hong-kong-in-chinese-history-community-and-social-unrest-in-the-british-colony-1842-1913 — Page 3

Changing Social Milieu: A More Heterogeneous Society, the Mid-1880s-1900s

What was political integration from the government's view point was in fact a tendency toward community disintegration from the Chinese standpoint. The mob attack on the Tung Wah chairman would have

Chinese Community in a Colonial Situation 95



been inconceivable during the 1870s and early 1880s, when the elite exerted an unchallenged cultural hegemony over an integrated Chinese community. The fact that the mob attack happened in 1894 reflected not merely the panic situation during the plague but also the chang­ ing social milieu at the time.

Several factors contributed to create a new milieu. First, the col­ ony's Chinese population increased from 130,168 in 1876 to 171,290 in 1886, to 237,670 in 1895, and to 359,873 in 1905.84 The colony's entrepôt trade also rapidly expanded. In the years 1871-73 Hong Kong handled 32.5 percent in value of China's total import and 14.7 percent of China's export. By 1891-93 these figures jumped to 51.2 percent and 39.3 percent respectively.85With population growth and economic development society became more complex and heteroge­ neous, and a community consensus became increasingly more diffi­ cult to obtain. To provide mutual aid and social service for the new immigrants from the Chinese mainland, native place associations began to appear from the latter half of the 1870s until the 1890s, when several of them could be identified.86 But it was not until 1911 that such regional associations started to flourish and proliferate owing to the influx of the Chinese and the unsettled conditions on the mainland. And as we shall see, the Sze Yap (Four District) Asso­ ciation was to become particularly active in the politics of the Chinese community in the years 1911-13.

Second, economic development also contributed to the beginning

of labor consciousness. During the 1880s and 1890s some employees' guilds reminiscent of trade unions began to appear. The Artisan Tailors' Guild called for a strike in 1883, and the Carpenters' Guild also staged a strike in 1891 to demand wage raises. In 1889 the Masons' Guild protested against the inferior quality of rice supplied by masters. The Rattan Chairs' Guild struck work in 1891 to demand shortened hours of labor. And in 1894-95 the Coopers' Guild took collective actions four times to protest against the dismissal of mem­ bers and employment of outsiders. The consciousness of different interests of capital and labor was beginning to emerge in the 1880s and 1890s. And during the 1900s labor strikes for better wages and working conditions sporadically took place among the brass smiths, painters, rattan splitters, bricklayers, coopers, dyers, and sandal­ wood workers.87

Yet, the paucity of material on labor strikes is perhaps an indica-

96 Chinese Community in a Colonial Situation



tion that labor disputes had not yet become very serious. According to A. E. Wood's report in 1912, strikes were “usually settled by the Registrar General, with the assistance of Chinese gentlemen, by means of compromise." Wood observed: “On the whole, masters and em­ ployees are remarkably willing to listen to reason, and serious strikes have been few ." 8 Serious labor strikes against employers were in­ deed few until the compositors' strike of late 1911, to be discussed in a later chapter.

The third factor contributing to the creation of a heterogeneous society from the mid-1880s to the 1900s was the emergence of a young generation of businessmen, professionals, and new intelli­ gentsia who were more inclined to innovate and more Western- oriented than the old elite members. Many of these businessmen invested in foreign enterprises, entered into partnership with foreign merchants, and sat on the boards of directors with their European colleagues. Lau Chu Pak, for instance, invested in many Western- operated enterprises and worked in partnership with European col­ leagues as a director of the Hong Kong Tramway Company, Ltd., the Gold Mine Company of Manila, and the Shanghai Insurance Company. He was also a member of the Consulting Committee of A.

S. Watson & Company, Ltd., and a managing director of the Hong Kong Mercantile Company.89

Inspired by the models of Western enterprises, Chinese entrepre­ neurs in Hong Kong began to introduce innovations in management and operations. For example, the Kwong Hip Lung & Company (an engineering and shipbuilding firm founded in 1877) was reorganized into a limited liability company in 1890 with a capital of two hundred thousand dollars, with Chan Wan Chi as the managing director assisted by a consulting committee. Its engineering works, managed by To Li Ting, employed three hundred workers in 1908. Similarly, the managers of another engineering and shipbuilding firm, the Tung Tai Tseung Kee & Company (founded in 1897), had received their education in Hong Kong and learned their techniques in the Euro­ pean-operated enterprises. Employing five hundred workers in 1908, the company built about a hundred steam launches for Malina; it also held contracts from the French government in Saigon.90 Some Chinese enterprises in Hong Kong were growing in size and capital invest­ ment. Unlike small enterprises characterized by paternalistic relation­ ship between masters and employees, the developing capitalist en-

Chinese Community in a Colonial Situation 97



d the growing



w m v ind operation were introduced by Ma Ying-piao, who founded the Sincere Com­ pany—the first modem department store in Hong Kong—in 1900, and by Kwok Lok (Kuo Lo) and Kwok Chuen (Kuo Ch'üan), who founded another in 1907, the famed Wing On Company.91 And as we have seen, the gentry merchant Ko Sing Tze (third generation of the Ko family from Teochiu) launched new industrial enterprises, such as a modem textile factory at Cheng-hai and a water works in Swatow, in addition to managing the Yuen Fat Hong in Hong Kong. His secret involvement in the Chinese republican revolution epito­ mized the new commitments to republicanism and nationalism on the part of a number of merchants from the younger generation.

The development of service facilities in the entrepôt of Hong Kong produced a group of professionals. Just as compradors were experi­ enced in modem Western business methods, so doctors, barristers, solicitors, journalists, teachers, architects, engineers, and insurance company managers were well versed in modem Western profes­ sional services. Chinese barristers admitted to practice before the Hong Kong Supreme Court included Ng Choy (Lincoln's Inn 1877), Ho Kai (Lincoln's Inn 1882), and Wei Piu (Middle Temple 1888); solicitors included Ho Wyson (1887), Tso Seen Wan (1897), Wei Wah On (1897), and H. K. Woo. The barrister Ho Kai was also trained in Western medicine at Aberdeen University. The graduates of the Col­ lege of Medicine who practiced in Hong Kong included Kwan Sun Yin (1893), Ho Nai Hop (1894), U I-kai (1895), To Ying Fan (1899), Ma Luk, and S. F. Lee (further study at Edinburgh University, 1911). Two graduates of the Tientsin Government [Medical] College also practiced in Hong Kong during the 1890s: Chung King-ue and Wan Tun-mo.92 Some Chinese were learning to accept Western medicine in the 1890s.

In sum, during the years from the mid-1880s to the 1900s a younger generation of merchants, businessmen, professionals, and new intel­ ligentsia emerged in Hong Kong, a generation more Western- oriented than the old elite and more inclined to innovations and new commitments. It was a generation progressively politicized by such events in China as the Sino-French War (1884-85), the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), the Boxers' uprising (1900), the boycott movement of

98 Chinese Community in a Colonial Situation



1905-08, and the Republican revolution of 1911. Many people of this rising generation were to take part in the social and political move­ ments connected with the Chinese mainland.

Although still bound to many Chinese ideas, values, and customs, the new intelligentsia was also ready to challenge some parts of Chinese culture and tradition. Tse Tsan Tai (1872-1938), for example, described himself as “a staunch supporter of Confucius and his teachings," yet Tse also strongly supported "all that is wise and good in other religions," being a baptized Christian himself. During his school days at Queen's College in Hong Kong in the late 1880s he had sixteen friends who were in his confidence; and it began to dawn upon him that the time was ripe for planning "a movement for the reformation of China's millions" and for the overthrow of the Man- chus in China. Tse and his sixteen close friends, including Yeung Ku-wan (Yang Ch'ü-yün), Huang Yung-shang (Wong String's son), and Wen Tsung-yao, founded a revolutionary society called Fu-jen wen-she in 1892. From 1895 these men became involved in Sun Yat- sen's revolutionary movement in Hong Kong.93

These members of the new intelligentsia were iconoclasts, ready to attack some time-honored beliefs and values. Tse Tsan Tai launched attacks on such practices as feng-shui, foot-binding, opium-smoking, and mui-tsai (bonded maid servant system).94 In a heterogeneous community after the mid-1880s social consensus was increasingly more difficult to achieve. Some old cultural values and practices shared by the old elite and populace came under attack. During the 1894 plague Tse Tsan Tai openly questioned the wisdom of some Tung Wah elite members who insisted on petitioning the govern­ ment to stop the house-to-house sanitary inspection, "in order to please and appease the angiy, ignorant, and riotous mobs composed of the coolie classes."95

The split of elite into factions reflected the tendency toward com­ munity disintegration after the mid-1880s. Some new elite members found themselves alienated from the old values and practices that had bound the old elite and populace together. Ho Kai (barrister, medical doctor, legislative councillor) complained about the perfor­ mance of old rituals at the founding of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce on January 17,1896.

On that auspicious day. Colonel Ch'en K'un-shan, commander of the Chinese garrison at Kowloon City, was invited to perform the

Chinese Community in a Colonial Situation 99



opening ceremony of the chamber of commerce, conducted in a purely Chinese way, including the installment of god of war Kwan-ti in the building. Although Ho Kai and Wei Yuk had been elected as the chamber's secretary and vice-chairman respectively, they did not attend the ceremony, because of their disagreement with the cham­ ber chairman Ho Amei on the ceremony proceedings. The China Mail called this incident a "public scandal" in which the "ultra-Chinese faction" of the community had calculated to impress the Chinese inhabitants with the idea that Hong Kong was a mere appendage of the Chinese Empire.96

Under British protestation, the viceroy of Canton had to issue a proclamation reprimanding Colonel Ch'en for taking part in the cer­ emony.97 What is relevant to us here is that Ho Kai admitted in public that he "had never learned how to go through properly a regular Chinese ceremony of that kind and was never one of the worshippers of the God of W ar."98 The new elite members coopted by the colonial government were alienated from the old elite and the populace. It was difficult to reach community consensus. Soon after­ ward, the chamber of commerce was closed, probably due to internal discord among elite members. Yet, reopened in 1900, it took over many of the extraneous functions of the Tung Wah Hospital Commit­ tee. 9The split of the elite into factions was again revealed in a heated controversy over the Light and Pass Ordinance in 1895. Some elite members organized a protest movement against the ordinance, which reflected the government's racial discrimination against the Chinese in the colony. On this occasion the Tung Wah Hospital became a forum for some elite members to denounce others.



Protest Against the Light and Pass Ordinance in 1895

European racism provoked strong Chinese feelings. The colonial government had attempted to fight crimes by strictly enforcing the Light and Pass Ordinance, requiring only the Chinese to carry a lamp and pass at night. The requirement of carrying a lamp had been in force since 1870 and was considered by the Chinese reformer K'ang Yu-wei as a stigma of national humiliation.1 0 The leading Chinese businessmen and local Chinese press pleaded in vain against the ordinance.101

The community held a public meeting at the Tung Wah Hospital

100 Chinese Community in a Colonial Situation



on December 22, 1895, attended by over four hundred Chinese. A number of prominent merchants, compradors, and businessmen were present. But Ho Kai and Wei Yuk were conspicuously absent. Ho Amei, nominated to chair the meeting, denounced the ordinance, insisting that carrying a lamp was not necessary because the streets were well lighted. He deplored police brutality in the enforcement of the ordinance—people were tied together by their queues and marched to the police station. Moreover, the ordinance adversely affected the Chinese business interests, for fewer people visited the eating houses at night, reducing the demand for foodstuffs supplied by the Nam Pak Hong merchants. In his long speech. Ho Amei's inflammatory language drew repeated applauses from the audience: "Some Chinese have said, 'We should have a Light and Pass Ordinance.' I say those persons are not Chinese (Applause); . . . they ought to be con­ demned (Applause) Some of the Chinese do not respect them­

selves (Applause). We object to being stopped in the streets by Sikh policemen."102 The Tung Wah Hospital, supposedly the consensus­ building center for the community, became a forum for one faction of elite to denounce the other.

The Chinese elite was divided in its views on the ordinance. Wei Yuk and the majority of the District Watch Committee saw the rela­ tionship between the enforcement of the ordinance and the decrease in crime: "Between 7 and 9 p.m. the wealthier Chinese shops and places of business are closing. These hours are, therefore, the best hours for robberies."103 But Ho Amei and his friends believed that the streets were well lighted, making the carrying of lamps unneces­ sary.

Another speaker in the Chinese public meeting, Robert Ho Tung, complained that the Chinese theater had to be closed at 11:00 p.m. "In the City Hall, however, they [Europeans] are allowed to go on until one in the morning. . . . We pay more taxes than the Europe­ ans," he charged, "and derive the least advantage I condemn

the Ordinance simply because it is against the Chinese only. I advo­ cate an increase in the police force, and this would have a far wider effect than the Ordinance."104 The meeting concluded with unani­ mous approval of another petition to the colonial government for the abolition of the ordinance.

The following day, December 23, 1895, a deputation of seven Chinese merchants—mostly Tung Wah directors led by Ku Fai Shan—

Chinese Community in a Colonial Situation 101



called on Governor William Robinson. Ho Kai acted as an interpreter. The governor, in a bad mood, gave them a lecture: "You Chinese know that there is no place in your own country where you can live so quietly, so free from disturbance or interference, as Hong Kong; or if there is, it only surprises me that you do not go and live there. Is it not as I say. Dr. Ho Kai?" Ho Kai said yes. The governor threatened to take action against the agitators. At the end of the lecture, the docile Chinese deputation announced their decision to "think it over."105

The local English press condemned the Chinese agitators: "Ho Amei ought to be taught a stem lesson," and "Ho Tung's speech should remove him from the Roster of Justices of the Peace," for it could have the effect of "inciting his hearers to defy any law in the Colony."106 The local Chinese press fought back, praising the cour­ age and wisdom of Ho Amei and Ho Tung. It declared that the Chinese in Hong Kong had been peaceful and law-abiding, docile and subservient, that they had been victimized by foreigners, and that this could no longer be tolerated.107

Thus, moral indignation against racial discrimination and concerns about the ordinance's adverse effect on business, prompted the Chinese to agitate for the abolition of the ordinance. When Chinese businesses were adversely affected the colony's economy and foreign businesses were also hurt. Eventually, in June 1897, the system of the night pass was abolished; henceforth, night passes were to be required only as ordered by the governor. The number of Chinese arrested for breach of light and pass regulations was 2,1% in 1895, increased to 3,477 in 18%, and then dropped to 150 in 1897.108

The controversy over the ordinance revealed the split of Chinese elite into rival factions. Ho Amei and Ho Tung versus Ho Kai and Wei Yuk. The latter two gentlemen (appointed to serve on the sani­ tary board and the legislative council) were coopted into the govern­ ment power structure and hence more inclined than other elite mem­ bers to collaborate with the colonial authorities. In a more heteroge­ neous society after the mid-1880s what was political integration from the colonial government's view point was community disintegration from the Chinese standpoint.



Meanwhile, the new generation of Chinese merchants and intelli­ gentsia in the colony became increasingly politicized by the main

102 Chinese Community in a Colonial Situation



currents of events in China, from the Sino-French War in 1884-85 to the Revolution of 1911. The subsequent chapters of this study will show how the Chinese in Hong Kong took part in the social and political movements connected with the Chinese mainland from 1884 to 1913. During these years both elite and common people became activated sodall; litically.

The working generally labeled coolies, constituted the great majority of the colony's population. The following chapter examines the lives, work, and organizations of these coolies under British colonial rule.

F O U R

Coolies in the British Colony



The coolie does r.ot possess tim e rights . . . yet— he is happy. Work and to il are to him second nature.

—Hongkong Daily Press, October 10 ,1906

Bran is what a rickshaw puller gets to eat and blood is what bursts out of him. — Lao She, Rickshaw



Scholarly publications on the working people in Hong Kong during the period from 1842 to 1913 have been extremely rare. Perhaps this is partly because of the scarcity of materials about them. By putting together bits and pieces of information from scattered sources, this chapter provides a glimpse of the lives, work, and organizations of coolies under British colonial rule.

It is important to note that different segments of the working people had different degrees of attachment to the merchant elite. Members of the elite assumed leadership in the communities of their fellow provincials in Hong Kong. The wealthy Teochiu merchants Ko Soon Kam and Chan Tin San were prominent leaders in the colony's Teochiu community. The Hokkienese businessmen Yip Oi Shan and Ng Li Hing were leaders in the Hokkienese community. Vertical relationship among the community members cut across class lines, although this did not preclude transregional cooperation among the wealthy merchants. Committed to their kinsfolk and regional com­ munities, merchants often employed their trusted relatives to help in their business and hired their fellow provincials as shophands, door­ keepers, domestic servants, private chair bearers and ricksha pullers.

104 Coolies in the British Colony



Hong Kong had large numbers of these working people, who often developed paternal relations with their merchant employers and rarely engaged in organized strikes.

But Hong Kong also had large numbers of other workers relatively unattached to the merchant elite. These included cargo-carrying cool­ ies (employed in large numbers by such establishments as the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company), public chair coolies, public ricksha coolies, hawkers, sampan people, and boat­ men. In discussing social unrest in Hong Kong, it is important to differentiate these two general categories of coolies. During much of the nineteenth century, it was the latter that frequently engaged in organized strikes against government regulations affecting their live­ lihood. Popular unrest threatened both community peace and com­ mercial interests. To protect commercial interests and to fulfill its moral obligation to the lower classes, the elite sought to mediate between the striking coolies and the colonial government to help restore law and order. These coolies are the main focus of this chapter.



Labor Groups

Judging from the censuses of 1881 and 1901, the people who relied chiefly on manual labor for a living consisted of about 80 percent of the colony's gainfully employed Chinese population. The work of shipping, loading, unloading, and transshipping cargoes that were brought into the port by junks and steamers required a large pool of workers. Those working afloat in the harbor consisted mainly of three groups—sampan people, cargo boatpeople, and operators of steam launches. They worked on the transference of goods from steamer to steamer, from steamer to shore, and vice versa. In 1876 there were only 8 steam launches operated by about 40 engineers. By 1881 thirty-seven steam launches were operated by 186 engineers. But there were many more cargo boats used for transshipping and landing cargo. Although they varied in size, an average of 8 persons (including children) worked on board each cargo boat. In 1876 there were 494 cargo boats worked by about 2,700 men and women (a total of about 4,000 persons, counting children). By 1881 as many as 656 cargo boats were worked by 3,628 boatmen and women (a total of 5,319 persons, counting children).1

Coolies in the British Colony 105



Sampans were hired to transship and land cargo. A sampan car­ ried a family averaging 5 persons. The number of sampans increased from 1,357 in 1876 to 2,088 in 1881, involving 7,200 and 11,218 per­ sons respectively. In addition, in 1881 there were 370 pullaway boats for passengers in Victoria and Kowloon worked by 2,314 persons, and a larger fleet of 775 fishing boats engaging a population of 7,128 anchored and plied in harbor and bays.2

Working on shore were cargo-carrying coolies, who formed a large proportion of the laboring class in Hong Kong. In 1872 there were nineteen thousand cargo coolies, and in 1891 there were about twenty thousand. They loaded and discharged cargo on board ship and handled it on shore. Half of the cargo coolies were ch'ang-kung, regularly employed and paid by the month. The remaining ten thou­ sand cargo coolies worked as temporaries and were paid by the job, unable to secure employment every day.3

The population census of 1881 registered 2,118 licensed hawkers, but there were many more unlicensed hawkers in Hong Kong. Dif­ ferent kinds of hawkers plied their wares in the dty —vegetable hawkers, pedlars, hardware hawkers, congee sellers, and bruit sell­ ers.4 Although considered by Europeans and "better-class" Chinese as a "nuisance," hawkers performed important service to the col­ ony's population.

Another group of laborers who rendered important service to the public were sedan chair bearers and jinricksha pullers. There were 859 licensed chair coolies in 1876, and 980 in 1881.5 Jinricksha was first introduced in 1880 into the colony from Japan. It supplemented, rather than superseded the sedan chair, as jinricksha could only ply on the level streets and the hilly areas of Hong Kong still re­ quiring sedan chairs as a means of transportation. In 1883 the government issued 898 jinricksha licenses.6 In 1897 a total of 7,164 public ricksha pullers and chair bearers were licensed. Their num­ bers were increased to 8,252 in 1898, to 8,923 in 1899, and 9,984 in

1900.7

An even larger group of laborers were domestic servants, who numbered 21,957 in 1881—of whom 5,529 were servants to a small population of 3,040 resident Europeans and Americans. 8 Twenty years later, in 1901, the number of servants swelled to 49,476 persons (43,410 males and 6,066 females). Well-to-do Europeans employed large staffs of Chinese servants—a cook with one or two assistants; a

106 Coolies in the British Colony



house boy acting as a butler answering the door and waiting at tables; one or more house coolies to sweep and clean the house and carry water for baths; amahs (maids) and a washerwoman for chil­ dren; a sewing woman; gardeners; a ricksha coolie or four chair coolies.9 So, the well-to-do European family employed twelve to fifteen Chinese servants.

The 1881 census returns also listed other laborers: 1,439 stone cutters, 1,083 rice pounders, 560 mat bag makers, 448 rattan workers, 439 washermen, 1,198 barbers, 1,857 tailors, 864 braziers, 708 black­

smiths, 2,923 carpenters, 2,082 seamen, 542 masons, 508 painters, and 1,315 brothel keepers and inmates.



Wages

Labor was cheap since the earliest days of the colony. During the Opium War in 1841 "coolies were plentiful. Five dollars a month each would provide for as many as one could employ."10More often wages were much lower; in 1844 coolies' wages ranged from two dollars to three dollars per month. 1 The situation did not improve much for the coolies. In 1872 women employed at the sugar refinery were paid thirty cents a day, and house coolies received a monthly six dollars. In 1872 the legalized fares for certain groups of laborers were set by the colonial authorities as follows:12



Chairs (with two bearers) & Ordinary Pullaway Boats: Half hour 10 cents; Hour 20 cents. Three hours 50 cents; Six hours 70 cents. Day (12 hours, 6 a.m.-6 p.m.) $1.00.

Licensed Chair Bearers (each):

Hour 10 cents; Half day 35 cents; Day 50 cents.

Cargo Boats:

First class boat of 8 or 900 piculs:

per day $3.00; per load $2.00. Second class boat of 600 piculs:

per day $2.50; per load $1.75 Third class boat or Ha-kau boat of 800 piculs:

per day $1.50; per load $1.00; Halfday 50 cents.

Sampans or Pullaway Boats:

Half hour 10 cents; One hour 20 cents. After 6 p.m. 10 cents extra; Per day $1.00.



Street Coolies:

Coolies in the British Colony 107

Half hour 3 cents; One hour 5 cents. Three hours 12 cents; Half day 20 cents. One day 33 cents.

Two decades later, in 1893, the legalized fares for these laborers remained practically unchanged.13 Due to an ample supply of labor­ ers from the mainland, wages were constantly maintained at a sub­ sistence level. In 1895 cargo coolies still earned only six dollars or seven dollars a month.14 It was not until 1901 that they started to make a little more, between eight dollars and ten dollars a month. But as late as 1901 the earth coolies received only thirty cents for a long day's work, the ordinary coolies receiving forty cents.15

According to the government statistics, the average rate of wages for laborers in 1901 was as follows:16

Praedial paid in kind.

Domestic servants employed by Chinese

Chinese employed by foreigners Trades, Chinese workmen

Ordinary Competent Mechanics: Blacksmiths & Fitters

Laborers

Carpenters & Joiners Masons & Bricklayers

$12 to $48 per annum (i.e., $1 to $4 per month) with board & lodging.

$48 to $180 per annum (i.e., $4 to $15 per month).

$36 to $72 per annum (i.e., $3 to $6 per month) with board & lodging.



30 cents to $1.50 per day. 20 cents to $1.00 per day.

20 cents to 75 cents per day with board & lodging.

20 cents to 50 cents per day with board & lodging.

Thus, skilled laborers fared little better than unskilled coolies. Suppose the average coolie's monthly earning in 1901 was $9, his yearly income would be $108. The European community considered white persons in Hong Kong with incomes of less than $80 per month (or, $960 per annum) as very poor: "Their lot is cruelly hard. It is a disgrace that such incomes should exist."17 But the average Chinese worker was ten times worse than the "poor" Europeans in the colony. Among the Europeans, those who were employed in the government service earned a yearly average of $1,892, not counting the colonial secretary and the governor, who earned $10,800 and

spectively.18

108 Coolies in the British Colony



Cost of Living

While wages were kept low, since 1881 the cost of living had steadily risen. John W. Hanson, chief detective inspector, testified in 1901 that a dollar could buy only sixteen bundles of firewood, whereas "a few years" previously it was thirty-three bundles; that a jar of lamp oil was charged $2.50, while formerly it was only $1.50; and that the price of rice had increased by 80 percent. Ngan Wing Chi, a head coolie and labor contractor, confirmed that food had formerly cost $2 or $3 a month for a coolie, though now in 1901 it cost at least $5.19 Even the more prosperous European community complained about the high cost of staple foods, for there was a great rise in prices be­ tween 1895 and 1900. The price of bread had increased by 22 percent, rice by 23 percent, beef by 33 percent, mutton by 45 percent, fish by 50 percent, eggs by 80 percent, and peanut oil by 100 percent.20

As manual laborers, coolies ate a great deal of rice each meal. Ng A Tong, a headman of public chairs at the Peak, said that coolies were great eaters; it cost them in 1901 a monthly $5 or $6 each for food. In that year the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company employed about five hundred warehouse coolies through the labor contractor who paid coolies $8, $9, or $10 per month, according to the amount of work they were capable of performing. "If he is lazy, he only gets eight dollars. If he works hard, he will get nine and ten," said one contractor who sent half of the coolies' wages to their parents on the mainland. But the "lazy" coolie paid $8 would have only $4 in his pocket to pay back the contractor for house and food, all costing more than $5 or $6. So, each month the "lazy" coolie was about $2 short. He had to do extra night work to make up his losses. If he worked five hours overtime, from 7 to 12 of a night, he got 20 cents extra (that is, 4 cents an hour). Most of the Kowloon warehouse coolies worked this overtime, twenty days out of the thirty each month. Similarly, Jardine's Sugar Refinery emloyed in 1901 through contractor one thousand coolies who were paid be­ tween $8 and $12 per month. The dockyard cargo coolies received a similar amount.21

The chair and ricksha coolies employed by the private Chinese and European residents fared no better. In 1876 the private chair coolies were usually paid about $6 a month plus lodging. In 1891 they still received the same wage, despite the increase in the cost of living. In 1896 monthly wages paid to private chair and ricksha

Coolies in the British Colony 109



coolies ranged from $6 to $8.50; and in 1901, from $8 to $12 according to circumstances. Wages paid by some prominent Chinese were as follows: Wei Yuk (comprador, on the legislative council) paid his chair and ricksha coolies $5.50 each per month in 1896 in addition to giving them board and lodging; in 1901 he paid them $8 and gave them oil, firewood, and lodging but no food. Fung Wah Chuen (comprador, on the sanitary board) had four chair coolies in 1901; two old hands who acted as chair coolies and house coolies got free board and lodging and $9 each per month; the other two, newer hands, got $9 and free lodging, but no board. Lau Chu Pak (compra­ dor, on the sanitary board) paid his two ricksha coolies $7 each in 18% and $9 each in 1901 without providing lodging. In 1906 private employers still paid a monthly wage of no more than $10 to the ricksha, chair, punkah, and house coolies. 2

Ku Kiu, a Hakka, had been a chair bearer for over twenty years. In 18% he paid 30 cents for house rent and $4 for food per month. Five years later, in 1901, he had to pay 70 cents for rent and $6 for food. Making a total income of about $12 a month, Ku Kiu had $5.30 left for clothing and other expenditures. Ku Kiu and his partner owned their chair.23

Yan Ping Hup, public ricksha puller, earned a gross income of $12 or $13 per month after paying about 20 cents (200 cash) each day for the hire of a ricksha. Food cost him $5 or $6 and lodging rent was $1 per month. He earned a net monthly income of $7 or $8. He had to pay a man $30 as tea money (swindled) to get the license for him. Besides, he managed every now and then to send some money to support his family on the mainland. Like the large majority of coolies in Hong Kong, he could not afford to bring his family to live in Hong Kong because of the higher cost of living.24 Still, Yan Ping Hup was doing well in comparison with other ricksha coolies who were not so lucky.

Pulling ricksha was hard work—especially in Hong Kong, with its oppressive, hot, and humid climate that lasted nearly half the year, from May to October. The traveler Henry Norman described in 1895 his experience with the summer heat in Hong Kong:

The damp is indescribable. Moisture pours down the walls; any­ thing left alone for a couple of days—doths, boots, hats, portman­ teaus—is covered with mould. Twenty steps in the open air and you are soaked with perspiration. Then there are the cockroaches, to say nothing of the agile centipede whose bite may lay you up for

110 Coolies in the British Colony



a month . . . It does happen, too, that men die in summer in Hongkong between sunrise and sunset without rhyme or reason.25

Manual labor in such a trying climate was hard, and it usually took younger and stronger men to pull ricksha. When asked before a commission: “How long do these coolies last, only a few years? It kills them doesn't it?," the police chief, Mr. F. Henry May (later to become governor of Hong Kong in 1912), replied: “I don't know that. I never enquired." Ngan Wing Chi, headman of the Kowloon li­ censed ricksha coolies, knew that it was tough. He had difficulty getting coolies to pull rickshas. He still had ten rickshas that he could not get men for. "Over ten men have died because they had a long journey to run from Kowloon to Shatin. The journey over the new road kills them, and when they get home, they spit blood."26



District and Dialect Groups

A great many chair and ricksha coolies were Teochiu (Chiu Chau, Ch'ao-chou) men and Hoklos (Hokkienese) from Amoy and Foo­ chow; some were Hai-feng men, and others were Punti Cantonese.27 "Hok-los are very danny"; "being strangers in Hongkong, speaking a different language," "they stick together very dosely Living

in the same coolie house."28 In a report on sanitary conditions of Hong Kong in 1882, twenty-five chair coolies were listed as lodged in the upper floor of a house in Market Street, having erected bunks to sleep on; the lower floor was occupied by seven chairmakers who used it as a workshop and dwelling.29 The five hundred warehouse workers employed by the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Go- down Company and the one thousand coolies working at Jardine's Sugar Refinery in 1901 all came from Ch'ao-chou and Swatow and spoke the Teochiu dialect.30

The parochialism of the working people in Hong Kong found expression in the rivalry and hostility between different district and dialect groups. Sir Henry A. Blake (governor of Hong Kong, 1898- 1903) noted that "the junks horn Swatow land their cargoes in Hong Kong at a wharf where Swatow coolies are employed; did they land it at a wharf worked by Cantonese, there would certainly be disor­ der, and possibly fighting, before the discharge of the cargo."31

Why were the Hoklos and Teochiu coolies particularly "parochial" and "clanny"? Because traditional kinship ties and dialect group

Coolies in the British Colony 111



cohesion were important to these minority groups in their competi­ tion for resources and employment opportunities with larger and more powerful dialect groups of Punti Cantonese. Unlike merchants who had acquired considerable economic and social resources to promote their interests, coolies had only kinship ties and dialect group cohesion to rely upon in their daily struggle to compete with one another to make a living. Dialect group cohesion gave members protection and enhanced mutual assistance. Rivalry and tensions existed not only between the Hoklo, Teochiu, Hakka, and Punti Canotonese coolies but also between Cantonese coolies from Tung- kuan and those from Sze Yap.



Coolie Houses

The Tung-kuan coolies lived in the coolie houses operated by Tung- kuan housekeepers, and the Sze Yap coolies lived in those run by Sze Yap housekeepers. Some housekeepers were landlords them­ selves, but many others rented the houses from absentee landlords. As a labor broker and head of the house of a dialect group of coolies living together for mutual aid and protection, the housekeeper exer­ cised great power over his coolie boarders, who relied on him for finding employment at various jobs at the docks and wharves, in competition with coolies of other dialect groups. The coolie houses varied in size—all very crowded. In one instance, 428 people lived in a row of eight small houses, having but two hundred and thirty cubic feet of space per head. It was not unusual for over one hundred coolies to crowd into a lodging house.32

While some larger employers provided housing accommodations near their works, most laborers could not afford transport expenses and were compelled to live in proximity to their place of employ­ ment. 3This explains why coolie houses were mostly concentrated at the West Point of the dty of Victoria. Poverty forced coolies to live in crowded, unsanitary conditions.

Ngan Wing Chi was a labor contractor and head coolie to Jardine's Sugar Refinery while renting houses from absentee landlords for the company's coolies. He paid the rent for his coolies, collecting later the rents from them. Both Ngan and his coolies came from Ch'ao- chou. But not all coolie housekeepers were labor contractors or head coolies. For example, Lo Sz was a coolie housekeeper who con-

112 Coolies in the British Colony



sidered himself a sort of coolie. He went to Yaumati daily to obtain some earth work to do. In addition, he did some private trading business of his own. For about twenty years he had kept a small coolie house at Gough Street. The majority of his tenants were street coolies, with a few ricksha pullers, all from Swatow and Ch'ao- chou.34

Housing accommodations were of great importance to coolies. They would not come to Hong Kong from Swatow, Hai-feng, or anywhere else unless they could find accommodation with some friends at a minimal cost. Nor were there enough houses in the colony to admit them. The housing shortage allowed coolie house keepers to exercise power over their coolie tenants. Many coolies who had already found private employment with free quarters, con­ tinued to subscribe some fee towards the rent of their coolie house for fear that should they lose their job or fall ill, they would have no place to live.35

Coolie houses often served certain "guild" functions. Since each accommodated coolies from the same dialect district on the main­ land, the coolie house keeper acted as collector of an annual subscrip­ tion for religious purposes connected with their native district. Also, if coolies left an employer and had a grievance against him, they could return to their lodging house, urging their fellow coolies to boycott the employer. Coolie houses provided the basis of an orga­ nization for the promotion of boycott and strikes when necessary. When individual coolies were fined by the magistrate for any rea­ sons, coolies of their dialect groups often combined to pay the fines. Coolie house fellowship also helped in the constant fights between coolie factions for the best vehicle stands in town or for their right to work at certain docks and wharves.36



Triad Society

Another important association of the working people in Hong Kong was the Triad Society, which was organized along dialect and native place principles. In some lodges the members were chiefly Punti Cantonese, and in others, Hoklos or Hakkas. Their aim was to pro­ mote their members' interests and to provide them with assistance and protection in competition with other groups. The Triads in Hong Kong came mostly from the lower classes of the Chinese popula-

Coolies in the British Colony 113



tion—coolies, boat people, hawkers, and artisans.37The Triads rarely made connections with the wealthier classes in the colony. Political stability, general peace, and relative security rendered it unnecessary for the wealthier Chinese of Hong Kong to seek protection and enhancement of their interests under the banner of the Triad society. As the police inspecter William Quincy pointed out, there was no reason to believe that rich members of the Chinese community were connected with the Triad society.38

The number of Triads was variously estimated at between ten thousand and twenty thousand out of a total population of 181,529 in 1884. A special committee report of 1886 allows for a list by occupation of about five thousand Triad members in Hong Kong as follows: 1,540 coolies, 900 boatmen, 660 hawkers, 400 rice pounders, 310 gamblers, 300 stone cutters, 200 coal coolies, 150 barbers, 50 earth carriers and barbers from the Hakka ethnic group, 100 tailors, 100 chair carriers, 40 copper smiths, 40 washermen, 40 lodging house keepers, and 120 "bad characters." Triads were also found among boiler makers, soy dealers, chandlers, seamen, pirates, head coolie of emigration agency, and fishing boatmen. A Buddhist priest and two herb medicine practitioners were also known to be Triad mem­ bers. About one hundred to two hundred Triads were said to have penetrated the Hong Kong government services as policemen, detec­ tives, district watchmen, and in the surveyor general's department, harbor master's office and the registrar general's office.39

The Triads in Hong Kong had no unified command; rather, they split into various independent branches and factions, frequently op­ posing each other in fighting and litigation.40 The Triads set up pugilistic clubs, promoting the cultivation of the art of boxing and fencing. The clubs were frequented by all of the "low characters" in the colony as well as by the ordinary workers. Qub members often became active in times of popular disturbances.41 The Triads could do a wide variety of things, ranging from petty crimes to political revolution; they constantly threatened the Chinese government and reacted strongly to foreign imperialism. The Hoklo Triad Society in Hong Kong, for instance, "took the colloquial name of Ghee Hin, the Hokkien equivalent of 'Let Patriotism Flourish' "; it appealed to pa­ triotic motives and sought to "protect its members against the law itself."42The Triads wished to revolt against the Hong Kong govern­ ment or Chinese government, should an opportunity arise.43 While

114 Coolies in the British Colony



their criminal actions alienated them from the populace, on other occasions their patriotic motivation gave them popular support. 4 They took an active part in the popular insurrection in Hong Kong in 1884, and subsequently a number of Triads joined the revolutionaries in 1911 against the Manchus.



Coolies Under British Justice

How did workers fare under British justice? Choi Atim, chair coolie, was attacked by a dog in the street and bitten in the left thigh. At the police court on May 28, 1883, the dog's owner Mr. Linde paid one dollar to Choi Atim as compensation and the case was dismissed.45 At the police court on May 29,1883, Chan Acheung, house coolie, was charged by Mr. A. Millar, plumber, with leaving his employ­ ment without notice. In defense Chan Acheung said that Mr. Millar had beaten him and that he had told his master to get another servant. Still, he was fined five dollars—nearly the amount of his monthly earning. Unable to pay the fine, Chan Acheung was sent to

jail for a fortnight.46

These random bits of local news items on the obscure pages of the Hong Kong press may seem “trivial," but they were in fact politically significant. Ordering a European dog owner to pay only one dollar to a chair coolie as compensation for being attacked and bitten by his dog, and imposing a fine of five dollars on a Chinese servant for leaving an abusive European employer demonstrated how the judi­ cial system worked for the coolies in Hong Kong.

There were, of course, important judicial cases in the history of Hong Kong that served to illustrate the capability of the British judges to administer impartial justice on some occasions. In 1854 two Europeans who had murdered a Chinese boy on the ship Mastiff were brought to justice by execution. This "greatly impressed the Chinese residents with the equality of justice dealt out by British tribunals." And in 1871 there was the case of the Nouvelle Penelope, a French coolie ship from Macao seized on the sea by Kwok Asing and his fellow coolies, who murdered the captain and crew and fled to Hong Kong. Chief Justice Sir J. Smale ruled that the offense was against a French slave ship, and that "the murders committed with the object of regaining liberty were no crime."47

Yet numerous "trivial" cases imposed on many coolies summary

Coolies in the British Colony 115



and unjust punishment. Experience with the police magistrate and with the judges contributed to the formation of the coolies' view of British colonial rule. To the masses of coolies, the "foreign devil's" rule in Hong Kong often seemed arbitrary and unjust. The judicial system was frequently biased against the Chinese lower classes. Coolies were brought to trial often without benefit of counsel. They were consequently found guilty, and were either fined or sentenced to imprisonment. The court assumed that "most Chinese prisoners would do well to avoid the witness box, in view of consequent cross- examination," implying that the Chinese mentality was such that they would help their case more by being silent than by trying to defend themselves.48

Numerous court cases were reported in the local press, showing that lower-class Chinese when charged were most likely to be found guilty. Tsang Fung was accused of larceny and forgery. He was not represented by counsel and had entered a plea of not guilty. Still, the European jurors and chief justice found him guilty. When the verdict was given, Tsang Fung told his lordship not to be so hasty, he had something to say. The chief justice would not hear him and ordered him to be removed. Tsang Fung refused to leave the dock, and was pulled out, dragged from the court shrieking and yelling.49

In some ways British justice did protect coolies, fining those Euro­ pean sailors who refused to pay the ricksha coolie, or ordering reluc­ tant employers at times to pay back wages.50Yet British justice often ruled harshly and unjustly against coolies. Coolies and Europeans who were charged for the same kinds of crimes were treated in a different manner. Often, in addition to jail terms, the coolies suffered the added insult of public exposure in the stocks.51

The colonial government stood behind the employers, using the judicial system to keep the working class in line. A group of coolies employed on the Naval Yard works demanded a wage increase from thirty-five cents per day to forty cents. When the employers refused to grant a raise, the laborers went on strike in February 1904. A new group of coolies were engaged but were prevented from working by the strikers. One of the ringleaders was arrested by the police and sentenced to three months' imprisonment and three hours' stocks. The strike was thus ended.52The judicial system was constantly used in the colony as a force of labor control. Coolies were expected to be quiet and obedient. Mr. McEven's servants were punished for mak-

116 Coolies in the British Colony



ing too much noise. The Europeans loathed the noisy coolies at the Peak station as a "great nuisance."53

Every year large numbers of coolies were tried and convicted in the police magistrate's court and the supreme court. In the magis­ trate's court alone during a period of ten years from 1897 to 1906, a total of 135,460 cases were heard involving 162,945 defendants, of whom 136,899 persons were convicted and punished. That is to say, each year an average of 13,689 persons were given summary punish­ ment. In 1900 only one police magistrate was charged with the re­ sponsibility of hearing the cases. In that year Acting Police Magistrate Mr. F. A. Hazeland alone handled a total of 14,081 cases involving 16,696 defendants, of whom 13,650 persons were convicted and pun­ ished. In other words, each month Mr. Hazeland handled an average of 1,173 cases; that is, an average of 47 cases each day. He felt obliged to request the colonial secretary to appoint an assistant magistrate to help him hear the cases, because he said it was absolutely impossible for him to handle the cases alone.54

Summary "justice" brought anguish to numerous men, women, and children. Testimony was given by Lai Wing Sheng, shroff to the police magistracy for more than twelve years, from 1895 to 1908 (at a salary of seventy dollars per month). Highly regarded by his super­ visor as "a good man and doing his work well," he nevertheless wrote a letter to the police magistrate on February 22, 1908, applying for his transfer to the harbor department: "The reason why I apply for transfer is because I do not like seeing defendants cry and weep who have not sufficient or no money to pay fine and also because I cannot bear the harsh treatm ent I received on occasions from the Police." 5



Flogging of Prisoners

Chinese prisoners in Hong Kong were frequently subjected to cor­ poral punishment. Ordered by the magistrate or judge, the half- naked prisoner was marched from the Victoria jail through several crowded streets to the public whipping post located near the harbor master's office, the busiest thoroughfare of the colony. A crowd of spectators, including children, often gathered to see "the public ex­ hibition of an English turnkey flogging with a vigorous arm the speedily bleeding body of a Chinaman, tied to the whipping post."56

Coolies in the British Colony 117



There were three kinds of instruments employed in flogging the prisoners: the regulation cat, the naval cat, and rattan. The regulation cat had nine tails, with knots on each tail, while the naval cat had no knots. The rattan was generally forty-seven inches in length and two inches in circumference; a heavy weapon, its effects were “very likely to go deep into the cellular and muscular tissues, . . . and thus for a long time delaying the healing of the wounds." In one case, a pris­ oner who was punished with thirty-six strokes of the rattan on the breech in March 1878 received wounds that were not yet completely healed in September, a period of six months. Flogging with a “cat" on the prisoner's back not merely caused external injury of the skin but also involved a risk of injury to the internal organs, such as congestion of the lungs.57

From April 1871 to July 1876 the number of floggings of prisoners in Hong Kong was 1,149. As some prisoners received two or three floggings, the actual number of prisoners flogged was 902. Com­ pared with Britain, the number of floggings in Hong Kong was exceedingly high, far out of proportion to its population:58





NUMBER OF FLOGGINGS

(APRIL 187I-JU LY X876)



POPULATION

England

4,988

24,000,000

Scotland

679

3,400,000

Ireland

34

5,250,000

Hong Kong

1,149

140,000



To justify the penal system in the colony. Lord Carnarvon, the secretary of state for the colonies in London, argued in 1878: "The barbarity of Chinese punishments is notorious, and no flogging in­ flicted in Hong Kong is able to compare with them in severity."59 Whatever the rationalization, the British colonial government did not commend itself to the masses of Chinese coolies in Hong Kong by freely resorting to flogging their brethren.

The Victoria jail superintendent often "inflicted the punishment of flogging without authority" on prisoners for "breach of regulation or discipline." Mok A Kwai was four times "illegally flogged." On August 4, 1873, "for making a noise" he received six strokes of the "regulation cat" on the back. On October 6, he received the same punishment, again for "making a noise." On December 13 he re­ ceived still another three strokes of the "cat" for "making a noise."

118 Coolies in the British Colony



Mok A Kwai "died of phthisis" in the Gaol Hospital on September 28, 1877, aged twenty-four. Cases similar to this took place in 1874 and 1876.60

Sir John Pope Hennessy arrived in April 1877 to hold the reins of government in Hong Kong. Moved by humanitarianism, the new governor soon proceeded to reform the prison. He got rid of the worst of the foreign turnkeys who were ''brutalized by having to administer excessive floggings."61Branding of criminals and "public" flogging were declared permanently abolished in 1880, although "private" flogging of prisoners still took place within the walls of the jail.62 But Governor Hennessy was exceptional among the British colonists in insisting on humane treatment of Chinese prisoners. By pursuing such a policy, he made himself immensely unpopular among the colony's European residents, who looked upon him as a man of "peculiar" temperament bent on "creating trouble" for the colony. They blamed him for the increase of crimes and the lack of order and discipline among the Chinese of the lower classes. But the governor, in fact, desired order and discipline no less than they, only he doubted the deterrent effect of brutal treatment of prisoners.63

Sir John Pope Hennessy departed from the colony in March 1882. In June the new governor. Sir George Bowen, approved the flogging of prisoner Li A On, aged twelve, for stealing an umbrella. Corporal punishment of both adults and children quickly and quietly returned to the Victoria Gaol.64



The Destitute

A thin line separated a working coolie from a mendicant. A few days out of work, a worker became vagabond in the street. In the rugged capitalist society under British colonial rule there were always nu­ merous destitutes and vagabonds roaming the streets of Hong Kong. Under British justice poverty and destitution was considered a crime. Mr. Evans, the "protector of Chinese" in Singapore, suggested some measures to deal with beggars—two or four months in prison, with compulsory cleanliness, should be enough to convert most beggars into decent members of society! The China Mail commented that this recommendation was worthy of consideration in Hong Kong. An European resident in the colony published a letter in a local English paper, wishing to call the authorities' attention to "the importunate

Coolies in the British Colony 119



beggars who infested Wyndham Street Surely something ought

to be done to remove these pests."65 In fact, a series of ordinances in 1845, 1858, 1866, and 1876 subjected paupers to fine, imprisonment, whipping and deportation at the magistrate's discretion. 6

There was no poor law in Hong Kong. Although the Tung Wah Hospital directors provided relief for destitute Chinese, they were so afraid of being burdened with permanent pauper patients that they admitted into the hospital only those who had recommendation of influential subscribers.67 In 1879 the hospital admitted 1,614 poor Chinese, provided 221 burials, and sent 123 destitutes back to the mainland.68 Still, there were always hundreds of Chinese destitutes roaming the streets.

The humanitarian governor Sir John Pope Hennessy (r. 1877-82) became concerned about the abuses under the system of deporting Chinese mendicants—"old men and women who had worked a good many years in Hong Kong, but who, on getting feeble from age, were deported to the opposite shore of China to die." Chan Foon, a widow eighty-two years of age, who had resided in Hong Kong for thirty-two years, was arrested by the police for begging in the street.

E. J. Eitel, the acting Chinese secretary under Governor Hennessy, admitted: "The unusual number of suicides constantly occurring in Hong Kong, and of cases of persons found dead, is to be laid at the door of this brute deterrent policy in dealing with destitution." This "barbaric policy of brute repression" was "anything but creditable to a Christian Government or a civilized community."69

In expressing sympathy and humanitarian concern for the down­ trodden Chinese both Governor Hennessy and his protégé, E. J. Eitel, were exceptional among the European community in Hong Kong. The scholarly Eitel was a German missionary and was made a naturalized British subject by the governor's special ordinance only in September 1880. Both men were heartily disliked by the British community in the colony.70

But the community could not conceal the fact that every year hundreds of paupers and vagabonds were arrested, fined, impris­ oned with hard labor, put in the stocks, and deported. Around 3:30

a.m. Sergent Hedge discovered twelve coolies sleeping peacefully under a verandah in Des Voeux Road Central. Upon being awakened they admitted that they had no place of abode and were compelled to sleep in the street. They were all marched off to the police station.

120 Coolies in the British Colony



The magistrate sentenced them to four days' jail with hard labor.71 A cripple who had been a “nuisance" to the passers-by in Charter Road was sent to jail for fourteen days.72A one-armed Chinese and a blind Chinese were charged by Police Constable John Clarke with begging for alms. The magistrate imposed a fine of five dollars on each of them.73

In short, the police sought to round up the unfortunate poor and destitute for whom the colonial government provided no relief. The judicial system, supposedly society's instrument of justice, served in Hong Kong as a tool for the repression and control of the coolie working dass.



Coolie-Fanhvei Relations

The coolies' plight and their experience with the police magistrate and colonial justice shaped their attitude towards British colonial rule. They were suspidous of the fankwei and hostile to the colonial government. Sensitive to popular antipathy, an official report of 1874 warned: “At Hong-Kong where 30,000 Chinese are regularly em­ ployed, they would not hesitate, at a given signal, to massacre all the Europeans."74

But what had attracted the coolies to the fankwei's colony in the first place? The entrepôt of Hong Kong offered job opportunities and a relatively higher wage, though still a subsistence one. Moreover, in contrast with their homeland, which frequently suffered from politi­ cal and sodal unrest, Ûiefankwei's government in Hong Kong offered political stability, even though its police magistrates and judges were often harsh and arbitrary in their dealings with the coolies. Poverty drove coolies into working under harsh terms. Just as Chinese mer­ chants were easily coopted by the colonial authorities, coolies were as easily bought off by the foreign colonists. While merchants coop­ erated with their foreign business partners, coolies worked for their foreign employers to make a living. They worked for fankwei whom they disliked. Concerning the laboring people in Hong Kong, in 1892 a French author made this observation: “They crowd round the Europeans, because money can be made, but they display no affec­ tion or esteem, and remain strangers to their [European] civilisa­ tion."75

Coolies played a vitally important role in the colony's economy by

Coolies in the British Colony 121



providing the much needed labor. Without them, the loading and unloading of ocean steamships would cease, the harbor would come to a standstill, and the traffic in Victoria G ty would halt. They contributed significantly towards Hong Kong's growth and develop­ ment into a prosperous entrepôt in return for a bare subsistence wage. They comprised the most numerous elements among the col­ ony's population as well as the most abused, exploited, and ne­ glected. This was a major source of tensions in colonial society.



Coolies and Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 1897

In appearance, all seemed well about the flourishing port dty. On June 20,1887, the colony celebrated Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. John A. Turn, a Wesleyan missionary, observed that “in addition to the demonstration made by Europeans, the Chinese themselves spent

$100,000 [correctly, $10,000] in triumphal arches, processions, and shows, to express their satisfaction with the good government under which they lived. Thousands went from Canton to see what was done, and at their return, all the river steamers were densely crowded."76

In 1897, again. Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee was celebrated with much fanfare in Hong Kong. At a ceremony in the Government House on June 22, Ho Kai presented a Chinese tablet to Governor Sir William Robinson "in token of the profound respect and great admi­ ration" for the queen and the governor. Ho Kai's speech drew re­ peated applause from the audience:

For over half a century the Chinese in Hong Kong have enjoyed the fruits of strong, righteous and benevolent government, and in the prosperity of this port they have shared largely. Under the British flag they have found perfect protection and liberty and from the Government they have received equal justice and consideration (applause). 7

Ho Kai's flattering eulogy of the British Empire was characteristic of the “leading Chinese" from the wealthy merchant class on such state occasions. The Chinese mercantile community subscribed thirty-five thousand dollars (of which ten thousand was actually spent) for the jubilee celebration, which lasted for several days and nights.78

Why were Britain's Chinese subjects so enthusiastic about the

122 Coolies in the British Colony



Queen's jubilee? Many of them heartily welcomed the celebration for a pragmatic reason. Merchants, businessmen, traders, shopkeepers, and owners of restaurants, eating houses, and tea shops were lured by material gains; they desired to use the grand occasion to attract tourists and customers. The city of Victoria was "crowded with visi­ tors from all the southern provinces of China and elsewhere, giving 'the place an unusually animated appearance/ ',79 As an old resident recollected, "the guilds of various trades sought to use the great celebration of the colony's golden jubilee in 1891 as an excuse for promoting their trades and business." In fact, Chinese businessmen and traders eagerly petitioned the colonial authorities for permission to sponsor theater performances, dragon dances, religious festivities, popular assemblages, and street processions "to attract their country­ men from Kwangtung to do sightseeing in Hong Kong" and thereby to promote their trades and business.80 They used many such occa­ sions to advertise their businesses.81

Coolies, too, were delighted about the jubilee celebrations. Prepa­ rations for religious festivities and processions gave employment to large numbers of artisans, coolies, and boatmen. Street hawkers, ricksha pullers, and sedan chair bearers could earn a few extra cash from serving the great crowds of tourists. Pickpockets and beggars were also delighted over the jubilee as it offered gainful opportuni­ ties. However, they had no interest in the ritual and ceremonial purporting to honor the queen and glorify the British empire.

In short, all classes of Chinese rejoiced at the queen's jubilee because it was useful to them in varying degrees, depending on their position in the colony's social hierarchy. Ho Kai's eulogy of the British empire truly reflected one aspect of the wealthy Chinese merchants—a general complacency about their position in the col­ ony. But for the coolies, the great majority of the queen's subjects, the colony provided no more than political stability and an opportu­ nity to sell their hard labor for a subsistence living.

The jubilee celebration concealed the reality of social tensions in the British colony. The working people disliked fankwei, who in re­ turn frequently complained about the "insolent coolies." The gover­ nor was officially known in Chinese as Tu-hsien, but the Hong Kong Cantonese had a rather disrespectful nickname for him. They called him Ping Tau (military boss), and the botanical garden adjoining the Government House was known as Ping Tau Fa Yuen (the military

Coolies in the British Colony 123



boss's flower garden). St. John's Cathedral was officially known in Cantonese as Tai-Lai-Pai-Tong (the Great Worship Hall), but the street coolies referred to it instead as Hung-Mo-Miu (the Red Hair Temple), meaning the temple of the red-haired foreign devils. On the day after Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, an Englishman wrote a letter to the local English press to express his indignation at hearing the chair coolies using this nickname:

I felt a little disconcerted on that glorious jubilee morning by hear­ ing a nick-name applied to the British people as represented by the august assembly gathering in the Cathedral. . . . How can Her Gracious Majesty's authorities in this great Colony allow such dis­ respectful terms to be applied to themselves and us all?82

Later on, the Chinese in Hong Kong had a nickname for Governor Sir Reginald E. Stubbs (r. 1919-25). They called him Si-Tap-Si, that is, shit Stubbs, not a very polite nickname for his excellency.83 In 1886 young Charles S. Addis (of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) wrote to his sister back home in England that the Chinese in the colony hated the ''foreign devils." "They tell a crying child as I pass that if he does not be quiet the 'foreign devil' will come to him."04 On his visit to Hong Kong in 1895 the traveler Henry Norman sensed the danger of popular hostility toward fankwei. He predicted a revolt of the Chinese masses. "I never ceased to prophesy two things about Hong Kong, one of which, the epidemic [of bubonic plague, 1894], has come true indeed. The other waits, and as it is rather alarmist it is perhaps better left out of print."85 In fact, Hong Kong had a long history of popular resistance to British colonial rule. As will be seen in chapter 5, the Sino-French War in 1884-85 pro­

vided an occasion for a popular insurrection in Hong Kong.

F I V E

Popular Insurrection in 1884 During the Sino-French War



Canton and Hong Kong are conterminous; they share each other's peace and peril.

— Governor General Chang Chih-tung (1884)



What the Chinese authorities wish these men [Triads] to do is to set fire to French ships and to find out what houses are supplying the French with provisions M any of the boat-people are

members of the Triad Society and are much en­ raged against the French for attacking their coun­ try without reason.

— Hong Kong Police Intelligence



During the Sino-French War (1884-85) a wave of antiforeignism swept the southern provinces of China from Chieh-kiang to Yün-nan.1 Hong Kong was not immune to it. In 1884 a popular protest movement broke out in Hong Kong involving large numbers of laborers in a nearly general strike and acquiring a nationalistic overtone. What were the circumstances leading to the insurrection? How did the crisis reveal the complex social relations and community structure in the colony? This chapter addresses these issues.



The Impact of the Sino-French War

Since the times of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (r. 1848-71), the French had harbored an ambition to build a French Indo-Chinese empire in

Popular Insurrection in 1884 125



the East. Two military campaigns, in 1858-59 and 1861-62, forced Vietnam (Annam) to cede three provinces in Cochin China to France. A Franco-Vietnamese treaty in 1874 in effect reduced Vietnam into a French protectorate. But as Vietnam had historically been a Chinese dependency, China refused to recognize the treaty. To counter the French advance the Vietnamese sought assistance from the Chinese. By 1882 the irregular Chinese Black Flag army, under Liu Yung-fu, had begun to engage the French troops along the ill-defined Annam- China border. In late 1883 the Chinese and French troops began to fight open battles in Tongking, though negotiations for peaceful settlement went on.2

The French aggressions had profound impacts on China. It was an important stage in the evolution of bureaucratic public opinion lead­ ing to a nationalist, reformist movement in the bureaucracy in the 1880s and 1890s. The war stimulated ch'ing-i (pure discussion), that is, critical and theoretically disinterested discussion of national af­ fairs. A coterie of young officials in Peking, including Chang Chih- tung, Chang Fei-lun, Ch'en Pao-ch'en, and others, assembled to form a militant and patriotic group called ch'ing-liu (pure group), which expressed moral indignation against Li Hung-chang's ap­ peasement position and advocated war to defend China's honor and its tributary state.3 To strengthen the defense of China's southern front, the imperial court appointed Feng Yu-lin (president of the board of war) as commissioner for the coastal defence in Kwangtung and Chang Chih-tung as governor general of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. On August 5, 1884, the French fleet attacked Taiwan. And on August 23 Admiral Amede Courbet led a French fleet to bombard Foochow, destoying its shipyard and sinking eleven Chinese war­ ships. The French threat of attack on Canton incurred alarm and strong anti-French feelings among the Cantonese in both Canton and Hong Kong. Located only eighty miles from Canton, the colony lay middle way between the war theaters of Hanoi to the south and Foochow and Keelung to the north. The harbor of Hong Kong would have provided an ideal shelter for French vessels and warships to obtain repairs and supplies of food and ammunitions. But the Chinese in Hong Kong would not cooperate, and the officials in Canton did not stand idly by. The Chinese officials issued proclamations on August 30, offering awards for the lives of French soldiers. The

arrival of French ships in Hong Kong gave rise to disturbances.

A description of the disturbances is first in order, to be followed

126 Popular Insurrection in 1884



by analysis and assessment. The fury and excitement of the crowds and the complex nature of the strikes and riots can be comprehended through detailed description of some major incidents that occurred.



The Strike and Riots in September and October, 1884

On September 3, 1884, the French frigate La Galissoniere arrived in Hong Kong, with Admiral Courbet on board, saluted by British guns in the harbor. But Chinese dockworkers in Hong Kong refused to repair French vessels. The Chinese residents had petitioned the co­ lonial authorities against allowing French vessels to dock in the Hong Kong harbor. But the British authorities disregarded their Chinese subjects' feelings, again extending a warm welcome to the visiting French rear-admiral Lespes.4 The Canton officials issued more proc­ lamations on September 5 and 15, calling on the Chinese to "show a devoted regard for [their] fatherland" and warning them against working for the French. On September 18 a strike broke out in the shipyards in protest against the presence in Hong Kong of La Galison- niere, the French warship that had taken part in the attack on Foo­ chow, now anchored for repairs in Hong Kong.5 On September 25 the cargo boat people joined the strike. A French merchant named Francis Vincenot had four cattle to send on board a French warship, but tried in vain to engage cargo boats to do the work. Two boat- women were fined five dollars each by the Hong Kong magistrate for refusing to accept employment. Eight more cargo boat people were fined five dollars each on September 29 for refusing to unload a steamer of the French Messageries Maritime Company.6

Infuriated by the fines, nearly all cargo boat people staged a strike on September 30, and all work of loading and unloading cargo in the harbor came to a halt. Cargo-carrying coolies on shore also joined the strike. Most boat people went away with their boats to Yau-ma-ti in Kowloon. In the afternoon a crowd of nearly one thousand assem­ bled on the Fraya; they began to stone and drive away the few remaining cargo boats and the passenger boats. Although the police soon arrived to restore order, the harbor came to a standstill. A night meeting of the boating community was held at Yau-ma-ti to decide their future action. And a Chinese notice was posted on the wall of the French merchant Francis Vincenofs store on the Praya Central intimating that the premises would be blown up with gunpowder and warning the Chinese employees to leave.7

Popular Insurrection in 1884 127



The strike continued on October 1 and 2. The boat people de­ manded the right to refuse working for the French without penalty. Forced by the necessity of earning a living, many cargo boat people returned to Praya West early on the morning of October 3, intending to resume working (though still not for the French vessels). But an angry crowd of coolies showered them with stones and bricks. The police rushed to restore order, but shortly before 8 a.m. cargo coolies went to the principal thoroughfares in the Western or Chinese part of the town to prevent the jinricksha and chair coolies from working for foreigners. The crowd attacked British officers and other Western­ ers in the streets8because it was obvious to the crowd that they were all sympathètic with the French invaders. "They are cats of the same h'T," says a Chinese proverb. The Sikh constables fired into the crowd. Ngu Ayow, a street coolie, was found dead, lying in blood in the street in front of the Civil Hospital with his brains protruding from his skull. There were most likely a good many wounded, prob­ ably carried off by their friends.9

The excitement, exacerbated by the police shooting the crowd, spread until the whole district from Central Street to East Street was in a state of turmoil. "All the shops were closed, and coolies from all points flocked together to join in the revolutionary movement," re­ ported the local English press. Strong police reinforcements were sent to fire scene, including Sikh and Chinese police and some mounted Indian troopers. The huge mass of people that gathered on the Chinese Recreation Ground threw stones at the police, who fired revolvers into the crowd. No killed or wounded persons were seen, again as friends probably carried them away. No sooner had the riot subsided in one direction than it broke out in another. A number of wounded policemen were sent to the Civil Hospital. The police made a number of arrests, and by noon the riots had ended.10

Meanwhile, the British military authorities had sent two compa­ nies of troops to the scene of the disturbance. With fixed bayonets, their presence did much to overawe the dispersed crowd. At 4 p.m. thirty persons were brought to the police court. A number of plac­ ards posted by the crowd announced that the town was to be set on fire at night in three places. The police, taking precaution, seized all dynamite and other explosives that they could find in the hands of the Chinese shopkeepers in Queen's Road West. A hundred troops marched to the Tung Wah Hospital, to be quartered in its buildings, which was situated in a district densely inhabited by the Chinese.

128 Popular Insurrection in 1884



The streets were patrolled by police and troops at night, and the harbor by the launches and water police. 1

Early next morning, October 4, the “rowdies" were astir. Six cargo boats that came back to the Praya intending to start work were immediately stoned away. Some stone throwers were arrested, but almost all business afloat remained suspended. By then street cool­ ies, artisans, and workmen of all descriptions had generally ceased working. Waiters at the Hong Kong Hotel and the crew of the hotel launch refused to serve the former French consul from Shanghai.12 The rice pounders and coal men also joined the strike. The butchers, having been threatened while driving their bullocks to the slaughter­ house, intended to join in the strike, but when assured of police protection they returned to work. The chair and jinricksha coolies resumed working in all but the most disturbed parts in the western district. Many of them, however, encountered violent interference. Sporadic pelting of Europeans in the streets continued. The feeling against foreigners, particularly the police, was very strong. The French convent had the greatest difficulty in getting food, the Chinese being unwilling or afraid to supply them.13

At noon the following day, October 5, Chinese employees of Messrs. Butterfield and Swire visited Yau-ma-ti and asked their own boat people to return to work. With assurance of police and troop protection, large numbers of cargo boats and sampans returned shortly after noon to the Praya to work. After six or seven stone throwers were arrested, things remained quiet along the Praya West, although the cargo coolies ashore remained on strike. Meanwhile, about five hundred coolies, some armed with bamboos, gathered in Ship Street in Wanchai to intimidate the coal and cargo coolies working for Wing Kee, a ship comprador providing coal for foreign vessels. The police­ men quickly arrived to disperse the crowd; two men were arrested. The coal coolies seemed delighted to work again, for they were “a very poor dass, living from hand to mouth." By then the boat people were also glad to resume work. On strike for about a week since September 30, many of them were beginning to “feel the pangs of hunger."14

But a large crowd assembled on the recreation ground around 8

p.m. Jeering and shouting, they threw stones at the police. The Nam Pak Hong merchant guild had drawn up a notice and posted it all over the town, "advising the people to refrain from lawless acts, and

Popular Insurrection in 1884 129



warning them that if they continued riotous proceedings, the military would probably fire into them ."15 By October 6 the strike and riots were practically over, although the cargo boat people still refused to work for the French. Order had been restored for the time being, though sporadic attacks on Europeans continued to occur after that date.16

Thus, unlike prior labor strikes involving only certain occupational groups of workers, the strike in 1884 spread beyond earlier parochial boundaries, cutting across both occupational and dialect lines to include most sectors of Hong Kong's working population. This was a significant difference. Why did it happen?



Circumstances of the Strike and Riots

The disturbances in 1884 were complex in nature. A number of and circumstances conveiged to bring about the strike and rhe Canton officials' proclamations exhorted people along the

coast to patriotism (i.e., to help defend their homes, relatives, and country against a foreign enemy) and warned them against working for the French enemy. As most Chinese in the colony had homes, relatives, or property on the mainland, fear of mandarin retaliation was an important factor that initially caused many people in Hong Kong to refuse to work for the French.

But other factors were also at work. The French attacks and threats of attacks on various points along the coast had provoked an anti- French patriotic feeling among all classes in Hong Kong. Disregard­ ing the Chinese feelings, however, the colonial government prose­ cuted the local Chinese newspaper editors for publishing mandarins' patriotic proclamations; it also imposed fines on ten boat people who refused to work for the French enemy. This was an important factor that set off the labor strike. It occurred in a social context of general poverty and misery among the working people. The strike then spread to most sectors of the working population because many of them faced the threat of a five dollar fine and the loss of a whole month's earnings. Concerned about their livelihood and morally in­ dignant at the fines, the coolies became politically activated. By late September many workers had not only refused to work for the French but had also gone on strike to protest against the colonial authorities' repressive measures. In fact, such measures had inflamed the peo-

130 Popular Insurrection in 1884



pie's initial anti-French sentiment into a popular anticolonial move­ ment with a nationalistic overtone. A confluence of moral indigna­ tion and material concern provoked the patriotic social protest move­ ment.

However, the strike soon split the colony's working class. While many laborers quit work due to fear of mandarin retaliation or pa­ triotic feelings against the French or resentment against the colonial government's repressive measures or a combination of all these, many other laborers would rather have stayed at their work to make a living. To enforce labor solidarity the striking coolies had to use force to coerce the refractory coolies to join the strike. Among those intimidated were Hakka sampan people, Hoklo ricksha coolies, as well as Punti Cantonese butchers and coal coolies. When the police intervened, riots broke out against Westerners in the streets and especially against the colonial police. The police shooting into the crowd causing death and injuries further incensed the angry crowd against the colonial government.

The strike and riots were led by occupational guild associations (directed by head boatmen, head cargo coolies, and coolie house­ keepers) as well as the Triad societies. The Triads engaged in a wide variety of acts ranging from frequent petty crimes to occasional pa­ triotic actions against foreign intruders. The Canton authorities sought to enlist the Triads to fight against France by promising them mate­ rial rewards and by appealing to their antiforeign patriotism. But not all actions of the Triad activists were sanctioned by the Canton au­ thorities.

Anti-French patriotic sentiment was prevalent among all classes of Hong Kong Chinese. However, the Chinese merchants did not lead the popular protest movement. Though sympathetic with the boat people who were unjustly fined, the Chinese merchant elite did not approve of riots in the streets. With strong economic ties to Western capital, they desired law and order in the colony. When riots broke out, the merchant elite was eager to cooperate with the colonial authorities and to serve as mediators to restore law and order.

To adequately explain the origins and significance of the 1884 insurrection, we must take all these causes and circumstances into consideration.

Popular Insurrection in 1884 131



Chinese Officials' Patriotic Proclamations

The Canton magistrates' proclamations exhorted the Chinese people to “comprehend the distinction between China and a foreign coun­ try, and show a devoted regard for your fatherland." The magistrates promised the forgiveness of past offenses and the reward of official ranks to the Chinese who would secretly kill any French commander or destroy French munitions of war. The proclamations threatened death penalty for traitors and punishment for their relatives.17

These proclamations were directed particularly at the Chinese “traitors" from the coastal provinces and Southeast Asia who worked for the French for material gains. Some served as spies and informers for the French in Kwangtung, Taiwan, and even Peking. Lured by monetary gains, poor Hoklo fishermen secretly supplied the French vessels off the Fukien coast with rice and other grains. Some Shang­ hai merchants, using foreign firms as fronts, profitted from providing the French vessels with meat, flour, chicken, eggs, and other provi­ sions. In early 1885 the French recruited in Singapore five or six hundred unemployed Chinese as soldiers, promising each a monthly salary of eighteen dollars. But most of the Chinese working for the French during the war were forced laborers—sampan boat people, fishermen, soldiers, merchants, and others captured by the French fleet on its way to Taiwan. The French enslaved a large number of black people, Vietnamese, and Chinese during the war.18

When a French mail steamer visited Yokohama, Japan, in October 1884, twenty-one Chinese workers, “unwilling to serve the enemy," jumped ship to desert; and all Chinese employees of a French war­ ship did the same. The French vessels Menzaleh and Volga were forced to hire Japanese replacements. Another group of over thirty Chinese enslaved by the French in Keelung, Taiwan, escaped from the French encampment after killing seven overseers. Also in Kee­ lung twenty-five Chinese, suspected of giving information about French troops to the Chinese army, were shot to death by the French.19 Thus, the Canton newspaper Shu-pao reported such incidents con­ cerning both “patriots" and “traitors" among the Chinese. Those who voluntarily worked for the French for material gains were a tiny minority in comparison with the masses in China's southern prov­ inces who rose to attack the French and other foreigners and burned down their churches.

232 Popular Insurrection in 1884



The patriotic mandarin proclamations repeatedly sought to pro­ mote popular national awareness of the distinction and hostilities between China and the French enemy. In ordinary times, the con­ cepts of "Chinese nation" and "patriotism" (i.e., a sense of collective identity with and loyalty to one's country) were probably quite re­ mote from the coolies' mind in Hong Kong. But in 1884 the French war acts directly threatened coolies' lives and work. The people's anti-French patriotic sentiment was aroused by the French threats of attack on Canton and the Chinese coast where the Hong Kong Chinese had their homes and families. The French warship interfered with the junk trade in Hong Kong. On September 14 the French crew threw overboard eight guns and ammunition of a Chinese trading junk when it was passing the Chung Chow island bound for Hong Kong. Chinese junks in Hong Kong were afraid to go out of the harbor.20 Wartime hostility caused a "considerable amount of feeling and enmity" against the French.21

Fighting a war against France, the Chinese officials sought to explore all possible means to defeat the enemy, including an attempt to coopt the Triads by promising them material rewards and by appealing to their antiforeign feelings. The Triads came to play an important role in the Hong Kong strike and riots, which, however, were unintended by the Chinese officials.



Chinese Magistrates and Triads

There were thousands of Triads in Hong Kong in 1884, mostly con­ fined to the lower class Chinese population. In August, 1884, an expectant Taotai named Chan Kwai Sze came to Hong Kong to recruit volunteers for service in the Chinese army. About eight hundred men consisting mostly of "pirates, robbers, and outlaws" were en­ listed, "promised a pardon," and despatched to Canton. 2According to Hong Kong police intelligence, about a hundred more Triads were recruited to Canton on October 6. Some Triad leaders became direc­ tors of the disturbances in the colony.23

A Chinese detective sergeant working for the Hong Kong police testified as follows: through the arrangement of Aha and Ayik (two informers secretly serving the Hong Kong police), the Chinese impe­ rial commissioner of war P'eng Yü-lin interviewed thirteen Triad

Popular Insurrection in 1884 133



members, including some leaders named You Put-in (Pit-yin) and Li A-un (nicknamed Ngan Nga-un). The detective further testified:

What the Chinese authorities wish these men to do is to set fire to French ships and to find out what houses are supplying the French with provisions. The Chinese government does not wish to harm Hong Kong. But the Triads wish to stir up trouble in the Colony in order to enrich themselves. They stirred up the boat-people in order that they might benefit themselves The strike arose on

account of the fines Many of the boat-people are members of

the Triad Society and are much enraged against the French for attacking their country without reason. They consulted together, and agreed to strike. Ngan Nga-un gave the order.24

This testimony gave several factors that combined to cause the unrest. The Triads cooperated with the Chinese officials to discour­ age the Hong Kong Chinese from working for the French; the Triads wished to stir up trouble, hoping to profit from it; many boat people were Triad members and were "much enraged against the French for attacking their country without reason"; so, they refused to work for the French, and this led to their being fined, which infuriated them and led to strike.

The Hong Kong police received a report that the Canton govern­ ment plotted to use three thousand dollars to employ some Triads to blow up a French mail steamer in Hong Kong harbor.25 Pressed by British protestation, the Tsungli Yamen in Peking telegrammed Can­ ton to inquire about the plot. In response. Governor General Chang Chih-tung denied it as a false report, but he confided to the Yamen that a "secret arrangement" was made against French war vessels rather than mail steamers. Chang Chih-tung added that he at­ tempted to "strictly forbid causing disturbances in Hong Kong."26 While some Triads were in league with Chinese officialdom against France, they remained quite independent and not all of their actions were sanctioned by the Canton authorities.

In fact, the Chinese officials had a number of reasons to desire peace and order in the colony. First, Chang Chih-tung had received foreign newspaper reports on the easing of tensions between France and Germany and on German chancellor Otto von Bismarck's visit to Paris. Chang feared a French coalition with Germany against China. Feeling that China was already diplomatically isolated, Chang would

134 Popular Insurrection in 1884



not be eager to stir up turmoil in Hong Kong to antagonize the British.27 Second, the Chinese officials heavily relied on Hong Kong banking institutions for loans to finance the war against France—a total of 9,144,762 taels from 1883 to 1885.28 Third, they also relied on Hong Kong for importing a large amount of weapons and munitions ordered from abroad.29 It was, therefore, most unlikely that the mandarins would incite strikes and riots in Hong Kong at the risk of antagonizing the British and disturbing peaceful trade in the colony. In fact the Canton authorities feared that turmoil in Hong Kong could adversely affect Kwangtung province. Chang Chih-tung stated

most emphatically:

Canton and Hong Kong are conterminous; they share each other's peace and peril. If coal, rice and flour from Hong Kong do not arrive for ten days. Canton suffers. If cattle, pig and vegetable supplies from the province do not go to Hong Kong for a day, people in Hong Kong become restless. When Hong Kong is in turmoil, the trade routes in the province are blocked. When the province is in disorder, bandits in Hong Kong rise up from all sides. During the Sino-French War, the province was on the alert day and night, and Hong Kong too hurriedly made preparations, water police being constantly vigilant. When Hong Kong is in trouble, we [in Canton] become anxious. If we have problems, neither can Hong Kong rest in peace.30

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Chang Chih-tung's hope that peace and order would prevail in Hong Kong.

While seeking to enlist some Triads against the French, the Canton officials also feared domestic Triad uprisings. They were apprehen­ sive that the 'Triad bandits" in Hong Kong and Hui-chou areas might scheme to join with the French against the Chinese govern­ ment.31 In short, the Canton officials were in league with some Triads against the French, but they had no control over the Triad activities in the colony and were on the alert against possible Triad uprisings. Although the Triads played important roles in instigating the dis­ turbances in Hong Kong, one should not be tempted to attribute the strike and riots solely to the "criminal" Triads. The reality was con­ siderably more complex. It was only when there was already a solid social basis of popular animosity to the colonial authorities that the Triads could successfully instigate a disturbance. Another major source of popular discontent was the poverty and misery of the coolie class.

Popular Insurrection in 1884 135



As the Hong Kong English press admitted, coolies were forced by poverty to live "in places where you would not stable horses in England Cathedrals, Churches, Chapels, Missions, are a mock­

ery in the midst of the squalid, filthy, crowded houses and narrow streets of this Colony"; it was "a disgrace to humanity."32 Poverty and misery spawned social discontent and provided a general social context conducive to the unrest.

Again, it is important to note that the Triads were capable of a wide variety of acts, ranging from petty crimes to political revolution. While their criminal actions alienated them from the populace, on other occasions their patriotic motivation gave them popular sup­ port. 3They took an active part in the strike and riots of 1884, gaining popular support in Hong Kong, although the colonial authorities were subsequently able to arrest some of them for deportation.34



The Chinese Merchant Elite

Due to racial tensions, many Europeans suspected that some "lead­ ing Chinese residents" were directing the rioters. But the Hong Kong administrator W. H. Marsh pointed out that this was very unlikely, as the elite Chinese had "themselves been considerable sufferers from the general interruption to work."35 In fact, with economic ties to foreign capital, the Chinese elite members were eager to cooperate with the colony's government to end the disturbances. On the day of riots, October 3, when the government decided that British troops should be called, "the Tung Wah Committee at once placed their large hall at the disposal of the troops."36 Quartering British troops in the Tung Wah buildings was particularly significant, for it showed the readiness of the elite to cooperate with the British authorities in resorting to force in time of crisis. But the following day, as soon as the situation was under control, some elite members began to pro­ pose the removal of troops from the Tung Wah buildings. One can imagine the ambivalent feelings of the elite regarding the British military occupation of the Tung Wah, the Chinese civic center and elite power headquarters.

The Chinese elite would much prefer a peaceful settlement of the

issue, since they sympathized with and felt moral obligations to the coolies, who were fined by the colonial authorities. By mediating between coolies and government, the elite endeavored to exert their

236 Popular Insurrection in 1884



influence to terminate the strike and riots. On October 4 Li Tak Cheung and Ho Amei “summoned" the heads of the boat people and coolies to attend a meeting of the Nam Pak Hong merchants. They also invited acting colonial secretary Frederick Stewart to at­ tend. Li Tak Cheung suggested that he would have been glad if Stewart would give coolies and boat people an assurance that they would not be called on by the government to work for the French. Stewart refused to attend and to give such assurance, because his compliance would have meant giving official recognition to the Chinese merchants' assumption of political and governmental power. The meeting was held without Stewart.37 About twenty merchants were present who promised the striking coolies and boat people that they would endeavor to induce the colonial government to forgive them and remit the fines. The heads of the coolie houses in return prom­ ised to end the strike.38

Such was an effort made by some elite Chinese to terminate the

strike. But the elite was divided into factions. When the acting regis­ trar general, S. Lockhart, called a meeting on October 4 of the native justices of the peace and naturalized British subjects to discuss how to restore law and order, arrangement was also made for Li Tak Cheung and his friends to attend. The native justices suggested that the government administrator should issue another proclamation. Leung On (comprador) was deputed to draft the proclamation, which would state that "the government, on the intercession of the mer­ chants," had pardoned the rioters, who should therefore resume work. Acting colonial secretary Frederick Stewart objected to these words, because they would imply official recognition of Chinese merchants' political power and influence.39

The next point they discussed was the need to arrest and banish the "bad characters" who had instigated the riots. While this subject was under consideration, Li Tak Cheung and a number of his friends arrived. To the British officials' surprise, the native justices and their associates almost immediately left the council chamber. Leung On, who remained, proposed that troops should be removed from the Tung Wah Hospital hall, that the Tung Wah directors and their friends should hold a public meeting after which someone would address the crowd to be assembled at the hospital gates to induce them to end the strike. Again, Frederick Stewart objected, saying that political matters did not in any way concern the Tung Wah

Popular Insurrection in 1884 137



Directors, and that the collecting of a crowd in time of disturbances was undesirable. When it was proposed to issue a proclamation in the name of the Tung Wah directorate, Stewart strongly objected, stating that it “would amount to an abdication on the part of the government and the assumption of governmental power by the Cor­ poration."40

Then, Un Sing-ts'un (a merchant of the Tsun Ch'eung Hong) made a speech that made sense to the British officials. He said, "It was the duty of all loyal citizens to cooperate with the government in restoring order and terminating the strike," and that "each person present in his ware-house, his shop, or his household should indi­ vidually do his utmost to assist the efforts of the government." It was agreed to issue street notices to induce the people back to work.41

The two meetings revealed a great deal about sociopolitical rela­ tions in the colony. First, when the lower-class Chinese were in revolt, the ambivalence of the British attitude toward the Chinese elite became all the more apparent. The British authorities desired the advice and cooperation of the elite in restoring law and order, yet because of racial tensions they were also apprehensive of the elite's pretension to political power and influence over the Chinese com­ munity. Second, while cooperating with the colonial government, the Chinese elite also wished to play the role of community leaders by requesting the government to proclaim that the rioters were par­ doned as a result of the elite's representations. But the British author­ ities were sure of one thing—it was the British, and not the Chinese elite, that ruled the colony.

The vacillation of the Chinese elite in its relations with the colonial government is not difficult to understand. It reflected the predica­ ment of those who served as intermediaries between the populace and colonial government. In order to win the confidence of the colonial government and to end the disturbances hurting their com­ mercial interest the elite had to collaborate with the government, giving it advice regarding the arrest of "bad characters" and the stationing of troops in the Tung Wah buildings.42On the other hand, in order to obtain the trust of the populace and retain their "legiti­ mate" position as community leaders, the elite were obliged to dem­ onstrate their concern for the desires of the populace and to convey these desires to the government. If they succeeded in persuading the government to proclaim that the rioters were pardoned because of

138 Popular Insurrection in 1884



the elite's representations, the elite's political influence as commu­ nity leaders would be greatly enhanced. It was precisely this political influence that the suspicious colonial government tried to discourage and avert while at the same time it paradoxically sought to ask elite groups to use their influence to help end the unrest. Thus, the events of 1884 reveal most vividly the ambivalent relations between the Chinese elite and the colonial government.



Rivalry Between Elite Factions

The elite's meetings described above also revealed the rivalry and tensions between different factions of the Chinese elite: Li Tak Cheung, Ho Amei, and their friends versus some Chinese justices of the peace.43 All Chinese justices were naturalized British subjects from the commercial elite with dose ties to foreign commercial interests; four out of the seven justices were compradors to foreign companies. Their appointment by the colonial government as justices to help maintain peace and order in the colony indicated that they were the Chinese gentlemen most trusted and favored by the British authori­ ties. Two of them were Hoklo (Fukienese), who, together with their Punti (Cantonese) colleagues, cooperated with the British authorities to help keep law and order, which was essential for their business interests. The Chinese merchants' concern with social order and economic interests was a major factor conditioning their actions in times of popular unrest. Chinese commercial firms posted a street notice calling upon the striking workmen to resume work, and ex­ pressing grave concern about "the general loss and damage done to every branch of trade by the stoppage of labour." 4In the meantime, radal and national consdousness remained an important fador of life among the Chinese merchants, and the degree of ethnic feeling among them generally varied according to the individual's social relations with the colonial offidals.

Among the elite faction surrounding Li Tak Cheung and Ho Amei, ethnic feeling was strong. Ho Amei condemned the French war vessel's harassment of Chinese trading junks around Hong Kong waters as "an ad of piracy."45 The Chinese elite was also sympa­ thetic with the Chinese boat people, who were unjustly fined by the colonial government for refusing to work for the French. The elite felt moral obligation to intercede with the government on behalf of

Popular Insurrection in 1884 139



the boat people, but it disapproved of popular outbursts of strike and riots. Members of the elite faction surrounding Li Tak-cheung also had close economic ties to Western capital, and they too sought to cooperate with the British authorities to restore law and order in the colony. Ho Amei was the manager of the On Tai Insurance Co., Ltd., with offices in Praya West, the scene of riots on October 3. Li Tak Cheung served on the board of directors of the Chinese Insurance Company, Ltd., which included William Reiners, E.R. Belilios, and

H. Foss, with J. B. Smith as the company's secretary.46Thus, like his rivals among the Chinese justices, Li Tak Cheung was closely tied to foreign capitalist interests in the colony. As a businessman and a director of an insurance company in partnership with prominent European merchants, Li Tak Cheung naturally desired law and order in Hong Kong.

Essentially the two rival elite factions were competing with each other for political influence with the Chinese community and with the colonial authorities. In comparison with Ho Kai and other natu­ ralized British subjects who were appointed as justices, Li Tak Cheung and Ho Amei did not find as much personal favor with the colonial government. They had not forgotten that their application on behalf of the Wa Hop Telegraph Company for permission to lay a cable from Kowloon to Hong Kong was rejected in 1882 by the government on ethnic grounds—a Chinese company controlling the telegraphic communication "might under certain circumstances be a source of serious danger."47 Consequently, Li Tak Cheung and Ho Amei could not help bearing a grudge against the British authorities.

The European community, in return, was suspicious of Li Tak Cheung and Ho Amei because of their connection with the Chinese officialdom in Kwangtung. They had been involved with the circula­ tion of mandarin proclamations in the colony in support of the war against France.48 Ho Amei had sent several telegrams to the Canton authorities to report on French movements around Hong Kong.49 As we have seen. Viceroy Chang Chih-tung desired peace and order in Hong Kong; hence he sent a telegram to the Hong Kong gentry merchants asking them to exhort the striking workers "to stop within the limit of what is appropriate,"50 implying that some measure of unrest such as a strike against the French was alright but that street riot was inappropriate.

Li Tak Cheung's and Ho Amei's ties with the Chinese authorities

140 Popular Insurrection in 1884



were based not merely on ethnic and patriotic considerations but also on economic interests. Hong Kong merchants often sought Chinese official connections to protect their business and property in China. Ho Amei was the owner and manager of the Tam Chow [Silver] Mine near Canton (whose European staff had to be withdrawn during the war time due to Chinese ill-feeling against the French and other Europeans).51 Li Tak Cheung and Ho Amei's Wa Hop Telegraph Company had been sanctioned by the Kwangtung government, with an initial capital of three hundred thousand dollars in 1882. All its promoters were Chinese, including Hong Kong and Canton mer­ chants and Kwangtung officials.52 When popular disturbances broke out in Hong Kong, Kwangtung officials naturally became concerned. Viceroy Chang Chih-tung asked Li Tak-cheung and Ho Amei to ensure that the Hong Kong populace would “stop within the limit of what was appropriate.“ This coincided with Li Tak Cheung's and Ho Amei's wishes. Both men had other important commercial interests in Hong Kong, such as insurance companies that were closely tied to Western capital, so they too desired peace and order in the colony.



Incipient Popular Patriotism: Its Scope and Limitations

The Hong Kong working people had been divided by rivalry and hostility between dialect groups. Yet when their common interest was threatened by an outside force (e.g., colonial government, and foreign intruders), many of them would come together to take com­ mon actions.

In ordinary times, in their daily struggle to earn a living, the concepts of “imperialism," “patriotism," and “Chinese nationalism" were probably quite remote from the workers' mind. But in 1884 several factors combined to arouse an elementary sense of Chinese patriotism among the populace in the colony: the French threats of attack on Canton and the Chinese coast where the Hong Kong Chinese had their homes and families; the French war acts and the colonial government's repressive measures threatening the laborers' lives and work; the mandarin proclamations exhorting people to patriotism; and the colony's merchant elite circulating such proclamations that were also published in the Chinese popular press. All these com­ bined to arouse among the working people a vague sense of collec­ tive identity with the Chinese nation against the French enemy.

Popular Insurrection in 1884 141



In his report to the Colonial Office in London, Governor George Bowen testified to the emergence of "popular nationalism" in the colony. He stated that at the time of Britain's previous war with China in 1858 the southern Chinese cared little for Peking in the north, so that there was no difficulty in raising at Hong Kong a corps of more than two thousand coolies to act as porters to the allied English and French expedition against Peking. "But now all is changed. The Chinese artisans, coolies, and boatmen refused all offers of pay to do any work whatsoever for ch ships at Hong Kong." r Bowen attributed this to the establishment of a

ar press, the opening up of rapid communication between the north and south of China by steamers and telegraphs, and, above all, the irritating and yet indecisive hostilities of the French at various points along the coast. All these had combined with "other causes" to awaken a common national spirit among the Chinese people.53

The Canton officials worked hard to enhance patriotism by exhort­ ing the Chinese to "comprehend the distinction between China and a foreign country, and show a devoted regard for [their] fatherland" by helping to defeat the enemy and protect their homes and rela­ tives. The "other causes," which Governor Bowen did not specify, included precisely those measures adopted by the colonial authori­ ties to suppress that patriotic feeling—measures such as the prose­ cution of Chinese newspaper editors who published mandarin proc­ lamations, the imposition of fines on the boat people who refused to work for the French, and the police shooting the crowd causing death and injury.

The vernacular press indeed began to play an important role in

promoting popular national awareness. Chinese newspapers pub­ lished in Hong Kong and Canton had avidly carried battlefield re­ ports and propagated the cause of patriotism. News of French attacks on Foochow and Formosa and of the valor of the Chinese Black Flag forces helped to rouse national awareness among the populace. On August 25 a report was widely circulated and credited among the Chinese in Hong Kong that the French steamer Nam Vian had been captured by a Chinese gunboat. The destruction of the Foochow arsenal by the French was at first believed by many Chinese to be a foreign invention, for it contradicted their will to believe in the Chinese officials' announcement that the French fleet had been ignominiously thrashed. Indeed, a broadsheet illustrating the alleged disaster in-

142 Popular Insurrection in 1884



flicted upon the French ships was offered for sale in Hong Kong streets.54 A pictorial from Shanghai, Tien-shih-chai hua-pao, published pictures of battle scenes that appealed to the illiterate and semiliter­ ate. 5 Sun Yat-sen, then a student at the Hong Kong Government Central School, "heard stories told in the rice- and tea-shops of the great success of Chinese arms." And "the populace embraced these delusions joyfully."56

The war evoked a sense of patriotism among all classes of Chinese overseas. The Hong Kong Chinese community subscribed to a fund for purchasing two big cannons from England reportedly costing over forty thousand dollars to help strengthen coastal defense in Kwangtung. Patriotic Chinese residents in Osaka and Kobe also raised five thousand dollars to help China's coastal defense.57 Chinese mer­ chants in Singapore opened a subscription for the same purpose. And a party of French officers was attacked by "the Chinese of lower order" in Singapore.58

The Hong Kong people's lives were affected by the war. For a few days in late August and early September the river steamers on their trips down from Canton were crowded with "terror-stricken natives" fleeing to Hong Kong for fear of a French attack on Canton. A large number of what file English press called "rowdy characters, strangers and refugees" who had been evicted from Foochow, Canton, and other cities, flocked to the colony.59 Their presence in Hong Kong increased the people's awareness that their own well-being de­ pended on the well-being of the Chinese nation. An eyewitness to the events, young Sun Yat-sen felt encouraged by the patriotism of the Hong Kong dock workers who refused to repair the damaged French vessels, docked in Hong Kong from campaigns in Foochow and Formosa.

Under these circumstances the colonial government's imposition of fines on ten boat people served to bring large numbers of the working people together in opposition. To a working coolie in Hong Kong in 1884 a fine of five dollars was equal to his earnings for a whole month. Any coolie who refused to work for the French could suffer the same fate. The confluence of moral indignation and con­ cern with livelihood prompted coolies to action. The excitement was further exasperated by the police shooting the Chinese crowd, caus­ ing death and injuries.

The convergence of all these factors provoked a labor strike with a

Popular Insurrection in 1884 143



nationalistic overtone. National awareness was fused with local con­ cerns with family safety and livelihood to propel popular action. The boat people were infuriated by the fines and “much enraged against the French for attacking their country without reason."60 They posted a proclamation in Queen's Road protesting the fines and imploring the Chinese merchant elite to "be good enough to assist us with the strength of one arm in order that we may not be laughed at by the French."61 Self-interest was fused with patriotism in the coolie labor strike. To the English police constable Denis Delargy, a Chinese butcher named Wong Aleung said in pidgin English: "Hei Yah!—you thinkee Fan Kwai [foreign devils] can fight Chinaman?" Turning to the admiring crowd of "Chinamen" on the Recreation Ground, Wong Aleung incited them to ta fan kwei (strike the foreign devil).62

Patriotic protest against foreign invasions was not confined to the working people, although they constituted the major force in the strike and riots. The rioters arrested by the police consisted mostly of the lower classes, including a carpenter, a servant, a coolie, an earth coolie, a butcher, a boy, an unlicensed hawker, a coal coolie, a restaurant waiter, a tailor, fishmongers, and two shopmen. A shop­ keeper named Leong Ahung was charged with throwing stones at a European riding in a ricksha along Queen's Road West.63 Viceroy Chang Chih-tung's informers in Hong Kong reported to him that shopkeepers and their employees in the Western district of the town closed their shops to join the strike.64 But after three days of riots, many shopkeepers, merchants and property owners were getting impatient with the tumult. A meeting of the kaifong (street neighbor­ hood) leaders resolved to post notices all along the Praya on October 5 calling on the striking coolies to resume work and create no more disturbances.65 The strike and riots were largely a working people's movement.

But labor solidarity had its limitations, for the activists had to use

force to coerce many reluctant and refractory workers to join and continue the strike. Those who were intimidated included the Hoklo chair coolies and ricksha coolies, the Hakka sampan people, as well as the Punti Cantonese coolies. While large numbers of workers joined the strike and riots, many others remained passive and reluc­ tant participants in the event. Nevertheless, for the large numbers of workers who engaged in the strike and riots and who attacked the police and Europeans in the streets, the differences of dialect or

144 Popular Insurrection in 1884



occupation had largely, though only temporarily, faded into the background.

It is significant that neither looting nor wanton destruction of property took place during the riots. 6 Rather, the excited crowd directed their anger at specifically selected targets—the French mer­ chant Vincenot's store and the fankwei. Also selected for attack was the store of Wing Kee, a ship comprador providing coal for foreign vessels. Chinese Christians were “afraid to come out of their dwell­ ings on account of the threats and insults addressed to them.“ 67 Notices were circulated among the Chinese employees of foreign residents calling on them to cease work or face penalties.68The Triads wanted to attack the government office, the Hong Kong and Shang­ hai Banking Corporation, and the Victoria jail where about one hundred Triad members were held prisoners; but the planned attack was not carried out because of a lack of arms.69

The people's hostility towards the French was extended toward the British colonial authorities, which attempted to suppress the expression of anti-French sentiment. The Chinese crowd spit upon the British troops patrolling in the streets of Hong Kong and threw stones at them. Such indignities to the British imperial forces were something hitherto unheard of in China, the British military com­ mander complained.70

Antagonism against the French persisted among the working peo­ ple in Hong Kong after the riots had subsided. As late as November, when order had been restored, riot ringleaders had been banished, and hundreds of Triads had left the colony as a result of the procla­ mation of the Peace Preservation Ordinance,71 they still refused to work for the French Messageries Maritime Company. The cargo brought on by the steamer Saghalien a month earlier could not be landed.72 The strikers and rioters had attained their purpose—the right to refuse to work for the French.



The strike and riots were largely a working people's movement, led by head coolies, head boatmen, coolie housekeepers and Triads. These coolie leaders subsequently organized a legal defense for those arrested, engaging four lawyers (Ho Kai and three Europeans) for the defense of the arrested coolies in law court.73 Coolie leaders had promised to end the strike if the Chinese elite (who served as inter-

Popular Insurrection in 1884 145



mediaries) would induce the colonial authorities to forgive the ar­ rested coolies and remit the fines.74 However, their request was denied. Eager to end the disturbances affecting the Chinese mer­ chant elite's commercial interest, and eager to fulfill its moral obliga­ tion to the lower class coolies, the Tung Wah directorate reportedly repaid the fines inflicted on the cargo boat people.75 At the same time, the elite sought to strengthen the District Watch patrol of the Praya to help maintain law and order.76

It is important to note that cooperation with the British authorities to terminate popular unrest in Hong Kong did not necessarily mean a lack of Chinese "patriotism" on the part of the Chinese merchant elite. Patriotism could be expressed in different ways. As long as there were different views regarding what was in the best interest of the nation, there would be different kinds of patriots and national­ ists, including "populist nationalists," "elitist nationalists," and what might be paradoxically called "collaborationist patriots" (that is, those who collaborated with and rendered service to imperialism under certain historical circumstances in the hope of eventually building a strong nation to resist imperialism). 7 As we shall see in chapter 6, collaborationist patriotism was prevalent in Hong Kong during the period under study. With strong economic ties to Western capital­ ism, the Chinese merchants in Hong Kong in 1884 did not regard the popular outbursts of strikes and riots as "valid" expressions of Chinese patriotism.

The lower-class Triads took an important part in the anticolonial

movement in 1884.78 Yet, the Triads could engage in both political revolt and nonpolitical criminal actions, often blurring the distinction between the two. In fact, in ordinary times, the Triads' criminal actions were frequently directed against members of the working people.79 Hence the Triads could not organize the workers into a solidarity group to act politically in pursuing and defending their common interests on a constant and permanent basis.

The events of 1884 in Hong Kong are significant, not only for what they revealed about the nature of British rule and social tensions in the colony but for what they also demonstrated about the capacity of the Hong Kong people to become politically activated. The popular insurrection in 1884 left a lasting impression on the colonial govern­ ment, which was now determined to impose more direct political

146 Popular Insurrection in 1884



control over the Chinese community. The interventionist govern­ ment sought to accelarate political integration in the aftermath of these events.

In 1884 popular nationalism was in its incipient stage of develop­ ment: the people of Hong Kong had just begun to show some vague awareness of China as a nation-state at war with the French, who had the sympathy of the British and other fankivei. When that aware­ ness was fused with their concern about the colonial government's repressive measures threatening their livelihood, the people were aroused to action.

Incipient popular nationalism aroused in 1884 proved ephemeral, however. Local issues affecting the working people's livelihood re­ mained of primary importance to them. Issues of national import, if not aligned with local issues, had little appeal to the common people and were merely incidental to their lives. From the aftermath of the Sino-French War to the end of the nineteenth century, the elitist nationalists from among the merchants and intelligentsia could hardly win over the colony's working people to the nationalist causes under their auspices.

s


X‌

Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism,

1887-1900



If England suffers, the greatest volume of our trade being with that country, we shall be sufferers to the same extent China's army

should be organized under the English. — Ho Tung, comprador



The existence of a body of 20,000 coolies— lusty coolies— in Hong Kong, disaffected and armed with their formidable bamboo poles . . .

is a direct menace to the Colony.

— Granville Sharp, an English merchant



Nationalism: Its Complex Nature, Manifestations, and Historiography

Nationalism is a powerful force in the history of the modem world. Its manifestations are sometimes beneficial and constructive and sometimes malignant and destructive to humanity—particularly in the twentieth century when advanced science and technology pro­ duce dreadful tools and weapons for the assertion of power by the government of one nation against another, and even against its own dissident citizens. As a powerful sociopolitical force, nationalism can sometimes inspire loving care for one's neighbors and benign pa­ triotic feelings for the nation. But it can also provoke wars among nations, and create in belligerent countries an intellectually stifling war climate, with thousands of mindless flag-waving crowds clamor­ ing for violence and more violence, as in the recent war between Iraq and the United States. With such awesome power for both construc­ tion and destruction, it is not surprising that nationalism has been subject to voluminous studies for many decades by scholars in var-

148 Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism



ious fields and disciplines, including Hans Kohn, Carlton Hayes, Karl Deutsch, and Eric J. Hobsbawm, among many others.1

Nationalism is extremely complex in nature. When fused with different concerns and ideologies it takes different forms, such as liberal nationalism, conservative nationalism, totalitarian national­ ism, cultural nationalism, economic nationalism, elitist nationalism, populist nationalism, and so forth.2 "My country, right or wrong!"— this assertion reflects only one kind of nationalism, a conservative and irrational one. But there are many other kinds contradicting it.

In this study nationalism is defined as a sense of collective identity with and loyalty to one's nation-state. National consciousness means that members of a given nationality become aware of their interrela­ tionship with their conationals who together constitute a social group distinct from all others. Nationalism often presumes some prior com­ munity of territory, language, ethnicity, and culture, which may be called the "objective" basis for the existence of nationality. But more important, nationalism as a state of mind also involves "subjective" and conscious human effort and creation. In other word, the emer­ gence of national consciousness is not an automatic result of some objective static elements that compose a nation. Rather, "creative political action is required to transform a segmented and disunited population into a coherent nationality," as Geoff Eley asserts. "Na­ tionality is best conceived as a complex, uneven and unpredictable process, forged from an interaction of cultural coalescence and specific political intervention, which cannot be reduced to static criteria of language, territory, ethnicity or culture."3

Just as nationalism in early nineteenth-century Europe "was very much a movement of intellectuals rather than masses,"4 so national­ ism in China during the latter half of the nineteenth century was at first a movement of literati-offidals and other members of the intelli­ gentsia (i.e., educated persons aspiring to independent thinking and capable of forming public opinion, such as professionals, business­ men, journalists, teachers, students, etc.). In the creative process of transforming segmented and disunited population into a coherent nationality, members of the intelligentsia often played a leading role, for they were the first to become politicized by the crises China confronted.

In the historiography of Chinese nationalism a very influential interpretation stresses the dichotomy of culturalism (loyalty to tradi-

Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism 149



tional Chinese culture symbolized by the dynastic emperor) versus modem nationalism (loyalty to the nation-state), which is said to have emerged during the 1890s. In his classic work, entitled Modem China and Its Confucian Past, Joseph Levenson maintains that nation­ alism emerged "when the Chinese nation began to supersede Chinese culture as the focal point of loyalty."5 Benjamin Schwartz aptly points out that Chinese cultural tradition was not a monolithic entity; never­ theless, he asserts that one had to make a choice of priority ''between the preservation of the state and the preservation of basic Confucian values" before one became a nationalist.6 This definition of a nation­ alist is so demanding and restrictive that it excludes large numbers of Chinese, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, who devel­ oped some sense of patriotism and national consciousness while still remained loyal to the dynasty and committed to many traditional values.

Foreign war was an important agency in provoking patriotism and national consciousness. Mary Rankin's point is well taken: "Resting upon people's impulses to defend their territory, possessions, social power, or political structure against foreign attack, it [patriotism] did not require any fundamental change in values" or "unambiguously transferring their loyalty from the dynasty to a Chinese nation-state."7 To illustrate, Liu Kwang-ching portrays Li Hung-chang as a "Confu­ cian patriot," loyal to the Manchu dynasty, concerned with both the maintenance of his own power and the security and independence of China as a country.8 David Pong also characterizes Governor General Shen Pao-chen as a "Confucian patriot."9 Daniel Bays de­ picts Chang Chih-tung as a "bureaucratic nationalist" who always identified himself "as part of the central dynastic apparatus of gov­ ernment," and "was actually rather effective in dealing with foreign­ ers and promoting China's interests."10John Schrecker demonstrates how at the turn of the twentieth century the governors of Shantung Yüan Shih-k'ai, Chow Fu, and Yang Shih-hsiang successively la­ bored to defend the territorial integrity of the province against Ger­ man imperialism, and how a new nationalistic foreign policy was adopted by the Ch'ing imperial court after 1900 to defend China's sovereignty. 1

Foreign intrusion politicized not only the Chinese officials but also the literati outside the bureaucracy, including the gentry merchants and gentry managers on the Chinese mainland and merchants and

150 Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism



intelligentsia in Hong Kong and the treaty ports. The Sino-French War (1884-85) and the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) prompted them to advocate Westernizing reforms to strengthen China to resist for­ eign imperialism. Most of them were "elitist nationalists," who basi­ cally distrusted the common people and had no faith in the mass mobilization for national reconstruction envisioned by the twentieth- century "populist nationalists" like Li Ta-chao and Mao Tse-tung. The Sino-French war provided an occasion for the outbreak of a popular insurrection in Hong Kong that acquired a nationalistic over­ tone: the riotous populace showed some vague awareness of China as a sovereign nation-state at war with the French enemy. But the merchant elite disapproved of the social unrest and did not regard street riots as a "valid" expression of patriotism.

My purpose here is to illustrate the very complex nature of nation­ alism, which historically manifested itself in different ways and took many different forms. To a large extent, nationalism reflected the subjective human consciousness of nationality. As long as there were different views regarding what was in the best interest of the nation, there would be different kinds of patriots and nationalists: "liberal nationalists," who advocated liberal reforms to strengthen the na­ tion; "conservative nationalists," who wished to use authoritarian means to strengthen the country; "Confudan cultural nationalists," who sought to use Confudan cultural tradition for national regener­ ation; what I shall call "collaborationist nationalists," who collabo­ rated with the imperialists at the sacrifice of some sovereign rights in the hope of eventually building a strong nation to resist imperialist aggression.

The paradoxical nature of the collaborationist nationalists is quite obvious. Let us look at some examples. To the Kuomintang national­ ists Yüan Shih-k'ai was a "traitor" to the Chinese nation. But as Ernest P. Young shows, Yüan was a genuine "nationalist" in his own way, adopting "a strategy of selling out some part of his country's sovereignty in order, ultimately, to defend that same sovereignty."12 Similarly, Wang Ching-wei collaborated with the Japanese invaders in 1940-45, partly out of "patriotic" intentions. Concerned about the welfare of the Chinese people in the Japanese-occupied areas, and driven by defeatism to condude that China could never win the war, he set up a puppet government in Nanking, hoping that China would be better off as a member of the "new order in East Asia"

Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism 151



under the wing of a m ing Japan. To the Japanese, Wang Ching-wei made the folic reclamation:

What I ask the Japanese people to understand is that for the Chinese, the argument for peace [with Japan] is an expression of patriotic spirit and the argument for resisting Japan is also an expression of patriotic spirit. Anyone who has either of these beliefs loves his country and desires the prosperity of the people. Therefore the difference between these two theories of peace and resistance to Japan is caused by diferences in understanding of Sino-Japanese relations in the Far East. It is impossible for Japan to correct, by using military power alone, the understanding of those who be­ lieve in resisting Japan. I want you to understand that the best means for the Japanese to change their policies is through changing their [Japanese] own policies.13

In a wartime situation peace advocates who vote their conscience against war are not necessarily less "patriotic" than those who hold an opposing view. This was true during the ch’ing-i (pure discussion) debate over the Sino-French War (1884-85), and during the two Sino- Japanese wars. No one had a monopoly over patriotism, which could be expressed in different ways. Patriotism could be a divisive as well as a mobilizing force.

Thus, both Yüan Shih-k'ai and Wang Ching-wei were collabora­ tionist nationalists. Similarly, as we shall see, a number of merchants and professionals in Hong Kong became collaborationist nationalists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, although under different historical circumstances and with different visions for the Chinese nation-state.

Nationalism did not merely have political and cultural dimensions; it also had a socioeconomic one. It is important to examine the social basis of nationalism's appeal. In his essay on nationalism and social history, Geoff Eley forcefully argues for "the need to re-situate the historiography of nationalism in a strong context of socioeconomic analysis."14This study is an attempt to do so.

Nationalism took many different forms. But why did some people subscribe to liberal nationalism, while others turned to conservative nationalism? Why did prominent merchants in Hong Kong become collaborationist nationalists? And why did elitist nationalism appeal more to the social elite and less to the masses? A socioeconomic analysis may help to answer these questions. Chinese elitist nation-

152 Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism



alists in modem times often demanded that a citizen must put his or her priority on devotion to the state above all other concerns, and that he or she must be "selfless" and "disinterested," transcending and even sacrificing self-interests for the common good of the nation. Were these elitist nationalists themselves always "disinterested"? Would a disinterested and transcendental concept of nationalism appeal to the ordinary people? This chapter attempts to answer some of these questions.

As indicated in our discussion of the Chinese community in chap­ ter 3, because of population growth and economic expansion during the period from the mid-1880s to the 1900s the colonial society be­ came more heterogeneous and community consensus became more difficult to obtain. A new generation of merchants, businessmen, professionals, and intelligentsia emerged in Hong Kong, a genera­ tion more Western-oriented and more closely tied to Western capital than the old elite, and more inclined to innovations and new commit­ ments. It was a generation progressively politicized by main currents of affairs in China.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, a series of important events occurred in China—the Sino-French War (1884-85), the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898, the imperialist powers' "scramble for concessions," the British occu­ pation of the New Territories in 1899, and the Boxer uprising in 1900. These events aroused nationalistic responses from the new genera­ tion of Chinese merchants, professionals, and intelligentsia in Hong Kong. Ho Kai and Hu Li-yüan established their fame as advocates of reforms in China. With strong economic ties to foreign capital in the colony, some prominent merchants in Hong Kong expressed collab­ orationist patriotism in reaction to the "scramble for concessions" in China. Some members of the Westernized intelligentsia, inspired by nationalism and republicanism, organized the Hsing-Chung-hui rev­ olutionary society, seeking to use the British colony as a base for revolution against the Manchus.

This chapter seeks to explain why the elitist nationalists in Hong Kong won little support from the colony's working people for the nationalist causes in 1887-1900. These years witnessed three inci­ dents of coolie unrest—the 1888 boatmen's strike, the 1894 coolie feud, and the 1895 coolie strike. In these instances the coolies' pri­ mary concerns were local issues relating to their livelihood. The

Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism 153



immediate economic interest and mundane needs were of primary importance to the laborers in their daily struggle to earn a living. But the elitist nationalists from among the merchants and intelligentsia often failed to address the local issues relating to the workers' press­ ing social needs and economic problems. A large gap separated the elitist patriots from coolies. I will first examine the elitist nationalist responses to the events in China in 1887-1900.



Nationalist Responses to the Sino-French War and the Sino-Japanese War

The Sino-French War (1884-85) roused a wave of popular antifor- eignism in the southern provinces of China from Chekiang to Fukien, Taiwan, Kwangtung, and Yün-nan. It also aroused nationalist re­ sponses from the Chinese literati and officials. For about two decades prior to the war a handful of the Chinese literati (such as Feng Kuei- fen, Kuo Sung-tao, Ma Chien-chung, Cheng Kuan-ying, Wang T'ao, and Chang Tzu-mu) had become critical of China's "self-strengthen­ ing" policy for its narrow focus on Western techniques and had advocated institutional reforms to strengthen China. But prior to the Sino-French War such criticism was faint and sporadic. The Sino- French War was a turning point for the reform movement in China. The war stimulated ch'ing-i (pure discussion), that is, critical and theoretically disinterested discussion of national affairs. It marked an important stage in the formation and evolution of public opinion leading to a nationalistic, reformist movement.

The Canton newspaper Shu-pao abounded with articles calling for

reforms to strengthen the country against foreign aggressions. In January 1885 one such article advocated in most unequivocal terms the adoption of Western style parliamentary government and free­ dom of the press.15 The year 1887 saw the publication of Ho Kai's and Hu Li-yüan's reformist essays as well as Wang T'ao's essay "On Foreign Armaments and Techniques." They advocated reforms of governmental institutions, and forcefully challenged the Ch'ing gov­ ernment's "self-strengthening" policy. In 1888 the reformer K'ang Yu-wei presented his "First Memorial to the Emperor," calling for sweeping reforms of government.16

Some of these reform advocates came from Hong Kong. Wang T'ao (1828-97) was cofounder and editor-in-chief of Hsun-huan jih-pao

154 Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism



in Hong Kong from 1874 until 1884.17 Hu Li-yüan (1847-1916) was a scholar from a merchant family in the colony. In 1887 Hu and Ho Kai jointly published an essay criticizing Tseng Chi-tse (China's minister to England and France 1878-86) for his espousal of the "self-strength­ ening^" policy.18 Ho and Hu argued that the real cause of China's troubles lay not so much in its military weakness as in its "loose morality and evil habits, both social and political." The true founda­ tion of every truly great nation was "equitable rule and right govern­ ment." 19 "The government which is accepted by the public opinion ourish, and that which is rejected by the public opinion will

see disorder."20 Ho and Hu used the Men ea of the "primacy of the people" to justify institutional re at a time when China's power holders were preoccupied with ships, guns, and military defense. Thus, in 1887 Ho and Hu pioneered a line of thought to be loudly espoused in the late 1890s by other reformers such as Yen Fu, K'ang Yu-wei, and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao.

The futility of the "self-strengthening" movement predicted by Ho and Hu in 1887 was fully exposed during the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), a landmark in the evolution of Chinese public opinion supporting a nationalist, reformist movement. The dictated peace at Shimonoseki was considered by many literati both within and out­ side the official bureaucracy as a national humiliation. A nationally conscious public opinion developed, demanding continuation of war with Japan and institutional reforms to save China. Patriotic scholars like K'ang Yu-wei, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, and Yen Fu began to organize "study societies" (hsûeh-hui) and publish journals and newspapers advocating governmental reforms and réévaluation of traditional ideas and values to strengthen the country. The two Hong Kong reformist writers Ho Kai and Hu Li-yüan, again, joined the Chinese nationalist reformist movement.

Hu Li-yüan had been in Kôbe and Osaka, Japan, since July 1893, probably on a business trip in connection with a coal shop owned by his brother in Hong Kong. He stayed in Japan for two years, until the end of the Sino-Japanese war. While in Japan, he witnessed a strong sense of nationalism and chauvinism among the Japanese populace aroused by the war. He reported that almost the entire nation was united behind their government in the war effort. This made very strong impression on him. He also witnessed the Meiji constitution and parliament at work and became convinced that Ja-

Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism 155



pan was strengthened by her parliamentary government. Corre­ sponding with Ho Kai in Hong Kong, Hu Li-yüan discussed the crisis confronting China. The two men observed the progress of the war with dismay, for China suffered one defeat after another in battles, both on land and at sea.21 They jointly produced a pamphlet titled “Discourse on the New Government.'' Its fame ''is so wide­ spread in China that the first edition is exhausted and a fresh edition is being put through the press as rapidly as possible/' reported The China Mail.22 This reflected the sense of crisis and urgency prevalent among the Chinese literary public at the time.

Ho Kai and Hu Li-yüan observed that in wartime Japan, ''the military and civilians are in concerted harm ony/' and “the sovereign and people with one heart"—“thanks to the effects of the parlia­ ment."23 The parliament opened the "channel of expression" through which the people's views and opinions could reach the sovereign. Herein lay the secret of unity and strength of the Japanese nation.24 Although Cheng Kuan-ying (c. 1841-1923) and Ch'en Chih (d. 1899) were the first well-known reformers in China to advocate represen­ tative institutions, their thoughts about this were fragmentary.25 In comparison. Ho and Hu's “Discourse" in 1894-95 presented the most elaborated reform proposal for representative institutions up to that date; and it was also more “advanced,"26 as it called for a thorough reorganization of government, including the creation of a "responsible cabinet."27 To make their views respectable in the eyes of China's scholar-officials, they couched their reform ideas in Con- fucian terms. The Mencian doctrine of "the primacy of the people," with its emphasis on the people as the most important element of the state, reinforced their belief in the Lockeian theories of social contract and popular sovereignty, resulting in an intellectual synthe­ sis of their ideas.28

Ho and Hu's reformist thought was shaped not merely by wartime

crisis and Hu's experience in Japan but also by their social back­ grounds and personal experiences in the British colony of Hong Kong. Their backgrounds were similar in a number of ways, so that they came to hold many identical or virtually identical political views. Both were inspired by Western classical liberalism as formulated by the liberal thinker John Locke, Enlightenment philosophes Adam Smith and Montesquieu, and Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Ho Kai went to Britain for studies in 1873, when the

156 Coolie Unrest and Elitist Nationalism