Previous: 6. Peoples & Regional Roots | Index | Next: 8. Fictions
By Vaudine England
There were 145 foreign traders resident in Canton in 1831: 66 English, 52 Parsees (who were counted as British), total 118; 15 Americans, 3 Dutch, 3 Swedish, 1 French, 1 Swiss and 4 Spanish. Most of these were resident in Hong Kong within 15 years. They joined a small Chinese population of farmers and fishermen of mixed ethnic backgrounds. This chapter looks at the individuals of all origins who came to Hong Kong from Canton, Calcutta, Java, Persia, Armenia, Baghdad, Holland, and beyond – through specific studies, biographies and memoir.
READING SUGGESTIONS:
Airlie, Shiona. Scottish Mandarin, The Life and Times of Sir Reginald Johnston. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press/RAS HK Studies Series, 2012.
Airlie, Shiona. Thistle and Bamboo, The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Bickley, Gillian. A Magistrate’s Court in 19th Century Hong Kong: Court in Time. Hong Kong: Proverse Hong Kong, 2005.
Bickley, Gillian. The Complete Court Cases of Magistrate Frederick Stewart. Hong Kong: Proverse Hong Kong, 2012.
Bickley, Gillian. The Golden Needle: the Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889). Hong Kong: David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, 1997.
Blyth, Sally and Ian Wotherspoon. Hong Kong Remembers. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Booth, Martin. The Dragon & The Pearl. London: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Booth, Martin. Gweilo, A Memoir of a Hong Kong Childhood. London (Doubleday 2004) Bantam, 2005.
Bowring, Philip. Free Trade’s First Missionary, Sir John Bowring in Europe and Asia. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014.
Brassey, Mrs. A Voyage in the ‘Sunbeam’, Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months. London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1878.
Chamberlain, Jonathan/King Hui. King Hui, the Man Who Owned All the Opium in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books, 2007.
Chan, Anthony, B. Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s Elusive Billionaire. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Chan Kwok-bun, ed. Hybrid Hong Kong. London: Routledge, 2012.
Cheng, Irene. Clara Ho Tung: A Hong Kong Lady, Her Family and Her Times. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1976.
Cheng, Patsy and Phoebe Chau. Lamma Story. Hong Kong: SEE Network, 2008.
Ching, Frank. The Li Dynasty, Hong Kong Aristocrats. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Chiu, Fred Y.L. ‘Politics and the Body Social in Colonial Hong Kong’. In Tabni E. Barlow, ed. Formation of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, 295-322. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.
Choa, G.H. The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai. 2nd Edition. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2000.
Clarke, N.M. The Governor’s Daughter Takes the Veil. Hong Kong: Canossian Missions Historic Archives, 1980.
Coates, Austin. Myself a Mandarin. Hong Kong: Heinemann Asia, 1983.
Cragg, Claudia. The New Taipans. London: Century Limited, 1995.
Cree, Edward H. (Edited with Introduction by Michael Levien). The Cree Journals – The Voyages of Edward H Cree, Surgeon, R.N., as Related in his Private Journals 1837-1856. Exeter: Webb & Bouwer, 1981.
Crisswell, Colin, N. The Taipans Hong Kong’s Merchant Princes. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press/Oxford in Asia Paperbacks, 1981.
Cumine, Eric. Hong Kong Ways & Byways, A Miscellany of Trivia. Hong Kong: Belongers Publications, 1981.
Dirks, Nicholas B. Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.
Drage, Charles. Two-Gun Cohen. London: Jonathan Cape, 1954.
Emrys Evans, D.M. ‘Chinatown in Hong Kong: The Beginnings of Taipingshan’. Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 10 (1970), 69-78.
England, Vaudine. The Quest of Noel Croucher, Hong Kong’s Quiet Philanthropist. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1998.
England, Vaudine. The Chinese International School, The First 25 years. Hong Kong: Chinese International School, 2009.
Feng Chi-sun. Diamond Hill, Memories of Growing Up in a HK Squatter Village. Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books, 2009.
Fong Peter K.W. and Chan Chik. Home of Yesterday. Hong Kong: Hong Kong in Pictorials Series, Joint Publishing (HK), 1993.
Fung, Cornelia (Nelly) Lichauco and Yiu Chuen Wan. Fung Ping Shan, The Man, His Life and His Library. Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong Libraries/The Commercial Press, 2012.
Fisher, Stephen F. Eurasians in Hong Kong: A Sociological Study of a Marginal Group. PhD Thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1975.
Fung Chi-ming. History at the Grassroots: Rickshaw Pullers in the Pearl River Delta of South China. PhD Thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1996.
Gittins, Jean (Hotung). Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1982.
Grantham, Alexander. Via Ports: From Hong Kong to Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965.
Gundermann, Maiko Angela. The Self-Perceived Identities of Half-Japanese: A Hong Kong-Japanese/German-Japanese Comparison. MPhil Thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2006.
Haffner, Christopher. The Craft in the East. Hong Kong, 1977 [about Freemasonry].
Hall, Peter. In the Web. Wirral: Hurst Village Publishing, 1992 (2012).
Hall, Peter. In the Web. Birkenhead: Apprin Press, 2012 (earlier editions 1992, 1993).
Han Suyin. Love Is a Many-Splendoured Thing. London: Jonathan Cape, 1952.
Harrop, Phyllis. Hong Kong Incident. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1943.
Hayes, James. The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Ho, Eric Peter. The Welfare League, The Sixty Years 1930-1990. A pamphlet held by HKU Library Special Collections (HKP 361.763 W46 zH). The Welfare League was formed specifically to provide aid and welfare to Hong Kong’s Eurasians and was thus a first public statement of the existence of a mixed race community.
Ho, Eric Peter. Tracing My Children’s Lineage. Hong Kong: Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong, 2010.
Holdsworth, May. Foreign Devils. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
This records what May calls a pattern of ‘mutual incomprehension and distrust’ between Westerners and Chinese in HK, the European desire to segregate, the European District Reservation Ordinances for the Peak and Kowloon, and the Night Pass and Lantern laws. On pp. 186-192 she considers the idea that Eurasians are Hong Kong’s ‘only Indigenes’. Also discusses protected women, and the ‘charmed circle’ of the expatriate elite. She says yes Europeans were racist but so were Chinese.
Holth, Sverre. Karl Ludvig Reichelt and Tao Fong Shan. Hong Kong: Tao Fong Shan Christian Institute, undated.
Holzberger, Peter. Recollections of an ‘Old China Hand’. Hong Kong: Martin and Thomas, 1984, 1st ed.
Hughes, Richard. Foreign Devil – Thirty Years of Reporting in the Far East. London: (Andre Deutsch 1972) Century Publishing, 1986.
Hutcheon, Robin. First Sea Lord, The Life and Work of Sir Y.K. Pao. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1990.
Hyde, Francis E & Marriner, Sheila. The Senior, John Samuel Swire 1825-98, Management in Far Eastern Shipping Trades. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1967, 1st ed.
Jackson, Stanley. The Sassoons. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968.
Kirk-Greene, Anthony. On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services 1837-1997. London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 1999.
Lee, Vicky. Being Eurasian: Memories Across Racial Divides. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004 (also, her PhD HKU 2001).
Lee Sperry, Ansie. Running With the Tiger, A Memoir of an Extraordinary Young Woman’s Life in Hong Kong, China, the South Pacific and POW Camp. Sperry Family Trust, 2009.
Linklater, Andro. The Code of Love, a True Story. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.
Litmaath, Joop B.M. Far East of Amsterdam. Hong Kong: Corporate Communications, 2003.
Loh, Christine. Being Here, Shaping a Preferred Future. Hong Kong: SCMP Book Publishing, 2006.
Lowe, Kate and Eugene McLaughlin. ‘Sir John Pope Hennessy and the “Native Race Craze”: Colonial Government in Hong Kong 1877-1882’. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 20:2 (May 1992), 223-47.
Mangan, J.A., ed. Pleasure, Profit, Proselytism: British Culture and Sport at Home and Abroad 1700-1914. London: Frank Cass, 1988.
Marden, Anne. Letters to My Grandchildren. Hong Kong: Anne Marden/Twin Age Limited, 2006, 2007.
Marshall, J.F. Whereon the Wild Thyme Flows: Some Memories of Service with the Hongkong Bank. Surrey: Token, 1986.
Mellor, Bernard. Lugard in Hong Kong, Empirers, Education and A Governor at Work 1907-1912. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1992.
Memories of the Reverend Dr Carl T. Smith March 1918-April 2008. Pamphlet/Memorial Service 2008.
Mikes, George. East Is East. London: Andre Deutsch, 1958.
Nocontelli, Carmen. Empires of Love: Europe, Asia and the Making of Early Modern Identity. University of Pennsylvania Press 2013
Pixton, Ralph. On the Line. Hong Kong: Zebra Publishers, 1978.
Pluss, Caroline B. The Social History of the Jews of Hong Kong A Resource Guide. Occasional Paper Number One, The Jewish Historical Society of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Jewish Historical Society of Hong Kong, 1999.
Pope-Hennessy, James. Half-Crown Colony: A Hong Kong Notebook. London: Jonathan Cape, 1969.
Pope-Hennessy, James. Verandah: Some Episodes in the Crown Colonies 1867-1889. London: Allen and Unwin, 1964.
Pottinger, George. Sir Henry Pottinger, First Governor of Hong Kong. Stroud: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1997.
Poy, Vivienne. A River Named Lee. Calyan Publishing, 1995.
Roberts, Denys. Another Disaster, Hong Kong Sketches. London: The Radcliffe Press, 2006.
Selle, Earl Albert. Donald of China. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948.
Sinclair, Kevin. Tell Me A Story, Forty Years Newspapering in Hong Kong and China. Hong Kong: SCMP Books, 2007.
Shih Shu-ching. City of the Queen: A Novel of Colonial Hong Kong. Translated from the Chinese by Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008.
Smith, Joyce Stevens and Joyce Savidge. Matilda: Her Life and Legacy. Hong Kong: Matilda and War Memorial Hospital, 1988.
Sohmen, Helmut. Perspectives – Stories for Grandchildren. Illustrator Lo Kingman. Hong Kong, 2013.
Symons, Joyce Catherine. Looking at the Stars. Hong Kong: Pegasus Books, 1996.
Teng, Emma. Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China and Hong Kong, 1842-1943. University of California Press, 2013.
Teng studies how people saw mixed race identities and what was said about them – with some facts of racial mixing and resultant networks. She uses memoirs and archives to reconstruct the Eurasian experience in Shanghai, Hong Kong, California, New York, etc. Contents:
1. A Canton Mandarin Weds a Connecticut Yankee: Chinese-Western Intermarriage Becomes a ‘Problem’
2. Mae Watkins Becomes a ‘Real Chinese Wife’: Marital Expatriation, Migration, and Transracial Hybridity
3. ‘A Problem for Which There Is No Solution’: The New Hybrid Brood and the Specter of Degeneration in New York’s Chinatown
4. ‘Productive of Good to Both Sides’: The Eurasian as Solution in Chinese Utopian Visions of Racial Harmony
5. Reversing the Sociological Lens: Putting Sino-American “Mixed Bloods” on the Miscegenation Map
6. The ‘Peculiar Cast’: Navigating the American Color Line in the Era of Chinese Exclusion
7. On Not Looking Chinese: Chineseness as Consent or Descent?
8. ‘No Gulf between a Chan and a Smith amongst Us’: Charles Graham Anderson’s Manifesto for Eurasian Unity in Interwar Hong Kong.
Tse Liu, Frances. Ho Kom Tong, A Man for All Seasons. Hong Kong: Compradore House, 2003.
Vaid, K.N. The Overseas Indian Community in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1972.
Veronica. Hong Kong Column in the Hongkong Weekly, 1907. Witty insights into the working of class (and race) in Hong Kong.
Warner, Denis. Reporting South East Asia and China. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1966.
Waters, Dan. One Couple Two Cultures – 81 Western-Chinese couples talk about love and marriage. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations, 2005.
Wedderburn, Gren. No Lotus Garden, A Scottish Surgeon in China & Japan. Edinburgh: The Pentland Press, 1987.
Wesley-Smith, Peter. ‘Kwok A-Sing, Sir John Smale, and the Macao Coolie Trade’. In Shane Nozzal, ed. Law Lectures for Practitioners 1993. Hong Kong Law Journal, 1993.
Wilson, Brian. Hong Kong Then. Ely: Melrose Press Limited, 2011.
Zheng, Victor and Chow, Charles W. Sir Shouson Chow, Grand Old Man of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2010.
***
ON DIOCESAN GIRLS’ AND DIOCESAN BOYS’ SCHOOL,
attended by many Eurasian, Chinese and other students:
— Celebrating 150 years of educational excellence/DGS, 2010.
— DGS Kowloon A Brief History 1860-1977.
— Quest, the DGS magazine
— DBS, 135th Anniversary, 2004
— The Diocesan Boys School and Orphanage Hongkong: the history and records 1869 to 1929, by W.T. Weatherstone, 1930.
— A Tribute to Rev Canon George She, headmaster 1955-1961, 2004.
— Wings, ‘sursum corda’: a souvenir magazine, 1937.
— To Serve and To Lead, a history of the DBS, 2009.
— Steps, the DBS magazine.
***
ON MUI TSAI, ‘PROTECTED WOMEN’:
Cheng Po Hung. Early Prostitution in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: University Museum and Art Gallery The University of Hong Kong, 2010.
Cheng Po Hung. Early Hong Kong Brothels. Hong Kong: University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, 2003.
Jaschok, Maria. Concubines and Maidservants: A Social History. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, and London: Zed Books, 1988. This was a pioneering study of the phenomena of bonded women servants and their offspring. Jaschok studies specifically the Moot family, the role of the Comprador, the feelings of the women involved, the coercion and lack of choice, the purchase of women, competition between wives and concubines and much more. She then looks at the overall trade, exactly how it took place and where it left all the participants.
Jaschok, Maria and Miers, Suzanne, Editors. Women and Chinese Patriarchy – Submission, Servitude and Escape. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, and London: Zed Books, 1994.
For Hong Kong students, the most important chapters are: Chapter 3, pp. 45-77, by James Hayes: San Po Tsai (Little Daughters-in-Law) and Child Betrothals in the New Territories of Hong Kong from the 1890s to the 1960s; and, Chapter 7, pp. 141-171, by Dr Elizabeth Sinn: Chinese Patriarchy and the Protection of Women in 19th Century Hong Kong; and, Chapter 10, pp. 198-221, by Carl T Smith: Protected Women in 19th Century Hong Kong. Other chapters cover similar issues in mainland China, Singapore, San Francisco and the Perl River Delta.
Report of the Special Committee Appointed By His Excellency Sir William Robinson, &c., to Investigate and Report on Certain Points Connected With the Bill for the Incorporation of the Po Leung Kuk, or Society For the Protection of Women and Girls, Together with the Evidence Taken Before the Committee and an Appendix Containing Correspondence, Reports, Returns, &c. Hong Kong: Noronha, 1893.
Watson, Rubie S. and Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, eds. Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991.
Chapter 7 by Watson: ‘Wives, Concubines and Maids: Servitude and Kinship in the Hong Kong Region, 1900-1941’, pp. 231-256.
Other chapters refer to related issues from 6th-Century China to 20th-Century Shanghai.
***
VARIOUS IMAGES OF VARIOUS HONG KONG LIVES:
Asia Society Galleries. Picturing Hong Kong – Photography 1855-1910. New York: Asia Society Galleries/George Braziller, 1997.
Brandel, Judith and Tina Turbeville. Tiger Balm Gardens, A Chinese Billionaire’s Fantasy Environments. Hong Kong: The Aw Boon Haw Foundation, 1998.
Cheng Po-hung. A Century of New Territories Roads and Streets. Translated by Patrick H Hase. Joint Publishing (HK), 2003.
Cheng Po-hung and Toong Po-ming. A Century of Kowloon Roads and Streets. Translated by Irene Cheng, Ko Tim-keung and Paul Levine. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (HK), 2003.
Cheng Po Hung. A Century of Hong Kong Island Roads and Streets. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (HK), 2001.
Cheng Po Hung. Hong Kong Through Postcards 1940s-1970s. (Hong Kong in Pictorials Series). Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (HK), 1997.
Cheng Po Hung. Early Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula. Hong Kong: University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, 2007.
Go, Simon. Hong Kong Apothecary, A Visual History of Chinese Medicine Packaging. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations, 2001/2003.
Hong Kong Arts Centre. Visual Research into Contemporary Hong Kong 1990-1996. Hong Kong: Photo Pictorial Publishers & Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1996.
Hong Kong Museum of Art. Historical Pictures. Hong Kong: The Urban Council, 1991.
Hong Kong Museum of Art. Views of the Pearl River Delta, Macau Canton and Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Urban Council and the Peabody Essex Museum, 1996.
Hong Kong Museum of History, Urban Council. Historical Photographs of Hong Kong, Part 2 (1991), and Part 3 (1994).
Hong Kong Tourist Association. Around and About Hong Kong April 16th 1961 (pamphlet). Hong Kong: HK Tourist Association, 1961.
Hong Kong Tourist Association. Around and About Hong Kong October 16th 1961 (Pamphlet). Hong Kong: HK Tourist Association, 1961.
Joint Publishing (HK). In Chinese: Old Photos of Hong Kong, 1994.
Society for Community Organizations. Photo Album of Cages. Hong Kong: SOCO, 1993.
Society for Community Organization. Homeless, Vols. I & II. Hong Kong: SOCO, 2007.
Society for Community Organization. Our Life in West Kowloon. Hong Kong: SOCO, no date.
Warner, John. Hong Kong Illustrated – Views and News 1840-1890. Hong Kong: John Warner, 1981.
Wattis Fine Art. Catalogues, various, Early Hong Kong and China Trade Pictures, 2008, 2009.
***
EARLY TRAVEL GUIDES:
Golden Guide to Hongkong and Macao. Hong Kong: Far Eastern Economic Review, 1969.
New Golden Guide to South and East Asia. Hong Kong: Far Eastern Economic Review, 1963. (Hardback)
The Hong Kong Guide 1893, Introduction by H.J. Lethdbridge. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1982.
***
Previous: 6. Peoples & Regional Roots | Index | Next: 8. Fictions