RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207
22 

KEITH G. STEVENS 

columns, boards, boards bearing auspicious phrases, balustrades, roofs and lattice windows exactly like full-size temples (Illustration 16). Several wooden miniature shrines seen on lower decks of large sea-going junks were heavily ornamented and the carving exquisitely detailed. At the other end of the scale, soap boxes, painted red and upended, serve as the simple shrine of the less affluent household. 

Actual images of gods in homes are few, and their worship is very limited. Usually, there is just a framed print, and routine offerings consist of a daily incense stick burnt before the print with, in addition, a small offering of tea or rice on the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month. The majority of Chinese who have a household shrine display on their main altar the bodhisattva Guan Yin, who is, without a doubt, the most popular deity of Chinese everywhere. Most homes also have a second “altar”, the Kitchen or Stove God, whose title on a red board is hung up, or when written on a red paper is pasted up near the family cooking range. 

Shop or factory shrines usually stand or hang on walls at shoulder height, constructed of wood and painted vermilion. The majority of shop shrines contain plaques or prints of Guan Di as patron deity of merchants and Tu Di Gong, the Earth God. Those in fire stations and police stations bear prints of Guan Di in his role as the patron deity of loyalty. 

On days marked Chu (除)22 in the Almanac (i), old lady devotees offer prayers in the street before unpainted wooden boxes used as shrines. They are propitiating the demons who cause disasters, and are also attempting to change their luck for the better. They use one of their shoes to strike the "small men” (1-A) banging small figures of humans cut out of black paper and at the same time calling out in high-pitched voices for the demons to flee. The voice is pitched particularly high when calling back the roaming soul of a sick child (the absence of the soul being the cause of the sickness). 

Apart from modern concrete decorative structures in places like the Tiger Balm Gardens and on the foreshore of Repulse Bay, there is only one pagoda in Hong Kong or Macau. This is at Ping Shan, in the New Territories, and was built of stone blocks some three hundred years ago. Like other Chinese pagodas, it has little use other than to enshrine some sacred object, in this case, several images
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v
REVD. CARL T. SMITH'S NOTES ON THE SO KON PO VALLEY AND VILLAGE

So Kon Po can be translated as "the straw broom plain", or possibly, "the straw broom landing place". The valley is a pocket with hills closing in at its seaward end. The hill to the north is the site of Tai Hang Village and Tiger Balm Garden. To the south-west is Jardine's Lookout, and to the south-east is Caroline Hill. There are two principal roads, both circular, the Eastern Hospital Road and the Caroline Hill Road. The original So Kon Po district extended to the north-west of the valley itself, that is, to the north-east side of the old East Point Hill, now the area of Hysan Avenue and Lee Gardens. In the present area of Jardine's Bazaar, Irving Street and Keswick Street there was probably a Chinese settlement at the time the British occupied Hong Kong. In 1842 the population of this village of So Kon Po was given as eighty. The valley drained into the sea near the present junctions of Yee Woh Street, Causeway Road and Tung Lo Wan Road. Tung Lo Wan was the name of the bay at the seaward end of the valley; the bay has now been reclaimed to form the Patterson Street and Victoria Park area.

The original cultivators of the valley seem to have been the Wong (#) family. A few people in the village were engaged in ship-building and fishing.

Capt. Belcher, commander of H.M. survey ship "Sulphur", landed on Hong Kong island in January 1841. As the most suitable site for a settlement, he suggested a spot "at nearly the east end of Hong Kong bay, in two small indents; one opening into the valley of Wongneichong and another to the north-east [the So Kon Po valley]. A small promontory [East Point] of about 220 yards in length and 120 in breadth, with a frontage on both sides, has a landing place for boats at the point at all times of the tide. Both of these small bays are dry at low water spring tides, and would be easily gained from the sea". (Canton Register, 7 Dec. 1841)

Captain Belcher's suggestion was not followed, but Jardine, Matheson and Company considered the East Point promontory,
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
Cinema, at North Point (constructed in the early 1950s), is suspended; or the English style, Kentish-Rag, stone retaining wall on the south side of Battery Path in Central. One wonders if the latter was commissioned by some homesick Englishman.

And, while parts of the Territory have been disparagingly called "concrete jungle”, there are modern structures of merit. Depending on your taste, the St. John's Building (Lower Peak-Tram Station), Admiralty Centre; and the Macau Ferry Terminal spring to mind. The foyer at the Landmark, and the high-rise, high-tech Exchange Square, with its "electronic plumbing" so tenants can plug in for centralised computer services, are also of merit. Other recently completed buildings show an impressive degree of distinction and aesthetic sensitivity.

In an article written by Doctor Alan Birch in 1978, previously Reader in History at Hong Kong University, he stated that 95 per cent of the Territory's buildings had been erected from 1946 onwards (even if the deterioration of some belies their age). Although that was probably a very approximate estimate, since then many more old buildings have been torn down. Hong Kong is a city-state where, with the exception of the plot on which Saint John's Cathedral stands (which is freehold), all land is leasehold held from the Crown: this demands that landholders maximise their income from the land in as short a time as possible.

To give some idea how dramatically the skyline has changed: until World War II the seven-storey Peninsula Hotel, on the Kowloon waterfront, which served as the Japanese army headquarters during the occupation, was considered tall. Since then, the skyline has changed dramatically every decade.

Catherine II (Catherine the Great) (1729-96), Empress of Russia, who together with her many architects erected royal palaces and public buildings, said that building was a disease, like alcoholism. Not too dissimilarly, in Hong Kong, Aw Boon Haw, the son of a Chinese herbalist, who together with his brother, Boon Par, produced the famous "cure-all", Tiger Balm, was told by a sooth-sayer that he would lose his fortune and die if he stopped building. When he eventually departed he had erected 26 castles around Asia, as well as the well-known Tiger Balm Gardens in both Singapore and Hong Kong. These, which contain figures depicting stories in Chinese history or mythology, were built to promote Aw's well-known pharmaceutical products.

Page 30

Page 31
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g
this project will now be completed by the summer. Please keep an eye on the Newsletter for details.

During the year, apart from the Journal, the only other publication with which the Society was associated was the publication of a Polish translation of Han Su-yin's The Crippled Tree. The translator of this novel asked for the Society's assistance. The Society accordingly acted as publisher for the work, and co-ordinated dealings with the printer. No cash assistance was required. A copy of the translation will be available for members in the Society's Library.

The Volunteers

The Society has a group of Volunteers who do voluntary work for the Antiquities and Monuments Office, both by visiting historic buildings with a view to grading them, and by assisting with archaeological excavations undertaken by the Office in Hong Kong. The group provides tremendous support for the Office, while, at the same time, providing those members who give up their time to the job with the perfect opportunity of getting to know Hong Kong's antiquities on an intimate level. I must express the Society's thanks to the Volunteers, and especially to Mr. Bob Horsnell and Mr. Bill Greaves, who run the group so noticeably well.

During this last year the group has visited a number of historical buildings and sites, and in particular has been researching the Tiger Balm Gardens, and some of the remaining structures connected with the old RAF Station at Kai Tak, a few of which still remain from before the War. Buildings under consideration for grading in old Wanchai have also been researched. On the archaeological side, the group assisted Dr Solomon Bard in his important excavations in the garden at Tai Fu Tai, San Tin, where a number of interesting finds were made, including a very large garden pavilion, a well-laid pathway, and a large pool with a small pavilion built over it on a granite platform.

The Volunteers remain very much a group in being, and have a programme of work stretching over the next few months. Members interested in joining the group should contact Bob Horsnell: anyone willing to give up a weekend-day on a regular basis would be considered!

xxiv
================================================================================