RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 28 G. FINDLAY ANDREW Having agreed the matter of weight and accepted the rate of exchange, the next settlement had to be agreement on count and grading. Cash was usually strung in strings of five hundred. But the count was never full for the law of custom allowed the shop to deduct up to three cash per hundred to pay for the labour of counting, grading and stringing. Thus a nominal hundred worked out at 97—even less with a little sharp practice. Then in many districts there was a differentiation of "large" and "small" cash. In such case further bartering was necessary to agree the ratio of "large" and "small" in each hundred. Personally I would agree that the charge of three cash per hundred for counting, grading and stringing cash could be well justified. I do not remember seeing even a Scot count his cash after an exchange transaction. The labour involved is well illustrated in a Chinese story of a wealthy man and his prodigal son. The father was so incensed by the gambling debts incurred by his wayward son that, in a moment of extreme exasperation he disowned him. In accordance with well-established Chinese custom, the friends of the family rallied around and set to work to persuade the father to rescind his ruling. Finally, yielding for face sake, the father called for his steward to bring out 100,000 cash, the amount of the last gambling debt. It was winter time and the money was taken to the arbour in the garden and there the strings were cut and the cash poured into one pile on the floor. The son was then ordered to count and string the cash and discharge his debt therewith. You can imagine the state of the young man—physically and mentally—when at long last the task was completed! Finally when the long exchange transaction was completed, the purchaser was faced with the physical task of moving his purchase. The approximate weight was one lb. per hundred cash. Thus the exchange of one Mexican dollar (at the time equal to one U.S. dollar) at the ruling rate of 1,500 cash per dollar, faced the purchaser with the problem of having to move fifteen lbs, deadweight. When the traveller was on horse-back (as we so often were) this became a problem of considerable magnitude. Applied to present days this would mean that a traveller changing five dollars into cash before boarding a plane would find himself saddled with 75 lbs. of luggage—some ten lbs. in excess of the luggage allowance on an international flight. Yet in those days a single brass cash had its purchasing power. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 56 HEROLD J. WIENS Contact between the Han and non-Han resulted in the gradual acculturation of the lesser to the superior culture, and military conquest hastened the overwhelming of the lesser cultures in the kind of areas in which the Han were interested in settling, chiefly lowland valley farming regions. Into the poorer mountain lands of south China the Han found small reason at first to penetrate, and these were left to the mountain tribesmen whose ancestors occupied the land before the coming of the Han. The history-conscious Han people left records of their contacts and conflicts with the non-Han peoples in all parts of China, so that we can find the names of some 800 ethnic groups, or, rather, 800 names of ethnic groups with whom the Han came into contact in the course of their expansion from the Yellow river heartland. Many of these names no doubt were of identical groups recorded at different times by different people. The brief notices revealing the ethnic characteristics of these groups were sufficient to allow their classification by later students into larger common tribes. An especially useful study of these groupings was made by Professor William Eberhard, presently of the University of California, Berkeley.2 Of these 300 odd ethnic groups, Professor Eberhard found that only eighty were met with in north China; 290 were found in south China and 345 were found in southwest China. The small percentage found in north China probably reflects both the topography and the climate of the north. The dry climate of the northern peripherals of China restricted livelihood and population number, whereas the grasslands and plains reduced isolated ethnic evolution and developed a greater degree of intermixture and homogeneity than in the south. Similarly, the south China hills and valleys are less isolating than the high mountains and deep gorgelands of the southwest, so that less ethnic variety is found in the south than in the southwest. Thus, cultural diversity appears to reflect the topographic character of the land. Professor Eberhard recognized that, with the beginning of history in south and southwest China, there were four major cultural groupings in southwest China and three major and six 2 William Eberhard, Kultur und Siedlung der Randvölker China (The culture and settlement distribution of the peripheral peoples of China), T'oung Pao, Supplement to Vol. 36, Leiden, 1942. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 58 HEROLD J. WIENS mountainous regions of south China but also across the southern borders in Burma, Laos and Vietnam. The Yao, like the Miao, also are mountain-loving people, but appear to have originated as ethnic groups in the hill country of east-central China, in such regions as the present provinces of Anhwei, Chekiang and Kiangsu. They were here as early as Chinese records mention them, but they appear to have gradually abandoned these areas, as Han-Chinese settlement increased in density, and friction over land and other matters led the Yao to seek more isolated mountains. Since they were like the Miao in their type of fire-field or forest-burning, shifting cultivation, they inevitably came into close contact with the Miao and have many cultural features in common with the Miao. Elements of the language also appear similar. Some Chinese ethnographers have considered the Wu-ch'i Man a Yao rather than a Miao group, and others believe them to have common origins. This confusion is probably due to strong Mon Khmer influences originating from India and Southeast Asia in the earliest times. 4 One of the supporting arguments for the common origin of Yao and Miao is the common cult attached to the dog and the tiger. The Yao trace their ancestry mythically to the union of a princess with a supernatural dog-hero called P'an-hu. Yao myths trace their movement southward from both the central Yangtze valley regions and from the Chekiang-Fukien mountains. Folk songs of the Yao indicate further that they crossed over the Nan-ling mountains in great numbers during the period of Huang-ch'ao's rebellion in the reign of the T'ang Emperor Hsi-Tsung (A.D. 874-889),4 When the Miao moved into the Kweichow region in the earliest times, they probably found the Yi or Wu-man peoples already in occupation of western Kweichow. The Yi certainly preceded the Han in this part of China, and the Han Chinese have known of the Yi in their present habitats in southwest China for over 2,500 years. The peculiar manner in which the * Chiang Ying-liang, Hsi-nan pien-chiang min-tsu lun-ts'ung (A discussion of the peoples of the southwest borderlands), Canton, 1948, 74-79; see also Ling Shun-sheng and Jui Yi-fu, Hsiang-hsi Miao-tsu t'iao-cha pao-kao (Report of research on the Miao of west Hunan), Academia Sinica, Shanghai, 1947. 4 Hsu Sung-shih, Yueh-chiang liu-yü jen-min (The peoples of the Yueh river drainage), Shanghai, 1939, 130-135. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE 61 type shifting-cultivation of mountain slopes. Food supplies were restricted and commissary problems for military or administrative organizations here were large. The inducements to Han conquest were small, whereas the costs of conquest and military occupation were relatively large. The Han were in the main content to set up or permit local chieftains to operate with little interference except when Han interests were too much affected or when uprisings against Han oppression required pacification. The system of local rule described by the term "T'u-ssu" institution evolved into a system of petty hereditary kings holding commissions or warrants from the imperial government, or the central government in republican times, to rule their areas. In general, these areas have today become the nuclei of the so-called "autonomous regions" or "autonomous districts" of the Chinese Communists. However, there is much less autonomy in these areas than in the pre-Communist period. 44 L R What are some of the ethnic characteristics that set off one group from another among the chief non-Han peoples discussed in the preceding paragraphs? The Miao and Yao both share the semi-nomadic fire-field type of mountain agriculture except where their Sinicization has caused them to become entirely sedentary in the Han type of farming. Both engage in hunting, gathering and some lumbering to supplement their livelihood. The Miao are more likely than the Yao to do some herding of goats or cattle on the poor grasses of south China. Their crops are upland (dry-land) rice, maize, wheat and buckwheat. In social organization, neither Yao nor Miao have strong tribal organizations traditionally, and there are no ruling classes. Both are patriarchal systems, with the Miao having a strong ancestral cult. Both share the dog and tiger cult. Among the Yao, at the end of the year there are ceremonies with masked participants for driving out evil spirits from the home and settlement localities. The Miao may or may not bury their dead in coffins, the Yao generally do. Freedom in sex and love between girls and boys prevails until their marriage, which is of their own choosing rather than through middlemen or marriage arrangers. Marriage among the Yao takes place after the first child is born. Among * Yu Yi-tse, Chung-kuo t'u-ssu chih-tu (China's T'u-ssu system), Chung-king, 1944, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE 63 Among the Wu-man or Yi people, settlement tends to be more sedentary than among the Miao and Yao, although where forests existed, fire-field cultivation also has been practised. Dry-land crops such as corn, buckwheat, wheat, barley, beans and (since its relatively recent introduction) white potatoes are the main crops. In the higher altitude, horses, sheep and cattle, including yak, are raised on the grasslands. Hunting and fishing are practised where feasible. The material culture includes wooden houses with shingle or slat roofs, but traditionally, beds are on the floors with skin or felt bedding. Clothes of felt or coarse wool accompany the use of leather shoes and leggings. The hair of the noble men (Black-bone) is worn in a forward pointing horn. The beard is plucked out. Weapons include cross-bows, shields, armour, bows, swords and lances. As with the Tibetans, the Yi use milk, butter and tea.12 The Yi possess their own writing, but the written language has been used mainly for religious or superstitious purposes rather than for ordinary communications. Sorcery is a strong part of their religion, and animal sacrifices are made in connection with it. Divination is accomplished through the use of plant stalks. In the social organization are signs of an early matriarchal system which is reflected in the significant status of women in Yi society. A caste system of nobility and commoners differentiates them from most other non-Han tribes of southwest China.13 An interesting amplification of the Yi social system as well as those of the Wa or K'a-wa † and Ching-p'o 景颇 is provided by Alan Winnington14 who purportedly travelled under Chinese Communist auspices in western Yunnan in 1956. Although the book parrots the Communist line in making overmuch of Communist achievements and in vilifying the Kuomintang handling of the minorities problems, there is much useful information if the reader is careful to discard the chaff. The purported intention of the writer was to investigate slavery and this no doubt limited his observations of tribal society. Concerning the Black-bone Yi, Winnington found that, without a central administration among them, each family was a law unto itself. Nevertheless, 12 Ibid., 50. 13 Ibid. 14 Alan Winnington, Slaves of the Cool Mountains, Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd., London, 1959. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE 65 was contrary to the intention of the cadres. The distribution of confiscated animals among the slaves and bondsmen was at first regarded as a glorious opportunity to have a religious splurge of sacrifices and feasting instead of an investment for production. Sacrifices are required to placate the various spirits that were thought responsible for every evil and ill, from accidents to rheumatism. Winnington found that the Wa or K'a-wa of southwest Yunnan represent a different society, although Hsi-meng district to which he was taken by his Communist Chinese hosts lies only in the fringes of the Wa territory and may not be entirely representative. The Wa inhabit both sides of the south Yunnan-Burma borders and are divided into the "wild Wa" and the Wa tamed by contact with Burmese or Chinese civilizations. The "wild Wa" in British Burma in 1935 were still addicted to headhunting, both on other Wa and on non-Wa people coming into or living near their village areas.15 A Chinese account of the "wild Wa" on the Yunnan side related the headhunting to efforts to ensure good harvests. In any event, the "wild Wa" decorated the approaches to their thorn-fence walled-village with a double column of skulls mounted on posts. A person entered their territory at his peril. In the Sinicized northern part of the Wa territory there is a transition zone of intermixed hill Shan, La-hu and other mountain people as well as of Wa. Slavery here is practised in a very relaxed form, according to Winnington. Slaves constitute only about five per cent of the villagers as compared with over 90 per cent of the population in the Black-bone country. A slave suffers no social discrimination among the villagers and takes part in village and clan ceremonies open to other villagers. He can marry whom he pleases, and when the new couple sets up separate housekeeping, the master is bound by tradition to help them on pain of community criticism for failure to do so. Such a marriage virtually ends the slavery status, although the slave is expected to make payments to his master until his price is paid for. 1 Great Britain Treaty Series No. 80 (1947), Exchange of notes concerning the Burma-Yunnan boundary, 18th June 1941, London, 1947, 4. 16 Li Sheng-chuang, Yün-nan ti-yi chih-pien chü-yü nei chih jen-chung l'iao-cha (Research into the ethnic groups within the First Border Settlement District of Yunnan), Researches on the Yunnan Frontier Problems, Kunming, 1933, 194. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 70 HEROLD J. WIENS but their main concentration in a solid bloc is in the Ta-liang mountains southwest of I-pin district of Szechwan. More closely related to the Tibetans, the Ch'iang live in the west fringes of the Szechwan basin east of K'ang-ting city. The chief areas of Tibetan settlement are almost all in the Tibetan plateaus, though politically the areas are divided among five provinces in addition to Tibet proper and not counting now-abolished Sikang province. These are Kansu, Chinghai, Yunnan, Szechwan and Kweichow. Since Sikang has largely been incorporated into Szechwan, the latter now contains over 700,000 Tibetans, whereas Yunnan has some 67,000, Aside from the Chuang who constitute about seventy per cent of the total population in what is called the Kwangsi Chuang Autonomous Region, other T'ai-related groups are widespread especially in Yunnan and Kweichow. The T'ung occupy a solid bloc of territory joining three provinces: southeast Kweichow, northern Kwangsi, and western Hunan. They are related to the Shui who live in the southeast corner of Kweichow. The Pu-yi (also called Chung-chia) are a T'ai-related group in southwest Kweichow. In central Kweichow they live intermingled with the Miao, and they constitute the majority of the country people around the provincial capital of Kuei-yang. The T'ai proper have settled in the southern half of Yunnan where they are divided into two branches: the Hsi-shuang pan-na T'ai and the Te-hung T'ai. The former of these branches constitute "Twelve pan-na or basin 'states'", whence their name. The latter are close relatives of the Burma Shan people. Also related to the T'ai more distantly are the Li people of Hainan Island, with their heartland in the Li-mu ("mother of the Li") mountains that dominate the southern half of the island. Some Miao also are found on Hainan, having been imported during the Ch'ing dynasty to make poison arrows in the campaigns against the Li.20 The Miao are a very scattered group and only in two regions do they form compact settlements: eastern Kweichow and southwest Hunan. In Szechwan they live along the Kweichow borderlands. In Kwangsi they have settled in small groups in the centre of the province. In almost all regions the Miao have 20 Hsu Sung-shih, Yueh-chiang liu-yü jen-min, 122-123. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE 71 been pushed into the higher mountain districts and are surrounded by Han or T'ai people in the lower valleys. The chief Yao concentration is in the border mountains where Hunan, Kwangsi and Kwangtung come together. In Kwangsi they form a compact group in the Yao Mountains. According to Bruk, only a third of the Yao still speak the Yao language; the other two-thirds are said to have adopted one or the other of the Miao, Tung, Chuang or Han Chinese languages. Of the Miao-Yao group, but set somewhat farther apart culturally by time, is the She cultural group which mostly are in the east coast provinces but consider themselves to have come from Kwangsi. All except about 3,000 of the 151,000 She are in Fukien and Chekiang, the most compact settlement region being Ching-ning district in southern Chekiang, in which about a third of the total number reside. Aside from whatever problem the minorities constitute to the controlling Han Chinese, their occupation of the frontier regions of south and southwest China give them a peculiar significance. Many of them inhabit blocs of territory overlapping the international boundaries. With the development of national consciousness, especially in periods of real or imagined oppression by governments not of their own choosing on one side or the other of the border, resentments tend to be reflected in desires for pan-national or pan-ethnic consolidation. Trouble on one side of the border leads to easy flight across the border to receptive and related peoples on the other side. This also works for criminal elements wishing to escape from police authority in their home territory. Frontier smuggling and banditry require the cooperative effort of friendly neighbour states, but are hard to deal with when neither side exercises effective control in the isolated, sparsely-settled frontiers of southwest China. International grievances over minority peoples in the past have been numerous between former British-controlled Burma and China. 21 Within China, the ethnic character of its southwest clearly indicates its frontier aspects. This is a region of clashing cultures in various stages of peaceful or compulsory Sinicization. Today the acculturation process is being greatly accelerated by the Chang Hu, T'eng-yueh pien-ti chuang-k'uang chi chih-nien ch'u-yin (A discussion of the situation in the T'eng-yueh frontiers and of their control), Yunnan Frontier Research, Kunming, 1933, 321-322. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 80 J. W. HAYES an honest livelihood without difficulty. Few signs of anything approaching destitution were seen, and only a few beggars were met "." The reason for this general standard of well-being was undoubtedly the universal ownership of land. Whether Punti or Hakka, most families in every village owned some fields of their own, some more as a matter of course and some less, and because of the joint succession to ancestral property by all male descendants in the direct line, nearly everyone had a joint and undivided share, a stake, in the land. There was also clan land, which could be farmed out to poorer members. In land matters, the clan had priority over the individual. This was reflected in Chinese deeds of sale or mortgage which, if the New Territory is anything to go by, appear to follow the same form in Kwangtung as in far Shantung.11 Where a sale was contemplated, a reason had always to be specified, and the land had always to be offered in the first place to all relatives, which in fact meant practically anyone inside the clan, before being offered to an outsider. Mortgages were more common than sales and were redeemable at any period after the original mortgage, so that land need not pass outside the clan forever. There is no doubt that this tight rein on sales assisted the general preservation of the clan and the village and was a powerful factor in the continuance of a static and integrated life. These matters were regulated by the clan elders in conformity with immemorial custom. To meet clan needs, amongst which was the proper worship of ancestors as well as the needs of the living, such as education of the young and the care of the old, certain fields and houses were set aside in trust, and the trust so created was known as a tong or tso. These are commonly found in the New Territory, and many were registered at the land settlement which followed the grant of the lease to Great Britain. The tso is the more closely connected with the clan. Anyone can form a tong, but a tso is definitely a clan affair, and of the nature of a serious ancestral trust.12 It is set up to ensure that property is not divided or disposed of without due thought and is designed to circumvent the acts of foolish or spendthrift descendants, in the interests of all that the Confucian system holds most dear: the rearing of sons, giving them a proper education, seeing that forebears are duly respected in a fitting manner, assisting with ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 88 J. W. HAYES 36 Disturbances apart, the common people preferred to be left to themselves. They rarely had anything to do with the magistrate and his followers and preferred it that way. The magistrate, in his turn, was glad to leave routine affairs to the local tribunals. The price paid for these attitudes was the prevalence of crime. Poor communications were no help. The magistrate was often rendered powerless by unrest and disturbances of all kinds. Robberies and descents on shore by pirate gangs could take place with impunity since, even if help came, it invariably arrived far too late. Crime might eventually be punished but it was seldom prevented. No one would inform on disturbers of the peace for fear of reprisals or being entangled in the meshes of the law. Commenting on coastal piracy in 1897 Consul Brenan wrote, "The boat people never attempt to effect an arrest; there would probably be bloodshed and they would then be involved in judicial proceedings almost as unpleasant for themselves as for the pirates. They are thankful enough if they can get rid of their dangerous passengers, and persuade them to go off and try their fortune elsewhere"** However, it is only fair to state that the people of the district were also apt to create trouble among themselves, especially when circumstances conspired to make life difficult as in the dry season. This was especially true of the more closely populated agricultural areas, with villages in close proximity to each other, often sharing the same water supply for their fields and personal needs. The volatile Cantonese temperament is not suited to a cautious settlement of complicated personal problems: it is easier by far to fly off the handle and strike an attitude than to sit down and think. Hence difficult situations often were made intolerable by proximity and a quick temper, and clan fights were not uncommon, especially in the Yuen Long area. Hostilities between southern villages were well known at the time.** A tablet in the Tin Hau temple at Miu Kong, Tsuen Wan, refers to the death of seventeen male villagers by armed conflict between this village and Shing Mun Pat Heung in three years of intermit-tent strife which began in 1861. To these disturbances between the Punti villagers can be added a general antipathy between Hakka and Punti which sometimes erupted into violence and was still smouldering after the Hakka rebellion thirty years before."" 38 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 94 J. W. HAYES land and the clan. The popular religion too, was but an ephemeral thing, something to meet the needs of the moment; something too that was not so respectable as the austere worship which fell within the Confucian canon. In short, the impression left by the brief excursion into the past which forms the basis of this article has left me with the firm impression that Confucianism was the dominant influence over people and government in the New Territory in 1898. I hasten to point out that in itself this is not in any way surprising: but in view of the remoteness of the area and its late settlement by Chinese of different race with their undoubted absorption of earlier inhabitants this impression of its pervasiveness and brooding presence everywhere in the Territory at this time is probably worth restating. NOTES As far as possible the notes are designed to supplement the text and not to be a necessary part of it. I have used local source material which has come to my notice during a tour of duty as District Officer South (1957-60) and Islands (1961-62) when I have been in a favourable position to hear of, find and utilise whatever happened to come my way, besides the authorities cited in these notes. I have scarcely used the District History, the San On Yuen Chi (⛧人元誌, last edition 1820, but reprinted by Kwong Tung Printers, Canton, in 1933) nor Mr. Lo Hsiang-lin's Hong Kong and its external communications before 1842 which uses the District History extensively. (It is good to know that a translation of the latter is in the Hong Kong University Press and will appear shortly, so making available in English part of the District History). I ought also to say here that this is my first excursion in the field of Oriental Studies, with all that this implies. I wish to thank Mr. Lo Chi Chung of the District Office for his valuable help. A Cantonese form of romanization has been used throughout. 1 James Haldane Stewart Lockhart (1858-1937) became a Hong Kong Cadet in 1878. He was appointed Colonial Secretary in 1895, the post he held at the time of his Report (8th October 1898) for which he received the thanks of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He was created C.M.G. in 1898 and K.C.M.G. in 1908. In 1902 he became first Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei, a territory of 285 square miles on the coast of Shantung with an estimated 330 villages and a population of 124,000 which had been leased to Britain in 1898. He remained in this quiet backwater for the next twenty years. Lockhart was a sinologue of some note in his day and wrote a Manual of Chinese Quotations (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1903), The Currency of the Far East, 3 vols (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1895, 1898) and a monograph, The Stewart Lockhart collection of Chinese copper coins, (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1915). Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 97 J, FUNG Yiu Tsan, residing at No. 69 in this village, have a farm hut and a piece of waste threshing ground at Lot Nos. 94 and 95, which I hereby sell to a junior clansman FUNG Tak Yau, because I am old, have no son to support me and cannot make a living or obtain the money I need by borrowing. The price agreed upon is twenty-four silver dollars. This has been paid in full, after weighing, to me personally; the money is to be taken home for me to spend; hereafter the above-named payer will assume ownership of the farm hut and waste threshing ground, including the walls, tiles, ordure pit and boundary stones. From now on no arbitrary claims may be made, for this sale is voluntary and payment has been made in full and as agreed. This agreement is irrevocable. Should this property be found to have been acquired under suspicious circumstances, the vendor alone will be held responsible; the above payer is not liable. This written agreement is hereby prepared as proof and for retention by FUNG Tak Yau. Another, drawn up during the difficult days of the Japanese occupation in 1942 reads, This deed of sale on land is drawn up by the vendor CHAN Wan Shing. Because he has not money for purchasing provisions, he first offered to sell to his kinsfolk the nine plots of land, total area three dau chung, located at Nam Pei Tau in Shek Pik Village, bequeathed to him by his grandfather, but none of them are interested. Then, through the medium of a middleman, KWOK Lai Pai of Tai O was approached and he undertook to buy them at a current price of $165.00. Again, through the middleman, CHAN Wan Shing has received a sum of $165 for himself, and with effect from the date of this deed, the lots will become the permanent property of KWOK Lai Pai. For fear that verbal agreement may not constitute evidence, this deed is executed as a certificate to confirm the transaction. During a land court held during the Shek Pik settlement just as a case was being settled in the present possessor's favour in default of proof of the plaintiff's contention that the original document was a mortgage and not a sale (and therefore redeemable, according to custom, despite subsequent transactions) the defendant pulled out a new sheaf of papers for inspection. Among them was a white deed which proved to be the original mortgage of 1918. He thereby defeated his own case. It turned out that he had never bothered to read the papers handed over to him with the white deed of sale drawn up during the Japanese Occupation. Similarly, a sixty year old mortgage elsewhere on Lantau which was discovered in the land registers when succession was being determined, was honoured by the mortgagees, though grudgingly, the real point at issue being the amount of compensation and not the return of the land, as no figure was stated in the original entry. 12 This is recognised in the provisions of the New Territories Ordinance Cap. 97 where the registration of a so manager in the Land Office is obligatory. A change of manager can only be secured after the vacancy has been filled at a properly advertised clan meeting and notices of election, posted by the District Office, have expired without objection, Prospective sales of two land have to be reported to the Assistant Land Officer (the D.O.) and advertised by him, again without objection, before a sale is allowed. Trustees, too, are not permitted to sell land belonging to minors unless the Land Officer has given his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f EXCAVATIONS AT MAN KOK TSUI 107 The impressed designs on the pottery were geometric and appeared to have been stamped onto the pot with a die or paddle as over-printing was often noted. The patterns on the soft pots differed from those on the hard pots being, on the whole simpler and cruder. A 'string' pattern, running vertically up the sides of the pot and overprinting in criss-cross on the base was the commonest on the soft pottery, and 'zig-zag chevron' and basket-like designs also occurred. On the hard pottery the commonest pattern was a 'net' design of differing fineness, which sometimes covered the whole pot or was used in conjunction with one of the more elaborate hard pot designs: and 'lozenge', 'circle', and 'double-f' motifs; or with horizontal parallel lines, and the pricked stitch pattern described by Fr. Finn. 4 Many of the hard pots had, either on the base or the lip, a distinctive incised mark of dots or parallel lines—perhaps a potter's or owner's mark. None of these marks were alike. One spindle whorl made of stone and two made of pottery were found in the central valley at Man Kok Tsui, also many roughly fashioned rings of stone and pottery which may have been used as weights for fishing nets. CONCLUSIONS: 44 Although it is known that the sea level was higher and that primary forest covered the Colony in prehistoric times, it seems reasonable to suppose that the factors making an area desirable for settlement (for example: a reliable source of fresh water, shelter from the worst prevailing weather, good landing beaches for small boats, etc.) would still apply in historic times and up to the present day. This limits the possibility of undisturbed and "diggable" sites in Hong Kong, as many existing villages may be built on top of older settlements. We were lucky enough to find at Man Kok Tsui remains of a Neolithic culture, over-laid with very few traces of later habitation and to have a record of the cultivation and settlement of the valley in recent years. In spite of this little information was gained about where or how the people lived, except what could be gleaned from their tools and pottery—the fine workmanship in stone, the few pieces of bronze, the fish-hook, the presumptive net weights and spindle whorls. The heavy rains and high humidity of this area, and the acid nature of the soil may account for the complete absence of traces of animal and human bones, clothing and dwellings. Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING 81 the death of Sir Robert Hart during the siege, and on July 21st it carried a long letter from the President of Queen's College, Belfast, which served as a somewhat premature obituary notice for Hart, who, in fact, lived until 1911.** The relieving troops finally entered the British Legation on August 14th, when a Company of mounted Sikhs rode in at about 3 p.m. accompanying General Gaselee and his staff. So ended the siege which had lasted from June 20th until August 14th, a total of 55 days. Fortunately no overwhelming damage had been done to the British Legation, though many of the roofs were badly smashed about and bullets and shells had gone through most of the buildings. One last ironic touch; immediately after the raising of the siege the commissariat functioned so inefficiently that the besieged had to forage for themselves and for some days got less to eat than during the fighting. Meanwhile those who had 'enjoyed' the hospitality of the British Legation during the siege departed and the work of clearing up and repairing the damage began. The actual damage suffered by the British Legation buildings was slight in comparison with the damage done to the other foreign Legations. The outer walls were badly damaged and had to be rebuilt, but one small section on the north-east corner facing the Imperial Canal was sufficiently unharmed to be left intact, and on its surface someone painted in black nine-inch letters the words "LEST WE FORGET”. Most of the buildings in the compound were soon repaired and the Legation again looked substantially the same as before the siege. However, as part of the settlement after the Boxer troubles and the siege of the Legation Quarter Britain acquired considerable ground on the northern and western sides of the old Legation. This consisted of land formerly occupied by the Mongol market, by the Imperial Carriage Park and by the Hanlin Academy, which was burnt out during the fighting. This newly acquired land was later used for 28 Born in 1835 Hart came out to China in the Consular Service in 1854 and spent his first three months as an interpreter at Hong Kong. After various consular appointments he was permitted by the British Government to resign from the consular service in 1859 and to join the newly formed Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs service as Deputy-Commissioner of Customs at Canton. In 1863, at the age of twenty-eight, he was appointed Inspector-General of the Maritime Customs, a post which he held until his resignation in 1908. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v CHEUNG CHAU 95 the tablets state that upon its establishment the Po On study was endowed with a shop and a house, both with their title deeds; and the Fong Pin hospital with two shops. This abstention from many of the basic duties of local government on the part of the district authorities could lead to abuses when a powerful group of local leaders became unscrupulous through continued exercise of power, and lack of control and supervision from above. On Cheung Chau, as I have said, this group was represented by the WONG Wai Chak Tong, with whom the larger shopkeepers and important individuals were probably prepared to make common cause. The Tong owned all the land; its parent branch at Nam Tau must undoubtedly have included senior graduates and possibly retired officials; and the tablets show that some members of the Cheung Chau branch were junior graduates by examination or purchase.** This group must have been able to exert a considerable pressure on the district magistrate and his secretaries regarding Cheung Chau affairs, and during their short three-year tour most magistrates must have felt that the Tong and the Cheung Chau people were capable of looking after themselves on what was, after all, a small and remote island, with a population less than that of many of the larger villages in the district. In short, Cheung Chau interests were well represented if the Tong was honest and well-meaning, but not if its members were corrupt and ill-intentioned. Turning again to the tablets, that relating to the Po On study is of great interest because of its connection with a prominent feature of Cheung Chau society which has so far only been mentioned in passing: the district association.** 25 The district association is a social and charitable organisation organised on the basis of mutual assistance from among natives of the same district when living in another place. In a mixed settlement like Cheung Chau, where Hoklo and Tanka rubbed shoulders with Hakka, Chiu Chau, and Punti from various districts of Kwangtung province, it was a distinct advantage to be part of a community which had troubled to organise itself for welfare purposes, as had several district groups on this small island a hundred years ago. These traditional media of mutual assistance warrant a closer look, especially as their existence is proof of the diversity of persons settling on Cheung Chau, its ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 128 A. D. BLUE an unofficial association of Chinese pilots stationed at Hankow, whose members were employed by the companies on this section of the river. For the Upper River there was a branch of the Chinese Pilotage Service, whose members were licensed by the Customs, and an apprenticeship of five years was required to qualify as a pilot on the Upper River. The Yangtse was opened to foreign trade through British diplomatic and naval action, and the Yangtse Valley was always a particular preserve of British commerce and industry. This was tacitly recognised by the other Powers, even during periods of intense international rivalry. By the early 1920's it was estimated that British investment in the Yangtse Valley, including Shanghai, was over £200,000,000. This was almost as much as was invested in the whole of British India at that time, and much more than was invested in British Africa. More than half of the shipping regularly employed on the Yangtse was owned by two British companies—the China Navigation Company of John Swire of London, and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company of Jardine Matheson and Company of Hong Kong. Both Companies also had substantial investments in other industries in the Yangtse Valley, as well as in docks, wharves, and warehouses. The operations of the British Yangtse steamers were severely curtailed shortly after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Within a few months of the outbreak of the war the Japanese had captured Shanghai, and soon after that Nanking, the capital. The capital had previously been moved up river to Hankow, and when Hankow in turn was threatened it was moved further up to Chungking, which remained the capital for the remainder of the war. The capture of Hankow resulted in the closure of the Lower River to British shipping, but the services above Hankow were still maintained. After Ichang was captured in June 1940, a still more restricted service was maintained in the Upper River until the end of the war. No British ships operate on the Yangtse nowadays, and the Red Ensign is seen only on the rare occasions when a British ship under charter to the Chinese government visits Nanking or Hankow. 17 By Shanghai is meant here the Chinese city surrounding the International Settlement and the French Concession. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE 43 as a humble amateur I appeal humbly to the professionals for assistance; and, much less humbly, to other amateurs to take over the gathering of data on Hong Kong before the Chinese.* By Hong Kong, I mean that southern part of the district now known as Po On,1 previously known as San On,122 and still earlier included within Tung Kwun,31 or partly within Tung Kwun and partly within Kwai Shin,60 which today comprises the Colony and leased territory of Hong Kong. By Chinese, I mean such of the inhabitants (and ancestors of the inhabitants) of that territory as would not have been described in a contemporary official document by one of the terms used for non-Chinese, i.e. I Ti Jung Man.67 If this definition appears negative it cannot be helped, since Chinese literature itself does not, until modern times, contain any word which corresponds to our word "Chinese", but has always had several terms for what might be called "Non-Chinese". Although one Chinese-type grave, said to date from the Han151 Dynasty, has been found in New Kowloon, and although one small Buddhist temple has behind it the foundation of a previous structure said to date from the Tsin158 Dynasty, there is no evidence of Chinese settlement before the end of the Tang.139 Up to and including the Tang Dynasty all the inhabitants, and up to the Yuan Dynasty most of the inhabitants of what is now the Colony and leased territory of Hong Kong are described, if described at all, as Man.88 The two Chinese clans with the longest records of continuous local residence (the Tang44 of Kam Tin,56 Lung Yeuk Tau7 and Ping Shan; and the Man of San Tin125 and Cha Hang11) go back indisputably to early Sung;132 and their traditions, to which I shall be referring again, speak of two other clans (Mo5 and Chan17) having been before them. The oldest building, except the temple previously mentioned, of which there is evidence, is the fort of Tuen Mun141 built in the Nan Han99 (Canton) Dynasty in A.D. 958. Another document refers to the appointment of a military commander of Tuen Mun in A.D. 954. I cannot be assailed if I say "Anything before A.D. 900 is, for this territory, before the Chinese." The Frame. The natural question to be asked is "Before the Chinese, who?" Before I attempt to answer this question, there *All local place names are given in the Cantonese pronunciation. Notes giving Chinese characters and romanization in the Barnett-Chao system are given at the end of the article.—Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE 45 is one important point to be cleared up. The Chinese are highly skilled farmers. Their techniques of land-winning and of irrigation change landscapes. So, alas, does their age-long war against trees. But since A.D. 900 the topography of this territory has been changed not only by human technique. There has also been a gradual, small, but identifiable and, I believe, measurable tilt of the surface of the earth along the axis of the four high peaks (the two on Lantao,37 Tai Mo Shan and Ng Tung Shan104) which has altered and is still altering the coast line. I leave it to geologists to say whether this is a necessary effect of what happens when the subsidence of a long straight shore meets a range of hills parallel to the shore (in which case it will be reproduced at many points of the Chinese coast), or whether it is a local peculiarity. It would also be interesting to fill in some of the chronological gaps and find out whether the two clear cases of recent river capture13 took place before or after the Chinese settlement. Until these gaps are filled up, I do not claim that the details of the shore line indicated on the map are authoritative, but they are not far wrong for the northwestern part of the territory, which was the part first settled by the ancestors of the Man94 and Tang.44 You will observe that the present Castle Peak and the mountain attached to it on the north42 were at that time an island, separated from the mainland of the New Territories by a sea channel which in A.D. 900 was probably very shallow but navigable. The traditions of the oldest villages leave no room for doubt that there has been a general uplift in excess of 5 metres in this area. The red line approximately follows the present 5 metres contour. The ground on both sides of the navigable channel was swamp, probably mangrove swamp, dotted about with small islands and intersected by creeks and streams. The first fort of which there is written record was known as Tuen Mun Chan141 and was almost certainly located at a point I have marked on the map,138 about three miles north of the present location called Tuen Mun.141 It would be an advantage if all doubts could be settled by excavation on the site, which can be seen even from the ground (and more clearly still from the air) to have contained old earth-works and possibly buildings. It will be noticed that the present Sham Chun120 River had a much shorter course at that date, and the northern half of what ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 46 K. M. A. BARNETT our map describes as Laffan's Plain27 was then a swamp, probably with one or two navigable channels; which explains why there is in that region a Tin Hau135 temple, which is now miles from the highest point which even sampans can reach. 96 Although the first fortification was dated A.D. 958, the name, if it means what it says, indicates that this channel or mun must have had a fortification on it before. Among all the channels which are called by this name mun— all the important channels are so called - no one is going to single out one to be described as "the fort (or garrison) channel" unless it previously had a fort or garrison. However, evidence is still lacking of the nature of this previous fortification. Here a word of conjecture may be permitted. The San On Yuen Chi123 mentions that in the year ✯✯ 6 (A.D. 331) of the Tsin158 Dynasty the hsien of Po On3 was first set up, to be abolished under the Sui22 Dynasty. Since it was in the Tsin158 Dynasty that the first Buddhist temple was said to have been built, the establishment and abolition of the hsien may indicate an unsuccessful attempt at settlement during this period, say from A.D. 330 to 590. From the Nan Han99 Dynasty onwards, it was settled government policy in these parts to encourage soldiers of each garrison to take up grants of land and to settle there after completion of their military service. The land they occupied was known as tuen-tin142 and was charged land tax at a lower rate than normal. Taxation at this favourable rate continued up to the last edition of the San On Yuen Chi123. The favourable rate was the same as the special rate for monasteries. It is pretty clear from local tradition and from the location of the pieces of land which paid tax at the preferential rate that the reclamation of mangrove swamp in and around the present Yuen Long was done by these soldiers and their early descendants. The Man94 clan now settled at San Tin125 have been winning land in this fashion for 500 years on their present location, to which they moved from their first settlement at Lo Fu Hung85 about half way down what was then a creek. The latter lies between the original Tuen Mun141 fort and the present shore of Castle Peak Bay15. Just north of that location, at the foot of the small group of hills on one of which stands the present Ping Shanlit Police Station, there was a village called Nga Tsin Tsuen settled ļ ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 48 K. M. A. BARNETT 17 strong corroboration of traditions, which might otherwise be thought apocryphal, of the disappearance of other villages, including the large village of Lik Yuen,84 half way down what is now Tide Cove.16 For all that, one cannot be absolutely sure. An old Hoklo155 boatman at Tai Po, who fortunately spoke reasonable Cantonese (for I cannot manage the Hoklo language) told me that "fifty years before he was born, Hong Kong Island was joined to the mainland. It obviously was not. But remembering what has been observed by other field workers, that "fifty years" is commonly used to mean any time too long to be remembered, what the old man was passing on was clearly a tradition among the Hoklo that Tuk Ngo Kong45 a name for Victoria Harbour which apparently only the Hoklo language now preserves was long ago interrupted by a strip of land. It may well have been so, and I have provisionally marked it so. For if it were, it would tend to explain the curious demarcation of responsibility between the military commanders of Nam Tau and Tai Pang40 and the apparent fact that ships went through Sheung Sz Mun127 rather than through the present Hong Kong Harbour. It might also explain why Kwun Fu Cheung was more important for the collection of salt than for defence. There is also some slight reason to believe that Ma Wan and Tsing Yi,13 which are now islands, were 1,000 years ago connected to the mainland and to one another, and that the channel between Chep Lap Kok1 and Tung Chung was considerably deeper than it now is. But I must emphasize that the picture on the south and east side is still sketchy. It would greatly facilitate the work of the historian if his geological colleagues could be persuaded to take their eyes off remote aeons and fix them on to this comparatively recent period so as to obtain some degree of certainty regarding the position of the shore-line at the time of the first Chinese settlement. The Missing Pieces. To move away from the shore up to the hills, the first thing that would strike the eye of any us, if he could be transported by time machine into the tenth century, would be the profusion of trees. A former Director of Agriculture told me that the remains of huge trees had been discovered some distance below ground during preparatory work for one of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 56 K. M. A. BARNETT where the sea has been receding, it should be possible to find sites for excavation which are further away from the sea than they were when occupied. If one such can be found, it might be possible to uncover the whole settlement (whereas hitherto we have had to be content with the inland fringe of it) and thus to learn more of how these people lived before their way of life was disturbed. The area between the present Castle Peak Bay and Lau Fau Shan,79 particularly the re-entrants (which 1,000 years ago were bays) on the eastern side of Castle Peak and Tai Tau Shan,42 seems to afford the greatest promise. Associated with the seashore sites, but also to be found on all the hills, are curious inverted conical pits variously described as kilns and vats. Their use has never been satisfactorily explained. These also should be plotted. I would be surprised if the plotting of all these objects: pits, stone walls, graves, standing stones, shore-side occupied sites and pre-Chinese irrigation channels, did not indicate that the inhabitants whom I have described throughout, in deference to tradition and to Chinese records, as of four kinds did not prove to have been after all one people. The fact that a people who grew cereals and roots on the hills and hunted wild game in the forests did not possess a technique for draining and cultivating mangrove swamps is no proof that they did not know how to catch fish; and the fact that our present boat people grow no crops and have for some centuries specialised in fishing and manufacturing salt does not mean that their earlier ancestors could not have hunted on the hills as well as in the sea, and there grown the cereals they needed to supplement a fish diet, and the roots from which they produced the preservative dye which they still use for their nets and sails. They must have had access to the forest to obtain the wood from which they built their boats, the skins from which they made their sails, and the gut from which, I suppose, they made their bowstrings and other fastenings. They may have done all this by friendly barter (I have suggested elsewhere that a group of place names including Yau Ma Tei,65 Ma Yau Tong90 and Ma Liu Shui could have been places where by convention the people of the shore and the people of the hills met to exchange their necessities), but the possibility that they were all one people ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE 57 should not, in the course of scientific investigation, be omitted as a possibility; even though subsequent events thrust them apart, by interposing a new and more vigorous culture, based on intensive agriculture and possessing sufficient military power and social drive to impose on the less numerous people of the waters and of the forests a language, a dress and a society different from that which they originally had. I will here ask you to turn your eyes for a moment to Canton, which is less than 100 miles from here and which when the first Chinese settled in this territory was, and had been for many centuries, the metropolis (and probably the only city of any size known to the inhabitants) of this region. Canton was founded originally as a Chinese trading settlement or colony, in the middle of non-Chinese territory with ethnologically non-Chinese inhabitants. It became first the capital of a peripheral kingdom, which from time to time acknowledged and was acknowledged by the Son of Heaven: then the capital of a province which from time to time, when the central government was weak, tended, and has continued to tend even into modern times, to re-assert its independence. Then in the Sui22 Dynasty it became the first port in which foreigners were officially permitted to settle and trade—I mean of course the Arabs, whose completely assimilated descendants are still to be found in Canton and Hong Kong; and finally, following the same well tried pattern (since Chinese administrators, like all others, adopted new ideas with grave reluctance and preferred to follow the old ruts) the first port to which the ebullient Europeans, following in the track of the Arabs, also came to purchase goods the Chinese did not particularly want to sell and to offer in exchange commodities they did not want to buy. The frame of our picture, or of our jigsaw puzzle, would not be complete without a reference to Canton. Bricks bearing the imprint of, and presumably made in, Pun-yue1—that is to say Canton can be seen today in the roofs and walls of the ancient tomb, if it be a tomb, at Li Cheng Uk.83 Throughout the Tang139 Dynasty the inhabitants of Canton must still have been mainly non-Chinese, since the author of the Hsin Wu Tai Shih121 is at some pains to explain why it was that so many Chinese came and settled in this region during the disorders which brought down that dynasty. From the point of view of Canton, and therefore ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 71 PENG CHAU BETWEEN 1798-1899 J. W. HAYES, M.A. I The object of this and previous articles is to recover as much of the pre-1899 past of the Hong Kong region as possible, with special reference to the nineteenth century. What materials for a history of the life and times of the people still exist? Locally there are occasional stone tablets commemorating the repair of temples or the settlement of an important local dispute. They mostly belong to the latter part of the nineteenth century. Some eighteenth century ones have survived but early tablets are generally rare because local people have a habit of getting rid of them when the temple is repaired once more. If not actually thrown out, they are taken into the yard and eventually broken up by children, or taken away to serve as impromptu table tops and seats or as chopping boards for vegetables. Then there are the numerous horse-shoe shaped graves which stud the countryside, practically all of which have dated tablets. Many of those still legible date from the late CHING period (1644-1912), but time and exposure to the elements have often done their worst, especially where a family has died out and the grave is no longer visited every year. There is the mute evidence of the countryside itself, where land long fallow and houses mouldering into the ground testify to a more populated past, often at a considerable distance of time from the present. Written records include clan genealogies. These seem to be fairly widespread, though fewer in number than before the Japanese war. In the remoter and poorer areas, where the clans are small and poorly educated, they often amount to no more than a list of names without even dates of birth and death; but those of the larger clans are often printed and include all kinds of interesting information, such as lists of property, honours and posts held by ancestors, clan rules, etc. A few land-deeds from the CHING period also turn up from time to time, but, like the genealogies, they have suffered from damp and the consuming desire of white ants to know more of their local history. It has also to be remembered that land-deeds had to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 72 J. W. HAYES be shown for inspection to prove ownership at the land settlement which followed the British lease and, though opinions differ on this point, many old villagers have said that their deeds were handed in to the Government and not returned. This would, in part, account for their being in very short supply today, at any rate throughout the area with which I am familiar; that is the islands and the Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay districts. Following widespread enquiry over a number of years, I am convinced that another factor of great importance in explaining their scarcity is the Japanese occupation of the Colony in 1941-45. Many villagers say that their papers were destroyed at that time, in many cases by themselves, since they feared the questions which might result if the Japanese authorities got their hands on them. The less they knew the better, was the prevailing view, and therefore many families destroyed their papers, to our present loss. Fortunately, to set against this background of loss and decay, there are the valuable records of the land settlement carried out within a few years of the lease of the New Territories to Britain in 1898. These consist of records of a ground survey, carried out mainly to a scale of thirty-two inches to the mile, in which individual lots are set down and numbered, and their ownership listed in an accompanying schedule certified as correct by an officer of the Land Court.2 These constitute a modern "Domesday" of all titles to land in the leased territory. Their usefulness to the historian is obvious and apart from their intrinsic value as a contemporary record they provide many clues to the past and enable detailed checks to be made on some of the persons and organisations whose names appear on commemorative tablets and others dated items such as furniture and fittings, which are to be found in the many temples which dot the countryside. There are also the recollections of elders, particularly those over eighty years of age, who were young men at the time the territory changed hands. The memories of the oldest men are sometimes good and when this is the case they can do a great deal to fill in the bare bones of the land records and the genealogical trees. Since certain changes overtook the region within the first decade of British rule,3 their testimony is of the greatest importance to a realisation of manners and attitudes and an understanding of the system of civil and military administration which obtained ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r PENG CHAU 77 settlement is given below and it is sufficient to say that at first they owned little beyond their houses22 and seem to have been closely involved in fishing, at any rate in the second half of the century. When their senior elder Mr. CHUNG Fat ## (born 1876) was a boy of fifteen years old, his grandfather owned nine fishing boats of the Hoklo type. These rowing boats were manned with the help of other Hakkas, their friends and clansmen from the Tsuen Wan-Shing Mun-Pat Heung area of the present New Territories. They fished by day or night according to the season, using thread nets made in the shape of a basket and sold to them by Hoklo people. The boats were often out overnight, depending on the distance to which they went to fish and the nature of the catch. They often fished all round the Lantau coast and into Deep Bay, which is a long way for a rowing boat, though anyone who has seen the speed with which the rowers propel these craft off Cheung Chau will not be surprised at this. In 1896 Mr. CHUNG's uncle returned from Sandakan in Borneo, and took him there to work for three years, after which he came back, was married, and together with his uncles and cousins again made the sea his business. This time he did not do the fishing, but with two small sailing boats operated as a fish collector. On behalf of a shop, which was owned by a Punti of San Wui †† extraction then resident on Peng Chau, he went out to the Tanka boats fishing the neighbouring waters and bought their catch, for which he received a commission. At a later stage (1916-46) he worked two boats with which, in the summer months, he collected grass bought from the Lantau villagers opposite Peng Chau. He dried the grass and sold it the following year to fishermen for caulking their boats on a piece of land which he had bought for the purpose. By 1899 the CHUNGs had taken a lot of mortgaged land from the LUI family,23 and all this activity connected with the sea was in addition to farming paddy and vegetable fields, which was mainly carried on by the womenfolk. These paragraphs illustrate the diversity of activities in a small coastal settlement like Peng Chau and the danger of assigning one group to its traditional role and no other. It exemplifies what, in 1840, the famous Commissioner LIN of Opium War fame reported as being a local Kwangtung saying, “Seven go to fishing, three go to the plough”, and again “Three parts mountain, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 78 J. W. HAYES six parts sea", an exaggeration which none the less makes its point.24 Hardly part of the fishing fleet as such, but a contribution to Peng Chau's sea-faring activity was the recovery of coral from the sea bed. The coral was used in the production of lime which was required in the building trade for making mortar. This was a major undertaking by the end of the century; it was, in fact, the largest in the New Territories at the time its numbers were reported in 1901.25 Twenty junks each carrying eighteen men and sixty boats each carrying six men, that is 720 men between them, were said to have been engaged in this work which took place within three square miles of sea between Peng Chau and Nei Kwu Chau, the present Hei Ling Chau leprosarium. Fishing, and the recovery of coral for the lime kilns, was such a large scale enterprise in Peng Chau waters at this time that, as two elders have put it to me on different occasions, you could walk on boats as far as the adjacent shore of Lantau, a distance of almost a mile. The land dwellers on Peng Chau were of two kinds: Cantonese, whose principal outlet was business, and Hakkas who had settled down to farm there in the decades before and after 1800. The history and origins of the latter are well-defined by family graves and the recollections of their present descendants but the influx of the Cantonese, and the time and manner of their coming — because in many cases they probably came and went without making a permanent settlement — is more of a mystery. Chinese land deeds of the Ching period are often useful since they sometimes uncover facts not recorded in the earliest land records of the British administration. I have seen such a deed dated 188226 which records the transfer of a shop from one party to another. Naturally this is a common enough transaction, but this particular deed provides interesting information about land ownership on Peng Chau at an earlier date. It relates how the CHAN Yan Hop Tong ✰✰ of San On district had, at a prior but unknown date, leased land sufficient to build ten houses to the CHAN Yee Ka Tong of Tung Kwun district, who in turn sold one shop built on this land to another person. There are actually two differently worded deeds of the same date relating to the same shop and the same transaction, and they Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 80 J. W. HAYES of these persons also appear on the large temple bell presented in 1792. All six donors of this bell were CHANs, all related, and these two are listed as the sons of two elder CHANs. One would expect the members of a tax-lord Tong to subscribe liberally to local projects. Indeed, they could hardly avoid doing so, since they would certainly be asked and could not refuse without loss of face. Therefore it is possible that these CHANs did belong to either the Tung Kwun family or the Nam Tau family which, as I have surmised, may well have been different branches of the same powerful clan. Some of its poorer members may even have settled as shopkeepers on Peng Chau, since when the British took over the New Territories in 1899 persons of this name were prominent among owners of shops and houses in the main street left and right of the one which had been sold in 1882. Perhaps settlement was the only means of collecting the rents from this remote place, which induced the family to send some of its people to live there. It is difficult to get conclusive proof since no members of this clan appear to be left on Peng Chau today and my last suggestion is more conjecture than anything else.28 The CHAN clan were not the only Puntis with an interest in Peng Chau, but with the information at present at my disposal it is impossible to say whether they were the first Cantonese settlers or developers. In 1899 all but one or two shops were run by Cantonese, though Hakkas had been on the island for about a century. Several of the shopkeepers had inherited businesses begun by their grandfathers, which indicates that a measure of stability had been achieved on the island for some time past. However, the merchants and shopkeepers generally may have been less settled and less wedded to Peng Chau than the farming Hakkas. Turning now to these, the LUIs are said to be the oldest, but whether they were actually the first Hakka settlers is an open question. They have fallen on hard times and there are only two separate families left. A man of sixty-four is of the fifth generation, which on the twenty-five year basis of reckoning would give the first ancestor's birth-date as 1800, whilst a thirty year period, which is perhaps more likely, would give 1780. At any rate the family must have come to Peng Chau about 1800. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r PENG CHAU 81 The first ancestor came from Po Kat in Po On, then San On, district. He settled not far from the anchorage and the shops nearby, and the family flourished there for several generations, farming most of the cultivable land and planting an extensive forestry lot.29 But the position had changed for the worse by 1899. At the land settlement which followed the British lease, though the LUIs were credited with owning house land, four and a half acres of paddy fields, and nine and a half acres of dry cultivation and vegetable land on Peng Chau, all except their houses were mortgaged to different persons without hope of return.30 When my informant was a boy, the LUI houses were in a broken-down condition. They also owned a lot of land on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau, but much of this too was mortgaged by the end of the century.31 The CHUNG family are said to have been the next arrivals. According to old Mr. CHUNG, his great-grandfather, who was the family's first ancestor to live on the island, came together with his son, a boy of ten. Consultation of the grave tablet, which is dated 1834,32 shows that he probably arrived in Peng Chau in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, not long after the LUIs. He came from his parent village of Tin Liu Ha in the Lam Tsuen Valley near Tai Po in the present New Territories. In 1899, the family still owned very little land of its own on Peng Chau, having, besides houses, only one-third of an acre of dry cultivation, but they held the mortgages of nearly nine acres of the LUI land, including most of their paddy fields.33 The family farmed their own and the mortgaged land, but, as I have said above, fishing was their chief concern about ten years before the British lease, another seeming "irregularity" which warns against the assumption that our local communities have separate characteristics and perform distinct functions which do not overlap. It was very likely Mr. CHUNG's grandfather's success at sea which enabled him to loan money to the LUI family and so gradually obtain their land; and the lack of land which made this family concentrate on the sea in the first place. Another family of Hakka settlers are the LAM ✯ clan who came in the mid-nineteenth century. According to family tradition, three brothers who were operating a pawn-shop in Shum Chun Market were "squeezed" by yamen runners when a murder... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 84 J. W. HAYES probably building materials and general goods, including clothing, luxury items and foodstuffs, since Peng Chau produced little more than sufficed for the Hakka farmers who had settled there. In the other direction the boats may have taken salt fish and shrimp paste, and lime for the building trade from Peng Chau's kilns. Peng Chau's development in the nineteenth century and before was assisted by its proximity to the south-east coast of Lantau. The waters in this area, except in the south-west monsoon, are generally calm and are easily crossed by rowing sampans or wind-driven craft. In 1898 there were some half a dozen small villages and hamlets situated along this coast37 which, together with a large settlement on Nei Kwu Chau, used Peng Chau as a market centre, selling their produce and livestock there and purchasing goods of all kinds from the island's shopkeepers. The area east of Tai Pak appears to have been well settled in 1899 by Hakka farmers whose descendants still live there today, but from Tai Pak west to Man Kok the land must at one time have supported a larger population than it did in 1899. The land registers show that many fields were abandoned, and no owners came forward to claim them at the Land Settlement after the lease of the New Territories. Even the claimed land, which in this area was in the minority, was in the course of changing hands, largely by way of mortgage to persons from Peng Chau. A WONG Keng of Peng Chau had recently become the registered owner of sixteen acres situated there and east to Yee Pak and was giving mortgages to other owners. The LAMs of Peng Chau were in possession of many fields at Man Kok and Kau Sat Wan, of which they were the mortgagees. They also held the mortgages of other fields there which belonged to the unfortunate LUI clan of Peng Chau. The large amount of empty fields, unclaimed at the lease, is interesting and the conclusion must therefore be that there were more settlers in this part of Lantau fifty or a hundred years before, and that these persons helped in a small but steady way to increase Peng Chau's prosperity,38 These families had either died or gone away by 1899. In an island community like Peng Chau where different groups found themselves in the course of time committed to joint settlement, and hence to the need to establish a modus vivendi, one of the more interesting relationships is that which subsisted ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r PENG CHAU 89 coastal and riverine areas of Kwangtung were always receiving the unwelcome attention of pirates and robber gangs, right up to the end of the nineteenth century and well into the present one. The Taiping rebellion occupied the middle years of the century and, though it does not seem to have caused much bloodshed in the San On district, the large-scale struggle between Hakkas and Puntis in the parts of the province west of the Delta must have increased mutual antipathy between the two groups elsewhere. The Opium War and the War of 1857-60 saw increased foreign activity in Hong Kong waters. There were therefore both internal and external dangers to be expected on a small island settlement like Peng Chau at this time. Internally there was probably less trouble than there was potential. There are no recollections of fighting between the various groups of settlers on the island, though the Hoklos, who are generally credited with a more turbulent disposition than the Cantonese and Hakkas, perhaps in most cases having fewer possessions to make them cautious, sometimes fought among themselves.51 The Cantonese shops in the main street were ever fearful of robbery and violence and until ten years ago one could see the last of the protective gates known as ... There were three of them, barred every night, one at each end of Wing On Street and a third at the entrance to a large lane which left the main street at right angles and led to the Hakka settlement. Within living memory one or more watchmen were employed at night by the Kaifong and collected contributions from shops according to their size. These night defences were erected as much to keep out bandits and robbers coming from the sea as thieves or dissatisfied elements from within the island. There was, as Mr. CHUNG recalls, a small military post on the island in the late nineteenth century, but this would scarcely deter would-be assailants, especially if they were numerous and well-armed, and there can be little doubt that the first farmers and shopkeepers lived in genuine fear of such assaults. There are sufficient instances of violence from neighbouring places at various times to show that such fears were fully justified3½ and an isolated town like Peng Chau would have offered better prospects for pillage than a lonely village of farmers. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r FENG CHAU 93 26 Dated the thirteenth day of the sixth Moon of the 8th year of Kuang Hsü (27th July 1882). 27 Other examples of local tax-lords are quoted in note 12 of my Cheung Chau article. For an interesting instance from another part of the New Territories see Appendix II to the Report on the New Territory for the year 1900, Hong Kong Government Gazette, vol. XLVII (1901), pp. 1403-4, where a claim by members of a branch of the TANG family of Kam Tin to ownership of the whole island of Ts'ing I was investigated by a member of the Land Court. He wrote "I have taken special pains to go thoroughly into this case because it seems a very typical example of the curious and unwarrantable pretensions to the ownership of very large tracts of country which are perhaps the most striking feature in the economy of what we call the New Territory." Like the TANGS, the CHANS may have owned part but claimed, or aimed to control, the whole. 28 It is interesting that the earliest grave known on the island has a tablet dated Chien Lung fifteenth year (1749) and that the person buried there is a CHAN Yiu Hong & and the person responsible for erecting the tablet (no relationship is given) CHAN Hing Sin. These men may conceivably have had something to do with the CHAN Yan Hop and Yee Ka Tongs. The grave is unlikely to be that of a fisherman and most likely to be that of someone who was living on Peng Chau at the time of his death. Not everyone is provided with a formal grave, and therefore he was probably a person of some consequence. Also, at the time of the land settlement, various persons named CHAN who were not local villagers but belonged to Peng Chau and Nam Tau (BCL) owned land on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau. One of them was the CHAN Yan Hop Tong of Nam Tau. This land may represent the remains of larger holdings left over from an earlier period but mostly sold or mortgaged by 1899, or else not recognised by the Land Court during the re-registration of titles, as being "not compatible with the principles of British administration" as happened with some other tax-lord land in the New Territories—see note 12 to my Cheung Chau article. 29 Peng Chau M.S. 30 BCL. 31 BCL, Lantau coast. 32 A lucky day of the first winter month of the year of Tao Kuang (1834), 33 BCL. 34 BCL. 35 BCL. 36 Peng Chau M.S. 37 At the 1911 census (see note 7 above) the population of these villages was Nei Kwu Chau 78, Tai Pak 52, and Yee Pak 59. There were also families living in hamlets at Nim Shue Wan, Cheung Sha Lan, Hai Tei Wan, Hung Shui, Kau Shat Wan and Man Kok, but they are not listed in the Census. 38 There is conflicting evidence about the prosperity of the area in the second half of the century. The decline of population on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau has been noted. This is more noticeable elsewhere on Lantau, where some of the more important villages can be shown to have Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r FENG CHAU 95 from his own or adjoining villages worked with him. The Shek Pik people were therefore closely connected with the sea despite the fact that their fields were extensive and well-watered. Elsewhere on Lantau, an old account book of the Hakka CHEUNG Kung Tak Tong at Pui O, which is dated 1897-99 (Kuang Hsu 23rd-24th years), shows that the Tong had a regular income from a fishing sampan. 41 It has been shown that the Peng Chau shopkeepers always contributed to the temple repairs. A more illuminating instance of merchants' concern for the safety of local waters is to be found in the Tin Hau temple at Fan Lau on the south-west tip of Lantau, facing Macau and the mouth of the Delta, a remote area two hours' walk from Tai O Market. Here tablets survive from the Chia Ching and Hsien Feng periods (1796-1820 and 1851-61) and contain the names of many Tai O shops. One imagines that few of the donors would ever visit the temple, but they were obviously intent to ensure Tin Hau's benevolent care. 42 Information received from CHEUNG Kai Chun of Ham Tin, Pui O, Lantau (born 1886). But this was not true everywhere. At Shek Pik several families of Tanka used the anchorage for at least fifty years. There was no remembered animosity during this time and these fishermen were allowed to cut grass and firewood without charge. However, they rarely strayed far from the beach and the two groups did not intermarry or have much to do with each other, except in casual contact at the main festivals and when villagers bought fish from them at the jetty, which was over a mile from the village. The fishermen would not go to the village to sell their catch. 43 Information received from the present leaders of the WONG Wai Chak Tong ✯ of Cheung Chau. 44 This statement is based on close knowledge of the Southern District of the New Territories and of the District land registers. 45 Barbara E. Ward "A Hong Kong Fishing Village”, Journal of Oriental Studies (University of Hong Kong) volume 1, no. 1 (January 1954) pp. 195-214, especially p. 211. See also note 42. 46 See my Cheung Chau article for the Cheung Chau district associations before the British lease. At Tai O in the same period there appear to have been associations of Tung Kwun and San On origin, each with a club-house. 47 The number is wrongly given as 28 in note 14 to the Cheung Chau article. 48 A tablet in the Pak Tai temple at Cheung Chau dated January, February 1906 (a lucky day of the first month of spring of the thirty-second year of Kuang Hsü) shows that Peng Chau people also contributed to its repair. 49 See the Cheung Chau article for this institution. 50 The Kaifong of the Hong Kong region, and their like, are local institutions with a fairly long history. The Peng Chau Kaifong is quite likely to have an early date in relation to the age of the present settlement. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 106 CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD had the opportunity of travelling to Peking and observing life at the Court. It was realized that even if the main objects of the embassy were not achieved it was a splendid opportunity for obtaining first-hand information about various aspects of China. In fact, the embassy was something of a reconnaissance behind the Manchu curtain of exclusiveness, since Macartney took with him an army officer, Lieutenant Henry William Parish, who was trained to make plans and sketches and to take measurements. As one of his tasks Parish made a detailed survey of a section of the Great Wall which Macartney passed by on his journey from Peking to the Manchu Emperors' summer hunting-palace at Jehol?. Also included in the ambassador's suite was William Alexander, a promising young artist who was given the title of draughtsman, Macartney arrived at Peking in August 1793, and then proceeded to Jehol where he had an audience with the Emperor on 14 September. After being shown round the parks and pleasure gardens at Jehol he returned to Peking where on 7 October he received the Imperial reply refusing all the requests made in the state letter from King George III to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung. A few days later Macartney set out from Peking on his way to Canton escorted by Chinese officials. After a long journey by inland waterways he reached Canton in December, and finally in January 1794 he moved to Macao where he stayed until all the East Indiamen were ready to sail in convoy with H.M.S. Lion (64 guns), the warship which had brought the ambassador out to China. While waiting for the Indiamen to complete their loading Lord Macartney used his staff for various tasks. Thus Lieutenant Parish was instructed to draw up answers to question on the defences of Macao3, and also in February 1794 he was sent, together with William Alexander, to explore the coast of Lantao island and the small island of Ma Wan (called in his report Cowhee) in case it might be considered necessary to form a settlement somewhere in that area. The idea of obtaining an island was not a new one. It had been put forward unofficially in the past and it received official recognition in the instructions to Lord Macartney dated 8 September, 1792 where it was stated: ᅡ ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN Secondly that the great extent of our commercial concerns in China requires a place of security as a depot for such of our goods as cannot be sold off or shipped during the short season that is allowed for our shipping to arrive and depart; and that for this purpose we wish to obtain a grant of a small tract of ground or detached Island, but in a more convenient situation than Canton, where our present Warehouses are at a great distance from our ships, and where we are not able to restrain the irregularities which are occasionally committed by the Seamen of the Company's ships, and those of private traders4. 107 In fact in his Journal under an entry dated 2-7 January, 1794, after discussing the possibility of obtaining Macao, he went on to mention the possibility of a settlement on an island. Or with as little trouble and with more advantage we might make a settlement in Lantao or Cow-hee, and then Macao would of itself crumble to nothing in a short time. The forts of the Bocca Tigris might be demolished by half a dozen broadsides, the river would be impassable without our permission, and the whole trade of Canton and its correspondencies annihilated in a season. The millions of people who subsist by it would be almost instantly reduced to hunger and insurrection. Therefore it was natural that Macartney should send Lieutenant Parish to survey the coast of Lantao and the neighbouring islands in search of a harbour and a possible place for a settlement. In his report Parish refers to "a situation for a settlement, intended to protect the large and valuable ships employed in the China trade". It was unfortunate that the bad weather during the short time available for the survey prevented Parish from obtaining a more detailed description of the area. However, he did manage to land on an island which he calls Cowhee and his report to Macartney contains information of interest which, together with his sketch map, is worth reproducing3. It reads as follows: Macao 28th February, 1794. Pursuant to your Excellency's orders, Mr. Alexander and myself embarked on board the Jackall in the Typas, at seven ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 110 CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD to within ten yards of the shore. We saw a hut on the beach, and six men at work with some bamboos. Here we disembarked and the sailors filled a cask with excellent water from a well close to the shore. The inhabitants who were fishermen were civil, but they appeared to be alarmed at our arrival14. Mr. Alexander and myself walked up to the high land over the point I, where we had a view of the island and of the north east end of Lantao, as well as of the eastern shore of the main as it is laid down in the charts. The general form of the island appeared to be triangular. Its length from north to south about a mile, and from east to west about three quarters. Its general surface is irregular, rising in unconnected hills or joined only at their bases, but these are smooth and thickly covered with grass of different kinds, some of which had been lately cut down. The soil is red, light and sandy; if we may judge from its verdure it is very fertile. Besides three or four other plants the gardener found some ginger, there were also some guava trees and wild figs15. The projection K is narrow but rather high, on it are five or six huts of fishermen, whose nets are suspended from different points, and hauled up occasionally by windlasses. Between K and I is a rocky bay, that appears to be very deep. South of the projection K we saw some trees, but there are not very many on the island17. About ten acres of land are under cultivation in two separate patches from the bay on the east shore where the land is low. The water on this side of the island is very rocky. Whilst on the hill we were visited by about fifteen persons, men, women and children, from these we learned, that the island is called Toong Shing-ow-a18. As to its extent, its fertility and its situation, in a point of view merely military, it appears a desirable island, but perhaps it may be seen in a different light when examined as a situation for a settlement, intended to protect the large and valuable ships employed in the China trade. It appears incapable of future improvement to any very great degree as an harbour, since on account of the rapidity of the currents, the depth of the water and the badness of the bottom, large ships cannot lie with safety on that side of the channel next the island. A few may lie on the north shore, and perhaps but a few, and on this account it ¡ ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD the mainland. In this latter passage, up which the Jackall had to sail so slowly, there are vicious back-eddies along both shores and there is often no appreciable period of slack water at the turn of the tide. After heavy rains in the Pearl River, the ebb tide from west to east along this channel is particularly strong27. The coasts in general shelve steeply, with few good landing places and often with cliffs plunging straight down to the sea. The only large coastal plain which Parish saw during this survey was at Tung Chung, on the west coast of Lantao behind Chek Lap Kok island (Shatlapko on Parish's chart see note 9) but weather and timetable combined to prevent him from getting a close look at it. There is a general absence of good anchorages, except in the shallow waters between Chek Lap Kok and the coast of Lantao, and there is an 8-foot tidal range. The steep hillsides produce fluky gusts of wind in all but the calmest weather. It is surprising that Parish made such detailed observations in the face of these navigational hazards. Parish's comments on Ma Wan itself are also a fair summary of its geographical limitations. The island is geologically complex, with an interesting variety of soils. The underlying rocks, however, are not sufficiently porous to hold large supplies of ground water, and the size of the island (less than a square mile) is too small to form an effective catchment. Any trading post established on Ma Wan would have been severely restricted in size by this problem. The two small settlements on the island have probably not grown appreciably since Parish's visit28. Perhaps it was fortunate that impressions of Ma Wan were coloured by his attempt to land at the most difficult and dangerous point on the coast. The general elevation of Ma Wan is much lower than the hills of North Lantao or of the mainland opposite, and the island is so badly overlooked as to be indefensible. Parish was quite right in rejecting it as a potential site for a large trading settlement, and it is a pity that his orders did not permit him to stay longer on the coast of North Lantao. It is invidious to speculate on the course of history, but if the weather had been better his initial impression of the suitability of the west coast of North Lantao for settlement would no doubt have been confirmed. Possibly the first British trading post would have grown up on Lantao instead of on Hong Kong Island, and the city of Victoria would have looked out over the Pearl River estuary. Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 116 CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD which lies in the mouth of the Pearl River estuary between Macao and Castle Peak on the opposite headland. However, during the south-west monsoons the anchorages of Kapsuimun門 pq 29, and Hong Kong were used because they provided greater protection. The Kapsuimun anchorage was situated south of Ma Wan island and sheltered to the west by the headland of Lantao and to the east by Tsing I island. Because of the smuggling of opium from depot ships at these outer anchorages the capabilities of the anchorages off Lantao island and between Hong Kong island and Kowloon on the mainland became thoroughly known to British merchants and sea captains. In 1835 a former member of the British East India Company published a book in which he advocated the need for Britain to obtain some island from which trade with China could be carried on because of the uncertain conditions of trade at Canton following the ending of the Company's monopoly30. In a review of this book published in the Chinese Repository the reviewer remarks on the fact that the author pressed the idea of Britain acquiring Macao from Portugal, which he considered ill-advised. He wrote The want of a good harbour, and its dangerous position in the season of typhoons and strong north or east gales, unfit it for the possession of a commercial nation, as point d'appui. Lantao is better, and this we should prefer of the places named by our author. It is an island, capable of defence, producing abundant supplies of food, with many good harbours, is not so near the provincial city as to render it dangerous for natives to resort to it, for the purpose of commerce.31 Thus in 1835 Lantao was still considered eligible as a possible British settlement. In May 1839 the British Superintendent of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot, and all British subjects, left Canton as a result of the measures taken by the Imperial Commissioner Lin Tse-hsü, and retired to Macao. However, when in mid-August of 1839 the British were forced out of Macao by Chinese pressure it was to the anchorage of Hong Kong that the English ships went. Although Hong Kong was eventually ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Nanking 1842 this had not always been an automatic choice, the possibility of forming a settlement on Formosa, the Bonin Islands, and on Ma Wan and Lantao island had previously been given serious consideration. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 NOTES AND QUERIES 121 (v) Loans were often outstanding for a long time, e.g., two separate cases appear in the papers where loans were not concluded until thirty-eight months had passed. Where such delays occurred, fields were taken during the course of the loan as additional security for it, or on settlement in lieu of repayment in cash. (vi) Money loans were also made under different initial arrangements, i.e., on the security of a deed of mortgage of land to the Tong. This alternative procedure was presumably adopted in cases where repayment in cash was doubtful. Where it occurred, a debtor lost the use of his fields, which were placed at the complete disposal of his creditor. On the other hand, he paid no interest for his loan. (vii) Sometimes a time limit was placed on repayment of the loan. This was done in one case relating to a man from an adjoining village. His fields were to become the property of the Tong if repayment was not made within a period of two years. A Tong such as this would only come into being and flourish where a member of the clan was literate, i.e., could keep written accounts, and possessed business acumen. This particular Tong appears not to have survived the death of its architect. It was not known of by the present Chi elder (b. 1900), nor did it appear in the schedules of ownership completed by the Hong Kong Government after the land settlement which followed the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898. Other Points 1. The papers give no indication of the objects for which villagers sought to raise money by joining a money association or getting a loan on repayment of interest. But where land was given as security by way of mortgage, or where land was sold, reasons were usually given in the deed of transfer, and some of these were specific, e.g., debts incurred by a younger brother; the need to pay government taxes; money to pay for a father's funeral; capital for business, etc. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 122 NOTES AND QUERIES 2. With the high rates of interest on loans and/or the continuing need over several years to have money ready to pay the instalments in a money-loan association, it is not surprising that people got into difficulties and there are good instances of this in the papers. One man borrowed thirty-four silver dollars from the Tong at the end of 1886, and three years and two months later owed eighty-eight dollars, representing principal plus interest. Of this sum ten dollars had already been paid off by selling land to offset the debt. The remainder was extinguished by the debtor waiving his turn for payment in a money-loan association in favour of his creditor. Yet this experience was not a case of 'once bitten, twice shy' for either side, for in the month following the settlement of his affairs with the Tong he asked it for, and secured, another loan of sixteen dollars "due to dire need of money." This loan was made on the mortgage of more of his inherited farmland. We do not know the sequel. Another villager who had failed to pay his share or instalment in a money-loan association mortgaged a house in pledge and was to lose if he had not paid the money by the end of that lunar year. 3. The Tong was not the only source of money loans available to the Shek Pik villagers. Shops in the neighbouring market centres of Tai O and Cheung Chau would advance credit, or give loans as would two other local Tongs. They were not organizations belonging to Shek Pik, one being composed of merchants from Tai O and the other a family organization belonging to a clan in another village. 4. These papers came from only one of the clans living at Shek Pik and there is reason to think that similar activities were taking place in other clans and amongst other groups of persons in the village. J. W. HAYES A CEREMONY TO PROPITIATE THE GODS AT TONG FUK, LANTAU, 1958 In the course of opening new roads and other works the developers usually run up against feng shui (geomantic influences). This ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 18 JOHN J. NOLDE larger problem. That this may have been the case is reflected in a memorial to Peking from an “unknown writer", a translation of which appeared in The Chinese Repository of April, 1838.24 The author states that the present sad state of affairs dates from the disastrous fire of 1822, the uprisings of minority tribes on the Kwangtung-Kwanghsi border (which I have not mentioned) and the devastating floods of 1833 and 1834. The memorialist urged Peking to take strong action, included in which should be the suppression of the opium traffic.25 From 1840 to 1842, the Opium War probably dominated the day to day life of our Hong Kong-Macao-Canton area. The Royal Navy controlled the river from Canton to the sea. The city itself underwent a kind of siege in 1841, and British troops and elements of the local militia actually clashed on the heights north of the city in May of that year. Hong Kong became a British colony. The local histories report almost nothing but the activities of the barbarians, as do the official memorials and edicts. Yet one wonders whether or not this is a case of the "big news story stealing the headlines". Except for the episode of May, 1841, the local populace was rarely and only peripherally involved. After the May incident, the British action was conducted in the north and Canton was outside the main stream of events. The best we can say is that we don't know, When we come to the late 1840's, the historian is faced with the same problem that confronted him in the 1820's and 1830's. The standard documents seem to suggest that the dominant theme was again barbarian-oriented, and the historian's emphasis has generally been on the post-war treaty settlement, the reopening of trade, and, especially, the anti-foreign movement which culminated in the "Canton City Question” of 1849.26 But what was really happening? It would seem rather obvious that the diplomatic negotiations of the time were of little concern to the average villager along the river. Similarly, the reopening of trade per se could have had only a minor impact. But the anti-foreign movement seemed to have been another matter, one in which the populace was directly involved. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 25 THE FIVE GREAT CLANS OF THE NEW TERRITORIES Based on a Lecture Delivered on 1st March, 1965 HUGH D. R. BAKER I Southeastern China, and the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung in particular, is an area which, to quote Freedman, "has specialised... in large-scale unilineal organization". The New Territories falls within this area and is true-to-type in its widespread settlement by patrilineal groups. I have to deal with two kinds of such groups and shall use the terms lineage and clan to distinguish them. By lineage I mean a group of agnatically related males together with their unmarried female agnates and the wives of the men, all living together in one settlement (village or village-cluster), holding property in common, and politically a unit under one leadership. By clan I mean the aggregate of all such groups in the area bearing a common surname and recognising a recent, traceable common origin, but yet not necessarily owning property in common and not united as one leadership unit. These definitions are not entirely satisfactory, but will perhaps suffice in this context, since there is a lack of precise terminology with regard to such units of the Chinese kinship system. In this paper I am going to describe in outline the history and development of the five largest clans and lineages of the New Territories, to try to tie in historical and land-type factors with wealth and growth, and to trace out some of the consequences of wealth in the lineage system. Finally I shall try to show briefly how these clans and lineages were engaged in a network of alliances and antagonisms, and how they reacted to external stimuli. The term Five Great Clans is an attempt at translation of the Chinese, by which name I have heard these people refer to themselves. The author is a graduate student at the University of London who conducted research in the New Territories in 1963-65. Page 30 Page 31 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 26 T HUGH D. R. BAKER The five clans bear the surnames Tang2, Hau3, Pang, Liu,5 and Man. The Tangs were the first of the five to settle in the area as far as is known, coming in at the beginning of the Northern Sung Dynasty, probably in 973 A.D.,8 giving them a history of some thousand years of settlement. Their first village (and still one of their largest) was Kam Tin. Other major villages which are occupied by members of the Tang Clan are those of Ping Shan,10 Ha Tsuen,11 Tai Po Tau2 and Lung Kwat Tau,13 while these few names by no means complete the list. The Haus arrived towards the end of the twelfth century in the Southern Sung Dynasty.14 Their first settlement was at Ho Sheung Heung,15 the lineage later segmenting to form three branch-villages at Yin Kong,16 Kam Tsin17 and Ping Kong,18 Spatially there is quite a distance between these four villages, and while they still recognise that they are kin, recognise obligations of mutual aid, and appear to hold certain property in common, they are politically four distinct units under four leaderships, each of which is divorced from the others, so that they must be considered a clan. They themselves call the group either the 4 (Hau Clan) or the 5 (Hau Alliance). The Pangs claim to have arrived during the Sung Dynasty also, and are said to be in their twentieth generation at the moment. Freedman has pointed out that "poverty postponed marriage",19 and the Pangs were poor, so that we may allow thirty-five years per generation of this lineage, which would in fact date their arrival in the last years of the Sung Dynasty. The lineage village is called Fan Ling.? 20 The Lius of Sheung Shui have a history of approximately 630 years, their first ancestor arriving from Fukien Province towards the end of the Yuan Dynasty.22 They have not lost any branches through hiving-off, and the entire lineage still lives together in the one village-cluster. The Mans have two large groups of villages. The first is at San Tin, the second at Tai Hang.24 Each of these village groups is a separate lineage, separated by a great distance, apparently owning no property in common, and each under separate leadership. The two lineages together are spoken of as the ✯ (the Man Clan). Page 26 ... Page 20 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 28 HUGH D. R. BAKER point in history at which the clans arrived, and with their subsequent development. Grant gives some maps plotting the regions of land of various qualities, dividing the land into categories according to the number of catties of paddy per dau chung per crop it can produce.38 Best quality land produces 300 catties and upwards per dau chung, and then he grades the qualities down in units of 50 to 150 catties per dau chung, the lowest category of production worth his recording. The region of the New Territories which has the largest area of double-cropping land is the Kam Tin Valley, settled largely by the earliest comers to the district—the Tangs. The land is not all of the best quality, about two-thirds falling into the category of moderate productivity (200–250 catties per dau chung),40 but for sheer size, with good water supply, it is the best region of the New Territories. In the early thirteenth century the lineage segmented, one branch hiving off to the Ping Shan area, where again was a large region of paddy-growing land, double-cropping with moderate productivity,42 fairly well watered, and close enough to the parent village to be within the range of easy communications. Three generations later another branch hived from Kam Tin and established itself in Ha Tsuen.43 I have no information as to the quality of the soil in the area (though from Grant it would seem that productivity might not be very high44), but there is a large quantity of land. The Tangs thus secured to their near-exclusive possession the whole of the agricultural land in the Southwestern corner of the New Territories. When later other groups hived off to found villages on the Eastern side of the New Territories at Lung Kwat Tau in about 1368 A.D.,45 and at Tai Po Tau perhaps two generations earlier,47 they were less fortunate. Not only were they out of the immediate power sphere of the Tang Clan but they moved into an area where other clans were already settled or in the process of settling. The Hau48, who were the next of the clans to arrive, settled in an area which was well watered but rather too low-lying to be safe against flood. They appear to have had little power, and after an initial period of growth, when they founded several new villages,49 seem to have lost all impetus. Their land is of good quality, but when they expanded to Ping Kong,50 Kam Tsin,51 and Yin Kong,52 they did so along a line of poorer quality soil,53 arguing perhaps prior settlement in the nearby rich Sheung Shui ================================================================================ 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 29 area by a group at least as strong as they, a point which will be taken up later. The Pangs of Fanling were also on the fringes of the Sheung Shui area, and also were unable to settle on this better land, though they apparently arrived shortly after the Hau's. Their land is of moderate quality, though a little of it is in the 250-300 catty range,54 and the Pangs were poor, as remarked earlier. Recently the 'vegetable-growing revolution' began on this lineage's land,55 communications being excellent, so that, being on the direct line of exit from the Mainland, the area was soon picked out by the immigrants for settlement and farming. One result of this revolution has been a sudden rise in the income and standard of living of the Pangs, an indication of their growing influence being their entering of a candidate in 1964 for the high-prestige position of Chairman of the Heung Yee Kuk.56 At the same time the Pangs display an ultra-conservative attitude in respect of feng shui57 and religion. I am not in a position to say whether this conservatism is of long standing, or whether it has been strengthened since the change in their economic conditions. It is interesting, however, that their response to rising standards of living contrasts markedly with that of the Lius, whose rejection of feng shui tenets appears to be as whole-hearted as is the Fanling tenaciousness. The Lius were the fourth of the clans to arrive. Their history is fairly well documented and throws an interesting light on the process by which they acquired probably the largest area of first-quality land outside the Tangs' holdings.59 The first ancestor was an itinerant tinker who disappeared from the area after founding a family there. Within four generations the family was scattered all round the Sheung Shui area in small settlements, the best land being occupied by the Kan60 lineage. By the seventh generation the Lius had greatly increased in numbers. A geomancer61 was amongst them, and he suggested that they should all come together to found a village, for "he knew that it was not good policy to live in so many places, and feared that being scattered they would be unable to retain their close contacts and unable to maintain their mutual protection and aid".62 Then, says the genealogy, "the whole lineage lived together completely in accordance with the wishes of the geomancers".63 This bland explanation of history does not explain how the Kans were persuaded to vacate their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 30 HUGH D. R. BAKER village and lands and move over to the village of Tsung Pak Long64 in the inferior land area already partly occupied by the Haus. Nor is it possible now to discover what it was that enabled the Lius after only seven generations to drive out the Kans, while neither the Pangs nor the Haus had done so after a much longer period of settlement. The Mans were the last of the five to settle. The lineage of Tai Hang secured the lower end of the fertile valley of Lam Tsuen, and with double-cropping, mostly above-average land, were well off.65 The Mans of San Tin settled in an area of marginal land, with access to some quantity of poor quality land recently risen from the sea, which would grow one crop of brackish-water paddy.66 There is reason to suppose that the area of this land has increased considerably since they settled there,67 enabling the lineage to support a large number of members and expand without segmentation to any great extent. Thus the five clans occupied the majority of first-class land in the area. The possession of good land in quantity was one of the only ways perhaps in which a lineage of this area could rise to power, either on a local or a national basis. The best land of the New Territories was, and still mostly is, in the possession of these five clans, and certainly in the local situation it was these five clans which wielded power. The present-day situation plays down rather than emphasises the power which they formerly held; much of their land for instance being rented out to other lineages, so that the actual area of five-clan settlement is not a guide to the amount of land which they in fact own, while many of their old holdings have been allowed to lapse of recent years. The most powerful of all, and the wealthiest of all, was the Tang Clan, the clan which had settled on the most fertile and rewarding land. The rising of land from the sea near the Man village of San Tin, while not making the Mans wealthy, enabled them to support a large populace, which in turn led to their rise to a position of some power through sheer weight of numbers early in the last century. The acquisition of the Sheung Shui land enabled the Lius to expand as one undivided lineage. Shifts in land values have produced changes in wealth, as is particularly exemplified by the Pangs and their holdings of land which has turned out to be ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 42 HUGH D. R. BAKER NOTES This article is based on the lecture delivered to the Society on 1st March, 1965. The material has, however, undergone rewriting, augmentation and excision, firstly for the purposes of a paper read to the Anthropology Colloquium of Cornell University in April 1965, and secondly to suit it for publication in this Journal. When the original lecture was given, I began by pointing out that I could give no more than an outline of the history and conditions of settlement and life of the Five Clans, and that much more work would have to be done on this topic before concrete conclusions could be drawn. I must stress again the tentative and sketchy nature of this article, offering it rather as an inducement to others to continue investigations than as a satisfactory piece of research. Many statements made are unsubstantiated by footnotes, and it should be understood that in these cases I have drawn the material from oral sources and from my own observations during a residence of eighteen months in a village of one of the Five Clans. Chinese names and terms have been romanised according to their pronunciation in Cantonese. 1 Maurice Freedman, Lineage Organisation in Southeastern China, London, 1958; Preface, 2 3 4. 6 X. 7 *, A.D. 960-1127. 8 寶安錦田鄧氏族譜、“干開寶六年宦遊入廣.........遂即遷居于寶安 9. See Sung Hok-pang's articles in the Hong Kong Naturalist, Vols. VI and VII, "Legends and Stories of the New Territories", Parts III and IV, "Kam Tin", for a detailed account of the founding of this village. Strictly speaking, Kam Tin is an area rather than a village, but I shall refer to it as a village. The population is given as 2,150 in A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong, 1960. Population figures given below are also taken from this source, but they must be taken as a rough guide only, the Introduction to the Gazetteer warning that "the statistics are based on an unofficial census in 1955". Furthermore, the intervening decade has seen many changes in distribution and size of the population. In some cases the total population for one village is not given, and I have had to add together figures from component villages, which I may have selected too arbitrarily for accuracy. 10. Population 2,760. 11. Population 2,840. 12 AЯ. Population 660 including Tai Po Tau Lo Wai ✰ƒ¤★¤, 13 ★★A, also known as Lung Yeuk Tau. The name is that of a group of villages, an area; but I shall refer to this group as a village. Population 2,605, but only a small proportion are Tangs. 14 $*, A.D. 1127-1279. 15 ML, but frequently pronounced Wo Sheung Heung, and sometimes written #. Population 580. ================================================================================ 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 45 63 Ibid., In fact there was a second geomancer (of the eighth generation) cooperating in this plan, 64 松柏朗 65 Grant, op. cit., figs. VI(e) and (f). These figures also point to one of the mysteries of the New Territories—the settlement of the very rich upper half of the Lam Tsuen Valley by Hakka lineages, a phenomenon which denies the usual pattern of Punti monopoly of first-class land. 66 Ibid., fig. IV(a). 67 Ibid., fig. I(c), and p. 2. For a map see K.M.A. Barnett, "Hong Kong before the Chinese” in JHKBRAS, Vol. 4, 1964. 68. This moribund market was revived in 1925, and has thriven since 1949. 69 元朗儅爐. 70 大埔舊墟 71 See Robert G. Groves, “The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories" in Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories, HKBRAS, Hong Kong, 1965, p. 17. 72 Ibid., p. 18. 73 For a brilliantly worked out study of marketing systems of this sort see G. William Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China” in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXIV, Nos. 1-3, 1964-5. 74 For some other ways in which they made the markets pay, see Groves, op. cit., page 18. 75 See J. W. Hayes, "The Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898", JHKBRAS, Vol. 2, 1962, for an incomplete list of markets operative at the time. Sha Tau Kok and Shek Wu Hui are notable omissions. 76. 77 坑頭村- 78 See, for example, Freedman, op. cit., pp. 66ff, 79***. But they are often more in the nature of 'leaders' than 'representatives', a fact which is recognised in the title by which the villagers more commonly address them HE. 80 The festival of Chung Yeung. 81 Called ch'i l'ong. 82 荃灣. 83 See J. M. Potter, Ping Shan: the Changing Economy of a Chinese Village in Hong Kong, micro-filmed thesis for the degree of Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1964. 84 or T. 85 As witness an incident a few years ago in San Tin, where, in an adultery case, a man was condemned by the villagers to drowning in a pig-basket in the pond. Timely intervention by the police was all that saved him, 86 Rightly or wrongly the view persists in the rural areas that no contact with authority is good contact. 87 A. 88 FA. They are mentioned under the name of Sia-wu in Chen Han-seng, Agrarian Problems in Southernmost China, 1936. 89 Quite what brought about the disappearance of this institution is not clear to me. Certainly it was not interference from the Government of Hong Kong, as witness the report by J. Russell dated 18th July 1886 and appended ================================================================================ 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 123 shores away from the villages and forming small clannish communities". For this description he was indignantly taken to task by later writers13 but since this is the contemporary estimate of an experienced person it should not be set altogether on one side, especially as this was a period during which Hakkas were generally on the move. His case is perhaps strengthened by a contemporary statement of the low ebb of education among the estimated 10,000 Hakkas then living in the San On district. At that time Rev. Ph. Winnes of the Basel Mission wrote:14 "Popular education in this district... is generally speaking in a deplorable state as regards the Hakkas. We may find small villages in which scarcely one person is to be found who can read and write. Then in those places where schools are to be found the local people cannot derive much benefit from them on account of their poverty". If an accurate statement of the position, this is consistent inter alia with recent settlement on the part of many of the 10,000. I wish now to turn my attention to some Hakka villages in the centre of Old Kowloon. These are the villages of Mong Kok (*) and Ho Man Tin (††) which, with other smaller settlements, occupied the hilly area in the centre of the peninsula.15 These villages disappeared in the face of urban development in the opening decades of the 20th century but sufficient material is available to give an account of them, thanks to the longevity of some of their former inhabitants16 and to published source material. These villages may be described as multi-clan settlements; that is to say, they were inhabited by families of more than one shing () or name. For instance by 1897 Mong Kok seems to have been inhabited by families of seven names, though one of them nearly outnumbered all the others put together. Their population was then between 200-300 persons each.17 In Ho Man Tin families of six names together made up the village. All these persons were described to me as Hakkas. However, my enquiries about marriages to the third generation above my informants show that these local Hakkas were of mixed blood. Marriages of Hakka men with Punti women and vice versa were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 124 JAMES HAYES quite frequent. Other families are said to have spoken Hoklo at home as well as Hakka which presupposes previous settlement in Hoklo areas and some intermarriage with Hoklo people. Ho Man Tin village also had settlers who were described to me as 'Wai Chow Punti'*, that is Puntis who, living in what had become the predominantly Hakka area of Wai Chow, had been accepted by the Hakkas as their own people (§ CA). In short there was quite an intermixture of dialect groups in these Kowloon villages. This bears out what the missionary James Johnston writes of the Swatow area of Kwangtung in his China and Formosa (1897):18 44 Whilst these three divisions (Punti, Hakka, Hoklo) of the population are distinctly marked, and kept up from generation to generation, there are frequent intermarriages between them and intermixture of the people in their different localities". Though settling down in the same villages these Hakka settlers did not all come from the same areas. Some of them came to Kowloon from inland districts of the East River, others from Hoklo-speaking districts further up the coast. Thus Hakkas of different geographical origin settled down together in the Kowloon villages; and not all at the same time, but by degrees. Mong Kok was already an established village by 1862: the available evidence points to an 18th century or early 19th century origin. Ho Man Tin, on the other hand, was not mentioned as a village in the Commissioners' Report in 1862, although family backgrounds indicate that it was probably already a hamlet by then.19 Hakkas have always had a reputation for industry, and perseverance.20 These settlers would have needed those qualities to settle in the Kowloon peninsula, where the majority of good agricultural land had already been taken up by the time most of them came to the Hong Kong region and only areas fit for marginal farming were left for them to develop. In consequence, only a few of the families in these two villages owned rice fields and most of them had to be content with vegetable land in the less well-watered upper slopes of the many small valleys which threaded the peninsula. Farming land was scarce. When the father of one of my informants lost his own vegetable land as the result of a confidence trick he had to cease farming and turned ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 126 JAMES HAYES in Chinese territory. The village elders retained much of their authority, though I am not yet in a position to assess the degree to which they were recognised, and to that extent supported, by the British administration.27 Two of my informants recall that stealing crops in their villages was a matter for the village elders. If the offender was an outsider the elders would take him back to his own village and expect his own leaders to deal with him. Failing an agreeable settlement the offender would be taken to the nearest police station. For a long time, it seems, the realities of local power lay with the elders. It is significant that as late as 1895 Eitel was able to write:28 "The Chinese people in town are at the present day under the sway of their own head men (the Tungwa), and the people in the villages are ruled by their elders as much as ever". The same degree of local autonomy existed above the village level where the village organisation was augmented by small regional groupings which were usually based on a temple.29 For example, Mong Kok, Ho Man Tin and adjoining smaller settlements patronised the Kwun Yam [Kuan Yin] Temple (†) at Tai Shek Kwu near Ho Man Tin village. Their fore-bears had apparently built this temple soon after their arrival in the area. It was removed to make way for development in 1926,30 and as the preamble to the commemoration tablet in the new building has it:31 44 "The Shui Yuet Kung Temple was first built at Tai Shek Kwu over a hundred years ago. It was famed for the exact prophesy of its gods and had many worshippers". My informants confirm that it was a very popular temple and consequently well-supported. It was given a major repair about 1908 when all the local villagers and the Yau Ma Ti shop-keepers contributed money towards the project. The temple building stood on top of a rocky feature to which access and egress was by two flights of granite steps each with thirty steps. Local people referred to it as the Tai Shek Kwu Miu (★☎★A). At the beginning of the 20th century the temple was looked after by four managers, (f) as they were styled. One of them was a prosperous villager called WONG Lan-sang (*) a self-made man from Mong Kok village of whom more ================================================================================ 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 133 NOTES The place names are all in Cantonese and can be found in the Hong Kong Government's publication The Place Names of Hong Kong and the New Territories (1960). Where not otherwise stated my authority for information given in the paper comes from the old people mentioned in note 16. The aim of this article is to recover as much of the pre-1899 past of the Hong Kong region as possible, with special reference to the nineteenth century. 1. E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London: Luzac & Co., 1895, p. 360. 2. The Convention of Peking, 9 June 1898. The text can be found on pp. 198-199 of the Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers, i.e., papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899. 3. Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong and Kowloon for 1864... presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty in 1865 to be found in Parliamentary Papers, China, 1861-66, p. 16. 4. C.O.129/85 in the Public Record Office, London. 5. The Commissioners sent an abstract of these documents to London. These were as follows: "No. 1 | List of Red Deeds Owners not belonging to the Teng Family—contains 91 Deeds, comprising an area of 176 acres value computed at $25,865.32 No. 2 List of Deeds belonging to the Two Branches of the Teng Family contains 78 Deeds comprising an area of 276 acres value computed at $40,561.52 No. 3 List of squatters showing the number to be 222—spread over 90 acres value computed at $13,226.16* The "Teng" family mentioned in Nos. 1 and 2 above is the Tang (*) family of Kam Tin, who are Cantonese and are the oldest, richest and best-known of the New Territories landed families. See SUNG Hok-Pang. "Legends and Stories of the New Territories" Parts III-IV, Kam Tin, in The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vols. VI and VII. 6. Hong Kong Government Gazette, Government Notification 41 of 1860, dated 24 March 1860. The population at this time contained a preponderance of men; 3356 to 971 women and 778 children (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 22 February 1862). 7. For instance, the genealogies (##) of the Ng (吳) clan of Nga Tsin Wai and Sha Po and the Lam (林) clan of Chuk Yuen and Po Kong show that their settlement dates back to this period. 8. I base this statement on personal knowledge of the fifty or more Hakka villages in the Sai Kung district of the New Territories. 9. Hong Kong Government Blue Book for 1871 p. 148. 10. See G. N. Orme's "Report on the New Territories 1899-1912" in Sessional Papers 1912 p. 55 and J. H. Stewart Lockhart in Sessional Papers 1899, p. 189. My second statement is based on conversations with families of Hakka stonecutters at Ngau Tau Kok Village, Kowloon. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 42 EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY GÖRAN AIJMER* Introduction The following pages are devoted to a broad outline of economic and social change in a remote valley in a mountainous part of the New Territories, Hong Kong.1 The valley has its mouth on the east side of Tide Cove, and stretches about two miles in a southeasterly direction between the Ma On Shan and Turret Hill areas. The valley is fairly well-watered and there is a main stream at the bottom, which has plenty of water even during the dry autumn and winter months. Several small streams run down the steep surrounding mountain sides. This valley was once well-forested but little of this remains. Some groves of old trees can still be seen around the villages, and in the uppermost area, there are still patches of dense forest. The hillsides are now mainly covered with shrubs, and where not, on the upper slopes, there is poor grassland. The former woodlands of the valley were dwelling places for small barking deer and wild boars, but the animals have disappeared with the trees. Three settlements of Hakka-speaking people are to be found here. Together they consist of some 320 persons. There are no recent immigrants from China. Each settlement is inhabited by a patrilineal kin group with one common surname. One of these localities is a composite village situated at the mouth of the valley, where formerly two big streams jointly had their outlet into Tide Cove. The name of this place, Big Stream Village (Tai Shui Hang), is derived from one of these that comes down the northeastern hillside above the village and separates it into two parts. It is nowadays emptied of its water, which is led away for the use of the mining sites at Ma On Shan. There is a comparatively large area of flat land here, well suited for agriculture. However, during high tide, salt water soaks the lower areas and also runs up the mid-valley stream. * Dr. Aijmer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnography and Social Anthropology at the University of Stockholm. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 43 Half-way up the valley Plum Grove Village (Mui Tsz Lam) climbs the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain peak, overlooking a widening stretch of land. No flat land is to be found here and farming takes place on stone terraces built on the slopes. There is plenty of water, running down the hillsides in small brooks. The third and uppermost settlement is another composite one, Grass Field Village (Mau Ping). It comprises three hamlets and some isolated houses. The valley ends in a bowl-shaped area, and the settlement is spread around on three steep sides. Farming is done entirely on stone terraces. Parts of this bowl are densely forested. Rice production is a prominent feature of the valley. The irrigated fields are double-cropped but the yield is and has, within living memory, never been sufficient to cover the local consumption. It seems that even in a good year the basic food supply would last only for about seven months. Small holdings are characteristic of this valley. Bad soil and lack of arable land limit the possibilities of agricultural expansion, together with the frequent and serious damage caused to crops by typhoons. The torrents of rain accompanying the storms sometimes flood the whole area. The water carries away fertilizers and soil. On the other hand, the crops, especially the first, are exposed to periods of drought since, however well-watered the valley is, people find it extremely difficult to make use of the supply. There is a constant want of rain-water as the fields are often too far away from the brooks. The main stream pursues its way in a deep ravine and is hardly of any use at all, whilst its mouth is, as mentioned, filled with salt water during high tide. The hillsides are steep and the run-off of water is rapid. In earlier days the rice produced in the village was consumed on the spot. According to the rice merchants in the market towns the quality of the grain from this mountain area is as good as any from the New Territories' plains. When rice mills operating in the Sai Kung and Sha Tin markets after the Pacific War (1941-45) started an exchange system, the villagers were presented with a new alternative. They could transport their high-quality rice crop to the market and there exchange it for inferior broken polished rice, generally imported from Burma or Thailand. This is now usually done, and on a 'picul for picul' system; ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 44 L. G. Aijmer implying the exchange of one picul of unmilled grain for one picul of the inferior quality. It has been estimated that by this procedure farmers can increase the quantity of their food supply by 25%. However, this process has been accompanied by a large-scale abandonment of arable land, and the total rice production has rather decreased in recent years. But before we turn to this phenomenon we shall have another look at the economic conditions prevailing at an earlier stage. It is apparent that people in the valley have never been able to gain their livelihood by rice farming alone. From the very beginning of their settlement, they have almost certainly been looking for possibilities of complementary economic activities. There has always been some vegetable cultivation, but intended for local consumption only. Indeed, nowadays people have to buy most of their vegetable supply in the market towns. The plots are small and the technique of the villagers seems inadequate. In comparison with the thriving vegetable fields down in the plains the plots up here make a sad sight. It is agreed that difficult transportation has been the main obstacle for an expansion of gardening. To make a reasonable profit, marketing in the urban areas is necessary. Keen competition from the specialized plainsmen and their co-operatives gives villagers the feeling that rice cultivation gives the only crop that is worthwhile. The social value of rice growing surpasses the value accorded to gardening: the latter occupation is generally connected with the large numbers of recent immigrants from China. Bad means of transportation also limit the production itself. Vegetable growing requires intense fertilizing. The supply of manure is limited. To buy and transport additional fertilizers would heighten the production costs above profitability. Some fields of sweet potatoes and ground-nuts are also to be found. The yield is for local consumption only. On the hillsides above Big Stream Village traces of terraces can still be seen. I was informed that they were once used for the cultivation of both vegetables and ground-nuts. This might imply that more extensive gardening actually took place here at one time. What this meant as an extra source of income to the villagers is difficult to estimate. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 52 L. G. Aijmer this century, followed in very much the same way as their fathers though many men stayed on as sailors. The old men in this village are well-travelled. They stayed away from the village for twenty to forty years, remitting money home for their families. External income became increasingly important as a complement to agricultural production, then as now largely in the hands of the village women. In Plum Grove Village there was no specialised skilled labour trade like masonry in Grass Field Village, nor was there specialisation in going abroad to seek employment. Emigration was an important factor in the economic life of this settlement also, but it started later than in Big Stream Village. It seems to the present author unreasonable to dismiss the problem by merely referring to accidental choice. Some points call for brief discussion. There is reason to consider the market situation. Grass Field Village had its traditional economic ties with Sai Kung, about one hour's walk away over hill paths. Today it is a market town of some importance with about 1,500 inhabitants. An item of information from 1899 tells us that there were 800 people living there at that time, although the 1911 Census, reckoned as very reliable, gives the figure 512. A very knowledgeable man in Grass Field Village recalls from his childhood in the beginning of this century that Sai Kung was then a small place with only about 300 people, a few shops, and a tea-house. He was also of the opinion that little business was done there, and that villagers went fairly seldom to the market town. Life in the village was self-contained. Nevertheless, Sai Kung would have been important in the economic life of the village as the principal market for its products, at least before the establishment of the urban community at Yau Ma Tei on the Kowloon Peninsula. Tea, dye, charcoal, fire-wood, and pigs will have been sold in Sai Kung in traditional times. As mentioned earlier, Big Stream villagers had their traditional connections with the important market at Tai Po. However, the situation in this town was entirely different from that in Sai Kung: In the 1880's the Tai Po market was controlled by a localized lineage of the Tang people who, as masters of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g the market, permitted themselves to claim excessive privileges and to harass marketers from other lineages. Tang control of the market was repeatedly challenged by the Man people of another village, and on suffering a decisive setback in their campaign to force a relaxation, the latter organized a league of already existing intervillage units in order jointly to establish, in 1893, a new market in the close vicinity of the old.10 53 Also, Tai Po was relatively distant, and by rowing-boat the trip there would take a couple of hours in good weather. The conditions prevailing at the Tai Po Old Market will have created economic difficulties that did not exist in the Sai Kung Market, and which placed the Big Stream people in a relatively bad situation. The Plum Grove villagers used the market at Sai Kung, and often do so still but its possibly declining importance may have been less decisive in determining the extent of their work outside the old-style village economy. The land under cultivation around this settlement is regarded as the best land in the valley, though a large proportion of the fields here is owned by people from Grass Field Village, and also by people from Yellow Bamboo Mountain Village in another valley. In a small village the agricultural output might still have been sufficient enough to make emigration less attractive. The Plum Grove people also had some bad experience as some 10 men left the village for Southeast Asia around 1910 and were never heard of since. III I wish now to turn aside to provide a background for migration in the context of the social structure of these villages. The youngest children in Grass Field Village are of the 25th generation of a patrilineal kin group, all members of which share a common surname, Lau. The early ancestors lived in Mui Yuen (Mei Hsien, M), a Hakka district in the north-eastern corner of Kwangtung Province. A branch of the Mui Yuen people migrated down to what is now the New Territories, where they first settled in the Sai Kung area. A group soon branched off, and left the immediate coastal area, supposedly because of the constant threat Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 55 on New Year and the grave festivals. This kin group, spanning over several localized major lineages might be called a 'composite lineage',13 a 'maximal lineage', or more conveniently 'clan'. Maurice Freedman, in his analytical description of kinship structure and organization in the south-eastern provinces of China, recognizes latent possibilities of wider spans of kin bonds: Past connections which were traced between lineages through fission might be made the basis for some sort of clan grouping, but there was no regular framework for the expansion of a segmentary system beyond the limits of a local group.14 The Freedman's supposition comes true in the actual case. Lau clan could hardly be described in terms of organization or function; but still there is a clear concept of the Lau people as contrasted with other groups bearing the same or other surnames. This Hakka clan is then a loose 'we-group'; rather a concept than an organization. Common ancestor worship is the social ceremonialism expressing this unit, based on sentiment of common descent.15 Visits to the village of origin should have a symbolic aspect, comparable to the visits to the graves at the Ch'ing Ming and Chung Yang festivals in spring and autumn.16 The fact that ceremonial bonds connect localized lineages requires an analytical recognition of the clan. I prefer the term 'clan' to 'maximal lineage'. The Hakka concept of clan tsung-tsu (M) -- is one of an everlasting unit with a fixed foundation antedating what could clearly be remembered, while segmentary lineages tend to depend on historical processes of settlement. The latter emerge on a scale of generations provided by the clan. There is good reason to focus particular interest on the process of segmentation. Freedman has traced the intimate connection between the endowment of ancestral halls and lineage segmentation: a new segment came into being when property was set aside to finance a hall for it. ...lineage segmentation in this fashion was an aspect also of differentiation, in the sense that any section of a segment which wished to mark a new identity for itself on the basis of its superior status vis-à-vis other sections could turn itself into a sub-segment by establishing a hall, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 57 tinuum of generations. The Hakka concept of major lineage is intimately connected with a process of fission and resettlement; it seems impossible that one particular, geographically distinct, settlement could contain more than one tsu (M) or major lineage of the same clan. Minor lineages — fang (M), tracing descent to the different sons or grandsons of the first village founder, are always present and tend to live in hamlets separate in space, but close enough to form together a distinct compound settlement. If a fraction wished to manifest itself as a segment within the localized group by way of establishing a new ancestral hall, it remained part of the existing system, and became merely an addendum to a series of lower order segments already in being. This kind of segmentation, the result of accumulation of wealth and status, does not appear to have been frequent in Hakka society. In none of the three villages studied has ramification of ancestral halls occurred below the minor lineage level. This might be correlated with the small amount of social and economic differentiation pertaining to the small-sized hill settlements in 'traditional' times.20 Another factor may be of importance in this connection. As far as my experience allows me to generalize, Hakka ancestor ceremonialism differs from that of the Punti population in the arrangement of the ancestral halls. The Hakka do not have individual tablets symbolizing particular dead persons, but they have one tablet for the collective unit of dead ancestors in the centre of the table for ritual paraphernalia. All ancestral halls in the valley have been rebuilt after the war, and on a smaller scale than before. A look at the District Demarcation Maps, drawn soon after the British takeover in 1899, seems to reveal that in Big Stream Village and Plum Grove Village, where segmented ancestral halls on minor lineage basis could be found, the different units were erected side by side, thus probably expressing the unit of higher order.21 Ancestral ceremonialism, expressing unit, thus seems to have been instrumental in a process of fusion, discouraging segmentation within the existing structural framework. Segmentation implying an expansion beyond the limits of the localized settlement, requires some consideration. Freedman, in scrutinizing social conditions in the provinces of Kwangtung and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 58 L. G. AIJMER Fukien, has found that there was no regular framework for the expansion of a segmentary system beyond the limits of a local group'22. We have seen that the Lau people of Grass Field Village in traditional times maintained only ceremonial connections with their villages of origin in Mei Hsien and Sai Kung. Their own ramified branches at Clear Water Bay, Three Fathoms Cove and Yuen Long also maintained similar connections with Grass Field Village. We could say that ramified groups did not continue to be part of the system at home, but together with their village of origin they remained within the ceremonial system provided by the clan. A new major lineage was not subordinated by the major lineage of origin. A permanently resettled fraction marked off their identity as a new lineage by the establishment of a new ancestral hall, providing a fixed focus on the continuum of generations pertaining to the clan. A vague principle of seniority might have been expressed in the return of the resettlers for common ancestor worship, but this was not reflected in a system of control.23 We have seen that the hill-dwelling Hakka in the New Territories display only a small amount of segmentation within the local framework, but a rather widespread expansion beyond the limits of established settlement. Accepting that segmentation and expansion form part of the domination processes, we may argue that fractions building up an increasing prestige mostly operated within a given fixed structure. Although small, the accumulation of wealth that was implied in this course of action was directly dependent on the given localization, the amount of external income through non-local resources probably being rather small in traditional times. At that time local status could be described in terms of local economy. People coming into a favourable social position were not those who were apt to move out. Rather, it will have been the sections who, within a fixed non-developing economic framework, had to pay for the rise of other groups in the community who broke away. Sole owners of small amounts of property were prepared to give this up, and resettle under uncertain conditions in other areas. In situations characterized by shortage of resources in relation to the population, ramification appears to have been quite frequent. Droughts, typhoons and heavy rains are factors that played a part in this process. Segmentation of lower order in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 66 L. G. AUMER and Hoklo fishermen operating from Ho Tung Lau across the water. He is mainly dependent on the remittances from his son working in England. It seems likely that his exclusion from the informal council is due to his low economic status. The third, 86 years old, is completely deaf and cannot communicate with people. On the basis of the above we may generalize and say that during the transitional period the earlier, fairly non-differentiated, gerontocracy in Big Stream Village was transformed into a system, still gerontocratic in nature, but one marked by unequal distribution of power within the set of old men. Power was directly correlated with the accumulation of wealth which, in communities involved in processes of extension, was dependent on the economic opportunities pertaining to the destinations of the sojourners, and their fortune there. VII The new phase in the extension initiated after the Pacific War took, as we have seen, a more systematic form as emigration was almost entirely concentrated on Great Britain. The difference in the new situation lies in the circumstance that the emigrants from the same village, although scattered over the whole of Britain, are still not too far away from each other to be able to keep in touch. Some of the 33 men from Big Stream Village working overseas, on an occasional visit at home, told me that villagers working in Britain in Chinese-style restaurants stay in London, Liverpool, and other places. They have frequent contacts and meet each other fairly often. Sometimes they even hold meetings. The different solidarity groups within the major lineage at home mark off relations also in the overseas settlement. The village at home is now almost entirely dependent on the remittances flowing in from Britain. In this situation those working in Britain, who now constitute a kind of localized sub-group in the community, feel that political influence should go along with the flow of money. They are young and middle-aged men with a latent dissatisfaction with the passive conservatism of the old men still in power at home. The Village Representative is constantly blamed for his lack of interest in village affairs, supposedly reflected in his daily visits to his former place of work, the Ma On Shan Mine, where he spends his days at the mahjong table. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 73 2 There are indications that this mountain area at one time was inhabited by non-Chinese Yao people; Barnett 1957, p. 261. The present inhabitants, however, are all Hakka- and Cantonese-speaking Chinese, settled here for only about 300 years. 3 The estimated average price for local unmilled rice is (1965) HK$28 per picul for first crop rice. The corresponding figure for second crop rice is HK$36 a picul. 4 Chiu 1964, p. 77. 5 Bot. Report 1906, p. 221. It could be added that a fish hawker is touring the area daily. He is from Sai Kung and his route includes Grass Field Village and Plum Grove Village. There are also other occasional peddlers, trading in food and sweets. Some shops can be found at the mining workers' settlement at Ma On Shan. Fishermen call at the pier there every morning. People from Big Stream Village often take advantage of these facilities. 7 S., D. W. 1900, p. 202f. See also Tregear & Berry 1959, p. 12ff, and Hayes 1966, p. 128f. 8 In a village just outside Canton, "almost all those who went to work on ships were Wongs. This was chiefly due to the functioning of kinship relations in economic life. One who knew of an opportunity in one's own occupation usually recommended it to a kinsman. A Lee already engaged in business in Hong Kong would hire his own relatives as help or recommend them to fellow businessmen who might need help. A Wong in the 'hard labour' business, an activity tightly controlled by secret societies, or in marine work, did the same for his own kinsmen." Yang 1959, p. 73. 9 Lockhart Report, p. 557. Census 1911, p. 103. 10 Skinner 1964/65, p. 202. For further details, see Groves 1965a and 1965b. 11 The Ng people in Plum Grove Village have no connections with the former Grass Field people of the same surname. 12 The coastal area of Kwangtung was the scene of a dramatic mass deportation, executed by the Ch'ing occupants as a counter-measure in the struggle against raiding Ming loyalists. This course of action was carried out from 1661. Eight years later the coastal strip was declared open for settlement and an active policy by the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, A Ke-min, lured immigrants to the waste lands. The main influx of Hakka to the New Territories was in the following decades. If this is correct it may be that the Lau people appeared in this area during the course of this re-occupation. See Hui 1963, p. 89ff. See Hui 1963, p. 89ff. However, Professor Freedman (1967) has quite correctly pointed out that the data are by no means conclusive on the effective evacuation of the area. 13 Skinner 1964/65, p. 37. 14 Freedman 1958, p. 50. 15 In the Hakka village in the Tolo Harbour area, studied by Jean Pratt, at the Chinese New Year 'all the men go to the lineage hall in a village across the valley, where they claim their ancestors lived. Pratt 1960, p. 149. But note supplementary information in Freedman 1966, p. 41; this issue, however, has no bearing on my argument. Similar social ceremonialism seems to have occurred among the Cantonese-speaking Punti population. See Hayes 1962, p. 28. ================================================================================ 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 EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 75 Vaillant 1920, p. 85. Leaving this discussion open, there is still reason to assume that both the disturbances in Kwangtung and the Hakka expansion to the south were correlated with a search for new areas for resettlement. 28 'A dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and Pún-téis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties. Ball 1925, p. 282. A Hong Kong resident reports that the Peninsula of Kowloon presented for several days in August, 1862, the novel aspect of an animated battlefield, as the Punti inhabitants of the neighbouring villages were engaged in a bloody warfare with Hakka settlers at Tsimshatsui." Eitel 1895, p. 380. See also n. 27. 29 "Every year is marked unfortunately by an increasing influx of unattached and often undesirable characters from Chinese Territory, most Hakkas from the Wai Chau and Hing Ning District. It is impossible to keep track of the movements of these persons, and many of them are tempted by their opportunity of acquiring unlawful gains by means of robbery, kidnapping, 'White pigeon', and kindred offenses. It is hoped that these undesirable additions to the population will be considerably curtailed before long." New Territories Report 1917, p. J2. 30 The quarry-men are nearly all Hakkas from Kweishin, who settle at the quarries until they have made some money and then return home." New Territories Report 1899-1912, p. 55. 31 This type of extension might also have served as reconnaissance for a future settlement of a permanent kind. The following note from the New Territories could be interpreted in this direction: In the 24th year of the reign of the Emperor Kwong Shu, which was 1897, there came to the Land of the Jumping Dragon a Hakka by the name of Kong Tai Kuen. Up to that time none but Tangs had lived there. Kong rented a house and became a tenant-farmer. He recommended two of his relations to come along also, but they stayed only three years and then returned to the Kong ancestral village at Li Long north of the Shum Chun river, while Kong Tai Kuen gave up farming in the Jumping Dragon Land and moved to Fan Ling, Ingrams 1952, p. 162. 32 I use the word 'sojourner' in a freer sense than Paul Siu, to whom the term implies a stranger 'who spends many years of his lifetime in a foreign country without being assimilated by it;' Siu 1952, p. 34. My term signifies a person who temporarily lives geographically separated from the locality constituting his main focus of social interest. 33 SCPH 1965; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Apart from going abroad, some young men from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village work as police constables in Sha Tin and Kowloon. One man from Grass Field Village works in a textile factory in Kwun Tong, New Kowloon, 34 This is confirmed by other sources. For instance, the New Territories Report 1900 remarks upon the fact that 'Hakka women work as hard, if not harder, than their men,' (p. 269). An observant traveller noticed that in Mei Hsien in Kwangtung, the Hakka district where both people in Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village had their clan foci. 'it seems to be mainly the women who do the hard work. They do not bind their feet. The women are strong and erect, though excessive toil begun too early in life may account in part for their tendency to be undersized... the women do all ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 91 LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE HONG KONG REGION OF KWANGTUNG IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY* JAMES HAYES This article concerns a fringe area of the Kwangtung Province of South China and deals with land and leadership on the island of Lantau. Lantau or in its Chinese form (L) is the largest offshore island of what, since 1898, has been styled the New Territories of British Hong Kong. Lantau is roughly fifteen miles long by five-and-a-half miles broad. The island takes the form of a mountain range which runs, with breaks, along its whole length on a N.E.S.W. axis. The main peaks of this range are around 3,000 feet high. Most of the cultivated land is situated around the coast and at the time of the British lease amounted to a little less than 2,660 acres; that is, only a few square miles. The main crop was and still is rice, harvested twice in July and November. In 1898 the island possessed one market town (population 2,000) situated at its north-west extremity. This place was a salt-producing centre and a considerable fishing port. There were also about fifty small villages on the island. At a carefully-conducted census taken some years after the lease, four of these villages had populations in excess of 200 persons (the largest 363), another seven had more than 100 inhabitants, whilst the remainder were under that figure. The total land population was then over 6,700 persons, mainly Cantonese. Most of the villages were inhabited entirely by Cantonese or Hakka clans, though some of them were of mixed settlement. There was also a boat population of around 5,500 persons whose craft were based on the market town and other anchorages along the coastline. Before 1898 Lantau was part of the San On (**) district of the Kwangtung province. Though it was not far by sea from the This paper is a slightly amended version of that presented at the XVIIth International Congress of Chinese Studies held at the University of Leeds in 1965. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 93 A scattered community of peasant farmers and petty shopkeepers might seem, educationally speaking, incapable of taking a lead in public business, and too engrossed in their own affairs to wish to do so, thus creating a power vacuum which might be filled from outside. However, enquiries into local history in the period under review show that outsiders seem to have taken no part in organising local affairs. This was not because there was a lack of interested outsiders. Two very different parties had an interest in the island and might conceivably have taken the initiative. There were the shopkeepers and fish-dealers from the neighbouring market centres on the islands of Cheung Chau and Peng Chau who had an economic interest in the people of the island's southern coast and its produce. There was also a more likely candidate for local leadership in the person of the family of scholar gentry from near Canton that collected rents in silver from the island's land population every year. This family appears to have collected rents for centuries by virtue of a grant of land which went back to Sung times (960-1278); but in the 19th century their interest in the island seems to have been confined to securing their income and, on the evidence of commemorative tablets, making occasional contributions to the repair of local temples at the request of the organising committees. No one now living can recall or has heard tell of their taking a part in the arbitration of local disputes in the last quarter of the century, which is the only period for which there is reliable first-hand information. As for the shopkeepers and other commercial people in the market centres, the surviving evidence, oral and documentary, points to a degree of financial exploitation through foreclosure on debts by taking fields and property in pawn, and by usury, but little in the way of directing local affairs. Page 6 Instead, local leadership, other than the internal or village leadership exercised within the various clans who in some cases constituted an entire village, and in others shared the settlement, was provided by such village persons as rose above their local environment by reason of business acumen and personal ability and can be said to have created their own wider area of influence on the island. Three such persons have come to my notice. One of them flourished in the middle years of the nineteenth century, and the other two in its second half. It is fairly certain that there were other ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 94 JAMES HAYES persons exercising a similar authority in the course of the century, but I have not yet learned who they were. CHAN FU-SHING (c.1800-60) Chan Fu-shing (c.1800-60) was a Cantonese from the village of Sha Lo Wan on North Lantau. He was the eldest of three sons who were brought there by their mother at the beginning of the nineteenth century from Sai Heung not far from the District City of Nam Tau (about eighteen miles away by sea). The mother was presumably a widow. Why she came to Sha Lo Wan is not known -- perhaps a married aunt or sister lived there but when they did arrive it is more than likely that the family had no land of their own because of the circumstances of their coming and the fact that the oldest village clans claim a depth of settlement that indicates arrival in the 17th century. Family tradition has it that the boy was put to work in a grocery store in the market town of Tai O six miles away. Being able and diligent he made himself indispensable to his employer and eventually became a partner in the business. By this means he obtained the small capital that was essential for speculation. He appears to have used this money to make loans to village people either at the customary high rates of interest -- documents show that 50% per annum was common -- or in return for mortgages of land. He was also able to buy land when the opportunity offered and gradually built up an estate for himself and his descendants. It was not a large one. By the time of the British lease the Chan family, all descended from himself or his brothers, owned 19 acres in and around Sha Lo Wan. Most, if not all of this property, must have come from Chan Fu-shing. It is interesting that almost half these fields were placed in common ownership in two ancestral trusts with one or more managers. This ensured that the land would not be divided into small segments every succeeding generation, and would not be at the mercy of a spendthrift or gambler. By way of an aside, it is, in my experience, unusual -- on Lantau -- for so high a proportion of land to be preserved in this way and this prescience must have been exercised by Chan Fu-shing. The Chans' ancestral hall, used as a village school for almost a century, was also due to Fu-shing and his money. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 97 Lantau for a long time. He had a better start in life than either Chan or Cheung. His father was a schoolmaster with a business turn of mind who, besides owning land in his own village, had built up a small estate in a neighbouring settlement of Shek Pik where he had taught for many years.1 After being educated by his father at home he was sent to the District City to continue his studies in the academy there. However, despite this favourable beginning he does not seem to have obtained the first degree by examination after all, and had to purchase the title of chien sang later on. Being literate and neither a shopkeeper nor a farmer he probably possessed more of the external attributes of a gentry member than the other two. He was well known in the area as a scholar and calligrapher, and his services were in demand for writing presentation scrolls and for composing suitable inscriptions for temples, monasteries, and private houses. He was also a geomancer or expert on “fêng shui” and was often called in by local people when they wished to site a new grave. All these were gentlemanly occupations. Kung was also a teacher and taught for some years at Shek Pik like his father before him. Later on, he also taught in the school run by one of the district associations in Tai O Market. However, he did not forget the business side of his life, on which his superior position depended, and continued to act as a money-lender and land-broker. At the time of the lease of the New Territories, he owned or managed eight acres of land in the Shek Pik valley and was recorded as holding mortgages on 30 plots of farm land there. It was left to his nephew, who succeeded him in the property, to dissipate the estate which had been built up by Kung and his father. This man was known locally as a gambler but when I saw him in 1962, aged seventy-two, three weeks before his sudden death, I was impressed with his appearance and manner, and could well imagine that his uncle and great-uncle had been public figures in the area. Commentary What points of general interest can be made from what is known of the origins and careers of these three men? In the first place, it is interesting that two of them were Hakka at a time when Cantonese must have formed the great majority ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 102 JAMES HAYES 2 This figure is given in the table at p. 145 in Sessional Papers, i.e. Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, for 1906 (Hong Kong, Noronha & Co., Government Printers) included in "New Territories: Land Court, Report on Work from 1900 to 1905". The figure is for all private lots demarcated, and includes house lots as well as agricultural land. 3 Colony Census of 1911 in Sessional Papers 1911, pp. 103 (22, 26 and 37-38). 4 See Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong in The Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899 at p. 541. Also Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JHKBRAS), Vol. 3 (1963), pp. 144-145 and Vol. 4 (1964), pp. 146-150. 5 This information is based on my own extensive enquiries in the Hong Kong region. They corroborate the usual accounts given in many books, among them E. T. Williams, China Yesterday and Today (London etc., Harrap & Co., 1923) pp. 118-136, Chapter VI, "The Village Republic" and E. T. C. Werner, China of the Chinese (London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1920), pp. 161-165, "Local Government”. 6 See p. 12 and notes 15-17 of my "The Settlement and Development of a Multiple-Clan Village" (Shek Pik on Lantau Island) in Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories (Hong Kong, Hong Kong Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, n.d. but 1965), 7 See also my note "Village Credit at Shek Pik, 1879-1895" in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, No. 5 (1965), pp. 119-122, for interest rates of 50% of principal per annum, simple interest, from a money loaning Tong in the same area. This Tong's varied means of doing business are paralleled in the surviving papers showing Cheung Kwong-chuen's agreements with local farmers, * See Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China, Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 33-38, "It would not be an exaggeration to say that in Ch'ing times practically anybody who could afford a little over 100 taels could obtain the chien-sheng title and the right to wear the scholar's gown and cap", p. 34. * For more details of the area see my article "A Mixed Community of Cantonese and Hakka on Lantau Island" in Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories, cited at note 6 above. 10 His name heads the list of twenty-six persons who presented a commemorative red and gilt board on the occasion of the last major repair to the Tin Hau temple at Ham Tin, Pui O dated the equivalent of 15 January 13 February 1915. 11 For a brief account of this village see the article referred to in note 6 above. 12 The Census of 1911 lists 5,694 Cantonese and only 944 Hakka out of an estimated land population of 6,710. See Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (22). I have my suspicions about the Hakka figure but have not yet counter-checked by other means. For alleged Cantonese domination see inter alia K. M. A. Barnett, "The Peoples of the New Territories" in J. M. Braga (ed) The Hong Kong Business Symposium (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, 1957), pp. 261-265, and G. N. Orme's "Report on the New Territories 1899-1912" in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 44 where he says that the imposition of British rule led to the freeing of the neighbours of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 113 The temperature of the water varies at different times, and the several springs also differ in their temperature. The hottest of them is always of too high a temperature to allow of the hand being immersed in it, and at the time the traveller visited it, a thermometer immersed in it registered 108° Fahr. About twenty yards from its source is an artificial tank, which is used as a bath by people who are suffering from cutaneous diseases, who often return home cured. Where the water is stagnant, deposits of sulphur are observed. The Chinese fancy that great treasures are concealed around these springs, and requested me to show them to them, they being of opinion that a foreigner is able to see several feet deep into the earth. The inhabitants of the Sanon district are divided into the Pun-ti and Hak-ka; only a few speak the Mandarin or Hak-lo dialects. Some Hak-lo families are, however, employed in the imperial salt fields. A list of the Sanon villages was made about 40 years ago, and they then numbered 854; of these 279 were inhabited by the Pun-tis, and 275 by the Hak-kas. Many of the villages mentioned in this list are now deserted or destroyed, but many new ones have also appeared, and we may fairly say that their numbers have rather increased than diminished. The Hak-ka villages are in many instances small clusters of houses, whilst the Pun-ti villages sometimes number from 10,000 to 30,000 inhabitants. The Hak-kas dwell in the mountainous region of the eastern and more interior parts of the district, and are hence nick-named by the Pun-tis “Ngai-lu” ✯, or mountain-fellows; Pu-kakis the most important Hak-ka settlement; and in the western Hak-ka territory, U-shek-ngam #· a market-place at the foot of the Yeong-toi mountain, is of chief note. The large plains previously noticed, are exclusively possessed by the Pun-tis. There are in the district forty places where markets are held; one-fifth of these only are possessed by the Hak-kas. Populous towns, such as Nam-tow, Sai-heong, and San-keaou, have spacious streets, where, every day, besides market days, large quantities of goods are exposed to sale. Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 148 LIN SHU-YEN 1939 “A slight (unspecified) fall in the output compared with 1938" A very successful year as a result of a large increase in price. Some general figures for the New Territories salt-industry before 1912, not specifically related to Tai O, are given in G. N. Orme's "Report on the New Territories 1899-1912" (para. 71) to be found in the H.K. Government's printed Sessional Papers for 1912. They are as follows: 1900 30 cents a picul. 1908 $1.20 a picul: "salt makers came in for large profits". 1912 70 cents a picul: decrease "chiefly owing to imports from the Northern Coasts". Orme lists 37 acres of salt pans at Tai O, 32 at Castle Peak, 12 at Shun Wan near Tai Po and less than one acre at Sha Tau Kok. However, at Tai O at least, the area under production at that time was not the total acreage laid out for the purpose. At the survey and land settlement conducted a few years after 1899 a total of 107.07 acres was recorded as salt-pans. These were then (1903-04) five pans, the largest 37.39 acres and the smallest 5.66 acres. The area under production was, it appears, usually less than the total and would vary according to the demand for salt, and the market price. These details are taken from the Block Crown Lease and Survey Sheets in the District Office South. There is an interesting passage on the manufacture of salt in the New Territories and the uses to which both it and imported salt was put at that time in Colonial Reports Annual, No. 314 Hong Kong, Report for 1899 (London, HMSO, 1901); "Salt is manufactured at four places in the New Territory, the yearly output being about 4,466 tons, worth some $16,000, which in part supplies the local demands of the population, the fishing junks which keep the fish they catch while at sea in brine, and the various fishing stations where fish is salted and dried. A much larger quantity is, however, imported at certain places for the use of the fleets of fishing junks. The imported salt is also largely used for the salting and drying of fish, for which purpose it seems to be preferred to the locally manufactured salt. The manufacture of salt is an industry which is likely to increase and develop in the New Territory, and which is worthy of being ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 150 LIN SHU-YEN families the men and women were in their fifties. In the third, the son, who is about thirty, did most of the work. The leaching process, Lin tells us, was carried out mainly by natives of Lantau Island and was the only method inherited from their remote ancestors. In 1962 I was able to speak to an old lady who came in 1898 at the age of 16 to the village of Leung Uk, at the south-west edge of the salt pans, to be married to one of the villagers. She told me that men and women from the locality worked in the fields, some of them from Leung Uk. Not many people worked in the fields at that time, and they were operated by an outsider. The workers were paid on a piece work basis depending on their output, but it was customary for the company to advance money for daily food and deduct the sum from the final wage. For how long the local village people, as opposed to outsiders, carried out the work on the salt-pans is not known. The Leung Uk settlement, since it is named after the Leung family, it is reasonable to suppose that they were the first inhabitants of the present settlement, was apparently settled about 1800. This estimate is based on calculations from a genealogy which also states that the first ancestor came to Tai O from a village near Shum Chun Market to the north of the present Sino-British frontier. These people are Hakkas. The other villages in the Tai O basin, adjacent to the market town, are the similar small settlements of Nam Chung, San Tsuen, and Wang Hang, and it is unlikely that they are earlier than Leung Uk. At the 1911 Colony census, the population of these three small villages was recorded at 50, 42, and 90 respectively, whilst the population of Leung Uk was 104 persons. There were other, larger villages a little further afield, and some of their inhabitants may also have worked at the pans. Since writing the above, I have chanced upon a note in The Hong Kong Naturalist, also in Vol X (1940), by Father R. Maglioni, the noted archaeologist, in which he offers some comments upon Lin's article and an earlier one by Dr. C. M. Heanley on some of the problems connected with local, i.e., Hong Kong archaeology. He writes: "About the furnaces described by Dr. Heanley in The Hong Kong Naturalist (Vol. VI, Nos. 3-4), I must confess that I am not ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g NOTES AND QUERIES 163 ter. "The inhabitants, from our knowledge of their character”, wrote another, "appeared to be industrious and obliging.. They seemed in general to have been very peaceably disposed, nor did they exhibit any marked approbation, or disapprobation, on their transfer to the British sway".8 The Villages To-day. There are two villages, Kau Wai and San Wai—the Old Walled Village and the New Walled Village (though only the first has traces of an enclosing wall). Both have seen better days. The inhabitants no longer own the fields (they were resumed in connection with anti-malarial schemes in 1934–36) and the villages are now places where people live and go out to work. Most of the present vegetable growers live in huts beside their plots and not in the old settlements. In the Old Village most of the old houses have gone and many of to-day's dwellings are temporary structures put up on the site of old houses that have fallen into a ruinous state and thereafter have been cleared away. There used to be a temple to Pak Tai, the God of the North, but this became ruined and fell down about 50 years ago.10 The New Village, on the other hand, still retains some of its old houses which, in their present form and decoration are upwards of 60 years old. Their tiled roofs, ornamented ends, moulded plaster friezes, decorated eave-boards and granite lintels are worth a glance, as being some of the few surviving examples of this type of village architecture left on Hong Kong Island. They are typical of the better class of village dwellings of South China, many other examples of which can be found in the New Territories. Also in the New Village is the former house of Sir Shou-son CHOW's family (see below), but this was rebuilt about 1930 and it is of interest only for the photographs and paintings it contains of the CHOW family. The Villages Yesterday. The date of settlement is not certain, though Lobscheid, the German missionary who was also an Inspector of Schools for the Colonial Government, was told by the village head in the 1850s that the first ancestor had taken a lease from "Tang the acknowledged owner of the soil" in 1668.1 In 1893 a group of villagers had to appear before the Squatter Board to help determine and register legitimate holdings. From the information then recorded, and happily preserved, the following facts emerge: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 164 NOTES AND QUERIES (a) the New Village was built entirely by inhabitants of the old village; (b) two of the houses in the New Village were built 1860-70 and some earlier, some later; (c) many families owned houses in each village; (d) many families owned 2 or 3 houses; (e) none of the cultivated land in the valley was (1893) owned by outsiders: (f) one of the villagers had been away in Singapore for over 10 years, another (most likely the future Sir Shou-son CHOW) was in Shanghai and one was “a cook for an Englishman”.12 The People of the Villages. The inhabitants of the two villages were all Cantonese, as opposed to Hakka etc.13 There were five clans in 1893. The CHOW family accounted for most of the Old Village and part of the New Village. This clan is of particular interest to us because Sir Shou-son CHOW, the well-known leader of the Chinese community before the war, was one of its members (see below). This lineage has other branches in several villages on Lamma Island, to which they seem to have migrated from Hong Kong. The other old families in the two villages came from clans whose main settlements are to-day still in Pokfulam on Hong Kong Island and other villages on Lamma. The marriages of those surviving old people in the village born in the decades 1880-1900 still reflect the close ties of family and village which bound together the scattered settlements of old Hong Kong. Enquiry showed another aspect of this unity, i.e. the participation of the two villages and the old village of Wong Nei Chung - with whose people they were related by marriage - in the series of ten yearly Ta Chiu or Pacification of Spirits ceremonies which appear to have been held regularly up to 50 or 60 years ago and in which my informants participated on several occasions in their youth. Origin of the Name Hong Kong. According to Prof. LO Hsiang-lin of Hong Kong University, the name Hong Kong means "incense port" and the village along the northern shore of the present Aberdeen, "extending as far as the present settlement of Little Hong Kong", once acted (in Ming and early Manchu ...) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 166 NOTES AND QUERIES held office for many years on the main advisory bodies representing the Chinese community in the Colony, including the District Watchmen's Committee, the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, the Chinese Public Dispensaries Committee and the Po Leung Kuk.15 Sir Show-son CHOW's son, Mr. CHOW Yat-kwong, J.P. has kindly given permission for members to visit the house in the New Village which contains the family's ancestral hall, III. THE Hung Shing Temple And AP LEI CHAU The Hung Shing Temple, The Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau, judging by the temple bell, dates from the 18th century.16 It appears to have been enlarged in 1847 and some wall-tablets show that it was given a major repair in 1888. The present building dates from that time or earlier. Its origin is uncertain because it is not clear who built it in the first instance. Records show that the Ap Li Chau land population was "no more than two or three families of Hakka grass cutters" before 1841, so that we must look elsewhere for the builders. It could have only been built and supported by the joint efforts of the local (i.e. Aberdeen) land people and boat population. The former only amounted to a few hundreds before the British came, but the boat population was probably as considerable before 1841 as after, e.g. 415 boats and 2,243 persons at the 1856 census18 and 424 boats and 4,130 persons in 1866.19 The temple is interesting in that it has old-style flagpoles still standing in front of the building. Old prints frequently show this kind of pole; but though a few bases can still be seen nowadays in Hong Kong, Macau and the New Territories these could be the only ones left with the poles and their basket-like tops still in place. Ap Lei Chau before 1911. The present land settlement on Ap Lei Chau was founded in the early decades of British rule. By the mid-1860's there were 60 houses there, which implies that several hundred residents were living on the island at that time.20 By 1897 the number of residents was 1,123 rising to 1,437 at the Colony Census of 1911.21 This population gained its livelihood to a great extent from concerns directly associated with the fishing industry, such as boat-building yards, ship chandlers and rope and sail works, and from provision shops and general stores that also catered for the fishermen's daily needs.22 There was very ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g NOTES AND QUERIES 167 little farming, as the island has steep and rocky sides and there are only a few places where agriculture may be carried on. As in other little towns of this sort whose existence was founded upon the business opportunities created by the presence of a fishing fleet, the population was mixed, consisting of Punti and Hakka people from a number of districts of the Kwangtung province.23 For the most part, it was recruited from among young men from the country districts bearing introductions to fellow clansmen and relatives already working or settled on Ap Lei Chau, or else following them back to Ap Lei Chau when they came on short visits to their native place. For most of its history, men outnumbered women residents. As late as 1911, the relative numbers of males and females, including children, were 1,041 to 396. In 1897, it had been 783 to 340.24 This was because many wives stayed behind in the village and were never taken to Ap Lei Chau. In this respect, Ap Lei Chau was like any other settlement of overseas Chinese living away from their native place and under alien rule. Following a pattern long established elsewhere, the local people established their own "district associations" (鄉會) on the island in the 19th century.25 There were three of these organisations, each under a fong or 'ward' name. Membership of the Fongs was automatically extended to all comers, whether temporary or permanent residents, and irrespective of status. The odd-job coolie and the established merchant were equal members, though having adequate means and more leisure, the latter would, of course, play the more important part in the Fong's affairs: it would, in any case, be expected of him. Only women and children were excluded from membership. At a time when the Victorian colonial administration of the Colony saw its main function in the rural areas as keeping the peace, the leaders of the three Fongs, in effect, of the Ap Lei Chau community made themselves generally responsible for local affairs. However, the need to perform special duties was apparently intermittent and spasmodic, and their most regular function was to make adequate arrangements for celebrating the birthdays of the principal gods of the two local temples, Hung Shing, the God of the Southern Sea, and Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, and the occasion of the Yue Lan Festival (盂蘭節) in the 7th moon. Each Fong took its turn to be entirely responsi- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION Sectarian Religion and the Rural Area 27 Some of the organizations referred to as sects in the literature were in fact religions in their own right. Their ideas were taken from both Buddhism and Taoism certainly, and they also used cosmological notions accepted by the State and the more scholarly members of society; but they often combined such elements in a way forming a distinct ideology of their own. Many were strongly messianic, looked forward to a millenium, and sometimes had secular, even political aims, connected with their ultimate religious goals. The literature on such organizations suggests they had a regional distribution, although the evidence is not entirely clear because various names were used by one and the same body at different times or in different places, and some of them themselves ramified into sects. Speaking generally, they appear to have been most active in the poorer parts of the rural area especially in regions with large dislocated populations. Szechuan was birth-place to several and was not only an area of scattered settlement but the land of much of the province was poor (perhaps a factor contributing to absence of nucleated settlement). They also operated a great deal in Anhwei, and on the borders of Honan, Shantung and Hopei. Exile appears sometimes to have been a factor in their extension to new areas. Some groups I studied in Singapore in the 1950's were brought down to village areas in Kwangtung, Kwangsi and Fukien leaders exiled from Honan in the mid-nineteenth century. But when trying to visualize their operations at the rural level one realizes how thin information in the literature is on their activities in relation to communities of different type and size. Where were their lodges, what did they look like? Were their bases in villages, towns or the open country-side? If one of the more militant, the Nien, said to be an off-shoot of the White Lotus is any example, it appears they might change their base. At one phase in its development it operated from nests in the mountains and at another based itself on earthwall communities in Anhwei for strategic reasons.34 The Nien, however, might in fact have been a secret society type organization and not a religious sect. I will return to the question of secret societies presently. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 74 BEING CAUGHT BY A FISHNET ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA GÖRAN AIJMER Big Stream Village is situated on the east shore of Tide Cove in Hong Kong's New Territories. It is a Hakka-speaking settlement exclusively inhabited by people of the surname of Zhang (*) all members of one major lineage. In 1964 there were 146 persons in the village and 33 members of the community working elsewhere. Big Stream Village is located at the mouth of a mountain valley. About one mile and a half further up this valley the small Plum Grove Village is picturesquely situated on the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain. It is inhabited by a localized major lineage of the surname of Wu (吳). In 1964 their number was 74 but over 20 members were then away.1 I was told a story about these two villages. Formerly, the story has it, the people of Plum Grove Village were living on the spot now occupied by the Zhang; and the Zhang were living where the Wu are now. Because of influences emanating from the natural surroundings the Wu were not too happy about their location at the mouth of the valley. It is said that the Zhang people pointed out to the Wu that the mountain on the other side of the fields in front of the village was a fishnet. This fact, it was pronounced, had a very special effect on the settlers there. The local Hakka pronunciation of Wu, their shared surname, is Ng. But ng in Hakka also means 'fish', and the Zhang assured the settlers at the mouth of the valley that they were, for certain, in the process of being caught by the net. The Wu seem to have agreed with this suggestion, and the result was that both communities exchanged their locations for their present-day situations. This story may need some comments. It deals with influences emanating from the natural surroundings, a believed-in order that in Chinese is designated fengshui – ‘wind — water'. It implies an aspect of ecological adjustment in that it is concerned with natural * Standard Chinese is given in pinyin form. Dr. Aijmer, whose article "Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society" appeared in Vol. VII of the Journal, is Assistant Professor in the University of Stockholm. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA 75 phenomena. Fêngshui is a ritual language: a set of symbols and ways of combining these symbols into ritual statements. The fêngshui language is largely shared and understood by all Chinese and it provides an important instrument in Chinese society for a diffusion of local ideas into the larger society. The system of symbols can also be manipulated; individuals in the process of maximizing their resources employ special techniques — ‘geomancy’ — to discover and map localized symbolic sub-systems. Natural surroundings are explored in terms of fêngshui. The natural influences the interaction between the symbols can be played upon to the benefit of the player. This facet of fêngshui has recently been discussed in anthropological literature. The argument of this paper is concerned with its communicative aspect. The fêngshui influences of a given ecological setting are of extreme importance to the people who are dependent on this setting. They are not static, but are changing in 60-year cycles. The fêngshui has a bearing not only on the particular individuals, but is equally important for the whole localized group. The effect of the influences can be measured in terms of good or bad fortune; the latter experienced in few sons, bad crops, and so on. In the same way as individuals are maximizing their resources, a whole community may try to manipulate the fêngshui. An example of this was to be found in Grass Field Village, further up the valley mentioned above. A most striking feature in the scenery there is one of the two peaks of the imposing mountain Maanshan (Ma On Shan) peeping up from behind the lower mountain ridges surrounding the village. Villagers explained that they always have a feeling that this mountain top is watching them from above. Apparently this watching implied a negative influence; people tried to check it by planting trees on the ridge in order to screen off the sinister mountain top. However, during the Japanese Occupation these trees were cut down, fuel being reckoned then as more essential than negative influences. On the other hand, one seldom finds a general agreement as to the positive or negative character of the fêngshui influences in a certain setting. Poor people tend to regard the fêngshui of their locality as a 'killing breath', while better-off persons in the same settlement may say that it is after all ‘not too bad'. Fêngshui language, then, is used to express social and economic differentiation. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA 79 tion was limited as the population pressure increased in the two other land-owning communities as well. Generally, new land was not available. As time passed people of Plum Grove Village reached the optimum point where they had to look for new alternatives to traditional local production. The men started to emigrate, mostly to Southeast Asia. But the prospects of these areas were very different from those in America. Around 1910 some ten men left for Nanyang. People have never heard from them since. It is supposed that they were killed by the effects of the damp climate. But the movement had to continue. Later emigrants set out for Singapore but they returned as poor as they went, and there was no accumulation of capital at all. Today it is very apparent that Plum Grove Village is a much poorer place than Big Stream Village. What has been exchanged between the two lineages Zhang and Wu is not their respective localization, but the image of their relative prosperity. What is communicated in the myth is that the economic situation of one settlement has improved while that of another has declined. The shift of the respective conditions is referred to as emanating from natural influences. Fengshui is not just a way to communicate, but is a believed-in-order. In Big Stream Village one can still find traces of earlier attempts to minimize negative influences; large stones inscribed with the conventional trigram — yinyang patterns and series of characters have been erected outside some of the houses in order to avert negative forces in the natural surroundings. The four character series are completely meaningless to villagers, who nowadays know nothing about the stones, except that they realize that they have been erected there for fengshui purposes. It is apparent that special knowledge is required to make sense out of a combination of words meaning 'purple', 'minimal', 'first month', and 'illuminate'. These stones, however, are evidence that people in Big Stream Village were really concerned about their bad fengshui position at one time. But this aspect cannot be separated from the aspect of communication. The stones carried a message telling about misfortune. They made the poverty of the locality explicit and understood by others. Nothing comparable to these stones is to be found in Plum Grove Village. In the latter place they now explain their decline, in a less explicit way, by referring to the bad ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 82 FAN LAU AND ITS FORT: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ARMANDO M. DA SILVA* Site and Situation Fan Lau is located at the extreme southwestern tip of Tai Yu Shan or Lantau Island. It is almost equal in distance from Hong-kong and Macau and it is situated about twenty-five miles due east of the latter. Fan Lau can be reached by sampan or fishing boat either from the market towns of Cheung Chau or Tai O, or by walking along the water catchment from Shek Pik reservoir to a point above and beyond Kau Ling Chung, and then by descending a steep stony path towards the settlement. Another route is to strike out from Tai O, taking the coastal footpath through Yi O, and thence to Fan Lau. There is no motor road to Fan Lau. The area of Fan Lau includes a headland known as Kai Yik Kok (†) meaning "chicken wing point" where an old fort is located (see map 1).† The high point of the Kai Yik Kok promontory rises to about 380 feet above sea level. In the north of this headland lies the cultivated waist of Fan Lau where a small settlement is located. Looming above the settlement is Kai Yik Shan1 from which two streams supply irrigation water to the padi fields. Two fine beaches, Tung Wan and Sai Wan, flank the waist of the peninsula. Tung Wan, though exposed to prevailing easterly winds and a long fetch from the village, can accommodate deep-draught junks. The actual territory associated with the village extends beyond the physical boundaries of the settlement. Fan Lau villagers, for example, cultivate fields located in Tsin Yue Wan (see map 1) and records show that, at least in 1904, padi fields in Kau Ling Chung (since abandoned) were also cultivated. Situated at the entrance of the Chu Kong or Pearl River estuary, Fan Lau enjoyed a strategic location in the past. This position was reflected in the construction of numerous forts and guard stations * Mr. da Silva has a Master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley and is at present with the Department of Geography, University of Hawaii. † Maps 1-4 are located at pp. 92-95. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d FAN LAU AND ITS FORT 85 Lau, meaning "division of flows" and the name of that point on the southwestern tip of Tai Yu Shan, describes accurately and specifically the abrupt change of colour of the sea off the point, from a clear green to a muddy brown, as any traveller from Hong-kong to Macau can attest. The name Fan Lau is not only appropriately but propitiously applied. In fung shui the confluence of streams or sea currents is considered auspicious (conversely, a site flanked by forking streams is not considered lucky). Fan Lau, situated as it were at such a confluence, is considered a lucky site; hence the presence of a fort, a temple, and a settlement. Conditions must have deteriorated in the Chu Kong estuary some sixty years after the return of Ch'ing control in 1669, for we hear of the garrisoning and reinforcement of troops in Tai Yu Shan in 1730 to shore up existing coastal defences there. "In the 7th year of Yung Cheng (1730) forts were constructed on two hills, to deploy garrisons for their defence and to reinforce the troops garrisoning Tai Yu Shan, thus forming an angle similar to that made by the horns of an ox, to serve the exterior defence of Macau and the Boca Tigre". The Kai Yik Kok fort must have been one of the two strong points mentioned, the other being probably the fort at Tung Chung. The analogy between the location of the fortifications of the estuary and the shape of an ox's horns is interesting. A glance at a map of the Chu Kong estuary would show Macau (in reality, the Heung Shan district forts) and Fan Lau to be the tips of those horns. Both these strategic areas cover the entrance to the estuary. The Boca Tigre (Fu Mun19) at the apex of the near-isosceles triangle formed by these three points, served as the pivotal central fortification. We know too, that the Fan Lau fort was designated as the administrative boundary between the San On District and the Heung Shan District on the other side of the estuary from Fan Lau. A map of the Chu Kong estuary in the O Mun Kei Leukaz depicts the Kai Yik Kok fort with the accompanying caption “San Heung Fan Kai” (***), meaning "This is the dividing boundary between the San On and the Heung Shan districts". It is very likely that some of the fort's soldiers were allotted plots of land for their own use. Another interesting possibility is that the soldiers and officials appointed to preserve law and order came from the very ranks of rebels and pirates who had previously Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ 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 JARDINE, MATHESON & CO.'S FIRST SITE IN HONG KONG 149 Alexander Matheson told the House of Commons Select Committee on Commercial Relations with China in 1847 that his firm had, without authorisation, commenced building "to a certain extent" before the first Land Sale held by Captain Elliott* on 14 June 1841 in Hong Kong. It is commonly assumed that the site of this building was at what later became known as East Point, in the present Causeway Bay area of Hong Kong, where the firm was to build extensive godowns and residences. One writer, for example, speculates that by the time of those first land sales, Jardine, Matheson & Co. had already selected for themselves a "spacious area at East Point" and intimates that it was there that they were building in June, 1841.2 However, even on the rather scanty evidence available, it seems clear that the site of this unauthorised building was not East Point but an area on the present Queen's Way, in the old Admiralty Dockyard. Contemporary evidence, in any event, makes it unlikely that East Point was the site. Pottinger, the first Governor of Hong Kong,† gives us a graphic description of East Point as he saw it, possibly in August 1841 but more likely in mid-1842, when he returned from the military expedition against China. He describes its "wild and uncouth state being one chaos of immense masses of granite and other rocks, that it was hardly accessible by person or on foot, either on the side of the water or the land, that the firm in question, by the application of science and extraordinary labour and by an expenditure of about £100,000 (sic), have not only made it available for their vast mercantile concerns, but have rendered it a credit and an ornament to the colony." The site sounds at that time, to put it mildly, somewhat unattractive though it did stand at the head of the Wongneichung Valley and would be well-placed to dominate any settlement there; there is evidence that the firm conceived a plan in 1842 for building a seawall and * Administrator of Hong Kong January-August 1841 as well as plenipotentiary for the current negotiations with the Chinese authorities. See p. 16 and Appendix I of G. B. Endacott's A History of Hong Kong (London, Oxford University Press, 1958). † Sir Henry Pottinger, Administrator and subsequently first Governor of Hong Kong August 1841-May 1844. Endacott op. cit. Appx, I. ================================================================================ 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 A REAPING KNIFE FROM LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG 161 Plate 21 shows a locally-made agricultural tool from Pui O Lo Wai, a three hundred year old mixed settlement of Hakka and Cantonese on Lantau Island.* It is said to have been made about thirty years ago. It is very simply made from the fork of one of the lesser branches of a common local tree, the China Fir. A slender blade has been added that could have been made by one of the itinerant blacksmiths who visited Lantau each winter until recent years, or else have been purchased in the shops of the nearby market centre of Cheung Chau. The size of the handle of such a knife could obviously vary from branch to branch though there were obvious minimum and maximum limits dictated by usability. In our example the handle measures approximately 13″ and the blade is 4″ long. Despite appearances the blade is not broken off at the tip but was made with the squared-off end. This knife, together with the more usual type shown at Plate 22, was used to cut the rice stalks in the paddy fields. The first type was — and is generally used for the first crop which is harvested in June and July. This is a wet crop because the fields are not dried out at reaping time as in the case of the second crop (October-November) when the second knife is normally favoured. The construction of the first knife enables the user to gather four or five stalks between the arms of the handle and draw them together, after which a deft flick of the wrist turns them over to be dealt with by the cutting edge of the blade. In cases where the stalks are lying flat or at an angle and may be tough through being wet the advantages of using such a knife are obvious. I do not know if it is in general use on Lantau, or elsewhere in the New Territories. Hong Kong 1968. JAMES HAYES * See my article "A Mixed Community of Cantonese and Hakka on Lantau Island" in Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories (ed. Marjorie Topley) published by the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S. in 1965, pp. 21-26. ================================================================================ 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 163 cloth, of which they make their winter dresses. In the Jin-on district [= San On] the spinning of the hemp of which grass-cloth is made, is more frequently seen, but the women do not weave it, and there are journeymen weavers who go round in the villages with their primitive looms to do the weaving for the families. It is interesting to note that these Hakkas did not restrict their visits only to Cantonese villages in this region, but that their services were also utilised in Hakka ones. An old Hakka man born in 1886 in the village of San Tsuen at Pui O, Lantau Island states: When I was a boy we wore clothes made from hemp cloth. We grew the hemp ourselves and the village women cleaned and sorted it and prepared it for weaving. They did not weave the cloth themselves but relied on itinerant Hakka-speaking men from the Lung Kong and Tam Shui districts who came yearly to our village and the nearby settlements to weave the hemp yarn into cloth. They brought their tools with them. I think this was an old practice and had been going on for a long time before I was born. These people stopped coming when I was about thirteen or fourteen years old. The cloth they wove was very strong and hard-wearing, suitable for wear in both seasons but best for summer use. Though they did not weave, our village people knew how to make clothes. Clothes were much simpler then and much wider, the sleeves being 6-8 inches wide, San Tsuen is a Hakka village in a mixed Hakka-Punti complex where both dialect groups are of equally long settlement. According to his family's genealogical record, my informant's ancestors have been settled there since about 1710. Yet it appears that not all local Hakkas relied on visits from their fellow-countrymen from North-east Kwangtung. An old Hakka woman who was married into the Hakka stone-cutters' settlement of Ngau Tau Kok in East Kowloon at the age of nine in 1897, recalls that her sister-in-law bought hemp in Kowloon City market and brought it home to weave, took it back to Kowloon City to be dyed and later brought it back to the village to make into clothes for the family. Making bed-clothes and mosquito nets was also mentioned. Most items were dyed black in colour. Her ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d DAWSON, Raymond, ed. THE LIBRARY The legacy of China. Oxford, Clarendon P., 1964. DEBNICKI, Aleksy. 183 The Chu-shu-chi-nien (+) as a source to the social history of ancient China. Warszawa, Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1956. DEGROOT, J. J. M. The religion of the Chinese. New York, Macmillan, 1912. DE MOUBRAY, G. A. de C. Matriarchy in the Malay Peninsula and neighbouring countries. London, Routledge, 1931. DER LING, Princess. Two years in the forbidden city. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1929. DRAKE, F. S., ed. Symposium on historical, archaeological and linguistic studies on Southern China, South-East Asia and the Hong Kong region: papers presented at meetings held in September 1961 as part of the Golden Jubilee Congress of the University of Hong Kong. F. S. Drake, general editor; Wolfram Eberhard, chairman of the proceedings. Hong Kong, University Press, 1967. EASTHAM, Barry C. Chinese art ivory. Tientsin, Paradissis, 1940. EBERHARD, Wolfram. Settlement and social change in Asia. Hong Kong, University Press, 1967. ECKE, Gustav. Atlantes and Caryatides in Chinese architecture. [Peking, Catholic University, 1930] EDWARDS, Richard. Pine, hibiscus and examination failures. [Ann Arbor] Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan [1966] Extract from Michigan. University. Museum of Art. Bulletin, v.1, 1965/66. ================================================================================ 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 35 organization.15 He first distinguishes between "local lineage" and "higher-order lineage". "What defines the whole class of local lineages... is that they are corporate groups of agnates living in one settlement or a tight cluster of settlements." Larger aggregations are also possible: "a local lineage may be grouped with other local lineages of the same surname... the whole unit in turn being focused on an ancestral hall or other piece of property. For this larger scale group... I propose the term 'higher-order lineage'. Freedman then considers Amyot's data on lineage organization in Fukien province. Amyot draws attention to the significance of the hsiang for lineage organization.16 A hsiang may be “either a complex of villages or hamlets forming some kind of unity, or again, the largest village of this complex from which the latter derives its name. It is usually a market center 20 Amyot argues that “lineage organization is constantly associated with a specific district or hsiang of relatively small dimensions. Members of lineage sub-branches "do not have the same kinds of interrelationship across spatially separated sub-branches as they have within the limits of one territory or between contiguous territories." In Freedman's view, what he has termed "higher-order lineages” are "likely to be confined to the small areas formed by hsiang.22 Freedman notes that Skinner has used Amyot's data to support his suggestion that the standard marketing area—the hsiang of Amyot's analysis---constitutes the "catchment area" of the higher-order lineage. He concludes: "it may well turn out... that in fact vicinage and standard marketing area are usually congruent and that they provide us with the key to understanding how local lineages are normally grouped together."23 The large, gentry-led, higher-order lineages of southern Hsin-an appear to be an exception. Their component local lineages were widely separated and were not encompassed within a single standard marketing area. Freedman suggests that, in these instances, the intermediate market town may have provided that linkage necessary for higher-order lineage organization.24 This summary, though it does less than justice to the work of Professors Freedman and Skinner, may suffice to indicate two convergent lines of analysis one concerned with lineage organi- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 56 R. G. GROVES Kinship ties played a large part in the organization of the resistance. In the Yuen Long area, leadership and probably manpower were overwhelmingly supplied by the three Tang lineages of Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Kam Tin. In the Shek Wu Hui district, it was a matter of cooperation between a number of lineages of roughly equal status. At Tai Po, the Man lineage of Tai Hang provided leadership, within the Ts'at Yeuk, for a large number of smaller lineages. Ties of clanship enabled the Tangs of Yuen Long to enlist the help of the Tangs of Pan T'in. They, in turn, received support from agnates living in Tung-kuan City. The Tang higher-order lineage of the New Territory did not act as a unified lineage during the resistance movement. The leaders of Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Kam Tin were concerned, first and foremost, to consolidate plans for resistance within the Yuen Long area. Leaders of the Tang lineages of Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau only subsequently became formally involved with preparations for resistance, along with other leaders from their respective marketing areas. The leaders of the three Yuen Long lineages carefully coordinated their plans. There is no evidence that representatives of Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau were similarly consulted. Moreover, the Lung Yeuk Tau settlement, along with others in the Shek Wu Hui area, was threatened with attack by the Tangs of Yuen Long. There is insufficient evidence to materially advance the discussion concerning the relationship between hsiang and marketing areas. However, the data strongly suggest that, for the purposes of resistance, the highest order of effective inter-lineage cooperation among the Tangs of the New Territory was achieved within the Yuen Long marketing community. There is also the possibility that long- or short-standing disputes between the various local lineages of the Tang higher-order lineage inhibited their cooperation across the boundaries of marketing areas during the resistance movement. But this would not necessarily weaken the argument that the standard marketing community was the optimum unit for inter-lineage cooperation. Wakeman, in his discussion of militia, has stressed the importance of gentry leadership. The documents concerning the resistance name 63 people as active in the movement, in that they: (i) took part in the meetings which organized it; and/or, (ii) acted ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 66 W. SCHOFIELD small plateau averaging some 10 to 12 metres above sea level. This is a plane of marine denudation dating from a time when the sea level stood 12 metres higher than now, perhaps during the last great inter-glacial period (Riss-Würm), some 100,000 years ago. From this lower area much less clay could be washed than from the higher and steeper hill to the north; and the gentler wave-action on the west beach, normally on the lee of the island, made it about five times as long as that on the east of the isthmus, with very few large boulders. Somewhere on the west side of the 12 metres terrace, between about 1100 and 1500 A.D., there was at one or more times a small settlement, perhaps no more than one or two fishermen's huts; for at this point on the west beach are found pieces of Sung and even Ming pottery lying on the beach and in the cliff, which here is largely built up of coarse rainwash from the hill behind. There is, however, no modern settlement and no cultivation, and the island appears to be used only by boat-people, either for fishing or for burial of their dead; for on one visit Prof. Shellshear, who was with me, discovered a human skeleton of recent date two feet below the top of the sand cliff. METHOD OF INVESTIGATION The site was first discovered and investigated by Dr. Heanley and Prof. Shellshear, who worked together from about 1925 in looking for sites showing early human occupation. Much of what they found lay on the surface of the beaches, but wherever possible they noted the depth from the soil surface of objects found in the sand cliffs. Part of their material was presented later to the British Museum, and some to Mr. Eumorfopoulos and others, but the rest seems to have disappeared during the war in 1941 when the Hong Kong University was wrecked. Their code number for the site was 123, which points to a comparatively later discovery: the Tai Wan site on Lamma, for example, is numbered 83. The technique employed by the writer at Tung Kwu was as follows. Objects not found in situ were collected and the initials of the site were painted on them in Chinese ink. If a single object was found in situ, its depth from the surface was measured in inches or centimetres; it was extracted; the depth and initials of the site were written on it or its wrapping paper, and later were recorded in Chinese ink on the specimen. In 1935, by which ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 74 W. SCHOFIELD Again, at Sai A Chau site opposite Shek Pik, one group of coarse pottery at a considerable depth from the surface, consisting of a cup and a pot 1 cm. from each other, in good preservation, suggested that they and the three or four soft pottery pieces by them with a net pattern were a tomb deposit. The bones, if any, must have been dissolved long ago by the acid soil and heavy rains: other pottery lay at just over 100 cm., more than 40 cm. above the supposed grave group, and these may have been part of a habitation layer. Six pieces which obviously formed part of very large store jars, all of coarse pottery, are known from this site,* and seem to indicate a small settlement of this pre-historic period rather than a place used only occasionally, such as a burial ground. Pottery classed as 'plain' or unornamented is not recorded on the site as lying lower than 140 cm., nor higher than 60 cm. Most of it was from 100 to 140 cm., but it was much scantier than the cord-marked. Stamped coarse pottery found in situ consisted of three pieces only, two at 107 and one at 114 cm. This latter had an ornament of parallel single and double raised lines across it, connected by numerous lines at right angles to them. These lines were raised, and strongly reminded me of a pattern found east of Kowloon Bay, on a hill site at Ngau Chi Wan, whence it may have been imported. The levels indicate that this pottery type is a late development at this site. 2. Soft Pottery: (See Plate 7) This class is represented by numerous fragments from all parts of the site, both loose and in situ. Most of it bears ornament impressed on the outside with what were probably carved wooden stamps which left a raised pattern on the soft clay, and these patterns were very varied, the majority being of a net type, with studs in the meshes differing in shape in each pot. The softness is caused by low firing, generally so low that the pots tend to disintegrate when wetted. Sometimes the surface is coloured with a slip, often of a grey-green colour. This softness makes it pretty clear that the pots and other vessels were either used for holding *It appears that Tung Kwu is intended, though I was not able to check this with the writer. His paragraphing is retained throughout the article. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 80 W. SCHOFIELD Antiquities in 1939, bulletin no. 11. On the Danh Do La site, a sand-bank, he describes a section 4.5 m. above sea level, where at 45 to 89 cm. below the ground surface is a culture stratum with potsherds, stones and pumice. His derivation of the pumice from the East Indies, while possible, is perhaps less likely than my suggestion of a more northern origin, as the prevailing winds in the South China seas are undoubtedly north-east to south-east, and typhoons generally make their approach felt by violent easterly gales. All but three of the pumice-bearing sandbanks in Hong Kong face east, and one of the three, Tai Wan in Lamma, faces south. LIFE AND INDUSTRY OF THE INHABITANTS The only industry of which we can be certain is that still carried on by boat-people living near Tung Kwu, namely, fishing: yet there is little direct evidence of it in the finds. A rough stone ring collected by Professor Shellshear, and a stone axe blunted almost beyond recognition, with a notch on each side for attaching a rope or rattan, most likely used as a net sinker, and found loose on the surface of the isthmus during a visit by Professor Andersson, are the only direct traces. Yet if people ever lived on the island, this was almost the only resource open to them apart from the primitive 'slash and burn' cultivation indicated by the digging-stones. The food vessels left for the dead, the store jars, and the cooking stands they placed their hot round-bottomed caldrons on, indicate not only a settlement, probably shifting, but a cemetery. Tiled houses were no doubt a later development, going back no further than the Tang dynasty. The main interest of the relics found lies in the light they throw on the culture and life of the men who lived there before the coming of the colonists from the feudal principality of Yuet, and so before Chinese influence was strongly felt.* * James Watt writes: L Since Mr. Schofield worked on this site, later excavations in China have confirmed that the whole class of stamped designs found on the soft pottery of Tung Kwu (Plates 7 & 8) is unmistakably derived from the decorative art of the Shang culture in the north. Similar, and some identical, designs are found on Shang pottery of all periods (including those from the recently discovered early Shang site at Erh-li-t'ou in north-western Honan). The pattern of raised studs set in the meshes of a rhombic lattice or a "compound lozenge" is also one of the chief decorations appearing on bronzes of the Anyang phase of Shang culture. Further evidence of Shang ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 141 THE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTERI* On the Centenary of the Copy in the R.G.S. Collection RONALD C. Y. Ng† In 1860 a young Italian priest arrived in the British Colony of Hong Kong to join the Mission of the Propaganda in the Roman Catholic Diocese there. Interrupted frequently by ill health, he stayed only a few years in the Colony and in the adjoining Chinese District of San On (Hsin-An Hsien, now known as Bau-An Hsien) in the Province of Kwangtung, in preparation for a later distinguished career in northern China. Compared with those long years of successful missionary work in the capacity of Bishop of Honan, Fr. Simeone Volonteri's early efforts were little remembered and his biographer devoted only a small section in an introductory chapter to the description of his labours in Hong Kong and its vicinity. Padre Ho, a name derived from the transliteration in the local dialect of the first syllable of his surname, was a well-liked priest among the Hakka rice farmers in the District. He was a man of tremendous zeal and was reputed to have converted an entire community on an island off the coast and nine other villages to the Catholic faith. His youthful keenness and his love of the country and the people led him, together with his interpreter and colleague, over land and water to almost every settlement in the District. A most remarkable fruit of his four years' professional labour was undoubtedly the San On District Map 'drawn from actual observations', a frequently consulted historical and geographical document for those interested in the area, especially of the period before the New Territories were leased to Britain in 1898. However, his modesty dissuaded him from acknowledging directly on the map his due share of the credit in bringing to the public this 'first and only map hitherto published'. Within two years of *This article was first published in the Geographical Journal Vol. 135, Part 2 (June) 1969, pp. 231-5. It appears here with the consent of the author and the kind permission of The Royal Geographical Society who have also provided the full-scale reproduction of part of the original map that appears as Plate 15 of our Journal. † Dr. R. C. Y. Ng is Lecturer in Geography, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d The San On Map of Mgr. Volontieri 143 was most familiar. In view of the fact that the water bodies were referred to by their English names and unaccompanied by their equivalent in Chinese, the former explanation seems more probable. There is however, no ready means of establishing how much existing information was available to him at the time, and the answer must await further research into the progress of the charting, the circumstances under which Volonteri worked and the amount of cooperation rendered him by the authorities. Fr. Volontieri attempted to portray the relief of the area in order to bring out the relative location of the settlements. It has been written by his biographer, Lozza, that 'he reconnoitred on foot, villages, small towns, plains and mountains in order to get to know in exactitude the true distances between one place and another, and to give maximum precision to the map'. His apparent ineptitude in relief representation by contours was a far cry from the close match between the elevations he recorded and the actual surveyed heights. The 'contours' shown on the map are certainly not lines linking up points of equal height nor are they spaced out at regular intervals. Far from being concentric rings, as contour lines should be, they are often merely broken arcs or even continuous spirals. In areas with no prominent heights, groups of these lines exhibit a scalar pattern and wherever a major river valley occurs, there is a conspicuous lack of any elevation representation. Perhaps one should not be too critical of the map on cartographic and technical grounds, for the greatest contribution of Fr. Volontieri's effort lies in making available a wide range of information on the settlement pattern in San On. In no way had the Catholic priest allowed his religious belief to influence the features he selected for recording on the map. Apart from the obvious inclusion of the Roman Catholic Chapels, of which there were only five in the multitude of settlements, he also truthfully recorded the locations of 'pagodas (temples) of some consideration'. Amongst the settlements he noted, he made a clear distinction between their sizes and importance, ranging from Mandarin Residences, large and small market towns of his day to villages, some of which could not have contained more than ten families in the 1860's. He also indicated all the important tracks and mountain passes, vital for communication between the major towns and village groups. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 144 RONALD C. Y. NG Considering that the mapping was done during his brief sojourn in the District, in the little time which he could devote to perform this immense task of recording over 900 settlements spreading over an area of some 750 square miles under personal and environmental conditions which were far from congenial, Fr. Volonteri deserves the admiration of all those who have recourse to the document. It is worth noting that the number of 368 villages and market towns shown in that part of San On which became British 30 years later is fairly consistent with the official figure of 416 for 1898. The information on the settlement pattern was certainly derived from his personal knowledge and the Chinese script was probably provided by his local collaborator, Don Andrea Maria Liang, who accompanied him on practically all his journeys in San On. Herein lie also the sources of weakness of the map: the vital time element and the joint authorship. The most immediately evident aspect of the discrepancies is the number of villages on both sides of the San On border which had their locations clearly marked but remained unnamed in either language. These settlements have in common that they are situated in the remote interior or on the off-shore islands. It may well be that Fr. Volonteri would have liked more time in the District to complete the work he had so meticulously undertaken, but his health deteriorated and, furthermore, he was under the impression that he would soon be assigned to a new post under the existing circumstances of shortage of personnel in other mission stations in China. He was understandably anxious to see the map engraved in Leipzig prior to his departure from the area. The appearance on the map of these unidentified villages may lead one to suspect legitimately that there could well be many more sites which are not even marked with a symbol. This is almost certainly the case with Lantau Island. Travelling in San On in his day was an arduous and time-consuming business, as Stewart Lockhart's description of the conditions thirty years hence was to reveal. There is no doubt that the work was finished in haste for on several occasions errors made in the Chinese characters were not properly erased but were merely printed over. Fr. Volonteri, with his knowledge of the Chinese written language, must have noticed these incongruities and, except for shortage of time, he would not have sent the manuscript to the engraver with such a lack of polish. Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d THE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTIERI 145 The pattern of settlement presented by the map must be treated with some caution, for there is a distinct difference in the degree of complexity between the two portions divided roughly by an imaginary line running from the middle of the top margin south-westwards to the bottom edge. To the east of this divide practically all the villages known to have been in existence at that time were accurately located and named, but on the other side of the line, the settlements were under-represented and the locations of those actually cited were rather inaccurately plotted. Furthermore, some six to eight miles of the north-western boundary with Tung Kun District is conspicuously missing, but it does not seem that any part of San On lies beyond the margins of the map. The distortion of the coastline and the lack of relief contrasts on which Volonteri must have based his observations, were part of the reason for the imprecision, but the full explanation for the omission of many village sites in western San On must be sought elsewhere. Although there was a larger number of small villages in the eastern peninsula, the concentration of population was definitely in the more prosperous and long established western plains. The broad valleys of the rivers emptying into Deep Bay were settled by the Cantonese Tang clan as early as the tenth century, while the hilly tracts of the east had to wait a couple of centuries for the arrival of the Hakkas. Several farming communities on the large island of Nam Tao (Lantau) have a history dating back to the Ming and even to the Sung Dynasty, but none of these were recorded on the map. There are two possible explanations which may account for this unfortunate lack of information in western San On. The first must be that Volonteri, like his successors, found that the Hakkas were, on the whole, more receptive to Christianity than were the more wealthy and tradition-bound Cantonese and hence a concentration of missionary efforts on these communities in the early days. In view of the Tai Ping Rebellion (1850-64), with its religious and ethnic implications, the timing of Volonteri's arrival and survey work was certainly not the most opportune. He would therefore have spent more time with the Hakkas and have become more familiar with the areas around the five strategically located Roman Catholic churches in the eastern section. The result was that his knowledge of the remainder of the district did not seem to have extended far beyond ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 156 NOTES AND QUERIES or gingall. That on the right is badly placed; its view is obstructed by a great rock, which possibly was not there when the wall was built. Other loopholes are set at intervals of 12 feet in the wall all along, and are very roughly and crudely made and badly placed. Only one or two command the path in fact. Immediately beside the stair leading to the gate platform once stood a small guard house, fragments of the red tiles of which can still be seen. The lines of its east and north walls (of ‘chunam') can still be traced. A fragment of an earthenware bowl embedded in decomposed granite was seen, and other fragments of pottery were seen on the ground. The East wall is about 12 feet long; the other say 6 feet. The South wall foundation of the guard house, of stone, is in place. WALTER SCHOFIELD REMOVAL OF VILLAGES FOR FUNG SHUI REASONS: ANOTHER EXAMPLE FROM LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG The 1963 Journal included notices of village removals for which Fung Shui reasons were given by those concerned.* These instances were all taken from South Lantau Island in the Hong Kong region of South Kwangtung. Yet another example from this area has recently come to my notice. It was unsuspected by me until a planned walk over the old coastal track led me to make enquiries locally about some ruined houses that lay beside it. After centuries of use this footpath was replaced in 1956 by a motor road on a different route. The removal of the village took place about sixteen years before the new road made the old track redundant. The two events were therefore not connected in any way. The village was the Hakka settlement of Shan Shek Wan (*) which had 19 houses at the time the Hong Kong Government surveyed the settlement shortly after the lease of the New *JHKBRAS, Vol.3(1963) pp.143-144. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d NOTES AND QUERIES 157 Territories to Great Britain in 1898. It was a one-clan village, then and now, and the clan record shows that the first ancestor arrived in Lantau Island about 1780. Family tradition states that they lived first in the larger older settlement at nearby Pui O before establishing themselves at Shan Shek Wan. The principal actor in the removal is still alive, aged 70, and what follows was taken from him and other elderly villagers. The occasion for the removal is said to have been the destruction caused locally by the severe typhoon of 1937, which takes its place with those of 1874 and 1906 as one of the three most severe storms in the preceding near century of British rule. Prior to this particular typhoon, the village, which stood close to the seashore, was fronted by a line of large old trees. These shut off the sea from the houses and constituted an effective visual screen, which was held to be an essential feature of village Fung Shui. The typhoon blew over many of these trees and made large gaps in the screen. This caused considerable uneasiness among the villagers, who, in pondering the new situation, are said to have considered another current feature of their lives. It is related that, at this time, there was a noticeable shortage of male children in the village, few families possessing more than one living son. The sudden removal of the accustomed leafy screen, together with the lack of male offspring, were interpreted by some as a sign that the place had become unlucky. My principal informant states that he decided to remove to another site about a quarter of a mile away, and that within two or three years, his example had been followed by the other villagers. Considerable expense and inconvenience were involved. Their old homes were substantial dwellings of mud-brick on a rubble foundation with granite fittings and tiled roofs. An ancestral hall was included in their number. Removal meant the total loss of these houses; and because they were old—a hundred years or more—and had been damaged by the typhoon, it was not possible, I was told, to recover many of the fittings for use in the new dwellings. For these and general economic reasons, the removal cannot be interpreted as an improvement in housing conditions. As at Shek Pik, it is worth noting that the new houses were not built to the same standard or decorative style. Another feature of this particular case, unlike the others, was that ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 the Society had a fine home of its own with a lecture hall presented by a Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a magnificent library and a museum and art gallery. It was supported by the Municipal Councils of the International Settlement and of the French Concession with liberal grants. In Hong Kong, however, no philanthropist has yet appeared to help the Society and the Government gives us only $200 a year in return for which it receives free copies of the Society's publications. Our library is increasing and now consists of about 500 books but can be much enlarged by the purchase of books and by donations. One section of the library, the rarest volumes and our exchange journals as well as a stock of our own journals, is kept in the University, while the other section is kept in the rooms of the British Council which is already hard pressed to house its own library. We are grateful to the University and the British Council for these facilities and the services of their staff but the time has come when the Society will have to appeal for funds to house our library and make it more easily available. We have to acknowledge with gratitude the gifts of books made during the year, including contributions from the Hong Kong University and from the South China Morning Post. A most valuable gift was the presentation on behalf of the Diocesan Girls' School of the classic and rare book, Bentham's Flora Hongkongensis, published in 1861. Bentham was a member of the Society but published his great work two years after the Society's collapse. In this connection I want to add that it has been my great wish, so far not achieved, to see Bentham's book succeeded by a new and colour edition of the Flora of Hong Kong based on the 500 admirable slides from the photographs taken by Mr. F. A. Nixon. With some Government encouragement and some philanthropic help, such as was given by Jardines and Dents in 1859, such an aim could be achieved and would serve as a permanent contribution by the Royal Asiatic Society to the natural history of Hong Kong. As you will see from the Hon. Treasurer's Report our finances are in a satisfactory position; but we cannot be complacent as we have heavy expenses to meet in printing the new issue of the Journal and in reprinting Vol. I and the printing of the record and results of the recent Symposia conducted by Professor Dwyer ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 42 H. J. LETHBRIDGE unsatisfactory. Instead, the system was adopted in the early 1880s of sending cadets to Peking where they learned Mandarin, which was little used in Hong Kong.24 Finally, in the late 1880s cadets were sent to Canton to learn Cantonese, and this arrangement continued in force until the Second World War. Cadets at Canton were billeted in the former residence of the Tartar General, which was taken by Britain after the war of 1857-60 and became His Britannic Majesty's Yamen. When the Consulate was transferred to Shameen, the area of original European settlement, the Yamen was turned over as a place of residence for cadets of the Malayan and Hong Kong Civil Services learning Chinese. Some cadets also resided in Shameen. In the early 1920s, according to Victor Purcell,25 who was then a Malayan cadet, there were in Canton usually about 15 or so cadets, the majority from Malaya, but a few from Hong Kong, and one or two police probationers, who were taught Chinese by a small band of Cantonese teachers... with a core of about half a dozen stalwarts who had taught generations of cadets in the past'. Sir Alexander Grantham, who was also a cadet in the 1920s, tells us that in his day there were about half a dozen cadets living in the Yamen.26 It is clear from his memoirs that the Hong Kong Government exercised little supervision over its protégés in Canton. So long as the cadets passed their examinations—four examinations taken at six-monthly intervals—cadets had two years of glorious freedom in a very free and easy Chinese city. Cadets appointed to the Hong Kong Civil Service, or transferred from other colonial territories in Asia, had much in common. All were British subjects of pure European descent and all entered the Colonial Service at approximately the same age. They were educated at fee-paying schools, but most had their schooling at minor public and obscure private schools, not listed in the Public Schools Yearbook: only one Etonian, one Wykehamist, two Rugbeians and two Harrovians are to be found among the eighty-five. The majority proceeded to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge but a substantial contingent—over 30 per cent—came from universities in Scotland and Ireland; only a handful—nine in all—were from London or English provincial universities.27 A few—Cecil Clementi, R. F. Johnston, J. H. Stewart Lockhart, F. H. May and A. M. Thomson28—had outstanding academic records; yet even the rest were above average. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 74 DAFYDD EMRYS EVANS altogether. Further, their settlement there had been "perfectly voluntary" and they had all "enjoyed the profits of their respective callings without contributing a penny to the expenses of the colony". If any refused to move, they were to be told that they could "leave the Colony whenever they like." The Committee found that there were 112 authorised lot-holders but a further 24 were, in the eyes of the Committee, disqualified by reason of their houses "being dedicated to disgraceful purposes" (but who should nevertheless receive $25 compensation).14 Nothing was done to put the Committee's proposals into effect and when Davis arrived to succeed Pottinger, it was clearly a matter of urgency, for the Government had pledged to provide an alternative site and to give up the site to the new owners by 22 July 1844. The lot-holders clearly could not be moved until the new site was prepared and, indeed, they showed every intention of sitting tight where they were. Davis directed the work of drawing up an estimate and a contract for the work as quickly as possible. But 22 July approached still without any progress even on this, and Davis directed that the work of levelling proceed without first obtaining an estimate. The work cost $5,956.40 but Major Aldrich of the Royal Engineers certified that the money had been properly spent.15 In view of the high cost of effecting the removal, Davis decided that no monetary compensation at all should be paid and that the 'rent holiday' should only last for four years and not the five suggested by the Committee. At the sale on 22 January, the purchasers had been promised possession of their lots by 22 July 1844 but that date arrived with the lot-holders still in situ. Bruce, the Colonial Secretary, therefore, published a Notification on 25 July to the effect that they should remove by 25 August so that possession could be given to the purchasers by 31 August. If they failed to comply with the direction, they would forfeit the materials on the sites now belonging to Crown lessees. The Notification further informed them that the ground for relocation was being marked out for them at Taipingshan and would be cleared for them free of charge, rent due would be remitted and no rent would be payable for a period of four years.16 The Press was disturbed: the Friend of China commented that "though legally Her Majesty's representative could claim ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 78 DAFYDD EMRYS EVANS "See their petition, reprinted in Friend of China, 4 May 1844, and also below, P. 10 The contents of the petition, Pottinger's reply and the lot-holders' rejoinder were all published in the Friend of China, 4 May 1844. "I Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, English translation, 1963) p. 117, maintains that there had long been a settlement in the area of the present Taipingshan, The name is said to have originated from the pacification of the pirate Cheung Po-chai in 1810 who is known to have had a stronghold there. The mountain now known as Victoria Peak was renamed Taipingshan (the Mountain of Peace) and is so known in Chinese today. The Man Mo temple, standing today in Hollywood Road, is said by Lo to have been built by Cheung in the first decade of the 19th Century. There is considerable documentary evidence as to the existence of such a settlement in the early 1840s. 12 Caine, Gutzlaff and Gordon to Pottinger, C.O.129, Vol. VI, p. 440. 13 Woosnam to Caine, Gutzlaff and Gordon, 17 April 1844; C.O.129, Vol. VI, p. 442. 14 Caine, Gutzlaff and Gordon to Bruce, 21 May 1844; C.O.129, Vol. VI, p. 444. 15 Aldrich to Bruce, 20 July 1844; C.O.129, Vol. VI, p. 445. 16 Notification dated 25 July 1844. It appeared in the Hong Kong Register on 30 July 1844 and the gist of it was contained in the Friend of China on 3 August 1844. Only in the former, official, version, does the information about the date of possession for the purchasers appear. 17 10 August 1844. 18 Friend of China, 2 October 1844. The site is still occupied by a branch of the present Western Market, 19 Davis to Stanley, (no. 44 of 1844), 26 July 1844 and Stanley to Davis, 3 January 1845; C.O.129, Vol. VI, p. 438. Under-Secretary Stephen commented on the despatch that, though the expenditure would have to be referred to the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, "it must, however, ultimately be sanctioned " 20 Davis to Stanley, 29 October 1844; C.O.129, Vol. VI, p. 157. The additional expenditure was sanctioned without further comment: Stanley to Davis 1 April 1845; C.O.129, Vol. VI, p. 161, 21 Inland Lots Nos. 223A, 223B, 223C, 223E, 224, 224A, 224B, 224C, 224E, 225, 226, 226A, 229D, 231A, 233, 233A, 234, 234D, 238B, 239A, 239B, 240A, 241, 242A, 243, 243A, 244, 244B, 245A, 245B, 245C, 245D, 245E, 245F, 245G, 245H, 245I, 246A, 247B, 247C, 248A, 253, 253A, 272. 22 Inland Lots Nos. 213, 224D, 228, 228B, 229, 231, 232, 232A, 232C, 233E, 234B, 234C, 234E, 238, 244A, 252B, 255B, 256B. 23 Inland Lots Nos. 223, 246, 246B, 246C, 247, 247A, 247D, 248B, 248C, 248D, 249C, 252C, 253B, 254, 255D, 255E, 256. 24 Inland Lots Nos. 214, 234A, 223D, 227, 235A, 241A, 246C, 246B, 253B. 25 Inland Lots Nos. 238C, 239C, 240, 241B, 241C, 242B, 245, 250, 255A, 256A, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE A. D. BLUE* Until after the Treaty of Tientsin of 1858, emigration from China was illegal, but this law, like so many others, was more honoured in the breach than in the observance, especially in the southern provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung, and to a lesser extent Kwangsi. Traders, however, were allowed to go abroad under certain conditions, which usually included eventual return to China. There had been emigration from these southern parts of China to most regions of South-east Asia for centuries before 1858, and there were flourishing colonies of Chinese at all the main ports when the first Europeans arrived there in the 16th century. The Ming fleet under Cheng Ho is said to have killed five thousand Chinese at Palembang in 1406, and while this is almost certainly an exaggeration, it is certain that these Chinese colonies were already populous. While treating briefly with Chinese emigration to other parts of the world, the following essay deals mainly with emigration to South-east Asia. The Chinese called this region the 'Nanyang', which literally means 'Southern Ocean'; but it is often used to describe other countries even further south, such as Australia, New Guinea, and the South Pacific islands. In the pre-European and early European eras, most overseas Chinese were traders, money lenders, and craftsmen, and their contribution to the economy of South-east Asia was out of all proportion to their numbers. The civil wars which succeeded the Manchu defeat of the Mings in south China in the mid-17th century gave a strong impetus to emigration; but the arrival of the Europeans in South-east Asia in time created the conditions favourable to Chinese settlement on a much larger scale. The Chinese were often the intermediaries between the Europeans and the native peoples, useful to each, but periodically incurring hostility from both. As they increased in numbers, the Chinese posed increasingly *The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtse in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Three of his articles have been published previously in the Journal: "European Navigation on the Yangtse" in Vol. 3, 1963, "Piracy on the China Coast" in Vol. 5, 1965, and "The China Coasters" in Vol. 7, 1967. * See the note at the end of this article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 85 at the French settlement on New Caledonia, after which the French authorities sent a ship to rescue the survivors on Rossel Island. Only one small Chinese boy was found, whose story was that the rest of the passengers and crew had been eaten by the natives. This was accepted as gospel by the press in Sydney where the boy was taken, although there were some glaring inconsistencies in his story, and it was repeated in the British Admiralty Sailing Directions. Not until thirty years later was it seriously questioned, when its most important critic was Sir William MacGregor, the first Australian administrator of New Guinea. It is now generally believed that, rather than wait to be taken on to Australia and a life-time of labour to repay the inflated cost of their passages, the Chinese had preferred to take a chance in New Guinea. Food, including the highly prized luxury bêche-de-mer, was comparatively plentiful, and life in New Guinea with freedom must have appeared infinitely preferable to life in the Australian goldfields saddled with a heavy personal debt. When the first official census was taken in New Guinea, many Chinese were recorded, of whose origins there was no satisfactory explanation. Another notable incident in the history of Chinese emigration, and which had a happy conclusion, concerned the Peruvian ship Maria Luz in 1872. The Maria Luz had left Macao with over 300 indentured labourers for the Peruvian guano islands, and was forced into Yokohama harbour in distress. One coolie jumped overboard and swam to H.M.S. Iron Duke, where he reported that the passengers on the Maria Luz had either been kidnapped or decoyed on board under false pretences. As a result of the publicity and outcry which this caused, all the passengers were sent back to China. Peru had then no treaty relations with Japan, but threatened war unless Japan apologised and indemnified her. The British government, however, warned Peru that any hostile act on her part would invite retaliatory action by the Royal Navy; and the whole question was referred to France, who gave her verdict in favour of Japan. This case focussed public attention on the many unsavoury aspects of the emigrant trade, and also led to the opening of diplomatic relations between China and Japan. It is necessary to remind ourselves that conditions in many of the emigrant ships to South-east Asia during the 1850's and Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 145 Iron was also used to make arrow heads, fishing hooks, and knives and the finding of moulds for making them points again to the fact that they were made on the spot. Finally we must mention that skeletons have been found in those sites; the horn of a large deer of species unknown; and that near the Lantau site is the pattern carved on a rock. This pattern is used by the aborigines of Hainan Island for tattooing, but it would be unsafe to infer a connection on these grounds alone. It is, however, a proof of aboriginal settlement. This brief summary of the prehistoric population of our region must suffice. In later chapters we shall try to discover what these people were and when they lived. At present, it is necessary to emphasise that they were a seaboard people who practised primitive industries of their own, but who imported a great many of their possessions either from China, Indo-China or the East Indies archipelago; in other words, they were connected up with a trade route, or were even possibly one of the links in the trade routes which in early times were used in the Far East. III. SOUTH CHINA BEFORE THE HANS There is all kinds of evidence as to a prehistoric migration of peoples using stone tools between India, the Far East, Polynesia and even Europe. These migrants, who are called "Austronesians” by the prehistorians, are believed to have navigated the seas and rivers in outrigger boats and to have introduced a very early exchange of objects the prehistoric world valued, such as cowries, tortoise shells and the like. The archaeological finds point to a survival of this culture in South China. How late it survived is not absolutely clear and unfortunately no authoritative opinion on the subject has been given. But from the position of the sites it might be supposed that the inhabitants were pushed onto the seacoast by the pressure of other peoples and their survival may have lasted well into historic times, even possibly as late as the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960), the date, as we shall see, when Chinese peasants first began to migrate into this region. The Tanka might, in theory, be the descendants of these earlier Page 146 is missing Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 151 Tonkin delta set up an independent kingdom comprising both the Tonkin and Canton estuaries. His capital was Pun Yü, the modern Canton, and was the first walled city to be built in Nan Hai. The connection between North China was kept up and tribute was sent regularly to the Northern capital. By this means the routes between Kwangtung and the Yangtze were developed. An important step was the opening of a canal which made a complete water route between the Yangtze via the Tung Ting Lake to the west river at the modern Wu Chow and thence to Canton. The canal exists to this day. When the kingdom of Nan Hai was finally subdued by the Hans in 111 B.C. a Chinese river fleet descended by this route onto Pun Yü and sacked it. After this victory the Han emperors extended their direct rule over the whole of the coast line from Canton to the Tonkin delta and farther south to places in modern Annam. Min Yüeh, that is the eastern part of Kwangtung, the whole of Fukien and a part of Chekiang, continued to be governed more or less independently. There was no extensive colonization by the Hans probably because their effort was directed towards the west and their ambition to link up through India their vast empire in the North West with the conquests they had made in the South. Not being a maritime people and possessing only a river fleet they were not interested in maritime routes, and the only effort they made on the sea was the conquest of Hainan Island. For this reason the earliest settlement of the Chinese spread west, not east, from Pun Yü, across Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces. We can trace it in the walled cities built at that time. There were a group of them round the present site of Canton which have now been abandoned. Wu Chow or Ts'ang Wu was the point of contact on the west river, between it and Chiao Chih or Hanoi was the modern Nanning or Wu Lin. There were other towns built on the littoral such as Lim Chow and Ko Chow. The Chinese inhabiting these cities were soldiers, political exiles and traders. There cannot have been much agricultural settlement. In the fortified centres the Han conquerors taught the natives some of their arts, the use of metals, as we have seen, was among them, and in exchange took all the produce and sent it to North China. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 152 S. F. BALFOUR Their presence in Tongkin and Annam attracted traders from the South Seas and from India. The later Han history mentions that in A.D. 132 the towns of Jih Nan farthest south in Annam, Chiu Chên and Chiao Chih were focal points of navigators. "Cattigara" was mentioned by Ptolemy about this time as the port of the Chinese; it has been identified with Chiao Chih or Hanoi. Traders came to it from India and from Yeh T'iao or Java. During the 3rd or 4th century these foreign traders penetrated as far as Canton. But the Chinese did not do more than encourage the foreign traders to come. What coastal trade existed must have been carried on by the aborigines, who were practically unaffected by the Chinese conquest. These aborigines, particularly in the seas between Annam and Canton, turned themselves into pirates and harassed the early western traders to an enormous extent. An independent centre of trade remained in Min Yüeh which was practically untouched by the Chinese until the T'ang dynasty. This centre must have been in touch with the civilised region of Wu, at the Yangtze mouth, and no doubt had contacts further with Japan. Little is known about it, but its importance must have been very great and it was lasting. Even in the Middle Ages Marco Polo referred to South China as Manzi or the Land of the Man-Tzů. In one or two ways the modern Fukienese show traces of contact with Japanese culture in their use of wooden utensils for instance. It is quite likely that the porcelain, especially the glazed type, found in our region was imported from the North East. When the Han dynasty broke up in A.D. 220 the empire they had founded from Canton to Indo-China was disrupted. The garrisoned towns were emptied of troops during the civil wars of the Three Kingdoms period, and right up to the T'ang dynasty the Chinese never regained their imperial hold over the South coast. The region was therefore left to the semi-tutored aborigines and to the foreign traders. There is no evidence at all of any settlement of peasants. The Cantonese language is not an archaic form of Chinese, and some of the eldest sub-dialects, for instance that of T'oi Shan district, do not point to a pre-Tang population. We must therefore recognise a break between the Han and Tang dynasties when the aborigines continued their tribal life and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 153 migrations, keeping only a semi-Chinese culture in the walled cities such as Pun Yü. Even in the Tang dynasty from the seventh to the tenth centuries it is not possible to trace any record of migration of peasants from the North. The earliest families must have died out or have been cut off so completely that they forgot their kinsmen. The settlement of peasants was accompanied by much fighting with the aborigines. At that time elephants and crocodiles existed in South China. The vegetation was tropical and the work of deforestation for agriculture was tremendous. However, the task was begun by soldiers. At various points garrisons were established by the T'ang emperors to protect the coastal trade and to keep the natives in order. These garrisons were known as T'un (屯) or soldiers who were settled on the land. We shall be able to give an example of the importance of these garrisons in attracting the settlement of peasants when we describe the history of Tun Mun or Castle Peak. The colonisation of Fukien by Chinese peasants occurred much more rapidly than that of Kwangtung. There is in fact no record of any conflict between the aborigines and there is reason to believe that the Chinese were even welcomed by the inhabitants, In fact Min Yüeh became during the T'ang dynasty a Chinese colony. The Chinese settlers must have intermarried with the inhabitants. The cause of this may well have been the migration south west into Kwangtung of the early fiercer tattooing and water-fighting aborigines due to the pressure of more civilised peoples. In any case the blending of the Northern Chinese and Min Yüeh cultures had the effect of making the Chinese for the first time a maritime nation. During the Tang dynasty the Chinese began to build boats and to open a new centre of trade, Ch'üan Chow, which began to compete with the older centres of Canton and Chiao Chih. But to return to Nan Yüeh. During the T'ang dynasty until almost the 10th century the pure Chinese population of this region must have been comparatively small. It consisted of garrisons, officials appointed to collect dues from the foreign traders, traders and exiles. In addition, there must have been a large semi-Chinese 10 Li Chi-Formation of the Chinese People. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 163 Tung Kun district, Heung Shan, and Kwangsi. Two brothers of the eldest branch remained in Tung Kun, of their cousins one received lands in P'ing Shan next to Kam T'in and another Tang Yuan Liang succeeded to Kam T'in and to a place called Lung Yeuk T'au in our region, besides lands at Tung Kun, This Tang Yuan Liang led the spacious life that might be expected of a man of widely extended property. He is buried in Tung Kun, but his family lived in Kam T'in and he himself was appointed an official in Kiangsi, near to the original home of his ancestors. His power over all this area was the greater because the Sung dynasty during his time was hard pressed by the Tartars. Tang Yuan Liang had established a kind of outpost in Kiangsi behind which he and his family governed a more or less independent region, officially loyal to the Sung dynasty, but in reality ready to take advantage of its misfortunes. In 1127 the Emperor's family was captured, but one daughter of the royal house escaped as far as Tang Yuan Liang's outposts, where she was taken charge of and sent half captive half refugee to Kam T'in where she married Yuan Liang's son. When the Tartars were driven back, her father became the Emperor Kao Tsung of Sung. He recognised the marriage, received the princess and her husband Tssŭ Ming at the capital, and gave him an official title. The family received a large dowry, tax collecting rights and the monopoly of the ferries in Tung Kun district. The four main centres of the Tang clan at present are Kam T'in, Ping Shan, Lung Yeuk T'au and Ha Tsün. We have already mentioned that one of the "five Yuans" received lands in P'ing Shan. The present Tangs of P'ing Shan are descended from him and are therefore probably the eldest branch in direct descent. The settlement at Lung Yeuk Tau also dates from one of the “five Yuans", that of Ha Tsün appears to be much later though directly descended from the great grandson of Tssŭ Ming and the princess, a man called Shou Tsu who lived in the Yuan dynasty and appears to have been the first of the Tangs to settle permanently at Kam T'in, instead of in Tung Kun district where his ancestors had lived. These four centres can be seen on the attached map (See T'ien Hsia, Vol. XI, No. 4).* It will be noticed that they contain many adjacent walled villages due chiefly to the fact that their houses *Plate 16 at end of this volume. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 164 S. F. BALFOUR became too old to live in and were abandoned by the richer members of the family, who built new ones elsewhere. This alone shows how prolific the Tang family were, but it is not the only sign of their overwhelming influence in our region. In almost every fertile valley including Lantau and Hong Kong islands, there has at one time or another been a settlement of Tang peasants and the inference that I have drawn is that they undertook the deforestation of these regions. There appears to be only one other landholding family with a record that goes back to Sung times. This is the clan of Hou17 who live near to Lung Yeuk Tau in several walled villages. Their family record shows that they came from Pun Yu or Canton in the year 1026 but gives no notice of their migration to Canton from the north. They have always been a humble family in comparison to the Tangs, although intermarriage between them has been very frequent, and their family book contains no references to any connection with government. What is striking about the early history of the Tang family is the kind of feudal power which they exercised. No doubt at the same time in other parts of South China influential families were occupying land and spreading branches in all directions. It requires a study of their family books to make a complete picture of the influx of peasant population into South China. VII. THE SUNG EMPERORS The story of the journey of the last Sung Emperors through this region must be recounted not only for its sentimental value, but also because it really marks an epoch in the history of the population. It was owing to the pressure of the Mongols from the north that the Tang family migrated, but when the same pressure spread south right to the coast, the migration into sparsely inhabited places became even more frequent, and it is also very likely that the large armies of Sung when they were dispersed settled down as agriculturalists. The journey of the last two kings of Sung began when the Emperor Kung Ti was taken prisoner with his court at Hangchow. The two boys who were known as Yi Wong and Wei Wong were 17. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 NOTES AND QUERIES 183 24TH MAY, 1969 VISIT TO OLD SHAU KEI WAN The programme notes prepared for the visit are reproduced below. Ed. This visit is to an area soon to experience redevelopment. Within a few years, extensive reclamation and clearance of squatter structures will transform the district. Dirty and non-descript, nonetheless it has interesting relics and associations that are worthy of attention. Shau Kei Wan, the name means "Rice Basket Bay", clearly so named because of its shape, is an old settlement probably dating back to centuries before the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. Its population was given as 1,200 persons in the first Hong Kong census of May, 1841. Then as now, the population were farmers, shopkeepers, and fishermen, scattered in various settlements round the shores of the bay, named by the British "Aldrich Bay" after a military engineer officer who served in Hong Kong in those first years. Shau Kei Wan has for long been known locally as the 'Bay of Hungry Men'. Writing as long ago as 1858, the Rev. W. Lobscheid noted: "This village is called by the natives Ngo-yan-wan (the harbour of the starving men). They relate that, about 150 years ago, a few junks were driven into this harbour by a hurricane. The weather continuing very rough for several days, and being in want of provisions, they went on shore in order to purchase some rice and other necessaries. But nothing could be obtained, and the unfortunate men had to leave almost in a starving condition. From that time, they called the place the harbour of the starving men', which appellation it bears up to this moment." [From A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education and the Government Schools of Hong Kong, etc. Hong Kong, Printed at the "China Mail" Office, MDCCCLIX p. 38.] In another version of the same story, given in a Chinese publication in 1947, the name is ascribed to the fact that Shau Kei Wan was a base for lawless pirates, the "hungry people". This account said that because of the geographical advantages ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 184 NOTES AND QUERIES that the bay presented for boats taking shelter in bad weather, these pirates were gradually displaced by fishing people and shopkeepers, leading in time to a permanent settlement. (See 香港百年史 Centenary History of Hong Kong 南中編譯出 Hi Ep 7 n.d. pp. 74-75). The name Ngo-yan-wan appears to have been used officially, too. Government Notification No. 69 of 1857 which appears in The Hongkong Government Gazette for May 9, 1857 describes District No. 2 Show-ke-wan as being "from Hoong-heung-loo to the village of Ngo-yan-wan, taking in Wong-kok-tsai, Chut-che-mooey, Shui-cheang-wan, Show-ke-wan and Ngo-yan-wan," but it is not clear to which part of the present extended Shau Kei Wan Ngo-yan-wan belonged, The oldest part of Shau Kei Wan, where original settlement took place, is along the Main Street East which we shall visit today. Many old houses probably dating from the 1850's to 1870's are still in existence. It is likely that the style of building followed that in contemporary Victoria and the Western district, though successive waves of redevelopment have left few traces of them there. They are all shop houses, and a count of the present shops in old premises shows besides groceries and general stores 9 Chinese herb shops, 7 josspaper shops, 7 fishing suppliers, 5 goldsmiths and 5 rice shops, indicating long established lines of trade with a predominantly fishing clientele*. In Main Street East is the Tin Hau Temple. The existing building dates from the 1870's, but since the inscription above the entrance states this to be a reconstruction, it is likely that a smaller building stood on the same site for many years before. A stone tablet dated 1876 states that it was badly damaged by the famous typhoon of 1874, necessitating a major repair. In this connection there is an interesting parallel with the Tam Kung Temple below which had also to be rebuilt a short time after its first construction owing to a more than usually destructive typhoon. The temple contains two other major shrines to Kwun Yam (Goddess of Mercy) and Lui Cho (one of the most prominent among the later Taoist patriarchs). see * A prominent local shopkeeper has told me that, pre-war, fishermen would not go outside Main Street East for business or pleasure. The shop houses are shown in plates 21-22, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO 23 as a creed, or ethics, that the world ever witnessed." Warming to his task, Harvey declared: "The first impression of a sensible and reasoning Englishman, on coming into contact with Taepingdom is one of horror, then of amazement, with contempt and disgust following each other in succession. Taepingdom is a huge mass of 'nothingness'... It is a gigantic bubble, that collapses on being touched, but leaves a mark of blood on the finger.” In such light, Harvey's advice was simple: "Your Excellency may rest assured that we shall only arrive at a correct appreciation of this movement, and do it thorough justice, when it is treated by us as land piracy on an extensive scale — piracy odious in the eyes of all men — and, as such, to be swept off the face of the earth by every means within the power of the Christian and civilized nations trading with this vast Empire." In his dispatch to London of April 10, 1862, British Minister Frederick Bruce enclosed Harvey's "very able report” and added: "No commerce can co-exist with their presence, and no specific relations are possible with a horde of pirates and brigands, who are allowed to commit every excess, while professing a nominal allegiance to an ignorant and ferocious fanatic." In another dispatch eight days later Bruce emphasized this theme saying that the presence of the Taipings in any district is "accompanied by the utter destruction of the materials of trade."19 Thus all evidence to the contrary from Ningpo and elsewhere of Taiping efforts to encourage trade were totally ignored, to be drowned out as a matter of fact, by such sustained propaganda, so that the impression has remained ever since that the Taipings were somehow anathema to commerce. Thus the stage was carefully being set for the climax. The British, with the French, awaited the opportune moment, or more precisely, an opportune pretext. This came on April 22, 1862. The occasion was the triumphant return to Ningpo of General Fan who had been away at Nanking. During a cannon salute, unfortunately aimed in the direction of the foreign settlement, some shots reportedly killed one or two Chinese within the settlement, although the report itself seems questionable. On the same day, some Taiping soldiers fired musket shots toward the H.M.S. Ringdove. The ship's Captain immediately protested, and the very responsive Taiping General Huang replied apologetically, on the very same day, promising punishment for the offenders. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 24 STEPHEN UHALLEY, JR. as soon as they were caught.20 A few days later, Captain Dew arrived in Ningpo and apparently impressed with General Huang's reply wrote of his satisfaction, and in his momentary spirit of good feeling toward the Taipings perhaps said too much. For example, he stated that "Till the late acts, they (the British) had every reason to be satisfied with your (the Taipings) conduct, and you may rest assured that no breach of friendly relations shall emanate from our side." And since the Taiping response had been "so satisfactory" and tended so much "to impress on us your wish to maintain friendly relations with the English and French," Captain Dew indicated that he would not insist on the demolition of the battery whence came the musket fire, but only that the guns be removed from the position. Incidentally, on the same day in a separate letter to Admiral Hope, Captain Dew noted that a "very active trade is being carried on with the rebels in rice and fire-arms,"22 which comment would in itself seem to be additional evidence against the contrary propaganda line which held that the Taipings were anathema to commerce. On the very next day, April 28, 1862, there came a surprising turn of events. Captain Dew suddenly reversed himself. He now demanded of the Taipings "an ample apology," insisted that the offending battery "be immediately pulled down," and that all guns facing the foreign settlement be removed. Twenty-four hours were given for compliance, after which he and the French naval commander would request permission from their respective admirals to destroy the battery. Dew threatened that should the Taipings fire but one shot in return it would be considered an act of hostility, leading to measures that would probably follow with the capture of the city of Ningpo.23 Considering the startling changed tone and the demands of this letter, it would appear that it was designed to antagonize and provoke the Taipings. One might have expected a defiant reply. Instead, on April 29, Generals Huang and Fan returned a very long letter characterized by an unusual degree of forbearance. It firmly maintained that the demands could not be complied with; otherwise the security of their position would be jeopardized. The letter pointed out all that had been done to keep relations proper and to protect trade. Without rancour it mentioned foreign transgressions against the Taipings. In the event that the foreigners should attack the Taiping positions, the generals made it clear Page 30 Page 31 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO 25 that they would not strike the first blow, but neither would they stand idly by. Finally, they used this occasion to affirm that under Taiping rules, all Chinese residents of the foreign settlement were still under Taiping Chinese jurisdiction. This was put very civilly, and it was emphasized that Chinese deportment toward foreigners would continue to be proper, and that trade would be allowed to continue as before.24 This letter did not satisfy Captain Dew. On May 2, he replied that since his "moderate demands" for the insult to the British and French flags had not been met, the generals' letter had been forwarded to the admirals. While awaiting the latters' decision, the foreign ships were moved down river two miles and all communication with the city was cut off. Dew now added a third demand: the appointment of a Taiping officer with guards to perform the duty of preventing anyone from mounting the walls opposite the ships. If the demands were not complied with, the Taiping generals were informed that the foreign naval vessels had already been given the authority to blockade Chinghae, and would prevent all foreign ships from entering the river toward Ningpo.25 The Taiping generals replied the following day, May 3, 1862. Point for point the reply seems to be reasonable enough. Regarding the first demand, it was pointed out that explanations had already been given on the accidental nature of the event. On the second demand, the Taipings again discussed their concern for the security of the city in the event of an attack. However, it was agreed that the portholes of guns bearing on the international settlement would be stopped up and all shot and powder from these positions would be removed. As to the third demand, it was emphasized that no persons were allowed on the walls in question except the men in charge of the guns. The few temporary workmen there would soon be removed. The generals concluded by reminding Captain Dew that "the order to blockade Chinghae will do more harm to your trade than it will to us," and that "we are inordinately desirous of remaining on good terms with you."26 The final exchange in this dialogue was an ultimatum from Captain Dew on May 8. By this time, the British had already made arrangements for an attack on Ningpo. This had come ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 26 STEPHEN UHALLEY, JR. about in the preceding three days, beginning with a request apparently from the Ch'ing tao-t'ai of Ningpo for British and French naval support for his impending attack on the city. Consul Harvey noted that this was "an extraordinary coincidence," and one that "was far too good an opportunity to be thrown aside and lost." The attack was to consist primarily of the vessels of a famous pirate of the region by the name of Apak who had gone over to the Manchus. Some effort was made to conceal the joint nature of the attack at the outset, for Captain Dew wrote for the record that he told his Ch'ing collaborators that since the rebels had refused his demands he had no objection to their fleet passing up river, "but that they were not to open fire till well clear of our men of war."28 The fiction of this position was made clear by subsequent events, and by other evidence. The ultimatum of May 8, stated that had the demands been agreed to, the English and French should have felt bound in honour to prevent an attack on the Taipings from the settlement side by approaching Ch'ing forces "which in countless numbers and heavily armed ships advance to attack you." The ultimatum proclaimed neutrality unless fire came from the battery or walls opposite the settlement on the advancing Ch'ing forces "(thereby endangering the lives of our men and people in the foreign settlement)."29 It is of interest to note how this exchange of correspondence was characterized by Consul Harvey and Captain Dew. Harvey said that "... the whole tenour of their letters was as bad and sarcastic as it was defiant,” and he assured his respondent “that nothing could have been more friendly, reasonable, and patient than the tone of our letters, as well as of all our demands on the Taipings."30 Dew was a bit more candid, for as he reported later: "I now commenced a lengthy correspondence with the Taiping chiefs, which was met on their side by the most subtle reasoning and arguments soon convincing me that but one argument, viz: that of cannon balls would avail with them...." The two men substantiated their interpretation of events and attitude in the correspondence with two memoranda written by an interpreter. The first, based upon "information supplied by certain respectable natives," claimed that General Fan had been sent from Nanking “to turn the foreigners out of Ningpo."32 The second memorandum purported to be extracts of a speech made by General Huang 31 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO 27 which included the alleged declaration: “In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, every man who brings in a foreigner's head, shall receive a reward of 100 dollars, and he who kills ten foreigners, shall be raised to the rank of Ta-kwan...."33 No explanation, naturally, is given on how this alleged speech was recorded; nor is the identity of the recorder mentioned. There is one more piece of evidence that casts serious doubt upon the contention that the British had any intention to remain neutral in the impending conflict. A Chinese by the name of Cheng A-fu who was in the employ of the British, perhaps as a servant or interpreter of Consul Harvey, was commissioned by the British to organize an armed force of three hundred so-called "green hats" who could be used in an attack upon Ningpo. This information comes from an account written of the Ningpo episode by a Ch'ing official, Hsü Yao-kuang, who was an administrative officer in Chekiang,34 On the 9th of May, the Ch'ing fleet captured Chinghae, then advanced up river and laid-to directly in front of the Foreign Settlement where it made preparations for an assault on Ningpo across the river. The foreigners were informed that the attack would take place the following morning.35 Thus the British and French were aware that when the attack did take place the advancing Ch'ing fleet would necessarily draw fire from the city, and this would endanger the English and French vessels and the settlement. Had Captain Dew adhered to his pledge of neutrality on April 27, in which he had said: “you may rest assured that no breach of friendly relations shall emanate from our side,” or if he had wished to remain apart from the contest, he should certainly have withdrawn his ships from the line of fire. The events of May 10th are the most interesting of all. On that day Captain Dew was to write to Admiral Hope that he had "found it necessary to capture the city of Ningpo...." Dew recorded that it all began at 10 in the morning with fire from the Taipings. Dew's assumption that the fire emanated from the Taipings is unquestioning. But did the Taipings fire the initial shot? We know now for a fact that they did not. For Cheng A-fu, the employee of the British, plotted with the pirate Apak to fire upon the foreign vessels, in order to create the impression that the Taipings had done so. This would "provoke" the foreigners ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 68 ALINE K. WONG with their leaders. Among the Kaifongs themselves, a Joint Kaifong Research Council and, since 1968 a second federation, the Council of Hong Kong and Kowloon Kaifong Associations serve as co-ordinating bodies. Today, there are 54 Kaifongs, claiming a total membership of over 850,000 people. The Kaifong associations of Hong Kong are traditional Chinese organizations, whose roles are very similar to the overseas Chinese institutions. The welfare functions of the Kaifongs are comparable to the welfare functions of the district and dialect associations. They form some sort of social security system in places where the government does not always provide such a service for the Hong Kong residents. Thus they give out relief, render medical services, open Chinese language schools and offer death and burial benefits. They encourage mutual-aid and friendliness. Like the district and dialect associations in the overseas Chinese communities, the Kaifongs are community-wide associations. However, the membership of the Kaifongs is neither based on ethnic grouping, nor on dialect grouping. Rather, Kaifong membership is based on the place of residence. Though the Chinese population is not a numerical minority in Hong Kong, the Chinese here are a minority in the social and political sense. They do not have direct representation in the Legislative and Executive Councils. Elected representatives only sit on the Urban Council, the municipal body which takes charge of civic amenities, public health and environmental sanitation. Socially and economically most Chinese stand at a number of disadvantages when compared to the European élite. Although there is no system of indirect rule in urban Hong Kong, the Kaifongs act as one of the principal intermediaries between the authorities and the people. The Kaifong leaders, being community "notables", are very appropriate intermediaries between the Government and the general public. They also act as arbiters of disputes. By tradition, the Chinese are adverse to approaching Government officials directly or going to law for the settlement of disputes. They prefer mediation by a third party. The Kaifongs thus resemble the district and dialect associations in overseas Chinese communities as far as their political functions are concerned. Big benefactors and leaders of community organizations are ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG 81 should be seized as a traitor by the Mandarins. In the end he settled at Hong Kong, where he is said to encourage disreputable characters by the loan of money, and in various ways to reap the proceeds of profligacy and crime.5 Loo Aqui also appears in the records as Lo Aking 盧亞 or Sze Mun King [Lo] (King, the Gentleman). At the time of the Sino-British war he seems to have played both sides of the game. The Chinese government lured him back to Canton by offering him an official degree of the sixth rank. He accepted but did not stay long with the Chinese, as he was soon back in Hong Kong enjoying the rewards of his services as provisioner for the British forces. He seems to have had supporters in Hong Kong Government circles for he secured the grant of a large and valuable section of land behind the Marine Lots of the Lower Bazaar. This was the area between Queen's Road and Jervois Street extending from near its junction westward to Cleverly Street. He and his family also acquired a number of Marine Lots by grant or purchase. Of the twenty-seven signers of the petition of land owners in 1848, about one-fifth of them were members of the Loo clan. Soon after the settlement of Hong Kong Loo Aqui was operating a gambling establishment and brothels. In 1845 he built a theatre. For a time he held the opium monopoly, and when the residents of the Middle Bazaar were removed to the Tai Ping Shan area in 1844, he petitioned the Government for the privilege of operating a market for the inhabitants, agreeing to build a substantial market house at a cost of $2,500 and to pay a monthly rental to Government of $200 for a period of five years. Loo Aqui and Tam Achoy were recognized as the leaders of the Chinese community, for according to a Chinese account entitled "Information as to the period of the formations of Districts in Hongkong and the alteration of the Character Wan—a bay to Wan—a circuit”, in 1847 they built the Man-Mo Temple on Hollywood Road and here "they judged the people in public assembly" until 1851 when the shopkeepers of the Lower Bazaar "repaired to Man-Mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein decided all cases of any public interest". Aside from Aqui's income from various business ventures, he had a steady income from his properties. In 1850 he was ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG xenophobia and inbred loyalty to China as the motherland. 83 Descriptions of the type of Chinese settler are found in numerous reports Government officials submitted to London. In 1844 the Colonial Treasurer writes, It is literally true that after three years and a half's uninterrupted settlement there is not one respectable Chinese inhabitant on the island.... The policy of the mandarins on the adjacent coast being to prevent all respectable Chinese from settling at Hong Kong; and in consequence of the hold they possess on their families and relatives this can be done most effectually. At the same time, I believe that they encourage and promote the deportation of every thief, pirate and idle or worthless vagabond from the mainland to Hong Kong.... No Chinese of humbler class will ever bring their wives and children to the colony. The shopkeepers do not remain more than a few months on the island, when another set take their place; there is, in fact, a continual shifting of a Bedouin sort of population, whose migratory, predatory, gambling, and dissolute habits utterly unfit them for continuous industry, and render them not only useless, but highly injurious subjects, in the attempt to form a colony.11 In establishing British government at Hong Kong, it was hoped that Hong Kong could lure away from Macao and Canton the larger part of the junk trade and thus make Hong Kong a centre of trade for the whole coast of Kwang Tung Province. Though a small beginning was made, this trade soon languished. Remarking on the absence of a substantial local trade with Canton, Gutzlaff states that this is because there are no Chinese large firms at Victoria to receive goods in charge, and sell them as soon as there is a demand. Attempts to found such establishments have also been made, but have not succeeded from want of encouragement or on account of considerable individual loss. At the present moment (April, 1845) there remains unfortunately not one single large merchant from Canton in the settlement who is able to promote by his capital and influence such a desirable state. The whole business is ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG 85 some of his property was sold at Sheriff's sale in 1847. Akow and Company sold its Queen's Road property in 1850, though Kam Cheong remained in Hong Kong. In 1852 he contributed five dollars to Dr. Hirschberg's Hospital. His last recorded activity in Hong Kong is the sale of two lots in 1855. At this time Akow and Company was operating a hotel for foreigners in Canton. After the death of Chinam the government still had hopes of attracting substantial merchants. A group of Fukienese inquired regarding conditions for settlement. For several generations a number of these merchants had operated large Hongs in Macao and the Hong Kong Government would have liked to induce them to move to Hong Kong. The Government therefore welcomed application from Fukien merchants for land grants. In the light of the ancient rivalry between Cantonese and Fukienese, it was felt that the allocation of land to this group needed to be handled with care. The Governor explains in his report to England that, These people constitute a very peculiar race, being far more commercial, migratory, and maritime in their habits than any other natives of China. Their spoken language is altogether unintelligible to the people of Canton, between whom and themselves a species of irreconcilable feud has existed from time immemorial. Hence they cannot inhabit the same neighbourhood without quarrels, and occasionally bloody conflicts. If land is put up by auction the Fokien (or Chinchew men) would in competition with the Cantonese either be excluded altogether, or mingled with the Cantonese be to the prejudice of general peace and order. It is important to secure the settlement of this class of people (in the present instance men of substance). The Council agreed with me to grant them a special location... placed much to their satisfaction in the neighbourhood of East Point, and they have commenced building on five contiguous lots, 15 This report was dated July 1845. However, in the Surveyor General's return of registered allotments as of 24 June 1846 he reports that the lots granted to the Chinchew merchants had been thrown up by them. So again the prospect of the settlement ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG 91 as the American Trading Company of Borneo, with the intention of developing the concession the Sultan of Brunei had granted to an American, Charles Lee Moses. The Chinese partners supplied most of the capital. The Company established a settlement, but after a few years of ship-building, experimental planting, and trade the project was abandoned. The company did not have sufficient capital to finance the undertaking properly.24 This drain of capital may have been the primary cause of the bankruptcy of Pang Wah Ping in 1866. He had acquired his original capital from profits of trade in unprepared opium, and during his years of prosperity his name appears on the various documents used as criteria for élite status. The Li family, however, was more firmly established and survived the failure of the American Trading Company of Borneo. Its interests were diversified. It had large real estate holdings in Hong Kong which regularly brought in rental income. It was perhaps the largest broker for coolie labor and charterer of ships for these emigrants. In 1868 gambling was legalized in Hong Kong and the monopoly was bought up by the Li family firm. They also had interests in the opium monopoly. Their financial investment in Hong Kong appears to have led them to identify their interests with the British at the time of the Second Opium War, and a Chinese source states that they "gave contributions to foreigners to the extent of over a lakh of ready money and recruited native braves who went to the front at Tientsin. When peace was declared they shared in the War Indemnity as well as in the Imperial effects and curios of the Yuen-ming-yuen (Summer Palaces)".25 They were accused of supporting France in its efforts to gain control of Annam. The Chinese authorities of their home district tried to derive some benefit from the fortunes of the family, by requesting large contributions for the reclamation of waste land. When the family seemed somewhat hesitant to meet the full demands of the authorities, they sought to provoke generosity by seizing a member of the family who happened to have returned to his home district, imprisoning him, and eventually putting him on trial. This account of the troubles the family encountered in its relations with Chinese officialdom illustrates the predicament the wealthy merchants and compradores found themselves in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 114 CARL T. SMITH 19 C.O. Series 129-78, No. 113, 24 Aug., 1860. 20 Tam Achoy was survived by five sons: Tam Kung Ping alias Tam Ping Kai, died 1887 at Canton, Tam Mo Seen, Tam Yun Yeen, Tam Kee Chun, and Tam Lin Tai. The latter had been adopted by Achoy's fourth wife in 1865. 21 Tang Aluk was survived by a daughter, the wife of Hu Yu Chan; a son Tang Tung Shang alias Tang Pak Shan, died 1899; and a grandson Tang Yeung Mau, the only son of Tang Shau Shan alias Tang Kau Chun. Some of the court suits revolved around whether the deceased son Tang Shay Shan was a natural or an adopted son of Tang Aluk. The family retained much of its real estate holdings up to the present. 22 C.O. Series 131-2. 23 The China Review, Vol. 1 (1872) p. 171. 24 K. G. Tregonning, Under Chartered Company Rule (Borneo 1881-1946) (Singapore, 1958) Chap. 1. 25 The China Mail, 23 July, 1891. 26 Ibid., 17 Oct., 1861. 27 For details on the Chiu (Hsü) family see: Hsü Jun, (Chronological Autobiography of Hsü Jun), #M. #****†# (1927). 28 See my article "The Chinese Settlement of British Hong Kong", Chung Chi Bulletin, No. 48 (May, 1970), pp. 30-31. 29 For notice of Cheung Achew see Chung Chí Bulletin, No. 45 (Dec., 1968) p. 11. 30 The China Mail, 9 Dec., 1858. 31 Ibid., 19 Dec., 1871; 7 Feb., 1872. 32 The Daily Press, 4 Nov., 1868. 33 Li Chin-wei, editor (A History of Hong Kong, 1848-1948) £34. điều (Hong Kong, 1949), p. 271. 34 The Daily Press, 23 April, 1880. 35 Archives of the London Missionary Society, London, South China, Box 8, 23 Sept., 1876. 36 C.O. Series 133-5. 37 The name of Ho Tsin Shin does appear on a list of contributors to the Berlin Missionary Society Chinese Vernacular School Fund in 1868 and 1869, 38 For reference to these various aspects of the career of Ho Shan Chee see The Daily Press 24 July, 1868, 20 Sept., 1878, The China Mail 28 Feb., 1882. 39 For details of the career of Ho Kwan Shan see The Daily Press 4 Oct., 1871. 40 The China Mail, 28 Aug., 1891. 41 A biographical sketch of Ho Kai is found in Wu Hsing-lien, (The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong) AA, SEP^S^ (Hong Kong, 1937). 42 The Hong Kong Telegraph, 3 Sept., 1891. 43 The information on the family of Wu Ting Fang is from the Archives of Presbyterian Missionary Society, New York. The exact relationship is deduced from probable evidence rather than having been directly stated in the sources, At the marriage of Ng Achoy and Ho Amooy, 14 Jan., Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g SUNG-TYPE POTTERY FINDS IN HONG KONG 143 wares in the shape of Chekiang celadons but with a soft red body, black glazed stonewares and white soft wares (probably from Fukien) and various ying-ching and greenish glazed porcellaneous wares. A large number of Southern Han (905-971 A.D.) and Sung coins were found with the pottery. The Nim Shu Wan site extends over a beach and the slopes of the low hills behind the beach rising to a height of 60 metres. The site was considered by geomancers to be extremely lucky, being flanked at both ends by promontories; the one at the south end, being long and narrow, representing the "green dragon", and that at the north-east end, being wider and broader representing the "white tiger". A more basic factor favouring settlement was that both the beach and bay were well sheltered from the prevailing easterly winds. However, the long southern promontory which used to extend to a distance of about 200 metres into the sea has over the years been partially washed away by wave action leaving a few stacks to mark its former extent. By local tradition, this was one of the market places, hsü, for the villages along the coast of the mainland extending from Castle Peak to Tsuen Wan as well as for those on the islands of Peng Chau, Hong Kong, Cheung Chau and Lantau itself. Its location and geographical features made it an ideal market place for people who relied mainly on boats for transport. However, as the southern promontory began to disappear leaving the bay more exposed to the winds, the "luck" also left the place and by the beginning of this century only a few families lived there. In the last twenty years, as a result of population pressure, people from Peng Chau have begun to move into this area again, using the stones and bricks of the many ruins of old houses for building new ones and for retaining the terraced fields for cultivation. The finds on this site include glazed earthenware funerary urns of a type that was prevalent in the Pearl delta during late T'ang and early Sung times (Plate 1). Apart from these, a large number of stoneware and porcelain sherds have been picked up on the beach from time to time. The fact that the quantity of sherds to be found on the beach remains fairly constant and that the breaks of the fragments are usually fresh and clean would indicate that the pottery has been washed down from higher ground and the pieces were broken on their way down the slope. There seems to be much greater variation in the colour and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 152 JAMES HAYES in 1859 and spread outwards through the self-governing and other territories of what became the Commonwealth and Empire. It extended to Britain's Eastern Colonies and to the foreign communities of the treaty ports of China and Japan where, from time to time, various alarms and excursions added self-preservation to the list of factors motivating the continuance or periodic resuscitation of volunteer corps. In Hong Kong the Laws of the Colony early provided for their existence as a constitutional force. A succession of Ordinances established volunteers on a proper basis. The earliest of these was No. 2 of 1862, which was repeated with slight variation in No. 18 of 1882. An important re-modelling was carried out by No. 6 of 1893. This was followed by a Volunteer Reserve Ordinance No. 25 of 1910. Both these Ordinances were replaced by a further Volunteer Ordinance No. 2 of 1920, still modelled largely on the important 1893 Ordinance. Volunteer forces were the rule in the various foreign concessions in China, though save in the larger ones local volunteer forces tended to be formed and reformed whenever events seemed to warrant it. For example, the Shameen Defence Corps was formed after a serious riot in 1884 and was reformed from time to time, e.g. in May 1911 due to the unsettled state of affairs in Canton (see Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen 1859-1938 compiled by H.S.S. and privately printed about 1938, pp. 19-26). The largest of the China volunteer units was, in time, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. This originated at two public meetings held in April 1853 and its early doings are described in Chapter XXXV of Lanning and Couling's The History of Shanghai, Part I (Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1921). Interesting details of its development are given here and there in Brigadier J. V. Davidson-Houston's Yellow Creek, The Story of Shanghai (London, Putnam, 1962). As in Hong Kong, the passing of the first emergency resulted in the demise of the Corps. "Enthusiasm for the Volunteer Corps sank to a low ebb, members neglected to turn up for training and it was soon practically defunct" (p. 58). The Corps was again raised in August 1860 with the onset of the Taiping rebels, when 107 volunteers came forward for enrolment (p. 65). However, after the successful operations against the rebels the Corps "wilted and died" and was wound up in 1867 to "pay for its debtor's balance by selling its rifles" although the rifle club continued to function (p. 90). The Corps was again formed in 1870 following the Tientsin massacre and continued in being thereafter, its numbers fluctuating between 250-350 for the rest of the 19th century (pp. 92-93). It then continued to grow in size, like the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, to meet the difficulties of the troubled 1920s and the war with Japan. The number of foreign residents in China is relevant to the size and location of Volunteer Corps. Some figures are given at pp. 292-295 of J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese or Notes Connected with China, 4th edition, Hongkong, Kelly and Walsh 1903. There were, for instance, 4,424 foreigners in Shanghai (exclusive of those living in the French Settlement) in 1895 and 6774 in 1900. The Hong Kong Census of 1891 listed 10,446 British and foreign residents. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 218 BOOK REVIEWS In answer to the review in the Journal of the previous book, one of the authors wrote "I am impelled to emphasize that we wrote avowedly as dealers. Our objective has been achieved and the work has brought us a substantial volume of business". Where desire for success prevails over truth, accuracy and scholarship, one gets only gallery patter. The present volume has all the bad points of its predecessor. Peabody Museum Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1971. F. B. LOTHROP J FAMILY AND KINSHIP IN CHINESE SOCIETY, edited by Maurice Freedman. Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1970., pp. XV, 269. Students of Chinese society are not able at present to undertake field studies in the Chinese homeland, the People's Republic of China. The last major social investigation was carried out in the vicinity of Canton by Professor C.K. Yang over twenty years ago. Despite this formidable obstacle - the fact that China is closed to direct sociological observation - the study of Chinese domestic institutions by Western and other scholars has quickened rather than slackened. A small group of dedicated social scientists have been active since 1949 in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other areas of Overseas Chinese settlement. Paradoxically, since 1949 much data have been collected, some important hypotheses formulated, and some parts of theory tested. As this volume makes clear, we have learned much about Chinese society since 1949 - at least about the older China now being transformed by political, social and economic developments. It is natural, I feel, that the editor of this volume should be Professor Maurice Freedman, whose two major studies of this area - Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (1958) and Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (1966) — have deeply influenced many other researchers in the same field. Professor Freedman, as the bibliographies appended to his works amply * A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition and The Chinese Family in the Communist Revolution (both M.LT., 1959), ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 90 E. G. PRYOR Besides their wider trading interests, the British in Canton had established a thriving trade in opium brought from India. The Chinese government regarded this trade with considerable concern, on the grounds that it was harmful to human welfare and also a serious drain on the country's finances. Early attempts by the Chinese government to stop the opium trade failed but in 1839 a Special Imperial Commissioner was appointed who forced the British traders in Canton to relinquish their supplies of the narcotic. The British Superintendent of Trade, Captain Elliot, consequently withdrew the English merchants to Macau and later transferred them onto ships anchored in Hong Kong harbour; subsequent events led to open hostilities between Chinese and British forces. It was decided by Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, that a satisfactory settlement of the dispute would require either a commercial treaty with adequate guarantees to protect the interests of British merchants or the cession of one or more off-shore islands from which the traders could operate without restriction. A British expedition was despatched to China in 1840 to back up these demands and in January 1841 negotiations were held in Canton between Captain Elliot and Keshen, a Manchu Commissioner, whereby it was agreed by the Convention of Chuenpi that Hong Kong Island was to be ceded to the British (Figure 1).* A British naval force took possession of the island on 26th January 1841, The Chuenpi terms were accepted by neither side. Elliot was replaced by Sir Henry Pottinger and hostilities were renewed. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Nanking on 29th August 1842 by which the island of Hong Kong was ceded in perpetuity to the Crown and four additional ports besides Canton were opened to British traders. The island was formally declared a British Colony on 26th June 1843 and Sir Henry Pottinger was appointed the first Governor. Hong Kong was declared a free port and by the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue the Chinese were given free access to the island for trading purposes. The Housing Problem Takes Root: 1841-1881 Almost from the day Captain Elliot raised the British flag on the northern shores of Hong Kong Island, a steady stream of artisans and labourers made their way to the Colony from the southern provinces. *Figures 1-8 will be found at the rear of the text. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 98 E. G. PRYOR ment should carry out improvements to existing properties financed from an improvement fund set up by contributions from the license fees on gambling houses; and that for buildings not capable of improvement the Government should acquire, demolish, rebuild and sell the properties concerned. Chadwick's report was a landmark in the history of Hong Kong, and as with Dr. Ayres in 1873 he drew attention to the serious consequences that would arise if nothing were done to alleviate the bad sanitary condition of the Colony. On this point Chadwick reported that: It is stated that, hitherto, Hong Kong has escaped the epidemics which have afflicted other places in the neighbourhood. The settlement is but 40 years old and the subsoil beneath the city may not yet be sufficiently saturated with filth to make it a hot bed for disease and a breeding ground of filth poison. It is somewhat premature to assume that this happy immunity will always continue for the process of saturation is slowly but surely going on and if unchecked cannot fail to bring forth abundant fruit, in the form of misery and disease. Another twelve years elapsed before Chadwick's warning took the form he predicted. Prelude to Disaster 1882-1894 Chadwick's report prompted the government into action and, as a first step towards meeting the problem, a Sanitary Board was set up in 1883 under a draft Order and Health Amendment Ordinance which gave the Board wide powers to deal with insanitary houses, the inspection of premises, compulsory disinfection and the removal of persons who were a source of disease. However, strong opposition from property owners caused these provisions to be withdrawn although the Board remained in existence. Further attempts were made in 1887 to introduce a Public Health Ordinance which, among other things, provided for the reservation of open spaces at the rear of buildings, the provision of privies and the fixing of a minimum standard of 300 cu. ft. of internal living space per adult. Great opposition against these proposals was voiced in the local press on the basis that the poorer classes would suffer 8 Ibid., p. 22. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h REVIEW OF HOUSING CONDITIONS IN HONG KONG 109 Thus, by 1950 the population was estimated to be nearly 2.1 millions, and as the houses were filled to capacity people overflowed into the streets and erected virtually overnight large squatter settlements on the urban periphery, on the roofs of buildings and in sheltered coastal embayments on boats. Yet a further problem which added to the burdens of the population and the administration was that in 1951 the United Nations imposed an embargo on trade to the Mainland due to the intervention of China in the Korean War. This action virtually eliminated the entrepot trade from which Hong Kong drew economic sustenance and a radical reorientation of productive enterprise had to be achieved through the development of manufacturing industry, upon which the Colony has since thrived. By and large, the task of providing new housing during the immediate post-war years was left to private enterprise, but its resources were unequal to the task. In December 1953, however, a disastrous fire in a squatter settlement at Shek Kip Mei in Kowloon made 53,000 people homeless overnight and the government initiated an emergency programme to build basic resettlement accommodation. Since then, the resettlement programme has been greatly expanded and has been augmented by other forms of subsidised accommodation, about which more is said below. Despite the commencement of Government participation in the large-scale provision of housing, the rapid rate of population growth combined with low family incomes continued to create acute housing problems, the extent of which came to light as the result of a sample survey24 carried out by the University of Hong Kong in 1957 as part of a report by a special committee on housing. The survey was based on a 1.6% sample of some 118,000 tenement floors and covered 1,265,000 persons comprising 267,000 households. It was found that roughly 70% of households had a living area of less than 120 sq. ft. each, and that of the accommodation occupied 49.2% comprised cubicles, 25% bed spaces, 24.7% rooms used for general living purposes, 7.6% rooms used other than for sleeping, 5.0% verandahs and 4.8% cocklofts. "Doubling up" of families was found to be widely prevalent, as indicated by the fact 24 Maunder W. F. and Szczepanik E. F., Hong Kong Housing Survey 1957, University of Hong Kong contained in the Final Report of the Special Committee on Housing 1956-1958, Hong Kong, 1958. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h POPULATION 2 MILLION 1 MILLION 500,000 100,000 50,000 10,000 5,000 YEAR ENDING 195 31ST MARCH REVIEW OF HOUSING CONDITIONS IN HONG KONG TOTAL SETTLEMENT I GOVERNMENT LOW COST HOUSING HOUSING AUTHORITY & HOUSING SOCIETY 1940 1965 1970 SOURCES ANNUAL REPORTS OF RESETTLEMENT DEPT., HOUSING AUTHORITY & HOUSING SOCIETY POPULATION IN GOVERNMENT & GOVERNMENT-AIDED HOUSING ESTATES – HONG KONG : 1955-1970 FIG. 7 123 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 142 LINDA F. SULLIVAN male agnatic descendants of a single ancestor together with their unmarried sisters and their wives."22 Hence, it is not uncommon for a village to have only one surname, as often is the case in the New Territories of Hong Kong. These patrilineal groups or family lineages play an important role in the life of the community. If there is more than one lineage existing in a settlement, there may be a struggle for power and control of the area. The more powerful clans may force the small clans to leave or assimilate, thus maintaining a single lineage. In those areas where two or more lineages do co-exist, they sometimes have their own areas within the village, separated from the other group. Hence, a need for protection developed from social conflict. When the Hakkas moved into these areas, they no doubt did not try to assimilate. They were a proud and independent people who sought freedom for their way of life. They built their fortified dwellings to maintain themselves in a countryside already divided into small units. Since these provinces are also near the sea, pirates were a problem, not to mention bands of robbers on land. Defense, therefore, was a necessary part of community life. Perhaps this stimulated the growth of relatively independent and closely settled local lineages. The Hakkas settled by themselves in their own tightly organized, independent complexes. The circular house was simply a more effective way to protect themselves against any enemy. A circle does not provide the enemy with any obvious point of internal weakness. The Hakka lineages have also been very small. Why this is so remains an unanswered question. It is not known whether it is because of the general poverty or because of some social more which prevents the growth of powerful, large groupings. Another factor might be that the Hakkas have always been moving on to new areas of settlement seeking freedom and independence. Hence, the younger generation travels away from home and fails to continue the patrilineal line. The walled towns in the New Territories represent another form of communal housing. Here the settlers are Punti (Cantonese), not Hakka. Their walled villages are located on the richer farming plains of the mainland New Territories amidst smaller and later unwalled settlements of other Punti and Hakka arrivals. These villages are enclosed on all four sides by a very high wall. Within these walls, the life of a "common descent" family unfolds. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h NOTES AND QUERIES “LETTING GO THE WOODEN GOOSE” 207 LI Mau-ying (*), posthumous name Man-kan (††), an official of the Sung dynasty who graduated chin-shih in 1226, was given an estate on Lantau, one of the larger islands of the Hong Kong region.* His rights continued through succeeding dynasties but were mostly extinguished at the land settlement that accompanied the lease of the New Territories to Britain at the end of the 19th century. A curious story is linked with the Li's ownership of their Lantau estates, indicating that this grant of land may have been given in a novel fashion. According to a villager of Sha Lo Wan, Lantau Island (1913-1962) who had an interest in local tales, the emperor was so pleased with Li that he told him to put a wooden duck on the sea and that he could have whichever land it touched. There is an echo of this in Cecil Clementi's minute to the Colonial Secretary of 16th June 1904 in a file about the Tang clan's claim to Tsing Yi Island (CSO1903/8551).† Without there being any apparent reason or preparation for making such a statement—probably because a whole section was omitted by the copier—one paragraph suddenly states 'For the method of "letting go the wooden goose" see minute of this date in N.T. 7466/03'. This file is unfortunately no longer in existence. Can any reader explain this 'system' of deciding upon which land to include in a grant? Hong Kong, 1972. JAMES HAYES PROGRAMME NOTES FOR THE VISIT TO POKFULAM, HONG KONG ISLAND, 29TH JULY, 1972‡ Today's visit is to a part of Hong Kong island that has not been subject to the same amount of change as other districts. Even today * For the Li family see Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963 (this is a part-translation of the Chinese version published in 1959), p. 73 and plate 20 and his article "This Sung Wang T'ai and the Location of the Travelling Courts by the Sea Shore in the Last Days of the Sung" in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. III, No. 2 (1958) at p. 212 (English text) and note 29 (Chinese text), with Plate XI. † Located in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong. ‡ Printed here for the convenience of members who were unable to join the party on this occasion. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r The Kam Tin Gates Peter Wesley-Smith* Behind the parked tourist buses at Kam Tin, behind the blue-rinsed American ladies and the orderly rows of Japanese camera-clickers and the outstretched palms of Hakka crones, the adventurous visitor will find a plaque on the Kat Hing Wai wall telling the story of the famous pair of gates which adorn the entrance. It is the purpose of this brief article to amplify the few facts engraved on the plaque.1 Kam Tin is the principal settlement of the New Territories Tangs and consists of several separate villages. Kat Hing Wai is the oldest: built in the 15th century it has been reasonably well preserved and is now a major tourist attraction.2 The road from Shek Wu Hui to Yuen Long separates it from Tai Hong Wai, a sister village whose walls have been partly demolished and which boasts no gates. The Hong Kong Government knew little about neighbouring San On in June 1898, when a large slice of the Chinese county was transferred on lease to Great Britain. J. H. Stewart Lockhart was therefore temporarily relieved of his duties as Colonial Secretary and Registrar General and sent on a fact-finding tour as Special Commissioner. During August 1898 he visited various parts of the area and in general was given an "excellent reception" by the inhabitants; but the villagers at Kam Tin were less polite. Unimpressed by the sight of the first steamer ever to navigate their river, they drove away the Commission's chairs and carriers and refused to provide replacements. The elders did not deign to present themselves. A journalist of the time reported that 1,000 villagers, "preceded by vigorously beaten gongs", gave a rousing welcome, "but in place of chin-chins and flowers they came with cries of 'ta' and 'foreign devils.'" Nothing is said here of the rotten eggs that emphasized these cries, but the gates of the village were closed and the Commission could not enter. According to a journal kept of the trip the gates were opened after "a clear explanation" by Stewart Mr. Wesley-Smith is LL.B., B.A., (Adelaide) and Lecturer in Law at the University of Hong Kong. He is currently Editor of the Hong Kong Law Journal. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 64 CHIU LING-YEONG of tusks (ivory), hides, feathers (kingfisher) and hairs (skins) and that of fish, salt, clams and oysters can, on the one hand, meet the needs of the treasury and, on the other hand, satisfy the demands of the Chiang-hui region.27 It was due to the opening of the Ta-yü Ling Pass which enabled the Persians and Arabs to transport their goods from Canton to other centres without any difficulty. The convenience of transportation also enabled Persians and Arabs to move from one place to another; thus they were no strangers to many of the cities. In the capital, life was more colourful than in any other cities. In T'ang times, there were two great markets in Ch'ang-an, the Tung-shih (the Eastern Market) and Hsi-shih (the Western Market). The Hsi-shih was also known as Chin-shih (the Gold Market), and the Tung-shih was also known as Chün-ming-men (the Bright Spring Gate).28 The Hsi-shih was more or less treated as the foreign settlement in the capital. There you could find all kinds of bazaars situated by the side of the main road. Wineshops employed exotically beautified Western girls with blue eyes and golden hair to serve their customers with rare wines in cups of amber or agate. Sweet singing and seductive dancing were also introduced in order to increase their sales.29 These blue-eyed and golden-haired beauties confounded our versatile poets. Li Po, on more than one occasion, dedicated his works to these beauties, like: The zither plays "The Green Paulownias at Dragon Gate', The lovely wine, in its pot of jade, is as clear as the sky. As I press against the string, and brush across the studs, I'll drink with you, milord; Vermilion will seem to be grass-green when our faces begin to redden. The Western houri with features like a flower She stands by the wine-warmer, and laughs With the breath of spring, Dances in a dress of gauze! 'Will you be going somewhere, Milord, now, before you are drunk.'30 The presence of these beautiful girls was the principal cause of the intoxication of many of these poets whose work enables us to trace the activities of the foreigners in China. In the T'ang period, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r NOTES AND QUERIES 135 (1847, or 26th year of To Kwang), Sz-man-king and one Tam-tsoi, built the Man Mo Miu, and here they "judged the people" in public assembly. In 30th year of To Kwang (1851) the shop keepers of Sheung Wan or Upper Bay ... repaired the Man Mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein decided all cases of any public interest. Biographical notices of the two community leaders who built the temple are given in an article "The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong” in this Journal, vol. 11 (1971), pp. 80-82, 87-88. Previous to the opening of the Man Mo Temple the Shing Wong Temple may have been used as a Chinese "Town Hall", for as we have noted only one such building is listed in 1845 and 1846, but two are listed in 1847, the date given for the erection of the Man Mo Temple. The two temples were quite close to each other. The Shing Wong Temple was on the western edge of the European part of Victoria and the Man Mo Temple on the eastern edge of the Chinese settlement. A steep and rocky hillside divided the two sections. Confirmation of the 1847 date given in the quoted Chinese account is supported both by the date, Tao Kuang 27th year, inscribed on the bell at the Man Mo Temple and the date of the Crown Lease for Inland Lot 338 upon which the Temple is built, which is 24 June, 1847. A letter dated 29 May 1847, from the Colonial Secretary authorized its issuance with the stipulation that the premises be used as a school. After the building was finished, however, it was used as a temple. In consequence, the Government in March 1848, began charging Crown Rent for the lot. It was then decided that the temple should be rebuilt on a larger scale reflecting the increasing affluence of the Chinese community. An account of the opening of the new building is reported in The Friend of China, 24 May, 1851: The Chinese Community are now enjoying themselves in a way we have never seen before in this Colony, on the occasion of the opening of a spacious Heathen Temple in the Hollywood Road, a few hundred yards from the London Missionary Society's College and Chapel. The Temple is dedicated to a body of the civil and military Gods, and has cost nearly a thousand pounds sterling in erection, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 The Monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang 107 On the return journey one can stop at the village on the bank opposite to Luang Prabang which contains one of the most interesting temples in the whole of Laos, Vat Chieng Men. Its doorways are among the best examples of the carving modelled with a mixture of mahogany sap and ash which hardens in the air; peacocks, perhaps a reminder of the Mon hamsa, decorate the outer arch of each door which is triple tiered and deeply recessed. The ceiling is coffered and carved, and the altar contains a fine Buddha statue. The surrounding buildings are simple kuti, or monks' dwellings, and the whole temple blends harmoniously into the jungle background of the mountain at the very wall of the temple. Not least of the attractions of this temple is the walk to get there from the river bank; one goes along a path through the village where children play, mothers chatter and sell bananas and dogs look suspicious but wag their tails. As everywhere in Laos, the scene may be unsophisticated but it is not wanting in humanity and charm. Readers of this note should not think that the tour did nothing else but visit temples. A silk-weaving village was seen, a Meo settlement, and the making of silver; the royal palace dancers performed specially for the group and the final evening included a specially-arranged baci blessing ceremony with a Lao dinner. The principal point of the tour was to absorb something of the restful atmosphere of Luang Prabang through its not magnificent but charming temples, its unhurried way of life and its noble simplicity. Vientiane provides a more modern contrast, but remains a quiet provincial town rather than a frenzied capital of the twentieth century. Laos might have the lowest income per capita in the world and its problems may be enormous, but it is not lacking in dignity and the charm of its people is unforgettable. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 The Hong Kong Region: Its Place in Traditional Chinese Historiography and Principal Events since the Establishment of Hsin-an County in 1573 James Hayes* Hsin-an is a coastal county The edge of a coat is called pien, edge or border. A coat always starts to get worn at the edge: an article begins to wear at the edge. In the same fashion, if an officer is posted to a border district, his responsibilities are ten or a hundred times as heavy as his colleague's in an interior district. It is therefore very difficult to understand people who belittle such government posts, These lines are taken from an inscribed tablet dated autumn 1847 commemorating the opening of the Lung-ching charitable school (i-hsüeh) in the Kowloon walled city. They were from the brush of the then magistrate of Hsin-an, Wong Ming-ting, an officer who believed in the burden of his responsibilities. This article seeks to examine the historical background of the Hong Kong region as seen in Chinese traditional historiography,1 and to describe the main events of the local situation over the course of some three hundred years. A recapitulation of this kind may be useful, because Hong Kong's past is still inadequately recorded in English (or yet in Chinese), and is too easily imagined, or glossed over, as being of no consequence. The region does possess a considerable and interesting history; though to gain the necessary perspective this has also to be seen in the context of the historiography of the neighbouring counties of this part of Kwang-tung. Ideally, this statement should be set against an account of the peoples and settlement of the area, but to provide an authoritative description here would be to lengthen this article to double its size if anything like justice were to be done to the course and com- *Mr. Hayes has been an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service since 1956 and is a Vice President and Hon. Editor of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S. 1 As defined in Chapter VII, 'Formal Classification' of Charles S. Gardner, Chinese Traditional Historiography, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1961). The full references to other works cited in the footnotes will be found at the end of the article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 THE HONG KONG REGION 109 plexities of local settlement and the absorption of the aboriginal dwellers of the area in the past thousand years. For a general account, readers are referred to the works by Lo Hsiang-lin (1959, 1963), K.M.A. Barnett, (1957, 1967) and the earlier writings of Krone (1859), G.N. Orme (1912) and S.F. Balfour (1941) cited in the references to this article. Introduction* For present purposes the Hong Kong region is defined as the present British Crown Colony of Hong Kong (403.7 square miles)1 and the immediately adjoining parts of Kwangtung province with which there has been intermittent official concern following the establishment of Hong Kong 134 years ago. This takes in the districts round the market town of Sham Chun north of the present Sino-British frontier, occupied by British troops between 16th May and 13th September 18992, and the areas of Mirs and Bias Bays to the east of the Colony that were often visited by British naval forces in their suppression of piracy in local waters during much of the 19th century and well into the 20th3. (See map). At the time the British occupied Hong Kong island in 1841, the whole of this area, less Bias Bay, formed part of the Hsin-an district of the Kuang-chou prefecture of Kwangtung province. The place names and geographical features of the region are shown in many contemporary and earlier Chinese sources, whilst the large scale European map produced in 1866 by Msgr. Volontieri, an Italian missionary of the Propaganda, provides rather more local detail4. In time the British came to occupy a greater part of Hsin-an district. Their occupation of Hong Kong island in January 1841 was converted into possession by the Treaty of Nanking in August 1842. British territory was extended by the lease in perpetuity of Kowloon under a deed dated 20th March 1860 and the cession of the same area by article VI of the Convention of Peking 24th 1 CR1971, p. 204; this figure includes recent reclamations. 2 See Groves, pp. 52-55. 3 For the early period see Fox and Dalrymple Hay. Two expeditions to Bias Bay in March and September 1927 were noted in AR1927, K16: and as late as 1947 piracy in Mirs Bay kept Hong Kong fishermen in port; CR1947, p. 46. 4 The KTTS of 1865 provides more detailed maps of Hsin-an and its adjoining areas than are given in the district and prefectural histories (HNHC and KCFC); see the general chart at pp. 1-2 of the opening volume. For the Volontieri map, which includes Chinese characters, see Ronald C. Y. Ng (1969) pp. 141-148 and Hayes (1970) pp. 193-196. * For the place names of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960: hereafter styled Gazetteer. ================================================================================ 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 118 JAMES HAYES to play havoc in it. The Japanese wo-jen had been particularly active. In 1571 the small walled town of Tai Pang on Mirs Bay in the northeast of the district had sustained a siege of over forty days by Japanese pirates equipped with scaling ladders.1 The district gazetteer gives an account of the troubled times at the end of the Ming period, which brought much misery and suffering to the people of the district, since famine accompanied the disturbances.2 These disorders lasted for a considerable time. It is reported that Tai Pang was held for nine years against all comers by a band of soldiers.3 The clan record of the Tsui family of Shek Pik contains a vivid account of the disasters of the time, as it affected their relatives and friends in their old home near Tung-kuan city which was the centre of an unsuccessful revolt against the new dynasty. These disturbances extended to the present New Territories. A former officer of the Ming, Li Man-wing, held this area on his own account between 1647 and his surrender to the new dynasty in 1656, and the walls and moats of the principal villages of the Tang clan in the New Territories are said to date from this time. The land presented a pitiable sight in these years: there was much burning and pillaging and many of the inhabitants fled. During this time, it was said, "The ground was covered with bones, in the day time nothing could be heard but the hum of flies, and at night the voice of weeping." The evacuation of the coast in the early years of the K'ang Hsi reign between 1662-1669 followed soon after these prolonged miseries and had a profound effect on the lives of the population and on the pattern of future settlement. Under instructions from Peking, the provincial authorities required the evacuation of the coastal areas of Kwangtung. The provinces of Shantung, Chekiang, Kiangsu and Fukien were also affected to varying degrees.7 This measure was in accordance with a five-point plan to deal with the pro-Ming ruler of Formosa, Cheng Ch'eng-kung, suggested by one of his former lieutenants 1 IHNHC 13/7. 2 HNHC 13/8-9. 3 HNHC 13/9-10. 4 JHKBRAS, 7 (1967), p. 154. 5 Sung Hok-p'ang in HKN, VIII, No. 2:107-108. 6 ibid, presumably a quotation from the Tang clan's genealogical record. The YCKC has a lengthy entry on the disorders of this troubled time, chuan 4/46-60. 7 Hsieh Kuo Ching, pp. 585-593. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 120 JAMES HAYES the order rescinded:1 and it was remembered centuries later by the manufacture and sale by pedlars of images of the two men, as recorded for the Yuen Long district of the New Territories at the end of the 19th century.2 Wherever it touched the lives of men the Evacuation is recorded in the histories of the districts, prefectures and provinces to which they belong. And as in the Hsin-an district, it appears that persons of other parts of the Kwangtung province erected temples to Governor Wong Lai-yam, and in some cases jointly to him and one or other of the viceroys of the time.4 I have already explained the effect of the Evacuation upon the pattern of settlement. Had there been none, it is conceivable that the number of Hakkas in the region would have been much less than the 44,375 recorded at the 1911 Hong Kong census, amounting to almost half the then rural population. However, it is also possible that the Hakka influx might have come in any case, leading to pressure on the land and to the 'wars' that occurred elsewhere in the province between the two groups. The useful summary of Hakka origins and history given by Lo Hsiang-lin in Thirty Years of Tsing Tsin Association encourages this view. Under the title K'o-chia Yuan-liu K'ao, it details Hakka migration to the south and their distribution in Kwangtung. Without the Evacuation, however, Hakka immigration into this area might not have been assisted by the government as it was after the order was rescinded.7 6 1 HNHC 7/17 lists three, styled "Wang Hsun-fu Tz'u", two of them in our region, at Sha Tau Hui and Shek Wu Hui; besides the "Chou Wang Erb-kung Shu-yuan" at Kam Tin (not listed but see Sung, HKN, VIII, Nos. 3-4:207, and Sung 1939). 2 Hayes, 1962, p. 91 and note 50. 3 See e.g. the statements included in the gazetteers for the Kuang-chou and Ch'ao-chou prefectures of Kwangtung: KCFC 80/20-29, and CCC, chüan 2 of the Ta Shih-chih/12-15. 4 Besides the Hsin-an temples already mentioned, see e.g. the eight in Shun-te county noted in the prefectural gazetteer, KCFC 67/23. 5 pp. 1-106. 6 See especially the maps opposite pp. 34 and 56. Also Lo 1965, with its records of the movements of forty lineages. 7 See HNHC 9/1, Lo, 1963 p. 104 and the reference to the rehabilitation work in Hummel, p. 777. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 122 JAMES HAYES the settlement into a fortress to guard against marauders. This involved construction of a walled enclosure, built of stone, and the replacing of the existing wooden gateway by a stone structure on the advice of the writer of the clan record, then an old man. As the positioning of the wall and its main gate was of great importance, for geomantic reasons as well as military considerations, a message was sent to Shing Mun* to invite a man named Cheung Lam-to, presumably a noted geomancer and perhaps a distant relative, to advise on the siting and on auspicious days for carrying out the work. The record ends: Work began on the 13th day of the 8th moon of the 8th year of Chia Ch'ing, and the gate was fixed on the 16th day. All the village men and women co-operated in the work which took a month to complete. Other areas of the Delta suffered in these years. In 1789, the 54th year of the Ch'ien Lung reign, an official of Hsiang-shan, the district in which Macau is situated, led an expedition in person against a considerable pirate known as the "wave-leveller".1 The scourge continued in the Delta and riverine areas of Kwangtung for over twenty years, and reached its worst proportions in the years 1807-1810. An interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with a pirate fleet in 1809 was given by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman, who was captured by them. This fleet spent a long time on and near Lantau which probably suffered from their levies and depredations. One of these pirates, Cheung Po-tsai, is remembered today in the Hong Kong region, where local stories link many places with his activities.3 With the help of the Macau authorities whose squadron fought a sea battle off Lantau in January 1810, Cheung was blockaded in the shallow waters of the bay of Hsiang-shan and was induced to capitulate with over 270 junks, 16000 men, 5000 women, 7000 swords and jingals and 1200 guns.4 1 Waley, 1956, p. 176. 2 Neumann, pp. 97-125. 3 Lo, 1963, pp. 106-118. See also the Ch'ao-lien of Hsin-hui gazetteer pp. 281-284 and Centenary History of Hong Kong, pp. 12-14. Cheung's memory lingers strongly in the region, though most attributions are unsubstantiated and many stories are probably apocryphal. 4 Montalto de Jesus, pp. 231-248: he calls him Ĉam Pao Sai or Chang Pao. *In the Tsuen Wan sub-district of the New Territories. See Gazetteer, pp. 147-148. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 124 JAMES HAYES Local people were placed in a difficult position when pirates or, in periods when China was at war with Britain and her allies, imperial war junks occupied their anchorages. At least two such instances occurred in the 1850s. In February 1857 two British vessels attacked war junks at the Chinese naval anchorage of Tung Chung on Lantau where there was also a fort and permanent garrison. The local population which had probably taken no part in the fighting had to make its peace with the squadron the day after it had burned the junks and dismantled some of the batteries on shore. An offering of two bullocks and some pigs, was sent with a letter from the elders begging the commander to spare their settlement.1 The same thing happened at Tai O, also on Lantau, in November 1854, when an expedition was sent to deal with pirate junks that had fired on the chartered steamer Queen, an American naval vessel. After shelling and an attack by the boats of the squadron, the pirate junks and storehouses were destroyed. An American naval officer, Lieutenant G. H. Preble, captured a pirate flag, inscribed with characters which, he wrote, 'state it is the flag of Lue-ming-suy-ming of the Hong Shing-tong Company, Chief of the Sea Squadron, and that he takes from the rich and not from the poor, and his flag can fly anywhere'. Local people did not see him in quite this light, for Preble records that ‘no sooner had we destroyed the piratical vessels, than a large fleet of fishing junks came into the Bay rejoicing and anchored'. These persons had to drive off a pirate attempt to take and make off in their boats during the night. The next morning a deputation of the chief men of the village came on board his steamer 'with a present of chickens, pork, fish, etc.'2 In this period, as at an earlier time, villagers took what measures they could to protect themselves from such villains. In the larger places like Cheung Chau, it was apparently possible for local people to prevent their being taken over by pirates as had happened at Tai O. As I have described in another place, their leaders established a Security Bureau in the early 1850s and repaired it when trouble again threatened some years later. In the villages 1 Illustrated London News, 9th and 16th May 1857, pp. 463, 473-474. 2 Szczesniak, pp. 262-266. Another account of this expedition is given in Tronson, pp. 61-62. He calls the place 'Tyhoo', and Preble, 'Tyho'. 3 Hayes 1963. Cheung Chau itself had previously been thought to harbour pirates; see CO129/6, No. 26 of 21 June 1844, in PRO London. ================================================================================ 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 203 At this time the population of Ha Wan was 4861 (G.N. 21 of the Government gazette for 5th March 1859). Observation Point must be the Observation Place shown on the Map accompanying Mr. Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong, published by the Colonial Office in 1882. The map shows Ha Wan as District No. 6 and Wanchai as District No. 7. This indicates that Wanchai was taken from it at some date between 1857 and 1882. Observation Place is shown at p. 46 of the Index to the Streets, House Nos., and Lots in the Colony of Hong Kong, 1903, and may be identified with the lower end of the present Tin Lok Lane, near its junction with Hennessy Road, then seashore. Wanchai was one of the first districts to be developed after the British Occupation of the Island in 1841. The Reverend Carl T. Smith has kindly provided an account of this development, based on his original researches into Hong Kong records. This is attached as a separate Note. The Itinerary and Places of Interest The party will follow a circuitous route among the back streets, steps and terraces of old Wanchai between Monmouth Path in the west and Stone Nullah Lane on the east. Among the places of interest to be visited are several Chinese temples and shrines as follows: 1) The Pak Kung Shrine at the side of No. 7, Star Street. This was established before the War, probably upwards of 70 years ago. The shrine is a To Tei Miu (±普普) or altar to the earth god. The main festival of the year falls on the 2nd day of the second lunar month when the management committee of local residents organises a religious and social celebration. 2) Hung Shing Temple, Queen's Road East. This temple is one of the oldest of the area and may even have existed as a shrine before the British Occupation of the Island. According to Carl Smith there was a small settlement nearby which may have provided the body of regular worshippers, along with visiting boat people. The present structure dates from Hsien Feng 10th year (1860-61), repaired in T’ung Chih 6th year (1867-68) when the persons responsible are listed as 'the whole body of devout Hong Kong believers'. These dates point to an earlier origin, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 206 NOTES AND QUERIES large dwellings and godowns. It was a pleasant area. Two of the properties were especially noted for their gardens. A Parsee merchant, Framjee Jamsetjee, in advertising his property for sale in 1845, stated that it was "beautifully situated by the water side with a fine view of the Bay, surrounded by a garden, stocked with the choicest plants which have been imported at great expense, and now is in a flourishing condition." The other gardened property was called Spring Gardens, and for a number of the years the name was applied to the area. The name is preserved today by Spring Gardens Lane which marks the eastern boundary of the original property. The dwelling was also known as "Old Government House" for at one time it had been the residence of Governor Bonham [1848-1854]. Advertisements mention its "ornamental grounds" and "fine well of spring water with powerful iron pump". When the military gradually bought up and occupied the area between Central District and Wanchai in the 1840s and 1850s, the two sections were separated and Spring Gardens area lost most of its commercial activity. Decline set in, reinforced by a business depression, and a number of godowns and dwellings stood empty. Several of the properties reverted to Government through non-payment of Crown rents. Others were foreclosed by mortgagees. The military took advantage of the empty premises to use them as barracks and officers' quarters. Poor Chinese settled as squatters both on the west and east fringes of Victoria. To accommodate these on the east the Government put up for sale in 1847 a range of lots at the foot of Hospital Hill along the present Wanchai Road. These were used for small shops, trades, and family residences. The population, however, tended to remain poor and unruly. With the influx of displaced people during the Tai Ping Rebellion in the 1850s several of the European properties were redeveloped with Chinese housing. The area near Queen's Road East and Ship Street was probably the site of a small settlement before the British occupation of the Island. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong states that the Hung Shing Temple on Queen's Road East existed before the cession. The pattern of the lots also suggests that there may have been previous occupants. When the military rented some vacant properties nearby for barracks, several brothels were established on Ship Street north of Queen's Road East. To the south, up the hill on Ship Street, there were several small dairies operated by Chinese. ================================================================================ 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 211 Note the offices of the Nam-pak Hong Association on the left-hand side of Bonham Strand; the divided shops of the Chun Lung Sang porcelain business (1878) and the bamboo and rattan ware dealers further along, also the frontage of the Ping Heung Tea-house next to Ching Wah Kok. During this visit Members are advised to look around them, up as well as down, because there are all sorts of interesting little vistas to have had, often revealed by the removal of a house for redevelopment. Footnote: 1) We will not be going to the Shun Tak District Commercial Association at 67, Queen's Road, West, as hoped, because a terrible blow; the furniture and fittings have already been cleared out prior to demolition of the building. 2) The Tung Kwun District Commercial Association was founded as the Tung Yee Hop Tong in 1893 for charitable, including educational, work among persons of that district resident in Hong Kong. The present premises were purchased about 40 years ago. There is an interesting commemorative board above the window in the main hall presented by four shops in Liu Po New Market, Tung Kwun in 1912 in appreciation of flood relief work and settlement of disputes and of a defamation case by the Hong Kong Chamber. This shows that its influence extended beyond Hong Kong. 3) The Nam-pak Hong Association in Bonham Strand, though in new premises that are of no appeal, is of great interest. This powerful commercial association was established in 1868 by merchants from different parts of China together with Chinese merchants from South-east Asia. This explains the name of the association which, in Chinese, means South-North Firms' Public Office. Additional Notes for the Visit to Old Western District Carl T. Smith (a) The Development of West Point The area we are visiting today was formerly dominated by two points of land. After the British occupation of Hong Kong they became known as Possession Point and West Point. Between the two was a steep hillside with a bay at its foot. The present Ko Shing Street approximates the original beach. Dr. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong, Europe in China, pp. 123-124, gives an account of the event which gave Possession Point its name: On January 24, 1841, Commodore Bremer, having arrived at Lantao, directed Captain Belcher, in command of H.M.S. Sulphur, to proceed forthwith to Hongkong and commence its occupation. ================================================================================ 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 215 The area between Queen's Road and the present Des Voeux Road, originally the Praya, extending from Wilmer Street west to Eastern Street was bought in 1858 by a Chinese consortium consisting of Chun Afie, Pang Awah, Tso Atak and Leong Hang*. The tract purchased consisted of Marine Lots 90, 91 and 92. They were apportioned among the several purchasers. At first the property was devoted principally to Chinese ship building yards, but as population and business spread westward, the yards became crowded out. The two lanes Tsz Mi and Sai Woo were developed in the 1860's. On the old Praya there was a concentration of rice dealers and a scattering of salt fish stores, though Ham Yu** Lane was located on the lots immediately to the west, between Eastern and Centre Streets. Like all the land in urban Hong Kong, the area we visit has passed through successive changes in land use and ownership. The land use changes are marked by three main periods: first (1842 to around 1855) European godowns and residences; second (1851 to about 1880) ship yards, engineering works and coal godowns; and lastly (1870 to the present) Chinese shops, godowns and residences. The owners of the land were originally mostly non-Chinese. But by 1876, all except a range of godowns and sheds owned by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was in Chinese hands, being divided between two of the largest land owners in the Colony: the Li family of the Wo Hang and Lai Hing firms***, and Kwok Acheong who was Compradore of the P. & O. Co., owner of his own steamships, and founder of the Fat Hing firm. At its first settlement the area was almost rural, for it was situated at the western end of original Victoria. Because it provided a convenient spot for pier and landing facilities, two European firms selected West Point for their Hong Kong establishments, just as Jardine, Matheson and Company settled at East Point, even though both locations were somewhat distant from the main centres of foreign business in Spring Gardens**** and Central District. In *The Pang and Chan are the same that bought the land at the east end of Wanchai, in the vicinity of the Yuk Hui Temple—see "Notes on the Nineteenth Century Development of Wanchai”, earlier in this Section. ** Cantonese for salt fish. *** See Smith: "Emergence of a Chinese Elite”, JHKBRAS 11, pp. 90-92. See "Notes on the Nineteenth Century Development of Wanchai”, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 20 JOHN T. MYERS in personal expenditures. Cult members assert that he is the Tai Wong Ye of their temple. The manner of his becoming their patron deity is outlined on a scroll prominently displayed in the temple office. According to the scroll a General Lei fled south with the Southern Sung Court in the late 13th century taking with him the tablet of his illustrious ancestor Lei Man Chung Kung. After the defeat of the Sungs at Ling Ting Island near contemporary Hong Kong the general established residence in the Lo Fu Ngam region of Kowloon. Within the area now occupied by the Lok Fu Housing Estate he is reported to have constructed a shrine in honor of his illustrious ancestor. It is further reported that the residents of the region soon recognized the Tang statesman as a powerful supernatural advocate and developed a popular devotion in his honor. We know little about the fate of the shrine and its deity during the ensuing 600 years other than that it persisted as a small structure tended in later years by Hakka villagers. After the Second World War the Lo Fu region changed dramatically as it became the site for squatter huts housing migrants from China. The immediate vicinity of the shrine was staked out almost exclusively by squatters from the Chiu-chow speaking region of Kwangtung Province. To the best of our present information it was with the arrival of the Chiu-chow that the shrine and its patron deity became the focus of spirit-medium activity. Former residents of the squatter settlement indicate that they found the shrine in disrepair and untended when they established their squatter huts. A small group of the Chiu-chow migrants soon undertook its repair and began active worship of the deity. After several months one of their number, a dockyard coolie, began to act strangely. An elderly kei tung judged that he had become possessed by the shrine's patron, Tai Wong Ye, and had been chosen to serve as that deity's medium. The new kei tung soon became the central focus of religious rituals sponsored by the shrine. A new phase in the temple's existence began in 1957 when the government announced plans for the removal of the squatter area preparatory to constructing on its site the Lo Fu Housing Estate. Most of the Chiu-chow squatters were allocated quarters in the soon to be completed Kwun Tong/Tsui Ping Road Resettlement Estate. The spirit-medium and 18 male devotees of Tai Wong Ye ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d MERCHANT ORGANISATIONS IN IMPERIAL CHINA 39 other geographical groups. However, the Chinese chambers of commerce, with their foreign influence and official sponsorship, were a “modern” kind of merchant organisation, and their story properly belongs elsewhere.38 In the area of increased political leadership—the third area of merchant aspirations—the merchants' success was mixed and in one sense limited. As a social class, the merchants did not have an overall strategy to enhance their status and influence. Rationalisation of their political roles varied from place to place. In Canton, the merchant leadership remained with the directors and officers of the charitable halls, and they remained conservative. In Shanghai, merchants participated not only in charitable halls but also in municipal organisations with clear political aims. By the first decade of the twentieth century, merchant study groups, in imitation of others formed by students and scholar-gentry, were established to examine the questions of local government and constitutionalism. Eventually these activities led merchants to agitate for political representations in the Municipal Council of the International Settlement, and to set up a city council for the Chinese-controlled section of Shanghai.39 Others participated in direct action, as in the case of the 1905-06 boycott against American goods over that country's discriminatory immigration policy.40 Few merchant organisations, however, became schools for political confrontations or other forms of patriotic outbursts. Most of them were run by establishment-oriented merchants who sought to use their institutions as a means to promote symbiotic arrangements with officialdom. Although these efforts varied by time and place, one common element stood out—the Chinese merchants in late imperial China were by and large interested in making their political links only at the local and provincial levels. Their interaction with the political order took place at these levels, for governmental sanctions and supports came from the provincial Governors-general and their lieutenants. The merchants realised that the central authority at the time was weak and far away. As practical men, they therefore limited their ties of mutual benefit to where they were counted most. Yet this went against their long-term interests. For to achieve economic development, China needed efforts at the national level. Then as collaborations between local officials and merchants increased, the considerable strength of the merchant ================================================================================ 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 99 adjacent to the European business centre, the so-called Central District (Chung Wan), or, eastwards along Queen's Road, in the district of Wan Chai." Once Kowloon was acquired, pong-paân were attracted to this new area of settlement because of low rents and the propinquity of the docks, wharves and godowns soon established there, which in time gave employment to numerous European overseers. At the end of the century, Kowloon had become the principal habitat of lower class Europeans. There were terraces of houses occupied solely by them. A witness wrote: These are generally employees in the dockyards, or clerks, or the families of engineers and mates of the small steamers that have their headquarters in Hong Kong... Hong Kong looks down on Kowloon with all the well-bred contempt of Belgravia for Brixton. And even in the despised suburb on the mainland these social differences are not wanting. The wives of the superior dock employees are the leaders of Kowloon society; and the better half of a ship captain or marine engineer is only admitted on sufferance to their exclusive circle.18 But the part of Victoria most frequented, especially at night, by the European lower orders—soldiers, sailors, merchant seamen, beach-combers and others—was Tai Ping Shan, a densely populated Chinese residential area west of the Central District. In 1875 a visitor to Hong Kong wrote: Passing westward along Queen's Road, we come upon a quarter of the town much frequented by seamen of all nations. Here spirits are sold in nearly every second shop, and bands of common sailors may be seen spending their time and money on questionable drink in more questionable company, roaring out some rough sea-song in drunken chorus, or dancing to the time of a drum and flute, accordion or cornopean. The piles of Chinese houses which rise above this locality embrace Tai-Ping-Shan, or the hill of great peace. The name is a fine one, but a fine name will not hide the sins of the place. Tai-Ping-Shan is inhabited, for the most part, by Chinamen; but men are found there belonging to all the nations of the East. As for women, these are principally Chinese; they are numerous enough, but of the lowest type. There are strange hotels in this quarter, * There are a number of 19th century street maps available for early Hong Kong, held in the Public Records Office, 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 CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 261 I was straban while Ashton Rose was preparing a medical report on Sham Shui Po. At this time we were being asked by the British Military Administration to submit lists of our kit which had been taken by the Japanese but I imagine that this only added to the papers with which they had to deal at that time. The Colonial Secretary was installed in the French Mission at Battery Path and heads of government departments followed shortly afterwards. Commander Craven and Major Boxer left us for staff duties in Hong Kong and I arranged for two barbers to come and stay for a few days. Six of our Q.A. sisters arrived and another six came late at night accompanied by very necessary male escorts from Stanley. We were delighted to see them and put them all up and fed them but it was early morning before I got to bed. On 27 August Saito came back and I pressed him again for our medical records and he excused himself by saying he had been so busy. The Indian hospital had 259 patients and 45 staff and I arranged an X-ray session for Indian patients including a number suffering from tuberculosis. Selwyn-Clarke sent us a gift of brandy and cigarettes, showing that though he did not use these comforts himself he would not deny them to others. Miss Dyson now back in her rightful position as Matron set about getting overalls for her sisters, a splendid boost to the morale not only of these ladies but of the patients and staff as well. Madame Lebon made these and our army promised payment. 1 We finally closed our compradore's shop and agreed a business settlement with the compradore on the basis of him taking out cash plus goods to the total of $8831.06 yen. We had an excellent concert provided by Sham Shui Po, and some of the Hong Kong Volunteers, particularly those of mixed race, were slightly built and made up very attractively as girls. Members of the Indian camp and the Internee Camp at Ma Tau Wei attended and as usual in these days I was very late to bed. We found it necessary to control visiting hours in the hospital because of the very large numbers of people we had roaming about. On 28 August we got smoke flares from our people for touching off by day to guide our aircraft when they were dropping supplies and the Japanese also sent in smoke cylinders for a like purpose. They also sent in 3 bottles of whisky, 4 of peppermint for the dispensary, 8 of brandy, 50 of port, 6 of gin and 20 of sherry. I at once arranged a general issue of 2 ounces of port per head, a meagre ration which I thought was wise at the time. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d NOTES AND QUERIES 319 Tai Kok Tsui in 1880 and in 1898 the Green Island Cement Company moved its works from Macao to Hung Hom. This fact helps to explain the predominantly male population in the census. The Hung Hom community was among the largest of these new commercial and industrial settlements. By 1897, its population was 5,876, standing second only to Yau Ma Tei with 8,051 (SP1897 p.485). (1) Details of the earliest settlement up to 1898 The first list of occupants of Hung Hom is the 1867 Return of Squatter's Licences.* This shows that the village was composed of forty-four premises held under licence by thirty-four individuals, of whom eleven bore the surname Tsang and nine Lee. Near the village was 31 mow of land under cultivation. These also were largely held by the Tsang and Lee families. As the village grew, due to the growth of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Yard with its opportunities for employment and for providing services for its ever-growing staff of employees, the amount of land under cultivation declined; only three years after the 1867 list, the amount of cultivated land had been cut in half. Between 1867 and 1874 the number of listed properties remained fairly constant, but in 1875 there was an increase from fifty-four to seventy-five. In succeeding years, however, the number of individuals occupying land by squatter's licences slowly declined. The first collection book for Village Rates in Kowloon is dated 1873.† It lists the occupant of the premise, with the use of the premise, its value, and the owner. Aside from the Dock Company's extensive establishment, thirty-nine buildings are listed. These included the Police Station (at the time unoccupied), a dwelling used as a school, six chandlery shops, one shop dealing in sundries, two carpenter's establishments, a fruit seller, and a barber. Of the shops, only three were rented out; the others were occupied by their owners. The remaining premises were all small family residences occupied by their owners. In two years, the properties upon which rates were collected had increased by twenty-five. Among the new premises listed was a Joss House rated at $50 and a house for the Joss House keeper, * H.K. Public Records Office, H.K. Record Series 183. † H.K. Public Records Office, H.K. Record Series 83. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 320 NOTES AND QUERIES Foo Akow. In 1877 some of the premises were listed by streets; viz Main Street with forty houses and shops, Back Street with twenty small family residences, the Praya with five substantial buildings recently built, and six wooden houses near the Dock. In 1880 the use of the premises are again given, though not all premises used for business purposes may be so recorded. The following summary, however, gives some indication of the business development of the settlement. There were seven chandlers, two eating houses, three barbers, and one each of druggist, rice shop, fruit dealer, and painter. By this date there were four more buildings on the Praya, and a fairly new group of houses opposite the entrance to the Dock premises. It might also be of interest to list the buildings contained within the Dock company's compound: the West Dock, ‘sheer legs', caisson, timber sheds on stone pillars and tiled offices, boiler maker's engine shop, moulder's shop and smith, the East Dock, pumping house, coal sheds, work shop, dwelling house, mat sheds, saw mill, boat building sheds, a new house with stores and new shops. The business of the village in 1884 consisted of thirteen grocers, three eating houses, six barbers, two opium shops, two druggists, and on the beach to the west of the village four boat-building establishments. In addition there were single individuals listed as carpenter, fishmonger, shoe dealer, fruiterer, vegetable seller, and painter. This is probably not an exhaustive list of business and trades carried on, but it gives a fair picture of the local tradesmen at that time. This year 1884 was a turning point in the physical development of the village, for in December of that year two fires within five days destroyed the major part of the settlement. The first fire broke out in a mat shed on December 11, and twenty-two timber houses with tile roofs for the temporary occupation of workers at the dock were consumed, whilst some dozen other buildings were pulled down to stop the progress of the fire. The newspaper notice (Daily Press, Dec. 12, 1884) remarks that "the loss of property sustained was not very great, but a number of pigs were burned to death." The more serious fire was on December 16th, "among the matsheds and shanties of a swarm of squatters who have settled down there.” The sight of the flames leaping into the sky seen from the Hong Kong side caused “a decidedly uncomfortable time to some of the shareholders of the Dock Company by the doubt as to whether the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 163 3 in the Hong Kong region in the late Ming dynasty than in the early Ch'ing. Then, from the early Ch'ing, after a period of decline, the boat population must have expanded until almost 1900. A particular type of settlement grew up in the area, quite possibly within the eighteenth century, such as on Kau Sai Island or Leung Shuen Wan, where a group of Hakka people farmed on the coastal strip and fished in coastal waters, and maintained a symbiotic relationship with a group of boat people whose boats moored in a permanent anchorage nearby. Boat people's temples, in honour of T'in Hau or Hung Shing, were frequently constructed in these communities. Ships from the naval squadron based in Tai P'ang occasionally called at these inlets and contributed to the construction and repair of the temples. The earliest datable object in these temples is a Ch'ien-lung 6 (1741) bell in the T'in Hau Temple on Leung Shuen Wan.5 The second stage of economic development began in the middle of the nineteenth century when Hong Kong was opened as a port. This stage continued until the Second World War. At the beginning of this period, Sai Kung District consisted of farming and fishing communities, with some salt-making at Yim Tin Tsai. But the opening of Hong Kong had an immediate impact on Hang Hau and the islands near Sai Kung. A bell was donated to the Hang Hau T'in Hau Temple in 1840, and there were a number of donations to both this and to the Hung Shing Temple on Tung Lung Island from the 1870's on. The temple at Tai Miu (Joss House Bay), and those in Po Toi O and Tin Ha Wan, were possibly built or repaired at this time. Donations were also made to temples on Kau Sai and Leung Shuen Wan in the 1880's and 1890's. The wide connections of Hang Hau are attested to by the donation tablet that was set up for the repair of the temple in 1876, on which are recorded the names of well over a hundred and fifty shops. Many of these were obviously not located in Hang Hau but conducted business there.6 The reason for this apparent increase in wealth from the mid-nineteenth century on in these coastal communities is the growing importance of fishing as a source of cash income. The new city provided a large market for fresh as well as salted fish, and a fishermen's community was growing at Shaukiwan on ================================================================================ 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 35 a reflection of the general mutual animosity between Teochiu and other Chinese. Any further discussion of general patterns becomes less meaningful given the variation within the Teochiu population. The discussion in one of the following sections of the Teochiu population in one resettlement estate considers this variation and the processes discussed above in a particular social setting. The geographical distribution of Teochiu in Hong Kong in 1971 is presented in Table 1. The only area of heavy Teochiu concentration in Hong Kong Island is the West census district, which of course includes Nam Pak Hong, the oldest area of Teochiu concentration. Hung Hom is the only area of substantial Teochiu settlement in the Kowloon census districts. More than one half of the Teochiu recorded in the census reside in the New Kowloon census districts, with one-fourth of all Teochiu in the Kai Tak district and almost one-fourth in Ngau Tau Kok and Lei Yue Mun districts. The Kai Tak census district includes Kowloon City, an area of heavy Teochiu residential concentration. The Ngau Tau Kok and Lei Yue Mun census districts roughly correspond to the industrial town of Kwun Tong. Thousands of Teochiu squatters were resettled into Kwun Tong's resettlement estates, particularly Ngau Tau Kok Resettlement Estate. Another census district in New Kowloon with significant Teochiu concentration is Shek Kip Mei; many Teochiu in this district reside in the Shek Kip Mei Resettlement Estate. The only areas of significant Teochiu concentration in the New Territories are Tsuen Wan and Yuen Long. Again, many Teochiu in Tsuen Wan reside in resettlement estates, mostly in Kwai Chung. Personal experiences in Tsuen Wan suggest that the actual number of Teochiu in Hong Kong is greater than the 1971 census figures. Table II indicates that more than 39% of Teochiu land domestic households are located in resettlement estates and almost one-half are located in one kind of housing estate or another. I would estimate that at least one half of Teochiu households at one time or another resided in squatter structures. In 1971 over 8,000 Teochiu households resided in "temporary housing" and another 4,700 households in "stone structures". These two categories refer primarily to illegal squatter structures, which suggests that a fairly large number of Teochiu are still squatters. 1 The information in Table 1 and in the other tables was very kindly provided by Mr. M. C. Leong, Statistician, Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Government. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 60 DOUGLAS W. SPARKS exception to this is the rivalry between ethnic gangs and more organized criminal groups in the area, who are competing for territory and access to the local market in illegal gambling, extortion and narcotics. There are various kinds of formal and informal associations within the estate, including several estate-wide associations as well as several ethnic associations. The most active and organized associations within the estate are the two registered Teochiu religious associations and another informal, unregistered Teochiu association. There is one informal Hoi Luk Fung religious association and one Cantonese association which is the least active of the ethnic associations. The primary functions of these ethnic organizations are the organization of ritual and the maintenance of small temples within the local area. Separation between ethnic groups is expressed in competition in the performance of particular religious festivals. This article will not consider the internal organization and dynamics of these ethnic organizations. The Teochiu segment of the estate population was resettled from squatter settlements in Tsuen Wan and Kowloon. Prior to resettlement, Teochiu in a particular squatter settlement were likely to be from the same village in China or from nearby villages and were involved in very dense kinship and friendship networks. A majority of Teochiu who were resettled into the housing estate are from one of the Teochiu districts in China and a very large portion are from a small number of villages in this district. This is due to the resettlement of certain squatter settlements, many of which were in Lower Kwai Chung, which contained high concentrations of Teochiu from that district. Most of the members of the Teochiu associations in the estate are from a small number of villages in this district, and these associations may be seen as extensions of social networks developed in squatter areas into the realm of ritual organization. Some of the most active members are from a single village which has over 400 “descendants” residing in this and nearby estates. The social and ritualistic core of this transplanted village is one extended family with over 40 members living in the estate studied. This pattern is by no means unique to this estate; other resettlement estates in Hong Kong have high concentrations of Teochiu from particular districts. This "same village" density is the basis for the organizational strength and ethnic solidarity of Teochiu in Hong Kong. Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q ETHNICITY IN A HOUSING ESTATE IN HONG KONG 63 I studied Village 10 is a central point on the map. It is 8 li (Chinese mile, about one third of a western mile) from this village to Village 6 on the ocean; 10 li to Village 12; 20 li to Village 15; and 80 li to Village 17. It is 60 li from Village 1 to the town of Kap Jib and 60 li from Village 14 to the town of Luk Fung. These distances are only approximate in that they were supplied by informants. The entire area is very small and densely populated. Many of these former villagers had friends and relatives in nearby villages and had traveled throughout the area under consideration. The historical origins of Teochiu and Hoi Luk Fung, changes in administrative structure in the area and relationships between border villages are discussed in the following section. Historical Origins and Relationships Histories of districts and prefectures in China are confusing, given the many changes in administrative boundaries and names. This article will not be concerned with the overall history of Teochiu nor with the frequent changes in boundaries. The historical origins of the Teochiu people will be briefly outlined as well as the establishment of and administrative changes in Hui Lai, Hoi Fung and Luk Fung districts. The histories of these districts are relevant to the understanding of social relationships between Teochiu and Hoi Luk Fung living in Hong Kong today. Teochiu are Han Chinese, the major racial group in China, and their language is one of the Southern Min languages (Forrest, 1965). The earliest migration of Han Chinese into the area known today as Teochiu occurred in 214 B.C. after Ch'in Shih Huang conquered Nan Yüeh (✯✯), an area in Southern China, and established the Nan Hai prefecture ( ). These first migrants were some of the 50,000 troops who stayed in southern China to initiate the settlement of the area (Chan, 1974: 120). During the Ch'in Dynasty there were several waves of migration from the Central Plains of the Yellow River southward to Teochiu. From 317 to 581 A.D. larger numbers of Han Chinese migrated into Fukien and as the latter became populated, there was further movement into Teochiu. The latter were led by four large clans (✯ ✯ ✯) which constituted the majority of the migrants (Chan, 1974:122). During this period the downstream areas of the major river system in Teochiu, the Han River, were populated by the original inhabitants of Teochiu, who were not Han Chinese. These people were gra- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 72 DOUGLAS W. SPARKS do not visit one another's homes in the estate nor did I ever see (D) accompanying the old man to any Teochiu rituals. Although their interaction is limited to the store front, it is more than an acquaintance relationship. The old man personally knows more Hoi Luk Fung than do most Teochiu in the housing estate, largely because of his friendly personality and the location of his shop. As I got to know (D) I learned that he had lived prior to resettlement in a squatter settlement in which many Teochiu in the housing estate had also resided. He thus knows many of the people in the local Teochiu associations and had, in fact, opened a business in the estate with one of the local Teochiu leaders. The business went bankrupt about 8 years ago, and since then the two have not been involved in any kind of business relationship and do not visit one another. This was the only business partnership between Teochiu and Hoi Luk Fung in the housing estate that I learned about. (D) once visited the office of one of the Teochiu associations. He knew 5 or 6 of the 15 people present and was very friendly in greeting those he knew as well as the others. The ex-business partner was present and entered into the usual greeting ritual for someone one has not recently seen but did not initiate any extended conversation. (D) busily took interest in the on-going mahjong game, asked about people, etc. Two Teochiu who had known (D) in the squatter settlement were particularly friendly at his arrival and made an effort to act the role of friend seeing friend after a long period by enthusiastically greeting him, seating him, asking about his current situation, asking him to drink beer, etc. This clearly indicated the unusualness of the visit; a frequent visitor is not likely to be publicly treated as a guest. (D) spoke briefly to these two individuals and to several others, walked around and tried to take part in several conversations, and shortly made parting statements and left. My impression, confirmed by talking to some of the Teochiu afterwards, was that he was not particularly close to any of the Teochiu and was unable to enter into conversation or initiate his own simply because he was not involved in that network of individuals and, as in any culture, knew when to end the interaction at an appropriate time. The interaction was interesting in that it was the only case of a Hoi Luk Fung visiting the association office, and because that morning (D) had taken me to visit the Hoi Luk Fung temple and his visit was evidently prompted by our own prior interaction. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 194 MAURICE FREEDMAN summer); Miss Jean Pratt from Cambridge, who studied a Hakka village in the neighbourhood of Tai Po; and, most recently, Mr. Jack Potter, from Berkeley, California, who has just completed a study of one of the major Tang settlements in Yuen Long District. All these may be called community studies, for they attempted to give rounded accounts of the lives of the people they investigated. The results of the three studies, when they are fully published, will provide a useful sample of traditional communities in the New Territories, for they cover both fishing and agriculture and range from relatively unsophisticated Tanka, through a small, and in some respects isolated, Hakka settlement, to one of the old centres of Punti power. In addition to these field studies the work of another anthropologist, Dr. Marjorie Topley, has dealt with the New Territories in a general way in regard to aspects of their economic life. 7. The gaps in knowledge and understanding of New Territories society are in part filled by the results of investigations carried out by other kinds of scholars. I have in mind particularly the work done by geographers and historians. The field studies by Dr. T.R. Tregear and Dr. C.J. Grant are too well known to call for my comment. At the moment further geographical field studies are in train; for example, Mr. Ronald Ng, a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong, is engaged in an investigation of the Tung Chung valley which promises to bring in much new material on the social aspects of agriculture. As for history, I may mention the work of Mr. J.W. Hayes, formerly a District Officer in the New Territories; he has produced two studies, one dealing with the New Territories as they were just before British rule, the other on Cheung Chau, which illustrate very happily how the work of the social historian and that of the anthropologist can complement each other. 8. But when the fruits of all this work are put together they will still leave out of account much that is important. The New Territories can no longer be regarded as simply a rural appendage to urban Hong Kong, an area where traditional Chinese village life has, because of the accident arising out of diplomacy in the nineteenth century, been fostered by British administration, a museum conveniently arranged for the benefit of antiquarians. The population has changed to what extent is demonstrated by the admirably conducted and analysed census of 1961. Modern industry has not ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 195 simply pushed back the social frontier of the New Territories, as is dramatically the case in Tsuen Wan, but affected the lives and ideas of large numbers of people in many parts of the region. Overseas migration, old in nature but new in pattern, has brought in much wealth. An agricultural revolution, no less dramatic than its industrial counterpart but less commented on in the world outside, has pushed the rice economy aside from the centre of the scene, created new kinds of settlement and broken up the image of an unhurried farming community. Land has now entered, or efforts are being made to bring it into, new markets for both agricultural and building uses. In these conditions it is not enough to study old-established communities and traditional institutions. How these changes have come about, how they are perceived and evaluated by the people they most closely affect, and how they in turn imply other kinds of changes should certainly stand in the forefront of studies of the New Territories at the present time. 9. On the other hand, it would be a mistake—as grievous as the error of neglecting what is new—to suppose that only the latest changes deserve attention. From the moment British administrators set foot in the New Territories a chain of changes was initiated: in land tenure, in political leadership, in social control, in economic life. The measure of modern change is not to be taken solely by a comparison between 1963 and 1949 or 1941; it must be gauged by the whole stretch of British administration. But, in turn, even this is too parochial a framework for the study of what was once a part of China. At this late date it is still possible to catch glimpses in the New Territories of how the area was governed before 1898 and to work out the implications of this form of government for social life. The New Territories, that is to say, have something to contribute to the historian's understanding of China in late Ch'ing times, and this understanding on the part of the historian of modern China can, reciprocally, help to build up a picture of 65 years of the New Territories against the background of their Chinese origins and under the influence of changes in China. 10. One of the problems I attempted to approach was the nature of local leadership in the New Territories. Let me, from this example, try to illustrate how changing institutions might be analysed to throw light on present-day concerns. I must stress the tentative and summary nature of my account, for the subject needs far more Page 210 Page 211 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 199 deeper inroads into rural society than the undermining of the scholarly elite. The Chinese legal system had assumed (more: it had required and been adapted to ensuring) that people would try to look to the settlement of their own differences and stay away as much as possible from the yamen as a court of law. The system of political control was loose and a large measure of autonomy, by default of efficiency if not by design, was accorded to local communities. The early British Administration was thin on the ground by comparison with what has been seen in very recent years, but by Chinese standards it was intense, and it quickly established for itself a reputation for accessibility and quick justice that attracted to it many of the disputes which had earlier been settled, or had lain unsettled, at the local level. Moreover, by preventing some disputes from being literally fought out in traditional feuds (an institution which the Chinese government often thundered against but hardly ever took steps to suppress), the British increased their burden of dispensing justice. (The feud-fights which in recent times have been witnessed in the Yuen Long District—interestingly enough in the area of the fullest development of deep clan organisation—are but shadows of their former selves). It cannot be said that the new Administration succeeded at once in imposing law and order. There was banditry in the early years; some of the village watchtowers were put up after 1899. But, within the limits of poor communications, the new Administrators made a determined effort to eliminate violence from the countryside. Certainly, they brought to their work a conception of positive government quite alien to the ideas informing the system operated by their Chinese predecessors. 16. I cannot in this report document all my historical statements about China and the early New Territories, but in connexion with the previous paragraphs I should like to quote what seems to me to be an important passage in an administrative report written thirteen years after British rule began: Reference should also be made to the waning influence of the village elders throughout the Territories. It was the intention of Sir Henry Blake that, 'existing village organisations should be maintained and utilised', and that the village tribunals should continue to decide local cases. But it soon became clear that the authority of the village elders was of no account, with the stronger authority of the Magistrates so easily accessible, and the idea of local tribunals had perforce to be dropped. Under ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 200 MAURICE FREEDMAN Chinese rule, the remoteness, the danger and the expense of the central courts had left much authority to the local elders, and especially to those entrusted with powers of collecting local taxes: under British rule this authority naturally decayed, though they have continued sometimes to be the medium of dealings with the villagers. But their moral influence has often been of great assistance to the officials in the maintenance of the public peace, and their knowledge of the decisions of questions concerning local customs, disputed successions, fung shui and such like. (Report on the New Territories, 1899-1912, Papers laid before the Legislative Council no. 11 of 1912, p. 45). 17. We shall need to consider who these elders were, but before doing so we must look at a wider context within which local leadership was to be seen. At the time the New Territories were created they were in large part covered by a network of village-groupings, many of them being known under the name of yeuk. A yeuk was a collection of neighbouring villages which had some means of expressing its unity (sometimes in the ownership of property common to the grouping) and which was often combined along with other such yeuk to form what I propose to call a yeuk-complex. This kind of organisation can conveniently be illustrated from material on the yeuk-complex to have survived most fully into our own day. I refer to the Ts'at Yeuk (i.e. the Seven Yeuk) of Tai Po. 18. There for long stood a market town at Tai Po: Tai Po Kau Hui. It was (and physically remains) just by the Tang settlement of Tai Po Tau, but the market was under control of the Tang people further north in Lung Yeuk Tau. As Masters of the Market the Tang taxed sellers and, if the stories told about them now are to be believed as reflecting reality, and not mythical justifications of revolt, they harassed buyers by the exercise of the privilege of claiming choice produce. Their control of the market was from time to time challenged. In 1892, the matter having been brought to the county magistrate's court at Nam Tau, a ruling was given that only the Tang had the right to build shops in the market. This decision (which was inscribed on a stone slab and placed in the local Tin Hau Temple) appears to have been the culmination of a series of challenges to Tang power by the Man of Tai Hang. (Up to 1873, when it was destroyed by a typhoon, the Man had had a settlement next to the market, but by the 1890s their base was Tai Hang). In response to the unfavourable outcome of the lawsuit ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 201 the Man and their allies rallied local support to form a new market on the other side of what in British times has come to be known as the Kwun Yam River. This was the beginning of the market town of Tai Po in its present form. (The story up to this point is told by Sung Hok-p'ang, 'Legends and Stories of the New Territories. I. Tai Po', The Hong Kong Naturalist, vol. VI, no. 1, May 1935. The stone slab recording the magistrate's decision no longer stands in the temple; when the temple was recently rebuilt the stone was cast into the yard where it now lies, often encumbered with rubbish, a neglected minor monument of late Ch'ing history). 19. The new market in a short time consigned the old one to a decrepitude familiar to anyone who has walked behind the Jockey Club Clinic which now stands next to the Tin Hau Temple. Soon the founder of the new market put up the first of the bridges to span the Kwun Yam River; the subscription list for the bridge is recorded on two stone plaques set into the wall of the Man Mo Temple which had been built as a centre for the new market. A room in the temple still houses the public weighing scales from which the founders and their successors have derived an income. 20. The story goes that the Man who led the revolt against the Tang monopoly called a meeting of the leaders of seven yeuk around Tai Po, each of these taking a share in the new market in the form of shops. The land on which the market was built appears to have been for the most part the property of the Man. Now it is probable that the Ts'at Yeuk dates from this point in time. My informants take this view. And there is one piece of information which tends to confirm it: one of the constituent yeuk is Cheung Shue Tan which, according to what I was told in Sha Tin, was previously a member of a yeuk-complex in this latter area; so that it may well have changed its allegiance at the time of the founding of the new market at Tai Po. But even if the Ts'at Yeuk came into being so recently, the yeuk themselves can hardly have done so for they appear to have been the material out of which the complex was formed. Many locals assert that the yeuk did not antedate the Ts'at Yeuk, but I am inclined to think that we are dealing here with a very old form of grouping, as comparative evidence will suggest. The seven yeuk were Lam Tsuen, Cheung Shue Tan, Ting Kok, Shuen Wan, Hap Wo, Tai Hang, and Fan Leng. Together they had over seventy villages, but the yeuk were of unequal size, so that while, for example, the Man settlement at Tai Hang formed a yeuk ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 202 MAURICE FREEDMAN on its own, Lam Tsuen consisted of twenty-six villages. When the constituent villages of the seven yeuk are plotted on a map they can be seen to form a more or less continuous arc around Tai Po, but there are two striking irregularities in the distribution. First, the three villages making up the yeuk of Fan Leng stand away to the north, being in fact so much out of the immediate Tai Po area that today they fall administratively into a different sub-district and are not involved in local Tai Po affairs except in so far as they remain responsible for the market. Second, about twenty villages in the area of the arc are not members of any yeuk. Some of these are settlements which have come into being since the 1890s, but a few certainly existed at the time the market was planned and were deliberately excluded, or excluded themselves, from the union. Naturally, the Tang settlement at Tai Po Tau is one of them; they were the general enemy. Others were probably clients of the Tang and unable, or unwilling, to participate in the revolutionary move. Were they previously members of yeuk who fell out when these were combined to form the seven? 21. The Tang and the Man are Punti, the former being members of the dominant clan group in the New Territories, and the latter a branch of a clan group whose most important settlement is at San Tin. The Man had for long intermarried with the local Tang (their genealogy book shows that the Tang gave them many women), were rich, and had produced some scholars. (Their main ancestral hall, now in ruins, must have been a splendid building). Their rivalry with the Tang at Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau had had a long history. As the story of the market demonstrates, the rivalry was in part commercial; the Tang at Tai Po Tau tell jokingly of the leading Tang and his Man counterpart competing to see who could lay the longer line of silver dollars along the path leading north from their settlement. But the area in which the contest was fought out was predominantly Hakka, and it was necessary for the Man to find their support in Hakka villages. Second in importance to the Man in the founding of the new market were the Hakka Ma of Wun Yiu. They appear to have been a small but well-to-do settlement. (The only crockery kiln in the whole region was in their area, and a Roman Catholic chapel had stood there for at least thirty years before the founding of the new market; they were clearly in a centre of some importance). The last flickers to be seen today of the hostility to the Tang in Ts'at Yeuk circles fail to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 214 MAURICE FREEDMAN ing, for they are now cut off from the intensive study of a period in which British administration and Chinese law and society were mutually adjusting themselves). Many disputes must have been dealt with in the communities within which they arose, and the remoter villages may in fact have had little to do with the Administration directly; but over a large area of the New Territories it came to be accepted that the administrator was a sure and final arbiter of major differences. In his report on the Northern District for 1913 Ross wrote: 'Some years ago by tacit consent parties did not bring forward cases relating to the "tso" and the settlement of ancestral property. Now a large number of cases heard are applications for a declaration as to the parties entitled to share in the property of a common ancestor... 39. The powerful role of the pre-war administrator in social control has left a legacy which weakens the effectiveness of modern attempts to divert the settlement of disputes to other channels. The Rural Committees are now expected to take over a large share of the burden of mediation. In fact, the tendency still seems to be that differences which cannot be composed within a village (where the Village Representative and the other elders are often incapable of exerting the authority to settle the matter) pass first to the District Officer whence they may be referred to the Rural Committee, sometimes returning to the District Officer when the Rural Committee finds itself unable to produce a settlement. And in some cases a settlement is never reached, because as matters have stood in the last couple of years, the District Officers no longer exercise many of the judicial functions with which they were formerly endowed. Land and small debts cases now fall within the competence of the new District Court. 40. Two questions are raised about the operation of the new court. First, is it so court-like in comparison with the informality of the old system practised by administrators that it attracts to itself the unfavourable attitudes which Chinese traditionally displayed towards the yamen? As well enter the jaws of hell as pass through the gates of the yamen. Second, are the subtleties of Chinese custom likely to be taken account of in the new court as they were in the days when justice was administered by officers trained to study and respect these niceties? It is of course too soon to say anything definite about the first question; the reactions of people to the court will need to be watched over a period of years; but as + + + + + ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 216 MAURICE FREEDMAN For the time being disputes in the New Territories continue to be essentially a matter for mediation by the District Officers, the Rural Committees, and the ‘elders', and if in default of settlement a case drags on, no effective and generally accepted machinery can at the moment be brought into action to force it to a conclusion. (A number of important aspects of the legal situation have necessarily been ignored in this brief discussion. Some civil cases involving large sums of money fall within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The kinds of cases dealt with by the New Territories Magistrate would be an interesting matter to look into. The whole realm of family law—marriage, divorce, maintenance of wives and children, adoption, and inheritance—requires to be treated in detail). 43. I come now to a point made by this discussion of some aspects of the political and legal situation in the New Territories. An approach to the study of leadership could conveniently be made by collecting some basic information on the Village Representatives. This task, it seems to me, might be discharged by the District Officers if they have the time to undertake it. A sample of Village Representatives could be drawn by a simple statistical procedure and the following data collected in respect of each of the men selected: his age; his birthplace; where he lives; where he lived before he became a Village Representative; whether he has ever lived outside the New Territories, and if so where and for how long; the length of time he has been in office; whether he was elected, and if so on what franchise; his occupations, main and subsidiary, past and present; his education (kinds and where acquired); the number of people living in the area he represents; the number of households in this area; the numbers of 'new population' in these last two figures; details (surnames and numbers of members) of the clans in the area represented; the number of men in the most senior surviving generation in his own clan; the age of the oldest man in this generation; the ages of the ten oldest men in the clan; the names of the previous Village Representatives, including the man appointed under the Japanese and any men acknowledged to be 'headmen' before the war; his precise kinship relation to these men; the number of his brothers; his birth order among them; their occupation; the ages of his sons and daughters; the education they are receiving or have received; their occupations, if any. The answers to these questions (some of which must already be known to the District Officers) would provide an indication of the position ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q (b) that nearly all of them hold British passports and may be assumed to have been born in the Colony, and (c) that they are practically all men of working age, then we may conclude that they represent very roughly, perhaps a third of all the men in the New Territories who were born there and who fall within the economically active years of manhood. Since, furthermore, there are certain areas of the New Territories from which emigration has been especially heavy, despite the fact that men from all areas have participated in the movement, there are grounds for assuming that the effect of migration must in places have been extremely important. 73. The scale and direction of the emigration of the last few years are novel, but they rest on a tradition which reminds us that in this, as in many other respects, the New Territories are geographically and culturally part of southeastern China. For, especially since the middle of the last century, the coastal regions of the provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien have served as a reservoir from which many countries, above all in South-East Asia, have drawn population. Emigration to California and Australia,—the 'gold mountains'—was noted by the first British administrators of the New Territories (for they spoke of loan associations got up to finance men wanting to go to these two countries), but there are hints in the early census reports that New Territories people were scattered more widely. The 1911 census shows a handful of Chinese in the New Territories to have been born in Annam, Hawaii, the Philippines, the Straits Settlements, Siam, and Australia. In 1921 the countries which appear in this context, again with reference to very small numbers, are Annam, India, Japan, British Borneo, France, Italy, the U.S.A., and Mexico. The list for 1931 reads: Indo-China, British North Borneo, Malaya, Netherlands East Indies, Siam, Canada, the U.S.A., Cuba, Panama, Guiana, Peru, England, and Holland. There were, in fact, two kinds of emigrants; landsmen who went overseas to make a living in a particular country, and seamen who, whether legally or not, left their ships to try their luck in places to which they had been carried. The establishment of Hong Kong as a British settlement in 1842 created a demand for local seamen, many of whom were recruited from the Chinese villages lying near the new centre. Men from Lamma Island and from Lantau Island seem at an early date to have taken service in British and other ships. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 238 MAURICE FREEDMAN 74. Early in the British period in the New Territories a considerable movement took place to the West Indies, especially from the Sha Tau Kok and Shap Sz Heung areas. After the Second World War the opportunities for overseas migration were much reduced both because of restrictions imposed in many countries and on account of the failure of the local shipping industry to re-establish its demand for seamen. New Territories men were casting about for new overseas openings; a few discovered the opportunity created by a demand for (what passes for) Chinese food in Britain, where there had been for many years a small but prosperous Chinese restaurant trade run mainly by Chinese from the New Territories and the area adjacent to it across the border in China; and within a short space of time a new emigration was under way, haphazard to begin with but becoming well-organised as its economic possibilities were realised by entrepreneurs. San Tin, whose men now bulk very large in the ranks of the emigrants, appears to have been a pioneer; one of the oldest Chinese restaurants in London was started by a man from this settlement. (I have a figure, which I have not been able to check, of 520 San Tin men in the United Kingdom in February of this year). The movement to Britain was already well-marked in the early fifties; it began to increase sharply in 1956 and reached its peak figures in the years 1958-1962. In the last few months, for reasons to be discussed presently, emigration has fallen away, so that 1963 may well prove to be a year in which the movement to the United Kingdom can be definitively studied. The New Territories demand for overseas work has also been met in part during recent years by the opportunities for contract-labour in Borneo and Nauru and Ocean Islands. The figures for this emigration are given in the New Territories Administrative Reports, but it is a movement about which I know very little and on which I propose to say nothing more. 75. The ability of the Chinese restaurant trade in the United Kingdom to expand by tapping the New Territories very widely for its workers rested on the enterprise of a few men who organised an efficient method of recruiting, financing, and conveying would-be hands once it became clear that considerable profits were to be made. The early traffic was by sea. For a time charter flights took men over to London (and brought some of them back) at £90 a head. More recently the airlines have offered special migrants' fares at £85. Much of the recent financing has been done through ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 T 241 tions on foreigners will block any spectacular expansion. It may be that New Territories Chinese in Britain will gradually diversify their occupations – they have begun to do so finding their way step by step into a multitude of industries and jobs. And it is possible that a disintegration of the restaurant pattern of settlement will have important consequences for the assimilation of the migrants and their ties with home. So far the tendency has been for the unsuccessful to lose touch with their people at home (by failing to send money back and to return), and for the successful to maintain close ties. A man works a few years, sending money home, especially when his fare has been paid off, and saving for a trip back to Hong Kong. He then goes home for a while. If he is unmarried he uses his holiday as an opportunity for getting a wife. The break over, he returns to the United Kingdom to resume work. (I have seen emigrants' passports which show this pattern of work and return. Now that passports have to be produced in Hong Kong in connection with applications to be admitted to the United Kingdom it would be a comparatively simple matter for the authorities to keep statistics showing how long men stay abroad and where they have been. It would be very useful information.) The restaurant business itself acts as an insulation between the migrants and the people among whom they make their living. They are caught up in their own forms of social grouping (domestically and otherwise). Many of them return to Hong Kong knowing no more than a few words of English (as kitchen-workers they will not have needed to speak to a non-Chinese); most of them cannot conduct a conversation in that language. A few hundred young women have gone to Britain from the New Territories in recent years to join their men (I have been given a figure of 300), so that a measure of isolation is assured for even some of those who set up family life. A few men have married, some bigamously, or formed liaisons with local women in Britain. If what is true for many minority groups in present-day Britain holds also for the Chinese, then such unions are not necessarily a link with the wider society, for the women often become a part of the small social island into which they have moved without throwing a bridge across to the mainland. 79. I have heard speculations about the role to be played by returned migrants in the social life of the New Territories. There is talk of their being so worldly-wise and sophisticated that they may come to form a difficult category of people to deal with. My im- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH in the N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 251 the agricultural revolution. Socially they have helped to swamp parts of the New Territories with factories and blocks of flats. They are now an integral part of local life as a whole, but in so far as they remain on the fringes of old-established communities they merit some special attention from the anthropologist who is interested in problems of assimilation. The problem in the New Territories has many sides to it: economic, political, educational, and 'social'. On the surface it might seem that many old New Territories settlements have been converted into mixed communities of old and new populations, the newcomers living in the worn out centres of walled villages, in new buildings at the edge of the settlements, and in shacks surrounding them. But some of them are commuters for whom the settlement is just a place to live, and even those whose livelihood is gained on the spot may have little say in the public affairs of the settlement. One may caricature the extreme case by saying that the old inhabitants have abandoned their rice fields to the immigrant market-gardeners and their poorer housing to the newcomers' families, that they have become the supercilious landlords to a new class of sub-citizens, despising them for their virtues of hard work and thrift, and that in the process these old New Territories people are busy dismantling their own rural way of life. 90. Immigration to the New Territories has been so bound up with vegetable-growing and poultry-farming that a useful approach to the general problem might well be through a study of their economics. It would seem that in some places a measure of social cohesion is produced among immigrants by their membership of co-operatives. The study of rents and credit would quickly lead on to the wider relationships between newcomers and their long-established neighbours, showing how far they depend on them and the permanence of the attachment. It is nothing new for people to drift into the New Territories, and there have been earlier examples of people being spurred over the border by political conditions in China; but in its scale and stability the modern influx is so important that it cannot be thought away from the present scene to leave only traditional communities for study. Of course, the task of surveying and investigating the heterogeneous new population would be formidable, but we might well aim at a community or two which would include sizeable segments of it. This at least would be a beginning. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 253 modern buildings, the banks, the cinemas, and the daily shopping, the country town still has many of the characteristics of the place it was in former times when the market was held only on certain days of the month and formed the only means by which people in different parts of the area kept in regular touch with one another. Marriages, business deals, and politics were and remain important elements in the body of transactions which the country town stands for. But not all the issues are to be prejudged; it may be that as the town grows in size and economic significance it develops an urban autonomy, and a kind of small-townsman emerges whose interests and values are no longer so tightly correlated with those of the villager. The town of Yuen Long, for example, may prove to have gone far in this direction already, and the advent of new business men into the market towns, some of them with bases in the city, may point the way to an increasing tendency for the small urban areas of the New Territories to set themselves up as independent social entities with their own mechanisms of internal order (chambers of commerce, kaifongs, and trade associations). It is for this reason that I hope that one of the two students from London who will be arriving in the New Territories in the autumn will be able to concentrate on a market town and its relations to the countryside. There is of course another kind of market town in the New Territories: the one which depends on fishermen and in which, as a result, there has traditionally been a social cleavage between the buyers and the sellers, such that the town has not been under the control of the people of the surrounding area. Such a town fell within the scope of Miss Ward's study. An outstandingly interesting example (especially attractive because its historical background has been explored in a paper, now in press, by Mr. Hayes*) is Cheung Chau; it should certainly be borne in mind for future investigation. It offers the promise of our being able to see the results of a long period of tight urban organisation, resembling very strikingly, I suspect, the kind of urban settlement built up by Chinese emigrants in many parts of South-East Asia. 93. I have been brought by questions of urban organisation to touch on fishermen. The Tanka were the first group of the New Territories population to be studied by an anthropologist, and there is little likelihood that fishermen, whether land-based or boat people, * "Cheung Chau 1850-1898: Information from Commemorative Tablets" in JHKBRAS, 3, 1963: 88-99. — Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1977 (Covering the period April 1, 1976 — March 31, 1977) During the past year your Council has endeavoured to arrange a full and varied programme of events and we hope that everybody has found something to interest and enjoy. Altogether there have been 14 lectures, three local excursions and two foreign tours, all events being well attended, although not always by the same people. Let me briefly summarise these events. In May 1976 Professor John Fairbank, a leading authority on modern Chinese history and Asia's relations with the West, visiting from Harvard, came to talk to us about contemporary China studies. He also asked us about studies of Hong Kong and China being conducted from here at that time, and was pleased to find many of our own members active in this field. In June, Dr. James McGough, an anthropologist, at that time with the University of Hong Kong, talked about his own research on Chinese marriage carried out in Taiwan, and in July Professor Robert Bruce, an old friend and former member of the Council, discussed relations between the United States and East Asia. In August Mr. Brian Peacock, Curator of Hong Kong's Museum of History and also a Council member, talked on Hindu-Buddhist Settlement and Trade in Ancient Kedah, Malaya; and in October members visited the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals' museum, under the able guidance of Carl Smith and James Hayes. Carl Smith also provided very comprehensive notes on the Hospital which will be published in a later issue of the Journal. Also in October Dr. Peter Wesley-Smith gave a very thought-provoking talk on the convention for the lease of the New Territories. This stimulated much discussion. In November, in preparation for the Sri Lanka tour, Ms. Minette de Silva gave an introductory talk, illustrated with slides, of the various places tour members would be visiting and things they would be seeing on the tour. Also in November Professor Cheng Te-k'un returned to us again to lecture, this time on Chinese Nature Painting, and in December Dr. Leigh Wright, a member of your Council, gave a lecture in preparation for the other foreign tour, to Borneo, which he led in February. A visit to the Tang family graves was organised by David Liu and James Hayes in December. The Tang lineage is the oldest and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 20 LEIGH WRIGHT several other rivers or streams flowing in, cause a muddy deposit, on which the houses are built. At high water they are surrounded; at low water, stand on a sheet of mud. On nearing it, we were encompassed by boats which preceded and followed us, and we passed the floating market, where women, wearing immense hats of palm-leaves, sell all sorts of edibles, balanced in their little canoes, now giving a paddle, now making a bargain, and dropping down with the tide, and again regaining their place when the bargain is finished. The first impression of the town is miserable. The houses are crowded and numerous, and even the palace does not present a more captivating aspect, for, though large, it is as incommodious as the worst. We had been seated but a few minutes when Pangeran Usop arrived, and directly afterwards the Sultan. He gave us ten leaf-cigars, and sirih, and, in short, showed us every attention; and, what was best of all, did not keep us very long. Our apartment was partitioned off from the public hall, a dark-looking place, but furnished with a table brought by us, and three rickety chairs, besides mattresses and plenty of mats. We were kept up nearly all night, which, after the fatigues of the day, was hard upon us. Further observation confirmed us in the opinion that the town itself is miserable, and its locality on the mud fitted only for frogs or natives; but there is a level dry plain above the entrance of the Kiangi river, admirably suited for a European settlement; and across the Kiangi is swelling ground, where the residents might find delightful spots for their country-houses. The greatest annoyance to a stranger is the noisome smell of the mud when uncovered; and all plated or silver articles, even in the course of one night, get black and discoloured. The inhabitants I shall estimate moderately at 10,000, and the Kadien population are numerous amid the hills. And yet another graphic picture of the city of Brunei written in the early part of the present century. This is an observation by C. A. Bamfylde, an officer in the service of the Raja of Sarawak, Charles Brooke,11 It may be as well here to give a description of Brunei and of its Court. The Brunei river flows into a noble bay, across which to the north lies the island of Labuan. Above the town the river is ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 76 J. T. KAMM Taxlordism first came to the attention of the British in an intelligent report filed with the Colonial Secretary nearly eight months prior to the occupation of the leased area. The document, essentially an analysis of potential unrest in the neighborhood of Kam Tin and Sham Chun, sheds light on the politics of the lease at the local level. Addressing himself to the question of possible resistance in Un Long Tung (*), the author remarks: + + + enquiries proved that the people of the markets and towns were glad to see England get the place. But the villagers were very much displeased, especially those of Kam Tin village, owing to the fact that, though the owners in the neighborhood of Kam Tin hold deeds, they have to pay tax to the said village. If England got the place, it is feared that the benefit will be deprived of (sic).... It is like the way the (Chinese) Government charges taxes.23 The report proved to be prophetic, for it was the gentry of Un Long Tung, specifically those of the Tang villages and their dependencies, which mounted the most effective and prolonged resistance to the occupation. The same reasons were invariably set forth in petitions from captured “ringleaders:” Among the wealthy villages, there was considerable apprehension over substantial and drastic changes in the tax structure, while among the smaller villages, leaders cited the coercion and bullying of the larger gentry villages.24 Taxlordism was so widespread that an enterprising land officer suggested, in 1902, that the Colonial Government utilize the taxlords "to get the taxes for us as they did for the Chinese Government.”25 When existing tensions ruled this out, a plan was formulated to eliminate the institution by granting unclaimed tracts of crown land to those who could establish “taxlord claims.” Initial optimism over a rapid settlement evaporated, however, as taxlords attempted to establish rights over huge tracts of land. The largest claims were unquestionably in Un Long Tung, where the Kam Tin Tangs laid claim to taxlord status over the whole of Pat Heung (A) and Shap Pat Heung (+A+),26 The "taxlord claims" proved to be the thorniest problem faced by British colonial administrators charged with the rationalization of revenue collection. The plan by which taxlords were to be compensated for rights "not compatible with the principles of British ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN 77 administration" was first implemented in the Sheung Yu Tung (**). The Land Court recognized the status of fourteen tax-lords, and granted them a total of 252.33 acres of unclaimed crown land. The taxlords, however, were in no hurry to select the land, and it was only after considerable prodding (over a period of several months) that they made their choices. The problems which arose over the plots selected were to plague district officers for years. Information regarding potentially profitable land was secured from bribed government clerks, with the result that speculation on railway land became rampant. Another problem arose when taxlords staked claims to "fung shui" groves and proceeded to extort and blackmail neighboring villages by threatening to chop down the trees for firewood. As a result, taxlord schedules for the tung were not completed till August, 1909; references to taxlord claims crop up in CSO reports well into the 1920's.20 By the time the Land Court got around to hearing the Un Long claims, little sympathy existed in the colonial service for the compensation plan. It is not surprising, then, that the Tang claims were dismissed as invalid, a decision which elders in the neighborhood still relate to the fact that the Tangs led the resistance. Official records regarding this decision have apparently been lost;29 thus, our only data on the nature of taxlordism refer to Sheung Yu Tung.* The most complete account of the taxlord settlement is provided in CSO6269 of 1909. Of the fourteen taxlords compensated throughout the tung, nine are dealt with in this file, which was compiled over the period 1904-1910. The table below summarizes these nine settlements. Table II: Taxlord Settlements, Sheung Yu Tung Taxlord Amount granted Located in: Tang Yung Peng 45.0 acres Fan Ling Liu Yin Yu 13.0 acres Man Lai Ngam Man Fung Chi 9.5 acres Tang Yui Shan 16.0 acres Pang Shin Han 65.0 acres Fan Ling, Hau Yeuk Fan Ling 9.0 acres 60.0 acres Ho Sheung, Lam Tsun Luk Yeuk 11.0 acres Hau Chak Wing Hang Chung Hin 4.8 acres Man Cham Tsum *The claims by Tangs over Tsing Yi Island were originally labelled. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n ## TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN government in his Discussion of the Official System (￥##): 79 (咸豐: During the troubled years of the Hsien-Feng period (: 1851-1862), the gentry of the various villages formed t'uan-lien (*) for the purpose of self-defence. If a village was weak, then it united with other villages to form one large district. In this way, all of the villages within one geographically distinct area were united under one committee of gentry, referred to as chu. These organizations were responsible for collecting taxes, and were managed by a staff of local administrators.34 The similarity between these developments, which transpired in Nan-Hai Hsien (南海縣), and the description of the collapse of li-chia in Tung-Kuan is remarkable. There was an unquestionable link between the presence of taxlordism and chu throughout South China in the nineteenth century. Kuhn (1970) cites evidence from Hunan which demonstrates that the primary function of chu in that province was the collection of the land tax; in some areas, chu effectively coupled the monopolization of land tax collection with the early administration of likin.35 In Hsin-An itself, it is quite clear that the services performed by taxlords were often coordinated by gentry committees; moreover, the services performed by these groups were essentially identical to those performed by the chu of Nan-Hai (these include: dispute-settlement, maintenance of irrigation works, temples, schools, roads, bridges, and the provision of sacrifices.)36 I propose that chu were essentially bodies of taxlords which regulated the collection and expenditure of revenue from agricultural production within the boundaries of tung or similar areas.37 The collection of revenue was greatly facilitated by 1) the location of chu in the major market town of the tung, and 2) its recognized status as overseer of the affairs of the tung, with the right to petition the magistrate in the name of the inhabitants.38 After collection of the land tax, a certain amount was extracted and set aside as public funds to meet "fixed costs." For extraordinary expenses, such as those incurred by the resistance campaign, the taxlord-gentry would either petition the magistrate to temporarily forego collection of the land tax, or would levy supplementary taxes of their own on the established rent and tax quotas of villages within the tung.39 ## TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN government in his Discussion of the Official System (￥##): 79 (咸豐: During the troubled years of the Hsien-Feng period (: 1851-1862), the gentry of the various villages formed t'uan-lien (*) for the purpose of self-defence. If a village was weak, then it united with other villages to form one large district. In this way, all of the villages within one geographically distinct area were united under one committee of gentry, referred to as chu. These organizations were responsible for collecting taxes, and were managed by a staff of local administrators.34 The similarity between these developments, which transpired in Nan-Hai Hsien (南海縣), and the description of the collapse of li-chia in Tung-Kuan is remarkable. There was an unquestionable link between the presence of taxlordism and chu throughout South China in the nineteenth century. Kuhn (1970) cites evidence from Hunan which demonstrates that the primary function of chu in that province was the collection of the land tax; in some areas, chu effectively coupled the monopolization of land tax collection with the early administration of likin.35 In Hsin-An itself, it is quite clear that the services performed by taxlords were often coordinated by gentry committees; moreover, the services performed by these groups were essentially identical to those performed by the chu of Nan-Hai (these include: dispute-settlement, maintenance of irrigation works, temples, schools, roads, bridges, and the provision of sacrifices.)36 I propose that chu were essentially bodies of taxlords which regulated the collection and expenditure of revenue from agricultural production within the boundaries of tung or similar areas.37 The collection of revenue was greatly facilitated by 1) the location of chu in the major market town of the tung, and 2) its recognized status as overseer of the affairs of the tung, with the right to petition the magistrate in the name of the inhabitants.38 After collection of the land tax, a certain amount was extracted and set aside as public funds to meet "fixed costs." For extraordinary expenses, such as those incurred by the resistance campaign, the taxlord-gentry would either petition the magistrate to temporarily forego collection of the land tax, or would levy supplementary taxes of their own on the established rent and tax quotas of villages within the tung.39 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND CEREMONIAL LIFE OF TWO MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES IN HOI-PING COUNTY, SOUTH CHINA, 1911-1949 YUEN-FONG WOON* The two villages to be discussed in this paper are: Na-loh Ts'uen (###) of Lo-yeung Heung (✯✯) and Lung-tsai She (** #) of Tsung-long Heung () both in Hoi-p'ing County (BI *) of Kwangtung Province in South China.1† Na-loh Ts'uen was a richer village and had a longer history of settlement. It was founded about 1350. This village was on the outskirt of the general area known as T'oh-fuk (4) which included four Heung—Lo-yeung, Chung-miu († $), Ling-uen (✯) and Ng-wing (). These four Heung were dominated numerically as well as economically by the Kwaan (§§) lineage,2 with its ritual centre at Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall (***) in the intermediate market-town of Che-hom (). Na-loh Tsuen itself was multi-surname: there were one hundred Kwaan families and sixty Oo (*) families in the village. Lung-tsai She was separated from T’oh-fuk by six li (two miles) and was part of Ts'ung-long Heung. Between T’oh-fuk and this village were the Oo lineage of Ue-leung Heung (f), the Chau () lineage of Hin-kong Heung (L) and the Wong () lineage of Paak-hop Heung (). The village was founded about 1500. There were about 200 inhabitants: eighteen Kwaan families, twenty Wong families and four Tang (4) families. It was not known when the Tang and the Wong came, but the Kwaan founder was Yan-waang Kung (#) who came from Na-loh some 160-170 years ago when the latter village had become over-populated. Both villages had ritual ties with the Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall at Che-hom. The Kwaan at Na-loh had an ancestral hall of its own, but the elder members went to Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall to take part in the annual rites there. The Kwaan in Lung-tsai She did not have an ancestral hall of its own, but the elders also attended rites * Dr. Woon is on the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C. † The residents of both villages were Punti speakers. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 108 YUEN-FONG WOON lineage of T'oh-fuk, the Kwaan of Lung-tsai She, whose ancestors had migrated from T'oh-fuk, came under its protective umbrella. Some of them had even succeeded in evading their head taxes through connections with the official leaders there. Thus, it was not surprising that the Kwaan in Lung-tsai She were eager to keep their separate identity by maintaining residential segregation from the Wong and the Tang while attending the annual Spring and Autumn Rites at the Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall in Che-hom. They only co-operated with the Wong and the Tang in projects of immediate concern such as irrigation and defence, since they were numerically a minority in Ts'ung-long Heung. The study of the centrifugal forces of the headquarters of higher-order and dispersed lineages on multi-surname villages in South China has been largely neglected by scholars in the field. G. W. Skinner, in his article "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China" Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV (1964-5 pp. 36-40) asserts that once segments of a lineage had moved away from the parent settlement and were attending different standard market towns, they would lose their connections with one another. The case of Lung-tsai She discussed in this paper tends to refute this argument. Despite geographical separation, the Kwaan in this village was economically, administratively and ritually still an integral part of the Kwaan lineage of T'oh-fuk until at least 1949. In Taiwan and other parts of China, where lineages were weaker, members of multi-surname villages not only had more intra-village ties, they also had more contact with and reliance on affinal and maternal kin outside the village. Intra-village quarrels were as likely to be along class lines as along lineage lines. Village temples had much more educational, economic, administrative as well as relief functions than were the case in multi-surname villages in South China. NOTES 1 Hoi-p'ing County is one hundred and four miles (290 li) southwest of Canton. Heung (Mandarin: Hsiang) was an administrative unit above the Ts'uen (: village) but below the District. There were one hundred and three Heung in Hoi-p'ing, each administered by a Heung Office since 1930. All names in this paper are in Cantonese, following the Meyer-Wempe system of transliteration. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n CEREMONIAL LIFE OF 2 MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES 109 2 The two villages described in the paper have been based on my data of the Kwaan lineage. Na-loh Ts'uen was part of Lo-yeung Heung and Lung-tsai She was part of Tsung-long Heung. The county gazetteer, K'ai-p'ing Hsien-chih (Hong Kong, 1933) provides extracts of genealogies of the Kwaan and the Oo as well as other prominent lineages of Hoi-p'ing but does not mention Na-loh Ts'uen and Lung-tsai She. The table at p. 111 shows the historical origin of the Kwaan lineage of T'oh-fuk. This account is based on personal communications from elderly informants. Again, Na-loh and Lung-tsai She were not mentioned. Much of the data used in this article was obtained from 14 Kwaan in Victoria and Vancouver, B.C. Canada 1973-74. They all came from Toh-fuk and Tsung-long areas. Of these six came from the two villages of Na-loh and Lung-tsai She as follows:- Name Birth Date Age Place of Origin Year Left Hoi-p'ing Kwaan F 1902 75 Na-loh Ts'uen 1915 Kwaan H 1911 66 Na-loh Ts'uen 1927 Kwaan I 1932 45 Na-loh Ts'uen 1953 Kwaan J 1941 36 Na-loh Ts'uen 1951 Kwaan K 1903 74 Lung-tsai She 1920 Kwaan L 1937 40 Lung-tsai She 1949 My Ph.D. thesis (Social Organization in South China 1911-1949: The Case of the Kwaan Lineage of Hoi-ping) deals with the general area.* 3 G. W. Skinner ("Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China," Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV (1964-65), 6-7, 20-31, 41-43) distinguishes between three types of periodic markets in traditional rural China: the standard market town, the intermediate market town and the central market town. The standard market town is a type of rural market which meets the normal trade needs of the peasant household. An intermediate market town serves the needs of the local elites of the standard market towns in the vicinity since it provides decorative items of quality which are inaccessible in the standard market towns. It serves as a centre for interclass dealings between the gentlemanly elite and the merchants of the market town itself. The central market town is normally situated at a strategic site in the transportation network and had important wholesale functions. 4 Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society in Fukien and Kwangtung (London, 1966, pp. 18-42) distinguishes between a localized lineage, a dispersed lineage and a higher-order lineage. A “localized” lineage denotes a group of agnates who live together in the same geographical area. The members claim to be descended from a common founder. They usually have ancestral halls to practise ancestral worship together. A "dispersed lineage" denotes two or more groups of agnates with the same surname which are separated geographically. One group has an ancestral hall to practise ancestor worship. The members of other groups do not have a hall of their own. They would go to the first group to worship because it is believed that they were originally descendants of the first group but had at some point in time moved away from the parent settlement. A "higher-order lineage" denotes two or more groups of agnates with the same surname which are separated geographically. Each group has an ancestral hall of its own but there is also a common hall comprising all the members for the performance of ancestral worship together because it is believed that they were all descended from a common founder. 5 I collected the marriage history of informants up to five generations. Whilst of interest in itself, it did not shed any light on village origins. * Now accepted for publication by the University of British Columbia Press. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 116 GREGORY E. GULDIN isolation of China. In the immediate post-1949 years little contact (aside from intermittent remittances channeled through Hong Kong) between Southern Fujianese and their mostly male kinsmen in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia was possible, causing great human and economic hardship. When China relaxed her emigration policy following the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955, however, thousands upon thousands of Fujianese women and children began arriving (illegally) in Hong Kong with the intent not of going to the Philippines or elsewhere to join their overseas husbands and fathers but merely to rendezvous with them in Hong Kong. Weeks and months, if not a year or two, though were often necessary to make the arrangements to bypass or overcome Filipino travel restrictions. For many Fujianese their "temporary" stay in Hong Kong turned first indefinite and then permanent as they both adjusted to Hong Kong life and sought ethnic comfort in the Fujianese community. Sai Ying Poon, the early destination of nearly all these Fujianese, could not accommodate all these newcomers into its crumbling and dilapidated housing. As the immigrative stream swelled in the early 1960s, Sai Ying Poon rents soared and more and more Fujianese began to settle directly in North Point which, we may recall, was at that time experiencing a housing boom and a drop in rents. North Point's attractions to these Fujianese also included a population who could speak Mandarin, the Chinese lingua franca, as well as a middle-class ambience which accorded well with the orientations of many of the more bourgeois, wealthier and overseas-related Fujianese. Although Fujianese emigration to Hong Kong slowed to a trickle during the Cultural Revolution in China (1965-1969), North Point continued to attract residents from Sai Ying Poon and by the end of the decade had far surpassed it as the center of Southern Fujianese life in Hong Kong. The resumption of legal emigration from Fujian in 1972 has helped spur the growth of satellite Fujianese communities in nearby Quarry Bay and across the harbor in Hung Hom, To Kwa Wan and Kwun Tong but the hub of the Fujianese settlement in Hong Kong has remained in North Point. Little Fujian as Sub-Neighborhood The postwar expansion of North Point has thus been quite swift, with the peak population increase corresponding roughly to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n % of Total HK Population 118 GREGORY E. GULDIN Fig. 3-Hong Kong and North Point Population by Place of Origin—19758 Place of Origin % of North Point Population % of Total HK Population Guang Zhou area 54% 46% Sae Yup 17% ... 82% 16% 69% Hong Kong, Macao area 5% ... Guangdongese9 1% ... Guangdongese9 ... Elsewhere in Guangdong 6% 6% Chao Zhou 10% 5% Shanghaiese (including Jiangsu and Zhejiang prov.) 3% 6% Fujianese 3% 18% Northern and Central Chinese (excluding Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and Shanghai) 1% 1% Others 2% 1% TOTAL 100% 100% Chinese led to the further expansion of the Fujianese sub-neighborhood across Tong Shui Road for the first time. Since then Little Fujian's explosive growth has slackened a bit although the last decade or so has seen the Fujianese move a block or two further east across Quarry Bay. This intra-North Point history makes today's ethnic settlement pattern understandable. Figure 1 maps out the spatial distribution of both Fujianese and Shanghaiese in North Point and indicates the location of today's Little Fujian sub-neighborhood as well as the boundaries of the 1950s Little Shanghai area. As suggested by the over-lapping boundaries, Little Fujian has supplanted Little Shanghai as North Point's major sub-neighborhood. Indeed, we can even go so far as to maintain that Little Shanghai no longer exists in North Point as a distinct sub-neighborhood, although a diminished and outwardly directed sense of Shanghaiese community does persist. There are more to these ethnic enclaves though than a few street blocks; equally important are the social ties that bind a community together. Since the Shanghaiese community no longer centers in North Point let us turn to the Fujianese community of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n "LITTLE FUJIAN (Fukien)" 121 indirect though that power may be. In general, though, and especially when compared to other Chinese "overseas" communities, neither the Commercial nor the Province Association dominates the Fujianese community. Little Fujian as Community: The Social Networks Ethnicity and community are also expressed in less formally structured ways than associations and organizations. Informal patterns of economic, religious and social behavior have arisen and guide life in Little Fujian to a significant degree. Of these three areas perhaps it is the economic and business aspects of Little Fujian that are most visible to outsiders, more visible because they are public. In the retail "Fujianese markets" of Chun Yeung and Mercury Streets, Little Fujian as a sub-neighborhood intersects with Little Fujian as social community. Each market street is located along an artery of the Fujianese sub-neighborhood and caters to Fujianese tastes in everything from food to jewellery to clothes. Non-Fujianese (Guangdongese, Chau Zhou and/or Shanghaiese) markets adjoin these Fujianese business areas but are socially as well as physically distinct; most Fujianese women prefer to shop on Chun Yeung or Mercury Street where they can be sure of finding people who sell Fujianese specialties prepared in the right manner and who will bargain with them in a familiar tongue. To younger Fujianese, though, language is not so great a barrier and they will often just as comfortably shop on the adjoining but “Fujianese-less” markets of Marble Road or elsewhere in search of a bargain. Yet even for these frugal shoppers the buying habits of childhood and the chance to meet Fujianese friends pulls them repeatedly back to Chun Yeung and Mercury Streets to buy things Fujianese style. As with business, so too has religion developed along ethnic lines in North Point.12 Twenty years ago there were no specifically Fujianese Buddhist temples in North Point and early arrivals frequented the one convenient temple in the area: the predominantly Guangdongese Yuet Fei temple on Electric Road.* During the first decade of Fujianese settlement in North Point the percentage * The origins of this temple are given in a Hong Kong Government file (Secretariat for Chinese Affairs 1/631/1948) which contains a minute dated 3rd April 1948 by the then Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Mr. R. R. Todd: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n CHEUNG CHOW – LONG ISLAND W. J. HINTON, M.A.* The island we are to describe is not the Long Island of New York society but another Long Island altogether, in the latitude of Havannah, and in the South China Sea called Dumb-bell Island in Hongkong, it is Cheung Chow to some eight thousand souls, three thousand ashore and five thousand afloat, who live there, or thereabouts on the fishing grounds. The little community is small enough to be understood by sympathetic observer, and interesting enough to merit description in some detail. So in the hope that some better qualified observer will be provoked to come forward and take up the tale, we will attempt a description. As to geography: the place lies in that archipelago which stretches across the mouth of the Canton River between Hongkong and the four hundred year old settlement of Macao. The River boats which ply between those towns pass by it disdainfully, or perhaps the police fear that if they touched there the problem of smuggling, already formidable would become altogether unmanageable. For they seem to be inveterate smugglers, these Cheung Chow fishermen like fishermen elsewhere. Cheung Chow is quite close to Hongkong, about one hour's steaming by launch, and on clear days the sails of its anchored junks are visible over the low spit of sand which forms the handle of the "dumb-bell" from Cheung Chow and Hongkong is a glorious sight, by day a long line of high ridges above which the clouds tower and at night a dim mass on which the mountain roads prick out white festoons and necklaces of light, still and shining above the winking beacon of Green Island. Across that dozen miles of sea a small ferryboat like a slow shuttle carries a slender thread of communication six times in the day. The Police can talk by wireless with their waiting launches in Hongkong, and for the unhurried there are the junks and sampans. This article is reprinted from the Hongkong University Journal of Law and Commerce, Vol. II, April 1929, No. 1. It was brought to the Editor's attention by Dr. Peter Wesley-Smith. * The author served the University of Hong Kong first as Registrar 1912-13, then as Professor of Economics and thrice as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, until his resignation to take up a post in England in 1929 ---- Ed. ================================================================================ 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 171 Higher up the mountain, there were those who were content with more modest quarters. Pre-war, Heywood found such a retreat beside some large rocks high on the mountain. Keeping always to the west of the stream, you will reach a secluded upper valley where there is a Buddhist settlement. Two of the charming and courteous people of this place once showed me round their home, which consisted of a cave under a huge overhanging boulder. A thatched porch shaded the wayfarer as he sat drank tea (and how very refreshing Chinese tea can be when you are out walking). Inside was the living room with beds and a table and a little shrine, all kept spotlessly clean, and down below was an underground kitchen, supplied with a clear trickle of water through a chink in the rocks." In contrast to these newer institutions there is at least one very old Buddhist nunnery, the Ling Wan Chi (†). This is stated to be a fifteen-century foundation, associated with the powerful family of Tang of Kam Tin in the New Territories (JHKBRAS 13 (1973): 128-9). 10. On all sides of the mountain, these earlier institutions have now been joined by a large number of smaller, more modest foundations, some in their own houses, others in rented accommodation. These, on the Tsuen Wan side, are largely Buddhist and most of them are intended for women, many of whom are retired domestic servants ending their lives in quiet. The outside and refugee origin of some of these persons is reflected in the names of their halls. A modest temporary structure in Lo Wai is named for the famous old Wing Ning hall (永寧堂) in Toi Shan city (台山城), in existence long before it became a county seat, as the owner told me proudly, whilst a larger pre-war hall is named Tung Po To, the 'Po To isle in the East' (=Kwangtung) after its founder's home monastery in Po To Island in the Yangtse, one of the homes of Chinese Buddhism.* Myths and Legends 11. An account of this region written nearly 120 years ago by Rudolf Krone, a German protestant missionary of the Rhenish Mission, states, * For a more famous sister, the 'Po To in the South' situated at Amoy in the Fukien province see Pitcher: 78 and illustration at 161. ================================================================================ 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 188 B. THE WAR 1. Contestants NOTES AND QUERIES (a) The Shing Mun villages, 8 in number and with a population of about 855 in 1928 when they were removed to build the Shing Mun Reservoir.1 (b) The Tsuen Wan villages, some 12 in number with an estimated population of around 1500 in 1900. These villages are still in existence although some of them have been resited because of recent development.2 All these villagers were Hakka Chinese, so that the struggle was between persons of the same language group. Moreover, since their settlement in these locations in the 17th and 18th centuries, the villagers had given and taken their womenfolk in marriage through many generations, and so were closely related and acquainted with each other. Also, the Shing Mun villagers did at least part of their marketing in Tsuen Wan.4 2. Time The war lasted for three years at the beginning of the T'ung-chih reign of the Ch'ing Dynasty, between 1862-1864. 3. Reasons for the Struggle The tablet in the Tsuen Wan Tin Hau Temple dated in the 1930s and written by a local Ch'ing scholar-gentry holding the first (hsiu ts'ai) degrees is not very revealing. It merely says that at the time in question law and order was lax and barbaric customs preva3vailed, so that village feuds revived and a fight with weapons ensued between the Shing Mun and Tsuen Wan villages. By implication, the Shing Mun people were, of course, in the wrong. The record continues: "being outnumbered our boundaries were constantly invaded and our villages were almost reduced to ruins." Dr. Betsy Johnson, who took notes on the subject in 1967-68, from one old Tsuen Wan villager whose grandfather had taken part in the struggle, learned that relations with Shing Mun were not very good before the war. However, according to him, it began over a third party, a small hill village in the present Kowloon reservoir area east of Shing Mun which had amicable ties with Tsuen Wan. The old man continued, 'Once some...' ================================================================================ 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 189 young people from Shing Mun planned to take property from Shek Lei Pui and they sent a note saying when they would come and what they wanted. Shek Lei Pui was very frightened. So some went to Tsuen Wan and told them. Sixty or 80 young men got together and hid around Shek Lei Pui and waited for the robbers. More than ten robbers came and were caught. The people took them to Tsuen Wan but didn't want to kill them. Finally, they put them in a big boat and took them to Nam Tau. But at Kap Shui Mun, one prisoner stabbed a Tsuen Wan man in the leg and escaped, and then swam to shore. They took the rest to Nam Tau. The escaped man went back to Shing Mun and said all the prisoners had been killed except himself. The people of Shing Mun were very angry and attacked Shek Lei Pui with weapons. They beat them because they gave no warning, and took all their property. But some Shek Lei Pui people escaped to Tsuen Wan and said the rest were all killed. Then more than 200 Tsuen Wan natives got together and marched to Shing Mun and fought there. The Shing Mun story, on the other hand, is quite different. It blames the war on the jealousy of the Tsuen Wan villages, especially Lo Wai, whose people tried to levy charges on Shing Mun persons passing through their territory to sell pineapples in Tsuen Wan Market. Pineapples were a prominent local product and said to be quite lucrative. There may well be something in the Tsuen Wan version, however, because a local lineage now living in Middle Kwai Chung had formerly lived in the hills to the north east in a place called Lan Nai Tong (MW). An 80-year-old man told me that they left there because of attacks from Shing Mun ‘about a hundred years ago' and settled in a less remote and exposed position, near existing villages in Kwai Chung. He also took me to the site of the old settlement, though it is overgrown with tree plantations and there is nothing to see there other than some old graves of his lineage and some of their abandoned paddy fields. The "Shek Lei Pui” of the story may well relate to their long-deserted and now little-known settlement, since it is the area place name as well as that of another village. * I have since received the written account reproduced below at Pp 197-198. ================================================================================ 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 191 spot in the fields near Kam Tin, beside one of the new villages built by the Shing Mun people with funds provided by the Hong Kong Government. This temple (Plate 40) contains a tablet bearing the names of 17 Shing Mun villagers who died in the struggle.16 (Plate 41). (b) Tsuen Wan The Tin Hau Temple, which likewise is the community temple for the Tsuen Wan villagers, also contains a tablet to the 17 Tsuen Wan villagers who died in the war. (Plate 42). We shall also see the memorial recording the war according to the Tsuen Wan viewpoint. (c) One of the local weapons, estimated to be over 100 years old, and likely to have been in use at the time, is preserved in Muk Min Ha Village, one of the Tsuen Wan group, and I have permission to bring it with me on the visit. In the quaint phraseology of the past it is of the type known locally as 'Little Duck-bill', no doubt on account of its shape. (Plate 43),17 7. Comment This episode in local history is interesting for several reasons: (a) It took place between persons of the same language group. (b) All the contesting villages were small and their inhabitants closely related by intermarriage and other links over the preceding one to two hundred years of local settlement. (c) The Shing Mun villages were known locally as the Pak Heung18 or 8 Villages. Their one major and several minor lineages banded together to oppose Tsuen Wan. The latter, even more diversely settled than Shing Mun, also closed ranks to deal with the enemy. (d) It was purely a local struggle: no outside factors or participants were seemingly involved, other than the group from the other Pat Heung. (e) The district magistrate and local military forces apparently did not interpose themselves between the contestants: at least not on the local memory of these events. (f) Such incidents throw light on the war-like nature of local villagers, and the obligations of lineage groups to each other in offence and defence: they are typical of the Hong Kong region and other areas of S.E. China at this time. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 198 NOTES AND QUERIES In that night, strange happenings occurred. Chickens crowed and dogs barked. When the village watchman searched the area for the cause, he discovered to his surprise two tiger-like animals crawling about. He immediately fired a shot at them. One of the 'creatures' was hit and its mate came to the rescue. The two fled, and showed themselves to be human beings! The AU-YEUNGs were convinced that these two persons were thieves and wondered from where they had come. On the next day, the Shing Mun villagers declared war on the AU-YEUNGs, intending to avenge the wounding of their fellow villagers. It was then revealed that the two night intruders were Shing Mun people who had come to steal, probably aiming at the belongings of the two brothers who had just returned from abroad. When the Shing Mun villagers approached the entrance of the AU-YEUNGs' village, they recklessly opened fire. The AU-YEUNGs, however, were not to be so easily daunted: they returned the fire. But being gradually outnumbered and overpowered by Shing Mun invaders, the AU-YEUNGs desperately enlisted the support of villagers of Lo Wai, Kwan Mun Hau, and Shek Lei Pui who readily offered help. The war dragged on for nearly three years and was finally settled by a villager from Kwan Mun Hau. Having served in the army for some time in the past, he decided to borrow two cannons to blow up Shing Mun Village. When the Shing Mun villagers learned this, they hastily asked for peace. Seeing that the war had caused tremendous loss to both parties, the AU-YEUNGs agreed to settle the matter without conditions. The war ended up with a death toll of about thirty on Shing Mun side and over ten on the other side.* From this war, the AU-YEUNGs realised that the distance between them and other friendly villagers was too great and, fearing that the terrible experience might be repeated in the future, they eventually migrated to Chung Kwai Chung to re-establish their village. There they named their new settlement Wai Kek Village (*) and continued their farming livelihood by opening up barren hills and tilling the land. * It will be noted that the numbers killed are not accurately stated, and that the way in which the war was ended does not tally with the version given at p. 190. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 204 NOTES AND QUERIES as "land-holding corporations" and are treated as such, descent data being regarded essentially as secondary particulars. 6. Although the implications of this statement for the general theory of unilineal descent groups have largely been ignored, the observation is borne out by a study of the ethnographic and historical data concerning the Kam Tin Tangs. The elders classify no fewer than four ancestors as hoi chuk cho, and, according to them, honor all four with essentially the same ritual obligations. These ancestors [1) Tang Hon Fat (**), 2) Tang Foo (##), 3) Tang Yuen Leung (*), 4) Tang Hung Yee (###)] are central pivots around which much of the oral and written history revolve; yet, as an investigation of the genealogy (##) kept by the elders reveals, long spells of "historical time" and interrupted residence separate them one from another, a disturbing fact which has, in the past, generated considerable debate on their individual legitimacies. 7. Sung Hok Pang* mentions a debate, recorded in an early Kam Tin genealogy during the Shing Fa () years of the Ming dynasty, concerning whether Tang Hon Fat ever actually visited Kam Tin at all. Elders maintain that this debate is still very much alive. 8. The debate concerning the founding of Sham Tin, i.e., whether Tang Hon Fat or Tang Foo founded the Tang settlement, is perhaps understandable when we realize the striking similarities in the biographies of the two men. Tang Hon Fat settled, it is said, in the vicinity of Sham Tin at a place called Kwai Kok Shan (± A L), some time towards the end of the tenth century A.D. There is speculation that he constructed the Hung Shing Kung (†), a temple still intact in Pak Pin (at) Village. He was a government officer, shing mo long (#4), from Kiangsi (31), Kat Shui Yuen (##), Pak Sha Tsuen village (#). The Nam Yeung Tang genealogy (✯✯✯✯✯), held by the Ping Shan Tangs, credits him with being the first settler. The Kam Tin Tangs disagree, placing most of the credit on his great-grandson, Tang Foo. 9. Tang Foo was also a high official of the Sung Dynasty (holder of the chin shih (+) degree and county magistrate of Yeung Chun (**)). He, too, is supposed to have settled at Kwai... See Mr. Kamm's Essay I, f.n. 20 and Essay II, f.n. 21. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 206 NOTES AND QUERIES a temple outside Tung Kwun city whose upkeep and ritual observances were financed by large joint landed estates. 14. Yeung-leung's son, Tsz-ming (8) was married off, albeit unwittingly, to a princess of the Sung Dynasty. I have little to add here that Sung and O'Dwyer do not mention, but I believe it is important to stress that this tale (popularly known as the Wong Ku (*) story) served the important function, at least prior to the 1930's, of defining Tangs relative to outsiders (the powers-that-be) and locals (especially surrounding great and small lineages). 14. a. The San On gazetteer (a rare copy of which exists in the Fung Ping Shan Library of Hong Kong University), compiled in 1819, gives the tale in complete detail. 14. b. The Rev. Krone's "A Notice of the Sanon District," published in the Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1859, contains the following passage: "The inhabitants of a pretty little village on Deep Bay called “Kam-Tin”... also trace their origin up to the Sung dynasty. A high mandarin, they say, of the name of Tung, came to San On from the interior of China, and was so much pleased with the county around Deep Bay, that he settled down and made himself very popular, by giving gratuitous instruction. The grandson of this man having done some meritorious service to the State, the emperor Ko-tsung of the Sung dynasty, gave him his daughter in marriage.' 14. c. It will also be noted that the plaque commemorating the return of the iron gates to Kat Hing Wai makes especial reference to the tale. Several elders of neighboring villages, when asked why the Tangs were so powerful as to be able to concentrate five wais (walled villages) in the district, cited this imperial kinship link. 15. The second major migratory movement of the Tangs occurred during the generation of Wong Ku's sons. Lam (*) settled at Lung Kwat Tau (##), Kei (*) settled in Tung Kwun at Shek Tseng &✯✯, Wai (*) established the Tang branch-settlement at Tai Po Tau (†). Chi (#) remained in Sham Tin. [Chi's grandson Chu-on (₫) established the Ha Tsuen lineage-village.] * Reprinted in JHKBRAS 7(1967). See p.134. † See P. Wesley-Smith's article in JHKBRAS 13, 1973: 41-44. ================================================================================ 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 209 20. b. Structure B. An organic/alliance model which stresses relationships of an egalitarian, contractual nature. Power is not usurped, but "won" through cooperation/conflict of equals. This structure, represented prior to 1898 by the Tung (董) system [especially the Tai Ping Kuk (太平局) of Sham Chun] has become the dominant polar type of the modern New Territories (examples: The Yuen Long Hop Yick Co. and The Tai Po Yeuk alliances, which dominate local markets to the exclusion of the Tangs; these alliances only become possible with the cooperation of Hakka and Punti, great clan and small clan alike.). 20. c. Both these structures (ideal types) existed as systems of unofficial control in Southern San On prior to British occupation. 21. The period dating from the beginning of Suen Tak (宣德) to the end of Sing Fa (成化) reigns of the Ming Dynasty, roughly from 1426-1487 A.D., was a period of great prosperity and expansion for the Kam Tin Tangs. 21. a. During this period, the Tangs moved out of their "neighborhood" of Sham Tin and took over complete dominance of the settlement. We can think of the settlement at this time as being a multi-lineage settlement, with at least three surnames present, Tangs, Lais (黎) and Shams (沈). The Tangs apparently drove out the Lais (turning them into "sai chuk") and enslaved the Shams (as "sai-man"). How they accomplished this is related in the Lai vs. Tang tale transcribed and appended below.* 21. b. The members of the 2nd fong (descendants of Hung-yi's 2nd son) constructed Ying Lung Wai (應龍圍), and from this wai they controlled the access to the Pat Heung (八鄉) valley and eventually established Yuen Long Old Market. 21. c. The building of Ling Wan Tsz (靈雲寺) at the head of Pat Heung valley can be viewed as part of the general process of expansion by which the Tangs gained control of the entire valley [that area now included in Demarcation Districts nos. 103, 106, 107, 109, 113]. A Tong (堂) was established to finance the upkeep of the temple, to which the Kam Tin Tangs contributed up to the early years of the Republic. The nuns continue to perform important * Not available. † Demarcation Districts are survey districts, the sheets and registers pertaining thereto being kept in the District Land Offices of the New Territories Administration. Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 224 NOTES AND QUERIES ment. Here is also a letter from an army doctor, which is as follows: Dear Sir, my regiment stayed in Pakhoi. The officers and soldiers were not accustomed to this new place, therefore most of them became sick. Fortunately, the doctor has the heart of Jesus and gave us treatment free of charge, so I have the honour to write and thank you. Since Sept. 1938, I have been acting again as Customs Medical officer. I have also been the only doctor for the hospital and Leper Settlement about 3 miles away, and I would like to point out that without the self-sacrificing help of the hospital staff, I could never have been able to fulfil this work. We were most thankful for all the help Bishop Hall gave us through the British Relief Council, and we were also most grateful for all the help and inspiration from Deaconess Vincent, who was with us for 7 months, and are glad to welcome Miss Bradley, who is as eager and successful in the Maternity and Hospital work as Matron and interpreter, as in her pastoral work among the lepers. On March 6th, Bishop Hall paid us a visit on his way to Kunming; we were very glad to see him, and although his visit was short, it proved a great blessing both spiritually & practically. Our hearts are full of gratitude and thanks to God for the help we have received in so many ways through many people, both Chinese and foreigners. Pakhoi, August 19th, 1939. Po Yan Hospital. After nearly 3 months of relative quietness, with only occasional alarms and machine-gun skirmishes with planes on their way or from the scene of real activity, we began to think that we were safe and quiet again. On the 15th of July, some of the hospital's staff went down to the beach for a bathe in the late afternoon. We had not been there long, however, before the alarm signal sounded in the town. Two planes came up over the horizon very quickly, and before we could get ashore, they were flying overhead. Their real object of attack was a group of large fishing junks lying about 200 yards away, but it was unpleasantly near to us, and we were forced to take cover under the wooden frame of the diving board until the worst was over; some of the swimmers had managed to get ashore in time and took refuge in the bathing house. On the 14th of August, we had a Page 240 Page 241 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 86 EUGENE COOPER mined much of the basis for its existence independent of the nationalist carpenters' union. What was in the early 1950's an extremely sharp distinction between workers in teak/camphorwood as opposed to those in rosewood has lost its currency today. The demand for teak/camphorwood products has declined, brought about largely by the decreasing purchasing power abroad of the American dollar, and until 1972 the increasing value of the Japanese yen. The Japanese preference for products of rosewood created a situation in which many workers in the teak/camphorwood unions who had previously never worked in anything but teak and camphorwood began to take up rosewood carving for the first time in rather large numbers. The influence of the Woodwork Carvers' Union among rosewood workers has grown in proportion to that change and, as mentioned, there is now a movement in progress to amalgamate the Woodwork Carvers' Union and the left wing Rosewood Workers' Union, the latter being the junior partner in numbers. In any event, it should be clear that the divisions of the labor force that Ch'en Ta described as characteristic of Chinese industry in the 1920's were certainly at work in the labor force of the post war art carved furniture industry in Hong Kong. The traditional divisions of the labor force, however, had become the vehicle by means of which modern political ideologies were expressed. Traditional parochialism had become distilled into a politically more volatile essence. The first real test of strength between labor and capital occurred in 1960 when workers went out on strike for higher wages. 1960 had marked the climax of economic success and accumulation of capital in the art carved furniture industry in its period of “manufacture", and initiated a period in which strikes occurred with greater regularity, as competing unions came to demand a greater share of the industry's prosperity. The political divisions of the labor force which were to disrupt the unity of labor in its dealings with capital for the next ten years were now manifest. Communist and nationalist unions carried on separate negotiations. Despite the fact that the declared membership in the communist Woodwork Carvers' Union was greater than the combined total of workers in both the nationalist teak/camphorwood unions, in 1960 it was the numerically inferior nationalist forces which held out longer for a slightly better settlement. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 146 C. MARTIN WILBUR to such matters as the dates for village fairs, the mutual protection of crops, and the like. The elders of the village are largely responsible for inter-village relations. One of their primary duties is to uphold the "face" of the village in its district. Many village improvements find their origin almost entirely in this desire to outshine neighboring villages in material ways. Temples which cannot be afforded and markets which are not needed are often constructed in a spirit of rivalry. Likewise "face" affords an impetus to scholarship, every village being extremely proud of its learned men, and their achievements. Indeed, in Phenix village the progress of the students of the village, even when they are away in middle school or college, is the solicitous concern of the whole group.1 Whenever a member or group in a village becomes involved with another village or members of it, the matter is thought to be the concern of the village elders. Every contact is a potential conflict, and the responsibility for such disturbances will fall upon the heads of the leaders. For this reason, quarrels, law suits or sales of property which involve outsiders come under the supervision of the elders of both groups. This system has the advantage of decreasing the number of situations which would of necessity go to the magistral courts, lacking any other machinery for settlement. The village elders are in some degree responsible for the behavior of members of their village even when these folk are in town, or in a neighboring village. If trouble arises during such an occasion, the offending member may be punished by the village court, while redress will be made through the agency of the respective village temples. In the same way, strangers in a village, if they happen to be ill-treated by the natives, may go to the temple and demand satisfaction. Thus it will be seen that in a wider range of relationships than the village itself, but still through the familistic, customary and traditional methods, government entirely divorced from the central system is maintained. II The relations between the village and the central government are normally very slight. The two primary interests of the government 1 Kulp, Daniel H.; Phenix Village, p. 125. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 148 C. MARTIN WILBUR event of threatening floods to repair embankments.1 Taxation, the primary interest of the government, is also carried out with the help of the Ti-pao. This individual is supposed to know all about every bit of land owned by the members of his village, and the exact tax set upon it. This is no easy matter since most farmers own many small bits of land scattered hit-or-miss over the countryside. Under the Ch'ing dynasty the land tax was set for all time in 1713.2 This does not mean that in reality taxes did not increase steadily, for the burdens seem constantly to be getting heavier. This increase was affected by several means. In the first place the permanent settlement takes no account of the cost of collection. This cost is a matter of yearly battle between the collector and the land owners; but once a precedent is set it becomes an accepted part of the tax thereafter, and is merely the starting basis on which further additions will be placed. A second manner in which accretions are made rests on the fact that originally all or part of the tax was to be paid in kind. The magistrate, however, often demands a cash settlement, and places the conversion rate well above the market price of grain. Another method is for the magistrate arbitrarily to fix the conversion rate between cash-coin and the tael at a point highly unfair to the land owner who has only cash-coin to pay in. By these and other devices Morse reports that the permanently settled land tax of 1713 is often increased to over five times the statutory amount.3 The Ta Ch'ing Lü Li (׆†##1) describes the correct machinery of collection as follows: [ Jamieson, George; Chinese Family and Commercial Law, p. 72. A good account of the modern working of a modified form of corvée is found in Smith, Arthur H.; Village Life in China, p. 230-231. Also, Boulais; op. cit., p. 161-162, 181-185, 213-214. 2 Morse, Hosea B.; The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, p. 86. (Jamieson; op. cit., p. 94, wrongly gives 1711 as the date of permanent settlement, but this is the date of the census which was made the basis for taxation.) This permanent settlement had several important results. In the first place, it practically did away with the old method of taking the census of the number of people liable to a poll tax, and led to the establishment of modern census taking of the whole population, as started under Ch'ien Lung. Secondly, the establishment of an immutable poll-tax led to its amalgamation with the land tax for ease and saving in collection. Huang, Han Liang; The Land Tax in China, p. 99-100. 3 Morse, op. cit., p. 87. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 168 C. MARTIN WILBUR Su, Sing Ging; The Chinese Family System. New York, International Press, 1922. Tang, Chi-yu; An Economic Study of Chinese Agriculture. No place, no pub., 1924. (Cornell University Ph.D. Thesis.) Tayler, J. B.; See: Malone, C. B., and Tayler, J. B. Tsu, Yu-yue; The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy; a Study in Mutual Aid. New York, Columbia, 1912. Tyau, Min-ch'ien (Ed); Two Years of Nationalist China. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1930. Werner, E. T. C.; China of the Chinese. London, Pitman, 1920. Werner, E. T. C.; Descriptive Sociology: or Groups of Sociological Facts, Classified and Arranged by Herbert Spencer. Chinese; Compiled and Abstracted upon the Plan Organized by Herbert Spencer. London, Williams and Norgate, 1910. (Folio no. 9 of series). Wilhelm, Richard; A Short History of Chinese Civilization. (Translated by Joan Joshua). New York, Viking, 1929. Williams, Edward T.; China Yesterday and Today. New York, Crowell, 1923. Williams, Edward T.; A Short History of China. New York, Harpers, 1928. Yen, James Y. C.; New Citizens for China. No place, Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement, 1929 (Reprint. Yale Review, vol. 18, No. 2) II. USEFUL WORKS NOT CITED. Brenan, Bryon; "The Office of District Magistrate in China" (Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 32, 1897-98, p. 36-65). Chen, Ta; "Socio-economic Conditions in Two Chinese Villages” (Chinese Economic Monthly, vol. 2, no. 5, 1925, p. 11-23). Chiao, C. M. and Buck, John L.; "The Composition and Growth of Population Groups in China" (Chinese Economic Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, 1928, p. 219-235), "Chinese Clans and Their Customs" (Chinese and Japanese Repository, vol. 3, no. 23, 1865, p. 281-284). Dickinson, Jean; Observations on the Social Life of a North China Village. (Chien Ying, Wu Ching Hsien) Oct.-Dec. 1924. Peking, Yenching, no date. Fang, Fu-an; Chinese Labour; an Economic and Statistical Survey of the Labour Conditions and Labour Movement in China. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1931. Gamble, Sidney D., and Burgess, John S.; Peking; a Social Survey. New York, Doran, 1921. Halhoun, Gustov; "Contributions to the History of Clan Settlement in Ancient China” (Asia Major, vol. 1, 1924, p. 76-111, 587-623). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 NOTES AND QUERIES 209 NOTES 1 Ip Lam-fung's Legends of Cheung Po-tsai. 2 Lo Hsiang-lin's Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Chapter 7. 3 'Ching Hoi Fan Kee', recorded in Chapter 33 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi. 4 'Ching Hoi Fan Kee' #2, recorded in Chapter 33 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi. 5 Yik Shan, General of Border Pacification, by Imperial Appointment before 1841. 6 Choi Sheung-ah, Minister of Constant Support from the 21st year to the 25th year of Tao Kang (1841-1845). 7 Kay Kung, Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi from the 21st year to the 23rd year of Tao Kang (1841-1843), 8 Leung Po-shcung, Governor of Kwangtung from the 21st year to the 22nd year of Tao Kang (1841-1842), Hong Kong, March 1979. ANTHONY K.K. SIU THE FAT TONG MUN FORT (OR THE TUNG LUNG FORT) Fat Tong Mun ¶ is a main waterway which lies to the east of Hong Kong. The north part is occupied by the peninsula of the Tin Ha Shan 田下山半岛, known as the North Fat Tong 北佛堂; and the South Fat Tong is an island called the Tung Lung Island today. It is the main waterway for entering Canton (Kwongchow). During the early Ch'ing Dynasty, a fort known as the Fat Tong Mun Fort was erected on the south Fat Tong. We now call the fort 'the Tung Lung Fort', after its present name. The fort lies on the NW of the island; on a promontory, with cliffs facing north, south and east. To the west, the promontory slopes gently towards the post-war Nam Tong village settlement, with paths linking the fort with the village. The fort occupies an area of about two thousand square feet. It is formed by four rubble walls, about eight feet high. It has an entrance which faces north. According to Mr. JAO Tsyng-i's record, the arch of the entrance could still be seen during his visit to the The author's photographs illustrating this note are at Plates 41-42. Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45 15 urgent consent of the United States Chiefs of Staff to detach a British naval force from the British Pacific Fleet to accept Japan's surrender and assume full powers of military administration in the colony.63 The Japanese accepted defeat on 14 August. However, the British Pacific Fleet assigned for service at Hong Kong, under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt, did not arrive until 30 August. During this interval of a fortnight, the question of Hong Kong sorely tried the British government and placed the United States government in an uncomfortable position. Hong Kong again became a serious point of contention between Britain and China. This time the argument was not whose sovereignty was to be set up but who was to receive Japan's surrender there. Despite the assurances given by Chiang Kai-shek on 16 August, and repeated on 24 August, that China had "no territorial ambitions" in Hong Kong and regarded it "as a matter which would require eventual settlement through diplomatic channel", the British Foreign and Colonial Offices insisted that Sir Cecil Harcourt receive Japan's surrender on behalf of Britain by virtue of her sovereignty over Hong Kong.64 The prime minister, now C.R. Attlee, appealed to the American president for assistance. Fortunately for Britain, Truman, who had assumed the presidency on Roosevelt's death in April, was in favour of a cautious policy. While being conscious of his predecessor's views regarding the future status of Hong Kong, he, however, decided to adhere to the "recognition of the established rights", although he told both Britain and China that such recognition "did not in any way represent U.S. views regarding the future status of Hong Kong." General Douglas MacArthur was therefore instructed to arrange for the surrender of Hong Kong to the British commander.65 Again fortunately for Britain, MacArthur was known for "his support for the cause of the British Empire in the Far East." In fact in October 1944 he had specifically expressed that he "fully appreciated the need for British forces to recapture Hong Kong."66 Chiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, insisted on his right to accept Japan's surrender at Hong Kong as commander-in-chief of the China theatre. He was therefore most distressed by Truman's agreement with the British. To avoid embarrassing Truman, Chiang now suggested that the Japanese forces in Hong Kong should surrender to his representative in a ceremony in which both ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45 7 could not refuse point blank either because, significantly, no American support could be expected in taking this stand, and the Chinese were likely to refuse to sign the treaty under the circumstances. The only alternative left was to endeavour to obtain postponement of the question by using the formula laid down by, surprisingly, the Colonial Office for the future status of Hong Kong earlier in August: "should the post-war reconstruction of the Far East to be undertaken jointly by all the United Nations require special contributions from Hong Kong, the British government would not 'regard the maintenance of British sovereignty over the Colony [here applied only to the New Territories] as a matter beyond the scope of... discussion." Such, plus the argument that the New Territories were leased territories and therefore unrelated to the question of extraterritoriality, was the British reply to the Chinese at the beginning of December,28 By mid-December, all outstanding obstacles in the American-Chinese negotiations had been removed, but the problem over the New Territories persisted in the Anglo-Chinese talks. The Chinese would not accept a settlement which did not include the cancellation of the Kowloon lease. The United States indicated that she would sign her treaty with China on New Year's Day 1943. Obsessed with the desire to sign the Anglo-Chinese treaty simultaneously, Britain informed the Chinese government through her ambassador at Chungking that "the future of the New Territories was outside the scope of the extraterritoriality treaty, but if the Chinese government desired [my italics] that 'terms of the lease of these territories should be reconsidered'", this should be done when war was over.29 Thus the British had clearly conceded to China the initiative to raise the question in future. The Chinese, however, remained adamant. On 28 December the Foreign Office decided to omit the words "terms of" before "lease" in her statement to China, having learned earlier of the suspicion of T.V. Soong, the Chinese foreign minister, of the words in question. But it was to be Britain's very last concession, even at the risk of sacrificing the treaty as a whole.30 At the war cabinet meeting that day Eden obtained permission to ask for the support of the United States, in deference to whose opinion Britain had conceded a number of important points in her negotiations with China, as a last attempt to save the situation.31 The State Department, however, did not comply with the Foreign ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 228 BOOK REVIEWS ology and administrators in the 'Territories'. This report (which was published in full in the 1976 volume of our Journal) had a profound effect, at least in anthropology. Students began to move from archives into the field in what Freedman came to refer to as "residual China"—the New Territories and also Taiwan. It was difficult at that time, in Britain, for a variety of reasons, to obtain the necessary training in sinology for social anthropologists and so, undaunted, Freedman persuaded those who were sinologically trained to move into anthropology. One of those he drew in was Hugh Baker, well known to members for both his village study of Sheung Shui and contributions to our symposia and Journal. Freedman's Singapore, China, and New Territories studies triggered off a new era in research. The essays in this book reflect Freedman's many interests in Chinese society and point up his lively mastery of Chinese social structural problems. The book is valuable also because they are scattered over a wide range of publications, many of which are difficult to obtain for those without access to professional and academic libraries (and several are not elsewhere available in Hong Kong). Essays are grouped around five major topics, viz.: "The Chinese in Southeast Asia”; “Chinese Society in Singapore"; "Social Change in the New Territories"; "Kinship and Religion in China”; and "On the Study of Chinese Society". Several pieces deal with studies in history. Freedman was a master at finding something in documents others might scorn for their biased approach or the secondary nature of their sources. I remember him saying to me once, “any document has something new to tell you. Whether you get a new answer depends on the questions you ask it". Other pieces reflect his interests in migration and settlement of the Chinese. As the editor observes, part of the attraction of overseas Chinese to Freedman was surely the analogy with Jews (Jewish studies were in fact another of Freedman's main-line interests). Essay 4 gives a treatment of this analogy. Other essays deal with geomancy in the context of kinship; Joan associations and the handling of money; and marketing organization. Some address themselves to the sinologist, as in "What Social Science can do for Chinese Studies". One of Freedman's missions indeed was to foster better relationships between sinologists and anthropologists: two groups more known perhaps for their feuds than their friendship. He was beginning to have some considerable success. Page 255 Page 256 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 PERSISTENCE AND PRESERVATION OF HAKKA CULTURE IN URBAN SITUATIONS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS OF THE WAICHOW HAKKA IN HONG KONG JIANN HSIEH* I. INTRODUCTION In modern anthropological literature, the study of voluntary associations or common-interest associations has received much attention. A main focus of such studies is on how rural migrants to cities organize voluntary associations that facilitate adaptation to the urban situation. In a context of rapid socio-cultural change, voluntary associations constitute one means of organizing rural settlement in cities; they create new roles and relationships that serve as substitutes for the traditional institutions with which the migrants have lost touch (Banton, 1968; Kerri, 1976; Fallers, 1967; Anderson, 1971; Freedman, 1960). For example, an excellent statement of the case, provided by Kenneth Little (1974:89-90) in his study of West African urbanization, is worthy of quotation: Voluntary associations are important in this situation because they provide a link between the traditional and urban way of life... In other words, these regional associations, as "adaptive mechanisms," provide for the rural migrant a cultural bridge, conveying him from one kind of social universe to another. Although the African ethnic or regional associations emphasize tribal duties and obligations, they are more directly concerned with adapting to a Western outlook and social practices, such as dress and table manners (Little, 1965, 1974: passim). In contrast to those of the West Africans, the voluntary associations of the overseas Chinese, as I pointed out in a previous article (Hsieh: 248), are mainly based on traditional principles. The overseas Chinese modify these principles to perpetuate their particular cultures. This seems to be particularly so in the case of the Hakka. * Dr. Hsieh, whose doctorate is from Pittsburgh, is a member of the Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 PERSISTENCE & PRESERVATION OF HAKKA CULTURE (**) Chinese. 35 The present study, based on a sample of fourteen major Wai-chow (Hweichow) associations in Hong Kong, sought to: 1. Delineate the different stages in the history of the Waichow Hakkas' migration to Hong Kong in terms of their social background and settlement pattern and their influence. 2. Discuss intensively the role of the Waichow Hakkas' voluntary associations in urban situations in order to find out how the Waichow Hakkas' particular culture is perpetuated and preserved, and also to determine the obstacles which confront their associations as cultural mechanisms for perpetuating and preserving Hakka culture. To my knowledge, there are few anthropological publications concentrating on Chinese voluntary associations, especially the traditional ones, in Hong Kong. To fill this gap I selected the Waichow group and its associations for a case study. Data presented in the paper were mostly collected in the field during the academic year 1978-79. Methodologically, this study fits into what Freedman (1963:19) has called the "Chinese phase in social anthropology": in which anthropological, sociological, and historical materials and techniques are combined to provide a fairly complete picture of a complex society. In other words, the method employed relies not only on personal interviews and participant observation but also on historical documents, including association publications, local gazetteers, newspapers, government publications, and clan genealogies. Much material was gathered through open-ended interviews and conversations with association leaders and members. Since most association leaders are from China and speak Mandarin, I needed an assistant to interpret on only a few occasions. In addition, I found that both my Chinese cultural background and previous field experience working on the Hakka associations in Singapore were helpful in handling the problems in the field.2 II. THE WAICHOW HAKKA IN HONG KONG A. Migration Pattern The history of the migration of the Waichow Hakka to the Hong Kong area may be divided into three stages in terms of their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 PERSISTENCE & PRESERVATION OF HAKKA CULTURE 37 year. Their migration pattern, conditioned by their political identity and personal background, is different from the two patterns already described. On the one hand, immigrants following this last pattern have cut off contacts with their native places and cannot receive any moral or material support from their relatives in mainland China; on the other hand, unlike those who practised "chain-immigration," they could not benefit from arrangements made for them before they came to Hong Kong. These factors also determined the nature of the voluntary associations which they formed. B. Organizing Principles According to my survey, in 1979 there were forty-nine Waichow and partly Waichow voluntary associations, of which most were organized according to the traditional principles of locality, dialect, kinship, and occupation. All of these forty-nine associations may be divided into the following categories: 1. The Waichow Hakkas' associations: As the majority group of Waichow, the Hakka have established thirty voluntary associations in Hong Kong since 1947. 2. The Waichow Hoklos' associations: Nineteen Waichow associations were organized by the Hoklos (Foklos), a marginal group of Waichow, sometimes jointly incorporated with Hoklos from other prefectures. Therefore, some of the Hoklos' associations could better be designated as “joint associations." In the present study fourteen major Waichow associations are examined. Two of these nominally represent all the Waichow fellow countrymen; nine, the Waichow Hakka; and three, the Waichow Hoklos in Hong Kong. Compared to their locality or dialect associations, the Waichow Hakka in Hong Kong have few associations founded on kinship principles. This is in sharp contrast to the Hakkas' clan and surname associations which I studied in Singapore (Hsieh, 1978: 1977).5 Since immigrants from mainland China after 1949 often arrived in Hong Kong without accompanying relatives, they could maintain only very limited kinship networks in Hong Kong. Furthermore, unlike that of the Hakka who settled in the New Territories during the Ch'ing Dynasty, the settlement pattern in this case is one of dispersion rather than concentration in particular areas. In addition, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 46 JIANN HSIEH ground could no longer maintain links with their native places. Psychologically, this must have enhanced their eagerness to establish traditional associations aiming at the seeking of identification. Although mainland China is now (1980) becoming stabilized, those who had established and supported the voluntary associations still cannot return to their native places for a happy life. On the contrary, during the past years they have started their careers in Hong Kong and made a life far better than any they ever had before. As a result, their voluntary associations have become both temporary "native places" for expressing their nostalgia and communication centers for doing business. As mechanisms for perpetuating and preserving a particular culture, the Waichow Hakka associations are facing a series of problems which may handicap their further development. Problems which the informants often mentioned in interviews are the alienation of young people from the associations, the leaders' old age, the small number of members, etc. In my opinion, all these are superficial phenomena and are not essential aspects of the problem. For instance, it should be noted that the traditional Chinese associations were in any case the preserve of seniors not juniors. Moreover, as societal complexity increases, associations organized according to new principles will surely attract a large number of young people. From my point of view, the most serious problems facing the Waichow Hakka associations may be summarized as follows: 1. Because of their long history of migration, the Hakka, as a minority Chinese group among the Chinese, have had a strong sense of group solidarity. In order to adapt to a new environment effectively, they often concentrated in particular areas and maintained very clear group boundaries with other Chinese (Lo, 1933: 65). The single-surname Hakka villages set up in the New Territories during the Ch'ing Dynasty may be regarded as typical examples. However, as I pointed out before, this is not the case for the Waichow Hakka who came alone after 1949 and thus scattered everywhere in Hong Kong and Kowloon. The patterns of both migration and settlement deter them from having a full participation in association activities. In addition to their limited kinship networks and dispersed rather than nucleated settlement pattern, high physical mobility in Hong Kong also hinders a stable linkage between the association and its members and makes established ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 48 JIANN HSIEH within the Hakka group. Using the Li family in So Kwun Wat Village in the New Territories, settled by Waichow Hakka during the Ch'ing Dynasty, as an example: from their genealogy we know that the family's ancestor Shih-chuan (+) of the twenty-first generation, ancestors Tê-mao (†) and Mu-yu (**) of the twenty-second generation, and ancestor Chên-k'un (*) of the twenty-fourth generation all married women of the surname Kan from a nearby Hakka single-surname village (Li, 1957). According to an informant in So Kwun Wat village, intermarriage among the nearby Hakka villages was very common in the past. However, it is difficult for the new Hakka immigrants to keep up the practice of speech group endogamy because of their settlement pattern and other social factors. It has been pointed out by Skinner (1960:86) that whereas in Indonesia thousands of Chinese can trace back their genealogical descent for as many as twelve generations because of strict Chinese endogamy, in Thailand even fourth-generation Chinese are practically nonexistent because of rapid assimilation. As first-generation immigrants, those Waichow Hakka who came to Hong Kong after 1949 were left with no chance to continue Hakka endogamy. How then can they encourage their descendents to keep up the tradition of Hakka endogamy? The only difference between the Waichow Hakka in Hong Kong and the Chinese in Thailand is that the Waichow Hakka in Hong Kong will be incorporated into the larger Chinese society speaking the Cantonese dialect rather than a host society of foreign origin. This may be the first time that a group of Hakka, always historically a distinctive minority group in China, will be assimilated with a larger segment of other Chinese. 4. Last but not least, the split of the powerful leadership stratum into two parts led to the formation of antagonistic association clusters centered respectively on the Waichow Clansmen General Association and the Ten-Districts of Waichow Association. This in turn resulted in small and low-level associations behaving in an uncoordinated manner, sometimes even hesitating to join either side. In other words, as a group with an estimated population size of about one million, the Waichow Hakka need a central authority, similar to that of the umbrella structure of many Chinese communities in Southeast Asia (Heidhues, 1974:54), an authority which could further the integration of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 70 JOHN VILLIERS "pect our virtue". Through this gate the Chinese passed the food and other supplies needed by the inhabitants, but at other times they sealed the gate with strips of paper, allowing into China only those few Portuguese officials with authorisation and sending to Macau only customs officers. The Portuguese in Macau were first given some official recognition by the Chinese government in 1582 when the new Viceroy of Canton and Kwangsi summoned Macau's chief officials to his court. They came with 4,000 cruzados worth of presents—velvets, crystals, mirrors and so on—and were informed that foreigners could continue to inhabit Macau provided they remained subject to the laws of the Empire.10 By 1585 the settlement had acquired full city status with its own municipal council (Senado da Câmara). The Senado was dominated by the casados, Portuguese who had retired from the service of the crown, married and settled permanently in Macau. These acted not only as agents for the Chinese traders but traded on their own account in pepper, cloves, sandalwood and other goods from the Indonesian islands and financed voyages to Manila and to Japan in the so-called Great Ship from Amacon. Macau was not under royal control and was not ruled by fidalgos sent out from Portugal or Goa, so that the interests of the Portuguese government were seldom, if ever, allowed to prevail. The Crown had to be content with a share in the profits from the annual voyages that it financed and the revenues from customs, duties and license fees levied on the merchants.11 The overall command of the government of Macau was in the hands of the Captain-major of the Japan voyage, who would spend some months in Macau each year en route to Japan from Goa via Malacca—from one end of the Estado da India to the other. As the Portuguese Crown seldom got more than the commissions and port duties paid in Goa and Malacca, the Captain-major was able to amass a large fortune for himself. He was, however, only permitted to operate a single ship during his term of office so he would ensure that it was the largest ship available. This ship he would load at Goa with Gujerati cottons, chintzes and other Indian textiles, woollen and scarlet cloths, wine, glassware, crystal and Flemish clocks. He would sail with the monsoon in April or May to Malacca, where much of his cargo would be traded for Indonesian spices, camphor and sandalwood and hides from Siam. Thence he ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 72 JOHN VILLIERS legitimate trade that could be allowed to the Portuguese. Portuguese ships were indeed used both by the Chinese and Japanese for suppressing local pirates. There was keen competition among the daimyō of Kyushu to attract the Great Ship from Macau to their fiefs. In 1562 Omura Sumitada gave what amounted to extra-territorial rights to the Portuguese at Yokoseura and soon after was baptised with the name of Dom Bartholomeu. Yokoseura was however destroyed in 1564 by some anti-Christian merchants from Bungo and the Great Ship was diverted to Hirado. In 1568 Jesuit missionaries first visited Nagasaki, then a small fishing village in a wood belonging to a Christian vassal of Omura Sumitada. It provided excellent anchorage and in 1571 the Great Ship called there for the first time. From then on it was the chief port in Japan for the Macau trade and by 1580 had become a large settlement with an entirely Christian population. In that year Omura offered possession of Nagasaki to the Jesuits, reserving only the shipping dues for himself. From about 1578 the Macaonese began to make use of the Jesuit missionaries, then gaining rapidly in influence in Japan, to market their goods. As the Italian Fr. Valignano wrote to his superiors in 1580: “After the grace and favour of Goa, the greatest help we have had hitherto in securing Christians is that of the Great Ship. For as the Lords of Japan, even though they have much land, are very poor in revenue and ready money, the benefits they derive when the ships come to their ports are very great...they try hard to entice them to their fiefs".15 The Jesuits indeed depended for most of their revenue on this investment in the Macau-Japan trade. By an agreement of 1578 with the Macau merchants they were allotted a share of 50 piculs in the annual cargo of 1600 piculs of raw silk.16 These 50 piculs brought a profit of about 1600 cruzados. There was much opposition to this arrangement — from the Mendicant Orders, particularly the Spanish Friars in the Philippines, from the Jesuit General in Rome and even from some of the more scrupulous merchant casados in Macau, but it survived at least until 1614, when the first decree of the Tokugawa Ieyasu banishing all foreign and Japanese missionaries from Japan was issued, and it gave the Portuguese an edge over their English, Dutch and Spanish rivals.17 Meanwhile, the Philippines were being brought under Spanish rule by force and the missionary work of the religious orders. The ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 76 JOHN VILLIERS Japanese junks owned or commanded by Portuguese interlopers. Much of their cargo consisted of supplies such as wheat-flour, salted meat and fish, but also woven silk, screens, cutlery, arms and armour, and lacquer ware. Some of the supplies were used to furnish the ships sailing to Mexico. Payment was made by the Spaniards in silver rials and the Japanese traders took back raw Chinese silk, gold, deerskins, brazil-wood, palmwine, Spanish wine, glass and other European curiosities as well as old Chinese pottery and porcelain found in graves in the Philippines and used by connoisseurs of the tea ceremony.28 The Macaonese felt themselves threatened by this trade between Manila, China and Japan—particularly the re-export of Chinese silk from Manila—but they were of course keen to continue trading with Manila themselves. Portuguese ships, sometimes sailing from India via Macau, would come every year to Manila with African slaves, Indian cottons, spices, amber, ivory, precious stones, toys and curiosities from India, Persian and Turkish carpets, gilded furniture made in Macau and "other commodities of great curiosity and perfection".29 In 1624 the Viceroy rejected the petition of the Senado of Macau that the Manila voyages be officially sanctioned but the Macau-Manila trade in silk was sufficiently profitable to both sides for it to survive all bans. It remained in Portuguese hands and there were in consequence some who advocated Macau transferring its allegiance from Portugal to Spain.30 In 1625 the Spanish founded a settlement which they called La Santissima Trindad at Keelung on the northern tip of Taiwan, partly as a counterweight to the Dutch settlement of Fort Zeelandia established in Taiwan the previous year and partly as an entrepot for the Chinese silk trade which they hoped might eventually supersede Macau. The Governor of the Philippines, D. Fernando de Silva, stated in 1626 that the Dutch had already diverted much of the carrying trade in silk to Fort Zeelandia. "This damage is clearly seen", he wrote, "from the fact that the fifty Chinese ships which have come to these islands have brought less than forty piculs of silk, whereas the enemy have 900 excluding the textiles and, if it were not for what has been brought from Macau the ships from Nueva España would have nothing to carry". The short-lived Spanish attempt to lessen Manila's dependence on Macau ended with the fall of La Santissima Trindad to the Dutch in 1642. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m ANOTHER LOOK AT LAND AND LINEAGE IN THE N T, c 1900 — 27 all too, multiple rights in land became negotiable. Thus, by the end of the Ch'ing period, in the places where this system existed, the revenue right, the cultivation right, and sometimes the tenancy right could be bought and sold, or mortgaged (as well as inherited), and, since mortgage could be assigned, might be transferred yet another step or two. The economic and social significance of these developments in late imperial China awaits full investigation. Under what circumstances did such a system come into being? I believe I have identified five kinds of circumstances. There may be many more. In one case, where a frontier is to be opened or devastated lands reclaimed, patents may be given to an entrepreneur to make the necessary arrangements. He may then recruit persons to do the work, giving them a perpetual lease to cultivate the land subject only to their paying him an annual rent on a perpetual basis. In this way, both entrepreneurship (which sometimes included partial financing of reclamation) and the actual labour of opening the land, are given their rewards. Such was the most common origin of the multi-tiered tenure system in Ch'ing Taiwan; but as far as I know these circumstances never applied to the New Territories of Hong Kong. In a second case, local power sometimes extending beyond the purely local to become influence in higher places was the basis of such an arrangement. In this case, clans or individuals who arrived early in a given region, claimed the best lands for themselves, and, in time, perhaps produced degree holders who exercised influence, or through armed forces asserted their local power, would then claim what amounted to "protection money" from other landowners in their region. Again, the result was the same: a right to part of the produce of the land. But in this case, there seems to have been little sense of responsibility for paying the tax and, indeed, the arrangement, based on power rather than documented land rights, might not have been recognized by the Chinese government if ever brought to notice. We are most familiar with this form of revenue claim from reports of the activities of the Tangs of Kam Tin just prior to the British assumption of sovereignty over the New Territories. In a third case, on a frontier where there were non-Chinese aboriginal peoples, treaties might be made with the latter in which Chinese settlement and land rights were allowed subject to the perpetual payment of fees to the aboriginal claimants. In Taiwan, where this situation existed, such a fee was called "barbarian" rent, or "barbarian" revenue (fan ta-tsu). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING 125 that is, the nomadic population, of Britain, do belong to a series of ethnic communities genealogically linked to the settlement of Romani immigrants in the sixteenth century, who now speak Romanes-linked creole dialects, as well as standard English." Several times in the early 1970s I was still able to converse with pupils in dialects that teachers had assured me were quite unknown to "their" Gypsies. Now it is much harder to catch teachers out this way. Work for Gypsies has become a small part of Britain's "Race Relations Industry". The word "Gypsy" has been ethnicized. The case with the fisherfolk of Hong Kong is exactly the reverse. Originally thought to be a distinct ethnic community, the thrust of modern scholarly research since the mid-1950s is that they are no such thing, that the vast majority are Cantonese, ethnically indistinguishable from the majority of Hong Kong inhabitants. The pre-War view, however, of the British administration in Hong Kong was that the boat people comprised two of the four ethnic groups native to Hong Kong. S.F. Balfour wrote: "This region has a country population consisting of four distinct communities known in Chinese as the Tanka, the Hokio, the Punti and the Hakka."18 By the "Punti" he meant the local Cantonese; by the 'Hakka' the descendants of late Han migrants from Northern China. Both the "Tanka" and the 'Hoklo' were boat-dwellers, fisherfolk. The Hoklo, a small minority of the boat people, mostly in the north-east of the New Territories, spoke a variety of Fukien dialect. The Tanka spoke Cantonese, but were believed to have another dialect of their own, to be in fact not Han Chinese at all, but, said Balfour, drawing on Chinese sources, "a branch of the Man tribe." In fact, it was generally believed that there existed in South China an aboriginally-descended aquatic people called the Tanka boat-people like the Hoklo. In Hong Kong they were fishermen, but in the Pearl River delta, and further north along inland waterways, they were transporters, salt-traders, prostitutes and followers of numerous other pariah occupations that could be based on a boat. Detailed studies in the 1930s by the new school of sociologists based at Lingnam University did not challenge this assumption.10 They were backed up by historian colleagues who traced back a recorded history of the Tan people to T'ang times. Then, Ho Ke-en concluded, Tan "was broadly equivalent to Man", a name covering several non-Han tribes in South China, but "in its narrow sense it designated one particular South China tribe". In the Sung period, he tells us, "the Tan people began to live on boats, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING 129 work organisation in 1978; it was found that of 263 respondents living in 4 large typhoon shelters, even though only 17 percent were active fishermen still, only 13 percent were not from fishing families. ** In my conversations with long-term boat-dwellers in Yaumatei and Castle Peak, all of Shui-sheung-yan origin, the problem appeared to be that many had not registered for public housing until their boats were about to fall to pieces, many had for years not even bothered to register as Hong Kong residents. ++ Such organisation as has arisen among the poor ex-fishermen has been very different to that promoted by the F.M.O. Its main aim has been to secure public housing on land for the poor boat-people (not private housing, as is the case with the "Better-living societies"). Methods used have been classic oppositional pressure group tactics: petitions, demonstrations, press conferences. 35 Government reaction, using the extraordinarily wide powers of the Public Order Ordinance, has been uncompromising and often unyielding. "Nevertheless, some groups have succeeded in being rehoused and as they have, of course, so they have ceased to organise and agitate. In consequence, this type of organisation is episodic and ephemeral. Such continuity as it has is given by outside community organisations, especially SoCO, the Society for Community Organisation, a Christian-inspired, privately funded community work group, founded in 1970, which first obtained re-settlement for a group of boat people as early as 1972. They used 200 student volunteers to carry out the survey referred to above. They found in the whole territory some 2,266 boat-people residences: possibly an under-estimate, but well within the limits of the population forced out of the fishing industry since 1971. 37 This survey found many social problems among the boat people. They had to live in dark, difficult and insanitary conditions, without running water, overcrowded because new boats were not allowed. There was usually no electricity. Children were unsafe, and from time to time drowned. Typhoons were an especially dangerous time. Poor educational achievement and low aspirations were also identified as a problem. Attendance at nearby schools was poor. Parents tended to want their children to start earning at an early age. 32.5 percent of the respondents bluntly declared they wanted only primary school education for their children. Another 42.9 percent indicated that it would be impossible without financial help and provision of study facilities for children. (i.e., the “study rooms" which are located in the basements of many Hong Kong public housing estates, which are filled every evening with ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING 133 groups of men receiving trophies for rowing, for fishing, or for winning the San Miguel beer-drinking championship. Dragons from the head of dragon boats are also hanging up; the club is very strong on participation in the dragon boat races. A much-used ping-pong table occupies one end of the room; at the other sits a caretaker amid piles of plastic heels: he does a little cobbling on the side. In a nearby restaurant the club holds numerous dinners, where guests are entertained with Chinese opera singing, and modern pop songs. Both present and ex-fishermen attend these dinners; it was estimated that at one I attended no more than 10 percent of those present were still active fishermen, (though this estimate discounted women and children and guests present, such as the San Miguel brewery representative.) Probably a greater proportion belonged to active fishing families. Before the war, Mr. Thirlwall said, there had been no policy for the boat-people, and they had been very socially isolated. From his lighthouse he had befriended them, dressed wounds, and had come to prefer their society to that of the uptight land-based Hong Kong Chinese. After the war, the pace of social change had been very fast, bewildering many older people. The fishing industry had contracted, and despite his local efforts there was very little solidarity among the fishermen, and that they were not represented as a community in the government process. Challenged as to whether the Regional Co-operative Federations did not do this job, he responded that the credit societies were just concerned with the operation of the better-off boats; they did not concern themselves with the slow loss of small anchorages to land reclamation, the difficulties of getting settlement without becoming an illegal squatter. It was said that all the boat-people were keen to settle: why then did the Marine Department have to refuse all fresh registrations of houseboats? In fact a community was being broken up, and many of the members of his clubs in Stanley and Chai Wan were no longer active fishermen. But they would defend their rights to be part of the Shui-sheung-yan community. He did not use the word “Tanka”, however, (“In fact, I hate it"), because it was used by land people to oppress them. These two clubs in fact bridged the gap between the well-to-do active fishermen and the poor ex-fishermen, partly because of the very evident affection in which Mr. Thirlwall was held by all sections of the community. The clubs were, in fact, an exception to the general rule among the boat-people, not economic organisations, but quasi-ethnic ones, following a very common Hong Kong Chinese pattern, that of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p CONTENTS Page PRESIDENT'S REPORT viii ADDRESS BY DR. J.W. HAYES xiv ADDRESS BY REV. C.T. SMITH xvii TREASURER'S REPORT xviii LIBRARIAN'S REPORT xxi ARTICLES: Structure and Function in an Urban Organization: The Mutual Aid Committees JANET LEE SCOTT 1 Origin and Development of the Political System in the Shanghai International Settlement J.H. HAAN 31 The Strike and Riot of 1884 A Hong Kong Perspective - ELIZABETH SINN 65 The New Constitution and China's Emerging Legal System in Perspective W. ALLYN RICKETT Two Chinese Domestic Murders LETHBRIDGE 99 H.J. 118 Phonology of a Cantonese Dialect of the New Territories: Kat Hing Wai -- LAURENT SAGART 142 Saikung, The Making of the District and its Experience during World War II-DAVID FAURE 161 The Hong Kong Amateur Dramatic Club and its Predecessors - CARL T. SMITH 217 Village Education in Transition: The Case of Sheung Shui — NG LUN NGAI-HA 252 V ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p NOTES AND QUERIES The Po Tak Temple in Sheung Shui Market - DAVID FAURE, LEE LAI-MUI The Attempt to Assassinate the Governor in 1912 - N.J. MINERS Problems of the China Trade a Century Ago: Two Letters on Transit Passes - H.A. RYDINGS The Village Watch in the Hong Kong Region - JAMES HAYES Village Rules: Firecrackers in the Settlement of Disputes and in Token of Fines - JAMES HAYES 271 279 285 294 297 Canton Water Pines (Glyptostrobus Pensilis (Lamb)) at Tai Hang Village, New Territories - IU KOW-CHOY, LAY CHIK-CHUEN 302 More About the Tung Chung Fort - ANTHONY K.K. SIU 305 BOOK REVIEWS 308 MEMBERSHIP LIST 363 vi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM IN THE SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT J. H. HAAN* In this article I shall examine the special governmental structure which came into being in the Shanghai International Settlement,1 and which was virtually unique among colonial or semi-colonial territories. Put succinctly, the Settlement had the following characteristics: 1. It was a territory which had explicitly been set aside by the Chinese authorities (in 1845 on the basis of the 1842 Nanking Treaty) in order that foreigners might live in it and conduct their trade from it. For the rest it was surrounded by Chinese territory, different from, say, Calcutta, Bombay, Colombo or Batavia, which all lay in foreign-dominated areas, if not originally then eventually. 2. It was never the possession of any one single Western power. In this it was distinct from, e.g., Hong Kong, Singapore or Macau. In practice, this meant that no single foreign country was ever able to convert the city into a colony of that country, or to claim sovereignty over it. In the crown colonies, government was conducted by a Governor who was appointed by the home country, and he was assisted by an Executive Council, equally appointed by the authorities; furthermore, there was a Legislative Council which consisted partly of official, ex officio, members and partly of non-official * Mr. Haan is a student of the University of Amsterdam. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 32 3. J. H. HAAN members who were not elected but appointed. Even when colonial cities obtained a Municipal Council in one form or another as Hong Kong did in 1883 with the Sanitary Board, the later Urban Council, and Singapore in 1856, while it was still under the Bengal Presidency the main government rested in the hands of the Governor and the other appointed Councils. Furthermore, in these cities, if legislative measures had to be taken, approval of one foreign authority was necessary—the one in the metropolitan country. This was in sharp contrast to the administrative system which prevailed in the Settlement. There municipal government consisted of a Municipal Council which was elected from among the foreign ratepayers in accordance with a written constitution termed the Land Regulations. If important byelaws had to be made these had to be approved by both the Council and the general body of foreign ratepayers assembled in Public Meeting as well as by a majority of the foreign consuls and ministers at Peking. This whole procedure was rather unwieldy when it was necessary to answer the new problems which were posed when the population of the Settlement increased (from 15 foreigners in 1844 to 38,940 foreigners and 1,120,860 Chinese in 1935), and when industrialisation gained pace from the 1920s.* As regards the administration of justice, Shanghai equally held a special position. All foreigners belonging to countries having a treaty with China enjoyed extraterritorial rights, that is, in law cases they were tried by their own consuls according to the laws of their own country. This did not obtain in other colonies; there, strangers were prosecuted under the laws of the colony. As for the Chinese in the Settlement they were tried by a so-called Mixed Court, in which a Chinese judge and a foreign assessor sat together on the bench. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 33 This contrasts with the situation in Hong Kong, for instance, where Chinese were tried by colonial judges principally according to English law, and also with Singapore where a similar situation obtained. Land Regulations: the Constitution of the International Settlement Earlier I have made mention of the Land Regulations without clearly explaining what these were. As these Land Regulations formed the Constitution of the Settlement on which nearly the entire structure of government was built it seems proper to give some more details about them, In the course of the Settlement's history (1845-1943) three sets of Land Regulations were issued: in 1845, 1854 and 1869. They all dealt in various degrees with the delimitation of the settlement's boundaries, the mode of renting land, the way in which foreign land-renters or ratepayers could elect a Municipal Council, the organisation of the Municipal Council and other administrative details. The way in which these sets of Land Regulations originated differed from each other. The 1845 Land Regulations The first set was issued by the taotai Kung Mu-chiu, on November 29, 1845. According to the preface these had been drafted by the Chinese and British authorities, meaning Kung and consul Balfour, "in communication together". This first Constitution had a distinctly Chinese flavour, as was to be expected. The basic principles of Chinese rulers were: first, paternalism, which held that a great number of detailed rules had to be laid down in writing and that one of the main tasks of administrators was to prevent the cropping up of unrest among the population, second, the so-called Ai-min principle (literally "love the people") which said that the feelings of the people should be respected, and third, the principle of mutual responsibility through the pao-chia system. In one form or another all these foundations of the Chinese state were represented in the 23 articles of the Land Regulations (the number of articles alone already indicates the Chinese obsession with detailed rules): e.g. paternalistic attitudes were to be found in articles IV, VI, IX, X, XI and others; the Ai-min rule in articles II, V, VII and IX; and the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 35 The 1866-1869 Land Regulations The first two sets of Land Regulations had been drafted by the Chinese and/or local foreign authorities; this was not the case with the third Constitution, the one of 1866-1869, In the years between 1854 and 1866 a great number of problems had arisen, partially caused by the influx of Taiping rebellion refugees. Moreover, civic discipline among foreigners was waning (taxes were not being paid, nuisances were being caused in the form of building materials left lying around, the authority of the Municipal Council to levy taxes was being questioned, the members of the Municipal Council had been held personally responsible for any deficits and debts of the municipality, etc.). All this contributed to the opinion that something had to be done to increase the authority of the Municipal Council, and on April 15, 1865, a Public Meeting of landrenters appointed a Commission to draft new Land Regulations. This Commission consisted of Henry Dent (member of the Municipal Council 1863-64 and 1864-65), R. F. Gould (former municipal secretary), Thomas Hanbury, James Hogg, and William Keswick (all members of the Municipal Council 1865-66), J. P. Lynill, and G. Tyson. The new proposed Regulations were published on January 22, 186610, and discussed in Public Meetings on March 9, 12, 13, and 1711. After a delay of three years, they were eventually approved by the foreign powers in 1869. There were a number of differences between the draft and the final version, but space does not permit me to detail these12. The new Constitution consisted of 29 articles, in which the position of the Municipal Council was strengthened as compared to the former Land Regulations. These Land Regulations were subsequently slightly amended, some articles being added in 1898. In this form, they remained in force until 1943, when the Settlement was returned to China. In the course of these years, only a few byelaws were altered or introduced; and thus, during the greater part of its existence, the Settlement had as its constitutional foundation a set of Land Regulations devised essentially by the landrenters themselves in 1866. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 38 J. H. HAAN Public Meetings and the voters I have already quoted some of the articles from the 1845 Land Regulations which dealt with the meetings of landrenters. These provisions were still rather crude, but in the 1854 Land Regulations they were refined in the tenth article, and in those of 1869 in articles IX, X, XV, XVIII and XIX. Moreover to the 1869 Land Regulations were added "Rules of Procedure to be observed at Meetings of Ratepayers". In article IX it was laid down that "it being expedient and necessary for the better order and good government of the Settlement that some provision should be made for the appointment of an executive Committee or Council, and for the construction of public works and keeping the same in repair the Foreign Treaty Consuls, L 1 P or a majority of them, shall, during the month of February or March in each year, and so early in the same as possible, fix the date for the election of the Executive Committee or Council and shall also during the said months give notice of a public meeting to be held within twenty-one days of such notice, to devise ways and means of raising the requisite funds for these purposes"; and article XV provided that "it shall be competent for the Foreign Consuls, collectively or singly, when it may appear to them needful, or for the electors, provided not less that twenty-five agree in writing so to do, to call a public meeting at any time, for the consideration of any matter or thing connected with the Municipality”. Most Public Meetings up to 1896 were probably held at the British Consulate, although a small number were convened elsewhere. The very first one was in Richard's Hotel on December 22, 1846; later some were held at the Shanghai Library (on April 8, 1861 and August 18, 1864). In 1896 a Town Hall was completed (a new one being opened in 1922) and from that date most meetings took place there. Most of the time the British consul was in the chair. Earlier we saw that foreign residents thought that municipal government ought to be based on mutual agreement and consensus; but, it might well be asked, whose agreement? In other words: who were allowed to participate in the elections and discussions at Public Meetings? Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 39 As in Europe in the first half of the 19th century, it was not deemed advisable to grant the vote to all and sundry. The fear of democratic tyrannic majority rule, after the experience of the French Revolution, still worked its influence on political thinking about the franchise. If only voters had some "respectable" background in most cases to be measured by their payment of taxes or rates they could be expected to vote in the "right" way. Moreover it was argued that the government of the land should be left to those who had a real stake in it, again measured financially. In view of this train of thought it is not surprising to find that in Shanghai similar opinions prevailed. 10 According to the 1845 and 1854 Land Regulations only landowners (incidentally: legally the ground could be rented only, but to all practical purposes it was owned) could take part in the decision making process at the Public Meeting. Originally this was a very natural development because most foreign residents owned land in the new settlement. Gradually this changed and more and more foreigners rented houses on which they had to pay a housetax which did not carry with it a right to vote. Soon after the approval of the 1854 Land Regulations in July, however, there was a short upheaval at a Public Meeting held on November 10, 1854. At that meeting a resolution was moved and passed which read: "That in addition to the qualifications for Votes now in use the payment by any Foreign resident of fifty dollars annually, or upwards, towards the Dues or assessments levied by the Municipal Council, shall entitle the individual or firm so contributing to one vote at any General Meeting (...)".20 This motion was probably induced not so much by the house renters, but by the payers of wharfage dues, the revenues of which in the budget of 1854-55 were estimated at $14,000 out of a total of $25,000 (against $2,000 landtax, $3,000 European housetax and $5,400 Chinese housetax),21 Chinese housetax). Although the resolution was passed unanimously, it was not approved by consul Alcock, whose main argument, expressed at the Public Meeting of November 24 was that if the franchise was widened on this basis "its application in any impartial or equitable spirit would involve the introduction of several thousand Chinese voters, to the swamping of the present small fraction of Foreign renters, in whom all power was now without dispute vested".22 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 41 be recognized, but as many qualifications as possible should be enumerated".25 But the landowners would not accept this, the hub of the matter being forcefully expressed by Mr. Hogg that a substantial enlargement of the voting qualifications "would in fact admit a class that now lived on the property holders and might then outvote them on every important question" and even if Mr. Winchester made any efforts to tempt his superior (the British minister Alcock) into liberalizing the franchise, he was unsuccessful. The final text of this article read: "Every foreigner, either individually or as a member of a firm, residing in the Settlement, having paid all taxes due and being an owner of land of not less than five hundred taels in value, whose annual payment of assessment on land and houses shall amount to the sum of ten taels or upwards, or who shall be a householder paying on an assessed rental of not less than five hundred taels per annum and upwards shall be entitled to vote in the election of the said members of the Council and the public meetings. Although it should be borne in mind that over the years rentals increased substantially, whereas the figures in the Land Regulations were not altered, so that more tenants became eligible for the vote, great disappointment was voiced at the time in a rather harsh comment of the North China Herald in which it was stated that "the Municipal Government has hitherto been conducted on quasi-feudal principles... the extreme difference between the election qualifications (under discussion in Shanghai and those under discussion in Britain) is sufficiently striking. While we have with difficulty gained a £250 franchise (viz Taels 700, the minimum rent which gave a tenant the right to vote — JH), large numbers at home are dissatisfied with a £10 standard and are agitating for a reduction to £6, while we fix the payment of £6 per annum in taxes as necessary qualifications, at home the payment of a £6 rental is thought to be established as entitling the householder to a vote. We see no reason why the outer many should not enjoy a voice and vote as well as the fortunate few"20 But however valid the objections of the critics were, these remained the foundations upon which the franchise in the Shanghai International Settlement was based. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 44 J. H. HAAN and above I have already mentioned the swamping number at the Public Meeting of March 12, 1866. One more danger which could well have appeared was the so-called plural voting system. This meant that each person was given more votes according to the acreage of land he possessed or the amount of taxes he paid. In several other foreign concessions in China, plural voting was part and parcel of the established administrative structure; as, for instance, in the British concessions at Hankow, Kiukiang, Canton, and Tientsin, as well as in the Russian and German concessions at Tientsin.31 In Shanghai, however, it was never practised, and in article XIX of the Land Regulations 1869, it was explicitly stated that no one should have more than one vote (apart from proxies). Earlier, it had already been rejected at a Public Meeting of May 25, 1852, but ten years later, an attempt was made to introduce it. At the Public Meeting of November 30, 1863, Mr. E. M. Smith moved a resolution which would have allowed plural voting.32 The text of the motion was published in the North China Herald of November 21, and the following week, a fiery letter to the editor from “Civis” appeared in the columns of the paper, in the following terms: “Just, however, as the slave-holding planters of the Cotton states of America felt the necessity of dominant power in the Federal Government, so the principal landholders in this settlement, true to the instincts of a monopolising class, are convinced that their influence to be secure must be paramount, and relying upon the specious boldness of a few and the moral apathy of the many, they propose a revision of the constitution which will place the Municipal power in the hands of a plurality of votes according to extent of Mowage or direct taxation and it was his opinion that “in the guise of much-needed reform, a coup d'état of no ordinary boldness is in contemplation.”3 Maybe this sharp opposition contributed to the defeat of Mr. Smith's proposal, for at the meeting of November 30, the motion was not even seconded and therefore could not be voted upon. With these details about voting qualifications in mind, we might well ask: how did they work out in practice; in other ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 45 words, to return to the question we put earlier: how representative was the electorate in terms of numbers for the total (foreign) population of the settlement? For this we have to rely on scattered figures. Even for the years up to 1865, which I have examined carefully, it is very hard to obtain the necessary data. But apart from details the trend is clear. In 1855 the total foreign population of the Settlement was 2434, while the number of landrenters, all of whom then had the vote, was 107.35 Thus this would mean that 44% of the foreigners were entitled to vote. Eighty years later in 1935, foreigners numbered 38,940 whereas there were 3,852 voters, roughly ten percent. So, although we should bear in mind that in 1935 there were many more children included in the total population number than there were in 1855, with the result that the figure for the potential politically active population should be lower and the figure of 10% somewhat higher, it is nevertheless evident that only a small proportion of foreign residents was eligible for the vote. Far less at any rate than in the 1850s and this notwithstanding the fact that land and house values had gone up very considerably; this could only mean that many foreigners still did not reach the very high standards set by the Land Regulations. Throughout the history of the Settlement the Chinese who constituted the vast majority of the population were not allowed to exercise the vote at Public Meetings or for the election of the Municipal Council as was of course the case in many countries which enjoyed full colonial status. The reasons for Chinese disenfranchisement have already been quoted from the succinct statement by consul Alcock, but it should be added that only at a very late stage did part of the Chinese population become dissatisfied with their not being represented on the Municipal Council and their inability to take part in elections. Later I shall devote some more attention to efforts to secure Chinese representation on the Municipal Council, to which body we must now turn our attention. The Municipal Council Like the Public Meeting, the origins of the executive branch ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 46 J. H. HAAN lay in the Land Regulations. In those of 1845 article XX declared that "the several contributors (of taxes, etc JH) will request the Consul to appoint three upright merchants to deliberate upon and determine the amount to be subscribed by them". And the 1854 Land Regulations stipulated in article X “meeting of renters of land.. to appoint a committee of three or more persons to levy the said rates and dues ..". With 10 out of the 29 articles of the Land Regulations of 1869 referring to the Municipal Council, this set of Regulations were far more elaborate as to the election and functioning of the Municipal Council than their predecessors. This was mainly caused by the problems several councils had faced in the 1860s as a result of which it was decided to strengthen the powers of the executive. Article XIX laid down the qualifications for a Municipal Council member: "And no one shall be qualified to be a member of the said Council unless he shall pay an annual assessment, exclusive of licenses, of fifty taels, or shall be a householder paying on an assessed rental of one thousand two hundred taels per annum". From this it is clear that the qualification for membership of the Council was even more restrictive than that for voting (the threshold for Council membership as suggested by the Commission of 1865-66 was even higher at Taels 1800, but this was changed by the foreign ministers). This was in sharp contrast to the earlier constitutions by which it was theoretically, and even in practice, possible for non-landrenters to sit on the Municipal Council, whereas only landrenters had the vote, thereby indicating that, at that time, the qualification for membership of the Council was more liberal than that for the franchise. In the records of the Settlement's early history (until 1865) two cases have come to light in which a non-landrenter was elected as a member of the Municipal Council, but in both cases there was some opposition from part of the foreign community. At the Public Meeting of June 14 1851 three gentlemen were proposed for membership of the executive then still called the Committee of Roads and Jetties, a name it kept until 1854 — William Seton Brown, Clement D. Nye and Edward Langley,37 viz: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 47 Only the first two belonged to houses which had property in the Settlement, but Mr. Langley was the manager of the Oriental Bank which was not registered as a landrenter. At some time during the meeting "the fact of Mr. Langley not being a land-holder and his being disqualified in consequence, was then argued", but most of those present thought that it was "competent for the Landholders to elect at a Public Meeting any person they might choose to take charge of their affairs”. Thus the affair was closed, and during the following ten years there were only renters on the Municipal Council; but in the edition of June 29 1861 a letter to the editor of the North China Herald was printed, which drew attention to the fact that a non-renter was allegedly a member of the Municipal Council. This letter, by "A Landrenter" partly read: "Sir. It is a generally received axiom that the possession of landed property renders its owner conservative; and on this good principle I was always under the impression that the Municipal Government of this Settlement was founded. Much then was I surprised to find the meetings of landholders purporting to be convened for them alone were attended by non-renters and from amongst them one of our Municipal Councillors was chosen My only reason for troubling you with this letter is to ascertain the opinion of my fellow-landholders as to the eligibility of non-renters to hold Municipal offices .". The person referred to was probably Mr. William Howard, manager of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China, who resigned as from June 28 1861.38 The opinion of the "fellow-landholders” was aired at a Public Meeting of March 31 1862, during which the stand of a decade before was reversed in a resolution passed unanimously: "That before choosing gentlemen for the Municipal Council for the coming year it be resolved that non but bona fide foreign Renters of Land shall be able to become members of the Municipal Council."30 Thus the matter was after all decided in favour of the landowners, the final Constitution only adding a very high threshold, to bar anyone who might not be considered “respectable”. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 48 J. H. HAAN In practice this meant that only the big commercial houses and other business interests came to be represented on the Municipal Council as virtually no private person paid enough taxes to qualify for membership: if only ten percent were qualified to vote, it may be imagined that the percentage qualified for membership of the Council was even smaller. In the period up to 1865 only one instance has been found of a Municipal Council member who did not originate from a commercial firm, namely Dr. Medhurst of the London Missionary Society, who was on the Council for 1854-55. Otherwise all members belonged to some China house, and it is remarkable that the American firm of Russell & Co. was at the top of the list, being represented seven times during the period 1849-1866, whereas the renowned British firm Jardine, Matheson & Co., very early established in Shanghai, had only one member on the Council and that as late as 1865-66. Later there would hardly be a Municipal Council without Jardines. 40 As befitted an International Settlement, the composition of the Municipal Council was mixed according to nationality. The number of members fluctuated rather wildly in the early years (2 in 1849-50; 3 in 1850-54; then it jumped to 7 for the Municipal Council of 1854-55, to be reduced to 5 the next year and to 3 as from 1856-57; it was increased again to 5 in 1862-63 and to 7 the following year). These changes and enlargements were principally caused by the numerous problems which the Settlement faced at one time or another. In the 1869 Land Regulations it was provided that the Municipal Council would consist of 9 members. In 1927, 3 Chinese members increased it to 12 and another 2 to 14 in 1930. The British and Americans were first in the field at Shanghai and throughout its history they retained their majority on the Municipal Council (until 1930 when they became on a par with other nationalities). The first non-Anglo-Saxon member was a German in the Municipal Council for 1863-64 due to the growing German commercial interests in China. The Germans retained their seat until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. After 1915, their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 49 place was occupied by Japan, which had outstripped the Anglo-Saxon population in the Settlement. Japan got another seat in 1927 and although they pressed for more representatives these demands were resisted.41 Chinese representation The Settlement was really a foreign one in so far as its government was dominated by non-Chinese, but with the advance of time, introduction of new ideas among sections of the Chinese population, the increase of this population itself and the resulting problems, it was evident that some mode had to be devised for representation of Chinese on the Municipal Council, if not at Public Meetings. The very first proposal for native representation was made in 1866 by the Commission which had drafted the new Land Regulations. It was proposed that a Board of three Chinese was to be established to advise the Municipal Council. This scheme was apparently not approved by the foreign ministers, for it was never put into practice.12 A second attempt was dodged by the ratepayers in 1906. After the Mixed Court riots a new move was deemed necessary to improve contact between the Chinese and foreign sections of the population. Chinese merchants proposed a Consulting Committee which could express native opinion, especially that of a business nature. The Municipal Council inclined to agree with this scheme, but the ratepayers objected to it on the ground that they feared the body would be government infiltrated. Another effort was made in 1915 when a Chinese proposal to set up an Advisory Board which would include members of different guilds was passed at a ratepayers meeting, but rejected by the foreign ministers. Four years later there was agitation among the Chinese residents for direct representation on the Council. This campaign was partly engendered by a threatening increase in taxation, partly by the heightened feelings of nationalism. Both the Municipal Council and the ratepayers objected to direct Chinese membership and as a temporary measure an Advisory Committee was installed in 1921. This body was to be recruited by the Chinese Ratepayers Association which was formed in 1919. The Committee did not ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 50 J. H. HAAN function very well and in 1925 there were fresh cries for Chinese representation. This time the direct cause was the May 30th incident and as a result of numerous Chinese protests, demonstrations and strikes which took place at that time, the Municipal Council understood that the Chinese could no longer be barred from membership. In 1927, for the first time in the Settlement's history, three Chinese took their seats on the once exclusively foreign Shanghai Municipal Council and three years later their number was increased to five. All members were chosen by the Chinese Ratepayers Association, mostly from industrial and commercial circles so that the Chinese members came from the same business background as the foreign members. Thus the electoral basis for Chinese differed materially from that for foreigners, which was understandable from the foreign point of view, for direct election would have meant that eventually the Council would become Chinese dominated. Besides, it suited most Chinese guilds and other business circles which were not used to open voting procedures, but preferred to be represented on an indirect functional basis. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that in the neighbouring Chinese Greater Shanghai Municipality, established in the same year of 1927, there also was an appointed Municipal Council. The elections In contrast to most governments and municipal councils in other countries, the Shanghai Municipal Council tenure of office was for only one year. Until 1865 the Councils were elected at a Public Meeting which was held especially for that purpose, as well as to discuss the budget (first introduced in 1854) and other financial and municipal matters. In the early years the months in which these electoral meetings were held varied, some being convened in January (1856, 1857, 1859), some in February (1858, 1860), March (1849, 1855, 1862), April (1863, 1864), May (1852), June (1851), July (1854) or August (1850). The ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 51 The result of this was that a Municipal Council sometimes sat for more, and sometimes for less, than a year. In 1865, however, the way in which the Municipal Council was chosen was changed according to a resolution that had been passed at a Public Municipal meeting of April 15, 1865,4% and which provided that a separate poll spread over several days should take place for the election of the Municipal Council. Some days later the elections were held after the new system and in the final Land Regulations of 1869 this mode was adopted (article IX, X, XVIII and XIX). There it was also laid down that the Municipal Council should be elected in February or March of each year. No reasons were given why it was deemed necessary to alter the rules for choosing a Municipal Council, except that “it was being urgently called for", but it may be imagined that with the growth of the population and the number of land-renters, the old procedure was becoming increasingly unwieldy. The period of small town politics was partly closed with this separate voting procedure. One of the consequences might have been that the composition of the Municipal Council would rest on a broader basis, as generally more people thought it worthwhile to vote, which took only an instant instead of going to a Public Meeting which might take a whole afternoon or evening. Other things being equal, there might even have developed a kind of election campaign and for 1866 it seems that something of the kind was indeed held, witnessing the remark that "the usual number of placards decorated the walls of the settlement, some conveying rather happy hits".44 But any developments in this direction were nipped in the bud by the provision in the Land Regulations of 1869, article XVIII, that "should the number of names proposed for election be exactly nine or less than nine and more than four, it shall not be necessary to have a poll..". In such a case, anyone opposed to one of the candidates could not vote against him. No doubt sometimes the elections were really contested, but later it was often complained that they amounted to nothing but ritual affairs: "the stage will be set for the annual election- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 52 J. H. HAAN contest if the term may be used in connection with such tame tussles as the Shanghai Municipal Council elections"45 and it was alleged that the "small and select group which dominates the affairs of the Shanghai International Settlement always regards the situation as ideal when there are only nine nominees for the nine posts on the Municipal Council because that obviates the necessity for holding an election. A public election, even when all the nominees are highly respectable as Shanghai standards go, is generally regarded as undesirable for there is always the possibility of unexpected developments because of nationalistic rivalries which exist here in an exaggerated degree”46 Municipal Bureaucracy and Social Legislation As has been made clear a certain ossification took place with regard to the political structure of the Settlement. It is interesting to consider whether this influenced the way the Settlement government coped with the increasing social and infrastructural problems which were inherent in a fast growing town which, moreover, was changing from a commercial into an industrial centre. The attitude of the foreign rulers of the Settlement remained essentially one of non interference, though efforts were sometimes made to soften the most obvious hardships. But in general an early and mid nineteenth century individualist liberal ideology prevailed. This meant that the main tasks which were considered legitimate business for the Municipal Council were: the upkeep of law and order through the police the provision of public works like roads, drainage, parks, etc. the taking of essential measures to prevent the outbreak of diseases, plagues, etc., in other words: public health. Closely related to these tasks was the rise of the several departments of the municipal administration. The municipal police originated in the early 1850s and although it cannot be said that it functioned very satisfactorily in the beginning one superintendent was even dismissed in 1860 "on charges indicating systematic fraud and extortion"47 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 53 later, conditions improved, though allegations of brutality and corruption were voiced from time to time.18 The force consisted of Chinese, Sikhs and, especially in the higher echelons, foreigners. The Public Works department equally had its origins in the very beginning of the Settlement when roads and drainage had to be built. At times there were many complaints about the state of the roads; thus one female reader of the North China Herald wondered whether it was "in reason that we should have to walk all the days of our lives over sharp little cubes of broken brick?"19 The department, however, faced a difficult task in the construction of roads on the marshy soil of Shanghai and the situation became only worse when traffic increased to such an extent that often a decision had to be made between demolishing whole rows of buildings, with all the attendant hardships for the occupiers, and letting congestion get out of hand. The Public Health department was initiated as the Nuisance Department in 1861 because of the dangers to health caused by the throwing away of offal at all possible and impossible places with the result that one reader of the local paper returned from a walk in the Settlement "sickened and disgusted”.50 Besides the official department there were numerous private or missionary hospitals receiving municipal financial subsides. These tasks were the traditional tasks of a laissez-faire government and in general did not rouse much controversy, apart from complaints that services did not go far enough. It is noticeable that it was only these tasks which were enshrined in the Land Regulations as falling within the realm of municipal administration. Quite different problems were encountered when it came to coping with the results of industrialisation, especially the regulation of working hours and the abolition of child-labour. In the west social legislation had increased in scope over the decades since the middle of the 19th century, but in Shanghai most efforts in this direction were doomed to failure. In the early 1920s several attempts were made to pass a bye-law which Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 54 J. H. HAAN would, if not have abolished, at least have restricted child labour. But these came to nothing as a result of apathy or hostility on the part of sections of the foreign ratepayers who had to decide about such measures.51 Some years later, in 1933, a byelaw was in fact passed which gave the Municipal Council the right to refuse licences to industrial enterprises and through this indirect way it gained some control over factory conditions. But owing to opposition from the local Chinese administration (of the Shanghai territory outside the Settlement), which was against any new and undue expansion of the functions of the Municipal Council, the new rules were applied only haphazardly. It was true that in 1932 an Industrial Section, under the Secretariat of the Municipal Council, was created, replaced by an Industrial and Social Division in 1940, and the officials of this department sometimes managed to persuade or coax factory owners into the adoption of more humane working conditions,52 but this was all on a rather ad hoc basis. In the 1920s and 1930s more and more pressure arose from the workers, sometimes organised in small trade-unions which were, however, regarded with some distrust by the Settlement authorities (just as they had been in Britain before the abolition of the combination laws in 1824), and numerous strikes, politically or economically motivated, were held. There were a number of reasons for the lack of social legislation in the Settlement, apart from the factors already mentioned. 1. As noted above, the Land Regulations only dealt with the traditional view of government functions. Any additions to the functions of the Municipal Council in the shape of byelaws ― would have to be passed by the Council, the ratepayers, the consuls, and the foreign ambassadors, as well as, in some cases, the Chinese authorities. This cumbrous process alone was in most cases enough to nip any efforts for improvement in the bud. 2. A second major factor was that the Shanghai area consisted of three independent municipalities: The International Settlement, the French Concession, and the Greater Shanghai ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 55 Municipality (after 1927). If the Council took measures which were not taken in the other municipalities it was easy for those affected who did not want to adhere to the new rules, simply to move to one of the other municipalities. Ideally any measures would have to be taken by all municipalities in cooperation, but this was often objected to by the Chinese authorities who to an ever increasing degree were opposed to the usurpation — as they saw it — of new rights by the Municipal Council of the Settlement. 3. A third important reason was the very restricted financial basis upon which the Settlement government operated. The only taxes that, according to the Land Regulations, could be levied were a land tax, a house tax, wharfage dues and licence fees. And though the rates of these taxes could be, and were, raised3 and though the increase in the value of property and trade saw to it that municipal revenues steadily grew (from about Taels 25,000 in 1860 to about Taels 1,600,000 in 1930) nevertheless this was not enough to pay for any extensive schemes of social welfare. But even with the small amounts available there were Chinese complaints that too much of the money benefited foreigners principally and that too few dollars were spent on the much larger Chinese population. A wealth or income tax was considered out of the question as for this the Land Regulations would have had to be changed and too many vested interests would have been attacked. Under the circumstances, the Settlement authorities could not and would not introduce far-reaching changes in the administration of social welfare. In this they did not materially differ from their colleagues in the colonies. Defects We may well ask what became of the high-sounding principles which were uttered in the early days of the Settlement when "consensus and consent" were thought to be the foundations of the political establishment in the Far East. If ever they were true in practice, even in the beginning, later government tended to develop into an oligarchy. Despite 54 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 56 J. H. HAAN the fact that so many foreigners came from countries in which one form or another of representative government was part and parcel of the political structure, in Shanghai it was hard to speak of democracy apart of course from the Chinese having practically no official say in it. In the very early days there was a real form of direct democracy in the Settlement. There were few people, few enough to make this kind of democracy feasible; nearly all were land-renters and there was a widespread feeling of doing something positive when introducing representative government into part of the Chinese empire. Sometimes there were fierce clashes between the land-renters and the Municipal Council, as in 1852 when the Municipal Council even decided to resign because a Public Meeting had rejected their drainage plan, a decision which was only reversed when another Public Meeting repealed the rejection;55 or in 1854 when a large number of renters objected to the expense of police barracks and the increase in taxation, and the newly established Municipal Council was threatened in its very existence; or in 1864 when the whole budget was rejected and a new one had to be drafted.57 Discussions at these meetings were often very spirited affairs, with letters to the editor appearing in the columns of the North China Herald. Gradually, however, the meetings seem to have become "cut and dry affairs"; sometimes debate became more heated, but lethargy prevailed, as became clear when the very important proposal to restrict Child Labour came up for discussion in April 1925, when not even the quorum to make a decision binding was present. One of the defects of the system was that it was not really a representative one. There were in the 1930s over 3500 rate-payers with the right to attend Public Meetings. If every one of them had wished to make use of this right, the meeting would have been turned into a complete Babel. Any person speaking at a Public Meeting was only speaking for himself, and it was difficult to be clear as to whether he had ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 58 J. H. HAAN Seventy years later it was complained that "official business in this important municipality is conducted in secret. Members of the Municipal Council are bound not to disclose matters discussed in meetings and no reporter of a local newspaper has ever attended a meeting of the Council. The Council does issue a so-called Municipal Gazette, probably the dullest official journal in the world, which contains brief reports usually starting out "Notice is hereby given" or "I have the honour to convey etc." 100 Now it is, of course, true that in Western countries with a parliamentary government, meetings of the cabinet or other governing bodies were (and are) not open to the public. But there the rulers were responsible to representatives of the people, be it in parliament or its local equivalent. Nothing of the kind happened in Shanghai, which apart from the other structural and institutional regulations which halted democracy as understood elsewhere, made the whole administrative system come to be looked upon as oligarchic. Summary Summarizing this article we might say that the Settlement government rested on a base which became increasingly outmoded in Western countries where democracy allowed ever more people to participate in politics. Franchise according to tax paid was gradually abolished in the West, but in the International Settlement at Shanghai it remained till the last day of its existence. In the beginning, consent of all residents was claimed to be the foundation of municipal government, but as time progressed the administration degenerated into an oligarchy with or without the negative implications which the term suggests. Political interest was low and nobody really tried to change the system. Though Justice Feetham published a massive report about the situation in the Settlement and offered valuable advice in 1931, nothing was done. Only in the heyday of Chinese nationalism were some minor facelifts agreed, without altering any of the fundamentals. It was only after the return of the Settlement to China in 1943 and especially after the communist takeover in 1949 that ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 59 Serious measures were taken to change the whole social and political structure of the town. NOTES Preliminary note: Although the present paper is to a great extent based on fresh research, the following works have been of considerable use as they contain material about the government of the International Settlement: Feetham, Justice Richard: "Report to the Shanghai Municipal Council" 1931-1932. Johnstone, W.C.: "The Shanghai Problem", 1937. Jones, F.C.: "Shanghai and Tientsin", 1940. Kotenev, A.M.: "Shanghai, its Mixed Court and Council", 1925. Montalto de Jesus, C.A.: "Historic Shanghai", 1909. Port, F.L. Hawks: "A short history of Shanghai", 1928. 1 The International Settlement at Shanghai was formed in 1863 by the amalgamation of the original British Settlement (formed in 1845, but later increased in area) with the so-called American Settlement in the Hongkew area which had grown up without formal establishment in the 1850s, and early 1860s, and which had been formally recognised by the Chinese earlier in 1863. The French Settlement (formed in 1849) always remained separate from the International Settlement. Outside the area of the foreign settlements lay the old Chinese city and suburbs: these remained under Chinese rule, and became subject to the Greater Shanghai Municipality when that was set up by the Chinese authorities in 1927. * Cf also Treaty of the Bogue, article VII, "ground and houses, the rent of which is to be fairly and equitably arranged for, shall be set apart by the local officers in communication with the Consul." 3 Population figures for intermediate years are, 1,666 foreigners and 75,047 Chinese in 1870, and 6,774 foreigners and 345,276 Chinese in 1900. Of the 13,536 foreigners resident in 1910, 4,465 were British, 940 Americans and 3,361 Japanese. Of the 38,940 foreigners resident in 1935 no fewer than 20,242 were Japanese, as against 6,596 British and 2,015 Americans. + * Text of the 1845 Land Regulations (LR) is in Shanghai Almanac 1853. It is not too fanciful to suppose that persons willing to move to as remote a place as Shanghai in the 1840s were likely to be particularly strongly imbued with the contemporary belief in individualism, with its consequent hatred of despotism and paternalism; this almost certainly assisted in the speedy breakdown of the 1845 Land Regulations to something far more individualistic in tone. • North China Herald (NCH) 30.7.1853. * J.H. Haan: "De opkomst van de International Settlement te Shanghai 1845-1865. Een historisch — politicologische analyse" ("The rise of the International Settlement at Shanghai. A historical-political analysis"), unpublished manuscript University of Amsterdam, 1977; chapter II. Cited as Haan "Shanghai". Cf NCH 22.7.1854; text of draft LR in NCH 30.7.1853, 27.8.1853; final version in 8.7.1854. NCH 22.4.1865. 10 NCH 17.3.1866. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 125 unfortunately, we shall never know. We could, perhaps, tentatively add a seventh motive for murder to Tennyson Jesse's list: murder born of pride or 'face', murder from shame,21 22 An earlier Chinese murder had not baffled an English judge and jury; this was a 'murder for profit', to use William Bolitho's phrase. At the Worcester Assizes in 1919, a Chinese Birmingham factory worker, Sung Djang Djing, was accused of murdering a fellow countryman, Zec Ming Wu, on June 23, 1919, in Warley Park on the Warwickshire-Worcestershire border. The victim's head had been savagely battered. Sung was accused of luring Zee to the woods, murdering him, and then stealing his Post Office Savings Book, which had a £240 credit. Sung admitted stealing the Savings Book found in his possession but denied murder, accusing another Chinese of the crime. The evidence was too strong; the motive too obvious. Sung was hanged in Worcester Prison (where, curiously, he was converted to Anglicanism in the weeks before execution). Sung was one of a number of Chinese attracted to the Midlands by the prospect of high wages during the war. It is not clear whether he was, like Lock, a former seaman, or had been a member of the Chinese Labour Corps, recruited in China, especially Weihaiwei, to work behind the lines on the Western Front, or in Britain's war industries. The problem of special ‘Oriental motivation' did not arise in this trial; it was a commonplace murder.2 The Chinese in Britain In 1925 there were three main areas of Chinese settlement in Britain: Liverpool, Cardiff, and Limehouse in the East End of London. These communities had been formed primarily by Chinese seamen who had either jumped ship or been paid off in England, from the 1850s onwards; for once shipping routes were opened up between Britain and the Far East, the demand for Chinese seamen steadily grew, especially as they, like Lascars, were then a source of cheap maritime labour. Many of those who settled in Britain started small businesses, especially laundries (as did their compatriots in Canada, Australia and the United States). It should be emphasised, though, that the Chinese restaurant business did not expand markedly, or flourish, until ================================================================================ 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-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p NOTES AND QUERIES 297 北 * H. D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village, Sheung Shui (London, Frank Cass, 1968) 79-83, 128 for details. 'James L. Watson, Emigration and the Chinese Lineage, The Mans in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975) mentions the San Tin Village watch at 27, 42, 177, 183 but gives no details of its organization. 5 Useful comparative information about the night watch in villages in Hopei, Shansi, Shantung and Hunan is given at pp. 109-112 of Sidney D. Gamble, North China Villages, Social, Political and Economic Activities before 1933 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1963). See also pp. 22-23 of his article "Hsin Chuang, A Study of Chinese Village Finance" (1907-1931) in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, VIII (1944-45), 1-33. Ordinarily the paid watch, sometimes replaced or augmented by volunteers, operated in these villages from the first of the tenth month until the end of the twelfth month, and sometimes into the second lunar month of the following year, whereas in the Hong Kong region it seems to have been permanent. However, more information is needed on this point, as there are cases here, such as Muk Min Ha, Tsuen Wan, where the former Village Watch was active mainly in the winter quarter. VILLAGE RULES; FIRECRACKERS IN THE SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES AND IN TOKEN OF FINES In rural society in the Hong Kong Region, there was until very recently and certainly up to the discontinuance of the padi farming that was the basis of subsistence agriculture a great reliance on local customary rules. These were generally unwritten, and carried in the heads of the elders, available for use when required. They were generally known to, and accepted by, the villagers, who would know when rules were being infringed or broken, and the appropriate remedy or penalty. Sometimes the rules would be put in writing, and in matters deemed to be important would be placed on a wooden board in the community temple or cut on a stone tablet let into the wall of the temple. Copies of the rules would often be written into the handbooks held by the village scholars. Copies of individual rules were also, on occasion, written out and posted up in a public place for all to see. This much is generally known, but one aspect of local practice in connection with the settlement of disputes that has come to my attention in the Hong Kong countryside is not so well covered in modern studies of village life in China. This was the provision for the letting off of firecrackers, to an appropriate but always ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 298 NOTES AND QUERIES substantial amount, outside the offended party's door or, in the case of a whole lineage, its ancestral hall, and at the expense of the other. Justice was not only to be done but was to be seen (and heard!) to be done. As one informant has said, "The act was intended to give back face, and so was done at the home of the wronged party but paid for by the other". It thereby entailed an acknowledgement of guilt by the offender, and since houses and ancestral halls were set in the midst of each village, and the dispute was of course common knowledge, the shame and vexation of the party having to make such an atonement was complete. I suspect that this made settlements much more difficult where the aggrieved party insisted on his rights to fire-crackers perhaps to such an extent that sensible people would not insist on it, and the mediating elders would do their best to persuade parties to forego the provision, wherever possible. This practice first came to my attention in 1957, when I was District Officer South. Two lineages in the villages of Tseng Lan Shue and Ho Chung were in dispute over damage to or interference with a grave belonging to the former, and its village representative (who was also an elder of the lineage in question) was demanding that the Ho Chung people should make due payment and, in addition, pay for ten thousand strings of fire-crackers to be let off at his clan's ancestral hall to show atonement and satisfactorily (for him) conclude the case. He was a difficult and determined person, and I was inexperienced and thought his claim extravagant. As the case was somehow settled or at any rate did not come up to me again, I thought no more about it, not realizing that the demand for firecrackers as part of the settlement was in line with old custom in the area. Since that time, the old rural society and its economic base have been changed out of all recognition, but my discussions with elders in different parts of the old Southern District, comprising the present Islands, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan administrative districts, at various times over the past twenty-five years have confirmed the practice in their areas in former days, and its time-honoured place in the settlement of disputes. Finding this practice to be an interesting, not to say intriguing, part of local custom, but being unable to spend time in gathering ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p NOTES AND QUERIES 299 examples from field work, I began to look in books on China for examples from other places. It then became obvious that the use of firecrackers in the settlement of disputes was widespread. Some examples from my reading may be of interest to readers, and I shall briefly refer to them here. E. T. Williams mentioned their place in the settlement of disputes in his general work on China China Yesterday and Today (New York, Thomas Y. Crowell 1923), 128: The village elders use their good offices to reconcile the disputants and earn for themselves the reward of the peace-makers. They hear the complaint and the defense, the rejoinder and the sur-rejoinder. They find a middle ground on which the parties to the quarrel may meet, The law-suit is avoided: the ill-feeling is removed, the principals and their relatives are reconciled, and the whole village participates in the feast with which the event is celebrated. Of the complainant is decorated with red hangings, and the neighbor against whom complaint was made brings great bunches of fire-crackers attached to a pole and sets them off in the gateway. Thus full atonement is made for the alleged injury or affront and everybody is happy. The house except, as I have said above, the losing party! And forty years before Williams' book was published, the prefect of Canton, intervening in a three-cornered dispute between merchants, scholars and his subordinate officials, playing the role of mediator, "soothed the anger of the scholars with fireworks, i.e. shooting firecrackers, a customary way of giving loud apology to a party whose sentiments or honor were wronged". This is taken from Kung-chuan Hsiao Compromise in Imperial China, Occasional Papers on China No. 6 (Seattle, School of International Studies, University of Washington, 1979), p. 45, citing the account given by Herbert A. Giles, China and the Chinese (New York, 1902). Chang Fu-liang, a member of a rural reconstruction programme in Kiangsi province in the 1930s, found that the settlement of disputes was sometimes necessary before a start could be made to the work. He describes one situation as follows:- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 300 NOTES AND QUERIES In the fall of 1934, the third welfare center was located in a populous village in a thickly settled area. The investigation by the welfare workers showed much that they could do to help the people in the village. But somehow in every home they visited and every person they met they found the same lack of interest in everything except the ongoing lawsuit between the Hsiungs and the Lius, the two largest clans, who accounted for more than half the population of the village. There existed a piece of poor land of about two acres which each side claimed to be its own. The Lius were largely farmers while the Hsiungs were scholars and merchants. The case was decided by the district court in favor of the Hsiungs, with the result that the Lius threatened to appeal to the high provincial court. Following the decision of the district court, the Hsiungs let their buffalo graze on the disputed land. This act was challenged by the Lius and a fist fight ensued. The Hsiungs, being white-collar workers, were beaten and had to flee. The Lius seized the buffalo and took it to their ancestral hall, thus making good the Hsiungs' charge that the Lius had stolen their animal. The Hsiungs refused to take back their buffalo without appropriate apology accompanied with musicians and fire-crackers after the fashion of a victory parade. The Lius, being farming families, could ill afford to continue the lawsuit, yet they found the thought of "losing face" by complying with the Hsiungs' demand even more distasteful than bankruptcy. The welfare workers from outside were neutral. They had many talks with both parties and insisted on chiang li or talking reason with both sides. The disputants finally agreed that the object of their lawsuit was worth less than they had spent, and that if they insisted on continuing it both sides would face bankruptcy. The welfare workers then organized a parade with flags and firecrackers and led the buffalo from the Lius' ancestral hall back to that of the Hsiungs. They invited the elders from both sides to a tea party for a peaceful settlement of the lawsuit. Each side disclaimed any desire for the two disputed acres, provided the other did not claim it. Finally, to the relief and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p NOTES AND QUERIES 301 satisfaction of all, both parties agreed to give the disputed piece of land to the experimental farm of the welfare center for furthering the work of agricultural improvement. This passage is taken from Chang Fu-liang When East Met West, A Personal Story of Rural Reconstruction in China (New Haven, Connecticut, Yale-in-China Association, 1972) 50-51. It will be seen that whilst the team tactfully used firecrackers in the final solution, it was not in the form originally insisted upon by one of the parties to the dispute! In another recorded village case, this time from Amoy in the Fukien province, provision for the use of firecrackers in the settlement of offences against the community was included in the village rules. Describing ownership and management of seaweed growing areas in the early 1930s, the writer, who was one of the professors at Amoy University, stated: "The rocks are jealously guarded and no one is permitted to pick up a single seaweed from another person's grounds. If such a case is discovered, the person will be fined by the village committee a sum of $50.00 and besides will have to set off a quantity of firecrackers as a means of confessing his offence against the owner". (Tseng, "Seaweeds of Amoy”, Lingnan Science Journal 12, No. 1 (1933), 49). Associations in urban milieu seem also to have used fire-crackers in the course of disciplining their members. E. T. Williams describes how the Swatow Guild, comprising persons from six nearby hsien, fined those members who failed to participate in the celebration of the birthday of the Queen of Heaven, the guild's patron saint, no less than 10,000 firecrackers. At least, there was provision for this in its rules! (Williams, op. cit. 200). Far from home, a party of Chinese miners on the phosphate workings on Ocean Island were only placated and a serious riot averted by the offer of fireworks by the District Officer trying to settle a dispute with their employers and the native Gilbertese workers. This happened in the 1920s, and the Chinese were almost certainly Kwangtung men since recruitment was carried out by agents in Hong Kong under the supervision of the Hong Kong authorities. The District Officer was the future Sir Arthur Grimble. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 302 NOTES AND QUERIES (Arthur Grimble Return to the Islands (London, John Murray, 1965) 159-167, first printing 1937). Another case in which firecrackers did the trick is described in some detail by Carl Crow. It concerned an advertising sign for cigarettes placed near a village outside Shanghai, credited with causing harm to its residents. In this instance, the writer found himself in a very difficult situation, between a wealthy, influential client and village feeling, and the case was only settled for good when the man lost interest in the product and turned to other lines of business. (Carl Crow, 400 Million Customers (New York, Pocket Books Inc., 1945) 99-102, first printing 1937). But we need more examples from Hong Kong. Now that village handbooks are being collected in greater numbers, and the work of interviewing old persons and experienced senior local leaders is being done across the territory by the energetic team of researchers in the Chinese University, there is every likelihood that more local examples of this and other aspects of village rules in the settlement of disputes will come to light. This note is intended as an indication of the scope and importance of the subject. Hong Kong, 1982. JAMES HAYES CANTON WATER PINES (GLYPTOSTROBUS PENSILIS (LAMB)) AT TAI HANG VILLAGE, NEW TERRITORIES The rapid development of the New Territories in the last decade has posed threats not only to many sites and buildings of historical and cultural interest but also to plant and wildlife habitats of scientific significance. Considerable effort has been made by the authorities concerned to conserve the best of these, with varying degrees of success. In the 1972 issue of this Journal, an account was given by D. C. Shen on two mature trees, Canton Water Pines, growing in the Tai Hang Village near 183 Milestone, Tai Po Road. Readers may be interested to know of conservation efforts made since then, and the present condition of the trees. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p BOOK REVIEWS 313 has been discussed a number of times previously by historians of this epoch, notably Louis Allen. The strategic importance of the India National Army is intriguing but subject to controversy. Typically, one might say, the Japanese conquerors did not completely trust their protégés; in fact, Bose's recall from Nazi Germany was delayed until 1943, after Fujiwara had been relieved of his command of the Kikan. Moreover, in 1945, the time of settlement for displaced loyalties from the British Raj to Independent India had come in the shape of the famous Red Fort trials at Delhi of some 14,000 of the 19,500 strong members of the National Army. Then, the British were forced to recognize the claims of loyalty to one's country and so these Japanese collaborators were acquitted of charges of mutiny or treason. Fujiwara's own account, then, of this far from clear-cut ideological conflict, conducted partly through the F. Kikan, is a valuable addition to the materials for the discussion of this important topic; even if, as its translator and editor admits, it is subjective and uncritical. @X ALAN BIRCH (A Cultural Geography of China) Chen Cheng-siang, Joint Publishing Co. Hong Kong, 1981. This is a collection of nine papers by Professor Chen, most published previously, some as early as the 1950's, and an address given by him to introduce his newly completed Historical and Cultural Atlas of China. The book bears a misleading title: X (literal translation: A Cultural Geography of China). Instead of being a comprehensive geographic treatment of China from the cultural perspective, it is rather a selection of loosely connected topics. The book opens with a chapter on the migration of the cultural core of China from north to south, which includes disappointingly simplistic statements about the way it has followed the shifting of political and economic centres. Methodologically, Chen employs mainly straightforward cartographic analysis (a total of 18 maps) of the distribution of population, eminent ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 348 BOOK REVIEWS China. Inevitably, and by intention, such persons were ignorant of the local scene and background, and usually did not speak its dialect. The contents of district gazetteers were usually fairly uniform, taking in the principal subjects such as history, geography, the economy and government, and providing extended or contracted accounts of these and other topics according to the interest and degree of industry shown by the compilers. The gazetteer also provided much information about the worthies of the district whether scholars, aged persons, religious figures, chaste widows and other females, or meritorious officials who had served there in past centuries. Interesting works on the district or by its natives were also included. Our Hsinan Gazetteer is a fairly typical product of the scholar-gentry's contribution to the writing of local history, albeit far from being the best example of the kind. Baker and Ng's work is well-done. The chapters are concise and the notes and complementary material are comprehensive, useful, wide-ranging and enlightening. The material itself is varied and interesting. The book includes useful tables showing the contents of the 1688 and 1819 editions of the gazetteer (pp 5-16 and 128-130), and there are also maps reproduced from the two editions, showing the county, the district city, and coastal defences, all typical of those found in local histories of the Ch'ing period and before. Useful additional features are a reproduction of the Italian missionary Volonteri's bilingual map of 1866 (map 9) and Dr. Baker's production of two special maps (Nos. 7 and 8). The latter show the dynamics of local settlement and population growth, and their geographical variation, and greatly assist the reader in making sense of what would otherwise be a mere listing of administrative divisions and place names. What then is there to be criticised? In general, any omissions are those of the gazetteer itself, being things which were largely taken for granted by the magistrate and local scholar-gentry who produced the 1819 edition. They expected that local villages and market towns would supply their own self-management and did not describe its workings, but owing to the distance in time and the vastly changed circumstances of the last eighty years, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p BOOK REVIEWS 349 it is necessary to emphasize this point anew. Secondly, with their likely (outward) bias against it, they did not bring out the importance of the popular religion for its own sake. They also missed its importance as a factor shaping local management. The popular religion emphasized the protection of the people against disease and harmful influences of all kinds, not only as individuals but as families and communities. Hugh Baker's own series Ancestral Images (SCMP Ltd. 1979, 1980 and 1981) and Joan Law and Barbara Ward's recent book on Chinese Festivals (South China Morning Post 1982) help to fill this gap. Thirdly, the daily life of ordinary people and its strong cultural base need to be added to the record. Fortunately, detail on these areas is now being recovered through recent field research conducted mainly from the Chinese University. The interested reader could expand his studies beyond the gazetteer, with the help both of Dr. Baker's complementary text and the notes, and the additional material research workers continue to provide for later synthesis. Dr. Baker has touched on land (pp 44-45) and has filled out the account provided in the gazetteer about settlement, especially after the "Evacuation of the Coast 1662-69" (pp 26-28) but more information is now becoming available. On land and land-related matters, Edgar Wickberg, David Faure and Michael Palmer have work published or in preparation. For settlement details, the collected genealogies of the long settled families of the New Territories, large and small, are producing a wealth of new material. A new listing of local genealogies, mostly held in manuscript, with an explanation of their contribution to local history, is given in Anthony K. K. Siu's recent book Genealogies and Hong Kong's Local History (in Chinese) published privately by the Hin Chiu Institute in 1983. Mr. Siu has also pointed to the use that can be made of the other and older Chinese sources for the region. This kind of documentary research would greatly assist with identifying more of the (too large) number of village names which remain unidentified on maps 7 and 8 referred to above. The gazetteer's listing of temples can also be extended. It is certain from my field research and enquiries that more existed than are stated in the 1819 edition, and many more were added after that time. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v REVD. CARL T. SMITH'S NOTES ON THE SO KON PO VALLEY AND VILLAGE So Kon Po can be translated as "the straw broom plain", or possibly, "the straw broom landing place". The valley is a pocket with hills closing in at its seaward end. The hill to the north is the site of Tai Hang Village and Tiger Balm Garden. To the south-west is Jardine's Lookout, and to the south-east is Caroline Hill. There are two principal roads, both circular, the Eastern Hospital Road and the Caroline Hill Road. The original So Kon Po district extended to the north-west of the valley itself, that is, to the north-east side of the old East Point Hill, now the area of Hysan Avenue and Lee Gardens. In the present area of Jardine's Bazaar, Irving Street and Keswick Street there was probably a Chinese settlement at the time the British occupied Hong Kong. In 1842 the population of this village of So Kon Po was given as eighty. The valley drained into the sea near the present junctions of Yee Woh Street, Causeway Road and Tung Lo Wan Road. Tung Lo Wan was the name of the bay at the seaward end of the valley; the bay has now been reclaimed to form the Patterson Street and Victoria Park area. The original cultivators of the valley seem to have been the Wong (#) family. A few people in the village were engaged in ship-building and fishing. Capt. Belcher, commander of H.M. survey ship "Sulphur", landed on Hong Kong island in January 1841. As the most suitable site for a settlement, he suggested a spot "at nearly the east end of Hong Kong bay, in two small indents; one opening into the valley of Wongneichong and another to the north-east [the So Kon Po valley]. A small promontory [East Point] of about 220 yards in length and 120 in breadth, with a frontage on both sides, has a landing place for boats at the point at all times of the tide. Both of these small bays are dry at low water spring tides, and would be easily gained from the sea". (Canton Register, 7 Dec. 1841) Captain Belcher's suggestion was not followed, but Jardine, Matheson and Company considered the East Point promontory, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 13 even though removed from the rest of the new settlement, as a possible site for their operations and accordingly bought Marine Lot 52 at the first land sale in June 1841. When the government took over their godowns and property in the Victoria Barracks area, they began building in 1843 on their lot at East Point (according to a source dated 1849). However, an on-the-spot report published in January 1842 describes a visit to the east end of the island and mentions buildings being built there: "At Mr. Gillespie's [in Wanchai] the road crosses a granite bridge [at the present junction of Queen's Road East and Stone Nullah Lane] and ascends rather suddenly to a gap cut through a hill which commands a view of the whole valley and village of Wongneichung and the road to T'ai Tam winding up. If one pursues the branch which crosses the valley and goes on east one arrives at the village of Sookon-poo, at present a sequestered, well-wooded, and very pretty part of the island. From the west end of this village a point runs out into the sea whereon a European building has already been commenced. . . the road to the cast terminates at the village of Soo-kon-poo.” Jardine's built a range of houses and shops just beyond their Marine Lot at East Point. These were for the convenience of their employees. The presence of the firm attracted Chinese who settled just beyond Jardine property. Their settlement, built in a haphazard manner, was an extension and enlargement of the old So Kon Po village. In 1847 the Government cleared the area and laid out some thirty lots, which were then sold to shopkeepers. Near the centre of these lots was built the So Kon Po market. This area is the core of the present Jardines Bazaar. In 1843, a Hong Kong newspaper commented on a statement made in The Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review that the government in Hong Kong had granted to private individuals whole villages of the original inhabitants of the island. The local newswriter claimed this was untrue: "The only village near any location in allotment is that at the Point. It is true the proprietors (wishing perhaps to be Laird of that ilk) did, for protection, enclose it within the ring fence of his own allotment, but at the request of the villagers themselves. The Government, however, immediately ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 21 A prolonged discussion followed, mostly with local researchers into the history, economy and society of the Hong Kong Region. Dr. David Faure offered two contributory reasons for the KMT's failure to deal with land reform in addition to those mentioned by Dr. Myers. One was the effects of the World Depression of the early 1930s; another was the amount spent on military expenditure that might have been usefully spent on land reform. Dr. Myers agreed. Dr. Hayes said that if the time needed for land survey and settlement in the N.T. of Hong Kong (4 years) and its cost were any indication of the size and complexity of the task, it might indicate that it was beyond the KMT's capacity, even in one province. There was also the matter of sufficient trained staff. The discussion then turned to tenancy itself. Dr. Patrick Hase said that, if the N.T. was in any way typical of the situation in the sub and top soil ownership situation, the amount of true tenancy was small, consisting of a small number of landless peasant families and others who had to rent land from others to make up for their own insufficient holdings. He also queried whether one could apply a broad brush. There was surely a difference between subsistence areas such as the Hong Kong Region and highly developed market-economy regions centred round big cities, as at Canton and in the Yangtze delta. Dr. Hase went on to say that in discussion of tenancy an important factor in assessing its effect was the percentage of the crop taken in tenancy, either by the sub-soil owner or by the surface owner from sub-tenants. In the Hong Kong Region the percentage of the crop represented by the first was very low, below 25% and getting less as more land was opened. The latter was (and had long been) customarily set at around 50%, and there were no signs that it had created economic deprivation and social tensions. Dr. Hayes added that the desperate economic situation of the peasants attributed to the tenancy position, as reported by the Institute of Pacific Affairs' social scientists in the 1930s, seemed very unreal to those of us working on the Hong Kong Region. Dr. Quested asked "who, then, were the tenants?" and what had been their experience and significance. Dr. Myers said they ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 95 uncommon, always indicates a kiln. Lime-burning boomed after 1918 but slumped badly in 1925 in the great strike in Hong Kong, and never revived seriously. Distilleries for making spirits, generally from molasses, sometimes from rice, are found in the towns, also soy and preserved vegetable factories. Mining of wolframite is done only in North Lantau. There are two or three small granite quarries on Cheung Chau and Lamma. A good deal of these various products are sold outside the islands and bring in cash and foreign goods of all kinds. Some remote valleys are still, however, living what is essentially a "subsistence economy" life, in which the village grows nearly all it needs, and has very little left over to sell. Much rice is exported, and rice imported from Annam to replace it; rice from Annam is cheaper and a profit is made on the difference. Cheung Chau is the biggest business centre of the islands, thanks to its excellent harbour, the ferry service, its big fishing business, and its flat land suitable for building. It does all the business of South and East Lantau and the smaller islands nearby; it supplies a small European settlement; has several factories, numerous shops, and does a very big fish and shrimp paste business; it has distilleries, and boat and junk builders' yards. Its chief drawback is water shortage; water boats bring supplies from Lantau, but the problem is a very serious one for the growing population. Tai O is a port which has grown up to supply the needs of the fishermen in the shallow waters of the Delta, the best fishing ground on this part of the coast. Its harbour is poor and rather silted up, and the deeper part is very exposed. It has not much industry beyond its saltpans. Pingchau is a business centre for North Lantau, many of whose inhabitants cut grass to feed its limekilns; the lime is got entirely from coral and shell, and as the sea near it is almost worked out, coral fishermen have to go far afield. Ma Wan is a village which seems to have grown up round the old Customs yamen, now the school. It has little business and few shops. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 100 Further to the west is Shalowan ("Sand Snail Bay") a big village with a fine beach and a fine wood behind it for “fungshui”. The villagers defend their beach against sand diggers with firearms; it guards their paddy fields behind. There is a settlement of early man on the headland near the village; old fields just behind the site are, apparently, for dry crops. In a suitable light ancient log slides can be seen, running straight down the steepest hills, on this stretch of coast. Between Shalowan and Tai O the only place of note is Sham Wat ("Deep Dene"), a narrow valley with two or three tiny hamlets. Just to the east of Tai O is Po Chu Tam (“Precious Pearl Pool"). The name may either preserve the memory of a pearl fishery or enshrine a local legend: pearl oysters were once to be found in Hainan only 200 miles away. Po Chu Tam is the back door to Tai O, from it a navigable creek runs down to Tai O town. Po Chu Tam has a big temple with a shed for dragon boats; the head and tail are kept in the temple. On a low headland nearby is a ruined Chinese fort: its work is now done by an Indian guard, put there after a piracy in 1926. Another protection is an old wall with a gate, which stands across the path from Po Chu Tam just outside Tai O. Any active man could out-flank it by going up the hill. Tai O ("Big Haven") is the biggest town in Lantau, with over 2,000 people. It was recently building an electric light and power station, run on oil. The town straggles along the shores of its creek, and has a small agricultural plain behind it. About 3 miles up into the hills is a big Buddhist temple, with a number of "fasting halls"; these have lately built a bridge and widened the path going up hill. Tai O salt is made in big salt pans, but is of poor quality, and only fit for salting fish. The creek cuts off the hills on which the Police Station stands from the town: it is crossed by a sampan ferry which is leased by auctions held by the elders of the place. In the wider part of the creek is a substantial settlement of boatpeople. They live in huts built on piles driven into the creek bed. These piles are often of stone, but often also of wood or bamboo. The huts are lashed to the piles with wire. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 104 Before moving on to discuss the larger islands to the south-east of Lantau, it is worth just mentioning the small islands off Lantau. There are small islands both to the north and the south of the main island. The Islands north of Lantau are six in number. East Brother, Reef Island and West Brother; fishermen sometimes live there. Chek Lap Kok ("Red Sea-perch Point") is a barren island of low granite hills which lies in front of Tung Chung, sheltering its harbour. Big reefs of quartz run through it. Two formerly prosperous quarries on this island were ruined by the 1925 strike. Now there is only farming and fishing. Kwo Lo Wan is a ruined village on the southern isthmus: it is a common placename. Shau Chau ("Guard-station Isle") 18; has three dumb-bell isthmuses, two covered at high water, and a third, on which there is a settlement of early man. There is a deserted temple here. Tongkwu (“Brass Drum") 19 has the chief early settlement of men in this area. The objects found show very little Chinese influence. Later settlements in Sung and Ming times were at the northern end of the beach. The island is used now for fishing and pasturing cattle, and there is a lighthouse. It is a very good example of a dumb-bell island - a sandy isthmus connecting two hills. Urmston Roads, as the waters between Tongkwu and the mainland are known, was a frequent anchorage for foreign fleets in the 1839 and 1857 wars, despite a strong tidal flow. It was used by a French squadron in 1857, and one ship left a record of her presence by inscribing a stone at Castle Peak with "Nemesis 1857". We now pass south of Lantau. All this coast suffers from lack of harbours: only bays facing south-west are any good. There is always some swell; and it can be very violent sometimes. Taking the small islands to the south of Lantau, we have firstly the Soko Islands. There are eight islands in this group ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 105 with rocks and reefs in addition; the name may mean "Dragnet Isles". The northernmost island is a dumb-bell with quite a good harbour, and a fishing village of huts very different from ordinary Chinese dwellings. This island was another settlement of early man. The southern larger isle has two or three villages on its dumb-bell isthmus. There is a shrimp paste factory here which exports to Europe and America. The names Tai and Sai A Chau mean "Big and Little Forked Island". A small island to the west of the group is also a dumb-bell; the isthmus here is covered at high tide. Patung or Shek Kwu Chau (“Stone Drum Island") is rocky and barren, but with one small valley where cultivation is possible. It was once proposed to lease the island as a rabbit farm, but the proposers never went on with it.20 its English name To the south-east of Lantau are a number of more important islands. Of these the most prosperous is Cheung Chau (“Long Island"). Cheung Chau is the best example of a dumb-bell island in these waters. The northern end contains a small hamlet and cultivation, the southern end contains the "Peak", or European reservation. It started there through missionaries building holiday bungalows on the hills: they began doing so in 1906, attracted by the beaches, the easy marketing and the village ferry to Hong Kong. This was run in the interest of the fish trade, but was taken over some 10 years ago by the Western Ferries Co., a Hong Kong concern, Between the fish trade and the market gardens, Cheung Chau breeds more flies per square yard than any other place in the Colony. It has a street cleaning squad, but of course this cannot touch the masses of filth on private property. There is a fire engine, a Government school, a hospital, and a big temple to Pak Tai, god of the Pole Star, the finances of which were inextricably mixed with those of the market, the ferry, and the electric light station. There are plays annually performed in May for the pleasure of Pak Tai, and incidentally for his worshippers, in a huge decorated matshed put up in front of the temple. It draws big crowds, and stimulates business quite a lot. There are other temples too, and little shrines to local spirits. There is also ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 106 a boarding house where Europeans can put up at cheap rates on the "Peak". An interesting feature of the island is that nearly all the land is owned by a family association called the Wong Wai Tsak Tong, which has its headquarters in Namtau21. All the buildings, however, are owned by the people who built them, or their modern representatives, who pay a small ground rent to the Tong for their sites. Most of the European houses are on hills, and so are on Crown land, unclaimed by the Tong in 1905 when the land settlement was made. This system of ground landlordism is found very rarely now elsewhere in Hong Kong. It is a relic of the system of paying land tax in distant Namtau by deputy, as happened before 1898, when the Territories were leased. To the north-east of Cheung Chau is Neikwuchau (“Nun Island"). This island once had three villages on it: but two are deserted; the third (Ngau Tau Tong, Cow's Head Pond) still flourishes.22 Pak Pai took its name from the high white rock in the bay off it; Kwo Lo Wan ("The Bay Along the Road") is where the limekiln used to be, Chau Kong ("Old Man Chau") 28 is a small island lying off Neikwuchau opposite Kwo Lo Wan. It is practically a desert island. I have never seen anyone on it. Further to the north-east, beyond Neikwuchau is Pingchau ("Flat Island"). Pingchau is another dumb-bell island, its houses being built on the isthmus, with limekilns thick along the western and southern shores, facing sheltered water. An industry not mentioned so far is gambling, which flourishes vigorously in the large, long shops fronting on the main street. As no Police live on Pingchau, nothing serious can be done to stop it. The island is full of Hakkas and Hoklos, who have little in common save mutual dislike. I once had a very bad riot case to try, in which a man had been killed by someone unknown, and the only thing I could do was to bind everyone over to keep the peace. The chief point is that to my amazement they did so! Leaving Pingchau and travelling east we first come to a group of small uninhabited islands. The first of these, Kau Yi Tsai ("Little Armchair")24 is a little desolate island, chiefly ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 108 and more than half of them still live within two miles of these ancient sites, which speak of hundreds of years of settlement and progress, before the Han emperors conquered the coast with a fleet and army. Leaving aside the islands close to Hong Kong, which have little of interest, we next pass the Potoi group off Cape d'Aguilar (named after a Major-General who commanded the troops in Hong Kong in its early years). All are of granitic rocks seamed with dykes of dark green stone which decay more rapidly than the granite and so often form valleys, caves and hollows. All but Potoi itself are barren and deserted, except for the light on Waglan (Wang Lan "Barrier Fence"). About nine years ago, the Chinese second officer of a ship distinguished himself by steering straight on to the island, where the ship not unnaturally stopped. There was no discoverable reason for this exploit; it was not bad weather, though dark it was about 2 a.m. and the light showed clearly. A similar but more excusable disaster occurred in 1916 on the east end of the Lema's eight miles to the south on Tam Kon Shan (“Carrying Pole Mountain"), when the Chiyo Maru, which was a big trans-Pacific liner, ran aground. I believe few or no lives were lost. nets. Potoi has a small but good harbour, very popular with boat people, and with a handsome temple. There are a few shops, and its economic centre is Stanley. The beach is used for drying. Once in 1930 an ingenious fellow tried to monopolize the beach by applying for a matshed site right in the middle of it. I saw the place, saw through his game, and turned him down. Up in the hills are three tiny hamlets, living on the scanty crops their fields produce, and probably selling to the boat people as well; their names mean "Long Stone Ridge", "Cow Lake", and "Mountain Hut" 27. To the north, at the entrance to Junk Bay, known in Chinese as "General's Haven" (Tseung Kwan O), is an island called Fat or Fu Tau Chau (“Buddha's or Tiger's Head Island"). It was the site of one of the "Blockade of Hong Kong" customs stations; the station is in ruins, although the island has a few inhabitants. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 115 Besides showing the diversity of the constituent communities of the city diversities of population, settlement, shrine and temple under leaders arising from the community this paper seeks to indicate the variety of leadership practices adopted therein. Although my information comes from recent times and it is practically impossible to obtain earlier documentary proof, it is clear from the accounts given for only five small bodies that a number of different techniques had long been employed. Even within the boundaries of a small place like Shau Kei Wan the methods used in the selection process differed from one end of the township to the other. This divergence is explained by the fact that the two organizations studied operated quite independently of each other in different sections of the community. Even in the 1960s I had to make separate arrangements to consult each body, and to assemble its elders. I had at first tried to do this through one that was much better known to me than the other, but this was a failure, despite the close association of their senior members in the Shau Kei Wan Kaifong Association, a very active and well-knit body. This, to my mind, underlines the strong separatism so characteristic of this type of local organization. It was probably even more marked in the 19th century, when communities were much more cut off from each other than they are today. The various studies are based on material collected mainly by visits and interviews to the local leaders concerned in the communities described above in the late 1960s. At this period the worshipping arrangements connected with annually recurring local festivals were still proceeding, as, indeed, they still are in some of the cases discussed. The communities themselves had changed since they had first become established in the middle nineteenth century with more expansion and less continuity in these areas than in the long-settled traditional villages of the type to be found elsewhere in the region but it was still possible to obtain from groups of community leaders information that provided a reliable guide to past organization and practice. This was sufficient to establish modes which dated back well into the nineteenth century, to most probably at, or near, the foundation dates of the communities served by the shrines studied. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 116 In selecting these organizations for study, I must emphasize that they are representative of many more from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. These simply happen to have come to my attention in the course of official duties and aroused my interest over the years. Taken as a group, whether situated in street, sub-district or suburban village, and despite being under foreign rule, they demonstrate the same capacity for social organization and self-management as in the much older communities on the mainland New Territories, then still under Chinese rule. They provide further evidence to show that communities of shopkeepers and villagers, of diverse origins and without benefit of kinship ties and long settlement, could manage their own affairs without any necessity for gentry or merchant elite leadership. In short, the instances from Hong Kong Island carry this conclusion one step beyond that reached for areas like Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the individual and linked villages of the Southern district of the New Territories, because, if gentry were lacking in those areas, there was altogether no possibility of their presence in early British Hong Kong, concerning which frequent estimates of the low quality of the population can be found.7 Ap Lei Chau and the Hung Shing Festival Ap Lei Chau, the island on the south shore of Aberdeen Harbour, had apparently no more than "two or three families of Hakka grass-cutters" when the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841. There was, however, a temple to Hung Shing, the God of the Southern Sea, that had stood on the island for many years; its bell is dated 1773.10 The likelihood is that the temple predated the land population, and that (together with the Tin Hau Temple on the north shore, where Aberdeen town now stands) it originally served the boat population of the Ap Lei Chau-Aberdeen anchorage. By the mid-1860s there were 60 houses there, with a population of perhaps two or three hundred persons.11 By 1897 the number of residents was 1,123, and by the Colony Census of 1911 it had risen to 1,437.12 This population gained its livelihood from concerns that served the fishing fleet: the local Aberdeen-Ap Lei Chau anchorage had 424 boats and 4,130 persons at the 1866 census.13 There was little farming, as the island has steep ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 117 and rocky sides, and there were only a few places where agriculture could be carried on. The population was of mixed origin, and for long was largely male. As late as 1911 the number of males to females, including children, was 1,041 to 396. However, like the number of boats and boat people in the anchorage, the numbers and proportions fluctuated. In 1897, the respective numbers had been 783 to 340,14 This population of landsmen came from the nearby districts of Kwangtung province. Their interests were looked after by three organizations named the Fuk Hing Fong, Luk Hing Fong and Sau Hing Fong (*****). They were formed by the (福祿壽慶坊) men of San On, Tung Kwun and a mixed group of men from other districts respectively.15 It is not known when they were established, but the available evidence points to the earlier part of the settlement's history. For reasons that will be given below, they amalgamated about 1930, when they took the name of Tung Hing Kung She (東興公社), meaning the Society of the Combined 'Hings', retaining the common part of their old names.10 The leaders of the three Fongs managed the affairs of the small Ap Lei Chau community. They looked after the structure of the local temples and came together to discuss district affairs whenever circumstances warranted. It was to the shops of the leaders that persons in need of assistance went in time of need. The connection between the main temple, the Fongs, and the Kaifong (街坊) of Ap Lei Chau is shown in a petition to the Director of Public Works dated 17 April 1893, which is styled 'the petition of Chung Tat Chi and others, Committees of the Hong Shing Temple at Aplichow and the Kaifong of Aplichow' (English translation of a Chinese text not now available). Chung is recalled locally as a prominent shopkeeper and the leader of one of the Fongs. Again, at a hearing to determine ownership of the Hung Shing temple in 1893, one witness said 'The Kaifong are the shopkeepers', and for our present purposes he might have added "The shopkeepers are the leaders of the three Fongs."17 However, I am more concerned here with the three Fongs. Religious duties were the most regular of their functions, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 153 'When the entire company is made up of yes men, it will decline. It is not desirable to have complete tranquility.' A non-proprietary director, B24, emphasized that it was an executive's duty to speak his mind: 'If the managing director said we shall go south and I thought north is the right direction, then I would explain my reasons for my belief. If ultimately he said let us go east, I should follow him eastward. The most important thing is not to be a yes man. Do not support going south just because he says so.' The fact that the ‘yes man' was singled out for criticism seems to indicate that compliance among subordinates constituted a problem in their companies. Differences in opinion, according to the spinners, must be contained and resolved before they deteriorate into actual conflict. They followed several rules to prevent dissent getting out of hand. Steps were taken to ensure that the interests of the key decision-makers were homogeneous. As A22 told me, 'All of our executive directors are Chinese, friends. We can argue things out'. Besides ethnic and friendship ties, kinship bonds were also used to guard against irreconcilable conflicts. In Mill 17, a young director said that differences in opinion were settled by those at the top who would take the ultimate responsibility: 'I follow the advice of my uncle and my father. My uncle has a son on the Board [of Directors]. So the four of us are of the same family. Only two other board members are outsiders.' Within this framework, the weight of an individual's opinion was graded according to his hierarchical standing. A24 put this best: 'If they are under me, I make the final decision. If they are senior to me, I explain my views to them. If they do not accept, I shall do it their way.' But among peers of similar status and power, resolution of differences could not be so straightforward. Under these circumstances, most spinners did not favour settlement by majority vote. A27 gave the following explanation: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 204 A RELIC OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER P. BRUCE In a small cool church in Macau, separated by a few hundred yards of muddy water from China, rests a unique relic of St Francis Xavier.* Almost 20 years ago 100,000 people in 15 days filed past the small piece of bone housed in an ornate silver monstrance when it was taken to America from its usual resting place in Macau. Now the relic is back in a tiny church on Coloane Island. Ten years ago the building was in a run-down condition, having been used as a chapel for soldiers from Mozambique serving in the Portuguese Army. Then Father Mario C. Acquistapace arrived on the scene. A sprightly figure now probably in his seventies, he had the church restored. Today its exterior is washed in pale yellow with windows and woodwork picked out in light blue. He has an outgoing personality that runs to a hug when he finds a visitor is a Christian. Macau, the first permanent Western settlement on the coast of China, across the silt-laden waters of the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong, despite wars, upheavals and revolutions, remains curiously Mediterranean. The Portuguese built their first houses there in 1557, having camped briefly at Liampo and Sanchuang (St John's) Islands. Francisco de Xavier, called by Pope Urban VIII the "apostle of the Indies", was born into a noble and wealthy family and in 1529 he made the acquaintance of St Ignatius Loyola who was then studying at Paris. Impressed by his teachings, Xavier became one of the original seven men to take the first vows of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, in 1534. When John III, King of Portugal, asked the Pope to send a mission to his Indian possessions, two Jesuits were selected, one of whom was Xavier. He set sail in 1541 and after a voyage of more than a year arrived in Goa, India, where he carried out missionary work. From there he journeyed to Ceylon, or Sri Lanka... * See plates 12-14. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 205 Lanka, and then to Malacca where he converted a Japanese resident. The two set out to convert Japan and they landed at Kagoshima in 1549. Such was their success that 400,000 converts are said to have been made. When he understood that the Japanese had long considered China the source of wisdom and knowledge, Xavier made up his mind to bring the Christian message to that vast country. After failing to persuade the Governor General of Goa to send an embassy to China so that he might accompany it and thus evade the laws against foreigners entering the Imperial Empire, the missionary decided to proceed privately. He joined a group of merchants and in 1552 reached the small Portuguese settlement on Sanchuang Island, south of what was later to become Macau. However, he was stricken with fever and the merchants, fearing official reprisals, refused to take him to Canton. Undaunted, Xavier intended to carry on by junk; but his fever worsened and, in a miserable hut on the shore, on December 3, 1552, he died. A colleague recorded: "I went at once to the ship to obtain vestments and all else necessary for the burial ... some of those on the ship returned with me and we made a wooden coffin in which we placed the body clothed in priestly vestments. It was very cold; so most of them stayed aboard, and there were only four of us at the burial, a Portuguese, two slaves and a Chinese." Today relics of the saint can be seen in three places. His body lies in an ornate shrine in Goa and it is exhibited to pilgrims at intervals of several years. The saint's right arm up to the elbow was removed in 1614 and was sent to Rome where it has been venerated in the Jesuit Church of Gesu for more than 300 years. The sole remaining relic is the fragment of bone in the tiny Macau church. In 1619 three bones from the elbow to the shoulder of the right arm were extracted at Goa. One was sent to Cochin, now Southern Vietnam, another went to Malacca and the third went to Macau. By this time the Portuguese empire was faltering and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 210 village representative recalled it very clearly when I spoke with him on the subject, because his second son died and his seventh son was born in the same year. The disease was, for him, Chue mō pêng characterized by a dry feeling, sore throat and, to quote his exact words "pig bristles and fish scales were found growing on the body". There was no vomiting or excretion of blood and it was not cholera or malaria which were known to, and otherwise described by the villagers. According to Peplow, the usual remedy was as described in his account: "The patient has a high temperature and certain medicines are taken such as honeysuckle and honey. In addition a kind of paste is prepared from rice, boiled. With this the patient's chest is vigorously rubbed, and during this operation thick bristles about an inch long appear through the skin. After these have been plucked out, the fever subsides”. In old Ngau Tau Kok village of East Kowloon, a settlement of Hakka quarry men, where I spoke with old villagers on the subject in the mid 1960s, the local treatment for this disease was quite different. It was to kill a chicken, take off its feathers, wrap them in a newly bought white cloth not previously washed, place it in hot water and then rub over the body excluding the chest. Two reasons for not rubbing the chest were given: that the heart was centred there, and that women should not be rubbed there anyway. If the complaint did turn out to be chu mỏ pêng, pig-like bristles would stick to the cloth. They believed that chu mō pêng was a kind of poison inside the body, resulting in too much heat (r'aaì ít hei) that could lead to death or to mental disorder. At Ngau Tau Kok, several remedies were given for excess heat. The first was to buy a wông lo kat (E) for 50 cents, and boil it for two hours. The water had to be carefully measured at the start as no more should be added to it during the boiling, the intention being to reduce six bowls down to two. The remaining liquid was drunk. Another method was to take a turnip (löh paûk)蘿蔔, and slice and dry it. It should then be soaked for two hours in water ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 110 JAMES HAYES that every spot in the varied surface of the isle is either reduced beneath the government of industry, or made tributary to the beauty of the landscape. Turning to the inhabitants of the villages I will say something about the boat people below; they were, it seems, both Cantonese and Hakkas. The former occupied the larger, longer settled villages like Little Hong Kong and Wong Nei Chung. The latter were to be found in the smaller villages and hamlets such as the Chai Wan villages and Tai Tam Tuk. The Cantonese are the older and more numerous inhabitants of the Kwangtung province, but the Hakka constituted a numerous and distinct secondary body, speaking their own dialect; some would say language, which is quite different from Cantonese. The two groups appear to have occupied separate settlements in the island of Hong Kong, though the population of the larger coastal fishing and market villages was mixed. 18 The village people of that time were generally members of either a single or a few clans, descended from founding ancestors who had come to the area in the preceding century or even before. For instance, the ancestor of the Chow clan of Little Hong Kong—in 1841 it shared the settlement with at least two or three others—came into the area in the mid-17th century. According to a letter I received from Mr. Y.K. Chow, J.P., in 1967, the founding ancestor's son Yuc-tsun (†Œ) was born in Hong Kong in 1667. By 1841 their descendants had been settled for seven to eight generations and were clearly well rooted in the local soil. In Pokfulam, the Chan clan had been there since the eighteenth century. At a hearing on 6 July 1893 of the Squatters Board, set up to examine the claims of villagers in 1890, a man of 71 stated that he had been born and lived there ever since. "I claim 15 and 4/10th mows of fields. They are all together in one place. This land was left to my ancestors. My father and ancestors have been there 100 years." The Wong Nei Chung families, which belonged to several clans, were probably longer settled still. A woman, Ip Chan Shi, giving evidence before the Squatter Board in 1891 about various properties belonging to her late husband, who had died the previous year aged 55, said that he had four houses in the village altogether and that his family had been in the village for "many generations". +19 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 139 58 Petition dated 23rd day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang 24th year i.e. 8th June 1844. 59 60 See notes 19-20 above and relevant text. Response or comment, presumably again by the District Magistrate, following the petition of 8th June 1844. 61 Instruction dated sometime in Tao Kuang 24th year, but date and originator not clear to me. 62 Communication dated 15th day of 11th month, Tao Kuang 24th Year, i.e. 24th December 1844 (from Series CO129/7/9807, p. 326). See also Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit., p. 57. 64 Public Records Series CO129 and FO233. Copies of this deed, together with a few other papers from Chai Wan, belonging to Mr Law Wan-yeung(c) of Chai Wan, are available in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong. 65 See note 26 for the Wong holdings. The Tangs leased out similar properties on Tsing Yi Island in the present New Territories, where they apparently did hold the sole rights to the sub-soil up to 1899. 66 See the account given in J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op cit, p 32 and in J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong op. cit., pp. 34-37 and 244-246. 67 For accounts of these places see chapters 2 and 3 of J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region, op. cit. 6. See J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, op. cit., pp 68-9 and relevant notes on p. 254. 69 See the information on settlement in north-west Kowloon and Tsuen Wan in J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, op. cit., chapters 5 and 7. 70 Kuo Fei(部) Yueh Ta Chi 與天記三十三政事類渗防廣東沿潮閣 71 This is perhaps misleading and more information is required. The list of places where land was claimed to be in the private ownership of the Tangs, with dates of purchases and names of sellers is given in a petition to the Hsin-an District Magistrate dated 18th day of the 10th moon in Tao Kuang 24th year, i.e. 25 November 1844. This shows that part of those Hong Kong lands registered in the Tung-kwun district yamen, presumably before 1573, had been purchased by the Tangs from another family in the Ch'ien-lung reign, and therefore cannot be used to show Tang ownership in or before the Ming dynasty, although they do suggest that the lands were cultivated and of value in the Ming. Nor do we know whether land registered in what later became Hsin-an had earlier been registered in the Tung-kwun yamen but with the relevant registers transferred to the new district yamen in 1573. 72 For the dates of these temples, and especially for the items mentioned in the Table, see 陸鴻基, 吳偏霞霞, 合编, “香港伸銘彝術 op. cit. (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong), passim. I 71 See J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. chapter 7. 74 ** A.R. Johnston “Note on the Island of Hong Kong” in London Geographical Journal, XIV, reprinted in the Hong Kong Almanack and Directory, 1846, 75 Endacott, op cit., p. 59 76 E.J. Eitel, Europe in China op. cit. p. 215. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 207 THE SHANGHAI MUNICIPAL COUNCIL, 1850-1865: SOME BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Introductory remarks J.H. HAAN In a former article* I gave an analysis of the administrative structure that developed in the International Settlement of Shanghai during the nineteenth century. Appended to that article was a list of Municipal Council members for the period 1850-1865. Here I intend to give some biographical details about those members, not only with regard to their commercial positions, but still more to show in which other organisations they were active. This may serve as an indication of the social ambitions of the Council members. From the data I have been able to assemble it will appear that in this respect some were far more active than others, but that most in some way or another devoted themselves to public tasks other than the purely political one for which they had been chosen by the landrenters. The organisations, committees, etc., in which they participated may broadly be divided into two categories: those that were of a political nature and those that were of a more social nature. 1. Political Committees As from 1862 a number of committees were appointed by Public Meetings of Landrenters, mostly in order to devise methods to improve the effectiveness of Municipal Council rule. * JHKBRAS, Vol. 22 (1982) p. 31 “Origin and Development of the Political System in the Shanghai International Settlement” ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 208 J.H. HAAN These were the following: I. II. A Committee (the Defence Committee) "to consider any propositions laid before them for the defence, draining, lighting and general improvement of the Settlement", appointed on January 3, 1862. A Committee (the Assessment Committee) "to assess the value of foreign property in concert with the Municipal Council", appointed September 8, 1862. III. A subcommittee of members from the Defence Committee and the Assessment Committee "to consider the modifications (of the Land Regulations which had been proposed by the foreign consuls — JH) and to report upon them to the community", appointed September 8, 1862. IV. A Committee "to confer with the Treaty Consuls, and recast the Land Regulations in some such form as may meet the support of the foreign and Chinese authorities", appointed March 31, 1863. V. The "Hongque Provisional Committee of Roads and Sanitary matters", appointed May 29, 1863 (Hongque, or Hongkew, was what was briefly called the American Settlement until it was merged with the British Settlement in 1863). VI. The "Hongque Provisional Committee of Ways and Means", appointed May 29, 1863. VII. The "Hongque Committee of Assessment", appointed September 21, 1863. VIII. A Committee to study the possibilities of a Charter of Incorporation; appointed June 29, 1864. IX. A Committee "to consider the method of government best adapted to the requirements of the community and that the interests of all classes be taken into consideration", appointed... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 135 NCH 31.3.1855. 136 137 CR Jan. 1848, Jan. 1849, Jan. 1850. Adv. NCH 1.4.1854. 134 Adv. NCH 11.8.1855. 119 Adv. NCH 17.5.1862. 140 227 NCH 31.3.1855, 14.3.1857. 141 Polt, o.c., fac. p. 81. 1414 "Dictionary of National Biography” (1900), Vol. XIII, p. 202-203; A. Wylie: "Memorials of Protestant Missionaries” (1867), p. 25ff; NCH 11.4.1857; Couling, o.c., p. 344. 143 See: J.H. Haan: “De opkomst van de Internationale Settlement te Shanghai 1845-1865" (The Rise of the International Settlement at Shanghai) Unpublished manuscript, University of Amsterdam, 1977, p. 167-169. 144 NCH 13.9.1851; SA 1855. 145 146 J.C. Harris: “Couriers of Christ" (1931), fac. p. 112. Wylie, o.c., p. 25ff; BS I, 74; III 1596-1597. Obituary by Henri Cordier in T'oung Pao, Vol. III (1902), p. 338. 147 148 SA 1855, 1856. 149 Adv. NCH 19.1.1861. 150 China Directory 1874. 151 See: Edward LeFevour "Western Enterprise in Late Ch'ing China" (1970), passim. 152 King & Clarke, o.c., p. 98; see also p. 137 (year of death should be 1902 instead of 1891). 153 JNCBRAS, Vol. VI (1871), p. ix. 154 JNCBRAS, Vol. VIII (1874), p. i. 155 BS III, 2365; IV, 2557. 156 CR Jan. 1847. 157 Adv. NCH 27.8.1853. 158 NCH 12.4.1856, 14.3.1857, 9.1.1858, 15.1.1859. Replaced by Whittal (NCH 13.6.1863). 159 NCH 26.9.1857; Cordier, Letter, (see n. 32) p. xii. 160 Death reported in Report 1863 Trustees Trinity Church (NCH 10.12.1864). 161 CR Jan. 1842, 1843, 1848 (Macau), 1847 (Canton), 1848 (ibid), 1849 (ibid), 1850 (ibid). 162 Elliston. o.c., p. 25. SA 1854, 1855, 1856; adv. NCH 3.1.1857. 163 164 CR Jan. 1851. 165 Notification in NCH 17.8.1861. 166 NCH 10.6.1865. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 269 My notebook says “We had tea at all these villages all locally grown". The list includes Tai Hang Hau, Sheung Sze Wan and Ha Yeung, but I visited others in the group without making special mention of tea. At Ha Yeung I was told that they had 100 trees of what they called shan cha (山茶) (“hill tea”), not wild but planted by themselves. Tai Po Tsai, one of the larger villages of the area, claimed to have 50 trees, but the largest village settlement, Mang Kung Uk, reported "only a few tea bushes not many." However, the little island settlement of Fu Tau Chau in Junk Bay gave me hill tea to drink, from its own trees. Further towards Sai Kung Market, I was given hill tea to drink at Nam Wai, and also at Pak Kong Au, though the village reported "only 8 to 10 trees". East of Sai Kung, people in the hamlet of Shan Liu said that “tea was formerly grown (i.e. cultivated) but only wild bushes are now harvested”. But it was at Nam A, east of Sha Kok Mei, that I learned most. "A really nice, almost English village", I wrote enthusiastically. "We drank hill tea (excellent) from trees planted twenty years ago in the hills behind the village, but not many. It is best brewed in porcelain, they said. Their supply lasts six months in all, but is harvested four times a year - once in the winter months, once at Easter and twice in the summer. The best is the Easter crop.” Nothing was said, or asked, about preparation but each crop was kept in a drawer for two months. My note ends "The cows like to eat it!”. On Lantau, the villagers of Pa Mei, otherwise known as Shan Ha, said they collected hill tea from Tai Tung Shan Keuk (大東山腳), that is the north western slopes of Sunset Peak. On South Lantau the people of the Pui villages also went up to Tai Tung Shan to collect leaves from wild bushes there in the second to fourth moons. Previously there had been many trees, but hill fires had reduced their number. It was used as leung cha (涼茶) for cooling the system. At Tong Fuk my notes state, "they gather tea leaves from bushes on the hill and use it a lot. The tea comes from the Fung Wong Shan peak behind the village, and the leaves used are plucked in the second and third moons.” Rather surprisingly, the villagers of Upper and Lower Keung Shan, though located on the mountain slopes of a sheltered valley with good tree cover, had never cultivated tea bushes, or at least not within living memory. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 285 who can wear a colourful ribbon), and for his father and grandfather he applied for 2nd grade titles to be conferred on them." His filial piety was difficult to surpass. He died in Vietnam at the age of 73. When his sons and grandsons carried the coffin back to his native village, thousands of Chinese and foreigners, officials and commoners, accompanied it until they reached the ship. There were people crying for him, drawing pictures of him, and writing essays about him. Cities far away, such as Singapore, also had his life-story written in the newspapers with the headline ‘Death of a Philanthropic Gentry' (*). He was really a great man. I am his old colleague, thus, I know all about his personality and activities. Here I cannot give the details, but can only give a general account of him. “Written in 1904 by Chen chao-ch'ang (陈兆昌), a Tsun Sz (遵司), appointed by Imperial Command an official of the Han Lin Academy, and humbly offered while the writer was in charge of the Shan Hai Kuan area (山海关). NOTES Eitel, E.J., Europe in China: History of Hong Kong, 1895. p. 311 ff. Ah-lum's wife and children were poisoned, and Eitel clearly had doubts as to his involvement in the crime. The defence of Ah-lum was conducted in a lynch law atmosphere and his arrest and deportation, even though he had been found innocent had, according to Eitel "reduced (him) from affluence to beggary.” 2 Hsiang-shan T'ieh-ch'eng Chang Shih Tsu-pu (AKA) (Clan Record of the Chang clan of Heung Shan and Fat Shan) (1934). Chi-ching Pu (2) section, Hang Chuang (孝庄) sub-section, pp. 8-9a. 1 According to the Clan record, ancestor Chung-te (忠德) immigrated to Shih-t’ou village (石頭村), eight miles to the southwest of T'ieh-ch'eng (铁城) Fatshan (Foshan) during the latter part of the Southern Sung dynasty. The lineage then segmented into 3 sub-lineages in the 7th generation. The 1st remained in the original settlement, the 2nd moved to Nan-Ping (南屏), and the 3rd to Long-Mei (龙美) in Hsiang-shan (Heung Shan) county. 3 generations later, in the 10th generation, 3 descendants of the 1st sub-lineage emigrated to Ping-Lan (坪兰), Ya-Kang (雅岗) and Wai-chieh-yung (外借涌) in Heung Shan, respectively. Ancestor Ch'un-chen (纯真) of the 10th generation was the first to move to Ya-kang, but the family was not regarded as native to Ya-kang until ancestor Miu-hsien (妙贤) of the 14th generation registered and started a new segment of the lineage (开户立户). Thus, an Ancestral Hall was built in the middle of the Chia Ching (嘉靖) period in memory of him. Ah-lum was of the 18th generation of the Cheung lineage, and the 9th of the Ya-kang segment. He was born in 1828, and died in 1900. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 333 China's Island Frontiers Studies in the Historical Geography of Taiwan. Edited by Ronald G. Knapp. The University Press of Hawaii and The Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1980. xv. 296 p. 41 figures. As the cover jacket to this book states "This collection of essays is not a comprehensive treatment but a multifaceted look at the patterns and processes of Taiwan's historical geography." The range of the eleven essays is quite broad. The editor, however, has grouped them under two headings: the first includes essays on migration and rural settlement, and the second on urbanization and economic integration. The first article by Wen-hsiung Hsu traces the development of Taiwan from an island inhabited solely by Malayo-Polynesian speaking aboriginal groups to a Han-Chinese primary settlement frontier by 1683. This study uses mainly Chinese sources and a Dutch source, plus some archeological information on pre-historic Taiwan. No Spanish or Portuguese documents are consulted. Hsu's viewpoint of early Taiwan's political history is summed up in the conclusion: “Taiwan is the only Chinese area that has been colonized by three foreign powers: the Dutch (1624-1662), the Spanish (1626-1642), and the Japanese (1895-1945)” (p. 28, italics mine). In my opinion, the Chinese were one of many foreign groups encroaching upon the island during the early colonization of Taiwan and only the Japanese can be said to have colonized a truly "Chinese area”. The second chapter by I-shou Wang, “Cultural Contact and the Migration of Taiwan's Aborigines: A Historical Perspective" describes the problems the aborigines have encountered under each period of political control and colonization starting from the Dutch period and ending with the current Chinese period (1945 to present). Wang is objective in his view of Taiwan's settlement history, but he does not draw any comparative conclusions concerning aboriginal treatment during the various periods mentioned. In the third chapter, Ronald G. Knapp focuses on a case study of settlement and land tenure on the Taoyuan plain concentrating on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Knapp describes in detail the tenancy rights found during the early eighteenth century. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 334 which were divided into cultivation rights, surface rights, and sub-soil rights. Knapp's article on Taoyuan is followed by Cho-yun Hsu's description of settlement in the Yilan (I-lan) plain where such tenancy practices were not found. Hsu's main argument is that it was "entrepreneurial leadership that guided pioneering activities and affected subsequent development" (pp. 85-86) on the Yilan plain in contrast to "foreign initiatives, military colonization, and patent-derived efforts” common in other areas of Taiwan. Wen-hsiung Hsu's second essay concentrates on discovering the role voluntary organizations played in instigating social disorder during the Qing (Ch'ing) period in Taiwan (1683–1895). The author divides the Han-Chinese settlers of Taiwan into three large groups: Zhangzhou (Chang-Chou) people, Quanzhou (Ch'uan-chou) people, and the Hakka. Uprisings usually only received support from the group to which the leader belonged whereas the other two groups would oppose the uprising out of hatred of the third group rather than out of love for the Qing. Hsu concludes that the voluntary organizations, often based on the above-mentioned groupings, increased the frequency and raised the scale of social disorder prior to the mid-nineteenth century but their proliferation after that date facilitated social integration (p. 105). Why the three groups began to cooperate with each other at that time is not explained which leaves the topic somewhat unfinished. The final chapter in Part One is a brief discussion by Chiao-min Hsieh of names given to places in Taiwan by the island's various ruling groups. Part Two, "Urbanization and Economic Integration," begins with a chapter written by Tao-chang Chiang on the walled cities and towns in Taiwan. The discussion deals both with the form of individual walled towns and their distribution throughout the island. Chiang briefly describes how the walls often limited urban growth and how they affected the street patterns when growth beyond the walls did occur since main roads all began at the gates. The Japanese removed many of the walls and in their place built broad encircling boulevards. Next Donald R. DeGlopper traces the development and decline of the port of Lugang (Lu-kang) on Taiwan's west coast and the trading "systems" or hinterlands ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x International Settlement at Canton. Finally on 15 March 1986, some 60 members visited the Hong Kong Cemetery at Happy Valley under the expert guidance of Revd. Carl T. Smith. This occasion was memorable because it included a visit to the grave of our first president, Dr. J.R. Jones. The Council is most grateful to all persons who have contributed to the programme with their time and knowledge. Particular thanks go to Elizabeth Sinn of our Council who with a small sub-committee has taken up the task of providing the programme with zest, knowledge and imagination. Hitherto, it was usual for the Council to plan future programmes at each Council meeting, relying on councillors to make suggestions and arrangements, but after a longish period where this had become difficult, the new sub-committee was established. Publications Publication of the annual journal, always the mainstay of our publication programme, is behind schedule, but I am glad to report that the 1983 Journal has just come from the printers. Its editor, Dr. Patrick Hase, also has the 1984 journal in hand, which is expected within the coming year. As incoming editor, Dr. David Faure took over preparation for the 1985 journal from November last year. A note on our publication difficulties and arrangements for the 1983-85 Journals has been sent to our overseas members. A special publication with Oxford University Press to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Society's re-establishment in Hong Kong was completed in time for our celebration of the event at the Mandarin Hotel on 28th November, 1985. This was the volume of essays dealing with the Chinese Protestant Church and its contribution to the growth and development of Hong Kong society, by our vice-president Revd. Carl T. Smith. Copies of the book, suitably inscribed to mark the occasion, were presented to our patron, His Excellency the Governor Sir Edward Youde (by Revd. Carl T. Smith) and to Revd. Smith ix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 153 1983, the others are alive and well in Philadelphia. Helen is the mother of Harry V. Ryder Jr., whose foray into the attic had led to the discovery of these letters from Edith Rowe. Nothing is known about the Rowe family. Since they were able to send their daughter to a private school that involved payment of fees, the parents must have been at least comfortable. In her letters to Louese, Edith had not mentioned any brother or sister, but it was clear that she had carried on a regular correspondence with her mother. Edith's mother had enjoyed seeing the drawings that were scattered throughout her daughter's letters, much like travellers today sending home photographs they took. Explaining the reason for sending Louese the drawings, Edith wrote, In lieu of a camera I tried to make these (drawings) pretty often in Mother's letters. They are very roughly done but they amuse Mother and so I venture to inflict them on my friends once in a while.* 5 Very little is known about Edith herself, except what can be gleaned from her letters. She had a teacher referred to in these letters as Miss Amy, and friends one of whom was named Florence. The fact that Edith had arrived in China in 1902 has been established by scanning missionary records. Louese was thirty-seven in 1909, therefore must have been born in or around 1872. As her classmate and contemporary, Edith must have been about the same age. This means that in 1902 Edith would be thirty. Being thirty and unmarried at that time probably had influenced her decision to become a missionary in China. American women of Edith's educational and social background in 1900 were following the same kind of spirit of service that had led Jane Addams a decade or so earlier to found Hull House, a settlement house in the slums of Chicago. Whereas women at home were also championing such radical causes as the right to vote and abolition of alcoholic drinking, the more conservative ones, like Edith Rowe, were going abroad as ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 154 WEI PEH TI teachers and preachers in China. Jane Hunter, in her research on women missionaries of that era, found that women who went to China under the auspices of one of the forty-one American women's missionary boards had come from humbler background than those heading for the settlement houses at home." Perhaps that was why Edith had joined the China Inland Mission founded by an Englishman instead of a local Baptist mission. Philadelphia, despite being the seat of the Continental Congress that renounced king and country in 1776, had retained the British mystique. Perhaps it was this snobbish preference for things British that led Edith to the China Inland Mission, which, by that time, had established a recruitment centre in the United States. Apparently both Edith and Louese had toyed with the idea of becoming missionaries while at school. In one of the letters, Edith asked Louese, “Do you remember your desire to be a missionary? Can't you spare one of these darlings (Louese's children) and consecrate one for Foreign Service?” J. Hudson Taylor, who had worked in China under the China Evangelization Society during the 1850s, had become concerned that Protestant missionaries were more interested in establishing hospitals and introducing educational and social changes than in spreading the Gospel. He organized the China Inland Mission in London and brought the first group of twenty-four men and women missionaries under its auspices to China in 1866. As the name indicates, work of this organization was to be concentrated in the interior provinces, away from the treaty ports. The centre of the mission was located at Shanghai, with stations in the capital of each province and sub-stations in various towns. Despite hostilities shown by the local populace during the last decades of the nineteenth century and ravages on the missionaries and Chinese Christians during the Boxer Rebellion, the work of the China Inland Mission continued. By the time Edith arrived at Taiho in March 1903, a sub-station of the Anhui Mission at Wuhu, work in the vicinity had already begun. In 1905, there were 828 missionaries working in China under the umbrella of the China Inland Mission." Taiho was a market town at the juncture of the Sha and the Ying Rivers in the northwestern corner of Anhui. Even the most ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 78 OBSERVATIONS AT THE JIU FESTIVAL OF SHEK O AND TAI LONG WAN, 1986 CHAN WING-HOI I. Introduction The jiu festival of Shek O and Tai Long Wan on Hong Kong Island reported in this paper was celebrated from 17th October 1986 to 20th October 1986. According to the villagers, this was the sixteenth celebration which took place once every ten years. During the festival Taoist priests were hired to perform rites, and puppeteers performed puppet shows on a temporary stage. A poster put up by the festival committee referred to the duration as three days and four nights. By the standard of jiu celebrations in the New Territories, this would count as a "three-day jiu". As in the case of celebrations in the New Territories, the hired Taoist priests started with an opening session on the evening of the first day, and continued with daily processions and non-repeating major rites for three days. On 19th October, the main day of the festival, the villagers participated in a major procession to the celebrating villages. The Shek O festival I found very much a repetition of the pattern found in the New Territories. The schedule and content of the rites were exactly the same except perhaps for the fact that the procession on the main day involved the main god of the celebration as well, and the priests hired were those usually seen in the New Territories. However, whereas in the New Territories, only bona fide villagers enjoyed the exclusive right to organize the jiu, here in Shek O the participants included indigenous villagers as well as outsiders. They included people who spoke different dialects, some having moved into the area only in the last ten years. Moreover, in Shek O, the spirit tablets for the ancestors of individuals who contributed extra money for the purpose were also displayed, and this practice is usually found only in Yu Laan rituals. Some of these features that seem peculiar to Shek O are probably related to the nature of the settlement, of which I learned only a little in the few visits I made during the celebration, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 79 II. The settlements The puppet theatre and most of the Taoist rites took place at a site in Shek O village during the festival. The participating villages included Shek O as well as Tai Long Wan and Hok Tsui. Hok Tsui is more than three miles from Shek O and used to hold its own celebration. A formerly separate settlement, Seung Wai, was midway between Shek O and Tai Long Wan about 2 miles away. Its residents had moved to Shek O in the 1920s or 1930s. Taking Seung Wai into account and assuming that it had joined the festival before the removal, the festival had been celebrated by three neighbouring villages. Having one of the most scenic beaches in Hong Kong, Shek O is a popular holiday spot for the urban residents of Hong Kong. Double-deck buses run between Shaukiwan and Shek O at half-hour or shorter intervals from early in the morning to 11:30 p.m. Near where the road divides for Shek O and Tai Long Wan a golf club which caters mainly for Westerners occupies a large area of land. Near the bus stop at Shek O are several shops, food stalls, restaurants and bicycle rental shops catering for the needs of the holiday visitors. Some of the shops have tables where one can sit for a drink. When there are few visitors in the winter season there are local people playing mahjongg or chatting over glasses of beer in some of those shops. The casual tourist will notice a dense settlement of cottages and huts, and in the areas with better views, Western-styled "villas". Few of the houses are in the style of indigenous village houses found in the New Territories. Near the bus stop is an area of vegetable gardens run by Hoklo residents whose presence in the settlement was conspicuously represented during the jiu celebration by several flags set up near the bus stop. Superficially, everything suggests that Shek O is a rather recent settlement. But Shek O has existed as a village for more than 150 years, if, as the villagers claim, the last decennial jiu was the sixteenth.' Originally, the villages were inhabited by Punti and Hakka people. A 73-year-old woman who married in from Hok Tsui told me that her husband's family had been there for four generations. They ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 84 CHAN WING HOI not give any figures for the ratio between indigenous residents and newcomers among the members, but he stressed that no distinction was made between the two groups (mou-san pei-chi). It seems, nonetheless, that the Hoklo, Wai Chau and Chiu Chau residents see themselves as distinctive groups in the settlement. There is probably a separate association for them, for many of the flags put on display in the entrance area were styled "to the Fuk-Wai-Chiu [a short term for Fuk Kin, Wai Chau and Chiu Chau] fellow townsmen" or their Association.' I found out less about Tai Long Wan and Hok Tsui. In these two settlements, too, the indigenous villagers had been Hakka and Punti people who practised paddy cultivation and fishing. Many of the men of more recent generations worked as seamen and their descendants were able to obtain jobs in the city. As in the case of Shek O, outside interest in their scenic surroundings has been a major factor in the changes in the last few decades. I talked with Mr. Yau Ho Sam, who moved to Tai Long Wan about 40 years ago. His native place was Zheng Cheng, but before he moved to Tai Long Wan, he had lived at Wong Chuk Hang. There were only some ten families at Tai Long Wan when he arrived. Now there are more than 100. The original inhabitants were mainly Hakka although some were Punti. According to Mr. Wong, Tai Long Wan is still a mainly Hakka village, although there are also some Punti, Chiu Chau and Hoklo people. Tourist facilities can be seen in the village, and there are some Westerners' residences. For Hok Tsui most of my information comes from the man who drove the Taoist priests to his village in his van for the daily haang-chiu procession in the festival. In the past the village had 40 indigenous households. Now there are fewer. The villagers were mainly Hakka. His family has been here for ten generations, counting to his grandsons. In the past many worked as seamen. They probably became wealthy in that occupation. There is a watch tower (diu-lau) in the main village (jing-chyn) for protection against bandits, said to be the only watch tower left on Hong Kong Island. I observed that many of the present houses were not in the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 91 lanterns affixed on the posts shone on Shek O and Tai Long Wan people. The priests and ritual representatives visited the faan-gon posts and made offerings three times a day in a procession called haang-chiu (audience procession). When I followed one of those processions in Shek O, however, I discovered that not all four of the faan-gon posts were erected at the corners of the settlement. The first faan-gon post in Shek O visited by the haang-chiu procession was between the school playground and the quarters of the cleansing unit of the Urban Services Department. One of the local members of the procession volunteered the information that the post was set up there because three years ago a fatal accident took place at the spot. Two young boys who lived in the quarters of the cleansing unit were playing there when a stone pillar fell down suddenly and killed both of them. V. The local gods The Tin Hau was represented by her wooden image at the centre of the altar. Behind the image was a piece of red paper on which the titles of ten local deities were written. With the exception of the Sea Goddess (shui sin) of the small temple at one edge of Shek O Beach, they were Baak-gung and Daai-wong earth gods of Tai Long Wan, Shek O, and Seung Wai. One of them, styled jang-paang daai-wong (earth god of the stakenets), was a reminder of the former fishing activities of the local residents. Many others had probably existed for the protection of villagers in fishing and farming. The change in land use is evident in the reply given by Mr. Wong, the local leader, when asked where the god's place was. He said, "Below the number 10 alley of the Westerners' residences of Tai Long Wan," linking the god with the change that had taken place in the locality. He gave the same description for the location of another god, the Earth god of the Banyan Tree Place. For the Seung Wai daai-wong, he explained that it was below no. 1 alley, which had become a residential area for Westerners. It used to be the villagers' settlement which was removed to Shek O for the construction of the golf club. There were also three gods whose names were not known to Mr. Wong. He believed that those were from Hok Tsui, the village which joined in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 156 CARL SMITH When Dr. Legge took charge, he immediately changed the system. When he arrived at Malacca, Mr. Evans was already suffering from a fatal illness and he died some months after. This change gave Dr. Legge the opportunity to put his own ideas of management and teaching into practice. The student body had dwindled from seventy students in 1837 to twelve in 1840. Six more left after Dr. Legge took over. With the remaining six, he began to build anew. After two years he wrote: "I have about thirty boys from ten to sixteen years of age, and four young men . . . My maxim is to communicate ideas to them, to call their faculties into exercise, and to make them teach themselves, just as they feed themselves, it being my task to furnish them with the appropriate nourishment.” Prompted by the suggestion of John Morrison, the son of Dr. Morrison, Dr. Legge began to think about the removal of the college to China. Political events were leading to the opening of China for foreign residence and the British possession of Hong Kong. Within days of the planting of the British flag on Hongkong Island Mr. John Morrison was writing letters anticipating the transfer of the Anglo Chinese College. He believed that neither money nor support would be a problem, for he wrote: “On a settlement of commercial and political affairs... there is no object that will so much open men's purses here as the Anglo Chinese College. Can we but give a fair ground of assurance that it is to take new life, and progress as rapidly as for some years past it has been retrograding.” Dr. Legge responded to Morrison's suggestions with enthusiasm. Both men wished to revive the college in accord with original plans. By the time Dr. Legge was prepared to move, there was the prospect of amalgamation with a school already established in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 198 CARL SMITH son, who passed through San Francisco in the 1870s, reported that his father was still remembered by the community with gratitude and respect. WHEN FAME HAS ITS HAZARDS The position of leadership is one of prestige and honour, but as a public figure the leader is also open to criticism by disgruntled members of the community. Tong A-chick, as leader of the Chinese community of California in the 1850s, experienced such attacks. In one case a husband charged him with harbouring his runaway wife. The background of the story indicates some of the difficulties Chinese women had in California. Many of them had been imported as prostitutes. Some had been abducted from their home villages, others had been purchased, and still others had been deceived by false promises. Their lot was not easy. The background of Too A-sung, the woman in the case, is not clear. She had been married in Sacramento to Fong A-lai in September 1856, by the Rev. Lewis J. Shuck, a former Baptist missionary in Hongkong. After the marriage, the couple went to live at Marysville, California. Here A-lai, the husband, began to mistreat his wife. He beat her, threatened to sell her, and, so she claimed, "forced her into the lowest depths of degradation.” He kept her in "constant misery, anxiety and wretchedness." Finally, she was able to run away through the assistance of some friends. She arrived at San Francisco and sought shelter at the business premises of Tong A-chick. The premises were also used as a branch of the Yeung Wo Association, as the association's house was on the slopes of Telegraph Hill some distance from the centre of the Chinese settlement. Tong A-chick was a director of the association, and Too A-sung ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 190 One foreign resident who knew Loo King said his presence had much to do with keeping people of better character from settling or even visiting Hongkong. The Rev. George Smith, later to be the first Bishop of Hong-kong, after his visit to the family house of A-king in 1844, claimed that his host "is said to encourage disreputable characters by the loan of money, and in various ways to reap the proceeds of profligacy and crime." It was alleged that he had interests in pirate vessels, financing their operations and disposing of their stolen goods. The charge was never proved, but it was generally believed. As the original conditions of the settlement changed, the power of Loo King waned and a leadership emerged that was not based on vice and criminal connections. A-king was still an important figure in 1847, for in that year he and Tam A-tsoi were the principals in the erection of the Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road. Tam A-tsoi's fortune was initially based on his construction business, though he soon branched out into numerous other profitable enterprises. While his fortunes were on the rise, those of Loo King were headed for decline. The one-time "king" of the Lower Bazaar was declared bankrupt in 1855. Respectability was winning the battle for control of community affairs. A new type of leadership based on solid business activities was emerging out of the rag-bag elements making up the first Chinese settlers in British Hongkong. The fact that Loo King not long after his arrival in Hongkong had built a small temple in the Lower Bazaar, and in 1847 joined Tam A-tsoi in building the much more impressive Man Mo Temple, suggests that he wished to establish respectability for himself as a patron of the people. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 218 resolution specifying a permanent memorial would be introduced. The memorial, which had been approved by a small majority of the planning committee, was the one Mr. Chater had mentioned in his remarks to the Legislative Council in February when he first raised the question of what Hongkong should do. He suggested that the improvement of Wongneichong Valley would make a suitable memorial. Mr. Chater had the honour at the public meeting to table the resolution that the Hongkong community express its regard for their sovereign by creating a park to be called Victoria Park. He was quite aware there were those who opposed the scheme but felt there was enough support to carry the resolution. Influential people were behind the scheme. The leaders were those who had occasion to frequent the Valley for racing. Any improvement to the surroundings would make their visits more pleasant. Mr. Chater, of all Hongkong residents, was perhaps the most loyal supporter of the Jockey Club. East Point was nearby. Any enhancement of the valley would please Jardines. It was always well to have the support of the princely Hong. The idea of improving the Valley was not new. The need to do something about it was clear almost as soon as the town of Victoria was established. The Valley contained the largest area of level ground on the north side of Hongkong Island. To some it seemed the ideal site for the business centre of the new settlement. It was soon found, however, to be a death trap for Europeans. Those who chose to build there were decimated by fever and soon the houses on the hills around were abandoned. The fever was attributed to "miasma" rising from the low-lying damp ground in the valley. Today we know the cause was the bite of the malaria-carrying mosquito which bred in the stagnant pools ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 220 The Government faced the vexing problem of compensation to the owners of the fields. This problem still troubles the Government. The compensation to people whose ancestral lands are resumed is a thorny issue. In 1844 a three-member commission was formed to consider claims and recommend suitable payment for the land given up. It was composed of the Land Officer, Mr. Gordon, the Chief Magistrate, Major William Caine, and the Chinese Secretary, the Rev. Mr. Charles Gutzlaff. Mr. Gutzlaff did most of the work interviewing the villagers and attempting to ascertain current land values. The Colonial Office inquired of the Governor under what circumstances it had been necessary to purchase the land when, with the cession of the island to Britain, all land automatically had become the property of the Crown. The Governor explained: “That Rule laid down since the occupation of the island has been that the property of those Chinese who were possessed previous to the cession of the colony should be respected, but none other. “The land in question is among the oldest under cultivation in the island, being a rich alluvial soil adapted to the growing of rice. It therefore came strictly under this rule.” The committee determined to its satisfaction that the price of the second-class paddy land was between $20 and $40 a mow (a Chinese land measure). It recommended the average of $30. Through a mistake by the committee in stating the number of mow in an acre, the Government almost blundered into paying three times as much for the land. Fortunately for the Government treasury, but not the villagers, the error was discovered before a settlement was made. It took a year to complete the project. The land was surveyed. The owners were compensated and the drainage and undertaken. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 221 By the summer of 1845, the work was almost finished. For each acre the villagers received a sum which amounted to the profit they would have made from ten years' labour on it. In many cases the cash in hand resulted in idleness and eventual impoverishment. Their traditional occupation and source of income was gone forever. What proved to be a disaster for the village was a boon to the expatriate sportsman. The foreign community in China had a tradition of avid interest in racing. When the centre of trade was Canton and Macau was the place to go during the off-trade period, a race course had been set up in the Portuguese settlement, not, however, without strong protest from the Chinese who objected to graves being removed or desecrated when the track was laid out. For the first few years after the British moved to Hong Kong, the merchants went annually to the Macau races. Though it was a pleasant excursion, it had many drawbacks and there was increasing pressure for Hong Kong to have its own track. Where else but the Wong Nei Chong Valley? Here, alone, there was sufficient level open space. From a notice to be quoted, it appears that the community took advantage of the improvements to the valley to hold a meeting in the autumn of 1845. The following announcement which appears in the China Mail in October 1846, suggests conditions were not entirely satisfactory and additional improvements needed to be made: "Meeting of members of the Hong Kong Club and of Naval and Military Gentlemen at the Hong Kong Club to make arrangements for Races to come off about a month hence at Wong Nei Chung Valley, for which, no doubt, permission will be at once obtained. "In order to render the course safer and better than on the previous occasion, it is proposed, besides constructing drains, to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 297 that guided the administration of the city of Canton during its four year occupation by the Allies, during which he laid the foundations of his knowledge of written and spoken Chinese, he joined the Chinese Maritime Customs at Ningpo. When that city was captured by the Taiping Army, he assisted the Sino-French "Ever Triumphant Army" to recapture it, and later commanded it in the operations that led to the recapture of Hangzhou, for which he received high rank and honours from the appreciative Ch'ing government. Contacts made during this time led to employment after the Rebellion, in and outside China, that lasted until his death in France in 1886. His principal achievement was the construction and administration of the Fuzhou Dockyard and its fleet of warships in the face of many difficulties. Ironically, they were destroyed by naval forces of his own nation during the hostilities of 1884-85 between France and China over Vietnam. Giquel was a rare bird for his times. Apart from his linguistic proficiency and administrative capacities, he was sympathetic towards China at a time when this was not common among his contemporaries. Moreover, he sought ever to combine his duties to his employers, the Chinese, with his loyalties towards his native land, a veritable tightrope which he conscientiously trod throughout his working life. As Dr. Leibo observes, "A less committed individual might never have attempted such a balancing act”. (Transferring Technology, p. 5). He gave offence to many influential Frenchmen and to his government in 1872 by an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes in which he suggested that the French Concession at Shanghai should be merged with the International Settlement, and criticized French policy towards China in various aspects. Why this should be so is hinted at by an English account which indicates how different Giquel must have been from most of his fellows. Even allowing for the fact that this is an English account, written at a time of strong rivalry between the two powers and by one side of an old and mutual antipathy, it speaks for itself: French officers are so quick to take offense (sic) — so quick to obtain satisfaction - so imperious, so impractical, and so totally uncommercial that they are viewed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q CONTENTS PRESIDENT'S REPORT ............. HON. TREASURER'S REPORT HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT ARTICLES: • Dian H. Murray, Pirates in the Pearl River Delta ... Dan Waters, A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong • Steven A. Leibo, Not So Calm An Administration: The Anglo-French Occupation of Canton, 1858-1861 Wei Peh T'i, Through Historical Records and Ancient Writings in search of the Giant Panada • Carl T. Smith, The First Child Labour Law in Hong Kong vii xviii xxiii • 1 10 16 • 34 44 Sung Hok-P'ang, Legends and Stories of the New Territories; Tai Po 70 Sung Hok-P'ang, Legends and Stories of the New Territories; Castle Peak 26 76 Sung Hok-P'ang, Ts'in Fuk 86 Violet Mebig Chan Lew, A Sentimental Journey into the Past of the Chan and Jong Families 94 Harold M. Otness, "The One Bright Spot in Shanghai" A History of the Library of the North China Branch of The Royal Asiatic Society NOTES AND QUERIES: • David Faure, The Man the Emperor Decapitated Carl T. Smith, The Archives of the Basel Mission 185 198 203 P. H. Hase, The Lanterns of Chuko Liang O. William Borrell FMS, A Silver Bracelet with an Ancient Greek Coin found in Wewak, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea · 207 212 James Hayes, The Tai Sheung Lo Kwan Temple, Chai Wan 217 • E. W. Wright, The Hongkong Milling Company's Failure 218 P. H. Hase, A Traditional New Territories Latrine James Hayes, A Note on Rice Hullers 222 226 James Hayes, A Glimpse of the Land Settlement at Shek Pik Village, Lantau Island, Hong Kong 228 BOOK REVIEWS 234 · vi Page & ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 18 was informed that while the British had twelve Chinese language linguists available, including a number of former officials and students, the French still had only three officials and several students with appropriate language skills. It was obvious that the city's administration would be a far greater challenge than merely capturing it, Establishing a functioning government was an absolute necessity because looting, first begun by the victorious Allied troops, had been taken up by the local Chinese. The situation was becoming quite out of hand. Organized bands of looters were active throughout the city. A decision had to be made. The only obvious choice was recognition that the local Chinese bureaucrats, individuals only just defeated and imprisoned days before, would now have to be released and recruited to administer the city through an arrangement whereby the allies would supervise them even as they supervised the Cantonese.1 There was little time to lose, even the local Chinese had begun to insist that the new "authorities" do something. On the Third of January Gros received three petitions insisting that the looting be suppressed.* Since using the imprisoned Governor-General Yeh, who had enraged the foreigners for so long, was quite out of the question, they decided to recruit one of Yeh's former associates, the Governor of Kwangtung, Po-Kuei. The Governor, himself a prisoner of the allies, was understood by Baron Gros to be a rival of Yeh's and apparently willing to resume his former duties. It was understood as well that Po-Kuei's involvement would facilitate the return of the many minor officials whose co-operation would be required as well.2 Gros himself was skeptical about ruling through the local Chinese, but it was clearly the only feasible plan. It was assumed that with appropriate supervisory mechanisms a satisfactory arrangement could be worked out. As for Po-Kuei himself, one of his principal concerns was whether the city, having once fallen to the allies, might soon become a rebel stronghold of the Taipings. The allied assurance that they intended to hold the city against any assaults until a settlement could be reached with the Emperor, must surely have reassured the Chinese Governor. Having the city in the hands of the Taipings would probably have been an even greater crisis than the European presence.3 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 29 65 Much of 1860 was spent working with the Chinese authorities searching for ways to shut down the continuing private trade in the outskirts of the city. That was not as easy as regularizing the trade within the city. The occupation administration was convinced that the illegal coolie trade with its accompanying brutality would make their continuing administration difficult if not impossible. Thus the commissioners and allied commanders remained committed to outlawing the illegal trade. Conclusion If the illegal trade remained a difficult problem, nevertheless, the Cantonese resistance to the occupation seems to have considerably lessened by 1860, and the next year and a half, that is until the allied withdrawal, was relatively uneventful. According to one observer: Today, French, English, Americans, Russians and Portuguese, every foreign nationality can come without experiencing the least obstacle. When we walk in the streets of Canton the Chinese regard us with a curious air, even as we ourselves look at them, but without any demonstration of anger or vengefulness. Everyone knows that we came among them neither to dominate nor to enslave them. They are beginning to understand that our diplomatic and commercial relations should one day make them rich and free. I think they are not far from actually liking us. In effect, the Chinese cannot detest these strangers who have brought them the benefits of civilization. Whatever the likelihood that the average Cantonese would have described the situation as our commentator did, it is nevertheless true that by 1860 the occupation had finally settled down to the routine so many have assumed it to have shown from the beginning. And a year later, by 1861, it was finally time to turn control of the city back to the Chinese. The official ceremony of departure, in the wake of the settlement of the Arrow War, took place on October 19, 1861, just short of the fourth anniversary of the city's occupation and after most of the allied troops ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 179 Dr. Joseph Lam, now medical director of the only out-patient clinic in the islands, located in the Palama Settlement on Vineyard Street, again extended help by giving me a clerical job. I am also grateful for his friendship. Encouraged by Mrs. Amy Gottschalk, the director of the social service department, I asked for a year's leave of absence, and on borrowed money attended Simmons College in Boston and received a B.Sc. in Social Work in 1937. When Mrs. Gottschalk resigned, I succeeded her as director. In 1941 when I passed a civil service examination, I resigned and went to work for the City and Health Department of Honolulu at its administrative office and emergency care facility on the grounds of the Queen's Hospital. I served directly under Mrs. Kathleen McDuffie and administratively under Dr. Thomas Mossman, both of whom I remember with fondness. Hospital care for indigent and semi-indigent residents was given by the City and County of Honolulu in private hospitals; terminal and convalescent care was given in its own facility, the Maluhia Home, and emergency service was available to all. In addition to giving supportive casework, I assisted Mrs. McDuffie in making discharge plans and referrals. I had the sole responsibility for psychiatric patients and their families and in arranging for their care in the Mental Health Unit of Queen's Hospital or in the Territorial Hospital, as recommended by Dr. Richard Chun on the staff. During the Second World War, we were called upon to receive those residents serving in the armed forces who were being discharged for psychiatric reasons. The Japanese attack of Pearl Harbour early in the morning of Sunday, 7 December 1941, caught us all by surprise, for the U.S. Navy was on maneuvers, on alert supposedly. Mother and I had been home only a few hours from an all-night wake for Aunt Jong Yau when we were awakened by the sounds of airplanes and explosions. Turning on the radio, we heard the hoarse voice of Governor Poindexter repeating again and again, "Take cover. Enemy planes overhead. Take cover. Take cover". Soon martial law was announced and all businesses ordered closed. Our first reaction was to flee from the aggressor, whom we expected to land and kill us any minute, but to where? No one was allowed out after dark without a pass. No lights were to be seen; it was absolute darkness after sunset. We had little fresh food on hand, but we were ready to share it with Cousin Mary and her family when they felt it was ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 190 of Mr. Bolton of the Atheneum of Boston, U.S.A.". This catalogue was dictionary in format and it included 2,125 catalogued items, grouped as follows: General Works 324 Philosophy 278 Religion 54 Sociology 65 Philology 120 Natural Sciences 52 Useful Arts 133 Fine Arts 84 Literature 340 History 675 (13) on Chinese languages)20 The need for a new and larger building became a regular topic of discussion, and the Shanghai Municipal Council became a frequent, if unpredictable, supporter of its causes, including the funding of the renovation of its building in 1909.2 In a guidebook written about this time, the Rev. C. E. Darwent wrote: The building in which the society is housed is situated in the Museum Road, just behind the British Post Office. There is a good library of books, on Oriental subjects mainly; a good supply of the proceedings of learned societies and learned magazines is kept. There is an exceedingly comfortable lecture hall; upstairs is a museum. The fathers of the settlement did well for it; their successors do nothing.2 By 1910 the library was open seven days a week, and no longer closed for tiffin as it had in earlier times. Donations were increasing, thanks largely to its new honorary librarian, Florence Wheelock Ayscough. A **suggestion book** was put out. A Chinese “assistant librarian” was engaged, first a "Mr. Woo" and later a "Mr. Wong", the latter described as “hard-working and attentive”. These people presumably did the routine checking out of materials, shelving, and record keeping. The library remained essentially an institution serving the foreign community although there was some Chinese membership in later years. A bequest from Thomas Kingsmill, a long-time society member, enriched the library. Duplicate works were sold and the funds used to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 226 to this one, although the bamboo arm-rest was a bit of a luxury not always found! This latrine was probably built early this century. Sheung Wo Hang had 30 latrines to service its approximately 100 families at the time of the Block Crown Lease in 1905; the great majority of them were very close in style and construction to this one. NOTES P. H. Hase 2 Journal Vol. 23, 1983, p. 241-246. My thanks are due to Mr. M.Y. Lee, of Sheung Wo Hang village, for drawing the latrine to my attention, and for helping me to measure it. See plan attached, and plate 11. 4 See plate 12. A NOTE ON RICE HULLERS (RE) In March 1972, I visited the New Territories' village of Ma Yau Tong, situated off the Po Lam road leading to Rennie's Mill in Junk Bay. I knew the village representative, Mr. Li Tak (...) from my days as District Officer South, 1957-60. He was aged 79 in 1972. With friends from Ngau Tau Kok old village in East Kowloon, who knew the Ma Yau Tong people, I looked carefully round the houses, paying special attention to old ones and their contents. Like most N.T. villages, Ma Yau Tong had been a rice-growing settlement, but in their case they had stopped planting some 10 to 15 years before my visit. I was interested in the farming tools and equipment, and made notes on a pair of rice hullers that we saw. However, we were only able to learn the details about one of them. The other was much older, and had been in the house longer than the old lady who lived there. As she had already lived in the village for 48 years, after marrying into one of the village families when she was 20 years old, it had obviously been made before about 1920. “About 100 years", they guessed, but ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 228 It reads in translation: + + "There are two sorts of rice huller. One is made of wood. The other sort is made of mud. This sort is made with a round bamboo frame, filled with clean yellow mud. Bamboo teeth are pressed into both the upper and lower hulling faces. The upper frame of the huller has a hollow to receive the grain, the capacity of which is double that of a wooden huller. If the grain is at all damp when it goes into the huller, it will be crushed. After hulling 200 shek (E) of rice, a mud huller will start to fall to pieces. Wooden hullers require strong men to operate them, but mud hullers are suitable for operation by women or young people. The ordinary peasants use mud hullers of this type." I am grateful to Mr. Yau for drawing my attention to this description. James Hayes A GLIMPSE OF THE LAND SETTLEMENT AT SHEK PIK VILLAGE, LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG In the opening years of this century, following the lease of what is now the New Territories of Hong Kong, all land that was being utilised or had been occupied was surveyed by the new government. A Land Court was set up to settle all claims to ownership of land, and any disputes were adjudicated. Finally, a register of ownership for each of the 355 Demarcation Districts was prepared and bound into a folio together with a survey sheet and a Block Crown Lease. Whilst the work of the survey and land court are well-documented in the official reports of the time,1 few materials showing the process in the villages have survived. To my mind, the most interesting of these are the small printed "chits”, known to villagers and government staff alike as Chi Tsai ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 229 **Small Papers**", Measuring only three inches square, they were issued at or near the time of the survey, to the persons who claimed each plot of land and would later have to substantiate their claims before the land court by producing acceptable proof of their ownership under Chinese rule. A group of miscellaneous land papers was given to me thirty years ago by the elder of the Chi(i) clan of Shek Pik, a multi-clan village on Lantau Island, then in the course of removal to make way for the construction of a large reservoir intended to improve the Hong Kong water supply. This unexpected presentation followed the settlement of compensation for all land in the valley. Whilst I made use of most of these papers to write about the village,2 I had forgotten about the chi tsai which came with them until the other day. Looking again at the Shek Pik papers, I realised that they had something more to tell us about the village at that time than I had squeezed out of the rest. In the first place, there were two different kinds of chi tsai. One sort was printed on one side only (See Plate 14). The other, though identical with the other in that respect, was also printed on the reverse (See Plate 15). They were otherwise the same. The most likely reason for their similarity is that the second type represents a second printing, when the opportunity was taken to add headings of information that were being written by hand on the earlier version. Presumably, there were stocks of both kinds available to the government staff working at Shek Pik, as the information being recorded on them relates to the same man and his property in the several demarcation districts allocated to the several parts of the area, and gives every indication of having been collected at the same time. All the chi tsai relate to one man, named Chi Yau-kei(!). In all there are 23 of the first kind, and 16 of the second. A list of the information contained on them is given in the Table. It is not known whether the chi tsai are the total number issued to Chi Yau-kei, though a search of the ownership schedules would confirm or reject this possibility. Quite possibly they do not. A note on one of the chi tsai states "B.18. p.7 & 8. 21 Chi Tsai lost?" (See Plate 14) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q DEZAKETTRE DWUKISME) James Hayes 233 NOTES See the list of printed papers given at pp. 271-272 of my book, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Conn., Archon Books, 1977). Perhaps I should add that whilst the progress of the survey and land settlement are described, the records of hearings in cases where disputes could not otherwise be settled are not now available, save for some reports in the local English-language newspapers.1 See Chapter 4, "Shek Pik, A Multilineage Settlement of Cantonese Farmers" in Hayes 1977, op cit, pp. 104-128. I have also used some of the documentary material in my paper Education and Management in Rural South China in the Late Ch'ing at pp. 575-592 of Vol. 1 of Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Asian Studies 1984, (Hong Kong, Asian Research Service, 1985). 1 Although surviving “Chi Tsai” from the New Territories are few in number, they are not rare either. I have come across them here and there in my research, but unfortunately dismissed them as being of no particular interest or value, compared with the Block Crown Leases and actual customary deeds of sale and mortgage. One entry from my Notes, for instance, taken at Chuk Yuen Village, New Kowloon, in July 1963, states, "Her husband's father was Lam Hei (), and she showed me a few chits for lot numbers claimed at the Land Court in 1901. They included one interesting receipt for 13 tax receipts, presumably Ch'ing land tax receipts, which must have been submitted as proofs of ownership at the land settlement following the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898“. A collection of some dozens of chi tsai from New Kowloon villages is in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong (HKMS104): these will be the subject of a separate note in due course. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 241 rise and decline of lineages and villages, of their alliances and rivalry, and of the domination of some over others". In the process of reconstructing that political history, it evolved eventually into an essay **on the social milieu out of which territorial arrangements were created and maintained over several centuries" (emphasis mine). By the end of the introduction, however, this goal of writing a political history of the New Territories is made even more modest; as he says, "the historical account is meant in the first place, to serve as an empirical test of the general conception of the lineage suggested by Freedman and which is modified here”, (p. 11) A tall order, I would say, for such modest ambitions. Ironically, almost everything about the book suggests that this is not your typical case study in social history. Rather than placing his case analysis within an historical or geographical framework as appears to be the normal practice in local historiography, the contents of the book read more like your typical ethnography. The first chapter entitled Theoretical Considerations attempts to define his basis units of analysis, namely the village and lineage, primarily in light of Freedman's theory. The second chapter is a brief ethnohistorical background to the New Territories. Chapters 3-6 spell out the sequential building blocks of "lineage society in the New Territories, citing examples from throughout the territory to illustrate his points. In Chapter 3, he discusses the nature of rights of settlement which, according to him, are the basis upon which membership into a village is constituted and through which the **naturalization” of outsiders of pre-existing lineage communities is negotiated. Chapter 4 focuses on the varieties of "lineage-building" in the New Territories. Chapter 5 emphasizes the role of religion in the symbolic representation of village communities. Chapter 6 deals with the various kinds of territorial arrangements that underlie the constitution of villages and village clusters in the New Territories. Chapter 7 pursues focal territorial organization at a higher level by describing the various kinds of regional alliances found in the New Territories. Chapter 8 discusses the importance of government and gentry in relation to the lineage, and this is followed by a discussion in Chapter 9 of the overlapping of greater and smaller traditions within the domains of local religion and ancestor worship. The Making of Lineage Society in Chapter 10 outlines in political historical terms the rise and fall of "The Five Great Clans" of the New Territories as the precursor for the development ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 243 primordial village is about what he calls "the rights of settlement". Or as he (p. 8) put it, “most lineages possess little beyond the rights of settlement". His examples illustrating these rights of settlement show that outsiders can come to terms with incumbents of an existing village by marriage, employment, litigation or force. So if settlement is negotiable in these ways, then multi-lineage villages should be, contra Freedman, a normal phenomenon as well. It is only when village membership has been gained according to these rights of settlement that the village can begin the process of lineage-building. Chapter 2 cites several such examples of lineage-village within a village. Proceeding to higher levels of village organization, Faure argues that the village as a local or territorial community has a religion of its own which is distinct from and equally important as ancestor worship in the expression of territorial identity. As he (pp. 70-71) put it explicitly, "the earth-god shrines and temples reflect a different aspect of the villager's religion, but like the ancestral hall, they are foci of local organization. . . . The act of founding the temple sets up a bond between the village and the deity". Village religion is important in his subsequent discussion of villages and village clusters to show that the definition of a village and village clusters do not necessarily follow the expectations of a descent model. Likewise in the case of village alliances, Faure argues that all such alliances found to exist within the traditional New Territories, even those archetypical regional defense alliances, were territorially rather than lineage based in nature (perhaps contrary to the kind of “system” described by Kuhn (1970)). More importantly, such alliances, according to Faure, have only existed since the mid-19th century and well after the peak of the Five Great Clans era (for discussion of the latter, see Baker 1966). The latter half of the book essentially sets up his attempt in Chapter 10 to reconstruct the political history of The Five Great Clans during the 14th-19th centuries, in contrast to the development of lineage communities that one sets in the aftermath of the "great" era. In fact, much of his reconstruction is an attempt to demystify the stature of these great clans by showing how they and the gaudy ancestral halls they created to embellish their image represented primarily the unintentional creation of official policies. Or as he (p. 165) put it, “real lineage society did not depend on ornate ancestral halls”. All of this finally permits him in the final analysis to criticize historians for glorifying the ancestral ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 244 halls and genealogies as significant constituents of the lineage when in fact they were just status-symbols of a past era. In the end, that aspect of the lineage which constituted the product of an official culture must be distinguished from those real lineages "on the ground" having rights of settlement and built upon rules of inheritance and estate. I would like to address my criticism with regard to three dimensions of his overall argument: 1) his assertion that the principles of lineage organization (i.e. descent) and village are distinct and that both then collaborate to produce a "lineage society" (his part 1), 2) his contention that the "great" lineages depicted in the historical and ethnographic literature are official "fictions" and thus should be dissociated from those real lineages on the ground” (his part 2), and 3) his argument that the appearance of lineage-villages and village-alliances in the "post-traditional” era was made possible only following the decline of the "great" clans (the historical relationship between parts 1 and 2). I think there are failures with respect to all three dimensions. 1 With respect to the first, frankly I see nothing in his alternative thesis which presents any salient criticism of Freedman's thesis or any serious understanding of the latter in its own terms. In fact, his basic argument would have been enhanced by not even referring to Freedman at all. Faure's attack on Freedman's focus on the apparent "coincidence of agnatic and local community” misses the mark completely because the actual local constitution of territorial groups was never a crucial concern in any of Freedman's monographs as it is for Faure as a local historian. In his preface to the first of two monographs on Chinese lineage organization, Freedman (1958:xii) recognized the existence of both single-lineage and multi-lineage villages in order to emphasize the thrust of his thesis as something quite other, namely the functional operation of the lineage (as descent group) in analytical terms, irrespective of how it happens to be constituted in territorial terms. As he put it rather unambiguously. I must make it plain that while I attempt to remain faithful to the facts I have been able to adduce, the picture I gradually build up inevitably departs from reality by subsuming (territorial) variations under generalized heads. But if my picture of the localized lineage (as sociological ideal type) in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 246 Thus, contrary to Faure's "modest" claims, I see very little in his alternative thesis which offers any criticism of Freedman's model worthy of anthropological note, unless of course one finds it fair to force any body of ideas to answer questions it was not initially intended nor prepared to ask. Ironically, there is more in this book which is broadly supportive of lineage theory than contrary to it. For one thing, Faure's talk of lineage society as being real would have been enough to make Meyer Fortes, Maurice Freedman and other ancestors of lineage theory jump out of their graves in delight, especially if viewed in light of recent attacks by anthropologists who have argued that “descent groups” and **social structure** are imaginary constructs which have no basis in empirical reality at all. (Holy 1979, Dumont 1970) Even Faure's attempt to dissociate the village as something that should be understood in its own terms is confounded by his failure to look at the village as anything other than the aggregation of descent groups. In short, his talk of rights of settlement, rules of inheritance, genealogical linkages, membership criteria and relations to inalienable property reproduces the whole language of descent and social structure which is at the root of lineage theory (in any of its versions). To wit (anthropologists, take note), The history of the lineage is one of the most important means of recording village membership, and given the fact that settlement rights are inheritable until they are surrendered, for instance, by the act of moving away, this is exactly what the researcher should expect of the villager's narrative. (p. 30) Nonetheless, the founding of separate lineages, each holding independent settlement rights, but which retained the claim to, even if they did not practice, common ancestral worship, is clearly illustrated. The acquisition of independent settlement rights was, no doubt, a stage in lineage segmentation. (p. 47) I have described four dimensions of the lineage in the organization of the villages of the eastern New Territories. First, the lineage embodies the inheritance of the rights of settlement in the village. Second, it is the corporate body, or the collection of corporate bodies, that holds property. Page 270 Page 271 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 249 Freedman's model. All of this then suggests in my opinion that the localized cult of ancestral worship is a peculiar historical phenomenon which cannot be understood in terms of Freedman's model or any version of descent theory. I shall elaborate further in a later context. The third dimension of Faure's work concerns the linkage he claims exists between the fall of "The Great Five Clans" and the rise of other village-lineage formations as well as regional alliances called the yeuk in Cantonese (hsiang-yüeh (M)). His political argument that alliances of this sort were successfully suppressed in the past and could only have appeared when the former's sphere of influence was considerably weakened is not very convincing. By Faure's account, there were several kinds of yeuk in the New Territories, some of which had primarily defensive functions. It is a significant fact that the yeuk in the New Territories has had a short history beginning no earlier than the mid-19th century and faded from memory by the mid-20th century. Yet even in the archetypical case of a defensive alliance like Luk Yeuk, it came to light only under threat by a larger party regardless of whether the latter was on the decline or on the rise, and under such conditions it is perhaps easier to believe that the "great" lineage-village and the yeuk are both products of the same "structural" environment (as in the notion of a **village-temple alliance**; see Brim 1974). Unless Faure can produce examples of yeuk having been obliterated out of existence in the past by larger villages, I would prefer to believe that a yeuk could easily have maintained its existence especially if it was necessary for its continued survival. Moreover, in the case of the Luk Yeuk, many of its participating villages outside of the more established villages like Ping Yeung, Shan Kai Wat and Ping Che were small communities which hardly could have been called anything more than groups of households a century earlier. Therefore, the yeuk was to be sure a product of a particular (historically constituted) social milieu, but one is still far from pinpointing how that social milieu was defined in analytical terms. In short, while the contrast Faure wishes to make between the villages of the "great" era and later settlements is an interesting one, his point would have been better served by writing his political history as history or by isolating regions in light of their peculiar historical experiences. History is what the nature of the village and the local community in the New Territories is all about, not misguided attempts to abstract in functional terms the rights of settlement. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 253 being has any more to do with descent than with those rules which are constitutive of the village as a village. Especially in light of the above remarks pertaining to the irrelevance of ancestor worship to territorial residence, it should be ever clearer that only principles of locality can explain the constitution of territorial groups like the household, village and other higher-level groups, whether they are composed of one or many "descent groups". Yet in its present form, locality is a catch-all concept whose precise definition must be further understood properly in a concrete historical context. In relation to the problem of what constitutes the Chinese "lineage-village", it suffices to say for now that the group that prays together must be analytically distinguished from the group that stays together. If this is so, then the very terms single-(multi-) lineage village and (God forbid) real lineage society must be avoided as unnecessary illusions inculcated by a model of descent-cum-social structure. At this point, I agree superficially at least with Faure's basic point that villages and village clusters must be looked at in terms of villages and village clusters, to which I add the important clause regardless of how the village (cluster) "appears" to be constituted in descent terms. Even in the case of the ideal-typical "single-lineage village", one should not take for granted a priori that it is the descent principle more than anything else which accounts for the nature of that group as a group. In this regard, I think much more needs to be said about how villages have come to be settled in specific concrete historical situations rather than whether one can abstract in jural terms hard and fast rights of settlement. Contrary to Faure's claim (p. 30) that “no village could have been founded in the New Territories in the last five centuries unless the founding ancestors had come to terms with incumbents”, I suspect that the majority of multi-surname villages and village clusters have come about during the formative period when there was really no clear definition of an established "settlement” or village and instead a flexible aggregation of households. The “single-lineage” village of Wo Hang presently occupied by members surnamed Li tracing their origin as residents from the same settler is a case in point. For the first 3-4 generations of its 10-generation history, the aggregation of Li households could hardly have been called a village. Occupied during that time by 3 other surname groups, it was not even the first group of settlers there. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 254 However, changing fortunes or circumstances later led two of the other surname groups to move away altogether. The other remaining surname group continued to reside in the village until 40 years ago when they too moved away, leaving behind an ancestral hall and several plots of land which still remain untouched. More importantly, outside of how insiders and outsiders were defined and accepted, which is the petty substance of membership criteria (and rights of settlement), lies the more relevant issue of how any village or village cluster is understood as a particular kind of moral community. Why does Faure not talk about rights of settlements in the context of a market town or an urban flat? As it is only in the context of the rural Chinese village that the newcomer (as "non-agnate") becomes a problem (in terms of rights of settlement). Are we not suggesting in other words that there is something special about the nature of the village as a moral community which transcends the hard and fast rules of settled residence? That something special, I would argue, ultimately lies at the core of that principle of locality which constitutes the village. To a villager, his village is not a chuen (C) (= ts'un (M)), which is the literal dictionary translation, but instead his heung-ha (C) (– hsiang-hsia (M)) or his "country". That villager might not necessarily be an actual resident of the village; he could be a person living and working in Hong Kong, or even an overseas Chinese born and raised overseas, several generations removed. Everyone has his heung-ha, unless of course he has moved his roots to a new heung-ha (as in the idea of hoi-kei (C), "to open up one's base"). I would argue, moreover, that one's definition of one's heung-ha is a highly intangible one variable to change and not necessarily reducible to the hard and fast rights to territory that are indicative of Faure's rights of settlement. To cite a personal example, I was recently instructed by my father to inspect the sites of our ancestral graves to assess the feasibility of re-burying them at a central site. As my father had lived overseas most of his life, the task of providing sacrifices every year on Ching Ming had always been in the hands of a close relative living there. Our 13th generation ancestor moved away from Cha Sai village to settle in the village of Tso Po several kilometers away, which had been inhabited by another Chun segment (fong) from Cha Sai descended from a 4th generation ancestor as well as members of the surname Ou. After having lived in Tso Po for four generations, our 17th generation ancestor moved to the market town of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q DAVID FAURE'S REJOINDER: There is much in this review that I dislike how can Chun take me to task, on the one hand, for dabbling in Anthropology, and on the other hand, conclude that I think “local history can be understood simply by looking at events and personages as they take place on the ground”? However, let me answer the several criticisms that I think touch on some of the major issues. First, Chun thinks I do not have a salient criticism of Freedman's thesis. Let me reiterate that much as we have learnt from Freedman, I found him wanting for not being able to incorporate village religion into his lineage framework, and for being sloppy in his use of terms such as "local lineage", "higher-level lineage" and "clan". I think my argument for the importance of "settlement rights" salvages his concept of the "local lineage". Second, Chun does not present here accurately my argument concerning the grandiose freestanding ancestral halls built in the official style. I do not argue that there was a "period" of the "Five Great Clans” not even in the eastern portion of the New Territories. I think the linkage of lineage groups across settlement, and the adoption of a code of conduct that included the compilation of written genealogies and that was consistent with officially prescribed standards, took root as a change in style that began in the sixteenth century and gradually worked its way from the richer and more powerful lineages to the poorer ones. This process took fully three centuries, and during this period different territorial groups dominated different parts of the eastern New Territories. In a nutshell, Lung Yeuk Tau (Tang surname) was overlord of all this area, with minor concessions to the Haus of Hung Leng and Ho Sheung Heung, up to the end of the Ming dynasty, The Lius of Sheung Shui sprang into prominence in the early Qing, nibbling into former Tang terrain, while possibly some time in the eighteenth century, the Hung Leng Haus lost their holdings. Of the other two surnames in the “Five”, the Fan Ling P'aangs did not achieve prominence until the nineteenth century, and while the Tai Hang Mans were taken into account by Lung Yeuk Tau, Sheung Shui and Ho Sheung Heung when the Po Tak Tz Old Alliance was formed in the early Qing (possibly eighteenth century), its influence declined subsequently until it became a party of the Kau Yeuk, along with the P'aangs, that founded Tai Po new market in the late nineteenth century. This history notwithstanding, my argument is quite simply that the ancestral worship one sees the villagers practise ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 263 in his home and in the ancestral hall that is no more than a compartment in a row of village houses, comes from a culture that is different from the ancestral worship that villagers are so fond of remarking on as being indicative of the ancestors' official status. Third, Chun's claim that I argue that the alliances known as the “yeuk” were ever “suppressed" again misses the mark. My argument is that what villagers remember as the "yeuk" were founded on common territorial worship and lineage bonds, and, indeed, as Chun points out, there were different kinds of yeuk formed for different reasons. I also argue that these particular types were formed in the nineteenth century. However, I do not argue that there were no village alliances before that time. Rather, with the exception of the Po Tak Tz Old Alliance, the word “yeuk” was apparently not used in this area for them. Some alliances were known then as “heung“, and quite a few were formed in the guise of lineages. Of the nineteenth century yeuk, the Luk Yeuk and the Kau Yeuk were obviously formed in areas where the "great surnames" of the eastern New Territories had lost influence. Fourth, Chun's question on the universal application of the concept of “settlement rights" is, of course, justified. As a supporter for the study of local history in China, I should be the last to ever want to claim that until we have many more detailed local studies, any concept that is generalized from any local study should be any more than tentative. Nonetheless, I seriously doubt if Wo Hang could have been settled without the Lei surname resident therein coming to terms with the incumbents, both in Wo Hang and in the wider territory of which Wo Hang was a part. Wo Hang is located in an area that formed the boundary between the Punti-dominated territory of the eastern New Territories, and the Hakka-dominated terrain that stretched from Sha Tau Kok to Po Kut and beyond. The Wo Hang Leis achieved considerable clout very quickly; by the fourth generation after settlement, according to the genealogy, they were tax-collectors at Sha Tau Kok. While on the question of “settlement rights”, it may also be pointed out that Chun's comments in his notes 6 and 8 confuse settlement with residence. As he knows, residence is not the issue, the right of building a house on land that is unclaimed is. That overseas Chinese people should be allowed to build houses in acknowledged ancestral villages shows that the concept of the "rights of settlement" is very much alive. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h recounts that the crew of the Sulphur landed on Hong Kong island on Monday 25 January” and as 'the bona fide first possessors' drank the health of Queen Victoria on Possession Mount. Then 'On the 26th the squadron arrived; the marines were landed, the union hoisted on our post, and formal possession taken of the island, by Commodore Sir J. G. Bremer, accompanied by the other officers of the squadron, under a feu-de-joie from the marines, and a royal salute from the ships of war'." Bremer himself was no more expansive. In his official despatch to R. More O'Ferrall M.P. at the Admiralty, written on 24 February but received only on 8 June 1841, Bremer reported that on 26 January he proceeded to Hong Kong ‘and took formal possession of the island, and hoisted the colours on it, with the usual salutes and ceremonies'. 12 News of the acquisition of the island of Hong Kong became public knowledge in England on the morning of Friday 9 April 1841, but yet again there was no description of the ceremony of possession. On this day Elliot's circular of 20 January was printed in The Times, and it was discussed in an optimistic editorial: it was considered good news because Hong Kong was much more convenient for trade than Macao and a settlement there would be able to maintain itself independently of the Chinese." By the following day the tone of the editorial had changed. Its author wrote that 'the nominal cession of the island of Hong Kong to the British crown, though apparently promising considerable advantages to our mercantile interests, has been clogged with conditions which in practice may substantially defeat them', and then referred to the island as an 'insulated and unfrequented locality'. One factor which may have been decisive in settling on Hong Kong in the negotiations was, as the merchant James Matheson noted, the Chinese language, for such, he felt, is its ambiguity that it is difficult to fix in it a definite meaning." Matheson believed that, when Ch'i-shan remarked in one of his communications ‘as we have granted you territory you do not now require another port', Elliot in consequence gave up thoughts of British access to a port in northern China in the hope that he could hold Ch'i-shan to an interpretation of the Chinese characters which meant that the British had been granted the territory of Hong Kong rather than merely being given a trading factory there.'5 Two letters to The Times published in the same week expressed dissatisfaction with the new British acquisition. The first was dated Macao, 22 January and was presumably written by a merchant: 'Regarding the terms of Captain Elliot's treaty with the Chinese, I have ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 1} American missionary, the Reverend Elijah Bridgman,1 merely noted the formal possession of the island in its journal of occurrences; it gave no precise date nor any details.24 Another reference in the same journal in a historical review of events in China was only marginally fuller.25 The Canton Press, published at this point from Macao, expressed itself slightly puzzled by the lack of information about the event: 'On Tuesday last, the 26th January, the Island of Hongkong, the new settlement ceded by the Chinese to the English, was taken possession of in the name of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. The English colours were hoisted, and saluted from the ships; we have not yet heard any further particulars of the ceremony.' Two weeks later the incident was mentioned again, but no further details were forthcoming.26 The Canton Register made no mention of the possession of Hong Kong except in the context of Elliot's treaty with Ch'i-shan; it seemed unimpressed by the terms and referred to 'the paltry island of Hong Kong'. › 28 The two groups with the most immediate interest in the acquisition of Hong Kong for the British were the merchants and missionaries. Unlike the troops, for whom the possession of the island was just one part of a long and arduous expedition in a foreign and unhealthy part of the world, the merchants and missionaries were already operating from the area and found Chinese restrictions on their movements irksome. And unlike the British government and its officials, the traders and propagators of salvation were most cognizant of the advantages that a piece of British territory in South China would afford them. They were not politically or ideologically committed to punishing China for the 'disrespect' it had shown to Britain. It is not known whether any missionaries attended the ceremony on 26 January, but some merchants who were late to have their fortunes inextricably bound up with the colony turned up to witness its official birth. According to a study of the Indian community of Hong Kong, at least four Indian merchants were present in Hong Kong at the flag-hoisting: Cawasjee Pallanjee, the representative of Cursetjee Bomanjee and Co. of Bombay; F. M. Talati; Albert Sassoon;29 and Rustomjee Dhunjee Shaw of P. F. Cama and Co. of Bombay. James Matheson of Jardine Matheson and Co.30 went from Macao to Hong Kong precisely in order to witness the hoisting of the British flag, and afterwards, as he wrote to William Jardine in a postscript to a letter of 30 January, he circumnavigated the island.32 Thus the future character of the colony can be gauged from the type of person with most to gain from its possession by the British. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 129 this sixth section was added at the 1928 rebuilding, and was connected with the taking over of the nunnery by immigrant monks at that date. If the original building was of only five sections, then it would have been of a very similar size to Lung Kai - about 70 feet by 65 feet - as well as of an almost identical design; the only significant difference would be that, at Ling To, the living quarters of the nuns were to the east of the worshipping space, while at Lung Kai they were to the west. Both at the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and at the Lung Kai monastery, therefore, and at the Ling To monastery, as far as the original layout can be deduced, the plan is quite distinct from the standard Buddhist plan seen in most of Hong Kong's Buddhist institutions. The worshipping halls are entered through the short walls, and the main altar is set against the opposite short wall, with a Tin Tseng between. There is no trace of the transverse hall arrangement. Both the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the Ling Kai nunnery open directly onto the roadway; neither has any trace of a courtyard-garden or other enclosure - although the Ling To monastery is now surrounded by a garden, which is probably original. All these institutions were clearly designed for only a few resident nuns - the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz for probably no more than an abbess and three nuns at most, and the Lung Kai nunnery (and probably the Ling To house as well) for an abbess and perhaps up to four or five nuns. In none of these cases was provision made for large communities by way of substantial ranges of residential buildings. The groundplan of these nunneries is very similar to that of the ordinary temples to the gods of the traditional village religion, with living quarters similar to local farmhouses attached. The implications of this sort of plan must be of closer integration into the local community, and of closer identification of Buddhism and the traditional village religion than is now common. The Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the local road system The Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was probably founded in the late eighteenth century. The whole of the Sha Tau Kok area was settled by Hakka clans, none of which claims a settlement date of before the Coastal Evacuation (1669), and many of which settled there only during the first half of the eighteenth century, or even later. Most clans consisted of only just one or two nuclear families at the date of their settlement in the area. The population of the Sha Tau Kok area was, therefore, very low during the early eighteenth century, and only started to build up ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 141 less than $400 a year clear from the ferry." The power of the Cheungs can be seen from the map. For several miles around their village, no other settlement was ever established. The whole area from the outskirts of Sham Tsun (the village of Heung Tung, ô, Xiangdong) to the Sham Tsun river, and back to the mountains, was Cheung territory. Outsiders entering this territory along the road were required to recognize this. This, however, the Ta Kwu Ling villagers refused to do. In the mid-nineteenth century, they initiated a programme to improve the road from Kan Tau Wai to Sham Tsun. Bridges were built across all the marshland ditches, and a causeway was provided across the marsh. They then proceeded to start bridging the main river, across the line of the Cheungs' ferry. This the Cheungs could not accept. They would not only stand to lose $400 a year clan income, but the successful building would demonstrate publicly that their control of their territory was not as absolute as they had always maintained. The result of the Ta Kwu Ling people's insistence on proceeding with the bridge was outright war between them and the Cheungs.28 The need to respond to very bitter fighting demanded a complete rearrangement of the local structure of inter-village alliances. Previously, as noted above, the strongest and best-organised area was the Ping Yuen Hap Heung, and its wider alliance centred on the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz. This area, however, was furthest away from the likely fighting area near the bridge, which was precisely the area where inter-village alliances had previously been weakest. The villages decided to establish a network of Yeuk, centred on Kan Tau Wai. Any invading force had to negotiate the bridge over the Law Fong river and the causeway over the marshes before it could arrive at the road intersection at Kan Tau Wai and the paths that ran from there along the higher ground to the other villages. Just north of Kan Tau Wai, a small hillock rises out of the marshes (just opposite the present Ta Kwu Ling Police Station). Here the villagers stationed a watch with an alarm drum to alert the area if the Cheungs attacked. This hill was called Ta Kwu Ling (‡T, “Drum Beat Hill”), and gave its name to the whole area. When the alarm was given, Kan Tau Wai had to send out runners along all the roads and paths out of the village to alert the other villages further away. The individual Yeuk were arranged as long, thin strips along each of these paths so that the villagers would respond, village by village, as the runner reached them, and thus their defenders reach the critical Kan Tau Wai area in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 158 THALIA AND TERPSICHORE ON THE YANGTZE A SURVEY OF FOREIGN THEATRE AND MUSIC IN SHANGHAI 1850-1865 J. H. HAAN "Thanks for the merry laugh that cheered our hearts For loud applause that bade us top our parts. For mirth, that taking all things for the best Made even a blunder seem a clever jest'."* Thus an epilogue to an evening of theatrical entertainment in 1852 that was given for the foreign community of Shanghai, and it sums up nicely the attitude with which generally speaking the efforts of the local amateurs were greeted. What happened on the stage in this outpost of Western civilisation may not have been very exciting or very daring but still it seems interesting enough to go into in more detail than has been done before now.2 1. Some notes on foreign life in Shanghai Until the first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842, foreigners were severely limited in China. In fact only one port, Canton, was open for external trade and merchants had to reside part of the year in the so-called foreign factories. After the war several treaties were concluded with Western nations (England, France, United States) in which the right of foreigners to settle themselves in a number of cities on the China Coast was granted. Among these cities was Shanghai, and it was not long before a predominantly British community came into being. A Foreign Settlement was delimited, Land Regulations (a kind of constitution) were issued in 1845 and 1854, a Municipal Council of foreign merchants was formed as early as 1846,3 houses in colonial style were built, roads and a race course laid out, a drainage scheme begun and a home-like church erected. To the south of the Settlement the French had their own Concession, while to the north an American settlement gradually developed. Problems abounded, sometimes caused by the obstructions of foreign residents; Ordinary reference notes are indicated thus: (1); notes in which additional information is supplied thus: (1x). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 159 still more because of the unsettled conditions in China during the 1850s and 1860s. Internal dissent manifested itself through the Taiping rebellion, in which Shanghai was threatened. The native city was occupied by insurgents during 1853-1855 and in order to prevent Imperial troops from threatening the neutrality of the Settlement, the recently formed Shanghai Volunteer Corps (which later, in the 1860s, gave some amateur dramatic performances) fought the Battle of Muddy Flat on April 4, 1854, a skirmish about which some Shanghailanders still spoke with unreserved pride fifty years later, but for which a performance of the dramatic corps had to be postponed for more than a month. ― In the early sixties, tension heightened again; in August 1860, the Taipings threatened the Settlement; 1861 was relatively calm, but in January and August 1862, the town was once more the target of the rebels. Foreign, mainly British, troops, however, had been brought down to Shanghai from North China, where they had been fighting another war, and with the aid of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, as well as mercenaries, all attacks could be staved off. Early in 1864, the Taiping insurrection was definitely quelled, All this was not without its consequences, of which only those pertaining to theatrical life need detain us here. It was not to be wondered that, as long as the Settlement was under the threat of attack, its foreign population had other matters to attend to than mere amusement, so in these years (1861-1862), there is an almost total eclipse of entertainment. Yet, no sooner had tensions eased somewhat than "nightlife" again appeared in full swing. The thousands of soldiers and marines had swelled the originally small population; as a result, this led, on the one hand, to amateur dramatics by the garrison forces; on the other, to an increased audience for travelling companies, which gave, for the first time in Shanghai's history, rather lengthy seasons. As was mentioned above, the resident foreign population was fairly small, and this should not be forgotten during any discussion of cultural life in the Settlement. In 1846, the total number of foreigners was given as 120; five years later, the British census showed 256, of whom 38 were females; in December 1859, there were 495 male and 74 female westerners, whereas the census of March 1865, which incorporated the results of events in recent years, showed a total of about 2100 resident foreigners, increased by 1850 military (a number which had no doubt been still higher in 1863 and 1864) --- 160 women again formed a tiny ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 160 minority in the foreign community.' The effects of this discrepancy on the local dramatic scene will be dealt with later. By far the greater part of those who came out to China were active as merchants or mercantile assistants; in general, they were in their late twenties or early thirties, and lived together in the hong of their firm. During business hours they traded in silk, tea, opium, and sundries; leisure was sought mainly in sports: racing, fives, bowling, cricket; by some in the Shanghai Library (established 1849), or the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (founded 1857). All, however, seemed to love the amateur theatricals that were put on several times a year. II. Theatrical Criticism In order to appreciate the information that has come down to us about the theatre in early Shanghai, some attention should first of all be paid to the way in which contemporaries wrote about it. (For reviews see the Calendar of Performances). The main, in fact the only, source as regards the early history of the foreign settlement in Shanghai is the “North China Herald”, a weekly that was founded in August 1850. A daily edition, the “North China Daily News” was begun in 1864, but the surviving copies date back only as far as July 1866. Other papers were published in the period under discussion, notably the "Shanghai Recorder" (1862-1869), but of these too all trace is lacking, with the exception of one volume (1865) of the "Shanghai Commercial Record”, the overland edition of the "Shanghai Recorder". So we have perforce to rely mainly on the "North China Herald"; and, to be sure, a worse source can be imagined. In its pages at the least we find the facts about which plays were performed and what kind of musical entertainment was enjoyed. That is, until about the beginning of 1866, for after that date there is a noticeable decrease in theatrical notes. Then one has to resort to the Daily News. All articles, which could be as long as a column, were anonymous, or, in a few cases, signed with an initial or a pseudonym. Not that it matters very much, for generally speaking the critic, if we may call him so, went to considerable lengths to avoid any harsh treatment of the amateurs on the stage. Apparently it was not deemed proper to pull the rug from under a handful of well-meaning gentlemen who devoted their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 165 unanimous voice of the Community in wishing that the Corps would again favour us with their highly agreeable representations”.30 ― A new venture in local companies was started in 1864 when, after the troubles of the Taiping rebellion, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps which had taken part in the defence of the Settlement apparently had enough superfluous energy to direct their efforts into more peaceful ventures. On March 30, 1864, Kenney's Raising the Wind, Jerrold's Cool as a Cucumber and Coyne's Duck Hunting were the three pieces given. Several more performances followed in 1864 (April 25, May 26) and 1865 (March 21, May 8, December 14). Not to be outdone by their colleagues, the Mounted Rangers, part of the S.V.C. and formed in 1862, decided to put on theatricals too. May 24, 1865 saw their first moves on the stage with Planché's The Knights of the Round Table and Mayhew's The Wandering Minstrel.3 31 Later performances were given on November 11 and 20, 1865, and January 12 and March 28, 1866. It was these two groups that in 1866 resolved on the foundation of the Amateur Dramatic Corps. Another local company saw the light in June 1864: The Amateur Burlesque Company Ltd. Whether they were not satisfied with the existing conditions of the theatre in Shanghai or whether the demand for Thespian evenings was so great cannot be ascertained; in any case it was announced that **although the theatrical season has closed, the approach of the hot weather warning us against crowded assemblies, a number of gentlemen have formed themselves into a burlesque company**. But the heat was no deterrent and on June 28, 1864 Lacy's The Silent Woman and H.J. Byron's Ill Treated Il Trovatore came off with considerable success, so much so that "many of the audience were disposed to believe that they were witnessing a display of professional talent". The society proved not to be a one-day affair, for it gave a number of other representations in 1864 and 1865. The actors in it probably consisted mainly of British and Americans; of another company that was also established in 1864 it may safely be assumed that only compatriots were members, viz. the Portuguese amateur dramatic club. Although the Portuguese population of Shanghai was small (the census of 1865 showed a total of 110, including 14 women and 15 children) this was apparently no hindrance to the staging of plays ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h The Rivals. 1861 saw some entertainment on board H.M.S. Scout, and in March 1864 there was a Prussian ship, the Gazelle, in port, and its amateur society performed three plays, two of which were by Kotzebue and Körner, whether in German or English is unknown, but the audience "frequently expressed their approval by enthusiastic applause”. As was stated in the introduction, there were times in the history of Shanghai when the Settlement was threatened from outside and foreign troops had to assist in its defence. Thus in the early sixties several regiments were brought down to the city. Both the British 31st and 67th regiment came out in 1861, to sail home in July 1863 and July 1865 respectively. The Royal Artillery started operations in 1862. After the military tasks had been largely completed in 1863, there was time left for whatever amusement could be organised — among these, of course, theatricals. Mid-March 1863 the amateurs of the 31st staged Lover's The White Horse of the Peppers and Brough's Crinoline "before the largest audience of the season"." Some weeks later the Royal Artillery scored an equal success. Shortly before their return to England the 67th amateurs put on Selby's The Unfinished Gentleman on June 17, 1865, which was "well attended and gave great satisfaction"." On more than one occasion the officers and local amateurs joined forces for the staging, for instance, of Morton's farces Where there's a Will there's a Way and Fitzsmythe of Fitzsmythe Hall on March 26, 1863 "before a crowded audience of subscribers to the fund for defraying the expenses".42 Travelling Companies Until the heyday of theatrical entertainment in Shanghai during the years 1864 and 1865 only one professional company visited the city: On August 9, 1856 Messrs Baker, Woodward and Montgomery ("formerly of the New York Serenaders") advertised that they would give, on the 14th, a "Grand Ethiopian Musical Soiree" which “could not fail to please all lovers of fun and harmony" and at which among others "the sidesplitting Negro farce 'The Nigger Doctor and his Patient, or The First Lesson in Surgery' "' would be performed. Ethiopian Soirees were another name for the minstrel shows given by blackened whites; they originated in the early 1830s and became hugely popular, especially in America, but later also in Britain,40 and to some extent in Shanghai too. These Ethiopian entertainments were given sometimes by amateurs (May 15, 1854) and sometimes by touring companies like the one mentioned above and later, in November and December 1864, by the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 172 stationed in Shanghai during the 1860s were nearly always open air ones. But sometimes a theatrical company co-operated with one of the bands, like the Amateur Burlesque Company on June 29, 1864. Otherwise, performances took place on the Bund, or Embankment, along the river, which was the favourite promenade of the foreigners as well as the most prestigious section of the Settlement. Records have come down to us of concerts by the French 101st regiment in March 1861 (“By permission of Colonel Pouget [who was the commanding officer of the regiment JH] we are authorised to state that the band of the 101st regiment will perform every Sunday and Thursday (weather permitting) before the headquarters of General De Montauban at Messrs Rémi, Schmidt & Co. [this was in the French Concession JH] between the hours of 3 and 4”*. Further concerts by the Rhenish Band and the band of the 67th regiment in June and July 1864 provided entertainment which “the residents evidently appreciated (...) large numbers (...) congregating during the performances”.67 Professional musicians From time to time professional musical artists visited Shanghai, and, as with the travelling dramatic companies, 1864 and 1865 were a golden age for the public. In the first decades of the twentieth century Shanghai was honoured with recitals by, to name just a few, Feodor Chaliapine, John MacCormack, Fritz Kreisler and Amelita Galli-Curci, but during the fifties and sixties it was only the lesser gods that came to the city. In fact, hardly any one of the artists in this period can be traced in contemporary reference works. This does not mean, of course, that they could not have been capable musicians able to provide enjoyment during an evening. That such was not always the case, though, has already been shown by the criticism drawn by the performance of Prof. Shonbrun, which led the Herald to state that "in this remote place we have so few opportunities of hearing really good music that we hunger for it and can ill brook disappointment".68 But then there were Messrs Desvachez and Grossi whose concert in February 1865 had "called for favourable comment at the hands of our music critic".69 Yet, bearing in mind the conditions of travel in the 19th century, it is amazing enough that European musicians were at all willing to undertake an Asian tour with only very uncertain financial prospects. "The first public concert (properly so called) that has ever been given ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 174 unfortunate that practically always only their stage names are known, making it impossible for us to identify any well known local citizens who were maybe also active in the municipal administration or social clubs. Not all pseudonyms were as transparent as Mr. Beverley Newcome, Mr. Circular Roller and Mr. Pickwick, nor so ludicrous as **Mr. Caput as Head Manager, Mr. Work-em-hard as stagemaker and Mr. Llanfair P.G. as the stagesweeper,” but we can never be sure about the real identity of most actors. Still, in a few cases the true names of participants were given (see: Calendar, 13.2.1863, 26.3.1863). With the managers of the companies things stood no better: the names have come to us of a Mr. Doldrum, Horatio Buskin and Peter Proteus, but they are mentioned here merely for curiosity's sake. In some instances the performers were nothing loath to adopt the names of well known contemporaries. Thus the orchestra at a theatrical night was reputedly conducted by the “Veteran Melodist Sir George Smart,” who indeed was a conductor, organist and composer (1776-1867), certainly not in Shanghai but in Britain, where he had conducted, among other performances, the first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1826. Another example was the appearance of "our old friend Mr Bravo Rouse". Rouse, always nicknamed Bravo Rouse, had been the originator of the Grecian Saloon in 1838, the precursor of the music hall.77 **76 One feature that should be highlighted is the absence of ladies on the stage until 1876. On April 18 of that year Shanghailanders witnessed their first amateur actress in T.W. Robertson's School.” Before that, however, there may have been attempts to break the male monopoly in the theatre, to judge from a short remark in the local satirical magazine **Puck, or the Shanghai Charivari”** in 1873: “We hear that the actresses of the Dramatic Club bitterly resent the movement that has lately been made by the ladies of Shanghai in the direction of amateur theatricals as they consider their rights infringed. We however think differently; the presence of these fair debutantes if of more frequent occurrence [my emphasis — JH] would tend to inspire the male actors, and while we should certainly have fewer sticks on the stage, we might have more matches”. Not that Shanghai in this respect lagged behind the amateur dramatic societies in other Far Eastern ports: Yokohama introduced women in 1878, Hong Kong in 1879 and Singapore in 1884.82 20 As far as Shanghai is concerned the reason for the lack of women on the stage is not difficult to find. Their general paucity in the Settlement ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 180 TOT concerts. For the performance on the first night, February 16 1859, the artists had prepared a drop scene representing "a most romantic spot on the banks of the Lago Maggiore". Italy obviously continued to stimulate the imagination. F. But whatever its qualities a long lifetime was not allotted to this theatre; after the last night in June 1859 it was pulled down, and once more a new shelter for Thalia had to be secured. Where it stood, we have no idea; even a proper name was not given, but on February 15 1860 the opening night of the season took place. G. During the Taiping ravages of the years 1860-1861, numerous Chinese fled to the Settlement and a huge building speculation developed, everyone trying to get rich by erecting the most flimsy structures for the refugees. Because of this it cannot have been easy for the amateurs to rent a godown to set up a new theatre in 1863. But, as usual, they succeeded in their efforts and another Theatre Royal enriched the streets of Shanghai, though which one it is impossible to say. There is, however, an interesting description of the interior in the Herald of February 14, 1863: "The audience part of the house consists of a dress circle and pit, the former enclosed with scarlet decorations, and the latter arranged with rows of good strong forms. The proscenium is plainly ornamented, with two 'guardian angels' on each side, and surrounded by a design having the flags of all nations combined round the British crown with the motto Unitate Fortior' underneath. These we understand were painted by a gallant captain [Hamilton, of one of the military regiments – JH] besides the drop scene, which is exceedingly well done and represents, if we are not mistaken, the Lake of Lucerne embosomed in the mighty Alps. The house was well lit up and the footlights were brilliant”. H. The capacity of the house was given as about two hundred and fifty. The following season, 1863-1864, saw, on February 10 1864, the opening ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 181 of the Olympic Theatre or Royal Olympic Theatre which was located at the back of the Shanghai Club, in the southern part of the Settlement. It had a dress circle and there is even mention of a "second circle". I. Finally we come to the last of the godown theatres, the Lyceum Theatre which was stated to be situated at Peking Road (ex Consulate Road), 104 The proprietors were the big firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co which had a hong on the corner of the Bund and Peking Road, 105 This was the scene of the 1864-1865 and 1865-1866 seasons. J. Evidently the existing situation was highly unsatisfactory. This was realised as early as 1852 when, at a Public Meeting on September 25, a Committee was formed at the instigation of the Shanghai Library that was looking for more appropriate accommodations. This Committee was to study the possibilities of “erecting a Building for an exchange and reading room". 106 In December a prospectus was issued by the Committee in which it was suggested that in the so called "Public Institution”, “a large room might be fitted for the Theatre, already under comparatively disadvantageous circumstances one of the most popular amusements we have", All these plans came to nothing, however, so in 1864 an epilogue to a theatrical evening gave vent to feelings of discontent: * 107 Ladies and gentlemen, our course is run 'T is yours to gild our quickly setting sun For if upon your frowns that sun should set This theatre must be advertised "To Let'. Shorn of its glory, prestige and renown Like our poor selves 't will be a mere godown. Not that the Drama in this wealthy port To such an humble bounty pray be led And build a lasting structure in its stead". 108 Apart from the inconvenience of securing a suitable godown every year, there was a great deal of capital loss involved. Each time a warehouse had to be fitted up at considerable cost (about 2,000 Taels in 1865; a Tael was worth approx. 6/7 in this period; in addition to the rent of Tls ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 183 January 27 1874 William Suter's Incompatibility of Temper and Tom Taylor's Masks and Faces or Before and Behind the Curtain opened the season in the New Lyceum Theatre. This one lasted much longer than its predecessor, indeed, until 1929 when it was sold to be resuscitated in the French Concession in 1931. —— But to return to pre-1867 conditions, some final notes should be added. Shanghai saw its first tentative steps in lighting its streets with gas in 1865 which was no luxury as the state of the roads was often rather dubious. Lighting in the theatre therefore, both the auditorium and the stage, was by means of either candles or oil lamps, the danger and inadequacies of which require no further comment. — Regulation of the climate in the hall was also difficult. Temperatures in Shanghai can be as low as 12°C in January and as high as 40°C in June-August. In order not to deter the audience, heating had to be provided in winter, which was duly advertised: "Thoroughly warmed with splendid stoves", whereas in summer which was certainly in the early years an unusual time for entertainment - one could read that "to obviate the excessive heat of a crowded house, the Company beg to state that they have had two large Punkahs hung and have otherwise improved the ventilation" (a punkah was a large rectangular fan suspended from the ceiling and moved by servants). Performances started generally at 8 o'clock or 8.30 (even 9) (1864-1865) and entry prices were $3 for the best seats and $2 for the other ones (back seats and gallery) (The Mexican dollar, one of the currencies used in Shanghai, fluctuated in value, but may be said to have been worth about 4/6 during these years — so no "shilling gallery" here). In addition to the godown theatres there were a number of other localities where artistic entertainment occurred in 1865. On February 23 1865 a concert was given at the Astor House Hotel. This hotel had been founded by an American, D.C. Jansen, in 1860 and it was situated in a part of the Settlement known as Hongkew (or American Settlement), north of the Soochow Creek, near the bridge. It was destined to become one of the most famous hotels in Shanghai and it was rebuilt several times. But in 1865 it was still a low construction. Other concerts, on October 17 1864, February 15 and March 1865, were given at the Shanghai Club, a redoubtable pillar of society located at the southern end of the Bund where it was opened in 1864. It was built in a neoclassical ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 184 style which distinguished it from the hongs by which it was surrounded. Finally there was a musical evening at the Town Hall of the neighbouring French Concession in early February 1865. The "Hôtel Municipal” was erected in 1864 and stood at the Rue du Consulat, between the Rue de l'Administration and the Rue du Nord. 117 Playbills were used to advertise the performances in the Settlement (of Calendar, 23.4.1857). Early this century there still existed such a bill dating from 1853, but I have never seen one. They were printed at one of the printing offices in Shanghai. The main ones were those of the North China Herald (Custom House Road - Hankow Road) and of the London Missionary Society which had a large compound on Temple Road (Shantung Road). The printing press of the latter of course mainly turned out religious publications in Chinese, but though the missionaries may not have been regular patrons of the theatre, one source states that playbills for their performances had been printed at "the Missionaries' house" VI. The Audience **119 120 The subject of the audience has already been touched upon several times and it is clear that the public, on the whole, liked what it saw and saw that it liked. This did not mean that all entertainments drew heavy crowds. Usually the dramatic companies had a full house, but the interest in music was decidedly less. Whereas Thalia enjoyed at times so many ardent admirers that some were obliged to stand the whole evening, her colleague often had to content herself with the cream of society. But there was always an excuse, or so it seems, for the small numbers in the concert hall; either it was the "wretchedly wet state of the weather' or the heat: 122 or maybe parsimony prevented people from going, for when M. & Mme Simonsen (violin and singing) gave a recital in May 1865 they failed to draw a large public, but when the admission price was reduced to $3 a full audience was presented. 12 This brings to mind a story of a much later period when the famous Scottish comedian Sir Harry Lauder had the audacity to raise the by then apparently immutable prices of $3-5 by a dollar and had to face a near empty auditorium. 124 121 Bearing in mind the population structure in the Settlement the audience, of course, consisted for the greater part of men. This, however, was all the more reason to note the attendance of the ladies. Time and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 198 T: Farce (1 act) C: Amateurs F: Music Th: D R: This was the last theatrical entertainment organised by Horatio BUSKIN and he could look back on a successful "career" as manager. Only the music had flagged of late (tonight "a buzz in a box near the proscenium represented the music — we were ten feet away from it and it was therefore lost upon us" the days of "Sir George Smart and Messrs Thalberg" and "Koenig" were over). — To make up for these shortcomings "Mr. CLAY as Honeybun (in the Infanticidal Farce) was, as he always is, first rate". In Slasher and Crasher the public witnessed the debut of "Miss Polly DEXTER as Rosa, affording hope of a new evening star of the first magnitude" (NCH 23.2.1856). 14.8.1856 (Thur) N.N.: The Nigger Doctor and his Patient Patient or the First Lesson in Surgery T: Negro farce C: Travelling American Company (Messrs Baker, Woodward and Montgomery) Th: Old Theatre (C) N: The whole evening was announced as a "Grand Ethiopian Musical Soirée" R: An advertisement only was published in the NCH of August 9. In it the above mentioned gentlemen (formerly of the New York Serenaders) praised their performances as having been "the theme of universal admiration during the past four years throughout the East Indies as well as the Australian Colonies". In addition to the farce, the programme consisted of "Negro songs, interspersed with willy saying and doings peculiar to the African race in America". 19.9.1856 (Fri) Concert by Ali Ben Sou Alle and some local amateurs. Instruments: Turkophone, "Turkophonini", clarinet, piano. Programme: G. ROSSINI: Two overtures. V. BELLINI: Selections from "La Sonnambula". F. MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY: "The Fairest Flower" (song). Some German songs, The "Shanghai Redowa Walse", Medley of English, Scottish and Irish airs. Th: N.N. (C) R: Tonight was the occasion of the first real concert in the Settlement's history. It was given by Mr. ALI BEN SOU ALLE, a Turk who, after a study at the Conservatoire de Paris, had been appointed Directeur de Musique de Marine in Senegal (which had been French since 1871) in 1844. In 1847 he returned to Paris to enter the orchestra of the Opéra Comique, but the following year he went to London where he found employment in the orchestra of Her Majesty's Theatre at the Haymarket. He learned to play some instruments that had been invented by Adolphe Sax, the Belgian musician (1814-1894) and thereafter he made an extensive tour to Australia, Java, Singapore, Manila and China (CM 16, 10, 1856). In Hong Kong and even Canton he had appeared in August and October 1856 (CM 7.8. 14.8. 21.8. 16.10.1856). In between he gave two recitals in the Yangtze port. In the Survey it has already been stated that the soloist entertained the public with performances on several instruments that had been rechristened Turkophone and Turkophonini: in reality they were the Saxophone and (probably) the soprano saxophone. Well may we ask how these instruments, which were only of recent origin (1840s), were received by an audience completely unused to their sound. The artist interpreted a selection from Bellini's "La Sonnambula" on the "Turkophone" and the critic wrote that "the compass of the instrument is very great but we confess to some disappointment as regards its quality of tone, and correctness of tone also, in some few notes, and altogether we think it an imperfect instrument ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 199 -- it may, however, improve on further acquaintance but we had no other opportunity of judging during the evening". The "Turkophonini” could be heard in a solo with variations and it was deemed "by far the most perfect and pleasing instrument of the two`. The Shanghai Redowa Waise (Redowa: a Bohemian dance) which had been "composed expressly for this Concert and dedicated to the Ladies of Shanghai — as the programme informed us", also performed on the Turkophonini was not thought of "very highly”, but it convinced the reporter that "the instrument is well adopted for that class of music". Obviously not everyone in the audience was of the same view, for the editor wrote in the Herald of September 27: "The critique of our reporter has been much discussed in fashionable circles and the correctness of his judgement as to the perfection of these new instruments questioned. Knowing his high attainments as a musician, we defer to his opinion. Matters of taste do not admit of dispute. De gustibus non est disputandum. We may all enjoy our own and as a second glass of wine enables us to pronounce better judgement as to its quality, so will this second performance (on September 29) by familiarizing us with the instruments enable us better to decide upon their excellence". In Hong Kong the China Mail could not speak "in very warm terms of praise at least as regards their suitability for solo performances" (CM 21.8.1856). On the other hand it admitted that "by men of cultivated taste M. Ali's talents are fully appreciated and it will be long ere those who have had the pleasure of listening to his performances will forget the sweet but powerful tones of the Turkophone or the duleet melody of the Grand Clarionet and Turkophonini" (CM 16.10.1856). Ali Ben Sou Alle was assisted by local amateurs who played a number of pieces including two Rossini overtures on the piano; and "very creditably" sung Mendelssohn's "The Fairest Flower". The evening was attended by a "numerous audience, comprising the beauty and fashion of our Settlement'' (NCH 20.8.1856). 29.9.1856 (Mon) A second concert by Ali Ben Sou Alle. No review was published in the Herald, only an announcement (NCH 27.9.1856). 18.2.1857 (Wedn) D. BOUCICAULT & C. MATHEWS: "Used Up" (1846) T: Comedietta (2 acts) J.M. MORTON: “Box and Cox" (1847) T: Farce (1 act) C: Amateurs F: Prologue Th: N.N. (C) ― R: The season opened both under the new management of "Peter PROTEUS" (again: a stage name, Proteus being an old Greek who could assume different shapes, as some actors are able to; also a character from Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona') and with a new theatrical reviewer in the Herald: "The Man on the Bund" (for the current season only). And although some months later he was heavily criticized because of some strictures he made about the choice of plays, in general his articles in a highly personal style were a mere continuation of the "nothing but praise" attitude that so prevailed. Thus Used Up was "rendered with unquestionable ability by Mr. Peter Proteus, the manager" who himself played Sir Charles Coldstream; and Mr. CLAY gave the part of the forlorn, but blunt and honest blacksmith Ironbrace with much skill and effect". Making her debut Mrs. NESBIT impersonated Lady Clutterbuck: "One would not have thought that so much deceit could lurk under so smooth and charming a face". She brought to this part "not only much cleverness and knowledge of the feminine heart but a very imposing person and decided good looks; and one could not help thinking the baronet might have stumbled upon a less pretty face in his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 207 plays; the wood scene we thought very effective and true to nature". This is one of the few times that at least some slight attention is paid to the staging of a piece. (NCH 8.5.1858). 28.9.1858 (Tue) R.B. SHERIDAN: "The Rivals” (1775) T: Comedy (prologue, 5 acts, epilogue), and two other, unnamed, light pieces C: Officers of H.M.S. Retribution Th: On board ship R: This must have been a long night for in addition to Sheridan's The Rivals (a full-length five-act comedy in which Mrs. Malaprop was played by "Mrs. Taylor") there were two other light pieces of which the titles have not been recorded. Small wonder then that "our reporter did not wait to see as the hour was late and he had to rise early to see the comet" — which had first been observed on September 15. (NCH 2.10.1858) 2.10.1858 (Sat) and 6.10.1858 (Wedn) Concerts by Mr. Martin Simonsen, violin, and some local amateurs. Programme: Charles Auguste DE BERIOT (1802-1870): Seventh air with variations, Martin SIMONSEN: "Sounds from Home", Heinrich Wilhelm ERNST (1814-1865): **Andante” (= Elegie?), N. PAGANINI: "Carnival of Venice", Some German songs. Th: Theatre Royal (C) R: That the scarce recitals by professional musicians did not draw the same public attention as the amateur actors has already been pointed out in the Survey. On October 2 the attendance was not large, but for the sixth "a considerable improvement" was observed and it was hoped there would be a full house on the 12th so that the artist would not be left **with cause to regret his visit to this remote place”. The critic, "'T.", gave himself an air of the specialist when he wrote that "though we do not find any attempt at the dignity and breadth of style which are the characteristics of the greatest performers of the age, we are glad to recognise an execution at once brilliant and lively and in some respects really astonishing"; and he regarded Mr. SIMONSEN as "a worthy member of that particular school of which De Bériot was one of the brightest ornaments (De Bériot was a famous violinist who had been forced by illness to end his career in 1852). It must be assumed that the writer had heard other musicians in Europe — where else? — with whom he could draw a comparison. These were the days without radio, gramophone or compact disc! He was apparently a lover of more serious music, for he added wrily: "We presume it is necessary occasionally to introduce pieces of a light and striking character, but for our own part we deprecate the production of such solos as 'Life on the ocean' **. As to those who assisted Mr. SIMONSEN "T." found it **creditable to this small Settlement that it can produce so able and numerous a body of amateurs who evidently study music for its own sake. We venture to ask them to persevere — it is a science which will amply reward its followers, which will repay a thousandfold its earnest students". (NCH 9.10.1858). In well-to-do circles in Britain a musical education was considered a mark of good breeding and probably a number of residents had acquired their instrumental skill in youth. Others could profit from the piano lessons that were advertised in December 1858: they were given "at moderate charges" and persons interested should apply to "D.D. at Mr. W.H. Moore's, Hongkew". Why all would-be artists in Shanghai were so mysterious about their true names remains an enigma. The initials D.D. do not suit any of the residents in the *Shanghai Almanac for 1858'. W.H. Moore is listed in it as a pilot. T ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 216 R: Nearly five years after his last recital in Shanghai, Martin SIMONSEN returned to the port, this time as a member of "Mr. Smythe's troupe". There was also the novelty of a lady singer, Miss Amelia BAILEY, who "could not fail to render the entertainment attractive even had her voice been less excellent than it is". This was the last night of a series for which public interest had not been particularly large; only on July 31st had there been an "excellent house" and in a reproaching comment, the Herald trusted that the company would "meet with more uniform support at Hong Kong, the residents of which are reputed more willing to put up with a little heat for the sake of an evening's amusement". (NCH 1,8,1863). October 1863 On October 24, the North China Herald informed its readers that "the Circus Company announced more than a year ago as upon its way to Shanghai has at length arrived and promises to be a valuable means of dispelling the ennui inseparable from winter in China". 17.10.-23.10.1863 A series of promenade concerts by Miss Amelia Bailey (singing) and Marquis Chisholm (piano), as well as the Rhenish Band. TH: N.N. (H) 7.11.-13.11.1863 A continuation of the concerts mentioned above. R: In spite of the meagre support met in Shanghai, the Smythe troupe ventured to return in October after a visit to Nagasaki. This time the concerts were more rewarding - financially, for in November it was noticed that “Miss BAILEY has continued to draw crowded houses" and that she has no reason to complain of the reception she has met in Shanghai". (NCH 17.10, 24.10, 14.11.1863). 10.2.1864 (Wedn) E.B. LYTTON: "The Lady of Lyons" (1838) T: Romantic comedy (5 acts) C: C.R. Faylor's travelling company Th: Olympic Theatre (H) R: The port was honoured by a visit of Mr. FAYLOR's theatrical company in February and May. This was after it had toured Macao (in December 1863; see BGM 14.12.1863) and Hong Kong. There it was highly successful, but the first performance in the Yangtze city was unfortunately a failure in consequence of the ludicrous incompetence of that portion of the company which had been collected in Shanghai and pressed into service. The audience, moreover, was riotous in the extreme and displayed the worst possible taste in exciting themselves to increase the confusion on the stage" (see also Survey, p. 22). (N.C.H. 13.2.1864). 13.2.1864 (Sat) C. DANCE: "Delicate Ground" (1849) T: Comic drama (1 act) C. SELBY: "A Lady and a Gentleman in a Peculiarly Perplexing Predicament" (1841) T: Burletta (1 act) C: C.R. Faylor's travelling company Th: Olympic Theatre (H) R: It is not quite clear how many nights were given by the FAYLOR company. The Herald of February 27 states that **it still continues its performances", but, in view of what had happened earlier, "naturally enough has not been patronised by any of the ladies resident in the Settlement". In May, it turns up again in the pages of the paper. (NCH 27.2.1864). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 221 Park Lanc?). The names of the actors mentioned in the advertisement must have been assumed ones. June and July 1864 Concerts by the Rhenish Band and the Band of the 67th Regiment. Loc.: The Bund R: NCH 28.5.1864, 2.7.1864 2-9.1864 H.J. BYRON: “Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp" T: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act) C: Shanghai Amateur Burlesque Company Th: N.N. (l) R: That the hope expressed in the Herald of 2.7. was not forlorn was proved by the full house for Aladdin in which "numerous local hits and puns are introduced which took admirably, especially a parody pidgin English on the 'lost child' (see Survey). The dresses were excellent and the scenery well arranged" (NCH 1.10.1864). 24.9.-30.9.1864 During the week a concert was given by Mr. Desvachez (violin) and two amateurs, TH NM. R: Another adventurous musician had come to enliven the Settlement's cultural scene. Mr. DESVACHEZ. His concert was "fairly successful, but people here hardly care to sit for two hours to listen to a performance on the violin, however well the instrument may be handled. Some variety is required and although Mr. DESVACHEZ was assisted by an amateur on the violincello and a pianist this desideratum was hardly attained". (NCH 1.10.1864). 6.10.1864 Opening night of Lewis Australian Drama Company. No titles of plays recorded. Th: NẠN. (I R: The first night of an eight-week season by Lewis' Australian Drama Co. (see also Survey). In the Herald, no detailed reviews appeared, only short summaries. The opening pieces have not even been recorded (NCH 8.10.1864). 8.10.-14.10.1864 H.J. BYRON: "The Maid and the Magpie" (1858) T: Burlesque burletta (1 act) A.G. HARRIS: "The Rose of Castille" (1857) T: Opera (music by M.W. BALFE) J.R. PLANCHE: "Paint Heart Never Won Fair Lady" (1839) T: Comedy (1 act) C: Lewis A.D.C. Th: Lyceum Theatre (l) R: It was reported that the company attracted "olerably full houses". Of the plays, Byron's The Maid and the Magpie was "infinitely preferred; in it every actor is well up to his part and personates the character he represents with ludicrous fidelity". (NCH 15.10.1864). £5, 10, 1864 (Sat) Performance by the Portuguese Amateur Dramatic Corps. No titles of plays mentioned. R: In their own theatre, the Portuguese actors were as usual well up in their parts and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 223 harmonium by D.H. ENGEL 17. "Eupeidee" (German student song and chorus) Th: Olympic Theatre (H) R: An advertisement only was published in the Herald of 29.10.1864. From it we learn that tickets could be obtained at the premises of Hiram Fogg & Co (ship chandlers, general store and auctioneers; one of the oldest foreign firms in Shanghai, located at the southern end of the Bund); Hall & Holtz (see 29.6.1864); A.A. Hayes Jr (Olyphant & Co, Nanking Road, ex Park Lane); and Herbert Cope (Geo Barnet & Co, Kiangsi Road (ex Church Street) and Hankow Road (ex Custom House Road)). It also becomes clear that there were at that moment at least two theatres in the Settlement: the Lyceum and the Olympic. The programme is interesting for the number of composers which have now been forgotten (Silcher, Kücken, Becker, Werner, etc.) and the piano arrangements of well-known opera arias. 12.11-18.11.1864 W. BROUGH: “Conrad and Medora” (1856) T: Burlesque pantomime (1 act) J.B. BUCKSTONE: “Married Life" (1834) T: Comedy (3 acts) J.W. MARSTON: "A Hard Struggle" (1858) T: Domestic drama (1 act) W. SHAKESPEARE: “King John”, prison scene (Act IV, scene III) Furthermore: “Cinderella”, possibly by H.J. BYRON (1860) or T. TAYLOR (1845). "Wonder"; no contemporary pieces are listed in HED; only: Mrs. S. CENTLIVRE: “The Wonder. A woman keeps a secret” (1714) and H. CAREY: "A Wonder or an honest Yorkshireman" (1735). C: Lewis A.D.C. Th: N.N. (E) R: The Lewis company continued to draw large houses and ventured even to put a Shakespeare scene on the programme, from King John. It proved to be "the hit of the week". In it starred Miss Julia EDouin and Mr. Henry BIRCH: "The acting was perfect. Miss Julia EDouin doing the fullest justice to the character of Prince Arthur and indeed taking the house by storm!" (NCH 19.11.1864). 19.11.1864 Sat H.J. BYRON: “Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp” (1861) T: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act) C: Lewis A.D.C. TH: N.N. (U) N: Benefit of Miss Tilly Earl who played the role of Aladdin R: NCH 26.11.1864 23.11.1864 (Wedn) R.B. SHERIDAN: "The Rivals" (1775) T: Comedy (5 acts) C: Lewis A.D.C. TH: N.N. (P) N: Benefit of Mrs. Gill who played the role of Mrs. Malaprop. R: NCH 26.11.1864 26.11.1864 (Sat) H.J. BYRON: "Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp” (1861) T: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h # BIBLIOGRAPHY 245 1. Archives: "London Missionary Society": Incoming Letters, Central China. 2. Newspapers and Periodicals: **Boletim do Governo de Macao**, Macao, 1855-1865. "China Mail", Hong Kong, 1845-1860. "North China Herald", Shanghai, 1850-1867. "Puck, or the Shanghai Charivari", Shanghai, 1871-1873. *Shanghai Commercial Record*, Shanghai, 1865. 3. Books and Articles: Adams, W. Davenport: "A Dictionary of the Drama. A Guide to the Plays, Playwrights, Players and Playhouses of the United Kingdom and America from the earliest times to the present", Vol. I (A-G) (no more published). Philadelphia, 1904. Appleton, William W.: "Madame Vestris and the London Stage", New York - London, 1974. Barr, Pat: "The Deer Cry Pavillion. A Story of Westerners in Japan 1868-1905", London, 1968. Black, J.R.: "Young Japan. Yokohama and Yedo. A Narrative of the Settlement and the city from the signing of the treaties in 1858 to the close of the year 1879", Tokyo-London, 1968 (reprint of 1880-1881 edition). Boase, Frederic: "Modern English Biography", London, 1965 (reprint of the 1891-1921 edition). Booth, Michael (Ed): "English Plays of the 19th century", Volumes I and IV, Oxford, 1969-1973. British Museum General Catalogue of Books. Brown, T. Allston: "A History of the New York Stage from the first performance in 1732 to 1901, 3 vols.; New York 1964 (reprint of 1903 ed.). Buckley, C.B.: "An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore 1819-1867, Singapore, 1902. Carse, A.: "The Life of Jullien", Cambridge, 1951. Chesterfield, Lord: "Advice to his son on Men & Manners in which the principles of politeness and the art of acquiring a knowledge of the world are laid down in an easy and familiar manner", Chiswick, 1826. Conolly, L.W. and J.P. Wearing: "English Drama and Theatre 1800-1900. A Guide to information sources", Detroit, 1978. Cordier, Henri: "Bibliotheca Sinica", second edition; 5 vols.; Paris 1904ff. Davis, Jim (Ed.): "Plays of H.J. Byron", Cambridge, 1984. 'Dictionary of National Biography". Dyce, C.M.: "Personal Reminiscences of Thirty Years' Residence in the Model Settlement. Shanghai 1870-1900", London, 1906. Engle, Gary D.: "This Grotesque Essence. Plays from the American Minstrel Stage". Baton Rouge, 1978. Fétis, F.J.: "Biographic Universelle de Musiciens", Paris, 1864; Supplement by Arthur Pougin, 1880. Fitzgerald, Percy: "Principles of Comedy and Dramatic Effect", London, 1870. "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians", London, 1980. Haan, J.H.: "Origin and Development of the Political System in the Shanghai International Settlement" in: "Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of Royal Asiatic Society", Vol. 22 (1982), p. 31-64. Haan, J.H.: "The Shanghai Library: A history of the first foreign library in Shanghai" in: "Journal of the Hong Kong Library Association", 1987. Hartnoll, Phyllis: "The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre", London, 1972. Howard, Diana: "London Theatres and Music Halls, 1850-1950", London, 1970. Page 270 Page 271 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 246 King, F.H.H. and P. Clarke: “A Research Guide to China Coast Newspapers 1822-1911”, Cambridge (Mass), 1965. Kosch, Wilhelm: "Deutsches Theater Lexikon", Klagenfurt, 1960. Kounin, I.I.: "The Diamond Jubilee of the International Settlement of Shanghai", Shanghai, n.d. (c. 1939). Kunitz, Stanley (Ed.): "British Authors of the 19th Century", N.Y., 1936. Lang, H.: “Shanghai considered socially", Shanghai, 1875. Lanning, G. and S. Couling: "The History of Shanghai", Vol. I.; Shanghai, 1921. MacGuire, Paul: "The Australian Theatre", Melbourne, 1948. MacLellan, J.W.: "The Story of Shanghai from the opening of the port to foreign trade". Shanghai, 1889. Makepeace, Walter, Gilbert E. Brooke and R. St. J. Bradwell (Ed): 'One Hundred Years of Singapore", 2 vols.; London, 1921. Maybon, Charles B. & J. Fredet: "Histoire de la Concession Francaise de Changhai'', Paris, 1929. Maude, Cyril: "The Haymarket Theatre, Some Records and Reminiscences" London, 1903. Mullin Donald (Ed.): "Victorian Actors and Actresses in Review", Westport, 1983 National Union Catalogue. 1 Nicoll, Allardyce: "A History of English Drama 1660-1900", 6 vols,; Cambridge 1952ff. Pal, John: "Shanghai Saga", London, 1963. Pearsall, Ronald: "Victorian Popular Music", Newton Abbot, 1973. "The Player's Library. A Catalogue of the Library of the British Drama League”, London, 1950. Pope, W.J. Macqueen: "Haymarket, Theatre of Perfection", London, 1948. Reynolds, Ernest: "Early Victorian Drama (1830-1870), New York, 1965 (reprint of 1936 edition). Riemann, Hugo: "Musik Lexikon", Berlin, 1916 (8th edition). Rowell, George (Ed.): "Nineteenth Century Plays”, Oxford, 1972. “Shanghai Alamanac” 1855, 1856, 1858, 1862; Shanghai, 1854ff years. **Shanghai t'ung yen-chiu tzu-liao (Shanghai Research Materials), Hong Kong 1972 (reprint of 1936 edition). Smith, C.; "The Hong Kong Amateur Dramatic Club and its predecessors" in: "Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the R.A.S.", Vol. 22 (1982), p. 217-251. Thomson, Peter: "Plays by Dion Boucicault", Cambridge, 1984. Toll, Robert C.: 'Blacking Up. The Minstrel Show in 19th century America”, New York, 1974. Troubridge, St. Vincent: "The Benefit System in the British Theatre”, London, 1967. Wearing, J.P.: "American and British Theatrical Biography", London, 1979. White, Walter: "China Station 1859-1864", London, 1972. Williams, Harold S.: "Tales of the Foreign Settlements in Japan", Tokyo, 1972. Wright, Arnold and H.A. Cartwright: "Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong. Shanghai and other Treaty Ports of China", London, 1908. Abbreviations: NOTES BGM: Boletim do Governo de Macao. NCH: North China Herald. SCR: Shanghai Commercial Record. 1 Performance 6.5.1852. NCH 8.5.1852. Only passing attention has been paid to the early theatre in Shanghai: Lanning & Couling. p. 429-430: MacLennan: p. 85-86. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 250 advertisement announcing the auction the ground lot was No 32; this can be found on a plan of the Settlement in the archives of the London Missionary Society (Central China, Incoming Letters, Box 1, Fold. 2. Jack D). That the theatre was in a godown adjoining the Commercial House is mentioned in an advertisement for a book auction that was to take place there (NCH 1.7.1854) and another adv. in the NCH 9.8.1856 (“Old Theatre on the premises of the 'Commercial House'). 95 NCH 18.4.1857. 96 NCH 25.4.1857. 97 NCH 2.5.1857. 98 According to the Shanghai Almanac for 1855 Crampton's had rented lots 43 and 77. The plan in the L.M.S. archives shows these to be between Church Street and Bridge Street. 26.1.1856. 99 100 NCH 1.1.1859. 101 NCH 26.2.1859. 102 NCH 19.2.1859. 103 NCH 29.10.1864; adv. NCH 7.5.1864. 104 NCH 26.11.1864. 105 Cordier, III, col. 2232. 106 NCH 2.10.1852. 107 NCH 4.12.1852. 108 NCH 28.5.1864. 109 Information supplied at a meeting 16.11.1866; of NCH 24.11.1866. NCH 22.9.1866. NCH 17.11.1866. 112 Minutes in NCH 24.11.1866. 113 NCH 24.11.1866. 114 For a brief survey of the Lyceum Theatre see: Shanghai-t'ung, p. 487-491. 115 NCH 3.12.1864. NCH 25.6.1864. 117 Darwent, p. 99; cf also Maybon & Fredet, p. 264-265. Wright, p. 390. 119 White, p. 23. In the archives of the L.M.S. there are, in the correspondence, a number of references to printing activities, but they of course focus on religious tracts, etc. Only in some instances is there mention of "commercial papers printed" or "Job work" (letter 19.4.1853; Box 1, Fold. 4, Jack A). 120 NCH 7.5.1853. 121 NCH 12.3.1859. 122 NCH 1.8.1863. 123 124 NCH 13.5.1865, 20.5.1865. of Pal, p. 121. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 311 recorded by Sung (1974:181-182), Wan-Guk "was a very rich man, and he owned a lot of cultivated land in [Xin'an County]". He died before 1513 (ibid: 182). We have more detail about some of his great-great-grandsons, among them Dang Yun-Fan who made a donation of 1,000 sek of rice to the county government for relief during a bad famine. The details of Dang Yun-fan's descent from Wan-Guk are obscure. Because of this act of generosity Kam Tin was given its present name in 1587, instead of the Sham Tin used earlier (Sung 1973:111-112). The story must be quite close to the truth. Siu (1982:23:24) has checked the Xin'an gazetteer to verify it. He found an entry for a serious drought in 1583, and the County Magistrate named in the anecdote assumed his position in 1586. I have found other supportive data in a local manuscript that records some of the inside inscriptions of the spirit tablets in one of the ancestral halls of Kam Tin. Two ancestors of this period had "pen-names" (hou) that probably alluded to the new name of the settlement. An elder I interviewed attributed the change of the place name to Kam Tin to his ancestor Pou-Am, another great-great-grandson of Wan-Guk's, and provided the following information. Pou-am's holdings reached Chuk Yuen near San Tin. He had house(s) where the rent collectors could stay when collecting the payment and being entertained by the tenants. Pou-Am's grandson Lok-Sin had comparable holdings. It was probably in the second half of the 16th century that an ancestral hall was built in honour of Ching-Lok, Wan-Guk's father. It was in all likelihood the earliest ancestral hall ever built in Kam Tin. We know the approximate date of the ancestral hall because a handbook for its rituals prescribed that extra portions of ritual pork were to be given to the descendants of certain individuals, some for their part in the initial building of the hall and some for their contribution towards subsequent repairs and rebuilding. These involved six people. Among them the two rewarded for the original building and another two rewarded for the first rebuilding were all Wan-Guk's great-grandsons. It was only in a subsequent repair in 1788 that one of the descendants of the other sons of Ching-Lok became involved. The spirit tablets in the hall confirm the dominance of Wan-Guk's segment. The two Dangs honoured for the initial effort, as already mentioned, were Wan-Guk's great-grandsons. The time when the ancestral hall was first built was probably not later than the time of Yun-Fan, the great-great-grandson of Wan-Guk's who made the donation to the county in 1587. It was also in the second half of the 16th Century that Kei-Fong (not a descendant of Ching-Lok) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 328 winter. Once in a year they practised shooting at a police shooting range near Man Kam To. In earlier times the guards had used gwan sticks. C. The village market At present there are a few shops, mostly food stalls, in Kam Tin Shi. Some Dangs also live there. They are descendants of the senior branch, including descendants of Wan-Guk and Wan-Gaan. The place used to be the local market. It was active before the Japanese occupation. It had a sign in the form of an arch, which was removed by the Japanese. Some documentary information about the market has survived in a rent record.29 One of the shops entered into the rental contract in 1851. The rent book included entries for five shops in Kam Tin Shi. Among them one was run by a tailor. It also mentioned the names of three streets. These were Upper Main Street (Sheung Taai Gaai) and Lower Main Street (Ha Taai Gaai) as well as Middle Street (Jung Gaai). The elders remembered that the market had two or three butchers and two or three fishmongers. Besides these there were a few other shops. Two sold jaap-fo (“sundry goods”). Kam Tin Shi is remembered to have mainly catered for the needs of the Kam Tin people. Very few outsiders came. Some informants added that there was even one pawn shop inside Kat Hing Wai. The owner was a descendant of Wan-Gaan jou. I have no idea when the pawnshop was started. There was also a peanut oil factory which was started more than 100 years ago. It was owned by a Wan-Yu jou person. IV. SETTLEMENTS AND LINEAGE SEGMENTS 4 According to Sung (1973:111) Hon-Faat, the first Dang ancestor to come to the province, built the first house at the bottom of a hill called [Gwai Gok Saan] about three-quarters of a mile away from the present Kam Tin". His grandson Fu-Hip lived there on retirement and founded a school called Lik Ying Jai (ibid.: 116). The descendants of Fu-Hip's grandson Seui, lived in the Naam Wai and Bak Wai villages around the beginning of Ming dynasty (1368). The division of the Kam Tin settlement into Naam-Bin and Pak-Bin remain today. Yun-leung, father of the gwan-ma and one of the sons of Seui, remained in Kam Tin. The other four descendants of Fu-Hip moved to nearby Ping Shan and places in Dongguan county, among other places. The descendants of many of the sons of the gwan-ma moved away to Lung Yeuk Tau, Tai Po Tau, 30 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 329 Loi Tung, among other places, including some to Dongguan and Xiangshan counties. The cousins of Hung-Yi moved away to nearby Ha Tsuen and Xiangshan county, among other places. Hung-Yi's brother Hung-Ji moved to Ha Tsuen. Thereafter, all the remaining Dangs of Kam Tin were descendants of Hung-Yi. Casually asking the Dang elders about the relationship between lineage segmentation and settlement, one is given both concrete examples that suggest a correspondence as well as general observations that there is no correspondence. For example, one would be told that the descendants of the third branch (Yeui), which are very few in number, all live in Wing Lung Wai, and that all the others of that village were descendants of the first fong. Unless one asks about a particular segment, the answers would be in terms of the four branches of the lineage, and the conclusion will be that no single segment lives in a village of its own except in the case of Tai Hong Wai where all the villagers are descendants of Man-Wai and his brothers. Going down the level of segmentation, to the lineage divisions focussed upon ancestors of the 17th to 19th centuries, there is correspondence in the sense that members of these segments all live in the same village. As already mentioned, all the members of the third branch live in Wing Lung Wai. Similarly, all the Ji-Ga Tong people live in Shui Tau, all the descendants of Wan-Yu live in Wing Lung Wai, and all the descendants of Gwong Yu Tong and Lei Ging Tong live in Tai Hong Wai. Another example is the descendants of Wan-Gaan, who, according to one account, had three sons: Fau-Ng, Jan-Ting and Gai-Jau. Gai-Jau's segment live in Kat Hing Wai. Fau-Ng's descendants are divided into three sub-segments. One of the three lived in Ko Po, another in Kat Hing Wai, and the other in Kam Hing Wai. Some segments of the lineage settled elsewhere. The descendants of Hung-Yi's second son Jan had moved to Ying Lung Wai near the Yuen Long Old Market at a very early date. I was told by its head of branch that many more lived in Zhongshan county. Some of the descendants of San-Fung, a son of Wan-Guk, also had settled elsewhere. I was told that most of them live in Kat Hing Wai, but some had moved to Tong Fong near Ping Shan. The ritual handbook for Ching-Lok's ancestral hall had a special provision for the descendants of San-Fung, which said that they had moved to Naam Tau, in a street outside the city wall. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 330 A. Early History of Settlements The present relationship between lineage segment and settlement is roughly the same as that recorded by Sung (1974: 168-70) concerning who started and walled which village and when. Village Started by Genealogical Position Walled in Kat Hing Wai Baak-Ging Son of Chyu-Yin and Gwong-Yu Jik Gin Kangxi (1662-1721) by Chyu-Yin and two others Wing Lung Wai Siu-Geui and seven others Tai Hong Wai Chung Shui Tau and four others Kei-Fong and Kei-Wa, both from Tai Hong Wai and Gwok-Yin One of the Man-Wai and five sons of Gaai-Yut Naam-Kai Son of Chung-Yut Gam-Tin jou, son of Hak-Sa Shui Mei Suk-Leun and Wan-Guk Sons of Gwai-Ting, Gwong-Yu Son of Ching-Lok Kam Hing Wai Yut-Man of Ko Po Kat Hing Wai and Pui-Hing of Tai Hong Wai Jau-Man +34 of Kat Hing Wai Sung has indicated that Kat Hing Wai, Shui Tau and Shui Mei were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 331 established during the Chenghua (1465-87) period. From information in genealogics about the Dangs who started the villages it can be estimated that Wing Lung Wai was established in the same period and Tai Hong Wai a little later, in the first half of the 16th century." All of the five main villages, therefore, had been started between the second half of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, and from them the smaller villages of Kam Hing Wai and Ko Po were derived. B. Merger of settlements in the 17th century The foregoing would suggest that the development of the Dang settlements in Kam Tin was a process in which new villages were established as offshoots of the older main villages. But the opposite process, that of newer settlements being merged into older ones, also took place, in the critical period of the 17th century. Such were the cases of Sa Bui Leng (Sha Pui Leng) and Gau Ga Chyun, two Dang settlements which either no longer exist (Gau Ga Chyun), or no longer have any Dang residents (Sa Bui Leng). According to his descendants, who now all live in Tai Hong Wai, Dang Man-wai first established a village at Shun Fung Wai, and then left it and moved to Nam Pin Wai. There is a widely known fung-sheui story which implied that Nam Pin Wai was unfit for a single surname community. Man-Wai discovered the problem: the fung-sheui was no good as far as the behaviour of women was concerned. So he gave up the idea of settling there. He moved from there back to Kam Tin. Man-Wai and his people first lived at Sa Bui Leng after coming back. It was told that a dan is still to be seen at the site of his settlement. After he became jeun-sz he built Tai Hong Wai and moved there. One version has it that Tai Hong Wai was started by his younger brother, not himself. The brother followed the instruction of the bandit chief called Lei Maan-Wing then living in Tai Mo Shan. Man-Wai was an expert on fung-sheui. Before his time the people [of his segment of the lineage?] were very poor. Thanks to his choice of good fung-sheui [something to do with the village wall] they enjoyed prosperity after the final move. Gau Ga Chyun means the village of nine families. An elder remembered seeing seven or eight houses used as store houses when he was small. These belonged to the Gwok-Yin jou segment of Wan-Yu jou people. He said that people lived there until more than 10 generations ago, they found the place unsatisfactory and moved back (sic) to Wing ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 334 Bui Leng village was established in very early days, “even earlier than Kam Tin". But the building of Yau-Leun Tong had destructive effects on its fung-sheui. After the rise of the Dangs the Sa Bui Ling villagers became their ha-fu. I have talked with a 64-year-old Mr. Chan, who was the oldest person in this village. The villagers were originally of three surnames: Chan, Yeung and Yun. The Yuns have left no descendants. The villagers had established Sa Bui Leng at the same time as the Dangs established their settlement. The Dangs had taken measures to prevent the prosperity of this village. They built three ancestral halls (chi tong-jai), i.e. Yau-Leun Tong, and two others, which used to be at the site of the present playground, and dug a pond which had only been filled up to build the cinema some ten years ago. The combination had bad impacts on the fung-sheui of Sa Bui Leng and the Chans suffered a serious decline. Therefore some of them had moved to Tai Kiu, a small village in Yuen Long. Before the war, the Chan family had grown rice on fields rented from a wealthy Dang and one of the jous of the Kam Tin Dangs. Mr. Chan stressed that the family farmed land rented from the Dangs, they did not work for them. There are indications that at least for the last hundred years, the Sa Bui Leng people were accepted as equals by some of the poorer Dangs. The Chan family was a member of the Yi-Chung Wui, a ritual association which drew its members mostly from the poorer Dang villagers of Kim Tin, since at least the time of his great grandfather. I also discovered that Mr. Chan's wife was a daughter of a Tai Hong Wai Dang. V. WORSHIP The supernatural world was very real to the villagers. It is still so to many of the elders. A Mr. Dang who had spent his youth in a trading firm on Hong Kong Island told me that in the old days when the area was less densely populated, one often encountered ghosts. Now that there were more people one rarely saw ghosts. I have heard something similar from a younger Mrs. Dang. The belief in the reality and power of the gods is strong too. It is, above all, manifested in the villagers' behaviour in the jiu festival. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 342 The festival was estimated to cost a total of more than one million dollars. The opera cost $357,000, paper images $150,000, temporary structures $150,000, and the puppet theatre $110,000. The opera was paid for, as is the tradition, from the funds of two lineage trusts, those of the Naam-Kai jou and Ching-Lok jou. Each contributes $180,000. For the other expenses, each of the villagers paid a subscription of $300, with the no. 1 to no. 15 ritual representatives each paying an extra $500, 50 The main participants were the Dang villagers of Kam Tin. For the purpose of organizing the jiu the villagers were divided into five gu sections. Each section corresponded to a village, except that the Tai Hong gu included, besides Tai Hong Wai, Ko Po, Kam Hing Wai, Tsi Tong Tsuen and Tai Hong Tsuen. Also taking part were the villagers of Ying Lung Wai, the settlement of the second branch of Hung-Yi's lineage outside the heung of Kam Tin. They paid half subscriptions and got the last three places among the 60 ritual representatives. Some of the non-Dang residents in the heung also participated. Those include the Sa Bui Leng villagers and post-War and later immigrants from China who operated farms and shops in Kam Tin. These "outsiders", however, could not become ritual representatives. The ritual representatives were to stand for all the villagers in the Taoist rites and in some of the rites the villagers performed on their own. There were also religious activities conducted by every household. At three points of the festival, i.e. the opening day, the main day, and the concluding day, every household came, family by family, to worship at the various ritual sites, and a priest visited each house on the last day to purify the family altar. In addition, each and every person was named in the ritual memorials which were read aloud and sent by fire to heaven, with a copy posted in the ritual area for all to read and check. Many other villagers in the area were also peripherally involved. They offered their congratulations by having fa-paai banners set up in the festival site, and by paying a formal visit to the site on the main day with their lion/unicorn dances. To wait to receive them the elders of Kam Tin lined up in cheung-saam, B. Ritual Area The festival site was beside the Jau and Wong Temple. A large paang temporary structure was erected. Outside the main structure were three small linked temporary structures for first-aid, the fire services, and the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 418 administration of the Foochow Dockyard and its fleet of warships in the face of many difficulties. Ironically, they were destroyed by naval forces of his own nation during the hostilities of 1884-85 between France and China over Vietnam. Giquel was a rare bird for his times. Apart from his linguistic proficiency and administrative capacities, he was sympathetic towards China at a time when this was not common among his contemporaries. Moreover, he sought ever to combine his duties to his employers, the Chinese, with his loyalties towards his native land, a veritable tightrope which he conscientiously trod throughout his working life. (As Dr. Leibo observes, “A less committed individual might never have attempted such a balancing act”, Transferring Technology, p. 5). He gave offence to many influential Frenchmen and to his government in 1872 by an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes in which he suggested that the French Concession at Shanghai should be merged with the International Settlement, and criticised French policy towards China in various aspects. Why this should be so is hinted at by an English account which indicates how different Giquel must have been from most of his fellows. Even allowing for the fact that this is an English account, written at a time of strong rivalry between the two powers and by one side of an old and mutual antipathy, it speaks for itself: – French officers are so quick to take offense (sic) — so quick to obtain satisfaction, so imperious, so impractical, and so totally uncommercial that they are viewed by the Chinese with great dread and by foreigners with apprehension. (Transferring Technology, p. 69) In truth, Giquel must have been greatly valued by the Chinese in particular, though the books show that this was at the expense of being thought too pro-Chinese by the French authorities, and even by trusted subordinates. The book is full of such interesting and illuminating passages, either from Giquel's own pen, those of contemporaries, or from Dr. Leibo's hand. Another useful observation, this time coming from the Imperial Commissioner charged with overseeing the Dockyard project, has for us today an oddly familiar ring to it. Commissioner Shen Baozhen was ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 There and elsewhere, the Rural Committees carried out many executive functions at that time, and in remoter places where government was less in evidence they continued to do so until much later. 3. Self-Management among Tsuen Wan Squatters Unlike the villagers, the squatter population of Tsuen Wan in the 1950s and 1960s was neither homogenous nor long-settled. It mostly comprised newcomers from many parts of Kwangtung and elsewhere. However, like other groups of Chinese who happened to find themselves living together in a strange place far from home, they too were imbued with the spirit and practice of these long-exercised "self-help skills". It was, therefore, in no way surprising to find that able, willing men (and sometimes women) in the squatter areas organized themselves and their fellow residents for greater convenience, providing local services through their own efforts and giving very little trouble to the authorities. 71 This self-servicing was decentralized. Committees formed in each squatter area in the time-honoured way, because men came forward and were accepted by the rest. There was a real need for their services. Life in such places was (and to a lesser extent still is) often fraught with dangers arising from fire, and from the floods, typhoons, landslips and similar natural disasters to which Hong Kong is periodically subject. However, the leaders were used to taking such precautionary measures as were possible and were ready to meet new crises as and when they occurred. There was an equal need for the exercise of initiative in daily life, since at that period the amenities provided by government departments or the public utilities mostly ended at the settlement fringes or some point in the neighbourhood. The leaders had to make their own arrangements to obtain and distribute water and electricity inside the lanes of the squatter areas, and they sometimes carried out minor public works. They also formed fire-fighting teams and security patrols. Disputes between residents over a wide variety of causes had to be resolved, and sometimes triad elements had to be deterred from taking a hand in “providing” security and services for a consideration. In short, the task of the local leaders was not light, even for capable men. It needed time, effort, and the right contacts in the community and the bureaucracy, including the local police, and cooperation and support from the residents was vital. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 35 An analysis of the rituals performed. Segawa shows that observation of the Jiao festival reveals not only traditional territorial alliances, but also past rival relationships among communities. Looking at the case of Pat Heung as an example, he illustrated that the Jiao closely reflects the past feuds between a village alliance and its neighbouring landlord community, Kam Tin. He argues that, besides its ritual and symbolic meanings, the Jiao can be seen as a "rite of solidarity”. That is, the community maintains its unity through regular worship of the heroes and feud victims, at the Jiao festival.“ 45 Besides traditional alliance-rival relationships, a study of a Jiao festival also reveals a society's internal social conflicts. Group consciousness and inter-group competition, which are obscured by modern city life, can be observed from the Jiao's organizational and symbolic representation. The deliberate exclusion from the "Hang Fu” [a ritual to purify every household at the end of the Jiao festival] ritual of some households in Lung Yeuk Tau reminds one of the existence of "Hahu" or bondservants in the community in the past. In Cheung Chau, the Tanka boat people are denied participation in some rituals. The festival area that is to receive the purification, blessings and protection from the gods does not include the site of traditional Tanka settlement." 46 My paper in Bunka Jinrui Gaku (Cultural Anthropology) no. 5 shows the family structure and kin relationships of different communities through a study of name lists posted at Jiao festivals. Through a comparative analysis of the name lists of three communities, it was shown that the structure of a community is clearly reflected in their name lists. The names of members of a single lineage community are written according to the principle of lineage. In other words, members of a registered unit are linked by a focal ancestor. On the other hand, in a typical name list of a multi-lineage community, be they settled in one or more localities, names are listed in the structure of a family, extended or nuclear, whose members are related to a surviving parent." 47 Studies of Jiao festivals provide an excellent source of reference to the understanding of social and political changes. A Jiao festival shows not only the ritual and social lives of the villagers, it reveals also the community's internal and external relationships. As shown in Table 2, at least 28 communities in Hong Kong celebrated Jiao ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 41 Kong: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 156-160 & 163-164, on the Jiao festivals celebrated between 1964 and 1972 in Ma Tau Wai, Nga Tsin Wai, Tung Chung and Tai O. N Mathias, John R.G., Study of the Jiao: a Taoist Ritual in Kam Tin in the Hong Kong New Territories (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1977-78). #I Kani, Hiroaki, "Hồn Kôn Chugokujin no shukyo shiso no ichidan nitsuite" Shigaku 40, no. 2 & 3 (1967). 22 Obuchi, Ninji, “Hon Kon no tokyo girei" |Daoist ritual in Hong Kong] in Ikeda Sueri Hakase Koki Kinen Toyo Gaku Ronshu (Tokyo, 1980), 753-769. 27 Yoshihara, Katsuo. "Shukyo" [Religion] in Kani Hiroaki (ed.) Motto Shiritai Hon Kon (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1984), 184-191. 11 See note 37. 14 I have been told that Dr. Faure had a manuscript on the Jiao festival sent to a publisher in Hong Kong. However, due to whatever reasons, it has not yet been published. See also Hayes, 164, about Faure's book on Jiao festivals. 36 I was probably the only researcher who participated in the 1980 Kau Lau Wan Jiao festival when I was first introduced by the late Prof. B.E. Ward and Dr. S.H. Wang to the Jiao festival celebrated by the fishing village. In October the same year, Dr. Faure and I attended the Jiao festival at Pak Kong, Sai Kung. In November, the late Dr. Lu Bin-chuan of the Music Department of CUHK, Dr. Lu's student Mr. Chan Wing-Hoi and I attended the Jiao festival in Fanling. Dr. Faure, Prof. Ward and Prof. Tanaka also came. The Jiao festival of Fanling and that of other areas are mentioned here and there in Faure's 1986 book. In December 1980 students of CUHK under the guidance of Dr. Faure, Dr. Wang and Prof. Ward started an ethnographical research on the Jiao festival in Ho Chung, Sai Kung. A detailed report of daily rituals was written by Lee Lai-mui and Cheng Shui Kwan, two CUHK students majoring in History and minoring in Anthropology. The report was sent to interested scholars. Unfortunately it has never been published. Two students of the CUHK at that time should perhaps be mentioned here: Chan Wing-hoi, who specializes in music and computer, was employed by the History Museum of Hong Kong to study the Kam Tin Jiao festival in 1985, a report of which was published in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29 (1989). Chan's master's thesis on folk music in Hong Kong also includes a chapter on the ritual music played by the Taoists at the Jiao festival. Chan also has an ethnography on the 1986 Shek O Jiao festival published in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 26 (1986), 78-101. The master's thesis of Leung Chor-on, now Ph.D. candidate of Cambridge University, submitted to the Anthropology Department of the CUHK gives a good account of the ritual symbols of the festival. Chan, Leung and I held a seminar on Jiao festivals on Dec. 11, 1988 for the "Research Circle of the Regional Society of Southern China" focusing on musical, ritual and social aspects of the festival. 27 Locally published works besides those by Faure and my own are: - (a) Chamberlain, Jonathan, "Introduction” in Chamberlain J. and Iam Lambot The Bun Festival of Cheung Chau (Hong Kong: Studio Publication, 1990). This is largely a collection of photos. Chamberlain's introduction is very descriptive but no sources are quoted. (b) Chan Wing-hoi, “Observations at the Jiu [Jiao] festival of Shek O and Tai Long Wan, 1986" Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 26 (1986), 78-101. Chan recorded meticulously what he was told and observed about the 'settlement', the 'participants', the "ritual site", the "local gods" and the "events". (c) Xiao, Kuo-jian (Anthony K.K. Siu), Xianggang Xiandai Shehui [Pre-modern society of Hong Kong] (Hong Kong: Chung Wah, 1990), 86-97. Xiao attempts to illustrate three reasons why the communities in Hong Kong celebrate the Jiao. The first reason is to plead for fortune, to pay sacrifices to the gods, to drive away evils and to prevent 4 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 97 made a very good shewing, which drew the admiration of all neutral observers. The Japanese soon brought reinforcements and extended their front down towards the Yangtze in an attempt to dislodge the Chinese from their grip on the suburb of Chapei; but despite the overwhelming superiority of the Japanese equipment, especially in the air, the Chinese stuck to their ground all through August and September, until well into October, when they began to crack, and were finally dislodged by a successful landing on the flank in Hangchow Bay, These operations at first led to a complete breakdown in communications between Nanking and Shanghai. Towards the end of August, however, it was found that cars could cover the 200 miles to Shanghai by turning off the main road at Soochow, and passing through Kashing to the Hangchow road, which entered Shanghai from the south. As I was badly in need of instructions I decided to motor down. On arrival in Shanghai I was astonished at the state in which I found popular foreign opinion. There appeared to be no adequate appreciation of the meaning of these new Japanese encroachments in China, or of the Japanese threat to the "open door" system of trading the Far East, the traditional British policy expressed in Lord Palmerston's instructions to Admiral Elliot in 1840, when he said "You will bear in mind that Her Majesty's Government do not desire to obtain for British subjects any exclusive privileges of trade which should not be equally extended to the subjects of every other power". Shanghai had for some years been the object of much factious interference and petty vexation on the part of Chinese officials in their campaign to recover their "lost privileges". The municipal council of the International Settlement found itself continuously involved in arguments, mostly sterile, over all sorts of questions of local interest, such as roads, police, taxes, jurisdiction, and so on, providing occasions where the Chinese aptitude for obstruction had full play. The consequence was to alienate the sympathies of many of the leading foreigners in the main stronghold of foreign interests in China. (According to Professor Remer, an American economist who made a study of foreign investments in China in 1931, British business investments were distributed as follows: In Shanghai £130,000,000 In Hongkong £36,000,000 In the rest of China £30,000,000 Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 98 These figures compare with the total American investment in China of £32,000,000). Feeling had been further embittered recently by the damage and heavy casualties caused when Chinese pilots, attempting to bomb the **"Idzumo"**, had dropped 1000-pound bombs in the most crowded street of the city, while evading Japanese pursuit planes. These incidents were attributed to carelessness and, though the victims were mainly Chinese, the Chinese population of Shanghai at that time was around five million; many foreigners, moved also largely by sympathy for the victims, felt the Chinese government had given insufficient consideration to the international investments at stake in Shanghai. They resented the fact that the Chinese had deliberately brought the war to Shanghai. They argued that the Chinese intention was to provoke the foreign powers to intervene on their behalf. In such an atmosphere, whispering campaigns detrimental to Chinese morale flourished. One of the most ridiculous, which to this day is still firmly believed by many, was that had the Chinese troops succeeded in driving the Japanese into the Whangpoo, they would then have turned to looting the International Settlement. If there was one thing that was clear at that time to the unprejudiced, it was that Chinese advantage lay in courting the goodwill of the powers, not in estranging it by allowing Chinese troops to commit anti-foreign excesses. It is true that in the past Chinese troops had acquired an unenviable notoriety for rapine and looting, but unfortunately, the seclusion from China in which the majority of foreigners resident in Shanghai lived had not allowed them to discover the great improvements the Central government had brought about in the administration and discipline of the Chinese army. The discipline in the 86th and 87th divisions, who were inspired at Shanghai to fight to the death, was equal to that of any Western troops. It was not realised that the Chinese were fighting for the democracies against fascist aggression. What the Chinese needed most at that time was sympathy and the expression of some confidence in their ability to weather the storm; and that is just what they did not get. No confidence was shown in the ability of the Chinese government to withstand Japan. The prolonged resistance at Shanghai came as a surprise, although Chinese troops had already proved to... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 ― 131 East. Thirty-five million tons of shipping entered the port each year, carrying twenty-five per cent of the trade of China. The vast town was controlled by three independent authorities: the International Settlement, where British and American influence predominated; the French Concession, mostly residential; and the Chinese Municipality. A polyglot population of between four and five million Chinese, and fifty thousand foreigners, thronged the streets. The war had brought about a great shift of population from the Chinese area, where residents were exposed to Japanese oppression, to the comparative safety of the two foreign areas, whose Chinese inhabitants increased from 1½ millions to 4 millions, resulting in a heavy congestion. It was a far cry back to those days in 1845, when in the British Concession, before it was amalgamated with the American district to form the International Settlement, the British Consul appointed "three upright merchants" to act as a Committee of Roads and Jetties to supervise the inconsiderable municipal needs of a small community living on a mud bank. From those simple beginnings had grown the proficient machine required to cope with the extensive complexities of a unique metropolis. H.G.W. Woodhead, the talented editor of "Oriental Affairs", described the functions of the Municipal Council of the International Settlement, and I cannot do better than quote his words: "Owing to its peculiar status as a sort of 'imperium in imperio', the Shanghai Municipality has had to shoulder various responsibilities that in other countries would be assumed wholly or in part by the State. For example, it maintains its own Defence Force, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, and a highly efficient professional Russian unit. It maintains, what, for the average daily number of prisoners, is the largest gaol in the world. It maintains or makes substantial grants in aid to many hospitals. It started subsidizing Foreign education in 1880, and Chinese education in 1900, and now operates, or makes grants in aid, to numerous Foreign and Chinese schools. It has an Industrial Section, which concerns itself with labour problems, and also controls the rickshaw business to the extent of limiting hire charges, and providing for welfare work among the pullers. It maintains a public library and a municipal orchestra and an up-to-date Public Health Department. And it finances these and other important activities such as Policing, the Fire Brigade, Public Works, etc., mainly from ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 132 rates and land taxes which work out at only 7.50 dollars per capita, compared with an average assessment in Great Britain of over 17 dollars. "The work of the Council, and especially of the Foreign Members thereof, has been largely political, as well as administrative. Since the development of Nationalism in China, it has had to wage an incessant struggle to maintain, and to prevent encroachments upon, its privileges, especially in such matters as taxation, and interference with the administration of justice and the police. In the last resort, of course, controversial issues have to be adjusted between the Chinese authorities and the Consular Body, and the success of the Council in upholding the status of the Settlement depends upon the support accorded to it by the Foreign Consuls. But unless the Council had taken the initiative and watched very jealously over its privileges, the administration would have taken a very different form from what we see today. It must be considered remarkable, when you come to think of it, that from the early eighteen-sixties a succession of men — mostly merchants with little or no municipal experience, should have administered the Settlement in an honorary capacity, in such a manner as to develop a huge, well-governed, and normally peaceful city out of an area of marshy ground. Although for political reasons the Council has not been popular with Chinese officialdom, the presence within its boundaries today of nearly three million Chinese is evidence of the confidence reposed in it by the ordinary Chinese. "Anglo-American interests still predominate in the Settlement. Ever since the amalgamation of the American and British areas in 1863 there has been the closest co-operation between the American and British communities. An American has on several occasions been Chairman of the Council. An American citizen has for the past ten years occupied the highest executive post in the Council, that of Secretary-General. Until comparatively recently the Foreign Councillors were invariably Europeans or Americans. In addition to Americans or Britons, Germans, Russians, Scandinavians, and others have at various times served upon the Council. The growth of the Japanese population, which increased from 736 in 1900 to 7169 in 1915, made it only reasonable that there should be a Japanese representative on the Council, and the first Japanese Councillor, Mr. Ishii, took his seat in the latter year. As the Japanese population continued to increase it was well over 20,000, compared with 6,700 British in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 133 1935, and probably exceeds 30,000 today the Japanese secured a second seat in 1927 and since that date, with one or two exceptions, the proportion of Foreign Councillors has been five Britons, two Americans, and two Japanese,'' It was from amongst the managers of the large firms that the foreign Municipal Councillors were selected, by a process of back-stage negotiation. There was, it is true, a form of straw vote through which nominations could be contested, but as the large firms could swing the votes that process was not democratic in operation. In point of fact the suggestion that the Council was a democratic body had long been discarded. The Council represented the interests of the large firms and, while it had to explain its actions to the foreign land-renters of the Settlement, it preferred, as such committees will, to avoid having to make explanations, by doing its work away from the limelight. That was, indeed, a necessary precaution, in so far as the delicate political negotiations in which it was frequently involved with the Chinese, and Japanese, authorities were concerned. The Council was an international body, a diminutive League of Nations, incomparably more effective, though on a small scale, than that larger body at Geneva. The comparison lends it international significance and underlines the importance that men, who are appointed to such positions of responsibility, should be carefully selected. On the expiration of my home leave I was appointed to Shanghai, where I arrived in July 1939. The betrayal of Czechoslovakia that Spring had increased international tension, and a series of incidents was bringing it home to the optimists, who had so cheerfully accepted the Japanese influx, that their early anticipations were so much smoke. Apart from a number of local outrages, including the bayonetting of a Briton, named Tinkler, inside the grounds of his own mill, there was the case of the British Military Attaché, who had been arrested in May in Kalgan, and was still held incommunicado, the mob attacks on the British consulate at Tsingtao, the heavy bombing of British property and shipping at Ichang, and the degrading treatment to which British nationals were being exposed at the barriers, erected by the Japanese to the exits of the British Concession in Tientsin. I was sitting on the verandah of the Country Club one day in September, after a game of tennis, when the boy called me to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 136 American films were flown over quickly from Hollywood, and pictures would often be released earlier in Shanghai than in London. When the newsreels of the war began to come along, they led to disturbances; the Germans got nasty and wanted to break things up. Cinema owners did not wish to see their cinemas wrecked and in the end the showing of newsreels was discontinued. Unfortunately, they also did not dare show pictures, like "The Great Dictator", which were critical of Fascist methods. The French were, however, determined to see "The Confessions of a Nazi Spy", an anti-Nazi picture which was doing much in the States to open the eyes of the population to the methods of the German 'Bund'. They stationed two armoured cars outside the cinema, while inside armed police, with drawn automatics, stood along the gangways. The picture had a very popular run for two weeks, without incident. Since the disturbances of 1927 the leading Treaty Powers had maintained garrisons at Shanghai. The Japanese forces were quartered in the section of the International Settlement north of the Soochow creek, where the majority of the Japanese population lived; the British, American, and Italian contingents guarded sectors of the perimeter south of the creek; and the French garrisoned their own Concession. There was a local understanding of live and let live, and even after the Italians came into the war, the Grenadiers of Savoy, decked out in patches of red on collar and sleeve, and the baggiest of plus-fours, continued to man their sector: but to avoid argument with Thomas Atkins and Jack Tar they were confined to their own particular taverns. Blood Alley remained an Anglo-Saxon preserve, where Johnnie Doughboy sometimes threw his weight about. It was in January, 1940, that the Royal Navy stopped the Asama Maru, within a few hours steaming of the Japanese Coast, and removed 21 Germans from on board. The Japanese, of course, went up in the air at this alleged insult to the Imperial flag, and the British community in Shanghai questioned the expediency of the action. The incident was settled by negotiation, 9 of the captives being returned, and the Japanese undertaking not to convey in their ships military personnel of the belligerents. It is interesting to remember that, when the S.S. "President Hoover" ran aground on the East Coast of Formosa, in Japanese territorial water, closed to foreign shipping, the Japanese refused to allow the Americans to salvage her, but insisted on the work being done by Japanese firms. Soon after, the Asama ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 Under police escort, the Japanese broke through the screens and dashed at the ambulance, which was being brought up behind. They rescued Mr. Hayashi and carried him off in triumph, whereafter the meeting was declared adjourned. Next day the Japanese Consul General called on the Municipal Council to express apologies for the incident. Mr. Hayashi, it was learnt, had been removed to Japan, where he presumably became a national hero. The adjourned meeting was reconvened for a later date, when the proposed motion was carried, under the covering protection of a strong contingent of Japanese Consular police. The compromise arrangement, which was also put into effect, placed the affairs of the Municipal Council in the hands of a nominated commission, to be known as the Provisional Council. It consisted of 4 Chinese, 3 Japanese, 3 British, 3 American, 1 German, 1 Dutch, and 1 Swiss. That gave a proportion of 8 Axis versus 8 non-Axis votes. It will be seen the balance depended on the ability of the Dutch and Swiss members to hold out. The Chinese members would inevitably be puppets of the Wang Ching Wei regime, and therefore tools of the Japanese. With this little flurry, the tempo of terrorism in the Settlement tended to increase. The British had already withdrawn their contingent of troops to Hongkong, where they were required to strengthen the garrison. There was an argument with the Japanese about whether their troops were to be brought south of the Soochow creek into the centre of the Settlement to man the British sector, or whether the Americans were to be allowed to take it over. In the end a compromise was arrived at and the Shanghai Volunteer Corps took over the sector. I had been for some time trying to persuade my wife that it was necessary to leave Shanghai; the optimistic atmosphere which the women found amongst their friends in the Clubs and at the bridge tables made the task anything but easy. I think, perhaps, the attack on the Chairman of the Council helped to decide the issue. It was impossible to obtain passages direct to England, but passages could still be obtained on Japanese liners for America, and so my wife, with several other wives, left for San Francisco in a sister ship of the "Asama Maru". Owing to blocked currencies, it was not everyone who could afford to send their wives to the U.S.A., but I was fortunate enough to be able to buy sufficient dollar exchange to tide... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 239 Boswell (1815 to 1860), a graduate of Edinburgh University, who set up in private practice (previously owned by Doctor Anderson) in Macau in 1845. He was a physician and his wife, Elizabeth (née Stedman), joined him the following year. Watson was also an amateur artist and a friendship with the famous George Chinnery lasted from 1845 to Chinnery's death in 1852. Watson wrote to his sister in Scotland, in 1848, about Macau: “Counting ourselves, there are just four families and one or two Americans and French. There are Portuguese of course, but I do not class them as foreigners as it is a Portuguese settlement.” Life out East for Watson meant 14 years of hard work, ill health, and a constant struggle to make enough money for him and his family to go home. Nevertheless, in Macau he was surrounded by a happy family; he lived (as he phrased it) in a “sweet abode the prettiest spot on earth with a spacious open terrace and a wonderful view.” Watson sold his practice to a Doctor B. Kane (it took time to dispose of it as Macau was on the decline), and he moved to Hong Kong in 1856 where he became part owner of the Hong Kong Dispensary. His rent for a house on Queen's Road then was $1,200 a year. Watson was also involved with the Victoria Dispensary but this closed in 1857 because of lack of business. It appears there were too many British doctors competing for custom. Watson was said to operate the most successful practice in the Colony. In 1857, he was closely involved when patriots of China attempted to poison Europeans by putting arsenic in the bread at the Ah Lum Bakery. He managed to rush home to warn his family before they had eaten breakfast. Fortunately, because the amount of arsenic was excessive, it induced vomiting and nobody died. To the intense annoyance of the European community Ah Lum was acquitted for lack of evidence. Watson sent his family back to Britain in 1857, and he himself returned to Scotland by the overland route (by ship to Port Suez, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 312 of degree holders, indicating social rank, there is also a wealth of swept ridges and stylised, 'teapot-handle', gables among the roofs of the common folk. Like Hong Kong, granite was readily available, and a good, dense, red face brick, some of which is quite narrow, is manufactured locally. The brickwork has an attractive, diaper pattern, with dark kiln marks on the face. Unlike Hong Kong, arches with keystones and pediments are in evidence. Much of the architecture resembles that of Taiwan, and, not unusual in many parts of China, there is a marvellous variety of murals and stone carving, including stylised motifs. Small figurines ride lions or other mythical beasts on roof ridges, which, together with eight-diagram (ba gua) and knife and sword charms ward off evil spirits. Similarly, 'wind lions' have stood on guard at entrances since the days of Koxinga. Another scenic spot for architectural gems is the 1.71 square kilometer Gulangyu Island, where at least one member of every family is said to play a musical instrument. This Island has two beautiful white egrets as its emblem and is situated a five-minute ferry ride from Xiamen proper. Part of the beauty is, however, marred by large, ugly, cigarette signs which generate high rents. No vehicular traffic is permitted in this hilly haven. It was a cold day, and RAS Party Members kept themselves warm by exploring. This included climbing to the Lotus Flower Monastery and beyond up the 90-metre high, crowded, precipitous 'Sunlight Rock'. Koxinga chose this as his bastion because it reminded him of Japan. Gulangyu Island is full of architectural 'relics' from the old International Settlement, with patchworks of yellow, terracotta and pink walls blending with oranges and greens. The forlorn, dilapidated building which once served as the British Consulate, is still there. Before World War II, 13 other governments also had consulates on the Island. They, together with tea merchants and financers, could afford to pay for, and insisted on, the best quality building materials. Much of the architecture of this 'garden island' is European, but there are examples of eclectic styles with Chinese columns and western capitals, and Chinese friezes and western brickwork. All these contrast with rows of old, Chinese type, shops with colonnades in Xiamen, with upper floors projecting over pavements; or with ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 83 furiously, threatening to cancel the exhibition if the 13 paintings were banned. The opening ceremony was postponed one hour to wait for a settlement which finally came with concessions from the Chinese officials. In their speeches at the ceremony, the Americans repeatedly referred to the "American" principle of free artistic expression, and Huang Zhen, Commissioner for External Cultural Relation and Wick's Chinese counterpart, expressed strong reservations about the paintings. To Wick, the exhibition was a showcase to the Chinese that in the United States, free artistic expression was a universally accepted value and artists in the United States enjoyed greater artistic freedom than in China, whose cultural policy, as it refused to accept abstractionism presented by those 13 paintings, was "totalitarian". Wick's hard line on this issue also implied that the United States supported those unorthodox Chinese artists and writers who were being criticized in the campaign against "bourgeois liberalization". Wick's management of the abstract painting incident indicated that the United States government would sacrifice good relations with China to the goal of presenting American cultural imagery to the Chinese people. Arts exchanges with China were no longer an instrument to create a warm atmosphere, under which circumstance both parties would co-operate nicely when differences occurred. Putting this position in the anti-Communist background of the Reagan Administration, a theme of explicit cultural warfare seems to have raised its head. Compared with the American Government, the private sector's support for arts exchanges with China was stimulated by fewer political considerations. Private interests provided support for such projects in various forms, including the funding of organizations specializing in U.S.-China arts exchanges, such as the Center for United States-China Arts Exchange, and the funding of specific exchange projects. In the realm of U.S.-China arts exchanges, financial support is a very important factor. The exchange programmes could not be realized without such support, but such programmes normally cannot show a profit. To discuss the numerous organizations and private exchanges involved is impossible. What can be done in this paper with regard to the private sector's support of cultural exchanges is to examine closely the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange and to derive some conclusions from the Center's activities. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 152 perimeter of the Settlement and the Concession, but was later to be used by the Japanese to hem in the foreign areas. At the time that Hawkins passed through, about eight in the morning, the news of the Japanese attack on Britain and America had apparently not yet been handed out by the Japanese High Command to their troops. The sentry took no notice of Hawkins, who, however, a little further on saw the men of a Japanese mechanised unit tumbling out of their billets in a hurry and manning their vehicles. The Shanghai neighbourhood, as indeed the whole of the Yangtze delta, is a network of creeks, large and small. Unless you know the country paths well you are liable to find your progress blocked at frequent intervals by creeks, the footbridges over which are few and far between. By nightfall Hawkins, keeping away from the neighbourhood of the several Japanese posts planted round the outskirts of Shanghai, had only covered ten miles; and he had lost one pony. To avoid approaching any of the bridges he had had to swim a number of creeks. It was not until his third day out, moving with great caution, that he found a farmer who could lead him to a Chinese guerilla unit. The news of the events in Shanghai was by this time beginning to filter out to the country people, all of whom shewed him the greatest kindness, gave him food, and found him shelter. Hawkins deserved all the more credit for his initiative and resource because he spoke not a word of Chinese and naturally had considerable difficulty in making himself understood. Throughout occupied China it is true to say in a general way that by night the country belongs to the Chinese. At night, owing to the guerilla activity, the Japanese, except when in force, retire to the safety of the towns. Only in the daytime, within reasonable distance of their posts outside the large towns and along the lines of communication, can they move with safety. In many places this guerilla control is effective up to the very walls of the large cities; or, in the case of Shanghai, the wire. Once Hawkins reached the guerillas he was comparatively safe. Night by night, watching their opportunities, they moved him further inland, taking him safely across the various railways, roads, or creeks, which were subject to Japanese patrolling, slipping if necessary between the machine-gun posts where the Japanese had established more permanent lines. The chief danger was from the spies and informers, in Japanese pay, who infest the whole area; they live dangerous lives themselves because they get short shrift when caught by the guerillas. It thus took him three weeks to reach the town where we sat eating our New Year ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 158 it responsibilities of adjudication, or what by Chinese custom is better described as arbitration, in the small affairs of the village; and, more important, of tax collection. By his own account Mr. Hsiao was renowned as a catcher of robbers. He had once caught two, and frequently in his cups, for Mr. Hsiao was the soul of charity and was always inviting us to feasts, he would relate how he had been visited by the two miscreants, had recognised them and made them drunk while he sent round for the police. They had been tried, sentenced, and executed on yonder hill. Mr. Hsiao did not drink the mild yellow rice wine, known as Shaoshing wine, with a taste rather like thick sherry; he plied us with a raw white spirit, also distilled from rice, a spirit of great potency, and what is more he did not only drink it neat of course, Chinese wine is not mixed with water - out of the little thimble cups commonly used, but would challenge us to empty it out of rice bowls, three bowls at a time. The Chief was the only one who could compete, and by the time Mr. Hsiao had finished with him they would be telling each other stories of interminable length in a language which the ignorance of each of the other's mother-tongue confined to gesticulation. While still in Kinhwa I had been concerned at the delay of the Chinese in finding interpreters for us, for work in class; and as, with the Japanese occupation of the Settlement in Shanghai, many young Chinese men were moving into the interior to avoid having to study under Japanese auspices, I took the opportunity of a Y.M.C.A. relief organisation there to enquire for suitable candidates. We found three lads of about twenty, who spoke good English, and took them on at what by Chinese standards were really high salaries. They were nice lads, but infected with the Kuo Min Tang teaching which made them very touchy about their dignity. Soon after our arrival at Chin Ya there was an unfortunate development. It had been my hope that we could all eat in mess together, but in practice we found the limits imposed by scattered accommodation, small kitchen facilities, and the scarcity of foreign table utensils, knives, forks, spoons, plates, and so on, made it impossible to eat all together at one time. When we travelled we all ate Chinese food, and very good it was too as a rule; but British stomachs are not used to a rice diet, and from my own experience I knew I kept fitter if I had an occasional change to our own type of cooking. So I was anxious that the British members of our party, while at Chin Ya, and it must be remembered that the various members were often absent for long periods, should have the comfort of eating their own kind of food, and so it seemed to be going rather far to go to the trouble of providing them with food to which they were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 189 investigated the special field of Chinese Medicinal Plants and published a book "An Atlas of Chinese Medicinal Plants". It was wartime and, owing to some unskilled people who helped him, his 125 specimen drawings, the typing and the printing of his French manuscript, were full of errors. I corrected this publication and filled 12 typed pages. Years after, as I corresponded with someone in Malagasy, I discovered that J. Roi was there. I wrote to him and among other things, I asked him about his book. He told me he had published another one on the same subject. I ordered a copy from Paris: Les Plantes Medicinales Chinoises. This was a quite different achievement, a well-documented and well-presented volume containing chemical analysis, explaining the uses of plants and their extracts, with references from Chinese and European Medical Literature. During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, at the end of 1941, I often met scientists who normally would have been connected with the Shanghai Museum in the International Settlement. One of them was Mr. Arthur de Carle Sowerby. He had offered the Museum a small but interesting collection of plants from Eastern China. This was prepared and published in 1950 by I. V. Kozloff, a Russian botanist who was working at the Museum at that time. But his main publication at the Heude Museum was his book illustrated by the author in Chinese-style drawings. Unfortunately, it was printed on newsprint paper, the only type available at that time. Copies couldn't last long. Kozloff was a white Russian botanist who had acquired a good knowledge of the North China flora. He had many articles to his credit. When he came to Shanghai in the 40s, he couldn't find a job as he spoke only Russian. He contacted me through the school where his son was studying. I found out that he was living in an attic with his family and that they were starving. He was invited to work at the Museum with a decent salary. Later, he migrated to the USA. I could not fail to mention Charles De Vol, of America's Fern Society who was encouraged by Dr. Roi to publish Courtois' fern collection. When Dr. Belval published Courtois' Flora, he did not include the Pteridophyters. De Vol's book is a classic but suffered the effects of the war, i.e., lack of proper proofreaders, poor printing, and wartime paper. I met De Vol again at the Herbarium of the University of Taipei. He had contributed the volume on Ferns in the Flora of Taiwan. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 8 regular references to his deep knowledge of things Chinese and in particular, their formal rituals. As with many foreign writers on China and the Chinese, Mesny frequently implied exclusive access to hidden corners. This was indisputable because, whilst most foreigners who pride themselves on having Chinese friends and have visited them at home, even perhaps having stayed with them, few have the opportunity afforded to Mesny when he served with the Chinese military forces and lived as one with them on the staff. However, in retrospect we can see that Mesny knew little of the private life, thoughts and policies of the native Chinese higher classes, or more importantly, of the ruling Manchus, simply through his lack of access. The great majority of foreigners in China were dependent upon what they could glean from their native interpreters whose depth of understanding was limited by their lack of knowledge, especially about state policies. Such people as Mesny, foreigners who spoke and read Chinese and had Chinese contacts, were one up on the foreigners who heavily depended upon their Chinese employees, but for Mesny to maintain his credibility with possible foreign investors he had to clutch at any crumb from the tables of the great and worthy, hence his repeated name dropping. It is also well nigh impossible to judge simply from his own account of events the extent to which Mesny understood the power politics of senior Chinese Imperial military officers or the nuances of the accusations aimed at a number of the generals. If he did, then his poignant description of the removal and demotion of his own Commander-in-chief from his command in Kueichou is very sympathetic. Shanghai, where Mesny spent many of his later years, was one of the first Treaty Ports, opened in 1842, and by the turn of the century the largest foreign settlement in the East with a western population of many thousands. Mesny spent all but five of his last thirty-three years in the city. A Briton, Oliver Ready3, writing in 1904 of the time when Mesny first reached China said, 'Forty odd years ago, at the close of the second great war [i.e. 1860, the year in which Mesny reached the China coast], China was a veritable Eldorado for Europeans, where all turned to gold beneath the slightest touch of alien hands. Fortunes were made with startling rapidity, and money came in so freely that the standard of living amongst foreign merchants and their employees reached such preposterous heights of luxuriousness, that even when the inevitable reaction set in, want, and even ruin, supervened where plenty should have been found. Forty years ago the foreign trade was practically monopolised by Englishmen, who only had to place their goods on the market of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 92 Li Hung-chang ## [1823-1901] He was one of the outstanding figures in modern Chinese history; a statesman and diplomat. He was Governor of Kiangsu province at the time of the Taiping Rebellion, and again was a major proponent in the self-strengthening movement in Imperial China during the latter years of the Ch'ing dynasty. He was first a soldier who came to notice during the suppression of the Taiping rebellion and later went on to help develop western economic methods to endeavour to lead China into a greater independence from western domination. He emerged from comparative obscurity commanding a few battalions of field troops with the title of Expectant Tao-t'ai of Fukien in 1859 serving under Tseng Kuo-fan (q.v.) and soon rose to fame. Liu Ming-ch'uan ## [1836-1896] 劉銘傳 Said to have been a gang leader who murdered a rich villager. When the Taiping rebels threatened his area, he organised a volunteer corps which became famous as a military leader. He was rewarded by being made an official of the first rank and Commander-in-Chief of Chihli at the early age of 29. Under the command of Tseng Kuo-fan, he defeated the Nien rebels. Some time later, in 1884, he was made Governor of Fukien during the France-Chinese war and ordered to garrison Formosa. Liu was defeated in several lesser battles but held Taipei and was probably saved by a French change of policy when they withdrew from Formosa [Taiwan]. Liu was made Governor of Taiwan in 1885 and relinquished his post in 1891, dying in retirement. Little, Robert and Archibald Robert [Bob] was a failed tea merchant who edited the North China Daily News for eighteen years. According to OM Green, he was the best-loved man ever known in the Settlement [Shanghai]. His brother, Archibald Little, who was not so loved according to others, has been credited with designing and taking the first steamship up the Gorges. He made the first attempt in 1888 but, when he got to I-chang, the officials raised a storm of protest and he had to desist; the Chinese Government afterwards buying up his ships. In 1899, he tried again, with a boat called the Pioneer, and got through from I-chang to Chungking in seven days compared with the three or even six weeks it took a junk to be hauled up by trackers on the bank. Archibald's wife, Alicia, founded one of... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 96 Ch'in-ch'ai Ta-ch'en ✯✯E : Imperial High Commissioner, a very senior appointment. Ever Victorious Army ET: A European-officered Chinese force of the Imperial Army raised by the American, Ward, which ultimately, under the command of Colonel Gordon, assisted in putting an end to the Taiping Rebellion. Expectant... (Ho-ju) ✩A : A prefix indicating that an official was qualified and certified to take up duty in the post named. Fan-t'ai #: A provincial treasurer known to foreigners as the Commissioner of Finance; charged with the fiscal or financial administration of a province. Formosa: The Portuguese name for the island of Taiwan. Hakkas [Ko-chia] ** : One of the southern Chinese ethnic groups said to have migrated from northern China during the Mongol dynasty, ca the thirteenth century AD. Han-lin Yuan #: The Chinese National Academy, admission to which was the highest literary honour obtainable by a Chinese scholar. Ho-shang : Buddhist monk or priest. Hongkew : Site of the American Settlement in Shanghai, where Mesny later lived. Hsien : Administrative district. Huang Ma-kua : The Yellow Riding Jacket. A high award from the emperor to his senior officials. Imperial Maritime Customs: Chinese customs service with a foreign inspectorate largely able to control the collection of duties and taxes without the usual Chinese squeeze [q.v.]. Robert Hart became Inspector General in 1863. Jingal (gingal): The Chinese blunderbuss. It was generally fired from a swivel fixed on a wall or wooden post, but sometimes it was fired with ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 97 the barrel resting on a second man's shoulder. Kang sì: a baked mud or brick bed used in northern Chinese homes, warmed in winter by hot air from the kitchen flue passing through it. Ko-ino Hul #₺★ : A powerful secret society; the Elder Brother Society, membership to which was strictly forbidden by the Ch’ing government and punishable by death. Kowtow : 'knock the head': The ceremony of prostration common in China, chiefly performed before the emperor, in religious ceremonies, and by inferiors to superiors as an humble apology. International Settlement together with the French Concession [Shanghai]: Colonial enclaves where privileges but not political control were enjoyed. The Municipal Council of the International Settlement, against which Mesny occasionally railed, eventually regarded itself as independent even of the UK and US Governments. Most foreigners regarded their presence in Shanghai, despite increasing Chinese nationalism, as in the best interests of the Chinese. Foreigners were divided socially and economically into businessmen, officials of all kinds including police officers and customs officials, missionaries and others such as be-shored seamen, refugees, later mainly White Russians and German Jews, and 'stayed-on' westerners who had married Chinese women or had nowhere better to go. Lartigue railway system: Mesny would appear to have been acting as the local agent for the Lartigue Railway Construction Company in China [in 1886] though whether authorised on a retainer or on commission we shall probably never know. The Lartigue system was invented during the 1880s by Charles Lartigue, a French inventor who, having observed how camel loads were balanced on either side of the animal, invented a monorail which after a tentative experiment in France was chosen as the system to be used for the Bally-Bunion to Lisowel Railway in a remote corner of Ireland in 1888. There is no indication that the line Mesny proposed between Wu-sung and Shanghai, ever got beyond Mesny's fertile imagination. Wu-sung, the town at the junction of the Yangtze and the river which leads up to Shanghai, was where ships first berthed before sailing up the Wu-sung River to Shanghai, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 152 German, Central and Eastern European Jews The third wave of Jewish immigration into Shanghai, and incidentally the largest, was in the years following 1938, as a result of Nazi persecutions in Germany, Central and Eastern Europe. Since Shanghai was the only port that accepted people without visas, Jews who were not permitted to enter other countries came to Shanghai. They travelled by water, on Italian liners via Africa. Since canal tolls had to be paid in pounds sterling, ship captains tended to take the long way by going around Africa, making the journey to Shanghai more than six weeks. Other refugees took the Siberian Railroad to Manchuria, then went from there to Japan. The Japanese consul at Vilna, apparently for humanitarian reasons, issued transit visas for those who possessed another, usually for some Latin American country. Or, for those who did not have any visa at all, the destination was to be Shanghai. As a result, a large number of Jews congregated at Kobe or Yokohama, waiting to travel to Shanghai by ship. Among this group were the faculty and student body of the Yeshiva from Poland. So, until the school moved to New York after 1945, the rabbis were trained in Shanghai. When the Sino-Japanese conflict merged into the global war following Pearl Harbour in December 1941, resulting in Japanese occupation of the International Settlement, the Jews in Shanghai were treated according to their nationalities. The large refugee community, either with 'non-enemy alien' status or stateless, manned the factories and operated cottage industries in their homes. In 1943, when special privileges enjoyed by foreigners in China came to an end as the unequal treaties of the 19th century were formally abrogated, the Jewish population in Shanghai was estimated to number 25,000. As the war ended in 1945 the Jewish refugees left to settle in the United States, Canada, Australia or, after its establishment, Israel. Long-term Jewish residents left as well after 1949. By 1956, only 543 Jews remained in China, 231 of them in Shanghai, 402 of these Jews were classified as Soviet citizens by the Chinese government, and were therefore unable to obtain the necessary papers in order to emigrate without cooperation between the Chinese authorities and the Soviet consulate. R.D. Abraham, leader of the Jewish community at that time, learned through a BBC broadcast that David Marshall, the noted Jewish lawyer from Singapore, was being invited to visit China. He quickly ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 157 surviving members of the Ezra family still enjoy a favoured position in the Jewish community in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, individual members of the family (or families, since there were several separate groups of Ezras in Shanghai) attracted notoriety from time to time. In 1918, criminal proceedings were instituted against Joseph Ezra and Ellis Isaac Ezra for using the launch owned by the Standard Oil Company without authorization. The same year, Joseph Ezra was summoned to court for assaulting a Mr Gordious Nielson, a Dane, who was the proprietor of the Shanghai Gazette, which had printed something that Joseph Ezra did not like. The South China Morning Post recorded a 1933 case whereby two men named Ezra, Judah and Isaac, were brought to court in San Francisco for smuggling narcotics. By 1933, the International Convention against opium had long since been signed. 16 Nissim Ezra Benjamin Ezra, better known as N.E.B. Ezra, founded and edited the Anglo-Jewish weekly newspaper, Israel's Messenger from 1909 to 1935. This paper became the official organ of the Shanghai Zionist Association, taking issue with Sir Victor Sassoon and other Sephardic Jews in Shanghai over the issue of Zionism. The paper supported the Jewish National Fund in China. In 1921 the fund received a donation of 21,000 pounds sterling from a single donor in Shanghai. Since it was pro-Japanese, Chinese sources speculated that the Japanese had succeeded in buying the paper's editorial policy to favour Japanese imperial ambitions in Asia. Silas Hardoon Silas Hardoon alone among the Shanghai Jewry was not spoken of as a family. To the Chinese he was the most interesting Jew in Shanghai. There is so much information on him that it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Hardoon was a colourful as well as important personality. He was also very, very wealthy. He was elected to the Municipal Council of the International Settlement as well as the Conseil Municipal of the French Concession. Chinese tradition has it that the British made this Jewish parvenu pay for the honour of being a municipal councillor by shouldering the expenses of paving Nanking Road. Hardoon married a Chinese woman reputed to be of brothel origin, by Jewish and Buddhist rites. They adopted a number of Chinese and Eurasian children, rumoured to be from a dozen to twenty. The Chinese ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 158 children took Mme Hardoon's surname-Lo-the Eurasian children the surname Hardoon. Their ostentatious life-style was particularly noted. The Aili Garden, designed to be in the style of the Da Guan Yuan of the Dream of the Red Chamber, embraced a temple and a school. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, it was said that the Hardoons assumed the life style of the court by entertaining imperial concubines and employing eunuchs as retainers. Actual facts known of the Hardoons are somewhat less flamboyant. Silas Hardoon was born in Baghdad. At the age of five, in 1851, his family moved to Bombay where his father worked for the Sassoons. In 1873 he moved to Shanghai to work for Sassoon as a clerk. His parsimonious living, administrative skills, and keen business sense soon enabled him to become a rich man himself. He engaged in opium sales and real estate speculation. Instead of buying expensive land in the British settlement, he bought land for himself and for the Sassoons in the External Roads area. And, when the settlement expanded, land value rose. It was said that he made as much as 500 million taels in one single transaction. Hardoon married a Chinese woman and had little to do with Jewish religious or social life in Shanghai, despite his significant gift to the construction of the Beth Aharon synagogue for the orthodox congregation Sheerith Israel. Before and during the Revolution of 1911, Hardoon and his wife harboured revolutionaries in the Aili Garden. Whether or how much they contributed towards the revolutionary coffers is unknown. Silas Hardoon died in 1931 and was buried in the Aili Garden. This final act of disregard of religious tenets again angered the Jewish community since the garden was not consecrated ground. The Kadoories The first woman to drive an automobile in Shanghai was Lady Kadoorie, wife of Sir Elly Kadoorie, an Iraqi Jew who made his fortune in real estate utilities in Shanghai. Kadoorie was a part of the Sassoon establishment until he went on his own. One of their sons, Lawrence,* was to become Lord Kadoorie, the first man from Hong Kong to sit in the House of Lords at Westminster. He has remained active in finance and industry in Hong Kong. Their other son, Horace, is known for his support for education of Jews all over Asia, including Israel. Horace likes to be active in all aspects of founding a school, from curriculum planning to staff hiring, in addition to fund raising. In Shanghai in 1939, * Since deceased [Editor] ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 160 published weekly under the editorship of Ezra, was in English. Others were in Russian and German. Schools Youngsters from the Sephardic community were educated at the Public School in the International Settlement. The fee was too hefty for most of the Ashkenazi boys. As a result, the Kadoorie family endowed the School for Hebrew Boys where there was a respectable scholarship program. B'nai B'rith An article entitled 'Shanghai Fortunes' in the National Jewish Monthly (June 1930) revealed that B'nai B'rith, considered the foremost secular Jewish organization in the world, but by the Sephardic community as particularly Ashkenazi, had trouble getting started in Shanghai. The Shanghai lodge was established officially in 1928, but, 'the circumstances of Jewish life in Shanghai are such that the organization of a B'nai B'rith Lodge was fraught with the most unusual difficulties. National divisions are sharp, particularly between the older Jewish families of the city and the more recently arrived Ashkenzim. Eventually the Shanghai Lodge of B'nai B'rith went on stream when leading citizens of the Sephardic community, notably the Kadoorie, lent their support. It sponsored such activities as the Jewish Boy Scouts and the Jewish Girl Guides. On Seder Night, hospitality was extended to all Jews. At a Hanuka tea, 500 children were present. Clubs 17 The Jewish Club opened in 1919 or 1920 in a colonial style building at the corner of Great Western and Tifeng Road. The cost for the building was $250,000. The entrance fee was $25 and the monthly subscription was $7. There was an auditorium of 80 by 40 feet for lectures, and a billiard room 'that was rarely neglected.' Meanwhile, Jews joined major clubs such as the Shanghai Club, the French Club, the American Club, and the Country Golf Club. They were also active in horse racing. As the reader can see, a great deal of work remains to be done in order to obtain a more complete portrait of the Jewish community in Shanghai. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 165 There is available to me a wealth of material bearing on this important subject: and that without so much as stirring a foot outside the confines of Tsuen Wan District. The District Office was itself a repository of information, since public works in and around the New Town had long involved its land staff in the removal of many local graves. Where the age and importance of a grave warranted, compensation was paid both for removal and resiting (where this was approved) and there was much detailed information in the files dealing with these matters. Also, in 1980-81, the junior land staff had tramped over the hillsides, in a systematic attempt to record the many old graves located in what are now country parks. This was in connection with new public health regulations. All hill burials were by now technically illegal, and new ones were prohibited. Development needs and these other official preoccupations apart, many local villagers had sent letters to the Office over the years. These usually contained requests for permission to repair old graves or to resite them in new locations when it was felt that their good fung-shui qualities had been spent or been rendered malevolent by changes in the landscape. The letters, documents and minutes in the files are thus a rich source of information on villagers' beliefs and practice in regard to graves and the family. They can also be important adjuncts to local history, through providing information on family and settlement, especially in regard to families no longer in existence. Copies of the texts of the grave tablets were often included on file, and the longer inscriptions on some of the older graves are particularly useful in giving us the "feel" of the rural communities to which they belonged. A few instances from this particular source of information are given below. Local Burial Practices But first it may be useful to explain that the formal graves were not the first stage in a traditional burial. It was the practice first to bury the deceased in a coffin on the hillside for a number of years, usually about seven, this being the average time for the fleshy parts of the body to disintegrate, leaving the bones behind. At this point, the grave was opened, the remains exhumed and cleaned, and an expert was called in to arrange them in proper order inside a burial urn. This was the second stage in a burial. The urn could then be placed on a hillside in what was considered to be a favourable location, and might perhaps never be moved again. Other urns would be moved from place to place, the responsible Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 169 family in the present generation and after: Our ancestors first came to live in Tsuen Wan about 235 years ago [1740]. Two brothers came from Chik Sek Market of Shi Kwan Tong sub-district (heung) of Hoi-fung County to Lai Chi Kok in Kowloon. Later, one brother moved to Sha Tsui (Yeung Uk Village), Tsuen Wan. Our founding ancestor was first buried on Tsing Yi Island, but because the authorities wished to develop that part of the island into a dockyard his remains were reburied in a formal grave at Fa Shan, Tsuen Wan. His wife was, and still is, buried at Hau Tei of Chai Wan Kok, Tsuen Wan. It has been found that both these ancestral graves have ever brought good fortune to our clansmen.” This letter was sent in response to my enquiry about the settlement of the lineage in Tsuen Wan. I had not realized it would be a catalogue of information on founding ancestors and their graves, ending in the statement that the graves were responsible for the flourishing condition of the lineage today! Alarm and Indignation at Official Notices Sometimes, there were more direct examples of the kind, originating in the posting of official notices on site. When old graves on Tai Mo Shan were being inspected and registered by our land staff in 1980, notices were posted which were guaranteed to upset their owners. One of the many affected parties, the Tang clan of Wang Toi Shan Village in the Pat Heung, sent in a very strongly worded letter to the Office: We refer to your notice posted at the ancestral graves of our Tang clan at Sze Fong Shan, Tai Mo Shan summit, stating that the burials were in violation of public health regulations. Descendants of the clan called an urgent meeting at which it was resolved to make strong objections. The Tang clan are indigenous villagers of Wang Toi Shan in the Pat Heung, and have a history [of settlement there] which is older than the Hong Kong Government. The ancestral graves in question date back to more than a century ago, and were repaired in the 31st year of Kuang-hsu [1905], as shown by the tomb inscriptions. The prosperity of our clan is attributed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 149 about the beds, and growing concern in enlightened circles about the cruelties implied by the corvée. By the end of the Ming, the north and east shores of the Bay were merely home to a few scattered, small, agricultural villages. The waning of imperial interest in the area led to an explosion of piracy. This area had, by the late Ming, become a lightly populated and dangerous part of Hsin An County, insignificant, remote, and probably declining. 5 The Coastal Evacuation of 1662-1668, the forcible removal of people living near the coast, to deny anti-Ch'ing remnants support, was a traumatic event. Many of the previous inhabitants died - possibly half. It seems likely that, when the remnants of the people returned in 1668-1669, they concentrated themselves in the better lands to the west, around Yuen Long and Sham Chun (Shenzhen), and around Tai Po and Sha Tin at the head of Tolo Harbour, abandoning the declining Mirs Bay area. However, land taxes still had to be paid for this area. Lineages looked, therefore, for tenants or purchasers to take over these more marginal areas. The newcomers they found to repopulate the area were Hakkas from the north-east. All the present inhabitants of the northern and eastern parts of the Mirs Bay area are Hakka, and their clan traditions all speak of settlement in the area after 1668. A few villages claim to have been founded in the late seventeenth century, many in the eighteenth, and some only in the nineteenth, in every case by families who had moved into the area after 1668. Some of the Hakka newcomers living in the north-west quadrant of Mirs Bay became, at least in village terms, wealthy during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Much of this wealth was poured into large reclamation projects. These aimed at increasing the arable land available in the area by filling in the mouths of the bays in front of the villages. These reclamation projects in turn brought yet more wealth to the area. The social status of the local Hakka rose steadily during this same period. In 1805 the Hakka were granted a quota of their own within the Hsin An County imperial examinations quota. Over a quarter of all the early Hakka examination successes from Hsin An County were from the north-west quadrant of Mirs Bay, and this should be seen as evidence of the wealth and self-confidence of the Hakka of that area in the early decades of the nineteenth century. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 193 H Details of the early Hakka examination successes are known from a recently recovered genealogy, of the Chan (陳) lineage of Nam Chung. It is understood that a copy of this genealogy will be deposited with the Hong Kong Museum of History. I am indebted to Mr Chan Wing-hot for drawing my attention to the information in this genealogy. Q Seen 8 At the time of the Block Crown Lease (1905), 12.68 acres of saltpans were recorded. However, the serious inadequacies of the first survey here led to another being conducted in 1912, when 17.11 acres were recorded. However, in 1912 two areas were left unclaimed, probably because storms had breached their bunds and ruined them. These two areas totalled about 3.3 acres. In addition, there were about 0.6 acres of houses, huts, and waste within the saltpan reclamation, which, therefore, totalled about 21.2 acres. The saltpans were very valuable property in the nineteenth century - the Basel missionaries (see below, n. 17) record the sale of a share by a Tam Shui Hang villager in 1882 for "several hundreds of dollars" (Basel Mission archive, doc. AT-16, Nr. 45). In the 1920s, however, and still more in the 1930s, cheap imported salt caused ever-growing problems, which led to the closure of the saltworks before the War. A bridge was built to the saltpans in 1934 (Administrative Reports for the Year 1934, App. J, "Report on the New Territories for 1934", p. J17). After the War, the abandoned saltworks became the site of a major squatter settlement, recently cleared. Today, the saltpan area has disappeared under new reclamation, and all that remains is a new Tin Hau Temple, replacing the old one previously on the saltpans, built on a new site on the new waterfront. For details of the history of the temples in the area, on the settlement of the Hakka in the area, the reclamation projects they undertook, the founding and management of the market at Sha Tau Kok, and the functioning of the Shap Yeuk as the district management body, see P.H. Hase, "The Alliance of Ten Settlements and Polities in the Sha Tau Kok Area", in D. Faure and H.S. Siu, eds., Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China, Stanford University Press, 1995. 12. No details on the earlier history of the temple survived the very full restoration of 1894, but Shan Tsun elders believe it to be very old. 13. In the 1688 Gazetteer (Ch. 3) a ferry “along the coast” is mentioned called the "Ma Tseuk Ling Ferry". There can be no doubt that this is the ferry to Sha Yue Chung (Shayuchong, etc.), 12 miles down the coast. Ma Tseuk Ling, at the head of Starling Inlet, is the nearest old village to the Wu Shek Kok Temple (Wu Shek Kok village - probably a foundation of the early nineteenth century). The coasts of Starling Inlet within two or three miles of Ma Tseuk Ling were blocked with mudflats and mangrove everywhere except at Wu Shek Kok, where alone a hill falls steeply into the sea. Wu Shek Kok is, therefore, the only possible site for a "Ma Tseuk Ling Ferry" landing place. The Ma Tseuk Ling villagers owned the Wu Shek Kok Temple, and the Ma Tseuk Ling military post (1688 Gazetteer, ch. 7), was at Shek Chung Au, just a few hundred yards from Wu Shek Kok. These Ma Tseuk Ling connections with the Wu Shek Kok area strongly suggest that the Wu Shek Kok hill was regarded as forming part of the Ma Tseuk Ling area. Later, Wu Shek Kok formed part of the Ma Tseuk Ling Yeuk of the Shap Yeuk. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 205 could not have been possible, or would have been substantially more difficult to conduct had I not been Chinese with a social network already established within the Chinese community in Britain. At every stage I traded on my ethnic characteristics, e.g. using my Chinese name on cover letters, and speaking Cantonese in telephone conversations with informants whenever possible. The ethnic familiarity (name, language) was intended to arouse a sense of ethnic identification in the respondents, which in turn would hopefully help to produce a feeling of ethnic obligation to cooperate with my call for assistance in this survey, In any research project selecting a representative sample, for example, is always difficult, but in the case of the Chinese it is particularly acute. Many earlier researchers had documented this problem of sampling. Until data from the 1991 Census was made available, there was a total absence of any reliable statistical information on this population. For example, Baxter in 1988 complained of the lack of the most basic information such as the size and distribution of the Chinese community in Britain. The frustrating methodological problem of sampling caused by lack of statistical information on the Chinese population in Britain has been a major contributory factor in the emergence of a certain type of research which has been carried out on the Chinese in Britain. One of the characteristics is that they tend to be qualitative in nature. That is, there is a tendency for data to be collected through interviews or through observation and case study techniques, such as those studies conducted by Watson (1977) and Ng (1965). Another feature is that most of the studies usually focus on the Chinese in a particular locale. This may be the result of the fact that the sampling problems described above are compounded by the geographical dispersion of the Chinese over Britain. Not only are the Chinese one of the smallest ethnic groups in Britain, they also have the most dispersed pattern of settlement compared to any other ethnic group in Britain (Owen, 1992). This additional problem for the researcher of locating the Chinese, therefore partly explains why many previous researchers have opted to study the Chinese in areas in which they are most concentrated. However, this does not reflect Chinese settlement in Britain, which due to the nature of the Chinese catering business and its reliance on the indigenous population for custom, distributes itself spatially to reduce competition. The third characteristic of existing studies of the Chinese is that the researchers who conduct the investigations are usually themselves of ethnic Chinese origin. The reason ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 I may speak the English language because I learnt it early in life. But I have not got the Western value system inside; mine is an Eastern value system. Nevertheless, I use Western concepts, Western words because I understand them. But I also have a different system in my mind. 209 BIBLIOGRAPHY Baxter, S.C.C. (1988) A political economy of the ethnic Chinese catering industry. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aston in Birmingham. Burgess, R.G. (1984) In the field: an introduction to field research. London: Allen & Unwin. Merton, R.K. (1972) “Insiders and outsiders: a chapter in the sociology of knowledge”, American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 78. pp. 9-47. Ng, K.C. (1965) Some aspects of the social organisation of Chinese engaged in the restaurant business in London. M.A. thesis. University of London. Owen, D. (1992) Ethnic minorities in Great Britain: settlement patterns. NEMDA 1991 Census statistical paper No. 1. Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick. Pang, Y.N.M. (1993) Catering to employment needs: the occupations of young Chinese adults in Britain. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick. Steier, F. (1991) Research and reflexivity. London: Sage. Taylor, M.J. (1987) Chinese pupils in Britain, a review of research into the education of pupils of Chinese origin. Windsor: NFER-Nelson publishing company. Watson, J.L. (1977) “The Chinese: Hong Kong villagers in the British catering trade” in Watson, J.L. (Ed) Between two cultures: migrants and minorities in Britain. Oxford: Blackwell. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 136 District Regional Hospital, from which a good view was obtained of the reclamation for the Mass Transit Railway Extension to Chaiwan; then being constructed along a 12.5 kilometre route from the western side of the Central Business District at Sheung Wan. Completion of its 12 stations, plus additions and alterations to those at Central and Admiralty, was expected in 1985-86. 17 With both new transportation links in operation, the Eastern District would at last come into its own, increasing the value of existing land and buildings there, and enabling the construction of more public and private housing development. The coach then took us to Shaukerwan. Our purpose here was quite different: to visit a new temple complex and walk through one of the large old squatter areas on the hillside, then still so characteristic of Shaukerwan, ending the visit with tea at the City District Office premises on the main road. The main temple, the Fuk Tak Chi, had been a 1970 removal and reconstruction of an earlier shrine that had served the old villages in that part of Shaukerwan from the late 19th century onwards. The shrine had prospered in its new location, and two more temples had been added in the mid 1970s. Together, they made an attractive group on the hillside. We were entertained to tea there by friends among the local Kaifongs and the temple managers, managing to attract a group of excited children. We then walked up to the large and heavily populated Nam On Fong Squatter Area, built around the nucleus of an older settlement that had originated with the extensive quarrying of the Shaukerwan hillsides in the mid-19th century. Passing through we had vivid glimpses of how people in the older squatter areas lived in all kinds of structures - in some places abutting onto large rocks - some made of wood and others of tin, with a few older cottages of brick and stone. Livestock, mainly pigs and chickens, occupied other premises and some buildings served their inhabitants as both home and workshop. A few religious establishments were dotted here and there on the hillsides or among the huts. They included the large hundred year old Kik Lok Tung, which unfortunately for us was barred and shuttered, its owner being overseas. Moving along, we saw residents engaged in the various pursuits and occupations. This part of the tour provided the visitors with sights that very few European city residents would see in the normal way - and the local people likewise! ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 139 Journal, this set out the basis on which the Hong Kong Branch of the Society had operated during its 30 years' existence. It explained our independent status and self-financing within an approved constitution; how we operated with complete freedom of action, without our activities being controlled, directed or restricted by the present government in any way; and mentioned the willingness of our guest speakers, and the cooperation of all the persons and institutions visited during our local tours. I emphasized that these were all vital elements in the Society's successful operation, and that they rested on the personal freedoms enjoyed in contemporary Hong Kong, stating in conclusion, that I hoped they would continue after 1997 and enable our Society to continue with its role as a cultural interpreter of Hong Kong and China to (in the main but not exclusively) the territory's expatriate population, 20 Chinese Membership of the Hong Kong Branch One of the interesting features of any voluntary society is undoubtedly its membership. A glance through the RAS membership lists for the 1960s, supplemented by my recollections of those years, indicates that the membership was widely distributed among the non-Chinese population, and that quite a number of them had been resident in pre-war China and Shanghai, the headquarters of the former North China Branch of the Society. There was a sizable Chinese component too, again largely with a Shanghai connection. The standard of English among members of that group and their knowledge and appreciation of Western culture, had struck me as being very high, perhaps even generally superior to the level among our Hong Kong Chinese members today. Educators in Hong Kong have agreed for years that, whilst the quantity of English-speakers in the population has increased, quality has not kept pace. However, such comparisons are facile, and not really helpful. It has to be remembered that English-speaking Chinese of the time were generally older and had belonged to another era and a very different world. Those able to acquire Western languages and culture in those now far-off days often came from families that were comfortably off, or even wealthy, well able to provide their offspring with an overseas education, or at schools and universities in the International Settlement at Shanghai, the main Treaty Ports, or in Hong Kong. The percentage of Chinese members in the Hong Kong Branch has never been high, amounting to not more than 15% to 20% and sometimes ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 186 in matters relating to personal relationships. During Lunar New Year, hundreds of people come from all over the Territory, even from as far away as Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, to offer prayers at the foot of the tree and to throw red and yellow prayer flags, attached to strings weighted with stones, up into the branches. Only in four villages was it claimed that the special trees were the home of earth gods. At Lin Au, the large, old Cinnamomum trees were planted by the villagers when the settlement was founded in order to protect the shrine that was built to honour the ancestors. The earth gods have their home in the trees and also roam about in the wood. Lin Au and Sheung Tsuen were the only cases found where this was said to happen, but it may be that such a belief could have been more widespread in the past. At Pak Kong, a grove of six trees protects the Tai Wong shrine to Tin Hau beside which is a smaller Paak Kung that is used to worship the earth gods who live in the trees. Kuk Po is also an example of an ancestral tree which is also the home of the local earth god. In most cases, however, the tree adjacent to the shrine is there simply to provide shelter. In the study carried out by the author, a variety of reasons were given as to why specific trees were protected and the commonest reason given was that the trees protected the important shrines of the village, which were both Tai Wong and Paak Kung shrines. The shrines were situated at important fung shui locations, usually protecting the entrance points of the village from loss of chi (good luck or prosperity) and affording protection from undesirable forces. The spirits live in the shrines rather than in the trees themselves. For example, at Tai Om, camphor trees protect each of the three Paak Kung shrines in the village and trees protect four of the principal shrines in Man Uk Pin. Such trees are commonly banyan, or camphor, although other species may be used. The commonest shrine trees found during the study were; Ficus microcarpa Banyan 19 Cinnamomum camphora Camphor 13 Euphoria longan Longan 5 Gironniera nitida 5 Litchi sinensis Lychee 4 in addition to 26 individuals of other less common species. 19 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 199 Dewey, John and Alice Chapman Dewey, Letters from China and Japan, New York Dutton, 1920 Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644, edited by Carrington Goodrich, et al, New York Columbia University Press, 1976 Dingle, E.J., Across China on Foot, Bristol Arrowsmith, 1918 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing) Dobell, Peter, Travels in Kamchatka and Siberia, with a Narrative of Residence in China, London H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830 Donne, G.H., Generation of Giants. The Story of the Jesuits in China in the Last Decade of the Ming Dynasty, Notre Dame University of Notre Dame Press, 1962 Donovan, John F., The Pagoda and the Crows, the Life of Bishop Ford of Maryknoll, New York Charles Scribner, 1967 Downing, C. Toogood, The Fan-qui in China in 1836-7, London Henry Colburn, 1838 (Shannon Reprint, Irish University Press) Dyce, Charles M., Personal Reminiscences of 30 Years Residence in the Model Settlement, Shanghai 1870-1900, London Chapman and Hall, 1906 Eames, James Bromley, The English in China, London Curzon Press, 1909 (New York Reprint Barnes and Noble) Earl, Lawrence, One Foreign Devil (on Mary Ball. A Medical Missionary in North China), London Hodder and Stoughton, 1962 Edkins, Jane Rowbotham, Chinese Scenes and People, London Nisbet, 1863 Edwards, Dwight W., Yenching University, New York United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, with a sequel by Y.P. Mei on Yenching in Chengtu, 1959 Elliot, Robert, Views From the East, London I. Fisher, 1835 Ellis, Sir Henry (1777-1855), Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China, Comprising a Correct Narrative of the Public Transactions of the Embassy, of the Voyages to and From China, and of the Journey From the Mouth of the Pei-Ho to the Return to Canton, 2nd edition, London J. Murray, 1818 Enders, Elizabeth Crump, Swinging Lanterns, New York Appleton, 1923 — Temple Bells and Silver Sail, New York Appleton, 1923 Englishman in China, The, London Saunders, Otley, 1860 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 9 By their differences in dwellings and occupations, already observed, these four communities can be grouped into land-dwellers and sea-dwellers, the Cantonese and Hakka being the former and the Tanka and Hoklo the latter. 43 The Cantonese, or Punti as they are sometimes called, had their origins in North China and speak a Chinese dialect of the western section of the Yueh language which evidences their claim to be of pure Chinese stock. There is no record of their arriving in the province of Kwangtung, which they colonised, earlier than the Sung Dynasty (960-1278 A.D.). In the van were a clan surnamed Tang who settled in the Yuen Long district of the New Territories late in the 11th century. This clan became the largest landowners with their main centres at Kam T'in, P'ing Shan, Lung Yeuk Tau and Ha Tsuen. They exercised "a kind of feudal power, and the tradition they had brought with them was so strong that they not only became the founders of the Cantonese settlement but to this day exert a great influence in affairs. The Cantonese occupy most of the two principal plains in the northwest sector of the New Territories, and own a good deal of the best valley land in various other areas. Villages in the Tung Chung and Shek Pik valleys, on Lantau Island, date back to the early Yuan dynasty in the late thirteenth century. The livelihood of the Cantonese is dependent mainly on the cultivation of rice. The Hakka migrated originally also from North China and, moving gradually southwards through Fukien and Kiangsi in the 10th century, reached Kwangtung Province during the latter years of the Southern Sung Dynasty. They speak two dialects or sub-dialects of the eastern section of the same Yueh language that the Cantonese speak. Arriving after the Cantonese, the Hakka settled usually upstream of them, that is, on the poorer ground. They have, however, steadily over the centuries encroached on the land first occupied by the Cantonese. For example, after the Manchus in the 17th century had evacuated the entire population of the China Coast inland to guard against the fleet of the Ming Dynasty based on Formosa, the Hakka apparently took the opportunity of resettling in the abandoned coastal area. Again, Hong Kong island is said to have been originally occupied by the Tang clan but the British in the 19th century found it almost entirely inhabited by Hakka. A third example of Hakka encroachment is said to be Lantau Island which in recent times was depopulated by... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 23 decorated cock but in order to make this valid three conditions must be fulfilled. a valid betrothal; an intention of the bridegroom to attend the marriage ceremony; and the eventual arrival of the bridegroom for consummation. The witness explained that in certain parts of China because of lack of communication a bridegroom was sometimes delayed and as a matter of expediency a cock was sometimes allowed to represent him. A settlement was negotiated by the third day of the hearing and the learned Chief Justice held that he was entitled under the circumstances to grant letters of administration jointly to the plaintiffs and the defendant but by consent the grant was made to the first and third plaintiffs, that is to the widow and one of her sons, and they were to pay about a quarter of the value of the estate to the defendant, who had filed a caveat as next of kin, against his abandoning all claims to the estate. Cases of such marriages by proxy are rare and those which have come to the attention of the authorities in Hong Kong were celebrated in the neighbouring Chinese territory. In 1954 Mr D. R. Holmes, the present District Commissioner of the New Territories, took statements from two villagers from the Po On District of China in regard to this customary form of marriage. One witness first distinguished the custom of a representative of the bridegroom's family taking a cock with a red thread tied on its leg to the bride's home in order to fix the date of the wedding. This custom takes place a few weeks before every wedding whether by proxy or otherwise. On the evening of a proxy wedding day there was a distinct and separate cock representing the husband carried by an attendant, which went together with the bride into the household shrine to worship the ancestors of the bridegroom's family. This cock too had a red thread on its leg. The act of worship was an essential part of the marriage custom. Only a “kit fat” wife could be taken in this way. There is no form of customary marriage by proxy where the bridegroom is present but the bride absent. The custom of “sam p’o tsai” or prospective daughter-in-law exists in the New Territories. Since it is practiced particularly by Hakka. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 65 actually a few wretched huts or matsheds built on shelves cut out on the acclivity of a ridge. They were filled with Indian sepoys, the Bengal Volunteers. A supplement of a survey of Hong Kong in the Canton Press dated February 1842 gave us information about the Sai Ying Pun Barracks in 1842. "A half-moon battery or platform which is to mount some half-dozen heavy guns on carriages is constructing at the extreme west of the town to protect the barracks there and at which are stationed the Bengal Volunteers" (Sayer, 1937, P. 209). The sanitary conditions of the barracks in those days were largely neglected. The water closet system that existed in the barracks was unfortunately unsuited to a tropical climate. Epidemics of fever spread through Hong Kong every summer in those early years of British occupation. In 1842, the Indian troops, stationed in Hong Kong lost nearly half their number. The death rate for the army in Hong Kong for that year was 25%. In 1843, the sanitary condition of Hong Kong was most alarming. In the summer of 1843 an extraordinary outbreak of malaria fever occurred which during the six months from May to October carried off by death 24% of the troops and 10% of the European civilians. It was noticed that this virulent fever ravaged chiefly the extreme west and east ends of the British settlement. (It was due to the opening up of the ground by the troops in making roads or new buildings created marshy conditions that helped to breed mosquitoes). At the West Point Barracks in Sai Ying Pun where the left wing of the 55th regiment quartered, sickness was so universal that the regiment lost 100 men between June and the middle of August. On 20 July 1843, the troops stationed there were hastily removed on board ships in the harbour and the Barracks were abandoned and ordered to be razed to the ground. At the recommendation of the Committee of Public Health and Cleanliness, the ground in the neighbourhood was ordered to be levelled and well-drained. Since Sai Ying Pun had proved to be one of the most unhealthy spots in the Island, the main forces of the army began to move out of the place. The Royal Navy also found the naval base east of Belcher's Bay unhealthy and lay fully exposed to the fury of a typhoon and moved. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 66 to a site in central waterfront for a naval yard and a central location in the area adjoining Queen's Road and next to the Victoria Barracks for naval stores. Sai Ying Pun was very much deserted when R. Fortune revisited Hong Kong in December 1845. He said: "Before leaving China, I had occasion to visit this spot of ground, the grave of many a brave soldier. A fine road leading round the island ...passed through the place where they had been buried. Many of their coffins were exposed to vulgar gaze, and the bones of the poor fellows lay scattered about on the public highway. (Fortune 1845, P. 22. footnote) The malaria fever of 1843 has a great effect on the urban development of Sai Ying Pun. If the military authorities did not move out in those early years due to the fever, many areas in Sai Ying Pun at present might still be in the hands of the military and excluded from the sprawl of urban structures. Sai Ying Pun During the Late Nineteenth Century Sai Ying Pun was only a tiny settlement in the 1850s. According to the Government Gazette of 1 April 1854, Sai Ying Pun was classified as a small village with some isolated squatter huts in those years. It had only 83 people (64 adults and 19 children) in 1853. The general occupations of the inhabitants were said to be fishing, trade and agriculture. However Sai Ying Pun experienced a rapid growth rate. For example, in 1854 the population rose rapidly to a total of 266 people (248 adults and 18 children), a 220% growth over the previous year. In 1860 together with Staunton Street and Tai Ping Shan Street, Sai Ying Pun was laid out. In 1866 under the Victoria Registration Ordinance, Sai Ying Pun became part of or one of the districts of the city of Victoria. The most interesting feature of the layout plan of Sai Ying Pun is that the road pattern in the First, Second, Third and High Street areas had been planned! (Talbot, 1971, P. 59) Though the road pattern had been influenced by the presence of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 160 maintaining high productivity as outlined previously. However, the mangroves are also very important as mud stabilizers. As the pioneers grow out onto the mud, the band of vegetation becomes broader and the rear becomes drier. Eventually new land is created, which can be used for agricultural purposes. They also play a role as an important protective barrier against destructive storm waves, thus reducing the risk of flooding. Man's impact on the mangrove The most significant impact by man has been the drainage and reclamation of the mangroves to provide sites for settlement and agriculture. This century alone about 1700 hectares of mangroves have been converted into deep fish ponds and vegetable growing areas and many of these, more recently, have been converted into container storage facilities and other industrial purposes. Many of Hong Kong's mangrove stands have already been totally destroyed; Mai Po's mangroves still survive to give an impression of what Deep Bay, indeed much of Hong Kong's shoreline would have looked like because they have been protected since 1976 as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The effects of deep fish pond development, vegetable gardening, industrial usage and new town development can all now be seen in the Deep Bay area. The likelihood of further major reclamation of Deep Bay for urban expansion poses new threats to the ecology of this mangrove area and to the life which it supports (Irving & Morton, 1988). However, at present, the biggest threat is pollution. The many streams and rivers that drain into Deep Bay carry an enormous load of agricultural, domestic and industrial waste. Increasing pollution loads have already been reflected in a changed use of the ponds in recent years. A marked decrease in shrimp harvest has led to the conversion of some gei wais and mangrove areas to freshwater ponds to protect them from marine pollution. If this trend continues, then extreme changes will result as more and more of the mangrove areas are turned into deep ponds and, as pollution has a greater effect on mudflat productivity, the whole area will eventually lose the ecological value which it now has as a multifaceted series of habitats supporting an enormous variety of flora and fauna. In particular, it will cease to be a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 62 show that women working full-time in shops, or from home, were quite common in the area. The "Occupations" statistics, when read against the population figures for the individual settlements given in the 1911 Census also throw a good deal of light on urban life in the New Territories. As mentioned a number of times, the towns of Southern District were more important to the society of that District than were the towns of Northern District In both 1911 and 1921 a far higher percentage of those with recorded occupations who were working in “urban” occupations was recorded in Southern District (see Table 27). Table 27 Persons in Urban Occupations, 1911 and 1921 Censuses District Total population In urban occupations % Northern District 1911: (M) 22770 3859 16.9% (F) 14387 105 0.7% Northern District 1921: (M) 34753 4669 13.4% (F) 12320 924 7.5% Southern District 1911: (M)*• 11036 5017 45.5% (F)*• 2270 Southern District 1921: (M)* 18418 4894 26.6% (F)* 4329 1100 25.4% * Includes New Kowloon • Does not include the floating population While the problems arising from the inadequacies of the "Occupations" tables in the two censuses make the detail of Table 27 not to be fully depended on, nonetheless the much more heavily urban character of the Southern society comes out clearly. The 1911 Census, which gives details of the population of every settlement, also allows us to see the relative size of the towns, which in Northern District were tiny when compared with those in Southern. The details are at Table 28. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 106 The genealogy of the Chengs of the Nam Wai traced their origin to a Song dynasty settlement in several places of Xingning, with farming and orchard land of several Chinese acres and population of more than one thousand. As the result of disorder during the Yuan they lost all names and burial places of ancestors save what was called their zheng shizu immediate Beginning Ancestor, ancestor Shao Ji(7) Lang. This name, while not indicated as a duming, also fits into the pattern of ordination names. The beginning ancestor's eldest son Shao Jiu(19), who was said to be of the Yuan dynasty, had only one son Shi Jiu (19). The latter moved to Changle County in the Taiding period (1324-1327) when he had no relatives around at the native place of Xingning. His son Liu Shi San (63) bore a son during the Hongwu years, Liu Shi Jiu (69). Liu Shi Jiu had a son called Sheng who lived during the Tianshun years (1457-1464), to whom the genealogy attributed magical powers,” but does not indicate any ordination name. One part of the genealogy listed the next eight generations, showing separately the two descendants of each of his two sons, while limiting itself to the descendants of the elder son in the last four generations. Another listed the descendants of the second son, who is an ancestor of the Chengs of Nam Wai. The first ancestor to have an ordination name in the genealogy is Fa You in the seventh generation, an ancestor of the Chengs of Nam Wai. His father lived in early Ming during the Hongwu years (1368-1398). But it was among the descendants of the first son that we find many with ordination names, a large proportion of the ancestors named for the 12nd to 14th generations." The only other ancestor of the Chengs of Nam Wai to have an ordination name was Fa Jing of the 16th generation who moved to the Xin'an county in the early years of Kangxi (1662-1722) at a very young age "His ordination, it therefore appears, probably took place in Xin'an county, Similarly, in a fragment of the genealogy of the Lis of Wu Kau Tan after the name of the 14th generation ancestor Ming Fang and his zi and hao names there are eight words which can be punctuated as "[alternative name] Fa Nian, and fang ming Li Mou Shi Lang”. While the term Shi Lang is the same as a title of an official it seemed to be originally Mou Shi(4)Lang. The caption of the plate says this is the first ancestor of the Lis to move to the Hong Kong region, probably in early Qing. The Chens of Luk Keng and elsewhere of the New Territories had some ancestors with ordination names since the 1st generation in early Ming until the 10th generation in early Qing. One Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 167 only once in three years, the annual festival to commemorate the Houwang's birthday serves better, in terms of higher frequency, to boost the sense of community identity through mass worship of the principal local deity and large-scale general activities of celebration and entertainment. When the community finally had to suspend the chao ceremony out of financial consideration, the Houwang's Birthday Festival remained. The latter has become even more extensive in scale as demonstrated by the development in the post-War period. Religion and the Evolution of Local Power Structure To prepare for the annual god's feast day celebration has never been an easy job. It requires financial as well as organizational support from the local élites. In a multiple-clan community, as observed by many scholars, its principal temple is always the focal point of village coalition organization and the seat of territorial social leadership. Tung Chung's Houwang Temple as a focus of religious activities has also been a locus of sociopolitical action. It is known to have kept a legal code, dated 1893, on a wooden board hung in one of the side rooms. Put there as a permanent record for all to note was also a list of the procedures to be followed in trying crop-stealers or other trouble-makers caught in the valley and their penalties in fines to be paid.61 In addition, on the temple wall, there is an inscription detailing the history and final settlement of a long dispute in the 18th century between Tung Chung's tenants and their landlord. That local rules and dispute-settlements were publicized at the village coalition temple signifies the role of the temple god as judge governing a well-defined territory63 and the place as the centre of community organization both symbolically and practically. 62 Like most local shrines, Tung Chung's Houwang Temple has been maintained by community members and shopkeepers. Because of substantial financial needs in temple management and maintenance, support from richer residents has proved indispensable. By sponsoring festival activities as well as temple renovation projects, local élites can in turn increase their social influence, for in a society where religion has ubiquitous influence, economic power often needs religious sanction. In Tung Chung, as in many other rural areas, the richest people have usually been the most zealous patrons of local religious activities. According to a 1910 inscription on the wall of the Houwang Temple ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 172 means of legitimizing their permanent residency in the district and increasing their local influence and power. When some seamen returned home, after foreign steamships had significantly reduced the recruitment of sailors from Hong Kong in the 1950s, they had become so unfamiliar with local affairs, as a result of their long leave from home, that even if they were elected village representatives on the Tung Chung's Rural Committee established in 1950 under government auspices, they served mainly as liaison men. Newer settlers at Ma Wan Chung, with their wealth and their leading role in organizing activities to commemorate the Houwang's feast day festival, have actually been among the leading local social élites, though not necessarily holding formal official positions. Adaptability and Tenacity: The Tradition of the Houwang Worship In effect, the Houwang worship transcends blood ties and bridges the gap between old and new settlers, and thus functions to maintain a strong village coalition in Tung Chung. As a multi-lineage community, Tung Chung can be used as a case to support Judith Strauch's argument that economic and ritual cooperation and overarching unity, implicit in shared "native place," instead of constant internal conflict and all-round uneasiness, can prevail in a mix-surname settlement.** It also fits Burton Pasternak's model of “villages in which families of different surnames joined forces and played down agnatic differences for the sake of survival."84 It is indeed in the villagers' interest to accept newcomers to the community, in order to make up for shortages of material and human resources. This receptive and inclusive feature of local culture also grew out of a universal cult centering around the village coalition temple. While ancestor worship is only an individual or family/lineage activity and the worship of the earth god and Hsuan-t'an is usually on an individual or village basis, religious and social rituals in honour of the Houwang involve mass participation by the territorial community and work to renew collective consciousness of local identity repeatedly and systematically. During the time when the chino was held in the area, the Houwang as the principal local deity also played a role in that large-scale communal festival. The Houwang worship continued to dominate local religious life, and was even promoted by concentrating | | ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 182 ++ James W Hayes, "The Patterns of Life in the New Territories in 1898,” JHKBRAS, Vol 2 (1962), p. 75. James Hayes, "The Settlement and Development of a Multiple-clan Village," in Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, ed., Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, Week-end Symposium, 9th-10th May, 1964 (Hong Kong: Cathy Press) p. 13. Hayes. 1966 op cit, pp 92-93 ***Kung-li Ta-hsi-shan Tung-Hsi-chung Chiang-shan chu-tien Liang-hsiang ho-huo yung-yuan chao-na pei,” £££%£¶‡ui (@N✯ in K'o, et al. op cit. p 43 65 For the concept equating local temples with the yamen and temple gods with local officials, see Faure, 1986, op. cit. p 71 James Hayes, "Secular Non-gentry Leadership of Temple and Shrine Organizations in Urban British Hong Kong," JHKBRAS, Vol 23 (1983), pp. 113-114 K'o et al, op cit. pp 399-402 + * Law Man Sang, "The Rural Leadership of Tung Chung " Graduation Thesis, History, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992, pp 36 AT Interview of Kung Chao-hsiang, op cit For this point, see Topley, op cit p 18 Interviews of Kung Chao-hsiang, op cit, Jul 6, 1991, Jul 8, 1991 70 Ibid "Interview of Cheng Man-hung op cit Jul 1, 1991 Ibid 21 Interviews Lo Chin-hu (age 80), Shek Lau Po, Jun 29, 1991, Li P'o, Cheng Man-hung etc, upper Ling Pei, Aug 11, 1991, Huang P'ing T (age 70), Ma Wan Chung, Aug 19, 1991, Cheng Man-hung, Huang Chieh-lin etc, Tung-sheng-lou Sept 23, 1991 # "Interview of Cheng Man-hung, op cit. Aug 11, 1991 "Law, op cit p7 Th Interview of Huang P'ing, op cit. Aug 18, 1991 + "Ng Cheuk You "Land and People in Tung Chung Valley An Example of Rural Land Use in Hong Kong." Ph D Thesis University of Hong Kong, 1965, p "Interview of Ch'en Kuang-sheng, op cit, Jul 8, 1991 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 64 to Leng Shan in Fanling from Dongguan in 1190.5 In 1220, they were then driven out and moved to Fan Ling Lau, as their residence was appropriated by neighbouring Tangs. In the Ming Dynasty, due to population pressure, some Pangs moved to what is now called Fanling Wai and built forty-two houses and the village walls. Fanling Wai is composed of a walled village and its extensions which are referred to by the Pangs as Wai Noi Tsuen, Nam Bin Tsuen, and Pak Bin Tsuen. The houses in the past were built one-storey high of clay bricks with tiled roofs. Wooden ancestral tablets were placed at the center of the house for worship. Nowadays, due to population growth, nearly two hundred village houses stand in a row in the village. They have been built and rebuilt into two- or three-storey cement houses since the 1980s, and they contain paper-made ancestral tablets for veneration. The Pangs call this type of house zu wu (literally means the ancestor's house) and point out that they should be passed down the male descent line, usually from fathers to sons, for maintaining the Pangs' lineage community. Outside the walled settlement, there are many village houses with dark-red tiled roofs, white walls, and a balcony. Villagers call it the Spanish style. These houses were mainly built in the 1980s, under the 1972 Small House Policy. The policy allows every New Territories male villager, whose ancestor had settled there before the British Government took over the lease in 1898, to apply for building a house in his village. The house is allowed to be built of no more than 25 feet in height (three storeys) and 700 square feet covered area. Since this type of village house is built by male inhabitants (nan ding), villagers colloquially call these houses ding wu (male's house). From the 1980s onwards, the Pangs have rented out their available village houses for profit when the demand for rural housing increases substantially. After the Second World War and the unstable political period in China in 1949, a huge influx of immigrants from China to Hong Kong, together with the subsequently increased birth rate, exacerbated the housing problem in Hong Kong's urban area. In order to relieve the over-crowded living conditions, the government has not only provided low-cost public housing but also commenced the development of satellite towns (nowadays called new towns) in the New Territories. Housing is nevertheless still in substantial demand because of its inadequate supply. In the 1980s, the private housing ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 65 market began to boom. As a result, more urban people were hitherto willing to rent New Territories village houses because of their lower rent as compared with that in the urban area. In Fanling Wai, village houses for rent are now in great demand. This is because the village is situated near the railway station and modern highways linking Fanling to urban Hong Kong. Besides, a large shopping mall, swimming pool, sports field, hospital and park are also available in the vicinity of Fanling Wai. Zu wu: Transfer through the Patrilineal Line In retrospect, when Hong Kong was under the rule of Imperial China, villagers were free to build houses without restrictions. But after the British Government took over the lease, village houses could be built and rebuilt into cement houses, which did not exceed 25 feet in height and 1,000 square feet covered area. In Fanling Wai nowadays, most of the zu wu are three and a half storeys, with a covered area ranging from 250 to 800 square feet. They are customarily transferred in the Pang's male descent line. When villagers dispose of them due to financial difficulties, their segment members have the priority to purchase them. In fact, the needs for collective agricultural activities such as irrigation and the defense of property and life were incentives for them to share a common residence. Villagers also believed that this settlement was propitious for them and their descendants, and also for their wealth. For achieving these aims, the Pangs transferred their housing property through the patrilineal line, which thereby defined this space/territory as their common settlement and generated a shared sense of lineage identity or of rootedness. The Pangs today still claim that, albeit the vanished pragmatic needs, they should abide by this customary practice for maintaining their lineage community. Fanling Wai has hitherto been considered by the Pangs as a native place to claim their identity, and the settlement itself also serves as a religious centre to give them spiritual protection against ill-health and economic insecurity. The villagers' statement is further supported by the legal transactions of 100 out of 634 house lots of the zu wu from 1898 to 1994, in which all were transferred through the male descent line. Though the market value of housing property has been increasing since the mid-1980s, the sale of the zu wu to non-Pang lineage members is socially prohibited. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 66 13 Despite this, the Pangs are free to rent it to outsiders for profit because this will not change their legal ownership. This social phenomenon manifests villagers' two underlying distinctive concepts, as David Faure suggests, that is, the right of settlement and the right of residence. He points out that not all residents in the village enjoy settlement rights, as the rights can only be inherited by the lineage founder's male descendants.1 One will be considered as a lineage member if one can trace common descent and hold the same settlement rights. Residents who do not hold settlement rights are defined as outsiders. They have no right to elect anybody or to serve in any posts (such as the village guard and Village Representative) in the lineage, nor can they participate in or benefit from lineage religious activities. Therefore, keeping village houses by lineage members is synonymous with maintaining their prescribed settlement rights to sustain their lineage community. As a matter of fact, property dispute is not unknown in Fanling Wai. The following case study demonstrates the way in which the Pangs strategically manipulated the spatial differences between agricultural land and housing land to prevent a married-out daughter from inheriting the zu wu. In the dispute, patrilineal ideology is commonly articulated by different parties involved, namely, the Village Representatives (who are elected by male villagers to speak for their interests and whose power is legitimised by the government) and the female villagers, to safeguard their interests. Pang Chiu Sun had only a daughter, Pang Mei Fan (see Diagram 1). In the late 1970s, after her parents' death, Mei Fan applied for the inheritance of her father's property, which included nine plots of agricultural land and two village houses. Her application, however, was objected to by Pang Man Si (Mei Fan's father's brother's wife). Man Si complained to the District Officer that Mei Fan should be precluded from inheriting her father's property. She argued that, according to the Pang lineage custom, married-out daughters enjoyed no rights to inherit the housing property in Fanling Wai. Village Representatives arbitrated this case. In 1979, they arrived at the resolution that Mei Fan inherited her father's landed property and the village houses were managed by Man Si as a trustee. Their rationale is that, by custom, zu wu should only be inherited by male ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 67 lineage members. Following this practice, Pang Sai Keung and Pang Tai Keung, the only male members in this segment, would be designated inheritors. However, since they died heirless and their property was managed by Man Sî (Tai Keung's wife), who was the only surviving member in this segment, the Village Representatives recommended Man Sî as a trustee of Chiu Sun's housing property. But they stipulated that she had no right to dispose of it, and it should be passed on to male descendants of the Pangs. In 1983 Man Sî therefore adopted an heir to carry on Tai Keung's family line and to inherit his property as well as Chiu Sun's property. In this case, adoption is viewed by Man Sî as an effective strategy to legitimately incorporate the Chiu Sun's property into her husband's household, and through which the hegemony of the patrilineal inheritance is reinforced and reproduced. For land, however, the Village Representative said it could be inherited by the married-out daughter of Chiu Sun. His justification was that land and houses should be customarily passed on to male lineage members, but since the village houses were located inside the lineage settlement while the land was not, married-out Mei Fan was therefore entitled to claim her father's landed property and could even dispose of it at her discretion. In sum, this case vividly demonstrates how the Pangs made use of the spatial difference to define and redefine their transfer practices of property in the early 1980s. They held the idea that only housing property inside the lineage settlement must strictly follow the patrilineal descent principle to maintain the Pangs' settlement rights, lineage community and its associated identity. The transfer of other property located outside the settlement was subject to the Pangs' negotiation. The Pangs drew or, perhaps, redefined this boundary in the 1980s when the government's resumption of their lands for development was in full swing and when the Pangs themselves also actively sold their lands to outsiders for a huge profit (since the land market in the New Territories sprang up at that time). Under these circumstances, land was no longer considered by the Pangs as an essential or indispensable property for maintaining patrilineal structure and preserving traditional identity. The retreat of the lineage's territory thus led them to become more conscious of the importance of the male inheritance of housing property. This is because only the village houses are the available estate property in Fanling Wai which can or have to be kept intact by the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 72 Wing, who emigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1960s and is now running a Chinese night club there, is going to retire in a few years and return to Fanling Wai. He said that the building of a ding wu was the prerogative of his being an indigenous inhabitant on the one hand, and a way to live and to associate with his fellow villagers after his retirement on the other. In this context, to build a ding wu is alternatively recognised by overseas Pangs as a means of re-identifying with his lineage members in Fanling Wai and of showing that Fanling Wai is his home and that he is not an outsider. In the above sections, different social and economic meanings and transfer practices of zu wu and ding wu are highlighted. In the following paragraph, the discussion will turn to how the Pangs come up with the different transfer practices of housing property by manipulating the conception of community boundary. Manipulating Space in the Construction of the Transfer Practice To reiterate, in Fanling Wai the Pangs hold a common argument that ding wu situated outside the lineage settlement can be sold to non-lineage members. They explain that since the lands for building ding wu are not owned by their ancestors and their locations are outside the lineage settlement, the transfer practice of their ding wu should not follow that of zu wu. Even the sale of their ding wu is also allowed. Why are the transfers of village house built inside and outside the lineage settlement treated in such a very different way? Why is this boundary so important to the Pangs? It should be noted that village territory is by no means defined solely by the location of the village house. Villagers might define village boundary with reference to such markers as paddy fields, hill slopes, groves, shrines, temples, fishing ponds and so on. For example, the elderly villagers defined the village territory within which the village guard in the past should patrol at night to warn off thieves, with referring to the locations of their paddy rice fields; or they defined which groves and hill slopes should be included to demarcate the village boundary, entitling them to collect wood and grass as fuel and to manage streams for irrigating rice fields. These cases reveal the fluidity of village territory which can be re-defined in different contexts. How do the Pangs manipulate the boundary of the walled settlement as a decisive factor to redefine the Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 73 transfer practices of housing property in the 1990s? The territorial boundaries between zu wu and ding wu were indeed created after the implementation of the 1972 Small House Policy, since all ding wu were built outside the lineage territory. But the location itself is not the factor which explains these different practices. Rather, the Pangs manipulated the spatial difference between these two types of houses to legitimate whether male inheritance practice should be enforced to them. As mentioned, the Pangs' idea of male inheritance of zu wu has never been lax. Being practised from generation to generation, the practice has been recognised or internalised by the Pangs as their custom, which in turn maintains and reinforces the lineage solidarity. Therefore, the value of zu wu at community level apparently overrides the villagers' self-interest, and the male inheritance of it is perpetually enforced by the villagers themselves. As housing value has been increasing since the 1980s, building of village houses becomes the Pangs' short-term profitable investments. Being able to make a huge profit from selling their ding wu, the Pangs have manipulated the geographical location of these houses to justify that their transfer/sale should not abide by the patrilineal descent principle. In daily conversation the Pangs use the term cun (village) to represent these two settlement units as a whole. But when they want to distinguish between the two, they call the walled settlement wei.28 This distinction corresponds with different transfer practices for the zu wu situated inside and outside the wei. The former are transferred rigidly according to the patrilineal principle whereas the transfer of the latter is subject to the Pangs' negotiation. This strategy defined in terms of geographical difference is constructed or shaped by their conceptual classification of “community” and “settlement”. The Pangs call their walled settlement "wei” or “cun", which is composed of three cun (villages), Pak Bin Tsuen, Wai Noi Tsuen, and Nam Bin Tsuen. The two words, wei and cun, are interchangeable. Cun/Wei is a community in which the Pangs share a common residence and enjoy the settlement rights through the male descent line. In this context, "community” implies two different meanings. On the one hand, community refers to a social milieu in which people engage in intense social interaction and share common interests. On the other hand, as Benedict Anderson suggests, community is an idea of socio-cultural relationship and belongingness in the minds of people." These two meanings do not, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 74 however, exclude each other. Rather they coexist in different contexts. Since the meaning of community itself is fluid, the Pangs can manipulate it in different contexts to define and redefine the transfer practice of their housing property. The transfer of ding wu is the case. After the implementation of the Small House Policy, a new settlement unit developed. Though this settlement unit is subsumed within the term "cun", the Pangs have never recognised it as an extension of the wei (lineage community). As mentioned before, in the Ming Dynasty the Pangs' ancestors found a propitious location at which Fanling Wai was founded. They built thatched sheds to develop the settlement. Over the generations, the settlement became more populous and the Pangs built more brick or stone houses to replace these thatched sheds. At present the settlement is not merely a nucleated cluster of houses, but it significantly represents the agnatic community of the Pangs. Keeping this housing property intact solely through the Pangs' male line is strategically important for the maintenance of their community. Nowadays, though many outsiders have rented houses in the wei, they cannot acquire right of settlement, which is the most important criterion for defining the lineage community's membership. As for the settlement of ding wu in which there is only a number of contemporary lineage members, this property is not thought of as a cultural legacy representing the Pang's lineage history and agnatic community. So its transfer to outsiders does no harm to the social cohesion of their lineage community. To recapitulate, the Pangs' conception of community boundary is changing. It has constructed and shaped their transfer practices of property to achieve maximisation of self and group interests in dramatically changing economic and legal circumstances. When property is defined as an essential material for lineage solidarity, its transfer should rigidly follow the patrilineal principle. For the property which is not so defined, villagers have the free right to dispose of it in their own interests. This principle explains why sometimes the Pangs' self interests are subordinated to the lineage interests and sometimes not. Someone will argue that the villagers manipulate membership but not space to justify their different transfer practices. Of course, they are entitled to inherit or get zu wu and to apply for building ding wu, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 77 health and fortune would not be harmed by evil spirits. In fact, these two religious activities are held in Fanling Wai (the settlement of the Pang lineage in Fanling) by the Pangs exclusively. The Pang villagers, be they in Fanling Wai or in other settlements, will enjoy the supernatural benefit from these activities through the descent line of their father or husband. This figure was collected from the Lands Department in the North District Office. 12 See Fong, Peter, K. W., op. cit. "But the Lees in Wo Hang, Sha Luk Kok recognised that renting village houses out would infringe on the values contributing to the maintenance of their community as a whole. The villagers defined occupancy within the village as permanent residence, and the rights for it could only be enjoyed and inherited by their fellow villagers through the male line. Houses were not simply residential structures but constituted Wo Hang as an agnatic village community. The house was a source of the rootedness that permitted the natives to claim identity with their natal village community through their right of occupancy." See Allen Chun, op. cit., pp. 249-50. David Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the New Territories, Hong Kong, pp. 2-4. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Liao Hua Chuan, "Xin Jie Yifan Lai Min Quan Yi Lu You" (The Origin of the New Territories Indigenous Inhabitant's Prerogative), p. 144, in Lu Yan (Ed.), Xiang Gang Zhang Gu (Legends of Hong Kong), Xiang Gang: Guang Jia Jing, 1987. 16 See GWE Jones, “Rural Housing in Hong Kong", in Lok, S. K. Wong (Ed.), Housing in Hong Kong: A Multi-Disciplinary Study, Hong Kong: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia), Hong Kong, 1975; Kwok Kam-chau, Planning for Village Development in the New Territories, M.Sc. thesis, The University of Hong Kong, 1987; Allen Chun, op. cit.; and James Hayes, Chinese Customary Law in the New Territories of Hong Kong, paper proceedings of the fourth International Symposium on Asian Studies in 1988. 18 For details, see Heung Yee Kuk (Ed.), Xin Jie Xiao Xing Wu Yu Zheng Ce Te Ji (Special Collection of the New Territories Small House Policy), 1980. **Of this total of twelve houses, four were built in 1979, five in 1980, two in 1981, and one in 1982. 19 The one allowed to build ding wu on Crown land had to pay a premium of about $4,000 at that time. 20 210 hectares of this new town were designated for residential and commercial development, 50 hectares for industrial development, and 140 hectares for government and community use. See Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong 1984 (Annual Report), p. 132. Hong Kong Government Press. 21 Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong 1985 (Annual Report), p. 183. Hong Kong Government Press. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 78 47 # Government Press The total land area of Fanling and Sheung Shui was 13,184 acres (20.6 square miles). See Heung Yee Kuk, Xin Jie Xiang Yi Ju Cheng Li Lu Shi Zhou Nian Jin Dian Te Kan (The Special Issue for the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk's 60th Anniversary [published in 1986]), p. 182 A name list of successful applicants was posted on the village notice-board in 1991. A total of 69 ding houses were allowed to be built. But unsuccessful applicants tore down the list and then submitted objections to the District Office. They complained that some successful applicants were found to be living abroad, some came from the same family, and that most village council members of Fanling Wai (cun wei hui cheng yuan) were successful applicants. The result was considered unfair because many of these successful applicants were said to have bribed the Village Representatives for their applications. So the District Officer and Village Representatives had to set up new criteria for reconsidering the applications. "The detail of the criterion is as follows (Data collected from the Fanling Wai village notice-board in 1994): (1) Villagers having large families and those whose present living conditions were comparatively less desirable. (1) Villagers who could afford the construction costs of the houses and were unlikely to dispose of the completed houses to outsiders. (11) Villagers who were enthusiastic towards serving fellow villagers and were benevolent towards the affairs of the village. (iv) Villagers who had submitted applications before June 1989. (v) Applicants who were or had been members of either the village committee, or Da Jiao Committee or Village Guard would be considered to have served their fellow villagers and to be benevolent towards the affairs of Fanling Wai. (Da Jiao is a lineage-based religious festival, see footnote 10). (vi) Where two or more applicants having a father and son relationship were successful in this selection exercise, only one application would be selected for allocation of a Small House site. "Some villagers anticipated that their building rights would not be realized in their lifetime due to the keen competition or to their lack of money, so they decided to sell their "right to build" (ding quan) to land developers to profit. That is, land developers have offered villagers money to make use of their building rights to apply to build houses elsewhere. During my fieldwork, I found a total of seven Pangs who had successfully applied to build ding houses outside Fanling Wai. Six were built in San Wai of Lung Yeuk Tau (the Tang lineage settlement in Fanling), and one in Long Chai, Fanling. In fact, the phenomena of selling ding quan by villagers to make a profit has been a common one. For example, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, ten villagers living abroad who had no intention of returning to Hong Kong made a total profit of $500,000 by selling their ding quan to land developers (1982: 55, quoted in Allen Chun, op. cit., p. 222). * In 1976, in order to discourage villagers from making profits by selling their ding wu, the government amended the policy to pay the government full market value premium if houses are sold within five years of the end of construction work. 27. The emigrant Mans also built new village houses in San Tin as the ultimate proof of their stake in the community of their birth. See James Watson, op. cit., p. 165 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 96 The Shing Mun Valley scheme was started in 1923 and initially a 2km-long 3m-diameter tunnel was driven to Shek Lai Pui. Subsequently, the largest pre-Pacific war reservoir was constructed, which was to double the Territory's total water storage capacity to 27,000 million litres; it was formed by the main Gorge Dam, which was the highest in the old British Empire at that time (1936), and the subsidiary 25m-high earth/rockfill/concrete core Pineapple Pass Dam. The remarkable Gorge Dam, 85m high with a bold and probably unique design, consists of a downstream shoulder of rockfill faced with pitching and an upstream face comprising a slender near-vertical reinforced concrete diaphragm wall supported by a massive concrete thrust block. Between the upper part of the thrust block and the downstream rockfill, there is a narrow wedge filled with sand for the purpose of taking up any settlement of the rockfill and to cater for possible earthquake movement. Any leakage through the upper part of the diaphragm can be observed from an inspection gallery behind it. Elaborate experiments were made to determine the correct design of the reservoir overflow bellmouth in order to reduce vortexing and to neutralise the destructive vacuum forces which could occur at the base of the bellmouth overflow shaft. For this investigative work, the young Geoffrey Binnie was awarded a Telford premium by the Institution of Civil Engineers. Subsequently, preliminary investigations for the Tai Lam Chung scheme were started shortly before the outbreak of the Pacific war, by which time the Territory's population had risen to about 1.6 million. As a result of an acute water emergency on the Island, work started on a 300mm steel pipe cross-harbour main in 1929, the sixty-two 30m-long bolted sections taking less than 2 months to lay, and a further 450mm main was laid in 1935. Due to corrosion problems, it was necessary to replace these pipes in 1939 with two 530mm steel pipes, protected with a 12mm-thick cement lining on the inside and a 60mm coating of vibrated concrete on the outside, which were laid on reinforced concrete blocks bedded on rockfill with a protective rubble mound on the east side of the pipelines to prevent damage from dragging anchors. These pre-Pacific war water schemes not only involved building dams but also needed construction, often in difficult site conditions, of a multiplicity of extensive catchwaters, tunnels, trunk mains, treatment plants, service reservoirs, pumping stations, and distribution mains in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 137 NOTES AND QUERIES A BRIEF HISTORY OF RECLAMATION IN MACAU THOMAS KVAN AND JUSTYNA KARAKIEWICZ Introduction Macau today is a city of 500,000 people living on 22 sq. km. consisting of three main areas: the peninsula of Macau (with approximately 50% of the population) and the islands of Taipa and Coloane. Most of the population lives on the peninsula itself. Over 7 million visitors visit the enclave each year. Primary industries are tourism (driven in large part by the casinos), light manufacturing and some trans-shipment of goods from China. In common with Hong Kong, the territory has experienced considerable physical change due to reclamation. This paper traces the history of reclamation and considers some of the implications for the urban form of Macau over the past four centuries. The Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries Macau saw development until the Portuguese occupied the peninsula in the mid-sixteenth century. When they arrived, it was a peninsula of approximately 3 sq. km. connected to the China mainland by a very narrow neck of sand that could be flooded at high tides. There were a few temples (already a few centuries old) and farm houses already constructed but the population was sparse. Within ten years, the population had grown to “over 5000, not including Chinese or slaves” (Pires 1987). By 1583, a Municipal Senate was formed and in 1586 Macau was designated a City. Places of worship began to be erected almost immediately upon settlement, with significant churches appearing from 1590 onwards. A protective wall was built in 1606 around the Jesuit settlement with a second fortress in 1629 and several more by 1638 (Duncan 1987). The enclave had evolved rapidly, therefore, from a poorly defined settlement on Chinese agricultural patterns to one based on an Occidental urban architecture of churches, fortifications and civic buildings. The former probably consisting of isolated buildings, most ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 241 the freshness, the cleanness, the splendour constrain them; they seem like fish which, from a dirty, marshy river have been transferred to an ornamental pond filled with clear water: nowhere to hide, to shelter, to filch, to swindle, to get oneself dirty or to get one's neighbour dirty. Having quickly walked round the whole quarter, we struck the mountain, which at this point was artificially cut away and consisted of a smooth, sheer wall; a new road was planned here. A whole regiment of labourers crowded around; they dug the earth, hewed stones, carted debris away. These were all immigrants from the Portuguese colony of Macau. No sooner had the English conceived the idea of a settlement here, and sent out a call, than Macau became almost deserted. Work, and consequently bread and money, lured up to thirty thousand Chinese over here. Instead of poverty in Macau, they preferred the endless labour and inexhaustible payment here. They were not frightened off by the epidemic fevers that raged in the beginning. Under the supervision of the English they began clearing and draining the soil: the epidemics abated and the migration increased. We came down from the rise and entered the Chinese quarter again, passing, incidentally, a house where a bare-chested young Chinese stood in front of a window, strumming a meagre and monotonous tune on an instrument resembling a guitar. A number of women peered out of the window. However not all Chinese wander around the town near naked: it is only porters, manual labourers and shopmen. The higher classes are dressed decently; there are even dandies, in snow-white coats and wide satin trousers, in heavy-soled shoes and with a thick black shiny pigtail down to their feet, with a fine fan with which they cover their heads from the sun. The more ordinary women walk around the town themselves whereas those who are richer or more important are led arm-in-arm. Their feet are all more or less maimed; and those who "through ill-breeding, through parental negligence" remained as nature had intended, fabricate another artificial foot under their real one, but one so small that they definitely cannot step on it and hence walk with the assistance of servant girls. In spite of the long garments in which Chinese women are wrapped from top to toe; I accidentally, with the aid of a puff of wind, discovered a bit of guile... Olive-skinned women with black, slightly narrowed eyes dress predominantly in dark colours. With hair-dos à la chinoise, and a splendid mass of black hair fastened at the back with a large gold or silver pin, they are not dis- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 TRACING GRAVES IN HONG KONG: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY DAN WATERS 395 In a letter dated 4 April 1998, the RASHKB received a request from the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA) to try to trace seven graves in Hong Kong. The BACSA had received these requests from the dead persons' relatives, living in Britain, who were seeking information regarding the whereabouts of the graves. Apart from names and in four cases exact dates (in the other three cases approximate dates) of deaths, no other information was, I was informed, available. We were not told, for instance, the dead persons' religions or denominations which made the search more difficult. The first attempt to track down the graves amounted to the best part of a Saturday afternoon which I spent in what, up to the early 1970s was known as the Colonial Cemetery, in Happy Valley on Hong Kong Island. It is now called the Hong Kong Cemetery. This is mainly Protestant although there are a few Japanese and Chinese buried there who were not Christians. On plan, the cemetery is divided into sections. There, with the help of Mr Pau Chi-sing the full-time cemetery attendant, after searching the register, I was eventually able to find three graves. Names, dates of deaths, sections in the cemetery and grave numbers are as follows: Boyle, Shirley Florence, 5 November 1945, Section 16F, Grave 10232 Boyle, Florence Ruby, 12 August 1968, Section 45, Grave 7423 Cornell, Francis Heawood, October 1908, Section 16, Grave 11772 Bearing in mind the ages of the graves, with no relatives or friends locally (one supposes) to look after them, they are in reasonable condition. Some settlement has taken place and gravestones are in need of repairs in some cases. Cleaning and re-polishing are necessary. As a result names are not always easy to read which made finding the graves more difficult. The last headstone mentioned above (Cornell), which is surmounted by a cross, has settled especially badly. ================================================================================ 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 3 survived until the coming of the Japanese, were built after the return of the Sub-Magistracy to Kowloon: they were completed in 1847. They may well, however, have been rebuilt on older foundations: the walled compound of 1293 and before may have stood here. From 1370 to 1841, Kowloon City usually had only a small military post (from 1682 to 1811 it had a unit of 10 soldiers, increased to 43 in the latter year, when a new fort was built on the sea-coast to guard the landing-place*). It is conventionally useful to say "Kowloon City" as the site of these early yamens, and there can be no doubt that the yamen was at all dates between 200 BC and 1811 AD close to Kowloon City, but there is no certainty that it was at all dates immediately under the site of the later Kowloon Walled City. Between 1811 and 1847 the local garrison was, for instance, certainly centred on the fort by the sea-shore, not at the Kowloon City site some a quarter of a mile inland. Again, in the tenth century, the Nanhan pottery finds centre on the Sacred Hill (the hill was also known as the Hill of the Sung Princes, which is the more commonly used name today) about a quarter of a mile south of the Kowloon Walled City, and the Nanhan yamen may just possibly have been in this area: equally, this may have been a residential area for the salt-workers, with the yamen closer to Kowloon City. However, the salt-marshes which blocked access to the Kowloon Bay shore from the sea except in the immediate Kowloon City and Sacred Hill area make it certain that any yamen in the area must have been close to this vital landing-place, the only place where ships could come to land easily. Thus, there can be little doubt that the yamen, at all dates, was either at, or very close to, today's Kowloon City. Thus, Kowloon City was a significant Imperial centre and garrison from, probably, about 200 BC, down to at least 1370, and continued to have a small garrison even after that date. The presence of a Salt Monopoly centre in or near Kowloon City from 200BC did not, however, lead to civilian Han Chinese settlement in the area. In fact, it is likely that such settlement was banned for many centuries. The Salt Monopoly, in the interests of controlling salt-smuggling, wanted to have the areas around its salt-fields made Restricted Districts, banned to ordinary citizens of the Empire except with passes issued by the Salt Intendant. It is likely that, for almost a thousand years after the establishment of the salt-fields at Kowloon City, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x the whole area remained a Restricted District, and closed to civilian settlement. The earliest civilian settlement in the area that we know of dates from the middle-late twelfth century. The Lam clan settled in this period at Po Kong, and, as will be discussed further below, the Chan clan settled in the Nga Tsin Wai area at about the same date. The foundation date of Ma Tau Wai is probably middle-late twelfth century as well. It is noticeable that the Salt Intendancy moved at precisely this period (1163) to Tip Fuk, in the still unsettled Mirs Bay area: it is likely that a decision to allow civil settlement around Kowloon City was coupled with a decision to keep the Restricted District in place around the Mirs Bay salt-fields, and to move the Salt Intendant's yamen into this still secure part of its old district. The most significant event in the early history of the area was the visit to Kowloon City of the Sung boy-Emperor Ching and his brother Ping (himself Emperor from the Third Moon, 1278) in 1277. The boy-Emperor and his remnant Court were being pushed down to the south by the Mongol troops, and, from the 2nd Moon in 1277 until the final destruction of their forces and the death of the Emperor Ping in the 2nd Moon, 1279, they were unable to leave the area around the mouth of the Pearl River, which was all they were able to control. During this period they stayed at Kowloon for five months (4th to 9th Moons, 1277). It is likely that the Imperial family stayed in the Salt Intendant's yamen, but a wooden "Travelling Palace" was also built for the Court. This may well have been built at the site of the later village of Yi Wong Tin, E, "Palace of the Two Kings" - this name is clearly rather suggestive (this village stood under today's Tam Kung Road, near Mok Cheung Street). Yi Wong Tin village stood just below the Sacred Hill, which was crowned by the Sung Wong Toi Rock, which has commemorated the boy-Emperor's stay here since the Ming dynasty at least. The presence of the Sung remnant Court for this period must have had major implications for the residents of the area, although it is difficult now to discover details. Many villages in the area (including Nga Tsin Wai) claim to have been founded by remnants of the Sung Court left behind when the Court moved away in late 1277, but in many cases (including Nga Tsin Wai) it can be shown that this is unlikely. One nineteenth century clan of Ma Tau Wai, indeed, the Chius, claimed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 12 refers to, is probably to be considered the date when the settlement of the Ngs was complete. The Ng clan Tsuk Po must have been brought up to date in the early fifteenth century, when Ng Shing-tak's six grandsons were the heads of the clan. No further ancestors are recorded however, until the ancestor alive at the end of the Coastal Evacuation, in 1668. The Tsuk Po states that details of "four generations" were lost "because of political troubles". This clearly refers to the Coastal Evacuation: as with the Chans, the Ngs were able to take their Tsuk Po with them, but nothing else, and so lost details of the ancestors after Ng Shing-Tak's grandsons. From the late fourteenth century, when these grandsons were born, to about 1625 when the ancestor still alive at the end of the Coastal Evacuation must have been born, is a period of some 250 years. Clearly, more than four generations have been forgotten. Ten generations at a 25-year generation gap, or eight at a 30-year generation gap would be more likely. Effectively, the whole of the Ming history of the clan has disappeared. Unfortunately, this gap includes the crucial period around 1570 when the walls of the village were built. The Ng clan Tsuk Po gives dates for the generations born after the Coastal Evacuation - the ancestors recorded were born in 1674, 1719, 1751, 1775, 1807-1819, 1821-1860 (mostly 1839-1847). This represents a rather late average age of marriage - the generation gap is very large in the early years (45 years followed by 32 years), doubtless reflecting the traumas of the post Coastal Evacuation period, but averages out at about 30 years thereafter. It is interesting to note that both the Chans and the Ngs claim descent from scholars active at the time of the establishment of the Southern Sung (i.e., 1126 and the following years). This was a time of great difficulty, with barbarian invaders capturing the north of China, and establishing there a non-Chinese dynasty, the Chin, and the native Sung only just managing to hold onto the south, from their "temporary capital" at Hangchow. Throughout the wider Hong Kong area, many of the major clans resident today claim as their Founding Ancestors men active during this period. Many were refugees from the Chin invaders, settling where they could in the still Chinese south; others were scholar-officials who rallied to the first Southern Sung Emperor, and in due course received the reward due for their fidelity and support. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 14 to Tip Fuk in 1163. The Ngs joined the Chans here about 1350: the foundation date for the temple of 1354 is probably connected with this. Possibly the Lis settled here at about this date as well. Chan Mung-lung, BH, was the first Chan to settle in the Nga Tsin Wai area, and Ng Chung-tak was the first of his clan. Chan Chiu-yin was not the first Chan to settle in the area, but he was the clan head when the village was walled about 1570. Ng Shing-tak was the second generation of his family to live in the area, about 1350: he lived two hundred years before Chan Chiu-yin, and two hundred years after Chan Mang-lung. The date of 1724 given by the villagers for the walling of the village must be a mistake. The village would have been in ruins after the Coastal Evacuation, and the 1724 date must represent the successful repair and rehabilitation of the village. The villagers on their return to the village after the Evacuation must have lived in temporary huts for some time before they could gather the funds needed for the repair of their walls, temple, and permanent houses. The Tsuk Po give a little information as to the settlement of those branches of the Ng and Chan clans to leave Nga Tsin Wai and settle elsewhere. The Chans of Nga Tsin Long settled there about 1550-1570 - the Founding Ancestor of Nga Tsin Long, Chan Kwok-yin, RTY, was the younger brother of Chan Chiu-yin. The Ngs of Siu Lek Yuen in Sha Tin split off from the Nga Tsin Wai stock in the generation immediately after the Coastal Evacuation - probably before 1680 (the Siu Lek Yuen Ngs comprise the third Fourth Fong descent line). Another branch of the Ngs moved to Pok Liu (Lamma Island) in about 1820-1850. A branch of the Ngs moved to Tseung Kwan O somewhen in the early eighteenth century, probably about 1720, at the same time as a branch of the Chan clan moved there as well. Probably most of the other branches which split off from the Nga Tsin Wai clans did so in this same period, i.e. the fifty years after the ending of the Coastal Evacuation - this was a period when clans tried to occupy as much space as possible, with a view to giving later generations plenty of living space. Some of the branches, however, may have moved out much earlier. Several Chan clans resident in the villages around Kowloon City claim a relationship with the Chans of Nga Tsin Wai, but do not descend from Chan Chiu-yin or Chan Kwok-yin. These may well be groups already distinct before Chan Chiu-yin moved within the new walls at Nga Tsin Wai. There are such Chan clans at Ta Kwu ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 24 eighteenth century. The Fungs () came there much later, at the end of the nineteenth century: they had fled from the Tai Ping rebels to Shek Lung Tsai in Sha Tin, and from there moved to Ngau Chi Wan. Very little is known of the Six Villages Alliance, and it is likely that it was more loosely structured than the League of Seven. It will be noted that Tai Hom, of the League of Seven, is completely surrounded by land that formed part of the Six Villages Alliance. Tai Hom, which is a single-surname village of the Chu (*) clan, is the only village of the League of Seven with no genealogical connections with Nga Tsin Wai. That it formed part of the League of Seven, rather than the Po Kong Six Villages Alliance is probably due to the circumstances of Tai Hom's foundation. The Founding Ancestor of the Chus, Chu kui-yuen, was a Hakka from Ng Wah District far to the northeast of Hong Kong22. He was a stone-cutter. He came to Hong Kong in 1762, to look for work in the quarries which were at that date starting up in the eastern part of what is today Victoria Harbour. He prospered, and established a quarry at Shek Tong Tsui in 1771. Later, he found Shek Tong Tsui rather remote, and exposed to pirate attack, and moved to Sha Po near Kowloon City. Later still, he bought quarry-land at the tip of Cape d'Aguilar Peninsula, and founded nearby the village of Hok Tsui. He had eight sons. His eldest son died unmarried, and Hok Tsui is today lived in by the descendants of his second, third and fourth sons. The fifth and sixth sons died unmarried or disappeared later. Chu kui-yuen bought more land, at Tai Hom, for his seventh son, Yan-fung, leaving his youngest son, Cheung-fung, , the land at Sha Po. After Kui-yuen's death, his widow lived at Tai Hom with her seventh son, who acquired a minor official post at Kowloon City, presumably after the re-establishment of the yamen there in 1841. Yan-fung was born in 1781, and died in 1857. Tai Hom was, therefore, a late settlement. It is unlikely to have been founded earlier than 1800. The land at Tai Hom was not fertile, and was steep and rocky (the Chus ran a quarry there, which supplied poor quality stone used for laying foundations in the Kowloon City area). Until 1992 a few remnants of Tai Hom, including the Chu clan Ancestral Hall, remained, buried within the Diamond Hill Squatter Area. It is likely that Po Kong refused to guarantee the good behaviour of these incoming Hakka (some already settled family was always required to guarantee incomers under the Pao-chia rules), while Nga Tsin Wai was willing, and that it was this which brought Tai Hom into the League of Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 17 ⚫ M. Greenberg (see bibliography). X 0 10 It was mentioned in the Egyptian Papyrus of Ebers, c.2000 BC, and by the Greek Theophrastus, 3rd century BC. M. Booth: Opium: A History, London 1996, p.104. An inferior quality opium was grown in Zhejiang Province. Chinese government made efforts to suppress it (1831). H.B.Morse: Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, New York, 1908, p.341. 'Imperialism' is used to describe the system whereby one nation acquires political and economic control over another less technologically developed nation. "Colonialism" is more difficult to define. Originally the term applied to a settlement of the subjects of a country in lands beyond its boundaries who remain subject to or connected with the parent state. However, in recent times the two terms have been used synonymously, Greenberg, M., British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-42. 13 American firms Olyphant & Co, and Nathan Dunn & Co.; their strict Quaker moral principles prevented them from trading in opium. 14 Another, highly improbable, anecdote relates that Macartney asked the Emperor to enter into an alliance with Britain against the French, to which The Emperor allegedly replied that he was not concerned with the "barbarians' petty squabbles" outside his domain. S 15 Secretary to the Court of Directors of the East India Company. 16 S. Bard: Traders of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 1993, p.30. 17 Anon.: China: Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical, London 1853, p.231. 18 Reproduced by courtesy of Charlotte Horstmann & Gerald Godfrey Ltd., Hong Kong. 19 The belief probably had its origin in the prevalent practice in Europe of a 'seasonal ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 22 Han Suyin's patrimonial heritage is very specific, as her father originated from the Hakkas, or "Guest People," a sub-group of ethnical Han Chinese, which initially meant displaced, dispossessed, and hungry peasants, the refugees from misery, migrating in millions from the regions struck by floods, droughts, foreign invasions, civil wars, and rural upheavals, and simply "seeking a roof." The Hakkas themselves claim that they moved five times within recorded history, their first migration dating at about A.D. 311, and the fifth one at the end of the Taiping rising (i.e., in the sixties of the nineteenth century). Their culture was to a very large extent affected by the turbulence of political and social events, by their own relative insecurity in the territories of new settlement, and by the resulting enormous eagerness and ability to survive. For these particular reasons, a somewhat remote analogy can perhaps be drawn between the mobile, industrious, and hard-working Hakkas, dispersed among the settled Han population, and the Jewish enclaves dispersed in medieval Europe and in the contemporary world as well. In the thirteenth century - the time of Gengis Khan's invasion and of the resulting third migration - Han Suyin's distant ancestors, named Chou, settled in Meihsien in the province of Kuangtung, a purely Hakka district. The wave of the Manchu-dynasty-inspired fourth migration (1680-1720) took some of them further to Szechuan, the region of Four Streams, a remote Chinese hinterland guarded from the outer world by the cliffs of Tibet, the Snow Mountains, and the Cold Mountains, and the dangerous Yangtse gorges. The recorded family history starts from the first ancestor, who arrived in Szechuan as an itinerant pedlar, most probably carrying across his shoulder a pole, with the baskets swinging at both ends to transport miserable personal property and sale goods. By the nineteenth century, Han Suyin's family had managed to climb up the economic and social ladder, to attain the top echelon, i.e., the scholar-official-administrator class. They had become local landed gentry, the cornerstone of the Chinese feudal social setup, and this anachronistic setup might have continued ad infinitum, had it not, under pressure from the colonial superpowers, ultimately collapsed. Han Suyin's father, Chou Yentung, was born in 1886 in China already invaded by the French and the British, the two colonial ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 24 promised quick liberation from technological backwardness of China and consequently from the dependence on non-altruistic foreign assistance, or so at least hoped young, aware, fierce and idealistic Chinese patriots of the mandarin origin, Han Suyin's father, Chou Yentung, among them. Belonging to the upper class of the Old China's society, a scholarship was rather easily granted to him by the provincial government of Szechuan to study railway engineering in Belgium. He spent ten long years in Brussels (1903-1913), studying and working, and there he met his future wife, Marguerite Denis, and eventually married her in 1908. In Chapter One of The Crippled Tree Han Suyin briefly comments: We are all products of our time, vulnerable to history. I was born because there had been, in China, a Boxer Rebellion (as the Europeans called it) in 1900, and because of this event, which the Chinese call the Uprising of the Righteous Fists, my Chinese father, instead of becoming a classical scholar, perhaps a Hanlin Academician, married my Belgian mother. Re-settlement of the Chou family from Belgium to China was a great disillusionment for both, Marguerite Denis and her young Chinese engineer husband. At that time (which - unfortunately enough - would end with the Communist Revolution only) Chinese were treated in their own motherland as citizens of the second category, by definition inferior to the whites. Han Suyin's great epic cycle on autobiography/history of China gives multiple examples to prove this abhorring and painful truth. The return trip alone was a bitter humiliation for the couple travelling such an enormously long way to the Chinese homeland with their first-born son. In Chapter Eighteen of The Crippled Tree, Han Suyin quotes fragments of her father's memoirs, which describe some details of that event: When we went to collect the tickets [for the English boat], the man in the booking office (tall, blond, low-voiced) said to Marguerite: "But, madame, you can go in first class if you wish, but not monsieur. It is the rule. "Oh," said Marguerite, astonished, "but he is my husband. Of course I shall go with him. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 25 “As you wish, madame.” He gave us a second-class cabin, looked at our son doubtfully. "Tall for his age, isn't he? Only four and something, did you say?" And another, equally persuasive fragment: In Singapore we were refused a room at the English hotel, and the Chinese ones were very hot and uncomfortable; there was opium-smoking, prostitution and gambling all round us. Marguerite had prickly heat, and our son cried all night long. Our clothes were all too heavy for the damp, hot weather Having returned home as a former engineering student from Belgium, Han Suyin's father was then employed by the Belgian company developing a railway network throughout the Chinese interior. There are many fragments in the pages of her books, referring to this period in her and her family's lives. A happy one is given already in Chapter One of The Crippled Tree: Railways meant a lot to my father, and they were also part of the climate of my growth since my childhood was spent in small or large railway stations. Even now, whenever I hear the siren hoot of an engine, my childhood comes cantering back to me. Inequality between Western high school diplomas granted to the Chinese and to the whites was indisputable, self-evident and absolutely “natural,” and was thus quite impossible to argue against. The Chou family was confronted with this inequality right from their re-settlement to China. In Chapter Nineteen of The Crippled Tree, Han Suyin mentions: It was in the yellow plains of Honan; not far from it, the Yellow River had burst its dykes and gone flooding once again, and there were many displaced peasants and also bandits and soldiers, the latter more than the former and more to be feared. The little station was safe, however. There the Big Engineer, whose name was spoken of with indrawn breath and a small pause of respect because he was a Belgian and had a large salary, stayed in a new brick house constructed specially for him on a small hill. Mama and Papa lived in a small Chinese house of earth walls on the other side of the railway, about two miles away ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g and batteries, canvas and rubber footwear, rattan furniture, trunks, suitcases, umbrellas and rope. Almost all these exports went to China and the nearby states of the Philippines, Netherlands East Indies, Malaya, Siam, French Indo-China, Burma and India. The only significant exports to Britain were 268 tons of lard valued at £7,000 and £50,000 of preserved ginger. In the 1930s exports to China were badly affected by a steep rise in import duties. Under the treaties imposed on China in the nineteenth century tariffs were limited to five per cent, but over the period 1926 to 1933 China achieved full tariff autonomy and soon raised its duties to gain additional revenue, and also to protect its own industries and substitute local manufactures for foreign imports. For example, the duty on rubber-soled shoes remained at five per cent until 1931 when it was raised to 17 per cent and then to 30 per cent in 1933. Similar protectionist moves were made by neighbouring countries in an attempt to combat the world depression of the 1930s. The Philippines raised its tariff on rubber shoes from 25 per cent to 100 per cent in 1933. This escalation in tariff barriers affected Hong Kong's trade and economic prosperity in two ways: the entrepôt trade through Hong Kong was reduced since China was deliberately seeking to curtail foreign imports; and Hong Kong's domestic exports of manufactured goods to China were also affected. A number of factories were forced to close having lost their markets in China. The value of imports and exports passing through the harbour dropped by 40 per cent between 1931 and 1934. Hong Kong's economy was saved from ruin by the amazing growth in its exports of manufactured goods to empire markets. This was an unintended consequence of the decisions taken at Ottawa to erect trade barriers to exclude Japanese exports. Page 17 II When the colonies of European settlement had advanced to internal self-government it was no longer politically possible for Britain to exercise control over their trade and tariff policies. The dominions wished to protect their infant industries against imported manufactures, including imports from Britain. At imperial conferences the dominion premiers offered to grant a preferential rate of duty to British goods and asked that Britain should reciprocate by granting a tariff preference to empire produce over foreign goods. Britain refused this offer and remained committed to free trade. The dominions then acted unilaterally to make Britain a beneficiary of their tariff policies. Canada was the first to grant tariff preferences to Britain in 1897, followed by South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. In 1907 the preferences granted to Britain by Canada were extended to the West Indian colonies, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Ceylon and the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g preferences granted to British goods, to increase the margin of preference on a few specific items and to review the level of existing tariffs which protected dominion manufactures against British goods. The dominions approved tariff preferences on specified colonial goods, mostly tropical agricultural products, asphalt, rum and cigars. Each dominion offered a different list of concessions to the colonies and not all were equally generous. South Africa granted preferences only on raw coffee and asphalt. Canada gave little more than the preferences already embodied in the 1920 trade agreement with the West Indian colonies." New Zealand was the only dominion which agreed to grant preferences at the same rates as were accorded to Britain to all the colonies and protectorates. The agreements with the dominions provided that the preferences accorded to British goods might be extended to the colonies, protectorates and mandated territories ‘if His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom so request'. All these preferences were for British manufactured goods. The development of manufacturing industry in the colonies was not anticipated by the governments represented at Ottawa. If it had been foreseen it is probable that the dominion governments would have raised strong objections to admitting goods manufactured under oriental conditions to their markets under a tariff designed to benefit British manufacturers.28 After the Ottawa conference a circular despatch was sent to all colonies and dependent territories setting out the tariff preferences which would be granted by the dominions to colonial exports of foodstuffs and raw materials." These preferences would give the dependencies a reasonable prospect of replacing foreign imports by imports from empire sources in the dominion markets concerned. In return the dependent territories were 'invited' to grant to the dominions the preferences which the colonial secretary had negotiated at Ottawa. Cunliffe-Lister made clear that it was a matter of the highest importance that the Ottawa settlement should be put into effect as an integral whole. I should feel that I had been guilty of a breach of faith if the legislature concerned refused to grant the preference in question, unless I could put to the dominion government concerned clear evidence that there were really substantial reasons for not granting the proposed preference. It would not be an adequate ground of objection to say that the desired preference might increase the local cost of living, so long as the increase was only moderate and did not cause hardship to a particularly poor class of the community. Governors prepared the necessary legislation for introduction into the colonial legislatures, but a number warned the Colonial Office that they Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 45 China, Hainan would appear to have been neglected. Before 1949 Hainan was an area which few foreigners appear to have visited, though for much of the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th foreign consuls, customs officers and traders endured their existence, particularly in the northern port of Haikou (Hoihow), the American Presbyterian Mission, the first body of missionaries, only began its work 'saving' Hainan in 1881. Despite the latter, there would seem to be no missionary writings describing the temples and "idols" as did Father Doré in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, Shryock in Anqing and others across northern and central China. The old church in Qingzhou Fu, some three miles inland and to the west of Haikou, by 1890 had been converted into a Temple of Longevity, and another church elsewhere in Hainan, had also become a Chinese temple known as the Temple of the Cross. In 1882 Mr Jeremiasen, an independent Danish missionary, made an unmolested circuit of Hainan on foot 'proving the friendliness of the people.' He then crossed the island north to south and east to west. Westerners who travel through "darkest" China today and write or talk about being the first foreigners within some remote spot, forget or overlook such Christian missionaries who roamed across all areas of China more than a century and a half ago. Even today there are foreign tourists who regard themselves as among the first to set foot in the more remote areas of Hainan. However, what Jeremiasen and others have overlooked are the individual Portuguese and German missionaries whose graves, dated in the 1680s, have been identified on Hainan. Most foreign visitors today also forget or, more likely, have probably never even heard of the eminent Chinese banished to the island during the early days of the periods of forced settlement of the 13th and 14th centuries. An aspect of journeys to Hainan a century or so ago, now also long forgotten, was the basic problem of getting ashore from the steamer from Hong Kong. This was often the worst part of the journey. The steamer from Hong Kong touched bottom some three miles or so out to sea leaving the trip ashore to the main port of Haikou by shallow draft sampan across mud flats under less than a foot of water. This required bargaining with the laoda [captain] of one of the many sampans which offered their services to tranship passengers ashore. The native boatmen in a very round-about trip through the intricate channels, sliding over ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 72 uniquely Hainanese. In practice of the seventeen only one was Hainanese and that bore the odd title. It was Li San Shengmu, literally the Saintly Mother Li the third. This is obviously Li Shan, misheard with the 'san' assumed to be the 'Third'. The most widespread claim is that Lishan Shengmu or Lishan Laomu24 was a ferocious lady general of the Tang dynasty known for her love of fighting, and is now a popular character in Chaozhou plays. However, to many Chinese she is better known by the maiden name of Fan Li-shan as merely the wife and mother of two famous generals, Xue. Several stories told about her contain in addition to common factors, others involving unconnected genuine historical heroes, some from entirely different eras. The composite story of the best known legends about Miss Fan25 begins with her warrior father giving her a 'sword to execute Immortals' and a 'whip to beat the spirits' and after she had completed her military training and prior to her going off to help General Xue Dingshan26 to pacify the west. In one version she joined up with him, served and fought alongside winning his trust and favour. In another Xue met and fought her on the battlefield. She defeated him but, because he was a handsome general, and with a bit of persuasion, she married him. A photocopied broadsheet distributed by the temple keeper in a small immigrant settlement shrine above Kowloon claimed that the Lishan cult had been popular in central China, and that her story, described in the 'Conquest of the West,' ostensibly written by Xue Dingshan himself, explained that she had been the wife of Xue, later transformed into an Immortal as a reward for her miracles and achievements. There is also a Lishan Laomu who is also a definitive goddess appearing in the great novel The Journey to the West, the story of the fantastic journey made by Xuanzang, together with Sun, the Monkey, Sha the monk and Pigsy. In part of the story it appears likely that Lishan was Monkey's elder sister, a courtesy title rather than a blood relationship. She, together with her three daughters, all Bodhisattvas, named Truth, Love and Pity, transformed themselves into beautiful women in order to tempt the Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang and his entourage of Monkey, Pigsy and Sha with their beauty. She changed herself into a widow and proposed to Xuanzang who rejected her. She and her daughters teased Pigsy, who after many adventures found that they were merely figments of his imagination. This goddess would ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 208 Hitting the highway Day 6, and the winding road, 1,000 feet up the valley side, that was taking us to the next item on our agenda, and along which no two vehicles could pass without one of them either reversing a few miles or risking an extremely rapid journey to the river, was referred to by the guide as 'The East-West Highway.' Along the route we had a brief but stunning view of Gunga Phunsum, at 24,614 feet the highest unclimbed peak in the Himalayas. At about 11,150 feet Shingkar village was the highest settlement we visited and the most remote. Even our guide had not been before, but needless to say Brian had. With the assistance of some international aid money, each house had been fitted with a small solar panel, but it was not certain whether or not they were working. However, that was the only hint of modernity. The rest was pure Middle Ages England. The village straddled a stream, which flowed through its middle unchecked, running where it would. The water was only diverted at one point, through a narrow wooden channel into a small stone structure, by which time the water was rushing with quite some force. Was it used to fire a generator, or to turn a mill wheel? The very beginnings of a local industrial revolution? No. Of course, the water was being harnessed to turn a prayer wheel. We wandered along the village's stone and mud paths, between the widely spaced and randomly placed houses. Up here at the back of beyond these people have precious little, but what little they have is precious, Our itinerant chef, Al Fresco, once again conjured up a good and welcome meal of rice, vegetables, salad and chicken. This time we were watched by a crowd of inquisitive but well-behaved onlookers - a novelty compared to all previous outdoor lunches. A short distance down the valley was the village of Ura, at about 10,170 feet, special for having its houses huddled more closely together. For warmth? It was not clear. But it had been a feature of all other villages that we had seen that the houses had been widely spaced; unlike their Chinese counterparts, for example, Bhutanese village-dwellers usually like to have a bit of space around them. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 424 readers will not have seen before. They number forty-three among the over 140 provided to illustrate the book. All the chapters are of interest, but I most enjoyed No.10. This is entitled 'Across the River: Honam and Fati,' dealing with the area opposite the City and the Foreign Factories, and separated from them by the main stream of the Pearl River. We read about the warehouses at Honam, occupied by the merchants after the Thirteen Factories were burned in 1856 (and which some among their number continued to occupy for many years after land in the new commercial settlement at Shamien was put up for sale in 1861). Also, about the villas and gardens of the two Chinese merchants foremost in the foreign trade, and the famous 'Sea Banner Monastery' nearby, now restored, which, like the gardens, had been one of the places members of the foreign community were permitted to visit under the 'Regulations' governing residence at the Factories. Included, too, are some glimpses of the temple and the merchant-mandarin residences, and their occupants taken from contemporary accounts of the Macartney and Amherst embassies to China, which had been housed on Honam during brief stays in Canton in 1793 and 1817. Besides the wonderful quotations from writers of the past, we have Mrs. Garrett's splendidly evocative account of her first visit to Canton in the 1970s (Introduction, xii), and her brief description of the garden at Abu Wangus's tomb (p. 8), making this reviewer wish she had included more of the same at other points of the narrative. Although the book is more of a "coffee-table" production than a guide-book, its contents seem to me to require one or more large maps. With the exception at page 178 (Fig. 14.6), the maps included among the illustrations are at best half-page, and most of them date from the past. A specially drawn full-page or even folding one, to complement the text, would assist the reader, especially since, in present-day Canton, besides the changes of street names mentioned by Mrs. Garrett, all street names are now rendered in pinyin romanization, which is vastly different from romanizations of the local Cantonese speech. Such a map would give visual indication of the precise whereabouts of the many interesting sites or buildings described by the author, and could have been substituted for the historical and disappointingly unclear historical map of the Canton River which is reproduced on the end ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 Transitional wares and their forerunners. Hong Kong: Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong, 1981. Kotenev, Anatol M. + Shanghai: its mixed court and council: materials relating to the history of the Shanghai Municipal Council and the history, practice and statistics of the International Mixed Court, Chinese modern law and Shanghai municipal land regulations and bye-laws governing the life in the settlement. Shanghai: North-China Daily News & Herald, 1925. Kotenev, Anatol M. Shanghai: its municipality and the Chinese. Shanghai: North-China Daily News & Herald, 1927. Lam, Susan YY. and Sze, Jane Past visions of the future: some perspectives on the history of the University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, 2001. Liao Disheng, Zhang Zhaohe, Cai Zhixiang Xianggang li shi, wen hua yu she hui. 1, Jiao yu xue pian. Xianggang : Xianggang ke ji da xue Hua nan yan jiu zhong xin, 2001. Liao Disheng, Zhang Zhaohe, Cai Zhixiang Xianggang li shi, wen hua yu she hui. 2, Tian ye yu wen xian pian. Xianggang: Xianggang ke ji da xue hua nan yan jiu zhong xin, 2001. Liao Disheng, Zhang Zhaohe, Cai Zhixiang Xianggang li shi, wen hua yu she hui. 3, Tian ye yu wen xian pian. Xianggang: Xianggang ke ji da xue hua nan yan jiu zhong xin, 2001. Lee, Kuan Yew Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. Tai-bei: Shi jie shu ju, 2000. Liang, Ellen Johnston Art and aesthetics in Chinese popular prints: selections from the Muban Foundation collection. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002. lv ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 1 ARTICLES THE TRANSFER OF THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS: A REVISIONIST APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF COLONIAL LAW AND ADMINISTRATION ANDREW ABRAHAM [Hon. Ed. - The Straits Settlements was a former British crown colony on the Strait of Malacca, comprising four trade centres, Penang, Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan, established or taken over by the British East India Company. The British settlement at Penang was founded in 1786, at Singapore in 1819; Malacca, occupied by the British during the Napoleonic Wars, was transferred to the East India Company in 1824. The three territories were established as a crown colony in 1867. Labuan, which became part of Singapore Settlement in 1907, was constituted a fourth separate settlement in 1912. The Straits colony, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, was broken up in 1946, when Singapore became a separate crown colony. Singapore attained full internal self-government in 1959, became a part of Malaysia in 1963, and became an independent republic in 1965. Labuan was incorporated in North Borneo (later Sabah) in 1946, which in turn became a part of Malaysia in 1963. Penang and Malacca were included in the Malayan Union in 1945, the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and Malaysia in 1963.] Introduction The Straits Settlements were transferred in 18671 to the Colonial Office's administration due to the dissatisfaction of the European merchants with the Indian government's rule. Their grievances were cited in a petition in 1857, the most contentious of which cover complaints of the East India Company's (EIC) attempts to introduce measures damaging to trade, problems with piracy and convicts, and failure of the Indian government to build up an influence in the Malay peninsula. However, a study of the history of the Straits Settlements shows evidence of a booming economy, many cases of intervention by the EIC in the affairs of the Malay states, and issues such as those concerning piracy, convicts and currency more or less resolved. Furthermore, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 In Calcutta's eyes, the main duties of the governor of the Straits Settlements were to 'balance his budget and to insulate the settlements from complications in the hinterland.' This policy, as Turnbull puts it, was doomed to fail;15 instead it provided the background causes for the agitation of the European merchant community for the transfer of the Straits Settlements from the India Office to the Colonial Office in London. For example, as the settlements prospered, the European merchants demanded more expensive and sophisticated administration, an efficient judicial system, defence, and security for their property and trade.1 However, due to Raffles' free trade policy, which was extended to all three settlements, and the failure of land and agriculture, there was insufficient revenue to fund these demands. The activities of ambitious pioneers, mainly Chinese migrant workers, who were 'lured by the wealth of the interior [of the Malay states],' made it impossible for the Straits government to cut the settlements off from the affairs of the Malay states. Calcutta maintained its policy of non-intervention to the end, but in practice, every would-be final settlement the government of India authorized merely provided the basis for further involvement.18 The petition of 1857, wherein the grievances of the Straits merchants were cited In 1857, the Straits merchants sent a petition to the House of Commons,19 explaining their grievances with regard to the administration of the Straits Settlements under the EIC, and requesting a transfer of control (by means of an Act of Parliament) from the EIC to the Colonial Office. However, some of the issues raised to the House of Commons appear to be questionable (that is, not all the issues were as serious as they were made out to be). This calls for an examination of the validity of these hazy 'problems,'20 in order to assess the necessity of the transfer. In the process, I will also highlight the way in which constitutional and legal changes were introduced in the Straits Settlements. Legal changes emerged in response to the demands of the Straits society; that is, such changes were governed by a variety of factors. Hence, I will ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 NOTES Abbreviations: Colonial Office - CO JIA - Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia JMBRAS - Journal of the Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society JSEAH - Journal of Southeast Asian History SFP - Singapore Free Press SSR - Straits Settlements Records The Government of the Straits Settlement Act, 1866. 29 & 30 Vicc 115 - An Act to provide for the Government of the Straits Settlements. Turnbull, The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony. (1972) Oxford University Press, p 379 Among the various historians on Malayan history, Mary C Turnbull's comments on the Straits Settlements prior to the Transfer in 1867 are, by far, the most balanced and comprehensive, and her views on this area are invaluable. While the following facts were gathered from several historians' works, I have been influenced strongly by Turnbull's analysis. I have attempted to summarize in the following 3 sections Turnbull's views based closely on her Introduction to The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony. cf. Treaty of 6 February 1819 (Johore 1819) (Treaties with Native States Part III) Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between the EIC and the Sultan of Johore in 1824, cf. Treaties with Native States p 16 Part III cf. Article 10 of the treaty Turnbull, The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony, Introduction p 3 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 in the Straits, for example in negotiation for the settlement of Penang Island in 1786 where the Supreme Government remained steadfast in refusing to promise military aid to the Sultan of Kedah. Thus, in a Siamese invasion in 1821, the Penang Government did not offer military aid to the Sultan, but only political asylum and mediation. Indeed the whole history of Anglo-Siamese relations in the Malay Peninsular shows evidence that the non-intervention policy was adhered to as much as possible, (cf. Mills, supra, Chap 8 (Anglo-Siamese relations)) For the obvious political and economic reasons the British did not want to antagonise the Siamese (cf. Tarling, Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Malay World, 1760-1824) by interfering in the affairs of the Malay States (such as Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu) which were within the Siamese sphere of influence. Severe censures were passed upon Captain Low for his treaty with Perak in 1826; and the treaty between James Low and Perak and Selangor in 1826, received strong criticism from the Supreme Government and resulted in Low's being suspended from his duties. (Tan DE, Supra, p 119) The Indian Government only relented when Governor Fullerton managed to convince it of the necessity of protecting British interests, a clear instance of the Indian Government's unwillingness to intervene in any of the Malay States. This was further proven when appeals of Perak and Trengannu for defensive purposes were likewise rejected. In the Naning War of 1831-2, Governor Ibbetson was told that the extension of territory was not desired. (Ibid. p 119) An even more striking instance occurred in 1833, when the boundary between the Malacca Territory and the tiny state of Johol was debated over. Between the two lay a debatable piece of land which had formerly been claimed by both states, containing rich mines of tin and gold. Governor Ibbetson regarded the frontier delimitation as an excellent opportunity for showing that accessions of territory and encroachments upon their rights is the furthest from our views and intentions' (Mills, supra, p 177), thus resigning any claims that the British might have to it, and even included it within the area of Johol. Through the above examples, I would say that the British were pursuing a policy of non-intervention in the Malay States between 1824-73. They upheld this policy whenever possible, though in some cases intervention was unavoidable. And it is significant that sometimes even in instances where British merchants' interests were threatened (for example in Negri Sembilan), the policy of non-intervention was still observed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 78 the theatrical matsheds and much else, were borne by association leaders and their members, and by donations from, and levies on, the local communities. The services of the schoolmasters and local scholars were normally rendered without charge, since they were probably pleased to be asked, and their work kept their names and reputation before the public. Lion or unicorn dances In Hong Kong, lion and unicorn dancers were, and still are, an important adjunct to ceremonial occasions. They are much in evidence at festival times, and in the opening ceremonies for any important event. No resited villagers would occupy their new settlement without the obligatory lion or unicorn dance to help guarantee a safe and prosperous environment, and no self-respecting new bank branch or restaurant would open for business without these harbingers of their future business success. Newly renovated historic buildings were also re-opened in style, with lion dancers well to the fore (Plate 19) Before development overtook Hong Kong's former rural area, practically all the six or seven hundred old villages of the New Territories had their lion or unicorn dance teams. In Cantonese-speaking villages, it was always a lion; and in the Hakka villages, a unicorn. However, observation and enquiry indicate that their purpose and motivation are much the same. These dance troupes are also to be found in urban areas, past as well as present. 3 Besides the lion and unicorn troupes, there was a third, much less common and only to be seen among immigrant communities of persons from the Hoklo areas of Northeastern Guangdong. This was the pei yau troupe. Described to me as 'younger brother to the dragon,' the pei yau was rather a joyous, amiable creature. Plate 20 shows a typical example, photographed in a New Territories village in recent years. * The dance teams were at the heart of traditional village life. Besides what might be styled their internal duties at family celebrations by fellow villagers or at the opening of temples, ancestral halls, schools and village offices, they were turned out to meet and send off important visitors. If plague menaced, the lion or unicorn dancers accompanied Taoist priests in procession round the neighbourhood in order to dispel it. And should any village be under attack, the troupes under their respected instructors would form the first-line defence. They were, besides, a principal means for maintaining and extending a village's status and prestige. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 112 Gough Battery The two gun emplacements of the Gough Battery are the most conspicuous features of the defence structures on Devil's Peak. The emplacements themselves were found to be in fairly good condition. There is no obvious damage to the concrete aprons and gun pits of the emplacements, although all metal parts of the shell cubicles of the emplacements, such as hinges and doors, have been taken away, probably by scavengers. The surface of the concrete apron of the larger gun emplacement, for a 9.2-inch gun, is slightly bevelled towards the outer rim. The spare barrel holder is intact. The cement rendering on this emplacement creates a surface with regular blobs, which probably facilitates the mounting of camouflage nests. The smaller of the two emplacements, which housed a 6-inch quick firing gun, has become a planter for wild trees. To the north of the emplacements lies the alleged third emplacement. This emplacement appears to be a machine gun position. Parts of the walls of this shelter have been damaged. Further to the west lies the remains of a rectangular floor slab/foundation of a former bunker structure that measures 18.3m x 5.5m. The superstructure has disappeared completely. Between the two gun emplacements is an underground complex. Broken ramps and steps can be found around a store structure, which we believe to be the original access. The whole structure should have been largely roofed over originally. However, the central portion of the structure has collapsed, forming a "central courtyard". Exposed broken end-sections of the roofs show little reinforcement to the original roof slab. The cement content of the structure is relatively low, with a large proportion of stones and sand. The largest underground store between the emplacements is a magazine. As a double vault supporting structure, it was built in brickwork. All of the arches are still in very good condition, without any noticeable crack or sign of settlement. There is a shaft for lifting ammunition to the 9.2-inch gun emplacement above. Note that the following features, which have not been or continued ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 114 The unauthorised cultivation of flowering plants and the erection of two pennant stands inside the redoubt may add to the attraction of the sites. However, the careless replacement of the old military path that linked Gough Battery and the 196m site by a new cement path is one example of human actions that can destroy the historic physique of the sites. The removal of the remaining beams and roofs over the firing trenches at the Devil's Peak Redoubt by unknown visitors or squatters is another example. The fixing of a pole outside the Yau Tong-facing external wall of the redoubt, which might have aggravated the settlement of the wall, is a third example. Hill fires caused by careless smokers and cemetery visitors are a fourth problem. Hill fires pose a big problem, as they lead to serious soil erosion, though such fires may expose some interesting features for pillbox hunters. The erosion is so serious that many natural and man-made features that existed on the 1:600 government survey plan of 1963 can no longer be seen now. An example is the waterway that drains the 6-inch gun emplacement of Gough Battery to the vicinity of the pillbox on the rock (referred to above) has disappeared. Although the area under study is not part of a country park, the two sites, under government ownership, have escaped the fate of being converted into a service reservoir in the late 1970s and have been protected passively since as a statutory Green Belt zone. Yet, the last government planning proposal to actively manage the area as part of an "urban fringe park," suggested in Metroplan, has yet to be taken up by a government department. It is in this context that the recent construction of a cement path that links the Gough Battery, the 196 m site, and the redoubt could pose a major additional threat to the survival of the remains on the sites, by improving access to a site without any facilities management. Acknowledgements The authors wish to express their thanks to Mr. R.G. Horsnell and Mr. Tim K. Ko for their useful advice on the military aspects of the structures on both sites in the course of finalising this paper. They also thank the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust for providing financial support. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 145 and started to work on what he loved - studying local history. so I “By nature I'm a local historian,” said Hase. "It's just nearly impossible to do it here for the 7th century English history started looking at local history." Hase briefly removed his glasses and seemed to look different from the way he had the last 30 years, with glasses. Because of those spectacles, I was able to stumble upon the academic in the 1984 edition of "Who's Who in Hong Kong.” In it is a picture of Hase with a bit thicker hair, but essentially looking very much the same. "I have no idea how I got in there,” said Hase who was at the time one of many civil servants listed. "I guess they just wanted all civil servants of a certain rank to be included." Hase was listed as principal assistant secretary to home affairs and his boss Dr. James Hayes, also was listed in the book. It was through Dr. Hayes - a past president and previous editor of the RAS Journal that Hase got involved with the Society. Hase joined the RAS in 1980; he became a member of its Council in 1981 and served as honorary editor. But Hase said he was not a very good editor. When he took over, they had fallen behind by a year and a half, and later on, that was extended to three years. "I was a good editor in doing the editing when I could get myself to do it, but I hated the work so the journals got horribly, horribly delayed... Eventually I did it, and I did it well.” He edited seven journals and two books for the RAS. Hase has himself published over 30 articles on life in the New Territories, customs, Fung Shui and pure history. Hase's next article, on Ngau Tse Wan Village, will be published in Vol. 39 of the journal. Most of Hase's subjects were born between 1910 and 1920; those people that still remember how the New Territories was before major changes wrought by increased settlement between 1915 and 1925. But in another 10 years Hase likely will not have any sources left for his research. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 231 Henan province to Legge in Hong Kong. It is very unclear who that might be, since the London Missionary Society did not have regular workers in inland China, or even more north along the eastern coast of China, until after the settlement of the second Opium War in 1860. Nevertheless, the writer speaks about "old Chow" (lǎo Zhōu, accepted as an intimate expression between friends and not merely descriptive of age), an elder Chinese Christian in their church, who became so interested in the Poklo movement that he visited Ch'ëa independently in 1858 and found what had been said to be the case. 54. For further comments on Hannah Mary Legge's life as a missionary wife and spouse of an Oxford University professor, see Lauren Pfister, Striving for the "Whole Duty of Man": James Legge and the Scottish Protestant Encounter with China (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, forthcoming 2003), vol. 2, chapters 5 and 6 in passim, and Norman J. Girardot, The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 55-56, 62, 84-87, 150-151, 194-196, 455-456, 506-509. 55. Legge wrote, “Since his baptism in 1856, Ch'ëa has spent a large portion of his time in travelling, and making known the things which he believes, entirely without fee or reward. Our Church came to the conclusion that we ought, in accordance with the principle that the labourer is worthy of his hire, to do something for him; and he has gone back home the Agent or Missionary of our Chinese brethren here, for a period of three months. At the end of that time we are to see him again, when it may be advisable to take measures to prosecute the work in Pok-lo on a larger scale than the small means of my people can attain to." EMMC/MM 24 (February 1860), p. 39. 56. These statistics are summarized from the annual report of Legge and Chalmers written on January 14, 1861 (CWM/South China/Box 6/Jacket B/Folder 3) and Legge's "Journey of a Missionary Tour". 57. The subtleties of translation here are also important. Did Ch'ea actually use a word for "Papists," or was this derogatory term the European translators' replacement for a more neutral phrase for "Catholics" like Tiānzhǔjiào tú? 58. See EMMC/MM (September 1857), p. 207 for details. It should be mentioned, though it may be obvious to some, that the previously described persecutions of 1856 when Ch'ea self-consciously remained silent before his "persecutors" in the government was also an imitation of Christ's silence before the Sanhedrin. 59. Selected from EMMC/MM (September 1857), p. 208. 60. This scene and the subsequent information from Mr. Kot appear in the translation of the dictated account of his conversion published in EMMC/MM (September 1857), pp. 208-209. 61. There are later examples of sermons dealing with the topic of providence, for example, which probably reflect earlier teachings at Union Chapel. For Legge's sermons touching themes of divine providence see "The Review and Meaning of the Past" (on Deuteronomy 8:2, dated January 1, 1871, found in CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 4), "The Rationale of the Divine Judgments" (on Psalm 119:75, dated September 17, 1871), and "The Doctrine of a Particular Providence" (on Psalm 37:38-40, dated January 28, 1872, both this and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 261 were keen to claim association with the first rulers of the Zhou, of the 12th century BC, and also with the infamous first ruler of China, Qin Shih Huangdi who, it was claimed, had used the area of Dantu as a penal settlement. During dynastic times Zhenjiang was a walled administrative seat, an important prefecture, and one of twelve prefectural cities in Jiangsu province, in a major region known as Jiangnan [South of the River]. Zhenjiang means 'Guard-post of the River', a title given in 1113 during the Song dynasty, and its location, guarding the junction of the Grand Canal and the Yangzi, is such that it was a fortified post at the point where the southern arm of the Grand Canal crosses the Great River to join the northern arm, as well as being the first and ideal position to control the upstream passage of the Yangzi. The British political aim, when their soldiers captured the city in 1842, was to cut off the vital supply route, the Grand Canal, from southern China to the north in order to exert maximum pressure upon the Imperial government. Although Zhenjiang lays claim to a number of incidents, destruction by nature and by human hand, visits by royalty, legendary happenings we shall restrain ourselves to note but a few. Sun Ce**, who was assassinated in 200 AD, conquered a wide territory down to the mouth of the Great River, to which region he gave the title Jiangdong [East of the River]. His brother, Sun Quan of Wu# succeeded to his throne, and it is to him that Zhenjiang is said to owe its existence as a city. Moreover, it was here that he came to court the beauty, Pan Furen, whose father Sun Quan had condemned to death. He pursued her until he was able to make her his wife. Although Nanjing was Sun's main city Zhenjiang had reminders of his fortifications still visible during the early years of the Republic. The foundations of the fortifications that he built round his Governor's Residence could still be traced in a line of crumbling masonry that capped the ridge of heights connecting the then existing Zhenjiang city wall northward to the monastery, Ganlu Si. Also, inside the present city stood a high solitary gateway, with a building on it known as the Old Drum Tower. The masonry foundations of the gate were alleged to date from the time of Sun Quan, and some graves outside the North gate were also said to be those of some members of his line. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 281 small boys were always at hand to do the beating, gun-carrying, ditching and picking up. It often occurred, under these circumstances, that a few dust-shot were put into the calf of a man's leg, and occasionally even an eye was injured. A fairly definite tariff gradually established itself; so much so that people used to dodge behind bushes or lurk in the ditches, so as to be ready to raise their hands and yell the instant a gun went off in their direction. Very few Chinese rustic skins were without an assortment of sores and bruises; and nothing was easier than to rub a shot or some powder in and pretend that an ‘internal injury' had occurred. With irate villagers gathering around timid or non-Chinese-speaking sportsmen were often only too glad to compromise on the spot; especially if a few old women with buckets of liquid manure joined in the discussion. Zhenjiang, some twelve to fourteen hours sailing upstream from Shanghai, was yet one more of the points of call on the Yangzi. Ships only stayed a matter of 30 or so minutes and tied up alongside one of the hulks or pontoons. These belonged mostly to foreign shipping or trading companies, though there were one or two hulks owned by Chinese businessmen, moored off the concession, from which it was reached by a bridge as there are pronounced seasonal differences in level. Passengers landed and were quickly cleared by the Customs House. The city, at the back of the foreign concession, was the prefectural capital with a Daotai, a Prefect or Circuit Intendant, and the Dantu, the County Magistrate. A Co-Prefect in charge of coast defences and a Prefect of Police were also located in the city, and in addition to the Manchu [Tartar] garrison stationed in Zhenjiang, under the command of a Lieutenant-General there was the ordinary Chinese garrison under a Lieutenant-Colonel, consisting of several battalions of local militiamen and trainbands [bodies of citizens trained in the use of arms]. Law and order was maintained in the settlement up to the turn of the 20th century by a body of British-officered Sikh policemen. Tall, imposing and forbidding-looking, they despised the Chinese and were equally heartily feared and disliked by them. The Chinese, amongst other things, complained bitterly about the iniquitous rates of usury charged by the Sikhs! At the age of 65, the indomitable traveller and writer Isabella Bird, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 283 doctors in charge, and a Lifesaving institution possessing six well-equipped, well-manned boats always on the river near the port, and ten others dodging about above and below. There was also a free ferry, with thirteen big boats, for crossing the ofttimes stormy and dangerous Yangzi. The city also had a winter 'soup kitchen', a Widows Relief Society and Widows' Home, the latter connected with a Boys' Orphanage. Another of the many Western visitors to pass through Zhenjiang was one of the first British Indian Army officers to study Chinese in Peking." Colonel Wingate eventually retired from the Indian Army as the Director of Military Intelligence but not before he had accomplished, among other things, a journey back from Peking to India overland between September 1898 and May 1899 to collect information of all kinds'. In the October during his journey up the Yangzi he disembarked from the Butterfield and Swire boat at Zhenjiang and was met by the British Consul, E. L. B. Allen who put him up in the consulate. [One of Allen's claim to fame was his hatred of the maddening noise of cicadas which he disposed of by shooting them with his pistol]. Wingate remarked in passing that Zhenjiang was unique among treaty ports in that it had only a British settlement; consequently most of the trade was divided between British and Chinese. Consulates were set up in Zhenjiang not only by Britain but also by France, Germany, Austro-Hungary and, for a short while, by America. British Consuls and the Consulate In 1858 the ruins of Zhenjiang were declared a treaty port open to foreign trade, and in 1861 a site was leased and laid out for a British concession. The British Consul first lived in the temple on Jiao Shan before renting a house on the slope near Guan Yin's Cave, the site which some sixty years later became the premises of the Chinese Life Saving Association which professed to be part-owner of most of the river foreshore. Later, a purpose-built Consulate was built on land acquired on the side of Yin Tai Shan [Consular Bluff] together with offices for the foreign employees of the Chinese Maritime Customs erected at the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 284 opposite extremity of the foreign settlement. Some years passed before the site was occupied. On 5th February, 1889, the Consulate building was burnt in a riot together with several neighbouring houses. The final Consulate of a main building and four houses was erected on the same site in 1890. Built predominantly of red brick with white and grey bricks forming the decoration, it had double windows to keep the rooms warm during the bitter winters and a royal reign tablet on the rear wall. This white oval plaque bearing the enjoined letters VR is still in place a century or so later. All the British consuls serving in Zhenjiang from its opening in 1860 found time hanging heavily and a number became medically unfit within a short time of taking up their posts. Adkins, the Consul writing to his father in December 1861 wrote in passing that 'the office of Consul at a thriving port is no sinecure I can tell you. He is judge, bishop, police magistrate, coroner etc. etc etc.' As is usual his own countrymen give him the least possible support and abuse him like a pickpocket.' It was also soon realized just how unimportant Zhenjiang had become to foreigners and by 1867 it was decided to post a junior consul to the port under the aegis of the senior consul at Shanghai. However, ten years later the number of British residents had increased sufficiently to warrant a return to the consular post being restored to its former independent status. It was by no means a comfortable place to live though PD Coates wrote that all in all Zhenjiang would have been a pleasant enough post had the [foreign] community been more congenial.24 One incident in the history of the consulate in Zhenjiang related by Coates, tells how in 1879 the Chairman and Treasurer of the Zhenjiang Concession Council, Bean, a British merchant who held several of the nineteen concession leases, physically assaulted H. J. Allen, the British consul, in the Club when the latter as Consul had asked to examine the Council's books before approving its accounts. Duff, another merchant, was the Secretary to the Council. Coates describes the constant and major friction between Bean and Duff, Bean and the Consul, and between other foreign residents of the Concession and this was reiterated by William Mesny as we shall soon see. Oxenham, a subsequent Consul in 1886, described Bean as a coarse, cantankerous, uneducated man of low tastes and malignant disposition who had insulted practically every Consul and Customs commissioner serving at the port. Adkins described in one of his letters to his father how English ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 286 Parker might pitch it into the nearest ditch as far as he cared, but it was as much as his place was worth for him to touch it. The Municipal Council issued notices and offered compensation, and meanwhile every day during their walks and rides they had to go round the obstructive eyesore. The Daotai had second thoughts and issued a proclamation saying that he had expostulated with Parker and in his reverent affection for human bones told him that he would have to wait for the agnatic descendants to come forward. This put Parker in a very uncomfortable position and he determined to go the Daotai one better. He therefore issued a proclamation explaining that no one had greater affection for human bones than he but pointed out that the coffin ran the risk of desecration, and that even distant members of the family were authorised to take it away at once. He then gave a broad hint to the Municipal Council that if distant members of the family turned up at dead of night with pick and shovel, no questions would be asked. It blew hard that evening and the air was filled with sleet. When he went out for his early walk the coffin had disappeared. The dealers in donkey-skins had taken four municipal policemen, dug a hole in the next field and then, after transferring the coffin, had slunk away. Nothing happened! Parker explained how Chinese and Tartar soldiers made a nuisance of themselves not only trouble making but also simply by strolling through the foreign settlement in order to steal a look at foreign devils. When he was Consul there, certain Europeans used to connive at gaming-houses, and take shares in native theatres; not to mention pawnshops, drinking houses and other places ever less orthodox, all flourishing under the sacred nose of Her Majesty's Consul. He found Zhenjiang a very rowdy place both from a foreign and native point of view. Consequently the municipal police had plenty of work. One strolling warrior was arrested for "committing a nuisance" and promptly punched the policeman's head. He was at last overpowered by others, and temporarily lodged in the consular gaol, the keeper of which was a one-eyed old soldier named Joshua Nunn, who boasted several medals, and had served his country bravely and well in the wars. Some more Chinese soldiers soon gathered round, and began to threaten a rescue, and even burn down the Consulate. Parker gave orders to plucky old Nunn to lock the man up in his strongest cell whilst he sent a pencil message round by the tingchai to each of three sturdy Britishers: "Please step round with your gun: I expect a row". In less than five minutes they were there, and with Parker sat before the entrance with their guns. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 287 The Consulate was on the most commanding elevation, at least fifty feet above the road with a steep mountain behind. About two hundred unruly soldiers gathered round the lower enclosure but seeing the four armed men did not approach. A written message was sent off to General Tao, commanding the permanent camp, half a mile off, stating that the man would not be released until the general came in person, identified the prisoner and punished him. After half an hour General Tao in his chair, with Colonel Peng on his charger, arrived and were informed that there was no intention to claim jurisdiction over or be harsh with the arrested man, but that it had to be clearly understood that if any soldiers or even officers came in to the settlement, they would be forced to obey the municipal bye-laws; and the Consul was the municipal chairman. The General was not too happy about the position he found himself in but was civil. He went with Parker to the prison, spoke with the man through the bars and as a result the man received about twenty slight bastinado-strokes on the spot and all was settled. The winter of 1877-8 was unusually bitter, the year of the great Shanxi famine when millions of Chinese perished from sheer want of food. Neighbouring provinces were invaded by endless streams of refugees and more especially so through the area surrounding Zhenjiang - because all roads from the north lead there. The authorities had provided thousands of mat hovels, on and against the city walls where shelter from the bitter wind was obtainable. Skilly was served out gratis twice a day with between fifty thousand to a hundred thousand refugees congregated around Zhenjiang. As we have already noted Zhenjiang was far from being the ideal posting and at least one consul there, in 1923, is known to have committed suicide. Consular duties brought hazards which, while not thought of as routine, were certainly sufficient to cause many a consul to look back with horror and amazement at what they had survived. One such consul would recall that in 1913, during the early days of the period of the war lords following the foundation of the Republic, with petty armies looting and causing endless unrest, soldiers of one such war lord, Zhang Xun, approached Zhenjiang bent on plundering the city. The British consul and a lone western merchant went out to face them - then, after very nearly being shot they held them at bay until one of their officers appeared and brought them under control. In another incident during the anti-British movement troubles of 1925 the British ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 305 Mason that 'You [Mason] have been left at Chinkiang not because you have been overlooked, but because you have shown a particular proficiency in acquiring the Nanking dialect, and I did not wish to interrupt these studies by transferring you to another province. It is also important for me to train certain men in the intricate business of Transit Passes40 peculiar to Chinkiang alone, and I have been pleased with your mastery of this branch of our work'. For the next couple of months Mason's name crops up in some dozen or so of Hart's letters, usually towards the end of a letter on, what were to Hart, weightier matters. Such comments included 'The Yamen finds "Mason Affair" very handy: it can now return the Legation fire neatly after last summer's bombardment sustained for the riots, etc. Mason was brought to trial in the British Supreme Court before the British Consul-General and the Shanghai Settlement's Chief Judge, N J Hannen, on 29 October 1891, charged simply with the illegal possession of dynamite to which he pleaded guilty. Although he had declared before and after the trial that he was a member of the Gelao Hui, had acted to further its plans to overthrow its government, and had personally brought the dynamite into China with unlawful intent, these facts were not mentioned at the trial nor did the Chinese government produce any evidence. The Chinese Legation in London later exerted pressure to demand that Mason, on his release from prison in Shanghai, be tried in Hong Kong on charges of crimes and conspiracy against the Chinese state. Mason was, however, not tried again. Hart, at one point, refers to Mason's comrade Croskey who Mason himself mentioned in his "Confessions" as a spy, put there by the Customs Service to watch Mason and who, according to Mason, betrayed and ruined him. In practice Croskey had been promoted from the outdoor staff to the indoor, and then posted to Zhenjiang. Mason somewhat naively explained his plans and plots to Croskey shortly after they met, and Croskey informed his boss in Zhenjiang who in turn asked Croskey to learn more about Mason's plan. Croskey resigned from the Service in the November 'on Sir Robert Hart's recommendation'. Croskey, according to Hart, was a promising young American citizen, a grandson of the first Sir Thos. Bazley, a Manchester MP.41 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 311 Zhenjiang city has grown beyond all recognition. Since the Communists came to power in 1949 Zhenjiang has suffered the same trials and tribulations as all other cities in China and only within the last decade or so of the 20th century did modernisation and development take off. Today it has wide streets, modern shops, drainage and factories as well as all the benefits, or otherwise, of westernisation. Also, three historical sites have been granted Asia-Pacific Heritage Protection Awards for 2001 by UNESCO. They are the Stone Pagoda, the Guan Yin Cave and a charitable association hall, all on Xijindu Street. 1 NOTES Zhenjiang city walls were said by the British military to have been thirty feet high and five feet thick. Allom, Thomas (1844) China - in a series of views, displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits of that Ancient Empire. London: Fisher, Son and Co Vol. IV p 41 3 The area selected to be the foreign settlement was chosen in 1861 and divided into lots. Ground rent was paid to the Chinese government by leaseholders to whom titles for 99 years were issued through the British Consulate. They would have expired in 1960 had not the treaty port as a whole been formally surrendered [rendited in official parlance to avoid using the word surrendered] in 1929 after it had been decided that minor concessions were more trouble than they were worth. A Cunynghame, Captain Arthur [1845] The Opium War: London "Taot'ai [Daotai] was the term for a Qing dynasty Circuit Intendant. *Percival, William Spencer (1889) The Land of the Dragon-My Boating and Shooting Excursions to the Gorges of the Upper Yangtze. London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd. [Percival was a member of H.B.M's Civil Service in China]. 'Clennell, WJ (June 1922) The Historical Setting of Chinkiang or a Bit of ‘Consular Bluff Shanghai: New China Review: Vol IV. No. 3 [Clennell provides much greater detail than is offered here]. & Sun Quan's city was built on Beigu Shan. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 Library Usage 2002/2003 2003/2004 No of reference enquiries 179 231 No of books consulted 408 327 No of borrowers 28 19 No of books loaned out 67 24 I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to the Hong Kong Central Library for their assistance and highly professional service to our members during the year. Ms. JULIA CHAN HON. LIBRARIAN 1 MARCH 2004 ADDITIONS LIST 2003/2004 Chen, Wen-te and Huang Ying-kuei Reflection on "Community Studies"; anthropological perspectives. Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 2002. Choi, Jang Jip Post-cold war and peace: experiences, conditions and choices. Seoul: Asiatic Research Centre, 2003 Dargye, Yonten and Sorensen, P.K. The biography of Pha 'Brug-sgom-zhig-po called the current of compassion. Thimphu: National Library, 2001. Drewett, Peter L. Neolithic Sha Lo Wan: a late Neolithic settlement at Sha Lo Wan, Lantau Island, Hong Kong. London: Archetype Pub., 1995. Geisert, Bradley Kent Radicalism and its demise: the Chinese Nationalist Party, factionalism, and local elites in Jiangsu Province, 1924-1931. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Centre for Chinese Studies Publications, University of Michigan, c2001. xlii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 6 incorporating the existing country park in Ma On Shan, marine park, hiking trail, holiday camp, water sports centre and festival market in the town. Moreover, Tai Long Wan - a traditional dwelling with its nearby beautiful beach in the eastern part of Sai Kung - was also included in its developmental guidelines for selected areas pending the preparation of Outline Zoning Plans (OZPs). However, the contested issue in Tai Long Wan is going to be the first case I will introduce. Tai Long Wan is especially well known among hikers and trail-walkers due to it being situated on the way from Long Ke to Pak Tam Au, forming the MacLehose Trail Stage Two. Nonetheless, we realize that the Town Planning Board (TPB) also deferred the Tai Long Wan zoning decision which was included in the SENTDSR for the intensive tourism/recreation and conservation/landscapes planning in Sai Kung area. After the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) rejected plans to build the Sheung Shui to Lok Ma Chau spur line project and the Lantau North-South Road link between Tai Ho Wan and Mui Wo, it perhaps was not surprising that the main reason for the postponement of the decision was the existence of certain rare plants in the area. And, TPB worried that natural resources in the proposed village zone area, in which indigenous people want to build houses, would be negatively affected in relevant development. A closer investigation of the situation in Tai Long Wan highlights the significant role of the government and implications of its policy and plan in balancing indigenous livelihood and the natural conservation. Tai Long Wan Tai Long Wan is a traditional settlement consisting of five villages and villagers with different surnames living together. It was probably founded more than 200 years ago even though we are not able to tell whether they came before or after the Coastal Evacuation 1662-1669.* Historically speaking, in 1899, there were already 700-800 villages including tsuen (not walled) and wai (walled) in the New Territories, and the two major dialectic groups were Punti who spoke Wai-tau language, and Hakka who spoke Hakka language. Those villages were grouped together in different regional alliances; however, after the official land registration at the beginning of the British colonial regime, the previous Chinese administrative units of heung and yeuk were strongly affected as well as weakened. In South China, the heung, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 7 which contained tsuen and wai, was an important administrative unit; yeuk were alliances formed by weak lineages as a means to oppose the stronger lineages. Tai Long Wan belongs to the Sai Kung Nam Yeuk (meaning Sai Kung South Alliance) which is originally formed by more than thirty Hakka settlements spreading all over the south-eastern part Sai Kung peninsula. Likewise, such groupings of Hakka communities were commonly found in the eastern part of the New Territories (about a similar traditional Hakka village settlement in Sha Lo Tung in Tai Po, also see Gee 1995). Divided by the mountain range on the eastern side of Pat Heung that is almost in the middle of the whole area, we find the north-western side of the New Territories is fertile flat land consisting of a few early settled clans such as Tangs, Mans, Haus, Lius, and Pangs. As distinct from the lineage-oriented village settlements of the north-western part of the New Territories however, we find the eastern and south-eastern parts of the New Territories are characterized by settlements that were regionally grouped in multiple lineages/villages together. As informed by Mr. Cham, one of the indigenous inhabitants of Tai Wai (sometimes called Tai Long by non-residents), one of the five villages in Tai Long Wan, there are altogether 700 to 800 villagers currently belonging to Tai Long Wan, even though most of them did not live inside the village. He estimated that about 500 villagers are now living in the UK and about 300 villagers are now living in the urban areas of Hong Kong. So many residents had moved out of Tai Long Wan because of the inconvenient transportation between the villages and the residents' working places and their children's schools. Mr. Cham told me that villagers from Tai Long Wan were mostly poor, and this explained why the last one-storey small-house built in Tai Long Wan was in the mid-1970s. Therefore, even though the villagers were asking for house land available for 370 units, he mentioned that the actual number would be much smaller and the potential applicants might be more in the next ten years. Regarding the indigenous rights in small-house policy, he emphasized that although 70 per cent of the potential applicants were living in UK, their rights to build houses on the homeland should be respected. Furthermore, he added that some retired villagers even came back to Hong Kong 2 to 3 times a year and some villagers had work that there might come back every year as well. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 'Rare plant delays zoning decision' (by A. So, South China Morning Post, November 4, 2000) With the intensive rural development and increasing land demand in Hong Kong from the late 1970s, policy related to land use became a more complicated task as people paid much more attention to the prime land than ever. The government has been putting efforts in environmental conservation; however, society's development continuously needed more land for both industrial and residential purposes. Adding to the dilemma, the government's claim to use of indigenously held land (either for conservation or development) was strongly rejected by the land's owners and dwellers. One of the main grounds for challenging the government has been the small-house policy enacted in 1972. Being able to build small houses within the village zone has been considered the indigenous rights claimed by local inhabitants in the leased territories; however, the increasing demand of house land requires village zones to be re-drawn. As we have seen from the case of Tai Long Wan, villagers expected to have some farm land converted into house land in order to have enough land for potential small-house applicants, yet, the government and many conservation groups have other considerations. In 2001, a village in Tai Long was graded as a historical settlement but future directions of restoration were not discussed yet. Pak Lap During the late seventeenth century, the Qing court encouraged migration to the coastal region after the Ming loyalist regime under Zheng Chenggong on Taiwan was pacified. Therefore, Hakka villages spread all over the eastern New Territories in Hong Kong including Sai Kung were mostly founded around that period. The second village, Pak Lap, shared a similar historical background with Tai Long Wan; more importantly, as far as I know, it is the only traditional village settlement in Hong Kong restored and developed into a small-scale rental-based resort houses. (for more information, see their homepage at: http://go.to/paklap). However, it was not planned in that way at the very beginning of the restoration. The story goes back to the early 1980s when Hong Kong was enjoying its economic achievements through the development of trading, finance, banking, and tourism industry. Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 10 Pak Lap is a single (Lau) surname Hakka village in which 17 houses built in two rows. In the past, Pak Lap's villagers depended on both farming and fishing; however, beginning in the early 1980s, farmland was taken out of agricultural production and most villagers moved away either working overseas or in the city. In 1993, a total amount of 300,000 square feet farm land belonged to Pak Lap villagers was all sold to a local developer; however, house land was still kept by the villagers. In addition, I was told that a condition of the transaction required by the villagers was that the developer had to rebuild the two rows of village houses (which they called Hakka pai house), even though the developer could have the rights of using them on a long-term basis to rent out for outsiders/visitors. Until 1999, Hong Kong's economy was still on the downside, the developer was no more able to fulfil the previous contract made in 1993. With the mutual understanding between Pak Lap villagers and developer, restoration instead of rebuilding was agreed; moreover, the rights of using were passed on to the constructor, Mr. Wong, because of the incomplete payment owed by the developer. Starting from that moment, the Wong family was in charge of managing the 17 houses in Pak Lap; two for their own use and 15 for renting out. When I visited them in early 2002, I found the rebuilding of the Lau Ancestral Hall was complete and some abandoned farmland was cultivated to grow different kinds of vegetables for the meals provided to visitors and customers staying overnight in the Hakka houses. Chek Keng The third village that I would like to introduce is Chek Keng. Unlike Tai Long Wan and Pak Lap, most buildings in Chek Keng can still be seen as they used to be, even though some of the houses had collapsed. Chek Keng is a traditional settlement consisting of five different lineage groups living together, and it was probably founded more than 200 years ago. Regarding the history of lineages in this Hakka village, I was told that there were five different lineages with surnames Fan, Chiu, Lee, Wong and Cheng living in the village. I got a chance to contact the village representative, Mr. Fan, who spent most of his time between UK and Hong Kong. The situation of Chek Keng was reported on by an English-language daily regarding lives of elderly New Territories villagers. Based on the only one Chek Keng resident ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 29 CANTON SYMPOSIUM: THE WORLD OF THE OLD CHINA TRADE: THE LOCALES AND THE PEOPLE JAMES HAYES [This article was prepared for a day symposium, China Trade: Insights into a Commerce that Traversed Seas, Continents and Centuries, organized by The Asian Arts Society of Australia at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Saturday, 1 November 2003.] Introduction The Old China Trade is a fascinating topic, in all its many aspects, broad and narrow. In all my years of study it has never lost this inherent attraction. This paper, intended to serve as a backcloth to the others in this Symposium, deals with the places in which the Old China Trade was carried out, and with the Manchus and Chinese with whom the foreign traders and sailors came in contact during the last hundred years or so of China's foreign Trade, under the arrangements of what became known as the Canton System.1 It is essentially about the Chinese side of the Old China Trade. Besides listing the various functionaries and personnel connected with it, I shall also be describing the condition of the people and the behaviour of the mandarins, both factors which had much to do with the conditions under, and the way in, which the foreign trade was administered. It also takes in the mutual ignorance of the other's history and culture, not omitting the lofty disdain long felt by all Chinese for "outer barbarians" nor the robust, self-confident pride of the visitors to their shores. The locales (see Map at Plate 1) Macau The Story of the China Trade begins in Macau. Until it reverted to Chinese rule, in 1999, Macau had been the oldest European settlement ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 101 issues may be left unresolved, at least there is some hope for the future, and concentration on building a peaceful future can be a common task, uniting former enemies. Where the end of the conflict has not been achieved through military victory, but through a negotiated settlement and through the use of amnesties, the settlement may be too fragile to bring perpetrators to justice. This is especially the case where there have been too many injustices, and where all sides to a conflict have something to fear. The current Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen, has used this kind of language to argue against legal resolution of old injuries, saying in 1998: “If the wound does not hurt, should we poke a stick into it and make it bleed again? If we bring the pair [Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, who defected from the Khmer Rouge to the government in December 1998] to prison…it could lead to renewed civil war.”24 An additional factor in the Cambodian situation is the time that has elapsed since the end of the Khmer Rouge rule: nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed, and many of the protagonists have died. "Brother Number One" of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, died on 15 April 1998. Half of the Cambodian population has been born since that time. The issues are important, but they do not have the same importance for those who were not directly involved. One writer has suggested that the policy of trial of a few leaders, and exemption for the mass of perpetrators, is the "middle way" policy for Cambodia, and the most likely to contribute to building a peaceful future.25 8. Conclusion The past, and in particular the scale of the atrocities under the Khmer Rouge, necessitate a tribunal which can deliver retributive justice is still a requirement despite the long passage of time since the events in question. The future, including both the personal resolution of issues for victims, and the dismantling of a culture of impunity, also necessitate such a tribunal. In practice, the Extraordinary Chambers will be limited to a few cases, and will not be responsible for retributive justice across the whole population. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 134 Pre-war there were a large number of local Chinese in Russian employment in Manchuria. A typical throw-away line in a correspondent's lengthy report was the description of the unexpected naval assault on the Russian Far Eastern Fleet in Port Arthur in February 1904 which precipitated the war. "The town was in confusion after this sudden and unexpected attack on the town initiating the conflict. Food prices soared as Chinese traders sold up and fled. Throughout the bombardment the Chinese streamed out to the hills wailing with fear. Clerks at one of the banks disappeared with large sums of money. Meanwhile, Chinese who were forbidden to travel by train during the mass exodus had converged on the harbour hoping to find places aboard foreign ships. Sampan men made a small fortune ferrying refugees out to the ships. Social organisation fell apart as Chinese servants and shop keepers fled leaving their employers and customers, the Russians, to fend for themselves." In August 1904 the Japanese entered the Treaty Port of Newchwang (Niuzhuang, now known as Yingkou), the Russians having pulled out without fighting. The Japanese were surprised the Chinese there did not welcome them as deliverers, regretted the departure of Russian friends, and charged the Japanese two dollars where they only charged the Russians one. During the interval between the departure of the Russians and the arrival of the Japanese, Chinese refugees poured into the settlement in a ceaseless stream, carrying their goods and chattels. This was an all too familiar pattern ahead of the advancing armies. A correspondent's description of life in Mukden ahead of the approach of the Japanese as winter set in 1904 included his impressions of the daily scene with 'Manchus and Chinese, the men almost indistinguishable from one another, the Manchu women differing in their free stride from the mincing tread of their Chinese sisters. Cossacks and Chinese had soon established quite friendly relations. At every step you can see soldiers bargaining with inflexible Chinese for a bottle of vodka, or a handful of nuts or a pair of socks. Sometimes you see a soldier eating an apple in a fruit-seller's stall. This soldier was supposed to discharge the duties of a policeman, and the apple represents bribery and corruption.' Although there were many reports of Chinese and Manchu peasants taking sides and fighting for one or other of the belligerents for what ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 139 units were in league with the Hong Huzi, whose activity was always a factor to be reckoned with in the Russian occupation of Manchuria. The Russian Minister in Peking made forcible representations and threats of what would happen should China break her neutrality. The Chinese were frightened into withdrawing General Ma and his army to a safe distance from the point of danger, and the General received the most explicit instructions not to make any move which might be used as an excuse by the Russians for an armed invasion west of the Liao River. The removal of his army from what was the main centre of bandit (Hong Huzi) activity in Manchuria left lawlessness there with a free rein against their bitterest enemies, the Russian occupying forces. As the Russian army found itself diverted to sending more and more of its garrison troops to stem the Japanese advance so the bandits grew ever bolder. Every night villages were attacked and robbed by marauders, who eventually even commenced to carry out petty depredations in a number of the native quarters of several of the major towns and cities along the south west of Manchuria. The Western residents of the foreign settlements became seriously alarmed at the prospect of what would in all probability happen when the Russian evacuation occurred and an interregnum ensued before the arrival of the Japanese. They formed committees under a major foreign dignitary, usually a Consul-General, to arrange for the defence of foreign life and property. During the interregnum the Russian settlement of Newchwang was in flames with swarms of Chinese looting the deserted houses, parading in the streets and waving little Japanese flags which had appeared as if by magic. Brindle reported that after the fall of Port Arthur bands of Hong Huzi deserted their guerrilla units and joined the regular forces of Japanese. They were sent north towards Mongolia and the market towns from which the Russian army secured its supplies, in order to harry the Russian supply lines. Bandits serving with Russian forces Following their occupation of Manchuria in 1900 the Russians had mounted a major campaign to suppress the Hong Huzi and found themselves to their surprise at war with well-armed parties of brave Chinese and Manchu bandits whose knowledge of the terrain provided ================================================================================