The Private Life of Old Hong Kong PDF Download

Author: Susanna Hoe
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This book presents a history of western women in Hong Kong and the Canton delta from the earliest years of the colony.

Author: Angelina Chin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442215615
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Emancipation, a defining feature of twentieth-century China society, is explored in detail in this compelling study. Angelina Chin expands the definition of women’s emancipation by examining what this rhetoric meant to lower-class women, especially those who were engaged in stigmatized sexualized labor who were treated by urban elites as uncivilized, rural, threatening, and immoral. Beginning in the early twentieth century, as a result of growing employment opportunities in the urban areas and the decline of rural industries, large numbers of young single lower-class women from rural south China moved to Guangzhou and Hong Kong, forming a crucial component of the service labor force as shops and restaurants for the new middle class started to develop. Some of these women worked as prostitutes, teahouse waitresses, singers, and bonded household laborers. At the time, the concept of“women’s emancipation” was high on the nationalist and modernizing agenda of progressive intellectuals, missionaries, and political activists. The metaphor of freeing an enslaved or bound woman’s body was ubiquitous in local discussions and social campaigns in both cities as a way of empowering women to free their bodies and to seek marriage and work opportunities. Nevertheless, the highly visible presence of sexualized lower-class women in the urban space raised disturbing questions in the two modernizing cities about morality and the criteria for urban citizenship. Examining various efforts by the Guangzhou and Hong Kong political participants to regulate women’s occupations and public behaviors, Bound to Emancipate shows how the increased visibility of lower-class women and their casual interactions with men in urban South China triggered new concerns about identity, consumption, governance, and mobility in the 1920s and 1930s. Shedding new light on the significance of South China in modern Chinese history, Chin also contributes to our understanding of gender and women’s history in China.

Author: Eliza Wing-Yee Lee
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774841907
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Gender and Change in Hong Kong analyzes women's changing identities and agencies amidst the complex interaction of three important forces, namely, globalization, postcolonialism, and Chinese patriarchy. The chapters examine the issues from a number of perspectives to consider legal changes, political participation, the situation of working-class and professional women, sexuality, religion, and international migration.

Author: Andrew Hillier
Publisher: City University of HK Press
ISBN: 962937577X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
“For this brief moment, the two sisters could be ‘together in heart and affection’, and through such letters bridge the distance of empire.” We often learn about the commerce, diplomacy, and military campaigns of the British empire without reference to the intimate side of life in these times—the development of self, the position of women, and the importance of family. In this book, the story of empire, so often told from a man’s perspective, is given a unique vantage point through Eliza Hillier’s letters to her younger sister, Martha. Written largely from Hong Kong, Shanghai, England, and Siam, the letters allow us to become a member of her family and follow the daily tribulations associated with the life of a young British woman in the port cities of Asia. We are thus able to share Eliza’s experiences as she leaves home to embark on married life, starts and raises a family, grieves at the abrupt and tragic loss of her husband, Charles Batten Hillier, and then sets about re-building her life. At once a reflection on the daily components of empire, an entertaining narrative of familial relationships, and the story of one woman’s inner feelings, My Dearest Martha guides us through the vagaries of life for a family who were very much a part of imperial careering and missionary circles in East and Southeast Asia. The letters are complemented by images and commentary from the author, a descendant of Eliza, providing context and depth, which together give us a fuller picture of British colonial life in the mid-1800s from a perspective that will resonate with readers around the world.

Author: Andrew Hillier
Publisher: City University of HK Press
ISBN: 9629376776
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Following the ending of the First Opium War and the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, Britain opened five treaty ports on the Chinese mainland in the cities now known as Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, and Xiamen. Foreigners were allowed for the first time to live and work normally in these cities under the eyes of their state’s consul. In establishing this presence, consular staff and their families faced numerous challenges, including unsuitable accommodation, illness, hostile local authorities, attacks from militias and pirates, while at the same time adjusting to an unfamiliar language and culture. Henrietta Alcock (1812–1853), the first wife of the British Consul, Rutherford Alcock, was little-known until an album of sketches and watercolours depicting her life in China came to light. Acquired by the Martyn Gregory Gallery, London in the early 1990s, the works in the Alcock Album feature picturesque natural landscapes, traditional Chinese architecture, and scenes of consular life. Drawing on more than one hundred images, this richly illustrated volume brings her out of the shadows, providing a unique picture of the treaty port world in its very earliest days and of Henrietta as an amateur artist, the wife of a consul and, most importantly, a woman in empire.

Author: John Mark Carroll
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742534223
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
When the British occupied the tiny island of Hong Kong during the First Opium War, the Chinese empire was well into its decline, while Great Britain was already in the second decade of its legendary "Imperial Century." From this collision of empires arose a city that continues to intrigue observers. Melding Chinese and Western influences, Hong Kong has long defied easy categorization. John M. Carroll's engrossing and accessible narrative explores the remarkable history of Hong Kong from the early 1800s through the post-1997 handover, when this former colony became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The book explores Hong Kong as a place with a unique identity, yet also a crossroads where Chinese history, British colonial history, and world history intersect. Carroll concludes by exploring the legacies of colonial rule, the consequences of Hong Kong's reintegration with China, and significant developments and challenges since 1997.

Author: Steve Tsang
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857730835
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 539

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Book Description
This major history of Hong Kong tells the remarkable story of how a cluster of remote fishing villages grew into an icon of capitalism. The story began in 1842 with the founding of the Crown Colony after the First Anglo-Chinese war - the original 'Opium War'. As premier power in Europe and an expansionist empire, Britain first created in Hong Kong a major naval station and the principal base to open the Celestial Chinese Empire to trade. Working in parallel with the locals, the British built it up to become a focus for investment in the region and an international centre with global shipping, banking and financial interests. Yet by far the most momentous change in the history of this prosperous, capitalist colony was its return in 1997 to 'Mother China', the most powerful Communist state in the world.

Author: Patricia Lim
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622099904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
The author has recorded the inscriptions on all 8000 graves in the HK Cemetery. These by the way will be available in due course as an on-line database through the Hong Kong Memory project. She has selected, from the graves she has recorded, a wide range of people whose lives shed light on the nature of society in Hong Kong. Inevitably as this was the 'Colonial' cemetery, they are predominantly Europeans, although there are numerous Chinese and a surprising number of Japanese too. She has then sought out information on these people from contemporary newspapers, land records, court records etc to provide a rich description of life in Hong Kong during the first 100 years approximately from its colonization and a wonderful series of anecdotes. Patricia Limhas lived in Hong Kong for more than thirty years and is married to a Chinese. She studied at Cambridge University and had a long and happy career teaching English, History and Latin in various schools and bringing up a family of three daughters. On her retirement from teaching she decided to try to bring the often hard to find heritage of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories to the attention of a wider public by publishing two books of walks. This book followed on from the second book. When gathering material for a walk round the cemeteries of Happy Valley, the old, silent, granite monuments and headstones sparked a keen interest in the lives of the forgotten people who lay buried in Hong Kong Cemetery. "Patricia Lim turns a tour of the Cemetery into a tantalizing historical journey, rediscovering the many individuals whose lives - even the most fleeting and obscure - reflect significant developments and provide a nuanced understanding of Hong Kong's past. A solid database and a riveting good read - a winning combination!" -- Elizabeth Sinn, University of Hong Kong

Author: Philip Snow
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300103731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
The definitive account of the wartime history of Hong Kong On Christmas Day 1941 the Japanese captured Hong Kong, and Britain lost control of its Chinese colony for almost four years, a turning point in the process by which the British were to be expelled from the colony and from East Asia. This book unravels for the first time the dramatic story of the Japanese occupation and reinterprets the subsequent evolution of Hong Kong. "Magnificent. . . . The clarity of mind Snow brings to his labor of storytelling and contextualizing is] amazing."--John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph "Beautifully written, with many telling anecdotes."--Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs "Very good. . . . Provides] a much more nuanced picture than has appeared before in English of life among Hong Kong's different communities before and during the Japanese occupation."--Economist

Author: Moira M. W. Chan-Yeung
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888754319
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
In Daily Giving Service: A History of the Diocesan Girls’ School, Hong Kong, Moira M. W. Chan-Yeung and her fellow contributors present a comprehensive history of one of Hong Kong’s oldest girls’ schools. As an alumna of the school, Chan-Yeung traces the history of her alma mater from its establishment in 1860, its development over the last 150 years until the recent decade. Having experienced stability and turbulences in Hong Kong in the twentieth century, the school has become one of the most prominent girl’s schools in the city. In several chapters written by other alumni, various aspects of school life of different eras are reconstructed and remembered. The author and other contributors focused on the postwar era in which Hong Kong grew from a small city to a global metropolitan. The expansion of the Diocesan Girls’ School largely followed this trend. The history of the school has also long been connected with the socio-economic development of Hong Kong society, sharing its happiness and sadness. “This book is likely to become the gold standard against which all future school histories in Hong Kong are judged. Comprehensive, insightful, and full of fascinating anecdote, the inspiring story of DGS is told both chronologically in Moira Chan’s main text and thematically in the specialist chapters contributed by her co-authors. This is a school history that tells us much about the larger story of education in Hong Kong while focusing on a single educational institution.” —Peter Cunich, Director, Centenary History Project, The University of Hong Kong “The history of DGS reinforces my observation that Hong Kong schools form an unusual system that combines the best of East and West in the philosophy and practice of education. The younger schools in Hong Kong that mushroomed later were basically modelled after schools such as DGS. That accounts for the excellence envied by many.” —Cheng Kai-ming, SBS, JP, Professor Emeritus, The University of Hong Kong “The history of DGS reveals how the path taken by the school over the years reflects the very qualities that define a person. DGS, like our home Hong Kong, has witnessed in equal measure challenges, disasters, and triumphs, and has dealt with them with equanimity. Dignity, respect, tolerance, courage, fairness, honesty, and of course excellence—underpinned by pastoral care—represent those essential qualities that have had to be called upon. As we now know, they have become the minimum tools expected of her students to realise fully their true potential in life and properly contribute to our community. This is their story.” —The Honourable Mr Geoffrey Ma Tao-li, GBM, Former Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal (2010–2021)