RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch ORASHKB and author 108 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 usually decides to transfer into the seminary and become nuns. The educational standards are high: in 1959 and 1960 over 90 per cent of each graduating class of the middle school passed the Chinese School-leaving Certificate examination, nearly a third with distinction. Other institutions of the Sangha that are noteworthy for their welfare activities are: (1) The Chi Lin Tsing Yuen, a nunnery established at Diamond Hill in 1945, where 68 nuns now operate a subsidized primary school (opened in 1953) for 236 underprivileged boys and girls; an orphanage with 24 girls from 6 to 15 years old; and the Chi Lin Home for Aged Women which has 100 inmates who live there free of charge. Both the Home and the orphanage were built in 1956 with funds donated by Aw Boon Haw 胡文虎, (2) The Po Yeuk Tsing She, a nunnery in Shatin where about 30 nuns operate the Po Yeuk Home for Aged Women. The Home was built in 1955, also with funds donated by Aw Boon Haw, and has 100 inmates, who live free of charge. in Shatin, where a group (3) The Ts'z Hong Tsing Yuen of about 30 women lay devotees, under the direction of an ordained nun, operate a co-educational subsidized free school with 216 pupils (tuition actually paid is HK$10 a year), (4) The Taai Kwong Nunnery near Tai Po, where about 10 nuns operate a co-educational subsidized primary school with 309 pupils (established in 1945) and are planning to open a middle school in 1961. This nunnery also runs a small orphanage, which now has 4 girls and 5 boys from 1 to 15 years old. Visitors get a very pleasant impression of the atmosphere created by the abbess, who has all these enterprises in her sole charge. Financial support comes from Buddhist laymen. VI. LAY ORGANIZATIONS 1. HONG KONG BUDDHIST ASSOCIATION 香港佛教聯合會 This is the leading Buddhist organization in the Colony. It was originally founded in 1932 as the Hong Kong Buddhist [Studies] Association, to foster solidarity among Buddhists, dis-seminate the dharma, and promote social welfare. During the Second World War it became inactive, one reason being that its members did not wish to have it exploited by the Japanese, who had become adept at using Buddhism for political penetration abroad. It was revived, however, in 1945 under its present name and incorporated on May 2, 1959. Its membership has risen from 1,500 in 1952 to 3,850 in 1960. Of the latter number, 116 are monks, 324 are nuns, and 20 are institutions (e.g., the Po Lin Tsz and the Hong Kong Lotus Association). The rest of the membership is composed of laymen, among whom the purely devout probably outnumber those who take a more intellectual approach to Buddhism. Dues are HK$10 a year for most members. 7 Tuition actually paid is only HK$24 a year. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 40 R. G. GROVES mediate marketing systems schedules are so distributed that one of the possibilities is normally monopolized by the intermediate market. Such a distribution may ... be taken as circumstantial evidence of the systematic genuineness of a given cluster of markets."44 The marketing areas were not equally endowed with arable land. This was reflected not only in the size of the populations supported, but also in the types of political association formed and the extent of lineage organization. Three local lineages in the Yuen Long marketing area played a particularly active part in the resistance movement. These were the Tang (Mandarin: Teng) lineages of Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Kam Tin. The Tangs of Kam Tin owned the land upon which the original Yuen Long market had been built. San Tin, within the Sham Chun standard marketing area, was the home of a lineage of the Man (Mandarin: Wen) clan. At Sheung Shui, near Shek Wu Hui, was the Liu (Mandarin: Liao) lineage, which owned the land upon which this market was built.45 There were two further Tang lineages at Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau, near the Tai Po markets. The five Tang lineages comprised a higher-order lineage. The Tangs of Lung Yeuk Tau had founded the original Tai Po market and owned the land upon which it was built. The Man lineage of Tai Hang was the chief rival to the political and economic ascendency of the Tai Po Tangs. In 1893 the Mans succeeded in uniting over seventy villages in an association known as the Ts'at Yeuk (seven Yüeh).46 The association established a new market at Tai Po which rapidly supplanted the original one. These lineages owned some of the best agricultural land in the territory. Their walled and moated villages occupied strategic positions throughout the area, dominating not only the most productive land, but also the major footpath systems. The warlike architecture of the villages suggests the social ingredients which derive from the control of basic agrarian resources; wealth, numbers, complex kinship organization, political influence, and parochial military prowess. It remains to consider the indigenous system of “local government" described by Stewart Lockhart. "If a person is arrested by a village constable, he is taken before the gentry and elders of the village, who assemble in a place specially appointed for the pur- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 45 danger. Certainly people are dissatisfied at this and have determined to resist the barbarians. If our firearms are not good we shall be unable to oppose the enemy. So we have appointed an exercise ground and gather all together as patriots to drill with firearms. To encourage proficiency rewards will be given. On the one hand we shall be helping the [Chinese] Government; on the other we shall be saving ourselves from future trouble. Let all our friends and relatives bring their firearms to the ground and do what they can to extirpate the traitors. Our ancestors will be pleased and so will our neighbours. This is our sincere wish. Practice takes place every day."57 Less detail is known of the preparations for resistance in the Sheung U Division. However, two centres of organization clearly emerge: the Man Mo Miu at Tai Po (new) Market and the Chau Wong Yee Yuen at Shek Wu Hui. The temple of Chau Wong Yee Yuen had been established to commemorate Chau Yau-tak and Wong Loi-yam, two 17th century provincial officials. Seven lineages held shares in the temple. These were the Man lineages of Tai Hang and San Tin, the Tang lineages of Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau, and the Pang, Hau (Mandarin: Hou), and Liu lineages resident near Shek Wu Hui.58 After 1st April this temple served as the resistance headquarters for the north-central part of the Sheung U Division. Instructions were issued from the temple that villages with "trainbands" (militia) should bring them to a state of readiness. A fund was established to finance the organization of the resistance and provision was made for the care of the wounded. Export of grain from the Division was prohibited, although other trade was allowed to continue. The Man Mo Miu (Civil and Military Temple) performed a similar function in the Tai Po area. When the Ts'at Yeuk was established in 1893 it became both an administrative and religious centre for the association. Resistance in the Tai Po area was at first offered almost exclusively by the Ts'at Yeuk, and the temple provided an established headquarters for the co-ordination of military activities. Leaders of the Pang and Man (Tai Hang) lineages participated in the activities of both the Chau Wong Yee Yuen and the Man Mo Miu. Both lineages were 'founder members' of the Chau Wong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 46 R. G. GROVES Yee Yuen and donated sums to its resistance fund. The two lineages also comprised two yeuk within the Ts'at Yeuk and, as such, were represented in the fighting at Tai Po. At some point after 1st April, leaders from the Yuen Long and Sheung U Divisions went together to the Tung P'ing Kuk at Sham Chun and attempted with little success to enlist wider support for their activities. An agent was sent to Tung-kuan Hsien, where a number of 'bare-sticks' were recruited. In addition, the help of the Tang lineage of Pan T'in, in the northern part of Hsin-an Hsien, was solicited. This lineage appears to have stood in a clan relationship with the Tang higher order lineage within the New Territory. Members of the Pan T'in lineage participated in the fighting within the territory and subsequently felt themselves threatened by the British occupation of Sham Chun. The first confrontation between the Ts'at Yeuk and the vanguard of the occupying force occurred at Tai Po. Since late March, contractors had been erecting matsheds for the Hong Kong authorities on a hill near the market. Work had been obstructed by local villagers who claimed that the hill was private land and that the matsheds would disturb the feng shui of the area. On 3rd April Captain-Superintendent May set off for Tai Po, with a mixed party of Sikh policemen from Hong Kong and a detachment of Chinese soldiers, which had been temporarily assigned to him by the Commander of the Chinese military garrison stationed at Kowloon City. He hoped to get work on the matsheds started again and intended to leave the soldiers as a guard for the construction materials, pending assumption of British authority in the Territory. May arrived at Tai Po early in the afternoon and went to a nearby temple, almost certainly the Man Mo Miu, where he knew he would meet local leaders. A large crowd gathered, both within the temple and in the narrow street outside. His efforts at persuasion failed and the bystanders "became very offensive in their language and demeanour."59 May thought it wise to leave, but hope of a dignified withdrawal ended as soon as the British party reached the street. They were set upon by an angry crowd, wielding brooms, buckets, and other improvised weapons. An escape was made after the soldiers had threatened the crowd with their rifles and the Sikhs had made a bayonet charge to clear a path. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 47 When the party regained their boat May sent the civilians back to Hong Kong. He took the remainder of his men to the matshed hill, where he intended to spend the night. As May deployed his men on the hillside, men from Fan Leng took the card of Man Cham-tsun—leader of the Man lineage of Tai Hang—to villages throughout the area, asking for help in an assault on his position. When darkness fell, May could see lights in the five villages nearest the hill and more lights moving along the footpaths to the rear of his position. Bombs were exploded in the adjacent valley and parties whistled and signalled as they moved forward. Realising that he could not hold the hill, May withdrew to an adjacent one and from there watched the attack. A signal drum sounded and there was a concerted rush from all sides to the crest of the hill. The matsheds were fired and a search begun for the British party. May and his men hid in a thicket of rushes and cactus until early the next morning, when they were able to escape unobserved. + - + Enquiries made the next day, by Stewart Lockhart and General Gascoigne, showed that the assault had been made by villages from within the Ts'at Yeuk. Of the seven yeuk, only one—Ting Kok Yeuk—appears not to have participated. In retrospect, May estimated that between 100 and 200 men had been involved. He concluded: "what struck me most was the evidently organized manner in which members from the surrounding villages concentrated to take part in the attack... This is no doubt a method... adopted both for offence and defence."60 The Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Henry Blake, took a detached view of the affair. “I am not disposed to attach much importance to this attack upon Mr. May and his party. Such a sudden access of militant irritability is not uncommon in Ireland, and subsides as rapidly as it rises."61 The next ten days were busy ones for the resistance leaders, particularly those of Ha Tsuen and Kam Tin. They visited villages throughout the area and exhorted people to oppose the occupation. Ammunition was purchased in bulk. Captured account books, associated with an ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen, show that gunpowder, ball, and percussion caps were being ordered throughout the earlier part of April. For example, the section for ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 56 R. G. GROVES Kinship ties played a large part in the organization of the resistance. In the Yuen Long area, leadership and probably manpower were overwhelmingly supplied by the three Tang lineages of Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Kam Tin. In the Shek Wu Hui district, it was a matter of cooperation between a number of lineages of roughly equal status. At Tai Po, the Man lineage of Tai Hang provided leadership, within the Ts'at Yeuk, for a large number of smaller lineages. Ties of clanship enabled the Tangs of Yuen Long to enlist the help of the Tangs of Pan T'in. They, in turn, received support from agnates living in Tung-kuan City. The Tang higher-order lineage of the New Territory did not act as a unified lineage during the resistance movement. The leaders of Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Kam Tin were concerned, first and foremost, to consolidate plans for resistance within the Yuen Long area. Leaders of the Tang lineages of Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau only subsequently became formally involved with preparations for resistance, along with other leaders from their respective marketing areas. The leaders of the three Yuen Long lineages carefully coordinated their plans. There is no evidence that representatives of Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau were similarly consulted. Moreover, the Lung Yeuk Tau settlement, along with others in the Shek Wu Hui area, was threatened with attack by the Tangs of Yuen Long. There is insufficient evidence to materially advance the discussion concerning the relationship between hsiang and marketing areas. However, the data strongly suggest that, for the purposes of resistance, the highest order of effective inter-lineage cooperation among the Tangs of the New Territory was achieved within the Yuen Long marketing community. There is also the possibility that long- or short-standing disputes between the various local lineages of the Tang higher-order lineage inhibited their cooperation across the boundaries of marketing areas during the resistance movement. But this would not necessarily weaken the argument that the standard marketing community was the optimum unit for inter-lineage cooperation. Wakeman, in his discussion of militia, has stressed the importance of gentry leadership. The documents concerning the resistance name 63 people as active in the movement, in that they: (i) took part in the meetings which organized it; and/or, (ii) acted ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 57 as leaders during the fighting. Ten of the 63 leaders are identi-fiable as members of the gentry, in the sense that they are men-tioned in the documents as having degrees obtained either by purchase or by examination. examination. Most of the remainder could be termed 'local notables'. Some were substantial owners of agricul-tural land and village houses. Other owned shops in their local markets. It is probable that they were often --as was Man Cham-tsun managers of corporately-owned lineage property. The available information about these men is summarized below. — Table II LEADERS IN THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT (By Marketing area, District & Village, Surname)* Marketing area District, or other Association of sharing gradu-ates Village, or Surnames No. No. of leaders Yuen Long 5+ Ha Tsuen Tang 12 2 Ping Shan Tang 11 1 Kam Tin Tang 10 2 Pat Heung Tang 2 Li 1 Lai 1 Tse 1 1. +3 15 Shap Pat Heung Chu 1 Ng 2 2 15 Tai Po Tun Mun Ts'at Yeuk Tang 1 Lo 1 Tai Hang Man 3 1 71 Pan Chung Chan 1 Mak 1 - * +3 + ++ 7 ** Fan Leng Pang 1 Sha Lo Tung Li 2 " ** * * 2 Cheung Shue Tan Chan 1 7: * H 3. Hang Ha Po Lam 1 Tai Po Tau Tang * Shek Wu Hui Lung Yeuk Tau Tang I ++ +1 Sheung Shui Liu 1 Ping Kong Hau 2 1 ** Sha Tau Kok Sham Chun Wo Hang San Tin Li 4 Man 1 * All romanisations are in Cantonese. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 62 R. G. GROVES 44 Skinner, op. cit., Part 1, p. 27. The markets of the northern district of the New Territory seem to have been dependent primarily upon Sham Chun, rather than upon several intermediate markets. This may be an example of what Skinner terms a marketing system in a "topographic cul-de-sac". Ibid., p. 21. 45 Baker, Hugh D. R. "The Five Great Clans of the New Territories”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. VI, 1966, p. 31. 46 Freedman, op. cit., pp. 82ff., gives an account of the origins of the Ts'at Yeuk. The character yeuk may be translated as 'covenant', or 'agreement'. The seven covenants' were a confederation of seven groups of villages within the Tai Po marketing area. 47 Papers Extracts, op. cit., p. 192. 48 Hayes, "The Pattern of Life.", op. cit., p. 9. 49 Freedman, op. cit., p. 81. 50 Papers Extracts, op. cit., pp. 201ff. 51 Hong Kong 1963, Hong Kong, 1964, pp. 363ff. 52 Papers Extracts, op. cit., pp. 587-8. 53 The following account has been assembled, somewhat in the manner of a jigsaw puzzle, from two sources: Hong Kong. Correspondence (June 20, 1898 to August 20, 1900) Respecting the Extension of the Boundaries of the Colony, Eastern No. 66, Colonial Office, London, 1900; Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899. Despatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1900. Specific references will be given only for quotations. 54 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 261. A brief discussion of the activities of the land syndicate mentioned in the preceding paragraph is to be found in Endacott, G.B., A History of Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, London and Hong Kong, and Paperback Edition, 1964, p. 265, who says: "The main problem of the take-over was not military but administrative. A land syndicate of Chinese among whom it was suspected Ho Kai [Dr. Ho Kai, a Chinese unofficial member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong] was one, had bought land at a fraction of its value by spreading the rumour that the British would seize all land. Blake threatened to restore this property, but the land problem proved too baffling for him to carry out his threat." 55 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 261. Wakeman, op. cit., Chap. V, discusses similar charges made against the British at Canton almost sixty years earlier. 56 One recipient was Liu Wan-kuk, of Sheung Shui. His support for the resistance appears to have been half-hearted throughout. On at least two occasions he protested: "the villages in our Division have no plans. Moreover, our commissariat and arms being insufficient, how can we offer effective resistance? We request your Division [Yuen Long] to decide on the plan of campaign and we will follow your instruction". The dominance of the Yuen Long Division—and of the Tang lineages within it—was to become increasingly obvious as the resistance movement developed. Papers Despatches, op. cit., p. 72. 57 Translated in Correspondence, op. cit., pp. 138ff. 58 Baker, op. cit., pp. 35ff. 59 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 147. 60 Ibid., p. 148. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d NOTES ON ETHNO-BOTANY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 127 are tacked onto certain bushes and shrubs having medicinal attributes. Otherwise, it is indeed difficult for an onlooker to tell medicinal from other common plants. Villagers do distinguish, though, between the everyday medicinal plants used for poultices, infusions, decoctions, and tonics, from certain other economic simples that are collected and sold for gain. The collection and sale of the rarer economic simples is a source of village income. The gathering of the plants is the task of women. At Fan Lau, women went early in the morning to the hillside and the ravines and returned with baskets of medicinal plants that were sunned and dried at the village. These were then taken to Tai O for sale. The locations where these simples may be found are usually regarded as village secrets, and many coastal settlements acquire reputations associated with the quality of these simples which, in contrast to the common village medicinal plants, find their way to market. Native Chinese village medicine is divided into two classes. One is known as koon yeuk ("official medicine"), the other as shang tsoi yeuk ("fresh vegetable medicine"). The first is associated with apothecary shops that deal in traditional drugs and medicines, many of which are listed in that Chinese pharmacopoeia of the 16th century, the Poon Ts'o Kong Muk. These are the Chinese pharmacies one associates with bear paws, rhinoceros horns, ginseng, and other dried or prepared medicine. Shang tsoi yeuk, less known, is based on gathered simples that are not sold in powdered, pill, or prepared forms. These are fresh medicaments possessing alleged tonic qualities that assist digestion and relieve "heat" (yuet hei). Some are used as styptic poultices, others to treat simple bruises. Unlike the apothecary shops that deal in koon yeuk, the shang tsoi yeuk stalls are not elaborate. The vendor of shang tsoi yeuk is usually a literate farmer turned herbalist. Many of the shang tsoi yeuk are not even listed in modern Chinese pharmaceutical works, as some of these plants are peculiar to local places, and to local tastes. The following are just some of the shang tsoi yeuk gathered from the hillsides, the ravines, and the beaches of Tai Yu Shan (Lantau Island) during the months of July and August. All of them listed here are collected in their wild state, and none is cultivated. Their market prices vary according to availability, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 163 Tung Kun district, Heung Shan, and Kwangsi. Two brothers of the eldest branch remained in Tung Kun, of their cousins one received lands in P'ing Shan next to Kam T'in and another Tang Yuan Liang succeeded to Kam T'in and to a place called Lung Yeuk T'au in our region, besides lands at Tung Kun, This Tang Yuan Liang led the spacious life that might be expected of a man of widely extended property. He is buried in Tung Kun, but his family lived in Kam T'in and he himself was appointed an official in Kiangsi, near to the original home of his ancestors. His power over all this area was the greater because the Sung dynasty during his time was hard pressed by the Tartars. Tang Yuan Liang had established a kind of outpost in Kiangsi behind which he and his family governed a more or less independent region, officially loyal to the Sung dynasty, but in reality ready to take advantage of its misfortunes. In 1127 the Emperor's family was captured, but one daughter of the royal house escaped as far as Tang Yuan Liang's outposts, where she was taken charge of and sent half captive half refugee to Kam T'in where she married Yuan Liang's son. When the Tartars were driven back, her father became the Emperor Kao Tsung of Sung. He recognised the marriage, received the princess and her husband Tssŭ Ming at the capital, and gave him an official title. The family received a large dowry, tax collecting rights and the monopoly of the ferries in Tung Kun district. The four main centres of the Tang clan at present are Kam T'in, Ping Shan, Lung Yeuk T'au and Ha Tsün. We have already mentioned that one of the "five Yuans" received lands in P'ing Shan. The present Tangs of P'ing Shan are descended from him and are therefore probably the eldest branch in direct descent. The settlement at Lung Yeuk Tau also dates from one of the “five Yuans", that of Ha Tsün appears to be much later though directly descended from the great grandson of Tssŭ Ming and the princess, a man called Shou Tsu who lived in the Yuan dynasty and appears to have been the first of the Tangs to settle permanently at Kam T'in, instead of in Tung Kun district where his ancestors had lived. These four centres can be seen on the attached map (See T'ien Hsia, Vol. XI, No. 4).* It will be noticed that they contain many adjacent walled villages due chiefly to the fact that their houses *Plate 16 at end of this volume. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 62 HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE had two meetings with the Chinese delegate, Huang Tsun-hsin1, and an agreement was signed at Government House on March 14. On the 16th Lockhart accompanied by the Director of Public Works left for Mirs Bay and proceeded to delimit the boundaries of the New Territory, which were fixed along a line joining the heads of Deep Bay and Mirs Bay, following the Sham Chun River for most of its course. Lockhart had urged the inclusion of Sham Chun and its valley but this was rejected later by the Chinese authorities. On 1 April Lockhart and a party sent by the Public Works Department to erect the posts on the boundaries settled upon were stopped by villagers and informed that if they attempted to get on with their work they would be killed. Understandably, the party withdrew to Hong Kong. At the same time, Wei Yuk# 1 an unofficial member of the Legislative Council, procured a copy of a placard that was being posted up in many villages and market towns; the translation revealed that people in the New Territories were being urged to drill with firearms. This was the first sign that the occupation of the New Territories was not likely to occur without incident. The Governor, Sir William Blake, accompanied by his Colonial Secretary, Lockhart, hastened forthwith to interview the Viceroy at Canton and they secured from him a promise of co-operation and the sending of Chinese troops to protect the two matsheds at Taipo that were being erected for the occupancy of police and officials from Hong Kong. On 3 April, however, F.H. May, Captain Superintendent of Police, and his small party of Sikhs and Chinese guards were set upon by 'villagers', the matsheds burned to the ground, and the group forced to retreat to Kowloon. The Governor immediately despatched troops by motor torpedo boat destroyer to Taipo. The troops were accompanied by Lockhart, of whom the commanding officer later said: 'I have to record my sense of the tact and judgment displayed by Mr. Stewart Lockhart in eliciting information most unwillingly given; and the interpreter whom he brought with him was simply invaluable owing to his proficiency in both English and Chinese and his knowledge of the system of dealing with the natives.' The interpreter was Ts'oi Yeuk-shan, First Chinese Clerk in the Registrar General's Department, a former pupil at Queen's College. Lockhart and the troops returned to Hong Kong later in the same day. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART 63 On 16 April Lockhart returned to Taipo and in the presence of the General Officer Commanding, Major-General W. J. Gascoigne, and about 500 men, he hoisted the British flag and then read the Order-in-Council and Convention. The territory was now formally occupied. There had been some resistance from the people and from those living in the Sham Chun area. Lockhart had been asked to return to Hong Kong to attend a meeting of the Legislative Council but in a minute to the Governor he stated: 'I have consulted the General Officer Commanding, who thinks it very desirable for many reasons that I should remain here. I am of the same opinion, so propose to remain.'22 Since the situation was still unsettled, the Governor concurred with Lockhart's proposal and Lockhart stayed behind with the troops, accompanying them on a long sweep through the New Territories to make the British presence known. Lockhart and the troops led by Lieutenant-Colonel The O'Gorman pushed on from Taipo on 18 April to Shek Kong; from that village they passed through Kam Tin, Yuen Long, Ping Shan, Sheung Shui, Fanling, and arrived back in Taipo on 27 April. The O'Gorman reported: "To the Honourable J.H. Stewart Lockhart, C.M.G., Colonial Secretary, is due the admirable results that have been attained in the Civil Administration of this Territory during this brief state of turmoil; his measures have been taken with great energy and ability and in a manner that, long experience has shown him, were suitable to the occasion. The result has been a most complete success. Only those on the spot can realise the amount of labour and care he has devoted from early morning to late at night to the discharge of these trying duties. A most hearty co-operation has existed throughout between us and no difference of opinion on any one point has arisen.'23 The Secretary of State, Joseph Chamberlain, in a despatch to the Governor, commented: 'without wishing to undervalue in any way the services rendered by others, it is evident to me that much has been due to the energy of Mr. Lockhart, and to his local knowledge."24 Lockhart remained in the New Territories until July 1899 in order to start the civil administration. The headquarters of the new administration were fixed at Taipo. He was assisted in his task by C.M. Messer, a cadet officer, Ts'oi Yeuk-shan, First Chinese Clerk, and two Chinese assistants. The problems he had to face were at first formidable. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 200 MAURICE FREEDMAN Chinese rule, the remoteness, the danger and the expense of the central courts had left much authority to the local elders, and especially to those entrusted with powers of collecting local taxes: under British rule this authority naturally decayed, though they have continued sometimes to be the medium of dealings with the villagers. But their moral influence has often been of great assistance to the officials in the maintenance of the public peace, and their knowledge of the decisions of questions concerning local customs, disputed successions, fung shui and such like. (Report on the New Territories, 1899-1912, Papers laid before the Legislative Council no. 11 of 1912, p. 45). 17. We shall need to consider who these elders were, but before doing so we must look at a wider context within which local leadership was to be seen. At the time the New Territories were created they were in large part covered by a network of village-groupings, many of them being known under the name of yeuk. A yeuk was a collection of neighbouring villages which had some means of expressing its unity (sometimes in the ownership of property common to the grouping) and which was often combined along with other such yeuk to form what I propose to call a yeuk-complex. This kind of organisation can conveniently be illustrated from material on the yeuk-complex to have survived most fully into our own day. I refer to the Ts'at Yeuk (i.e. the Seven Yeuk) of Tai Po. 18. There for long stood a market town at Tai Po: Tai Po Kau Hui. It was (and physically remains) just by the Tang settlement of Tai Po Tau, but the market was under control of the Tang people further north in Lung Yeuk Tau. As Masters of the Market the Tang taxed sellers and, if the stories told about them now are to be believed as reflecting reality, and not mythical justifications of revolt, they harassed buyers by the exercise of the privilege of claiming choice produce. Their control of the market was from time to time challenged. In 1892, the matter having been brought to the county magistrate's court at Nam Tau, a ruling was given that only the Tang had the right to build shops in the market. This decision (which was inscribed on a stone slab and placed in the local Tin Hau Temple) appears to have been the culmination of a series of challenges to Tang power by the Man of Tai Hang. (Up to 1873, when it was destroyed by a typhoon, the Man had had a settlement next to the market, but by the 1890s their base was Tai Hang). In response to the unfavourable outcome of the lawsuit ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 201 the Man and their allies rallied local support to form a new market on the other side of what in British times has come to be known as the Kwun Yam River. This was the beginning of the market town of Tai Po in its present form. (The story up to this point is told by Sung Hok-p'ang, 'Legends and Stories of the New Territories. I. Tai Po', The Hong Kong Naturalist, vol. VI, no. 1, May 1935. The stone slab recording the magistrate's decision no longer stands in the temple; when the temple was recently rebuilt the stone was cast into the yard where it now lies, often encumbered with rubbish, a neglected minor monument of late Ch'ing history). 19. The new market in a short time consigned the old one to a decrepitude familiar to anyone who has walked behind the Jockey Club Clinic which now stands next to the Tin Hau Temple. Soon the founder of the new market put up the first of the bridges to span the Kwun Yam River; the subscription list for the bridge is recorded on two stone plaques set into the wall of the Man Mo Temple which had been built as a centre for the new market. A room in the temple still houses the public weighing scales from which the founders and their successors have derived an income. 20. The story goes that the Man who led the revolt against the Tang monopoly called a meeting of the leaders of seven yeuk around Tai Po, each of these taking a share in the new market in the form of shops. The land on which the market was built appears to have been for the most part the property of the Man. Now it is probable that the Ts'at Yeuk dates from this point in time. My informants take this view. And there is one piece of information which tends to confirm it: one of the constituent yeuk is Cheung Shue Tan which, according to what I was told in Sha Tin, was previously a member of a yeuk-complex in this latter area; so that it may well have changed its allegiance at the time of the founding of the new market at Tai Po. But even if the Ts'at Yeuk came into being so recently, the yeuk themselves can hardly have done so for they appear to have been the material out of which the complex was formed. Many locals assert that the yeuk did not antedate the Ts'at Yeuk, but I am inclined to think that we are dealing here with a very old form of grouping, as comparative evidence will suggest. The seven yeuk were Lam Tsuen, Cheung Shue Tan, Ting Kok, Shuen Wan, Hap Wo, Tai Hang, and Fan Leng. Together they had over seventy villages, but the yeuk were of unequal size, so that while, for example, the Man settlement at Tai Hang formed a yeuk ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 202 MAURICE FREEDMAN on its own, Lam Tsuen consisted of twenty-six villages. When the constituent villages of the seven yeuk are plotted on a map they can be seen to form a more or less continuous arc around Tai Po, but there are two striking irregularities in the distribution. First, the three villages making up the yeuk of Fan Leng stand away to the north, being in fact so much out of the immediate Tai Po area that today they fall administratively into a different sub-district and are not involved in local Tai Po affairs except in so far as they remain responsible for the market. Second, about twenty villages in the area of the arc are not members of any yeuk. Some of these are settlements which have come into being since the 1890s, but a few certainly existed at the time the market was planned and were deliberately excluded, or excluded themselves, from the union. Naturally, the Tang settlement at Tai Po Tau is one of them; they were the general enemy. Others were probably clients of the Tang and unable, or unwilling, to participate in the revolutionary move. Were they previously members of yeuk who fell out when these were combined to form the seven? 21. The Tang and the Man are Punti, the former being members of the dominant clan group in the New Territories, and the latter a branch of a clan group whose most important settlement is at San Tin. The Man had for long intermarried with the local Tang (their genealogy book shows that the Tang gave them many women), were rich, and had produced some scholars. (Their main ancestral hall, now in ruins, must have been a splendid building). Their rivalry with the Tang at Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau had had a long history. As the story of the market demonstrates, the rivalry was in part commercial; the Tang at Tai Po Tau tell jokingly of the leading Tang and his Man counterpart competing to see who could lay the longer line of silver dollars along the path leading north from their settlement. But the area in which the contest was fought out was predominantly Hakka, and it was necessary for the Man to find their support in Hakka villages. Second in importance to the Man in the founding of the new market were the Hakka Ma of Wun Yiu. They appear to have been a small but well-to-do settlement. (The only crockery kiln in the whole region was in their area, and a Roman Catholic chapel had stood there for at least thirty years before the founding of the new market; they were clearly in a centre of some importance). The last flickers to be seen today of the hostility to the Tang in Ts'at Yeuk circles fail to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 203 suggest that the fight over the market was a quarrel between Hakka and Punti as such, and I incline to the view that, whatever may have been in earlier decades the state of feeling between communities speaking the different dialects, by the 1890s local alignments did not depend on ‘ethnic' solidarity. (Indeed, I think too much should not be made today of the cultural differences between Punti and Hakka in the New Territories and of the social cleavages which are presumed to rest on these differences). 22. The first British administrators seem not to have appreciated the local significance of the term yeuk, for when the New Territories were arranged in districts and sub-districts in accordance with the Local Communities Ordinance, 1899, boundaries were drawn round units (themselves labelled with the word yeuk) bringing enemy villages together. Since, however, the ordinance was never fully brought into force no harm was done. The Ts'at Yeuk continued under British rule to be masters of the new market and to dominate local affairs, and it has been only in recent years that a Tai Po Rural Committee has emerged, under government encouragement, to provide a strictly territorial form of local council. The Rural Committee is made up of seven units: six of the Ts'at Yeuk (Fan Leng being excluded because of its remoteness) and a new unit composed of all the scattered villages which are not members of the Ts'at Yeuk. The Ts'at Yeuk and the Rural Committee share the same offices (they were built by the former) and the same officers (the chairman of the one being a vice-chairman of the other and a second vice-chairman being common). In local eyes the Ts'at Yeuk remains dominant, not least because only it has access to the revenue brought in by the public weighing scales. 23. It is possible to piece together sketchy accounts of yeuk-complexes in other areas of the New Territories. One of them operated in the area now covered by the Ta Kwu Ling Rural Committee. This was the Luk Yeuk (the six Yeuk), a union which was cut in two by the new international frontier created in 1898. It appears to have been flourishing a hundred years ago when the father of my sole informant on it (I stress the fact that in this case I was unable to cross-check the assertions made) took part in a battle between it and a village in Chinese territory. Each of the six yeuk had an average of three villages, taking its name from the largest village. The Luk Yeuk had a common estate, most of it now inaccessible in China, which was managed in turn by each yeuk. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 206 MAURICE FREEDMAN ship of the struggle over the market; for up to that point they were perhaps strong enough to be independent, becoming a yeuk (and so assimilating themselves to an older pattern) in response to the needs of the new situation. (I may add that the Man of Tai Hang, the Liu of Sheung Shui, and the Tang of Lung Yeuk Tau were three particularly prominent clans in the area, and that their interrelations probably fluctuated as their respective fortunes waxed and waned. When the Man and their allies ruined the old market a Liu of Sheung Shui wrote a poem congratulating the Man leader; the poet was clearly pleased to see Tang 'arrogance' humbled). The villages in the Luk Yeuk of Sai Kung were subject to Tang landlords or taxlords (which they were it would not be possible to decide without a long debate on the relation between rent and the taxes exacted, officially or otherwise, by strong clans), and they may have used their contacts with the Kowloon organisation to protect themselves. In a part of the Empire where the state could certainly not be relied upon to redress wrongs and protect property and lives, the weaker communities were forced to seek among themselves (and sometimes, as the case of the Ts'at Yeuk illustrates, with the aid of a stronger one) protection against oppression by local powers. In many parts of what were to become the New Territories the Tang were regarded as being unduly dominant, their riches, scholarship, and connexions with officialdom being the bases of their strength; and smaller communities banded together against them. But on their home ground in the Yuen Long area Tang dominance was so complete that yeuk could not emerge. That, at least, is one possible conclusion. 27. It is time now to examine the word yeuk more closely. It can be taken to mean a pact or agreement, and several of my informants interpreted yeuk and yeuk-complexes as contracts or joint enterprises freely entered into. (It is like a business partnership, one man told me, in which people take shares). But in fact it is possible to argue that what we have been examining at the end of the Ch'ing dynasty may not have been some spontaneous and popular form of grouping so much as a development of an official and imposed system of control. Yeuk is an abbreviation of heung yeuk (‘hsiang-yüeh'), a term with a long history in Chinese local government and administration. It appears first in the Northern Sung period when (late eleventh century) a Confucian scholar set out a scheme for a kind of village self-government in which country people were to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 207 promote among themselves morality, education, social solidarity, and mutual aid. The plan seems to have enjoyed some vogue in the Ming dynasty, but the early Ch'ing rulers took over the term to give it a new meaning: 'hsiang-yüeh' became a public lecture system by means of which the masses were to be indoctrinated with the political ethics of Confucianism. Yet by the nineteenth century 'hsiang-yüeh' had once again undergone a transformation, a lecture system developing into a framework of state control to the point where 'hsiang-yüeh' was sometimes taken to be synonymous with 'pao-chia' and 'li-chia', the state organisations for security and taxation. On the other hand, a contrary process of evolution was also at work moving ‘hsiang-yüeh' back towards the kind of self-government which had been originally conceived under its name. It is on record that in places in Kwangtung the heads of 'hsiang-yüeh' assumed roles of local leadership in such a way as to take command of local affairs. In addition, 'hsiang-yüeh' were used as a setting for organising ‘regiment and drill corps' ('t'uan-lien') for local defence, and it is an interesting speculation that just as the 'ke yüeh hsiang-yung', the village braves of the several yeuk, rallied to the defence of Canton against the British in 1842, so we might find on closer inspection that some of the armed resistance to the first British in the New Territories was bound up with the Ts'at Yeuk and other yeuk-complexes. (There are of course many sources, both Western and Chinese, for the history of 'hsiang-yüeh'. The best and most convenient is Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle, 1960, pp. 184, 205). 28. My tentative view of the matter is that, while early Ch'ing policy may have popularised the term heung yeuk in the course of spreading the public lecture system, at the time we are concerned with, at least in our part of Kwangtung, yeuk were looked upon by the people who engaged in them as instruments of local control independent of state supervision. They might be used for treating with the state, as seems to have been the case especially with the three yeuk-complexes oriented to Kowloon City, and might have allied themselves with officialdom in the face of banditry or attack by outsiders, but they were far removed from being mere instruments of state control. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, whose home was in an area of Kwangtung which may be regarded as being in many ways comparable to San On, laid stress on the heung yeuk as a basis for a high degree of local independence and self-government in his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 208 MAURICE FREEDMAN own region. (See his History of Chinese Civilisation, in Chinese, Taiwan Chinese Book Company, 1956, pp. 57-60. Hsiao, op. cit., pp. 345ff., translates a large part of this section of Liang's book but fails to indicate that Liang makes modern rural independence rest historically on heung yeuk). 29. Early British reports on the New Territories speak not only of yeuk but also of tung, ‘cave', a term which in some contexts may be translated as a valley. When the social history of the New Territories comes to be written the significance of the groupings going under the names of heung, yeuk, and tung will need to be carefully gone into. (See Hayes, op. cit., pp. 9-12, 14, 25 for statements based on Lockhart's material. I am myself sceptical about some of Lockhart's data on local organisation and local tribunals, but I have not yet marshalled enough historical material to be able to enter into a debate on these topics). For the moment, confining ourselves to the data, such as they are, on yeuk, let us consider the kinds of leadership which were implied in the old system of inter-village relationship. Rich and powerful clans, of which the Tang were a supreme example, were—the paradox is superficial—so tightly connected with officialdom that they could act independently of it and use their power to dominate their neighbours. (In one account I received of the founding of the Tai Po new market the ability of the Man to establish a rival to the Tang market was attributed to the 'pull' they were able to exercise, through a high Man official, at Canton. There was a limit to the influence which any one clan or clan grouping could exert on the state, for officialdom played off one local power centre against another). But dominance could be expressed in some contexts as leadership, for up to a point weaker communities were content to be guided and instructed by stronger, making use of their favours vis-à-vis officialdom, looking to them for protection against other strong communities, and submitting their disputes to them for mediation. (The Man of Tai Hang got themselves into this position of leadership; they had something to offer to the other six yeuk). Past a certain point, however, dominance became oppression, and then the weaker communities might band themselves together. The leaders of such unions (except when, as in the case of the Ts'at Yeuk, a relatively powerful clan took a hand) were not gentlemen but country people (farmers and small business men) whose claims to prominence rested on their economic substance and ability as organisers and spokesmen. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 NOTES AND QUERIES THE PO TAK TEMPLE IN SHEUNG SHUI MARKET The Po Tak Temple (Temple to repay a virtuous deed), also known as the Ts'un Foo Temple (The Governor's temple), in Sheung Shui Market now occupies only a small flat in a multi-storeyed building on Tsun Fu Street, but it was a sizable building until it was burnt down in the fire in 1955. For a long time, it was also the political focus of the Punti villages in the northern and eastern New Territories. The temple was built to commemorate Chau Yau-tak (H), Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi from 1670 to 1673, and Wong Loi-yam (E), Governor of Kwangtung in 1669, the two officials who were instrumental in petitioning the Emperor to end the coastal evacuation from 1662 to 1669. No-one remembers when it was built. According to the 1819 edition of the San On Gazetteer, it was one of three temples devoted to these two officials in the county, the other two being located north of Sham Chun Market. This record must not be taken to be exhaustive: there was at least one more devoted to these two officials in Kam Tin (the Chau Wong I Kung Shue Uen). Village elders remember that before the Second World War and in the 1950s sacrifice was offered annually at the Po Tak Temple to the two officials by two separate but overlapping groups referred to as the Old Alliance (Kau Yeuk) and the New Alliance (San Yeuk). The Old Alliance sacrificed on the nineteenth of the Fifth Month and the New Alliance on the first of the Sixth Month. The account books of both groups are fortunately extant, and they provide valuable documentation on these two important inter-village organizations. Two copies of the Old Alliance account book are available. Both have written on the front covers: Po Tak Temple temple celebration volume, 12th year of the Republic, Lung Shaan copy (報徳祠神誕冊,民國十二年立,龍山冊). We have compared the introductory texts, and they are identical. It seems ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 74 Tang family had the right of building shops there, and a stone with an inscription to that effect, was put up in the temple of T'in Hau Kung(g) which can still be seen in old Tai Po market. When the Man family lost their case a wealthy friend called a big meeting of the elders of the seven districts round about Taai Haang (林村), Fan Ling(K), Lam Ts'un(#1), Yip Woh(), Sheung Wan(), Ting Kok(TM) and Cheung Shue Tan(). At his suggestion, and financed by him, they built a new market where the present market now stands. It was called Taai Woh Shei (utmost friendship market)(★Fifi) and was officially opened on the twenty-third day of the 6th month of the twentieth year of Kwong Sui, A.D. 1894. All the trade at once went to the new market and the old one gradually fell into disuse and can now be seen as a very poor and derelict village. Note. 1. The district of Sun On was formed in the sixth year of Lung Hing() A.D. 1572 of Ming dynasty. Fourteen years later the **History of Sun On District** was written by Yau Tai Kin the district magistrate. It was revised for the first time in the eighth year of Sung Ching(), but this edition was not published until eight years later when a third magistrate Chau Hei Yiu(2) added slightly to it. A second edition was published in the eleventh year of Hong Hei(E) A.D. 1672 of Ts'ing dynasty, a third appeared sixteen years later, and the present edition was published in A.D. 1819. Note. 2. The second character(W) is read yeuk in Cantonese but in the New Territories dialect it is read as Kwat. # Note. 3. Lam Fung is "Limahong" (= Lim a hong, not Li ma hong) whose name is already mentioned in the history of the Philippine Islands. It is also translated as in some Japanese books, and Limahong or Lin Ah Hong in some of the European books. = Lam Fung Limahong was a native of Raoping district(ATM) In the 10th month of the 2nd year of Lung Hing(), A.D. 1568 of Ming dynasty, he took sixty-two battleships with 2,000 sea-soldiers, 1,500 women, and a large store of food and ammunition to attack the Philippines. He was defeated and his fleet dispersed by the soldiers of ================================================================================