RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author 34 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 errant may be said to have had an ideology, it had more affinity with Taoism than with any other school of thought. True, in their altruism and devotion to duty they showed some resemblance to the Mohists, but they did not share the austerity of the latter. Indeed, the Mohists despised the knights errant and did not think them worth mentioning. It was to Taoism that some knights errant turned for guidance, as recorded in the biographies of several of them. This is hardly surprising: both Taoism and knight errantry came into being before Confucianism became the established official ideology, and both emphasized individualism and freedom from social bonds. To risk a generalization: if the obverse side of the Chinese character is represented by Confucianism—moderate, realistic, and conservative, then its reverse side is represented by Taoist philosophy, knight errantry, and various unorthodox artists and writers: romantic, individualist, and rebellious. It seems to me that it is the obverse side that is familiar to the West while the reverse side is perhaps not so well known and deserves more attention. To come back to the history of knight errantry; the early Han emperors, though they paid lip service to Confucianism, actually ruled largely by Legalist methods. It is therefore not surprising that they took strong measures to suppress the knights errant. I have already mentioned that Kuo Chieh's father was executed by order of Emperor Wen. In the next reign, Emperor Ching ordered the execution of many others. And Emperor Wu, as we have seen, ordered the execution of Kuo Chieh and his family. Yet in spite of such suppression, many knights survived, although not all of them lived up to the high ideals of true knight errantry. In later periods, knights errant continued to exist. For instance, the poet Li Po (A.D. 701-762) was a knight errant in his younger days and killed several people by his own hand. In still later periods of history, we also read of people described as being knights errant or behaving in a knightly manner. Sometimes this means no more than that someone behaved in a chivalrous, altruistic way, without necessarily using force or breaking the law. On the other hand, the more swashbuckling knights either degenerated into mere outlaws or became professional bodyguards. As we are concerned here with literature rather than history, I shall give no more examples of historical knights but turn to descriptions of knight errantry in literature. 7 According to the "Biographies of knights errant". See Lao Kan, "Yu-hsia, a type of knights errant in the Han dynasty", Bulletin of the College of Arts, National Taiwan University, No. 1. Li T'ai-po shih-chi (SPPY), chüan 31, 5a. See Arthur Waley, The poetry and career of Li Po (London, 1950), p. 6. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 51 friends of Education the expediency of establishing a public library in China. This plan was brought to our notice by the following letter, (which we publish with Mr. Colledge's permission) addressed: To the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, corresponding secretary to the provisional committee of the Morrison Education Society. My dear sir, On the dissolution of the British factory, it became necessary to make some disposition of the library belonging to the members of that establishment; and it was proposed to give the whole collection to the Morrison Education Society. The arrangement, however, not meeting with the concurrence of all the proprietors, a division of the books was determined on; and while I regret that so excellent a suggestion should not have been adopted, I am still happy in performing with my share, what it was my anxious wish should have been done with the whole, by presenting it to that admirable institution. The very injudicious method pursued in the division of the works, has allotted to me volumes of comparatively little value. Such as they are, I present them to the Morrison Education Society; with an ardent hope that I may live to see an institution, which so distinctly marks this enlightened age, attain, under your fostering care, the full realization of its philanthropic intentions, by promoting virtue and happiness through the blessings of education. I am, My dear sir, Respectfully and faithfully yours, T. R. Colledge. Macao, May 21st, 1835. Further early history of the Society can be traced through reports in the above-mentioned journal. One book still in the Library, A Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts Collected with A View To The General Comparison of Languages, And To The Study of Oriental Literature, by William Marsden, London, 1827, is inscribed by the author, "For the Library at Canton from the Author" and reminds the reader of the origin of some of the books. "Proceedings relative to the formation of the Morrison Education Society including the Constitution" were published in December, 1836. By this time there was a collection of some 1500 books on scientific, literary, and other subjects which had been presented to the Society, 700 from Mr. T. R. Colledge, 600 from Mr. J. R. Reeves, and others from Messrs. Dent, Fox, A. S. Keating, and J. R. Morrison, who gave a number of his father's books, some of which still bear his signature. A constitution was drawn up for the Library which stated that "The books belonging to the Society shall form a public library and be styled the 'Library of the Morrison Education Society'," and also provided that “rules for the regulation of the ================================================================================ 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-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v CHEUNG CHAU 91 is needed on this point. The Tong's position commands a special mention. It is the family organisation of the WONG clan who are now in the 27th adult generation at Nam Tau, their principal seat. By allowing a twenty-five year generation period, this will place their origin in Kwangtung in the early Yüan dynasty (1280—1368). However, the introduction to their gene-alogical record was written by a descendant of the 10th generation in the eighth year of the Hung-chih reign (1492-3), so that it seems likely that the generation periods are slightly longer and that the family dates from late Sung times. The Tong itself stems from an eighth generation ancestor, WONG Hing-cheong, a scholar of the chin-shih ± degree who had six sons, giving the Tong six branches, of which the first and third only are now represented on Cheung Chau. When the Tong acquired the Cheung Chau property is not stated; but since it was the sole ground landlord on the island in 1898 and all the other inhabitants held their leases from it and not direct from the Crown,1 it must have been at an early date, and very likely before the formation of the Tong in the mid-fifteenth century. Whether the whole island was given to the Tong by one grant, or whether, having first acquired a substantial grant of land, it pursued an assiduous policy of aggrandisement which eventually resulted in total ownership, is not certain; but, if a grant, it seems to have been a not uncommon thing in the San On district or the Kwangtung province.2 The island community was not as isolated as its geographical position on the fringe of an outlying district might suggest. It was on the main route between Macau, the West River, and Hong Kong which, as the century drew on, was a factor of increasing importance. Cheung Chau began to share in the prosperity of Hong Kong, though it would probably be going too far to say that it owed its rise to the increasing fortunes of its neighbour.3 Besides its original families it began to attract settlers in larger numbers, among whom were many persons from adjacent parts of the province, such as CHOI Leung, "the kind-hearted man of Tung Kwun”, who originated the Fong Pin scheme in 1872. According to the tablet he had already been trading on the island for several decades before he began his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v CHBUNG CHAU 105 Because of their loose organisation and lack of proper safeguards, these associations often ran into trouble over money. To quote an elder's reminiscences from the manuscript note book of the Tung Kwun association (which the present Chairman has kindly allowed me to see and use), compiled about 1928 but referring to the previous sixty years, "in the past there were upright managers, but there were also embezzlers, who appropriated public funds without authority. When X was in charge of our association's funds he reported that he had lost the account books, so nothing could be audited. It was through my persuasion he produced fifty dollars to end the matter". Similarly, he records how, on the death of a leading member who had been instrumental in purchasing new property for expanding the association, the members asked his family for the accounts and title deeds in his possession. The relatives refused to part with them unless a payment was made first. Members naturally refused, "which is why no title deeds or accounts are available from the early period". The manuscript also contains interesting material which illustrates difficulties faced by conscientious managers, e.g. "This house was originally the property of X. Unfortunately he was murdered and the body could not be found. His relative Y donated the house to the association. At first no tenant would take it and the fabric deteriorated. In the second year of the Hsuan-t'ung reign (1910-11) repairs were suggested, but there were no funds. Loans of five and ten dollars were raised from district members at 1 per cent interest. I loaned over a hundred dollars interest free, but it was still insufficient, so the association joined a ten dollar (share) money association and drew the necessary balance. The repair then started and the front is now let for $5.50 per month and the rear for $4 per month." There was also the lighter side. Speaking of the annual dinner party on the 15th day of the first moon an elder recalled "this year there were 28 tables with over 220 people. The caterer was X and the cost was $7.20 per table. The food was no good and those present were dissatisfied and there was a lot of grumbling." 27 A search was made for this and the Ser Yap tablet but, though hot on the trail of the first named with what appeared an infallible clue, a digging party regrettably drew a blank, 28 In the Crown Rent Rolls the association is termed kung sor 2 in Chinese and "club" in English. An inscription on one of the stone lions outside the Pak Tai temple, the largest on the island, states that it was donated by the Wai and Chiu Chau community in 1861. Mr. LEUNG Yau , born on Cheung Chau in 1875, attended the Wai-Chiu school, in the association's premises for two years (1885-86). 2o There was also a shrine in the Po On study. The tablet states that "a small fixture, known as the Tun Sin temple ('promote charity') has also been placed at one side of the hall, where wooden tablets bearing the names of the organisers are placed therein in commemoration of their devotion to the cause, irrespective of their parentage and place of origin." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r NOTES AND QUERIES 151 evacuation (1662-1669). But it is certain that Tung Chung and Sha Lo Wan had a share in the incense trade which terminated with the evacuation. Wild incense trees can still be found but the art of making incense sticks has vanished. The ancestors of the people living in the valley may have migrated into the area from the north in 1669 but the area has been, until recently, notorious for occurrences of malaria which claimed heavy tolls. The entire population may have been completely wiped out several times, as the oldest of the families has a family history of no more than seven generations. Tung Chung came into the limelight again when Cheung Pao Tsai and his pirate band who had been using the bay as one of their bases to prey upon the coastal trade of the South China Sea, successfully repelled a Ching naval contingent after a ten-day battle in the Ping Chung Bay in the twelfth year of Chia Ching's reign (1807). The trouble was finally quelled in 1809 when Cheung Pao Tsai surrendered and his pirates were disbanded. 2 With the suppression of the pirates, trade flourished. The Viceroy at Canton petitioned the Ch'ing Government in 1817 saying that "Ta Yu Shan of San On District, an isolated island, is on the (trade) route of the ships of the "barbarians". Tung Chung and Tai O are the only places where these "barbarian" ships can anchor. A fort at Chi Yi Kok2 with a Captain(?) and soldiers from the Tai Pang Camp has been maintained but there is no garrison at Tung Chung. As the two places are very far apart, eight garrison houses should be built at the mouth of the Tung Chung Rivers and two batteries (the fort), seven garrison houses and one arsenal should be constructed on the foot of Shek Shee ShanJ. "6 The petition was accepted and the work was completed in the same year. Whether the work was carried out as requested by the Viceroy has still to be proved. However, the fort has been relatively well preserved and seven old 2 Fan Lau (), 24 miles from Tai O. 3 Nan Tau (南頭), Po On District, 15 miles to the north of Lantau. 4 The distance is 6 miles across the main watershed and about 9 miles along the coast. 5 The idea was to prevent the "barbarians" from drawing fresh water for their ships. 6 Kwangtung Annals (廣東通志), p. 2,530. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 162 KEOWN, W. C. KEYES, M. P. - KHAN, Dr. L. A. KIDD, S. T. KILBORN, Prof. L. G. KIRBY, Prof. E. S. KNIGHTLY, F. J. c/o Messrs. Butterfields & Swire, Union House, H.K. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. 1, Wing Ying Mansion, 2/F, Soare's Ave., Kowloon. c/o Colonial Secretariat, Lower Albert Rd., H.K. 57, Humewood Drive, Toronto 10, Ontario, Canada. 2, University Drive, H.K. H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. KNOWLES, Hon. W. C. G.* Messrs. Butterfield & Swire, Union House, H.K. KNOWLES, Mrs. W. C. G.* Messrs. Butterfield & Swire, Union House, H.K. KRAMERS, Dr. R. P. KVAN, Rev. E.* KUMMER, Dr. M. KWAN, The Hon. C. Y.* KWOK, Chan* KWOK, Miss R. Y. KWOK, Walter LACEY, J. A. LAI, T. C. LAM, Yung-fai L LANYON-ORGILL, Dr. P. A. LAU, Wai-mai LAW, Chung-kam LAWRENCE, Mrs. I. LAWRY, R. E. - + + - L H.K. c/o Sinologische Bibliother Der Universitate Zurich, Florhofgassell, Zurich, Switzerland. St. John's College, The University, H.K. Goethe-Institut, German Cultural Centre, 6th floor, Caxton House, H.K. Room 736, Alexandra House, H.K. Hang Seng Bank Ltd., Des Voeux Road, Central, H.K. 7 Arbuthnot Road, H.K. 39-B, Estoril Court, H.K. c/o American Consulate-General, Garden Road, H.K. Dept. of Extra-Mural Studies, The University, H.K. c/o Ye Olde Printerie Ltd., 6 Duddell St., H.K. Brentwood College, Cobble Hill P.O., Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada. Institute of Oriental Studies, The University, H.K. Victoria Heights, 43-A Stubbs Rd., Flat 1-A, H.K. 4-B, Cliff View Mansions, 19 Conduit Road, H.K. British Council, Building, H.K. *Life Member 1st floor, Gloucester Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 STONE ENGRAVING AT FU-T'ANG 67 her temporary temple. Since then other sailors passing by went ashore to worship her, who, they believed, gave them every protection at sea. Later, they collected a sum of money to build a permanent temple there. Sung-chien, the first beneficiary, had become wealthy by then and contributed the principal share of the construction fund. Still later, in the second year of the reign of Hsien-hsun (1266) the local people, because of superstition, thought that another temple should be built on the shore of North Fu-t'ang. Tao-yi, the only son of Sung-chien, responded and constructed a much more elaborate temple there. Besides, he composed a poem commemorating the event and had it inscribed on a stone tablet which was erected by the side of the new temple. This monument has long been lost, but the temple remains there till the present day, of course having been repaired from time to time during the past 700 years. Its name has also been changed since the Goddess has been bestowed by Emperors of successive dynasties with different honorable titles from the plain Lin Ta-ku to Tien-hou (Heavenly Queen) which was given her by the Emperor K'ang-hsi (Hong Hei) of early Ch'ing. According to the Gazetteer of Kwangtung this is the oldest temple of T'ien-hou along the coast of the Province. Eight years after its construction, Lin Tao-yi, having made another effort to renew the whole vicinity and repair the Temple, requested the Administrator of the Kuan-fu salt field to prepare the inscription which he had engraved on the rock.* The stone-engraving has distinct cultural value. In the first place, for students of the history of the Southern Sung Dynasty, the reference to the construction of the Stone Pagoda at South Fu-t'ang in the fifth year of the reign of Emperor Chen Chung of the Northern Sung (A.D. 1012) is particularly of historical interest and significance. This is because when the two young sons of Tu Chung, who would become the last emperors of Sung * The Goddess was the sixth daughter of Lin Yuan (Lum Yun), an official in Fukien (892-946). It was alleged that she had an innate supernatural power and could perform miracles in saving people from drowning at sea. She died at the age of twenty and henceforth was worshipped by sailors as their patron goddess. See the author's study of her story in Sung Wong Toi, A Commemorative Volume (1960), Chüan 5, p. 279ff (in Chinese). For the author's detailed studies of the engraved rock, see the same volume, pp. 151-154, 268-280, 284-290. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 98 COLINA LUPTON indication is given in this book of how the British Government saw the ultimate future of the Colony, though this is of academic interest today. The years 1946-1949 were spent in drawing up what has become known as the Young Plan, after the Governor of the time, which would have provided for an elected Municipal Council, with a franchise for all men and women over the age of 25 who could read and write either English or Chinese. This plan was however thrown out by the Legislative Council, of which the unofficial members felt that reform of their own body should come first. They also objected to the fact that the proposed Municipal Council would overlap the functions of the Colonial Administration. In any case, the time, mid-1949, was unsettled in view of events in China and the opportunity was missed. Subsequently, the whole of Hong Kong society underwent such an upheaval with the flood of refugees and the diminishing of trade with the Mainland that constitutional reforms were shelved. A feature of the post-war situation of Hong Kong is the fact that everyone knows that the really important long-term decisions are not made in the Colonial Secretariat or even in Government House. This certainly adds to the lack of interest in acquiring any share in the Government. On the other hand, a paradoxical result of the establishment of the Communist Government in Peking is that most of the Chinese who have come to Hong Kong in the last fifteen years are here to stay, unlike the transients who before the war came to the Colony to find jobs in bad periods at home, expecting to return to their families when conditions improved. Hence the Chinese population does in fact have more interest than it did in pre-1949 days in seeing that the Government should at least be of the complexion it desires. As time passes, this will be both more and less true: a greater proportion of the populace will be Hong Kong born or educated, or both; but since it is clear that as Mr. Endacott says, Peking's demands for the revision of the "unequal treaties" are unlikely to stop at the Shum Chun river, the Colony's lifespan depends on how pressing the Chinese Government feels this revision is. An interesting point in the early history of the Colony which Mr. Endacott brings out very clearly is that it was the British Government, which by not allowing any constitutional advance ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 BOOK REVIEWS 107 In addition to the above merits over which it has no exclusive claim, Goodrich's dictionary has two special assets which are not commonly shared by other dictionaries. First, each character is immediately followed by its radical. This indication of the character's radical improves the value of the book as a tool for learning Chinese, especially for those who learn it by the inductive method. Radicals help the student understand the etymologies of the characters, and facilitate the process of associating the character and its meaning. Thus, they help, to some extent, remove that utterly 'lost' feeling which sometimes develops in the beginner who is tempted to think that Chinese characters are just so many arbitrary symbols. Secondly, abbreviated characters now in official use in Communist China are inserted in the new edition. This makes the dictionary particularly valuable to the student of contemporary Chinese problems, who must read source materials coming from Mainland China. Nevertheless, the dictionary is not without its share of imperfection. It was probably considerations of space that led the author of this pocket-size book to keep the number of "terms" or "expressions" given as illustrations of the use of the various characters, to a bare minimum. Among its very limited number of illustrative expressions, some are obsolete or wrong or otherwise not commonly in use in China. The following are but a few examples: The term shuikuo2 (or jui kuo2) (literally "Shui-country") given on page 177 to mean 'Sweden' is no longer in use at present. Chinese people coming across these two characters today would be at a loss as to what the user wants to say: Sweden (# shui tien3) or Switzerland (shui shih) or some obscure newly created state in some remote corner of the earth. The expression hsi fu4 is given on page 71 to mean 'bride, wife'. This is a colloquial use confined to Peking and its neighbouring areas. Elsewhere in China, these two characters put together mean 'daughter-in-law'. Other expressions such as cha2 cheng1 for 'exerting oneself' (page 3) and cheng1 ching4 for 'wrangling' (page 39), which are in colloquial use in Peking, are unheard of in other parts of China. The usual related expressions in ... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 134 HULL, G. B. G. HUNG, C. S. HURT. Miss E. J. - 49 Beach Road, Repulse Bay, H.K. 19 Hee Wong Terrace, 1st floor, H.K. c/o Sisters' Qtrs., Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Kowloon. HUTCHISON, Miss P. M. Room 509, King's Park House, King's Park, Kowloon. HUTSON, P. E. HYDE, Miss A. - INGLES, Miss J. M. INGRAM, Miss P. IU, Miss S. JACKSON, R. N. JAO, Tsung-i- JEN, Prof. Yu-wen JENKINS, Miss L. W. JONES, Dr. J. R.* KAY, Miss H. KELLY, Miss E. KENT, M. H. - KEOWN, W. C. KEYES, M. P. KHAN, Dr. L. A. KIDD, S. T. KILBORN, Prof. L. G. KNIGHTLY, F. J. KNIGHTS, J. KNOWLES. Dr. W. C. G.* - KNOWLES, Mrs. W. C. G.* KRAMERS, Dr. R. P. - c/o H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. 123 Breezy Court, 2-A Park Road, H.K. Government House Lodge, Garden Road, H.K. 95 Robinson Road, Top Floor, H.K. Matron, Grantham Hospital, Aberdeen, H.K. The Registry, The University, H.K. Dept. of Chinese, The University, H.K. 2 Stafford Road, Kowloon, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Sisters' Quarters, Kowloon. 3, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. Sisters' Quarters, Gascoigne Rd., Kowloon, P. O. Box 117, H.K. 7B Lincoln Court, Tai Hang Road, H.K. c/o Messrs. Butterfields & Swire, Union House, H.K. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. 1, Wing Ying Mansion, 2/F, Soare's Ave., Kowloon, c/o Colonial Secretariat, Lower Albert Rd., H.K. 57, Humewood Drive, Toronto 10, Ontario, Canada, H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. P. O. Box 113, H.K. Wakes Colne Place, Nr. Colchester, Essex, England. As above. Gemeindestrasse 21, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 38 HUGH D. R. BAKER men temples were built and dedicated to them in many parts of the effected area. In the New Territories there were three such temples - one at Sha Tau Kok,10 one built by the Kam Tin lineage of the Tang Clan,102 and a third in the market town of Shek Wu Hui known as the Chau Wong Yee Yuen,103 which was built by the five clans and endowed by them with land for its upkeep. It was not the five clans as clans which did this, but rather lineages of the five clans which came together and each purchased a share in the temple.104 The Man Clan took two shares in the temple, one purchased by each of the two lineages; as was the case with the eastern Tangs.105 The Pangs, Hau* and Lius each had one share. Not only was land purchased and a temple106 built with this money, but also a ferry boat was bought to assist all members of the five clans to cross the Sham Chun River107 to get to the large market town of Sham Chun, with which all had dealings. The share-holding lineages took part in an annual feast at which the business of the temple was discussed, the feast being paid for out of temple funds. As might be expected, however, the history of this temple association has not all been peaceful, and recently a major dispute has arisen, three members108 claiming complete control of the funds to the exclusion of the others.109 The matter quickly escalated to a point where both sides hired lawyers and placed vituperative advertisements in the Colony's newspapers. Eventually, after three years of argument, it was settled in 1963. The second example of cooperation between the clans is of the army which they raised between them to oppose the arrival of the British when they took control of the New Territories in 1899. Under the leadership of literati of the Tang Clan, working from the ancestral hall of the Ha Tsuen lineage,110 they mustered men, arms and supplies in quantity and attacked the British at their landing point in Tai Po. Unfortunately they lacked training and could do no more than fight an ignominious retreat back over the hills. Some records of the organisation of this force are still available through documents captured by the British at the time, and it is obvious that all the planning was done by and communications established at the level of the literati of the five clans. It seems that these men kept up some kind of informal contact, and there is mention of an organisation called the Tung P'ing Kuk112 in the first British reports on the area, which was said *Hau is the correct spelling, not "Haus". I've made the correction. Please let me know if you need further assistance. ================================================================================ 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 125 to raising pigs and poultry. His daughter used to go to the vegetable fields at Tai Shek Kwu nearby where, in return for helping others to water their fields, she was given the outer leaves and spoiled vegetables to take home for pig food. Pig rearing, it appears, was as chancy a business in the 19th century as now,21 As a rule, however, the villagers produced crops and produce for the Hong Kong urban populace and for the growing townships in Kowloon itself, such as Yau Ma Ti and Hung Hom. It was fortunate for the village people that the Colony's rapidly increasing urban population required the three basic staples of rice, firewood, and vegetables.22 As Wells Williams wrote in 1883:23 "The supplies of the island are chiefly brought from the mainland where an increasing population of Chinese... find ample demand for all the provisions they can furnish.” The arrival of vegetable boats from Kowloon has for long been a feature of the Hong Kong waterfront. These three staples, then, provided local people with the means to a livelihood; but they also had a wider effect. If they could summon the effort, villagers from further afield could and did share in meeting the urban demand, whilst local charitable and community organisations in Kowloon got part of their income from public weighing scales used for measuring vegetables and firewood destined for Hong Kong. Above all, the staples provided an opportunity for social advancement to those villagers with the necessary talent to exploit the business opportunities offered to them.24 The Colonial Government administered Kowloon with a loose rein. So far as I am aware, there was no seconding of administrators or magistrates there in the 19th century, and the police and other government departments with personnel available in Kowloon seem to have been on call when necessary in emergencies such as a fire, armed robbery, and serious crimes against the person, but were not otherwise obtrusive.25 The government did not see fit to appoint district officers to look after the people, as it was to do later in the New Territories. The advantages of doing so were suggested by a Land Commission in 1886, but never acted upon.26 In consequence, the internal management of these villages appears to have been much the same in Old Kowloon as it was ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 BOOK REVIEWS 141 THE GLASS CURTAIN BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE: A Symposium on the Historical Encounters and the Changing Attitudes of the Peoples of the East and the West. Edited by Raghavan Iyer, with a Foreword by the Dalai Lama. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. xii+356 pages. HK$42.00 This book, as its subtitle indicates, is a study of the East-vs.-West mentality of both Asians and Europeans in the modern world. The "Glass Curtain" refers to this mentality, as it were, "invisible yet impenetrable." As something that divides peoples into opposing sides, it is more subtle, and therefore more difficult to recognize and deal with, than the Iron Curtain, the "Bamboo Curtain," or what have you. The result is lack of mutual understanding and the proliferation of distorted images of other peoples as well as of one's own. Such a result, though perhaps inevitable historically, is naturally undesirable, so it is assumed in this book. This is so especially in our day of more extensive intercultural exchanges and more intense international conflicts. Furthermore, it is time to look forward to an emerging world civilization in which Asians and Europeans and other peoples should be more or less equal partners. All those who share this global outlook and cosmopolitan concern should read this book. The book is a tract for the times, a lesson in world citizenship. Though it presents a somber picture at the beginning, the book ends with an optimistic outlook. It appeals throughout to a broader understanding and a deeper sympathy. Although its material is historical (as are most of its essays), its aim is moral. Here lies the book's peculiar character. The main purpose of the book is to expose and, hopefully, lift one particular "curtain of ignorance" that separates and misleads people about others and about themselves, for the sake of better communication and in the name of a common humanity. In the words of its editor, the book aims at least "to offer a provisional framework for a frank dialogue between Asians and Europeans on the Glass Curtain that seems to separate them" (p.312). And he adds, "the concern for a real dialogue on equal terms is indeed more significant than the anxiety to reach agreement or to find specific solutions" (p.318). The point is to get the dialogue going. This book should provide a good start. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 179 HUTCHISON. Miss Pauline M. HUTSON, P. E. HYDE, Miss A. INGLES, Miss J. M. INGRAM, Miss P. IU, Miss S.* JACKSON, R. N. JAO, Tsung-i JARVIS, Edmund E. JEN, Prof. Yu-wen JONES, Dr. J. R.* KAPLAN, Mrs. Celia KEATLEY, R. L. KELLY, Miss E. KENT, M. H. KEOWN, W. C. KEYES, M. P. KHAN, Dr. L. A. KIDD, S. T. KILBORN, Prof. L. G.* KNIGHTLY, F. J. KNIGHTS, J. 907 Hermitage, 75 MacDonnell Road, H.K. c/o H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. 123 Breezy Court, 2-A Park Road, H.K. Government House Lodge, Garden Road, H.K. 95 Robinson Road, Top Floor, H.K. Matron, Grantham Hospital, Aberdeen, H.K. The Registry, The University, H.K. Dept. of Chinese, The University, H.K. P. O. Box 820, H.K. 2 Stafford Road, Kowloon 3, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. A33, Estoril Court, Garden Road, H.K. Apt. 4-B, 41-C Conduit Road, H.K. P. O. Box 117, H.K. 7B Lincoln Court, Tai Hang Road, H.K. c/o Messrs. Butterfields & Swire, Union House, H.K. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. 1, Wing Ying Mansion. 2/F, Soare's Ave., Kowloon. c/o Colonial Secretariat, Lower Albert Rd., H.K. Park Terrace, Apt. 113, 125 Raymond Street, Guelph, Ontario, Canada H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. P. O. Box 113, H.K. KNOWLES, Miss Moira G. - Training & Examinations Unit, Electric House, 22A Ice House Street, H.K. KNOWLES, Dr. W. C. G.* - Wakes Colne Place, Nr. Colchester, Essex, England. KNOWLES, Mrs. W. C. G.* - As above. KOCH, Mrs. Renate B. KRAMERS, Dr. R. P. KUMMER, Dr. M. 39 Shouson Hill Road, B5, H.K. Gemeindestrasse 21, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland. Goethe-Institut, German Cultural Centre, 6th floor, Caxton House, H.K. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g HONG KONG MAMMALS 13 Carnivores visited Hong Kong but they have not been seen now for many years. The last one was shot at Stanley during the war and its skin, now somewhat decayed, is still present in the temple at Stanley. The Shing Mun tiger of May 1965 has the characteristics of a well-planned hoax. All the prints were of the same pad and in all probability they were made by a tiger's paw on the end of a stick. That people should claim to have seen the tiger is not surprising; a large ferocious dog in thick undergrowth can be just as frightening as a tiger, especially when there is a tiger scare, and these people probably genuinely believe that they saw one. Leopards also visited the Colony until fairly recently. Both tigers and leopards are good swimmers and can travel from island to island. The last sighting of a leopard was in 1957 and shortly afterwards one was shot 8 miles inland from Sha Tau Kok. It was probably the same leopard and its skull and tail were brought back to the Colony and donated to the University of Hong Kong. Today only the smaller carnivores are present in Hong Kong: the tiger-cat or Chinese leopard cat, civets and ferret-badger. There are only a few tiger-cats surviving (Plate 2). There are probably none on Hong Kong Island. In the wild they live mostly on rats but also catch birds and chickens. In captivity they do not fare well due to their extreme nervousness which is often mistaken for fierceness. They become so frightened that they spit and growl until they are exhausted and may die of shock. Also they are susceptible to cat 'flu and other diseases in captivity. They are however very splendid animals, being one of the most graceful and beautifully marked of all the wild cats. Another carnivore, and one which plays an important role in reducing the rat population, is the South China Red fox. Several pairs are still living in the New Territories. The female is a light sandy colour, whereas the male is more brightly coloured with a reddish head and tail and grizzled grey flanks and legs. At a distance they resemble small wolves. (Plate 3 shows three young foxes). It is rumoured that European foxes were introduced just before the war for hunting, but the latter was not successful. The steep Hong Kong countryside was advantageous to the fox. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g HUGHES, G. M. HUGHES, Mrs. G. M. HUGHES, Prof. W. I. HULL, G. B. G. HUNG, C. S. HURT, Miss E. J. - - - + HUTCHISON, Miss P. M. HUTSON, P. E. INGLES, Miss J. M. INGRAM, Miss P. • IRETON, Mrs. Polly Hogue* IU, Miss S.* JACKSON, R. N. JAMES, Miss S. C. JAO, Tsung-i - JEN, Prof. Yu-wen JOHNSTON, James J. - JONES, Dr. J. R.* - KEATLEY, R. L. KELLY, Miss E. KENT, M. H. KESWICK, Henry KESWICK, S. L. KEYES, M. P. + KHAN, Dr. L. A. - L + - KIDD, S. T. KINOSHITA, James H. - American International Assurance Co., Ltd., American International Building, H.K. RBL 175 Sassoon Road, H.K. Dept. of Extra-Mural Studies, The University, H.K. 49 Beach Road, Repulse Bay, H.K. 4B, Headland Road, H.K. 601, The Hermitage, 75 Macdonnell Road, H.K. 176 The Avenue, Lowestoft South, Suffolk, England. c/o H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. Government House Lodge, Garden Road, H.K. 95 Robinson Road, Top Floor, H.K. 10, Peak Road, H.K. Matron, Grantham Hospital, Aberdeen, H.K. The Registry, The University, H.K. D-12, Bay Court, 127 Repulse Bay Road, H.K. Dept. of Chinese, The University, H.K. 2 Stafford Road, Kowloon, United States Consulate General, 26 Garden Road, H.K. 3, Abermer Court, May Road, H.K. Apt. 4-B, 41-C Conduit Road, H.K. P. O. Box 117, H.K. 7B Lincoln Court, Tai Hang Road, H.K. c/o Jardine Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. As above. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. 1, Wing Ying Mansion, 2/F, Soare's Ave., Kowloon, c/o Colonial Secretariat, Lower Albert Rd., H.K. Palmer & Turner, Room 1906, Prince's Building, H.K. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 124 H. G. H. NELSON tional Chinese rules of inheritance ensured the rapid redistribution of any accumulation of property. Estates could be created only by the injection of external capital derived from bureaucratic or commercial activity; and they were maintained by this device of incorporating them as collective holdings. Naturally enough, the ancestor in whose name an estate was incorporated was rarely, if ever, more remote than the father of the man who actually accumulated the land, so that no-one but his own and his brothers' sons and their descendants ever enjoyed the benefits of the property. Even if estates were concentrated in the hands of local, and not absentee landlords, the capital which created them was derived from external sources: and it may well be that the Treaty Ports stimulated this form of land-concentration by providing opportunities for the accumulation of capital on a greater scale than had ever been known before. There is evidence that this has happened in the New Territories: local men who prospered in business activities in Hong Kong city returned to their homes and invested the proceeds in land. It would have been instructive if Potter had told us exactly how Tang Jui-t'ai, ancestor G in the diagram, was able to accumulate his property. (It is not clear from the book whether he used the schedules of holdings drawn up in respect of private property by the Hong Kong Government a few years after the lease of the N.T. in 1898 which provide a unique source of socio-economic information about its many villages and form a base for later enquiries).* It is worth commenting, in passing, on another feature of the lineage's collective land-holdings, in which it is possible to see an exacerbation of the pre-existing situation. From Potter's description of the private benefits accruing to members of the corporation who are in a position to exploit their control of the land, it is quite clear that by far the majority of the benefits go to a small group of powerful men - political leaders and racketeers: and the poorer villagers, even if they know of this manipulation of property in which they, rightfully, have as good a share, can do little about it. Potter himself points out that this was probably always so, but that it is only recently that economic conditions — i.e. the enormous increase in land values and rents — have allowed such great profits to be made. * These have been utilised by Göran Aijmer in his article between pp.74-81. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 208 HUNG, C. S. HURT, Miss E. J.- HUTCHISON, Miss P. M. - HUTSON, P. E. INGLES, Miss J. M. Yuet Ming Building, 17th floor, Flat B, King's Road, North Point, H.K. 601, The Hermitage, 75 Macdonnell Road, H.K. 176 The Avenue, Lowestoft South, Suffolk, England, c/o H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. Government House Lodge, Garden Road, H.K. IRETON, Mrs. Polly Hogue* 10, Peak Road, All, H.K. IU, Miss S.* - JACKSON, R. N. JAMES, Miss S. C. JAO, Tsung-i JEN, Prof. Yu-wen - JOHNSTON, James J. JONES, Dr. J. R.* - KEATLEY, R. L. KELLY, Miss E. KENT, M. H. - KESWICK, Henry KESWICK, S. L. KEYES, M. P. KIDD, S. T. KINOSHITA, James H. - KHAN, Dr. L. A. KLEIN, Prof. Leonard KNIGHTLY, F. J. Matron, Grantham Hospital, Aberdeen, H.K. The Registry, The University, H.K. D-12, Bay Court, 127 Repulse Bay Road, H.K. Dept. of Chinese, The University, H.K. 2 Stafford Road, Kowloon, United States Consulate General, 26 Garden Road, H.K. 3. Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. Apt. 4-B, 41-C Conduit Road, H.K. P. O. Box 16004, H.K. 7B Lincoln Court, Tai Hang Road, H.K. c/o Jardine Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. As above. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. c/o Colonial Secretariat, Lower Albert Rd., H.K. Palmer & Turner, Room 1906, Prince's Building, H.K. 1, Wing Ying Mansion, 2/F, Soare's Ave., Kowloon, Flat C, 4/F, 70 Conduit Road, H.K. H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. KNOWLES, Miss Moira G. - Training & Examinations Unit, Electric House, 22A Ice House Street, H.K. KNOWLES, Dr. W. C. G.* Wakes Coine Place, Nr. Colchester, Essex, England. KNOWLES, Mrs. W. C. G. As above. * Life Member Please notify the Hon Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d Council in February of this year, and more recently both Mr. J. S. Lee and Mr. M. S. Cumming have resigned owing to their many other commitments, and in the case of Mr. Cumming owing to the likelihood of his being away a good deal from the Colony during the year. Of the original Council of 1959 there are only two left - Dr. Marjorie Topley and myself. The Council is a hard-working body; it meets at least once a month and its activities involve a great deal of time and labour. It is essential for the future of the Society to fill the vacancies with persons who have real interest in the work of the Society and are prepared to share the work in furthering its interests. In concluding I want to thank all my colleagues on the Council for their unremitting work, the British Council for their traditional help in a variety of ways and for the use of their premises for the meetings of the Council and their Library to house the greater part of the Society's books, and last but not least Mrs. O'Hara, also of the British Council, for her ever-willing and ready help and secretarial work which have been most valuable. 28 April, 1969. Lectures in 1968 comprised:- 15 January Professor Michael Sullivan. "The Cave Temples of Maichishan (with slides). 26 February J. R. JONES "The British Treaty with Siam of 1855" 16 March Mr. Robert Bruce. Visit to Chinese Vegetarian Halls (chai-t'ang) and the Sects of Former Heaven (Hsien-t'ien Tao). 18 March Dr. Philip Mao. "Some Aspects of Ching Dynasty Porcelain of the Kang Hsi, Yung Cheng & Ch'ien Lung Periods" (illustrated with slides). 8 April Annual General Meeting. 29 April Mr. T. C. Cheng. "Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils in Hong Kong up to 1941". ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 86 R. BRUCE monopolies abolished whilst levies on imports were to be limited, and vessels were to pay a tax on their size. But Burney failed to get permission for a British Consul to reside at Bangkok. Nor was he able to free British nationals from Siamese law. Next came the Americans. A merchant, Mr. Edmund Roberts, was commissioned by the President to secure a treaty at least as good as the British one. This was seven years later, in 1833. Although a President seemed to the Siamese a much less august personage than a King and America was both remote and less important, Roberts secured his treaty. It was almost exactly the same as the Burney agreement. In the next two decades, especially in the "forties, trade became more difficult. In fact the treaties with the British and the Americans gradually eroded away, and the old monopolies were taken back by the Court. Imports and exports were farmed to Chinese merchants by the King. Duties were arbitrary and heavy and trade dwindled. Everywhere else the British had greatly expanded their commerce by mid-century. Singapore was growing rapidly, the China trade had increased still further after the Opium War, the northern coast of Borneo was open to British commerce. It seemed only natural and civilised to the bold merchant princes and sea captains of Victorian England that Siam should, willy-nilly, share in the new prosperity, especially now that the first steamships had reached the Gulf of Siam. Sir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, was the next British envoy to sail up the Menam to Bangkok. He came in August 1850 on board H.M.S. Sphinx accompanied by a merchant vessel of the Company, the Nemesis, both steamers. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned Sir James to be careful in his quest for better trade. "In conducting these negotiations", he directed, “you must be very careful not to get involved in any disputes or hostile proceedings which would render our position in Siam worse than it now is or which might compel Her Majesty's Government to have recourse to forcible measures in order to obtain redress. It is very important that if your efforts should not succeed they should at least leave things as they are and should not expose us to the alternative of submitting to fresh affront or of undertaking expensive operations to punish insult”.' ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 191 KANN, P. R. - KELLY, Miss E. KENT, M. H.- KESSELRING, Dr. R. KESWICK, H. KESWICK, S. L. KEYES, M. P. KHAN, Dr. L. A. KIDD, S. T. · KINOSHITA, J. H. KJELLBERG, Carl C:son KJELLBERG, Mrs. I. - KNIGHTLY, F. J. KNOWLES, Miss M. G. - KNOWLES, Mrs. W. C. G.* KRAMERS, Dr. R. P. - KURATA, Mrs. Mary F. KVAN, Rev. E.* KWAN, H.C., Sir Cho-yiu" KWOK, Chin-Kung KWOK, W. LAI, T. C.* LAM, Yung-fai · T - The Wall Street Journal, 1 Branksome Towers May Road, H.K. P. O. Box 16004, H.K. Unknown. German Consulate General, Realty Building, H.K, c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., P.O, Box 70, H.K, As above. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., 3 Lombard Street, London, E.C.3, England. 1, Wing Ying Mansion, 2/F, Soare's Ave., Kowloon, c/o Colonial Secretariat, Lower Albert Rd., H.K. Palmer & Turner, Room 1906, Prince's Building, H.K. 55, Bisney Road, Pokfulum, H.K. As above. c/o H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corp., P.O. Box 64, H.K. Training & Examinations Unit, Electric House, 22A Ice House Street, H.K. Wakes Colne Place, Nr, Colchester, Essex, England. 8006 Zurich, Weinbergstrasse 73, Switzerland. 27 Grenadier Heights, Toronto 3, Ontario, Canada, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong, H.K. Room 736, Alexandra House, H.K. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., P.O. Box 70, H.K. 39-B, Estoril Court, H.K. Extra-Mural Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 12th Floor, Star House, Kowloon. c/o Ye Olde Printeric Ltd., 6 Duddell St., H.K. LANCHESTER, Mrs. G. W. Highclere (Middle Flat), 3 Middle Gap Rd., H.K. Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 ASPECTS OF HONG KONG MARINE FAUNA 59 arrow worm is found in it. Light is another important factor, for only the blue end of the spectrum penetrates much beneath the surface of the water. This means that at only a few feet below the water's surface, blues and greens are the predominant colors, and lend an ethereal background to submarine photographs, unless artificial light is employed. Other factors, such as pressure, depending on depth; available nutrients, or food sources; and the type of bottom on which the organisms living in a particular habitat are found, are also important factors. The focus of tropical marine fauna in the Pacific Ocean centers around Indonesia, and spreads widely to include the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, the South Pacific, and north to Hawaii, and is thus called the Indo-Pacific marine faunal realm. Variety is great in this realm, but representatives of most marine groups can be found in areas anywhere in the region. The fauna of Guam, in the Marianas Islands, is thus similar to that of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, or that of the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. Many marine organisms associate with one another, often in most peculiar ways. In some areas of the world, pearlfishes, which are my own specialty, live inside the body of sea cucumbers*. Some species of pearlfish are parasites, while others only use the body of the sea cucumber as a house, coming out into the open sea at night to feed. Clownfishes are another example. They often live in the folds of sea anemones. Although the clownfish is not harmed, other fishes approaching the anemone are stung by poison-filled threads, quickly die, and the clownfish and anemone share the meal. Marine biology is thus a fascinating field of study in which great advances are constantly emerging. Its importance, with over 2/3 of the world covered by oceans, is becoming quite evident. Marine Conditions in Hong Kong Let us turn our attention back to Hong Kong. Having seen the importance of temperature to marine creatures, perhaps a look at the temperature ranges found throughout the year in Hong Kong would be beneficial. A graph plotting the average * Trott, 1970. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong Carl T. Smith* (A lecture delivered to the Branch on 15 March 1971) INTRODUCTION The opening of Tung Wah Hospital (1872)† marks the terminal date for this study of the emergence of a Chinese élite in Hong Kong. We are concerned, therefore, with the first thirty years of the colony's history, 1841-72. The first decade was characterized by economic and social problems partially created by a shifting and generally irresponsible population. During this period, there was, however, a small number of settlers who were establishing themselves and their families with the purpose of making Hong Kong their permanent home, of acquiring capital, and of investing in real estate. As the Colony entered into the 1850s, this group increasingly assumed a position of leadership. It was recruited from a few successful contractors and builders, several government servants, compradores of foreign firms, and Chinese Christians attached to missionary groups. The second decade of Hong Kong's history was marked by an influx of population and capital caused by disturbed conditions in South China created by the Taiping Rebellion. This influx turned into an exodus when hostilities began between the British and Chinese in 1857. But war brought more compradores to Hong Kong as foreign firms moved down from Canton. In the third decade, there was a revival of trade, and a growing merchant class provided its share of élite. By the end of the * Rev. Carl Smith is Lecturer in the Theology Division in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and has been associated with the College since 1962. † It is difficult to know what date to give to the origin of Tung Wah Hospital. In 1869, a committee of concerned Chinese was organized. In 1870 (the usual date given for the foundation of the Hospital), the Tung Wah Hospital Ordinance was passed and the foundation stone was laid by the Governor. The Hospital was formally opened by the Governor on 14 February 1872. ================================================================================ 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 107 However with the financial assistance of his wife's share in the estate of Ho Fuk Tong, he was able to study law in England. He returned to Hong Kong to practice law and in time was appointed a Magistrate. In 1880, Governor Hennessy appointed him as the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council. He served for two years, but then resigned to join the staff of Viceroy Li Hung Chung at Tientsin. In 1897 he was appointed the Chinese Ambassador to the United States and continued serving his country in other posts of responsibility until his death in 1922. A classmate and good friend of Wu Ting Fang, named Chan Ayin (陳海亭) alias Chan Oi Ting was one of thirty representatives of the Chinese community to call on Governor Sir Arthur Kennedy to welcome him to Hong Kong in 1872. He is also named among fourteen who, dressed in their official robes as mandarins, welcomed the Governor on his visit to Tung Wah Hospital in 1878. He was baptized while a student at St. Paul's College and, like most of the others whose career we are considering in this section, after completing his education he entered Government service. He was connected with the Magistrate's Court, but in 1871 he left to become a reporter for the China Mail. When the Mail began publishing the Wah Tsz Yat Po in 1872, he was head of this department. In 1877 he surrendered his lease of the paper but continued with The China Mail for a short period after. He then gave up his career in journalism to join the staff of the newly appointed Chinese Ambassador to the United States. As a member of the staff, he was appointed Consul-General in Havana, Cuba. He continued to serve in the Chinese diplomatic service for ten years, but then returned to China where he became director of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company and of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Administration. He died at Shanghai in 1905.44 While editor of the Wah Tsz Yat Po, Chan Oi Ting was also instrumental in organizing and managing the Chinese Printing and Publishing Company which bought the press and type of the London Mission Press in 1872. This company began publishing the Tsun Wan Yat Po (Universal Circulating Herald) in February 1874. It advertised itself as the "first daily newspaper ever issued under purely native auspices". The paper was registered under the name of Wong Tao (£), a scholar of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h # HON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1971 The Accounts now before you have again been kindly audited by Messrs. Wong, Tan & Co. The deficit of Expenditure over Income for this year amounts to $792, compared with a deficit of $6,529 in the previous year. This is not, unfortunately, due to increased income but rather to decreased expenditure. Journal and other Publication expenses in 1970 ($20,350) were, as members may recall, exceptionally heavy, due to the number of publications about to be printed. The 1971 expenditure under this category ($16,657) is also high due to the following publications due for printing: the 1971 Journal, the report of the 1970 Symposium, and the Journal index. Such expenditure is of course a healthy sign of the Society's activities in this direction. The shortfall in Annual memberships to cover the expenditure is, as in previous years, made up by bank interest and dividends. Annual memberships are the most important part of the Society's income and members are actively encouraged to urge their friends to join the Society, not only to increase the income under this heading, but in order to make the Society wider known and permit more persons to share in its worthwhile activities. The Sundry Creditors on the Balance Sheet are for the publications referred to earlier. Local investments continue to show a gratifying increase in market value, which cannot unfortunately be said for the 6% Commonwealth of Australia Stock. The investments of the Society are kept constantly under review. March 25, 1972. D. A. Gilkes Hon. Treasurer ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h The Establishment of the Tsungli Yamen 43 but after the defeat at Taku we could only pacify them and not use force. When the barbarian troops entered the capital military measures became totally impossible and whether we attack them or pacify them we shall incur harm. Thus we have to weigh up and discuss these two methods and to act expediently in order to relieve the present crisis. After the exchange of treaties the barbarians returned to Tientsin and sailed south one after another. Moreover, their demands are still based on the treaties. Thus those barbarians really do not covet our land and people. By good faith and justice we can still win them over and control their nature, while we plan our own recovery. This appears to be somewhat different from the situation in previous dynasties. Your servants have taken into account the overall situation and consider that our attempts to ward off the barbarians at the present time is rather like Shu's treatment of Wu. Shu and Wu were enemies yet when Chu-ko Liang held the reins of state he sent envoys to win the friendship of Wu and make an alliance with Wu to attack Wei. Surely he did not forget his determination to annex Wu for a single day. It was rather because he had to weigh up the favourable and unfavourable aspects of the situation and the relative degree of urgency. So, if he did not suppress the hatred in his heart but risked all in a single test [i.e. by war with Wu] the result would be even worse than this. Now although the barbarians do not stand in the same relation to us as did the equal states of Shu and Wu yet the antagonistic situation between the barbarians and us is similar. At the present time the barbarian behaviour is fierce and insubordinate. All our countrymen share a common indignation. Your servants know something about moral principles (i li); how could they forget the best interests of the state? Now the Nien are ablaze in the north and the “long haired rebels" [the Taipings] in the south; our supplies are exhausted and our troops are tired. The barbarians have taken advantage of our weakness and as a result they have gained the upper hand. If we do not restrain our anger but antagonize them then we may suffer unexpected reversals at any moment. If we forget the injuries they have done us and make no preparations we shall leave our sons and grandsons a cause of sorrow. The men of old had a saying: "Consider peace and friendship as a temporary expedient, consider attack and defense as a basic condition". This truly is an unchanging axiom. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 222 BOOK REVIEWS within the economy it is true, but such is not the purpose of forecasting it is the result that matters, not the economic significance of the method of obtaining it. This review is not falling into that mould of criticism which consists of the complaint: why did not the author write a different kind of book to the one which he actually wrote? The point here is that a specific task could have been performed better in less than one fifth of the space which this book occupies. The length of this book is prodigious relative to its achievement. The authors seem anxious to perform techniques which have become respectable in economics and write as if the scientific weight of a publication corresponds to its physical weight. The chapter on cotton, for instance, covers twenty-six pages but requires only the last three to state its effective contribution that given the importance of quota restrictions in Hong Kong's textile trade one may as well predict simply on the basis of past trends. The description of the industry which precedes this is irrelevant and pedestrian. All the chapters which deal with the projections of Hong Kong's domestic production of primary products share the same fault: descriptions of the sector concerned, in great detail but without analytical insights, are provided which do not link in any discernable way to the straightforward extrapolations which eventually emerge. In short, the book fails. It is difficult to imagine any reader interested in the results. Many will be interested in the methods but here there is room for doubts that the econometrics have been imaginatively executed and the feeling that the authors have been excessively optimistic about the accuracy of the predictions of income and population. The effective passages of the book which actually come to grips with the task of forecasting are ponderously padded out, regrettably, because this aspect of the work threatens to obscure its merits, namely, the feel for economic statistics and the ability of the authors to write interestingly about them. University of Hong Kong, and Department of Trade and Industry, London NICHOLAS OWEN. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 1 # PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1972 I am very pleased to report to you this evening on the activities of this thirteenth year of the resuscitated Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. It is a year that has seen an increase in membership, in activities, and in sale of our publications. The timing of this Annual General Meeting is most auspicious, for as many of you probably know, this month the parent Society in Britain is celebrating its 150th anniversary. The Royal Asiatic Society, it might be recalled, was designed partly to bring together in London members of learned societies in the East, which had been formed for study of its various cultures. We, as one of these societies, and indeed directly affiliated to it, enjoy the privileges of using the very rich library facilities of the Royal Asiatic Society when we are in London. The Royal Asiatic Society was founded in March 1823, and it was not long afterwards that our original Hong Kong Branch was also founded. This was in 1847, and meetings were held in a room of the old Supreme Court building where the library was also housed. Unfortunately however, we were not to share the parent Society's long unbroken history. With the departure in 1859 of Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, and the death in that year of the Society's secretary, the organizing body collapsed. Despite the efforts of all those of the time, who recognised the important contributions the Society was making to the cultural life of the Colony, it failed to revive. In 1959, a hundred years later however, a group of people who had become concerned about the dearth of cultural activities in Hong Kong at that time, decided that they would try to improve the situation and bring the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society back into life. They were fortunate in having the enthusiasm and support of scholars working in the Colony, and other members of the community who desired to promote both interest in, and research into, the culture and environment of Hong Kong, China, and their near neighbours. This enthusiasm, I am pleased to say, has continued. Many scholars: historians, anthropologists, and other students of society and culture; and natural scientists, have presented some of their original research materials to the Society in talks, symposia, papers and journal articles, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 82 HELGA WERLE dissolved in 1964 when because of lack of business the old leader got so desperate that he threw his puppets literally into a rubbish-bin. The third group Tung-i still exists under the leadership of Wu Mu-sen and Ch'en Yung-ming. Their puppets are older and much larger than those of the Hsin-shun-hsiang troupe, and are very seldom used now. When Wang Chiao-tsou died his eldest son Hsi-ch'in continued the Hsin-shun-hsiang Troupe. He usually plays the Yeh-hu, for which he is very renowned, in the opera-orchestras. This is a two-stringed violin of which the sound box is made of a coconut shell. Five of the seven brothers and sisters Hsi-ch'in, Hsi-tang, Hsi-yü, Hsi-ch'ing and Hsi-hsien are all versatile musicians or singers, joining in the puppet or opera performances. There are also six artists of the older generation with 30-40 years' experience performing with them. They are Li Chen-chiang, Huang Shun-ch'i, Ma Chen-huan, Chang Chung-liang, Li Han-t'an and Chiu Hsüeh-ching. During a typhoon in 1960 Hsi-ch'in's squatter hut was flooded and most of his puppets were destroyed. He travelled to Ch'aochow to replace them, but he could not find any old ones. Fortunately, he found an old-puppet-maker who made a new set which he took to Hong Kong, and it is used now by his troupe and also by the Tung-i Troupe. Today, there are about sixty puppet-bodies and eighty puppet-heads, belonging to these two troupes, the Hsin-shun-hsiang and the Tung-i. They give no more than seven performances a year between them. They are still called by Ch'aochow associations to perform at the festival of the T'ien-kung Chi on the 5th day of the first month, the festival of Po-kung Fu-te Ta-yeh on the 29th day of the third month and to the ceremony of Hsieh-shen (thanking the gods) in the 12th month. Although the name of either of the groups invited to perform appears on top of the curtain, the puppets, puppeteers, musical instruments and musicians are mostly the same. The fee is handed to the leader of the troupe who, together with the leader of the orchestra, keeps a larger share. The rest is distributed equally among all the other performers, puppeteers and musicians. ================================================================================ 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 139 A translation of the original Chinese petition is in the Hong Kong Public Records Office, Colonial Secretary's Office File for 1893, No. 849. The petition naturally presented the views of the local population—or at any rate those of its leaders—and omitted any reference to the traditional relation of the Chan clan to the temple. The matter was referred by the Magistrate to the Squatter's Commission. Its hearings are recorded in a Summary of Reports of Squatters' Commission, a manuscript volume in the Library of the Colonial Secretariat. The Commission effected a compromise. It recommended that Government grant a lease of the temple site to five persons, two to be nominated by the Chan clan, two by the Public Worship Committee of Ap Lei Chau and one by the Registrar General. The Ap Lei Chau Committee was permitted to retain the caretaker they had placed in charge after their expulsion of the caretaker employed by the Chan clan, but he had to share the income of the temple with the clan. The former caretaker felt the decision was unjust. It kept preying on his mind until he became unbalanced. One day in November 1893, he left Ap Lei Chau in a small boat intending to visit the Land Office in Hong Kong to get satisfaction. Some of the villagers pursued him hoping to prevent him from reopening the case. As they neared his boat he jumped overboard and was not seen again. However, later, his body was washed up opposite the temple. As the account published in The China Mail, 10 November 1893, comments, it was "a circumstance which is regarded as not a little strange". Hong Kong, October 1973. CARL T. SMITH ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 98 R. G. IRWIN of investigation which he and two other Jesuit fathers had made to Formosa in 1714.31 Having carried his record to the close of the K'ang-hsi period, de Mailla ventured no further into contemporary history. Some forty years later the task of recording the subsequent Yung-cheng and Ch'ien-lung periods (to 1780) was assumed by M. le Roux des Hautesrayes32 of the Collège Royal de France. It should be noted that whereas de Mailla had scrupulously confined himself to Chinese (and in one instance Manchu) sources, the contribution of des Hautesrayes, in Vol. XI, pages 369-610, was based, not on Chinese texts at all, but on the writings of Jesuit missionaries, available in the volumes of Lettres édifiantes edited by Père du Halde and in the collection Mémoires concernant les Chinois,33 Vol. XII, containing “a note on the customs, sciences, and arts of the Chinese,” a table of reign titles, a summary of geographical nomenclature, an alphabetical index, etc., is also the work of des Hautesrayes. But the essays on Cochin China and Tongking, said to have been based on Chinese sources, are specifically attributed to P. Gaubil, and taken from Lettres édifiantes, Vol. XXXI.34 By translating the part relating to China in Fischer's Histoire de Sibirie, 1774 (in Russian), Stollenwerck has provided the note concerning the first attempts of the Russians against the Chinese.35 Abbé Grosier, who had been intimately connected with the publication of the earlier volumes, brought out in 1785 a supplement entitled "Description générale de la Chine ou Tableau de l'État Actuel de cet empire.” Individual copies have circulated independently, but it is commonly considered as Vol. XIII of the series, and its author is justifiably included in a review of those who share in the completed work. The present paper, it will be seen, makes no attempt either to evaluate the sources which have been identified, nor the manner in which de Mailla employed them. Its purpose has been simply to correct a popular misconception with regard to the relation between the T'ung-chien kang-mu and de Mailla's Histoire générale. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES 163 was gone that the toe was cured, so the farmer was none the better off for his share of the treasure! After that no-one else tried to dig the ground. The story of "Ngan T'au Laan” (*) “silver coins come to their new home" is firmly believed in by many villagers to-day. It is said to have happened during the K'in Lung () years A.D. 1736-1795, of Ts'ing dynasty at the place now called Naam T'eng (✯✯) south of Kat Hing Wai (‡ƒj[]). One morning the villagers were startled by the sound of a ringing bell far away in the sky, and running out of their houses to discover what it was, they saw a cloud of things, shining black and white, like a number of herons flying in the sky towards Kam Tin. When the cloud reached a certain house it flew round and round above the roof but did not come down. Then the people were able to see that the cloud consisted of "man ngan" () pure silver sycee. They all cried out "Ngan-t'au-laan! Ngan-t'au-laan!” The aged grandmother of the house at once got out a table and put on it three cups of tea with joss sticks and knelt down to make “k’au t’aus" (°F) to the coins, as the people said that it was the only way to get the silver to come down. But after all the members of the household had done their “kau-tau” the silver still remained flying in the air. Then the grandmother suddenly remembered that the baby of the family was lying asleep inside in his cradle and, thinking that perhaps the coins were meant for him, she woke him up and, carrying him, she again knelt down and bowed to the coins with the baby in her arms. The money instantly dropped to the ground but on being examined it was found to be covered with mud. At this the woman grumbled, "If you are indeed my grandson's coins, you should clean yourselves before you come. How can I pick you up, all covered in mud?” Then the coins started rolling themselves round on the ground, it looked as if they were trying to clean themselves in this way, but this was only for a while for they suddenly rose up in the air again and flew away. The astonished onlookers were very indignant with the old woman, and began to scold her, saying "You should not have spoken in such a way to those lucky coins. Why could you not have picked them up and cleaned them yourself?" Then they heard the sound of the silver bell again, and the cloud had come back and on reaching the roof of the same house, the coins dropped to the ground, quite clean like new silver. ================================================================================ 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 107 of the underdog Portuguese or Eurasian communities. The one social event that united—for one evening—all classes of European was that great Scots tribal festival, the St. Andrew's Day Ball. Celebrated on November 30, it ushered in the Hong Kong season, a season that closed with the Volunteer Ball.* The St. Andrew's Day Ball was open to any Scot or his friends who could afford the price of a ticket. Held in St. George's Hall, a spacious ball-room within the City Hall edifice, it was attended normally by over a thousand adults. Although an Army chaplain inquired plaintively: "Why should pig-iron turn up its nose at ten-penny nails (in Hong Kong)?" for one evening at least status distinctions between retailers and wholesalers were partially ignored, although the proceedings were always dominated by the chieftains of Jardine, Matheson and Co., the patriarchal Scottish hong, The European lower orders were excluded not only from the more amusing social life of the colony, they also had little say in its government. In 1885, for example, the total number of ratepayers was eighty-two: from this small group the unofficial members of the Legislative Council normally were elected or chosen. The pong-paân were thus totally unrepresented in this, a British colony. Their names, moreover, are not found on the lists of Justices of the Peace, Special Jurors, and those of members of official and other important committees. They were of course sworn in on occasion as common jurors. Why did the European lower orders experience such treatment from the well-to-do and influential? Partly, it was a consequence of social attitudes formed in the homeland: Victorian notions about the ordering of social classes and occupational groups, such as are analysed in Thackeray's The Book of Snobs. However, in early Hong Kong another notion was also prevalent: the view that there were 'dangerous classes', a term that connoted the lumpenproletariat, a class of persons spawned in the new industrial cities of Europe, 'those who had so miserable a share in the accumulating wealth of the industrial revolution that they might at any time break out in political revolt as in France'.32 Predictably enough, working-class Europeans were often viewed with some suspicion; there was fear that middle-class control over them would cease to prevail in certain For the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force see James Hayes' article in this Journal Vol 11, 1971: 151-171. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 290 Editor's Footnotes DONALD C. BOWIE 1. Dr. Bowie's own career and achievements, before and after the historic events of which he writes, will be of interest to readers of this Journal. They are as follows: M.B. 1918. University of Glasgow. F.R.C.S. Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh 1929. Honorary F.R.C.G.P. (Royal College of General Practitioners) 1969. Sir Arthur Keith Medallist, Royal College of Surgeons, England, 1969. Main Appointments, Army. Commissioned R.A.M.C. 1918. Served in U.K., France, Germany, Turkey. Seconded to Egyptian Army 1923-25. Shanghai Defence Force 1927. Territorial Adjutant, 54th East Anglian Division T.A. 1928-30, Surgical Specialist, British Troops in Egypt 1930-35. Surgical Specialist, Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, London 1936-39, Surgical Specialist, British Troops in China, Hong Kong, 1939. Prisoner of War, 1941-45. Reader in Military Surgery, Royal Army Medical College, London 1946-48. Consulting Surgeon, Middle East Land Forces 1948-50. Retired 1950. (voluntarily) Civil. Regional Postgraduate Dean, British Postgraduate Medical Federation, University of London in North West, South West Metropolitan and Wessex Hospital Regions, 1950-70. Now Retired. Dr. Bowie was awarded the O.B.E. (Military) in 1946. 2. Dr. Bowie's account of Japanese attitudes and behaviour can usefully be set beside the comments of Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and Dr. Li Shu-fan, the eminent Hong Kong surgeon, who both experienced them at first hand. Sir Selwyn writes (pp. 71-72 of his autobiography referred to at p. 178 above): Nobody can deny that man's potential for cruelty was exhibited on an appalling scale by the Japanese in the stress of war. It was predictable in the circumstances that I should suffer my share of ill-treatment at their hands, and this is what presently came about. Yet the feature of their character that stood out from that whole experience was in fact their unpredictability. They would be acquiescent, even humane, when least expected, vicious with sudden fury after a phase almost of apathy. They could respect, sometimes, a principled stand or an unflinching argument, and yet visit a meaningless rage upon the helpless. To attempt to understand them was the plain duty of anyone seeking to protect a community that was at their mercy, and the first lesson to be learned was that surrender violated their military code, making a prisoner a non-person. But this too was a generalization, and as such to be guarded against as one guarded against racial prejudice. For men are not cast in one mould, even by war, even by a code or an ideology. Dr. Li's account of Hong Kong under Japanese rule is given in chapters 6-9 of his autobiography, Hong Kong Surgeon (London, Victor Gollancz, 1964) in which his comments at pp. 159-160 are relevant here. ================================================================================ 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 SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 203 suggest that the fight over the market was a quarrel between Hakka and Punti as such, and I incline to the view that, whatever may have been in earlier decades the state of feeling between communities speaking the different dialects, by the 1890s local alignments did not depend on ‘ethnic' solidarity. (Indeed, I think too much should not be made today of the cultural differences between Punti and Hakka in the New Territories and of the social cleavages which are presumed to rest on these differences). 22. The first British administrators seem not to have appreciated the local significance of the term yeuk, for when the New Territories were arranged in districts and sub-districts in accordance with the Local Communities Ordinance, 1899, boundaries were drawn round units (themselves labelled with the word yeuk) bringing enemy villages together. Since, however, the ordinance was never fully brought into force no harm was done. The Ts'at Yeuk continued under British rule to be masters of the new market and to dominate local affairs, and it has been only in recent years that a Tai Po Rural Committee has emerged, under government encouragement, to provide a strictly territorial form of local council. The Rural Committee is made up of seven units: six of the Ts'at Yeuk (Fan Leng being excluded because of its remoteness) and a new unit composed of all the scattered villages which are not members of the Ts'at Yeuk. The Ts'at Yeuk and the Rural Committee share the same offices (they were built by the former) and the same officers (the chairman of the one being a vice-chairman of the other and a second vice-chairman being common). In local eyes the Ts'at Yeuk remains dominant, not least because only it has access to the revenue brought in by the public weighing scales. 23. It is possible to piece together sketchy accounts of yeuk-complexes in other areas of the New Territories. One of them operated in the area now covered by the Ta Kwu Ling Rural Committee. This was the Luk Yeuk (the six Yeuk), a union which was cut in two by the new international frontier created in 1898. It appears to have been flourishing a hundred years ago when the father of my sole informant on it (I stress the fact that in this case I was unable to cross-check the assertions made) took part in a battle between it and a village in Chinese territory. Each of the six yeuk had an average of three villages, taking its name from the largest village. The Luk Yeuk had a common estate, most of it now inaccessible in China, which was managed in turn by each yeuk. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 64 J. T. KAMM veyors, however, found well over 1000 mou under cultivation, roughly valued at 228.10 crown rent. At the current price of $2.30 per picul, the Tang's rent-value equalled $92.00. The British administrators were of the opinion that the 40 piculs rent was indeed in respect of all cultivation on the island, and hence the Tangs should be held responsible for "encroachments." As can be imagined, the Tangs eventually lost interest in pursuing the claim.32 The landlord-tenant equilibrium was maintained by social organizations ready to defend the respective positions. On the one side were aligned the tenant rings, or alliances, while on the other, the clan increasingly came to defend landlord interests.33 To this end, a "managerial elite," well-versed in the details of ancestral estates, rose within the clan. Evidence from the Tang petitions suggests that the Hong Kong estates were managed by a committee of four wu-sheng (military graduates of the first degree, in this case probably purchased-degree holders) on behalf of fifteen lineal descendants of the original “cultivator." The military gentry, who were not mentioned in the tax registers (and hence, probably not listed on the ancestral rent rolls), managed the fields for a fee. This managerial structure also prevailed on the Tsing Yi estates. Clementi, in a communication to the Colonial Secretary, writes: I have seen Tang Kwai Yui of Kam Tin, a military fau tsoi who is manager on behalf of the descendants of Tang Kou Nam for the land in question. He says that the first ancestor of the clan is Tang Kou Nam, and that after his time the clan divided into two branches:-(1) Tang Yi Kwok, and (2) Tang Lun Tai; “both branches have descendants still alive; they are both settled at Kam Tin. We are all British subjects. Both branches have a share in the land. I am manager of both branches. I have been manager for two years. I remain manager so long as I give satisfaction. I have no business. I live on the rent I collect. I have property of my own at Kam Tin,34 Clans and rings constituted bounded groups within which the circulation of rent-values and cultivation-values, respectively, ideally took place. Circulation of values was effected by two means: 1) succession, and 2) sale. By definition, the perpetual leasee was succeeded by his male lineal descendants. Division of cultivation-value, in the event of more than one son, often ================================================================================ 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 75 Hsin-An." How it relates to the dissolution of li-chia divisions is made clear in the following account, quoted in the 1921 edition of the Tung-Kuan Gazetteer: In the past, the fang (✈) and tu divisions were known by name. Now, for the most part, these old divisions no longer exist. In the recent past, when military activity necessitated the imposition of corvée (), the village areas themselves were utilized in the apportionment and collection of the duties. For this reason, several small villages grouped together to form a large district; other villages attached themselves to more powerful villages. The various changes are too numerous to record in detail; however, on the basis of experience, the county was divided into nine large areas. Yet, despite this method, inequalities remained, on account of the all-pervasive corruption.18 When one considers, in addition, the substantial demographic movements through the area in the eighteenth and nineteenth century,19 and the geographic limitations on the efficiency of local civil administrators, it is not difficult to imagine the total inability of local magistrates to implement viable alternatives to local self-governmental structures. Hence, Krone's comment: "The mandarins in Sanon district have very little power. The people pay their taxes, but do not allow the mandarins to interfere with their own local government."20 Official acquiescence gradually became implicit approval, and the collection of land tax by means of farms granted to local magnates was institutionalized at the local level. By the time southern Hsin-An came within Britain's imperial orbit, taxlordism was well entrenched in the agricultural sector. The position of taxlord carried responsibilities as well as benefits. By maintaining the relatively small taxable base, the taxlord was able to increase his own share of the revenue without having to pay over collected surpluses. Yet, under customary agreement, the taxlord was obligated to perform certain services for the privilege of extracting his commission. One of the most important of these was the protection offered against “unreasonable” squeeze. One measure of the Tang's dominant landlord and taxlord status was their apparent ability to avoid payment of squeeze under certain circumstances. Other services included supervision of local paramilitary and police forces, maintenance of roads and bridges, and provision of festivals and operas.22 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n J 78 J. T. KAMM It is interesting to note that each of the five great clans (§ Tang (鄧), Hau (侯), Pang (彭), Liu (廖), and Man (文) — are represented on the schedule.30 Of these, the Tangs clearly have the greatest share. Another point, which is less obvious from the scanty data presented above, is that the taxlords only chose land within the boundaries of the tung itself, even though plots existed in Un Long Tung considerably closer, and hence easier to manage, than the plots chosen. This seemingly minor point leads us into an examination of the political and economic foundations of the tung. The standard "primary source" on the nature of tung is Lockhart's description of “Local Government in the Villages" contained in his report on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong.31 On the basis of this report, which heavily stresses the judicial functions performed by the chu (Cantonese: Kuk) which oversee the tung, Acting Governor Black recommended the appointment of “a commissioner or a Resident, possessing knowledge of the Chinese” who "should govern somewhat in the present Chinese system, i.e., the village elders to rule the villages, which grouped according to topographical limits, form a tung having a council composed of representatives from the village elders."32 Considerable confusion exists over the precise nature of tung and chu. Lockhart clearly overestimated the political-judicial power of the Tung Ping Kuk (東平局), a mistake which would have proven costly had not the British possessed superior firepower in the Pat Heung Valley. Having won the support of this chu, Lockhart believed that the gentry of the various “divisions” would follow suit. He was to discover later that the gentry of Un Long Tung had convened another chu, the Tai Ping Kung Kuk (太平公局) which financed, and to some extent coordinated, the local revolt; in so doing, they effectively dismantled the Tung Ping Kuk by summoning Tung-Kuan clansmen to occupy Sham Chun.33 In most of the counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture, chu formed the basis of local self-government throughout the troubled nineteenth century. One of the best descriptions of these organizations is to be found in Kang Yu-wei (康有為)'s chapter on self-government.... "taxlord claims," but, since the inhabitants could not produce title to the land, the Tangs were recognized as "chief landlords." CSO8551 in 1903. One taxlord was recognized in Sha Tau Kok (Li Tung-chung) and one on Lantao (Wong Kwok-shi). Little is known concerning these cases, except that the latter status was granted out of compassion. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n UNDER ALTARS 87 Of these eight titles, Marshal Yin, a famous character in mythology, is a God in his own right in the Taoist folk religion pantheon. He is to be seen only in one temple in the heart of rural New Territories in image form, where, unconnected with any Under Altar, he is one of four generals guarding a major deity. Others who regularly appear in the Under Altar and are the deities who share the occupancy but in image form, are the Local Wealth God and the White Tiger. Others who occasionally appear on top of, near to, or in the Under Altar include the Green Horse, Marshal Chao and a second demonic figure similar to the Local Wealth God. The Local Wealth God (地方財神) The major image, sometimes called the Wealth God of the Under Altar (下壇財神) or the spirit of the Location (地方神) is usually alone though very, very occasionally he may be accompanied by a somewhat similar image. A Hong Kong Cantonese writer who lived during the last century, Wu Yen-jen, in the collection “Ch'ing Tai Wu Yen-jen Yu Yen Chi” (清代吳恩仁寓言集) calls this local deity the "Local Demon" (地方惡魔), a description which is more honest than the anodyne and unprovocative term "spirit" used nowadays. The Wealth God of the Location is a gaunt middle-aged man dressed in mourning apparel, ill-fitting robes of sacking (hessian). He has a protruding tongue and a tall dunce's cap bearing the message vertically on the front "Fortune at one glance" (一覽生財). His face is haggard, often with tears of blood coursing down his cheeks. Most Local Wealth Gods clutch palm leaf fans in their left hand, whilst others carry either furled umbrellas, wands with tattered edges raised above their heads in their right hands, have their arms full of paper charms, or a string of silver coins strung around their necks. The majority of images are roughly made of folded coloured papers, and bear strips of white cloth as a sign of mourning. One, in Macau, had a hessian veil stretched across the face "to prevent him from eating worshipper's “luck"", so the keeper said! The Local Wealth God is located at ground level because he is neither fit nor qualified to stand on the altar. According to a God Carver in Macau, he stands in the Under Altar for the want... ================================================================================ 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)" 123 Sunday is the most convenient time for a temple visit during a six-day work week although the temples, run by individuals as a profit-making business, are open every day. On Sundays, especially before noon, one can find the more popular temples jammed with Fujianese all providing offerings, burning incense and making supplications for help or blessings. The worshippers are overwhelmingly female and are all Southern Fujianese, and as more people arrive in Hong Kong from Fujian the numbers that go to temples are constantly rising. For the past ten to fifteen years, though, their average age has also been rising; most worshippers readily acknowledge the reluctance of younger people to go to the temples for formal worship. Yet for middle-aged Fujianese women, especially those who came to Hong Kong in the mid-1950s, the temples serve as one of the few places available to women to get together and share their problems and thoughts with each other. Anxious over events they have little control over (such as business earnings abroad) and worried about the health and welfare of husbands and families hundreds of miles away in the Philippines and in Fujian, the women come to secure blessings and protection for their families. It is no wonder that middle-aged Fujianese women are the mainstay of the traditional religious tradition in Little Fujian. The comfort and support of the other women there, though, is often as important as that derived from the spirits. This woman-to-woman bond is a key one in male-deficient Little Fujian and can also be seen in the common practice of a woman and her children sharing a flat with other such households. Such joint ventures are usually undertaken only with women from the same locality in Fujian. As such the pattern is also representative of the heavy reliance on "tong-xiang” (lit. "same district," but more broadly, one's fellow ethnics) to help one adjust to Hong Kong life and to make life a bit more pleasant. Close friends are almost invariably all “tong-xiang”, and even in places of work or recreation where groups are ethnically integrated in the spatial sense there exists informal friendship networks that are substantially ethnically enclosed. Lunch-hours and work schedules are often arranged around these groupings as workers "re-segregate” to eat and work with their ethnic-mates. The Fujianese do not see this as discrimination or unusual; they consciously acknowledge their separateness and explain it by proclaiming: ================================================================================ 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 177 26. Water was, of course, Tai Mo Shan's greatest natural resource. Before the construction of the Shing Mun catchwaters pre-war, and those for the Tai Lam Chung reservoir post-war, a tremendous flow of water ran down the mountain. It assisted in the gradual formation of land for houses and cultivation at its two main stream mouths in Tsuen Wan,* and was also used for industrial purposes. Water power drove the 24 incense mills located on the various streams of Tsuen Wan between 1900-1910 and before. (JHKBRAS 16 (1976):282-283). Stream water was also essential to the manufacture of bean curd and bean stick, another very old Tsuen Wan local industry, in which the quality of the product was directly related to the availability of a continually available pure water supply (see pp. 216-218 of this Journal). Public Works 27. In any hill area in which streams abound and become fast-flowing torrents in wet weather, there is a need for bridges across which travellers and villagers carrying heavy loads can proceed in safety. Tai Mo Shan has its share of such streams, and there are surviving bridges here and there in the hills and on its lower slopes. Among those known to me the largest is the Po Chai Bridge at Chung Hang, a few minutes' walk from my office in Tsuen Wan. Beside it is a battered slate-like tablet commemorating its repair in the 4609th year of the Yellow Emperor, a curious titling which owes its inspiration to the overthrow of the Ch'ing dynasty in the same year as its reconstruction (see Dingle: 89 for a similar dating that gave me the clue to this one and illustrates the wave of Chinese feeling that linked places as far apart in these two cases as Hankow and Tsuen Wan). The subscribers were the leading villagers and shopkeepers of Tsuen Wan and places linked to it by social and business ties. 28. Another bridge, further up the same valley at a place called Ngo Tei (#) or Goose Land—probably its geomantic name—has no tablet. However it is also an old bridge, and an elderly villager of Pak Shek Kiu, an abandoned hill village higher up, credits its repair fifty years ago by a city merchant from Hong Kong as the 'price' paid to the villages to allow burial of one of his relatives there. * The old name for Tsuen Wan was Chin Wan (**) or Shallow Bay which directly reflects the effect of the mountain on the bay. It was in use until the late 19th century, being replaced first by Tsuen Wan and then... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 208 NOTES AND QUERIES as that which obtains between the first and fourth fong of Kam Tin, in that the Ngs (4) originated from an adopted Wong (#). 18. The Hakka Tangs of Wang Toi Shan (1) have a tale of origin remarkably similar to the Hung-yi tale. A Ping Shan Tang, they say, while on a business trip to the north, met with hard times and married a Hakka concubine (or mui chai unclear). After siring a number of children, the Tang businessman died. The Hakka woman, carrying his ashes and children, returned to Ping Shan. Unfortunately for her, the Ping Shan Tangs refused to recognize the “legitimate" Punti/Tang status of the boy children; but rather than return to the northern districts, she decided to settle down near Kam Tin, and thereafter founded the Wang Toi Shan settlements. Due to her fortitude, virtue, etc. the Hakka Tangs have prospered. 19. Some debate exists over whether the Hakka Tangs and Punti Tangs "belong" to the same clan [to my knowledge, they share in no common estate]. This debate often takes the form of one of two questions: are the Kam Tin Tangs "really" Hakka? or are the Wang Toi Shan Tangs "really" Punti? One of the predictions to come out of this project is that Kam Tin Tangs will increasingly ally themselves with Hakka local groups, both politically (to the detriment of remaining "higher-order lineage" ties) and culturally (in that they will increasingly attribute to themselves Hakka characteristics). 20. Hypothesis: There has occurred a shift in dominance at the level of superstructure from one founding myth (Wong Ku) to another (Hung-yi Kung). This shift, which has taken place over the last few decades, reflects a shift at the economic/political base of the New Territories (esp. Yuen Long district) between polar structures A and B. 20. a. Structure A. Essentially the "large-clan"/higher-order lineage type. Lineages "collapse" into single, legal and social personalities, and assume great power over the formulas of exchange (women: in terms of marriage alliance, and goods: in terms of markets and tax systems). This structure, which is essentially hierarchical and feudalistic (in that it attempts to usurp power from the local tentacles of central government), is best represented by the Tangs prior to the economic/social revolution begun in 1898, and drawn to a close by the events of the 1930's. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 220 NOTES AND QUERIES The borrower then pays that amount weekly until his loan is paid off, while the other depositors reduce their weekly payments by the amount of interest. However, their share value remains. The bidding occurs at a meeting to which all depositors are invited. If no one bids, the banker finds a single borrower from the list of depositors and the funds are thus dispersed. Borrowers must have another person vouch for their integrity and be considered solvent themselves, but no loans are secured by property or recorded in courthouse files as liens. After the loan is made, regular deposits resume until a new round of bidding occurs. After a period of time agreed to by the group, the "bank" stops making loans. After all loans are paid back, the depositors receive their money, and the bank is closed. Then a new one is formed and the process begins again. In this system there is no policing as such. The operation is run by a "banker" chosen by the organizers. The banker accepts deposits, keeps the books (usually handwritten in Chinese characters), keeps the money in a safe place (invariably cash, never in a regular bank account), dispenses the loans and ultimately pays the depositors. When it came time to close the four banks in late 1976, the money was not there to pay the depositors. The lack of that money, according to those involved, is related to the financial difficulties of [name] one of the bankers and head of the local Chinese Free Masons..... This interesting piece was supplied by one of our Members, Captain Charles S. Mill, United States Marine Corps. The account by Eugene Meyer, Washington Post Staff Writer, clearly relates to the traditional Chinese money loan association, not something "created long ago in this country by enterprising Chinese immigrants" as Mr. Meyer supposed. Accounts of it as practised in China may be found in J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese, 4th edition, Kelly and Walsh, Hong Kong 1903: 632-645 and as Appendix E to G. N. Orme's Report on the New Territories [of Hong Kong] for the years 1899 to 1912 in Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers, 1912. TWO LETTERS FROM WARTIME CHINA The two letters which follow were passed to me by the late Walter Schofield (Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-1938) They are from the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 130 C. MARTIN WILBUR to the common ancestor. Or it may be that several individuals will tacitly be recognized as the responsible leaders. Associated with the ancestral temple is a clan council which serves in an executive capacity. The number of members in this council may be fixed, as reported by Leong, or it may include all the Chia-chang. If the size of the council is fixed, the positions may be filled by popular agreement amounting to election, or in rotation by the various Chia-chang. III The administrative and judicial affairs of the clan are managed by the officers of the ancestral temple. Most clans, through this temple, possess an estate, either in the form of productive farm lands set aside by former clan members, or as a revolving fund raised at some time by popular subscription. This estate the clan council has the duty of administering for the profit of the clan. As an added incentive they will often be granted a larger share of the yearly income from the estate. Regular and necessary expenses to be met from this fund are for the upkeep of the ancestral temple, the care of the graves, and the periodic ceremonies of worship, with their attendant feasts and theatricals. Charities also come under the jurisdiction of the clan leaders, for poor relief has been in the main a traditional familist concern in China. Poverty is commonplace, and in many areas it is very intense. The care of the poorer members of the clan, and of widows, children and aged who have no other means of support, must be attended to by the council of leaders. Rewards in the form of annual grants are often given to the scholars of the clan. To families 1 Leong, Y. K. and Tao, L. K.; Village and Town Life in China, p. 28. 2 Tsu, Yu-Yue; The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy, p. 79, ff. gives an extended account of the history and administration of one such clan estate founded in 1064 A.D., reporting particulars of the rules and procedure of administration. These are quite complicated. Clan estates are sometimes quite large: Tang, Chi Yu; An Economic Study of Chinese Agriculture, p. 236, gives an example of six villages in Swatow, Kuangtung, a province where clans are strong. In these six villages totaling 5000 people, 5325 mao of land were owned by the different clans in perpetuity. * Taylor, J. B.; The Study of Chinese Rural Economy, p. 43, figures that in the Kiangsu villages surveyed half the population, and in the Chihli (Hopei) villages over eighty percent are below the poverty line. It is Mallory's belief, however, that the abject poverty of the masses is a recent thing, living conditions having seldom if ever been so hard as now. Mallory, Walter H.; China: Land of Famine, p. 107. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 24 LUKE KWONG The success of the Customs' operations hinged on various factors, one of these being the high degree of immunity that it enjoyed from the political afflictions that had plagued other Chinese government administrations. Indeed, a comparison of the working conditions of the Customs and these administrations will probably show what the problems in China's administrative modernization had been. It was a policy of the Inspectorate of Customs that its employees should refrain from all unauthorized deeds which might compromise the Service's relatively independent political status. Consequently, Chinese Customs officials were not allowed to join political parties, local or national. This does not mean that the interviewees had abstained from politics all their lives. The nonagenarian, for instance, had been a member of the T'ung-meng hui (Wang Ching-wei being his reference upon entry), and did avail himself of an opportunity afforded by his Customs post to smuggle explosives for the revolutionaries. But early attempts like this were now looked back upon more as youthful exploits than as adult commitments. Whether because of aversion to politics that came with bad initial experience, or because of the above-mentioned prohibition against political involvement, the former officials seemed satisfied with their largely a-political pasts. In this, they seem to have represented a little studied, silent counter-type of educated Chinese to their political-activist contemporaries whose thoughts and actions have attracted far greater scholarly attention. The interviews were not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive. Rather, they were intended as forays into a potential area of research. It was encouraging therefore to find that the interviewees were willing to share their memories of the past, and to supplement these with old photographs and private papers. One of them even made available an unpublished manuscript of his memoir on his Customs years, which he composed on his retirement. Their recollections point up the gap in previous researches into the history of the Chinese Maritime Customs. While attention has been given to its formal status, structure and functions, the human dimension of the Service has for the most part been neglected. There is even less interest shown in those aspects which affected the life and career patterns of Chinese employees. As to the inside Chinese views of the Service, these are basically lacking. Thus, their reminiscences seem to provide the kind of information that might be used to bridge the gap in our understanding of this ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 70 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS On the fourteenth, an officer came in with a stern command that we were to pack up and leave for the internment camp. Just where, he did not seem to indicate, but he pointed towards the Prison and St. Stephen's College. After trying to explain to him that as a group we had considerable baggage, he reluctantly promised to have a truck sent over. We accordingly gathered together our meager belongings into a couple of suitcases and bags, rolled up our bedding, and awaited marching orders. The next day, word came that we were not to go immediately, that we may be sent to St. Stephen's College, and that we may take with us whatever food we have, but there will be no truck available. On the sixteenth, we took up a collection among ourselves and managed to get enough money with which to pay the coolies who were to help in carrying our baggage. The coolies arrived and, as a preliminary, weighed in our effects. Father Meyer took a hand in arranging the baggage and talking price, and I verily believe that if the number of coolies was not limited, he would have moved the whole house as well. For in addition to our personal luggage, there were food supplies, such as some tins of bully beef, tins of milk, oatmeal, a little coffee and tea, sugar, some flour, the remains of the salt pork in a barrel, and kitchen utensils, soup plates, and some dishes, a water filter, host iron, some bottles of Mass wine, a wringer, and a few tools. The question now is whether we shall be allowed to transport all this baggage, and if we have enough money to pay the coolies therefor. The next three days were still days of waiting. At night, we unrolled our bedding, and in the morning rolled it up again, just in case. As we have no more money and very little rice left, we are sorrowfully obliged to dismiss all our servants, except two, who expressed a willingness to share our fortunes or misfortunes, Ah Fung, a Hakka, and Ah Chin, a Cantonese. We understand that we may be allowed these two servants at St. Stephen's. We have only a part of a sack of rice left and only a few beans. In the meantime, we have sent some things, such as chalices, vestments, bookkeeping books, and various other belongings to the Carmelite Convent, where the Mother Superior has very kindly consented to store them for us, until happier days are here. We also emptied our rooms, and what books and other things we could not take with us were stored in the attic, with the hope that they will be here when, and if, we ever get back to our house. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 94 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS gage left for town by truck. That begins to look as if the repatriation is an assured fact, though the British don't yet believe it. The Japanese authorities announce that His Imperial Majesty's government is going to make us a loan; that we are to receive an allocation of money for our personal needs. The sum is $300,000.00 Hong Kong dollars, giving each internee about $105.00 of which $30 is to go to the communal funds, the remainder being credited to the individual, for food and personal needs. Everybody is still hungry, and there seems to be very little activity around the Camp. Softball and other games have fallen off, and even the children seem listless. According to a medical report by the Camp doctors, 90% of the children are suffering from malnutrition. At the present time, milk is issued only for three year olds and under, and for nursing mothers. The quality of our food seems to have increased slightly but the quantity is still meager. Our one piece of bread, issued daily or every other day, seems also to be dwindling in size, and becoming darker in color. At present our piece of bread is about three inches long by about one inch wide. Incidentally, the bread which we have been getting is being baked at the French Hospital, and we are getting it through the good offices and hard work of Dr. Selwyn Clark, the former head of the Hong Kong Medical Department, who has been allowed his freedom, so far. Thus he is doing great work for the internees, though he is not allowed in the Camp very often. In addition to the food, clothing and shoes are becoming a problem. We have no facilities for the repair of shoes. There are several dentists in Camp, but only one has any kind of equipment. The others have repeatedly asked for theirs, but some excuse is always given, one of which is, "you won't be here long enough to need it" which, of course, gives us hope. When the Americans also ask for garden tools and seeds they usually get the same answer. 14—At our morning meal, we received one boiled duck egg, rice, and carrot tops. Brother Thaddeus, in sorting over the soy beans for bean sprouts, finds a means to roast or toast the rejects, and we (his roommates) help him to eat them as peanuts. The Dollar Line officials in Camp are to be included in the repatriates already selected. The Canteen opens again under a new system, which avoids the long queues. Only two hundred tabs are issued and we draw lots for our share. The holder of each tab is also limited to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 120 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS 5- "The Optimists" appear again in an entertainment on the Green and delight their audience. A Mr. Shaw, British, died of heart failure in bed just after tiffin. Today, we received HK$5.00 as our portion of the allocation of relief from His Holiness, the Pope. Sunday. General meeting of Catholic Action in the afternoon. A good crowd was present and various reports read. Father Meyer hands over his share of the cooking to Mr. and Mrs. Kiley. Father Walter and Father Keelan still continue to feed us at night, with hamburgers and "rubber plant"-Excuse me! I should have said "hamburger." 7-Labor Day and no classes for the Language School. Three adults were baptized in the Maryknoll Chapel. Due to some wiring difficulty we had no electricity at night. 8-Nativity of Our Lady, and First Communion Day for the newly baptized. No news of our impending departure! Patience! Lights on again. 9-Big News: Maryknoll, in a cable, orders all Maryknollers in occupied areas to be repatriated! But how? and when? Rumor has it that we are to get news of our release tomorrow. 10-No news! 11--At Last!! We are to leave Camp tomorrow, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, and Father Price's anniversary. Evidently we have friends in Heaven. Laus Deo! 12—What a day! We are to be released from our confinement and go back to civilized life! We toted our baggage in the morning down to the American Club Block A-4, and there at 10:00 a.m. it was examined, not too minutely, by the gendarmes. Nothing was confiscated, however. At about eleven o'clock the truck which brings the food out to the Camp backed up and the first group, consisting of Fathers Toomey, Troesch, Downs, Keelan, Siebert, Walter and Knotek, Brother Thaddeus and Sisters Dorothy and Henrietta Marie, got in. At the Depot were many of our friends to see us off and to wish us well. At 2:30 in the afternoon the second group, consisting of Fathers Tackney, Madison, Moore, McKeirnan, Gaiero and O'Connell, and most of our baggage, left. As we in the first group sped out of the Camp and on our way over the familiar winding road to Hong Kong, it was hard to ana- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 166 JULIAN F. PAS cannot be touched by its defilements. The gods of the folk religion are seen as more human in this (and other) respects. They need worship and offerings for their continued existence. They are susceptible to dangers and impurities. This shows that these concepts have been created by the common people in a simple fashion. Neither the higher deities of Taoism nor the Buddhist Holy Ones share this vulnerability. Unless, perhaps, even here there is a wrong interpretation by the author. Is it correct to say that the gods can be polluted? I have some doubts. If gods are really efficacious, they do not have to fear human pollution, or pollution by evil spirits. I believe that gods are kept away from the presence of evil spirits as a sign of honour; it would be an insult to their sacredness (just as the common people are not brought into the presence of emperors). Wherever there is a special need of bringing the two together, as in cases of exorcism, the gods are called down to chase the evil spirits away. Why is that not polluting as well? In such cases, the element of irreverence is absent (as when criminals are brought into the presence of high mandarins for judgment and sentencing). The same sense of respect for the hierarchical status is present in the chronomantic ordering of sacrifices. The higher the status of the gods, the earlier in the day they are served (p. 154). On pp. 168-169, several confusions occur: Taoist priests are said to perform in Buddhist temples, while Buddhist monks are invited to Taoist temples. The examples cited do not warrant this, for the so-called Buddhist temple is not really a Buddhist temple, while the Matsu temples cited are not Taoist either. The author conveniently follows the official appellation from the gazetteers, which he has criticized in a previous chapter. On p. 174, there is another example of 'sublime distortion'. The author tries to explain the folk saying that "Taoists do not offer the service for feeding the hungry ghosts, and Buddhist monks do not offer the li-tou service", already quoted on p. 165. Factual observations contradict the saying. The author's explanation is that “individual ancestral services such as chin-chu and chin-t'a are only offered... in "Buddhist" bone temples, and by Buddhist priests (p. 174), whereas the community temples do not allow this to take place: the god's purity must be safeguarded. First, the statement is incorrect as far as chin-chu services are concerned; these normally ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 178 JULIAN F. PAS in Western languages but also in Chinese and Japanese. Many of the writings are hardly known in the West: they include an enormous output of 'morality books' published by temples where there is a divination writing cult. There is, moreover, an abundance of books and articles in related areas, such as anthropology, ethnology and folk-lore, but also a staggering number of works on magico-religious ideas and practices: divination, geomancy, palmistry, astrology, fate-calculation and magic. Add to these the great number of journals and monthlies of various calibre published by scholars, priests, devotees, and temple-committees and one can see that the word complexity is justified. The economic prosperity of Taiwan has evidently influenced the booming of religious literature: the ancient custom of printing edifying texts for the benefit of others in order to increase one's own merits is nowadays no longer beyond the means of many people. (e) There is, finally, an ever-growing visibility of religious life in Taiwan: new temples and monasteries of various affiliations are built, old ones are repaired, restored, and/or refurnished at great expense. Large festivals, such as the ritual of community or cosmic renewal, are organized with more pomp and greater frequency than ever before. Not only humans are enjoying more prosperity: the gods share the economic progress with better housing, richer food and money offerings and better quality incense. Besides the officially recognized temples, i.e. those registered at the city hall, department of religion, (approximately 5,000 on the island), there is a growing number of private temples, usually housing a medium-cult: their importance in the community seems to be on the increase. The above mentioned five complexities are not exhaustive although they should not deter the researcher from doing more careful field work. They serve here as an excuse for the incompleteness and many inadequacies of my report. Although the validity of the old-fashioned division of Chinese religion into three has recently been the object of doubts and criticism,3 I am still going to use this traditional framework with an important addition: the folk-religion. Very often the distinctions between these four are blurred but there is at least a minimum degree of identity in each of the four, which makes a distinction along these old lines not only useful but very appropriate, if not necessary. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE 67 affairs clandestinely. This greatly encouraged them to develop autonomous merchant communities with what amounted to extra-territorial rights. The most important of these Chinese merchant communities at the end of the 15th century was in Malacca. Ships went to and from Malacca as far as India and China, trading in a wide variety of Indian and Chinese goods which were exchanged for the products of the Indonesian islands. Malacca, the "city made for merchandise", was essentially an entrepôt the very existence of which depended upon its carrying trade. It had an excellent and easily defensible harbour, protected on either side by the narrow straits between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula and strategically placed, as Pires put it, at the end of one monsoon and the beginning of others. When Afonso de Albuquerque captured Goa in 1510 he was quick to see that Malacca's unrivalled position as an emporium and as a centre for the dissemination of Islam in South East Asia made it essential that he gain control of it also. He could thus fulfil Portuguese obligations to the Holy See and acquire a base for their commercial activities in the archipelago, in particular the carrying trade in spices and other precious goods from Indonesia to Goa and Lisbon in which the Portuguese sought to gain a share, if not a monopoly. At the other end of the maritime area with which we are here concerned was another important trading centre. This was the Ryukyu Islands. The inhabitants of these islands, known to the Europeans as Lequeos or Loochoos, were actively engaged in the carrying trade between the northern and southern parts of the area from the 13th to the mid 16th century. The islanders carried to the south Chinese porcelain, silks and other textiles, metal goods and drugs, Japanese weapons and armour, lacquer and gold, all of which they exchanged for spices, aromatic woods, dyewoods and exotic beasts and birds from the Indonesian archipelago — goods that they could sell in China for several hundred times the buying price.2 Technically this trade with China remained an imperial monopoly and was carried out under the pretence of tribute. As Ming seapower dwindled and piracy in the China Seas accordingly grew, and as the Portuguese extended their trading activities in the years following their conquest of Malacca in 1511 into the Indonesian archipelago and beyond to the spice islands, to Timor and the Solor Islands, to Makassar and eventually to Macau—so the Ryukyu trade became increasingly circumscribed until it was con- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 82 DAVID LUNG desires and aspirations are no longer a priority in design. The trend toward brutalism in architectural design has urged theoreticians in the field like Robert Vickery and Christopher Alexander to advocate a return to basic principles, to refathom the timeless way of building and to rediscover the fundamental 'pattern language' in environmental design. In the long search for meaning in Chinese architecture, I have come to the conclusion that buildings should reflect the characteristics, the values and the sensitivities of a culture so that people who live in them can sense their archetypal foundations and, in turn, heighten their awareness of their own culture and values. Hence, architecture is didactic, a device for expression. Architecture becomes a life-sustaining process, and not an end object itself. Chinese architecture, like its civilisation, is an accumulation of a continuous, monolithic tradition. Unlike its European counterpart where building types of certain periods characterise certain architectural styles, Chinese architecture basically carries one archetype throughout the ages. Be it a commoner's house, or a palace, or a temple, they share a common set of design principles and methods. From the founding of an imperial city in Peking to the building of a farm village, the same tradition is followed. Chinese farm villages do not just 'grow in a haphazard fashion' as a number of scholars have suggested. Rather, they follow the same set of values as city building of the Chou Dynasty (1122-256 B.C.). I have chosen Kat Hing Wai, a farm village in the New Territories in Hong Kong, to demonstrate one significant theory that "vernacular architecture and the monumental buildings of the grand design tradition have a common root and serve the same symbolic function, both express the meaning, values and needs inherent in public form of life." This village was built in the Ming Dynasty (1368—1644) and is the best surviving example of Cantonese farm architecture remaining in the Colony. It still serves as a viable living habitat for the original Tang clan who migrated to this region during the tenth century. I want to document and preserve this 'vanishing' farm village in drawings, photographs and writing, as well as to examine the reasons why this architecture, and the life it supports, have survived into the twentieth century. What lessons can we learn from the village built forms that can significantly contribute to the making of future environments? ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 14 STEPHEN MORRIS balance of the human person, the first thing to be upset is the feelings or the emotions. This shows itself by paleness, trembling, or nervousness, and the soul begins its journey to the land of the dead, leaving behind it only the body, which is still animated by the principle of life. If the soul does not return, death is inevitable. The world, as I said a little earlier, also contains other beings than humans. No Melanau doubts the existence of spirits, though if you ask him about them, he is likely to say: "They are things which cannot be seen; how can we be sure what they are like?" Even so everybody knows what quite a large number of them do look like; I have the detailed descriptions of about 150 spirits. Many people who are not experts have sufficient knowledge of the appearance and attributes of several spirits and the afflictions they are thought to cause. They are also able to carve spirit images for use in curing illness. The most general classification of spirits is by the region they inhabit; for like men, they all have their proper homes and settings. In this middle world are found air or sky spirits, and forest, and river, and sea spirits. The upper and the under worlds have the same types; and all can move from one world to another in a way that a man cannot. Spirits are male and female, and most are anthropomorphic. Some people think that like the Melanau they are hierarchically ranked within their categories, each of which has its own leader with authority over all his kind, whatever world he may inhabit. Although people tell myths and stories of marriages between humans and spirits and of men becoming spirits, others deny that any of this is possible. At the same time all agree that animals, plants, humans, and spirits are distinct and separate orders of being who happen to share the same environment - a fact that entails ordered rules of behaviour. Contact between these various orders is inevitable, but it carries considerable risk with it; the likelihood of over-stepping the bounds of proper behaviour and so causing trouble is very great indeed. ― The Melanau's technical equipment gave them little control over the natural forces of their environment; but they did have an extensive and detailed knowledge of its variations and dangers. By personifying those forces and placing them in a system of moral relationships, stated in much the same terms as they used in handling the social order and backed by the same kinds of sanctions, they were helped ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO 67 changed reality than were the old religious symbol systems. The adoption of Western science and philosophy and Western religion can be interpreted as a means of finding legitimation systems which are compatible with the new conditions created by modernization. They have the advantage of reconciling the consciousness to the reality of modern society, at least they do it better than the traditional legitimation systems. But they have one crucial shortcoming: they are not able to symbolize the Chinese cultural identity. At this point we come back to the role of traditional religions. In so far as they are traditional they express continuity and identity. But, on the other side, in so far as they are traditional they contain many elements which do not harmonize with the changed reality. However, only dead traditions are unchangeable. There are many signs that religions in Taiwan today are changing. This is obviously true of Buddhism. In the case of Taoism it is more difficult to demonstrate since recent research has put the emphasis on the revival of the Taoist tradition and not on changes in this tradition. As to popular religions, I have tried to give some hints as to what is going on. The tendency towards universalism is just one element. There are others which could not be dealt with here, and many which await further research. In any case we should be aware that traditional religions in present-day Taiwan may not just be survivals of a bygone age doomed to extinction, but living traditions which could even gain importance in the future. NOTES 1 Cf. C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967) pp 294–340 2 Cf. Chin Yao-chi, Ts'ung Ch'uan-t'ung tao hsien-tai (Taipei, 1979, third edition). 3 Of course, in the People's Republic there were other factors which made a great impact on the religious life, esp. the official anti-religious propaganda and the suppression of religious activities. Yang, op. cit., pp 363–377 • "As a result of industrial development, farm population has gradually moved to urban areas. The share of employment in agriculture decreased from 59.3 per cent in 1952 to 27.3 per cent in 1977, while that in industry increased from 14.5 per cent to 37.6 per cent in the same period." (China Yearbook 1978, p 165) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 44 longer the case, since it would be absurd to argue that a Chinese could make a valid will in the urban areas, but not in the New Territories.2 (b) The custom is that land is inherited by all the sons of the deceased, whether born by a kit fat (妻) or tin fong (正室) wife or by a concubine. They all inherit as tenants in common. In some cases, the father of the eldest grandson receives a double or larger share. Since daughters marry and join their husbands' family, they do not qualify for inheritance. In some cases the widow or concubine will also inherit, but this is by arrangement among the parties and it is usual for the widow or concubine only to have control over the land in the capacity of manager of a Tso (祖). This ensures that the land cannot be disposed of without the consent of the members of the Tso (宗族). Because the arrangement was intended to take care of the widow and so avoid disgrace falling on her deceased husband's brothers by her being forced into re-marriage to survive, the Tso with the widow as manager was usually dissolved on her death and the land re-distributed among the nearest male relatives. This assumes the widow had no sons. If she did have sons, then she would occupy the land during her lifetime and their minority as trustee on behalf of her sons. (c) When the sons have married and started families, it is permitted to divide the property amongst them by way of division. Often one share is retained in the name of a Tso (祖), so as to provide income for ancestral worship. (d) Where there are no sons, the property is inherited by the nearest male relative of the deceased. This is often a nephew, brother, uncle or cousin, and excludes all daughters. For the purpose of inheritance, a son is often adopted, from the nearest male relative with a son to spare. Failing that, from a distant relative; only in default of all else is a total outsider adopted. (e) Where there are no children and no close relatives, a widow on occasion may manage her late husband's property provided there are no family or clan objections, but more often the family will regard the adoption of a son as essential for purposes of inheritance. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 58 regular meetings are held throughout. In the commonest form of the Association, each member will at the first meeting pay to the chairman, who is usually the instigator of the scheme, an agreed sum of money, for example $50. At the second meeting, all members will in secret tender to the chairman on slips of paper the amount of interest which they are prepared to offer on each member's share. The member who tenders the highest interest, say $5 on $50 shares, is awarded all the members' shares for that meeting. The members are then required to pay over their share ($50) less the highest amount of interest tendered, i.e. $50 less $5 = $45. The winner therefore collects $45 from each member for that meeting. When a member has secured the highest tender, he is thereafter regarded as a dead member and at all further meetings has to pay the full share to the successful tenderer whilst himself being debarred from tendering again. In this manner, each member in turn will eventually at some stage become a successful tenderer. At the last meeting, the one remaining member will collect his full amount back again and he will have profited by the interest accruing on the sums loaned to each successful tenderer during the set period. (d) In the above form of the association, the chairman collects the fixed sum in full from each member at the first meeting repaying the same amount at each subsequent meeting to the successful tenderer. He gets in effect an interest-free loan. In a different form, the chairman may be in the nature of a professional, charging the successful tenderer each month a commission usually fixed at 50% of the fixed sum. This type of chairman is really acting as a sort of paid manager. (e) In any form of association, the chairman gives each member at or before the first meeting a booklet containing the names of members and simple rules, including a liability on the chairman in the event of a member dying or backing out. (f) The aim as far as possible is that each member should at some stage during the set period have the use of the combined shares of all the members. In effect, he is borrowing money at a low rate of interest without knowing exactly when the loan will come. It is the appeal of this gambling element which makes these associations so popular amongst wage-earning Chinese. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 139 50 workers and only 0.3% had 500 workers or more at that time. Lastly, these mills were among the most highly mechanized factories in Hong Kong. In the 1970's, the spindle to worker ratio in this industry had exceeded 40. Most of the data on the cotton spinners were obtained by face-to-face interviews. I attempted to interview two directors—the chief executive who held the title of chairman or managing director, and the director with the second largest share-holding as shown in the company records from each of the thirty-two mills. Forty interviews were completed and twenty-three mills were covered. 'Forced choice' questionnaire items were used to assess the business attitudes of my respondents. Some of these items were developed by Nichols in his study of British businessmen (1969). I borrowed them for comparative purposes. As Nichols has restricted his attention to just one aspect of business ideology, namely the businessman's conception of social responsibility, I have added other items to cover a broader range of themes. This forced choice method differs from two other major approaches in the study of business ideology. The research of Bendix represents the historical, cross-cultural approach (1954; 1956; 1959). It is legitimate for him to eschew the use of questionnaires as he is primarily concerned with what Karl Mannheim calls the 'total conception of ideology' (1936: 49-53). He wants to assess the ethos of an entire age and society with special reference to the authority relationship between employers and workers. The stress is on the ideology about industrial activities, not the ideology of industrialists. He considers the ideas of theorists who were not businessmen themselves as he is concerned with broad ideological drifts, not individual or group beliefs. The second approach, which may be called an elitist approach (Sutton et al. 1956; Heilbroner, 1964; Christ, 1970; Seider, 1974), is closer to the forced choice method in that both are dealing with 'particular conceptions of ideology' or the attitudes of a specific sector in society. Beyond this similarity, however, the elitist approach has its focus on the public statements of prominent businessmen. The contents of the speeches or writings of the 'industrial statesmen' are analysed with various degrees of rigour. Such a focus has ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 187 But this is not the only vexing problem in Chapter 26. Column 16 introduces a new divination system into which omens from the previous section keep intruding; while from column 18 to column 22 the text becomes increasingly obscure. This points to some confusion, either in the scribe's mind or in the material he was copying. What is clear is that this passage deals with offerings which, as a rule, do not form part of Chinese divination. In this connection, an analogy with another divination system also found among the Dunhuang manuscripts, may serve to illustrate the point. Both Tibetan and Chinese versions of a divination method based on the cawing of crows have been found. In the Tibetan version, the crow serves as the messenger of a powerful deity; in cases of unfavourable omens attempts are made to placate the god with appropriate offerings. Since the Chinese do not share that belief no offerings are mentioned in the Chinese texts; yet in our manuscript the passage from columns 18 to 22 appears to suggest offerings to deflect misfortune and another type of offering is alluded to in column 27. (column Had it been possible to identify the Shuozhou 19), some light might have been shed on the matter; as the text now stands it defies translation. One can only note some Buddhist overtones such as the plea (column 19) to abstain from dog meat because dogs too are part of the cycle of deaths and rebirths; and the recommendation (column 22) to release something living in order to gain merit. The last chapter in P. 3106 is entitled: "Portents from sounds"; column 23 explains that these sounds are all produced by the ghosts of dead soldiers. Since both chapters 26 and 27 deal with omens drawn from canine behaviour there is a tendency to assume that chapter 27 follows suit: in other words that these ghosts express themselves through howling dogs, which is my understanding of the text. But I am aware that this reading is based on circumstantial evidence and that other interpretations are possible. With these ghosts, at least, we are on familiar ground. The Chinese belief that those who died far from home were doomed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 218 • There are four in the year, but the principal one falls on the nineteenth day of the second moon. * See my "Secular Non-Gentry Leadership of Temple and Shrine Organisations in Urban Hong Kong" pp 113 to 136 of this Journal. * See my article "The Japanese Occupation and the New Territories", South China Morning Post, 15 December 1967. A COMMUNITY SHOOTING BUNGALOW NEAR CHINKIANG, KIANGSU, AND ITS LIBRARY ABOUT 1905 J. W. HAYES The following extracts are taken from A. H. Rasmussen's China Trader, published by Constable of London in 1954. Mr. Rasmussen was barely twenty when he joined the Chinese Customs Service at Chinkiang, where there was a small, lonely British concession. During his first four years, two of the original thirty-five Europeans died, two went mad, two cut their throats, and he himself was twice nearly murdered by smugglers. At this time, as he relates, he was lucky enough to find relaxation and renewal of spirits brought low by the conditions of life and work in shooting wild pig, and in finding a library and visitors' books in a small shooting bungalow in the countryside near the Chinkiang concession. Let him speak for himself. "When the Concession really got me down I 'lifted up mine eyes unto the hills' and got new strength from them. A ride of about eight miles took me to a hill called Wu Chow where for many years there had been a community shooting bungalow for those who were keen on wild boar-shooting. It was rather an expensive sport as it required about fifteen beaters at fifty cents (or one shilling) each a day. Moreover, a rifle had to be bought and fortunately I came across an ancient Lee-Metford single-shot carbine used in the Boer War. I bought it for fifteen dollars. In view of the daily cost it was important to get shooting companions to share in the beating expenses. No serious shooting had been done out there for several years, and no one in the port seemed to know the ropes. I went out one week-end to investigate and to get away from everybody, most of all from my old bored self. Page 240 Page 241 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 16 JULIAN PAS From Sung times on, the blockprint method made the spread of temple oracles much easier. I also believe that once one temple started using the oracles, the practice must have spread as quickly as fire to other temples to attract worshippers and increase temple revenue. Nowadays the great majority of temples in Taiwan have sets of bamboo lots for the use of visitors. Few temples, mostly those of Buddhist affiliation, can afford not to include them in their paraphernalia, and even then many Buddhist temples do make use of them. Taking over a successful practice, however, does not necessarily mean downright imitation. Personal inspiration and possibly competition amongst the temples resulted in an incredible variety of oracle texts. These texts, written by diviners, priests and even poets share the same basic orientation or purpose: to give answers to people in distress or uncertainty. It is believed that when the worshipper shakes the container, the divine influence will make the right answer appear. Besides this one universal characteristic, each set of oracles has its own individual traits, as will be shown below. The oldest set of oracles discovered so far probably dates from the Sung dynasty (ca. 1250) and was reprinted in 1958.1 In W. Banck's text edition, oracle no. 78 of that blockprint series has been reproduced; it is interesting to notice that in the interpretation given, the character kua | is used: this immediately links this oracle to the diagrams of the I Ching which are always called kua. Local influences, individual tastes and the talents of their creators must have given each series its own particularities. Obviously competition among various shrines must have also influenced the authors. In modern times the rich variety of oracle sets is amazing: in W. Banck's collection 55 different sets are photographically reproduced: 46 sets were collected in Taiwan temples, the remaining ones are from Hong Kong (3), Macao (1), Malaysia (3), Bangkok (1) and even California (1). Besides these, I collected in Taiwan some other sets not included in Banck's collection. One wonders how many more sets were once in use in mainland temples, since the varieties found in Taiwan mostly reflect the situation in Fukien and in a more limited way in Kuangtung. The Taotsang, the collection of sacred writings of the Taoists17 has preserved 7 or 8 oracle series, probably derived from other ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 106 BARBARA E. WARD Purse-seining was a two-boat operation; the fokis' wages were calculated on the gross total takings of the pair of boats. Actual payment was, however, made by each boat master separately to the employees on his own junk out of the cash remaining after division with his partner and payment of other expenses. If for any reason a foki did not go to sea, then the proceeds for the period of his absence were not included in the total on which his share was calculated. In general conversation and in answer to casual questioning, the share was always described as “4%” or “about 4%”. In fact, it was sometimes rather less than this, and I have examples ranging from 3.5% to 4%, the differences being explained to me in terms of competence and/or need. Thus, on Chung Fuk Hap's pair of purse-seiners in the first half of 1952, there were as many as 5 hired men and 1 hired woman. Three of the men received shares of 3.5% each, one received 3.8%, and one the full 4%. The three on 3.5% were all unmarried youths between 18 and 24 years of age. One of them was Fuk Hap's qualified coxswain-engineer nephew (brother's son). The 3.8% share went to a man a little older, and the 4% to a man nearly 40 years of age with two wives and several children, who was Fuk Hap's full brother and acting master of the second boat of the pair. The woman, who was the elderly mother of one of the 3.5% men, was given $15 a month and described as being “looked after” by Fuk Hap because she had nowhere else to live. On Ma Wing Toh's boats at the same period, there were 4 fokis, 2 on 4% and 2 on 3.8%. During the first six lunar months of 1953, Chung Fuk Hei's literate son, Fu Tak, kept full records of income and expenses, including all payments made to the 2 fokis his father employed at shares of 3.8% and 3.5% respectively; the amounts totalled $541.20 cts. and $373.95 cts. Public opinion might react strongly to rumours of underpayment. Early in 1953, it was being said that Fuk Hap was treating one of his men unfairly by paying only 3.3%. The man concerned happened to be younger brother to the wife of one of Fuk Hap's own younger brothers, Fuk Shun, and, although it was the unfairness in general that aroused unfavourable comment, I do not know whether I should have heard so much about it had I... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 151 75 Ahern (1973), 191-203, and 213-218. 76 M. Fortes, The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi (Oxford, 1949), 234-235; cf. 138-139. 77 Ahern (1973), 217-218. 78 I note only M.-Th. Charlier and G. Raepsaet, "Etude d'un comportement social: les relations entre parents et enfants dans la société athénienne à l'époque classique", AC, 40 (1971), 589-606. 79 Cf. Fustel de Coulanges (1874), 115, and 120-122; and J.A. Crook, “Patria Potestas", CQ, n.s. 17 (1967), 113-122. For an early and convincing instance of a son's inability to make a will while his father was still alive, see Plaut. Mostell. 233-234. 80 Thus also P. Veyne, "La famille et l'amour sous le haut-empire romain", Annales (ESC), 33 (1978), 36; and Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 243-245. 81 Cf. CIL 11.27, 40, 105-107, 112, 119 = ILS 8243, 121, 125 = ILS 8242, 147 ILS 8241, 187, 191 and 198. - 82 Field research for this paper in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom was made possible by a generous grant from the University of Minnesota's faculty travel fund, as well as a Single Quarter Leave Grant in the fall of 1983. It has benefited considerably from the criticisms and suggestions of many people expert in matters of contemporary Chinese religious experience. I am indebted above all to Patrick Hase for his invaluable suggestions at a meeting of the Hong Kong History Society, and to Alice Ng Lun Ngai-Ha and David Faure for their contributions at a seminar sponsored by the Department of History of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. None would agree with all to be found herein, but we do share a common conviction that local traditions, which are increasingly subject to external influences, should be recorded and studied before they are lost forever. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 158 WEI PEH T'I she continued taking Chinese lessons at Taiho. She took a second language examination in 1905. Mastery of the local dialect was also essential. It took Edith until 1905 to make herself understood in the northern Anhui dialect. “Last year I could not say much but this time I will have to do my share of the preaching,”20 Edith confided to Louese in her letter dated 5 January 1905. At the same time, another woman missionary, Mrs. Ferguson, “not having our pronunciation so that the women do not understand her very well,” was not very useful since she could not preach. 9920 At Taiho, the missionaries lived among the people to whom they were bringing the Gospel. These were poor people, judging by their daily fare and by their standards of hygiene. Edith described the scene in the back lane where the men of the neighbourhood ate their evening meal squatting outside their front doors. The men do not eat with their wives, . . . The man of the house takes his bowl of rice, if he can afford it, or if not his bowl of dough strips and perhaps a bowl of salted garlic or some kind of greens. If it's the first or fifteenth of the month he will have another bowl with some stewed meat and onion etc.22 Seeing the population of the back lane thus gathered, the missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm as well as Edith, would assault them with the words of the Lord. every day about the time they are eating their food we three stand at the back gate, sing a hymn to draw the crowd, then Mr. Malcolm steps out to preach to them. A great many of them won't come here, so we go to them." Their timing might not be the most propitious way to make friends and influence their neighbours, but the missionaries were only following Hudson Taylor's directions to reach the people wherever and whenever possible. And Edith was surprised that the neighbours were so “unfriendly”,24 mumbling such things as "the Boxers will finish them off yet" and calling the missionaries ! ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 160 WEI PEH TI had to share the house with local fauna. I have lots of company over here in the way of rats and bats and in the summer scorpions and mosquitoes. Last summer Mrs. Malcolm killed ten scorpions over here and caught about half that many rats. The bats are here still,...29 Single women missionaries in larger communities, especially those teaching in schools, were found by Jane Hunter to be sharing quarters. They tried to furnish their residences to resemble their own homes as much as they could, some even bringing with them piano and other pieces of furniture. In comparison, Edith's quarters at Taiho were basic indeed. There were rugs in the bedrooms, which the local population duly admired, but elsewhere the floors were of cold brick.30 Chinese tiled roofs might be picturesque, but they did not serve well when it rained. I had to have the roof mended not long ago for every rain saw me placing basins and pails around. And the roof mender nearly landed through twice, much to my consternation.31 Edith began to wear Chinese clothing as soon as she arrived at Yangchow. Describing this novelty, she wrote to Louese: Our Chinese clothes are very warm. You would laugh if you could see me, so we did at each other when we first put them on. Would you be interested for me to describe what I have on? We wear foreign underclothes, but try to dress as much like the natives on the outside as possible.12 Despite efforts on the part of foreign missionaries to fit into the Chinese community, they remained an enigma to the local populace. The Chinese women could not understand what Edith was doing in their midst and gave their own interpretations. They cannot understand single women away from home in a strange place. I am generally accepted as Mr. Malcolm's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 181 Chinese New Year comes this year February 4th and that means a very busy time for us. It's the women's gad-about time, the only time that they have a free foot, some are never allowed on the street except at New Year, so they all come to pay their respects and have a look around. Last year I could not say much but this time I will have to do my share of the preaching. Please write to me when you have the time, and I shall be looking for the picture with all the babies together. With love and thanks, (5) EDITH Taiho March 2, 1905 Dear Louise: Thank you very much for the dainty Christmas gift. I have really needed an indexed address book so I hope you are as pleased as I am to know that my need is supplied. I would have written before but my time has been so taken up and when evening comes, my time for writing, I am too tired to do anything but go to bed. I have even been tempted to go to bed with my clothes on. As I said to Mrs. Ferguson, all our troubles seem to have come at once, it never rains but it pours, you know. I have broken my record too, and had my first day in bed since coming to China. We are always as busy as can be receiving guests at Chinese New Year time, last year we reckoned we had a thousand the first day, but this year we did not have nearly so many and I was glad as I had the entertaining to do alone. The melting snow and consequent deep mud kept the country people away. But the city people came and some of them several times. The cookies etc. are an inducement but the Ferguson children are the special magnet for continued coming, to bring the different members of the family to see the little curiosities. Some seem quite astonished and say why they are just like our children! ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 14 HELEN F. SIU take it for granted. For rural emigrants in the 1980s who are already out of their context, the peculiarity of Hong Kong society is disorienting to say the least. Their attempts to solve personal dilemmas add new ones to their host society. On the other hand, however Chinese in appearance, the bureaucratic assumptions of a technically modern economy have penetrated life in Hong Kong. A generation with Western education and life styles is forming the technical backbone of Hong Kong's international trade, finance, and manufacturing sectors. They have developed a peculiar outlook which incorporates most of the incongruence caused by the juxtaposition of the "traditional" and the "modern," the "Chinese" and the "Western." Such mentality is actively communicated and explored as the local population conduct their everyday activities. They want to keep what they have against a political power hovering over the border. Stability is highly priced though it is precariously perched on a fulcrum of hope. Recent immigrants as much as the "maternal uncles" are readily seen as intruders. However, mainland boy or native resident, each has to acknowledge the existence of the other in a congested society required to perform a delicate balancing act. Each continues to jostle and bargain to give their concerns significance. However, amidst these active energies is a certain feeling of powerlessness that both immigrants and Hong Kong belongers share — that ultimately the factor colouring their energies lies in a political arena set by Beijing and the Western powers quite beyond their reach. This is a political reality more or less assumed. From time to time, Hong Kong citizens have expressed their political opinions — by "voting with their feet," as one journalist puts it. Just as Liang and his friends are accumulating resources and creating networks to settle in Hong Kong, many home-grown youths are preparing for departure. It appears that Hong Kong will continue to be the land of immigrants as well as emigrants. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 272 NOTES AND QUERIES that one of these is an earlier version, including the annual accounts for only 1911 to 1913. A photocopy of this one was given to James Hayes by the Chairman of the Sheung Shui Rural Committee in 1972, and Dr. Hayes kindly made it available to the Oral History Project at the Chinese University. It is now incorporated into the volumes on Sheung Shui in the Project's Historical Literature of the New Territories. The other copy is held by the British Library, and includes the annual accounts from 1923 to 1960. The British Library also holds the only copy of the accounts of the New Alliance, on the cover of which is written: Temple celebration of the New Alliance, opened on the 1st of the Sixth Month in the 1st year of Hsüan-t'ung, Lung Yeuk Tau copy (新約會神誕,宣統元年歲次己酉六月初一日✰✰✰). It includes the annual accounts from 1906. Both copies held by the British Library are originals, not photocopies. According to these account books, member villages held shares in these alliances, managed the communal property by annual rotation among the shares, and participated in the annual sacrifices that were paid for from income derived from the communal property. The Old Alliance was made up of four shares and the New Alliance of six. The four villages of the Hau (侯) lineage (Kam Tsin, Ping Kong, Ho Sheung Heung, Yin Kong) together held one share in the Old Alliance, and so did the Liu (廖) lineage of Sheung Shui, the Wan Shing T'ong (雲升堂) of Sheung Shui (a sub-lineage trust of the Liu lineage), and the Tang (鄧) lineage of Lung Shaan, i.e. Lung Yeuk Tau. According to oral tradition in Sheung Shui, the Wan Shing T'ong bought its share from the Man (文) lineage. This is corroborated by an undated document entitled, "Eulogy of the four surnames of Hau, Liu, Tang and Man on the foundation of the Po Tak Temple”(侯、廖、鄧、文四姓立報德祠頌詞) published in a recent commemorative volume (Liu Yun-sham, Commemorative Volume on the History of the Venerable Chau and Wong 廖潤深,周王二公史蹟紀念專輯 Hong Kong, 1982, p. 13). We have not seen the original of this document, but its title suggests that it was written for the Old Alliance at a time before the Man lineage sold its share to the Wan Shing T'ong. In the New Alliance, the four Hau villages, Sheung Shui, Lung ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 NOTES AND QUERIES 275 the heung in question is to take charge of the matter on its own, and it is not the concern of the other heung [in the alliance]. 10. In the event that there is a genuinely unlawful descendant [tsz-ai] among the various surnames, and his own lineage () brings charges against him, and if the shan-sz of other heung are notified, they must also put their names to these charges and may not refuse to do so. [The term tsz-tai implies that the culprit must be male and within the lines of descent of the lineage.] 約 11. If a robber is caught within the alliance [yeuk shuk] and charged, the alliance will contribute 4 silver dollars towards expenses. [The term yeuk shuk, literally "what belongs to the alliance", may include a much wider territory than what is normally thought of as the confines of the individual member villages. The member villages were major land-owners in the New Territories, whose holdings stretched from Sai Kung to Kowloon, and the possibility must not be ruled out that the Old Alliance was designed to have jurisdiction over a much larger area than Sheung Shui and its immediate vicinity.] 12. On the occasion of the annual sacrifice, within the first ten days of the Fourth Month, the chief manager of affairs for the year is to set a title from the Four Books and another for a five character poem, and post them outside the door of the Po Tak Temple, so that during the celebration villagers may submit to the manager their compositions. The manager will forward these compositions to teachers at the provincial capital [i.e. Canton] to be adjudicated. The best ten compositions will be awarded some small gifts in order to encourage literary achievement. 13. On the occasion of a military or literary official functionary [man-mo yau-p'oon] passing by the Governor's Temple and paying his respect to Governor-General Chau and Governor Wong, a roast pig is to be prepared, he is to be awarded altogether 6 silver dollars, and his men and horses are to receive 2 silver dollars. For the feast on that day, two tables are to be set. Every share [in the yeuk] is to despatch to the feast at the Governor's Temple one or two shan-sz from the village. It will be understood that the four shares together will ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 NOTES AND QUERIES 277 Temple and paying respect to Governor-General Chau and Governor Wong, a roast pig is to be prepared, and the sum of 8 silver dollars is to be awarded, in addition to 3 silver dollars for the men and horses. The feast for the day is to be arranged in the manner stated in the previous clause. 16. Should the provincial or metropolitan graduates, imperial students by special selection, or official functionaries, of the literary or military order, be accompanied by masters-of-ceremony, as they pass by the Governor's Temple, the masters-of-ceremony are to be paid 20 cents each. We have not been able to discover if these rules were used as stated. Village elders remember the feast, in which scholars sat at the most honoured places, and poetry and rhymed couplets were written. However, we have not come across any concrete reference to the Po Tak Temple as a place for litigation or reception of officials. The clauses concerning litigation and entertainment of officials and degree-holders are not found in the regulations of the New Alliance. Its regulations are brief, although one clause, giving the history of the alliance from 1908, is of particular interest. The lack of any reference to the literary competition should also be noted. A translation of the regulations is given below: 1. If money has to be distributed for the public affairs of this tung [] [a group of villages: this use of ... is common in the New Territories] the shan-sz of the heung are to meet to discuss the matter. Money must be distributed to each share as stated in former regulations, and not in this manner (SØER). [It is not at all clear what "this manner" refers to.] 2. Under former regulations, the New Alliance [met] on the 1st of the Sixth Month. It was divided into five shares. However, when the land came under British rule, there was insufficient money for annual sacrifices. In the thirty-fourth year of Kuang-hsü [1908], the accounts were closed and cancelled, and sacrifice was to cease from then on. The half share held by Loi Tung Village was scattered and excluded. The shan-sz then met and sought contributions. At that time, San Tin heung ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 the symposium was returned by nearly 130 members. This response gave the Council a better idea of our present situation and how we should move forward. Mr. Ian Deane, one of our members, did the major share of the preparatory work and wrote the draft report, greatly facilitating the Council's consideration of its contents. He is unable to be present this evening as an invited guest, but I wish to state our sincere appreciation of his work on our behalf, before and since the symposium. Following the symposium, the Council decided to strengthen our organisation by establishing a number of committees to cover the main activities and areas of concern. These will be chaired by Councillors. Membership will come partly from the Council and partly from our members, enabling more of you to share in the Society's work. In addition, the Assistant Secretary's work, which has steadily expanded, will be recognised by increasing her salary. A separate paper provides more detail and I will be happy to answer questions. Membership Last year at this time I reported that 82 people had joined the Society. During the year under review this number has further increased by the unheard of number of 192 with, Mrs. Bruce tells me, another 26 applications in hand. As President, may I extend them all a hearty welcome on your behalf. As of 1 March 1988 the Society has 580 local members and 131 overseas members, a total of 711. All indications are that membership will continue to grow, making it likely, before very long, that our membership will exceed that of the North China Branch of the RAS in Shanghai which, at its peak, had around 800 members. Finance Our Hon. Treasurer, Mr. David Gilkes, has tabled his report and will answer questions. I have to report that, after being our Treasurer for no less than twenty-one years, since 1967 in fact, Mr. Gilkes will be handing over to Mr. Robert Nield who has kindly agreed to become Hon. Treasurer in his place. Mr. Nield is a local partner of Messrs. Price, Waterhouse International and has been a Hong Kong resident since 1980. We welcome him to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 Some time ago you published an obituary of Mr. K. M. A. Barnett (South China Morning Post, October 30). News of his sudden death must have saddened deeply his many friends and admirers in Hongkong. I should be grateful if you would add the following notes as a personal tribute to this remarkable man. His talent in so many fields never ceased to amaze me. This perhaps showed best in his brilliance as a linguist. Apart from his superb knowledge of the Chinese language, including several dialects, he was fluent in at least 20 other languages (I am not sure of the precise number) and even recently he was still adding new ones to his large repertoire. He used to say that after the first introduction to a new language it would take him a mere four to six weeks to gain a working knowledge. Ken Barnett's impact on the study and research in Hongkong history was immense and inspired many to follow his lead. As a scholar of local history, he injected imagination and vision, adding a new and exciting dimension to the subject. True, some of us among his followers did not always share his theories, perhaps because of our own shortcomings. He saw ancient Sung dynasty fortifications in the valleys of the New Territories, where we could see none; he discerned archaic Chinese writing in the patterns of Hongkong's ancient rock carvings, where we could see none. But who can be sure? The rock carvings are still a mystery and perhaps future researchers will prove Ken Barnett right. For him the richness and the fascination of Hongkong heritage lay in the New Territories. He was a great walker and knew every square inch of his beloved New Territories. Little escaped his keen eyes. He discovered old disused fields, ancient stone walls and a stone circle on Lamma Island which is still a mystery and is possibly the earliest man-made stone structure in the territory. The list is long. We first became friends before the war, as fellow-officers in the Volunteers. He was a gunner-officer, capable and resourceful, as with his other interests. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 70 32 For further details and comments about the establishment and failure of the 1881-1883 Normal School, see CO129/197, p. 326f. In this file, Colonial Office minutes are critical of Hennessy's extravagance, note that "the scheme is evidently Dr. Eitel's with Governor Hennessy's fiat" and other correspondence (e.g., Eitel first report on the Normal School, in Eitel to M.S. Tonnochy, Acting Colonial Secretary, 19th January, 1882, and his second report enclosed in his letter to Tonnochy of 19th January, 1882) shows that Eitel, the Inspector of Schools, felt that there would be very unfortunate repercussions if the school were to be closed and that the headmaster, A.J. May was even prepared to take a salary reduction (from the original proposal of $2,400 a year to $1,600) rather than see the Normal School break up. In later reports (contained in CO129/202 p. 532f.), Eitel compared the Normal School, with its "special private tuition and instruction" in pedagogy, to the pupil-teacher scheme at the Central School to the disadvantage of the latter, and May, in his letter to Frederick Stewart of 19th July, 1883, mentioned the virtues of being able to utilize simulation techniques for the preparation of teachers at the Normal School. The actual end of the Normal School, which had been dismissed as unnecessary in the Education Commission Report of September 1882, was precipitated by A.J. May's insistence, in September 1883, that the students agreed to a bond to teach for five years at a salary rate of $25 per month on their completion of the course. The immediate result was that four of the ten students left for the Medical College at Tientsin, three joined commercial firms, and one became a government interpreter, leaving only two of the original intake, as mentioned above, to become teachers. 33 In Singapore, a central training college for men teachers using English as the medium of instruction was proposed in 1904 and again in 1910, but the scheme was aborted because of the lack of applications. In Kuala Lumpur, an experimental teacher training course began in 1905, proved successful, and was followed by a two-year course in Penang in 1907. See Wong Hoy Kee, Francis, and Gwee Yee Hean, Perspectives: The Development of Education in Malaysia and Singapore (Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd., 1972), pp. 12-14. 34 What is certain is that his name does not appear in the Blue Book as one of the Pupil Teachers at the Central School at any time between 1880 and 1885. As noted above, Mok Man Cheung won the Class 1 Mathematics prize in January 1884. He was employed as "Fourth Chinese Assistant" at the Central School from September 1884. He did not, therefore, have the time to be enrolled in a pupil teacher's course, which customarily lasted for three years, but he might have taken an examination in "Pupil-Teacher's Theory" while studying in Class 1. 35 The dispute over the opening hours at the City Hall Museum had come to a head in 1880 when the Executive Committee of the City Hall Museum, led by its chairman, William Keswick, attempted to restrict the entry of Chinese to the afternoons. They were opposed by the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council, Ng Choy, and by the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy. See CO129/189 p. 476-614 for correspondence, largely unsympathetic to the Committee's discriminatory proposal and including an extract from the Hong Kong Hansard for 1880 reporting a speech by Ng Choy, and CO129/192 p. 438-446 for correspondence which includes Keswick's opinion that racial distinctions should not be abolished with regard to admission to the Museum of the City Hall. The call for separate schools for the different races had been made on a number of occasions in the past, most notably in 1845, 1856, and 1870-1872, but the most recent resurgence of interest and argument about the issue had been provoked by a speech made by the Anglican Bishop Hoare at the Prize Distribution of the Diocesan Boys' School in January ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 73 tion of schools, contained in the Government Gazette, included: “An Upper Grade School means one in which at least part of the Staff is European. Lower Grade Schools are those under purely native management” (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 30th June, 1905, p. 1023). Earlier, Bishop Hoare, the Anglican Bishop of Victoria and South China announced at the annual prize distribution of a school noted for its ethnically ‘mixed' admissions policy that he "did not believe it was a good thing to put two races side by side in the school. He did not think they mixed. There was a gulf between the Chinaman as a Chinaman and an Englishman as an Englishman, and he did not think it was a good thing for Chinese boys to be educated side by side with English boys” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 30th January, 1901, p. 3). Amongst the largely supportive correspondence in the letters to the editor pages of the local press provoked by the report of Bishop Hoare's speech, there is a letter from a local Chinese resident, Wang Chung-yu, who argued, “Now, to exclude Chinese from certain schools means to go against the law of nature and to aggravate the hatred between Chinese and foreigners.... My experience goes to show that, as a rule, European boys in school generally depreciate things Chinese, and therefore there is no need to fear that European boys may learn any bad method of thinking peculiar to the Chinese.” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 7th February, 1901, p. 3). 48 Sweeting (1983), p. 274. 49 Despite the lack of warmth and closeness in the personal and social relations between the two communities, there was, in a sense, a reciprocal interest by certain Westerners for "Things Chinese". This interest was largely intellectual (anthropological and literary) and is, perhaps, best exemplified by Dyer Ball's large publication, which in later editions became increasingly larger, actually entitled Things Chinese. See the Introduction and Prefaces of J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press reprint, with Introduction by H.J. Lethbridge, 1982 of the 5th Edition revised by E. Chalmers Werner, 1925). Interestingly enough, Dyer Ball also published a book entitled Cantonese Made Easy, which by 1904 had reached its 3rd Edition. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 137 public meetings, fomenting agitations in regard to liberty of the subject and such things as the average Chinaman will never be able to discuss with safe familiarity for several generations to come. He admitted there might be exceptions to his sweeping indictment. “A few there are among the Chinese who are quite at home in these essentially Western matters; but very few indeed, and to their credit be it said they have discretion enough to see that their day is far off. These master-minds of regenerate China had no share in the ludicrous proceedings at the Tung Wah on Sunday." Did he specifically have in mind Dr. Ho Kai? As for those who did "speechify" at the meeting, in the editor's opinion, they had made fools of themselves. The paper called for stern action against the two main speakers. It took particular exception to the remark made by Ho A-mei that any legislation or Government action that is directed against the Chinese exclusively should be resisted. It suggested that “if the Government fails to make an example of a man who publicly promulgates this sweeping doctrine, then we shall consider that the Government fails in its duty. A maxim like that must be taken seriously and crushed forever." The writer sees in the words of Ho A-mei the seeds of revolt and the breakdown of British authority. In his remarks, Ho A-mei had called for more police vigilance. It was not the light and pass regulations that were needed to prevent criminal activity, but more detection and prevention by the police. The China Mail rose to the defence of the law-enforcers and charged A-mei with "laying calumnies against the police." In fact, according to the editor, "there are mis-statements enough in his speech to brand him forever as a man not fit to be allowed to speak in public.” And as for Mr. Ho Tung, his speech "should remove him from the roster of Justices of the Peace." The writer saw him as a dangerous rabble-rouser who should be checked before he caused greater damage to British authority. “Apart from the absurdities in which he wallowed, he gave utterance to sentiments which can ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 114 Georgette, herself a lawyer, married Iu Bing Leong, also a lawyer. Because he had been involved with the Nationalists in a minor role, he left his wife and daughter for the United States upon the rise of the Communists and is reported to be living with another woman, a fact that has deeply wounded Georgette, who has remained in Shanghai, ill with cancer. Moo Yun was a beautiful girl and while still young, married well. However, after a brief marriage, she was divorced and became dependent on her parents until she died after a goitre operation in Canton in 1934. Moo Sau, a graduate of Lingnan University, teaches in Hong Kong. She married a dancing instructor, who died in 1974, and is the one to keep her siblings informed of each other's doings. Ting Cheong was 'given' posthumously to Father, who had taken a liking to the boy when they first met in 1919 and had suggested the possibility to Mother before he died. A male heir must have been important to him. Mother tried to be fair with her meagre resources by contributing to his schooling and sent whatever money she could spare from time to time, including a share of what Grandfather left Father. Uncle, in fairness to all his children, pooled what he received from Mother with his own assets in order that all of his children would share equally in his estate. We saw little of Ting Cheong and know less about him as an individual. He seemed shy and retiring, a man of few words. I often wonder if he resented being 'adopted out', even though this was in name only and as a gesture of love between brothers. Ting Cheong had had no say in the matter. I seem to recall that Ting Cheong had some training in the Customs Service in Peking before he was accepted and sent to the Customs Service in Canton, where he remained until 1949. He was 'punished' together with his colleagues for crime by association, rather than by evidence, because of the corrupt reputation of the service. Later he was allowed to work in Hainan Island until he obtained permission to move to Canton in 1978. He was given a small pension upon retirement, barely adequate for his needs. He and his concubine lived with his elder daughter until his unexpected death of tuberculosis on 25 June 1979. His first wife predeceased him and his four children are by his second wife. They are: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 130 and settled in a new home at the East Gate of Shekki. A son, Tin Suk, was born a year later, followed by two daughters, Ah Fook and Ah Look. When all three children came down with a serious illness, only Tin Suk survived. I treasure a vignette of Grandfather beside a horse tied to a tree behind our Iwilei home, ready to leave for Kaneohe, and another one of him sitting on a chair and asking me to press my face against the stub of his whiskers. I pushed his face away, but Ruth did not resist. He told Mother that he liked my 'spirit', a trait she considered as stubbornness, and tried to subdue by applying the rod generously. It is hard to understand why Grandfather did not leave any money to Uncle when he left Hawaii. This meant years of hardship for Uncle and his family. Everyone had to share in the numerous tasks. The children had many chores: cutting grass to feed the pigs, beating kerosene cans to frighten flocks of birds which came to dine on ripening grain, pasting bags out of newspaper to protect melons from destructive insects, helping with the threshing of grain and bagging of the paddy, and on and on. Aunt's work was endless. In addition to child-bearing, she shared in the planting and harvesting of both rice and vegetables, chopped guava trees which were in great abundance on the hillside for firewood, cooked three meals every day, and saw to the needs of the children. Although Annie, the oldest child, was not a boy, she had to help in ploughing the fields at an early age, and had little opportunity to attend school. One crop of rice a year was general, but some years Uncle managed two plantings. Vegetables were also grown: cucumber, bitter melon, mustard cabbage, napa, bak choy, water chestnut, watercress. At harvest time, as well as during the planting season, itinerant workers had to be hired. It was men against weather. They transferred the rice seedlings into the watery mud fields, inserting a few stalks at a time in neat, straight rows. When the grain ripened, the rice stalks were cut with sickles and laid row on row in neat piles for bundling. Sheaves of grain, balanced on each end of a long pole, were carried on the shoulder to the threshing ground, which was a large concrete area with a stake in the centre. A horse tied to it would be driven round and round to stomp the grain from the stalks, which were then pitch-forked away into a mountain-high pile that served as a play area for the children. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 157 converted to Christianity. Although I did not understand the import of the occasion, I sensed it was a special event the Sunday we were all baptized at the Fort Street Chinese Church to which Father already belonged. We were amused when Helen, then a baby, pushed the minister's hand away when he reached out to baptize her. Thereafter the family attended church regularly, participating in all the religious celebrations in new outfits, especially during Christmas when our excitement ran high. On Sunday afternoons we would worship again at the Kauluwela Mission on Vineyard Street, located midway between Liliha and River Streets. Mrs. Cooper had come from Chicago to carry on this mission work financially supported by Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Richards, in order to reach out to the different races (Chinese, Hawaiians, Portuguese, Puerto-Ricans, and even a few Russians) living in several camps in that area. Mrs. Cooper would often ask Mother to accompany her when visiting Chinese families. In time we became good friends. Whenever Mrs. Cooper visited us, she would have us kneel while she prayed long and fervently, giving me the impression that we were sinners needing forgiveness. In 1917 we moved to 178 South School Street in order to accommodate a growing family, at a time when many of our Chinese neighbours were beginning to move to other parts of the city. The more affluent ones bought or built larger and better homes around and beyond Thomas Square. The arrival of the automobile, electricity, and telephone changed our way of life. Within several years tragedy came into our lives when Father died. After an initial severe grief reaction, Mother knew that she had to face reality. She heeded the advice of Bishop Bank to let the Bishop Trust Company administer Father's estate, and as a result, she discovered, to her regret, that she had no say in any decision-making. She was allowed only 60 dollars a month. It was a neighbour, Lam Ôn, who counselled Mother to contest the application of the trust company to continue as guardian of her minor children's share of the estate, and to retain I. M. Stainback as her attorney. Thus she was able to secure the guardianship. By careful management of the assets, she was able to turn over our respective interests to us when each of us reached the age of majority. Although Father did not leave much, there was enough to support Mother through life and for her to leave what remained to her surviving daughters. 1 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 255 Lam Pin near the original village of Cha Sai to start a business. Upon his death, the 17th generation ancestor like those of the 13th to 16th generations was buried near his heung-ha of Tso Po. Not long after getting married, however, the 18th generation ancestor (my father's father) decided to emigrate overseas, leaving the family business to his four brothers in Lam Pin. My grandfather never returned to China and was buried overseas, where the rest of his family continued to live. The four brothers of this 18th generation ancestor died, unfortunately without male survivors and were buried near Lam Pin. Our house in Lam Pin has since been occupied by close (affinal) relatives, and the old house in Tso Po was eventually abandoned, remnants of which still stand. I was told also that those family members living overseas are now the only living survivors of that fong beginning from the 13th generation ancestor in Tso Po. Despite the many generations, there were a few other descendants from the 13th generation once or twice removed, but they too died without male survivors, leaving us therefore with the task of tending to their graves. These graves now include all those from the 13th to 17th generation ancestors at Tso Po and those of the 18th generation at Lam Pin. The funny thing about this explicitly genealogical account, however, is that my father never knew we had ancestors at Tso Po." He had likewise passed on to me the firm impression that we were Cha Sai villagers, and we usually address ourselves as Cha Sai villagers living at Lam Pin. According to elders, there was no question that our heung-ha was Tso Po. Bad fortune was probably what led the 17th generation ancestor to move to Lam Pin, but it was the 18th generation ancestors who began to dissociate themselves from Tso Po (due to bad fortune rather than change of residence). Thus, our change of heung-ha to Cha Sai represented less a nostalgic return to the past than a change of circumstances in an ongoing (re-)definition of that local life-situation. If the meaning of locality is as complex as suggested by the above example, then what about the so-called "single-lineage village", one may ask? Contrary to appearance, such villages are less conscious of the fact that they live as a common descent group than of the fact they share relations of closeness (chan (C), ch'in (M)). It is easier perhaps to explain why a single-surname village remains a single-surname village than to explain how such a village came to be so in the first place. The continuity of a single-surname village has less to do with the descent principle per se than with a customary rule of marriage residence. A ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h inspiring leadership and contagious enthusiasm. In keeping with the other committees, its membership includes Members who are not on the Council. The burden is not light. Visits in particular take a lot of preparation if they are to go well, and with larger numbers it is essential. This is the place to say a special word of thanks to Rosemary Lee, Dan Waters, Richard Gee and Geoffrey Roper who have again been active during the year as members of this very keen Committee. We are also grateful to our speakers and tour organizers. The programme would not have been possible without their willingness to share their knowledge and give us their time. It is not our practice to give honoraria, but to show our sincere appreciation we invite a number of them as guests to the Society's Annual Dinner. I am glad to report that 7 speakers and organizers have accepted our invitation to attend tonight. Library The Hon. Librarian has tabled his report, from which you will see that a considerable number of books has been added to the Library this year. As I have been largely responsible for book purchases during my presidency, and before, let me explain why there has been a continuing effort to increase its size, now around the 3000 volume mark, Our Collection mainly comprises old and out of print works in English and other European languages on China and the Far East. It covers the European and Western response to, and experience of and in China, in a direct and authoritative way. Many of the authors wrote with first-hand knowledge, or after consulting official and other reports. Their works have an abiding interest, intrinsically and because they reflect the concerns and attitudes of their times. Such books are not only becoming increasingly hard to find: they are also becoming very expensive. However, in the course of my personal collecting, here and overseas, I have been able to add many books to our Library Collection, usually at reasonable or modest cost, in the firm belief that both the Society and the Hong Kong public will benefit. Some of the additions to the Library are also by donation, for which we are grateful. It is to be hoped that Members will keep the Collection in mind when disposing of their own books. xi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 121 CHEUNG SHAN KWU TSZ (長山古寺), AN OLD BUDDHIST NUNNERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES, AND ITS PLACE IN LOCAL SOCIETY The Plan of the Nunnery P. H. HASE* Hong Kong has dozens of Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, mostly located in the New Territories. Almost all are recent foundations. The majority were founded by monks or nuns fleeing from one of the three major disturbances to Buddhist life in China in the last 80 years - the 1911 Revolution, and the chaos of the Warlord years which succeeded it; the Anti-Superstition Campaign mounted by the Kuomintang from the mid 1920s; and the Communist Revolution of 1949-1952. These monasteries and nunneries mostly share a single common plan, which distinguishes a Buddhist place of worship from the ordinary temple of the traditional village religion. The ordinary temple consists of a windowless rectangular hall, with the altar to the God against one of the short walls, and entered through the opposite short wall. The hall usually has a Tin Tseng (天井), or lightwell, in the centre for the escape of incense smoke. Often two subordinate similar halls are placed one on either side of the main hall, interconnecting by arches. Most Buddhist institutions are built to a different plan. They are centred on a Buddha Hall (A, 大殿), which is also a rectangle, but one entered through the centre of one of the long walls, and the altar is not against the opposite long wall, but free-standing a little in front of it. These Buddha Halls usually have windows, and do not have Tin Tseng. In large monasteries or nunneries, the Buddha Hall is a free-standing structure surrounded by a portico, placed in the centre of an enclosed courtyard-garden on a raised podium, with the other buildings forming ranges along the edges of the courtyard. The whole complex is enclosed: the monastery or nunnery, unlike the ordinary temple, is * The author would like to thank those Ta Kwu Ling elders who gave him the information on which much of this article is based, and also the staff of the District Office, North, who assisted in setting up the interviews. He would also like to thank the staff of the District Land Registry, North, for their unfailing courtesy and assistance. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 200 rash decision to marry the first that came". Another actor who was to become a local Roscius. Mr. Phunago BRUSHWOOD, "gave the somewhat unusual stage character of a double-faced farmer (Wurzel) all the selfish cunning and irritable tone which it needed". Other parts were taken by Miss Polly DEXTER, Mr. HEAVISWELL, Mr. Jehoshaphat SNAKES and Mr. PLEADWELL (as the lawyer!). In Box and Cox Messrs PROTEUS, BRUSHWOOD and Mrs. CLAY "kept the audience in a roar" (NCH 22.2.1857). 3.3.1857 (Tue) Dramatic readings from Charles Dickens by Mr. Benjamin SEARE. Th: C ― R: In the Herald of February 28 it was announced that "we are apprized by 'Circular' that an entertainment of a novel character in Shanghai, but one which has greatly attracted the fashionable and literary world elsewhere, will be given by Mr. Scare in the Hall of the Shanghai Theatre on Tuesday Evening next the 3rd prox. The subject - The Early Writings of Charles Dickens is a theme affording scope for great versatility of talent. (...) The Community are much indebted to Mr. Scare for his gratuitous offer of an evening's intellectual amusement to diversify and enliven the monotony of Shanghai life. The Circular notifies that the divertissement will commence at half past 8 & precisely, that no personal invitations will be issued and that a syllabus of the Lecture will be placed in each seat for the use and acceptance of its occupant”. Then, in the issue of March 7, a report was published: "A large and select circle of residents had met in the New Theatre". It became a kind of one man show by Mr. Seare, as the "requirements of versatility and mimic power were most successfully supplied. (...) The lecturer was perfectly at home in each and all of the various characters as they turned up, passed from one to another with an ease that was admirable and portrayed each with a force of comic power which elicited much applause, and, to select the most appropriate compliment we can bestow, did justice to the author. All in all the audience was "kept in a roar”. Mr. Seare concluded with some general remarks on the necessity of some recreation of this kind in a community so distant from home and so isolated and comprising at the same time so much intelligence and ability" (NCH 7.3.1857). One wonders how Mr. Seare was able to give these lectures free of charge; had he been a touring artist that would of course have been impossible. But as it turns out he was a mercantile assistant in the employment of Gilman & Co (this according to the Shanghai Almanac for 1858). In May 1865 he gave another performance (see 27.5.1865). No further details are available about the programme, but no doubt the characters from The Pickwick Papers figured largely in it. Who, after all, can resist Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Jingle and Sam Weller? Dickens himself began readings from his own works one year later, in April 1858, in Britain and the United States. 26.3.1857 (Thur) J.B. BUCKSTONE: "A Kiss in the Dark" (1840) T: Farce (1 act) M.B.W. JERROLD: "Cool as a Cucumber" (1851) T: Farce (1 act) H. DANVERS: "A Conjugal Lesson" (1856) T: Farce (1 act) C: Amateurs Th: N.N. (CH R: In a witty mind "The Man on the Bund" informed us that "by way of introduction there was a kiss — and in the dark too! — perhaps the sweetest kiss of all, administered with enviable gusto by Mr. SNAKES as Fathom. Mrs. Pettibone submitted to it with less indignation than the fact of her being so much respected led us to suppose. But then, it was to punish the odiously jealous Mr. Pettibone who would insist on making Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 232 not heard before and of which the best that can be said is that they are decidedly original. They seemed an imitation of the noise of braying of donkeys, but still they elicited great applause from the gallery [which was generally not regarded as very complimentary JH] perhaps from a certain feeling of sympathy. An amateur played Weber's "Aufforderung zum Tanz" with a "perfect feeling". To conclude the evening Mme SIMONSEN sung the "Valse de concert" (composer unmentioned) in which "she displayed her powers more than in any other piece she has sung" (SCR 22.5.1865). 24.5.1865 (Wedn) H. MAYHEW: "The Wandering Minstrel“ (1834) T: Farce (1 act) J.P. PLANCHE: "The Knights of the Round Table” (1854) T: Drama (5 acts) C: Amateurs of the Shanghai Mounted Rangers F: Music by the Band of the 67th Regiment; prologue read by Capt. Markham Th: Lyceum Theatre (1) ― R: In lieu of the old time favourites, Messrs Brushwood, Pickwick, Newcome and Mrs. Nesbit had come new faces. Most foreigners had not yet made Shanghai their permanent place of residence, so turnover in the theatre too was rather high. Tonight could be admired Mr. SMALLWEED who, in the Knights of the Round Table, as "the blameless king shewed a keen appreciation of his part and while he delivered the burlesque passages with much humour, proved by the taste with which he pronounced the prophetic eulogium on the Queen of England that he need not necessarily confine himself to broad burlesque in order to gain well-merited applause"; Mr. Edmund (also a member of the Amateur Burlesque Company) won golden opinions as Launcelot, whereas Mr. PEEKT as Merlin "displayed much cleverness in personating feeble old men". In The Wandering Minstrel "Mr. R.T. Larff, better known to the theatrical world as Mr. Wynnge (did this mean that he had two stage names? JH) sustained the reputation he has already gained as a low comedian and makes us the less deplore the absence of the well known and inimitable Brushwood” (last recorded performance 10.5.1860). Of course the female roles were taken by men, which led, as it always does, to some ridiculous scenes: "The company possesses great strength in the important particular of lady performers. The only drawback which, however, is immaterial in burlesque, lies in the great height and muscular development of the fair ones". Yet Miss Mary MIDDLESEX "bore away the palm for natural feminine get-up" and "nothing could excel the dash which Kate COVENTRY threw into the part of the vivandière", (NCH 27.5.1865). That not all patrons were equally pleased became evident from the Shanghai Commercial Record (5.6.1865) when it wrote: "an allusion which was considered too personal led to a corresponding in our columns" (i.e. the "Shanghai Recorder" which to the great regret of all historians treating the history of foreign Shanghai can no longer be found). At the end of the evening a number of toasts were proposed, among others to "Alabaster, to whose exertions much of the success of the company was due". This was a reference to Chaloner Alabaster (1831-1890), the British vice-consul who was also active in the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. In conclusion the Herald reported that "the arrangements were excellent and notwithstanding the warmth of the evening and the crowded state of the theatre, the air within the walls did not become oppressively hot. Punkahs were slung over the front seats and during the temporary pauses kept up a current of air", 27.5.1865 (Sat) Performance by Mr. Benjamin Seare. Programme unknown (reading, etc) Th: Lyceum Theatre (1) R: Both the Herald and the Record agreed that Mr. SEARE "is possessed of great talent" ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 263 I shall not venture to say much about the cooking, etc. for I am obliged to keep my eyes shut on all occasions where I am near it, for fear I might see something not quite to my fancy in that department. I enjoy the biscuits very much, only I shall soon have to shut my eyes when eating them. Our fresh provisions are beginning to go, so we must soon fall back upon the preserved provisions. We have plenty of good milk to last the voyage, plenty of sardines, salmon, etc. and plenty of bottled fruit, so that we have a fruit pie or pudding every day. In fact we have everything that could be procured on land, and for what I can see, quite as good. The captain and I agree very well on all points but religion. Yesterday we had a regular set-to about it, and I was obliged to talk to him rather plainly, only it will not do to say too much to such a man when he is warm. Captain Moult is about such another, or else he would not be a bad companion. He has been well educated, and has a good share of common sense. We are thrown a great deal into each other's society, and so it is to our interest to keep on pretty good terms. Since he has resided at Hong Kong for some time he knows all about the place, and I get a good deal of information out of him, on different subjects. We have spent several hours in walking the deck together. It is the only exercise to be got on board ship. I have however invented two or three species of exercise in my cabin, which I find very beneficial. I believe I should be soon laid up if I did not take a fair amount of exercise. Often I have envied the sailors at their work, and should have liked to have a pull at the ropes with them. Saturday, April 6th Today has been a cheerful pleasant day. Soon after daylight the chief mate came down with the intelligence that land was in sight on the "lee bow". After so many days rambling over the water it was joyful news to me, so I got up, and had the usual wash all over, and went upon deck to take my constitutional, i.e. early walk. It was a lovely morning. The sun already "well up" was rather warm, and all round was lovely and delightful. Sure enough there was the land, but it was above thirty miles off, yet on account of its great elevation (in some parts 6000 ft) I judged it to be about four. The clear atmosphere quite deceived me. It proved to be Madeira, and we were on the eastern side. All day I have been on deck enjoying the beautiful soft balmy breezes, which are now quite ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 374 which has been copied in an untitled manuscript in the possession of Mr. Dang Yu-Hing).36 Dang Kei-faan Genealogy in the Baker Collection of New Territories genealogies in the British Library. 37 The elder was Dang Wing-Sau, the head of the lineage. I do not know which generation he was in. See Taga (1982:92). 38 Translated in Sung (1974:177-179). 39 40 See table above and the genealogy in Kam Tin Historical Documents, vol. 1. Probably Dang Hei-Seui. See Sung (1974:166-168) and a genealogy of his segment included in Hugh Baker's Collection of Genealogies. 41 Patrick Hase has drawn my attention to the importance of the monastery as central to the establishment Hung-Yi's descendants in Kam Tin, just as Ling To nunnery is to the Dangs of Ha Tsuen. The monastery and the earlier temple are a major element in the fung-seui of the Pat Heung valley and Kam Tin. The rivers important to irrigation in the area all flow from the mountain on which the monastery stands. 42 41 44 I have not tried to find further information on this man in gazetteers. See Sung (1973:112-113) for the Hung Sing Temple. This was one of two stories. They were thought of as alternatives although there is no contradiction between them. I shall relate the other one later. 45 I was told that the Juk-Yun Am used to be at the present site of the Gwaan-Dai Temple of Shing Mun San Tsuen, and San-Sin Fu near Shui Mei. 46 Two items in Kam Tin Historical Documents vol. 2 were probably intended for this very grave. These were among the papers of Dang Ting-sam from the year 1873. The first was a request for donations towards the establishment of a charitable grave. The second was intended for a stone inscription. There is strong evidence that the charitable grave was established before the British came, although many present-day Dangs believe that those buried in the grave were those who died fighting against the British. The jiu festival record for 1895 included the Dei-Jong Wong of Tung-Fuk Tong among the gods to be invited, and an elder in his nineties remembered seeing gam-taap jars for bones when he was very small. He deduced that those must have been the remains of people who died before 1898, because one had to wait for many years he suggested ten — until the bones could be extracted after a first burial. 47 A bin-ngaak (horizontal inscribed board) presented to the Buddhist altar at its completion included ten names who were believed to be the share-holders of the Tong. They were three Wan-Guk jiu descendants of Shui Mei: Baak-Cheung, Daat-Hung, and Jik-Hing; three brothers Yat-Wa, Seui-Chuen, Gam-Wa and two of their nephews, and Baak-Yi, all descendants of Wan-Gaan; and a Hin-Yiu of Kam Tin Shi. 48 Plus a inscribed stone on the ground saying Naam-mo O-Mei-To-Fat, set up to offset the bad influences that caused traffic accidents near the stone. 49 Hoi-dang for a village did not always take place at an altar for the God of Earth and Grain. In the Shui Mei case it took place at the Tin-Hau Temple. 50 The elders made it clear that gu here does not mean “shares". 51 The subjects for these paper images were specified in the contract made with the craftsmen. The contract was included in the general record for the festival and was copied from the previous ones. But neither the organizers nor the contractor seem to have paid much attention to the details of the prescription. 52 The object is probably more commonly known by the name dong 'an and is more often installed over the central area of the Taoist altar rather than in the backstage room. See ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 42 disasters. the second is for those who died because of plague. The final reason is to thank the benevolent governors Wang Lai-ren and Zhou You-de of the beginning of the Qing dynasty. In my opinion, all these reasons can be integrated into the first one. (d) Chan Wing-hoi "The Tangs of Kam Tin and their Jiu festival", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29 (1989) 302-375, a rich and detailed account of the lineage, its temples and villages, and the festival which draws them together. Dr. Faure gradually switched his interest to the Pearl River Delta while Prof. Tanaka, as I was told, is now looking at Sichuan province. Talk on publishing a book on Hong Kong Jiao festivals has been going on for years by members of the "Research Circle of the Regional Society of Southern China''. In 1990, the editorial board of the society set up a schedule to compile a book focusing on the Jiao festival. It is expected that papers on various aspects will be completed by the end of April 1991. (Correspondence from the society dated 28.12.1990) Schipper, Kristofer M., "The Written Memorial in Taoist Ceremonies" in Wolf, Arthur P. (ed.) Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 324, For example, according to Chan Wing-hoi, villagers of Shek O celebrated their 16th Jiao in 1986 (Chan, 78). The Dengs in Kam Tin claimed to have celebrated their Jiao since 1684 (Tanaka, 918). See for instance Basel Mission Archives, doct. Al-6, No. 51 (1869), and doct. Al-7, No. 51 (1870) and Der Evangelische Heidenbote, July 1867, in which a missionary describes how he was forced to go to the Magistrate to get his support before he could avoid having to pay his share of the Jiao expenses. All these cases are from Hsin An County. The Sha Tin poem will, it is hoped, shortly be published by Dr. P.H. Hase. These two series are part of the 15 series of historical documents collected by Dr. D. Faure and others in the New Territories. Copies of the collections are kept in the libraries of CUHK, Hong Kong University, Sha Tin Regional Council Library, and Institute of Oriental Culture, Tokyo University. 31 Tanaka Chugoku no Sozoku to Engeki [Lineage and Theatre in China] (Tokyo Univ. Press 1985), 608. Jiao festivals celebrated by the powerful communities in Hong Kong like Kam Tin, Ha Tsuen, Lung Yeuk Tau etc., were all performed by the Zhengyi Taoist group, led first by the late Master Lin Pei and now by Master Chan Kau. Another Zhengyi Taoist group is led by Master Chan Wah. However, many Taoist priests work for both groups. There are also other Taoist groups who performed for the Jiao festivals, like a Cantonese group which performed for Ho Chung and a Heklo group for Cheung Chau. In 1983, four out of five Jiao festivals were performed by monastery Taoists. It is not clear whether it was because of tradition or out of economic reasons. A comparison of the two Taoist groups has yet to be made. 14 Choi Chi-cheung **Sho matsuri no jinmei risuto ni mirareru shinzoku ban'i” [Kinship as seen in the name lists of Jiao festival] Bunka Jinnú Gaku 5 (1988): 131, table L. 35 **Shinshi men" [Section of Believers] in Fanling Wenxian (Historical Literature of Fanling) vol. 8. This brief account records details of the arrangement of the Jiao area, including the contents of couplets, names of deities invited, location and direction of matshed stages, and the sacrifices prepared etc.. See n. 32 for the depositories of Fanling Wenxian. 36 See (1972) Lin Chuan [Lam Tsuen] Xiang Taiping Qingjiao huiyi jilubu in Dapu [Tai Po] Wenzian [Historical Literature of Tai Po] vol. 1. (see n. 32 for depositories) 37 Tanaka Issei's three books, all published by the Tokyo Univ. Press are: Chugoku Saishi Engeki Kenkyu [Ritual Theatres in China] (1981), Chugoku no Sozoku to Engeki [Lineage and Theatre in China) (1985), and Chugoku Kyoson Saishi Kenkyu: Chihogeki ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 of the shops come from these villages. Of course, not everyone who belongs to the "Market Association" has a share in a shop, but they have an interest in the market, and therefore they have been accepted as members of the association. The population of the 45 villages of the small associations is roughly 6000, out of which 250 live here. The Chinese population consists of four ranks. Here and in the surrounding area live people of all four ranks. The first rank consists of literati, and all the Government employees of the Empire belong to this rank. The lowest class of the literati are the so-called "book-readers", who have read the Four Books of Confucius, and the Five Classics, but who have failed at the District Examination, and have no degree. If they can gather a sufficient number of students they found a primary school and subsist on the meagre payments from them, which is just adequate for survival. They do not get any employment from the State, and, as a rule, they have to find their own means of survival. They earn comparatively the same as a primary school teacher receives at Home. They number a high percentage of the literati in China. The candidates who have passed the District Examination receive the first degree, and they are called Siu Tshoi [Sau Tsoi]. This means "Elegant Talent". It has to be mentioned that many unworthy students receive this degree through corruption, whereas some knowledgeable young men, without resources, will have to give way. A Siu Tshoi also gets no Government employment. Should he want employment, he will have to apply himself to further study and examinations. However, he already has some advantages as a Siu Tshoi. He is allowed to open a Private School in which he can prepare students for the District Examination. By doing this he can earn quite good money. Besides, it is a great honour for a Chinese to have received a first degree. Literati of this kind are much rarer than the "book-readers". However, some live in this particular district, and Brother Lechler's teacher [the other missionary resident in Sha Tau Kok] in 289 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 32 29 The term 'comprador' in Chinese history is quite argumentative. In late Qing times it referred to a commercial broker, an agent and employee of a foreign firm. With the rise of Chinese nationalism in the Republican period, the meaning was gradually expanded beyond its original sense to include politics in a negative meaning or collaboration with foreigners of serving interest of imperialists. In Chinese Marxist scholarship, comprador has taken on a political meaning. See Jung-fang Tsai (1981), The Predicament of the Comprador Ideologists, pp. 191-7. However, economic historians such as Wang Jingyu, realizing the role of Chinese merchants in the economic development of the nineteenth century, said they included compradors who had large investment in modern enterprises, been active in huashang fugu huodong as well as buying capital in from foreign aggressive enterprises. See Wang (1965), Shijiu shiji waiguo qinhua qiye zhong de huashang fugu yundong (The Activities of Chinese Merchants to Buy Capital-Shares from the Foreign Aggressive Enterprises in China During the Late Nineteenth Century) and (1983b) Shiji xifang ziben zhuyi dui Zhongguo de jingji qinlue (The Economic Invasion of Western Capitalism on China in Nineteenth Century), pp. 483-526. 10 Xu Run, Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, pp. 4-5. 31 As Xu himself stated, the estimate value of this amount after discount should be 3,219,470 taels. See ibid, p. 68. 17 Other investments, though the amounts are uncertain, can also be ascertained from his autobiography. They are: a pier company at Guangdong, a grocery at Shanghai; also silk cloth shop, tea shop, partnership in Huya'an Insurance Co., Huaxing Insurance Co., Difeng Co., Shanghai Land Investment Co., Ltd., Shanghai Tramway Co., Xunhuan Newspaper in Hong Kong, a water works, and Tongyi cultivation company in Guangdong. See Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, preface. 33 See Liu Kwang-ching (1962), Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-1874, p. 155. 14 See Hao (1970a), p. 100. As Xia Dongyuan found that in the Zheng's zhushu (will) written in 1914, Zheng regarded 4,088 taels the interest from share-stocks as one of his main sources of income. See Xia (1985b), p. 268. 35 See Zheng Guanying, Zhi Li Zhaomin Fangbo lun zhuang Lundun Hongyuan Gongsi (Letter addressed to Li Zhaomin in discussing the founding of Hongyuan Company in London), in Xia Dongyuan (1988a), pp. 507-3; Wu Chang-chuan (1974), pp. 86-8. 36 As Wang Shui has concluded from various sources, during 1840 to 1894 Chinese compradors had accumulated a total income of about half a billion taels, see Wang (1983), Qingdai maiban shouru de guji jiqi shiyong fangshi (An Assessment of Compradors' Income and Its Spending Ways in Qing Dynasty), pp. 298-307. 37 See Thomas G. Rawski (1970), Chinese Dominance of Treaty Port Commerce and its Implications, 1860-1875, pp. 451-73. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 126 There are different versions." Leung suggests that the sharing of pork between ancestors and descendants renews the symbolic union in two worlds. The living know that to receive blessings they must continue to worship. Some do not share ritual pork with outsiders thus redefining membership of clan or family. In this study, even after mourning ended there were visits. These could be to the temple where the ashes are kept, at Ching Ming ('Chinese Easter'), the day for grave cleaning in the spring; or at Chung Yeung, the ninth day of the ninth moon (in Hong Kong, until 1967, when graves were visited firecrackers were let off to frighten away malevolent spirits). Visits were also made by the family to the soul tablet at the Buddhist Hall in Kowloon, or to the shrine at the second daughter's home. Visits took place on her sz kei (FEE), the anniversary of her death, and her shaang kei (EE), the anniversary of her birthday. On one visit to the second daughter's home she recited a Buddhist prayer 80 times over water which was later drunk by all present. The eldest daughter was still unsettled, unable to sleep at nights and not feeling secure when watching television alone. Apprehensive about accidents, she instructed the maid to wash the car with water over which she had said a Buddhist prayer. The deceased herself used occasionally to attend seances of foo kei (AL) seeking guidance at a small Buddhist Association hall in Western District. In this Chinese version of 'planchette' a spirit medium receives messages from the dead. These are written with a pointed willow stick in a bed of sand or sawdust." Foo kei is also practised at the temple where the ashes of the deceased lie. However, relatives have not so far tried to contact the dead woman using divinatory means. Dreams Dreams played an important part in this study. The third daughter had given her mother a jacket and, after she died, the daughter retrieved it. The following night a friend dreamed the deceased complained of feeling cold. The jacket was promptly returned and hung in mother's wardrobe. An associate dreamed the face of the deceased was black, covered with soot and her right arm was red like raw meat. It was concluded the dead person's spirit tablet in the temple was too close to the furnace ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 142 Chinese troops in India was no new one. Sir Henry Wade, who was British Minister to the Imperial Court at Peking in the 1870's had the same idea, frequently pressed, but without success. Sun Yat Sen, if one is to judge from what he writes in the "Three Principles", claimed that Burma should belong to China. For several centuries, it is true, though maybe spasmodically, the Court of Ava sent a decennial tribute mission to Peking, and this continued even after the British occupation, until 1896, in much the same way as Siam, for instance, sent a mission every four years; but there seems little doubt that the Burmese considered the mission more in the nature of a cultural courtesy than as a token of submission. Any reassertion by China to a claim to tribute would undoubtedly be resented. The Burmese, like the Indians, take religion seriously. Every Burmese young man spends a period, even if only a few days, in a Buddhist temple. The monks, or pongyis, as they are called, number about 1% of the Buddhist population. Their shaven heads and yellow robes are a common sight, particularly in the morning hours when they go around with the wooden bowl, begging for the day's share of rice. In recent years they have taken an active part in politics, and there was some evidence that the Japanese were using them as a fifth column. The Chinese troops, during the fighting, were so convinced of this that they shot any they caught. The political activities of the pongyis are not approved of by many true Buddhists, and opinion should be reserved on this aspect, until more is known about the facts. The Burmese enjoyed a large measure of self-government. Unfortunately the sense of responsibility in their politicians was insufficient to overcome the native propensity for intrigue and corruption. The graft in the administration stank to high heaven: it was a situation in which Japanese money could talk. The Prime Minister himself, U Saw, slipped up and had to be arrested for high treason; as it happened, while passing through Honolulu, only a few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbour. Meanwhile, Germany had invaded Russia, the British entered Syria, the Japanese entered Indo-China, General Tojo formed a new government, the U.S.A. decided to arm her merchant ships, and the Bush Warfare School staged a demonstration for Mr. Duff Cooper and the Governor of Burma. On the edge of the jungle a small fort had been ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 206 China 1890-1938, From the Warlords to World War, A History in Documentary Photographs by Eric Baschef, with an Introduction by Han Suyin (Swan productions AG. Zug/Schweiz, October 1989). The publication details are not on the title page but in the rear of the volume. Historical photographs of China have a perennial fascination for those many persons the world over who share an interest and affection for the country and its people. China 1890-1938 is as good a collection as any that have appeared to date. The publishers' dust-cover claim that these are "striking, often haunting, photographs portraying the full range of the great empire" is valid enough. Many are familiar, others less so; but much instruction and enjoyment may be had from perusing them all. Nonetheless, the book itself is rather unsatisfactory. The texts of the titling are not always carefully worded or in some cases accurate, and the translations from the original German or French (the map inside the front cover is in French) sometimes show up clumsily. I imagine that many readers will be able to spot inaccurate captions and attributions for themselves. For me, there is a classic at page 92, where the bottom left photograph has nothing to do with the execution of “Boxers” in Peking but is a well-known record of the execution of pirates on the beach at Kowloon City by the Chinese authorities in 1891: though I have seen this variously described elsewhere, too. And on page 192, a wag is surely having us on! Six heads in wooden cages suspended below a sign in English and Chinese bearing the caption "Speed Limit 15 Miles per Hour" are described as follows: "Anarchy reigns. Speeding motorists are beheaded". I hope not! On P. 205, top, a photograph of a post office is the wrong way around. The chapter summaries are far too short, almost as though the layout had determined what space was available for the scanty text throughout the book. Also, the one covering the 62 pages on “Immortal China” (pp. 12-73), a fascinating section, is placed at its end, instead of at the beginning where it would be more useful. In fact, this treatment is continued throughout the book, with the same results. Han Suyin's five-page Introduction is somewhat one-sided in its approach and treatment, as one might expect. It also provides another, revealing, instance of the way in which this book has been compiled. Whereas she covers the years 1900 to 1937, the book's title deals with the period 1890 to 1938, showing the compiler's failure to marry up Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 17 ++ Very often, we designate terms such as “family”, “social class”, "teachers", "experts”, “democrats”, “Tibetans”, “Chinese”, “Americans” etc to delineate a social aggregate. It is because members in a group share some functional commonality, ascribed or achieved. They share some norms and beliefs which bind them together. They hence behave in a way as expected from a member in that particular group. If face is bounded by the three elements of status, role performance and moral conduct, then there is no reason why a group cannot have the right to a face basing on the status, role performance and moral conduct of its members in general. Furthermore, if members in the family share the same properties, status, prestige, outlook, surname, moral codes and a face in an ascribed manner, then there is no reason why members in a nation, sharing the land, the physical features, the economic achievement, political rights and so on, cannot share a face as well. The picture seems that there can hardly be any argument against leaving open the limit to the size and scope of a social aggregate within which its members can share a face. Face, theoretically speaking, can be societal, racial, national, continental and if interaction opens up among planets, planetary. While a global face may appear surreal, the hypothesis upon the presence of a nation's face may not. In fact, some scholars have found that an individual's sense of self may vary according to the prosperity or poverty of the nation to which the individual belongs (Volkan, 1985: 231). If an individual's face correlates with an image of self, as in Goffman's definition, then there is reason to believe in a relation between an individual's face with the fortunes of the nation in which he is embedded. People may share a sense of self, rising and falling, insofar as their nation does so. People may share a face, prestigious or notorious, dignified or unscrupulous, if that is what their nation appears. Images of nations are nothing new in the social sciences. Many scholars have already studied them. What is awaited from scholars is the research on a nation's image with a focus on the concept of face. Moreover, a nation's face does not seem to be an irrelevant topic of study and particularly regarding China. King and Myers have pointed out that the primary source of identity of people in the country has gradually shifted from family or village to nation. They have reported Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek as speaking of a nation's face and the ================================================================================ 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 204 The concept of "reflexivity" has been described by Mead (1962) as a turning-back of one's experience upon oneself (Steier, 1991:2). There are many varieties of reflexivity, but the type I will focus on here is "reflection". More specially it is "benign introspection", which basically requires that we think about what we are doing in our research (Woolgar, 1988: 22). In my case this was particularly important given that I shared many common characteristics with the subjects of my study. First, I was a Chinese researcher studying young Chinese adults in Britain. Not only did I share the same ethnic background with my subjects, I also possessed similar socio-economic background and history as the majority of these respondents. Furthermore, I fell into the age range of the target group of Chinese I was studying. Therefore, I typified everything I was studying. Consequently, I had the advantage of the "insider" (in Merton's terminology) of the 'capacity to understand' (Merton, 1972). I strongly believe that 'who I am' has been both relevant and significant to the production of knowledge. In fact, the genesis of this research project grew from my general observations of my Chinese peers. I became increasingly curious to discover more why the Chinese youth I knew appeared to be displaying a particular trend. This was a bimodal distribution whereby the indications were that the Chinese second generation were showing a propensity to either become professionals or to work in the Chinese catering industry in Britain. In addition to being responsible for leading to the idea of this research project, my insider status within the Chinese community in Britain undoubtedly facilitated the research in a number of other ways, most imperatively in the provision of privileged access. Numerous researchers had already previously reported on the methodological difficulties of conducting research on the Chinese in Britain, such as sampling, locating, and gaining access to the Chinese. I believe that such methodological difficulties have contributed to the paucity of studies on this ethnic group in Britain, especially when compared to other ethnic groups such as those from the West Indies or those from the Indian subcontinent. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that my doctoral research ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 'Doctrine of the cosmic breath', and outlines of nature involving landscapes, mountains and watercourses, and their likeness to animals either mythical or real, are employed. Of the Fukien and the Kiangsi Schools, the latter is the more popular in Hong Kong, although the two have tended to merge and overlap like Buddhism and Taoism over the past century. In addition to the two main schools of fung shui, as already demonstrated, there are variations in methods used by different practitioners. Although they may know things about 'unseen forces' and the supernatural that they did not learn through schooling, because fung shui is complex, alternative interpretations by different masters are by no means uncommon. One frequently finds that a master's personality plays an important part. Many masters do not share the same views or give identical advice. They have been likened to blind men feeling the same water buffalo and getting different impressions. One touches its head, another its tail and so on. On account of such factors, Chinese geomancy has been described as rather 'hit and miss'. Certainly, it is 'by no means an exact science'. But science can be a dead end anyway to an imaginative soul. Sick Building Syndrome A great deal has been written in recent years about the effects of chemical emission of building materials on occupants. Dr Bill Wolverton, a member of the United States 'Plants for Clean Air Council' (Plants that cure ..1992), maintains that research proves plants in buildings can filter out harmful chemicals. Microbes in the roots detoxify and help purify air. Naturally, some plants are better at this than others, and only fresh plants can provide energy and power to attract positive forces. Azaleas or plants with sharp, pointed leaves are to be avoided because of the 'dagger effect', Chinese believe. When the leaves of fortune plants wither and turn yellow, however, they should be replaced, or yellow edges should be trimmed. Most Chinese will tell you that with fresh bamboo, this is permissible. Others insist you should not cut plants after they have grown, while in your possession, as you are 'cutting away your own wealth'. Incidentally, some Chinese believe, with plants and flowers symbolising growth, life and nature, and with colours linked to the Five Elements, it is natural to place them in green or blue vases. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 152 It is, moreover, fortuitous that he not only examines records for his own immediate purposes, but collates his data so systematically that it may conveniently be used by other researchers. His home, with hundreds of drawers of index cards, is more like a library. More importantly, his willingness to share his research experience and information has greatly helped other scholars in their study of Hong Kong. Recently, the Public Records Office has further processed his data to make it retrievable electronically. It would be no exaggeration to say that Carl Smith is a key figure (keystone?) in building a firm foundation for the study of local history, and has become something of an institution himself. Historical Geographers Another small group studying local history were the geographers, notably D.J. Dwyer, C.J. Grant, T.G. McGee and later Ron Hill of the University of Hong Kong, whose work covered the rural as well as the urban areas. It should be pointed out that under their guidance, many of their students have produced extremely interesting work, but unfortunately this is not widely known. Their field projects and BA theses, many of which are focused on localities and date back to the 1960s, are kept in the Map Library of the Geography Department, HKU, and these, with their contemporary descriptions and photographs, are in fact of immense value as source materials for local history. The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Though the five groups were quite diverse in their focus and approach, two institutions did bring them together: the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) and the Centre of Asian Studies (CAS) at HKU. Almost all of them had at least some of their works published in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Society's Occasional Publications. As early as 1962, three years after the Society was re-established, the Hon. Editor expressed a hope to develop the study of Hong Kong by printing articles and short notes about the life and customs of the people. James Hayes' article, "The Patterns of Life in the New Territories in 1898" appearing in the 1962 Journal, in a way marked the beginning of the RAS' deep commitment to local studies. This was Hayes' debut, to be followed by massive output in each following volume. Not surprisingly, it was also he who reminded the Society that "Hong Kong has an urban history" (his italics).12 As Hon. Editor from 1967 to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 25 male heir to inherit land and to worship the ancestors. A nephew or clansman of a younger generation is usually adopted, although the generation and age of the adopted person are unimportant. The adoption may take place within the lifetime of the adoptive parents or after one or both of them have died. The explanation of this latter phenomenon is that adoption is a formal process which not only requires action of the adoptive parents but also the approval of the elders of the family and clan. The latter normally signify their approval by attending a feast to eat ceremonial pork. An adopted person renounces all rights of succession and inheritance in his natural family but, of course, acquires them in the family by which he has been adopted. Money loan associations 148 149 Such associations are common in South China and in Hong Kong. Half a century ago, these associations had been employed by the inhabitants of the New Territories to raise money. The object of such an association is to pool the financial resources of the members with the prospect of gambling, so popular with the Chinese, that at some stage each member will be able to use these pooled resources for his own benefit. These associations are usually formed of groups of wage-earning persons in close daily contact, which engenders mutual trust. The number of members having been arranged, the period of the association is likewise arranged to correspond (e.g., an association of 10 members for a period of 10 months). The period may begin at any time, and regular meetings are held throughout its duration. Before or at the first meeting, the chairman, who is usually the instigator of the scheme, gives each member a booklet containing the names of members and simple rules. One rule invariably is that no member can back out of the scheme, for otherwise the sum won by a successful tenderer would be depleted. Another rule also provides that in the event of a member dying or backing out, the chairman will become liable. Also at this first meeting, the chairman collects a sum fixed by agreement in full from each member, say $50. At the second meeting, all members tender to the chairman in secret on slips of paper the amount of interest which they are prepared to offer on each member's share. The member who tenders the highest interest, say $5 on each $50 share, is awarded all the members' shares for that meeting. The remaining members then pay over their shares of the fixed amount less the interest tendered (e.g., $50 less $5 = $45) to the winner. The chairman also repays to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 27 The Customary Law of the Sea-dwellers, the Tanka and Hoklo 154 There has been even less chance of the customary law of the sea-dwellers receiving mention either in law reports or elsewhere for now as was the case fifty years ago they comprise only a little more than a tenth of the total population of the New Territories. 155 These sea-dwellers are, moreover, accustomed to a way of life free from bickering and litigation. The arduous demands made by the fishing activities on all members of the family result in a close-knit unit with the men in the dominant and the women in subordinate status. Even in a big family one person, usually the eldest male, is regarded as the house-holder and he manages the family assets which belong to all the members of that family. For example, the proceeds of each catch are made known to the whole family; part of those proceeds are allocated to daily expenses, purchase of equipment, debts and such like expenditure, part is placed on deposit to meet future contingencies and part is shared out to each family member to meet individual expenses. The latter sharing may be in equal parts or alternatively it may be on the basis of 1/200th or 3/100ths to each member of the family, man, woman or child, according to individual ability in the fishing operation. Property The sea-dwellers seldom possess land but if they do then by special privilege the eldest son assumes control of any house on land. Their property, of course, mostly consists of their boats and their fishing gear. If a family has among its number grown-up sons, then, providing the family business prospers or the initial capital can be borrowed, as many boats are built by fishermen of small fishing vessels, operating handlines and gill nets, as will enable each grown-up son to operate his own fishing boat independently. In the case of the bigger vessels, that is the mechanized trawlers and the tsam junk trawlers, if the family has crew in excess of its vessel or if excess funds are available then they build another new vessel adding it to the family's fleet. In such a large vessel several of the grown-up sons would live aboard and one of them would be appointed master by the householder. The income from the fishing operation of such vessel would be divided into equal shares and an extra half share allocated to the son acting as master of the vessel Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 28 Succession The sea-dwellers are not accustomed to make wills. The majority of them are illiterate and even if a house-holder could write, the tradition is not to make a will. Yet disputes as to the succession rarely occur, and so cases have never, as yet, so far as is known, come to court. Moreover, as a fisherman grows old, he usually makes certain dispositions of the property in his control by registering his boat in the name of his eldest son, unless the latter is degenerate. Such a son, providing he is of good character, has a knowledge of family accounts, is experienced in the fishing operation, and shows the quality of leadership, usually succeeds to the status of householder. Thereafter, the new householder becomes the executor of the deceased's estate and is responsible for the family's expenditure, especially in connection with marriages, births, and sicknesses. To meet such expenses, he may borrow funds on behalf of the family. Should there be no natural son of the deceased to succeed him, then the successor may be a stepson, an adopted son, or a nephew. Alternatively, if the son who succeeds is a minor, or it is intended that a son shall be adopted to succeed to the status of householder, then the widow or a brother of the deceased will manage the estate until the minor son attains adult status, usually at sixteen years of age, or until a son is adopted by the widow. In the rare contingency of there being neither a son nor a widow of the deceased, then one of his daughters who has married attracts the estate to her husband, who succeeds as a son. If there is no married daughter, then the uncle of the deceased succeeds. If, after the decease of the householder, a dispute arises as to the succession, or if a successor is considered to have dealt unjustly with members of the family, then the family meets to consider dissolution. Such a meeting is not, out of respect, usually held immediately after the death of the former householder. Should dissolution be decided upon, then, with the elders and uncles arbitrating, the assets of the family are equally divided among the sons of the deceased, with an extra half share to the eldest son or eldest grandson. Bachelor sons also receive an extra amount out of the estate as a marriage allowance, say of four thousand dollars (i.e., £250) [The exchange rate in 1962 - Editor]. Adopted sons take under the dissolution just the same as sons. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 29 of the blood but sons who have left the family to support themselves are disqualified from any inheritance. Daughters of the deceased likewise have no right to any inheritance but the deceased's brothers receive a share. On the dissolution of the estate the boat and engine are first offered for sale within the family. It might be that one of the heirs wishes to sell out his share and to build or purchase a vessel for independent operation. In any case the value of the property in the estate is realised and then the debts of the family are counted. If the value of the property in the estate is insufficient to offset the debts, one of the heirs may take the whole estate and thereby assume sole responsibility for all the debts of the family. Alternatively, the heirs on sharing the assets will share the debts equally also and will then each inform the creditors what share of the debt he has assumed responsibility to pay. Marriage 17 Most sea-dwellers follow the old Chinese custom in marriage and very few reach marital state through love-affairs or register their marriages in the modern manner. A match-maker is employed to introduce the relatives of the boy and the girl and then upon the agreement of the respective parents the boy sends a gift to the girl as a symbol of their engagement. Then a temple or fortune-teller is consulted regarding the fixing of the wedding date. Ten days before that day the boy gives the girl's parents notice and on the day before the wedding he sends her a large present of cakes, wine, roasted pigs and other delicacies. That night the girl's parents give a dinner party. The following morning the boy sends one of his close female relatives with the match-maker in a sampan to a given rendezvous and they escort the bride to the bridegroom's boat. On her arrival the bride first salutes the bridegroom's ancestors. In the afternoon a dinner party is given by the bridegroom's parents usually on a "Ko Tong” (=restaurant boat). If the bride's family is wealthy a dowry may be given. Since they are accustomed to adopt a son if their wife has no issue, few sea-dwellers keep concubines. However if a concubine is kept in the traditional manner then she must receive the approval of the first wife and thereafter any sons by the concubine are treated in the same manner as sons by the first wife. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g NOTES AND QUERIES LIFE ON THE FRINGES: THE BIOLOGY OF MANGROVES AND THE RÔLE THEY PLAY IN HONG KONG. JOHN HODGKISS 155 Introduction Mangroves are a group of plants belonging to several families which share a common habit and habitat. These plant formations are typical of soft depositing shores in tropical regions, where they live at the fringes of the land, so that at high tide their roots (and aerial parts often) are fully immersed in salt water, whereas at low tide they come into contact with water percolating down the shore, which is almost fresh. Thus, characteristically they grow where there is a freshwater input into the sea. The rise and fall of the tide creates an environment of continuing change, which alters daily, monthly and year by year. Perhaps the most important change is the varying salinity, but the tides affect mangroves in other ways as well, altering temperature, nutrient supply and the level of oxygen in the soil and water. All this means that the mangroves form a special community and there is, in fact, no comparable community of large flowering plants which has a similarly intimate relationship with the sea, and few which experience so many short-term and long-term environmental changes. Botanically, mangroves are most closely related to the plants of the rainforest, and they are considered to have originated in South East Asia about 70 million years ago. Today they are widespread in the tropics (extending from 32°N to 38°S and fringing about 65% of the world's tropical coasts) but they attain their greatest diversity and luxuriance on the west coast of the Malaysian Peninsula. There they grow up to 30m high and merge at the back of the shore with the tropical rainforest. In Hong Kong, because of the cooler winter temperatures, the mangroves are generally stunted, dwarf trees less than 5m tall, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g Book Review 217 JAMES HAYES (1996), Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People, 1953-87, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 11 chapters, appendix, glossary, index, 320 pages. James Hayes needs little introduction to most members of the Society. He was a former editor of the Journal and President of the Council for many years. He is also an extraordinarily nice human being with a passion for bow-ties. He allegedly retired, to Bondi Beach, Australia, in 1987 but there is little evidence that he is taking this seriously. Au contraire, he continues to write prolifically for the Journal and has also added many new books to the Society's collection through his constant forays into used-book shops. All-in-all, James spent 32 years in Hong Kong. He was a member of the Administrative Service of the Hong Kong Government from August, 1956 (he was here briefly in 1953 with the Army). Although he had the varied career that characterises the Service, he spent almost half his time in the New Territories as District Officer South (1957-62), District Officer (and Town Manager) Tsuen Wan (1975-82), and Regional Secretary, New Territories (1985-87). He was, and remains, a noted sinologist and accomplished in the Chinese language. Academically, he was very sound with a PhD from the University of London and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters bestowed by the University of Hong Kong in 1992. James has decided to share his memories of his service in Hong Kong with us in a new book. Autobiographies by former Hong Kong Government civil servants, and by Hong Kong people generally for that matter, are relatively rare events, almost as if the majority are reluctant to write their memoirs for fear of criticism or ridicule, or have little in their careers worth writing about. James has no problem on either count. His career was rich and varied, filled with achievements and may truly be said to have added value to public life in Hong Kong. As for the telling of it, he has avoided the inclination to embark upon a literary ego trip although he is not averse to describing the highlights in detail. Few will be offended by the style. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 153 household chores Our interviewees seemed to take it for granted that women were the main cultivators Wives, mothers, and daughters all engaged in farming, pig raising, and firewood cutting. Child brides, who were not uncommon in the district until the middle of the century, added to this female workforce in the fields.' Generally speaking, women earned half of the family income by farming, while men made up the other half by working as sailors. As a common practice, the steamship companies, employing the men, sent one-half to two-thirds of a seaman's wage directly to his family." Modest economic conditions and geographical remoteness strengthened the sense of interdependence among Tung Chung's villagers. While Tung Chung was isolated from other districts, its villages had to depend on each other for survival and resource sharing. For example, they shared the water from two streams, i.e., the East Stream (Tai Yat) and the West Stream (Pak Yat), which were the life-lines for farming on the valley plain. Communal efforts were needed to maintain normal water supply for this agricultural community. Participation in a common drainage system, as suggested by John Brim, may have been an important determinant of village alliance membership in the New Territories." As early as 1900, Lockhart already noticed that villages that formed an alliance often shared an irrigation source. These village alliances, commonly referred to by rural people as yüeh/#heung or "Alliance", can be classified into two major types, i.e., alliances that consist chiefly of villages populated almost entirely by members of one higher-order lineage and alliances of villages that do not share membership in one dominant lineage." Like the latter, which was also termed by Maurice Freedman as "local alliance," the Tung Chung Hsiang consists primarily of villages of different surnames. In contrast to many single-lineage communities in the New Territories, which are solidified by blood ties or kinship bonds, a majority of Tung Chung's villages are multi-surname communities without ancestral halls and marked by weak lineage organization. Actually, Tung Chung's communal life has transcended lineage lines and characterized a trans-village community. Inter-village coalition has also proved vital for the pooling of economic resources to support collective social functions, which would be too much of a burden for individual villages with Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ 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 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-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 155 ity of the released allied prisoners themselves in a note which states that "those who were restored to liberty gave their share of the indemnity money to the families of the murdered captives.” 58. In the later issues of The Illustrated London News during this period, there is also a continuing attempt to add to the readers' knowledge of China, as for instance, the brief explanation given on 4 May 1861: "The capital of the Chinese empire contains a great number of palaces and temples decorated with numerous works in marble; but a considerable portion of the area of the city is occupied by squares, gardens, ponds, and even fields. Pekin consists... of two cities, one named the Tartar, and the other the Chinese, besides twelve populous suburbs. The Tartar or Northern City is divided into three distinct parts - a central block called the prohibited city, containing the Imperial palace and the grounds belonging to it; the Imperial city, surrounding it; and the General city. In this last division are situated the university buildings and those of the Russian mission." 59 The cover story of The Illustrated London News on 13 April 1861 carried in response to the return of Lord Elgin from China (his wife had travelled to Marseilles to meet him) is interesting for three things: its recapitulation of the causes of the recent hostilities; its discussion of the considerations that the writer represented as having been weighed during the recent hostilities; and its tribute to Lord Elgin's moral qualities: "No disaster of modern times ever excited a more stinging feeling of chagrin in this country than that which occurred at the mouth of the Peiho to the allied squadron intended to give both dignity and protection to the British and French Embassies to Pekin. [The reference is to Elgin's earlier attempt to make his way up to Peking, in June 1859, and the defeat of the British navy at the Takoo Forts, referred to above.] It took the public wholly by surprise. It appeared to destroy at a blow all the fruits which we were preparing to gather from the Tien-tsin Treaty. It inflicted a lamentable loss of life. It seriously damaged the prestige of our arms throughout the East. It threw us once more into the midst of the difficulties and uncertainties necessarily attendant upon a war carried on at a distance of 15,000 miles, with an immensely populous, although an essentially unwarlike, empire. It conjured up before us a vague prospect, equally perplexing and inglorious - perplexing, for who could tell by what means and at what risk the Imperial Court could best be reached and reduced to reason? – inglorious, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 176 image with one of the other titles is the same god. The Fengshen Yanyi records numerous departments of the Celestial World including, for example, the Department of Thunder. It has a chief, General Wen, and twenty-four subordinates, amongst whom are the spirits of wind, rain and lightning; these are often referred to as the Five Spirits of Thunder, Lei Shen. Another is the Department of Fire Spirits. Its departmental head, Luo Xuan of Fire Dragon Island, called himself Yan Zhong Xian, the Immortal of the Flames, and was a fierce-looking iron-toothed, red individual. His immediate subordinate was Liu Huan, a yellow-faced demonic being who, during the Shang-Zhou struggle, brought along the materials with which they nearly destroyed the capital of Xi Ji, before being themselves routed. Luo Xuan was awarded the title The Chief Spirit Ruler of the Southern Region Three Atmospheres Fire Virtue Star: Nan Fang San Qi Huode Xingjun Zhengshen. Among his subordinates are a pig, monkey, tiger and snake spirits, all representing the different kinds of fires. The tiger is the 'tail fire' which is very hot; the pig is a 'house fire' which bursts out unexpectedly; the monkey is the 'nose fire' which comes suddenly through openings; whilst the snake is the 'winged fire' which leaps from one place to another. Liu Huan causes fires to spread. The story begins with the last ruler of the Shang making an offering at the temple of the goddess Nü Wa. Having written a poem on the wall of the temple, a graffiti that offends her, she sends three monsters to bewitch him. The following résumé of the last two chapters of the book brings into focus the tenor and style of the story. Jiang Ziya, about whom tales are told of his ineffectual efforts to become a trader and thus satisfy his wife's demands that he should do something useful, was eventually introduced to the Court and King Zhou Xin, who gave him a high position. Jiang antagonised Dan Ji, Zhou Xin's concubine, by getting rid of one of her vampire friends who had disguised herself as a human to share with the evil queen the flesh and blood of the victims she had slaughtered. Jiang was being taken away to be executed outside the palace but managed to slip through a hole in a bridge and disappeared. The guards sought him everywhere and finally assumed that he had been drowned. He had however been able to conceal himself. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 231 mainly inhabited by Chinese, which circumstance already speaks sufficiently for itself, but eastwards the city is spreading rapidly, with magnificent houses being built; in the two years following my first visit marked progress has been made. Further towards the east a magnificent road leads to a beautiful valley, through which flows a small stream. They say this was the only place that was inhabited prior to the occupation of the island by the English. The Chinese (man) who had a farm here and who had cultivated the valley, called it Happy Valley, a name by which it is still known today. Nowadays alongside the excellently cultivated fields other fields are gradually being sown for great harvests in the future. We too planted a few seeds brought here from afar. The name of the valley accords with its choice as the site for the cemetery. What first particularly strikes one in Hong Kong and other trading towns of China is the almost total absence of horses; they are replaced by Chinese. It is too hot to walk on foot and hence improper for a decent gentleman, let alone a lady: on my walks I never met a lady on foot. Each household usually has one covered litter, like a carriage body without wheels, and several open ones, consisting of light bamboo armchairs with two poles attached: in the true sense - a portechaise. Two Chinese are harnessed to both the former and the latter, which obviously works out cheaper than horses, but from the moral point of view they are debased to the level of animals and are no better than any slave. On more than one occasion a poor coolie (porter) received a beating from a passing dandy for not moving out of the way in time or simply because the latter wanted to make use of his cane. It seems that crying out against slavery, or preaching equality, is much easier. During my stay here a small scene took place on 'Queen's Road.' The main role was played by a young officer of the frigate HM Nanking. It seems that the young man, being in high spirits, decided to eat some fruit from the basket of a hawker and the Chinese, not appreciating the joke, demanded payment and not receiving it grabbed the gentleman by the coat. Apparently, this insult to his attire was too much to take, even if the citizen of the Celestial Empire was right, and that is why HM Mr. Officer dealt the 'peasant' a mighty blow, which cut his face. Several peace-loving citizens, who didn't share the hero's warlike spirit, happened to be present and insisted that he be taken to the police, which was indeed done in spite of the loud protestations of his friends. The ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 349 that they are happy to share with all present. I learned that one can not over-estimate the time that should be spent on planning for such an event; the room allocations of those who were sharing, for example, should have been sorted out in the relative comfort of Hong Kong rather than hoping to patch things up on the day. I learned that even though we were shamelessly interested only in European colonial remains, half expecting to have to be apologetic about this to the local population, many of these remains have been carefully restored and protected. I learned that only three bars of Cadbury's chocolate are not nearly enough to sustain me during five days in China. The only real disappointment was being told that foreigners could not go and look at a 100-year old railway station, and a foreign built one at that. However, one of our members got his own back by video-taping Chinese fighter planes taking off and landing at Dalian airport whilst waiting for our flight back to Hong Kong, and doing this in full view of everybody. He was not even cautioned, let alone arrested. Which brings me back to why I took 25 people into Shantung and only brought 18 of them back. Were the others lost? Not really. Being a fairly long trip (six days/five nights) there was an option for participants to leave the tour after Weihai - which seven of them did. All the accompanying photographs with the exception of No. 1 were taken by the author. Bibliography Readers who are interested in reading more about Treaty Ports in China in general, and the places we visited in particular, might like to refer to the books the organisers of the trip used as reference: The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, Mayers, Dennys and King, pub. Trübner, London, 1867 Wanderings in China, Constance Gordon Cumming, pub. Wm Blackwood & Sons, London, 1888 The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Samuel Couling, pub. Kelly & Walsh, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH 1999/2000 PRESIDENT'S REPORT PRESENTED AT THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY, ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING ON FRIDAY 24TH MARCH 2000 No man can know a country who only knows what is happening in it today. Anon. As you know the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch (RASHKB) took the 1997 Handover of the Territory, from Britain back to China, in its stride. That Hong Kong has rejoined its Motherland makes little difference to the way our Branch operates. More recently, we have taken a further leap into what most people have come to accept as the New Millennium. This year is also, incidentally, the 40th anniversary since our Branch was reconstituted. Our Branch was first established in Hong Kong in 1847. Unfortunately, it survived only 12 years. It then slumbered for a century and was reconstituted in 1960. Now, moving on into the 21st century means in effect that the RASHKB has played an active part in the local community during three centuries. That is from early British colonial times to the present day when Hong Kong forms a part of the People's Republic of China. Our Society is pleased to have been able to contribute to our community in a variety of ways as this report amply illustrates. Although we are a Royal Society with our head office in London we are at the same time, with branches in several parts of the world, international in character. Together, we share a rich history. Nevertheless our local Branch ploughs its own furrow entirely and we receive no financial assistance from Headquarters. Our Branch is very much part of the Hong Kong scene doing its best to serve the local community, foster goodwill and provide close working relationships between locals and expatriates. Let us examine various aspects of our Branch's activities since the 1999 Annual General Meeting one year ago. I should emphasise that the Branch has continued to be strong and virile as you will see from the following pages. xi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x members of the Cathay Camera Club. A special vote of thanks must go to Iain Masterton and Charles Slater, who as both RAS and Cathay members also served, during different periods, as photographic co-ordinator. This book has made a contribution to local literature and will be read and referred to for many years to come. It is available in all good bookstores. Faced with the task of making sure a large membership keeps in touch, our lively Newsletter comes hot off the press every two months. Although a few of us feed in information its preparation is done almost entirely by our energetic Assistant Secretary, Sarah Parnell. We also congratulate our many members who have published books, papers or articles during the past year on their own account. A special mention, however, must be made of Dr Patrick Hase's splendid paper entitled, 'The Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch) and its Journal'. This article came out in The Journal of Resources for Hong Kong Studies which was produced by the University of Hong Kong Libraries, volume no.9. Activities It has not infrequently been said that the backbone of our Branch is the activities we provide and many join because, during a brief stay in Hong Kong, they wish to learn something about local history, customs and culture. It has jokingly been said, however, that you cannot do this, and learn to speak the language, on a diet of western food. The answer to this must be that, during the course of the year, members do have the opportunity to share a few meals together. During the past year 12 lectures, eight Hong Kong visits and two excursions to the China Mainland were conducted. This is an impressive number. A wide range of topics was covered as can be seen from Appendices A and B of this report. A large number of speakers are named on these lists and I take this opportunity to thank them all, together with the leaders and organisers of tours and anyone else who assisted us with our activities in any way. We are pleased that many of you have been able to accept our invitations and have joined us for dinner this evening. XV ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 225 A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong Old people recall the past gladly and shrink characteristically from contemplating the future. But obviously things are going to continue to change, just as some of us in the 1970s could visualise that an organisation similar to the Vocational Training Council (VTC) was not so far away. But just as in the colonial 1950s and '60s 1997 was seldom mentioned, looking into the crystal ball today to decide what technical education will look like half a century from now has to be another story. Thank you again for inviting me to share this very special day with you. About the Speaker Dr D D Waters, who was born in 1920, sailed from England for Hong Kong in 1954. It has been his home ever since. He taught building at the old Technical College (now the Polytechnic University) becoming Head of the Building Department in 1963. In 1968 he was appointed Principal, more than one year in advance of the opening of Hong Kong's first Technical Institute at Morrison Hill. In 1972, he was transferred to the Education Department Headquarters to oversee the setting up of additional Institutes. He later became the Assistant Director (Technical Education) and responsible to the Director of Education for Hong Kong's technical education system. Dr Waters served as a Justice of the Peace in the 1970s and was made a Companion of the Imperial Service Order by Her Majesty the Queen in 1981, largely for his work in technical education. In 1998 he was awarded a Bronze Bauhinia Star, by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, for his work in heritage conservation. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 3 تر and interactive" experiences. Looking at these forms of so-called Hong Kong heritage, I ask whether the sense of belonging or historical identity has been successfully created among people who share rooted cultural similarities but have diverse origins. Historical identity, being defined as self-identification with regard to one's origins, is important for local people who aim to construct their own origins in the past, and also for their understanding of how Hong Kong society might cope with current political relations between China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong's case, because of the continuous immigration from mainland China and the similar socio-cultural backgrounds involved, the issues of self-identification and the idea of Chineseness are always controversial; because people are to some extent oriented by different institutions, multiple identities can always be found among Hong Kong residents, for example, passport, citizenship, widespread family, education, etc. Moreover, with the recent decline of rural areas and the rapid expansion of urbanization in the New Territories, the contrast between the cultural heritage areas and the new town areas with their modern facilities for many leisure activities has become more marked than ever before. With the popular "discovery voyage" development in the last two decades, New Territories became the hinterland for history and traditions, which Hong Kong people were looking for. Again, modern transportation networks conveniently served nostalgia in the forms of traditions such as rural landscapes, ancestral hall, and puhn chơi (a festival as well as banquet food in the New Territories). In fact, there are many differences between international tourists and domestic tourists in the way they use the same heritage trail. Foreigners see the heritage trail as one of the never-ceasing wonders created for the Hong Kong image. However, locals take it as the central part of the search for local Hong Kong history, as well as the "main dish" of the one-day domestic tours. It might be contended that cultural heritage, on common land with common history, is intimately related to the commonsense notion of belonging to Hong Kong, and that is the way that participants' identities are being shaped through these one-day experiences. But what I found out was that local tourists did not identify with the monuments through these visits, but they identified with each other as Hongkongese through the experience of cultural as well as heritage tourism. ================================================================================