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 RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 11 THE STUDY OF ASIA: A HERITAGE AND A TASK Inaugural Address delivered on April 7, 1960. F. S. DRAKE, O.B.E., B.A., B.D., Professor of Chinese, Hong Kong University. The study of Asia by the West is the result of the total impact of East and West through the ages, in which traders, soldiers, administrators, travellers, preachers, and scholars all have a part, and in which a study of the language and literature of the peoples of Asia is an essential element. So far as Europe is concerned the study of Asia commences with the Greeks. The Greeks were in contact with Asia in three directions: along the coast of the Black Sea they were in contact with the Scythians; in Asia Minor they lived under the shadow of the Persian Empire; through Egypt they were in contact with the sea routes to India and beyond. These three directions indicate three great geographical divisions of the subject around which we can, I think, arrange the historical, cultural and linguistic studies. First the grasslands of Central Asia, from the steppes of Russia to the plateau of Mongolia, home of the nomadic races from the Scythians to the Mongols; second, the Oriental Empires connected with the great river valleys and deltas from Iran to India and China; third, the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan, including the China coast. I. The Scythians are graphically described in the pages of Herodotus, and his description is verified by the finds of archaeologists in the tombs of their chieftains in South Russia and the Caucasus region. The virile 'nomad animal style' of the ornaments in bronze and gold found from the Caucasus to the Siberian side of the Altai, and from the Altai through Mongolia to the borders of China, indicates the extent and the character of the nomadic tribes. But the chief source of our knowledge of the nomads is to be found in the series of Chinese dynastic histories. The Chinese were in continual contact with the nomadic peoples along their northern frontier from Manchuria to Turkestan—the line of the Great Wall. The struggle between the nomads and the Empire, based on agriculture, is the great theme of Chinese history. ================================================================================ 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 RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 50 THE MORRISON LIBRARY AN EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY COLLECTION IN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG DOROTHEA SCOTT. A.L.A. THE HISTORY The history of the Morrison Library goes back to 1806 when the members of the English Factory in Canton unanimously decided to establish a Library by subscription "comprising a moderate collection of works of acknowledged value and respectability; together with an annual contribution of all the most desirable new publications, which are at present, generally either not imported at all, or multiplied by unnecessary repetitions. . . It would be a library. . . far surpassing in extent, variety, and adaptation to general use, any collection that has hitherto been in possession of, or attempted to be formed by, any European in this country". The president of the select committee of members of the Factory granted a "very commodious" room for a library and by 1832 it contained 1600 different works in about 4000 volumes and a catalogue was published. The Library flourished until the withdrawal of the charter of the East India Company in 1834 and the break-up of the English factory. Just about this time, on the 1 August, 1834, occurred the death of the Rev. Robert Morrison, D.D., the first protestant missionary to China and well-known scholar. A circular dated 26 January, 1835 was distributed among the foreign residents in Canton and Macao suggesting the formation of the Morrison Education Society to carry on the work he had started and to be a "testimonial more enduring than marble or brass". The idea received considerable support, twenty-two signatures to the circular were obtained, the sum of $4,860 was subscribed and a provisional committee consisting of Sir George R. Robinson, bart., Messrs. William Jardine, David W. C. Olyphant, Lancelot Dent, John Robert Morrison (Robert Morrison's son who had succeeded his father as Chinese Secretary and Interpreter to His Majesty's Commission in China) and the Rev. E. C. Bridgman was formed to act until a general meeting of the subscribers in China could be convened to form a board of trustees. The Chinese Repository, a monthly magazine in English, had been founded in 1832 by Morrison and Bridgman. It gave its support to the foundation of the Society and in the number for June 1835, it published the details given above, saying, "We have been led to make these remarks by a desire to suggest to the ================================================================================ 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 RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 57 painstaking scholar. In his journals and letters he notes with appreciation books received for recreational purposes and also for the education of his children. The collection is representative of the period and contains more curiosities than rarities, Only about two hundred volumes remain which are of Far East interest. This section seems to have suffered the depredations of time and insects more than any other, but what is left is perhaps of sufficient interest to warrant description. There are a fair number of eighteenth century books but in all only five seventeenth century and of these only two are about China, The earliest is Atlas Extreme Asiae Sive Sinarum Imperii (Atlas of furthermost Asia and Imperial China) by Martin Martinius of 1654. It lacks a title page and of the fifteen maps three are missing. It includes a brief note on Korea and Japan. It has a thirty-six page supplement "De Bello Tartarico Historia" many separate editions of which appeared in French and Dutch translations. The work is listed in Cordier as Novus Atlas Sinensis a Martino Martinio Soc. Iesv, a later edition than the one here described. According to the same authority there were two Latin editions and many translations. Only one of the two copies listed of China Monumentis by Athanasius Kircher, S.J. is now in the Library. It is a copy of the first 1667 edition listed in Cordier as being the finest, a folio, complete with the engraved frontispiece and the numerous plates. Among the eighteenth century books there is a copy of the first edition of the first English translation to be made of Camoës' epic poem, The Lusiad (Os Lusiadas) by William Julius Mickle. Mickle published a translation of Book Five only in The Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1771 and a little later the first canto. These were followed by the whole poem in 1775 when its publication was supported by a long list of subscribers. The translator visited Portugal as secretary to Commodore Johnstone in 1779 where he was received with much acclaim. There is a copy of the first collected English edition of The Works of Peter Pindar, Esq. in three volumes (two earlier collected editions had appeared in Dublin), but unfortunately the first volume is missing. Peter Pindar, the pen name of John Wolcot, was well known as a pungent satirist in his day. This collected edition was published in 1794 by John Walker of Paternoster Row, London, to whom Wolcot sold all the rights of his published and future work in 1793. This arrangement subsequently led to disputes and a law suit which was decided in the author's favour and he enjoyed a comfortable annuity for the rest of his long life until 1819. The Works contain A pair of Lyric Epistles to Lord Macartney and Odes to Kien Long which recall how much in the public eye was the British Embassy to Peking at this time. ================================================================================ 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 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 58 Among the eighteenth century travel books must be mentioned two first editions of interest although not relating to the Far East. The earlier is James Cook's A Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World of 1777, unfortunately the second volume only. And the second is Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa by Mungo Park, published in 1799. There is a 1771 edition of A voyage to China and the East Indies, by Peter Osbeck which includes An Account of the Chinese Husbandry, by Captain Charles Gustavus Eckeberg and A Faunula and Flora Sinensis. The first volume contains ten engraved plates of plants found in China. In the second volume is printed a letter from Charles Linné [Linnaeus] to Peter Osbeck which says:- + + + I have read your excellent books with pleasure and surprize. You, Sir, have every where travelled with the light of science: you have named every thing so precisely, that it may be comprehended by the learned world; and have discovered and settled both the genera and species. For this reason, I seem myself to have travelled with you, and to have examined every object you saw with my own eyes. One other eighteenth century account of travels and exploration in the Far East should be noticed: A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies by the Abbé Raynal, 1784. It may be salutary to notice the bitter attacks which the Abbé makes on English administration in India and elsewhere. Books like Ellis' Embassy and Timkowski's Travels have been too often described to warrant inclusion here. The Hundred Wonders of the World, and of the Three Kingdoms of Nature of 1824 published under the pseudonym of the Rev. C. C. Clarke, has a picture of the Porcelain Tower at Nankin, China, as a frontispiece. It is sad to think that this wonder no longer stands; it was destroyed during the T'ai-p'ing Rebellion. Processes of time, not war, have destroyed two of London's institutions listed as 'wonders', the Linwood Gallery of Leicester Square and Bullock's Museum, Piccadilly. It is strange to think that in their day they were compared with the British Museum and the Louvre of Paris. Elements of political economy by James Mill appears in a first edition of 1821. James was the father of John Stuart Mill for whom he obtained a clerkship in the East India Company after he himself had been given a high position following the publication in 1818 of his History of British India. Among the illustrated books in the collection there is an 1828 edition of Flora Javae by Carolo Ludovico Blume with remarkable colour plates. ================================================================================ 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 RASHKB and author 62 11 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 "(Ching-Hai Fen-Chi) History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea, from 1807 to 1810"; "The Cathechism of the Shamans; or, The Laws and Regulations of The Priesthood of Buddha, in China" and "Vahram's Chronicle of The Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia, During The Time of The Crusades". C. F. Neumann was a German sinologue who visited Canton in 1830 to buy Chinese books for the Royal Library, Berlin. He had a letter of introduction to Morrison from Sir George Staunton and enjoyed much hospitality from the British residents during his visit. It is recorded in the Memoirs that he deplored the attacks that von Klaproth and Rémusat were making on Morrison. Sir George Staunton was a staunch friend to Morrison during long years in China and helped him in every way he could. Morrison had taken over the duties as Senior official translator to the East India Company (a post in which he had been assisting) when Staunton had to retire through ill-health in 1812. Two of Staunton's own contributions to translations from Chinese are in the Library, Narrative of the Chinese Embassy to the Khan of the Tourgouth Tartars, in the years 1712, 13, 14 & 15. By The Chinese Ambassador, and published By the Emperor's Authority, at Pekin, 1821 and Miscellaneous Notices Relating to China, and our Commercial Intercourse with that Country, printed for private circulation only in 1828. A letter from Staunton to Morrison telling him that he has sent him four copies of his work is printed in the Memoirs. There are two translations from the Chinese by another French sinologue, Stanilas Julien (1799-1873), Le Livre des Récompenses Et Des Peines, En Chinois Et En Français: Accompagné De Quatre Cents Legendes, Anecdotes Et Histoires, Qui Font Connaitre Les Doctrines, Les Croyances Et Les Moeurs De La Secte Des Tao-Ssé and Lao Tseu Tao Te King, Le Livre de la voie et la Vertu, Paris, 1842. One more French sinologue Jean Pierre Guillaume Pauthier (1801-1873), is represented by one of two books originally listed in the catalogue, Le Tao-Te-King ou Le Livre révéré de la Raison Suprême et de la Vertu, par Lao-Tseu, Paris, 1838, with the text in Latin and Chinese and with a French commentary. A noteworthy work by an earlier French sinologue, Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718-1793), (in the book printed Amyot) a Jesuit missionary at Peking is the Dictionnaire Tartare-Mantchou-Français, 1789. It is a two-volume work. Unfortunately, the first volume is missing. 11 靖海氛記 ================================================================================ 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 RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 L 64 Sacred to the Memory of/ Robert Morrison, D.D.,/ The first Protestant Missionary to/ CHINA:/ where, after a service of Twenty-seven years,/ Cheerfully spent in extending the kingdom of the blessed Redeemer,/ during which period he compiled and published/ A DICTIONARY OF THE CHINESE LANGUAGE;/ Founded the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca;/ And, for several years laboured alone on a Chinese version of THE HOLY SCRIPTURES,/ which he was spared to see completed, and widely circulated/ among those for whom it was destined. He sweetly slept in Jesus. He was born at Morpeth, January 5th, 1782;/ Was sent to China, by the London Missionary Society, in 1807;/ Was for twenty-five years Chinese interpreter, in the employ of the East India Company:/ And died at Canton, August 1st, 1834. A LIST OF BOOKS MENTIONED IN THE ARTICLE IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER OF AUTHORS OR OCCASIONALLY, OF TRANSLATORS. AINSLIE, ROBERT, 1766-1838. [Reasons for the hope that is in us.] Edinburgh, printed by Ballantyne & Co. [c.1820.] Amiot, Jean JOSEPH MARIE, 1718-1793. Dictionnaire tartare-mantchou-français, composé d'après un dictionnaire mantchou-chinois, par M. Amyot, rédigé et publié avec des additions et l'alphabet de cette langue, par L. Langlès. 2v. Paris, imprimé par Fr. Ambr. Didot l'aîné, 1789. BAZIN, ANTOINE-PIERRE-Louis, 1799-1863. Le pi-pa-ki ou l'Histoire du luth, drame chinois de Kao-Tong-kia représenté à Péking en 1404 avec les changements de Mao-Tseu, traduit sur le texte original. Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1841. BAZIN, ANTOINE-PIERRE-LOUIS, 1799-1863. Théâtre chinois ou choix de pièces de théâtre composées sous les empéreurs mongols traduites pour la première fois Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1838. BIOT, ÉDOUARD CONSTANT, 1803-1850. Dictionnaire des noms anciens et modernes des villes et arrondissements compris dans l'Empire Chinois indiquant les époques auxquelles leurs noms ont été changés. Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1842. ================================================================================ 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 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 67 years 1795, 1796, and 1797. With an appendix, containing geographical illustrations of Africa. By Major Rennell. London, printed by W. Bulmer & Co. for the author, 1799. PAUTHIER, JEAN-PIERRE-GUILLAUME, 1801-1873. Le Tao-te-king, ou le livre révéré de la raison suprême et de la vertu, par Lao-Tseu, traduit en français et publié pour la première fois en Europe, avec une version latine et le texte chinois en regard, accompagné du commentaire complet de Sie-Hoéï, d'origine occidentale, et de notes tirées de divers autres commentateurs chinois. Part 1. Paris, F. Didot, etc., 1838. PHILLIPS, SIR RICHARD (REV. C. C. Clarke, pseud.) 1767-1840. The hundred wonders of the world, and of the three kingdoms of nature, described according to the best and latest authorities, and illustrated by engravings. 17th ed. London, printed for G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1824. Premare, Joseph HENRI MARIE DE, 1666-1736. Notitia linguae sinicae. Malaccae, Collegii Anglo-sinici, 1831. RAYNAL, GUILLAUME-THOMAS-FRANCOIS, 1718-1796, A philosophical and political history of the settlements and trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies. . . . Newly translated from the French by J. O. Justamond with a new set of maps, elegant engravings and a copious index. 6v. Dublin, printed for John Exshaw, 1784. REMUSAT, JEAN-PIERRE ABEL- 1788-1832. Elémens de la grammaire chinoise, ou principes généraux du kou-wen ou style antique, et du kouan-hoa, c'est-à-dire, de la langue commune généralement usitée dans l'Empire Chinois. Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1822. STAUNTON, SIR GEORGE THOMAS, bart., 1781-1859. Miscellaneous notices relating to China, and our commercial intercourse with that country. 2 parts. L. Skelton, printer, Havant. (For private circulation only.) 1828. STAUNTON, SIR GEORGE THOMAS, bart., 1781-1859. Narrative of the Chinese embassy to the Khan of the Tourgouth Tartars, in the years of 1712, 13, 14 & 15, by the Chinese Ambassador, Translated from the Chinese, and accompanied by an appendix of miscellaneous translations. London, John Murray, 1821. Wolcot, John (PETER PINDAR, pseud.) 1738-1819. The works. 3v. London, printed for John Walker, 1794, ================================================================================ 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 RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 103 of Buddhist literature, chiefly sutras in Chinese, and is open to the public (although only members are allowed to take books out). It is headed by Abbot T'aam Hui of the Wang Faat Tsing She, and staffed by his disciples. There is another, much smaller Buddhist library on the Hong Kong side (the Bo Fat Tripitaka Library, Queen's Road East), under the direction of Abbot Fat Ko of the Po Lin Tsz. By far the most numerous category of Buddhist institutions in Hong Kong is the tsing she, or hermitage, most of which - at least 120 are registered under the Temples Ordinance - are to be found in secluded parts of the New Territories (over 80 on Lantao Island alone). These are small private institutions where five or ten persons lead a peaceful life, eat vegetarian food, worship morning and night, and (in the case of the intellectually inclined) more or less diligently study Buddhism and practice Buddhist meditation. Many of the hermitages are headed by an ordained monk: in others, one or two monks may live as honoured guests, teaching the laymen who, in almost all cases, form a majority of the inmates of each institution. Little distinction is made as to sect: each inmate is free to take the approach that he finds most congenial. Women as well as men may be found in tsing she (offering little distraction, since they are usually elderly), but most Buddhists lay women prefer the institution known as the chai t'ong, or vegetarian hall, which is a species of tsing she and follows the same regime. Here no men are to be found. Amahs and other women who have saved a little money make it over to the head of the chai t'ong in return for her commitment to support them until they die. Sometimes the spirit of the commitment is not lived up to. The proprietor tries to make life so spartan for one of her guests that the latter will leave in disgust. Her purpose is then to acquire another lump sum from the person who replaces the disgruntled member. This kind of sharp practice often leads to disputes that the District Officer must solve. III. FINANCES Tsing she, including chai t'ong, receive practically no money from public sources. Outsiders are not encouraged to attend worship there except in cases where they are potential candidates for admission. The income comes from members only and, where the latter are well-off, the standard of living can be high. The income of the funeral specialists is entirely in the form of fees for services performed. The various study centres and libraries depend on donations from well-to-do Buddhist devotees, who, in many cases, wish to acquire merit by helping to spread the dharma. Since their personnel is usually small and their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 16 F. S. DRAKE In A.D. 489 the Theological School at Edessa was closed by the Roman Emperor Zeno. In A.D. 496 the Nestorian Catholicos (or Archbishop) of Nisibis was made Patriarch of the East with his seat at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia on the Tigris, and the Persian Churches with their own Patriarch were henceforth independent of the Patriarch of Antioch. 4 It is doubtful how far the split was due to theological differences, and how far to patriotic motives. Although the name 'Nestorian' is commonly applied by others to this ancient independent Syro-Persian Church, it is not the name by which they describe themselves. And in fact they were probably little conscious of the theological differences indicated by the name. They were conscious rather of being a Church outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; their Patriarch was the Patriarch of the Christians of the East, and they called themselves the Church of the Chaldees. Some still call them the Chaldaean Church. But this name has now become attached to a section of them that has become incorporated in the Church of Rome. Some call them the Assyrian Church, and this perhaps is the name least liable to cause confusion. Their centre was in fact, and is, the mountainous country of Kurdistan, east of Mosul (the ancient Nineveh) and of Arbela, where Alexander defeated Darius and commenced the conquest of Persia (331 B.C.). The sturdy peasants, who under the Persian Empire after an initial acceptance, endured a period of bitter persecution, and who maintained their primitive faith and life derived from the early days, are in all probability the descendants of the ancient Assyrians. After the conquest of Persia by the Moslem Arabs, the seat of the Patriarch was moved in A.D. 762 to Bagdad, the new capital, at that time a centre of learning and science, where at first they lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot. During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church was allowed to go on its own way, sometimes with kindly recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognized institution within the territory of Islam. With the Mongol invasion Hulugu, grandson of Genghis, took Bagdad in A.D. 1258 and put an end to the Eastern Caliphate. 7 Adeney, op. cit., p. 494. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 18 F. S. DRAKE working with their hands in the well-kept vineyards, the cherished penmanship and the care of ancient manuscripts reminiscent of 'the knowledge and zeal, which once so eminently distinguished the Chaldaean priesthood'. 4 This is the Church which evangelized the greater part of Asia during the ancient and mediaeval periods, truly it has been called a Church on Fire, and the Great Missionary Church of Asia. But that the fruit of its labours are no longer manifest is because no Church has suffered martyrdom as this Church has; it has become the great martyred Church of the world. III. THE NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS OF THE ORDOS REGION The story of the Nestorian missionary movement before the Mongols conquered Central Asia and established the Yüan Dynasty in China (A.D. 1260 to 1368) can be pieced together with difficulty from scattered references in the Syriac records; but during the Mongol domination vivid descriptions of their activities have been left to us in the pages of the Mediaeval travellers from Europe to the courts of the Mongol Khans. These can be divided into two groups: Franciscan Friars and travelling merchants. It was the time of the Crusades, and the great widening of men's horizons that these brought about. The enlightened policy of the Arabs had been followed by the restrictive measures of the Turks, now converted to Islam. Europe was stirred by the danger. The astonishing success of the First Crusade (1096-1104) was followed by the failures of the Second (1146-1187), and Third (1189-1192). The Fourth Crusade was diverted against Constantinople (1200-1205); shortly after, the Mongols appearing from the ends of the earth ravaged Armenia, and crossing the Caucasus, penetrated into Southern Russia in 1232. The great invasion followed in 1238—Russia, Poland, Hungary. At the 11 A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, London, Murray, 1849. 12 Stewart, The Nestorian Missionary Enterprise, 1928. 13 These have been collected by Assemanni, Bibliotheca Orientalis, Rome, 1728 (4 vols.). See also Mingana, The Early Spread of Christianity in Central Asia and the Far East, Manchester Univ. Press 1925, and Bull. of John Rylands Library, July 1925. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f NESTORIAN CROSSES 19 battle of Lignitz (1241) the knights of Europe were mown down, Europe lay helpless before the invaders, when the Great Khan Ogotai suddenly died, and the Mongol princes hastened back to be present at the grand assembly in Mongolia for the election of a successor. Europe was saved. But meantime through travelling merchants and friars contacts with the Mongols had been established in the Near East and, no doubt as a result of the Nestorian missions, and the conversion of the king of the Keraits in 1007, rumours grew of the rise of a great Christian Potentate in Central Asia called Prester John". Availing himself of the respite afforded by the withdrawal of the Mongols, the Pope conceived the idea of sending emissaries to the Mongol rulers, on the one hand to avert the threatened Mongol invasion by appealing to the reports of their common faith, and on the other to enlist their aid against the Moslem Turks in the Holy Land. The emissary chosen by the Pope was Friar John of Pian de Carpine (Plano Carpini) who was despatched with a letter to the Mongol rulers in A.D. 1245. Proceeding with his companion Friar Benedict the Pole through South Russia and Central Asia, he arrived at the camp of Kuyuk Khan in northern Mongolia at the time of his election by the great assembly, and was received in audience by him. Friar John returned to Europe in 1247, and met King Louis IX of France in Paris preparing for the Fifth Crusade (1248-1254). He has left a short but valuable account of his journey and a history of the Mongol tribes.11 During the disastrous Fifth Crusade King Louis was accompanied by Friar William of Rubruck, and he received several travellers returning from the nearer Mongols and despatched several emissaries, the most important of whom was Friar William of Rubruck himself whom he sent in 1253 on a personal mission to the Great Khan. Friar William travelled from Constantinople via South Russia and Central Asia to Karakoram near the present Urga, as Friar John had done, and returned through Asia Minor. He has left a long and detailed account of his journey, which for accurate observation, and balanced judgment is a document 14 Rockhill, The Journey of William Rubruck with two accounts of ... John of Pian de Carpini, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, No. IV, 1900, D'Avezac: Relation des Mongols ou Tartares par le frère Jean du Plan de Carpin, Paris, 1938. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 32 G. FINDLAY ANDREW travelling for some days over the broad plains of the Kokonor and the first trade centre we reached was the small market town of Tangar. We both had to replenish our cash supply but unfortunately the smallest piece of silver the Scot had was an ingot of some ten taels weight. I took the problem along to the blacksmith smithy in the east gate of the small city. The smith took the ingot and nonchalantly tossed it on to the fire. When sufficiently heated he took it from the fire and laid it on the anvil and commenced to chisel off the required piece of about three taels weight. When old Jock saw the sparks begin to fly he got very excited and jumped in all directions trying to catch them under the firm impression that his precious silver was being dissipated before his very eyes. Of course in the large cities the cash shops had their own silver shears and it was only in the smaller centres that the blacksmith was called upon to act as the travellers' friend in such exchange transactions. In the former Tibetan province of Amdo, on the Kansu Tibetan border lies the large lamasery of Labrang. In the days of which I write, the Living Buddha who presided over the destinies of this very large lamasery was Kia Muh Yang. He was reputed to be the owner of a mountain of silver which had been created by the molten silver offerings of the faithful being poured into one solid lump. Thus when the Buddha set off on one of his periodic journeys, all he had to do was to load pack animals with pieces hacked out from the side of his mountain and his finance problems were solved! In another connection, the same practice obtained in the neighbouring lamasery of Kumbum where the gold offerings were melted and poured down the roof of the temple that housed the sacred figure of Tsong Kaaba, the reformer of Lamaism whose birth-place the shrine marks. I wonder whether either the Silver Mountain or the Golden Roof exist to-day? The handling of sycee had its own particular problems, perhaps the main one being the assessment of the standard of purity on which subsidiary currency exchange rates were fixed. I shall never forget my feelings when on a certain occasion I opened the boxes of a large consignment of silver which I had received from a Moslem war-lord. Inside was the queerest mixture imaginable of everything approximating to silver either in the form of ornaments or coins. There were bracelets, rings, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f CURRENCY PROBLEMS 33 tooth-picks, ear-cleaners, silver dollars from many of the provincial mints and even Russian roubles. We melted the whole mass down, refined the metal losing seventy ounces in weight in the process and recast in ingots of a standard whose increased exchange rate more than compensated for the loss of weight. The child of sycee, the silver dollar, gradually superseded its parent in favour. As far as the memory serves me, the Mexican dollar was the first to come into common circulation on the China coast. Thus for many years the dollar currency in China was designated "Mex". The Ching dynasty minted their own dollars and maintained a standard around 71 to 74 tael cents to the dollar. But with the coming of the regional and provincial mints all this was changed and standards varied considerably. One of the earliest war-lord dollars was the Yuan Shih-kai's which maintained a high standard of purity. Deterioration led to confusion of exchange rates and one certain provincial dollar eventually found its level on the common market at half the value of other provincial dollars. Gradually the dollar became the common form of silver currency. One great advantage lay in the fact that the "dud" dollar was much more readily spotted than adulterated sycee. There may be some, who, like myself, have been amazed at the dexterity of the Chinese bank teller in detecting spurious dollars by the "dullness" of their tinkle. 4 In the year 1929 I was back in Kansu distributing relief in severe famine areas. This was in the days before there was motor transport in the north-west of China and transport facilities had been decimated by the starvation deaths of man and beast. Added to which, difficulty was added to what transportation was possible by the roving bands of brigands roaming the country in search of food. All usual means of remitting money from the coast were suspended and the only way I could get funds was by issuing letters of credit on my brother in Tientsin. One leading war-lord offered me a remittance of fifty thousand taels of silver provided I would take delivery at his home village, located two and a half days' journey from the provincial capital. By a considerable effort I managed to assemble a caravan of some twenty pack animals. One pack mule will carry three thousand ounces of silver deadweight. With a heavily armed guard we took the trail over the mountains. On the second evening we came to the top of a mountain range and here we ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 82 J. W. HAYES 10 standing in loco parentis to the people of his district. An instance of this outlook is a proclamation issued by the Canton Viceroy in April 1899 in which he told the people of the New Territory that the English government had agreed that "the people are to be treated with exceptional kindness ".10 On the reverse side of the medal the magistrate could also, like his followers in the tribunal, use his authority to evil purposes and be referred to as being as (fierce as) a tiger" 如虎 or a dog-official"35 whose extortions and venality were a byword 44 in the district.1 C4 + 17 In his government the Magistrate was usually assisted by an indoor and outdoor staff. The former might consist of personal adherents from his own home district who followed him from post to post, and partly of local personnel of the tribunal or yamen4 such as a legal adviser, secretaries, and land clerks, whose local knowledge it would be difficult to dispense with. All these were entirely dependent upon the magistrate for their livelihood, and upon what they could pick up in the course of their duties. To maintain his position and put food into the mouths of the members of his personal staff and their families the magistrate was given an inadequate salary by government. There were in addition the outdoor staff which comprised a considerable number of police, watchmen, runners and the like, who may have been paid by Government despite what Lockhart says to the contrary, but used their opportunities as they came, In the San On district the Magistrate's yamen was at Nam Tau, which lies beyond the northern or further shores of Deep Bay on the far side of the Nam Tau peninsula. This was the district city where the treasury, jail and examination halls were also situated. It also contained a Confucian temple. The seat of government therefore lay outside the borders of the New Territory which, however, was served by several of his subordinate officers. He was assisted by an assistant magistrate10 whose office was at Tai Pang north-east of Mirs Bay and outside the New Territory and two deputy magistrates, one of whom was stationed within the walled city of Kowloon. They had power to make arrests and conduct preliminary enquiries but were bound to refer most cases to Nam Tau for final decision. The Kowloon deputy, like his colleagues, had a lock-up for detaining persons pending trial and there was also one each for the local ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 94 J. W. HAYES land and the clan. The popular religion too, was but an ephemeral thing, something to meet the needs of the moment; something too that was not so respectable as the austere worship which fell within the Confucian canon. In short, the impression left by the brief excursion into the past which forms the basis of this article has left me with the firm impression that Confucianism was the dominant influence over people and government in the New Territory in 1898. I hasten to point out that in itself this is not in any way surprising: but in view of the remoteness of the area and its late settlement by Chinese of different race with their undoubted absorption of earlier inhabitants this impression of its pervasiveness and brooding presence everywhere in the Territory at this time is probably worth restating. NOTES As far as possible the notes are designed to supplement the text and not to be a necessary part of it. I have used local source material which has come to my notice during a tour of duty as District Officer South (1957-60) and Islands (1961-62) when I have been in a favourable position to hear of, find and utilise whatever happened to come my way, besides the authorities cited in these notes. I have scarcely used the District History, the San On Yuen Chi (⛧人元誌, last edition 1820, but reprinted by Kwong Tung Printers, Canton, in 1933) nor Mr. Lo Hsiang-lin's Hong Kong and its external communications before 1842 which uses the District History extensively. (It is good to know that a translation of the latter is in the Hong Kong University Press and will appear shortly, so making available in English part of the District History). I ought also to say here that this is my first excursion in the field of Oriental Studies, with all that this implies. I wish to thank Mr. Lo Chi Chung of the District Office for his valuable help. A Cantonese form of romanization has been used throughout. 1 James Haldane Stewart Lockhart (1858-1937) became a Hong Kong Cadet in 1878. He was appointed Colonial Secretary in 1895, the post he held at the time of his Report (8th October 1898) for which he received the thanks of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He was created C.M.G. in 1898 and K.C.M.G. in 1908. In 1902 he became first Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei, a territory of 285 square miles on the coast of Shantung with an estimated 330 villages and a population of 124,000 which had been leased to Britain in 1898. He remained in this quiet backwater for the next twenty years. Lockhart was a sinologue of some note in his day and wrote a Manual of Chinese Quotations (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1903), The Currency of the Far East, 3 vols (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1895, 1898) and a monograph, The Stewart Lockhart collection of Chinese copper coins, (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1915). Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 99 three districts in the vicinity of Canton the phrase shui shui, tso shui, tsou shui (£££) literally "sleeping in-come, sitting in-come, walking in-come" which may be thus explained: the incumbent of the first may go to sleep, whilst his emoluments come rolling in; in the second he may sit still, and his emoluments come rolling in; and in the third he must trot around, but his emoluments come rolling in". 12 Lockhart calls these officers assistant and deputy magistrates, Papers 1899 p. 191 and so does Consul Allen in his Trade Report for Pakhoi 1896, FO No. 1983, but there appear in fact, to have been no such titles. There were one or two yuen shing (B) in each district styled to ye (*) who were officers of the sixth and seventh rank and were graduates of kam sang (1) degree. These were appointed from Peking and were transferable every three years like the magistrate himself. They were stationed at places in the district and their powers were very limited. 20 He does not mention officers other than those at the two Lantau forts, but there was another fort on Lantau at Fan Lau, still standing, which may or may not have been occupied at this time, and there were posts on Lamma and Cheung Chau officered by shun tei kun (MILF) (information from Mr. CHEUNG Yau (4) of Tai Ping, Lamma Island, and from a list of donors inscribed on a tablet in the Tin Hau temple on Cheung Chau). There must also have been shun tei kun in the mainland part of the district. More information is sought about their stations and their duties. As far as I know, they were military officers of low rank who controlled ten or twenty men in an out-station, 21 Papers 1899 p. 192. 22 A map showing these divisions, dated July 1899 on the reverse, is to be found in the Registrar-General's Department, in the Supreme Court. It is probably the Map VI referred to on page 192 of the Papers 1899, which was not printed with them. The Councils of the Tung may not have existed in the remoter and more sparsely populated areas. On Lamma for instance the village elders appear to have administered summary justice individually and not in unison. Mr. CHEUNG Yau already quoted, and other gentlemen of similar age, state there was no Council on the island. The map does not assist in this instance, being vague in some details. There were four tung in any district: north, south, east and west. 23 Dyer Ball, The Chinese at Home (London, Religious Tract Society, 1912) p. 189 says "The life of an official in China, if he occupies a high position and rules over a populous district of country, is arduous in the extreme. He knows no hours. His work is never done. He is up before dawn, and official receptions take place in the small or early hours of the morning. The health of many a man is injured by the incessant toil and unremitting anxiety". He calls him "often hard worked, harassed with many cares, and loaded with responsibilities". His is experienced and impartial testimony. 24 Papers 1899 p. 192. 25 Sir Robert Douglas, Society in China (London, Ward Lock & Co., 1901) pp. 120-1 has hard things to say of them. "The mental activity of these men, not having... any power to operate in a beneficent way, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 101 See paras. 38 These feuds, often of long standing, persist to-day. 77-79 of Mr. K. M. A. Barnett's annual administrative report for 1955-56 as District Commissioner New Territories for a good instance of traditional hostility. For other cases see paras. 97 and 43 of the annual departmental reports for 1957-58 and 1958-59. See Smith Village Life in China p. 286, also p. 222 "The local Magistrates take care not to intervene too soon or too far, lest it be the worse for them. When the fight is over the officers put in an appearance, arrests are made, and the machinery of government recovers from its temporary paralysis", and pp. 282-86 for a northern instance of clan violence. 40 According to Dyer Ball Things Chinese (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1903) p. 326 "a dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and the Punteis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties". See also pp. 369-70 of B.C. Henry's Ling Nam (London, Partridge, 1886), 41 From information supplied by elders of Ho Chung village who were at school during or before 1898. 42 See the section on Disasters in the San On Yuen Chi. 43 See stone tablet outside Tin Hau temple, Kat O, Tai Po district. 44 From a stone tablet dated Ch'ien-lung 42/4/26 (1777) at Yuen Long Old Market. 45 From a stone tablet dated Chia-ch'ing 7/3/23 (1802) at the Tin Hau temple, Kat O. 46 From a stone tablet dated Ch'ien-lung 42/lucky month, lucky day (1777) at the Hau Wong temple, Tung Chung. 47 From a stone tablet dated Tao-kuang 21/7/19 (1841) at Tin Hau temple, Peng Chau. 48 From a stone tablet whose date is uncertain, at the Tai Wong temple, Yuen Long Market. 49 Variously, as above. 50 Reminiscences of Mr. TANG Kiu Fong of Fui Sha Wai near Yuen Long, in an article in the New Territories Weekly for January 1962. 51 Tree spirits are quite common in the New Territories where many old trees have joss sticks and red paper inscriptions placed under them on a rough altar. There is, in particular, a very large old banyan tree at Long Kang a few miles east of Sai Kung Market which must surely be the oldest tree in the Southern District. This is visited regularly by devotees. From personal experience of every part of the old Southern District I can say with confidence that belief in tree and earth spirits still exists to-day, and might indeed be said positively to flourish. 52 An ancestral temple is not open to the public: it is for the private use of the clan, for whom alone it has any meaning. Most villages of any age and consequence have ancestral temples, and in multi-clan villages ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 104 ELSPETH MANEELY 16 hill slopes of the western islands and in the Castle Peak area; but perhaps only four places investigated since archaeological work began in the Colony may be dignified by the term "site". These are: So Kun Wat #, a series of low hilltops to the west of the Tai Lam Chun reservoir; Lamma Island (Pok Liu Chau14), which really comprises several distinct sites; Shek Pik and Man Kok Tsui, both on Lantau Island (Tai Yu Shan). A report on the findings at So Kun Wat was presented by C. M. Heanley and J. L. Shellshear in 1932 at the first Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East held at Hanoi. Father Finn's publications on the Lamma sites, begun in 1932, have recently been reprinted in one volume, Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island Near Hong Kong.3 The Shek Pik site, on the south-west coast of Lantau Island, was excavated by W. Schofield and J. G. Andersson in 1937 and a report was published in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, in 1938. The artifacts uncovered at Man Kok Tsui are similar to those found at these earlier sites and are of three kinds: stone tools and ornaments, pottery and bronze. Before describing the discovery of Man Kok Tsui in more detail however, reference should be made to Father R. L. Maglioni's extensive discoveries in Hoifung as they bear a definite relationship to finds in the Hong Kong area. Hoifung lies on the China coast about one hundred miles north-east of Hong Kong. In 1934 Fr. Maglioni, then a priest in the Hoifung region, embarked on a thorough search for prehistoric remains. He located as many as twenty distinct sites. In general the finds were of the same type as those described by archaeologists working in Hong Kong, but Fr. Maglioni was able to distinguish three separate Neolithic cultures. These three he called the SON, SAK and PAT cultures from the capital letters of the romanized names of villages adjacent to the sites. So far Neolithic remains in Hong Kong resemble closely those of Fr. Maglioni's PAT culture, the latest of the three. In April 1958, Dr. S. M. Bard first reported Man Kok Tsui as a possible area for investigation by the University Archaeological Team. The site, given the number 30 by the Team, lies at the extreme tip of the northern arm of Silvermine Bay, Lantau Island. It consists of two sheltered, sandy beaches, a flat fertile valley ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 108 ELSPETH MANEELY The suggestion of glaze on two of the pots, the bronze, the variety of shapes of the polished stone adzes, and the impressed patterns on the pottery similar to Fr. Maglioni's PAT culture, all indicate a Late Stone Age or Early Bronze Age date (Warring States, 481-221 B.C.) for the Man Kok Tsui site. However, the people living in this area may have continued to use stone tools and pottery of this type well into the Han period. REFERENCES 1 William Watson, Archaeology in China, Max Parrish, London, (1960). 2 C. M. Heanley and J. L. Shellshear, “A Contribution to the Prehistory of Hong Kong and the New Territories", Proceedings of the First Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Hanoi, (Jan. 1932), 3 Daniel J. Finn, S. J., Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island Near Hong Kong, Ricci Publications, Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, (1958). 4 W. Schofield, "A Protohistoric Site at Shek Pik, Lantao, Hong Kong", Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, (1938). 5 R. L. Maglioni, S. J., "Archaeology in South China", Journal of East Asiatic Studies, Manila, II, No. 1, (Oct. 1952). 6 R. L. Maglioni, S. J., "Archaeology Finds in Hoifung", Hong Kong Naturalist, VIII, Nos. 3-4, (March 1938). 7 S. G. Davis and Mary Tregear, "Man Kok Tsui, Archaeological Site 30, Lantau Island, Hong Kong", Asian Perspectives, IV, Nos. 1-2, (1960), 183-212. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 109 A NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE IN HONG KONG PRELIMINARY REPORT M. W. WELCH During the Hong Kong University's Golden Jubilee in September 1961 I heard an excellent paper by Mrs. E. Maneely on archaeological possibilities in Hong Kong. It encouraged me to think that there was a role that even an amateur could play. We frequently sail in the New Territories and during our sails I began to search for what might be neolithic sites. I worked on a very simple principle: to look at the shore of islands, as we passed by, for places that, if I had been a neolithic man, I would have liked to settle in. There had to be a good harbour, well sheltered for mooring in storms. There had to be sufficient elevation for good visibility over surrounding waters and approaching boats. There had to be level land for cultivation as well as an accessible source of water. CL Having picked the first prehistoric site, we anchored and went ashore to explore. My surprise was great when within minutes of landing I discovered a fine polished adze exactly in the place I hoped to. Spurred on by the excitement of this discovery I looked around in earnest to find more artifacts. I went on to the next hillock and indeed had further success. I found, in all, three sites on the same island, each on hills 30 to 50 metres above sea level, each located near or on kaolin deposits, and each in an area used for target practice by the British Army and Navy as well as by navies from Commonwealth countries. The island, Kau Sai Chau, between Port Shelter and Rocky Harbour, offers one of the few areas in the Far East which have been cleared of inhabitants and where firing can be carried out at will. Over several years of practice the hillsides have become peppered with shell holes and on some of them heavy erosion has started. Only in or near those heavily eroded areas, that look almost like moon landscapes, have I found artifacts, and all have been surface finds (though usually far The author has lived for the past four years in Hong Kong, where she developed a keen interest in amateur archaeology. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 112 M. W. WELCH and improved the primitive method of firing so much that well-shaped vessels of fairly hard clay, which may be considered as ancestors of porcellaneous ware, were actually produced. Supports of refractory clay evidently used for the pots in the kiln are proof of this great progress. The pottery found in site I and II is pretty uniform in composition and appearance, and I would say typical of SAK. The mixture of clay is very fine; the potsherds quite thin and hard. When struck they give off a fairly fine "ping". So far, no other kind of pottery has been found on the sites. There has, for instance, been none of the rough and sandy ware found on Lamma and Lantao, which is crumbly and very thick. 44 On the potsherds I have found, there are three types of SAK pressed patterns. Though there are no complete pots, I have been able to put together enough of one to conclude that it was fashioned in the same manner as those found by Maglioni in the Hoi-fung area: the pot shaped and patterned first, the foot added later. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of my site is what I have not found. There has, for instance, been no bronze. Maglioni makes the point that absolutely no bronze or other objects belonging to a metallic period have been discovered in any of the pure SAK sites. Nearby, however, he came upon numerous large villages of the later (PAT) period, often with bronze pieces, and he has a theory that the spreading of the PAT culture was the reason for the dispersion of the SAK people. I have found nothing that can be assigned to PAT. This is in contrast to other sites in Hong Kong, where a few SAK pieces have been found, but always mixed in with a much larger number of PAT artifacts. My sites are not only rich in SAK, both implements and pottery, but they are pure SAK. They are, indeed, the first pure SAK sites to be found in the Colony. There are two other things I want to mention. One is the type of very roughly shaped large tools that I have found in groups on all three sites near kaolin deposits, frequently embedded in a lump of hardened kaolin. I have tentatively separated these tools into eight categories according to their shape. Five are “Archaeology in South China" by Raphael Maglioni, University of Manila Journal of East Asiatic Studies, Vol. II, No. 1 October, 1952. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 115 BRITAIN AND CHINA' Reviewed by COLINA LUPTON, M.A.2 China is and will probably continue for some time to be the most unpredictable element in world affairs. With the passage of time she becomes more, not less so; her motives grow more obscure, her economic development more problematical, her political life—within the echelons of the Communist Party—more a matter for conjecture. On the face which she turns to the world there is little sign of the stresses and strains which she is undergoing; the information which China publishes about herself is remarkable only for the lack of knowledge it conveys. Unhappily—in view of our ignorance China is likely by sheer weight of numbers to be the dominant influence in the world in perhaps twenty years' time, and how this unleashed dragon will deal then with other nations largely depends on the kind of handling she receives now. Hence any book which sheds light on Chinese thought processes, in particular relating present policies to past treatment, is a valuable one. Mr. Luard has gone one better and conjectured the course of the future. His book sets out a sane and lucid account of relations with China since the first British ships reached her shores in 1637, and describes both what he expects to see and what he would like to see happen in the next few years. In what really amounts to a series of essays on the historical background, on the Kuomintang, the Communists and the Korean war, on missionaries and merchants, Hong Kong and Taiwan—he neatly discusses, without a superfluity of chronological detail, the past, the present, and the future. This method necessitates a little overlapping between the chapters, but it is worth this since it saves a lot of narration inessential to the point of the book. For the author is trying to discuss sentiments and policies as much as facts, and this kind of pattern gives him the scope to do so. This is certainly not to say that he has ignored facts; though the historical background is compressed, the account of Britain's dealings with the Mao Tse-tung regime is very fully treated. By Evan Luard. Chatto and Windus, 1962. 25/-. * The writer was formerly a research assistant in the Far East Department of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. She has been living in Hong Kong since the end of 1960, and is Assistant Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 120 COLINA LUPTON argued that any reform in the constitution, especially one which permitted elections, would immediately be exploited by the Communist regime in China, seizing the opportunity to infiltrate its own supporters into positions of power and using political meetings to stir up trouble. While it is true that the economy has hitherto flourished because of Hong Kong's exceptionally stable conditions, the government should remember, as Mr. Luard points out, that it has an unequalled opportunity for disseminating the ideals of western culture, of which democracy is one, on the very shores of China. Too much should not be sacrificed to material prosperity. Yet despite all the criticisms which could be made, the fact remains, as Mr. Luard says, that "it has proved a more fertile and more stable meeting ground of East and West than almost any other city of the world". And whatever its political driving force, it is one of the finest examples existing of the speedy and successful development of a non-Marxist economy, which alone should provide some food for thought for the pragmatic Chinese over the border. As to the future, Mr. Luard predicts that Britain and China will almost inevitably find themselves in conflict in both South East Asia and Hong Kong, since the new China expects to expand to the borders reached in its historic periods of greatness. Not everyone agrees that China's plans stretch only thus far; many close observers of the scene might think that China has territorial designs on South East Asia at the least—an area which in the past she has held in fee but not actually settled (if the Overseas Chinese are excluded). And today China is trying to extend her influence as far afield as Africa and Latin America. Nor is it Britain's interests only which are affected; not only the whole of the west, but also the neutrals have an interest in preserving the status quo in these areas. In this context particularly to speak of British interests in isolation from the rest of the world gives the book a false emphasis. But when Mr. Luard deals with the future of British policy—as he does in a highly practical manner—this is avoided, partly because he discusses subjects which are specifically British concerns, trade and economic relations with Communist China and the future of Hong Kong, and partly because he conceives British policy as it truly should be in these days of her declining power—as a matter for giving advice and bringing influence to bear. Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v PROTESTANT CEMETERY IN MACAO 11 Company doing in Portuguese territory? Why did the Protestants need a separate cemetery? What is the significance of the date 1814? These are but a sample of the problems that these few words pose. The first Europeans to set up permanent maritime contacts with the Chinese were the Portuguese, and by 1557 they had been granted permission to settle on a small peninsula of the delta island of Heung Shan. This peninsula, covering an area of only about five square miles, thus became the first permanent European trading base in China. Later came the Dutch, the Spanish and the British traders and navigators; the first and the second of these national groups eventually made their oriental headquarters elsewhere, but the British, through their highly organized East India Company, were more persistent and more successful as far as trade with the mainland of China was concerned. But the China of those days was, in the eyes of her own people, the centre of the universe, and all those who lived outside the confines of her ancient and well-tested civilization were considered barbarians. They could only be admitted inside the fold as tribute bearers to the Imperial Court to receive the ethical instruction of the Son of Heaven, and were then sent back home. When such admissions were allowed, portals of entry were carefully chosen and rigidly controlled, and in the case of sea-faring people, the port appointed was Canton, situated ninety miles up the river from Macao, and thus the barbarians were kept as far as possible from the sacred heart of the Middle Kingdom. But even at Canton there were further restrictions, geographical as well as political. The ships could only get up as far as Whampoa, which was the deep-sea port for Canton, and about eleven miles down river from it. The foreign merchants were allowed to go on to Canton itself but they had to reside in a place set apart outside the city—the Factories; nor could they remain there permanently; the length of residence permitted was determined by the time it took to dispose of the cargo brought in their ships and to load the return cargo of silk or tea. The time of the year at which these operations took place was determined by the monsoon; foreign trade was therefore completely seasonal—from September to March approximately, and as soon ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 12 LINDSAY RIDE as the season was over all foreigners had to leave Canton and return to their barbarian homes. It mattered not to the Chinese officials that it was a physical impossibility for the foreigners to go to their homes on the other side of the world and be back again in time for the next trading season. When the ships sailed from Whampoa, the Factories at Canton closed, and the merchant staff called Writers, Factors and Supercargoes, all left too. They went as far as Macao, and while the cargo laden ships sailed on to Europe, the merchants waited there for the coming of the next season's ships. One other restriction that we must mention is that no European women were allowed to go up river at all, so the annual expulsion of the men from Canton was really not so very hard to bear for most people. It meant reunion with one's wife and family for those married men whose families were in Macao, and the pleasure of European female company for the bachelors. Macao was thus the foreigners' home away from home. They worked strenuously in isolation in Canton while the season lasted, and then between seasons they repaired to the more natural abode of the families in the only equivalent of a health and holiday resort that the Far East then knew. Social life in Macao was strenuous, especially for women folk who were few in number; many of the men were either bachelors or grass widowers and for approximately six months in each year, they had very little official work to do at all; at any rate this was certainly true for the juniors. Another significant fact which had important implications was that the Chinese, at the time of which I speak, recognized only one foreign official body other than the Portuguese- namely the British East India Company, and they made all the official contacts with the other nationalities through the controlling body of this Company in Canton -the Select Committee. As may well be imagined, this situation led to difficulties between the British and the various other foreign communities whose trade with China had increased tremendously towards the end of the eighteenth century. This was particularly true of the new maritime power, the United States of America. After their independence, the Americans were naturally no longer willing to depend on the British shipping for their foreign trade; Britain made it particularly difficult for them to retain any of their trade with their former sister colonies in the West Indies, and they were thus forced to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v PROTESTANT CEMETERY IN MACAO explore trade possibilities outside the Americas. 13 The New England states especially took the lead in this expansion of maritime trade, and towns like Salem and Boston soon became busy ship-building and overseas ports. Boston ships sailed east to the Pacific via the Cape of Good Hope, while those from Salem sailed west round the Horn; when, as was inevitable on a globe, east met west in the Far East, they agreed to an east-west boundary line which ran south of Canton and the Philippines; the area of South China was thus in the Salem sphere, and hence most of the early American traders in this area belonged to early Salem, Beverly, and Danvers families. The procedure that had to be followed by foreign ships trading with Canton was briefly this. They made their first China landfall amongst the Ladrone Islands; here they took on a pilot from a junk, and he brought them to Macao; anchoring in the roads off Taipa, they made contact with the Chinese officials who were at that time established on the Praya Grande at Macao; on being cleared by them for Canton, the ships were allowed to proceed to Bocca Tigris at the river mouth, where, after a further delay, they were eventually given a Grand Chop, which was the permit to sail up river. The ships anchored at Whampoa, and the almost endless negotiations for discharging their cargoes and reloading with their purchases began. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the foreign floating population of Whampoa ran into thousands, and the sickness, accident, and mortality rates were very high. Up river, disposal of the dead was one of the easiest of all local business transactions; the Chinese had no such things as enclosed cemeteries, and neither had the foreigners; burials involved no legal or civil procedures; one merely negotiated with a Chinese landowner for a hillside plot and hired a few labourers. On Danes Island, French Island, at Whampoa, Lintin, Capsingmoon, and Cumsingmoon, there lie buried thus hundreds of foreigners whose frail memorials, if they ever existed, have long since disappeared.* In westernized Macao, however, the situation was different. There were enclosed cemeteries there, but they were consecrated by the Roman Catholic Church and therefore were not available to the other Europeans who were *For a map of the Pearl River estuary see p. 93. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v PROTESTANT CEMETERY IN MACAO 17 Towards the far end of the terrace a number of children lie buried in a row and this is undoubtedly responsible for the oft repeated comment on the high infant mortality amongst the Europeans living in Macao in those days. The two memorials at the far end of the central avenue are very conspicuous; the first is the altar-tomb of Sandwith Drinker, an American sea captain, business man and consul. The other is built into the wall at the end of the avenue, and carries only these two words: GEORGE CHINNERY. He was Macao's great canvas historian. He is generally referred to as an Irish artist. If this is correct, it is not because of his place of birth. He was born in 1774 in Gough Square, Fleet Street, London, and not in Ireland. He went to Dublin when a young man, probably because a branch of the family had moved there from East Anglia a few generations previously. Nor is it certain that he was, as is usually claimed, a Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy which was not founded till twenty-one years after Chinnery left Dublin. While in Dublin he formed two attachments which were mainly responsible for the pattern of his future life; one had political repercussions which led to his sudden departure from Ireland and eventually from England to India. The other attachment was a wife; after an all too short period of blissful happiness, he spent the rest of his life trying to evade her. In this he was finally successful, but only by eventually settling in Macao with its haven of refuge from females close at hand in nearby Canton. Chinnery came to Macao in 1825 and died there in 1852. During that time he must have painted hundreds of portraits and pictures of local scenes. Practically no foreigner and certainly no ship's captain left Macao without at least one portrait of himself by Chinnery, and the number of these scattered throughout the world must be vast. Yet it used to be said that this part of the world possessed no examples of his art. However true that was, it is certainly not so now, for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, acting on the expert advice of our President, has built up a most valuable collection of his paintings. Although Chinnery never did like Hong Kong very much, many examples of his art certainly have a permanent home in our midst now. In the Lower Terrace there are 122 memorials and in our experience the most popular one amongst visitors is that of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 20 LINDSAY RIDE But the interest of the cemetery is not by any means confined to biographies of those buried there. There are the histories of the ships that brought them there, clippers, men-of-war, whalers and countrymen (ships engaged in the "country trade", a term usually applied to the trade which had grown up between India, South East Asia and Canton); there are the interesting professions they followed as merchants, missionaries, military men, beach-combers, diplomats or opium traders; there are the mysteries behind the nameless memorial or the undecipherable or partly decipherable inscription, or the absentees. Of these latter we know of at least two, whose sojourns in our cemetery were but temporary; they are Lord Napier, whose final resting place is amongst his shepherds in Ettrick, Scotland, and Thomas T. Forbes, who is with his family in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, leaving his companion, who was drowned with him in a typhoon, alone in Macao. May I conclude my talk this evening by now completing the quotation with which I began? There are worse ways of occupying leisure than tours on foot through noteworthy cemeteries, so long as one does not overstay one's welcome, and by praying that I have not detained you too long this evening in the restful peace of the Old Protestant Cemetery of Macao. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 51 RECENT CHANGES IN THE CHINESE LANGUAGE A lecture delivered on 18th June, 1962 MA MENG, B.A.* *Mr. Ma Meng is Principal of the Language School of the Institute of Oriental Studies in the University of Hong Kong. Recent changes in the Chinese language, so far-reaching in many respects, should not escape attention by anyone interested in studying China. Comments on this subject, both in Chinese and other languages, have appeared quite regularly in recent years.† Most of these deal directly with the simplified characters and the adoption of romanization in place of the traditional ideographs — radical changes, which, however, form only one part of the latest developments in Chinese language reform. Although the extent of these changes has varied in different historical periods, the long process which led to the drastic reforms of recent years began only after China's contacts with the West in the late nineteenth century. The limitations imposed by the traditional language were felt more keenly as the demand for Western knowledge increased. As the traditional language seemed no longer adequate to cope with the new situation, the need to reform it began to appear imperative. The first efforts aimed at language reform came from a small number of intellectuals, including Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, a leader of the 1898 reform movement who also advocated radical political changes aimed at westernization. Their efforts soon bore fruit. Between 1890 and 1913 there appeared no less than six plans for language reform, all aimed at standardizing the spoken language and simplifying the written one. Both of these measures were considered necessary preliminaries to more thorough reforms. The last of the six plans for reform provided for a script based on the Peking dialect and was very similar to the Japanese Kana. This plan proved quite practicable and has therefore been adopted. *I should like to express my gratitude to Miss Li Chi of the University of California from whose work, Studies of Chinese Communist Terminology (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies, East Asia Studies, Nos. 1 and 2, 1956; Nos. 3 and 4, 1957) I have drawn information in preparing this paper. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 52 MA MENG in many parts of China since 1913. It is still used as a teaching aid notably in Taiwan and in some schools in Hong Kong. However, on the Chinese mainland, it has been replaced since 1957 by a new system of romanization. The May 4th Movement of 1919 gave a tremendous impetus to language reform in China, widening not only its scope but also its application. Previously the concern of only a handful of pioneers, it now became a spontaneous mass movement of the intellectuals, particularly the students. The importance of radical language reform gained general recognition, and demands for a literary revolution could be heard all over the country. From this wide-spread awakening sprang all subsequent efforts to reform the Chinese language. In particular, the May 4th Movement gave rise to the two chief currents of subsequent language reform: the New Literature movement in which the classical language was replaced by the vernacular, or pai-hua; and the movement to create a common spoken language based on the Peking dialect. The New Literature movement led to changes in terminology, syntax and style which culminated in a new plan to romanize the language. Both movements showed deep traces of Western influence, which became more and more apparent in subsequent language reforms. Recent language reform has continued to follow its historical course, developing with particular vigour after the Second World War. As a result, some linguistic innovations have been practised more widely than before. These innovations, though the result of long-standing demands for linguistic reform, gained unprecedented force from political and social changes. Great differences in phraseology, syntax and style could be found in almost all popular writings. No reader can miss these differences when he compares a current journal with one, say, twenty years old. Great differences also appear in the spoken language as more and more Chinese speak Mandarin since the war, not only on the Mainland, but also in Taiwan, Hong Kong and within the overseas Chinese communities of South-east Asia. Since Chinese language reform still continues, it is difficult at this stage to make a final appraisal of the linguistic changes that have taken place since 1919. Hence I merely wish to present a brief summary of the most important changes that have occurred recently. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 86 J. L. CRANMER-BYNG in the north-east quarter of the city, well away from the new diplomatic quarter.2 All accommodation for foreign embassies was to be concentrated in one area outside the east wall of the city, and about one and a half miles from a newly constructed gate, just near to the old astronomical instruments which can still be seen on top of the east wall. Eventually, after negotiations, the new British Legation was allotted two large houses and two blocks of flats in this new diplomatic quarter. The last christening was performed in the Legation chapel, the books in the small library were taken off their shelves, the flag at the gate was hauled down, and everything was packed.3 Among the more colourful of the closing scenes in the life of the old British Legation should be mentioned the two Commonwealth cricket matches played in the Autumn of 1958 between the Moonrakers, captained by Mr. Duncan Wilson, the British Chargé d'Affaires, and the Woolgatherers captained by the Indian Ambassador, Mr. G. Parthasaratly. The rules governing this diplomatic cricket were many and local but the chief rule of all was that if anyone hit a ball into the grounds of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security next door his whole side was out. Finally, in September 1959, the staff moved to their new quarters and thus after nearly one hundred years of continuous occupation the existence of the old British Legation in Peking came to an end. From an historical and sentimental point of view its loss was sad. But from a realistic point of view which 20 This was built on a site which had been granted to Russia as far back as the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689). As a result of fighting between Russian settlers on the frontier between Siberia and Manchuria about a hundred Russian prisoners were brought to Peking in the period 1683-5. They were formed into a company, given a place of residence in the northeast corner of Peking, close to the Lama Temple, and intermarried with Chinese and Manchus. They retained their Greek Orthodox faith and were allowed to have their own priests. See Michel N. Pavlovsky, Chinese-Russian Relations (New York, 1949) 145-164. It was to this place, known as the Pei-kuan ("Northern Hostel") that the members of the Russian ecclesiastical mission transferred in 1861. 30 Unfortunately the imposing Royal Coat of Arms which dignified the gateway of the old Legation was too large to fit properly into the new Legation buildings. Mr. Michael Stewart, the Chargé d'Affaires at the time of the move, arranged with Sir Robert Black, the Governor of Hong Kong, that the Coat of Arms should be sent to Government House in Hong Kong. It is now fixed onto the wall at the far end of the long ballroom of Government House, which it dominates by the brilliance of its colours, ================================================================================ 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 115 journey by chair. He was the first Englishman to travel by this route, which it was hoped would develop into an important trade route from Upper Burma and West China. In 1872 John Swire of London formed the China Navigation Company to trade on the Yangtse, and started by purchasing the two steamers of the Union Steam Navigation Company, following this up a year later with three ships of their own specially built on the Clyde. In this same year of 1873 the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company was formed, a Chinese company partly under government control and direction. This company purchased the steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in 1877, and so became the owners of the largest river fleet. A few years later Jardine returned to the Yangtse with the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, and by the early 1880's the greater part of the Yangtse trade was shared between these three companies: the China Navigation Company, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company. The formation of the China Navigation Company in 1872 was a logical development from that of the Blue Funnel Line by Alfred Holt in 1866. Alfred Holt and John Swire were close friends and business associates, and when the latter opened an eastern branch of his company in Shanghai he took over the agency of the Blue Funnel Line ships. One reason behind the formation of the China Navigation Company was to provide cargoes for the Blue Funnel ships to and from the Yangtse. Alfred Holt was unwilling to operate ships so far from his personal control, but was willing to support the Swire enterprise. The inauguration of the Blue Funnel Service to the Far East, the opening of a Far Eastern branch of John Swire and Company in Shanghai in the same year, and the formation of the China Navigation Company six years later, meant the introduction of a new and powerful combination to the China coast. Holt and Swire, in association with the Clyde shipbuilding family of Scott, were soon to play a very important part in the China trade, and in the shipping of the whole of the Far East. Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, and Australia, were all to come within their orbit before many years had passed. In 1881 the various shipping interests of Jardine were merged into the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, of which Jardine were made permanent managers. For a list of the main shipping companies plying on the Yangtze see Appendix on p. 130. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 130 A. D. BLUE APPENDIX Main Companies mentioned in this article with ships plying on the Yangtse. SHANGHAI STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY 1862-1877. Founded by Russell & Co. CHINA NAVIGATION COMPANY. Founded 1872 by John Swire. Managed by John Swire & Sons of London, and represented in the Far East by Butterfield and Swire. This Company still runs on the China Coast. CHINA MERCHANTS STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY. Founded 1873. Chinese owned. It still continues to operate. INDO-CHINA STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY. Founded 1881 by Jardine, Matheson & Co. Now operates in the Far East generally with occasional calls at China ports. NISSHIN KISEN KAISHA. Founded 1907. Japanese owned. SZECHUEN STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY. Founded 1908. Chinese owned. 1 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 9 JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON During the cessation of trade at Canton 1839 The manuscript of this Journal was discovered in the library of the Boston Athenaeum by Professor E. W. Ellsworth, who transcribed it and sent it as a contribution to the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Although it is not possible to claim categorically that it is by W. C. Hunter it is felt that it is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of this period and therefore worthy of publication in its own right. The Introduction by Professor E. W. Ellsworth is followed by the transcription of the actual Journal with added notes contributed by Sir Lindsay T. Ride and J. L. Cranmer-Byng. INTRODUCTION TO THE JOURNAL E. W. ELLSWORTH William C. Hunter of New York traveled to China in 1824. For the next two years as a necessary prelude to a business career he studied Chinese at the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca. Thereafter he was employed by Thomas H. Smith and Son until the company ceased operation in China in 1827. Hunter then returned to the United States but he had been fascinated with the Far East and went back within a few months. In 1829 he joined Russell and Company and remained with the firm in China for fourteen years. Hunter's associates in this largest and most famous American trading association in China were A. A. Low of Salem, Massachusetts and later Brooklyn, New York, who diligently amassed a magnificent fortune and also Robert Bennett Forbes and Joseph Coolidge members of illustrious New England families. The comfortable existence and, indeed, complacency of Hunter and the foreign commercial community at Canton was rudely shaken by developments in early 1839 which were the opening salvos of the Opium War. The longstanding problem of opium traffic in China arose with a new intensity that was sparked by dedicated reformers. Drug addiction was a fairly widespread vice compounded by economic overtones; foreigners ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 34 W. C. HUNTER During the afternoon letters were received from Macao dated 27th stating that Columbia had arrived in the roads. It is needless to say that this news has created universal joy in our prison, tho' she may not after all be able to afford us any protection. It remains to be seen what effect her presence will have on matters, Wednesday, 1st May 1839 Everything remains as before. We have no certain intelligence from below but many rumors, amongst them that of opium becoming scarce at Chumpee and doubts if there will be enough for some time to make up 20,283 chests. In the evening we heard that a letter dated yesterday had reached town stating that the Colonel Young and Ternate, two east coast vessels, had got in, which is lucky as it will keep the deliveries going till more arrives. The Manl... is also in from the Gulf of Tonquin rather unexpectedly. She reports having been lying at anchor in a bay for one month surrounded by men-of-war junks without the possibility of a boat getting alongside of her. Thursday, 2 May This afternoon we had a report in town of the arrival in Macao Roads of the John Adams which gave us great pleasure. There are now outside three vessels of war. It is also said that Commodore Read has sent on shore at Macao 50 barrels of gunpowder. The Commissioner it appears has ordered the place to surrender a quantity of opium within three days, and if not given up threatens to remove all Chinese servants, cooks, etc., and to cut off all supplies of food from the foreigners. It is well known that there is no opium in the place, and consequently we are at a loss to know what measures the Commissioner will adopt after the three days have expired. In the meantime the Governor of Macao46, who is himself a soldier and said to be a brave man, intends should the Chinese commence hostilities against the place to defend it. He has about 400 troops. The forts are in good order and quite capable if well manned to defend the city against any Chinese force. There are about 350 officers in the place, a daring set of fellows who despise the Chinese, and about 800 or 1,000 male inhabitants capable of bearing arms. Besides these he will have the assistance of all the crews of the vessels in the roads without the men-of-war, about 500 men, and finally there Remaining part of name illegible. ! Page 45 Page 46 ================================================================================ 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 35 are the vessels of war who could alone defend the place. But it is doubtful if Mr. Commissioner will allow matters to get to such a length. If they do, the Governor of Macao intends to defend it to the last extremity. He has ordered all the inhabitants between the ages of 15 and 50 to hold themselves in readiness to be called upon to carry arms. We hear of three more vessels from the east coast, the Corsair, Amelia, and Anna. There are yet there the Lord Amherst, Henry Clay, and Lady Hayes. Letters from Chumpee to the 30th have been received. 13,800 chests were delivered and no more vessels were there but the Lady Grant and Mahmoodie were in sight in their way up. It is said they have on board near 200 chests and when they are discharged we shall see if the Commissioner intends to break his word again. Weather rainy; have not had a fine day these ten days past and it is very cold for this season of the year, thermometer at 60° to 63°. Wrote to Captain Gilman and Mr. Sturgis at Macao gave the letter to the Compradore to be forwarded. Sunday, 5 May 1839 Some of us at last to be released but 16 foreigners are to be detained in Canton till the opium business is all settled. Under certain restrictions and surveillance any foreigner except 16 can leave Canton. This is by permission received yesterday from the Commissioner. Ships at Whampoa can be loaded and unloaded and leave Whampoa, but no ship can come in. In the morning the Kwang Chow Foo, the Chung Hup and the Kwang Hup with attendants on horseback rode into the Square and to the Point and ordered all the military guard to withdraw from the boats, and the boats to break up the line of circumvallation with which we have been surrounded six weeks this day. The Hong coolies also broke up their encampment on the edge of the walk and retired from below the Company's arch leaving however 70 who have stationed themselves in the middle of the Square to guard the 16 foreigners and prevent their escape. The Hong merchants have also retired from beneath the Company's verandah and things begin to look as before. No ships boats can go to or come from Whampoa yet, neither can our pleasure boats be allowed to be put into the water. But licenced passage boats are permitted to go daily as before with passengers. In the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 64 K. M. A. BARNETT Ng 103 Ngraahcrinn-chynn, 104 Ngrhtrung-shaann, N. L. 105 Ngrr-droi, £1 (+908—+959, with local variations). 0 106 Obliterated villages:- Nai Tong Kok,101 Pak Hok Tuns and the original Tai Pak,35 some way from the present site. P 107 Phuunniryh, #5. 108 Preangzhaw, , an island five miles west of the western tip of Hong Kong Island. 109 Preangzhaw, H, an island in the north-eastern part of Mirs Bay,41 110 Pre-Chinese languages: I should exempt from this stricture Professor Princeton S. Hsu,23 whose books, "History of the People of South China”72 and "A Study of the Thais, Chuangs and the Cantonese People"133 are of great interest and should be read by anyone anxious to learn more in this field. But I think he goes too far in suggesting a Malay origin for the Tanka-or is it a Tanka origin for the Malays? 111 Prengshaann, Ħ4. 112 Pruunn-gwuur, 1. R 113 River Capture. The break-through of the Kwun Yam Ho62 from the Lam Tsuen74 valley to Taipo:33 formerly it flowed through Fanling48 and Sheung Shui130 into Deep Bay;152 and that of the two streams which now flow into the sea at Sham Tseng,119 the headwaters of which used to flow through Tin Fu Tsai137 into Tai Lam.38 $ Sei-braak, see 35, 114 Shaahtraw-gok, YA★ · 115 Shaahtrinn, 3⁄4w. + 116 Shaahtrinn-xoe, , still better known to the local people as Lik Yuen Hoi. Shaamm-braak, E★ see 35, 117 shaann-ghoh, Hakka saan-go, L. 118 Shaannloo, #. 119 Shamm-zearng, ##. + 120 Shamm-zeon, . The second word means an artificial channel with earth banks and suggests that the present river was cut to drain the swamps to the east and south-east of the present town. 121 Shann Ngrrdroi-sir, ĦARK - Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN 113 Captain Proctor in his passage from Chusan in the Endeavour in October last, came through what is called the Cowhee Passage. It was then blowing hard from the south east. The pilot carried him to the westward of Cowhee, and he anchored for the night in 8 fathoms water, soft mud, off the point L. In the morning he passed to the southward of the Bottoe Islands, having 5 and 6 fathoms over soft mud all the way in shore. On the morning of the 17th we got under weigh and passed close to the northward of the Bottoe Islands, we then stood over to the north shore, and worked up to the northward of the islands of Lonkoo25 and Lintin. The weather was so thick that we were frequently out of sight of land. At the turn of tide we anchored near some fishing stakes in 4 fathoms water, Lintin bearing SSE distant about 15 miles. On the 18th we weighed and worked up to Anson's Bay, and on the 19th we passed the Bocca Tigris, and reached the Indiamen at the second bar. The 20th in the evening the Jackall arrived at Whampoo. Signed: HENRY WM. PARISH Lieut. Royal Artillery N.B. The soil in general is free from stone, but the surface of the hill on the north west side of the island is covered with stones of a moderate size, and proper for building. Geographical Comments Any note on the value of Parish's survey of Ma Wan (Cowhee) and Lantao Island must inevitably take into account the state of nautical knowledge of Hong Kong waters at the time. This was probably sketchy; indeed, Parish himself states that he made a major revision to the outline of Lantao. His own work was very accurate, and his records of depths and currents off Lantao and around Ma Wan are confirmed exactly on modern charts26. His constant harping on the difficulties of navigation, however, cannot be ascribed entirely to the awkwardness of the local topography; bad weather (of which he had plenty), and a clumsy square-rigged ship, cannot have helped to raise his opinion of the area. The channels around Ma Wan and North Lantao contain some of the deepest and most dangerous waters in Hong Kong. Both on rising and falling tides, there is a concentration of currents of up to seven knots along both east and west coast of Ma Wan, and these converge in the channel between Lantao Island and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 118 CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD 14 They had every reason to be alarmed on account of the continual attacks from pirates on coastal villages in Kwangtung and other places during the period from about 1787 until 1810. See A. W. Hummel: Eminent Chinese of the Ching Period, 446-8. Also C. F. Neuman, History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810. 15 Macartney took with him on the embassy a "gardener and botanist”, David Stronach. For the botanical side of the embassy see J. L. Cranmer-Byng, op. cit., 317-19. 16 These nets are known locally as "stake nets" or tsang pang are lowered and raised by means of a tackle. They are frequently used along the coasts of Kwangtung today. The fishing season is from February to mid-September, 17 The island is now reasonably well covered with pine trees and there are a few small feng-shui woods of deciduous trees. A large number of kites have been observed using pine trees on a ridge in the centre of the island as a roost during the winter months. 18 Parish knew the island, which he had been sent to reconnoitre, under the name of Cowhee. Now he learned that the inhabitants called it Toong Shing-ow-a. However, this name does not appear to have survived and the island is now always known as Ma Wan4 and was so called as far back as 1859. See Rev. Krone, op. cit. (note 8) p. 73. The word Cowhee was probably a phonetic rendering of the name of an island between Ping Chau island and Hong Kong island known as Kau I Chau 交椅洲. 19 By the small island to the south-east Parish presumably meant Tang Lung Chau## which now has a small light-house on it. There is now a small harbour with a jetty at Ma Wan village, and this is the normal place for landing on the island today. 20 This is a doubtful statement. 21 The word as written in the manuscript report is clearly "profil". I can only suggest that Parish meant "profile", and was using it in a technical, military engineering sense, meaning "outline". A reading of Tristram Shandy and other eighteenth century books about sieges and defence works might give a clue to its technical meaning at that time, 22 From the anchorage position marked on the chart this must refer to the bay of Tsing Lung Tau. Today Ma Wan is connected to the mainland by a regular ferry service running from the bay of Sham Tseng, where the Hong Kong Brewery is situated. 23 By the word "bay" in this context Parish appears to refer to the wide bay formed by the northern coast of Lantao from its headland opposite Tsing Lung Tau to Chek Lap Kok opposite Tung Chung bay, but the wording is somewhat ambiguous at this point. 24 Probably the western arm of Luk Kang - · + + on Lantao. 25 Tung Ku #island opposite Tap Siak Kok on the Castle Peak peninsula. It forms part of the Urmston Road. 26 See Charles Tulse, Local Master's Handbook. Seamanship Illustrated (Hong Kong University Press, 1960). 27 See photograph of the "race" between Ma Wan and Lantao on page It is interesting to know that Professor Deryck Chesterman of the Department of Physics in the University of Hong Kong is carrying out research into the currents off Ma Wan and their effects on the sea bed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r BOOK REVIEWS 133 The University of Hong Kong has from the beginning been handicapped by mixed aims and by financial difficulties. Sir Frederick Lugard, Governor of Hong Kong from 1907 to 1912 and the first Chancellor of the University, according to Professor Harrison "advocated a university for Hong Kong on various grounds: it would help to serve the higher educational needs of an awakening China; it would be a lighthouse of learning, a symbol of the Western cultural tradition in the Far East and a meeting-place for Chinese and Western cultures; it would help to maintain British prestige in Eastern Asia; and, through its dissemination of modern knowledge and of the English language, it would indirectly benefit British business." The primary aim for many years "was not so much a university of and for Hong Kong itself, as a university in Hong Kong for China.” (p. xiii) Except in the field of medicine, the University of Hong Kong was not able, prior to the late 1940's, to provide a level of instruction that would draw students from China, where a number of universities of at least as high quality were developing at the same time. A large proportion of this University's students therefore have come from Hong Kong itself; and it would appear that as many students were drawn from Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as from China. Since World War II, particularly since 1949, thanks to the phenomenal economic and cultural growth of Hong Kong and to the active support of both the British and the Hong Kong governments, the University has developed rapidly, both in size and in quality. Today it stands among the recognized universities of Asia and of the British Commonwealth, and its sponsors and staff are determined to achieve an even higher level of educational and scholarly leadership. The colony is populous and rich enough now to justify and to support a great university. The historical narrative is found principally in chapters III (The Beginnings, by George B. Endacott), V (The Years of Growth, by Brian Harrison), VI (The Test of War, by Sir Lindsay Ride), and VII (A New Beginning, by Francis E. Stock). Most of the other chapters are also essentially historical and supply details which elaborate or supplement the basic narrative, although there is some unnecessary duplication. One is impressed with the relative indifference of the colony toward the University during ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r NOTES AND QUERIES 153 the cultivation of all plants whose names are qualified by the prefix faan," used for immigrants such as the tomato, the guava, the rambutan, one kind of melon, and the sweet potato. The peanut is not so qualified and it would appear that the prefix faan is used only for importations from the Pacific. The peanut bears no indication of foreign origin in its name. I do not know what it is called in the various dialects of Fukien, but Chinese books of reference refer to it as lok fa shang. The Cantonese name is fa shang, which is clearly an abbreviation of the former, while the Hakka name is ti tiu, which means earth bean. Again it might be of some assistance if there could be recorded the names by which this plant has been known both in Arabia and in other countries of the Middle and Far East to which the Arabs introduced it. Another introduction, perhaps better described as a reintroduction, was the lemon. It would appear that the first Arab traders on their admission to Canton at the end of the sixth century took back with them the seeds of a plant then described in Chinese as yi mo (itself clearly a non-Han name) and from that plant developed and cultivated the now well-known lemon-shaped lemon which they called by the name Al-Laimûn which is the old Chinese name arabized by the common ending -n and the initial slurred with the definite article. The Cantonese then re-borrowed the Arabic name in the form of ning mung12 which we still use. Another Arabic word which was introduced into the language of Canton was the word amah, now familiar in the meaning of a Chinese female servant employed by a foreign family, which has nothing to do with the Cantonese word for grandmother2 but is a word for a female servant common to all the Semitic languages, including Hebrew it will be found in the Books of Exodus, xxiii. 12, Judges xix. 9 and many other places in the Bible. I suspect that many of the other words commonly used in Cantonese to express special relationships between Chinese and foreigners could also be found to have an origin in Arabic, Malay or other languages used by foreign traders in Canton before any Europeans were heard of: for example, sz tsai,16 sz tau,15 (which I think is the Arabic sayyid,1 fa wongł which is clearly the same word as the Urdu malik, originally meaning king and then gardener; kwun-tim," sz-naai14 and taipan3 If this surmise is correct, then these words are likely to have been ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 12 S. G. DAVIS The sites at Tai Wan, Hung Shing Ye and Yung Shu Wan on Lamma Island have been most fruitful and have provided the material that was excavated and studied by Father D. J. Finn, which is partly on display today. The report of finds at Tai Wan came in a most interesting way. Mr. Tom Man Long (who happily is present with us tonight) was building the service reservoir in the Botanical Gardens opposite Government House when he noticed that the sand being used for the concrete had fragments of pottery and several axe-heads. Mr. Tom, as a keen collector of Chinese art and pottery, recognized the antiquity of the pottery and reported his discovery to the Waterworks Department who in turn notified Professor Shellshear. He visited Tai Wan and immediately recognized the richness of the site. At a later date Father Finn was asked by Professor Shellshear, who was going on leave, to interest himself in the finds. Father Finn wrote, "I was very glad of the invitation and luck seemed to confirm the vocation. A few days after that, while I was still regarding any active participation as remote, I almost crushed a piece of obviously old pottery under foot as I walked past a sand-heap on a jetty at Aberdeen. The next step was to find where the sand came from. Having found out that and having got there, I found myself at the site from which I knew Professor Shellshear and his friends had already reaped a rich harvest.” It was a fortunate day for archaeology when Father Finn began his work on Lamma. He brought an expert knowledge to the study and rapidly revealed tremendous archaeological treasures by thorough, careful digging. The results of this work were meticulously reported in The Hong Kong Naturalist from 1933 to 1936 and still later combined in one complete volume under the editorship of my friend, Father F. Ryan, S.J. Many of the best finds from the Lamma sites are in the British Museum. They were sent there by Professor Shellshear and were examined by Mr. Soame Jenyns, the curator for the Far East section. Mr. Jenyns had been in Hong Kong as a young administrator and had studied Chinese art. Outstanding among the specimens is a bronze sword about eleven inches long and distinguished by a zoomorph design in three panels along the blade. This sword has been dated as Warring Kingdoms Period, (421-221 B.C.). A bronze-socketed celt with a distinctive design ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 18 S. G. DAVIS BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bard, S. M., Chiu, T. N., and So, C. L. "Stone Ring at Loh Ah Tsai, Lamma Island, Hong Kong," Asian Perspectives, VIII. 2. Ch'en Kung-che (1957). "Archaeological Surveys and Excavations at Hong Kong," Kao Koo Hsueh Po, No. 4. 3. Davis, S. G. (1952). The Geology of Hong Kong (Archaeology), Government Printers, Chapter XI, pp. 188-194. 4. Davis, S. G. and Tregear, M. (1961). "Man Kok Tsui. Archaeological Site, 30, Lantau Island, Hong Kong," Asian Perspectives, IV. 5. Davis, S. G. (1962). "Hong Kong University Team Archaeological Activities for Period 1958-61," Asian Perspectives, V, 53. 6. Davis, S. G. (1964). "Rock Carvings at Shek Pik, Lantau Island, Hong Kong," Asian Perspectives, VII, 19-21. 7. Finn, D. J. (1933-1936). "Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island, Hong Kong," The Hong Kong Naturalist, Reprinted 1958, Ricci Hall Publications, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. 8. Heanley, C. M. (1928). "Hong Kong Celts," Bull. Geol. Soc. of China, VII, 209-214. 9. Heanley, C. M. and Shellshear, J. L. (1932). A Contribution to the Prehistory of Hong Kong and the New Territories. 10. Heanley, C. M. (1935). "Fields of Hong Kong," The Hong Kong Naturalist, VI, 233-239. 11. Heanley, C. M. (1938). "Letter to the Editor on Archaeological Finds in Hoifung," The Hong Kong Naturalist, IX. 12. Laufer, B. (1909). Chinese Pottery of the Han Dynasty, American Museum of Natural History Publication, East Asiatic Committee. 13. Laufer, B. (1914). Chinese Clay Figures, Part I, Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, Publication 154. 14. Laufer, B. (1917). The Beginnings of Porcelain in China, Field Museum of Natural History, Publication 192, Anthropological Series, XV, No. 2. 15. Lo, H. L. (1956). "The Sung Wong Toi and the Location of the Travelling Courts by the Seashore in the Last Day of the Sung," Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 185-217. 16. Maglioni, R. (1938). "Archaeological Finds in Hoifung District, China," The Hong Kong Naturalist, No. 8, 208-214. 17. Maglioni, R. (1940). "Archaeology: New Nomenclature," The Hong Kong Naturalist, X, No. 2, 130-133. 18. Maglioni, R. (1940). "Some Aspects of South China Archaeological Finds," Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, 209-229. 19. Maglioni, R. (1952). "Archaeology in South China," Journal of East Asiatic Studies, No. 2, University of Manila, Philippine Islands, 1-20. 20. Meanelly, E. (1962). "Excavations at Man Kok Tsui on Lantau Island," Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 103-108. 21. Schofield, W. (1935). "Implements of Palaeolithic Type in Hong Kong," The Hong Kong Naturalist, VI, Nos. 3-4, 272-275. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY 19 22. Schofield, W. (1938). "The Proto-historic Site of the Hong Kong Culture at Shek Pik, Lantau, Hong Kong," Proceedings of Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, 235-305. 23. Schofield, W. (1938). "Report of Ancient Beads Found Near Hong Kong," Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, 24. Seligman, C. G. (1935). "Early Pottery from Southern China," Transactions, Oriental Ceramic Society, London, 25. Shellshear, J. L. (1928). "Pottery Associated with Bronze Implements from Hong Kong," Proceedings of the First International Congress of Prehistoric and Proto-historic Sciences, London, 26. Weinberger, W. (1949). "Some Notes on Early Pottery and Stone Artifacts Excavated on Lamma Island, Hong Kong," Transactions, Oriental Ceramic Society. 27. Welch, M. W. (1962). “A New Archaeological Site in Hong Kong," Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 109-114. 28. Yuen, P. L. (1928). "Review of the Hong Kong Neolithic Collection," Bull. Geol. Soc. of China, VII, Nos. 3-4, 215-220. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 NIAH CAVE, 1947 - 1964 A lecture delivered on 2nd September, 1964 TOM HARRISSON Archaeology, the past, is everywhere. There is a lot more of it than of the present, of course. But it takes observation and experience to find and analyse it! Once the methods are learned, there is archaeological work to be done everywhere in the Far East. Hong Kong is alive with it. Studies so far have only scraped, no, only touched the surface of Hong Kong's prehistory. But a lot of hard thinking and training (and financing) will have to be done before much can be expected in the way of major results. Major results are there to be won, I feel sure. Perhaps I can best illustrate what is involved by a case history from quite another place, Borneo, where I have lived since early 1945. In Borneo no serious archaeological work had been done and there was no idea of doing any when I started serious work there after the war years, in 1947. In this short article, I will stick to one of the main sites we have developed - one of many, but currently the best-known and, indeed, one that is becoming famous. Twenty years ago, however, no one outside a small district in Borneo had ever heard of Niah in Sarawak, Borneo is far from Hong Kong and the madding crowd. But all our recent work has shown that great streams of influence had emanated from or passed through Hong Kong and down to Borneo for centuries and even millennia in the past. Indeed, it was one major source of cultural influence among several. The great cave assemblage in the Subis Mountain limestone massif at Niah, Sarawak, the west side of Borneo, has been a local focus of human activity, for many thousands of years. But it was unknown to non-Asians until only recently. In 1947 - 48 it was the subject of initial archaeological reconnaissance when I made a long overland tour of West Borneo caves, coastal and inland. Mr. Harrisson was in Hong Kong attending the Second Conference of Asian Historians, 31st August - 5th September, 1964. His talk was illustrated with two new films taken by his wife on Borneo's "living past". His Niah and related work has recently been recognized by the award of the Founder's Medal from the Royal Geographical Society and a Prince Philip Medal from the Royal Society of Arts. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 24 T. HARRISSON and carved wood have also survived there. Some fifty rush mats and wrappings survived under late neolithic or early metal burials in the West Mouth of the Great Cave. PUBLICATIONS Many smaller caves have been studied; and many others are available for study - over fifty. But there is no point in constantly repeating work that is very costly. Rather we seek constantly to define and re-define the project, so as to add new data, modifying or widening ideas — in preference to multiplying the established points. So far, about fifty papers have been published on the Niah results in Asian Perspectives (annually), Archaeological Newsletter, Journal Royal Society of Arts (a general review to 1963), Man (three papers), Oriental Art (Oxford), Artibus Asiae (Switzerland), Bijdragen (Holland), and the Geographical Journal (Royal Geographical Society, London). The full background and a long series of technical reports are published in the last eight issues of the Sarawak Museum Journal (Kuching, Sarawak, East Malaysia). The S.M.J. papers include specific contributions from Dr. R. Brothwell of the British Museum, Miss J. Clutton-Brock of the Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Calvin Wells of the Norwich Museum, Dr. D. A. Hooijer of Leiden and Professor G. H. R. von Koenigswald of the University of Utrecht, Dr. W. S. Solheim of the University of Hawaii, Drs. R. Inger and Wayne King of Chicago, the Earl of Cranbrook and Miss Pat Aldridge (now Dr. P. Marshall) of the University of Hong Kong. While those who have made specialist studies on the spot, working in Kuching, include Lord Medway (both here and at the University of Malaya), Dr. Alastair Lamb (glass beads), Dr. Solheim with Mrs. Lindsay Wall (prehistoric earthenware), Mrs. E. Moore in association with Miss Mary Tregear at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Yueh and other early porcelains), Mr. Benedict Sandin and Mr. R. Nyandoh (links to cave and other Niah folklore), Mr. Geoffrey Barnes (burial rites), Mr. J. Revers (U.S. Peace Corps; topography), Professor N. Haile (geology; now of the University of Malaya), Mrs. Barbara Harrisson and her husband. Work of this sort involves multiple cooperation, as has already been well demonstrated by the University team from Hong Kong working on Lantau Island. In 1965-66 we hope to get additional outside help from Dr. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 69 PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST A. D. BLUE For most of recorded history piracy has been a menace to sea-borne trade, and there have been times when it has been difficult to distinguish between pirates and honest or should one say legitimate traders. Nationality has often been the only mark of distinction, as Spanish and English views of Drake, Hawkins, and the like illustrate. The Chinese were pioneers in piracy, as in so many other things, and a history of piracy in China would begin many thousands of years ago. The Chinese were probably skilled practitioners of the art before history began to be recorded. The earliest accounts are in the records of the Chou Dynasty in the fourth century B.C., and piracy continued in China long after it had been suppressed in other parts of the world. When the first Europeans arrived in the China Seas in the sixteenth century, many of the pirates on the coast were Japanese. For three centuries after the defeat of Kublai Khan's invasion of Japan in 1281, Japanese pirates mainly from Kyushu were active along the whole coast, from the Liaotung Peninsula in the north to Hainan Island and the Straits of Malacca in the south. The famous Arctic explorer, John Davis, met his death at their hands in 1604. Davis was serving on an East India Company ship which was anchored off the island of Bintang, east of Singapore, when it was attacked by Japanese pirates. This was at the end of the Japanese era, which came about as the result of several different factors. One was the establishment of a strong central government in Japan by Iyeyasu, the first of the Tokugawa Shoguns at the beginning of the seventeenth century; and another was the increasing superiority of Chinese over Japanese junks. The depredations of these Japanese pirates often extended far inland, and they were accompanied by atrocities reminiscent of the Japanese Rape of Nanking in 1937. Because of this the Ming Emperors banned all intercourse between the two countries, and this afforded the Portuguese the opportunity to act as ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 70 A. D. BLUE middlemen in trade between the two countries. There was a flavour of irony in this, as the Portuguese were to prove as great pirates as the Japanese, Their most famous pirate was Mendes Pinto, who flourished in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and who seems to have been a combination of Sir Henry Morgan and Baron Munchausen. Pinto's exploits are characteristic of Portuguese history during those early centuries, displaying that amazing mixture of gallantry and greed, of religious zeal, bigotry, and cruelty. The eastern seas had always been full of violence, and the arrival of the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century, and the Dutch a century later, increased that violence. The Dutch lacked the religious zeal of the Portuguese, but substituted an equally unattractive obsession with trade. Much of the European trade in the Far East at that time was based on piracy. The Dutch, for instance, were excluded from direct trade with China until 1729, and in their Japan trade in which Chinese silk was the most important commodity they obtained much of their silk by plundering Portuguese and Chinese ships. — The persistence of piracy in Chinese waters for so long after regular trade had been established there by Europeans, was due to the peculiar conditions under which that trade developed. In India, and in the East Indies, European trade was succeeded by a steady increase in European power, although in both places there was a considerable time lag between establishing political power on land and the suppression of piracy at sea. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, British and Dutch naval power had made Indian and East Indian waters comparatively safe for European commerce. The situation in China was very different, however, and piracy continued there for fully another century. Not until after the First China War of 1841-42 were there any centres of European power in China, and the few centres established then were separated from each other by hundreds of miles of Chinese territory. The situation was aggravated by the increasing anarchy and lawlessness which became endemic over much of coastal China from the early nineteenth century, as the authority and power of the Manchu Government declined. When the East India Company's monopoly of the China trade was abolished in 1833, and the trade thrown open to all comers, ================================================================================ 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 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-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 101 BOOK REVIEWS CHINESE HISTORY: INDEX TO LEARNED ARTICLES 1902 - 1962. Compiled in the Fung Ping Shan Library, University of Hong Kong, by Ping-kuen Yu. XXXI 573 pp. Hong Kong: East Asia Institute, 1963. Paper, HK$70. Distributed by Universal Book Company, Hong Kong. ― Hong Kong, though boasting archeological remains of Chinese culture going back more than 2,000 years, has only recently come of age in the field of Chinese studies. This has resulted from the pressures of the extraordinary events of the past twenty years. No better corroboration of these two statements could be found than that provided by the appearance of this volume, and the circumstances surrounding its production. Mr. P. K. Yu, its compiler, was trained in Chinese studies first at New Asia College, now a component of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. New Asia College, like the other components of the Chinese University, was founded by intellectuals who had left the Mainland but who wanted to continue the scholarly traditions of the Mainland in Hong Kong. Professor Emeritus Frederick S. Drake, to whom this volume is dedicated and who contributes a graceful preface to it, headed the Department of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong until his retirement in 1964; he brought to that post a vast fund of Chinese learning garnered during his many years in China, as well as the high standards of modern scholarship. It was Professor Drake who called Mr. Yu to Hong Kong University, and who encouraged the present project with the double aim of making Hong Kong's resources for Chinese studies more accessible to scholars, and of training advanced students in methods of scholarly research. Mr. Yu himself represents one Hong Kong individual who has made one kind of response to the changing life of the Colony since World War II, that of becoming a first-rate sinologist and historian, first as a student at New Asia, then as a teacher and director of research at the University. None of these things would or could have happened in Hong Kong before World War II. They are evidence that not only have the pressures of the post-war years created strains and problems for Hong Kong, they also have brought about growth ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 3 succeeded him as Vice Chancellor of the University of Hongkong, and whom we welcome to carry on the tradition of Sir Lindsay Ride and Dr. Knowles. This year, however, the Society and the Council will be suffering three serious losses which will make it necessary to give careful consideration to the composition of the Council to enable it to maintain the vitality which it has sustained during the last six years. Early this year Sir Lindsay Ride, who retired last year as Vice Chancellor of the University and had gone to live at Taipo to concentrate on his forthcoming great work on Macao, to the appearance of which we look forward with eagerness, wrote that he felt that the time had come to give up his membership of the Council. Sir Lindsay is a founder member and was a pillar of strength on the Council from the beginning. His address on the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macao, which was published in Volume III of the Journal in 1963, was a memorable one and his address on the same subject last November and his inspired guidance on the occasion of the Society's visit to Macao assured the complete success of the tour. Although Sir Lindsay wrote that he would always follow the activities of the Society from the back benches with unabated interest, his loss to the Council will be severely felt; but we trust that we may still rely on his help and wise counsel which I am sure will be often needed. Next comes Mr. T. J. Lindsay who has performed the increasingly arduous task of Hon. Treasurer from the beginning when he joined the Society as a founder member. Mr. Lindsay has not only looked after our finances and borne the burden of collecting members' subscriptions, but with his immense knowledge of China and the Far East he has been a source of great strength on the Council in all its activities. He is leaving the Colony on retirement to Australia, and we wish him and Mrs. Lindsay long years of happy retirement. As a culmination of our losses, comes the loss of Mr. Lawry. Mr. Lawry will be leaving the Colony this coming summer. From 1961 until recently he was our Hon. Secretary, popular and indefatigable. Upon the resignation of Sir Lindsay Ride as Vice Chairman in January last, the Council by virtue of their powers under the constitution, appointed him Vice President in Sir Lindsay's place until this Annual General Meeting. To fill his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 JOHN J. NOLDE larger prefecture of Kwangchou, whose administrative center was at Canton. Kwangchou itself was one of the fifteen prefectures which made up the province of Kwangtung, the latter being linked with the neighboring province of Kwanghsi to form the Viceroyalty of Liang-Kwang. Kwangchou prefecture was about 25,000 square miles in size and was occupied by a population of about five to ten million people. Now, when this area appears in the standard histories of nineteenth century China it is usually as the stage-setting for the activity of the foreigner and the conflict between the Western barbarians and Chinese officialdom. There are long accounts of the nature and organization of the Canton trade. H.B. Morse wrote six volumes on the East India Company. The diplomatic historian is concerned with the Amherst mission of 1816 and the Napier mission of 1834. There are detailed accounts of the effect of the dissolution of the Company on the Canton trade. And, of course, there are numerous descriptions of the Opium War and its causes and consequences.4 It would seem, somehow, that the history, if not the day to day living, of the people of the Hong Kong-Macao-Canton axis (if not all China) was inseparably linked with the foreigner, his exploits, the Canton system, and the opium traffic, But what was really "going on"? What was life really like? The most striking fact about the area during those times was not the foreigner and his trade but the deplorable state of civil administration. It was in chaos. Official authority did not extend much beyond Canton. Banditry and brigandage were the order of the day inland. Secret societies harassed government officials and private individuals at will, Piracy, especially, was a problem. In the early years of the century a large pirate fleet under the leadership of one Cheng I had been organized. While his theatre of operations extended from Swatow to the Philippines, and perhaps as far as Borneo, most of his activity was centered in these waters. Commanding a fleet of hundreds of junks and thousands of men, Cheng I virtually terrorized the coast. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 49 SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS UNDER THE MONGOL EMPIRE* Herbert FRANKE Contacts between Chinese civilization and that of the West, whatever we take "West" to mean in this context, have a long and tortuous history which, for some periods, is still far from sufficiently studied. All historians, however, even the most Europe-centered ones, do agree that these contacts reached a pre-modern, all-time high under the Mongol empires in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and even the most superficial or condensed textbooks of world history have a few words to say about East-West relations following the conquests and campaigns of Chingis Khan. In such books, we frequently encounter the statement that this period facilitated intercourse and exchange because of the so-called Pax Mongolica, "Mongol Peace", when the Mongol domination of East and Central and even great parts of West Asia crystallized into an empire stretching from the Yellow Sea to Southern Russia. Like so many historical tags, this is, however, a statement that loses much of its seemingly uncontrovertible truth when one considers the historical facts. If it is really the task of the historian to reconsider from time to time historical writings and historical dicta, and to debunk history if necessary, then this notion of Pax Mongolica requires qualification. A historian of China will therefore perhaps ask if cultural contacts and interchange between China and the non-China West were really more frequent and easy under the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than under the Six Dynasties and the T'ang when no Eurasian universal empire like that of the Mongols existed. We know that a great number of travellers, missionaries, and merchants from the Western Regions came to China between the late second and the ninth centuries A.D., and that many non-Chinese cultural elements penetrated East, among them the world religion of Buddhism that became such an important part of Chinese culture. Most of the early Buddhist Text of the Hume Memorial Lecture delivered at Yale University, February 5th, 1965. The author is Director of the Institute for East Asian Cultural and Linguistics Sciences, University of Munich. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 54 HERBERT FRANKE peculiarity of the Chinese script, and Chinese script is something that would strike even the most casual observer as something different from any other script in Asia or Europe. Even William Rubruk, who had never been in China but only in Mongolia, gives an entirely correct description of the Chinese writing system. All this has cast some doubt on the contention that the Polo family spent a long time in China. But however that may be, until definite proof has been adduced that the Polo book is a world description, where the chapters on China are taken from some other, perhaps Persian, source (some expressions he uses are Persian), we must give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was there after all. Polo tells us that he was "the first Latin" to come to Kublai Khan's court. "Il (that is, Kublai) avait très grande joie de leur venue comme un qui n'a jamais vu aucun Latin." This is another statement in his book that is open to doubt. The Polos were certainly not the first Europeans who came to Kublai Khan's court. This is shown by a passage in a Chinese chronicle covering the time from the eleventh month of 1260 to the eighth month of 1261, that is, the beginnings of Kublai's reign. This chronicle is, at the same time, the most detailed annalistic source for any period of the Mongol dominion in China. There we find recorded under the seventh day of the second month of the second year of Chung-t'ung (June 6, 1261) that an embassy of the "Fa-lang" country came to Shang-tu (Dolon-nor) and was received in audience. Fa-lang is the Chinese rendering of Farang, the Franks, the name by which the Near Eastern peoples called Europeans. The description that these self-styled envoys gave of their country and their travels is very curious, but not more curious than some of the fantastic notions about the East that are found in European medieval literature: "These people came and presented garments made from vegetable fabrics (cotton?) and other presents. These envoys had travelled three years from their country to Shang-tu. They reported that their country is in the Far West beyond the Uighurs. In their country there is constant daylight and no night. It is evening there when the field mice come out of their holes. If somebody dies there, then Heaven is invoked and it might even happen that the person is restored to life. Flies and mosquitoes are born from wood. The women are very beautiful and the men usually have blue eyes and blonde hair. There are two oceans on the route from ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS 59 and that the foreign country of Fu-lang itself did not arouse any curiosity among the writers. Europe, in any case during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, remained unknown to the Chinese. It was not until the arrival of the Portuguese, and, a little later, of the Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century that the two worlds were brought into closer contact. This relative disinterest in foreign countries is paralleled 100 years earlier by the poems of Yeh-lü Ch'u-ts'ai. He had been in Khwarezmia (today Russian Turkestan) with Chingis Khan's armies and wrote a number of poems on Western subjects. If one would put it in a flippant way, one would have to say that Yeh-lü in his poems seems to have been impressed not by the proud mosques and the ancient culture of that region but mostly by the grape wine and the water melons that were grown in Khwarezmia. If we take the word Western in a broader sense than just European and include the Near East, then we find for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries much more detailed information on "Westerners" and their influence on activities in China. Islamic civilization had some impact on China under the Mongols, and we have seen that certainly geography in China was flourishing, incorporating data on the non-Chinese world taken from Arab sources. The geographical interest of the Mongol court is also reflected in Kublai Khan's attempts to discover the sources of the Yellow River. Expeditions were sent and the reports that can be found in the dynastic history and also in another, private source the Cho-keng lu, printed in 1366 are a valuable source for the historical geography of the Ch'ing-hai region and Eastern Tibet. Islam had, of course, reached China much earlier, that is, under the T'ang in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., but it was under the Mongol rulers that Muslims began to take part in Chinese life to a greater extent. The Muslim contribution to Chinese civilization under the Yüan seems to have been chiefly in the fields of science. Astronomy was highly developed in the Islamic countries. After the Mongols had conquered Iraq and Persia, not a few Muslim scholars went to China. A center for astronomy was the observatory in Maraghah (Azerbaijan) founded in or about 1258. Under the Ilkhan Hulagu or his successor a Marāghah astronomer, Jamal ad-Din, was dispatched to China with what may be called blue-prints for astronomical instruments. We find their Persian-Arabic names and a short description of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS 71 the former empire of Chingis Khan this development was, as we saw, mostly a result of the conversion of the ruling minority to the religion of the ruled majority. Events would have followed a different course if the Mongols had been able to substitute a religion, or a universal set of values of their own, for the existing indigenous creeds and patterns of life in their respective dominions; this had happened some centuries earlier with the Arabs who not only conquered much of the Near East but also succeeded in imposing Islam, their own religion, on the subjugated countries. In the cultural field, Islamisation had a much stronger effect on the affected areas and nations than the equally or even more far-reaching conquests of the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The most lasting, and, from the point of view of world history, perhaps most important result of East-West contacts in the period of Mongol domination was that these commercial and cultural contacts inaugurated for Europe the age of maritime exploration. The seafaring nations of Europe attempted to reach by sea those fabulous countries in the East which Marco Polo and other travellers or merchants had described after their travels through the Mongol dominions. When Columbus left Spain to discover a sea route to the East Indies and to Cathay, land of the Great Khan, he had a copy of Marco Polo's book on board his ship. And so it came that instead of achieving a renewed contact between the Far East and the West a new world was discovered. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 72 HERBERT FRANKE NOTES 1 On Europe and Europeans as mentioned in Chinese sources, see H. Franke in Saeculum, Vol. II (1951), pp. 65-75. 2 W. Fuchs, The Mongol Atlas of China by Chu Ssu-pen, Peiping, 1946, Monumenta Serica Monographs, No. 8; J. Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol III, pp. 555-556. 3 H. Franke in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 112 (1962), pp. 228-232 (review of Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo's Asia). 4 Francis A. Rouleau, "The Yangchow Latin Tombstone as a Landmark of Medieval Christianity in China", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 17 (1954) pp. 346-365. 5 John Foster, "Crosses from the Walls of Zaitun", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1954, pp. 1-25. (pl. XII). 6 Saeculum, Vol. II (1951), p. 74-75. 7 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 167-382. 8 See for example, H. Franke, Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte Chinas unter der Mongolenherrschaft, Wiesbaden 1956, p. 34 (Nestorian surgeon). 9 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 381, note (c). 10 A. C. Moule, "The Siege of Saianfu and the Murder of Achmach Bailo", Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 58 (1927), pp. 1-28; Vol. 59 (1928), pp. 256-257. 11 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 141. 12 Yüan-shih ed. K'ai-ming, ch. 190, p. 6565, II/III. For the Ho-fang t'ung-i see Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng, Vol. 1486. 13 A. C. Moule, op. cit. 14 R. Loewenthal, "The Nomenclature of Jews in China", Monumenta Serica, Vol. XII (1947), p. 113. 15 H. G. Farmer, "Reciprocal Influences in Music 'twixt the Far and Middle East", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1934, pp. 327-342. 16 Ch'ing-lou chi, ed. Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng, Vol. 2734, p. 9. 17 H. Franke, "Der kluge Richter", in Asiatische Studien, 1950, pp. 55-59. 18 Renate Noethen, Das Sha-kou ch'üan-fu, München, 1961 (Diss.). 19 L. C. Goodrich, "Westerners and Central Asians in Yuan China", Oriente Poliano, Rome, 1957, pp. 1-21; "Western Regions Writers of Chinese Lyrics during the Yuan", International Conference of Orientalists in Japan, No. VII (1962) pp. 17-21. 20 L. C. Goodrich, Oriente Poliano, p. 15. 21 O. Sirén, Chinese Painting, Vol. IV, New York/London, 1958, pp. 54-59, plates Vol. VI, Nos. 57-60. 22 W. Fuchs, "Analecta zur mongolischen Übersetzungsliteratur der Yüan-Zeit", Monumenta Serica, Vol. XI (1946), pp. 34-39; W. Fuchs und A. Mostaert, "Ein Ming-Druck einer chinesisch-mongolischen Ausgabe des Hsiao-ching", ibid., Vol. IV (1939/40), pp. 325-329. 23 E. Haenisch, Mongolica der Berliner Turfan-Sammlung, II, Berlin 1959. 24 A. Mostaert and F. W. Cleaves, Les lettres de 1289 et 1305 des ilkhan Argun et Öljeitü à Philippe le Bel, Cambridge, Mass. 1962. 25 M. S. Ipsiroğlu, Saray-Alben, Wiesbaden, 1964, pl. XLIV, No. 64. 26 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 217-219. 27 H. Franke, "Some Sinological Remarks on Rashid ad-Din's History of China", Oriens, Vol. 4, (1951), pp. 21-26. 28 W. Franke, "Zur Frage der Mongolen in China nach dem Sturz der Yüan-Dynastie", Oriens Extremus, Vol. 9 (1962), pp. 57-68. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM 79 tions, he spent the first year on language study in Tokyo, then a year at Otani University, and a final year at the Mampukuji outside Kyoto, which is the most Chinese of Japanese Zen monasteries. He was very politely treated. When I asked (perhaps tactlessly) whether the Japanese Government did not have a policy of trying to use Buddhism to subdue China, he replied with some sharpness: "I was not utilized by them. That was not the way they behaved towards me." He said, however, that other monks who had gone to Japan were looked on as collaborators when they returned, and some had had to change their names. Other informants have stated that after victory in 1945 several high-ranking monks in Shanghai were imprisoned for collaboration with the Japanese and one was executed in Canton.18 33 Quaritch Wales in an article written at the height of the war summarized the Japanese use of Buddhism as follows. “Buddhist propaganda has for several years been carried on by the New Asia Bureau of the Dai Nippon Buddhist Association, which is under the joint control of the Japanese Education and War Ministries. It is responsible for all missionary work in East Asia and long before Pearl Harbour was already deeply entrenched in north China. There, the more systematically to further its ends, the New Asia Bureau had established Sino-Japanese Buddhist Associations at Hangchow, Amoy, and Nanking, subsidized by the Special Service Section of the Army, naturally not with purely religious motives.”19 Most of this, sensational though it may sound, is confirmed by the semi-official Japanese source already referred to in the notes, that is, the 1943 Yearbook of the Great Harmony Religious Alliance of Central China. The Great Harmony Alliance had been set up in accordance with a religious work policy formulated by the Japanese Military Intelligence Bureau in October, 1938.20 It was "under the direction and supervision of the military authorities." Throughout a series of bureaucratic changes over the next four years, its purposes remained the same: 1) to coordinate and control Japanese religious groups in central China; and 2) to promote their cooperation with Chinese counter-parts. To this latter end the Alliance set up at least a dozen Japanese-Chinese Buddhist associations, of which those that existed in November 1940 formed the Japanese-Chinese Buddhist 21 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 90 1897-1904 ― HOLMES WELCH Christian missionary to the Jews of Hamburg and Montreal, first as a Presbyterian, then as an Anglican clergyman; finally curate in an English country village. 1904-1906 Odd jobs in London. 1906-1909 Director of a large socio-economic survey of Belgium. 1909-1915 Member of Parliament, speculator in Rumanian oil fields, forger of cheques, 1915 Would-be German spy, who, after escaping from Britain, then escaped from the New York police. 1916-1919 In English prison for forgery. 1919-1922 Plotter in the Kapp Putsch in Berlin; salesman of information about other proto-Facist plots in several European countries; again in jail. 1922 To the Far East. 1922-1924 Advisor to a succession of Chinese warlords (Yang Shen, Wu P'ei-fu, Ch'i Hsi-yüan). Back to Europe, then to the U.S., then to China again, where he resolved to enter a Buddhist monastery. 1925-1926 In Colombo, Ceylon, where he began to dress as a Buddhist monk and lecture on Buddhism; returned to Europe for an unsuccessful attempt to save his son from execution for murder in England. 1927-1928 Buddhist missionary in San Francisco; then back to China. 1928-1931 Whereabouts generally unknown, but sometimes living in Buddhist monasteries in Shanghai and Hangchow. From July 1929 to June 1930 on a tour of Europe, lecturing on Buddhism, dressed in Buddhist robes and signing hotel registers "Chao-k'ung". In May 1931 he became Chao-k'ung officially when he was ordained at Pao-hua Shan, the most illustrious ordination center in China. The next year he went to Europe to collect disciples and arrived back in Shanghai with them on July 25, 1933.46 There were twelve of these disciples - English, French, Italian, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 51 Kowloon. They engaged in the construction of small bridges, pig-sties, village houses, and urban structures. On the look-out for chances of work, leaving their families behind them in the village, they began to settle, more or less temporarily, in the market towns of the New Territories, and on the Kowloon Peninsula. They lived a life oscillating between the rural and urban areas. This uniform specialization in a skilled labour trade is difficult to explain. However, I venture to suggest a possible explanation. It seems reasonable to assume that specialization in the masonry trade was a gradually developing process. Some men were making use of the slack season in farming to obtain an extra income. This was a period when rapid urbanization in Kowloon, and increased building by New Territories emigrants in their native villages, would have raised the demand for such labour. Some success could have encouraged them to work on a larger scale, and to recruit extra hands by way of their agnatic bonds of kinship. The enterprise ramified, and more relatives became engaged. Through the stimulus supplied by the possibility of earning money in a short time when the traditional village economy was suffering from the strain of foreign industrialism, more Grass Field people sought a new income along lines already established by agnatic kinsmen. For a time, most households in the village had male members in the masonry trade. The fact that very few people chose existing alternatives can be explained in terms of a strongly kinship-orientated society. A more drastic solution to maintain livelihood was emigration abroad. All three settlements have experienced this type of migration. But here also there are differences. Before the Pacific War, Grass Village had only a few migrants working in South-east Asia, while in Big Stream Village nearly every household had overseas members. In fact, emigration abroad seems to have started one generation earlier in the latter place than in the other two valley settlements; that is around 1890. In this generation, several men left for the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. I was told that mostly they entered the new countries illegally. They made a start as recruited crew members of ocean-going ships, and later deserted in convenient ports, thus avoiding poll-taxes and other obstacles to unwelcome Chinese immigration. The next generation, setting out in about the second decade of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 77 income of this man is then at least HK$25. It is also interesting to note that costs in the villages are often estimated in terms of British currency. 40 See e.g. Baker 1965, p. 30. 41 Marriage connections were then cast outside the standard market area of Tai Po. This is in contradiction to an assumption by G. W. Skinner (Skinner 1964/65, p. 36), who suggests that standard marketing communities were endogamous in traditional times. 42 Sometimes children by this mating were brought back to the village. In Big Stream Village there is a man whose mother was a Jamaican woman, and his features are quite distinct. However, I have the impression that he is fairly well integrated in the village. He was, for instance, the only male I saw performing ancestral rites at the graves at the Ch'ing Ming festival. He is working as a policeman in Sha Tin. Otherwise I have not come across any secondary marriages in the valley. REFERENCES BAKER, H. [1965] 'Marriage and the Family', Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch) n.d. BALL, J. DYER 1925 Things Chinese, or Notes Connected with China, 5th edn, rev. by E. C. T. Werner, (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh). BARNETT, K. A. 1957 'The People of the New Territories', Hong Kong Business Symposium, a Compilation of Authoritative Views on the Administration, Commerce and Resources of Britain's Far Eastern Outpost, J. M. Braga (ed.), (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post). 1958 'Introduction on Hong Kong Place-names', Hong Kong Gazetteer to the Land Utilization Map of Hong Kong and the New Territories, with Chinese and English Names, T. R. Tregear (ed.), (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press). Bot. Report 1906 1907 'Report on the Botanical and Forestry Department for the Year 1906', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1907, (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers). Census 1911 1911 'Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1911, (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers). CHEN TA 1939 Emigrant Communities in South China, (New York, Institute of Pacific Relations). CHIU TZE NANG 1964 'Land Use in the Extreme East of the New Territories', Land Use Problems in Hong Kong, S. G. Davis (ed.), (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press). EITEL, E. J. 1895 Europe in China, The History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882, (London and Hongkong, Luzac and Co.). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 79 NG, R. 1965 'Economic Life and the Family', Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch) n.d. N.T. Report 1900 1900 'Report on the New Territory during the First Year of British Administration', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hongkong 1900, (Hongkong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers). N.T. Report 1899-1912 1912 'Report on the New Territories 1899-1912", Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hongkong 1912, (Hongkong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers). N.T. Report 1917 1918 'Report on the New Territories for the Year 1917, Administrative Reports for the Year 1917, (Hongkong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers). PRATT, J. 1960 'Emigration and Unilineal Descent Groups: A Study of Marriage in a Hakka Village in the New Territories, Hong Kong', The Eastern Anthropologists, Vol. xiii, S., D. W. 1900 European Settlements in the Far East, (London, Sampson, Low and Marston). SCPH H.K. Chinese 1965 H.K. Chinese in Britain Now Number 35,000, South China Post-Herald, Sept. 12th, Hong Kong. SIU, P. 1952 'The Sojourner', The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 58. SKINNER, G. W. 1964/65 'Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China', The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. xxiv. TOPLEY, M. 1964 'Capital, Saving and Credit among Indigenous Rice Farmers and Immigrant Vegetable Farmers in Hong Kong's New Territories', Capital, Saving and Credit in Peasant Societies, Studies from Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean, and Middle America, R. Firth and B. S. Yamey, eds, (London, George Allen and Unwin). TREGEAR, T. R. and L. BERRY 1959 The Development of Hongkong and Kowloon as told in maps, (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press). VAILLANT, L. 1920 'Contribution à l'étude anthropologique des chinois Hak-ka de la province de Moncay (Tonking)', L'Anthropologie, Vol. 30. WILLMOTT, W. E. 1964 'Chinese Clan Associations in Vancouver, Man, Vol. lxiv. YANG, C. K. 1959 A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition, (Cambridge, Mass, The Technology Press). ================================================================================ 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 85 were very small, but had very powerful engines and steering gears. Only the high passenger and freight charges enabled them to run at a profit. One of the most important cargoes from the Upper Yangtse was tung oil, which was latterly carried in bulk. This oil was used in the manufacture of high quality paints and lacquers, and was so valuable that the privilege of cleaning out the cargo pumps after discharge was one of the most highly prized perquisites of the engine room staff. The Upper Yangtse was too dangerous for night navigation, so that the Gorge boats anchored each night at dusk, and set off again at dawn. Officers on these ships were paid a special bonus after a season on the Upper River, and also given local leave. Because they operated in inland waters, the Yangtse riverboats were exempt from certain of the manning regulations which applied to deep sea British ships. Certificated masters and chief mates were always carried, but sometimes the second mates had no British qualifications, and were either White Russians or Chinese. During the inter-war years these White Russians were often former officers of the Imperial Russian Navy, and without exception were very capable and efficient. On the engine room side the chief and second engineers had British qualifications, but sometimes Chinese third engineers were employed, The opium clipper tradition inherited by the 'China coasters' resulted in smart and well run ships, a credit to the owners and crews concerned. The pre-war 'China coasters' were probably the smartest ships in Britain's Merchant Navy, and their bright paintwork, gleaming brass work, and smart red-sashed quartermasters would have gladdened the heart of old Admiral Benbow. Their closest rivals under the Red Ensign were the coasters of the Straits Steamship Company which were based on Singapore, and which traded round Malaya and the East Indies. 'China coasters', apart from officers, had all Chinese crews, while the Straits coasters and their Dutch K.L.M. rivals had Malays on deck and Chinese down below, a good combination in pre-Sukarno days. Sailors and firemen sometimes spent a lifetime on one ship, and often the bosun and Number One Fireman would have started their careers on the same ship twenty-five years earlier. The Arab and Indian practice of the bosun and Number One being responsible for their department was followed on the China coast, and each department was very much a family and clan affair. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT J 105 This officer established himself at a place then called Shak-tse-kong, the present Nam-tou, a part of which situated on a hill was surrounded by walls. But it was found that this officer was unable to rule efficiently the whole of the district, and some men of influence, supported by the high mandarins at Canton, demanded that the part of the country which they inhabited should be made a separate district. The Emperor Wan-lik granted this petition in the first year of his reign; the new district was called "Sanon,” new peace; and the walled part of Nam-tou rose to be the district town of Sanon, and accordingly received the name of Sanon Yuen-shing 新安城. The Sanon district included the islands of Lan-tow, Hongkong, and all the small neighbouring islands. The mainland portion of the district was bounded to the North by the districts of Túng-kun 東莞 and Kwei-shin 歸善. The northern boundary is formed by the Pik-tau River, which flows into the estuary of the Canton River, and is navigable for small Chinese sea craft (such as passage-boats) for about 8 miles; and several chains of mountains further to the East. This boundary, however, is very arbitrarily drawn, as sometimes villages in the midst of Sanon belong to Túng-kun. The borders of the three districts join together in the neighbourhood of the mart of Kun-lan, a place notoriously unsafe, as being the abode of thieves and vagabonds, who can with facility escape from the jurisdiction of one mandarin to that of another. To the East, the Sanon District is bounded by the estuary of the Canton River. This estuary is divided by the Chinese into several parts with different names: the part to the south of the Bocca Tigris into which the Pik-tow River falls, is called Hop-lan Hoi; the bay named by the English Lintin is designated by the Chinese Nam-low Bay, after the city of that name; Deep Bay is called Hau-hoi or Back-water Bay*. This bay is generally very shallow, a deep channel however running down the centre; the navigation is rendered more dangerous by the many oyster-beds which exist. The bay terminates in a considerable creek, which is navigable at high-tide for three or four miles, as far as the important mart of Sham-tsuen. & PA. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 111 the flesh of this, which is coarse, and contains much rancid oil, is also sold in the markets. The Rivers, The district of Sanon is generally well irrigated, but the streams are of small size. Three of them, perhaps, may merit the name of rivers; in the southern and eastern part of the district there are only small mountain streams, which pour down over the precipices, sometimes forming picturesque waterfalls. Deep Bay terminates, as already stated, in a considerable creek; and into this several large streams, coming particularly from that part of the district which was first occupied by the Hakka population, pour their waters. These are too shallow and irregular even for the navigation of small craft. Not far from the village Tai-chung ★, east of the district town, another river, Ti-sha-ho ★, discharges its waters into the bay. It has its source in the Yeong-toi mountains, and after a long serpentine course, at last reaches the bay. Its bed is broad, but often shallow, and its embouchure is very sandy. On account of its breadth and the sudden floods to which it is subject, no bridges are built across this river, and as, after long continued rain, it swells to a great height, it frequently becomes quite impassable, and travellers are put to much delay and inconvenience in consequence. The Sai-heong river, also takes its rise in the Yeong-toi mountain, and empties itself into Nam-tow bay, at the market town of Sai-heong. It is only navigable for a short distance at high water, when many trading junks and fishing-boats make their way up to the town, where they remain high and dry. If the exact time of high tide be not chosen, these boats can neither make their way outwards nor inwards. Sai-heong is divided by this river into two parts, which are called the eastern and western villages. These are united by an awkward wooden bridge about 200 yards in length. This bridge is of a peculiar construction, the planks being nailed underneath, instead of upon the cross-beams, so that it is somewhat awkward walking over it. The intervals between the cross-beams are about two yards. It is asserted that the bridge (erected about the time of the first war) was thus built, in order to prevent the British being able to transport their cannon over this river, if they should venture to make their appearance in the neighbourhood. A few years ago, a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 131 people. He afterwards rose to high honours, and the people erected temples to show their gratitude to him. The chief merits for which the men whose names are mentioned in these tablets are praised, are thus specified. They were polite towards the literati, strict with their inferiors, improved the prisons, properly regulated the taxes, abolished all illegal imposts, and publicly explained the Four Books; they established schools and other benevolent institutions, and took with them but little pelf when they left office. In the hall for the commemoration of the sages, there are five tablets containing the names of those who have been recognised as worthy of the honour by the emperors, and also some others with the names of those to whom the people thought this honour due. The following is the history of one of the first class: In the time of the Sung dynasty, there lived in the present Sanon an inferior mandarin, who had a very diligent son; as regards filial piety, he was a model for the whole region. During the greatest heats, he would wait upon his parents at table in full dress. He was never guilty of disobedience, and when he was told to go a distance of a thousand miles, he would start immediately. When his father died, he became half mad from grief, and built a hut at the tomb, whence the sound of his weeping was heard at night at a far distance. This man occupies the first place among the sages of Sanon. Another of these heroes had the misfortune to have his father fall into the hands of robbers. Not having sufficient money to ransom his father, he followed the pirates, and offered himself to be their prisoner as his father's substitute. The pirates accepted his offer, and on taking leave he begged his father to forget him, as he had other sons remaining to him. He then cast himself into the sea. Another of these worthies was a mandarin in another district. A change in the dynasty having been effected, he returned home, as he was unwilling to serve two masters. He was able to earn but a scanty livelihood. A high officer once visited him, and found him sitting on a dirty mat, and in very poor circumstances. He applied to him for instruction. "A pure heart is all in all," was the answer of the sage. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 162 NOTES AND QUERIES Apart from being an old landmark, the main interest of the present stone is that it bears the characters Kwan Tai Lo (# #). Sayer discusses (pages 90-92) the various meanings which have been attributed to this phrase at one time or another. Among them are suggestions that the name Kwan Tai Lo was the original Chinese name for Hong Kong Island (a small fishing village of this name was listed in the first Hong Kong Government Gazette of 15th May 1841; it was located at East Point near the present Daimaru Department Store); that the name was associated with the famous Admiral Kwan who fought the British in 1841; that the character 'Kwan' was an alliteration for the English word 'Queen'; and finally that the name is descriptive for a road which, like a petticoat girdle, encircles the island. As he says, the name "has evoked endless speculation". Another suggestion is that it was the personal name of a girl from the boat people who led the British round the island. II. LITTLE HONG KONG (**) The Setting. With the exercise of a little imagination Little Hong Kong is still, in its outward appearance, the world of the Chinese peasant before 1841. Substitute rice fields for vegetable plots and chicken farms, clear away their associated structures and the modern buildings in the surrounding area, concentrate your attention on the groups of old structures that form the nuclei of the two old villages and you are back in one of the most beautiful valleys on old Hong Kong Island. It was up this valley that Sir George Staunton, the eminent sinologue and Third Commissioner in the Amherst Embassy to Peking in 1816, strolled from the Aberdeen anchorage the following year to visit the village — in so doing to give his name to Staunton Creek now, 150 years later, being reclaimed from the sea.4 The Southern Side of Hong Kong Island in 1841. When the British came in 1841 the population of Little Hong Kong was around 200 persons (the Census of 1856 gives 229). One of the visiting British officers at that time was impressed with the villages and the scenery. "In general", he wrote, "the south side of Hong Kong Island is far more picturesque and less bleak than the north. The villages we saw, unlike the mat-huts in the harbour, are exceedingly neat in appearance with blue-tiled and white-walled houses". The village inhabitants, too, were given a good charac- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g NOTES AND QUERIES 169 NOTES I am most grateful to Mr. Yuen Chun-fang, Liaison Officer, Secretariat for Chinese Affairs for help with the interviews which yielded part of the information given above. 1 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, 1845 (London, W. Clowes & Sons, for H.M.S.O., 1846) p. 147 and the same for 1846, p. 230. 2 G. R. Sayer, Hong Kong, Birth Adolescence and Coming of Age (Oxford, University Press, 1937) p. 208, quoting from the Canton Press, February 1842. 3 Sayer, p. 91. 4 Sayer, p. 30. 5 A. R. Johnston (H.M. Deputy Superintendent of Trade) "Note on the Island of Hong Kong" first published in the London Geographical Journal Vol. XIV, and reprinted in the Hong Kong Almanack and Directory for 1846. 6 Hong Kong Government Gazette for 28 March 1857 p. 4, Table No. 4. 7 The Last Year in China......by a Field Officer actually employed in that Country. 2nd edition (London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1843) p. 75. 8 K. S. MacKenzie, Narrative of the Second Campaign in China (London, R. Bentley, 1842) p. 160. 9 See Hong Kong Administrative Reports for 1934, 1935 and 1936 at pp. Q.86, Q.84 and Q.81 respectively. 10 This information, like any other for which no specific source is quoted, comes from Mr. CHOW Chik-san of Kau Wai, aged 77 and Madam CHAN CHOW Ping of San Wai, aged 81. 11 Rev. W. Lobscheidt, A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education and the Government Schools of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China Mail office, 1859). 12 See Summary of Report of Squatters Commission 1891-1906, pp. 97-103. This volume of MSS. is kept in the Library, Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong. 13 For accounts of Cantonese and Hakka see J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong etc., Kelly and Walsh Ltd., 4th edition, 1903) pp. 202, 211 and 323-326. 14 LO Hsiang-lin and others, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963) pp. 80-88. This is the English translation of the text, but not the notes, of their work published in Hong Kong in 1959. 15 This information is taken from the accounts given at p. 5 of Prof. Woo Sing-lim's The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, The Five Continents Book Co., 26th year of the Chinese Republic, 1937) published in Chinese and English and at pp. 578-579, under the name CHOW Cheong-ling, of Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent and Progressive Chinese at Home and Abroad, published in London, Shanghai etc. by The Globe Encyclopedia Company, 1917. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g BOOK REVIEWS 185 the eyes of those who made history at that time. The bibliography is limited to "the principal books consulted". As a bibliography it is brief, capricious and inadequate. The following works, central to the theme of this book, were omitted from the bibliography: Arthur Waley, Yuan Mei and also The Opium War through Chinese Eyes; C. H. Philips, The East India Company 1784-1834; J. L. Cranmer-Byng, An Embassy to China (containing Macartney's journal); W. C. Hunter, Journal of Occurrences at Canton (1839) which was printed in vol. 4 of this Journal in 1964; Lo-shu Fu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (1644-1820), 2 vols. This last book contains a wide selection of Chinese documents in translation together with ample notes and will supply future historians with some splendid source material when they come to write a full and satisfactory account of the prelude to Hong Kong. University of Toronto June, 1967 J. L. CRANMER-BYNG *** † TM & HSIN-PIEN TUI-HSIANG SZU-YEN): A 15th Century Illustrated Chinese Primer. Facsimile Reproduction with Introduction and Notes by L. Carrington Goodrich. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 56, H.K.$15. Over the past decade research undertaken by the international community of sinologists has touched on almost every aspect of China, but until now very little attention has been paid to the traditional Chinese approach in educating the young. In producing this delightful illustrated primer Professor Goodrich has therefore performed a welcoming service by giving a lead to studies in this field. The first stage in traditional Chinese education was always the study of the language based on preliminary manuals of instruction, the compilation of which was regarded as a separate field of study. MENG HSÜEH (*), the traditional Chinese name for such work — literally meaning "the study of 'preliminary enlightenment'" — was not treated as an equal branch of scholarship in China although books of this nature have existed since Han times. The aims of this type of book were: (1) to instruct students to acquire a basic vocabulary — characters and phrases; ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d Colony in not losing more than 53 ordinary and two life members in 1967 and to gain 59 ordinary and three life members. It is hoped that, in the year 1969 which will be the tenth year after the revival of the Hong Kong Branch of the Society, we may achieve a membership of 500. The Journal of the Society (which has now reached its seventh issue) covering the year 1966 came out in 1967 under the editorship of Mr. Hayes and has maintained its high standard and interest. From the Hon. Treasurer's report it will be seen that on the working of the year there was a small deficit of $738 due mainly to the doubling of our expenditure this year on the Society's publications, the Journal, the Volume on the 1966 Symposium and the reprinting of Sir Lindsay Ride's article on the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macao, from the sale of which we expect to replenish our finances. Our efforts to build up a library available for the use of members have this year shown some promise of success. We have now a collection of over 300 volumes of standard works on China and the Far East including, in particular, works on South China and Hong Kong and a valuable collection of exchange journals. Our collection has been enriched with the books purchased with the generous grant of $2,850 from the Asia Foundation and with about 100 books from the library of the late Colonel Burkhardt and Madame du Breuil generously presented by Colonel Burkhardt's daughter. Our thanks are due once again to Mr. F. A. Nixon who has enabled us to receive from the Fung Ping Shan Museum of the University five albums containing photographs of his collection of Nestorian Crosses which are housed in the Museum. The British Council have come to our aid by kindly providing space in their library for the greater part of our books, while some of the rarer books and reference works will still be kept for the time being in the University Library. The accommodation given to our library by the British Council is the best temporary solution of our library problem until some kind benefactor appears to give us a room of our own with sufficient funds to provide for a part-time librarian. Before the original branch of the Society was wound up in 1859 it had a substantial and valuable library which was presented to the Morrison Educational Society and it was fortunate then in having good friends in its first President — Sir John Davis — and the Chief Justice who provided a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d THE HANKOW STEAMER TEA RACES 51 say with any degree of accuracy, although probably one-third of this consumption would drive her about 12 knots an hour. On the principle that, while 100 horse-power would drive a steamship ten knots an hour, it would require 1,000 horse-power to propel her at the rate of twenty knots (all other conditions being in proportion), it will be seen that Mr. Macgregor's grounds and conditions for accelerated speed are not only reasonable but indispensable: the few last knots always the most expensive, and apparently almost prohibitive. "Indeed, the present tendency seems to be towards a falling-off in the inclination to pay for such acceleration, so far as Tea freights are concerned: but time will show. Last year [1881] the slowing down of the three Glens was positive proof that the desire for fast passages had declined; and the projected telegraph to Hankow may possibly materially interfere with high freights for the future. In face of these facts, it appears clear that the large capacity of the Glenogle is a decided advantage. The Glenogle took Home this year 5,206 tons of Tea and 185 tons of miscellaneous cargo; and when she left London a few weeks ago she carried 4,022 tons of general merchandise to China; that is, she has taken into London and brought back to the East the largest cargoes that have been carried in one bottom since the opening of the China trade." J Events soon proved the soundness of the view taken by the China Mail's contributor. [Plates 1 and 2 illustrate this article]. NOTES The material has been obtained from articles in contemporary newspapers in the library of the Supreme Court, Hong Kong mainly the Hong Kong Telegraph and the China Mail, which also quoted from many other newspapers in the area. Grateful thanks are given to Messrs. Alfred Holt & Co. for their permission to use this material which was sent to them and formed the basis of an article in their House Magazine. The contemporary account has a vividness which is often lacking in the more formal history. Quotation is therefore used to give light to the story. No attempt is made to deal more than superficially with the events and there are gaps in the information provided. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 66 H. A. RYDINGS 4 G. H. Preble, The opening of Japan; a diary of discovery in the Far East, 1853-1856, ed. by B. Szczesniak, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1962, p. 58. 5 By 1867 Hong Kong was minting its own dollars. The English gold sovereign was quoted at this time at HK$4.60. 6 From the article on "The City Hall" in V. H. G. Jarrett, op. cit. 7 Twentieth century impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other treaty ports of China, ed. by A. Wright and H. A. Cartwright, London, Lloyd's Greater Britain Publ. Co., 1908, p. 162. 8 D. Scott, "The Morrison Library”, JHKBRAS, vol. 1, 1960-61, pp. 50-67. 9 J. W. Norton-Kyshe, The history of the laws and courts of Hongkong, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1898, vol. II, p. 252. 10 ibid., vol. II, p. 369. 11 ibid., vol. II, p. 429. 12 ibid., vol. II, p. 430. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 67 FURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI W. SCHOFIELD* The very interesting paper by Professor Lo Hsiang-lin on the Sung Wong T'oi and the travelling courts of the Sung Dynasty, in Volume III No. 2 of the Journal of Oriental Studies,† and the partial wrecking of the historic site by the Japanese in the war,‡ have prompted the writer to put on record some notes made during the years 1918 and 1937 on the earthworks, inscriptions and relics found by him on and near the site, which may help to supplement Professor Lo's paper. In what follows the hill is described as it was in 1937, as the writer has not seen it since 1938. It is a crescent-shaped hill, convex towards the east, where it rises steeply from the beach to a height of nearly 40 metres. It commands a good view of the south slope of the Kowloon hills and the plain beneath, the east half of the harbour, and of Lyemun channel and the west end of the Fat Tau Mun channel beyond, except for a few hundred metres at its north side by Slope Island (see Plate 5). A watch-tower on its summit would provide an observation post well over 40 metres above sea level. The concave side, on which lies the main path to the top, is terraced for cultivation up to 15 or 20 metres. The objects investigated on and near the hill can be classed in three categories, earthworks, inscriptions, and pottery and other objects, and will be dealt with in that order. The Earthworks (see sketch plan at Plate 3) There are signs that the hill was formerly fortified. On its top from the south end above the 20 metre contour as far as the great inscribed rock on the summit, there is a gentle rise from which the ground falls away steeply to the east, and rather less so to the west and south. At the south end of the ridge traces of a bank at the edge appear to form a rough semicircle, presumably as a flank defence, for a clearly defined earth bank about a metre high by three or four wide at the base runs northward from it nearly straight along the centre of the hill crest to a point near the south- *See biographical note at the end of this article. † Published by the Hong Kong University Press, May 1958. [See also Mr. Jen Yu-wen's article "The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung in Kowloon" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 7, 1967, pp. 21-38. Ed.] Mr. Schofield writes in the present tense, Unfortunately the hill has now disappeared completely, what was left by the Japanese being removed for the airport extension about 1958. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d FURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI 71 ment outside, possibly T'ang; two fragments of stoneware bowls with pale blue glaze, much weathered and probably old; and two thick stoneware bowl bases roughly hollowed out below, with their yellow glaze decayed, probably of Sung date; one of them was apparently not glazed so far down as the base. Lastly there is one fragment of the neck of a large stoneware jar, wheel-turned, the external diameter of which was 37 cm. at the mouth, and internal 35 cm.; it shows no sign of slip or glaze, and seems to be of Six Dynasties date. 2. Pottery from the beach. A group of 21 bowl bases and sherds were collected from the boulder-strewn beach at the south-east foot of the hill. All but two were submitted to the British Museum for determination of the probable dates of manufacture, with the following results: T'ang dynasty; broken bowl glazed olive-green, with 17-tooth comb mark. Probably T'ang: two bowl bases, one with 10-tooth comb marks. Probably Sung: three bowl bases and two sherds, without incised ornament. Probably Southern Sung: two bowl bases and one sherd with shallow incised grooves on the outside. All the above bowl bases are unglazed below a line part way down their outsides, and are hollowed out with a tool that left a helical mark within the footrim. Southern Sung or Yuan: three bowl bases of 13th century date, two with white porcellanous bodies and white glaze, and one with pale buff body and creamy glaze: their unglazed bases are flat with very low footrims. Each of the first two has incised ornament, one an underglaze wave pattern within the bowl, the other a lotus petal pattern on the outside with raised outlines. The third shows signs of wear on a beach, which are seen on no other specimen. This specimen was overlooked and not submitted to the Museum, but has a strong resemblance to the two others in its style and appearance. These three pieces are broken across their bases in such a way that outline tracings of the base in section could be made. Figures 1, 2 and 3 below ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 72 W. SCHOFIELD are the outlines so traced: they are numbered to correspond with the order in which they are described. The remaining items from this group are:- Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Probably Yuan: piece of the shoulder of a jar with the base of a handle; glazed gray, roughly made. Probably early Ming, 14th to 15th century; two sherds with worn opalescent blue and white glaze, each of them part of the rounded lips of thick bowls. Ming, 16th century: three pieces, a bowl, a sherd, and a plate, with blue underglaze designs. 19th century: small broken porcelain wine cup, light blue glaze. This piece could well date back to the days of quarrying on the hill: it looks newer and less worn than any other piece, and was not submitted to the Museum. 3. Pottery fragments from the exposed surface of a cutting through the south end of the earthwork, where it faces east. These fragments, numbering 13, were also submitted to the British Museum experts, who reported as follows: 'We are agreed that these are of Six Dynasties and T'ang Dynasty date. The sherd with the impressed designs is not parallel with those found on Lamma Island,* and The reference is to Father Finn's discoveries pre-war. See Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island (*) near Hong Kong, Ricci Publications, Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958 reprinted from The Hong Kong Naturalist between 1933-36 and edited by T. F. Ryan, S.J. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 90 ARMANDO M. DA SILVA It will suffice here to say that the exterior defence of the Chu Kong estuary consisted of a series of forts, customs-stations and guard-posts in the Lo Man Shan 老萬山, Kai Pong 鷄澎, Sam Chau Mun 三洲門, Ngoi Ling Ting 外伶仃, and the Tam Kon ## groups of the outer off-shore islands. The civil administration ruled from Nam Tau, the district city of the San On district. The military administration was centred at Tai Pang, on the western arm enclosing Tai Pang Hoi (Mirs Bay). The civil administration operated on a north-south axis, as against the east-west axis of the military coastal defence system. This is understandable when one realizes that the military could facilitate their control of the coast-line by establishing easy communications by water running the length of the coast-line from strongpoints on strategic head-lands and the offshore islands. 3 For the Chinese characters of place names of some locales in the vicinity of Tai Yu Shan see map 3. For names of places within the present territory of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960). 4 So far as I know there has been no published study of this fort by Hongkong's local historians, except for a brief mention in one work which states that Kai Yik Kok fort was of Ch'ing dynasty date. Lo Hsiang-lin, Hongkong and its External Communication before 1842, (Hongkong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963) p. 172. 5 The principal ingredients of this cement are clam and oyster shells which are crushed and burnt to produce slaked lime. The lime is then mixed with fine sand to produce a holding cement. Shells and fine sand are common to many local beaches and are, apparently for this purpose, used in lime kilns. 6 San On Yuen Chi, kuen 22, under section on Coastal Defence reads: 看復界後海絮籹寧而設險更捻周密雖今之汎地 及設兵皆與舊制不同而大嶼山雞翼角炮臺南頭 炮臺赤濘炮蠱最為餓要 7 Fan Lau is also known as Shek Sun meaning "boulder growths", a reference to the numerous residual boulders at Kai Yik Kok, 8 Luis Gomes, Monografia de Macau (Macau, 1951), a Portuguese translation of the O Mun Kei Leuk p. 70. "No 7° ano de long Tcheng (1730) construiram-se fortalezas nas duas montanhas, distribuiram-se as guarniçoes para a sua defensa e foram reforçadas as tropas que guarneciam Tai-U-San formando assim como que um angulo semelhante ao que e constituido pelos chifres dum boi, para servir de defensa exterior de Macau e o Boca Tigre", 9 J. J. L. Duyvendak, "Sailing directions of Chinese voyages" T'oung Pao, vol. 34 (1938) pp. 230-237; and "The true dates of the Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century", T'oung Pao, vol. 34 (1938), pp. 341-412. 10 The district of San On (新安) was formed in the sixth year of Lung Hing (隆慶) ie. 1572-73, Fourteen years later, in 1587, the San On district gazetteer was written by Yan Tai-kon (縣太君), the District Magistrate. Various editions followed. The latest edition was published in 1819. This gazetteer provides the best primary source of information on pre-British Hongkong. Chapters (kuen) XIV and XXII deal with Coastal Defence. These are chapters of special interest to historical geographers. ================================================================================ 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-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 182 COHEN, Paul A. THE LIBRARY Some sources of anti-missionary sentiment during the late Ch'ing. Ann Arbor, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan [1962?] Extract from China Society, Taiwan. Journal, v. 2. COHN, William. Chinese art. London, The Studio, 1930. COHN, William. Chinese painting. London, Phaidon Press, 1948. COLE, Fay-Cooper. The peoples of Malaysia. New York, Van Nostrand, 1945. COTES, Everard. Signs and portents in the Far East. New York, Putnam, 1907. COULING, Samuel. The encyclopaedia sinica. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1917 reprinted 1964. COWDRY, N. H. Plants from Peitaiho. [Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1922] Reprinted from Royal Asiatic Society. North China Branch. Journal, v. 53, 1922, pp. [158]-188. CROSSMAN, Carl L. A design catalogue of Chinese export porcelain for the American market. Salem, Mass., Peabody Museum, 1964. DAVID, Armand. Journal de mon troisième voyage d'exploration dans l'Empire Chinois. Paris, Hachette, 1875. 2 vols. DAVIS, S. G., ed. Economic geology of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, University Press, 1964. DAVIS, S. G., ed. Land use problems in Hong Kong: a symposium. Hong Kong, University Press, 1964. DAVIS, S. G. and TREGEAR, Mary. Man Kok Tsui (†); archaeological site 30, Lantau Island, Hong Kong. Hong Kong, University Press, 1961. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 184 EITEL, Ernest J. THE LIBRARY Feng-shui: or, The rudiments of natural science in China. London, Trübner, 1873. bound with EITEL, Ernest J. Three lectures on Buddhism. Hong Kong, China Mail, 1871. ELLIOTT, Alan J. A. Chinese spirit-medium cults in Singapore. London, London School of Economics, Dept. of Anthropology, 1955. (Monographs on social anthropology, n.s., no.14) ELLIOTT-BATEMAN, Michael. Defeat in the East: the mark of Mao Tse-tung on war. London, Oxford U.P., 1967. EMBREE, John F. A Japanese village: Suye Mura. London, Kegan Paul, 1946. ENDACOTT, G. B. A biographical sketch-book of early Hong Kong. Singapore, Eastern Univs. P., 1962. ENDACOTT, G. B. A history of Hong Kong. London, Oxford U.P., 1958. Fables de la Chine antique. Pekin, Éditions en Langues Étrangères, 1958. FAIRBANK, John King. Trade and diplomacy on the China coast; the opening of the treaty ports, 1842-1854. Cambridge [Mass.] Harvard U. P., 1964. (Harvard historical studies, v. 62 - 63). FEDDERSEN, Martin. Chinese decorative art: a handbook for collectors and connoisseurs. Tr. by Arthur Lane. London, Faber, 1961. FINN, Daniel J. Archaeological finds on Lamma Island (##), near Hong Kong. Ed. by T. F. Ryan. Hong Kong, Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958. Republication of articles originally appearing in the Hong Kong Naturalist, 1933-1936. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 188 HOÀNG, Peter. THE LIBRARY A notice of the Chinese calendar, and a concordance with the European calendar. 2nd ed. Zi-ka-wei near Chang-hai, Catholic Mission P., 1904. HOBSON, R. L. Handbook of the pottery and porcelain of the Far East in the Department of Oriental Antiquities and of Ethnography. [London, British Museum] 1937. HODGSON, Mrs. Willoughby How to identify old Chinese porcelain. 4th ed., enl. London, Methuen, 1920. Hong Kong et la côte chinoise, du Tonkin à Ning-po... Paris, Hachette, 1910. HONG KONG. University. Institute of Oriental Studies. Chinese tomb pottery figures: catalogue of exhibition... 26th-28th September, 1953. Hong Kong, University Press, 1953. (Institute of Oriental Studies. Catalogue series, no. 1) HOSIE, Dorothea, Lady. Two gentlemen of China: an intimate description of the private life of two patrician Chinese families... London, Seeley, Service, 1924. HSUAN Tsang (玄奘) Si-yu-ki: Buddhist records of the western world. Tr. from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629) by Samuel Beal. Popular ed. London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, [189-?] 2 vols. in 1 HSUEH, Chün-tu A review article: the years of triumph. London, 1962. Reprinted from China quarterly, no. 11, 1962, pp.225-235. Presentation copy inscribed by the author in Chinese. HUANG, Raymond Intonation in idiomatic English, for Chinese students in south-east Asia; by Raymond Huang in collaboration with A. W. T. Green. Hong Kong, University Press, 1964- v.1 only. HUCKER, Charles O. China: a critical bibliography. Tucson, University of Arizona P., 1962. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d THE LIBRARY 191 LANG, Olga. Pa Chin and his writings; Chinese youth between the two revolutions. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U.P., 1967. (Harvard East Asian series, 28) LANYON-ORGILL, Peter A. An introduction to the Thai (Siamese) language for European students. Victoria, B.C., Curlew P., 1955. LAUFER, Berthold. Archaic Chinese jades collected in China by A. W. Bahr, now in Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, described by Berthold Laufer. New York, privately printed for A. W. Bahr, 1927. LAUFER, Berthold. Ivory in China. Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History, 1925. LAUFER, Berthold. Jade; a study in Chinese archaeology and religion. 2nd ed. South Pasadena, Perkins, 1946. Reprint of original ed., publ. by the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 1912. LESLIE, Donald, and DAVIDSON, Jeremy. Author catalogues of western sinologists. Canberra, Dept. of Far Eastern History, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1966. Mimeographed. LIN, Yu-t'ang (***) The gay genius: the life and times of Su Tungpo. New York, John Day, 1947. LIN, Yu-t'ang (***) The importance of living. New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1937 reprinted 1938. LIN, Yu-t'ang (††364) Moment in Peking: a novel of contemporary Chinese life. Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1939. LIN, Yu-t'ang (#*#*) With love and irony. Garden City., N.Y., Blue Ribbon, 1945. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 192 LIU, James J. Y. THE LIBRARY The Chinese knight-errant. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. LIU, Hsiang (NA) Le Lie-sien tchouan (* *(4): biographies légendaires des immortels taoïstes de l'antiquité. Traduit et annoté par Max Kaltenmark. Pekin, Centre d'études sinologiques, Université de Paris, 1953. LIU, Kwang-ching. Anglo-American steamship rivalry in China, 1862-1874. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U. P., 1962, (Harvard East Asian studies, 8) LIU, Shih-shun (*) One hundred and one Chinese poems, with English translation and preface. Introd. by Edmund Blunden; foreword by John Cairncross. Hong Kong, University Press, 1967. MACKEY, Sean, ed. Symposium on the design of high buildings; proceedings of a meeting held in September 1961 as part of the Golden Jubilee Congress of the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, University Press, 1962. MARCHAL, H. Guide archéologique aux temples d'Angkor: Angkor Vat. Angkor Thom et les monuments du petit et du grand circuit. Paris, Van Oest, 1928. MARRINER, Sheila, and HYDE, Francis E. The Senior: John Samuel Swire, 1825-98; management in Far Eastern shipping trades. Liverpool, Liverpool U.P., 1967. MARTIN, Bernard. The strain of harmony: men and women in the history of China, London, Heinemann, 1948. MEDHURST, Walter Henry, A glance at the interior of China, obtained during a journey through the silk and green tea districts, taken in 1845. [Shanghai, 1849] This copy formerly belonged to the Canton Library and Reading Room, and is inscribed "W. C. Hunter, Hong Kong, January 29, 1852". ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d THE LIBRARY MICHAEL, Franz H., and TAYLOR, George H. 193 The Far East in the modern world. London, Methuen, 1956. MILLARD, Thomas F. Conflict of policies in Asia. New York, Century, 1924. MORSE, Hosea Ballou. The international relations of the Chinese Empire. [London, Longmans Green, 1910-1918 reprinted 1961] 3 vols. NACHBAUR, Albert. Mon carnet de Chine: 1920, 2ème volume [only] [Pekin, Nachbaur, 1920?]. NOTT, Stanley Charles. Chinese jade throughout the ages: a review of its characteristics, decoration, folklore and symbolism. London, Batsford, 1936. OLIPHANT, Laurence. Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan in the years 1857, 58, 59. Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1859. OLIVER, Frank. Special undeclared war. London, Jonathan Cape, 1939. OUDENDYK, William J. Ways and by-ways in diplomacy. London, Davies, 1939. PEFFER, Nathaniel. The Far East; a modern history. Ann Arbor, Univ. of Michigan P., 1958. (University of Michigan history of the modern world) POLO, Marco. The travels of Marco Polo, rev. from Marsden's translation, and ed. with introd. by Manuel Komroff. London, Jonathan Cape, 1928 reprinted 1930. POPE-HENNESSY, Una. Early Chinese jades. London, Benn, 1923. POULIK, Josef. Prehistoric art, including some recent cave-culture discoveries, and subsequent developments up to Roman times. Photographs and graphic arrangement by W. and B. Forman. Tr. by R. Findlayson Samsour. London, Spring Books, 1956. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 196 SUNG, Z. D. THE LIBRARY The symbols of Yi King; or, The symbols of the Chinese logic of changes. Shanghai, China Modern Education Co., 1934. SWALLOW, Robert W. Sidelights on Peking life. Peking, China Booksellers Ltd., 1927. TENG, Ssu-yü, and BIGGERSTAFF, Knight. An annotated bibliography of selected Chinese reference works. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass, Harvard U.P., 1950. (Harvard-Yenching studies, v. 2) TENG, Ssu-yü, and others. Japanese studies on Japan and the Far East; a short biographical and bibliographical introduction, prepared by Teng Ssu-yü with the collaboration of Masuda Kenji and Kaneda Hiromitsu. Hong Kong, University Press, 1961. THOMPSON, Robert Wallace. O dialecto português de Hongkong. Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1961. THORBECKE, Ellen. People in China; thirty-two photographic studies from life. London, Harrap, 1935. TREGEAR, Thomas R. A survey of land use in Hong Kong and the New Territories. Hong Kong, University Press, 1958. TROTSKY, Leon. Problems of the Chinese revolution ... Tr. with an introd. by Max Shachtman. 2d ed. New York, Paragon Book Gallery, 1962. Reprint of 1st ed., 1932. TUN, Li-ch'en (E) Annual customs and festivals in Peking, as recorded in the Yen-ching sui-shih-chi. Tr. and annotated by Derk Bodde. 2nd ed., rev. Hong Kong, University Press, 1965. U.S. Library of Congress. Science and Technology Division. Mainland China organizations of higher learning in science and technology and their publications: a selected guide. Comp. by Chi Wang. Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS 25 Dr. Tso was noted as a very frank, honest and outspoken person. On 26th August 1936 when Mr. (later Sir) M. K. Lo proposed a motion in the Legislative Council that the censorship of the Chinese press should be abrogated, he opposed it by saying that, although he appreciated the principle of the freedom of the press within certain limits, he must ask that local conditions and the interest of the Colony, and in particular of the Chinese community, should be taken into consideration as of first importance. He argued that as there was so much unrest and uncertainty in the political atmosphere in the Far East as a result of Japanese aggression in China, it was very easy and quite natural for the Chinese papers to over-step their bounds by giving expressions to their feelings on matters Chinese. Such expressions, if undesirable and unchecked, might create misunderstandings outside and stir up trouble inside the Colony. He advocated that prevention was better than cure; for, if bad feeling or bad blood were stirred among the masses, especially among the less intelligent sections of the Chinese community, it would be most difficult to restrain or pacify. He felt therefore that Government should continue to censor the Chinese press, although the better controlled English press needed little, if any, censorship. Although Lo's motion was also opposed by other members and was lost, Dr. Tso's frank remarks led to fierce criticisms and even hostility against him by the Chinese press and the Chinese public. This was probably the cause of his resignation in 1937. In 1931, when Sir Shouson Chow left the Legislative Council, he was succeeded by Mr. Chau Tsun-nin, now Sir Tsun-nin Chau. Sir Tsun-nin, born in 1893, is the seventh son of the late Chau Siu-ki who was acting Legislative Councillor in the years 1921, 1923 and 1924. Having received his early education at St. Stephen's Boys College, he completed his university studies at Oxford. He was then admitted to Middle Temple and became a barrister. In 1914 he returned to Hong Kong and, after practising as a barrister for a few months, turned to business. He was appointed a J.P. in 1923 and a member of the Sanitary Board in 1929. He was a member of the Legislative Council from 1931 to 1939, and was awarded the C.B.E. in 1938. After the war he was appointed to the Executive Council and was created a knight bachelor in 1956. He retired in 1959. When Robert Kotewall retired from the Legislative Council ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 66 W. SCHOFIELD small plateau averaging some 10 to 12 metres above sea level. This is a plane of marine denudation dating from a time when the sea level stood 12 metres higher than now, perhaps during the last great inter-glacial period (Riss-Würm), some 100,000 years ago. From this lower area much less clay could be washed than from the higher and steeper hill to the north; and the gentler wave-action on the west beach, normally on the lee of the island, made it about five times as long as that on the east of the isthmus, with very few large boulders. Somewhere on the west side of the 12 metres terrace, between about 1100 and 1500 A.D., there was at one or more times a small settlement, perhaps no more than one or two fishermen's huts; for at this point on the west beach are found pieces of Sung and even Ming pottery lying on the beach and in the cliff, which here is largely built up of coarse rainwash from the hill behind. There is, however, no modern settlement and no cultivation, and the island appears to be used only by boat-people, either for fishing or for burial of their dead; for on one visit Prof. Shellshear, who was with me, discovered a human skeleton of recent date two feet below the top of the sand cliff. METHOD OF INVESTIGATION The site was first discovered and investigated by Dr. Heanley and Prof. Shellshear, who worked together from about 1925 in looking for sites showing early human occupation. Much of what they found lay on the surface of the beaches, but wherever possible they noted the depth from the soil surface of objects found in the sand cliffs. Part of their material was presented later to the British Museum, and some to Mr. Eumorfopoulos and others, but the rest seems to have disappeared during the war in 1941 when the Hong Kong University was wrecked. Their code number for the site was 123, which points to a comparatively later discovery: the Tai Wan site on Lamma, for example, is numbered 83. The technique employed by the writer at Tung Kwu was as follows. Objects not found in situ were collected and the initials of the site were painted on them in Chinese ink. If a single object was found in situ, its depth from the surface was measured in inches or centimetres; it was extracted; the depth and initials of the site were written on it or its wrapping paper, and later were recorded in Chinese ink on the specimen. In 1935, by which ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d TUNG KWU ISLAND 73 ment (cord-marked, stamped, or plain) or style (ancient or proto-historic, and hard, glazed pieces attributable to historic dynasties). Another classification could be made according to the probable use of all specimens collected, including those picked up loose: this would naturally be more comprehensive. But as much has been written about the lack of stratigraphy in our Hong Kong sites, it is very desirable that where it exists it should be described and its results deduced. 1. Coarse cord-marked pottery: (See Plate 4) These pieces were most numerous in the sectors on each side of the central sandy isthmus, but a few were found even in the northern sectors on the west beach. Almost all found in these sectors (L, M, N, O and P) had a matrix of rainwash from the hill behind, and lay at greater depths than pieces from the sandy isthmus. The deepest ranged from 200 to 220 cm. from the surface, with a scattering of others between 180 and 200 cm., and a few higher still, but none above 140 cm. Above 140 cm. in the other sectors (A to K) the corded pottery becomes very common indeed, with a regular stratum at 122 cm. which must have been a habitation layer,* with thinner layers at 137 cm., and others at 112 and 95 cm., and some scattered sherds between. Hardly any were found above 90 cm. One of the pieces from sector A was very elaborately decorated with cord-marks; it was from 122 cm., the main culture layer, and resembles a few others found loose. Such ornament on a jar, which this one was, like the others found, seems to indicate that they belonged to a person of importance, or were used for special purposes. Several more pieces with elaborate cord-mark impressions were found loose on the beaches. This type of coarse pottery seems to have been in everyday use on the site, as cooking pots, store jars, drinking cups and beakers, and as stem cups, of which one stem with the attached piece of the bottom was found. None were found in a position making it possible to infer that they were used as food vessels in a burial, though two vessels of coarse pottery, both decorated with stamped designs, were found in proved graves at Shek Pik†. *See Plate 6. † See W. Schofield, "The proto-historic site of the Hong Kong Culture at Shek Pik, Lantau, Hong Kong" at pp. 235-305 of Proceedings of the Third Congress of Pre-historians of the Far East, Singapore, Government Printing House, 1940. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d TUNG KWU ISLAND 75 non-liquid food such as grain, nuts or fruit, or for holding food of some sort for the use of the dead, who would not be likely to find their food jars dissolving in their graves. The use of the net pattern with what were probably magic signs in each mesh may indicate that such jars were funerary vessels, covered with watching eyes or other patterns to repel demons from seizing and carrying off the food. (See R. Maglioni “Some Aspects of South China Archaeological Finds" in Proceedings, Third Congress of Far East Pre-historians). The variety of patterns is illustrated in Plate 8. The distribution of ornamented sherds in depth and locality presents some interesting points. In my collection, there are 33 such pieces. 16 were picked off the beach at unrecorded spots; the others were found in known stretches of beach, indicated on the sketch-map, or in situ at measured depths in the sand. It was not always easy to decide either the nature or the purpose of the designs inside the meshes, but round raised studs were probably ‘eyes', and most other designs were perhaps 'life-giving' or occasionally 'phallic'. A few were indeterminable: these were raised ridges in meshes of rhombic shape, or so shapeless that no conclusion could be drawn. Four designs of each type came from known depths, and four were found in the I, J, L, and M sectors. One, as well as four loose pieces with ‘eye' patterns, came from C sector. No real conclusion can be drawn from the recorded depths with so few specimens, except that the patterns seem to have been equally fashionable throughout the occupation of the site. From other sites, however, notably Sha Chau, a mile or two south of Tung Kwu, I got the impression that the raised stud in a single-line, square-net pattern was more popular when the upper layers of the sandbank formation were deposited. The lines of the netting on the sherds differ in number from one to four, and the angles of the meshes are either right angles, enclosing squares, or obtuse and acute angles, enclosing rhombs. Of the square-meshed nets, only four are from known depths, none lower than 122 cm., and there are three with one line round the meshes and one with three. The rhombic net impressions are much commoner than the square in the pottery found at measured levels: 16 as against 4. Nets of one and three lines show average depths of 111 cm., those of two lines—much commoner—average 170 cm. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d TUNG KWU ISLAND 79 or saucer, painted with an open flower in underglaze blue, crudely executed and very badly glazed; and the third, found at 78 cm. in the sandbank, was a bronze button wrapped in a fragment of coarse cloth, hollow and containing a small object which rattles. I interpret this as a fragment from a modern burial: its depth is noteworthy. A group of late pottery fragments is recorded on my last visit but one to the site. Three of them were at 69, 71 and 76 cm. from the surface, and one, probably a piece of tile, at 61 cm. They were near the north end of the west beach, where rainwash from the hill has increased the depth recordings compared with those on the sand isthmus. Other pieces of tile, with textile impressions on their concave sides, and gray in colour, apparently old-fashioned, lay at 1 m. depth in rainwash 25 m. north of the group described. These tiles evidently mark an occupation level, most likely fishermen's huts of the Yuan or later period; some of the fishermen may even have been using pieces of porcelain left behind by the Sung court after its retreat from the Kowloon district to its final end on the Ngai Mun mouth of the West River. The accumulation of rainwash over this level points to the island's deforestation as having started about the Sung period, when Chinese immigration from the north had increased the population, and with it the demand for timber and firewood, as the log runways on the Lantau hills testify. PUMICE An interesting feature of the site is a layer, roughly 32 cm. thick, and from 75 to 107 cm. from the surface, containing fairly numerous rolled pebbles of pumice, stained yellow by the sand. It is confined to the east shore of the isthmus. This layer evidently points to an eruption that took place in Japan or the Philippines, possibly submarine, and coming from a magma of the acid type rather than the basic, from which the 'froth' was expelled by explosions, and was drifted by wind and currents on to the Tung Kwu beach. Similar beds of ancient pumice are found at eight other sites in the Colony, very likely more, and give a very useful datum line for correlation, like a zone fossil in geology. This holds good also in some sites on the Tonkin (North Vietnam) coast visited by Dr. Andersson in 1938; his results were published in the Stockholm journal of the Museum of Far Eastern ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d TUNG KWU ISLAND 81 influence is provided by the recent discovery (in 1968) of a Shang-style stone ko (dagger-axe) on Sha Chau in association with the same soft pottery. The affinity between the decoration on the pottery of Sha Chau and Tung Kwu and Shang pottery is therefore rather stronger than Mr. Schofield's last sentence in the present article suggests. Perhaps his statement made thirty years ago in his classic report on the Shek Pik site remains true: "From the earliest period to which the Hong Kong culture can be dated a trace of Chinese influence is present." ++ Pre-war writings on Hong Kong Archaeology include: (1) J. G. Andersson — “Topography of the Hongkong Sites" in Bulletin No. 11, Topographical and Archaeological Studies in the Far East, of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1939. (2) S. F. Balfour Section II, "Archaeological Evidence" at pp. 336-341 of his article "Hong Kong Before The British” between pp. 330-352 and 440-464 of T'ien Hsia Monthly, Shanghai, 1941. (3) Fr. D. J. Finn — various articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist between 1933-36. These are now reprinted in (ed. T. F. Ryan, S.J.) Archaeological Finds On Lamma Island (Akhio) Near Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Ricci publications, Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958. (4) C. M. Heanley and J. L. Shellshear "A Contribution To The Prehistory Of Hongkong And The New Territories”, Praehistoria Asia Orientalis, I, Premier Congrès des Pré-historiens d'Extrême-Orient, Hanoi, 1932. (5) W. Schofield — "Implements Of Palaeolithic Type In Hong Kong" at pp. 272-275, The Hong Kong Naturalist, December, 1935. (6) W. Schofield — "The Proto-Historic Site Of The Hong Kong Culture At Shek Pik, Lantau, Hong Kong" at pp. 235-305 of Proceedings of the Third Congress of Pre-historians of the Far East, Singapore, Government Printing House, 1940. A photograph of Mr. Schofield taken at Tung Kwu by Professor Shellshear on 9 December, 1931 is at Plate 9. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 82 KING MONGKUT OF SIAM AND HIS TREATY WITH BRITAIN ROBERT BRUCE* When Sir John Bowring sailed up the river to Bangkok in March 1855 he was asked by King Mongkut not to fire a salute lest the citizens be alarmed. Sir John, Governor of Hong Kong and Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in the Far East, reluctantly agreed to postpone the ceremonial explosion from the Rattler's guns until the anxious citizens had been given one day's warning. The Siamese had cause for concern. The Burmese, their traditional enemies, had been conquered by the British; and a dozen years before the Bowring mission the great Chinese Empire had been defeated by the British navy. On their eastern frontier, the Siamese watched with alarm the French encroachment on Cochin-China and their own dominion of Cambodia. To the south of the Isthmus of Kra British power was spreading into the Malay States, including Kedah, a feudatory of Siam. But their fears were to prove unfounded. The Bowring mission to Bangkok was completely successful for both British and Siamese. On April 18th, 1855, a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed, an agreement which was to secure for Siam, alone in south-east Asia, independence from colonial rule and which set her on the long, painful road of modernisation. Force had been used to 'open' China. In the same year as Bowring's peaceful mission to Bangkok Commodore Perry's American warships were demanding commerce and navigation rights of the Japanese. Even after the Treaty of Nanking had * This article, entitled "King Mongkut of Siam", appeared in History Today for October 1968. The original text, slightly extended, is reprinted here by permission of the Editor. Mr. Bruce lectured to the Hong Kong Branch on this subject in February 1968. Mr. Bruce is at present a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Kentucky University, U.S.A. He served eight years as Representative of the British Council in Thailand and later filled the same post in Hong Kong where he was a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society. Mr. Bruce was also one time Director of the Government School of Chinese Language at Kuala Lumpur, Malaya. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM 83 opened the Treaty Ports and a second British conflict with China had proved the superiority of Western arms, the Chinese court refused to reform. The Japanese were quicker to read the signs. Only Siam, unlike her weak neighbours in the tropical south, was able to adapt herself to the new world without war or its threat and without loss of sovereignty. Why was this? Was it because Britain and France had agreed to the Thai kingdom being a buffer between their Indian and Indo-Chinese empires? Or was it that the King of Siam who received Sir John Bowring had more vision than most of his Asian contemporaries and was succeeded by an equally gifted son? Whatever the reasons, the Treaty of 1855 was a major factor in determining the future of the Thai kingdom. It provided for the opening of diplomatic relations with Britain and, as a natural consequence, with other western nations. It introduced extra-territorial rights to British subjects living in Siam and allowed them to own or rent property. In commerce the Treaty abolished the strangling system of monopolies owned by the King and 'farmed' to Chinese merchants - replacing it by a free market with low duties on imports and exports. The year after the conclusion of the British treaty the Americans and the French secured similar agreements and these in turn were hastily followed by treaties with various European nations. These treaties marked a turning-point in the modern history of Siam. In the century and a half which followed Louis XIV's mission to Ayuthia in 1689 Siam had little or no contact with the West. In the mid-eighteenth century her main preoccupation was the constant war with the Burmese who finally sacked their ancient and splendid capital in 1767. By the time the new house of Chakri had established the capital at Bangkok in 1782 the British East India Company had consolidated its dominion over India. The tea trade with China was growing rapidly and ports of call on the eastern run were obvious advantages. Francis Light obtained Penang island for the Company from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786 for the annual payment of $6,000 and the vague understanding of British protection. Kedah was an acknowledged feudatory of Siam, but at that time King Rama I was far too busy with the building of Bangkok to concern himself with the incident and the British were not then interested in Siam. Raffles had ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 84 R. BRUCE lost Java and gained Singapore for a reluctant Company, and Malacca followed. Siam was eventually drawn into the picture not for her trade or her position on the way to China a little off the route -- but, in fact, because of Kedah and the other northern Malay States. By 1818 the Chakri dynasty had gained sufficient strength to instigate her vassal Kedah to attack the neighbouring Malay State of Perak. The Siamese army then entered Kedah itself and the Sultan fled to Penang. British merchants there were indignant and called on the Company to intervene, but the Supreme Council in Calcutta considered that "a war with Siam would be an evil of very serious magnitude". Their policy was one of conciliation. "All extension of our territorial possessions and political relations on the side of the Indo-Chinese nations" the Company declared, "... is earnestly to be deprecated and declined as far as the course of events and the force of circumstances permit". As well as the Malay States there was the Burma question. The restive Burmese had extended their power to Arakan, thus making them neighbours of the British in India. By the eighteen-twenties Britain became involved in war with Burma in the southern part of the country. With the extension of the East India Company's interests to Siam's western and southern borders it became desirable that relations between the Company and Bangkok should be regulated on a peaceful basis. At the same time trading relations should be improved. The bad conditions of trade were described by Raffles as "slavish and humiliating” for English merchants. He gave this account of the trade: “On arrival in port the most valuable part of the cargo is immediately presented to the King who takes as much as he pleases; the remaining part is chiefly consumed in presents to the courtiers and other great men, while the refuse of the cargo is then permitted to be exposed to sale. The part which is consumed in presents to the great men is entire loss; for that which the King receives he generally returns a present which is seldom adequate to the value of the goods which he has received; but by dint of begging and repeated solicitation this is sometimes increased a little." To remedy the situation John Crawford was sent to Bangkok by the Governor General of India in 1822. Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM 85 Crawfurd obtained neither better relations nor easier trading conditions. What is more he was received by King Rama II's officials in a most ungenerous manner. Dr. George Finlayson, the Scots medical officer and naturalist on board their ship the John Adam records this impression of the dwelling given to the mission by the Siamese: "A habitation was provided for the British envoy, a miserable place, an out-house with four small, ill-ventilated rooms, approached through a trap-door from below..." An official of low rank was sent to them. All he wanted was presents for the King. Finlayson goes on: "In the urgency to obtain and the frequency of the demands of the Court for the gifts there was a degree of meanness and avidity at once disgusting and disgraceful". The King seems to have been petty as well as rude. On one occasion the Foreign Minister called on Crawfurd to help retrieve two pairs of "ordinary glass lamps" on which the King had set his heart. The lamps had been promised, said the Foreign Minister, to His Majesty and sold by a member of the John Adam's crew to somebody else! Fortunately the Crawfurd mission was not treated in such a mean manner throughout all its four months' stay at Bangkok. Dignity was restored by a Royal audience and there was much friendly talk. But he got no improvement in either trade or diplomacy. Crawfurd also tried to get the Siamese to accept a Consul and to obtain exemption for British merchants and crews from the harsh justice of Siam's law, but in these matters he had no success. He comments in his account of the Mission: "If the subjects of a free and civilised Government resort to a barbarous and despotic country, there is no remedy but submission to its laws, however absurd or arbitrary". Four years later, in 1826, the East India Company sent another mission to Bangkok. By this time the first campaign against the Burmese had been fought and won and there was a new king on the throne of Siam, Mongkut's half brother, Rama III. The mission was led by Captain Henry Burney, a nephew of Fanny Burney and military secretary to the Governor of Penang. He was much more successful than Crawfurd and came away with a treaty which somewhat improved matters. The Burney Treaty did not, however, go very far. It obtained a certain amount of goodwill regarding the frontier and the Malay States but Kedah was still accepted as Siam's vassal. Trade was to be free and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 94 R. BRUCE necessary for the late King? He would be welcome then, that is in 1852. At the same time he took the initiative in improving trading conditions. Monopolies were partly removed and duties on imports and exports reduced. For a moment it seemed that Siam's foreign relations could be improved without formal treaty and the British Government did not press the matter. But in fact there was much to be done, and with a new British Plenipotentiary at Hong Kong it was opportune to resume discussions. Sir John Bowring was a very different diplomat from his three British predecessors, Crawfurd, Burney and Brooke or the American envoys Roberts and Ballestier. He was an intellectual, a radical reformer, a disciple and editor of Jeremy Bentham, a linguist who could prattle in a dozen languages, an ex-Member of Parliament and a writer of hymns, an inveterate talker, a man with limitless energy and a Victorian capacity for pomposity and self-glory. After a career of business, politics, writing and self-appointed diplomacy in the courts of Europe, Bowring, being short of money, accepted public office as Consul at Canton. That was in 1849 when he was fifty-seven. Some five years later he became Governor of Hong Kong, Superintendent of Trade and, most glorious of all, Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary responsible for relations with China, Japan, Siam and all countries in the Far East. Bowring's five years' Governorship of the island colony on the coast of China was anything but successful. Some of his senior officials were incompetent and even corrupt, and he was unpopular among the British merchants. Worst of all he precipitated the second Anglo-Chinese war by sending warships to bombard Canton over a quite unworthy incident. But he was completely successful when he sailed to Bangkok in March, 1855, to negotiate a treaty with the Siamese. Most of the detailed business of the negotiations was done by Bowring's young assistants, his son John C. Bowring, an employee of Jardine, Matheson and Co. in Hong Kong, and Harry Parkes, his secretary, who was later to have a distinguished career as Consul at several ports on the China coast, (Mongkut referred to the young men as "Mr. Parkes and Your Excellency's upspring".) But it was Bowring and King Mongkut who created the favourable atmosphere which allowed progress to be rapid and the discussions congenial. It was clear from the start that the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM 121 of the two should in fact have proportionately more empty houses than its poorer neighbour22; it is not impossible that the sort of inefficiencies in the descent system that I have described whereby the swelling of a descent line in one generation may leave the next with more house-property than it needs or can redistribute — may account for this anomaly.* H. G. H. NELSON. NOTES 1. Göran Aijmer, "Being Caught by a Fishnet: On Fengshui in South-eastern China", J.H.K.B.R.A.S., Vol. 8, 1968, pp. 74-81. 2. Field data drawn on in this paper are derived from a period of work in Sheung Tsuen, Pat Heung, from June 1967 to October 1968. I was employed as a Research Officer of the London School of Economics, on a project financed by a grant made to Professor Maurice Freedman by the Social Science Research Council. Much of the information from the Hong Kong Government's land records was collected by my wife, whose fare to Hong Kong was provided by the London-Cornell Project for East and South-East Asian Studies, financed jointly by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Nuffield Foundation. I am very glad to acknowledge their generosity. 3. See for example J. E. Spenser, "The Houses of the Chinese", Geographical Review, Vol. XXXVII, 1947, pp. 254-273. 4. Cf. J. W. Hayes, ‘A Chinese Village on Hong Kong Island Fifty Years Ago Tai Tam Tuk, Village Under the Water', in I.C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, eds., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 33. 5. Block Crown Lease, Demarcation Districts Nos. 112 and 114, 1905; various Memorials in Yuen Long District Office; and ‘A-Roll' volume X.14. I am most grateful to the New Territories Administration for their courtesy in allowing me access to the invaluable information contained in their Land Records. 6. The current records conceal the difference between inhabited structures and "house-lots' (Crown Rent being assessed on the site rather than the structure) - a difference of which the villagers are aware. Many of them, when asked how many houses they own, will say, "so many houses and so many lots "(uk-tel_£)". It seems to me possible that some villagers may, in 1905, have been far-sighted ---or fortunate enough to register both their houses and their ruined lots, thereby avoiding the expense and complication of obtaining a New Grant Lot when they wanted to rebuild on an old site. * Groups of houses, bigger and more durable than usual, have also been built as a form of long-term investment (and prestige expenditure) by particularly wealthy men; but their hopes of producing enough sons and grandsons to justify this deliberate over-production of houses are often sadly unfulfilled. * On the subject of this article see also Mr. Hayes' note at pp. 158-160. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 138 J. T. COOPER are used mainly as street plans. No contours are shown. Four sheets cover Hong Kong Island and three cover Kowloon and New Kowloon. From these a series at 4" to 1 mile has been produced, one sheet covering Hong Kong Island and another Kowloon and New Kowloon. All the new maps and plans now being produced will, however, quickly lose their value unless they are kept up to date. A continuous revision programme is being put in hand, and it is planned that in the near future the large-scale plans of the built-up areas of the Colony will be revised at least once a year. After each block of large-scale plans is revised on the ground the smaller scale plans will be revised by photographic reduction in the drawing office. After the strenuous efforts of the last few years it can be modestly claimed that by 1972 the Colony may well be the best mapped territory in the Far East and probably in the world. Even in Great Britain, which is probably the best mapped country in Western Europe, the national mapping of large cities is at 1/1250 scale and most of the country is at 1/2500 scale, while the largest scale at which contours are plotted (at 25 ft. vertical intervals) is the 6" to 1 mile series. The plans and maps summarized at A and B below can be obtained from the Crown Lands & Survey Office, Public Works Department. Since several thousand sheets are involved and the demand for any one sheet is very limited outside of Government departments, no stocks of prints are held, but a print of any sheet can usually be supplied within an hour or two at a cost of $3.00.* The negatives of the air-photos are held by the contractor in England. Prints can be supplied by air mail within about 10 days. Cost of a contact print (9″×9″) is $23.10, (including air mail postage). Index diagrams of all plans and air photos can be inspected at Crown Lands and Survey Office, Central Government Offices, Hong Kong. A. HONG KONG ISLAND, KOWLOON, NEW KOWLOON (i) 1/600 scale (50 ft. to 1 inch) with 5 ft. contours† No. of sheets 700 * All costs should be taken to refer only to those operative at the time this Journal goes to press. Ed. † See Plate 11. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d THE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTIERI 145 The pattern of settlement presented by the map must be treated with some caution, for there is a distinct difference in the degree of complexity between the two portions divided roughly by an imaginary line running from the middle of the top margin south-westwards to the bottom edge. To the east of this divide practically all the villages known to have been in existence at that time were accurately located and named, but on the other side of the line, the settlements were under-represented and the locations of those actually cited were rather inaccurately plotted. Furthermore, some six to eight miles of the north-western boundary with Tung Kun District is conspicuously missing, but it does not seem that any part of San On lies beyond the margins of the map. The distortion of the coastline and the lack of relief contrasts on which Volonteri must have based his observations, were part of the reason for the imprecision, but the full explanation for the omission of many village sites in western San On must be sought elsewhere. Although there was a larger number of small villages in the eastern peninsula, the concentration of population was definitely in the more prosperous and long established western plains. The broad valleys of the rivers emptying into Deep Bay were settled by the Cantonese Tang clan as early as the tenth century, while the hilly tracts of the east had to wait a couple of centuries for the arrival of the Hakkas. Several farming communities on the large island of Nam Tao (Lantau) have a history dating back to the Ming and even to the Sung Dynasty, but none of these were recorded on the map. There are two possible explanations which may account for this unfortunate lack of information in western San On. The first must be that Volonteri, like his successors, found that the Hakkas were, on the whole, more receptive to Christianity than were the more wealthy and tradition-bound Cantonese and hence a concentration of missionary efforts on these communities in the early days. In view of the Tai Ping Rebellion (1850-64), with its religious and ethnic implications, the timing of Volonteri's arrival and survey work was certainly not the most opportune. He would therefore have spent more time with the Hakkas and have become more familiar with the areas around the five strategically located Roman Catholic churches in the eastern section. The result was that his knowledge of the remainder of the district did not seem to have extended far beyond ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 174 BOOK REVIEWS tive or sub-administrative area?" So far as the Kowloon school was concerned it served the rural areas immediately east, west, north of and round Kowloon, whose principal villages were linked in yeuk (yueh) (#5) or 'compacts” — though whether the latter were self-organised or instituted by Government is still unknown to me. These villages used Kowloon as a market centre though there were small local markets in some of the yeuk. Together these yeuk do not appear to have constituted either an administrative or sub-administrative area of the county (1) save in the sense that the Kowloon sub-magistrate utilised their existence as a medium of contact and, no doubt, control. Again, whether they had any tuan lien is unknown - though village tradition at Nga Tsin Wai just in front of the Kowloon Walled City has it that, assisted by the Tin Hau goddess from the village temple, whose image glistened with her supreme effort, the villagers 'saved' the City from the Red Turban rebels in the 1850s and their leading elder was given a kung ming (1) by Government in recognition of their part in the defence. In short, the detailed picture remains unfilled but we stand greatly in Mr. Wakeman's debt for having set the scene in such a stimulating and authoritative manner. Hong Kong, 1969, JAMES HAYES HONG KONG: A SOCIETY IN TRANSITION. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF HONG KONG SOCIETY, ed. I. C. Jarvie, in consultation with Joseph Agassi, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1969, pp xxix, 378, illustrated. A symposium such as this might be approached from one of two angles: its theme could be either an exploration of the conflicts within Hong Kong society, or a comparison between the problems of Hong Kong and those of other areas in a similar situation of rapid and profound change. None of the papers in this volume attempts the latter; and those which attempt the former are noticeably more stimulating and more valuable than those which attempt neither. Hong Kong is a place in which a number of almost totally disparate groups, their interests sometimes diametrically opposed (e.g. the indigenous people and the immigrants in the New Territories), coexist in an exceedingly small compass: an opportunity to survey the relationships, often Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 176 BOOK REVIEWS the modification of the position and attitudes of the British Mandarinate. This is a most valuable piece of research; it is to be hoped that Mr. Lethbridge will eventually be able to give us a fuller publication on the events and the effects of this period. Other contributions which explore the dynamics of Hong Kong society, rather than one of its disparate elements, are those of J. S. Cansdale and E. Kvan; both treat of students at Hong Kong University, a group whose significance as a focal point of East-West contact is out of all proportion to its numbers. One would like to see these enquiries, cultural and psychological, followed up in, for example, a study of Chinese government servants in Hong Kong; those, in other words, for whom the crisis of contact is subtly different. Having grasped the fruits of their education, traumatic though it may have been, they are now at the focus of political and administrative contact between East and West. What conflicts do they experience, and how are these resolved? Concerning a third paper which attempts to deal with the specific problem of East-West contact, that of the co-editors themselves -- I have considerable misgivings. I feel that they might have taken heed of the fact that few have dared to tread this ground, and thus been more wary of venturing into so intricate a subject as that of "face". They contend that Chinese concern for "face" is not only a barrier to trivial moments of daily interaction, but to the more vital (in their estimation) process of westernisation; they go so far as to ask how any society so burdened could have functioned in the past. I would emphasise the value of a more positive approach: if the traditional Chinese concept of status relations had been so unwieldy, the society would surely have failed to function at all. It would have been better to investigate, with the fullest reliance on Chinese sources, the role of "face" in the total social system of traditional China: was it in fact a barrier to, or a method of communication? The subject of "face" is at once sufficiently important to deserve a better informed and more sympathetic treatment than this, and is yet at the same time possibly less important than the authors lead us to suppose. There is little need to stress the value of Dr. Marjorie Topley's essay, here reprinted, on Chinese attitudes to wealth. Scholars in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 179 THE LIBRARY OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH, ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY Report for the Year 1968-1969 The Library has continued to grow during the past year, both through gifts and by purchases. The total number of books added was twenty, of which seven were donations, bringing the total stock to 343 volumes (excluding unbound periodicals). The Branch wishes to thank the following for their welcome gifts: Mr. J. A. H. Saunders (Wayfoong, by M. Collis) Mrs. Crawford, daughter of the late Mr. C. A. Tomes (East India Register and Directory for 1832) Mr. José dos Santos Ferreira (Macau sã assi) also the publishers of various volumes which have been sent for review in the Journal of the Branch. Purchases were made from the small balance of the Asia Foundation grant, now exhausted, and from the Branch's own funds. It is regrettable that the Library must continue to be divided between two locations: the bulk of the collection, comprising 166 books and 60 volumes of bound periodicals, is housed in the British Council, Gloucester Building. The remainder, comprising rarer books and some of less interest totalling 50 volumes, 22 pamphlets, over 200 unbound parts of periodicals, 5 Chinese books and a number of other items, are kept at the University of Hong Kong Library (where also the stock of publications of the Branch are stored). The Branch again expresses its appreciation to these two institutions for providing these facilities, which are however far from ideal, since the Library is not easily accessible, and few members have taken advantage of its existence. Members are reminded that a complete author catalogue of books in the Library is provided, on cards, in the British Council Library. Those books located at the British Council may be borrowed by members, whilst the ones kept at the University of Hong Kong are for reference only. The bookcase at the British Council is now filled, and until the Branch has its own premises it will not be possible to make available a larger number of volumes, except to those members who are able to visit the University Library. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 182 THE LIBRARY Asia; with an appendix of sailing directions for those seas and coasts. 5th ed. Taipei, Ch'eng-wen Publ. Co., 1966. YULE, Sir Henry. Y95 Cathay and the way thither; being a collection of medieval notices of China. New ed., rev. throughout in the light of recent discoveries by Henri Cordier. Taipei, Ch'eng-wen Publ. Co., 1966. The following bound volumes of periodicals are now located in the British Council Library, Gloucester Building, where they may be consulted. They are not available for loan. Asia major, London, vols. 9-11, 1962-1965, East and West, Rome, vols. 14-17, 1963-1966. France. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Bulletin signalétique. Sec. 21: Sociologie, etc., vols. 16-18, 1962-1964. Sec. 24: Sciences du langage, vol. 19, 1965. Japan quarterly, Tokyo, vols. 10-14, 1963-1967. Journal of Asiatic studies, Seoul, vols. 8-10, 1965-1967. Monumenta serica, Los Angeles, vols. 19-25, 1960-1966. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm. Bulletin, vols. 1-4, 1929-1932; 38-39, 1966-1967. Royal Asiatic Society, London. Journal, 1957-1966. Royal Asiatic Society. Korea Branch. Transactions, vols. 34-39, 1958-1962. Sarawak Museum journal, vols. 9-14, 1960-1966. Sinologica, Basel, vols. 7-9, 1962/63-1966/67. Tōhō Gakuhō, Kyoto, vols. 32-39, 1962-1968. Tsing hua journal of Chinese studies, Taipei, new series, vols. 2-6, 1960/61-1966/67. This collection comprises 14 different titles, and 75 vols. (bound in 60). Hong Kong, 28 April, 1969. H. A. RYDINGS, Hon. Librarian. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 4 trade and penetration to China and the Far East, and the Society was in part designed to bring together in London members of these societies who had returned to England and allow them to meet and continue publication of their work. It was founded in March 1823 and received its Royal Charter of Incorporation from George IV on 11th August, 1824. It is the oldest and most important Society of its kind in Europe, and its standing as the doyen of Societies promoting the study of Asia has been maintained by the devotion of generations of eminent scholars, explorers, and others who have contributed through its Journal, in public addresses and in many other ways, a rich harvest of knowledge, the practical uses of which serve to promote and aid our understanding of, and our relation with, the East. Before the acquisition of Hong Kong the movement had extended to the mercantile community in Canton, under the influence of Sir John Davis who had become a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and of correspondents of the Society who included James Matheson. The Hong Kong Branch grew out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society founded in 1845. This Society, however, in accord with the contemporary spirit of inquiry, and the enthusiasm for better knowledge of Asia in general and of China in particular, had contemplated setting up a Philosophical Society under the leadership of Andrew Shortrede, Editor of the China Mail who drafted the Society's laws based on those of the Royal Asiatic Society. Sir John F. Davis, then Governor of the Colony, by reason of his known literary and scientific acquirements rather than his official rank, was asked to be President. He suggested that the Society should seek to be admitted as a Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society with which, as a founder member, he was in close touch and with whose active President, the Earl of Auckland, he had had discussions on these lines before he left England. So in January 1847 the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was founded and all the members of the Medico-Chirurgical Society who wished to join were admitted on condition of their Society's library being handed over to the new body. Besides the Governor as President, and Andrew Shortrede as General Secretary and Major General D'Aguilar as Vice President, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 50 H. J. LETHBRIDGE Superintendent of Prisons. In the 1920s a larger number of cadets were recruited—22 in all—but the number dropped to 12 in the 1930s. Three more were appointed in 1941, just before the Japanese occupation. This increase, particularly in the 1920s, must be related to a general expansion of services and a growth in the functions undertaken by government, and to the near cessation of recruitment during the war years 1914–18. In 1901, the total number of employees in all grades of the government service was 715; and in 1938 the figure was 2,886.55 Another trend, which was to radically reshape the cadet service after the 1939–45 war and change its composition, was a growing demand for the appointment of local people to more senior posts. In the 1935 budget debate the Acting Colonial Secretary, echoing the views of the Governor, Sir Andrew Caldecott, declared that the ‘Government has fully and frankly accepted the policy of replacing wherever possible European by Asiatic employees’.56 But the pace of localisation was exceedingly slow and the policy was hardly implemented, outside the Medical and Health Department, before the Governorship of Sir Alexander Grantham, 1947–1957. Colonial officials have been caricatured as stiff, arrogant and snobbish, bemused by questions of precedence and protocol.57 They have been accused by Americans in particular of ‘spirited amateurism towards administration and technological illiteracy in relation to the problems of economic development’.58 But these characteristics in a milder form are a reflection of the values held by the English upper middle class, from whom the cadets were recruited. The cadets did not suffer a sea change on their way out by P. and O. to Hong Kong. They were gentlemen trained in the ideology of the pre-war English public schools and older residential universities. In Hong Kong they went on launch picnics; they swam, played polo, golf and tennis, walked in the New Territories, and played bridge in the evenings. A substantial number, however, did not allow their curiosity and intelligence to slumber in a sub-tropical climate: they wrote books and scholarly articles about the East. And one cadet—Geoffrey Sayer, an historian of early Hong Kong—claims that the bridge between East and West has been bridged ‘in so far as it has been bridged, by "linguist", "comprador", "missionary", "interpreter", and "cadet"’.59 ================================================================================ 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 CADETS, 1862 - 1941 53 19 Sir Francis Henry May (1860-1922), Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Dublin. Hong Kong Civil Service 1881; Captain Superintendent of Police, 1893-1902; Colonial Secretary, 1902-1910; Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of Western Pacific, 1910-12; Governor of Hong Kong, 1912-1919. First cadet to become Governor. Altogether May spent 38 years in Hong Kong. 20 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874-1938), Educated at Edinburgh University (Gray Prize; prox. accessit., Lord Rector's Essay); Magdalen College, Oxford (mentioned hon, causa Stanhope Essay). Hong Kong Civil Service 1898; Assistant Colonial Secretary, 1899-1904, Transferred to Weihaiwai 1904; Senior District Officer and Magistrate, Weihaiwai, 1906-17. Tutor to the Ex-Emperor of China, 1919-1925. Commissioner of Weihaiwai, 1927-30. Professor of Chinese and Head of Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Languages, London University, 1931-1937. 21 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at St. Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford, Hong Kong Civil Service 1899. Clementi, following his uncle and godfather, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, preferred an Eastern Cadetship, and was posted to Hong Kong. Land Officer and Police Magistrate in the New Territories, 1903-6, Clementi had the task of recognizing the land titles of over 300,000 claims. Appointed Colonial Secretary of British Guiana 1913-1921; Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1922-1925; Governor of Hong Kong, 1925-30; Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States 1930. In 1934 Clementi retired on account of ill-health. 22 James Legge "The Colony of Hong Kong", China Review, Vol. I, 1872-3, p. 173. 23 Dominions Office and Colonial Office List 1939, p. 624, states: "The average number of cadets appointed to Malaya and Hongkong during the period of 1919-31 inclusive was between 9 and 10. Since 1931 the average has been 5-8, 6 generally. In 1937, 7 cadets were appointed, and 9 in 1938. There were none appointed to Hong Kong 1937, and only 2 in 1938. The demand for cadets in Hong Kong was always small”. 24 For example, Thomas Sercombe Smith (1854-1937) was appointed a Hong Kong Cadet in 1882. In 1883 he was attached to the Colonial Office for a year; and in 1884, after a brief spell attached to the Colonial Secretary's Office, Hong Kong, proceeded to Peking where he studied Chinese, 1884-6. On the other hand, Arthur Winbolt Brewin (1867-1946), proceeded to Canton in 1888. Brewin, who was educated at Winchester, succeeded Eitel as Inspector of Schools in 1897; became Registrar General in 1901 and retired in 1912. 25 Victor Purcell The Memoirs of a Malayan Official, London, 1965, pp. 108-109. The Index to Correspondence (of the Colonial Secretariat), compiled in 1902 by R. H. Kotewall, has a cryptic entry: "Cadets studying Chinese in China must reside at a place removed from European social surroundings". 26 Alexander Grantham Via Ports, Hong Kong, 1965, p. 5. 27 I have been able to discover the schools attended by 64 of the cadets: 52 went to schools listed in the Public Schools Yearbook; the other 12 to small private schools. Two cadets (H. E. Wodehouse and A. W. Brewin), it seems, did not go to a university; five I have been unable to trace; and of the rest - 78 in all — 55 went to English universities (Cambridge 25; Oxford 23; London 4; and one each at Leicester University College, Liverpool University, and Manchester University); 10 to universities in Ireland (Trinity College 8); and 11 to Scottish universities (Edinburgh 6, -55 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 54 H. J. LETHBRIDGE St. Andrews 2, Aberdeen 2, Glasgow 1). Sir Joseph Kemp attended Cape University, South Africa and Edward Wynne-Jones the University of Wales. These university-educated gentlemen represent a social stratum lying somewhere between Mathew Arnold's Barbarians and the Philistines. A large number of them had been educated in schools animated by the ideas and ideals of Arnold's father, Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby. 28 Alexander Macdonald Thomson (1863-1924), Educated at Aberdeen University. Lecturer in Mathematics, Naini Tal College, India, 1884-5; Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Aberdeen, 1887; entered the Hong Kong Civil Service, and attached for one year to the Colonial Office, 1887; Treasurer 1898-1918. Retired in 1918. He is the only cadet who retired to live in the United States (San Mateo, California); most cadets, including the Scots, settled in the Home Counties on retirement. 29 Norman Lockhart Smith (1887-1968) was the son of Hugh Crawford Smith, M.P., Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Lewis Audley Marsh Johnston (1865-1908) the son of William Johnston, M.P., Ballykilbeg, Ireland. 30 Robert Huessler Yesterday's Rulers, Syracuse, New York, 1963, p. 98. 31 In H. R. Wells and Lam Tong Chinese Documents and Petitions, Hong Kong, 1931, some examples are given in Chinese, with English translations. There are also some interesting specimens of petitions received by the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs from Chinese in Hong Kong. In the section on the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs in the General Orders of the Hong Kong Government, 1924, we read: "Before taking action affecting bodies or classes of people, the Chinese Government is in the habit of issuing proclamations explaining the action to be taken and the reason for it and the Chinese in Hong Kong expect the same notice to be given. It is desirable that whenever the Head of a Department finds it necessary to take notice of any slackness in complying with the law, or to put a stop to gradual encroachments on the part of individuals, or to bring some new regulation into force, he should first consult the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and ask him to notify the people affected in the same way". 32 Margery Perham Lugard, vol. 2, London 1960, p. 302. 33 Ibid., p. 367. 34 Geoffrey Robley Sayer (1887-1962), Educated at Highgate School, London, and Queen's College, Oxford. Hong Kong Civil Service 1910; Director of Education 1934-6; retired 1938. 35 Stephen Francis Balfour (1905-1945). Educated at King's College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1929; died in internment during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. 36 Walter Schofield (1888-1968). Educated at the University of Liverpool. Hong Kong Civil Service 1911. First Police Magistrate 1934-1937; retired 1938. Schofield was noted for his work pre-war on the geology and archaeology of Hong Kong, in which fields he was a pioneer scholar. 37 Roger Soame Jenyns (born 1904). Educated at Eton and Magdalene College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1926; resigned in 1931 to join the British Museum. He is a noted expert on the arts of the Far East and has written extensively in that field. 38 Robert Andrew Dermod Forrest (born 1893). Educated at Aberdeen University. Hong Kong Civil Service 1919; Inspector of Vernacular Schools; Immigration Officer 1940. Lecturer in Tibeto-Burman Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. ================================================================================ 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 CADETS, 1862 - 1941 55 19 Kenneth Myer Arthur Barnett (born 1911). Educated at Mill Hill School, London, and King's College, Cambridge, Hong Kong Civil Service 1934. Retired as Director of Census and Statistics 1970. 40 Quoted in James Hope Hennessy's Verandah, London, 1964, p. 186. Hennessy is quoting, presumably, from Sir George Bowen's Thirty Years of Colonial Government, London, 1889, which I have not seen. 41 Margery Perham, op. cit., p. 302. Lugard also liked and trusted A. W. Brewin, the Registrar General: "if he once said, he was very 'pro-Chinese' this was really a compliment. He would allow Brewin to forbid his own delivery of a speech to a Chinese gathering. He could not always understand the reason ‘but I trust implicitly in him'." 42 E. J. Eitel "Chinese Studies and Official Interpretation", p. 8. 43 Alleyne Ireland, Far Eastern Tropics, London, 1905, p. 34. In 1901 Ireland was appointed Colonial Commissioner of the University of Chicago for the purpose of visiting the Far East. 44 Ibid., p. 32. 45 Norman Gilbert Mitchell-Innes (1860-1947). Educated at Repton and Edinburgh Academy, Hong Kong Civil Service 1881; Treasurer 1891; left Hong Kong Service in 1896 and transferred to the Home Prison Service. Des Voeux thought highly of Mitchell-Innes. See G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong 1841-1962, Hong Kong, 1964, p. 112. 46 Report on Defalcations in the Treasury, Sessional Papers, Hong Kong, 1893, p. 546. 47 Ibid., p. 546. 48 Norton-Kyshe, vol. 2, p. 447. 49 Ibid., p. 447. 50 Sir Arthur George Murchison Fletcher (1878-1954). Educated at Cheltenham College and Trinity College, Oxford, Hong Kong Civil Service 1901; transferred to Ceylon 1927; Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1926-9; Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner for Western Pacific 1929-36; Governor and Commander-in-Chief, Trinidad and Tobago, 1936-38. 51 Geoffrey Norman Orme (1879-1966). Educated at Cheltenham College and Hertford College, Oxford, Hong Kong Civil Service 1902. Director of Education 1924-26. Left Hong Kong Service in 1926. 52 The Report on the Land Court, 1900-1905, Sessional Papers, 1905, gives a list of the presidents and members of the Land Court in order of their appointment, most of whom were cadets. H. H. J. Gompertz was appointed in 1900 and resigned in 1904; Cecil Clementi in 1903; and C. M. Messer and J. R. Wood in 1904. The Registrars in order of appointment - all cadets were: J. H. Kemp, E. D. C. Wolfe, and S. B. C. Ross. The Land Court in 1905 consisted of three members: C. M. Messer, Cecil Clementi, and J. R. Wood. The New Territories became popular with cadets as a place to walk or shoot in on week-ends. Robert Oliphant Hutchison (1880-1920), the Superintendent of Imports and Exports, on his way to shoot snipe at Saikung fell off a launch in a squall and drowned. His body was never found. With him at the time was D. W. Tratman, the Colonial Treasurer. One imagines from the evidence that both had "tiffined" rather too well. 53 "At first British officials were limited in principle to two, dealing with police and land. In 1899 a police magistrate was appointed and also an assistant land officer to deal with land cases, and the police were placed Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 CHINATOWN IN HONG KONG: THE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN DAFYDD Emrys Evans It seems unrealistic to talk of a 'Chinatown' in a place as obviously Chinese as Hong Kong. But for a very long time, there was indeed an area thought of by the Europeans as a part of the city into which they would not normally go. This area has, right from its inception, been known as "Tai Ping Shan' or Mountain of Peace, after the Chinese name for the mountain the Europeans called Victoria Peak. When the British arrived in Hong Kong at the beginning of 1841, the north shore of the island was substantially unoccupied, there being nothing more than scattered huts between the village of Sai Ying Pun in the west and Wong Nei Chung in the east. The principal site for the new city lay in the present Central District of Hong Kong, and the first areas built up by the Europeans (apart from the waterside godowns and houses which extended from the Central Market to Causeway Bay) lay around the present Central Magistracy but rapidly extended within the first three years of the Colony's existence east and west of that spot. Although a small number of Chinese obtained grants of land in this area it is true to say that the town was exclusively European (with, of course, a number of Parsee merchants from British India) from the line of the present Garden road as far as the present Aberdeen Street and up the hill to Hollywood Road. At the time of the Colony's inception there were never more than a few hundred Europeans contrasted with several thousand Chinese who came as tradesmen and artisans. Where, then, did the Chinese live? Apart from the small town that Jardine, Matheson & Co. built out at East Point, there were three principal areas where the incoming Chinese settled at first. It is known that in the early days after June, 1841 a good many matshed huts sprang up on the hillside to the west of the area later to be the site of the main part of the town (and these were destroyed by the great typhoon in August, 1841) and one stretch of the waterfront was 'taken over'. As early as August 1841 the 'Lower Bazaar' was forming in the area of what later became Jervois Street and Bonham ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 THE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN 71 which the European had no place and was not really expected to penetrate. Two Europeans (Richard Oswald and F. J. Porter) did apparently have lots there though how they came by them is not recorded, and the American Baptist Mission Board had a school house and small chapel. A third area was Tai Ping Shan where many Chinese lived in matsheds, but it is not known how many lived there in these early days. But one inconvenient feature soon revealed itself as the demand for building land increased in the Colony on the establishment of regular government in the middle of 1843. The town was restricted in its possibilities of development to the east by the reservation of 'Government Hill' (the area on which the Government Offices now stand) for Government purposes only. Beyond Government Hill to the east lay the military cantonment and, since the main part of the town was now inevitably fixed where the present central district stands, the only possible direction which expansion could take, other, that is, than up the mountainside, was to the west. But, between Inland Lots 43 and 10 on the Queen's Road lay the Upper Bazaar, an uncomfortable fact which not only meant that there would be a large number of Chinese-type houses in the middle of the 'European' town (with their attendant rather greater risk of fire) but that their presence would interfere with the proper development of the area with drainage and streets and so on. In terms of extent, the Upper Bazaar was occupying almost 11 acres of valuable building land for which speculators would be willing to offer far higher Crown Rents than those which the then inhabitants were paying. So almost inevitably, the suggestion came to move the Upper Bazaar lot-holders away to another location. The story of the removal of the Upper Bazaar is of interest on several counts: it is the first 'resumption' of land for public purposes in the history of Hong Kong, a process since employed on an ever increasing scale by the Government for the improvement and redevelopment of the environment. It provides us with an insight into government practices of the day and the cumbersome manner in which decisions could be taken and implemented, and also of the role of the Press at that time. Finally, it led to the establishment, as a matter of deliberate Government policy, of a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 80 A. D. BLUE difficult problems to the governments concerned, and cruel, drastic, but ineffectual attempts were made to halt immigration. The massacres of thousands of Chinese in the Philippines in 1603, 1639, and again after the British occupation of 1763, are the most celebrated of many such occurrences, the last being caused by the Chinese having shown a marked preference for British rather than Spanish rule. In Indonesia the worst massacre took place at Batavia in 1740. Similar pogroms, but on a much smaller scale, continued in the Philippines down to 1820, and post-war Indonesia has shown a disquieting tendency to put the clock back two centuries in their treatment of their Chinese. But although victims of periodic bouts of xenophobia from the local peoples, in most countries of South-east Asia and at most times the Chinese were protected by the colonial governments which recognised the value of Chinese labour for their economies. By the early decades of the 19th century the coolie trade between China and South-east Asia had attained substantial proportions -- although still nothing like so great as it was to become later -- and most of the trade was in the hands of Chinese junks of from 300 to 400 tons. Such craft could only sail before the wind and carried crews of up to ninety sailors, enough to man five European ships of the same size. They took anything from twenty to thirty days between south China and the Straits or Bangkok, and the coolies had a very uncomfortable time on the passage. No charts were carried, the only navigational instrument being a very rude compass, and they kept as close to land as possible. In the 1830s up to eighty such junks sailed to Bangkok every year, usually from Swatow, and by the mid 1840s, by which time European steamships were entering the trade, it was estimated that about 15,000 coolies were emigrating to Bangkok every year. A description of these old trading junks is given in S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom (London, W. H. Allen & Co. revised edition, 1883) vol. 1, p. 753. It shows inter alia that the number of passengers carried on these junks to the Nanyang could be very great. ... "The cabins look more like niches in a sepulchre than the accommodations for a live passenger. The crew lie upon deck most of the time, and are usually interested in the trade of the vessel or an adventure of their own. The great number of passengers which have been stowed in these vessels entailed a frightful loss of life when they were wrecked. In February, 1822, Capt. Pearl, of the English ship Indiana, coming through Gaspar Straits, fell in with the cargo and crew of a wrecked junk, and saved one hundred and ninety-eight persons (out of one thousand six hundred with whom she had left Amoy)." Ed. ================================================================================ 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 CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 89 making their first venture abroad in those years were joining relatives or friends, and had been able to borrow enough on future earnings to ensure a comfortable passage. There were always a few unfortunates, however, who, in their anxiety to escape from the poverty and misery of their native village, had borrowed their passage money from money lenders or their tongs at ruinous rates of interest. Conditions for most of this century were certainly vastly changed from the middle decades of the 19th century. Prospective passengers lived in boarding houses in Amoy or Swatow when waiting for a ship, and the ship's compradore often had a financial interest in these boarding houses or worked in close co-operation with their owners. As there was keen competition in the 20th century emigrant trades, not only between different shipping companies, but under the compradore system — between different ships in the same company, the prospective passengers were well treated in the boarding houses, which bore little resemblance to the barracoons of the 'bad old days'. Beside the China coasters, overseas ships on the Far Eastern run also took part in the emigrant trade, especially to the Straits and Bangkok, as this could be fitted into their wayport schedule; and even the large and luxurious Canadian Pacific liners were not above carrying a few hundred deck passengers from time to time. Ben Line steamers, too, sometimes called at Amoy and Swatow and took up to two hundred deck passengers to the Straits or Bangkok or vice versa, but on many overseas ships the passengers had to supply and cook their own food, and sleep on wooden planks laid over steel decks. The overseas ships were not normally so well suited for deck passengers as the regular coast ships, and by the First World War the latter had captured the cream of the trade. In the South-east Asian trades south-bound traffic normally exceeded north-bound, but not to a disproportionate extent. Many overseas Chinese returned home, either for a holiday or to retire, and north-bound ships were especially busy just before Chinese New Year, and south-bound just after this important festival. These north-bound ships, where many passengers were carrying the savings of a few years or even of a lifetime, were the most tempting for pirates, and were specially equipped to deal ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 90 A. D. BLUE with this menace. North-bound ships also carried several dead Chinese in their coffins, and spare coffins to accommodate any who might die on their way home. These latter were not buried at sea, but were invariably carried on to China for interment in their ancestral village, Not every Chinese who emigrated to the 'Nanyang' became a wealthy 'towkay', but most overseas Chinese communities were by Chinese standards prosperous, and all retained their liking for traditional Chinese foods and delicacies. This resulted in a substantial south-bound trade in such things as Swatow cabbages and oranges, live and preserved fish, lychees, Chinese wine, and preserved eggs; all of which paid high freight either to the shipping company or to some member of the crew. Amoy and Swatow had always been the major ports for emigration to South-east Asia, and they retained this importance until emigration came to an end shortly after the outbreak of the Pacific War; while Hong Kong was always the base for most of the ships engaged in the emigrant trade. The China Navigation Company was the coast company most concerned with the emigrant trades to the south during this century, although the three principal coast companies — China Navigation, Indo-China Steam Navigation, and China Merchants Steam Navigation Companies — were all equally concerned with the deck passenger trades on the coast and on the Yangtse. L For most of the inter-war years the China Navigation Company operated weekly services from Amoy and Swatow to Bangkok and Singapore respectively, with four ships on each service. They had also one ship on a fortnightly service between Amoy and Manila, and four ships on a weekly service between Shanghai and Haiphong, with calls at the intermediate ports of Amoy, Swatow, Hong Kong, and Canton. In this latter trade cargo and deck passengers were equally important. The Bangkok trade had previously been operated by a German company, Nordeutscher Lloyd, which had bought out an earlier British concern, the Scottish Oriental Company, in 1899. Butterfield and Swire had been agents for both companies in south China, and when the German company in turn sold out during the early years of this century, Butterfield and Swire inherited this increasingly valuable ================================================================================ 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 91 trade for their own China Navigation Company. During most of the inter-war years a Norwegian company also operated a weekly service between Swatow and Bangkok in opposition to the China Navigation Company; but the latter's faster and more modern ships enjoyed the lion's share of this trade. The Singapore trade was an inheritance from the Blue Funnel Line, and came to the China Navigation through their close connection with the Holt family. For several decades before the First World War much of the emigrant trade to Indonesia was in the hands of German companies, but when German overseas shipping was eliminated after the outbreak of war in 1914 this trade passed to Dutch companies, in particular the K.P.M. and the J.C.J.L. lines. Previous to 1890 a consortium of Dutch planters had employed coolie brokers in Singapore and Malaya for recruiting purposes, and Malaya was always something of a reservoir of Chinese labour for much of South-east Asia, especially for Indonesia and Siam. Entry into Malaya was easier than elsewhere, and there were more frequent and cheaper shipping services between south China and the Straits. It was always a comparatively simple matter for Chinese—authorised or unauthorised—to cross the short Malacca Straits into Indonesia or the ill-defined boundary between Malaya and Siam. The Indo-China Steam Navigation Company was not nearly so deeply involved in the southern deck passenger trades as the China Navigation Company, but their Japan-Calcutta ships took part in the Straits trade on their way up and down the coast, and their Hong Kong-Sandakan ships had a near monopoly of the comparatively small trade to British North Borneo. Most coasters on the Hong Kong-Shanghai service called at Canton and carried deck passengers, but there was also a small fleet of specially designed river steamers employed between Hong Kong, Canton, and Macao, which provided daily and nightly services between the three ports, and thus an out and in connection for emigrants. The Canton river steamers were smaller editions of the Yangtse steamers, and their night departure from the Praya at Hong Kong, when they were a blaze of flamboyant and garish lights, was a spectacular sight before the Second World War. The six or seven hour passage between Hong Kong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 92 A. D. BLUE and Canton, and the shorter passage between Hong Kong and Macao, was for many Chinese passengers an opportunity for a prolonged gambling and drinking session. The peak years of Chinese emigration to South-east Asia were those immediately preceding the world-wide economic depression of the early 1930s. The rubber and tin industries of South-east Asia were particularly hard hit by this depression, and Chinese immigration into all the countries of the region was severely curtailed. There had only been a very partial revival to pre-depression levels when the Pacific War broke out, soon after which Chinese emigration completely ceased. Owing to the different countries of South-east Asia adopting different methods of classifying nationality, it is practically impossible to obtain an accurate estimate of the number of Chinese in the region at any time; but well-informed authorities agree that at the outbreak of the Pacific War the number of people who regarded themselves as of Chinese race was about 8 million, that is between 5 and 6% of the total population. By far the greatest concentration of Chinese was in Malaya, where in 1947 the Chinese population of the Federation and Singapore was 2,605,000 out of a total population of 5,823,000. Singapore was, and still is, almost a Chinese city, and in 1947 there were 730,000 Chinese in a total population of 941,000. It is even more difficult to estimate how many Chinese were moving between China and South-east Asia in any year, but considering isolated figures relating to different countries, this must have amounted to several hundred thousands when the traffic was at its height. In 1929 Indo-China had a surplus of Chinese immigrants over emigrants of 40,000; while in the same year 195,000 Chinese males entered Malaya. In 1937 again some 8,000 Chinese entered British North Borneo. Although mainland Chinese have been unable to travel abroad since 1949, Chinese still move between Hong Kong, Formosa, and South-east Asia; but their numbers are infinitesimal in comparison with the vast traffic during the colonial era. However, the China Navigation Company is engaged in two specialised passenger trades which bear a little resemblance to the emigrant and deck passenger trades of the old days. One is the carriage of indentured labourers from Hong Kong to the Pacific phosphate ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 A BRITISH WARTIME CHART SHOWING HONG KONG 129 As can be seen from the illustration the chart has a somewhat old-fashioned appearance as it has the radiating lines indicating the 32 directions in the same manner as the Mediaeval Portulan Charts. It would appear that these lines indicate true and not compass bearings as one East to West line meets the point indicating 21° 54' N. on both sides of the chart, also a North line to the south of Hong Kong (not shown on the illustration) has a fleur-de-lis emblem on it; this is the usual symbol to indicate true north. The scale of the chart is not given, but the sides are graduated at one minute intervals of latitude. These can be taken as Sea Miles in use at that time. The precise length of one degree of latitude was in dispute during the eighteenth century, and lacking other information it is probably safest to assume that the value obtained by Picard in 1669 would have been used. This assumption would give a scale of 1:333,475, with 10 Sea Miles equivalent to 56 mm., 10 kilometres equivalent to 30 mm, and 10 Statute Miles equivalent to 1.9 inches. It should be noted, however, that the Kilometre did not come into use until 1799 and that the Statute Mile was established by an Act of Parliament in 1824.3 The latitudes of the southern point of Macao on the chart is 22° 12′ N., being 14 minutes too far north. The latitude of Canton, at the position of modern Shameen, is 23° 9′ N., being 3 minutes too far north, while Kowloon City at 22° 21' N. is 1 minute too far north. These latitudes are very accurate for the period, but not surprisingly so, considering the fact that the Portuguese had been in the area for more than 250 years, and that as the positions are within the tropics their latitudes could be deduced from the date of the sun at Zenith with the help of the Solar Declination Tables. The small error for Kowloon City is fortuitous, due to surveying errors.4 Regarding the content of the map it is clear from the title that we are faced with a composite map with at least two and possibly three distinct sources. These are 1. A Portuguese Chart 2. A Chinese Chart 3. Possibly original surveys by Hayter or others. The Portuguese influence can be seen in the names "Furado" and "Porado”. The contents of the "Chinese Chart of the Macao Pilots" is not known, but if the maps in the local gazetteer of the Hsin-an Hsien are any indication they are not likely to have been based on accurate surveys. ================================================================================ 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 135 the There are, of course, other books on the same subject topography of Kwangtung province for instance or that of Tung Kun district which once included San On district.2 Many of them contain identical phrases and documents and do not add much to the material contained in the San On topography, which is sufficient basis for a history of this region during the last 500 years. Some earlier material is contained in family records and one or two phrases in books; but it is scant, and the date where there is no printed record occurs very early for a place within the Chinese Empire. And yet the region we are describing cannot be properly understood without some consideration of its prehistory. A place on the seaboard generally has a complicated agglomeration of races in its population, and not only does our region illustrate this, but it also has a complex kind of seaboard. To its west is a wide river estuary which brings down mud from all over Kwangtung province and deposits it along the coast. There is a good deal of flat plain which has been partly created by the deposit and partly by rice growers and reclamation, especially round the coast of Deep Bay. Around these plains are steep hills, the most westerly being the T'un Mun3 range on the mainland and the island of Tai Yü Shan or Lantao. There are many rocky islands with high peaks to the south, the biggest of which are Tsing I, Lamma, and Hong Kong and narrow straits through which the tide sweeps in an east-west direction, the most important being known as K'ap Shui Mun, Lai Yü Mun, and Fat T'ong Mun.5 The sea is roughest towards the south and east, and the country around this part and as far as Mirs Bay is very rugged and not easily accessible. There are many isthmuses and shallows, the most important being Mirs Bay itself, the Taipo Sea and the Sha Tau Kok isthmus, above which is the highest mountain of all Ng T'ung. The reader is invited to identify these names on the accompanying map* if he does not know them already. This region has a country population consisting of four distinct communities known in Chinese as the Tanka, the Hoklo, the Punti and the Hakka. 2 廣州縣誌 and 東莞縣誌 3 屯門 4 大嶼山 or 大溪山 5 汲水門 鯉魚門 佛堂門 * Plate 16. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 142 S. F. BALFOUR throwing or shooting since they are so thin that they would break if used for stabbing. Tools of soft stone for sharpening them showing traces of use have also been found. Other polished stone artifacts found in great quantities are ornaments. These are made of shale or of carefully chosen brown or greenish basaltic rock or of quartz. They consist of rings, bracelets and of small discs or buttons, carefully shaped and polished and most of them very fragile. In some cases it is difficult to decide what part of the body they were meant to adorn. Most of the rings have a very thin section and they may have been used as earrings, the section being passed over the lobe of the ear, or alternatively they may have been belt buckles. The small discs may have been used as ear plugs. But these theories are by no means certainties. In only a few cases can we be sure of the ornament's use; for instance, a pair of identical brown shale bracelets with flanges on the inner circumference, can be slipped onto a very slender wrist. Their workmanship is remarkable, and a break in one of them had been repaired by drilling small holes on either side of the broken pieces so that they could be bound together with ligaments. The finish of many of these stone implements is very striking to people like ourselves who do not know the use of stone in our everyday life. There are many existing populations who use stone tools and ornaments, but it is chiefly from the adze that we can derive some idea of the cultural affinities of this people. The adze is used over a wide area embracing the Indian Ocean, Polynesia and even South America. But the "shouldered" or "stepped" adze of the type found in our region is particularly found in the East Indies. A tool used in the way we have described the use of the adze is still common in those parts. It is therefore quite certain that early population of these sites had once a connection with the "Indonesians" or the peoples that settled in the archipelago between the Indies and Polynesia. The importance of the Hong Kong finds is that they establish beyond a doubt the presence of this people in South China. But when we take the conjunction of these stone implements with pottery and bronze we are faced with the difficulty of determining how far these people were influenced by Chinese craftsmanship. ================================================================================ 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 145 Iron was also used to make arrow heads, fishing hooks, and knives and the finding of moulds for making them points again to the fact that they were made on the spot. Finally we must mention that skeletons have been found in those sites; the horn of a large deer of species unknown; and that near the Lantau site is the pattern carved on a rock. This pattern is used by the aborigines of Hainan Island for tattooing, but it would be unsafe to infer a connection on these grounds alone. It is, however, a proof of aboriginal settlement. This brief summary of the prehistoric population of our region must suffice. In later chapters we shall try to discover what these people were and when they lived. At present, it is necessary to emphasise that they were a seaboard people who practised primitive industries of their own, but who imported a great many of their possessions either from China, Indo-China or the East Indies archipelago; in other words, they were connected up with a trade route, or were even possibly one of the links in the trade routes which in early times were used in the Far East. III. SOUTH CHINA BEFORE THE HANS There is all kinds of evidence as to a prehistoric migration of peoples using stone tools between India, the Far East, Polynesia and even Europe. These migrants, who are called "Austronesians” by the prehistorians, are believed to have navigated the seas and rivers in outrigger boats and to have introduced a very early exchange of objects the prehistoric world valued, such as cowries, tortoise shells and the like. The archaeological finds point to a survival of this culture in South China. How late it survived is not absolutely clear and unfortunately no authoritative opinion on the subject has been given. But from the position of the sites it might be supposed that the inhabitants were pushed onto the seacoast by the pressure of other peoples and their survival may have lasted well into historic times, even possibly as late as the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960), the date, as we shall see, when Chinese peasants first began to migrate into this region. The Tanka might, in theory, be the descendants of these earlier Page 146 is missing Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ 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 147 about the customs of Southern peoples published during our era. Another point worth mentioning is the resemblance between the dragon boat and boats in scenes of everyday life depicted on bronze drums found in Tonkin. These drums were made by the natives under the tuition of their Chinese masters. One of them shows the picture of a long thin boat with a dragon's head being paddled by its crew with a drum in the middle. Another possible survival of Indonesian culture might be seen in the matshed dwelling in our region. It is unnecessary to build matsheds in a place where typhoons occur so frequently and where there is an abundance of stone, and the explanation can only be given that matshed dwellers have no tradition of building in stone. The Indonesians are invariably matshed dwellers, they do not even use stone walls as protection. In many places they build houses on stilts. This however may be an independent custom on either side, although it should be noted that among some peoples of Indo-China there are identical huts on stilts akin to those of the Tanka and of the water population in the West river regions. Again remembering the phenomenon that one religion can take on the divinities of another, we cannot ignore the possibility that the Tanka worship of Tin Hau (A1⁄2, i.e., the Heavenly Queen) their principal saint is an adaptation of an earlier aboriginal goddess. The original Tin Hau lived in Fukien and kept a lighthouse to guide sailors to port. She was officially canonised by the Chinese Board of Rites at the request of local officials but there was a much earlier goddess known among the Indonesians who could avert storms or drought. Temples to her existed in the Tonkin delta at the beginning of our era. It is not likely that the Tanka adopted the enthusiastic worship of such a late personage as Tin Hau without some tradition behind it. However we can never be certain that the Tanka are of Indonesian stock. Whether or not the Indonesians have left descendants, it is certain that they were the founders of maritime commerce in the Far East. Using perhaps canoes and coasting in such stages as for instance from Swabue to Lamma Island, 8 續齊諧記 and 越地記, both Han dynasty books. 9 V. Goloubew-Le Peuple de Dong-Son. (Hanoi.) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 148 S. F. BALFOUR they made the primitive links in the chain of commerce before the foreign traders from India and Persia arrived about the 4th century A.D. In the present state of archaeological knowledge we do not know how far east this early trade route spread. It may have linked up Japan and Korea for instance. It seems certain that it spread to the Tonkin delta, down the coast of Annam and possibly to Malaya, Java and Sumatra. Very likely, also, is the existence of the trade routes inland by the great rivers throughout South China and Tonkin. There is unfortunately no Chinese historical record of this trade. The Chinese accounts of aboriginal life in South China are very indefinite and unsatisfactory. In very early times (in the book of Chuang Tzŭ and the Book of Rites) the South of China was called Nan Yüeh or South of the Mountain Barrier. Texts of the Han dynasty give in greater detail the geographical divisions of the coast. The South of Fukien was called Ou, Fukien Min Yüeh, Kwangtung and Kwangsi South Yüeh and the western part of Kwangsi with the Tonkin delta Lo Yüeh or Ou Lo. These divisions cannot be taken as based on any real knowledge of racial distinctions. A few texts give us a meagre description of the natives. The Han history describes the inhabitants of Min Yüeh as "cutting the hair short, tattooing the body, possessing neither towns nor villages but living in valleys of bamboo, expert at fighting on the water but of no use on land, having neither chariots nor horses nor bows and arrows." We also know that in 180 B.C. Chinese traders were forbidden to sell iron to the natives of South Yüeh which indicates that they were using stone weapons. Another text of the Han history connects the people of South Yüeh with those of Lo Yüeh or Tonkin by saying that "they are both of the Mi tribe". It is tantalising that in spite of much account of battles and biographies of chieftains the Chinese historians have left no real description of aboriginal life. Such was their dislike of barbarians that they either ignored them completely or wrote about them as if they were pure Chinese. According to the San On topography the tribe of Yao, a people of Sino-Tibetan stock affiliated to the Miao, existed to the north of our region some 200 years ago. They live now in Kwangtung and Kwangsi besides other places such as Hainan Island. They tattoo their bodies and use stone implements. They ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 152 S. F. BALFOUR Their presence in Tongkin and Annam attracted traders from the South Seas and from India. The later Han history mentions that in A.D. 132 the towns of Jih Nan farthest south in Annam, Chiu Chên and Chiao Chih were focal points of navigators. "Cattigara" was mentioned by Ptolemy about this time as the port of the Chinese; it has been identified with Chiao Chih or Hanoi. Traders came to it from India and from Yeh T'iao or Java. During the 3rd or 4th century these foreign traders penetrated as far as Canton. But the Chinese did not do more than encourage the foreign traders to come. What coastal trade existed must have been carried on by the aborigines, who were practically unaffected by the Chinese conquest. These aborigines, particularly in the seas between Annam and Canton, turned themselves into pirates and harassed the early western traders to an enormous extent. An independent centre of trade remained in Min Yüeh which was practically untouched by the Chinese until the T'ang dynasty. This centre must have been in touch with the civilised region of Wu, at the Yangtze mouth, and no doubt had contacts further with Japan. Little is known about it, but its importance must have been very great and it was lasting. Even in the Middle Ages Marco Polo referred to South China as Manzi or the Land of the Man-Tzů. In one or two ways the modern Fukienese show traces of contact with Japanese culture in their use of wooden utensils for instance. It is quite likely that the porcelain, especially the glazed type, found in our region was imported from the North East. When the Han dynasty broke up in A.D. 220 the empire they had founded from Canton to Indo-China was disrupted. The garrisoned towns were emptied of troops during the civil wars of the Three Kingdoms period, and right up to the T'ang dynasty the Chinese never regained their imperial hold over the South coast. The region was therefore left to the semi-tutored aborigines and to the foreign traders. There is no evidence at all of any settlement of peasants. The Cantonese language is not an archaic form of Chinese, and some of the eldest sub-dialects, for instance that of T'oi Shan district, do not point to a pre-Tang population. We must therefore recognise a break between the Han and Tang dynasties when the aborigines continued their tribal life and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 172 S. F. BALFOUR Duarte Coelho, a captain who arrived at T'un Mun a little before Fernando d'Andrade, had had to fight no less than 35 engagements with local pirates, and his fleet was almost decimated by pirates while he was away in Canton. Besides pirates, they had to put up with a local boycott. The inhabitants had refused to help when their ships had been wrecked in a typhoon and gave them no provisions. It was natural that Simon Andrade decided to solve these problems by building a fort with forced labour and by making raids on the pirates' bases. The Chinese themselves recognised this, for one of the arguments that was put before the government for continuing trade negotiations was that the Portuguese were suppressing piracy at Lo Man Shan and other places. The Chinese officials might in fact have tolerated the outrages committed by Simon Andrade if he and his companions had not designed to annex territory at T'un Mun and organise a trading colony under the Portuguese flag. The inscription with the arms of Portugal had been one of the signs of this intention; the fort Andrade built was another. The Chinese government, which had heretofore encouraged colonies of foreign traders, now felt that their liberality was being exploited. A Chinese text explains the situation as follows: "Some time near the end of Ching Tê's reign (1506 to 1522) a people not recognised as tributary to China known as the Feringhis (1) together with a crowd of riff-raff filtered into the harbours between T'un Mun and Kwai Ch'ung and set up barracks and a fort, mounted many cannon to make war, captured islands, killed people, robbed ships and terrorised the population by their fierce dominion over the coast. Their ambition being to annex territory they made a survey and set up boundary stones and tried to administer the various other foreign traders within this area."28 In this text Kwai Ch'ung must refer to a village of that name south-east of Tsün Wan and opposite Tsing I Island. The harbour between the mainland and Tsing I Island is one of the most sheltered in the whole region and must, I think, have been one of the main anchorages of the foreign ships. The place referred to as T'un Mun O is Castle Peak Bay itself and this was undoubtedly the place where the subsequent battle between the Portuguese and 28 Chang T'ien-tse connects these boundary stones with the tablet bearing the Portuguese arms mentioned by Barros. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 184 NOTES AND QUERIES that the bay presented for boats taking shelter in bad weather, these pirates were gradually displaced by fishing people and shopkeepers, leading in time to a permanent settlement. (See 香港百年史 Centenary History of Hong Kong 南中編譯出 Hi Ep 7 n.d. pp. 74-75). The name Ngo-yan-wan appears to have been used officially, too. Government Notification No. 69 of 1857 which appears in The Hongkong Government Gazette for May 9, 1857 describes District No. 2 Show-ke-wan as being "from Hoong-heung-loo to the village of Ngo-yan-wan, taking in Wong-kok-tsai, Chut-che-mooey, Shui-cheang-wan, Show-ke-wan and Ngo-yan-wan," but it is not clear to which part of the present extended Shau Kei Wan Ngo-yan-wan belonged, The oldest part of Shau Kei Wan, where original settlement took place, is along the Main Street East which we shall visit today. Many old houses probably dating from the 1850's to 1870's are still in existence. It is likely that the style of building followed that in contemporary Victoria and the Western district, though successive waves of redevelopment have left few traces of them there. They are all shop houses, and a count of the present shops in old premises shows besides groceries and general stores 9 Chinese herb shops, 7 josspaper shops, 7 fishing suppliers, 5 goldsmiths and 5 rice shops, indicating long established lines of trade with a predominantly fishing clientele*. In Main Street East is the Tin Hau Temple. The existing building dates from the 1870's, but since the inscription above the entrance states this to be a reconstruction, it is likely that a smaller building stood on the same site for many years before. A stone tablet dated 1876 states that it was badly damaged by the famous typhoon of 1874, necessitating a major repair. In this connection there is an interesting parallel with the Tam Kung Temple below which had also to be rebuilt a short time after its first construction owing to a more than usually destructive typhoon. The temple contains two other major shrines to Kwun Yam (Goddess of Mercy) and Lui Cho (one of the most prominent among the later Taoist patriarchs). see * A prominent local shopkeeper has told me that, pre-war, fishermen would not go outside Main Street East for business or pleasure. The shop houses are shown in plates 21-22, ================================================================================ 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 191 The caretaker, Mr. Liu Wai-tong deserves special mention. Born in the caretaker's quarter, he is the third generation of his family to fill this post, as he says his father and grandfather before him held it also. Old Tai Hang Not much to look at, but the object is to see the old houses. Tai Hang was one of the old villages of Hong Kong Island. There are about 15-20 houses of the former village still standing, mostly in one row with a few others scattered among new buildings, and all built more or less to the same pattern.* They are situated in New Village Street (*†††) although an old resident tells me that this is a misnomer because they represent the old village known as Tai Hang Lo Wai (★★) which has always stood on this spot. The population of Tai Hang at the 1911 Census was already 1,574 persons. Formerly situated not far from the shore, reclamation began there in the 1880s by which time the area was already known as Causeway Bay - and ended with the development of reclaimed land for Victoria Park in the early post-war period. ▬▬ The village was a multi-clan one settled by the Hakka families of Wong (*), Cheung (3), Lee (†), Chu (*) and Ip (#). The first three are said to be the oldest families. A Wong now aged 45 is in the fourth generation which means that these families probably arrived in the area about the time that the British took over Hong Kong in 1841. Old residents say that besides some farming and fishing, the inhabitants kept some of the first dairy farms on the Island, long before the Dairy Farm started in 1886, and also engaged in laundry work. The name of the main street of present day Tai Hang, Wun Sha Street (r), which means 'washing cloth', refers to this early line of business. One of the most interesting aspects of Tai Hang is its fantastic sports record. For unknown reasons, the old Tai Hang families produced a great many star soccer players before the war. I have been told that on five occasions at the pre-war Far East games the China Football Team were the winners, and that 90% of the team came from Tai Hang: again, that nine out of the *See plates 23-24, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 BOOK REVIEWS 213 academic subject. Indeed, Scott has tried this with American actors: the Butterfly Dream was played at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts of New York. This approach to theatre breaks a new path in research. Generally speaking, academics store culture in books as if they were canning it — but tinned food loses its flavour. Here Scott treats Chinese plays as a living part of culture, made to be played, not to be kept in libraries. But if the author, by trying not to cut culture off from life, shows that universities need not necessarily be funeral parlours of art, his publisher is singularly backward. It is very difficult to visualise movements from written descriptions alone. It would have been much better if we could have had photos and drawings of each movement in the margin and colour photos for the costumes; and if, as well as providing the tapes, the publisher could supply a little film. Books continue to be published on the same old pattern. In this instance, a little case with a tape, a film, an album of photos and the text itself would have suited the aims of A. C. Scott far better. A documentary film might have been even better than a book; but from my own experience here in Hong Kong, where I have tried to persuade companies and so-called “cultural” organisations to make a purely explanatory film on Chinese opera, I have learnt that films are the monopoly of a mafia and the scholar is condemned to be book-bound. Hong Kong, 1970. ANON GOLDEN GUIDE TO HONGKONG AND MACAO. P.H.M. Jones, Hong Kong, Far Eastern Economic Review Ltd., 1969, pp. 453, with colour and black and white illustrations and maps. HK$10. (Paperback) The preface to this work states that the Far Eastern Economic Review had long planned a companion volume to its Golden Guide to South and East Asia in the form of a detailed guide to Hongkong. This has now materialized in the present Guide ‘which is designed primarily to help tourists and travellers on their way and to sharpen their interest in the modern scene'. The compiler ================================================================================ 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 85 some of his property was sold at Sheriff's sale in 1847. Akow and Company sold its Queen's Road property in 1850, though Kam Cheong remained in Hong Kong. In 1852 he contributed five dollars to Dr. Hirschberg's Hospital. His last recorded activity in Hong Kong is the sale of two lots in 1855. At this time Akow and Company was operating a hotel for foreigners in Canton. After the death of Chinam the government still had hopes of attracting substantial merchants. A group of Fukienese inquired regarding conditions for settlement. For several generations a number of these merchants had operated large Hongs in Macao and the Hong Kong Government would have liked to induce them to move to Hong Kong. The Government therefore welcomed application from Fukien merchants for land grants. In the light of the ancient rivalry between Cantonese and Fukienese, it was felt that the allocation of land to this group needed to be handled with care. The Governor explains in his report to England that, These people constitute a very peculiar race, being far more commercial, migratory, and maritime in their habits than any other natives of China. Their spoken language is altogether unintelligible to the people of Canton, between whom and themselves a species of irreconcilable feud has existed from time immemorial. Hence they cannot inhabit the same neighbourhood without quarrels, and occasionally bloody conflicts. If land is put up by auction the Fokien (or Chinchew men) would in competition with the Cantonese either be excluded altogether, or mingled with the Cantonese be to the prejudice of general peace and order. It is important to secure the settlement of this class of people (in the present instance men of substance). The Council agreed with me to grant them a special location... placed much to their satisfaction in the neighbourhood of East Point, and they have commenced building on five contiguous lots, 15 This report was dated July 1845. However, in the Surveyor General's return of registered allotments as of 24 June 1846 he reports that the lots granted to the Chinchew merchants had been thrown up by them. So again the prospect of the settlement ================================================================================ 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 87 Only a few were able to survive the perils of the business. They were not accustomed to building in the Western style and therefore often underestimated on contracts, resulting in their bankruptcy. In 1844 the Land Officer comments that "almost all contracts hitherto entered into with Chinamen have been obliged to be finished by Government, for the works were taken at far too low an estimate, and the consequence was, when the parties found they would become losers, both contractor and security decamped, and in some instances they were imprisoned."16 One of the few contractors who did survive in this early period of Hong Kong's history was Tam Achoy †, alias Tam Sam Tshoy, alias Tam Shek Tsun, although he too almost went into prison for debt, escaping only through the generosity of his creditor. Achoy was generally recognized as the most prominent leader of the Chinese community when an élite was first beginning to emerge out of the hodgepodge of shopkeepers, craftsmen and traders. We have noted that he and Loo Aqui built the Man-Mo Temple where they performed in part the traditional role of village elder. He was also Trustee for the I Ts'z Temple in Taipingshan (1851) and the Temple in Queen's Road East at Wanchai (1869). In 1847 the Colonial Treasury had on deposit £185.16.8 from Tam Achoy for erecting a Chinese School in the Sheung Wan (Lower Bazaar). Achoy had come to Hong Kong at its foundation in 1841, having been formerly a foreman in the Government Dockyard at Singapore. He was granted a certificate for the easternmost of the lots in the Lower Bazaar, and soon began to buy up the interests of the adjacent property owners until he had acquired an extensive sea frontage. He built some of Hong Kong's most prestigious early buildings such as the P. and O. Building and the Exchange Building, which was bought by Government and used for many years as the Supreme Court Building. With the accumulation of increasing capital he began to broaden his interests and secured permission from Government to build and operate a market. This was a most profitable venture and when the Lower Bazaar was destroyed in the Christmas fire of 1852, he soon rebuilt it, operating it under his firm's name, Kwong Yuen. During the period after 1848, when Hong Kong became a port of embarkation for thousands of emigrants, Achoy was ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 96 CARL T. SMITH Wong Shing, newspaper editor and manager of the London Mission press; and Cheung Achew, a wealthy carpenter.29 The Rev. Ho Fuk Tong and his family lived at the nearby compound of the London Mission Society. In time this area around Peel, Graham, Gage Streets and Hollywood Road became a centre for Parsee and Indian merchants, as well as European brothels. Some of the old families stayed on, but the opening up of the area bounded by Wyndham, Wellington and Pottinger Streets by the Dents provided a needed location for the houses of the better Chinese. After the Peak was developed in the 1870s and 1880s, the wealthy Chinese moved up to Mid-levels occupying the mansions of the Europeans who moved to the Peak. Of the individuals who had their family residence in the former Middle Bazaar area were two who were on the organizing committee of Tung Wah Hospital, Wong Shing and Ho Asek alias Ho Fai Yin #alias Ho In Kee. Ho Asek first appears in Hong Kong records in 1849 when he purchased a lot in Tai Ping Shan. At the time he was compradore of the opium firm of Lyall, Still and Company. It failed in 1867 and Ho Asek embarked upon his own business ventures under the firm name of Kin Nam. According to a newspaper account, he was subject to a $2,000 “squeeze” from the mandarins during the second Sino-British War.30 He traded extensively in opium as well as rice, and in 1871 held the gambling monopoly from which within a year he realized a $28,000 profit. In an action brought against him in 1871, he testified that he operated with a capital of $200,000.31 In 1868 two of his employees were brought before the court on a charge of extortion. In the evidence presented it was stated that about September 1866, some influential Chinese started a system of subscription or unofficial taxation to support district watchmen. The city had been divided into two sections, East and West. The West District was superintended by Tam Achoy and Ho Asek, "a most respectable and honest trader”. A shopkeeper resisted the pressure put upon him to contribute and brought the charge of extortion against two of Asek's employees who had been collecting for the scheme. The court gave judgment in favour of the defendants.32 Ho Asek was still a member of the Kai Fong Committee in 1872. He died in Pang Po (likely Ping Po+), Shun Tak District in 1877. His wife was granted letters of administration on his estate, but she being blind, gave her power ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g The District Watch Committee 137 to be the richest man in Hong Kong. When Ho Tung retired as chief compradore to Jardine, Matheson's in 1900, Ho Fook succeeded him. Ho Fook's assistant was Ho Kom Tong, another of Ho Tung's brothers. The members of the District Watch Committee were members of a small circle of businessmen, often related through ties of blood or marriage. When the Tai Yau Bank was established in 1914 with a paid-up capital of $6,000,000, the proprietors were named as Lau Chu Pak, Ho Fook, Ho Kom Tong, Lo Chung Shiu and Chan Kai Ming. Lau Chu Pak was compradore to A. S. Watson and Co., chairman of the Po On Commercial Association and chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce; Chan Kai Ming was manager of the Opium Farm; and Lo Chung Shiu, assistant compradore to Jardine, Matheson and Co., was Ho Fook's brother-in-law. All were or became members of the District Watch Committee. 22 T. C. Cheng writes that Wei Yuk 'was very much concerned about law and order among the Chinese masses because in those early days riff-raff and political refugees from South China continued to come into Hong Kong. Thus it was at his suggestion that the District Watch Force was founded in 1888. Mr. Cheng appears to be mistaken about the date and is no doubt referring to the ordinance of that year, no. 13 of 1888 rather than to its proper date of origin. Wright and Cartright, Feldwick, and Professor Woo all state that the Committee was formed on Wei Yuk's suggestion. See: T. C. Cheng, 'Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils of Hong Kong up to 1941', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 9, 1969, pp. 17-18; Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai and other Treaty Ports, London, Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Co., 1908, p. 109; W. Feldwick, ed., Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent Chinese at Home and Abroad, London Globe Encyclopedia Co., 1917, p. 576; Professor Woo Sing Lim, The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Five Continents Book Company, 1939, p. 4. 23 Unfortunately all the records in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs were destroyed or lost during the Japanese occupation and hence anyone trying to reconstruct the history of the District Watch must work mostly from scraps of information found in government publications, newspapers, books. 24 My guess is that a large number were traditional Chinese merchants from the Five Districts operating on a relatively small scale. The Committee after 1891 represented the views of a more westernised and modernised elite with a knowledge of modern business techniques and modern financial manipulations. Dr. Ho Kai, for example, played the stock exchange with great success and speculated in many fields, particularly land development. He was, properly speaking, a financier although his occupation is often given tout court as lawyer. He had also qualified in medicine at Edinburgh but gave up the practice of medicine soon after his return to Hong Kong in 1882 because of Chinese resistance to western medicine. 25 In 1903, for example, the Committee opposed the re-introduction of the night-pass system but suggested other remedial measures (see Index to Correspondence (General Register) 1894-1904, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1909, p. 100). In 1909 'at the request of the District Watchmen Committee, children who are hawking without a licence are on their first offence sent to the Registrar General who cautions their guardians. This procedure seems to have proved effective in each case' wrote the Registrar General in 1909. It is worth noting that both Registrar General and Committee wanted to end the night-pass system and were opposed by the Captain Superintendent of Police, who was unsuccessful. As for hawkers, very few Chinese regarded them as a serious menace although colonial administrators ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 148 J. C. Y. WATT argument to establish that the tomb was in fact Ming. The 17th century Cantonese poet, Ch'ü Ta-chün, in his Kwang-tung Hsin-yü recorded that Sung coins were still in use in Kwangtung in his time. Thus, although Sung coins are often found with (and inside) Sung-type pottery in Hong Kong they cannot be accepted as evidence for precise dating even if they provide the only clue. (The question of the Sung coins in the Manila excavations must be even more tantalising as the blue-and-whites, unlike the 1955 Canton jars which had a Ming flavour, exhibit in themselves distinct possibilities of being the earliest blue-and-white found so far, apart from the circumstances of their recovery.) THE HONG KONG FINDS IN RELATION TO THE MANILA FINDS Apart from the class of brightly coloured glazed earthenwares, it will be noted that all the types of pottery found in Manila are also found in Hong Kong with the conspicuous exception of the three most interesting types, the "spotted white", the "ching-pai" and the "early blue-and-white". The fact that these closely related wares are not found in Hong Kong indicates that they were not produced in Hong Kong and neighbouring areas. One may push the argument a little further and say that it is not likely, although not impossible, that these three types were produced at the particular kilns in Fukien and Chekiang from which Hong Kong received some of its crockery in Sung times, and later. Indeed, the present evidence is that blue and white came to this part of Kwangtung rather late. So far, apart from a single find of a pair of blue and white bowls of the late 15th century1 the Ming finds in Hong Kong have been mainly of a type of green glazed stoneware similar to those manufactured at the Hsin-an kilns in Hui-yang Hsien about 100 kilometres east of Canton1. This is a stoneware with a grey body, an olive green glaze and a simple shape, and is often decorated with incised vertical lines on the outside and a stamped or incised character or mark in the centre of the inside. (See Plate 10) Thus, although many similar types of pottery are found both in the Philippines and in Hong Kong, the immediate contribution of the evidence from Hong Kong to the discussions on the origins and dating of the finds in the Philippines is very little. However, the detailed description of pottery sites in South-east Asia, and the study of the distribution of various types of ware ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 160 JAMES HAYES By 1940 this force had been considerably expanded to include four batteries of artillery and one anti-aircraft battery, seven machine gun or rifle companies, a mobile column consisting of two platoons of armoured cars and three of medium machine guns, a fortress signal company, corps signals and engineers, an Army Service Corps company and others. All these men were recruited as volunteers, although no doubt some of them felt that the pressure exerted upon them by events and by their fellow-men made it easier to fall in with the rest than stay away. At any rate, the Commandant was able to say in 1940 that "the Corps is now as strong as it is ever likely to be".21 The G.O.C., Lieutenant-General E. F. Norton clearly thought they were good in quality as well as in numbers, because in a message dated 30th October, 1940 he said that the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps was "in an eminently satisfactory state of efficiency".22 This was no doubt true despite rapid expansion, but only because, as the Year Books show, its leaders had long been aware of the growing danger from Japan in the east and Germany in the west. In his message for the Year Book of 1936 the then G.O.C. had made a particular point of urging on the drive for volunteers,23 and in the 1937 issue the Editorial emphasized that, however willing, young men were useless in an emergency without previous training.24 Of the drive for efficiency there can also be no doubt. The Commandant's annual report ended with the statement that the headquarters staff of the Corps "had one object and interest..... to make the unit as efficient as possible to take its place beside the regular Army in the defence of the Colony.”25 The expansion of these last few pre-war years contains one feature of great significance: the inclusion of Hong Kong Chinese in the Corps in separate units. No. 4 (Chinese) Company was formed in October, 1937 "with two platoons each of 30 machine gunners"26 and No. 7 Company some time later. The Corps had been slow in this respect; although it is clear from the Com- 21 Y.B., 1940, p. 7. 22 Y.B., 1940, p. 4. 23 Y.B., 1936, p. 6. 24 Y.B., 1937, p. 3. 25 Y.B., 1937, p. 7. 26 Y.B., 1938, p. 47. ================================================================================ 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 THE COLONY OF HONG KONG 175 on from them a little way was the Cemetery, still a small enclosed space, which, it had been thought, would be sufficient for the needs of the Colony. Hardly any one but myself, I suppose, ever thinks now of paying it a visit. Beyond that, hardly any buildings were met with, till we came to Spring Gardens, where two or three English firms had begun to occupy the ground on the left. Then came Hospital Hill, with diminutive buildings on it, devoted to the same purposes as the larger erections that now crown it; and Morrison Hill, where the school of the Morrison Education Society was in vigorous action, with the Hospital of the Medical Society, the foundations of which can hardly be traced now, but where I found hospitable quarters for several months. Arrived at the Happy Valley, there were to be seen only fields of rice and sweet potatoes. At the south end of it was the village of Wong-nei-ch'ung, just as at the present day, and on the heights above it were rising two or three foreign houses, with an imposing one on the east side of the valley, built by a Mr. Mercer of Jardine, Matheson and Co.'s House. All these proved homes of fever or death, and were soon abandoned. Beyond the Valley somewhere was a range of buildings, which had already become tabooed as unhealthy, and then came the offices of the great Firm, with the workmen still busy about them, and far from being what they are at the present day. If I have omitted to mention in this retrospective view of Victoria as I first saw it any of the foreign houses then existing, they can only be a very few. When I contrast the single street, imperfectly lined with hastily raised houses, and a few sporadic buildings on the barren hill-side, with the city into which they have grown, with its praya, its imposing terraces, and many magnificent residences, I think one must travel far to find another spot where human energy and skill have triumphed to such an extent over difficulties of natural position. I sometimes fancy Britannia standing on the Peak, and looking down with an emotion of pride on the great Babylon which her sons have built. Although I was charmed with the general appearance of the place, and the energy that was manifest in laying out the ground and pushing on building, I found many of the residents oppressed with gloom because of its unhealthiness. 1843 was, no doubt, a very sickly year, more so, perhaps, than any one has been since. The left wing of the 55th Regiment lost a hundred men between ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 190 REV. JAMES LEGGE the excitement and activity. Then came the close of the war in America, which had produced a feverish activity in the cotton market, ultimately disastrous to many. There followed, in 1866, the commercial disasters consequent on the fall of Overend and Gurney, and the panic at home, with the crashing of banks and the downfall of Houses which had been supposed to be firm as the foundations of the mountain behind us. It was a time of trouble and darkness. Sir Hercules came to the Colony when the tide was rising, and he had it at the flood for the greater part of his time. There remains the Robinson Road to perpetuate his name. When he went away, Mr. Mercer took his place as acting governor, an able man and accomplished, who would have done better for himself had he ventured to assume more responsibility. Then came Sir Richard MacDonnell to the helm at a time of great difficulty; but here I must bring my reminiscences of Hongkong to a close. The events of Sir Richard's incumbency are fresh in the memory of most of you, fresher, indeed, than in my own, for I was absent from the Colony during his administration for three whole years. There are none of us but would rejoice to hear of the reinvigoration of his health. In these recent years the capabilities of the telegraph wire and of the Suez Canal have come fully into play. Their effects on the Colony have already been great, and they will yet be greater. And now, as I draw to a conclusion, permit me to observe that the more than thirty years of my residence in the East have witnessed events of almost unparalleled magnitude and change all over the world. What wars and revolutions have taken place in Europe! in America! in India! in Africa! But great as they have been, they have not been greater than those which have taken place, here in the Far East. When I think of China opened as it has been, and of Japan pursuing with much more willing and rapid steps the career of progress, I can scarcely realize the contrast between the state of things in 1839 and 1872. We sometimes doubt if China be really moving, but moving it is; and if I sometimes fret at the slowness of its advance, and wish that there were more in it of the mobility of its neighbour, yet in the end that slowness tends to increase my respect for the country and its people. There must be a great future yet for the country. In Great Britain there is an area of 12,000 miles of coal fields, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 196 NOTES AND QUERIES large, old temples in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. it is not under the management of the Chinese Temples Committee but is exempted from the provisions of the Chinese Temples Ordinance No. 7 of 1928. At that time it was allowed to remain in the hands of the private family to eight of whose members a Crown Lease had been issued on 14th May, 1897. This was the Tai (...) clan formerly of Po Kong Village, Kowloon which was demolished during the Japanese occupation to make way for an extension to the Kai Tak airfield. The temple remains in the hands of their descendants to this day. Just when the Tai clan began the connection and whether they were responsible for the foundation and successive reconstruction cannot now be established for certain, as no written records remain. A document that might have helped, their clan record, (...) was lost during the Japanese occupation, and we are left with oral tradition. Conversations with the present manager and with an old village woman, a Tai, born in 1887 at Po Kong, gives information that the family are Hakkas from Tam Shui district, not far from Hong Kong. When they came to Po Kong to settle is not now known, but it was certainly before the British occupied Hong Kong Island in 1841. The story goes that members of the family used to come over to Hong Kong Island to cut grass. They found an image of Tin Hau among rocks on the sea-shore where the temple now stands—the coast-line has since been altered by reclamation—and built a modest shelter for it. By degrees it became a popular shrine with boat people and others, especially at the goddess' birthday on the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month. A proper temple building was erected later by the Tai family who are said to have collected subscriptions for the purpose, leading in time to the major reconstruction of 1868. ― There is some doubt in my mind whether the bell now in the temple was cast specially for it. The Chinese characters on it do not mention that it was for the Tin Hau Temple. Alternatively, though the bell may have been made for this temple, the Tais may not have been the founders, despite their traditions, as not one of the five persons who presented it, and whose names appear on it, was a Tai. The Crown Lease of 1897 was issued to eight persons, and from what the old lady has said it appears that this followed a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g BOOK REVIEWS EARLY MING WARES OF CHINGTECHEN. A. D. Brankston. 106 pp. 45 plates (1 coloured), 18 text-illus. Re-issue 1970. Vetch and Lee, Hong Kong $60; Lund Humphries, London, £5. The appearance of a reissue of A. D. Brankston's book Early Ming Wares of Chingtechen will be welcomed by the collector, connoisseur and dealer alike and will fill a long-awaited need to possess this classic in the field of Chinese ceramics. The original edition, published by Mr. Henri Vetch in Peking in 1938 was limited to 650 copies and has been, until now, virtually unobtainable to the layman, despite the fact that it is frequently referred to by writers on Chinese Porcelain and freely quoted from in sales catalogues. The present edition has been faithfully reproduced on the off-set press and Mr. Vetch is to be congratulated for turning out a most pleasing volume which retains much of the charm of the original. Archibald Brankston was born in Shanghai in 1909. He followed his father's profession as a civil engineer and, after schooling in England, came to Hong Kong to work on the Shing Mun Valley Water Scheme. Being obliged to return to England due to ill health, he was fortunate to be employed in the setting-up of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art in London in 1935. This led to his appointment as a travelling student by the Universities China Committee in London and he was thereby enabled to journey into the interior of China and visited the kiln sites around Chingtechen from which he recovered a variety of samples which now form part of the British Museum study collection. He was also fortunate in being acquainted with well-known Chinese collectors of that time, including Mr. Wu Lai-hsi and others. Back in England, he was employed in the Department of Oriental Antiquities of the British Museum for two years until he had to return to the Far East on behalf of the Ministry of Information. He died in Hong Kong in 1941 at the early age of 31. The book deals mainly with blue and white wares of the 15th Century covering the reigns of Yung Lo, Hsüan-Tê, Ch'êng Hua and Hung Chih and also includes some information on the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g BOOK REVIEWS 217 of Dr. Colledge in his Opthalmic Infirmary with his Chinese assistant, which was engraved and published in London 25 November 1834. Harriet Low continues "The pictures" (not picture) "were unfortunately all too late for the Exhibition". To attempt to substitute the double portrait in the place of two separate portraits seen is unethical. 1 As art experts the authors are careless. The medium in plate not given is watercolor and the "Chinese Military" scene was "later" engraved not "lithographed". It is also poor geography to say that Lord Macartney's Embassy entered the Yangtse, when it was the Peiho River. In the Introduction, they produce two alibis: “Paintings illustrated in the sequence and not otherwise designated are attributed to him" [Chinnery], “except for portraits of Hong Merchants which are referred to in general terms” and "Events are necessarily telescoped without rigid regard for precise chronology". What a multitude of sins one can try to cover up with statements like these. Is it really necessary to include Richard Henry Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast"? The voyage was along the California coast not to the Far East. Bryant & Sturgis, the owners, were of Boston as stated, but never had an office in Canton. Their China Trade business in Canton was handled by J. P. Sturgis & Co. There are illustrated 20 paintings by Lt. J. S. Rundle, R. N. of Opium War scenes, also a pen and ink sketch. The medium is not given. All midshipmen in European Navies in the 19th century were taught to sketch and paint watercolors, so presumably these are in watercolor. The authors surmise that Chinnery met Rundle and "probably saw some of the action paintings actually illustrated in this work", but offer no factual proof that any meeting took place. No mention is made of W. A. Knell, the marine artist, whose work, of course, is much better known. In fact, the authors give a very warped view of China Coast painting. No mention of Webber nor Huggins, nor Borget. The Daniells not to be confused with the Daniells of later date are mentioned, but the one Daniell illustration shown is Indian, inappropriate to a book on China Coast Paintings. Chinnery had European pupils - five at least but apparently they are unknown to the authors. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h CONTENTS PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1971 · HON. TREASURER's ReporT FOR 1971 - THE LIBRARY, 1971 - - TRANSACTIONS OF THE BRANCH Chinese Medicine and its Contribution to Modern Medical Science (A Lecture given on 16th November, 1971) DR. F. I. TSEUNG - Some Nineteenth Century Water Colours of Canton and the Far East (A Lecture given on 15th December, 1971) P. H. COLLIN - Raja James Brooke and Sarawak: An Anomaly in the 19th Century British Colonial Scene (A Lecture given on 18th January 1972) -DR. L. R. WRIGHT ARTICLES: The Establishment of the Tsungli Yamen: A Translation of the Memorial and Edict of 1861 — J. L. CRANMER-BYNG Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart: Colonial Civil Servant and Scholar- HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE A Historical Review of Housing Conditions in Hong Kong DR. E. G. PRYOR Traditional Chinese Regional Architecture: Chinese Houses LINDA F. SULLIVAN · - Page 1 6 9 12 20 29 41 - - 55 89 130 The Origins of Hong Kong's Central Market and the Tarrant Affair Dafydd Emrys Evans Archaeology in Hong Kong and South China (1938) — W. SCHOFIELD ― Three Chinese Deities: Variations on a Theme KEITH STEVENS NOTES AND QUERIES - Who Hoisted the Union Jack? DR. J. R. JONES China's Earliest Printing—a Note a Note L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH - - Unusual Trees in Hong Kong: the Canton Water Pine SHEN DZE-CHIA A Note on Agricultural Change in Hong Kong AIJMER - Letting Go the Wooden Goose JAMES HAYES 150 - · 161 169 196 - 197 - 198 GORAN - 201 207 - 207 - 213 Programme Notes for the Visit to Pokfulam, Hong Kong Island, 29th July, 1972 - JAMES HAYES - BOOK REVIEWS - ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h CHINESE MEDICINE 15 weakness, etc., may be too far fetched, but the basic idea of endocrinology exists. In recent years a great variety of glandular substance has been used in medicine. Of these the thyroid, pituitary, suprarenals, pancreas, liver and the placenta, have been found to be of therapeutic value. It is remarkable that many of them have been used and incorporated in Chinese pharmacopoeia for ages past. The Ming dynasty is the most glorious in the history of the pharmacopoeia of China. The most important contribution is the Pen Tsao Kang Mu (†1), the National Pharmacopoeia of China, compiled by Li Shi-chen. This is one of the most popular works on Chinese medicine, and is considered a great classic. It consists of some 52 comprehensive volumes divided into the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the mineral kingdom and others, with a description of 1,892 kinds of different substances. It contains many drugs which are common in both the East and the West. It took Li Shi-chen, the city magistrate, almost thirty years of hard work to complete this commendable piece of good work. This book is extremely rich in remedies, especially those of the vegetable origin, and offers a rich field for scientific research. Considerable attention has been directed to it by foreign writers, notably Du Halde who translated part of it into French in 1735 and Porter Smith in 1871. In 1911, Stuart extensively revised Smith's work and published the Chinese Materia Medica, the vegetable kingdom. Works on the mineral kingdom and the avian kingdom were published by Bernard Read in recent years. An attempt was started by the Chinese Government to carry out scientific research on the drugs contained in the Chinese Materia Medica, but the war with Japan aborted the work. Perhaps, the earliest Chinese drug that has won its way abroad is China root, the so-called Chinese sarsaparilla, once reputed as a remedy for syphilis. Its fame spread as far as to India, Persia and Turkestan in the 16th century, and in Indian literature it was mentioned that syphilis came from Europe but China root could cure it. Eumenol, a liquid extract of tang kuei (†14), was introduced into Europe by the Germans in 1899, and is said to be effective in menstrual disorders. Macanin, a preparation from a Chinese seaweed, has been put on the market by the Japanese and vigorously advertised as a sub- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h SOME NINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON AND THE FAR EAST P. H. COLLIN* (The text of a lecture to the Branch given on 15th December 1971) A small collection of mid-nineteenth century water-colours of the Far East recently came to light in a London dealer's. The paintings are mainly of China, in particular Canton, with inscriptions and dates in pencil or paint; at some later date, they have been numbered in Roman numerals in ink on the reverse. The list of the paintings is as follows, showing the number on the reverse, the inscription on the face of the painting (in italics), and a brief description by the author. The spelling and punctuations are as in the originals. II Sumatra Straits of Sunda Nov. 14 57 A view of islands, with a native dhow. III After heavy rain. Straits of Sunda A sailing vessel. IV China Sea the green clouds are from nature Small junk against the sunset. V North Wantong|Id. Bocca Tigris Decr 16th 57 A fort with a red-coated soldier on guard and mountains seen on the far side of the channel. VII Canton Feb 58 A view looking across roof-tops towards a pagoda and the west gate. XI Febry 58 Canton Bamboo grove beyond White Cloud Mountains The Jingal pic-nic Feb 20th 58 Some soldiers and Chinese sitting by bamboos, looking across paddy fields to a clump of bamboo where a group of figures are visible. Mountains in the distance. XIII Canton 58 Three horses and riders with, beyond rolling country, the pagodas of Canton. * Mr. Collin was formerly Lecturer in English at the University of Hong Kong and is now a publisher in London. Plates 32-33 illustrate this article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 22 P. H. COLLIN of the time. The painting of the praya at Macao (No. XVII) is a scene which is found in many nineteenth-century illustrated books;* the picture of the East walls of Canton (No. XXXV) is virtually the same as that of the frontispiece of Fisher's Three Years' Service in China, that of Howqua's garden (No. XLV) closely resembles the frontispiece of Albert Smith's pamphlet To China and Back. The dealer from whom the paintings were acquired was unable to identify their origin, nor the artist whose initials G.A.S. appear on numbers XXXIII and XLV. Nor was it possible to find any clues as to the whereabouts of the missing paintings, which, to go by the Roman numbers on the reverse, must be at least twenty-five in number. To discover the identity of the artist, there are certain clues in the paintings themselves. In view of their dates, it seems certain that he must have come to the Far East in connection with the "Arrow" war and the capture of Canton in December 1857. Reinforcements for this campaign were requested by Admiral Seymour in the summer of 1857 and arrived in China waters during the autumn of that year. The first to arrive were the steam-transports Imperador and Imperatrix, which reached Hong Kong on 28th October and 6th November respectively. Some time after them came the Adelaide, also a steamer, which, although leaving England at the same time as others (the Imperador left Plymouth on August 10th, the Imperatrix on 12th August, the Adelaide on 17th August), only arrived in Hong Kong on December 1st. Wingrove Cooke, in his despatches to "The Times", reveals the impatience of the Hong Kong garrison with what he calls "this lagging log, the Adelaide." In a later report, he states that "the long-expected Adelaide made her appearance on the 1st, having on board twenty officers and 507 rank and file". Judging from the date on the first painting, the artist we are concerned with must have been aboard the Adelaide: perhaps he devoted himself to painting to relieve the tedium of the excessively long voyage. There were, of course, people in Hong Kong at the time who might have painted the pictures. Albert Smith mentions meeting on 24th August 1858 the son-in-law of the P. and O. agent, a “Mr. * As, for example, in James Orange, The Chater Collection, Pictures relating to China, Hong Kong, Macao 1655-1830 (1924). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 30 LEIGH R. WRIGHT entered the Borneo scene in 1839 very much the idealist-humani-tarian, nineteenth century liberal, gentleman adventurer, in the colonial tradition of such forerunners as Francis Light of Penang and Thomas Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore and sometime British governor of Java. Even much of the colour and romance painted by the early travellers and story writers bears up under the careful scrutiny of the historian. James Brooke came from stock which had produced a seven-teenth century lord mayor of London. His father and uncle were civil servants in the East India Company, and James lived until aged 12 near Benares on the Ganges in British India where he was born in 1803. Brooke himself entered the military service of the Company after a somewhat indifferent education which involved only two years of formal schooling in the Norwich Grammar School. He was severely wounded in a campaign of the first Anglo-Burma war in 1825, and after a prolonged convalescence resigned from the Company, largely, we are led to believe, because of disenchantment with its conduct of eastern affairs and because of widespread corruption among Company servants. When in 1835 Brooke's father, then a retired nabob living in Bath, died leaving him a comfortable fortune of £30,000, James bought a schooner and fitted out an expedition to Borneo and the Celebes Islands, an area in the East Indies with which he was familiar from earlier voyages and from exhaustive reading of the accounts of George Windsor Earl and Stamford Raffles. Brooke's schooner sailed in December 1838 under the colours of the Royal Yacht Club. He looked forward to satisfying his adventurous curiosity about Borneo and perhaps doing some trading. He particularly wanted to penetrate to the interior of Borneo, and had in mind exploring up the rivers which flowed into Marudu Bay, on the northern end of the island. He was a private voyager, but the colours of the Royal Yacht Club commanded respect in naval and colonial circles and he was well received in Singapore where he arrived in May 1839. I There he was given a pseudo-official mission to perform in Borneo. Several Singapore-based vessels had recently been ship-wrecked or plundered by Bornean pirates and their crews sold into ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 76 HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE trove is not certain. In Lion and Dragon in Northern China (1910), R.F. Johnston used the folklore material he himself garnered in Weihaiwei for purposes that are now regarded as dubious. It is clear Johnston was influenced by the theories of the cultural diffusionists, who attempted to trace everything back either to a common source or to a process of borrowing from other cultures; in other words, Johnston went far beyond the evidence available and indulged in highly conjectural reconstructions of what could have happened in the past. But Lockhart published only two papers on folklore and, as far as can be ascertained, did not engage in any comparative or theoretical study of the subject. However, it seems plausible to conclude that he, like Johnston, must have been influenced by the climate of anthropological opinion in his time, for both were active in this field before the functionalist anthropologists became intellectually influential. Lockhart had a lifelong interest in numismatics and over the years he was able to build up a fine collection of Chinese copper coins. In 1895 the first two volumes of his The Currency of the Farther East, published by Noronha and Co., Hong Kong, was produced in an edition of 250 copies. The third volume appeared in 1898. The collection of coins illustrated in the work — Chinese, Annamese, Japanese and Korean — had been made by G.B. Glover of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, who had supervised the production of the plates printed from blocks. But Glover died before the book went to press and it was Lockhart who supplied the introductions to the three volumes and information about the dates and inscriptions on the coins. In 1915 The Stewart Lockhart Collection of Chinese Copper Coins appeared as a one-volume supplement to the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 'This book,' wrote a reviewer in 1915, 'is the first of its kind, and is calculated to stimulate the interest of those who have wished to collect Chinese cash, but have been hitherto deterred from doing so by the absence of any guide to the subject.'63 In 1967 an authority on coins stated that: this is one of the all-time standard works on collecting Chinese coins, with 2,070 coins illustrated. He has put a great deal of interesting material in the introductory fifteen pages.'64 The publication of the book caused Lockhart many problems, for he and the Chinese engraver he employed worked on the text and illustrations at Port Edward, Weihaiwei, while the book was being set up piecemeal in Shanghai. ================================================================================ 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 77 Lastly, reference should be made to Lockhart's great interest in Chinese painting. He built up during the forty years he spent in Hong Kong and China a notable collection of Chinese paintings dating from the Sung Dynasty (960-1279) down to the closing years of the Empire, including one by the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi herself. Lockhart's collection was exhibited in June 1928 at the Betty Joel Galleries, Knightsbridge, and created wide interest. In January 1972 a painting by Yün Shou-p'ing (1633-1690), one of the six masters of the early Ch'ing Dynasty, was presented to the University of Hong Kong by Lockhart's daughter, Mrs. Mary Stewart Lockhart, 'in memory of her father and as a perpetual token of her father's admiration and affection for the Chinese of Hong Kong.'65 The remainder of Lockhart's collection of Chinese coins, paintings, and papers have been given to George Watson's College. LAST YEARS Lockhart returned to England in 1921 and settled down with his family in South Kensington, London. He returned with undiminished vigour, his interest in China and in things Chinese as acute as ever, and he continued to keep in touch with his Chinese and European friends in Asia. Jean Gittins, Sir Robert Ho Tung's daughter, tells us in her autobiography66 that when the Lockharts heard she was contemplating staying in England, they at once suggested she should live with them and that Lockhart should act as her guardian. Lockhart became a regular attendant at the Council meetings of the Royal Asiatic Society — he was in fact one of its oldest members (nominated in 1879) and of its vigorous North China Branch (nominated in 1885) — and he contributed a number of book reviews to its Journal. He frequently presided at the ordinary meetings and lectures given under the Society's auspices and in 1928 became its honorary Secretary and also the Society's nominee on the Governing Body of the School of Oriental Studies at London University. He held both these honorary appointments until 1935, when failing health forced him to resign from both. He died on February 26, 1937, aged 79, at his home. The Times obituary was headed appropriately: 'Forty years in China', and it spoke of him as 'a colonial official who had served with distinction for more than 40 years in the Far East.'67 The obituary in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society said: 'most of his contemporaries in Hong Kong have passed away or have left the Colony, but there are still ================================================================================ 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 81 21 'Despatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong', Sessional Papers, no. 32 of 1899, p. 13. 22 Ibid., p. 36. 23 Ibid., p. 65. 24 Ibid., p. 69. 25 'Report on the New Territory during the first year of British Administration', Sessional Papers, no. 15 of 1900, p. 252. 26 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901', Sessional Papers, no. 22 of 1902, p. 4. 27 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921. 28 Alfred Hancock and his brother Sydney were partners in the firm of A. and S. Hancock of Queen's Road, Hong Kong. In 1906 Alfred Hancock had resided for over fifty years in Amoy and Hong Kong. In the 1920s the firm had moved to Des Voeux Road and the chief partner was H. R. B. Hancock, Lockhart's brother-in-law. The firm was still active in 1940. 29 The walled city of Weihaiwei, captured by the Japanese in 1894, by the terms of the 1898 Convention was not under British jurisdiction but nominally under a Chinese sub-district deputy magistrate. The British sphere of influence extended for an area of 1,500 square miles east of the Leased Territory. 30 On the Chinese Regiment see: Captain A. A. S. Barnes, On Active Service with the Chinese Regiment, London, 1902; C. E. Bruce-Mitford, The Territory of Wei-Hai-Wei, Shanghai, 1902, pp. 22-24; R. F. Johnston, Lion and Dragon in Northern China, London, 1910, pp. 82-3; and Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1906. The only servicemen left in Weihaiwei after 1906 were the small body of Royal Marines of the Island Guard, 31 Johnston, op. cit., p. 82. 32 L. K. Young, British Policy in China 1895-1902, London, 1970, p. 73. 33 Johnston, op. cit., p. 80. 34 The Weihaiwei School was opened with only four pupils in 1901 by a Mr. H. J. L. Beer. In 1903 a new school house was built near Port Edward, partly with the aid of a debenture loan subscribed by British subjects in Shanghai. The new school had dormitories for forty boys. The school, which took boys between ages of 8 to 14, was mainly for the sons of British expatriates. Pupils came from places as far apart as Mukden, Canton, Kobe, and Chungking. The school closed in 1925 when it became apparent that the rendition of Weihaiwei was close at hand. Weihaiwei's fine climate contributed to the school's success with expatriate parents. 35 Johnston, op. cit., p. 96. 36 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, K.C.M.G. (1874-1938). Johnston was educated at Edinburgh University and Oxford. He arrived in Hong Kong as an Eastern Cadet, fresh from Magdalen, on Christmas Day, 1898. In 1904, Robert Walter, Secretary to Government and Magistrate at Weihaiwei, was seconded for service as Emigration Agent at Ch'iu-wang-tao for the Transvaal Government and Johnston was appointed to take his place. In 1906 he was appointed District Officer and Magistrate and resided in the heart of the Territory. In 1919 when he took up his appointment as tutor he was Senior District Officer. In 1927 he returned to Weihaiwei as Commissioner. After the rendition of Weihaiwei in 1930 he became Professor of Chinese, University of London, and Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Studies, 1931-37. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 82 HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE It is an interesting comment on Johnston that he visited England only twice in twenty-eight years of residence in China. See Johnston's obituary in the Times of 8 March, 1938. 37 R. F. Johnston's, Twilight in the Forbidden City, London, 1934, describes his experiences as an Imperial tutor. 38 Much information on Johnston's experiences as District Officer and Magistrate are given in his book, Lion and Dragon in Northern China. 39 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921, p. 3. 40 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1903, p. 5. From time to time the Magistrate's office issued proclamations in Chinese, notifying the people of the wishes of the Government. All the villages of the Territory were provided with large notice boards on which such proclamations were posted. The style of governing in Weihaiwei owed much to Chinese example. 41 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1904, p. 26. The statement is taken from Johnston's 'Report of the Secretary to Government for the Year 1904'. This is a most interesting report on Chinese society in Weihaiwei, 42 The China Review was founded in 1872 by N. B. Dennys. The publication terminated with vol. xxv, 1901. It was published bi-monthly. 43 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1937, pp. 391-3. 44 In his obituary notice of E. H. Parker, E. T. C. Werner wrote: "The editor's request to write this notice puts me in a rather awkward position, for I cannot but refer to the very great amount of valuable sinological work which has been done by members of the British Consular Service in China. Considering its relatively small size, the Service has produced proportionately more brilliant sinologists than any body connected with the Far East.” See Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (henceforth cited as JNCBRAS), vol. lvii, 1926, p. vi. 45 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at Oxford. Hong Kong cadet in 1899. Governor of Hong Kong 1925-30. He published, among other books, The Chinese in British Guiana, Georgetown, 1915, Cantonese Love-Songs, Oxford, 1904, and Summary of Geographical Observations taken during a Journey from Kashgar to Kowloon, 1907-8, Hong Kong, 1911. 46 Lockhart's interest in the Chinese language is recognised in the dedication to him of Mok Man-cheung's Tah Tsz Anglo-Chinese Dictionary, 2nd edition (Chinese foreword dated 9th October, 1914). Mok had served in the Registrar-General's department with Lockhart, and moved to the Supreme Court as an interpreter in 1891. See also note 71 below. 47 China Review, vol. xxi, 1892/93, p. 405. 48 Vols. xx to xxii. The disputants included E. J. Eitel, E. H. Parker, E. D. H. Fraser, H. A. Giles, and Lockhart. The first edition of Lockhart's book was dedicated to Dr. John Chalmers, the distinguished sinologue, and the second to Dr. James Legge as well. Lockhart spoke of them as 'two famous Aberdonians'. 49 China Review, vol. xxi, 1892/93, p. 412. 50 China Review, vol. xxii, 1893/94, p. 547, 51 T'oung Pao, vol. viii, 1897, pp. 412-430. 52 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 6, 1930-32, p. 812. 53 Chinese Recorder, Sept. 1903, p. 464. ================================================================================ 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] ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 108 E. G. PRYOR reduce overcrowding it was essential to provide more and better designed houses, to decentralise the population into new self-contained communities and to reduce building density. The commission also recommended the setting up of a permanent town planning and housing committee and the provision of more public parks. It made the further suggestions that the provision of adequate housing for the poorer classes should not be left to private enterprise without assistance and that consideration should be given to the financing of slum clearance and subsidised housing by means of a special tax, loan or issue of housing shares. The tide of events again overwhelmed any intentions the government had for implementing the findings of the commission for in 1937 the Japanese declared war against China and this brought 750,000 refugees into the Colony. However, a Town Planning Ordinance was passed in 1939 to provide for the layout of new urban areas and the replanning of districts already developed although nothing was immediately achieved under this Ordinance as the Colony was engulfed in December 1940 by the Japanese conquest of South-East Asia. The Past Meets the Present: 1945-1971 There was considerable damage to property during the war and a survey carried out in 1946 showed that almost 8,700 domestic units had been destroyed and some 10,300 damaged.23 The number of persons displaced as a result totalled 161,000 of whom 154,000 were Chinese. Although the population of the Colony had been reduced to 600,000 persons by 1945 as a result of Japanese deportations and voluntary movements back to China, large numbers of displaced people came back with the return of peace so that by 1947 there were some 1.8 million persons in Hong Kong. It is not hard to imagine the circumstances under which most families had to live in view of the depleted stock of housing and the limited availability of public services during the immediate post-war years. The housing problem became even worse as a consequence of the establishment of the People's Republic in China during 1948-49 which motivated yet more refugees to seek shelter in the Colony. 23 Building Reconstruction Advisory Committee, Final Report, Hong Kong, 1946, Appendix 2, p. 13. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE 141 encircled by a passageway. Within the central courtyard there are two narrow, rectangular one-storeyed buildings for the pigs and chickens and the privy. At the far end of the main axis is the ancestral hall. On the outer circle of the building there are the kitchens and cattle pens. There are three storeys to this dwelling. Again, the second floor is for storage and the third is for living. This time the house is facing west which is perhaps because of the surrounding land and was the decision of the local geomancers. In front of the house there is a river encircling the site and the house is protected on one side by a mass of pine trees. Although the front door faces west, the windows on the top floor face only south, thus allowing the auspicious, and cooling, winds to blow in. The outside wall is made of loess mixed with limestone, and with the grey roof, the green pines and the river below, the entire setting is one of warmth and beauty. The next house21 is a more complicated version of the last example. The differences are mostly in size and number. There is a central axis beginning at the front door with a southern orientation. In the middle of the gatehouse there is a small courtyard. In the center of the complex is the principal courtyard, around which there are several reception rooms for guests. At the far side of the courtyard is the main hall, behind which there is another courtyard. Finally, one reaches the ancestral hall at the back. Along the outer wall there are numerous kitchens. There also is a secondary east-west axis running horizontally from side gate to side gate. These gates were built for easy access to the mills which frequently are found in Hakka settlements. These mills provide the employment and means of support for such a self-contained, independent group. From an interior view of the house, one can see the extreme height of the outer wall in comparison to the inner circle. The upper floors are used for the living quarters, which are entered through balconies. The windows, again, are only on the upper levels where the people live. The whole complex is built to keep the outside world out and to tie the community together in a living and working environment. In the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung there is a distinct type of society. The area is more heterogeneous and is divided by many dialects. "The villages of the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung are compact. Many of them are communities composed of the * See also Fig. 4: also Plates 13-14. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 168 W. SCHOFIELD Editor's Note The manuscript breaks off abruptly at this point, and since it was passed to me after Mr. Schofield's death in December 1968 and I was hitherto unaware of its existence there is now no means of knowing whether it was completed or finished in part only. It is reproduced here for its interest as a contemporary statement of the progress of the archaeology of Hong Kong and South China by about 1938, when it was written, and for the useful account it provides of the part played by Schofield, Shellshear and Heanley in the early period of Hong Kong archaeological studies. PRE-WAR WRITINGS ON HONG KONG ARCHAEOLOGY INCLUDE: (1) J. G. Andersson — "Topography of the Hongkong Sites" in Bulletin No. 11, Topographical and Archaeological Studies in the Far East, of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1939. (2) S. F. Balfour Section II, “Archaeological Evidence" at pp. 336-341 of his article "Hong Kong Before The British" between pp. 330-352 and 440-464 of T'ien Hsia Monthly, Shanghai, 1941. [Since reprinted in Vol. 10 (1970) of this Journal -Ed.] (3) Fr. D. J. Finn — various articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist between 1933-36. These are now reprinted in (ed. T. F. Ryan, S.J.) Archaeological Finds On Lamma Island (Ai》) Near Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Ricci publications, Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958. (4) C. M. Heanley and J. L. Shellshear “A Contribution to the Prehistory of Hongkong and the New Territories", Praehistoria Asia Orientalis, I, Premier Congrès des Préhistoriens d'Extrême-Orient, Hanoi, 1932. (5) W. Schofield — "Implements Of Palaeolithic Type In Hong Kong" at pp. 272-275, The Hong Kong Naturalist, December. 1935. (6) W. Schofield "The Proto-Historic Site of the Hong Kong Culture at Shek Pik, Lantau, Hong Kong" at pp. 235-305 of Proceedings of the Third Congress of Pre-historians of the Far East, Singapore, Government Printing House, 1940. J. W. H., Hong Kong, 1972. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h THREE CHINESE DEITIES: VARIATIONS ON A THEME (With special reference to overseas Chinese communities in South East Asia) KEITH STEVENS* Individual Chinese gods are worshipped universally throughout all Chinese communities and areas, or are worshipped only within limited areas such as a village or linked villages. Some are peculiar to linguistic groups such as the Shanghainese or the Cantonese. Three gods from the immense Chinese pantheon have been chosen and their legends, recognition features, the reason for their worship and where possible the area in which they were or still are worshipped have been described in detail below. The first deity, worshipped in practically all Chinese communities, is General Yin Ch'iao (**太岁**) more frequently referred to as T'ai Sui (**太岁**). The second, Fa Chu Kung (**法主公**), is a deity to be found only within two or three localised communities in Fukien province and amongst overseas Chinese from these communities. However, he is also to be found in a few temples of other overseas Chinese communities who have adopted him to take advantage of his power. The third deity is Cheng Ho (**郑和**), the explorer of the 15th Century who is worshipped only by limited communities of overseas Chinese in areas where Cheng Ho's fleet called during his explorations. These three have been chosen because they are good examples of three different types of Chinese deities. The first, T'ai Sui, is a * Major Stevens is a serving officer at present with the Ministry of Defence. He has been employed in South East Asia and the Far East and has travelled extensively among the Chinese communities of the region (but of necessity outside China) in his search for images of Chinese gods. The value of his article lies in bringing together material from, as he says, 'two and a half thousand temples' in the region, showing the great variety of images in their various forms and continued devotion to the pantheon of gods. I am glad to have this opportunity of publishing it in the Journal. No attempt has been made to impose a uniform romanization which is here given as presented by the author from the various works consulted, and as in the different dialect forms he encountered in the course of his enquiries. Nor have I changed the terms "god-shop" and "god-carver" used by Major Stevens because they are colourful, and therefore appropriate to the subject. Ed. Plates 15-29 illustrate this article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h THREE CHINESE DEITIES 179 In c. above, he is two different beings, his benevolent form is as a man with two eyes, “ear pressing" tufts of hair, three pairs of arms, and hair standing erect on the back of his head. In his malevolent form he is depicted as a man with a leopard's head, three eyes, a lion's nose, a tiger's mouth, a bear's tongue, a boar's tusks, and three pairs of arms. Again, above his ears are "ear pressing" tufts of hair, and on top of his otherwise bald head is a headdress called a k'ui ying. In the two and a half thousand or so temples visited in South East Asia, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, the basic forms listed above can be grouped into general categories. T'ai Sui/Yin Ch'iao were seen in 48 temples; among which 11 were Fukienese, 28 Cantonese, 2 Hakka, 2 Ch'ao Chow and two inter-community Buddhist temples. Of these, 18 were in Singapore, 15 in Malaya, 9 in Hong Kong, 3 in Macao, 1 in Cambodia and 2 in Taiwan. The 'youths with a scroll' are mainly Cantonese, as are the majority of the 'youths holding a bell.' The ‘elderly man with a bell' was seen in two Hakka temples and one Cantonese community temple. The images of the 'fierce general' was seen only in Fukienese community temples and a few images of 'youths with bells or scrolls' were seen in Fukienese temples. The groups of sixty images have been seen in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macao, and in Fukien by Hodous. In Singapore and Kuala Lumpur large but odd numbers of T'ai Sui, including a mix-ture of them with scrolls or bells, were seen in two Cantonese community temples. These images have not been seen in any Hainanese temples. Only in Cantonese and Hakka temples were these images observed standing on wads of hell money. The four charms carried by T'ai Sui, according to a Fukienese god carver, are: a. a seal of office, which, if shaken, causes the heavens to quake. b. two swords, one male and one female, which are able to destroy demons and wrong-doers. c. a bell, called Jung Kuei Ch'ung (*) which causes one to lose the way when rung. This bell causes demons to forget their tasks and to wander aimlessly. It is also a magic teller of time. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h THREE CHINESE DEITIES 185 the newly dead. Mara has a cleft head, ear-pressing tufts and protruding eyes. His skirt can be made of leaves and on occasions he has a staff in his right hand. THE CULT OF FA CHU KUNG Background The localised cult of Fa Chu Kung appears to have originated in the areas of An Chi and Ying Ch'uen in Fukien Province and has been carried by emigrants to their new homes in Taiwan and South East Asia. Fa Chu Kung is renowned amongst his devotees for his ability to cure any illness, and is believed to be capable of such potent magic that many Chinese are fearful even to mention his name. In addition it is claimed in some areas that he is able to cause and stop rain at will, and in one Cantonese temple in Kuala Lumpur he is specifically prayed to for confirmation that a marriage in process of being arranged will be successful. A Fukienese temple keeper in Singapore, who was not too fearful to discuss the deity, confided that Fa Chu Kung is the powerful leader of a large group of gods which includes the Northern Emperor Hsuan Tien Ta Ti and has very many disciples. He also claimed that Fa Chu Kung is able to transform himself into anyone or anything and that Chinese spirit mediums can only approach other gods through Fa Chu Kung. Therefore Fa Chu Kung's goodwill and agreement are always necessary before any petition or prayers may be offered to any god apart from the supreme deity, the Jade Emperor. Recognition Features Fa Chu Kung is more often to be found as a minor deity on an altar dedicated to another god rather than the main deity on an altar or of a temple. His image is very easy to recognise. The basic recognition features are his shiny black face and body, his unkempt hair and slightly protruding eyes; his unsheathed sword is held at the ready in his right hand and a red snake curls round his neck and shoulders and over his left arm. His black feet are bare and are resting on fire wheels, and finally his left hand is making a magical sign. This is made by his whole left hand stretched forward at waist level and pointing vertically with his index and little finger; his thumb and the other two fingers are pressed to the palm. The whole hand is twisted to face the right. Most images have all these ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h THREE CHINESE DEITIES 193 from the Imperial Palace. These Chinese expeditions sailed as far afield as the coast of East Africa, the Maldive Islands, Mogadishu, the Persian Gulf, Aden and Mecca, Siam, Champa, Java, Sumatra and Malacca, visiting more than thirty countries in South East Asia, the Indian Archipelago and the Indian Ocean. Cheng Ho The most famous of the admirals to command these expeditions was Ma Cheng-ho, a eunuch from the Imperial Palace and the son of a Chinese Moslem Hadji from Yunnan. The Admiral is remembered either as Cheng Ho or by his title, San Po Kung (2) and not by his family name which was the common Chinese Moslem name Ma ( ). The full title by which he was known after his death was San Pao T'ai Chien (2), the Three Jewelled Eunuch, but this in South East Asia has been shortened to San Pao Kung (ET). Cheng Ho's last expedition in 1430 visited seventeen countries from which tribute had ceased to be received, but after he died in about 1431 all official intercourse between these countries and China ceased.* Where or when he was deified is not known. However, amongst the overseas Chinese communities which are mentioned below Cheng Ho is still prayed to for protection, both in everyday life and on short journeys. In the earlier days of the Chinese migrations to South East Asia, he was prayed to by the junk crews of the southern maritime provinces of China and the South Seas. Cheng Ho himself on his voyages is said to have prayed to Tien Fei, the Heavenly Consort (kt), the Chinese seafarers' goddess, who is now normally called Ma Tsu or Tien Hou. What a good example of Chinese toleration Cheng Ho was: or perhaps a good example of the prudent Chinese who takes the opportunity not to offend, and also backs all horses. Here he is, a Mohamedan who prays to Tien Fei for protection and who during one of his voyages erects a tablet in honour of the local Buddha. Images of Cheng Ho Statues of Cheng Ho are to be seen in temples in Singapore; in Malaysia in Muar and Malacca; in Sarawak; in Semarang in Java, See J. V. G. Mills' edited translation of Ma Huan's Ying-yai Sheng-lan. The overall survey of the Ocean's Shores, Cambridge University Press for The Hakluyt Society, 1970. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 208 NOTES AND QUERIES it is easy to see what it was like in 1841 when Britain occupied Hong Kong. University Hall began life in the early 1860s as Castle Douglas, the fanciful creation of Douglas Lapraik, an early Hong Kong ship-owner (see J. Llewellyn's article from Volume XI, (1967-68) of Outpost, the annual magazine of University Hall Students' Association). The house and estate were sold to the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris (hereafter called the French Mission) in May, 1894, rebuilt and extended, and renamed Nazareth House. The Mission figures prominently in today's tour, since we shall visit the Maison de Béthanie, opposite Castle Douglas, that also belonged to it. Before proceeding further to describe Nazareth House and Béthanie, I shall mention something of its work and history. According to Samuel Couling's Encyclopaedia Sinica (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1917) p. 378, the Société, all of whose members were French, was, at the time he wrote, a society of secular priests who, without being tied to any religious vow, devoted themselves to the propagation of the Catholic faith in the Far East. It originated in the middle of the 17th century by some French priests proceeding by invitation to Tonkin to assist the work of the Jesuits there. Its first missionary to reach China proper was Mgr. Pallu in 1681. It had no Superior-General but was administered by the heads of the different Missions, and by the Directors of the Seminary in Paris. The Society provided more workers and more martyrs than any other of the bodies that evangelized the Far East. At the time Couling wrote, it had under its care 12 Vicariats with 462,321 Christians, and more than 160 of its members had been made bishops. Besides its Missions in China, the Société had in Hong Kong a famous printing house, the Nazareth Press, which began its work soon after the first Nazareth House was opened in Macau in December 1884. Nazareth House soon moved to Hong Kong, to Tai Ku Lau, Pokfulam, (see below) 1885-1891, then to Richmond Terrace above Kennedy Town in the Western District of Hong Kong (1891-1895) and then to Castle Douglas, renamed Nazareth (1895-1953). The printing press went with it in all these removals. The Nazareth Press was a notable achievement. It occupied a special building at Tai Ku Lau, with the presses on the ground floor and the setting rooms above. A special extension was later built ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 210 NOTES AND QUERIES University Hall. The hall has accommodation for 80 students, all men. The present warden is Dr. Enoch Young, lecturer in physics at the University, through whose courtesy the Branch is able to visit this historic building today. We shall then walk across to the Maison de Béthanie. This building, since renovated and added to, was originally constructed in the early 1870s by the French Mission. Father Caminondo who is in charge of the Maison de Béthanie has very kindly supplied the following account: At a time when travelling was not easy and medical care not available in many mission countries, the Superiors of the Paris Foreign Mission Society decided to put up a house in the Far East for the sick and old missionaries. Hong Kong was chosen for this purpose on account of its climate and medical facilities available. It must be added that at that time few places in the Far East offered the political stability and religious tolerance of the Colony. The name of Béthanie was chosen after "Bethany village" of the Holy Scripture, and the inscription above the main entrance "Lord he whom thou lovest lies sick" is part of the message sent to Jesus by Martha and Mary when their brother Lazarus became sick. Many Missionaries availed themselves of the facilities offered by the sanatorium. In 1884, for instance, 43 missionaries stayed for some time. Apart from the delightful setting, the main interest of the Maison is its chapel. This is said to be built to the same design as the former French Cathedral in Tokyo, destroyed during the war. By kind permission of Father Caminondo, we are permitted to enter the chapel and walk round it, up one side to the sacristy behind the altar, and down the other. The chapel is remarkable for its fine furniture and fittings which apparently date from its construction. Note the sets of altar tables, of different shape and decoration, on each side of the aisle, and the large wall cupboards in the sacristy which is, as its name implies, the repository for vestments, vessels etc. used in the chapel. There are two memorial tablets to martyred priests behind the entrance doors to the chapel. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h BOOK REVIEWS 235 The volume as a whole marks the beginning of an effort started some four years ago to bring the local university into greater contact with key problems of life in Hongkong. Academic commitment to Hongkong inevitably fluctuates. This volume is proof that the effort to get "town and gown" working together is worthwhile. Hong Kong, 1972. LEO GOODSTADT This review first appeared in the Far East Economic Review for 18 March 1972, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author and the F.E.E.R. Ed. PREMODERN CHINA, A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION, Chu-shu Chang, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No. 11, 1971, pp. iii, 183. Dr. Chang provides an introductory bibliography of Western-language works on premodern China from prehistoric times to the early nineteenth century, In the preface he describes his purposes as follows: It is designed primarily to introduce graduate students of premodern Chinese studies to all basic research tools and the current state of research in their field. It is hoped that the use of this bibliography will familiarize students with the major achievements and the most significant issues raised in Western-language sources (primarily English) before they undertake their research into Chinese and Japanese materials. A few standard references to and bibliographies of Chinese and Japanese sources, mostly with excellent comments in English, have also been included as a guide for advanced students who have acquired some reading knowledge of Chinese and/or Japanese and who desire to read works in these languages. Various limiting considerations are listed in the rest of the preface. However, Dr. Chang need not have too many misgivings about his work which is a most useful basic guide and, within the limits of a relatively short book, provides much valuable bibliographical assistance over a wide field. The book is well-produced and carefully edited, is convenient to carry about and handle, and reasonably priced. This makes it thoroughly practical: not every ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h Plate 33. In Tartar Yamun, August 1858 (No. XLVIII). Plates 12 and 33 illustrate Mr. Collin's article "Some Nineteenth Century Water-Colours of China and the Far East". ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r We have also had this year a lecture on Chinese music accompanied by a musical performance; a talk on the Chinese in Singapore; and another on acupuncture. Library Our Honorary Librarian, Mr. Rydings, has not only been busy selling publications. During 1972 he compiled a catalogue of our library which has steadily grown within the limits placed upon us by space. Distributed free to members, it should be a valuable aid to those interested in the cultural and scientific aspects of the Far East, and we hope, encourage members to make greater use of our collections. This year also, Mr. Rydings has produced for us an index to volumes 1-10 of our Journals. This should be regarded as a “must” by all those engaged in research in the area, for it includes many articles based on recent findings in a variety of fields. Acknowledgements It remains for me now to thank all of those who have helped to make this an active year for the Society. I would like personally to thank the Council for its time and support in our many ventures, and individual members of Council who have organised or helped organise our activities. Our corporate thanks go additionally to members and friends of the Society who have given time and expertise in contributing to the programme of events and to the Journal. Finally and as always, our very special thanks go to the British Council—its staff and Representative Mr. Bridges—for continued special help and support. 25th March, 1973. MARJORIE TOPLEY ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r YAUMATEI TYPHOON SHELTER, HONG KONG 29 So it was that on 14th December, 1903 the Honourable Gershom Stewart*, an unofficial member of the Legislative Council, rose to move the following motion- That in the opinion of the Council it is advisable to increase, if possible, the means of shelter for cargo boats and sampans during the typhoon season. In the course of a long speech Mr. Stewart said it was a fact to be borne in mind-- That the harbour is after all the reason of our existence here, from the harbour we either directly or indirectly, all of us, depend on our subsistence. We are now in the happy position of having an abundant revenue and I have now put in a plea for a humble and hard working section of the sea-faring population who have no means of advocating their own cause. He then spoke at some length on the dangers which the boat people faced in the course of typhoons with particular reference to that which had occurred in 1900, and went on to recommend his resolution to the Council on two grounds- The first being that of self-interest for we indirectly will get some benefit because we are doing something to assist trade and secondly on the higher ground of our common humanity. For I think it is right and proper that we should afford all the protection and help we can to an industrious and hard-working section of the community. For during a certain part of the year they may claim to be following a dangerous avocation, because we must remember that these people in numbers, men, women and children have nothing between them and the next world but perhaps a half inch plank when it may be blowing a hurricane in the harbour. Mr. Stewart's resolution was seconded by Mr. C. W. Dickson* who pointed out that-- * Listed in Who's Who in the Far East 1906-7 June (Hong Kong, China Mail, Publishers) as b. 1858, came out to Hongkong Bank, Jan. 1883, Exchange Broker, Chairman of the China Association. * Charles Wedderburn Dickson, listed in Who's Who in the Far East as partner in the firm of Jardine, Matheson and Co., and Deputy Chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, b. 1863, arrived in Hong Kong 1884. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r YAUMATEI TYPHOON SHELTER, HONG KONG 31 On 13th September, 1906 it again became time for His Excellency to speak on the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for the coming year. In the course of that speech he said— One of the items which I wished to appear on the Estimates for this year but which does not appear is the typhoon shelter. So long as we have those waterworks on hand to which I have referred there is very little chance of doing anything in connection with the shelter; unless the Chamber of Commerce would suggest raising the light dues to provide funds for its construction, in which case such a reasonable suggestion might be adopted. Events were then to take a tragic turn. A week later on 20th September, 1906, His Excellency returned to the Legislative Council and informed the members that (as they well knew)— Hong Kong had just suffered from catastrophe as calamitous, if not more so, than any which had previously befallen the Colony, the loss of life and property between the hours at 9 and 11 on Tuesday morning were as far as can at present be judged greater than those incurred in the great typhoon of 1874. He went on to say-- None of us are likely to forget the scenes of that morning, first of all we saw when the typhoon gun was fired about 9 o'clock crowds of helpless shipping drifting to the east before the wind, then the whole scene was wiped out by the blowing sheets of rain, and an hour later the atmosphere being again clear, we saw that the junks and small craft had disappeared and that many of the larger ships were aground or in distress. What had happened to the Chinese boats was evidenced by the appalling scenes of desolation along the prayas or the Kowloon shore. I need not, however, dwell on those scenes nor account the losses which were witnessed and known to all of you. He went on to detail and pay tribute to various acts of heroism which had occurred during the course of the storm. This typhoon had occurred just after the budget for 1907 had been presented and before the Council had had an opportunity to comment on the proposed expenditure at its next sitting. Now the Governor had suggested the construction of a typhoon shelter could not be started unless perhaps it were financed out of increased light dues. Despite the typhoon in which an estimated 10,000 people ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 32 A. J. S. LACK had died the reaction of the Chamber of Commerce to the Governor's suggestion was not perhaps what one might have imagined. On 27th September 1906, Mr. E. A. Hewett* the unofficial member of the Legislative Council appointed by the Chamber of Commerce rose to comment upon the budget proposals for the year ahead, and in the course of his speech said— With regard to the typhoon shelter, your Excellency referred to the necessity for this which is admitted by all and went on to suggest the Chamber of Commerce might see their way to suggest the means of raising funds, I am sorry to say the Chamber of Commerce do not see their way to meet your Excellency's suggestion. For many years it has been strongly urged by all those interested in shipping that tonnage and light dues should not be levied for the purposes of general revenue. He claimed that in 1897 Mr. Chamberlain, the then Secretary of State in reply to a telegram from Sir Wilfred Robinson, “practically admitted that in future light and tonnage dues were not to be raised for such purposes." He then said, "the shelter benefits all classes of the community and should be borne by the Community and not by the shipping section, we all depend on the native craft, the merchant and the house owner as well as the ship owner and the refuge here is just as much a benefit to the merchant and the house owner as to the ship owner. Consequently, it would be manifestly unfair to ask a portion of the community to raise a large sum of money for the benefit of the whole Colony." Mr. Hewett then questioned various sites which had been proposed for a typhoon shelter and raised the possibility of the Colony incurring a loan to pay for it. Then he went on to say that he did not suppose that even had there been a shelter it would have had any effect in avoiding the great loss of life which had occurred on 18th of the month. He considered that a few boats in the immediate vicinity might have gone into the refuge, but it would not have benefitted the native shipping at large. * Edbert Ansgar Hewett, listed in Who's Who in the Far East as Superintendent, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, b. 1860, member of the Shanghai Municipal Council 1897-1901 and its Chairman in 1900-1901. Chairman of the Hongkong Chamber of Commerce since 1903. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r YAUMATEI TYPHOON SHELTER, HONG KONG 33 This speech was followed by one from Dr. Ho Kai,* senior Chinese member of the Legislative Council who said that he was "very sorry indeed to hear it from his Honourable friend that there was no hope of the Chamber of Commerce coming to the aid of Government on the important question of the speedy erection of a typhoon shelter.” Dr. Ho suggested that the typhoon shelter was not being erected for the purposes of general revenue, but was a special kind of work which the recent disaster had emphasised as being necessary. Notwithstanding the refusal of the Chamber of Commerce to aid the Government he thought that Government should at once devise means for the erection of the refuge, going on to say that it would be an excellent thing to have a number of typhoon shelters which might be available for the floating population, and urging the necessity for the work not only on the grounds of expediency but on grounds of humanity also. Later that afternoon the Governor replied to these speeches saying that he would endeavour to start work upon the typhoon shelter in the coming year since he believed it to be absolutely necessary. He thought it would take some time to decide on the best site and a satisfactory design, and in the meantime he would consider how the necessary expenditure could best be met. He did not intend to raise a loan, or repeat the reasons why he was against such course of action, but would answer one of the arguments commonly used in favour of a loan. It is said why should we pay now for what will benefit coming generations. That I do not think is a fair way to put it, we should pay for whatever benefits the next generation in the same way as the past generation paid for the benefits which the present generation enjoys. There is no finality in this progressive Colony about any of our public works. This credo was greeted by applause. Later in his speech, his Excellency said— If the cost of the typhoon shelter is not to be met by a loan (and I think I have the majority of the Council with me that it * Dr. Ho Kai, listed in Who's Who in the Far East as Senior Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council representing the Chinese and Justices of the Peace, b. Hong Kong 1859, educated Aberdeen University (M.B., C.M.) and Lincoln's Inn (Barrister at Law). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 36 A. J. S. LACK At the same meeting another unofficial member, Mr. Osborne,* mounted a quite blistering attack upon Government's past failure to provide adequately for the shelter of the boat people in Hong Kong. He referred to the typhoon of 1841 and to the storm of 1874 in which over 2,000 lives were lost within the space of 6 hours and 35 foreign vessels were wrecked or badly damaged. He claimed that the screaming of those in distress on the water could be heard in the mid levels of the town above the noise of the storm. He went on to refer to subsequent and more recent typhoons, one of which (1906) had exacted a toll of 10,000 lives in two hours. He demanded to know what it was that had been done with the lessons of previous years, and came to the reluctant conclusion that very little had been done. He castigated Government's lavish expenditure on various new public buildings, notably the Supreme Court, the Harbour Office, and the intended Post Office Building, as being quite beyond the bounds of what was required, and ended with these remarks, During a rather long residence in the Colony, I have had exceptional opportunities of coming into contact with the boat population. Though, like most humanity, their character is a blend of the good and the bad, there is one quality they possess in marked degree, which has always commanded my deep admiration, and that is their patience and philosophic bearing under circumstances of trial and suffering. In their name, Sir, and apart from the commercial aspect to which I have alluded, in the name of thousands who have already suffered in silence the misery wrought by these destructive storms, I appeal to your Excellency that there shall be no further delay in giving them the shelter which it is our clear and bounden duty to provide. These words put the officials on their mettle. At the next meeting of the Council, the Director of Public Works and His Excellency the Governor were at pains to assure members that something was going to be done about the typhoon shelter: in fact, they had purchased a dredger on which to begin work on the foundations of the shelter. This provoked an unexpected row because some members considered that another dredger also for sale in the harbour at that * Edward Osborne, listed in Who's Who in the Far East as Secretary of the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Co., b. 1861, with P & O Steam Navigation Co. in London and Hong Kong 1880-1889. Director of Hong Kong Hotel, Dairy Farm, Steam Laundry, etc. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 46 A. D. BLUE steamships in India operated on the Hoogly in the early 1820s, mainly as tug boats. The first steamship in the Dutch East Indies was the Van der Capellen, a paddle steamer of 230 tons, designed to operate a coastal service in Java. The Van der Capellen was built by a consortium of British merchants in Sourabaya in 1825, and equipped with engines built by Fawcett and Company of Birmingham. Due to the close association between British India and Canton through the East India Company, it was not long before steamships were introduced on the Canton River. Although he did not live to see his scheme carried through, a Mr. T. J. Robarts of the Company's Canton staff is the pioneer of steam navigation in China. When on leave in London in 1821, just nine years after the Comet was launched on the Clyde, he suggested to the Court of Directors that a steam tug could be usefully employed on the Canton River. Because it was thought that the Chinese might object, his scheme was turned down, but Mr. Robarts decided to go ahead on his own. He ordered two 16 horse-power engines and a copper boiler from Henry Maudslay and Company of London, and a hull of oak frames; all of which arrived at Canton in 1822 and aroused great curiosity and admiration. Unfortunately, bad health caused Mr. Robarts to retire prematurely, and there was no one at Canton able, or willing to continue with his scheme. Everything was therefore sent to Calcutta, and arrived there in June 1822. The parts were assembled at Kyd and Company's yard at Kidderpore, and the vessel, known as the Diana, was launched on 12th July 1823. However, the original oak hull was discarded in favour of a new hull built locally of teak. The name Diana was taken from the figurehead which had accompanied the original hull. The total cost of the Diana was 70,000 rupees, and the government declining to take any part in the enterprise--this was financed by a group of Indian agency houses. The Diana ran successfully, but not profitably, on the Hoogly for a year, and was then sold to the government for use in the Burma War, 1824-1826. It was Captain Marryat, then the senior naval officer in India, who recommended her purchase to the government. The Diana took part in the first expedition to Rangoon, and proved so useful that she was retained on the Irawaddy for the whole of the war. She suffered at times from overloading, as not ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 50 A. D. BLUE Jardine should not pass up the river. In the outcome, the passengers for Canton continued their journey in a sailing boat, and the Jardine returned to Lintin. Some time later the Chinese repeated their demand that the Jardine must leave the country, and as her machinery needed repair, she left for Singapore under sail, and arrived there on 28th February 1836. After several ineffectual attempts to repair the engines and to sell her, the engines were removed and the Jardine was converted permanently to a sailing ship. As such she returned to China on 23rd September 1836, but was recognised at Lintin as the "smoke ship" which had been turned away some nine months before. Although now minus the offending engines and paddle wheels, the hoppo decreed that she must leave. Her later history is obscure, but she seems to have continued in Jardine, Matheson and Company's fleet as a schooner. In his British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-1842, Michael Greenberg includes her in a list of the Company's ships on the China coast in 1840. It was the operations of the steamships of the Royal Navy and of the East India Company in the First China War, 1840-1842, which proved the value and practicability of steamships in Chinese waters. By the end of the war there were 48 British warships on the coast, including hospital, troop, and supply ships. Fourteen of these were steamships, nine wooden and five iron, the best known being the Nemesis. The Nemesis was a pioneer in several respects, and it was her exploits in the First China War which advertised the many advantages of steam over sail in coastal waters. She was the first iron steamship to round the Cape of Good Hope, and to operate in Chinese waters for any length of time. Her outward passage to China in 1840 was probably the longest and most perilous voyage undertaken by a steamship up to that time; and some of the problems posed by her iron construction were never fully solved in her time—compass errors and the effects of lightning, for instance. She was flat bottomed and of shallow draft, only drawing six feet when fully loaded. She had two movable sliding keels, one fore and one aft of the engine room, and was divided into seven watertight compartments. With her shallow draft (she could be made to draw as little as five feet when necessary) the Nemesis was especially handy for inshore work on the coast and rivers. She probably demoralised ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA 51 the Chinese more than all the rest of the British warships put together, Chinese opposition to steamships was overborne after the First China War, and in the years between then and the Second China War 1857-1858, steam navigation in China was established on a secure foundation. During the first two decades of steam, American ships were as prominent as British on the Canton River and on the coast, and sometimes more technically efficient. This was largely because the Americans made good use of their experience on the Hudson and Mississippi Rivers, and also because their early steamships were designed specially for coastal and river conditions. Many of the early British steamships were merely sailing ships equipped with engines. The earliest American steamers were associated with Russell and Company, and Robert Benet Forbes was the man mainly responsible for bringing most of these early steamships to China. The first was the Midas, built at East Boston in 1844, which was the first American steamship to round the Cape of Good Hope, as well as being the first to be seen in China. The Midas arrived at Hong Kong on 21st May 1845, and was put on a twice weekly service between Hong Kong and Canton, the first regular steamship service in China. She also engaged in towing and salvage work, which was usually more profitable than carrying passengers or cargo; so that the advertised regular sailings were often more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The Midas was followed by the wooden screw bark Edith, also built at East Boston, which arrived at Macao on 2nd September 1845 and Hong Kong a few days later. The Edith was originally intended to run in the opium trade between India and China, but plans were changed and she was loaded with general cargo for Shanghai. Bad weather and engine trouble foiled two attempts to make this passage, and the Edith was eventually sent back to Boston via Rio de Janeiro, reconditioned at Boston and then chartered to the United States War Department. In 1846 Forbes sent the small 20 ton screw steamer Firefly on another ship to Hong Kong, and put her in service between Hong Kong and Whampoa until 1849, usually making two trips daily. She was withdrawn in 1849 and sent to California by sailing ship. In 1846 Jardines were successful in inaugurating the first British steamship service on the river, with the Corsair between Hong Kong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r SWATOW HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS Ch'aochow Puppets in contemporary China and overseas 83 Liu Fu-kuang §✯ an educated person of about 40, who is the most outstanding Ch'aochow orchestra-leader here, is closely connected with the Hsin-shun-hsiang puppet-troupe. He came to Hong Kong in 1959. According to him, puppet-troupes completely disappeared in Ch'aochow after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. This is probably because their performances were intimately connected with the festivals of the myriads of local deities, the worship of which was strongly discouraged by the Communists. In 1957, Liu Fu-kuang saw the last troupe, called Shant'ou Ying-hsi-t'uan 4⇓✯D (Shadow-play-troupe of Shant'ou) perform in Swatow. He believes that not even one troupe is now left in Ch'aochow, after a history of about one thousand years and a hundred active troupes fifty years ago. People from Ch'aochow make up a large percentage of the Overseas Chinese population of South East Asia and Ch'aochow opera flourishes there; but there is said not to be one single "paper-shadow-play" troupe overseas. This shows that from the great tradition of puppet-theatre, only the two troupes in Hong Kong are left. It is therefore the last chance to savour and study this tradition before its extinction which, at least at the moment, appears to be inevitable. BIBLIOGRAPHY Batchelder, Marjorie H.: Rod-puppets and the Human Theatre, Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 1947. Huang Chun-ming: The Forbidden Puppets' in Echo of Things Chinese, Taiwan, October 1972, pp. 24-34. Jacob & Jensen: Das Chinesische Schattentheater, Stuttgart, 1933. Margareta Niculescu: The Puppet Theatre in the Modern World compiled by Union Internationale des Marionettes under Margareta Niculescu, George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, Toronto, Wellington, Sidney, 1967. Tsim Tak-lung (compiler): Puppet-demonstration on pages 45-47 of ‘Chinese Theatre in Hong Kong', Proceedings of a Symposium, Nov. 22-23, 1968, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1968. Burger, Helga: 'The Cantonese Stick-puppets', in Kaleidoscope, Hong Kong, March/April 1973. "The Far Eastern Puppet Theatre' in Souvenir Book of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, 1974. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 114 SUNG HOK-P’ANG to Kam T'in he was much taken by it, considering the people were more friendly and honest than those of his own country, and it was said that he came to live there in the 6th year of Hoi Po (HT) A.D. 973 of Sung dynasty. During the 8th year of Shing Fa (APC) A.D. 1472 of Ming dynasty when the Kam T'in people revised their family tree, they added a note which cast doubt on the veracity of this, and instead they were inclined to believe that Tang Foo (#) the great grandson of Tang Hon Fat was really the first to come to Kam Tin, and that he transferred the bones of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather to Kwangtung from Kiangsi. Be that as it may, and although there is no actual proof that one or other was the original Tang to settle in Kwangtung, Tang Hon Fat remains a "first ancestor" as his is the oldest Tang grave near Kam T'in. It can be found at Ah Kai Shaan (Y), Waang Chau (H) village. Six generations after Tang Hon Fat there were two brothers, Kwai (3) and Sui (). Kwai had two sons called Yuen Ying (* ) and Yuen Hei (†), both of whom left Kam T’in and founded branches of the family elsewhere. Sui had three sons, Yuen Ching (元祯), Yuen Leung (元亮) and Yuen Woh (元和). The first and last of these also left for other districts but Yuen Leung remained behind, and the Tangs in Kam T’in to-day are his direct descendants. These five cousins were known as the "Five Yuens", and after their death their descendants who by then were scattered in various parts of China built an Ancestral Hall, common to all the Yuens, called To Hing T'ong (*). It is at the South gate of the district city of Tung Koon (✯✯), on the Kowloon-Canton railway not far from Sheklung (). In the hall Tang Hon Fat has been given premier place, but the "Five Yuens" are venerated in the same way as he and Tang Yue are, as being "first ancestors”. As mentioned before, Tang Foo, the great grandson of Tang Hon Fat is said to have found the sites for the graves of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, himself. They were all acknowledged as being lucky places by the "fung shui" men, who were, of course, consulted. That of Tang Hon Fat is called Yuk Nui Paai T'ong (£#*) jade girl reverence; and his son's grave which is on Yuen Long Hill (₪), is called Kam Chung Fau Tei () gold bell cover ground. The grave of Tang Foo's father is called Poon Yuet Chiu T'aam (#AM) half moon shine lake, Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 115 and is on a hill named Hau Tei (#) king crab ground, near the village of Ch'ai Waan Kok (A) Ts'uen Waan ( ) district. The tablet has a poem engraved on it written by Paak Yuk Shim (1) a poetical genius of the Sung dynasty. He was also famous for his paintings which were highly admired among Chinese Scholars. Legends have attributed to him magical powers, and he is supposed to have appeared and disappeared in all the famous mountains from Tung Koon, San On and to the east of Kwangtung. He received the title of "Tsz T'sing Chan Yan” (**^^) from the emperor Sung Ning Tsung (#). Biographies of him were recorded in Tung Koon Yuen Chi (£) Ch'iu Chau Foo Chi (M) and many other books. The poem on the grave was remarkable for the curious allusions that were made in it to the future. It runs:- 1. 長伸左手接星羅, 2. 走攬青衣濯碧波, 3. 深夜一潭星斗現, 4. 裏頭容萬船過。 5. 有人下得朝陽穴, 6. 十三年內登科, 7. 若是世人尋不得, 8. 囘頭轉問釣魚哥。 This can be roughly translated as follows: 1. "Put out the left hand as far as Sing Hill, 2. running as far as to Tsing I island wash it in the green waves.” These two lines refer to the position of the grave. 3. "In deep night one harbour all the stars appear.” Alluding to the lights of Hong Kong harbour in the future. 4. "Inside harbour there will be ten thousand ships passing to and fro. The trade that was to come to Hong Kong. 5. "If any one can find the proper site of the grave 6. in thirteen years' time his descendants will pass the highest degree of Government examinations." This came true in so far as the Tang family were very successful in passing examinations and some of them became high officers and men of rank. 7. "If people in the world try to find, and are unable to find it 8. turn your head round and ask the young fisherman." Referring to the grave again. When Tang Foo was finding the place for the grave the local villagers pointed out to him a stone known as the Fishing Stone which helped him to decide on the site. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r LEGENDS & Stories of the NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 129 dhism. This was the origin of the Ling Wan Tsz (+) which still exists at the head of the Kam T'in valley, and is one of the best known monasteries in the New Territories. It was built between A.D. 1426 and 1435 during the period of Suen Tak (✯✯) of Ming dynasty. From Hung Yee's time up to the 2nd year of the Republic it has always been supported by the Kam T'in people. In the 2nd year of the Republic when abbot Miu Ts'aam (A) took charge of the monastery, it was supported by the management of Miu Ts'aam and his successors up to now. Little is known about the early abbots who directed the monastery. It is recorded on a tablet (written by a “mo kui yan” (AKA) of Kam T'in named Tang Ying Yuen (*), which is still to be seen in the monastery, that when some repairs were done to the building in the 1st year of To Kwong (i✯) A.D. 1821 of Ts'ing dynasty, the abbot Tik Ch'an (*) was in charge of raising the necessary funds for the work. Another abbot was Yuen Hung (H) who was in authority in the Ist year of Kwong Sui (✯✯) A.D. 1875 of T'sing dynasty, and when the British leased the New Territories in 1899 Ts'ing Yuen (#) was in charge of the monastery, but later he was promoted to be abbot in another monastery in Loh Fau Shaan (†#). The present building was put in order and enlarged by the late abbot Miu Ts'aam (A) who first held the office in the second year of the Republic. He did much to add to the existing buildings. Now if one visits the monastery a bell is heard being rung day and night. There is a story that when this bell was being cast everyone promised to subscribe to it, and from far and near people brought offerings of money and valuables. When it was completed a hole was found in it that spoilt the tone. In vain the makers tried to fill up the hole but each time the filling fell out. When they were in despair a woman appeared at Ling Wun bringing a gold earring with her. She explained that she had promised to give it as a donation for the bell, but had forgotten to do so. Then everyone said "No wonder! Now the bell is really complete" and they put the earring just as it was into the hole and found it fitted quite tightly. Then they rang the bell and, to their joy, the tone was perfect.* To be continued *The photographs illustrating this article will appear with the next instalment in the 1974 Journal, Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r BOOK REVIEWS YING-YAI SHENG-LAN "THE OVERALL SURVEY OF THE OCEAN'S SHORES' [1433] Translated from the Chinese text; with introduction, notes and appendices by J. V. G. Mills. The Hakluyt Society, Extra Series, No. 42, pp. xix, 391. Cambridge University Press, 1970. £11.50 U.K. When the Emperor Yung-lo died in 1424, the Ming dynasty had reached the height of its power. Chinese fleets commanded the eastern seas, and foreign potentates as far west as Egypt acknowledged the suzerainty of the Emperor. Between 1405 and 1433 a remarkable eunuch, Cheng Ho, as outstanding a seaman adventurer as any produced by Elizabethan England, commanded seven overseas expeditions, and visited over thirty countries. Chinese naval, and consequently trading, hegemony extended from Japan to the east coast of Africa. The expeditions usually extended over two years. Setting out from the neighbourhood of Nanking in the autumn, powerful fleets, including sixty or more 'treasure-ships', and twenty-eight to thirty thousand men, moved down the Yangtze to the mouth of Liu creek (near Shanghai), where organisation was completed; thence to an anchorage near the mouth of the Min river in Fukien province where the ships waited for the favourable north-east monsoon. Java, Palembang, Malacca, Ceylon, Calicut, and Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, were regularly visited. On some occasions, detachments from the main force called at Arabian and at East African ports, sailing southward as far as Malindi. On the fourth expedition (1413-15), Cheng Ho was accompanied by a young Chinese interpreter Ma Huan who, on the basis of observations in the course of succeeding voyages with the 'grand eunuch', contributed perhaps the most important record of life and manners in south Asia by any traveller before the arrival of the Portuguese. Ying-yai Sheng-lan, introduced in two parts, the first describing the expeditions under Cheng Ho, and the second discussing Ma Huan and his book, may have been first published in 1451. Its author died about ten years later, scarcely better known than his book which never acquired a wide circulation. Ma Huan claimed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r BOOK REVIEWS 183 In making the attempt to study the area, Mr. da Silva has performed a most valuable service. He has brought to the task special talents not often found in combination; local birth, knowledge of written and spoken Chinese, a geographer's training, interest in ethnography, and a sympathetic and discerning eye. The book has five chapters, entitled: Chapter I-General Background; Chapter II--Historical Background; Chapter III-Ecological Adaptation and Livelihood; Chapter IV-The Ecology of Padi Cultivation; and Chapter V-Traditional Land Tenure. Of these the three dealing with ecology are the most valuable. Chapter III, in particular, gives a fully integrated account of the traditional means of livelihood in a coastal village area that is not available in any other work, to which he adds a description of the various influences at work on local minds, emphasising how they combine to form a unified cosmological whole (pp. 63-64). This unity of conception is the predominant feature of the local rural scene, and one that imposes itself very strongly on the consciousness of the long-term observer. Chapter IV, which deals with the farming and fishing calendars and describes the sequence and ecological importance of rice cultivation is another valuable contribution to knowledge of the local scene, of a kind and to a degree that, so far as I am aware, has not yet been supplied. In short, these chapters help to repair a deficiency noted by Reischauer and Fairbank, the reconstruction 'with verisimilitude' of 'the daily life of the average Chinese villager in the pre-modern centuries.' (p. 383, Vol. 1 of East Asia, The Great Tradition, Harvard, 1958). The third section of the Chapter on Traditional Land Tenure contains some new and interesting information on land measurement and land classification but the rest is rather sketchy and inadequate on what is a notoriously complicated and difficult subject. The historical chapter is too broad to be effective and Mr. da Silva's knowledge of the island from this viewpoint does not match the superior quality of the other sections. He is misleading on family connections, e.g. pp. 28 and 32, whilst the maps and charts before p. 20 and at p. 35 are not as comprehensive as they could be made to be. The unevenness of the information acquired, and the lack of balance between the ethno-botanical treatment and the historical aspects, mar an otherwise very interesting, stimulating, and informative book. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 5 of disease and urbanisation in Singapore and Hong Kong. Finally Dr. Shih Hsiao-yen, Curator of the Far Eastern Department of the Royal Ontario Museum, and Adjunct Professor of the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto, talked on the relationship between Chinese tomb figurines and monumental sculpture. Dr. Shih, who is presently visiting professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, illustrated her talk with many striking colour slides. Our overseas trip this year, which took place over five days at the Chinese New Year, proved very popular. It was, like our previous Thailand excursion, very ably led by Mr. Michael Smithies. Forty-one members joined the party, starting at Vientiane, proceeding to Luang Prabang, and returning again to Vientiane. They visited museums, Vat, a silk-weaving village, and other handicraft centres, caves and ceremonies; and they saw a rare performance of classical dancing given by the Royal Lao dancers. It is hoped that we may continue to arrange at least one overseas trip a year and we have already received offers to lead future excursions from two of our members. I regret to say that our proposed trip to China has not advanced very far. On the advice of the China Travel Agency we revised our original proposals, suggesting several small groups of ten to fifteen members—and also the possibility of diversifying, some groups making a longer (approximately three weeks) trip to take in Peking and other northerly areas, and some making a shorter (about ten days) trip to places within Kwangtung Province to include museums, potteries and archeologically interesting areas. Recently members of another learned society in England made a trip to China and we can only hope that we are not too far down China's list of priority groups. ARTS CENTRE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE A few words about the progress of the Hong Kong Arts Centre and our participation. The Society became a constituent member of the Arts Centre in January 1973, paying its entrance fee in February of that year. The Society had long wished to have its own premises both for holding lectures and discussions and for housing its library and archives, but despite efforts it was never able to afford to fulfil these wishes and now with astronomical rents it is clearly most unlikely that it ever will. We joined the Arts Centre so that when its buildings are completed we may enjoy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG: THE MARQUIS DE MORES AND DAVID DE MAYRENA HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE* Adventurers at Government House In the nineteenth century Hong Kong's Government House quickly established itself as one of the best caravanserais in the whole Far East. There were then few good hotels in Hong Kong so that His Excellency the Governor usually felt under a strong social obligation to accommodate at government expense any distinguished visitor from abroad; less prestigious persons would be invited to a function—dinner, soirée, levée — and journalists, writers, and other small fry granted in most cases only an interview. It is clear from Sir William Des Voeux's memoirs1 that at certain seasons Hong Kong swarmed with globe-trotters, nearly all of whom would wish to pay their respects to Her Britannic Majesty's representative at Government House. Des Voeux declares2 that two of the most extraordinary visitors he received at Government House were David de Mayréna, 'King of the Sedangs', and the Marquis Antoine de Morès, 'Emperor of the Badlands', both of whom arrived in Hong Kong in November of 1888 and left behind the remarkable legend that they had fought a duel. This essay is an attempt to describe their strange histories and to explore some questions relating to what may be termed 'the sociology of adventure'. Inevitably such an inquiry must invite discussion of why Europeans left their homeland, for they went overseas not only in pursuit of wealth but in search of a destiny, a term that suggests a number of psychological and sociological problems. On 14 November 1888 the Danish steamer Frejr, a small vessel of 397 tons, engaged in the coastal trade and commanded by a Captain Lund, anchored in Hong Kong harbour after a three days Mr. Lethbridge who is Reader in Sociology at the University of Hong Kong is well known for his earlier contributions on local society and government which have appeared in this Journal and elsewhere. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG 29 voyage from Haiphong. The China Mail's shipping notices reported that the Frejr had landed ‘H.M. The King of the Sedangs and 3 servants and 13 Chinese. The King, of course, was the Frenchman David de Mayréna. As soon as Mayréna had been rowed ashore to a waterfront pier, he hired a chair and was carried off to the Hong Kong Hotel in Pedder Street, where he was booked into Room 23. The next day a reporter from the China Mail came to the hotel and interviewed Mayréna at some length in his room. The report that appeared in the newspaper that same day, three columns of print, was headed 'The King of the Sedangs in Hong Kong. An interview with His Majesty'. The monarch from Indo-China was described as: a tall energetic man of, I should say, 50 years of age, with whiskers and a moustache turning gray, and a countenance full of vigour. One could not find a trace of the “exalté” about him. He was dressed in simple white clothes such as are worn by European residents here during the Summer, made by natives of his Kingdom or at least of the adjoining dependency over which the Jesuit missionaries have for several years exercised a kind of authority." During the interview the French Consul in Hong Kong, M. de Verleye, called, and Mayréna informed them that a royal palace was being constructed in the capital of his kingdom. The day after the lengthy article on Mayréna appeared in the China Mail, the Hong Kong Telegraph also published a report on the King, in which its readers were told that: if many a man here in the Far East wrote his own history, even with a moderate adherence to the truth, it would make unusual reading. For romantic adventures, however, the, at present, principal guest at the Hong Kong Hotel far excels the average adventurer... His few visitors find him a tall, middle-aged, military gentleman, bearing many scars, and with an indifference to his rank except in so far as to assert his right to it at the outset. The article affirmed that the King was now desirous of attracting Chinese emigration to the Sedangs, with a view to opening it up. To men of enterprise and capital there should be a magnificent opening." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 32 H. J. LETHBRIDGE not on his side. He had come to Hong Kong with an express aim - to obtain cash. His design was to persuade Hong Kong merchants to invest heavily in the exploitation of the territory he claimed to rule as soi-disant King of the Sedangs, a title he had assumed in June 1888 with the passive assent of an innocent montagnard people. There were rich men in Hong Kong - speculators, gamblers, risk-takers - and Mayréna hoped to interest them in the mineral wealth and natural products of his new kingdom. Thus he assumed that meeting Sir William and Lady Des Voeux at Government House would vouch for his respectability and provide an entrée into the social enclosure of the rich European merchant class. Morès, on the other hand, had no such motivation. He was in Hong Kong with William Van Driesche, and an engineer, a M. Thorel, en route for Tonkin. His visit to Hong Kong was an accident. The Calédonien, the ship he boarded at Marseilles, berthed at Saigon and Hong Kong but not at Haiphong, so Morès was forced to travel on to Hong Kong and transfer to another ship for Haiphong, the entry port for Hanoi and the Red River basin. He was in a hurry and bent on business. Hence he stayed in Hong Kong for only a week, leaving on 29 November by the small German steamer, the Clara. It was during this week that the alleged duel between the two adventurers took place; but to explain why they had both wandered into the East and why they clashed, we must first examine their previous careers. Marie-Charles David de Mayréna16 The future King of the Sedangs was born into a bourgeois milieu at Toulon on 31 January, 1842. His father was a commander in the French navy, who died when Mayréna was a child so that he was reared entirely by a complaisant mother. He failed his examinations for the Ecole navale in 1857 but joined the Sixth Dragoons in 1859, transferring to the Spahis de Cochinchine in 1863. He served in Indo-China until 1868, when he resigned and returned to France. His career so far had been unremarkable. The next year he married a colonel's daughter; but little is known about the marriage and it seems likely that they soon separated or divorced. Mayréna was a great womaniser. The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 and he was recalled to the colours and procured the rank of captain. In February 1871 he was awarded the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG 37 Vicar Apostolic, Bishop Raimondi, and the heads of the various Catholic missions and organisations. He attended mass daily at the new Catholic Cathedral in Caine Road. But he drew a blank: no Catholic institution was prepared to finance any of his schemes. He now threw away his mask of piety, doubtless with great relief, and settled down to enjoy himself and to gull another class of person. He soon installed a mistress in a rented house in Lyndhurst Terrace, loaded her with gimcrack jewellery and dresses from Gate and Fairall, the milliners of Queen's Road, and hired for her a sedan chair, complete with liveried chair-bearers. She appeared with the King on sundry royal occasions at the Hong Kong Hotel. It is difficult to identify Mayréna's 'consort'. Soulié asserts that she was a Miss Dahlberg,25 who had accompanied her brother and Mayréna to Hong Kong on the Frejr, and that Mayréna met this blonde Swedish ice-maiden in 1888 at Bangkok, where she was engaged apparently in archaeological exploration; but other writers suggest Mayréna's new mistress was a lady from an Italian Opera Company touring in the East,26 which arrived in Hong Kong in late 1888. The latter seems the more plausible account, for at that time European opera singers and ballet dancers were often accommodating ladies who desired nothing better than to be set up in state by some rich protector. Whoever she was, all witnesses agree that the "Queen of the Sedangs' in Hong Kong was a most voluptuous demi-mondaine and that she fascinated the topers of the Hong Kong Hotel and the other hostelries that Mayréna frequented. Much of Mayréna's roistering was done necessarily at the Hotel, since he could obtain credit and simply await the chits at the end of the month, and in its hospitable bar he met many kindred spirits, such as the atrabilious, scandal-mongering Robert Fraser-Smith,27 proprietor of the Hong Kong Telegraph, and also John Joseph Francis, Q.C.,28 Hong Kong's leading barrister and noted Irish tippler. By 1888 the Hong Kong Hotel, established in 1860, had become Hong Kong's social centre. One author claims it was ‘rightly termed the heart of the Colony, for it is one great social rendezvous for dinners, teas, dances, and is probably the most noteworthy meeting place in the Orient'.29 'Proteus', in the Hong Kong Telegraph, supplies this description of its grandeur: After a shower-bath and a change of clothes in our room—and all the rooms in the hotel are on the same scale of loftiness and ================================================================================ 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 ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG 55 not serve his full sentence because he was released on grounds of ill-health. But, as Des Voeux notes, the day after his release from Victoria Gaol he was seen avidly betting at the Happy Valley Race Course. He was, clearly a great card and popular with drinking circles in Hong Kong. The Telegraph was an evening newspaper. After Fraser-Smith's death, J. J. Francis became publisher and Chesney Duncan its editor. 28 John Joseph Francis (1839-1901) was educated in Dublin and intended for the Catholic priesthood. But instead of entering the Church he enlisted in the Army, coming out to China in the Royal Artillery during the Second China War. He took his discharge in Hong Kong and commenced the study of law in the office of a Mr. Owens, solicitor. He was admitted to practise as an attorney in 1869 and entered into partnership with another solicitor and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Ambitious, he gained admission to Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1877. By 1888 he was the Colony's leading barrister. Francis was extremely touchy and truculent: in 1895 he returned to the Governor a silver inkstand, given to him in recognition of his work during the plague, on the grounds that the gift did not sufficiently acknowledge his services. He died of apoplexy at Yokohama's Grand Hotel in 1901. A fitting end: he was an apoplectic soul. Francis lived at 'Shirley House' in Bonham Road, a commodious residence with extensive grounds. 29 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 366. 30 22 November, 1888. The Hong Kong Hotel, situated in Pedder Street, was originally managed by Parsees; in 1866 it came under European management and soon became a first-class hotel with all the facilities of a good West End hotel. 31 7 January, 1889. 32 Soulié states that Mayréna on his way to Hong Kong marooned Afong on Hainan Island but that the intrepid Chinese took passage on a junk and appeared in Hong Kong to haunt the King of the Sedangs. 33 China Mail, 7 January, 1889. 34 George Murray Bain (1842-1909) was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland. He joined the China Mail as a sub-editor and reporter (some say printer) in 1864. In 1875 he became sole proprietor of the China Mail and in 1879 took over the editorship of the paper himself. With N. B. Dennys he started the China Review in 1872. The China Mail was edited from Wyndham Street, a short distance away from the Hong Kong Telegraph on Pedder's Hill. Bain, unlike Fraser-Smith, appears to have been pious, temperate, and acutely respectable. 35 Hong Kong Telegraph, 27 December, 1888. 36 'Drey' was the name of a Sedang locality. 37 China Mail, 24 January, 1889. 38 Hong Kong Telegraph, 25 January, 1889. 39 7 January, 1889. 40 Sir Hugh Clifford, Heroes of Exile, London, 1906, pp. 69-70. Clifford states that it was the Hong Kong merchants 'who had paid his (Mayréna's) passage and had supplied his Majesty with a little ready money' and that they had been actuated partly by a desire to remunerate one from whom they had derived so much entertainment'. Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941), a colonial administrator, who served in Pahang from 1887 to 1899, was, apparently, in Hong Kong in late 1888; it is possible that he had taken local leave but I have been unable to confirm the fact. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 THE CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE KEITH G. STEVENS* In my research into Chinese iconography I made a considerable nuisance of myself in three particular two-storey shophouses in the middle of Singapore's Hokkien (Fukienese) area (see plate 1), by questioning the god carvers' every action during the process of carving and repairing images of Chinese gods. In Singapore three families are in partial competition, yet from their full order books business would appear to be thriving. Two of the families are Hokkien originating from near Foochow and Amoy respectively and the third is Teochew (Ch'ao chou) from Swatow, all being second or third generation Singaporeans who have never visited their homeland. Into these shophouses are crowded the unmarried longterm employees in addition to the families themselves, notably the apprentices who sleep on campbeds in the shop and eat en famille. One master carver bewailed the shortage of apprentices who in this age of affluence were unwilling to undertake a long and poorly paid apprenticeship. I have always referred to these craftsmen as god carvers and their shops as godshops. My article "Three Deities" in this Journal in 1972 provoked the editorial comment that the term was colourful and as such would be left unedited. My terminology is a far cry from the jargon of the anthropologist and it is my intention to describe, in my own terms, the production of gods in one of these godshops. These godshops are ten foot square or ten by twenty foot work-spaces on the ground floor of the shophouses. Here new gods are carved and painted and the old repaired, not only for the island of Singapore but also for places as far north as Thailand and Cambodia, as far east as Borneo and Brunei and as far south as Java. This group of godcarvers is unique in being the only Fukienese and Ch'ao chou specialist carvers still plying their trade save for a few * Major Stevens' other contributions on the interesting subject of Chinese gods in South-east Asia and Taiwan appeared in Vols. 12-13 of this Journal. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 "OH FOR THE JOYS OF ENGLAND" LT. ORLANDO BRIDGEMAN'S LETTERS FROM CHINA AND HONG KONG, 1842 - 1843 ROBIN MCLACHLAN* Lieutenant Orlando Bridgeman was a minor participant in British activities in China in the early 1840's. Mention of this quite unimportant subaltern is not likely to be found in any of the dozens of histories and memoirs narrating the First Anglo-Chinese War and the early years of Hong Kong. However, Orlando Bridgeman has left us his own personal record of his sojourn in the Far East in the form of several entertaining, if somewhat illegible, letters preserved in the archives of the Nottingham County Record Office.1** His correspondence home provides the rare opportunity of seeing what life could be like in the Far East for a very homesick and bored young British officer on his first overseas service. The impression that Bridgeman gives of life in China and Hong Kong is quite different from the more romantic and adventurous picture provided by more experienced and hardier souls. For Bridgeman, his time there was little more than an adventure in misery. Limited biographical information on Orlando Bridgeman can be gleaned from Hart's Annual Army Lists and Burke's Peerage.2 His full name was Orlando Jack Charles Bridgeman; he was born in 1823, the younger son of Captain Orlando Henry Bridgeman (1794-1827) and his wife, Selina. Both parents were the children of British aristocracy; his father was the third son (of four) of Baron Bradford and his mother was the daughter of the Earl of Kilmorey. The careers of the four sons of Baron Bradford comply with the popular stereotype of careers followed by the sons of eighteenth and nineteenth century British nobility. The eldest son, of course, succeeded to the family title; for the second, third and fourth sons there were careers in the navy, army and church respectively. Following their schooling at Harrow, both Orlando Jack Charles Bridgeman and his brother, Francis Orlando Henry, followed their * Mr. McLachlan is a member of the Department of Far Eastern History at the Australian National University. **The notes to this article will be found at the end. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 78 ROBIN MCLACHLAN It may not have been Orlando's intention to alarm the gentler members of his family, but the receipt of such accounts must have been the occasion for much apprehension for his safety and well-being. In October, he wrote from the island of Chusan where, he told his sister, there was the danger of being kidnapped by the "dreadfully treacherous" Chinese. Yesterday, Shadwell had a most narrow escape of being kidnapped. Since the peace we have been perhaps rather incautious in walking too far into the country, and almost unarmed, but now we have had a warning. Shadwell was walking in the country with Cap. Wellsley and after about getting five miles they returned, when within three quarters of a mile of the city they were suddenly attacked by about ten men from behind. Shadwell was pinioned and gagged and Wellsley after breaking one man's head with his stick, saw there was no chance against so many and having also broken his stick, took to his heels and alarmed the guard, but he had to run a mile.5 In the meantime, Shadwell was trussed up by his Chinese captors, who were already dragging him off when the guard arrived on the scene and rescued him from an unpleasant fate. But such danger and excitement were rare during Orlando's stay in China; more common were his complaints of boredom and homesickness. Within weeks of arriving in China, he confessed a longing for home with the lament: Oh for the joys of England again, all those joys, alas so long vanished, and with so small a chance of seeing them again for a long time, ... I would rather break stones by the roadside in England than undergo what I have done since I have been in the East.6 By Christmas, he was not only homesick for England, and an English Christmas ("There is no place like England for it."), but quite bored with life in China. Monotony generally makes time fly very quickly, but I do not ever remember anything so tedious as the time has been since my embarkation.7 5 The two persons mentioned in the letter were brother officers of the 98th. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 82 ROBIN MCLACHLAN then a junior officer in Orlando's regiment but later to become the British Minister at Peking and Sir Thomas, was to teach Orlando to play the flute.17 But as Wade was busy with his Chinese language studies the flute lessons had to be postponed indefinitely. About the same time the music lessons were being considered, Orlando met Elijah Coleman Bridgman.18 This Bridgman was the first American missionary in China, arriving in Canton in 1829, and is probably best remembered for his part in the founding and editing of the Chinese Repository. Although the American spelt his name without an "e", Orlando still considered it a rare event to meet someone of the same name who was not a relation. It is unlikely though that he would have been anxious to claim a relationship with a man he described in his letter as a "beast". When writing of his commander in the war, General Hugh Gough, and the naval commander, Admiral William Parker, Bridgeman was equally caustic in his remarks. Writing in October from Chusan, where the British force had collected before proceeding on to Hong Kong, he commented: The whole force is collected here now, with the exception of the Genl. and Admiral who are delaying as long as they can because they are each putting £30 a day into their pocket and as soon as they get to Hong Kong they will cease to receive this.19 Unfortunately, there are very few comments, either favourable or unfavourable, on the Chinese people and their way of life. In his first letter home from China, he complained that he didn't get to see anything of Nanking and the Chinese people he had seen were only the "lowest of the low."20 Later he confessed that what "pity" he had for the Chinese, on account of their heavy losses in battle ("The slaughter was frightful ... .”), was lost "since they proved so dreadfully treacherous" with their kidnapping on Chusan.21 During his time at Hong Kong, Bridgeman continued this lack of interest in things Chinese and only occasionally commented on Chinese customs and ways. For example, his interest in Chinese tea led him to describe to his sister the Chinese tea stands that dotted the colony and how, according to his observations, no Chinese could pass one without having several tiny cupfuls of tea.22 But such sketches of Chinese life in the colony are rare in his letters; the Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong seemed scarcely to exist for Bridgeman. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 FATHER ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J., 1886 - 1973 AN APPRECIATION G. J. BELL* In the Bulletin de Geophysique No. 34 from the College Jean-de-Brebeuf, Montreal there was enclosed a notice of the death of Father Ernesto Gherzi, S.J. at Saint-Jerome, Quebec. He died on 6 December 1973 at the age of 87 years and 4 months. Fr Gherzi was a very well known and popular figure on the China coast between the years 1910 and 1954. He made notable contributions to the science and practice of seismology and meteorology while at Zikawei Observatory, Shanghai from where he operated an efficient typhoon warning service. He was a colourful character who made a great impression on all those who met him and he is remembered with affection by very many mariners and aviators—both military and civil—who served in the Far East in the thirty years prior to 1954. EARLY YEARS Fr Gherzi was born in San Remo, Italy on 8 August 1886. In October 1903 he joined the Society of Jesus, an order whose members had made great contributions to geophysics and meteorology at their Observatories at Zikawei and Manila. He was posted to Zikawei for the period 1910-13 after which he went to England to work with Appleton on ionospheric studies for the Admiralty, London. He was ordained in England in June 1916 and returned to China in October 1920 to start his long scientific career in the famous meteorological, seismological and magnetic observatory at Zikawei. The Zikawei Observatory was supported by grants from the Chinese Customs, the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, the Shanghai municipality and the telegraph companies; in return it provided time signals, weather forecasts and magnetic data for shipping. Fr Gherzi produced annual summaries of typhoon tracks for 1926 and for the years 1928 to 1940; they were addressed to the * Mr. Bell has been Director of the Royal Observatory, Hong Kong, since 1965. This article first appeared in Weather, Volume 29, No. 5 (May 1974). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 86 G. J. BELL Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and most of them also contained an interesting essay on some scientific aspect of typhoons. His essays and papers were written in a personal, committed style which illustrated the emotional attachment he had to his theories. He frequently recorded occasions on which his prognostications or theories were proved to be correct to the dismay of other meteorologists who, allegedly, disagreed with them. This, of course, not only made lively reading but helped to build up his reputation amongst mariners and others upon whom he was dependent for support. Perhaps understandably, he seldom recorded occasions when his predictions were unsuccessful. In one of his later papers (1952) he extols the value of his ionospheric method of predicting the movement of tropical cyclones (1946, 1950) claiming that it succeeded where other methods and forecasters failed and he wrote 'We would beg the gentlemen of those Far East weather services to forgive us if anything in our statements should sound disagreeable to them. All wrong forecasts were copied ourselves from listening to their broadcasting stations'. PRACTICAL METEOROLOGY Fr Gherzi was very practical and belonged to the fast disappearing breed of meteorologists who are adept in all divisions of the profession. He would make an observation, broadcast it in impeccable Morse code, then receive weather reports in Morse from other stations while simultaneously decoding and plotting them on a weather chart in both red and blue ink. He would then analyse the chart and issue weather forecasts and warnings. If necessary, he would repair or adjust the radio receiver or transmitter. He maintained a close liaison with mariners and aviators and frequently visited masters on their ships to collect their weather logs and discuss their experiences. This information he would use----often naming the master and his vessel----in his researches and in his climatological publications. He was thus observer, plotter, radio operator, radio technician, communications specialist, forecaster, port meteorological officer, climatologist, research meteorologist and undisputable PRO in the Observatory of which he became Director in 1930. The early aviators who were opening up routes in the Far East used to consult Fr Gherzi and in their memoirs they usually acknowledged the help he gave them and, sometimes, they went further and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 FR. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J. 87 discussed his impressive character. For example, Sir Francis Chichester in his book The Lonely Sea and the Sky (1964) tells of his early flight from New Zealand to Japan in August 1931 and of his visit to Zikawei to ask Fr Gherzi when it would be safe to proceed to Kagoshima. "... I waited in a cool, silent, stone hall, while a priest went to find Father Gherzi. He was a thin tall man with slender high-browed head, and a narrow black beard. He wore a long black robe under which appeared two enormous black boots. He was impatient, impetuous and clever. In a rapid, emphatic way, he said that there was a typhoon centred east of Formosa, that it was travelling fast straight for Shanghai, that it was impossible for me to leave for Japan because of a 35 mph head wind, and that I must secure my seaplane at once. After my experience the day before with the emphatic reporter in the sampan, I started cross-examining Father Gherzi about this weather. He showed clearly that he resented this, and that he thought me a fool.... In the afternoon Father Gherzi said that I must not leave before he had the Japanese reports at 8.30 in the morning. That meant a 9.30 start, which was later than I liked, but what could I say to a man who was taking so much trouble for my safety? There was something fine about that dark impatient man, and he was good; each time I parted from him, I had an impulse to live a better life.' His 'enormous black boots' were sometimes the butt for humour by his more youthful and disrespectful colleagues, one of whom spoke of the 'longest feet in Asia protruding from beneath a long black cassock'. A WRITER OF MANY PUBLICATIONS Apart from his annual reports and papers, Fr Gherzi wrote the following books on the distribution of the meteorological elements in the Far East: Rainfall (1928), Winds and upper air currents (1931), Temperature (1934), Humidity (1934) and an Appendix on Rainfall (1937), all published by Zikawei Observatory. He was particularly interested in microseisms and was the first (1923) correctly to attribute the source of a certain type of microseism to the central region of typhoons but he thought, incorrectly, that they were caused by barometric pulsations of the central atmospheric column. He presented his case in a number of journals (e.g. 1932) and for the rest of his life, he continued to argue for this cause of typhoon microseisms. Indeed, the journal which carried notice of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 Fr. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J. 89 first meeting of the International Meteorological Organization's Regional Association II which was held at Hong Kong in January 1937.* In May 1949 he attended the Conference on Storm Warning Procedures at Manila, which established relevant definitions, standards and procedures for the World Meteorological Organization. However, the revolution in China and its associated nationalism had overtaken Zikawei (1947) and he was refused permission to return to China. The then Director of the Royal Observatory Hong Kong, Mr Heywood, found a place for Fr Gherzi on the staff and he worked there until asked by the Portuguese authorities to help reorganise and equip the Macau Observatory. While in Hong Kong, he finished his two-volume work on the 'Meteorology of China'. Certain sections of the draft manuscript, particularly those on tropical cyclones, were hotly disputed by some staff members and led to much animated discussion. The volumes were eventually published in Macau in 1951 and whilst they suffer, in places, from being out of date and lacking in accuracy—Fr Gherzi's notes remained in China—the books were a good record of the climatology of the Far East and of the experiences of himself and others in typhoons. It was during the years that Fr Gherzi spent in Hong Kong and Macau that I was fortunate enough to get to know him quite well. He was a competent organist and after work I would sometimes accompany him to the Rosary Church to listen to his playing—Bach was a favourite—or he would come to my quarters to hear records and take a considerable number of glasses of sherry—his preferred drink. He was game for most activities and his majestic figure often looked out of place in the rudimentary sports car or sailing junk that I used in those days. Over the years, Fr Gherzi developed a technique of using cocktail parties to good advantage; on joining them he would charge his glass with sherry and, whilst stroking his grandee's beard, look for the most senior naval person present. He would then disarmingly engage the poor fellow in typhoon talk and eventually succeed in getting him to donate a radar or other piece of electronic equipment of which the good Father was in need. *This paragraph records two 'firsts' for Hong Kong in the field of international meteorology. Hong Kong is a member of the World Meteorological Organization in its own right on account of these early developments. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 90 G. J. BELL Influential contacts in London and Washington—usually naval officers whom he had first met as young men and who had subsequently attained high rank—would be called upon to ensure that the gifts were promptly regularised and confirmed. By these means he succeeded in getting radars, radios and associated equipment for all three Observatories—Zikawei, Hong Kong and Macau. It is remarkable that although cut off from the mainstream of meteorological research during World War II, yet he taught himself to understand and service new and complex radar sets. In 1954, at the age of 68, Fr Gherzi moved to the United States of America, staying briefly in Saint-Louis and New Orleans before moving in 1955 to the Observatory of Geophysics in the College Jean-de-Brébeuf, Montreal. He occupied the post of Director of Research in the Observatory and maintained his interest in the measurement of solar radiation, ionospheric soundings and atmospheric electricity. Although no longer engaged in routine weather forecasting he still went out of his way to communicate with ships' officers and in his last letter to me, in 1969, he enclosed a photograph of himself on the bridge of the Leonardo da Vinci (See plate 51 to this Journal). Fr Gherzi contributed an article to Weather on the 'Derivation of the word "Typhoon"' (1953) and he would be delighted to notice that 13 years after his long letter to the Editor on 'Unrealistic Weather Maps over Continents' (1954) the same point should again be made in a paper in Weather (Walker 1967). Fr Gherzi received international recognition for his work in so far as he was honoured by membership of the Pontifical Academy of Science and the Academies of Science in both Lisbon and New York and, of course, he was made welcome in observatories in the Far East and North America. However, nothing gave him more pleasure than to be in contact with, and of help to, mariners and aviators whom he served so well and so long. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF DE MAILLA, HISTOIRE GENERALE DE LA CHINE RICHARD Gregg Irwin Introduction Many years ago a student of mine, then in Peking, named Richard Gregg Irwin, sent me a draft of a paper he had written on the sources of the well-known Histoire générale de la Chine by Père de Mailla. I thought it worthy of publication and promised to help him in the revision. In the meantime he was caught in the war with Japan and imprisoned in Weihsien; by the time he returned to the United States he was wholly absorbed in completing his dissertation, which eventually was published in the Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies as The Evolution of a Chinese Novel: Shui-hu-chuan. Duties of an exacting sort at the East Asiatic Library of the University of California followed in Berkeley, and he died prematurely in 1968 without finding the leisure to turn again to his initial study of de Mailla's magnum opus, still the longest history of China in a western language. Now that the undersigned has completed his work on Ming biographies it has occurred to him to make the necessary revisions, so that Mr. Irwin's essay may see the light of day. This seems all the more timely as de Mailla's history has recently (1967) been reprinted by the Ch'eng-wen Publishing Company, Taipei. Columbia University, 21st May, 1974. THE NOTES L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH A false impression is given by the full title of de Mailla's Histoire générale de la Chine, ou annales de cet empire; traduites du Tong-Kien-Kang-Mou, par le feu Père Joseph-Anne-Marie de Mailla, Jésuite français, missionaire à Pekin; publiées par M. l'Abbé Grosier Paris, 1777-1783. - 12v., which describes it as translated from the T'ung-chien kang-mu. This work, in 104 chüan, comprising the main body of the history, written about 1190 under the supervision of the celebrated Chu Hsi (1130-1200), together with its commentaries, an introductory section based on the writings ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 134 JAMES HAYES Sung Hok Pang, 'Legends and Stories of the New Territories, Part III, Kam Tin', The Hong Kong Naturalist, in six instalments between December 1935 March 1938. 'Ts' in Fuk (), being an account of how part of the coast of South China was cleared of inhabitants from the first year of Hong Hei (4) 1662 to the 8th year of Hong Hei 1669', The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vol. IX, Nos. 1 and 2, November 1939, pp. 37-42. Szczesniak, Boleslaw, The Opening of Japan. A Diary of Discovery in the Far East, 1853-1856 (by Rear Admiral George Henry Preble. U.S.N.). Norman, Arizona, University of Oklahoma Press. Tronson, I. M., Personal Narrative.... London, Smith, Elder, 1859. Waley, Arthur, Yuan Mei, 18th Century Chinese Poet, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1956. Williams, S. Wells, A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, Shanghai, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1874. OFFICIAL REPORTS Annual Departmental Reports from 1946 on, published by the Government Printer, Hong Kong. [ADR] Administrative Reports, being annual departmental reports, 1909-1940, published by the Government Printer under this head, and bound together in series in the library of the Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong. [AR] Earlier annual reports by departments bound into Sessional Papers (Papers presented to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong), printed in Hong Kong by the Government Printer and available in the library of the Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong. [SP] Annual Colony Reports from 1946 on, published in Hong Kong by the Government Printer, [CR] Hong Kong Hansard. The proceedings of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong were published in yearly volumes under this title from the early 1890s on, by a number of publishers, and the Government Printer after the Pacific War. [Hansard] In Chinese Chang lineage of Pui O, South Lantao, Hong Kong ********* * Family Record A. Copied in manuscript in the 1930s from an earlier version. Chang lineage of Pui O, South Lantao, Hong Kong **4❀❀**❀ **, Family Record (not identical with the above as it came from another branch of the family) ✯✯✯✯. In manuscript. Last compiled in 1927. Chin Wen-mo (preface) #. Gazetteer of the Hsin-an District ### 13 chuan, revised edition, 1688. [HNHC 1688] Chou K'uang B, Ch'eng Yeh-chung and others. Summary of historical researches on Kwangtung ★★***. 46 chuan, 1894. [KTKKCY] ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES 183 road,” now Victoria city, and So Kwun Po (7). From the fact that these references occurred in the Leung Ch'aak (##) or Register Book of Tung Kwun district, one may judge that the land was owned by the Tangs before the 1st year of Maan Lik, A.D. 1525, as after that the San On district was formed. To the East of Shui Mei village there is an ancestral Hall called Mau King T'ong (N). It was built by the descendants of Tang Chan (1) Tang Yui (*) and Tang Kuen (#) the three younger brothers of Tang Yam (3) the father of Tang Tsing Lok. When the descendants of Tang Yam completed the building of Sz Shing Tong, the descendants of the three younger brothers felt it was a disgrace that there were no ancestral halls for their respective ancestors. However they were far from being rich, so they decided to combine together and build one hall under the leadership of Tang Man Wai (4X4), who was a man of rank and a descendant of Tang Chan. On the top of the front door they carved the characters §; › §¡› ✯ ✯✯ “Chan, Yui, Kuen, the three Ancestors Hall," and on a signboard the three big characters ✯✯ Mau King Tong, were written by Ts'oi Hok Yuen (4) a scholar of San On, and hung in the hall in the 22nd year of Ka Hing, A.D. 1817, of Ts'ing dynasty. The reason why the name Mau King Tong was chosen was on account of the old story "Tin Shi King fa fook mau” ( # A#*M*) “the Judas-tree of T'in family again becomes luxuriant." The story is as follows:-- T'in Chan (₪) and his two younger brothers T'in Hing (w A) and T'in Kwong (□), natives of Chiu Shing district (#K) of Shantung, during the Hon dynasty, decided to divide their family property between them. Among other things, they owned a Tsz King (**), judas tree, and the evening before the dividing up was to take place they found to their surprise that the tree was withered. This upset T'in Chan's feelings very much, he sighed and said to his younger brothers, "The different branches of the tree come from one root; now that they have heard that they are to be divided up, they have become melancholy and look sorrowful. Now we brothers are human beings, but although we have separate bodies we all came from the same parents, so why should we divide the family property and live separately? Do we not feel ashamed in seeing the appearance of this tree?" Then the younger brothers were moved by this, and they never mentioned the idea of dividing the family property ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 NOTES AND QUERIES 203 At this time the population of Ha Wan was 4861 (G.N. 21 of the Government gazette for 5th March 1859). Observation Point must be the Observation Place shown on the Map accompanying Mr. Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong, published by the Colonial Office in 1882. The map shows Ha Wan as District No. 6 and Wanchai as District No. 7. This indicates that Wanchai was taken from it at some date between 1857 and 1882. Observation Place is shown at p. 46 of the Index to the Streets, House Nos., and Lots in the Colony of Hong Kong, 1903, and may be identified with the lower end of the present Tin Lok Lane, near its junction with Hennessy Road, then seashore. Wanchai was one of the first districts to be developed after the British Occupation of the Island in 1841. The Reverend Carl T. Smith has kindly provided an account of this development, based on his original researches into Hong Kong records. This is attached as a separate Note. The Itinerary and Places of Interest The party will follow a circuitous route among the back streets, steps and terraces of old Wanchai between Monmouth Path in the west and Stone Nullah Lane on the east. Among the places of interest to be visited are several Chinese temples and shrines as follows: 1) The Pak Kung Shrine at the side of No. 7, Star Street. This was established before the War, probably upwards of 70 years ago. The shrine is a To Tei Miu (±普普) or altar to the earth god. The main festival of the year falls on the 2nd day of the second lunar month when the management committee of local residents organises a religious and social celebration. 2) Hung Shing Temple, Queen's Road East. This temple is one of the oldest of the area and may even have existed as a shrine before the British Occupation of the Island. According to Carl Smith there was a small settlement nearby which may have provided the body of regular worshippers, along with visiting boat people. The present structure dates from Hsien Feng 10th year (1860-61), repaired in T’ung Chih 6th year (1867-68) when the persons responsible are listed as 'the whole body of devout Hong Kong believers'. These dates point to an earlier origin, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 NOTES AND QUERIES 205 The roof is also of considerable interest, being again provided with the pottery frieze so common in temples in Southern China, dated Kuang Hsü 33rd year (1907-08). Again this comes from the Shek Wan kilns. The temple is also remarkable for a very large image which has somehow found its way there, though it is much older than the building. It is, in fact, of the Ming dynasty and carries the following inscription — 大明萬曆三十一年歲次癸卯季秋吉旦建 which dates it to the end of 1603. Terrace Houses and Individual Buildings en route In the course of the visit, members will have the opportunity to see individual old buildings and in some cases whole terraces of houses. These appear to vary widely in date. Some belong to the late 19th century while others date from the early decades of this century. In all cases, however, they are of considerable interest and appeal, though their number has sadly diminished in the post-war years. Further Information Mr. Henry James Lethbridge, who has researched into the history of 19th century Hong Kong, informs me that a large number of the married European policemen, turnkeys and minor Government functionaries lived in Wanchai before 1900, cheek by jowl with Chinese (unlike the senior European officials who generally lived apart from them). Many of these persons moved to Kowloon when this was developed for residential purposes early in this century. Mr. Lethbridge also states that many Japanese lived in Wanchai from the early 1900's. They included girls and brothels and during the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-45, the military authorities designated it as a 'red light' area. Notes on the Nineteenth Century Development of Wanchai* The first land sale in Hong Kong in June 1841, consisted of a continuous line of Marine Lots marked off from the Chinese section of the Lower Bazaar (Sheung Wan) eastward to Hospital Hill (now the site of the Ruttonjee Sanatorium) at the east end of Wanchai. Individuals and firms bought lots in the Wanchai area and built *By Carl Smith. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 5 films have been shown many times. This time—in June—we had a new film on the boat people of Hong Kong "Dragons of the Sea" made with Miss Barbara Ward, an anthropologist and also an old friend of our Society. We were invited together with many of the boat people and others in Hong Kong who had helped make the film a success. In July one of Mr. Brian Brake's films "Borobadur, Cosmic Mountain” was reshown. Borobadur is one of the world's greatest Buddhist monuments, situated in central Java. Mr. Brake is well-known for his documentary art films. In September another of his films "Ramayana” a major epic of the Far East was shown. Ramayana has culturally influenced Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and other parts of the East and has been represented many times in paintings, sculptures, dances and theatrical performances. In December films on Taiwan were shown in connexion with our excursion to Taiwan over the Christmas holidays led by Miss Werle. The Taiwan visit was a great success I understand (I never seem to be able to go on overseas trips myself owing to family commitments during the holiday seasons). Members visited Hualin, Taipei, the National Palace Museum and the Peking Opera School; various temples; and Tainan where a shadow puppet performance was seen. It was with great reluctance that we had to cancel our proposed visit to Borneo over the Easter holidays, owing to insufficient numbers. We realise, of course, that for many people this is not a “free” time and the possible lack of response was due to this fact. PUBLICATIONS Several of our talks for 1974 will be published in our coming 1974 journal, which will also include, apart from several original articles, two valuable reprints, one on the Tang Family of Kam Tin by the late Sung Hok-pang, and another on place names of Hong Kong and the New Territories by Mr. K. M. A. Barnett. Most of the items have already been passed to the printer and it is hoped the Journal will be ready for distribution by June this year. Also in press now, are the papers relating to the two symposia we held: Hong Kong, Chinese tradition and the Development of a Town; and The Flora of Hong Kong. Professor Lofts' symposium on the Fauna of Hong Kong is also in preparation. ARTS CENTRE As old members will recall, the Society is a constituent member of the Hong Kong Arts Centre. For new members our object is ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 32 9 WELLINGTON K. K. CHAN Shanghai during the 1900's is shown by the fact that out of the fourteen largest merchant organisations, seven of them were Landsmann guilds. Canton was unlike Shanghai in that commerce there was dominated by the local Cantonese. But even Canton had at least one fairly large Landsmann guild—the Chü-ho t'ang. It was founded in 1860 as an offshoot of the Ch'ao-chou (i.e. Swatow) Landsmannschaft (Pa-i hui-kuan) through the help of the naval garrison commander in Canton, who came from Ch'ao-chou.10 The functions of these Landsmann guilds resembled their parent Landsmannschaften. Chü-ho t'ang in Canton, Ssu-ming kung-so and Kuang-ch'ao kung-so in Shanghai all owned land for relief work and cemeteries for those who were waiting for permanent burial at their ancestral homes. Social values of this sort loomed large in the thinking of the Landsmann guilds, just as they did for the Landsmannschaften. The well-publicised struggle between the Ssu-ming kung-so and the French Consulate in Shanghai for half a century (1849-1898) was not over some commercial interest, but over the Ningpo merchants' insistence to maintain their cemetery grounds and the French desires to level that area. Ultimately, the French had to back down.11 The Ssu-ming kung-so's preoccupation with the cemetery shows at once its strength and weakness as an institution which contributed to social and economic integration. The traditional trade guilds were primarily concerned with avoiding competition from among its own members. Their regulations were cast in the "thou-shalt-not" vein. Their vigorous growth during the late nineteenth century helped to curb intra-trade competition.12 In contrast, the concern of the Landsmann guilds went beyond class lines and the economic self-interest of their members. They thus had broader orientations. Their aim was not to restrict or to negate, but to assert positively the rights of their entire group. Their weakness was, however, also obvious. They seldom considered the interest of the whole community. The Landsmann guilds were at best a stepping stone toward organisations that could claim community-wide representations. Charitable Halls (Shan-t'ang) Another new institutional development took place sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century. As war and economic decline ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 46 CHIAO-MIN HSIEH 1,400 miles long, runs between Lanchow and Urumchi via Hami in Sinkiang. The Communist government obviously feels that the political importance of these railroads is greater than their economic value. Since the great bulk of China's population, markets, and production lies east of Lanchow and south of the Great Wall, many railroads are urgently needed in that part of China. One must wonder whether the two railroads built in the desert for the main purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union were so necessary and their construction so urgent. Moreover, there is at the moment a sand-dune problem confronting the operation of the railroad in these desert areas. This seems to be insoluble by use of present techniques and makes the value of the whole project even more questionable. 3. In southwest China a railroad was built between Nanning and Pinghsiang in 1955, which is connected with Haiphong and Hanoi. The significance of this new rail link between the Red River delta and the South China province of Kwangsi is that it opens a new major sea outlet for south China. Since China is an amphibious nation, facing the interior continent in the northwest and the Pacific Ocean in the southeast, one of the most significant geopolitical factors in China's history is her changing relations with the continent and the sea. In ancient times China faced the northwest, where the "Silk Road" passed through: the Pacific coast was the back door. The Kansu corridor in the northwest was the main entrance, playing an important role in communications between China and central Asia. In the nineteenth century, Western sea powers acted to open China's coastal ports, China began to turn her face toward the Pacific, which then became the front door, through which came new ideas and knowledge, but also new problems and troubles. Shanghai, Canton, and Tientsin replaced the cities in the northwest as the key cities. This reversal in geographic accessibility has transformed China's isolated condition to one of contact with the world. The eastern coastal areas soon became the main part of China, where were located most of the large cities, heavy industries, railroads, and inland water routes, and about 70 per cent of the population. Because of its location, the area is vulnerable to attack by foreign sea powers. During World War II the area was easily ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d INCIDENT: H.K. MERCHANTS & B.E.I. CO. 51 I might have been able to have furnished you and my country with some lasting memorial of services rendered in that naval field where so much fame has so honourably been acquired; but you are aware that my career in that service was cut short by the entire stop to promotion which took place at the close of the American war in the year 1782; and the sea service of the East India Company, which I then adopted, gave but little scope for anything worth relating; however, on one occasion, in China, I was placed in a situation the account of which you may perhaps think worthy of a place in your collection. In 1811 I was commodore of a large and valuable fleet belonging to the East India Company, then lying in the port of Canton. In Canton all mercantile business is carried on by Chinese appointed by the Government and styled Hong or security merchants; they are selected from the richest and most respectable persons in Canton, and through them only can the supercargoes, our residents in China, have intercourse with the Hoppo, or Viceroy.1 These merchants have therefore the power of withholding all representations to the Government which may be against their private interest, or otherwise disagreeable to them by exposing the extortions and impositions they frequently attempt on the English. On the occasion I am now going to relate the Hong merchants had some pecuniary demands which the supercargoes thought it their duty to resist.— the consequence of which was that misrepresentations were made by them to the Viceroy, and, when the fleet was ready to sail, the port-clearance was refused. After various ineffectual efforts to obtain our despatch, Mr. Brown, the chief supercargo, sent for me and expressed his anxiety at the unlooked-for detention of the very valuable fleet which was ready for sea. He informed me he had sent several petitions by the security merchants to the Hoppo, but he had reason to believe that 1 Hoppo, or Viceroy. This mistake shows how dangerous it is to read the account of an eye witness of that time without making sure that his/her facts are correct. The Viceroy was the Westerners' name for the Governor-general of two provinces. Working in association with him was the Governor (Fu-yuan) of Kwangtung with his headquarters at Canton. Independent of these two great mandarins stood the Superintendent of Maritime Customs for Kwangtung who was the Emperor's direct financial representative at Canton, and was known to the English merchants as the Hoppo, this being a corruption of the Chinese name of the department of government at the capital under which he served, the hu-pu (Board of Revenue). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d INCIDENT: H.K. MERCHANTS & BEI. CO. 59 volumes on official documents, 1 should prefer to accept his version as more likely. From a wide reading of Morse's Chronicles I have found other instances when a threat from the E.I.C. supercargoes was sufficient to make the Canton officials allow the fleet to sail or trade to reopen; but never the next day. The officials always needed some means of delay and therefore of saving face. By way of comparison a similar incident involving Lindsay's only son, Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, in 1831 is worth looking at. Hugh Hamilton Lindsay entered the East India Company's service as a young man and passed through the various ranks until by 1831 he was a supercargo. This story begins in May 1831 when the Governor suddenly and unexpectedly ordered that part of the factory's grounds be destroyed, a linguist put in chains and a Hong merchant sent to gaol. The supercargoes received a copy of an imperial mandate ordering them to comply with a restatement of all the existing restrictions on foreigners. The Select Committee decided to warn the Chinese authorities that if they persisted in enforcing all the regulations these would be resisted, even if it meant withdrawing from trade at Canton. The members of the Committee decided to send Hugh Hamilton Lindsay to Canton (they had recently returned to the E.I.C. premises in Macao for the summer) to hand over the keys of the Company's factory to the Hong merchants for them to deliver to the Governor, with a letter to the effect that they would no longer rent the factory while they were not safe from intrusion and destruction, and if no steps were taken to remedy the situation then trade would be suspended on 1st August 1831. The description of Lindsay's efforts to deliver the letter and the keys is given in Morse, Chronicles, Vol. IV, pp. 282-3. Lindsay didn't manage to persuade the Hong merchants to deliver the letter, but eventually the officer in command of the troops of the district, who customarily received petitions presented at the gates, accepted the letter and the keys of the factory. But he simply handed them to a Hong merchant with the order “None are to be received". The dispute dragged on till the end of 1831 and occupies as far as page 323 in Vol. IV of Chronicles. In the following year Lindsay was given a more congenial commission by the Select Committee. He was sent in the E.I.C. ship Lord Amherst (350 tons), with a cargo of various English cloths, for which he was to find out the probable demand and the prices ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY 95 entering the harbour, George Woodcock affirms of seamen in the Far East that they 'provided its nearest equivalent to a European proletariat; out of their ranks emerged its shifting population of poor whites and also a high proportion of its adventurers'. He concludes that 'on shore the status of the seamen remained, as it always had been, anomalous. His occupation was essential to the very existence of British communities in the Far East, and yet he was always an outsider, disturbing and distrusted',10 The author of a booklet issued in 1891 to commemorate the jubilee of Hong Kong claimed that the practice of the handicrafts in Hong Kong appears to be entirely in the hands of the Chinese; there is a considerable European population, but few are mechanics, and the Portuguese decline all forms of labour, the aspirations of both running towards the counting-house and the banker's desk.11 The suggestion that there were few European mechanics in Hong Kong is incorrect if we realise that many European overseers in the dockyards and other industrial undertakings and utilities were expected not only to supervise the labour force but to look after and repair machines. Many overseers in such enterprises were skilled engineers, who had served their apprenticeship in the engine-rooms of the British mercantile marine. The Taikoo Sugar Refinery at Quarry Bay, owned by Butterfield and Swire, gave direct employment to fifty or sixty Europeans as well as many hundreds of Chinese. A journalist, J. S. Thomson, wrote of this refinery that it was a marvellous study in Scotch sociology. There is a company reservoir and hospital in the hills; a cable to carry European overseers five hundred feet over the gullies to the fever-free bungalows on the cliffs; Company model tenements at inexpensive rents; a Company loan fund for overseers to bring out Scotch wives...12 The China Sugar Refinery, owned by Jardine, Matheson, also utilised the services of at least twenty-five European engineers, mechanics and overseers. At the end of the century, the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company employed about 800 Chinese, chiefly natives of Swatow, supervised by European overseers, many of whom were skilled mechanics. Other undertakings, such as the Green Island Cement Company, the Hong Kong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY 97 trouble with police) had embarked for the Far East. But a significant proportion were always local recruits; they were simply lower-class women forced into prostitution because of poverty. The case of Bridget Montague, convicted in 1873, at the age of 23, of running a clandestine brothel is illustrative. Bridget, a Californian, had married a Portuguese storekeeper in San Francisco. Her husband took her to Hong Kong where he abandoned her. She went to live with an Irish barman from the Crown and Anchor, a tavern in Queen's Road. A year later her bibulous Irishman was sentenced to two months' imprisonment for public drunkenness. Homeless and penniless yet again, she took lodgings with a young Portuguese widow from Macau, who had been formerly kept by a policeman. The two women, now lacking male protectors, went into business as full-time prostitutes. Convicted, together with the Portuguese widow, Maria Roza, of running a clandestine brothel, Bridget was fined $50, or one month's imprisonment, and compelled to undergo medical examination for a period of six months.15 A life of prostitution was the common destiny of many European women deserted, abandoned or widowed, whose husbands or protectors were, or had been, policemen, turnkeys, inspectors, overseers, or employed in similar occupations. Prostitution was the only occupation that allowed a destitute European woman, if reasonably young or attractive, to support herself, for there were no jobs available in Hong Kong for uneducated European women, and precious few, apart from work in mission schools, for the educated. Bridget Montague, for example, after conviction and payment of fine, went back to work as an independent prostitute, took a beachcomber as a lover for a time, and then disappeared from Hong Kong. In 1877 there were about 17 European prostitutes known to the police, but probably many more operated covertly as occasional or part-time prostitutes. There were also working transients, mainly French women, on their way to Shanghai or Yokohama. In the 1870s the number of prostitutes increased, mainly from a great influx of such women from San Francisco. At the turn of the century with the growing respectability of the European population in Hong Kong and a growing feeling that Europeans had to prove their moral worth as missionaries of Western civilisation in the East, the government took steps to reduce by deportation their numbers. Apart from prostitutes, Hong Kong always had a small number of seedy adventurers, gamblers, swindlers, impostors, petty criminals Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 100 H. J. LETHBRIDGE besides music-halls and lodging-houses, the haunts of vagabonds well known to the police.19 The spectacle of Jack Tars, returning from the grog-shops of Tai Ping Shan and Sai Ying Pun, tipsily and rowdily weaving their way along Queen's Road, affronted respectable Britons. A Wesleyan missionary complained in 1894 that the colony was always upset by the arrival of a fresh man-of-war whose crew once ashore would behave like wild animals. "They drink like fishes," he complained, "ride round the town in rickshaws, making night hideous with their shouts, eat over-ripe fruit from street stalls, are stricken with cholera, and die in a few hours." He insisted that for soldiers and sailors (and possibly for most others in the East at the present moment) "total abstinence is a duty".20 The Wesleyan missionary, a fervent supporter of the temperance movement, misunderstood the reasons for excessive drinking among servicemen in Hong Kong. It was not due to innate depravity or irreligion. Soldiers and sailors drank because of the tedium, the hideous boredom they had to endure as pariahs in Hong Kong. They were totally excluded from polite European society; there were no young white women of their own class to walk out with; there were few entertainments, except lugubrious church or mission functions, provided for them. Off duty the only pleasures available, apart from a climb up the Peak, a jaunt in a sampan, or a visit to the Botanical Gardens, were the drinking dens and brothels of the more welcoming Chinese quarters of the town. Sailors, in particular, led almost completely isolated lives in the Far East. News from home could take months to reach their ships. Often they spent over a year without going ashore on leave. Walter White, a ship's painter, joined H.M.S. Scout at Sheerness in 1859, left England in that year and did not return from service on the China Station until 1864.21 His experience was typical. He spent New Year's Day, 1862, in Hong Kong and put up at the European Hotel, a hostelry overlooking Tai Ping Shan. From the verandah of his hotel, he wrote home, "you can sit and look down upon the teeming, squalid living, jangling and evil smelling Chinese quarters."22 But it was in this teeming quarter that White and his naval companions were obliged to spend their evenings of leave, Major Henry Knollys epitomises the life of the British gunner in Hong Kong in the 1880s thus: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d # EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY 111 It is exceedingly difficult to assess the cultural impact of working-class Europeans on the Chinese population; there were strong, but not completely impenetrable, barriers between the two; each despised the other, the underdog European particularly so. Although the latter usually lived in Chinese quarters of the town, spoke pidgin English or a little Cantonese, and often lived with a Chinese woman, this did not make him necessarily feel less British. He was, it can be inferred, as jingoistic as his counterpart in Liverpool or London, buoyed up at times by a sense of racial and national superiority. He did not belong to Chinese society and, it can be surmised, never wished to. He was more at ease with Portuguese and Eurasians; but his social contacts with them were often touchy, prickly, and patronising; for even the déclassé European knew he was a member of a dominant race. At the end of the century, Taipan and pong-paân were residentially segregated. A writer concluded that ‘between those who reside at the summit (of the Peak) and those who live in the peninsula of Kowloon there is as wide a gulf as that which divided Dives and Lazarus'.39 This 'gulf' was more than an expression of traditional English class attitudes: the European working class in Hong Kong was an anomaly in a colonial setting, a curious transplant from a more settled society. ## NOTES 1 Sir James Cantlie, 'Hong Kong' in the British Empire Series, vol. i, 1906, p. 514. 2 See, for example, 'Beachcombers and castaways' in H. E. Maude's Of Islands and Men: Studies in Pacific History, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1968, pp. 134-177. 3 China Mail, June 8, 1888. 4 J. W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1898, vol. i, p. 279. 5 For details about John Lee consult the Report of the Commission to Enquire into the Working of 'The Contagious Diseases Ordinance, 1867', Hong Kong, 1879. 6 'Report on the Public Works Department', Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1902, p. 51. 7 Lt. Col. G. J. Wolseley, Narrative of the War with China in 1860, London, 1862, p. 3. 8 John Stuart Thomson, The Chinese, London (1909), p. 30. 9 George Woodcock, The British in the Far East, London, 1969, p. 21. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 112 10 Ibid., p. 31. H. J. LETHBRIDGE 11 Fifty Years of Progress: The Jubilee of Hongkong as a British Crown Colony, Hong Kong, Daily Press Office, 1891, p. 43. 12 J. S. Thomson, op. cit., p. 8. 13 Ibid., p. 54. 14 Allister Macmillan, ed., Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 340. 15 Information about Bridget Montague is to be found in contemporary Hong Kong newspapers and the Report on the Contagious Diseases Ordinance (see note 5). 16 Alfred Weatherhead, Life in Hong Kong: 1856-1859. Typescript in the Library of the University of Hong Kong. 17 W. A. Hornaday, Two Years in the Jungle, London, 1885, p. 185. 18 Capt. Gordon Casserly, The Land of the Boxers, London, 1903, p. 193. 19 John Thomson, F.R.G.S., The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China and China, London, 1875, pp. 192-3. 20 J. A. Turner, Kwang Tung or Five Years in South China, London (1894), pp. 108-9. 21 See China Station 1859-1864: The Reminiscences of Walter White, London, National Maritime Museum, Maritime Monographs and Reports, No. 3, 1972. 22 Ibid., p. 27. 23 Major Henry Knollys, English Life in China, London, 1885, pp. 56-7. 24 'Report of the Commission on Alcoholic Liquors', Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1898, p. 1. 25 E. J. Eitel, "Treatment of Paupers in Hong Kong', Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1880, p. 470. 26 Ibid., p. 469. 27 The Kowloon British School was opened in 1902; before that some girls were educated at convent schools in Macau. 28 Marjorie Topley, 'The Role of Savings and Wealth among Hong Kong Chinese', in L. C. Jarvie, ed., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 193. 29 J. Thomson, op. cit., pp. 203 and 208. 30 L. N. Wheeler, The Foreigner in China, Chicago, 1881, p. 242. 31 Rev. E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at Home, London, n.d., p. 29. 32 Leon Radzinowicz, Ideology and Crime, London, 1966, p. 38. 33 Allister Macmillan, op. cit., p. 339. 34 Op. cit., p. 151. 35 Samuel Couling, The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Shanghai, 1917, p. 437. 36 W. A. P. Martin, A Cycle of Cathay, New York, 1900, p. 24. 37 L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon's Eyes, London, 1931, p. 151. 38 H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, 1958, p. 186. 39 Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China, London, 1908, p. 341. Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 138 RICHARD J. SMITH 86 See Smith, "Foreign-Training;" also Yang-wu yün-tung [The “foreign matters" movement] (Shanghai, 1961), 3: 463, 469, 492, 599, 613, etc. 87 IWSM, TC 22: 12-13b; 23: 42-43. 88 See the IWSM references cited in note 85. Pennell became fully sinicized, shaving his head, changing to Chinese clothing, learning Chinese, marrying a Chinese, and finally petitioning to be registered as a native of Ho-fei, Anhwei. Mesny, too, was attracted by Chinese civilization, thus reinforcing the persistent notion of barbarian "transformation". See especially the memorial by Wu Tang and Ch'ung-shih in 1870 requesting that Mesny be advanced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel (ts'an-chiang) and awarded the peacock feather for his efforts against the Miao. This memorial was in many respects a replica of Hsueh Huan's request for similar awards to be granted to Ward in 1862. 89 Examples in IWSM and WCSL abound. See also Fairbank, "The Early Treaty System," esp. 264-265; John Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 50. Traditional attitudes were, of course, reinforced by the examination system. One of the topics for the metropolitan examinations in 1880 was the following quotation: "By indulgent treatment of men from a distance they are brought to resort to him from all quarters. And by kindly cherishing the princes of the states, the whole empire is brought to revere him." Cited in the North-China Herald, May 18, 1880. 90 See, for example, WCSL 101: 9; 129: 17. 91 See especially K. C. Liu, "The Confucian as Patriot and Pragmatist: Li Hung-chang's Formative Years, 1823-1866," HJAS, 30 (1970); David Pong, "Confucian Patriotism and the Destruction of the Woosung Railway, 1877," Modern Asian Studies, 7.4 (1973). ** 92 For a discussion of the concept of r'i-chih, see Immanuel Hsü, China's Entrance into the Family of Nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1960). 93 See Ella Lonn's Foreigners in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill, 1940) and Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy (Baton Rouge, 1951). 94 See, for example, Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression: Europeans Prepare the Japanese Army (Tucson, 1965); Noboru Umetani, "Foreign Nationals Employed in Japan during the Years of Modernization," East Asian Cultural Studies, 10.1 (March, 1971). 95 What differed was China's international situation. China had to endure far more political, economic and military pressure from the European powers than either the United States or Japan in the nineteenth century. 96 The great majority of Japanese military employees in the latter half of the nineteenth century neither became Japanese subjects nor accepted Japanese culture. See, for example, Presseisen, 112. 97 See the discussion in Smith, "Foreign-Training." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 152 DONALD C. BOWIE When I started to write this account I intended to concentrate upon the experiences of staff and patients, and to restrict reference to myself to trying to cast a little light on situations which otherwise might seem obscure. My diary notes, though voluminous, were for the most part phrased in what I thought then discreet language in case they were discovered by the Japanese. I had a healthy respect for the Japanese capacity for dealing out punishment to anyone who failed to obey their orders to the letter. This discretion, allied to a tendency to refer in cryptic terms to events which filled my mind at the time but which have now faded from my memory, has left me with masses of statistics and information of a kind which I have found difficult to weave into a coherent story which will do justice to patients and staff. I have lost touch with nearly all my colleagues and friends whose own memories might have stimulated me, and in this account I am therefore relying far more on personal recollections and experiences to round off the story than I ever intended originally. I hope that those who shared these years with me will, if they read the story, forgive the change in emphasis which these considerations have made necessary. Looking back over my diaries now I am glad that I never had to explain some of the entries to the Japanese. I learned enough then to understand now that a quite truthful explanation of a simple description of an event might not be accepted. Practised interrogators were known to use methods against which the truth finds it hard to prevail. Fortunately I never had to submit to such an ordeal. This then is the story of the British Military Hospital, Hong Kong. I did not see any prisoner of war camps until I lived in Sham Shui Po for a few days in March 1945 when conditions had, as they had also in the hospital, become much more stable. I am in no position to write the stories of the camps, and any references I may make to conditions there are based on hearsay only. Their medical and administrative problems were different from those we met in the hospital. After considering in a prelude the general situation in Hong Kong as I saw it, I refer briefly to the period of hostilities and then to the early months of captivity up to August 1942. I then deal in more detail with events from that date onwards fortified by the notes in my own diaries. The story of the Army Medical Services in Hong Kong is contained in Volume 11 of the Official Medical History of the Second ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 155 in my mind that the Colony could not hold out long against an attack. After France fell in June 1940 the outlook darkened further. At this time I was a major of 22 years service but I held a lowly position in the Army List for my Corps, being near the bottom of a block of officers who had been commissioned during the First World War. I had prepared for a career in Surgery and I also had experience of administration. In theatres where the army was expanding, promotion for officers in my position was nearly certain but in Hong Kong there was no such possibility. For a time I hoped I might be posted elsewhere, and while I never thought it possible that I might get home the Middle East seemed just a possibility. The likeliest destination for me if I moved at all seemed to be Singapore where my friends told me of the huge increase of strength in the army there. I was never moved. I had no part in preparing the army's plans for increased hospital accommodation in Hong Kong in war. Some of the buildings it was sought to use were occupied by religious orders, some of which were Italian and I understood that Colonel John Simson, the Assistant Director of Medical Services, China Command found difficulty inspecting these and met a blank refusal to a request that we might be allowed to make a preliminary accumulation of medical stores in some of these buildings. The Hong Kong Government was, I believe, unwilling on grounds of policy to overrule the objections. The Indian Army Hospital which was in Kowloon and which accommodated some British patients as well, was on the outbreak of hostilities to close, cross the harbour and reopen on the Island of Hong Kong in the Chinese Hospital, Tung Wah East. With the frontier so close to the harbour this would obviously be a difficult operation and I was sorry for the A.D.M.S. who had to plan under these conditions. I have been able to obtain through the courtesy of Colonel R. H. Freeman and Brigadier John Lapper, a postwar aerial photograph of the Military Hospital buildings in Bowen Road, which I reproduce here (plate 17). The photograph shows that new buildings have been added since the war and does not show the hospital reservoir. The hospital was built in two wings each containing a ground floor and two storeys, and these wings were connected by a central block which held the administrative offices. To the north there was a magnificent view over the harbour to the mountains of the New Territories while in the rear of the building the ground rose ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 156 DONALD C. BOWIE steeply to one of the passes, Magazine Gap, through which roads passed from one side of the Island to the other. The hospital had wide shady verandahs but no lifts, and all windows had heavy wooden shutters for use during typhoons. A reservoir for fire fighting purposes had been constructed a little above hospital level and was fed by hill streams. Above that again was the Nursing Sisters Mess. About the same level as the hospital were quarters for warrant officers and a barrack block for male staff, a NAAFI block for recreation and a tennis court together with some lesser outbuildings. Below the hospital was the Sergeants Mess and a residential block for married staff, "H" block. There was only one approach road winding up to the hospital, Borrett Road, but there was a subsidiary road, Bowen Road, running along a contour line but not strong enough to take heavy traffic. The hospital was one of the landmarks of the Hong Kong scene when viewed from the mainland. Below the hospital the ground fell steeply to the main road linking the city of Victoria and the Island to the east, and to the Naval Command Headquarters in H.M.S. Tamar, the Naval Dockyard and the headquarters of China Command. The hospital was therefore close to legitimate enemy targets and any margin for error in artillery fire and aerial bombing was reduced still further by the precipitous slope on which it stood. The hospital however had nowhere else to go, and Colonel Shackleton the commanding officer used his considerable ingenuity to have two operating theatres with their necessary adjuncts and X-Ray rooms constructed in the basement of the administration block. Engines for generating electricity, one capable of supplying the theatres and X-ray room, the other able to serve part of the hospital as well were installed and were of great value during hostilities and during the long period of captivity. When the hospital was severely damaged and the kitchen totally destroyed very early on by aerial bombs and shell fire, Shackleton speedily got an emergency kitchen operating in the sergeants mess and set up a protective wall of concrete blocks, known to us from a much publicised local court case as "Mimi Lau's”, on the harbour side of the ground floor wards. Shackleton was a forceful character, apparently not aware of fear, who was ready to cut through any red tape which obstructed his aims. He liked his own way and was not an easy man to have under command, but to those relying upon his administration in war he always provided what was needed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 159 the Military Hospital in Bowen Road, which I scarcely left until we moved to Kowloon in March 1945. 8-25 DECEMBER, 1941 During hostilities eleven hospitals on the Island received casualties. These were: Military Hospital, Bowen Road. St. Albert's Convent St. Stephen's College, Stanley. Stanley Prison Hospital Hongkong Hotel. Matilda Hospital, The Peak. Indian Military Hospital, Tung Wah East. Royal Naval Hospital. Queen Mary Hospital, Pokfulam. University Hospital, University Buildings. War Memorial Hospital, The Peak. The Indian Hospital was responsible mainly for Indian casualties, but like all other hospitals, service and civil alike, admitted any casualties which occurred nearby. The hospital in Bowen Road acted as a Casualty Clearing Station during hostilities, a role which though foreseen was forced upon us very early by shell fire and aerial bomb hits which caused casualties among the staff, destroyed the kitchen and damaged the structure to such an extent that it became unsafe to use the two top floors as wards. After surgical treatment patients, when fit to move, were transferred to other hospitals thought to be a little safer, and to emergency accommodation opened elsewhere such as the Hong Kong Hotel where they were nursed on mattresses laid on the ballroom floor. The main approach road to Bowen Road, Borrett Road, was soon damaged by shell fire and for a time ambulance cars could not reach the hospital at all. Casualties then had to be carried on stretchers by our staff over long stretches of slippery, wet, and steep slopes of mud. The basement operating theatres and X-ray room in the hospital proved to be a great success, and early and effective surgery was carried out successfully. The occupation of Kowloon by the Japanese, complete by 18 December, cut off our sources of supply of anaesthetic gases, mains water, and electricity. We then used our generators to supply light and power and drew water from our reservoir. One of our wards had been made gas-proof but neither ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 191 of course I was responsible. Only on one occasion was I accused of a misuse of stores myself. In a community the size of ours, in the disturbing atmosphere of the early year or two, I suppose I was lucky not to meet more accusations of my own shortcomings. Anonymous letters diminished and eventually disappeared as the policy of spreading responsibilities took shape and of course as conditions improved. In this account I have given much space to the problems of general messing of patients and staff for this was the most important general matter which affected everybody. Ordinary complaints as to quantity and quality of food were openly and freely made and as speedily forgotten by most of our population. There were some, a few only, whose recurring complaints made life miserable at times for all those in the supply line. Arrangements made by our friends in Hong Kong Even now I do not know the whole story about the food supplies which arrived at the hospital as gifts from our friends in Hong Kong. I repeat here the hope that Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke will find it possible to relate this in detail for it was he who originated the system. A short account of this remarkable man is necessary. He was Director of Medical Services in Hong Kong at the outbreak of war and was deeply committed to the welfare of Hong Kong Chinese citizens of all classes. He had reorganized the medical services in the Colony and had a formidable reputation as an advocate in any cause that he took up. He sought nothing for himself; he liked his own ways of doing things and often enough these did not commend themselves to others. Courage, pertinacity and not a little guile allowed him usually to carry the day. His wife and very young daughter were in Hong Kong with him, and were not evacuated to the Philippines and later to Australia with other service and civilian wives and families in July 1940. His view was that if the families of Chinese and other races for whom the Hong Kong government was responsible were not to be evacuated then his own family would also stay in the Colony. In this decision his wife backed him up fully. Before the Far East war, following representations by the Japanese Foreign Office a Japanese doctor named Eguchi came to study on the spot the medical and health arrangements in the Colony. Colonel T. Eguchi next appeared as the Director of Me- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 205 lights-out and a host of minor matters. They sometimes slapped patients, both officers and other ranks, for what they considered to be breaches of orders. On our side the victims could only guess at the reasons for the slapping for no interpreter was ever to hand at the time. I took up every one of these cases with Saito or Seino as soon as either appeared after the incident, and I always tried to have the matter investigated. Repeatedly I was told that a sentry represented the Imperial Army and must inflict punishment at once for any irregularity on our part. I never discovered that there was anything personal in these slappings in the sense that they might be a retaliation for what, in the British army, we used to call dumb insolence. Some tempers on our side were sorely tried but no major incident occurred. I was never approached by any Japanese officer or N.C.O. for help over medical treatment. Only once did an opportunity occur to retaliate. Late in 1945 in the Central British School in Kowloon we had an officious guard sergeant who was nicknamed 'Slappy' because of his readiness to slap all and sundry for what he thought were offences. About the time of the Japanese surrender, but well before the guards were withdrawn, this man was waylaid by some of our sappers who had suffered themselves and who wanted to repay him on their own and their friends' behalf. I was told that they were very satisfied with the result and there were no repercussions. TRADING The Japanese allowed us to have a shop within the hospital. We had to buy stocks from a Hong Kong Chinese compradore, a term which will be familiar to all who have been in the Far East, and we then sold the goods within the hospital. For a very long time we were not allowed to make a profit, and it was not until a year or two after our surrender that I got permission to make five per cent and use the proceeds within precisely defined limits. The shop stocked goods likely to be desired, mainly cigarettes, matches, syrup, jams, salt, eggs on occasion, tomato sauce, beans, cigarette papers, sugar, sewing cottons and needles, ginger, laces, soy bean powder, soap, razor blades etc. We placed an order one week and such goods as were available were delivered the following week. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 214 DONALD C. BOWIE serve for Japan?". We either left this particular question unanswered or replied that we were unwilling to serve for Japan. One young man who had put down roots in Hong Kong before the Far East war, in answer to this question gave a detailed account of his qualifications which were substantial. As the replies passed through my office I saw his answer and persuaded him to leave this question blank in a new form which I gave him and I left him to tear up his own original completed form. Each month all in hospital received what we called necessities. The items varied but as a rule there were a couple of cakes of coarse soap, an envelope of tooth powder, a packet of toilet paper, and a fandoshi. This last looked like a triangular bandage and was tied round the waist, the point being passed back between the legs to be secured to the waistband behind, thus preserving the decencies. From time to time there would be an undervest or stockings or a toothbrush. In September 1942 we were able to restart our gramophone concerts broadcast to the wards during permitted hours after a stoppage which had lasted for several weeks. Also in September we equipped and opened a barber's shop served by men who could shave those unable to do so themselves. Thereafter growing beards, an affectation much in favour soon after our surrender, but already dying out, was forbidden! Ten Canadian combatant soldiers who volunteered for the job came to us as orderlies. Two wounded Chinese members of the H.K.V.D.C. whom we had been caring for were removed by the Japanese. By this time they were reasonably fit to leave and we were told that they would be released in the town. I only hope this was so. In October '43 all our staff received ten yen each from the Red Cross Society and we began to receive three or four copies daily of the Hongkong News free. We were also given twelve X-ray films, and having previously been given glass for windows but having no putty, we eventually obtained a supply of thin wire which our sappers made into nails and re-glassing broken windows began. On the afternoon of 26 October a single American plane flew low over the harbour and rose steeply to the north to disappear over the Kowloon hills. There were further raids during the nights of 27 and 28 October. No bombs were dropped, but thereafter I thought it wise not to remove the ‘Mimi Lau' concrete blocks protecting the ground floor wards on the harbour side. At this time we had beds on every verandah in the hospital in order to gain as ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 217 we had sudden night checks which would be carried out about midnight or one a.m. One of the most disagreeable tasks in the hospital was that of the washing squad. We had to have a system of washing bed linen for those unfit to wash their own sheets. Most of the work was carried out on badly stained sheets which had come from the dysentery wards and which had to be washed in cold water. The four men under Corporal R. Thompson R.A.M.C. who did this work deserve unstinted praise, but it was not until December that I was able to buy a pair of rubber boots for the washing squad. In the same month Seino gave me 25 grammes of nicotinic acid and all Canadians received ten yen each from home, Patients and staff decorated the wards at Christmas time and it was remarkable what a gay effect was produced by the bright colours of a few empty cigarette packets. We had a little extra for Christmas dinner carefully hoarded for many weeks beforehand. We even had a concert on Hogmanay but I was glad to reach the end of 1942. 1943 Thirty years after the event it is possible to look back and see that 1943 was the turning point for the better in the affairs of the hospital and its inmates. It was less easy to discern this at the time. We had known of the naval battles of the Coral Sea in May and Midway in June 1942. They were fought over four thousand miles from Hong Kong and seemed remote to us. The Japanese accounts claimed them as decisive victories, and it was not till the history of the campaigns became available long after the war that I saw these battles clearly as having imposed the first check on the Japanese advance in the Pacific. It would have been immensely encouraging to have known this at the time. In 1943 we knew of the Russian successful defence of Stalingrad, we knew of the victory in North Africa, the invasion of Sicily and the fall of Mussolini. The placenames on the Russian front showed how that terrible campaign was going. We knew of the island battles in the Pacific; we knew of Guadalcanal; but all the Far East news published in the Hongkong News was presented to show the huge losses inflicted on the Americans by the Japanese defenders of positions which in the end remained safely in their hands. The impression conveyed was one of enormous American losses from Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 232 DONALD C. BOWIE The fact that I remarked upon this feature shows that it was unusual and this is true. Other doctors were not openly discourteous; their manner was uniformly aloof and when interest in the case of a patient was displayed there was little sign that one human being was dealing with another. This characteristic was shown by all inspecting officers and we came to regard it as normal, certainly with us and quite possibly with their own troops also. One eye specialist, a lieutenant, his name sounded like Igara, examined a number of these patients suffering from disturbed vision one day along with Major J.D. Fraser. We asked him for suggestions for treatment and he advised giving potassium iodide by mouth along with subconjunctival injections of saline. We showed no enthusiasm for these measures and he said he was prepared to give the injections himself. We diverted his attention and no such injections were ever given. In January 1944 all in hospital were asked by the Japanese to provide 200 word essays on their experiences during hostilities. Essayists were asked to pay special attention to any psychological reactions to their experiences, the area in which they had fought and the names of comrades who had been killed. I imagined that criticisms of our own leaders, personal fears, war weariness, Japanese superiority in the field for example, might have proved useful propaganda in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Many of the stories which passed through me showed that bodily privation had not impaired mental inventiveness and I made sure that nothing of value got through in these essays. Japanese forms were also required to be completed for every man in the hospital showing his name, date of birth and age, height, weight, chest measurement, dates of inoculation against typhoid, dysentery and cholera and date of vaccination. I was required to record weights graphically each month, a record which I had been keeping up already for my own purpose ever since August 1942. In December separate forms giving information about themselves were required in addition from all non-British in the hospital. Another report demanded by Saito was on the peace condition of our hospital in Bowen Road. He sought information on accommodation, diets, amenities, ward equipment, lighting and so on. I never discovered the reason for him collecting this information whose only value could have been to satisfy his personal curiosity. Page 240 Page 241 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 280 DONALD C. BOWIE hostilities and in captivity was of the highest order and had an enormous effect in inspiring patients and male staff. I have recorded earlier the gloom that descended on Bowen Road when the army and navy nurses and all the women volunteers who backed them up were removed to civil internment in Stanley in August 1942; it was three years before we saw them again. Miss Dyson became deputy head of the Army Nursing Service in later years. Miss Franklin became head of the Naval Nursing Service and others reached high positions in the National Health Service. Others still assumed family responsibilities, so that the splendid qualities which showed so clearly in Hong Kong had not been extinguished by their dreadful experiences. I publish their names in an appendix but as I have no records I trust that any whose names are not included will forgive me. CONCLUSION The future does come "one day at a time". I hope that the method I have chosen to present this story, involving the recording of much detail will allow readers to form for themselves a picture of the uncertainties and conflicting influences which constantly beset us. The story is not a smooth one, nor were the events it describes but the patients and staff in the British Military Hospital, Hong Kong, bore what happened to them in a manner in which their corps, services and the Colony can take pride. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have read widely in the history of the Second World War and in the personal stories by many who had experience in the Far East. I have had discussions with Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and Miss Gwendolene Colthorpe who was, till recently matron of St. Stephen's Hospital, Chelsea. The Misses Elaine and Helen Ho have been good enough to read the section dealing with the efforts of our friends in Hong Kong to help us. While none of those named has any responsibility for any of the opinions I express I am extremely grateful to them for their help. My wife typed the earlier drafts and without the spur that she applied and without her industry the story would never have been completed. I gladly acknowledge a deep debt to her. I am indebted to Miss Beryl Brown for much valuable advice and help on the production of this account, and to Miss Lorraine Robinson for the final typescript. London, W.8. March 1975. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 290 Editor's Footnotes DONALD C. BOWIE 1. Dr. Bowie's own career and achievements, before and after the historic events of which he writes, will be of interest to readers of this Journal. They are as follows: M.B. 1918. University of Glasgow. F.R.C.S. Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh 1929. Honorary F.R.C.G.P. (Royal College of General Practitioners) 1969. Sir Arthur Keith Medallist, Royal College of Surgeons, England, 1969. Main Appointments, Army. Commissioned R.A.M.C. 1918. Served in U.K., France, Germany, Turkey. Seconded to Egyptian Army 1923-25. Shanghai Defence Force 1927. Territorial Adjutant, 54th East Anglian Division T.A. 1928-30, Surgical Specialist, British Troops in Egypt 1930-35. Surgical Specialist, Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, London 1936-39, Surgical Specialist, British Troops in China, Hong Kong, 1939. Prisoner of War, 1941-45. Reader in Military Surgery, Royal Army Medical College, London 1946-48. Consulting Surgeon, Middle East Land Forces 1948-50. Retired 1950. (voluntarily) Civil. Regional Postgraduate Dean, British Postgraduate Medical Federation, University of London in North West, South West Metropolitan and Wessex Hospital Regions, 1950-70. Now Retired. Dr. Bowie was awarded the O.B.E. (Military) in 1946. 2. Dr. Bowie's account of Japanese attitudes and behaviour can usefully be set beside the comments of Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and Dr. Li Shu-fan, the eminent Hong Kong surgeon, who both experienced them at first hand. Sir Selwyn writes (pp. 71-72 of his autobiography referred to at p. 178 above): Nobody can deny that man's potential for cruelty was exhibited on an appalling scale by the Japanese in the stress of war. It was predictable in the circumstances that I should suffer my share of ill-treatment at their hands, and this is what presently came about. Yet the feature of their character that stood out from that whole experience was in fact their unpredictability. They would be acquiescent, even humane, when least expected, vicious with sudden fury after a phase almost of apathy. They could respect, sometimes, a principled stand or an unflinching argument, and yet visit a meaningless rage upon the helpless. To attempt to understand them was the plain duty of anyone seeking to protect a community that was at their mercy, and the first lesson to be learned was that surrender violated their military code, making a prisoner a non-person. But this too was a generalization, and as such to be guarded against as one guarded against racial prejudice. For men are not cast in one mould, even by war, even by a code or an ideology. Dr. Li's account of Hong Kong under Japanese rule is given in chapters 6-9 of his autobiography, Hong Kong Surgeon (London, Victor Gollancz, 1964) in which his comments at pp. 159-160 are relevant here. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d NOTES AND QUERIES 309 with Taoist exorcisms and are performed at wedding ceremonies to obtain from Heaven the happy union, using the ritual of a local Taoist folk religion heterodox cult of the Three Ladies' (三娘). The 'Three Jesters' are called by the puppeteers the "Three Brothers' (三兄弟) or, individually, the Great, Second and Third Wang Yeh.* Schipper then explained that he and his informants had made many conjectures in order to identify the Three Jesters. He believed tradition links the Three Brothers (Three Jesters) with the Three Tien Brothers and thus with Tien To Yuan Shuai, and this seemed to him to be better founded than other conjectures. He continued that the identity of T'ien is extremely confused, and claimed that T'ien is reputed to be the master of T'ang Emperor Ming Huang (唐明皇) and to have taught the actresses of the Peach Garden (梨园), popularly believed to be the first academy of the theatre. Iconography, he said, represents T'ien the puppet as the 'laughing lad', similar to T’ien To Yuan Shuai. Schipper observed that when the plays are of the northern Fukienese type, the Three Jesters are identified with T'ang Ming Huang, the patron of the theatre of North China. When the play is Southern Fukienese or Ch'aochow, T'ien To Yuan Shuai (Chief Marshal T'ien) is the patron, and the Three Jesters are identified with him. The T'ang Emperor is also often referred to in Taiwan and South East Asia, where he is also accepted as the God of Actors bearing the title of the Imperial Prince or King of the Western Ch'in (Hsi Ch'in Wang Yeh, 西秦王爷) or Hsi Ch'in Lao Wang Yeh (西秦老王爷), or, on Taipei and Keelung altars just as Hsi Ch'in Wang (西秦王). (He is called the King of the Western Ch'in because of his exile in Szechuan, in Western China). His image is more colloquially referred to as The Young Gentleman (小哥) and less respectfully as The Old Boy (老郎). Schipper agreed all this might seem highly incongruous, but, he continued, the tradition which links the 'Three Brothers' (The Jesters) with Tien To Yuan Shuai (Chief Marshal T'ien) seems, as we said earlier, better founded than others. Wang Yeh Schipper has linked the Three Jesters with the Fukienese epidemic gods by the title of Wang Yeh. He also noted the legend * More often than not Wang Yeh (Imperial Princes) in Fukienese communities are epidemic deities. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q # SAI KUNG, THE MAKING OF THE DISTRICT AND ITS EXPERIENCE DURING # WORLD WAR II ## DAVID FAURE'* ## INTRODUCTION The traceable history of Sai Kung District begins in the eighteenth century. At that time, the whole of Hong Kong, * ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article records and analyses the findings of a research project into the oral sources available for the history of Sai Kung, conducted by members of the Oral History Project Team of the Centre for East Asian Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Thanks are due to many people for the successful completion of this project. Mr. Colin Bosher, former District Officer, Sai Kung, suggested it in the first place, and Mr. S.J. Chan, the present District Officer, gave his advice and encouragement most generously. Professor Chen Ching-ho, former Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, took a most understanding attitude towards research on local history, and his kindness made possible not only this project, but also several other projects concerning the history of the New Territories. At every stage, the staff of the Sai Kung District Office and members of the Sai Kung Rural Committee helped in many and varied ways. The kindness of Miss Carrie Tsang, Miss Joyce Nip, Mr. Lei Yun Shou, J.P., Mr. Chung P'oon, Chairman, Sai Kung Rural Committee, and Mr. William Wan, must be especially acknowledged. Between November 1980 and August 1981 many residents of Sai Kung and neighbouring districts kindly agreed to be interviewed by the research team and their student assistants. For the record, their names and the dates of these interviews are appended to this report. As always, Dr. James Hayes and Dr. Patrick Hase offered kind and sound advice, and made available their own research notes for consultation. Father Sergio Ticozzi provided information on the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Sai Kung. Mr. K.M.A. Barnett generously gave us his time to discuss numerous issues that arose in the interviews. Thanks are also due to the Sai Kung Rural Committee and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for providing financial support for this project, and to Mr. Deacon Chiu, whose generous donation to the University made its grant possible. At different times, the following students at the Chinese University assisted: Cheng Shui Kwan, Kwok Po Nei, Lam Loi, Lau Kwan Yau, Lee Lai Mui, Lui Shuk Yee, Ngo Yin Ling, Tang Chan Yiu, Tsui Lai Yi, and Wong Yue Leung. Miss Cheng Shui Kwan and Miss Lee Lai Mui worked on this project from the start to its completion, and their contribution to the project is immense. ================================================================================ 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 13 iron factories and built many steamships. She has changed to the use of Western weapons. [...] Perhaps she is merely planning for self-protection. But if Japan seeks only self-protection, she is nevertheless oppressing and looking down on our China. Should not China plan for herself?"5 6 The outcome of the Sino-Japanese War perhaps causes us to cast the "success" of Japan and the "failure" of China in too sharp relief. But Cohen's protests to the contrary, modernization is a horserace. It involves the notion of catching up, or at least maintaining competitive presence. And nowhere is the race more evident than in military affairs. Yet curiously, very little attention has been given to the military as a perspective from which to view the comparative modernization of China and Japan. This is especially surprising in light of the importance attached to military reform by modernizers in both countries, the common threat posed to each by Western imperialism, and the same basic access to foreign military technology and assistance in the nineteenth century. This research note, based on my own preliminary investigations, suggests two tentative conclusions: First, that Japan's modernizing advantages in the military sphere on the eve of the Western encounter do not explain her military "success" in the Meiji period;7 and second, that the modernizing implications of Japan's successful military reforms, and the relative "failure" of China's, extend well beyond the sphere of military affairs. Four main stages have been identified with the responses of China and Japan to the Western "impact”: (1) Recognition of Western military superiority; (2) recognition of Western scientific technology as the basis of military superiority; (3) recognition of the need to train native personnel in Western military technology; and (4) recognition that scientific technology in the military sphere is merely part of Western science and technology in general, and that in order to develop it, the pure science and general learning of the West also had to be introduced. These phases unfolded relatively slowly in China, while in Japan they occurred almost simultaneously. A common feature of the effort to achieve national strength and self-sufficiency in both China and Japan was the employment of foreigners in military affairs. This policy, which entailed certain obvious risks, brought substantial benefits to Japan in the Meiji period, as Ernst Presseisen has indicated. In China, however, ================================================================================ 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 21 vernment was, in Perkins' words, "an almost unbelievably weak [financial] instrument." Even if the Ch'ing government had been moved to undertake more fundamental military reform, China's transition to modernity would have been painful; but without such reform, it was virtually impossible. NOTES 1 Paul Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang Tao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 4. 2 Ibid.; see also 148-149. 3 Thomas Kennedy, "Self-Strengthening: An Analysis Based on Some Recent Writings,” Ching-shih wen-t'i, 3.1 (November, 1974), 27. 4 Cohen, 149. 5 Quoted in S. Y. Teng and John K. Fairbank, eds., China's Response to the West: A Documentary Survey 1839-1923 (New York, 1966), 109. 6 See, for example, William Lockwood, "Japan's Response to the West: The Contrast With China," World Politics, 9.1 (October, 1956); Marion Levy, "Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan," Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2 (October, 1953); Marion Levy, "Some Structural Problems of Modernization and High Modernization: China and Japan," Proceedings of the Symposium on Economic and Social Problems of the Far East (1962); Allan Cole, "Contrasting Modernization in China and Japan," Ch'ung-chi hsieh-pao, 4.2 (May, 1965); E.O. Reischauer, “Modernization in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan," Japan Quarterly, 10.3 (July-September, 1963), etc. A partial exception is the fine article by John K. Fairbank, et al., entitled "The Influence of Modern Western Science and Technology on Japan and China," Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 7 (1954). 7 Two of the most obvious advantages were, of course, Japan's greater and more immediate awareness of the Western military challenge (a product of geography and historical timing), and the military orientation and ethos (bushido) of the Japanese elite, as compared to the civil orientation and ethos (wen-te) of the Chinese elite. Other factors were also important, including the absence of opium smoking among Japanese officers and the rank and file, which again contrasts so markedly with the case in China. See Jonathan Spence, "Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China," in Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Carolyn Grant, eds., Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1975). 8 See Fairbank, et al., "The Influence," 192-194, esp. 193. 9 Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression: Europeans Prepare the Japanese Army (Tucson, 1955), 139. 10 See Richard J. Smith, Ward, Gordon and the Ever-Victorious Army: Foreign Assistance and Military Modernization in Nineteenth Century China (manuscript). ================================================================================ 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 23 23 See Umetani Noboru, "Foreign Nationals Employed in Japan during the Years of Modernization," East Asian Cultural Studies, 10.1 (March, 1971). 24 Ibid., 5-6. 25 See Roger Hackett, "The Meiji Leaders and Modernization: The Case of Yamagata Aritomo," in Marius Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization (Princeton, 1965). 26 Yamagata Aritomo, "The Japanese Army," in Okuma Shigenobu, comp., Fifty Years of New Japan (New York, 1909), 206. 27 Ibid., 206. 28 Ibid., 206-208. 29 Presseisen, vii; also chapters 2 and 4. 30 Ibid., esp. 135-136. As a professor at the Army Staff College and an adviser to the General Staff, Meckel helped to reorganize the Army Ministry, refine the General Staff, improve the system and content of Japanese military education, and develop the Japanese system of logistics and medical services. In addition, he helped restructure the army into divisions and taught the Japanese "the demands of full-scale mobilization, which included a strategic railroad network, a new conscription act, and improved staff exercises." 31 Mary Wright, The Last Stand, 220-221; Rawlinson, 167-204; Presseisen, 139-143; Hsü, The Rise of Modern China (New York, etc., 1975), 418-420; Yamagata Ariyoshi, "The Army," in Albert Stead, ed., Japan by the Japanese (London, 1904), 107-109; etc. 32 Cited in Roger Hackett, "The Military: Japan," in Robert E. Ward and Dankwart Rustow, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, 1964), 328. 33 Ike Nobutaka, "War and Modernization," in Robert Ward, ed., Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton, 1968), 209. 34 Hackett, "The Military," 346-348. 35 See, for example, Ike, 196; also Shibusawa Keizo, ed., Japanese Life and Culture in the Meiji Era (translated and adapted by Charles Terry; Tokyo, 1958), 303-309, esp. 308-309. 36 Hackett, "The Military," 335. 37 Ogawa Gotaro, The Conscription System in Japan (New York, 1921), chapter 3. 38 Shibusawa, 306-307. 39 H. Paul Varley, Japanese Culture: A Short History (New York, 1973), 163-164. 40 Donald Keene, "The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Its Cultural Effects in Japan," in Donald Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton, 1971). 41 Ogawa, part 2. 42 See Harry T. Oshima, "Meiji Fiscal Policy and Economic Progress," in William Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1968), esp. 372. See also Shibusawa, 305, 315; Fairbank, et al., 199-200; Ike, 205. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 24 RICHARD J. SMITH 43 See Ono Giichi, War and Armament Expenditures of Japan (New York, 1922), 57-58, 70-71, 140-144, 273-277, and Ono's Expenditures of the Sino-Japanese War (New York, 1922), 120-126; also Oshima, 372-375, 376, note 18. 44 Smith, "Foreign-Training," 219-220; Yamagata, "The Army,” 107-108; British Public Record Office, W.O. 33/34, Captain Trotter, "Some Remarks on the Army of Li Hung-Chang;" Rawlinson, 190. 45 Smith, "Foreign-Training," 219, 221; see also Rawlinson, 202-203; Thomas William Ayers, Chang Chih-tung and Educational Reform in China (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 164-189, 204-215. 46 Smith, "Foreign-Training," 218-219; Cavendish, 721. 47 Cavendish, 711, 713-715, 719-723. 48 Smith, "Chinese Military Institutions," 157, note 135. 49 See Fairbank, et. al., “Economic Change," 20-21; Hsü, The Rise of Modern China, 527-534. On the more positive side of the ledger, consult Ernest Young, "Nationalism, Reform and Republican Revolution: East Asia: Essays in Interpretation, 160-162; Hsü, The Rise of Modern China, 535. 50 See, for example, Hatano Yoshihiro, "The New Armies,” in Mary Wright, ed., China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913 (New Haven and London, 1968). 51 Paul Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T'ao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 4, 148-149. 52 See Kublin. 53 Smith, "Foreign-Training:" Ralph Powell, The Rise of Chinese Military Power, 1895-1912 (Princeton, 1955), 245-246, 262. An interesting question is whether the Manchus could have preserved their power, and even enhanced it, by undertaking meaningful military reform at the central government level. Although vested interests in the army were pervasive and solidly entrenched, one cannot assume that what happened to the dynasty in 1911 would necessarily have happened in the same way had the Ch'ing government initiated reforms in the 1860's and 1870's comparable to those undertaken by the dynasty in the early 1890's. By the beginning of the twentieth century, anti-Manchu sentiment was a powerful ideological weapon, at least in part because the Manchus had proven so totally incapable of protecting Chinese interests against foreign encroachments. But during the Tung-chih period, anti-Manchuism was no real issue at all. 54 Dwight Perkins, "Government as an Obstacle to Industrialization: The Case of Nineteenth-Century China,” Journal of Economic History (1967), esp. 486, 492. ================================================================================ 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 (With especial reference to the Upper Yangtze) A. D. BLUE* West China, and in particular the provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan, interested British merchants in India before the end of the eighteenth century, and this interest increased after Britain got a foothold in Lower Burma in the early nineteenth century. Not until Britain was established at Shanghai and on the Lower Yangtze, however, did the British China traders take any great interest in West China. Until the 1860s, therefore, the initiative in opening West China to British trade came from the West, and concentrated on reviving the old caravan routes from Upper Burma into Yunnan. The Treaty of Yandabo between Britain and Burma in 1826, which established Britain in Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and Tenasserim, rekindled interest in these old routes. Sino-Burmese contacts went back many centuries, but were usually recorded from a diplomatic or military aspect, although it was well known that there had been considerable trade along these routes. At this time Canton was the only British foothold on the China coast, and the much shorter land route across Burma seemed to offer many benefits to British and Indian merchants in both India and Burma. Then, and for many years afterwards, India was the source of most of China's foreign imports, cotton and opium in particular, and much of British policy in the Far East was concerned with maintaining and extending this trade. An interesting side product of this China-India relationship was the proposal to import workers from west China for the infant Assam tea industry. The East India Company had become interested in the possibility of tea production in Assam as early as 1823, when indigenous tea plants were found in the Upper Brahmaputra * The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtze in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Five of his articles have been published previously in the Journal. "European Navigation on the Yangtze" in Vol. 3, 1963, "Piracy on the China Coast" in Vol. 5, 1965, "The China Coasters" in Vol. 7, 1967, "Chinese Emigration and the Deck Passenger Trade" in Vol. 10, 1970 and "Early Steamships in China" in Vol. 13, 1973. Plates 20-25 and the sketch-maps at the end of the volume illustrate this article. ================================================================================ 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 163 Valley. A tea committee was formed whose findings were favourable, and experimental tea gardens were opened at Jaipur in Upper Assam. By 1859 over 4,000 acres were under cultivation, and the industry was assured of a bright future. Ample British capital was available for expansion, the British public's appetite for tea seemed inexhaustible; but scarcity of labour was a serious handicap. Assam was thinly populated, and the planters were dependent on Bengalis, who took a long time to get acclimatised. The idea of importing Chinese labour by the overland route was suggested, as at this time Chinese labour was considered indispensable to economic development in the tropics, and the Indian government was sympathetic. There were several possible land routes between India and West China, some passing through Burma, and Article 9 of the 1862 Commercial Treaty between Britain and Burma allowed entry into British territory from the Burmese side. The tea planters, however, failed to recruit Chinese workers, and blamed their lack of success upon the difficulties and hardships of the overland routes. This led to pressure on the government to improve the major land routes, and to several expeditions across the debatable borderlands between India, Burma, and China. From the 1860s until near the end of the century, therefore, there was rivalry between British commercial circles in India and those in China, over access to West China. In addition to these two approaches, from India and from the Yangtze, there were others from the south; by the Mekong or Red River from Indo-China, and by the West River from Canton and Hong Kong. Anglo-French colonial rivalry was acute during the second half of the nineteenth century, especially in the Far East. The French were keen to find and exploit a trade route to West China; and while Britain was investigating routes from Burma, the Yangtze, and the West River, France was investigating possible routes from the Mekong and Red Rivers. As became widely known by the end of the century, and suspected by realists before then, West China and its borderlands comprise some of the most difficult regions of the world in which to build roads or railways, or in which to improve river navigation. There are high mountain ranges divided by deep valleys, densely forested in many places; and all the great rivers—the Yangtze, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Red River, and Salween—are seriously impeded by rapids ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 168 A. D. BLUE Meanwhile exploration continued from the south. Between 1866 and 1868 the French under Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier made their famous expedition from Saigon by the Mekong River through Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos to Talifu and Kunming in Yunnan. The Panthay Rebellion was then at its height, and the Chinese authorities refused them permission to proceed further up the Mekong. Garnier, who had succeeded to the leadership after Lagrée's death, had to abandon his plan to explore the sources of the Mekong, and turned east across Yunnan to the Upper Yangtze at Iping. Here boats were obtained to take them on the four weeks journey to Hankow. Garnier saw enough of the Mekong to realise that it could never rival the Irawaddy, let alone the Yangtze, as a trade route to West China, and French interest shifted to the Red River route from Haiphong through Tongking. During an enforced delay on the Siamese border, Garnier made the first thorough survey of the ruins of Angkor, and his expedition is important in that it encouraged French ambitions for an Indo-Chinese Empire. There was no clear policy on the part of the various British parties concerned with developing trade with West China, nor over the best way to reach this region of supposed inexhaustible wealth. Lack of accurate information is also a constant theme in the history of British relations with West China. However, penetration and exploitation from the West, that is from India and Burma, attracted greater public and official support in Britain than that from the Yangtze by the China traders, though by 1874, a combination of circumstances led to a co-operative effort being made from both East and West, the aforementioned Dual Mission of 1874-75, which I shall now describe. The Panthay Rebellion finally came to an end in May 1873 when the Imperial troops captured Momein, this completing the reconquest of Yunnan after eighteen years of civil war. During the ensuing period of rehabilitation the provincial authorities tried to revive the Burma-Yunnan overland route, and caravans reappeared after nearly twenty years' absence, undeterred by disbanded soldiers and lawless hillmen. By May 1874 the British Political Agent at Bhamo reported that more caravans were passing between Burma and Yunnan than for many years, and that British and Chinese merchants were sending such large consignments of goods ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 172 A. D. BLUE she was retained as the headquarters ship of the Royal Navy's Upper Yangtze squadron. The Royal Navy had always maintained a strong presence on the river, since British ships commenced to trade on the Yangtze in the early 1860s. So far as the Yangtze was concerned, ‘trade followed the flag". Naval ships were the first British ships to navigate the lower Yangtze, and continued to lead the way as British shipping extended its operations further up the river. As we have seen, H.M.S. Woodcock reached Chungking and beyond to Suifu a few months before the Pioneer made the first successful commercial passage of the Upper Yangtze. By the mid 1920s, when British shipping had reached its peak there, the Royal Navy's Yangtze Squadron consisted primarily of six general purpose gunboats of the "Insect" class based on Hankow. These had been built originally for service against the Turks on the Tigris and Euphrates in World War 1. Each carried fifty-four officers and men, and had two six-inch guns, and they were powerful little ships in flat country. For the Upper River there were several smaller ships of the "Bird class", which carried twenty-six or thirty-one men. Two operated on the Tungting Lake and on the Siang River to Changsha, and another two on the Upper Yangtze to Chungking, with occasional trips to Suifu. In the high water season the "Insect" class ships could also operate on the Upper River. This force was commanded by the Rear-Admiral, Yangtze, at Hankow, who came under the overall command of the Commander-in-Chief of the British naval forces in the Far East at Hong Kong. The Yangtze Squadron, therefore, consisted of about 500 officers and could be quickly reinforced from Shanghai and Hong Kong if necessary. It was also possible for a 10,000 ton cruiser to reach Hankow in the high water season. The Royal Navy was frequently called on to protect British ships and British interests on the Yangtze, sometimes against rebels, pirates, war lords, or threats from other foreign powers. The term 'gunboat diplomacy' probably originated from the operations of the Royal Navy on the China coast and on the Yangtze. The most notable naval occasion on the Yangtze, since the First China War of 1839-42, was the Wanhsien Incident of 1926. This originated in the refusal of the captain of the China Navigation Company's Wanliu to carry soldiers of Yung Lin, one of the war ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 180 MICHAEL SMITHIES development from this, a temple built around a solid core. A narrow passage runs around the central core in which is set a niche containing the principal Buddha statue. The hollow temple, with immensely thick walls to support the weight of the vaulted roof, was in its early stages a core with the passage around and an antechamber or nave in front, usually on the eastern side. The stupa rising above the core could be of any shape, the Singhalese bell form or the stepped figured squares topped with a pinnacle, a form inspired by Pala architecture from India (particularly from one of the sacred Buddhist shrines at Bodh Gaya where the transformation of the Buddha took place). A development from this simple shrine is the Greek cross plan exemplified by the magnificent Ananda temple built by Kyanzittha, Anawrahta's son, in 1091. This still has the solid core but a double gallery around and antechambers on the axes of all four sides. A further development of this was where the whole temple was raised a level and the central core shifted slightly to contain and enfold the main Buddha facing east; the Thatbinnyu and Sulamani temples are good examples of this later style. Of the early buildings the Ananda is undoubtedly the most impressive, and the recent (mid-1975) earthquake, far from apparently damaging the building, has removed in parts the plaster and whitewash and shown the arching to be of bricks of alternating light and dark colours. The four main statues in the teaching posture have with overgilding lost their interest, but they impress by their size and the illumination from the hidden upper windows which show the Mon craftsmen as highly skilled technicians. The numerous glazed terracotta plaques ornamenting the base of the temple tell different Jataka tales (the lives of the hundreds of Buddhas before the Gautama Buddha and often taking the form of morality fables) and the small stone sculptures set in the internal walls tell the story of the life of the Gautama Buddha himself. The terracotta plaques (the great invention of Pagan, as the distinguished archaeologist Bernard Groslier indicated in a lecture to the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society at Pagan) can be seen at their best at the very late (1284) Mingalazedi temple, a little damaged by the earthquake, and the two Petleiks of the 11th century, where the exceptional series is preserved almost in entirety. The early temples near Myinkaba are remarkable for their excellent preservation and for the quality of their decoration. One Page 195 Page 196 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q The Ancient Mon--Pagan, Peru & NAKORN PATHOM 183 century. The main vestibule of Sulamani faces east and the upper storey is reached by two stairways built into the walls; it is almost the same height as the ground floor. Sulamani used to have good paintings but these have been lost and newer ones dating from the 19th century cover the old ones. The Dhammayangyi is a single-storey building rising in stepped levels and closely resembles the Ananda in structure. The quality of the brickwork is excellent. Lastly, of the many temples to be visited in Pagan, there are two not strictly speaking temples. The Pitakat Taik was built as a library by Anawratha in 1058 to house the Buddhist scriptures he took from the sack of Thaton. It is a modest square building with small Mon windows, but the roof, rather elaborate, already bears the traces of baroque flamboyance of later Burmese styles; it was repaired in 1783 by King Bodawpaya and is currently being repaired again. The Upalithein is a long, low ordination hall of the 13th century with a battlemented roof. Inside are paintings of the 17th or 18th century which are bright and arresting, though without the interest and minute detail of the early paintings to be seen elsewhere in Pagan. Only the two temples near Minnanthu are omitted from this list of the major temples in Pagan; these are Nandamannya, which is a small vaulted chamber with one entrance and paintings of a Mahayanist Tantric nature from the middle of the 13th century, and the triple form of the Payathonzu temple, late 13th century, with paintings of a similar character in the corridors and vaults linking the three main cores. The two are difficult to reach without sturdy transport. If this catalogue of temples gives the impression that there is nothing else to see in Pagan, it would be false. There is a cottage lacquer industry, another weaving traditional shoulder bags, and making cheroots; one can take boat trips on the Irrawaddy at sunset and make journeys by pony and trap and see the colourful display of fruit and vegetables in the village's markets. But the setting of these scenes of daily life is subservient to the temples, and the arid landscape, for Pagan is the centre of the dry zone of Burma, in which they are placed, is balanced in some measure by the majesty of the river flowing through. One is left with the impression of scrub, sandy tracks, and marvellous brown brick temples arising on all sides as far as the eye can see. In Mandalay, to the north, where the evening cool in winter is even more striking than in Pagan, the two most impressive temples ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 186 MICHAEL SMITHIES With Pegu one is back to the culture of the early inhabitants of Burma, the Mons. Their original centre was around Thaton, further east than Pegu and this was certainly in existence by the 5th century AD. It was a Mon monk who had converted the Burmese King Anawrahta in the middle of the 11th century to Buddhism, and the king had requested certain relics and texts from king Manuha, who had refused. The result of the refusal was the destruction of the Mon kingdom but its cultural preeminence was recognised in the religion, architecture and art of early Pagan. After the fall of Pagan the Mons reestablished their kingdom, first at Mataram, and then, from 1369 at Pegu (Hanthawaddy or Hamsavati). They were temporarily ruled by the Burmese from 1539-1550 and again from 1551-1740; but Mon independence was due to be short-lived and the last king Binnya Dala was killed in 1747 by Alaungpaya and the Mons, like the Chams in Vietnam, then became a people without a country, though they still exist in large numbers in lower Burma near Moulmein and also in scattered villages in central Thailand. Pegu is a day trip out of Rangoon, but as much as the present capital now reflects the condition of contemporary Burma, so Pegu is lost in its past. Its most famous sight is the Shwemawdaw pagoda, centred round a stupa with a broad stepped octagonal base and which is still taller than the Shwedagon in Rangoon. It is in many ways the palladium of Mon culture. Its foundation date is not known, but it was already raised in height by the Mon king Thamala in 825. In the twentieth century it suffered three severe earthquakes, and the present spire effectively dates from 1954 when restoration was completed. A number of ancient Buddha images was found when much of the stupa collapsed in the 1930 earthquake. Not very far from the Shwemawdaw is the spot where the two Hamsa birds alighted, one on the other's back, on a shallow spot in what was then the sea. The Hamsa is the symbol of the Mons and is also of course the mount of Brahma. This site is the Hinthagone, which now boasts a rather horrible modern shrine with vulgar paintings of hamsas but with a good view towards the Shwemawdaw. Hardly less vulgar is the reclining Buddha, the Shwethalyaung, reputed to be largest such image and certainly one of the ugliest. It was originally built in 994 but fell into disrepair and was restored in the 15th century. It was neglected again and became overgrown, to be rediscovered by a railway engineer at the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 188 MICHAEL SMITHIES the minority dances like those the repetitious groupings of the Karen, but in the pwe, a complicated form of popular opera where the narrative of a traditional story is intertwined with a modern play which, reaching its end about two or three in the morning, then reverts to the rest of the pwe story. Pwe has everything for the villager wishing to take his mind off current cares, for it includes love songs, stories of handsome princes chasing after princesses who can wiggle their bottoms, often in contrary directions, with regal exquisiteness, and the strident orchestra gives the appropriate support to the stage. Mandalay is the great centre for pwe activities. The Mon theme can be resumed in Thailand by a visit to Nakorn Pathom, a few hours drive from the city. Like Pegu, Nakorn Pathom is an ancient Mon centre, called Davaravati in Siam, and is thought to date from the 5th century. Just before arriving at the modern city, which was established in the 19th century, is the Phra Pathone; little remains of the original stupa which is probably the oldest Buddhist monument in Thailand. Nearby a kind of grotto has recently been erected by a deceased monk into which are inserted heads and objects found in the temple grounds; they are nearly all Davaravati period and some Buddha heads are of much beauty. Not far from this is the unimpressive brick remains of Wat Chulapathone which has however yielded considerable artistic riches in the form of terracotta bas-reliefs which were originally placed around its base. These illustrate Mon versions of the Jataka tales and are to be seen in the new museum to the south of the giant chodi in the town. Wat Pramane is a much-excavated brick ruin to the south of the city giving but a faint idea of its early importance. But the chief pride is the 19th century stupa erected over the original stupa that was Phra Pathom. The work of building the enormous tiled cupola was started by King Mongut, who discovered the original stupa when still a monk, and was continued by his son Chulalongkorn. The stupa may be higher than the Shwe-dagon in Rangoon but it cannot begin to compare in interest. At its base, on the upper terrace, are twenty-four small turrets with bronze bells for the faithful to ring. The projecting chapel to the north contains a venerated statue in the Sukhotai style, and in a detached prayer hall to the east is an excellent Davaravati stone Buddha seated in the European fashion. Also of interest in Nakorn Pathom is the Sanam Chan palace built by King Vachiravuðh ================================================================================ 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 245 population in the figures often makes detection difficult). Large numbers of able-bodied men being away, the women must assume new or at least increased responsibilities. Now it would seem that New Territories women, both Punti and Hakka, play a very active role in agricultural life. (It was not so everywhere in China, nor even throughout the south-east). And it may be that their agricultural skill is not only a consequence but a cause of the absence of the men. (I also raise the question whether in the past the agricultural roles of women were more noticeable among the Hakka than the Punti, and whether, in turn, male emigration was in earlier times promoted more strongly among the Hakka by such a difference). But however competent the women, a heavy draining away of male labour, when it cannot be replaced with hired hands, must impose a considerable strain on the women who stay at home. To see a woman ploughing the fields with a baby at her back suggests many questions about the conduct of her domestic affairs. But it is not simply a matter of her economic duties being increased; if men are away some reallocation must take place in the social roles of the household; family life is affected; even the control of community affairs may pass partly to women. One study in the New Territories (see Miss Jean Pratt's paper in The Eastern Anthropologist, vol. XIII No. 4, 1960) has already approached this subject, but it is a fit topic for several detailed enquiries, for, apart from the theoretical problems it raises in sociology and demography, it has many welfare aspects in the field of marriage, the care of children, and social control. 83. It seems to me to be important to study both ends of the movement to the United Kingdom. The migrants there are very far from being cut off from people at home, and their problems have a direct bearing on New Territories life. Stories of gambling losses and debt circulate widely. Talk of unemployment and the abuse of labour by restaurant owners upsets families with young men away. How the Chinese in Britain organise themselves, adjust themselves to their strange surroundings, and make use of the opportunities open to them are questions which deserve careful study. I have a Chinese graduate student under training in London who is interested in the problem, and if all goes well he should be able to produce a valuable study of it. As for the New Territories themselves, I think that the best material will come from community studies, because the effects of migration need to be studied in the ================================================================================ 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 253 modern buildings, the banks, the cinemas, and the daily shopping, the country town still has many of the characteristics of the place it was in former times when the market was held only on certain days of the month and formed the only means by which people in different parts of the area kept in regular touch with one another. Marriages, business deals, and politics were and remain important elements in the body of transactions which the country town stands for. But not all the issues are to be prejudged; it may be that as the town grows in size and economic significance it develops an urban autonomy, and a kind of small-townsman emerges whose interests and values are no longer so tightly correlated with those of the villager. The town of Yuen Long, for example, may prove to have gone far in this direction already, and the advent of new business men into the market towns, some of them with bases in the city, may point the way to an increasing tendency for the small urban areas of the New Territories to set themselves up as independent social entities with their own mechanisms of internal order (chambers of commerce, kaifongs, and trade associations). It is for this reason that I hope that one of the two students from London who will be arriving in the New Territories in the autumn will be able to concentrate on a market town and its relations to the countryside. There is of course another kind of market town in the New Territories: the one which depends on fishermen and in which, as a result, there has traditionally been a social cleavage between the buyers and the sellers, such that the town has not been under the control of the people of the surrounding area. Such a town fell within the scope of Miss Ward's study. An outstandingly interesting example (especially attractive because its historical background has been explored in a paper, now in press, by Mr. Hayes*) is Cheung Chau; it should certainly be borne in mind for future investigation. It offers the promise of our being able to see the results of a long period of tight urban organisation, resembling very strikingly, I suspect, the kind of urban settlement built up by Chinese emigrants in many parts of South-East Asia. 93. I have been brought by questions of urban organisation to touch on fishermen. The Tanka were the first group of the New Territories population to be studied by an anthropologist, and there is little likelihood that fishermen, whether land-based or boat people, * "Cheung Chau 1850-1898: Information from Commemorative Tablets" in JHKBRAS, 3, 1963: 88-99. — Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q NOTES AND QUERIES POLITICAL AND PUGILISTIC FREEMASONRY?* CHINESE FREEMASONS 281 Door front of a house in a Chicago China Town street. The Chinese inscription on the glass panel: +##NR% (literally: China Hung Mun Peoples' Governing Party). "Hung Mun" is a branch of Chinese martial art (kung fu); "Peoples' Governing Party" is probably what Freemasons are known to be by this organisation in Chicago. This photograph was taken by Y. F. Lam, P.M. 428 and 493, S.C. during his U.S.A. tour in May, 1976. Mr. Lam continues: I am indebted to my good friend, James W. Hayes, M.A., Ph.D., currently Town Manager and District Officer, Tsuen Wan, N.T. and Editor of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, who provided me with a relevant and interesting excerpt from a book entitled Ex-Chief Inspector Kenneth Andrew, Hong Kong Detective, published by John Long, London 1962. It runs: * Reprinted, with permission, from the "1975-1976 Year Book and Proceedings of the District Grand Lodge of the Far East". Mr. Y. F. Lam is, of course, our Member and Printer. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q NOTES AND QUERIES 295 There was a 'fleshy body' in Anking in Central China. It had been placed in a large earthenware k'ang filled with willow charcoal and left for three to four years. The corpse was then gilded and set up beside an image of the Buddha, Sakyamuni7. The shrivelled and varnished body of a Taoist priest named Sun (), who died in 1703 aged 94, was enshrined in a glass case in the Grotto of the Immortals in the east side of the lower Court of the Temple of either the Jade Emperor or, as stories vary, of the Three Sovereigns on T'ai Shan in Shantung. He had lived in the temple nearby for some sixty years under the religious title of Chen Ch'ing and was known as "the Immortal". Apparently he felt divinely inspired, and slowly starved himself to death; he became just skin and bone sitting cross-legged. He had requested his fellow priests not to inter him but instead to leave him in a vacant room. This they did, and he remained withered but not decayed as a relic for future generations of believers. One could see, apparently, only the bare bones of his arms and legs. His face had been replaced by a mask in his likeness and all that remained on his hands was skin and nails. It was not only monks who had their bodies preserved. In 1878 Reverend MacKay, a missionary in Taiwan, wrote of a Chinese girl who died of consumption not far from Tamshui, North of Taipei. Someone in the neighbourhood more gifted than the rest announced that a goddess was present, and her wasted body immediately became famous. She was given the title of the Virgin Goddess, (Sien Lu Niu in Fukienese) and a small temple was erected and dedicated to her. Her body was immersed in salt and water for some time, and then placed in a sitting position in an armchair with a red cloth around her shoulders and a wedding cap on her head. Seen through the glass of the case in which she was placed she looked to MacKay, with her black face and teeth exposed, very much like an Egyptian mummy. Before many weeks had passed, hundreds of sedan chairs were to be seen bringing worshippers, especially women, to her shrine, and rich men sent presents to adorn the temple. Another preserved body of a female was exhibited in a temple near Fenchow in Szechuan. She was a Buddhist devotee who died there in a sitting position: being Tibetan she was particularly worshipped by the local aborigines?. The most recent example of a 'fleshy body' has been the mummification of the corpse of the Buddhist monk, Yueh Chi Fa Shih ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 170 DAVID FAURE now be described. In general, villagers from Ho Chung all the way east to Ko Tong, and those from the islands in Rocky Harbour, went to Sai Kung Market. Tung Sam Kei, and Hoi Ha villagers went to Tai Po and Tap Mun, but a boat from Pak Tam Chung came regularly to collect firewood, which was sent to Sai Kung. Pak Sha O villagers went to both Tai Po and Sai Kung. Shap Sz Heung, and Sham Chung, were in the Tai Po marketing area rather than in that of Sai Kung. To the south, villagers from Tseng Lan Shue and Pik Uk obtained their supplies from Kowloon. Villagers from the Tseung Kwan O to Seung Sz Wan area went to Hang Hau. Tin Ha Wan had several shops, but its residents, as well as those from Po Toi O and Tai Wan Tau usually went to Shaukiwan. In general, if the transport linkage between Hang Hau and Sai Kung is taken into account, the Sai Kung marketing area went from Seung Sz Wan to Ko Tong, beyond the present administrative boundary of Sai Kung District,29 So far as can be discovered, except for several from Tam Shui (Wai Chau), the shop-keepers of Hang Hau came from its own marketing area, i.e. from Mang Kung Uk, Pan Long Wan, Tseung Kwan O, and Ha Yeung. There were several general stores, selling food, including grain, meat, oil, salt fish, and salt. There was a goldsmith, a stationer, a tailor, and there were several ferries.3 By 1916, when the Sai Kung T'in Hau Temple was renovated, Sai Kung had for some time been the bigger town. There were at least eight general stores, two butchers, a teahouse, a tailor, a Taoist priest, a herbalist, a draper's, and two shipyards. Many of the owners came from outside the Sai Kung marketing area, from Shuen Wan and Sham Chung, both in the Tai Po marketing area; Sham Chun, Po Kut, and Sha Tseng, all three in Po On county; Wai Chau; and San Wooi.31 Brief information on some of these shops can be found in Table 1. The biggest shop in Sai Kung Market was Saam Shing general store, followed closely by T'aai Shing. Saam Shing was the older, but T'aai Shing caught up quickly. Mr. Lei Yiu T'ing, who worked in T'aai Shing just before World War II, remembered that letters for Sai Kung villagers were brought to the shop with goods from Hong Kong. Mr. Lei Shiu Yam remembered that T'aai Shing used to help villagers collect their overseas remittances. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 28 LEIGH WRIGHT The state of Brunei annual report for 1956 describes the water city, Kampong Ayer, this way, Set in a wide sweep of the river, this river town is in its way unique. At high tide under favourable conditions of light it takes on quite a remarkable beauty; viewed at close quarters it is even more remarkably ramshackle. The houses are grouped together in small villages, being connected by precarious plank walkways, and there the inhabitants carry on their multifarious activities in much the same way as if they were on land. NOTES 1 See e.g. O. W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce; a study of the origins of Srivijaya, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967); and D. E. Brown, Brunei: the structure and history of a Bornean Malay sultanate, (Brunei: Brunei Museum, 1970). These works have drawn upon the earlier studies of such scholars as W. P. Groeneveldt (1880) and Lien Sung (1919). 2 See Brown, op. cit., Ch. XI. 3 The fullest account of the Moro wars is in E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493 - 1898, (Cleveland, 1903 -09). 4 Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed.), The first voyage round the world by Magellan, by Antonio Pigafetta, (London: Hakluyt Society, 1874). 5 J. Hunt, "Some particulars relative to the Sulo islands in the Archipelago of Felicia”, in Malayan Miscellany, I, (Bencoolen, 1820). 6 James Horsburgh, Directions for sailing to and from the East Indies and China, (London, 1811), the navigational handbook for generations of British sea captains. This work drew heavily upon the surveys of eighteenth century seafarers such as Alexander Dalrymple (1774) and Thomas Forest (1780). 7 S. B. St. John, Life in the forests of the Far East. (London, 1862), Vol. 2, pp. 248-49. 8 British Parliamentary Papers, 1854-55, XXIX (253), 9 Sarawak Gazette, 26 April, 1872. 10 Henry Keppel, The expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido for the suppression of piracy, with extracts from the Journal of James Brooke, Esq. of Sarawak, (London, 1847), 11 S. Baring-Gould and C. A. Bampfylde, A History of Sarawak under its two white rajahs, (London, 1909), pp. 82-83. 12 Lennox Mills, British Malaya, 1824-67, (reprint: Kuala Lumpur, 1966), p. 248. 13 British interests in Borneo are treated extensively in, L. R. Wright, The Origins of British Borneo, (Hong Kong, 1970). 14 See L. R. Wright, "The Foreign Office and North Borneo", in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. VII, No. 1, (January 1969). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 70 J. T. KAMM out to private concessions. So pervasive was tax farming in this regard that the Kowloon Customs itself joined with the local magistracy in insuring its maintenance. CSO15 of 1900 records the case of the Ying Yi Farm which was granted the concession for supplying services to trading junks at Lai Chi Kok (*** ) in exchange for supplying free water to customs cruisers.4 Despite its significance for late Ch'ing finance, little has been written concerning the origins and structure of tax farming in China. C.M. Chang's case study of auctioned revenue collection in Ching-Hai Hsien **), Hopei, remains our most authoritative account. Chang, who focuses on the workings of the brokerage tax farm, ascribes the origins of tax farming in China to the growth of miscellaneous taxes imposed after the Taiping Rebellion, an assertion decisively rebutted by Lien-sheng Yang, who traces the institution as far back as the fifth century. In general, we can say that tax farming arose at various times in Chinese history to meet the demands of the specific era and locality. There was indeed a remarkable increase in miscellaneous taxes imposed on Hsin-An in the late nineteenth century. In an appendix to his report on the New Territory, Lockhart lists a number of "extra" taxes and rents not found in the gazetteer of 1819. This list, in turn, is borne out by an investigation of the data contained in the Kwangtung Ts'ai-cheng Shuo-ming-shu (*****). Lockhart, distrusting the figures supplied by the Nam Tau Magistrate, persuaded an informant in Sham Chun () to provide him with an unofficial assessment of the revenue collected annually in the Tung Lu. As expected, Lockhart discovered a great number of omissions and discrepancies between the "official" and "unofficial" revenues. Lockhart observed that the magistrate and his superiors benefit substantially from these discrepancies, but noted that "not a small portion of it (the difference between reported and collected revenue) is secured by those who farm various items of revenue, for which they pay much less than they make out of them." Despite the surge of miscellaneous taxes and the consequent rise in the activity of farmers in the trade sector, the origins of tax farming in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture can be traced to earlier times. I propose to show that tax farming evolved in the agricultural sector, and was the direct result of the failure to effectively implement the official li-chia system. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n % of Total HK Population 118 GREGORY E. GULDIN Fig. 3-Hong Kong and North Point Population by Place of Origin—19758 Place of Origin % of North Point Population % of Total HK Population Guang Zhou area 54% 46% Sae Yup 17% ... 82% 16% 69% Hong Kong, Macao area 5% ... Guangdongese9 1% ... Guangdongese9 ... Elsewhere in Guangdong 6% 6% Chao Zhou 10% 5% Shanghaiese (including Jiangsu and Zhejiang prov.) 3% 6% Fujianese 3% 18% Northern and Central Chinese (excluding Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and Shanghai) 1% 1% Others 2% 1% TOTAL 100% 100% Chinese led to the further expansion of the Fujianese sub-neighborhood across Tong Shui Road for the first time. Since then Little Fujian's explosive growth has slackened a bit although the last decade or so has seen the Fujianese move a block or two further east across Quarry Bay. This intra-North Point history makes today's ethnic settlement pattern understandable. Figure 1 maps out the spatial distribution of both Fujianese and Shanghaiese in North Point and indicates the location of today's Little Fujian sub-neighborhood as well as the boundaries of the 1950s Little Shanghai area. As suggested by the over-lapping boundaries, Little Fujian has supplanted Little Shanghai as North Point's major sub-neighborhood. Indeed, we can even go so far as to maintain that Little Shanghai no longer exists in North Point as a distinct sub-neighborhood, although a diminished and outwardly directed sense of Shanghaiese community does persist. There are more to these ethnic enclaves though than a few street blocks; equally important are the social ties that bind a community together. Since the Shanghaiese community no longer centers in North Point let us turn to the Fujianese community of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n CHEUNG CHOW LONG ISLAND 133 Typhoons bring with them torrents of rain. More falls in the two or three days that follow than in a whole year in drier climates. It is these rains which make possible the dense population of the deltas of South China as well as the disastrous floods. From October to March there is little rain, but the sun is always bright and hot. The wind blows for the most part from the North and East, and the cool air, hot sun, and brilliant sea make an exhilarating setting for the activities of the little state. Even in summer the climate is far superior to Hongkong's, the air fresher and the oppressive canopy of clouds less unbroken. Hence there are summer visitors, missionaries and their families from the interior, and business and professional men from Hongkong, who live apart from the village but in perfect friendliness and to mutual advantage. The town itself stretches for a mile along the shore, being only a few streets deep at the ends, but widening out in the middle to a little market square, some three streets wide. The main landing stage opens on to this market place, and here the police and the male and female searchers take their stand to prevent the smuggling of arms or opium which would otherwise most certainly take place. There is another and older pier a hundred yards or so away, at which the salt junks load. In the main street almost every building is a shop, workshop, or both, until we reach the end nearest the Pak Tai Temple, which is in the "West End" of the town. There we find private houses of the usual narrow type. The backs of half these shops and houses run out on to the beach on a picturesque disarray of piles and retaining walls, interspersed with garbage heaps. There is none of the beautiful and simple cleanliness of the Japanese village. On this beach side or on the beach itself are two slipways for beaching and repairing the junks, a tannery, several boat-building yards, a distillery, coffin maker, and several blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and coppersmiths' shops. The beach is a scene of constant activity. At the Eastern end is a floating village of sampans, occupied by families of the Tan Ka tribe, and when one of these sampans becomes too old to float any more, it is hauled above high water mark, and some family or other lives there until it literally drops to pieces. They look rather like huge sea slugs taking to life on shore when the struggle for survival on the water has become too severe for them. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 134 W. J. HINTON The fishing fleet, or what part of it is in harbour, lies outside this floating village, and so do the salt and cargo junks, which occupy the centre of the harbour in lines on either side of the fairway to the pier, and boats ply to them from the beach all day and night. To the West are the boats of the Hoklo tribe, drawn up on the beach or riding to their stone anchors. Wonderful boats these, shaped like a crescent moon and able to ride the great waves in the monsoon, miles from land. They are heavy, yet easily rowed by a few men. These tribes like the Puntis and Hakkas keep their own distinctive customs, languages and crafts though so closely packed in one small island. Beyond the Hoklo beach lies the greatest temple of the island, the Pak Tai Temple, dedicated to the Guardian of the North, and the scene of an annual Theatrical display in honour of the God. The Guardian it appears was once an official under the Sung Dynasty, canonised later for his services to the Empire, and now worshipped in some parts of China. At the other end of the town, among the Hakka tribe is the Temple of the Queen of Heaven, goddess of sailormen. It is hung with votive offerings from the happy sailors whose ships and lives she has saved. One is reminded of the Church of Notre Dame de la Garde at Marseilles. Still farther to the east is a rock shrine, shared amicably by the genius loci, and the gentle and compassionate Kwan Yin. The streets show small shrines wherever a strangely shaped stone or tree is to be found, and of course the Kitchen god, can be seen in his smoky niche above the fire as one peeps through the open doors. Elsewhere in the island are two small shrines or temples. One is the beloved Kwan Yin, and the other a shrine for fishermen where some fish god gives luck to the devotee and receives his offerings and thanks when success has followed the fishing. At the little temple of Kwan Yin mothers often kneel to ask for favours, above all for children. Thus far the village is purely Chinese but some of the houses in the centre are built in the hideous style of the tenements of Hongkong, like a pile of empty boxes with the mouths gaping blankly at the spectator, but the majority are still Chinese in style and ornament. Most of the houses are of one storey, and they are built of a great variety of material. Some are of granite masonry (looking much more substantial than it really is, since the walls are hollow and the mortar practically mud,) and others of brick, Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 142 W. J. HINTON sails have been lowered and stowed, white awnings cover the decks, there is a gilded bamboo "whip" at the foremast of each junk and the bay is alive with small boats. Once past the police searchers, the crowd disperses into the town to buy food at the stalls which line the thoroughfares. Evidently this is fair day. All the shops are doing a roaring trade, and the streets are full of visitors from Hongkong, and even from Canton, and places a hundred miles away. Presently we notice that the crowd is drifting in one direction; going with it, we find ourselves off the main street. Passing the gates we enter a field covered with booths and resounding with the clash of cymbals and the shrill note of the pipe. Here is all the fun of the fair. A matshed has been erected, part theatre and part temple. At the far end a theatrical performance is now being given. The clang of cymbals marks the warlike gyrations of the actors, but now and then gives way to the shrill tones of the two-stringed violin in moments of pathos. And all the time the priests on either side of the open end of the theatre chant their services at two altars. A Chinese who is near me either cannot or will not tell me what gods are served at these altars. To me they seem to present an aspect of amicable rivalry. On either side of the entrance, but without, stand two large conical frameworks of bamboo, stuck all over with small white rice cakes, and looking each like an ear of Indian corn. These are about twenty feet high. There are small replicas on portable platforms. We leave the grounds and walk to the Pak Tai Temple where a procession is forming. It is one of several, for each village street provides a procession, and there is great emulation between the teams. The procession starts. At its head is a Dragon, at least it is a dragon for all practical ceremonial purposes though to the carnal eye it seems a large mask completely covering the head of a boy. He prances and sidles along, mopping and mowing most realistically, the formidable but apparently benevolent monster rolling his head and his eyes, and shaking his sinuous body; for which purpose a second lad under a red streamer of thin cloth goes through all the motions that can reasonably be expected of a Dragon's hind legs. The beast is followed by bearers, carrying a platform covered with a canopy, and on the platform two small girls, powdered and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 152 W. SCHOFIELD used by villagers occurred in 1931, when a man applied for a matshed permit for a small area in the middle of the beach at Tai Wan village on Po Toi. I took a launch there to see the place and found he had picked the centre of an area on which were a large number of poles used by the villagers to support bamboos for drying nets and similar purposes: so after a few enquiries I told the applicant he could not have that place. (That was the day I found a fine shouldered stone adze-head on the path above the village at the 150 ft. contour). Another very different case was that of a house built on a levelled site on a low hill above Muk Min Ha, Tsun Wan: the contractors mishandled the levelling so badly that the earth fill was nearly all washed down into the village and raised its lanes by 2 or 3 feet, making a fearful mess: this was about 1926. During my term of office the resumption of the Shing Mun Valley for reservoir construction was carried through, the D.O. North doing the actual negotiation, which was long and difficult. The problem was where to resettle the five displaced villages, and before a site was found enquiries were made in all directions, even as far afield as North Borneo. Some village elders were sent there to see the area offered, but their report was very adverse; there were too many corrupting influences there to suit their people — all Hakkas — who naturally wished to bring up their children in proper surroundings, not among brothels, opium dens and spirit shops. One of the quietest parts of the District was the area of the Lyemun and Hang Hau peninsulas, where the traditional ways of life were kept going, and people rarely dealt in land, or brought their disputes to me. Hang Hau peninsula was served by only two good lines of communication; the Hang Hau ferry from Shaukiwan, connecting with a launch that ran from the east side of the Hang Hau isthmus to Saikung, and a solidly built Chinese paved road running along the ridge north and south down the peninsula. On Nam Tong, by the Fat Tau Mun, stands a fort with a gun platform on the south rampart for light artillery; this was said to have been a pirate stronghold originally. West of this fort lay some old deserted fields, which at the time of my visit were being tilled by a squatter. I suggested to him that he might become a regular land-owner and start paying Crown rent, but apparently the rent suggestion frightened him off, for next year the land was deserted. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 168 NOTES AND QUERIES ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY VISIT TO TAI MO SHAN, 3RD APRIL 1976 HISTORICAL AND GENERAL NOTE 1. Tai Mo Shan is 3,140 feet (957 metres) in height, the highest mountain in Hong Kong territory. 2. It is a curiously unimpressive mountain at close quarters. Viewed from Tsuen Wan, the former small market town at its foot on the southern side, the visitor could be forgiven for not noticing the mountain at all. It is, from there, only part of a large hilly area that arises quickly from sea level and extends in all directions, with occasional higher points of which the Tai Mo Shan summit is only one, in no way outstanding or separating itself from its neighbours. 3. From a distance, however, the true splendour of its peak and general mass is revealed. A visitor looking north from Magazine Gap or Wong Nei Chong Gap on Hong Kong Island, some 10-12 miles distant, cannot fail to notice, to the north, the bulk and height of the mountain, overtopping all around. The Lion Rock range of hills behind Kowloon Peninsula, closer to the viewer and usually so impressive from low ground, then appears in its true and diminished scale. 4. Mountains figure prominently in Chinese historical geography. There is, in every district, prefectural, provincial or general gazetteer, a section devoted to Shan-chuen - 'Hills and Streams'. As befits its size, Tai Mo Shan always receives a notice in the local works. The earliest mention I can find so far is in the 1688 edition of the Sun On District Gazetteer. This is repeated with much the same text in the 1819 and last edition, and in the 1822 and 1879 editions of the provincial and prefectural gazetteers respectively. The 1688 notice may be translated as follows: Tai Mo Shan is 50 Chinese miles east of the District City. It has the shape of a big hat. It extends south and west from Ng Tung Mountain. Its peak measures 2,000 Chinese feet. It is a big mountain in the Fifth Division, with a stone pagoda and many tea plantations. 5. So far as I know, there never has been a separate gazetteer of Tai Mo Shan such as has been provided for the more famous mountains of the Province; e.g. the White Cloud Mountains near Canton or ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 169 the Law Fau Mountains northeast of Hong Kong. In the event that there is not, it must be accepted that this little essay is no more than a start, since the preparation of a satisfactory record would require a lot more time than I possess. However, given perseverance it would be possible to create such a gazetteer for our mountain. 6. A typical Chinese gazetteer usually begins by dealing with boundaries and administration, then proceeding to geography, including streams and hills, local customs, natural products, and so on to settlements, buildings, temples, markets, fords and bridges, etc. There is usually a section on past events and historical relics, including stone inscriptions, another on poems and literature i.e. writings by local persons or on local matters, and so finally to a large section dealing with the lives of famous persons connected with the area. For present purposes, I shall not tie myself rigidly to a gazetteer framework though I shall mention items that form the subject of any such work. Settlements 7. For hundreds of years the mountain had its upland villages. Before the war, there were a considerable number of old settlements situated above the 500 feet contour line, and thus located on the mountain-side and on its upper slopes. On the south, east and west - I know little of the north—the largest group of these were the 8 villages of Shing Mun (17) mostly occupied by the ramified offspring of a single clan (Cheng ) settled in the main village, Tai Wai (PIA). A recorded 855 persons from these places were removed in 1928-29 to prepare for the construction of the Shing Mun Reservoir, going to a number of places elsewhere in the New Territories and some beyond into Kwangtung. Besides the Shing Mun group there were in 1899 another six upland villages located on the south, east and west sides of the mountain.* 8. These all gained their main living from agriculture, on padi fields and dry cultivation on small patches of flat land in the hills. The highest rice fields were cultivated at some 1500 feet above sea level. At the present day, save at Chuen Lung, the villagers have mostly left and cultivation has been largely abandoned. Chuen Lung, Pak Shek Kiu, Sheung Fa Shan, Ha Fa Shan, Sheung Tong and Ha Tong Lek. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 171 Higher up the mountain, there were those who were content with more modest quarters. Pre-war, Heywood found such a retreat beside some large rocks high on the mountain. Keeping always to the west of the stream, you will reach a secluded upper valley where there is a Buddhist settlement. Two of the charming and courteous people of this place once showed me round their home, which consisted of a cave under a huge overhanging boulder. A thatched porch shaded the wayfarer as he sat drank tea (and how very refreshing Chinese tea can be when you are out walking). Inside was the living room with beds and a table and a little shrine, all kept spotlessly clean, and down below was an underground kitchen, supplied with a clear trickle of water through a chink in the rocks." In contrast to these newer institutions there is at least one very old Buddhist nunnery, the Ling Wan Chi (†). This is stated to be a fifteen-century foundation, associated with the powerful family of Tang of Kam Tin in the New Territories (JHKBRAS 13 (1973): 128-9). 10. On all sides of the mountain, these earlier institutions have now been joined by a large number of smaller, more modest foundations, some in their own houses, others in rented accommodation. These, on the Tsuen Wan side, are largely Buddhist and most of them are intended for women, many of whom are retired domestic servants ending their lives in quiet. The outside and refugee origin of some of these persons is reflected in the names of their halls. A modest temporary structure in Lo Wai is named for the famous old Wing Ning hall (永寧堂) in Toi Shan city (台山城), in existence long before it became a county seat, as the owner told me proudly, whilst a larger pre-war hall is named Tung Po To, the 'Po To isle in the East' (=Kwangtung) after its founder's home monastery in Po To Island in the Yangtse, one of the homes of Chinese Buddhism.* Myths and Legends 11. An account of this region written nearly 120 years ago by Rudolf Krone, a German protestant missionary of the Rhenish Mission, states, * For a more famous sister, the 'Po To in the South' situated at Amoy in the Fukien province see Pitcher: 78 and illustration at 161. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 173 famous mountains from Tung Koon, Sun On and to the east of Kwangtung' (JHKBRAS13(1973): 115.) Indeed, one of Po's poems appears on the tomb inscription of one of the first ancestors of the Tang clan who is buried on a little hill opposite my office in Tsuen Wan. 14. In the case of our Tai Mo Shan, it is, I believe, far from being the case that its history, legend and mythology are fully known, either as recorded or oral history. An enquiry into this subject among the older residents of the hill villages and the larger settlements beneath its slopes would be a worthy subject, before what is still remembered in a long unbroken verbal tradition is lost amidst the disruptions of removal and the distractions of modernisation. 15. I have come across several examples of its legends, one old and one new in the making. The older is a story of locomotive rocks, of the kind mentioned by Krone. It comes from Chuen Lung village on the west of the mountain, and is as follows: Heung Shek had already been in existence over three hundred years ago, before Chuen Lung Village came into being. The story goes that Heung Shek was a group of rocks lying on top of Tai Mo Shan. They gradually moved towards the fung shui "mouth" of Tsuen Wan (near the present Tsing Yi Bridge) intending to improve the Tsuen Wan fung shui as a whole. But then, seen by an expectant mother, they could move no more and stayed at their present location. Now Heung Shek is divided into two parts: the first being the 'gong' rock weighing approximately 20 tons and lying next to the 'drum' rock, the second being the drum rock weighing approximately 30 tons. Also, lying aslant the top of the second is a long flat boulder. If one picks up a stone and knocks against it, a hollow echo sound is produced. Amongst the rocks, there is a fissure wide enough to allow a man to go through. Inside there exists something like a stone chamber. Such things are really fantastic and too mystic to understand. 16. The second, which I found in a 1951 Guide Book to Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, published by the well-known newspaper, the Wah Kiu Yat Pao, is about a rock called 'Hero's Rock'. I was, as you might expect, all set to expect a stirring tale of battles long ago, but when I came to track down the history, local worthies said that the name was given by the pre-war ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 175 Visitors 20. Mountains have always been favoured retreats, especially in the South. Herbert Giles wrote in 1911: Monasteries are built high up on the hills, often on almost inaccessible crags; and there the well-to-do Chinaman is wont to escape from the fierce heat of the southern summer. On one particular mountain near Canton, there are said to be no fewer than one hundred of such monasteries, all of which reserve apartments for guests, and are glad to be able to add to their funds by so doing. (Giles 1911: 9) It seems that rich merchants from Hong Kong were among their number and have long been accustomed to take their ease, and perhaps salve their conscience, there. For 19th century examples reported by European travellers see Henry 1886:320, and Bourne (1895) who reported the death at one of these places of 'Lo Hok-pang, late Compradore of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank' (p. 35). 21. The monasteries of Tai Mo Shan long benefitted from a similar connection. It is clear from the large buildings that have been erected before and after the Pacific War 1941-1945—in one case they include a splendid air-conditioned lecture hall—that they draw at least part of their financial support from a number of wealthy patrons; although the post-war urbanization of Tsuen Wan has probably reduced their attraction as places of refuge from the heat and bustle of the world. 22. Over many years, such persons from Hong Kong, having no local connection other than an existing or sought-after grave for members of their family or even for themselves, have traversed the mountain's sides with geomancers and finally settled for good locations. Here a splendid grave has been constructed, and sometimes a pavilion also where the family can rest and eat during the arduous visits in successive grave worshipping seasons. In some cases only an empty grave and a ruined pavilion remain, showing that the descendants, concerned over business failures and reversals of family fortunes, have taken up the remains and placed them elsewhere, despite the heavy initial and subsequent cost necessitated by feeing the geomancer(s) and hiring mountain chairs for the party, and paying local labour to carry the construction materials. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 178 NOTES AND QUERIES 29. Yet another bridge, in Central Tsuen Wan, still has its protecting shrine in place, with a stone tablet inscribed to the Fuk Tak Kung (福德公) of the Wing Fuk Bridge (#). The cyclical date would make it 1945 (which is obviously too late) 1885, 1825 or earlier. There is no means of telling which it is, but its style and appearance indicate an early date. Incidentally, all three bridges noted above have lost their original appearance, having been repaired post-war with concrete and reinforcing steel bars. Conclusion 30. A recent visit to the mountain took me from Lead Mine Pass, above the head of the Shing Mun Reservoir, to a point east of Chuen Lung, along paths formerly opened by villagers but in most cases now widened by the Agriculture & Forestry Department of the Hong Kong Government to assist their fire prevention and fire fighting activities. 31. The route ran through the Sei Fong Shan area, where there are many graves: so named (四方山) because there is access to it from four sides i.e. Tai Po, Pat Heung, Kwai Chung-Tsuen Wan and Chuen Lung (on Route TWSK). Then through the abandoned fields and village site of Nam Fong To, a single lineage village of the Law family (羅氏), evacuated in 1928 to Wo Hop Shek near Fan Ling (NT) for the construction of the reservoir. The site was enclosed by a thick low rubble wall and stands amid large boulders and (now) many trees. From the Tsuen Wan side the last stage of access was across a large stream and up a steep flight of stone (boulder) steps. West of the village the hills on both sides, but especially the opposite side of the valley, were marked by steep slides of water that became water-falls in places. Further on, the path overlooked the valley of Wu Yeung Shan (烏羊山) with many abandoned fields. The village of that name, on the main lower path to Wo Yee Hop village (*) and Kwai Chung, was inhabited by a branch of the Chengs (鄭氏) from Shing Mun Tai Wai. Moving SW and passing along the slopes of the mountain above Wo Yee Hop and Lo Wai well above catchwater level we encountered a few more graves placed in good locations. Also patches of abandoned cultivation built up here and there on stone-walled terraces above the path. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 180 NOTES AND QUERIES A visit will be made by coach to five of the oldest graves belonging to the family and, in addition, to a school in Kat Hing Wai at Kam Tin to see some of its heirlooms. Quite a bit of walking is involved and lady members are advised to wear flat shoes for comfort and ease of movement over hill paths. The visit will start from the Tsuen Wan Ferry Pier at 11 a.m. Members are advised to catch the regular ferry from the Central Terminus, Hong Kong (35 minutes by ordinary ferry, 20 by hover ferry). Please check ferry times with HK Yaumatei Ferry Co. (Tel. 5-220393) and make your own arrangements. Otherwise, come by car and park locally, allowing plenty of time to find parking space (try the western end of Yeung Uk Road, in the area of the Yeung Uk Road Sports Ground, in the same road as the pier). Members are advised to bring a picnic lunch. The visit should end between 5--6 p.m., back at the Tsuen Wan Ferry Pier. The tour will be limited to two buses and members and their friends are invited on a first-come-first-served basis. Please telephone names to Mrs. Kam at 12-403396 (District Office, Tsuen Wan). Programme notes will be available on the day. DAVID LIU and JAMES HAYES Joint Organizers 29.11.76 THE TANG (4) CLAN IN THE NEW TERRITORIES AND ITS OLDEST GRAVES According to the genealogical record kept by the Tang clan at Kam Tin, it originated from a branch settled in Kut Shui County (*) of Kiangsi Province during the northern Sung period (960-1126).* It all started when one of the ancestors by the name of TANG Fu-hip (###) passed through this part of Kwangtung on his way to his new official assignment as the magistrate of Yeung Chun County () after he had successfully passed the imperial examination and was awarded the chin-shih degree during the reign of Hsi Ning (1068-1077). * With the exception of "Kiangsi” romanizations used in this Note are in Cantonese. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 188 B. THE WAR 1. Contestants NOTES AND QUERIES (a) The Shing Mun villages, 8 in number and with a population of about 855 in 1928 when they were removed to build the Shing Mun Reservoir.1 (b) The Tsuen Wan villages, some 12 in number with an estimated population of around 1500 in 1900. These villages are still in existence although some of them have been resited because of recent development.2 All these villagers were Hakka Chinese, so that the struggle was between persons of the same language group. Moreover, since their settlement in these locations in the 17th and 18th centuries, the villagers had given and taken their womenfolk in marriage through many generations, and so were closely related and acquainted with each other. Also, the Shing Mun villagers did at least part of their marketing in Tsuen Wan.4 2. Time The war lasted for three years at the beginning of the T'ung-chih reign of the Ch'ing Dynasty, between 1862-1864. 3. Reasons for the Struggle The tablet in the Tsuen Wan Tin Hau Temple dated in the 1930s and written by a local Ch'ing scholar-gentry holding the first (hsiu ts'ai) degrees is not very revealing. It merely says that at the time in question law and order was lax and barbaric customs preva3vailed, so that village feuds revived and a fight with weapons ensued between the Shing Mun and Tsuen Wan villages. By implication, the Shing Mun people were, of course, in the wrong. The record continues: "being outnumbered our boundaries were constantly invaded and our villages were almost reduced to ruins." Dr. Betsy Johnson, who took notes on the subject in 1967-68, from one old Tsuen Wan villager whose grandfather had taken part in the struggle, learned that relations with Shing Mun were not very good before the war. However, according to him, it began over a third party, a small hill village in the present Kowloon reservoir area east of Shing Mun which had amicable ties with Tsuen Wan. The old man continued, 'Once some...' ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 189 young people from Shing Mun planned to take property from Shek Lei Pui and they sent a note saying when they would come and what they wanted. Shek Lei Pui was very frightened. So some went to Tsuen Wan and told them. Sixty or 80 young men got together and hid around Shek Lei Pui and waited for the robbers. More than ten robbers came and were caught. The people took them to Tsuen Wan but didn't want to kill them. Finally, they put them in a big boat and took them to Nam Tau. But at Kap Shui Mun, one prisoner stabbed a Tsuen Wan man in the leg and escaped, and then swam to shore. They took the rest to Nam Tau. The escaped man went back to Shing Mun and said all the prisoners had been killed except himself. The people of Shing Mun were very angry and attacked Shek Lei Pui with weapons. They beat them because they gave no warning, and took all their property. But some Shek Lei Pui people escaped to Tsuen Wan and said the rest were all killed. Then more than 200 Tsuen Wan natives got together and marched to Shing Mun and fought there. The Shing Mun story, on the other hand, is quite different. It blames the war on the jealousy of the Tsuen Wan villages, especially Lo Wai, whose people tried to levy charges on Shing Mun persons passing through their territory to sell pineapples in Tsuen Wan Market. Pineapples were a prominent local product and said to be quite lucrative. There may well be something in the Tsuen Wan version, however, because a local lineage now living in Middle Kwai Chung had formerly lived in the hills to the north east in a place called Lan Nai Tong (MW). An 80-year-old man told me that they left there because of attacks from Shing Mun ‘about a hundred years ago' and settled in a less remote and exposed position, near existing villages in Kwai Chung. He also took me to the site of the old settlement, though it is overgrown with tree plantations and there is nothing to see there other than some old graves of his lineage and some of their abandoned paddy fields. The "Shek Lei Pui” of the story may well relate to their long-deserted and now little-known settlement, since it is the area place name as well as that of another village. * I have since received the written account reproduced below at Pp 197-198. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 211 Village, p. 41, the K'ang Hsi evacuation "may well have helped the Liao lineage to consolidate its position as a major power and landowner in the area." This undoubtedly extends to the Tangs as well, though for quite different reason. The Liaos increased their local power by means of the formation of a Hakka/Punti alliance to finance the local school built to honor the two official Chou Yu-te () and Wang Loi-jen (). The Kam Tin Tangs also participated in the "deification campaign" (The two officials petitioned the emperor to allow the re-population of the coastal strip), and similarly constructed the school, the ruins of which are still to be seen in Pak Wai Tsuen. However, the school was never given official recognition [i.e. it was not listed, with the other schools, in the gazetteer], perhaps because of, again, the "special relationship” enjoyed by the Tangs and San On magistrates. The Tangs claim that these officials were eventually to suffer at the hands of the imperial government because of their loyalty to the Tang family! [I have been unable to verify this, though I expect that it is true. How else can one explain the subsequent favors bestowed on the Tangs immediately after their (at least implicit) support of the Cheung Ta-yuk and Lei Man-wing rebellions?] 23. c. The To Hing Tong () was constructed in 1707 by the five branches of the Tangs residing in San On and Tung Kwun. This followed shortly after the re-location of the Tangs in San On. The large number of Tang settlements in Tung Kwun no doubt facilitated the smooth re-location into Kam Tin, Ha Tsuen, Ping Shan, Tai Po Tau and Lung Kwat Tau. Several tales concerning this relocation are still told, some of which cast doubt on the existing theory that there was a total evacuation. The ceremonies held twice yearly at the To Hing Tong (continued into the early years of the Republic) served greatly to consolidate the consciousness of Tang unity. 24. By far the most popular topics of conversation among Tang elders concern the nature and extent of their land holdings prior to 1898, and how subsequent events stripped them of much of these estates. It is probably impossible for us now to reconstruct, from records available, the exact amount and number of their holdings. However, some evidence exists: * After the Evacuation of the Coast 1662-69 by the Ch'ing authorities to deny supplies and assistance to Ming loyalists on Taiwan. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 189 although military power was much needed at the time. In fact, it was quite ineffective against the bandits. Several months into the occupation, the office was burnt by the bandit Wong Chuk Ts'eng.70 Mr. The burning of the Wai Ch'i Wooi was well-known. Chan Tsz K'eung, of Sai Kung Market, thought that a Japanese spy had been sent to investigate the guerrillas in Sai Kung and that this was a reprisal. Mr. Lei Yun Shau thought that it was due to a dispute between Wong Chuk Ts'eng and the Wai Ch'i Wooi. Mr. Loh Kai Faat of Kau Sai thought that Wong Chuk Ts'eng, having made a fortune from banditry, was wavering between looting and working for the guerrillas; the Wai Ch'i Wooi, however, was on the verge of deciding to capture him. Mr. Sham Kin K'eung, who spent most of his war years in Tai P'ang, said that Wong had fought on the side of the Nationalist forces in Tam Shui at Pak Mong Fa. He was a bandit and a smuggler who operated from Sham Chun to Wai Chau, and he had many small groups working under him. Mr. Sham thought it unlikely that Wong would have come to Sai Kung himself, and believed it must have been one of these groups working for him that was responsible for burning the Wai Ch'i Wooi. It is not at all clear what the disputes between the Wai Ch'i Wooi and the bandits amounted to. Several months after the burning of the Wai Ch'i Wooi, Mr. Lei Shiu Yam resigned as chairman, and the post was given to Mr. Hui Mei Naam of Lai Chi Chong. This change might not have had anything to do with the burning of the Wooi. Several months into the occupation, the Japanese Government could afford to strengthen its presence in the districts. On July 20, a new system of district administration was promulgated, dividing the whole of Hong Kong and the New Territories into twenty-eight districts, Sai Kung being one of them. Each one of these districts was represented by a K'ui Ching Shoh (District Administration Office), and this name came to be used in place of Wai Ch'i Wooi. The extent of the district was the entire peninsula east of Ma On Shan, including not only the villages from Tseng Lan Shue to Man Yee Wan, but also those north of Pak Tam Chung, those in Shap Sz Heung, and those near Hang Hau. The K'ui Ching Shoh office was set up at the Sung Chen School, and at about this time, a small contingent ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1977 (Covering the period April 1, 1977-March 20, 1978) It is my pleasure tonight to report to you on the year's activities and progress of our Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. During this eighteenth year since the Society was resuscitated we have continued to organise a regular programme of lectures and occasional tours drawing on both local talent and the expertise of visiting scholars, and I begin with a short resumé of these events, so that newcomers particularly may gain some idea of the range of our interests. In April Mr. Geoffrey Emerson, a local historian of the Japanese Occupation, gave an illustrated talk about the Stanley Internment Camp during the 1942-45 period: a camp where many local residents at the time were forced to live by the Japanese authorities. Several of the persons thus interned attended the talk and some interesting discussion arose. The talk will be published in the 1977 Journal for it is based on original research. Also in April Michael Stevenson spoke on the Chinese Press from his long knowledge as a journalist and particularly his more recent work for the Sing Tao Group of newspapers and as a public relations consultant. In May, Tony Reynolds, Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Hong Kong University, and member of the Friends Ambulance Service in West China between 1941-46, described his fascinating experiences as convoy leader for a load of medical supplies allowed by the Nationalist Government to be taken to the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Region occupied by the 8th Route Army—the first since 1941. This talk which also gives Mr. Reynolds' impressions from meetings with Mao Tze-tung, Chou En-lai and Marshal Chu Te will appear in the 1977 Journal too. The first of two lectures in June was concerned with the History and Music of the Cheng, the Chinese 16-stringed zither, delivered by Professor Liang Tsai-ping who has performed and lectured in both Europe and the U.S.A. as well as Asia; and the second with political and other changes in the Far East in the last ten years, given by Tony Lawrence, for nineteen years Far Eastern Correspondent for the B.B.C. In July Brian Peacock, Curator of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 THE LIBRARY OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1977-1978 At long last the ambition of having our library in one accessible location has been achieved: the books previously kept at the Public Records Office and the bound volumes of periodicals kept at the University of Hong Kong were moved to the Library of the Arts Centre just before Christmas, and the collection was ready for use at the beginning of the New Year. Revised regulations, mainly reflecting the change of location, were approved by the Council on 16th November, 1977. It is hoped that the comfortable surroundings and longer hours of opening will encourage members to make greater use of this facility. The collection has continued to grow at a satisfactory rate. The three sources of accessions are gifts, purchases, and exchange of publications with other societies and institutions. In the first category, special mention must be made of the generous donation by Mr. Stephen S. F. Hui of the following three important volumes: The Chater Collection: pictures relating to China, Hong Kong, Macao, 1655-1860... by James Orange. London, 1924. Present day impressions of the Far East... Editor-in-chief: W. Feldwick. London, 1917. Twentieth century impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai and other treaty ports of China... Editor-in-chief: Arnold Wright. London, 1908. After these have been rebound and catalogued, they will be available for consultation. Dr. J. W. Hayes has also kindly continued to donate books, and we are grateful to have received a copy of McClure's Migration and survival of the birds of Asia from Mr. F.O.P. Hechtel. Over 30 volumes have been purchased during the year, many being older books on the Far East which are becoming increasingly difficult to find at reasonable prices. The number of bound volumes of periodicals has also grown. At the time of the move to the Arts... ================================================================================ 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 59 Ibid. (Wang), 8. 37 60 Ibid. Wang notes that branch schools of the Tientsin Military Academy were established at Shan-hai-kuan and Wei-hai-wei. 61 Ibid., citing LWCK, Memorials, 74: 25. 62 Ibid., 8-9. 63 Ibid., 7. On Li's financial difficulties, consult Wang, Hual-chin, 275-290; Spector, chapter 7. 64 Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang," 9-12. The major problems, according to Wang, were: (1) The administrators of the academy were not well suited to their tasks (non-specialists); (2) the foreign instructors were arrogant, overpaid, unappreciative, and remiss in their teaching responsibilities; (3) heavy reliance on interpreters was inefficient and confusing; and (4) both academic and practical training tended to degenerate into formalism. Other problems included capricious grading, reports of cheating, and shortages and lack of standardization in equipment. For problems in China's other military and naval schools, consult Ayers, 108-113, 179-180, and John Rawlinson, China's Struggle for Naval Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), passim. 65 Rawlinson, 163, 169; Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression (Tucson, 1965), 140-141; NCH, September 21, 1894. 66 For a summary of the fighting on land and sea, consult Liu and Smith, "The Military Challenge." ** 67 See, for example, E. Bujac, Précis de quelques campagnes contemporaines (Paris, 1896), vol. 2; N.W.H. Du Boulay, An Epitome of the China-Japanese War, 1894-95 (London, 1896); Lieutenant Sauvage, La guerre Sino-Japonaise 1894-1895 (Paris, 1897); Richard Wallach, "The War in the East," Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, 21, 4 (1895); T. A. Brassey, ed., The Naval Annual (Portsmouth, 1895); Vladimir (pseudonym for Zenone Volpicelli), The China-Japan War (London, 1896). 68 On the Japanese response to the war, see Donald Keene, "The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Its Cultural Effects in Japan," in Donald Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton, 1971); also Jeffery Dorwart, The Pigtail War: American Involvement in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (Amherst, Mass., 1975), 94-96. 69 Professor Samuel Chu of Ohio State University is currently studying the Chinese response to the war, and has produced several illuminating but as yet unpublished papers on the subject. For the time being, the best available discussion of Chinese attitudes is Kuo Sung-p'ing, "The Chinese Reaction to Foreign Encroachment" (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1953). 70 See Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's critique, cited in Joseph Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 111; consult also Kuo, 49-50, 81-83, etc. 71 Cited in Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China 1840-1928, translated and edited by S. Y. Teng and Jeremy Ingalls (Princeton, Toronto, London and New York, 1956). See also Japanese Imperial General Staff, eds., History of the War between Japan and China (Tokyo, 1904), 1; 30-32. 72 Rawlinson, 190. 73 Liu Feng-han, "Chia-wu chan-cheng shuang-fang ping-li ti fen-hsi," Chung-kuo i-chou, 829 (March 14, 1966) and 830 (March 21, 1966); CJCC, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 42 KEITH STEVENS In addition there were scraps of cotton, threads, one or two grains of rice, a tiny sac of cotton cloth stuffed with more cotton and several beads and slivers of mica. There were also two dried sea-horses* in the image dedicated in 1871 though there were no signs of any other remains. The strips of paper are not all that usual and are rarely found in Southern Chinese images. Precis translations of the six strips of paper are included later in this note. The papers show that five of the seven images were dedicated and placed on altars in the County of Wu Kang (A) in South East Hunan, one hundred miles due north of Kweilin and three hundred and seventy-five miles NNW of Hong Kong, near the Hunanese boundaries with its neighbouring provinces of Kwangsi and Kweichow. The west and south-west of Hunan were not easily accessible until the 1930's due to the dangerous rapids in the upper reaches of the plentiful rivers. Then a system of highways opened up the area. Prior to that, apart from the occasional traveller, traders and, of course, the petty officials sent to such "punishment" posts, all that was known of the area came from tales passed on from mouth to mouth. Wu Kang is in rising country, on the edge of an area marked on old maps as the lands of the Thai minority peoples, the Ko Lao (z) and another larger minority people, the Miao (δ). The other two images come from Chi An prefecture () in Kiangsi province, some two hundred and eighty miles due east of Wu Kang. Chi An, an old walled city and a major centre on the north-flowing Kan Chiang, had closer cultural links with central rather than south China. The first image (Plate 2), from Wu Kang and dedicated in 1756, is a household deity to protect the home and family and to bring blessings. The slip of paper relates that Worshipper Fu Shih-hsiang, together with his three sons and others from his family, all of Hsin Wu Chang Village, Yen Shan, Lung Chu district of Wu Kang county in Pao Ching prefecture (now Shao Yang), Hunan, on the 4th day of the 7th moon of the 20th year of Ch'ien Lung (1756), offered sacrifices to the gods at the City God temple in Shih Pei.† He also reported to them in writing that he and his whole family * Seahorses, found as far inland, would have a rarity value, though they are commonly used by Chinese herbalists & pharmacists. † Chinese characters are to be found on the illustrations of the slips of paper. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 IS FACE THE SAME AS LI? 51 and li is like saying shame is distinguished by being an external sanction. Face is purely external; whereas li is at least partly internal. Face, as everyone agrees, has exclusively to do with appearance, however important appearance may be. No one can lose face over something which is not discovered or not dragged into public view. When we talk about face it is true that "tis not to leave it undone, but to do it unknown"; actually it goes further; misconduct or shortcomings, even if known, does not impair the face of anybody so long as everybody can pretend to ignore it. This is well understood and pointed out by Agassi and Jarvie. Face answers the earliest definition of shame sanction as an external sanction set into motion by others.4 Li, as advocated in Confucianism on the other hand is supposed to be internalized. Confucius says in various ways, in the Analects, that li which does not issue from true feelings is not real li but only the motions of li. Often the true feeling, or internal state required is yen translated as 'benevolence' or 'human heartedness'. We are told, for example, ‘If a man has not yen, what can (the motions of) li do for him?' 'Lin-fang asked about the essence of li. The Master said, "Important question this! It is truly li to be understated rather than overstated; for example, in a funeral, to be more concerned to have real grief than with ease with the ceremonies."6 Again, in another passage, interpreting a quotation from the Book of Poetry, Confucius agreed that the lesson was 'the putting on of colours comes after the preparation of a flawless ground', and that, in turn, signified that, likewise, li comes after the proper state of mind is attained. Clearly, Confucius means that li is a combination of the proper external motions and the proper internal emotions. When internal emotions of kindness, respect, humility, etc. are disciplined by and manifested through appropriate rituals or in accordance with etiquette, we have li. Even in Hsun Tzu's interpretation of Confucius, which places great emphasis on external discipline, the internal element is far from being ignored. On the contrary, external discipline is proposed as the most effective means to mould internal emotions. Face makes no such pretense at all. In Men Tzu's interpretation, which places overwhelming emphasis on internal cultivation, li is simply the ideal expression of some noble emotion which is already there. The Great Learning, traditionally believed to be written by Confucius' immediate disciple, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 70 GÖRAN AIJMER hells. The usual way of converting paper money to the death realm is to burn it. In terms of calendar events54 it seems possible to argue that yang ancestors are provided with 'valuables' by way of burning. But burning is not used on the graves—with one exception, on record from Baling. + Instead, the yin ancestors receive their share of paper wealth by way of the medium of bamboo. How that medium ‘operates' remains as unclear to me as the working of fire in the same capacity in the many important burning ceremonies. This particular aspect of bamboo may be complemented by others. Apart from the protective, cleaning properties, mentioned above, bamboo is also linked to productive forces. The hollow bamboo is, in 'general' Chinese thought, contrasted with solid fir tree, both being antonymous ‘exhibitions' of the element wood. Wood is one of the Wu hing £ fj, five ‘elements' (or perhaps better, activities), wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Again, the element wood is linked to east, spring and green colour. Here I shall not pursue such intricacies of classification. Instead I shall venture a pure, and to some minds probably wild, guess that bamboo branches with paper money inserted on the grave is a representation of a rice plant in ear. Bamboo and paper money may have formed a sign constellation designating rice straw and rice grain. If we accept this, at least for the sake of the argument, then we may proceed to say that the plant by its 'roots' links the 'grain' hung up in the branches with the soil in which are the yin ancestors. Thus it may be argued that the act of 'planting' a paper money bamboo on a grave is a reversed reaping. In an attempt to make this piece of guesswork more plausible we must refer the reader to the suggestions with regard to the structure of the Chinese calendar which were presented above. I maintained that in Central China, Qingming is a symbolic correlate to sowing and Chongyang the symbolic correlate to reaping. I will return to this discussion in the final paragraphs of this essay; suffice here to mention that if my propositions are 'true', the yin ancestors are those entities which are 'responsible' for the agricultural production and the main providers of rice. Through the roots and stalks of rice, which are a medium linking Earth and human beings, paddy is sent by the ancestors to their living progeny. The grain is a gift from them to reciprocate the Qingming offerings, the paper money provided by the living, which is 'seeped' through the bamboo branches down into Earth. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 178 DAVID H. S. CHAU The fact that in the Tsin Dynasty (#), 303-379 AD, the technique had been widely used, and about the seventh or eighth century the Chinese already used woodblock to print calendars (Ɔ). The oldest woodblock printed book still in existence, so far as we understand, is the Diamond Sutra (✨#∞) a Buddhist text (**) printed in the year 868 AD, which was found along with thousands of manuscripts from Mokao (†) the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (†) at Tun-huang ( ). Tun-huang, a city situated on the outskirt of the Lob Desert in western Kansu Province (+), was once the main gate of the Old Silk Road (***). From the first century until the fourteenth century, merchants, caravans, travellers, monks, and armies leaving for the West all passed through Tun-huang on their way to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Europe. The Italian merchant Marco Polo („§ +) used the same route to come to China. Hollowed out in irregular tiers along the face of a steep cliff, the cave temples of the Thousand Buddhas were known in the Tang Dynasty () as Mokao or “Grottos of Surpassing Height". They are located a few miles southeast of Tun-huang City. There had been huge Buddhist monasteries at the place for centuries, but it became forgotten when the Ming Dynasty (#9) began trading with the West by sea, and since then most of the caves had been buried by the shifting sand of the desert. In the late nineteenth century, it was rediscovered by a Taoist Priest called Wang Yuan-lu (10*), but by then all the wooden structures of the monasteries had vanished, and only the stone caves used as shrines remained. Mokao is more than five thousand feet in length and consists of four hundred and ninety-two caves of various sizes. Over two thousand Buddhist statues and numerous huge murals can still be found in the caves. If we could have all the murals linked together, they would be at least twenty-five miles long. In the year 1899, Wang Yuan-lu discovered an old monastery library in a walled-up chamber behind a mural in one of the caves. In the chamber, he found more than twenty thousand volumes of manuscripts and woodblock-printed documents and books, among them the Diamond Sutra. The news of the discovery soon spread abroad. In 1907 an Englishman, Sir Aurel Stein, traded with the priest and carried away 29 cases of manuscripts and books. More ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 204 NOTES AND QUERIES lict until demolition commenced in November 1953 and a block of government flats was erected. This more modern and far less attractive building was originally to be known as "Marble Hall Flats" but is now called Chater Hall. What seems to be some of the brickwork associated with Sir Paul Chater's home can still be seen near the site. Hong Kong, June 1979 A Note on Sources PETER WESLEY-SMITH The photographs were contained in the Governor's despatch to the Colonial Office written when the gift of Marble Hall to the Hong Kong Government seemed to be about to take effect. See Clementi to Amery, No. 475, 23 Nov. 1926: C.O.129/498. Also included with the despatch were extensive plans of the house and a description provided by the Public Works Department, Hong Kong. Short biographical notices of Sir Paul Chater appear in Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai etc. (London: Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Co., Ltd., 1908), pp. 107-8 (there is a photograph of Marble Hall at p. 156) and W. Feldwick (ed.), Present Day Impressions of the Far East etc. (London: The Globe Encyclopedia Co., 1917), pp. 518-20. See also Nigel Cameron's brief history of The Hong Kong Land Company Ltd., published in 1979. Further (though scanty) information can be discovered in the various reported cases on Chater's much-litigated will; see (1927) 22 H.K.L.R. 80; (1927) 22 H.K.L.R. 89; (1930) 24 H.K.L.R. 43; (1936) 28 H.K.L.R. 1; (1937) 157 T.L.R. 376 (on appeal to the Privy Council); (1949) 33 H.K.L.R. 283. Chater was authorised to embark on pier and wharf schemes by ordinances Nos. 4 and 19 of 1884. After his death, the Chater Masonic Scholarship Fund Ordinance (No. 25 of 1929, now cap. 1007, L.H.K. 1975 ed.) was passed. His collection of pictures is catalogued in James Orange, The Chater Collection: Pictures Relating to China, Hong Kong, Macao, 1655-1860 (London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1924). I am much indebted to Mr. J. F. G. Marshall, of the Public Works Department, Hong Kong, for information he painstakingly gathered several years ago on the postwar history of Marble Hall. Hong Kong, September, 1979 PETER WESLEY-SMITH ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 NOTES AND QUERIES 207 Kwong Tung To Shuet ✯✯ Tung Ch'ih Period (1862-1874) edition Kwong Tung Hoi To Shuet ✯✯ ✯ 1889 edition Kwong Tung Yu Ti To Shuet ★★★★ 1889 edition Kwong Tung Yu Ti Chuen To ★★★LAN 1909 edition Of course, we cannot be certain that all these troops were actually in post. Hong Kong. 1979. ANTHONY K. K. SIU THE CANNONS ON THE WALL OF THE TUNG CHUNG FORT, LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG* Six old muzzle-loading cannons, each fixed to a cemented base, can be seen on the wall of the Tung Chung Fort: two on the west and four on the east. They all carry inscriptions, of which only four are still legible. The inscription of the eastermost cannon is illegible, due to severe weathering. The second has an inscription which shows that it was cast in the eighth moon of the 14th year of the reign of Chia Ching (1809), serial number Ching 80, weighing 1,000 catties, and cast by the Master of the Man Shing Furnace (£+0‡^^÷ 日鑄造,靖字第八十號,一千斤砲一位,匠頭萬盛爐鑄造). As far as we know, during this 14th year of the reign of Chia Ching, the famous pirate Cheung Po-tsai had a very strong influence on Lantau. At that time, Pak Ling, Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, was responsible for suppressing him and his gang. He ordered the casting of cannons and mounted them along the coastal regions, such that the area became strongly fortified. The cannons that he ordered to be cast bore the serial number of 'Ching, and were cast by the Man Shing Furnace of Fat Shan.2 It may be surmized that because of this strengthening of the forts and guard-stations in this region, Cheung Po-tsai finally surrendered in the 15th year of the reign of Chia Ching (1810),3 Thus, one can see that the cannon had played an important part in the suppression of the pirate Cheung Po-tsai. * This note is illustrated by the author's photographs at Plates 33-40. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 NOTES AND QUERIES 209 NOTES 1 Ip Lam-fung's Legends of Cheung Po-tsai. 2 Lo Hsiang-lin's Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Chapter 7. 3 'Ching Hoi Fan Kee', recorded in Chapter 33 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi. 4 'Ching Hoi Fan Kee' #2, recorded in Chapter 33 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi. 5 Yik Shan, General of Border Pacification, by Imperial Appointment before 1841. 6 Choi Sheung-ah, Minister of Constant Support from the 21st year to the 25th year of Tao Kang (1841-1845). 7 Kay Kung, Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi from the 21st year to the 23rd year of Tao Kang (1841-1843), 8 Leung Po-shcung, Governor of Kwangtung from the 21st year to the 22nd year of Tao Kang (1841-1842), Hong Kong, March 1979. ANTHONY K.K. SIU THE FAT TONG MUN FORT (OR THE TUNG LUNG FORT) Fat Tong Mun ¶ is a main waterway which lies to the east of Hong Kong. The north part is occupied by the peninsula of the Tin Ha Shan 田下山半岛, known as the North Fat Tong 北佛堂; and the South Fat Tong is an island called the Tung Lung Island today. It is the main waterway for entering Canton (Kwongchow). During the early Ch'ing Dynasty, a fort known as the Fat Tong Mun Fort was erected on the south Fat Tong. We now call the fort 'the Tung Lung Fort', after its present name. The fort lies on the NW of the island; on a promontory, with cliffs facing north, south and east. To the west, the promontory slopes gently towards the post-war Nam Tong village settlement, with paths linking the fort with the village. The fort occupies an area of about two thousand square feet. It is formed by four rubble walls, about eight feet high. It has an entrance which faces north. According to Mr. JAO Tsyng-i's record, the arch of the entrance could still be seen during his visit to the The author's photographs illustrating this note are at Plates 41-42. Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 210 NOTES AND QUERIES fort in 1923. However, it is now ruined. The whole area is covered with shrub and mangrove. Before the Ming Dynasty, there was no military post on the island. It was not until the late Ming Period that a guard-station or shuen, which was administered by the commander of the Nam Tau Walled City, was set up.2 Before then, the area had only patrol-boats, probably stationed at Tun Mun.3 During the early Ch'ing Period, because of the increased strength of the pirates along the coast, more forts and guard-stations were set up. The Fat Tong Mun Fort on the Tung Lung Island was erected during the K'ang Hsi period (1662-1727)3, and a garrison of 25 soldiers under one pa-tsung or sergeant Tai Pang Battalion✯ was stationed there.6 The fort remained a strong outpost along the east coast of Hong Kong for nearly a hundred years. Then, in the 15th year of the Ch'ia Ching rule (1810), the fort was evacuated and finally abandoned.7 A new fort was built at the place of the present Hong Kong Marine Police Headquarters at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. The fort remains in ruins till now. Hong Kong, 1979. SIU KWOK-KIN NOTES 1 See note 4 of Mr. JAO Tsung-i's Kowloon in Historical Records of the Sung Dynasty九龍與宋季史料, 饒宗頤著 2 Chapter 8 of the San On Yuen Chi, K'ang Hsi edition, records, "In the 19th year of the Man Lik Period of the Ming Dynasty, guard-stations were established at Fat Tong Mun, Tor Ling Ngor Kung O, Kowloon, Tun Mun, Kap Shui Mun, Tung Sai Chung, Ngor Kung Tau, Chak Wan, Lo Man Shan and Long Pak." In the same chapter, it is also recorded, "Six guard-stations were set up during the Ming Dynasty. They were Fat Tung Mun, Lung Shun Wan, Lok Kat, Tai O, Long To Wan, and Long Pak. These guard-stations were administered by the commander at the Nam Tau Walled City." Thus, we know that the Fat Tong Mun Guard Station was established in the 19th year of the Man Lik period of the Ming Dynasty; but the fort must have been built at a later time. 3 Chapter 5 of the Cheong Wu Chung Tuk Kwun Mun Chi records, "Patrol boats from Nam Tau were stationed at Tun Mun. Some sailed through Fat Tong Mun to the region as far east as Tai Pang." The book was completed in the 32nd year of the Chia ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45 15 urgent consent of the United States Chiefs of Staff to detach a British naval force from the British Pacific Fleet to accept Japan's surrender and assume full powers of military administration in the colony.63 The Japanese accepted defeat on 14 August. However, the British Pacific Fleet assigned for service at Hong Kong, under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt, did not arrive until 30 August. During this interval of a fortnight, the question of Hong Kong sorely tried the British government and placed the United States government in an uncomfortable position. Hong Kong again became a serious point of contention between Britain and China. This time the argument was not whose sovereignty was to be set up but who was to receive Japan's surrender there. Despite the assurances given by Chiang Kai-shek on 16 August, and repeated on 24 August, that China had "no territorial ambitions" in Hong Kong and regarded it "as a matter which would require eventual settlement through diplomatic channel", the British Foreign and Colonial Offices insisted that Sir Cecil Harcourt receive Japan's surrender on behalf of Britain by virtue of her sovereignty over Hong Kong.64 The prime minister, now C.R. Attlee, appealed to the American president for assistance. Fortunately for Britain, Truman, who had assumed the presidency on Roosevelt's death in April, was in favour of a cautious policy. While being conscious of his predecessor's views regarding the future status of Hong Kong, he, however, decided to adhere to the "recognition of the established rights", although he told both Britain and China that such recognition "did not in any way represent U.S. views regarding the future status of Hong Kong." General Douglas MacArthur was therefore instructed to arrange for the surrender of Hong Kong to the British commander.65 Again fortunately for Britain, MacArthur was known for "his support for the cause of the British Empire in the Far East." In fact in October 1944 he had specifically expressed that he "fully appreciated the need for British forces to recapture Hong Kong."66 Chiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, insisted on his right to accept Japan's surrender at Hong Kong as commander-in-chief of the China theatre. He was therefore most distressed by Truman's agreement with the British. To avoid embarrassing Truman, Chiang now suggested that the Japanese forces in Hong Kong should surrender to his representative in a ceremony in which both ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 197 were killed by the guerrillas. The occasion highlighted the importance of the Chamber of Commerce in Sai Kung Market. Local people could not come out to fetch water, and Mr. Lei Shiu Yam and Mr. Lok Kau Kei of the Chamber of Commerce were given permission to distribute water to the shops and the households.97 "Smuggling" The fundamental cause that gave rise to smuggling on a massive scale in Sai Kung in the years of the occupation was the rice shortage in Hong Kong. Before the War, Hong Kong imported much of its rice from South-east Asia. The outbreak of the War disrupted supply from this source, hence a shortage developed. Rice was abundant across the border in China, in Sha Yue Ch'ung on Mirs Bay and in Wai Chau. But trade was forbidden between these guerrilla-held places in China and Japanese occupied Hong Kong. The trade that developed had to be regarded as "smuggling".98 There were three kinds of people involved, and the first was the "travelling merchant" (shui haak). Not all "travelling merchants" were engaged in smuggling rice. Mr. Shing of Mang Kung Uk, who was a "travelling merchant" with little capital, bought secondhand clothes from the pawnshops in the city, and carried them on foot to Sha Tau Kok. From Sha Tau Kok, he went into China. Then he would buy fish from Yim T'in, in China, which he sold in Lung Kong, also in China. He did not travel by boat because, as he put it, “Only rich people could take the boat."99 Mr. Chan T'in Po of Yim Tin Tsai was also a "travelling merchant". He bought secondhand clothes in Sai Kung Market. He said this had to be done carefully without the notice of the Japanese. He would carry the old clothes himself to To Kwa Ping, where he would take the boat to Sha Yue Ch'ung. The boat was operated by someone from a nearby village. He would sell his goods at Sha Yue Ch'ung or Kw'ai Ch'ung, and return to Yim Tin Tsai with oil, rice, or sugar. Mr. Lau Lui Faat of Pak Kong Au was also a "travelling merchant" on this route. He said he usually boarded the boat at night, and sometimes he came back with cash.100 He ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45 Far Eastern Affairs in the Department of State in 1944, terms “the most difficult supply operation of the entire war" over the towering hump of the Himalayas. The second difficulty was connected with the priority given to the European theatre. The result was that much of the promised materials to China was often diverted, much to the distress of Hornbeck and others, from its original destination for the European fronts.? Speaking in more specific terms, by late September 1942, US$3.1 billion worth of lend-lease materials were sent to the British Empire, $750 million to Russia, and only $112 million to China. The disparity became even more remarkable by early June: $7,030,000,000 to the British Empire, $1,899,000,000 to Russia, and only $133,000,000 to China.8 Under the circumstances, it is understandable that the United States should entertain grave anxiety regarding China, especially over a possible collapse of Chinese resistance against Japan. This concern, which the Chinese did everything to keep alive, was universally shared by senior men in the Washington government, including the president himself, H. L. Stimson, then secretary of war, Henry Morgenthau, secretary of the Treasury, Leahy, and many involved in Far Eastern affairs in the Department of State, principally Hornbeck.9 While some doubt was expressed as to how much China could and was willing to contribute to the war effort in the east, the consensus was that her collapse would be a fatal blow to the United Nations, especially the United States, in the Pacific theatre. This event, therefore, must be prevented at all cost. It was only natural that the United States, torn by anxiety, should be obsessed with the desire to compensate China as best she could. Consequently, the American government announced at the beginning of 1942 a loan of 500 million dollars to China, with next to no strings attached.10 Meanwhile, the move to push for the allies' recognition of China as one of the great powers, of which Hornbeck claimed himself to be the originator, became increasingly prominent in the American government.11 The outcome was the American insistence that China be included as a signatory, together with Britain, the U.S.S.R., and the United States, of the Declaration of Four Nations on General Security, signed in Moscow on 30 December 1943, and that Chiang Kai-shek, together with Roosevelt and Churchill, be a party to the Cairo Declaration, issued on 1 December 1943.12 The American eagerness to compensate naturally did not allow Madame Chiang Kai-shek's visit to the United States, Page 30 Page 31 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 CHAN KIT-CHENG Ostensibly for medical reasons, at the end of 1942 and early in 1943, to pass unutilized. No effort was spared to make the visitor feel welcomed and cherished. She was a guest at the White House and at President Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park. She was invited to address the Senate and the House, and was welcomed by huge gatherings at all the stops she made from the east to the west coasts.13 A further and significant gesture of American friendliness was embodied in the United States' renunciation early in 1943 of her extraterritorial rights in China,14 a subject to be further dealt with later. One last example of the American compensatory effort during the first two years of the Pacific War was the passing of an act in December 1943, by large majorities of both Houses of Congress, repealing the longstanding Chinese exclusion laws, establishing an annual Chinese immigration quota, and making legally admitted Chinese eligible for naturalization as American citizens.15 It is imperative to spell out in some detail the general American attitude vis-a-vis China, not only to serve as background to the subject under discussion, but also because such attitude unavoidably influenced Britain in her dealings with China, including those over the question of Hong Kong. Ever since Pearl Harbour, China had made no secret of her resentment of Britain for having rejected China's offer of assistance in the defence of Hong Kong and Burma, for having been so catastrophically defeated by Japan in such a short time, and for, according to Chou En-lai who was then representative of the Chinese Communist Party at Chungking, having “discriminated against and treated as inferiors the Chinese who fought with the British at Hong Kong and in Malaya.”16 Britain, on her part, was anxious to improve relations with China and to collaborate closely with the United States in relation to their Far Eastern ally. She was, not unlike the United States, "obsessed” for the greater part of 1942 with the fear that China might "throw up her hands." The Foreign Office decided that all that Britain could do was to "adopt an apologetic and ingratiating attitude towards the Chinese." However, the United States, much to Britain's annoyance, stole the limelight from all the major British attempts at appeasing China. Britain's offer of a loan of £50,000,000, with stringent regulations regarding expenditure to maintain equilibrium in her post-war balance of payments, was a clear anti-climax to the Chinese after the unconditional American loan.18 Although Britain renounced her extraterritorial rights in China simultaneously ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 The U.S. and the Question of Hong Kong 1941-45 with the United States, "very little credit accrued to Britain, the assumption in Chungking being that Washington had pressed a reluctant London to agree to rendition."19 As opposed to the glamour of Madame Chiang's visit to the United States, Britain's “cordial invitation” to her to visit Britain, issued by the King himself, was decidedly ignored.20 Britain felt that her already difficult relations with China were aggravated by the fact that the “Americans [were] pathological about China, and keenly suspicious of any possible unfriendliness towards her on the part of others”.21 It was naturally feared that anything China demanded would have the sympathetic hearing of the United States, even at Britain's expense. Britain's future position in Hong Kong became all the more difficult to defend in view of the American wholesale denunciation of Britain's imperial and colonial policies. The American mentality towards the matter has been thus summarized: "The idea became prevalent in America that the war the United States and the United Nations were fighting was not merely for self-preservation, but for the greater qualities of human rights and decency. There was a growing cry for a ‘Pacific Charter', to be on the lines of the Atlantic Charter, to guarantee freedom after the war to the non-self-governing countries in the Pacific. Or, at least, the Atlantic Charter should be extended to cover the Pacific region.”22 This mentality was shared by the president as well as the general public. It has been asserted that Roosevelt had been an anti-imperialist before the Pacific War, but he began a vigorous attack on colonialism everywhere early in 1943 after his trip to Casablanca, which apparently had a profound effect on his attitude towards colonialism.23 Turning specifically to the American attitude towards Hong Kong, interest in the British colony was evident early in the War. There was clear indication that American public feeling "would feel itself cheated if the outcome of the victory of the United Nations were to be simply the restoration of the status quo ante in Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma, India and the Netherlands East Indies." There had been widespread speculation about the future of Hong Kong, stimulated by the speeches of such high officials of the administration as Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles. Critics in the United States frequently raised the question why Britain did not give up Hong Kong and relinquish her extraterritorial rights in China. It seemed almost certain that in the event of China demanding the return of Hong Kong, she could be confident of American sympathy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45 7 could not refuse point blank either because, significantly, no American support could be expected in taking this stand, and the Chinese were likely to refuse to sign the treaty under the circumstances. The only alternative left was to endeavour to obtain postponement of the question by using the formula laid down by, surprisingly, the Colonial Office for the future status of Hong Kong earlier in August: "should the post-war reconstruction of the Far East to be undertaken jointly by all the United Nations require special contributions from Hong Kong, the British government would not 'regard the maintenance of British sovereignty over the Colony [here applied only to the New Territories] as a matter beyond the scope of... discussion." Such, plus the argument that the New Territories were leased territories and therefore unrelated to the question of extraterritoriality, was the British reply to the Chinese at the beginning of December,28 By mid-December, all outstanding obstacles in the American-Chinese negotiations had been removed, but the problem over the New Territories persisted in the Anglo-Chinese talks. The Chinese would not accept a settlement which did not include the cancellation of the Kowloon lease. The United States indicated that she would sign her treaty with China on New Year's Day 1943. Obsessed with the desire to sign the Anglo-Chinese treaty simultaneously, Britain informed the Chinese government through her ambassador at Chungking that "the future of the New Territories was outside the scope of the extraterritoriality treaty, but if the Chinese government desired [my italics] that 'terms of the lease of these territories should be reconsidered'", this should be done when war was over.29 Thus the British had clearly conceded to China the initiative to raise the question in future. The Chinese, however, remained adamant. On 28 December the Foreign Office decided to omit the words "terms of" before "lease" in her statement to China, having learned earlier of the suspicion of T.V. Soong, the Chinese foreign minister, of the words in question. But it was to be Britain's very last concession, even at the risk of sacrificing the treaty as a whole.30 At the war cabinet meeting that day Eden obtained permission to ask for the support of the United States, in deference to whose opinion Britain had conceded a number of important points in her negotiations with China, as a last attempt to save the situation.31 The State Department, however, did not comply with the Foreign ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45 13 Taking advantage of the changed American sentiments regarding China and the allied victory in Europe, Britain began an active propaganda programme to influence American public opinion concerning Britain's imperial and colonial attitudes and policies and the British Empire's contribution to the allied war effort. The British Information Services, an agency of the British government in New York, published numerous booklets for the purpose.$7 Hong Kong naturally figured prominently in these publications. In the booklet entitled "Britain and Japan", for instance, it is thus stated: "When the Island of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain one hundred years ago, it was almost uninhabited. Since then Britain has built on that island the beautiful city of Victoria. By 1941 Hong Kong had a population of 1,650,000, mostly Chinese; it was a trading center and a port for commercial shipping which had enriched the communities all around it. Students from China came to the University of Hong Kong to get degrees in Medicine, Engineering, Science and Arts, which were recognized in Britain as fully reaching British standards. During the long troubles of China, the island of Hong Kong, and the city of Victoria, became a refuge for hundreds of thousands of distressed Chinese." The message was clear: if the British colony of Hong Kong had been beneficial to Britain, it also had been as much so, if not more, to China. Meanwhile, events were leading to the last stages of the Pacific War. In September 1944 the Americans and the British reached a clear understanding which laid down the general principle that in the British Far Eastern territories which were in the American command, the policies to be followed on the liberation of those territories should be laid down by the British government and accepted by the American force commander.58 Late in February 1945 the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, instituted in December the previous year for the purpose of coordinating the Department of State and the War and Navy Departments, directed that its Subcommittee for the Far East maintain, as a general guide for its activities, a master list of Pacific-Far Eastern problems, arranged in appropriate order of priority. Also, before initiating action on any one of such problems the subcommittee should submit in each case to the main committee a detailed recommendation showing “(1) a statement of the problem (2) the agency or agencies to be charged with initiation of the basic documents involved, and (3) the method of processing and coordination thereof, including ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 14 JULIAN F. PAS recommendations for ultimate implementation." Appearing on the master list was the subject "Treatment by United States Occupation Forces of Special Areas: Hong Kong."59 The Department of State was first invited to submit a paper, bearing on the political aspects of the question, to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee. After considerable deliberation the department concluded that in view of the political differences between China and Great Britain regarding the future status of Hong Kong, United States forces should not participate in operations for the reconquest or occupation of Hong Kong unless absolutely necessary from a military point of view, and that the United States should make no plans to participate in military government in Hong Kong which, according to the previous agreement of the Combined Civil Affairs Committee, was to be instituted by Britain.60 On receiving the department's recommendation, and after consulting the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State-War-Navy Coordinating Subcommittee for the Far East submitted a draft report in mid-June. Apart from reiterating the Department of State principle of non-involvement, the report further pointed out that while the Joint Chiefs of Staff had agreed to substantial United States participation in the Canton-Hong Kong operation, it was a Chinese operation under Chiang Kai-shek and not an operation conducted by United States forces under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Joint Chiefs of Staff therefore should not regard themselves as obligated, in so far as the Canton-Hong Kong operation was concerned, to the civil affairs agreement with the British. Moreover, China was not a signatory to this agreement, and it did not cover the situation in the case of a Japanese withdrawal from Hong Kong. The subcommittee accordingly recommended that the United States Chiefs of Staff inform the British Chiefs of Staff that United States support of the operation was being furnished to attain strictly military ends, and that arrangements with regard to the civil affairs administration of Hong Kong should be worked out between Britain and China.61 This document, with some minor alterations, was accepted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee by the end of July. The suggestion that Chiang Kai-shek should be consulted with regard to civil affairs in Hong Kong was naturally unpalatable to Britain.62 The news that Japan would accept defeat in the near future changed the entire picture. Britain now decided to secure the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 18 CHAN KIT-CHENG 23 W. Range, Franklin D. Roosevelt's World Order (University of Georgia Press; 1959), p. 105. 24 This is according to the observation of Ashley Clarke, head of the Far Eastern Department in the British Foreign Office, during his one month visit to the Department of State early in the summer of 1942; see his report on his visit to A. Eden, secretary of state for foreign affairs, 11 June 1942, FO371/31804. See also Ministry of Information to Colonial Office, 22 October 1942, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/31774. 25 "The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations", pp. 266-272. 26 Brenan's minute, 3 December, on J. G. Winant, American ambassador to London, to Eden, 2 December 1942, FO371/31664. 27 Eden to Winant, 7 December 1942, in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), China, 1942 (Washington, 1956), p. 390. 28 "The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations", op. cit., pp. 284-5. 29 Ibid., pp. 287-8. 30 Ibid., pp. 288-9. 31 War cabinet conclusions 173 (42), 28 December 1942, Cab65/28. Also Eden to Winant, 29 December; and Eden to Lord Halifax, British ambassador to Washington, tel. 8264, immediate, 29 December 1942, FO371/31665. 32 Thorne, op. cit., p. 179, and note 53, p. 198, referring to G. Atcheson to Hornbeck, 29 December 1942, Department of State, Decimal and Other Files, National Archives (Washington D.C.) 793.003/12-2942. 33 W. L. Tung in his book V. K. Wellington Koo and China's Wartime Diplomacy (New York, 1977), based on the Wellington Koo Papers deposited with Columbia University, gives a possible explanation: "Koo was then Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain and returned to Chungking for consultations. As an experienced diplomat well familiar with the attitude of British official and unofficial circles, he counselled the government to conclude the treaty on the relinquishment of extraterritoriality but reserve the right of later negotiations on the Kowloon question”, p. 53. 34 Halifax to Eden, tel. 6310, immediate, 31 December 1942, FO371/35679. 35 "The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)", pp. 58-68. 34 Ibid., p. 68. *7 See memorandum in Hornbeck Papers, box 466. ** Cordell Hull, secretary of state, to United States chargé d'affaires in London, tel., 4 April 1943, in FRUS, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, The Far East, 1943 (Washington, 1963), III, pp. 46-7. Also see R. E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), p. 707. 30 For American interest in India, especially early in the war, see for example, M. S. Venkatramani and B. K. Shrivastava, "The United States and the Cripps Mission", India Quarterly, XIX, no. 3 (July-September, 1963), pp. 214-65. See also author's article, "Britain's Reaction to Chiang Page 45 Page 46 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45 19 K'ai-shek's Visit to India, February 1942", The Australian Journal of History and Political Science, XXI, no. 2 (1975), pp. 52-61, in which the American attitude is discussed. 40 Memorandum by Hopkins, 15 March 1943, in FRUS, the British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, the Far East, 1943, III, p. 17. 41 Sherwood, op. cit., p. 719, and H. C. Allen, Great Britain and the United States (London, 1954), p. 828. 42 For a summary of the allied military situation at the end of 1943, see J. M. Burns, Roosevelt: the Lion and the Fox (New York, 1956), p. 464. **Hornbeck to Ashley Clarke, 16 December 1943(?), in Hornbeck Papers, box 469. 44 Hornbeck's autobiography, op. cit. 46 Hornbeck's memorandum, 15 November, on his conversation with Churchill, Hornbeck Papers, box 468. 10 16 Hornbeck to Hull, 3 January 1944; also see Hornbeck's memorandum, 3 December 1943, Hornbeck Papers, box 181. 47 C. Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York, 1948), II, p. 1599, 4 Hornbeck's autobiography, op. cit., and J. Bishop, FDR's Last Year (New York, 1974), p. 40. **E. Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York, 1946), pp. 163-4, 203-4, 249-50; J. T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (New York, 1948), p. 349; Hull, op. cit., II, p. 1596; and T. H. White (ed.), The Stilwell Papers (New York, 1976), p. 252. Stilwell was summoned to the conference to discuss China. 50 See SWNCC III, secret, 17 April 1945, in ABC 014 Japan (13 April 44) see 32, National Archives. 01 See minutes of the meeting in FRUS, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Washington, 1955), p. 769. Also F. L. Loewenheim (ed.), Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York, 1975), p. 656. 52 FRUS, ibid., pp. 664-5, 676. 53 58 Thorne, op. cit., p. 549. 54 Tung, op. cit., p. 61. 55 Bishop, op. cit., p. 95. 56 Division of Public Liaison and Office of Public Information, Department of State, "Fortnightly Survey of American Opinion on International Affairs", Survey no. 13, confidential, 18 October, Survey no. 14, confidential, 6 November, and Survey no. 15, confidential, 20 November 1944. 57 Examples of these booklets are: "The British Commonwealth and Empire" (May 1944), and "Britain and Japan" (June 1944). **See paragraph six of the Chapter of the Combined Civil Affairs Committee at Washington, FO371/46251. **SWNCC 111, 17 April 1945, op. cit. SWNCC 111, 17 April 1945, ibid. 61 SWNCC 111/2, top secret, 14 June 1945, in ABC 014 Japan (13 April 44) see 32. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 20 CHAN KIT-CHENG 62 "The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)”, p. 72. 63 Brigadier A. J. H. Dove of the War Office to C. H. M. Weldock of the Admiralty, 12 August 1945, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/46251, and Admiralty to commander-in-chief, British Pacific Fleet, tel. 131957A, important, 13 August 1945, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/46252. 64 Seymore to Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary, tel. 857, most immediate and top secret, 16 August; tel. 865, most immediate and top secret, 17 August; tel. 909, most immediate and top secret, 23 August; and Bevin to Seymore, tel. 984, 25 August 1945, FO371/46252. **Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman (New York, 1965), I, p. 492. **Thorne, op. cit., p. 649. 67 General Hurley, now United States ambassador at Chungking, to secretary of state, tel. 1414, 21 August 1945, in FRUS, The Far East, China, 1945 (Washington, 1969), VII, pp. 507-8. **Truman, op. cit., pp. 493-4. *Hurley to secretary of state, tel. CFB$633, 23 August 1945, in FRUS, The Far East, China, 1945, op. cit., p. 511. 70 Truman, op. cit., pp. 494-5. 71 Truman, ibid., p. 496. 72 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 302. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 34 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS doubt, the most momentous year of its short history. After months and months of suspense occasioned by the occupation of the mainland, the war struck Hong Kong. Everyone, of course, was hoping against hope that the catastrophe would not affect the British Crown Colony, but such was not to be, and its peace and quiet was rudely shattered by the Japanese guns and ships which began shelling the city. As a precautionary measure our Econome, Father John Troesch, wisely put in a goodly supply of food stuffs in expectation of a long siege, but as a matter of fact, we did not benefit from it, as future events proved. From this point we shall quote from detailed diaries written by Maryknollers stationed at Stanley, eye witnesses of much of the attack and occupation, Fathers Troesch, Feeney and Downs. The month of December in Hong Kong was ushered in much the same manner as its companions of 1941, but its exit from the world was in striking contrast. We Maryknollers at Stanley rose to greet it, and at our breakfast table read the news of the day, news of the war in various sectors and rumors of war nearer at hand, but hope was uppermost in our hearts that the fair city of Hong Kong would not be embroiled in the world catastrophe. Due to the unsettled conditions in the Far East our 1941 group of new missioners had been delayed, and now that we had some news of their departure from the Coast, we were anxiously awaiting their arrival. One small group had already reached our shores, three of whom had left for their missions in Kongmoon; the fourth, a Hakkaite, Father Siebert, was waiting for an escort to his adopted land. This year the Hong Kong Language School was to move inland, and our plans, already formulated in our minds, were that as soon as we had definite word of the arrival of the new men, we would book passage on a plane leaving nightly from Hong Kong for Kukong. Because of the "China Incident" plane travel was the only means of transportation left with the interior of China, and we were all looking forward to our coming trip. The atmosphere, of course, was tense, and no one could hazard what was to happen, but hope was strong in our hearts that we could get to our inland missions before any storm broke. Among our house guests at this time were Bishop O'Gara, C.P., and two of his priests, Fathers Benson, the Passionists' Procurator at Shanghai and Norris, C.P., who had come to meet their Bishop; and they joined us in felicitating Father Meyer on the celebration of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 36 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS tions were flying thick and fast from both sides. Everybody was happy and elated, and when we retired it was with the thought of arising the next day to celebrate the glorious Feast of our Blessed Lady, Her Immaculate Conception, and to make preparations for our trip to the missions. December eighth in the Far East and December seventh in the Western world! Maryknoll at Stanley rose as usual. Masses and breakfast followed and shortly after we were electrified by the report that Kai Tak airport had been bombed at 7:45 and that the Pan American Clipper which brought our new missioners had been destroyed. WAR! And Hong Kong is in the news! Being eleven miles over the mountains from Hong Kong we had, of course, heard nothing of the bombing, and were inclined to believe that the whole thing was a hoax of some kind. But soon we were entirely disillusioned when the radio flashed news of Pearl Harbor and when shortly after tiffin the planes flew over Stanley and dropped a few bombs to the west of us, apparently over the sea. We tried to get news from Hong Kong over the telephone but nobody seemed to know just what was happening. We anxiously gathered around the radio and tried to pick up what news we could. Evidently, war was on in earnest and America and we were involved. About five o'clock in the afternoon, our telephone jangled and we heard the voice of His Excellency, Bishop Valtorta, saying that all his Italian priests had been interned by the British Government, and that he would like to have Father Downs come to help him out at the Cathedral. His priests were given only a short time in which to pack up their personal belongings and were immediately taken away to a destination which was not disclosed to the Bishop. Father Downs hastily packed his suit case and caught the half past five bus for Hong Kong, and it must be confessed, with no little trepidation. The trip to the city was a tense one. Along the route the bus was stopped periodically by the British sentries, inspected and finally diverted by way of Aberdeen, instead of the usual Happy Valley route. The whole city, too, was tense, and though the downtown streets were crowded, there was fear and uneasiness everywhere. At the Cathedral were His Excellency, Father Rosello, a Spanish priest attached to the Cathedral and Father Craig S.J., from Wah Yan College, as also a few young Chinese priests. His Chancellor, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46 39 mattresses. As the Bishop's house is built on the side of a hill, as are in fact practically all the houses in Hong Kong, the outer wall of our dugout, facing north, was on a level with the garden, so as an extra precaution against bomb fragments, a heavy loose stone wall had been built up outside as high as the ceiling. There was but one small window and this we covered up in accordance with the blackout regulations. In this emergency dugout, His Excellency, Fathers Craig and Downs slept a little more securely than in the upper rooms. Father Rosello, however, kept to his upper room. One night, during the early days of the war, we were rudely awakened by a terrific blast, which must have shaken the whole island. We could hear fragments of shells or bombs falling just outside of our improvised loose stone wall, and it seemed as if the Cathedral had been hit with a salvo of shells. We could learn nothing that night and after a while returned to our couches. Later we heard the story. It seems that the British had a large store of dynamite or TNT on Green Island and it was decided to transfer this explosive to the Hong Kong shore. For this duty a squad of volunteers was chosen, comprising some British and Chinese police. As the story goes, they were instructed to leave Green Island at a certain predetermined time, but in some way or other, they started earlier. As their boat containing this high explosive neared the Hong Kong side, someone, fearing it was an enemy vessel, fired on it, and that was the tremendous explosion that shook the whole island, and which blew all those brave volunteers into eternity. As was remarked above, the Bishop's house is situated on quite an eminence overlooking the harbor, and consequently we had a real grandstand view of the attack on Hong Kong. From our vantage point we saw shells fall in various parts of Kowloon; saw them encircle and finally land directly on Stonecutters Island, a fortified zone in the harbor; heard them whistle over our heads and strike the Navy Yard and other points to the east, and the Peak to the South. We could not see the shelling and bombing of Mount Davis, another fortified zone, but we could hear distinctly enough. From our vantage point we watched ships burning and scuttled in the eastern approaches to the harbor; we saw planes circling over Lyemoon forts, we saw the feeble anti-aircraft actions against the marauding planes. The fire from these ack-ack guns seemed brisk ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 48 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM, DOWNS ports, visas and so on, and on their return the bus which they had boarded took them only as far as Repulse Bay Hotel. From there they began walking to Stanley, and they had not gone far when the command rang out: Halt!. They saw no one in the gathering darkness and continued on, when suddenly a bullet whistled over their heads. Some British Tommies on sentry duty stopped them and demanded their credentials. These having been verified they were allowed to proceed, none the worse for their experience. During these eventful days, Father Toomey did great work in visiting the Prison, on occasional sick calls. He also went to Point d'Aguilar where volunteers were holding an advance position. He was likewise at the Fort on the Hill when it was being bombed by the Japanese planes. While at the Prison he attempted to visit the interned Italian Fathers, but was not allowed. However, he managed to have delivered to them a Mass kit or two with the necessary supplies. At the Carmelite Convent just below our hill, Father Hessler said daily Mass for the Sisters and later on remained with them during the actual fighting at Stanley. As the days wore on in the second week of the war, things began to get pretty "hot" around Stanley. An occasional shell whistled overhead, reports came in that the Japanese landed in Hong Kong and were even now converging on the Tytam reservoir just to the east of us; in fact, they were even said to have captured a red brick house close by. Finally, on the twenty-second of the month, without warning, eight of the Royal Engineers' coolies who were standing just outside our garage on the west of the house, were wounded by machine gun bullets fired from across the valley. Also a little beggar girl who used to come frequently for food received a flesh wound. We brought them all into our house and laid them on the floor and did what we could for them, bandaging up their wounds. Just across this valley the British had built some ammunition dumps and had placed there an anti-aircraft battery or two. These batteries fired at enemy planes in the beginning but eventually we heard them no more and no doubt they were removed elsewhere, for now the Japanese were in possession of this hill. As a measure of safety we moved our kitchen away from this western exposure and also kept away as much as possible from that end of the house. Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46 85 six rooms with two tiny kitchens and pantries, and two baths. We are quartered as follows: in room 7, Fathers Hessler, Walter, Knotek and Brothers Michael, Lawrence and Anselm; in room 8, Fathers Callan, Reardon, Allie and O'Connor, C. M.; room 9, Fathers Downs, Quinn, V. Walsh, Tackney, Moore, Madison and Brother Thaddeus; room 16, Fathers Troesch, Meyer, Bauer and Brother William. In this room, we had been saving a cot for Father Feeney, but before the Sisters were interned he managed to secure a pass on the plea of being a neutral alien and was later allowed to go to the interior of China. In room 17, Fathers Benson, Norris, C. P., and Brothers Cornelius and Anthony; room 18, Fathers Toomey, Keelan, O'Connell, Siebert, Gaiero and McKeirnan. With six and seven in a room, and even with four in the smaller rooms, we are pretty crowded, like bees in a hive. Our tableware consists of a soup plate, a large spoon and a cup. As our cups are breaking one by one, we are falling back on discarded jam tins, with a small wire handle. Our dishes are thus easily washed. We also wash our own clothes, wherever we can, in the kitchen sink or bathtub, or in a pail, of which we have one or two, and hang them out on the verandahs or, in wet weather, in the corridors, all of which gives our apartment the appearance of a New York East Side tenement. 4—Mr. Walsh, a sergeant of the Hong Kong Police, died suddenly today of heart failure. However, Father Toomey was in time to anoint him. Brother Anthony comes down with malaria. Brother is a very big man, and has worked very hard both during hostilities in caring for the sick and wounded at LaSalle College, and in the Camp on manual labor. One small slice of bread today. 5-Mr. Walsh buried this morning after a High Mass of Requiem on the tennis court, at which quite a number of internees, both Catholic and non-Catholic, were present. Interment took place in the old Military Cemetery (within the confines of the Camp) on the hill near the Prison. In this ancient cemetery are the graves of many British and Irish soldiers and their families who died shortly after the founding of Hong Kong either from malaria or from wounds. Now new graves are multiplying, being those of soldiers fallen in this present war, and of internees. Father Quinn starts a class in Spanish. One slice of bread again today. 7-Our Saturday evening songfest was put on tonight by the ... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 122 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS Hotel. Well, we did justice to that meal! Sister Paul also lost no time in informing us that we had every hope of getting out of the Colony within a few weeks, and that even then she was working on our necessary passes and permits to go to Kwongchauwan. Right then and there we signed our forms, affixed our photographs (she, in her admirable foresight, had even these all prepared) and after the second group had arrived and carried out their part of the program, it was time to sit down to another real honest-to-goodness meal. Of course, these were still wartime meals, but we enjoyed them hugely. Then we trekked down to the bund, caught the eight o'clock bus to Aberdeen, and soon were knocking at the door of Bethany, where we were heartily welcomed by the Superior, Father Bos and Father Chaye, the Belgian priest, who, it will be recalled, was once our fellow-internee at Stanley. They were the only two priests in the House, and the rest of it was at our disposal. Our rooms were all prepared and we lost no time in getting under real covers and settling down to rest, after such an exciting and memorable day. The next morning found us saying Mass at real altars in a real Chapel, and sitting down to breakfast table at which we enjoyed some of the food which again Sister Paul had previously provided. She had also very thoughtfully engaged a cook and a house-boy for us, and everything was shipshape. Bethany is a sort of Rest House for sick and aged Paris Foreign missioners, and the scriptural inscription over its main portal is pregnant with meaning: "Magister, quem amas, infirmatur” "Master, he whom thou lovest, is sick." Just across from Nazareth is the Retreat House and Printing Press of the same society; it is situated on a knoll overlooking the beautiful South China Sea, and on the slopes of its hill are the graves of a hundred of its valiant missioners who have labored in almost all parts of the Far East. Its little Gothic chapel has a charm all its own, and must be redolent of memories for those who have spent some time within the walls of Bethany. Needless to say, we Maryknollers were delighted to have this haven of refuge and we are all more than grateful to the French Fathers who have been so uniformly kind. On the Monday following our arrival, we went to the city in company with Father Troesch in order to secure our ration cards and to register our names and addresses with the proper precinct. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 126 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS every foreign enemy building, whether public or private property, and those which have escaped confiscation have not escaped the looting by Chinese. Curiously enough, there was an almost total absence of English signs on streets and over buildings and stores, the Japanese having taken all these down, and in many instances, replacing them with Japanese signs. In the lobbies of office buildings all the tenants' names were in Chinese or Japanese, and it was often very difficult to find one's own family doctor, unless one happened to be familiar with his Chinese name. It seemed that everything reminiscent of the hated foreigner had to be effaced. Placarded all around the town, too, were flaming posters depicting the New Order in the Far East, showing smoking chimneys of busy factories, smiling Chinese gathering grain in the fields, and other indications of what Japan expected to do for the downtrodden Chinese. At various conspicuous places were also huge maps showing the conquests in East Asia of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. The streets were fairly clean, though here and there might be seen some piles of rubbish, and I understand that in the beginning, the Japanese kept in office some of the officials of the Sanitary Squad, that is, British officials. Just to show the effect of Japanese progress, now some of the streets in the downtown sector were actually being washed daily! However, along the side streets, one could find more sordid scenes--emaciated and dying beggars lying on the pavement, and others looking pretty thin and hungry. Before we left Hong Kong, most of these beggars had disappeared and I suppose it is not hard to imagine what became of them, for the Japanese are not very often moved to pity. There are many tales of cruelty inflicted on the Chinese, and one significant fact is that the huge Prison at Stanley is practically empty. It is said that often offenders against the laws were thrown off the bund into the sea; others were tied up and left standing in the broiling sun until they died, and some of us have seen the police dogs which the Japanese have trained to hunt down Chinese who cut wood on the mountain sides. A friend of mine was an actual eye-witness of a Chinese woman whose flesh was literally torn by these dogs and who ran screaming down the mountain. These brushwood gatherers are often shot at, too. The Japanese have retained both the Indian and the Chinese police and they patrol this city and the roads. The Indian police ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46 127 have been uniformly courteous to us, except under the eyes of their masters and I think they realize that their position is a precarious one. They are, however, pretty cruel at times to the Chinese. Except army trucks, there is no transport in the city. On the Pokfulam Road, however, the Chinese have resurrected a few very small wooden carts with tiny iron wheels which they laboriously pull along up the grades of the winding Island Road. Only a few bus routes are in operation. The Aberdeen route is running; the University route via Caine Road is in operation, and the Stanley run, with a bus every two hours, completes the service. The trams, of course, are running and quite crowded. Ferry service has been resumed, but on a very limited scale. I speak only for Hong Kong, as I know little about conditions over in Kowloon. As for purely private cars, practically none are seen in the streets, all having been confiscated and shipped to Japan. A taxi service was attempted but the fares were prohibitive. The Dairy Farm is functioning under, of course, Japanese management and control. However, over half the dairy herd has been shipped out of the Colony to Formosa and Japan. A few British overseers have been retained. The milk is being sold for thirty yen a small bottle, but it is of very watery consistency. No butter is available. As for the once flourishing harbor, it is now bare of shipping, save for an occasional Japanese freighter. Occasionally, a destroyer or two or a small cruiser are seen in the harbor, but they come and go. As will be remembered, the regular east channel leading to the harbor has been blocked with scuttled and burned ships, so all vessels now enter Hong Kong by the west channel, which passes just beneath Bethany, so we have a splendid view of all incoming and outgoing ships. Now and then we will see a steamer limping into port, disabled and apparently sinking. Once a convoy of some seven or eight ships entered and left the harbor, and on two occasions we saw a very large trans-Pacific liner like the Asama or Chichibu Maru enter and leave. On another occasion, a small destroyer engaged in maneuvers ran aground just to the south of Bethany on a point near the Dairy Farm, but was later pulled off by tugs. Before the war, the British were assembling ten thousand ton fabricated ships in Kowloon, and apparently the Japanese found one of these under construction, as later on we saw it under- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 NOTES AND QUERIES 195 A STUDY OF THE CH'ING FORTS ON LANTAU ISLAND During the Ch'ing period, two forts were built on Lantau Island. They were the Fan Lau Fort and the Tung Chung Fort: the latter including the Tung Chung Walled City and the Shek She Fort in the Tung Chung Valley. The Fan Lau Fort Fan Lau Kok 汾流角, also called Kai Yik Kok 鷄翼角, is a promontory which lies on the south-west tip of Lantau Island.3 It has a height of about three hundred and eighty feet. To the north of the promontory is the Fan Lau Sai Wan. The Fan Lau Tung Wan lies to its south. On the top of the promontory, there was a fort known as the Fan Lau Fort.1 It was erected in the late Ming Dynasty. During the early years of K'ang Hsi period, the coast of China was evacuated,a and the fort was abandoned. Then in the 7th year of the Yung Cheng reign (1729), the fort was rebuilt and again fortified.9 During the early 19th century a famous pirate, Cheung Po-tsai, plundered along the south-east coast of China. His fleet was so strong that the Ch'ing navy was also defeated. He had taken Tung Chung, Lantau Island, as a base for his fleet.10 Fan Lau was quite near Tung Chung. Thus, the Fan Lau fort might also have been in his hands during that period. After the surrender of Cheung Po-tsai in the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1810),11 Ch'ing forces recovered the fort.12 Before the Opium War (1841), foreign influence along the coast increased. The Ch'ing government strengthened the forts and the guard-stations of this region. The Fan Lau Fort was still fortified.13 During the Opium War, the Chinese were defeated. Most of the forts along the coast were abandoned. In 1842, British officers travelling in the region found that the Fan Lau Fort was not manned.14 The Fort has a length of one hundred and fifty-five feet, and a breadth of seventy feet. It is formed by four rubble walls, about ten feet high. It has an entrance which faces east. The entrance is about five feet wide. There are steps for mounting the walls. The Fort has remained in ruins till now. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 The Tung Chung Fort NOTES AND QUERIES Tung Chung15 is a valley which lies on the north coast of Lantau Island. It is surrounded by hills on three sides,16 facing the sea on the north. The valley is well-drained by streams, giving fertile farmlands to the people. A century or so ago, there was a walled area, called the Tung Chung Walled City; and a fort which guarded the coast, the Shek She Fort A6. The Tung Chung Walled City was erected between the Sheung Ling Pei village #17 and the Ha Ling Pei village 下嶺皮村 T## 18. During the early years of K'ang Hsi period, there was only the Tung Chung Shuen (post)✯✯ under a Tsin Tsung +(or lieutenant) of the Tai Pang Battalion 19. However, the post was quite isolated, and it was far from Tai O where there was the Tai Yue Shan Shuen 大嶼山汎20. After the surrender of Cheung Po-tsai in the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign2, foreign intercourse and influence increased; and fortifications along the coast were strengthened. In the 22nd year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1817), the Tung Chung Walled City and the Shek She Fort were erected 22. The Walled City and the Fort remained strongholds on the island until 1898, when the New Territories were leased to the British. Then the Walled City was used as the Police Station and later as the Wah Ying School **** during the Second World War.23 It is now the site of the Tung Chung Rural Committee's office and the Tung Chung Public Primary School. The Walled City measures 225 feet by 265 feet. It is backed by the Tai Tung Shan. It has three rubble walls: its front wall is about 15 feet thick. The building stone of the walls came from Chik Lap Kok Island.24 The Walled City has three gateways: The East Gate was called Chip Sau ✩✩, the West Gate was called Luen Kun, and the Main Gate, Kung Sun. The East and West Gates are now blocked by bricks, and the main gate is used as the entrance to the Rural Committee and the Public School. Inside the Walled City, there is a playground. Behind the playground, there are two old houses, which are the remains of the guardhouses built during the 22nd year of the Chia Ch'ing reign.25 These houses are now used as the office of the Tung Chung Rural Committee. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 204 J NOTES AND QUERIES To the east of the Temple of the Supreme Ruler was the former Sung Wong Toi, a rock from which has been preserved in the Sung Wong Tooi garden. The land for several miles around used to be arable plain and contained rice fields watered by streams. This would have been an agreeable place for the hard-pressed emperor Tuen Chung to stop. Traces may well be left in the neighbourhood of halts made by the Emperor and his ministers in their retreat before the Mongols, and the former Temple of the Supreme Ruler may indeed be one of these traces and thus provide a link in the history of Kowloon. The temple itself fell into ruin long ago leaving only the lintel of its main door which was here found intact. In commemoration the Hong Kong Government has made this Rest Garden which, like the nearby Sung Wong Toi Garden, provides in its reminder of past history more than a place of rest. Mr. Kan Yau Man of Sun Wui was the first to recommend to the Hong Kong Government the preservation of the ancient temple lintel and the creation of this Rest Garden. Mr. Yiu Chung Yee, whose name is also spelt Jao Tsung I, of Chiu On prepared the Chinese account of the history of this place. The garden was completed on September 15, 1962 and opened by Doctor R. H. S. Lee MBE. MORE NOTES ON TSUEN WAN Members of the Society visited Tsuen Wan on 1st December, 1978 and visited a number of places connected with various aspects of Chinese religion. The visit took in: (a) a long-established Buddhist monastery, (b) a small post-war temple established by newcomers from another part of Kwangtung, (c) a structure serving as a shrine for one of the lesser known later sects of Chinese religion, the Chun Hung Kau (*2), (d) another large pre-war religious house founded by a group of persons associated with the three main religions of China, The notes which follow are printed, with some additions, for the benefit of members who took part of the tour, and for other interested persons who may not have been able to come that day, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 208 NOTES AND QUERIES (b) Holy Mother Yiu Temple (*****) This temple was first established by persons from Pok Law district (###) of Kwangtung who came here immediately after the war in search of work and shelter. It was first established in a squatter area at Ma Sim Pai () but was later moved to its present location in Fu Yung Shan (*) overlooking the town. Here we have a Kwangtung worthy! The goddess after whom it is named was a famous woman inhabitant of Kwangtung who lived in the Han Dynasty nearly 2,000 years ago. This person received an entry in the Kwangtung provincial gazetteer (1822 edition) which reads as follows: "Lady Yiu's temple () is in Mok Tsuen (#) in the east of the Pok Law District. In the Ho Ping reign period of the Former Han, 28-24 BC, there lived a chaste and virtuous woman named Yiu who was praised by the local people. After her death they erected a temple to her memory at Pun To Wan (#), and the worship there is in the name of ‘Our Lady Yiu'.” Another old account has the following quaint story: “Lady Yiu Temple. During the Han dynasty, a lady named Yiu of Pok Law county was renowned for her virtues. After her death, a temple was erected to offer sacrifices to her. Chen Yao-tsao† accompanied by Hsu Shen,‡ a Chiu Chow scholar, departed for Pok Law to take up the post of Sub-Prefect of Chiu Chow. On their way, they moored the boat to the bank on a certain night. There they heard several horsemen addressing them in a dignified tone: "The Prime Minister and the Commissioner for Grain Transport are sojourning here tonight." On the next morning, Chen and Hsu visited the place and found there a Lady Yiu Temple. Later, they were in fact promoted to the two posts respectively. †I have mislaid my reference to this source, but my friend Mr. Anthony Siu Kwok-kin of Hong Kong has traced the story further back to a Sung book (與地紀勝卷九十九廣東南路惠州博罪官吏) which dates the incident to the 2nd year of Hsien Ping in the Sung Dynasty **** (999 A.D.). †陳堯佐 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 NOTES AND QUERIES 221 Dr. Sun Yat-san. In front of the portrait, there was a long table, on which were installed a shrine of the deity ‘Cheung Wong Yeh' and a statue of Confucius. Each year in pre-war times there were two sacrifices, one dedicated to the 'Cheung Wong Yeh' deity in Spring and the other to Confucius in Autumn. When the sacrifices took place, the Strand was decorated with lanterns and colourful ribbons, with female singers performing in matshed, riddle-games being staged, or Cantonese operas being performed. However, the celebrations were suspended during the Japanese Occupation. They were resumed after the War and carried on until 1953 when the Association building was demolished for reconstruction. At present, our new, magnificent building standing in this busy city has been completed. When we look back to the past, could we not be moved by the old memories still lingering in our mind? In spite of business difficulties and a recession in the market, in which our trade bears the brunt, our predecessors have selflessly devoted much of their time and effort to the reconstruction of our Association building. With the completion of this new building, it is to be hoped that our members will work together for the advancement of the Association's functions, the economic recovery of our trade and the promotion of members' welfare. THE COMMERCIAL WORLD* The District is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, to develop in the history of the Colony. As far as more than a century ago its status was second to none; its town proper was a thriving entrepot, clustering around a few narrow streets in the famed Nam Pak Hong — a legendary name which had been handed down with pride even to the present day, pinpointing the area now occupied by the Bonham Strands East and West and the nearby Wing Lok Street. The title, literally translated as the "South and North Traders", was of great significance as it implies that the long arm of business stretched as far as Peking and Tientsin in North China to the distant countries in Southeast Asia. It was in this tiny plot of land that business tycoons of the last century were fostered, flourished and prospered. The ones in Bonham Strand were experts in Chinese herbs and other precious organic medicine as well as importers and exporters in other popular Chinese commodities, * Translation of an article in the Association's centenary bulletin, also by courtesy of the Director of Home Affairs. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 BOOK REVIEWS 229 This book, then, places a major part of Freedman's material in the context of his career. It reviews one aspect of its contribution and points up the significance of Freedman as a promoter of future research. Many have been influenced by both his ideas and his standards of excellence (this writer included), and as the editor comments in his introduction; Freedman's own students together with those from American, European and Chinese universities "produced during the 1960's studies that in number and scope exceeded the sum total of the anthropological work done in China proper before 1949. Nearly all of this research was inspired by Freedman's work". Hong Kong, June, 1980. MARJORIE TOPLEY THE CHINA STATION; WAR AND DIPLOMACY, 1830-1860, Gerald S. Graham. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. pp. XX, 444, appendixes, bibliography, index, maps. It has been over ten years since Professor Graham published his most useful study of the British navy in the Indian Ocean (Great Britain in the Indian Ocean 1810-1850, Clarendon, 1967) and established himself as a leading authority on naval history. He had been for many years the Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in the University of London.* The book under review is Professor Graham's long awaited study of the British navy in China during the most crucial period of the development of China's contacts with the western world in the nineteenth century. And because the Royal Navy played the major official role in "opening China" the book covers the full sweep of British policymaking and its implementation on the China coast during a period that saw the change from mercantilist principles to "free trade" - the ending of the British East India Company's "monopoly" of the Canton trade and its replacement by private trading houses, loosely shepherded by a new British official, denominated Superintendent of Trade, who was given consular powers. * Where the Hon. Editor studied British Colonial History and a Special Course on the Development of Dominion Status under his guidance. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 230 BOOK REVIEWS The years following the change-over were not peaceful. The western relations with China were not, on the whole, harmonious. This was largely because a tradition-bound and conservative bureaucracy, loosely ruled from Peking, was reluctant to allow contact with outsiders except within the long established tributary relationship by which the "middle kingdom" dealt with foreigners. Professor Graham uses mainly western (and almost completely British) sources in his research. His extensive use of Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Admiralty and Indian Office Records in London and New Delhi has given him the expertise with which to assess British policymaking and the multifarious problems arising in its implementation in the imperial period of the nineteenth century. He uses private papers to complement official sources, delving into such well known collections as those left by the "actors" of the story, among them Palmerston, Wellington, Russell, Pottinger, Aberdeen, James Matheson, William Jardine. And he does not neglect the less well known diaries and journals left by common seamen and admirals who were participants in the action of the book. The purpose, then, as the author admits, is to see the conflict between China and the west "through European eyes” (p. viii). But here the author is rather modest for he does make excellent use of the best available translated sources to attempt to understand the conflicts from Chinese views. The chapters are roughly chronological, beginning with a discussion of the Canton "system" of trade in tea, silk, opium and silver, and tracing the "campaigns" of the naval skirmishes in 1839-41 and 1856-60. Inserted, at appropriate places, are chapters on the founding of Hong Kong as a colony, the problems of administration and command in the Royal Navy (the China Station was not actually established until a division of the East Indies Station occurred in 1844), and the impact of the Crimean War, Russia and the Indian Mutiny upon events in China. It is curious that rather limited naval skirmishes leading to consular treaties should be denominated by historians as “wars”. Professor Graham defines three separate Anglo-Chinese Wars, viz. 1839-41 ("the Opium War"), 1856-58, and 1860. These limited campaigns were found necessary, according to the preponderant British view, because Chinese officialdom was largely ignorant of western armed strength and must be shown by a demonstration of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 BOOK REVIEWS 233 view, states "this volume will occupy an essential place . . . . in any library claiming to cover the affairs of the Far East in general and those of south-east Asia in particular". He adds that it is “much more than a tale of crime. It touches unceasingly, and sometimes commandingly, the everyday life's economic activities and official governments of the Chinese population, incidentally throwing sharp lights and shades on the character, social organization, and politics of the Chinese A vivid piece of research not.... dead history + 抒 + + a scrap of I am not an expert on secret societies, nor have much to offer by way of useful comment on the modern period of the book, but I am most impressed with the account given of Chinese associations in the early period of Chinese immigration and the reaction of the British Colonial authorities to the problems encountered in their train. They were dealing with an enigma and found it difficult to separate the clearly often respectable side of Chinese associations from the secret society or criminal aspect. Where they could be separated (which was not always the case) each type of society had yet come together for mutual self-help. Even the most criminal retained this feature which was so important and continuing a part of the movement. For me, interested in the association side of Chinese life at home and abroad — where, it is necessary to remind oneself, it had initially to operate against a background of all-male life in one or more alien cultures and a different climate — this confusion, the variety across the spectrum and the wealth of material provided in the book are more fascinating than the criminal involvement of certain societies and their leaders at different times.* * This confusion was noted by others in touch with Chinese in Colonial Society at the time. In this connection, the following extract from a work by an English Presbyterian missionary in Singapore (Archibald Lamont writing under the pseudonym "John Coming Chinaman" in Bright Celestials, The Chinaman of Home and Abroad (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1894)) may be of interest. At pp. 183-184 he relates a conversation by his hero, a Chinese emigrant who is discussing a secret society with his employer, a Dutch planter in the East Indies. 'But although our Society has its dangerous and unworthy subsections and cliques, comprising men who use Society privileges for selfish and criminal ends,' said Tek Chiu, ‘our real aims are the highest and the best. And although there are bad men in our membership, the loyalty that we owe to the Society becomes all the greater. We who are free from crime act as a conscience to the blackguards, who, however bad they may be, will on account of the oath that binds them, do us no wrong. And on the other hand, we may do them much good in dissuading them from evil courses.' ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS 7 A shrine and two Chaozhou squatter temples on a hillside at Wong Chuk Hang on Hong Kong Island were removed during 1979 to permit road widening and the building of new housing estates. Temples, seemingly built to last forever, also disappear. A long destroyed and unidentified Cantonese traditional temple depicted in an old photograph in a published collection of photographs of old Hong Kong, may well be the temple which used to stand in Wong Nei Chong village approximately in the area of the present day King Kwong Street.13 The population explosion in Hong Kong has surrounded on all sides some of the originally relatively isolated temples by high-rise blocks of flats. Some recently opened temples have even been established in shop houses, in ordinary flats in the high-rise blocks, and in flats and huts in resettlement areas.14 Geomantically such accommodation may be adequate for their purpose, but for ideal conditions the exact orientation of all temple buildings should be determined by geomancy and the feng shui expert's calculations. Traditional temples are often on the best feng shui sites in the vicinity. According to Chinese laymen, temples should, as far as possible, face south. This south-facing orientation would mean that the main god or gods on the altar would also face the "geomantic South" which approximates to due south, and thus places the auspicious Yang on the east, and Yin on the west. However, even a casual examination of the temples in both Hong Kong and Macau shows that they can and do face in all directions. The two immediately obvious criteria in the siting of traditional temples, as can be seen from any large-scale map, are that either they back onto a hill (presumably having a powerful and beneficial geomantic influence), or face the sea. Many, of course, do both. Temples and monasteries are open from around 8 am to 8 pm, the exception being for those individuals whose need is great, and they may call at a monastery at any hour. Buddhist temples There are some one hundred and thirty-five Buddhist temples or monasteries in Hong Kong built or funded by individual monks or nuns, or by individual devotees or groups. In addition to Buddhist temples, there are organizations and services in Hong Kong which ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS 13 two temples are alike. The interior decoration and content of temples tend to reflect their keeper's foibles, whims and beliefs, and whilst some temple keepers offer special rituals, others are thoroughly disinterested and their temples often bare and ill-kept and bereft of any spark of life. Rural temples are considerably barer than their urban equivalents. In some, poverty is stark and all that can be seen is a well-nigh empty hall, with an ash container for incense sticks and perhaps a paper plaque or two, with possibly an image and, if it is at all possible, electric illumination even in fairly remote areas. At the other end of the scale some of the urban temples are cluttered with objects of every kind, with the cool courtyard being used as a social gathering place. Incongruities abound such as, not uncommonly, sweaty vests drying on hangers suspended from the front edge of the altar, and the blaring gramophone record of church bells which greeted several surprised Westerners when they entered a small temple in Kowloon. Many temples have private courtyards for use by the keeper and his family. Visitors touring the Far East frequently compare the spacious, light and clean Thai Buddhist temples with Chinese folk religion's dark and grimy temples. Many Chinese Buddhist monasteries and temples, not usually on the itinerary of tourists, are also bright and clean whereas the religious edifices in which folk religion deities dwell and which are visited by tourists in Hong Kong central and Kowloon, appear quite forbidding. Traditional folk religion temples consist of a single-storey building with windowless outside walls and one large dark, cavernous entrance, through which one can see oil lamps flickering in the gloom. Inside the temple the altars at the far end of the dimly lit halls may contain a single deity, a small group of deities or hosts upon hosts of them. Clouds of incense with its soft fragrance adds to the eerie dimness and in time blackens the gods. It also makes one's eyes water! One aspect obtrudes during certain seasons - open drains in the older traditional temples. The basic urban, village and coastal traditional temple is a one-roomed “box”. It can be a traditional building (Illustration 4) or a simple old cottage. It might even be an old two or three bedroomed two-storey house or, if the founder has been fortunate with his sponsors, it will be a purpose-built construction. The main doorway of the basic traditional temples at the front is normally the only entrance. It has large inward-opening doors ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 36 JIANN HSIEH migration patterns. First, in the early Ch'ing Dynasty, Hsin-an Hsien (*) (a district including Hong Kong and Kowloon) was deeply affected by a security policy of "chien-chieh" (†) (literally, "to clear up the border") and, therefore, became somewhat depopulated. Thereafter, during the later part of the Ch'ing Dynasty, many Hakka were encouraged by the government to migrate to the depopulated areas, which included the present day New Territories. They came with their families, possessions, and tools for reclaiming the land, and formed so-called single-surname villages, i.e., villages based on localized lineages, in the resettled area (Davis, 1962:331; Aijmer, 1967: passim).4 Second, the Hakka immigrated to Hong Kong or via Hong Kong to other Southeast Asian areas after 1842. Hong Kong especially, with its continuous urban expansion, attracted many Waichow Hakkas to work in the stonecutting and building trades (Hayes, 1977:151-158). Before the Second World War, migration was provoked mainly by population pressure, but sociopolitical disorder was another important factor (Lo, 1933:63). Evidence for this is to be found in Ch'en Ta's (1939:63) study of the relationship between land and population in Fuchien and Kwangtung; in Huang Chih-lien (1972:64) and in my research done in Singapore (Hsieh, 1977:42). As for the migration pattern at this time, although there were then relatively fewer political barriers than today to put a brake on migration, most migrants moved from rural places to urban areas, or even entered into a completely different socio-cultural setting in a foreign land; they were people who took risks. As a result, cases of migrants moving with their whole families or even with a whole lineage—as happened in the Ch'ing Dynasty—do not figure prominently. Anthropologists had designated this pattern of migration as "chain-immigration" (Hsieh, 1977:41). It was the most common pattern of overseas Chinese migration to South East Asia: people emigrated gradually from their native places, relying on intertwining kinship networks, each individual clinging to the others. However, the picture is quite different when we examine those who migrated to Hong Kong after 1949. This migration constitutes the third stage. Data from my interviews show that more than 95 per cent of the present leaders of the Waichow voluntary associations were born in China and immigrated to Hong Kong after that ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE 67 affairs clandestinely. This greatly encouraged them to develop autonomous merchant communities with what amounted to extra-territorial rights. The most important of these Chinese merchant communities at the end of the 15th century was in Malacca. Ships went to and from Malacca as far as India and China, trading in a wide variety of Indian and Chinese goods which were exchanged for the products of the Indonesian islands. Malacca, the "city made for merchandise", was essentially an entrepôt the very existence of which depended upon its carrying trade. It had an excellent and easily defensible harbour, protected on either side by the narrow straits between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula and strategically placed, as Pires put it, at the end of one monsoon and the beginning of others. When Afonso de Albuquerque captured Goa in 1510 he was quick to see that Malacca's unrivalled position as an emporium and as a centre for the dissemination of Islam in South East Asia made it essential that he gain control of it also. He could thus fulfil Portuguese obligations to the Holy See and acquire a base for their commercial activities in the archipelago, in particular the carrying trade in spices and other precious goods from Indonesia to Goa and Lisbon in which the Portuguese sought to gain a share, if not a monopoly. At the other end of the maritime area with which we are here concerned was another important trading centre. This was the Ryukyu Islands. The inhabitants of these islands, known to the Europeans as Lequeos or Loochoos, were actively engaged in the carrying trade between the northern and southern parts of the area from the 13th to the mid 16th century. The islanders carried to the south Chinese porcelain, silks and other textiles, metal goods and drugs, Japanese weapons and armour, lacquer and gold, all of which they exchanged for spices, aromatic woods, dyewoods and exotic beasts and birds from the Indonesian archipelago — goods that they could sell in China for several hundred times the buying price.2 Technically this trade with China remained an imperial monopoly and was carried out under the pretence of tribute. As Ming seapower dwindled and piracy in the China Seas accordingly grew, and as the Portuguese extended their trading activities in the years following their conquest of Malacca in 1511 into the Indonesian archipelago and beyond to the spice islands, to Timor and the Solor Islands, to Makassar and eventually to Macau—so the Ryukyu trade became increasingly circumscribed until it was con- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE 69 the imprisonment of Tomé Pires, whom they had sent as ambassador to the Emperor, and to the closure of Canton until 1530 to all foreign commerce. Henceforth the Portuguese had to trade clandestinely around the Bay of Amoy and at Ningpo in Fukien in the various goods, notably pepper and sandalwood, for which no amount of imperial prohibitions could lessen the demand in China. The commercial losses suffered by the Chinese as a result of their isolationism and the prohibition of their own navigation were gains for the Portuguese. As the American scholar George D. Winius has aptly put it, "in the Atlantic the Portuguese were explorers; in the Indian Ocean they were conquerors and in the Far East they were businessmen". Before long their trading activities in the China Sea had developed sufficiently to make inadequate the temporary shacks and tents in which they stored and displayed their wares in such places as Shang-ch'uan (Portuguese Sanchao or São João, where St. Francis Xavier died of fever in 1552), and they began to press the Chinese authorities for a trading centre of their own. In 1555 the Jesuit Father Belchior Nunes Barreto described Shang-ch'uan as a centre for trade with the Chinese where "silk, porcelain, camphor, copper, alum and China-wood are bartered for many kinds of merchandise from this land" (i.e. Japan).7 In the previous year Leonel de Sousa had secured permission for regular trade with China on payment of customs dues and in 1557 the Portuguese were allowed to establish themselves at Ao-men (Gate of the Bay), otherwise known as Amacon, Macau or the City of the Name of God in China.8 There was no written agreement with the Chinese for the establishment of Macau as a Portuguese enclave in China and, though the Portuguese continued to pay rent to the Chinese government till 1849, their sovereign rights in Macau were not fully conceded till 1887. But from the outset, Macau's extra-territoriality was admitted in practice because it suited both parties to the agreement - the Portuguese because it gave them a secure place in a highly profitable commercial network and the Chinese because, as later with Hong Kong, they could now enjoy most of the benefit of foreign trade without having to abandon their restrictions on foreigners entering or Chinese leaving China. A gate was erected across the isthmus joining Macau with the mainland - the Porta do Cêrco - upon which the Portuguese placed a grandiloquent inscription: "Dread our greatness and respect..." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE 71 would go to Macau, where this cargo would be traded for Chinese silk, porcelain, gold, musk, rouge, and rhubarb. The ship would stay in Macau for almost a year if it missed the southwest monsoon or the silk fairs in Canton, held in June and January, where the finer silks from central China were sold. On the next monsoon, between June and August, the Captain-major would set out for Japan. In Japan, successively at Bungo, Hizen, and Omura, and after 1571 at Nagasaki, the Chinese goods would be sold for Japanese silver, gold, copper (which was chiefly used for casting cannon in the famous foundry of Manuel Tavares Bocarro in Macau), lacquer, painted screens, swords, and other weapons, and slaves, including Korean prisoners of war. In November, the ship would catch the northeast monsoon back to Macau, where the silver acquired in Japan would be exchanged for gold, copper, ivory, pearls, and more Chinese silk. From Macau, the captain-major would return to Goa. The bulk of the cargo from Macau to Japan was at first raw silk, but woven silks and damasks were increasingly exported during the 17th century. There was generally sufficient silk left over after trading in Japan to supply India, Europe (via Goa), and Spanish America (via Manila).12 The Chinese demand for silver was, as we have seen, insatiable. A factor of the English East India Company wrote in 1636 that the Chinese, “will as soon part with their blood” as silver once they had possession of it.13 Japan possessed rich silver mines in Honshu, and the ratio of the value of silver to gold in Japan was about 12:1, approximately the same as in Europe. China, however, possessed very little silver and was willing to acquire it in exchange for gold at about 5.4:1.14 Thus, the Portuguese could trade spices for Chinese silks and porcelains, sell these to the Japanese, who prized them above their own products, together with some European goods such as firearms, in exchange for silver and, finally, exchange the silver in China for gold at a very favourable rate. The total ban imposed by China in 1557 on all direct trade with Japan, and the continuing raids by Japanese pirates on the China coast, enabled the Portuguese to gain a virtual monopoly of this Sino-Japanese trade, and the annual silver exports from Japan in the Great Ship from Amacon reached a value of about 1 million cruzados by the end of the 16th century. The restoration of strong central government in Japan under Oda Nobunaga, who occupied Kyoto in 1568, brought about a decrease in piracy and a consequent increase in the volume of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE 75 wealth thereby to act as bankers to the shippers. Profits were seldom less than 100 and often as much as 300 per cent. In return the galleons from Acapulco brought about 2 million silver pesos to the Philippines in an averagely good year.23 In 1580, with the death of the Cardinal King Henry of Portugal, the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united in the person of Philip II. In the Indies as well as in Europe, the Cortes of Tomar of 1581 guaranteed completely separate Portuguese and Spanish administrations and made direct trade between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions overseas illegal. Both in Manila and Mexico there were many who wished to engage in direct trade with China, but the Portuguese argued that this would ruin their commerce in the Far East and that Spain would also suffer, as all the silver from Nueva España would go to China and not to Spain or the Philippines.24 They also claimed it would mean the ruin of the Portuguese Jesuit missions in Japan, since, as a bishop in the Philippines remarked, "all these affairs are moved by but one wheel, namely Macau."25 Direct voyages were even made occasionally from Macau to Acapulco, though these caused great scandal in official circles. In 1589, D. João da Gama made the first crossing of the Pacific from Macau but on arrival in Acapulco was imprisoned and his goods impounded. Requests made by the leading citizens of Manila to make voyages to "Japan, Macau and all other kingdoms and posts, whether Portuguese or pagan" were not granted.26 The government in Madrid accepted that Japan lay within the Portuguese sphere of influence and that Macau had a monopoly of the Japan trade, while at the same time the Macaonese consistently thwarted all Manila's attempts to gain a trading base on the China coast which would have competed with theirs. The Cantonese officials did finally allow the Spanish to settle at a place they called El Pinal on the coast between Canton and Macau; its exact whereabouts are unknown. The Portuguese informed the Chinese that the Spaniards were "robbers and insurrectionaries who raise revolts in the kingdoms they enter" and then attempted to drive them out of El Pinal. Though this attack was staved off, El Pinal was nevertheless abandoned shortly afterwards.27 By about 1610 some direct, though intermittent, trade had developed between Nagasaki and Manila. Most of it was conducted in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 78 JOHN VILLIERS commercial acumen, of piety and profit. It demonstrates how in Macau as elsewhere in their far-flung empire, the Portuguese desire to win both converts to Christianity and fortunes by trade went hand in hand. The Macaonese received the news with "tears of joy in their eyes, congratulating each other on such a piece of good fortune, especially the families and relatives of the martyrs, all of whom dressed not in mourning but in gala clothes. They did not shut the windows of their houses from grief, but opened them wide, placing many lights in them, and sounding shawms and other musical instruments for many days, singing many tuneful songs as a sign of their joy. It is a most noteworthy thing that, as the welfare, maintenance, and almost the very existence of this city depends chiefly on the Japan trade, if the news that the embassy had failed in its purpose had come without that of this glorious triumph, the citizens of Macau would have been aghast and their spirit would have sunk to their shoes. With this glorious news, however, everyone rejoiced exceedingly, and nobody spoke sadly or showed any sorrow because the trade was not reopened. On the contrary, they all rejoiced in the comforting thought that they had their ambassadors in Heaven, hoping with good reason that through their intercession, God would cast his eyes on that commonweal to save and sustain it, either by restoring the Japan trade or by opening some other way for its preservation".34 FOOTNOTES 1 Tomé Pires Suma Oriental. Trans. and ed. Armando Cortesão. 2 vols. Hakluyt Society 2nd series. LXXXIX, 1944. 1. p. 286. 2 Pires, op cit. 1 pp. 128-134. João de Barros. Da Asia, dos feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento das terras e mares do Oriente. Ed. N. Pagliarini 3 vols. Lisbon, 1777-1778. III. 2. ch. 8. 3 O. H. K. Spate. The Spanish Lake. London, 1979, pp. 147-148. 4 On Sino-Japanese relations and European dealings with the Japanese in the 16th century see C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan. University of California Press and Cambridge University Press, 1951, G. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, London 1950, Idem, A History of Japan 1334-1615, London, 1961, J. Murdoch, A History of Japan II. 1542-1651, London 1949, M. Cooper S.J. (ed.), The Southern Barbarians. Tokyo, 1971, especially D. Pacheco SJ. The Europeans in Japan, 1543-1640, Knauth, Confrontación Transpacifica, el Japon y el Nuevo Mundo Hispánico. Mexico, 1972, and Kuichi Matsuda, The relations between Portugal and Japan. Lisbon, 1965. 73 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE 79 › See Spate, op. cit., p. 151, Tien-tse Chang, Sino-Portuguese trade from 1514-1644. Leyden, 1934, pp. 35-38 and 54-56 and Boxer, South China in the sixteenth century. Being the narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P., Fr. Martin de Rada, O.E.S.A, 1550-1575. Hakluyt Society. 2nd series. CVI, pp. xIV-XX. Bailey W. Diffie and George D. Winius. Foundations of the Portuguese empire 1415-1580. University of Minnesota Press and Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 380. ↑ Cartas que os Padres e Irmaos da Companhia de Jesus escreverao dos Reynos de Japao e China desde anno de 1549 até o de 1580. Evora, 1598. Quoted in Boxer. The Great Ship from Amacon. Annals of Macao and the old Japan trade 1555-1640. Lisbon, 1963, p. 22. * For accounts of the foundation and early history of Portuguese Macau see Duffie and Winius op. cit., pp. 381-392, Jose Maria Braga. The western pioneers and their discovery of Macao, Macao, 1949, pp. 102-139, A. Ljungstadt. An historical sketch of the Portuguese settlements in China. Boston, 1836, pp. 30-46, Boxer. Fidalgos in the Far East 1550-1770. Oxford University Press, 1968, pp. 12-29. "Chang, op cit., p. 98. Ljungstadt, op cit., p. 79. See Boxer. Portuguese society in the Tropics. The Municipal councils of Goa, Macao, Bahia and Luanda 1510-1800. University of Wisconsin Press, 1965, pp. 42-71. See also Montalto de Jesus. Historic Macao. Hong Kong, 1902, pp. 37-40. 12 On the Captains-major see Boxer Great Ship, pp. 8-11 and 179-241, and Idem. Christian century, p. 106. U.H. Boinford writing from Surat to the East India Company of London. 29 April 1636. Quoted in Boxer. Great Ship, p. 1. 14 Boxer, Christian century, pp. 426-427 and 464-465. 15 Quoted in Boxer, Christian century, p. 93. Padre Lourenço Mexia in his report for 1580 makes an almost identical comment. See Boxer, Great Ship, p. 40. 16 Viceregal provisao of 18 April 1584. 17 Boxer, Great Ship, p. 39. J See John Leddy Phelan. The Hispanization of the Philippines. Spanish aims and Filipino responses. University of Wisconsin Press, 1959, pp. 11-12, 42, 101-102 and P. Chaunu. Les Philippines et le Pacifique des Ibériques. Paris, 1960, pp. 43-46. 1 Spate, op cit., pp. 161-164. 20 For a detailed list of Chinese goods brought to Manila see Dr. Antonio de Morga. Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. Mexico, 1609. Trans. and ed. Hon. H. E. J. Stanley. Hakluyt Society. First series. XXXIX, 1868, pp. 337-339, 21 W. L. Schurz. The Manila galleon. New York, 1939, p. 27. 22 Spate, op cit., p. 162. 23 Boxer, Great Ship, p. 170. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 NOTES AND QUERIES 141 (1810), General Chin Mun-fu ***** suggested that the Fat Tong Mun Fort be abandoned and be rebuilt near the Kowloon guard-station ✯ ✯ A Viceroy Pak Ling T✯ ordered the Magistrate of the San On County 觚 ***◊ to carry out the suggestion. Chapter 175 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, Tao Kuang edition KKAR £&4-4*+ states, "The Kowloon Fort Aate lies 290 # E west of the Tai Pang Battalion 4. It was guarded by one pa-tsung and one ngai-wai with 48 guards." 5 After the Opium War, the Chinese were defeated, and Hong Kong was ceded to the British. In the 23rd year of the Tao Kuang Reign (1843) Ke Ying was Viceroy of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces **** and Wong Yan-tung & was Governor of the Liang Kwang-tung ✯✯✯. They proposed building the Kowloon Walled City. The work was completed in the 27th year of the Tao Kuang Reign (1847). * See Chapter 13 of the Kwangtung Tao Shuet, Tung Chih edition ŁATÁRUK+ which records. "The Kowloon Walled City was under the command of a fu-cheung ## or brigadier of the Naval Forces of the Tai Pang Battalion. Under him was an extra ngar-wai who guarded the Walled City with 150 men. There were 75 men under one tsin-tsune for lieutenant guarding the Kowloon Fort; and one ngai-wai-tsin-tsung ††or sub-lieutenant leading 15 men guarding the Kowloon Coastal Guard Station ALDA. * See Chapter 73 of the Kwangchow Fu Chi, Kuang Hsü edition ANA££*TE and Kwong Tung Hoi Tao Shuet, Kuang Hsü edition 張之洞廣東海圆說. * See my article 'The Old Cannons found in Hong Kong' in Volume 8, Part 2 of Kwangtung Man Hin REÆ : RKARXUŁ^ËZI * The Old Yamen is now occupied by the CNEC Grace Light School. TUEN MUN FROM CHINESE HISTORICAL RECORDS 2 Tuen Mun1 lies in the western part of the New Territories. The highest mountain in this area is the Tuen Mun Shan ₺F2 which reaches a height of 582.9 metres. To the east of the mountain is the Tuen Mun Bay, also called the Castle Peak Bay lying to its east, and the Lantau with Kau King Shan A Island lying to its south. Tuen Mun Bay is surrounded by mountains on three sides, thus forming a good typhoon shelter from the strong easterlies. It is also the waterway for entering the Chu Kiang i or Pearl River estuary of the Kwangtung Province. The Bay had been an important harbour for the Persians, the Arabs and the people from India, Indo-china and the East Indies. Their trading fleets had to anchor and gather at Tuen Mun before entering the Chu Kiang. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 146 NOTES AND QUERIES To the north of Chun Fa Lok on the mainland side are Kwai Chung 葵涌 and Chin Wan 淺灣.* Kap Shui Mun 急水門 lies to the south-west. South of the Kap Shui Mun is the Yeung Shun Chau 仰船洲? Judging from the position shown on the map, Chun Fa Lok's location is probably the same as that of Tsing Yi Island today. And from the present day maps of Hong Kong, we can find the name Chun Fa Lok on the east coast of Tsing Yi Island. I have twice visited the present Chun Fa Lok on Tsing Yi Island, once with Dr. James Hayes, and found that the huts there belong to one family, surnamed Chung. They came here a few decades ago, after the Second World War. Now, they are the second generation here. I was told that before the present reclamation there was a pier quite close to the village, and the seashore in front. Nothing about Chun Fa Lok itself is recorded in the local histories, but in the San On Yuen Chi, 1819 edition, it is recorded, 'In the 12th year of the Chia Ch'ing period of the Ming Dynasty, pirates called Hui Chat-kwai and Wan Chung-sin 溫宗卷 invaded Tung Kwun county. Ku Sing 顧晟, a military officer of Tsin-wu † rank, tried to capture them at Chun Fa Yeung ***, but was killed in the fight, Kong Leung-choi ‡, commander of the naval forces of that region, defeated them." Can Chun Fa Yeung be the waters near Chun Fa Lok of Tsing Yi Island today? This needs further proof. The names of Tsing Yi Mun 青衣門 and Tsing Yi Tam 青衣潭 appear in the local history books written in the later part of the Ch'ing Dynasty, but nothing about Chun Fa Lok is mentioned. Is Chun Fa Lok the old name of Tsing Yi? The local elders have been unable to state the connection, when consulted on this point, though confirming that Chun Fa Lok is an old place name. Hong Kong, April, 1980 ANTHONY K. K. SIU 1 Yuet Tai Kei NOTES was written by Kwok Fai in the Wan Li reign (1573-1620) of the Ming Dynasty. The map of the Kwangtung Coast is shown at the end of Chapter 32. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 158 NOTES AND QUERIES YET ANOTHER LIBRARY In his Korea, published by William Heinemann of London in 1904, Angus Hamilton has a good deal to say about John McLeavy Brown, C.M.G., LL.D., formerly Treasurer-General of that Kingdom and, when he wrote, Chief Commissioner of Customs, that is, of the Korean Customs. Hamilton writes (pp. 85-86): In his official life he represents a type of Englishman that is rapidly disappearing from our public services. His private life reflects the culture and the grace of an attractive personality. They say, in Seoul, that Mr. McLeavy Brown is more skilful as a diplomatist than as an administrator; and his brilliant conversational powers give some colour to the assertion. Upon arrival in Seoul, newcomers are apt to hear that "Brown is a walking encyclopædia." He speaks, reads and writes with equal facility French, German, Italian and Chinese. It will be remembered that he is in the service of the Korean Government, a sphere of utility and activity which demands fluency in yet another language. His library attests the breadth of his culture; it numbers some 7000 volumes, and fills the walls of the rooms and corridors of his house at Seoul from floor to ceiling. Boxes of new books arrive by every mail. When he reads them it is difficult to conjecture. At night, as one strolls from the British Legation to the Station Hotel, the lights in his study window may be seen burning brightly. He is believed to sit up with his books very often until dawn. It would be typical of this silent self-contained man if he found in the pleasures of his library the antidote to much which takes place in Seoul. McLeavy Brown appears in the contemporary Who's Who in the Far East 1906-7 published by the China Mail, Hong Kong, in June 1906, where he appears as 'ex-Head of Customs and Controller of Finance, Corea', having resigned in 1905 and gone on tour abroad in April following. He had been appointed a Student Interpreter in China in 1861 and was Acting Chinese Secretary in the British Legation at Peking 1871-72, resigning in 1872. He was later appointed a Commissioner in the Chinese Customs and appointed Commissioner-General of Customs, Corea. I am here less concerned with the man himself, despite his stature and later career which can be followed in the Dictionary of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 BOOK REVIEWS ANCESTRAL IMAGES, MORE ANCESTRAL IMAGES, ANCESTRAL IMAGES AGAIN Dr. Hugh Baker, Hong Kong, South China Morning Post Ltd., pp. viii, 162, viii, 164, viii, 186. The first volume in this series was reviewed in the Journal by Dr. Marjorie Topley a few years ago. Since then, two more volumes in this popular series have appeared and I have no doubt that they will be reprinted frequently to meet public demand. The three books' main asset is their easy style and readability. This is due to the wide observation of the anthropologist - Dr. Baker's own discipline - a good command of Chinese and Cantonese dialect - Dr. Baker is also a teacher of Chinese language and the added benefit of his wide reading in older books which provide a wider background to his stories. "I have spent hours trapped inside some of the books", he writes. In addition, there are excellent photographs from his own collection, most of which are reproduced in colour. The result is far and away the best and most enlightening introduction to the history and customs of the New Territories. The books show the reader what to look out for, and give him some idea of background and wider connections. To my mind each volume is better than the one before. In the third, in particular, Dr. Baker's familiarity with his subject leads to a great ease that, combined with his excellent sense of humour and sense of timing, provides some really entertaining reading. See pages 36-37, 65, 92, 122 (with photograph), 128, 150 to cite only a few examples. But let no one think that this means "light" content. I have found many illuminating things in these volumes, and enjoyed stories and situations from life which gave added point to things I have half understood for years. This arises largely from Dr. Baker's eighteen-month stay in Sheung Shui village in the New Territories in the mid 1960s, and his keen observation of the Hong Kong scene in later visits. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 211 Elsewhere, "smuggling" between Nationalist-held areas and Japanese-held areas was just as prevalent as that conducted across Mirs Bay, and it was not necessarily carried out without the knowledge or consent of the Japanese. See the political context of this particular form of trade discussed in Lloyd E. Eastman, "Facets of an ambivalent relationship: smuggling, puppets, and atrocities during the War, 1937-1945", in Akira Iriye ed., The Chinese and the Japanese, Essays in Political and Cultural Interactions (Princeton, 1980). Mr. Shing 10.7.81. 100 Mr. Chan T'in Po 12.5.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81. 101 Mr. Ip Wan 2.7.81. 102 Mr. Lei Yun Shau 14.11.80. 103 Mr. Tse Koon K'au 9.6.81. 104 Other members of the East River Guerrillas included Wong Koon Fong, Kong Shui, and Lo Fung; see ints. Mr. Cheung Hing 28.11.80, Mr. Chiu Lin Shing 11.5.81, Mr. Sham Kin K'eung 23.6.81, 1.7.81. For the background history of the East River Guerrillas see Feng Pai-chu, Tseng Sheng, et. al. Kuang-tung jen-min k'ang-Jih chan-cheng hui-i (Canton, 1951), and "The general conditions of the liberated areas behind enemy lines in South China (East River and Hainan Island)”, in K’ang-Jih chan-cheng shih-chi chieh-fang-ch'ü kai-k'uang (Peking, 1st ed. 1953, rep. 1981) pp. 123-132. Dr. (later Sir) Lindsay Ride contacted Ts'oi Kwok Leung immediately upon his escape from Hong Kong and after the British Army Aid Group was formed, Ts'oi co-operated with the B.A.A.G. to assist prisoners-of-war escaping from Hong Kong. See Edwin Ride, BAAG, Hong Kong Resistance, 1942-1945 (Hong Kong, 1981). 105 Mr. Cheung Hing 28.11.80. 100 Mr. Hoh Shang 24.6.81, Mr. Wong Ts'ing 23.6.81. 107 Mr. Lau 17.7.81, Mr. Chan Shing 21.11.80. 108 Mr. Lau Wan Hei 25.6.81, Mr. Sham Kin K'eung 23.6.81, Madam Chiu I Mooi 7.5.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81. 100 Mr. Cheung Hing 28.11.80, Mr. Wong Ts'ing 23.6.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81. 110 Mr. Chan Shing 21.11.80. 111 Mr. Chiu Lin Shing 11.5.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81, Mr. Lei Yun Shau 14.11.80. 119 Mr. Lok Kau Kei 26.6.81, Mr. Yau Koon K'au 27.7.81, Mr. Lei Yau 13.11.80, Mr. Tse Kw'an 16.11.80. 113 Mr. K.M.A. Barnett 13.2.82, Mr. Wan Yau 14.7.81. 114 Father Lau Wing Yiu 18.5.81. 115 Mr. Chung Poon 13.11.80, Mr. Sham Kin K’eung 23.6.81, 1.7.81. 116 Mr. Lei Shiu Yam 8.5.81, Mr. Lei Yau 13.11.80, Mr. Tse Kw'an 16.11.80. See also "The story of the American pilot Kerr's escape", in the Wen-hui pao 7.1.80, and Edwin Ride, op. cit. pp. 219-220. 117 Mr. Wan Ts'eung 31.11.80. 118 Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 8.5.81. 110 Mr. Chung P'oon 13.11.80, Mr. Lau Wan Hei and Mr. Kong Sai P'ing 25.6.81. 120 J. Barrow, "Annual Report of the D.C.N.T. 1947-48”, p. 2. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 58 HUIBERT SEIWART culture is by no means absolute. As can be observed in the above quoted text, the real contrast is not between the Chinese and the Western cultural traditions but between spiritual and materialistic approaches to life. To be sure, the spiritual culture is represented above all by the religious and moral traditions of China, while materialism is seen as the product of Western civilization. But at the same time it is admitted that in the West there also exist spiritual traditions, namely the two religions Christianity and Islam. In this view Western civilization is not objected to in its totality, only its materialism is rejected. The menace of the modern world results from the fact that the West has submitted to materialistic thinking and this materialism gains more and more ground in China as well. Since the Chinese religious traditions and the Western religions are equally opposed to this materialism, they are all fighting for the same cause, they are allies not adversaries. The recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions equal to the Chinese religious traditions can be observed at different intellectual levels. A rather superficial level is represented by some of the fu-luan cults. While the deities which manifest themselves by the writing-stick originally all belonged to the traditional Chinese pantheon, it does happen today that Western gods, above all Jesus and Mohammed, give revelations by fu-luan. This integration of Western deities into the fu-luan cults may be seen as symbolic of the lack of opposition to Christianity and Islam; it is no proof, however, of any deeper understanding of these foreign religions. Actually, as far as I could observe, the knowledge of the general fu-luan believer and even the mediums about Islam is virtually non-existent, though somewhat more is known about Christianity. When I asked a medium how Jesus and Mohammed could manifest themselves in a Chinese temple, I was simply answered that in heaven no boundaries between East and West exist and all gods live in the same heaven3. While the recognition of Christianity and Islam in the fu-luan cults is purely formal, allowing Jesus and Mohammed a status equal to the Chinese gods, the teachings of I-kuan Tao go one step further, trying to integrate the doctrines of these Western religions. To be sure, a manifestation of Jesus during an I-kuan Tao fu-luan session is recorded as early as the year 1939, and we might suppose that at that time their understanding of Christianity was much like that of today's fu-luan cults in Taiwan. But in recent years texts have been published which prove beyond doubt that one is earnestly attempting ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING 125 that is, the nomadic population, of Britain, do belong to a series of ethnic communities genealogically linked to the settlement of Romani immigrants in the sixteenth century, who now speak Romanes-linked creole dialects, as well as standard English." Several times in the early 1970s I was still able to converse with pupils in dialects that teachers had assured me were quite unknown to "their" Gypsies. Now it is much harder to catch teachers out this way. Work for Gypsies has become a small part of Britain's "Race Relations Industry". The word "Gypsy" has been ethnicized. The case with the fisherfolk of Hong Kong is exactly the reverse. Originally thought to be a distinct ethnic community, the thrust of modern scholarly research since the mid-1950s is that they are no such thing, that the vast majority are Cantonese, ethnically indistinguishable from the majority of Hong Kong inhabitants. The pre-War view, however, of the British administration in Hong Kong was that the boat people comprised two of the four ethnic groups native to Hong Kong. S.F. Balfour wrote: "This region has a country population consisting of four distinct communities known in Chinese as the Tanka, the Hokio, the Punti and the Hakka."18 By the "Punti" he meant the local Cantonese; by the 'Hakka' the descendants of late Han migrants from Northern China. Both the "Tanka" and the 'Hoklo' were boat-dwellers, fisherfolk. The Hoklo, a small minority of the boat people, mostly in the north-east of the New Territories, spoke a variety of Fukien dialect. The Tanka spoke Cantonese, but were believed to have another dialect of their own, to be in fact not Han Chinese at all, but, said Balfour, drawing on Chinese sources, "a branch of the Man tribe." In fact, it was generally believed that there existed in South China an aboriginally-descended aquatic people called the Tanka boat-people like the Hoklo. In Hong Kong they were fishermen, but in the Pearl River delta, and further north along inland waterways, they were transporters, salt-traders, prostitutes and followers of numerous other pariah occupations that could be based on a boat. Detailed studies in the 1930s by the new school of sociologists based at Lingnam University did not challenge this assumption.10 They were backed up by historian colleagues who traced back a recorded history of the Tan people to T'ang times. Then, Ho Ke-en concluded, Tan "was broadly equivalent to Man", a name covering several non-Han tribes in South China, but "in its narrow sense it designated one particular South China tribe". In the Sung period, he tells us, "the Tan people began to live on boats, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 134 TA ACTON "home village associations", which are formed by all members of particular villages in China who have migrated to Hong Kong. The clubs are the home village associations of two little fishing villages left behind not in distance, but in time, engulfed by technological change and urban sprawl. The villages still exist, surrounded by or transmuted into flats, but their former inhabitants are as much spiritual exiles as most other Hong Kong Chinese. That these clubs are not primarily economic in aim does not mean, however, that they cannot be used for economic advantage, of course. The members do help each other. Members of the clubs, for example, had managed to secure most of the life-guard jobs at the new Chai Wan public swimming pool. The fishermen's club on Lamma Island was founded by a business-man who had been active in trade with China since the 1930s, Jonathan Gray. It is similar to those of Chai Wan and Stanley, but has been prepared to be more militant and public in its pressure group activity to gain compensation for fishermen when their best fishing areas off Lamma were being 'reclaimed'. These three clubs, confined to a small area in the south of the territory, are the only instances that even approach an ethnic mobilisation of the Shui-sheung-yan, The True Jesus Church The True Jesus Church was founded in Peking in 1917, and is evidently part of the world-wide Pentecostal revival of the early years of this century. It is distinctive in that, as well as being charismatic, it is "Seventh Day" — that is, it holds the Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday, not Sunday. It also holds that believers' baptism should be carried out by total immersion with the face facing downwards, and should be followed by the washing of feet. Otherwise, it is fairly orthodox in its evangelicalism. It describes itself as "a revived apostolic church”, preaching "a full gospel of salvation based on the truth in the Bible, accompanied by signs and miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit". The membership of this church remained almost wholly Chinese as it spread to South-East Asia, apart from some missionary work in Nigeria. Its headquarters are now in Taiwan. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, a lady fish merchant belonging to the church came to Hong Kong from Malaya to buy seafood. She began to preach to her Shui-sheung-yan suppliers, and to pray for healing for their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m JUAN YUAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826 # 1 145 support the militia and educational institutions, and make all manners of presents and contributions to the authorities far and near". Although leadership of the foreign merchants resided in the Select Committee of the British East India Company, each foreign firm licensed to transact business in Canton, as well as each of its ships coming into the port, had to be secured by a hong merchant, who had to guarantee the good conduct of officers and crew of the ship while in port, and to assure the Chinese authorities that the ship was not carrying contraband. Under this system, the security merchant also served the important role as intermediary between Chinese officials and foreigners. # 2 Despite accusations by the Chia-ch'ing and the Tao-kuang Emperors that Juan Yuan was expending more time and energy on compiling books and founding academies than on affairs of state, a sentiment echoed by the twentieth-century historian John K. Fairbank, both British and Chinese historical records show that Juan Yuan had taken the conduct of foreign affairs at Canton very seriously. He adhered strictly to the protocol established under the Canton system, handling negotiations with foreigners through the hong merchants and the Select Committee, refusing "to establish direct communications between the local government and [the foreign community]". Although contemporary foreigners at Canton complained about Juan Yuan's “inflexibility”, they remembered him later with respect. "His conduct... was both firm and conciliatory, and his memorials were admired by foreigners for their polite and dignified style..." +6 # 3 Juan Yuan saw the British as a serious threat to Chinese security, and considered them the most difficult among foreigners at Canton to keep under control. This was consistent with the general attitude of the Ch'ing court that the British were pressuring for further expansion of trade with China beyond Canton, thus challenging traditional Chinese policy. In 1818, however, his proposal for a repressive policy towards the British, outlined in a secret memorial to the Chia-ch'ing Emperor, was not accepted by the Emperor, who exhorted moderation. The Emperor restrained Juan Yuan with this rescript: “Adopt a policy showing both strength and kindness simultaneously. Do not over-react under any circumstances and avoid rash actions.” "Appointed to Canton in the wake of the Amherst crisis, only four days after his arrival at Canton, Juan Yuan embarked on an inspection tour of the Pearl estuary outside Boca Tigris in the company of the provincial commander-in-chief of the Kwangtung marine force. They visited fortifications and gun batteries along the shores and on the islands, and paid a visit to Macau.7 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m JUAN YUAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826 149 ably developed. Only rarely, if ever, were foreign merchants involved in such a criminal case. Sailors from foreign vessels, both merchant ships and war ships, therefore, were the chief offenders in these instances. "The most undesirable consequences may result from the rash and improper conduct of seamen",21 the Chinese Repository was to pronounce more than a decade later. Since the 1810's, there had been a standing order from the British that "no boat's crew are to stop overnight at Canton".22 thus cutting down the number of such incidents considerably. A spokesman for the British East India Company at Canton had implied that by bribing Chinese officials at the scene, matters could be silenced at the onset, but, once higher authorities in Canton became aware of the situation, there would be serious consequences, especially when loss of life was involved.23 Perhaps this explains why only a handful of such cases were recorded in history. When a case involving foreigners did occur, the Governor-General, the Governor of Kwangtung, the security merchant, the supercargo (headman) of the particular country whose national had committed the crime, and the Select Committee, as spokesmen for the foreign community, would all become embroiled in the crisis. Before the Treaty of Nanking (1842) established the practice of extraterritoriality in China, and in the absence of any consular agreement, the Chinese policy had been that foreigners who committed crimes in China or Chinese waters were to be handed over to Chinese authorities and punished in accordance with the Chinese concept of law and justice. This would have been a universally accepted policy except for the fact that the Chinese concept of justice was quite alien, and therefore, absolutely unacceptable to those of the Anglo-American tradition. The traditional Chinese doctrine of responsibility made the governor-general in the province answerable to the Emperor for all activities, including crimes within his jurisdiction. There was also the doctrine of collective responsibility upon which the pao-chia system was based. If the lawbreaker had managed to evade justice before he could be apprehended, another person of his pao-chia unit could take the punishment in his place. Although it is doubtful that temporary foreign residents in their factories at Canton or on their vessels moored offshore had been incorporated into a pao-chia system of their own, the doctrine of collective responsibility would still apply. On the other hand, in theory at least, in the tradition of Anglo-American law and justice, punishment could be meted out only to the actual offender in person, and only after his guilt had been established by a jury of his peers in open trial at a court of law. These two systems of justice clashed at Canton. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 164 WEI PEH-T'I Governor-General of Yunnan and Kweichow. By this time he was over sixty, a venerated official who had served three reigns. He was an author and scholar of distinction. He had a solid reputation abroad as a pragmatic and honest official. His family was large and despite the loss of a young daughter under tragic circumstances in 1823, by his own assessment he was pleased with his Canton years. The grain storage was full. Fortifications and new examination facilities were constructed. Other public buildings and historical sites were restored, and, of course, the famous Hsueh-hai-t'ang Academy was a reality. The seas were free of foreign war vessels, and at least on the surface, and for the time being, foreign traders and hong merchants were under control. It was not until more than a dozen years later that British commercial interests were able to garner support from their government to challenge the Canton system by force. 1 NOTES J. K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 55. 2 The Chia-ch'ing Emperor's accusations were communicated to Juan Yuan through court letters. See, for instance, Kung-chung-tang – CC 019639 (Palace Memorials, hereafter referred to as KCT). Similar charges were levied against Juan Yuan by the Tao-kuang Emperor in KCT – TK 000013. Both emperors were angry at Juan Yüan because they felt that he was not doing enough to suppress secret society activities in the provinces under his jurisdiction. J. K. Fairbank, op. cit. p. 20; on the other hand, cited Juan Yüan as an example of the "intellectual unpreparedness for Western contact" on the part of Chinese officials of the early nineteenth century. May, 1818. H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635–1834, (Taipei reprint edition), III, 316. Select Committee Reports on the East India Company and Trade with China 1821-321, Parliamentary Papers, (Irish University Press edition), 36:540. 5 Chinese Repository, II: 71–72 (June, 1835). 7 Draft Biography, Palace Museum No. 1266(1) Lei-t'ang an-chu ti-tzu chi, 5:106-11 (Chronological account of Juan Yuan's life by his students) hereafter referred as Ti-tzu chi. 8 Hsin-hui hsien-chih (Local gazetteer of Hsin-hui district) 12:16. This is a rather liberal translation. 10 9 Yen-ching shih-chi, (1820) compiled by Juan Yüan, II:7:24-25b. I am grateful to Father Benjamin Videira Pires of Macau, who took me to visit the fort in December 1979, just as the fort was being converted into a tourist hotel. Father Videira is the author of “As Fortalezas de Cidada, em 1741”, in Comunidade, a newspaper published in Macau. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 166 39 40 Ibid., IV, 26. WEI PEH-T'I Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p. 16. 41 WCT - TK 1/11. Copy of memorial from Juan Yuan, Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, dated TK 1/11/19 (1821/12/31). 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. **Ti-tzu chi, 5:23b. 46 Ibid. Imperial rescript to memorial from Juan Yuan. Figures compiled at Canton, November, 1828. "Report from Committee on China Trade, East India Company", Parliamentary Papers. 30:173. 47 Ibid. 48 Appendix to report from the Select Committee on China Trade, VII, Paragraph 5174. 49 Testimony of William Jardine to Committee on China Trade, Parliamentary Papers 30:514. 60 Gerald S. Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978). The quotations are taken from p. 17 and n.28. 51 Morse, Chronicles, IV, 44 and 93. There is no indication whether opium had been clandestinely removed from these ships. 52 This date was given in Juan Yuan's memorial in Wai-chiao shih-liao, Tao-kuang 1:39. The villagers were killed on the next day, 15 December. English sources did not indicate that the incident took place on two successive days, Morse, Chronicles, IV, 28. 53 Morse, Chronicles, IV, 28. 54 Ibid., IV, 29. 55 A brother of the victim, Huang I-ming, went to Peking to petition the Emperor charging inaction on the part of the local officials. He also claimed that the British had stolen tens of thousands of taels of silver from the house of the deceased. The Emperor referred the case to Juan Yuan, who decided against the petitioner, asking, "How could a peasant who made his living by growing potatoes on Lintin Island accumulate so much wealth?" Wai-chiao shih-liao, Tao-kuang 1:39b. 56 Wai-chiao shih-liao, Tao-kuang, 1:11b. 57 Ibid., 1:19. 59 Ibid., 1:19b. 60 Ti-tzu chi, 5:10b-11. 61 Ti-tzu chi 5:26. 62 Wai-chiao shih-liao, Tao-kuang 1:15 a-b. 63 1 2 46 Ibid., 1:32, memorial from Juan Yuan, TK 2/9/20 (1822/11/3). Ibid., 1:36 a-b. Court letter to Juan Yuan, TK 2/11/3 (1822/12/25). Ibid., 1:37. Imperial edict, TK 2/12/12 (1823/1/23). Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p Chinese University's History Department and editor of our 1981 Journal, spoke on Saikung district during World War II: the district being a regular escape route for prisoners of war from Kowloon. After a summer break we began again in October with Professor Shih Hsio-yen, Head of Department of Fine Arts at Hong Kong University, talking on recent Chinese archeological finds and how the Chinese on the mainland look at their origins. In December Dr. James Hayes led a tour of the New Territories, which included Sam Tung Uk village built in the eighteenth century and scheduled as a museum and cultural centre, and Tsuen Wan, with a vegetarian lunch at the Yuen Yuen Hok Yuen, Tsuen Wan, a temple complex belonging to a Chinese syncretic religious group. Also in December, Professor Rulan Chao Pian, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and of Music at Harvard, and currently visiting Professor of Music at the Chinese University, spoke on traditional forms of dance narrative in North China. Her talk was illustrated with video tape material. Finally, in January Dr. Graham Johnson, Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of British Columbia, talked on the Chinese in Canada, discussing their history from the early rural migrants who worked in the goldfields and on the railway, to the more sophisticated urban migrants going to Canada after 1967, many from Hong Kong. There was very poor response to the two overseas tours offered through, or by, the Society during the year. The tour to India had to be cancelled through lack of sufficient numbers, and the tour of the Pearl River Delta consisted of six persons only, including the leader, Dr. Michael Lau, to whom I express my thanks. This year about seven members will be joining a tour arranged by Dr. Brian Shaw for late March-early April. The group will witness the annual sacred masked dance festival at Paro in Bhutan and also visit other places in Bhutan, and Darjeeling and Kalimpong. Other tours may be arranged by Dr. Shaw during the coming year, and Mrs. Craig will also be offering tours to members, who will be kept informed. As the year progressed we found it increasingly difficult to obtain bookings at the Volunteer Officers' Mess due to heavy ix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 55 Municipality (after 1927). If the Council took measures which were not taken in the other municipalities it was easy for those affected who did not want to adhere to the new rules, simply to move to one of the other municipalities. Ideally any measures would have to be taken by all municipalities in cooperation, but this was often objected to by the Chinese authorities who to an ever increasing degree were opposed to the usurpation — as they saw it — of new rights by the Municipal Council of the Settlement. 3. A third important reason was the very restricted financial basis upon which the Settlement government operated. The only taxes that, according to the Land Regulations, could be levied were a land tax, a house tax, wharfage dues and licence fees. And though the rates of these taxes could be, and were, raised3 and though the increase in the value of property and trade saw to it that municipal revenues steadily grew (from about Taels 25,000 in 1860 to about Taels 1,600,000 in 1930) nevertheless this was not enough to pay for any extensive schemes of social welfare. But even with the small amounts available there were Chinese complaints that too much of the money benefited foreigners principally and that too few dollars were spent on the much larger Chinese population. A wealth or income tax was considered out of the question as for this the Land Regulations would have had to be changed and too many vested interests would have been attacked. Under the circumstances, the Settlement authorities could not and would not introduce far-reaching changes in the administration of social welfare. In this they did not materially differ from their colleagues in the colonies. Defects We may well ask what became of the high-sounding principles which were uttered in the early days of the Settlement when "consensus and consent" were thought to be the foundations of the political establishment in the Far East. If ever they were true in practice, even in the beginning, later government tended to develop into an oligarchy. Despite 54 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p # THE STRIKE AND RIOT OF 1884 # A HONG KONG PERSPECTIVE ELIZABETH SINN* In the autumn of 1884, Chinese dock workers in Hong Kong staged a strike against French ships. The strike spread, bringing trade to a standstill and creating much animosity. After a few days, a riot broke out in the Central and Western districts. This caused great excitement; the military was called out, the fleet was put on the alert, and the government passed new legislation for preserving the peace. The local press became almost hysterical. It became a diplomatic issue between Peking and London, and questions about it were raised in the House of Commons. Yet, despite the uproar these events created, relatively few historians, including historians of Hong Kong, have paid attention to them. This paper is an attempt to reconstruct this dramatic episode, and to examine its significance. In 1884, the war between China and France over Annam dominated the horizon of East and Southeast Asia. The year before, the Chinese had despatched regular troops quietly into Tongking. As negotiations broke off, the Chinese court feared a French attack on China itself, and important officials were sent south to consolidate the front. P'eng Yu-lin,** a president of the Board of War was appointed Commissioner for the Coastal Defence of Kwangtung, and in the following year, 1884, the conspicuously pro-war Chang Chih-tung became Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. Officials and people both of Canton and the surrounding region responded excitedly to every move the French made. On 5th August, 1884, French warships bombarded Keelung, * Miss Sinn is a Ph.D. candidate of the University of Hong Kong, currently working as Resources Officer in the History Department of that University. ** All Chinese names/words will be Romanized according to the Wade-Giles system except where there are other transliterated forms in common usage. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 68 ELIZABETH SINN having been supplied by a French firm to the order of the French admiral. The animals remained at the Praya the whole morning as no cargo boats could be hired to ship them out to the French man-of-war. Eventually the crew had to man a boat themselves to take the cattle on board.11 These events convinced Acting Governor Marsh that the proclamation of the Canton authorities was achieving its intended effects. Worried that more inflammatory proclamations would be published and stir the people to more extreme actions, he decided to prosecute the four Chinese newspapers on a charge of Inciting to Murder.12 In the meantime, the Chinese refusal to work for the French had other repercussions. On the 26th, 3 Chinese cargo boats were charged with unlawfully refusing to accept employment, i.e. to transport the bullocks. The charges were brought by Mr. Vincenot, the French agent provisioning the man-of-war. The mistresses of these boats were fined $5 each.13 The following day, eleven cargo boats were also fined for refusing to work for the French; this time, it was for refusing to unload a steamer of the French Messageries Maritimes Company. They were also fined.14 On the 30th, an all-out strike of boats took place. They were no longer boycotting just the French. Almost every boat, those engaged in loading and discharging cargoes as well as passenger boats, rowed off to the Chinese side of the harbour. Boats which continued to work were stoned from the Praya, but when the police arrived, no trouble developed. In the course of the day, the strike became more widespread, and even employees on boats owned by hongs joined it.15 No arrests were made that day, and the China Mail reported that the boating community was to meet at Yaumati to decide on future action. The strike continued into the next day, the 1st of October. Only a few boats chartered at East Point were still operating.16 The strike spread on 1st October from the Praya and the boats to many other areas. At the Hong Kong Hotel, for inst- Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 90 ELIZABETH SINN the Canton Government. It responded to Canton's call to strike and then terminated it when it had gone too far because each, in its judgement, was the appropriate thing to do at the time. In my opinion, it did what it believed to be right, and commensurate with the Committee's status as Chinese gentry. And the 1884 episode, we must admit in all fairness, demonstrated its effectiveness. No doubt individual members had personal ambitions and motives, and in a sociological sense, these were what made the Tung Wah Hospital tick. What we must not overlook however, are the ideals and nobler feelings men had, and in 1884, in particular, I think these played an important part. It is too easy to be cynical; perhaps it is time to review the past with more sympathy. The ease with which the Tung Wah and other Chinese leaders could rally cargo boatmen and coolies to strike stemmed not only from their prestige and influence but also from a common national feeling. Merchants and coolies alike suffered losses from the strike, but nationalism and a sense of moral righteousness against the fines made them accept these losses and join in common action. It is perhaps this ability on the part of the Tung Wah to identify with local Chinese of various classes through an incipient nationalism that made it so formidable in 19th Century Hong Kong. And one may speculate that the later decline of the Tung Wah Hospital as a political force was partially due to the rise of a newer, more complex and more narrow brand of nationalism in the 1920s which emphasized class lines and class struggles and thus made it more difficult for any single organisation to build on the joint allegiance of different social groups. But what the average European contemporary saw was not the social, political and psychological vacuum that the Tung Wah Hospital could fill. He saw only dark conspiracies growing out of the ambition of its Committee members to usurp power from the Administration. European newspaper editors and correspondents alike lost no opportunity during the episode to vilify the Chinese leaders. European opinion reflected envy and hostility at every turn, envy for Chinese who rose to power and influence, and hostility against those who dared to demand a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p TWO CHINESE DOMESTIC MURDERS H. J. LETHBRIDGE* Boswell. "You 'Johnson called the East-Indians barbarians. will except the Chinese, Sir?" Johnson. "No, Sir". Boswell, "Have they not arts?" Johnson. "They have pottery". Boswell. "What do you say to the written characters of their language?". Johnson. "Sir, they have not an alphabet, They have not been able to form what all other nations have formed". Boswell's Life of Johnson 1 George Orwell wrote a celebrated short essay on murder in which he argued that the great classic English murders were mostly domestic and concerned ordinary people. He went on to argue that the violence of external events, such as World War II, had made conventional murder seem unimportant.2 Orwell's essay was published in 1946. A latter-day criminologist is likely to argue that the abolition of the death penalty in 1965 has 'demeaned' murder as a fine art. Before 1965, a murder trial was often an awesome contest - the issue was a matter of life and death. Today a convicted murderer in Britain, or Hong Kong, is likely to experience, on the average, between 7 to 10 years of incarceration. The two cases discussed below, in which both principals were Chinese, raise a number of interesting legal and sociological questions, together with problems of cultural 'confusion'. In each case, the judge and jury had great difficulties in interpreting Chinese behaviour and in understanding the motivation for the crime. Lock Ah Tam: the man who ran ‘amok'? Lock Ah Tam was born in 1872 in Canton, the capital city of Kwangtung province. Kwangtung was then one of the major areas for Chinese emigration and a territory from which over half of China's seamen hailed. As a young man, he went to sea as a ship's steward. In 1895 he settled in Liverpool and stayed there for the rest of his life, marrying a Welsh girl. Before 1914, *Prof. Lethbridge is Professor of Sociology, University of Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 125 unfortunately, we shall never know. We could, perhaps, tentatively add a seventh motive for murder to Tennyson Jesse's list: murder born of pride or 'face', murder from shame,21 22 An earlier Chinese murder had not baffled an English judge and jury; this was a 'murder for profit', to use William Bolitho's phrase. At the Worcester Assizes in 1919, a Chinese Birmingham factory worker, Sung Djang Djing, was accused of murdering a fellow countryman, Zec Ming Wu, on June 23, 1919, in Warley Park on the Warwickshire-Worcestershire border. The victim's head had been savagely battered. Sung was accused of luring Zee to the woods, murdering him, and then stealing his Post Office Savings Book, which had a £240 credit. Sung admitted stealing the Savings Book found in his possession but denied murder, accusing another Chinese of the crime. The evidence was too strong; the motive too obvious. Sung was hanged in Worcester Prison (where, curiously, he was converted to Anglicanism in the weeks before execution). Sung was one of a number of Chinese attracted to the Midlands by the prospect of high wages during the war. It is not clear whether he was, like Lock, a former seaman, or had been a member of the Chinese Labour Corps, recruited in China, especially Weihaiwei, to work behind the lines on the Western Front, or in Britain's war industries. The problem of special ‘Oriental motivation' did not arise in this trial; it was a commonplace murder.2 The Chinese in Britain In 1925 there were three main areas of Chinese settlement in Britain: Liverpool, Cardiff, and Limehouse in the East End of London. These communities had been formed primarily by Chinese seamen who had either jumped ship or been paid off in England, from the 1850s onwards; for once shipping routes were opened up between Britain and the Far East, the demand for Chinese seamen steadily grew, especially as they, like Lascars, were then a source of cheap maritime labour. Many of those who settled in Britain started small businesses, especially laundries (as did their compatriots in Canada, Australia and the United States). It should be emphasised, though, that the Chinese restaurant business did not expand markedly, or flourish, until ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 139 10 The Homicide Act of 1957 extended to the English courts the Scottish doctrine of Diminished Responsibility, S. 2 of the Homicide Act, 1957, reads that the accused can be found guilty not of murder but manslaughter, if he was suffering from such abnormality of the mind (whether arising from a condition of arrested or retarded development of mind or any inherent causes or induced by disease or injury) as substantially impaired his mental responsibility for his acts and omissions in doing or being a party to the killing'. 11 Marjoribanks, op cit, 388. The police stated in evidence that Lock was drinking one-and-a-half to two bottles of whisky a day. 12 Op cit, 389. **There is an excellent discussion of 'running amok' in Isabella Bird, The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither (London: John Murray, 1883) 355-357.** **Sir Ellis Griffith (1896-1934). Called to the Bar, 1925.** **Sir Frank MacKinnon (1871-1946), afterwards Lord Justice MacKinnon, 1937, MacKinnon had little or no experience of the criminal courts before his appointment to the Bench.** **Sir Travers Humphreys, A Book of Trials (London: Heinemann, 1953) 162.** 17 F. Tennyson Jesse, Murder and Its Motives (London: Harrap, 1924) 11. 1 In R.D. Laing and A. Esterton, Sanity, Madness and the Family (London: Tavistock, 1964), the authors attempt to discover meaning in madness. They argue that schizophrenia, for example, is not something that comes out of the blue but is a product of family interaction: the sources of schizophrenia are to be found in the family environment, family life. 10 See, for example, the tragic 1938 case of Sidney Paul in E. Spencer Shew, A Second Companion to Murder (London: Cassell, 1961) 168-170. Paul killed his wife because he had lately lost his job. This he had concealed from his wife to save her anxiety, and day after day he had left home as if to go to work as a salesman in the city. At last, in desperation, he killed his wife to save her from destitution. * This celebrated and unique series was founded in 1905 by Harry Hodge (1872-1947), the Glasgow Publisher. #1 Homicide and suicide are both forms of aggression: one turned outside, the other inside. Loss of standing or position, related to feelings of shame or injured pride often motivate suicide. **See William Bolitho, Murder for Profit (London: Jonathan Cape, 1926).** 29 See The Times for September 8, October 23, and December 4, 1919. Also E. Spencer Shew, A Second Companion to Murder. (London: Cassell, 1961) 221. "A good account of this development, especially of Man-owned restaurants, is given in James L. Watson, Emigration and the Chinese Lineage: The Mans in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1975). 20 Montagu Williams, Q.C., Round London: Down East and Up West (London: Macmillan, 1893) 76-78. It is possible that Williams mistook a party of Malays or Lascars for Chinese. It is also not likely that a group of Chinese would charge into the street shouting "Amok!". Williams' account is retrospective and written many years after the events were witnessed by him. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p # SAI KUNG, THE MAKING OF THE DISTRICT AND ITS EXPERIENCE DURING # WORLD WAR II ## DAVID FAURE'*' ## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article records and analyses the findings of a research project into the oral sources available for the history of Sai Kung, conducted by members of the Oral History Project Team of the Centre for East Asian Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Thanks are due to many people for the successful completion of this project. Mr. Colin Bosher, former District Officer, Sai Kung, suggested it in the first place, and Mr. S.J. Chan, the present District Officer, gave his advice and encouragement most generously. Professor Chen Ching-ho, former Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, took a most understanding attitude towards research on local history, and his kindness made possible not only this project, but also several other projects concerning the history of the New Territories. At every stage, the staff of the Sai Kung District Office and members of the Sai Kung Rural Committee helped in many and varied ways. The kindness of Miss Carrie Tsang, Miss Joyce Nip, Mr. Lei Yun Shou, J.P., Mr. Chung P'oon, Chairman, Sai Kung Rural Committee, and Mr. William Wan, must be especially acknowledged. Between November 1980 and August 1981 many residents of Sai Kung and neighbouring districts kindly agreed to be interviewed by the research team and their student assistants. For the record, their names and the dates of these interviews are appended to this report. As always, Dr. James Hayes and Dr. Patrick Hase offered kind and sound advice, and made available their own research notes for consultation. Father Sergio Ticozzi provided information on the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Sai Kung. Mr. K.M.A. Barnett generously gave us his time to discuss numerous issues that arose in the interviews. Thanks are also due to the Sai Kung Rural Committee and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for providing financial support for this project, and to Mr. Deacon Chiu, whose generous donation to the University made its grant possible. The research team included David Faure (co-ordinator), Lai-hung Kwan, Bernard H.K. Luk, Yue-him Tam, and Barbara E. Ward. At different times, the following students at the Chinese University assisted: Cheng Shui Kwan, Kwok Po Nei, Lam Loi, Lau Kwan Yau, Lee Lai Mui, Lui Shuk Yee, Ngo Yin Ling, Tang Chan Yiu, Tsui Lai Yi, and Wong Yue Leung. Miss Cheng Shui Kwan and Miss Lee Lai Mui worked on this project from the start to its completion, and their contribution to the project is immense. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 227 was commendable that the A.D.C. had departed from farce and burlesque, its venture into something more serious was not altogether successful; but the fault may have been not in the type of drama but in the type of characters of the particular play. It was the opinion of the reviewer that "In selecting plays they should have no out-of-the-way characters. A success at home may not be suited to Amateurs, such as these in Hong Kong. Some dramas are written for special actors". He suggested that "perhaps the amateurs could give a selection, perhaps one or two scenes, or an act from a standard play, for example, the scene between Wolsey and Cromwell in Henry VIII." This had been done by the Hon. Mr. York at the inauguration of the City Hall's Theatre Royal in 1869 during the visit of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh. The suggestion was not taken up, and the Company attempted another serious piece, the popular play "The Caste". In this, the amateurs had to compete against the standard set by performances given a short time before by two different travelling professional companies in which actresses played the female parts. The comparison was not kind to the amateurs. As usual, the reviewer was reluctant to criticize, but he did venture to say that the performance might tend to lessen subscriptions for the next season. He thought too much had been spent on the costumes, when, in fact, in his view, "people go to see acting, not wardrobe". The A.D.C. returned to something lighter, and in 1876 put on a very successful burlesque, "The Field of the Cloth of Gold," by William Brough. The opening scene in the London production had been the harbour of Calais; in Hong Kong, it was the Praya between City Hall and the Bath House of the Victoria Recreation Club. The field of the cloth of gold was East Point. Though it was agreed that there was not much scope for dramatic talent in the piece, it was pronounced "an undoubted success, and far surpasses, in splendour of the get-up, number of performers, and brilliancy of the scenes, anything hitherto placed on the boards of this colony". Unfortunately, its lavishness had to be paid for, and it took several seasons before the A.D.C. had a balance. One of the perennial favourites was the burlesque "Aladdin the Wonderful Scamp". It was given in 1863, 1867, 1875 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 232 CARL T. SMITH The opportunity to give a world premiere came about in this fashion. Early in the year Mr. Sinclair directed students at the University of Hong Kong in two Dunsany plays. They did not attract much public attention, but Sinclair sent photographs of the production along with some newspaper notices to Lord Dunsany. As a result, he wrote a play about the Gold Isles and sent the manuscript to Mr. Sinclair with the intention that it also should be performed by the students. Unfortunately, they were not able to do so, so Sinclair, as one of the popular A.D.C. directors, decided to have a Dunsany evening and include "The Compromise of the King of the Golden Isles". It was full of colour, filled with pomp and ceremony. It is interesting to note that the late Noel Croucher served as a bodyguard in one of the crowd scenes and that Sinclair had consulted Sir Robert Kotewall and Mr. Fung Yuk-shum to get authenticity for the Chinese costumes and other details. In 1926 the A.D.C. performed Dunsany's most successful play "If." His plays have been described as "decorative drama". Many of them had settings in the Near and Far East. W. Sinclair was both an innovator and a man of cosmopolitan tastes. During the years he produced plays for the A.D.C., the repertoire ranged from Shakespeare to the future and from fantasy to realism. The Hong Kong Mummers presented "Twelfth Night" in 1913. It was directed by Mr. Siegler, a name assumed by Mr. Sinclair for some of his early productions in Hong Kong. He later abandoned this pseudonym. "Twelfth Night" was billed as the first amateur production of Shakespeare in the Far East. This claim was corrected by the Tokyo A.D.C., which had presented "As You Like It" in 1906, "Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1911, and "The Merchant of Venice" in 1912. The Hong Kong A.D.C. had assisted Miss Janet Waldorf and her small company of professionals in "As You Like It" in 1899. It was scheduled for an outdoor performance on the Parade Ground, but this was rained out and it was held in the Theatre Royal. Weather did permit a second performance on the Parade Ground. In 1922, the A.D.C. under Sinclair produced "The Tempest". "The Blue Bird" by Maeterlinck was given in 1914. It was ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 246 1884/85 1885/86 CARL T. SMITH 16 Dec. 1884 "Still Waters Run Deep" comedy (T. Taylor, 1855) given in 1862, 1878. 17 Dec. 1885 "Chiselling" farce (J. J. Dilley and J. Albery, 1870) "Nine Points of the Law" (T. Taylor, 1859) in 1878. 18 Feb. 1886 — "The Overland Route" (T. Taylor, 1860) second performance of season. 1886/87 9 Mar. 1886 "Weak Woman" (H. J. Byron, 1875) benefit with Canton Amateurs for burned Canton Theatre. 7 Apr. 1886 — "Heads or Tails" (J. Palgrave Simpson, 1854) "Chiselling" farce (Dilley and Albery, 1870) given in 1885, 18 Nov. 1886 "A Widow's Hunt, or Everybody's Friend" comedy (J. Sterling Coyne, 1859) 30 Dec. 1886 — "Cups and Saucers" musical sketch (G. Grossmith 1878) "Our Wife" comedietta (J. M. Morton, 1850) 13 Apr. 1887 — "A Comical Countess" (Wm. Brough, 1854) "Our Soldiers" comedy (H. J. Byron, 1873) 1887/88 8 Nov. 1887 "Withered Leaves" comedietta (J. W. Broughton, 1875) "The First Night" comedy (J. M. Maddox, 1853) "The Rivals" (Sheridan, 1775) 17 Jan. 1888 1888/89 1889/90 1890/91 apparently no production this season. 26 Dec. 1889 last performance Mar. 1890 - 1 Christmas Pantomime: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" Grand 26 Dec. 1890 --- "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" pantomime 30 Mar. 1891 - "The Two Roses" (J. Albery, 1870) 1891/92 24 July 1891 1864) "David Garrick" comedy (T. Robertson, 26 Dec. 1891, 23 Jan., 20 Feb. 1892- Christmas Pantomime: "Beauty and the Beast" 27 Feb., 1 Mar, 1892 21, 30 Apr. 1892 + "Betsy" (F. C. Burnand, 1879) "Turned Up" (or "Too Much Married") comedy, (M. Melford, 1886) Page 268 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 251 1932/33 1933/34 21 Feb. 1933 "Nine to Six" all female cast (Aimee and Philip Stuart, 1930) performance at Kings Theatre. — 11, 12, 13, 14 Apr. 1934 "The First Mrs. Fraser" (St. John Ervine, 1929) performance at China Fleet Club to 1941. 17, 20, 21, 23, 24 Feb. 1934 Armstrong) 1934/35 J 5, 6, 7, 8 Dec. 1934 1935/36 venue "Ten Minute Alibi” (Antony Mackenzie) "Fresh Fields" (Ivor Novello) 18, 19, 20, 21 Dec. 1935 1936/37 4, 5, 6, 7 Nov, 1936 — 1937/38 7 "Musical Chairs" (Ronald Rattigan) "Night Must Fall" (Emlyn Williams) 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Dec. 1937 - "Outward Bound" (Sutton Vane) 23, 25, 26, 27 Feb. 1938 — "French Without Tears" (Terrence) 1938/39 8, 9, 10 Mar. 1939 "The Shining Hour" (Keith Winter) 1939/40 T 22, 23, 24 Feb. 1940 "The Circle" (Somerset Maugham) (Note: all notices are taken from the English newspapers in Hong Kong, in most cases from editions of the dates given). ================================================================================ 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 301 satisfaction of all, both parties agreed to give the disputed piece of land to the experimental farm of the welfare center for furthering the work of agricultural improvement. This passage is taken from Chang Fu-liang When East Met West, A Personal Story of Rural Reconstruction in China (New Haven, Connecticut, Yale-in-China Association, 1972) 50-51. It will be seen that whilst the team tactfully used firecrackers in the final solution, it was not in the form originally insisted upon by one of the parties to the dispute! In another recorded village case, this time from Amoy in the Fukien province, provision for the use of firecrackers in the settlement of offences against the community was included in the village rules. Describing ownership and management of seaweed growing areas in the early 1930s, the writer, who was one of the professors at Amoy University, stated: "The rocks are jealously guarded and no one is permitted to pick up a single seaweed from another person's grounds. If such a case is discovered, the person will be fined by the village committee a sum of $50.00 and besides will have to set off a quantity of firecrackers as a means of confessing his offence against the owner". (Tseng, "Seaweeds of Amoy”, Lingnan Science Journal 12, No. 1 (1933), 49). Associations in urban milieu seem also to have used fire-crackers in the course of disciplining their members. E. T. Williams describes how the Swatow Guild, comprising persons from six nearby hsien, fined those members who failed to participate in the celebration of the birthday of the Queen of Heaven, the guild's patron saint, no less than 10,000 firecrackers. At least, there was provision for this in its rules! (Williams, op. cit. 200). Far from home, a party of Chinese miners on the phosphate workings on Ocean Island were only placated and a serious riot averted by the offer of fireworks by the District Officer trying to settle a dispute with their employers and the native Gilbertese workers. This happened in the 1920s, and the Chinese were almost certainly Kwangtung men since recruitment was carried out by agents in Hong Kong under the supervision of the Hong Kong authorities. The District Officer was the future Sir Arthur Grimble. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 312 BOOK REVIEWS to a halt and where the physical past remains frozen or fossilized by political currents. ALAN BIRCH Fujiwara Iwaichi, F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in S.E. Asia, 1983. Heinemann's Asia. Professor H. J. Benda, authority on the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian archipelago, once remarked "Japan's war-time aims were never as clearly defined as in South-east Asia”. Recognizing this significance of Japanese plans and preparations for the war waged against the imperialism of the West, Heinemann's have published a number of studies illuminating in depth several aspects of this important programme, notably Joyce Lebra's Japanese trained Armies in South-east Asia. It is she who writes the introduction to this present volume Lt. General Fujiwara's account of the operations of F. Kikan in Malaya in this critical area of World War II in the Far East. (Actually, this is a translation by the noted Japanese scholar Professor Akashi Yoji, biographer of Loi Tak, the notorious and typical middleman figure in these entanglements of the contending forces of imperialism). Lebra claims for the author of this war-time account of the activities of this Japanese propaganda intelligence group stood for Fujiwara, Freedom and Friendship that he developed a vision of Japan's military role in Asia at its most idealistic, Seeing himself as the Japanese 'Lawrence of Arabia' he took the war-time propaganda slogan ‘Asia for the Asians' most seriously. Fujiwara's relatively short-term, but significant, role in furthering the formation of the Indian National Army, which, of course, was to attempt the removal of the colonial bondage of the British rule of India and further to demonstrate the self-proclaimed role of Japan as the instrument of liberation, is therefore of more than passing interest to historians of that critical period in the shifting of political power in the East. Fujiwara's part in this crusade, and particularly his relations with the least ambiguous of Indian nationalists, Chandra Bose, ================================================================================ 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 325 are many other, smaller countries where no newspaper industry has developed. Professor Lent is concerned with press freedom. He deplores its disappearance in countries ruled by totalitarian regimes. He deplores the repressive situation in Singapore, where the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act enables the government to put its own nominees in control of newspapers. Even the more liberal press atmosphere of Hong Kong comes in for some criticism. Journalists are tempted to take bribes because of their often miserably low salaries, he says, and these bad practices remain outside the reach of the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) because they are condoned by the journalists' employers. Lent also complains that there are many doors of government closed to Hong Kong journalists. Some of the book gives a somewhat out-of-date impression. It is a recent publication but much of the material was gathered years ago and in some cases there has obviously been difficulty in revising it. This detracts from the value of the survey where it deals with countries like Vietnam. It could also be objected that the viewpoint of the editor and contributors is too western-oriented when dealing with the press in developing areas. Freedom of the Press is a hall-mark of civilised modern communities, but it can survive only in a country which is highly literate and politically awake; it has no hope in more primitive places or in countries where the government fears criticism. To expect a free press in such areas may be unrealistic. There is a considerable difference, too, between Asia and the West in attitudes towards the profession of journalism. In the West the image of the journalist as news-gatherer, critic and reformer inspires considerable numbers of young men and women to enter the profession. Its human opportunities and fascinations more than compensate for the relatively mediocre financial rewards. This is far less the case in the Far East where in many countries journalism has little appeal for the educated. Inevitably this affects the value and effectiveness of newspapers. However the fact that the Asian press is surveyed here from a western viewpoint in no way detracts from the impressive ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 342 BOOK REVIEWS form a coherent and readable entity, since they only contain information of a very specialized nature, and constitute only snippets from the enormous archaeological literature of even the 1930's and 1940's. Four of the seven articles deal with Szechuan province, which Cheng wrongly described in 1947 as “fundamentally a marginal area [whose culture] has never been a product of an independent development." Another article treats Tang dynasty tombs in Fukien, while the remaining two of the pre-1950 period concern monuments of the Hopei-Honan-Shantung area, and cannon of the Opium War. As the author notes in the Introduction, these and many similar studies are scattered in various learned journals. One may thus entertain serious doubts about the claim of the publishers that “it is worth gathering some of the more important [of Cheng's archaeological writings] together for reference." For whose reference? The few interested scholars can easily obtain copies of the original publications, whereas the general reader would have little interest in reading 40-year-old site reports and field surveys, concluded by out-dated interpretations. Regardless of Cheng's occasionally enjoyable style, as in the anecdotal archaeological tour of the three provinces, the reader will not gain even a partial overview of Chinese archaeology from these articles. Many of the same considerations apply to Cheng's essay on archaeology in Sarawak. Although more recent (1969), it does not give a current or balanced view of Sarawak's past. One assumes that Cheng himself approves of including Sarawak in a volume on “Chinese archaeology," since he views the area as the extreme southern frontier of the Han empire—a notion which is highly debatable, to say the least. In support of this line Cheng in this article takes "Chinese relics" automatically to indicate "Chinese activities”, relates Sarawak's Iron Age to the Chinese invention of iron metallurgy in the Shang dynasty (the date should actually be Late Chou, and it may have been a borrowed idea rather than an “invention”), describes a flat stone with two perforations as "an import from the mainland”, and suggests that the custom of boat burials in cliff caves was spread by "southern Chinese" throughout southeast Asia. Suffice it to say that the chapter on Sarawak, though containing interesting tidbits of information, is cast in a strong sinocentric perspective. ================================================================================ 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 343 Even so, it is out of place in this volume, unless the title is intended to imply “a Chinese style of archaeology" rather than "the archaeology of China." The first chapter is the only one of real substance in the book, at least for those seeking a reasonable summary and interpretation of Chinese archaeology, but it is marred by the unlabelled mixing of fact and opinion. Entitled "The Beginning of Chinese Civilization," this recently revised essay presents an overview of the prehistoric and Shang periods. Cheng rightly points out the emergence of the various Early Neolithic cultures from their regional antecedents in the Paleolithic, though he is speculating wildly in assigning a date of 25,000 years before the present for this transition. Unfortunately, Cheng still clings to the outmoded “nuclear area hypothesis" applied to the Late Neolithic. In spite of much evidence to the contrary (some of which is even mentioned in this essay), Cheng still maintains, as he has for many years, that "the expansion of the Late Neolithic culture beyond the Central Plain was responsible for the diffusion of the new pattern of food production [cereal agriculture] in various parts of China." And, ignoring all the botanical, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence to the contrary, Cheng then claims that "rice found a most agreeable home in the wet South" after being introduced by farmers from the North. A few pages earlier, Cheng had described the important Ho-mu-tu site in Chekiang, i.e., in the South, as one of the most agriculturally advanced and the earliest dated Late Neolithic site excavated in China so far. Cheng also makes the highly disputable claims that painted pottery spread throughout China from a Yangshao origin, and that "the expansion of the Mongoloid people into the South Seas [? the South China Sea] was an event closely related to the spread of agriculture in China.” Most archaeologists would not claim a single origin for all the painted pottery of China, and very little, perhaps nothing, is really known about the spread of "Mongoloid people" or agriculture in the Neolithic of East Asia. In dealing with the earliest historical period, Cheng again on occasion mixes fact and good and bad hypothesis with pure conjecture and cultural bias. Cheng implies that Chinese writing ================================================================================ 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 351 study of revolts, reforms and revolutions in the South East Asian region is of particular interest and relevance for the outside world. This is because the variety of its component races, religions and political systems, before and after the colonial period, are paralleled by the diversity of situations experienced in revolution, reform and revolt. They are as diverse in kind as the very varied social, cultural, economic, historical context will allow, whether in or outside the colonial period, whether the colonial power was French, British or Dutch, whether a communist party was present or not. They are also, they claim, made the more interesting through the variety of "models," outside assistance and influences available to the leaders of its governments and insurgent movements alike. The authors state that, out of the total of twelve articles, five study revolts, three reforms and four revolutions. Five of the nine new states are represented (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore and Vietnam), with the former colonies of French Indo-china making up three quarters. Two articles concern events before 1914, three take place between 1914 and 1945 and four after the Second World War, and three span several of these periods. Neither the early period of colonial penetration nor the contemporary scene have been neglected, though by choice the authors have generally not gone back beyond 1850. Generally speaking, the essays illustrate the theme of the Introduction, and they do cover a most diverse and interesting set of events. This is a stimulating collection of essays which will certainly be of value to serious students of South East Asia. Also, they bear out the authors' claim that they have a wider relevance than the region in which they are set. JAMES HAYES Chinese Festivals Joan Law and Barbara E. Ward, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 1982, 95pp, including Bibliography, Index. 85 Colour plates It is surprising that no-one produced a book like this long ago. Of course, this superb volume is no less welcome for that. The book consists of a short introduction, followed by brief ================================================================================ 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 361 symbolism and certain architectural elements such as the stele to commemorate the dead are explained in detail with an appendix containing a further explanation of the symbolism and characteristics of the four intelligent creatures which are depicted in all the tomb architecture in the valley. The principles of Chinese architecture in general and tomb architecture in particular are established to enable the readers to understand the layout of the different mausolea; however, the comparison of domestic architecture, city planning and tomb architecture requires further exploration. Throughout the book, Ann Paludan emphasizes the tenacity of classical Chinese tradition apparent in the architecture of the Ming valley. All elements (basic forms, general pattern, layout, ground plan, style etc.) except for the drainage system can be dated back to an earlier time as in Han or T'ang. It is certainly a difficult task to describe thirteen similar tombs without boring the readers, and so the author tries to tease out peculiarities observed in individual tombs, e.g. the ceramic frieze of the stele tower in Ch'ing-ling, the stone basins before the altar of Yu-ling and the sophisticated drainage systems in Yung-ling and Chao-ling. She also shows that later tombs often incorporate ideas from different earlier tombs which together with a few innovations fit into a traditional framework. The book should be commended for the clear graphics especially in the diagrammatic illustration of the tomb layouts and comparison of the thirteen tombs together. Photos could have been better if more of a sequence had been produced to tie in with the plans. At the end, Ann Paludan gives an account of the traditional administration of the Imperial cemetery and sacrificial rites performed at the tombs. This, together with her list of birds she observed during her many visits to the tombs, indicates the care and effort she has given to this beautiful piece of work. PATRICK LAU Britain in the Far East, Peter Lowe, Longmans, London and New York, 1981, n.p. Professor Lowe's book is subtitled “A Survey from 1819 to the Present" and that precisely defines the scope and treatment of the subject. As the author says, "The aim of this work is ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p Page 362 BOOK REVIEWS + + + to provide a succinct general survey of British policy in the Far East with the emphasis placed primarily towards China and Japan; South East Asia is discussed, particularly in the nineteenth century and the period after 1941, when it is more important to assess developments within the pattern of British advance and retreat in the Far East. Within that framework Peter Lowe has succeeded admirably in laying bare the flesh and bones of the subject. And, indeed, so far as the body of the book has been anatomised as a living tissue of encounters, resulting from the impact of one Western civilization upon several Asian societies, the only possible criticism might be that the need to be succinct has forced the author to cut through the nervous system of cultural and diplomatic relations rather too drastically. However, it must be recognized that there is an awful lot of relevant data — economic as well as political — to be included in this survey. I admire Peter Lowe's skill in compressing these not insignificant details into the narrative. (I suspect that he relieved the pressure of his expositions when the text, presumably, was given as lectures by anecdotal asides to generate a feeling of the period and the place.) Therefore it would not be appropriate in a short review such as this to raise any particular issues for discussion or criticism. The text, in fact, is supplemented by well-informed references to recent book and periodical literature where the serious university student would follow up the cryptic clues to the problems of interpretation so precisely indicated in the author's presentation. Britain in the Far East, in fact, represents that happy example of a text book which so clearly reflects a mastery of the subject obtained by meticulous research and command over sources in Western languages. The authority so evident will therefore also commend the book to the general readers of Far Eastern History whether they are located in the British metropolis or in the surviving periphery of the British formal and informal empires laid down in the nineteenth century. Again, Peter Lowe puts this perspective into a lapidary concluding remark “In essence, Britain's role in the Far East belonged to history.” All we can add in Hong Kong is the rider that here a certain instalment of that history has yet to be played out. ALAN BIRCH Page 362 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v In fact a pair of monkeys liked the place and seemed to want to join up. They would scamper all around the house as if they owned it. However, as they were not housebroken they were a nuisance. One day a very religious monkey was found in the chapel. He ran into the sacristy and the door was slammed on him. Then the tennis net was brought up to capture him. The door was flung open, and in charged the priests with the net flying. The monkey was so frightened that he smashed right through the window and disappeared in the woods. Apparently he had decided he didn't want to be a monk after all. There were no great incidents at the house till the war came in 1941. Incidentally, I was ordained in 1941 and arrived in Hong Kong the night before Pearl Harbor on the last of the Pan Am Flying Clippers. And today happens to be the anniversary of the starting of the war! It was dusk on that Dec. 7th as we drove from the airfield out to Stanley, so we didn't see much of the city. Next morning when I was saying Mass in the lower chapel, there were big explosions and the altar jumping around. I thought this is probably the way they start every day in the East. Then when I came down to breakfast, the news had been received on the radio that the Japanese were attacking Hong Kong. We also got the first uncensored reports on Pearl Harbor. As the Japanese army gradually conquered Hong Kong Island, many refugees came to take shelter in the house. The Salesian Fathers had brought out a group of orphans and taken over a part of the house. Some military were also quartered in the house. With us nine new arrivals, the staff etc. there were some thirty people. The war started on Monday, so on Tuesday we as aliens had to go downtown to register. The bus went through Aberdeen, right past Mt. Davis, a big British military installation. The Japanese were bombing this all day, and so we spent practically all day jumping on and off buses, diving into the gutters along the roadside or darting into air raid shelters. We arrived in town just in time to catch the last bus home. However, after dark, the bus only went as far as Repulse Bay and we had to walk the rest of the way. With us were two Carmelite Sisters who had been to town to buy provisions for the siege. As we came down the road into Stanley ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 63 consulted a number of dictionaries of foreign words and phrases and discovered a disappointingly low number of Chinese entries. In the world-wide use of the English language the number of loan words from Chinese is not large. For example, sampan, tea, cheongsam, mahjong are fairly well-known. And in recent years it has become fashionable to include Romanized forms of Chinese words to give local colour in newspapers and journals, local as well as international, and in works of fiction, especially where subject and/or locale are 'Chinese'. But as far as I am able to discover, the subject of lexical borrowing from Chinese into English has not been systematically studied. A. J. Bliss, in his Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases gives a lengthy and analytical account of the process of borrowing from Greek and Latin and French. He makes the point that the nature of language contact results in different types of words being borrowed. In his Appendix he suggests the type of research which can be undertaken in connection with the history of contact between English and other languages by giving examples of words borrowed in different periods. The list for Chinese is brief. It goes: 17th Century sampan 18th Century typhoon 19th Century kowtow, loquat 20th Century cheongsam, kuomintangs Though brief, it is instructive, and tracing, however briefly, the history of West and East coming into contact is certainly a necessary part of a complete study of lexical borrowing from Chinese. But only one aspect of it. What is needed is a systematic study of other aspects, particularly linguistic ones, of the subject as well. The contact between English and Chinese has been brought about as much by the coming of English-speaking people to China as by the migration of Chinese people to English-speaking lands. My collaborator and I have attempted to extend our study as far as possible to English outside Hong Kong and to the borrowings resulting from the earliest periods of language contact, and have made use of literature written in English about China and the Chinese or reflecting interest in such a subject from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 68 active and/or passive vocabularies, their attitudes to Chinese culture and the Chinese language. An attempt is made to analyse the extent to which their knowledge of Chinese loan words is conditioned by their life style. Of the 300 questionnaires sent out, 128 were returned. We selected at random 100 as our sample. While we did attempt to find answers to the vexed problem of what constitutes full integration for a loan word partially through the responses, our conclusions were by no means dependent on the subjective answers of the respondents, but were based very much on linguistic criteria. By way of comparison we sent an abridged questionnaire to respondents living in Britain and the United States, most of whom had never been east of Suez; we were astounded by the extremely low rate of recognition by both groups. Given the sociological factors, which act as incentives or disincentives to learning a language, and the vastly disparate nature of the two languages, it should come as no surprise although it often does—that the number of loans from Chinese which have entered the English vocabulary, in various stages of integration, is very low indeed, far lower than English words which have entered into the lexicon of Hong Kong Chinese. The exchange has by no means been an equal one to date. The list of English loan words in Hong Kong Chinese given in our earlier monograph comprises almost 400 items while our list of Chinese loans comprises only about a quarter of this number, and a larger number in the former list meet our tentative criteria of full integration. What is more, our studies seem to indicate that with a few exceptions like tea, kowtow and tycoon, kaolin, gung ho, Chinese loan words are usually restricted to strictly 'Eastern' or specifically Chinese contexts and are sometimes used on a sort of transliterated 'once-off' basis in novels or journalistic writing with a view to giving stylistic flavour, for example, Tien-tze AF, immediately glossed in Elegant's Dynasty as 'The Son of Heaven' (p. 20). Most Chinese terms have, as in the nature of lexical borrowing in general, been taken over because of the need to find a name for a thing new to the borrowing culture and hence without a name in the borrowing language. Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 95 uncommon, always indicates a kiln. Lime-burning boomed after 1918 but slumped badly in 1925 in the great strike in Hong Kong, and never revived seriously. Distilleries for making spirits, generally from molasses, sometimes from rice, are found in the towns, also soy and preserved vegetable factories. Mining of wolframite is done only in North Lantau. There are two or three small granite quarries on Cheung Chau and Lamma. A good deal of these various products are sold outside the islands and bring in cash and foreign goods of all kinds. Some remote valleys are still, however, living what is essentially a "subsistence economy" life, in which the village grows nearly all it needs, and has very little left over to sell. Much rice is exported, and rice imported from Annam to replace it; rice from Annam is cheaper and a profit is made on the difference. Cheung Chau is the biggest business centre of the islands, thanks to its excellent harbour, the ferry service, its big fishing business, and its flat land suitable for building. It does all the business of South and East Lantau and the smaller islands nearby; it supplies a small European settlement; has several factories, numerous shops, and does a very big fish and shrimp paste business; it has distilleries, and boat and junk builders' yards. Its chief drawback is water shortage; water boats bring supplies from Lantau, but the problem is a very serious one for the growing population. Tai O is a port which has grown up to supply the needs of the fishermen in the shallow waters of the Delta, the best fishing ground on this part of the coast. Its harbour is poor and rather silted up, and the deeper part is very exposed. It has not much industry beyond its saltpans. Pingchau is a business centre for North Lantau, many of whose inhabitants cut grass to feed its limekilns; the lime is got entirely from coral and shell, and as the sea near it is almost worked out, coral fishermen have to go far afield. Ma Wan is a village which seems to have grown up round the old Customs yamen, now the school. It has little business and few shops. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 98 cave with a low pass behind it across to the other side of the island. Further west, Tai Ho ("Big Ditch") and some other villages lie in a small plain with a bad harbour. Near the middle of the north coast is Tung Chung ("East Creek") which was once the most important place in Lantau; it has the biggest plains, the most villages, and the best harbour for small boats in the island. The harbour is, however, too shallow for anything bigger than a launch, and is silting up with hill wash and river muds from the Delta. Tung Chung was the administrative centre of the island, and a station of the Taipang coast defence force was built here. This was the only Chinese yamen in the islands, and a library building still exists, showing the place was once, and perhaps still is, a scholastic centre. It was fortified, and the headquarters of a squadron of war junks: the guns of some of its batteries were dug out of the sand by my predecessor in office and mounted on the yamen wall on cement carriages. These guns may be connected with a naval action in 1857. H.M.S. Auckland, with the steam tender Eaglet, saw five mandarin junks in the harbour as they sailed north from Tai O to Namtau. They returned and attacked them. The captain of the Auckland goes on: Owing to the shallowness of the water I had to anchor in three fathoms, the ship grounding as the tide fell, otherwise we should not have been within range. The Eaglet, on taking up a position near the junks received the fire of five batteries in addition to that of the junks, and soon expended her ammunition, having received three or four shots in her hull, Mr. Ellis (her commander) coming for ammunition, I sent the Auckland's boats to tow the Eaglet, to destroy the junks, the Auckland attacking the batteries and junks with shell and round shot at the same time. A smart fire was kept up on both sides for a short time; the boats of both vessels then charged and fired the junks; Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 106 a boarding house where Europeans can put up at cheap rates on the "Peak". An interesting feature of the island is that nearly all the land is owned by a family association called the Wong Wai Tsak Tong, which has its headquarters in Namtau21. All the buildings, however, are owned by the people who built them, or their modern representatives, who pay a small ground rent to the Tong for their sites. Most of the European houses are on hills, and so are on Crown land, unclaimed by the Tong in 1905 when the land settlement was made. This system of ground landlordism is found very rarely now elsewhere in Hong Kong. It is a relic of the system of paying land tax in distant Namtau by deputy, as happened before 1898, when the Territories were leased. To the north-east of Cheung Chau is Neikwuchau (“Nun Island"). This island once had three villages on it: but two are deserted; the third (Ngau Tau Tong, Cow's Head Pond) still flourishes.22 Pak Pai took its name from the high white rock in the bay off it; Kwo Lo Wan ("The Bay Along the Road") is where the limekiln used to be, Chau Kong ("Old Man Chau") 28 is a small island lying off Neikwuchau opposite Kwo Lo Wan. It is practically a desert island. I have never seen anyone on it. Further to the north-east, beyond Neikwuchau is Pingchau ("Flat Island"). Pingchau is another dumb-bell island, its houses being built on the isthmus, with limekilns thick along the western and southern shores, facing sheltered water. An industry not mentioned so far is gambling, which flourishes vigorously in the large, long shops fronting on the main street. As no Police live on Pingchau, nothing serious can be done to stop it. The island is full of Hakkas and Hoklos, who have little in common save mutual dislike. I once had a very bad riot case to try, in which a man had been killed by someone unknown, and the only thing I could do was to bind everyone over to keep the peace. The chief point is that to my amazement they did so! Leaving Pingchau and travelling east we first come to a group of small uninhabited islands. The first of these, Kau Yi Tsai ("Little Armchair")24 is a little desolate island, chiefly ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 136 Sources on population are given in Marjorie Topley and James Hayes, "Notes on Temples and Shrines of Tai Ping Shan Street Area" in Topley (ed), op cit, pp. 123-141, at p. 124. 20 Topley, op cit, p. 139. These and other details are given in Topley, op cit, pp. 123-125 and 136-139. * See note 5 above. Whilst the Kung sor is still in existence a school building (R) on the other side of the temple has been pulled down. See the photograph p. 72, 58 in the Urban Council's 1982 publication, The Hong Kong Album. For a historical account of this area see Revd. Carl T. Smith's note on "The Five Terraces" with Li Po Lung Path, in "Programme Notes for Visits to Older Parts of Hong Kong Island (Urban Areas)," in JHKBRAS 14(1974) pp. 197-199. + + There is a possible confusion here. If the three powers of nature are intended it would be, without A. If truly 三聖公 it could refer to Yao, Shun and Yû or Yü, Chou Kung and Confucius (W.F. Mayers, The Chinese Reader's Manual, (Shanghai, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1874) pp. 301-302.) I am grateful to liaison staff of the City District Office, Western, who obtained the information on this shrine for me in 1974. The 1841 estimate comes from the first Hong Kong census of May 1841. The remaining figures, taken from later census returns and other sources, can conveniently be found in Hayes 1983, p. 253 note 21. 10 Tung Tai Kai and its eastern adjunct Ah Kung Ngam together had four temples. There were large Tin Hau and Tam Kung temples in the Street. To its front, built on rocks in the sea and therefore known as the Hoi Sum Temple (or temple in the sea), was another smaller, older Tin Hau temple which for long has been completely hemmed in by squatter boats. On the east was the fourth of these temples, dedicated to Yuk Kung (Jade King). Tablets and other dated material inside the temples, together with other information, show that they date as far back as the 1860s, 1905, the 1890s and the 1840s respectively, at the least. See my note "Visit to Old Shau Kei Wan --- 24th May 1969" in JHKBRAS 10(1970), pp. 183-88. * Sessional Papers 1901, No. 39/1901, p. 18, Table XII. Like most of the Shau Kei Wan villages, the residents were mainly stonecutters. For the quarries see JHKBRAS 10(1970) p. 186 in the Note cited above (note 36). * Information from Mr. Walter Schofield, Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-38. * Sessional Papers 1901, No. 39/1901, p. 18, Table XII. * See Endacott's History of Hong Kong. p. 293 and Edward Szczepanik The Economic Growth of Hong Kong (London, Oxford University Press, 1958) p. 114. It will be obvious that this article could not have been written without the assistance of many people. I gratefully acknowledge their assistance here. I also wish to thank Dr. Patrick Hase, editor of this Journal, for much encouragement and good advice in its presentation. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 207 The Vietnamese bones include those of Andrew, Pro-Martyr of Vietnam. Andrew, or Phy-yen, was born in 1625 in Fan-ran province in South Vietnam. He became a Catholic at 15 and was martyred at 19 when he refused to adjure his religion. His head was taken to Rome where it can be seen today. His bones are in Macau, together with other Vietnamese and Japanese. The bones are neatly packed in polished wooden boxes. Father Acquistapace laughs as he recalls the occasion when the relics were inspected by scientists: "One seized a bone and said: 'But this bone is from a woman!'” The priest's comments: "As if only men can die for Jesus!" There are, in fact, bones from 15 female martyrs in the church. He breaks off, pressing a few pamphlets and souvenirs into the hands of the visitor. "Stay as long as you wish", he says. "The children are coming." And so they are, for into the cool, airy church come tumbling a horde of laughing Chinese children chasing each other and finding places on the wooden pews. Father Acquistapace moves his attention from the relics of the dead to the enthusiasms of the living. He strides up and down the short aisle as the youngsters roar out a cheerful hymn in Chinese, cajoling, quietening, and then swelling the youthful sounds with great arm movements. Outside, the day is hot and humid, and across the flat patch of muddy water in front of the small village that can be seen in China, a few dilapidated junks lie at anchor. From the church comes the sound of singing. The first modern missionary to the Far East, Xavier, and the martyrs from Japan and from Vietnam, must heartily approve. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 212 THE KWUN YAM AND TUNG SHAN TEMPLE OF EAST KOWLOON 1840-1940 J. W. HAYES This note details the origins, rise and fall of a temple, over the course of a full century, in what was originally a rural district of East Kowloon. The community connected with the temple originally comprised farming villages and stone cutters' settlements. To this core, urban and suburban elements were more and more added until they eventually came to dominate the area entirely. These changes led to the virtual extinction of the original community and, with it, its temple. The Tung Shan Temple is now in ruins; only the walls remain. It became derelict during the Japanese Occupation, and was not repaired after the war. There are, in fact, two temples, standing side by side. The stone inscription above one door states that it is a Kwun Yam (*) or Goddess of Mercy temple, rebuilt in the 13th year of the Kwang Hsü reign (1887). The inscription above the main door of the other states that it is the Tung Shan (*) or Eastern Peak temple, dated the equivalent of 1904. The two are here treated as an entity, as (it is stated) they were always under the same management. According to two elders from the Chu Family (朱) of Tai Hom village (born in 1891 and 1896; interviewed 1967-1968), the Kwun Yam temple is built on land belonging to their clan. The Chu's were Hakka latecomers to rural east-central Kowloon, arriving in the 18th century and taking up higher land under the encircling hills. The spot where the temple was constructed was originally padi land, growing poor quality rice; but after a great grandfather had placed an image of the Goddess of Mercy near the fields they began to yield good crops. At the insistence of this same man, the village elders erected a small temple there in the Tao Kuang reign (1821-1850). My informants had this story in their youth from their clan uncles. The next chapter in the history of the Kwun Yam temple opens with its repair in the Kwang Hsü reign (1875-1908). No ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 216 The popularity of the Kwun Yam temple must be seen in relation to the followings and reputations of the other village temples of the area from which the temple drew its patrons. There was a long-established Tin Hau temple (A) inside Nga Tsin Wai village, a mile or so to the west over towards Kowloon City and its suburb Kowloon Street. According to a late 19th century tablet in the temple, this had existed at least as early as 1727. It had long provided the normal place of worship for the residents of the seven villages of the League of Seven (1) centred on Nga Tsin Wai, and some of the elders of these villages described their villages to me as 'coming under the rule of the Tin Hau of Nga Tsin Wai'. Other old villages had their own temples, including another dedicated to Tin Hau in the large old village of Po Kong. Another well-known temple outside the north-west corner of Kowloon walled city, dedicated this time to Hau Wong (E), had its followers from Kowloon Street and the villages nearby. However, if my informants are to be believed and their natural bias discounted, in the early years of this century none of these commanded such wide support as the Tung Shan temple and its Kwun Yam image, and none enjoyed the wide territorial support shown by the existence of chik li chosen from, and the circulation of subscription books within all of the thirteen main villages of Kowloon. Herein lies the importance, and the interest, of the combined Tung Shan and Kwun Yam temple of east Kowloon. By contrast, the post-war neglect of this temple, and the fact that it has not been rebuilt, is, at first glance, hard to reconcile with its relatively recent rise to fame and period of glory. Elders give various reasons, and there is no doubt that a number of factors were at work. Firstly, the privations of the Japanese Occupation were more felt in Kowloon than in most places, because the military authorities razed Po Kong and other old villages nearby to extend the airfield, and this is said to have shaken villagers' faith in the gods. Secondly the high cost of the necessary repairs in a period of general impoverishment after the war are given as another factor. Thirdly, the removal of the Kowloon villages one by one for redevelopment purposes, before and especially after the war, was clearly another factor. The degree of disruption and personal struggle involved for the village families in these removals ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 217 was great and must have left them with little time or money to spare for their ruined temple. Finally, and almost certainly the most seriously, the influx of a new population, and immense schemes of redevelopment completely altered the generally rural background of village and market town life that still characterised pre-war East Kowloon. Thus, in the Tung Shan Temple we can see a temple, founded for purely rural reasons slowly growing until it became the predominant community temple of the whole of rural East Kowloon. During this period its management changed from a purely private, clan-based system to a typical community temple structure of committee members and chairman of a type typical not only of the rural community temples in the rest of the New Territories but also of those in urban Hong Kong at this date. Founded in a rural community this temple could, and did, develop both physically and in its management structure to reflect the needs of that community. It could not, however, survive the complete destruction of that community, and its ruination directly reflects the collapse of its founding community in the face of massive urbanisation, and the establishment of the new urban communities created by that urbanisation. The new urban communities have formed their own shrines, and their flourishing condition, alongside the continued ruin of the main temple of the defunct rural community, show more clearly than anything else can the essentially community basis of the temples of this area and their management groups. NOTES In the 1904 Block Crown Lease for Survey District No. 3, New Kowloon, the ownership is recorded in the monk's name Shing Kin (Hsing Star Bridge) and the property is listed under Lot 1101 as temple 0.7 acres, house 0.2 acres, and potato ground 0.33 acres. An entry "Kwun Yam Temple, Ngau Chi Wan" had been crossed out by the Assistant Land Officer who recommended that a lease for the temple buildings and site be given to the Registrar General, 28 April 1904. From south-east Kowloon, Ngau Tau Kok and Cha Kwo Ling; from east Kowloon, Ngau Chi Wan, Ping Shek, Sha Tei Yuen, Upper and Lower Yuen Ling and Chu Shi Liu; from central Kowloon, Tai Hom, Po Kong, Nga Tsin Wai, Upper and Lower Sha Po, Nga Tsin Long and Kak Hang; from Kowloon City, the commercial areas, Sai Tau, Tung Tau and Hoklo Village. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 done across the territory. Inscribed tablets have been copied from old temples and other public buildings, together with documents and family papers, and interesting old persons have been interviewed. The nature of this work, and its results so far, were reviewed. On 30 May, the Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong invited members of our Society to attend a lecture meeting at which Professor Michael Sullivan, Christensen Professor of Oriental Art at Stanford University spoke on "The Present State of Chinese Painting”. On 19 June, Dr. Rosemary Quested, Reader in History at the University of Hong Kong and an authority on Sino-Russian relations, spoke on the subject "Whither Sino-Soviet Relations: some reflections in the light of history and current events.” On 28th June, Ms. Patricia Cuenot gave a slide presentation entitled "The Magic of Pushkar", which dealt with the Camel Fair held during October and November each year in Pushkar, Rajasthan. On 24 October, one of our members, Mr. Phillip Bruce, a Principal Information Officer of Government Information Services, gave a fascinating illustrated talk, entitled "The Forgotten Fortress". Based on his own research, it dealt with the coastal defences of Hong Kong from the 1840s up to the 1939-45 war. Following this, on 13 November, Professor Grant K. Goodman of the University of Kansas, who is Japan Foundation Visiting Professor of History at the University of Hong Kong and a specialist on the history and politics of Japan, gave an interesting lecture entitled "Vanguard of Empire? — Japanese prostitutes in South East Asia". On Friday, 7 December, Mr. Francis S.Y. Sham, a veteran translator and language teacher and a member of our Society, gave an interesting talk on "Fortune Sticks from Hong Kong's Temples". Mr. Sham has published two volumes on fortune sticks from Kwun Yum and Wong Tai Sin Temples and is currently working on Lui Tso oracles from the Ching Chung Kwan monastery in Castle Peak. On 29 January, 1985, I spoke on the subject "Hong Kong before Lord Palmerston: a “Go” at the Barren Rock Myth”. The talk ix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 15 The Present-day Temple Oracles The temple oracles, described in modern historical writings and still found in contemporary practice in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. can be traced back as far as the Sung dynasty. Yet such a long interval between the milfoil-I Ching oracles of early Chou and the Sung practice does not necessarily mean a historical continuity. But although today the literary links are missing, some scholars have assumed a continuous line of development. J. Needham is very definite when he states that "The milfoil, ... has descended continuously to the Taoist temples of the present day, where simple folk choose a stick from a box ..." This method of using sticks is, in Needham's opinion, different from the use of the I Ching symbols, although he admits that, in the latter, milfoil sticks were also used. 14 More recently a German anthropologist Werner Banck, has focused his attention on the study of temple oracles. A first volume of his work, a large collection of temple oracle texts, was published in 1976.1 (A second volume is promised in which the author will analyse and evaluate the collected source materials). In his foreword to Banck's work, Wolfram Eberhard clearly expresses the belief that there is continuity between the contemporary oracles and the tradition of the I Ching and the Han alternative version, embodied in the T'ai-hsuan ching. W. Banck himself shares this opinion and plans to examine the literary tradition of China for more exact information. A possible reason why direct evidence is not easily available consists in the very nature of the contemporary temple oracles: they are used by the people in the temples. Two conditions make such a practice possible: the existence of temples and the availability of printing. This double factor only started to materialize toward the T'ang period and therefore it seems plausible to look for the origin of temple oracles in the middle or later T'ang era. Before that time, people who wanted to consult the oracles in private matters, could visit diviners, who did not need temple oracles since they could read the I Ching and similar texts and cast the oracles for their clients. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 109 scenery of the same area. He wrote, "In general, the south side of Hong Kong Island is far more picturesque and less bleak than the north. The villages we saw, unlike the mat-huts in the harbour, are exceedingly neat in appearance with blue tiled and white walled houses."14 Nonetheless, there were attractive places on the north and east too. A description taken from the English language Canton Press of January 1842 mentions the view of the whole valley and village of Wong Nei Chung obtained from a gap cut in a hill following the line of one of the new roads, and how the branch road to the east "takes one to the village of 'Soo Kon Poo', at present a sequestered, well wooded and very pretty part of the island"+15 a character it has not entirely lost even today!” Thomas Allom's celebrated View of China, for which the text was prepared from various works by Revd. G.N. Wright, also pays tribute to the natural beauties of the island: "The maximum length of the isle is about eight miles, its breadth seldom exceeding five; its mountains of trap-rock are conical, precipitous, and sterile in aspect, but the valleys that intervene are sheltered and fertile, and the genial climate that prevails gives luxuriance and productiveness to every spot, which, by its natural position, is susceptible of agricultural improvement." And in another place: "Few areas so limited include so many scenes of sylvan beauty as the sunny island of Hong Kong. The country immediately behind Queen-town (sic) is peculiarly rich in romantic little glens, or in level tracts, adorned with masses of rock, in the fissures of which the noblest forest-trees have found sufficient soil for their support. These wood-crowned crags rise abruptly from wide-spread rice-grounds that closely encircle them; so ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 130 JAMES HAYES previously been located near Sham Chun, but, shortly after the cession of Hong Kong the sub-magistracy was moved to Kowloon, known as Kowloon City after a wall was built around it in 1847. A military garrison was transferred to Kowloon City from Tai Pang in north-east San On, at about the same time. 73 There had been a few small military posts on the island of Hong Kong established long before 1841. These were manned by soldiers and ratings of the Tai Pang battalion which served as a kind of military marine constabulary, sailing war junks and manning small posts scattered across this part of the district. However, they may have been discontinued before 1841 as there does not seem to have been any civil or military establishment on Hong Kong island when it was taken over. Johnston wrote in 1843 "no public buildings were found on any part of the Island of Hong Kong when it was first occupied by the English, except a small tumble-down Chinese house at Chek-choo (now Stanley) and another at Shek-pie-wan (now Aberdeen) where the petty mandarins stopped occasionally 76 +74 It seems, then, that the magistrate sent collectors and runners to the island in connection with the land tax and that a clerk was sent in a boat to issue licences to the boat people. There are reports of the district magistrate's officers still attempting to collect land taxes at Stanley as late as 1844 and the boat people may have been subject to the annual charge of 400 cash said to be levied on the 150 boats privileged to fish in local waters. The San On magistrate was still trying to collect this in 1844. Such visitations were being reported by the inhabitants in the few years following the British occupation of Hong Kong, and the British official correspondence gives the impression that this had been a regular practice in past days. However, it was not to be tolerated after the cession, and after representations by the Hong Kong Government, the provincial treasurer of the Canton province indicated that any claims to the former land tax would now be relinquished. 77 Otherwise, the inhabitants were left to their own devices. In common with other communities of the region, large and small ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 135 Julian Arnold et al, Commercial Handbook of China, US Department of Commerce, Miscellaneous Series No. 84 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1919) Vol. 1, p. 181. Ibid. It is, however, only fair to record that E.J. Eitel Europe in China: the History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882 (Hong Kong 1898) pp. 130-134 gives a more balanced picture of Hong Kong before 1841. 9 The Chinese characters for most of these places can be found in the Hong Kong Government's Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Government Printer, n.d. 1960) but variously at pp. 90-98, 103-106 and 114-117. See also “Original Gazetteer and Census, May 15th 1841" at Appendix II of Geoffrey Robley Sayer, Hong Kong 1841-1862 Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age (Oxford, University Press, 1937), p. 203. 10 The extracts from the Collinson letters reproduced here are taken from transcripts in preparation kindly made available by Mr. Ian Diamond who advises that they should be checked against the originals. For the owners of the letters, and their whereabouts, see file MSS23 at the Public Records Office of Hong Kong. A reference to Collinson's military mapping of Hong Kong, described by Mr. Diamond in an unpublished memoir as follows: "Collinson completed his survey at the end of October, 1845. The work had taken him almost exactly two years. The survey was principally of Hong Kong Island but the resulting map took in also the islands immediately adjacent to Hong Kong, Kowloon Peninsula and the coastline of the mainland as far as Tsuen Wan in the West and Fat Tong Point in the east, Drawn to a scale of 4" to one statute mile (1/15840) the finished map was on four joinable sheets covering north-west, north-east, south-west and south-east Hong Kong respectively. The map is meticulously detailed and very finely drawn. One of the most interesting features of Collinson's map is that it employs contour lines instead of shading, or hatching, to show land heights and is said to have been the first such map ever to be published. Collinson did not invent the technique. Contour-line mapping was first employed by military engineers in France, but it seems to have been used there largely in the siting and planning of fortifications. By the early 1830s the concept had been taken up by the Royal Engineers who, especially after about 1834, began to give it a more general application, largely in connection with the great surveys of England and Ireland, His map was published by the Ordnance Map Office, Southampton in 1846, prior to any contoured map of the United Kingdom, the first not being printed until December, 1847. Collinson submitted, together with his map, a portfolio of "Ten Outline Sketches of the Island of Hong Kong". These were pen and ink drawings of the Island landscape viewed from ten locations and were designed to illustrate its salient topographical features and the nature and location of important buildings and settlements." 12 Ibid. A few years earlier, Dr. Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., also recorded a visit to a village school, under date 7 April 1841. "Went into the village school where we saw a lot of moon-faced urchins were acquiring the rudiments of the celestial learning and put one in mind of some of the village schools at home." (ed) Michael Levin, The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree. Surgeon R.N., as related in his private Journals 1837-1856 (Exeter, England, Webb and Bower, 1981) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 155 of the policy of suppression which had been adopted in Singapore. He strongly opposed the sending of an investigatory commission from London, which the Colonial Office had been pressing upon him. Peel's views were supported by the Permanent Under-Secretary and officials in London, who advised against any immediate action. A League of Nations commission to enquire into the international traffic in women and children was about to visit the Far East and this gave a good reason for delay, since any sudden change of policy would appear to be either designed to impress the commission or else to be an admission of guilt. Lord Passfield accepted this advice. For the next six months the question was allowed to rest. Then in June 1931 Peel again wrote to the Colonial Office, enclosing a long memorandum on the legal position of brothels in Hong Kong written by the Chief Justice, Sir Joseph Kemp. This legal exposition concluded by warning that, though the suppression of all registered brothels might possibly lead to less illicit intercourse, it would probably arouse great resentment if the Chinese brothels patronized by the Chinese were to be suppressed. He continued: ‘I fear the danger of shaking the loyalty of the Chinese community as a whole and their confidence that the government will respect Chinese customs generally. The risk may have to be run, but I think it is a real one. It must be remembered that the Chinese do not view prostitution as we do. They look upon it with a more lenient eye, though excess is reprobated just as excess in other forms of self-indulgence is reprobated. Prostitutes are not social outcasts to the same extent as in 'Western' countries. A prostitute often becomes a highly respectable concubine . . . I realise that this is a very difficult defence to make, especially as the English public do not always realise the delicacy required in ruling an alien civilisation.' Peel offered up a small sacrifice to appease the Secretary of State: he suggested that the seven brothels containing European prostitutes should be closed down. This was not a sign that Peel had been converted to the moralists' point of view; European prostitutes were customarily deported from Hong Kong from time to time, since their presence was considered demeaning to European prestige in the East. This decision to close the brothels employing European, Australian and American women was endorsed by the Executive Council in July 1931. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 161 16 For example in 1908 CO129/352 pp. 416-419 and Minutes of the Executive Council, 26 March 1909 and 1 March 1910. 37 Minutes of the Executive Council, 2 July 1931. 38 J.H. Thomas to Peel, 29 Sept 1931 in CO129/533/10. 39 H.K. Hansard, 22 Oct. 1931 p. 193. 40 Minutes of the Executive Council, 6 Dec. 1934. Southern to Cunliffe-Lister, 18 July 1932 in CO129/532/3 p. 133. 41 42 Minutes of the Executive Council, 25 April 1935. 43 Report of the Committee constituted in accordance with the directions of H.E. the Governor contained in his letter dated 9 April 1938. C.S.O.5661/32. (The Abbott Committee, 1939) p. 19. (Copy available in Secretariat Library). 44 Administration Reports 1932 and 1939. Reports of the Medical Department. The Abbott Report, p. 5. 45 46 League of Nations Commission of Enquiry into the Traffic in Women and Children in the Far East. Replies to Questionnaire by Hong Kong Government p. 6 in CO129/533/10. Interview with Mr. R.R. Todd who first arrived in Hong Kong a cadet (administrative officer) in 1925. 47 For the results of the system before 1894 see minute in CO129/259 p. 129 dated 23 Nov. 1893, quoting the views of the Registrar General. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 217 LANGLEY, Edward 1851-1852 Manager of the Oriental Banking Co. LATIMER, Nichol 1865 Born 1830, died 1865. With Archibald Little and John Nutt he was the founder of a firm that operated in Shanghai under the name of Nichol Latimer & Co. in Kiukiang and Chinkiang as Latimer, Little & Co, from January 1, 1864, He was one of the managers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Co. 1865.130 Member of the NCBRAS 1865.131 Publisher of the North China Herald 1863-1865, in the issue of which of September 30, 1865 his death (on Sept. 28), due to an overdose of morphia, was announced. He was buried at Shantung Road Cemetery. MACDUFF, Hector C.R. 1850-1851, (1854-1855) Mercantile assistant MacVicar & Co.133, later partner in Smith, Kennedy & Co. in which his interest ended June 30, 1855.134 Trustee British Episcopal Church 1854-1855. MAN, James Lawrence 1856-1857 At first lived in Canton.136 135 137 Authorized to sign for George Barnet & Co. March 31, 1865, the date on which that firm moved to Shanghai; partner from August 6, 1855;135 interest ended March 31, 1862.139 140 Trustee British Episcopal Church 1855-1856, 1856-1857 and 1857.141 Portrait. MEDHURST, Dr. Walter Henry 1854-1855 Born 1796, died 1857. Sent out by the London Missionary Society to the Far East, where he lived in Malacca and Batavia before taking up residence in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 275 A large clump of such "public" trees (HAB) exists, for instance, on the north-east slope of Kowloon Peak. 10 See, however, section 2 of this Note. The late Mr. T. S. Woo, MBE (formerly of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department and the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association) stated that local “Hill Tea” was once dealt in by Gibb, Livingston, but that this later died away, probably as a consequence of the great growth in Indian and Ceylonese tea exports in the late nineteenth century (Note by K. C. Iu). Plate 39. 12 Elsewhere in this journal, D. Faure in "Notes on the History of Tsuen Wan" mentions tea growing on Tsing Yi and at Chuen Lung in the earlier part of this century. 11 Section 3 of this Note discusses this "tea" more fully. 14 Plate 40. 15 Sessional Papers 1907, p. 221. 16 "A Notice of the Sanon District" reprinted JHKRRAS, Vol. 7, 1967, p. 122. 17 The Mau Tso Ngam Village Representative, Mr. Cheng Kau-hung, has also spoken to me (PHH) about herb collection. He stressed that knowledge of herb collection was kept as a secret and handed down from father to son, the father going to remote spots on the hillside to point out herbs to his son where prying eyes could not see what was done. Only some of the Mau Tso Ngam village families knew how to collect herbs, and this information was kept even more carefully from villagers from other villages. The prepared herbs were sold to shops in Kowloon City, a few cents being paid before the War for a well-prepared catty of the less frequently found herbs. The herbs were usually not those found in the Standard Pharmacoepia but "Mountain Drugs" (山藥), representing local folk remedies. Sellers of “Mountain Drugs" can still be found in the New Territories Market towns. Mr. Cheng stressed the difference between medicinal herbs the identification and preparation of which was kept secret, and those herbs usable as food in famines, which it was the duty of the elders to ensure every villager could recognise, and know how to prepare, in case the need ever arose (Note PHH). Dr. Chong Siu-cheung, with a group of local herbalists, has prepared a 5 volume book in English and Chinese “Chinese Medicinal Herbs of Hong Kong" (Commercial Press, Hong Kong, 1978-84) describing and discussing the uses of about 1,100 species of plant with medicinal properties found in Hong Kong. This book, however, does not cover the place collection or preparation played in the village society or economy (Note KCI). Plate 41. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 290 RODERICK O'BRIEN S.J. had only to retire to the Consulate where a rare treat awaited me in going over his collection. Although at this stage in his fifties, and in weak health (he died a few years later in 1889), Woods apparently planned a substantial scientific voyage up the Yangtze (Changjiang) River, but was unable to achieve this aim. April 1885: Passing Through Woods then joined HMS Flying Fish on a voyage to the Philippine Islands. On 20 March 1885, we find him writing from Manila to his brother, Terry. But the exigencies of war in the region meant that the Flying Fish had to return to Hong Kong, and so also Woods. The precise date of his return to Hong Kong is not known. In any event, Woods was soon gone again, this time to Japan. He left Hong Kong on 11 April 1885. July 1885: Pokfulam The visit to Japan was planned to be only a short one, and Woods intended to return on the same steamer. But he was taken sick, and it was over a month before he could leave Japan. On 21 June, he was able to leave, and returned to Hong Kong about four weeks later, This time, in a letter to his brother Terry dated 7 July 1885, he tells us that he was staying at Pokfulam, at the home of the managing partner in the firm of Douglas Lapraik & Company. Apparently he had not recovered in health, and the Governor arranged for him to spend his stay in the more salubrious climate of Pokfulam. Nevertheless, he was sufficiently attentive that in a later publication on the geography and geology of Hong Kong he was able to make specific mention of formations near the reservoir. Presumably recovered, he left Hong Kong to complete his work in the Malaysian area, arriving in Singapore once again, and undertaking an excursion to Pahang on the east coast of the peninsula. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 292 RODERICK O'BRIEN S.J. steamed amongst many barren-looking granite islands, about the fifth day from Singapore. At last one island with a very high peak upon it, loomed out from the clouds at no great distance, soon near enough to discern the forests of masts and crowds of steam-funnels, junks, sampans, and small steam launches which told unmistakably of a large seaport. As we neared it in the dull light of that cold foggy day, it looked as picturesque as any place I have ever seen. It may be defined as thick rows of masts; then handsome terraces of houses rising tier above tier upon such a steep incline that they looked as if each higher range were founded on the chimney-pots of the other. About half-way up the houses ceased, and then diagonal and zig-zag roadways, with scattered villas rapidly ascended into the clouds. A piercing cold Siberian wind was blowing keenly upon the animated scene of great rafts of steamers loading and unloading, a goodly fleet of men-of-war, and, as we neared the wharf, excited, surging, shouting crowds at the waterside. Hong Kong has often been described, but its wonderful population must be seen to be understood. Enormous crowds of boat-women, junk sailors, and coolies, which make a living stream on the quay, have no parallel in Europe or Asia. Certainly Hong Kong is not a Chinese town, but a town for Chinese, but yet not of European architecture, nor like the Straits Settlements. Its crowded by-streets and lanes, the absence of horse-carriages, the presence of chairs and jinrickshas make it very peculiar. There are plenty of soldiers in red coats and plenty of sailors in naval uniform, and all sorts of picturesque Chinese costumes, a few Hindoos and Malays, besides Parsees of portly presence and European dress surmounted with a hat like a stove-pipe. I am not going to describe any more of Hong Kong. I believe it is the most hospitable town in the East, almost surpassing the Straits Settlements and Shanghai. The merchant princes live in real splendour, extravagant if you will, but really comfortable. In winter sporting, hunting and other such amusements are out of the question; but for cricket, lawn-tennis, foot-ball and such like, and for balls, parties, private theatricals, & c., it ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 312 HONG KONG HILLTOP RETREAT FOR CROSS AND LOTUS HUGH WITT* The town of Shatin in Hong Kong's rural New Territories is a mushrooming area of rapid growth. High rise apartment blocks, factories, shops and offices are rapidly transforming this valley community into a major urban district. Shatin is one of six new town developments designed to reduce the heavy concentration of Hong Kong's population in densely congested Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. It is a typical example of Hong Kong's ability to keep pace with the need for progress and expansion in a highly competitive world trading economy. But there is more to Shatin than a reflection of Hong Kong's material needs. It is also a monument to more lasting values. For Shatin holds a unique place in east-west religious thought; it is the place where Christianity and Buddhism blossomed side by side in the teachings of a far-sighted Norwegian missionary. High on a hill, overlooking the changing landscape below, is the Christian mission of Tao Fong Shan the Mountain of the Wind of the Way. Hidden by trees from view below, the site of the mission is marked by a 40 feet (12 metre) cross which can be clearly seen from afar. Today Tao Fong Shan is a study centre dedicated to ecumenical work and the role of the Christian church among the Chinese. But it continues to carry the influence of its founder, Dr. Karl Ludvig Reichelt, who perhaps more than any other missionary to China, sought and found common ground between the ideals of Christianity and Buddhism. The church, its dormitories and the other buildings erected by Reichelt, are set in peaceful tree-lined gardens. And although the * This article, originally published in a number of Scandinavian theological publications, and in some newspapers in Norway, is printed here as background to the visit to Tao Fong Shan by the Society in the Spring of 1984. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 316 HUGH WITT Sverre Holth, a leading authority on Reichelt, wrote: “His vision of the cosmic Christ had opened his eyes to the need for a special type of missionary work in the Far East, namely to reach with the gospel those religious people whose hearts had already been prepared by God's logos. His experience had convinced him that Christ had been there before him and that his footprints were to be seen even in the non-Christian religious systems, or even specially there. He also believed that it had been one of the gravest blunders of modern missionary endeavour that these divinely prepared points of contact had been neglected.” Did this belief in "preaching to the converted" conflict with the traditional approach of missionaries to preach to the Godless? Dr. Lee commented: "Chinese are not really secular people. In Hong Kong today religion is there much more than it appears on the surface. Most Chinese people have some kind of religious influence. Reichelt's approach was not a denial of the truth of other religions but an affirmative statement that Christianity fulfils other religions." After Reichelt's death his followers did not have the same outlook and there were inevitable changes of course. The Christian Mission to Buddhists became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Institute. "That Reichelt's followers did not have the same outlook was partly due to his unique personality. There was also a gradual growth in resistance to Western influences during the years after his death," said Dr. Lee. Buddhists coming from China in the late 1940s found hospitality here but by the mid-1950s not so many people were coming out." A transitional period followed, when in 1957 the institute became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture. Reichelt's son became its first director and the Right Reverend R. O. Hall, then Bishop of Hong Kong, who lived at Shatin and had been a friend of Reichelt, became its first chairman. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 19 made an ornament and not a disfigurement”. He thought it not proper that the Colonial Chaplain had been turning his ponies loose to graze in the cemetery, though he had no complaint about the grounds-keeper, Mr. Donaldson, who kept things in order, reduced "over luxuriant foliage”, and in bare places planted trees and shrubs. He suggested that for a trifling cost the bare blank walls along the road could be made more ornamental. The south end of the cemetery, however, was unenclosed and, as far as he knew, unconsecrated. He suggested this portion, "rising in a rapid slope, could be greatly improved if it were grassed and flowering shrubs planted”. Even at the date covetous eyes were cast towards the proceeds from the races. "Could not the Race Committee spare a few dollars that flew so plentifully into its coffers, for the purpose of improving the appearance of the site of their annual sports. We have more than once suggested that the centre of the race course should be laid out and planted, but we should rather see the cemetery beautified and cared for". Colonial Cemetery Ordinances the problem of Japanese and Chinese burials The Public Health and Buildings Ordinance (No. 1 of 1903) included an article setting aside separate sections of the cemetery for special groups: naval and military commissioned officer, civil servants, residents of more than twenty-one years standing, residents of more than seven years standing, children and destitutes. Several conditions remained that created dissatisfaction in sections of the community. One was the burning of joss sticks and the firing of crackers at graves of non-Christians. The other was the absence of what were considered proper sites for the burial of wealthy Chinese with resulting periodic requests for burial of such in the Colonial Cemetery. These issues came before the Sanitary Board in 1908-1909, and resulted in the Christian Cemetery Ordinance of 1909. The joss stick and cracker problem was principally related to Japanese burials. The first Japanese burials were on terraces where their graves were intermingled with Christians. Later a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x ANTHONY FARRINGTON 187 A NEW SOURCE FOR CHINESE TRADE TO JAPAN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ANTHONY FARRINGTON* I must confess that the word 'new' in my title is a slight exaggeration; 'neglected' might be more accurate, because the source which forms the basis of this paper has been known from at least the beginning of the twentieth century.1 But my contention is that one of its more interesting features has been overlooked and the general context has been partly misinterpreted. India Office Records: G/12/17 comprises the diary and consultations of the English East India Company's factors in Tongking from 25 June 1672 to 30 November 1697. The volume is a composite one, made up in the nineteenth century from ten separate 'books' representing the sequence of transmissions back to London, and it contains some 500 folios of varying size. Neither a calendar nor a transcript of the text has been published, and I can claim to be one of the few to have read through it. Cromwell's charter of 1657, broadly confirmed by Charles II in 1661, rescued the East India Company from a period of financial confusion and commercial difficulties.2 The 1660s then saw the growth of serious interest in the possibility of reviving trade to Japan. The subject was discussed by the Company's Directors at the end of 1658, a report was compiled for the Deputy-Governor in 1661,3 and in 1664 a plan was put forward. A ship would leave London in September with a cargo of English manufactures, take in pepper and Indian piece goods at Bantam, call at Cambodia for any suitable commodities, sail on to Japan and finally, leaving there in November 1665, return to England via Bantam.4 The plan had to be shelved with the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1665, while in any case the Agent at Bantam pointed out that a base in Tongking, not Cambodia, to secure raw and finished silks for the Japanese market, would be * Mr. Farrington is Curator, India Office Records, London. I i ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 189 after all, the Dutch had been trading there for sixty years. Following the 1670 plan three ships, the Zant, Experiment and Return were first despatched from London to Bantam. After leaving Bantam the Zant could not get across the bar of the Red River until 25 June 1672, making her turn around too late to sail for Japan. The Experiment and Return reached Taiwan on 16 July 1672 and, after delays in lading cargo, only the Return went on to Japan. The Experiment was captured by the Dutch (the Third Anglo-Dutch War had reached East Asia) on her way south, while after a wait at Nagasaki from 29 June to 28 August 1673 the Return was expelled by the Japanese. The factories established at Tongking and Taiwan immediately lost their whole basis for existence, yet both survived — Taiwan intermittently until 1685 and Tongking for 25 years, until 1697. 8 For the first few years the Company remained hopeful of overcoming Japanese hostility, blaming the Dutch for what they saw as a temporary setback. But then the Tongking factory, despite all the difficulties of dealing with the local mandarinate,1 emerged as of value in its own right, supplying finished silks for the London market. The first order was placed in 1675; in October 1676 the English contracted for 4630 pieces; and in 1679 they ordered 18,500 pieces plus 40 bales of raw silk. It was only gradually, through the 1680s, that Cantonese wrought silks, satins and damasks proved more popular at the London sales. Apart from a price disadvantage, the Tongking merchants proved unwilling to adapt patterns and textures to suit European tastes, even though specimens were sent out.2 Chinese adaptability and commercial acumen proved irresistible, access to Japan was finally seen to be impossible, and the English withdrew from Tongking in November 1697. to So far this outline of the Tongking venture must be relatively familiar. My novel element lies in the fact that the English factory archive records previously unnoticed details of the trade between Tongking and Japan which had eluded them. The Dutch operated three-cornered voyages between Batavia-Tongking-Nagasaki, bringing in Japanese copper cash2 and armaments and carrying out raw and finished silk, all of which were noted. But more importantly, the factory diary throws some ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 191 3 Written by Quarles Browne, former chief factor in Cambodia, it survives in a 1664 copy in IOR: G/21/4 JJ. 4-8. *IOR: E/3/86 fl. 184-90 Company to Bantam 29 Feb 1664. 5 IOR: E/3/28 no. 3041 Bantam to Company 31 Dec 1664, 6 "The trade of the English East India Company in the Far East 1623-84", D.K. Bassett, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1960 32-47 and 145-57. 7 The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635-1834, Hosea Ballou Morse, 5 vols (Oxford, 1926 & 1929) — I p. 40. * For an excellent transcript of the documentation see Experiment and Return: documents concerning the Japan Voyage of the English East India Company 1671-3, ed Roger Machin (Kyoto, 1978). 9 Vividly summarised in the diary as "to be devoured by a company of catterpillers" — IOR: G/12/17 p. 281. 10 For example, Sep 1677 Tongking ‘peelongs' brought between 29s piece; Oct 1680 Cantonese 'peelongs' coloured 12s 8d 13s 2d, plain 23s 6d. IOR: Court Minutes B/34 and B/36. 37s per 23s In May 1677 Bantam forwarded "two pettecoats made of a sort of silke much worne in England — it's called by the name of gawze.” 12 The Tongking currency consisted of Japanese 'great' cash and locally coined small cash, which passed in the ratio of 6:10. The tael of silver (65 8d sterling) was reckoned at between 1000 and 1400 'great' cash, according to the availability of copper coinage. In September 1672 three Dutch ships from Batavia, bound for Nagasaki, brought in 6 million Japanese cash. 13 'Floss' silk, used for padding winter clothing. 14 Perhaps anticipating modern reactions, the Agent at Bantam wrote in June 1676 "Wee would have you be larger in your advices though shorter in your letters." Page 210 Page 211 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 together with information on local cultural societies, and other branches of the Royal Asiatic Society in the Far East. Membership Last year at this time I reported 25 new members. This year, 82 people have joined the Society. However, this increase is not reflected so fully in the membership numbers owing to weeding-out persons whose subscriptions have been long-outstanding. As of 19 March, 1987 the Society has 433 local members and 135 overseas members, a total of 568. This compares with 530 last year at this time and 475 the year before. There are 94 local life members and 71 overseas life members. From addresses given, and as the result of computerization of our records undertaken by Sharon Bruce, we find that 343 members live in Hong Kong, 57 in Kowloon and 33 in the New Territories. All indications are that our membership will continue to rise. Annual Subscription An increase in annual subscriptions under different heads is intended, but I shall leave our experienced Hon. Treasurer, Mr. David Gilkes, to explain the reasons for the increase and the reasoning behind the suggested amounts now proposed. This will be the subject of a separate discussion and vote. I hope that members will be able to support the Council's proposals. Publications The annual Journal is our major permanent contribution to knowledge of the Hong Kong Region and further afield. Its production is dependent upon the time and energy, largely related to one another, of our editors. In fact, we are fortunate to have two, Dr. Patrick Hase and Dr. David Faure, who are bringing out the 1984 and 1985 Journals respectively. These will appear shortly. Two other publications are also in hand, under other editors. One is on religion in China today and the other on historic buildings in Hong Kong. xi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 Publication Stock Hitherto the Society's stock of publications was kept at the University of Hong Kong and latterly at Bethanie, in a section occupied by the University Press. However, in May 1986 we were asked to remove the stock to make way for a rearrangement of the University's accommodation in the building. The impending crisis was averted by the Law Librarian Mrs. Felicity Shaw's kindness in allowing us to hold stock in the basement pending finding another home. This was achieved in July when the Government Archivist, our council member Dr. Thomas Lau, agreed to hold our stock in the Public Records Office. I am most grateful to Felicity (an RAS member) and Thomas for their timely assistance. The Library As members will recall, in 1985 the Council decided to place our large and valuable collection of books and periodicals on China and the Far East on permanent loan with the Urban Council Libraries, to be housed in the new Kowloon Central Library at Homantin, Kowloon. Wherever one places the collection it is necessary to advertise its existence, in order to ensure that it will be used. The Chief Librarian, Urban Council Libraries, takes various measures to this end periodically. On our part, we have written to some twenty local tertiary educational institutions whose students would wish to know of our library and its contents, enclosing copies of the library catalogue. This publicity, repeated at intervals, is bound to pay off eventually. In the past year, the Chief Librarian reports 18 enquiries, and that 37 books were consulted. Sir Edward Youde The Governors of Hong Kong have always been closely associated with our Society; as Patrons of the Hong Kong Branch re-established in 1959-60, and as Presidents of the first China (Hong Kong) Branch in 1847. Our first President was Sir John Davis, scholar, sinologue and a founder member of the parent society in London in 1823. In this connection I have to remind members of the sad event that occurred last December when we lost our current Patron, Sir Edward Youde, who died suddenly whilst on duty. Page xii ¡ ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 HELEN F. SIU social networks, they allied with top government officials to support the status quo. They had benefited the most from Hong Kong in the last few decades. Their conservatism was backed by owners of small-scale enterprises who desperately tried to keep their hard-gained independence. Another 37 percent of the working population were topped by a professional elite of lawyers, engineers, educators, administrative civil servants, and business executives. They were supported by a cast of technical staff with post-secondary education. Both strata belonged to the post-war generation, received and accepted the Western-style value system as provided by the colonial environment. Li argued that they had also benefited from the general prosperity of Hong Kong. The last 52 percent of the working population consisted of a labouring stratum with varying skills. The skilled workers gained more from the demands of an increasingly technical-intensive industrial sector, while the unskilled not only faced the prospect of becoming redundant, but also faced competition from the influx of Chinese immigrants in the late 1970s.10 Therefore, between the first wave of immigrants in the late 1940s and the last wave in the late 1970s, a generation of local residents grew up in Hong Kong to become its social mainstream, though polarized. The elites had Western education and a cosmopolitan outlook. They were tuned to urban living and worked comfortably within a modern economic infrastructure, the construction of which the Hong Kong government (despite its hands-off attitude) had taken a major part in.11 By the late 1970s, they had assumed important positions in the media, educational institutions, business, and the civil service. They also took for granted the role of the government as "provider" of many public services, however inadequate the services had been.12 Their outlook and life-styles shaped and were shaped by an emerging but unique Hong Kong culture they identified with and to an extent were defensive of. They were farther removed from the uprooted cultural values of their parents, and were most nervous over their futures at the time of political redefinition. In sum, Hong Kong culture and society in the 1980s have been characteristically "Chinese" but not quite so, owing to adaptations to unique historical circumstances. This is the reality recent ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 49 1916, he was responsible for road works in New Kowloon and the New Territories, extending the network of metalled roads in the Territory. By this time he was on a salary of £630 per year with a conveyance of £360 per year (presumably to cover the costs of running a car). Jackman married Dorothy Smith in the Peak Chapel on 26 August 1910. Dorothy Smith had come to Hong Kong around the beginning of the century with her brother, Crowther Smith, who had a legal practice in Queen's Road Central together with F. X. d'Almada e Castro. Also in Hong Kong at the time was Dorothy Smith's uncle, Horace Percy Smith, a well-known accountant and eminent Freemason. Immediately after the wedding, the couple went off for their honeymoon in Macao with a very rowdy send-off at the Macao Ferry Pier. So many firecrackers with red confetti were set off at the pier that one paper reported that the couple were mistaken by passers-by for the Governor of Macao, and many people joined the crowd to see what was going on. After their honeymoon, Jackman and his wife lived in Des Voeux Villas on the Peak. They had no children. H. T. Jackman was the father of urban planning in Kowloon and New Kowloon. In the early part of the century, development in the territory of Hong Kong had mainly been restricted to the island, while Kowloon had provided bases for the Army as well as major wharfage areas. The construction of the Kowloon Canton Railway greatly increased the development value of Kowloon and the population there started to grow rapidly. The land necessary for the Railway station, shunting yards and workshops was reclaimed from the sea to the east of the Tsim Sha Tsui peninsula (the hongs having taken up much of the available land to build godowns in anticipation of the opening of the railway). Writing in 1908, H. A. Cartwright, felt that “it requires no great prophetic instinct to predict that in time, the whole of Hung Hom Bay will be reclaimed.” From 1919, Jackman was closely involved in Kowloon town planning. Many of the old villages in the area succumbed to development clearance: Kau Lung Tsai and Kowloon Tong villages gave way to town house developments which are still there today. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 51 A couple were presented by colleagues with a silver rose bowl and a coffee set. Intending to recuperate in England, Jackman and his wife left Hong Kong on July 21, 1928, aboard the s.s. Rawalpindi. However, he contracted pneumonia soon after the ship sailed from Bombay and died at sea on August 4. His wife probably did not return to Hong Kong (although her name and address appear in directories for the Peak up until 1929). SOURCES Hong Kong Blue Book, 1903-1928 China Mail, August 10, 1928 South China Morning Post, August 11, 1928 Hong Kong Daily Press, 1 January 1928 Hong Kong Telegraph, 28 October 1910 Rev. Carl Smith's card index Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. (Lloyd's Publishing House, 1908) Directory & Chronicle of China, Japan, etc., 1914-1930 Who's Who in the Far East (pub. China Mail), 1906-07 Henry Thomas Jackman, born 4 June 1874, Civil Service Record: Date | Events | Absences | Salary 20.10.1902 | Appointed to Colonial Service (CSO4408 of 1903) | | 1903 | Executive Engineer, PWD | | HK$3,000 p.a. 1904 | | | 1905 | | | | Appointed 5 June 1903 Took up duty 15 July 1903. Acting Sanitary Surveyor | 3 Apr.-23 Nov. | £480.0.0 | | | £480.0.0 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 73 assistant, Mr. S.T. Dunn, who was in turn succeeded by his assistant, Mr. W.T. Tutcher in 1910. Both Dunn and Tutcher carried out extensive botanical work and were co-authors of "The Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong". Tutcher wrote "Gardening for Hong Kong" which served as a useful manual for horticulturists unfamiliar with the peculiar seasonal conditions of Hong Kong. They also organized repair and maintenance work to the buildings of the Botanic Gardens and Tutcher introduced electric lighting into the Gardens in 1913 for evening functions. Mr. H. Green succeeded Mr. Tutcher in 1919. He arranged the layout of some of the flower-beds and relaid the old paths and channels with cement granite. A granite memorial in the shape of a 'Pai Lau' was erected in 1928 at the top of the main entrance steps on the old Garden in memory of the Chinese in the service of the British Government who died during the Great War 1914-1918. Then in 1931 the lower portion of the Gardens was taken over by the Public Works Department for the construction of a service reservoir. Work was completed in 1933 and the area was recovered with black soil, turfed and reopened to the public. Mr. Green retired in 1937 and the vacant post was taken up by Mr. F. Flippance after a series of quick changes of appointments. By this time the activities of the Department had expanded so much that forestry in fact accounted for 65 to 70% of its work, the rest being botanical, gardening, and agricultural. In fact, afforestation work on the hills was carried out by the Gardens Department as early as 1876 but it was not until 1880 that planting on any large scale was undertaken and the Department had since been renamed the Botanic and Afforestation Department. The Botanic Gardens remained in good condition until the Second World War broke out. During the Second World War the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong resulted in extensive structural damage to the Botanic Gardens the site of which was badly cut up to provide earthworks for gun emplacements and defensive trenches. Much of the shrubbery was destroyed as were a number of the larger trees; additionally the surrounding railings and gates were removed to provide ease of access to military personnel and equipment. There are no Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 128 D.L. MICHALK 1940 and 1941. Troops trained on Hainan included part of the 18th Division which was later landed at Kota Bharu and which pushed southward along the Malayan east coast, the 5th Division which was landed at Singora and Patani in Thailand, the Guards Division which was lent to the XV Japanese Army for the early part of the invasion of Thailand and Burma, and then reverted to the XXV Army to support the advance of the 5th Division (Wigmore, 1957). In fact, the 5th Division was shipped in troops transports from San Ya in December, 1941, to the Thai peninsula (Wigmore, 1957). Another attraction for the invaders was the rich mineral resources of the island. Industrialists quickly developed a large, open-cut mine at Shi Lu Shan to provide the much-needed iron ore for the Japanese war effort. This necessitated construction of ports at Ba Suo and Yu Lin, and a railway link to transport the annual ore production of 2 million tonnes to these ports. To achieve the development targets demanded by Tokyo, Chinese were indentured and mustered into work-camps. Later Australian and Dutch soldiers captured in Indonesia were transported to a camp at Ba Suo to help with the work (Wigmore, 1957). A total of 267 Australians from the 2/21st Australian Infantry Battalion (or Gull Force as it was known) and 233 Dutchmen captured at Ambon were transported in the "Taiko Maru" to Hainan, arriving at Ba Suo in October, 1942. Conditions at the camp were harsh, and only 110 Australians remained when liberated by American forces on August 26, 1945. The opening of Hainan to foreign tourists enabled ten former Australian prisoners to return to Hainan in 1985 specifically to seek information on the fate of ten Australians who escaped from the camp and joined Communist forces in guerilla campaigns against the Japanese army (Nelson, 1985). Liberation and isolation After the defeat of the Japanese, the KMT regained control of the island, and when Chiang Kai-shek retreated from the mainland to Taiwan more than 100,000 of his loyal soldiers fled to Hainan. This meant that although the "People's Republic" was ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 37 ment, when attempting in April to occupy the New Territory (as the New Territories were then called), encountered much more ferocious resistance than anticipated. At this juncture, 600 men were sent into the Kowloon Walled City by the Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and the British authorities, convinced that they were there to support the resistance, demanded their withdrawal. The Colonial Office went so far as to threaten starving out the garrison at the City until troops were removed.41 The Chinese, however, claimed that the troops had been sent by special request of the Hong Kong government to preserve order, and though some of the men were withdrawn, by 4th May, 200 were still stationed in the City.42 This prompted the British to take action to attack Shumchun and Kowloon City as punishment for the Governor-General's duplicity in abetting the local resistance. On 16th May, at 3:00 p.m., a force of 300 men consisting of Royal Welsh Fusiliers and 100 Hong Kong Volunteers proceeded to Kowloon and occupied it, apparently meeting little resistance.43 All Chinese civil and military officials were ordered to depart as the British claimed that their continued presence and the retention of Kowloon Walled City in Chinese hands had proven inconsistent to British military requirement. To “legalize” the situation, an Order-in-Council was issued in December, announcing British jurisdiction over the Walled City which was to be administered in the same manner as the rest of the Colony.44 Yet this remained a unilateral revision of the Convention which the Chinese government never recognized. 44 45 46 The Chinese naturally responded bitterly to the development. T'an Chung-lin, the Governor-General, protested vehemently to the court of the undignified manner in which the military officers and soldiers were cast out.45 At Peking, the Tsungli Yamen complained to the British Minister.46 Chinese eagerness to recover jurisdiction at Kowloon is best revealed in the letters from Lo Feng-lu****, Chinese Minister at St. James, to the Foreign Office.Yet, paradoxically, this eagerness was not accompanied by action; no attempt was made by the Chinese to reinstate an administration in the Walled City. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 40 are the ones to be found remounted in the City today. Inscriptions on them indicate that they had been cast in 1802 and apparently transferred to Kowloon from the Tung-lung Forts in 1811. We do not know the origins of the other cannon, and since the War, there has been no trace of them. And so the City languished. Although squatters had filtered in after 1899, in the 1930s, the population was still less than 500. Conditions there were insanitary but at least it escaped the horrific over-crowding of some other parts of the Colony. In 1933, however, the government announced plans to demolish the houses, ostensibly for sanitary reasons, sparing only those used for public purposes, and to make the area into “a place of popular resort and antiquarian interest". There was some resistance from the residents; the Chinese authorities protested on their behalf while objecting to British disregard for the Convention. After several years' hesitation, the Hong Kong government finally took steps, despite Chinese objections, to evict all residents. By 1940, all buildings, except the old people's home, the former Lung-chin Communal School and the private home of a native resident, had been demolished. The dismantling continued under the Japanese: the wall was completely torn down to provide material to extend Kai Tak Airport. The "Walled City" was no more. After the War, as refugees fled to Hong Kong, a number of them settled in the "Walled City”; by 1947, its population had risen to about 2,000. Once more, the Hong Kong government's attempt to expel them provoked diplomatic conflict. But this time, no eviction took place. Instead, the City was left to its own devices, and to develop, as Governor Sir Alexander Grantham described it, into “a cesspool of iniquity, with heroin divans, brothels and everything unsavoury. From the early '60s, squatter huts gave way to high-rise buildings, which seem designed to break every conceivable construction regulation. Built with no open space between them, but with passages connecting each other like rabbit warrens, they are fire and health hazards and perfect criminal hide-outs. The old people's centre, formerly the Kuang-yin yuan, provides the only open area, and the mass of concrete around this +65 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 57 At least partial substantiation of these claims can be found in a Who's Who in the Far East entry under his name in June 1906. Presumably, the details of his entry were provided by Mok Man Cheung himself. A full quotation of the short passage may, therefore, tell something of how he viewed his own achievements. It reads: MOK, MAN CHEUNG (HONG KONG), Commission Agent, Translator of Legal documents and Arbitrator; b. Dec. 4, 1865. Educ. Government Central School (now Queen's College), Hong Kong. Monitor in Government Central School, 1884; Pupil Teacher, 1885; assistant teacher, 1888-92; Translator in Registrar General's Office, Hong Kong, 1893-94; Translator for the Supreme Court of Hong Kong, 1895-1900; assistant Compradore in Butterfield and Swire's service, 1901. Publications: “Tah Tsz English and Chinese Dictionary”; “English Made Easy". Address: 267, Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong." 23 Snapshot 2: Mok Man Cheung in the mid-1880s It is interesting that, over twenty years after the appointment, Mok Man Cheung chose to include "Monitor in Government Central School, 1884" as a mark of distinction. The prefect system was not established in Queen's College until 1911,24 and, therefore, Mok Man Cheung had no opportunity to add such an honour to his resume. Even though in general it remains true that absence of evidence cannot provide solid evidence of absence, in his particular case, one may assume that the fact that he did not quote scholarship successes, coupled with the fact that he is not mentioned in this respect in any of the Government sources or in Stokes' Queen's College 1862-1962, indicates that he did not win one of the prestigious scholarship awards25 during his time at the Central School. On the other hand, Carl Smith possesses evidence that Mok Man Cheung won the Mathematics prize for Class 1 (i.e., the senior class in the school) on 23rd January, 1884. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 58 Furthermore, Mok himself does refer to his participation in the pupil teacher scheme of 1885. This is particularly interesting on a number of grounds. First of all, there must be some doubt about the precise veracity of Mok Man Cheung's 1906 entry in Who's Who in the Far East. His name does not appear in the Hong Kong Government's Blue Book of 1885 as one of the pupil teachers, but it does appear in that year's Blue Book as Third Assistant Chinese Master.26 In the 1884 Blue Book, Mok Man Cheung is recorded as "Fourth Assistant” in the Central School, appointed on 23rd September, 1884. It appears certain, therefore, that, having completed Class 1 at the Central School in 1884, he was appointed directly to the staff of the school, rather than to the pupil-teacher scheme. He may well have taken a Class 1 examination in Pupil-Teacher's Method and his monitorial duties may have included the supervision of some of the junior classes. The records indicate, however, that he was not formally appointed as a Pupil-Teacher at the Central School at any time between 1880 and 1885 and that the normal length of a Pupil-Teacher course was three years. 27 The pupil-teacher scheme is itself of considerable interest and an association with it may have been regarded by Mok Man Cheung in 1906 as face-enhancing. A slight diversion from the personal snapshot may, therefore, be justified in order to consider the provisions for teacher education in Hong Kong in the latter part of the nineteenth century. 28 The first provision of formal teacher education in Hong Kong was similar to the "Monitorial System" of Bell and Lancaster in Great Britain. In the early days, however, Frederick Stewart, the first Headmaster of the Central School, who, for many years, doubled as the Inspector of Government Schools, became discouraged by the way pupils who were trained in school to become teachers "cashed in" their improved fluency in English by leaving school and taking up employment as interpreters, translators, or other types of middlemen in commercial undertakings or in government service.29 In 1881, an experiment with a discrete teacher education establishment was launched in Hong Kong, thanks to the enthusiasm of the new Inspector of Schools, Dr. E.J. Eitel, and the forceful, but controversial Governor of the time, Sir John ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 60 the pupil-teacher system as the most efficient and economic remedy for the lack of trained teachers in the two colonies and the first training colleges for English-medium teachers were not established until the twentieth century. 33 34 The fact that Mok's name appears as an assistant Chinese master from 1884 to 1887 at a salary initially of $240 per year and later of $300 a year (i.e. $25 per month) shows that he accepted employment at the Central School only for a very short period,” and that he, then, like the students who had been the despair of Frederick Stewart, proceeded to exploit his own marketability by obtaining a transfer to the more lucrative translation service of the Hong Kong Government. In this respect, Mok Man Cheung was a person who took some actions which enhanced his eligibility as an open collaborator of colonialism. At a time which witnessed attempts to ensure "separate treatment” of the Chinese and Caucasian races as far as the admission hours to the old City Hall's museum were concerned and efforts to secure separate schools for the different races," Mok Man Cheung outwardly valued his connections with the European establishment. It is possible that he signed a bond committing himself to teaching in a Government school for a period of five years at a relatively low salary. Like certain Whig politicians of the eighteenth century in England, he might well have been prepared to "sell spot to buy futures”. Snapshot 3: Mok Man Cheung in late 1917 On his deathbed in late December, Mok Man Cheung might have had time to consider whether his career decisions had been wise ones. In their favour he could point to more than respectable worldly wealth and a respected social position. He had written two successful books and had been engaged in numerous property and other commercial deals. In the last few weeks of his life, he witnessed the will of Mok Tso Chuen, a relative and benefactor. In the last few days, he made his own will, disposing his worldly possessions in the proportion of 2:1 between his wife and his concubine. Perhaps, at some time, Mok Man Cheung cast his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 61 thoughts back to the decision to leave the Central School and the teaching profession. Even before the expiration of any bond period to which he might have agreed, he capitalised on his extra training in English by moving out of the underpaid teaching profession and into the more prestigious, and better paid, government service as a Chinese Clerk and Interpreter. Thus, even if he were an open collaborator with colonial rule, he also made use of it for his own purposes. His first post was with the Registrar General's Department. He joined the Registrar General's Department on 1st April, 1887, not, as his Who's Who in the Far East entry claimed, in 1893. This move raised his annual salary to $660. The experience certainly provided him with evidence about active negotiation at the sharp end of the relations between the colonial government and Chinese social, cultural and political mores. While working in the Registrar General's office, he probably not only improved his facility to translate between Chinese and English, but also made useful connections. He was certainly in good enough standing to be able to secure a brief endorsement of his book by the new Registrar General, A.W. Brewin, over ten years later, in August 1904. Towards the end of his time at the Registrar General's Office, Mok Man Cheung had begun another potentially prestige-making and personally rewarding middleman activity. In 1890, he was translating Chinese wills into English. Indeed, his dual role is recognized in the Government Blue Book of 1890 where his name appears twice — first, substantively, as Chinese Clerk and Interpreter at the Registrar General's Office, but, also, as “Acting Chinese Clerk and Translator at the Supreme Court”, having been appointed to this acting post by the Governor on 7th July, 1890 under C.S.O.1531 of 1890. It is not surprising, therefore, that his next career move was to the even more face-giving Supreme Court. This he joined, substantively, as "Chinese Clerk and Translator”, on 17th September, 1891, under Colonial Standing Order 351 of 1891, not in 1895 as he elsewhere suggests. His salary was now $960 per annum, rising by $10 increments to $1,200. By 1894, however, he had reached the salary level of $1,200. In that year he witnessed a further dete- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 from the List of Common Jurors (in the Hong Kong Sessional Papers), where most recently it had been associated with his long-standing address at 267, Queen's Road East and with the occupation of Compradore for Holt's Wharf, the Hong Kong home of the Blue Funnel Line. An examination of his will and the certificate of probate shows that he died on Sunday, 30th December, 1917. On Tuesday, 1st January, 1918, the following brief news item appeared in the “Local and General” column of the South China Morning Post:43 A well-known Chinese resident, Mr. Mok Man Cheung, compradore at Holt's Wharf, died at the week end. Mr. Mok passed away on Sunday morning at his residence, 267, Queen's Road East. He was an old QC44 student and very well known in the Colony. He was on the Committee of the Tung Wah Hospital, the Po Leung Kuk, the Hongkong Public Dispensary and many other prominent institutions.” He was only 53 years of age at the time of his death. Questions which remain for consideration and which possibly taxed him at the time of his death concern the inaccuracies in the career summary which he permitted to be published in 1906. Why did he claim to be a pupil-teacher in 1884, when in fact he was already a fully-fledged assistant Chinese master? Why did he post-date his teaching career at the Central School? Why did he post-date and abbreviate his career at the Registrar General's Office? Why did he post-date his time at the Supreme Court? The simplest answer is to place the responsibility either on faulty copy-editing on the part of the editors of Who's Who in the Far East or upon faulty memory on his own part. These answers do not ring true, partly because the editors have received no similar criticisms relating to the numerous other entries, and partly because the errors are too consistent to be simply the result of an oversight. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a person in 1906, then aged 41, would forget the dates of employment only fifteen to seven years before. Another possibility, already mentioned, was that Mok Man Cheung felt that he gained face from association with the pupil teacher scheme, and that all consequent post-dating was caused by ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 68 Office Records, Series 129 (“Hong Kong: Original Correspondence"), File 404, pp. 359-397. Such references will hereafter appear in the style, CO129/404, pp. 395-397. 12 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper, 1944), p. xlviii, 20-42. 13 The expression "country youths" is broad enough to include the Chinese further up-country in Guangdong Province. It is likely, however, that Mok Man Cheung had his eye on the chance of catering to the population of the area then known as "the New Territory", leased from China in 1898. 14 "Feng Shui" is the traditional Chinese concern for geomancy, or the most favourable conjunction of winds and waters which would be taken into consideration when, for example, a tomb or a residence was being sited. See Maurice Freedman, 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong Kong', in The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, selected and introduced by G. William Skinner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979), pp. 189-211. 15 In the Cantonese vernacular, "horse-boy" also means “minion”. 14 The various page numbers included in parentheses refer, of course, to the original 1904 edition of English Made Easy. 17 Other examples of simple errors, which have little to do with local knowledge, include "grosery", "Bigonia", "Spinage", "Carret", "Pumpkin", "Thrimp fritters", “Calway seeds”, “Pate foi gras", "Sarsaparilla", “Cut dough or spargetty", etc. 18 A common expression, especially in business circles, for present, treat, "sweetener", close to the conceptual borders of bribe. 19 Anthony Sweeting, 'Hong Kong', in R. Murray Thomas & T. Neville Postlethwaite (eds.) Schooling in East Asia: Forces of Change (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1983), p. 275. 20 Smith (1985) p. 103f. 21 An expression used by Carl Smith to mean educated through the medium of the English language in one of the leading “Anglo-Chinese" schools in Hong Kong at the time, e.g., the Morrison Education Society School, St. Paul's College, Ying Wah College, the Diocesan Home and Orphanage, the Central School (renamed Victoria College in 1887 and Queen's College in 1894), and St. Saviour's College (renamed St. Joseph's College in 1875). 22 Smith (1985) pp. 143-171. 24 Who's Who in the Far East, (Hong Kong, China Mail, 1906), p. 233. The first Prefects were appointed on Empire Day, 1911, received gilt badges to denote the importance of their office, and were known ironically as "Mr. Ralph's peerage", presumably to signify that this new pupil aristocracy was the brainchild of Mr. Edwin Ralphs, the popular Second Master. See Gwenneth Stokes, Queen's College 1862-1962 (Hong Kong: Queen's College, 1962), p. 282. 25 These included the Morrison Scholarship, donated by the Morrison Education Society in 1873; the Government Scholarship, instituted for pupils at the Central School in 1874; several Belilios Scholarships established by E.R. Belilios in 1882 when his offer to erect a statue in honour of Viscount Beaconsfield, recently Prime Minister of Great Britain, was politely declined; the Stewart Scholarship, estab- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 87 NOTES “Wong Tai Sin” is the most common transliteration in Hong Kong of the god's name. The pinyin transliteration is Huang Daxian. For Chinese names with a conventional Hong Kong transliteration which differs from the pinyin form, we will begin with the pinyin forms followed by the Hong Kong forms within brackets. For names and places in China, and for subsequent references to Chinese names and terms used in Hong Kong (except for place names such as Hong Kong and Kowloon), only pinyin system will be used. On the reasons for the growth in popularity of Huang Daxian in Hong Kong, especially since the late 1940's, see Graeme Lang, and Lars Ragvald, “Upward mobility of a refugee god: Hong Kong's Huang Daxian," The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies. Vol, 1, 1988. We have called Huang Daxian the “refugee god” both because his cult was imported into Hong Kong early in this century during a period of persecution of traditional religion in China, and also because the god's success can be attributed in part to the refugees who flooded into the area around the temple in the late 1940's. Key decisions made by the management of the temple were also very important. Our discoveries regarding the ruined temples to Huang Daxian in Guangdong, and a second visit to these sites in 1987, will be reported in a forthcoming article. There are undoubtedly many intriguing stories about Huang Daxian which could be collected by researchers in Guangdong province. For instance, one story connecting Huang Daxian to legends about the founding of Guangzhou was related to the first author by the manager of a local company near Guangzhou, who as a child had played in an old Huang Daxian temple in the Fangcun area (on which, see the first author's forthcoming paper). According to this story, Huang Chuping of the Jin dynasty had found the way (Tao) and become a saint at Mt. Luofu. He then, it is said, shouted at five pieces of hard rock turning them into five fairy-sheep and also ordered five fairies dressed in red, yellow, blue, white and black respectively to drive the sheep. This unlikely flock descended in the midst of Guangzhou. Huang Daxian then chanted, "I wish that Guangzhou from now on shall enjoy bumper harvests, timely wind and rain, be prosperous and at peace, and never suffer famine or disaster”. This tale was related as explaining the origin of the old names Wuyang Cheng (City of the five sheep) and Suicheng (Ear of grain city). The story is clearly modeled on the old (documented) tales of the five saints on ram-back who brought the five ears of grain to Guangzhou. It is not clear where the manager got his story, but it may have been stimulated by an obscure phrase on one of the pillars of the main gate of the old Fangcun Huang Daxian temple. In any case, we expect that there are many such tales which remain to be uncovered. The versatile Huang Daxian, with his several incarnations and his ability to absorb stories from other traditions, may continue to surprise students of his cult for years to come. In the present paper, however, we focus only on his merger with another Taoist figure at Mt. Luofu. 5 Several cases of apparently similar confusion or merging of legendary Taoist figures on the basis of similar surnames have been documented in S.H. Wong. “A study of Huang Ta-hsien [Daxian].” The Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, XVI, 1985, pp. 223-239. Mt. Luofu, some 100 kilometres northeast of Guangzhou, is historically the most important site in the history of Taoist worship and practice in Guangdong province. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 102 of this has yet been found although contemporary maps indicated at La Loma a "Burial place of infidels.” Infidels comprised non-Catholics and included European Protestants, Chinese, and Indians. Incidentally, still living in Cainta, only a few miles away are the descendants of the Indian troops of the expedition who decided to stay after deserting or being left behind after their boat capsized, but their distinctive looks are, however, slowly disappearing. Sadly, after being governed by the East India Company for eighteen months, Manila had to be returned to the Spanish by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Speculation still exists amongst Filipino scholars about what the Philippines might have been if the British had remained in control — a British colony in the Far East, rich in natural resources, fifty years before the acquisition of Singapore and Malaya and eighty years before Hong Kong. Trade continued to prosper after the resumption of Spanish Authority, and, until 1821 the Philippines continued to be run from Mexico. Treaty ports and trading posts were established in several places including Sual in Pangasinan, on Luzon Island, in Iloilo on Panay and on Cebu and Protestant cemeteries were established in each town, where beforehand the burial of Protestants in consecrated ground was prohibited, (as was the importation of Protestant Bibles). With the expansion of trade, a burial place for the four hundred to five hundred aliens from Europe and North America living in Manila, was becoming an urgent necessity. In 1827 the first British Consul General was appointed and it was his successor, John William Perry Farren (sometimes referred to as Fearon) who in 1860 attempted to establish a Protestant Cemetery for the mostly but not exclusively British residents. Sadly, Farren became one of the cemetery's first residents within weeks of its establishment. On May 27th, 1862, the Spanish Government by a "Superior Decreto" granted permission to construct the Cemetery, and on March 11th, 1864 a lease was signed between Farren and Don Jose Bonifacio Roxas, the Owner of Hacienda de San Pedro, of a parcel of land of 31,656 "varas cuadradas" (22,467.85 sq metres or ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 224 turned the soil in the Wongneichong Valley for a park. The incipient park already bore his name. Governor Bowen was one of Hongkong's unpopular administrators. He was regarded as pompous with an over-developed sense of his own importance. This antagonism towards him may possibly have been one reason why the park had received support as a memorial gesture. It would be an indirect expression of the public's disapproval of its late administrator if he were deprived of having his name perpetuated in Hongkong by a public amenity. Dr. Ho Kai reminded the meeting that if looked at in another way the change of the name from Bowen to Victoria was not entirely complimentary to Her Majesty. It was rather like, as he expressed it, offering her "cast off shoes." This remark was greeted with loud applause. Dr. Ho Kai reserved his most serious objection last. It was he said "a class objection." The park would not be welcomed by the Chinese. Though he did not say so openly, it meant that the community could not expect the Chinese to assist in this aspect of the plans for the jubilee. The park would be too far from the centre of town. Not only the Chinese but other less affluent sections of the population would find it too remote. Dr. Ho Kai admitted that for residents near the park and those who liked to take long walks the park would meet a need, but, on the other hand, for the great majority of people living in the town the park would be quite useless, at least for some time to come. There were suggestions that circumstances might change. “We speak of having tramways, of the Praya extension, and of connecting east and west, but in regard to this I may use the words of Mr. Chater and say that Government does not undertake these ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 241 Only one letter was received. It was from Dr. Patrick Manson who proposed building a sanitarium at the Peak for the sick and convalescent. The meeting started inauspiciously. It had been called for 4.30pm at the City Hall. When the hour arrived there were only four or five people present. Obviously they could not proceed. Half an hour later there were sufficient present to begin. The attendance, however, was far below that of the first meeting. On looking around it was noted that high-ranking government officials had decided not to attend the meeting. They had become somewhat wary of public meetings. They found themselves in an embarrassing position due to their presence at the previous meeting when a plan had been adopted which reflected badly on Hongkong's regard for Governor Sir George Bowen. The Governor was on leave and it was not expected his appointment would be renewed. Rumours, however, reached Hongkong after the meeting that he was to sail for the East. It was not clear whether he was returning as Governor of Hongkong or for some other purpose. As it turned out, his term was not renewed. At any rate, prudence dictated that Government officers should avoid meetings which reflected the local animosity towards Sir George. After the opening formalities, the letter of Dr. Manson was read. The chairman then asked for an expression of opinion on the sanitarium scheme. No one responded, instead Mr. W. E. Crow, a government pharmacist, introduced the idea of a public library and reading room, Following Mr. D. R. Crawford's seconding of his proposal, Mr. Crow asked for clarification on a point of procedure. Would Dr. Manson's project be voted on before his own, or would his be voted on as an amendment to Dr. Manson's? The chairman ruled that as Dr. Manson's proposal had not been seconded and Mr. Crow's had, it was the latter which should be voted on. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 288 always been so. [For the method of selecting managers at this shrine, see the account given in the article cited above]. I asked about the drums used by the teams. It seems that horse hide is used for drums used for watch and ward, and for military use; but that cow hide is more usual for lion and other dance troupes, on account of its higher and sharper pitch. Peel Street This shrine, unlike the one at Sheung Fung Lane which dates back to the nineteenth century, is of post-war origin. It comprises an altar under a canopy on one side of the steps which form this part of Peel Street, with a small management office in a temporary structure opposite. The shrine has only been at this location since the mid-1960s. It was first kept inside and then at the doorway of a house at 31 Elgin Street, before being put in the street outside that address in a small temple-like structure. It was moved here upon the demolition of the old house in Elgin Street. The shrine serves a group of Hoklo persons originating from the Hoi Fung (海豐) area of north-east Kwangtung. Of the ten interested parties with whom I spoke in 1974, two came to Hong Kong in 1934, five arrived here in 1945-46, two in the 1950s and the last in 1962. The oldest was 65, and the youngest 37. The altar is in the form of a black granite tablet inscribed with the characters #2£âZī. It is said to be old: the estimates ranged from "several generations" to "100 years" to "200 years". All agreed that it had been brought from a large temple known as the Pak Kung Miu (北帝廟) located in the small market town of To Tong Hui (陶塘墟) in Hoi Fung, just after the War. The town served as the market for between 30 to 40 surrounding villages, and in Ch'ing times the area was known as To Tong Yuek (陶塘約). The shrine was established without authority, like many of its kind in the post-war period. The managers had to be persistent, and brave the disapproval of the Squatter Control Division of the Resettlement Department, whose duty it was to control the spread ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 296 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 interested in modern China or who are interested in the British in Asia. Dr. Atwell has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of how the British administered one small locality and coped with demands of modern forces. Her work can be used as a guide or springboard for comparison of British colonial policy in various East Asian places, such as Brunei and the Straits Settlements, Hankow, Tientsin, and Shanghai, say, with Hong Kong tossed in for good measure. WEI PEH T'I* Steven A. Leibo, Transferring Technology to China, Prosper Giquel and the Self-strengthening Movement, China Research Monograph 28, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, 1985. Prosper Giquel, edited by Steven A. Leibo, A Journal of the Chinese Civil War 1864. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1985. These two works, one of compilation and assessment based on a doctoral dissertation, the other of translation (with the help of Debbie Weston) and annotation with a lengthy introduction, have a considerable intrinsic interest because they deal with a rather extraordinary man. They have also a degree of relevance, over a century later, for the West's involvement with present-day China's modernizing programme. They are to be read in conjunction with other modern works on this period of China's self-strengthening efforts, including those listed in Dr. Leibo's introduction to Transferring Technology. Prosper Giquel, a French naval officer, came to China during the Second China War. After service with the Joint Commission * Wei Peh T'i is Honorary Lecturer, Department of History, and Research Associate, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China (1987). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q Meanwhile the Far East Flying Training School (the original name) commenced training pilots and engineers for civil aviation in 1934.10 The Far East Flying and Technical School Limited, as it was later named, was a private institution. It closed in 1983. The first Government post-secondary technical institution was the Trade School which opened in Wood Road, on Hong Kong Island, in 1937, on a site adjacent to that on which Morrison Hill Technical Institute now stands. At the time of opening, under Principal George White, it ran courses in building, mechanical engineering, and marine-wireless operating. The college also took over the evening practice courses previously run by Taikoo Dockyard. The new, then two-storey (an additional floor was completed in 1953), Trade School building in Wanchai, was well constructed and was one of the few examples of good face-brick-work in the Colony. (It was demolished in 1988, seven years after becoming an annexe of the Morrison Hill Technical Institute.)* Thus, when the Pacific War broke out in 1941, technical education was being provided at secondary, trade-school, and post-secondary levels, but not on a large scale. For example, there were about 200 full-time students attending post-secondary courses at the Trade School. This did not receive a great deal of support from employers except from the dockyards and the members of the Building Contractors' Association. During the Japanese occupation (December 1941 to August 1945) oral history has it that the equipment was moved away and the Trade School building was used for a period as an opium factory. In 1947, after World War II the Trade School (renamed Technical College in 1947), the Junior Technical School, the Aberdeen Trade School, and a number of centres running evening classes in technical subjects, reopened and were soon working at pre-war capacity. To this group was added the Tang King-po Secondary School, in Kowloon, in 1953. For many years this had a trade school section which organised classes in printing, shoemaking and tailoring.11 This section was phased out in the late 1970s. *Please see Plate 1. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 15 NOTES The Author is grateful to the Reverend Carl T. Smith for providing material about vocational training in early Hong Kong, and to Mr. C.L. Ko and Mr. M.H. So for the photograph. T.F. Ryan, 'The Story of a Hundred Years: The PIME in Hong Kong, 1858-1958', Catholic Trust Society, Hong Kong, 1959. Hong Kong Daily Press, 20 July 1876; and Hong Kong Catholic Register, Vol. II, No. 39, 29 June 1879; and South China Morning Post, 16 November 1936. Hong Kong Telegraph, 30 January 1905; and Hong Kong Telegraph, 17 September 1901; and Daily Press, 25 January 1906; and Hong Kong Telegraph, 17 June 1914. T.C. Cheng, "The Education of Overseas Chinese: A Comparative Study of Hong Kong, Singapore and the East Indies' (University of London MA thesis, 1949), p. 141; and Hong Kong Telegraph, prospectus of evening courses to be held at Queen's College. *Imperial Education Conference Papers, Education Systems of the Chief Colonies not possessing responsible Governments' (Hong Kong, 1914), p. 5. 4 Ibid, pp. 27 and 28. 7 Watt Hoi-kee, "Technical Education in Hong Kong Today", Appendix I (undated), p. 26 (c. 1964). # 'Opening Ceremony New Technical College' (booklet), (2 December 1957), p. 3. *Aberdeen Technical School 1935-1965, 30th Anniversary Souvenir Number'. C 'Far East Flying and Technical School Ltd' (prospectus) (undated). Monica Yeung, 'Air-minded men who never get off the ground', Hong Kong Standard (15 September 1974) p. 19. 12 'Hong Kong Technical College 1970-71', prospectus p. 1. 11 Information given verbally by pre-war Trade School student. TH 'Tang King-po School Speech Day and Prize-giving' (brochure) (19 November 1976). 15 'Technical Education Investigating Committee, Report on Technical Education and Vocational Training in Hong Kong' (30 October 1953). 'Opening Ceremony of the Polytechnic's First New Building' (brochure) (26 October 1976), p. 1. 17 TH 19 'Opening Ceremony of the New Technical College' (2 December 1957), last page. *Report on the Cost Study of the Hong Kong Technical College' (December 1968). *'Opening Ceremony of the Polytechnic's First New Building', loc. cit. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 31 1 Elgin to Clarendon, 9 Jan. 1858, Accounts and Papers, XXXIII 257) p. 140 and Bowring to Malmesbury, 15 April, 1859 Confidential Print, FO 405: 6. fol. 2, no. 1. It is often said that Martineau des Chesnez (see for example Hurd, The Arrow War, p. 125) spoke Chinese as well. This seems a confusion based on the fact that Chesnez spoke English and thus was helpful as a French-English linguist. See for example, Gros to Walewski, 13 January 1858, p.s. of the 14th, CP 23, fol. 41, AE. 1 5 Wade to Elgin, 10 March, 1858, Accounts and Papers, XXXIII 2571, (1859), p. 226. See Steven A. Leibo, Transferring Technology to China: Prosper Giquel and the Self-strengthening Movement, (Berkeley, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1985), ch. 5. Bourboulon to Walewski, 5 October, 1858, CP, vol. 22, fol. 177-178, AE plus Leibo Transferring Technology To China, ch. 1. 7 Laurence Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan in the Years 1857, 58, '59 (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1859), vol. I, 151. 10 Gros to Walewski, 3 January, 1858, CP, vol. 23, fol. 8, AE. Gros to Walewski, 3 January, 1858, CP vol. 23, fol. 8, AE. Gros to Walewski, 8 January, 1858, CP vol. 23, AE. Hurd, The Arrow War, p. 125. Bowring to Labouchere, 16 April 1858, FO 17 296, des. 49, fol. 117-118, PRO. and Stanley F. Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast: Wm. Mullan and Sons, 1950), p. 176. 13 Gros to Walewski, 8 February 1858, vol. 25, fol. 210, AE. Laurence Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan, P. 155. 15 Genouilly to Min. de la Marine, July 1, 1858, Dossier Individual Martineau des Chesnez, CC 7 2503, SHM. Elgin to Malmesbury, 5 November, 1858, Accounts and Papers, XXXIII 2571, (1859), p. 413. 17 Hsu, The Rise of Modern China 3 ed. p. 207. 19 Trenqualye to Walewski, 28 April 1859, CCC Canton, vol. 2, fol. 112 and D'Abouville to Min. de la Marine, 2 May 1859, BB 4 763, fol. 106-7, AN. 19 Laurence Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan, P. 155. 20 Gros to Walewski, 8 January 1858, CP vol. 23, fol. 23, AE, 21 Hurd, The Arrow War, p. 125. 15 21 D'Abouville to Min. de la Marine, 12 December 1858, BB 4 763, fol. 20, AN. 11 January 1858, Accounts and Papers, XXXIII 2571 (1859), incl. 2 in no. 83 fol. 149. PRO. 24 Coupvent to Min. de la Marine, 20 June 1860, BB 4 787, fol. 11, AN, 25 Hurd, The Arrow War, pp. 124-126. 26 Laurence Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan, P. 169 ================================================================================ 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 88 panic; many of the people abandoned their homes without taking food or money, and with their wives and children were driven towards the boundary. Destitute, many of them died on the road, while a few managed to escape to Kwai Shin district and other places as far away as they could. A year later the boundary was moved a further 30 Chinese miles inland. The new boundary ended to the west at Taai Ch'ung Hau and Sha T'ong Fong and to the east at Taai Shaan Ha and Paak T'au Shaan, a flag being put up at each of these places. Almost immediately the district magistrate of Tung Kwun made a personal inspection of the places where the flags were erected and he reported that the people in Taai Chung Hau had not moved so the flag was taken from Sha Tong Fong and hoisted on top of Shek Shaan. Thus the six villages Ch'ung Hau, Lau Ka Haang, Chaak Mei, K'iu T'au and Tau Ch'ung all had to be moved, but at Kiu T'au a rope was put between it and the boundary and half only of the village was shifted. The Viceroy Lo Shung Tsun quite sympathized with the people, and joined with other high officials in sending a memorial to the throne, stating how miserable the people were, and begging that fewer villages should be caused to move. In the 10th month of the same year (1663) two head boatmen, Chau Yuk and Lei Wing revolted against the Ts'ing Government in Kwangtung. These two men were the owners of fleets of several hundreds of junks that usually fished in the rivers of Poon Yue district. All the junks had long oars as well as three sails so they were very fast. In addition they stored a lot of arms on board. Both Lei and Chau had a military title of Yau Kik bestowed on them by the P'ing Naam Wong, as their sailors had proved themselves of great assistance in fighting sea-battles against the Ming soldiers. When, however, the order was issued preventing boats from putting out to sea the junks of Chau and Lei were detained in the rivers and their families forced to live in Canton city. Chau and Lei pretended to get leave to go home and bury the bones of their ancestors. Secretly they took their families away from Canton, and collecting all the boatmen they put out to sea. Then openly they attacked the Ts'ing forces, capturing many of their ships and burning the guard stations along the coast. They never ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 105 Because of conflict between the Heong Shan and the Toy Shan cl stockholders of the bank, and depressed over the loss of Me Yuk, uncle returned to China in 1910. I remember them when they stopped over in Honolulu and the trip we took with him by taxi to the Pali. He presented Mother with a pair of etched California gold bracelets, one of which I now own. On my first visit to China in 1919, Uncle was working for the Sun Company Ltd., a large department store in Hong Kong, but he later returned to banking as the Branch Manager of the Bank of East Asia in Canton until his death during World War II. one at 96 Kennedy Road, Hong Kong, M, Canton, on the bank of a small He established two homes and the other in Lai Chee Wan river. The former was a sturdy concrete building of British design and character, while the latter was Chinese, with an enclosed courtyard and garden. Since he had accumulated a comfortable fortune, he acquired an estate in Deep Water Bay near Aberdeen, Hong Kong, where he would retreat from time to time to enjoy the beautiful flowers which his gardeners cultivated. His Kennedy Road home was like a hotel, open to relatives from the village and to other visitors as well. He found jobs for male relatives from the village who wanted to work in the city; he contributed to the support of needy kinsmen; and he paid a percentage of the debt owed to creditors of the family pawn shop which had failed during Grandfather's tenure. He was a true head of the house, assuming responsibilities for the care and support of many. 1 Sometime before 1919 when Uncle got settled again, he brought into the household his "Third Concubine", a native of Sun Yup. Born on 12 December 1897, she was considerably younger than Uncle. Uncle seemed quite fond of her. This was probably threatening to both First Aunt and Small Aunt, for the former then adopted a son, Po Nin, who was born on 17 February 1908, but he died from tuberculosis when he was in his teens. Small Aunt tried very hard to conceive by frequently going to the temple to pray for a son and miraculously became pregnant and bore a son, Po Ling, on 10 May 1915. A great deal of rivalry existed between the two concubines that resulted in intrigues and accusations until eventually Uncle reluctantly had to send Third Concubine out of his household, reportedly because there was proof of her infidelity. However, he gave her a sum of money in order that she could learn to be a midwife and become self-supporting. It is reported ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 118 In May 1903, he wrote that he had been ill since the 7th of April, three weeks before the examinations. He said that he had 'walking typhoid fever' but felt he had been cured since he no longer suffered from fever or numbness of his legs, although he was still thin and weak. His doctor had assured him he would be perfectly well by the end of the month. Subsequently, in July, he went to San Jose for a short vacation with plans to transfer to Stanford University the coming year in order to benefit from the more hospitable climate of Palo Alto. Due to increased responsibilities with the arrival of his concubine in San Francisco a few weeks before, First Uncle could not help Ping Lim much except to pay the doctor's bill of 50 dollars, and to advise him to return to Hawaii in view of the fact that First Uncle could not continue supporting him. Grandfather sent him 20 dollars, but he still had to borrow 200 dollars from a friend. He also asked Father to send him 30 dollars to buy himself a new suit. He must have left California for Honolulu soon after that, because a letter from a friend, Otis S. Lee, dated 18 August 1903, expresses surprise to learn of his departure and said that all his friends missed him. Although it was hoped that convalescence in Manoa would restore his health, Ping Lim died on 2 October 1903. It was a great blow to the family, especially to Grandfather. There was a eulogy to him in the San Francisco Chinese newspaper, for he had cultivated the friendship of a group of students from China and of other intellectuals exposed to Western thinking who would later participate in the political changes in China. It was an annual ritual in early spring for Father to take Ruth and me with him to the Lin Yee Cemetery in East Manoa (established 7 June 1889) to pay respects to Uncle Ping Lim and his mother. We would take the Manoa street car to the end of the line, walk some distance along a country road to reach the cemetery and place a bunch of asters, Father's favourite offering, on each grave, located only after a long search among unkempt plots. Fourteen years after Uncle's death, Father hired a man to exhume the remains of Uncle and his mother in order to return them to their native land for permanent burial. I remember watching with fascination, after the earth was removed, the man lifting the lid from the wooden coffin and seeing a fully-clothed shape of a body that quickly deflated as air got to it. Taking mouthfuls ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 149 Upon receiving word of the unexpected death of Second Paternal Aunt, Father decided to take a trip to China to see his remaining brothers and sisters. Passage by boat after the First World War was difficult to secure, but reluctant to change his schedule and to inconvenience the bank, he accepted steerage accommodation and left in April 1919 on the Shinyo Maru. Before the ship arrived in Japan some ten days later, he had seen 19 passengers die from influenza and he had himself fallen ill. He debarked in Japan to seek medical care, but as he had difficulty communicating with the Japanese doctor, he proceeded to Shanghai so that Second Paternal Uncle could take care of him. The weather in Shanghai proved to be too cold, so he decided to go to Hong Kong to stay with First Paternal Uncle. There a doctor Koch diagnosed Father as suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. When his fingers began to swell, relatives believed the sulphur content of the water in Hong Kong was not beneficial and arranged to move him to my maternal grandfather's home in Shekki, occupied then by his widow and son. It was then that Father sent for Mother. With the help of C. K. Ai, Mother was able to obtain passage, again steerage, on the S. S. Nanking for herself, Dora, and me. Ruth and Helen were left in the care of the Ais. It must have been difficult for them, especially for Helen, to be separated from Mother under such stressful circumstances. On shipboard we were one of three families in a large cabin, sharing one bath. There was much noise and activity in and outside of this cabin, but we kept much to ourselves because Mother was very much worried about Father and left Dora, who cried a good deal, probably from seasickness, to my care. One day Mother suffered such severe gastric pain that she thought she would die and gave me instructions as to what to do. The ship's doctor was able to ease her pain. It was a frightening experience and the trip was a traumatic one for all three of us. Years later, Dr. Samuel Yee found that Mother had had a healed perforated gastric ulcer and I wondered if it had occurred then. Since we were total strangers in a different world, First Paternal Uncle thoughtfully accompanied us from Hong Kong to join Father in Shekki. We travelled over the ocean and up river to our destination on a crowded junk or "doo", to be greeted joyfully by Father. Chinese herbs and good food, however, had not been able to restore Father to good health. So my parents decided to return to Honolulu, hoping that a stay at the Leahi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 163 Groven Ballen. There was some excitement when Mrs. Lam thought the infant was a boy and announced this to Father. Although having no sons was a disappointment to my parents, this infant daughter was no less precious. With his usual sense of humour, Father named her Dora Me Sun, explaining that Dora sounds like the Chinese words for "too many", that is, “too many" girls. He ordered milk, especially rich for babies, delivered daily for Dora, but she could not tolerate it and became very colicky and fussy. I tried to help by carrying her, swinging her back and forth in my arms or in the hammock, hoping to soothe her with songs like “Rock-a-bye Baby”. Upon the advice of Mrs. Lam, fresh milk was replaced by malted milk, but this probably did not fill Dora's need for adequate nourishment and she continued to cry a great deal. The very strict 4-hour feeding schedule that the doctor recommended added to the problem. Soon the First World War cast a shadow of uneasiness over our lives and we felt the sadness of mothers who saw their sons drafted and sent to Europe. It came close to home when William Kam, our neighbour, and a few of our schoolmates left. War songs, rallies, victory bonds, first aid packages, etc. in school whipped up our patriotism. I had my first sight of an airplane then. It was a day of great rejoicing when the end of hostilities was announced. But soon the world-wide epidemic of influenza reached our islands and we would hear the sounds of sorrow in our community over the death of loved ones. We were anxious and frightened about an illness that struck so swiftly and with such deadliness. In spite of this, we were a happy family until in April, 1919, we received word that Father had come down with influenza on board ship bound for China. This was our last home in which we had all been so happy together, because Father died on his way back to Honolulu. His death left Mother widowed at age 32 with four young children, and gave me my first real loss, which had on me a sobering and maturing effect. Support and advice from friends helped Mother, sheltered from the world before this, to cope with her new responsibilities. Ruth's education outside the home began in a small school for Chinese girls run by Mrs. Chang in a building behind the Fort Street Chinese Church. The following year Mother tried to enrol Ruth and me in Central Grammar School, but the principal, Mrs. Carter, reputed to be very selective of minorities and called by the Chinese "pigeon eye" ÉIR ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 195 The establishment and growth of the Library of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was a remarkable achievement by a number of dedicated individuals from several nations over a period of ninety years, and of varied professions and persuasions, who found time in their busy lives to labour without remuneration in the belief that a library would serve as a bridge of understanding between Chinese and Westerners. While the Chinese were only grudgingly permitted society membership, and its resulting library borrowing privileges, in later years the library was open to all. The collection was at least a signal to the Chinese that at least some of the foreigners living among them were interested in studying their history and culture." Looking back in the 1920's, a Shanghai historian wrote: Of course a large part of the community was not deeply interested in the Society and regarded it as a dry-as-dust institution, but it has had a long and honourable history and has carried on valuable research in the language, customs, ethics, history, etc., of China. It has a creditable museum and a very valuable library of books on the Orient.“ This was the library that The China Journal called "probably the best in China, when it comes to reference works of all kinds on China and the Far East. It contains numerous old works that are now unobtainable, and certainly are not to be found in any other library in China. This same journal later called it a "magnificent library of works on China and the Far East" and "the most important library in this city" +42 43 But, libraries are not forever. They are the creations of inspired individuals, and the victims of public indifference and political change. But while they exist, they help people to better understand the worlds they live in. For at least some of those Westerners trying to live in the two worlds of Shanghai between 1857 and 1948, this library must have been an inspiration, a refuge, a source of enlightenment, and a monument to their attempt to grasp the curious worlds in which they found themselves. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h inspiring leadership and contagious enthusiasm. In keeping with the other committees, its membership includes Members who are not on the Council. The burden is not light. Visits in particular take a lot of preparation if they are to go well, and with larger numbers it is essential. This is the place to say a special word of thanks to Rosemary Lee, Dan Waters, Richard Gee and Geoffrey Roper who have again been active during the year as members of this very keen Committee. We are also grateful to our speakers and tour organizers. The programme would not have been possible without their willingness to share their knowledge and give us their time. It is not our practice to give honoraria, but to show our sincere appreciation we invite a number of them as guests to the Society's Annual Dinner. I am glad to report that 7 speakers and organizers have accepted our invitation to attend tonight. Library The Hon. Librarian has tabled his report, from which you will see that a considerable number of books has been added to the Library this year. As I have been largely responsible for book purchases during my presidency, and before, let me explain why there has been a continuing effort to increase its size, now around the 3000 volume mark, Our Collection mainly comprises old and out of print works in English and other European languages on China and the Far East. It covers the European and Western response to, and experience of and in China, in a direct and authoritative way. Many of the authors wrote with first-hand knowledge, or after consulting official and other reports. Their works have an abiding interest, intrinsically and because they reflect the concerns and attitudes of their times. Such books are not only becoming increasingly hard to find: they are also becoming very expensive. However, in the course of my personal collecting, here and overseas, I have been able to add many books to our Library Collection, usually at reasonable or modest cost, in the firm belief that both the Society and the Hong Kong public will benefit. Some of the additions to the Library are also by donation, for which we are grateful. It is to be hoped that Members will keep the Collection in mind when disposing of their own books. xi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h TEXT OF ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, DR. JAMES HAYES, AT THE ANNUAL DINNER 1990 Sir David, Ladies and Gentlemen, Speaking on behalf of the Society, it is my great pleasure to say how delighted we are to have our Patron, Sir David Wilson, together with Lady Wilson, with us on this occasion. Despite their overwhelming schedule, they have made time to be with us tonight, and we are the more appreciative: but not only on this account. Sir David is a scholar-diplomat, a former Editor of The China Quarterly, and very well acquainted with the history of China and its tributaries, and their relations with the West. A Fellow of our parent body since 1968, he shares the concerns and aims of this Branch of the RAS, its youngest offspring. Both he and Lady Wilson take a keen interest in our progress, and we are most grateful for their support and encouragement. This is also an occasion of another kind for me, since (though not leaving the Council) I am stepping aside after 25 years as an office-bearer of the Society, the last seven of them as President. Seizing on this opportunity to the full, I have made some gratuitous observations on the role and modus operandi of the Society in the coming years in my Annual Report to the AGM, and shall now indulge in a more personal aside. Over many happy years working for the Society and doing "recces" and preparing Programme Notes for visits to places of interest, the one that still means a great deal to me was our visit to Bethanie in 1972 in its centenary year; both for its own sake and for its insights into bygone Hong Kong. The Maison de Bethanie, nowadays a storehouse for the University of Hong Kong, was the sanatorium of the Paris Mission, that valiant body which preached the Gospel in China and other countries of the Far East from the 17th century on. In his brief note for visitors, Father Caminondo who was in charge at that time wrote for me, “At a time when travelling was not easy and xviii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h medical care not available in many mission countries, the Superiors of the Paris Foreign Mission Society decided to put up a house in the Far East for sick and old missionaries. Hong Kong was chosen for this purpose on account of its climate and medical facilities available. It must be added that at that time few places in the Far East offered the political stability and religious tolerance of the Colony". Those words have long rung in my ears. I doubt if there could be a finer unsolicited tribute to British Hong Kong. I must confess, too, against that stirring background of service, and recalling the over 100 priests and high dignitaries of the Mission who were buried in the private cemetery then within the grounds, that I was moved by the inscription that can still be found over the entrance. Father Caminondo had continued, "The name of Bethanie was chosen after "Bethany village" of the Holy Scripture, and the inscription above the main entrance "Lord he whom thou lovest lies sick" is part of the message sent to Jesus by Martha and Mary when their brother Lazarus became sick”. Truly memorable, at least for me. But enough of the past: though it enriches the present. We are a strong Society in both numbers and spirit. We aim to continue in the service of scholarship and mutual understanding in this great City for as long as may be possible. Judging by the record of the last 30 years, there will never be a shortage of willing workers and contributors, whether British, Chinese or others. With Sir David's consent, I shall now ask him to propose a toast to the Hong Kong Branch of the RAS. xix JAMES HAYES ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 14 48 to have been a more junior soldier such as a drill or colour havildar who would have been ordered to hoist the flag. At the moment it is not possible therefore to say whether Mohammed Arab hoisted the Union Jack on Hong Kong or not, but what is undeniable is that by his death in 1878 Hong Kong had prospered and grown in importance to such an extent that he and the wider community in the colony considered that whoever had hoisted the flag that day had done something of interest to posterity. If it had been Mohammed Arab, it would have been a foretaste of the multiracial legacies that colonialism would leave to the island. 49 50 The other candidate for the honour of hoisting the flag is a far more conventional one. In his guide to Hong Kong of 1893, William Legge wrote: 'In January [1841] . . . the British Ensign was hoisted on Possession Point . . . by midshipman Dowell (now Admiral Sir William Dowell KCB)'. William Montagu Dowell was born on 2 August 1825 and was made a lieutenant in the Royal Navy in 1847, rising to be vice-admiral in 1880 and admiral in 1885. In January 1841 he would have been fifteen, so it is possible that he could have been a midshipman at that date and could have been among the group landing on Hong Kong to hoist the flag. More important than whether Dowell raised the flag or not is the fact that the author wished to associate a famous person with the act. William Dowell had been involved in the Second China War of 1857, he was at Shimoneseki in Japan in 1864 and he returned to the Far East as commander-in-chief of the navy in China between January 1884 and September 1885; his naval career had also included spells at the Cape of Good Hope, on the West coast of Africa and on the Egyptian expedition of 1882. By claiming an admiral and a knight as the perpetrator of the deed, the author may have been expressing a desire that Hong Kong's rise in importance should be seen to be mirroring that of Dowell. 51 52 It is extraordinary that historians have paid so little attention to the acquisition of Hong Kong and that so little effort has been expended in trying to establish the manner in which Hong Kong came to be possessed by the British, and contemporary reactions to that possession. Such omissions might perhaps have been more understandable had Hong Kong at this stage only been thought of as a temporary possession. But by the 1870s it was clear that Hong Kong had become a permanent and financially successful part of the Empire, and certainly by the twentieth century it could have been expected that there would have been considerable interest in constructing a colonial history. That such a history ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 27 One of the unique features of the cult of the Jade Emperor is the extent to which members of his immediate family also appear on altars. In Taiwan and South-East Asia in Fukienese community temples, some of the daughters of the Jade Emperor are portrayed in image form on altars both with their father and alone, and prayed to in their own right. The Jade Emperor is said to have sons and four, or according to others, seven daughters. Temple keepers, when asked, without exception denied that the sons and daughters were approached by devotees who hoped for indirect but preferential treatment of their requests from the Jade Emperor. Graham in Suifu noted two statues in Jade Emperor temples portraying his daughters. (Regrettably Graham did not provide characters, simply giving their titles as Yin Fei U Nu and U Giang U Nu (the U Nu probably being Yuh Nu)). Though his daughters did not become prostitutes in the ordinary sense of the word, many amusing and ribald stories are told about them. The Jade Emperor's seventh daughter, Chang Ch'i-chieh (A) [Chang the seventh sister] chose to marry a woodcutter who, from the description in the legend, must have been not far off mentally defective. He did not even understand what a wife was. She overcame the woodcutter's mother's natural reluctance to see a beautiful and intelligent young woman throwing away her life to marry her idiot son. Ch'i Chieh was a good wife and all went well. However, unfortunately, she came to the notice of a rich and handsome young man who was determined to have her. She arranged to marry him in exchange for a very large bride-price to be paid to the idiot and, being an immortal, she punished the rich man severely on their wedding night. He promptly changed his mind and released her, whereupon she returned to the idiot who was now rich, and bore him a son. She then returned to Heaven having fulfilled the curse, but at the same time, she had punished the wicked and rewarded the filial, if idiot son. In one temple only, small images of the mother and two wives of the Jade Emperor stand alone in a small shrine behind the main altar on which stands the image of the Jade Emperor himself. This temple layout in Silat Avenue in Singapore is very rare as the consort of the Jade Emperor, according to several different god carvers, is never portrayed on the altar. However, Graham, in Suifu in Szechuan in 1928, noted an image of the Jade Emperor's mother on the side altar in his temple, called Yuh Huang. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 61 THE KIUKIANG INCIDENT OF 1927 P. H. MUNRO-Faure The turgid waters of the Yangtze rolled by to the sea, four hundred and eighty miles away. They swirled past the two hulks, alongside which river steamers came to discharge the cargoes of cotton material, hardware, salt, and those edible sea-products so dear to the heart of the Chinese gourmet; loading in return tea, porcelain, grass-cloth, and camphor. Inshore small wavelets glistened in the wintry sun, and lapped along the edge of the dark mud, which sloped down to the water in front of * Editor's Note. Paul Hector Munro-Faure was born in 1894 of Swiss/Scottish parentage. Educated in England, he entered the Supplementary Army Reserve in 1912, and volunteered on the outbreak of War, being commissioned in the Sherwood Foresters. He was wounded on the Somme in 1916, and, on his recovery, was attached to the King's African Rifles, with whom he saw action in Tanganyika. By the end of the War he had risen to the rank of Captain. He was Mentioned in a Despatch for distinguished services in the field, and was commended in writing by the Secretary of State for War. After the War, he joined the Asiatic Petroleum Company, and remained in their service until the outbreak of the Second World War, as Manager of one or other of their offices in China. In 1937 he established a Chinese Refugee Safety Centre in Shanghai, and was later decorated for this by the Chinese Government with the Brilliant Star with Ribbon. In 1938 he was connected with the International Relief Committee in Nanking, by whose Chairman he was commended for his work for the displaced. He was also commended at this date by the Secretary of the Admiralty for his work in evacuating from that city civilians at risk. On the outbreak of the Second World War he was commissioned as Major (shortly afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel) in the Special Operations Executive. He worked at first in the Bush Warfare School at Maymyo, Burma, which trained Chinese guerillas for behind-the-lines work. (For this school, see "Prisoners of Hope", Michael Calvert, (London, 1951), where Lt. Col. Munro-Faure is mentioned at p. 11). He then opened a similar school near the front lines in the Hangchow-Nanking area. For this he was awarded an OBE in 1943. Later still he worked between the front lines on the north-east frontier of Burma, attempting to ensure the continuing support for the British of the native princes of the region, in the face of Japanese, and particularly Chinese, attempts to replace the British as the dominant local power. He was commended for this work by his Commanding Officer. In 1944, he was recalled to England. After the War he was seconded as Oil Attache to the British Embassy in Romania. He retired in 1949, and died in 1956. Lt. Col. Munro-Faure wrote a book of Memoirs in 1944-1945, in 11 chapters, covering his experiences in the Kiu Kiang Incident (1927), and between 1937 and 1944, together with an exposition of his views on the proper role of foreigners in China. The text is in the Imperial War Museum, London, Because of the immensely valuable picture these Memoirs paint of the Kiu Kiang Incident (in which the writer was closely involved), of China during the early War years, and of the border areas of Burma during the period when the present troubles in the area were first developing, it is proposed to print them as a series in this and the next several issues of the Journal. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 129 this sixth section was added at the 1928 rebuilding, and was connected with the taking over of the nunnery by immigrant monks at that date. If the original building was of only five sections, then it would have been of a very similar size to Lung Kai - about 70 feet by 65 feet - as well as of an almost identical design; the only significant difference would be that, at Ling To, the living quarters of the nuns were to the east of the worshipping space, while at Lung Kai they were to the west. Both at the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and at the Lung Kai monastery, therefore, and at the Ling To monastery, as far as the original layout can be deduced, the plan is quite distinct from the standard Buddhist plan seen in most of Hong Kong's Buddhist institutions. The worshipping halls are entered through the short walls, and the main altar is set against the opposite short wall, with a Tin Tseng between. There is no trace of the transverse hall arrangement. Both the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the Ling Kai nunnery open directly onto the roadway; neither has any trace of a courtyard-garden or other enclosure - although the Ling To monastery is now surrounded by a garden, which is probably original. All these institutions were clearly designed for only a few resident nuns - the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz for probably no more than an abbess and three nuns at most, and the Lung Kai nunnery (and probably the Ling To house as well) for an abbess and perhaps up to four or five nuns. In none of these cases was provision made for large communities by way of substantial ranges of residential buildings. The groundplan of these nunneries is very similar to that of the ordinary temples to the gods of the traditional village religion, with living quarters similar to local farmhouses attached. The implications of this sort of plan must be of closer integration into the local community, and of closer identification of Buddhism and the traditional village religion than is now common. The Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the local road system The Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was probably founded in the late eighteenth century. The whole of the Sha Tau Kok area was settled by Hakka clans, none of which claims a settlement date of before the Coastal Evacuation (1669), and many of which settled there only during the first half of the eighteenth century, or even later. Most clans consisted of only just one or two nuclear families at the date of their settlement in the area. The population of the Sha Tau Kok area was, therefore, very low during the early eighteenth century, and only started to build up ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 134 14 not only succeeded, but passed out the highest of his year. Subsequently, all Hakka youths from the area trying for the imperial examinations took to spending the first night away from home in the nunnery, in the hope of emulating Lee Cheung-chun's success, and its fame grew in consequence. The roof was rebuilt in 1890, according to an inscription on the carved eaves-board, at the expense of a Loi Tung villager. During the twentieth century, the nunnery became steadily less significant. The rebuilding of the Ng Tung Monastery to the north-east of Sha Tau Kok in 1906-1907 diverted some of the devout to this larger and more splendid place. The opening of the Fanling Sha Tau Kok railway in 1916, and, far more significantly, of the Fanling Sha Tau Kok road (completed in 1928), took traffic off the old Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun road. By the 1920s, the nunnery had become of only local significance. In 1920 a hill fire caught the nunnery, and burnt part of its roof off and destroyed many of its fittings. The abbess was able to secure donations, mostly from the villages of the Ta Kwu Ling area, and from the Sha Tau Kok area, to allow for a full repair, but the effort further impoverished the nunnery, at a time when its income from passers-by was already dropping, and reduced its wider significance even more. The abbess responsible for the repairs after the fire died in 1931. The local villagers appointed a replacement to care for the place, after a short time during which the nunnery seems to have been vacant, and the new abbess found a second nun to assist her. Both were elderly. These two old nuns both died during the Japanese Occupation. The abbess was the last to die, in 1944, leaving the nunnery once again vacant. Owing primarily to its remote location, it was not much harmed. In 1949, the monk Kuk Shan Kit (竹山傑), or LTR, originally of Shek Ki and of the Hau (侯) surname, the thirteenth abbot of the Po Tsik (寶積) Monastery at Lo Fau Shan (羅浮山), fleeing from the Communists, came to Hong Kong with about a dozen disciples, and settled into the vacant building, repairing what damage the War had caused, and restarting the daily prayers.16 This change of the buildings from a nunnery to a house of monks does not seem to have troubled the local villagers, who seem to have ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 142 steady waves. This sensible and pragmatic defence plan lead to the villages near Kan Tau Wai being formed into five Yeuk, which radiate out from Kan Tau Wai like the spokes of a wheel. The villages to the north-east, furthest from Kan Tau Wai, formed a sixth Yeuk: its duties were to guard the other entrances to Ta Kwu Ling, the Fan Li Au and to keep an eye on the Cheung's allies in the area, especially Lin Ma Hang and Sai Ling Ha. The arrangement of the area into six Yeuk lead the area to be called the Ta Kwu Ling Luk Yeuk ("Ta Kwu Ling Alliance of Six"). The Yeuk seem to have been very united in their opposition to Wong Pui Ling — the deaths of villagers in the fighting were very evenly shared between them. 29 + These arrangements required the Ping Yuen Hap Heung to be split, Ping Che joining Tong Fong and Kan Tau Wai in one Yeuk, centred on the Ping Che Road, and Ping Yeung with Nga Yiu Ha and Wo Keng Shan forming another centred on the Miu Keng road. The Loi Tung villagers had no interest in the Law Fong bridge, and did not join the Ta Kwu Ling alliance; their political interests lay elsewhere. Similarly, the old grouping of Kan Tau Wai, Lei Uk and Tai Po Tin had to be split, with Lei Uk and Tai Po Tin being joined with Shan Kai Wat further along their common access path. These arrangements seem to have been introduced no earlier than about 1850, and were limited to defence and mutual assistance matters; ritual and other arrangements continued to operate according to the older groupings. Hence the management of the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was unaffected, and even though Loi Tung and Man Uk Pin were probably friendly with Wong Pui Ling, the political contacts of the villages near the pass did not end, and probably helped to stop the dispute escalating too far. Although it is something of an irrelevance to this article, it is, perhaps, worth saying something further about the Luk Yeuk. The alliance was successful in its war with Wong Pui Ling: the bridge was built (it was a very fine, three-span granite structure), with an inscription set up at the bridge foot detailing the donors. Wong Pui Ling had to accept defeat, and see its influence disappear throughout Ta Kwu Ling and beyond. The Ta Kwu Ling villagers, after peace had been secured, set up an organisation to ensure that the area could go back onto a “war footing” at short notice if required. This was the Shing Ping She ("Peace Secured Society"). This organisation ensured that all the young men were trained in martial arts, and that patrols "to keep the peace" ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h A CALENDAR OF PERFORMANCES 1850 - 1865 191 Introduction Instead of giving a rather dull summing up of dates and plays, I have added to almost each performance excerpts from the reviews which appeared in the local paper(s), with explanatory note if necessary. The material is not equally abundant on all occasions. Sometimes only a few lines were published, sometimes more than a column: actors were not always mentioned and there are hardly any details about the staging of the plays. With respect to the actors and musicians, cast lists have been given only when real names were available. In the excerpts numerous instances will be found of stage names as adopted by Thespian residents. It is unfortunate that their true identity cannot be ascertained; nevertheless, I had to include them, especially those who made a "career" of sorts in the Shanghai theatre. Perhaps one day it will, through e.g., private correspondence in some archives, become possible gradually to lift the veil. It should be reminded that female characters with the amateurs were always played by men. Only in the professional companies is a Miss really a Miss. All reports about the wonderful acting qualities of the amateurs should of course be seen in their proper perspective. It has been said in the Survey that we cannot be sure how good or bad the performances were, but it must be assumed (and the 1852 Epilogue hints as much) that things were liable to go wrong and that the acting was rather crude, certainly not as polished and natural as we are used to today. That was often not even the case with professional players in that time, let alone amateur ones. In the papers, playwrights were almost never mentioned, so other sources had to be used in order to establish authorship. Invaluable in this regard are: Allardyce Nicoll: A Dictionary of the Drama, of which unfortunately only Volume I (A-G) was published; The Player's Library; and, to a lesser extent, T.A. Brown: A History of the New York Stage. Composers of musical pieces performed at concerts were similarly not always mentioned. Where possible, I have tried to supply the missing information. In Appendix I will be found an author list of plays with full titles and in Appendix II an alphabetical list of plays staged in Shanghai; both with dates of performances. As far as feasible, the pieces in the Calendar have been entered in the order they were represented on a particular night. Abbreviations: T. Type of play C.: Company F.: Features BGM: Boletim do Governo de Macao CM: China Mail NCH: North China Herald SCR: Shanghai Commercial Record Th. Theatre N.: Note R.: Review N.N.: Not Named 1849-1850: First theatrical season, but no titles of plays have been recorded. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 211 on any stage with ease and aptitude. And the part of the soubrette was acted "in a manner for which we had not given the young lady who sustained it credit" (NCH 17.3.1860). 10.5.1860 (Thur) J. COURTNEY: “Time Tries All" (1848) T: Drama (2 acts) J.M. MORTON: “To Paris and back for £5" (1853) T: Farce (1 act) C: Amateurs F: Music by the Germania Singing Club and the band of the 101st regiment Th: N.N. (1) N: Third and last performance of the season R: Time Tries All was a revival from 1858 and in it some of the old familiar faces could be admired again. This time Mr. TINTINNBULUM personified Matthew Bates and he "threw an amount of grace and feeling into his acting that make us well regret his absence in the two former representations“. Mrs NESRIT gave a repeat of her Laura Leeson. One of the newcomers, Mr. ADOLPHE, “has assumed the character of negative instead of the positive villain of the last representation and almost succeeded in making us gape, so natural was his representation of that peculiar because catching disease". Phunago BRUSHWOOD reappeared in To Paris and back for £5 and this farce offered **full scope to his laughter moving capabilities, both as to acting and costume". There was music too, by the Germania Singverein – which reminded the critic “of their own charming Soirées Musicales" (not recorded). However, the construction of the theatre was "such as to mar to a considerable extent the effect of their well chosen and well executed pieces“ (NCH 12.5.1860). 17.3.1861 (Sunday) Concert by the band of the French 101st regiment, conducted by Mr. Dumas. Programme: G. DONIZETTI: "La Favorita", D.F.E. AUBER: "La Part du Diable", overture, **Haydée” (an opéra-comique), fantaisie, George BOUSQUET (1818-1854); “Hélène” (waltz), DENEAUX: Mazurka. Location: Headquarters of General De Montauban at Messrs. Rémi, Schmidt & Co French Concession. (NCH 16.3.1861). 24.3.1861 (Sunday) Concert by the band of the French 101st regiment, conducted by Mr. Dumas. Programme: GURTNER: Pas redoublé, DUMAS: Ronde tyrolienne. D.F.E. AUBER: "La Muette de Portici", overture, G. ROSSINI: **[Il Barbiere di Siviglia” fantasia, D.F.E. AUBER: **Les Diamants de la Couronne", overture, “La Brise”. Location: as on 17.3.1861 (NCH 23.3.1861). 31.3.1861 (Sunday) Concert by the band of the French 101st regiment, conducted by Mr. Dumas. Programme: BOSCH: Pas redoublé. C.W. VON GLUCK: "Armide", F.M.V. MASSE: "La Chanteuse Voilée", overture, G. ROSSINI: "Mosè in Egitto”, chorus **Valse allemande“. GURTNER: "France" (polka). Location: as on 17.3.1861 (NCH 30.3.1861) November 1861 Concert by Signor Robbio. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 125 See e.g. NCH 28.2.1852, 27.3.1852, 21.2.1857, 19.2.1859. 126 NCH 30.4.1864. 127 NCH 13.2.1864. 128 NCH 28.2.1864. 129 NCH 13.2.1858. 251 1:30 Fitzgerlad, p. 89. 131 Davis, p. 3-4. 112 133 1,14 1347 See Buckley, p. 741-753. See Smith. NCH 22.9.1866. King & Clarke, p. 115; Williams, p. 158-159; Black, introduction by Grace Fox. Briefly his journalistic career was as follows: 1861-1867: Editor Japan Herald, Yokohama: 1867-1870: Editor Japan Gazette Yokohama; 1870-1875 Ed. magazine "The Far East", Yokohama; 1872-1875 Founder and editor of the Japanese language Nisshin Shinjishi 1876-1878: Founder and editor of “The Far East", Shanghai; 1878-1880: Editor Shanghai Courier and Celestial Empire; 1879: co-founder of Shanghai Mercury. Acc. to Boase, Vol. IV, col. 657-658, she first performed in the Midland Counties 1855-1857. Neither in Maude, nor in Pope is there any detailed mention of "Miss Snowdon". She made her debut at the Haymarket as Mrs Malaprop on 14.10.1863 and continued to play there till 1874. 1:16 In: Mullin, p. 391. 137 Reprinted in Thomson, p. 133-169. 13. Repr. in ibid., p. 23-49. 139 140 Repr. in Booth, Vol. IV, p. 235-253. Repr. in Davis, p. 41-68. 141 Repr. in Trussler, p. 235-260. 142 147 Repr. in Rowell, p. 236-266. Repr. in Booth, Vol. 1, p. 152-200. 144 Repr. in ibid., Vol. IV, p. 41-74. 145 Repr. in ibid., Vol. IV, p. 207-232. 146 Repr. in ibid., Vol. IV, p. 157-175. 147 Chesterfield, p. 32. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 417 interested in modern China or who are interested in the British in Asia. Dr. Atwell has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of how the British administered one small locality and coped with the demands of modern forces. Her work can be used as a guide or spring board for comparison of British colonial policy in other East Asian places, such as Brunei and the Straits Settlements, Hankow, Tientsin and Shanghai, say, with Hong Kong tossed in for good measure. WEI PEH T'I, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong Steven A. Leibo, Transferring Technology to China, Prosper Giquel and the Self-strengthening Movement, China Research Monograph 28, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, 1985. Prosper Giquel, edited by Steven A. Leibo, A Journal of the Chinese Civil War 1864. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1985. These two works, one of compilation and assessment based on a doctoral dissertation, the other of translation (with the help of Debbie Weston) and annotation with a lengthy introduction, have a considerable intrinsic interest because they deal with a rather extraordinary man. They have also a degree of relevance, over a century later, for the West's involvement with present day China's modernizing programme. They are to be read in conjunction with other modern works on this period of China's self-strengthening efforts, including those listed in Dr. Leibo's introduction to Transferring Technology. Prosper Giquel, a French naval officer, came to China during the Second China War. After service with the Joint Commission that guided the administration of the city of Canton during its four year occupation by the Allies, during which he laid the foundations of his knowledge of written and spoken Chinese, he joined the Chinese Maritime Customs at Ningpo. When that city was captured by the Taiping Army, he assisted the Sino-French "Ever Triumphant Army” to recapture it, and later commanded it in the operations that led to the recapture of Hangzhou, for which he received high rank and honours from the appreciative Ch'ing government. Contacts made during this time led to employment after the Rebellion, in and outside China, that lasted until his death in France in 1886. His principal achievement was the construction and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 OBITUARY HUGH GIBB Mr Hugh Gibb, a long-term Member of Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, died in August 1990. With the permission of The Daily Telegraph, we reproduce here an obituary which appeared in that newspaper on Friday, August 24, 1990. HUGH GIBB, who has died aged 75, was a maker of sensitive documentary films, chiefly about Asia, which combined artistic distinction, rigorous research and a strong cultural message. His much applauded seven-part series, The Borneo Story, made in the mid-1950s, won a Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival. Another seven-parter, Images of the East shot in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand for BBC television during the 1960s gave a unique record of the old Indo-China, particularly of the monuments at Angkor in Cambodia. Gibb was re-working his Angkor films, in the hope that they would widen sympathy for the Cambodian people and perhaps lead to the neutralisation of the site under UNESCO's aegis, when he was struck down by a sudden illness. A stickler for detail, Gibb was perhaps the last of the "one-man" producers: he did the research, wrote the scripts, filmed, edited, wrote and even spoke the commentaries of his films. His style on location was exigent, authoritarian and sometimes irascible, and this discouraged many of his would-be collaborators. Gibb's extreme individualism perhaps accounts for the incomplete state of his later work. Several ambitious films about China, particularly its great waterways, were never finished. A Lloyd's broker's son, Hugh James Gibb was born in London on March 15, 1915, and educated at Rugby and Oriel College, Oxford. He followed his father into Lloyd's before enlisting in the Royal Artillery on the outbreak of the Second World War. Page 15 Page 16 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 He served with the 8th Army in North Africa, where as an officer cadet he was among those deployed to surround the Abdin Palace, King Farouk's residence in Cairo, while tanks were moved into the square, a show of force to oblige the King to call on the Wafd leader Nahas Pasha to form a government. Gibb was then with the 8th Army in its drive into Italy, before transferring to Intelligence, to be parachuted into Yugoslavia to join the British units helping Tito's partisans. After the war in which he was mentioned in despatches - Gibb returned for a short time to work at Lloyd's before going to the Far East as a journalist for the Sunday Times and other papers. In Singapore he switched to photography and was one of the first to realise the potential of 16mm film for television. Operating from South-East Asia and the Far East, he quickly became a master of documentary film. A key point in Gibb's career as a film-maker occurred in the Great Caves of Niah in Borneo in 1954, when he watched the dangerous process whereby birds' nests were gathered from the roofs of the caves and turned into delicacies for the Chinese table: out of that moment grew his prize-winning Borneo series. Drawn by the legendary appeal of the Angkor complex of ruins, Gibb rebased himself in 1960 in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to which he drove from Singapore in his Land Rover. Gibb's enduring interest in Khmer architecture and sculpture, of which Angkor is the supreme expression, was accompanied by an awareness and admiration for the French archaeological achievement in Indo-China. He became a close friend of the late Bernard-Philippe Groslier, the last French curator of the Angkor ruins, and was a frequent guest at the Conservation in the days before Cambodia was engulfed by turmoil. This Anglo-French intellectual entente proved to be an enduring influence on Gibb's work. Earlier this year Gibb was in close contact with the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient, which was interested in his films for their archives; and his Angkor films are to be shown at a commemorative ceremony at the Musée Guimet in October. ¦ XV ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 23 2 China: The Land and the People (New York, William Sloane Associates. 1948), pp. 152-153. 3 A most useful survey is given in chapter 4, Autonomous Hong Kong, 1972-1982, of Ian Scott's Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong (London, Hurst and Company, 1989). 4 My government service was mostly spent in departments and in direct contact with the population. 5 Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (New York, Halcyon House, 1938), pp. 203-206. 6 My The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Connecticut, Archon Books, 1977) and The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) are directed at this theme. See especially the Introduction to the former, at pp. 11-13. See also David Faure, "The Hong Kong History Project”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 27 (1987), p. 261. 7 Personal letter from Walter Schofield (1888-1968) dated 27 July 1962. 8 Austin Coates, Summary Memoranda on the Southern District of the New Territories, Spring 1955 (Unpublished). He was District Officer between May 1953 and July 1955. 9 Everard Cotes, Signs and Portents in the Far East (London, Methuen & Co., n.d. but 1907), pp. 110-111, 10 Rev. R.H. Graves, D.D., Forty Years in China, or China in Transition (Baltimore, R.H. Woodward Company, 1895), pp. 18-19, 11 Reginald F. Johnston, Confucianism and Modern China (London, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1934), p. 66, citing Mencius, Book 1, Part 2, Chapter viii. 12 13 Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1967), p. 21. 14 Herbert Giles gives numerous examples in the chapter "Democratic China" at pp. 75-106 of his China and the Chinese (New York, The Columbia University Press, 1912). Many others are cited by Kung-Chuan Hsiao, Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1960), pp. 433-440. 15 I am uncertain whether this record was engraved on a stone which has since been lost, or whether it only ever existed on paper. Either way, the original is now lost, and I cannot now recall who was kind enough to give me a copy. 16 My early lectures came from male and female indigenous New Territories villagers living in remote places at a time when modernization had not yet set in; it was seemingly part of the tradition. 17 In Leonard A. Lyall, China (London, Ernest Benn. 1944). p. 99. 18 E.R. Hughes, The Invasion of China by the Western World (London, Adam and Charles Black, 1937), p. 157. 19 Arthur H. Smith, China in Convulsion (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier. 1901), Vol. 1, p. 6. Striving to convey to his readers and listeners the power of these teachings, he explained that ... the tenets of Confucianism, as a whole and in detail, [are] intellectually and psychologically appropriated by the Chinese as on a par with a law of nature. 20 Yang Kang, Daughter, An Autobiographical Novel, (Beijing, Phoenix Books: Foreign Languages Press, 1988) pp. 225-226, and see also pp. 67-74, 80-83 of this fascinating book. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 50 us to re-date two Nestorian manuscripts discovered in Tun-huang in 1980, and suggests contexts for their composition. Best of all, it throws valuable light on one of the most appealing Nestorian missionaries of the T'ang period, Adam, archbishop of China and composer of the celebrated Sian tablet inscription. As will become clear, Adam possessed an extraordinary talent for the art of public relations. The 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' The main source for the Nestorians in Tang China is the Sian tablet.* The tablet, discovered in 1625, was originally set up in 781 by the elders of the Nestorian church on the premises of a Nestorian monastery in the city, then China's capital. It was probably buried by Sian's Christian community during a period of persecution or unrest to save it from destruction, but we do not know when: possibly as early as 845, possibly as late as the 980s. Christians in Yüan China knew nothing of it, and appear to have believed that they were the first to bring the Gospel to China, so we can safely conclude that when Marco Polo arrived in China in 1279 the Sian tablet had been long underground. Its discovery in 1625 caused a sensation, both in China and Europe. In China, Christianity enjoyed a short wave of popularity, and the Jesuit missionaries found that for a few years they were making converts in far larger numbers than previously. In Europe, the discovery stimulated scholarly interest in the history of the separated eastern churches. Forays were made into the Middle East in the early eighteenth century by antiquarians in search of old texts. These expeditions came none too soon, and it is in large measure due to the efforts of the scholars of the Age of Enlightenment that the history of the Nestorian church has been preserved in more than its mere outlines. The Sian tablet carries a long inscription in Chinese, supplemented by a few sentences in Syriac, and we learn from it that the monastery in which it stood had been founded in 638, on the orders of T'ai-tsung, the second emperor of the T'ang dynasty, in response to a petition from a Nestorian monk named Reuben.2 It is implied, though nowhere explicitly stated, that this monastery was the first Christian foundation in China. The inscription, apparently aimed at satisfying the curiosity of visitors to the monastery, includes a brief sketch of * See Plate 1 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 6.5 was prepared to mix with the practitioners of other faiths; that he had scholarly interests; and that he was an ambitious man, used to mixing in court circles. The Sian tablet inscription demonstrates, unsurprisingly, that he was a far more sensitive and effective communicator when dealing with his own, Christian, faith. We are left to wonder what circumstances produced such a man, and here the possibility that Adam was the son of Jazedbouzid is suggestive. If his father was indeed a high-ranking general who came east from Balkh in the 750s to enter the Chinese service, Adam may well have grown up in China. If so, he would have been exceptional among Nestorian clerics of metropolitan rank in knowing something about the culture of China, and his familiarity with the imperial court and his interest in translating Christian and Buddhist thought into Chinese would be more easily explained. Adam and the invention of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' The term 'brilliant teaching' was almost certainly invented by Adam. A man of his background, whose sensitivity to Chinese culture was displayed in the skilful composition of the Sian tablet inscription, would doubtless have realised that the old term 'teaching of the scriptures' did not convey the essence of the Christian religion. Besides general probability, one very significant feature of the inscription points to Adam as the term's inventor. Seventy-two monks are listed by name at the bottom of the main inscription, probably monks from the Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang monasteries who were present in Ch'ang-an for the tablet's unveiling ceremony. In most cases the names of these monks are given in both Syriac and Chinese. Adam is one of only three men whose Chinese name includes the character ching, 'brilliant'. His Chinese name Ching-ching (37) signifies 'brilliant purity'. Perhaps his Chinese name suggested the new term for Christianity, or perhaps it was the other way round. But it is difficult to believe that this was mere coincidence. It is likely that the term ching-chiao, ‘brilliant teaching’, was first publicly used in the Sian tablet inscription. Firstly, it is probable that a new term would be used in the capital before spreading to the provinces, and the erection of the Sian tablet in 781, in China's first Christian monastery, offered a suitable occasion for the 'unveiling' of the new image. Furthermore, the inscription self-consciously, as if of a new term which requires explanation, draws attention to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 86 A local Ch'ao-chou cult image seen on a secondary altar in a tiny makeshift rural temple in Ulu Sembawang in Singapore is said to represent the spirit of a nine-year-old boy who died in the late 1960s. He is the medium spirit who speaks through his aunt, providing advice for local devotees. His aunt raised the image after she found that the spirit of the boy returned to her in a dream offering to help people. The boy is known by the title of 'the Prince of the East of the Sea', Hai-tung Tai-tzu. A Cantonese Kuomintang soldier, Huang Chin-ch'uang, crossed to Taiwan in 1949 with the retreating KMT forces. He was posted to Pingtung near Kaohsiung and served with a unit near the main village on the island of Little Liuchiu where some time later he became ill and died. The people of the village, remembering his kindness and goodwill and knowing that he had no family of his own, buried him in an auspicious spot on the hillside. He became the spirit guarding the hills above the village and also gained renown for his ability to protect fishermen in danger. A shrine, a privately run temple, was built in his honour and an image of him placed on the altar where he is now known as Marshal Huang despite having been a mere private soldier. Wang was a sailor left behind in Java by the great Ming explorer Cheng Ho at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His image is to be seen on a side altar in the Earth God temple at Ancol, not all that far from Jakarta, whilst tablets dedicated to him are to be seen in Chinese temples in Semarang and near Sourabaya, all on the island of Java. Local Chinese belief is divided as to whether he was pure Chinese or Javanese, and whether he was a shipwright, navigator, or senior member of Cheng Ho's crew, or merely a Javanese interpreter. They are at one, however, that Wang was a Moslem and that he married a Javanese wife and lived out his days, dying peacefully in Semarang. Of these ten male and two female spirits, all but two are represented by stylised images on altars, and they are taken from each of the main ethnic groups along the south China coast, the Cantonese, Fukienese, Hakka, Ch'ao-chou, and Hainanese. Five originated during the past fifty years, three some time during the past century, whilst four definitely developed during the Ch'ing dynasty. Only six of the spirits still have their full names remembered, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 97 made a very good shewing, which drew the admiration of all neutral observers. The Japanese soon brought reinforcements and extended their front down towards the Yangtze in an attempt to dislodge the Chinese from their grip on the suburb of Chapei; but despite the overwhelming superiority of the Japanese equipment, especially in the air, the Chinese stuck to their ground all through August and September, until well into October, when they began to crack, and were finally dislodged by a successful landing on the flank in Hangchow Bay, These operations at first led to a complete breakdown in communications between Nanking and Shanghai. Towards the end of August, however, it was found that cars could cover the 200 miles to Shanghai by turning off the main road at Soochow, and passing through Kashing to the Hangchow road, which entered Shanghai from the south. As I was badly in need of instructions I decided to motor down. On arrival in Shanghai I was astonished at the state in which I found popular foreign opinion. There appeared to be no adequate appreciation of the meaning of these new Japanese encroachments in China, or of the Japanese threat to the "open door" system of trading the Far East, the traditional British policy expressed in Lord Palmerston's instructions to Admiral Elliot in 1840, when he said "You will bear in mind that Her Majesty's Government do not desire to obtain for British subjects any exclusive privileges of trade which should not be equally extended to the subjects of every other power". Shanghai had for some years been the object of much factious interference and petty vexation on the part of Chinese officials in their campaign to recover their "lost privileges". The municipal council of the International Settlement found itself continuously involved in arguments, mostly sterile, over all sorts of questions of local interest, such as roads, police, taxes, jurisdiction, and so on, providing occasions where the Chinese aptitude for obstruction had full play. The consequence was to alienate the sympathies of many of the leading foreigners in the main stronghold of foreign interests in China. (According to Professor Remer, an American economist who made a study of foreign investments in China in 1931, British business investments were distributed as follows: In Shanghai £130,000,000 In Hongkong £36,000,000 In the rest of China £30,000,000 Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 112 to walk along the paths which follow the mountain slope, when it began to rain heavily. Spying close-by a house, with an attractive green-tiled roof, we approached proposing to ask permission to 'phone for a taxi. I rang the bell and put my request to the Chinese boy who opened the door. He showed me in, leaving the door ajar, so that my wife, who remained outside, should not feel shut out; and led me to the 'phone in the hall. He was about to dial for me, when a voice in the distance asked, curtly as I thought, who I wanted. We were by then pretty well soaked and I suppose we did look rather like tramps. It was the lady of the mansion. I explained our predicament. She motioned to the instrument, then moved to the far end of the room, without inviting in my wife, whom she saw waiting outside. The boy got busy on the 'phone and eventually connected me, when the voice was heard instructing him to "close that door". He was most embarrassed and apologetically shut it on my wife. The taxi firm having promised to send for us, I rejoined her outside in the rain, where we remained for ten minutes until the car arrived. I would not have the reader think that such behaviour was typical of British manners in Hongkong. It was not, but it was characteristic of a small clique, which is found in most British colonies, courting a reflected lustre on the fringe of the official hierarchy. I think possibly its geography explains to some extent the notorious snobbery of Hongkong. Living, say, in Victoria, an invitation to dinner on the Peak was of doubtful attraction. It meant starting off in a taxi to the higher level, where there would only too probably be a heavy mist, and perhaps rain as well. You would have to leave your taxi to walk up several hundred steps to the house, built on the steep hillside, arriving with wet feet and, if wearing a raincoat, probably also drenched in sweat. On another occasion the invitation might be to dine in Kowloon. That would involve going down to the jetty, crossing the harbour in the ferry, picking up a taxi on the other side, and so reaching your host's house without too much difficulty; but, unless you left in time to catch the last return ferry at midnight dinner in the Far East ― you would have to seldom starts before nine, or half past nine search for a walla-walla boat, a small type of taxi motor-launch; there ! ! Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 121 day to Changsha. The capital of Hunan, the province with a long history of anti-foreign fanaticism, is situated on the Siang river, which flows down to the Yangtze above Hankow. In summer the middle-river steamers come up as far as Changsha, but in winter the level over the sand flats where the river passes through the Tung Ting lake, near its mouth, is so shallow that even the specially designed river gunboats cannot pass. One British gunboat generally wintered at Changsha. There was no concession, and in the course of time the foreign community had congregated on a long sand bar, which made an island in the river, opposite the city. The few bungalows were grouped round the Club. It was a simple life with tennis and walks for relaxation. Normally Changsha connected with the outer world by ship through Shanghai, but now for over a year that channel had been closed by the war and the number of the foreign community, usually not more than a couple of dozen, was reduced. It did, however, include two British tank officers, loaned to the Chinese army, whom I had last seen in Nanking. They now depended for their supplies on the new railway to Hongkong. I left my car here and went on to Hankow by train. It was nearly twenty years since I had last been in Hankow, years crowded with change, not only material but also intellectual. Hither junks from the far north-west of China, in Shensi Province, came down the Han river. From here they could sail a leg up the Yangtze, and proceed along the Siang river, until their mast-tops showed a view towards Kweilin. To the west, through the famous gorges, the small steamers fought the current to Chungking 700 miles distant; and 600 miles downriver, past Kiu Kiang, Wuhu, and Nanking, lay Shanghai and the sea. The railway in normal times ran north-east to Peking and south to Canton and Hongkong. On the opposite bank, a kilometre away, the provincial capital, Wuchang, showed; larger than Hankow and, across the Han, where that river made an angle with the Yangtze, the industrial town of Hanyang belched its smoke. Of the Concessions along the water front, only the French retained its status. The British Concession had been returned at the time of the Chen-O'Malley negotiations ten years previously; the German and Russian Concessions had reverted to China after the Great War, and the Japanese Concession had been evacuated soon after the Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge) incident. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 ― 131 East. Thirty-five million tons of shipping entered the port each year, carrying twenty-five per cent of the trade of China. The vast town was controlled by three independent authorities: the International Settlement, where British and American influence predominated; the French Concession, mostly residential; and the Chinese Municipality. A polyglot population of between four and five million Chinese, and fifty thousand foreigners, thronged the streets. The war had brought about a great shift of population from the Chinese area, where residents were exposed to Japanese oppression, to the comparative safety of the two foreign areas, whose Chinese inhabitants increased from 1½ millions to 4 millions, resulting in a heavy congestion. It was a far cry back to those days in 1845, when in the British Concession, before it was amalgamated with the American district to form the International Settlement, the British Consul appointed "three upright merchants" to act as a Committee of Roads and Jetties to supervise the inconsiderable municipal needs of a small community living on a mud bank. From those simple beginnings had grown the proficient machine required to cope with the extensive complexities of a unique metropolis. H.G.W. Woodhead, the talented editor of "Oriental Affairs", described the functions of the Municipal Council of the International Settlement, and I cannot do better than quote his words: "Owing to its peculiar status as a sort of 'imperium in imperio', the Shanghai Municipality has had to shoulder various responsibilities that in other countries would be assumed wholly or in part by the State. For example, it maintains its own Defence Force, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, and a highly efficient professional Russian unit. It maintains, what, for the average daily number of prisoners, is the largest gaol in the world. It maintains or makes substantial grants in aid to many hospitals. It started subsidizing Foreign education in 1880, and Chinese education in 1900, and now operates, or makes grants in aid, to numerous Foreign and Chinese schools. It has an Industrial Section, which concerns itself with labour problems, and also controls the rickshaw business to the extent of limiting hire charges, and providing for welfare work among the pullers. It maintains a public library and a municipal orchestra and an up-to-date Public Health Department. And it finances these and other important activities such as Policing, the Fire Brigade, Public Works, etc., mainly from ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 136 American films were flown over quickly from Hollywood, and pictures would often be released earlier in Shanghai than in London. When the newsreels of the war began to come along, they led to disturbances; the Germans got nasty and wanted to break things up. Cinema owners did not wish to see their cinemas wrecked and in the end the showing of newsreels was discontinued. Unfortunately, they also did not dare show pictures, like "The Great Dictator", which were critical of Fascist methods. The French were, however, determined to see "The Confessions of a Nazi Spy", an anti-Nazi picture which was doing much in the States to open the eyes of the population to the methods of the German 'Bund'. They stationed two armoured cars outside the cinema, while inside armed police, with drawn automatics, stood along the gangways. The picture had a very popular run for two weeks, without incident. Since the disturbances of 1927 the leading Treaty Powers had maintained garrisons at Shanghai. The Japanese forces were quartered in the section of the International Settlement north of the Soochow creek, where the majority of the Japanese population lived; the British, American, and Italian contingents guarded sectors of the perimeter south of the creek; and the French garrisoned their own Concession. There was a local understanding of live and let live, and even after the Italians came into the war, the Grenadiers of Savoy, decked out in patches of red on collar and sleeve, and the baggiest of plus-fours, continued to man their sector: but to avoid argument with Thomas Atkins and Jack Tar they were confined to their own particular taverns. Blood Alley remained an Anglo-Saxon preserve, where Johnnie Doughboy sometimes threw his weight about. It was in January, 1940, that the Royal Navy stopped the Asama Maru, within a few hours steaming of the Japanese Coast, and removed 21 Germans from on board. The Japanese, of course, went up in the air at this alleged insult to the Imperial flag, and the British community in Shanghai questioned the expediency of the action. The incident was settled by negotiation, 9 of the captives being returned, and the Japanese undertaking not to convey in their ships military personnel of the belligerents. It is interesting to remember that, when the S.S. "President Hoover" ran aground on the East Coast of Formosa, in Japanese territorial water, closed to foreign shipping, the Japanese refused to allow the Americans to salvage her, but insisted on the work being done by Japanese firms. Soon after, the Asama ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 137 Maru was blown ashore at Hongkong during a typhoon, and the British without fuss readily agreed to allow the Japanese to salvage her themselves from right under the guns of one of the major forts of the Hongkong defences. They were hard at it when I was in Hongkong in 1938. Now, of course, all that unilateral courtesy was forgotten by the champions of Greater East Asia. In May we were faced with Dunkirk, in June France collapsed. The Japanese applied pressure to both Britain and France to discontinue transfer of supplies to China over routes under their control. America gave no support. France agreed to close the Indo-China railway to such supplies. At the height of the negotiations with Britain, Mr. Stephen Early, the President's Secretary issued a statement asserting "...the complete absence of any intention whatever on the part of the United States to interfere with territorial questions involving adjustments in Europe or Asia. The United States Government want to see, and thinks there should be, application of the Monroe Doctrine in Europe and Asia, similar to its interpretation and application for this hemisphere." Japan saw the green light. On July 18th Great Britain agreed to close the Burma road for three months to supplies of arms, ammunition, petrol, lorries, and railway material for China. Other supplies, of which there was an abundance, continued to pass through to the extent which the landslides, frequent during the summer rains, allowed. A week later America placed an embargo on the shipment of oil and scrap to Japan. America's anxiety to emphasize her determination to retain her independence of action thus created embarrassments for Britain in the Far East at a time when the British back was to the wall in Europe, and operated to the disadvantage of China. Had the American embargo been announced ten days earlier the Burma road would not have been closed. Timing is of the essence of warfare. "Time, only give me time", said Napoleon. It was not Germany, who missed the bus in the spring of 1940, as Mr. Chamberlain claimed, but Japan. In July, when the negotiations about the Burma road were in progress, the situation was very tense; I thought Japan would declare war. I was on the Reserve of Officers, and I was anxious not to be caught in Shanghai. From my Chinese contacts I had learnt a good deal about the guerilla organisation which was operating in the environs, and I thought I ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 141 vehicles, with much kind assistance from my Chinese friends, I found my way, frequently changing buses, to Kinhwa, the large commercial town to which the capital of Chekiang had been removed after the fall of Hangchow. A stretch of the Kiangsi-Chekiang railway was still in operation, though the terminals at either end, Nanchang and Hangchow, were in Japanese hands. The railway carried me to Yintang, where I again took to the bus, and eventually made my way, via Kanshow, to Laolung, the roadhead above Hongkong, at the head of junk navigation on the East river. My progress was often delayed by air alarms, as in accordance with their usual practice, the Chinese would not allow vehicles to enter a town while the alarm was on, and you might spend half a day waiting in the country outside. On the way I was struck by the enormous numbers of Chinese migrating from occupied to unoccupied parts. These mass migrations, which have been extended by each subsequent Japanese advance, cannot but have a great influence on conditions in China after the war. The people of the provinces are getting mixed up in a way which has not happened in China before. The effect should help to break down the exclusive provincial barriers which have handicapped unity in the past. Also, owing to the bombing, it was the habit, in many towns, to close down until about four in the afternoon. Everyone who could manage it would walk out into the countryside early in the morning, only to return late in the afternoon after any chance of bombing might be over. The shops would then open and remain open till late at night, and all the intercourse of the town would be...* ...good progress, but the boatman refused to travel at night; muttering about the danger of bandits, he tied up alongside a number of other junks - they always go into a huddle at night for safety - and proceeded to light his opium pipe. Next day we reached a town whence a launch service connected with Waichow. The launch only travelled at night to avoid the risk of being shot up by Japanese aircraft; so we reached Waichow early in the morning and breakfasted off the hot steamed rolls which are popular amongst the Cantonese. From Waichow the track led overland to Mirs Bay in Hongkong waters. For about half of the sixty miles, the recognised form of conveyance was on the carrier of a push-bike propelled by a muscular coolie. We distributed ourselves and our baggage over the necessary * 27 lines missing here... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 142 number of bicycles, and despite having to dismount frequently to cross ditches, alleged to be anti-tank but too narrow to be effective for the purpose, made forty miles in a day along the footpaths amongst the hills. Tens of thousands of coolies were carrying loads over the track from Mirs Bay to the East River: it shewed what a large flow of supplies still entered China from Hongkong despite the Japanese blockade. I even saw the parts of wholly dismantled lorries being carried along, four coolies to each pole on the heavier loads, such as the frame. Unfortunately a cholera epidemic was raging, and the Chinese government appeared to have made no effort to provide medical and sanitary supervision, on what was one of the few remaining routes of entry into China. A plague of flies hovered over the human excreta which defiled the edges of the road along its whole length. Coolies were dying by the dozen. They would collapse by the side of the road and crawl off to expire in the scrub. In places the stench was so strong as to make you retch. On arrival next day at Mirs Bay we were offered tea at the little Chinese customs house, while waiting for the launch. As the bay was entirely inside Hongkong territorial waters, Japanese ships could not enter, and the launches ran twice a day with impunity. I stepped ashore at Taipo, a village in the New Territory, in time to catch the evening train from Fanling, but I was now feeling ill myself and half wondering whether I too had not caught cholera. I was unable to join the golfing fraternity in the saloon car to listen to the highlights of the day's sport, or to partake of refreshment, and on arrival at the Gloucester I retired to my bed. The luxury, however, of a modern hotel soon put me on my legs, and I was further fortified by the comfort of a passage to Shanghai in one of the Canadian-Pacific Company's liners. It was November. Many of the younger men had left to join up, either in Malaya or in India, where it was thought their services might prove more useful than in England. Nevertheless with the addition of the people who had been brought in from the outports, there was no shortage of staff in the offices; and the Clubs, if anything, appeared rather crowded. Owing to the stagnation in trade, people had not much to do. Yet managers seemed reluctant to release their young men, too many of whom, as it appeared to me, seemed quite content to stay; while, surprisingly, older middle-aged men were being allowed Page 165 Page 166 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 145 her over there until she could get a passage across the Atlantic to England. I had been hoping to be called up myself, and in the meantime saw a good deal of the two able liaison officers left behind by the British Army in Shanghai. One was a Japanese interpreter, and the other spoke Chinese. We were all impressed with the importance of the Chinese guerilla effort, and hoped that the British government would be able to provide technical assistance for their support. I am afraid that the seed then sown fell on stony ground. Regular generals do not comprehend the implications of guerilla warfare, nor do those schooled in concentration appreciate the advantages of dispersal; moreover, generals are not interested in small groups; they prefer the big battalions. When the time came, in May, and I was recalled to join up in Burma, I was glad to leave Shanghai. Many excellent people, detained by their duty, reluctantly remained there; but generally the atmosphere, so thick with complacency, had long jarred on me. As late as September 1941 the deluded residents of Shanghai were willing to oversubscribe fifty times a new share issue, which a British Cotton Mill Company elected at that time to place on the market. Long after the comforting assurance of the period of "phoney" war had ended so catastrophically in Europe, its demoralising effect continued at work in the Far East. At last, on December 7th, 1941, the house of cards collapsed; and the final bankruptcy of British leadership in Shanghai shewed itself, when the young men, caught there by that cataclysm, failed even to attempt to escape from a net, whose meshes were not closed until some weeks later. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 182 Chinese Recorder, by one of the leaders of the conference. It claimed that Legge was making the Confucian Classics equivalent to the Old Testament. Legge's attempts to synthesize traditional Confucian views of God and man with Christian revelation, reflected, it claimed, an unrealistic assessment of modern Confucian ideology and Confucian bureaucracy. Taking Legge's thesis to its logical conclusion, it claimed, there was no substantial reason to promote Christian missionary efforts in China. Although it was clearly not Legge's intention to weaken the Christian missionary effort, these fears were felt by many missionaries. ## II. Academic Misrepresentations Late in Legge's career at Oxford the translations of the Confucian sacred texts Legge had prepared for The Sacred Books of the East were attacked by Barthelemy Saint Hilaire. His conclusions were that there is basically no religion in China; the Chinese honour, he stated, no spiritual Being except Heaven (Tian, 天) thus contradicting Legge's discussion of the terms Shangdi ("Lord on High") and Di ("Lord”). Hilaire ranked the religion of Confucius last among the world's religions, far behind even Graeco-Roman mythology, since it was built only on certain traditions, only had a human basis, and excluded all notions of divinity; while Confucius was admirable in his own milieu, his teachings only insult and degrade our intelligence. It would seem that Hilaire had not read Legge's texts seriously, and his views have not been much supported since. Nevertheless, the fact that not all scholars accepted Legge's position raised some doubts in the minds of even some of his closest associates. In 1895, A.M. Fairbairn, Legge's close friend and founder of Mansfield College in Oxford, when completing a text on the philosophy of religion, was convinced by anonymous sources not to publish his materials on China (based heavily on Legge) because Legge's position was "dated". ## III. Accusations of Interpretive Error In 1895 Legge was confronted with a more subtle criticism. It came from an Austrian sinologist, Franz Kühnert. He wrote a criticism of Legge's translation of The Great Learning, basing his criticism on the standard interpretation of The Great Learning of the Song dynasty ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 221 about 20 headquarters staff. Shortly before Hong Kong was founded in the 1830s, this company controlled one-third of all foreign trade with China. Jardine's Today, the best known of Hong Kong's traders is still Jardine Matheson, which predates the birth of the colony by nine years, although some say there has been an over-concentration on Jardine's history at the expense of other firms. Nonetheless it is the oldest, still thriving, western trading house in the Far East, having been established in the reign of William IV (1830-7). In 1817 William Jardine decided to enter commerce, and, on an introduction by Hollingworth Magniac, from 1822 to 1824 he took charge of Charles Magniac and Company (Charles and Hollingworth were brothers) which was in financial difficulties. James Matheson arrived in Canton in 1820 and formed Matheson and Company. In 1828, Jardine and Matheson joined forces. The name Magniac was dropped, and the new enterprise was established by the two Scotsmen in 1832. The name remains the same to this day. William Jardine had been a ship's surgeon in the Honourable East India Company from 1802-16. He retired to Scotland in 1838 (some records say 1839) and died in 1843. Matheson left the East in 1842 and took an active part in running the firm from Britain. He died in 1878 aged 82. Both were Members of Parliament in the 1840s. William Jardine had already returned to Scotland when the firm set up business in Hong Kong. When the first land sales were held in Hong Kong on 14th June 1841, Jardine's built godowns (warehouses) on land purchased in what is now Queensway. In 1842, these were sold to the Royal Navy for stores. Immediately Jardine's started to build an office, wharves, a slipway for ships, workshops, stables, houses, and a junior mess at East Point, on an isolated promontory. They also built godowns which had thick walls of granite blocks. The site was close to the present Yee Wo Street (fi) which takes its name from the Chinese name of the company (meaning 'pleasant harmony'), although the Chinese name for the firm is more often romanised as Ewo. All the original buildings have been demolished. Other places named after the company include Jardine's Bazaar ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 223 the 'Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade', A romantic web has been woven around Jardine's, far more than any other western firm in the Far East. This romanticism stretches to fiction, and Taipan and Noble House, both written by James Clavell, are reputed to be based on the 'Princely Hong'. Also a play named Poppy, about the Opium War of 1840, with comic Gilbert and Sullivan style songs, was staged in London in the early 1980s. Another better-known song, 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' written by Noel Coward in 1932, has it that: "In Hong Kong They strike a gong And fire a noonday gun There is no agreement, however, as to where the Hotchkiss Mark I, three-pound, quick-firing naval gun came from. Some say documents prove that before 1961 it was owned by the Hong Kong Marine Police. Others believe it came from the Royal Navy although Jardine's maintain the Senior Service has no record of the gun. The colourful myth that appears in guidebooks is that a penalty was imposed on Jardine Matheson by an irate British admiral because the firm fired a salute to its chief manager as he sailed into the harbour. Another tale has it that the gun was fired to honour the arrival of its opium-carrying fleet. From then on, so both stories go, the Navy compelled Jardine's to fire a gun daily. As A.I. Diamond, previously of the Public Records Office in Hong Kong, wrote: "Neither version explains by what authority the Navy could have compelled Jardine Matheson and Company to fire a gun at all let alone daily at noon, presumably in perpetuity." The true account is quite different. In the British Empire the armed forces used to fire guns at set hours to signify the time. In Hong Kong this practice stopped in 1869 because, by then, many people owned watches, and to save the cost of gunpowder. An extract from the Hong Kong Daily Press, dated January 3, 1870, records: It is interesting and just to note that the renewing of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 224 twelve o'clock gun firing is due to the liberality of Mr Magniac (a partner) of Messrs. Jardine Matheson and Company, who, when the Home Government ceased to provide this small return for the heavy Military Contribution forwarded annually from this Colony, purchased a gun, etc. and had it fixed up at Messrs. Jardine's, where it is fired daily. Although their gun is still at East Point, not far from where Jardine's started trading in 1841, their head office moved to Central District as long ago as 1864. It has been said there is not one field of commerce in which it does not hold a prominent position and its 'tentacles' extend to interests in many other firms. Hong Kong Land The Colony's leading businessmen have usually had considerable interests in land, and it was thus fitting that two of them, Paul Chater (later Sir Paul) and James Johnstone Keswick, should be prime movers in the Hong Kong Land Investment and Agency Company which was incorporated in 1889. The latter, as Taipan of Jardine's, following in the footsteps of his great-uncle William Jardine, was also founding chairman of Hong Kong Land. James was the first of six Keswicks, spanning five generations, to hold the position. The company soon began buying sites and erecting office buildings. Between June 1904 and December 1905 it erected Hong Kong's first 'skyscrapers', five major buildings each of five or six storeys, which dwarfed the two and three-storey structures surrounding them. Hong Kong Land acquired Humphrey's Estate and Finance Company, which owns residential property in Mid-Levels, in 1972, and for 14 years 'Land' had a controlling interest in the Dairy Farm, Ice and Cold Storage Company. Today, the latter is once again an independent public company. In its centenary year Hong Kong Land owned some six-million square feet of commercial space of which five-million is in the so-called 'Core Central' area. The firm has been described as "... perhaps the most valuable property company in the world and certainly in the region ...." Whether this is true is not known. Certainly, today, some Japanese companies hold considerable interests in real estate on a global scale. L ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 227 19th century. In 1891 the Hong Kong Telegraph spoke of the firm in less than complimentary terms; the everlasting Bugbears of Eastern commerce, the nigger-drivers, the sweaters, the Jews worse than Jews, - for no Jew was ever so full of hatred and persecution and intolerance of all others... Yet Swire's was sometimes also accused of having more liberal racial views, and comments were rife when B&S invited Chinese brokers to a dinner. A recorded comment was: +++ the Swire lot blustering away among the Chinamen (hobnobbing) with every unwashed devil in the place John Swire died in 1898, wealthy and prestigious. During World War I Governor Sir Henry May accused Swire's of reluctance to help the war effort for failing to provide volunteers for the defence of the Colony. Today, with people in their employ like Lady Lydia Dunn, Howard Young and others, Swire's can certainly no longer be accused of lacking in community spirit. From 1878, Jardine's acted as agents for the China Sugar Refining Company at East Point. But after going East, Swire soon started to diversify. John Samuel's first marriage was to the owner of a sugar refinery, and not only did he consider he knew something about the business but a study conducted in Hong Kong satisfied him there was potential for two refineries. Consequently, Taikoo Sugar Refining Company was first registered in 1881, although it did not commence production until 1884, at Quarry Bay, in a refinery based on a design of a factory in Scotland. By the early 1900s Taikoo was the largest sugar refinery east of Suez, with a turnover of approximately 2,000 tons a week. At one stage it was said to be the largest in the world under one roof. The company was the first in Hong Kong to provide living accommodation on site for its staff. A new factory was completed in 1925. This had to be refitted after World War II, but in the early 1950s there were about 650 workers and it was still the largest sugar refiner in the Far East. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 231 it to recover. Gilmans was taken over by Duncar, Paterson of Perth, Western Australia, in 1917, and converted into a private limited company incorporated in Hong Kong. It suffered, however, during the depression in the 1930s, although the backing of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank helped it to expand and prosper especially up to the Japanese invasion in 1941. Gibb Livingston Gibb Livingston, which like Gilmans may be seen as a smaller yet similar version of Dodwells, is the second oldest (after Jardines) trading firm in Hong Kong. It was founded by two Scotsmen, Thomas Augustus Gibb and William Potter Livingston, in Canton, in 1836. There it occupied one building which served as an office, a warehouse, and a residence. The firm imported English cottons and woollens and exported tea and silk. Silver bullion was used as payment. The two founders soon started to diversify into such fields as shirtings, velveteen, leather, and tin plate, and acted as agents for a large number of sailing ships. At an early date, four Gibbs worked in the firm. Branches were opened in Hong Kong (1841), Amoy, and Shanghai. In addition to the import-export trade, Gibb Livingston acted as agents for Ben Line steamships, although, unlike Dodwells, it also acquired its own tea clippers. Then, in 1899, it purchased a fleet of steamers which sailed as the Gibb Line. Gibb Livingston is said to have diversified earlier and more successfully than Gilmans. By 1908, it was one of the most important business houses in Hong Kong. Here, as in Shanghai, it specialised in shipping, and, later, in insurance. At the turn of the century, it had interests in Hong Kong Electric Company, Shanghai Land Investment Company, and a number of other firms. It also branched out into engineering and manufacturing. In 1921, Gibb Livingston was acquired by Gray, David and Company. Jardine's and Swire's are by no means the only old British firms in the Far East. Dodwell's, Gilmans, and Gibb Livingston have also been trading here for many years, although now all three are within the Inchcape Group which was formed as recently as 1958. Caldbeck, Macgregor and Company A fourth firm in the Inchcape fold, Caldbeck, Macgregor and Company ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 232 Company, was originally established in Shanghai after John Macgregor and Jack Caldbeck purchased the business of George Smith and Company. Macgregor had come East to seek his fortune after serving in the Royal Navy in the Crimean War. Caldbeck had been the P&O agent in Singapore. Unlike other firms, Caldbeck Macgregor specialised in wines and spirits. From its original base in Shanghai, which started in 1864, it opened branches along the China coast with outposts in Peking and Tientsin doing especially good trade. In 1882 an office was established in London, and a branch opened in Hong Kong in 1889. The latter was started partly because of the popularity here of horse racing. Although employees in some firms, such as Dodwell's, had been discouraged from taking part in the sport, the partners of Caldbeck Macgregor were able to investigate the potential of various wines and spirits at race meetings. It soon became the best known firm in the liquor business in the Far East. Caldbeck Macgregor was much more of a family concern than most organisations until this control was lost in the late 1960s. Hutchison's In 1877 John Du Flon Hutchison, aged 22, came to Hong Kong to join Robert S. Walker and Company who were merchants in Gough Street. Known as Wo Kee in Chinese (和記), the firm opened for business about 1860. Probably in the 1880s he began trading on his own, as John D. Hutchison, and, in 1893, with one assistant named W.M. Watson, his company operated from Stanley Street. Hutchison died in Shanghai in 1920, although he had sold his firm in 1917 to T.E. Pearce. John Douglas Clague (much later Sir Douglas) had been captured by the Japanese in Hong Kong in 1941, but managed to escape from Sham Shui Po prisoner of war camp in 1942, and, with the help of Chinese partisans, Clague made his way over the hills into China. There he served with the British Army Aid Group. With a brilliant war record behind him Colonel Clague became Taipan of Hutchison's in the late 1940s. It expanded rapidly taking over many other companies which had interests in a variety of fields. But the Group over-extended itself and ran into financial difficulties in the 1970s. As a result an Australian businessman who had lived in Page 255 Page 256 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 244 Parsees. At one time, with a German Chairman and an American Deputy Chairman, the Board had no British members. The financial failure of Dent, in 1867, had the effect of freeing the Bank from dependence on any one enterprise and brought about more independent management control. Within months of setting up its headquarters in Hong Kong a branch was opened in London, and further branches were established in San Francisco (1875), New York (1880), Lyons (1881) and Hamburg (1889). By the 1880s The Hong Kong Bank had become banker to the Hong Kong Government, and to this day it is, in effect, the Central Bank of the Territory. World War I proved a difficult period, and its German directors resigned shortly after hostilities commenced. The Bank resumed its leading position in China and the Far East in the 1920s and 30s. Like the Chartered Bank, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank's branch in Shanghai operated without interruption all through the Cultural Revolution. Today 'Wardley' is the name of an investment company associated with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. In 1864, Wardley House (demolished in 1882 when its new bank building was completed) was the first premises of the Bank. William Henry Wardley was a staff member of Gibb Livingston. He started his own firm about 1850. Although the company was taken over by F.B. Johnson and James Bowman the name was retained. It stopped trading about 1861, before the Bank was established. But the name, Wardley, has been perpetuated. The Mercantile Bank The old Mercantile Bank can be traced back to October 1853, with the founding of the Mercantile Bank of Bombay. Within two months it had become the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China, a co-partnership of four Indian proprietors and four British. An office was opened in London almost immediately, and other offices, in 1854, in Madras, Colombo and Kandy. In 1855 branches started at Calcutta, Singapore, Canton, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Comparing these dates with the Chartered Bank, Mercantile got off to a quicker start, although both banks were established in the same year. Mercantile had a branch in Hong Kong, for example, four years before Chartered. Skipping a century, in 1958 the name was shortened to ‘Mercantile ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 245 Bank Limited', partly to remove the impression, prevalent at the time, that it was an Indian, and not a British, bank. In the same year, a share exchange took place with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation for the entire share capital of Mercantile. In 1967 in Hong Kong, the 'Disturbances' (spill overs of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic) resulted in a flight of capital which reduced deposits in banks fortunately only temporarily. The following year, as a number of members served on both the London Committee of the Hong Kong Bank and Mercantile's counterpart, it was decided to disband the London Committee of 'Mercantile'. Finally, the full amalgamation of the Hong Kong Bank and Mercantile took place in 1982-3. Insurance In the early days of trading in Canton insurance posed something of a problem for the small European community. Members formed a local underwriting syndicate (on the Calcutta pattern) to provide facilities for marine insurance. The Canton Insurance Office was established in 1804 (other records say 1805), and for the first 30 years of its existence it was managed alternately by Jardine's and Dent and Company, changing every three years. A great deal of trust appears to have existed between the Chinese hong merchants and the European traders, and a document shows that Chinqua, a Chinese businessman, promised to make good any loss suffered by a merchant in France, to whom he was shipping tea, without having to prove loss by the return of goods. The Union Insurance Society of Canton was established in Canton in 1835, by a number of far-sighted British Merchants under the guidance of Dent and Company. After Dent's went into liquidation, in 1864, Union Insurance became a separate entity. It had already moved its headquarters to Hong Kong in 1842, which is still its home even though it has offices and representatives in many cities in the Far East and agencies throughout the world. In 1861, Hong Kong had 73 merchant houses and 18 of these acted as agents for insurance companies. Jardine's has retained its early interest in insurance, and, in 1868, when the Hong Kong Insurance Company was formed, it became the agent. This, a century ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 247 ― and Godown Company. 'Monuments' still standing include the Helena May Institute (completed 1916), Saint Andrew's Church (foundation stone laid 1904) and Church Hall, and the Peninsula Hotel (official opening 1928) which — along with the Taj Mahal in Bombay, Raffles in Singapore and a few others was classified, before World War II, as one of the 'great hotels of the East'. Another of Leigh and Orange's edifices is the main, 'Renaissance' style, building at Hong Kong University which was completed in 1912 and extended in 1952. It has been gazetted as an historical monument. The now demolished Sir Paul Chater's 'Marble Hall', generally accepted as the most luxurious residence in Hong Kong before World War II, was another example. The Colony's first, full-time, chartered accountant was Arthur Lowe, who came to Hong Kong in 1902. Joseph Bingham became his partner in 1905, and Frederick Mathews (Lowe, Bingham and Mathews) in 1909. There were other accountants in the Territory before 1902, but few had professional qualifications and auditing was usually a subsidiary activity to their main lines of business. For instance, Linstead and Davis were mainly property agents, but they also sold bicycles, and, up to 1926, they had an agency for Manila cigars. The partners audited the accounts of various companies. The senior partner of Gibb Livingston was one of the two Hong Kong Bank auditors, and so on. Lowe Bingham (Lo Bing Ham in Chinese) became part of the international firm of Price Waterhouse in 1974, Hong Kong and China Gas Company William Glen, who had no knowledge of the gas industry in 1861, obtained from the then Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson (when the population was 123,281), a concession to supply gas to the city of Victoria. The company was incorporated on May 31st 1862: most of the shareholders lived in the United Kingdom, although 500 shares were offered locally. Then, on December 3rd 1864, Hong Kong was lit with gas for the first time by about 15 miles of mains and 500 lamps, in Queen's Road extending up the hill to Upper Albert Road. Previously, the only street lights had been installed voluntarily by residents, and burned peanut oil. The residents of Caine Road complained that they --- Page 270 Page 271 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 248 were still in darkness. Kowloon had to wait another 28 years before gas lights were turned on. The inhabitants there continued to depend upon candles and oil lamps. The board of directors set up their office in London, and from there they engaged staff and ran the company. The first manager in Hong Kong was R.C. Whitty. It was he who erected the plant, which came from Britain, on the waterfront at West Point (near Whitty Street). It was the first gas utility in the Far East. Jardine's office, the Hong Kong Dispensary (A.S. Watson and Company), and the Hong Kong Hotel were the first buildings to be lighted by gas. Gas cookers and water heaters were still unheard of. The first plant could manufacture 120,000 cubic feet of gas a day, and for 80 years coal was used as fuel. The Ma Tau Kok gasworks used to ring a brass bell at hourly intervals, like ships of old using the marine system of two, four, six, and eight bells over a four-hour period, for timing the charging and discharging of furnaces. This bell was a familiar sound to Ma Tau Kok residents. For 90 years the company was managed directly from Britain. Then, in 1954, majority control was purchased by George Marden of Wheelock Marden. In 1982, the transfer of the company's corporate registration from England to Hong Kong made it a local firm. These moves brought about more effective management control. For 100 years there were gas lights in Hong Kong. Today only four remain. These are situated at the head and foot of the broad granite steps, built between 1875 and 1889, which lead from Ice House Street into Duddell Street in Central. The lamps were installed at the turn of the century when they were lit manually. These steps and the four street lights have been gazetted as historical monuments. Once there were over 2,000 street gas lamps. But in spite of the loss of business, the Gas Company learned to adapt and emerged stronger than ever. In the late 1980s, it had over half a million consumers. After 1981, Towngas has been produced entirely from eight naphtha plants. Hong Kong Electric The first power station in Hong Kong was in Star Street, Wanchai, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 249 and at six o'clock on December 1st, 1890, 50 electric lights were switched on in Queen's Road Central, Battery Path, and Upper Albert Road. All testing had been done in secret so nothing would mar the excitement of that first night. On the second night a fault put the electric lights out and sceptics were saying, 'I told you so!' A week later, during rain, the lights went out again, and they were not restored for two days. There were no more breakdowns from then on for 26 years. Later, all streets west as far as Bonham Strand and Caine Road at Mid-Levels, and, later still, along Queen's Road East and Wanchai Road to Mission Hospital Hill (the present site of Ruttonjee Sanitorium) were lit. Hong Kong and Shanghai were the first two Asian cities to have a public electricity supply, and Hong Kong Electric is the only surviving company of the many that pioneered electric power throughout the Far East. It is one of the oldest suppliers of electricity in the world. Of the three chief men who pioneered the Hong Kong Electric venture, Bendyshe Layton is credited with providing the momentum, and Sir Paul Chater, who was a director for 37 years, was responsible for finance. Capital amounted to $300,000, divided into 30,000 shares of which half were offered to the public. The third person was William Wickham the electrical engineer. He designed and supervised the building of the first power station and remained as manager of the company until 1910. Interest in electricity soon developed, and, in the 1890s, the first private homes were wired up and electric fans began to replace punkas. Also, by 1898, the first substation was constructed to service the new tall buildings, which had electric lifts (elevators), along the newly reclaimed waterfront. By 1905 the company was supplying power for 15 lifts, hundreds of fans, the equivalent of 34,500 lamps and street lighting. The Royal Naval Dockyard, near where Queensway now runs, was a blaze of light. Power was later extended, underground, to West Point, then the centre of the colony's busy night life. Subsequently electricity reached the Peak and Shau Kei Wan, and, by 1916, Aberdeen and Ap Lei Chau were supplied. Gradually large organisations like Dairy Farm, Taikoo Docks, the Peak Tram and the University, which had been ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 255 The Hong Kong Guide 1893 (republished 1982) Hughes, Richard, Borrowed Place Borrowed Time, Hong Kong and its Many Faces (London 1968, reprinted 1976) Hunter, W.C., The "Fan Kwac" at Canton Before Treaty Days 1825-1844 (republished 1965) Hutcheon, Robin, The Blue Flame, 125 Years of Town Gas in Hong Kong (1987) Hutcheon, Robin, Wharf. The First Hundred Years, 1886-1986 (1986) Ingrams, Harold, Hong Kong (London, 1952) Jardine, Matheson & Company... an historical sketch (undated) Jarrell, Old Hong Kong Jones, Stephanie, Two Centuries of Overseas Trading. The Origins and Growth of the Inchcape Group) (England, 1986) King, Frank H.H., The History of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, vols. I to IV Lawrence, Anthony, and Frederick Amentrout, The Taipan Traders Liu Kwang-ching, Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China 1862-1874 (Harvard 1962) Luff, John, Hong Kong Cavalcade (1968) Luff, John, The Hidden Years, Hong Kong 1947-1945 (1967) Luff, John, The Hong Kong Story (circa late 1960s) MacMillan, Alistair, Seaports of the Far East (1925) Morris, Jan, Hong Kong, Xianggang (England, 1988) Murray, Simon, Legionnaire (England, 1980) Peak Tramway. 1888–1988 Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent and Progressive Chinese at Home and Abroad, Managing Director W.H. Morton-Cameron, Editor-in Chief W. Feldwick (1917) Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, journals, various The Thistle and the Jade. A Celebration of 150 Years of Jardine. Matheson & Co. Editor Maggie Keswick (London, 1982) Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong. Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China, Editor in Chief Arnold Wright (1908) Wong Siu-lun, Emigrant Entrepreneurs: Shanghai Industrialists In Hong Kong (1988) UNPUBLISHED BOOKS Book 1, The Canton Dispensary 1828-1838 Book II, The Hong Kong Dispensary 1841-1862 Book III, A.S. Watson and Company 1862-1886 COMPANY BROCHURES, LEAFLETS AND MAGAZINES A.S. Watson & Co., Limited Brief History: The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation China Light and Power Co. Ltd. (annual reports) Deacon's The Elements of Power, China Light & Power History of Hong Kong & China Gas Co. Ltd Hong Kong Bank Group Magazines Hong Kong Land 1889/1989 Hong Kong's Noonday Gun (Jardine) Hutchison Whampoa Limited (annual reports) Inchcape: The International Services and Marketing Group A Pictorial History of Hong Kong Electric Standard Chartered News ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 266 about a mile below the Sha Wan River, and finally the Ching Shui River which drains the northern part of the valley from Po Kat (Buji) down, and which enters about half-a-mile below the Sheung Yue River. The main river is navigable for small skiffs as far as Kim Hau, but for junks only as far as the confluence of the main river and the Ching Shui River. However, the river at the mouth of the Ching Shui River is not navigable for junks at low tide. Furthermore, the navigable part of the river is not wide enough for a junk to turn around in easily when under sail. The Ching Shui River, at the junction with the main river, splits into two branches, with a low, marshy island between them and the main river.* Junks could come up the main river, enter the Ching Shui River, pass behind the marshy island, and back into the main river via the second branch of the stream, thus turning round without cutting across the channel, using a "one-way" system. The landing place used by the cargo junks and ferry boats, therefore, was the channel of the Ching Shui River behind the island. Junks would come up the river with the tide, and would load and unload while at rest on the mud at low tide, and would cast off and go down the river with the next high tide. Three significant roads pass through the valley, crossing at Sham Chun: the Yuen Long to Wai Chow (Huichou), Nam Tau (Nantou) to Sha Tau Kok, and Po Kat to Kowloon roads. In the Ming, this valley had a number of markets, of which Sham Chun was only one. There was another at Kim Hau, and others to the west, including one at Lung Tsun Hui (Longjinxu), which was part of the Fuk Tin (Futian) village cluster. By the nineteenth century, however, all these other markets had either become extinct, or else survived only in a very small way as satellites of Sham Chun. Sham Chun had developed until it had become a very large market, with probably 500 and more shops. The market was ringed by large villages of rich clans—the Cheungs at Wong Pui Ling (Huangbeiling) about a mile to the east, the Tsois at Tsoi Uk Wai (Caiwuwei) about half a mile to the south-west, the Wongs at Fuk Tin about a mile to the south-west, the Yuens at Lo Wu (Lohu) about half a mile to the south and the Hos at Sun Kong (Sungang) about half a mile to the north. These rich and ancient clans were almost perennially in dispute, as they jostled for power and position in the district. * See Map. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 288 and so I would prefer to say no more on this subject. In the village of Tungfo, "Eastern Peace" [Tung Wo means Eastern Peace], there are no family houses because this place is a market. All the buildings are used as shops and workshops. Amongst them are six pharmacies. In total there are fifty such shops, large and small, which are all built closely together, and form two east-west streets running parallel to each other. The whole place would look like a square if the second street were as completely built up as is the first. Such a shop is narrow and dark. During the day it is aired through the open door, which is as wide and high as the shop itself. In front of the door is a row of round posts which are fixed into the beams of the roof, and, at the bottom, into the stone. During the day, the middle ones are removed in order to make an entrance to the shop. Just behind the row of posts is the door, which consists of movable wooden planks, which fit into a slot. At dusk the posts are put back, the movable planks moved forward into place, and barred from the inside with a cross-bar. Inside the shop the goods are piled up on one or both sides on shelves, just as in European shops. Across the middle stands a long counter [with drawers] used as a cash-box on which the goods are weighed and measured. From the roof of the house some paper lanterns hang down which light up the shop during the night. Most of the shops are groceries and general goods shops. Most do retail business. Only a few of them have significant trade. The owners of these shops and stalls do not live in the town, but in neighbouring villages, and only come here for business and trade, or have it conducted by a substitute/manager. All who take part in this market have united into an association, which is called the "Market Association". This consists of eleven small associations to which belong 45 smaller and larger villages. The owners Page 31 2 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 306 the San Bernadino Strait and searched the east coasts of Samar and Mindanao. By the 24th December the Sphinx had arrived in Davao and made preparations for an eastward search through the Caroline Islands. Following fruitless enquiries in Palau from the local chieftains, the Sphinx churned her way further east through the myriad islets and atolls. By the time HMS Sphinx had reached the Enderby atolls, Cmdr Brown had begun to lose hope of finding the Norna survivors. One last possibility lay ahead of him. Truk (now known as Chuuk), was the group of islands closest to St Augustine on the intended route of the Norna's castaways. In the early morning of the 3rd March 1862, HMS Sphinx eased her way through Truk's 100 mile circular coral fringe. No sooner had they entered the lagoon than they saw an European style boat being rowed frantically towards them. The four lascar occupants scrambled up to the Sphinx's deck and explained they were from the shipwrecked barque Norna. They also told Brown that the rest of the crew were being held captive as slaves on various other islands in the group; they themselves had managed to escape. After a minor skirmish with the natives, HMS Sphinx rescued all the castaways from the Norna save for one who had died a few months earlier from the treatment meted out by the Trukese. It had been all but a year since the Norna was wrecked on the reefs of Oroluk Lagoon. On the 19th March 1862, HMS Sphinx set course for Guam where they arrived six days later. After 10 days of rest and recreation, Brown set the Sphinx on course for Hong Kong and came to anchor close by the guardship, HMS Princess Charlotte, which was anchored not far from today's Kellet Island. HMS Sphinx had more than successfully acquitted herself in her endeavours. She had sailed and steamed nearly 6,000 miles through the little known waters of the Western Pacific in search of a crew who might or might not have survived. However, the naval authorities in Hong Kong firmly believed there was more than a fair chance of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 315 Despite their conflict in the Crimea in 1855 the British and the Russians never turned the Great Game into all-out war: There the risks and horrors were in the local tribal scene — agents unmasked and beheaded or just disappearing, and mobs lynching unwelcome interlopers. A dreadful interlude was the British penetration of Tibet in order to check the rival influence, causing the slaughter with modern weapons of hundreds of ill-armed monks. How did the Great Game end? Officially, when both sides were tired of it, by an Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Britain was by then seeing Germany as a more immediate potential enemy, and Great Power attentions were focused more sharply on Europe and less on any Russian ambitions in the East. Today there are no Great Games but rather a series of smaller games in Bosnia, the Gulf, Cambodia by smaller men unaware of any code or rules. Strange to recall far-off days when Russian and British officers, meeting inadvertently somewhere in the wild Pamirs, would ask each other to dinner and apologise for their governments' cussedness. — The Great Game is a long, intricate and absorbing tale and Hopkirk tells it with unflagging enthusiasm, reflected in his lively writing-style. His is not a book garnished with footnotes for the historian (though it has a good index) but for the general reader it provides an excellent introduction to the amazing and still largely unknown and unreported world of Central Asia. ANTHONY LAWRENCE Aleko E. Lilius. I Sailed with Chinese Pirates (Hong Kong Oxford University Press reprint 1991) 245 pp illus. As this is a re-print of a book first published in 1930 its relevance to present-day events is necessarily limited. The author, a United States citizen of Finnish origin, reveals himself as a journalist of extraordinary drive, pertinacity and courage but he is very much a creature of a pre-World War II colonial era when Western attitudes towards Chinese (even dangerous-looking pirates) were condescending and patronising in a way which reads quaintly today. Which is a pity, because with a different approach and greater knowledge of Cantonese and the coastal people of Southern China it might have been possible to produce a valuable study of the motives, pressures ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 323 attitudes towards China and Japan is equally poor. He shows little appreciation of the effective American acquiescence in Japanese expansion during most of the 1930s, nor of the manner in which private American investments in and commerce with Japan undercut the professed United States policy of building up China. He gives one little sense of the dynamics of the inter-relationship between domestic American politics and the government's role in the Far East, nor of the manner in which the international crises in Europe and the Pacific were interconnected. To judge by the sources cited in the notes, he did not consult the works of Irvine H. Anderson, Jr., Roberta A. Dayer, Michael H. Hunt, Jerry Israel, David Reynolds, Jonathan G. Utley, or Paul A. Varg, but relied largely on a traditional and dated interpretation of United States policies towards both Japan and China. One hopes that, should a second edition appear, these chapters will be rewritten to take these factors into account. Happily, Dudden escapes from these doldrums to give a workmanlike account of the familiar territory of the Pacific War, the effect of the developing Cold War, the American occupation of Japan, the Communist takeover of China, and American intervention in Korea and Vietnam. This was the period in which American involvement in the Pacific region increased exponentially, so that by the mid-1950s the United States was the guarantor of the security of Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and most of the Southeast Asian nations, and had bases scattered through the Pacific. While he does not, perhaps, bring out the theme of the extent to which American policies in Asia were generated by considerations arising from developments in Europe, his survey is solid and thorough. One may perhaps regret that he apparently did not make use of recent works by such scholars as Bruce Cumings, Rosemary Foot, and Christopher Thorne, but his coverage of the period of maximum American military commitment to Asia is essentially sound. Dudden's final chapter, on the 1970s and 1980s, is inevitably inconclusive. The growing United States tendency to turn inwards and concentrate on the country's own domestic problems; the commercial rivalry with its ally and protégé Japan, and to some extent with South Korea and Taiwan; the love-hate relationship between America and China, particularly since the Tiananmen Square Incident of June 1989; the ambivalent relationship between the United States and the Philippines, still fatally ready to make their old colonial sovereign ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 333 theatre-going society of pre and post-war London, personified by Noel Coward. Indeed he belonged to that world. Beaton was an extremely talented man - a man of the theatre (as stage designer); and of films (as artistic designer). He was also an extremely brilliant portrait photographer of celebrities - politicians, film and stage stars, beautiful aristocrats - and a sharp autobiographer. ― Oxford University Press have, indeed, performed a public service in re-printing these two books, products of the propaganda arm of the Allied War effort in World War II. They capture in words and pictures the exotic and heroic backdrop of places and people - the military, of course, but also the peasant men, women and children of the two main theatres of war in the Far East, South East Asia and China. The words of Beaton's travel diaries and pencil sketches provide marginal observations to the photographs which, in most cases, "speak for themselves" in usually the direct language of propaganda. (However, it must be admitted that exposures of the manly heroic breasts of the soldiery record as well Beaton's sexual ambivalence, which doubtless lies at the heart of his creative genius). It is interesting to note that at the time, in 1942, when these War Correspondent's despatches were being executed, Beaton was anguishing over the artistic dilemma of whether to carry out the assignment, principally as a photographer war-artist, or whether to pursue his more artistic endeavours. In conclusion, it is perhaps unfair to Oxford, when they have done a very good job with an introduction by the Keeper of Photographs at the Imperial War Museum, London, illuminating the context of these now exceptional picture archives of the war - for this reviewer to feel a slight pang of disappointment with the reprints when compared with the originals. There the typography, design and format provide an additional dimension of insight into the ethos of that dramatic period of history. ALAN BIRCH Nancy Tapper, Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in an Afghan Tribal Society Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, xx + 309pp. Bibliography, Index. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 344 REVIEW NOTES The following books have been received by the Journal from the publishers and are briefly noted here. Titles of immediate interest to the region are in bold letters; others are in standard type. All the books noted here have been placed in the RAS Library. THE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Balfour-Paul, Glen, THE END OF EMPIRE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: BRITAIN'S RELINQUISHMENT OF POWER IN HER LAST THREE ARAB DEPENDENCIES, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991. xxiii + 279pp. Notes. Bibliography. Comparative chronology. Index. The three Arab dependencies from which the British withdrew after World War II were the Sudan in 1955, South West Arabia (Aden) in 1967, and the Gulf States in 1971. Bernstein. Gail Lee, JAPANESE MARXIST: A PORTRAIT OF KAWAKAMI HAJIME 1879-1946. Paperback. Cambridge (Mass); Harvard University Press, 1976. Second Printing 1990. xiv + 221 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. The subject, a professor at Kyoto Imperial University who embraced Marxism at the age of 40, is especially interesting in the context of his samurai family and early 20th century Japan. Blake, Stephen P., SHAHJAHANABAD: THE SOVEREIGN CITY OF MUGHAL INDIA. 1639-1739, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xvi + 226 pp. Glossary. Bibliography Index. This is a study of the old capital city of Old Delhi as a symbol of the power and influence the Mughal rulers were extending over their states in Pre-modern India. Brodie, Patrick, CRESCENT OVER CATHAY: CHINA AND JCI, 1898-1956, Hong Kong, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Chan, Wing-tsit (editor), CHU HSI AND NEO-CONFUCIANISM, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1986. xii + 644 pp. Notes. Glossaries. Appendixes. Index. This is a comprehensive and extremely important publication on Neo-Confucianism, comprising more than 30 papers presented at an international conference on Chu Hsi (Zhu Xi; 1130-1200) at the University of Hawaii in the summer of 1982. The papers, by noted and respected contemporary scholars in the field in Chinese, English, and Japanese, are presented in English in this volume. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 347 Lai, T.C., CHINESE PAINTING, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press IMAGES OF ASIA series, 1992. 64 pp. Index. Typically succinct and readable, the inimitable T.C. Lai has not merely explained the craft, philosophy, and aesthetics of Chinese painting in 60 pages, he has made it possible for the general reader to gain an easier entry into the mysteries of this genre of brush art. Reardon-Anderson, James, THE STUDY OF CHANGE: CHEMISTRY IN CHINA 1840-1949, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xvi + 434 pp. Appendices. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. This work traces the development of chemistry in China from the Opium War to the end of the Nationalist era. Based on extensive research using Chinese and Japanese sources as well as those in Western languages, this book should be most useful to readers already versed in modern Chinese history and the history of science. Scalapino, Robert A. THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT: PERSPECTIVES ON TWENTIETH-CENTURY ASIA, Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1989. 137 pp. This series of 1988 Edwin O. Reishauer lectures was delivered by a renowned political scientist especializing in Asia. Professor Scalapino traces the evolution of Asian countries in the 20th century, and discusses the trend of development into three different models - the Leninist system, the authoritarian-pluralist system, and the liberal-democratic system. So Wai-chor, THE KUOMINTANG LEFT IN THE NATIONAL REVOLUTION 1924-1931, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press East Asian Historical Monographs, 1991. 290 pp. Notes. Glossary. Index, Bibliography. In this work Dr So distinguishes the Leftist members of the Kuomintang before 1927 from those after the purge. The leading protagonists of this group, Ch'en Kung-po and Wang Ching-wei, long reviled as traitors by their contemporaries because they collaborated with the Japanese, have been carefully scrutinized. Traver, Harold and Jon Vagg, editors, CRIME AND JUSTICE IN HONG KONG, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1991. 216 pp. References. Index. In these essays, nine scholars in Hong Kong and abroad examine the institutions and attributes of crime in Hong Kong through studying changes in the territory's economy, society, and politics. Institutions scrutinized include delinquency, victimization, ================================================================================ 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 128 Also, many who did not believe in reincarnation did believe in supernatural powers and in retribution. Namely, that one would be punished later for sins committed on earth. In the funeral in this case study, the three daughters and the two granddaughters all believed in reincarnation. Conclusions In his long, complicated, Italian poem, I Sepolcri (Graves), Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) looks at death, the after life and how the dead are represented on earth. We see ourselves in the tombs we erect, he maintains. What is the cult of death? It began when civilisation began. When homo sapiens ceased to be animal and 'honoured its urns'. There is conflict between erecting tombs and the law of nature which recycles bodies back into the earth's system, Foscolo continues: "The stink of the corpse mixes with the smell of incense. In Italy, importance is attached to cypress and cedar trees which stay green with fragrances to record to eternity those who have gone. In England, these are replaced by aged yews and in the Far East sometimes by frangipani. Funerals, along with food, festivals and weddings tell us much about a nation's culture. Former British Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-98) said: Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws and their loyalties to high ideals. Certainly the 'cult of death' is complex and fairly clearly defined for the Chinese who, with their ancient civilisation, rich in folklore, have been 'honouring urns' in a similar manner back as long ago as the Chou Dynasty (1122-255 BC), although there are slight regional variations. The Chinese, more than any other people, are obsessed with the dead.48 There is a fear of the dead. There is a continuing relationship between the dead and the living. Rituals demonstrate, resolve and change situations. Money, goods and food are 'dispatched' to the deceased. In return, from ancestors, the living expect luck, wealth, moral order, fertility and health. If punishment is meted out this is accepted. Feng shui plays its part. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j Maymyo 1941 GUERILLA TRAINING* P. H. MUNRO-FAURE 135 The shortage of British shipping along the China coast became more marked during 1940 and 1941. The vessels built for this traffic, generally between three and four thousand tons in measurement, with comparatively shallow draft, were particularly suitable for use in the Persian Gulf and along the shores of North Africa. Many had been taken to serve as transports in those seas. Moreover, the Admiralty, sensitive to the dangers threatening the peace of the Far East, had directed such larger ocean-going vessels as still were available not to proceed west of Singapore. Consequently there was pressure on the remaining cabin space, and I was fortunate to obtain a berth in a small coaster, which took seven days to reach Hongkong from Shanghai, as against the usual four. Hongkong was very quiet, a state of affairs not to be attributed to an entire absence of females. It was remarkable how many had succeeded in avoiding the order to leave the Colony. I had to wait a whole week for a passage to Singapore, where formerly berths on a dozen different ships would have been offered in the time. This gave me an opportunity to look around. Friends took me out to Deep Water Bay, where we sunbathed on the beach, and drank our tea on the club verandah, looking out over the little golf course. High up on the hill towards Wong Nei Chong Gap I could see the green tiled roof of the house where my wife and I, only three years previously, had been caught in the rain. I wondered whether the lady of the mansion was one of those who had contrived to remain behind. In the evening we drove round to the next bay and bathed from the Lido, a steel and concrete building of pleasing design housing a restaurant, and bathing booths. The hot weather had set in, but here a cool breeze blew down a gully on the hillside into the windows. I had always liked the place because of its informality. You could eat your dinner, and dance and talk, in shorts, and so keep cool, as compared with the stricter etiquette of the Gloucester and Hongkong Hotels, or the Repulse Bay Hotel, or even the Peninsular Hotel across the harbour, where several nights a week you were required to don “black ties”. *This is the third part of the Memoirs of Col. P H. Munro-Faure. See Editor's Note, p 61, vol. 29, and Plate I ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 148 normal form of exercise was the evening stroll. There is, perhaps, nothing which so readily distinguishes the Chinese from their lugubrious neighbours to the west, the Indians, as their cheerful spirit. That evening the scene was more animated than usual. I could read in the happy faces of the crowd the joy they felt at finding themselves at last no longer alone in the struggle. Arrangements had been made to send the officers of our little group to various parts of the Chinese front to study war conditions. The others had already left, and I was due to leave by air for Kweilin next day. I went down to the island air-strip early in the morning to find several planes just in from Hongkong, with the families of the C.N.A.C. staff who had been living there. The American crews had flown to Kaitak from a field in China, loaded up, and flown out again all at night. Over a cup of bad Chungking coffee they described the events in Hongkong, the bombing of the airfield and the destruction of the majority of the C.N.A.C. planes, caught on the ground by the sudden Japanese attack. By and by the covers were taken off the three engines of the old Junkers 52 plane, in which I was to fly, and mechanics started them up. The plane was the last of those belonging to the Eurasia Aviation Corporation, a Sino-German company, the only competitor of the C.N.A.C. The German pilots had been replaced by Chinese. There were a dozen passengers; we clutched our seats a little nervously as the heavy-looking machine accelerated down the runway towards the river only to rise from the ground just before we hit the water. We spiralled up above the Chungking escarpment and flew away over the Szechuan mountains at a steady hundred miles per hour, until we dropped back through a gap in the clouds to see below us the sabre-toothed hills of Kweilin. I was taken in hand by an efficient "Fu kuan" (Adjutant) of General Li Tsung Jen's staff and motored into the city, where I found Michael waiting. My destination was the 3rd War Zone, the most important of the nine war zones in China. It covered the greater part of the richest provinces, Kiangsu, Chekiang, Anhwei, Kiangsi and Fukien: bounded by the Yangtze to the north, the sea coast in the east, Fukien to the south, the area of the 3rd War Zone reached west as far as the Kan river. General Ku Chu Tung, famous for his defence of Shanghai in 1937, was the Commander. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 162 ammonal, 50 lbs, if properly placed under the track will lift a locomotive ten feet into the air and throw it far enough off the track will lift a locomotive ten feet into the air and throw it far enough off the track, to make it difficult for the usual type of railway repair-crane to reach it to lift it back. While in Hunan, information came through that the Japanese had started to advance from Hangchow in the direction of Kinhwa and it looked as if they might cut off our part of the front. I made hurried arrangements to return; but before we left I was disconcerted to learn from the Chinese general, X....., under whom the British contingent in Hunan worked, that I was to come under his orders. General Ku had placed us under an Army Group Commander, whose headquarters were in the village next to ours; and I could not understand the advantage of now being placed under a General whose headquarters were 1600 kilometres away and, moreover, in another war zone. It looked as if the work we had commenced in Eastern China was to be wrecked; I saw General X...... and he assured me the change was a mere formality and would make no difference to the work we were doing. Later events, however, were to show that my uneasiness was fully justified and that we had become a pawn in high level politics. The news of the Japanese advance on Kinhwa got worse. I loaded the lorry with all the stores we could beg or borrow, and we set out on a return journey which was to prove exciting. In addition to Michael and Doctor Petro, and the driver and a mechanic, I had been able to collect two Chinese medical orderlies, who had escaped from a detention camp in Hongkong, and a Hongkong wireless operator. I still hoped I might one day have a wireless set. The lorry was grossly overloaded and we nearly lost it next day when crossing on the Siang river ferry. We had to collect volunteers to help us to unload it hurriedly, as the ferry arrived on the far side with such a heavy list that we could not drive the lorry off. Further on a tyre blew out; we also received news not only that the Japanese were on the point of occupying Kinhwa, but that they had commenced a push from Nanchang to the east along the Kiangsu-Chekiang railway to meet their troops who were advancing from Hangchow. It became a race to see if we could reach Yingtan before the Japanese, and as we had no more spare tyres, we could not risk continuing with an overloaded lorry; we had to dump some of our previous cargo. We were not to see it again for six months. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 183 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE HEUDE MUSEUM "MUSEE HEUDE" 1858-1952 ITS BOTANIST AND PLANT COLLECTORS OCTAVIUS WILLIAM BORRELL* Mr. Liu Zhong Ling, M. C. Dear Friends, Let me first introduce Mr. Borrell as many of you don't know him, I suppose. He could qualify as a Citizen of the world, an International citizen. Through his origins, he belongs to two great cultures, being British and Greek. Through his primary, secondary and tertiary education and through language studies, he has touched two more cultures, the Italian and German. In 1934, by choice, he selected China to be his adopted country where he spent 18 years of his youth. But it was not to last. Circumstances made him leave China in 1952. After spending five years teaching and studying in Britain, he returned to the Far East. He taught Chinese, Malay and Indian students in Malaysia and Singapore, Chinese and Eurasians in Hong Kong, Chinese, Dayaks and Ibans in Sarawak, Melanesians and Polynesians in New Guinea and finally he retired in Multicultural Australia. Mr. Borrell Thank you Liu for your kind introduction. Now I am back in Shanghai, old memories of olden times come back to my mind and I have the extraordinary and delightful pleasure of meeting old friends I knew 40 years ago. It was in a casual conversation that I mentioned the Musee Heude * Talk given on 11 October, 1991 to a group of botanists at a seminar in Shanghai ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j BULLETIN SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES Postal and African Studies EDITORIAL BOARD JC Wright, Chairman, S K M Allan, D L Appleyard, TH Barrett, G R Hawting, K Hayward, MJ Hutt, S Kaviraj, DO Morgan, A H Morton, N G Phillips The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has been published for nearly 60 years, and is unique in its breadth of coverage. The Bulletin spans the cultures and civilizations of the Near and Middle East, South and Central Asia, the Far East, South-East Asia, and the continent of Africa, from the pre-biblical era to the present day. Since its foundation in 1917, the Bulletin has contributed scholarly articles on the history, religions, languages and literatures, art, and archaeology of these regions. In addition, over a third of each issue is devoted to reviews and book notices. These provide a reliable guide to new publications, and are used by academic institutions and libraries worldwide for book selection and acquisition. 1995 ORDER FORM Please enter my subscription to BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES | Volume 58 (3 issues): £62/US$114 Please note: £ sterling rates apply in UK and Europe, US$ rates elsewhere. Customers in the EC and in Canada are subject to their local sales tax Name...... Address.... City/County... Postcode. Please debit my Mastercard/ American Express / Diners / Visa Card Number: Exp. date: For further subscriptions information please contact: Recent & Forthcoming articles include: ADH Bivar The Portraits and career of Mohammed Ali, son of Kazzem-Beg: Scottish missionaries and Russian orientalism OXFORD Journals Marketing (X95) JOURNALS Oxford University Press Walton Street Oxford OX2 6DP United Kingdom Fax: +44 0 1865 267773 Pei Huang The confidential memorial system of the Ch'ing dynasty reconsidered Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H Shokoohy Tughlugabad, the earliest surviving town of the Delhi sultanate. Paul Thieme On M Mayrhofer's Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen ME Yapp Two great historians of the modern Middle East Nicholas Sims-Williams Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen Michael Brett The way of the nomad Clive Holes Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East Vassili Kryukov Symbols of power and communication in pre-Confucian China Padmanabh S Jaini Jaina monks from Mathura: literary evidence for their identification of Kusana sculptures Colin F Baker Judaeo-Arabic material in the Cambridge Genizah Collections ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 8 regular references to his deep knowledge of things Chinese and in particular, their formal rituals. As with many foreign writers on China and the Chinese, Mesny frequently implied exclusive access to hidden corners. This was indisputable because, whilst most foreigners who pride themselves on having Chinese friends and have visited them at home, even perhaps having stayed with them, few have the opportunity afforded to Mesny when he served with the Chinese military forces and lived as one with them on the staff. However, in retrospect we can see that Mesny knew little of the private life, thoughts and policies of the native Chinese higher classes, or more importantly, of the ruling Manchus, simply through his lack of access. The great majority of foreigners in China were dependent upon what they could glean from their native interpreters whose depth of understanding was limited by their lack of knowledge, especially about state policies. Such people as Mesny, foreigners who spoke and read Chinese and had Chinese contacts, were one up on the foreigners who heavily depended upon their Chinese employees, but for Mesny to maintain his credibility with possible foreign investors he had to clutch at any crumb from the tables of the great and worthy, hence his repeated name dropping. It is also well nigh impossible to judge simply from his own account of events the extent to which Mesny understood the power politics of senior Chinese Imperial military officers or the nuances of the accusations aimed at a number of the generals. If he did, then his poignant description of the removal and demotion of his own Commander-in-chief from his command in Kueichou is very sympathetic. Shanghai, where Mesny spent many of his later years, was one of the first Treaty Ports, opened in 1842, and by the turn of the century the largest foreign settlement in the East with a western population of many thousands. Mesny spent all but five of his last thirty-three years in the city. A Briton, Oliver Ready3, writing in 1904 of the time when Mesny first reached China said, 'Forty odd years ago, at the close of the second great war [i.e. 1860, the year in which Mesny reached the China coast], China was a veritable Eldorado for Europeans, where all turned to gold beneath the slightest touch of alien hands. Fortunes were made with startling rapidity, and money came in so freely that the standard of living amongst foreign merchants and their employees reached such preposterous heights of luxuriousness, that even when the inevitable reaction set in, want, and even ruin, supervened where plenty should have been found. Forty years ago the foreign trade was practically monopolised by Englishmen, who only had to place their goods on the market of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 19 IV. Unhappy are they who die with their shoes on. Wm. Mesny." Virtually the last item in the final volume of the Miscellany was an acknowledgement of the receipt of No 4 Volume 1 of the Shanghai monthly magazine The Far East. Mesny heartily commended the work to Sinologues, wished Editor Fink every success and then added ‘and wish we could follow his good example in the matter of illustrating Mesny's Miscellany.' This again highlighted the shoe string on which the Miscellany had been published. Mesny wrote in 1895 on his use of pawnbrokers. It was an aside that having lost the ticket for some gold ornaments pawned by him in Shanghai he had obtained surrender of the articles by giving a description of them and an acknowledgement, backed by two local shopkeepers, as security for his assertion. This was his only reference to his use of pawning to raise ready cash. Having been deprived of half of his property when he was legally separated from his wife in his late sixties he appears to have drifted into a menial job, probably paying a nominal salary, which kept him going until he died. There has been no indication that he was supported by either his son or daughter, nor for that matter whether they kept in touch with him. Apart from two specific instances of inventions, one which he failed to patent, but described in his Miscellanies, he implied that he had been the inventor of a number of items as well as having a fertile imagination for schemes to aid both China and his pocket. There is no doubt whatsoever about his ability to improvise and modify equipment when required but nothing specific appears to have been created and marketed by him and been a resounding success. If it had been so we would have been told about it and not just once. The invention he failed to patent and which he claimed was taken up by an American firm was a cartridge extractor for horse pistols. He explained that he had had enormous difficulties with the pair he had used in action as the spent cartridges remained within the chamber and had had to be pushed out with, amongst other things, a chopstick. The other invention which he patented in both England and France in 1878 and manufactured one gross of was a ship's life jacket-cum-pillow. We hear no more about it. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x Bearing in mind that much of what he claimed was written from either notes or memory between the ages of 53 to 63, the almost obsessive way he describes the semi-nudity of the girls from the minority Miao suggests that he must have been sex-starved, a red-blooded young man, and a lone Westerner amongst an army of Chinese. Mesny described various tribes and sub-groups of non-Chinese and their customs in some detail in his articles in the Miscellanies, though he did seem to be more interested in their love life and marriage customs than, for example, births and deaths. His description of the 'fair maidens' en route during his treks in central China eyeing him and he ogling them are frequent, with no lack of comment on their bare bosoms in particular and occasionally their genitalia. These were, as one would expect in Kueichou province at that time, not Han Chinese but tribeswomen from the Chuang, Lolo, Miao, and other tribes. He also allowed himself the pleasure of preening before them and, in one instance, washed the upper part of his body, combed his beard, and brushed his hair in full view of the local ladies who, he believed, 'expressed great admiration' for him. He was 36 at the time and ostensibly unmarried, though we suspect that he had already taken a Chinese lady to wife by Chinese rites. Mesny, on the subject of marriage, made much of the fact that he very nearly became the son of a Cantonese millionaire named Huang, conditional on Mesny changing his name to Huang. This apparently took place in Hong Kong shortly after he had arrived in the Far East, in 1861, when he was still under the age of twenty and a turn-key at a Hong Kong gaol. It is hard to believe that a wealthy Chinese would be so desperate to acquire a foreign son-in-law, though we know no more than Mesny has seen fit to tell us. In the event, the marriage did not take place, and though he does no more than hint at it by stating that something unforeseen had turned up, it would seem more than likely that his dismissal from the Hong Kong Prison Service had something to do with it. He was then nearly ensnared by a Chinese friend who wished him to marry his sister. Mesny, however, claimed to have declined to be a party to any scheme depriving another man of his prospective wife, as she had been betrothed to a young man in accordance with the custom of the country. Mesny added that he did not wish to break the law, even if it meant hurting the feelings of the Chinese friend who, in Mesny's words, was 'no ordinary personage, in the common sense of the word, and the [proposed] voyage up the Yangtze with him gave promise of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 52 becoming increasingly financially desperate. His fourth volume on better paper, weekly fascicules published on Sunday instead of Saturday as in previous volumes, begins with a photo of himself in Chinese robes with his mandarin's cap beside him in the manner of Chinese officials in the standard photographs of themselves. He apologised for the delay between Volumes III and IV, from 1899 to 1905, some five years, because he had been overwhelmed with misfortune and had lost all his savings at a stroke.' In the final fascicule in June 1905 he advised readers that he was unable to afford to continue the Miscellany but would be publishing Mesny's Commercial Guide from that date. In June 1905 after the completion of Volume IV he expresses gratitude to his subscribers but was, he regretted, unable to undertake the publication of a fifth volume as yet due to insufficient support. During almost the entire six months of the production of the weekly parts of Volume IV Telegrams of the Week reflected the mounting excitement of the Russo-Japanese War and contained hundreds of items detailing the departure, the 'secret' journey and arrival of the Russian Baltic fleet in the Far East ending with its catastrophic defeat by the Japanese navy in the Tsushima Straits at the end of May in 1905. The unfolding picture of the Russian navy's progress, route and activities from their almost inexplicable attack on British fishing vessels in the North Sea [believing them to be Japanese torpedo boats] to the devastating destruction off Japan makes compulsive reading, and though of secondary interest as far as Mesny was concerned, the series continued to highlight the fear entertained by the Chinese of Russia swallowing up further large parts of northern Chinese territory. Two questions stand out: did he ever get round to a fifth volume? and what happened to all the unused notes he must have had stored away? From an advert in the second to last issue of the Miscellany Volume IV, it is possible that Mesny, giving up the idea of the Miscellany, perhaps only temporarily, requires a 'Job Printing Plant' suitable for printing a small daily newspaper and a small illustrated magazine (nfd). It may be a coincidence but most likely there is a connexion. An advert in the very next Miscellany, the final issue, offers Mesny's Commercial Guide to be published immediately after the completion of Volume IV of the Miscellany. From Mesny's own hand we learn that he frequently advised senior ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 59 prevail elsewhere, and some of the descriptions held good for the whole of China. But,' continued Mesny, 'China is a large Empire, and General Tcheng was too young when he left China for Europe to have seen much of his own country. He was no doubt much better acquainted with Parisian manners and customs than with many manners and customs which prevail in many parts of the Chinese Empire. Nevertheless, his book deserves to be read more than once, even by me, who have seen so much more of China and the Chinese than General Tcheng has so far. Had I the literary qualifications of the writer of Les Chinois, Peints par Eux-memes, I could write at least a dozen such books on China and the Chinese without exhausting the stock of information I have acquired during my forty-four years' residence in the country. I have been treated in some parts of China much the same as General Tcheng was treated in Paris,' The Miscellany probably just about paid its way though from the occasional note of sadness though not despair which appears from time to time, Mesny must have continued more for the desire to make a living and perhaps also to keep his name before the public eye rather than to earn a fortune. It was by no means smooth going and at times he must have upset individuals and even groups such as the announcement he made in July 1899 that his Miscellany was being boycotted by the press, bankers, insurance and shipping agencies and by shopkeepers. He bemoaned the fact [Volume II, Issue 28: Sep 1896] that the loss on the first year's publication was over $2,000. Several times in the course of his Miscellanies Mesny repeats a disclosure of a titbit of news or political scandal to prove that he was first and that the North China Daily News and the Shanghai Mercury had simply copied his original scoop without attribution. A number of magazines were being published around this time on the China Coast such as The East of Asia Magazine, printed and published by the North China Herald Office in Shanghai, a quarterly illustrated consisting of essays on topical subjects such as Chinese customs and superstitions, gems of Chinese poetry, bits of Fukien travel, Ningpo under the T'ai-ping's, etc mostly written by reasonably well known people. It only ran for a couple of years. Another was Social Shanghai, a monthly glossy journal relating western social happenings mostly in Shanghai but in a few instances referring to the outports. It consisted of the usual society articles, including births, deaths and marriages, the races, and lengthy pieces about the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. This ran ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 115 control. Lung Yun still maintained his own troops, well equipped and better paid and fed than those of Chungking, out of the revenues he had collected from the supplies which had flowed over the Indo-China railway and the Burma road. The control of the only communications into China had made the Governor of Yunnan a very rich man. My experiences during the subsequent year were to be discouraging. In the past my championship of the Chinese cause had been unpopular with my own people; it had involved me not only in disapproval but also in financial loss. As the situation in Western China unfolded itself to me I began to wonder whether, after all, there was not a lot to be said for the view of the die-hards. Since my return to England I have made a point of studying the aspects to which I have drawn attention in these writings. I examined the history of Sun Yat Sen's Three Principles and the record of Kuo Min Tang teaching. I have set out the facts as they came to my notice, and will leave it to the reader to judge for himself how far the extraordinary incidents in which I was now to find myself involved sprang from independent impulses present in a backward province, or more directly from the nationalist teaching of Sun Yat Sen. As the 'plane flies in from India, over the mountains of Yunnan, and begins to circle to come down to Kun-ming, the ribbon of the Burma road shows up below where it passes a cluster of villas nestling, some fifteen miles short of the town, at the foot of the hills on the edge of the lake. The 'plane crosses the tip of the forty-mile long lake to land on the large airfield at the far side of the city, 6,150 feet above sea level. Accommodation in the city was hard to find; for some weeks I stayed out at the lakeside. Owing to its height, Kun-ming enjoys an excellent climate all the years round, cool in summer, mild in winter. The great mountain ranges to the west absorb the moisture of the monsoon, leaving an adequate but moderate rainfall: apart from a period in the autumn the sun shines daily. The two Chinese characters Yun and Nan mean 'South of the Clouds,' an appropriate reference to the climate of Szechuan to the North East, where for six months in the year, at Chungking, they never see the sun. The foreign community, in addition to the small number of French who were concerned with the operation of the railway line to the Indo-China border, included the Consuls of the leading countries, and an increasing number of American military personnel, attached to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 118 assistance which it might be possible to provide, and, soon after, the Myosa left to return to his country. In August 1943 British troops were poised on the Assam border at Imphal, Tamu, and Tiddim, awaiting sufficient replenishment of equipment and the cessation of the rains to undertake the return advance into Burma; and there was activity down in the Arakan: while General Stilwell's Chinese divisions, retrained, reinforced, and re-equipped in India after their withdrawal from Burma, were just beginning to feel their way forward from Ledo, away up at the northern end of Assam, down the road which later was to become famous as the Ledo road. General Wingate's first expedition into Burma had just been completed, with heavy loss on our side, but with much success in confusing the enemy and disorganising his effort to consolidate his positions. The shape of future operations depended on the enemy's dispositions, so that any information which could be collected in eastern Burma would be useful: and in Kokang it might also be possible to organise patriot parties to assail his communications. It was not an easy matter to obtain the consent of our allies for the passage of a British party to Kokang. The Chinese have unfortunately imitated the Japanese in a predilection for red tape; formalities are extended ad infinitum. It was fair enough that any British officer who entered China should require a pass issued by the Chinese authorities - though no such restriction attached to the presence of Chinese officers in India - but was it really necessary that the power to issue the pass should be retained by the highest authority in the land, the Military Affairs Council which would correspond with our Committee of Imperial Defence and that it should have to carry the personal chop of the Generalissimo? It did not make for speed in administration. It should also be remembered that the Chinese refused to serve in Burma under British command: that is how General Stilwell first came on the scene; and I think it is fair to say that our American allies had come to look on the Far East, and perhaps more particularly China, as their own special sphere of operations, where there was no room for any British. My appointment was from the Army in India, which in those days, before the South East Asia Command had been established, was responsible for the operations in Burma. The proposal for assistance to the Myosa was submitted by the British representatives in Chungking to the Chinese government with a request that the necessary passes be ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 119 issued for the passage of our party through Yunnan to Kokang in Burma. The suggestion was added that it might at the same time be possible to give some assistance to the Chinese guerillas, reports of whose existence in western Yunnan had come to our ears. On looking back I think this suggestion was a mistake, because the guerillas were Lung Yun's men and the Central government might be unwilling to encourage them. While awaiting the passes I remained in Kun-ming, where I found old friends and made many new ones. Our bungalow on the lake side became a popular resort, particularly on Sundays, when many Chinese, American, and British comrades would come out to drink tea on the lawn and to enjoy the lovely sunny weather. On the hill at the back several old and picturesque temples provided objectives for an afternoon stroll. One of the temples, carved out of the rock face overhanging the precipitous mountain side, was approached along a ledge, also cut out of the rock, an approach to inspire qualms in any but the strongest-headed visitors. At week ends wealthy Chinese from Kun-ming would flock to these temples, where the priests kept special guest rooms for those who wished to stay. Earlier on, when Kun-ming had been subjected to occasional bombing raids, the rooms were at quite a premium. We had some good friends among the American officers, many of the more senior of whom were regular soldiers with long years of service in the Philippines and other tropical places. One in particular who some years before had met the officers of my regiment, the Sherwood Foresters, when they went over from their station in the West Indies to visit Panama, at a later date provided us with very considerable assistance. If it was part of American high policy not to encourage the presence of British troops in certain areas of the Far East, the attitude was certainly not reflected in the manner of the American officers towards us. They invariably treated us with the greatest cordiality: with their large establishments and regular system of supply they were often in a position to assist us, especially over transport* and many are the good turns for which we have to thank them. I am sure this camaraderie of the field is the best possible antidote, and a very effective antidote, to the mischievous propaganda put out by our common enemies in the attempt to create discord between America and Britain. * The American Army had an excellent and well-managed hospital where they treated British patients just like their own. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 131 with him. The marriage customs are many and curious. We happened to be passing a village on the day of a wedding and were invited to see the communal dancing; the ceremony included inspecting the bride and groom in bed by the fitful light of torches. It seems that immediately after the feast the lucky couple retire to bed and are there visited by all and sundry to an accompaniment of the sort of joking which does not appear in print. The custom of men seizing their brides in mock raiding attacks, staged for the purpose, is also common. During one such attack, until we discovered what it was about, we thought that we were being sniped at by the Japanese. Nancha is high up the mountain, some 6,000 feet, overlooking the Salween, which here flows at 1,000 feet above sea level. The river itself was out of sight in the bottom of the valley where it ran between steeply-sloping banks. Across the valley on the mountain on the far side a mile away we could see in the bright sunlight the villages occupied by the Japanese. Their system of garrisoning was not continuous; they had one or two central posts, and from these they would man one or other of the lesser posts. Through my glasses I could see the posts; trenches with grass huts screened in the jungle nearby, and the ubiquitous Japanese flag. They were sited where the path entered the village high above the river: a mile away as the crow flies, to reach Nancha from one of those villages would take the best part of a day. From Nancha, Jack left to reconnoitre the Salween ferries, while I moved on more slowly as I wished to study the country and make friends with the people; we took three days to reach the Lihsaw village of Hsintang. Despite the small size of our party our progress was triumphal: the young women were shy and kept out of the way; the men were still cowed and not sure of their position; but the old women everywhere came out to greet us. They met us with gifts of bananas, brought up from the hot valleys below, chickens and eggs, neatly done up in long tubes of plaited rice-straw; and being of Chinese blood they prepared tea for our refreshment and invited us indoors to drink it. They said, "We have not seen you Englishmen for a long time. Where have you been for the last two years? We have waited for you a long time, and now conditions are so bad that they are no longer to be borne. But you have at last returned and set our minds at ease." This blind confidence was very touching: may Britain long prove worthy of it. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 142 fires and flying away again unable to find them. Inevitably there were some accidents and losses. ― -- Rarely half a dozen 'planes would make a sortie the same night; we would then be busy for days collecting the heavy containers they would weigh up to three hundred pounds and carrying them back to camp. We received reinforcements; officers with long experience in the East; British wireless operators; Chin, Kachin, and Burmese assistants. Our money and our mail also came this way; Bren guns, Stens, Italian carbines, clothing, food and occasionally drink. Sometime later we were visited by two American officers attached to the Nth division; they spent the day with us. We discovered they had a partiality for Bourbon whisky, a thing most difficult to find in Calcutta. However, we thought we would plan a little surprise for them; we asked our friends in Calcutta whether they could not find a couple of bottles and include them in the next sortie. The sortie was made in due course, several containers crashed, and when we anxiously looked over the lists of contents, we sadly found that the precious bottles had "pranged" as Stan put it in his airforce jargon. The problem of cutting a way through the jungle was ever present in Burma. We decided we would equip one man out of every two with a cutting implement for the purpose. There were many opinions about which implement was the best; each officer had his own idea. We left it to our 'furnishers' to supply what they had, and I have never seen such a collection of deadly looking hacking weapons as the variety sent. It included dahs, the light Burmese single-handed sword, with a blade about two feet long and in my opinion not quite heavy enough for the job; kukris, a choice for the expert; the East African panga, which I like best, but then perhaps I am prejudiced it reminded me of my days with the King's African Rifles during the last war; a short two-edged stabbing sword, obviously borrowed straight from the Roman Legion; and some quite unrecognisable kinds, probably designed by enthusiastic cranks. The Italian carbines had been captured in Africa and were believed useful for our type of work; they only weighed four pounds, were short and handy but they had a very high muzzle velocity and kicked like an anti-tank rifle, without the rubber padding with which that rifle is fitted. They had fixed sights; on the little thirty yards range, which Stan had built in a fold of the mountain, we found they threw at least a foot off the bull; but they appeared to be fairly accurate at somewhere around ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 151 a handful, because efforts had to be made in order to make sure that there would be enough male Jews to constitute a daily Minyan. This community was by far the most prominent of the three groups of Jewish residents in Shanghai. They were among the first foreign traders in the metropolis, bearing names that included Sassoon, Kadoorie, Ezra, Abraham, Solomon, Rahmin, Moses, and Gubby, families still active in Hong Kong today, and were a part of the international mercantile community in the Far East at that time, enjoying business and personal links with the close-knit Jewish communities in Hong Kong and Bombay. At first they traded in raw cotton and general goods, then took over the opium trade. In time, in Shanghai as well as in Hong Kong and Bombay, they branched out into real estate, banking, shipping, warehousing, insurance, hotels, utilities, and other industries, gaining power and influence locally as well as in international commerce. The names of 38 prominent Sephardic Jews were found among the 1932 list of 99 members of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Ashkenazi Jews 6 Immediately following the completion of the trans-Siberian Railroad and the pogrom in Russia in 1905, a number of Russian Jews moved to Manchuria through Siberia, with about 300 filtering down to Shanghai. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, more than 10,000 Jews emigrated to Harbin. Apparently at that time the Chinese government had been contemplating expelling the Jews from Manchuria. In the mid 1920s when White Russians and Japanese interests began to spread in Manchuria, many of the earlier immigrants moved southward to Tianjin and Shanghai, swelling the total Jewish population in Shanghai to just under 2,000. The Ashkenazi community of Jews in Shanghai, mostly Russian but by then joined by stragglers from Lithuania as well, increased to more than 1,000 after 1924. They were not exactly embraced by the Sephardic community of Shanghai. The Ashkenazi were not princes of commerce, but small businessmen who engaged in the import and export of such items as wool, bristles, and fur. The Chinese in Shanghai remembered Jewish salesmen going from house to house, carrying rugs for sale. The Ashkenazi Jews were also professionals; physicians and lawyers, for instance; and, above all, musicians. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 205 out as soon as I was able to make out my surroundings. I have never seen such a dense swarm of mosquitoes. Thank goodness we never had to use this shelter. Our departure for Hong Kong that spring was dramatic. From the hospital we took the ancient hospital motor boat down the creeks to Canton. We found the river steamer for Hong Kong moored in the fast flowing stream. It was surrounded by an impenetrable mob of sampans carrying people fleeing from the Japanese attack on Canton which was expected any day. Our motor boat could not get to the gangway so we transferred to a sampan. We approached the ladder from downstream as most of the boats were tied to the steamer upstream. We soon found out why because as each sampan cast off from the ladder another, aided by the stream, pushed its way in from upstream. We could make no headway. The only possible approach was from the bows. As we worked our way slowly down we saw that the captain was getting worried by the crowds swarming on board. He had to sail or be swamped. Our luggage was manhandled across the intervening sampans but my father would not allow us to be passed along in the same way, which I thought was a pity. The captain saw us and waited only until our sampan at last made the steps. He then gave the order for his crew to chop through the mooring ropes of all the sampans still tied on. Once freed of these, he weighed anchor and set off for Hong Kong - an overnight journey. P & O to England – Canadian Pacific to China In 1933 my father was due for leave so the whole family, now comprising four children and parents, set off on the P. & O Rawalpindi, a ship which was converted to be an armed merchantman during the war and sunk by a U boat. Travel by sea was the most commonly used way to reach Europe. From about 1933 one could go a little faster by taking the Trans-Siberian railway. Fast mail was marked 'Via Siberia' on the envelopes. The sea journey involved four days at sea to Singapore and trips to the Botanical Gardens there. Then on to Penang, Colombo, Aden, through the Suez Canal perhaps with a stop at Marseilles, where some in a hurry got on the train through France to England, a stop at Gibraltar and thence to Plymouth where we got off for a train to Herefordshire. Most passengers went on to Tilbury in London. There was a leisurely routine about the trip. Beef tea was served on the deck mid-morning and tea in the afternoon. An enterprising steward rounded up a number of children to help him gather up the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 2 dictionaries of phrases, many of them carry the figurative meaning. What more, these 'phenomena' suggest that the concept of face is important. is Face Is Important Lu Xun, the author of the epic A Q, had written many stories, articles, and poems. Among them, one article was solely devoted to the concept of face (Lu, 1934).* Another contemporary writer, Lao She also took pains to single out face as the central theme in one of his early plays: Mianzi Wenti (The Question of Face), a three-act play published in 1941.6 In what can be regarded as a concise statement of what Lu Xun and Lao She had tried to convey, Lin Yutang, the famous linguist, wrote that face was 'yet the most delicate standard by which Chinese social intercourse [was] regulated' (Lin, 1935: 200). He also lamented that if China was to become strong, it was necessary for her people, especially those who had face, to cast aside this concern (Lin, 1980: 210). His underlying assumption was that the concern with face barred the country from developing into a state ruled by law and thereby a strong state. This view was shared by other social critics like Bo Yang (Bo, 1987: 121). Even some Westerners who had much experience living in China feel the same (Bo, 1987: 338-339). Some Western scholars also attended to the concept. Elizabeth Croll, for example, in her study of marriage rituals, concluded that the scale of marriage was taken as a symbol of a household's or even a larger social group's status. Wedding banquets were used by those who experienced changes in their status to advertise their new positions in society. Although the word 'face' was not directly used, it is apparent that the concept worked in this context. As far as this ritual was concerned, the situation remained the same in post-1949 China. More so, the cadres themselves, rather than the villagers, were the group being indulged in extravagant feasting. Even in the political arena, the concept of face appears to be important. In an analysis of the dynamics of political factions, Lucian Pye has argued that, very often, politicians would not be totally driven out, nor would political factions be totally defeated. This is to save the losers from a complete dismantling of their status, power and other means of living. This is also important to allow the defeated to live on by saving them from a 'deep sense of loss of face' which implies loss of respect and dignity (Pye, 1980: 188-189). * A copy of the bibliography is available from the Hon. Editor ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 61 Besides, these victories would be far from memorable ones. Korolev's set of floor exercise was devoid of any new moves (11 July, 1987). The introduction of a third party disproval was also evident in downplaying these foreign victories. The Korean success in badminton found little coverage in the Korean papers; the People's Daily said. The article suggested that the press might be too ashamed to report it due to the conspiracy of the linesmen and the service judges which promoted the Korean upset against Chinese. Moral behaviour of these foreign winners was often of a negative mode. The Korean archer was arrogant (20 September, 1986); the Korean soccer team "blamed" the weather for poor performance (24 September, 1986); Russian coaches tried to conceal their strength in women's basketball (17 July, 1987); and the Korean reporters were too confident that their country could come first in the final overall standing in the Asian Games. While crowd applause of Chinese and overseas Chinese cheers for Chinese were all positively reported, fans of other countries did not receive the same treatment in the Chinese press. Elsewhere, the American fans produced nothing but noise, affecting the performance of athletes, especially Chinese athletes. The Korean table-tennis spectators were so noisy that the stadium was shaken to the ground (26 September, 1986). Although the American and Korean crowds showed their support to their compatriots and boosted the performance of them, they were viewed as deteriorating the competition environment for fair play. This was in direct contrast to the press's reactions to Chinese fans. There were three obvious cases in which the press kept a low key position towards unfavourable conditions presented to athletes of other countries. In the women's basketball tournament in 1985, China played N. Korea in one of the matches. Chinese players were continuously fouled by their opponents, but this was only mentioned indirectly in a few words (27 August, 1985). East Germany lost in a women's volleyball match to China. The press did not say that the team lost because of poor performance but just excused her for not being the first team and suggested that she might reserve strength for the final (17 July, 1987). In another article in 1987, it was reported that the PRC's women volleyball team defeated Taipei. The focus of the article, however, was not on the loss of Taipei nor the victory of the Communist side, but rather, on the friendship and skills exchanged between the two teams. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 114 or a boil on her chest which other doctors had been unable to cure. The story adds that he was required to pass a test before he would be allowed to approach the empress. He was offered a silken thread which had been tied to a column in the hall [or on the knob of a door] but behind a screen and was then asked to take the empress's pulse. It was the custom to take the pulse of ladies by remote means using a piece of thread tied to the wrist. Wu correctly diagnosed that the thread was tied to a column [by the pulse of the dragon in the stone] and not the empress's wrist as he had been told it was. They next tied the silk to the paw of a kitten and again Wu was able to identify the pulse as non-human, and it was only then that he was allowed to treat the empress. Having cured her illness the emperor asked what reward Wu would like and, so legend claims, he requested an old set of the emperor's cast off clothes. After his death Wu was deified by the emperor as Pao-sheng Ta-ti, alluding, so it is said, to him being dressed in the emperor's cast off robes. A caretaker at his cult centre added that as Wu wore the emperor's clothes in life and was buried in them he had command over minor deities and even some of the major ones such as Lei Kung, the god of thunder. A strange tale recounted by a temple keeper in Jakarta claimed that Pao-sheng Ta-ti appeared to a Sung emperor in a dream and informed him that he, Pao-sheng Ta-ti, was an incarnation of the Yellow Emperor [Huang Ti] and bore the same surname as the emperor of the Sung, Chao. Therefore, so the story concluded, Pao-sheng Ta-ti was regarded as the imperial ancestor and his special protective deity. His cult, first established at the Lung-chiu An, a monastery not far from Amoy, and later at the Tzu-chi Kung in Lung-hai [Pai-chiao], was carried by immigrants through the ports of T'ung-an, Amoy and Hai-ch'eng to the southern seas. The oldest image of Pao-sheng Ta-ti in Taiwan is probably in Hsueh-chia in Tainan county where it is said to have been brought over to Taiwan from the mainland by Koxinga. Some indication of his popularity as a doctor deity in Taiwan is manifest by his presence as the major deity in at least 160 temples on the island, dedicated to him, predominantly in the areas of Tainan and Yunlin, with a great many more as the main deity on a side altar of other temples. A noticeable increase in shrines dedicated to him occurred after the great plague swept Taiwan in 1699 killing large numbers of new immigrants. It was believed that an image of Pao-sheng Ta-ti brought over from Fukien, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 The road and terry junction in this area attracted attention from the military authorities from an early date. While the Salt Commission and the Pearl Monopoly were active in Mars Bay, law and order were probably maintained by the special salt and pearl troops. After these were withdrawn, a military post was established at Shek Chung Au, with a watchtower nearby. This was close to the Wu Shek Kok ferry pier, and near to the road junction at Wo Hang Au. Other troops were established at Yim Tin. In various formulations and strengths, this military position remained at Shek Chung Au for several hundred years, until the mid-nineteenth century - eloquent testimony to the continuing importance of this traffic node. Sha Tau Kok's position in the road system of the area gave it two economic advantages. The first was the Sha Yue Chung Ferry. There was only one a day in the early twentieth century, and this can safely be assumed to have been the case earlier as well. Many travellers, therefore, would be obliged to spend the night in Sha Tau Kok, or at least several hours, waiting for the ferry, and, if the weather was bad, these enforced waits could stretch out to several days. There was, as a result, plenty of opportunity for merchants in the town to profit from servicing travellers held up there. As noted already, in the 1920s Sha Tau Kok had more guesthouses, restaurants, and entertainment facilities than most towns in the area, and although most of those facilities were new, servicing the new frontier garrison and Customs staff, some at least were certainly a feature of the town from an earlier period. The other great economic advantage was the geographical location of Sha Tau Kok in relation to Sham Chun. Sham Chun was at the head of navigation on the Sham Chun River, and was a busy port for the small junks that came up the river from Deep Bay. Sham Chun was, therefore, well located as far as water-borne traffic from the west went. But Sham Chun had no water route to the east, to Mirs Bay. By sea from Sham Chun to Sha Tau Kok is a good hundred miles: by land, barely seven. There were three important commodities not available in the Deep Bay area which could be had from the Mirs Bay area - rice, some sorts of quality fresh fish, and salt. Sha Tau Kok was, in effect, the port of Sham Chun to the east, where these commodities in particular were landed, and then carried by coolies over the Miu Keng pass to Sham Chun. Mirs Bay was usually - despite occasional famines - a rice surplus area. The Sham Chun and Deep Bay area was a rice shortage area, even ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 166 In good years, like so much of the more heavily populated parts of Kwangtung. In the nineteenth century the Canton and Pearl River areas made up their shortfalls in rice, to a large extent, by imports from outside Kwangtung, but the Sham Chun area was not well placed, and had no deep-water harbours capable of taking ships larger than small junks, and so was not able to use imported rice to the same degree as those more metropolitan areas. For Sham Chun, rice carried from Sha Tau Kok was a matter of life and death. The anti-Customs extract printed above specifically notes problems when 'at the harvest... the crop was carried across the frontier': this was a routine local activity. Salt was less critical, but still important. Most of the salt produced at Sha Tau Kok was carried to Sham Chun for sale, and through Sham Chun to the other significant markets between Sham Chun and the East River. Fresh fish were a luxury. There were plenty of fish in the Deep Bay area, but that bay is shallow and muddy - poor for those species which prefer clean, deep water with a rocky bottom, like garoupas and coral fish. Mirs Bay is deep and full of rocks and coral, its waters are clear and fast moving, and full of high quality fish. These fish, landed at Sha Tau Kok at first light, could be at Sham Chun by nine or ten in the morning, still fresh. A similar carrying trade in fresh fish linked Sha Tau Kok with the markets at Po Kat and Wang Kong. Most of the fishing ports in the Hong Kong area dealt primarily in dried fish, landed and dried at the port, and then carried inland to be sold at those inland markets far from the sea. Sha Tau Kok was unusual in having a fish trade predominantly in fresh fish, although, of course, some fish were dried there as well. This double trade, in fresh and dried fish, was already established by 1853, as the Basel missionaries make clear: 'A number of people make a sparse livelihood from fishing. They either sell the fish immediately, or dry them first in the sun, and then salt them, which is a method of preserving them for a longer time, and then sell them as salt fish,' 53 This trade in rice, salt, and fish carried by coolies to the bigger market seven miles away was what made Sha Tau Kok prosperous. It was a surprisingly large trade - about 200-250 tons a month, rising to 400 tons in peak periods, were carried from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Chun in the early twentieth century, while total traffic on the Sham Chun road averaged 20,000 travellers and more a month, and double that at peak periods ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 167 There is some evidence of the traffic on the other routes out of Sha Tau Kok to the west in the same period. In 1910 22,000 persons "carrying goods" crossed the Shek Chung Au pass each month, carrying about 880 tons of goods, with probably a further 50,000 - 55,000 crossing the pass without carrying goods. This pass was clearly a major nodal point. With about 250 travellers crossing it every day, one every three minutes, including a laden coolie every ten minutes - it must have been a very busy road indeed, with, at peak periods, an almost non-stop flow of travellers. There were good reasons for the Ming and Ch'ing military post to be placed here. Of these 75,000 travellers, about a third went on to cross the Miu Keng Pass for Sham Chun, as noted above. A further 40% went to, or came from, destinations along the Yuen Long road - probably mostly to the villages nearest to Sha Tau Kok, who marketed there. A further sixth travelled to and from the villages south-west of Sha Tau Kok, in the Nam Chung-Luk Keng area, including some who continued on to Kowloon. The remainder travelled only as far as the villages between the Shek Chung Au and Wo Hang Au passes. In 1904 a daily total of 600 travellers crossed the Sha Tin Pass between Sha Tin and Kowloon, of which nearly half were "carrying goods" (mostly fresh fish from Sha Tin to Kowloon). Of this total perhaps 75-100 went on to Sha Tau Kok via Ang Chung and Kuk Po, including perhaps 25 carrying goods - this route may have seen a monthly total of as many as 3,000 travellers carrying up to 35 tons of goods. While none of these statistics was as well gathered as would be expected today, they can be used to give an impression of the size of local trade in the early twentieth century. The traffic they suggest (75,000 persons, and nearly 900 tons of goods) as entering Sha Tau Kok from the south and west is very substantial. Probably a half again as many travellers entered Sha Tau Kok from the north and east, from where statistics are not available, and probably as much again in goods carried. In total, Sha Tau Kok was probably visited by up to 120,000 travellers a month (most of these travellers, of course, entered Sha Tau Kok, only to leave it again a few hours later) and handled some 1,850 tons of goods. 55 These ancient roads and ferries remained the sole arteries of local trade until 1898. The drawing of the new frontier between Hong Kong and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 197 conditions, under which the pickets contented themselves with exacting 'squeeze' from the local trade over the border1. Administrative Reports for the Year 1925, Appendix J, "Report on the New Territories for the Year 1925", p. J2. In Administrative Reports for the Year 1926, App J, "Report on the New Territories for 1926", p. J3, the District Officer notes that the fishermen in Mirs Bay suffered particularly seriously from the boycott, as they were unable to fish except close inshore, because of the "disturbed conditions”. These Communist guerrillas had appeared in various parts of the East River area since at least 1925. They were the direct descendants of the rebels who had operated near Yim Tin in the first decade of the century, and were closely related to the groups who took over the Hoi-Luk Fung area to form the "Hoi-Luk Fung Soviet" on three separate occasions between 1925 and 1928. They were the original nucleus of the "East River Guerrillas" of the war years and just after. 40 The agreement specified that goods for the guerrillas would be treated as duty-free. 41 Juntonghanguan Bainian Dashup, op cit passim. 42. The son of the executed man had committed a robbery in the market, and left a "paper" at the scene of the crime which implicated him. He had fled back to his home near Yim Tin, where the soldiers could not get at him. So they took the father and shot him instead, behind the Man To Temple in the market, in the presence of most of the district's young people. The fact that the son fled to the rebel-held area, and the "paper" left at the scene, suggests that the robbery was politically motivated, and the execution, too. 43 Shatoupaode Lishe, op cit. 44 Administrative Reports for the Year 1910, Appendix I, "Report on the New Territories", p. 16. The bulk of the Sha Tau Kok marketing district was in the New Territories, and there was a satellite market at Yim Tin, which could service the part of the marketing district in China if the Sha Tau Kok market did cross the frontier. 45 Administrative Reports for the Year 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, Appendices J, pp. J8 (and Table IV), J3, J2, and J17 (and Table IX), respectively. 46 Administrative Reports for the Year 1937, Appendix J, pp. J7-10. "The typhoon of September the 2nd will long be remembered in the eastern parts of this District, where it caused much damage and suffering. Unfortunately, the height of the gale coincided with a very high tide, so that the swollen waters of Mirs Bay were driven with double force westward up Starling Inlet, whence they had no outlet. The sea rose, about 2-5 am, in places 20 feet and more higher than it had been known to rise for many decades. The resultant damage was astonishing. All round the shores of Starling Inlet roads, bridges, paths, piers, and bunds were breached and broken up, and buildings overthrown. All the big bunds on Starling Inlet were [almost wholly overthrown]. Casualties were heavy, about 100 in "Brush" Sha Tau Kok. At Sha Tau Kok the Officer in Charge of the Police Station displayed initiative in [getting the dead buried, animal corpses burned, and obstructions cleared] and in arranging for a supply of rice and peanut oil from Kowloon, which broke a ring at Sha Tau Kok Market who had greatly raised the prices of these two. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 200 not have been written at all 58 See the plan and cross-section of a typical 1853 Sha Tau Kok shop unit, taken from the drawings and descriptions of the Basel missionaries, in P.H. Hase, "The Alliance of Ten", in D. Faure and H. Siu, eds, Down to Earth, op. cit., and see also P.H. Hase, "Sha Tau Kok in 1853", op. cit. 59 D. Faure, A. Ng, B. Luk, eds, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 262-280 60 The Hong Kong Museum of History has a set of Po Tau equipment 61 Julonghaiguan Barman Dashiji, op. cit., sub anno. 62 P.H. Hase, "Sha Tau Kok in 1853", op. cit. 63 The Tai Po to Sha Yue Chung Ferry was also deeply involved in this trade. In 1939, the Customs came to an agreement with Tsang Sang, the leader of the guerrillas controlling the eastern side of Mirs Bay, that the Customs would treat as duty-free goods anything imported through Sha Yue Chung for the guerrilla fight against the Japanese, but, while this trade was, therefore, not smuggling, it still faced major problems from Japanese attack. 64 Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hongkong, 1899, printed by Noronha & Co, Government Printers, (Sessional Papers), "Extracts from Papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong. Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor: Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong" (No. 9 of 1899), p. 190, notes this boatyard as a significant business in 1898. 65 "Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart" (Sessional Papers, 1899), op. cit., p. 189 66 For the Sha Tau Kok Branch Railway, see R.J. Phillips, Kowloon-Canton Railway (British Section). A History, Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1990, pp. 84-93 67 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1925. I am indebted to Mr. J. Lanham for drawing my attention to this description. 68 For the first two of these tablets see Faure, Ng, and Luk, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 262-280, and Vol. 2, pp. 376-379. The third is unpublished, and is now at the Hong Kong Museum of History. 69 A further, small, boatyard was at Kat Om in 1912: see Oime Report, op. cit., para. 76, p. 55 70 See, for instance, details on shops in Sai Kung in D. Faure, "Saikung, the Making of the District and its Experience during World War II", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 22, 1982, pp. 161-216, on Tsuen Wan in D. Faure, "Notes on the History of Tsuen Wan", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 24, 1984, pp. 46-104, and on Cheung Chau in J.W. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 223 the suburbs, blending, to be sure, with the rambunctious commoners' culture, but far more subdued. Not what Seidensticker loved about old Tokyo, but fascinating none the less. The changes are particularly sharp after the war, after the second destruction in this century of the inner low city in the bombings of March 1945, and the Allied Occupation. The books, however, do not pretend to be political histories, although they give mention to politics when they touch on the fabric of the city. Instead they record the changes in the lives of the people. The department store girls, for example, who were encouraged by management to wear Western-style under-garments after eight of them fell from high ropes during their escape from a fire in one store, clad in kimono, they tried to protect their modesty and unclothed nether regions with one hand, but the other hand was not strong enough to bear the burden. This incident, while hardly a formative one in the city, is one of many incidents which Seidensticker has culled from a myriad of sources to portray the rapid changes which typify Tokyo. He gently blends the sum of them into a textured picture, one which will provide readers with a feeling for the city even if they have never seen it. If readers have seen it (and many readers of this publication will have), the picture will make greater sense of a city that can seem to be a confusing mélange of exits from subway stations. And if some readers have been fortunate enough to have lived there, the book will provide a depth of meaning to corners of their former home that are familiar, yet unknown. These books are a joy and a boon. Already ten years old (the first volume; the second appeared just five years ago), they will stand the test of time and are a welcome addition to the library of anyone seeking to keep informed about East Asia, its cities, and its culture. THOMAS STANLEY ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 227 Fukuda Shozo, With Sweat and Abacus Economic Roles of Southeast Asian Chinese on the Eve of World War II, translated by Les Oates from the Japanese, edited by George Hicks, Singapore: Select Books, 1995. 284 pp. (Review reprinted from Eastern Express). It must be exciting indeed to obtain a rare publication, albeit in Japanese and on microfilms and to have translated it into English, making available to specialists and general readers alike a unique field of knowledge. With Sweat and Abacus. Economic Roles of Southeast Asian Chinese on the Eve of World War II, on the tremendous economic progress made by Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia during the 19th century and the early 20th, was written by Fukuda Shozo (died 1973). It was originally published in Tokyo in 1939 with a third edition printed in 1942. "Thanks to Fukuda Shozo," writes the noted Australian scholar Jamie Mackie in the introduction to this English translation, "we know more about the role of the Chinese in the economic life of Southeast Asia in the 1930s than we know of their role in the 1990s." The fact remains that after reading Shozo's work, we should know quite a bit more about the Chinese in Southeast Asia than merely their economic role. It is known that Fukuda Shozo had spent four years in Shanghai from 1933 to 1937, researching and writing this book. After its completion, he was made Director of the Third Research Committee of the Toa Kenkyujo (Third Research Institute) to ferret out information on anti-Japanese activities among the Chinese in Southeast Asia, but Shozo also paid attention to Chinese economic relations between the mainland and Southeast Asia. Little else is known about Shozo, except that from 1938 until his death, he taught at Chuo University in Tokyo. Perhaps due to wartime conditions, the quality of the paper of the 1942 edition was inferior. During the intervening years, fewer than a handful of copies survived, but it was learned that the brittleness of the paper would not withstand photocopying, which is extremely harmful to the original. Ramon Myers, Curator of the East Asian Collection in the Hoover Institution at Stanford, came up with the brilliant idea of microfilming the book. Les Oates, a specialist in the field and a Japanese linguist at Melbourne University, translated the work into English. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 2 The name apparently derives from a city in Germany, but records indicated they had for a time lived in Egypt or Turkey before arriving at the China coast. This study is one-dimensional. I do not have sufficient knowledge nor have I undertaken the necessary research to put the story of the Germans in Hong Kong in a proper international setting or to relate it to the complexities of the internal and external developments of the German states and, subsequently, the German nation. This study is based on Hong Kong sources and hence is seen only from the Hong Kong view. The story could be greatly enlarged and enriched by a scholar with broader knowledge than the present author. Sources for the study Documentation of sources is usually of little interest to the average reader but they are important to the scholar who might want to check the facts or further develop aspects of the subject. I am not aware that there has yet been published so detailed a history of the German-speaking community in Hong Kong as the present study. Even so, I have not dealt with the subject in a thoroughly exhaustive way. I have confined myself to data found in Hong Kong and I have not included every detail or fact I have in my files. Readers who check the notes will find that most of my information is from a limited number of sources: Hong Kong newspapers; the Hong Kong section of directors for China and the Far East; the Hong Kong Government Gazette contains jury lists, annual probate calendars, the medical register, notices of changes in the partnership of firms and authorisation to sign; reports of the Spirit Licensing Board; the China Repository lists of residents on the China coast 1833-1851; Colonial Office records, especially for the World War I period; selected Series in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, especially those from wills, rates and valuations, and surrendered deeds; and the memorials in the Land Office. With so many references, there may have been some mistakes in transcribing dates and names. I hope these errors are at a minimum. I should like to express my appreciation to the staff of the Public Records Office, the Secretariat Library, the Special Collections Room at Hong Kong University Library, and to the Registrar General for permission ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 7 Gutzlaff was not unaware that his Union needed closer supervision. He appealed to German missionary societies to send out agents to assist him in his project. In response the Rhenish Missionary Society at Barmen and the Basel Missionary Society each sent two men in 1847. After a brief orientation period in Hong Kong, they were sent into China where they worked severally in areas where Cantonese, Hakka and Tiu-chau speakers lived. During the second Sino-British war they weathered out the war in Hong Kong and Macao. It was also the time when some took home leave. On the return of Rev. Rudolph Lechler of the Basel Missionary Society in 1861, he built a mission house, school and chapel at Sai Ying Pun. The church and school served the Hakka speaking community in Hong Kong. The congregation is now the present Kau Yan Church on High Street. The Rev Heinrich Cocking, also a medical doctor, arrived in Hong Kong in 1855 as an agent of the Berlin Missionary Society. He opened a small dispensary and hospital in 1858 at the foot of Morrison Hill in Wanchai. It was principally for Chinese but German sailors were also treated there. Agents of the Berlin Ladies Mission for China opened a home for foundling children on the top of Morrison Hill. The Berliner Frauenverein für China had been organised in response to the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff's appeal for support for his vision of the speedy conversion of the Chinese nation. The home was moved to No. 1 High Street in 1861 where it had built a large building, which was named Bethesda. It was not far from the mission house and chapel of the Basel Missionary Society. Before the removal to High Street of the Berlin foundling home, German speaking services were held on Sundays at their establishment on Morrison Hill. At an earlier time these services were held in a tavern on Queen's Road East operated by a German. The Rev. Philip Winnes, of the Basel Mission, reported in 1858: “In this manner, I preached until the sailors had enough, and that they had quite soon". The Hong Kong Blue Books in their ecclesiastical returns list a place of worship for Europeans from 1871 at the chapel of the Berlin Mission House on High Street. A small chapel was built beside the foundling home in 1881. Its entrance was off Bonham Road. The services were moved to the hall of Union Church on Kennedy Road in 1902. They remained there until 1904 when they were moved back to the Bethesda Chapel where services were held. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 8 00 until the outbreak of war in 1914. During the period when the congregation met in the Union Church Hall, the community also conducted a school there. The group meeting there was called the Deutsche Kirchen und Schulegemeinde (Rev. Albert Plag, "Bethesda and the Berliner Frauenverein Für China”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1969, v. 9: 149-150, Carl T. Smith, “The German Congregation in Hong Kong until 1914", ibid, 1975. v. 15: 292-295). In the 1896/97 the Hildesheim Mission opened the Ebenezer Home for the Blind. There were two homes, one on Hong Kong Island and one in Kowloon. During the First World War they were placed under the supervision of the Church Missionary Society, though the Sisters in charge were allowed to continue to care for the children. Among the first Germans to return to Hong Kong after the end of the war were several deaconesses of the Hildesheim Society. The Ebenezer Home and School for the Blind is now located on Pokfulam Road. Two German missionaries became Inspectors of Schools in Hong Kong. Rev. Wilhelm Lobscheid was sent to China in 1848 by the Rhenish Missionary Society, but in 1857 he changed his allegiance to the British-based Chinese Evangelization Society, yet another of the groups inspired by Gutzlaff. He was Inspector of Schools in Hong Kong from 1855 to 1859. He published in 1859 a valuable historical account entitled A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education, and the Government Schools of Hong Kong; with remarks on the history and religious notions of the inhabitants of this island. From 1861 to 1866 he acted as an emigration agent, recruiting labour for British colonies in the West Indies. His labours in this endeavour again produced a book which contains much of interest as its title suggests, Chinese Emigration to the West Indies: A Trip through British Guiana undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of the Chinese who have emigrated under Government Contract With Supplementary Papers Relating to Contract Labour and the Slave Trade. Another German, Rev. Ernest J. Eitel was Inspector of Schools from 1878 to 1896. He was influential in setting policies for the development of education in Hong Kong. He was sent to China in 1862 by the Basel Missionary Society. Three years later he transferred to the London Missionary Society. He married Miss Eaton, an agent of the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East. She was head-mistress of the Diocesan School for Girls. Mr. Eitel became a naturalised British ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g subject when Governor John Pope Hennessy planned to appoint him as His Excellency's personal secretary in charge of affairs relating to the Chinese. The British merchants were opposed to the Governor creating an office where he would have more direct communication with the Chinese. Due to their opposition, Eitel never occupied such a position. In 1895, he published Europe in China, a detailed history of Hong Kong up to that date. Club Germania A club for Germans was started in 1859 in Wanchai in an unpretentious building. The German-speaking population at the time would have been very small. There were three German firms and two stores conducted by Germans. Within two years, the community almost doubled. It was small, but still large enough to provide a social centre for the community. In 1865, George Michelmore advertised the opening of a hotel in premises "which were formerly known as the German Club". It was below the Headquarters House, now Flagstaff House, off the present Cotton Tree Drive. This may have been the second location of the Club, as an article written in 1909 states that the first building was in "an outlying section of Wanchai", a description which does not fit a location on what is now Cotton Tree Drive (DP, 17 May, 1865). The club moved in 1865 to a new building erected by Gustav Overbeck at the top of Wyndham Street, just south of D'Aguilar Street. But the German population was increasing, and the Germania Club decided to build a more commodious building. This was on the east side of Wyndham Street off Queen's Road. The new building was opened in 1872. It was a brick building in the Gothic style. The architects were Messrs Wilson and Salway. The cost was $21,000. Thirteen granite steps led to the entrance, and the main hall. On either side of the hall was a billiard room and a reading room. On the same level was a library room and a bar. The Concert Hall was approached by a flight of seven-foot-wide stairs. The Hall accommodated 275 persons; on either side was a drawing room and a dining room. There were accommodations for sixty in the dining room. Four bowling alleys were in the rear of the building (HKT, 27 Nov. 1909). The building served the community well until again it became too small, and another building was erected on Kennedy Road. This building became enemy alien property in 1914 and passed into the hands of St. Joseph's College. The College is still located in the building. Page 30 Page 31 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 28 Alexander Cosman Levysohn, another founder of the firm is on the Hong Kong jury lists in 1864 and 1865. He then went to Canton to take charge of the Shameen office there. Lewis Mendel became a partner in 1875 (DP 3 Jan. 1874). He died at Hong Kong on 4 November 1895 aged fifty-one. He came to China to join the firm in 1867, retired in 1883 and returned home, but came back to Hong Kong later and established his own business as a share broker (DP 5 Nov. 1895). His will made in 1882 mentioned only his father, brothers and sisters as his heirs. His executors were Jacob Arnhold of London and Lorenz Poesnecker of Hong Kong. Mr. Mendel was a native of Altona, Germany (PRO will File No. 101 of 1896 [4/1105]). Lorenz Poesnecker was an assistant in Arnhold, Karberg and Co. in Hong Kong from 1870 to 1880. He was authorised to sign for the firm on 6 June 1874 (DP 7 June 1876) and became a partner in 1880/81. When he made his will in June 1896 he gave his address as 5 East India Avenue, City of London. He left his estate to his wife and after her death to his children. He named Caesar Erdmann of Hamburg and Richard Millitzer of Hof, Bavaria as his executors. He died in London on 9 July 1897 and the administration of his estate in Hong Kong was granted to Carl Beurmann and Max Carl Johann Grote as attorneys of the executors named in the will (PRO Will File No. 20 of 1898 [4/1162]). Julius Kramer was authorised to sign for the firm in June 1888 and was admitted a partner in 1892 (DP 13 June 1888, 18 Mar. 1892). During his first years with the company he was at its Canton office. At an auction for lots in the French Concession on Shameen in November 1889 he purchased Lots 1 and 7 for $2,610 (DP 8 Nov. 1889). After being admitted a partner he moved to Hong Kong. There his wife Bertha died on 14 February 1896 at “Luginsland” on the Peak Road (DP 15 Feb. 1896). Not long after he left Hong Kong and died on 11 November 1898 at Heidelberg. Administration of his estate in Hong Kong was granted to Ernest Goetz as the attorney of Philip Arnhold (GG Probate Calendar 7 June 1898). A former street in Tai Kok Tsui, Kowloon, was named after Mr. Kramer. When the Royal Dutch Oil Co. began importing oil to China by tanker in the last decade of the nineteenth century, Arnhold, Karberg and Co. acted as its agent. Oil storage tanks were built at Tai Kok Tsui. The Royal Dutch is better known as the Shell Co. When Philip Arnhold died in 1910 Ernest Goetz became senior partner. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 35 usually known as Bernhard became a partner along with Friedrich Seip in 1888. He had charge of the Canton office (DP 14 Mar. 1888). Gustav Harling became a partner in 1883 (DP 10 Jan. 1883). The firm may have been dissolved by the year 1896, for in that year George Wilhelm Gustav Harling — probably the same as Gustav Harling — was a member of the firm of Harling, Buschmann and Menzell in Hong Kong. In 1900 the name of this firm was changed to the East Asiatic Trading Co. Carl Bodiker and Co. Carl Bodiker and Co was among the German firms placed in liquidation in 1914. In a petition of German firms to the Government at that time the date of its establishment is given as 1860. I am unable to trace the company to this date. In 1912 Carl Bodiker, who styled himself as the sole partner of the company and was then resident in Hamburg, appointed Frank Esrom to hold his power of attorney in Hong Kong. The document states that by an indenture dated 28 November 1911 George Wilhelm Gustave Harling transferred to Bodiker all the business of Schuldt and Co. A compradore's bond and agreement dated 7 August 1908 names the partners of Schuldt and Co. at that time as Adolf Heinrich Ernest Schuldt, 28 Armgaistrasse, Hamburg, George Wilhelm Gustav Harling, same address, and Schelte Swart, Hong Kong. As noted under the history of Schellhass and Co., Mr. Harling was successively with Schellhass and Co., Harling, Buschmann and Menzell Co. and the East Asiatic Trading Co. The 1860 date for the founding of Bodiker and Co. must be the date for the founding of Schellhass and Co. By the year 1923 Carl Bodiker and Co was again doing business in Hong Kong as import and export merchants and engineers. The partners in 1929 were Q. May and B. Soltau. Hesse, Ehlers and Co. J China Export and Import Bank Compagnie The China Import and Export Bank Compagnie was one of the firms placed under liquidation in 1914. It had its origins in the firm of Hesse, Ehlers and Co. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 68 back door. In this way prosperous winds are not allowed to blow straight out of the other side. Considerable care was taken, too, in selecting the positions and angles of the two long escalators leading up to the first floor of the Bank. They should not directly 'confront' the entrance. Unlike most enterprises in urban Hong Kong 'The Bank' still has an open space in front of it and a sea view. The harbour is the bathing place of the dragon. With water signifying money this is important. Water is the most powerful of all the Elements. It is non-resistant. It can wear away rocks. A deluge can sweep all before it. In many cases planners go to some lengths, among other measures, to ensure that interior water features assist good joss to circulate throughout a building. The height of the ejection of water of a fountain is often considered important. The now liquidated Hong Kong Branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce was sadly not so wise. '... the BCC displayed a large water feature which cascaded away from the entrance... this means (in fung shui terms) wealth pours out of the bank. I am surprised anyone should put their money into this bank in the first place,' a fung shui master contended. There are countless cases where western managements have paid consideration to fung shui in Hong Kong (Saw, 1990:8) In Exchange Square, for example, a special skylight was installed and the 'water curtains' on either side of the two escalators are spectacular. In the Hyatt Regency Hotel doors and furniture were repositioned. Virgin Atlantic Airways timed their first flight to the Far East to start on a propitious day. Marks and Spencer buried lucky gold coins in strategic positions under floors in its stores, and Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm, also pays regard to the 'caring philosophy'. Asians, of course, like to see Westerners respecting their culture. In turn, it is good for business (Sunday Times, 1995:16). The author has no hard data, but his personal recollections are that clearly far more interest is shown in fung shui by western establishments today than 40 or so years ago. Certainly there is far more interest in it now than there was between the two World Wars. Going back still further, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 69 the views expressed right at the start of this paper by Dr Ernest J. Eitel, sometimes titled Hong Kong's first historian and for some time a Hong Kong civil servant, were by no means unusual. Today, far more empathy is shown towards Chinese culture in general by Westerners. For instance, many Caucasian firms believe aquariums enrich the fung shu of an office. It is not just Chinese who can relax, Westerners will tell you, when they lie back and watch fish swimming. It gives everyone a special feeling and lowers their blood pressure by a few degrees. Of course, certain rules have to be followed. The number of fish kept is often six or nine. Three multiplied by three equals nine (a lucky number); and a homonym of three, in Cantonese, sounds similar to the character meaning 'lively'. Because of colour symbolism, one fish may be black (a Black Molly), another reddish (a goldfish), and the rest any other colour. Because the fish are supposed to act as a shield against bad fung shui, sometimes a fish dies. But better a dead fish than a dead customer. Higher up the hill above Central District, at the Albany in Albany Road, residents were concerned about the 70-storey, new, People's Republic Bank of China Building 'giving off vibes'. They feared the sharp edges of its structure with their negative forces would menace the abode of some of Hong Kong's rich and famous. In the West, the new Bank of China building would perhaps be described as 'ominous', 'overshadowing' or 'overpowering'. Many Chinese, however, liken the sharp edges of the Bank of China to a knife pointed at, or arrows cast at, Government House and Central Government Offices, namely, the heart of the British Colonial Administration. These 'weapons', together with the flyovers close to Government House, tie the decision-making hands of the British Governor and threaten the prosperity of Hong Kong. The fung shui 'dragon vein', with the dragon's head turned to face its ancestors, serpents down from Victoria Peak, close to the Albany, concealed by a carpet of vegetation. It passes close to the Albany apartments. The dragon thrusts and turns as the topography changes. The earth surges with natural energy. Chinese dragons are more serpent-like and sinuous than those in the West. And, as the vein gathers strength, it proceeds vigorously on to the 'dragon sites' such as the home of the Governor and down to the Hong Kong Bank. It then dips into the harbour, the 'dragon's lair'. Although now the slope up the Peak is largely obscured by high-rise buildings, on some hills and 70 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 82 The site of the flat in the case study is not perfect. The hills could surround the home, at the sides, more, thus providing a better 'armchair effect'. The shapes of hills and features on hills, similar to boulders such as Sha Tin's Amah Rock, frequently form the backdrop for wayside shrines. This rock did not ask, some rustics will tell you, to be eroded into the shape of a woman with a baby on her back, and the wind and the rain did not want to sculpt them, it is something that just happened. Such features display the power of nature and the majesty of the cultural landscape. Like the Australian aboriginals, boulders or other objects in Hong Kong can take the forms of beasts, real or imaginary. This is especially so for the Hakka Chinese. There is some resemblance between aspects of Chinese folklore and its Gaelic counterparts. The latter has its mischievous leprechauns. But whether it be a Chinese village hovel or a palace, the ideals to aim for are similar. With the basic grammar of an ideal site, with us 'armchair of slopes' and 'ring of sunny hills', the spur on the right is known as the 'Azure (green in Cantonese) Dragon'. That on the left is described as the 'White Tiger'. More of an armchair effect would give the building in our case study better protection against calamities. Like typhoons for instance, which rampage in from the south-east. In the case of a mountain, which should be tranquil but can also signify 'authority and vigour, it may 'overpower' the natural environment. A 'killer breath' (shaar hei), as mentioned earlier, with harmful currents that travel in straight lines, may develop. There, the chi is violent. In some instances these forces can be deflected by screens, fences, water, fountains, mirrors or lucky charms. An eight-sided Baat Kwa, with Trigrams in the centre, may be used. A small, hand-held 'windmill' can be employed to disperse strong chi. With such remedial measures an unfavourable site may later be classified as favourable. Nevertheless, because of inauspicious circumstances and the anger of the gods, a slope or cliff consisting of partly decomposed rock may turn to mud during a storm. Thus a hill may not provide the intended security to a building. 'Feels as if the mountain top is always watching you,' is how some villagers explain it. To overcome such 'negative influences', trees can be planted to form a 'curtain' in an effort to 'mask' the ridge (Ajmer, 1968:75). But, during the Japanese Occupation in World War II, such trees were sometimes felled because of a fuel shortage. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 89 unease (even dread) if certain lore is followed concerning the construction or the furnishing of a building. A Chinese geomancer will probably be able to give specific reasons why it is so. It is not difficult to imagine that if someone's home is 'tranquil', and that if he or she feels 'comfortable' there, that this will be 'picked up', sensitively, eventually resulting in a greater degree of self-possession and, consequently, greater accomplishment. In Chinese communities talismanic paper emblems above door frames, like the 'Five Happinesses' (signifying long life, wealth, health and peace, love and virtue, and natural death after a full span) are common. Understanding something of metaphysics one realises the power of the negative word. The Chinese characters signifying 'Coming or leaving go in peace', painted on a strip of red paper and pasted by the entrance, although by no means hypnotic or yogic techniques, mean a great deal to many. It psychologically 'hearts are put at ease' by constantly reading such messages (a form of auto-suggestion) then the desired effect is achieved. Some Chinese symbols can be compared with an old shoe tied to the back of the car of a newly married English couple; or a horseshoe (which must hang the right way up) by the door of a cottage. Inside the parlour you might find the motto, 'Bless this house', displayed. Certainly during World War II a number of British aircraft crew members, on bombing missions over Germany, carried lucky charms, such as rabbits' paws. Fung shui has been likened to the pull of gravity or high voltage electricity. Others describe it as dei mat, the veins through which the pulse of the earth can be sensed. The end result, many believe, is directly proportional to the degree of skill of the fung shui practitioner. With the cosmos in a constant state of flux his task is to analyse bad elements and to advise on cures to help balance or restore the build-up and circulation of chi. Often it is accepted the fung shui specialist cannot prevent something from happening. But if he has mastered his art he can make the effects less severe. Of course it does not always happen so. 'My fung shui lo ("fellow") did not tell me so much red in my flat would upset Ng Wong (the Fifth King God),' a Chinese woman told the author. 'Also, he did not forecast the death of my friend's mother. All he is concerned with now is taking on as... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 134 Pokfulam and Bethanie, July 1972 During an address at the 1990 Annual Dinner in the presence of our Patron and Lady Wilson, I reminded members of this visit to the "Maison de Bethanie" in its centenary year, some eighteen years before. This particular local tour had meant a great deal to me; on its own account, and for its insights into bygone Hong Kong. Made in the height of the Hong Kong summer, it took in University Hall the former "Nazareth" of the French Mission's complex at Pokfulam with its famous Mission Press, operated between 1884-1953 together with "Bethanie" itself, and the old Pokfulam Village. As was stated in the programme notes for the visit, it was being made to a part of Hong Kong Island that had not witnessed the same degree of change as other districts. "Even today", I wrote in 1972, "it is easy to imagine what Pokfulam was like in 1841 when Britain occupied Hong Kong." "Bethanie" had been built by the Fathers of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris; otherwise called for short, the French Mission. Suffice it to say here, that this particular Catholic Mission provided more workers and more martyrs than any other of the bodies that evangelized the Far East. It originated with some French priests who, in the mid 17th century, had been invited to Tonkin to help with the Jesuits' work there, and its first missionary to China had begun work there in 1681. By the time the Mission received a mention in Samuel Couling's Encyclopaedia Sinica in 1917, it had under its care 12 Vicariats with 462,321 Christians, and more than 160 of its members had been made bishops. But it was by "Bethanie" itself, the embodiment of so much heroic effort, that I was so stirred. As stated in the Journal, its chapel had then still contained beautifully finished ecclesiastical furniture and fittings that, in mediaeval fashion, had obviously been made by artisans working on and round the site for as long as required, when the building was nearing completion. Its walls carried memorials in marble to martyred priests, and the adjoining Mission cemetery had held the remains of a hundred former priests and high dignitaries, many of whom had come to "Bethanie" to die of sickness contracted elsewhere or to spend their declining years amidst its peace and safety - for the "Maison de Bethanie" was essentially a sanitarium for the entire overseas Mission, and Hong Kong had been selected on account of its climate and the medical facilities available. Father Caminondo, who permitted our visit and provided a valuable note, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 135 reminded us that "at that time few places in the Far East had offered the political stability and religious tolerance of the Colony". He also told us that the name of Bethanie was chosen after "Bethany village" of the Holy Scripture, and the inscription above the main entrance, Domine ecce quem amas infirmatio (Lord, he whom Thou lovest lies sick - John III) is part of the message sent to Jesus by Martha and Mary when their brother Lazarus became sick And from the start there were sick missionaries in abundance In 1884, for instance, 43 missionaries had stayed at the sanitarium for some time.1 Our visit that day was memorable. It showed us another, broader side of British Hong Kong, and I have never forgotten it. Chatwan and Shaukeiwan, May 1983 This visit was of a different kind, and focussed on Hong Kong people and on important new public works. As a serving government officer, I used my opportunities to combine old and new on RAS tours, showing our members what was being done in the way of new civil engineering projects of public housing development, for instance, and providing facts and answering questions about them. The Chatwan visit was one which combined these aims admirably On a warm May day, we left Queen's Pier in Central District by a licensed passenger boat which took us along the Hong Kong Island waterfront as far as Chatwan On the way - the reason for our going by sea we were able to view the engineering and construction work proceeding along the length of the new "Hong Kong Island Eastern Corridor". This modern highway, with its several reclamations, elevated sections of carriage way, slip roads, and grade-separated junctions and interchanges, would link Chaiwan and Eastern Hong Kong Island with the Central Business District. It was intended to ameliorate, if not solve, the long-standing congestion and delays on the existing roadways which had reached saturation point. At Chatwan we went by coach to Tai Ping Village, one of the last remaining of the extensive squatter settlements that used to cover practically the whole of the area in the mid-1950s Next to it was a new Urban Council swimming pool complex with its main and six other pools, completed in 1978 We then went to the site earmarked for the new Eastern ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 188 These sites and their associated trees, which are usually of a great age and which villagers often claim were planted when the village was founded, are of fundamental importance to the fortunes of a village, more so than the fung shui woods themselves. In some villages, such as Ma Mat Wei, during the last war fung shui woods were felled so that rice could be bought for the impoverished villagers. The important individual fung shui trees, however, were never felled. Villagers will go to great lengths to protect these sites from private development and from government projects. Roads may be diverted to avoid harming such sites. While the importance of certain trees can be determined on fung shui principles, villagers who do not possess any fung shui knowledge may just call any tree they want to protect a "fung shui tree". Shrines are in various states of repair or dilapidation according to the devotion and resources of the villagers and shrines may sometimes be completely rebuilt, such as at Tai Om where one of the main shrines was first built seventy years ago, but was rebuilt in the last few years and is surrounded by a small garden. Sometimes shrines may also be relocated, usually because of a road widening scheme, and the relocation of a shrine is a very serious fung shui matter. The relocation shrine at Wo Hop Shek, near Fanling, is an example. Occasionally a shrine may be abandoned, presumably due to a loss of efficacy by the residing deity. The Tai Wong shrine in the wood at Ho Sheung Heung is no longer worshipped, while it is the earth god, Fuk Tak Gung, who resides in the comfort of the village temple. There are also three Tze Jik shrines, which are more important than Paak Kung, protecting the village to the north, east and south. These shrines are particularly worshipped by farmers and protect the whole community. A typical layout of village shrines may be seen at Man Uk Pin, north east of Fanling. The Tai Wong shrine on the northern arm of the fung shui wood protects the whole village. The water spirit Paak Kung, by the dam on the stream which borders the fung shui wood, ensures the safety of the drinking water supply. There are also four other Paak Kung facing each of the four directions, with trees planted to protect them, including two within the fung shui wood, and one in the middle of the village. The villagers of Man Uk Pin take their spiritual protectors very seriously. Several villagers claim to have seen the spirit of Tai Wong himself while they were walking along the path at night. He was seen to be dressed in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 204 Hunter, Jane, The Gospel of Gentility, American Women Missionaries in Turn-of the Century China, New Haven Yale University Press, 1984 Hunter, W C. The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton, London Kegan Paul, 1882 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing) Hunter, William, Bits of Old China, London K Paul, French, 1885 Hutchison, James Lafayette, China Hand, Boston and New York Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1936 Hutchison, Paul, ed. A Guide to Important Missionary Stations in Eastern China Lying Along the Main Routes of Travel, Shanghai Mission Book Company, 1920 Hyatt, Irwin T, Jr, Our Ordered Lives Confess. Three 19th Century Missionaries in East Shantung, Cambridge (Mass). Harvard University Press, 1976 Ichiko, Chuzo, Political and Institutional Reform, Cambridge History of China, vol II, 375-415 Inglis, Brian, The Opium War, London Hodder and Stoughton, 1976 International Mission Council, Christian Education in China, A Study Made by an Education Commission Representing the Mission Boards and Societies Conducting Work in China, New York, 1922 Isaacs, Harold Robert. Images of Asia, New York and London. Harper and Row, 1972 Jesuits, Letters from Missions, The Travels of Several Learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus translated from the French in 1713, London printed for R Gosling, 1714 1 Johnston, Alan James, The Footprints of the Pheasant in the Snow, Portland Me Johnston, 1976, 1978 Johnston, R. F, From Peking to Mandalay, London John Murray, 1903 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing) Twilight in the Forbidden City, London Victor Gollancz, 1934 (Hong Kong Reprint Oxford University Press) Jones, Francis Clifford, Shanghai and Tientsin, With Special Reference to Foreign interests, London Oxford University Press, 1940 Kemp, Emily Georgina (b 1860), The Face of China. Travels in Eastern, Northern, Central and Western China, with Some Accounts of New School, Universities, Missions, New York Duffield and Co. 1909 Chinese Mettle, London and New York Hodder and Stoughton, 1921 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 205 Kendall, Elizabeth Kimball, A Wayfarer in China, Boston New York Houghton Mifflin, 1913 Kerby, Philip, Beyond the Bund, New York Payson Clarke, 1927 Knox, Thomas Wallace (1835-1896), Overland Through Asia. Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar Life, Chicago FS gilman, etc, 1871 The Boy Travellers in the Far East Part just. Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Japan and China etc, New York and London Harper, 1898 Kranzler, David H, Japanese, Nazis and Jews. The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai 1938-1945, New York Yeshiva University Press, 1976 Lamberton, Mary, St John's University Shanghai, 1879-1951, New York United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1955 Lamont, Florence, Far Eastern Diary 1920, New York Horizon Press, 1951 Latourette, Kenneth S, A History of Christian Missions in China, New York Macmillan, 1929 - Beyond the Ranges, an Autobiography, Grand Rapids. William Erdman Publishers, 1967 + Le Coy, Albert von, Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, London Allen and Unwin, 1926 (Hong Kong Reprint. Oxford University Press) Levy, Howard Seymour, Chinese Foot Binding, London Neville Spearman, 1970 Lewisohn, William, China's Wild West A Road Trip of 5,000 Miles in a Motor Car, Shanghai North China Daily News and Herald, 1937 Leys, Simon, Chinese Shadows, London Penguin, 1974 Li, Anthony C, The History of Privately Controlled Higher Education in the Republic of China, Washington DC Catholic University of America Press, 1954, Westport, Conn Greenwood Press reprint, 1977 Liddell, T Hodgson (B1860), China Its Marvel and Mystery, London Allen, 1909 Lin-ch'ung (1791-1846), A Wild Swan's Frank the Havels of a Mandarin, translated by TC Lai, Hong Kong, 1978 Lau, Alicia Helen Neva (Bewicke) (d. 1926), My Diary in a Chinese Farm, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 1892 74pp - The Land of Blue Gown, London Unwin, 1902 + AMAMT 11 41 DL/ ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 209 Nevins, John Livingston (1829-1893), China and the Chinese, New York Harper, 1869 Northey, James E, People Go to Church the Story of Greater Lancashire, London Salvationist Publication and Supplies, 1973 Oliphant, Laurence (1829-1888), Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan in the Years 1857, 1858, 1859, New York Harper, 1860 Orleans, Pierre Joseph d' (1641-1698), History of the Two Tartar Conquerors of China. Including the two Journeys into Tartary of Father Ferdinand Verbiest, in the Suite of the Emperor Kang-Hi from the French, London printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1854 Osbeck, Per (1723-1805), A Voyage to China and the East Indies Together with an Account of Chinese Husbandry by John Reinhold Forster - Appendix of Faunula and Flora Sinensis, London B White, 1771 Owen, David Edward, British Opium Policy in China and India, London and Oxford Oxford University Press, 1934 Parker, Edward Harper, Chinese Customs, a Lecture, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 1899 Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons (1857) Session 2, No XLIII, papers relating to the opium trade in China 1842-56 (Opium Trade 1932, Correspondence Relating to China 1840, Additional Correspondence Relating to China 1840, Report from the Select Committee on the Trade with China 1840) Paterno, Roberto M, The Yangtze Valley anti-Missionary Riots of 1891, Harvard University PhD dissertation, 1967 Pelliot, Paul, Notes on Marco Polo, Paris Imprimerie Nationale, 1957-1963 1 Le voyage de MM Gabet et Huc a Lhasa (a reprint of 1850 article) in Toung Pao 24 133-78 (1926) Pennell, Wilfred V, A Lifetime with the Chinese, Hong Kong Privately printed, 1974 Percival, William Spencer, The Land of the Dragons, My Boating and Shooting Excursions to the Gorges of the Yangtze. London Hurst, 1889 Twenty Years in the Far East, Sketches, London Simpkin, 1905 Pereira, Thomas, The Treaties and the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk, 1689, the Diary of Thomas Pereira, SJ, Rome 1961 (Bibliotheca Instituti Historici S J vol 18) Playfair, G M H, The Cities and Towns of China, a Geographical Dictionary, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 2nd edition, 1910 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen publishing) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g Roc, A S, China As I Saw It, London Hutchinson, 1910 Romer, Charles Frederick, Foreign Investments in China, New York Macmillan, 1933 Roosevelt, Kermit, The Search of the Giant Panda, Journal of American Museum of Natural History XXX 33-16(1930) Ross, Edward Alsworth, The Changing Chinese, The Conflict of Oriental and Western Cultures in China (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing) Rowbottom, Arnold H, Mission and Mandarins, the Jesuits at the Court of China, Berkley, University of California Press, 1942 Roy, Jules, Journey Through China, London Faber, 1967 Royal Asiatic Society, Journal of Hong Kong Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Journal of North China Branch Quested, R. K.I., The Expansion of Russia in East Asia 1857-1860, Kuala Lumpur University of Malaya Press, 1968 Saeki, P Y, The Nestorian Monument and Relics in China, Tokyo. Toho Bunkwa Gakuin, 1937 Scidmore, Eliza Ruhamah, Westward to the Far East, a Guide to the Principal Cities of China and Japan, Montreal Canadian Pacific Railroad, 1894 Scott, Roderick, Fukien Christian University. Historical Sketch, New York United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1954 Sebes, Joseph S.J., The Jesuits and the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), Rome Institutum Historicum S.I., 1961 Sewell, William Gowan, The People of Wheelbarrow Lane Chengtu 1931-41, London Alfred and Unwin, 1972 Shaw, Robert, Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand and Kashgar, London John Murray, 1871 (Hong Kong Reprint. Oxford University Press) Shaw, Samuel (1754-1794), The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton with Life of Author by Joseph Quincy, Boston W Crosby and H P Nichols, 1847 Silverstein, Joseph and Lynn, David Marshall and Jewish Emigration from China, China Quarterly (London 1979) Sino-Swedish Expedition 1927-1935, Reports from the Scientific Expedition to the North-Western Provinces of China Under the Leadership of Sven Hedin, with 54 folded maps, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1995/96 This is the 36th Annual General Meeting of the Society since its re-birth in 1960, and it gives me great pleasure to report to you on the events and activities of the previous year, i.e. the 35th Anniversary Year. Before doing so however I would like to say one or two things about the Society's history, current situation and some thoughts on the future. The Royal Asiatic Society was originally conceived in the United Kingdom in the early part of the 19th century in 1825; it was conceived because it was recognised that in view of the spread of commercial and other activities in the near and Far East there was a need to fulfil a desire by many to form a structure whereby the history and social aspects of those countries in which the United Kingdom had an interest could be studied in more detail. The early membership of the Society was therefore made up of leading academics and politicians who were known to be experts in their subject, and who were keen to bring that knowledge to a wider public. A building was leased in the centre of London where members could meet, a library was built-up and lectures at periodic intervals were well attended by the standards of the time. If you now visit the Royal Asiatic Society in London you can do so at their bought premises in Queen Anne's gate. It still has monthly lectures, and it has a really splendid library, which not only houses some very rare books but also a fine array of interesting journals from many parts of Asia, including I was pleased to note our own Society's journals. The Royal Asiatic Society in London, however, did not confine its aspirations to the United Kingdom; it spread its wings far and wide and Royal Asiatic Societies sprung up in a variety of interesting places, particularly in the main cities of India, and the Malaysian Peninsular, in addition to some other countries in the near East. The Hong Kong Branch was founded in 1847, only six years after the foundation of the colony, and later on Australia, and New Zealand founded Royal Asiatic Societies. Shanghai had one and in fact had a building on the Bund with a splendid library, and you can, if you persevere, see the books in a... VII ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 50 to the new comers? I have come up with four logical reasons: (1) In the actor's psychology, his role on the stage is to entertain, and as long as he can keep the audience amused, everything will be O.K. Sometimes, he forgets, as when he puts his whims and fantasies into practice, and he throws logic out of the window. (2) The theatrical people may be inclined to think that the audience's mind cannot be rushed. The action has to be brought about in such a way that they can gradually grasp the meaning and importance of the story being told. (3) One way to highlight the importance of the story is to prolong the time of the fighting scene. In other words, the more you fight, the more important that fight will be. Things can turn sour if you run counter with this theme. Take, for instance, the following example which amply proves my point: In the play "Jie Dong Feng" (f) which literally means "Praying For The East Wind", people spend hours acting out the story that leads to the "The Battle Of The Red Cliff” (EZ). The story has it that strategists of both the Wu (R) and the Shu (S) States are scheming how to defeat the mighty Wei State's fleet that was anchored on the upper reach of the Yangtze River. Since the Wu's forces were in the lower reach of the Yangtze River, they needed the "East Wind", in gale force, to help them to win. Well, when the East gale force winds do come, you would expect that thousands upon thousands of soldiers would throw flaming arrows across the sky aimed at the Wei's fleet, which was tricked to join together with iron chains by internal spies. Then, when the fleet was destroyed and the smoldering ships were cold enough to board, the Wu and Shu strategists would send soldiers to mop up and put a finishing touch to it. Nothing of the sort happened! What they did was to send a couple of men, with maybe two dozen arrows (not even the flame carrying ones), and throw them in the direction of the enemy. Before you even knew it, the war was over! What an anticlimax! So everyone who sat ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 115 In the early seventeenth century, according to Dr Batalha, Portuguese had attained the status of a lingua-franca around the coasts of Africa and southern Asia, including Malacca. The resident population of Macau in 1563, according to Montalto de Jesus, comprised some 900 Portuguese, excluding children, with some thousands of Malays, Indians and Africans mostly domestic slaves. A creole dialect was already established among these groups, based on pre-renaissance Portuguese. This dialect was spoken by the Portuguese residents of Macau in addition to native "metropolitan" Portuguese. In the period from 1550 to 1650, xenophobia among Chinese officialdom was very gradually overcome by a desire to import foreign goods and to exploit the market for Chinese silk, spices, porcelain and decorative articles. In the early days of Macau, Chinese who wished to work or carry on business there had to enter in the morning and leave the enclave through the border gate before sun-down. (Whether this requirement was laid down by the Chinese or the Portuguese is not clear.) During this period of Portuguese-Chinese trade, we speculate that the existence of an Indo-Portuguese creole spoken among a population, many of whom would have had long contact with Chinese settlers in south-east Asia, would have allowed ample opportunities for translation between Chinese and Portuguese traders. Demands on the Chinese traders to learn Portuguese would have been minimal. The Honourable East India Company was founded in 1600, and the Dutch East India Company in 1602. In the 1650s, the first vessels of the United East India Company were coming to Canton to do trade. These fundamentally English-speaking traders were faced with a different order of problems. Their exposure to the Far East at that time had not been long enough to permit the establishment of a lingua-franca. The low volume of trade between China and the North European traders up until the early eighteenth century was no doubt supported by translation services by Malays who had had exposure to the Chinese language. However, in the early seventeen hundreds, the demand for China trade rose dramatically, and this laid the ground for the development ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 122 First, the extracts in the Sing-Song are clearly artificial productions written as a literary joke. Given what we understand of the way Pidgin developed and how it was used, there is little chance that texts of the sort published by Leland would have circulated other than as an after-dinner entertainment among Western-educated people with a knowledge of Pidgin. We know from the writings of W.C. Hunter that this sort of entertainment did, in fact, take place. We are not saying here that Pidgin-English Sing-Song is a hoax. Leland never claims that the texts are authentic, only that they have been judged plausible by western scholars of Chinese. The style and expressions used in the texts contain a variety of American slang and minstrelsy terms, and the overall internal evidence is, to my mind, that Leland wrote most of the texts himself. Leland was never a long-time resident of the Far East, I must therefore digress slightly to explain how he could perform the feat of writing a small book of prose and verse in a language which he could only have known slightly. It also gives me an excuse to introduce you to a colourful and talented character, Charles Godfrey Leland was born in Philadelphia on 15 August 1824. He was a voracious reader by the age of nine and studied at college in New Jersey from 1841 to 1845. Then he went to Germany via Italy and spent two years at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich. Known as the "Gentle Giant", he had a gargantuan appetite for food, drink and tobacco. In 1848, he moved to the Sorbonne, and manned the barricades in the Paris Commune. Returning to Philadelphia, he studied law, then turned to journalism, authorship, politics and exploration of the Western US. He joined the Confederate cause and fought in the Civil War. He was an acknowledged master of literary journalism and in 1866, he became editor of the Philadelphia press. From 1869 to 1879, he stayed in London and became closely associated with the humanist thinker Walter Besant. Leland took a close interest in education in the industrial arts, as well as taking up research on Gypsies and the Romany language. He was a talented linguist and was particularly interested in slang and jargon ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 130 There has been some speculation that the group of words ending in -um (de-lam, ki-lam, etc) represent a specific grammatical form. But in Tong, these words are given as a basic form and in nearly all cases are derived from English words which end in -l or -ll; si-bui-lam (spoil), de-lam (tell), go-lam (call), gi-lam (kill), bui-lam (boil), and se-lam (sell). It is worth noting that all these are verbs. I speculate that these were first introduced into Pidgin in their present participle form (-ing) and that through an East China dialect, the syllable in (lam in Cantonese) was used to represent -ing in English. Let's look at some other well-known Pidgin words with less obvious derivations. Chop Hobson Jobson and other major sources give as the origin the Hindi word, chhap, a word denoting an official stamp or the act of emprinting. Macau patoa: chapa - Documento oficial emanado das autoridades chinesas. Marca, selo, carimbo. (G. N. Batalha). Tong Ting Shue lists the word as a measure (chop) of tea. The character used is chaap, “to insert”. Chop chop Most sources give as the origin of chop-chop a Chinese word with a similar sound. Hobson Jobson offers a number of dialect pronunciations of the word pronounced in Cantonese gap. None of these is particularly near to the sound chop. Tong writes it as jap-jap, the characters for "to pick up". This does not help. We have searched a number of Chinese dialect vocabularies and failed, so far, to find any Chinese word in any dialect denoting “quick, fast” which sounds as if it could have been the origin of chop-chop. Chop-sticks The OED and all other major sources are persuaded by the argument that the word is connected to the Pidgin chop-chop, meaning quick. That is, the Chinese eat with sticks, the sticks enable them to eat fast, therefore they should be called "fast-sticks". The Macau patoa word is faichi. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 183 ones, having sprung up through private enterprise. Others, like a large newly completed temple in Tampenis New Town, were a complete surprise. Back in the early sixties I came across a deity who intrigued me because he did not appear to be worshipped elsewhere, and had an unusual multi-coloured striped face. He was known as the Great Emperor of the Seven Stars [the Northern Dipper], Qixing Dadi. The temple was a basha hut with an attap roof in a humble and impoverished village on the road across the north east of the island towards Changi. The villagers were unable to tell me anything about the deity apart from it being a powerful stellar god, feared and carefully propitiated. I returned to the village a number of times and always came away disappointed. Nothing seemed to be known about his background and legend. Then, in the early seventies I again tried to find the temple but this time neither the village nor the temple remained and no one seemed to know where the temple had gone to. In 1993 I was once more fortunate to revisit the Republic for a short visit and driving my hire car from the airport lost my way in the welter of new roads and found myself in Tampenis New Town. There ahead of me in the midst of the blocks of flats was a new and comparatively large popular religion temple. I parked and entered wondering just what I might find and was amazed to see a row of some nine separate altars facing me, all with two or three images on them with a large Pestilence Wangye shrine in the centre. I began to make notes and sketch in the detail when, at the first altar at stage right, was my old friend, Qixing Dadi. It transpired that each altar was occupied by deities from nine separate temples from the area around the New Town, all of which had been demolished over the years to make way for modern development. The ending, however, for me anyway, is sad. Having re-found the Great Emperor and sought out the temple staff, no one again was able to help with his legend. A visiting devotee offered to help and over the next few months wrote several times explaining the progress or lack of it ending with the report that the old man who might have known more had died a matter of months earlier. So here we have a minor cult, almost certainly brought to Singapore Page 210 Page 211 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 207 Jack Edwards, since well-known for his work on behalf of ex-P.O.W.s, and their families. The trial began on October 3rd 1946 and ended with convictions two weeks later. I need say no more as Jack Edwards had written a graphic account of the conditions at Kinkaseki in his book "Banzai you Bastards". My second case turned into a marathon. It opened to a crowded courtroom on October 21st 1946 and ended in an equally-crowded court on November 30th - Hong Kong's longest-running War Crimes Trial. The Royal Navy took a special interest in the case due to the number of Naval Personnel who had perished, and the Hong Kong Commodore sent out a signal that all Naval Officers not on sea duty were to attend the opening of the trial in No.1 uniform with medals and swords. About fifty did so, arriving early to take up the front spectator seats in the Jardine East Point Godown (since demolished) which had been furnished as a court. A Naval Officer sat as a member of the Tribunal. The accused was of medium height, and aged 45. He held himself well in the dock. He spoke passable English, but preferred to give evidence in his own language. The accused, Captain Kyoda Shigeru, had been Master of the "Lisbon Maru" which sailed from Hong Kong for Tokyo on September 27th 1942. It had on board, in overcrowded conditions, 1816 undernourished British and Allied P.O.W.s who were being moved to Japan to work in factories there. It also carried a substantial number of Japanese troops returning for relocation and a general cargo. Three days after sailing from Hong Kong the "Lisbon Maru" was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine which punched a hole in the stern and thereafter the vessel was slowly sinking. The Officer-in-charge of the P.O.W. detachment, a young Lieutenant Wada, ordered the accused to batten down the prisoners in the hatches, and to remove the ventilation chutes. According to evidence, the accused first argued with Lt. Wada, but when the order was repeated he gave instructions to the Ship's Carpenter to carry it out. As the ship slowly sank, conditions in the holds became more and more intolerable, and deaths due to drowning and asphyxia began to occur. No food or water was supplied. The air was foul, and they were in darkness. There were no latrine facilities. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 the Foreign Office and a noted authority on Chinese temples and deities. He is a frequent contributor to the Journal. Anthony Siu is a Council Member of the HKBRAS and an authority on Hong Kong's pre-colonial and colonial history of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Ronald Bishop Smith lives in Portugal and is a private researcher into 16th century Portuguese history, notably the exploits of the Portuguese in the Middle and Far East, and China. He has written prolifically on this subject and is one of the very few people familiar with 16th century Portuguese palaeography. Dan Waters is the President of the HKBRAS and a noted authority on Hong Kong history and culture. He is a frequent contributor to the Journal. Choi Chi Cheung is with the Humanities Division of the University of Science and Technology and a Council Member of the HKBRAS. vii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 89 5% 2.992 females aged 25-30 in 1911, 2,795 in 1921 Census Report 1911, Table XXI Census Report 1921, Tables XXIV-XXVII Based on a figure of double the female population since the male population is clearly significantly distorted by immigration * See JW Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions in Town and Countryside. Hamden, Connecticut, 1977 ** Census Report, 1977, Tables IX and X. No detailed breakdown of Place of Birth of the Floating population is included in the 1911 Census C. I The statistics for Place of Birth in the 1921 Census give a somewhat different picture. There (Census Report, 1921, Table XI) the place of birth of 34,724 Northern District males and 36,311 Northern District females are given, of which only 88% (males) and 82% (females) were born within the New Territories. The sharply higher figures for persons born outside the New Territories seems to be due to three factors. The first is the time of the Census. The 1921 Census was taken during the cooler weather (March-April) as compared with the 1911 Census (April-June). Numbers of stonecutters, itinerant weavers, etc., are likely to have been higher in 1921 as it is known from oral evidence that many of these village-to-village traders went back to their own families in villages outside the New Territories for the summer and harvest seasons, and would thus have been enumerated in 1921 but not in 1911. This is doubtless the reason the 1921 Census shows a far higher figure for males born in Kwai Shun District (997 compared to 354), and also for males from the area north of Canton (241 as compared to 23), although the numbers from Ka Ying and other East River areas were lower (142 as compared to 177). This may also be the reason for higher recorded numbers of males from other inland areas in 1921 (Sze Yap 77 as compared to 25, and Shiu Hing area, 95 as to 19). With the exception of Kwan Shun, all the 1921 figures for these areas show far fewer females than males (Kwan Shun, 1507 females; north of Canton, 1-42; East River, 72; Sze Yap, 16; Shiu Hing, 45). The effects of the Ching Ming Festival, and the remaining 1920 refugees are responsible, almost certainly, for the much higher numbers of San On born males (1213 in 1921, only 243 in 1911), and may in part also account for the increase in Tung Kun males (385 in 1921, 163 in 1911). Most of the difference, however, must be due to a more careful enumeration of the boat people in the area. The higher numbers recorded in 1921 for males born in the Delta (750 as against 234), the Chin Chau area (143 as against 9), Hong Kong (226 as against 10), and Macao (25 as against nil), must be due to this factor. The reduction in the numbers of women recorded as born in Hong Kong (1208 as against 2383 in 1911) may be due to errors in the 1911 record. Because of these differences, it is difficult to compare the two Censuses directly with regard to these statistics. It is considered likely that the 1911 figures are closer to the actual position of long-term land population residents born outside the area. The information in the 1921 Census does not permit any direct comparison with the Place of Birth figures for Southern District in 1911, since the 1921 figures include New Kowloon as well as the Islands. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 136 We coasted along, and could only move by using the sweeps behind, and the six oars in front. Capt Drummond and I took each an oar, and had a long pull. Just before we entered "Deep water Bay" we found the tide had turned and the current was dead against us. So we came to anchor, and the other accompanying ships did the same, all near each other, for fear of pirates. When the anchor is cast the boy who attends to the Religious ceremonies, ascends the poop with a roll of paper which he lights and waves to and fro and then throws overboard. Then the gongs began to ring at a fine rate, to frighten away the evil spirits, and at last the shouts of the men gradually died away in the stillness of the night; and only an occasional shout was heard from the distant shore from the huts of the fishermen, who were boiling their nets in very large coppers. We had previously taken tea, and Mr Lechler had addressed the passengers in the hold: and then, it being late we prepared to turn in for the night. We had our evening devotion, and as we knelt on the deck in the moonlight, and listened to the voice of prayer, breaking the stillness of the waters, in the sight and hearing of the heathen around us, I felt a sensation which words cannot describe. Then as we rose and sang "From all that dwell below the skies," there was something so soothing, so comforting in the music, that as the last notes died away in the distance, and all was calm and still, I felt transfixed to the spot. "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast," and never did I feel its power more than on this occasion. Messrs Irwin and Drummond slept on the deck, while I tried to sleep down below in the small box, with Lechler. But sleep I could not. A tooth began to ache, and gradually increased to such an extent that at 1 o'clock I got up, and went round to the man on the watch and all the Chinamen I could find, to beg a morsel of tobacco to put into it. At last one fellow gave me a piece, which though it did not prevent the pain, yet gave me so much relief that I got nearly an hour's sleep. At 3 o'clock the tide turned and we again got under weigh, after which there was no more sleep for me. The night before, I was up till after two o'clock writing for the Bishop: so that I was quite worn out. The wind was against us, what little there was, and so we had to scull and row all the way. At daylight we were entering the river, and after a good wash, and breakfast, we were ready for action. The men ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 151 THE HOUWANG CULT AND TUNG CHUNG'S COMMUNAL CULTURE HON-MING YIP AND WAI-YEE HO' While the ancestral hall often serves as the socio-political centre of a single-surname village, a temple of folk religion always stands out as the focal point of local people's social and cultural life in such a multi-lineage rural community as Tung Chung. For the dozen or so villages in the Tung Chung valley, the Houwang has long been their principal deity and the Houwang Temple, their main local shrine. For years, the popular worship of the Houwang has functioned as a cultural and social binding force to hold this secluded community together. In what follows, the development of Tung Chung's Houwang cult is traced, and details of the area's religious and social activities and their cultural as well as political significance for the locality are expounded. Tung Chung as a Secluded Community of Multi-Surname Villages Situated on the north shore of Lantau Island, Tung Chung used to be a strategic port for maritime defence and trade during the early Ch'ing period. The area's economic development was also facilitated by its favourable position in sea transportation at a time when the northwestern New Territories were Hong Kong's economic centre of gravity. With the British occupation after the Opium War, however, the north end of Lantau suffered gradual marginalization and isolation as the colony's economic core shifted eastward to Hong Kong Island. The decline of ocean transport to north Lantau and underdeveloped overland communication with the southern part of the Island, in effect, kept Tung Chung in a state of seclusion. Hills to the east, south, and west separated this valley from other parts of Lantau. Between Tung Chung and Bak Mong in the east, Mu Wo and Tong Fuk in the south, and Tai O in the west, there were only muddy paths over the mountain or along the shore. Before transportation improved in the 1960s, travel between Tung Chung and these districts on Lantau required two to three hours by foot, roundtrip. Communication was even more difficult with regions outside of Lantau. Beginning from the 1920s, a few ferries carrying goods sailed on Pl ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 198 were named the "South-west militarists". Concerning how these governments sustained themselves, I have selected four possibilities for discussion. They are taxation and provincial remittances, customs surplus, foreign loans, and internal loans. 1) Concerning provincial remittance and taxation, the government in Beijing enjoyed a limited amount from those provinces it managed to control. The southern government, however, failed to get any taxation from other provinces. 2) About customs surplus, collected by foreign authorities to guarantee payment of the Boxer indemnity, this was returned only to the Beijing government, the only legitimate government recognized by the foreigners. In the South, when Sun Yat-sen threatened to seize the customs in Guangdong, Canton was surrounded by British and American gunboats. 3) Foreign loans were monopolized by a "Financial Consortium", formed by major western banks aimed at avoiding mutual competition. As the consortium recognized only the Beijing government, all foreign loans to China were monopolized by Beijing. This picture, however, was upset by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Money was then moved away from the Far East to Europe again. As a consequence, by about 1915, the Chinese governments, in Canton and in Beijing, were increasingly dependent on domestic loans. The Chinese merchants were a major source for these domestic loans. 4) Domestic loans are where the role of Chinese merchants came into play. Generally, three important groups of financiers can be identified. They centred around Tianjin, Shanghai, and Canton-Hong Kong. One common feature of these regions was the foreign presence, which secured a base for final retreat. Understandably, many Chinese companies were registered in the foreign concessions even though they operated outside them. Political Investment in the Hong Kong - Canton Region Against this background, I will focus the second part of my article ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 201 "official-supervision merchant-management" (A). The formula went like this: the reform-minded officials provided the political patronage - they bargained with Beijing for charter, franchise, monopoly or tax concessions for the enterprises, and the merchants provided the capital and management. Concerning merchants' ability to raise capital, their credibility came not from the enterprises they set up, but from their own reputations, as well as from the political patronage which they managed to establish. Some of the most famous of these merchants in the western affairs movement were such Hong Kong compradors as the Tang Jingxing (Tang King-sing) brothers. This kind of business environment made China unique when compared to Europe. Historically, the political fragmentation of Europe, and the frequent wars it led to, had forced the kings and the princes to be bound by their commercial commitments - one refusal to repay their debts meant that the princes would find tremendous difficulty in raising funds for the next war. In China, on the contrary, the Emperor needed not to (and actually had not) surrendered his right to interfere into the market; the government was not bound by legislation it made. Several incidents which occurred in the fifteenth century help to illustrate these divergences. Firstly, while the Ming Emperor abolished the national debt (in the form of salt certificates) overnight in 1667, the King of England was forced to grant his debtors a charter for the formation of a national bank (the Bank of England). Secondly, while the four Atlantic states (Spain, Portugal, France, England) were competing for overseas expansion and experiencing the “Age of Discovery”, the Chinese Emperor issued an edict to stop all his subjects from going overseas in 1667, just three years after the famous Zhenghe fleets (Tr Admiral) arrived at Malaya. Business endeavours in Europe were first protected by privileges granted by the Kings (in the forms of charter or monopoly) as in the case of the East India Company. This practice was later developed into a kind of rights guaranteed by legislation (company laws). In China, with the prohibition of sea-going, overseas trades were restricted in the forms of tribute, smuggling and piracy. No legislations were developed in China to guarantee and to protect commercial endeavors. An easy alternative for the Chinese merchants, therefore, was to rely on personal networks. On this, China and Europe went their separate ways. While the feudal society in Medieval Europe based on the ties of allegiance to a local land-owning aristocracy for protection, in China, authority was nominally resided in the central ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 Africa and South-east Asia to be suspicious of the pretensions of local leaders whose personal interests were not always easily identifiable with those of the common man—or, in their new surroundings, the worker in the plastics factory and his family. They had been conditioned by British policy and practice elsewhere to accept a goal of parliamentary democracy and self-determination as the norm; and while admitting that Hong Kong was, in the other cant phrase, “unique,” they saw no reason for it to be utterly different in ethos. Someone who appreciated the subtle differences within colonies and between their officials was the last Colonial Service Governor, Sir David Clive Crosbie Trench GCMG MC. Trench had started his service in the Western Pacific, where as a District Officer in the Solomon Islands he had been a wartime "coastwatcher" in the mountains, reporting on Japanese activity, and had earned a military decoration during the Allies' reoccupation. He was one of the few Administrative Officers to benefit from the old Colonial Office's unspoken "seven year rule." Under this, those who had spent that length of time in the supposedly enervating climate and mores of the Pacific should be sent to more politically and mentally bracing parts of the empire, the better to come back refreshed when more senior (determined Resident Commissioners in the Western Pacific, who thought seven years only just enough to train their juniors in the proper ways, usually managed to circumvent this best-laid plan.) Trench came to Hong Kong after the war, where he acquired a strong and popular reputation, notably in the Labour Department, as reorganiser of the Fire Brigade and as Deputy Colonial Secretary (DCS). It was no surprise when he went back to the Western Pacific as High Commissioner; there he presided over the creation for the egalitarian Melanesian society in the Solomon Islands of a novel democratic form of government based, via a constitution already adapted for Ceylon, on the pre-war London County Council, with committees instead of ministers (some of whose chairmen, however, inevitably assumed ministerial pretensions.) After three years, he returned to Hong Kong as Governor in 1964. Before he had left, Trench had naturally always shown greater sympathy with and understanding of the "interlopers," as the aforesaid subset was vulgarly known, than did some of his senior colleagues. Although relations with a governor were inevitably more remote than those with a senior secretariat officer had been, he contrived not to be ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 84 Kowloon, mainly for ships in the coastal trade, was opened in 1868 to be followed soon afterwards by a shorter 80m-long dock. A few years later (1876) the 140m-long Cosmopolitan Dock and dockyard at Tai Kok Tsui were commissioned. Subsequently the much larger 168m-long Admiralty Dock at Hung Hom was completed in 1888 and later extended in length by some 8 metres in 1903, to be followed by further lengthenings in 1911 and 1931. In the summer of 1907, the 170m-long Admiralty dry dock in Victoria, with an entrance width of 29 metres and 9m clearance at lowest spring tides, and Tai Koo's great ashlar-faced 238m-long 27m entrance-width graving dock (now a car park in the Tai Koo Shing development) at Quarry Bay, the latter capable of accommodating the largest ship then afloat (the liner Oceanic), were both commissioned. By laying down the former dock where it did and extending the original dockyard, with an 8ha reclamation which was started in 1900, the Navy sealed the long-held hopes of making Victoria a coherent city with a continuous commercial waterfront. Due to difficult foundation problems, including removal of a 1.2 to 1.8m layer of hard porous coral and the need to install hundreds of steam-driven hardwood piles through the underlying decomposed granite to secure the site, the naval dry dock finally took seven years to build whereas the larger commercial dock at Tai Koo was finished in five. The whole of the Tai Koo dockyard development took seven years to completion in 1908, a remarkable achievement in so much that it not only included the large dock but also excavation of some 1.3M cubic metres of hillside to form a 21ha site, which included a 8ha marine reclamation, and the adjacent section of the 23m-wide cut for King's Road, and the building of an entire complex of slipways, workshops and all the ancillary works which are needed to make a large dockyard a world of its own. It is interesting to note that Admiralty engineers in 1908 regarded locally-made cement as unsurpassed in fineness and tensile strength (at 28-days around 750lb/sq in or 5.2MPa), and it was used exclusively when building the new naval and Tai Koo dockyards. Wharfs By 1843 there were several comparatively small piers and jetties on the Island located between East Point and Sheung Wan. Pedder's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 87 of the Island This was completed in 1904, partly with filling material obtained from Chinese territory. The limits in Victoria of these two earlier major reclamations are marked by Des Voeux Road and Connaught Road respectively. During the next 30 years reclamation continued on the Island, the largest schemes being those at Tai Koo for the dockyard (21ha which included 13ha of land site formation, completed 1908), Wan Chai (36ha, completed 1929) and around North Point (nearly complete before the Pacific war), together with a smaller reclamation at Shau Kei Wan. Soon after the cession of Kowloon under the Convention of Peking in 1860 there was some reclamation adjoining deep water in Tsim Sha Tsui, primarily for wharfs, and at Hung Hom for the dockyard, to be followed by extensive reclamation in Tai Kok Tsui and Yau Ma Tei and, to a lesser extent, at To Kwa Wan, Sham Shui Po and Lai Chi Kok, the latter two both lying just to the north of Boundary Street. Subsequently an important reclamation was formed by the Kowloon-Canton Railway in Tsim Sha Tsui and Hung Hom bays (16ha, completed 1910) primarily for its own use which included three deep sea berths on the extreme south-east tip of the Kowloon peninsula. In the period after 1922 there was considerable reclamation in and near Kowloon just as there was in Wan Chai on the Island. Large areas were reclaimed at Sham Shui Po (26ha, completed 1928), Kai Tak (83ha, completed 1931) and Lai Chi Kok (c35ha), all these areas lying in the New Territories close to the old Kowloon/China boundary with much of the filling being obtained from Kowloon Tong, then being developed as a garden city. Just before the Pacific war, reclamations were also started in three other areas of Kowloon Bay, at Ma Tau Kok, Ngau Tau Kok and Kwun Tong. Roadworks Construction of Queen's Road in Victoria was started in May 1841, only four months after the British landed on the Island, by the Royal Engineers following the alignment of a narrow bridle/tow path high above the beach which extended some 7 kilometres from the water's edge at Kennedy Town on the west to within a short distance of Happy Valley on the east. Another road, from Wong Nei Chong to Shau Kei Wan was built at the same time, a causeway with two bridges being constructed to carry it across what is now known as Causeway Bay. Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 96 The Shing Mun Valley scheme was started in 1923 and initially a 2km-long 3m-diameter tunnel was driven to Shek Lai Pui. Subsequently, the largest pre-Pacific war reservoir was constructed, which was to double the Territory's total water storage capacity to 27,000 million litres; it was formed by the main Gorge Dam, which was the highest in the old British Empire at that time (1936), and the subsidiary 25m-high earth/rockfill/concrete core Pineapple Pass Dam. The remarkable Gorge Dam, 85m high with a bold and probably unique design, consists of a downstream shoulder of rockfill faced with pitching and an upstream face comprising a slender near-vertical reinforced concrete diaphragm wall supported by a massive concrete thrust block. Between the upper part of the thrust block and the downstream rockfill, there is a narrow wedge filled with sand for the purpose of taking up any settlement of the rockfill and to cater for possible earthquake movement. Any leakage through the upper part of the diaphragm can be observed from an inspection gallery behind it. Elaborate experiments were made to determine the correct design of the reservoir overflow bellmouth in order to reduce vortexing and to neutralise the destructive vacuum forces which could occur at the base of the bellmouth overflow shaft. For this investigative work, the young Geoffrey Binnie was awarded a Telford premium by the Institution of Civil Engineers. Subsequently, preliminary investigations for the Tai Lam Chung scheme were started shortly before the outbreak of the Pacific war, by which time the Territory's population had risen to about 1.6 million. As a result of an acute water emergency on the Island, work started on a 300mm steel pipe cross-harbour main in 1929, the sixty-two 30m-long bolted sections taking less than 2 months to lay, and a further 450mm main was laid in 1935. Due to corrosion problems, it was necessary to replace these pipes in 1939 with two 530mm steel pipes, protected with a 12mm-thick cement lining on the inside and a 60mm coating of vibrated concrete on the outside, which were laid on reinforced concrete blocks bedded on rockfill with a protective rubble mound on the east side of the pipelines to prevent damage from dragging anchors. These pre-Pacific war water schemes not only involved building dams but also needed construction, often in difficult site conditions, of a multiplicity of extensive catchwaters, tunnels, trunk mains, treatment plants, service reservoirs, pumping stations, and distribution mains in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 In order to deliver fresh water to the public. It is interesting to note that, in order to conserve fresh water, a salt-water mains system for flushing was investigated in 1921 and again in 1927 but was not pursued at that time. Airfields The original aerodrome was formed on a wedge of land comprising some 10 hectares (350m long by 275m wide) which had been reclaimed from the shallow waters of Kowloon Bay by a private housing development company established by Sir Kai Ho Kai and Mr Au Tak and bounded on the east and west by large open nullahs, with the first plane taking off in 1924. The reclamation then came under the control of Government in 1927 after the company failed. Government subsequently arranged for the airfield to be extended in 1929 and 1931 to some 83 hectares, partly using as a filling material hydraulic fill, obtained by dredging from the harbour, which was then covered with about a metre of decomposed granite and contained by a concrete blockwork seawall extending some 1.2 kilometres. The three open nullahs crossing the airport field were all covered by 1930, the concrete slab decks being propped by central piers. A short 457m-long tarmac runway, primarily for civilian use on an east-south-east/west-north-west alignment, together with hardstandings, jetty, control building, offices and a new piled civil hangar near the south-western extremity of the airport were completed in the later thirties which enabled Kai Tak to become viable, not only for flying club and military purposes, but more importantly for scheduled commercial operations which began in 1936 at a time when mail took precedence to passengers. One significant improvement noted at that time was the provision of a concrete slipway for seaplanes to replace the old tedious method of lifting them ashore with a steam-operated crane. Reports that three Royal Air Force squadrons were being sent out to reinforce Hong Kong's defences shortly before the Pacific war prompted planning of a second airport, at a site near Pat Heung (Shek Kong). In 1938 the ground was levelled and grassed over but the scheme was abandoned in early 1940 with the realisation that it would be within range of Japanese artillery following their invasion of Guangdong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 98 province. In 1941, construction of a 457m-long tarmac-surfaced runway at Kai Tak for military use on an approximate south-east/north-west orientation, which had already necessitated the dismantling of the RAF hangar, was due to start on 8th December 1941, the precise day on which the Japanese invaded the New Territories and attacked Kai Tak airport. Military/Defence Works Prior to the British administration, there were several forts in the New Territories going back to the early years (17th century) of the Ch'ing Dynasty, the oldest existing fort (1717) probably being that on Tung Lung Chau overlooking the narrow Fat Tong Mun passage in the eastern approaches to the harbour, and the largest still remaining at Tung Chung (60m by 80m) on the northern coast of Lantau, which was completed in 1832. Little remains of the old 4m-high walled Kowloon City, a garrison fort (120m by 230m) with its sturdy granite parapet wall complete with embrasures and watchtowers, which was finished in 1847 soon after the British established themselves on Hong Kong Island. Subsequently, the British military have been involved in a considerable amount of civil engineering. The Royal Engineers were first involved in 1841 in the early construction of Queen's Road in Victoria. Perhaps their most impressive roadworks over the years, constructed before the Pacific war, have been Jat's Incline, which provides access to the upper levels of the steep hills overlooking Kowloon. Nevertheless, the main military engineering effort was expended on providing defences and back-up facilities (for example, naval dockyards, aviation needs, storage depots, barracks, and hospitals), principally against possible seaborne attack by Russia last century and later against the increasingly land/sea invasion threat by Japan in the 1930s. Novel defence measures included excavation of a cavern at Lei Yue Mun towards the end of the nineteenth century to house the sophisticated Brennan torpedo, which, after launching down a ramp, was controlled from the shore with a wire attached to the rudder. Regarding defence facilities, at the outbreak of the Pacific war in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 151 from the Colonial Office, in London, for the setting up of a Botanical Garden. This garden, which still flourishes today, finally came into being in 1862. But, skipping a hundred years to the Branch's second time around, quite a lot else has been achieved. For example, the RASHKB has built up a respectable library of books on Asia. This is on permanent loan to the Urban Council, at the City Hall, and members of the general public are welcome to refer to it. On the shelves of the RASHKB Collection one can find many old, valuable titles, such as: A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793 and 1794, by Aeneas Anderson (1795) (then in the service of Earl Macartney), and Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, by Captain Sir Edward Belcher RN (1843), in two volumes. Some books in the RAS Collection bear interesting chops (stamps), such as from the old Canton Reading Room and the South China Morning Post's pre-World War II Library. In addition RASHKB Archives, including files, photographs and papers, are deposited with the Government Public Records Office (PRO). Other Branch possessions are on long-term loan to the Hong Kong University. These include the F.A. Nixon, Buddhist, Tang Dynasty Scroll and the 38 M.A. McMullen Bills of Lading, relating to shipments in China from 1825-73. Also held by the University on behalf of the RASHKB are microfilms of 1847-59 Branch procedures and the Nixon Photographs of 991 bronze Nestorian crosses. Although the Society is basically apolitical, and occasionally thought of as being pro-establishment, it has not been afraid to take up cudgels when it felt there was a cause. As examples a letter was sent, in May 1995, to the Hong Kong Government pressing for the retention of the spirit hall and historical and architectural artefacts when the old Nga Tsin Wai Walled Village, in East Kowloon, is demolished. Also, because of some government intransigence at the time, a small group of RASHKB members appeared twice before a Legislative Council committee to press for a properly established Public Records Office. When a purpose-designed, reasonably accessible, PRO opened in June 1997 at Kwun Tong, many members liked to think the RAS played a part in this successful outcome. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 154 Schofield, a competent geologist, a good example of the colonial scholar-administrator, helped to map more than 100 sites with evidence of archaeological finds (Bard 1995: 383). Another well-known scholar, a big man in every sense of the word, who served the Hong Kong Government from 1932 to 1969, was K. M. A. Barnett. As a jovial, erudite scholar who managed to master various Chinese dialects, this larger than life personality received a severe beating at the hands of the Japanese for volunteering information to a Red Cross team which came to inspect a prisoner-of-war camp in Hong Kong during World War II. Ken Barnett, who in prison camp had difficulty, according to Dr Solomon Bard another inmate, in finding people with whom he could play "mental chess", has fortunately left a few examples of his scholarship in RASHKB journals. When the Branch was re-established, in 1959, Dr J. R. Jones (J. R. as he was known to most of us) became its founding President. As well as being a good all-rounder in the heritage field, he too was a linguist. Dr Jones was followed as President by Sir Lindsay Ride, a Rhodes Scholar and, from 1949 to 1964, Vice Chancellor of Hong Kong University. During World War II he escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in Hong Kong and, from a base in China, served with the British Army Aid Group. One of his best known pieces of research, which he undertook together with his wife Lady May (also a long time member of the RASHKB), was about the East India Cemetery and protestant burials in Macao (Ride 1996). The third RASHKB President was Dr Marjorie Topley, an anthropologist. She too was recognised internationally and a number of her papers may be seen in our Branch's journals. Dr James Hayes, who first joined the Branch back in 1961, served all but about six years of his membership period in Hong Kong as an office bearer. He did not step down as President until 1990, when he emigrated to Australia. There are more contributions by Dr Hayes in the Branch's journals than by any other author. He too has an international reputation as a scholar, and, in 1992, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters was bestowed on him by the University of Hong Kong for his work in the field of local history. For him, the Royal ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 170 located. The Seventh Day Adventist Church, which stands at numbers 6-8 on the tree-lined Sun Yat-sen Road (formerly part of Tung Sui Road), was on the site of a building used during the war years as an officers mess (see Plate III). The clinic, which now stands at No. 28 Shui Dong Kai (Water East Street), is on the site where a 'hospital' and the BAAG headquarters were situated during World War Two. Then, Huizhou stood in a kind of ‘no-man's-land'. It was not part of 'Free China' nor was it really in Japanese occupied territory. But the Japanese did make regular incursions into the city which was an undercover centre for Chinese guerillas and the British Army Aid Group. Members of the Allied Forces would occasionally escape from prisoner-of-war camps in Hong Kong and make their way, with the help of Chinese guerillas, to Sai Kung. From there they would sail over to the coast of China and proceed on up to Huizhou to link up with the 'East River Column' of guerillas. After rest and medical attention escapees would make their way to the hinterland and Free China proper. Huizhou was well positioned as an escape route which was provided by a road network, of sorts, and the East River which flows along to the Bocca Tigris in the Pearl River Delta. 5 Men who managed to escape included Colonel Anthony Hewitt (at the time Captain) of the ‘Die-Hards', the Middlesex Regiment, who gave a talk in November 1996, to the RASHKB entitled 'The Defence of Leighton Hill during the 1941 Battle for Hong Kong'. Colonel L.T. Ride also escaped to set up and head the British Army Aid Group. Sir Lindsay, who was Vice Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong from 1949 to 1964, was also a founder member of the RASHKB, in 1960, when it was reestablished. He was President of our Branch from 1969 to 1972. Although members of our RAS Group saw a considerable amount of new building as we drove from Shenzhen to Huizhou on that November day in 1997, one was struck by the number of walled villages and watch towers. This part of China was, obviously, a pretty lawless region at one time, and, to some extent, it still is. One occasionally sees cars plying the roads without number plates and right-hand drive vehicles which have probably been smuggled in, one assumes from Hong Kong. T ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 The two walled villages that our Group did walk around, in this basically Hakka Chinese region, struck the author as being, both in layout and construction, similar to the Hakka Tsang Tai Uk walled village in Hong Kong's Sha Tin. All, for example, have communal soul tablets above their altars in their ancestral halls, unlike Cantonese ancestral halls which have individual soul tablets for passed leading members of the community. The walled villages we inspected also have wok i gables which are supposed to denote scholarship among the persons living there. In these walled villages in China, there was also the odd coffin or two stored in their ancestral halls. These are sometimes bought by old people and kept in storage ready for when the last trumpet call sounds. The author has read of coffins being bought and stored in this way but has never actually seen it practised in Hong Kong. Except for bad pockets of pollution, including both dust from construction sites and smoke from factories, parts of the countryside in the Huizhou region reminded the author, very much, of the Hong Kong he knew in the 1950s. As we sped along a new highway with many tollgates and little traffic, a wide variety of vegetables were being grown occasionally by the People's Liberation Army which has to earn its keep. On one occasion, our minibus was held up by a column of ducks waddling, single file, across the road! But, in addition, there was a great deal of paddy with rice harvesting in progress. Winnowing machines were being used similar to those you sometimes see today stored in ancestral halls in Hong Kong's New Territories where they are no longer required. Although there are some small tractors in the Huizhou Region, in the main, the water buffalo is still the beast of burden. On one occasion, the author counted a herd of over 20 out grazing. We saw, of course, many fish ponds on our trip in 1997, and, although we did not see any salt-pans as one could see in Tai O, on Lantao, in the 1950s, and even up until the early 1960s, they still exist in out-of-the-way places in China. The small group of RAS members that visited this eastern Guangdong region, in 1995, did see salt being harvested at a place called Ping Hoi. Before World War Two, salt farming in Hong Kong was usually undertaken by Hakka Chinese, and, in addition to Tai O (previously the most important place for salt farming ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 Sheilah Hamilton - The District Watch Force ... 199 NOTES AND QUERIES Hong Kong (From the Notes of a Russian Traveller), translation of an article written by Iosif Antonovich Goshkevich in 1871.... 229 Hong Kong, translation from a book chapter written by Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov in 1853 237 ...... 247 R.G. Horsnell - The Story of Stanley Fort 257 R.G. Horsnell - The Story of Gun Club Hill Barracks ..... 265 B.C. Fawcett - First World War Labour Corps Cemeteries in Flanders 281 Keith Stevens - The American Soldier of Fortune Frederick Townsend Ward: Honoured and Revered by the Chinese with a Memorial Temple 285 Ronald Bishop Smith - Sir Ralph Moor and the 'Benin' Cannon of the British Museum and the Royal Armouries 293 Photographs from the Hong Kong 1906 Typhoon contributed by Victoria Brown 297 Dan Waters - Arnold Graham, 1905 - 1996. 305 Translated letter from the Bishop of the Philippines to the King of Spain dated 1584 contributed by Robin M. Bridge.............. 315 Geoffrey W. Roper - The Drunken Dragon Dance and the Tam Kong (Tam Kung) Festival: Notes on the RAS HK Visit to Macau, May 1997 .. 323 Robert Nield - Bits of Broken China: The RAS Visit to North-east China in Search of Colonial Remnants, 1999 329 viii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 Gillian Bickley, Ph.D., B.A. (Hons.), Cert. Ed., M.Litt., F.R.S.A., is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Hong Kong Baptist University. She has previously held posts in Hong Kong at the University of Hong Kong, Longman Far East, the British Council, St. Stephen's Girls' College, and the Hong Kong Examinations Authority. She has taught at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has lived in Hong Kong for 23 years. Paul Bolding, works as a financial journalist at the news and information organisation Reuters in London. He has been with Reuters since 1974. He lived in Hong Kong from 1993 to 1997 and has travelled widely in Asia. Mr Bolding has previously worked in Europe and the Middle East including Brussels, Berlin and Nicosia. He has a special interest in the silk route and is a co-author of the Insight Guide to Turkey. B.C. Fawcett, was born in the Far East where his father served with the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. He also joined the bank and served from 1961 to 1978, being based in Hong Kong from 1971 to 1978. During that time he was also a volunteer with the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force, now the Government Flying Services. He is a life member of the HKBRAS. Richard J. Garrett, M.A.(Cantab), C.Eng., F.I.C.E., F.I.Struct.E., F.H.K.I.E., is a director of an international firm of Consulting Engineers and based in Hong Kong since 1973. He has been a collector of antique arms and a member of the Arms and Armour Society of the U.K. for over 30 years. He has published a number of articles on the subject of early firearms. Sheilah E. Hamilton, B.Sc., M.Soc.Sc., Ph.D., is a long-time resident of Hong Kong and former forensic scientist with the Hong Kong Government from 1968 to 1988. Her passion for Hong Kong history began in 1992 and areas of interest include historical fires, forensic issues and security. R.G. Horsnell, is a Chief Property Services Manager with the Architectural Services Department, Hong Kong Government, and a ... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 council member of HKBRAS. Robert Nield, F.C.A., F.H.K.S.A., is a certified public accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the Hon. Treasurer of HKBRAS. Penny Robbins and Meredith Tong-Draper are longstanding members of HKBRAS who have taken a very active role in recent activities, both locally and on the mainland. Geoffrey Roper, B.A., is a retired Assistant Commissioner of the (Royal) Hong Kong Police Force and a former long serving council member of HKBRAS. Ronald Bishop Smith, lives in Portugal and is a private researcher into 16th century Portuguese history, notably the exploits of the Portuguese into the Middle and Far East, and China. He has written prolifically on this subject and is one of the very few people familiar with 16th century Portuguese paleography. Keith Stevens, B.A., served with the British Army and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office before his retirement in 1991. He is an authority on Chinese temples and deities, and Chinese history generally, and has written prolifically on these subjects. Dan Waters, M.Phil., Ph.D., is a retired Assistant Director of Education of the Hong Kong Government. He is a long-time council member of HKBRAS and has been President since 1997. He has written prolifically on the history and culture of the HKSAR. Jennifer Welch, M.A., now lives with her husband in Hong Kong having spent a number of years in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Australia. Her interests are varied and include French culture and language, China and the Chinese, porcelain and history. xi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 Laurel and Hardy, who first teamed up in 1927 and made over 100 films together which came out 'fresh' every time, are other examples of comedians whose humour travelled well. Hong Kong's own martial arts expert and stunt man, Jackie Chan, sometimes dubbed 'Hong Kong's favourite son,' has become successful, both in the Far East and Hollywood, by combining Chinese kung fu and bits of slapstick. Another good example is Mr Bean who, because he doesn't say anything, has no difficulty in getting his humour ‘across the Great Wall' and into countries in Asia. It is interesting that, to most British audiences, Bean is funny, foolish and unenviable in every way. He is the last person they would wish to work with or be associated with (Cairnes, 1998). The Japanese and many Asians, however, see him rather differently. They see Bean as a pathetic, lonely figure who deserves pity and would be fun to have around. Yet even he does not appear funny to everyone. Visual, universal humour, such as the puppy licking the baby's ice-cream, has a much better chance of crossing frontiers, although the television series, America's funniest home movies, does not always receive the same reaction in countries outside the United States, and indeed not even by all Americans. As a group of Chinese and Britons discussing humour agreed: 'If you've seen one showing of America's funniest home movies you're seen them all.' In fact the reaction to these movies seems to be mixed. An American woman living in Hong Kong told the author that the humour was not subtle enough for her but her two children enjoyed these films. Other Americans, however, said they found them 'funny and relaxing'. According to American Brent Ambacher, who was raised in Hong Kong and works as a part-time comedian, more and more Westerners today expect more sophisticated, 'highbrow' (sometimes termed 'three-dimensional') humour. This more profound variety should, as it were, embrace a ‘moral lesson.' This may depend on the cultural background and the awareness and intentions of the artiste. It may, for example, concentrate on slamming pomposity, condemning underhanded politics or corruption, or some other topical subject. Today's audiences often expect a comedian who is more 'civic minded,' who will deliver his act in a philosophical way and will give them something of substance to evoke deep afterthought. All this as opposed to the shallow ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 cially as it involved the only 'foreign devil' present, thoroughly enjoyed it even though the joke has been repeated countless times throughout the ages. Many jokes, both in the East and the West, are of course repeated over and over again over a period of years. Although possibly rather feeble by today's standards, the author remembers a riddle being repeated to him when he was a child in England. The question was: 'When is a door not a door?' The answer was, 'When it's a jar (ajar)!' This was told countless times and seemed to have been passed down from generation to generation as many jokes in many countries are. In the case of a Chinese example of an oft repeated joke there is the saying, Ah Yee Leng Tong (-). This really means "gone to the Second Wife's to drink lovely soup.' Up to October 1971, Chinese men in Hong Kong could legally take concubines. The principal wife, generally, knew her position and was pretty secure, but the concubine, so it was said, needed to prepare tasty soup (and other things) to please her husband to make sure her position also was secure. There is a restaurant named Ah Yee Leng Tong in Causeway Bay, on Hong Kong Island, and whenever the name is mentioned it always raises a smile. Having said that, however, Chinese tend not to laugh out loud so much as Westerners, but, in Hong Kong, said Reuben M, an American part-time comedian who has lived in the Territory for a number of years, even Westerners are inclined to be more subdued than people living in the West. Nevertheless, it was pointed out by the same comedian that, if Chinese don't like a show and they are bored, they can be a noisy, distracting audience. Laughter can certainly help break down barriers, including pricking bubbles of solemnity at meetings, and there are few occasions when some degree of hilarity does not serve a useful purpose. Certainly humour is an important key to the happiness and well-being of us all, irrespective of race, just as anger and depression have the opposite effect. Norman Cousins was stricken with a seemingly incurable disease. He decided to keep himself occupied with a diet of humour and, as he lay on his sick-bed, he watched old silent movies of Laurel and Hardy and read anything that would make him laugh (Cousins, 1979; 39). He recounts he made the joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anaesthetic effect that gave him at least two hours of pain-free sleep. Gradually he began to recover. A good bout of laugh- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 24 'Eat or don't eat!' John Moloney, the British comedian, found that playing to a Chinese (partly westernised) audience in Hong Kong required less of a cultural leap than when he took his act to Beijing (Syrett, 1995:4). The itinerant comedian, in fact, soon learns to steer clear of anything remotely embarrassing or linguistically complicated and to resort to the 'language of action.' This is universal and capable of bringing about smiles and even belly laughs. While all people, no matter the culture, are said to cry at similar incidents, people in London, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, or wherever, may not always laugh at the same jokes. In the same way, people in the West and people in China may not always see insults in the same light. For example, Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily, in the run-up to the 1997 Handover in Hong Kong, called a senior China official a 'turtle's egg,' meaning more or less 'unnatural birth.' Although not too unpleasant, it caused a furore. Yet, as an American Old-China Hand commented to the author, 'Who would get worked up over name-calling like that?' The last British Governor, Chris Patten, took it as a joke when he was described in catch-phrases by the Beijing Government as 'a serpent' and being 'disgraced in history for a millennium.' In fact, Patten quoted with relish his sobriquet of 'Whore of the East.' Most Britons also saw such 'insults' in much the same light as Patten, and as being faintly despicable, with the rhetoric unworthy of 5,000 years of continuous civilisation (Waters, 1995:168). In the same way that Chinese and Westerners may see insults differently, so they often see humour differently. A Hong Kong Chinese, of Shanghainese stock, said to the author, 'I'll tell you a typical English joke which the average Chinese cannot really appreciate. 'A publican and a customer were talking in a bar (E) when in came another man. He walked up the wall, walked upside down across the ceiling, and then down the wall the other side. He ordered a pint of beer, which he promptly quaffed. He then walked up the wall, across the ceiling, down the wall the other side, and out of the pub door. "That's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 112 smaller pieces did exist firing shot of a few ounces. Similar weapons were used in the West, but were generally referred to as wall-pieces or swivel guns, the latter term being used particularly with reference to those mounted on the gunwales of ships. In describing the fortifications at Tinghai Lord Jocelyn reports: "on the walls were mounted gingalls and cannon of various calibres, but none exceeding a nine-pounder; and wall-pieces with shifting breeches, each having eight or nine spare breeches attached to it, ready loaded."23 This reference to wall-pieces with shifting breeches is of interest as they represent an early form of breech-loading. The idea dates back many years and King Henry VIII had weapons of this form; however, it fell from favour and in the mid-nineteenth century must have seemed very strange to western eyes. Finally there was the Chinese rocket. This had probably been in use for centuries, but it had not improved with time. Mackenzie notes that these were "the merest child's weapon being not above six inches long, fastened on a slender bamboo shaft and armed with a barb inserted at one end."24 Clearly it was not a mass killer, but it did claim at least one life,25 and it had a use as an incendiary device. As would be expected, the Chinese did learn from their experiences in the first war and by the second they had made considerable progress. It is recorded that when the forts at the entrance to the Pei Ho river were attacked in May 1858, that: "The guns were much better cast, and not so unwieldy as those in the Canton River, and were better equipped in every respect. They had good canister shot, and the hollow 8-inch shot appeared an imitation of our own. There were several English guns in the batteries."26 Hand-Held Arms The next class of weapons are the hand-held arms. On the European side the main projectile arm was the musket, a smooth-bored arm about 55 inches long, and firing a spherical lead ball of just over an ounce (14.5 No. to the pound). The flintlock musket used black powder (gunpowder) and ignition of the charge was achieved from the sparks ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 149 ber of thirty-nine British, French, and Sikh prisoners who had been taken by the Chinese on 18 September 1860. They had literally been carted from here to there, denied water for long periods, imprisoned, interrogated with violence, and loaded with chains. Some had been tied so tightly with ropes that the circulation was impeded, and eighteen at least died slowly of the resulting gangrene. Contained in the Daily News correspondent's narrative as quoted by The Illustrated London News was a thumbnail sketch of one of the prisoners who died, Private Phipps, of the King's Dragoon Guards. "He was a strong and cheerful man, and could speak enough Hindustani to make himself intelligible to them... [that is, to the Sikh soldiers]. To the last he appears never to have lost heart, and even when dying encouraged his companions, telling them to keep up their courage, for that help would soon come. All honour to this noble soldier! Though but a private in the ranks, he had the soul of a hero. Well may England be proud of such sons. 913 The same issue of The Illustrated London News also gives an account of an event which has subsequently been held synonymous with wanton destruction—the burning of the Emperor's Summer Palace in Peking. At the time, however, a different view of this was offered: "It having been ascertained that [the prisoners'] ill-treatment began in the Emperor's Summer Palace, it was determined to burn it to the ground, to mark in some tangible way the detestation entertained of the Chinese treachery and cruelty".14 15 The Illustrated London News was to maintain the Chinese theme over a period of months. Its next issue (12 January 1861) carried a portrait of Henry Loch,1 Secretary to the Earl of Elgin, who had been the bearer of the official despatches which had arrived from China on 27 December 1860,16 and which had occasioned the high degree of coverage in the subsequent issues of The Illustrated London News, which has just been described. (Loch was the gentleman with whom, as it seems, Fraserburgh North Eastern Scotland historian, John Cranna, confused Frederick Stewart (“Founder of Hong Kong Government Education"), when he inaccurately asserted that Stewart, at one time a secretary of Lord Elgin's, when that administrator held office in the Far East".)17 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 155 ity of the released allied prisoners themselves in a note which states that "those who were restored to liberty gave their share of the indemnity money to the families of the murdered captives.” 58. In the later issues of The Illustrated London News during this period, there is also a continuing attempt to add to the readers' knowledge of China, as for instance, the brief explanation given on 4 May 1861: "The capital of the Chinese empire contains a great number of palaces and temples decorated with numerous works in marble; but a considerable portion of the area of the city is occupied by squares, gardens, ponds, and even fields. Pekin consists... of two cities, one named the Tartar, and the other the Chinese, besides twelve populous suburbs. The Tartar or Northern City is divided into three distinct parts - a central block called the prohibited city, containing the Imperial palace and the grounds belonging to it; the Imperial city, surrounding it; and the General city. In this last division are situated the university buildings and those of the Russian mission." 59 The cover story of The Illustrated London News on 13 April 1861 carried in response to the return of Lord Elgin from China (his wife had travelled to Marseilles to meet him) is interesting for three things: its recapitulation of the causes of the recent hostilities; its discussion of the considerations that the writer represented as having been weighed during the recent hostilities; and its tribute to Lord Elgin's moral qualities: "No disaster of modern times ever excited a more stinging feeling of chagrin in this country than that which occurred at the mouth of the Peiho to the allied squadron intended to give both dignity and protection to the British and French Embassies to Pekin. [The reference is to Elgin's earlier attempt to make his way up to Peking, in June 1859, and the defeat of the British navy at the Takoo Forts, referred to above.] It took the public wholly by surprise. It appeared to destroy at a blow all the fruits which we were preparing to gather from the Tien-tsin Treaty. It inflicted a lamentable loss of life. It seriously damaged the prestige of our arms throughout the East. It threw us once more into the midst of the difficulties and uncertainties necessarily attendant upon a war carried on at a distance of 15,000 miles, with an immensely populous, although an essentially unwarlike, empire. It conjured up before us a vague prospect, equally perplexing and inglorious - perplexing, for who could tell by what means and at what risk the Imperial Court could best be reached and reduced to reason? – inglorious, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 159 home and the work and pleasure of establishing common cause with fellow men and women in the whole of China could progress on a less awkward foundation. (0) (2) (3) NOTES Illustrations from the Illustrated London News are reproduced by permission of The British Library, shelfmark PP7611(42). The following convention is used: when "[]" appears within a quotation, this represents that the present writer has either added letters or words missing in her copy of the original, or has supplied an explanatory comment. The author is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University, and author of The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889), published by the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, 4 Renfrew Road, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, 1997. ISBN: 962-8027-08-5. Educated in the United Kingdom, she has previously taught English Literature at the University of Lagos, Nigeria (she was there during the Civil War), the University of Hong Kong, and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has worked for Longman University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has worked for Longman Far East as an English-language editor, and she is an occasional freelance writer and journalist. She was briefly an Assistant Mistress at St Stephen's Girls' College, Hong Kong. Previous publications include articles, papers, presentations, and reviews on George Orwell, Leonard Woolf, Lafcadio Hearn, A. C. Swinburne, African Literature in English, New Zealand poetry, and numerous contributions on education in Hong Kong, with a particular focus on the creation of the Government education system under Frederick Stewart, the contributions of the first Anglican Bishop of Hong Kong, George Smith, language policy and standards from 1841 up to date, expatriate teachers, the learning of Chinese by non-Chinese, and the training and supply of translators in early Hong Kong. She has published a Bibliography of Hong Kong creative writing in English. Her entry on Frederick Stewart, commissioned by the New Dictionary of National Biography, has been accepted, and she has now been commissioned to write a revised entry on Bishop Smith, first Anglican Bishop of Victoria (who was the first Warden of St Paul's College, and based in Hong Kong). She is married to Dr Verner Bickley, MBE, formerly Assistant Director of Education and founding Director of the Institute of Language in Education in Hong Kong (now absorbed into the Hong Kong Institute of Education). Page 195 Page 196 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 162 (28) (29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35) (36) (37) (38) (39) Close of the War with China: Graves of Lieut. Anderson, Private Phipps, and Messrs. De Norman and Bowlby, in the Russian Cemetery, Pekin. - From a sketch by our Special Artist", half-page, The Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 67. See Gillian Bickley, The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889), Hong Kong, David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, p. 106. See Gillian Bickley, op. cit., p. 91. See Gillian Bickley, op. cit., p. 76. The Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 49, c. 3. See Edward A. Irving, Inspector of Schools' Annual Report for 1904, Hong Kong Government Gazette, 30 June 1905, p. 1031, quoting a Committee on Education Report on the Vernacular Schools, written in early 1902. The Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 64, c. 1. The Illustrated London News, 26 January 1861, p. 83, c. 3. "The Chinese Bringing to the British Head-quarters the 300,000 Taels [approximately one hundred thousand pounds sterling] as Compensation to the Released British Prisoners and to the Families of those who were Murdered - From a sketch by our Special Artist", full double-page spread, The Illustrated London News, 26 January 1861, p. 82. "Curiosity-Street, Pekin - From a sketch by our Special Artist", full-page, The Illustrated London News, 16 February 1861, p. 142. The Illustrated London News, 15 February 1861, p. 147, c. 1. E "Peking Cab", sketch by our special artist, one third page sketch, The Illustrated London News, 23 February 1861, front page. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 187 TEMPLES ARISE FROM THE ASHES OF REVOLUTION KEITH STEVENS Returning from each of our tours of temples in Mainland China the question most frequently posed is the extent to which religious freedom exists in China? I find this difficult to answer. I have yet to visit an area where we have observed any form of obvious religious discrimination or evidence of current iconoclasm. At the risk of being accused of being a 'blind' observer in a country with a record of political suppression, I know that constraint of religion by the State exists as I have read numerous articles in the Chinese press about Chinese government calls for crackdowns on illegal temples and superstitious practices, but the extent to which these instructions have been carried out has not been apparent during our tours around the countryside. Indeed, there are few signs of religious suppression in any form. In late 1997 we came across a small rural temple in one of the loess canyons some fifteen or so miles north-east of T'aiyüan in Shansi province and were told by one of the villagers that the local Public Security Police had ordered it be pulled down as it was 'a bad element, a manifestation of superstition'. The small modern shrine, constructed some eight years ago, contained just one deity, a very rough and amateurish, modern baked-mud and concrete image of the local protective spirit, Ts'ai T'ai-yeh. The PSB had passed through the village many times during the two years since they issued the order for the destruction of the image; however, the villagers had simply ignored it and even when crowds of visitors drove in by car during the annual festival on the fifteenth of the first lunar month, the PSB again had simply turned a blind eye. China's constitution theoretically protects the freedom of religion in China with party members being dissuaded from practising. Whilst permissive religion is unquestionably allowed within certain bounds I suspect 'tolerance' should be substituted for the word freedom. The Bureau of Religious Affairs under the State Council in Peking permits the five major organised religions to worship as they wish, within reason. These are Taoism, Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism [known in China as 'Christian'] and Islam. The Bureau does, however, frown on and frequently clamps down on popular religion, [also known as folk religion and even as Taoism by foreigners who have not perceived the difference] and some of the smaller proselytising western ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 251 The Stanley Battery The 9.2 inch three gun battery at Stanley Fort was probably one of the most modern of its kind in 1937 in spite of the fact that the guns were second-hand, having come from the batteries at Devil's Peak and Mount Davis. The Mark X 9.2 inch 28 ton Breech Loader was the premier coast defence gun at that time and was used extensively in all major defences. In the UK it was sometimes railway-mounted so that it could be moved about together with its ammunition wagon. Rail-mounted guns, before being fired, had to be secured with heavy iron guys known as chain pickets to stop them toppling over from the force of their recoil. In fixed guns like those at Stanley Fort, the recoil was absorbed by a spring accumulator mounted to the rear of the gun. The Mark X had been developed from the Mark IX in 1899. It had a single motion breech mechanism with an electrical or percussion firing mechanism. Its maximum range was 29,200 yards, which meant that the upper gun at Stanley, which was mounted on a traverser, could reach targets in Kowloon and also the Lema Islands to the south of Hong Kong. The weight of the Mark X B.L. including breech assembly was 28 tons, and the weight of the cradle mounting nearly 130 tons. As previously explained, the guns were transported from their old batteries by sea, as the roads would not have supported such heavy axle loads. The transportation of the guns and the construction of their huge concrete bases would have been carried out by civilian contractors, but the actual installation of the guns would have been undertaken by the Royal Artillery using a special portal crane known as a gantry crane. The installed guns would have been disguised with huge camouflage nets draped over them, and protected from the weather when not in use by canvas tarpaulins. The concrete gunhouses built over the two lower guns by the Japanese were probably not bombproof casemates and would only have given the gunners protection from the weather and from strafing by enemy fighters. Judging by old photographs of the gunhouses, the arc of fire must have been severely restricted. The Stanley Battery, situated at the south-east corner of the peninsula, was made up of three gun emplacements and a large number of magazines, bunkers, and other battery support buildings spread over a fairly wide area. Most of these structures are still in existence. Page 285 Page 286 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 306 paper cutting recalling the story of his life. Many of the papers and photographs, which have been placed by the Royal Asiatic Society with the Government Public Records Office on permanent loan, could be of interest to RAS members who are undertaking research in relevant fields. Among the maps of the Pacific region are some of Japan and Shanghai, one dated 1919. There is also an unusual map (undated) of Shanghai (3 feet x 2 feet 3 inches) which has a 'border' consisting of a large number of small pictures. On the map is printed, 'In this map we have tried to depict for you the history, customs and points of interest in this cosmopolitan city of Shanghai.' Many of Mr Graham's photographs concern the Shanghai Gas Company. They include group pictures of the staff, both Chinese and Westerners, at farewell parties, group gatherings and the like. In all these pictures no women are present. Most images were taken in the early 1930s, when Arnold Graham, as a young man, was Assistant Secretary. There is one photograph of a smaller group, again of both Westerners and Chinese, where some Chinese men are wearing cheung saams. This is interesting because it was taken in October 1950, one year after the People's Republic Government came to power. There is just one photograph of a group which includes both men and women. This was taken in London in 1957. All are Europeans. It was probably a reunion. There is also an album containing a number of snaps of life in Shanghai and China, in the 1930s, and during the Sino-Japanese war. There are also a number of family photographs depicting the lifestyle of Europeans in the Far East between the two World Wars. What did Arnold Graham do in his spare time? He was a keen cricketer and a Shanghai Interporter. There are a number of photographs, of varying sizes, of cricket teams: such as Hong Kong versus Malaya, at Singapore in 1926. There is a picture of the teams, 'Hankow versus Shanghai circa 1930.' There are some pictures taken with people sitting in front of pavilions. Most of the photographs consist entirely of Europeans. In a few pictures, however, there are one or two Chinese who could have been groundsmen. The papers in the box include a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 308 of his time, during the War, he served as an interrogator of the Japanese having earlier undergone army language courses. Also included in Arnold Graham's material is a photocopy of the Extra to the Kobe Herald, in English, for Saturday January 3, 1914. This was seven months before the outbreak of World War I. The subscription rate for the newspaper at the time, incidentally, was two yen per month. There are also photocopies of various accounts of the Lisbon Maru, a Japanese ship which was sunk by a torpedo from an American submarine. This resulted in considerable loss of life among the Allied prisoners of war aboard. Also included among the items sent by Arnold Graham's daughter are two identification cards issued by the British Consulate in 1938 and 1939, during the Sino-Japanese War. Other interesting papers are the Surrender of Japanese and Japanese Controlled Armed Forces in Borneo and the Netherlands East Indies East and Exclusive Lombok to the Commander in Chief Australian Military Forces (September 1945). There is also a Chinese translation (interspersed with some Japanese characters) of this surrender document as well as a speech by Lieutenant-General Teshima, Commander Second Japanese Army which he delivered on that occasion. There is also a newspaper cutting about a letter written by a Japanese who, as a wounded soldier captured in 1943, was nursed back to health by a British nurse. Among the many items sent by Arnold Graham's daughter is a souvenir programme of the centenary dinner of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, held in April 1954, at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. On the back of the programme is printed the song "Maloo Memories". Arnold Graham composed the words; the first verse of which goes as follows: Let us sing of that old city in the North we knew so well Where to sing to love and laugh we used to dwell, From the Seven Seas foregathered to the Bund and Bubbling well ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 337 is good and allows for reasonably fast travel; the journey took about three hours. I had suggested to the guide beforehand that perhaps a stop along the way for "refreshment" would be in order. The bus pulled into an establishment that looked for all the world like a desert caravanserai, or some hostelry from the Wild West. The only commodity of any sort on sale was a type of large black mushroom, and a tea-like drink made from it. Our main interest, however, was with the toilet facilities - until we saw them, that is. A few of us were in enough need to make the considerable effort to go inside. Others decided to cross their legs for another couple of hours. I can only presume that German influence had not spread this far north. On the way into the city of Yantai a large street-side sign was spotted saying "No Whistling within the City Boundary". Nobody could explain the purpose of this, unless it was a reaction to endless British tourists whistling Colonel Bogey. The first point of interest in Yantai was the Fujian Hall. This was not in keeping with the colonial flavour of the trip, but was relevant to us southerners as being an outpost built in the north by the Fujian community that had been very active in business in the early days of Chefoo. Most of the old British remains are concentrated in a fairly small area - from the promontory of Yantai Hill east along the sea front to the former Chefoo School. Yantai Hill is the place that once housed the British and other foreign consulates. It is very pleasant to walk the narrow roads and paths in this small area. A number of buildings remain, although very few are still used. Some are boarded up, and some remain only in the form of their foundations. It is not clear which was which, even with the benefit of old maps from the last century. However, a clear impression can be had of the peace and tranquility that still reign here, and of the commanding position that the residents must have had. I could almost hear a scratchy wind-up gramophone playing and the chink of ice in glasses of G&T. To the west of the hill is the port, and there are still a number of small dock-side buildings that might date from the 19th century, but ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 338 there does not seem to be much more of interest in that direction. On the seafront at the foot of the hill to the east is the former Chefoo Club building. Now a restaurant, but with apparently some residential facilities, the main structure has been well preserved. I think I have seen a similar building at the bottom of Quay Hill in Lymington in Hampshire - at least, this one would be very much at home there. Further along the seafront to the west, and just inland from the front, is the site of the main former British residential and business area. A number of solid Brighton-like houses still stand along the front, where waves crashing over the sea wall complete the British picture. Inland for a block or two are many buildings that would have housed businesses as well as the houses of the less well-to-do. These buildings are very suggestive of the bustle that once took place in this small outpost. One was dated 1930, according to a carved stone plaque on its wall. In Chefoo as well as Tsingtao (and later in Dalian) it was a great help to have Tess Johnston and Deke Erh's wonderful book "Far from Home”, and to try to spot as many as possible of those buildings that feature in its beautiful photographs. Towards the eastern end of the long beach is a group of buildings that once housed the famous Chefoo School, a boarding school for English boys from all over North China. Next to this, rather incongruously, is a small military establishment that houses a 1950s-looking bomber and a motor torpedo boat in its front yard. Nearby, a number of other well-preserved and very English buildings could have housed the more wealthy and influential residents and their families and servants. Dinner that night was in the splendid and luxurious Government Guest House, a modern complex standing in its own spacious grounds at the far eastern end of the city. The service here was the best we experienced on the whole trip - as one might expect of people trained to look after visiting dignitaries from the capital. The food, also, was what one would expect from such an establishment - and not to my somewhat unadventurous taste at all. We were treated to such delights as braised crunchy silk worms, boiled fish stomachs and wobbly sea ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 345 It immediately became clear, however, that although very similar to the building in the picture taken by Tess Johnston, the present building was somewhat different. On enquiry, we were told that the old building had been demolished and rebuilt as an almost exact replica. This appeared to be true. Beyond this, along the road, were a line of impressive European-style residences, with delightfully contrasting back streets leading left and right. The far end of this street opened into a cobbled square with six or eight storey apartment buildings, reminding me of the suburbs of Milan. In fact the whole city has a very European feel to it. Compared to many Chinese cities, Dalian is very neat and tidy, and organised. It is proud of being the first (or only?) city in China to rid itself of rats. (I witnessed some public garden workers in a state of great excitement when they thought they saw a rat in the garden they were working in - it turned out to be a squirrel when the four of them flushed the unfortunate beast out of the bushes.) The streets are clean. There are trees everywhere. The roads leading out of the city are marked with white bollards at the roadside. One finds oneself wondering how come this particular part of China can stand out so much as being - well, rather nice. The answer is quickly offered by anybody to whom you ask this question, and that is that it is the Mayor of Dalian who is responsible for the city's progress. He has travelled extensively overseas, and when he comes home he tells his officials that he wants to see in Dalian the sort of facilities that he has seen abroad. And he is getting his way. The man deserves a medal. It would not be surprising for Dalian to be giving Shanghai a good run for its money some time in the new century. Another feature of Dalian is that there is very little in the way of graffiti, although our guide spoiled the illusion somewhat by explaining that "nobody can afford the paint". Lunch was in an enormous restaurant where our party were the only customers. The city tour continued with a visit to the Nanshan suburb, the former Japanese residential area. Here are a number of quiet leafy streets containing very smart houses that would be at home in Surrey or Kent or a London suburb. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 347 As can be imagined, this news was met with somewhat derisory comments. To give due credit to the long-suffering guides, permission was eventually obtained (thanks to a half-hour conversation on a mobile phone) for our bus to travel through the town and past the railway station, but we could not take any photographs. I somewhat facetiously asked if the four of us who looked the part could take pictures, and the answer was that they could! Well, this was China, after all! The first attractions of the day, however, were a couple of hill-top forts. Not only were these open to all and sundry, but they were also very well maintained and signposted. It seems that every hilltop around Port Arthur had a fort or gun emplacement on its summit. The first we visited was the North Fort on East Cockscomb Hill, to the north-east of the town. This features a very extensive fort (dilapidated rather than ruined, but very clean and well looked after) and a small Museum of the Japanese-Russian War. A good view could be had from here over the bay in which Captain Arthur moored and of the rest of the town of Lushun. Most of the hills around have some sort of monument or obelisk on the top, and this one is no exception. Strangely, however, the obelisk here was erected by the Japanese and has a long Japanese inscription, all of which is intact. No surprise, therefore, that there were coachloads of Japanese tourists (from the Imperial Asiatic Society, no doubt). The second hill was the famous 203 Hill, so named because it is 203 metres high. This hill is a bit nearer to the town, and so a clearer view could be had of the forbidden territory. Atop this one was a 20-foot high metal obelisk resembling a rifle bullet. The inscriptions here were Chinese, but there was a fair amount of graffiti including some in Russian. Also on view was an anti-aircraft gun (our so-called experts had not even heard of the Russian air attacks in 1894!) and well-preserved assault trenches. Next came the hard-earned whizz through the town, with the four of the party designated as photographers for the rest of us. The sole object of this foray was the railway station, the actual end of the line that linked this extreme end of the Russian empire to Moscow. More symbolic than beautiful, the station was well worth the trouble it took just to see it. Very small and twee, it is only about the length of two modern-day railway carriages, but the small hall is topped by an onion ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 350 Shanghai, 1917 1933 Handbook for China, Carl Crow, pub. Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai, The Philatelic and Postal History of Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports, FW Webb, pub. Royal Philatelic Society, London, 1961 Strangers at the Gate, Frederic Wakeman Jr, pub. University of California Press, Berkeley Cal., 1966 China's Struggle for Naval Development, 1839-1895, John L Rawlinson, pub. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1967 "The Invasion of China by the Western World”, ER Hughes, pub. Adam & Charles Black, London, 1968 The British in the Far East, George Woodcock, pub. Atheneum, New York, 1969 Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, John King Fairbank, pub. Stanford University Press, Stanford Cal., 1969 Western Enterprise in Late Ch'ing China, Edward LeFevour, pub. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1970 Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism - Germany in Shantung, John E Schrecker, pub. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1971 Nagel's Encyclopedia Guide to China, pub. Nagel, Geneva, 1980 British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers, Pamela Atwell, pub. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1985 Lion and Dragon in Northern China, Reginald F Johnston, pub. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1986 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 369 ANOTHER DILEMMA FOR TODAY'S YOUTH IN CHINA Keith Stevens and Jennifer Welch During a recent RAS [HK BR] tour of the Museum of the Humen People's Resistance against the British in the Opium War [1840-1842] at Humen [Bocca Tigris], a small town about sixty miles south-east of Canton on the east coast of the Pearl River, we entered the old temple dedicated to the Northern Emperor [Bei Di] in the grounds of the Museum. The main altars of the temple were not in any way unusual in that it had the central altar with the image of the Northern Emperor, Bei Di, and two flanking side altars, one dedicated to Lü Dongbin, the doctor in the group of the Eight Immortals and the second dedicated to Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. However, there were two further glass cabinets, identical with the form of the main altar, one on either side wall. Against the wall, stage left, was an image of Lin Zexu, the Imperial Commissioner despatched by the Emperor to Guangdong province in 1839 with instructions to stamp out the opium trade. His destruction of the stocks of opium held by British, American and other foreign traders led to the so-called Opium War [in British parlance, the First China War]. The cabinet against the temple wall, stage right, contained three images of Chinese officials involved in the War. They were Admiral Guan; The Governor of the Two Guangs and a General Chen who, captured by the British, is now remembered as the prisoner taken by his captives, together with his loyal horse, to Hong Kong where he died. Before both side cabinets, which had baldachin and silken hangings in front of the altar tables bearing honorifics as do temple altars virtually everywhere, were altar tables with red spirit tablets bearing their honorific titles, as well as offerings of fruit, bottles of wine and incense pots. What proved so interesting was the indecision manifest amongst Chinese visitors who, having not hesitated to bow and offer incense before the images of the three main deities, Bei Di, Lü Dongbin and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 383 MONUMENT TO THE WESTMORELAND REGIMENT THE 55TH REGIMENT OF FOOT IN DINGHAI CITY ON ZHOUSHAN ISLAND KEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH In October 1998 the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society organised a visit for members to Ningbo [Ningpo] and Zhoushan Island [Chusan Island] off the East coast of China in the archipelago of the same name. The object of the visit to Dinghai, the county capital of the archipelago, was to try and follow the course of the British military campaign there during the First and Second China Wars, the First being the so-called Opium War of 1840-1842 and the Second, the Arrow War of 1856-1860, and see if any monuments to the British victory and subsequent occupation remained. In particular we were looking for the military cemetery and tombstones. The Chinese guide who met us in Ningbo and who was to accompany us to Dinghai was most doubtful about our mission. We did not think she was even aware that the British Army had been on Zhoushan 150 years ago. However by the time our ferry docked at Dinghai, maps relating to the campaign, which had been brought along with us, had been studied in detail, together with an account by the Reverend Wright. In Dinghai our first call was at the local museum where we collected the Curator. We were most fortunate in that he was interested in the China Wars, and not only knew the accounts - albeit from the Chinese point of view - but was able to lead us to the sites of action, and to the one remaining monument to the British. During the two China Wars Zhoushan had its moments of glory in history after which both conflicts gradually faded from both British national and Chinese local memories. Between the 5th of July 1840 when the city of Dinghai fell before a British attack for the first time, and the 5th of June 1846 when the British restored Zhoushan to the Chinese, the island was ruled twice by the British with its claim to fame as the first Chinese territory ever to be occupied and controlled ================================================================================ 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-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY - HONG KONG BRANCH NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 1999 1. GENERAL The Society was established as a branch society of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. The principal activities of the Society are investigation and encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia and in particular in relation to Hong Kong and the Far East. 2. ADOPTION OF STATEMENT OF STANDARD ACCOUNTING PRACTICE In the current year, the Society has adopted Statement of Standard Accounting Practice (SSAP) 24 “Accounting for investments in securities” issued by the Hong Kong Society of Accountants. SSAP 24 has introduced a new framework for the classification of investments in securities and the adoption of the standard has had a significant effect on the treatment adopted by the Society for its investments in securities. In adopting SSAP 24, the Society has selected the alternative treatment for securities. Under alternative treatment of SSAP 24, all investments in securities are now carried at fair value and valuation movements are dealt with in investment revaluation reserve. The accounting treatment specified by SSAP 24 has been applied retrospectively - resulting in a decrease in investment revaluation reserve at 1 January 1998 of HK$117,449, an increase in surplus in 1998 of HK$140,055 and an increase in investment revaluation reserve in the current year of HK$148,848 (1998: a decrease of HK$22,606). Comparative information has been restated to reflect this change in accounting policy. xxxi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 18 Untypical is the temple at the end of the central spinal lane: in other walled villages this site is occupied at most by a "God-house" (7), since the villagers tended to feel that to have a full-scale community temple inside a walled village was improper, as access was thus reduced for non-villagers. The absence of a well is another uncommon feature of the two villages - most walled villages, for obvious reasons, find space for one (the Nga Tsin Wai villagers, if besieged within their walls, as they were in 1854, dipped water from their moat). Moats are quite common, and are not special to these two villages. The village was built to house far more people than can possibly have been Nga Tsin Wai villagers in 1570. 130 houses is a very large number. It is probable that it was always assumed that each village family would occupy several houses, some as residences, some as barns, some as pigsties or cattle sheds. It is likely that the large number of houses was designed to allow the other villages of the Kowloon plain to flee inside the walls when problems arose, and that at least those members of the three clans of the village living outside the walls in the other villages of the area always assumed they could find shelter there at a pinch. When the walls were rehabilitated in 1724 they certainly sheltered far more people than were then needed - the Ng clan then consisted only of some eight households, and the other two clans of no more than three or four each. Without question, the elders of 1724 were looking to the long term in rebuilding so lavishly, and must have had the defences of more than just Nga Tsin Wai in mind. At both Nga Tsin Wai and Tai Wai, the villagers started to build houses outside the walls in the late eighteenth century at Tai Wai, more probably during the early nineteenth century at Nga Tsin Wai. These houses were larger and airier than the houses within the walls, and were built by the wealthier villagers as residences - normally these families retained one or more houses within the walls as well. By 1902 there were thirty house-lots just outside the walls at Nga Tsin Wai, mostly on the east of the village, between the moat and the river. Some were very large (see Map 2). The first of these houses were built by 1846, as several are shown in the 1846 drawing mentioned above but more were added between then and 1902. It is likely that houses built by members of the village clans in Sha Po were originally seen as no different from the houses built between the walls and the river: they were both "houses outside the walls". It was only at the end of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 25 Seven, rather than into any relationship with Po Kong. Tai Hom was the only Hakka village in the League of Seven. It was probably this Hakka ethnicity, their rejection by Po Kong, and their relative isolation from Nga Tsin Wai that led the Tai Hom villagers to establish a temple of their own outside their village, somewhere in the period 1821-1850, probably late in the period: it was greatly expanded in 1904. This temple, the Tung Shan Temple (it was dedicated to Kwun Yam) became, for a short period during the 1920s and 1930s, the main religious focus of the "thirteen villages of Kowloon", that is, the villages of both the League of Seven and of the Six Villages Alliance, but it was left ruined in the War. The land south of Ma Tau Kok formed part of the Alliance of Three (三聯盟) of Hung Hom (Hung Hom including Tai Wan, Hok Yuen including Shek Shan, and To Kwa Wan, probably including Ma Tau Kok). The land east of Ngau Chi Wan and Pak Uk Tsai formed the inter-village alliance called "The Four Stone Hills" (四石嶺). This was a sworn alliance of the quarry-villages of this mountainous and infertile area (Ngau Tau Kok, Sai Cho Wan, Cha Kwo Ling, and Lei Yue Mun). Inter-village alliances normally centre on joint worship by the elders, either at the higher earth god of the area, or at the local temple. Nothing is now remembered in Nga Tsin Wai of any inter-village worship by the elders of the League of Seven as a group at any higher earth god shrine, nor of any She, * , Feast of the elders in front of the shrine. However, the Nga Tsin Wai villagers do not now even remember where their earth gods used to stand - they were all removed by the Japanese, except for the earth god of the Village Gate - so too much should not be made of this. The elders of the villages of the League of Seven did and do worship the Nga Tsin Wai Tin Hau, however, on her Birthday each year (the Tai Hom elders consider the villages of the League of Seven as "belonging to the Tin Hau of Nga Tsin Wai"): it is likely that this was the ritual focus of the League, and that the meetings of the elders of the district took place after the worship. The elders hold a feast today after the worship of Tin Hau, and this is probably a very ancient tradition. The Temple, however, was the property of Nga Tsin Wai alone (it is owned by all three of the Nga Tsin Wai clans, and the Manager of the Temple, chosen by the elders of the three clans, is the Village Headman): it was probably for this reason that, on her Birthday, the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 51 Life was not, however, all hard work, sickness, and brawls. The farming year was full of slack periods when there was time for entertainment and pleasure. The ritual year gave the villagers a framework for their leisure activities: each major festival was marked with a feast - even the poorest of families would have fat pork and rich eels on feast days. Nga Tsin Wai was, according to the Sha Tin village elders, famous for making "Cha Kwo", the traditional sticky village cakes, and these would usually be in evidence at festivals. The New Year, Tin Hau's Birthday, and the Winter Solstice Festival were the main festivals celebrated in Nga Tsin Wai, together with the Spring (Ching Ming) and Autumn (Chun Yeung) Grave Festivals, where fat pork would be distributed by the Ancestral Trusts to those who attended the worship at the graves. During the summer, and particularly at the Dragon Boat Festival, the village had the habit of inviting strolling singers to come and stay in the village for a few days or a week, to sing through their repertoire of "Dragon Boat Songs". These were long sung novels, and the villagers would sit outside the village gate in the evening listening to the singer for hours. The villagers of Nga Tsin Wai were famous for singing themselves (the Tai Wai villagers in Sha Tin were jealous of the Nga Tsin Wai skills). The villagers sang Shan Ko, “Mountain Songs". These were sung man to woman, verse by verse, and often included innuendo and suggestive comment: they were often called "Teasing Songs" as a result. Nga Tsin Wai villagers would often hold impromptu contests with youngsters from Tai Wai when they met at the pass which separated the lands of the two villages (the villagers say that is why the songs are called "Mountain Songs"). The Sha Tin elders also remember that more formal contests were also held - an annual one at Ma Tau Wai drew contestants from all of East Kowloon and Sha Tin: it was held at the Mid Autumn Festival. Contestants would be drawn, man and woman, and they would sing to each other; the one that ran out of things to say being declared the loser. The audience was mostly youngsters, and a few interested elders - they would sit around the contest area on the ground, vocal in their comments. The village elders say these contests could last for a couple of weeks if enough contestants appeared. The last contest was held just after the War. This was a Punti practice. The elders of the Hakka village of Ngau Chi Wan rather... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 119 one of the best descriptions about the background to the Battle of Hong Kong. The Battle Itself In terms of the actual fighting, a host of publications specifically on the facts of the fall of Hong Kong and its aftermath, both English and Chinese, has been published, beginning in 1943 with Harrop's memoir, The Hong Kong Incident (Harrop 1943). This was followed after the war by the despatch by Major-General C.M. Maltby to the Secretary of State in the London Gazette, “Operations in Hong Kong from 8th to 25th December, 1941" of 1948 and a Hong Kong Government publication in the same year, Events in Hong Kong on 25th December 1941 (Hong Kong Government, 1948) and in 1953, A Record of the Actions of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps in the Battle of Hong Kong. Seven years later, Carew's book The Fall of Hong Kong was published (Carew, 1960). Endacott's History of Hong Kong, first published in 1958 (Endacott, 1958), and Fung's Chinese counterpart of 1967 (Fung, 1967) represented the earliest local works that put the Battle in the historical context of the Colony. Another 17 years lapsed before another phase of active publication occurred, starting with Coates' A Mountain of Light (Coates, 1977). One year later, Hong Kong Eclipse commenced by Endacott and posthumously completed by Birch appeared (Endacott and Birch, 1978) with Lindsay's The Lasting Honour: the Fall of Hong Kong 1941 (Lindsay, 1978). Birch's own Radio Hong Kong broadcast on the Battle was published one year later in a book entitled Captive Christmas: the Battle of Hong Kong (Birch, 1979). In 1980, Ferguson's work, Desperate Siege: the Battle of Hong Kong, was published (Ferguson, 1980). In the following year, Vincent's (1981) work, No Reason Why: the Canadian Hong Kong Tragedy: An Examination, and Lindsay's second work, At the Going Down of the Sun: Hong Kong and South East Asia 1941-1945 (Lindsay, 1981). This active phase of publication ended with the first systematic Chinese account, A History of the Fall of Hong Kong, (Yip, 1982) and The Royal Hong Kong Police 1841-1945 written by Crisswell and Watson (Crisswell and Watson, 1982). Most English works in this period retained a condescending view about the reliability of Chinese soldiers who happened to be in the Colony and Chinese civilians who helped the defence of Hong Kong. The odd ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 132 Lai, S.S. The Surrender of Japan: Before and After, Hong Kong, Ming Pao Publishing, 1995. (Chinese publications) Leason, J. Singapore: the Battle that Changed the World, Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1968. Liddell Hart, B.H. History of the Second World War, New York, Da Capo Press, 1999. Liddell Hart, B.H. Strategy, second revised edition, New York, Meridian, 1991. Lindsay, O. The Lasting Honour: the Fall of Hong Kong 1941, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1978. Lindsay, O. At The Going Down of the Sun: Hong Kong and South East Asia 1941-45, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1981. London Gazette: Supplement, 29 January 1948. “Operations in Hong Kong from 8th to 25th December, 1941” Morris, J. Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1997. Muir, A. The First of Foot: the History of the Royal Scots, the Royal Regiment, Edinburgh, Royal Scots Historical Society, 1961. Neillands, R. A Fighting Retreat: the British Empire 1947 - 1997, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1996. Orwell, G. The War Commentaries, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1987. Oxley, D.H. Victoria Barracks, 1842-1979, Hong Kong, British Forces Hong Kong, 1979, Ponting, C. Armageddon: the Second World War, 1995, Chinese translation by Rye Field Publishing, Taipei, 1997. (Chinese publication) Priestwood, G. Through Japanese Barbed Wire, New York, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 135 Supplement, 29 January 1948; A Record of the Actions of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps in the Battle of Hong Kong December, 1941 (1953). For the official Hong Kong account of the surrender, see Hong Kong Government (1948). 3 The literature referred to in this section is not exhaustive and focuses on books and reports only. English and Chinese newspapers and periodicals from time to time carry articles on the Battle. Post-war annals of universities, university halls and secondary schools in Hong Kong are also a good source of materials about the Battle. There are also a number of novels on war events, + The emphasis is placed on attacking the enemies' "line of least resistance" or "line of least expectation". 5 As quoted in Ko and Wordie (1996), p.18. "They were influenced by the views of Air Chief Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the British Commander-in-Chief in the Far East. 7 During the initial stage of the Battle, BBC broadcasts (Orwell, 1987) placed high hopes on the availability of Chinese forces in the vicinity of Hong Kong. Such forces were never to come. Liddell Hart (1999): footnote at 219. "Colonel Hewitt is the author of a number of books on the Battle and Japanese occupation of the Colony. 10 The title of the book is a misnomer as the police force obtained the royal title only in the late 1960s. Blackburn gave an account of the anarchic situation of Hong Kong shortly before the surrender (Blackburn 1989). 12 On 23 October 1937, the Joint Overseas and Home Defence Committee considered re-fortification or demilitarisation of Hong Kong, assuming that it took 90 days for the British fleet to relieve Hong Kong. Rollo (1992): 113. According to Aldrich, the British Chiefs of Staff considered the abandonment of Shanghai and demilitarisation of Hong Kong to avoid confrontation with Japan. Aldrich (1993): 261. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 141 Monday fifteenth. Contact Canadians who have positions at foot of Bennetts. They are very helpful bringing us hot tea and helping us in our digging. Am now in the army without a doubt and under the orders of Major Baillee of E Battalion Winnepeg Grenadiers with hqrs at Wanchai Gap. More heavy bombing of Aberdeen harbour, heavy casualties to Naval personnel caused by explosions of torpedoes and depth charges. Tuesday. Japs attempt landing at Lye Mun but party wiped out by six inch guns. Heavy shelling by Japs of Wanchai Gap and Stanley bombed. Driving the staff car into HK I have a lucky escape as a stick of bombs meant for the Thracian in Deep Water Bay drops on the road just behind me. Wednesday. Hennessy goes to Canadian hqrs on Col Sutcliff's staff. Intense bombing and shelling of island defences. One stick aimed at us misses. Another day of hard work and very little food. During the night enemy warships shell the island and shrapnel shells burst right over our heads giving us an uncomfortable time. Two cruisers and one destroyer had been seen the previous night. One six inch shell of British make struck the AIS and knocked a large hole in the wall of MTB repair shop, also completely writing off my car. Thursday. Enemy succeeded in landing on island last night and forced their way into Happy Valley despite heavy casualties. Scots and Canadians fail in attempt to drive them out. Japs in large numbers assisted by fifth columnists. Landing covered by intense artillery and naval bombardment. News muddled and rumours of all kinds are rife. Friday nineteenth. News still confusing but Japs push into Wong Nei Chong Gap. My positions were designed against attack from the West not East and we have to improvise a new line. Lt Campbell takes a party of men to go to the assistance of Canadians trapped in Wong Nei Chong, their place being filled by Chinese volunteers. Major Giles RM arrives with a small party. Eventually the Chinese go, much to our relief, as they are much too jumpy. Junior now in charge of Bennetts with Giles and myself commanding a sector running from the foot of Bennetts to Mt Nicholson. Situation very tense and we spend a sleepless night. Pours with rain all night and bitterly cold. Everyone soaked through and half dead by the morning as we had no protection against ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 213 Yet however misinformed or ignorant of the real China they might have been, the British officers who went there in the course of the Opium War were not prejudiced against her either. Albeit they usually measured Chinese behaviour against Western concepts of ethics and convention, their writers were still generally respectful of China and its people. Matched by Chinese Ignorance of the West The half truths and misconceptions common to those Britons who bothered to think at all about China and the Chinese were only matched by the equal, if not greater ignorance, exhibited by Chinese about the West, even by the governing classes. Their mind set, even of the most thoughtful among them, was cast in a different mould.5 The Chinese themselves may be held partly to blame for this state of mutual ignorance. Major George Henry Mason, who produced one of the most valuable early works in English on China and the Chinese, based on his personal experience of the situation at Canton in 1789-90, commented that in his day: The very circumscribed limits which are marked out for foreigners at Canton, have rendered the natives of China so completely cut off from human kind that only a very superficial acquaintance has been hitherto obtained with the Religion, the Laws, the Manners or the Arts of a people the most ancient in the discovered world. It was, Mason said, “to be exceedingly regretted, that either habitual caution, ungenerous suspicion, or experienced necessary circumspection, should influence the Chinese, even at a distance of fourteen hundred miles from the capital of their empire, to restrain the observing traveller within his narrow compass. 196 This situation had not changed a whit by 1839. Each party to the War was boxed in by its own limitations. British Officers' Differing Views on the War Like the British public at home, some members of the Expeditionary ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 221 Chinese officials upon shipwrecked Britons and Indians, and upon captives generally, was strongly condemned throughout the Expeditionary Force. There was universal outrage at the treatment accorded to the survivors of the brig Kite, including the wife of its Master who had been lost in the wreck. "Where shall I find language sufficiently strong to execrate the beings that inflicted the following cruelties on wrecked and starving fellow creatures?” asked Commander Bingham in his account.41 The terrible treatment of Captain Stead of the Pestonjee transport, ending in his death, excited similar outrage;42 as did, when they became known, the brutalities and executions visited upon many of the mainly Indian personnel on board another transport, the Nerbudda, cast away on Formosa.43 Poor treatment of Chinese by Other Chinese However, during the course of the War, many British officers came to realize that ill treatment of prisoners by the Chinese authorities was the norm in dealing with their own population. They also came to see that some Chinese treated their fellow-countrymen very badly. Upon taking Chinese towns and cities, they were astonished at the Chinese mobs that came out to loot them, and did so much more effectively than the British troops who had captured them. Similarly, during naval operations along the coast the crews of British warships saw how ruthlessly Chinese pirates treated peaceful traders and harmless villagers. British commanders' readiness to attack the pirate ships always won the heartfelt appreciation of Chinese fishermen and country people. Bingham cites a good example. Some fishermen had pointed out three pirate junks off the mouth of the Pei-Ho. A colleague's subsequent encounter with them, upon his boats' crews being attacked, led the sufferers to express "the most lively feelings of gratitude for being delivered from the vagabonds who had been for some time plundering them."44 Bingham also mentions the effrontery of several pirate craft that had hoped to evade attention by anchoring near his ship but had been informed against by the people they had been plundering.44 45 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 222 A Bold Approach to War I have referred to the indomitable spirit that animated the British troops and sailors of the War. This was something one cannot fail to notice in the various accounts of the War. As in the First Burma War, there was a boldness that must have taken the Chinese aback whenever it was demonstrated. Being practically universal, one minor example may serve to illustrate the rest. It comes from J.D. Vaughan, later a magistrate in the Straits Settlements, who had served as a midshipman on the Honourable East India Company's steam frigate Tenasserim in 1842, and is recounted here largely in his own words.46 A few days after the capture of the Yangtse city of Chin-kiang-foo, his captain took two of the ship's boats with twenty or thirty men each, with a brass three-pounder at the bow, and went to a town on a canal flowing into the great river. The writer was in one of these boats. The ship's Chinese carpenter, a Southern Chinese picked up at Singapore, could write but could not speak the Mandarin language of the area. Armed with a slate, and a truly astonishing degree of sang-froid, he made the captain's wishes to purchase provisions known to a large throng of citizens and soldiers who had assembled on the banks. Negotiating with a mandarin, they got all that they wanted, and during their brief stay were treated with the greatest civility and kindness. “A table and chairs were brought, and the elders of the city had a most interesting conversation with us through the invaluable carpenter. It was a curious sight to see the skipper sitting as cool as a cucumber smoking his cigar surrounded by our foes." “Few men,” Vaughan says, “would have ventured so fearlessly into the very clutches of an armed foe within a few miles of a captured city with war raging all around; and strange to say we came away un-harmed and not an angry face was to be seen amongst the crowds of men who flocked out of the gate of the town to see us.” Many other instances can be found in the books on the War, and indeed it was the norm. This verve derived from military and naval discipline and tradition, and from the leadership shown by, and expected of, British officers of the day. Only when that leadership failed, as in the contemporary disasters at Kabul in the First Afghan War, when a British army was annihilated through hesitation and mismanagement, Page 255 Page 256 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 225 NOTES Not all the materials for this study are available in Sydney libraries, and I have been obliged to take extracts from secondary sources where it has not been possible to consult the originals. 2 William C. Milne, Life in China (London, Routledge, Warnes & Routledge, New Edition, 1859), p. 1. 3 Davis had been a long-serving member of the Honourable East India Committee's Select Committee at Canton, and was a skilled linguist and translator. 5 Sir John himself provided a light-hearted anecdote in the Introduction to a revised and augmented edition of another of his books, The Poetry of the Chinese, published in 1870. This tells its own story. "When this Treatise was first printed (now more than forty years ago), with types brought from China, in the quarto Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, the foreign [i.e. Chinese written] character was so little known in England, that Lord Palmerston, with his usual pleasantry, said he took it 'at first sight for a work on Entomology'." (Sir John Francis Davis, The Poetry of the Chinese (Paragon Book Reprint Corp. New York, 1969 of the original, London 1870, p.v) Concerning the Chinese statecraft reformer Wei Yuan, Jane Kate Leonard comments, "Never for a moment did he conceive of the West as a new and unique center of culture and civilization in any sense comparable with China": in Wei Yuan and China's Rediscovery of the Maritime World (Harvard University Press, 1984), pp.3-4. 6 George Henry Mason, The Costume of the Chinese (London, William Miller, 1804), preface. 7 "An Observer" in Vol II of this publication, p.111. 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, Saunders and Otley, 1844), p.37. 9 Ouchterlony, pp.37-8. 10 Wyndham Baker wrote home: "I have read every work I can get hold of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 239 Two important things happened in October 1971: firstly, men were no longer allowed to take concubines and, secondly, every person had to have at least one full day off work a week. Up until then people in small Chinese firms frequently laboured seven days a week with a few days off at Lunar New Year and odd days off at major Chinese festivals - like Dragon Boat and Mid Autumn Festival. People Enough about statistics: what about RAS members who made things happen? I will always remember Dr J R Jones CBE, MC, MA, LL.D, JP, who served as our President from the time our Branch was reconstituted until 1970. I first met J R in early 1955 at a Dante Alighieri (the Italian Society) meeting. Then I learned he had a penchant for things antiquarian as well as languages — although he spoke little Chinese. There are a few short pieces written by him in early RAS Journals. I remember him in a pinstripe, blue suit and, although fairly tall, he could be described as dapper, polished and a ladies' man. He was gentlemanly, personable and, as such, made a splendid RAS ‘front man.' Much of the work behind the scenes, such as setting up the reconstituted Branch in 1960, was in fact done by Dr Marjorie Topley and Jack Cranmer-Byng, Honorary Editor. Marjorie Topley became our President in 1972. Dr Jones had led an interesting life including serving King, Country and Empire in two world wars, as well as helping to organise the Ukrainian Army soon after the end of World War One. He also went on archaeological expeditions to Italy and Africa. As a lawyer he practised at the High Court in London and later in Shanghai. In Hong Kong he was legal advisor to The Bank, as he always referred to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. In fact he advised 'the Bank' to buy a number of paintings by George Chinnery (1774 to 1852). The latter is often said to have been the most accomplished western artist to have worked in the East in the 19th century. These paintings, which the Bank purchased, were a splendid investment. In addition, JR sat on a number of government ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 258 Viewed in retrospect, my report is rather ponderously expressed. My prose tended to be "turgid," the boss once told me, and I resolved to do better! However, turgidity could not disguise my exasperation, which still shines through the contents of the report, loud and clear, 39 years on. Looking back on that period, my exasperation was increased by the fact that I had to put up with (and more to the point, get over) similar difficulties with village communities in other parts of a far-flung District, from Sai Kung in the east to Lantau in the west. With road works going on at each extremity, I was sometimes rushing here and there, backwards and forwards, dealing with problems of this kind. There were special difficulties in getting the new extension to the Sai Kung road past Tso Wo Hang Village in regard to the road line, and also with cutting stone at a certain spot where, my notebook says, "the Village Representative was to say when work could start”. It sticks in my memory that none of the other villages affected by construction work for the new road were as temperamental or difficult as this one, and certainly this seems to be borne out by my notes. See my chapter "The Traditional Background: Hong Kong Villages in the 1950s” in Elizabeth Sinn and Patrick Hase (eds) Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Joint Publishing (HK) Company Limited. As I have written elsewhere, patience and resolution, leavened with an essential saving dash of humour, were qualities in demand on these occasions. The Tong Fuk episode was certainly one of those in which all of these had to be deployed by my land staff and myself during that period. Mercifully, an antidote was sometimes supplied by the villagers themselves, since their ill humour could be turned to laughter by themselves or even by one of us, and lead to an amicable compromise. When all is said and done, it was fun! What was equally important for me as a young D.O. was that in Ronnie Holmes I had an ideal boss, someone who was immensely able, perceptive and compassionate, and a good Chinese linguist, a man who could see both sides of any situation. Also, he would welcome me home for a drink, listen and laugh at my predicaments, and (usually) endorse my solutions to them. By way of a postscript to the above, we were by no means ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n CONTRIBUTORS Solomon Bard, O.B.E., E.D., is a long-time, well-known resident of Hong Kong and amongst his many other accomplishments is a musician, archaeologist and historian. His published works include the following: In Search of the Past: A Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong (Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1988); Traders of Hong Kong: Some Foreign Merchant Houses, 1841-1899 (Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1993); and Garrison Memorials in Hong Kong: Some Graves and Monuments at Happy Valley (Antiquities and Monuments Office, Hong Kong, Occasional Paper No. 4, 1997). Brian C. Fawcett, was born in the Far East where his father served with the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. He also joined the bank and served from 1961 to 1978, being based in Hong Kong from 1971 to 1978. During that time he was also a volunteer with the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force, now the Government Flying Services. He is a life member of HKBRAS. Peter Halliday, M.A., Ph.D., is an Assistant Commissioner with the Hong Kong Police Force and is in charge of the Information Systems Wing. He has been the Hon. Editor of the HKBRAS Journal since 1993 (peterhalliday@police.gov.hk). James Hayes, Ph.D., D.Litt. (Hon.), is a Past-president of HKBRAS. He is a noted scholar and Hong Kong historian, and has written several books, the most recent being Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People, 1953-87. He has contributed prolifically to the Journal (mouseh1@bigpond.com). Teresa Kowalska, Ph.D., is a professor of physical chemistry at the Silesian University, Katowice, Poland. She has a distinguished academic record in her chosen field and publishes widely. Her interest in and admiration of, the writer Han Suyin is an extracurricular pursuit (kowalska@uranos.cto.us.edu.pl). Jack Lao Mou Chi, is a retired Assistant Commissioner of Labour of the Hong Kong Government and a member of HKBRAS. Barbara Park, is a landscape designer and a long-time member of HKBRAS. xii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY - HONG KONG BRANCH NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2000 1. GENERAL The Society was established as a branch society of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. The principal activities of the Society are investigation and encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia and in particular in relation to Hong Kong and the Far East. 2. SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention, as modified for the revaluation of investments in securities The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in Hong Kong. The principal accounting policies adopted are as follows: Income recognition Annual subscription income is accounted for as it is received, except that amounts received from new members joining after 31 October in any year are carried forward into the following year. Income relating to life memberships is taken into account in five equal instalments, commencing with the year in which it is received. Equipment Equipment is stated at cost less depreciation. The cost of an asset comprises its purchase price and any directly attributable costs of bringing the asset to its present working condition and location for its intended use. xxxviii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 4 and serve tea. Credit for initiating the custom of afternoon tea is generally given to Anna, Duchess of Bedford (1788-1861). The correct protocol states that tea should begin between 4 and 4.30 in the afternoon and should last just one hour.” Tea had become so much the national drink that the East India Company was required by an Act of Parliament to keep a year's supply always in stock. For the British Exchequer, tax on tea brought revenue amounting, in the 1830s, to over three million pounds - an astonishing amount. Tea could be obtained only from China. Indian tea (or Ceylon tea) was still many years away. It had to be paid for, preferably not in silver coin, but by equitable trade exchange. China, however, while keen to export tea, wanted nothing in return except silver bullion. Faced with an alarming trade disadvantage, British merchants discovered that opium was one item by which they could balance the trade in tea. As addiction to tea, for that is what it was, could not be stopped, moral scruples did not prevent British traders from fostering opium, far more pernicious than tea, on China. It may be safely assumed therefore that had it not been for Britain's demand for increasing quantities of tea, China might never have been subjected to opium, which was grown in India under British supervision. Opium and the Chinese Many scholars and historians believe that mankind has known opium since prehistoric times. It was certainly known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, used extensively for medicinal purposes mainly as a remedy for pain and to induce sleep. Opium has been known in China at least since the Tang Dynasty (618-906AD) and possibly much earlier, originally only for its medicinal value. It was derived from Papeverum somniferum, a species of poppy cultivated in India and Turkey. Although not indigenous to China, the opium-bearing poppy plant was cultivated in the western province of Yunnan to supplement opium imported overland from India. Trade with the Middle East and India flourished in the Tang Dynasty, but import of opium into China was comparatively small as homegrown opium supplied most of local needs. It would be surprising, however, if some non-medical use of the drug had not developed. M. Booth believes that such use was not widespread and was restricted to 'an upper-class elite'; the drug was probably eaten. This seems to be confirmed by the absence ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 6 met in armed conflict - futile and unnecessary. Ironically, both were strongly devoted to tea though their actual taste in tea may have been different. The Chinese did not call their country China. To them it was the Middle Kingdom, the kingdom between heaven and earth, the Celestial Kingdom. The Emperor was the Son of Heaven who possessed divine powers. Their civilization was 5,000 years old, and for nearly half that period they lived in solid houses, dressed in silk, and produced works of art which are still admired today. Almost completely isolated from the western world since the Song Dynasty, China was oblivious to the achievements of the West in many fields. Proud and self-contained, China shunned outside contacts. In their self-proclaimed superiority, the Chinese in the 18th century still believed that only barbarians lived beyond their boundaries and that their countries were automatically vassal states of the Celestial Kingdom. Chinese contempt for foreigners persisted into the later periods, no doubt fuelled by the shameful behaviour of the foreign powers towards China, humbled and humiliated by the defeats in the Opium Wars. 'Barbarian devils' was a description often uttered even by relatively enlightened Chinese. Is it then any wonder that even in our time “Kwai Lo” (though no longer “Fan Kwai”) is still often heard, though perhaps more in jest, and used even by the foreigners themselves? Britain, on the other hand, in the early 19th century was opening one of the most glorious pages of its history. Napoleon was defeated and France was no longer a threat. The Royal Navy reigned supreme over the waves and Britain had become truly a great imperial power dominating huge areas of territory and much of the trade from the New World to the Far East. In 1837 the young Queen Victoria ascended the throne and a long period of British colonial rule had asserted itself. The British nation had every reason to feel proud and superior. But with superiority came also arrogance and a deep distrust of foreigners. We live in a time when the world has discarded Imperialism and Colonialism, the right of strong nations to rule over weak ones, when some disputes at least are settled in a forum of nations, when the right of all peoples to self-determination is recognized. The latter is a recent principle: born of the Versailles Treaty, after the 1st World War, it has forged ahead without stopping. But in the 19th century, imperialism ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 7 was still the way of the strong. Since ancient times successive empires have risen and fallen. China, too, had an imperialist past, when the Han Empire (206BC-221AD) extended its rule from Burma in the south to Korea in the north. Britain was the last to enter the stage, after the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch, forging perhaps the largest empire since the Roman Empire 2,000 years before. In the spirit of the new age, Britain professed an obligation to assist the indigenous colonial peoples in economic development and prepare them afterwards for self-government within the framework of the British Empire. This was the foundation of the 'Imperialism' which dominated her colonial policy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This mission was sometimes regarded as at best illusory and at worst hypocritical. However, there is little doubt that the spirit of commercial enterprise was the leading motive of the British colonial policy, and it was the British pursuit of trade in the East, which brought China and Britain into confrontation. Predictably, this encounter of two nations, both proud and arrogant, proved disastrous. British attempt to establish contact with China began early. A Captain Weddell approached Canton in 1637, was refused entry but forced a passage through the Humen Forts (Bogue Forts). After a skirmish with the Chinese war junks, in which it was claimed Weddell had the upper hand, he was finally forced to withdraw. It was an ominous start to what Britain hoped would be a peaceful penetration. No further attempts were made for some 150 years, though in the meantime the English East India Company had managed to secure, in 1664, a trading base in Macao, and, by the turn of the century, in Guangzhou. Slowly, and in spite of many difficulties, foreign trade with China had assumed a regular character by the early 18th century. The main difficulty has already been mentioned: while British traders were eager to trade and in particular secure a steady supply of much needed tea from China, the latter desired no trading intercourse with the West. Emperor Qianlong's oft-quoted announcement stated: "The Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders, there is therefore no need to import manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our products.' The Emperor spoke for himself and his government but hardly for the common man, to whom trading and material profits mattered. While requiring little from the West, Chinese were eager to sell tea - a ‘wholesome beverage' prepared almost exclusively for the British people. The question has been often ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 8 posed as to whether the Chinese as a whole were "anti-commercial" or whether it was only the government. Greenberg believes that "trade in the long run mattered little to the Chinese economy."2 A further factor contributing to distrust of foreigners and the consequent restriction in contacts and trade was fear of European expansionist policy apparent to the Chinese in Tibet, the East Indies, the Philippines, Burma, and Nepal. By the 1830s British demand for tea had become enormous; tea worth twenty million pounds sterling was imported into Britain annually. It was paid for from huge profits made on the sale of smuggled opium. Many foreign firms in Guangzhou, other than British, had engaged in the lucrative trade, with two notable exceptions,13 Britain accounting for more than 80% of the trade. Dissatisfied with the capricious nature of its trade in Guangzhou, Britain made three high-level attempts to form full diplomatic relations with Beijing, sending embassies under Macartney in 1793, Amherst in 1816, and Napier in 1834; all failed. The last two reached no further than Guangzhou before being unceremoniously sent back. But it may be of interest to deal in some length with Macartney's Mission because it seemed to succeed; that it failed was the most significant disaster in relations between the two nations, eventually leading to war. After a long journey, Macartney's Embassy embarked on Chinese boats to proceed up Baihe (Peiho) River on the 9th of August 1793. The following day they reached Tianjin (Tientsin) where they met the Emperor's envoy at a formal ceremony, which, however, lasted a mere 20 minutes. After staying in Beijing for some two weeks, they set out for Chengde (Jehol) where, on the 30th of September, they met Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795). Lord Macartney was graciously permitted to dispense with kowtow; it was agreed that the salutation was to be made on the right knee. According to Macartney, the Emperor was polite, and the conversation, conducted through interpreters, was lively and interesting. Moreover, the various scientific instruments, which were brought as gifts, were examined with obvious interest. The Embassy was told that they should depart on the 7th of October. Three days' grace was promised but immediately withdrawn, ostensibly because the Emperor was concerned that an early onset of cold weather would inconvenience the Ambassador. To reach their ships at Zhoushan (Chusan) Island, the Embassy had to travel across China, partly overland and partly by rivers - a journey that took nearly two months. It has ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 10 Lin Zexu and the Conflict Lin Zexu is not the subject of this paper. However, since he is the central figure of the Symposium, it seems appropriate to devote some little space to this extraordinary man, who no doubt cast a giant shadow on Anglo-Chinese relations. Emperor Qianlong, great emperor though he was, apart from issuing prohibitive edicts seems to have done little to stop the opium trade. Jiaqing (1796-1820) who followed was equally ineffectual. His successor Daoguang (1821-1850), however, was a man of a different mettle. In 1836, Imperial edicts having failed to check the opium trade, the problem was hotly debated in Beijing. There was one faction that favoured legalizing opium importation and so turning it to public profit. To this Emperor Daoguang replied: 'It is true, I cannot prevent the introduction of the flowing poison; gain-seeking and corrupt men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat my wishes; but nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people," noble words by a great monarch. In 1839, deciding to take forceful action, the Emperor appointed Lin Zexu as his Commissioner charged with total eradication of the infamous trade. Commissioner Lin journeyed to Guangzhou and immediately ordered all commerce in opium to be stopped. He further demanded that merchants should surrender all stocks and sign a bond to cease importing, in effect laying the factories to siege. This much is well documented as well as the ensuing course of events which led to the 1st Opium War. Lin Zexu presents an interesting character study of contrasting portraits. For many years the British sources had portrayed him as 'fierce, unscrupulous, and fanatical.'" Most of the known paintings of him show a fierce, pugnacious countenance. It is, therefore, gratifying to include in this paper a reproduction of a rare painting depicting him as a handsome man with a dignified yet kind expression on his face.** Gradually the picture has changed and Lin is being recognized as an intelligent and learned man, a capable and resolute official, a competent administrator, and a fair and just dispenser of the law; most importantly, he was incorruptible. A modern, progressive man, he observed, however, all the Chinese ceremonies, made sacrifices at temples, and made offerings to the spirits of his ancestors. He liked poetry, which he practised for his own leisure. A man who, at the height of the opium ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 21 TEA, IVORY AND EBONY: TRACING COLONIAL THREADS IN THE INSEPARABLE LIFE AND LITERATURE OF HAN SUYIN TERESA KOWALSKA Han Suyin, medical doctor and fierce Chinese patriot, is the grand dame and doyenne of Chinese writers, born and brought up in pre-communist semi-colonial Old China, and has devoted over fifty long years, in a splendid literary career, to the interpretation of her beloved and largely misunderstood motherland China to the Western world. In spite of perfect fluency in French, Mandarin Chinese and English, she decided to write in the latter language in order to reach the largest possible audience. Her ultimate intention has always been to build bridges of communication and understanding between East and West, and her much under-estimated artistic and intellectual contribution has added a non-Eurocentric reflection on modern history of the Far East and South-East Asia to the treasury of contemporary global thinking. Maybe the humiliating touch of quasi-colonial atmosphere in Peking of her childhood and adolescence spurred her to undertake this challenging task of becoming an outspoken ambassador of her nation in front of the outer, fairly prejudiced and occasionally hostile world. Her inner independence irritated many, provoking accusations of being a communist, or a communist sympathizer at least. The artist's answer to these unfounded objections and simultaneously her meaningful artistic as well as human credo is contained in the below cited fragment of Chapter Eleven from Phoenix Harvest, volume five of her powerful six-volume epic cycle on modern history of China: I have had to live by what was imprinted in my cells, remaining averse to and suspicious of high-flown abstractions, but totally engaged to that smell and savour and warmth, that feel of the tide, blood beat, which is for me the people of China. With others, exultant ideologies may have priority, but it has never been so with me. I shoulder and make do with systems, with ideologies. I am not committed to any. Only one thing concerns me: in the great sweep of history, will this or that system have been another step forward for the Chinese people? They are the only 'side' I am on. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 57 an auspicious location to build a palace [of peace] where all the world's powers could meet and create a peace that will last ten thousand years. The second letter is not addressed to any specific addressee with the writer also signing himself 'The Spiritual Man Yuan Chun`. Sir, Your humble disciple learned that your righteous attempt to bring peace to Europe was rebuffed. Your setback was not due to your lack of sincerity for peace, but is due to the Western people's desire for war. Sir, you know that the Chinese people [in Europe] have been placed in great danger by the war. We believe in your powers to make further attempts for peace, and to ensure our safety and our eventual return to China. The third letter is addressed to His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief and is unsigned: The current situation is one of utter chaos; the people's lives are very hard and we have waited in vain for the government to alleviate our difficulties. Our country is weak and the people disunited. Now is the time for an heroic brave man to take command and launch a crusade to stabilise the nation and unite the people. I hope Your Excellency will not hinder my efforts to carry out this righteous duty and I ask for your assistance in this endeavour. I wonder if any of the above letters were sent and, if so, whether the contents had any result on the final cessation of hostilities. Whilst writing this article I was fortunate to find a book on the life of Two-gun Cohen, the well-known personage with strong ties to China. Morris Abraham Cohen was born on 3rd August, 1889 in Stepney, London's East End, of an immigrant Jewish couple from Poland. He was shipped to Canada at the age of 16 after having come into conflict with the authorities. In Canada he learnt to ride, shoot and gamble, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 59 Chinese, were one of four forms. ‘A Noble Duty Bravely Done', 'Faithful unto Death', 'A Good Reputation endures Forever' and 'Though Dead He still Liveth'. As with all CWGC cemeteries, this one was well maintained. We (Friends) then visited the Tincourt British Military Cemetery which has 57 graves of the CLC. The base depôt, prison and hospital of the CLC was at Noyelles-sur-Mer and the cemetery there contains the graves of 838 men of the CLC, with a memorial bearing the names of 41 men whose graves are unknown12. The site of this cemetery was selected by the Chinese themselves so that the fengshui was correct. Whilst many of the CLC in this cemetery had home addresses in Shandong and Zhili provinces [about 98%] there were also about 25 from other provinces all north of the Yangzi River; two were from Fengtian in Manchuria [the old name for Mukden and now Shenyang], seven from Henan, seven from Jiangsu, five specifically from Hebei [the modern name for Zhili], one from Anhui, two from Shenjing [the archaic name for Jilin province in the north-east] and one from Gansu. The latter is unusual, it being a province to the north-west of China. One grave is noteworthy being that of an early recruit whose serial number was 53. Wang Yufong came from Rongcheng in Shandong, a mere 35 miles from Weihai Wei, and he died on the 10th June 1918. Many of those buried here had died of flu from the post-war epidemic. Chinese visiting France today appear to be intrigued by signs saying Cimetiere Chinois [Chinese Cemetery] and, having visited them, have been surprised to see compatriots buried there. An entry, from a Chinese visitor from Qingdao, in the Memorial Book at Noyelles-sur-Mer, commented that he was a man from Shandong province himself and had not realized so many of his fellow provincials had died and had been buried in France. The CWGC, in response to our comment that we were surprised that there were no signs in French explaining the background to the fallen Chinese, wrote: A certain amount of historical information can be gleaned from the introduction to the registers made available at the cemeteries and some of the more significant sites have permanent historical notices. However, it should be ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 134 Quadrants of the 28 Heavenly Constellations, the image of Chen Wu [Xuan Wu], as Lord of the North, was usually to be seen on altars, usually in Daoist monastery or temple entrance halls, together with the Azure Dragon [Qing Long] of the East, the Vermilion Bird [Zhu Qiao] of the South and the White Tiger [Bai Hu] of the West, where they were the guardians. Although Tai Sui is the Minister of Time, another major deity, Fu Xi, has been credited not only with the establishment of kingly rule, of marriage laws, but also the computation of time by inventing a form of calendar using a knotted cord. The Eight Trigrams [bagua] are attributed to him as well as the development of a system of fortune telling using these trigrams which has governed the lives of a great many Chinese ever since. Yang Ren There is ambiguity over the rôles of the two deities, Yin Jiao and Yang Ren. In the very early days, before the emergence of the concept of the stems, the twelve branches were represented by images of the deities of the year with all twelve portrayed on altars in temples, especially in northern China where they were regarded as an entity commanded by Yang Ren. Later, when the Sixty Spirits of Taisui, that is the sixty cyclic deities, replaced the Twelve, they too were commanded by Yang Ren - or by Yin Jiao depending on local legend. According to the Fengshen Yanyi Yang Ren is the Jiazi Taisui [the first of the sixty combinations] and is known as Jiazi Taisui Zhengshen. XIE. [see photograph 4: with small hands emerging from the eye sockets] whilst Yin Jiao, as we have seen above, was identified in the same historical novel as the President of the Ministry of Time. Though we have accepted Yin Jiao as the President of the Ministry and Yang Ren being the identity of the primary Taisui, the picture is far from conclusive. The Ten Stems and Twelve Branches have been represented in human form in a number of temples but, as far as can be ascertained, none has been connected with the Lord of Time, Taisui. One of two side walls of the main hall of a temple near Pingyang in Shanxi province representing the Lord of the Northern Dipper, Zhen Wu, contains 13th century frescoes depicting ten figures. These represent five of the Ten ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 157 But First, the Story of the Rebellion. Tang Ming Huang, or Xuan Zong, the sixth emperor of the Tang dynasty, who reigned between AD 713-756, became infatuated by Yang Yuhuan, the consort of his son, Prince Shou, and caused her notionally to enter a Daoist nunnery. She soon became the favourite concubine of the emperor who shared with him her love of music and dance and whose hold over him led to his neglect of state affairs. It is rarely explained that the Concubine Yang was comparatively plump, conforming to the social concept of beauty of the era. By about 740 the Emperor, tired of the daily routine of his high office, now addicted to luxury and women, also became indolent. As the eunuchs gained ever greater control over state affairs so the emperor surrendered power into the hands of two men, Li Linfu and Yang Guozhong, the latter being a relative of the concubine. Only this one woman, the Concubine Yang [Yang Guifei], a famous beauty, was able to fascinate the ageing emperor. He took her into his own harem where she speedily dominated the aged emperor's consort after which he gradually slid into dissipation with his name forever linked with her and their ill-fated romance. Her hold over him led to his loss of interest in imperial duties transforming him from being a staid and good ruler to a playboy. This led to his downfall and her murder. In the late 740s she adopted An Lushan as her son and she, the emperor and An remained in a very friendly relationship until immediately prior to him rebelling. Despite An's gross and huge frame scandalous stories have circulated down the ages of his sexual excesses with the emperor's concubine, Yang, which may or may not have had any truth to them. General An lost the emperor's favour when Yang Guozhong, a distant relative of Yang Guifei who had worked his way into power, became the most powerful man in Court. He hated An and with the ear of the emperor he was able to turn the emperor's fondness into one of hate and distrust. Eventually, believing the calumny spread by Yang Guozhong, the emperor lost faith in his favourite general, An Lushan found his position untenable and finally, at the end of 755, he rebelled, almost certainly to counter the threat to himself posed by the ever-growing power of Yang Guozhong and his realisation that he had lost the support of the emperor. An Lushan's army drove east and in a series ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 159 Meanwhile, General An's army was facing the threat of yet more foreign forces coming to the aid of the new emperor and the armies of Guo Ziyi. These were mainly Uighur and during the summer of 757 after the two Chinese capitals had been captured by the Uighurs, one of the cities, Luoyang, suffered several days of carnage and plunder. An was assassinated, some say by his son, Qingxu, others by a fellow rebel early in 757, but all agree that he was succeeded by his son who was in his turn murdered by his general, Shi Siming. Shi Siming was also a native of Liuchak, of Turkic descent, who had co-operated with An Lushan in his campaign against the Kitans. After the death of An Qingxu, he proclaimed himself emperor Yingtian Huangdi of the Great Yan dynasty. In the east, severe fighting had been going on; but, owing to the valour displayed by the garrisons at Pingyuan and Chang Shan, the progress of the rebels in the direction of Shandong was checked. Nor were they more successful in their attempts to invade the Yangzi region. In the direction of Anhui, they were confronted by the stronghold of Suiyang, of which we will learn more later; and in the direction of Hubei, their advance was blocked by the city of Nanyang, both of these cities held out stubbornly. Shi Siming was in his turn murdered by his own son, who proclaimed himself emperor and reigned for a matter of months before he too was overthrown and put to death, thereby ending the four-year-old rebel dynasty. The rebellion had lost its impetus and festered on with intermittent battles until 763. Even during the last years, the outcome was far from certain. It was ultimately quelled and the dynasty regained the throne, but not before the emperor and his son and heir had both disappeared from the scene in death. This epic story is well known to all Chinese, having been related down the centuries throughout China by village tea-house storytellers. Now that we have a picture of the Rebellion, let us focus on the emperor Tang Ming Huang and the eight generals who took part in the suppression of the An Lushan rebellion and have become local, regional, and even nation-wide popular religion cult deities with their images, euhemerized heroes revered on a number of altars. Although images of leaders of various rebellions down the centuries have become popular religion cult deities, no image has been seen on altars of An Lushan. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 187 virtually cut off the supply to the waterfall other than when they are overflowing, for instance after a heavy storm. Apart from pleasure boats and other small craft, Tai Tam Harbour was used more in the 19th century than it is today. During the period 1806 to 1819, long before Hong Kong was taken over by Britain, James Horsburgh, a hydrographer with the East India Company, surveyed the waters around the Island. He wrote that Tai Tam afforded shelter from almost all winds (Liu Shuyong, 1997:24). It is not of course a harbour as we sometimes know it with wharves and godowns. It is an inlet, which provides a place for ships to shelter. To illustrate again the Harbour's use as a place for protection from the elements mention is made of ‘tactical manoeuvring and target practice,' in February 1878, by the Royal Navy (White Ensign-Red Dragon, 1997; 39). It continues, 'The 20th February being very misty the fleet remained at Tytam Bay.' People naturally ask when exactly were the two Obelisks first erected; who erected them; and what purpose did (or do) they serve? As a start, with the aims of answering such questions, two Chief Inspectors, H J W Chetwynd-Chatwin and Keith Francis, both then serving in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, arranged an informal meeting, in 1994. The meeting took place in a bar at a police officers' mess in Wan Chai. It was followed by a curry lunch. About a dozen people were invited who, it was felt, could contribute. They included the Government Director of Marine and RASHKB member R S Hownam-Meek who spent his career in shipping with Jardine. A couple of weeks or so after the meeting the topic of the Obelisks was raised by Radio Television Hong Kong. Little of real substance emerged from the meeting or the ‘phone-in radio programme. The late Arthur May, then a retired civil servant, did however ‘phone in to say that, as a youth, he went to live at Tai Tam in 1919. He also recalled that when he sailed around the Harbour in the 1920s the two Obelisks were definitely already there. The Hydrographic Data Centre, at Taunton in England, maintains that information was received from the Commander-in-Chief, China, that two beacons, each 30 feet high, had been erected. These were first inserted on Admiralty charts by 'Notice to Mariners 755' of 1900 (Atherton, 1996:94). I have a chart showing Tai Tam Harbour, dated 1894, which shows the Obelisks, but Atherton informs me that this is a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 214 A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong School (VTS), that a new curriculum was phased in. It changed from being a trade school and became a secondary technical school. Meanwhile the Far East Flying Training School -- the original name -- commenced training pilots and engineers for the civil aviation industry in 1934. The Far East Flying and Technical School Limited, as it was later renamed, sited at Kai Tak, was a private institution. It shut its doors in 1983 because of the rapid expansion of government-sponsored technical education. Meanwhile, retracing our steps, further progress in the field of technical education was made pre-World War Two when, in 1935, the Salesian Society founded the Aberdeen Trade School. This provided a sound general education, together with training considered to be comparable to an apprenticeship. Like the JTS, this School too was converted into a secondary technical school in the late 1950s. I recall visiting the Aberdeen Trade School on its open day, in January 1955, when I was struck by the high standard of craftsmanship of the students' work on display. The first Government post-secondary technical institution was the old Trade School which opened in Wood Road, Wan Chai (using the old spelling), in 1937. It stood on the corner where the Vocational Training Council's multi-storey office block stands today. At the time of opening, under Principal George White, it ran courses in building, mechanical engineering (with a bias towards automobile engineering) and marine wireless operating. The Trade School also took over the evening classes previously run by Taikoo Dockyard at Quarry Bay. The new, then two-storey (an additional floor was added in 1953) Trade School was well constructed on the lines of other colonial-style buildings erected between the two World Wars. It had high ceilings with paddle-fans because there was virtually no air-conditioning in Hong Kong at that time (an exception was the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank). The Trade School was one of the few examples of good face brickwork. In the 1950s navigation, commerce and textile ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong system. After all, most people have been to school and, therefore, many are instant experts. Claude Burgess, Colonial Secretary from 1958-1963, said that Hong Kong was a problem of people. Indeed one sometimes wonders how other countries' education systems would have fared if their populations had increased at the rate Hong Kong's has. Post-World War Two education started from a low base line, but by 1981, universal, compulsory, free education had been introduced. The proof of the rice dumpling has to be in the eating, just as you judge an education system by the students who graduate. Many of those who studied technical education in Hong Kong have gone right to the top of their chosen fields. A few have graduated from the Polytechnic, or its predecessor the Technical College, and have become members of the Legislative or Executive Councils. To achieve what we have, certainly in the old days when funds were restricted, there had to be a force of long-serving, dedicated teachers. Members of staff who gave stability and shape to the technical education scene, in spite of its limitations some of which have been noted in this brief paper. If you cannot live with change Hong Kong is not the place to be. Certainly over the past half century the pace of change has been staggering. I cast my mind back to when we teachers were invited in 1956, by past building students, to a Chinese dinner in the woodwork workshop, at the old Technical College in Wood Road. They engaged outside caterers and the food was cooked in the corridor. The cost was around $100.00 per round, Chinese table seating 12 persons. Today, every New Year I am graciously invited by my past students, some of whom have already retired, to a Technical College/Polytechnic/Polytechnic University Ball at the Grand Hyatt. How things have changed! As you can see I still keep in touch with some of my old students, both locally and overseas, some of whom I taught over 40 years ago. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g Göran Aijmer, is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and is currently associated with the Gothenburg Research Institute of the University. His research focuses on symbolic expression and articulation in fields such as politics, economy and religion. His regional projects have concerned southern China, Southeast Asia and Melanesia. He has worked in many universities, more recently in the Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, and the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich. His recent monographs are Ritual Dramas in the Duke of York Islands: Cantonese Society in a Time of Change (with Virgil K.Y. Ho) and New Year Celebrations in Central China in Late Imperial Times. Together with Jon Abbink, he has also edited Meanings of Violence (goran.aijmer@newyork.com). Sir David Akers-Jones, K.B.E., C.M.G., J.P., was a founding member of the reconstituted HKBRAS in 1960 and a former Chief Secretary of the Hong Kong Government. He is a noted sinophile (akersjon@pacific.net.hk). A.C. Bromfield, is an active member of HKBRAS. Chiu Hang Shi, is an active member of HKBRAS. Richard Garrett, M.A.(Cantab), C.Eng., F.I.C.E., F.I.Struct.E., F.H.K.I.E., is a director of an international firm of consulting engineers and has lived in Hong Kong since 1973. He has been a collector of antique arms and a member of the Arms and Armour Society of the U.K. for over 30 years. He has published a number of articles on the subject of early firearms. Valery Garrett, B.A., Post Grad. Dip. Des., is a Hon. Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, and the author of six books on traditional Chinese clothing. She is a Council Member of the Royal Asiatic Society (vgarrett@hkucc.hku.hk). César Guillén-Nuñez, M.Phil., is a specialist in colonial Spanish and Portuguese art. He has degrees in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of Pennsylvania and University College, London. He is presently a research fellow at the Macau Ricci Institute (cgnunes@yahoo.com). Fr. Dr. Louis Ha, Ph.D., is the Archivist of the Catholic Diocesan archives and Chairman of the Hong Kong Archives Society. His Ph.D. was entitled The Foundation of the Catholic Mission in HK 1841-1894. Peter Halliday, M.A., Ph.D., is a former assistant commissioner of the Hong Kong xi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g A REPORT TO THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY (HONG KONG BRANCH) FROM THE FRIENDS (U.K.) Once again it is my privilege to present a report to the Annual General Meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong, and what a pleasure it is. First of all, though, the Friends would like to send its greetings and all good wishes to those in Hong Kong. We can only admire at a distance the growth of the Society, and what it is now achieving. This is well brought out in your very informative newsletters and journals, both of which convey a picture of liveliness, historical eagerness and relevant research. The Society was revived in 1959 with 'the object of encouraging an active interest in East Asia, and in particular China, through the medium of lectures and discussions and by publishing an annual journal. These objectives have certainly been achieved, and we are all the beneficiaries. By the nature of our distance from East Asia and our far-flung membership, the Friends' achievements in the U.K. are more modest. We are only entering our fourth year of operation and we number approximately 75 members. However, what we may lack in numbers is made up by the enthusiastic response of those who attend the quarterly meetings; members do come from all parts of the U.K., and one member comes from Belgium. This is all very encouraging and augurs well for the future. Since I last reported, the Friends' programme has continued to be held quarterly, normally at London University SOAS, preceded by lunch at Sheng's Tea House. It started with the A.G.M. in May 2000 followed by a lecture by that well-known Hong Kong personality, Anthony Lawrence. Anthony gave a very lively and personal picture about H.K. today. He informed us of the gradual physical evolutionary changes but at the same time explained that the human side was much the same as it was when he first went to Hong Kong fifty or so years ago. Interspersed with anecdotes of examples, the talk lived up to the highest expectations and the Friends would like to thank him again for taking time out in his busy U.K. annual visit. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g We were particularly fortunate in our next event, which took place in August 2001 in Salisbury, to visit the Cathedral and the Salisbury museum where we also heard a lecture by Patrick Hase on 'Traditional South China Agriculture.' To find this latter combination, i.e. Patrick in Salisbury in August and South China agricultural instruments in the Salisbury museum, may appear somewhat far-fetched; however, by the end of the fascinating and extremely well researched lecture and a visit to the museum to actually see the agricultural instruments, which formed part of the Pitts River ethnographic collection, there was no doubt that all members had experienced a day well worth it. Our sincere thanks go to Patrick for giving us his time and for educating us on a subject about which most of us knew absolutely nothing. The Friends have for some time been trying to arrange a tour to Northern France to view the World War I battlefields, and in particular the Chinese Connection, when around 100,000 Chinese labourers were brought over from the Far East to support the war effort behind the lines. A number of them died in the process and are buried in the cemeteries. For various reasons the trip has not taken place except by the inveterate few, but we were fortunate in having the next best thing, i.e. a talk by Brian Fawcett, which took place on Saturday, 1st December 2001. Brian has been researching the Chinese Labour Corps for some time and the Friends were particularly fortunate to hear the results of his research and to see a short video/film of First World War relevant events. The fruits of his labour have recently been published in the 40th volume of the Journal of the Society, and Radio 4 in the U.K. will shortly be giving a half-hour programme on the subject. And our programme did not end there. Recently, on 16th February 2002, forty-five members and guests sat down to celebrate the incoming Year of the Horse at the Joy King Lau Chinese restaurant. Not only did we welcome Dr. Patrick Hase and his wife Aileen, who were fortunately in the U.K. again, but we also had Mr. and Mrs. S. F. Bailey (Bill), who was the first Chairman of the Hong Kong Arts Centre in the 1970's and 1980's, and was very supportive of the Society when it was a Constituent Member of the Arts Centre. Now, however, we are preparing ourselves for our next far-flung visit at the end of April to take place in Cornwall, when about twenty-five members will visit the Gardens (Caerhays, Trewithen, Pine Lodge, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g Carl Crow, 1883-1945 My friends, the Chinese. London: Hamish Hamilton. 1938. Fitzgerald, C. P., 1902- Communism takes China: how the revolution went Red. London: BPC, c1971. Franck, Harry Alverson Roving through Southern China. New York: Century, c1925. Geil, William Edgar A Yankee on the Yangtze: being a narrative of a journey from Shanghai through the Central Kingdom to Burma. New York: Eaton & Mains, 1904. Gottschang, Thomas R. Swallows and settlers: the great migration from north China to Manchuria. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, c2000. Gray, John Henry China: a history of the laws, manners, and customs of the people. London: Macmillan, c1878. 2 vols. Hobart, Alice Tisdale, 1882-1967 Oil for the lamps of China. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, c1934. Ho, Pui-yin. Dian di hua dang nian: Xiang-gang gong shui yi bai wu shi nian. Xiang-gang: Shang wu yin shu guan (Xiang-gang) you xian gong si, 2001. Ho, Pui-yin Water for a barren rock: 150 years of water supply in Hong Kong; [English translator, Lui Yuen Chung]. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, c2001. Honey, W.B. (William Bowyer) The ceramic art of China and other countries of the Far East. London: Faber, c1945. xlvi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 47 Shenggong and Li Shan Shengmu. Also noted in Hainanese temples in the vicinity of Kluang are Under Altars, usually connected with Cantonese temples, though again presumably "borrowed" by Hainanese. Only two such Under Altars have been noted - both are typically at floor level and contain spirits of tamed demons unfit to be honoured with places upon the main or side altars. Finally, not too uncommon in Malaysia and Singapore where ethnic communities live cheek by jowl, a dark-skinned deity in the Hainanese temple in Jalan Pindu in Singapore was identified as General Supramaniam, placed there by a local Tamil and with the usual tolerance of Chinese devotees, though not revered by them, he has incense placed before him by passing Chinese devotees who realise and accept that he is a foreign deity and not of the Chinese pantheon. From 1949 until the late 1980s folk religion images were banned and removed from altars within China and therefore Hainanese deities have had to be researched mainly within overseas Chinese communities. To carry out the necessary research on Hainanese temples and gods it has been necessary to visit as many of the temples run by and in Hainanese communities outside China, mainly concentrated in Singapore, southern Malaysia and Cambodia. The regular visits to temples in Singapore over a period of years revealed changes within the temple community which would not have been apparent under normal circumstances. Accepting that the circumstances were unique in that the Singaporean authorities forced the resettlement of old and especially 'temporary matshed or corrugated iron' temples to the suburbs in the targeted population relocation of the sixties and seventies, a good example of the change was the resiting in 1984 of an atap hut temple, the oldest Hainanese community temple, in Lorong Ah Soo to a custom-built complex in Hougang Avenue 5. The layout of the altar images in the new Hainanese temple was unchanged as reflected in black and white photographs taken in Lorong Ah Soo in the late fifties and colour photographs taken in Hougang in 1985. The four custom-built temples, one of which is the Hainanese re-located temple, consist of a terraced row of four brick buildings, similar to two-car garages but with high ceilings and much wider than a standard garage. In the years up to the 1950s not only did the diversity of language amongst the overseas Chinese in south-east Asia [Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and Chaozhou, as well as Hainanese] impose a real barrier ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 59 in southern China. Although he is particularly remembered in the south of China as the General who conquered the Yue people [Tonkinese] in about AD 39, the Hainanese in South-east Asia regard him as one of their special heroes with his image on side altars in several Hainanese community temples in Malaysia and Sumatra. Support of such a powerful spirit of a general who symbolised courage and confidence in the comparatively newly conquered south was vital to bolster the spirits of the Chinese settlers and to counter threats from aborigines, the climate and the general misgivings of the migrants so far from the Han homelands of central and northern China. Although this was the original reason for the worship of this deity, in recent centuries it has been lost and, in general, replaced by worship for his magical efficacy in providing satisfactory solutions to daily problems. He began his career under the Xin dynasty ruler, the usurper Wang Mang but stimulated by ambition he later took up arms against him. During one campaign when briefing his generals he produced a "cloth model" by tracing out the lie of the land in a large tray of rice pointing out the routes and lines of advance his assembled generals should take. He aided Liu Xiu in re-establishing the Han dynasty by defeating the forces loyal to Wang Mang. Ma was then appointed Governor of what is now Gansu province, in the north-west, from where he led an army down to Tonkin to put down the revolt against the Chinese overlords. Ma Yuan, well known in Guangzhou for his great height and bravery as a general, was particularly renowned for his campaign in Annam where he had pacified the country and brought back to Guangzhou city a number of Tonkinese bronze drums which he had melted and cast into statues of horses. Apart from the award of the title 'The Conquering Wave' he had the honour of having his daughter joined in marriage with the heir apparent. A certain Lady Zhu headed the insurrection against the Chinese in Annam and was captured and sentenced to death. She had been stripped of her finery before execution and was dressed in her barest clothes. Ma Yuan took pity on her and gave her one of his robes to cover her bare limbs which is said to have led to the Tonkinese ladies' custom of wearing trousers and a long covering dress with wide sleeves. Despite his age he volunteered with his ardour and ferocity ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g TERAKR Bar: A XXS NAVAR 2001 * 12 9 14ÜIADAVKUGAN Charles Pinker RL. David Blur (Anne) A A Alexandra Blair' AL Andrew Blau 113 The descendants of Sir Frederick Lugard, the Pinker and Blair families, have generously agreed to present The Tribute on permanent loan to the University of Hong Kong. Members of the family attending the presentation ceremony on Friday December 14, 2001, and representing Major Richard Pinker, include (with their relationship to Sir Frederick Lugard): Mr Charles Pinker (great great nephew) Mrs David Blair (Anne) (great great niece) Miss Alexandra Blair' (great great great niece) Mr Andrew Blair (great great great nephew) 盧押在香港 Lugard in Hong Kong 1858 年 1 月 22 日 (Fort St George, Madras) 教士,他出任香港總督一職前,擔任英國 Royal Niger Company 工作的經歷,使他在 1900 年至 1906 年間出任尼日利亞高級專員。 ## 1902 年 Flora Shaw 與 Lugard 結婚 ... 旅行家、作家,曾擔任倫敦《泰晤士報》殖民地編輯。 由於 Flora 的健康問題,盧押辭去尼日利亞高級專員的工作,離開當地,並於 1907 年後接受任命為香港總督。 盧押在香港的工作及功績並不屬於本文介紹的範圍。但值得一提的是九廣鐵路通車和香港大學的成立,是他任內發生的重要事件。 Frederick John Dealtry Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger, was born of missionary parents on January 22, 1858 at Fort St George, Madras, India. By the time he arrived as Governor of Hong Kong, his work and exploits in Africa on behalf of the British Army, the British East Africa Company, the Royal Niger Company and the Colonial Office were legendary. He was High Commissioner of Nigeria from 1900 to 1906. In 1902, he married Flora Shaw, herself a great traveller and writer and Colonial Editor of The Times of London until the end of the 19th century. Because of Flora's health and her inability to be with him in his colonial posting, Lugard resigned his post and left Nigeria. However, he accepted the Governorship of Hong Kong in 1907. Lugard as perceived by the cartoonist "Spy" in Vanity Fair's "Men of the Day" series, December 19, 1895 The events which followed and Lugard's role and achievements in the life of the Colony are mostly beyond the scope of this introduction to The Tribute. They would, however, include the opening of the Kowloon-Canton Railway and the foundation of The University of Hong Kong. Miss Blair, who is the assistant foreign editor of The Times of London, continues a family association with the newspaper begun by Flora Lugard. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 142 himself, as well as the whole of their missionary activity in Asia and the Far East, including Macao, accounts for this. Sadly, as in Macao's Madre de Deus (which apparently was popularly called St. Paul's because of the Goa college and church), today only a pitiful ruin remains of this artistic and historic treasure, with merely a section of the entrance façade with its stone portal standing (Fig. 8). The entangled history of the church's abandonment and final decay need not concern us here. But conveniently for my main arguments, the small section that does survive displays an Arch of Triumph integrated to the wall. Here engaged Corinthian columns, paired and elegantly fluted, standing on bases decorated with diamond-shaped reliefs and carrying a broken entablature frame the half-circular entrance arch. Artistically and technically this feature is close to the sophistication of Italian Renaissance architecture. Since neither the famous college nor its church survives, Mário Chicó attempted to reconstruct the latter by means of drawings based on contemporary descriptions. He believed it to be the prototype for one of two types of Indo-Portuguese churches. He also convincingly argued that of the two types that of the façade of São Paulo is the closer to Serlio and Italian Renaissance architecture. In Chicó's published drawing the façade of the church is shown as having three storeys, plus a pedimented attic. The three storeys are divided into three bays by projecting pilasters with entablatures, with openings for entrances and square and round windows. There is a niche for a titular image in the attic, which is joined to the floors below by the pilasters of the middle bay and by volutes. It's an imaginative reconstruction, especially the fact that the façade has comparatively little decoration. It relies for effect on the more purely abstract lines of the design and on the main feature of its decoration, its Arch of Triumph. The artistic and symbolic potency of the motif and its application as decoration to the façades of religious architecture was one that was not actually initiated by either the architects or the religious members of the Society of Jesus in Italy, Spain, Portugal or India. Rather it was one that the Jesuits had readily accepted and were able to effectively ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 157 Other Images A salutation in St. Alfonso's Office praises the palma patientiae and the cedrus castitatis. This allusion to both cedar and palm trees derives from Ecclesiasticus, 24, 17-18. When it comes to the date palms of the second storey, it is very much a part of the stock-in-trade immaculist symbols, particularly dear to southern Spanish poets and painters and also known from early prints, all praising Mary's Immaculate Conception. But these may equally refer to the triumph of the Society of Jesus, with the canonisation of its main protagonists, Sts. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier in 1622 and the recent beatification of Francis Borgia and Luis Gonzaga. In the fourth storey or attic The Child Jesus raises his right hand and holds an empty left hand forward. The latter undoubtedly held the lost orb mentioned in the 1644 Annua. It is a pose and attribute typical of the kind of devotional religious image known as an infant Salvator Mundi, that is, Infant Jesus Saviour of the World. The type of "Menino Jesus" as Salvator Mundi was well disseminated in Portuguese colonies in the East during the seventeenth-century, as a large number of Indo-Portuguese and Chinese ivory statuettes, usually nude, tend to confirm. Here the Child Jesus is framed by reliefs of angels displaying the Arma Christi, or symbols of Christ's suffering on the Cross. According to Christian theology, the ironically named arma are the “weapons” Christ used in his earthly battle against evil in order to redeem humankind. They were profoundly mystical symbols popularised in devotional literature and images since Medieval times in Europe. The pediment is decorated with the large bronze of the Holy Spirit, originally gilded and emerging from rays, with four stars framing it. Next to it are square slabs of the sun and moon, with which the iconography of the main image of the Assumption is finally brought to full completion. The dove of the Holy Spirit hovers over both Mother and Child with wings far outspread in an image that seems uncannily like a visual illustration of the Holy Spirit in the opening lines of John Milton's Paradise Lost. As bronze sculpture it is impressive enough today; with its original gilding it must have appeared awe-inspiring to the citizens of Macao and to seventeenth-century and later visitors before the fire. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 163 - Mario T. Chico. "Algumas observações acerca da arquitectura da Companhia de Jesus no distrito de Goa: igrejas, fachada, planta e espaço interior", Garcia de Orta. Lisboa, número especial 1956, pp.257-72. See Professor Giorgio Bonsanti's elucidating article dealing mainly with St. Francis Xavier's mausoleum in the Bom Jesus, published in Velha Goa, exhibition catalogue of A. Martinelli's photos. Fundação Oriente, Macao. September 15, 2000. (Unnumbered). However, vid. D.Kowal, op. cit., p. 488, who states the Jesuit Domingo Fernandes, aided by J. Simão were architects of Bom Jesus. Also Documenta Indica, **For Charles Borromeo's Instructions, see E.C. Voelker, “Charles Borromeo's Instructiones Fabricae et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae, 1577. A Translation with Commentary and Analysis". Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1977. "L.E. McCall. "Early Jesuit Art in the Far East". Artibus Asiae, XI. Ancona, 1948. pp. 62-9. Y. Okamoto, The Namban Art of Japan, (translation by R.K. Jones of Namban Bijutsu. Tokyo, 1965), Weatherhill/Heibonsha, New York-Tokyo, 1972, pp. 99-103. See also more recently, Gauvin Bailey. "The Art of the Jesuit Missions in Japan in the Age of St. Francis Xavier and Alessandro Valignano”. lecture in the 450th Anniversary of St. Francis Xavier's Arrival in Japan. International Symposium '98, Sophia University 1998, pp.7-22. "Guillen-Nuñez, C., "Retablo and Imafronte: A Study of the Influence of the Retable on the Church-façade in Mexico and Peru", (unpublished M.A. dissertation), University of Penn., 1973. "H. Rodriguez-Camilloni. "The Retablo-Façade as Transparency: A Study of the Frontispiece of San Francisco, Lima", in Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, 62, Mexico, 1991, pp. 111-22. Sylvie Deswarte, "Francisco de Hollanda et les Etudes Vitruviennes en Italie”, in A Introdução da Arte da Renascenca na Península Iberica, Coimbra, 1981, pp. 254-80. * Hugo-Brunt, op. cit., p. 11. Kubler and Soria, op. cit., p. 24. See Hugo-Brunt, op. cit., p.13, note 24. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 191 Closer to the ground The call came, loud and clear, and 30 minutes later we were off, bound for the BAe 146 aircraft, a reassuring piece of British engineering, and the flight to Paro. Some Bangkok to Paro flights route via Dhaka in Bangladesh, but most call in at Calcutta. When, during my less-than-extensive research, I had seen ‘Kolkata' on the itinerary I presumed it was somewhere in Bhutan. But like Mumbai and Yangon, Kolkata is modern-speak for an old familiar name. I wonder if it will catch on? The leg from Calcutta (obviously didn't catch on with me) to Paro was just over an hour—long enough to serve a boxed meal and deliver a warning to all passengers. The pilot came on the overhead speakers to tell us that the approach to Paro is quite unusual. 'Do not worry if you appear to be closer to the ground than normal. This is quite standard.' I thought to myself: 'This chap doesn't realise that he is dealing with 27 people who have done many landings at Kai Tak.' But, loyal as I am to all things Hong Kong, I have to say that the approach to Paro is a bit more hairy than Kai Tak used to be. It is rather like flying into Happy Valley as far as the foot of Blue Pool Road, doing a u-turn, and then landing on Queen's Road East using a runway about one-quarter as wide as Kai Tak's was. On the walk across the tarmac to the terminal building I was able to talk to the pilot and congratulate him on such a challenging landing. He told me that he had been with his country's national carrier, Druk Air, for thirteen years, always flying 146s. In fact he started on them after only 250 hours experience. 250 hours! Even I have 350 hours of flying experience—but I am very happy to leave such interesting landings to him, full load of passengers and fuel and all. A pleasant surprise The temperature on arrival was a pleasant surprise. On the plane, the pilot had initially reported -5°C, and then -2°C and just before landing +5°C. Obviously things warm up pretty quickly when the sun comes out. And it was certainly out when we arrived—clear blue skies and what felt like 15-20°C, although noticeably cooler in the shade. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 241 A REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENT OF CEMETERIES IN HONG KONG: 1841-1950 KO TIM-KEUNG Hong Kong had been claimed for the British Crown even before the First Opium War (1839-42) was formally brought to an end. A naval party under Sir Gordon Bremer landed on the island on 26th January 1841. A form of government was organized and a chief magistrate and a harbour-master appointed, and in June the first land sale took place to create the impression of permanency. The port was declared a free port, and merchants, both foreign and Chinese, were encouraged to settle and trade there. However, little significant building followed, the main deterrent being the island's insalubrity and a high death rate from 'Hong Kong Fever.' Hong Kong, quite unexpectedly, became the last resting place of many of these early settlers and troops. The Burial Ground in Wan Chai The first years in Hong Kong had a distressing aspect for the British, particularly its army, because of disease. The setting up of the first barrack areas along the north coast of the island led to severe epidemics of fever among the troops. 183 of them had died in 1841. Consequently, a burial ground for the dead was urgently needed. A notice was proclaimed in August 1841: A piece of land to the eastward of Cantonment Hill having been allocated by Government as the ground for the burial of the dead of Europeans and others, Notice is hereby given that persons burying their dead in any other unauthorised place will be treated as trespassers. Jno. F. Mylius, Land Officer, Hong Kong 30th August 1841. A 19th-century publication also records: "Deaths now [1841] became frequent occurrences also among the European community; hospitals had to be hastily constructed, and the first cemetery (near the present St. Francis' Chapel, above Queen's Road East) began to fill..." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 248 The Chinese Burial Ground having become offensive in consequence of the corpses being so close to the surface it was found necessary to spread a quantity of quick lime over the whole area at a cost of £20.16s this was provided for by Requisition 5 of 1856. In was in the same year that an ordinance was passed to regulate Chinese Burials, and to prevent certain Nuisances, within the Colony of Hongkong. This Ordinance 12 of 1856 became the first step taken by the government to regulate Chinese burials by the establishment of special Chinese cemeteries. In addition to regulating the burial grounds, due to the 'nuisances' described above, the ordinance also stated that 'a Grave of less than Five Feet in depth from the ordinary surface of the ground to the uppermost side of the Corpse or Coffin therein deposed, shall for every such Offence forfeit and pay a sum not exceeding Fifty Dollars, nor less than Five Dollars.' 58. However, it was only fifteen years later in 1871 that the first designated Chinese burial ground was created, which was located in Kowloon. The plot of land was ‘situated about one Quarter of a mile to the North-east of the Village of Yau-ma-Tee.' It became the only lawful place for the Chinese inhabitants of British Kowloon to inter their dead until the establishment of another cemetery in 1885. But no designated Chinese burial ground on the island has so far been traced prior to this announcement. The first Chinese cemetery on the island was selected and appointed in 1882, at Mount Davis ‘measuring on the North thereof 40 feet, on the South thereof 40 feet, on the East thereof 60 feet, and on the West thereof 60 feet.”59 In 1882, the first two cemeteries for Chinese Christians were authorized. The first one was located ‘on the Eastern slope of the Shaukiwan Hills, on a contour line about 300 feet above the level of the sea, marked by four boundary stones and measuring on the North thereof 200 feet, on the South thereof 200 feet, on the East thereof 400 feet, and on the West thereof 400 feet." The second one was on the west side of the island, ‘on the Western slope of the Hills below the Pokfulam Road, marked by five boundary stones, and bounded on the North by Mount Davis on the South by Crown Land, on the East by the Pokfulam Road, and on the West by the Sea (Sandy Bay) high water mark, and containing about 43 acres. 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 250 burial ground. Inland Lot 899, on the east by the Pokfulam Road, and West by Cliff facing the Sea, measuring on the North, 4,800 feet, South-West, 3,500 feet, West, 5,100 feet. 69 CAROLINE HILL. Situated on the South side of the Caroline Hill Road and to the South of Caroline Hill, bordered on the North by a Public Road, 400 feet, South, 612 feet, East, 1,275 feet, West, 1,100 feet. In the 1890s, a Eurasian cemetery, generally known as Ho Tung Cemetery before the Second World War and later renamed 'Chiu Yuen Cemetery,' was erected in Mount Davis, with the first grave dated to December 1892.70 The Plague Cemeteries and Trenches The first outbreak of bubonic plague in Hong Kong occurred in May 1894. In less than a month, more than two thousand persons had died. On 6 June, Father Piazzoli, the pro-vicar, wrote: The plague is spreading rapidly with 100 dead each day, though only a section of the Chinese city is infected. The tragedy is terrible. There are streets completely empty: it is estimated that about 40 thousand Chinese have left the island. The harbour too is deserted, the large ships sail at large; the trade is dead and the most horrible misery is growing..." From 1896 on, the plague became almost an annual recurrence. Over the period 1894-1901, about 8,600 people succumbed to the disease.72 Two plague cemeteries were designated at Kennedy Town and Cheung Sha Wan in 1901.74 In addition, a section of ‘Kau Pui Loong Cemetery' (see below) was also referred to as 'Plague Trench'75 (疫症); which was also the case of 'Kai Lung Wan East Cemetery' (also see below).76 Indian / Hindu Cemeteries in Kowloon In 1900, a Hindu Cemetery was authorized in Kowloon, this might have been the result of the plague, as many Indian troops were among the victims of this epidemic disease. This Hindu Cemetery was described as: Page 300 Page 301 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 255 cemetery set apart for the burial of Christians.123 In the end the governor, Sir Frederick Lugard, admitted that the Colonial Cemetery was no longer a Protestant cemetery. The Japanese burials were to continue right up to the Second World War period, and even after the war125 124 Further Development of Cemeteries before the Second World War In 1914, a Chinese cemetery, 'Ap Lei Chau Cemetery' which contained an area of 4 acres, was authorized.26 A nearby cemetery, 'Shum Wan Cemetery,' was mentioned in several government notices127 in the 1920s, however, the early history of this cemetery is not known. In 1938, a government notice authorized ‘a cemetery or urn cemetery' in Shum Wan which was to be known as 'Shum Wan Cemetery128'. The piece land contained about 8.68 acres. It is not certain if the two Shum Wan Cemeteries were actually the same cemetery. In 1919 a Chinese Christian cemetery was appointed, which was described as: An area adjoining New Kowloon Inland Lot No.5 measuring approximately on the North side 140'0" and 135'0," on the East side 387'0," on the South side 210’0," and on the West side 290'0" and 120'0," and containing in the whole 57,585 square feet or thereabouts.129 Two years later (1921), a cemetery in Ho Man Tin was authorized which was 'to be known as the Kowloon Cemeteries situate and being near Ho-min-tin in Kowloon in the Colony of Hongkong containing altogether an area of about 97 acres. A cemetery was to be added to list of Chinese Christian cemeteries in 1924, when the 'Christian Chinese Cemetery, Stanley,' 'adjoining the north-west boundary of the Stanley Cemetery, having an area of about 34650 square feet,'13 was authorized. In 1928, a cemetery for the Little Sisters of the Poor (†4) only and to be known as New Kowloon Cemetery No.2, the piece of land containing approximately 8850 sq. ft. situated at Ngau Shi Wan, on the north side of lot 1907, Survey District II, was appointed. A home for the aged was also constructed near the cemetery. In the same year, a Christian Cemetery was also founded in Castle Peak.133 ⚫132 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 258 were entrusted to a Board of Management, comprised mainly of the leading Chinese members in the community. The location of the cemetery, finally authorized in 1941, was described as 'a piece of land at Tsun Wan in the New Territories of Hong Kong known as Lot No.262 Demarcation District No.446'.154 'New Kowloon Cemetery No.7,' situated at Hammer Hill, was also authorized in 1935.155 Three years later, in 1938, an urn cemetery, known as 'Hammer Hill Urn Cemetery,' containing about 90 acres and situated at Hammer Hill, was approved.156 Another extension of New Kowloon Cemetery No.7 was authorized in 1941, which was described as 'that piece of land containing about 16 acres situate to the east of the said cemetery and having Anderson Road as its western boundary.'157 Just before the Japanese invasion, a new Catholic cemetery, 'New Kowloon I.L. No.2662 (Roman Catholic) Cemetery,'158 had been erected near Piper's Hill in Cheung Sha Wan; however, no information is found regarding its setting up,159 though a 1947 government notice stated: It is the intention of the Government to exhume all unauthorised graves in the Roman Catholic Cemetery, known as New Kowloon Inland Lot No.2662, Cheung Sha Wan, in which bodies were buried during the war period. The exhumation will commence on 1st February 1948. The remains of those known to have been of the Roman Catholic Faith will be reburied in the same cemetery, and the remains of those known to have been non-Catholic will be removed to authorised urn cemeteries for reburial unless applications for private reburial are received in the meantime...160 The Japanese Occupation Period (1941-1945) Despite the huge loss of lives during the Japanese invasion and the subsequent occupation period,161 no cemetery of a long-term nature was established between 1942 and 1945. However, a number of 'War Emergency Cemeteries' were temporarily in use; they were: 1. Hong Kong No.1 (Emergency) Cemetery, at the Hong Kong University Playing Field in Pokfulam.162 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 259 2. Hong Kong No.2A, piece of Botanical and Forestry Department ground at the junction of Kennedy Road and Garden Road 163 3. Hong Kong No.2B, piece of Botanical and Forestry Department ground at junction of Upper Albert Road and Albany Road, 164 4. Old Government Civil Hospital Site 165 (2,631), open space behind the Old Government Civil Hospital. 166 5. Queen Mary Hospital Site (101), piece of ground on the east side of Pokfulam Road near the Maison de Nazareth. 167 6. Aberdeen Site (98), on the north side of Island Road, 100 yards from the Aberdeen Industrial School, 169 7. Island Road, 170 Shaukiwan Site (363), slopes on side of Island Road near its junction with Shaukiwan Road. 171 Figures in bracket show the number of grave exhumations for reburial between April 1948 and March 1949. 172 The remains in these emergency cemeteries were reburied in the New Kowloon Cemetery No.8 (Diamond Hill Urn Cemetery). Early Post-War Cemeteries The first cemetery authorized after the Second World War in 1947 was a military cemetery for the burial of the servicemen who had died in the war. It was initially known as the 'Sai Wan Military Cemetery,' 173 which contained about 5.71 acres, situated East of Chai Wan Cemetery 174 and the extension thereof and to the North of the road serving Sai Wan and Cape Collinson in the Colony of Hong Kong.' 175 This was followed by a 'Prisons Cemetery' in the same year, which was 'being an enclosure of about 5,000 square feet lying 250 yards to the South of St. Stephen's College Preparatory School Building at Stanley,' 176 It was recorded that as early as 1940, the government had already intended to transfer the government cemeteries for Chinese from the urban area to new sites in the New Territories. However, due to the... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 265 Sayer, S.R. (1980). HONG KONG 1841 - 1862: BIRTH, ADOLESCENCE AND COMING OF AGE. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, p. 117. 7 Eitel, E.J. (1895). EUROPE IN CHINA: THE HISTORY OF HONGKONG FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE YEAR 1882. Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, p. 175. 3 Ticozzi, Sergio (1997). HISTORICAL DOCUMENT OF THE HONG KONG CATHOLIC CHURCH. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives, p. 13. 9 Ibid. 10 Hawkins, R.S. (1968). Far East Outpost, The Royal Engineers Journal Vol. LXXXII, p. 41. 11 Endacott, G.B. (1988). A HISTORY OF HONG KONG. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, p. 67. 12 Oxley, p. 28. 13 For details of some of the military graves, see Bard, Solomon (1997), Garrison Memorials in Hong Kong: Some Graves and Monuments at Happy Valley, The Antiquities and Monuments Office Occasional Paper No.4. Hong Kong: The Antiquities and Monuments Office. 14 Illustrated London News, 8 November 1845. 15 Smith, Carl T. (1985). NOTES FOR A VISIT TO THE GOVERNMENT CEMETERY AT HAPPY VALLEY, The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 25, pp. 17-18. Also see the same author's work, A SENSE OF HISTORY: Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (1995), Hong Kong: Hong Kong Education Publishing Co, pp. 113-114. 16 Wong Nai Chung Valley was at first intended by British merchants and the Land Officer and Colonial Engineer A.T. Gordon for the principal business centre, but the project was abandoned as the valley was found to be unhealthy. See Eitel, p. 167 and Endacott, p. 45. 17 A list of these graves and monuments can be found in HKGG Notification of 2nd Page 315 Page 316 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 271 th see HKGG Notification 691 of 17 August 1906. A certain number of graves in the cemetery were ordered to be removed in 1914, see HKGG Notices 449 of 13 November 1914. Another removal of graves was ordered in 1930 for 'the proper laying out of such area in connection with the Aberdeen Waterwork Scheme,' see HKGG Notice 539 of 29th August 1930. Removal of all graves and urns in this cemetery was finally ordered in 1949, see HKGG Notice 936 of 30th September 1949. 7 69 This cemetery was later referred to as in Chinese, see HKGG Notice 580 of 26th November 1920. In 1948, all graves and urns, other than those in 'Section D,' were ordered to be removed, see HKGG Notice 1071 of 19th November 1948. 70 Information supplied by the Rev. Carl T. Smith. Other references in regard to the erection of this cemetery have not been found yet. 71 Ticozzi, pp. 102-103. 72 Pryor, E.G. (1975). The Great Plague of Hong Kong (1894), The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol.15, p. 64. 73 Apart from this plague cemetery, a 1907 War Office map kept at the PRO at Kew (WO78/5332) also shows a 'Plague burial ground (1894)' at Sandy Bay, at about the site of the present Duke of Kent Children's Hospital. In 1948, the removal of all bodies and remains of bodies in 'Kennedy Town Cemetery' was ordered, it is not certain if this cemetery was the same plague cemetery, see HKGG Notice 700 of 30th July 1948. st 74 HKGG Notification 473 of 31 August 1901. On the eastern edge of St. Raphael's Catholic Cemetery in Cheung Sha Wan, there is a large charitable grave dating back to 1894, the year of the Great Plague, erected by the Tung Wah Hospital. This grave may be associated with the plague cemetery, 75 HKGG Notice 164 of 26th March 1926. 76 HKGG Notice 555 of 8th October 1926. 77 HKGG Notification 466 of 15th September 1900. 78 Tai Shek Ku was generally referred to an area to the north-east of the old Ho ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 290 mineral oil with rotating apparatus floating on mercury. This method for rotating lights by floating the apparatus on a bath of mercury, which eliminated friction and permitted revolutions as frequent as every 15 seconds, was invented in 1890. The technique led to a system of identifying lighthouses by the pattern of intervals of light and darkness. Waglan Light was one of only two such modern pieces of equipment introduced and installed in Asian waters at that time. The other one was installed on the Lao-t'ich-shan Light at Dairen. The British, after taking Waglan over, installed a diaphone fog signal. During its eight-year history as a Chinese light, no fewer than 222 fog-signal guns were fired during the month of April 1894. The fury of the sea at this spot during typhoons is notorious. In 1896, waves flooded the fresh water tanks and completely carried away the derrick used for landing stores, while the spray reached the lantern, 225 feet above high water, pitting the panes with sand and gravel. 24 The cast iron tower is 52 feet high in the shape of a cone. It is painted white with a red upper portion. During the Second World War Waglan Lighthouse was extensively damaged by bombing. Repairs took place after 1945. It has been unmanned since August 1989. Waglan Lighthouse acts not only as a navigation aid but also as an outpost where weather information on the eastern corner of the territory is collected and fed to the Hong Kong Observatory, Tang Lung Chau Lighthouse Situated on Tang Lung Chau, a small island to the west of Hong Kong Island, Tang Lung Chau Lighthouse is also commonly known as Kap Sing Lighthouse. It was put into service on 29th April 1912. It has a skeletal steel tower, 11.8 metres high, with a white lantern on top. The steel tower and light apparatus were obtained from England. Skeleton structures are normally used for supporting lights on soft or insecure bottoms - such as on sandbanks, coral reefs and shoals. The brick building which was the light keeper's house has a bedroom, a kitchen, a latrine and a storeroom. Rainwater was collected from the roof and diverted into an underground tank as there was no spring or fresh water supply on the island. The lighthouse is now unmanned and automated. Together with Waglan, this lighthouse was declared a historical structure on 29th December 2000. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 341 NEXUS OF VILLAGES BY UNICORN DANCING TEAMS CHIU HANG SHI It was chilly, cloudy and rainy on Sunday, January 27, 2002 in Hoi Pui Tsuen, Pat Heung. This village is inhabited by the Fan, the Cheung and the Kan. This area was quite inaccessible before the construction of the Tai Lam Tunnel and recently the West Rail Station. Some 60 people, mainly young men and some leaders of the village, have been gathered in front of the village office since 2:00pm in a jovial manner. Inside the village office, a temporary altar was set up facing the entrance of the building with a tablet of hand-written characters on it. Some seven unicorn dancing teams arrived by 5:00pm. All teams were first greeted by the unicorn team of the host village and then each team proceeded to the two ancestral halls (Fan's and Cheung's) to pay tribute to the ancestors. A banquet of basin meal of 120 tables was served in the evening. The organizer of this celebration was Nam Shing Tong. This celebration has been held every year after the Handover. The reason for doing so was that this Tong has had some extra money left every year. At first one might have no idea why unicorn dancing teams from some apparently unrelated areas would be invited to come. 1. Yuen Long, well, it is reasonable to have a team from Yuen Long. Hoi Pui Tsuen is in Yuen Long, 2. Shatin, it is quite the other part of the Territory, and 3. Sai Kung, it is obviously very far away. Later, I was enlightened by being told that they were from the same instructor, Master So. The unicorn dancing team from Sai Kung was particularly able to draw one's attention - it was known as Pak Kei Lun (Northern unicorn), which was black, as different from the unicorns commonly seen in Hong Kong, which were bright and colourful. The Pak Kei Lun had two small horns, which might, ironically, make it no longer qualified to be a unicorn, in a Western sense. The ordinary unicorn had five colour strips around the neck: red, yellow, blue, white and black, resembling the five directions: south, centre, east, west and north. Page 390 Page 391 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 361 The Mediterranean and Tropical biomes are not planted in order to try to recreate sections of those floras in toto, but more to provide examples for the message, which is an understanding of the importance of biodiversity. And unlike the other gardens where plants are grown to perform at their best, Eden grows them to perform "to type"; e.g. rhododendrons are grown on the rather scrubby soil they would have in the wild, which in Cornwall of all places provides a great contrast in results and was interesting to us in particular. However, as Tim Smit himself has admitted, conditions in the biomes are still not "real": tropical trees are growing far faster and with smaller root systems, for lack of any wind or storms, for instance. And at the moment, insects are excluded, so that the staff must actually play God, and pollinate plants by hand. If our guide was typical, the staff at Eden are genuinely convinced of the value of their work: he was hugely enthusiastic, (and rather frighteningly asked if he could read my notes, so that he could see which parts of his tour had come across best) and we were booked for the full tour, encompassing both biomes. Eden is the biggest event in Cornwall, and suffers a little from its success in that it is rather impersonal, but it is hugely impressive and very well organised. Maggie, who knows its creator Tim Smit, said that she felt that they were learning as they went along, and that having established an educational base they may move on now to more academic research in order to ensure the project's long-term interest and value. Some research is already carried out, particularly into the plant diversity of the Oceanic islands, and Eden also propagates examples of rare plants, such as Impatiens gordonii, of which only 250 examples remain in the wild, in the Seychelles. A more unexpected aspect of Eden was the amount of modern sculpture installed about the site. In the Humid Tropics biome, a "shimenawa" has been hung above the rice exhibit area by two Japanese artists: a huge swag of rice straw signifying a sacred space in the Shinto religion. Tregrehan is run by Tom Hudson, himself a modern-day plant collector, though as a native New Zealander, his collecting comes not only from the Far East, but much of the southern hemisphere as well. At first glance it is a very traditional landscape of walled gardens and woodland walks, but one soon descends into a tree-shaded valley where the garden makes a radical departure into planting from the landmasses ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 371 descriptions of it paint a vivid picture in inland China, of towns, villages, farming and husbandry at the end of the eighteenth century and put life to the many pictures and engravings of that period. It was on this inland journey that Macartney was able to collect his tea plants. He says in his own words: I must not omit that the Viceroy (they had been joined by the Viceroy from Canton) observing our curiosity about everything relative to natural history, allowed us to collect seeds and fossils as we came along, and to take up several tea plants in a growing state with large balls of earth adhering to them, which tea plants I flatter myself I shall be able to transmit to Bengal, where I have no doubt that by the spirit of patriotism of its Government an effective cultivation of this valuable shrub will be undertaken and pursued with success. No doubt the hard balls of earth were wrapped in the same casings of matting in which plants arrive from China to this day. So far as opium is concerned, rather oddly, I cannot find that it came up in conversation at all although by then the illicit trade was well established and its use had been banned by Imperial edict some sixty years before. Dr. Dinwiddie, who had accompanied the Embassy to Peking, took the plants to India on Jackall, together with tallow and varnish plants as well as some silkworm eggs, all of which were delivered to Dr. Roxburgh, superintendent of the East India Company's botanical gardens in Calcutta. Some years later indigenous tea plants were discovered growing in Assam and it is tea from these which seems more like the tea that we are now accustomed to drink. Whether there was any hybridisation between the two species I cannot say. Certainly Chinese tea retains its distinctive characteristics. The journal of the Embassy's adventures in China is a fascinating and extraordinarily detailed account and description of a way of life and scenery which has largely disappeared. Present day Chengde is a shadow of the Jehol described by Macartney with pagodas, temples ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 380 the gunpowder store, on one of the uppermost platforms. (Figure 4) Today it is kept locked, but is no doubt empty. Photographs from about 1900 show there was another building alongside the fort. This has been demolished to make room for the road that now skirts this side of Taipa. Reclamation was instigated to provide for a pier which is now situated besides the Fort. Today the land in front has been filled in and a pleasant garden occupies the area. (Figure 5) On the slope at the side of the fort is a memorial to the victims of an explosion on the frigate D. Maria II in 1850. This is inscribed A MEMORIA DAS VICTIMAS EXPLOSAO DA FRAGATA D. MARIA II EM 1850. ERECTO EM 1880. It is a sad reminder of the dangers to which seafarers were exposed in those days. Security of Taipa Island was eventually taken over by the police and the fort was used as a police station until 2000. It is now a base for the Scout Association of Macau. Its continued official use has meant that there has been no pressure to change the facilities and there are no signs of any major modifications to them. A Nineteenth Century Cannon Although there are a number of old cannon within the fort, most have been placed there in recent times. However, an original one, dating almost from the time of the fort's construction, is at the front corner nearest to the pier. This gun is an interesting example from the middle of the nineteenth century, a period of great change in the design of cannon. Similar guns quickly became obsolete and were replaced, so it is very unusual to find such a piece still in place, complete with the original mounting3. Figures 5 and 6 show the cannon, still pointing out across the straight between Taipa and the island belonging to mainland China. The cannon is marked 'C.A. & Co. Boston,' and dated 1855. The maker was Cyrus Alger and Company, a firm founded in the U.S.A. in 1809. Their foundry was on Dorchester Avenue, Boston and they supplied the United States with cannon balls in the war of 1812 and later in the Civil War. They made both cast bronze and cast iron cannon, the basic alternatives for cannon up till the middle of the nineteenth ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 392 Ms. Han did not practice medicine in China in the 1950s or at any other time * Ms. Leon Comber was a superintendent (not assistant superintendent) with the Malayan police, and acted as assistant commissioner On the morning of Sunday, 25 June, 1950, communist forces from North Korea crossed the border into South Korea. The next day, on 26 June, President Harry S. Truman ordered American air and naval forces to go to the assistance of South Korea, and Clement Attlee in the House of Commons expressed support for Mr. Truman's actions. On 27 June, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution recommending that all members of the UN furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to meet the armed attack.' The Korean War had begun. The unexpected outbreak of the Korean War took all newspapers by surprise but The Times had Ian Ernest McLeavy Morrison, a member of its staff, in the Far East at that time. By August of that year he would be dead. Born in Beijing on 31 May 1913, he was the son of the famous Australian journalist, Dr. George Ernest Morrison (4 February 1862-29 May 1920) and a New Zealander Jennie Wark Robin (1889 – 20 June 1923), Dr. Morrison's former secretary who he had married in 1912. Dr. Morrison was known as "China Morrison" and was himself a correspondent for The Times during 1897-1912 and later political adviser to the Chinese Government. His brother, Alastair Gwynne Morrison was born on 24 August 1915. He ultimately joined the Diplomatic Dr. Morrison and his three sons, Ian, Colin and Alastair, 1917, (Mitchell Library) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 395 correspondent for The Times in southeast Asia, having previously supplied articles to the paper on a freelance basis. One of the last to escape the invading Japanese, he reported the retreat along the Malay Peninsula and the last stand and surrender of the British garrison in Singapore on 15 February, 1942. After Singapore, Mr. Morrison went to Java before following the campaigns in the South West Pacific under General MacArthur, and later in Southeast Asia under Admiral Mountbatten. Mr. Morrison was a courageous correspondent who never thought twice about entering a dangerous situation to get a good story. During the Second World War he spent a lot of time reporting from the front and shared the soldiers' life in the jungle. He regularly hitch-hiked on Australian or American army transport planes in order to follow the action and provide authentic accounts of the fighting with the Japanese. He often came close to death. In late November 1942 he was slightly injured during an air raid on the Buna front in Papua, and in December 1943 he was involved in a plane crash which resulted in head wounds and fractured vertebrae. This is how he telegraphed the paper: 'Regret involved in airplane accident enroute obtain eyewitness operational full stop hospitalised injuries seriouser than yestertime hope recover soon Dickson Brown newschronicler kindly consented cover next three days thereafter Curthoys sorry disappoint you good story - Morrison' His injuries on that occasion kept him out of action until July 1944, when he returned to cover the South East Area Command. He was not out of trouble for long. On 10 December 1945, while reporting from Batavia (now Jakarta) covering a local campaign he was again wounded and cabled the paper: 'Left hospital today. Thumb, in which fragments of Dutch bullet are lodged, will take at least a fortnight to Ian Morrison and family, circa 1950 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 402 By July 15, the 24th Division was forced back on Taejon, sixty miles below Osan, where it initially took position along the Kum River above the town. Clumps of South Korean troops by then were strung out west and east of the division to help delay the North Koreans. While pushing the 24th Division below Taejon, the main North Korean force split, one division moving south to the coast, then turning east along the lower coastline. The remainder of the force continued southeast beyond Taejon toward Taegu. Southward advances by the secondary attack forces in the central and eastern sectors matched the main thrust, all clearly aimed to converge on Pusan. North Korean supply lines grew long in the advance, and less and less tenable under heavy United Nations Command (UNC) air attacks. The U.S. Far Eastern Air Force meanwhile achieved air superiority, indeed air supremacy, and UNC warships wiped out North Korean naval craft. Alarmed by the rapid loss of ground, Walker ordered a stand along a 140-mile line arching from the Korea Strait to the Sea of Japan west and north of Pusan. His U.S. divisions occupied the western arc, basing their position on the Naktong River. South Korean forces, reorganized by American military advisers into two corps headquarters and five divisions, defended the northern segment. A long line and few troops kept positions thin in this **Pusan Perimeter**. This line was, essentially, the front on August 12, the day that Mr. Morrison was killed. Mr. Morrison's movements in Korea before his death are unknown. Seoul had fallen several days before his arrival, so he would have been forced to arrive in the south of the country, perhaps at Taegu. One assumes he spent the next five weeks, or so, behind the retreating UNC frontline. "Morrison, a Daily Telegraph correspondent, and a great friend of mine, Uni Nair (sic), acting as a UN observer, were all killed together. I have always been convinced that Nair probably got them all into trouble. He was notably fearless. While with the Indian army in Italy during WW2, as a PR officer, he thoroughly enjoyed taking visitors into particularly dangerous sectors where their jeep attracted hostile fire. Towards the end of the war, in Burma, he volunteered without training to jump with paratroops in the drop on the outskirts of Rangoon. 'Nair was fond of palm reading. My own, that I would reach a ripe old age, turned out pretty true. But if we asked Uni what sort of future he read in his own palm he always said, after a pause, “A short life and a merry one.”" (Russell Spurr -- personal communication with the author) Page 450 Page 451 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 406 OBJECTIVE REACHED This evening the Eighth Army statement reports that the 35th Regiment of the American task force operating in the south has occupied the high ground east of Chinju, which was the objective of the limited counter-attack launched on Monday. There are reports that Chinju is being evacuated. The Marines have simultaneously occupied the town of Kosong, 17 miles south-west of Masan, against strong North Korean resistance. Pockets of bypassed North Koreans are still giving trouble and are being steadily cleaned up. This is some of the most encouraging news of the campaign to date, and shows that where numbers are not too desperate the American troops are more than a match for their opponents. It has to be seen, however, in relation to the complete picture. The statement also reports that the North Korean bridgehead just north of Waegwan, which, although resolutely attacked and reduced in size by the South Korean 1st Division, was never finally liquidated, is again being expanded. The North Koreans have again brought tanks into the bridgehead, which American pilots today attacked with unknown results. The pilots report that the North Koreans have built a causeway of sandbags, across the river about 18in. under water (a favourite engineering practice of the Russians in the last war) which is difficult for aircraft to knock out. In spite of continued American counter-attacking no progress has been made in reducing the North Korean bridgehead in the loop of the Naktong about 30 miles south of Waegwan. A delayed message from our Special Correspondent in Korea is on page 3. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 can be accessed more easily by the public. The work of putting all this material onto CD and entered into the library is likely to take some time, but I hope that most of the work will be complete by this time next year. Keep your eyes on the Newsletter for information on these developments as they are achieved! The Society has been successful over the last year in attracting donations to the library of a significant number of important books on Hong Kong and the Far East, I would like to recommend this to you. Should any of you have books no longer of interest, please consider donating them to us. The executors of several recently deceased Members have chosen to donate some of their holdings of books on Hong Kong: this is also a practice which I would like to recommend to you all! Members should bear in mind that the library would be particularly interested in donations of books which may be seen as "out-of-date" but which would nevertheless have a historical interest - commercial reports, Government papers and so forth would certainly be of interest to us! Friends of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong, in the United Kingdom Members are, I am sure, well aware of the existence of the Friends in the United Kingdom. This body allows Members moving from Hong Kong to the United Kingdom to continue their interests in the culture and history of the Hong Kong area, as well as providing a social venue where they can continue to meet up with old friends who, like them, have moved from Hong Kong to the United Kingdom. I and my predecessors have, in the last several Annual General Meetings, urged all Members leaving Hong Kong for the United Kingdom to join the Friends, and I do so again now. As to what the Friends do, I will shortly read an Annual Report on their activities sent to us by the Chairman of the Friends, Mr David Gilkes. Conclusion I would like to conclude this Report by thanking all Members of the Society in general, and all Members of Council in particular, for their support of the Society during this past year, and for their friendliness and helpfulness to me personally at all times. I would also xxix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 1 ARTICLES THE TRANSFER OF THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS: A REVISIONIST APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF COLONIAL LAW AND ADMINISTRATION ANDREW ABRAHAM [Hon. Ed. - The Straits Settlements was a former British crown colony on the Strait of Malacca, comprising four trade centres, Penang, Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan, established or taken over by the British East India Company. The British settlement at Penang was founded in 1786, at Singapore in 1819; Malacca, occupied by the British during the Napoleonic Wars, was transferred to the East India Company in 1824. The three territories were established as a crown colony in 1867. Labuan, which became part of Singapore Settlement in 1907, was constituted a fourth separate settlement in 1912. The Straits colony, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, was broken up in 1946, when Singapore became a separate crown colony. Singapore attained full internal self-government in 1959, became a part of Malaysia in 1963, and became an independent republic in 1965. Labuan was incorporated in North Borneo (later Sabah) in 1946, which in turn became a part of Malaysia in 1963. Penang and Malacca were included in the Malayan Union in 1945, the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and Malaysia in 1963.] Introduction The Straits Settlements were transferred in 18671 to the Colonial Office's administration due to the dissatisfaction of the European merchants with the Indian government's rule. Their grievances were cited in a petition in 1857, the most contentious of which cover complaints of the East India Company's (EIC) attempts to introduce measures damaging to trade, problems with piracy and convicts, and failure of the Indian government to build up an influence in the Malay peninsula. However, a study of the history of the Straits Settlements shows evidence of a booming economy, many cases of intervention by the EIC in the affairs of the Malay states, and issues such as those concerning piracy, convicts and currency more or less resolved. Furthermore, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 25 225 Cady, John F, 1964, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development, McGraw Hill, New York Cameron, J. (1865) 1965, Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India, Kuala Lumpur Campbell, Persia Cranford, 1923, Chinese Coolie Emigration to Countries within the British Empire, PS King & Son, London Cavenagh, O, 1844, Reminiscences of an Indian Official, London Cavenagh, O, 1867, Report on the Progress of the Straits Settlements from 1859 - 60 to 1866 - 67, Singapore Chan, Helena H M, 1986, An Introduction to the Singapore Legal System, Malayan Law Journal Pte Ltd, Singapore Chiang Hai Ding, 1966, 'The Origins of the Malayan Currency System', JMBRAS, xxxix, no 1, 1-18 Collis, Maurice, 1966, Raffles, Faber and Faber, London Comber, Leon, 1961, The Traditional Mysteries of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, Eastern Universities Press, Singapore Coupland, Sir Reginald, 1946, Raffles of Singapore, Collins, London Cowan, 1950, 'Early Penang and the Rise of Singapore 1805 - 1832', JMBRAS, xxiii Coyajee, JC, 1930, The Indian Currency System, Madras Crawfurd, J, 1967, History of the Indian Archipelago, Cass, London Davidson, G F, 1846, Trade and Travel in the Far East, London Desai, Tripta, 1984, The East India Company, A Brief Survey from 1599 to 1857, Kanak Publications, New Delhi De Vere Allen, J, 1968, "The Colonial Office and the Malay States, 1867 - 73', JMBRAS, xxxvi, no 1, 1 – 36 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 30 Personalities and Principles, JMBRAS, xxx, no 1, 134 - 163 Turnbull, CM, 1970, 'Internal Security in the Straits Settlements, 1826 - 67', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, i, no 1, 37 - 53 Turnbull, CM, 1972, The Straits Settlements 1826 - 67, Indian Presidency to Crown Colony, Oxford University Press Waldron, T, 1872, Letters and Journals of James 8th Earl of Elgin, London Wilbur Marguerite Eyer, 1945, The East India Company And the British Empire In the Far East, Stanford University Press. Stanford, California + Wong, Lin Ken, 1960, 'The Trade of Singapore 1819 - 69' JMBRAS, xxxiii, no 4 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 37 forces to the north would tire themselves out trying to link up with the beachhead. Should the Chinese collapse in the face of a Japanese attack, then an Allied campaign to recapture Hong Kong would be jeopardized. Japan had an incentive to retain Hong Kong. Besides being a part of Japanese-held China, Hong Kong also lay just outside Japan's Inner Zone. This zone included Japan Proper, Korea, Manchuria, North China, Formosa, the Pescadores, the Ryukyus, and the Japanese half of Sakhalin Island. Well before the war, the British had already gained an appreciation that a Hong Kong in Japanese hands would augment the defence of the Inner Zone. Moreover, Hong Kong helped guard Japan's LoC to points west and her oil supplies in the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese could still afford to trade space for time by forfeiting many other parts of their Pacific empire to the Allies, but they were certain to defend their Inner Zone and the positions that anchored their LoC to and from it with the utmost vigour. If the Japanese lost Hong Kong, this would provide hope to people living under Japanese rule elsewhere, while it would send a message to the Japanese people that the war was proceeding unfavourably for them. By late 1943, the Allies had gained the upper hand over the Japanese in the Pacific. It was the Allies who could dictate where the next move would fall. As China was still in the game, Allied planners began to take a closer look at the feasibility of a Hong Kong campaign. One opponent the Allies couldn't overcome, however, was Mother Nature, so heed was paid to Hong Kong's weather and how it could affect an Allied campaign there. A timeless enemy Nature at its cruellest is a phenomenon that humanity's best efforts still cannot match. Even during a high-technology conflict like World War II, the weather proved to be as indomitable a nemesis as it had been throughout the history of war. With World War II being fought over a greater expanse of the planet than any other war in history, its participants had to endure extreme variations in the weather, like the freezing cold of the Arctic and the Soviet Union to the sweltering heat of New Guinea, or the oppressive humidity of the South Pacific to the barren aridity of North ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 47 Harbour, and engulfed everything in their way up to a quarter mile (400 meters) inland. At least 200 people were killed (a heavy loss, considering that the area was sparsely populated back then), and the Tai Po Road (one of Hong Kong's few major roads at the time) and KCR were temporarily put out of commission, which isolated the survivors from the rest of Hong Kong for two days.26 In Victoria Harbour (between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island), 28 of the 101 steam vessels present were stranded, resulting in five deaths. Shore facilities on both sides of the harbour were wrecked, including Kai Tak Airfield. Fortunately for this part of Hong Kong, which was and remains the most congested part of the territory, no tidal wave struck here because the eastern entrance at Lyemun Pass was too narrow for enough water to break through. But Victoria Harbour was still vulnerable to strong winds and rough seas, which were what caused all that damage in its vicinity.27 The implications that the "Great Typhoon of September 1937” (typhoons didn't acquire female names until after the war) had on a potential Allied landing in Hong Kong were profound. First, all kinds of operations would be impossible during a typhoon. Everyone would worry about how to take shelter from the storm rather than fight the enemy. Given the expected relative positions of the two sides, the Allies were sure to be more exposed to the elements than the Japanese because they were on the offensive and had to establish LoC inland. Second, Hong Kong was intended to serve as a port of entry for LoC into China. With its extensive waterfront facilities, Victoria Harbour would have served as the primary berthing area for ships, and Tolo Harbour was considered a good secondary anchorage. Depending on the path of any typhoon that hits Hong Kong, Victoria Harbour may be afforded some protection by the mountains that surrounded it on the Kowloon side.28 Tolo Harbour (and neighbouring Plover Cove) was roomy and calm enough for ships - as long as there was no typhoon.29 Once a typhoon hits Tolo Harbour, as it did in 1937, this area is at a disadvantage. Typhoons usually approach Hong Kong from the east or southeast, and Tolo Channel and Tolo Harbour are in the eastern part of Hong Kong. The winds in a typhoon blow in an anti-clockwise direction, which is an arc-like motion from east to west when one is facing north. In the case of Tolo Channel (which is the outlet to the sea ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 53 utilizing only 20 per cent of its bomb capacity was not the way to obtain satisfactory returns on a US$3 billion gamble. Even worse was a bomber that could not make it to the runway due to breakdowns or adverse weather. Eventually, the Allies captured the Marianas Islands in the Pacific, and the B-29s were transferred there. The Marianas also suffered from typhoons, but they were closer (no more than 1,600 miles) than Hong Kong to Tokyo. When the B-29s began bombing Japan from the Marianas, each plane carried about two tons of bombs. The results continued to be unsatisfactory, and were an indication of how the B-29s likely would have fared had they operated from Hong Kong. Not until the Allies acquired more aircraft and tried a new tactic - stripping down each B-29, loading it with six tons of incendiary bombs, and making them fly lower to ease the stress on the engines - did Tokyo begin to burn, as it did in March 1945, when as many as 100,000 of its inhabitants were incinerated in one raid, Aside from its distance advantage, the Marianas were also safer from Japanese interference than Hong Kong. This advantage became even more significant later in the war, when Japanese control of the Pacific ebbed, but swelled in China. Should the Japanese not contest an Allied landing or Hong Kong, they were expected to harass the LoC established into it with a sizable naval force. The Hong Kong area was a good place for the Japanese to make their stand. They had shorter LoC plus the potential support of land-based aircraft from nearby Japanese-held areas. The Allies, presumably coming from the southeast, would have extended LoC that were potentially vulnerable to attack on the flanks, and such LoC would be passing through a typhoon-infested area.52 So it was evident how vital a secure LoC into Hong Kong from the sea was in order for B-29 operations to begin from there. In the absence of such a LoC, the strategy of having the B-29s fly their own supplies to Hong Kong (if the Allies somehow managed to recapture it by land), like they did for Central China, would be impractical. Even without Japanese interference, the weather alone was enough to ensure that establishing and maintaining LoC into Hong Kong would be a monumental undertaking indeed. But, until the Central Pacific drive made better progress, China Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 54 remained an integral part of Allied strategy to defeat Japan. Even if her expected contribution to Allied victory over Japan had been downgraded and a squadron of B-29s based on the mainland was not as promising as a combat-ready Chinese Army, the politics of basing such a new and promising weapon on Chinese soil were thought to be enough to boost Chinese morale.53 The issue is in doubt By the end of 1943, Allied planners had not settled on a decision to drop Hong Kong from the list of future objectives, nor did they elevate its status to that of a territory whose possession was beyond debate. In short, if a campaign in China was likely, a port on the China Coast would need to be opened up, and Hong Kong was a leading candidate for such a port. The development of the war in 1944-1945 would determine Hong Kong's importance. As the USN's Central Pacific offensive gathered momentum in early 1944, the adjacent Southwest Pacific offensive under General Douglas MacArthur also stepped up its pace so as not to be left behind. The competing dual advances sped up the Allied timetable, and brought the Allies to within striking distance of Japan by summer 1944. In China, it was a different story. Chinese forces here had not faced a major Japanese attack since 1938. When the Japanese attempted to link their possessions in the south (including Hong Kong) with the large portion of China they held north of the Yangtze River with a major offensive in the summer, the Chinese forces standing in the way largely disintegrated without offering much resistance. By early 1945, the Hong Kong beachhead had linked up with the rest of Japanese-held China. By now, the prospect of recapturing Hong Kong from the sea, while still not entirely infeasible, was made harder due to the potential ease with which the Japanese could reinforce Hong Kong from the interior of China. Intelligence reports indicated that the Japanese probably intended to wage a last-ditch defence of Hong Kong like they were already doing in the Pacific.54 J The Japanese eventually overextended themselves in China, while China belatedly began to receive supplies in some quantity once the road link from Burma was reopened and the air link over the Hump ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 113 to be shown in government survey plans, were surveyed and shown in Figure 4: (a) a circular pill box (a British "tett turret" or a 1.3mm light Japanese AA gun position (United States War Department 1944: pp. 110-116) in the proper of the battery site [and there is another similar structure to the east of Lord Wilson Trail, to the north of (d) below]; (b) two iron rings fixed to the ground of the battery site; (c) a pennant holder behind a rock of the battery site; (d) a pillbox built of stones on a rock to the east of Lord Wilson Trail, which is annotated as a rock outcrop in a 1964 1:600 government survey plan (Figure 7). The ruins of a two-storey communication centre can still be found to the southeast of Gough Battery; and (e) a number of foxholes dug into the slopes below the pillbox (and above the ruins of the communication centre referred to in (d) above) were exposed after a hill fire in autumn 2002. Like the tunnels found elsewhere in the area, it is possible that these foxholes were also constructed during the Japanese occupation. (Figure 8). Remarks The key structures on Devil's Peak have a history of one century or nearly so, and are, by urban Hong Kong standards, extremely old. Wild vegetation has colonised large tracts of the sites since their abandonment by the military. The humid climate of Hong Kong has added to the weathering and erosion process that compromises the integrity of the ruins. Systematic removal of the roofs of disused military structures for internal security and squatter control purposes as well as scavenging have also contributed to the demise of the sites. However, it is careless and deliberate human action facilitated by the good system of footpaths left behind intact and upgraded from time to time that has ruined the sites the most. Littering, the careless filming gang fighting movies, and mosquitoes that breed in water containers used by unauthorised gardeners may be regarded as mere nuisances. of Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 118 Kong PRO control no. MM-0477) 'Hong Kong Devil's Peak, 2-6" B.L. Gun Battery, Details of No. 1 Emplacement - Gough Battery' chopped by the Inspector General of Fortifications dated 28.5.70 (with a Public Record Office reference WO78/4140 RP3578) (Hong Kong PRO control no. MM-0469) 'Hong Kong Devil's Peak, 2-6" B.L. Gun Battery, Details of No. 2 Emplacement - Gough Battery' chopped by the Inspector General of Fortifications dated 28.5.70 with a Public Record Office reference WO78/4140 RP3578 (Hong Kong PRO control no. MM-0470) Colonel Robertson, L. (28.7.1914), Devil's Peak: Copy of the Original Design prepared by Lt. A. F. Day and coloured by him to show progress up to 1.7.1913. 1:120 sketch drawn by Colonel L. Robertson, Chief Engineer, South China Command, (WO78/5432), PRO441(1). Colonel Robertson, L. (28.7.1914), Devil's Peak Redoubt as Constructed. 1:120 sketch drawn by Colonel L. Robertson, Chief Engineer, South China Command, (WO78/5432), PRO441(2). (b) On military operations Hong Kong Government, History of the War in the Far East. Confidential File CR5751/47, Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong Government, PRO HKRS163-1-656. History of the Part Taken by the 5th BN 7th Rajputs in the Defence & Fall of H.K. Against the Imperial Japanese Army, Dec; 8th - 25th. (WO172/1692), PRO16947. Royal Artillery Report on Operations in Hong Kong in Dec 1941. PRO17849. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 1900 Gough Battery first mentioned with two 6-inch BL Mark VII guns. Rollo, 1992, p.187 Gough Battery was in existence as early as 1900: 1901 A compass sketch drawn by Colonel L. Brown, C.R.E. in China, and dated 13.0.1901 shows the "Plan of Proposed Site for New Barracks: Devil's Peak" at the present Yau Tong industrial zone. The plan had the annotation "new road to batteries." CO129/305 It had a history of more than a century by the date of production of this paper. 1902 1902 6 October 1906 A compass sketch of ground to north of Devil's Peak showed land to be acquired by the War Department, with the locations of Gough and Pottinger Batteries indicated as "New Batteries." Signs of quarrying at the present Lei Yue Mun Valley were shown. The construction of Taikoo Docks at Quarry Bay on the island of Hong Kong commenced. August 1902: a 9.2-inch gun was delivered to Pottinger Battery. Owen Committee Report dated 6 October 1906 stated that Hong Kong was the principal naval base of the British fleet in the Far East and a commercial port of great importance liable to a Class A Attack by Battleships. [Therefore, one of the 6-inch guns proposed for Gough Battery by the 1898 Committee was replaced by a 9.2-inch BL Mark X gun by 1910.] 6 February 1907 Royal visit by Field Marshal His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, who arrived at the Colony on 6 February 1907. Later, the Duke observed firing exercises for the 9.2-inch guns at Pottinger Battery and the 6-inch guns at Gough Battery. PRO219 Eastern District Board 1994, p.25 Rollo, 1992, p.70, p.79 Rollo, 1992, p.79, p.80, 187 Rollo, 1992, p.83 129 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 137 NOTES Now described as "Pau Toi San" in both English and Chinese in government correspondence and plans, literally Battery Hill, probably to get rid of the stigma with the expression "Devil" and to indicate the presence of defence structures on the hill. We use the old place name here in this paper for easy cross-reference to archive materials. 2 The English version of the film was presented to HKBRAS at City Hall on 24 January 2003. 'Only three of the loopholes have survived. * See Kwun Tong District Board (1999) and Kwun Tong District Office (2002). See Lands Department aerial photographs No. 1940 (1972); 6660 (1973); 10113 (1974); 12581 (1979); 19317 (1977); 23912 (1978); 32269 (1980). 'CO129/305. *Our estimation is based on the number of loopholes (one hundred), machine gun emplacements (three with 11 loopholes) and the number of shelters (five) shelters therein, not to mention the pillboxes to its east and south (the 196m site). Ko (2000, p.16) reported that the British Army in 1949 and 1950 blew up pre-war pillboxes and bunkers in Kowloon and the New Territories (presumably other than those in retained military lands) to prevent them from falling into hands of those committed to sabotaging Hong Kong. From aerial photos taken in 1949, we could see the outcome of such exercises. The typical outcome is that the building structure thus affected has become devoid of its roof but the vertical walls remained almost intact. See provisional Kwun Tong District Board (1998), which documents the history of the pennant stands. Erected on government land by private individuals, these stands are unauthorised building works under the Buildings Ordinance. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 144 "My car is white so wave at me when you see me, I'll be there in seven minutes," said Hase as he gave me directions to wait at the McDonald's in Tai Wo KCR station for our interview. It has taken me almost an hour to get here. I'm in the New Territories. He is dressed in a loosely fitting top with colourful embroidery around the edges, and his hair is shorter and seems to have gone a bit lighter than when I last saw him a few months ago. He is friendly and I'm feeling relaxed despite having been a bit nervous in anticipation of our meeting. I fear my questions will not be good enough, or intelligent enough for him. Hase's home is just as I had imagined it: east meets west, and serene. I am served English tea in a Chinese mug and we are using bronze coasters with Chinese characters on them. When I go back to Toronto, my friends often say I sound a bit British, and sometimes they say they don't know what I sound like. But Hase's English accent hasn't been corrupted by his learning Cantonese. "Cantonese is difficult because of two things. The first is, it's not written," said Hase. "Now if you're learning Mandarin, you can learn to read it and learn to speak it and the two help each other...The second problem is the tonal structure, which is very complicated, infinitely more complicated than it is in Mandarin and that's very difficult for foreigners..." "So, when I'm speaking Cantonese, my tones are not bad but if I get angry, if I lose my temper, then my tones start to change." Hard to believe that Hase arrived in the colony not knowing a word of the language. The government wasn't looking for people who knew the language, just for people who wanted a job. Hase was born in the United Kingdom and got his Ph.D. from Cambridge in an aspect of 7th Century English History. Hase was unable to get a job teaching and opted for a job with the government as an Administrative Officer with his first posting as Administrative Assistant in the Urban Services Department. He arrived in the territory in 1972 Page 210 Page 211 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 162 quite early on to professional military strategists. War, when it came to Hong Kong, would have to be waged by means other than conventional warfare. Realistically, occupation would be a foregone conclusion: the challenge was to struggle on by covert means and to develop some resistance mechanism. In short, a new concept of waging war, based on intelligence and action behind enemy lines. Military intelligence Three years after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, [Hon. Ed. - I find it difficult to see how Japan's unprovoked occupation of large parts of China and the atrocities committed by its army can be termed a 'war.'] the British Army, Navy and Air Force created a 'Far East Combined Bureau.' It operated openly, employed no agents and depended on information volunteered by customs officials, commercial travellers and the like. Its offices, based within the Naval Dockyard compound, discouraged visits from casual informants, and much of its work involved monitoring personal reports from China sent by courier, rather than proactive intelligence gathering. Naval Intelligence provided support and maintained a signals station on Stonecutters Island for transmitting information to Singapore. GE Grimsdale, later to become Major General, joined the FECB in its early days. One of his earliest recommendations on curbing Japanese espionage in Hong Kong was to suggest that tourists be banned from using cameras! Later he was to acknowledge that espionage was harmless in a place like Hong Kong where defences were open and unsophisticated - one snatched photo of a ship leaving the naval dockyard revealed less than its official description in Jane's Fighting Ships." In any case, Japanese had been known to go to Kelly and Walsh, the booksellers in Central District, to find maps better than their standard issue 1:20,000 series. In January 1937, Capt. Charles Ralph Boxer, of the Lincolnshire Regiment arrived in Hong Kong. Everything about Boxer contrasted strongly with the stereotype of a colonial in the Far East. Although he came from a family of military men, he was an unconventional individualist. Moreover, he was a scholar, who spoke fluent, literary Japanese, studying Japanese history and culture to the extent that he was welcomed in some of the most influential Japanese social circles. After the war, these values would pit him against bigots for whom any sympathy for the Japanese was anathema. But pre-war, he represented ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 163 a new breed of intelligence officer. Grimsdale recalled his admiration with the ease with which Boxer could gain the trust of the Japanese. When the Japanese conquered Guangdong in 1938, Boxer arranged an invitation for himself and Grimsdale to visit the Commander of Japanese Forces, General Ando, whom he had known socially in London. To Grimsdale's amazement, Ando showed them round Japanese installations in his own staff car. They were able to inspect troop positions, aerodromes and see the power of the Japanese army at first hand. Perhaps that was Ando's subtle point, but it benefited both parties. At one stage, the general joked to Boxer that the British should stop supporting the Chinese 'then we could finish off this bloody war and all go home.' In the same jesting vein, Boxer answered that the Japanese should stop supporting the Germans. Boxer and his colleagues made a point of travelling and meeting people. Through personal contacts they were able to extract more information, and get an understanding of context. Boxer and his colleagues were articulate and fluent in Chinese or Japanese, and above all sensitive to the cultures, aware of the place of Hong Kong in the overall Chinese scheme of things. They illustrated the concept that "well informed is well armed." Nor were they the only ones. In 1937/8, the Japanese Army in central China had agreed to take a young Japanese speaking British officer "on attachment" for nine months. Although his detailed report was misinterpreted (the atrocities in China were deemed a 'temporary lapse') is the then Military Attache and Foreign Office agreed that a non confrontational approach was more effective in getting information and defusing potential incidents. iv Alert to the nuances of Japanese politics, Boxer sensed in July 1939, a sharp deterioration in Japanese attitudes towards the British. He interpreted this as a move by the Japanese Army to find a scapegoat for their lack of progress in the China campaign. He reported 'at present there can be no greater error than to assume as is so often done that Japan's military machine is too bogged down in China to prevent it being turned towards us...the only thing likely to restrain the Japanese Army....is the fear of possible complications with the United States of America." His warnings however went unheeded: Europe was itself just about to plunge into war, and to the Foreign Office, Hong Kong seemed very far away. Indeed, the note covering Boxer's letter ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 167 societies in the Japanese Army, though in his memoirs he downplayed this role. When Mrs Bush, a Japanese, was later forced to work as a Kempeitai interpreter, she talked to a prisoner who was in American Naval Intelligence about their mutual friend Charles Boxer. Bill Kendall, of whom more below, was told by Boxer that the Japanese were on the move: when he saw the zeros flying overhead, and knew that the attack had finally started. Beyond military intelligence FW Kendall was a Canadian from Vancouver who had lived in Hong Kong since childhood, and spoke not only fluent Cantonese but other dialects as well. He had had a mining business in China, but after the Japanese occupied east Guangdong and Chekiang his business was cut off. He then moved back to Hong Kong and worked for the Government organising refugee relief, building and running the main large camp at Kam Tin. Early in 1940 Kendall was approached by Col LA Newnham, in his capacity in charge of Military Intelligence, and asked to set up a small unit of civilians and volunteers. Being non-military personnel, they could undertake training in the use of sabotage and "ungentlemanly warfare," which the official armed services could not legitimately carry out. The unit was given the cover name Z Force. Allocating £1,500 for this 'unit for independent action behind enemy lines' had to be done outside normal accounting channels, GOC Hong Kong told the War Office in September 1941, because of the need for absolute secrecy in a small place like Hong Kong. The Special Operations Executive, under the Ministry for Economic Warfare, had been established in Europe for some years to assist resistance. They trained agents for the specific purpose of operating behind enemy lines using espionage, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare. Specialist SOE units created miniature code machines, wireless facilities and concealed weapons, known by the cheerful name of 'toys.' Where strategically useful, SOE created facilities for specialised sabotage. The whole point of SOE was to facilitate war in situations such as in occupied countries where traditional warfare was impractical. Its methods were ideally suited to the situation in China, where the front was so large and diverse that Japanese supply lines were stretched to vulnerability. The populace was strongly motivated for resistance, and the Japanese, whose control was weak beyond urban areas, were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 168 particularly vulnerable to guerrilla harassment. SOE targeted China in its plans, but had to hold them in abeyance pending the outright declaration of war, since Britain was supposed to be neutral. Kendall and his friend Eddie Teesdale were trained at the SOE base at Singapore. Kendall also had explosives experience from his days as a mining engineer. Kendall organised a group of hand-picked volunteers, who included the talented Administrative Cadet Ronald Holmes, a Russian-born businessman named Monia Talan, a PE instructor Colin McEwan, Dr Harry Talbot, Bobby Thompson, Hugh Williamson, all to play a role later in underground services. In addition, two police officers trained with them to learn SOE techniques. Intriguingly, with the group was also at least one Chinese, a man recorded only as ‘Brigadier Lee of North China.' Kendall's men met secretly at a camp near Kam Tin, each weekend, usually trained by Teesdale, as Kendall was often in China. They received training in cipher and intelligence work, weapons, wireless and explosives. They also spent much time literally walking through the scrubland, often in the dark, getting to know the trails and terrain at first hand, in preparation for the day that they would have to work behind Japanese lines. Weapons were stored in Kendall's bungalow near Shing Mun, where Holmes and Teesdale lived for extended periods. They also set up five hidden stores, for supply in the event of a prolonged campaign behind Japanese lines. In the event, the Japanese found the main store, in a cave on Tai Mo Shan about 1,800 feet up on the south-east slope. Another was in an old lead mine at Lin Ma Hang, near the border at Sha Tau Kok. It was later raided by villagers, who would have seen troops of Indian soldiers carrying supplies there on mules. On the outbreak of battle, Col Newnham ordered Kendall and Talan out of the New Territories and into Lyemun Pass, to fix limpet mines to scuttle a ship being used by the Japanese as an observation post. The remaining SOE men in the New Territories, led by Holmes and Teesdale, spent a month behind Japanese lines, crossing back and forth across the border, collecting information, setting up contacts and reconnoitring. Z Force was by no means the only undercover agency operating in Hong Kong: there are hints and rumours of a much wider, high-level series of groups, but firm proof is hard to substantiate. By definition such work would be secret. For security reasons networks had to operate ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 170 to villagers, making personal and individual contacts. He told Endacott how he met farmers and fishermen, Hoklo and Hakka speakers, and gradually won acceptance: at one stage, he had to undergo a “blood ceremony” with some pirate families in the Mirs Bay and Bias Bay area. Trained in SOE tactics, he realised that these close-knit communities, with their tradition of secret societies and their sometimes justified tradition of being outlaws, alienated from established government, were an ideal ready-made resistance underground. Strategically, the hinterland behind Hong Kong was a critical buffer zone in the event of Hong Kong being occupied. It would be the area through which information, personnel, and material would enter and exit. Hence the extreme importance placed on developing relationships with all the local people, whatever their politics, and channelling their interests in support of the British cause. Shortly after the fall of Canton in 1938, a guerrilla unit was formed, nominally under national government influence, to assist in carrying out resistance against the Japanese in the East River Area, just north of Hong Kong, and along the lines of the Kowloon-Canton railway from Sumchun to Sheklung. This unit was commanded by the charismatic ex-seaman Tsang Sheng, whose vision of social change was far closer to communist values than to the increasingly right-wing KMT. Because his power base was the region behind Hong Kong, not especially loyal to the central government, he was able to break free and declare his communist sympathies. He consolidated his influence over the area by earning the support of the local populace and by controlling the worst excesses of bandits, many of whom at this period were KMT supporters. Tsang’s army of guerrillas, known as the Guangdong People’s Anti-Japanese Resistance Unit, or the East River Column, formed the strongest, best-organised, and most aggressive Chinese military formation in the vicinity of Hong Kong. Kendall noted that these men were well-armed with Mausers and decent equipment, funded either by the Communist Party or by the relatively prosperous villagers who had overseas remittances from men working abroad. He knew that many in the KMT were as violently opposed to the Communists as they were to the Japanese, and that working with the Communists would be a high-risk strategy, but it was essential in a region so crucial to Hong Kong. It is known that Kendall was involved in negotiations with the Communists. Ronald Holmes, a SOE agent seconded to the BAAG, was to refer to this in July 1944 when he prepared a report of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 175 Hong Kong shipyards to do marine engineering could also be used to make armour cladding for ships and vehicles. Hong Kong was also the base from which British aircraft manufacturers wanted to penetrate the Chinese market - the Far East Flying School wanted to train Chinese to fly so they would buy British rather than American or German planes. Hong Kong was also a centre for financial transactions both within and outside the banking system, a source for remittances and money transfers, more secure than Shanghai after the Japanese conquest. A large KMT community operated out of and lived in Hong Kong: almost a parallel government. While there was sympathy for the Nationalists, the colonial administration was uncertain how to maintain a balance between the Japanese and the Chinese Government. Riots against Japanese living in Hong Kong had been suppressed, and no protests made against Japanese attacks on the junk fleet. When the St Johns Ambulance wanted to send an ambulance to bombed Canton, the Colonial Office refused permission. Groups of Chinese 'terrorists' were arrested and deported from time to time. As late as May 1941 the colony's police force raided premises at 98 Robinson Road and destroyed a wireless transmitting station which had been operating for three years. The leader of this group was Chan So, an agent of General Wu Te Ching. When Governor Northcote sought guidance, the Colonial Office was advised by the Foreign Office that British policy had to vary according to circumstances, and support for China should be rendered 'compatible with the safety of Empire and avoidance of actual hostilities with the Japanese.'xix Nonetheless, there was a significant understanding between the Goumindang and the British when it came to matters of mutual benefit. When war officially broke out, their clandestine relationship could come out into the open. When Phyllis Harrop, a civilian consultant working with the police reported for duty right after the outbreak of hostilities, she was assigned to work with the KMT who had already started to occupy offices with the police. The Japanese were all too aware of the importance of Hong Kong to the KMT. The Japanese Foreign Minister had softly but firmly reminded the British Ambassador to keep the KMT under control. Even before their push to the south, the Japanese had identified KMT activists and targeted educated, articulate overseas Chinese as a threat and source of resistance. In Malaya and Singapore, they were to massacre thousands of Chinese in the wake of their advance, a fact obscured by the emphasis on the sufferings of Europeans interned in camps. In Hong Kong, on ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 183. NOTES 1 Quoted in Endacott and Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, Hong Kong 1978 p 56 TM Grimsdale Thunder in the East MSS ibid iv FO 371/22153 *FO 371/23573 vi Urban warfare and underground resistance: Heroism in the Chinese secret service during the war of resistance. Wen Hsin Yeh, in Wartime Shanghai ed Wen Hsin Yeh, Routledge 1998 vii WO 208/2049A viii ibid ix private diary CO129/23 * Endacott's notes, HKPRO. * WO 208/716 * WO 208/457, 12th July 1944 x ibid Bunny Hide's report, www.hamstat.demon.co.uk xi ADM 199/1287 xii "Police Files G56(4) xvi Although there are rumours of an incident in which some 400 fifth columnists were reported killed. xvii Letter to SS colonies 3/2/42 WO 208/733A xviii Alfred Peveril Guest who attached himself after hearing about the mission from an unknown source. xix FO 371/22160 ** WO 311/543 *** CO129/591/23 xxi WO 208/727 xxii ADM 199/357 xxiii ibid. ***WO 208/3260 p 41, also Ride, British Army Aid Group, Hong Kong 1981 p 44 xxiv CO129/590/23 * WO 208/3260 appendix 1 xxvi ibid, appendix 2 xxvii ibid. appendix 4 ================================================================================ 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 208 — foreign military strength prevailing against the Qing regime, calculated by the British and French to force compliance with the new treaty conditions, also actually caused greater threat to those foreign travellers who moved outside the provincial capital. Still, all this being recognized by Legge and his travelling companions, including Ch'ea, they pursued their missionary goals and tested the reliability of the Qing forces to uphold the treaty conditions. In the end it was clear that local Qing authorities could only be partially successful in maintaining public order during their travels. This fact was highlighted during the missionary tour. Legge explicitly mentions in his journal published in Hong Kong in June 1861 - issues almost always deleted from the edited versions published in the missionary journal accounts produced for English audiences - the troubles they faced at certain places where crowds had stones and bricks nearby and available to attack their party. One of the harshest responses came in the district city of Wye-chow, a large walled city not very distant from Poklo. Stonings there caused noticeable damage to the main boat rented for the trip. In another district town up the river by the name of Hé Yuán, the "rain of stones" became "exceedingly unpleasant.” In order to avoid further physical threat on their return through the alleys of the walled city, Legge and Chalmers with their attendant soldiers finally climbed up on the city walls where the attackers had their point of advantage. By this means they surprised the stone slinging "rabble" so that they quickly dispersed without presenting any further threats until the group had entered their boats.70 Legge was nonplussed: "I did not think that we should have experienced such treatment so far away from Canton." The political reality that antiforeigner feelings were running high and spread broadly throughout the region could not be denied. 69 Added to this was a deeper, more persistent strain of demonology which continued to erupt in the curses yelled at the missionaries in any place that was "inhospitable." One single record in Legge's journal illustrates the visceral level at which this demonology worked. At one point northeast of Poklo as they were travelling up the East River, the boat passed through a herd of water buffalo “luxuriating” 71 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 224 (Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981), the first volume subtitled Barbarians At The Gates, pp. 143-147, 174-175, 224-225. 11. Both Hong Réngan and He Jinshan have been discussed in detail in Pfister's Striving for "The Whole Duty of Man", especially chapters 4-6. A more thorough study of He Jinshan's contribution to Chinese Christian history by Lauren Pfister is an essay entitled "A Transmitter but not a Creator: The Creative Transmission of Protestant Biblical Traditions by Ho Tsun-Sheen (1817-1871)” in Irene Eber, et. al., eds., Bible in Modern China: The Literary and Intellectual Impact (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1999), pp. 165-197. 12. The name of Ch'ëa Kam-Kwong is constituted by particular Chinese characters Legge described as the "Golden Light Chariot," a way of expressing in English what the common meaning of each character is. Unfortunately, two misspellings have predominated in other literature, one in English and one in Chinese. In English, we surmise that Helen Edith Legge put together the typescript entitled "Che'a Kin-KWáng," horribly mixing up the transliteration with something like the proper name in Hoklo dialect, but the given name in Mandarin. Legge never uses these transliterations in his own writings. In Chinese, Wáng Tão wrote the wrong characters for the name in his personal diary for 1862 when he had first come to Hong Kong, showing also his struggle in understanding Cantonese pronunciations, making his given name "Embroidered River" (M. Jinjiang, C. Gam-gong) presumably by guessing from the sounds he heard from other Hong Kong Chinese Christians who referred to him. Consult Fang Xing and Tăng Zhijūn, eds., Wáng Tão rìjì (Wáng Tāo ’s Diary) (Beijing: Zhōnghuá Book Store, 1987), pp. 196-197, record for the date of the 10th month and 15th day of the lunar calendar (or a day in September, 1862). 13. There is no study of Ch'ea Kam-Kwong in Chinese language sources as far as I know, and very little published about him in English after the 1860s. Part of the reason, as will be argued below, is that his murder became an embarrassment to both the British embassy and the Qing dynasty at the time. 14. Legge wrote memorials for his elder brother, an important Congregational minister in Great Britain, George Legge (1802-1860), and his co-pastor, Hé Jinshan, published in 1863 and 1872 respectively. See the typescript on the "Sketch of the Life of Ho Tsun-sheen" in SOAS/CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 7, the original manuscript on Ch'a being held in the Bodleian Library (the second item in MS Eng. misc. c. 865, fol. 1-19). Consult the long introduction written for George Legge's Lectures on Theology, Science and Revelation already mentioned above. The text of "Che'a Kin-KWáng” is a compilation done most likely by his daughter, Helen Edith Legge. It uses many original and secondary sources citing her father's and other missionaries' writings, but also includes some perspectives and interpretations which may not portray the full story. 15. The story of their visit to Daoist and Buddhist sites on Mount Lo-fow is described in Legge's "Journey of a Missionary Tour along the 'East River' of Canton Province," China Mail, Supplement to #853 (June 20, 1861), p.4 (covering events of May 22-23, 1861). This is the full text from which extracts were and published in EMMC/MM, No.304 (New Series, No. 21) for September 2, 1861, pp. 249-260. made ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 262 War in 218 AD between two of the Three Kingdoms [San Guo], between Sun Quan of Wu and Liu Bei of Shu, led amongst other things to the capture of the city of Qingzhou. One of Liu Bei's generals, Guan Yu, hurried south to defend the city but was ambushed, captured and decapitated by Sun Quan after he refused to change sides. Guan was later deified as is now the immensely popular deity, the Patron of Uniformed Bodies and is known as the God of Loyalty, Guan Di. Thus, the founder of Zhenjiang had the distinction of slaying the consequent Patron deity of Soldiers, Firemen and Detectives and the second most popular god on Chinese popular religion altars. In the first years of the 6th century AD the first emperor of the Liang dynasty, Wu Di, who was renowned for his support of Buddhism and the Buddhist clergy, visited Zhenjiang. He had been visited by a divine monk in a dream who urged Wu Di to institute a great fast in order to rescue all sentient beings from the miseries of their existence. The Emperor ordered a new monastery to be built at Tse Hsin [Zexin], known today as Jin Shan to accommodate the Congress held in AD 507, and for centuries within the monastery there was a building known as the Hall of Liang Wang. This tradition is at odds with the date usually given for the founding of the monastery - AD 317. Our next story involves a deified hero who had nothing to do with Zhenjiang in life but, for some unknown reason, his cult would appear to have become centralised along the Grand Canal and especially at Zhenjiang. He is a canonised hero of the Tang dynasty, but one of a pair whose images elsewhere appear together on popular religion temple altars. These two euhemerised heroes, Zhang Xun and Xu Yuan, ***, have been seen on altars in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-east Asia. These two protective deities are known individually as the Venerable King of Peaceful Pacification, Wen'an Zunwang ✰✰ E [Zhang Xun] and the Venerable King of Military Pacification, Wu'an Zunwang ✯✯ [Xu Yuan] though they will + be referred to hereafter simply as Zhang and Xu. The most common history of the two heroes as related by a great number of temple keepers describes how Zhang and Xu, loyalists during the reign of Tang Ming Huang, opposed the rebellion led by An Lushan. They died heroically in AD 757 during the civil war defending the provincial city of Suiyang in Henan province which fell to the enemy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 265 in 1144, built to the west of the Bridge of a Thousand Autumns, Qianqiu Qiao, beside a small canal with landing places attached. It would seem to have been inside the present city, about where the road from the west gate crosses the canal, before you reached the City God Temple. It was restored in 1271 with a commemorative inscription composed by Liu Xiufu, and the whole establishment was enlarged during the Ming so as to have 109 rooms, with stabling for 80 horses, forty of which had to be kept constantly saddled, presumably for use by imperial messengers. Moving on to the Yuan [Mongol] dynasty, an interesting account, if indeed it is genuine, claims that Marco Polo mentioned the foundation of Nestorian Christian churches at Zhenjiang (Cinghian fu) by a Nestorian Christian governor, Mar Sargis [or Mar George] from Samarkand. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China during the 13th century employed foreigners within his civil service, one of whom was Marco Polo who spent three years as Governor of Yangzhou, the city a short distance upstream on the northern arm of the Grand Canal immediately across the Great River from Zhenjiang. The story goes that the maternal grandfather of Mar Sargis cured Genghis Khan of a sickness by administering sherbet and his secret recipe. The latter was passed down the family and each generation did good business ensuring their fortune. The story of his appointment as governor would appear to have been confirmed by various entries in the old records of Zhenjiang in which there are references to seven Christian monasteries [i.e. churches] in or near the city, adding that the Zhenjiang Christian population in about AD 1280 amounted to 215. These were started after Mar Sargis had a dream in which he was instructed to construct seven Nestorian churches. Using his fortune he is said to have completed all seven but unwittingly with one on the site of a former famous Buddhist monastery which Mar Sargis was ordered to hand back to the Buddhists. Of the remaining six two were said to have been on the ridge running inland from the former site of the British consulate. During the early days of the Ming, in the reign of the Yongle emperor, various expeditions sailed down the Yangzi from Nanjing, and out into the Eastern Ocean, a commander of several of the expeditions being the renowned eunuch, Zheng He. The policy of despatching such expeditions far beyond China's shores was short-lived. Between 1405 and 1425 Zheng's fleet voyaged through south-east Asia ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 324 old Colonial Office in Great Smith Street. Sir Christopher Cox, who headed the interview panel, said: 'Waters, you would be more suitable teaching building subjects in Hong Kong than in Trinidad. Go away and think about it!' Rose, Rose I Love You was the first song originating in the People's Republic of China to become popular in Britain. Yet the composers never received royalties. They could not afford to be seen drawing money from a capitalist country. And as I listened to the refrain in Merry England, it all tied in. Serving in the Colonial Service in Hong Kong seemed terribly exciting and romantic. It made me think of Camp Coffee, Zam Buk ointment and other similar branded goods with scenes of Empire on bottles and tins which I grew up with as a child. 'You're not going to the Far East?!' an acquaintance exclaimed. 'The Communists have just acquired half Korea. There's fighting in Vietnam and Malaya. Hong Kong will be the next to fall!” In spite of adverse comments I accepted the offer from the Colonial Office which was shortly to become Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service. After all a considerable amount of a map of the world was still coloured red. Hadn't Winston Churchill proclaimed: 'I have not become the King's first minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire'? At the time I could have been posted to any one of something like 55 different colonies or dependent territories within the British Commonwealth. For me, 'Go East young man!' was the watchword. Nevertheless, some said that the Hong Kong Royal Naval Dockyard was shortly to be closed down. So, in spite of discouraging remarks, I "burned my boats,” sold the family business as a going concern, and went shopping. I spotted cabin trunks made of sheet metal. 'Oh no," the shop assistant exclaimed, 'you only need those, Sir, if you are going to some humid place like Hong Kong!' 'I'll have two!' I replied. Shipboard In the early 1950s, if one flew to Hong Kong, one normally went by seaplane, landed on water and slept the night in a hotel. The journey took five days. But up until 1959 most of us travelled by sea. The Page 390 Page 391 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 365 microforms, audiovisual materials, and CD-ROMs, covering oriental subjects and cultures, in varied languages, and has become a fine reference source. Some of the books provide eye-witness accounts of China over the past years. Many of these are old and out of print, available to the public only in this Library. The Society has also established exchange programmes with many learned societies all over the world. The Journal forms the basis of the Library and sufficient numbers are printed for exchange. The Journal has a book review section which helps to bring in a useful nucleus of publications. Of high academic standards and interest, there has been an increasing demand for it from members and scholars overseas. The Collection is growing steadily as a result of the many useful exchanges established with other institutions. Collection access Post-1900 materials are available for loan. For security and preservation of rare and valuable materials, pre-1900 materials (with selected rare post-1900 materials) which might be difficult to replace are only for in-house use. The collection is also open to the academic community, students and the general public as it is the intention of the Society to aid scholarly research on China and the Far East. Bibliographic aids To facilitate the use of the Society's Journal, Mr. H.A. Rydings compiled two indexes, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Index to Vols. 1-10 (1961-1970) and Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Index to Vols. 11 - 20 (1971-1980), in 1972 and 1983 respectively. These two indexes combine, in one alphabetical sequence, entries for authors and subjects of articles in the 20 volumes of the Journal and cover the contents of the annual Journal from 1961-1970 and 1971-1980. In addition, the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is one of the journals enlisted in the University of Hong Kong Libraries' digital project on Hong Kong Journals Online which contains scholarly journals published in Hong Kong. This database is open to access worldwide and allows browsing of table of contents ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 366 and keyword searching of author, title and journal. The full text of the articles will be displayed if copyright clearance has been obtained. Together with the printed indexes, the database, which provides greater coverage, and fast and convenient searching capabilities, will greatly assist scholars in locating information in the Journal for their research on Hong Kong and the Far East. Automation With computerisation of the collection at the City Hall Library, the Society's collection has become far more accessible than it was in the past. The Dynix Library System makes available bilingual access to the Society's records of both western and East Asian materials. Books, journals and other materials can be more efficiently retrieved by searching the automated catalogue, by author, title, subject, and/or keywords. The old printed card catalogues are no longer used and have been discarded. In November 1997, the system was further enhanced to allow remote access to the collection via the Hong Kong Public Libraries online catalogue. Users who are connected to the network may access the catalogue in offices or at home, and no longer have to take special trips to the Library for required information. In support of the Hong Kong Government's Digital 21 initiative, the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society created an Internet website in 2001. This was done by Ms. Moody Tang and the website provides information on the Society, its history, activities, and publications on the Internet. Also, with the establishment of a hyperlink to the Hong Kong Public Libraries' online catalogue, the website offers an alternative gateway to the Society's collection. It also serves as a powerful vehicle in promoting the Society and its collection to scholars, libraries, institutions, and the world at large. Conclusion Founded in 1847, the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, through the dedication and support of its members, will continue to strive to provide a forum for the sharing of knowledge and experience, and discussion of common interests. The Library, moved to the new Hong Kong Central Library in May 2001, has finally found a home with modern well-equipped facilities where its excellent and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 381 THE COLOURFUL DOUGLAS LAPRAIK (1818-1869) PETER HANSELL A year or more ago I purchased what appeared to be an interesting clock at an auction of the residue of the estate of an elderly spinster lady domiciled in the UK, but without any surviving relatives. My instant reaction to the likely function of this clock was that it had been used or owned by a merchant traveller or campaigner and so it turned out to be. Similar in substantive construction to a ship's chronometer, but with a lever escapement, it had been lovingly embellished with a gilt oriental bow and strut at some later date and was contained in a mahogany travelling case, which could be laid flat, carried by a flush brass handle, or hung from a concealed bracket. The silvered dial is cursively engraved Douglas Lapraik, Hong Kong. Having no provenance from the previous owner, my researches had to begin. Many residents of Hong Kong will know the legend of Douglas Lapraik, but it is worth paraphrasing here. He left Scotland as 'a young businessman' in 1839 at the age of 21 in order to seek further fortunes in the Far East. He spent some time in Macao before moving to Hong Kong, which had recently become a British Dependency. Before arrival there in 1842 in somewhat straitened circumstances he had become acquainted with a fellow ex-patriot and clockmaker, Leonard Just, to whom he became apprenticed. There were several Justs who were devoted to the clock making industry, but Leonard had been supplying clocks and watches to the Chinese market before he emigrated from Scotland a little earlier. His son Leonard Just Junior was listed as an apprentice along with Lapraik. During this time, Douglas Lapraik must have become acquainted with numerous mariners, their ships and their clocks, which he undoubtedly repaired. After a few years he is recorded as setting up his own clock making business, which, after his final departure from Hong Kong, became "Falconer Jewellers', a trading name that survives to this day. Perhaps a more important development was that pari passu with this horological activity he became commercially interested in ships and shipping, the building of docks and warehouses and the establishment of a very successful shipping line chiefly concerned with ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 397 The result of the Confucian education is supposed to be the formation of a highly virtuous character....The chief energy of those who have taught it has been expended in the endeavour to give it practical effect on the individual, the family, and the nation.1 In regard to the depopulation at Shek Pik, it is curious how this was repeated at Tong Fuk, another old village four miles to the east, where the 198 persons recorded at the Colony Census of 1911 were survivors of the much larger population of some 700 persons claimed before the onset of disease sometime in the second half of the 19th century. Interviewed in 1971, the elders had been most emphatic about this, on the basis of information handed down by their fathers' generation... 'There was not a single empty or ruined house [before the epidemics struck],' or so they claimed. Later on, in the 1910s, when my oldest informants were then in their teens, the situation worsened again, with two persons dying every day. 'No sooner had we taken out one body for burial, than we had to start all over again.' As at Shek Pik, altered, meaning adverse, fung-shui was blamed for these disasters. 'For we Cantonese, fung-shui is vital,' stressed one of their number. The caption to Plate 25, the rebuilt Tianhou Temple at Chiwan, Shenzhen, can be extended here. I omitted to mention the famous well, prominent in the foreground, with adjoining plaque, As mentioned in the related text, the temple's long history and cultural importance had not saved it from destruction. By the end of the ten-year period of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) only the foundations survived, and what remained of its historic buildings had been reduced in height and roofed over to provide barrack accommodation for a unit of the People's Liberation Army, still in occupation at the time of my first visit in 1983. The temple's fine stone and wood carvings had gone, along with the many donated fittings and repair tablets that would have been kept within its walls. However, one tradition had survived the decades of Communist ideology. 'This was both the theory and the aim. However, Edkins concluded that despite the intention, 'it has not made them (the Chinese) a moral people. Many of the social virtues are extensively practised among them, but they exhibit to the observer a lamentable want of moral strength. Commercial integrity and speaking the truth are far less common among them than in Christian countries. The standard of principle among them is kept low by the habits of the people.' ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 405 MORE ON THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE, 1917-1921: A NEW DISCOVERY DAVID MAHONEY A recent discovery throws some light on the army of skilled and unskilled men from Shandong and surrounding provinces that comprised the Chinese Labour Corps during and after World War One. The medals Several medals were awarded to British troops for service in the First World War: 1914 Star, 1914/15 Star, Territorial War Medal, British War Medal (BWM), and the Allied Victory Medal. All troops in "war zones" would have received the latter two, the BWM in silver. Supporting the fighting troops was a huge army of non-combatants from Africa, the Middle East, Malta, etc., and from China, nationals of whom were formed into the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC). In addition to Indian labourers, recruited from the sub-continent, were Chinese labourers resident in Calcutta, which comprised the 62nd Chinese Indian Labour Company. All these non-combatants in war zones were awarded the BWM in bronze, but not the Victory Medal. British officers and Other Ranks with the CLC received the BWM in silver as well as the Victory Medal. Unlike all other BWMs, which were impressed around the edge with the recipient's number and name, the bronze medals awarded to members of the CLC were numbered but not named. The appropriate medal roll (WO329/2374-2383) held by the Public Records Office at Kew in West London reveals the identity of the 134,353 Chinese members of the CLC who were awarded the bronze medal. However, as many of the recipients could not be located once they had returned to China, a large number of these medals were undelivered and were returned to the Royal Mint for destruction. The discovery Some years ago, there came to light the pocketbook of Labourer ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 450 was not possible to erect a replacement plaque in the cathedral. The authorities concerned would not permit it. Another interesting case was that of a clock made by Douglas Lapraik in Hong Kong in the mid 19th century. This story has been written up by the enquirer, Dr Peter Hansell, and an account is published in this volume of JHKBRAS, * Other enquiries have included a request from a family member about Thomas Child Hayllar who was Attorney General in Hong Kong in the middle of the 19th century. On similar lines, Francis Howell was also enquiring about family members named Eckford who worked in China and Hong Kong during the past two centuries. On another occasion we received an enquiry from a HKBRAS overseas member for information about what appear to be bullet marks on the low boundary wall which runs along the east side of lower Stubbs Road. Although they were probably caused by machine gun fire during the attack by the Japanese, in December 1941, we have not been able to glean any detailed information about the actual incident. Another enquirer, an academic living in New Zealand, wanted to know whether there were any roads, buildings or any monuments at all in Hong Kong in memory of Nurse Edith Cavell. She was executed by the Germans in Brussels, on 12 October 1915, for assisting Allied prisoners escape. As far as we know there is nothing erected in her memory in Hong Kong. A gentleman from Britain wanted to learn more about his maternal grandfather who joined the colonial service in 1910, whereupon he was posted to Hong Kong and subsequently to Canton to learn Cantonese. During the run-up leading to the Sun Yat Sen Revolution, probably in May or June of 1911, the group of Hong Kong cadets was accosted by over-zealous Chinese officials. One of the cadets then drew his revolver and shot an official. The British gentleman has said that, according to family lore, his grandfather, Samuel Burnside Boyd McElderry, was able to calm the situation and talk the group out of the encounter. In spite of searches at the Hong Kong Public Records Office (who were extremely helpful) and elsewhere, no information has been gleaned about this incident. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was originally founded in 1847 but ceased to exist in 1859. It was reconstituted in 1959. The objects of the Society are to encourage an active interest in East Asia and, in particular, China through the medium of lectures, meetings, discussions, visits and by publishing an annual journal, and to do such other things as may be conducive to the attainment of the objects of the Society. A brochure containing a short history of the Hong Kong Branch, together with a list of lectures given before the Society since its reconstitution, can be obtained from the Hon. Secretary, G.P.O. Box 3864, Hong Kong SAR. NOTE TO CONTRIBUTORS The Council welcomes contributions to the Journal, either in the form of articles, notes, queries or book reviews. Contributions containing photographs and illustrations are particularly welcome. The text should be forwarded in soft copy and should adhere closely to the Journal's style, a sample of which is on the following page. Articles without an accompanying disk will not normally be accepted. It is requested that submissions are checked carefully for grammar, punctuation and spelling before transmission. The return of original photographs and illustrations cannot be guaranteed. Responsibility for opinions expressed in articles, notes, queries or book reviews published in the Journal rests with individual contributors and not with the Council. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 Gillian Bickley, Ph.D., is an English writer, teacher, and speaker, who has lived in Hong Kong for over thirty years, teaching at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Baptist University. She taught previously at Universities in Nigeria and New Zealand, and has lectured throughout Britain, the USA and Asia (gbickley@hkbu.edu.hk). Sidney C. H. Cheung, is Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include visual anthropology, heritage and tourism, indigenous people, food and identity. His published books include On the South China Track: Perspectives on Anthropological Research and Teaching (Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, 1998), Tourism, Anthropology, and China (White Lotus, 2001), and The Globalization of Chinese Food (Curzon Press and University of Hawaii Press, 2002) (sidneycheung@cuhk.edu.hk). Eric N. Danielson, studied modern Chinese history under the guidance of Professor Kent Guy at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he earned his History B.A. in 1988. Later, in 1994 he earned his History M.A. from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He has previously published works on Kurdistan, Yugoslavia, and China. He was the co-author of The Yangzi River and the Three Gorges, sixth edition published by Odyssey Guidebooks of Hong Kong in August 2001. For the past six years he has lived in Shanghai, where he has worked as an education consultant and academic manager in China's rapidly growing private education industry (ShangConsultant@netscape.net). Michael Gillam, joined Dartmouth Naval College in 1945 at the age of 13 and continued his service in the Royal Navy specialising in Minewarfare and Diving. The first of his many visits to Hong Kong was in 1952 as a midshipman en route for the Korean War. Among his subsequent appointments was a year in Iran setting up a diving school in the Caspian Sea for the Imperial Iranian Navy and two and a half years in Singapore with responsibility for diving throughout the Far East Fleet. He returned to Singapore at the end of the 60's as Staff Operations Officer to the Inshore Flotilla that included responsibility for providing Coastal Minesweepers to act as the Hong Kong guard ship. xvi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 Roderick O'Brien, LL.B. (Adelaide), M.A. (Hong Kong), Postgraduate Certificate in Ethics (Griffith), has been a life member of HKBRAS since 1976. He is an Australian lawyer, and currently teaches international law at the Northwest Institute of Politics and Law in Xian, China, where he lives. He travels widely in China. Jonathan Parkinson, was born in Trinidad in 1939 and educated in England. He started his maritime career in the shipping business in Sarawak between 1960 and 1964, and thereafter was based in the Bahamas, South Africa, Belgium and the U.S.A. He retired to Johannesburg in 1987 where he spends many hours a week happily engaged in aspects of Naval research (jmp@iafrica.com). Keith Stevens, B.A., was born in 1926 on Merseyside, Great Britain where he lived until he enlisted in the Royal Navy during World War II. He later transferred into the Indian Army and then in 1948 joined the British Army as a career soldier. He read Chinese at both London and Hong Kong Universities, before going onto a second career with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office serving, altogether, more than 25 years in the Far East. He first became interested in Chinese iconography in 1948 and has been compiling a Who's Who of Chinese deities for more than 30 years. He has visited around 3,500 temples in Mainland China, Taiwan, the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions, and across South-East Asia, gathering material. His personal collection includes more than 1,000 images (statues) of Chinese deities, 30,000 photographs of temples and their images, and he has documented the legends and folk law surrounding approximately 2,500 gods. In addition he has written prolifically on modern Chinese history. His publications include Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons and Chinese Mythological Gods (chgods@btopenworld.com). Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather, Ph.D. (Lond.), LRSM, FRGS, was previously Senior Lecturer in the School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of New England, Australia. She was Scholar in Residence in the David C Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University (1995-97, 1999-2000 and 2001-02). She now lives in Canberra, Australia, where she is enjoying the delights of the University of the Third Age (courses on the Silk Route in 2003 and Chinese History in 2004). A summary of her research into deathspace xviii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 APPENDIX ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY ACTIVITIES FOR 2003/2004 Lectures Date Lecture 2003 Friday 25 April Mr Paul Fonaroff: A General History and Overview of Hong Kong Cinema Friday 9 May Mr Tony Banham: The 1941 Hong Kong Garrison - Unabridged Friday 30 May Dr Vicky Lee: Memoirs of Eurasianness Friday 13 June Mr Dave Morgan: Through Spanish Eyes: Two Sixteenth Century Spanish Accounts of the China of the Period Friday 27 June Dr Graeme Lang; The Return of the Refugee God – Wong Tai Sin Friday 29 August Mr Stephen Selby: Chinese Archery -- An Unbroken Tradition Friday 5 September Mr Philip Snow: The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation Friday 24 October Mr Joop B.M. Litmaath: Forty Years in Hong Kong – Far East of Amsterdam Friday 14 November Dr Louis Ng: Sun Yat-Sen, Hong Kong and the Sam Chau Tin Rebellion Friday 21 November Dr Patrick H. Hase; Sha Tau Kok Market and its Market District Friday 12 December Mr Andrew Tse: Ho Kon-Tong: A Man for all Seasons 2004 Friday 16 January Dr Elizabeth Sina: Power and Charity: The Rise of the Chinese Merchant Elite in 19th Century Hong Kong Friday 30 January Dr Francois Bizot: The Jardine Matheson Correspondence. 1827-1843 Friday 13 February Dr Peter Halliday: A History of Suicides in Hong Kong Friday 27 February Dr Greg Thomas: From Model to Museum: Yuanming Yuan through European Eyes xxvii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence Archery traditions of Asia. [Xianggang]: Xianggang hai fang bo wu guan, c2003. Hong Kong Museum of History Boundless learning: foreign-educated students of modern China. [Xianggang]: Xianggang li shi bo wu guan, c2003. Hong Kong Museum of History Brief guide to Hong Kong Museum of History. Xianggang: Shi zheng ju, c1991. Hong Kong Museum of History Napoleon Bonaparte: emperor & man. Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services Department, 2003. International Conference on Sinology (3rd: 2000 : Taipei, Taiwan) Guo jia, shi chang yu mai luo hua'de zu qun (State, market and ethnic groups contextualize). Taibei Shi: Zhong yang yan jiu yuan li shi yu yan yan jiu suo, Minguo 92 [2003]. International Conference on Sinology (3rd: 2000 : Taipei, Taiwan) Xin yang, yi shi yu she hui (Belief, ritual and society). Taibei Shi: Zhong yang yan jiu yuan li shi yu yan yan jiu suo, Minguo 92 [2003]. Litmaath, Joop B.M. Far East of Amsterdam. Hong Kong: Corporate Communications Ltd., 2003. MacGillivray, D. A century of Protestant missions in China (1807-1907) being the Centenary Conference historical volume. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Centre, c1979. Macau on the threshold of the third millennium: an international symposium, co-organized by the Macau Ricci Institute and the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, Hong Kong. Macau: Macau Ricci Institute, c[2003]. xliii ================================================================================ 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 25 Yin. While Guanyin has compassionate mercy for those in need, it is Da Shi Zhi who possesses the power to actually carry out her acts of kindness. The San Sheng Dian houses by far the oldest of Longhua's three bronze bells, this one supposedly dating from 1132, which would also make it the oldest historic relic the temple possesses today. The hall itself dates from an 1884 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1986. Immediately behind the San Sheng Dian is a walled garden with trees which unfortunately is closed to the public. Inside this walled garden is a fifth main hall, the Abbot's Quarters (Fang Zhang Shi), which is for the private use of the resident monks and their master, the Fang Zhang. It was the only hall which the monks maintained control of during the Cultural Revolution. Normally it is kept off limits to the public and cannot be visited. However, the author was able to steal a glimpse and found that the hall was furnished with rows of large armchairs, and lacked any large statues. Possibly it is a modern day form of the Meditation Hall (Chan Tang). At the far left end of the hall is a small office decorated with framed color photos of the temple's Buddhist leaders posing with Communist Party leaders such as Jiang Zemin. Behind the Abbot's Quarters is the sixth and final courtyard, and the sixth hall on the central axis, the newly built two-story Scripture Hall (Cang Jing Lou). This modern building holds most of the temple's few genuine relics, including a library of 7,000 Qing Dynasty volumes; a Ming Dynasty gold seal given to the temple in 1598 by the emperor Wanli (1573-1620); a Ming Dynasty gold-plated bronze Buddha statue; Tang Dynasty scriptures; and a copy of the Heart Sutra dating from the year 1098, the fifth year of the Zhe Zong reign (1085-1100) of Emperor Zhao Xu of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1126). Exactly how these relics survived the destruction of the Taiping Rebellion, the lengthy military occupation of the Min Guo era, and the Cultural Revolution is unclear. Possibly they were donated to the temple sometime later. Unfortunately the public is not welcomed to visit this sixth hall, and the relics are kept hidden from view, although photographs of them appear in a recent pamphlet sold at the temple's bookstore. Hidden in a seldom visited corner of the temple grounds on the east side of the Fang Zhang Shi's walled garden is a smaller garden ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 30 on the China coast, first occupied intermittently in 1517 and then from 1557 continuously under payment of a ground rent until 1849, when the Portuguese threw off Chinese control not long after the Opium War.2 Its picturesque title was "City of the Name of God in China". E In the 1830s, the entire Portuguese population, including slaves, was not above 5,000; whilst the Chinese of Macau were calculated to exceed 30,000.3 Macau had a senate, a bishop, thirteen churches, three monasteries and a convent. A visiting Protestant wrote, "...you are every moment reminded you are in a papal town: the bells ring often every day, processions with crucifixes and lighted candles go and come, and priests with black frocks and cocked hats are seen in the streets'.5 Macau owed its rise solely to trade. Despite its minute size, it was an important part of the Portuguese seaborne empire. It had thrived on the Japan trade, lost after the Japanese rulers turned against Christianity and the overseas trade, which brought its priests into their country; had beaten off Dutch attempts to capture the place in the 1620s; and due to its pivotal role in Eastern trade with South-east Asia and the West, was able to flourish in succeeding centuries. With the growth of world trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, Macau became the place to which, by Chinese decree, all foreign merchant ships trading with China through Canton had to report for clearance, and pay for the pilot and permit needed to enter the Canton River. Vessels could then proceed upstream to the Whampoa anchorage where they had to wait to take on their cargoes. Their departure was authorized by a licence, known picturesquely as the Grand Chop. (Plate 2). It is well-known how the foreign merchants conducting business in Canton could only reside there for half the year, and how they had to return thereafter to join their wives and families in Macau. Macau to Canton The Delta is broad, the shores on each side out of sight save for distant mountains, but two-thirds of the way from Macau, we enter the narrow approaches to the Pearl River at the Bocca Tigris or Bogue ("Tiger's Door" or "Gate"). The change is almost abrupt, and made the more dramatic by the island in mid-stream which blocks the passage into the River. To left, right and centre there were forts. That on the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 The Hoppo lived in the City, along with the Viceroy, the Governor of Guangdong, and other high provincial officials. Their relations had for long crystallised into an arrangement that ensured access to private gain from the trade as parts of one administration, in contrast to the competing rivalries of earlier times. This was in part to provide for mutual protection against interference and accusation from Beijing officials. The Hoppo's and other officials' treatment of foreign merchants The language used by these officials in their communications with the traders and the EIC's Select Committee - as instanced by Dr. Gutzlaff, a most useful contemporary source of information on the times - was invariably haughty and patronising, in keeping with the accepted modes of address towards inferiors of all kinds, and did nothing to ease relationships. Gutzlaff also mentions the 'governmental proclamations, detailing the infamous conduct of barbarians, [which] have been repeatedly posted up at Canton,' imbuing the minds of the people with strong antipathy against such worthless barbarians, and discouraging them from having anything to do with foreigners. "The writer has often heard the natives rehearse these accusations with self-congratulation at their own superiority." This sort of thing was an irritant, as were the restrictions on the movement of foreign merchants whilst in residence at the Factories, mentioned above. Far more vexing were their other complaints against the Canton System, which were listed by Morse as including the heavy taxation/impositions levied on the trade; the monopoly system of the Co-hong; the uncertainty of recovery of debts due from Chinese merchants; the diversion of the Consoo Fund (provided from the trade to cover such debts) to government use and presents to officials; and the prohibition on their making representations to any official save through the Co-hong. To all such complaints must be added the descriptions of the general venality of the administration, the Hoppo and other senior officials included, and indeed of the whole Canton System, as described in this paper. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 47 There was a downside to this denial of access and more reliable information. For most Britons (as for most Europeans) China had been a country steeped in fantasy and misconception. The 18th century craze for "Chinoiserie" had left them with a vision of Cathay, rather than knowledge of the real China. But as time went on; in some curious way, a much less attractive hodgepodge of exotic notions about the country and its people had been assembled, and by the time of the Opium War, this seems to have displaced the benign willow-pattern, and the romantic tale which accompanied it, in the public mind. An early Protestant missionary to China told his readers that when he went there in 1839 he carried with him the following notions in regard to what 'most people in the West entertain about the Chinese,' some of [which] elements may be said to be, "odd manners, pig-tails, cramped feet, long nails, fans, paintings, rice-paper drawings, processions, concentric balls, lanterns, chopsticks, eating rats, mice, and bird's nest soup, popular infanticide, and an utter want of benevolence'.73 These were attributes which found visual expression in the comic illustrations provided by the artist John Leech for Thomas Henry Sealy's 1841 compilation, The Porcelain Tower, Nine Stories of China, a book purporting to provide more information on the country, but more likely intended as a great "send-up" of the entire Chinese nation.74 Nor, in retrospect (albeit there was little alternative, given the linguistic variations of the Chinese language and the more or less permanent ban against teaching it to Westerners) was the enforced adoption of “pidgin" at Canton, as the lingua franca of commercial and social exchange, calculated to convey a fuller understanding or enhance mutual respect.75 Chinese disdain for the West The half truths and misconceptions common to those Britons who bothered to think at all about China and the Chinese were only matched by the even greater ignorance exhibited by Chinese about the West, even by the governing classes. However erudite (they were largely scholar-officials) their mind set was cast in an entirely different mould. For them, China was the "Middle Kingdom," the centre of the universe, and all outside its borders were barbarians who were only allowed a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 48 subordinate status in all things, including the favour of tribute missions and foreign trade.76 Rev. W. Ellis, in Gutlaff's Three Voyages (1834) wrote, ‘A grave Chinese author, profoundly skilled in the literature of his own nation, congratulating himself that he was not born in our barbarous countries of the West observes, "for then I must have lived in a cave under-ground, - eaten the bark and roots of trees, worn leaves and long grass for my covering, - and been really a beast though in the shape of a man."77 Western sojourners in China could not fail to observe the fact that, as the great missionary translator-scholar W. H. Medhurst wrote in 1838, 'The Chinese assume to be...the only civilised and powerful nation in the world ...,'78 an attitude that appears to have characterised official and peasant, merchant and coolie alike. As Parkinson commented in 1937, 'With such invincible ignorance it is difficult to cope.'+79 At the same time, trying to be objective about Chinese disdain, Lord Macartney, England's first ambassador to China, wrote in 1794 of his own countrymen: 'Is there any country on the globe that Englishmen visit where they do not display that pride of themselves and that contempt of others which conscious superiority is apt to inspire?'80 The Impending war By 1839, the situation had not changed a whit. Each party to the impending hostilities was boxed in by its own ideas and limitations, in the case of the Westerners fanned by the many irritations accompanying their lives and mercantile dealings at Canton under the restrictions imposed by Chinese officials. These prompted one of the historians of the military side of the War to opine that 'The opium question 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...'81 But at least one of his brother officers had deplored going into a war in which the opium question was an unworthy element.82 And at this point, on the verge of War, we must regretfully take leave of the China of the old China Trade,83 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 50 more detail, the returns for the Company and 'Country' trade at Appendix I in Greenberg, Michael (1951), British Trade and the Opening of China. Cambridge University Press. s Cited in Views of the Pearl River Delta, Macau, Canton and Hong Kong (1996). Urban Council, Hong Kong joint exhibition organized by the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Peabody Essex Museum, USA, p.108. 9 Ball, B.L., M.D., Rambles in Eastern Asia Including China and Manilla During Several Years' Residence, Boston, 1855, pp.97-8, 10 Davis, John Francis (1845). Sketches of China Partly During an Inland Journey of Four Months, Between Peking, Nanking and Canton. [made with Lord Amherst's Embassy in 1816]. London, as a Supplement to the 1845 edition of The Chinese, p.262. 11 Cited in Views, op.cit., p.109. 12 Parkinson, op.cit., pp.257-8. 13 Gutzlaff, Rev. Charles (1838). China Opened, or A Display of the Topography, History, Customs, Manners, Arts, Manufactures, Commerce, Literature, Religion, Jurisprudence, Etc., of the Chinese Empire. London, Smith, Elder & Co., 2 vols. At Vol. I, p.138. 14 For an evocative recent account of Canton, see Garrett, Valery M. (2002). Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away, Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press. 15 For a description, see Davis, The Chinese, vol. II, pp.114-116. 16 Herbert A. Giles (1900). A Glossary of Reference of Subjects Connected with the Far East. Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, Third Edition, p.87. A plan of the Factories, as drawn in 1856, is given in Morse, Hosea Ballou (1910), The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, The Period of Conflict 1834-1860. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, opposite p.70. 17 Ball, Rambles in Eastern Asia, op.cit., p.100. The earlier remark is by Commodore Mathew Perry, USN, when en route to his Mission to Japan, but other than having recorded "Perry, p.136" I cannot at present trace my source. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 118 In addition to her usual cruising on the China coast the ship paid one visit to Nagasaki and, early in 1933, another to the Philippine Islands. On 11 June 1933 the carrier EAGLE, Captain L.V. Wells, DSO, arrived at Hong Kong to replace her on the station. Accordingly the next day HERMES slipped for Singapore and after a pleasant passage reached Sheerness on Saturday, 22 July 1933. Although while in the East mention has been made above of the activity of pirates, actual direct involvement with any such deed had been about the only experience she missed between 1930 and 1933. She was to fill that gap during her following commission, also on the China Station when under the command of Captain The Hon. George Fraser. NOTES [Hon Ed.] HMS HERMES, a small aircraft carrier of some 10,950 tons, was the first purpose-built such warship in the Royal Navy. On 15th January 1918 she was laid down at the Armstrong Whitworth yard and launched on 11 September 1919. The yard was scheduled to close, and no great post-World War I urgency to complete her was perceived, so she was towed to Devonport for completion. There she was commissioned on 6th August 1923. Several of her pre-World War II commissions were spent on the China Station. At the outbreak of World War II she "worked up" in the English Channel, carried out one patrol, and then in October 1939 was ordered to Dakar to work with the French Navy on anti-enemy blockade runner and surface raider patrols. With the ship operating twelve Swordfish aircraft, generally speaking these operations took place out across the Atlantic towards the coast of South America. On 8 July, 1940, with the advent of Vichy then at Dakar, the ship launched a daring night-time attack first using her motor boat immediately followed by Swordfish aircraft torpedoes, crippling the new battleship RICHELIEU which was lying in Dakar Roads. Subsequently, when returning to Freetown, she was damaged in collision with the P & O liner CORFU, then an armed merchant cruiser engaged in convoy protection duties. She was repaired at Simonstown, South Africa. Following repairs she saw further service, enjoying some notable successes, in the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. From Trincomalee late on 8th April 1942, the approaching Japanese fleet having ================================================================================ 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 128 immediately led to political intervention by Russia, France and Germany which forced Japan to give way and retrocede Liaodong to China. This high-handed action by Western powers left a permanent scar on the Japanese psyche. In the last years of the 19th century, as a result of Russian forward policy in the Far East, Russian pressure had forced the Chinese to grant them railway and territorial concessions in the southern part of Manchuria. This, as well as Russian interference in Korea, led to ever increasing Japanese fears of further Russian expansion within the Pacific region. The Russian Government used the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 as a pretext for sending thousands of troops into Manchuria, ostensibly to protect the China Eastern Railway. Her encroachment in Manchuria, which she had promised to evacuate after having occupied it on the pretext of protecting it against the Boxers but which she firmly held, disturbed the Powers. The causes of war were not insignificant. During the years immediately following the suppression of the Boxers Russia saw an increasingly formidable Japan rise up before her. Put bluntly, Russia and Japan went to war to determine who would control Manchuria and Korea, with one of the main Japanese grounds being fear generated by the threat posed by the land-bridge of Korea pointing threateningly straight at Japan, with the belligerent Russians poised on Korea's northern border. Another, and possibly a more credible threat, was the probability that a strong, victorious Russia would lead to the dismemberment of the Chinese Empire. This would have made a case for Japan's 'defensive war' - to occupy Port Arthur in order to place herself in a position to prevent any such dismemberment by laying the first stone in her long-term plan for predominance in Peking. The war 1904-1905 After several years of Russian-Japanese political sparring the latter grew impatient with diplomacy and war became inevitable. The Japanese took the initiative. Their plan envisaged a swift knock-out blow against the Russian Far Eastern Fleet with a night torpedo-boat attack, followed the next day by her fleet attacking the Russian fleet off Port Arthur and defeating it. Their next move was to get two armies into the field, the first to be landed on the west coast of Korea at ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 138 preyed on the Chinese who had settled in Siberia, north of the Amur River, and every now and then, upon those who lived in Manchuria just south of the river. The Russian bandits gradually disappeared from this region, and their place was more and more taken by Chinese, and so the term Hung Hutse came to be applied to Chinese bandits as well, even though the latter with rare exception have no beards.' Another version provided by an American reporter with a vivid imagination explained that the bandits painted their faces red and wore false beards to engender fear in the hearts of all and sundry. Brindle related the story of two Hong Huzi chiefs who held high positions in the Imperial Army of China, and periodically visited Peking. They had organised large bands of Hong Huzi during the summer and autumn of 1904, the result being a determined and continual harassment of outlying Russian camps. The Hong Huzi, he wrote, 'were splendid horsemen, well armed and mounted on Manchurian ponies, and made admirable irregulars.' Two early French travellers, Ular and Mury, described a community in northern Manchuria as 'Zheltuga, the republic of the Chinese bandits, the Hong Huzi'. Zheltuga was the community of illegal Chinese gold miners which existed on the banks of the Heilongjiang [Amur], the border between Manchuria and Russia, between 1883 and 1886. It consisted of Russians and Chinese who flocked into the area from Siberia and Manchuria when gold was found in the area of the present Chinese town of Mohe as far north as one can get in Manchuria. Zheltuga lasted three years and was destroyed by the Qing in 1886. There would appear to be no corroboration of the French claim, and the miners so described consisted of unauthorised speculators who doubtless were referred to as bandits by the Qing authorities and by extension as Hong Huzi. They may, perhaps, have been a community dominated by Hong Huzi but it is doubtful whether they were an organised community of Red Beards. General Ma, one of China's generals stationed in northern Manchuria near its border with Mongolia, attracted significant attention of the Russians as he was one of a small but powerful party who urged the Chinese Government to cast her lot with the Japanese, making common cause against the encroaching northern Power. Many 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 140 the Russian military with a major headache. Russian attempts to destroy brigandage inadvertently increased the dislike with which they were regarded by the local inhabitants. It was not long before Chinese peasants supported the bandits who also received secret encouragement from Chinese and Manchu officials. The native officials hated the foreign usurpation of their power, but were impotent to openly protest against it. The Russians tried to avoid any interference with the Chinese provincial administration in Manchuria which remained intact, continuing in the hands of Chinese officials, though the Russians instituted their own police service. However, the Russian occupation was distasteful to the official class as a whole, as it diminished both their prestige and, consequently, their emoluments. So that from the official class the Russian met with a hostility which took the form chiefly of passive resistance. A number of snippets in the illustrated War in the East refer to the 'Chunchuses' operating alongside Russian troops on the road to Mukden. One such reads 'On 15th June 1905 took place the battle of Telissu while on the 12th General Kuoki reported the occupation of Huairen Xian by a detachment of his (Japanese) troops, who expelled a force of six hundred Russians and Chunchuses.' The Red Beards were to all intents and purposes soldiers of fortune, and as such fought for whomsoever they wished but only for as long as it suited them. In view of their general attitude towards the Russians it was surprising that they ever co-operated with them in the field. However, the Red Beards resembled the Cossacks with their habits of free life and distrust of military discipline, a common love of their horses and a shared prowess at horsemanship. Bandits serving with Japanese forces The Japanese were quick to appreciate the potential of the Hong Huzi as guerrillas. The large contemporary two-volume Japan's Fight for Freedom, a contemporary illustrated popular history produced in Britain, included several references to the Hong Huzi, describing them in the text as 'Hunhuses, serving under Japanese command.' ================================================================================ 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 205 YET ANOTHER ANGLE ON THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE, 1918 KEITH STEVENS Many of the officers of the Chinese Labour Corps in France in 1918 were or had been Christian missionaries in China recruited for their language skills. One usually hears about Protestant missionaries of various sects in uniform in France though, as far as I am aware, no Roman Catholic missionaries would appear to have been recruited. It was therefore fascinating to come across a short essay in a book containing experiences and memories of members of the Irish Maynooth Mission to China which highlights this. One afternoon in late April 1918 a Roman Catholic Chaplain was riding along a road near the border of Artois and Picardy on the "Poor Old Slob," as his groom affectionately called the antiquated charger. Some eight miles to the east he could discern the gentle rise where the line had been held during the desperate weeks which followed March 21st and it was here that he saw in a sheltered field a short distance off the road, a group of tents before which swarms of Chinese Labour men were cooking their evening meal. The Chaplain suddenly realised that he had never heard whether there were any Catholics amongst the Chinese: and besides, it was meal time there and perhaps, with a bit of luck he would find an officer there at tea. As he rode through the camp the Chinese turned and looked at him with that impenetrable stare which is so disconcerting to the western mind. He found the officer in his tent, with his Chinese servant setting the tea-things on a soap box which did duty for a table. The officer, as he sat to tea, said to the Chaplain, ‘Any Catholics, you ask. I should not be surprised if there were, because these chaps come from an inland village where I know there was a French Mission. We can enquire during the next parade.' After tea the officer paraded his men and spoke a few words to them, completely unintelligible to the Catholic Chaplain. The result 'Heralds of the Orient : Maynooth Mission to China: Dalgan Park, Galway : 1924 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 209 the original plaque, with the words as above, has been cleaned and is easy to read, A new, interesting information panel now also accompanies the exhibit. It reads as follows: Steam Ship Tyndareus In 1916 the 25th (Garrison) Battalion, the Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regiment) was ordered to proceed to Hong Kong from Aldershot. The Battalion was to be taken as far as Durban by S S Tyndareus, a 7058-tonne vessel with a crew of 108 owned by Alfred Holt and Company of Liverpool which was making her maiden voyage. Having sailed from Glasgow, the Tyndareus embarked the battalion, 1005 strong, and left Devonport on 22 December 1916. At 6.55pm on February 1917, off Cape Agulhas, 173 Km south-east of Cape Town, the vessel struck a German mine which exploded creating an 84 square metre hole in the starboard side and bottom of the ship. The Tyndareus heaved over, began to ship water and started to go down by the head. No lives were lost in the explosion or the subsequent evacuation and the vessel managed to reach Simontown two days later. The Tyndareus received partial repairs in South Africa, served through the Second World War and was not broken up until 1960. The Battalion had recovered sufficiently from its ordeal to form a guard of honour at the opening of the South African Parliament on 16 February, and after a further stop in Singapore the 25th reached Hong Kong on 1 April 1917. Here the Battalion's commanding Officer commissioned the erection of a memorial, sited on the Peak of Hong Kong Island, to commemorate the exemplary conduct displayed by his men when the ship was mined. An inscribed metal plaque was later added to the rock which erroneously stated that it was erected in memory of the men who died in the accident - perhaps a confusion with the wreck of HM Troopship Birkenhead in 1852 which claimed 445 lives. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 217 opportunity to turn knowledge into action? (pp. 138, 131) Will China reaffirm her feeling of acceptance by offering her some new task? Whatever the case, readers of this book, impressed by Ruth Hayhoe's sincerity and passion, will all, surely, wish the writer of this revealing autobiography all things good. GILLIAN BICKLEY Jonathan Tucker, The Silk Road, Art and History, 2003. Philip Wilson Publishers, 7 Deane House, 27 Greenwood Place, London NW5 1LB. ISBN 0 85667 546 6. 391pp, index, bibliography, maps, 437 plates. Why is the term 'the Silk Road' so evocative? Is it because it can be seen as a metaphor for the passage of human history in all its magnificence, cruelty and sheer grit? The patterns of trade that flourished for about fifteen hundred years along the eight thousand kilometre network of routes known today as the Silk Road can be dated back to the time of the Han Emperor Wudi (reigned 141-87 BCE). For strategic reasons, Wudi wanted to set up an alliance against the nomadic Xiongnu tribes with the Yuezhi, who had settled in the area centred on the Hindu Kush. After more than ten years, Zhang Qian, his first emissary to the Yuezhi, brought back news of lands to the far west, but it was hearing of the magnificent 'blood sweating horses' of Ferghana that made Wudi determined to establish links with Central Asia. In 101 BCE a Chinese army reached Ferghana, seized many horses and established suzerainty - much contested, however, for the next few centuries - over territory as far west as the Pamirs. The routes that opened up between China and the West became known as the Silk Road, and they were to become the main land artery along which travelled not only traded goods but also the ideas and technology of east and west. Those who used the Silk Road were driven by the search for profit, enlightenment, conquest, refuge, by missionary zeal, or by curiosity about exotic lands. Their quests faced the contingencies of physical calamities, for the regions they traversed were, and remain, prone to floods, droughts, storms, extremes of heat and cold, and earthquakes. It is likely that along it, too, from the east, came the Black Death, which brought calamity to medieval Europe. Where travellers paused to rest arose tiny places such as forts and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 218 shrines, and also larger caravanserai and trading centres. Many of the last developed into great crucibles for cultural development, cities that derived their often stupendous material wealth from trade, but also an equally magnificent cultural wealth derived from their location at the crossing point of cultures. It is this outpouring of human creativity at points along the Silk Road that is a major focus for Jonathan Tucker's book The Silk Road, subtitled Art and History. Tucker's quest is bold, as befits his topic: to describe for the serious but not necessarily academic reader the art that flourished along the Silk Road during the fifteen hundred years of its heyday. Over four hundred colour illustrations conjure up a wonderful picture of the Silk Road, its places and people, its architecture (often in ruins today), paintings, sculpture, and even - through depictions on what remain of palace and temple walls - its music and ritual. It is a difficult task that Tucker has set himself. To appreciate the art he presents, a knowledge of the complex passage and interaction of peoples and cultures is necessary. Tucker goes into enormous detail to try to ensure that his readers acquire this background. He gives the clearest picture when he concentrates on individual cities, for example, Chang'an (modern Xi'an) towards the eastern extremity of the Silk Road (which extended to Japan), and Baghdad towards the west (Istanbul is where Tucker draws his line here). By the Tang Dynasty, significant numbers of foreigners were reaching China along the overland route, and by then in Chang'an lived Zoroastrian refugees from Sassanian Persia (conquered by the Arabs in 651); Muslims (though the mosque in Chang'an is probably not as old, says Tucker, as the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, which dates from 627); Jews, who were significant and numerous Silk Road traders; Nestorian Christians; and followers of Manichaeism. Tucker painstakingly identifies elements that derived from non-Chinese influences in terracotta figurines, tomb paintings and sculptures, statues and other artefacts found in Chang'an and Luoyang from Tang and later periods. Most notable is a marble Bodhisattva, the 'Venus of the East' (his Fig. 119) which, in its sculptured clinging garments, reflected Indian antecedents, and was enormously influential on subsequent sculpture in this part of China. Art from the one hundred and ninety-three caves not far from ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 220 Buddha. After all, the Greeks had settled here even earlier, in the third century BCE. Other examples, before being blown up in 2001, were the huge images of Buddha carved out of the cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, with their moulded mud and stucco draperies. Alexander's forays and settlements to lands well to the east of his Macedonian homeland remind us that several of the cities that Tucker describes were far more ancient than the Silk Road. Babylon, which fell to Alexander in 331 BCE, had already by then been the Middle East's most magnificent city for over fifteen hundred years. The earliest city to occupy the site of Chang'an was in existence before 1000 BCE. Tucker manages to convey a huge sweep of history and geography. You will need time to read this book as, if you merely dip into it, you will lose the interconnecting threads, which are the crux of his thesis, i.e. that, throughout fifteen hundred years, numerous cultures met along the Silk Road and nourished each other's creative spirits. You will need to read it at a table because it is too heavy to read on your knees. And you will need an atlas alongside it that has maps showing some realms not often shown on a single spread. Your maps will need to show the geographical proximity of the towering mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush with the drainage basins of the Aral Sea to their west and north and with the upper tributaries of the Indus to their east and south. The passes connecting these regions beckoned both Alexander and, nearly two thousand years later, Tamerlane, both intent on conquering and settling the north of the Indian subcontinent. You will need a single map to show the vast latitudinal spread of the great grasslands, deserts and semi-deserts from Turkey to northern China over which the nomads galloped. It was along these northernmost routes of the Silk Road that the Mongols charged on their terrifying way to Vienna, besieging it in 1241 and only withdrawing because they had to travel back, unexpectedly but unavoidably, all the way to Karakorum to appoint a new Grand Khan. The Silk Road saw many such events that were turning points in history, such as when in 1218 the governor of a city in what is now Kazakhstan killed an envoy of Ghengis Khan, suspecting that he was a spy, an action that precipitated the wrath of the Khan, and "was to propel the world into an abyss, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the deaths of millions of people from the Danube to the Sea of Japan' (p.221) - because Ghengis Khan's horsemen set out to avenge this insult, inflicting terrible retribution on all in their path. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 222 and (from Needham) a “Summary on the Transmission of Mechanical and other techniques from China to the West'. There is an index, and an extensive bibliography. Tucker acknowledges the assistance of experts in many cities along the Silk Road, and also his wife, Antonia Tozer, who accompanied him on several of the journeys that he undertook while writing the book and whose photographs comprise the majority of those included. Other sources of photographs include the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, Tucker's alma mater. No book is perfect, and although my background does not qualify me to comment on the content and arguments of this one, I have one major reservation about the way Tucker argues his thesis, and several reservations about the book's presentation. My first point relates to Tucker's failure to compare the relative significance of the overland Silk Road with that of the maritime Silk Road. An excellent, though very different and far briefer, companion to Tucker's book is a volume produced in 1996 by the Hong Kong Museum of History, edited by Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong) member Dr. Joseph Ting.2 Contributors to this edited volume make it clear that the cultural exchange between China and countries to the west was just as significant by sea as by land. Admittedly, Tucker notes a contemporary account in around 800 that describes Chinese junks in Baghdad, and several maps indicate the maritime routes, but his single-minded focus on the overland route detracts from a more balanced picture of the relative significance of the two routes. In fact, Patricia Ebrey comments that the trade along the sea routes in the Tang Dynasty was higher in volume than that by land. Tucker's concluding chapter implies that it was European voyages of discovery in the fifteenth century that led to the development of the sea routes between China and the west. His emphasis on Chang'an, which is appropriate as it was a major destination for travellers along the overland Silk Road, might lead readers to overlook the significance of Guangzhou, a city which dominated the maritime Silk Road for centuries, and in which the cultural mix in the Tang dynasty was as great as in Chang'an. This leads me to wonder whether the extant art and history of the Chinese influence in the ports used by Chinese vessels on route for India, the Middle East and East Africa have been investigated, and whether this would be a worthy subject for a book. I note a tantalising Page 270 Page 271 ================================================================================