RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 28 missionary named John Fryer. Though he studied only in evening class, he learned to speak English as well as his uncle. In 1859, through his personal ties with Xu Run, he was introduced to Dent & Co. to work as an assistant in freighting and warehousing until 1868 when the firm was dissolved. Zheng then turned to a foreign tea company Heshengxiang as a comprador and later became a manager, and eventually the owner. In 1874, Zheng joined the Butterfield & Swire Co. as a comprador to its affiliate China Navigation Co. until 1881. He then turned to assist Sheng Xuanhuai in managing the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co. thus terminating his compradorial career. 34 From Table 6 we can see Zheng was interested in a lot of modern enterprises. In absence of sources, we are unable to know the exact amount of his investment. A preliminary estimate as shown in the table was about thirty thousand taels. This is near Yenping Hao's assessment of forty thousand taels. Modern enterprises in which Zheng invested varied from commercial and financial to industrial and mining; they were scattered over Shanghai, Tianjin, Canton and other Chinese cities as well as Southeast Asia. As previously discussed, Zheng favoured joint-stock companies. He thought it was a powerful business organization and he considered it reasonable to have opened company accounts as a way to solicit support of shareholders. Zheng was quite conservative in starting a new undertaking. He had objected to Tang Tingshu's plan to establishing the Hongyuan Co. in London in 1881.35 Instead he had shown his genius in solving technical problems occurring in some guandu shangban enterprises such as China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co., Kaiping Coal Mines, Imperial Telegraph Administration, Hanyang Iron Works, Shanghai Cotton Mill and Canton-Hankow Railway Co., for which he had won appreciation from his patrons including Li Hongzhang and Sheng Xuanhuai. He had helped Sheng Xuanhuai in reorganizing the Hanyang Iron Works, Daye Iron Mines with Pingxiang Coal Mines into one limited liability company under the name of Hanyeping. It was incorporated at the Ministry of Commerce in 1908. One year later, he also reorganized the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co. into a public company. Moreover, he was a pioneer in introducing the latest methods in organising joint-stock companies, as he had translated the company laws of Hong Kong promulgated in 1865 from English to Chinese. As a Cantonese comprador, merchant and so-called comprador-merchant as mentioned before, Xu, Tang and Zheng were all regarded as outstanding in performing entrepreneurial activities, particularly in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j Table 6 Zheng Guanying's Investment in Modern Enterprises 29 Item Amount (taels) Place Union Steamship Navigation Co. ? Shanghai China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co. 1,200 Shanghai Yuehan Railway Co. ? Canton Renhe Insurance Co. Shanghai Cotton Mill A Paper Manufactory A Glass Work A Dairy Co. ? ? 50,000 ? ? Shanghai Shanghai ? ? Shanghai A Silk Filature ? ? Tongwen Book Co. 14,000 Shanghai Ma'an shan Coal Mines ? ? Jinzhou Coal Mines 100,000 ? Jilin Gold Mines Xuancheng Coal Mines Shandong Mines Pingchuan Gold Mines Mianning Gold Mines Jianping Gold Mines Chefoo Coal Mines Yongping Gold Mines ? ? several thousand 36 shares + 4,320 20 shares + several thousand ? several thousand ? Shanghai ? ? ? ? ? Pingxiang Coal Mines Hupei Nantaiwu Shan Coal Mines Fujian Chengping Silk several thousand ? Kaiping Canton Land 5,000 Canton Tianjin Kutang Land Reclamation 3,000 Tianjin A Nacre Co. ? ? A Reclamation Project in Malaya ? Malaya Tianjin Peihailou ? Tianjin A Gambling Co. 5,000 ? Total 232,520+? Sources: Wu Chang-chuan, Cheng Kuan-ying: A Case Study of Merchant Participation in the Self-strengthening Movement (1878-1884): Xia-Dongyuan, Zheng Guanying Zhuan. early development of modern Chinese enterprises. As shown in the case of Xu, Tang and Zheng, they not only provided funds to modern ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 48 Spurr, Russell (1995), Excellency, the Governors of Hong Kong, FormAsia. Stapleton, Kristin (1997), Interpreting Humour in History: Two Cases from Republican China, paper presented at 'Comparative and World History Seminar,' at John Hopkins University, USA, on 4 February 1997. Sypher, Wylie (1956), Introduction and Appendix, Comedy, John Hopkins University Press. Syrett, Michel (1995, October 29), ‘Jest over the wall,' Agenda, South China Morning Post. Tse, Sabrina (1997, November 14), 'What a laugh: being funny in Hong Kong,' Hong Kong Standard. Vittachi, Nury (1995), The Hong Kong Joke Book, Chameleon/Hellman and Schoenberg. (1999, March, 27) letter to the author. Waters, Dan (1991), 21st Century Management; Keeping Ahead of the Japanese and Chinese, Prentice Hall/Simon and Schuster. (1995), Faces of Hong Kong an Old Hand's Reflections, Prentice Hall/Simon and Schuster. Welsford, Enid (1935), The Fool, His Social and Literary History, London. Wu, Cynthia Hsin-feng, “If Triangles Were Circles...” A Study of Counterfactuals in Chinese and in English, Crane Publishing Co. Ltd., USA, undated but some time in 1990s. Xu Jingxiang (1989) 200 Cartoons from China, China Today Press (China Reconstructs Press), Beijing. ================================================================================