RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f EDITORIAL The first volume of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society published in 1961 contained a short account of the history of the original Hong Kong Branch of the R.A.S. which existed from 1847 until 1859. During this early period the original Society published six volumes of its Transactions. It may be of interest to examine the contents of these volumes, and to compare them with what has already been achieved in the two volumes of the present Society's Journal published so far. The first volume published by the original branch was entitled Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1847. It was printed at the office of the China Mail at Hong Kong in 1848, and contained 14 pages of preliminary material and 78 pages of text. The last volume to be printed bore the title Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Part VI, 1859, and was printed at the office of the China Mail in the same year. It contained 8 pages of introduction and 164 pages of text. Surveying the articles printed in these six volumes one's main impression is that the subject matter was predominantly connected with China, and that the contributors were mainly missionaries or members of the British Consular service. For instance one of the leading contributors was Dr. John Bowring, who was Governor of Hong Kong from 1854 until 1859. Among others were T. T. Meadows, who was interpreter to the British Consulate at Canton at this time and wrote perceptively about China; the Rev. Carl Gutzlaff, principal Chinese Secretary to the Hong Kong Government; W. H. Medhurst, Jr.; Harry Parkes; Dr. D. J. Macgowan; the Rev. Joseph Edkins; the Rev. Samuel Beal and Alexander Wylie, printer to the London Missionary Society at Shanghai. To some extent this reflects the difficulties facing the Society at this period. It was forced to rely for its lectures and articles on a small number of scholarly people resident in Hong Kong and the five original Treaty Ports. The North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society which 1 Bowring was a man of scholarly interests and had received an honorary doctorate from Gröningen University for services to European literature. He was knighted in 1854. ================================================================================ 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 65 was contrary to the intention of the cadres. The distribution of confiscated animals among the slaves and bondsmen was at first regarded as a glorious opportunity to have a religious splurge of sacrifices and feasting instead of an investment for production. Sacrifices are required to placate the various spirits that were thought responsible for every evil and ill, from accidents to rheumatism. Winnington found that the Wa or K'a-wa of southwest Yunnan represent a different society, although Hsi-meng district to which he was taken by his Communist Chinese hosts lies only in the fringes of the Wa territory and may not be entirely representative. The Wa inhabit both sides of the south Yunnan-Burma borders and are divided into the "wild Wa" and the Wa tamed by contact with Burmese or Chinese civilizations. The "wild Wa" in British Burma in 1935 were still addicted to headhunting, both on other Wa and on non-Wa people coming into or living near their village areas.15 A Chinese account of the "wild Wa" on the Yunnan side related the headhunting to efforts to ensure good harvests. In any event, the "wild Wa" decorated the approaches to their thorn-fence walled-village with a double column of skulls mounted on posts. A person entered their territory at his peril. In the Sinicized northern part of the Wa territory there is a transition zone of intermixed hill Shan, La-hu and other mountain people as well as of Wa. Slavery here is practised in a very relaxed form, according to Winnington. Slaves constitute only about five per cent of the villagers as compared with over 90 per cent of the population in the Black-bone country. A slave suffers no social discrimination among the villagers and takes part in village and clan ceremonies open to other villagers. He can marry whom he pleases, and when the new couple sets up separate housekeeping, the master is bound by tradition to help them on pain of community criticism for failure to do so. Such a marriage virtually ends the slavery status, although the slave is expected to make payments to his master until his price is paid for. 1 Great Britain Treaty Series No. 80 (1947), Exchange of notes concerning the Burma-Yunnan boundary, 18th June 1941, London, 1947, 4. 16 Li Sheng-chuang, Yün-nan ti-yi chih-pien chü-yü nei chih jen-chung l'iao-cha (Research into the ethnic groups within the First Border Settlement District of Yunnan), Researches on the Yunnan Frontier Problems, Kunming, 1933, 194. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 60 THE OLD BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING, 1860-1959 Based on a lecture delivered on 20 August, 1962 J. L. CRANMER-BYNG, M.A.* On the afternoon of March 26th, 1861, Frederick Bruce, the first British minister to China to reside in Peking, entered the grounds of the former palace of Duke I-liang, and the history of the old British Legation had begun. The desire of Great Britain to have a minister resident in the capital was of long standing, and had its origins in the eighteenth century. From at least 1760, some English merchants in Canton had been arguing that only when an ambassador from England resided at Peking would their grievances be properly represented to the Emperor of China and their position improve. Eventually, this point of view was strong enough to influence the Government of England. Indeed, one of the prime objects of the embassy of Lord Macartney to the Court of the Emperor Ch'ien-lung in 1793 was to secure for England just such permanent representation at Peking. However, there was not the slightest chance that such a request would be granted. All foreign embassies to China were regarded as tributary missions of a temporary nature, and all foreign countries as inferior. Even the first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842, and the subsequent Treaty of Nanking failed to obtain this object. From the Chinese point of view, relations with the western barbarians were still a local matter to be carried on by the Governor-General at Canton or by the Governor-General at Nanking. The foreign powers, for their part, were still unable to gain direct communication with the Imperial Government at Peking, and therefore were unable to protest effectively when the treaties did not appear to be working properly, or when they wished to revise them. This was the background to the War of 1858-1860, in which English and French forces were used to secure the Treaties of Tientsin, by which the earlier treaties were revised. Article III of the British Treaty of Tientsin stated (in part): "It is further agreed that Her Majesty's Government may * Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong. Author of An Embassy to China, reviewed on page 136 of this Journal. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING 61 acquire at Peking a site for Building, or may hire Houses, for the accommodation of Her Majesty's mission, and that the Chinese Government will assist it in so doing". Then, when the Imperial Government appeared to procrastinate over the ratification of these treaties, another English and French force fought its way to the capital and compelled the Manchu authorities to ratify them by the Convention of Peking. This was signed by the British envoy, Lord Elgin,1 and by Prince Kung,2 the chief Chinese representative, on October 24th, 1860 in the Hall of Ceremonies situated in what was later to be called Legation Street. The second clause of the Convention stated that "Her Britannic Majesty's Representative will henceforward reside permanently, or occasionally, at Peking, as Her Britannic Majesty shall be pleased to decide”. Lord Elgin proposed that Prince Kung's own residence should be rented to the British, but Prince Kung memorialized the throne as follows: As regards the matter of the English residing at the capital in the near future, we have been discussing it with them during the past few days. The chief barbarian official [Lord Elgin] considers that the quarters in Prince I's [Prince Kung] palace are spacious and he insists that it is to be their future residence at the capital. Moreover, he stated that there were still open spaces in the palace and that he wants to build houses there himself. It seems to your ministers that to 1 James Bruce, eighth Earl of Elgin. He served as Governor-General of Canada 1846-1854. In 1857 he was appointed envoy extraordinary to China and signed the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, returning to England early in 1859. In 1860 he was again sent to China as special envoy, and signed the Convention of Peking. He returned to England in 1861 and was appointed Governor-General of India in the same year. He died in India in 1863. His younger brother Frederick William Bruce held the post of Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong from 9 February 1844 until 27 June 1846. In 1857 he accompanied his elder brother to China as principal secretary. He was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the Emperor of China in December 1858, but had to wait until March 1861 before actually taking up residence in Peking. He left China on his appointment as British Minister to Washington in 1865. 2 I-hsin (1833-1898), the first Prince Kung, was the sixth son of Emperor Tao-kuang. When the joint French and British forces approached Peking in September 1860 the Emperor Hsien-feng fled to Jehol leaving his half-brother, Prince Kung, to make peace with the allies. When a prototype Chinese foreign office, the Tsungli Yamen, was set up in 1861, Prince Kung was in charge of it, and he played an important part in Chinese affairs for the next fifteen years. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 62 J. L. CRANMER-BYNG allow them to reside there temporarily is already improper. If by any chance they are allowed to occupy it permanently and build additional houses it would be all the more improper. We have repeatedly explained this to him tactfully. According to the barbarians' statement, if they are not to reside at Prince I's palace they must be given Duke Ch'ï's palace in Ch'ang-an Street in the eastern part of the city. He still wants to build additional houses. Furthermore, he states that each year they are willing to pay a rent of one thousand five hundred taels. At present we are still attempting to dissuade him, and not to let them reside in a nobleman's palace. Instead we are looking for another palace for them. Whether they will listen to us or not we will act as occasion demands. In a memorial submitted in the second year of the reign of the Emperor Tung-chih (1863) Prince Kung wrote: "Prince Kung and others further memorialize that ever since England ratified the treaty in the tenth year of the Emperor Hsien-feng (1860) it has been using the palace of Duke I-liang as an official residence." Also in a subsequent memorial about the French Legation buildings Prince Kung wrote: "Moreover the English envoy, before withdrawing his troops inside the An-ting gate occupied the Palace of Duke I-liang on his own initiative*" 自行” (i.e., without authorization from Chinese officials)." * Chou-pan i-wu shih-mo ##** Hsien-feng, chüan 68, 2b-3a. Hereafter cited as IWSM. 4 IWSM, T'ung-chih, chüan 20, 36a. I-liang was the fourth son of Mien-ch'ing ✈, [a direct descendant of the Emperor K'ang-hsi]. In the eighteenth year of Tao-kuang's reign he was created a "general guarding the state" of the third rank. In the first year of Hsien-feng's reign (1851-2) he succeeded to the title of “duke guarding the state" # 2. In the eleventh year of T'ung-chih's reign he was granted the title of pei-tzu Я† (a Manchu title bestowed on the sons of imperial princes). He died in the thirteenth year of Kuang-hsü's reign (1887-8), Ch'ing-shih kao ***, Huang-tzu shih-piao 2 *** 'genealogies of the sons of the Emperors, 于世 piao 4, 9b. IWSM, T'ung-chih, chüan 20, 37a, column 5. The An-ting Men gate of established peace', is the easterly of the two gates in the north wall of the Tartar City, and the starting point of the road to Jehol. It was occupied by the British in 1860 who dragged their guns up the ramp and positioned them on the wall in order to command the city. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING 67 ran parallel to the wall of the Legation in which the main gate was situated, and in summer often flooded the road, and at times gave off a horrible stench since many drains ran into it. Meanwhile repairs to the Legation proceeded and Rennie describes, among other things, Colonel Neale doing his accounts, the five hundred Chinese coolies being paid, a temporary strike, and continual trouble over 'squeeze'. The part intended for the members of the Legation to live in was now called 'Legation Court' and Rennie preserved, in translation, an estimate for redecorating the front of these buildings in the Chinese style, the total being one thousand and fifty Mexican dollars. By mid-April the weather was growing hot and on April 26th Parkes, Wyndham, Lt. Gow (in charge of the guard) and Rennie made a trip to the Western Hills in search of a temple which could be adopted as a residence during the extreme heat of the summer. The Russians, who had maintained an ecclesiastical mission in Peking since the Treaty of Kiakhta in 1727, had been in the habit of going to the Western Hills in the summer, and probably gave the newly arrived English this tip. Henceforth this was to become the yearly practice of foreign legations in Peking. Meanwhile the first mail from home arrived on April 27th, having been posted in England on February 26th. In this way Rennie's account is full of interesting detail. For instance just near to the entrance to the Legation there was now a line of Peking carts for hire, just as later there was a rickshaw stand, and more recently pedicabs. From this time onwards Rennie described the arrival of various English visitors who were entertained at the Legation. * Rennie visited it in March, 1861. It was situated in the same street as the newly acquired French Legation, and the members consisted of an Archimandrite together with three ecclesiastical and six lay members. (Rennie, I, 43-4.). This place, known as the Nan-kuan ("Southern Hostel"), was originally a hostel for Russian envoys and, since it had a large compound, it was used by Russian merchants who after 1698 received the privilege of sending a trade caravan to Peking at regular intervals. It was situated near the Mongol market. As a result of the Treaty of Kiakhta (1727) two hundred Russian merchants were allowed to come to Peking every third year to trade, and Russia was permitted to build a church in the grounds of the Nan-kuan, and appoint priests. In addition four Russian students and two tutors were allowed to reside there and were subsidized by the Chinese government to study the Chinese, Mongol and Manchu languages. When the first Russian minister to Peking, Colonel Balluzeck, took up residence there in July 1861, the Nan-kuan became the Russian Legation, and the ecclesiastical mission then joined up with another Russian mission at the Pei-kuan ("Northern Hostel'). See footnote 29 below, } I : J ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING 77 Queen. While we were waiting for our examiner, a sudden desire seized Gordon to show his loyalty, after the custom of the country; so he dropped down in front of the portrait, and solemnly knocked his head nine times on the floor, kotowing in proper form. He seemed much inspirited by it, and had a feeling that he was now in some way under the special tutelage of Her Majesty, and could be trusted to floor the paper. The impression given by Wilkinson's account is that student life in Peking at that period held much that was enjoyable. However, there was plenty of work for them to do on being sent to their posts. As one observer wrote in 1900 "Our Legation ... is a bigger establishment than that of any other country, owing to the fact that the British Consular Corps in China has exceptionally large requirements. In the Legation the Student Interpreters, who subsequently become Consular Assistants and Consuls, learn the language of their adopted country and to some extent their future political, judicial and commercial work. After two years at Peking they move on to a Treaty Port and begin to put theory into practice. There are often as many as twenty of them in Peking at a time, besides an efficient staff of older men who act as the Chinese Secretaries.”21 Meanwhile trouble was imminent and another visitor at this same period mentions the marines. Describing the Legation Quarter he wrote: "The familiar redcoats of British marines drilling on the lawn lent perhaps an extra touch of homeliness to the well-kept grounds. For in view of possible troubles, most of the foreign legations were provided last winter [1895- Ed.] with a special guard drawn from the fleets in the Gulf of Tchih-li. They have since been for the greater part withdrawn. ... As if to heighten the contrast, the Chinese authorities had also assigned to each legation a special guard of their own braves who were encamped along Legation Street. In 1900 the marines were to lend a more than homely touch to the scene inside the Legation. By mid-May of that year the anti-foreign massacres inspired by the Boxers had alarmed the Europeans, who were coming into Peking for protection. 20 Ibid., 266-7. 21 Clive Bingham, A Year in China 1899-1900 (London, 1901), 47-8. 22 Valentine Chirol, The Far Eastern Question (London, 1896), 42-3. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 108 A. D. BLUE provided that the river be opened to foreign shipping. This commenced the modern or more correctly the European history of the river. By the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin three ports on the river were opened to foreign shipping and trade - Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow, Hankow, by far the largest and most important of the three, was six hundred miles from the mouth of the river. The Franco-Chinese Treaty, signed at the same time, provided for the opening of Nanking. At that time, however, and for a further six years, Nanking was occupied by the Taiping rebels, and no attempt was made to trade there, and it was not until 1899 that the Chinese Maritime Customs opened a station there. When the Treaty of Tientsin was signed in 1858 most of the Lower Yangtse was in a disturbed state because of the Taiping Rebellion, and a great part of the river was under rebel control. In these circumstances, therefore, it was not expected that the river would be opened to foreign trade until the restoration of Imperial authority. Lord Elgin, the British Plenipotentiary, however, was unwilling to wait for this, and persuaded the Chinese authorities to allow him to make a voyage up the river. His expedition consisted of the frigates Retribution and Furious, and three small gunboats, Cruiser, Lee, and Dove. After being fired on by the rebels at two places, Hankow was reached on 6th December 1858, the first time it had been visited by a foreign ship. Lord Elgin went ashore at several places on the river, and made short excursions into the country. He found the people to have no sympathy with the rebels, and thought they welcomed the prospect of foreign trade. He also thought them reasonably prosperous and contented, and not too heavily taxed. At Hankow he found coal and iron, the latter in abundance, also considerable quantities of imported cotton and woollen goods; but he formed the opinion that British manufacturers would have to exert themselves to supplant native goods. It was a pleasing fallacy, he wrote, to imagine that it was only the malign influence of intriguing mandarins which caused the Chinese to prefer native to foreign goods. James Matheson, one of the founders of Jardine, Matheson and Company, frankly admitted on several occasions the superiority of Chinese nankeens over Manchester cotton goods. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE 109 The Imperial forces had very little success against the Taipings in the next two years, and although it had been stipulated that the three ports on the river were not to be opened until they were defeated, a second naval expedition left Shanghai early in 1861 to establish consular posts at Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow. This expedition went up 158 miles beyond Hankow before turning back. Shortly after the return of this expedition the river was opened to foreign trade. There is some ambiguity about Western policy during the Taiping Rebellion. It seems to have been regarded with sympathy in the early stages, when it was looked on as a reforming movement with Christian affiliations; and many foreigners welcomed the prospect of a change from the corrupt and reactionary Manchu régime. The British, American, and French governments, therefore, adopted a policy of neutrality in the early stages of the conflict. Later on, however, a marked change took place, which was not entirely due to the excesses committed by the rebels. Commercial considerations undoubtedly played some part. The Treaty of Tientsin had legalised the opium trade, but the Taipings were against opium and alcohol, and banned this trade in the territory under their control. They also made it clear that under their rule foreign trade would not be carried on in the one-sided manner so favourable to the foreign merchants. The Treaty of Tientsin again had stipulated that foreign ships could not navigate the Yangtse until peace was restored. Because of these and other reasons, the Western Powers abandoned their policy of neutrality. The rebels were looked on and referred to as firebrands and extremists, and the Manchu government as a peaceful and stabilising element, and steps were taken to help the latter. These included supplying the government forces with arms and ammunition — including the new Lee Enfield rifle, not yet used in Europe — allowing foreign steamers to transport government troops, and supplying officers to train and lead them.* As a result Nanking was captured in 1864, and the last vestiges of the rebellion were stamped out by 1866. In 1862 the Scotland, a steamer belonging to Lindsay and Company of Shanghai was the first ocean-going merchant ship to go to Hankow, and thus opened the interior of China to direct * Gordon was the most famous of these officers. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE 113 transport. It was so successful that by 1872 it had a fleet of 17 steamers, had established 9 depots on the river, and found it necessary to increase its capital from Tls. 1,000,000 to Tls. 2,000,000." During 1866 and 1867 the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company succeeded in obtaining almost a complete monopoly of the Yangtse river trade, at least in that part of it carried by foreign ships. In these two years the rival American company of Olyphant withdrew their two steamers, Jardine's transferred their two river steamers to the Hong Kong-Shanghai run, and the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company bought the steamers of Dent, Lindsay, and Heard. Their only remaining rivals were two steamers of the recently formed Union Steam Navigation Company, a Shanghai British company. These were not serious rivals to American supremacy, but in five years' time were to be sold to a new British company which was destined to challenge the American near monopoly on the river successfully. Although American steamers were supreme on the Yangtse at this time, and also prominent on some of the coast runs, British trading firms were still the most powerful foreign firms in the treaty ports as a whole, including the three newly opened ports on the Yangtse. British ships were also the most prominent in the foreign trade of China, including that from the Yangtse ports. In 1869, for instance, two British ocean steamers went up to Hankow at the height of the tea season and loaded direct for Europe, and were followed by six in 1870, and nine in 1871.* This, of course, was a serious challenge to the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company. Company. Of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company's 17 ships at this time only five had been built in America, six having been built in Britain, and six in Shanghai; while a good proportion of their captains and officers were British. This, together with the fact that Russell and Company always had a friendly alliance "Of the original Tls. 1,000,000 capital about one third was contributed by members of Russell and Company, another third by foreign business men in Shanghai, of whom the majority were British, and the last third by Chinese business men, also in Shanghai. * Six of their steamers were on the Shanghai-Tientsin run, with calls at Chefoo, and two on the Shanghai-Ningpo run. ? As the result of a triangular arrangement between the firms of Russell, Jardine and Dent, Jardine withdrew to the coast, and helped Dent financially, and Russell agreed not to increase their services on the coast. * One of these was Holt's Agamemnon and the other the Erl King. After this Holt's sent at least two ships to Hankow each season. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 116 A. D. BLUE There was intense rivalry between John Swire's China Navigation Company and Russell's Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in the years before the latter's ships were sold to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company. John Swire seems to have adopted and improved on Russell's methods of soliciting business from Chinese merchants, and making his shipping services and godown facilities as attractive to them as possible. This was a policy which the "Princely Hong" were much slower in adopting in their shipping services. It is amusing to read F. B. Forbes's exasperated comments on a dinner party which Swire's compradores gave for their Chinese freight brokers, and at which their European clerks were present and assisted in the hostly duties.12 Forbes thought this undignified, but one imagines his real grievance was that he had not thought of this himself. The Chefoo Convention between Britain and China was signed in 1876, following the murder of A. R. Margary, a British consular officer, on the border between Burma and China. The connection between the two events may appear remote, but at this time the murder of a foreigner, or any untoward outburst of xenophobia on the part of the Chinese, was often followed by China being compelled to surrender some of her territory or sovereignty to the foreign power concerned. In this instance the Chefoo Convention provided for the opening to foreign trade of several more ports on the coast, and a further 340 miles on the Yangtse, the section between Hankow and Ichang known as the Middle River. Ichang, at the upper end of the Middle River, became a treaty port, and also Wuhu, a port between Nanking and Kiukiang. At the same time, Anking, Hichow, Luhchow, Tatung, and Wusueh, were opened to foreign trade as ports of call. These were ports where passengers and cargo could be loaded and discharged, but where foreigners had no rights of residence. All these ports of call, except Luhchow, were below Hankow; Luhchow being on the Middle River 70 miles above Hankow. F. B. Forbes was a nephew of P. S. Forbes, a former head of Russell and Company in America. He was a director of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company from 1863 to 1866, and from 1868 to 1872, and president from 1872 to 1874. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 118 A. D. BLUE the Yangtse was now open to foreign trade and navigation for almost 1,400 miles from the sea, and access had been gained to the rich and populous province of Szechuen, of which Chungking was the chief port. The section of the river between Ichang and Chungking was known as the Upper River, and the first steamer to navigate this section belonged to Archibald Little, whose Y-Ling had been the first steamer to navigate the Middle River. Little was a member of a well-known Shanghai family, and he was the real pioneer of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtse. He had commenced his career as a tea taster for a German firm in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon went into business on his own and was one of the first to appreciate the possibility of trade in Szechuen Province and beyond in Tibet. He settled in Chungking soon after it became a treaty port, and started up several industries connected with wool, bristles, and coal—to mention some of the more prominent, and also engaged in marine insurance, specialising in covering cargoes on the Upper Yangtse.1 The Shanghai Chamber of Commerce had sent two prominent British merchants—Alexander Michie and Robert Francis—up the Yangtse to Chungking as early as 1869, to investigate trade prospects there, but no important developments followed. In 1887 Little made a much more intensive trip from Ichang to Chungking by junk, and formed the opinion that there were great possibilities for trade in Szechuen Province and beyond. The following year he attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking with a stern wheeler specially built on the Clyde called the Kuling. Because of a clause in the Chefoo Convention stipulating that foreign steamers could only go to Chungking after Chinese steamers had gone there, the Kuling was not allowed to go beyond Ichang. Little then sold her to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, who employed her on the Hankow-Ichang service. One of his brothers was a famous editor of the North China Daily News, and another a well-known doctor in Shanghai. [Robert Swinhoe, British Consul at Amoy was sent up the Yangtse by Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister at Peking, in March 1869 to enquire into the trade of the Upper River. He reached Chungking in May of the same year. His account of this journey was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society Vol. XL (1870), pp. 268-85. It is accompanied by a folding map of the Upper River from the Tungting Lake to Chungking compiled from the charts made by two survey officers specially sent up the Yangtse for this purpose. Ed.] ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 120 A. D. BLUE Shanghai, travelled by junk from Yochow to Pingsan on the Yunnan border, 1800 miles from the mouth of the river; but were then forced to turn back because of the unsettled state of the country. In 1894, the Australian A. G. Morrison,15 successfully completed a somewhat similar journey. Travelling alone and by the customary methods, Morrison went up the Yangtse from Shanghai to Chungking, and then across Western China and the Shan States into Burma, a total distance of 3,000 miles. Morrison was unable to speak Chinese, but travelled in Chinese dress, and experienced nothing but kindness and hospitality all the way. He went from Shanghai to Hankow as a deck passenger on the Jardine steamer Taiwo, paying a dollar a day extra to the steward for foreign 'chow'. From Hankow to Ichang he again travelled as a deck passenger on the China Merchants steamer Kweili, then the only triple screw steamer on the river. At that time Ichang was the last open port on the river, and no foreign ships went past there. For the next stage to Chungking, therefore, Morrison hired a small sampan called a "weipan", with a captain and crew of four. This stage of nearly 400 miles through the Yangtse Gorges took 15 days, which was a record at the time, and cost him the equivalent of £2-16-0 in copper cash. In his journey up the river Morrison noticed that many of the largest trading junks flew foreign flags, thus avoiding paying “likin” at the various provincial and regional boundaries. Under treaty regulations they only paid an ad valorem duty of 5% on their cargo, which was collected by the Chinese Maritime Customs at Ichang or Chungking. Morrison left the river soon after Chungking, and travelled overland for the remainder of his journey. He found food plentiful and cheap everywhere, and opium growing all along the Chinese section of his route. The total cost of his whole journey from Shanghai to Bhamo was under £20. Sir Reginald Johnston, a British consular official, followed fairly closely in Morrison's footsteps in 1906. He started from Peking, going from there to Hankow by rail, and then up beyond Chungking by steamer and junk, finally going overland to Mandalay. 15 Later to become famous as "Chinese Morrison" of the Times. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON 41 40 Fan Kwais. Fan-kuei ₺ A foreign devil. foreign devil. The title of one of Hunter's books of reminiscences was The Fan Kwae' at Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844, by an old Resident, London, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1882; reprinted Shanghai 1911. (J.L.C-B.) 41 blows them sky high. By a coincidence Eric Partridge in his interesting work A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 4th Ed. 1951 p. 68 defines to blow sky high as "to scold or blame most vehemently" and adds origin U.S. and anglicised ca. 1900. Here we have an American example of the use of the phrase "to blow sky high" in 1839. (J.L.C-B.) 42 Hae yaw? Probably part of the common expression pronounced in Cantonese "hac yao ch'i lei" £À which means literally "there is no such principle!" So it comes to imply "it can't be done”, (J.L.C-B) 43 bond. The bond presented to the American Consul by Commissioner Lin "stipulated that should any opium be found on an American vessel, the ship would be liable to confiscation and its entire crew liable to death. The Consul, moreover, was to be held responsible for his countrymen's behavior." Dulles, F. R., 1930, The Old China Trade, p. 157. (L.T.R.) 44 Pankugua. Probably a reference to P'an Cheng-wei (pidgin Pwan-keikua). (See note 21.) (J.L.C-B) 45 Chinchoo. Ch'üan-chou, a port in Fukien. (J.L.C-B.) 46 the Governor of Macao. Don Adriao Accacio da Silverira Pinto who served as Governor from 1839 until 1843, (J.L.C-B.) 47 16 foreigners. A list is given in the Blue Book, Correspondence Relating to China 1840, p. 403, which states "Supposed names of the sixteen individuals, as given in the list appended to the Kwang Chou fu's letter to Capt. Elliot dated 4 May 1839." "Supposed" because J. R. Morrison in translating from the Chinese had to guess what names were meant by the sounds of the Chinese characters used for transliteration, The names listed were: Dent, Henry, D. Matheson, Daniell, Inglis, Ilbery, Dadabhoy, A. Jardine, Heerjeebhoy, Stanford, Green, Franjee, A. Matheson, Matheson, Bomanjee, Goldsborough. The 16 left Canton with Elliot on 24th May. (J.L.C-B.) 48 the Chung Hup. This may refer to the two characters pronounced in Cantonese Chung Heep. This officer commanded a brigade. (J.L.C-B.) 49 Snipe. She was a brig of tonnage reported variously as 176 to 196 tons, and registered sometimes as British, sometimes American. She was owned by Augustine Heard & Co., and for many years she was commanded by Capt. William Endicott of Boston, and was stationed at Woosung as an opium receiving ship. (L.T.R.) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 130 BOOK REVIEWS today. This information negates the subsequent statement "The only specifically recorded Lamqua portrait in an American collection is that of Dr. Peter Parker + 8 A bibliography omitting nearly 50% of the last published bibliography will startle any serious scholar. It may be possible to write about Chinnery without consulting E. W. Bovil's articles in Notes and Queries and about the Opium War without using Maurice Collis' Foreign Mud with its Chinnery illustrations, but it is not recommended practice. W. C. Hunter, partner in Russell & Co., is quoted in the text, but both of his books The Fan-Kwae in Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 and Bits of Old China with its chapter on Chinnery, are omitted from the list. Any modern researcher will want to check the Jardine-Matheson papers in Cambridge, England. They are not mentioned here. There is a list of plates, but no general index. In the China section of photographs, there are 57 oils, water-colors, and drawings captioned as by Chinnery, also 10 so-called "School of Chinnery", 28 port scenes, all called "School", and 2 miscellaneous. Authentication of any artist's work, particularly if unsigned, is a matter of opinion. When in doubt, it is far sounder to "attribute" and the best museums follow this custom. In recent months, a world expert on Chinnery and your reviewer considered together these 57 pictures and questioned or denied 21 of them, a substantial percentage. + • In 1953 the statement was made, and remains unchallenged, it is obvious that the Hong Kong Chinnery is the only portrait of Howqua that may be said to have been painted in a truly accomplished Western manner such as one would expect from the brush of Chinnery. The other portraits of Howqua, in spite of their long-standing attribution to Chinnery, almost without exception speak of Western art with a strong Cantonese accent". There is no photograph of the Chinnery portrait of Howqua in Hong Kong in this book a significant omission. However, there are three portraits of Howqua11- all obviously by Chinese * Page 39. 9 Arts Council Catalogue 1957. 10 Albert Ten Eyck Gardner-The Art Quarterly, Winter 1953 11 Plate 39 top and bottom, Plate 40 top. 10 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 THE POPULATION OF CHINA 29 Some years ago I had an opportunity of discussing the subject of Chinese population with the Mandarin at Ningpo who was charged with making the returns for that district. Ningpo can scarcely be called a progressive place; it is decidedly the least so of the Five Treaty Ports; but I found, generally speaking, that the real returns were considerably in excess of the official estimates. And I would remark, that, in taking the area of the Eighteen Provinces of China at 1,348,870 square miles, the census of 1812 would give 268 persons to a square mile, which is considerably less than the population of the densely peopled countries of Europe. According to ancient usage, the population in China is grouped under four heads, 1, Scholars; 2, Husbandmen; 3, Mechanics; 4, Merchants. There is a numerous class who are considered almost as social outcasts, such as Stage-players, professional Gamblers, Beggars, Convicts, Outlaws, and others; and these probably form no part of the population returns. In the more remote rural districts, on the other hand, the returning officer most probably contents himself with giving the average of more accessible and better-peopled localities. I have no means of obtaining any satisfactory tables to show the proportions which different ages bear to one another in China, or the average mortality at different periods of human life; yet to every decade of life the Chinese apply some special designation:- The age of 10, is called "the Opening Degree"; 20, “Youth expired"; 30, "Strength and Marriage”; 40, “Officially Apt"; 50, "Error knowing"; 60, “Cycle Closing"; 70, "Rare Bird of Age"; 80, "Rusty visaged"; 90, "Delayed"; 100, "Age's Extremity.” Among the Chinese the amount of reverence grows with the number of years. I made, some years ago, the acquaintance of a Buddhist priest living in the convent of Tien Tung near Ningpo, who was more than a century old, and whom people of rank were in the habit of visiting in order to show their respect and to obtain his autograph. He had the civility to give me a very fair specimen of his handwriting. There are not only many establishments for the reception of the aged, but the Penal Code provides severe punishments for those who refuse to relieve the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST 71 Piracy was firmly rooted along the South China coast. Then, during the First China War, many junks were allowed to act as armed privateers, and when the war was over, became pirates rather than return to peaceful trade. Hong Kong and its neighbouring islands had always been centres of piracy, or the home of fishermen ambitious to earn a dishonest dollar or two from piracy. The new British colony must have appeared like manna from Heaven to these people, and the colony's first years were marked by an increase in piracy. There was a similar increase in piracy around Singapore at the same time. The founding of Singapore in 1819 had resulted in a great increase in native trade in the area, and this suffered severely from attacks by well-armed Chinese junks, which sometimes attacked European ships. Captain James Brooke with his sea Dyaks played a big part in suppressing piracy in these waters.1 The period between the First and Second China Wars is one of the most confusing in Chinese history. On one hand is the founding of a British colony at Hong Kong, the opening of the treaty ports, and the inception of regular shipping services along the coast; while on the other is the persistence of lawlessness and piracy. In the background is the increasing weakness of the Manchu Dynasty, and during the last years of the period, the Taiping Rebellion. When the East India Company controlled the China trade, there was little need for naval protection in Chinese waters, and the Cantonese were traditionally opposed to the Royal Navy. The large and well-armed East Indiamen and "Country" ships were perfectly capable of fighting their way past the pirates who infested the Canton River delta, as were smaller, but faster and equally well-armed opium clippers. In spite of Chinese objections, however, British warships visited Canton on several occasions. Anson called in the Centurion in 1741, on the famous voyage on which he captured the Manila galleon, and Cook in 1779 with the Resolution and Discovery after his three-year cruise in the Pacific. Cook's ships were careened, refitted, and provisioned at Canton, the East India Company advancing the money in return for bills on the Admiralty in London. 1 The first white Rajah of Sarawak. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST 73 official agreement between the two countries to refer to piracy. and Article 52 gave British warships permission, when in pursuit of pirates, to enter any port on the coast. Provision was also made for co-operation between the Royal Navy and the Chinese for punishment of pirates, restoration of stolen goods, and so on, and later treaties and agreements followed the same pattern. Unfortunately, experience proved that the Chinese had undertaken more than they could carry out; and that the provincial authorities were as often unwilling, as unable, to implement the pledges of the Peking Government. The pirates on the coast in the 1840's, 50's, and 60's, included British, American, French, and other foreign renegades, who often worked in league with Chinese merchants in Hong Kong and the treaty ports. The system of ship registry then in force in Hong Kong was even more liable to abuse than the present system, and allowed Chinese shipowners an easy means of claiming the protection of certain foreign flags. This increased the difficulties of the Navy, already hard pressed to distinguish between convoy and pirate, and between pirate, trader, and fisherman. The most famous renegade among the pirates in the 1850's was an American sailor called Eli Boggs, for whose capture the Hong Kong Government offered a reward of $1,000. This was won by an even more famous American sailor, more often associated with blackbirding in the Pacific, than with piracy on the China coast. Captain Bully Hayes, however, made his debut on the China coast, and when that part of the world became too hot for him he moved south to Australasian and Pacific waters. Hayes first appeared in the Far East in 1854 at Singapore, as master of the American barque, Canton. He was then twenty-five years old. After selling the Canton, which did not belong to him, he appeared in Hong Kong a few months later as master of another American barque, the Otranto, which was probably under charter to the famous American house of Russell and Company. In Hong Kong's Victoria Hotel, and in the company of the masters of two Jardine opium clippers, Long John Saunders of the Chin Chin and King Tom Donovan of the Spray, Hayes made the acquaintance of some naval officers, and for the rest of his time on the coast he was a great favourite with the Navy. During ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 74 A. D. BLUE this time he visited Amoy, Foochow, and Shanghai several times, and it was in 1857 north of Shanghai that he captured his compatriot Eli Boggs. Hayes was a guest on H.M.S. Bittern when she attacked Boggs's fleet of between thirty and forty junks. When the junks fled into shallow water out of range of the Bittern's guns, Hayes persuaded Captain Vansittart to allow him to continue the chase in the longboat, and in this he personally captured Boggs. Boggs was taken to Hong Kong and found guilty of piracy. He escaped hanging, however, as no one could be found willing to swear to having seen him commit murder. Hayes helped the Royal Navy on another occasion shortly afterwards, when he was on the steamer, Paoushan, and on this occasion obtained some of the pirates' ill-gotten gains for his trouble. He was a free spender, however, and everything went on a series of parties he gave for the officers and men of the Bittern in Shanghai, after which he left with his port dues unpaid and owing money to Chinese shopkeepers and tailors. This was a favourite trick which he repeated in Australian and South Pacific ports, and his final departure from the coast was in the same vein. He loaded a hundred coolies in Swatow for Australia, before Swatow was legally open as a treaty port, and did a large illegal trade in opium and emigrants. Hayes induced his passengers to pay him their poll tax for Australia as well as their passage money. After passing through Sydney Heads he flooded his bilges to give his ship the appearance of sinking, and then persuaded a tugboat to take the Chinese ashore to safety, by promising it the salvage work on its return. When the tugboat returned, however, Hayes and his ship had disappeared beyond the Heads. The Navy had several spectacular successes against the pirates during this period, on a much bigger scale than those in which Hayes was involved. The most notable were Admiral Sir John Dalrymple Hay's actions against Shap-ng-tsai and Chu-apoo in South China waters in the summer of 1849, in which dozens of pirate junks were destroyed and hundreds of pirates killed. These actions cost the Admiralty £42,000 in bounty money, which was considered far in excess of the risks involved, and were responsible for the bounty system being modified. In spite of these naval successes piracy continued to flourish in South China, and new ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 76 A. D. BLUE the countryside for miles from the coast. The leaders of such fleets were often opposed to the ruling dynasty, sometimes being disaffected former high officials. Koxinga, the greatest of all Chinese pirates, comes into this category. Koxinga was a supporter of the fallen Ming Dynasty against the Manchus, and the Chinese honour him to this day as a great patriot. His greatest exploit was the capture of Formosa from the Dutch in 1661. This type of rebel cum bandit cum pirate continued to appear down to modern times. The expansion of the China trade, and the opening of Japan to foreign trade resulted in a great increase in British naval forces in the Far East. The first naval ships to operate in the China seas were based on the East Indies station, but very soon China became an important sphere of naval operations on her own. The suppression of piracy was only one of the Navy's responsibilities. The distance between Britain and China meant that unusual and interesting duties were often entrusted to naval officers, especially before telegraphic communications were established and when senior Foreign Office or Diplomatic officials were unavailable. Hong Kong became the headquarters of the China station, which extended from Singapore to Shanghai, and later to Japan. It continued as such until, as the result of a reorientation of naval policy in the inter-war period, Singapore became the major British naval base in the Far East. Even after that Hong Kong continued to be the headquarters of the anti-piracy forces. Until France sent naval forces to co-operate with the Royal Navy in the Second China War, the Royal Navy was the only effective naval force in the China seas, and undertook the protection of all shipping. Even after the United States and France stationed naval forces permanently in these waters, the major responsibility for the suppression of piracy remained with the Royal Navy. It was British policy to station a warship at or near each treaty port, whether it was a coastal or a river port. This meant warships of two distinct types. There were the larger ships and their auxiliaries, which only saw action on rare occasions, and which were based in Hong Kong, with a summer cruise to Wei-hai-wei. Then there were the shallow-draft river gunboats, specially designed to operate on the Yangtze and the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY 19 Between 1842 and 1849, Canton and its environs seemed to have been rocked by a series of violent anti-foreign disturbances. Three of these were full-scale riots in which the foreign factories were either directly attacked or seriously threatened. In one case six young Englishmen were murdered while strolling in the countryside. Throughout the period foreigners, either singly or in groups, were subjected to attacks and insults. In 1849 a massive demonstration succeeded in forcing Great Britain to abandon its demand that British subjects be permitted direct access to the city.27 The 1849 demonstrations were particularly impressive. Organized by members of the upper levels of the gentry class and aided and abetted, if not actually inspired by, the local authorities, they served to convince Sir George Bonham, then Governor of Hong Kong, that should he seek to force an entrance into the city, which Britain had always claimed as her right according to the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, his troops would be met by massive resistance on the part of the populace. Now, no one would deny that all this reflected a certain degree of anti-foreign spirit on the part of the people of Canton and its environs. After all, foreigners were attacked and their property was stolen or destroyed. But what happens when these incidents are examined more closely? In the cases of attacks upon the foreign factories, each episode was provoked by an ill-considered act of the foreigners themselves. In perhaps half, or more, of the attacks on individuals or groups of foreigners, robbery was the primary motive. Some "attacks" were not really "attacks" at all. One involved some small boys who threw stones at a group of passing barbarians (and were severely reprimanded by their parents for doing so).28 Yet Sir John Davis made this an occasion for a formal protest to the Chinese high authorities. Another "incident" concerned the looting of the house of the Reverend I. J. Roberts by a "ruthless gang of Chinese". Investigation shows that the ruthless gang was really Roberts' own congregation, who fell to fighting among themselves over the distribution of coins which the Reverend used to reward them for attending his services.29 As to the murder ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 NOTES AND QUERIES 161 prefix faan in Cantonese, I would like to offer alternative etymologies for some of the words which he discusses and to suggest that it is to Portuguese—often in its Asian dialectal forms that we should look rather than to Arabic for the immediate sources of several loans. The Arabs were certainly present in Canton from early times but so, since the middle sixteenth century, were the Portuguese, and the part played by them from the beginning in introducing the cultivation of new plants to China from other parts of the world has already been demonstrated in various works by Mr. Jack Braga of Hong Kong. Not only is it possible for certain Portuguese expressions to have entered the southern Chinese dialects through the dialect of Macao but also through the Portuguese lingua franca or pidgin, widely used on the coasts and amongst the islands of Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and through China coast pidgin English which had its hey-day towards the end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth in Canton and Hong Kong as well as in the Treaty Ports and, for that matter, in Macao itself. Pidgin English, originally more Portuguese in aspect than in the period of its decline, bears the marks of Indo-Portuguese influence in forms such as amah (female servant), coolie (labourer), comprador (local agent or grocer), chop (stamp), chit (slip of paper), tiffin (luncheon). In short, some Indo-Portuguese expressions may have been introduced to the Cantonese by the English and other foreigners rather than by the Portuguese or Macanese. Others, such as derivatives of leilão, (auction), must have entered several Chinese dialects at an earlier date. While agreeing that it is of importance to establish the date of the introduction to China of the cultivation of all plants whose names are qualified by the prefix faan in Cantonese, I cannot accept the statement that "it would appear that the prefix faan is used only for importations from the Pacific." Three of the four plants with the faan prefix mentioned by the author almost certainly came from the West. They are the tomato, the guava, and the sweet potato. Of these three, the guava and the sweet potato were brought by the Spaniards to the Old World, and their very names in Spanish and English are from the Taino-Arawak dialect of the Greater Antilles. The tomato, a Mexican plant ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 28 JEN YU-WEN It is recalled that the area north of the Sacred Hill was known locally by the name of Chiao-pei-shih (Kau-pui-shek in Cantonese) (1). Chiao-pei, or more properly pei-chiao, means two pieces of wood carved in the shape of oyster shells which are used for the purpose of divination in worshipping idols. This has induced me to think that the Sacred Hill just to the south was originally named Chiao-pei-shih, for the two large rocks really looked like a pair of divining blocks.13 On 24th October, 1860, when the Peking Treaty was signed, the area south of Boundary Street in Kowloon was ceded to Great Britain, and on 19th January, 1861 was formally taken over by the Hong Kong Government. Since then the Government has taken a deep interest in, and made special efforts for, the preservation and protection of the Sung Wong Toi. In February, 1899, the Sung Wong Toi Reservation Ordinance* was enacted expressing the popular wish of the local residents to preserve this area as a public resort and to prohibit the leasing of any piece of land within it for constructing buildings or any other purpose. The Government also erected a small stone tablet at the foot of the Sacred Hill bearing the words "Sung Wong Toi Reservation, Quarrying Absolutely Forbidden” and two lines of Chinese characters beneath. In 1915 Prof. Lai Chi-hsi (賴際熙), head of the Chinese Department of the University of Hong Kong, upon hearing that this area was to be sold by auction, appealed to the Government to be sure to reserve this area permanently. Mr. Li Sui-kam (李瑞金), a leading citizen of Hong Kong, lent his support and paid for the erection of an encircling stone balustrade. When the Japanese occupied the territory 1941-45, they levelled the Sacred Hill for the purpose of extending the Kai-tak Airport. They blasted the engraved rock which broke into three pieces. Fortunately one part retained the original inscription intact. After the Liberation in 1945 the Government held to its former desire to preserve this ancient monument. A small garden was created to the southwest of the airfield, about five hundred feet west of the original Sacred Hill across the Tam-kung Road. The section of engraved rock was trimmed into a rectangular shape and placed within the garden which was to be its permanent and suitable resting place. This, too, fulfilled the public wish. Work on the * On the initiative of Dr Ho Kai, later Sir Kai Ho Kai (1859-1914). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g THE CHINA COASTERS 83 essential; although there was a point beyond which these could be detrimental to the owner. The rent which the compradore paid to the owners for the deck passenger space depended on the number of passengers usually carried in that particular trade. It was adjusted periodically according to fluctuations in trade and other factors, and was the subject of keen bargaining between owners and compradore — the latter naturally putting a much lower evaluation on the ship's passenger potentiality than the owners. At irregular intervals the owners sent someone to travel on the ship, and check the number of passengers and the amount of cargo carried. These men were known as 'pidgin snatchers' and were very unpopular with the floating staff. If the captain and compradore were good friends and either knew in advance of the 'pidgin snatcher's' movements, the other was warned, and co-operative counter measures instituted in good time. Most China coasters called at their home port of Hong Kong or Shanghai at least once a month, so that their officers were in much closer touch with life ashore than their contemporaries on overseas ships. During the inter-war period, normal tours of service on the coast were five years, in the course of which officers would serve in several of their company's ships. Many senior officers were married, and had wives and families in Hong Kong or Shanghai, or in a few cases Hankow. Long home leave was granted after a five years tour, but the attractions of life on the coast made many officers and their wives reluctant to go on leave. Captains and mates on ships where 'pidgin' were plentiful, were afraid they might be posted to less profitable ships on their return; while wives were loath to exchange their smoothly-run homes for the doubtful comforts of furnished rooms or boarding houses in Britain. European homes in Hong Kong, Shanghai, or the treaty ports, were sparsely staffed by African or Indian standards, but run much more efficiently. A cook and house boy, sometimes only a cook boy, sufficed for a small house or flat, supplemented by a baby amah or gardener if circumstance warranted this. A similar establishment in India would have been indifferently served by a staff twice as large. Although the taipans of the big foreign companies and senior customs commissioners lived in considerable style, life on the coast was in general much less ostentatious than in India, and much more pleasant. Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 182 BOOK REVIEWS Weddell's foray at the Bocca Tigris in 1637 until the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Nanking between Ch'i-ying and Pottinger on the newly ceded island of Hong Kong in June 1843. In this short book of 232 pages the author has mainly confined himself to retelling the part played by British subjects in the growth of foreign trade at Canton and the events which finally led to the cession of Hong Kong. He emphasizes the major role played by Macao in these events but without providing much information of interest not already known. Even the picturesque details of life in Macao which one might expect from Mr. Coates' known ability as a descriptive writer are few and far between. In the main this is a simple account of how the British eventually gained Hong Kong, and in telling this story the author has traversed, in a brief space, the same ground that was covered by H. B. Morse in five volumes. The information is so compressed that one wonders whom the author had in mind when writing this book. Two hundred eventful years for which a mass of original documents in Chinese, Portuguese and English exist cannot satisfactorily be cut down to fit such a slim volume. Moreover, the author has resolutely made no concessions to scholarly readers, since the book contains almost no footnotes and no references to support the author's statements and judgments, and no details of the documentary sources from which quotations have been made. The style of the writing may give some clue to the public for whom this book was designed; it is one of ‘imaginative reconstruction' based on the author's own sensibility rather than on thorough historical research and evidence supported by exact references. For instance, describing a Chinese official who could speak Portuguese he writes: "No description of this one survives, yet we see him clearly. He is obviously Chinese, yet his youthful association with foreigners has changed something of his expression.... We cannot help being amused by his subtle understanding of his own people's weaknesses and shortcomings.” (p.9) This method is admirable in an historical novel but is out of place in what purports to be a factual account. At times the style tends to be rather arch, as though the author felt it necessary to sugar-coat his narrative in order to make it acceptable to the weaker students. The following examples show the kind of tricks he employs: "But Weddell, a weather-beaten sea dog as tough as they come, was not a man to be taken in by a civil service answer" (p.5). "Let us ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d CAPITALISM AND THE CHINESE PEASANT 125 A corollary of the sudden rise in land values is of course a desire on the part of landlords or land manipulators to let or sell their land to the highest bidder. Tenant farmers were traditionally protected by an acknowledged system of secure tenancy, but the sanctions which supported this, though effective enough in the past, are rapidly being weakened now, and tenants' title to the land they farm is becoming increasingly insecure. They are seeking legal, documented contracts to protect their interests against those of the landlords. Rents were traditionally high; Potter's conclusion is that rent generally amounted to 45% of the crop—and it is clearly only because the system of reckoning rent, based on the potential rice yield of the land rented, has been slow to catch up with modern conditions that vegetable-growers are not paying much more than they are for their fields. As it is, Potter observed a tendency for rents to rise each time a new tenancy is arranged. In spite of increasing insecurity of tenure, and gradually rising rents, farmers' income has risen with the growth of Hong Kong: Potter, with unquestionable logic, derives the one from the other. But he does not explore the paradox that while the bulk of Hong Kong's development has taken place in the context of laissez-faire capitalism, two factors which have been of crucial benefit to the agricultural community have been the result of direct Government intervention: the Vegetable Marketing Organization (V.M.O.) and the Farmers' Cooperative. The paradox deserves consideration—the more so as Potter himself says that the farmers' reaction to the establishment of the Cooperative "might offer some hint as to the attitude of the peasantry on mainland China to the collectivization of agriculture". Despite farmers' criticisms, Potter's objective assessment is that both the V.M.O. and the Cooperative have been successful and of great value to the farmers. But how then is one to characterise the economic history of the New Territories since 1900? To this question Potter does not fully address himself, and he allows his section on the Cooperative to belie the implication of his title. In spite of the change of title, the argument of the book on the subject of the Treaty Ports is a considerable modification of the argument as presented in the thesis. This is all to the good; the micro-economist takes on the macro-economists at his peril. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d NOTES AND QUERIES 151 Enough has been said to demonstrate that East Point was not the Firm's first building site. This leads on to a further contention that it was not the original intention to site the main part of the new city of Victoria in the Happy Valley - though it is undeniable that that idea was mooted within a year or so and building did commence there after a very small number of individuals, most of them connected with Jardine, Matheson & Co., very quickly obtained grants of much of the best land in the area. However, one further circumstance suggests that the firm originally intended to have their Headquarters much nearer the centre of town than was later the case. Sometime in 1841, perhaps very soon after the sale of 14 June 1841, they obtained a transfer from a Captain Ramsay of what was then Town Lot 42, and there erected a large house of which the Canton Press caustically commented that "on entering the harbour, you perceive the most commanding site, disfigured by a hybrid erection, half New South Wales and half native production, which is a foretaste of the architectural absurdities to be perpetrated on this island." But Jardine, Matheson & Co. were unfortunate in their choice of this site for their headquarters on two counts. It was early decided that the hill to the west of the present Albany nullah (Garden Road) should be reserved for Government buildings only. Government correspondence was as early as November 1841 datelined ‘Government Hill’. Thereby restricting the development of the town in that direction into the fairly wide and gently sloping valley behind the present Murray House. But even worse was the Military's insistence that the ridge and hillside to the east of the Albany nullah should be reserved for their use; this area covered the sites of both the firm's godowns and house. The house later became the residence of Lord Saltoun, Commander of British Forces in China during the war which ended with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The present Flagstaff or Headquarters House, built by 1846, now stands on this site."1 They were able to occupy neither building for long: early in 1842, Colonel Malcolm, Pottinger's secretary, wrote to them, extending an offer to compensate them for moving away to allow the area to be used by the Military. They would be allowed to choose marine lots in any part of the island not appropriated for any other purpose and would, in addition, be given $25,000 in cash for the buildings they had erected. They had, of course, no option, and ================================================================================ 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 BOOK REVIEWS 171 tung. On the military side these events included two assaults on Canton itself, nearly four years of military occupation of the city (5.1.1858 - 21.10.1861) and various punitive expeditions on the Canton river and inside the province. On the civil and diplomatic side were the sequence of events connected with the question of entry to Canton, which the British held to have been promised them under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. This culminated in the triumph of the Canton Viceroy in 1849 who was able to defer entry still further on the grounds of the rooted opposition of the gentry and people of the province to this step by their officials — though deferment was also due to Bonham's conviction that the real key to Canton lay not by warlike action there as in the North. These years also saw economic crises at Canton occasioned, among other factors, by the opening of four other treaty ports under the Nanking Treaty, and a wave of growing lawlessness across the province culminating in the great disorders of the 1850s in the wake of the Taiping rebellion. Mr. Wakeman's theme is the re-emergence of local militia in the early 1840's to assist in repelling the British forces and their continuance through the later years of the entry question (1846-49); the part they played in local defence against the Red Turban and other rebels, pirates and banditti in the early 1850s; their efforts against the British attack in 1857-58 and, under secret orders from Peking, in the guerilla struggle against the British in Canton in the first period of the occupation, until diplomatic agreement in the North led to their being told to desist. He traces the ebb and flow in official attitudes to the local militia from encouragement to discouragement, from enthusiasm to apprehension. He describes, too, the methods by which the militia were raised and financed and shows how they were a two-edged weapon to Government and people alike. Mr. Wakeman also traces the rise and wane of anti-foreign attitudes in Kwantung during this period and the paradoxical change from bitter enmity to a realisation, at least in Canton and its surrounds, that British troops were a guarantee against a multitude of threats from lawless elements. The treatment is masterly and authoritative, being based on a wide variety of sources in English and Chinese; the book is compelling and the narrative moves smoothly. In this review I shall confine my remarks mainly to the militia. First of all I wish to comment briefly on the use of the English ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 LORD ELGIN AND THE TAIPINGS STEPHEN UHALLEY, Jr.* When Lord Elgin, Great Britain's Plenipotentiary to China and the negotiator of the abortive Treaty of Tientsin in 1858 and of the Peking Convention in 1860, in a fit of anger and frustration at the Manchu government raised the possibility of treating with the Taiping revolutionaries instead, his colleagues quickly dissuaded him from such a drastic course. But the question, having been raised, remained to what extent was Lord Elgin's threat the revelation of an alternative policy that the British might have been considering should the recalcitrant Manchus prove in the end to be hopelessly intractable? In other words, had the British been giving secret thought to negotiating a separate or alternative treaty with the Taipings at Nanking? Aside from Lord Elgin's passing remark in this regard there certainly was little in the record of relations between the British and the Taipings to suggest that any such arrangement had been given serious consideration. The early diplomatic visits to Nanking in 1853 and 1854 were never followed-up by any of the Western powers.2 Despite the features of the Taiping regime that did not set well with the foreigners it had manifested a friendly attitude toward them and did continue to exist as a de facto alternative government with which they might have dealt had they been so disposed. But they were not. Instead the powers opted to deal exclusively with the Manchus, even though this required the waging of further hostilities in order to accomplish their diplomatic objectives. Still, there does remain Lord Elgin's annoyed comment. Did it possibly signify a line of action that had been hidden? Of course, this was unlikely. Yet the best way to satisfy our curiosity on this question is to examine the record of Lord Elgin's own visit through Taiping territory. Did the Minister Plenipotentiary, *The author, a former editor of this Journal, currently Associate Professor of History at Duke University, is indebted to the Research Associates Program of the Graduate School of International Studies and the Social Science Foundation of the University of Denver for a grant which facilitated the preparation of this article. In modified form the article forms part of a chapter of the author's forthcoming book Revolutionary Taiping China and the West. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 LORD ELGIN AND THE TAIPINGS 25 himself, use this opportunity to reach some kind of understanding with the Taipings? Did he use the opportunity to at least gain a greater understanding of them, as a possible prelude to a later accommodation? Let us look at the record. The occasion was Lord Elgin's trip up the Yangtze River following the yet-to-be-aborted Treaty of Tientsin of 1858. The treaty had provided for the opening of the Yangtze River to Western trade. The official purpose of the mission was to investigate suitable trading ports and trading conditions along the river in anticipation of the day when this concession could be fulfilled. Elgin departed Shanghai aboard H.M.S. Furious on November 8, 1858 and arrived in Hankow on December 6. He left Hankow on December 12, returning to Shanghai on January 1, 1859. Far from getting off to a diplomatic start as far as any approach to the Taipings was concerned the trip was conducted in the grand gunboat style. Elgin declared: I, of course, resolved that no human power, and no physical obstacle which could be surmounted should arrest my progress. It was obviously essential to the prestige of England, that a measure of this description, if undertaken at all, should be carried out; I could not therefore recognize in the rebels a right to stop me, nor could I take any step which they might construe into such an admission. Subject to this limitation, I was ready to give them every assurance that our movement was of a peaceful character, and that we did not intend to take part, one way or another, in the civil war to which they were parties.3 No effort was made to notify the Taipings of the coming of this special mission. As a result an almost predictable misunderstanding occurred when Elgin's mission reached Nanking. Unfortunately we only have the English version of the incident, but this is sufficient to raise some interesting questions. Upon reaching Nanking, Elgin dispatched a smaller vessel to communicate, if possible, with the Taiping authorities. As the vessel approached the Nanking batteries, it was not unnaturally fired upon. The vessel, however, was under orders not to return fire immediately, but to hoist a white flag first. It did so. The Taiping batteries, however, fired seven additional shots within three minutes time.5 Page 30 Page 31 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 32 STEPHEN UHALLEY, JR. in answering a question it is always their chief endeavour to say what they suppose their questioner will be best pleased to hear. If therefore the knowledge of a fact is to be arrived at, it is, above all things, necessary that the inquiry bear a tint so neutral that the person to whom it is addressed shall find it impossible to reflect its colour in his reply. He will then sometimes, in his confusion, blunder into a truthful answer, but he does so generally with a bashful air, indicative of the painful consciousness that he has been reluctantly violating the rules of good breeding. A search after accurate statistics, under such conditions, is not unattended with difficulty,38 Elgin, however, never seemed to think equally critically of the information brought for his consideration about the Taipings. While it is of utmost importance what opinions such high-ranking English decision-makers were forming of the Taipings, it need not be supposed that the foreign community in general at this time was similarly influenced. We have the account of a relatively high ranking English naval officer which stated quite explicitly: "When Lord Elgin returned from his expedition up the Yang-tze-kiang in 1858, his high-handed policy toward them at Nankin, Ngan-king, and elsewhere, was much disapproved of by a large section of the community, and it was thought that he had hardly done justice to them."39 One might legitimately raise the question again as to the purpose of the mission. We have already given the ostensible reason: to investigate suitable trading ports and trade conditions along the river. But this seems implausible. With a full-scale war taking place along the greater part of the lower Yangtze Valley, it was unlikely that such an investigation would prove of much value. The mission was premature in another respect as well, for it took place before the treaty was ratified, an observation that is especially to the point since the Ch'ing government did not, in fact, ratify the treaty. Actually, Elgin had two underlying purposes. First, he believed that the trip would confirm that the Emperor had in principle conceded the opening of the river, thus inducing the Chinese to take steps to put the treaty into effect. Second, Elgin reportedly believed that the trip would aid the Imperial cause against the Taipings since the "opening ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 81 Until the treaty port era that began with the Treaty of Nanking 1842, most Chinese emigration was voluntary, and mainly to South-east Asia. Then the situation changed. Almost coincident with the opening of the treaty ports and the expansion of foreign shipping on the coast, a widespread demand for cheap labour arose in many parts of the tropics, to replace the recently emancipated slave labour, and also to supply the additional workers required for the increased agricultural and industrial development which followed the establishment of European administrations. In many of these places contract labour from China provided the solution. Much of the contract labour was voluntary; but many thousands of the Chinese emigrants to the Spanish and ex-Spanish colonies of South America and the West Indies were kidnapped, abducted by unscrupulous crimps, or sold by cruel or poverty-stricken relatives. The coolies themselves were not always blameless, and many accepted engagement money and then failed to turn up at the collecting centres, or absconded before joining the ship. The labour agents employed by the centres received a capitation fee for every coolie they delivered at the coast, and were specially active during famines and depressions. In 1853 the capitation fee was three dollars per head, but in addition these agents often appropriated any money advanced to the coolies on the score of defraying expenses, and also charged them with the capitation fee, maintenance costs at the depot, and other expenses. As a result the unfortunate coolie often found himself saddled with a heavy debt which might amount to several months' wages before he ever set foot on the promised land. But whether voluntary or forced, the coolies were herded into wretched barracoons at the coast while waiting for their ship, and then suffered great hardship and cruelty on the voyage. In spite of repeated protests, British ships and Hong Kong played an invidious part in this infamous traffic in the early treaty port years. However, the British government soon made attempts to ameliorate the abuses of the emigrant trade but only succeeded in diverting much of it to other ports such as Whampoa, Macao, Cumsingmoon, Amoy, and Swatow. The Chinese Passengers' Act, passed in 1855, prescribed certain standards of food, accommodation, medical attention, and so on; and two years later a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 85 at the French settlement on New Caledonia, after which the French authorities sent a ship to rescue the survivors on Rossel Island. Only one small Chinese boy was found, whose story was that the rest of the passengers and crew had been eaten by the natives. This was accepted as gospel by the press in Sydney where the boy was taken, although there were some glaring inconsistencies in his story, and it was repeated in the British Admiralty Sailing Directions. Not until thirty years later was it seriously questioned, when its most important critic was Sir William MacGregor, the first Australian administrator of New Guinea. It is now generally believed that, rather than wait to be taken on to Australia and a life-time of labour to repay the inflated cost of their passages, the Chinese had preferred to take a chance in New Guinea. Food, including the highly prized luxury bêche-de-mer, was comparatively plentiful, and life in New Guinea with freedom must have appeared infinitely preferable to life in the Australian goldfields saddled with a heavy personal debt. When the first official census was taken in New Guinea, many Chinese were recorded, of whose origins there was no satisfactory explanation. Another notable incident in the history of Chinese emigration, and which had a happy conclusion, concerned the Peruvian ship Maria Luz in 1872. The Maria Luz had left Macao with over 300 indentured labourers for the Peruvian guano islands, and was forced into Yokohama harbour in distress. One coolie jumped overboard and swam to H.M.S. Iron Duke, where he reported that the passengers on the Maria Luz had either been kidnapped or decoyed on board under false pretences. As a result of the publicity and outcry which this caused, all the passengers were sent back to China. Peru had then no treaty relations with Japan, but threatened war unless Japan apologised and indemnified her. The British government, however, warned Peru that any hostile act on her part would invite retaliatory action by the Royal Navy; and the whole question was referred to France, who gave her verdict in favour of Japan. This case focussed public attention on the many unsavoury aspects of the emigrant trade, and also led to the opening of diplomatic relations between China and Japan. It is necessary to remind ourselves that conditions in many of the emigrant ships to South-east Asia during the 1850's and Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ 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 181 executors, clearly thought that his papers were likely to be of interest to others. These papers have recently been donated to the University of Toronto by Mrs. Coombs. The following brief summary will give readers of this note some idea of their scope, though it does not show the range of Bland's correspondence with prominent politicians, diplomats, civil servants, artists, actors, scholars, social scientists and public figures in general on subjects not specifically connected with Chinese affairs. Brief Summary of Contents 1. Diaries. Those for October 1883 - March 1885 and 1906 - 1910 were kept while he was in China. Bland left China in 1910. 2. Typescript of chapters incorporated into his various books. These include material later discarded, as well as translations from Chinese, handwritten by Backhouse, of material used in their two books. Unfortunately, these translations do not appear to contain any references to the Chinese sources from which they were made. Also included in this section is the original version of Backhouse's translation of Ching-shan's so-called 'Diary', together with correspondence from 1920 until 1945 with various authorities concerning its authenticity. Victor Purcell, in The Boxer Uprising, 1963, devoted an interesting appendix to Ching-shan's 'Diary', stating that Backhouse's papers were burned in Peking during the Japanese occupation, and adding: “I have not, so far, been able to trace the whereabouts of any private papers of J.O.P. Bland”. 3. Manuscript notebooks, essays, etc. E.g., "In a Peking compound and around it”. 4. Thirteen scrapbooks of clippings and articles by and about Bland. 5. Photographs of Peking, Shanghai, etc. 6. Correspondence. This comprises the most important part of the collection. One large group of letters concerns Bland's relations with the British and Chinese Corporation Ltd., and his case against it. Also in this section are letters concerning the Mackay Treaty, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and the British Legation in Peking. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FORGOTTEN EVENT STEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.* The occupation of the important treaty-port city of Ningpo in Chekiang province by Taiping revolutionaries from December 1861 to May 1862 constitutes a fascinating and significant page of history. That it has been by and large overlooked in Western historical memory of the Taiping period by no means detracts from this assertion. Rather, such neglect is merely additional testimony to a faulty historiographical tradition. For a curiosity about the event is natural, and the significance of the occupation is self-evident. There are three main reasons for this. First of all, the occupation enabled the largely land-locked Taipings to realize at last their ambition of gaining access to the sea, an especially urgent matter after they had been denied this objective by the British and French at Shanghai. Secondly, the occasion gave the revolutionaries an opportunity to demonstrate in practice what they had long proclaimed verbally, that foreigners had no reason to fear Taiping political authority in an area where foreign lives and interests were exposed. Finally, despite obvious indications of Taiping success on both of these points the entire experience seems only to have helped galvanize foreign opposition to the Taiping movement. This too would seem to call for a closer look at the event. The Taipings had been in possession of much of the Chekiang hinterland for many months. When they finally decided to take Ningpo in late 1861, they did so with surprising swiftness, and painlessly. To the disappointment of the British, who had helped in making plans for the defense of the city against the Taipings, there was in fact no military opposition. British Admiral James *The author, a former editor of and contributor to this journal, is a Senior Specialist at the East-West Center and Visiting Associate Professor of History in the Asian Studies Program at the University of Hawaii for 1970-71. This article is based upon a paper delivered at the 28th International Congress of Orientalists in Canberra, Australia on January 9, 1971 and on material from a forthcoming book, Revolutionary Taiping China and the West. The author acknowledges with gratitude the suggestions made by Professor Jen Yu-wen for improving the original paper. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE DEBATE ON NATIONAL SALVATION 37 on the part of the Power committing it of a desire to discontinue its friendly relations with the Chinese government. "In the alienation of Sovereign dominion over that part of her territory comprised in foreign settlements at the treaty ports, as well as in some other respects, China feels that the treaties impose on her a condition of things which, in order to avoid the evil they have led to in other countries, will oblige her to denounce these treaties on the expiry of the present decennial period. China intends the establishment of manufactories, the opening of mines, and the introduction of railways. The publication of Tseng's article immediately attracted the attention of those who were interested in Far Eastern affairs. It was soon translated into German and French and was immediately published in leading papers of these two countries. Moreover, this article was simultaneously reprinted in several English newspapers in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tientsin.3 Immediately after the publication of this article in London, a Chinese translation was swiftly made available to the Chinese public. Reactions to this article, however, were not all favourable. The North China Herald in Shanghai, in its editorials on 16 February and 2 March 1887, stressed that Tseng's opinion on the Chinese Navy and Army was of no significance. The writer even quoted the comment of the French Premier, Jules F. C. Ferry, that "China is a great country, but in spite of her greatness, her existence can just be ignored." He further said that China was not only continuing her sleep, but, as a matter of fact, she was on the verge of death. Tseng Chi-tse's article was nothing but boasting." Criticism also came from The Spectator in London: In fact, what Marquis Tseng announces in his article is not true..... to purchase battleships from Great Britain or Germany can hardly make China become a Naval power. What China needs at the moment is to have a crew of well-trained naval officers to man the battleships. Without them, the battleships can easily be captured or go aground. It is impossible to bring all these naval officers to have confidence to manage such complicated and difficult courses in one or two years' time. As for the army, China has a very good background to increase her military ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g HON EDITOR of the period in later life in two well-known books entitled The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 (Kelly & Walsh, 1882 and 2nd edition 1911) and Bits of Old China, also published by Messrs. Kelly & Walsh at the same dates. C. Toogood Downing's The Fan-Qui in China (three volumes, London, Henry Colburn, 1838) is another well-known contemporary account. Extracts from the Letters * TO HIS SISTER, DATED CANTON, 12TH DECEMBER, 1835 My time here is fully occupied, I am glad to say. If sometimes rather too much so there's no great harm done; I assure you I have supped too full of the horrors of idleness in time gone by, to fret at hard work now. There are several circumstances in Canton life which agree with me very well—and these are just enhanced by contrast with its disadvantages. There is some interest too in the strange faces, browned and weather-beaten, of the ship-captains from Liverpool and London etc. who are lodged and boarded of necessity in our Hong here all the time their Ships are in the Port, so that Covers are laid every day for an indefinite number, and the whole Domestic Establishment in short is a Boarding-House with a Table d'hôte at 7 p.m. The comfort of this evil, is the sanctity with which folks' private-rooms are regarded—seeing that there is no privacy whatever elsewhere; and in my bedroom accordingly, I enjoy greater security and deeper seclusion than if I were a stranger in an Inn with boots and chambermaids and postboys to interrupt me whether I have business with them or no. Sundry persons who dislike the strict imprisonment of a Canton-life, venture out, of evenings, on the river, in wherries. As there is a barrier, a break-water, of some thousands of boats and river-crafts of the most unutterable forms and still more unmentionable characters, to break, bruise and burst through, before ten square feet of dirty water can be won free, this is not an amusement I have taken to; and fond as I used to be of it, I think I shall become more and more averse to experiments on the Canton River the longer I remain in China. Three Europeans have been drowned by accident since my arrival here, which is just an * * The text has been left in the writer's style. Additions and queries in square brackets are the Editor's. Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ 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 Tiuchau merchant, Ko Mun Wo 93 alias Ko Cho Heung of the Yuen Fat Hong. He was the founder of the firm which established itself in Hong Kong about 1858 and developed an extensive business in the importation of rice from Siam. It soon became one of the wealthiest Chinese firms. In 1881, Ko Mun Wo was the sixteenth highest rate payer, and when he died the year following, the value of his estate was estimated at $163,000. After his death the business was continued by his four sons. Tang Pak Yeung 16 alias Tang Kam Chi was the youngest member of the first Tung Wah Hospital Committee. He was a merchant in the chartering firm of Kwong Lei Yuen. He had received an English language education. He was not a large property owner, nor does his name appear in other lists of the elite. THE COMPRADORES GROUP The compradores were an important new class which arose in the nineteenth century in the port cities of China. A recent study by Yen-p'ing Hao entitled The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, Bridge between East and West (Cambridge, Mass., 1970) shows how influential this group became in providing capital for the introduction of modern forms of communication, industry, mining, banking and journalism in the late Ch'ing Dynasty. The origin of the compradore system is in the Co-Hong organization through which China channelled all trade with foreigners before the opening of the Treaty ports in 1843. The compradores were recruited from the Canton and Macao area. A large majority of the most influential compradore families were from the Heung Shan District near Macao. When the foreign firms came to Hong Kong they brought with them their compradores. As trade increased on the China coast, the compradores were provided with an opportunity to accumulate considerable capital. This they invested in real estate and in Chinese commercial firms. The late Ch'ing Dynasty was often in financial difficulties. One method of raising income was through the sale of official degrees. The compradores and merchants of the port cities, who formed a newly-created bourgeois nouveau riche group within ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 152 JAMES HAYES in 1859 and spread outwards through the self-governing and other territories of what became the Commonwealth and Empire. It extended to Britain's Eastern Colonies and to the foreign communities of the treaty ports of China and Japan where, from time to time, various alarms and excursions added self-preservation to the list of factors motivating the continuance or periodic resuscitation of volunteer corps. In Hong Kong the Laws of the Colony early provided for their existence as a constitutional force. A succession of Ordinances established volunteers on a proper basis. The earliest of these was No. 2 of 1862, which was repeated with slight variation in No. 18 of 1882. An important re-modelling was carried out by No. 6 of 1893. This was followed by a Volunteer Reserve Ordinance No. 25 of 1910. Both these Ordinances were replaced by a further Volunteer Ordinance No. 2 of 1920, still modelled largely on the important 1893 Ordinance. Volunteer forces were the rule in the various foreign concessions in China, though save in the larger ones local volunteer forces tended to be formed and reformed whenever events seemed to warrant it. For example, the Shameen Defence Corps was formed after a serious riot in 1884 and was reformed from time to time, e.g. in May 1911 due to the unsettled state of affairs in Canton (see Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen 1859-1938 compiled by H.S.S. and privately printed about 1938, pp. 19-26). The largest of the China volunteer units was, in time, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. This originated at two public meetings held in April 1853 and its early doings are described in Chapter XXXV of Lanning and Couling's The History of Shanghai, Part I (Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1921). Interesting details of its development are given here and there in Brigadier J. V. Davidson-Houston's Yellow Creek, The Story of Shanghai (London, Putnam, 1962). As in Hong Kong, the passing of the first emergency resulted in the demise of the Corps. "Enthusiasm for the Volunteer Corps sank to a low ebb, members neglected to turn up for training and it was soon practically defunct" (p. 58). The Corps was again raised in August 1860 with the onset of the Taiping rebels, when 107 volunteers came forward for enrolment (p. 65). However, after the successful operations against the rebels the Corps "wilted and died" and was wound up in 1867 to "pay for its debtor's balance by selling its rifles" although the rifle club continued to function (p. 90). The Corps was again formed in 1870 following the Tientsin massacre and continued in being thereafter, its numbers fluctuating between 250-350 for the rest of the 19th century (pp. 92-93). It then continued to grow in size, like the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, to meet the difficulties of the troubled 1920s and the war with Japan. The number of foreign residents in China is relevant to the size and location of Volunteer Corps. Some figures are given at pp. 292-295 of J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese or Notes Connected with China, 4th edition, Hongkong, Kelly and Walsh 1903. There were, for instance, 4,424 foreigners in Shanghai (exclusive of those living in the French Settlement) in 1895 and 6774 in 1900. The Hong Kong Census of 1891 listed 10,446 British and foreign residents. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 158 JAMES HAYES undoubtedly due to the Volunteer Movement and to the succession of small imperial wars in the last 25 years of the 19th century which popularised the Army, and fed the emotional needs of imperial Britain in the Victorian age. Between 1902 and 1914 it was due to the sobering effect of the Boer War and the growing realisation by many of the need to reform and rearm against a possible European enemy. Soldiers, in short, were in the public eye, and Hong Kong was no exception to the general rule. Here, and in the treaty ports, another factor in the popularity of, and support given to, the volunteer corps was the pool of potential recruits provided by the employees of the major European firms, many of whom had attended public schools in Britain and were well suited by their education and sentiment to play a leading part in the volunteer movement. (b) 1914-41 The 1914-18 War saw many Volunteers go off to the War in Europe, and led to increased duties for the Corps due to the need to employ regular forces on active service elsewhere. Numbers dropped and compulsory service was introduced in 1917.18 In 1920, shortly after the War, a new Volunteer Ordinance was introduced to replace those of 1893 and 1910 which regulated the existing Volunteer Corps and Volunteer Reserve. When introduced into the Legislative Council, it was stated to closely follow the old Ordinance, but with a few changes to meet altered times. The Volunteer Force was now "considered desirable for two reasons for defence against foreign enemies, and also in order to assist the Police and regular forces in case of any serious local disturbances'19 (my italics). We are coming nearer our own times in which the present Regiment was called upon in 1966 and again in 1967 to assist with “duties in aid of the civil power” i.e., internal security. The obligation to serve was also to become more serious. Every Volunteer was to be deemed to have engaged himself to serve for a period of three years and if he left before this without showing good cause he would henceforth have to 18 For the war period see Vol, 1954, pp. 58-67 and Endacott, pp. 284-285. See also the Military Service Ordinance, No. 19 of 1917, 19 Han., 1920, p. 15. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K. 159 pay certain sums into the Corps Funds. These variations to the old Ordinance are important as no fixed period under penalty had been enjoined in it, and no special duties other than active military service had been envisaged for the force. The reasons for these changes must again be sought in the changing nature of the times. The educated youth and the industrial labour of China had entered into a period of unrest and discontent brought about by their country's weakness. China had entered the war as an ally of the Western powers in 1917 but despite this they refused to give up tariff privileges and treaty ports (the European concessions) or to make their other Eastern ally, Japan, relinquish her territorial encroachments on China. The 1920s were a time of growing internal strife in China coupled with increased resentment of the West. Hong Kong was not excluded from the impact of ideological struggle. The Seaman's Strike of 1922 and the General Strike of 1925-26 crippled the port and damaged the economy of the Colony. An emergency situation existed, and thus a fresh impetus was given to the Volunteer Corps whose services were again needed for humdrum but essential work. Colonel H. Owen Hughes recalls being called out for six weeks in 1925, and combining office work by day with duty by night patrolling the streets and guarding hospitals and vulnerable points.20 Whoever decided that a new Ordinance was needed in 1920 was a man of prescience and discernment. Other amendments were made to the Volunteer Ordinance in 1926 and 1927 (No. 15 of 1926 and No. 27 of 1927) in the light of contemporary requirements. By the late thirties hostilities were again threatening in Western Europe and Japan's gradual encroachments in China led to actual war in 1937 and the occupation of Canton the following year. The danger which these events might bring to Hong Kong had already been anticipated. The Corps grew in size during this period and the Year Books between 1934 and 1940 make interesting reading. In the first issues we see that, following the Ordinance of 1933, the Volunteer Defence Corps consisted of one battery of artillery, a machine gun battalion that included three machine gun companies, corps infantry (largely Portuguese) and corps engineers and signals and armoured cars with a reserve company. 20 Vol, 1964, p. 42. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE COLONY OF HONG KONG 173 a Convention between Captain Elliott, who was then our plenipotentiary, and the Chinese commissioner Ke-shen; and some adventurous spirits had soon after located themselves on it. Ke-shen got into disgrace with his government for the cession; but it was fully confirmed by the subsequent treaty, and the island received the status of a Colony from an order in Council dated the 5th April, 1843, its principal town to be dignified with the name of our Queen. When I arrived, it was under the government of Sir Henry Pottinger, who had brought the war to a successful close. To give you an idea of the place as I first saw it, I had proposed to take a walk with you along the Queen's Road from the west to the east, but I found that that would take too much time. That road was marked out, in many places imperfectly, from Sae-wan on towards Aberdeen, the waters of the bay, from which so much land has since been taken, coming, in the greater part of its course between East and West points, up to it on the north, Hollywood Road, and the streets running down from it to the Queen's Road, were also indicated in a rudimentary fashion. A little beyond the present Sailors' Home, were the Naval Stores, and, south of them, all the indentation of the hill where the Reformatory now stands was occupied with tents and huts peopled by the 55th Regiment. From that eastwards all was blank to the bluff where the Civil Hospital rises, and on which was a bungalow built by Jamieson, How & Co., and occupied by Mr. Edger, belonging to that firm, and in later years a member of the Legislative Council. On the other side of the road were some godowns of the same firm, washed by the sea. The next European buildings were Gibb, Livingston & Co.'s premises, enclosed within a ring fence, and where partners and employés all managed to reside, with none of the massive godowns which now seem to serve as buttresses to the offices. Up and down, and athwart, T'ae-p'ing-shan, were thread-like paths, with a Chinese house here and there, but the ground was mainly boulder and sandy gravel. Turning to the west, where Wellington Street runs into Queen's Road, you could see a few Chinese houses on either side of the latter, and Jervois Street was in course of formation, the houses on the north side of it having the waters of the bay washing about among them. Eastwards from the same point on to Pottinger Street, Queen's Road was pretty well lined with Chinese houses; ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 224 BOOK REVIEWS the familiar background of the disasters — natural and man-made which afflicted China from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. The author, a retired Naval Officer, himself with a first-hand knowledge of the China Station and with some apparent experience of the military and political intelligence work supporting the diplomatic moves described in this book, weaves his story from the letter books of the Great and Ancient House, Taikoo. The period covered by these extracts and quotations is from the Sino-French war of 1883-5 through to the so-called Great Boycott of 1925. There are appended a number of short notes, some by the author, others contributed to the book, on topics ranging from "The origin of Tribute Rice and of Lao mei" to "Treaty Port Racing". Several of these are probably not to be taken as serious studies of these subjects; for example, the two devoted to "Opium" and "The Eunuchs of the Empress" are mere fragments not embodied in the main text. There is undoubtedly a wealth — even an overflowing — of rich historical material in this volume; so much so, that the author, unwilling to sacrifice any scraps of illustrative comment from these business records, ends up by creating a confused picture of events. The significant fact throwing particular light on the business activities on the China Coast, is circumscribed by coils of superfluous trivia. From a naval writer, one might have expected a direct, economical style of exposition; and of course, the impact on the reader would have been much more effective. It is, indeed, painfully obvious throughout the book that despite the authorship of a considerable number of publications, the writer is an amateur. The book is written in a mixture of styles compounded from the Boys' Own and official memoranda; it is ridden with clichés and undigested wedges of administrative gobbledy-gook. For the historian who would like to use this book as a compilation of source material, there are also the difficulties that the extracts are frequently not dated nor ascribed to a writer or only vaguely so. For example, there is the telegram from the Admiralty to the Commodore Hong Kong — one wonders how this came to be with the B & S records, if in fact it is extracted from them. The exercise would have been much more useful if the range of extracts had been more carefully selected, given full documentation, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 34 ! LEIGH R. WRIGHT The issue of Brooke's status revolved around, firstly, the question of whether or not a subject of the Queen could hold the position as a sovereign prince of a foreign state; and, secondly, whether Brooke was in fact an independent ruler or a vassal of the Sultan of Brunei. The issue, however, was not a burning one in the ministries of Whitehall. Despite the fact that Borneo was of concern to Britain as the guardian of the eastern flank of the South China Sea route to the China coast, and was to assume, gradually, more strategic value as first France and later Germany began colonial operations in the area, at mid-century Britain possessed a colony and naval station at Labuan and a (“good strong”) consular treaty with Brunei which gave her a certain measure of control, if she chose to indulge it, in Brunei's relations with foreign states. Most of the Colonial and Foreign Secretaries in London, until the 1870s were not very interested in defining precisely Raja Brooke's status, For the most part, Whitehall grudgingly approved of Brooke's “civilizing influence" in Borneo. Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary in 1846, offered naval support for the suppression of piracy, and during a later term of office gave standing orders to the Eastern squadron to visit Sarawak at regular intervals. But the Foreign Office generally held to the view that "it is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government that British subjects should possess territory on the mainland of Borneo". Lord Clarendon, when Foreign Secretary in the mid-1850s, came close to disavowing Brooke's position in Sarawak. In 1853 the Raja took issue with a Foreign Office statement that seemed to assume that Brooke was a vassal of Brunei. Clarendon minuted, It seems to me that the various documents tend to prove how cautiously the government abstained from recognizing his (Brooke's) independence although in various ways the anomalous character of his position has been admitted. But Clarendon did not leave it at that. When in 1855 Spencer St. John succeeded Brooke as Consul in Brunei he suggested to the Foreign Office that he also be accredited to Sarawak as an independent state. The Raja agreed and insisted that the new consul must receive his exequatur from him. This act would render the desired 6 FO to Admiralty, 24 July 1846, FO 12/4. 7 Clarendon minute upon Brooke to FO, 27 September 1853, FO 12/13. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 48 J. L. CRANMER-BYNG tendent of Trade for the Northern Ports and Superintendent of Trade for the Southern Ports would find some material of use in this section of the six-point memorandum. For instance, it states that at Newchwang, the staple trade commodity is soya-bean cakes, but that this trade is not open to foreign ships. Details of the suggested method of collecting and reporting the customs revenues of this port are then given. At Tengchow, the memorialists state, an illicit foreign trade has been going on for a number of years, unbeknown to the Court. Now that it has officially become a treaty port, officials must be appointed to administer foreign trade there. As regards the five original treaty ports of Canton, Foochow, Amoy, Ningpo, and Shanghai, no changes in the regulations need be made. As regards the newly opened ports of Ch'iungchow, Swatow, Taiwan, and Tamsui, as well as Chenkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow on the Yangtze, the governors-general and governors in whose jurisdiction these ports lie should jointly memorialize with the imperial commissioner at Shanghai concerning officials to be appointed to take charge of these places. Monthly reports on the volume of foreign trade at these ports are to be sent to the Tsungli Yamen and the Board of Revenue. Suggestions are also made for arrangements to be made for trade with Russia at the newly opened trading places of Urga, Kashgar, and Kalgan. According to the treaties, twenty percent of the duties on foreign trade are to be held for the payment of the indemnity. A counterfoil will be provided so that the total amount of revenue collected can be checked against the amount withheld. The memorialists then return to the point they were making near the beginning of point 3 [as translated above]. Thus, the amount of foreign duty collected each year being clearly shown, the officials through whose hands it passes will be unable to enrich themselves through peculation. Not only will they be deprived of the means of living, they will secretly resort to other malpractices. It is further feared that wily clerks, when they see there is no money to be made, may provoke trouble, thus endangering the public interest. If we do not clearly lay down regulations providing them with expenses for transacting official business, we very much fear that unforeseen malpractices will arise. It is therefore proposed to request that an order be given to the superintendent ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 90 E. G. PRYOR Besides their wider trading interests, the British in Canton had established a thriving trade in opium brought from India. The Chinese government regarded this trade with considerable concern, on the grounds that it was harmful to human welfare and also a serious drain on the country's finances. Early attempts by the Chinese government to stop the opium trade failed but in 1839 a Special Imperial Commissioner was appointed who forced the British traders in Canton to relinquish their supplies of the narcotic. The British Superintendent of Trade, Captain Elliot, consequently withdrew the English merchants to Macau and later transferred them onto ships anchored in Hong Kong harbour; subsequent events led to open hostilities between Chinese and British forces. It was decided by Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, that a satisfactory settlement of the dispute would require either a commercial treaty with adequate guarantees to protect the interests of British merchants or the cession of one or more off-shore islands from which the traders could operate without restriction. A British expedition was despatched to China in 1840 to back up these demands and in January 1841 negotiations were held in Canton between Captain Elliot and Keshen, a Manchu Commissioner, whereby it was agreed by the Convention of Chuenpi that Hong Kong Island was to be ceded to the British (Figure 1).* A British naval force took possession of the island on 26th January 1841, The Chuenpi terms were accepted by neither side. Elliot was replaced by Sir Henry Pottinger and hostilities were renewed. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Nanking on 29th August 1842 by which the island of Hong Kong was ceded in perpetuity to the Crown and four additional ports besides Canton were opened to British traders. The island was formally declared a British Colony on 26th June 1843 and Sir Henry Pottinger was appointed the first Governor. Hong Kong was declared a free port and by the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue the Chinese were given free access to the island for trading purposes. The Housing Problem Takes Root: 1841-1881 Almost from the day Captain Elliot raised the British flag on the northern shores of Hong Kong Island, a steady stream of artisans and labourers made their way to the Colony from the southern provinces. *Figures 1-8 will be found at the rear of the text. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h NOTES AND QUERIES The following letter appeared in the South China Morning Post, 10th April, 1972. — Ed. WHO HOISTED THE UNION JACK? In today's (April 7) issue on page 20 you publish an article headed "The Hongkong Club decides to go back to Victorian Era”. In the article you state "The Club was founded in 1846, five years after the Union Jack was hoisted on Possession Point by Captain Charles Elliot". The statement is not correct. It is true that Sir Charles Elliot issued a formal declaration of British sovereignty over Hongkong in January 1841 after the treaty of Chuenpi, but the Union Jack was hoisted on Possession Point by Captain Belcher commanding H.M. survey ship, Sulphur, on January 26, 1841. The account is given in Captain Belcher's book "Voyage round the World" published 1843, Volume II page 157. The following is an extract: "The only important point to which we became officially partners was the cession of the island of Hongkong, situated off the peninsula of Cow Loon within the island of Lama, "On the return of the commodore on the 24th we were directed to proceed to Hongkong and commence its survey. We landed on Monday the 26th January at fifteen minutes past eight, and being 'bona fide' first possessors, her majesty's health was drank with three cheers on Possession Mount. "On the 26th the squadron arrived; the marines were landed, the union hoisted on our post, and formal possession taken of the island by Commodore Sir J. G. Bremer, accompanied by the other officers of the squadron, under a feu de joie from the marines, and a royal salute from ships of war”. There may be some uncertainty about the exact date. It is probable that the landing was on Monday, January 25 and that the more serious formalities took place on Tuesday, January 26. Captain Belcher's history is preserved in the Colony in the names Belcher's Gardens, Belcher's Fort (and formerly Belcher's Creek) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r SWATOW (CH’AOCHOW) HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS HELGA WERLE* # Introduction The so-called Swatow puppets are in fact wrongly named. This is due to a confusion which requires some explanation. In Western languages the adjective Swatow is used to attribute a dialect, culture or people etc., when the Chinese themselves speak of Ch’aochow. This is because the British gained access to the Ch’aochow area by the opening of the port of Shantou (Swatow) by the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. Chinese know that the city of Ch’aochow heads one of the 8 prefectures of the province of Kwangtung and is situated on the Han River about 40 miles from the sea and as far from the border with Fukien. Swatow itself, a port with about 85,000 inhabitants in 1925, is in the delta of the Han River, five miles from the open sea. In this article the term “Swatow” has been replaced by the use of the proper Chinese description of Ch’aochow. Ch’aochow developed very early into a culturally independent area. Its seaboard position and flourishing port gave it the necessary economic basis and exposed it to various cultural influences. Culturally and linguistically, it is more like a prefecture of Fukien than of Kwangtung. Its dialect is distinctly different from Cantonese, so are its customs and its music, which all deserve to be studied in detail for the value of its rich ancient tradition. Among its cultural assets, the Ch’aochow puppet-theatre is truly amazing, with unique features found nowhere else in the world.† The author has studied in the Sinology departments of the Universities of Munich, Hamburg, and Cologne. She has been a resident of Hong Kong since 1966 and has followed up her studies with field work in Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines. She is particularly interested in folk art and theatre and is at present on the staff of the Hong Kong Arts Centre Ltd. She has published various articles on puppet theatre and folk art. † For the Introduction, see L. Richard (translated, revised and enlarged by M. Kennelly), Comprehensive Geography of the Chinese Empire and Dependencies, Shanghai, T’usewei Press 1908, pp. 206 and 210. Also J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese or Notes connected with China (5th edition, revised by É. Chalmers Werner), Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai, Hong Kong etc., 1925, pp. 689-690. For the Min dialects of which Ch’aochow and Swatow are part, see R. A. D. Forrest, The Chinese Language, Faber & Faber, London, 1958, pp. 225-232. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 54 H. J. LETHBRIDGE in André Malraux, Antimémoires. Paris, 1967, pp. 375-473. There is a short biography in Roman d'Amat and R. Limouzin-Lamothe, eds., Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, Paris, 1965. 17 Souvenirs de Cochinchine par Ch. David de Mayréna, Capitaine d'État-Major, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur... Toulon, J. Laurent, 1871. 18 See Marcel Ner, 'Marie Ier Roi des Sedangs', Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient (Hanoi), Vol. 27, 1927, p. 316. 19 Ibid., p. 333. 20 Ahnaja, Mayréna's consort, died of tuberculosis in late 1888. She had followed Mayréna from Saigon but they were never legally married. 21 There are many studies of Morès, but most are written from a French nationalist point of view: see, for example, Baron Charles de Donos, Morès: Sa vie, sa mort, Paris, 1899; Auguste Pavy, L'Expédition de Morès, Paris 1897; Félicien Pascal, L'Assassinat de Morès, un crime d'État, Paris, 1902; Jules Delahaye, Les Assassins et les vengeurs de Morès, 3 vols., Paris, 1905-1907; Pierre Frondaie, L'Assassinat du marquis de Morès, Paris, 1934. Of great interest are chapters on Morès in Maurice Barrès, Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme, Paris, 1902, and in Georges Bernanos, La Grande peur des bien-pensants, Paris, 1931. For details on the family see Almanach de Gotha, Gotha, 1890, pp. 390-91. Robert F. Byrnes, Antisemitism in Modern France, vol. 1, New Brunswick, NJ., 1950, contains many illuminating insights into Morès' political career. The most modern study is Donald Dresden's The Marquis de Morès: Emperor of the Bad Lands, 1970, which is particularly good on Morès's adventures in the Far West. 22 One of his fellow cadets was Philippe Pétain (1856-1951), who later became the head of the Vichy Government. Another was the saintly Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), a missionary in the Sahara. 23 His full name is given in the New York Times Obituary Index as Louis A. von Baron Hoffmann. He died in 1909. His daughter's name, Medora, was probably taken from Byron's poem 'The Corsair'. 24 See Russell Reid, 'The De Morès Historical Site', North Dakota Historical Quarterly, vol. 8, 1941, pp. 272-83. In 1963 Louis Vallombrosa, the Marquis' eldest son, presented the château and the surrounding grounds to the State of North Dakota. 25 See Maurice Soulié, Marie Ier, roi des Sédangs, 1888-1890, Paris, 1927, pp. 122-6. Mlle Dahlberg was supposed to be studying Siamese monuments in Bangkok but she was probably in the pay of the Germans who had recently discovered an interest in the region. Her brother was ostensibly a trader at Haiphong but really engaged in the smuggling of contraband goods. 26 A tour of the East was often a risky venture. Many companies went broke and singers and actresses left penniless and hence vulnerable as a consequence. See, for example, Conrad's novel Victory and Somerset Maugham's story 'Flotsam and Jetsam' for fictional but accurate accounts of the lives of distressed European actresses in the East. 27 Robert Fraser-Smith founded the Hong Kong Telegraph in 1881. He was also its editor and publisher until his death in 1895. The paper was edited from 6 Pedder's Hill and Fraser-Smith employed a staff of about four Europeans, usually Scotsmen, as reporters. As J. S. Thomson in The Chinese (London, 1909) writes: "The newspapers of the Treaty Ports are generally set up by the Macaense (sic) and edited by Scotchmen". Fraser-Smith was constantly involved in libel actions and in 1890 was sentenced to six months imprisonment for libelling J. Minhinett, a foreman in the Public Works Department, by suggesting he had committed rape. He did Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 THE HONG KONG REGION 109 plexities of local settlement and the absorption of the aboriginal dwellers of the area in the past thousand years. For a general account, readers are referred to the works by Lo Hsiang-lin (1959, 1963), K.M.A. Barnett, (1957, 1967) and the earlier writings of Krone (1859), G.N. Orme (1912) and S.F. Balfour (1941) cited in the references to this article. Introduction* For present purposes the Hong Kong region is defined as the present British Crown Colony of Hong Kong (403.7 square miles)1 and the immediately adjoining parts of Kwangtung province with which there has been intermittent official concern following the establishment of Hong Kong 134 years ago. This takes in the districts round the market town of Sham Chun north of the present Sino-British frontier, occupied by British troops between 16th May and 13th September 18992, and the areas of Mirs and Bias Bays to the east of the Colony that were often visited by British naval forces in their suppression of piracy in local waters during much of the 19th century and well into the 20th3. (See map). At the time the British occupied Hong Kong island in 1841, the whole of this area, less Bias Bay, formed part of the Hsin-an district of the Kuang-chou prefecture of Kwangtung province. The place names and geographical features of the region are shown in many contemporary and earlier Chinese sources, whilst the large scale European map produced in 1866 by Msgr. Volontieri, an Italian missionary of the Propaganda, provides rather more local detail4. In time the British came to occupy a greater part of Hsin-an district. Their occupation of Hong Kong island in January 1841 was converted into possession by the Treaty of Nanking in August 1842. British territory was extended by the lease in perpetuity of Kowloon under a deed dated 20th March 1860 and the cession of the same area by article VI of the Convention of Peking 24th 1 CR1971, p. 204; this figure includes recent reclamations. 2 See Groves, pp. 52-55. 3 For the early period see Fox and Dalrymple Hay. Two expeditions to Bias Bay in March and September 1927 were noted in AR1927, K16: and as late as 1947 piracy in Mirs Bay kept Hong Kong fishermen in port; CR1947, p. 46. 4 The KTTS of 1865 provides more detailed maps of Hsin-an and its adjoining areas than are given in the district and prefectural histories (HNHC and KCFC); see the general chart at pp. 1-2 of the opening volume. For the Volontieri map, which includes Chinese characters, see Ronald C. Y. Ng (1969) pp. 141-148 and Hayes (1970) pp. 193-196. * For the place names of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960: hereafter styled Gazetteer. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 THE HONG KONG REGION 133 Hayes, J. W., 'Old Ways of Life in Kowloon: the Cheung Sha Wan Villages" in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. VIII, No. 1, January 1970: 154-188. Ho, Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1959. Hsieh, Kuo Ching, 'Removal of Coastal Population in Early Tsing Period', The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, XIII, 1929: 559-596. Hummel, Arthur W. (Editor), Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644-1912), Taipei, Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company, 1967. Reprint of the first edition, Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 2 vols., 1943. Krone, Rev. Mr., A Notice of the Sanon District. C.B.R.A.S. Transactions VI, 1859: 71-105. Reprinted in JHKBRAS 7, 1967: 104-137. Lo, Hsiang-lin, 'The Sung Wang T'ai and the Location of the Travelling Courts by the Sea-shore in the Last Days of the Sung' in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. III, No. 2, July 1956. -, (and others), Hong Kong and Its External Communications before 1842. Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963. An English version, abbreviated, of the Chinese edition of 1959. Mayers, W. F., Dennys, N. B. and King, C., The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A Complete Guide to the Open Ports of these countries, together with Peking, Yedo, Hong Kong and Macao. London, Trübner & Co., Hong Kong, A. Shortrede & Co., 1867. Murphey, Rhoads, The Treaty Ports and China's Modernization: what went wrong? Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No. 7, Ann Arbor, 1970. Montalto de Jesus, C. A., Historic Macao, International Traits in China Old and New. Macao, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, 1926. Neumann, C. F., Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with Notes: 1 History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, London, John Murray, 1831. Ng, Peter Y. L., The 1819 Edition of the Hsin-an Hsien-chih, A Critical Examination with Translation and Notes. Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (1644-1842). Unpublished M. A. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1961. Ng, Ronald C. Y., 'The San On Map of Mgr. Volontieri. On the Centenary of the Copy in the R.G.S. Collection', London, Geographical Journal, Vol. 135, Part 2, June, 1969: 231-235. Reprinted in JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 141-148. Orme, G. N., Report on the New Territories for the Years 1899 to 1912. in Sessional Papers 1912. Perkins, Dwight H., Agricultural Development in China 1368-1968. Chicago, Aldine Publishing Company, 1969. Potter, Jack M., Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968. Schofield, Walter, Personal Communications, 1958-1968. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 34 WELLINGTON K. K. CHAN charitable halls were not merely institutions in which merchants participated; they were merchant institutions initiated and dominated by merchants. In Canton, Governor-general Chang Jen-chün once observed that charitable halls were particularly numerous in Kwangtung because there were a large number of rich merchants.24 Several factors contributed to these developments. The first was a change in the composition of the merchant class by 1900. By turning themselves into entrepreneurs, a number of officials and gentry members had joined the merchant class. Men like Yen Hou-hsin and Chou Chin-piao who came from official backgrounds took the lead in the formation of the Shanghai Commercial Consultative Association and later the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce. The founders of Ai-yü shan-t’ang in Canton probably had official backgrounds as well. Two had taotai rank and the house they bought had belonged to their friend, an official salt merchant who had gone bankrupt. A second factor was these merchant founders' conscious borrowing from the West. It is not enough to argue that they started charitable halls because as a group they commanded great wealth. For then the question arises: Why had the rich salt merchants or the cotton merchants not done the same before? Insofar as the merchants who sponsored charitable halls came from the treaty port areas, it seems that these merchants had been influenced by the work of the Christian missionaries. In one case, an orphanage was founded in Shanghai in 1892 by merchants and the district magistrate after there were reports of alleged cruelty to orphans in the missionary orphanage.22 Indeed, Po Leung Kuk's emphasis on tracking down kidnappers was in response to complaints of a similar sort, while Tung Wah Hospital's emphasis on healing and hospital care paralleled the activities of missionaries like Peter Parker in Canton. This in no way means that works of philanthropy were alien to the Chinese merchant's ethos. The merchant's traditional justification for acquiring wealth was in order to benefit the rest of society. What was new was not the attitude, but the organisational mechanism they now employed to further their ends. A third factor was the local officials' increasing reliance upon the leaders of the trade and handicraft guilds from the 1860's. They were asked to help conduct tax farming, and to organise contributions in money and labour towards the reconstruction of public ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 130 RICHARD J. SMITH Army,83 Others, such as Captain Coney, Baron de Meritens, and William Winstanley, headed foreign-training programs established in treaty port areas. Still others, including John Pennell, Halliday Macartney, and William Mesny, served in Chinese armies as individual instructors or officers.85 Forced by circumstance to employ these foreigners, the Chinese became quite adept at handling them—despite China's disadvantageous position vis-à-vis the West. As in the past, Ch'ing officials paid their foreign employees well, at the same time subjecting them to close surveillance, and fostering personal relationships with them as a means of control. In addition, however, they also took special pains to define regular channels of communication and command, and specified roles and responsibilities through the use of detailed regulations and written agreements.86 Furthermore, in rewarding loyal foreign service, the Chinese authorities went beyond simply arranging for edicts of praise and encouragement, the dispensing of ranks and titles, and the bestowal of traditional marks of imperial favor such as peacock feathers, silk, animal skins, and silver. They also began notifying foreign governments of the accomplishments of their respective nationals, and distributing foreign-style (as opposed to Chinese-style) medals—a rather significant departure from traditional practice. The throne even went so far as to acknowledge in 1864 that since Westerners especially esteemed foreign-style medals, these awards were the most generally appropriate expression of imperial gratitude.87 To be sure, Peking continued to reward evidence of cultural submission, casting it in traditional terms of imperial condescension. The cases of Pennell and Mesny provide striking examples of this tendency.88 Moreover, throughout the nineteenth century, even as the Chinese world order crumbled about them, Ch'ing policymakers continued to use expressions such as "turning toward Chinese civilization," "cherishing and soothing men from afar,” and “using [the doctrines of] China to transform the barbarian." Policymakers also persisted in referring to both ancient and more modern precedent in order to justify (or argue against) the employment of barbarians in Chinese military affairs. Allusions to the use of foreign "allies" as the Hsiung-nu and Uighurs, as well as references to such diverse individuals as Yu Yü, Chin Mi-ti, Ch'i-pi Ho-li, and Gordon, continue to crop up in Ch'ing documents of the 1890's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT Concluding Remarks 131 It is difficult to know to what extent the vision and vocabulary of the Chinese world order affected the perceptions and policies of Chinese officials in the late Ch'ing period. Obviously, the compelling rhetoric of the Chinese world order lasted longer than the Sinocentric system it described. This is quite understandable, for one could hardly expect the Ch'ing emperor to willingly abandon his claim to rule "all under Heaven" (t'ien-hsia). At the same time, it is clear that among the few informed "Confucian patriots" who had extensive contact with foreigners in treaty port areas, a new world view was rapidly evolving. Not surprisingly, this is clearer in their private writings and conversations than in their official communications and pronouncements. My point, in any case, is not that "traditional" attitudes were breaking down faster than the official record would seem to indicate—although this was certainly true and deserves further study. Rather, I am suggesting that certain aspects of Chinese tradition were not, as is commonly supposed, necessarily inimical to modernization. Although the lingering perception of a hierarchical, Sinocentric world order unquestionably retarded China's modern development in some areas—notably her entrance into the so-called "family of nations"—this was less true in military affairs, where China's long tradition of borrowing foreign military talent was more of an asset than a liability. Recourse to foreign military assistance did not, after all, imply the inferiority of China's inherited culture, with its predominantly civil ethos, nor was it an affront to the dignity of the Chinese state (t'i-chih). China's failure to use foreign military assistance effectively in the late nineteenth century was less a function of traditional attitudes toward the employment of barbarians, than of late Ch'ing administrative practice. Stripped of its world order rhetoric, much of Chinese policy toward the use of foreigners in late Ch'ing times seems to compare favorably with that of other nations in similar periods. A glance at Civil War America, for example, indicates that China was not alone in her concern over the linguistic and cultural integration of foreign officers, their fidelity, or the potential for interference on the part of their respective governments. Like the Chinese, both the Confederacy and the Union liberally rewarded foreign service, yet significantly, both also tended to reserve the highest ranks and greatest honors to individuals who ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT 63 See Smith, "Foreign-Training,” 83-86. 64 Ward and other foreigners in the Chinese military service are studied in depth in Smith, Ward, Gordon and the Ever-Victorious Army. 65 For basic Chinese documentation on Ward's career, see IWSM TC 4: 25-276; 4: 40a; 4; 51b-52; 5: 6b-8b; 5: 33-36b; 5: 51-52; 5: 54; 6: 2a-b; 6: 14b; 6: 17b-18; 6: 19b-20; 6: 30-31; 7; 47b-48b; 9; 3-4. 66 IWSM TC 79: 11. 67 Ibid., TC 4: 25-26; see also John K. Fairbank, "The Early Treaty System," 270. 68 IWSM, TC 5: 33-36b; 5: 51-52; 6: 19b-20; 6: 30a-b. 69 Li Hung-chang, Letters to Friends, 1: 29. 70 Foreign Relations of the United States (1888), part 1, 211-217. 71 IWSM, TC 6: 17. 72 Ibid., TC 9; 3b. 73 Ibid., TC 9: 4. 74 Ching Wu and Chung Ting, eds., Wu Hsu tang-an chung ti T'al-p'ing r'ien-kuo shih-liao hsüan-chi [Selections of historical materials concerning the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Wu Hsu's archives] (Peking, 1958), 128-129, 75 See Martin Ring, "The Burgevine Case and Extrality in China, 1863-1866," Papers on China 20 (1969). In mid-1863, Prince Kung requested that Burgevine be expunged from the Chinese population register. See IWSM, TC 17: 136 and 20b. 76 Ring, 145-146, 156 note 70. 77 IWSM, TC 10: 46-49. 78 Ibid., TC 10: 50a-b. 79 Ibid., TC 15: 10b-11. 80 I have discussed this combination in Ward, Gordon and the Ever Victorious Army. For some indications of Li's approach, consult J. O. P. Bland, Li Hung-chang (New York, 1917); I. C. Cheng, Chinese Sources for the Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864 (Hong Kong, 1963), 120-132; Gordon Papers (British Museum), Ad. Mss. 53, 386, Robert Hart to Charles Gordon, October 7, 1863. 81 See, for example, Feng Kuei-fen's Hsien-chih-r'ang chi [Collected essays from the Hall of Manifest Aspirations] (1876), 6: 46. 82 IWSM, TC 22; 3b; 24: 29a-b; 25: 27b-28b; 27: 28-29. On Gordon's return to China in 1880 to assist Li during the so-called Ili Crisis, consult Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, "Gordon in China, 1880," Pacific Historical Review 30.2 (May, 1964). 83 See Kuo T'ing-i, Taiping t'ien-kuo shih-shih jih-chih (A daily record of historical events of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom] (Taipei, 1963), appendix, 165-167. 84 See Smith, "Foreign-Training". 85 See Mary Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-Chih Restoration, 1862-1874 (New York, 1967), 216; IWSM, TC 16; 11; 39; 22-29; 70: 38a-b and 41-42b; 85: 39a-b; 87; 31, 34-35. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 312 NOTES AND QUERIES The Deputy Commander at Taipang was the highest ranking officer in the locality of Kowloon during the Ch'ing Dynasty. At that time, the headquarters was set up within the Kowloon Walled City. This office, which also served as a garrison, still existed before the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, but had been converted into a Home for the Aged run by a Catholic Mission. In accordance with the [Kwangtung] military system adopted in Ch'ing Dynasty, there were altogether 6 battalions of armed forces under the Kowloon garrison commander. The reason why the Kowloon headquarters was named the Taipang Garrison is that the geographical name of Kowloon was once alternatively called Taipang Shan (⚟) and was politically under the sovereignty of Po On (then San On) District Magistracy.* Besides, there is also a very good harbour by the name of Taipang Bay located at the southeastern part of Po On District and east of Kowloon. In Taipang harbour the water runs to 5-10 fathoms deep where large warships can cast anchor. It was partly due to the importance of local coastal defence and partly due to the necessity of civil administration that such a garrison was established at Taipang Bay. The post of Deputy Commander was normally held in a 3 years' term; and among all the previous commanders, General Cheung was the most important in terms of historical significance. Cheung Yuk-tong, alias Hon-sang,† was born in Wei Yeung District, Kwangtung, and for many generations the Cheung's family lived in the Peach Garden in the capital town of the Wai Yeung District. In the 4th year of Hsien Feng (A.D.) (1853) he was appointed as Deputy Commander at Taipang, being promoted from staff officer at the Chin Shan Checkpoint [near Macao]. For four successive tours of service, in all a total of 13 years Gen. Cheung had been holding this post, and in those days the local inhabitants enjoyed a very peaceful time. It was not until the 5th year of Tung-chih reign (1866) that General Cheung retired from the military service at the age of 72. When the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula was ceded to Britain as a consequence of the signing of the Peking Treaty he was still in office. As the Treaty was signed by the Imperial Court, *This is not so, but the Taipang garrison force served in and controlled Kowloon and district. Except where stated footnotes are supplied by James Hayes. † ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q STUDY OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINA & JAPAN 19 of the army hindered the growth of nationalistic sentiment among Chinese soldiers. Locally raised, armed, and trained, most Chinese troops had little sense of national identification.44 The great majority of Chinese soldiers remained illiterate and uninformed. Not surprisingly, the Chinese military contributed little bureaucratic talent to the civil sector. In fact, the Manchus actively discouraged this tendency. With few notable exceptions (e.g., Liu Ming-ch'uan), the Ch'ing government avoided the appointment of military men to high posts in the bureaucracy. Throughout the nineteenth century, the virtually unchanged civil service examination system remained the accepted channel of bureaucratic mobility. Only after the Sino-Japanese War did this begin to change.45 The Ch'ing military did nothing to promote social change. Indeed, it tended to reflect the least modern aspects of Chinese society. Even in the new-style armies of Li Hung-chang and others, personal ties of blood, friendship, or local affinity often counted for more than expertise, thus helping to militate against the introduction of new ideas and influences.46 There is no evidence to suggest that the Chinese military contributed significantly to urbanization or to the cultural transformation of Chinese soldiers. Although some troops received exposure to limited Western influences through contact with foreign instructors or temporary residence in treaty port areas, the lifestyle of most Chinese soldiers changed imperceptively. Manchu troops remained isolated in Banner garrisons, and Chinese troops continued to wear Chinese uniforms and the Manchu-imposed queue. Ch'ing military forces ate Chinese food, lived in Chinese housing, and often even reverted to Chinese-style weapons.47 The existence of widespread corruption and opium smoking, coupled with the lack of modern medical and other facilities, neither improved the living conditions of the average Chinese soldier nor altered his expectations.48 The disastrous effects of the Sino-Japanese War on China are too well-known to require elaboration.49 Ironically, however, Japan contributed substantially to China's military modernization and political transformation in the post-war era, providing large numbers of advisers and instructors, as well as a variety of educational opportunities for Chinese students in Japan.50 Mutatis mutandis, we may say that Japan in late nineteenth century China ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG 31 371,000 Teochiu in Hong Kong in that year (1971 Census). All "official" Teochiu estimates of the total Teochiu population suggest that the census figure is considerably too low. Various Teochiu associations have estimated that there are as many as one million Teochiu (Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce, 1971:105; Chiu Chow Cultural and Educational Association, 1974:125). If this is an accurate estimate, then between 20 to 25% of the total population is Teochiu. This figure is most probably, however, an overestimate and the true figure probably lies somewhere between the government figure and the Teochiu estimate. Whatever the actual number of Teochiu, they are the second largest ethnic group in Hong Kong, Cantonese being the largest. It is difficult to outline the pre-World War II history of Teochiu in Hong Kong in that there are few written sources aside from brief statements in Teochiu publications. The major source of information is thus the recollections of older Teochiu who lived in Hong Kong prior to World War II. It is clear that the largest portion of Teochiu lived and worked in Nam Pak Hong (南沛行 at #5), a triangular area of several blocks in what is now Western District. This area was the location of the earliest import-export trading firms after the establishment of the Colony in 1842. Many of these firms were owned by Teochiu and although there appear to be no records indicating the extent of Teochiu control in the early entrepôt trade, Teochiu informants suggest that many of the firms in Nam Pak Hong were Teochiu. The success of these early firms, some of which are still in existence, is in large part due to what must have been a very rapid development of commercial ties with Teochiu businessmen in Thailand, other areas in Southeast Asia and Swatow.1 It can be assumed that many of the Teochiu and perhaps a majority, who came to Hong Kong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did so in order to participate in and to extend the regional Teochiu commercial networks. A Teochiu publication discusses the biography of an important Teochiu businessman who came to Hong Kong in 1842. This man had emigrated from his home district in 1 Swatow was the second largest town in Teochiu in the 1800s and not very important commercially, but quickly became the centre of commercial and industrial development after it was opened as a treaty port in 1858. It later became the administrative centre for Teochiu and is still the administrative centre today. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG 33 between Hong Kong and Thailand was at its height during two periods of several years following the two World Wars. Teochiu import/export firms trading with Thailand established a commercial association in 1946 (Hung, 1961:4). In the 1920s there were at least 21 Teochiu firms involved in trade with Singapore, and in 1930 these firms established a commercial association which by 1951 had 41 member firms (Hung, 1961:2). Teochiu trade between Hong Kong and Vietnam began in the last years of the Ch'ing Dynasty and became substantial in 1914, apparently as a result of World War I. This trading gradually increased until the involvement of the U.S. in the war of liberation at which time the importation of goods into Vietnam from China ceased. This drastically curtailed the importing activities of Teochiu firms in Hong Kong exporting Chinese commodities to Vietnam (Hung, 1961:7). After the opening of Swatow as a treaty port in 1858, Teochiu firms in Hong Kong became active in importing Teochiu products from there and then re-exporting them to Southeast Asia, primarily for Teochiu consumption. In 1946 there were at least 20 firms involved in such trading and by 1948 about 100. Many of these were evidently forced out of business or into other areas of business after 1949, although there were still about 20 firms still involved in Swatow/Southeast Asian trading during the 1950s. These firms were evidently forced to operate with a very low profit margin (Hung, 1961:8). Immediately prior to World War II there were perhaps 20,000 Teochiu in Hong Kong, many living in Western District. During the 1930s, however, some Teochiu began to move over to the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon, particularly Haiphong, Hankow and Canton Roads (Lee, 1969:55). Many of these people were employed as coolies in the Kowloon Godown, which still today employs predominantly Teochiu laborers. Most, however, were forced to move out of the area after World War II with the commercial and tourist development of Tsim Sha Tsui. Another area of Teochiu concentration prior to World War II was in the hills around Kowloon Walled City where Teochiu squatters raised pigs and poultry (Lee, 1969:56). This early concentration was undoubtedly a factor in the later heavy concentration of Teochiu in Kowloon City in the 1950s and 1960s. By 1961, according to the government census, there were 257,319 Teochiu in Hong Kong and by 1971 the figure ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881 93 successful in negotiating a Reciprocity Treaty effective in 1876. This gave Hawaii and the United States duty-free trade with each other. For Hawaii, it meant that sugar and rice, the principal agricultural products exported to America in that period, brought about an era of prosperity to the islands. Hawaii, since its chance discovery by the English explorer, Capt. James Cook, in 1778 in his search for a Northwest passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic, advanced rapidly from a primitive, feudal state into a stable monarchy under Anglo-American tutelage. Beginning with King Kamehameha I in 1795, King Kalakaua was the seventh ruler of this tiny kingdom in the central Pacific Ocean, which is over 2,000 miles from San Francisco and 5,000 miles from Hong Kong. By 1898, Hawaii was annexed as a United States territory until 1959 when Hawaii became the fiftieth state of the American Union. Early relations between China and Hawaii started soon after Capt. Cook's discovery in 1778. American and European trading vessels passed by Hawaii on their way to the Pearl River estuary. The sandalwood trade from Hawaii to China flourished from 1790-1840. To the Chinese in the Canton-Macao area, the Hawaiian Islands became known as Tan Heung Shan #2 or Sandalwood Mountains. By the time of King Kalakaua's reign, the Pearl River delta area furnished the principal labor supply for Hawaii's agricultural development and Hong Kong had become the principal port of departure. In 1864, the Hawaiian government started to take an active part by establishing a Bureau of Immigration. The ending of the American Civil War (1861-1865) affected the sugar market favorably for Hawaii. Dr William Hillebrand, newly appointed Commissioner of Immigration, went to Hong Kong and other areas in the Far East in 1865 in search for labor suitable to Hawaii's burgeoning sugar plantations. With the help of the Reverend Wilhelm Lobscheid and the Chinese emigration agency, Wo Hang *, Hillebrand carefully selected 521 Chinese laborers, including ninety-five women and thirteen children, They left Hong Kong in two single-deck ships, the Alberto and Roscote, arriving in Honolulu on September 23 and October 12, 1865.2 Chinese labor, both under contract or as free immigrants, contributed greatly to the agricultural economy of Hawaii. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA 165 boats as far as Bhamo, and then partly by land and partly by water into China. Other exports were amber, ivory, precious stones, betel nuts, and edible birds' nests; while in return Burma got raw and wrought silk, velvet, gold leaf, preserves, and chinaware. Similar reports came from other sources. By 1850, the possibility of extending trade from Yunnan into Szechwan was envisaged, and the glowing prospect of an extensive market for British goods in West China became an obsession among many British officials and merchants in Burma and India. Captain McLeod's mission of 1836 is the first official British attempt to find an overland route to China. McLeod went from Moulmein, the port in the newly acquired province of Tenasserim, via Kungtang to Kenghang, a Shan state on the border of China. Here he failed to get permission to enter Yunnan, being told that if the British wanted to trade with China they should go to Canton, and that if he still persisted in wanting to enter Yunnan he would require official permission from Peking. McLeod had to admit defeat, and turned back. After this came a succession of other ventures from Assam and Burma, all—for one reason or another—failures. These culminated in the famous and ill-fated Dual Mission of 1874-75, which led to the Margary Affair.* This was a joint attempt to explore West China from the Burmese and Chinese sides. Previous to this the only important attempts to find a route between Burma and China from the eastern side had been Captain Blakiston's in 1861 and T. T. Cooper's in 1868. The Royal Navy's expedition of 1861 which went up the Yangtze to establish the first treaty ports on the great river—Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow—continued 153 miles beyond Hankow to Yochow. Here they transferred Blakiston's party to junks in which they continued for another 1050 miles to Pingshan, nearly 1800 miles from the sea and 400 miles above Chungking. It had been intended to follow the Yangtze to its source in Tibet, and then cross the Himalayas into India. Because of unsettled political conditions at Pingshan and beyond, however, they were forced to turn back; but they had obtained valuable information about the Middle and Upper Yangtze. See pp. 169-170 below. Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 170 A. D. BLUE days later rumours of an ambush by Chinese and Shan tribesmen led to Margary deciding to go in advance as scout, and he left the main party on 19th February with five Chinese companions. Three days later word came back that he had been murdered at Manwyne, with rumours that 4,000 Chinese troops were on their way to annihilate the whole expedition. Before Browne had time to recover from this blow, the camp was attacked by an advance guard of the Chinese force, but was beaten off by the Sikh and Burmese soldiers. Next day confirmation of Margary's murder came from the King of Burma's commercial agent at Bhamo, and on 20th February Browne's whole expedition retraced its steps to Mandalay and Rangoon. Margary's murder, and deteriorating relations between the British and the King of Burma, prevented further expeditions from Burma; but ironically led to further progress on the Yangtze, Sir Thomas Wade, British Minister at Peking, took advantage of the Chinese government's failure to protect Margary to press for further trade relaxations, and the result was the Chefoo Convention of 1876 between Wade and Viceroy Li Hung-chang. This provided for the opening of five more ports to foreign trade, and of the 400 miles of the Middle Yangtze to foreign shipping. Among the new treaty ports was Ichang, located at the upper end of the Middle Yangtze and 400 miles below Chungking, the main port of Szechwan. When the Convention was ratified in 1885, a supplementary clause provided for Chungking to become a treaty port; but not for free navigation on the 400 miles of the Upper Yangtze between Ichang and Chungking. This was granted after the Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan on the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. More than ten years before this, however, the remarkable Archibald Little had appeared on the Yangtze scene. Little began his career as a tea taster in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon started up business on his own. He was attracted to the possibilities of trade in Szechwan and West China, and fascinated by the problems posed by steam navigation through the famous gorges of the Upper Yangtze. He made a trip by junk from Ichang to Chungking in 1883 to investigate trade and navigational prospects, and in 1887 attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking, by the Kuling. This was a Clyde built stern-wheeler of 450 tons ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA 175 the Upper Yangtze-eight British, seven American, three Chinese, six French, five Italian, and three Japanese. Political troubles, however, had forced the pioneering Szechwan Steamship Company out of business in 1920. During the previous few years its Shutung and Shuhun had so often been forced to carry troops for the different war lords as to make their operations uneconomic. After 1920 the Chinese flag was flown by the China Merchants Steam Navigation and the Ming Steamship Company, both of whom seemed more able to accommodate themselves to the political changes. Captain Plant, however, was still active on the Upper Yangtze, but in a different capacity. He had left the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company in 1913 to become River Inspector in the Chinese Maritime Customs, and his work was one of the factors contributing to the development of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze in the early 1920s. There was a period during the brief heyday of the Kuomintang government between 1927 and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when shipping on the Upper Yangtze almost settled into a regular pattern. Probably 1928 was the peak year, when there were seventy small steamers in regular service between Ichang and Chungking; the smallest about thirty tons and the largest just over 1,000 tons. The average time between Ichang and Chungking was three days, as against an average of a month by junk. Britain had fifteen ships of 5,357 tons; China twenty-six of 3,672 tons; and America eleven of 2,934 tons. Losses, however, were heavy. Several of the smaller companies were forced out of business, some selling their ships to the China Navigation Company. In this manner, the latter acquired the famous Loong Mow in 1923, which was renamed Wanliu I, and the Alice Dollar in 1926, which was renamed Wantung. This company also built six ships at Yarrows on the Clyde between 1922 and 1926. These included the Wanhsien, 210 feet long with a loaded draft of eight feet and reciprocating engines of 3,000 indicated horsepower, the most powerful ship on the Upper Yangtze; two turbine steamers of less than half this tonnage, the Kiating and the Kintang, for the low water season; and two small motor ships, the Siushan and Suiting, of 296 gross tons for the Top River above Chungking. British shipping was supreme on the Upper Yangtze for the last few years of the treaty port era, since political troubles hampered ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA 177 Although British commercial shipping operations on the Yangtze and on the China coast came to an end in 1940, the official death knell came in 1943. On the 11th January of that year China concluded new treaties, on a basis of equality and reciprocity, with Britain and the United States. This ended the period of the 'Unequal Treaties', the 'treaty port' era which had started with the 1842 Treaty of Nanking between Britain and China. Not only British shipping in Chinese waters, but significant British and Western influence in China on the former pattern came to an end with the treaties of 1943. Looking back, and with some measure of hindsight, it is evident that there was no solid commercial basis for West China providing an expanding market for British industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All the Western countries concerned with the China trade failed to appreciate the self-sufficiency and poverty of China's predominantly peasant population. Although Szechwan was considered a prosperous province, neighbouring Yunnan was sparsely populated and poverty-stricken, and much of its reputed mineral wealth was nearing exhaustion when Europeans first heard of it. As on the coast, and on the Lower Yangtze, the success of British shipping depended on established domestic trades, some of which it stimulated further. Two economic activities which expanded greatly on the Upper Yangtze during the latter years of the treaty port era were the Chinese passenger trade between the treaty ports, and the import of kerosene; while an important export from Szechwan was tung oil, a valuable wood oil used in the manufacture of high-quality paints and varnishes. The motives of the British effort to open up West China to British trade may be questioned by some today; but the courage, determination, and ingenuity displayed by British merchants and sailors are still worthy of admiration. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 MILITARY EDUCATION IN CHINA, 1842-1895 29 the Yalu River in mid-September, 1894, China and Japan each had twelve ships, but the encounter was no contest. China's problem was less the quality of her ships than the lack of an effective command structure, poor communications, cowardice (on the part of Liu Pu-ch'an), poor training, and ammunition shortages." Chinese firing was comparatively effective, especially in the early stages of the fighting, but too often the shells were faulty. At Wei-hai-wei, in early 1895, the situation was even more grim. By this time, the war had been lost, and Chinese naval forces were completely demoralized, even mutinous.92 China's use of foreign talent could not remedy her military deficiencies. Unlike the Japanese, who succeeded in eliminating reliance on foreigners entirely by the outbreak of the war, the Chinese were forced to continue using them on both land and sea. A surprising number served, in spite of the existence of various neutrality ordinances and foreign enlistment acts.93 At one point, the Ch'ing government even contemplated establishing an army of 100,000 Chinese troops under 2,000 foreign officers—an effort, in the words of the North-China Herald to "re-create an Ever-Victorious Army” under Constantin von Hanneken.94 Predictably, however, the plan met heavy opposition from Ch'ing officials, including Li Hung-chang, and it was never implemented.95 In all, the Sino-Japanese War was a disaster for China. Yet there were optimistic voices to be heard even in the midst of China's despair. The journalist, Wang T'ao—as shocked as anyone by Japan's sudden victory—undoubtedly spoke for many reform-minded Chinese in expressing the hope that defeat by the Japanese would finally shake China out of her lethargy. National humiliation was a prelude, he felt, to meaningful change, The alliance between Chinese nationalism and agitation for reform, was evident in many sectors of Chinese society during the first few years following the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The writings of newly-politicized Chinese intellectuals, as well as the publications of the burgeoning Chinese periodical press, reflected these related concerns.97 The immediate post-war era also witnessed the proliferation of Chinese reform associations and study groups. Even remote Szechwan was touched by the reform spirit. In late 1896, a group of gentry members issued a manifesto which called for the abolition of footbinding and argued with tortured but telling logic: "The present is no time of peace. Foreign women have natural feet, Page 30 is missing, actual page number in original text is "45" and "46" Page 45 Page 46 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 59 Serious measures were taken to change the whole social and political structure of the town. NOTES Preliminary note: Although the present paper is to a great extent based on fresh research, the following works have been of considerable use as they contain material about the government of the International Settlement: Feetham, Justice Richard: "Report to the Shanghai Municipal Council" 1931-1932. Johnstone, W.C.: "The Shanghai Problem", 1937. Jones, F.C.: "Shanghai and Tientsin", 1940. Kotenev, A.M.: "Shanghai, its Mixed Court and Council", 1925. Montalto de Jesus, C.A.: "Historic Shanghai", 1909. Port, F.L. Hawks: "A short history of Shanghai", 1928. 1 The International Settlement at Shanghai was formed in 1863 by the amalgamation of the original British Settlement (formed in 1845, but later increased in area) with the so-called American Settlement in the Hongkew area which had grown up without formal establishment in the 1850s, and early 1860s, and which had been formally recognised by the Chinese earlier in 1863. The French Settlement (formed in 1849) always remained separate from the International Settlement. Outside the area of the foreign settlements lay the old Chinese city and suburbs: these remained under Chinese rule, and became subject to the Greater Shanghai Municipality when that was set up by the Chinese authorities in 1927. * Cf also Treaty of the Bogue, article VII, "ground and houses, the rent of which is to be fairly and equitably arranged for, shall be set apart by the local officers in communication with the Consul." 3 Population figures for intermediate years are, 1,666 foreigners and 75,047 Chinese in 1870, and 6,774 foreigners and 345,276 Chinese in 1900. Of the 13,536 foreigners resident in 1910, 4,465 were British, 940 Americans and 3,361 Japanese. Of the 38,940 foreigners resident in 1935 no fewer than 20,242 were Japanese, as against 6,596 British and 2,015 Americans. + * Text of the 1845 Land Regulations (LR) is in Shanghai Almanac 1853. It is not too fanciful to suppose that persons willing to move to as remote a place as Shanghai in the 1840s were likely to be particularly strongly imbued with the contemporary belief in individualism, with its consequent hatred of despotism and paternalism; this almost certainly assisted in the speedy breakdown of the 1845 Land Regulations to something far more individualistic in tone. • North China Herald (NCH) 30.7.1853. * J.H. Haan: "De opkomst van de International Settlement te Shanghai 1845-1865. Een historisch — politicologische analyse" ("The rise of the International Settlement at Shanghai. A historical-political analysis"), unpublished manuscript University of Amsterdam, 1977; chapter II. Cited as Haan "Shanghai". Cf NCH 22.7.1854; text of draft LR in NCH 30.7.1853, 27.8.1853; final version in 8.7.1854. NCH 22.4.1865. 10 NCH 17.3.1866. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p NOTES AND QUERIES 293 The final happy twist to this story is that the Foreign firm which took over Welsh's contract for Cassia, thus restoring the good name of the foreigners, was almost certainly Herton's. Earlier in Piry's report he wrote: "Messrs. RUSSELL & CO's steamer Hainan will be remembered here as having proved the means of breaking the ice in Pakhoi. She made her first appearance here on the 28th of September, with a Foreign merchant on board". As we have seen above, the Hainan came to Pakhoi especially to fetch the consignment of Cassia, and the Foreign merchant on board was equally probably Mr. Herton, perhaps come to take up residence as indicated by Stronach. What use, if any, William Keswick made of the two letters has not been ascertained. It is of interest, however, to note that soon after Russell's Hainan inaugurated the Hong Kong - Pakhoi run, Jardine, Matheson's Conquest began to include Pakhoi on her Hong Kong -- Haiphong route. H. A. RYDINGS NOTES The large collection of China Maritime Customs publications in the Library of the University of Hong Kong were donated by the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce in 1937. William Keswick was at one time Chairman of the Chamber. When the letters were found in the 1879 volume it was unfortunately not noticed between which pages they had been left, but it is probable that it was at the beginning of the report from Pakhoi. * Contained in Great Britain, Foreign Office, Embassy and consular archives: China: correspondence (F.O.228), now in the Public Record Office, London: microfilm in the University of Hong Kong Library. Correspondence on the Herton claim is in vols. 612, 630 and 654. 4. Transit passes were instituted under the Treaty of Tientsin, 1858, in Article XXVIII of which it is stated: "It shall be at the option of any British subject, desiring to convey produce purchased inland to a port, or to convey imports from a port to an inland market, to clear his goods of all transit duties, by payment of a single charge. The amount of this charge shall be leviable on exports at the first barrier they may have to pass, or, on imports, at the port at which they are landed; and on payment thereof, a certificate shall be issued, which shall exempt the goods from all further inland charges whatsoever." (Hertslet's Treaties, &c., between Great Britain and China, London, 1908, v.1, p. 27-8). Hai-An (M) is the port on the mainland opposite to Kiungchow, Page 315 Page 316 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p BOOK REVIEWS 311 from 5 million Shanghai, despite its recent prolific growth to 1 million in recent years straddling along the banks of the Huangpu river is, for the visitor, the oldest Treaty Port of China. The tourist does not see and probably is not particularly interested in seeing the ring of satellite suburbs around the commercial city of the 1930's. Shanghai is, for the traveller, the mile long Bund with the famous landmark of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building, the former Cathay Hotel (now the Peace Hotel), the British consular gardens and the famous Shanghai Club (now the Dong Feng Hotel whose notorious long bar room is now used for wedding receptions). And, even though the Nanking Road does not exactly convey the excitement of the heady decadent atmosphere of the night club haunts of the champagne-swilling, déraciné White Russian dance hostesses of the Bubbling Well Road of the 1930s; nevertheless, even today, one can still buy the cream cakes and coffee in the cafés and cake shops of the area houses of consumerism among the deserts of the Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 departmental stores of the socialist regime. The outstanding merit of this book is that it is much more than a guide to the tourist wishing to find the whereabouts of the old landmarks of Shanghai. In fact, it is a very attractive presentation of the well-known (e.g. the life of luxury) and of the lesser-known (e.g. the intellectual and political life) aspects of Shanghai's social history in the modern period. The style is simple and clear and the balance of the treatment of subjects is perfect. (Consider for instance, the account of Shanghai's contributors to the Chinese film industry. This gives an extra dimension to Laida's history of the Chinese cinema and its thesis of the silver screen as the projection of Chinese politics.) Finally, reading this nostalgic and informative re-creation of Old Shanghai makes me, at least, wish that the same kind of thing could be done for Hong Kong. But, probably, we shall have to wait till after 1997 for that suitable opportunity to recapture the essence of a city, when progress and change comes ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 209 ed April 15, 1865. In the biographies roman figures, as above, will be used to distin-guish these committees. 2. Social Committees Despite the pressure of work during part of the year and in spite also of some claims that the treaty ports were a social and cultural desert, Shanghai could boast a fair number of clubs and charitable institutions. Below I give some elementary details about those that crop up more than once in the biographies. a. British Episcopal Church The official Anglican Church was very early established in Shang-hai; in 1847 the first Trinity Church was built, to be replaced by a new one in 1866-1869. b. Chinese Hospital Founded in 1846 by the London Missionary Society with non-mission funds; trustees supervised the activities of the hospital, which was for Chinese only. c. North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS) Originated in 1857 as the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society, renamed the NCBRAS in 1859, temporarily suspended in 1861 to be resuscitated in 1864. d. Recreation Fund A fund that was formed in 1863 through the sale of the ground within the second racecourse (to the east of the new one at Bub-bing Well Road). In order to administer this fund a committee was formed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 120 D.L. MICHALK Taxes levied on imports were just as crippling since the rates were fixed according to the size of the vessel that ferried the goods to Hainan, regardless of the value of the wares it carried. This meant that because the greatest profits were obtained from luxury goods such as expensive furniture, fine silks, silver vases and gold-en hairpins for the privileged rich, these imports took precedence over cargoes of livestock, cooking pots and bags of rice which returned negligible profits (Schafer, 1969). The lack of necessities of life led the poet Su Shih to lament in verse that a "grain of rice was like a pearl”. Enticed by an abundance of rich cargoes, bands of pirates formed and pillaged, almost unchecked, shipping along the entire southern seaboard of China. The problem reached such epidemic proportions in the seventeenth century as to preclude safe navigation on the open sea between the east coast of Hainan and the mouth of the Pearl River (Mayers, 1872). The only secure trade route between the mainland and Hainan was to cross the narrow straits which separate the island from the Leichow Peninsula with strong military escort and thence, trek overland to the provincial capital, at quickest a journey taking one month. As a consequence, commerce virtually ceased and Hainan was immersed again in the poverty and deprivation for which it was noted in medieval times (Schafer, 1969). Denied their source of revenue, pirates turned their ravages landward, and repeatedly sacked towns and villages in the north and east of the island, in spite of the presence of Imperial garrisons (Mayers, 1872). Although the destruction in 1684 of the pirate kingdom in Taiwan restored safe navigation to the Guangdong coast, Hainan still remained a haven for buccaneers, and pillage continued almost unabated until the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was the combination of a growth in foreign shipping interests in China, the use of steam power in ships and the opening of a treaty port in Hainan, which led to the demise of piracy as a lucrative pastime in the South China Sea. Although the Chinese had previously established rudimentary navies such as the "Sea-Patrolling Water Army" (Hsun-hai shui-chun) to control piracy (K’iungchow fu chih, 1920 ed.), it was the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 121 British Navy stationed at Hong Kong which eradicated free-booting from the China coast. Equipped with the newest steam gun-boats designed for navigation in shallow water, the British commenced a blitz on piracy in 1863, and in a short period rousted the privateers from their haunts in Hainan's shallow river estuaries. To prevent a revival of piracy, the Guangdong provincial government was provided with similar gunboats officered by Englishmen, to patrol the waters surrounding Hainan, Restoration of trade The quashing of piracy led to a rapid restoration of trade between Hainan and the mainland, which in turn, aroused for the first time the interest of foreign merchants in this unknown island which had previously been dismissed as merely a sanctuary for pirates and banditti. This interest resulted in the opening of K'iungchow as a treaty port in 1876 and the development of a thriving trade with Hong Kong. A steamer link with the British colony was established and Hainan produce was ferried on the regular service. Raw sugar, vegetable oils and livestock (cattle, pigs, ducks, chickens and frogs) were the chief exports, while betel nut, copra, rattan, sisal hemp, hides, tallow, medical herbs and incense timber were shipped in small quantities (Henry, 1886; Moninger, 1919). Unfortunately, Hainan did not escape the baneful effects of opium which became the island's principal import (Henry, 1886), its use being justified in warding off the deadly malaria endemic throughout the island (Swinhoe, 1872a). With the flurry of business activity, companies formed with foreign and Cantonese capital mushroomed everywhere in Hainan, each striving to secure as large a share as possible of the agricultural and mineral resources of the island. Unfortunately, Hainan did not surrender its untapped wealth easily, and the harshness of the tropical climate sent most enterprises quickly into bankruptcy. Those that did succeed were large, well-financed operations such as the K'iu Hing Kunz Sz, a large plantation near Nada involved in the production of rubber, coffee and tobacco (McClure, 1922). Even this company with over 20,000 rubber trees and 300,000 mature coffee bushes experienced hardship mainly caused by labour shortages, although these may have been ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 123 two. Foreigners in the land Although the opening of Hainan to foreign trade led to an influx of westerners to open business houses and man the British, German and French consulates that were installed in Haikou soon after the treaty port proclamation, they were not the first foreigners to penetrate Hainan. This honour belongs to gallant Roman Catholic priests who took up residence on Hainan almost 300 years before, although undoubtedly even these priests were preceded by unknown sailors from foreign vessels marooned by typhoons on the "Shore of Pearls". The first Jesuit padre known definitely to enter Hainan was Father Gago who was shipwrecked in 1560 on the southern coast (Madrolle, 1898), and spent five months at San Ya before he could secure passage to Macau (Dehergne, 1940). However, it was not until the arrival of the Portuguese Jesuits, Pierre Marquez in 1632 and Benoit de Matos in 1635, that a church was established in K'iungchow (Pfister, 1932). By 1637, there were four churches with a total membership exceeding one thousand which included some high officials such as Wang Hung-hui, a former emissary to Peking, and his son, Paul (Pfister, 1932; Dunne, 1962). 2 Through persecution and plagues, a succession of priests from Portugal, France, Italy and Germany, superintended the growing mission for more than a half century until 1665 when Jesuits were banished from China (Dehergne, 1940). After the priests were expelled, church property was seized and converted into Taoist temples, two of which were still standing in the late nineteenth century (Swinhoe, 1872a). Little remains today of this influence, although as late as 1919, the Roman Catholic cemetery in K'iungchow was still intact, albeit neglected, and the epitaphs of at least three priests buried in the 1680's could still be deciphered (Moninger, 1919). The number of tombs of respectable people is evidence of the large following the Jesuits had established in Hainan (Henry, 1886). Between 1673 and 1725, priests returned to Hainan to continue ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 157 Hongkong. In November 1842, the Morrison Education Society School had moved over from Macau. After some months it occupied its newly built quarters on what became known as Morrison Hill. The society had been organised after Dr. Robert Morrison's death by the merchants of Canton to honour his memory. Recognising his intense interest in education for the Chinese, the society was devoted to this purpose. Dr. Legge welcomed the idea of a merger with the Morrison Education Society School. He realised that he would not be able to bring many students to Hongkong from Malacca, that it would be costly to build a school building and that its administration would make a heavy demand on his time. The London Missionary Society held a conference in Hongkong in August 1843, to discuss strategy now that Hongkong and six ports in China were open to foreign residence. Among the topics discussed was the future of the Anglo Chinese College. There were a variety of opinions expressed. Some wished to turn it into a theological school to train church workers, thus abandoning the liberal and open policy laid down by Dr. Morrison. An article in the Colonial Gazette advocated the reorganisation of the school on broad principles, suggesting it should provide instruction “in the useful and ornamental arts, the sciences, and above all medicine.” Some of the missionaries thought the best location for the school would be on Chinese soil. If the school was at a Treaty Port, there would be a better class from which to draw students. There would also be a more abundant supply of qualified scholars to teach Chinese language and literature. Hongkong at this time had no settled respectable Chinese, let alone literati. The idea was soon abandoned when Sir Henry Pottinger, the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 181 It also mentioned difficulties encountered by Chinese students in schools conducted by foreigners during the Opium War. A-chick wrote: “Mr. Brown is the best teacher that I know in my life, and his school is too. In this part of the country I think there is no such school as his. "Here there is a school for Deaf and Dumb in New York. But if Chinese were so, he would not learn anything, neither how to read nor write, until he died. "When school first formed had five boys - after about nine months some went home, because English were at war with China. Afterwards eldest of them whose name was A-ling went home, because he did a very bad thing and committed a great sin against God, as in the law of Moses and the prophets. "A-tseuk was taken home by his father. One day, as the English were fighting with the Chinese, his father came to Mr. Brown's school and wanted to take A-tseuk home. On the same day Mr. Brown was not at home. Then he wished to take him back without asking Mr. Brown. But A-tseuk wouldn't go, and his father gave him a flogging and he cried, and after about an hour they went. Next morning, father came and wanted to take his things home, when Mr. Brown saw him he rebuked him and he went home. "Now in this school our teacher has appointed a monitor to keep the boys still when the teacher is out, and the school in order, and they ring the bell to call the boys into study their lessons and say them to the teacher." The letter shows that A-chick had made good progress in English after two years' study. A year and a half after writing it, he was qualified to serve as an interpreter. In 1842 the Treaty of Nanking was signed and the British were granted the right to trade at six treaty ports. This privilege meant ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 31 - fort was built at the head of the beach.' Its strategic, administrative and economic position remained relatively insignificant until the British occupied Hong Kong Island in 1841. In 1843, after the ratification of the Treaty of Nanking, the hsün-chien (Assistant Magistrate) of the Hsin-an county, with administrative responsibilities for 491 villages, was transferred there.2 Also transferred there was the Commodore of Ta-p'eng, the chief military officer of the county, and the garrison was increased to 150.3 It soon became apparent that these measures were not enough. In 1846, Ch'i-ying, the Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, further memorialized the imperial court pointing out the exposed position of the site, and suggested constructing a “walled-city” (tsai-ch'eng) mounted with cannon. He also proposed building offices and barracks, not only to provide accommodations for the civil and military personnel who had hitherto been billeted in private homes, but also facilities for drilling. Such measures, he felt, would have a “constraining effect” on the barbarian base in Hong Kong, and would greatly strengthen the coastal defence of the area. The wall was completed in 1847, and the “Kowloon Walled City" came into being. Reports on the dimensions of the wall varied. As described by James Stewart Lockhart, who reconnoitred the newly leased territory in 1898, it formed a rough parallelogram measuring 700 ft. by 400 ft., enclosing an area of 6.5 acres. It was built of granite ashlar facing, 15 ft. in width at the top, and averaged 13 ft. in height. There were six watch towers and four gateways, with doors of wood lined with iron sheeting. Officially the main gate was the South Gate over which the four characters “Chiu-lung tsai-ch'eng” (Kowloon Walled City) were engraved, but it seems that the East Gate, which opened onto the market place, saw the most traffic. The parapet had 119 embrasures and an unknown number of cannon were mounted. At a later date, the wall was extended from the northern corners up the hill behind, forming the apex of a triangle at the top. The knoll, known both as White Crane Hill and Twin Phoenix Hill, had a number of romantic legends associated with it.4 With large boulders perched precariously on its slopes, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 14 Ibid., part 106. 15 Ibid., part 105. 43 16 Lockhart, p. 77; Hayes, p. 164. 17 13 For the Kowloon Street and its kaifong, see ibid., pp. 171-173. 18 See ibid., pp. 168-171; also Chiu-lung Luo-shan-t’ang pai-nien shih-shih HACKETT (One hundred years of the Lok Sin Tong) (Hong Kong, the lang, [1980]). 19 Peter Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty 1898-1997 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1980) pp. 19-20; Stanley F. Wright, Hong Kong and the Chinese Customs. China. The Maritime Customs. VI Inspector Series: no. 7 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspector-General of the Customs 1930), pp. 9-10. “Native” customs offices were handed over to the Inspector-General of Maritime Customs after the signing of the Hong Kong Opium Agreement in 1886. 20 See Faure et. al., vol. 1, p. 166, p. 251. 21 Siu, Chiu-lung ch'eng, p. 37. #1 23 24 25 Bowring to Grey, August 21, 1854, despatch 61: CO129/47. Krone, p. 116. Macdonnell to Buckingham, August 27, 1867, despatch #358: CO129/124. Jarrett, Vincent H.G. "Old Hong Kong”, vol. 2, p. 613. This is a series of articles on the history of Hong Kong taken from the South China Morning Post from June 17, 1933 to April 13, 1935, and re-arranged alphabetically by subject. A Xerox copy of copies typed from the original articles is deposited in four volumes at the University of Hong Kong Library. 26 Bowring to Grey, August 21, 1854, despatch 61. 27 W.J. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, 2 volumes (Hong Kong: Vetch & Lee, 1971; 1st published 1898) vol. 2, 423–429. Another case occurred in 1896 when a Chinese policeman was shot in Hong Kong. His murderer was arrested in Canton and brought to Kowloon City where he was beheaded. (John Luff, “The Hong Kong Police", China Mail, February 24, 1960). Macdonnell to Kimberley, April 3, 1872, despatch #976: CO129/157. 29 See Faure et. al., vol. 1, pp. 103, 114, 133. 30 The tablet is dated the first year of the Tung-chih reign, i.e. 1862. It is still in very good condition. 31 Newspaper cutting dated May 27, 1886, enclosed in Marsh to Granville, May 31, 1886, despatch #183: CO129/226. 32 3 Hua-tzu jih-pao #711, January 17 and 18, 1896. Daily Press, January 20, 1896. 34 Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, p. 17; The open nature of the gambling was also decried by the Hsun-huan jih-pao, December 17, 1885. 35 Norton-Kyshe, vol. 2, p. 423. 36 In fact gambling houses were re-opened as soon as Chinese officials departed from Kowloon, Blake to Chamberlain, August 18, 1899, in Great Britain, Colonial Office. Confidential Prints Eastern (Series 882) (hereafter CO882)/5, no. 66, p. 340. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 44 37 Krone, p. 132. 18 Bruce Shepherd, The Hong Kong Guide (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1982; 1st published, Shanghai, 1893) pp. 117-118; R.C. Hurley, Tourists' Map of 8 Short Trips on the Mainland of China (Neighbourhood of Hong Kong) including Principal Places frequented by Sportsmen (Hong Kong: R.C. Hurley, 1896) enclosed in Blake to Chamberlain, April 28, 1899, #107: CO129/290, p. 7. 39 Shepherd, p. 117. 40 The Convention is appended in Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, pp. 191-192. The negotiation of the Convention is dealt with in detail in the book. * Colonial Office draft telegram to Sir H.A. Blake, enclosed in Colonial Office to Foreign Office, April 27, 1899, despatch #130: CO882/5/66, p. 136. 42 Blake to Chamberlain, May 4, 1899, telegram: CO882/5/66, p. 140; Consul Mansfield to Bax-Ironside, April 20, 1899, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., July 13, 1899: ibid., p. 304. 43 Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, p. 73. 44 The Order-in-Council, dated 27th December, 1899, is appended in ibid., pp. 196-7. 45 T'an Wen-chin kung tsou-kao, XUSA (Memorials of Tan Chung-lin) 2 volumes, (Taipei: Ch'eng-wen Co., based on 1911 edition) vol. 2, 248-26a. 46 Translation of a telegram from the Tsungli Yamen, dated Peking May 20, 1899, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., May 22, 1899: CO882/5/66, p. 160. 47 Lo Feng-luh [sic] to the Marquess of Salisbury, October 17, 1899, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., October 28, 1899: CO882/5/66, p. 364; Lo Feng-luh to the Marquess of Salisbury, November 14, 1899, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., November 25, 1899: ibid., p. 369. Peel to Cunliffe-Lister, January 9, 1934, confidential: CO129/546. 49 Stubbs to Amery, June 26, 1925, despatch #275: CO129/488. 50 Sheng San-i l'ang tsuan-hsi t’e-k'an 1890-1965 ——A (Special bulletin to commemorate the diamond jubilee of the Holy Trinity Church, 1890-1965) (Hong Kong: the Church [1965]) p. 34. 51 Ibid., p. 33. 52 Ibid., p. 34. $3 $4 Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1901, p. 1401, Peel to Cunliffe-Lister, January 9, 1934, confidential; Chiang-shan ku-jen, "feng-t'u", parts 106-107. 55 Stubbs to Amery, June 26, 1925, despatch #275; Chiang-shan ku-jen, “Pen-ti feng-kuang" (Local sights) part 163. These are articles appearing in the Hua-ch'iao jih-pao in 1931 and an album of them is in the University of Hong Kong Library, Jarrett, vol. 3, p. 609. 56 Stubbs to Amery, June 26, 1925, despatch #275. 57 Peel to Cunliffe-Lister, January 9, 1934, confidential: C. Van Leo, “A Little bit of China in the Heart of Hong Kong", Hong Kong Telegraph, January 18, 1937. R.C. Hurley, Handbook to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong and Depen- 58 ¦ ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 45 dencies (Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, 1920) p. 130; S.H. Peplow and M. Barker, Around and About Hong Kong (2nd revised and enlarged edition, 1931), p. 10. 59 For example, Chao Chun-hao, Yueh-Kang-Ao tao-yu #5 (A guide to Canton, Hong Kong and Macao) (Shanghai: China Travel Agency, 1938) p. 58; Wen Te-chang. ii) Kuang-Chiu t'ieh-lu lu-hsing chih-nan Rířili (A guide to travel on the Canton-Kowloon Railway) (1922) p. 139; T'u yun-fuzli Hsiang-kang tao-yu fi (A guide to Hong Kong) (Shanghai: China Travel Agency, 1940) p. 15. 60 Chiang-shan ku-jen, “Feng-kuang”, part 163. This was a Mr. Liu T'ao §‡ who had descended from one of the original inhabitants of the City. In 1931, he was living in the K'uei-hsing ke. He had copied every inscription there was in the City for sale to visitors. 61 Jarrett, vol. 3, p. 611; "Report on the New Territories, 1899-1912”, Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1912, pp. 43-63, p. 47. 62 Hsing-che 1, "Lung-chin shih-ch'iao” ¡¡¡ (The Lung-chin bridge [jetty]) in Li Chin-wei $ (ed) Hsiang-kang pai-nien shih dred years of Hong Kong history) (Hong Kong, 1948) p. 93. #2(One hun- 63 John Stuart Thomson, The Chinese (London: T. Werner Laurie, Clifford's Inn, n.d.) p. 62; Jarrett, vol. 3, p. 611. Siu, Chiu-lung ch'eng, p. 38. Quoted by Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, p. 127; an interesting account of the City in the 1930s-50s is provided in Chapter 7. The Colonial Office file dealing with the removal problem in 1933-4 is CO129/546; for the Chinese side of the story, see Wu Pa-ning "Chiu-lung ch'eng chu-min san-t'u pei pi-ch’ien ching-kuo" JuffDWIDE-LOK MESA (An account of the three occasions on which residents of the Kowloon City were forcibly evicted) in Li Chin-wei, p. 89 and Chih-che IL “Chiu-lung ch'eng shih-chien ti chiao-she" ** (Negotiation over the Kowloon City incident) in ibid., pp. 98–101. ז' 1 Other secondary works on the subject include N.J. Miners, "A Tale of Two Walled Cities", Hong Kong Law Journal vol, 12; no. 2 (1982); Peter Wesley-Smith, "Forlorn, Forbidden and Forgotten: Kowloon's Walled City" Kaleidoscope vol. I: no. 3 (February, 1973) 26-33; Mike Davis, “Inside the Walled City” ibid., vol. IV; no. 6 (August, 1976) 5-11; Michael Chiang, "The Development of the Kowloon Walled City" (Student's thesis, School of Architecture, University of Hong Kong. 1979-80). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 146 The Chinese desire to have a consul in Hongkong was tied to the much larger problem of the opium trade. Hongkong had a special place in the trade. As a free port immediately next to the Chinese mainland, it was an excellent base for smuggling opium into China. The Chinese Government had for many years prohibited its importation. However, it reluctantly agreed to its legalisation by the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. There was the hope that, if legalised, China could better control the trade. A heavy duty was levied on it, however, and to avoid payment, large quantities continued to be smuggled from Hongkong in Chinese junks. The smuggling was difficult to control. Hongkong regarded it strictly as China's problem. It saw no reason why it should be responsible for its suppression. It was the peculiar situation of Hongkong that made enforcement by the Chinese difficult. In Hongkong there were ample storage facilities for the drug. The processed opium could be purchased from the Government opium monopolists. There was little difficulty in putting it aboard a junk in Hongkong and delivering it to agents somewhere along the coast or in an inland waterway. Two types of charges were levied on opium. There was the duty on goods imported in foreign vessels to the treaty ports. The Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs became responsible for collecting this. In addition, there were provincial levies called likin. These varied from province to province and were subject to change at the will of the provincial administrators. This is the background for the intermittent suggestion that a Chinese official be placed in Hongkong to supervise the collection of duties imposed by the Chinese upon goods shipped from Hongkong and thereby to check the blatant smuggling. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 148 grievance in regard to smuggled opium. The geographical position of Hongkong immediately adjacent to the coast of China made it difficult for China to control the contraband trade. To do so would require patrolling all the rugged coastline and its thousands of inlets and navigable streams, or, as an alternative, to place a cordon of Chinese ships around Hongkong. They could patrol within Chinese waters the entrances and exits of Hongkong. In view of the alternative, Sir Rutherford proposed that "it would seem reasonable that the Emperor of China should have the same right to appoint a consul to reside in Hongkong as all other Treaty Powers have, and to enjoy the same rights and exercise the same authority in matters connected with the trade of Chinese subjects as any other nation in treaty with Great Britain may claim in British Colonies." The proposal was received as worth consideration by the British Government and the item was put on the agenda for the formal negotiations regarding treaty revision which were to begin soon. It is not surprising that a cry of alarm arose in Hongkong over the suggestion. Sir Rutherford was a diplomat and not a trader. He viewed the problem as one to be resolved according to diplomatic usage. The Government officials in Hongkong were eager to protect its commercial interests. They viewed the problem from a financial and not a diplomatic stance. Sir Rutherford looked at the request within the enlarged context of Britain's total relation to China, of which Hongkong was only a part. Hongkong, on the other hand, related the problem to its own peculiar position and the difficulty of governing a population it regarded as a potential threat to its security. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 294 enced in colonial administration. They were also blessed with long tenures. J. H. Stewart Lockhart, who had advised the Hong Kong Government on the administration of the New Territories, was British Commissioner at Weihaiwei for nineteen years, and R. F. Johnston for sixteen. Weihaiwei was not a major port boasting access to other areas of China. Despite efforts at cultivation, except for ground-nuts, its lack of a marketable product meant the absence of a powerful foreign business community like those that challenged authority and policies of British officials at the treaty ports. The British administrators, therefore, could establish and carry out policies without having to consider other vested interests. As a rule, they were free to work within the framework of traditional Chinese institutions. Conservatism of the local gentry and absence of a strong Chinese middle class meant that there was no pressure on British administrators to bow to forces that clamoured for reform and modernization. During the first decades of the twentieth century, Chinese institutions were undergoing changes. Certain constitutional features were being introduced to the Chinese government, and, with the abolition of the civil service examination system in 1905, education based on Confucian classics was being replaced by a more modern, westernized curriculum. At Weihaiwei, however, neither the local elders nor the British administration sought to change the status quo. With the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912, demands for ending foreign privileges increased. Subsequent civil war among various warlord factions meant hardship for the people of Weihaiwei, but, until the formation of the National Government under Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, Britain did not have to give serious thought to returning Weihaiwei to Chinese rule. Meanwhile, administrators kept expenditures below revenue, partly because they wanted to make sure "that sufficient funds were available for staff pensions and other expenses when the British withdrew." (p. 168) The actual transfer of administration to the Chinese took place ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 45 The mui-tsai question provoked more reaction and heat in the Chinese community than child labour, since the mui-tsai system affected the domestic life of the owners of the child servants. Most of the households affected were of the wealthier class. Child labour also affected families but these were the poorest in the community. The Chinese Christians organised to abolish the mui-tsai system. Those opposed to any drastic changes were the wealthy merchants and compradores. There was no easy solution to either problem, as both were part of a complex social and economic pattern. Another stimulant for action on child labour was the regulations laid down by the International Labour Organisation following the end of World War I. Britain was committed to these proposals as it was a signatory to the Peace Treaty which embodied them. Both in Hong Kong and in the British Parliament calls were made for the commitment to be honoured in Hong Kong as a colony of the British Empire. The 1896/97 Chamber of Commerce Report on labour conditions in the East Under the auspices of a British Chamber of Commerce a mission was sent to China in 1896-97 to investigate conditions in trade and industry. The mission rejoiced that in China there had been no legislation controlling workers; this included Hong Kong. The report said, There is... no hampering legislation for which there has been such a reckless desire in recent years in the West; curtailing the liberty of the labourer within the narrowest possible limits and unduly harassing the employer. By contrast, In the East every man, woman and child is allowed, without restriction, to sell his or her labour at the best price obtainable, and to work under any conditions as to hours, systems or place. Employers are at liberty to conduct their own business as seems best to their discretion and judgment. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q Introducing a motion for the adoption of the recommendations of the sub-committee, Mr. Bowley stated that in the Peace Treaty then under discussion provisions were made for an International Labour Convention and for a League of Nations. In the proposals for both organizations the welfare of women and children were dealt with. Appended to the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with the Labour Convention was the affirmation of the principle of an eight hour working day and a forty-eight hour week. Mr. Bowley reminded the Board that the matters being proposed were on the agenda of the Labour Convention which was to be held in Washington, D. C. in the United States in October 1919. These developments had a particular meaning for Hong Kong as a British outpost in the East, for if Hong Kong took action as a part of the British Empire it might influence “our neighbouring allies' China and Japan, both of whom were parties to the Treaty and who had accepted both the League of Nations and the Labour Convention.” He continued. “If Hong Kong, China and Japan are to be included in the comity of nations on equal terms, it behoves us and our neighbours to consider these questions very carefully”. He contrasted the absence of factory legislation in Hong Kong with Britain where such legislation had been gradually developed and enforced over the past eighty years. One reason for the difference between the two places was that Hong Kong until only recently had not been much of a manufacturing centre, but now there were many new factories. "The time has come", he said, "when some, at least, of most of the elementary principles of the Factory Acts should be introduced into the Colony”. The experience of England had been that factory legislation had to be related to provisions for education and it would be difficult to apply the same laws to Hong Kong if there was no movement at the same time toward compulsory education, but since the Sanitary Board had no jurisdiction over education, the committee had concluded that it was impossible to prohibit employment of children even of the tenderest age, for it was better for children to be occupied with light tasks with their parents than playing in the gutter. Moreover, the criminal law contained provisions for the punishment of parents or masters and mistresses who ill-treated or neglected their children or child servants. So until something was done about universal education, the present measures were as much ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h recounts that the crew of the Sulphur landed on Hong Kong island on Monday 25 January” and as 'the bona fide first possessors' drank the health of Queen Victoria on Possession Mount. Then 'On the 26th the squadron arrived; the marines were landed, the union hoisted on our post, and formal possession taken of the island, by Commodore Sir J. G. Bremer, accompanied by the other officers of the squadron, under a feu-de-joie from the marines, and a royal salute from the ships of war'." Bremer himself was no more expansive. In his official despatch to R. More O'Ferrall M.P. at the Admiralty, written on 24 February but received only on 8 June 1841, Bremer reported that on 26 January he proceeded to Hong Kong ‘and took formal possession of the island, and hoisted the colours on it, with the usual salutes and ceremonies'. 12 News of the acquisition of the island of Hong Kong became public knowledge in England on the morning of Friday 9 April 1841, but yet again there was no description of the ceremony of possession. On this day Elliot's circular of 20 January was printed in The Times, and it was discussed in an optimistic editorial: it was considered good news because Hong Kong was much more convenient for trade than Macao and a settlement there would be able to maintain itself independently of the Chinese." By the following day the tone of the editorial had changed. Its author wrote that 'the nominal cession of the island of Hong Kong to the British crown, though apparently promising considerable advantages to our mercantile interests, has been clogged with conditions which in practice may substantially defeat them', and then referred to the island as an 'insulated and unfrequented locality'. One factor which may have been decisive in settling on Hong Kong in the negotiations was, as the merchant James Matheson noted, the Chinese language, for such, he felt, is its ambiguity that it is difficult to fix in it a definite meaning." Matheson believed that, when Ch'i-shan remarked in one of his communications ‘as we have granted you territory you do not now require another port', Elliot in consequence gave up thoughts of British access to a port in northern China in the hope that he could hold Ch'i-shan to an interpretation of the Chinese characters which meant that the British had been granted the territory of Hong Kong rather than merely being given a trading factory there.'5 Two letters to The Times published in the same week expressed dissatisfaction with the new British acquisition. The first was dated Macao, 22 January and was presumably written by a merchant: 'Regarding the terms of Captain Elliot's treaty with the Chinese, I have ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 1} American missionary, the Reverend Elijah Bridgman,1 merely noted the formal possession of the island in its journal of occurrences; it gave no precise date nor any details.24 Another reference in the same journal in a historical review of events in China was only marginally fuller.25 The Canton Press, published at this point from Macao, expressed itself slightly puzzled by the lack of information about the event: 'On Tuesday last, the 26th January, the Island of Hongkong, the new settlement ceded by the Chinese to the English, was taken possession of in the name of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. The English colours were hoisted, and saluted from the ships; we have not yet heard any further particulars of the ceremony.' Two weeks later the incident was mentioned again, but no further details were forthcoming.26 The Canton Register made no mention of the possession of Hong Kong except in the context of Elliot's treaty with Ch'i-shan; it seemed unimpressed by the terms and referred to 'the paltry island of Hong Kong'. › 28 The two groups with the most immediate interest in the acquisition of Hong Kong for the British were the merchants and missionaries. Unlike the troops, for whom the possession of the island was just one part of a long and arduous expedition in a foreign and unhealthy part of the world, the merchants and missionaries were already operating from the area and found Chinese restrictions on their movements irksome. And unlike the British government and its officials, the traders and propagators of salvation were most cognizant of the advantages that a piece of British territory in South China would afford them. They were not politically or ideologically committed to punishing China for the 'disrespect' it had shown to Britain. It is not known whether any missionaries attended the ceremony on 26 January, but some merchants who were late to have their fortunes inextricably bound up with the colony turned up to witness its official birth. According to a study of the Indian community of Hong Kong, at least four Indian merchants were present in Hong Kong at the flag-hoisting: Cawasjee Pallanjee, the representative of Cursetjee Bomanjee and Co. of Bombay; F. M. Talati; Albert Sassoon;29 and Rustomjee Dhunjee Shaw of P. F. Cama and Co. of Bombay. James Matheson of Jardine Matheson and Co.30 went from Macao to Hong Kong precisely in order to witness the hoisting of the British flag, and afterwards, as he wrote to William Jardine in a postscript to a letter of 30 January, he circumnavigated the island.32 Thus the future character of the colony can be gauged from the type of person with most to gain from its possession by the British. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 20 secure a writ of pardon for a soul in the Underworld. Buddhists have occasionally accused the Taoists of stealing him from their pantheon. The Buddhist Indra, known as Yu Ti (**玉帝**), literally The Jade Emperor, was, they say, adopted by Taoists to counter Buddhist power. Others suggest that the Jade Emperor was a creation of a Chinese emperor to help maintain the authority and stability of his rule. In one popular version the Sung emperor Chen Tsung (**宋真宗**) in AD 1012, in order to divert his ministers from an unfortunate treaty he had been obliged to sign with some barbarian tribes, announced with great pomp that he had been visited in a dream by an immortal with a letter from the Jade Emperor. In the letter the Jade Emperor explained that he was sending one of the emperor's ancestors in person. The Sung emperor then claimed that a dazzling deity appeared before him in a dream and informed him that he was the Jade Emperor, Master of Heaven and Earth, and the Incarnation of Tao. Later the emperor, having announced that the visit had taken place, ordered that thereafter the Jade Emperor, “one of his ancestors", was to be treated as a major deity. The next year, in 1013, the Jade Emperor's image was cast and placed in a special temple, the Jade Palace (**玉皇殿**) where it was worshipped by the whole court. One hundred years later, the Sung emperor Hui Tsung (**宋徽宗**) built an even more magnificent temple for the Jade Emperor and thereafter the image was portrayed in imperial robes. H. Y. Feng3 claimed that the earliest reference to the Jade Emperor was in a poem by Han Yu (768-824), a Confucian scholar who wrote, admiring plum blossom, "Riding clouds we came together to the home of Yuh Huang', proving, he states, that the Sung emperor's claims were after the fact. However, state recognition by emperor Chen Tsung made the Jade Emperor an important deity in the pantheon. A Fukienese legend describes the Jade Emperor as being born to a queen who conceived miraculously after a visit by T'ai Shang Lao Chun (Lao Tzu) in a dream. When this prince in due course became king, he ruled with great compassion and concern, and was a model ruler who later devoted part of his life to religion and attained sainthood. This was, however, many centuries before the Sung emperor Chen Tsung popularised the cult. Another popular version explains how the Jade Emperor appeared in his visible manifestation to a Sung emperor and told him that he, The Jade Emperor, was the manifestation of the power and thought of Tao, Page 45 Page 46 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 65 the better equipped but uninspired troops of the War Lords, had rapidly moved north and reached the Yangtze river at Kiu Kiang. Trouble immediately broke out in the Concession. Violent many-hued anti-foreign posters were pasted onto walls both inside and outside the foreign area. A variety of slogans appeared on these posters such as "Beat down the British Imperialists”, or “Kill the running dogs of the new War Lords”. Others showed pictures of poor Chinese peasants and students being slaughtered by the aforesaid imperialists, and yet other pictures were too obscene to describe. Every artifice was bent to the inflammation of the feelings of a normally gentle and law-abiding population. The threat to the security of the small foreign population was so manifest that armed piquets were put ashore from the British destroyer anchored off the Bund. Guards were mounted on the Concession gates, and rudimentary precautions were taken for the safety of the civilians. Soon the Revolutionary Army reached Hankow, the large treaty port further up the Yangtze, and there the situation repeated itself in an even more acute form. The tension was relieved once or twice by incidents which were not without humour. One day a respected member of the British community was going along the Bund to call on his Consul, when he saw, standing outside the gate of the Consulate, two Chinese soldiers, one of whom carried a large kerosene tin full of paste and the other a bundle of pink and green posters. The soldiers with deliberation commenced to cover the Consul's gateposts with a colour-scheme, which on inspection invited the public to "beat down" all sorts of fairly innocent parties. This was too much for that particular "Imperialist”, who seized the can of paste and poured it over the head of one of the soldiers. That put him temporarily hors-de-combat, but the other soldier grasping the paste-brush daubed the "Imperialist's" face with a particularly adhesive mixture. The situation had in it all the beginnings of a riot. Chinese coolies and others passing-by ran up, when fortunately the hasty, if innocent, cause of the commotion remembered that he carried a whistle for just such an occasion. He looked towards the destroyer, anchored some two hundred yards away, and blew three shrill blasts. There was no obvious reaction on board the warship, but the street cleared like magic. The member of the community, no longer looking so respectable, thus had an additional subject to discuss when he went in to see his Consul. Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 195 his alarm allayed amidst the warmest applause from the audience for his clever and successful "sell". In addition the editor wrote that this Prologue afforded H. E. more valuable hints how to treat the Rebellion than all the suggestions that have been submitted to him since his arrival. Apparently Bonham was "so much delighted that we are not without hopes a report on the performances may form the subject of his first despatch from Shanghae”. So much for modesty. As regards the performances themselves, the writer had it in confidence from a tall whiskered male who occupied a front seat disguised in a dress coat, that although Hong Kong theatre is now more conveniently lit up in the Victoria Theatre in acting Shanghae would not suffer by comparison". "That treaty port chauvinism was not lacking even at that early stage was made clear when the visitor insisted that our Head Actor has been brought from Hong Kong”. Despite his earlier lukewarm praise he must have made some sour remarks too, for the editor wrote that "except as to the heroine, his critical skill was evidently at fault in discriminating the excellences of the other performers in Betsey Baker; and all he could be got to say regarding Apartments was something about Mr. and Mrs. Keeley having many worse imitators” (Robert Keeley, 1793-1869; and Mrs. Keeley (Mary Ann Coward), 1806-1899: famous British actors). (NCH 26.3.1853). 5.5.1853 (Thur) G.A.A. BECKETT: "Siamese Twins" (1834) T: Farce (1 act) R. BUTLER: "The Irish Tutor" (1822) T: Farce (1 act) C: Amateurs F: Music by the band of the Susquehanna Th: Imperial Theatre (B) N: Final performance of the season R: The close of the season by the amateurs who called themselves the "Lily Troupe" for a "bumper house"; with some “admirable music by the Band of Susquehanna" — a steamer belonging to the U.S. Japan Squadron. (NCH 7.5.1853). 8.3.1854 (Wedn) J.M. MADDOX: “A Fast Train! High Pressure!! Express!!!" (1853) T: Farce W.B. BERNARD: “A Practical Man" (1849) T: Farce C: Amateurs P: Music Th: Tac Ming Theatre (C) R: At the start of the evening a, for part of the audience at least, unexpected treat was in store: “On the rising of the curtain a ludicrous incident quite upset our friend BUSKIN. He was set down to enact "Colonel Jack Delaware" (in A Fast Train — JH) but a storm met him as soon as he appeared on the stage and he was fairly hissed off when a stranger leapt over the footlights and announced his intention of supporting the character. The curtain dropped and after a short delay the volunteer Yankee came forward, dressed in the most extravagant fashion and took up the part with great spirit". Was the leading actor-manager really taken by surprise? This could hardly be, and it must be assumed that it was, like the "rebellion" before, a set up. At any rate the "interloping Yankee was enrolled in Buskin's company. The musical department was sustained by "Messrs Thalberg and Koenig with their usual talent and success". Both these noms de théâtre were after well known musicians: Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871), a Swiss pianist and composer; and Friedrich Koenig, a German violinist. (NCH 11.3.1854). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 246 King, F.H.H. and P. Clarke: “A Research Guide to China Coast Newspapers 1822-1911”, Cambridge (Mass), 1965. Kosch, Wilhelm: "Deutsches Theater Lexikon", Klagenfurt, 1960. Kounin, I.I.: "The Diamond Jubilee of the International Settlement of Shanghai", Shanghai, n.d. (c. 1939). Kunitz, Stanley (Ed.): "British Authors of the 19th Century", N.Y., 1936. Lang, H.: “Shanghai considered socially", Shanghai, 1875. Lanning, G. and S. Couling: "The History of Shanghai", Vol. I.; Shanghai, 1921. MacGuire, Paul: "The Australian Theatre", Melbourne, 1948. MacLellan, J.W.: "The Story of Shanghai from the opening of the port to foreign trade". Shanghai, 1889. Makepeace, Walter, Gilbert E. Brooke and R. St. J. Bradwell (Ed): 'One Hundred Years of Singapore", 2 vols.; London, 1921. Maybon, Charles B. & J. Fredet: "Histoire de la Concession Francaise de Changhai'', Paris, 1929. Maude, Cyril: "The Haymarket Theatre, Some Records and Reminiscences" London, 1903. Mullin Donald (Ed.): "Victorian Actors and Actresses in Review", Westport, 1983 National Union Catalogue. 1 Nicoll, Allardyce: "A History of English Drama 1660-1900", 6 vols,; Cambridge 1952ff. Pal, John: "Shanghai Saga", London, 1963. Pearsall, Ronald: "Victorian Popular Music", Newton Abbot, 1973. "The Player's Library. A Catalogue of the Library of the British Drama League”, London, 1950. Pope, W.J. Macqueen: "Haymarket, Theatre of Perfection", London, 1948. Reynolds, Ernest: "Early Victorian Drama (1830-1870), New York, 1965 (reprint of 1936 edition). Riemann, Hugo: "Musik Lexikon", Berlin, 1916 (8th edition). Rowell, George (Ed.): "Nineteenth Century Plays”, Oxford, 1972. “Shanghai Alamanac” 1855, 1856, 1858, 1862; Shanghai, 1854ff years. **Shanghai t'ung yen-chiu tzu-liao (Shanghai Research Materials), Hong Kong 1972 (reprint of 1936 edition). Smith, C.; "The Hong Kong Amateur Dramatic Club and its predecessors" in: "Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the R.A.S.", Vol. 22 (1982), p. 217-251. Thomson, Peter: "Plays by Dion Boucicault", Cambridge, 1984. Toll, Robert C.: 'Blacking Up. The Minstrel Show in 19th century America”, New York, 1974. Troubridge, St. Vincent: "The Benefit System in the British Theatre”, London, 1967. Wearing, J.P.: "American and British Theatrical Biography", London, 1979. White, Walter: "China Station 1859-1864", London, 1972. Williams, Harold S.: "Tales of the Foreign Settlements in Japan", Tokyo, 1972. Wright, Arnold and H.A. Cartwright: "Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong. Shanghai and other Treaty Ports of China", London, 1908. Abbreviations: NOTES BGM: Boletim do Governo de Macao. NCH: North China Herald. SCR: Shanghai Commercial Record. 1 Performance 6.5.1852. NCH 8.5.1852. Only passing attention has been paid to the early theatre in Shanghai: Lanning & Couling. p. 429-430: MacLennan: p. 85-86. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 415 community elders and magistrates who represented the central government in these localities. Early conflicts over such issues as taxes and militia were resolved when Britain began to send civilian commissioners experienced in colonial administration. They were also blessed with long tenures — J. H. Stewart Lockhart, who had advised the Hong Kong Government on administration of the New Territories, was British Commissioner at Weihaiwei for nineteen years, and R. F. Johnston for sixteen. Weihaiwei was not a major port boasting access to other areas of China. Despite efforts at cultivation - ineffective except for ground nuts — its lack of a marketable product meant the absence of a powerful foreign business community like those that challenged the authority and policies of British officials at the treaty ports. The British administrators, therefore, could establish and carry out policies without having to consider other vested interests. As a rule, they were free to work within the framework of traditional Chinese institutions. The conservatism of the local gentry and the absence of a strong Chinese middle class meant that there was no pressure on British administrators to bow to forces that clamoured for reform and modernization. During the first decades of the twentieth century, Chinese institutions were undergoing changes. Certain constitutional features were being introduced into the Chinese government, and, with the abolition of the civil service examination system in 1905, education based on Confucian classics was being replaced by a more modern, westernized curriculum. At Weihaiwei, however, neither the local elders nor the British administration sought to change the status quo. With the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912 demands for ending foreign privileges increased. Subsequent civil war among various warlord factions meant hardship for the people of Weihaiwei, but, until the formation of the National Government under Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, Britain did not have to give serious thought to returning Weihaiwei to Chinese rule. Meanwhile, administrators kept expenditures below revenue, partly because they wanted to make sure that sufficient funds were available for staff pensions and other expenses when the British withdrew, (p. 168). The actual transfer of administration to the Chinese took place on 1 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 416 October 1930. The Chinese, in the opinion of Dr. Atwell, had not done their homework. The administrator sent by the central government was a naval officer. Instead of working within the framework of local traditions, the central government chose to embark on a programme of immediate modernization and reform, doing away with practices of many centuries, leading to deprivation and resentment. Economic and social conditions continued to deteriorate. The area was again occupied by Japanese forces when the second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937. If Dr. Atwell's work has to be faulted at all, it would be on her preponderant reliance upon British documents. Even what Chinese policies were and how people felt about them were discerned from Foreign Office records. Motivations and reasons for adoption of certain policies, therefore, were not exactly taken from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Dr. Atwell has a more than respectable command of Chinese, and could have investigated more Chinese sources in greater depth. Perhaps her mentors at the University of London did not encourage consultation of Chinese historical archives. Perhaps the documents were not accessible. In addition, it must have been a disappointment to Dr. Atwell and a loss to the readers that she was denied access to some important personal papers of Lockhart. It must also be noted that Chinese central governments did not normally look at localities except as a small part of the whole. Policies and programmes were adopted for the entire country, and Weihaiwei came under them only as a part of the whole. It was, as Dr. Atwell has pointed out, T. V. Soong, Minister of Finance, therefore, rather than the local administrator, who determined fiscal policies for Weihaiwei after 1930. The National Government was following the time-honoured tradition of giving priority to the total polity over individual localities. Perhaps, had British administrators followed modernization programmes adopted elsewhere in China, Chinese rulers after 1930 would not have needed to use such drastic means. Scholars in future may examine Chinese materials more fully, including extant archival sources which are becoming routinely consulted in Chinese historical research, and may find some of the answers to the questions raised by Dr. Atwell's investigations. Individual treaty ports in China as well as other parts of Asia, large and small, are receiving attention from scholars. Meanwhile, British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers should be read by all who are ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 90 brought in own friends and those displaced, however capable, had to go out to find jobs elsewhere. It made for loyalties on a personal as opposed to a national scale. The Customs service, under foreign supervision, was the first to produce a cadre of permanent officials, and other government departments now set out to follow that example. Yet it should be remembered that relationships in China are still almost exclusively on a personal basis. If I have some business to transact, and if I know the right man, it will probably be easy to arrange; but if I do not know the right man, or have not got friends who can give me the proper introductions, then my business will almost certainly languish indefinitely. Personal relations are important anywhere in the world; in China they are more important than anywhere else. It was, however, in communications that the greatest advances had been made by the new government. Railways were in course of construction under capable Chinese engineers, trained for the most part in the United States; and a network of roads began to spread in all directions, linking remote and backward country towns with the progressive markets on the coast. The telegraph achieved popularity, and the long-distance telephone. Broadcasting stations were erected at a number of places; over these news and views went out in a common dialect, which was compulsorily taught in the schools, and concurrently the simplification of the written style in the newspapers led to the spread of a language understood throughout the country. So in many directions the new developments worked to break down the old partitions. A proportion of the national revenue had been spent in improving the amenities of the capital: wide thoroughfares were cut through the old native city: magnificent government offices rose here and there, topping happily the concrete styles of New York with the curved roofs of Cathay: the electricity supply was good: water was laid on. In the residential district elegant houses vied in diversity of design. The roads streamed with traffic, and the very latest in ferries carried trains across the Yangtze. In the large treaty ports it was difficult for foreigners and Chinese to mix. Habits were too different. The Chinese like to drink with their meals; the foreigner likes to drink before he eats. The foods they ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 125 The journey takes the whole day. It was almost dark when I got off and walked across the long new road bridge, erected over the great Kan river which forms the main artery down the centre of Kiangsi province, as the Siang river does in Hunan. And as in Hunan the Siang river passes through the Tung Ting lake, one of the natural overflow reservoirs into which the surplus waters of the Yangtze pour during the summer freshets, so in Kiangsi the Kan river passes through the Poyang lake before reaching the Yangtze some miles below Kiu Kiang. Nanchang stands where the Kan river enters the lake. Like Kweilin it is not a treaty port. Apart from missionaries no foreigners were allowed to live here, but they could transact business and pay visits. In the old days owing to the discomfort of the railway we generally preferred to come by houseboat through the lake; but now the motor car had begun to replace all that, though the process was hindered by the scarcity of petrol caused by the war. The population of Nanchang could not be far short of a million. The narrow streets were giving way to wide new thoroughfares on which the city bus services operated. Though many in China could afford motor cars, away from the treaty ports their use was not common, because only too often, unless the owner could arrange through his friends for protection, the car would be commandeered for military business claimed to be urgent. It is this fear of commandeering that has restricted the distribution of the private car and the private wireless set in China. The very shops were changing their nature. The old shops, in their narrow alleys, would show a front open to the cust, of which there was plenty, and receive such meagre light as the proximity of the houses on either side of the strect admitted. The back of the shop would be dark. Perhaps, a small kerosene lamp stood on a desk to light up the accountant's daybook. Across the front and down part of one side, along the passage to the back, an open counter awaited the display of such goods as the customer might require. These would be drawn from the shelves at the back by one of the numerous assistants, mostly relations of the owner, who would be standing behind, leaning their elbows on the counter, and killing much time by making comment on the people passing in the street. The intending purchaser would examine the article exposed for his inspection and point out its numerous defects, imagined or real, while the assistant would take the opposite view and extol its merits. There ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 138 might be more useful outside. The Japanese had not yet occupied all the coast; foreign ships were still sailing to the unoccupied ports. I slipped out to Ningpo, intending to remain a few days while watching to see which way the cat jumped: but instead of attacking Hongkong, the Japanese landed at Chinhai, at the mouth of the Ningpo river, and I was thus cut off. After a fortnight they withdrew, leaving guard ships to watch the approaches. In the meantime the Chinese had mined the Ningpo river to deny entry to Japanese ships. I was shut in at Ningpo for three months during the heat of the summer. It was my first contact for two years with unoccupied China. With the restrictions imposed, first by the impediments arising from the Japanese war with China, and in the second place by the shortage of shipping and exports consequent on the war with Germany in Europe, British trade in the interior of China was at a standstill. The large British firms found it commercially unprofitable to keep their staff in many of the remaining treaty ports of free China, and withdrew them to Shanghai and Hongkong. British opinion thus, on the one hand, tended to lose touch with conditions in free China, while, on the other, was increasingly exposed to impression by the Japanese, who swarmed so actively in the occupied ports. The British were no more at fault than the Americans or the French, but for the Americans the balance was to some extent redressed by their larger and more vocal upcountry missionary organisation; as British interests out-numbered those of the other powers, so did the Chinese tend to concentrate criticism on them for continued failure to realise that China was fighting the battle of the democracies. A particularly unfortunate failure was the continued indifference shewn to the Chinese Government at Chungking. While it was still in Nanking, with branch divisions in Shanghai, foreign firms had extensive contacts with all the various departments, but when the Government was driven first to Hankow, and then to Chungking, no attempt was made to follow and nurse those contacts. The Chinese Government in its extremity would have welcomed any display of sympathy and was affronted by this neglect, but the large firms continued to treat their business in the Capital at the level of the small and remote treaty port, which Chungking had been. One consequence, for instance, occurred in 1943, when the two leading British banks belatedly decided to open branches in Chungking. The Chinese kept them waiting six months on the doorstep. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 139 I was in Ningpo when the announcement of the closing of the Burma road was received. It was a severe blow for the Chinese, but I think they appreciated the difficulties of Britain's position and that she had only been compelled by the force of circumstances to accede to the Japanese demand. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness and courtesy shown to me by the merchants and officials whom I met. Ningpo was one of the first five treaty ports, opened to trade in 1842. Early promises had not been fulfilled, and the port, overshadowed by Shanghai, had remained small. Off the mouth of the Ningpo river on the largest island of the Chusan archipelago lay the walled city of Tinghai, occupied by British troops twice for a space of several years between 1840 and 1860. Tinghai at one time was designated, instead of Hongkong, as the place to be ceded to Britain for the repair of vessels. It looks a healthy enough place, built up the slopes of a high hill, yet the troops suffered much from sickness and the stones in the graveyard bear witness to the numbers buried there. The garrison imported some turkeys, to provide variety for the larder. The British troops have long since left, but the climate was favourable to turkeys, and now large flocks descended from the original birds are bred to supply the Christmas market in Shanghai. In Ningpo, the graveyard contains the stone monument, first erected outside the East gate of the city, to commemorate the assistance given by Captain Roderick Dew, R.N., and Lieutenant Kenny of the French Navy and their respective ships' companies, in 1862, to the Imperial Chinese troops in expelling the Taiping rebels from the town. It was nearby that the American General Ward, Gordon's predecessor in command of the Ever Victorious army, was killed. But times change. To Dr. Sun Yat Sen and the Kuo Min Tang the Taiping rebels are the glorious forerunners of their own revolution, and it is doubtful whether General Gordon, or the British, are given any credit for having assisted the Imperial Government to quell the rebellion. The country round the little Ningpo plain is very beautiful. In previous winters I used to shoot on the shallow lakes which lay amongst the hills to the west. Most sportsmen waited to go after the early morning and evening flights of duck, but I preferred to work along the edge of the hills with my dog for the occasional pheasant. They were not so numerous here as amongst the reedbeds of the Yangtze. Beyond the lakes, the deep waters of Nimrod Sound were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 242 Chartered Bank Until 1840 or so banking facilities in Hong Kong were provided by the large hongs, such as Jardine's, Dent's and Russell's. However, once the Colony was considered stable enough, bankers came here following the traders, and, after the establishment of the Treaty Port System, starting in 1843, a number of joint-stock banks with their headquarters in India or London opened. The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, one of the principal promoters of which was James Wilson MP, the founder of The Economist, and a successful businessman, was such a bank. It was established in London in 1853, and its first branches in the East were founded in Calcutta and Shanghai, both in 1858. Only six years after receiving its Royal Charter Makalee (F), as the bank is called in China (a direct translation of John MacKellar, the first manager in Shanghai), set up a branch in 1859 in Hong Kong. Since 1862, Jah Da (†) (as 'Chartered' is usually called in Cantonese in Hong Kong) has issued its own bank notes. It is at present the oldest foreign bank and was the first licensed financial institution in the Colony. Together with the Hong Kong Bank, the Bank of East Asia, and the Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation, the 'Textile Bank' (yet another sobriquet for 'Chartered' because of its connections with that industry) was one of four overseas banks that was allowed to keep its branch in Shanghai after the People's Republic Government came to power in 1949. The author recalls opening his first account with the Chartered Bank in early January 1955, not in the building that was demolished in 1986 (which was completed in 1959 and at the time was the tallest building in Hong Kong) but in the one before that. There was a colonial atmosphere about the place, with paddle-type fans suspended from ceilings. Few buildings in Hong Kong were air-conditioned then. The bank did not open its first branch in the Territory until early 1962. This was in Tsuen Wan. A time-worn adage had it, a little unkindly perhaps, that officers of Chartered were bankers aiming to be gentlemen, and that expatriates in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank were gentlemen trying to be bankers. In those days the Hong Kong Bank did not employ Chinese, other than in menial positions, and local staff were mainly Eurasians. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 310 Dr Elizabeth Sinn explained at intervals during the three-day trip something of the history of Amoy. Together with Ningpo, efforts were made by the British to establish the two towns as centres of trade before Canton secured commercial dominance in 1757. The Canton monopoly was broken in 1842, with the Treaty of Nanking, by the opening of not only Amoy and Ningpo but also the Treaty Ports of Foochow and Shanghai. From and to these ports, among other commodities, were shipped tea, silk, and opium. But before then, in the late 17th century, Amoy had been the lair of freebooting, swashbuckling Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), who not only drove the Dutch from Taiwan to make it an anti-Manchu base but also attempted to wrest power from the Qing Dynasty. Today, the People's Republic is trying to proclaim that Koxinga, who had a Japanese mother, was no common pirate but a national hero. Amoy also played a big part in the infamous, so-called in Chinese, 'pig business'. The first Chinese contract coolies left Canton in 1845, but they were soon being shipped from other ports in southern China. Recruiters frequently shanghaied labourers who departed for various countries, including Hawaii, Trinidad, British Guiana, Jamaica, and British Borneo. The journey to Peru or Cuba took about 130 days. Conditions aboard, because of overcrowding, were unimaginable. With a lack of food, unsanitary conditions, and harsh treatment, and 500 men crowded into a hull with barely room to lie down, riots and murders sometimes occurred. Over one-quarter of the labourers are said to have died aboard in their 'pens'. Many others, however, emigrated from Fujian under somewhat better conditions, and today most families in Xiamen have relatives living overseas. But the Province's most famous son has to be Tan Kah Kee (1874-1961), well known for his philanthropy, which is evident in several parts of town, including Xiamen University. This was completed in 1919 on its 100-hectare campus. Tan (pronounced Chan in Cantonese) was born just north of Xiamen to a father who had emigrated to Singapore and was engaged in the rice, pineapple, and rubber business. At an early age, Tan Junior also transferred to the British Colony, as it was then, where he later had four wives and fathered 17 children. Although he spoke neither Mandarin nor English, for business convenience, he became a British subject in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 311 spite of his deep love for his motherland. Naturally, his pictures take pride of place in the 'Overseas Chinese Museum' which has over 6,000 exhibits portraying the Ming and Qing diaspora. The building was completed in 1956, endowed by Tan and other overseas donors. Like most similar establishments in China, information is available in Chinese only. If the People's Republic really wishes to attract overseas visitors, is it too much to ask that literature and captions be printed in English as well? The Group also made a visit to Huli Shan Fortress, completed in 1823, which protected the entrance to the fine, deep-sea port in the lead-up to the First Opium War. The island of Quemoy, from which the Nationalist Government relayed propaganda with loudspeakers during the 'cold war', lies only 2.4 kilometres off the Communist China Mainland near this fortress. The RAS Party later went to the Nanputuo Temple, under the towering 'Five Old Men Peak', which is an architectural masterpiece and crammed with Buddhist statuary. Renovations were in progress. It was encouraging, too, to see the local People's Patriotic Church had recently been given a facelift by the provincial government. But impressions lie in the senses of the beholder. Some RAS Members may especially remember Xiamen for its reasonably priced seafood available, with over 600 varieties of fish compared to Hong Kong, or the edible frogs or fine noodles. There was even champagne available with the buffet breakfast! ― Nevertheless, for the author, the most treasured recollections are of banyans and buildings. Some of the former, with labyrinths of contorting, twisting roots, were probably growing a century-and-a-half ago, before the island became a Treaty port. The town is also a 'museum' of vernacular and colonial architecture. Whether the vantage point is Bill Job's workshop or the hotel window, a vista of old, mellowed, orange, Chinese 'roll and trough' roof tiles, with some roofs of interlocking tiles, blend in reasonably well with new structures erected often from overseas remittances. Although the more ornate, gently sloping, swallow-tail roofs were traditionally reserved for temples, official buildings, and residences ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j the reliance on native place ties by Shaoxing natives away from home. Susan Naquin and Evelyn Rawski, in their history of eighteenth-century China, observe that "native place was the principle most often invoked as grounds for affiliation and assistance by men who left their homes to work in an alien environment.” The most extensive analysis of native place ties in an urban environment is William Rowe's detailed study of the central China treaty port city Hankow (Hankou). Although concluding that "the prevailing mood of the city was cosmopolitan," he nevertheless emphasizes the persistence of localism in urban development. Rowe describes the importance of hometown bonds in securing jobs, financial help in time of need, and defence in daily street brawls. Commercial cliques, worker recruitment, and leisure activities were often organized around native place ties. More interestingly, Rowe's study has demonstrated a process of different ethnic groups establishing themselves in the newly developed city. The most distinctive one was a rivalry between Cantonese and Ningbo with Shaoxing people, the two prominent ethnic groups in Hankou. Cantonese used the advent of Western trade to advance their position in native commercial circles while the Ning-Shao natives had become the most powerful force in the native banking and lower Yangzi River trade, but they were second to their Cantonese counterparts in foreign trade. More recently, in addition to the above studies, as shown in Emily Honig's study of Subei people in Shanghai, there are many more factors determining ethnic identities than race, religion and nationality. Origins of Cantonese Emigration in the Nineteenth Century Historically, South China was the recipient of successive waves of migration from the north, which is more hilly and hence conducive to the isolation of one social group from another. In Guangdong province, the Chinese inhabitants categorized themselves as Punti (Bendi, locals) which included the Cantonese and the people of Teochiu; Hakka (Hejia, guests); Hoklo or Tanka (Danjia, boat people). By the end of the eighteenth century, the rate of delta land reclamation could not match the rate of increase in population in South China. Growth of population caused massive emigration both domestically and overseas. The rapid growth of population, unaccompanied by improvements in agricultural technology, meant that it was increasingly difficult for peasants in this area to depend on the soil alone for a decent livelihood. To support ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j themselves they had to turn to migration to urban centres and overseas emigration, and to nonfarm work in the villages. Following the path of the traditional junk trade, overseas emigration was common in southern Fukien (Fujian) and eastern Guangdong in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it did not spread to the rest of Guangdong until the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, when the European powers were initiating mining and plantation projects in Southeast Asia, and when the American continent was building transcontinental railways, China became a popular source for labour recruitment. There were three major emigrant areas in South China: first, southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong; second, the western part of the Pearl River delta and Siyi, namely Kaiping, Enping, Xinhui, and Xinning (later renamed as Taishan); and third, northeastern Hainan Island. People from the first area were the first to emigrate because of the junk trade with Southeast Asia. The Nanking (Nanjing) Treaty following the Opium War in 1842, which stipulated the establishment of treaty ports along the coast of China, broke the Canton monopoly. The newly opened ports of Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy (Xiamen) competed with Canton for China's foreign trade. With the rich Yangzi River valley as its hinterland, Shanghai soon began to fulfill its extraordinary potential as a port of trade. By 1850 the volume of trade in Shanghai had surpassed that of Canton. Trade routes were diverted to these cities, causing a lot of porters and boatmen to lose their jobs. Canton was no longer a recipient of any substantial foreign investment. It went either to Shanghai or Hong Kong. The development of Hong Kong with a shift of British interest from Macau and Canton also attracted many Cantonese merchants to search for economic opportunities. For instance, Cantonese traders, artisans, and laborers from all neighbouring districts followed the British merchants in flocking to the British colony. Moreover, Hong Kong had become a major centre of Cantonese emigration abroad. The high points of overseas emigration came between 1890 and 1904. Between 1885 and 1900, a total of 1,830,572 Chinese emigrants embarked at the port of Hong Kong. The overwhelming majority of the Cantonese emigration came from the Pearl River delta region, particularly from the counties shown in figure 1. The Xinning, Xinhui, Kaiping and Enping were known collectively as Siyi while Panyu, Nanhai and Shunde were Sanyi. ================================================================================ 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 35 Faure, David W. 1990. The Rice Trade in Hong Kong Before the Second World War. In Between East and West Aspects of Social and Political Development 216-25. Edited by Elizabeth Sinn. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong. Fok, Kai-cheong. 1988. Wanqing qijian Xianggang dui neidi jingji fazhan zhi yingxiang (The influences of Hong Kong on the economic development of mainland during the late Qing period). In Xueshu Yanjiu 1988/2 70-4. 1989. Xianggang huaren zai jindaishi shang dui Zhongguo de gongxian shixi (A preliminary study on the contributions of Hong Kong Chinese to China in modern history). In Huaren Yanjiu | 81-8. 1990a. Lectures on Hong Kong History Hong Kong's Role in Modern Chinese History. Hong Kong: Commercial Press. 1990b. Private Chinese Business Letters and the Study of Hong Kong Industry: A Preliminary Report. In Collected Essays on Various Historical Materials for Hong Kong Studies. Edited by Hong Kong Museum of History. Hong Kong: Urban Council. 1992. Xianggang yu Jindai Zhongguo (Hong Kong and modern China). Hong Kong: Commercial Press. 1993. Nineteenth Century Hong Kong: China's Gateway to the Western World of Business - themes and sources. Unpublished paper presented at the 34th International Congress on Asian and North African Studies. Hong Kong. Gaw, Kenneth. 1988. Superior Servants: the Legendary Cantonese Amahs of the Far East. Singapore and New York: Oxford University Press. Godley, Michael R. 1981. The Treaty Port Connection: An Essay. In Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12/1 248-59. Hamashita, Takeshi. 1991. Higashi Ajiashi ni okeru Honkon no ichi (The role of Hong Kong in East Asian history). In Sōbun 320 1-8. Hamilton, Gary Glen. 1991. Edited Business Networks and Economic Development in East and Southeast Asia. Hong Kong: University Press. Hao, Yen-p'ing. 1969. Cheng Kuan-ying: The Comprador as Reformer. In Journal of Asian Studies 29/1 15-22. 1970a. The Comprador in Nineteenth-Century China: Bridge Between East and West. Cambridge and Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1970b. A New Class in China's Treaty Ports: The Rise of the Comprador-Merchants. In Business History Review 44/4 446-59. 1970c. Maiban shangren wanqing tongshang kouan yi xinxing jieceng (Comprador-merchants: "new class" in late Qing treaty ports). In Gugong Wenxian 2/1 35-44. 1977. Zhongguo jindai yanhai shangye de buwenling-sheng (Commercial uncertainties along modern China's Coast). In Shihuo Yuekan 7/8-9 1-11. 1979. Commercial Capitalism along the China Coast during the Late Qing Period. In Proceedings of the Conference on Modern Chinese Economic History 303-27. Edited by Chi-ming Hou and Trong-shian Yu. Taiber: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica. 1982a. Entrepreneurship and the West in East Asian Economic and Business History. In Business History Review 56/2 149-67. 1982b. The Compradors. In Maggie Keswick (edited) 85-102. 1986. The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hayes, James. 1979. The Nam Pak Hong Commercial Association of Hong Kong. In Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 19/2 16-26. 1984. Collecting Business Papers of Chinese Enterprises in Hong Kong. In Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies 47-55. Edited by Alan Birch. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong. He, Wenxiang. 1989. Xianggang Jiezushi (History of Hong Kong's big families). Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 37 history) Hong Kong, Xinya Yanjiusuo Rawski, Thomas G. 1970. Chinese Dominance of Treaty Port Commerce and its Implications, 1860-1875. In Explorations in Economic History 7/4, 451-73. Redding, Gordon S. 1991. Weak Organizations and Strong Linkages: Managerial Ideology and Chinese Family Business Networks. In Gary Hamilton (edited), 30-47. Rhoads, Edward J. 1975. China's Republican Revolution: the Case of Kwangtung. Cambridge and Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. 1977. Merchants Associations in Canton, 1895-1911. In William Skinner (edited), 97-117. Rowe, William T. 1984. Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796-1889. Stanford, Stanford University Press. Sekkó Zaibatsu (The Zhejiang financial clique). Edited by Mantetsu Shanhai Jimusho. Shanhai, Mantetsu Jimusho, 1929. Shanghai duiwai maoyi (Shanghai foreign trade, 1840-1949). Compiled by Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo and Shanghai-shi Guoji Maoyi Xuehui Xueshu Waiyuanhui. Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press, 1989. Shanghai Sojourners. Edited by Frederic Wakeman and Wen-hsin Yeh. Berkeley, Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California, 1992. Sinn, Elizabeth. 1989. Power and Charity: The Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital. Hong Kong, Hong Kong Oxford University Press. Skinner, William G. 1974 (edited). The Chinese City: City Between Two Worlds. Stanford, Stanford University Press. 1976. Mobility Strategies in Late Imperial China: A Regional-System Analysis. In Regional Analysis, Volume One: Economic Systems, 327-64. Edited by Carol A. Smith. New York, Academic Press. 1977 (edited). The City in Late Imperial China. Stanford, Stanford University Press. Smith, Carl T. 1983. Compradores of the Hongkong Bank. In Frank H. H. King (edited), 93-111. 1985. Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong. Hong Kong, Oxford University Press. 1993. Hong Kong Chinese Wills, 1850-1890. Unpublished paper presented at the International Conference on Folk Documents and Regional Society in South China, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Su, Waigong. 1933. Xianggang, Shanghai, Guangzhou shangye mingrenlu (Prominent business characters of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Canton). Shanghai, Shangye Bianshu Gongsi. Topley, Marjorie. 1964. Capital, Savings and Credit among Indigenous Rice Farmers and Immigrant Vegetable Farmers in Hong Kong's New Territories. In Capital, Saving and Credit in Peasant Societies: Studies from Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean and Middle America, 157-86. Edited by Raymond Firth and B. S. Yamey. London, George Allen & Unwin. 1968. The Role of Savings and Wealth among Hong Kong Chinese. In Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, 167-227. Edited by Ian C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi. New York, Frederick A. Prager. Toyama, Gunji. 1944. Shanhai Dota: Go Kensho (The Shanghai taotai Wu Jianzhang). In Gakkai 1/7, 45-54. 1945. Shanhai no shinsho: Yo Bo (A gentry-merchant in Shanghai: Yang Fang). In Toyoshi Kenkyu 1/4, 17-34. Tsai, Jung-fang. 1975. Comprador Ideologists in Modern China: Ho Kai (Ho Chi, 1859-1914) and Hu Li-Yuan (1847-1916). PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 137 And yet, of an evening, through all those Eastern shores, you could find few pleasanter places than the inner courtyard at Raffles. Towering above at third-floor level, beneath a canopy of stars, the palm-tops shivered in the breeze; while below in the dim rose light of the table lamps, turbaned bearers moved noiselessly, and the murmur of conversation mingled with the low strains of soft music to conjure fantasy. It was only with the arrival of the British that the Chinese, attracted by the rule of law, the security of life, and the open door, moved in numbers to Malaya, so that they are now two million, amongst a population totalling five million. They have been of great service in developing the country. They own many of the tin mines, much of the rubber, nearly all the retail shops, and they are the wealthiest community. But, as is characteristic of the Chinese everywhere, they are not assimilated. They remain a community apart, and even, surprisingly, send members to the People's Political Council at Chungking, the representative organ which advises the Chinese Government, and which is supposed to be democratic but cannot be, as the electoral machinery is controlled by the Kuo Min Tang party, and the secret ballot is as yet unknown in China. The British colony, the actual Straits Settlements, covers only a very small part of the area of Malaya. Such control as the British may have over the remainder derives from treaty relations with the Rulers of the several States. How to frame a satisfactory sort of Malayan union out of the ten components of a country as small as England is a problem as yet unsolved. I expect it is the knowledge that the allegiance of the Chinese in Malaya is claimed by the Kuo Min Tang that makes it difficult for the British to recruit them for the armed forces, as though their allegiance were to Malaya. The Americans in the Philippines, where there is not a similar number of territorial divisions, would be faced with the same problem in an easier form were 41% of the population Chinese, instead of 1%. In fact the Chinese in Malaya were quite happy. Through the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs they were able to make their views known to the Government. Unless external political pressure is brought to bear they are unlikely to make trouble. Here again they have found conditions of security, comparing only too favourably with those in the homeland, and they know when they are well off. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 6 during his first journey into the interior from Hankow to begin his career with one of the new local armies of the Chinese Imperial forces. Potted biographies of Mesny have been little more than loosely connected accounts of the major incidents in his life and have presented a one-dimensional figure. Had he not been made a general in the Chinese Imperial Army with which he served for a mere six years, the other forty-five years of his life would probably have merited 300 words towards the foot of the obituaries page in a local paper. Also, without the four volumes of his Miscellany, which tend to be our sole source-material, virtually all record of his service with the Chinese army would have been lost. For at least part of his life Mesny lived at one end of an extreme, as a westerner who dressed as a Chinese, lived in a Chinese home and absorbed Chinese ways semi-consciously. The other end of the extreme were the westerners who lived out their working lives in treaty ports moving from office to club to home, and making sure that they never had any contacts with the natives nor learnt a single word of their language. He seems to have been an engaging character, though pretentious and extravagant, whose fascinating life, although insignificant in the run of Chinese history, was no more exciting or unique than many other westerners who led equally exciting lives on the China coast during the same era, the difference being that remarkably few wrote about them and those who did were usually fairly staid travellers describing their journeys across the Chinese empire. Mesny went several stages further, writing notes and autobiographical essays. Many were self-serving memoirs, which he published in Shanghai in his own periodical, the four volumes of Mesny's Chinese Miscellanies [described in detail in Appendix A] consisting not only of events within China, especially ones he considered important insofar as they affected his personal life and activities but also, more importantly, colourful observations during the second half of the 19th century in China reflecting the atmosphere, the social and military structures of the lower echelons of Chinese officialdom, foreign fortune seekers during the earlier days of the Treaty Ports and also, to a certain extent, the social life of the middle strata of foreigners on the China coast. Although he did not fully appreciate it, his notes on the Chinese military forces at that time and in particular the day-to-day details of military operations within a Chinese provincial army are unique. Although certain colour emerges from the foreign news telegrams of the day reproduced in his later volumes, it is singularly disappointing that he wrote so little on the momentous changes occurring in China at the turn of the century. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 9 any newly-opened port for them to be snatched up and at almost any price by Chinese merchants..... until the Chinese purchaser came to close quarters with the English importer, eliminating middlemen at small ports and to transferring operations chiefly to the great emporiums of Hong Kong and Shanghai.' Hankow was the other city in which, on and off, Mesny spent a dozen or so years and where eventually he died, a city on the north bank of the Yangtze, part of the three-city metropolis now known as Wuhan. It was the major commercial port in central China during the second half of the 19th century, containing British, German, Russian, Japanese and French settlements, known as Concessions. Hankow was opened as a treaty port in 1861, a year before Mesny arrived there and became famous abroad as the start of the annual tea-clipper race back to England. The province of Kueichou in south-west China, where Mesny also spent a number of years was one of the most backward areas of China. It had been under Chinese rule since the Han at about the time of Christ, but only became a separate province during the Ming, in AD 1413. Waves of Chinese immigration, mainly from neighbouring Szechuan and Hunan provinces, forced the non-Chinese minority tribesmen out of the fertile valleys leading eventually to discontent and finally rebellion. Mesny's story is illuminating in a number of respects. There were always foreigners who took up minor posts with the Chinese bureaucracy, particularly during the modernisation campaigns which took place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Old photographs exist showing foreigners in, for example, a Chinese arsenal beside foreign machinery or weapons, both as advisers and trainers, but few ever wrote of their experiences. The most interesting part of Mesny's life, however, standing out as a unique experience, was the short period of some five to six years when he served with two provincial forces of the Chinese Imperial Army on active service helping suppress a rising of the Miao, a subjugated minority race in a remote part of southern China. [See Appendix C for a summary of the first campaign against the Miao in which Mesny took part]. Probably the most interesting part of these narratives is the reasonably detailed description of Chinese soldiering during this relatively minor campaign. It is full of anecdotal descriptions of campaigning in central south China against a redoubtable foe, the Miao people, though regrettably Mesny fails to go into detail about such interesting subjects as how he was paid, how patronage worked up to him personally, etc. He does, however, cover a number of themes in his Notes on the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 46 His essays on his soldiering days consist of strings of facts and incidents, strong on action but showing little attempt at analysis or motives. He often managed to mingle action scenes with romanticised ones. According to his writings he, at 26, displayed strategic and tactical wisdom which his seniors, experienced Chinese generals greeted with acclaim, or so Mesny would have us believe. He lived in exciting times and enjoyed experiences worthy of being recorded for posterity. A case in point is his description of the incidents when twice in a twelve month period he had to call on British gun boats to deliver him from the hands of Chinese captors. The first was the deliverance from the 'Imps' [the Chinese Imperial forces] at the forts below Nanking and the second from the Taiping rebels at Nanking itself. His description of his experiences living with the Taiping rebels, of life in a treaty port and his explanations of, for example, the process of the literary and military degree examinations in China and the organisation of the Tsung-li Yamen [The Chinese Bureau of Foreign Affairs] are fascinating even if some of the material has been copied from other works, and some of the autobiographical episodes seem at times to be exaggerated or 'edited'. An article in The Pilot [July 1946] claimed that Mesny had served under General Gordon during the Taiping rebellion as a lieutenant and, when Gordon returned to England in 1865, Mesny remained on in the Chinese army. This would seem to have been misunderstood folk memory as it is certain that, if such had been the case, Mesny would have described it during his autobiographical essays in the Miscellanies. His love life with Chinese ladies also at times reads like a Mills and Boon novel, but however much we may smile at his amorous memoirs, the military side of his autobiographical essays ring true throughout. Mesny wrote about himself as if he needed the constant repetition to reassure him of his place in society and perhaps history, and was frustrated by the lack of influence he considered his due. In March 1905 Mesny wrote that scarcely a day passed but that he was asked to adjudge of important matters between Chinese and Chinese. He added that he did not always comply though his Chinese rank was sufficient as an excuse to act as a judge. He certainly saw himself as a bridge between Chinese and foreigners, and appeared to have many nodding acquaintances in both societies. A number of foreign authors describing China as they saw it around the turn of the last century each in turn complimented other writers ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 99 rebellion [1851-1868], led by Chang Lo-hsing, was a rising of impoverished peasants against the Manchu dynasty in the area to the north of the Huai River. It was defeated by the local Huai Army under Li Hung-chang into whose army many Nien were enlisted for service in the troubles in the North-west. Ningpo: a treaty port on the coast of the eastern province of Chekiang. Pai-lou: an ornamental archway in memory of a deceased person of exceptional chastity, loyalty or filial piety. Seals [Mandarin]: Every Chinese official of any standing had a seal of office. [all seals, either government, business house (hong) or personal were usually referred to as 'chops' by foreigners] Sedan chairs: Mesny was first carried by two bearers but was upgraded to three shortly afterwards. The emperor alone was entitled to sixteen bearers, princes of the blood eight, and all other officials down to Prefect four, including District Magistrates if in office. Below this grade two was the rule. All tao-t'ai's rode in green chairs carried by four bearers, accompanied on their official visits by a great number of attendants, some of whom were bodyguards, the others bearers of the insignias of office. 'Self-Strengthening': a Chinese term denoting the policy of selective adoption of western technology and institutions between 1860 and 1895. One of the main proponents was Li Hung-chang about whom Mesny wrote many complimentary and other not so complimentary comments. Squares: pu-tzu: Square badges denoted the nine grades of official ranks in later dynastic China, worn front and back of the official's surcoat. They were some twelve inches square, embroidered in various designs, portraying, for example, a silver pheasant for a civil official grade 5, and a tiger for a grade 4 military official. Squeeze: applied both as a verb and substantive to peculation of any kind. Originally it was the commission Chinese servants, fully in accordance with Chinese custom, charged their masters on all articles purchased. Ta Ch'ing**: The Great Pure Dynasty: The name of the last Imperial ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 918 MESNY'S CHINESE MISCELLANY. and he has a Shou-pei, or Second-Major for his Adjutant. The regiment is divided into the usual Left and Right (Wing) Companies, or Shao, each of which is commanded by a Chien-tsung, Captain, who is assisted by a First and Second-Lieutenant, thus giving a total of eight officers to this regiment, besides the usual number of non-commissioned officers and men. 1431. CHIEH-CHOU YING - The Chieh Chou Battalion. This Territorial Battalion is commanded by a Tu-ssu, Major, subject to the orders of the Chih Ch'i, Brigadier-General, and as such also under the orders of the Yang-chiang, Lieutenant-General. The battalion consists of a single company commanded by a Chien-tsung, Captain, who is assisted by a First, Second and Third-Lieutenant, besides the usual complement of non-commissioned officers and men. 1432. TUNG SHAN YING - The Tung Shan Battalion. This Territorial Battalion is commanded by a Shou-pei, Second-Major, also subject to the orders of the Chih Ch'i, Brigadier-General, and thus also forming part of the Yang-chiang Division. In one copy of the Red Book that I have this very battalion is placed as under the orders of the Colonel of the Lei chou, Territorial Regiment, but the Provincial List has it placed as above. It has a Chien-tsung, Captain, described as a Shui Shih and a Lieutenant, described as a Shui Shih Pa-tsung, besides one Lieutenant, simply described as Pa-tsung (I suppose the Shui Shih officers are afloat), thus giving a total of four officers, besides non-commissioned officers and men. Jan. 9th, 1896. Second-Lieutenant in both companies, thus giving a total of eight officers, besides the usual complement of non-commissioned officers and men. This regiment ought to form part of the Chiung-chou, or Hainan Division. 1433. HAI KOU YING - The Hai-kou Regiment. This Territorial Regiment is stationed at the Treaty Port of Hoihow (Hainan Island), and is commanded by a Ts'an-chiang, Colonel, who has a Shou-pei, Second-Major, for his Adjutant. It also forms part of the Yang chiang Division, and is divided into two Shao or companies, each of which is commanded by a Chien-tsung, Captain, assisted by a First and Second-Lieutenant. 1434. LUNG MÊN HSIEH - The Lung Min Brigade. This is an important brigade. Its head-quarters are near the frontiers of Tung-king, as well as on the coast. At the present moment the French are in possession of some town in the neighbourhood, which the Chinese commissioners claim as Chinese territory. The brigade is composed of two wing regiments, Tso Yu liang Ying. Each regiment is commanded by a Tu-ssu, Major, who has a Shou-pei, or Second-Major for his Adjutant. The commandant of the left (wing) regiment is also Brigade-Major and Adjutant to the Brigadier-General. Each regiment is divided into two left and right (wing) Shao or companies. Each company is commanded by a Chien-tsung, Captain, who is assisted by a First, and Second-Lieutenant, thus giving a total of seventeen officers, including the General, besides the usual complement of non-commissioned officers and men. A number of war junks and a few steamers are also attached to this brigade, I am told, but I suspect the steamers are not worth much. 1435. HAI AN YING - The Hai-an Regiment. This Territorial Regiment is commanded by a Yu-chi, Lieutenant-Colonel, who has a Shou-pei, Second-Major, for his Adjutant, and the commandant is to a certain extent under the orders of the Lung men Brigadier-General. The regiment is divided into the usual left and right wings, Shao or companies, each of which is commanded by a Ch'ien-tsung, Captain, who is assisted by a First and Second-Lieutenant, thus giving a total of eight officers, besides the usual complement of non-commissioned officers and men. 1436. AI CHOU HSIEH - The Ai Chou Brigade. This brigade is composed of Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 64 the agreement is only a diplomatic document and not part of the treaty or laws of Hong Kong, it would be unlikely to present a successful legal claim (Wesley Smith; 1992; 29). Customary law is, nevertheless, an essential part of rural life in the New Territories. It has thus been argued that the existence of fung shui was tacitly acknowledged by the government (Hayes, 1963: 143). While Englishmen sometimes claim that, legally, their houses in Britain have 'right of light' or 'right of air', in ancient China disputing parties sometimes went to court over infringements of fung shui rights. 'He has ruined my fung shui. He has no business to put himself above me,' a Chinese would state. In Hong Kong, however, impaired fung shui has never been actionable under British law. Compensation Nevertheless, the Hong Kong Government has not only respected the beliefs of the New Territories' villagers but also paid out sizeable amounts over the years as compensation when people have claimed the Government has spoiled their fung shui. One wonders how many other colonial powers would have been as considerate. Examples of spoiling fung shui include excavations that break the 'neck of the dragon' and constructing highways or water supply schemes which impair the sweep or rhythm of hills. A less caring government would have ridden roughshod over any perceived obligations, In 1990, the Government paid HK$1.1 million to fund a 72-hour fung shui ritual at Ha Tsuen, which included engaging Taoist priests and erecting a small, temporary temple. The fear was that the construction of a sewerage disposal system, which included tunnelling through a small hill on which many of the villagers' ancestors are buried, would disturb evil spirits. Another example occurred on Tsing Yi Island when the villagers reacted at intervals from 1977 to 1980 (Hayes, 1979: 213; and Hayes, 1980: 155). There are many other cases. Women protesters are often more visibly active than men. In November 1994 Mr Brian Jenney, the Government Director of Audit, tabled his annual report. Tuen Mun New Town, he stated, had cost ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 136 The “Fan Kwae” at Canton Before Treaty Days (1825-1844). W.C. Hunter. Pb. Kegan Paul & Trench. London 1882. 12 All vessels bound for Whampoa were loaded with general cargo, or with rice only, and were subject to what were called Cumsha and Measurement Charges. 29 "The position of Hong merchant was obtained through the payment of large sums of money at Pekin. I have heard of as much as 200,000 taels, say £55,000 sterling. If the licence they acquired was costly, it secured to them uninterrupted and extraordinary pecuniary advantages..." 36 [Ilouqua]: “have got too much bad news... Hwang Ho have spillum too much... Man-ta-le have come see you? ... He no come see me, he send come one piece ‘chop’. He come to-morrow. He wantchee my two-lac dollar". "You pay how much? ... My pay he fifty, sixty thousand so. But suppose he no contentee? ... Suppose he No. 1 no contentee, my pay he one lac." 44 You and I are No. 1 "olo flen"; you belong honest man, only no got chance"... "Just now have settle counter, alla finishee; you go you please." 54 The position of compradore was therefore one of great responsibility, and I never knew of but one betraying the trust reposed in him. Although his pay was comparatively small, say $250 or $300 per annum, his perquisites, from sources which had long been in existence, and had become "olo custom", were very important. 99 Before she could open hatches, the formality of “Cumsha and Measurement" had to be gone through. The first word signifies "present", and was a payment made by the earliest foreign vessels for the privilege of entering the port;.. 100 Measurement: 842.2.8.5, Cumsha 810 9.6.1 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 200 The influence of these western-educated Cantonese extended northward in the 1860s when western firms such as Jardine and Swire established their branch offices in the newly opened Treaty ports — Shanghai in 1850, Fuzhou in 1854 and Hankou in 1861. It was in these new Treaty ports that the Cantonese recognized that a new job market in politics was open to them. A "Western Affairs Movement” was initiated by several powerful provincial officials in China by the 1870s. Under the patronage of these officials, economic and legal reforms were introduced into China in the name of westernization. These officials who rose to power after suppressing the Taiping Rebellion without Beijing's support, developed huge business enterprises in the name of the "official supervision — merchant management” or “western-affairs movement". The Hong Kong compradores were mainly responsible for the collection of capital. Their credibility came not from the enterprises they set up, with or without the legal backing of a company law, but from their own reputation as well as the political patronage behind them. Amidst the rhetoric of these western affairs movements, “reform-minded" officials recruited their own advisors and set up their own personal governments, known as Mufu, literally, tent government, or what we now call think-tanks. Many Cantonese, with or without imperial degrees, were sought to fill these posts. The strength of this “Cantonese party” rested on their early access to things western — the "Cantonese faction established predominance in China's internal affairs and foreign relations... [their strength] lies in the monopoly in the matter of emigration overseas ... Before 1840, Canton was the only port open to foreign traders”. On how these think-tank members were appointed, westerners observed that: in the exercise of patronage... the principle is that which animated Washington in the selection of his first cabinet. Latterly the Canton party, ultra-progressive, has come to the front. In the 1870s amidst this rhetoric of westernization, and with the assistance of western-educated Cantonese, the "reform-minded" officials managed to bargain with Beijing and develop huge business enterprises under their patronage. In an environment where company law and stock markets were absent, these reform-minded officials started these modern enterprises under an arrangement known as the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 210 Kong and the British Consul to act as arbitrators.” The Governor could not conceal his excitement. To persuade London to accept this proposal, the Governor quoted from earlier information that he received from someone he believed to be very close to President Yuan: [The President said] as the state of things in Canton was so desperate, the only course open was for the Canton Government to ask for foreign intervention and to get the Canton province run as the customs are run: for a limited period of 20 to 30 years. To help this proposal to get through in London and Beijing, the Governor of Hong Kong telegraphed his British colleagues in the treaty ports for assistance. Sir Jordan recorded that his part in this scheme was "to induce President [Yuan] to accept this principle and instruct Canton accordingly". This scheme, however, failed to materialize because the influence of Liang Shiyi in Beijing declined suddenly in face of his political competition with the Anhui military men, another group of supporters of Yuan. To save its decline, the Communication Clique was driven to support Yuan's monarchical movement, a move which proved to be a political disaster for the Communication Clique. The majority of them had a narrow escape to Japan or Hong Kong after the fall of Yuan. The worse for the Cantonese was yet to come. After the death of Yuan, Sun Yat-sen, together with Wu Tingfang returned to Canton from Shanghai and declared a new constitutional government in the South. Without an army under his control, he brought with him a guest army from Guangxi. I quote from a memoir of a Guangxi general that: They really look awful! This same uniform had been worn through a war and a hot summer & in most cases had been worn to rags. Without needle or thread, many soldiers simply used grass to fasten the torn [pieces] together; the entire army was in a state of near-starvation... He explained the difficulty of his army and how the army was formed: When the anti-Yuan movement had started, local armies were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 20 June 18 July Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites. Dr Elizabeth Johnson, Women's Place; Women's Roles-Question of a Female Identity in a Tsuen Wan Village. M. Philippe Le Corre, The Hong Kong Handover: An Historical Perspective. 19 September Dr Judith Hollows, Hong Kong, Korean and Japanese Management: What is Different and Why? 31 October Dr Betty Wei Peh-T'i, Foreigners in China: A Bibliography. 28 November Ms Tess Johnston, Northern and Southern Treaty Port architecture in China. Dr Patrick Hase, Fung Shui in Action. 5 December 1998 16 January 6 February 20 March Mr Ko Tim Keung, An Illustrated Talk on Pre-World War II Kowloon. Mr Kevin Bishop, China's Imperial Way. Drs Gillian and Verner Bickley, Nineteenth Century Government-led Education in Hong Kong. Concert 21 June 1997, Chinese International Music Performance, Hong Kong YWCA Chinese Orchestra, organiser Dr Michael Lau. Excursions outside Hong Kong 28-31 March 1997 Visit to Shanghai, Drs Michael Lau and Joseph Ting. xxii T ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 164 Michael Lau, was to see this problem had been solved, with the difficulty now being how to restrict the visit to a small number of galleries rather than to try and see too much in the limited time available. Accordingly, we visited the most renowned galleries only, those housing Ancient Chinese Bronzes and Ceramics. We were well rewarded by the quality and range of exhibits on display. Our enjoyment and understanding was greatly enhanced by explanations provided by the two senior staff members provided for us as gallery guides by Museum Director Ma Chengyuan. The next day, Saturday, we drove out north-west of Shanghai to the Jiading County Museum, in particular to see the exhibition on the former Jiading Imperial Examination Hall. RAS Council Member Joseph Ting, who also was our guide that day, had arranged this visit. (Prior to the visit, before leaving Hong Kong, Dr Betty Wei3 had given members a talk on the Hall and the imperial examination system, so important in China prior to 1905). Again we were given VIP treatment, with Director Zheng of the Jiading Cultural Bureau and Director Yang Chun of the Museum, addressing us upon arrival and providing us with an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide, Ms Liu Chuyong. Members were impressed by the graphic quality of the exhibits, especially those on examination cheating methods. The highlight of our Sunday programme was a tour of Old Shanghai, with our guide being Ms. Tess Johnston, author and raconteur extraordinaire, whose assistance had been obtained for us by Council Member Valery Garrett. After a bus tour of treaty port architecture, Tess led us on foot through the city's oldest area, Huangpu. There, one block west of the Friendship Store and two blocks south of the Wusong River (Suzhou Creek), on Huqiu (Museum) Road, near the junction with Dong Road, we found to our delight the old premises of the North China Branch. The building is now used as a bank and share-trading hall, but little has changed in its appearance and structure with RAS still to be seen on the pediment (see Illustration 1, a group photograph outside the building, and Illustration 2, plans of premises after the 1932-34 re-building; provided for us by Ms Johnston). On the Monday morning our exploration of both the past and present ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 117 leading their men to an attack. 5 Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 138. 6 Lord Jocelyn. Six Months with the Chinese Expedition. London, 1841, p. 41. 7 Although the benefits of rifling to give more consistent trajectories were known, no one had yet been able to come up with a practical means of taking advantage of it in a cannon. 8 Lieutenant John Ouchterlony, The Chinese War: An Account of all the Operations of the British Forces from the Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking, London 1844, p. 98 notes that at Tycocktow the Gunboat Nemesis "threw shells into the upper fort." D. Bonner-Smith & E.W.R.Lumby. The Second China War 1856-1860. London, 1965, p.53 records that Rear Admiral Seymour reports that "The Barracuta at the same time also shelled the troops in the hills at the back of the city, from a position at the head of Sulphur Creek." 19 D. Bonner-Smith, op. cit., p. 173 records that Commander Forsyth of the Hornet reports "..commenced firing grape and shrapnel, with ricochet shot,into the whole mass of junks, which must have done dreadful execution, as they were crowded with men to excess." Ouchterlony, op. cit., p. 239. 12 Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 23 reports "a Congreve rocket, which was fired at the Admiral's junk, went through the deck into the magazine, upon which she immediately blew up." 13 Loch, op. cit., p. 40. 14 Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 149 notes "In artillery they are very backward, their guns being of enormous weight in proportion to their calibre; some of the pieces of ordinance which we captured weighing seven ton, although only 42 pdrs; yet notwithstanding the immense thickness of metal in many cases the guns burst." 15 Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 157 notes "in the great arsenal at Amoy, a large two-decked junk was found nearly ready for sea with guns, as well as something bearing a resemblance to gun-carriages." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 NATURALIST, AUTHOR, ARTIST, EXPLORER AND EDITOR AND AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN PRESIDENT Arthur de Carle Sowerby 1885-1954 President of the North China Branch of The Royal Asiatic Society 1935 - 1940 KEITH STEVENS 121 Although the lives of many Western expatriates who lived in China and experienced the excitements and horrors of travel and the exoticism of the old civilisation cry out to be recorded, most expatriates lived mundane, cliché-ridden existences, apart from the occasional excitement caused by the troubles and emergencies of the times, brigandage, rioting, and war. They never, or only very rarely, ventured far from their Treaty Port and certainly not into the dark hinterland of China. Should they have ventured anywhere at all, it would have been to hunt or shoot in the immediate area of the Port or go to a nearby beach or classical tourist site, such as Nanking or Soochow. And of all, only a mere handful of those who did venture far afield have left sufficient records to enable a portrait of their life to be disentangled and recorded. Arthur de C. Sowerby was one such venturer. Before the centenary of his and his family's fortunate furlough in 1900 passes, I wanted to pay a debt of pleasure to the author and publisher, Arthur Sowerby, on behalf of all those who gained some insight into a China now long departed. I have unorthodox reasons for taking a special interest in Arthur Sowerby. Beginning some years ago, a train of circumstances led me to him when I bought several unbound second-hand copies of the China Journal published by him and his wife in Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s. I was then drawn by a series of coincidental incidents to the fascinating and exciting period of his life, his early years. Each of these incidents has had some significance to me, ranging from the city of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 123 while trekking and living amongst Chinese his Chinese language skills must have been of immense value and probably were the prime reason why he was invited to join several natural history expeditions through northern China. Arthur's father, the Reverend Arthur Sowerby was a missionary in China for forty years, mostly in Taiyuan though during his latter years he was a tutor to the sons of Republican President Yuan Shih-kai [who attempted to mount the imperial throne in 1916]. Sowerby was a man of his time. He would have seen the Chinese first, as a child and a young man, from a missionary point of view, “sad heathen souls needing saving," later, with the eyes of a traveller and so-called explorer as "dullards who needed leadership and western civilisation,” and finally, as a businessman and resident in the Foreign Concession of Shanghai, where the Chinese were regarded as "the Yellow Peril, natives to be kept at a distance, and frequently ridiculed." China and the Chinese were popularly denigrated by the Western community and Chinese in general were distrusted. These strongly rooted beliefs reflected nearly a century of western misunderstanding and reaction to Chinese conduct, and shaped the behaviour of Treaty Port Westerners and Britons in particular. However, Sowerby had a redeeming feature as the editor of and a writer for a journal, one of the aims of which was to educate foreigners living on Chinese soil on, amongst other things, Chinese culture, The only connection this article has with the Millennium, however tenuous, was the fortunate escape of the Sowerby family, including the fifteen year-old Arthur, from the largest Boxer massacre of missionaries exactly a century ago in 1900. The great majority of Western missionaries in Shansi, many scores, were murdered - with the provincial Governor, Yü Hsien, taking part in the killing of fifty-one Catholic and Protestant missionaries in his yamen, and with a further fifty or so being killed elsewhere in the province. The Sowerbys were lucky enough to be back in England on long furlough at the time and the Reverend Arthur Sowerby who lost many friends and colleagues had the sad task of writing the obituaries of several of them. Arthur was educated at home in Taiyuan and also at a missionary ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 131 Not only did he write many of the Journal's editorials but also in each edition a number of miscellaneous articles on subjects ranging from hunting in Manchuria and boating as a holiday to the Hall of Antiquities in the Hude Museum in Shanghai - a pet project of his, as well as Scientific Notes and Reviews. His editorials ranged from Shanghai's Position in the World to China's New Industrialisation. A typical editorial described the colossal task facing the leaders of China's Republic and, as the years passed, so his editorials became more and more anti-Japanese. In the great age of European self-confidence these editorials reflected the general mood of expatriates not only in the Treaty Ports but also within the hinterland of China. None of this necessarily precluded a measure of genuine interest in Chinese culture though he, himself, appears not to have been a convinced ‘Orientalist.' He covered a vast range of subjects under broad-brush headings Engineering, Industrial and Commercial Notes; Scientific Notes and Reviews; Educational Notes and Intelligence and Travel and Exploration Notes. A number of articles written by people whose names have come down to us as authors of well-known books such as Florence Ayscough, L.C. Arlington, Juliet Bredon and James Hutson appeared in the Journal over the years. It would be impossible to list here many of the articles and papers printed issue by issue ranging as they did from tea to river craft, secret societies to criticisms on the Shanghai local artists exhibitions as well as descriptions of expeditions into the interior With Kua-tzu and Camera in the Yangtze Gorges by H. Foote-Carey and in 1923 - Investigation of the Thermal Dissociation of Hydrated Alumo-silicates, Prehnite, Zoisite and Epidote by E. Norin of the Nystrøm Institute, Taiyuan Fu, Shansi. In early 1938 Arthur and his wife, Clarice, sold their interest in the China Journal to a new company called "The China Journal Publishing Company Limited" based at 117 Hong Kong Road, Shanghai, accepting part of the purchase price in shares of the new company. There were now three directors, H.J. Timperley, A. de C. Sowerby and H.J. Freyn. The manager at that point was a Mr. W.V.D. White with Clarice Moise no longer referred to on the staff of the Journal. Then, on 7 December 1941, after Pearl Harbour, men of the Japanese navy broke into the offices and destroyed everything, including the files, mailing lists, back numbers, and that was the end of the China Journal. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 148 More than a year later, on 25 July 1860, French and British forces combined prior to proceeding to Peking to enforce the treaty of Tientsin. On 18 September, a small group of diplomats, civilians and soldiers, led by Mr (later Sir) Harry Parkes, of the British Consular Service in China, left the main body of troops to make certain arrangements with the Chinese Commissioners. They were taken captive on their way back to rejoin the troops. Given the nature of their mission at the time of their capture, great indignation was felt. Mr Harry Parkes was held for ransom. Other prisoners were treated with great cruelty. This again caused great indignation. By way of reprisal and on Lord Elgin's deliberated orders, the Imperial summer palace at Peking was razed to the ground. On 24 October 1860, the Treaty of Tientsin was finally ratified and the Convention of Peking was annexed to it as a make-weight. 6 The arrival of full news on these and related events gave rise in Britain to several months of heavy press coverage on China and the Chinese in early 1861. The London Illustrated News, with its combination of illustrations and narrative, is a useful case study to illustrate both the extent and the variety of this coverage. The Illustrated London News 8 On 5 January 1861, The Illustrated London News was full of news from China. It carried three illustrations "by our special artist": two double-spread half-page illustrations of "Street Scene in Pekin: A Crowd of Celestials Contemplating the Barbarians" and "An-tin Mun, the Gate of Pekin in Our Possession"; and one full-page double-spread illustration, showing "The Earl of Elgin's Entrance into Pekin on the 24th of October Last to sign the Treaty of Peace Between Great Britain and China". The Illustrated London News also gave the text of the Convention and a description of the ceremony of the signing of the Convention. 11 The same issue also contained part of Mr Harry Parkes's detailed and circumstantial narrative of his own imprisonment, and an account by the Daily News correspondent of the fate of the whole number... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 208 nior Inspector of Nuisances' and the 'Instructions to Head Watchmen and Watchmen' are of importance in this current study and, since the duties of the Watchmen contained in these instructions are so different from those originally envisaged by the creators of the District Watch scheme, their relevant parts are reproduced at the end of this paper. Before continuing with a discussion of the District Watchmen's role in sanitary inspections, some explanation of the word 'nuisance' is appropriate. In the context of Victorian Britain, the term 'nuisance' implied something much more than the modern milder meaning of 'pest' or 'irritant.' 'Nuisance' was a general term to describe anything noxious which would offend the senses, whether these were sight, sound, smell or touch. Brenda Yeoh, in her study of colonial Singapore, describes it as 'an elastic term which encompassed many possibilities from filthy premises to undesirable animals.' She further mentions the comprehensive list of nuisances in The Acts and Ordinances of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements from 1st April 1867 to 1st June 1886 compiled by Mr C.G. Garrad which extended over two pages. Given the graver meaning of the term in the nineteenth century, it can be seen that the post of Inspector of Nuisances was much more important than might be regarded today from its title. Inspectors of Nuisances were found throughout the British Empire and also in the Treaty Port of Shanghai. 14 Returning to the removal of the District Watchmen to undertake sanitary duties, what we have here is the appropriation by the Hong Kong Government of the whole of an existing viable private security force to be used by the Government for a completely different function. Moreover, this change would incur the Government in only minimal additional expense since the bulk of the watchmen's wages would still be met by the Chinese merchants. There can be no doubt that the plan was put into operation since, in the Blue Books for 1883-85, a total of six Head District Watchmen and thirty-seven District Watchmen appeared under the heading of Sanitary (a sub-heading under Public Works Department) at an annual cost to the Government of $24 for each Head District Watchman and $12 for each District Watchman. During these three years the Chinese merchants continued to provide these men with an annual wage of $180, in the case of a Head District Watchmen, and $72 per annum for each District Watchman. The following year there appears to have been a change in policy because, in the 1886 Blue ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 385 Rev. Wright provided the text for Allom's China and wrote a short piece entitled The Fortress of Terror, Dinghai. He claimed that 'during the British descent upon the coast of China, nowhere was the destruction of life and property greater than at Dinghai. Every hill on the coast in the vicinity of Dinghai was crowned with a battery of apparent strength; some of them too elevated to be effective. At the entrance of a defile, watered by a rivulet flowing from the valley of Chae-hu [sic], and on an eminence about two hundred feet above the level of the bay, stood one of those deceptive structures, misnamed "The Fortress of Terror," in which the Chinese so lucklessly reposed entire confidence, when the British fleet cast anchor in the roads beneath. No troops, however armed or disciplined, could have acted with more eminent personal gallantry, than the Tatar garrison of the fort of Terror, yet none ever encountered a more signal overthrow. Wright described Zhoushan as an agreeable scene, with every hill cultivated to its summit, every valley, from the mountain's foot to the river's margin with industry and fertility, producing a large surplus for the enrichment of the labourers. These productions, including rice, cotton, seed potatoes, coarse tea and candles made from the seeds of the tallow tree, were conveyed along canals in barges. The roads of Zhoushan were not constructed for the convenience of visitors, the gratification of travellers, or the mere objects of pleasure. In describing the city of Dinghai, Wright noted that it did not stand upon the marshy ground but on the sloping side of the Yongdong Valley. It was surrounded by a brick wall twenty-six feet in height, sixteen in thickness, and six miles in circuit, with four entrance gates corresponding exactly with the four cardinal points. The city was intersected by open sewer canals, the streets were narrow and paved, and intersected by canals along the middle. Between 1841 and 1844 the Westmoreland Regiment served with the British force during the campaign to capture and hold the Island of Zhoushan. The assault on and occupation of Zhoushan during the First China War was one of many along the coast of Southern and Eastern China. It culminated in the Treaty of Nanjing [Nanking] in August 1842 under terms by which occupation forces held on to several places until the treaty was fully implemented, Zhoushan being one. There was a school of British opinion at the time which strongly believed that we ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 386 should have taken Zhoushan Island rather than, to quote Palmerston's scathing words, 'the barren rock' of Hong Kong which would have undoubtedly altered the course of history and British relations with China in the 20th century. The Westmoreland Regiment," part of a larger British expeditionary force, therefore returned to Zhoushan Island after the Treaty had been signed and remained on until 1844. A monument was raised in Dinghai dedicated to the few from the ranks who had been killed in action and the many who during the occupation had died of diseases so prevalent there. An annex to a report written probably in the 1880s provides us with the wording on the monument as well as a second annex describes the wording on a separate monument dedicated to Captain Colin Campbell of the Westmoreland Regiment who died at Zhoushan on the 29th May 1842 of a wound received in action at Zhapu [Chapu].vii The wording on the main monument read: Sacred to The Memory of 11 Sergeants, 13 Corporals, 4 Drummers, and 403 Privates of H.M. 55th Regt who were killed in action or died from disease while serving in China from the 14th July 1841 to the 22nd February 1844 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 214 Force conceded that there were reasons for beginning hostilities against China, whilst others were openly critical of a war opened on behalf of opium traders, badly treated or not. An anonymous military writer in Colburn's United Service Magazine observed bitterly at the time that "the poor Chinese - with their painted paste-board boats - must submit to be poisoned, or must be massacred by the thousand, for supporting their own laws in their own land." Another military officer, Lieutenant John Ouchterlony of the Madras Engineers in his history of the War, conceded: "That the quarrel was an unhappy one and for many reasons to be deeply deplored, does not admit of a doubt." At the same time, Ouchterlony introduced a wider consideration for his readers. However plausible the view taken in England by those opposed to a war which, as they thought, was being undertaken to enforce the opium traffic, it was, he said, “on our part just and unavoidable" due to the "vindictiveness and insufferable arrogance of the Chinese government" during the past half-century. "The opium question," to his mind, was to be "regarded merely as a spark blown into a mine, and no more to be considered the primary cause of the war than the match which ignites the train..." This was a view shared by another young officer, Lieut. Wyndham Charles Baker of the Madras Engineers, as we see from one of his published home letters. Not all their brother officers were convinced. The naval surgeon Edward Cree, was more concerned with the results of the War. Noting in his journal for Monday 29th [August] 1842 that "the articles of the treaty [were] signed this day," he commented: “So ends the Chinese War. About the justice and policy of it I leave to more competent judges, but one thing I dislike in connection with it is the opium question. It has cost the lives of many thousands of human beings, and great destruction of property and misery and sorrow to many. Waging War in European Style 11 In official circles in Britain, China's Court and Government were blamed for bringing on the War. Perhaps because of this, the British ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 34 Shiyi' who suggested that an army be sent to Europe for training and service with the Allies. He continued to promote China's participation hoping for future political and financial advantages which might accrue providing further expansion of his own empire of bureaucratic and financial interests. Lord Inchcape, the chairman of the Port and Transit Executive Committee, had already suggested the formation of Transport Workers Battalions to assist in clearing ships' cargoes for speedy turn-around. Some considered that delays in this area resulted from dock-workers not working a full day or were too few in number to carry out the work. To placate the unions, their representatives were appointed to serve on the Committee. Ernest Bevin, the national organiser of the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Worker's Union [the Dockers' Union] considered that the port authorities intentionally created labour shortages as an excuse for employing non-union labour. After an agreement had been reached with the Government as to further representation by Union members to serve on the Committee, Ernest Bevin became a member of the Committee. However, because it was considered that agreement with the Unions would not be reached, as to the employment of foreign labour, it was decided to look elsewhere for additional manpower. Throughout the war, trade union pressure prevented the introduction of Chinese labourers to the British Isles. Many years previously, Chinese had travelled to work, under contract or treaty provisions in, for instance, the gold mines of South Africa. They were tempted to do so due to poor conditions in China and because of the comparatively high wages offered. Recruitment The French pioneered the scheme to recruit Chinese to serve as non-military personnel, negotiations being conducted by government officers posing as civilians to protect the Chinese Government and its neutrality from controversy. The contract to supply 50,000 labourers was agreed upon on 14 May 1916 and their first shipment left Tianjin for Dagu and Marseilles in July 1916. In February 1917, in the Mediterranean the French steamship Athos was sunk with the loss of 543 Chinese lives, but this did not deter the Chinese from enlisting to serve with the French or British. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 6 Straits Settlements, but not to Hong Kong. The governor protested to the Colonial Office at Hong Kong's exclusion in 1907, 1910 and 1912 but the Canadian government refused to include Hong Kong within its preferential tariff on the grounds that goods from China might be shipped through Hong Kong's open port and fraudulently obtain the benefit of Canada's preferential tariff." So Hong Kong's exports of cement and refined sugar were taxed at the highest rate and soon lost their market in Canada. In 1912 a trade agreement was negotiated between Canada and the West Indian colonies whereby Canadian exports were granted preferential tariffs in return for Canadian preferences on Caribbean cane sugar, cocoa beans and lime juice. The West Indian colonies negotiated this trade agreement directly with Canada and the secretary of state for the colonies raised no objection. These preferences were increased by a new trade agreement in 1920 and were generalised to benefit goods from all empire sources.20 The Colonial Office invited all colonies and protectorates to consider the practicability of introducing preferential rates of duty for goods of imperial origin. But most of the colonial empire was prevented by international treaties from imposing discriminatory tariffs. Northern Rhodesia, Kenya and Uganda, being part of the Congo Basin, were forbidden to discriminate by the Convention of St. Germain (1919); Nigeria and the Gold Coast by the Anglo-French treaty of 1898; and Tanganyika, Togoland, Cameroons and Palestine were mandated territories of the League of Nations which prohibited discrimination. By 1932 the only colonies which were free to adopt imperial preference but had not done so were Somaliland, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and certain islands in the Pacific." Canada and New Zealand were the only dominions which granted any preferences to the colonial empire before 1932. Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Southern Rhodesia and India granted none. The world trade depression which began in 1929 convinced British politicians that the liberal principles of free trade which had been followed for the past 70 years must be abandoned. The National government elected in 1931 quickly passed the Import Duties Act which imposed a general duty of 10 per cent ad valorem on all imports. Section 5 of the act granted an entire exemption from the general duty to imports from all colonies, protectorates and mandated territories, provided that at least 25 per cent of the value was derived from materials grown or produced or from work done within a part of the empire." Imports from the dominions and India were exempted from duty only until November pending the outcome of an Imperial Economic Conference." A circular despatch was sent by the Colonial Office to all colonies and protectorates drawing attention to the great advantages extended to the colonies by the Import Duties Act and inviting them to give similar preferences to United Kingdom manufactures ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g where the territory was not debarred from doing so by treaty. In preparation for the negotiations at Ottawa the colonies were also asked to consider what preferences might be accorded them by the dominions and what preferences they might give to the dominions in return on the lines of the Canada-West Indies agreement.” 34 The governor, Sir William Peel, discussed Hong Kong's position while visiting the Colonial Office in June 1932. Officials agreed with him that Hong Kong's status as a free port made it impossible to impose anything like a general tariff. Any such tariff would ruin the entrepôt trade which was vital to Hong Kong's existence and no practicable means could be devised of landing goods in bond for re-export without involving so much inconvenience as to drive the entrepôt trade to other neighbouring ports. Peel was prepared as a gesture to give a preference to empire products on articles such as spirits and tobacco which were subject to excise duty and to impose a higher rate of first registration tax on foreign motor cars than on cars imported from Britain and Canada. He did not ask for any preference from the dominions in return since in his view the bulk of Hong Kong exports consists of foreign goods the proportion of the cost of which, due to treatment in Hong Kong, was not large enough to secure a preference...” This showed a surprising ignorance of Hong Kong's growing trade in domestic manufactures which were largely exported to neighbouring Asian countries. The Ottawa conference convened in July 1932. The British delegation was led by Stanley Baldwin, the former prime minister, and four other cabinet ministers. Canada, Southern Rhodesia and Newfoundland were represented by their prime ministers; Australia and New Zealand by former prime ministers; South Africa and the Irish Free State by their finance and trade ministers. India, which had been given the freedom to establish protective duties in 1923, was represented by Sir Atul Chatterjee and other members of the Viceroy's Council. The interests of the colonial empire were safeguarded by the secretary of state for the colonies, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister and one civil servant from the Colonial Office, G.L.M. Clauson. The conclusions of the conference were embodied in agreements between the United Kingdom government and the governments of the dominions and India. Britain consented to continue the free entry of goods grown, produced or manufactured in any part of the empire, and to impose additional duties on specified foreign goods which would give empire produce a preferential margin higher than the 10 per cent tariff already imposed by the Import Duties Act. Britain also agreed to 'invite' the non-self-governing colonies and protectorates to extend to all the dominions any preference at present extended to any part of the empire, and to increase the margin of preference or impose specific duties on a long list of items requested by the dominions. In return the dominions confirmed the existing ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 21 Kenya 33 per cent, Nigeria 58 per cent, Ceylon 52 per cent, Jamaica 60 per cent. 7. For example Nyasaland in 1929 raised the duty on imported soap from 5 shillings to 7 shillings to protect a newly established factory. In 1931 the duty was increased to 8 shillings a cwt. The Colonial Office first heard of these increases in 1932 when Unilever complained. Memo IDC(37)No.7, T160/763/F14811/2. 8. CO137/780. Georgina Waylen, 'Colonial Policy towards industrialisation between the wars: the case of Jamaica', Manchester Papers in Politics (University of Manchester, Nov. 1987, mimeo). 9. In 1931 a local company proposed to establish a cement factory in Kenya which required a protective tariff and a guarantee that a very high anti-dumping duty would be imposed on Japanese cement which dominated the market. The Colonial Office refused the request for protection on the advice of the Board of Trade because the local factory if successful would take over government orders, depriving British cement manufacturers of the last remnant of the market. CO533/417/18. In 1933 the Colonial Office rejected a scheme to erect a cotton spinning and weaving factory in East Africa which required a capital subscription of £500,000 from the governments of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. IDC(37)No.8, T160/763/F14811/2. A proposal for a soap factory in the Windward Islands was disallowed because it involved the colony being given a preference over the UK in other colonies from which the copra was to be exported. IDC(37)No.7, T160/763/F14811/2. 10. Hong Kong Blue Book 1846 (PRO, CO133/3), 226, stated ‘A large number of Chinese are employed in their respective shops and houses in the exercise of industrial trades and manufactures and there are scarcely any ordinary wants of the inhabitants which do not meet with a ready supply within the town.' 11. These dates are taken from the Return of Manufactures, Mines and Factories in the Blue Books compiled every year for submission to the Colonial Office. Not all the manufacturing enterprises were successful: the cotton spinning factory closed in 1914 and removed its machinery to Shanghai. But new manufacturing ventures soon took their place. Sir William Robinson (governor 1891-98) in his first address to the legislative council spoke of the advantages that would accrue from a further encouragement of local industries. 'The community may rely upon my aid and assistance in fostering in every legitimate way the development of such enterprises.' Hong Kong Legislative Council Debates, 25 Jan. 1892, 97. This was done by selling public land by private treaty at a discount for industrial development, H.K. LegCo. Deb., 4 Dec. 1893, 1–2. 12. CO129/379, 377-384 and 392-755. 13. Hong Kong Blue Book 1930. Blue Book 1932. The largest factory was that of the Green Island Cement Company which could employ 1,470 men when working at full capacity. 14. Statistics on imports and exports were first collected in 1918. Publication was discontinued in 1925 and resumed in 1931, but no distinction was made between re-exports and domestic exports until 1959. Estimates of gross domestic product were not made by government statisticians until 1961. Domestic exports have been calculated from Hong Kong Trade Returns 1932, compiled by the Imports and Exports Department (Hong Kong, 1933), CO133/103, by identifying all categories where exports exceeded imports, on the assumption that the surplus must represent Hong Kong domestic production. This calculation certainly understates local production since it does not take account of manufactures consumed locally. Also the trade figures do not include the very large volume of goods smuggled into China to avoid payment of customs duty. 15. Memorandum in Clementi to Cunliffe-Lister, 20 Sept. 1933, CO323/1232. 16. Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor to Enquire into the Causes and Effects of the Present Trade Depression in Hong Kong, February 1935 (Hong Kong, 1935), 88-89, CO129/554/5. 17. Trade Depression Report, 75. 18. W.K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs Vol II, Problems of Economic Policy 1918-1939, Part 1 (Oxford, 1940), 87. 19. CO129/344. CO129/370. CO129/392. 20. F. V. Meyer, British Colonies in World Trade (Oxford, 1948), 9–11, 18–19. 21. Hancock, 125. Meyer, 10-11. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 302 Department opined - sincerely - to the author that lighthouse keepership had become a kind of Eurasian tradition. They had developed the expertise and took pride in this. One can see, looking in Government staff lists, that lighthouse keepers in the 1950s and '60s usually had English names. But they were generally Eurasians. They are still talked about by those who remember them. In fact the eccentricities (if they may be called that) of some of the old timers are recalled with affection (Rull; 1999). When on shore leave the Brown Brothers (Henry and Richard) would go fishing. Marine Department staff used to laugh and say it was because they found, after working in an isolated lighthouse for so long, that the "hubbub" at home was just too much to bear. Their grandfather was a Danish mariner named Bruhn, although the family was of German stock with the spelling Braune (commonly spelt Braun). It is not known when the family changed its name to the English Brown. Grandfather travelled in and around China and lived for a time at the old treaty port of Amoy (now called Xiamen). It was a large family, generally tall, and several of the children were educated at Diocesan Boys or Diocesan Girls schools in Hong Kong. Most family members have now emigrated to Britain, Canada or Australia. Henry (born in 1898) was a big man in more ways than one. He liked double-breasted suits and bow ties. He enjoyed parties, telling jokes and drinking with friends - although not to excess. He made up for his time at Waglan when on shore leave. Both brothers liked fishing and shooting. Richard (born in 1896), who had lost fingers in an accident, was the quiet one. Both used to talk to family members about Waglan and of having to be hauled up in a basket in bad weather. One of the Brown brothers acted for a time, in the mid-1950s, managing the Lighthouse Section until the post of Superintendent of Lights was filled in March 1957 by Terrence Coughtney who was posted from Sarawak (Lack; 1999). Because the Brown family was of Danish nationality, and Denmark was not technically at war with Japan, the Brown brothers were not interned during the Japanese occupation. Another colourful character, who served as a lighthouse keeper starting in 1937, was Charles Beatty Allenby Haig Thirlwell. With three of his four given names taken from surnames of two famous British ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 NOTES Abbreviations: Colonial Office - CO JIA - Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia JMBRAS - Journal of the Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society JSEAH - Journal of Southeast Asian History SFP - Singapore Free Press SSR - Straits Settlements Records The Government of the Straits Settlement Act, 1866. 29 & 30 Vicc 115 - An Act to provide for the Government of the Straits Settlements. Turnbull, The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony. (1972) Oxford University Press, p 379 Among the various historians on Malayan history, Mary C Turnbull's comments on the Straits Settlements prior to the Transfer in 1867 are, by far, the most balanced and comprehensive, and her views on this area are invaluable. While the following facts were gathered from several historians' works, I have been influenced strongly by Turnbull's analysis. I have attempted to summarize in the following 3 sections Turnbull's views based closely on her Introduction to The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony. cf. Treaty of 6 February 1819 (Johore 1819) (Treaties with Native States Part III) Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between the EIC and the Sultan of Johore in 1824, cf. Treaties with Native States p 16 Part III cf. Article 10 of the treaty Turnbull, The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony, Introduction p 3 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 23 86 they were considered a bad influence by Sir Richard MacCulloch, Recorder of Singapore 1856-66, and merchants and Grand Juries made "vague accusations from time to time" (Turnbull, supra (on convicts), p 99) *for example, between 1830 and 1850, more than 1500 Thugs were sent to Singapore and Penang, and they played a prominent part in the Dusserah and Muharram festivals, turning them into the rowdy display of hooliganism they became by the middle of the century.' (Turnbull, supra (on convicts), p 100) 88 for example, transportation of convicts to the Straits Settlements were put to an end in 1860 (Annual retrospect for 1860 in SFP 10 Jan 1861) 89 for example, Governor Cavenagh took a personal interest in the convict administration, the health of the convicts improved, death rates fell with more attention paid to their diet; better supervision, incentive bonuses enhanced their efficiency 90 1857 riots "1 albeit that their fears were groundless in most instances BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources: Hansard Parliamentary Debates 3rd ser, cxlix, (986 - 996) Parliamentary Papers, 1862, xl (House of Commons) The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce Singapore Free Press CO273 series (Straits Settlements, Original Correspondence) Straits Settlements Records (Microfilm 139, 141, 142, 184) Treaties: Treaty of 6 February 1819 (Johore 1819) (Treaties with Native States, Part III) Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between the EIC and the Sultan of Johore (1824) (Treaties with Native States Part III) Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Alliance of 1800 (Treaties with Native States, Part I) Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 24 Treaty of Holland (Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824), (Hertslet's Treaties Vol VIII) Pangkor Engagement of 1874 (Treaties with Native States Part II) Bill: Straits Transfer Bill (House of Commons), 1866, V (Session 1 Feb - 10 Aug 1866) Statutes: Act 24th George III Cap 25 (1784) Indian Charter Act of 1833 Indian Act No. XVII of 1855 Charters of Justice (1807, 1826, 1855) The Colonial Laws Validity Act, 1865, 28 & 29 Vic, Cap 63 The Government of the Straits Settlements Act, 1866, 29 & 30 Vic, Cap 115 The Courts (Colonial) Jurisdiction Act, 1874, 37 & 38 Vic, Cap 27 The Straits Settlements Offences Act, 1874, 37 & 38 Vic, Cap 38 Case: Regina v Willians Esq (1858) (3 Ky 16) Secondary Sources: Allen, Richard H S, 1968, Malaysia, Prospect and Retrospect. The Impact and Aftermath of Colonial Rule, Oxford University Press Auber, P, 1826, An Analysis of the Constitution of the EIC and the Laws Passed by Parliament for the Government of Their Affairs at Home and Abroad, London Blythe, W L, 1969, The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, Kuala Lumpur Braddell, Roland St John, (1915) 1982, The Law of the Straits Settlements. A Commentary, Oxford University Press (Kuala Lumpur) Braddle, T, (1853) 'Notices of Singapore', JIA, vii, 1328 Buckley, Charles Burton, (1902) 1984, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore, Oxford University Press ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 # Appendix I: A chronology of events concerning Devil's Peak and its vicinity Date Event Source Remarks 1368-1643 Lei Yue Mun classified by the Ming Dynasty as one of the 16 major sea passages and placed under naval patrol. Siu, 1997, p.24 Circa 1646-1656 Lei Man Wing, a supporter of a Ming Prince, occupied Devil's Peak and established his own "customs post" at Lei Yue Mun. Siu, 1997, p.24 1656 Lee Man Wing surrendered to the Manchu Dynasty. Siu, 1997, p.25 Circa 1661 Cheng Sing King (Coxinga or Surname of the Royal Family) drove the Dutch out of Taiwan (Formosa), his general Cheng Kin settled at Lei Yue Mun. Siu, 1997, p.26 c.f. Leung 1980, pp.68-69 Circa 1735 Cheng Lin Cheng, the great grandson of Cheng Kin, a pirate, established his camp in Devil's Peak. The name Devil's Peak owed to the ferocity of Cheng. Empson, 1992, p.104 (Plate 1-19); p.106 (Plate 1-20) 1753 Cheng Lin Cheong built a Tin Hau Temple along the coast as an observation post. This temple has been repaired several times since then and still exists. Empson, 1992, p.98 (Plate 1-14) 1819 The name Devil's Peak appears in Hong Kong maps produced by James Wyld and Captain Belcher, Empson, 1992, p.128 (Plate 2-1) 1841 The term "Lei Yue Mun fort" appears in a map to the Sun On Gazetteer, referred to as "San On Country Directory", Empson, 1992, p.112 (Plate 1-24) The location of the fort is uncertain as the map is not to scale and not at all accurate. 1845 1860 The name Devil's Peak appears in the lease map for the Treaty of Peking 1860, by which Kowloon was ceded to Britain. 127 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 197 Promises were made that other colporteurs would continue to stop by Poklo, and so Ch'ea left his Hong Kong connections to return to an uncertain future. PART THREE: Darkness outside, light within: Chinese cultural rejections of Ch'ea's Christian way No further contact with Ch'ea occurred for nearly a year after he left for Poklo, partly because of changing circumstances in Hong Kong that prevented any more aggressive strategies from taking shape. Legge himself had already been living as a widower since October 1852, his wife Mary Isabella (1817-1852) succumbing to what was probably advancing tuberculosis during a burdensome delivery of a stillborn child.34 Longing to see his children who had been receiving their education in Scotland since 1853, but also anxious to show the first fruits of his plans for the Chinese Classics to the London Missionary Society Directors, Legge was predisposed to staying close to Hong Kong and not taking trips into the nearby mainland. The Arrow Lorcha affair in October 1856 heightened the political tensions over supposed conflicts in treaty provisions between the Qing and British empires, lending just enough reason for British officials to initiate full-scale war in December. Whatever plans there were for "nurturing" and "supporting" Ch'ea, the declaration of war made travel inside China for foreigners literally impossible. 35 In the meantime, Ch'ea had to make his own way. Soon after he returned to Poklo he officially gave up his "employment in the sacred temple [of Master Kong]" and apparently devoted his free time to reading the books brought with him from Hong Kong. Family members charged him with following a foreigner's religion, suggesting that he had given up his allegiance to the Manchurian empire. Neighbours and others considered him either to be mad or possessed, the latter group throwing water on him (blessed in one of the Daoist temples?) to cast out the demons. What is significant, and may not be fully understood at first notice, is that these reactions occurred months before any outright military hostilities had begun (the so-called Second Opium War). "Following ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 210 very direct and personal ways during the 1861 missionary tour. PART FIVE: Legge's risk and Ch’êa's Via Dolorosa 73 Having expected some signs of local discontent and not sensing that the level of antiforeignism was high enough to obstruct further developments, Legge arranged to purchase a house in Poklo for the establishment of a chapel and missionary coordinating office the following July. Although these arrangements were protected by the new treaty conditions, a controversy soon arose in which a local gentry claimed previous rights to the house, refusing to admit that the London Missionary Society representatives had the prior option to purchase the place. Consequently, though money had been sent for the purchase, the deeds for the house were never turned over to the missionary society. Social tensions between the district authorities and the opposing gentry rose, so that Legge appealed to both the British and Qing provincial authorities in Canton to help them resolve the problem. All this particular appeal seemed to produce was further obstacles in the way of a normal sale, the provincial authorities refusing to make any independent actions on their own. The issue must have become controversial enough that most active citizens in the Poklo region knew about the problem, making it a heated topic of debate among gentry and common people. In the meantime, as Legge explained in a letter of mid-October, "[One of the gentry] took violent possession [of the house] and proceeded from one act of aggression to another, till affairs wore a very threatening aspect as concerns the safety of our Native Brethren." So desperate was the situation that Ch'ea and others "fled to Canton to ask advice and help from the missionaries." 74 Frustrated over the intransigence of both Qing and British authorities, Legge left Hong Kong for Canton in early October, seeking to resolve the problem by making a personal appeal to the presiding British official there. It was a significant move for several reasons left unstated in the missionary publications which followed the event. Certainly, the fact that active threats of persecution against local Chinese Christians in Poklo were now known heightened the stakes of the sale of the house, for the protection of Chinese ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 216 forces of the British and French armies were departing Canton, so that whether these events had any correlation may be an additional issue. Nothing seems to have been consciously planned as an attack on the Governor-General, though he felt threatened by the riot (the events in Poklo being some 40 miles east of Canton). At the very least the vigilantes were acting "in flagrant violation of the stipulations of the [1860] Treaty," "stirring up the hatred of the people toward foreigners, and their dislike to Christianity." Whether they had other "ambitious ends" hidden under the banner and their rhetoric remained a serious, but moot, question. Following normal protocol for this kind of emergency, Chalmers acting on behalf of the London Missionary Society presented their complaints to the consul at Canton. The missionaries had been given no indication of the Governor-General's intentions, but Legge specifically adds that, if all else failed, they could refer the matter "to our Ambassador at Peking." His attitude toward the Qing bureaucracy was unqualified and negative: "The [Qing] Government is effete. The foundations are destroyed.” Although this might seem like an overstatement, the feelings reflected a fairly realistic evaluation of the disarray of an empire overcome by foreign powers in the capital and unable to handle the massive Taiping Rebellion which continued to defy imperial armies and ruled over much of the centre of the empire at the time. Other means for dealing with the crisis were also at hand. Daily prayer about the whole situation and its continuing problems became the self-imposed discipline by the Chinese Christians in Hong Kong, prompting Legge to compare this "painful and discouraging" situation in Poklo with the "primitive forthgoing of Christianity” where persecution was also a stimulus for expansion. It was part of the "cunning of history" that Legge's life and name for the next decade were identified with two major issues of the year of 1861: Poklo and his Chinese Classics.90 In missionary publications he became "Dr. Legge of Hong Kong and Poklo,” and in Hong Kong itself, the memories were more vivid and even more powerful in creating around him a kind of aura as a “folk hero" in the Carlylean sense of the term. At least one major event later in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 THE YANGZI PORT OF ZHENJIANG DOWN THE CENTURIES 鎮江 PART I KEITH STEVENS 255 Introduction Zhenjiang is a former walled city on the south bank of what is known to the Chinese as the Chang Jiang, the Long River, or simply as The Great River, and to Westerners - the Yangzi [Yangtze]. The city lies some 40 miles downstream from Nanjing and 156 miles upstream from Shanghai, and in its prime during the Northern Song, in the eleventh century, it was one of the major ports on the River, and even though its influence and authority came to a sudden and dramatic end with its capture and destruction by the Taiping rebels in 1853 it remained the provincial capital of Jiangsu province down to the 1940s. Zhenjiang commanded one of the two junctions of the southern or main arm of the Grand Canal with the Yangzi. The city is surrounded on one side by the Yangzi and on three other sides by hills, none at all high or steep, with the Grand Canal winding past the southern and western face of the walls to its convergence with the River at the Xiannü Temple. The city has been walled since the Yuan [13th century], and was built on the level ground between the Yangzi and the Grand Canal. Three of these numerous hills, all islands or former islands in the Yangzi, Jiao Shan, Beigu Shan and Jin Shan, are part of the city's legend. Some ten miles to the south lies a range of higher hills within which foreigners used to seek their exercise, riding and hunting. Of all the treaty ports Zhenjiang is possibly the least remembered by the great majority of westerners, with very few nowadays even having heard of the place. Not even when it is explained that in former romanisations it has been known to foreigners as Chinkiang, Chin-kiang, Chen-chiang Fu, Chin-keang-foo, Tsing-kiang-foo, Kin-kiang, Chingkiang, Tsing-kiang and Jingkou [i.e. Gateway to the Capital - Nanjing]. It was even known by the title of Chin-shan [Jin Shan], Gold ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 258 Shanghai did not possess, and were undoubtedly conducive to health by promoting exercise. In winter the climate is bracing and healthy though fever and dysentery were to be dreaded in summer'. There are a number of highlights for foreign visitors beginning, perhaps, with the former foreign concession, though nowadays more than seventy years on, it is difficult to discern. Outside the Chinese old city with its modern main roads, cobbled side streets and a stone pagoda said to be 13th century Yuan dynasty, though its present condition suggests that it has either been well restored or completely remade within the last century, there are the fourth century Jin Shan temple and pagoda; the Grand Canal; the former British Consulate; the home of Pearl Buck, as well as the sites of the storming of the town by a British brigade on 21st July 1842 during the First China War [commonly referred to as the Opium War]. There are also the remains of the lengthy trench dug by the Taiping rebels to protect the city from recapture by Imperial forces as well as the ruins left after the destruction of the city by the Taipings during the 1850s. And for those who have read a little Chinese literature or attended Chinese opera the widely-known tale of the White Snake Lady is also part of the story of the Jin Shan temple. Before waxing too lyrically about its glories let us remember that Zhenjiang is the vinegar capital of China, with, if the wind is in the wrong direction, an evocative sour tang forewarning approaching visitors long before they are anywhere near to the city. The majority of Chinese when confronted with the name of the city almost to a man voice the single word 'vinegar' or to the connoisseur 'brown rice vinegar'. Zhenjiang was a treaty port with a foreign concession for sixty-eight years, from the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1860 until 1928, one of the minor footholds foreigners had obtained from China in one of the 'unequal treaties' and the base for numerous foreign interests. There were great hopes for the place and Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, even anticipated that eventually it would eclipse Shanghai as a commercial centre. Despite numerous westerners passing through the place down the years only a few spent full tours of duty there. Many of the temporary visitors were the lesser employees of major western companies such as BAT and Butterfield and Swire, whose regular tours to the many small ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 259 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 • ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 268 bannermen stationed there. The great Qing emperor Qian Long, travelled far and wide throughout his empire on Inspection Tours and visited Zhenjiang. He had a particular love for the monastery at Jin Shan. Lord Macartney was yet another visitor who, in 1792, passed through Zhenjiang on his way up to Beijing, during his unsuccessful attempt to achieve British diplomatic representation there. He was much impressed by the crossing of the Yangzi from the southern arm of the Grand Canal to the start of the northern arm, and by the pagoda-crowned islands he observed on the Yangzi. These would be Jin Shan and the Ganlu Si. Some twenty-five years later Lord Amherst's Mission to Beijing also visited Zhenjiang. His visit was also unsuccessful and, moreover, he was treated with gross discourtesy in the Capital. The storming and capture of Zhenjiang by the British force under Sir Hugh Gough on the 21st July 1842 during the First Anglo-Chinese War This episode in Zhenjiang's history is described in Part II by Phillip Bruce. The problems facing the Qing emperors and their survival from both within and without China during the seventy or so years after 1840 heightened political consciousness and the increasing weakening of control due to unrest and an increase in brigandage. During the latter years of the Qing forced confrontation with Western culture in treaty ports led to the spread of popular unrest and Zhenjiang was no exception. The Taiping era The Taiping Rebellion was an armed rebellion against the Manchu Emperor. It grew out of worsening social and economic conditions, with a number of secret societies and clan groups offering an existence economy and protection. The foreign dynasty of the Manchus had lost its drive and with opium addiction widespread, the scene was set and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 279 from since. Legends claim it to be either a Buddhist pagoda dredged up the bed of the Yangzi Song dynasty from about 1000 AD or a memorial shrine to a Song dynasty prefect of about 1090. A stone Stupa or dagoba [containing Buddhist relics] is situated on a stone platform supported by four pillars over a busy street in front of the Guan Yin Cave to the north of Yuntai Hill to the west of Zhenjiang. In years gone by people heading for the small ferry across the Yangzi had to pass under it and gained confidence for their chancy ferry crossing from the protective power emanating from the relics. It is said to have been built during the Yuan dynasty during the 13th century. Daily life of foreigners in this insignificant Treaty port During the heady days of westerners within the Yangzi basin the steady stream of river steamers sailing the river under the protection of foreign flags and the twin fleets of protective river gun boats of the RN and USN, trade flourished and even an early form of tourism existed. Zhenjiang was famous for silk piece-goods, silk cord tassels for official hats, medicated wine called White Flower Wine, Baihua Jiu, aromatic plants, and fine sturgeon. However, for the foreign residents the greatest bane was the boredom. Although there was the Club where cards, drink and perhaps a few books and newspapers helped while away the long evenings, the ennui of the same faces, the same voices and the same topics of conversation was sufficient to bring some to the verge of suicide and some over it. Life was fairly constrained. There were only two provision stores to serve the foreign community during the first decades of the 20th century, Foo Chong and Chong Hsin. And according to L.C. Arlington Zhenjiang Concession, despite its very limited numbers, boasted its own aristocracy, with the Consul and the Commissioner of Customs as joint Sovereign Lords. The port, he added, was full of individuality, and social life; and the clubs - that for the Upper Circles [Zhenjiang Club] and that for the Lower Strata [Customs Club] - combined to produce constant gossip and occasional friction.20 There were a number of peculiar characters but none more peculiar than an American missionary who had been divorced by his wife owing, it was said, to his peculiar ways. He professed to carry out the teaching of St. Paul by consorting with the coolies in the native city, and providing them with Page 345 Page 346 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 282 in 1896 took herself off up the Yangzi and later wrote about her six-month journey, including her stopover in Zhenjiang. She travelled on the steamer Poyang and...'after passing Silver Island [Jiao Shan], a wooded rock on which there is a fine temple, we reached Chinkiang, the first of the treaty ports on the Yangtze, and well situated at the junction of the Grand Canal with the river. On my two visits I thought it an attractive place. It has a fine bund and prosperous-looking foreign houses, with a British Consulate on a hill above; trees abound. The concession roads are broad and well kept. A row of fine hulks connected by bridges with the shore offers great facilities for the landing of goods and passengers. Sikh police are much in evidence, the hum of business greets one's ears, traffic throngs the bund, the Grand Canal is choked with junks, ...and judging from appearances only, one might think Zhenjiang a busier port than Hankow, the great centre for commerce in Central China'. Mrs Bird then goes on to describe the passing trade including...'our German rivals have done a very neat thing' in starting an albumen factory, in which the albumen, dextrously separated from the yolks of ducks' eggs, is made into slabs, which are sent to Germany for use in photography, the production of leather, and the printing of cotton, etc.'. She also commented on 'the beautiful Golden Island [Jin Shan], separated as recently as 1842 by the channel south of the island where there is now an expanse of wooded and cultivated land sprinkled with villages'. The hulks were replaced many years ago, and yet again, since 1980, their wooden piers have been rebuilt into a row of some half dozen concrete piers. Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of Chinese Maritime Customs for forty-five years, referred several times to the hulks at Chinkiang, usually because the hulk owner, Bean in one instance, was involved in a law case with the local Customs Commissioner. Isabella Bird learned of a number of charities and organisations for the welfare of the poor from the British Consul, W R Carles, and from Rev. W W Lawton who had made careful investigations for the Christian Literary Association of Zhenjiang. She noted that there were an orphan asylum and a benevolent institute for girls in Zhenjiang as well as a benevolent institute with eighty boys. For adults there was a Bureau for Advancing Funds, of inestimable advantage to the struggling farmer or merchant. There were also two free dispensaries, with nine ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 283 doctors in charge, and a Lifesaving institution possessing six well-equipped, well-manned boats always on the river near the port, and ten others dodging about above and below. There was also a free ferry, with thirteen big boats, for crossing the ofttimes stormy and dangerous Yangzi. The city also had a winter 'soup kitchen', a Widows Relief Society and Widows' Home, the latter connected with a Boys' Orphanage. Another of the many Western visitors to pass through Zhenjiang was one of the first British Indian Army officers to study Chinese in Peking." Colonel Wingate eventually retired from the Indian Army as the Director of Military Intelligence but not before he had accomplished, among other things, a journey back from Peking to India overland between September 1898 and May 1899 to collect information of all kinds'. In the October during his journey up the Yangzi he disembarked from the Butterfield and Swire boat at Zhenjiang and was met by the British Consul, E. L. B. Allen who put him up in the consulate. [One of Allen's claim to fame was his hatred of the maddening noise of cicadas which he disposed of by shooting them with his pistol]. Wingate remarked in passing that Zhenjiang was unique among treaty ports in that it had only a British settlement; consequently most of the trade was divided between British and Chinese. Consulates were set up in Zhenjiang not only by Britain but also by France, Germany, Austro-Hungary and, for a short while, by America. British Consuls and the Consulate In 1858 the ruins of Zhenjiang were declared a treaty port open to foreign trade, and in 1861 a site was leased and laid out for a British concession. The British Consul first lived in the temple on Jiao Shan before renting a house on the slope near Guan Yin's Cave, the site which some sixty years later became the premises of the Chinese Life Saving Association which professed to be part-owner of most of the river foreshore. Later, a purpose-built Consulate was built on land acquired on the side of Yin Tai Shan [Consular Bluff] together with offices for the foreign employees of the Chinese Maritime Customs erected at the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 296 Qufu, and Tai Shan, the Holy Mountain, where he saw thousands of poor pilgrims assembling. Mesny claimed that, as an adviser to the Governor of Shandong province, Ding Baozhen, he persuaded the Governor Ding to establish an arsenal near Jinan and build a railway from the Yellow River to the arsenal. Mesny also claimed to have persuaded him to dredge the Yellow River and to fortify Weihai Wei and Jiaozhou [both places later occupied and governed by Britain and Germany respectively as leased territories]. Mesny also claimed to have persuaded Ding to develop the mineral wealth of Shandong 'which he did though in a small way only'. Riots and mob violence Zhenjiang suffered its share of mob violence and riots during its treaty port era. One of the major problems confronting westerners within China was the ever-present possibility of petty or even major violence against their persons and property. Often the disturbance to the peace, due to whatever cause, would be exacerbated by either western impetuosity and/or the indifference and inactivity of the local intendants [mandarins] and their staffs. There were also the perils of banditry, of pirates, of rebels or simply of thugs. One afternoon in 1865 the astounding news was received in Hankou that three foreigners had been most barbarously hacked to pieces in Zhenjiang, and were not expected to live. One was Francis Pickernell, a friend of Mesny, and another was Charles Lewis of Boston, an American, a former ship and messmate of Mesny's, whilst the third was another friend and fellow Jerseyman, Filleule, all of whom died from their horrible wounds. The outrage caused a profound impression upon all foreigners in the river ports and John, Mesny's younger brother, who had not been at Hankou very long, felt very sad at the loss of three such friends. The outrage was said to be due to mistaken identity. A man named Stone, a master of a lorcha on the Yangzi, appears to have offended some Chinese military officials who had insulted his Chinese wife, and they had attempted to avenge themselves in this horrible manner. One fine evening in about 1866, during the time the Nianfei [or Nianzi], the so-called Twisting Bandits, were in the neighbourhood of Hankou, Mesny relates the dreadful tale of four westerners who saw a favourable opportunity to join up with one of the roaming gangs of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 300 Silver Island forts. I did not answer his letter, but noted the date thereon and the date on which I received it. I was requested to send an answer to someone in Zhenjiang. I gave the letter to Consul Mowat.35 As I did not answer Mason's letter he called early one morning and I asked who he was and what he wanted. He replied that he was the United States consular marshal at Hankou and had come down to see the machine gun I had offered to sell to the Municipal Council at Hankou and wished to know if my machine was a single action or double action gun. I showed him the gun and how to work it, and he decided to buy it. He then wished me to send it somewhere on the Yangzi, I said I could not let it go out of my house until it was paid for, and would not deliver anywhere outside the limits of a treaty port unless provided with a special passport or huzhao. Mason then said that he was going to Ningbo and would call for the gun on his return. He did not do so. He went to Hongkong engaged a lot of foreigners, instructed them to come and report themselves to me for duty, etc., etc. On Mason's return to Shanghai he brought a lot of firearms he had bought in Hongkong. They were seized, and the men he had engaged were looked after. He himself was introduced by Mr R.E. Bredon, Shanghai Commissioner of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, to the Daotai of Shanghai who invited him to dinner and to witness a theatrical performance as if he, Mason, had been a popular hero. He lived in the Central Hotel and was a frequent visitor at the Shanghai Club where he had been introduced by Mr Bredon. Meanwhile all sorts of tricks were being practised to inveigle me into a trap. Conch shells were blown at all hours of the night about my house under the direction of Mason. A host of extra police officers and detectives were placed on special duty on my property, at the switch-back railway. I suddenly remembered the letter that had been sent me. I thereupon called on Mr acting-consul Mowat and insisted on his reporting the matter to H.M.'s Minister at Beijing. Mowat pooh-poohed the whole thing as a farce and so it proved in reality though very costly and dangerous to me. Instructions were soon received from H.M.'s Minister at Beijing and Mason was removed from the Central Hotel on the Bund to H.M.'s ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 309 During their drive north to eliminate the War Lords and unify China under the Republic, the Nationalist [KMT] forces entered Zhenjiang in March of 1927 and at the same time took over the Concession. Most westerners left for Shanghai whilst those who remained lived aboard hulks on the River or as close to the River as they could get. Even the British Consul was withdrawn to Shanghai where he continued to carry out his Zhenjiang duties. Eventually, in 1929, bowing to the inevitable the Zhenjiang Concession was finally retroceded to Chinese control and the treaty port, as such, was no more. Gerald Yorke travelled to China in 1931 planning to spend a couple of years travelling around China and studying, to satisfy a childhood dream. Not long after his arrival, as Reuter's correspondent, he joined a party chosen by the Chinese Government to inspect the dyke systems of the Yangzi and Huai river valleys which had just been rebuilt as a result of the disastrous floods in 1931. During the tour with the party they departed from Shanghai and reached Zhenjiang early the next morning. They were greeted on the hulk by a band which played valiantly out of tune. After motoring through the town to a public garden they were entertained at a European luncheon. The weather was cold but presuming that any entertainment would be indoors an under-dressed Yorke froze in the open pavilion. A Shandong medicinal wine was served with the first course; appetising dishes came hot from the kitchen, all of which sat on the table waiting for the Chairman of the Provincial Reconstruction Committee to finish his welcoming speech. When the tepid lunch was over they were each given a pamphlet describing the flood protection work done and the reconstruction planned for the future, a perfect example of how provincial officials wasted their time and country's money by publishing, with their portraits next to the title-page, an account of rather more than they have done and of what they would like one to think they are going to do. The afternoon was spent sight-seeing at the monastery on Silver Island [Jin Shan], with its hundred or so monks and its ancient fir tree in the outer courtyard. The tree had but one branch still alive, its trunk bound in iron and its base enclosed in marble - a symbol of the passing of classical Chinese culture. The monastic treasures were all displayed, the bronze vessel from the Zhou dynasty, a drum from the Han, and a jade belt belonging to a former statesman, possibly Ming. There was also a small hexagonal column inscribed with the Daode Jing, the Daoist classic which had surprised Yorke as he had not expected to see a Daoist classic in a Page 375 Page 376 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 311 Zhenjiang city has grown beyond all recognition. Since the Communists came to power in 1949 Zhenjiang has suffered the same trials and tribulations as all other cities in China and only within the last decade or so of the 20th century did modernisation and development take off. Today it has wide streets, modern shops, drainage and factories as well as all the benefits, or otherwise, of westernisation. Also, three historical sites have been granted Asia-Pacific Heritage Protection Awards for 2001 by UNESCO. They are the Stone Pagoda, the Guan Yin Cave and a charitable association hall, all on Xijindu Street. 1 NOTES Zhenjiang city walls were said by the British military to have been thirty feet high and five feet thick. Allom, Thomas (1844) China - in a series of views, displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits of that Ancient Empire. London: Fisher, Son and Co Vol. IV p 41 3 The area selected to be the foreign settlement was chosen in 1861 and divided into lots. Ground rent was paid to the Chinese government by leaseholders to whom titles for 99 years were issued through the British Consulate. They would have expired in 1960 had not the treaty port as a whole been formally surrendered [rendited in official parlance to avoid using the word surrendered] in 1929 after it had been decided that minor concessions were more trouble than they were worth. A Cunynghame, Captain Arthur [1845] The Opium War: London "Taot'ai [Daotai] was the term for a Qing dynasty Circuit Intendant. *Percival, William Spencer (1889) The Land of the Dragon-My Boating and Shooting Excursions to the Gorges of the Upper Yangtze. London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd. [Percival was a member of H.B.M's Civil Service in China]. 'Clennell, WJ (June 1922) The Historical Setting of Chinkiang or a Bit of ‘Consular Bluff Shanghai: New China Review: Vol IV. No. 3 [Clennell provides much greater detail than is offered here]. & Sun Quan's city was built on Beigu Shan. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 411 YET MORE ON THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE, 1917-1921 DAVID MAHONEY Keith Stevens writes that Brian Fawcett in his article on "THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE" quoted a figure of 30,000 Chinese who returned to and remained in France, from China, after World War I. He added that the figure appears excessive. In fact, the total of all the Chinese labourers recruited by the French for the French Chinese Labour Corps during World War I did not exceed 50,000. The French began their recruitment of Chinese in 1916, some six months before the British did. The scheme was initiated following preliminary discussions on the practicalities of recruiting Chinese labourers to be shipped to France to work in munitions factories to release Frenchmen to serve in the trenches, with the initial idea being to recruit Chinese from the area around the French treaty port of Guangzhouwan in Guangdong in southern China. This, however, was rejected and Jiangsu province - a northern province where the Chinese were hardier and used to northern climes - was selected, particularly in view of the wide French missionary influence in that province. A French Army major was despatched from French Indo-China (now Vietnam) to Shanghai where he was based in the French Concession ostensibly as a French civil servant, to avoid embarrassing the Chinese, to report on the practicality of the proposal. His report was favourable and accepted, and recruitment of Chinese volunteer labourers was started in Jiangsu province, in the vicinity of Shanghai in July 1916. The labourers were transported by sea from Shanghai to Marseilles, where the main French CLC was situated, and Le Havre, and trained and worked in munitions factories across France such as Bergerac in the Dordogne, or in private concerns such as the Schneider factory at Le Creusot. Such employment was not possible in Britain due to the objections raised by British trade unions. French Chinese labourers were often billeted in French homes, and an unknown but comparatively large number married French women, some of whom accompanied their husbands back to China. The few labourers who died in France were buried at French civil cemeteries. Their records were maintained at the Headquarters in Lyons. 'JHKBRAS: Vol. 40, 2000, pp. 33-111. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 2003 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY (UK) Although the number of Friends' activities during the past year cannot compete with those in Hong Kong, it is nevertheless pleasing to report that the quarterly meetings which have taken place have been of a very high standard. They started in May 2003 with a bold and forthright talk by Dr. Francis Wood, entitled 'Marco Polo and Me.' Dr. Wood is curator of Chinese Collections at the British Library and author of 'Did Marco Polo Go To China?' and 'No Dogs, Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China 1843-1943.' Her talk was very convincing and one was left in no doubt that there are still many unanswered questions about Marco Polo's trips to China. The second event took 35 Friends to Bath and Bristol for two days in early October, 2003. Bath has an excellent Museum of East Asian Art, originally set up by Mr. Brian McElney, who lived in Hong Kong for many years in the 1960s and 70s. He became a well-known collector of Chinese artefacts. The museum now houses a wide range of Far Eastern art, including items from South Korea and Japan. Our visit coincided with the very well presented exhibition 'Death and Burial: The Chinese and the Afterlife.' The Friends were particularly impressed by the emphasis on education and the museum's outreach to local schools. The day ended with a very authentic Chinese meal at the Cathay Rendezvous in Bristol. The following morning the Friends met at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum, which was opened in Bristol three years ago, with a great deal of local and overseas backing, including the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. It was particularly pleasing to see Dr. Dan Waters' name inscribed in the entrance hall. The exhibition portrayed in very enlightened and balanced ways a history of the Commonwealth countries, as seen by many of the local people who lived there. The items on display showed that the build-up of Empire and Commonwealth was a remarkable achievement, but there were clearly some aspects which did not come up to the high ideals many expected - this precipitated a lively topic for discussion during the lunch that followed after the visit and the subsequent river cruise through the old town of Bristol. xlvi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 42 About a mile above Whampoa we called at "Boston Jack's" ... [He] is familiarly known to the European population as a kind of interpreter and furnisher of provisions for vessels, and a commissioner to provide servants, coolies, and to make purchases of various Chinese articles. He was formerly a pilot, and is still connected with that business, furnishing pilots, &c.; and is ready to do any kind of business between the foreigners and Chinese. He is said to be worth a hundred thousand dollars; treated us to beer, and gave us some to take on the way. He had much to say of his son who lives in New York, and was very polite, inviting us to call again, &c.53 Boatmen and washerwomen Then there were the other indispensables to the work of Chinese linguists and compradors, and foreign merchants, captains and crews, alike. First were the boatmen, each one anxious and begging to obtain the employment of waiting upon the ship during her stay here. Then came the washer-women, some twenty or thirty, of all ages, each one clamorous for the privilege of washing the clothes for the men. All this constituted a bustling scene.34 There were also the boat-women traders who took their wares out to the ships in the anchorage, some of whom - it is hardly surprising to learn - spoke a form of 'pidgin' English that became fluent through practice.35 Intermingled throughout were the minor functionaries of government, equally ready to oil wheels or to obstruct, according to perceived advantage, for the sake of personal profit. Morse provides us with the following succinct statement of the situation at Whampoa in pre-treaty port days: She [the ship] was usually in this anchorage for three months, and, while there, continued to give a steady stream of profit to the interpreter [the linguist] and comprador, to the bumboatmen and other small fry, and to the minor officials from daily and monthly fees, and gratuities to facilitate her working and expedite her departure.56 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 45 which is actually levied,' and since the dealers believed the authorities to have been personally interested in these illegal transactions, they believed it would be useless to look to them for protection or redress'. 63 Whilst these passages are taken from early Treaty Port days, two decades after the Canton System had been replaced, they describe a world which had otherwise scarcely changed. It was still, in its essentials, the working milieu in which the Co-hong, the officials and their minions, both civil and military alike, and the people at large, on land and sea, had been obliged to exist; and with which, and with whom, the Western traders had to contend, Rough treatment by the mandarins It was also a milieu in which criminals, and anyone falling foul of officials would have a very bad time. The Chinese personnel of the Old China trade were no exceptions to the general rule, and could be very roughly treated by the mandarins when they chose to enforce the minute and graduated regulations that governed all and sundry throughout the Empire.“ 64 A compradore was severely beaten and tortured and thrown into prison in 1816, because the EIC's ships' captains had presented a petition at a city gate over difficulties with obtaining a permit to load, with more beatings ordered for another compradore and two linguists, whilst the Company's head compradore had to leave hurriedly because police runners were looking for him. 65 In 1831, during the Canton Prefect's unannounced visit to the EIC's hall, a linguist was put in chains, taken away, and threatened with decapitation. 66 The officials, their courts and prisons were justly to be feared. Just how bad they could be was experienced at first hand by Captain Denham, shipwrecked on Formosa with his mixed crew of 55 Europeans, Chinese and Indians, and 2 passengers, in 1842. Perhaps because their brig, the Ann, had been an opium runner, they were treated like Chinese criminals, subject to the practices and procedures usual when men were imprisoned, tried, and condemned to execution, as indeed nearly all of them were. 67 The truth is, that the Chinese government was very severe with its ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 74 daughter Anna must have entranced him." Many years later when he wrote to Campbell, he still revealed his paternal care for the wards. He wanted Anna to attend a good boarding school where not only “she can devote herself to music, French, and German", but also "where she will be comfortably lodged and kindly treated.” (Fairbank, Bruner, Matheson 1975: 192-3) 5. Although Hart did not confess, perhaps in his lifetime he had never confessed, fully to his relationship with Ayaou and his three children by her, what he states in Declaration 1 and 2 has given us a clearer idea of his secret domestic life in late 19th China. It indicates that Hart felt affection for Ayaou, though the relationship was initially established for a temporary relief of sexual desire. It also indicates that such a relationship caused considerable hardship to those involved. It should be noted that Hart made his statement concerning his sexual relationship with the Chinese girl Ayaou when the social norms concerning mixed-race relationships between British men and Chinese women had changed fundamentally. When describing his life in the treaty port, Swatow during 1874 to 1878, Paul King states (1980:25); Happily, all this is changed and gone for ever. The number of marriageable girls of his own race all over China gives no excuse to a white man seeking a helpmeet to risk entangling alliances with native blood; but as a temporary measure in the old dark days—well, perhaps better not to hazard an opinion. Bickers also suggests (1999: 98) The twentieth-century treaty ports were still largely bachelor societies, although the proportion of families settled there grew steadily. As elsewhere in the colonial world, British men took native partners when there was a shortage of fellow Britons or other Europeans. The presence of European women—and after 1917 especially the influx of White Russian refugees—made stable sexual relations with Chinese as much as 'unnecessary' as taboo. The change of social norms meant that Hart's relationship with Ayaou was no longer simply a personal secret or a private matter, but an issue with regard to social conceptions, norms, and even rules which were followed by British society in China in the early twentieth century. Thus, in the declarations Hart had to make the new version of his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 127 ## BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS: CHINA AND THE CHINESE DURING THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR 1904-1905 ## KEITH STEVENS The power confrontation between Russia and Japan finally developed into all-out conflict in 1904 in Manchuria, ending with a victory for the Japanese that shook the western world, who had assumed that no Asian power could possibly defeat a European one. Apart from on the high seas, the Russo-Japanese War was fought in the main on Chinese territory, in the three provinces of Manchuria, homeland of the Manchus, now known as Dongbei, the North-east. China was not a participant. The first stage of the land campaign took place in Korea, where Japan landed an army, which fought its way up the peninsula to the northern border, the Yalu River, and on into Manchuria for the long slog to victory. Since the Manchu conquest of China in 1644, the Three Provinces, Fengtian (renamed Liaoning), Jilin, and Heilongjiang, originally the homeland of the Manchus, was known to westerners as Manchuria, and although referred to as part of the Chinese (Qing) Empire, it was not considered to be part of China Proper. During the 19th century, the population of Manchuria grew by leaps and bounds as Chinese settlers flooded in, particularly from Shandong province, encouraged to occupy its wide open spaces before the Russian advance could extend its influence into the area. In 1931, at the time of the eventual Japanese occupation of the whole of Manchuria, the population was estimated to have been more than 90% Han Chinese, with a mere 3% Manchus. The rest was made up of 6% Mongols and a handful of Japanese, Russians, and Koreans. ## The lead-up to the war The Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 ended the Sino-Japanese War, fought under the guise of securing the independence of Korea, and included the cession to Japan of the Liaodong Peninsula. This ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 129 Chemulpo (later Inchon). This would drive north along thawing and impassable roads, across the Yalu River into Manchuria, heading for Liaoyang and Mukden (now known as Shenyang) north of the Liaodong peninsula. Then, with what remained of the Russian fleet bottled up in the harbour at Port Arthur, the second and main force would be landed some thirty miles north of Dalny (Dairen to the Japanese and now known as Dalian) cutting off Port Arthur at the tip of the Liaodong peninsula. The final stage was the landing of a third Japanese army in January 1905 and its assault on Port Arthur. The war began as planned with a Japanese 'Pearl Harbor' bombardment at Port Arthur, taking the Russian fleet by surprise. Although the Japanese met with a number of set-backs their overall plan succeeded. The crowning moments were the Fall of Port Arthur at the beginning of January 1905 and the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, the titanic clash between the Japanese fleet and the Russian Baltic Fleet, the latter having made its slow progress across the world from Latvia in October 1904 to Tsushima seven months later, and to its fate and destruction. News of the devastating Japanese victory alarmed a number of Chinese officials who, whilst they did not wish Japan to lose, had not wanted her to gain such an overwhelming victory. Finally, after the eighteen month campaign the land war ended with the destruction of the Russian army before Mukden. The succeeding months were a matter of Japanese mopping-up operations and the capture of Liaoyang and Mukden. During the final stages of the war the Japanese finally took the fighting on to 'sacred' Russian territory when they invaded the large island of Sakhalin. This was of great political importance as it was regarded as Russian territory and, with rioting on the streets of the Russian major cities, the Russians realised that they had lost. Also at that point, Japan now holding most of the cards, but militarily and financially exhausted, sought President Roosevelt's good offices to bring about a peace conference. This took place in September 1905 concluding with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in the United States. The Russians ceded the Guandong peninsula (Chinese territory) and half of the island of Sakhalin to Japan but without having to pay any indemnity. The Russians, so the Japanese believed, had been allowed by the Americans to get away without paying any financial compensation. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 134 Pre-war there were a large number of local Chinese in Russian employment in Manchuria. A typical throw-away line in a correspondent's lengthy report was the description of the unexpected naval assault on the Russian Far Eastern Fleet in Port Arthur in February 1904 which precipitated the war. "The town was in confusion after this sudden and unexpected attack on the town initiating the conflict. Food prices soared as Chinese traders sold up and fled. Throughout the bombardment the Chinese streamed out to the hills wailing with fear. Clerks at one of the banks disappeared with large sums of money. Meanwhile, Chinese who were forbidden to travel by train during the mass exodus had converged on the harbour hoping to find places aboard foreign ships. Sampan men made a small fortune ferrying refugees out to the ships. Social organisation fell apart as Chinese servants and shop keepers fled leaving their employers and customers, the Russians, to fend for themselves." In August 1904 the Japanese entered the Treaty Port of Newchwang (Niuzhuang, now known as Yingkou), the Russians having pulled out without fighting. The Japanese were surprised the Chinese there did not welcome them as deliverers, regretted the departure of Russian friends, and charged the Japanese two dollars where they only charged the Russians one. During the interval between the departure of the Russians and the arrival of the Japanese, Chinese refugees poured into the settlement in a ceaseless stream, carrying their goods and chattels. This was an all too familiar pattern ahead of the advancing armies. A correspondent's description of life in Mukden ahead of the approach of the Japanese as winter set in 1904 included his impressions of the daily scene with 'Manchus and Chinese, the men almost indistinguishable from one another, the Manchu women differing in their free stride from the mincing tread of their Chinese sisters. Cossacks and Chinese had soon established quite friendly relations. At every step you can see soldiers bargaining with inflexible Chinese for a bottle of vodka, or a handful of nuts or a pair of socks. Sometimes you see a soldier eating an apple in a fruit-seller's stall. This soldier was supposed to discharge the duties of a policeman, and the apple represents bribery and corruption.' Although there were many reports of Chinese and Manchu peasants taking sides and fighting for one or other of the belligerents for what ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 153 recruit Chinese labour for the South African mines had been discussed and taken before the outbreak of the war). NOTES i The Russian's naval port at Port Arthur was built beside the small Chinese town of Qingniwa now part of greater Dalian (called Dalny by the Russians). The Chinese town was known to the Russians as either the Chinese town or the Old Town. ii Mukden was Fengtian in Qing times; also Shengjing. This consisted of revolutionary agitation, with strikes, riots and mutinies in the army and navy - including the mutiny on the Potemkin in Odessa in June 1905. iv The IG In Peking: Vol. II: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 1971: Hart's Letter 1319 of 28 February 1904 * Ernest Brindle: With Russian, Japanese and the Chunchuse - The Experiences of an Englishman during the Russo-Japanese War: John Murray: London: 1905 (A number of observations provided by Brindle have also been quoted within this article) v Sakuya Takahashi: International Law Applied to the Russo-Japanese War: Stevens and Sons, Ltd: London: 1908 - Chapter IV: Section I vii Newchwang [(Niuzhuang) is a town some 30 miles inland and connected by the River Liao with its port, formerly Port Newchwang, and known to the Chinese as Yingkou. Newchwang had been a Treaty Port with Western resident businessmen and missionaries since 1861. viii Some four months after the outbreak of the war foreign newspaper correspondents were complaining that neither the Russians nor the Japanese allowed them to see much of what was going on. Both belligerents claimed that war was too serious an affair to let plans be spoiled by correspondents. Japanese reports were considered more reliable and Russian accounts were not taken seriously. ix [C]hun[c]huse was probably the Russian romanisation for Hong Huzi. x Shao Yuchun: Minzu Lao Yingxiong - Wang Delin: (Wang Delin, Old Hero): in Tan Yi [ed] Dongbei Kangri Yiyongjun Renwuzhi: Vol 2: 1981 xi Mancall and Jidkoff: Les Honghuzi de la Chine du Nord-Est: 1970 xii War in the East: Virtue and Co.: London: Volume VI xiii International Law Applied to the Russo-Japanese War: Chapter IV: Section II xiv Illustration in Japan's Fight for Freedom H.W. Wilson: The Amalgamated Press: London: 1905 - Volumes I and II. xv * Hart's letter No. 1387 dated 29 October 1905 ================================================================================