[ { "id": 204287, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n51\n\nfriends of Education the expediency of establishing a public library in China. This plan was brought to our notice by the following letter, (which we publish with Mr. Colledge's permission) addressed:\n\nTo the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, corresponding secretary to the provisional committee of the Morrison Education Society.\n\nMy dear sir, On the dissolution of the British factory, it became necessary to make some disposition of the library belonging to the members of that establishment; and it was proposed to give the whole collection to the Morrison Education Society. The arrangement, however, not meeting with the concurrence of all the proprietors, a division of the books was determined on; and while I regret that so excellent a suggestion should not have been adopted, I am still happy in performing with my share, what it was my anxious wish should have been done with the whole, by presenting it to that admirable institution.\n\nThe very injudicious method pursued in the division of the works, has allotted to me volumes of comparatively little value. Such as they are, I present them to the Morrison Education Society; with an ardent hope that I may live to see an institution, which so distinctly marks this enlightened age, attain, under your fostering care, the full realization of its philanthropic intentions, by promoting virtue and happiness through the blessings of education.\n\nI am, My dear sir,\n\nRespectfully and faithfully yours,\n\nT. R. Colledge.\n\nMacao, May 21st, 1835.\n\nFurther early history of the Society can be traced through reports in the above-mentioned journal.\n\nOne book still in the Library, A Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts Collected with A View To The General Comparison of Languages, And To The Study of Oriental Literature, by William Marsden, London, 1827, is inscribed by the author, \"For the Library at Canton from the Author\" and reminds the reader of the origin of some of the books.\n\n\"Proceedings relative to the formation of the Morrison Education Society including the Constitution\" were published in December, 1836. By this time there was a collection of some 1500 books on scientific, literary, and other subjects which had been presented to the Society, 700 from Mr. T. R. Colledge, 600 from Mr. J. R. Reeves, and others from Messrs. Dent, Fox, A. S. Keating, and J. R. Morrison, who gave a number of his father's books, some of which still bear his signature.\n\nA constitution was drawn up for the Library which stated that \"The books belonging to the Society shall form a public library and be styled the 'Library of the Morrison Education Society',\" and also provided that “rules for the regulation of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204669, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "134 \n\nCLIVE ROBINSON \n\nand one is apt to forget one's own unease in admiration of the ponies which, fully laden, negotiate the rocky path with marvellous sure-footedness. Once over, the rest of the descent into the Sind valley below is an unending joy of forest paths, strange bird calls and ever-changing mountain views. It took us the best part of two days to reach the Sind river and at our last night's camp we knew we had reached civilisation again by the noise of the watchmen beating on tin cans in an endeavour to keep the bears out of the Indian cornfields. That was the only night we chained our dog, Sally, to the camp bed. \n\nOne more day's walk along the valley to the village of Sonamarg and its military bridge over the river leading on to Leh. Here there is, or rather was, a large notice warning \"Tourists and Trekkers\" that they could go no farther. It sounded rather like the New Territories but when I enquired in the village I gathered that few tourists ever got to Sonamarg and we had been the first that year over the Yamher. We camped outside at Thajiwas (9,000 ft.) in the Valley of the Glaciers, and next day walked back into Sonamarg to catch a bus home. The drive took us about four hours and this time we had ducks and sheep with us as a variety. \n\nSo ended perhaps the most memorable holiday we have ever had. Certainly the walk is one of the best short treks it is possible to make in Kashmir. Going leisurely we had taken seven days, walked about ninety miles and reached a height of 14,000 ft. \n\nTwo days later we left the “Golden Gleam” and said goodbye to the incomparable Gaffar and his happy staff. Going up the Banihal Pass on the way home to Delhi my car developed the usual complaint of petrol-pump trouble which often happens in the more rarified atmospheres of heights over 9,000 ft. Unfortunately it did not respond to the regular Indian treatment of a wet mud-pack wrapped round the pump so, for four hours, I was compelled to remain crouched on the mudguard with my back to the way we were going in order to be in a position to apply a smart tap with a screw-driver to the ailing pump whenever it showed signs of giving up the ghost. Fortunately I had faith in my wife at the wheel as the hairpin bends on the Banihal are not particularly pleasant when seen backwards from the mudguard of a Riley! \n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204725, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n19\n\nkeep us prisoners in Canton. From the different boats are displayed the various triangular and square flags of different colors of the officers in command. At night the soldiers keep up an incessant blowing of conch shells and beating of gongs while all on guard cry out continually the watch words “K'an-Ch'o” and “Tseaou-Ch'o” which mean \"look sharp\".\"7 The coolies have another word which they cry out at intervals, \"An-Tsou\" which means \"morning\".18\n\nThus is our guard disposed in front. Behind the Factories from one extremity of them to the other, on both sides [of] the street (which runs along the rear) are stationed infantry with matchlocks and cartouch boxes. The Consoo House is turned into quarters for the officers whose horses are picketed in the area inside the building. Our entire guard of all sorts consists of between one thousand and twelve hundred men.\n\nIf it was not for the mysterious and peculiar circumstances under which we are situated we might laugh at the resources the foreigners are driven to, to obtain fresh food, while some are seen carrying bundles of clothes to the end of China Street where they are taken by the linguist who marks them and sends them to be washed and returns them clean in the same manner. Gilman and Spooner contrived yesterday to get into one of the back streets and bought a side of mutton which they brought home on a bamboo.\n\nLast night all the boats remaining in the boat houses were hauled on shore in the middle of the Square. Many received great injury by the rough way in which they were handled. The Chinese have also unshipped the rudders and unbent the sails from four schooners lying in front of the Factories, the Alpha, Sylph, Breeze, Rover.\n\nAt 12 today Houqua's servant came in with two coolies bringing a roasted leg of mutton and some boiled potatoes wrapped up in paper.\n\nWe hear today that a Chinese who was taken yesterday at Ta-Sha-Tow on his way to Macao with a foreign letter found on his person was tortured to death. We can not learn whose letter it was. A Chinese girl who was also on the boat is in prison.\n\nThis being Sunday nothing has been done between the foreign consuls and the Chinese authorities, but while we were at dinner", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204741, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n33\n\nbeing to get rid of the opium as quick as possible and thereby procure our release. The latest accounts from below are that 12,391 chests have now been delivered to the Chinese. We hear also that Saoqua, one of the Hong merchants at Chumpee, met with a serious accident getting into his own boat from one of the ships. While here old Houqua, one of our best friends, has been confined to his house for a week past with dropsy of which he has a bad attack.\n\nNearly all the Factories have now their compradores, cooks, and coolies and here and there a servant. Our imprisonment is the same as before but the guard at night do not keep up such a continual beating of gongs and blowing of horns as they did. Sunday evening, 28 April, 1839\n\nThis evening while taking tea at Elmslie's, Houqua and Mouqua came in. They each sat down and ate some jelly and bread and took a cup of tea. The former had just had a letter from Pwankuqua dated at Chumpee yesterday, which said that 13,900 odd chests had been delivered. After half an hour's chat on various matters they went over to see Captain Elliot at the hall. Wrote to J. & P. Sturgis at Macao, gave the letter to Delano to be forwarded.\n\nWe heard this morning of the arrival of the Cowasjee Family from Calcutta and Singapore with 500 chests of opium. The Columbia and John Adams sailed from the latter place five days before her. The Columbia we understand for Lintin direct and the John Adams to touch at Bankoff. This news was received with great delight throughout our prison as they may in some measure hasten our release or the catastrophe, whatever it is to be. No passage boats or ship boats allowed to run.\n\nMonday, 29 April 1839\n\nSeveral days since we heard that three lascars had been brought from the coast of Chinchoo at which place they probably deserted from some ship and were lodged at the Consoo House. Today they were released and sent out to the Factories. Nothing can be made of their story except that they belonged to an opium vessel on the coast and had landed and were left behind. This was of course carefully concealed from the Name-Hoe who questioned them at Consoo House. We hear today that Mouqua is better and Saoqua also. He requested permission of the Yum Chae to come up which was refused.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205084, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "THE FIVE GREAT CLANS\n\n35\n\nsibility of the watch to compensate the owner, so that they acted as a rudimentary form of insurance, as well as guards. They also acted as fire-watchers and firemen. One further advantage was that in this way there was always a small body of men under arms in case of attack from bandits or other clans.\n\nMen who were apprehended by the watch were taken before the village leaders for trial and judgement. Punishment frequently took the form of a beating, the criminal having a sack tied over his head to prevent his seeing who administered it. At the same time restitution of goods stolen, or a cash equivalent, had to be made. The system still survives, performing the same functions, though the watch no longer have to deal with bandits. Nowadays offenders caught would probably be handed over to the police, though a lineage member might well be subjected to the informal justice of his own lineage leaders in preference to this. Certainly it is not unknown for the lineages still to execute their own forms of punishment on wrong-doers. The chief advantages of the watch-system from the villagers' point of view are that both thieves and the police are kept away.86\n\nOne of the marks of a wealthy family, in this part of China at least, was the ability to buy and maintain outsiders in a position of servitude. Sai Man87 or Ha Fu, as these servile families were called, were to be found in each of the villages of the five clans, while other smaller lineages of the area do not appear to have possessed them — a further mark of the superior wealth and status of the five. Under this system of servitude, a male would be bought from his family and raised as a servant in the house of the purchaser. In due course he would be married at the owner's expense and provided with a house to live in and fields to till. He paid no rent, nor did he give up any proportion of his harvests; in theory, all he was required to do was to work for his owner on special occasions such as weddings and feasts, and to help at lineage ceremonies. In practice he was at the beck and call of all the lineage to do any task they set him. He was a servant for life, as were his wife and his descendants. In return for a guaranteed income and house he forfeited his freedom and submitted to a position of degradation throughout his life. Financially better off than the poorer members of the master lineage, he was socially way below them. Sai Man were not taken from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205749, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "# MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n49\n\nThe resistance movement had now reached a state of readiness. Further subscriptions of silver were obtained and responsibility for provision of rations allocated. On 13th April Ping Shan supplied pigs as food for the militia. By 14th April an advance force was in position on the hills overlooking Tai Po. It was composed of units from Fan Leng, Kam Tin, the Lam Tsuen valley, and Pat Heung. A British party making preparations for the flag raising saw about 150 men on the hills to the northwest. Four or five standards were seen, and the Chinese \"kept up an incessant yelling, beating of gongs, and firing of crackers, or guns, probably jingals ...\" 64\n\nWhen the Governor heard of these events at Tai Po he decided to station a force there immediately. On the morning of 15th April, two units were dispatched from Hong Kong. Captain Superintendent May, in charge of 22 policemen, left by launch for Tai Po. A company of the Hong Kong Regiment* — comprising 125 officers and men — set off overland from Kowloon, with orders to rendezvous with the police that afternoon.\n\nWhen the police landed near the matshed hill they were fired upon by forces from the Lam Tsuen valley, Tai Hang, Pat Heung, and Kam Tin. The militia of Ha Tsuen and Ping Shan had not been committed, although Ha Tsuen was, on this day, responsible for rations. By this time the infantry company was only a short march from Tai Po. Its commanding officer, Captain E. L. C. Berger, could see that the hills were crowded with several thousand militia, displaying six or seven different banners. As they approached the market he noted that the Chinese were uniformed and that the units nearest him occupied good tactical positions.\n\nThe soldiers joined the police on the matshed hill and found their situation difficult. The hills to the west and northwest were occupied by militia. To the east was Tolo Harbour. Twelve pieces of light artillery — probably jingals and mortars — kept up a steady fire on them from two positions. There was also continuous musketry fire. If the aim of the militia had been better, the casualties would have been heavy. Shortly thereafter the militia began an advance but were driven back by volley fire. This was the situation when H.M.S. \"Fame\" arrived late that afternoon.\n\n* A regiment of the Indian Army, with British officers and Indian (Pathan) other ranks, not to be confused with the volunteer unit of this name in present day Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206071, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "146\n\nS. F. BALFOUR\n\npeoples. They too are an ancient population living on the seaboard without any trace of their earlier habitat. But as we have seen in the first chapter they have been so overwhelmed by the force of Chinese culture that not a trace remains of their original customs. However it is proposed to show that some aspects of their life might suggest a connection with the \"Indonesians\", however far fetched the theory may be,\n\nThe Tanka boats must be of recent design, and they were probably evolved as a result of contact with foreign peoples, even as late as the Portuguese. The eyes painted on the prows of Hoklo boats may also point to earlier contacts, although it is possible that this custom evolved quite independently. What seems more likely to be the survival of an earlier boat is the “dragon boat” or huge canoe used by the Tanka, Punti and Hoklo in their yearly festival.\n\nThis festival occurs on the 5th of the 5th month when the 'dragon' constellation is highest in the sky and celebrates the death of a poet Chü Yûan who drowned himself in a river in Hunan because his King would not take his advice. But it is difficult to understand the connection between the poet and the rather war-like parade of boats accompanied by the beating of a drum and throwing of rice into the waters. In fact, the festival appears more likely to be an annual sacrifice to a fishing god, or in places where rice culture depends upon irrigation caused by floods, to an agricultural god. Its distribution (in connection with the Chü Yuan legend) is confined to South China and to Szechuan. In Fukien, besides the poet a famous general is sometimes commemorated. Remembering the tendency of all religions to adapt new gods to old customs, we may be justified in discounting Chü Yuan from the festival's origin,\n\nThe regatta is formed by a number of very long canoes paddled to the rhythm of a drum beaten in the middle of the boat by some forty to eighty half naked men. It is unlike any other Chinese feast and the canoe and style of paddling are more reminiscent of Polynesian methods than of Chinese. Similar regattas exist all over the Indonesian regions; in Pnom-penh, for instance, it is almost identical (see accompanying illustrations),* and the first mention of the feast in Chinese literature occurs in books written\n\n* Plates 17-18.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206482, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "24\n\nP. H. COLLIN\n\n\"Soon after moving on, we came to a rivulet, the course of which assured us our problem was solved; there must be a pass through the mountains. We followed the stream, and emerged on the great plain. Our spirits rose, and we walked on, admiring the peacefulness and tranquillity of everything, and the hospitality of the poor industrious countrymen. We concluded that we might with ease and comfort walk to Pekin. Some quail fell to some of our sportsmen's guns, and some distant trees gave promise of the nobler woodcock. On nearing this wood, we found that it formed the background to a large village, but we saw a path leading round outside, which we resolved to follow. We were considerably astonished by several villagers coming forward gesticulating, and, as we afterwards supposed, entreating us not to go on. We could not at the time quite make out what they meant, but supposed that they did not wish us to pass through the village. So on we went by the outer path, and entered a grove of tall pine-trees. We were instantly saluted by such a din of gongs, and clamour of voices as I never heard as if we had upset a hive of people. Individual Chinese soldiers displayed themselves, beating two swords together, and capering about, as if to challenge us to single combat. We caught one man, and tried, through our interpreter, to explain that we were only out for a walk.\n\n\"It was manifest enough that the scrape we had been endeavouring to avoid, we had at last fallen into, and in a more unpleasant form than we anticipated; in fact, that we had stumbled on the enemy's camp. The hum of voices sounded as if upwards of a thousand people were in movement. Our first step was to load, and our next to get back into the open plain, where we could not be surrounded without seeing our assailants. Whilst we were loading, bang came a great jingall shot right among us, fortunately hitting no one. Another shot or two were fired which were not very well aimed, and we got on to the plain.\n\n\"Of course our danger was that we should be cut off from Canton, whence we were distant, as the crow flies, about six miles. But, unfortunately, it was not visible from where we were, and of course we only had an idea of about where it ought to be. We saw from the plain that there was a succession of villages in the direction of the city, and we feared the alarm would spread, and that we should be headed by these villagers turning out in front of us,\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "176\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\ncyclical characters of the year.\" Hodous appears either to be confusing T'ai Sui and Kou Mang, or to be giving T'ai Sui yet another alias.\n\nIn T'aip'ing in Malaya two images of mud bulls are to be seen standing on a pile of paper hell money on the altar beside T'ai Sui. The reason for their inclusion on the altar was not known by the temple keeper nor by the devotees who said that they had always been in that position as far back as anyone could recall. (See Plate 15).\n\nThe Rev. Wm Milne4 in Ningpo in the mid 1840s noted \"the festival of the Beating in of Spring\" when on the first day of spring the Chief Magistrate of the city beat the \"god of spring\", a multi-coloured paper ox, which was then torn to pieces by the crowd, for luck. Milne claimed to have seen this same ceremony elsewhere in Central China, and said that in some districts the bull is made of mud. “The colouring varies as laid down in the Peking annual book of ceremonies. The variations in colours such as red horns, black tail and feet, white body, blue head and neck are regarded as prognosticating the portents of the coming year. The amount of black signifies sickness, blue winds, white rain and floods, red fire and yellow the fruits of the earth. There are also a number of smaller mud oxen mainly sold for household good fortune.”\n\nThe Rev. Milne also reported that “the \"god of spring\" was seen in the shape of a youthful human image, the son of an early Emperor. He too is attired in a fashion prophetic of the fortune of the coming year: bareheaded predicted cold weather, and white robe augurs a dry year etc.\" This youthful image is almost certainly T'ai Sui. In all temples where he was observed in the \"scroll or bell-holding\" two-armed version, his image was seen very frequently to be balanced on wads, sometimes very high wads, of hell money. This is the paper money purchased from temple keepers to be burnt by devotees for the use of deceased members of the family in the Underworld. This custom is usually only to be seen in temples under wealth gods, but in the case of T'ai Sui, the wads are offerings to T'ai Sui for protection and not for transmission by burning to deceased relatives. Shyrock in his Temples of Anking says hell money is burnt for use by ancestors and is never presented to Gods. It would appear to be otherwise in Central and South China.\n\n4 Milne, W. C., Life in China (London, Routledge, 1857).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207316, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "76\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nwhich has the shape of a miniature temple, has the three characters Han-lin yuan embroidered on its red curtain; it is not General T'ien who is sitting behind the ever closed curtain, but the San t'ai-tze lao-yeh\n\nthe 3 princes (Mu-ch'a, Chin-ch'a and No-ch'a).* \n\nThe birthday of the San t'ai-tze lao-yeh is celebrated yearly by this troupe with special performances in the first month of the Chinese calendar in the public housing estate Tung Tau Tsuen ✯✯, not far from the airport, where a whole community considers the San t'ai-tze as their patrons.\n\nAt this birthday celebration in 1976, between 9 and 10 p.m. a man suddenly came running to the temple facing the stage and donned the costume prepared on the table. No-ch'a is usually represented as a young boy: his hair tied in a bob over each ear, with his feet on fire-wheels. The man, a medium, is believed to be an ordinary man who might have never thought of No-ch'a. But on his birthday the god (here No-ch'a) will possess a person who will then only act as a medium. The man or sometimes a woman will get up from his bed, if he is sleeping, or from the table if he is eating, and rush to the square where the festivities are held without talking to anyone. Sometimes 3 people appear being possessed by the 3 princes. If the god in this temple has proved to be particularly efficacious (ling) then this event is expected and the respective clothes for the god are already prepared on a table specially marked with a green bamboo 3m high attached to its leg. The costume for the god is usually put into a flat round basket and a weapon is placed beside it. The medium puts on No-ch'a's costume, a yellow silk blouse and trousers and on the head he puts a band with the two hair-knots attached, shaking all the while and aided by those who have expected his arrival. When dressed the medium takes up the weapon, a solid spiky iron-ball on a chain, and wields it against his own body, beating his back and chest, perhaps to prove that he is actually possessed by the god.\n\n* Doré, Chinese Superstitions, Taipei 66, Vol. 7, p. 413 and Vol. 9, p. 111; E. T. C. Werner: Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, page 247.\n\n† Such a bamboo is also fastened to the roof of the stage or where rituals for the dead are held: it indicates the presence of spirits or marks the place to which spirits are invited to come.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207317, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES ON CHIUCHOW OPERA\n\n77\n\nBy that time the audience who were watching the opera* becomes aware of the medium, who is now rushing through the audience on to the stage, where the performance stops and the actors retreat. A table is placed on the stage, the medium stands behind the table facing the audience, shaking in trance, beating himself with the spiky iron ball. A dozen men surround him, one spraying water from a bucket in all directions, one throwing rice around, several beating gongs. They take away his weapon and give the medium some water to drink from a bowl, they hand him a sword which he brandishes into all directions of heaven. He then opens his mouth, sticks out his tongue with the tip downward, and holding the sword vertically pointing upward he inflicts small cut-wounds to the middle of his tongue. Stacks of yellow paper in various sizes are already prepared on the table, and he bends down and chops the paper with his bleeding tongue, whilst the helpers take away the marked ones to distribute them to the crowd. When the medium's tongue stops bleeding he again drinks water from the bowl, brandishes the sword and cuts his tongue and repeats this whole process several times, shaking all the while, and the deafening gongs never stop being beaten. He finally beats himself once more with the iron ball and blood streaks appear on the back of his costume. Then he is rushed back to the temple where he repeats once more the scene, as on stage. After that he takes off his costume and returns quietly home. They suppose that he is unaware of what he has been doing, and that the wounds of his lacerated tongue and back will have healed by the next morning.\n\nThe members of the opera-troupe who play the military roles, handling knives and swords also venerate Kuan-ti, the god of war on his birthday on the 13th day of the 5th month.\n\nIn recent years, the Chiuchow opera in Hong Kong has received a great boost when Hsiao Nan-ying, a top Chiuchow actress, came to Hong Kong and started to perform in 1974. She has re-trained the actors of the Sang Ngai opera troupe and has written some libretti for them in the style of the reformed traditional plays, a movement which was created under Mei Lan-fang's influence. She produced the libretti, directed the performance, played the leading role...\n\n* From the stage a roof extends to shelter the audience, it rests on pillars and the 3 sides are open. As in church (in Europe and formerly in Protestant mission churches in China) the sexes are divided, women on the left and men on the right. There is a fenced passage-way through the middle up to the stairs leading to the stage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207540, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 308, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "300\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nJ. A. Prescott\n\nH. A. Rydings\n\nC. T. Smith\n\nPhotographers\n\nSouth China Athletic Association, Photographic Group:\n\nButt Chak-yu 畢澤宇\n\nHoh Wing-chan 何永燦\n\nJimmy Kwok 郭天志\n\nLai Yat-fung 賴一峰\n\nLau Cho-chak\n\nTam Yee-yin 譚以仁\n\nTong Wai-hang\n\nRoyal Asiatic Society:\n\nH.A. and J.W. Rydings\n\nH. Werle\n\nHong Kong, 1975.\n\nH. A. RYDINGS\n\nBOAT PEOPLE'S CEREMONIES OBSERVED AT ISLAND HOUSE ON 5TH AND 31ST JANUARY, AND 16TH NOVEMBER, 1975*\n\nThe following notes were provided by Mr. David Akers-Jones, Secretary for the New Territories and a member of this Society, whose residence is at Island House, Tai Po. The island Yuen Chau Tsai (AMA), connected by causeway to the main road, has long been a centre of the boat population. Ed.\n\n(I) 5th January, 1975\n\nA motorized sampan motored slowly round Island House from the bridge to the shelter used by the small in-shore fishing boats on the other side of the Island House causeway. On board a group of six young women were pretending to pole the boat along, wearing plaited red wheel-hats. Another girl was beating a gong, creating a tremendous noise, another standing in the bow facing aft was beating a drum in a frenzied manner, and on the roof of the\n\nPlate 18 illustrates these notes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208071, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "94\n\nL\n\nK. G. STEVENS\n\ncause of their infidelity behind. (White cords have no separate meaning according to the temple keepers concerned).\n\nThe larger and more permanent Green Horses are offered fresh vegetables which are not placed in or near their mouths but, rather frustratingly for the horses, balanced on their heads. The rider of the Green Horse is known as the \"Nobleman of the Green Horse\" Kuei Jen (†A), and although he is rarely depicted save on paper charms it is accepted that they are a pair who work together and never separately. A keeper of the Stone Nullah Lane temple in Hong Kong claimed that the Nobleman (the Kuei Jen) and his Green Horse are helpful persons to whom people turn in time of need. He then referred to the opposite, the Hsiao Jen, the “mean one\" who grumbles, carries tittle-tattle and is envious. The latter causes you unnecessary trouble such as loss of money. The helpful Nobleman shows you the way to fortune and the easy route through life. The beating of the \"mean ones”, described earlier, is to discard the bad luck such people bring.\n\nA few devotees, only encountered in Shamshuipo, believe that the Green Horse is capable of providing academic success for members of the devotee's family, as they reason that a nobleman on a horse must be both well-educated and an official, and that his support must inevitably bring success to youthful scholars.\n\nA few devotees pray to Green Horse before a journey and again after a safe return. An extension of prayer for the traveller's safety was described in one small temple in Kowloon where the keeper said that the Green Horse is a divine messenger who is asked to visit and inform close relatives far away, of the sender's well-being and bring back tidings of their lives and aspirations. The keeper rather surprisingly added that it was also his understanding that if children failed to obey their parents, the elders would petition the Horse to knock some discipline into them! In another temple, however, a keeper was quite adamant that the Green Horse is only a messenger used by the Gods to send messages to each other, and must never be approached by humans. Finally, in Shamshuipo and in Wanchai, the Green Horse and the Nobleman are prayed to by the out-of-work, as the couple have the reputation of speedily being able to find suitable employment for devotees.\n\nThere are other similar horses which should not be confused with the Green Horse. The first is the steed ridden by Kuan Ti, the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208193, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "216\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nhead for the hall, the result is that the hall would bring about Great Wealth (大富)\n\nOn the ancestral hall itself, it is apparent that it is being surrounded by green mountains and beautiful streams. Its walls are finely made and its direction is carefully orientated so as to suit the Dragon form. The rooms inside are spacious, comfortable, and neatly packed together. In front of it is Shau Sing Kung Shan (壽星宮山) (\"Long-life mountain\") and on the left of it is Kwun Yam Shan (觀音山). All these signs imply that from here “Great Nobility\" (貴) would appear. Its form, so magnificent, calls for the Red Bird (朱雀) to lead the way (朱雀護送迎) and the Green Dragon and White Tiger to kneel (†). It drives the ranges to curl around it and the stars to look after the outlet. Every mountain, no matter how far comes to guard the cave, and every stream comes to gather round the hall. This indicates \"Great Wealth\" (大富). Thus the window of Heaven is made open and the door of Hell is tightly shut.\n\nThis is the best Dragon form. It should foster great wealth and great nobility. It explains why the Tang clan has had so much success in wealth, fame, and in civil examinations, as compared with the other villages in Pat Heung (八鄉). Of course, it owes very much to the keen choice of Fung-shui by the Tang ancestors. Hong Kong, 1973\n\nJOHN THOMAS Kamm\n\nBEAN SKIM (豆漿皮); A PRODUCT OF BLOOD & SWEAT FROM THE MAKERS\n\nBean skim is a traditional rural product in the Tsuen Wan District of the New Territories of Hong Kong. The following account was written by WAN Chung-yan of Pun Shan Village, Chai Wan Kok, Tsuen Wan on 12.1.1976, at the Hon. Editor's request.\n\nBean skim is a kind of bean product of rich nourishment. In the age when the electric motor had not yet been invented, such product was really a product of blood and sweat from the makers.\n\nThe making of bean skim is easily described. Choose the best yellow beans, dry them under the sun and peel them. Then soak the beans in water and crush them into a paste. After filtering off the refuse, boil them in a pot. Skim off the upper layer of foam. Keep heating the paste at a certain temperature until a thin layer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208195, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "218\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nOnce this trade was taken up, not a single family member could sit idly by. If the family consisted of only five members, all five had to be mobilized: first of all, to grind the beans and then boil the paste. After the paste was hot enough, one member had still to keep heating it to produce the layers of bean skim. Another member carried the products prepared the day before to Kowloon where he sold them to the shops and bought more beans. The remaining members, after finishing their breakfast, had to climb the hills to look for dry grass which they fetched home for fuel. This was the hard way by which our ancestors managed to make a hand-to-mouth living and rear us.\n\nNowadays, we have electricity, motor and transport facilities and the manufacturing process has mostly been mechanized. The kind of hard life that our ancestors once led will never be repeated.\n\nADDENDUM\n\nThe brief account that follows is taken from Peng-chun Chang's China at the Crossroads (London, Evans Brothers, 1936) p.145.\n\nAn example of a type of manufacturing common in the villages is the preparation of tofu, or bean curd. A tofu shop may be seen in nearly every village. In this shop is the mill used for crushing the beans. This mill is run by human or animal power. The beans are ground in the mill and then mixed with water. The liquid, called bean milk, is squeezed from the mass and boiled in a boiler which is part of the shop's equipment. This boiled milk is frequently eaten. If, however, certain chemicals are added to the boiled liquid, it solidifies and is known as bean curd, or tofu. The tofu manufacture represents a rough, everyday type of manufacture common in the villages. It exhibits the skill of accumulated experience, for this food has been common in the diet of the Chinese people for centuries.\n\nTofu is high in protein and takes the place of dairy products and meat in the diet of the people. Recent scientific experimentation in China is endeavouring to find a commercially profitable way of reducing the bean milk to a powder to take the place of imported powdered milk.\n\nChang was a native of Tientsin and presumably is referring mainly to North China. For a recent detailed account from Hong Kong based on field work in 1961 and 1963 see Vol. One, Part III, 27, \"The Bean Curd Maker\" of Cornelius Osgood's The Chinese. A Study of a Hong Kong Community (Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Press, 3 vols, 1975), pp. 393-404. These volumes contain a wealth of information on many traditional economic undertakings.\n\nFOUR CHINESE ‘BANKS' FAIL, PARTNERS BLAME HEAD\n\nThe following is extracted, in part, from a report in The Washington Post Metro for Sunday 26 February, 1978.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208630, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "60\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nremaining hardtack biscuits and the rest of the milk in the can. In the course of the morning our door was pushed ajar and we were given a pail of water and a few more biscuits. (The water, as we learned afterwards, came from a well nearby, the city water supply having been shut off or the mains broken since some days before Christmas. At our house during that time we had filled all available bottles with the precious liquid and had even drained out the water from the hot water heating system.) With the pail of water was one small cup, and as our hands were still tied, one of the soldiers who brought the water held the cup to our lips and we drank in turn.\n\nDuring the day we continued to clean up the debris in the garage, and succeeded in getting rid of a little more rubbish. We had to work quietly and in the absence of the sentry as we did not wish to excite his suspicions. During the night the rickety wooden bed had fallen apart, and in the morning the old iron bed was taken away we surmised for the purpose of cremating the dead bodies that left us with a little more floor room. As previously mentioned there were a few odd articles of clothing on a line in the garage and these we commandeered as substitutes for pillows.\n\nSo\n\nIn the afternoon of the twenty-seventh our hands were untied by the guards for the space of about an hour, so that we could eat our biscuits and drink our water. This was certainly a relief. We were likewise allowed to go outside for a short period in order to limber up, and were also informed that we could go to a nearby well for more water. Accordingly Father Keelan and I started off in company of a soldier to a house just in the rear of Dr. To's home. As we walked through the little ravine which leads to the beach we could see the vestiges of soldiers' camps, and in the unusual stillness which reigned, Stanley looked very desolate. We drew two pails of water from a rather deep well and brought them back to our brethren. In the meantime, a half dozen of us, under the lead of Father Troesch, were allowed to go up to our house to secure some clothing and blankets. They soon returned bringing with them a few armfuls of odds and ends of clothing, a blanket or two and a few tins of foodstuffs. Someone then brought us a small Chinese firepot; we found a large tin can which had contained the army biscuits and we were allowed to cook a meagre supper just outside our garage door. Hardtack was soaked in a large tin of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209315, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 218, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "204\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nKung Temple. The dyke at Tin Sam Valley was across half the river as the river bed here was high, but the others crossed the whole stream. When the railway and Tai Po Road were built these main canals were carried across in great culverts. Other villagers in Sha Tin used less sophisticated irrigation systems, merely taking a small mountain stream and distributing its waters over the fields.\n\nThe dykes across the Shing Mun or Tin Sam streams would be washed away in each storm; they required to be rebuilt about twice each year. Each family in turn was responsible and would announce the dyke building day in advance by beating a gong through the streets. Every family had to send at least one adult to carry stones, earth, and straw (women) or place them (men). Families without land in that area were excused. The dykes were just heaps of stones, packed with clay and straw without anchors (note - wooden beams for anchors were too precious, and even if anchored the dyke would still be swept away in typhoon storm).\n\nThe main dyke at Tai Wai required communal building (Tai Wai/Tung Lo Wan), and the Hin Tin dyke required communal building (Tin Sam/Keng Hau).\n\nA tau of land: some causes of misunderstanding\n\nMisunderstandings have arisen once or twice when seeking answers to the questions \"How many seeds were needed to plant 1 tau of land\" and \"How much land would 1 tau of seeds plant\". The questions were asked to try to clarify if 1 tau of land and 1 tau of seeds were complementary. On several occasions the answer was “2-4 shing” and “several tau” respectively. The misunderstanding seems to have arisen from the fact that seeds were planted in seed beds and fields were planted with sprouts, and the first question was answered by the respondent as if the question was, \"How big a seedbed was needed to plant seeds for 1 tau of land\", and \"How many fields would a seed bed 1 tau in size cope with\". In both cases the equation 1 tau of seeds (yat tau t'in →†¤斗田) was treated as being too obvious to conceivably be the point of the question. In both cases it seems to be assumed that the seedbed should be 1/5 - 1/4 the area of the later fields.\n\nAn example of village morality: the problem of cash incomes, the importance of seamen's money\n\nI discussed with Wai Hon-leung the problem of how subsistence", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209476, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "111\n\nWork of Lawyers of the People's Republic of China” adopted by the Standing Committee of the NPC in August 1980. Their duties are to give help to government organizations, enterprises and other undertakings, social bodies, people's communes, and ordinary citizens so as to ensure the just implementation of the law, and to defend the interests of the state and the collective and legitimate rights and interests of citizens. As pointed out in an article appearing in the Beijing Review: Lawyers are state legal workers who work in legal advisory offices which provide their leadership and pay their salaries. Unlike lawyers in capitalist countries who work for their clients, lawyers in China proceed from the stand of the people and safeguard the correct implementation of the law and the legitimate rights of litigants.15\n\nOther protections are provided by the Criminal Code and Criminal Code of Procedure: Articles 136 and 137 of the former forbid the use of torture to extract confessions and gathering a crowd for purposes of \"beating, smashing, and looting,\" while article 32 of the latter forbids the extortion of confessions by torture or duress and the collection of evidence by threat, enticement, deceit or other illegal means. Article 35 of the Criminal Code of Procedure goes on to state that in handing down judgments stress shall be laid on the weight of the evidence, and \"when there is only a statement by the accused and no other evidence available, the accused shall not be considered guilty and sentenced.\" The Criminal Code also attempts to deal with two serious problems of the past: Article 9 provides that the law shall not be applied retroactively, and Article 135 prescribes severe punishment for state functionaries who intentionally bring false charges against people. The Criminal Code of Procedure (Articles 43-52) further establishes detailed procedures governing arrest and detention, requiring warrants for arrests, eliminating secret arrests, and setting strict conditions and time limits under which a person may be held without a proper warrant authorized by the procuratorate.\n\nThe Criminal Code is based on drafts prepared in the mid-1950s which in turn appear to have been based on the 1926 Soviet RSFSR Criminal Code. This later Code, replaced in the Soviet Union in 1958, was severely criticised in its day, and it is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209484, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "119\n\nit should be remembered, travellers to England needed no passport or travel document, so that Lock had no problems about residence or work. Liverpool, as a great port, had a long-established Chinese colony — a small 'China-town' as it would now be termed — so one infers the young Lock did not feel too cut off from his homeland.\n\nBecause of his maritime experience, he became the European representative of the Chinese Seamen's Mutual Benefit Society, formed in 1914 among Chinese seamen on ocean-going vessels.* This society was registered in Hong Kong under the name of the 'Seamen's Philanthropic Society'. It was more than a mutual-aid society; it had political aims. Lock was also a member of the T'ung-meng-hui (Sworn League), the secret revolutionary party organised by Sun Yat-sen and others in 1905, which later became the Kuo-min-tang. Sun used seamen as couriers in his revolutionary activities and, it is claimed, Lock worked for Sun as a secret service agent in England. Lock also founded the Chinese Republic Progress Club (a significant designation) in Liverpool in 1918 and became the leading figure in the Liverpool Chinese community. At his trial it became known he had convened a secret court to punish a Chinese for beating his English wife (but we do not know what punishment, if any, was meted out to the callous husband). Lock was thus highly respected in both the English and Chinese communities and was a spokesman for his compatriots. He became that well-known figure: a Chinese community leader. He was also a British subject: a naturalised Englishman.\n\nEdward Marjoribanks affirms that ‘... he was not the sinister \"King of Chinatown\" of detective romance; a kindly, gentle person, he distributed much in charity and hospitality, giving Christmas treats to the poor children of Birkenhead and Liverpool, and renting a shoot where he entertained his English friends'.5 All his affairs prospered until 1923 when he launched out on a large commercial undertaking and lost most of his investment. As a consequence, he was forced to file his own petition in bankruptcy, although he continued to live with his wife and children in some style. Friends said that after these events he became moody and his behaviour erratic, flying into sudden rages and weeping uncontrollably. He also began to drink heavily,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209981, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "218\n\n• There are four in the year, but the principal one falls on the nineteenth day of the second moon.\n\n* See my \"Secular Non-Gentry Leadership of Temple and Shrine Organisations in Urban Hong Kong\" pp 113 to 136 of this Journal.\n\n* See my article \"The Japanese Occupation and the New Territories\", South China Morning Post, 15 December 1967.\n\nA COMMUNITY SHOOTING BUNGALOW NEAR CHINKIANG, KIANGSU, AND ITS LIBRARY ABOUT 1905\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nThe following extracts are taken from A. H. Rasmussen's China Trader, published by Constable of London in 1954. Mr. Rasmussen was barely twenty when he joined the Chinese Customs Service at Chinkiang, where there was a small, lonely British concession. During his first four years, two of the original thirty-five Europeans died, two went mad, two cut their throats, and he himself was twice nearly murdered by smugglers. At this time, as he relates, he was lucky enough to find relaxation and renewal of spirits brought low by the conditions of life and work in shooting wild pig, and in finding a library and visitors' books in a small shooting bungalow in the countryside near the Chinkiang concession. Let him speak for himself.\n\n\"When the Concession really got me down I 'lifted up mine eyes unto the hills' and got new strength from them. A ride of about eight miles took me to a hill called Wu Chow where for many years there had been a community shooting bungalow for those who were keen on wild boar-shooting.\n\nIt was rather an expensive sport as it required about fifteen beaters at fifty cents (or one shilling) each a day. Moreover, a rifle had to be bought and fortunately I came across an ancient Lee-Metford single-shot carbine used in the Boer War. I bought it for fifteen dollars.\n\nIn view of the daily cost it was important to get shooting companions to share in the beating expenses. No serious shooting had been done out there for several years, and no one in the port seemed to know the ropes. I went out one week-end to investigate and to get away from everybody, most of all from my old bored self.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210320, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 291, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "270\n\nP.H. HASE, J.W. HAYES AND K.C. IU\n\nIn the 1970s when District Officer and Town Manager, Tsuen Wan, my contacts with local village people established that there were families in Lo Wai which had tea bushes on the mountain slopes of Tai Mo Shan. The Hui (4) family of Lo Wai village collected tea from wild bushes near the present radar station at the very top of Tai Mo Shan. One old man, born in 1896, used to collect ten catties a week during the season, commenting that the best time for plucking the leaves was in the third lunar month: the leaves become older and coarser thereafter. This type of tea was described as wan mo (雲霧) (\"cloud mist\"). He began doing this when he was about 10 years old, selling to other villagers and not to shops or teahouses. He also collected medicinal herbs on the mountain. Another favourable location for wild tea trees on this mountain, he said, was Nam Tong To (南塘肚) where the Shing Mun villagers collected leaves from wild tea bushes there of the same type. Such trees could not be replanted and grown elsewhere, he stated. Separately, old Shing Mun villagers living in Kam Tin since their removal there in 1928 for construction of the Jubilee Reservoir, themselves confirmed their taking of leaves from trees in this locality. In the foothills west of Tsuen Wan, villagers of Yau Kam Tau also collected leaves from wild tea bushes.12\n\nLantau island possessed a rather special type of red \"tea\", with a brilliant red infusion, known as tsz pooi tin kwai (紫背天葵). Tsz pooi tin kwai was described to me as being “half herb half tea”. It was used as a kind of cooling tea (清熱茶) for “over-heating” from food or drink, sore throats and the like. The leaves came from a plant growing between cracks in rocks and stones in high gulleys where there was much moisture. The people of Tong Fuk village on south Lantau, at the foot of the Fung Wong mountain, used to collect these from upper slopes. It was also collected by the women inmates of the religious houses of Ngong Ping and others living at the Po Lin monastery there. Some of the produce found its way to shops in Tai O market where one of the leading shopkeepers, chairman of the Rural Committee, gave me some at intervals. According to Shiu-ying's Hu's An Enumeration of Chinese Materia Medica (Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 1980) page 153, it is to be described in English as the Tea Begonia (Begonia fimbristipula) and in Chinese as (紅天葵/紫背天葵).13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211424, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "116\n\nhad to postpone its Christmas celebrations by a week, and that several Kauluwela boys were unsuccessful in their attempt to enter high school. After a quarantine of a week, the disease was considered stamped out. Ping Lim and Ting On, both of whom were attending Oahu College, were on a three-week vacation then.\n\nIn a letter dated 20 February 1900, Ping Lim wrote:\n\n\"My dear brother Ping Yip Chan:- On account of the great distance between town and our residing place in Moanalua and the inconvenience of getting your letter at once which came to me on Tuesday afternoon, the 14th of Feb., when the steamer was about to leave, I did not answer you immediately. You are, no doubt, wondering why I am in Moanalua. The cause was that S. M. Damon was afraid that his brother F. W. Damon's residence and the school might burn down in case one of our members should have attached the plague, and also the school's neighbourhood is in a very bad condition. So we moved to a small island owned by S. M. Damon, which is near to the 3 mi. water pumping tank, and borrowed six tents from the Kamehameha School to make our chambers. Four of them used for us, sixty in number, and one for the three teachers, and one for a food storeroom. You may think it is crowded but there the ocean wind is pretty strong. At first we expected to live there one week or two, but after having been there a week the news reached us, stating that several Chinamen working in the Pantheon stables, which are adjacent to our school, have died of plague and so these buildings were soon turned to ashes. Afterwards the whole block in which we live was said to be infected and a rough fence has been built around the block. The people of this spot have been put under quarantine. Had we not made the move we are surely in quarantine.\n\nNow I must turn to another important subject. Well, you have told me that the burning of Chinatown is the most cruel act that was done to our Chinese by the whites. No, the properties destroying itself was not so half bad as to see our ignorant helpless bind-footed Chinese women and babies crying and running forcibly for their lives on the streets, when the unexpected fire came. More than this, some few women who were about to let their babies out to earth were pushed to the drays which took them to quarantine. While during these hours it has been said that some births have occurred. Of course the Chinamen were driven like cattle by the inspectors who carried stakes or some other beating instruments in their hands. After that the men and women, numbering several thousand, were taken to the Kawaiahau Church and grounds. The women lived inside the church while the men outside on the grounds with tents. I am sorry to say that father, brother and in-law's whole family were among these people. During their residing in the church, I went to see father every day, asking if there was anything wanting. Many articles and foods have been taken there by our store partners. But after having been in there for a week they were driven to Kalihi just a little below the Kamehameha School where a great number of new rough rooms have been set up. In Kalihi's I can't see any of our known people to talk with there. All I can do is to send letters to them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211438, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "130\n\nand settled in a new home at the East Gate of Shekki. A son, Tin Suk, was born a year later, followed by two daughters, Ah Fook and Ah Look. When all three children came down with a serious illness, only Tin Suk survived.\n\nI treasure a vignette of Grandfather beside a horse tied to a tree behind our Iwilei home, ready to leave for Kaneohe, and another one of him sitting on a chair and asking me to press my face against the stub of his whiskers. I pushed his face away, but Ruth did not resist. He told Mother that he liked my 'spirit', a trait she considered as stubbornness, and tried to subdue by applying the rod generously.\n\nIt is hard to understand why Grandfather did not leave any money to Uncle when he left Hawaii. This meant years of hardship for Uncle and his family. Everyone had to share in the numerous tasks. The children had many chores: cutting grass to feed the pigs, beating kerosene cans to frighten flocks of birds which came to dine on ripening grain, pasting bags out of newspaper to protect melons from destructive insects, helping with the threshing of grain and bagging of the paddy, and on and on. Aunt's work was endless. In addition to child-bearing, she shared in the planting and harvesting of both rice and vegetables, chopped guava trees which were in great abundance on the hillside for firewood, cooked three meals every day, and saw to the needs of the children. Although Annie, the oldest child, was not a boy, she had to help in ploughing the fields at an early age, and had little opportunity to attend school.\n\nOne crop of rice a year was general, but some years Uncle managed two plantings. Vegetables were also grown: cucumber, bitter melon, mustard cabbage, napa, bak choy, water chestnut, watercress. At harvest time, as well as during the planting season, itinerant workers had to be hired. It was men against weather. They transferred the rice seedlings into the watery mud fields, inserting a few stalks at a time in neat, straight rows. When the grain ripened, the rice stalks were cut with sickles and laid row on row in neat piles for bundling. Sheaves of grain, balanced on each end of a long pole, were carried on the shoulder to the threshing ground, which was a large concrete area with a stake in the centre. A horse tied to it would be driven round and round to stomp the grain from the stalks, which were then pitch-forked away into a mountain-high pile that served as a play area for the children.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211439, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "131\n\nMost of the itinerant workers were from where my father originated and spoke the Nam Long subdialect. Uncle housed them in a bedroom attached to the large barn facing the concrete area used for threshing and drying the grain. After dinner these men would lie on wooden, mat-covered beds, conversing with each other while heating beads of opium over a small lamp before puffing through a long pipe the bubbling brown drug. To this day I can recognize the sweet odour of opium.\n\nWhenever Uncle went to Honolulu, he would always stop by to bring us vegetables from the farm and have his lunch, usually large buns filled with black bean paste and large, flat cakes, made largely of flour and sugar. He usually left around two o'clock in order to reach home by sundown. The journey was difficult, especially in bad weather, because the horses would sometimes balk and refuse to proceed when they approached the Pali. Uncle believed that the horses were sensitive to the presence of ghosts, so that whenever they became stubborn and refused to proceed, he would let them turn back towards Honolulu until they reached the drinking trough of spring water near the entrance to Dr. Morgan's estate. Uncle would wait until the horses were willing to start for Kaneohe again.\n\nBefore the Pali Road, started in 1898, was completed, travel was by horseback from Luluku to the half-way house at the foot of the mountain pass and up the steep slopes to the Pali. A two-seater buggy, which supplanted the horse, was most intriguing in that the passenger seat swung out before one could get in. Once we got to ride in it when Mother allowed Ruth and me to visit our cousins without her. The visit was exciting and enjoyable, as we crowded together on the matted beds, enclosed by thick mosquito netting. Soon we thought that it was more fun to be outside on the porch. As we ran back and forth carrying each other piggy-back, Uncle suddenly appeared and ordered us back to bed. I was told later that I had become so homesick that Uncle had to take us home much sooner than planned.\n\nMother looked forward to a yearly visit to Uncle's and we would go there by coach, owned by Look Buck of Kaneohe. We often grew anxious as the automobile raced down the steep, narrow and winding road. Once Mother jumped out of the coach with Helen in her arms when it began to slide backwards while manoeuvring a hairpin curve. For several years", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211517, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "210\n\nof the ground, so that they can rise up with the balloon in due course: these youths have to light the fuses at just the right moment when the balloon takes off (see plate 6).\n\nOnce the balloon is fully erect, the oil-soaked ball is set alight and fixed to the centre of the wire struts at the rim. The balloon is pulled down to the ground and held down by as many of the village youths as possible, to maximise the heating effect of the very ardent fire produced by the oil-soaked ball (see plate 7).\n\nLighting of the old peanut oil ball was not always easy, and often took some time; the modern diesel soaked balls are much easier to light. In either case, once lit, the balloon soon begins to glow like a huge lantern, and the whole balloon quickly starts to strain upwards. The young men of the village try to restrain the balloon until the whole surface of the oil-ball was well alight, to ensure that the balloon flies upwards quickly and directly, with no dangerous lurches to the side where village buildings and crops stand ready to be set on fire. Usually, the balloon's lift is, however, so great that the young men are unable to restrain it for more than a few seconds. This is the most dangerous time, as the risks of the balloon catching fire at this stage are high: about half, in fact, fail and collapse in flame in this stage. If they don't burn out, the lift is great enough to carry the balloon up to a height of several thousand feet: balloons will cross the mountains of the New Territories with little problem. Ideally, the night for flying a balloon should be still and windless, so that the balloon goes straight up and hangs like a great lantern over the village, only drifting off slowly (see plate 8). A well-made balloon with a peanut oil-ball would burn, the villagers state, throughout the night and into the following day. Certainly, within the last 3 years, the author has seen balloons still hanging two or three hundred feet above the ground well into the morning after the Mid Autumn Festival. Diesel fired balloons burn out quicker, and tend to drift back to earth after an hour or so.\n\nThe villagers are and were aware of the fire-risks inherent in these balloons. The danger was when the balloon came back to earth still burning rather than staying in mid-air until the oil burnt out and the balloon drifted, dead, slowly back to earth. If the balloon was not restrained for the first few seconds after it was lit, or if the paper dome\n\n!\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211666, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "56\n\nbeaten and thrown out by his two partners. Having lost everything the mother had to take in washing even though she was seven months pregnant. One day whilst washing clothes by the river she slipped but luckily the local Earth God seeing her falling, changed into a dog and rescued her, dragging her out of the water. When she regained consciousness the Earth God had changed into an old woman who helped deliver her of a healthy boy, Hsu En-te (4). The beating had caused the father injuries which prevented him from working and the family lived in poverty. The father, unable to stand it any more went out to hang himself but met with a local dignitary named Kuan who, when he had heard the sad story took the family back to his house and cared for them. The father slowly recovered and when fully back to his old self he became a rent collector for Mr Kuan. On one of his trips out collecting rent he encountered his two former partners from the silk shop who again robbed him and took the rents he had just collected, beat him up again and this time the father died of his injuries as he crawled back to the Kuan household. By this time En-te was seven years old and he swore never to forget those who had done his family such great wrongs. He worked at looking after the accounts for Mr Kuan and secretly started to learn martial arts. He was accomplished by the time he was fifteen. When he was sixteen the Kuan household was attacked by bandits and to everyone's surprise En-te not only beat them off but detained three of them. At first he turned down the offer from a local magistrate to become the head of the local police force but as his mother wished him to serve the people he finally accepted the offer and served three years.\n\nWhen, after the three years, he returned to live in the Kuan household he discovered that one of the two partners who had killed his father was also living in the Kuan household together with his daughter. The killer was hated by everyone but being afraid of him they left him well alone to live in peace. The killer fell ill, repented and expressed his deep sorrow at his heinous crimes. Hsu En-te gave some money to the daughter so that she could buy medicines for her father.\n\nAfter many incidents En-te eventually married the daughter of his father's killer and when, much later, En-te himself died he was revered by the local population as a benefactor and was looked upon by them as their protective deity. The cult was carried across to Taiwan, to the temple in a village near Tainan where the immigrants from Kiangsu established it as Hsu Wang Yeh,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211793, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 208, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "183\n\nJanuary 27 1874 William Suter's Incompatibility of Temper and Tom Taylor's Masks and Faces or Before and Behind the Curtain opened the season in the New Lyceum Theatre. This one lasted much longer than its predecessor, indeed, until 1929 when it was sold to be resuscitated in the French Concession in 1931.\n\n——\n\nBut to return to pre-1867 conditions, some final notes should be added. Shanghai saw its first tentative steps in lighting its streets with gas in 1865 which was no luxury as the state of the roads was often rather dubious. Lighting in the theatre therefore, both the auditorium and the stage, was by means of either candles or oil lamps, the danger and inadequacies of which require no further comment.\n\n—\n\nRegulation of the climate in the hall was also difficult. Temperatures in Shanghai can be as low as 12°C in January and as high as 40°C in June-August. In order not to deter the audience, heating had to be provided in winter, which was duly advertised: \"Thoroughly warmed with splendid stoves\", whereas in summer which was certainly in the early years an unusual time for entertainment - one could read that \"to obviate the excessive heat of a crowded house, the Company beg to state that they have had two large Punkahs hung and have otherwise improved the ventilation\" (a punkah was a large rectangular fan suspended from the ceiling and moved by servants).\n\nPerformances started generally at 8 o'clock or 8.30 (even 9) (1864-1865) and entry prices were $3 for the best seats and $2 for the other ones (back seats and gallery) (The Mexican dollar, one of the currencies used in Shanghai, fluctuated in value, but may be said to have been worth about 4/6 during these years — so no \"shilling gallery\" here).\n\nIn addition to the godown theatres there were a number of other localities where artistic entertainment occurred in 1865. On February 23 1865 a concert was given at the Astor House Hotel. This hotel had been founded by an American, D.C. Jansen, in 1860 and it was situated in a part of the Settlement known as Hongkew (or American Settlement), north of the Soochow Creek, near the bridge. It was destined to become one of the most famous hotels in Shanghai and it was rebuilt several times. But in 1865 it was still a low construction. Other concerts, on October 17 1864, February 15 and March 1865, were given at the Shanghai Club, a redoubtable pillar of society located at the southern end of the Bund where it was opened in 1864. It was built in a neoclassical", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212250, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE OFFERING TO THE WHITE TIGER\n\nIN CANTONESE OPERA\n\nSAU Y. CHAN*\n\n169\n\nIntroduction\n\nSymbolically, the White Tiger is a mystic figure in Cantonese folk religion. Though it can also bring merits to people, it is often referred to as a fierce devil. Thus the ritual known as zae bak fu (Offering to the White Tiger) should be held from time to time so that the harm caused by the White Tiger could be minimized. It is performed in a variety of Cantonese folk religious practices and a comparatively more elaborate form of the ritual has been preserved in the tradition of Cantonese opera, where it is also called zuk bak fu (capturing the White Tiger), zae toi (offering to the performing stage), po toi (breaking or initiating the performing stage), da mau (beating the cat) and occasionally as tiu coi sen (dance of the Deity of Fortune) and tiu jyn tan (dance of the Jyn Tan deity). As it has often been criticized as a superstitious act in mainland China, troupes there have, according to some informants, ceased to perform this ritual in recent decades. Nowadays this operatic form of White Tiger ritual is mainly preserved by troupes performing in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.\n\nI\n\nThe Exorcistic Function of the Offering\n\nAccording to interviews with many Cantonese operatic employees, whenever a theatre, whether temporary or permanent, is built on a piece of land that has never been used for such a purpose, the performing stage is called a sen toi (new stage) and the White Tiger ritual has to be performed for the protection of members of the troupe and the community which hires the troupe. It is believed that a tiger turns white when it reaches the age of 500. It would then make use of people's mouths to harm other people. Before the ritual is done, if one calls the name of another person, or simply talks, the words will be made use of by the White Tiger and the one who responds will be harmed. In the past, disasters such as the flooding, collapse and\n\n* Music Department, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212252, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "171\n\nThe Non-Operatic Performance of the Offering\n\nThe introduction of the present paper has already mentioned that the White Tiger ritual is often undertaken in contexts other than the initiation of a new Cantonese operatic stage. The other forms of the ritual are discussed below.\n\nIn modern Hong Kong, one of the other rituals that makes use of the White Tiger ritual is known as da siu jen (beating the petty or debased person), which is performed by a male or female religious practitioner for his or her client who suffers misfortune or bad luck. According to Chien Chiao's study, the ritual can be held for “general blessing or exorcising purposes\" (Chiao 1986:213) but it is often aimed at a certain spirit or real person who brings bad luck to the practitioner's client. During the ritual, the practitioner pierces or beats with a sword or shoe a small paper figure cut in the shape of a human being, as an act to punish and defeat the petty person's harmful power. The practitioner also puts a piece of pork in the mouth of a stone statue of the White Tiger as a simple form of offering, which is supposed to be a similar exorcistic action to the more elaborate ritual involved in the initiation of an operatic stage.\n\nWhen a temple is newly opened or re-opened after its renovation, its management sometimes hires priests, operatic actors or puppeteers to perform the White Tiger ritual. According to some Taoist priests, for such an occasion, an offering to the White Tiger should better be staged by puppets as the fierce spirits and evil deities surrounding the temple might harm the priests and actors if actual human beings were to perform the ritual. Sometimes the management chooses to hire a Cantonese operatic troupe to stage operas to celebrate the opening and also requires the troupe to hold the White Tiger ritual for the occasion, even though the stage may not be a \"new\" one. If no operatic troupe is hired, the temple management might hire a group of priests, who are often Cantonese operatic employees, or a group of Cantonese operatic actors and accompanists to stage the offering. Whether performed by puppets, priests or actors, the ritual appears in a form similar to that used for the initiation of a new stage.\n\nSome building managements also arrange to have the White Tiger ritual staged either at the time the construction work begins or concludes. Ward has described this form of non-operatic White Tiger", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212260, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "179\n\nthe profession as a means to solve problems related to the management of the troupe and the theatre. Eventually such management rules were overwhelmed by the profession's religious sentiments and transformed to become an essential part of the employees' religious beliefs.\n\nHsu Francis L.K. 1983\n\nREFERENCES CITED\n\nExorcising the Trouble Makers. Magic, Science and Culture, Westport: Greenwood Press.\n\nChiao, Chien\n\n1986\n\n\"Beating the Petty Person: A Ritual of Hong Kong Chinese\" (in Chinese), in New Asia Academic Bulletin (Volume VI): Special Issue on Anthropological Studies of China, Hong Kong: New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nWard, Barbara E. 1979\n\n\"Not Merely Players: Drama, Art and Ritual in Traditional China,\" in Man, March 1979.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212572, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "106\n\nunique practices as do, for instance, the Hakka, Chiu Chau and the boat people. Northern Chinese have no 'second burial' after exhumation as do southerners. Indeed funeral conventions sometimes vary slightly from village to village. Some believe that a menstruating woman must not touch a corpse as she is ‘unclean”. Men, as a sign of respect, may comb their dead wife's hair.\n\nIn Hong Kong there has been considerable merging of customs by different regional Chinese groups, but the focus is still, especially for Cantonese, on veneration of ancestors. This has been construed as meaning, if the living pay sufficient respect to the dead they will, in return, exert benevolence over the lives and prosperity of present and future family members. Ancestor worship is practised in several countries especially where communities are composed of kin groups believed to be descended from common ancestors, like the Five Great Clans of the New Territories. Christian churches have difficulty accepting the word 'worship' and prefer the term 'ancestor reverence.' Filial piety has been described as the most powerful force in China for the past 3,000 years. Probably nowhere are family records as meticulously kept as in China.\n\nReturning to the case study, while the deceased was alive, a western-trained Chinese physician suggested that she undergo an operation. She refused. Going 'intact' into the next world is still considered important by many. Thus Chinese medicine, with little emphasis on surgery, is not infrequently preferred to western medicine. This follows the Confucian dictum: 'One should not inflict harm on one's body, not even hair and skin because they were inherited from one's parents' (ADZ 膚,受之父母,不敢毀傷).\n\nThe human body is a sacred treasure which must not be marred by surgical incision.\" Eunuchs in Imperial China kept their castrated private parts in jars to be buried with them on their death. Not until 22 November, 1913, did an official edict in China grant permission for autopsies. The great shame with beheading was to have a dismembered body.\n\nIn Hong Kong, up to the 1950s and even later, if a patient had an operation and then died, some families would request that any removed organs be buried with the 'heavenly body'.\" Today, patients expect to be told whether something was removed during an operation. Donating of organs, such as kidneys for transplants or removing a beating heart,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212917, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "211\n\nthe loading and unloading of cargo, listening to the varied languages of the coast in Foochow, Amoy and Swatow. It was always a thrill to catch the odd Cantonese phrase as we neared home. At one port we took on board a large number of pigs which were housed in pens on the deck forward of the accommodation. The loading of these pigs involved tremendous squealing generated by the beating of the pigs to make them move. We thought this was cruel so, in the evening, when the loading was finished, several of us sought out the bamboo poles that had been used for beating the pigs and threw them overboard. At sea off the ports we would come across massive fishing fleets. On one occasion our ship was in collision with one of these fishing junks and took the crew on board. We heard that one man had been lost but the rest rescued, including the family of the owner. They looked a miserable wet group on board and I imagine there was a good deal of argument about whose fault the collision was and bargaining about compensation. In any event the ship was stopped for several hours before the fishermen were taken off by one of the other boats.\n\nStorms and Pirates\n\nThese journeys were made in the winter so there was no danger from typhoons but the North East Monsoon produces almost continuous gales in the Taiwan Strait and China Sea. This monsoon sped us on our way south and held us up on the way back. The little ships bucketed about all over the place but any seasickness was soon over. It was great fun hanging over the very bows in a big sea watching the ship's stem come right out of the water and plunge back. The year when the sea froze over we found the first ice in the form of tiny plates like fish scales. These got larger and larger until we found drifts of serious ice. The ship had to take one or two runs at some of these drifts and we had a great struggle to get alongside when we reached the port in Chefoo.\n\nPirates were common on the China coast but only once was a school party involved in a piracy. This was the Shanghai party travelling back to school on the Tungchow in, I think, January 1936. The pirates, believing that this ship had a load of silver, got on board in Shanghai as deck passengers. The deck passengers were segregated from the cabin area and bridge by bars and locked gates while armed White Russian guards patrolled the decks near the bars day and night. Once at sea the pirates killed the White Russian guard and took over the ship. The ship disappeared for days. Nobody had any idea where on the thousands of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213360, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "165\n\nHong Kong history is to make any relevant material collector's items. Old postcards, for instance, which might have been bought for several dollars a few years ago, are now selling for ten, twenty times the price. New collectors are entering the market, and no doubt 1997 has much to do with heating up the collectors' market for 'Things Hong Kong'. The effect is that items which might have gone to the museums and libraries where serious researchers have access, are now in private collectors' hands and so unlikely to be used for research.\n\nMaybe, in this respect too, the local historian is the victim of his own success.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nIt is clear that the study of local history in Hong Kong, built upon earlier foundations, has made great progress since the 1970s. In the meantime, government and semi-government bodies have contributed towards promoting interest and awareness in local history and heritage conservation. To a generation born in Hong Kong and curious about its own history, these developments have been timely. Thus we are witnessing a period of unprecedented activity in promotion and research, and ready funding. In turn, the sudden surge in public demand is creating bottlenecks. There is no quick or easy solution to the problem, and it will take a few years for the universities, and perhaps the museums, to train a sufficient number of researchers to keep up with popular demand. At the same time, we should not lose sight of the need to continue serious research to ensure that quality and depth are not sacrificed for popularity.\n\n## NOTES\n\nThe author is grateful to the Japan Foundation for funding part of the research for this paper, which is a slight modification of one presented at the 14th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 20-24th May, 1996, entitled “The Study of Local History in Hong Kong: Progress and Problems”.\n\n2\n\nLan Tien-wei dates the beginning of the study of Hong Kong history to the 1910s when the former Hanlin scholar Chen Botao revised the Dongguan Local Gazetteer. In this case, of course, Hong Kong was only a minor part of the study. In the 1920s and 1930s, some archaeologists began excavations in the Hong Kong region, but since prehistoric archaeology is a different branch of knowledge with techniques of its own, it will be excluded from this paper (See Lan Tien-wei, “Hong Kong Studies in the Past Seventy years” (in Chinese), Chu...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213583, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "149\n\nmentioned that incense trees in fung shui woods were ever harvested. Iu (1983) claims that the misunderstanding may have been caused by the reference to another incense producing species Aquilaria agallocha which was commonly grown in north Vietnam.\n\nAnother resource, long since exhausted, were the forest trees used for charcoal burning, once a flourishing local industry all over the New Territories. The memory of this occupation remains in one of the place names at Shing Mun, known as Tan Chong or \"charcoal factory”, in which some houses were already abandoned by the early years of this century (Hayes, 1983). An account of the charcoal industry, which was carried out by outsiders for trade, is given by Shen (1971).\n\nThe village hill areas were the main suppliers of fuel, usually in the form of grass cut in autumn, but also as pine and brushwood gathered to augment a villager's income. Firewood was taken to market as it was one of the three basic staples, including rice and vegetables, that was required by the rapidly growing urban population. Firewood from Shatin was brought on foot to Kowloon (Sessional Papers 1903, p209) which list 66,521 loads of firewood, each of 90lbs. The Kowloon Lok Sin Tong levied a small weighing charge on each load of firewood sold in Kowloon City market, for charitable works. The annual output of one acre (0.4ha) was 11 piculs (640kg), (Hong Kong Annual Report 1938 p59). Gathering firewood was the main occupation of the village women. A typical headload would be in region of 90-100lbs (45kg) and would be collected twice a week, (Hayes, 1983).\n\nFirewood was used in earthenware stoves, known as \"feng-lu\", for cooking family meals and special food at festival times. Grass gathered from the hill side in autumn and the stalks from the first crop of rice were the universal fuel used for heating water and pigswill. Firewood was still being used up until 1964 in the urban encroached village of So Uk in west Kowloon for cooking at Chinese New Year, as it was better for baking (Hayes, 1983).\n\nWhen a bride came to live in her husband's village, the older women would show her those areas from which fuel could be gathered and those areas, usually the fung shui woods, where it could not be gathered. This information was often learned by means of a 12 line poem or song to name those areas where the young wife should not gather fuel.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214117, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "154\n\nSchofield, a competent geologist, a good example of the colonial scholar-administrator, helped to map more than 100 sites with evidence of archaeological finds (Bard 1995: 383).\n\nAnother well-known scholar, a big man in every sense of the word, who served the Hong Kong Government from 1932 to 1969, was K. M. A. Barnett. As a jovial, erudite scholar who managed to master various Chinese dialects, this larger than life personality received a severe beating at the hands of the Japanese for volunteering information to a Red Cross team which came to inspect a prisoner-of-war camp in Hong Kong during World War II. Ken Barnett, who in prison camp had difficulty, according to Dr Solomon Bard another inmate, in finding people with whom he could play \"mental chess\", has fortunately left a few examples of his scholarship in RASHKB journals.\n\nWhen the Branch was re-established, in 1959, Dr J. R. Jones (J. R. as he was known to most of us) became its founding President. As well as being a good all-rounder in the heritage field, he too was a linguist.\n\nDr Jones was followed as President by Sir Lindsay Ride, a Rhodes Scholar and, from 1949 to 1964, Vice Chancellor of Hong Kong University. During World War II he escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in Hong Kong and, from a base in China, served with the British Army Aid Group. One of his best known pieces of research, which he undertook together with his wife Lady May (also a long time member of the RASHKB), was about the East India Cemetery and protestant burials in Macao (Ride 1996).\n\nThe third RASHKB President was Dr Marjorie Topley, an anthropologist. She too was recognised internationally and a number of her papers may be seen in our Branch's journals.\n\nDr James Hayes, who first joined the Branch back in 1961, served all but about six years of his membership period in Hong Kong as an office bearer. He did not step down as President until 1990, when he emigrated to Australia. There are more contributions by Dr Hayes in the Branch's journals than by any other author. He too has an international reputation as a scholar, and, in 1992, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters was bestowed on him by the University of Hong Kong for his work in the field of local history. For him, the Royal", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214407, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 265, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "231\n\nmainly inhabited by Chinese, which circumstance already speaks sufficiently for itself, but eastwards the city is spreading rapidly, with magnificent houses being built; in the two years following my first visit marked progress has been made.\n\nFurther towards the east a magnificent road leads to a beautiful valley, through which flows a small stream. They say this was the only place that was inhabited prior to the occupation of the island by the English. The Chinese (man) who had a farm here and who had cultivated the valley, called it Happy Valley, a name by which it is still known today. Nowadays alongside the excellently cultivated fields other fields are gradually being sown for great harvests in the future. We too planted a few seeds brought here from afar. The name of the valley accords with its choice as the site for the cemetery.\n\nWhat first particularly strikes one in Hong Kong and other trading towns of China is the almost total absence of horses; they are replaced by Chinese. It is too hot to walk on foot and hence improper for a decent gentleman, let alone a lady: on my walks I never met a lady on foot. Each household usually has one covered litter, like a carriage body without wheels, and several open ones, consisting of light bamboo armchairs with two poles attached: in the true sense - a portechaise. Two Chinese are harnessed to both the former and the latter, which obviously works out cheaper than horses, but from the moral point of view they are debased to the level of animals and are no better than any slave. On more than one occasion a poor coolie (porter) received a beating from a passing dandy for not moving out of the way in time or simply because the latter wanted to make use of his cane. It seems that crying out against slavery, or preaching equality, is much easier. During my stay here a small scene took place on 'Queen's Road.' The main role was played by a young officer of the frigate HM Nanking. It seems that the young man, being in high spirits, decided to eat some fruit from the basket of a hawker and the Chinese, not appreciating the joke, demanded payment and not receiving it grabbed the gentleman by the coat. Apparently, this insult to his attire was too much to take, even if the citizen of the Celestial Empire was right, and that is why HM Mr. Officer dealt the 'peasant' a mighty blow, which cut his face. Several peace-loving citizens, who didn't share the hero's warlike spirit, happened to be present and insisted that he be taken to the police, which was indeed done in spite of the loud protestations of his friends. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214421, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 279, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "245\n\ncontinuing battle between Fadeev and the coolie, for the basket. I hired a boat and placed Fadeev in it, but the coolie followed him and resumed the fighting. The Chinese in the surrounding boats started shouting; Fadeev was about to sit down in the boat, like a mandarin, holding the basket in both hands, but the coolie wouldn't leave him alone. The boatman didn't want to take us, waiting for a resolution of the matter. Fadeev moved to go ashore again - but they wouldn't let him. \"With your permission, Your Excellency, I'll settle them,\" he said, taking the basket in one hand, and energetically pushing the Chinese aside with the other, he got ashore. I left, leaving him to sort it out as best he knew, only from afar I could see him beating off the Chinese like a bear amongst a pack of dogs, hitting them on their outstretched arms. Then later I saw him proudly moving away on our ship's boat, with just the purchases, and not the basket, which had belonged to the coolie and was, through our slow-wittedness, the cause of the conflict.\n\nAt one end of Hong Kong's extensive roadstead the trading house of Jardine and Matheson has been established. The four of us went to have a look at this example of the indefatigable energy and insatiable greed and enterprise of the English. Sten-Bil, the commander of the Danish corvette \"Galatea\" believes the English have invested too much labour and money in Hong Kong and the undertaking will not vindicate itself. On the appropriation of this island, merchants from Calcutta and Singapore rushed here and some of them sank all their capital, counting on the proximity of the Chinese mainland and on the sale of opium. But so far this has not been justified. Perhaps misgivings about the commercial imprudence of some Jardine may be warranted but nevertheless the possession of Hong Kong, the cannons, their own harbour - all this at China's doorstep, assures the English of trade with China for ever, and this little island will, it seems, be an everlasting eyesore for the Chinese government.\n\nA palace has been built at the Jardine establishment, and a garden and path laid out nearby; other buildings are being erected. While we were there hoards of Chinese were paving the ground with slabs; a few vessels stood by the shore. It was not yet midday when we walked onto the wharf and then hurriedly disappeared into the scant shade of the young garden. The chirping of the insects, with the approach of midday was so loud, that it could have challenged a large orchestra. We sat wearily on a bench, glancing occasionally at the glass doors of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214580, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 438, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n407\n\nGH Choa, The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai, A Prominent Figure in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong, Revised Edition (first published 1981), Chinese University Press Hong Kong (2000) (pp. 305).\n\nThis book is about one of Hong Kong's favourite sons, who lived from 1859 to 1914. At least he would be if more people knew about him. That is, one supposes, one of the main purposes of this book. This distinguished man deserves to be better known. So often too, after one has written a book, one discovers additional information. Dr Choa has had a second bite at the cherry.\n\nPicture if you can a 13 year-old Chinese lad going off to Britain in 1872, in a vastly different world to that which we know today. After completing secondary education he moved to medical school at Aberdeen in 1875, where he graduated with the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery. Not content he then studied law at Lincoln's Inn where he was selected as Senior Equity Scholar and Senior Scholar in Real and Personal Property. When the news arrived back, 'on a slow boat to Hong Kong,' it caused quite a stir. All Chinese basked in Ho Kai's glory. This young Chinese was beating the Brits at their own game.\n\n4\n\nBut wait! While in Britain he did an unheard of thing and took an English woman as his wife. Choa says, \"This was probably the first Anglo-Chinese marriage ever... On returning to Hong Kong in 1882, it must have caused considerable consternation. Bearing in mind that cross-cultural marriages were frowned upon in many circles in Hong Kong up to well after World War Two, one wonders how Alice and Ho Kai were received in 'polite' social circles? Unfortunately, the marriage did not last. Ho Kai's wife died a couple of years after arrival. It appears she died of typhoid shortly after giving birth to a daughter who was later sent back to England. In his wife's memory her loving husband established the Alice Memorial Hospital. He later took a second wife and raised a large family.\n\nIt is a pity we know so little about Ho Kai's first wife. Her father", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215029, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "81\n\nthe scars of the beating. They would then be sent to the camp hospital, where a kind Scottish doctor, Major Gray, would do his best to treat them...\n\n'Dead of what? Disease, only attended to when too late. Those who succumbed to harsh treatment, beatings, poor nourishment, the climate and cold. I saw one tied to a tree and savagely beaten. He died. But why such harsh treatment? Because they were not allowed to leave camp to walk in the village. Also, there were problems with the [French] women. This has always been the same throughout history. Some managed to escape at night, for one night. And at dawn, instead of returning to camp, where they knew they would be beaten to death, they would rather hide in the fields, buried in haystacks, where they would be found, weeks later, dead of hunger and cold. After the war many skeletons were found when the camp was dismantled. Many preferred to bury themselves alive rather than to return to the \"hell of Nolette.\" They were buried like animals, standing up, especially at first. Often their heads could be seen. It was only later that gravestones were arranged and maintained properly to erase the awful memories and so that the public could be kept in blissful ignorance of what really happened.'\n\nMonsieur Réveillon recounts: 'In 1917 I was 13 years old. Nobody by then paid any attention to French or English soldiers. But the whole population assisted on the arrival of these \"Little Yellow Men\" with complete bewilderment. They were odd, with their plait down the back, their padded blue sleeveless clothes, puffed-up trousers and slippers of the same material, which did not appear to have a sole and on which they walked silently.'\n\n‘On arrival, the Chinese were directed to the Camp located on sides of the road to Sailly. They live here, slightly in retreat where they have built a pagoda to pray. Only 2 street sweepers, always the same two, have contact with the villagers. Silently, they warm themselves in Mr Réveillon's father's forge. Other workers clean the stables where the English keep their horses. A bamboo stick in one hand, a basket in the other, they remove the manure. They also visit the shopkeeper, who is not always honest and sell them outdated stock hats, belts - at sometimes inflated prices. Apart from these rare contacts, the villagers did not approach the Chinese whose smile, they thought,\n\nww", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215065, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "118\n\nand the ten celestial trunks.\" These indicate the cardinal points and all other directions, as well as calculating various phenomena according to Chinese beliefs, by which the specialist can work out the geographical position of Taisui and the times and places threatened by his presence. To find where Taisui will be during the forthcoming year, and he is believed to move annually, the compass is used by a fengshui expert, a geomancer; or for every day general use prognostications are simply looked up in the Farmer's Almanac.\n\nNowadays, the birth hour and date of an individual are matched to the movements of Taisui given in the Almanac thereby obtaining the auspicious and inauspicious dates for most social functions such as weddings, travel, starting a business or journey, launching a ship or burying the dead. Individuals whose future has been identified as clashing with the particular cycle through which Taisui [or his planet Jupiter] is passing must avoid major events such as travel, moves, marriage or house construction. Although he is greatly feared as he can not only protect and provide happiness he can also invoke disease misfortune, calamity and must be placated especially before embarking on any new major project. Despite the importance of this deity he is worshipped on as few occasions as possible as he is so alarmingly unpredictable. He is, however, prayed to when a child is born for a long, comfortable and happy life. Taisui is also prayed to in Fukienese temples, especially in Malaysia, for good luck at the races.\n\nAs an agricultural deity, one of the most important rôles of Taisui, was to control rainfall, and to provide sufficient and no more for a good harvest. In Fujian and other eastern Chinese provinces Taisui was also known as Mang Shen or Gou Mang, \"the youth with the Spring Ox.\" A colourful and symbolic ritual, not observed in Hong Kong or Macau but still to be seen in Taiwan, was the beating of the Ox at the beginning of Spring. The ox, fashioned from mud or coloured papers, was based on the Farmer's Almanac, with its size and colouring determined by the portents for general well being and weather for the coming year. The ceremony consisted of a float bearing the mud images of the ox and Taisui, followed by city officials bringing up the rear. It ended with the ox being beaten by the local mandarin outside his yamen and broken up, followed by devotees scrambling for parts which they either fed to their pigs for fertility, buried them in the fields for abundant crops, or kept them in their homes for good fortune. The first illustration", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215490, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "216\n\nwas commemorating, it was certainly doing so with great Excitement and Atmosphere.\n\nAcross another courtyard, up a dark flight of wooden steps to a square viewing balcony with space for perhaps 40 people to stand next to the railing, looking down into\n\nTemporarily speechless\n\none of the most amazing and moving sights I have ever seen. So much so I had to leave after a few minutes, and go and look at the sunlight and distant mountains before venturing back in, still in a state of some shock. Seated one floor below us, lit only by smoking candles, cross-legged on the wooden floor, were four rows of monks dressed in their dark blood-red habits, two rows facing the other two rows, 48 monks in all. Each had a drum of about two feet in diameter, which was held vertically with the aid of a three-foot pole. They were beating these drums and chanting in the deep-throated growly tones that one only hears in Buddhist temples, all to a set but irregular rhythm without the apparent aid of written music or any other form of instruction. Wandering along the ranks of seated chanters was a sergeant-major or choirmaster with a large and solid-looking stick in his hand. He used this to apply a none-too-gentle rap on the shoulder to any monk whose drum was not held perfectly upright. I regret that my less than classical education made me think of Indiana Jones when he was deep inside the Temple of Doom amongst the thuggees. I apologise if I am upsetting any reader's sensitivities with this comparison, and I freely admit that there could hardly be less similarity than between a gentle Bhutanese monk and a murderous Indian thuggee.\n\nSeated behind these monks, beneath our viewing platform, were countless other monks - some with instruments, some without. Some of these, it seemed to be the young novices, for no apparent reason received three lashes each on the back from a gentle monk carrying a cat-o'-nine-tails. (Parent: 'Did you have a nice day at the temple today dear?' Young Novice: 'Yes thank you mama.' P: 'Did you get thrashed?' YN: 'Yes mama - thrice.' P: 'That's my boy! Your father and I are so proud of you.')\n\nBack to centre stage, where the performers were considerably more", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215981, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 280, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "214\n\nnot fully known. There was apparently some disturbing news passed along unseen lines of communication that a large group of unruly men, nearly 5,000 in all, had been rounded up in Wye-chow and urged on by Soo and another gentry collaborator, Wong Chik-wai, to sneak into Poklo and capture the district magistrate, Legge, and Ch'êa. Their intentions were apparently malevolent, fully inclined toward \"punishing\" all three if they were found. In fact, their progress toward Poklo was slower than the Hoppo anticipated. On October 10th, the day Legge left to return to Canton and then on to his young family in Hong Kong, the vigilantes had already \"made prisoners\" of the Prefect of Wye-chow and the District Magistrate of Kwye-sheen, capturing them as they returned from the previous day's festivities in Poklo.\n\n1584\n\nCh'êa himself, Legge reflected, \"was full of joy, as I was, and unsuspicious of danger.\" Apparently sometime during the evening of the 12th or 13th, a group of men surrounded the London Mission's house in Poklo and provoked Ch'êa to come to the door by having a small child knock on it. Having tricked him by this means, they grabbed him, beating him till they could control him by other means. Soon afterwards this kind of aggressive physical persecution spread to all the places where residents had become Christians, neighbours saving themselves by becoming informants, causing a desperate exodus from many places. News that finally did filter down to Hong Kong came from the mouths of a handful of refugees who managed to escape from the area.\n\nLegge's daughter, Helen Edith Legge, put together a series of letters including translations of notes and verbal news received by Chalmers in Canton as well as passages from letters of her father to reconstruct the final days of Ch'êa's persecution. Even though one local Christian named Wong Shan Yen, possibly a wealthy farmer Ch'êa had often met over the years, offered a large ransom to have Ch'êa released, the vigilantes had other purposes in mind.85 First tortured with fire,86 and then later moved to another hamlet where he was hung overnight to a beam by his thumbs and big toes, reawakened into the consciousness of his pain by water dashed in the face, Ch'êa's enemies were merciless. Only if he promised to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 299, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "233\n\nespecially in official rituals such as this interview with foreign guests). \"Friendly conversation\" and longer \"speeches\" constituted the interview, Ch'ea continuing to interpret even though \"his Honour evidently understood us well enough.\"\n\n68. A sensitive reading of these events from both Qing and British sides with the implications for missionaries and their Chinese followers is provided in A. J. Broomhall's Hudson Taylor & China's Open Century: Over the Treaty Wall (Book 2) (Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981).\n\n69. See notes for May 7th, 1861, in Legge's Journal Of A Missionary Tour.\n\n70. Taken from notes for May 12th, 1861, in Legge's Journal Of A Missionary Tour.\n\n71. Described candidly in Legge's Journal of a Missionary Tour, notes for May 9th, 1861.\n\n72. This incident occurred on May 19th, Ch'ea's being \"rudely handled\" by what some elders in the town (who later came to apologize) called a \"few heady youth\". Yet when Legge sought out the sexagenarian Ch'ea's response, suggesting that the beating was severe enough to consider a formal response to the authorities, Ch'ea's principles were unmoved. \"I only pray our Heavenly Father to have pity on them!\" said Ch'ea, and there the matter rested.\" See Legge, Journal of a Missionary Tour, notes for May 9th, 1861.\n\n73. Ch'ea had suggested two places, one next to the Füzi miàao temple complex and a house located on a main thoroughfare in the town. The fact that Ch'ea had formerly been a keeper of the temple probably influenced his opinions as well as the sense of a suitable location for the first Christian church in the area. See comments made by Legge about Ch'ea's suggestions in his Journal of a Missionary Tour, notes for May 6th, 1861.\n\n74. Letter to Arthur Tidman, Secretary of the London Missionary Society, dated October 14, 1861, and published with commentary in EMMC/MM 26 (January 1862), pp. 13-17, here esp. p. 15. Helen Edith Legge refers to another source (no details provided) where it is claimed that the obstructing gentryperson \"led a body of men to make a tumult at the house, assailed it with a quantity of filth, made a violent entry, plundered it of its goods, took possession of the house and threatened to put to death Ch'ea [sic] and other Christians.\" Actions reflecting anti-foreign attitudes follow this event, heightening the tension. See Helen Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar, pp. 114-115.\n\n75. So described in Helen Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar, p. 116.\n\n76. The China Mail in Hong Kong actually described the ceremonies attending the formal evacuation of the British and French forces in its number for October 24, 1861. The event had taken place on October 21st. See China Mail #871 (October 24, 1861), p. 171.\n\n77. Recorded in Legge's essay, \"Che'a Kin KWáng,” the typescript found in CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 7, p. 5.\n\n78. During one point in this tense trip Legge caught Ch'ea sitting down in the corner of his room on the boat with his eyes closed, thinking at first sight that Ch'ea was exhausted from the ordeals he had been facing. Able to see the humour in the serious situation they all faced, Legge playfully chided the elder Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216048, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 347, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "281\n\nsmall boys were always at hand to do the beating, gun-carrying, ditching and picking up. It often occurred, under these circumstances, that a few dust-shot were put into the calf of a man's leg, and occasionally even an eye was injured. A fairly definite tariff gradually established itself; so much so that people used to dodge behind bushes or lurk in the ditches, so as to be ready to raise their hands and yell the instant a gun went off in their direction. Very few Chinese rustic skins were without an assortment of sores and bruises; and nothing was easier than to rub a shot or some powder in and pretend that an ‘internal injury' had occurred. With irate villagers gathering around timid or non-Chinese-speaking sportsmen were often only too glad to compromise on the spot; especially if a few old women with buckets of liquid manure joined in the discussion.\n\nZhenjiang, some twelve to fourteen hours sailing upstream from Shanghai, was yet one more of the points of call on the Yangzi. Ships only stayed a matter of 30 or so minutes and tied up alongside one of the hulks or pontoons. These belonged mostly to foreign shipping or trading companies, though there were one or two hulks owned by Chinese businessmen, moored off the concession, from which it was reached by a bridge as there are pronounced seasonal differences in level. Passengers landed and were quickly cleared by the Customs House. The city, at the back of the foreign concession, was the prefectural capital with a Daotai, a Prefect or Circuit Intendant, and the Dantu, the County Magistrate. A Co-Prefect in charge of coast defences and a Prefect of Police were also located in the city, and in addition to the Manchu [Tartar] garrison stationed in Zhenjiang, under the command of a Lieutenant-General there was the ordinary Chinese garrison under a Lieutenant-Colonel, consisting of several battalions of local militiamen and trainbands [bodies of citizens trained in the use of arms].\n\nLaw and order was maintained in the settlement up to the turn of the 20th century by a body of British-officered Sikh policemen. Tall, imposing and forbidding-looking, they despised the Chinese and were equally heartily feared and disliked by them. The Chinese, amongst other things, complained bitterly about the iniquitous rates of usury charged by the Sikhs!\n\nAt the age of 65, the indomitable traveller and writer Isabella Bird,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]