G.C. Anderson; Joseph Overbeck Anderson, alias Hung Kwok-leung, born in 1880, died in 1904, who studied law at Lincoln's Inn, London; and Hung Kwok-wah. All were students at Queen's College, Hong Kong.
Hung Kam-ning was appointed second interpreter in 1887. He had been a student at Queen's College, where he received the Steward Scholarship in 1884. While still a student, he had been appointed a provisional clerk in the Marine Survey Office in 1881, and in 1883 became fifth clerk in the Harbour Master's Office. From there, he entered the Magistracy as interpreter. He was placed on the government pension list in 1896 upon the abolition of the office he then held. After his retirement from government service, he was usually known as Henry Graham Anderson. His children were Hugh G. Anderson, born in 1887, died in 1922; Ernest G. Anderson, born in 1888, died in 1920; Charles (Carl) Graham Anderson, born in 1889, died in 1949 (Carl Anderson was the father of Mrs Joyce Symons, a member of the Legislative Council); James G. Anderson of Shanghai; Dr Henry M. Ander-son, one-time member of the Royal Army Medical Corps; John G. Anderson; Catherine Anderson, wife of Ho Sai-wing, the son of Ho Fook and adopted son of Sir Robert Ho-tung; Mabel Ander-son, a sister in the Canossian Religious Order in Hong Kong; Irene Teresa Anderson, born in 1895, died in 1959, a government nurse; Agnes Anderson, born in 1899, died in 1946, unmarried; and Edith Anderson, born in 1900, died in 1959, unmarried, one of the first physiotherapists to be trained in Hong Kong.
English-speaking Chinese as Compradores
It was natural that Chinese with a formal English education should increasingly dominate the compradore system in Hong Kong. The better his English, the more competent the compradore was to perform an important function of his position: middleman be-tween Chinese employees and business men, and his foreign em-ployer. In the days before formal English-language education was offered in the missionary and government schools, the compra-dores depended upon China coast pidgin English as the bridge of communication. Pidgin, as we saw, seriously limited the areas of communication and could be a source of misunderstanding. On the English side, a person often had to guess the exact meaning of the garbled language; on the Chinese side, knowledge of pidgin did not enable a person to understand the subtleties of English.
The compradore system, as it developed in nineteenth-century China, grew out of the 'Co-hong' system instituted by the Chinese Government at Canton to control foreign trade. An official group of Chinese linguists was licensed to bridge the language gap. They were to be the medium of communication between the foreigners and government officials. In addition, each foreign firm or hong had a compradore secured by a Chinese hong merchant; all ser-vants and household affairs were under his supervision. He was also in charge of the treasury and its contents.22
After the abolition of the Co-hong monopoly in 1842, the com-pradore assumed functions which had previously been performed by the linguists. 'Linguists', as an official category, disappeared, though in some sense official translators and interpreters may be considered as continuing the linguist tradition.
On 19 June 1871, the China Mail published an editorial on the compradore system in which it set forth a compradore's duties, responsibilities, and privileges under seven points, which are summarized here:
(a)
He was guaranteed to his employers by the chop of respect-able and wealthy sureties, generally in an amount which, though large, was very frequently of little practical protec-tion against defalcation, by reason of the very large sums of money and the value of the goods placed under his care.
(b)
In default of banking facilities, the compradore had entire charge of all monies, bullion, and cash, and in addition was not unknown to have acted somewhat like a banker in finding monies, and paying cheques and orders on him, in excess of his employer's balance, i.e. in honouring overdrawn accounts.
(c)
He engaged the servants, coolies, and so on, and was held responsible for any losses incurred by their misconduct.
(d)
He was the go-between in his master's commercial dealings with native merchants. All transactions were conducted through him or his agents and he was accountable for the honest fulfilment of all contracts entered into by his master with them, whether in the sale of goods or purchases of mer-chandise. All commercial dealings went through his hands.
(e)
He was paid only a nominal wage, but in consideration of his service he was permitted to charge native buyers or sellers a commission on every transaction which passed between them and his employer.
(f)
He also usually traded on his own account. This was not con-
sidered to affect his services as compradore or his relation-ship to his master. Whatever trading the compradore engaged in was outside and distinct from his services as compradore.
(g) Large operations were frequently entered into between em-ployer and compradore on joint accounts, but these were also distinct and apart from compradore duty, and were friendly agreements for mutual profit.
From this description of duties and privileges it can be seen that the compradore was a central figure in the organization of business between Chinese and foreigners. His position provided him with the opportunity to trade on his own and in private partnership with his employer. He was enabled to acquire capital, which he used to promote commercial, financial, and industrial enterprises mod-elled on Western patterns. The compradore financed Chinese-owned steamship companies, banks, and insurance companies, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century increasingly made inroads on the foreign domination of these business fields. In the Kwangtung area, Hong Kong compradore capital was a signifi-cant element in the promotion of railroads, telegraph, and public utilities.
In Hong Kong, the development of the compradore system was strengthened in the 1850s with the influx of foreign firms seeking refuge from the disturbed conditions in Canton caused by the out-break of the second Sino-British war in 1856. It was in the 1860s that the foreign firms began to recruit a larger number of their compradores from students of the English-language schools. In the first half of the century, most of the compradores used pidgin Eng-lish. In the larger foreign firms, the compradoreship became a family position, sons and nephews succeeding fathers and uncles as they retired or died. The second generation had usually been edu-cated in English in anticipation of their future responsibilities, and in turn, they sent their sons to English-language schools.
English-speaking Chinese in the Legal and Medical Professions
As early as 1845, the author of an article in the Chinese Repository suggested the propriety of Chinese practising in the courts of Hong Kong: 'As friends of the Chinese, we should like to see this Court [the Supreme Court] provided with its learned Chinese advo-cates'.23 However, it was not until 1856 that a Chinese expressed
a desire to practise in the Hong Kong courts. At that time, Yung Wing had returned to China after graduation from Yale University in the United States. After acting as personal secretary to Dr Peter Parker, the American Commissioner at Canton, he moved to Hong Kong. He arrived at a time when the Supreme Court was in desperate need of a qualified interpreter. Yung Wing offered himself and was eagerly accepted. But his future as an in-terpreter in the Hong Kong courts did not meet the expectations of either himself or his patrons. He was urged to prepare himself to qualify for acceptance for practice as a solicitor. In consequence, he entered the office of Ambrose Parsons as an articled clerk for a three-year apprenticeship, after which he hoped to apply for per-mission to practise. In this move he had the support of Thomas Chisholm Anstey, the Attorney-General. Anstey prepared and in-troduced into the Legislative Council an ordinance, No. 13 of 1856, 'for the admission of candidates to the rolls of practitioners in the Supreme Court, and for the taxation of costs'.24 Section seven clarified the position of Chinese applicants: 'No person bona fide domiciled within the Colony and who complied with the provi-sions of the ordinance, was disqualified from obtaining such admis-sion as aforesaid merely by reason of alienage, or that he is by birth a Chinaman.'
While the ordinance was under consideration, members of the legal profession, who according to the editorial in the 19 June 1856 issue of the China Mail 'imagined their craft to be en-dangered, and their gains jeopardized, by the introduction of the new element amongst them' held a meeting, drew up a memorial, and sent a deputation to the Governor to protest against its enact-ment. In spite of this opposition, the ordinance was adopted by the Legislative Council on 21 June 1856. When the Supreme Court re-opened on 1 July, Yung Wing tendered his resignation as inter-preter, acting upon the advice of Attorney-General Anstey, who said that it was not compatible with the terms of the new ordinance for him to act as court interpreter and at the same time be an articled clerk in a solicitor's office.
In anticipation of qualifying under the terms of the ordinance, Yung Wing drew up a memorial requesting that he be granted letters of naturalization as a British subject. The memorial bore the recommendation of the Bishop of Victoria and other promi-nent members of the community. Before submitting it, he sent the memorial to Chief Justice Hulme asking the favour of his recommendation and signature to the document. But here Yung Wing met with a rebuff, for according to the account of the inci-dent published in the China Mail on 19 June 1856, 'with marked and inexplicable discourtesy, the humble petition was returned, not only without signature, but in an open envelope, and un-addressed.'
However, a subsequent explanation was given in a letter from the Chief Justice's clerk, W.F. Bevan, published in the China Mail of 26 June 1856, stating that the Judge had wished to interview Yung Wing and had sent his messenger to invite him, but the messenger, instead of issuing the invitation, had returned the memorial to Yung Wing, who then left.
The controversy aroused by Yung Wing's intention to qualify for the legal profession was accompanied by articles in the press, which, according to the China Mail of 19 June 1856 'by inuendos and under cover of reflections upon the Chinese as a body to villify [sic] Awing, whose reputation hitherto has been stainless ... and whose good qualities have won for him the esteem of all foreigners with whom he has come in contact.'
The editor of the China Mail, Andrew Shortrede, was sym-pathetic to Yung Wing and his ambitions. Shortrede had been one of the principal supporters of the three students of the Morrison Education Society School whom Samuel R. Brown, the principal of the school, had taken to America to be educated in 1847. Yung Wing had been one of these students.
These attacks were an important element in Yung Wing's deci-sion to move to Shanghai in August 1856, where he became an interpreter in the Chinese maritime customs service, although he did not find this position satisfactory either. He could not accept the system of graft practised in the service and resigned after four months to enter the business world.
It was not until 1877 that a Chinese was admitted to practise in Hong Kong. He came fully qualified, having been accepted as a member of Lincoln's Inn in London. Norton-Kyshe published a 'Roll of Barristers admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Hongkong'.25 Out of forty-six admitted between 1844 and 1898, three were Chinese: 18 May 1877, Ng Choy, of Lincoln's Inn; 29 March 1882, Ho Kai (ftft), alias Shan-kai (**&), of Lincoln's Inn, Bachelor of Medicine of Aberdeen University and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons; and 22 October 1888, Wei Pui, of the Middle Temple.
The 'Roll of Proctors, Attorneys, and Solicitors admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Hongkong'26 contains sixty-seven names, of which three were Chinese: 23 August 1887, Ho Wyson, a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature in England (admitted on 8 July 1887); 3 July 1897, Tso Seen-wan ( W.��) , a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature in England (admitted on 1 October 1896); and 26 July 1897, Wei Wah-on (*.*) , a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature in England (admitted on 12 January 1897).
Wei Pui and Wei Wah-on were sons of Wei Akwong, compra-dore of the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China. Ho Kai and Ho Wyson were sons of the Revd Ho Fuk-tong.27 Ng Choy had married their sister. Another brother, Ho Yow (H86), alias Ho Shan-yow (#56), became an articled clerk to his brother, Ho Wyson, when the latter began practising in Hong Kong in 1887. In 1897, Ho Yow accompanied his brother-in-law, Ng Choy, to the United States. The latter had been appointed Chinese Minis-ter in Washington. Ho Yow was appointed Chinese Consul-General in San Francisco. Ho Wyson died in Hong Kong on 25 June 1898. He was not a forceful personality and Norton-Kyshe remarks 'it is feared, that Mr. Ho Wyson, who was much re-spected, did not take advantage of the opportunities which offered themselves to him'.28
Tso Seen-wan, who was born in 1868 and who died in 1953, belonged to a wealthy Macau family.29 He received a Chinese education at Shanghai and went to Cheltenham College in Eng-land in 1886. He left the college in 1890 to join a solicitor's firm as an articled clerk, passing his final law examination in 1896. He practised in Hong Kong, where hisfirm become known as T'so and Hodgson.
Of the above six Chinese legal professional elite, three became members of the Legislative Council, Ng Choy (1880-2), Ho Kai (1890-1914) and T'so Seen-wan (1929-37). Two others, Wei Pui and Wei Wah-on, were brothers of another member of the Coun-cil, Sir Boshan Wei-yuk (1896-1914).
The first Chinese to receive a medical degree from a Western university was Wong Fun (MM.).30 He had received his English-language education at the Morrison Education Society School. In 1847, accompanied by two of his classmates, he went to America for further study. After several years at the Monson Academy in Massachusetts, he went to Edinburgh University, Scotland, under the patronage of the editor of the China Mail, Andrew Shortrede. He graduated with high honours in 1857. Before his return to China, he was appointed a missionary of the London Missionary Society, which intended to send him to work at Canton. How-ever, the second Sino-British war prevented his departure from Hong Kong. While waiting for the settlement of the conflict, he opened a dispensary in Hong Kong for a short period, but in October 1858 he was able to open a dispensary in Canton. Both were under the auspices of the London Missionary Society.
In 1860, the relationship between Wong Fun and the Society became strained and he resigned to take up the post of administra-tor of the Civil Hospital in Hong Kong, but he did not remain long in Hong Kong, leaving soon afterwards to become medical adviser to Viceroy Li Hung-chang. Again, his service in this position was short, and he then entered private practice at Canton, at the same time assisting Dr Kerr in the Canton Medical Missionary Society Hospital and serving as medical officer in the Chinese maritime customs service. He died a wealthy man in 1878.
During the long history of the Canton Medical Missionary Soci-ety Hospital, a number of Chinese were trained in Western medi-cine but none seems to have practised in Hong Kong. The second Chinese to receive a Western medical degree was Ho Kai, alias Ho Shan-kai, the fourth son of the Revd Ho Fuk-tong. He was born in Hong Kong in 1859 and died in 1917. Educated at Queen's Col-lege, he was sent to Britain for advanced study. There he earned degrees in both law and medicine.
Dr Ho Kai was a key figure in the development of a medical Chinese elite in Hong Kong. He was the liberal donor of the Alice Memorial Hospital, named in memory of his deceased wife and operated in close association with the London Missionary Society. After many delays, the hospital was opened in February 1887 and, in the same year, in October, a College of Medicine for Chinese was opened in the hospital. Dr Ho Kai was one of the originators of the scheme. The Hong Kong Government relied heavily upon Dr Ho Kai's advice in respect of issues affecting the Chinese community. He was appointed to most of the important advisory boards and was a member of the Legislative Council from 1890 to 1914.
The graduates of the College of Medicine for Chinese were too young to rise to elite status in the nineteenth century, but by the early part of the twentieth century many of them were recognized leaders in Hong Kong and in one important instance, in China. The most famous of the graduates was Sun Yat-sen, the father of Republican China. There was a strong Christian influence in the college and hospital and a number of Dr Sun's classmates were baptized.
Under the patronage of Li Hung-chang, a medical school was opened at Tientsin in 1881. Two of its graduates came to practise in Hong Kong. Chun King-ue was staff surgeon at Alice Memorial Hospital from 1890 to 1895. He died in 1908. The other graduate of the Viceroy's hospital medical school was Dr Wan Tun-mo (f*ffifl), alias Wan Man-kai (ic) . He was the son of Wan Wei-tsing (f*Hrft), an ordained minister of the London Missionary Society. After his graduation at Tientsin, Dr Wan returned to Canton, where he was associated with the hospital of Dr Kerr. In 1897, he came to Hong Kong as staff surgeon of Nethersole Hos-pital, and after the death of U I-kai (fflJBffif) in 1898, Dr Wan replaced him as staff surgeon at Alice Memorial Hospital. He mar-ried the daughter of Au Fung-chi, and several of his brothers-in-law were graduates of the College of Medicine for Chinese and practised with him in Hong Kong.
U I-kai graduated from the College of Medicine for Chinese in 1895. He died during the plague of 1898. Among his children were Dr Arthur Wai-tak Woo and Miss Katie Woo, late headmistress of St. Paul's Girls' School.31
English-speaking Chinese as Advisers to the Government
Hong Kong English-speaking Chinese were used as advisers to government officials in both Hong Kong and China. In China, their knowledge of Western practices in business, commerce, and industry qualified them to advise those officials who were in-terested in promoting the military, commercial, and industrial modernization of China. Such officials recruited Hong Kong Chinese as members of their personal staff. These appointments were not part of the official system based on success in government examinations. However, the patron of these Hong Kong Chinese often recommended them to an official position as advisers or they were rewarded with an official honorary rank. Examples were Ho Shan-che, adviser to the Viceroy of Fukien, Wu Ting-fang, adviser to Li Hung-chang, and Yung Wing, adviser to Tseng Kuo-fan.
While officials in China chose English-speaking advisers on the basis of their intimate acquaintance with Western practices, the Hong Kong official sought the advice of English-speaking Chinese for their knowledge of Chinese ways and thought. The Govern-ment also relied heavily for advice on those Chinese-speaking Europeans in their employ who had intimate knowledge of Chinese ways and thought: such men as John Robert Morrison, Charles Gutzlaff, E. J. Eitel, and J. Dyer Ball, all with missionary connec-tions; and Daniel Richard Caldwell whose wife was Chinese. The Government, however, realized more and more the value of Chinese as advisers. For example, when the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, was at one time concerned about the practice of flogging prisoners, he sought the opinion of Wei Akwong, compra-dore of the Chartered Mercantile Bank.
The most significant step in securing Chinese opinion in govern-ment decisions was the appointment of Chinese to the Legislative Council. The first such appointment was made in 1880, when Pope Hennessy recommended Ng Choy, alias Wu Ting-fang. He served until 1882. In 1884, Wong Shing was the second Chinese member of the Council. He resigned in 1890, to be succeeded by Dr Ho Kai, a brother-in-law of Wu Ting-fang. He served until 1914. Wei Yuk, the son-in-law of Wong Shing was appointed in 1896. He also left the Council in 1914. All had received English-language educa-tion, both locally and abroad, and were in some measure con-nected with the missionary presence in China.
The Government also appointed English-speaking Chinese to certain boards and committees which dealt with specific aspects of Chinese life in Hong Kong. In the nineteenth century the most important of these was the District Watch Committee.32
At times, the Government turned to its Justices of the Peace for advice. All appointees were English-speaking. Thefirst Chinese to be appointed Justices were Ng Choy, Ho Kai, Wei Yuk, and Wong Shing. The following were also appointed before 1900: in 1883, Chan Quan-ee, Choa Chee-bee, Luk Sau-theen, Wong See-tye, and Woo Lin-yuen; in 1886, Kaw Hong-take; in 1891, Ho Tung and Lau Wai-chun; in 1892, Chan Afook, Ho Fook, and Tseung Sz-kai; in 1893, Chan U-fai; and in 1899, Fung Wa-chun, Leung Pui-chi, Leung Shiu-kong, and Wei Long-shan.
The following biographical notes on these individuals are taken from various materials I have gathered on Hong Kong people, not all of which have as yet been collated.
(a)
Chan Quan-ee (RBflSr), alias Chan Shut-cho, alias Chan Man-shing, lived for some years in Burma, where he learned English. From there he came to Hong Kong and in 1857 was clerk in the office of George Cooper-Turner, solici-tor. Upon the removal of the American firm of Augustine Heard and Company from Canton to Hong Kong at the time of the second Sino-British war, he became compradore. Through the years, he invested in property and became a large real estate owner. He was one of the first among the Chinese to live in the 'Mid-levels' area of Hong Kong Island, developing Lower Mosque Terrace, now known as Ying Fai Terrace. He died in 1901 or 1902. According to my records, his sons were Chan Yau, born in 1861, died in 1938; Chan Pat; Chan Wei, died in 1911; and a daughter, Chan Man-ng, alias Chan Kam-ying, alias Alice Martha Chan.
(b)
Choa Chee-bee (WMW), alias Choi Tse-mei, alias Tsoi Tsz-mi, was a member of a Fukien family which had been settled in Malacca for several generations. Choa Chee-bee came to Hong Kong in the early 1870s, where he was compradore for the newly-organized Wahee, Smith and Company Sugar Re-finery. Later, the partners in the Company went bankrupt and the business was taken over by Jardine, Matheson and Company; Choa Chee-bee continued as compradore under their management. He died in 1901, apparently without chil-dren. His nephew, Choa Leep-chee (HitS) , born in 1859, died in 1909, came to join his uncle at the refinery. He later became compradore. Both uncle and nephew had received an English-language education in the Straits Settlements. Choa Leep-chee was survived by ten children. There are many of his descendants still in Hong Kong, including Dr George Choa and Dr Gerald Choa, the Director of Medical Services in 1973.
(c)
In 1881, Luk Sau-theen ( USE) , alias Luk Sow-tin, was an assistant in the Yew Cheong Hong of Bonham Strand.
(d)
Wong See-tye (K8tffi), alias Wong Yiu-chun (Mill), alias Wong Siu-kwong (MJt), was the eldest son of Wong Yook (W3L), who died in Hong Kong in 1877. The father owned real estate in Hong Kong that he had bought in 1866 from Kwok Acheong, the compradore of the P. & O. Steamship Company. Wong Yook also appears to have been a compra-dore for the company. His son, Wong Shu-tong (M$11�G.),
alias Wong Ka-yau (^SK), alias Wong Wing-kwan (36*$), alias Wong Achai, certainly was compradore, as well as his grandson, Wong Ping-sun (RSS) , alias Wong Shau-ying (MM). The latter died in Hong Kong in 1942. Another son of Wong Yook, Wong Yam-ting, alias Wong Wa-hee, had interests in the sugar business. He was a principal in Wahee, Smith and Company Sugar Refinery and the Oriental Sugar Refinery. In neither company was he successful and he went into bankruptcy in 1878. Wong See-tye was compradore of Belilios and Company in Hong Kong. In 1880, he was a member of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee. He died at Canton in January 1889. The value of the property he left in Hong Kong was estimated at $118,000. It was administered by Wong Ping-lam (M'fi%#), alias Wong U-kai (MS), com-pradore of Belilios and Company, and Wong Tat-kwan.
(e)
Woo Lin-yuen (SIJITC), alias Woo Tsit-san (ftill), came to Hong Kong about 1867. He was a member of the Fukien community in Hong Kong. In 1887, when the Fukien mer-chants entertained a member of the Royal family of Siam, the only English-speaking hosts at the dinner were Hong Bing-kew, secretary to the Viceroy of Kwangtung, and Woo Lin-yuen, who was secretary of the Man On Insurance Com-pany. In 1887, Woo was appointed Hong Kong agent for the China Railway Company of Tientsin. In 1883 and 1884, he was a member of the Committee of the Po Leung Kuk, orig-inally established as a refuge for kidnapped girls and women,33 but he does not appear to have served on the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, which was another important Chinese elite organization.34 Woo was appointed to the Sanitary Board but resigned in 1892, presumably because of ill health, for he died in Canton in June 1893. His Hong Kong estate, valued at $1,000, was administered by a wealthy mer-chant, Li Sing, and by Lai Siu-tang.
(f)
Kaw Hong-take was a member of the Singapore firm that received the Hong Kong opium monopoly in 1881. He last appears on the roll of Justices of the Peace in 1904, and prob-ably returned to Singapore.
(g)
The career of Sir Robert Ho-tung is so well known that it is not necessary to give full biographical details here.35 Born in Hong Kong, he was educated at Queen's College. Upon grad-uation, he accepted a post in the Chinese maritime customs
service in October 1878, but resigned in June 1880. He re-turned to Hong Kong and entered the employ of Jardine, Matheson and Company, becoming in time their head com-pradore.
(h)
Lau or Lai Wai-chun (fJ/lill), alias Lau Sai (ffi), alias Lau Kwok-cheung (H#) , was a native of Tsin Shan, Heung Shan District, Kwangtung. His family had business connections in Vancouver, Canada, and as a young man he was sent there to gain overseas business experience. While there he learned English. He later come to Hong Kong, where he was natural-ized in 1891. He was twice elected to the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, in 1884 and 1893. In 1892, when the compradore of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation embez-zled a large sum of the Bank's money, Lau Wai-chun took over his position. Formerly, he had been a member of the Tung Shang Wo firm engaged in the California and Austra-lian trade. In the same year that he became compradore for the Bank, he was appointed by the Government as Justice of the Peace, member of the Sanitary Board, and member of the District Watch Committee. Lau Wai-chun became in-volved in the complicated affairs of the Wong Fung firm, which was established in 1895 to take over the management of the Wai Sing lottery monopoly in Kwangtung Province. Associated with him were the two brothers, Wei Yuk and Wei Long-shan. The latter was the assistant compradore of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. However, when the Viceroy of Kwangtung shut down the lottery in 1905, the Wong Fung firm, as well as several other businesses connected with it, became insolvent, causing Lau Wai-chun to go into bankruptcy in 1906. He is said to have had liabili-ties of over two million dollars, although one source puts his liabilities at the more conservative figure of $503,657. His assets were only $66,554, consisting of his furniture and a share of property on Lyndhurst Terrace. Lau's bankruptcy ended his connection with the Bank, although a relative, Lau Pun-chin (Ifl#tl), alias Lau Ting-cheung (�G�G�D), succeeded him as compradore.36
(i)
Chan Afook was appointed clerk in the Registrar-General's Department in 1867. In 1870, he was transferred to the Sur-vey Department as fourth clerk. In 1881, he was made acting second clerk in the Police Magistracy. He left government
service in 1882 and entered the office of Danby and Leigh, civil engineers, architects, and surveyors. Later, he went into business on his own and also became a director of Watkins Ltd.
(j)
Ho Fook, a brother of Sir Robert Ho-tung, left Queen's Col-lege in 1881 and joined a Haiphong Chinese hong as shipping clerk. He soon returned to Hong Kong and was appointed Chinese clerk and interpreter in the Registrar-General's Department. In 1885, he entered the office of Dennys and Mossop, solicitors, as interpreter. He then became assistant compradore at Jardine, Matheson and Company and even-tually succeeded his brother as head compradore.
(k)
Tseung Sz-kai or Tsz-kai (l?��^) , alias Tseung Ying-fong (K5J) , was a native of Amoy who, when young, went to Jamaica; he later spent some years in Puerto Rico. In about 1872, he returned to Hong Kong. In time, he became compra-dore to the Japanese firm of Osaka Shosen Kaisha; in 1887, he was Vice-Chairman of the Po Leung Kuk Committee; and in 1891, he was appointed to the District Watch Committee. He either left Hong Kong or died about the year 1910.
(1)
Chan U-fai was appointed pupil teacher at Queen's College in 1873 and in 1874 was promoted to assistant master. He later left and engaged in business. He is not listed as a Justice of the Peace after 1897.
(m)
Fung Wa-chun (MMJW), alias Fung Tat-cheung (lip) , alias Fung Shui, was appointed a pupil teacher at Queen's College in 1874 and promoted to assistant master in 1876. He left his teaching position in 1881 and became an assistant in the Yan Wo opium firm. In 1892, when he was elected to the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, he was compradore of the National Bank, but by 1901 he was compradore of Shewan, Tomes and Company. In 1898, he was appointed to the District Watch Committee; in 1899, to the Sanitary Board; and in 1906, he held the lease for quarries in Fa Yuen District, Kwangtung. His name does not appear on the list of Justices of the Peace after 1912.
(n)
Leung Pui-chi (^*HS), alias Leung Long-cheung (ft?), alias Leung Chung (/�G), was a native of Heung Shan District, Kwangtung. He was naturalized in 1899. He had at that time been in the colony for thirty-seven years. In 1889, he was elected to the Tung Wah Hospital Committee. He had busi-
ness interests in the Shui Fung Bank. His name last appears on the lists of Justices of the Peace in 1917.
(o)
Leung Shiu-kong was, in his younger years, a clerk in the Mercantile Bank. In 1898, he was compradore to A.H. Ren-nie, and in 1900, Chinese agent of the Canadian Pacific Rail-way. After 1904, his name is not listed as a Justice of the Peace.
(p)
Wei Long-shan, alias Wei Song, was a son of Wei Akwong and brother of Wei Yuk. In 1882, he was an assistant com-pradore in Shanghai. He later returned to Hong Kong, where he invested in real estate and became involved in the management of the Wai Sing lottery monopoly of Kwang-tung Province. With the lottery's collapse in 1905, he went into bankruptcy. He took up residence in Macau, where he died in 1929.
Conclusion
In this examination of the progress of Chinese to elite status in nineteenth-century Hong Kong, the focus has been mainly on the development of English-education institutions, and the education and careers of particular individuals. One purpose of the examina-tion was to refine some of the raw material, to systematize some of the data, before any positive sociological statements about the emergence of Chinese elites in the nineteenth-century period could be made. However, I would like in thisfinal section to make some general observations on the basis of my material and from what I know about the backgrounds of some elite individuals.
English-language education clearly fulfilled a need in the colo-nial situation of Hong Kong. The colony was ruled and dominated by a minority foreign population. Both the Government and the foreign firm needed individuals with dual-language ability to bridge the gap between the non-Chinese-speaking foreign com-munity and the non-English-speaking Chinese community, and there were not many who had this facility. A very small group of foreigners had studied Chinese. A somewhat larger group of Chinese young men had received an English-language education. Dual-language ability opened up a new type of employment: as interpreter or compradore. Both positions had roots in the Canton Co-hong system. The positions of linguist and compradore, estab-lished as they were to facilitate and control relations with for-eigners, did not command much 'face' among traditional Chinese, but an education outside the traditional Chinese system meant, at least at a formal level, a break with the prevailing cultural system. And, in Hong Kong, the old values relating to status did not have the same importance. In China, the community would have looked to the literati-gentry class for leadership (although even there English-educated individuals were beginning to assume important roles). In Hong Kong, such a class scarcely existed (although some members of the elite reinforced their status by purchasing degrees and titles). Leadership was assumed by those who accumulated wealth. Because the demand for dual-language speakers exceeded supply, it was not difficult for a Chinese speaking standard English to secure a position which at the same time gave him opportunities to accumulate wealth (perhaps not always by legitimate means). Many members of the elite had humble beginnings but English-language ability in a dual-language community enabled them to rise from poverty to wealth; from obscurity to prominence. The dual-language-speaking group formed the pool from which the Government recruited its top advisers on affairs relating to the Chinese community at large.
Elite persons did emerge among those who did not understand English, particularly those operating in strictly Chinese social and business organizations. But wherever such organizations moved beyond a strictly Chinese context, those members with facility in English were placed in influential positions. This is evident if we look at such institutions as the Tung Wah Hospital:37 established to provide medical services for the traditionally-minded Chinese, it came to assume responsibility for various quasi-political activi-ties within the Chinese community. And inasmuch as the hospital was accountable to the Hong Kong Government, members of the organization able to speak English were at an advantage. Practi-cally all the Chinese on the councils and committees established by the Government were at one time members of the Tung Wah Board of Directors.
As a man of wealth and position, the English-educated member of the elite had the qualifications necessary for becoming a 'found-ing ancestor' of an elite 'dynasty' or descent group. The fortunes of the family in a new geographical setting centred on him. The family was basic to Chinese life and its importance was reflected in certain aspects of the structure of Chinese elite groups in Hong Kong. The present Chinese elite, indeed, is still largely dominated by families whose ancestors grew to elite status in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Practically all these ancestors were individuals discussed in this chapter.
The Chinese family system operated on a principle of first res-ponsibility to members of the immediate family, and then, in varying degrees, to other members of the wider descent group. This often resulted, in Hong Kong, in the introduction of brothers, cousins, sons, and nephews to positions over which an individual could exercise some influence on employment policies. Certainly, we find that in some government offices and departments, employ-ees were kinsmen. A compradore might staff the lower positions under his control with remoter kinsmen, but reserve the better places for those nearest in relationship. In some cases also the position of compradore was held in the same family for some three or four generations.
The position of the family in elite circles also appears to have been strengthened and extended by intermarriage with other elite families. Although intermarriage among elite families follows a general pattern, in the Hong Kong Chinese case, the situation was influenced by degrees of Westernization and Christianization. A person might have a foreign-acquired aversion to foot-binding, preferring to have a wife who had not been subjected to this prac-tice; and she, in all likelihood, would be a member of a Western-ized and elite family. Christian families wished to find Christian marriage-partners for their sons or daughters and again they tended to be in the Westernized and elite family groups. And given these marriage 'qualifications', partners also tended to come from the same dialect group and place of origin.
Special attention needs to be paid to the role of Eurasians in the nineteenth-century elite of Hong Kong, particularly towards the turn of the century when they began to come into prominence. Two groups of Eurasians appear to have existed according to whether they used a Chinese or a non-Chinese surname. During the period of concern, the Eurasian was almost universally the child of a non-Chinese father and a Chinese mother. Eurasians with English surnames do not as a group enter into this study with the exception of a few persons who began their careers with Chinese names and later changed to a non-Chinese surname.
Eurasians bearing English surnames usually appear to have been children of foreigners with a low social status: tavern-keepers, lower-grade Chinese maritime staff, and government ser-vants of lesser rank such as police, prison staff, sanitary inspectors, and so on. Some members of this group had neither the financial means nor the desire to return to their countries of origin. Hence, they frequently married or cohabited with a Chinese woman, established a family, and remained in Hong Kong until they died. Their children then bore their father's surname.
Eurasians bearing Chinese surnames were usually children of a father who remained in the colony for a limited time. A number were merchants and business men of good social position and wealth, but who, after amassing a competence, returned to their home country. They had not married the Chinese women by whom they had children in Hong Kong. These women were called, locally, 'protected women' and formed a special class. They tended to be particularly independent and were usually girls from the so-called Tanka' floating population.38 Their patrons often arranged to provide for theirfinancial security. This was usually in the form of an annuity, a property in trust, or an outright gift of real estate. These provisions assisted the Eurasian offspring to be-gin their careers with some financial advantage. In the absence of her patron, the mother returned to the Chinese community. Here, the children were reared in a Chinese-speaking household and bore a Chinese surname. The mother, however, appears to have realized the importance of English for the future career of her son and sent him to an English-language school. When Eurasian boys sought employment, the firm with which the father had been con-nected often employed them and provided them with special advantages. This assisted them to rise more rapidly to elite status.
English-educated Chinese were also significant as a bridging ele-ment between Chinese and Western culture and social institutions in the adjustment period following European imperialism. Having been trained outside the traditional Chinese educational system with its emphasis on the conservation of the values of the past, the English-language student was open to innovations in social be-haviour, business methods, and the uses of capital. He functioned to open up various avenues in commerce, finance, and industry for the Chinese.
In China, such students served as middlemen for progressive Chinese government officers in their efforts to modernize China during the closing years of the Ch'ing dynasty. They not only filled the positions of interpreter and translator, but also provided the much needed knowledge of Western law, customs, attitudes, and modes of behaviour. Moreover, they provided specialized techni-cal and professional knowledge for the development of a modern army and navy and for the introduction of railways, telegraph ser-vices, steamships, Western medicine, and journalism.
I have been looking at general trends. In fact, conditions affect-ing English-language-educated Chinese in the 1850s were different from those found at the end of the century. In the first period, a Chinese elite group was only just beginning to emerge in Hong Kong, By the turn of the century elite groups were well estab-lished. The elements composing the elite and the origins from which members of this elite sprang became more diverse. This in-creasing complexity and diversity have continued to the present day.
THE Church has held to certain basic beliefs since its foundation, but these have been subject to historical development and adap-tation within different cultural settings. In the process, church thought and practice have interacted with the context in which they have existed.
China provided a new context for an old faith, with a different language, different thought forms, customs, economic and poli-tical structures, and social institutions. The propagation of the Christian faith accompanied an aggresive foreign trade. Both were resisted by China, which maintained it needed nothing from the West.
The missionary to China came from a tradition where civiliza-tion was equated with Christianity. Non-Christian peoples were 'heathen' and hence barbarian. The Chinese, on their part, iden-tified their own nation and culture with civilization and those out-side the Middle Kingdom as barbarians.
The Chinese literati-gentry elite were not about to abandon their traditional views, and Christianity made few converts among them. The common man generally accepted the traditional view, even though his participation in the higher Chinese culture was limited. He was more ready, however, to submit to the inferior position the missionary expected him to accept as a person of an 'inferior' and 'heathen' nation. The missionary was slow to ac-knowledge the Chinese as equals in culture and character.1 The result was a tendency towards denationalization of the convert. This process was reinforced when the Church established itself in a colony.
In Hong Kong, missionary efforts had the support of a familiar legal system, they were tolerated, and they had an established (as in the case of the Anglicans)2 or a semi-established status (other groups vis-a-vis traditional Chinese religions).
This chapter will examine aspects of the adaptation of the Protes-tant Church in a colony with a predominantly Chinese population and will focus particularly on the ways in which the Church has dealt with cultural distance and superior-inferior relationships.
Distance and Dependence
Thirteen days after the British flag was planted on Possession Point, a party of eight Protestant missionaries came to Hong Kong from Macau on an exploratory trip. They found a temporary vil-lage rising on the beach where the town of Victoria was to be. It was made up of a cluster of huts and matsheds hastily thrown together. The missionary party also visited some of the agricultural and fishing villages. They estimated the entire population of the island to be less than 2,500, practically all of them very poor. The island's significance as a Chinese settlement did not impress them, but they envisaged a glorious future for it as a British possession. 'There is no question but that in the course of time, the island of Hong Kong will, if retained by the British, rise in importance and influence until it becomes the first insular emporium in these East-ern waters.'
As to its missionary prospects, they felt that Hong Kong might form, 'in the providence of God, a place on which to establish, under the auspices of the flag that now waves on its summits, the true principles of commerce, justice and the Christian religion, which protected, these may flourish untrammeled until the nation (China) be enlightened and saved'.3
The missionaries, after reflection, were divided in their views as to the advantages of a British colony as afield for their work. They felt that, with the political and military power of Britain behind them, they would have protection and security, whereas there were uncertainties on Chinese soil. However, it was soon evident that Hong Kong was not China and the Chinese settlers did not represent the best of Chinese society.
In 1847, a missionary contrasted the difference between Hong Kong and Canton as it affected missionary work. 'Hong Kong is English soil, with a Chinese population of various dialects, and mostly unsettled in residence, going and coming constantly. Here (at Canton) is a Chinese society in all its primitive state. This is Chinese soil, and the people do not feel themselves to be bonds-men or servants. We come to them as men in their own houses and homes.' Unfortunately, he did not have a high opinion of Chinese character. 'The Canton people are covetous, avaricious, selfish, extortioners.'4 The Revd George Smith, after a visit to various cities of China, noted that in the northern cities the foreigners everywhere met intelligent and friendly people representing the
best of China; not so in Hong Kong, where the Chinese were mostly of the lowest order.5
Missionaries and clergy did not make the impact hoped for. At the time the missionaries were opposing the introduction of legal-ized gambling houses for Chinese, Mr Turner, of the London Mis-sionary Society, described the sad state of affairs:
Anyone at all acquainted with the Chinese and their feelings toward Christianity knows that the conduct of the British government in the opium trade and the war consequent thereon, has been an immense ob-stacle in the way of the missionary. This is a bye-gone conclusion to which it would be useless and unwise now to refer to publicly. But another scandal is threatened in some respects more shameful than the opium trade. This is the licensing of gambling houses by the British government in the only spot of land where the Chinese have any opportunity of observing what the British government is. The Chinese Christians agree with me that this measure will make our Government a laughing stock to the Chinese, and will be a great disaster for the mission work. You know, I dare say, from similar experience in India, how the natives refuse to be disabused of the notion that the missionaries are government agents. It follows that we and our work are made to bear directly the odium of any wrong acts on the part of the government�X Nothing but utter ignorance of the Chinese could have impelled him [the Governor] to such a step.6
In spite of petitions and protests from the missionaries, the gambling houses were licensed. To the missionary, this was but another example for the Chinese that 'barbarian' governments were immoral. In his yearly report to the mission board in Lon-don, Turner wrote: Three great vices of China, opium smoking, fornication, and gambling, are carried on [in Hong Kong] under license and regulation of Government'. The Chinese expected the Government to uphold morality, and Turner admitted that their Government usually maintained 'a consistant [sic] profession of adherence to virtue, and in its laws and edicts aims at the suppres-sion of vicious practices. For a Christian government in the sight of these people to even appear to patronise vice is a terrible stumb-ling block to the way of the Gospel.'7
In the process of adapting to a Chinese and a colonial situation, the Protestant Church encountered problems of distance and posi-tion: distance in terms of a gap in attitudes and cultures, position in terms of inferior-superior relationships. A letter written in 1840 by a Chinese convert will be used as a framework to discuss these problems. The points raised in the letter will be illustrated by other examples from the early period of Protestant mission work in Hong Kong.
The letter was written by Chu Tak-leung.8 He had been bap-tized in England in 1838. He had been taken there from Indonesia by the Revd Walter Henry Medhurst, of the London Missionary Society, to assist in the translation of the Scriptures. By 1840, he had returned to China to visit his family. He was then attached to the mission at Macau as a language teacher to William C. Milne, the son of the pioneer Protestant missionary at Malacca.
Upon his return to China, Chu was regarded by the missionaries as an employee and of inferior status. Even such a valuable and well-qualified pastor as the Revd Ho Fuk-tong was not accepted as an equal. It is true that Dr James Legge treated him as a trusted friend and colleague, but during Legge's absence from Hong Kong another missionary refused to hand over money sent for the care of some girls whom Dr Legge had left under the supervision of the Revd Ho Fuk-tong. The missionary justified himself to his board with the following explanation.
We object to the proposal [to hand over the money] as calculated to lower us in the eyes of Tsun-shin [Ho Fuk-tong was also known as Ho Tsun-shin] and the other natives around us. What is it, but saying, we can trust Tsun-shin with the disposal of this money, but not the missionaries. Mrs. Cle-land may engage in the work of instructing these children, but cannot be entrusted with the funds for their support. Could any Christian lady brook to apply to a native, however estimable and trustworthy Tsun-shin cer-tainly is, for the monthly allotment for the support of these children�Xthus exalting one we have been sent to teach and be an example to, above the missionaries themselves in point of trustworthiness ... Nothing should be done to lower us in the eyes of the Chinese, otherwise how shall they regard us as examples in all things.9
From any point of view, this expression of missionary superiority and condescension towards Chinese hardly provided the example on which to produce a church built on trust and mutual respect.
Another example of these same attitudes is shown in the case of Dr Wong Fun. He was commissioned by the London Missionary Society in England in 1856 with the same status and salary as their other agents. Wong Fun had been educated at the Morrison Education Society School at Hong Kong. He and several school-mates were taken by their headmaster, the Revd S.R. Brown, in 1847 to the United States for further study. After several years in the United States, Wong Fun proceeded to Edinburgh to study medicine. He received his degree there in 1856.
The news of the commissioning of Dr Wong Fun produced dif-ferent opinions regarding its wisdom among his future colleagues in Hong Kong. Many of the reservations about the appointment seemed to arise from an awareness of Dr Hobson's reluctance to work as an equal with a Chinese. Wong Fun's status as a commis-sioned missionary was viewed as a wedge to undermine missionary authority among the Chinese. All this leads one to believe that if Wong Fun were to succeed as a missionary, it would not be be-cause of the friendly reception by his Western co-workers.
If it was thought there would be prejudice against a Chinese missionary which could only be counterbalanced by the presence of a foreigner, no account was being taken of the great ill-will the Chinese held against the foreigner. Wong Fun himself was not deceived in this matter. After his return to Hong Kong he wrote, 'There are always many obstacles to missionary labors, but at present there is, and there will be for many years to come, a strong prejudice against Englishmen for what they (the Chinese) think, the high-handed way in which they carry everything. Which prejudice works very strongly against the missionary'.10
But let us return to Chu Tak-leung. After his return to Macau, where he was employed as a language teacher, he was charged with smoking opium. Later, some opium-smoking equipment was found hidden in his room. He was sent away and all connections with him were severed. He replied, however, with a long letter justifying his acts and asking to be forgiven and reinstated. He accused the missionaries of being a party to the corruption of China through the opium trade:
Where does this opium come first, if not from your Christian country? Why [are] men of Christian land so kind, to send this opium to China and kill so many people. Christ came to save them, but not condemn. Now you came to be missionary. I think your Society spend money in vain. Why? Because one save, and one kill. If you say, 'they are they, you are you', but think where comes your Society's money. Are col-lected from them.11 It is you and they are just one. How can make differ-ence. I think it is better for you to go back to your country, tell your own people, and to ask your Queen give orders, from this time any mer-chants shall not trade with opium to China.
The missionaries were accompanied by the taint of the record of their 'Christian' nation. They were open to the charge that the opium policy of their country contradicted the missionary claim to be seeking salvation of souls, the betterment of life, the im-provement of moral standards, and the introduction of a 'civiliz-ing' influence.
The first missionary comment on the opium trade appears to have been in 1837, when the Revd E.C. Bridgman, editor of the Chinese Repository, published an article entitled 'The Traffic in Opium'.12 He wrote to his mission board in America, 'The sub-ject of opium is at length broached. What will be the issue of it is not possible for man to conjecture with much confidence. I will do what I can to make known the whole truth concerning it.'13
In 1842, during the course of the war between China and Eng-land, the missionaries drew up a statement. They polarized the two contestants as two mighty empires, 'one of them as it were a mass of inert mind, indurated by the "old customs" of ages; and the other a nation, whose mind seems to be destined, by its activ-ity and energy, to leaven the whole world'. The meeting of these two great nations, even though it was on the field of battle, 'will be productive of advancing the final triumphs of Christian civiliza-tion, the war with China must be regarded as "the leading star" in the political horizon'.14
The possibilities the war opened up, if it resulted in the humil-iation of China, pushed into the background the objectionable features, from the missionary view, of its origins.
As its succeeding acts one after another developed, the observer is carried along with them, and the originating causes ... lose somewhat of their obnoxious character, from seeing how grand and unexpected are the re-sults likely to flow from them. The conduct of the foreigners in bringing opium, against their wishes ... cannot on any ground be defended ... But we rather desire to regard the occurrance [sic] of the last four years as a new exhibition of God's power and goodness in causing the wrath and avarice of man to work out his ends.15
The war against the Chinese was a just retribution for their pre-tensions against the sovereignty of God. The British bullet was seen as the thunderbolt of God against an impious nation which was an affront to those eager to defend the honour of their God.16
This kind of reaction by Protestant missionaries in China reflected attitudes and theological views current at the time. It in-dicated the great gap they would have to overcome before they could correctly understand the setting in which they expected to work. On the practical side, they saw no end to the opium traffic, in spite of its evils. 'The love of money will continue to lead men to raise it and bring it here, as long as the lust of appetite drives thousands to take it and die.' Unfortunately, this prediction was true. Only the pressure of world opinion finally induced the British Government to suppress the trade in Hong Kong. This was well into the present century.
The opium trade and British policy were a great hindrance to missionary work. The Revd Ho Fuk-tong, in a letter to Dr Legge, tells how in Hong Kong one of the mission's Chinese colporteurs 'has often been abused by many. They say, "The English came here to distribute these books, which teach men to do good. How is it that they come likewise seeking to fight with us, and to usurp our land? There is no good doctrine in that" \1 7
In Hong Kong, antagonism was muted. In China, it was more open. Dr Benjamin Hobson observed in 1851, T had myself no conception of the difficulties of the Mission work till I resided here (at Canton) some time, and been taught by bitter experience how deceitful, proud, and self-satisfied the Chinese are. In their native village and towns you see them in their natural element. In Hong Kong and other places where a higher and foreign power reigns, the Chinese prove accommodating and even servile.'18
Some missionaries did not feel free to express their true feelings about the opium question publicly, though they were willing to share them with their board. To the directors at home, a mission-ary wrote in 1847, T do not wish anything I have said concerning the opium trade or the merchants here made public, for if it should reach their ears, it would bring down their wrath upon me.' He cited the fate of Dr Macgowan at Ningpo, 'Two years ago a strong protest was published in the Baptist papers. The captains of vessels going up the coast and the merchants engaged in the coasting trade were so vexed that they would not forward any letters or parcels to him.'19
Not all missionaries were so averse to letting their true opinions be known. Dr Julius Hirschberg resigned in 1849 as Director of the Medical Missionary Society Hospital in Hong Kong because of his opposition to the opium trade. He gave his reasons to the board of the London Missionary Society:
From the beginning and more particularly now my conscience reproves me for being united with a Society [the Medical Missionary Society] most of the Members of which are Opium Dealers I know that there is hardly any Society which does not receive contributions from ungodly men, and I know also the reasonings which are brought forward in favour of this, but what, if my conscience reproves me and tells me daily that I ought to avoid giving any countenance to evil, and as a Christian I ought to show the world that I disapprove of the traffic.20
As the years passed, the missionaries became increasingly out-spoken in their criticism of the opium trade and other social evils. The missionary seldom adopted a Chinese mode of life, particu-larly those who remained in Hong Kong or the treaty ports of China. This unwillingness to live as their converts reinforced the distance between them.
Chu Tak-leung, in his apologia, criticized the first Protestant missionary to China for adopting a life-style that was too comfort-able:
Dr. Morrison first be missionary to China, after a few years he put away his own duty, turning to be interpreter to opium merchants.21 He think to be missionary could not get much money but to be interpreter may get much money, may live well withfine house, may keep many servants, may put on fine cloth, may eat fine food. Allow me a question to you, are truly Christians who love money in this way.
Unlike Morrison, the German-born missionary Charles Gutzlaff made a conscious effort to identify with the Chinese during the early years of his mission to the Chinese. Later, he followed a more usual missionary style of living. On his first journey up the coast of China in 1831, he wore Chinese dress and lived with the Chinese. He speaks of having become 'a naturalised subject of the celestial empire, by adoption into the clan of family of Kwo, from the Tung-on district of Fukien ... [and] wore occassionally [sic] the Chinese dress. Now I had to conform entirely to the customs of the Chinese'. A traveller who met him at this time said, 'that those who know him to be a foreigner believe that his grandfather must have been Chinese, and thus the jealousy which exists in regard to the barbarians generally, is in a measure removed from him.'22
When in 1846 four young men arrived from Europe to assist Gutzlaff in his Chinese Christian Union, he placed them in rooms in the Chinese section of Hong Kong. One died within the year, and some believed his death was the result of unsanitary condi-tions in the district. While his assistants were acclimatizing them-selves to Chinese life in Hong Kong, Gutzlaff himself was living with his wife in a large European-style house in Gough Street. He was at the time a government employee, receiving a large salary as Chinese Secretary. As head of a government office, he was able to staff the office with his Chinese converts.
The missionary found family responsibilities an obstacle to a fuller identification with a Chinese way of life.
At the same time that Gutzlaff was putting his bachelor recruits into a Chinese environment, the Revd Samuel W. Bonney, also a single man, was living in the upper room of a tea warehouse in Canton outside the foreign settlement. He had adopted Chinese dress, but without the queue (Gutzlaff had sometimes worn a false queue) and ate in the Chinese style. Some parts of this new way of things he considered temporary. He informed his home board that 'after my neighbours see that I am not a foreign devil but a foreign friend, I will dispense with those parts of the dress inconvenient, especially with soled shoes. I will also put spoons on my table to show how much neater it is to take food with than to shovel it down with chopsticks'.23 Perhaps after becoming expert in the use of chopsticks he would have found their use more acceptable, but at least he was making an effort to fit into the Chinese scene.
He further noted how Chinese dress broke down distance bet-ween peoples. 'When foreigners approach a house in a foreign dress, the dogs bark, the children run away and cry out 'fan qui", the door is quickly shut and barred, and like demonstra-tions of non-intercourse are exhibited. But when he goes in the dress of the people, the dogs are quiet, the children laughing, the master of the house or shop is pleased and offers tea or a tobacco pipe.'24 Bonney's American friends at Canton did not receive his innovations in the same spirit as the Chinese appeared to. He was accused of adopting a 'heathen costume' as opposed to 'Christian' dress. One told him, 'I hope that you enjoy your heathenish cos-tume, and that the natives pity rather than resent your weakness.'
In the view of most foreigners in China at that period, any con-cession to Chinese customs was an admission of inferiority and weakness. Such attitudes pervaded missionary circles and contri-buted to their separation from the people they had come to serve. The Chinese felt that missionaries did not have a proper under-standing of Chinese culture and customs. Chu Tak-leung's principal accuser was a youth aged 25. To him Chu wrote, 'You are too young, have not much knowledge, cannot be missionary, and you come to China a short time, not understand of my custom.'
In spite of the distance between missionary and convert, they
were bound by a tie. It was one of dependence. The convert had received something from the missionary, and it was thought by the missionary that he had nothing to give in return but gratitude and loyal obedience. In the opening stages of missionary activity, a convert was usually an employee or a student of the mission, or, perhaps, he was taken into the pay of the mission after his conver-sion, for in this period there was a demand for pressmen, teachers, translators, preachers, catechists, medical aides, and other assis-tants.
The convert also looked to the missionary as the agent who had brought him into a state of grace through baptism. He was the source of spiritual instruction. He directed church affairs. Chu's last point in his letter was that the missionaries in Macau had no right to cut him off without the permission of the Revd W.H. Medhurst, who had baptized him. This showed a special sense of 'belonging' to an individual missionary.
This dependent relationship between the Chinese Christian and the foreign missionary continued to characterize the Church in China for many years. Among some Christian groups in Hong Kong, vestiges of it can still be found.
From its establishment, the Protestant Church in Hong Kong has been somewhat different in its development from the Church in China. The Church in China today is both fully independent and Chinese. The Hong Kong Church sooner or later will be a part of that Church. As a Church in a colony, however, its experience has been different. Both the positive and negative aspects of this ex-perience should enable it to make its own contribution to the Church of China.
How has the colonial status of Hong Kong affected the Chinese Christian Church? Have the attitudes and experiences of Hong Kong Christians been significantly different from Christians in China? The differences will be examined using four aspects aris-ing from the colonial situation of Hong Kong: (a) Hong Kong as a place of refuge for those who wished to remove themselves from conditions in China; (b) the marginal character of the Chinese community in Hong Kong; (c) the relative absence of a challenge to the Chinese Christian to come to terms with his faith in relation to national identity; (d) the close identification of the Church with the objectives of a colonial government. In conclusion, some ques-tions are raised about the future.
Hong Kong as a Place of Refuge
Hong Kong is an urban centre on the edge of China beyond the jurisdiction of the Chinese Government. This has resulted in its becoming a haven for Chinese wishing to escape from Chinese law or from disturbed social, political, or economic conditions. This has affected the quantity and the quality of the Chinese population of Hong Kong. In both these aspects, the history of Hong Kong has reflected the prevailing conditions within China.
In the years immediately following the British occupation, many of the least desirable elements of the population of the Canton delta came to Hong Kong. The first Chinese landowners were those who had supplied the British forces with provisions or had otherwise co-operated with the enemy of China in the first Opium War. An extract from George Smith's description of the Chinese population of Hong Kong published in his account of a visit to Hong Kong describes this situation:
The lowest dregs of native society flock to the British Settlement, in the hope of gain or plunder ... The principal part of the Chinese population in the town consists of servants, coolies, stone-cutters, and masons engaged in temporary works�X The colony has been for some time also the resort of pirates and thieves, so protected by secret compact as to defy the ordi-nary regulations of police for detection or prevention. In short, there are but faint prospects at present of any other than either a migratory or a predatory race being attracted to Hong Kong, who, when their hopes of gain or pilfering vanish, without hesitation or difficulty remove else-where.1
Like many overseas Chinese communities in their earliest periods, the population of Hong Kong was predominantly male. There were few families and little sense of belonging. Missionaries did not consider this type of inhabitant promising material with which to establish and build a strong Chinese Church. In spite of this, the Church in Hong Kong prospered. It produced a group of young men educated in the English language who by. the 1860s were rising to positions of importance in the political, educational, and commercial life of China. They were sought out by those pro-gressive Chinese officials interested in strengthening China. These officials engaged them to serve on their staffs as advisers on West-ern techniques and ways of thought. These young men proposed a pioneer project for the foreign education of Chinese, the Chinese Educational Mission, and they introduced new methods and pro-cedures into Chinese commerce and industry.
From the standpoint of an independent Chinese Church, perhaps the first self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating congregation was the To Tsai Church. It was established in 1843; a Chinese pastor was ordained in 1846; a congregation with deacons and elders was formed in 1849; a constitution was adopted in 1876; and the To Tsai Church became fully independent in 1888. Today, the congregation bears the name Hop Yat.
How do we reconcile the unpromising prospects of early Hong Kong for missionary success and its production of leaders in the modernization of China and the establishment of an independent Church? The answer may be found in the colonial status of Hong Kong, which attracted and produced what may be termed 'marginal Chinese'. The marginal character of Hong Kong Chinese and their effect upon the Church will be examined in the next section of this chapter.
The post-war period witnessed a different type of person flock-ing into Hong Kong to escape conditions on the mainland. It was not the adventurer seeking quick gain or the criminal. The composition of the post-war refugee population was varied, but a significant number were middle-class and educated. A large num-
ber, however, were destitute and the rapid increase in population created serious problems in terms of education, employment, and housing. There was a basic need for clothing and food. This need aroused the compassion of foreign Christian communities, which responded by sending personnel and money to Hong Kong. Those churches which had a well-developed local leadership became the channel through which relief was administered, though financed by foreign contributions and organized with foreign administrators co-operating with the local church. Other groups which did not have an established local base found that the opportunities pro-vided by a relief programme assisted them in establishing new reli-gious communities. Sometimes, these new groups were recruited from refugees who had come from areas where churches of a par-ticular denomination had been established on the mainland. The result within both the established churches and the more recently organized churches was a rapid increase in membership, so that the growth rate of the Hong Kong churches in the 1950s and into the 1960s was among the highest in the world.2
Apart from the obvious danger of attracting 'rice Christians' in-herent in the programmes of relief conducted by churches and church agencies, the church offered security to people who were uprooted and faced with the necessity of restructuring their lives. It provided values to those whose traditional values had been ren-dered ineffective by changing political, social, and economic struc-tures.
In the early years of Hong Kong's history as a colony and in more recent years the situation of Hong Kong as an easily acces-sible place of refuge has been a factor in the development of the Hong Kong Church.
Hong Kong as a Marginal Community
The low status of Hong Kong's original population in relation to the traditional structure of Chinese society has been noted. Some, serving the interests of foreign aggressors, had been traitors to their country; some, unsuccessful in achieving economic security in their home community, sought to make a quick fortune in the new economic structure of Hong Kong; others were of the criminal class. The first converts of the Protestant Church in its mission to the Chinese were often individuals of similar status. They be-longed to a group of misfits who had been unable to establish or maintain their proper place in Chinese society: opium-smokers, unemployed and unsuccessful literary aspirants, and servants of the proscribed 'barbarians'. Some had been converted in overseas Chinese communities such as Singapore, Malacca, or Bangkok and were thus from the group of emigrants who defied Chinese law by living outside the Middle Kingdom. When the missionaries came to Hong Kong, they brought some of their converts with them as assistants and servants. These became the nucleus upon which the Hong Kong Church was built.
The Chinese convert found in Hong Kong an environment in which he could establish his identity in a way he could not have done were he in China proper. In Hong Kong, he was not under the same pressure to adjust to the demands of the traditional Chinese social structure. Once the convert had given up the observance of traditional Chinese rites associated with worship of ancestors, burial, marriage, and festivals, he did not fit into the social organization of his clan or village. He had become an outsider not participating in the rites which supported social cohesive-ness and established personal identity. In a large urban centre like Hong Kong, however, he could participate in a new social organ-ism, the Church. The supportive function of the Church is men-tioned by the Revd A.B. Hutchinson in his annual letter of 1875 to the Church Missionary Society. He explains why his congregation, St. Stephen's, did not grow as fast as the other two Protestant Chinese congregations in Hong Kong, those of the Basel Mission-ary Society and the London Missionary Society. 'A large com-munity amongst which are several wealthy members has a great attraction for the young convert, cut off from old friends and associations and needing to realize whatever support there may be for him in human brotherhood�Xthus many are led to cast in their lot with the older and larger body in preference to joining our church.'3
Unlike most of the other Chinese residents of Hong Kong in the early period, the Christian usually established a family and bought property. Thus, he became a founding ancestor. Following the tra-ditional practice regarding founding ancestors, the Wong family of Fu Mun, Tung Koon District, Kwangtung, whose members have contributed both to the Hong Kong Church and to the diplomatic, judicial, and educational life of China, published a genealogy in 1954 which begins with the first Christian convert of the family. Property was left in trust by a descendant to finance semi-annual visits to the grave of his ancestor, the Revd Ho Fuk-tong, the first Chinese pastor to be ordained in Hong Kong. The creation of a genealogical branch or 'fong' in a clan and the use of income from property in trust for visits to an ancestor's grave indicate the rise of a strong family unit.
One of the positive aspects of marginality was that it opened up new creative possibilities. One was released from the demand for strict conformity to a traditional social order. The marginal person was released to carve out a new way of life. In theory, the indi-vidual had greatflexibility. On the one hand, if he valued the tradi-tional structures from which he had been excluded, he could try to re-establish them in his new environment. On the other hand, he could try to move into the new patterns introduced by an alien culture. However, he was unlikely to find either alternative totally successful.
His experience in a marginal situation often made him an agent of change. When he returned to China, either from Hong Kong or overseas, he was different. His values had been affected by the need to adapt to a different cultural situation. He rebuilt his vil-lage house so that it would have more windows; he often promoted and financed schools and clinics for his village. In Hong Kong, as an instrument of social change, he promoted the introduction of Western-style medicine, journalism, and education for the Chinese. He also acquired a new concept of the role of women. The Revd Ho Fuk-tong was persuaded by a missionary to change his will and provide legacies for his married daughters. Chinese Christians, in their obituary notices and gravestone inscriptions, included the names of daughters and granddaughters long before non-Christian Chinese began doing so. Christian families no longer bound the feet of their daughters. They sent them to schools established by missionaries. Mature women were trained for a career as Bible women. The unmarried female missionary pro-vided an image to some of the Chinese girls of the possibility of remaining single and pursuing an independent career. In the earl-iest period, this career was in teaching, nursing, or medicine. As early as 1879, graduates of the True Light Seminary were being trained as doctors at the Medical Missionary Hospital in Canton. Later, a separate medical school was organized for women. In Hong Kong, however, medical training was too closely linked with a male-dominated Government to accept female students. The missionary movement, in providing education, different images, and new roles for women, prepared the way for the emancipation of women in modern China. This was preceded, however, by the impact of the missionary educational programme for boys.
The introduction of Western education in the first half of the nineteenth century produced profound changes in the develop-ment of China in the last years of the Ch'ing dynasty. This educa-tion attracted those who were in a marginal situation. The earliest schools providing English-language education for Chinese were opened at Malacca, Singapore, and Macau. Some of these were later transferred to Hong Kong. Students were recruited among those too poor to pay for training in the traditional manner or among those whose parents realized the advantage of English as a means to advancement in areas where the foreigner had intruded. In these schools the student acquired the qualifications to serve as a bridge between two cultures. Dr Margaret M. Coughlin suggests, in her unpublished doctoral thesis, 'Strangers in the House:
J. Lewis Shuck and Issachar Roberts, First American Baptist Missionaries to China', for the University of Virginia in 1972, that the Christian convert fulfilled a function similar to that of the com-pradore on the China coast and that an important contribution to the understanding of the modernization of China would be made by a study of this role of the Chinese Christian similar to that of Yen-p'ing Hao on the compradore in nineteenth-century China.4
In the early period of the China mission, the convert was often the Chinese of marginal status. In turn, once becoming a Chris-tian, his new situation reinforced his marginality for he came under the influence of foreign ideas and institutions. Hong Kong provided a setting for the marginality to produce a new type of Chinese elite which contributed both to the development of Hong Kong as a colony and to the modernization of China and the changing of its traditional structures.
Christianity in a Colonial Setting and National Identity
The Chinese Church in Hong Kong tended to develop a colonial mentality. There was not a strong Confucian literary tradition in Hong Kong in the nineteenth century. The Hong Kong resident was seldom exposed to the representative of the classical Chinese tradition. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, some of the wealthy merchants purchased degrees, which entitled them to wear mandarin robes and display the usual symbols of literary achievement, but they were only playing a game. For the average resident of Hong Kong, his identity as a Chinese was not chal-lenged in the way it would have been if he had been living in China.
Those among the Chinese population who intended to make Hong Kong their permanent residence�Xand the Christians were a disproportionate part of this group�Xrealized that it was in their best interests to accept and take advantage of the colonial institu-tions and structures. This meant Westernization: use of the Eng-lish language, a Western-style education, and accepting honours and titles in recognition of their contribution towards the imple-mentation of the policies of the colonial Government.
In Hong Kong, the Government tended to regard Chinese who were Christians as a step above the rest of the Chinese population. This reinforced their marginality and made it easier for them to become Anglo-Chinese. An example of the special treatment of converts is reflected in the Hong Kong Register's account of the public administration of a sentence of sixty strokes laid upon Julian Ahone, otherwise known as Wei On. He had been baptized in America and on his return to China became a member of the Baptist Church in Hong Kong. In the issue of 26 October 1843, the paper reported:
The culprit was paraded down the Queen's Road from prison to the place of punishment. He was dressed exactly as a European, white hat, jacket and trousers, but his tail being cut off, we suppose at the time of his con-version, he walked surrounded by police but not in bonds ... The usual 'man of rattan' did not officiate, but a European who did not strike him the blow half so severe as the usual rattaner would have done.
In this case two missionaries had appeared in court on his be-half. There are other instances of missionaries appearing to plead for a convert who had become involved in legal proceedings. Such intervention had its effects upon the judgments of the courts. Even after death, Chinese Christians were granted special privileges. Until the granting by the Government of a site for a Chinese Protes-tant Cemetery in 1858, the Chinese Christian was buried in the Colonial Cemetery, and even after the Chinese Protestants had their own place of burial, some of the more wealthy members of the Chinese Church were permitted to be buried in the Colonial Cemetery. These examples show how Hong Kong provided a set-ting in which the Christian could find a new identity vis-a-vis his
identity in terms of Chinese nationalism, and it continued to do so in other subtle ways.
Within China, the Christian was under open attack with the rise of the Chinese nationalist movement in the 1920s. This movement produced anti-Western and anti-religious criticism of foreign in-fluence upon China. The Hong Kong Christian experienced these attacks only in a secondary way, if at all. By this time, most of the Christians in Hong Kong, particularly the decision-makers in the Church, had accepted the Government's conception of their role in the British Empire.
The policy of the Government regarding the Chinese population is set forth in a speech that Governor John Pope Hennessy gave at the Prize Day of Central School (now Queen's College) in 1880.
It is my wish�Xit has been the ambition of nearly every man who preceded me in the Government of this Colony, and it has been the policy of all Secretaries of the State, who have written to my predecessors and myself�Xthat Hongkong should be made an Anglo-Chinese Colony, where Her Majesty should have thousands upon thousands of Chinese subjects, with a thorough knowledge of the English language�Xamenable to English law and appreciating the British Constitution, loyal to their Queen, and a strength to this distant part of Her Majesty's Empire. Our education scheme will accomplish a practical result if it assists in achieving this. An Anglo-Chinese Colony, such as I have over and over again ex-pressed my wish to see here, must spring from the children in the Colony.
That the influential section of the Chinese population had accepted their role as defined by the Governor is evident in his further remarks:
Last year there came a deputation of Chinese merchants and shop-keepers. Some of them said, 'We have children and grandchildren born in this Colony, and we ourselves desire to become naturalized. We desire to see the property we hold transmitted to our children as from British subjects to British subjects.'... They also told me they desired to keep their children here, with all their future interests wrapped up in Hong-kong as their permanent home, their real country and last resting place .5
In a 1925 report of the baptism of a student of St. Stephen's Girls' College, Hong Kong, both denationalization and a commit-ment to serve China are reflected. Her teacher stated:
She asked for the baptismal name Victoria ... She has discovered that the great English queen determined, while still a girl, to do her utmost to lead her people in the right direction, and to be worthy of her great responsibil-ity as a Christian queen. It is this example which hasfired the Chinese girl, as she sets out upon the Christian life, to be a Christian leader�Xto serve her people and to help them forward and upward toward God and toward a new and better China. Where has she learned this ideal? From one of the English missionaries who had looked across the sea to 'a great nation in great need' and determined to go and help to meet the need.6
The question arises whether the image of the British queen she had acquired in Hong Kong would have been an impediment to the realization of her hope 'to serve her people and to help them ... toward a new and better China'.
As a result of the anti-religious movement of 1922 in China, there was an organized movement for the 'Recovery of the Rights of Education'. The movement sought to bring all education under government regulations. It required registration of schools and, in 1925, the Private School Regulations of the Ministry of Education required half of the board of directors and the head of the school to be Chinese. This posed a problem for those Christian institu-tions which had not yet developed Chinese leadership or handed over management to local control. The Church in Hong Kong did not have to face this problem as there had been a long and close association between the Government and the Church. As early as 1845, the Revd Charles Gutzlaff, at the time part-time missionary and Chinese Secretary to the Governor in his capacity as Superin-tendent of Trade in China, recommended that the Hong Kong Government should grant a subsidy to the Chinese schools on Hong Kong Island. A committee of three was named with the Colo-nial Chaplain as chairman to administer and supervise the grant. Later, when a Bishop was appointed for Hong Kong, he replaced the Colonial Chaplain as chairman. The committee, dominated as it was by religious interests, favoured the appointment of Christian teachers. Some of the incumbent teachers were baptized and in other cases Christian converts replaced what were considered unsatisfactory non-Christian teachers. Within a few years all the subsidized schools had Christian teachers. From 1856 to 1860, the Revd William Lobscheid, a missionary of the Chinese Evangeliza-tion Society, was Inspector of Schools. Another former mission-ary, the Revd E.J. Eitel, was Inspector of Education from 1879 to 1897. Sir John Bowring, a Unitarian, was an advocate of secular education, but this policy could not be implemented until the re-tirement of Bishop Smith in 1864. A great deal of the burden of educating Chinese in Hong Kong was assumed by the Church. Its
contribution was recognized and brought into direct government relationship by the grant-in-aid scheme in 1873. Until the present day, the Church has been an ally of the Government in its educa-tional policies and programmes.
It is to be expected that the Government would wish its educa-tional system to prepare students to fit into and support the given structures of Hong Kong as a colony. The result is a blunting of national consciousness. How relevant for Hong Kong today are the remarks of Bertrand Russell made in The Problem of China, published in 1922. 'Education in mission schools ... tends to be-come denationalized, and have a slavish attitude toward foreign civilization ... and of course their whole influence, unavoidably if involuntarily, militates against national self-respect in those whom they teach.'
The Church's Identification with the Objectives of the Government
The relationship between the Church in a colony and denational-ization, particularly as it relates to education, has been discussed. This section will further develop the role of the Church and its members in their relation to a colonial government.
The nineteenth-century British Christian, considering his coun-try's ever-expanding colonial empire, was impressed with the obligation this entailed for missionary endeavour. The Revd George Smith, the first Bishop of Hong Kong, expressed this in a report of a visit to China in the 1840s. Speaking of Hong Kong, he stated:
While contemplating this rapidly formed colony, the circumstances under which it has been gained, and its probable influence on the future destinies of a race amounting to one third of the estimated population of our planet, many novel considerations obtrude themselves on the mind of a British Christian. Believing that his country has been honoured by God as the chosen instrument of diffusing the pure light of Protestant Christianity through the world, and that the permanency of her laws, institutions, and empire is closely connected with the diffusion of evangelical truth, a Brit-ish Missionary feels jealous for the faithfulness of his country to her high vocation, and 'rejoices with trembling' at the extension of her colonial empire.7
But in fact, when Smith viewed more closely the actual conditions
in Hong Kong, he concluded that the British administration and the presence of a foreign population were hindrances to the mis-sionary cause. He cites particularly:
the frequent spectacle of European irreligion, and the invidious regula-tions of police ... It is with unfeigned regret and reluctance that the au-thor states, that scenes frequently occur in the public streets, and in the interior of houses, which are calculated to place the countrymen of the Missionaries in an unfavourable aspect before the native mind ... The Chinese also are treated as a degraded race of people. They are not per-mitted to go out into the public streets after a certain hour in the evening, without a lantern and a written note from their European employer, to secure them from the danger of apprehension and imprisonment till the morning.8
There was a serious gap between the ideology which viewed the empire of a Christian nation as a divinely given opportunity for evangelization and the sober reality of actual conditions created by the imposition and exercise of a colonial administration.
The Revd George Smith was describing Hong Kong a few years after the British occupation. With the passing of years, attitudes and conditions changed. The missionary continued to be grateful for certain advantages the colonial status of Hong Kong provided for the missionary enterprise. In time, however, a new relationship was established between the Government and the Chinese popu-lation. In this change, the Chinese Christian played a significant role.
The Church provided an English-educated elite through which the Government could relate to the general Chinese population. Sometimes with government approval and sometimes without it, the Chinese community developed institutions to manage its inter-nal affairs and its relations with the Ch'ing Government of China. This was done through quasi-governmental structures such as the Man-Mo Temple Committee, the Kai Fong organization, and the management committees of the Tung Wah Hospital and the Po Leung Kuk. A dual administrative structure appeared to be emerging, the official one controlling the European population and its contacts with the Chinese and unofficial organizations through which the Chinese managed their own affairs. To counter-act this, the Government created official structures for Chinese representation and advice. English-speaking Chinese were ad-mitted to the roll of jurors. The first juror was Wong Shing in 1858. He was a deacon of the Chinese congregation of the London Mis-
sionary Society. Chinese were appointed to the Legislative Coun-
cil. The first was Ng Choy, otherwise known as Wu Ting-fang, in 1880. He had been baptized as a student at St. Paul's College. The second appointment of a Chinese was Wong Shing in 1884. The third was Ho Kai in 1890. Sir Ho Kai was the son of the Revd Ho Fuk-tong. The Government also named Chinese as Justices of the Peace. It reconstituted the District Watch Committee (Kai Fong), and appointed Chinese to the Sanitary Board (the predecessor of the Urban Council). In all of these there were a more than pro-portionate number of Christians or of those who had come under the influence of the missionary endeavour and were sympathetic to it. These structures, through which the Government could better relate to the Chinese community, have been continued to the pre-sent day.
The Government realized the important role that the English-speaking product of mission education could play in its effort to bridge the gap between an expatriate-dominated administration and the local resident. The Chinese Christian accepted this role and became a part of the colonial establishment. Perhaps follow-ing the pattern set forth by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and R.H. Tawney in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, a portion of the Christian community had become wealthy, thus further qualifying them for elite leadership. Their wealth and their prominence in the community made them impor-tant figures in the Church. They served on church councils and were on the boards of church institutions. When members of the Church have both an economic and status stake in the established order, this tends to blunt the prophetic role of the Church and may be an impediment to the Church acting as an agent for social change.
Thinking of the future of Hong Kong as it is envisaged in the Sino-British Joint Declaration, I would pose the following ques-tions. Will the Church have the motivation to participate in the social changes of the future? Has its prophetic and creative role been seriously blunted by its close association with the policy of a colonial government? How much are the decisions of the churches determined by the interests of the decision-makers in the status quo? Is the Church overconcerned with the value of individual liberty, especially if the exercise of this liberty benefits the privi-leged section of the community to the detriment of a whole-hearted endorsement of efforts to change the conditions of the deprived section of the community? Traditionally, Western Chris-tianity has thought of its responsibility to the poor and exploited in terms of charity and benevolence. Both within the Christian faith and within the ideology of the People's Republic of China there is the possibility of a different relationship.
THE place of the family in the development of the Hong Kong Protestant Church must be seen in relation to the traditional Chinese family structure. In what ways did Christian faith and the standards required of converts by missionaries conflict with the traditional structure of Chinese family life? Could the integrating factors of the old system be preserved within a different ideology? Have the adjustments and adaptations that have been made been consistent with the theological implications of Christian faith to family life?
It is obvious that prevailing social patterns constitute a signifi-cant element in the adaptation of the Church to a new situation when it is establishing itself in an area and culture where it has not previously existed. Certain structures and their ideological base may promote or retard church growth and determine the quality of Christian life established. When the Church established itself in China, it had to come to terms with a central unifying value of Chinese society, the concept of filial piety as expressed in the worship of ancestors within the context of the basic social organ-ization of Chinese society, the clan. Certain implications of the Christian's new faith produced changes in practices and values related to filial piety, the clan, and family patterns.
Filial piety is so important because fatherhood and the produc-tion of sons are essential for the continuity of the family and as a link between past and present. It is associated with respect for age, and thus looks backward to the preceding generations, the ances-tors. It emphasizes the duty to produce descendants and thus looks to the future. The ancestors and descendants must be bound in an unbreakable biological chain. The genealogical expression of this chain is the clan, and the basic structure of traditional Chinese society is the large family within a clan organization.
One of the most interesting aspects of the relationship between Chinese social organization and Chinese ideology is the concrete character of the ideological base. The clan is a visible entity, it is rooted in history, and certain objects represent this history, such as ancestral tablets, a clan temple, ancestral graves, and a clan genealogy. The value system is permanently recorded in clan rules.1 These tangible entities embody transcendent values. The individual, whatever his hierarchical rank,finds his identity both as a recipient of the blessings of the ancestor and as a contributor to the biological continuity of the family in the future, and with the destiny of heaven on his side, he will enhance the family prestige and honour.
The system provided the individual with a sense of identity and a system of values. He was a part of the greater whole that had a concrete historical identity. He was surrounded by a ready-made set of values which provided meaning and purpose, as well as a given structural form to life.
There were always in China, however, those who for one reason or another did not participate fully in the system. They constituted a restless substratum beneath the stability of the given order. The early Christian convert was often a member of this substratum. In the first decades of the Chinese Protestant Mission, its work was located not in China proper, but among the overseas Chinese population in Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Bangkok, and Bata-via. The very fact of their overseas residence removed these Chinese from the structures we have been examining. They had committed the unfilial act of 'deserting the graves of their ances-tors'. Their marginal sociological, psychological, and geographical situation made them amenable to a transfer to another value system and to adjustment to a different social organization, that provided by the Christian Church. Once they had made the change, they were removed from those structures which provided identity and value to a Chinese.
In an earlier period, the Jesuits had attempted to hold Christian commitment and the place of ancestors together. It was a bold, well-intentioned attempt at indigenous adaptation and was realis-tic in its awareness of the importance of the ancestral cult for the Chinese. But the question is whether the transcendent aspect of the ancestral cult could have been transferred to the transcendent ideological symbols of Christian faith, particularly those of God and the communion of saints.
The nineteenth-century Protestant missionary usually demanded a clear break by the convert. He was not to participate in the 'heathenish-idolatrous' ceremonies associated with marriage, burial, or 'sweeping the graves'. This meant that the convert could not be a contributing member of the supportive rituals of village life. The rituals reinforced the given social and ideological structure of the village and clan. This exclusion from customary community ritual forced the convert to become involved in new structures. It was here that some of the tensions and problems lay for the missionary, the convert, and the new Christian community.
The supportive character of a missionary and/or a Chinese con-gregation could soften the trauma of a break with an inherited sociological structure which embodied meaning and identity. Adaptation of certain traditional Chinese methods of reinforcing a strong family sense in terms of relation to ancestors could be employed by Christians. There are examples of such adaptation among well-established Hong Kong Christian families. The Wong family, originating from Fu Mun in the Tung Koon District of Kwangtung, published a genealogy that begins with the first Christian convert as the founding ancestor, though mention is made of the line of descent from an earlier ancestor probably taken over from their traditional clan genealogy.
Another feature of Chinese family life that shaped its structure was concubinage. The practice was closely related to the necessity of maintaining family biological continuity. Its ostensible purpose was to provide male descendants when the first wife did not do so. It was also a status symbol fitting into the cycle of the more vir-tuous, the more prosperous, the more wealthy, the more sons and descendants. Concubinage ensured that a wealthy family would not lack descendants. Of course, behind the customs was also a pandering to the male sexual appetite. The monogamous tradition of the Church conflicted with this Chinese practice.
The custom was particularly prevalent among the well-to-do. This conflict between Chinese and Christian attitudes towards plu-ral marriage may be an element in the failure of the Church to attract the wealthy. This relation between wealth and the custom of concubinage as it affected the Hong Kong Christian Church is illustrated by an aspect of the first work of the Anglican Church among the Chinese.
Initially, the Anglican Church in Hong Kong directed its mis-sionary thrust towards education, most notably St. Paul's College. Here were educated and converted a number of boys of humble origin. Their English-language ability enabled them to rise to posi-tions of importance and acquire wealth at a relatively young age. In a number of cases, when they began to be prosperous, they took on additional wives. They were excluded from the Church, or their Christian connections grew increasingly tenuous. Examples are Wu Ting-fang, twice Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Chan Oi-ting, first Chinese Consul-General at Havana, and Sun Yat-sen.
The record book of the London Missionary Society congrega-tion in Hong Kong contains a number of entries of disciplinary action because of concubinage. A deacon was admonished be-cause he consented to his daughter being taken as a secondary wife of one of the nominal Christian old boys of St. Paul's College. At times, a married convert would be accepted in Hong Kong, and only later would it be revealed that he had another wife in his village. There were instances in which men with several wives were received into the church. In one case, the member made special financial provision for his secondary wife, on the understanding that she would not be a part of the household, nor would he have further conjugal relations with her. My impression is that the policy of some of the churches eased regarding concubinage in the early decades of this century, though I have not precisely documented this assumption.
Another model for the traditional Chinese family was a large family house. Its existence depended onfinancial ability as well as a will to maintain harmonious relations. The Government of Hong Kong was always hopeful that the responsible elements of the Chinese community would establish family houses as some of the Chinese community had done in Malacca. The congested condi-tions of the Chinese sections of Hong Kong were not conducive to the type of large family house which could contain a number of apartments for nuclear family units of uncles, brothers, and cousins.
Most of the better-off Chinese in Hong Kong maintained their family house in their home village, having a smaller establishment in Hong Kong with a secondary wife. The Christians who were able to become financially secure occupied larger premises near the European section of the city. A deacon of the London Mission-ary Society congregation, a man of some property, left each of his sons a piece of Hong Kong real estate in his will, but stipulated that each should contribute to the expenses of their common family house in which they and their families were expected to live with their widowed mother.
In some cases, the household of the Christian family was opened to more distant relatives from the country. An interesting example of a large household was that of Mrs Ko, as she is designated in Chinese church records, or Mrs Caldwell, as she was known by the English community. She was the Chinese wife of Daniel Richard Caldwell. He began his career in Hong Kong as a translator and rose to the position of Registrar-General or 'Protector of the Chinese'. He was a colourful and controversial figure. This was in part due to his close connection with certain members of the Chinese community. About 1845, he went through a traditional Chinese marriage ceremony with his wife, Chan Ayow. In 1850, she was converted and became a member of the London Mission-ary Society congregation. In March 1851, a Christian marriage service was performed in St. John's Cathedral. The children born before the Christian ceremony were baptized shortly afterwards. The Caldwell children were members of the Anglican Church and grew up as part of the English community. As they grew older, Mrs Caldwell received into her household an assorted collection of Chinese, most of whom, if not all, were baptized and became members of her church, the London mission congregation. The unmarried were subsequently matched off, presumably by Mrs Caldwell. The church register lists some twenty-four persons con-nected with the Caldwell household, including a table boy, a num-ber of girl servants, a relative, several blind people and 'the tall woman'.
Of special interest is an orphan she raised who, at his baptism in 1872, was table boy. He was married to one of the servant girls. He became the progenitor of a large family, many of whose members are still prominent in the life of the Hong Kong Church. After the death of his first wife, the former table boy married the daughter of a wealthy and socially prominent doctor, also a member of the London mission congregation. This second marriage illustrates the opportunities for social mobility provided by the Christian community.
For several years, Mrs Caldwell employed a young man from Fatshan, Kwangtung, to act as a private chaplain for the house-hold. She remained a faithful member of the Chinese Church and was a generous contributor to the building of To Tsai Church, which occupied the site of the old Caldwell residence on Holly-wood Road. A picture and plaque in her memory are located in a prominent place in the present Hop Yat Church, the successor of the To Tsai congregation.
In the period in which she lived, Mrs Caldwell would not have fitted well into a European congregation, particularly as her hus-band was a civil servant. His marriage to a Chinese was not looked on with favour by many of his colleagues, especially those who believed and circulated a slanderous rumour regarding the social background of his wife. This rumour was not substantiated by an official inquiry regarding possible connections of Mr Caldwell with criminal elements in the Chinese community.
Living in an urban centre, the Hong Kong Christian family was often quite mobile. The standard pattern for the ordinary rural Chinese was to function as one link in a centuries-old tradition of cultivating the family fields. Disturbed political and economic con-ditions or an excess of population in a particular village upset this pattern and encouraged removal to urban centres or emigration overseas. We have already noted that the first Protestant work among the Chinese took place in overseas communities. Hong Kong itself was a nearby urban centre to the Kwangtung delta and overseas in the political sense of not being under Chinese jurisdic-tion. This resulted in the movement of Hong Kong Christians be-tween the urban centres of Hong Kong and Canton, or a return to their home village, or possibly emigration, especially to the places most frequently mentioned in the church records, namely Annam, Singapore, Australia, California, Hawaii, British Guiana, and North Borneo.
As certain of the Christian families, or those with Christian backgrounds or connections, became more prominent and assumed leadership in the political and economic life of China, there was a tendency for the well-established Hong Kong-based families to disperse. They moved back to China, but in times of political change, Hong Kong or America became places of refuge.
Another aspect of this dispersal and mobility is the strong con-nection between the Hong Kong Christian community and over-seas communities, particularly those in Australia and the United States. Various factors in overseas residence were conducive to acceptance of the Christian faith. Among these were the interest that was shown by the host community 'to the heathen in our midst' and the opportunity presented to 'a Christian land' to reach non-Christians with the gospel; the desire of the immigrant to learn English and the Chinese Sunday School movement, which provided 'the bait of English whilefishing for souls', an expression used at times by promoters of the movement; the supportive strength of a close community of Chinese converts for an immi-grant experiencing personal loneliness and cultural isolation; and a natural desire to conform to the expectation of the larger commun-ity. These and other factors, not to mention the working of the Holy Spirit, contributed to the susceptibility of the immigrant to conversion. Once converted, taught the Christian moral values, and introduced to non-Chinese patterns of behaviour and thought, he sometimes found, on his return to his home village in China, that it was difficult to adjust to what had been natural before his emigration. Thus, he often found Hong Kong a more acceptable place of residence. It was Chinese enough for him to feel as though he had returned home, but also a place where he was not expected to conform to all the old patterns, with some of which he found himself out of sympathy.
Notable among these returned overseas Chinese converts were the several members of the Kwok, Ma, To, and Choy families of the Sincere, Wing On, and Sun companies. They returned not only with the Christian faith, but with new merchandising principles and business methods which were both popular and financially rewarding.
I have mentioned that those who left the ancestral village were regarded as 'deserting the graves of the ancestors'. Hence, they were regarded as unfilial. Certain graves of the clan, such as the original founding ancestor and other distinguished or wealthy members, particularly heads of separate branches (fong) of the clan, were regularly visited. Funeral customs and graves were a village concern. Overseas Chinese usually tried to arrange to ship back to the home villages bodies of their compatriots who died. The Christian who had been cut off from the clan structure was still desirous of a proper burial. It soon became apparent that provi-sions should be made for a burial place in Hong Kong. Sites for the burial of Christians might still be bought near home villages if the family had sufficient funds and could find someone who would sell to them, or perhaps they still retained property suitable for burial near the home village, but as increasingly Hong Kong Christians considered Hong Kong their permanent home and ties with the home village diminished, the Christian found it more convenient and appropriate to be buried in Hong Kong.
At first, Chinese Christians were buried in the Colonial Ceme-tery at Happy Valley, but in 1858, representatives of the London Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, and the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society were granted a site in what is now Western District by the Government. With the expansion of the town in this direction, it became necessary to move to another location, and the original plot was exchanged for the present one at Pok Fu Lam Road.
It is an interesting feature in the development of church life in Hong Kong that the cemetery has been an important factor bring-ing the Church together in a common concern. It has helped to finance certain joint projects of the Chinese churches. The Chinese Christian Churches Union, which manages the Hong Kong and Kowloon cemeteries, is a significant feature of Pro-testant church life, uniting in a common purpose groups that otherwise might have no integral relation to one another. In like manner, in traditional China, the maintenance of graves of cer-tain important members of a clan served to unite its members in a common interest, who otherwise, in time, might have little in common other than the tradition of a common biological origin.
In the case of some wealthy or prominent individuals, one will find at the Pok Fu Lam Cemetery a large impressive stone marking the grave, and on the same lot in subsidiary position the graves of sons, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and sometimes daughters and sons-in-law. Such an arrangement reinforces consciousness of family solidarity.
My examination of Chinese wills written in Hong Kong indicates that it was traditional to regard prosperity as the favour of the ancestors and to exhort the testator's survivors to maintain har-mony and to practise economy and diligence to ensure the future good fortune of the family. In the case of two Christian wills, those of a father and a son, these values relating to the family are trans-ferred to God. A deacon of the London Missionary Society con-gregation, writing his will in 1869, stated, T have to thank God the Father for enabling me to possess certain houses and land at Hong Kong'. His son, dying as a young man in 1873, entrusted his property, his wife, and two small children to the care of his elder brother. In doing so, he stated that 'being of the same parents (life breath), I need not make too many orders, but I pray ten thousand times that God, the Heavenly Father, will bless our whole family, this is ordered what my heart sincerely wishes'. In the son's will, there is reflected much of the awareness of traditional Chinese family unity, but with the introduction of an appeal to God for con-tinued blessing rather than the traditional virtues of economy and diligence as the means to ensure continued family prosperity.
These examples illustrate a significant transfer of values from family biological continuity to a transcendent reality not as im-mediately tied to the material and tangible.
The most significant factor affecting Christian family life was the break with the traditional ancestral cult. The cult was the ritual expression of identity as a part of a large family or clan. The clan was the basic social organization of Confucian China, and biologi-cal continuity was essential for the clan. Values, life-meaning, and personal identity were resident within the biologically- and historically-based family-clan structure. This tended to tie trans-cendent values to a concrete continuum.
In Christianity, family continuity does not bear transcendent values. These values are transferred from the biological family to the communion of saints. This communion is spiritually based in that it is centred on man as a child of God, rather than as a child of an immediate or ancestral father. The basic value is not found in a continuing biological line, but in a relationship to a spiritual real-ity, God the Father. Fatherhood is spiritual. Filial piety for a Chinese Christian is lifted to a different realm. In both Christian and non-Christian attitudes, the piety has transcendent dimen-sions. In Confucian piety, this dimension is focused on concrete historical personages. In Christian piety, it is focused on a God who is both in and outside history.
The Christian belief in the community of saints provides a theological base for the equality of sexes which theoretically should liberate women from their historically subordinate posi-tion. The Chinese sensed that the attitudes maintained by the foreigner regarding the relationship between the sexes would, if introduced among the Chinese, break down old-established prac-tices and change traditional structures. Medhurst, a missionary of the London Missionary Society in Batavia in the 1830s, summa-rized an anti-Christian tract in which the author charged that the missionary was deficient in four out of the five cardinal virtues, saying that 'It was monstrous in barbarians to attempt to improve the inhabitants of the celestial empire, when they are so miserably deficient themselves ... allowing men and women to mix in society, and walk arm in arm through the streets, they shewed that they had not the least sense of propriety.'2
The same fear, but with an added sexual element, was expressed in the anti-Christian feelings during the 'genii powder' hysteria of the early 1870s, which originated in Nam Hoi, Kwangtung, and spread northwards. One of the placards posted at Fatshan, Kwangtung, embodied some of the fears felt concerning breaches of propriety in the relation between the sexes:
Barbarians erected churches and chapels to incite women and girls to be-come converts and to have lewd intercourse with them. Women and girls originally knew the rules of propriety, and when they saw that the bar-barians were detestable from their features and their differences of race, how was it possible that they should become converts and associate with them? They used money to bribe people to go in disguise of Tao priests, or to get old procuresses, to mix themselves among villagers, to falsely proclaim an epidemic at hand and distribute 'San Sin Fan' (Genii Powder).3
The powder, when mixed with rice flour to make dumplings, caused those who ate the dumplings to become ill; in women their stomachs swelled and in men it was their feet. Then the mission-aries appeared offering a cure, but with the primary intent thus to gain converts, 'only to cause women and girls, when once con-verts, to let barbarians have free sexual intercourse with them.'4 These quotations indicate that the Chinese critics of the missionary movement were aware of the changes that would be produced in the relationship between the sexes, and particularly in the role of women.
In traditional China, a woman was supposed to assume a sub-missive role, as a daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, and even as widowed mother. Normally, her status increased with age. Within these limits, there were many levels in the family hierarchy. At the bottom was perhaps the purchased female servant (or slave). A concubine was considered subordinate to the first wife.
A young woman lost her original identity upon marriage. She was expected to be a full part of her husband's family. Often her lot was not easy. Her husband might be dominated by his mother. The mother might be jealous of the daughter-in-law, and re-membering the difficulty she had as a young bride under the sur-veillance of her own mother-in-law, might now find satisfaction in making the life of her daughter-in-law as difficult as possible. If, in time, the husband took a secondary wife or wives, the female portion of the household could become a hotbed of jealousy and strife. The situation was aggravated in that there were few or no external outlets to serve as an escape valve for the frustrations and restrictions experienced.
Against this background the increasing liberation experienced by girls in Christian families should be considered. If born into a Christian family, they would not have to undergo the binding of their feet and the resulting limitation on their physical mobility. If they were of a family of financial means, their big feet would in itself put them into a special group.
The Chinese female was not expected to attend public meetings. The church, of course, encouraged the attendance of women at public worship, or rather, one might say, the missionaries urged it, for it is not certain that husbands and fathers were always eager for the women of the family to attend worship. They may still have been influenced by the traditional attitude that it was not proper for a woman to go out into a public place, even if it was a church gathering. This separation of the sexes extended, of course, to the seating arrangement in the church. When the London Missionary Society congregation instituted the practice of a monthly 'tea-meeting', women did not attend, though an annual tea-meeting was held for them.
Attendance of women at a church service could be a nuisance. There is a delightful account given by the first female agent of the London Missionary Society to work in Hong Kong of services in the Chinese congregation on Sunday afternoons at Union Church. The report was written in 1891 and relates other aspects of her work among women.
In the Spring of 1877,1 was appointed to work among women and girls in Hongkong, with instructions to do what seemed best for the improvement of the Female members of the Church and evangelization of surrounding masses. At the first meeting with the deacons, I sensed the sense of the meeting, that old women, wives and mothers of the church members, were to be accepted as they were, and left undisturbed in their ways.
Many of the men were married to heathen women, and even among the deacons there were several whose homes were ruled and influenced by idolatrous mothers. All told [there were] aboutfifty-five women [in the] church membership, but of these about half were very lax in observance of religious duties. Excuses were: some too old and feeble, others too young to traverse streets, all had household cares, and many declared it was too expensive to have their heads dressed and chairs engaged to take them to the service in a manner suitable to their position. Few could read, and of the rest, a large number fell back on the Chinese notion of the stupidity of the feminine mind, and asserted that consequently they could not under-
stand Sermon, Scripture lesson, or Psalmody, and it was a waste of time, and wear and tear of garments to go to church regularly. When they did go, they made it a social function; babies were brought, and old women to nurse them, little children and girls to play with them, other children be-cause they could not be left at home, and even the family dogs to please the little folks. Baskets and bundles, of course, accompanied them, and a kind of subdued picnic went on all over the women's side of the beautiful Union Church. Children and dogs played about the aisles, babies were handed from one to the other, and carried in and out screaming, while the mothers compared notes of admiration and whispered with their gossips, and the bigger girls looked about them and giggled at their friends in neighbouring pews. The missionary voice rose higher and higher above the occasional tumult, and the men on their side, sat stolidly indifferent to the behaviour of their female relatives. Babies and noise were accepted as necessary evils, the women could not come and leave them at home. Any-thing like control or compulsory reverence in the House of God was beyond the power of man. Any interference with the views of the 'Sisters* or their privileges would cause them 'to lose face'.
The singing was dreadful. An acquaintance who lived on the same Street, told me he was obliged to change his lodging, because our vocal-ization utterly destroyed the rest and calm of the Sabbath Day. Everyone who could read the characters felt it was his and her duty to shout them aloud, as if like the priests of Baal, they thought God was sleeping and 'must be awaked'.
Now in 1891 ... Bible women work from house to house, reading Scrip-ture in the colloquial, explaining them and exhorting ... Two evenings a week there are special meetings for women. One on Sunday mornings in Wantsai Chapel has gradually become a mixed assembly of men, women and girls. At the Chinese Chapel Sunday afternoon service, the women's side is fairly well filled with an orderly, attentive, interested congregation. Children of all ages are still brought, but the art of keeping them in order has been learned. Many of the young women and all the elder girls can read their Bibles. The habits and attitudes of respect learned in schools have proved useful in revolutionizing the attitude of the youthful mem-bers of the audience.5
Miss Rowe's report documents changes effected in behaviour, attitudes, and education of women within a Christian congrega-tion. They increasingly acquired a different understanding of their position and capabilities.
An interesting example of the influence of missionary attitudes on inheritance patterns as they affected females in the family is provided by the example of the family of the Revd Ho Fuk-tong.
In his will, he left the management of his considerable estate to his widow. The Revd John Chalmers states that he had some difficulty in finally convincing the widow that she ought to break with tradi-tional Chinese custom and leave an outright bequest to her daugh-ters as well as her sons. It is probably the share of one of the daughters, Ho Mui-ling, which enabled her husband, Ng Choy, better known as Wu Ting-fang, to study for the bar in England. Further evidence of a more inclusive view of female members of the family is the early appearance of the names of daughters and granddaughters on the gravestones of Christians. It was common practice among all Chinese to record names of sons and grandsons, but not daughters.
The Church was a pioneer in the education of females. In the early period, the missionary wife would sometimes care for orphans or unwanted girls, and at a proper age form them into a small class. Otherwise, it was difficult to induce parents to send their girls to school as they could be more useful at home caring for the younger children or performing household tasks. When one of the first agents of the Church Missionary Society opened a girls' school in Hong Kong, he offered the inducement of a subsidy, though the experiment was soon abandoned.
The first school for girls supported by the Government was organized at Stanley and was taught by a convert of the Anglican Church. It was so successful that the leaders of the Chinese com-munity in Hong Kong requested that the teacher be transferred and placed in charge of a similar school to be opened there.
An interesting project was organized by the wife of the first Bishop of Victoria, Mrs Smith. She enlisted the aid of interested women in the education of Chinese girls of the better class. They formed a committee and appealed to the Society for the Promo-tion of Female Education in the East to send teachers out from England. The new school was called the Diocesan Female Train-ing Institute, and the girls were given instruction in English. This, however, was found to be a mistake, as it made the young girls too attractive to that section of the male European community who were looking for local household companions with whom they could communicate in English. After several of the students had entered into such irregular positions, the language of instruction was largely confined to Chinese.
One of the purposes of the Diocesan Female Training Institute was to train teachers and provide suitably educated marriage part-ners for the young male converts of St. Paul's College. This pur-pose was fulfilled by a number of pupils of the Institute.
In response to the appeal from Hong Kong to the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East, several unmarried women came from England. Among the first, arriving in 1860 and 1861, were the Misses Baxter, Magrath, and Eaton. They opened and conducted schools, male and female, boarding and day, for Europeans, Chinese, and children of mixed race. The energetic and devoted service of Miss Sophia Harriet Baxter attracted par-ticular notice and has had a lasting influence, particularly in the schools which have been under the patronage of the Anglican Church.
These women were the forerunners of the unmarried female worker, though Gutzlaff had persuaded some unmarried women to come to Hong Kong in about 1850 for the purpose of missionary work among the Chinese. It was charged that he had misled them in portraying the prospects in much too optimistic a vein. The ladies were disillusioned and their missionary service was brief. Following the example of the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East, the mission boards increasingly sent out single female workers. They devoted themselves largely to educa-tion or house visiting, though some female doctors were also sent. Their presence was important, as they provided a model for a posi-tive female vocation other than that of wife and mother. They in-spired some of the girls who came under their influence to resist the pressure to marry, but instead to remain single and pursue a career in education, medicine, or church work. The churches also opened up positions as a means for young widows to achieve finan-cial independence.
In some fashion the nineteenth-century improvement in the sta-tus of women in the Christian community in China laid the founda-tion for demands for women's suffrage, appointment to govern-ment office, and the broadening of job opportunities made in the early 1920s at the time of the establishment of the Canton-based southern constitutionist Government. The leaders in the effort for women's rights were largely young returned overseas students. Many had received their earlier education in the Christian schools in southern China, and were thus already conditioned to think in terms of greater freedom for themselves as girls and women. Their hopes were reinforced by their overseas experience as students.
There is a theological foundation for the liberation of women and equality between the sexes. In God's sight there is no distinc-tion of ethnic origin, social status, or sex; though this implication of equality has seldom been realized fully in the Church at large, the concept of equality did support movements towards improving the role and status of women in the Chinese Christian community. In the community created by clan solidarity, there is a well-defined hierarchy on the basis of age, generation, sex, and social status. If the equality of the saints includes equality of male and female in their fellowship with God and each other, it should logically pro-vide an impetus to the liberation of women from a subordinate position within earthly society.
THIS volume has discussed various aspects of the Protestant Church in Hong Kong in the nineteenth century. The develop-ments since then and a look at the future can only be briefly sug-gested.
Before the Second World War, Pentecostal and Holiness groups had long been established in Hong Kong. Missionaries were sent out by other fundamentalist and faith groups, mostly American. There were also several congregations unrelated to any missionary body.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, some of the main-line denominations that had not previously had con-gregations in Hong Kong, such as the Lutherans and the American Methodists, organized congregations. The great influx of refugees in the 1950s directed world-wide attention to the needs of these people. During this period, the sectarian-fundamentalist presence was strengthened. The longer-established main-line denomina-tions were independent of foreign control but were dependent on foreign funds for educational and relief work and the financing of major building projects. The land boom of the late 1970s freed main-line groups from a need for foreign funds to support their large programmes. The Church as a whole has reached maturity, though in some groups there is still a relatively strong missionary presence.
The fact that Hong Kong was a British colony resulted in its own particular characteristics which distinguished it from cities in China, though there was always a reciprocal influence between them. What is true of the colony is also true of the Churches.
The relationship between the Churches in Hong Kong and on the mainland was altered after the establishment of the People's Republic, and during the cultural revolution of the 1960s the con-tact between the two was virtually broken. In recent years, con-tacts have been re-established. There has been increasing inter-change, though neither the Church in China nor the ecumenical Churches in Hong Kong wish to return to pre-liberation patterns.
The Protestant Church in China operates within the context of the national policies of the People's Republic. It is still exploring
the best methods to participate in China's reconstruction and to assume its proper role in a new social order.
There have been some misgivings about the possible position of the Hong Kong Church in the period after 1997, but many of these doubts have been assuaged by the terms of the Joint Declaration of 1984, which ensures the Church its freedom of operation. The details will have to be worked out within the context of a develop-ing situation.
The histories of the Church in China and of the Church in Hong Kong have been different. This difference has influenced attitudes and policies. In the future, there should be a sharing of the unique-ness of each group, a searching for the most effective way for the Church to contribute to the national life of China and to assume a positive role in the life of its own particular community, yet also to participate in a universal community of faith.
Appendix
A Register of Baptized Protestant Chinese (1813-43)
My interest in obtaining more information on .the Chinese converts and their careers led me to search archives of several missionary societies that worked among the Chinese. In the letters and reports sent back by mis-sionaries I found numerous references to the Chinese converts. Many times, these references had been omitted by authors who used these archival sources for their published missionary histories.
The spelling of the names is copied from the original sources. At this period, there was no settled form for Romanizing Chinese names. Most of my material has been from English and German language sources.
The material is largely from the following sources: Archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Houghton Library, Harvard University (Cambridge); Archives of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (New York); Archives of the London Mission-ary Society (London); Archives of the American Baptist Church (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania); Calwer Missionsblatt; and Gaihan's Chinesische Berichte (Cassell, 1850). 1813 Batavia (Java), a convert of 'Chinese extraction' baptized by W.
Robinson, an English Baptist missionary. 1814 Macau, Tsae A-ko (Choi A-ko) baptized on 16 July by Morrison. Born 1776, died 1819. He worked for Morrison as a pressman.
1816 Malacca, Leung A-fa baptized on 3 November by Milne. He was a block-cutter for the mission press. Born 1787, died 1855. Ordained as an evangelist-preacher by Morrison in 1827.
1821 Malacca, Johanna, daughter of a Chinese father and a Siamese mother, and formerly mistress of a European, baptized by Milne. 1821 Kwangtung Province, Ko-ming District, Loh-tsun village, Lai, wife of Leung A-fa, baptized by A-fa. She died in 1849. 1822 Macau, Tsae A-heen, elder brother of Tsae A-ko, requested bap-tism by Morrison. However, there is no record of his actual baptism.
1823 Canton, Leung Tsun-tak, son of Leung A-fa, baptized on 20 November by Morrison. Bom 1820, died about 1862. In 1859, he was received into a church at Shanghai by the Revd Elijah C. Bridgman.
1824 New York, Lieaou A-see, alias William Botelho, a Chinese student of the Foreign Missions School of the American Board of Commis-sioners for Foreign Missions at Cornwall, Connecticut.
1828 Kwangtung Province, Ko-ming District, Kwu Tin-ching, a school-teacher and relative of Leung A-fa, baptized in January by A-fa. There is no further information regarding him.
1828 Tavoy, Burma, Kee Zea-chung baptized on 3 August by an Ameri-can Baptist missionary. 1829 Kwangtung Province, Ko-ming District, Loh-tsun village, Leung A-chin, infant daughter of Leung A-fa, baptized by A-fa. 1829 Malacca, Choo Hea, a cripple, baptized by Kidd. He was still a member of the Malacca church when it was disbanded in 1843.
1830 Macau, Keuh A-gong, alias Wat Ngong, employee of the London Missionary Society press, baptized in February by Morrison. Born 1785, died 1867. For many years, a preacher for the LMS in Hong Kong.
1830 Bangkok, Bun Tai, baptized by Gutzlaff. Rebaptized by an Ameri--1 can Baptist missionary, the Revd John Taylor Jones on 8 December 1833. He separated from the Siam Baptist Mission in 1836. Re-turned to the church for a short time in 1843-4.
1832 Canton, Choo Tsing, a literary graduate, teacher at the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, baptized by Morrison on 16 December. When the British Government was established at Hong Kong, he became a government employee, but was dismissed in October 1843. He was seen by the Revd George Smith in Canton in 1844. He was an opium-smoker. 1833 Bangkok, Peng (Pong), aged 50, baptized on 8 December. Died March 1836. Sang Seah, aged 40, baptized on 8 December. Both were baptized by Jones. 1834 Malacca, a Chinese girl, aged 17, baptized in June. 1834 Surabaya (Java), the missionary Jacob Tomlin mentions meeting Fek-suy, a baptized Christian, in August. 1834 The small Chinese Christian Church at Canton was scattered by the persecution of the Chinese authorities. Most of the members had been baptized by Leung A-fa between 1831 and 1834. A list of the members was published in a circular letter from E.C. Bridgman and
J.R. Morrison dated Canton, 15 January 1835.
1.
Leang Afa, aged 48, an evangelist.
2.
Keuh Agan, aged 50, an assistant.
3.
Le, aged 31, wife of A-fa.
4.
Leang Atih, aged 15, son of A-fa.
5.
Leang Achin, aged 11, daughter of A-fa.
6.
Le Asin, aged 31, bricklayer. (He is said to have been afraid to associate with foreigners after the 1834 persecution.)
7.
Chow Asan, aged 25, pencil-maker. (Renounced his faith and became an informant on his fellow Christians in 1834.)
8.
Woo Achang, aged 31, assistant printer. (Fled to Singapore and became head printer for the American Board mission.)
9.
Leang Ataou, aged 28, pencil-maker.
10.
Leang Asun, aged 24, pencil-maker. (There is a record of A-fa baptizing his relative, a literary graduate, aged 62, and his sons, aged 21 and 17, in February 1831.)
11.
Ashun, ... , ...
12.
Afuh, ... , an assistant to A-fa.
13.
Lew Che-chang, aged 38, a literary graduate.
14.
Choo Tsing,... , a literary graduate. (There is also a record of A-fa's baptism of Lam, an innkeeper at Canton in 1831. His name was not included in this 1835 list of bap-tized persons at Canton.)
1835 Bangkok, baptized by American Baptist Mission, 20 and 30 Decem-ber: Chek Han (How? Ho?), aged 40, died June 1843; Chek Ete, aged 60, a tradesman; and Pay-chun, aged 70, a gardener, died 19 May 1844.
1836 Malacca, fifteen Chinese baptized; of these, four were students of the Anglo-Chinese College and the remaining were three married couples and five children.
1836 Macau, on 28 December, the Revd E.C. Bridgman married Lewis Hamilton, an American shipwright, to Mary, a baptized Chinese. Their adopted daughter was baptized in 1837. Lewis Hamilton, born 1799, died 1845, was buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery at Macau.
1837 Singapore, Ke Seng, former student of the Anglo-Chinese College, Malacca, baptized on 1 January by an American Board missionary. He was a teacher in the American Board school at Singapore.
1837 Macau, Ah Loo, a Chiu Chow house servant of the Shucks', was baptized by Shuck in January. In April 1838, he went with Dean to Bangkok. He was excluded from the church (for immorality?) in June 1838.
1837 Malacca, between November 1836 and April 1837, Evans reports baptizing twenty, including four families of four men, four women and five children, and six young men aged from 18 to 24. (Among these may have been the above-mentioned individuals baptized in Malacca in 1836.) On 31 December, Evans baptized eighteen persons, and on 21 May, ten persons; of the latter group there were three young men, two families totalling six persons, and an old man aged 65, formerly a schoolteacher. On 14 August, the mission at Malacca reported a 'devoted flock of between 40 and 50'.
Among the persons baptized at Malacca in 1837 were probably: Ho A-sun, alias Ho Ye-tong, a printer for the London Missionary Society press. He accompanied Legge to Hong Kong in 1843, and was a useful and faithful member of the LMS congregation. He died in 1869. Wong A-muk, alias Wong Kwong-ching, a printer, from
Malacca went to Singapore, whence he came to Hong Kong in 1846. He was a deacon in the LMS congregation in Hong Kong. Born in 1810, he died in Hong Kong in 1884.
1838 Bangkok, the following were baptized by the American Baptist mis-sion: Kiok Cheng, Chek Hwa, and Chek Kok. The mission reported six Chinese members in the church.
1838 Singapore, A-tei, a young man who came with Leung A-fa from China was baptized by the American Board mission. In 1840, he returned to China. Lee (Seen-shang) was baptized by Johnson of the American Board. He was employed as a teacher by the Board.
1838 Hackney, England, Choo Tih-lang, Medhurst's language teacher. Excluded from church at Macau for opium-smoking in 1840. Later, a clerk for a commerical firm in Hong Kong.
1838 Malacca, on 2 April, twenty-nine Chinese men and women partook of Holy Communion. September 1838 to April 1839, nineteen Chinese were baptized at Malacca. Among them was Ho Fuk-tong, alias Ho Tsun-shin, a student of the Anglo-Chinese College. He accompanied Legge to Hong Kong in 1843. He was ordained in 1846. Until his death he served as pastor of the London Missionary Society congregation in Hong Kong. Born 1818, died 1871. 1839 Singapore, A-bi, student of the American Board school, baptized by their missionary. Died of leprosy about 1856. Tang Kwan, language teacher of the Revd Robert Orr, baptized by the American Presbyterian mission in November. 1839 Baltimore, USA, Wei Ang, alias Julian, baptized in Baptist Church. Returned to China in 1842 and joined Shuck's congregation at Hong Kong. Was excluded from congregation in 1843. Apparently was mentally unbalanced. 1839 Bangkok, three Chinese baptized by American Baptist mission in October. One of them, Chek Yet, came to Hong Kong with Dean in 1843, and was killed in April, when he intervened as a peacemaker in a quarrel. Dean also brought with him to Hong Kong, Hong Hek, who had been baptized in Bangkok before 1842. He was a charter member of Dean's Hong Kong Chiu Chow congregation. Nine Chinese are reported as members of the Baptist Bangkok mission. 1839 Macau, in a letter dated 10 November, Gutzlaff mentions the fol-lowing as coming into the Christian Church: Chang Ye, Schin-se, Gno, a Hokien, and Setschong (Schitschang), a youth. (He became a member of the Chinese Christian Union, and in 1847 was preaching in Ho-nan.)
1839 Eton (Eason) Apping, USA, returned to Singapore in 1840. Accom--40 panied American Presbyterian missionaries to Amoy. He left their employ in 1845.
1840 Canton, Leung A-fa baptized four in April. He reports that there are 'altogether now twelve baptized persons' at Canton. 1840 Bangkok, American Baptist mission baptized four on May 13 and two on 11 October. Dean reports 16 Chinese in Bangkok mission.
1840 Macau, Gutzlaff reports following baptized persons: two youths; Hin, a doctor; a young man; a teacher, who is also a tradesman; a scholar; an aged man of 70 years. One of these must have been Siao Tao Ching, from Kwei-shan District, who became an active member of Gutzlaff s Chinese Union.
1840 Singapore, Teum Chi, a native of Chiu Chow, baptized by McBryde, American Presbyterian mission, on 15 November. He is described as 'a poor laborer'.
1841 Surabaya, Java, Yang Pang-ke, a 'country-born Chinese' baptized by Medhurst in September.
1841 Malacca, a Chinese man baptized in October.
1841 Canton, Kwan, aged 35 years, sister-in-law of Leung A-fa, a widow, baptized by A-fa in October. 1841 Singapore, Tsang Lai-sun, former pupil of the American Board
-2 school baptized by McBryde of the American Presbyterian mission. In 1843, he was taken to America by Mr Morrison, a Presbyterian, and was educated at Hamilton College, New York. Upon his return to China, he became assistant of the American Board mission at Canton from 1848 to 1853. Then he went to Shanghai as mercantile assistant. He was one of the Commissioners of the Chinese Educa-tional Mission to the United States in 1873. He was a member of the staff of Li Hung-chang. He married Ruth Ati in 1850 (see below).
1842 Batavia, Java, Medhurst baptized two girls from Miss Aldersey's school, Ruth Ati, who married Tsang Lai-sun in 1850 (she was born in 1825, died in 1917 at Shanghai) and Christiana Kit, who married Kew Teen-sang in December 1847 (he had been brought up in a mission school at Batavia and was baptized in Shanghai on 13 November 1845). The two girls accompanied Miss Aldersey when she moved her school to Ningpo. They were assistant teachers in the school.
1842 Macau, some time before Gutzlaff's departure for Chusan in June, he had baptized Liapo; Jong, a teacher; Nia; Kwu, a teacher; Sa (Siau?), a dentist, and his assistant. Among the members of the Chinese Union at its organization in June 1844 were Yung, a teacher, Kwo, a teacher, and Leap, catechist. On 25 July 1844, Roberts reports one of his assistants at Canton as A-fa, dentist. This may be the same as Le A-sam whom Roberts reports as deceased in 1845. The teacher Jong (Yang) may be the Yeang Chi-yuen, a mem-ber of Dean's Chiu Chow congregation in Hong Kong, but excluded in 1847 for opium-smoking. Two of Hamberg's assistants in 1848 were reported as being baptized in the year 1842. They were Tai, aged 27, from San-on District, and Siao Tao-ming, aged 48 years, from Kwei-shan District.
1842 Bangkok, baptisms by American Baptist mission: Chek Team, in January; Chir Sun, on 16 April by Goddard; and Chek Chin, on 7 August. The number of baptized Chinese in Siam was reported by the Baptist mission as eighteen, of which four moved to China and one died, leaving thirteen Chinese in the Bangkok mission.
1842 Hong Kong, Chun baptized by Roberts at Chek Chu (Stanley) on 12 June. He was Roberts' first convert, a member of Shuck's Baptist congregation formed on 1 April 1843. He accompanied Roberts to Canton in 1844, and died in 1845.
1843 Malacca, Legge reported in May that there were six members in the church: Keuh A-gong, Ho Tsun-shin, and Ho A-sun (these three accompanied him to Hong Kong), a man and his family moved to Singapore to work at the London Missionary Society press (this was probably Wong A-muk), one remained with the son of the Revd John Evans, and another remained in Malacca (one of these must have been Choo Hea, baptized in 1829).
1843 Singapore, five church members are reported: a language teacher named Tan Le-chun, a Christian from Malacca, and three who had been baptized by the American Board missionaries.
1843 Hong Kong, Chow and Wong were baptized by Roberts on 2 July. They were received as members of Shuck's Hong Kong Baptist con-gregation. Wong was excluded on September 1843. Chow accompa-nied Roberts to Canton as an assistant in 1844. Tang Tui, a coolie contractor for the Government, and Koe Bak were baptized by Dean on 27 April. Both were charter members of the Chiu Chow Baptist congregation at Hong Kong organized by Dean on 28 May 1843. Both became active members of the congregation.
Notes
Notes to Chapter 1
1.
Chinese Repository, Vol. X, 1841, p. 583.
2.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, pp. 634-8 for Brown's analysis of the Chinese language and quotations cited in the text.
3.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XI, 1842, p. 549.
4.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, p. 636.
5.
Chinese Repository, Vol. X, 1841, p. 572.
6.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XI, 1842, p. 550.
7.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, p. 632.
8.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, p. 633.
9.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, p. 633.
10.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, p. 476.
11. Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength, A History of the Chinese in the United States,
1850-1870 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 147.
12.
Mrs Gutzlaff, the former Miss Wanstall, had conducted a girls' school at Malacca as an agent of the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East. After marrying the Revd Charles Gutzlaff and moving to Macau, she opened a similar school there. She also accepted a few young boys into the school but soon gave up having a mixed school. The school was begun in 1836 and was discontinued when the Opium War broke out. Mrs Gutzlaff, accompanied by several blind girls she had in her care, then went to Manila.
13.
Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1909), pp. 2-3.
14.
Yung Wing (1909), pp. 9-10.
15. Eighth Annual Report of the Morrison Education Society for the Year ending
September 30, 1846 (Hong Kong, China Mail Office, 1846), p. 33.
16. Eighth Annual Report (1846). p. 36.
17.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, p. 640.
18.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XII, 1843, p. 628.
19.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XII, 1843, p. 628.
20.
New York Observer, 9 January 1841, 25 June 1842; W.E. Griffis, A Maker of
the New Orient, Samuel Robbins Brown (New York, Fleming H. Revel and Co.,
1902), pp. 77, 79-80; Chinese Repository, Vol. XI, 1842, pp. 339-40, Vol. XII, 1843, pp. 362-8, Vol. XIII, 1844, pp. 383-5; Fourth Annual Report of the Morri-son Education Society read September 28th 1842 (Macau, S. Wells Williams, 1842), pp. 27-31; and Eighth Annual Report (1846), pp. 33-6.
21. This is probably a misreading for Ats'euk. The apparently complete record of the students does not mention the name Auseule.
22. New York Observer, 9 January 1841, p. 6.
23.
New York Observer, 25 June 1842, p. 101.
24.
Fourth Annual Report (1842), p. 27. The identification of the authors of the essays printed in this report is deduced from a comparison of the information given in the report concerning their age and time at the school with the published lists of students.
25. Griffis (1902), p. 77. 26. Griffis (1902), p. 80.
27. Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, pp. 506-9.
28. Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, p. 509. The essay proceeds to spell out the corrupt practices of the mandarins under six points:
(a)
They forcibly take money from the people;
(b)
Opium-smugglers can buy their way out of punishment;
(c)
They extort gifts from the rich under the pretence of borrowing;
(d)
The customs officers and tax collectors extort excessive levies;
(e)
They employ underlings but do not pay them, though they charge their ser-vices to the public expenses;
(f)
A prisoner is tortured into a confession before any attempt is made to ascertain if he is innocent or guilty. If guilty, the judge will accept a ransom for his release.
29.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XI, 1842, p. 340.
30.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XI, 1842, p. 340.
31.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XI, 1842, p. 340.
32.
Eighth Annual Report (1846), p. 34.
33.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XII, 1843, p. 364.
34.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, p. 384.
35.
Fourth Annual Report (1842), p. 28.
36.
Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Western Culture (Honolulu, East-West Cen-ter Press, 1963), pp. 57-8.
37.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, pp. 383-4.
38.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, pp. 516-19.
39.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, pp. 515-16.
40.
Eighth Annual Report (1846), pp. 34-6.
41.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, p. 512.
42.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, pp. 304-5.
Notes to Chapter 2
1. fcM, &&�Ge&�Di�G (Hsu Jun, Chronological Autobiography of Hsu Jun) (1927), pp. 57-8; SWKJSC. �GglS�GH*i$ft (Liu Kuang-ching, T'ang T'ing-shu, His Compradore Years') in 7nM^%* (Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies), New Series 2, Vol. 2, 1961, pp. 143-83; !tm&, �G�G45(9 (Biography of Tang Ting-shu), in t&8��H>cfl; (Literary Notes of P'ao-yin-lu); Albert Feuerwerker, China's Early Industrialization (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 110-11; Yen-p'ing Hao, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1970), see index; Chan Hok-lam, 'Four Chinese Students of the Hong Kong Morrison Memorial School', in F.S. Drake (ed.), Historical, Archaeological and Linguistic Studies (Hong Kong University Press, 1967), pp. 285-6; Ellsworth Carlson, The Kaiping Mines (1877-1912), in Harvard University Chinese Economic and Political Science Studies, Special Series (Cambridge, 1957); and Kwang-ching Liu, 'A Chinese Entrepreneur', in Maggie Keswick (ed.), The Thistle and the Jade (London, Octopus Books, 1982).
Difficulties arise in research because of the complex Chinese system of naming. A Chinese may have several names and one of his names may be used in one document and another in another document. Alternatively, several aliases, as they are usually termed, may be given. Where aliases have been found, I have included them for further identification. In Chinese names, the surname comes first. This is most typically followed by a 'generation' name, which identifies the individual in terms of his descent group. Then comes the personal name. More rarely, there is no middle name, the generation being identified by the use of a particular radical attached to the phonetics of the characters for all personal names of individuals of one generation of the descent group. An individual may further have several names which identify him as an actor in particular roles. Thus, he may have a name given by his parents, another added when he enters school, another when he marries; perhaps another when he joins an association or society; and another Western name if he is baptized a Christian. Chinese also have nicknames used by friends and close associates and it is quite common to replace the generation name by the appellation 'a' for informal use.
A confusion has arisen over the identity of Tong A-chick. Chan Hok-lam, in his article on the students of the Morrison School, identifies him as Tong King-sing. I myself had done so until Mr H. Mark Lai, President of the Chinese Historical Society of America, kindly drew my attention to the chop, Tong K. Achick, affixed to his translation into Chinese of a California law for the collection of the foreign miners' tax. The chop reads Tong Cheuk Mow Chee (Jffii/!�G& ) (Bancroft Library, Berkeley, F862.3/C148x). When A-chick was admitted to the Morrison School in 1839 he was 11 years of age (hence born in 1828); his brother Akii was admitted in 1841, aged 10 (hence born in 1831). The sixty-first birthday celebration for Tong Mow-chee was held on 19 December 1888 (hence born in 1827); a similar cele-bration for Tong King-sing was reported on 3 June 1892 (hence born in 1831). Daily Press, 25 December 1888; North China Herald and Supreme Court Consular Gazette, 3 June 1892, p. 741.
2.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, pp. 504-19. This is one of the six essays written by pupils of the senior class. Unfortunately, the names of the writers are not given, so we are unable to relate the sentiments and interests of an essay to a particular member of the class. The titles of the other essays were 'Chinese Govern-ment', 'Labour', 'An imaginary voyage' (including a tour of the United States; this is interesting in view of the fact that all but one member of the class later travelled to America), 'Scriptures' (at least four of the class later professed Christianity), and 'Notions of the Chinese in regard to a future state'.
3.
An incident in the later career of Tong King-sing illustrates this principle. While in the employ of Jardine, Matheson and Company in 1866, some question was raised regarding his honesty. He refutes this aspersion on his character by referring to his youthful education: 'Having received a thorough Anglo-Chinese education, I consider squeezing an Employer is a sinful and mean act' (Liu Kuang-ching, 1961, p. 165). When the foreign community at Tientsin organized a sixty-first birthday celebration for Tong King-sing, they did so to express 'their deep appre-ciation of the splendid straight-forwardness and rectitude of principle he had displayed in all his dealings with them' (North China Herald and Supreme Court Consular Gazette, 3 June 1892, p. 741).
4.
As the name suggests, Tong-ka was the village of the 'Tong family'. The family had been resident in the Heung Shan District for generations and this was their family seat. In the Republican period there was an ambitious project to make the village a major port of China.
5.
An uncle of Tong King-sing was a compradore to Charles G. Holdforth, She-riff of Hong Kong from 1845 to 1849. Holdforth left Hong Kong for San Francisco and this may have influenced the uncle to follow him.
6.
Archives of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, Microfilm Reel 192, Vol. 6, No. 83, Macau, 26 January 1847, Vol. 2, No. 63, Macau, 24 February 1846, and Vol. 2, No. 66, Macau, 28 March 1846.
7.
'Seventh Annual Report of the Morrison Education Society', Chinese Reposi-tory, Vol. XIV, 1845, pp. 473-4. The father quoted is not identified by name, but a detailed analysis of the student rolls of the school has led me to identify him as the father of Tong A-chick. With reference to the father, there is a baffling item in the Hong Kong Probate Calendar for 1897 in the Government Gazette. On 1 June 1897, an administration on the estate of one Tong A. Tow, who died on 28 November 1845 in Heung Shan District, was granted to Tong Chick, the only son. The esti-mated value of the estate was given as $5,000. This may be the father of the three
boys. Tong King-sing died in 1892, the youngest brother may also have been dead by 1897, thus leaving Tong Mow-chee (Tong Chick or Tong A-chick) his only surviving son. Tong Mow-chee died at Shanghai on 6 July 1897.
8.
The first five students were Aling, aged 16, from Macau, who was dismissed on 12 October 1840 for bad conduct; Atseuk, aged 14, from Shan Cheung, was driven from the school by his father on 19 August 1840, but returned on 1 June 1842; Ayun and Awai, both aged 11, from Shan Cheung, were removed by their father on 19 August 1840; and A-chick, aged 10, from Tong-ka. More students were admitted later. On 11 November 1839, Ahop, aged 12, was admitted from Tsin Shan, but after a few months' trial he was dismissed for stupidity. In March 1840, five more students were enrolled. Of these, the youngest, Alun, aged 10, could not adjust because of homesickness and was dismissed for going home re-peatedly without permission. Tanyau, from Nam-ping, was also dismissed in June for bad conduct. Lee Akan, aged 14, from Ngau-hung-lai, Chau Awan (Chow Wan), aged 13, from Macau, and Wong Atu, aged 11, from Tung-nong, remained as permanent members of the first class. On 1 November 1840, Yung Wing, aged 13, from Nam-ping, was enrolled, and on 1 January 1841, Wong Ashing, aged 15, from Macau, became the last member to join the class. See student roll, Chinese Reposi-tory, Vol. XII, 1844, p. 263.
9.
For the missionary orientation of the school, see Carl T. Smith, 'A Study of the Missionary Educational Philosophy of Samuel R. Brown from the Perspective of Inter-faith Encounter', Ching Feng, Vol. XII, No. 2,1969, pp. 2-22.
10.
New York Observer, 9 January 1841.
11.
New York Observer, 25 June 1842.
12.
A notice of the death of T'in Sau appeared in the Hongkong Register on 6 December 1853: 'Death of Hwang T'een Siu (commonly known as "Teen-sow") for some time in the service of the Taoutae here, known as one of his linguists. Whether born in China or one of the Chinese settlements at "The Straits" does not appear. For some years he was in one of the Mission Schools at Singapore or Malacca, and came from thence to Hongkong and subsequently Shanghai. His arrival here was very soon after opening of the foreign settlement in 1842. For a time in service of foreigners, then went into service of native merchants. He pro-fessed himself a Christian and was often seen in worshipping assemblies on the Lord's day. During naval operations on the river below Chin-kiang he was sent back and forth between the fleet and the Taoutae. His sympathies were with the rebels. Probably the reason his master Taoutae Wu dismissed him. He applied to foreign houses for employment, but was not successful, so he joined forces with the Taoutae's foes in the city. He had not been a week in the city when he became obnoxious to his new master. He was charged with being a spy, and was "cut to pieces". The reasons for his breaking friendship with his new master, and undertak-ing to act as a spy, do not appear; but that he did so, his best friends admit. The circumstances of his death are too terrible to be related. At their recital Samqua (Tao-tai Wu) is said to have cried like a baby.'
13.
See Carl T. Smith, 'Commissioner Lin and His Translators', Chung Chi Bulletin, No. 42, 1967, pp. 29-36.
14.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIII, 1844, p. 625. Several years after the first boys were sent, Governor Davis requested more students. This time, Mr Brown took a firmer stand and was willing to have a show-down on the issue. The Presbyterian missionary, Andrew P. Happer, reported the matter in a letter to his mission board: 'Within a week Mr. Brown writes he has had correspondence with the Gov-ernor terminated rather crabidly on the part of the Governor in relation to boys for the public service. The Governor asking for some as if he felt he had a perfect right to call for any anytime he might wish them. Mr. Brown wrote to him that the boys are engaged to stay for a certain number of years and that he had no authority from the Trustees to let any leave the school until their term of study was com-
pie ted, when they were at liberty to enter upon any service that they chose. The Governor thought that this was a new interpretation of the matter and that through giving a lot free of rent and Sir Henry Pottinger having given some $1,300 from the public fund and the civilians and military of Hong Kong contributions for its sup-port, gave them the right to expect Interpreters from it. He closed the correspon-dence by saying to Mr. Brown that he was at liberty to call from Shanghai two boys that have been in the consulate there for more than a year, and Mr. Brown thinks that Governor Davis himself may order them home. All the Trustees support Mr. Brown but the Governor can set influences at work which will sooner or later result in removing Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown inquired if our Board would be willing to receive him�Xthat he was that tired of laboring for the world that had no Christian sympathy or prayers for the great object he had in view.' Archives of the Presby-terian Board of Foreign Missions, Vol. 2, No. 41, Macau, 4 August 1845.
15.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, 1845, p. 475.
16.
Eighth Annual Report of the Morrison Education Society for the Year ending 30 September, 1846 (Hong Kong, China Mail Office, 1846), pp. 33-6.
17.
Hong Kong Land Registry Office, Memorials 943,1098 and 1179.
18.
Legge Collection, Archives of the London Missionary Society.
19.
Colonial Office Records, Series 129-23, No. 15, 25 January 1848.
20.
China Mail, 18 December 1850.
21.
Friend of China, 17 September 1851; Parliamentary Papers, Vol. XLVIII, 1860, p. 174.
22.
Hongkong Register, 16 September 1851, 7 October 1851; China Mail, 23 October 1851.
23.
Colonial Office Records, Series 129-45, No. 24,11 May 1854.
24.
For a summary of the case, see G.B. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book of Early Hong Kong (Singapore, Eastern University Press, 1962), pp. 97-9.
25.
Queen v. Tarrant, 1 August 1858, Parliamentary Papers, Vol. XLVIII, 1860.
26.
Colonial Office Records, Series 131-1, 1855-6.
27.
China Mail, 3 April 1856.
28.
Mentioned in Liu Kuang-ching, 1961.
29.
Bonney writes that 'one of the overseers of the company had been a teacher of our deceased brother J.G. Bridgman, and another of the emigrants was formerly my pupil in Morrison School and has been baptized'. Archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 16.3.8, Vol. 2, No. 232, 21 January 1852.
30.
The St. John's Cathedral Baptismal Register, entry Nos. 15, 16, and 17 for 29 June 1851 are blank, but written in pencil is the notation, 'Chinese�Xstudents in St. Paul's College'. This fits with the statement made in the Bishop's report for 1851: 'Three pupils were baptized during the last summer: Ching-tik, sent back to Ningpo, his native place, dangerously ill, and apparently dying, where he has, however, unexpectedly recovered, and continues under the kind care of his former friends and instructors, the missionaries of the Church Mission Society. Achick is at present unsettled, on account of an uncle wishing to take him to California, and Kum-shoo, a boy of fifteen, considerably advanced in Chinese reading and posses-sing a fine intellect and disposition', Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury con-taining the Annual Report of St. Pauls College and Mission at Hong Kong, George Smith, D.D., Bishop of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1852). Tong A-chick later stated that he had received the baptismal name 'Laying cheu'. The Revd Albert Williams of San Francisco reports this, stating that A-chick had said that this meant 'belief of the Scriptures'. It is likely, however, that if the Chinese words had been heard and transcribed correctly, the name was ^Ui., meaning, 'confess the Lord'. The Pres-byterian, Vol. XXII, No. 31, 1852, p. 82.
31.
Annual Report of the Bishop of Victoria to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 April 1854, Archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, London.
32.
The Presbyterian, Vol. XXII, No. 31,1852, p. 82.
33.
'Journal of William Speer', Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Vol. IV, 1853, p. 214.
34.
There is little evidence that, in his later career, Tong King-sing was an active Christian. However, a newspaper correspondent, reporting from Tientsin in 1886, comments that Li Hung-chang 'prefers to promote the interests of his countrymen who have embraced the Christian religion and pushes them on to rank and high position'. As examples, he mentions Tong King-sing and his brothers. Daily Press, 9 March 1886.
35.
Letters regarding the Chinese mission in California 1852-65, from Speer to Lowrie, No. 6, newspaper clipping of contribution list, Presbyterian Historical Society, Microfilm Records of Presbyterian Church, USA, Board of Foreign Mis-sions, Microfilm 2, C. 441, Reel 1, No. 5,15 September 1853, San Francisco. Along with Tong A-chick, there were two other individuals who contributed $100, Chun Ching and Lee Kan and Co. Lee Kan is probably a former classmate of Tong A-chick's at the Morrison Education Society School in Hong Kong, who died some years later in San Francisco. Three of the five district associations contributed. The Sz Yap Company gave the largest contribution, $200, and the Yeong Wo Company and the Ning Yeung Company each gave $100.
36.
I have followed the account of this issue as given in Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength, A History of the Chinese in the United States 1850-1870 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1964), chap. VI.
37.
Reprints from a pamphlet, 'An Analysis of the Chinese Question', Friend of China, 2 June 1853.
38.
Quoted in Barth (1964), p. 147, from a newspaper notice in the Herald, 1 June 1852.
39.
This and subsequent quotations are from an account of the Chinese case published in Friend of China on 2 June 1853. Gunther Barth (1964), p. 146, doubts whether the two letters were actually written by Chinese. He says, 'it was not according to Chinese procedure'. This is true, but he overlooks the experience Tong A-chick had gained in such matters during his service as interpreter in the British Consulate. Nor was Tong A-chick a stranger to the effectiveness of a letter to the Editor', a popular method employed by readers of the China coast news-papers to air their grievances or special concerns.
40.
Theodore H. Hittell, History of California (San Francisco, N.J. Stone and Company, 1897), Vol. IV, p. 110.
41.
Letter from the Revd W. Speer dated 30 November 1852, Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Vol. IV, 1853, p. 51.
42.
Annual Report of the Bishop of Victoria to the Archbishop of Canterbury (1854).
43.
Daily Press, 25 December 1888.
44.
Daily Press, 17 July 1869; Government Gazette, 2 January 1870.
45.
Hong Kong Land Registry, Memorials 11687 and 13264. 46. Feuerwerker (1958), pp. 113 and 129.
47.
O Macaense, 9 July 1883.
48.
North China Herald and Supreme Court Consular Gazette, 3 June 1892, p. 741.
Notes to Chapter 3
1. Arthur Waley, The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes (New York, Macmil-lan and Company, 1958), pp. 65-6.
2.
Letter from T.T. Leang to Mrs Morrison dated Macau, 4 November 1841, Evangelical Magazine, Vol. XX, 1842, p. 295.
3.
Archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Houghton Library, Harvard University), 16.3.3, Vol. I, No. 119, 1840 (hereafter
AABCFM).
4. Chinese Repository, Vol. VIII, 1840, pp. 635-6. 5. Waley (1958), pp. 95-6.
6.
Bridgman's journal, 1 May 1830, AABCFM, 16.3.8, Vol. I, No. 26.
7.
London, Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1885, pp. 260-5.
8.
Chinese Repository, Vol. XVIII, 1849, p. 407; Fourth Annual Report of the Anglo-Chinese College (1826), Fifth Annual Report (1827), Report of the Eleventh Year (1829).
9.- William C. Hunter, Bits of Old China (London, Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1885), pp. 261-2, quoting from the Canton Register of 3 October 1829.
10.
Chinese Repository, Vol. VIII, 1839, pp. 167-8.
11.
Missionary Herald, Vol. XVII, 1821, p. 2.
12.
Tien Hsia Monthly, Vol. XI, 1940, pp. 128-39. La Fargue states (p. 137) that Lieaou Ah-see, another of the students at Cornwall, was mentioned by 'Robert Morrison and David Abeel... as serving as an interpreter in the yamen of Commissioner Lin'. Unfortunately, La Fargue has not documented this statement. It is questionable inasmuch as Robert Morrison died in 1834 and the Lin Commis-sion took place in 1839-40. Perhaps Dr Morrison's son, John Robert Morrison, is meant. Abeel mentions seeing Ah-see at Canton but does not suggest any connec-tion with Commissioner Lin. It would appear that La Fargue assigns rather arbi-trarily to Ah-see the role of Lin's translator out of the five Chinese boys who stu-died at Cornwall. He was probably using as his source the notice in the Chinese Repository which does not definitely name the translators. G.W. Overdijking, in his study of Lin, Lin Tse-hsii, een Biographische Schets (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1938, Sinica Leidensia, Vol. IV), picks up this identification of Ah-see as an interpreter indirectly from La Fargue through the mention of Ah-see in George H. Dan ton's
The Culture Contacts of the United States and China, the Earliest Sino-American Culture Conflicts 1784-1844 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1831).
13.
AABCFM, 16.3.8, Vol. I, No. 220, 18 May 1834.
14.
AABCFM, 16.3.11, Vol. I, p. 25.
15.
Archives of the London Missionary Society (London), South China, Box 2, Folder 2, Jacket C.
16.
Bridgman's journal, 23 October 1830, AABCFM, 16.3.8, Vol. I, No. 30.
17.
AABCFM, 16.3.8, Vol. I, No. 61.
18.
Letter dated Macau, 5 December 1840, Archives of the London Missionary Society, South China, Box 4, Folder 1, Jacket C.
19.
A letter from Bridgman dated 29 November 1840, AABCFM, 16.3.3, Vol. IA, No. 65.
20.
Letter from Bridgman dated 11 July 1841, AABCFM, 16.3.3, Vol. IA, No. 71.
21.
Letter from Bridgman dated 1 March 1841, AABCFM, 16.3.3, Vol. IA, No. 67 and note appended to the printed semi-annual letter of the missionaries at Macau dated 1 January 1841, AABCFM, 16.3.3, Vol. IA, No. 73.
22.
Letter from Bridgman dated Victoria, 14 February 1844, AABCFM, 16.3.3, Vol. IA, No. 84.
23.
Letter from Bridgman to Prudential Committee dated Hong Kong, 20 September 1844, AABCFM, 16.3.3, Vol. I, No. 56. Hong Kong Land Registry Office, Memorials 33, 34, 36 and 37.
24.
Letter from Bridgman dated Hong Kong, 26 May 1845, AABCFM, 16.3.3, Vol. I, No. 57.
25.
Letter from Bridgman dated Canton, 25 December 1845, AABCFM, 16.3.3, Vol. I, No. 63.
26.
George H. McNeur, China's First Preacher, Liang A-fa, 1789-1855 (Shang-hai, Kwan Hsueh Publishing House, 1934), p. 93.
27.
Letter from Bridgman dated Canton, 18 March 1847, AABCFM, 16.8.3, Vol. Ill, No. 72.
28.
Letter from Bridgman dated Shanghai, 25 August 1848, AABCFM, 16.8.3, Vol. Ill, No. 93.
29.
AABCFM, 16.8.3, Vol. Ill, No. 206.
30.
Daily Press, 14 May 1878.
31.
Chinese Repository, Vol. VI, 1837, p. 231.
32.
Archives of the London Missionary Society, London, South China, Box 3, special red folder.
33.
For an account of the life of Liang Tsen Teh, see Carl T. Smith, 'Commis-sioner Lin's Translators', Chung Chi Bulletin, No. 42, 1967, pp. 29-36.
34.
Minutes of Singapore mission dated 28 November 1837, AABCFM, 16.2.6, Vol. 1, No. 129.
35.
Roll of American Board mission school, Singapore, 1 February 1840,
AABCFM, 16.3.1, Vol. 2, No. 180. 36. AABCFM, 16.3.1, Vol. 2, No. 151. 37. AABCFM, 16.3.1, Vol. 2, No. 151.
38.
Morrison Education Society reports for the years 1861-2, 1862-3, and 1863-4.
39.
Semi-annual report by Bridgman dated Hong Kong, 20 July 1843, AABCFM, 16.3.8, Vol. IA, No. 23.
40.
Hong Kong Government Land Registry Records, Memorials 36-7.
41.
Letter from Hirschberg dated 25 September 1852, Archives of the London Missionary Society, South China, Box 5, Folder 3, Jacket A. 'The Chinese have contributed $250 to the erection of the new hospital. One Tam Ah-choy, a rich building contractor, had been several times a looker in at the hospital. Another Loo Ah-qui, who owns a number of houses in the Lower Bazaar and who obtained a button for some services to his country, received me most friendly and in a very good English said to Lee Kip Tye, a Chinese broker, who went with me to collect the money "Do not trouble that gentleman to come here again, I shall send you the money ($15) to your house tomorrow mornings" and then turning to me said "A very good cause, Sir. A very good cause" and then took my hands and shook them most heartly according to English fashion. Another Ah-Yang, late teacher of Rev. Dean, sent me $2 during his illness and after his death received from Dean: "En-closed is $5 as a small bequest for your hospital from my late Chinese teacher, who died this morning." Lee Kip Tye has taken great interest from the start and pro-cured by his untiring zeal the greatest number of subscribers and at his own expense has undertaken to erect a stone in the hospital with the names of all subscriptions engraved, as an evalasting memorial of the first assistance given by the Chinese to Europeans for a good cause.'
42.
China Mail, 23 September 1852.
43.
Hong Kong Government Land Registry Records, Memorials 684, 685, and
737. Ho A-seck, who also bore the names Ho In-kee and Ho Fei-in, first appears in Hong Kong records in March 1849 when he purchased Inland Lot No. 239 C in Tai Ping Shan (Memorial 468). At the time, he was compradore of the opium-importing firm of Lyall, Still and Company. The firm closed in 1867. Ho A-seck engaged in his own business ventures under the firm name of Kin Nam. He was a dealer in opium and in 1871 he held the gambling house monopoly in Hong Kong. In an action brought against him in 1871, he testified that he operated with a capital of $200,000. He was one of the leaders of the Chinese community, a member of the Joss House Committee in 1872, a member of the Committee to Establish Tung Wah Hospital in 1870, and Vice-President of the Tung Wah Committee in 1872. He died in Pang Po (probably Ping Po (�D#)) , San Tuk District, on 29 April 1877. His wife, Ho Leong, obtained letters of administration, but as she was blind, she gave power of attorney to Wei Akwong.
44.
Hong Kong Government Land Registry Records, Memorial 2629.
45.
Cheung Achew (88 i�G $!) was a neighbour of Wei Akwong. He bought Inland Lot No. 189 from William Scott on 17 August 1855 (Memorial 876) and a month later purchased the adjoining lot No. 193 (Memorial 891). He died at his home village of Kai Choong in Heung Shan District on 7 December 1865. Probate of his estate was granted to Wong Shing, a neighbour. His widow, Cheung Chew-shi, died at Hong Kong on 16 December 1880. Probate of her estate was granted to her son, Cheung Tsun, of Macau. An adjoining lot to those of Cheung Achew, Inland Lot No. 197 (Memorial 917), was bought by Cheung Mung (ft 38), a compradore, in August 1855. He died in 1858, and his property in Hong Kong fell to his adminis-tratrix, Cheung Chew-shi. Lum Ayow is listed as a lorcha owner in the Hong Kong Government Gazette of 26 January 1856, 'Return of Vessels Owned by Chinese Residents Holders of Land in the Colony'. 1854, No. 15, October, Good Chance, 149 tons, owner Lam Yow, Captain Lam Yuen, securities Amoon and Ty-sing.
46.
Article from China Review reprinted in the China Mail, 23 October 1875.
47.
Hong Kong Government Land Registry Records, Memorials 2447, 2977, 2978, 4312, 5237, and 5093.
48.
Letter from Wong Shing to James Legge dated 20 February 1869, Hong Kong, Legge Collection, Archives of the London Missionary Society.
49.
Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shang-hai and other Treaty Ports of China (London, Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Company, 1908), p. 109.
50.
Wei family genealogy, 1908 (*�G*.,#.�G*) . Made available to me through the courtesy of Dr David Faure.
51.
Probate File 1151 of 1878 (4/368), Public Record Office of Hong Kong.
52.
This is my interpretation of his remarks and may not be a completely accu-rate assessment.
53.
See Tin-yuke Char, 'In Search of the Chinese Name for "Lai Sun", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 16, 1976, pp. 107-111. The character for his surname appears to have been (#) . In his signature he used the romanization 'Chan'.
54.
'Brother Tsung Lai Shun in Massachusetts', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 21, 1981, pp. 179-84. Reprinted from Chater-Cosmo Transactions, Vol. 2, 1980.
55.
Spirit of Missions (Journal of the American Episcopal Church), Vol. 22,
1857, p. 350. 56. Vol. 58, p. 258.
57. South China Morning Post, 23 January 1917.
Notes to Chapter 4
1.
In an appendix to Dr Margaret M. Coughlin's unpublished doctoral thesis, 'Strangers in the House: J. Lewis Shuck and Issachar Roberts, First American Baptist Missionaries to China', University of Virginia, 1972, there is a letter from Roberts to Shuck dated 27 March 1847 giving details of Hsiu-ch'uan's spiritual development.
2.
Southern Baptist Missionary Journal, Vol. 2, No. 10,1848.
3.
For an English-language account, see Jen Yu-wen, The Taiping Revolutionary Movement (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1973).
4.
When my sources have not given names in Chinese characters, I have used the Romanization of the original manuscript, except for Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, Hung Jen-kan and Feng Yun-shan. There are particular difficulties in determining the proper surname for individuals who appear in the sources as Fung. This was the accepted Hakka form of the surname Hung (&), but it was also the Cantonese spelling of the surname Fung (M).
5.
Letter from Hamberg dated May 1854, Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, October 1854.
6.
Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, June 1868, p. 73.
7.
Li Tsin-kau, otherwise known as Lee Sik-sam, died on 8 April 1885, aged 62. On the letters of administration issued to his widow, Ho Lai-yau, the value of his estate was estimated at $400. His assets consisted principally of a small house be-side the Basel Missionary Society's church and mission house in Sai Ying Pun, which he had purchased in 1878 for $480. He sold a portion of the lot in 1878 for $370.
Li Tsin-kau's wife was baptized in Hong Kong in 1861 and died there on 21 September 1888, leaving four surviving children. The family property after her death was conveyed by Li A-cheung, an interpreter, Li Shin-en, a missionary, and Li En-kyau, unmarried, to their brother, Li A-po, a trader.
The eldest son of Tsin-kau, A-lim, had died in 1864 'in trouble with the police'. A-po, the second son, was betrothed in 1865 to Kong Oi-fuk from Lilong. She was a student in the Basel Missionary Society girls' boarding-school in Hong Kong, and he was a student at their boys' school at Lilong.
The third son, A-cheung, studied at Hong Kong Central School (Queen's Col-lege) and in 1871 was given the prize for best scholar. After leaving school, he entered government service, beginning as a charge-room interpreter for the police, but in 1875 was transferred to the Magistracy as a clerk. Three years later he was promoted to second interpreter in the Magistracy. In 1882, he was offered the position of interpreter to the Kingdom of Hawaii. Like his brother, he had married one of the students at the girls' boarding-school in Hong Kong, Tshin Then-tet. She accompanied him to Hawaii.
In 1883, the Revd Frank Damon, who was in charge of Chinese Christian work in Hawaii, visited Hong Kong. In a report of his visit published in The Friend (New Series, Vol. 33, No. 2, 1883, p. 9) he expresses his pleasure at meeting 'the vener-able and interesting father of our government interpreter in Honolulu, Mr Lee Cheong. A brother and sister are engaged in teaching here, while another brother is missionary to his countrymen'.
The fourth son, Li Shen-en ( $ ^B) , alias Li Syong-kong ( $ # it), was baptized in Hong Kong in 1859. Following in the footsteps of his father, he served as catech-ist in the Sai Ying Pun Hakka congregation from 1883 to 1888. He then emigrated to Sabah, North Borneo, where, under the auspices of the Basel Missionary Soci-ety, he organized a congregration of Hakkas. He married Lin Loi-kyau, a daughter of the Revd Lin Khi-len. She was a teacher at the girls' boarding-school at Sai Ying Pun from 1882 to 1894.
Li Tsin-kau had one daughter, Li En-kyau ( $ BSf), born in 1860 and baptized as an infant. She attended the Sai Ying Pun school and also taught there from 1877 to 1902; in addition, she carried out volunteer church work among the women.
The services rendered by the several generations of the Li family to the congrega-tions and schools of the Basel Missionary Society well repaid the initial interest and attention which the young Li Tsin-kau had been given when he first turned up in Hong Kong in 1853 as one displaced because of his connection with the leader of the Taiping movement.
The details of the family of Li Tsin-kau were taken mainly from the archives of the Basel Missionary Society and from a mimeographed paper entitled 'Geschichte der Hongkonger Gemeinden' kindly lent to me by Dr James Hayes.
8.
Letter from Legge dated 26 September 1853, Archives of the London Missionary Society, South China, Box 5, Folder 3, Jacket C, and Yearly Report of the Hong Kong Mission dated 25 January 1854, Jacket D. For a brief note on Keuh A-gong, see Carl T. Smith, 'A Register of Baptized Protestant Chinese 1813-42', Chung Chi Bulletin, No. 48, 1970, p. 24. For a note on Ng Mun-sow, see Carl T. Smith, 'Dr Legge's Theological School', Chung Chi Bulletin, No. 50, 1971, pp. 16-22.
9.
Letter from Legge dated 28 January 1869, Archives of the London Missionary Society, South China, Box 6, Folder 2, Jacket C, and letter from Wong Fun dated 8 May 1857, Folder 1, Jacket A. Another missionary estimate of Hung Jen-kan is the testimonial the Revd John Chalmers sent to the Revd Rudolph Lechler, Basel Missionary Society Archives, Vol. IV, 1857-62, letter written from London Mission House, Hong Kong, dated 24 December 1857: T have great pleasure in giving my testimony to the Christian character of Hung Jin, the relative of Hung Sew Tsuen, who, since his return from Shanghai in the year 1854, has been in the employment of our mission; first as a Christian teacher, and afterwards as a preacher and assis-tant missionary. His general behaviour has been such as becomes the Gospel; the work which we have given him to do, he has always executed to our satisfaction and not only so, but his zeal for the promotion of the cause of Christ has been marked. He is a young man of superior abilities, and I hope he may yet be honoured to labour successfully in the preaching of the gospel to his countrymen for many years.'
10.
Letter from Chalmers dated 5 June 1858, Archives of the London Missionary Society, South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket B.
11.
Letter from Legge and Chalmers dated 11 January 1859, Archives of the London Missionary Society, South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket C, enclosing a translation of a letter from Hung Jan: 'Translation of Hung Jan's last letter, sent from Shanghai by Mr. Muirhead, who received it from a Chinaman who had been with Lord Elgin's expedition up the Yangtze. He wrote in [sic] 170 or 180 miles on that river below Hakow.' Letters from 'Shau Kwan, Nan Gan [both on the northern boundary of Kwangtung], one from the capital of Keangse, one from imperialist camp at Yaou Chow [north of Keangse]' are mentioned as having been written by Hung Jen-kan.
12.
Letter from Legge dated 24 August 1860, Archives of the London Missionary Society, South China, Box 6, Folder 2, Jacket C, and letter from Legge dated 14 January 1861, Folder 3, Jacket B.
13.
Letter from Legge and Chalmers, 14 January 1857, Archives of the London Missionary Society, South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket A.
14.
Legge family papers, letters dated 28 March 1861 and 24 March 1871,
Archives of the London Missionary Society.
15.
For identification of Hung K'uei-hsiu, see Jen (Chien) Yu-wan, i��7�Gr%mm&&mJ3f3M\ (Record of Visit with Descendants of the Taiping Hung Family), �ӢD^mmi (Taiping Kingdom Miscellany), No. 4, 1935, and B^Pf- Lo Hsiang-lin, %M%.WUW> (Historical Sources for the Study of the Hakkas), (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1965), p. 409.
16.
Hong Kong school report, 14 February 1875, 'Teacher Schui Thin will shortly change places with Fung Khui-syu in Tschong Hang Kang, because the last as a son of a Tai Ping Rebellion King, cannot stay anymore in the mainland without danger to the life of himself and family', Basel Missionary Society Archives.
17.
Hong Kong school report, 16 April 1873, Basel Missionary Society Archives, and letter from Lechler dated 2 October 1865, Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, January 1866.
18.
Chinese Mission Yearly Report, 1885, Basel Missionary Society Archives.
The ship Dartmouth left Hong Kong on 25 December 1878 and arrived at George-town, British Guiana, on 17 March 1879. Among itsfive hundred and sixteen emi-grants were seventy Christians.
19. Kuo Ting-i (M&&), Daily Record of Historical Events of the Tai Ping King-dom (Chungking and Shanghai, Commercial Press, 1946), appendix, p. 24.
Notes to Chapter 5
1.
'Sun Yat-sen as Middle School Student in Hong Kong', Ching Feng, Vol. XX, No. 3,1977, pp. 154-6. In the register of the China Congregational Church (Kung Lei Tong (& if g)), the three young men are registered as follows: No. 2 % B if (Sun Yat-sen), No. 4 m&& (Luk Chung-kwei), and No. 5 m^m (Tong Wang-kwai).
2.
Missionary Herald, 12 April 1912.
3.
The American Board mission opened three day-schools, which were listed as grant-in-aid schools in 1884. These were Bridges Street, teacher, Sung Yuk-lam, with an assistant, ninety-three boys; East Street, teacher, Chau Cheung-tai, twenty-eight boys; and Station Street, teacher, Chau Tsing-tsun, forty-one boys. The school on East Street had been taken over from its former patron, the Revd Ho Kau, of the London Missionary Society congregation. It was closed in 1887, and its teacher, Chau Cheung-tai, replaced Tsing-tsun at the Station Street school. The same year, the American Board mission took over the management of two schools from the Presbyterians. One was the school on Queen's Road West, where Hager had opened a Sunday school on 1 September 1883, the other was a school in Hing Lung Lane.
4.
The biography of Jee Gam and the careers of his children illustrate therise of a poor immigrant boy to a position where he could provide university education for his children. They, for their part, returned to China to contribute to the new China of Sun Yat-sen.
Jee Gam accompanied an uncle to San Francisco. He first found a situation as a house-boy. Dissatisfied with his wages, he went to work in a factory. One Sunday, he found his way to a Chinese Sunday school. The superintendent of the school was attracted by the boy's appearance and manners and introduced him to the family of the pastor of the church, the Revd George Mooar. He was taken into the family as a servant, but was soon considered part of the family circle. In 1870, with two other Chinese, he joined the Oakland Congregational Church. He soon became a leader in Christian work among the Chinese. In 1871, he returned to China to marry a bride who had been chosen for him. A son was born, but died. To console the bereaved mother another boy was adopted. Jee Gam returned to California, leav-ing his wife in China. Later, he sent for her to join him, but his father suggested that it would be better for him to take a second wife in California. Jee Gam replied that this was against his principles as a Christian. He persisted and his wife was allowed to join him.
He returned to China in 1876 to take his wife back with him to California. She was not a Christian, but when Jee Gam transferred his membership from the First Congregational Church, Oakland, to the Bethany Congregational Church, in 1884, she was baptized and received into membership with him.
In 1895, the Congregational Association of Chinese Christians requested that Jee Gam should be ordained. He had been doing the work of a pastor for twenty-five years. The date of the ordination, 19 September, was the anniversary of the date on which he had begun his Christian work in California.
In addition to the son adopted in China, Jee Gam had nine children; all were baptized. One of his sons, Jee Shin Fwe Pong Mooar, having received a medical
degree from the University of California, went to Tientsin, where he practised as an eye surgeon. Another son, Jee Shin Yien Luther MacLean, received an MA from Harvard University and later joined the Ministry of Finance of the Chinese Repub-
lic. All the other children who grew to maturity received a good education in one way or another and all except one returned to China.
Jee Gam was planning to spend his old age on Chinese soil but died on his way home within a day's journey to Honolulu. His body was returned to China for burial.
5.
The Pacific, Vol. 32, No. 8, 21 February 1883.
6.
The Pacific, Vol. 32, No. 9, 28 February 1883.
7.
Lo Hsian-lim, 'The Spread of Christian Faith and Its Influence on the Course of Modern China, as seen in the Chinese Genealogical Records' ( *R&fig3fpE;�G#ft�Gft&Si!jtfft + S�GIJSft ), Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. VII, No. 1, 1969.
8.
See the following articles by Carl T. Smith, 'A Study of the Missionary Educational Philosophy of Samuel R. Brown from the Perspective of Inter-faith Encounter', Ching Feng, Vol. XII, No. 2, 1969, pp. 2-19, 'The Chinese Church in a Colonial Setting: Hong Kong', Ching Feng, Vol. XVII, Nos. 2 and 3, 1974, pp. 75-89, and 'The Early Hong Kong Church and Traditional Chinese Family Patterns', Ching Feng, Vol. XX, No. 1, 1977, pp. 56-60.
9.
American Missionary, Vol. XXII, No. 9, 1878, p. 281.
10.
Fung Foo (1849-1934) was another of those Chinese boys in the United States who came under church influence and received an English-language educa-tion.
Fung Foo (&&), alias Chung-ling (Mi�G) or Pat Sun ($gi), an orphan, was shipped out as a coolie to Cuba at the age of 15. Instead of working in the sugar-fields as a labourer, he became a house-servant. After completing his service, he drifted up to New York City. There he came under the patronage of the superinten-dent of the Five Points mission and was sent with two other Chinese boys to study at Howard University at Washington, DC. The Hong Kong obituary of Fung Foo states that he was educated at Harvard, but this is an error. Howard was a school founded for the education of blacks and was associated with the American Mission-ary Association.
After completing his studies, Fung Foo went to San Francisco, where he became a helper in the Congregational Chinese Mission sponsored by the same society. His services were of considerable value and he helped to draft the constitution for the Chinese Young Men's Christian Association.
While at Howard, he had written to the Secretary of the American Missionary Association, which was financing his studies, stating, 'I am preparing myself to be a teacher, and will go back to my country to teach my people of this language'. His youthful resolve was realized, for after returning to Hong Kong in 1881, he became a teacher at the Government Vernacular School at Sai Ying Pun. Its successor is King's College, Bonham Road. Later, he was appointed as Headmaster. He served in the Hong Kong government school system until his retirement.
He married Kwan Uet-ming (M ft 18), the eldest daughter of Kwan Yuen-fat, an elder in the London Missionary Society congregation. Fung Foo was therefore re-lated by marriage to Wan Ping-chung, whose wife was a cousin of Uet-ming. Fung Foo was a deacon in the To Tsai Church( formerly the London Missionary Society congregation and subsequently the Hop Yat Church) and was later ordained and became an elder. In the later years of his life, he assisted in the organization of Ying Wah College and established a free school at Castle Peak, New Territories, for poor boys.
11. Lee Sam was a convert of the California mission which had sent the Revd C. Hager to Hong Kong. He accompanied Hager to Hong Kong and assisted him in establishing the mission there. He also sold and distributed literature on behalf of the American Bible Society.
12.
This was the Central Government School, later Queen's College, in which Sun Yat-sen was enrolled in March 1884.
13.
Either this is a misprint or Hager did not hear the name clearly. Miss Harriet Noyes founded True Light College in Canton in 1872. Its successors are the Hong Kong True Light School, Tai Hang Road, Hong Kong; the Kowloon Chan Kwong (True Light) Girls' School, Kowloon Tong; and the True Light English School, Waterloo Road, Kowloon.
14.
Emily Hahn, The Soong Sisters (Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1941), p. 5.
15.
The account given by Miss Hahn of the young runaway stowing away on the cutter SS Schuyler Colfax and being befriended by Captain Charles Jones does not agree with the facts uncovered by Ensign A. Tourtellot and published in an article 'C.J. Soong and the US Coast Guard', US Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 75, 1949, pp. 201-3. This states that he was shipped aboard the American revenue cutter Albert Gallatin and was enrolled in the coastguard by its captain, Eric Gabrielson, in January 1879. See the article on Soong, Charles Jones, in the Biographical Dictionary of Republic China, editor Howard L. Boorman (New York, Columbia University Press, 1970), Vol. 3, p. 141.
16.
Cambridge, Heffer and Sons, 1949, p. 277.
Notes to Chapter 6
1.
It is difficult to know what date to give to the origin of the Tung Wah Hospital. In 1869, an organizing committee of concerned Chinese was formed. In 1870 (the usual date given for the foundation of the hospital), the Tung Wah Hospital Ordi-nance was passed and the foundation stone was laid by the Governor. The hospital was formally opened by the Governor on 14 February 1872.
2.
Colonial Office Records, Series 129-23,19 February 1848.
3.
Colonial Office Records, Series 131-3, 4 November 1856.
4.
See the studies by Chung-Li Chang, The Income of the Chinese Gentry (Seat-tle, University of Washington Press, 1962) and The Chinese Gentry: Studies in their Role in Nineteenth Century Chinese Society (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1955), and by Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York, Columbia University Press, 1964).
5.
See the column 'Old Hong Kong', in the South China Morning Post of 12 July 1933.
6.
Colonial Office Records, Series 129-12, 24 June 1845.
7.
Friend of China, 6 November 1861.
8.
George Smith, The Consular Cities of China (London, Seeley, Burnside and Seeley, 1847), p. 82.
9.
Yen-p'ing Hao, The Compradore in Nineteenth Century China (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 195. I have not been able to check the sources he cites.
10.
These were Loo King (El) , owner of Inland Lots 99,102, and 103; Lo Lye or Alloy (�G�G) , owner of Marine Lots 16C and 19; Loo Foon (AfL), owner of Marine Lot 16D; Loo Sing ( �G$.) , owner of Marine Lot 17C; Loo Chuen, alias Loo Chew, alias Young Aqui, alias Loo Choo-tung (�Gflg), owner of Marine Lots 16A, 28A, and 35A. The family lived in Aqui's Lane, or, as it is now known, Kwai Wa Lane (til) , running from Hillier Street to Cleverly Street and lying between
Queen's Road and Jervois Street. Here, in 1872, lived Loo Wan-kew, Loo Yum-shing, compradore of David Sassoon, Sons and Company, and Loo Achew.
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