Before proceeding to discuss Hong Kong's part in the interplay of Chinese and Western cultures, it is necessary to make a sketch of Hong Kong's position and role in China's communications with foreign countries.
The development of the island of Hong Kong began relatively late. The Kowloon peninsula and New Territories, had since the T'ang and Sung Dynasties, been prominent in China's intercourse with the outside world. Take the T'un Mên Bay (Castle Peak Bay) in the New Territories for instance. It served as an outer harbour of Canton from the days of T'ang and Sung onward; Chinese and foreign sea-faring craft called there or came to drop anchor, for the bay was linked to Canton by land and sea, and under the shelter of Lantao Island, it provided protection for shipping from the rage of the typhoon. Hong Kong Island, situated to the southeast, stands like a sentinel guarding the entrance to the bay.
Being a port of call for foreign vessels before sailing up to Canton, and for Chinese vessels before continuing their sea voyages, T'un Mên was often mentioned in the literary works of T'ang scholars. For instance, in his work on the sea-routes to Canton, Chia Tan, a literary man of the T'ang era, said: "We sailed southeastward for two hundred li and reached the T'un Mên Mount, and from there we hoisted sail and headed westward." The imposing scenery of T'un Mên often inspired T'ang poets in their compositions.
Even during the reign of Chêng Tê ( Emperor of the Ming Dynasty from 1514 to 1521), the Portuguese who came and traded in the East first thought of developing T'un Mên as their main base. Later they gave up the idea after they had occupied Macao and developed it into a trading centre. Then T'un Mên, as piracy became rife in the neighbourhood, gradually lost its importance in China's communication with foreign countries.
In the 21st year of the reign of Tao Kuang ( 1841), Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain. Under an efficient British administration which was based on the rule of law, Hong Kong (the island proper) and later, the Kowloon peninsula, grew prosperous and populous, and became a shipping centre in the Far East. Later the construction of the Kowloon-Canton railway linked Hong Kong and Canton. Now with a modern airport, Hong Kong is well connected with Europe and America, and grows daily in importance in the world. As former Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Cecil Clementi, said at the end of 1935: " Hong Kong is but a dot on the map of China; and yet it is a place of worldwide importance because of its ocean-borne commerce. Moreover, its commercial greatness rests upon the safest and most durable foundations, for nature has endowed it with a priceless asset in its wonderful harbour. British foresight divined and British enterprise has developed the potentialities latent in this generous gift of nature to mankind, with the result that today Hong Kong is one of the largest shipping centres in the world."
Since 1842, Europeans and Americans who came to preach or trade in China often came to Hong Kong first, and made themselves acquainted with the conditions in China before leaving for the mainland. The Chinese intending to go abroad also came to Hong Kong first: they either waited here for the arrival of liners or studied Western languages and other subjects here before sailing for their destinations.
For instance, the China Office of London Missionary Society was transferred from Malacca to Hong Kong in 1843; the Anglo-Chinese College, which had been established by Robert Morrison, was removed also from Malacca to Hong Kong in the same year. Rev. J. L. Shuck, sent by the Triennial Convention in the United States, arrived at Macao in 1836; he came and settled down in Hong Kong in 1842. In 1844, he and Rev. I. J. Roberts both left independently for Canton and remained there preaching. W. A. R. Martin came to Hong Kong from the United States in 1850 and studied Chinese here first and then left for the mainland. John Fryer came to the East in 1861 and became a teacher in Hong Kong. Later both taught English at the T'ung Wên College in Peking, and became well-known as translators of Western works.
Even Yung Hung who had petitioned to the Manchu Government to select and send boys to study in the United States, had to come to Hong Kong to enrol boys from among those who had already learned some English. Ou Fêng-ch'ih, a Cantonese, went to Germany and taught Cantonese at an institute of oriental languages, largely because of the fact that he had been a teacher in Hong Kong and had thus got acquainted with Western diplomats. All this points out Hong Kong's role in the cultura exchange between China and the West.
From the days of Han and Chin Dynasties down to 1842, a small number of Chinese dwelt in the Hong Kong area. They fished, ploughed or followed other callings. Naturally, Chinese rites, music, and institutions were relatively preserved here. When Hong Kong became a thriving port, industrialists and merchants from Kwangtung and Fukien continued to come and settle here, and built houses, reared children. They of ten invited literary men from the mainland to come down and tutor their sons and younger brothers, or they sent them back to the mainland to culture for civil service examinations or further their studies. They often came back and lived with their families here. With tutors invited from the mainland, with sons and brothers sent back to join the civil service or to continue their studies, the Chinese community here were naturally brought with greater contact with Chinese culture, and thus the spirit of Chinese culture easily took root here. This is one of the reasons why Chinese culture was easily evolved and diffused here.
Showing posts with label Macao. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Macao. Show all posts
Chinese Food
Years ago in Mukalla on the South Arabian coast I sometimes walked into the Customs godown in which dried fish was kept pending export. There were always quantities of large filleted fish of various varieties lying as dry and hard as planks of wood, though never quite so odourless. Amongst them was a great deal of dried shark and in a corner there would be a large pile of discarded triangular fins. I inquired what was done with them.
'They are sent to China, your honour. I ask pardon of God and your honour for mentioning it, but it is said the Chinese eat many abominable things which are not lawful to be eaten.'
I thought back to those few exiled Chinese in Pemba who used to collect sea-slugs, and the Mauritian boutique chinoise with its so-called hundred-year-old eggs, and there came to me again an old vision of epicurean mandarins in gorgeous robes embroidered with peacock feathers, hats with buttons, elegant fans, and yard-long drooping moustachios, daintily lifting morsels of birds' nests, sharks' fins, sea-slugs and other delicacies to their aristocratic lips with ivory chopsticks.
Now, in Hong Kong, as I walked with the estimable Mr. Chan along the arcaded pavements of Queen's Road West, I saw in the food shops those familiar triangular fins. There they were, large and small, just as they had been in Mukalla, and I felt sure that at least some of them must have come from that very godown.
Mr. Chan, ever anxious to eradicate false impressions, told me that one did not buy one of these triangles to make shark's fin soup, but a neat packet of stuff which looked like gelatinous macaroni, wrapped in cellulose, and with a colourful label describing the contents as best shark's fin manufactured in Hong Kong. And so he took us to a friend, the owner of a sharks' fin factory and also of a restaurant well known to the connoisseur of sea delicacies. Yin Yeng Ki, with his closely cropped head, benevolent round face, and well-filled pyjamas, was a good advertisement for the nutritive value of the fins.
His factory was in the dim upper regions of a back alley. The atmosphere was a combination of old-fashioned washhouse and boiling glue. It was hot and humid, and we paddled about in puddles of hot water. The fins are soaked overnight and then placed in boiling water for 20 minutes, after which the skin is scraped off them. This looked a rather messy process. A man with a very sharp knife sliced off the layers of meat from both sides of the fanlike bones: the work needs skill, because there is not much meat and the bigger the slice the better the quality. The bones are afterwards sold as fertilizers. The slices of meat are then pulled or cut into thin strips, boiled for a few minutes and dried with a hand-operated press. The damp strips are packed tightly into a square frame, and the frames laid on mat trays and placed on bamboo shelves under which sulphur is burnt to bleach them white. After this they are dried on the roof and are ready for packing.
It was a strange world, on the roof-tops where they dried the fins. There was something familiar about it, for it recalled drying grounds one sees all over the tropics, here for cloves or copra, there tobacco, or coffee, or cocoa. Just as if it had been on the ground, dogs wandered about and there was dry ordure, human and canine, as there would have been anywhere else. It is just as well all these things we eat from the tropics go through a lot more stages before we consume them! None of the space was wasted. A neighbouring roof had strips of pigskin hanging from lines. It is put into oil afterwards to soften it and is said to make excellent food.
There are about thirty of these sharks' fin factories in Hong Kong. In Yin's factory the employees were mostly apprentices earning £5 a month plus food and lodging. They slept where they worked, and each boy had his towel hanging on a hook on the wall, with a tube of toothpaste and soap-box perched on top. The boys had a very steamed and bleached appearance.
Many countries provide fins for the famous soup: Ceylon, Burma, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Korea, Norway, Cuba, Indonesia, South America, East Africa, West Africa, North Borneo, French Indo-China, Macao, Iran. When you come to think of it shark's fin soup and other shark products take quite a toll of these unpleasant beasts.
At Yin's restaurant we sat in his private balcony room overlooking the café. This arrangement is common in Hong Kong shops and enables the proprietor to be simultaneously in the middle of his family and at his business. The cook was introduced and we were given a recipe for the soup. Put a packet of fins in boiling water and soak until soft, then drain. Put five ounces of lard into a frying-pan and when melted add two ounces of crushed ginger, 11/2nces of sliced onion, and the fins, then fry for about 10 minutes. Add sufficient cold water to cover (a Chinese frying-pan is deeper than ours) and boil for 10 to 15 minutes. Take out and drain. Serve with chicken or meat broth. This last is very important because sharks' fins are quite tasteless by themselves and must be served in a good broth.
No Chinese dinner-party is complete without this soup, for with it the dinner proper begins; the courses before the soup are merely appetizers. In the arrangement of menus, as in so many other things, the Chinese go the opposite way to us, for after the preliminary courses, which may include sea foods or salads, and the shark's fin soup, you have meat or poultry, or both, then fish, then another soup, and sometimes end up with a sweet dish. There are very definite preferences in the choice of meat and poultry. Pork is No. 1 choice, then beef, with mutton (at any rate among the Cantonese) as a bad last. The smell of mutton is so disliked by some Chinese that they just cannot eat it. Our local butcher at home got so used to our ringing up to ask for beef at the week-end when expecting Chinese friends, that he used to ring first to inquire 'Have you any Chinese visitors?' before sending the ration. As for poultry, the Chinese consider chicken the best, then wild duck, duck, goose, and turkey a bad last.
'They are sent to China, your honour. I ask pardon of God and your honour for mentioning it, but it is said the Chinese eat many abominable things which are not lawful to be eaten.'
I thought back to those few exiled Chinese in Pemba who used to collect sea-slugs, and the Mauritian boutique chinoise with its so-called hundred-year-old eggs, and there came to me again an old vision of epicurean mandarins in gorgeous robes embroidered with peacock feathers, hats with buttons, elegant fans, and yard-long drooping moustachios, daintily lifting morsels of birds' nests, sharks' fins, sea-slugs and other delicacies to their aristocratic lips with ivory chopsticks.
Now, in Hong Kong, as I walked with the estimable Mr. Chan along the arcaded pavements of Queen's Road West, I saw in the food shops those familiar triangular fins. There they were, large and small, just as they had been in Mukalla, and I felt sure that at least some of them must have come from that very godown.
Mr. Chan, ever anxious to eradicate false impressions, told me that one did not buy one of these triangles to make shark's fin soup, but a neat packet of stuff which looked like gelatinous macaroni, wrapped in cellulose, and with a colourful label describing the contents as best shark's fin manufactured in Hong Kong. And so he took us to a friend, the owner of a sharks' fin factory and also of a restaurant well known to the connoisseur of sea delicacies. Yin Yeng Ki, with his closely cropped head, benevolent round face, and well-filled pyjamas, was a good advertisement for the nutritive value of the fins.
His factory was in the dim upper regions of a back alley. The atmosphere was a combination of old-fashioned washhouse and boiling glue. It was hot and humid, and we paddled about in puddles of hot water. The fins are soaked overnight and then placed in boiling water for 20 minutes, after which the skin is scraped off them. This looked a rather messy process. A man with a very sharp knife sliced off the layers of meat from both sides of the fanlike bones: the work needs skill, because there is not much meat and the bigger the slice the better the quality. The bones are afterwards sold as fertilizers. The slices of meat are then pulled or cut into thin strips, boiled for a few minutes and dried with a hand-operated press. The damp strips are packed tightly into a square frame, and the frames laid on mat trays and placed on bamboo shelves under which sulphur is burnt to bleach them white. After this they are dried on the roof and are ready for packing.
It was a strange world, on the roof-tops where they dried the fins. There was something familiar about it, for it recalled drying grounds one sees all over the tropics, here for cloves or copra, there tobacco, or coffee, or cocoa. Just as if it had been on the ground, dogs wandered about and there was dry ordure, human and canine, as there would have been anywhere else. It is just as well all these things we eat from the tropics go through a lot more stages before we consume them! None of the space was wasted. A neighbouring roof had strips of pigskin hanging from lines. It is put into oil afterwards to soften it and is said to make excellent food.
There are about thirty of these sharks' fin factories in Hong Kong. In Yin's factory the employees were mostly apprentices earning £5 a month plus food and lodging. They slept where they worked, and each boy had his towel hanging on a hook on the wall, with a tube of toothpaste and soap-box perched on top. The boys had a very steamed and bleached appearance.
Many countries provide fins for the famous soup: Ceylon, Burma, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Korea, Norway, Cuba, Indonesia, South America, East Africa, West Africa, North Borneo, French Indo-China, Macao, Iran. When you come to think of it shark's fin soup and other shark products take quite a toll of these unpleasant beasts.
At Yin's restaurant we sat in his private balcony room overlooking the café. This arrangement is common in Hong Kong shops and enables the proprietor to be simultaneously in the middle of his family and at his business. The cook was introduced and we were given a recipe for the soup. Put a packet of fins in boiling water and soak until soft, then drain. Put five ounces of lard into a frying-pan and when melted add two ounces of crushed ginger, 11/2nces of sliced onion, and the fins, then fry for about 10 minutes. Add sufficient cold water to cover (a Chinese frying-pan is deeper than ours) and boil for 10 to 15 minutes. Take out and drain. Serve with chicken or meat broth. This last is very important because sharks' fins are quite tasteless by themselves and must be served in a good broth.
No Chinese dinner-party is complete without this soup, for with it the dinner proper begins; the courses before the soup are merely appetizers. In the arrangement of menus, as in so many other things, the Chinese go the opposite way to us, for after the preliminary courses, which may include sea foods or salads, and the shark's fin soup, you have meat or poultry, or both, then fish, then another soup, and sometimes end up with a sweet dish. There are very definite preferences in the choice of meat and poultry. Pork is No. 1 choice, then beef, with mutton (at any rate among the Cantonese) as a bad last. The smell of mutton is so disliked by some Chinese that they just cannot eat it. Our local butcher at home got so used to our ringing up to ask for beef at the week-end when expecting Chinese friends, that he used to ring first to inquire 'Have you any Chinese visitors?' before sending the ration. As for poultry, the Chinese consider chicken the best, then wild duck, duck, goose, and turkey a bad last.
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