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

87

looks towards the future it was a welcome move. By the 1950's the old British Legation had come to occupy an invidious position in the heart of Peking. It was too big and imposing for a foreign embassy. It was too closely linked in the minds of the Chinese people with a long legacy of dislike of the foreigner, connected as it was in their minds with two captures of Peking in 1860 and again in 1900. Moreover, it was in the nature of a box inside which a few British diplomats were the easy target of mass demonstrations. In the long run it was better to be rid of such a prominent place and instead to form part of a new diplomatic quarter on a site chosen by the government of the Chinese Peoples' Republic itself. Certainly, from the Chinese point of view, by 1959 the large space occupied by the old Foreign Legation Quarter in the centre of Peking was too valuable to be inhabited by a small number of foreign diplomats. It was an obvious site for the new government offices which were needed. Thus in 1959 a symbol of the far off days of the so called 'unequal treaties' disappeared, and with its disappearance the prospect of better relations between Great Britain and the Chinese Peoples' Republic was, perhaps, imperceptibly enhanced.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653
98

COLINA LUPTON

indication is given in this book of how the British Government saw the ultimate future of the Colony, though this is of academic interest today.

The years 1946-1949 were spent in drawing up what has become known as the Young Plan, after the Governor of the time, which would have provided for an elected Municipal Council, with a franchise for all men and women over the age of 25 who could read and write either English or Chinese. This plan was however thrown out by the Legislative Council, of which the unofficial members felt that reform of their own body should come first. They also objected to the fact that the proposed Municipal Council would overlap the functions of the Colonial Administration. In any case, the time, mid-1949, was unsettled in view of events in China and the opportunity was missed. Subsequently, the whole of Hong Kong society underwent such an upheaval with the flood of refugees and the diminishing of trade with the Mainland that constitutional reforms were shelved.

A feature of the post-war situation of Hong Kong is the fact that everyone knows that the really important long-term decisions are not made in the Colonial Secretariat or even in Government House. This certainly adds to the lack of interest in acquiring any share in the Government. On the other hand, a paradoxical result of the establishment of the Communist Government in Peking is that most of the Chinese who have come to Hong Kong in the last fifteen years are here to stay, unlike the transients who before the war came to the Colony to find jobs in bad periods at home, expecting to return to their families when conditions improved. Hence the Chinese population does in fact have more interest than it did in pre-1949 days in seeing that the Government should at least be of the complexion it desires. As time passes, this will be both more and less true: a greater proportion of the populace will be Hong Kong born or educated, or both; but since it is clear that as Mr. Endacott says, Peking's demands for the revision of the "unequal treaties" are unlikely to stop at the Shum Chun river, the Colony's lifespan depends on how pressing the Chinese Government feels this revision is.

An interesting point in the early history of the Colony which Mr. Endacott brings out very clearly is that it was the British Government, which by not allowing any constitutional advance
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d
22 

T. C. CHENG 

In May 1915, Japan forced the Republic of China, then under the premiership of Yuan Shih-kai, to accept the "Twenty-one Demands". Four years later, in 1919, the Chinese delegation failed at the Peace Conference in Paris to prevent the "transfer" of Germany's "rights and privileges" in the Shantung Province to Japan. As a result of this complete disregard of China's sovereignty by the foreign powers, thousands of students took part in processions demonstrating against foreign militarism and oppression in China on 4 May 1919. In response, students, merchants, and workers throughout China also staged demonstrations and strikes, thereby sparking off in China the "May 4 Movement". Chinese national feelings were also stirred by the Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (or K.M.T.), who now pressed for the abolition of extra-territorial rights and unequal treaties and the retrocession of foreign concessions. All these had serious repercussions in Hong Kong, and in 1922 the first of a series of seamen's strikes began. On 30th May 1925, certain Chinese demonstrators were shot and killed by British policemen in the International Settlements in Shanghai. This led to more serious strikes and demonstrations in Shanghai, Canton, and Hong Kong, culminating in an economic boycott which paralysed Hong Kong.

During this period, the Chinese unofficials, viz., Chow Shou-son, Ng Hon-tsz (who died in May 1923) and Robert Kotewall (who succeeded Ng Hon-tsz), and other prominent Chinese leaders, including Sir Robert Hotung and the directors of Tung Wah Hospital, stood solidly by the Government. Some of them actually acted as unofficial middlemen in negotiations between Hong Kong and the seamen's representatives in Canton. The services rendered by Chow Shou-son and Robert Kotewall during this crisis were so valuable and outstanding that speedy recognition was accorded to them. In 1926, Chow was created a knight. Kotewall was given the honorary degree of LL.D. by the University of Hong Kong, and the following year was awarded the C.M.G.

It may be of interest to quote here the Governor Sir Cecil Clementi's remarks made in early 1926 at a Legislative Council meeting about the big strike of 1925 and the boycott that followed: "We are determined to give full protection to the people of Hong Kong, and to put down with a firm hand any conspiracy to intimidate or otherwise to cause trouble among labourers and
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h
88

HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE

Report of the Commission to inquire into the existence of insanitary properties in the Colony, Hong Kong, Noronha & Co., 1898.

'Report of the Commission to Enquire into the Public Works Department', Hong Kong Sessional Papers, no. 13 of 1902, pp. 125-368,

REVIEWS IN THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY

1927, pp. 643-4

1928, pp. 648-9

1929, pp. 197-8

1929, pp. 410-12

1929, p. 944

1930, p. 487

1931, pp. 677-8

1931, pp. 872-3

1932, pp. 672-5

1932, pp. 1025-6

1934, pp. 151-3

1935, pp. 189-90

1935, p. 395-6

Herbert H. Gowen and Josef Washington Hall, An Outline History of China.

Louise Wallace Hackney, Guide-Posts to Chinese Painting.

A.E. Grantham. Hills of Blue. A Picture Roll of Chinese History from Far Beginnings to the Death of Ch'ien Lung, A.D. 1799.

V.A. Riasanovsky, The Modern Civil Law of China (part 1).

Rodney Gilbert, The Unequal Treaties: China and the Foreigner.

Sir Harold Partlett, A Brief Account of Diplomatic Events in Manchuria.

Fr. Schjöth, The Currency of the Far East.

V.A. Riasanovsky, The Modern Civil Law of China (part 2).

G.F. Hudson, Europe and China: A Survey of their Relations from the Earliest Times to 1800.

Leonard Shiblien Hsü, The Political Philosophy of Confucianism.

E.T. Williams, China Yesterday and To-day.

Roswell S. Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press, 1800-1900.

Bernard M. Allen, The Rt. Hon. Sir Ernest Satow, G.C.M.G.: A Memoir.

[1930, pp. 217-221 Obituary of Sir E.M. Satow by J.H. Stewart Lockhart]
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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.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x
4

off with a whole pound, 'the foundation of his fortune' which induced him to go to sea as a sailor. He then sailed away, at the age of 12, and in the course of the next six years visited various parts of the world including Australia, Africa and the Americas before finally settling in China in 1860 during the last days of the Arrow War [better known perhaps as the Second Opium War].

Mesny arrived in China at the start of the era known to the Chinese as the 'post-unequal treaties', an extraordinary period of readjustment in Chinese thinking. He arrived in a China whose rulers were an alien dynasty, the non-Chinese Manchus from Manchuria whose dynasty, the Ch'ing, ruled China between 1644-1911. Mesny's era covered the gradual collapse of the dynasty and its fall, followed by the first years of the Republic.

William Mesny spent a total of 59 years in China during which time he first, for some thirteen years, led a life of high adventure and, later, one which he lived to the full but at the same time one which appears to have fluctuated between the verge of success and pathetic failure. As it stands the later years of Mesny's life, following his short military career, fall into four periods; first, trekking across China, second, his life in Shanghai whilst still hoping to make his fortune; third, his time there when that hope had all but disappeared and finally, his last days, apparently alone in Hankow. The story contains elements which can only be guessed by reading between the lines in his Miscellanies, sadly without the help of other written or oral records.

I have attempted to provide a chronology of Mesny's life from the multitude of snippets and asides he provided in his Miscellanies. This will be found at Appendix B. The great majority of the research in the UK has been carried out by Dr R G Tiedemann of SOAS in the University of London to whom I am also greatly indebted for both his advice and comments, as I am too to Miss Lucie Mesny of St Lawrence in Jersey, for her memories and photographs. However, any errors are mine alone.

Apart from the autobiographical portions of the Miscellany we have to rely upon the tiny smattering of family memory still available, two obituaries from Shanghai English language newspapers and what little has been written about Mesny by others who knew him in China. It is unfortunate that other living descendants of William Mesny have fought
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x
Until the middle of the 19th century China assumed and acted on the principle that the world owed allegiance to the supreme ruler, the Emperor of China, a view considered by the British in particular as ludicrous, and despite costly emissaries to try to persuade them otherwise, the Chinese were only forced to accept change by military force—leading to what it was hoped by foreigners would be an era of equality such as existed between other nations. Mesny experienced but probably failed to appreciate the depth of change within China in which he was involved; Chinese military commanders in the field without the presence of their foreign overlords, the Manchus, being one. But much more important were the changes in style of xenophobia, a newly acquired awareness of the power of western nations by the Chinese and most of all the deep resentment of the imposition of foreign equality. It is this more than anything else which makes Mesny's story so fascinating and refreshing.

He also lived in China during the era when the attitudes of Christian missionaries were changing, from those who felt such a strong cultural superiority and behaved arrogantly, with an attitude of self-righteousness and a complete lack of sensitivity towards Chinese feelings, which caused the vast majority of Chinese to become even more xenophobic than they had been before westerners forced through 'unequal' treaties; to those with more sympathetic views. By the end of the century many missionaries were comparatively understanding and tolerant of Chinese customs and culture, and though their mercantile compatriots were still of the old views, a number of missionaries were working with Chinese and helping to bring about the modern transformation of China. Although Mesny was one of the few foreigners whose sympathies lay with the Chinese, with his feet in both camps he found good and bad on both sides. One of Mesny's more revealing snippets is the irritated and grieving rather than angry digression; an item in the Miscellany on an uncommon Chinese saying "Tsai ssu szu wei" meaning "Try, try and try again". He wrote 'It (the phrase) is probably worth using by foreigners as a very expressive and convenient tenor when trying to persuade natives [Chinese] that it is impossible to comply with the requests and importunities to "do something for them". I have reflected on the matter,' he continued, 'and though I have repeatedly tried still I have not succeeded.' Many foreigners, even to this day, will sigh in agreement.

Mesny would, in later life, doubtless have seen himself as a ‘China Expert' and would also have wished others to regard him so. He cultivated this impression in print from the first issue of his Miscellany with his
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x
101

each harnessed and stripped to the waist, fighting the torrent.

Treaty ports: Ports opened to foreign trade and residence under what the Chinese have always regarded as 'unequal treaties'.

Tsung-li Yamen : The Foreign Affairs Bureau of the late Ch'ing dynasty, established after the capture of Peking in 1860 by the Allied forces. It was the channel of communication between foreign Ministers resident in Peking and the throne.

Tsung-tu #: the Viceroy or Governor-General of one or more provinces within which he had the general control of all civil and military affairs and was subject only to the throne.

Wai-sing Lottery: lit: examination of names, a kind of sweepstake, once a very popular form of gambling amongst the Cantonese, on the result of the public examination for the second degree. The holder of a successful candidate's name being the winner of a greater or lesser sum according to position on the published list.

Wei-yuan A: a delegate staff officer, a special delegate or Expectant Appointee on ad hoc duty.

White Lily Sect [Pai-lien Chiao] was a more serious rebellion at the end of the eighteenth century. This secret society, originally founded in opposition to Mongol domination several centuries earlier, had been revived in order to get rid of the alien Manchu rule of the Ch'ing dynasty. It broke out in western Hupei in 1796 and for nearly nine years taxed China's resources to the utmost. Although Mesny was not involved his and their paths crossed on occasion.

Yamen : The official and private residence of any 'mandarin', officials who held a seal, a government office.

Ying #: usually a battalion but not uncommonly, a force of a number of battalions.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x
152

German, Central and Eastern European Jews

The third wave of Jewish immigration into Shanghai, and incidentally the largest, was in the years following 1938, as a result of Nazi persecutions in Germany, Central and Eastern Europe. Since Shanghai was the only port that accepted people without visas, Jews who were not permitted to enter other countries came to Shanghai.

They travelled by water, on Italian liners via Africa. Since canal tolls had to be paid in pounds sterling, ship captains tended to take the long way by going around Africa, making the journey to Shanghai more than six weeks. Other refugees took the Siberian Railroad to Manchuria, then went from there to Japan. The Japanese consul at Vilna, apparently for humanitarian reasons, issued transit visas for those who possessed another, usually for some Latin American country. Or, for those who did not have any visa at all, the destination was to be Shanghai. As a result, a large number of Jews congregated at Kobe or Yokohama, waiting to travel to Shanghai by ship. Among this group were the faculty and student body of the Yeshiva from Poland. So, until the school moved to New York after 1945, the rabbis were trained in Shanghai.

When the Sino-Japanese conflict merged into the global war following Pearl Harbour in December 1941, resulting in Japanese occupation of the International Settlement, the Jews in Shanghai were treated according to their nationalities. The large refugee community, either with 'non-enemy alien' status or stateless, manned the factories and operated cottage industries in their homes. In 1943, when special privileges enjoyed by foreigners in China came to an end as the unequal treaties of the 19th century were formally abrogated, the Jewish population in Shanghai was estimated to number 25,000.

As the war ended in 1945 the Jewish refugees left to settle in the United States, Canada, Australia or, after its establishment, Israel. Long-term Jewish residents left as well after 1949. By 1956, only 543 Jews remained in China, 231 of them in Shanghai, 402 of these Jews were classified as Soviet citizens by the Chinese government, and were therefore unable to obtain the necessary papers in order to emigrate without cooperation between the Chinese authorities and the Soviet consulate. R.D. Abraham, leader of the Jewish community at that time, learned through a BBC broadcast that David Marshall, the noted Jewish lawyer from Singapore, was being invited to visit China. He quickly
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g
144

See Henry Lethbridge, Hong Kong Stability and Change (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1978), p 200

144

With an Additional Note by Professor Lo Hsiang-lin, JHKBRAS 7 (1967), pp 152-7

See the introduction to Ray Huang's 1587, A Year of No Significance (New York, Columbia University, 1988) "Fu", meaning wealth, is a felicitous rendering of "Goodrich"

He is mentioned in Robin Hutcheon's SCMP, The First Eighty Years (Hong Kong, SCMP, 1983) A photo showing him at ARP drill is at p 84

12 See JHKBRAS 29 (1989), pp xvii-xx

11 Ibid

14 Samuel Couling, Encyclopaedia Sinica (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1917), p 378

14 Ibid

16 I was to be constructed in three separate stages Work had begun on the main contracts in 1981 and 1982, with completion forecast in 1984 and 1985, at an estimated cost (end 1982 figure) with all ancillary related contracts of HKD16 millions Information provided by the Engineering Development Department, HKG

17 Same The likely cost at 1980 figures had been estimated at HKD7.3 billions

18 See JHKBRAS 23 (1983), p. 129. One was dedicated to the famous Kwan Tai, the God of War, and the other to Yo Fei, a celebrated general and statesman of the Sung dynasty

19

The 1872 Hong Kong Blue Book listed 72 stone quarries at Shaukeiwan See JHKBRAS 10 (1970), p 186

20

See P Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaties 1898-1997, China, Great Britain and Hong Kong's New Territories (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1980), especially chapters 7 and 10, and Elizabeth Sinn, "Kowloon Walled City: Its Origin and Early History", in JHKBRAS 27 (1987), pp 30-45

21 See Jackie Pullinger, Crack in the Wall, Life and Death in Kowloon Walled City (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1989)

22 for a progress report on the clearance project, see e.g. SCMP, 24 September 1987

23 Mr Lu Hau-Luen

24

Only two are listed in the annual reports printed in the 1988 and 1989 Journals, but three were made, as noted in Vol 28 (1988), p ix
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278
188

deaths of Chinese persons within these fourteen personal absences Legge experienced, one stood out over time because it became so formative in shaping Legge's public image in Hong Kong. The images of both Legge and this seminal Chinese figure were first promoted through extracted letters and reading literature of missionary journals where the story about Ch'ea Kam-Kwong first appeared. After Ch'ea's murder, however, it became a festering and frustrating element within the larger political scenario of the unequal treaties period in foreign policy between the Qing Manchurian empire in China and the newly established British ambassador. Legge made the issue all the more prominent in 1863 by publicly challenging British officials' complacence about the matter and condemning attempts by Sir Frederick Bruce (1814-1867), the first British ambassador to the Qing empire, to defuse the whole tragedy by general claims about missionary incompetence.

The period from 1861 to 1863 was pivotal in Legge's missionary-scholar career because of three books and two supremely “felt” public absences. In February and November 1861 he published the first two of the eight-tome-five-volume series he entitled the Chinese Classics. In October and at the very beginning of 1862 he faced news about the deaths of Ch'ea Kam-kwong and his eldest brother George respectively, writing special memorials to both men in the subsequent months. In the latter case, James Legge edited and introduced his brother George's selected lectures and sermons (an introduction of just over 100 pages!), an act of filial respect simultaneously Scottish Nonconformist, Ruist/Confucian, and Victorian in style and content.

2

Yet Ch'ea's death in October 1861 and its consequences had a power over Legge's career he himself could not fully anticipate. So influential was it that in the balance of the decade of the 1860s Legge was regularly referred to in local Hong Kong and overseas missionary literature as "James Legge of Hong-kong and Poklo." Here we will explore the meaning of Ch'ea's death for Legge's life, and the broader implications it had on a surprising range of “larger issues" in the study of cross-cultural interactions during the later decades of the Manchurian Qing dynasty. Part of the significance is shown in a negative fashion in Paul Cohen's early work of the
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002
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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
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