Carl T. Smith
CHINESE CHRISTIANS Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong
This book, published to mark the twenty- fifth anniversary of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, traces the establishment and development of the Chinese Christian community in Hong Kong.
Provided with a Western-style education and versed in the English language by missionaries, the Chinese Christian of the nineteenth century was a man who stood between two cultures. This dual aspect of his thought and outlook enabled him to fill a much-needed place in the meeting of the Chinese nation with foreigners promoting trade and commerce.
Some of the earliest English-language mission schools on the China coast were at Hong Kong and the students trained there were among the first to become middlemen. Many of them served as interpreters, translators, compradores and advisers to government officials, and they became a significant element in the emergence of a Chinese 谷lite in the colony.
The author, Carl T. Smith, was formerly a Lecturer in Theology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and is Vice- President of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.
jacket illustration: top left, Dr Morrison and his assistants translating the Bible; top right, medical students from the True Light School for Girls at Canton; bottom left, To Tsai Church, Hollywood Road, Hong Kong; bottom right, the chapel and mission house of the Basel Missionary Society station at Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong； and, centre, the London Missionary Society house on the north side of Aberdeen Street, Hong Kong.
Oxford University Press
ISBN 0 19 583973 0