RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 NOTES AND QUERIES 189 Mossman's China, A Brief Account of the Country, its Inhabitants, and their Institutions, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London about 1867 (no date is given on the frontispiece but the contents date it to this period, see e.g. p. 60). It is the first I have come across that provides any detail, though E. Watson's The Principal Articles of Chinese Commerce (Import and Export), published at the Inspectorate-General of Customs, Shanghai 1930, deals with the various types of Hemp and Ramie under the general head of Ma (麻) between pp. 50 - 59. "Hemp, or, more properly speaking, fibres analogous to those of the plant which we know by that name, are extracted from several indigenous plants in China: these no doubt formed the first textile fabrics worn by the Chinese, as they did of other ancient civilized races. Since the introduction of cotton, however, the cultivation and manufacture of these fibres is limited to the finer sorts, called by the English grass-cloth. This is principally made from a plant belonging to the Urtica, or nettle family, named ma by the Chinese. In cultivating it, great care is taken in the selection of the seeds, and in preparing the soil. The former when gathered are packed in jars with sand or dry earth. A loose dry soil is selected; the ground is well ploughed, manured, and divided into beds, about eight yards long and one wide, whereon the seed is thrown broadcast, and earth is swept over it with a broom. Before it sprouts, a framework with matting is laid over the beds, to protect them from the fierce heat of the sun in June. When three inches high they are transplanted. Being perennial they are carefully tended during the winter and spring; and in the third or fourth year are ready for cutting. The plant is also propagated by roots, and yields three crops annually, the first in June, when the blades are comparatively short; but in a month or two they are seven or eight feet high, when the second cutting takes place. The latest crop is cut in September or October, from which the finest cloth is made; the first being inferior, coarse and hard. On being cut the leaves are soaked in water for an hour, and the fibre stripped by breaking in the middle; whilst the operator, generally a woman or a child, separates the filaments skilfully from one end to the other with the finger-nails. The next process is scraping the hemp with a knife by drawing the strips over the blade from within outwards, taking off all the mucilaginous parts; then it is rolled up into bundles, exposed for a day Page 195 Page 196 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 213 pious, became more prominent. PIONEER BEHIND THE MINING TRAIL TO NEW ZEALAND The career of Ho A-mei, the younger brother of Ho A-low, is of particular interest because he was an innovator. He introduced the first group of Chinese miners into New Zealand goldfields. He opened up lead, tin and silver mines in Kwangtung province. He was a principal in organising a company to build a telegraph line between Canton and Hongkong. He initiated a proposal to organise a waterworks company at Canton. He was the first president of a Hongkong Chinese Chamber of Commerce. I shall be writing about these and other aspects of his career in this and future articles. After leaving Dr. Legge's school he left Hongkong in 1858 to join his brother in Australia. Here he acquired enough capital to embark on a project to introduce Chinese labour to the goldfields of New Zealand. The details of his effort are set forth in a letter he sent in 1871 to the Otago Daily News Times in New Zealand. He begins with an estimate of himself and his intentions. "Sometime in the month of November 1865, being an energetic and enterprising man, blessed with the health and hopefulness of youth, and more especially animated by a spirit of speculation, I started from Melbourne for your city (Dunedin)... My object was for obtaining reliable information, and making necessary preparation previous to the introduction of Chinese labour into your goldfields, but being not a miner myself, my view therefore was to first secure the introduction of labour; then, with a hope to reap the benefit by having the full command of provisioning business, should the scheme prove a success. A-mei gives the impression that he alone was responsible for initiating the project. The account of the coming of Chinese to New Zealand given in Charles Price's book, The Great White Walls are Built, states that he had been invited to Dunedin by the Otago Provincial Council and the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 166 Hai Journal, no 12 | August 1981, pp 191-201) 1 Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Its External Communications Before 1842 The History of Hong Kong Prior to British Arrival (Hong Kong Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963) Barbara Ward, "Rediscovering our social and cultural heritage", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (JHKBRAS) 20, pp 116-124, p 124 See Jack Potter Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant. Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village (Berkeley, Calif University of California Press, 1968) He contradicts the theory that the industry and commerce of the treaty ports were the principal reasons for the bankruptcy of the Chinese countryside by showing how in Ping Shan, the effects of capitalism were beneficial to peasants. James Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911. Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Connecticut Archon Books, 1972), The Rural Communities of Hong Kong Studies and Themes (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1983), Tsuen Wan Growth of a New Town and Its People (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1993) 7 For the special nature of the District Officer's duties, see Austin Coates, Myself a Mandarin Memoirs of a Special Magistrate (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1975) Selina Ching Chan, "Tradition Inherited, Traditional Reinterpreted. A Chinese Lineage in the 1990s", (Unpublished Ph D thesis, Oxford University, 1995) Alan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Years the Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-45 (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1982) and Captive Christmas (Hong Kong. Heinemann, 1979) 10 Most of the Rev Smith's work was published in articles in various, often obscure, journals, but more recently they have been collected in anthologies - Chinese Christians, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1985) and A Sense of History Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co, 1995) See especially, DJ Dwyer (ed) The Changing Face of Hong Kong. Proceedings of a Weekend Symposium of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch (Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1971) 12 Editorial, JHKBRAS, vol 7(1967)pp 1-3,p 2 13 PH Hase and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Beyond the Metropolis Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Joint Publishing (HK) Ltd, 1995) 14 Marjorie Topley, (comp) "Anthropology and Sociology in Hong Kong Field Projects and Problems of Overseas Scholars" Proceedings of a Symposium, February 8-9, 1969 (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1969) See Ian Diamond, "The Paper Chase - Archives and the Public Records Office of Hong Kong" ================================================================================