RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 175 the Tsing dynasty (from the 17th century until modern times) continued to be bound up with coast defence. The Tanka were still a source of disorder during the whole of this period. Their chief centres appear to have been Tai O and Tung Ch'ung on Lantao Island. One of the differences between this period and earlier ones is that in their attacks on shipping in the Canton estuary they were helped by the Hoklo boatmen whose migration to centres in the west such as Heung Shan and Hainan Island had been under way for some centuries. The disorders, however, should not be exaggerated just because they figure large in the official history. The Tanka and Hoklo were for the most part fishermen and those who took to piracy were probably forced to do so from distress. The peasants and traders on shore were without doubt a peaceable population as they are now, whose greatest desire was to avoid trouble and to carry on their industrious occupations. But from the very beginning of the dynasty the coastal population was looked upon by the government with extreme suspicion. They were accused of being in sympathy with the cause of the Ming dynasty which was still being kept alive in certain centres along the coast. The Manchu government was never able to muster a good enough fleet to defeat the Ming remnants. Just as at the end of the Sung dynasty the coastal shipping had been the last refuge of the defeated dynasty, the last hope of the Ming dynasty was centred in a fleet which they based at Formosa where they were entirely independent. It occurred to the Manchus that the only way to avert the danger was to move the entire population of the China coast inland and to fortify the coast more completely. This colossal undertaking was put into practice without much organisation and without a thought of the suffering it entailed. The official reason given was the danger of pirates and the necessity of protecting the population against them, but a courageous official called Wang Lai-jên pointed out in a petition that the evacuation only increased piracy: "I have been two years in my post", he wrote, "and have never heard of any piracy. It has arisen only since the evacuation. If the people are allowed to return the so-called pirates will sell their swords and buy cows." He added “It Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN 191 10 See M. Saso, The Teachings of Master Chuang. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978. 11 Journal of Buddhist Culture, Fo-Chiao wen-hua hsüeh-pao,*** published by the Institute for the Study of Buddhist Culture since 1972. Articles are in Chinese or English. 12 Journal of Taoist Culture, Tao-chiao wen-hua,Maxit published by the Taoist Culture Journal Association since 1976. Articles are in Chinese. 13 Examples are: Fo-kuang hsüeh-pao,1*£* published by the Buddhist monastery on Fo-kuang mountain near Kaohsiung, since 1975 or 1976; Boahedrum, Pw-ti-shu,### Taichung: Hui-châ, & Torch Wisdom, Taipei; Hal Ming-tao, published in Tounan (Yünlin district). of 14 See E. Ahern, The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973. 15 See L. G. Thompson, "Notes on Religious Trends in Taiwan", Mon. Ser., vol. 23 (1964), 319-350. 16 See A. P. Cohen, "Fiscal Remarks on some Folk Religion Temples in Taiwan", Mon. Ser., vol. 32 (1976), 85-158. 17 See Liu Chih-wan, Taipei-shih Sung-shan ch'i-an chien-chiao chi-tien (Great Propitiatory Rites of Petition for Bene-ficence at Sungshan, Taipei, Taiwan), Taipei: Academia Sinica, Institute of Ethnology, (monographs no. 14), 1967, Liu Chih-wan, Chung-kuo min-chien hsin-yang lun-chi (Essays on Chinese Folk Belief and Folk Cults), Taipei: Academia Sinica, Institute of Ethnology (monographs no. 22), 1974. M. Saso, Taoism or the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, Washington State University Press, 1972. 18 See St. Harrell, "Modes of Belief in Chinese Folk Religion", in JSSR, vol. 16 (1977), 55-65. 19 See D. Jordan, Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors. Folk Religion in a Taiwanese Village, University of California Press, 1972, G. Seaman, Temple Organization in a Chinese Village (Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, vol. 101), Taipei: Chinese Association for Folklore, 1978, 20 See D. Overmyer, "The Saying of Master Lu", Unpublished paper, given at the joint panel of the CASA and the CSSR on Chinese Religion at the Conference of the Learned Societies in Saskatoon, May, 1979. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 73 elements in the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching". The expression ‘brilliant teaching' for Christianity occurs three times in the text of the Book of the Secret Peace and Joy, but there is no reference to Ta-ch'in. We must conclude that, by the tenth century, the Nestorian monks at Tun-huang no longer used Adam's formula Ta-ch'in ching-chiao as punctiliously as they once had, although both Ta-ch'in and ching-chiao are found separately, and that a tendency to render proper names by transliteration from the Syriac had replaced the earlier policy of finding appropriate Chinese terms for them. Other examples of this tendency can be found in the titles of some of the thirty-five books listed in the Book of Praise: The Gospels (Syriac: evangelion) are the A-wan-chü-li-yung ching; the Epistles of St. Paul (Syriac: shlicha, the Book of the Apostle) the Shih-li-hui ching; the Book of Hosannas the Wu-sha-na ching; and the Book of the Cross (Syriac: tsuliba) the Tz'u-li-po ching. Although these are the titles, according to the Book of Praise, of books translated by Adam, it is difficult to believe that he would ever have allowed them to be given such meaningless names in Chinese. We have seen how much care he took in the Sian tablet inscription to make himself clear, and suitable Chinese titles could easily have been found for these books. But book titles, as we have already seen in the case of other Tun-huang manuscripts, are obvious targets for updating in the light of changing taste, and these Syriac-influenced titles were probably given to Adam's books by the Tun-huang monks in the tenth century. They lived on the fringes of China and were not writing for discerning scholars in the capital, as Adam was. They preserved the memory of their past glories under the leadership of men like Reuben and Adam, but a definite change of style had taken place since the confident days when the Sian tablet was erected. They were conscious that an era had passed. 1 NOTES Hong Kong has a fine collection of bronze crosses from the Ongut region, worn by Nestorian Christians during the Yüan period, in the Fung Ping Shan museum of Hong Kong University. See F. S. Drake's article "Nestorian Crosses and Nestorians in China under the Mongols", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 1962, pp. 11-25. His Chinese name, given in the Sian tablet inscription, was A-lo-pen. It is suggested in Volume 3 of the Cambridge History of China that A-lo-pen is a transliteration of Reuben, and this seems to me as good a guess as any. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 67 ridges and valleys, there seemed to have been an attempt to impose a grid-iron plan for the streets. Though there were some divergencies from this. Pokfulam Road was an old footpath of the Island and Water Street which recalled the old water tank and 'watering place' for ships was influenced by the presence of a nullah. In my opinion, it is not difficult to explain why the road pattern was planned in that way. Firstly, in those days with those crude surveying instruments and limited manpower, it was the earliest plan to demarcate the streets in that ridge and valley terrain. Even in 1903, the surveying team consisted only of one inspector, 24 surveyors, 32 Indian chairmen and about 45 Chinese coolies. Secondly, the British laid out the district in an orderly pattern because they hoped to improve the congested living conditions of the Chinese quarters in this way. The early Chinese quarters like those in Tal Ping Shan district had rapidly become a squatter area. In 1855, a Land Commission was even appointed to investigate the overcrowding in Victoria. Thirdly, the British may also have wanted to have some form of centralized control, political and military, in the Chinese quarter. As H. D. Talbot pointed out in his essay 'An Outline of the Urban Development of Hong Kong Island During the Nineteenth Century', those streets could have been planned as approach roads for the military. (Talbot, 1971, P.57) Owing to the Tai Ping Rebellion, which began in 1850 and created unsettled conditions in China for almost fifteen years, thousands of refugees rushed to Hong Kong. In 1861, 116,335 Chinese were registered in Hong Kong, a six-fold increase over the 1848 figure of 21,514. The entry of Chinese into Hong Kong in such a large number was unforeseen and naturally little housing provision was made for it. Demand for houses and rooms in Hong Kong vastly exceeded the supply. Every available space was at once filled and the overwhelming population overflowed the buildings. By 1880, Sai Ying Pun had become seriously overcrowded. Unoccupied houses (including newly built houses) were being taken up rapidly by the inhabitants (Table 1). Tenement floors were usually ================================================================================