RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974
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218 

NOTES AND QUERIES 

came about at the time of the building of the Ko Shing Theatre in 1870. The theatre gave its name to the old Praya when the sea was reclaimed near the turn of the century. Today a new building is being built on the site of the theatre. Two lanes were left on either side. The western one was called Kom Yu and the eastern Wo Fung. A short lane, Pan Kwai, ran off Wo Fung. It contained five family houses on each side. It no longer exists, as the Ko Shing Telephone Exchange has been built over it. Tsung Sau Lanes East and West were developed between 1877 and 1879, as was also In Ku Lane and Sutherland Street with its godowns. Li Sing Street was opened later.

As an illustration of the diversity of shops conducted on Queen's Road, the 1885 Rate and Valuation Table lists the following between Queen's Street and Wilmer Street: four each of chandlers, druggists and barbers; three each of tin smiths, merchants and tea dealers; two each of coopers, shoes, scales, lamps, lumber and tobacco; and one each of iron, cotton, silk, joss paper, pickles, rice, pawnshop, mason, carpenter, eating house, marine store, copper smith and gun smith.

Currently much redevelopment is taking place, but some of the old alleys, particularly In Ku, still retain buildings erected when they were first opened a hundred years ago. Queen's Road still has the same variety of shops and Ko Shing Street is still lined with Nam-pak business hongs.

(b) Chinese Tea Houses

(1) A Chinese friend has supplied the following Note:

Cha Kui (**茶居**) is the old, local name for a Chinese Tea House. It is a special type of Chinese restaurant catering exclusively for tea-lovers. Tea drinking or Yum Cha (**飲茶**) has been a long-standing pastime with the people of the Kwangtung Province to which Hong Kong once belonged. It is popular with poor and rich alike. A tea house is sometimes looked upon as a gathering place for meeting people, talking with friends or for taking leisure in a friendly atmosphere. Most tea-house goers used to go to the same tea house everyday and also at almost the same time of the day and it is also customary that they ask for the same kind of tea each time they go. In a sense, a tea house for Cantonese people is much like and comparable to a 'pub' for English people.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
206

DONALD C. BOWIE

The Hospital Funds were the main customers, and provided much needed extras for general and for individual consumption. Cigarettes were in great demand and came in various brands. Occasionally what we called Chinese cigarette tobacco was available and when burned this emitted a foul smell making its users extremely unpopular with their neighbours. I had stopped smoking myself many years before the war, so I suffered no deprivation but many men, particularly Canadian soldiers curiously enough, felt the lack of tobacco greatly. Earlier in this account I said that some patients in the early months of my charge were exchanging food issued to them for treatment purposes for cigarettes. We took a strong line on this and the practice soon ended. Another time a soldier received a large number of cigarettes in a parcel from home, though how this got through I do not know. He started to sell some at a level of profit which would have excited envy in most black markets. The business attained the proportions of a scandal in our small community and I confiscated the greater part of his remaining stock and distributed these free to all except officers in the hospital. This met with approval by our population rather than disapproval of the high-handed action, which in fact it was. When funds allowed we bought cigarettes as a general issue for all except officers in the hospital, non-smokers getting a cash allowance instead. In the shop at a later date we set prices to yield small profits though such commonly sought articles as cheap cigarettes were often sold at cost and gradually we built up a fund of some hundreds of yen.

I had the greatest difficulty in getting permission from the Japanese to use this money; they kept a close watch on the store to make sure that unauthorised goods or messages did not come in. Eventually in August 1944 they agreed to refer to their headquarters my request to use our profit. Headquarters then wanted us to buy musical instruments and other goods of this kind. I feel sure that the reason was that these articles could be displayed in our recreation room and provide readily visible evidence to inspecting officers as to Japanese solicitude for patients in the hospital. In the end, though specific permission was never actually given, we began to use this profit to add to our diet. Like many other of our practices this started in a small way and grew to sizeable proportions.

The range of goods in the shop was astonishingly large early on. In February 1943 when my records of prices start, 58 items were on sale and ranged from corned beef at ¥2.40 per tin to cotton
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522
53

however, it is interesting to note that Mok's universe of persons and occupations encompasses such categories, as well as the more pragmatically justified "Broker", "Interpreter", "Agent", "Magistrate", "Justice of the Peace", "Compradore", "Stone-cutter", "Tin-smith", "Shroff", "Coolie Agent", et al. It is also interesting to note that the dramatis personae of this section of the book include "Schoolmaster", "Teacher", "Horse-boy", "Bad man", "Fool", "Watchman", "Porter", "Deaf", "Convent Sister", "Midwife", various family relations, "Tenant", "Kidnapper", "Geomancer", "District watchmen", "Juggler", and "Priest".

A similar ambivalence, between traditional and modern as well as between East and West, may be detected in other sections of the book. Under "Stores and Business Shops", for example, one finds a Bank, Foreign goods shop, Factory, Dispensary, Tobacco store, Hardware dealers, Ship Chandler's store, as well as a Compradore shop, Opium divan, Pawn-broker's shop, and Chinese Bank. Under "Clothing and Wearing Apparel", the reader could discover a way to pronounce "Pyjama", "Silk stockings", "Breeches", "Chemise", "Mosquito net", "Knickerbockers", "Cholera belt", "Combination", "Pantaloons", and "Swallow Tail coat", while the separate section on "Chinese Clothes" introduced him to the pronunciation of such objects as "Wadded Coat", "Mandarin robe", and "Queue string". The section on "Crockery and Household Articles" and the separate section on "Household Articles" provide an interesting glimpse of some of the personal belongings which Mok Man Cheung assumed would be characteristic of his readership. Such items include "Wine bottle", "Scissors", "Tea cup", "Tea saucers", various other pieces of crockery (including a "Mustard cup"), "Nut cracker", "Cheese scoop", "Pickle fork", "Candle stand", "Soy stand", "Bamboo broom", "Feather brush", "Red tape", "Bay Rum", "Hair oil", "Powder horn", "Bullets", "Horse saddle", "Dagger", "Tooth brush", "Tooth pick", "Chessmen", "Thimble", "Gramophone", "Telephone", "Looking glass", "Lamp chimney", "Scissors", and "Horse whip". Under "Court Matters" and "Punishments", the reader could also find traditional modern, Eastern and Western practices intermingled. For example, in
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302
177

a specialist winemaker, and a dogmeat seller. There were several sweet sellers, although details of only one have been remembered. A cattle dealer not only sold and brokered animals, driving them to his clients' homes in the villages on demand, but also slaughtered cattle as needed. Two carpenters and five or six blacksmiths mended the farm implements and made new ones - the carpenters also made furniture and coffins, and sawed planks for various uses. Also working in the timber trade was the boatyard at Sha Lan Ha, as well as building and repairing boats, this establishment made oars and other wooden equipment used on the boats.69 Three tailors and cloth dealers (plus, probably, a number of seamstresses working in their own homes to sew up clothes for them), and a cobbler, made clothes and shoes for the local residents. A pawnshop supplied credit and storage services; this establishment occupied the lower floors of the western gun-tower and the adjacent premises, since the pawn business required secure and strong buildings to store the deposited goods in. On the outskirts of the town were a couple of lime-kilns. Services were provided by a letter-writer, four paper-offerings sellers, a barber, nine doctors and a dentist. Visitors and entertainment seekers were serviced by two tobacco and opium sellers, an opium divan, three restaurants, a gambling house, four or five guesthouses, and ten or twelve prostitutes. Fuel, vegetables, poultry, and certain sorts of handicraft and cooked food were sold by hawkers in the streets. Salt was sold directly from the saltworks.

This breakdown of trades is not markedly dissimilar to those found elsewhere in the area. Most local markets were dominated by "general stores" of various sorts, and most had a surprisingly high number of doctors. Even in 1853, the Basel missionaries noted that, of the 50 shops then in the town, six were "pharmacies", and that most of the major shops were then general stores or wholesalers, probably, in the latter case, fishmongers. The Basel missionaries also mention or imply carpenters, pig slaughterers, and at least one guesthouse (1859). They also refer to a noodle-seller (1882). They noted that some of the larger general stores dealt with traders in Hong Kong. All in all it would seem that the mix of trades in Sha Tau Kok in the 1850s was similar to that 50 years later. At both dates the town had a generally similar mix to other small towns in the region, apart from its entertainment specialities, and the salt, rice, and fish carrying trades. Sha Tau Kok is, however, the only small town in the area known to have had prostitutes - apart from Sha Tau Kok, prostitutes were only found in Hong Kong, Kowloon, Sham Chun and Cheung Chau.

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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993
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184

preoccupied with the fuel trade to have any spare time to enter the carrying trade.

Especially in the 1930s, one of the biggest coolie trades was smuggling, although it was of significance earlier as well. Villagers smuggled their own purchases back over the frontier (the bridge carrying the footpath over the border river near the Sha Tsui temple was a commonly used route, as it was not continuously guarded by the Customs), but bulk smuggling (mostly of sugar, kerosene, tobacco, and also opium) was organised by the shops in the market, especially the tobacco dealers. These treated their trade as any other carrying trade, with village women being hired ad hoc to carry loads to customers across the frontier, or across the lines to Sha Yue Chung. Most village women active in the coolie trade took part in this smuggling business.

The society of the market at Sha Tau Kok was entirely dominated by the local Hakka of the surrounding villages. The Tanka - the boat people - were, as always, regarded as somewhat second-class, even though their presence was essential to the economic success of the town. The perceived inferiority of the boat-people may well be the reason that few of them lived in the market at Sha Tau Kok: they preferred to live at Kat O, a few miles off-shore, outside the Shap Yeuk area.

Even more regarded as second-class, however, were the Hoklo saltworkers. These groups of workers, living for the term of their contract away from their families in their miserable huts on the saltpans, had no status at all. Of the total population of the town, perhaps as many as one fifth were saltworkers (assuming five workers per salt-works). The Hakka villagers owned the salt-works, but left them entirely to the contract overseer and his hired staff, so long as the rent was paid. No-one remembers the names of any of these salt-workers, nor can anyone remember any marriages between local Hakka or Tanka girls and these Hoklo labourers. The villagers kept away from them, and their only contact was the exchange of fuel or vegetables for salt at Yim Liu Ha. The salt-workers were important to the economy of the town, but they were treated as being the very bottom of the social scale.

At the other end of the social scale were the teachers at the Tung Wo School. The Shap Yeuk elders had wanted to ensure that the district had at least one first quality school, and had consequently built the school to
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g
212

Stockholm Statens Etnografiska Museum, 1866

Skrine, CP, Chinese Central Asia, London. Methuen, 1926 (Hong Kong Reprint Oxford University Press)

Sladen, Douglas Brooke Wheelton, The Japanese at Home, 5th edition, with Bits of China, London and New York Waid, Lock and Bowden, 1895

Smedley, Agnes, Chinese Destinies - Sketches, New York Vanguard, 1933

- China Correspondent, London Routledge and Kegan. 1934

- Battle Hymn of China, New York Knopf, 1943

+

Smith, Carl T, Chinese Christians Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1985

Smith, Richard J, Mercenaries and Mandarins: the Ever-Victorious Army in Nineteenth Century China, New York KTO Press, 1978

Smith, Ronald Bishop, A Projected Portuguese Voyage to China in 1512 and New Notices Relative to Tome Pires in Canton, Bethesda (Maryland) L Decatur Press, 1972

Spence, Jonathan, To Change China: Western Advisers in China 1620-1960, Boston Little Brown, 1969

The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, New York Viking Penguin, 1984

Staunton, Sir George Leonard, An Authentic Account of An Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, London G Nicol, 1798

Stein, Sir Mark Aurel, Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost China. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1921

Stern, Simon Adler, Jettings of Travel in China and Japan, Philadelphia Porter and Coates, 1888 (WB11894)

Szczesniak, Boleslaw, The Writings of Michael Boym, Monumenta Serica XIV (1949-55), 481-538

Taylor, Francis, mss (Bodleian Library Ms Rawl D391/95-98) Letters of Francis Taylor to Dr Edward Browne April 25, 1703 off Ancuago on coast of China,

Teignmouth, Henry Noel Shore, (b 1847), The Flight of Lapwing, a Naval Officer's Jottings in China, London Longmans, 1881

Thomas, James A, A Pioneer Tobacco Merchant in the Orient, Durham NC Duke University Press, 1928.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641
136

We coasted along, and could only move by using the sweeps behind, and the six oars in front. Capt Drummond and I took each an oar, and had a long pull. Just before we entered "Deep water Bay" we found the tide had turned and the current was dead against us. So we came to anchor, and the other accompanying ships did the same, all near each other, for fear of pirates. When the anchor is cast the boy who attends to the Religious ceremonies, ascends the poop with a roll of paper which he lights and waves to and fro and then throws overboard. Then the gongs began to ring at a fine rate, to frighten away the evil spirits, and at last the shouts of the men gradually died away in the stillness of the night; and only an occasional shout was heard from the distant shore from the huts of the fishermen, who were boiling their nets in very large coppers.

We had previously taken tea, and Mr Lechler had addressed the passengers in the hold: and then, it being late we prepared to turn in for the night. We had our evening devotion, and as we knelt on the deck in the moonlight, and listened to the voice of prayer, breaking the stillness of the waters, in the sight and hearing of the heathen around us, I felt a sensation which words cannot describe. Then as we rose and sang "From all that dwell below the skies," there was something so soothing, so comforting in the music, that as the last notes died away in the distance, and all was calm and still, I felt transfixed to the spot. "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast," and never did I feel its power more than on this occasion.

Messrs Irwin and Drummond slept on the deck, while I tried to sleep down below in the small box, with Lechler. But sleep I could not. A tooth began to ache, and gradually increased to such an extent that at 1 o'clock I got up, and went round to the man on the watch and all the Chinamen I could find, to beg a morsel of tobacco to put into it. At last one fellow gave me a piece, which though it did not prevent the pain, yet gave me so much relief that I got nearly an hour's sleep. At 3 o'clock the tide turned and we again got under weigh, after which there was no more sleep for me. The night before, I was up till after two o'clock writing for the Bishop: so that I was quite worn out.

The wind was against us, what little there was, and so we had to scull and row all the way. At daylight we were entering the river, and after a good wash, and breakfast, we were ready for action. The men
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g
could be nullified only by the use of the crown prerogative of disallowance. The Colonial Office was most reluctant to exercise this power except in extreme circumstances since it might cause the governor public embarrassment. There are only three cases to be found in the files before 1933 where the Colonial Office was consulted about a project and imposed its veto.

The progress of industrialisation in Hong Kong was completely different from all other British colonies where factories could be established only with the aid of protective tariffs and other government assistance and manufactured goods were sold only in the local market. Hong Kong island was originally occupied because it had the best deep-sea harbour between Shanghai and Indo-China. It served as a base for the British navy and a place where merchants could store their goods and transfer them from ocean-going vessels to smaller ships to trade at ports along the China coast and inland waterways. About 80 per cent of the goods passing through the harbour consisted of re-exports destined for South China from overseas or from North China, or exports from China being transhipped in Hong Kong. Since the principal reason for Hong Kong's existence was to be an entrepôt for trade with China, it has always been a free port with no customs duties on imports or exports. Industries were established early in the colony's history to provide for the needs of the port and to process primary products for local consumption and export to China. Shipbuilding and ship-repairing yards were established soon after Hong Kong island was occupied in 1841, followed by a rope-making factory in 1851, a flour mill in 1859, a sugar refinery in 1870, a distillery in 1871, tobacco and cigarettes in 1880, a cement factory in 1897, and a cotton spinning and weaving company in 1899.

In 1911 the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce carried out a survey of all European, American, and British Indian firms in the colony engaged in import, export, and manufacturing. The survey listed 38 trading companies which had also set up factories. The 1931 census found that about a quarter of the working population (112,133 out of 470,794) were employed in manufacturing industries. The 1930 Blue Book listed 3,164 factories and workshops under 102 categories ranging from 124 boat builders to 116 tin beaters and 14 weaving factories. Most of these establishments were very small, situated in the back streets and tenements of the urban area. In 1932 only 586 were registered under the new Factories and Workshops Ordinance, which regulated firms that employed at least 20 persons. It is difficult to quantify the size of the manufacturing sector in the absence of detailed statistics of local consumption, but it appears that domestic exports of manufactured goods in 1932 totalled at least HK$36 million (about £2,500,000).1 The main items exported were cement, refined sugar, preserved ginger, lard, knitted singlets and hosiery, and electric torches.
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towns and villages of the region visiting their Chinese agents, taking orders for tobacco and sugar and checking sales and receipts, used Zhenjiang as one of their bases. They were known as 'sugar and tobacco travellers'.

An extract from the Shanghai Mercury in 1887 described Zhenjiang and its surroundings in the not untypical purple prose of the newspaper hack of the day:

Few ports in China would seem to be better situated for trade than Chinkiang, a few perhaps have been more disappointing. The first glimpse of the port is eminently reassuring, as the fine bund, at the time of the year bosomed [sic] in trees, the conspicuous houses topped by the British Consulate, and the goodly array of hulks connected by handy bridges with the shore make a picture surpassed in our picturesqueness by none. The hum of traffic and the cry of coolies permeates the air; the familiar aspect of the Sikh policeman appears at the corners of the British concession; the concession roads are wide and well kept, and, what is unfortunately unusual in China, the enterprise of the foreign residents has succeeded in acquiring a system of good riding roads penetrating the country in all directions as far as from four to six miles from the central point.

At the first opening of the port it was assumed that, with the suppression of the Taiping rebellion, its unrivalled position would make it the centre of a large and increasing trade. The Inspector-General nursed it, and proclaimed it the natural rival of Shanghai, British consuls prophesied a direct trade on its own account with Europe, even the native authorities for a time seemed to have come out of their shell and lent it aid and counsel. One Taot'ai', to his honour, be it said, laying aside the prejudices of his class, re-introduced the art of silk cultivation, and the mulberry trees planted by his assistance have originated almost the only industry which remains in the neighbourhood. In spite, however, of all this flourish, Chinkiang remains a comparatively poor port...the British concession is but a small spot, a few hundred yards square, and on it is concentrated the entire trade of the place, native as well as foreign.

Although Zhenjiang in reality was but a minor treaty port it was well-known to western expatriates in China during the 19th century as

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