Author: viviank

Introducing Luca Yau

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Our guest writer this week is Luca Yau, who’s set to start her PhD at Trinity College Dublin in March 2019. During her MPhil study at Lingnan University, Luca explored the representations and self-representations of Hakka women since the mid-nineteenth century.

I was born and raised in a Hakka family, a group whose ethnicity has become marginalized and increasingly unseen in the process of rapid urbanization in the post-war period. In the 1970s, the British colonial government mandated the teaching medium of Hong Kong to be Cantonese, with the result that the Hakka dialect has been dying out over decades, losing its voice almost without a murmur. The number of Hakka speakers has declined to a worrying level, with less than 1% of the population over the age of 30 being able to speak the dialect. It was once one of the major dialects of Hong Kong in the pre-WWII period.

Having grown up in a Cantonese-dominated society, my Hakka identity has been always invisible outside of my family sphere, giving me multiple identities in terms of ethnicity. Being different from the Cantonese majority, questions on what constitutes one’s identity have often come to my mind. This notion has also shaped my curiosity towards the transformation of Hakka identity in Hong Kong, and ultimately inspired the questions that would define the research I pursued for my MPhil degree.

In my research, I worked on the representations and self-representations of Hakka women, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The first challenge I encountered in my MPhil studies was the challenge inherent in seeking a standard definition of who, or what, constitutes Hakka. This most elementary of questions has long proven to be a stumbling block for scholars who have endeavored to give a solid definition of what it means to be a Hakka. But such efforts of definition are fraught, when their validity can be so undermined by the consideration of any of the numerous counter examples which challenge any fixed criteria of Hakka identity. I later came to realize that the identity itself is fluid, floating, and extremely changeable. It is not scientifically practical to seek to define a group which is in fact ethnically undefinable; rather, Hakka identity has been historically constructed in different contexts.

Images of Hakka women have tended to appear as very vibrant in historical discourses, museum representations, and the ongoing Hakka projects of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). The very first Chinese historical writing on Hakka women emerged in the context of the Hakka people competing for scarce resources with the Punti people (Native Cantonese) in the early 19th century. The population had doubled between 1650 and 1800. When the relations between Hakka and Punti became tense, Hakka women were singled out for comparison with Punti women, receiving constant compliments – for having unbound feet, being hygienic, hardworking, and independent – representations which have acted to effectively constitute the characteristics of Hakka women, adding a layer of perceived glory to Hakka identity. I was intrigued by the vigorous images of Hakka women, produced as they were in what was a significantly patriarchal society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the fact that such images have been able to survive through the centuries, such that you can still see them predominating in the exhibitions of the Hong Kong History Museum and in the promotion of ICH on Hakka items.

Had a casual conversation with a Punti woman speaking Weitou dialect (a branch of Cantonese) in the Northern New Territeries on 15 August, 2014. Photo Courtesy of John Choy.

To examine the ways in which Hakka women have been represented, and how they have created self-representations, in museums and in the trend of intangible cultural heritage preservation, entails the employment of anthropological methodologies to enable critical access to the thoughts of Hakka women, to contextualise observations on how they are represented and how they have been given space to make their own self-representations. I was very fortunate to get to know several of the major practitioners of Hakka patterned band weaving in Hong Kong, including Tsui Yuet-ching and Choi Ching-mui, who were both invited to present their cultural practices in different kinds of media. Under the wave of intangible cultural heritage preservation, they have been afforded the chance to empower themselves and to make a voice on behalf of Hakka women.

I conducted interviews with them and attended the talks and lectures that they offered to the public, the analysis and contextualization of which comprised a significant part of my research findings. In their genuine and forthright spirit of sharing, it can be seen that, even in a patriarchal society, women have had their own ability and space to express themselves and to create their own cultures through Hakka mountain songs and patterned bands in the past. In recent years, Hakka women have been enjoying the spotlight in exhibitions and activities at the center of the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in the public sphere, whilst Hakka men worked behind the scene to preserve Hakka culture, receiving comparatively little attention for their contributions and being unseen in the media coverage. This fact has reminded me to adopt, and to ensure, a more balanced lens in looking at the gender roles between Hakka women and men.

My interviewee, Choi Ching-mui was putting a Hakka patterned band on me at her home in Sha Tin on 20 January 2016. Photo courtesy of Hulu Culture.

I enjoyed the privilege of conducting interviews with the representatives of Hakka women who have endeavored to promote and preserve Hakka culture. They are happy to speak Hakka and share their past and thoughts on safeguarding Hakka culture. When we speak the same dialect, we feel as though we are culturally connected. My Hakka background has enabled me to make interpretations and observations of how they make sense of their identity, and of the revitalization of Hakka culture. My interviewees are very proud of being Hakka – in doing so, they have echoed many of the historical discourses on the Hakka people, and particularly on Hakka women, illuminating the extent to which essentialised views of Hakka women have been inherited. These are products of a historically constructed identity.

 

 

The diversity that we see in Hong Kong today is mostly based on the categorization of a territory in which Chinese ethnicities have become almost invisible, as the majority of the population either speaks Cantonese or Mandarin. The various ethnic groups have become homogenized into one all-encompassing Chinese identity, one which overlooks, and forgets, the diversity that previously existed among the Chinese of Hong Kong, and the position that ethnicity once held in defining communities and identity. Further study on ethnicity is needed in order to achieve a fresh understanding of the impacts of colonial policy on the New Territories. The interactions between the ethnic groups, the changing boundaries of ethnicity, the lines between rural and urban, the impacts of urbanization on ethnic merging, and the differences of gender roles between villages and estates. Consideration of these factors offers a window into a little understood aspect of the city’s history, allowing for a more complete picture of Hong Kong history to emerge in the historical record, and for posterity.

Introducing Chi Chi Huang

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Our guest writer this week is Chi Chi Huang, who recently finished her PhD at the University of Hong Kong. (Congrats Dr. Huang!) By incorporating archival research and the study of visual culture into her project, Chi Chi’s research explores how British popular culture imagined Hong Kong in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. Here’s Chi Chi telling us how memories of her trips to Hong Kong as a kid influenced the direction of her research. 

I was so excited for my first trip overseas. Mum packed a little goodie bag for me with a tube of Fruit Tingles (a real treat) and Pak Fah Yeow (白花油) (in case I felt sick). I had just turned six, I was going to Guangzhou via Hong Kong for the very first time since I migrated to Australia at the age of two. The trip started with a small hiccup – a delightful detainment at Hong Kong Immigration and Customs where I experienced two firsts in my life. I, (well my father on my behalf), applied for my first individual passport because my previous one was attached to my mother’s, hence the hiccup. And I experienced my first nosebleed. My Uncle swiftly came down from Guangzhou with copies of various documents demonstrating that I was, in fact, “Dao Zi Huang”, the name only my doctor would use. Soon enough, or soon enough in my memory, we were all skipping along on our merry way to Guangzhou.

My second trip to Guangzhou via Hong Kong lives in my memory with less enthusiasm. I was about nine and the previous year, I watched the Handover ceremony on television with utter confusion as to how one country in the first instance could rent a section of another country like you would an apartment or car. This time, the distance between Hong Kong and Guangzhou seemed further apart and littered with more barriers and checkpoints. I think this memory is less a comment of the changes that took place after the Handover, rather a reflection of the things I chose to pay attention to as a kid. In any case, I was not impressed. I simply could not understand why it was so hard to move around Canton!

These trips shaped my curiosity towards the city and ultimately the questions I asked in my PhD research. I grew up thinking of Hong Kong and Guangzhou as more or less one entity because, in my mind, everyone spoke Cantonese, enjoyed steamed fish with abandon, and ate wonton noodles. Once I started to grasp the concept of politics and diplomacy, I started to notice the differences between the two cities. When I was proposing a research topic, I was intrigued by what my friends knew and thought of Hong Kong and China, which seemed to mirror my own initial understanding. This led me to think about how cities shift in ones’ perception through experiences and exposure. Extrapolating from this, I began my research with the question “How did Britain perceive Hong Kong in the early colonial period, and how did this change over time?” Inevitably, this topic was too large, and I refined my core question to “In what ways was Hong Kong made to matter to Britain?”

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the colony of Hong Kong had no discernible product or produce that was a quotidian feature of home life in Britain. The population in Hong Kong, whilst Chinese, wasn’t considered necessarily as intriguing as the more “authentic” visions that could be found just a few hours north of the colony. Hong Kong, however, was far from absent in British popular culture. In the various iterations of this public space, Hong Kong slowly morphed into a tropical ideal, in its geographical position, physical features, and social offerings. These ideals were, of course, in constant tension with colonial anxieties. But it is exactly in this tension that the value of Hong Kong as understood by individuals, scientists, merchants, and the colonial administration was expressed.

One of the postcards that Chi Chi used in her research. (Hong Kong Pavillion at the British Empire Exhibition, Postcard, Fleetway Press Ltd., 1924)

I am now contemplating how to turn my thesis into a book and I find myself wandering back to those memories and to the time when I conflated ideas of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Before the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, Hong Kong was often talked about in relation to Canton, Macau, Singapore, Shanghai, Calcutta, Scotland, and even Budapest. Some of these connections are more obvious than the others, but it speaks to the malleability of how Hong Kong was perceived by the British. Perhaps the city’s current brand as “Asia’s World City” holds some historical truth, as Hong Kong refracted visions, aspirations, and concerns from across the globe.

 

Introducing Reynold Tsang

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This week our guest writer is Reynold Tsang, MPhil student at the University of Hong Kong. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Reynold shares with us his research on the development of museums in late colonial Hong Kong, and how such research informs us about various aspects of the city’s history.

 

Thanks to the colourful history comic books from public libraries and various historically themed video games, I developed my interest in history at the very early stage of my life. I received my BA degree at HKU, and naturally picked History as my major. I did not have any specific research interest at first, but I was gradually attracted to Hong Kong history and history of colonialism by the end of my undergraduate study. I was born and raised in Hong Kong. As a Hongkonger, I am eager to learn more about the place I call home and love. I also feel the obligation to record the history of the city before part of it was lost or being forgotten. My interest in colonial history grew from my study of Hong Kong’s colonial past.

Apart from being a history lover, I am also a big fan of museums. So, I wrote about the development of museums in late colonial Hong Kong for my undergraduate dissertation. I later noticed that this topic has been overlooked by historians and there is much more to investigate. I therefore decided to continue my “unfinished” work on museums in late colonial Hong Kong in a more comprehensive manner in my MPhil study.

My study will span from the 1930s to the 1990s, covering the death, rebirth, and growth of museums in Hong Kong. I seek to answer three major questions in my study. First, how did the colonial government and the Urban Council direct museum development? Second, what were displayed or presented in the museums and why were they chosen? Third, what influences did museums bring to the community and how they interacted with each other? I will utilize different sources from various archives, including government documents, minutes and working papers of the Urban Council and the Hong Kong Legislative Council, English and Chinese newspapers, brochures and other publications of museums, guidebooks and other promotional materials for tourists.

Museum history may seem trivial, but it can shed light on different themes and issues in Hong Kong history. For example, by studying the planning and directions of museum services, we can learn about the cultural policies of the colonial authorities, which give us insights on the colonial administration of Hong Kong; by examining the collections and contents of museums, we can identify what kinds of “knowledge” and “facts” were the colonial authorities trying to convey to the public, thus revealing the hidden political or cultural agenda of the colonial authorities. Museums are also highly related to arts and culture, education and tourism. With connections to various aspects of society, museum history offers us a new perspective to look at the history of colonial Hong Kong.

Introducing Thomas M. Larkin

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Sorry that it took us a while to resume our publishing routine! This week we have Bristol’s very own Thomas M. Larkin to tell us his fascinating research. Supported by the Augustine Heard Studentship within the Hong Kong History Project at University of Bristol, Thomas works on Anglo-American relations in 19th century China, and aims to find out how trade competition between the two communities influenced the development of Hong Kong society.

 

 

Thomas Larkin

I sort of side-stepped into the study of Chinese history. York University, where I completed my BA and MA, has a strong multidisciplinary community of scholars focusing on South and East Asia, so I was spoiled for choices on what to study. I was originally drawn to Edo-period Japan and the Dutch trade at Dejima. I was gently nudged by my professors, however, into the study of China. This new focus quickly developed into a wide range of interests, spanning from the early Qing Empire to the rise of the Chinese Communist Party. Identifying just one topic to focus on within such a vast timeframe has been the real challenge.

 

The choice was made a bit easier by my undergraduate experiences. In the course of my studies I had to opportunity to take a year in Hong Kong. Like many before me, I became swept up in the distinctly Hong Kong culture, food, and aesthetic. I inevitably met a number of expatriates during my brief time in the city. Each time I felt the urge to ask what has become a nagging question whenever I see expatriates in any part of the world to this day: “How and why did you end up here?” This fascination in the origins and legacies of expatriate communities has expanded more broadly into an interest in how cultures interact and selectively borrow from each other, and how prejudices and socio-cultural hierarchies are developed, maintained, or transcended.

The Augustine Heard Studentship at the University of Bristol has offered the perfect opportunity to explore some of the themes outlined above. My topic, investigating nineteenth century Anglo-American (and to an extent Sino-American and Sino-British) relations in the Pearl River Delta, addresses the ways distinct expatriate communities interacted in Canton and Hong Kong in a shifting regional and global context. The project aims to understand the ways expatriate communities were shaped by their uniquely cross-cultural experiences, and how they conformed to or deviated from the political, cultural, and social norms of their home countries. The stipulations of the studentship necessitate the use of the Augustine Heard archives at Harvard University, and as such I hope to demonstrate that commercial entities such as a company can provide windows into the social histories of places of contact such as Hong Kong.

The purpose of the Augustine Heard Studentship is to promote the study of Anglo-American relations in China, making use of the Augustine Heard records in the Baker Library Special Collections at Harvard Business School. This is a vast (almost too vast) archive of material containing the business records of the American company Augustine Heard & Co., the Forbeses, and the various captains, free traders, and partners associated with the firm. The collection holds thousands of records from the family and their associates, touching upon everything from orders for tailored pants from a favourite shop in Boston to gunboat diplomacy and trade with Hong Xiuchuan and the Taiping. The company operated in Canton, Hong Kong, Japan, and many of the treaty-ports in China, and the Heard brothers were first-hand witnesses to just about every major event in 19th century Chinese history. Continued work with these archives has the potential to augment our understanding of Sino-Western interaction, offering a fresh perspective to a narrative typically approached through a British lens.

By studying a company like Augustine Heard & Co., we gain crucial insight into the ways commercial practices influenced societal norms. The most visible of company employees were the partners, who occupied an elite place in society and tended to spend lavishly. But China-trade companies were also made up of clerks, accountants, compradors, shroffs, and coolies. They employed captains, sailors, architects, builders, pilots, and supercargos. Their Western employees brought their families over, kept mistresses, formed strategic business ties (or rivalries) and generally became an integral part of the social fabric of Hong Kong. The study of a company, not as an empirical unit of commercial success or failure, but as a system peopled by individuals of various ethnicities and classes, reveals the ways society and culture in a place such as Hong Kong were at least partially the products of these seemingly impersonal entities.

Katon Lee looking for interviewees for HK suit culture, 1950s-80s

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一則來自英國布里斯托大學歷史系博士候選人李啟雋（Katon Lee）有關口述訪問的信息：

您好！我正埋首於有關1950至80年代香港華人西裝文化的研究。如果您（或您的親朋好友）知道有關香港裁縫、裁縫商店的故事，或曾在港訂造西裝，我誠邀您與我分享您的寶貴故事。我現身處香港，可與您在港見面傾談，如不方便會面，亦可透過Skype以網上訪問。

如對我的研究有任何疑問，歡迎發電郵至katon.lee@bristol.ac.uk。期待您的分享和回覆！

This week we have a message from Katon Lee, history PhD student at the University of Bristol, seeking oral history interviewees for his research:

Hi all, I am currently doing a project about Hong Kong suit culture. My project aims to use suits as a case study to reveal the reshaping of Chinese society and culture under colonial influence from the 1950s to the 1980s. I would definitely love to hear from you if you (or your family and friends) know anything about tailors and tailoring businessmen or have any experiences of buying suits in Hong Kong, particularly from the 1950s to the 1980s. We could arrange a face-to-face meeting as I am currently in Hong Kong for research, or a Skype meeting if you prefer going online. If you have any questions about my research project, please feel free to contact me via katon.lee@bristol.ac.uk. I sincerely look forward to your precious and fascinating stories!

 

Introducing Amelia Allsop

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We are delighted have Amelia Allsop as our guest writer this week. The Research Manager of the Hong Kong Heritage Project 香港社會發展回顧項目, Amelia is doing her PhD at King’s College, London. Here she tells us her way into Hong Kong history, and her fascinating doctoral research about Jewish refugees in Hong Kong. 

I completed my History BA at King’s College London in 2005 and in the same year I embarked on an International Relations MA, also at King’s, while working for my local Labour MP. At the end of the course I was offered a position in Hong Kong to help set-up an archive for the Kadoorie family and their business and charitable entities, which include China Light and Power and The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels. I worked closely with the Archivist to secure acquisitions across various businesses, describe the collection and promote access for researchers based in Hong Kong and overseas. It was an immensely enjoyable, challenging and rewarding experience, and provided a practical introduction to the world of archives – a discipline with a vital role to play in preserving Hong Kong’s memory. Over the next few years I recorded over 200 English language oral history interviews (and counting!) with public figures and ‘everyday’ historians and worked with colleagues to showcase the archive via publications and on our website. Today, the Hong Kong Heritage Project (HKHP), as the archive is known, regularly hosts exhibitions and works in partnership with youth organisations to encourage an interest in local history. In 2015 I moved back to London and embarked on a PhD on the topic of Jewish refugees in Hong Kong – again at King’s. I continue to work for HKHP as Research Manager and regularly return to Hong Kong.

My thesis is titled ‘A Borrowed Place: Jewish Refugees in Hong Kong, 1938 – 1956’. The idea of Hong Kong as a ‘borrowed place’ is perhaps a bit of a tired cliché, but the epithet captures contested themes of transience and disappearance so central to literature on Hong Kong’s history and culture, which has been shaped by successive waves of refugees. It also speaks to the alienation experienced by many Jewish refugees when they passed through Hong Kong on their way to or from Shanghai, many of whom were poorly treated by the colonial authorities. I became interested in this topic in 2010, when HKHP collaborated with the Hong Kong Jewish Historical Society to curate an exhibition on the Jews of China. I started to consider the viability of the topic as a PhD subject when, on further reading, I discovered that Jewish refugees in Hong Kong were absent from refugee literature, from wider Holocaust writing (specifically, Shanghai as a ‘Port of Last Resort’), and finally, from explorations of Hong Kong’s Jewish community, which tended to focus on the Baghdadi diaspora. It’s a little-known topic but one that I feel will contribute to debates tackling Jewish flight, refuge and rescue, particularly within the British Empire. As part of this study I hope to compare colonial responses to Jewish refugees with other refugee groups in Hong Kong, namely stateless Russian refugees, at times viewed with suspicion as Soviet spies, and Chinese refugees, who, for reasons of economic and political expediency were labelled ‘squatters’ by the Hong Kong government.

Existing historiography on Hong Kong’s Jews, mostly written in the 1980s and 1990s, has fixated on Baghdadis and their role as the founding fathers of Hong Kong’s Jewish community. Families such as the Sassoons are central to this literature. Although I examine the humanitarian role of Baghdadis vis-à-vis the refugees, my aim is to uncover hidden histories of refugee groups – their escape from Nazi occupied Europe, their experiential perspectives of Hong Kong, Shanghai and the China Coast, and the politicised response of the colonial government towards this persecuted group as ‘aliens’ rather than refugees. As with all historians, I believe in the value of my work and I’m passionate about my research topic. But beyond my own interest, the importance of this research lies not in Hong Kong’s status as a ‘refuge’, but in its ability to draw wider parallels on the Jewish refugee experience in the western and non-western worlds. It is a microcosm of displacement and internment, so familiar to the refugee encounter, within a uniquely British imperial and Chinese setting that links together the local, regional and global. My research hopes to fill gaps in Sino-Judaic literature whilst enriching studies of empire, identity and minority groups in Hong Kong. It seeks to fill a lacuna in Shanghai’s refugee historiography by looking to the exodus of Jewish refugees and their transit through Hong Kong, and in tandem, hopes to complement existing studies on refugees in the former colony, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Finally, I seek to reveal, for the first time, Jewish refugee memory of Hong Kong.

I’d be delighted to hear from other researchers with an interest in this subject, and especially from former refugees and their relatives. I can be contacted at: https://hongkongrefuge.wordpress.com/connect/

Finally, more information on the Hong Kong Heritage Project can be found on our website: www.hongkongheritage.org and further details of my research can be found on my blog: https://hongkongrefuge.wordpress.com/.

Natalie Fong on finding her ancestors in China and Hong Kong

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Where There’s a Will There’s a Way:
Finding My Ancestors in China and Hong Kong

by Natalie Fong 鄺黎頌

My research journey started in London, where I completed an MA in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, in 2006. For one assignment, I analysed representations of nineteenth-century Chinese opium dens in London’s East End in literary texts and contemporary accounts. Living in London again in 2013, I researched opium protest movements as a “spin-off” project, possibly as a proposal for an MPhil or PhD. While reading Virginia Berridge’s ‘East End Opium Dens and Narcotic Use in Britain’, something caught my eye: in 1909, 72 Chinese residents in Liverpool signed a petition asking the Home Secretary to ban the importation and sale of smoking opium. Further research uncovered Chinese in Australia who were active anti-opium protestors: Reverend Cheong Cheok Hong (who delivered an address to the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade in London), and a letter to the editor of the Northern Territory Times and Gazette in 1907 from Chinese storekeepers in Palmerston (now Darwin, Northern Territory) responding to allegations that they were illegally selling opium. Among the signatories was “Wing Wah Loong”, the business established around 1890 by my great-grandfather, Fong How (鄺修榮/Kwong Sau Wing/Fong Sui Wing). The “spin-off project” now had global and personal significance. I needed to go back to Australia.

In 2014, I began an MPhil at Griffith University, Brisbane, on Chinese-organised protests in the Northern Territory, 1880-1920. This was a key period in Australian history with the formulation of the 1901 Immigration Act and other discriminatory legislation (collectively referred to as the “White Australia Policy”). The Chinese merchants in the Northern Territory protested against these discriminatory measures on behalf of the Chinese community in a variety of ways. Authorities in Australia and countries such as America and Canada did, however, make exceptions for merchants who facilitated Asian-Australian trade, their families and their households. Thus, discrimination was not just racial, but also class-based. Such exceptions allowed my great-grandfather and other Chinese merchants to operate businesses that were transnational, familial (branches managed by male family members) and transfamilial (between families). My great-grandfather was apparently in partnership with Northern Territory businessman Lee Chow of Man Fong Lau (萬芳楼) and wealthy Victorian merchant Louey Way Sun (雷維信). The company’s headquarters, Man Sun Wing (萬信榮), was at 9 Connaught Road West, Hong Kong. A managing partner, Lui Leung (雷亮), would later be a founding member of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company. The Fongs had businesses in Darwin, Katherine, Mataranka, Broome, Sydney, Fiji and the Philippines. Fong How was absent from Australia for periods of six months to seven years, reflecting the lifestyle of a merchant with many businesses and more than one family (the first, or principal, wife commonly resided in the ancestral home in the family village in China, with another wife in Australia). Gold was sent from Australia to the villages via Hong Kong, and children might be sent to China or Hong Kong for education and marriage. My project expanded into a PhD examining Chinese merchants as active citizens in the Northern Territory.

Natalie with a portrait of her father’s maternal grandfather, Lowe Dep, in Lowe Dep’s house in his village in Kaiping

During my candidature, I have been working as a secondary English and History teacher at Citipointe Christian College, Brisbane, and my employers have generously allowed me to stay back on overseas school trips to research. In 2016, after our school visited its sister school in Hong Kong, Diocesan Girls’ School (DGS), I enlisted the help of DGS teachers to visit the Hong Kong Public Records Office. Providentially, I found my great-grandfather’s will, long presumed lost or non-existent. He died in 1920, his last visit to China, and is buried in the mountains in Taishan, near his village. This added to our family history puzzle and confirmed the transnational nature of Chinese businesses. The Carl Smith Collection and business directories held by Hong Kong University Libraries are invaluable for locating transnational Chinese businesses. A research project I would like to pursue in future is to map Chinese businesses with links to Australia, America and Asia, with headquarters in Hong Kong (I’ve counted 230 so far).

A further connection with Hong Kong is through my grandfather, Edward Fong (Kwong), who passed away in 1995. He was born and grew up in Darwin and was four when Fong How passed away. In 1928, Edward (aged 14), his brother Harry and their mother travelled to Hong Kong, where their mother died in 1929. Edward returned to Darwin, and his eldest brother became his guardian. As mentioned, merchant families in Australia might send children to China or Hong Kong to be educated in Chinese; for sons, to become scholars, or as preparation for working in family businesses. In 1930, Edward was sent to complete his primary education at the Overseas Chinese Military Academy, part of Lingnam University in Canton (now Guangzhou). He completed his secondary education in 1933 at St Stephen’s College, Stanley. Edward began studying towards a BSc at St John’s University, Shanghai, but with the advancing Japanese forces, he returned to Hong Kong and obtained a teaching position at Diocesan Boys’ School, Kowloon, in 1938. The encroachment of the Japanese led to Edward returning to Darwin, where he worked in a family business. I only found out about his former career as a teacher through this project. This year (2018), while in Hong Kong en route to China, with the help of teacher friends I toured the grounds of St Stephen’s College and Diocesan Boys’ School. I also devised a Chinese Merchants Heritage Trail.

This was my first trip to mainland China, as part of Dr Kate Bagnall and Dr Sophie Couchman‘s Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour (photo diaries @miss pom and #cahht). We visited historically significant sites in Guangdong related to the Chinese diaspora. Exploring the villages gave insight into, and appreciation for, the sacrifices made by those who left and those who remained, in order to pursue opportunities abroad but also to invest back into family villages. We observed the wonderful work of Dr Selia Tan (Wuyi University) and her team in preserving this important cultural heritage. With the assistance of Kate, Sophie, Selia and her students, I visited the ancestral villages of Fong How and the houses built from the profits of his trade, and also my father’s maternal grandfather, Lowe Dep, who was from Kaiping and became a market gardener in the Northern Territory.

Currently, I am researching wives and daughters of Northern Territory Chinese merchants (including my great-grandmother and great-aunts) and their involvement in businesses – an area of history worthy of greater exploration. This has expanded my project’s scope to 1950.

This research project has been an incredible journey, geographically, academically and personally, only possible with the help of many, particularly my aunts Lyn and Barbara Fong, whose family history research has been foundational, and my supervisors, Professor Fiona Paisley and Professor Regina Ganter, for their valuable feedback.

Vaudine England on writing a company’s history

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BY VAUDINE ENGLAND

At first glance, a history of a company best known for selling building products, especially sanitary ware, might seem a little dull. This was not a big name like Jardines or Swires; not even Dodwells or Gibb Livingston. This was Arnhold & Company. Looking back at the nineteenth century you won’t even find such a firm, but you will find Arnhold, Karberg & Co, and indeed, they are direct relatives, one growing out of the other.

 

This gives the first hint of an interesting story — who were Mr Arnhold and Mr Karberg and what happened to them? And why did the company have to change its name? In fact, it changed at least four times over its existence, depending how you define the word ‘change’, and that’s not including the brief period it was publicly listed as i-Onyx.

Luckily, this company has a current patriarch, Michael Green, who was personally enthusiastic about all the ups and, more importantly, the downs of the company. He has told a fantastic story, unafraid of exposing failings or crises, and personally encouraging the discovery of much that was not known about his company’s past.

What makes Arnholds fascinating is that it has lived through interesting times. Arnholds, Karberg & Co was founded in Hong Kong in 1866, with a branch office in Canton opened a year later. The young men involved came from Northern German and Danish Jewish families and already had experience working in silk from Canton. They soon expanded to Shanghai and beyond, and diversified beyond silk into manufacturing machinery and products, bringing part of Europe’s industrial revolution eastwards.

Then World War One began, and being a German company in British Hong Kong suddenly became impossible. All German firms were liquidated, and Germans interned, often breaking up close friendships and ruining lives. From 1914 to 1918, Harry and Charles Arnhold, sons of the firm’s founder Jacob Arnhold, were busy ducking and weaving, desperately trying to find ways to save the business. They managed it — although some of their competitors never quite forgave them for their clever dealing — only to be taken over by Sir Victor Sassoon in Shanghai.

Again, those interesting times intervened — the bombing of Shanghai by Japan in 1937, the onset of expanded war by 1941, internment of the Arnholds and many others, and the slow death of all foreign firms in China after 1949 and the flight back to Hong Kong. By then, a bright young engineer called Maurice Green had risen through the ranks enough to be able to get control of the flailing firm in Hong Kong in the 1950s, and Arnholds has been run by the Green family ever since.

How does one find out what actually happened in places which have been dragged through such revolutionary change that few records survive? The answer in this case was the London Metropolitan Archives near Roseberry Avenue in London, and of course the National Archives at Kew. That’s after spending time in the Carl T. Smith Collection, and tracking down long-forgotten descendants by knocking on deserted doors in deepest Sussex.

For me, the realities of a trading company on the nineteenth century China Coast required a crash course on Treaty Ports. Beyond all that faded grandeur of large old mansions and godowns in far-flung towns, it was necessary to learn what was actually traded (I’m still not absolutely certain what strawbraid is), how it worked in all its very many variations, and how the conditions and personalities in these places changed over time. Just as it takes only a bit of colonial history reading to find out how vastly different each colony was from the next, so too with treaty ports.

There remains a wealth of business history to be done with these and other little-used resources. Using a company as a red thread which one follows through a range of strange places and events is yet another way to tell history. In this case, it meant that a cold case file could be opened and, for now, closed, having told the firm’s owners many things about their company and its interesting times that they never knew. Hopefully others will explore the many more old firms and families whose daily lives and travails help illuminate the past.

 

HKHP Talk: ‘A System Apart? Hong Kong’s Political Economy from 1997’

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‘A System Apart? Hong Kong’s Political Economy from 1997’ by Simon Cartledge
1 February 2018, 6-7 pm
Venue: LT2, Arts Complex, University of Bristol

Since 1997, Hong Kong’s economic growth rate has dropped sharply, inequality has increased, and corruption has found its way to the highest levels of government. These changes can in good part be attributed to the city’s ‘pro-business’ constitution, which has held back change and led to the rise of anti-establishment, localist opposition.

Drawing on the arguments of his book, A System Apart, traces the interplay of Hong Kong’s economy, society, politics and relations with the rest of China over the last twenty years – and where this leaves this leave the city today.

Biography

Simon Cartledge is the founder of Hong Kong-based publishing and research company Big Brains and a former Editor-in-Chief, Asia for the Economist Intelligence Unit. He has lived in Hong Kong for more than twenty-five years.

For further details, please see here.

Introducing Kaori Abe

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Kaori Abe is a former postdoctoral fellow of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and has a PhD in History from the University of Bristol. Her main research areas are the history of Hong Kong, modern China and the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Don’t forget to check out her book Chinese Middlemen in Hong Kong’s Colonial Economy, 1830–1890 if you’re interested in her fascinating research on compradors in Hong Kong!

I was not planning to research the history of Hong Kong when I started to write my undergraduate thesis at the International Christian University of Tokyo. At that time, I had just returned to Japan from a year abroad programme in Hong Kong.

I enjoyed my stay in Hong Kong, as it was my first time living abroad. Dorm, or hall, life was particularly memorable. I had the opportunity to study, live, and socialise with local students. These students, the young elite of Hong Kong, were good at adopting new technologies, informal and formal networking, learning different languages, and organising activities and societies.

The culture, society, and people of Hong Kong fascinated me. However, I knew that I was too passionate about these things to conduct research related to Hong Kong. An effective researcher should be able to observe and analyse his/her research subject from a neutral perspective.

Therefore, I submitted my research proposal on another area of modern Chinese history to my undergraduate supervisor. My supervisor looked over my research plan, returned it to me, and said, ‘Your proposal looks okay, but is it really the topic you’re interested in?’ I told him that I was interested in the history of Hong Kong, but I did not want to do research on it, because I could not be objective. My supervisor answered, ‘It’s fine. It’s OK to choose a topic about which you are passionate and emotional’.

This was the beginning of my now ten-year career as a Hong Kong history researcher. After completing my undergraduate course in Japan, I moved to the UK, studied the history of modern China and British Empire, and read a PhD in History at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Professor Robert Bickers. Last year, I published the book Chinese Middlemen in Hong Kong’s Colonial Economy, 1830–1890 (Routledge, 2017), which was based on my PhD dissertation on compradors in nineteenth century Hong Kong.

Compradors (買辦 maiban in Chinese) were Chinese middlemen working with foreign institutions and individuals in nineteenth and twentieth century China. The opening of treaty ports in China after the end of the Opium War in 1842 provided new business opportunities in the Chinese market for foreign companies. Similarly, this opening also provided economic opportunities for Chinese individuals interested in foreign markets and foreign companies. Many foreign firms in China hired local Chinese agents who were able to speak English or other European languages, as well as having business skills and a wide commercial network with other Chinese merchants. These individuals were often hired under the occupational title of ‘comprador’.

In the history of Hong Kong, compradors played key functions in the establishment of social institutions including the Tung Wah Hospital and the Po Leung Kuk (the Society for the Protection of Women and Children), together with other leading figures of the local Chinese community during the late nineteenth century.

Why did I focus on compradors? Firstly, compradors, in some ways, resembled the young students I met during my exchange programme in Hong Kong. Like the students I met, compradors embodied many attributes of the contemporary Hong Kong business elite. Present-day attributes of the Hong Kong business elite, such as the intermediation of Sino-foreign business, family-run companies, corruption, and philanthropy, could all be seen amongst compradors in nineteenth century Hong Kong.

There is also a lack of comprehensive research on compradors in Hong Kong. Many preceding works on the history of Hong Kong mention famous compradors such as Robert Hotung, financial magnate and Eurasian comprador to Jardine, Matheson & Co., and Kwok Acheong, comprador to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company and successful shipping merchant. These preceding works highlight that compradors constituted an important component of the Chinese elite in late nineteenth century Hong Kong. However, existing research has not fully explained why and how the compradors became indispensable economic middlemen by the 1870s and 1880s.

Through researching compradors in nineteenth century Hong Kong, I found that the comprador system was much more diverse than I had originally thought. For instance, some compradors worked for the colonial government and were different from commercial compradors. Most research argues that compradors were influential Chinese economic middlemen serving foreign companies, not official institutions. The diversity of compradors in Hong Kong prompts another question: ‘Who were the compradors in modern China?’, which suggests that further research is necessary. There should be more research into compradors operating in South East Asia and East Asia, outside of China.

Conducting research on intermediaries also enables us to understand the histories of nations, empires and cities from fresh perspectives. The voices of marginal actors, like compradors and local ‘collaborators’, has been silenced or labelled ‘unpatriotic’ in national histories. Focusing on knowledge exchange, and the movement of people and commodities, transnational and global history highlight the trans-national and trans-regional networks of overseas Chinese merchants and workers, whose narratives are not included in national histories. Similar to transnational and global history, the history of intermediaries also provides a voice to local, marginal actors who had previously been granted less attention and reveals the social, economic, and cultural realities that had been masked in national histories.

My next research project will focus on the decline of the compradors in twentieth century Hong Kong. My book analysed how compradors rose in Hong Kong, though it did not explain how they gradually lost their significance during the twentieth century. I will investigate what happened to compradors during the rise of Chinese nationalism, communism, and the decline of the British Empire, along with Japanese imperial expansion and the growth of the United States.

I’m also interested in the careers of shipwrecked Japanese sailors in nineteenth century China. The records on these individuals are sparse, but I am interested in how they worked with British merchants, missionaries, and diplomats in the Pearl River Delta, both before and after the end of Japan’s closed-door (鎖国 sakoku) policy.