[ { "id": 204598, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "68\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nand shown the sights of Peking. This became an agreeable task for the members of the Legation, and there was a constant stream of visitors to Peking enjoying the hospitality of the old Legation right up until its closure in 1959. One of the earliest of these visitors was Sir Robert Hart, the Acting Inspector-General of the Chinese Customs. Meanwhile the business of engaging Chinese clerks, gate keepers, and language teachers proceeded. At various times Rennie mentions such familiar things as burglaries within the Legation, and the virulence of the mosquitoes. By now the Legation was the haunt of curio dealers, many of the things they had to offer being of real value, since the destruction of part of the old Summer Palace by the British and French forces had occurred as recently as the previous autumn, and a great deal of loot was now in Chinese hands. In fact, what with buying antiques, conducting visitors round the sights of Peking, and going to the Western Hills in the summer the members of the foreign legations had already set a pattern during their first year in Peking which has continued much the same until the present.\n\nThe local craftsmen found nothing beyond their capacities, and one Chinese tailor made a fine new Union Jack with the old one to copy from. Rennie remarks: \"The Peking tailors have already mastered the making of European clothing, and several members of the Legation have had things made by them\". The total number of Europeans in the three legations (English, French and Russian) was twenty-two. The first American minister to reside at Peking did not reach the capital until July, 1862. On 23 August, 1861 Rennie records: \"We have been busy to-day getting ready for Her Majesty's Foreign Office a large bird's-eye view of the Leang-koong-foo, made by a Chinese artist. Figures for reference have been painted on it by Colonel Neale, and a key also made. The drawing is very exact, every building being carefully depicted.\" In October buildings next to the Legation on the south side were bought by the British Government from a brother of Duke I-liang. This new area was leased to a medical missionary, William Lockhart, who wanted to set up a medical mission in Peking. By January 1862 the extensive alterations to the Legation had come to an end, and the Chinese interpreter, who had made a good harvest of 'squeeze' out of it, now resigned and departed for Tientsin where the foreign troops were stationed. The time ran out.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204605, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n75\n\nWilkinson's book is a gay account of student life with work and play nicely balanced. He mentions many things which must have been familiar to generations of inmates of the Foreign Legations at Peking, such as paying calls on the European residents, buying a pony, choosing a reliable 'boy', the continual battle against 'squeeze', the danger of theft and so on. For pleasure not only was there the bowling alley, which provided the chief amusement inside the Legation during the winter, there was also skating on an improvised rink nearby. Three of the students once skated down the canal to Tungchow, a distance of about twelve miles. There was also the usual entertaining. \"Balls and concerts were given at some of the Legations and at the Inspectorate-General of Customs (where a number of young European men were employed). Dinners everywhere. But the pleasantest of all, perhaps, were the carpet dances (with the carpet up) at two or three houses. We shared the misfortune of most European communities in the East: an undue preponderance of the male. Dancing men were at a discount.\" At Chinese New Year the students generally put on a pantomime or a Christy Minstrel Concert. By this time there was a weekly arrival of mail throughout the summer, and a monthly one during the winter. In the spring and autumn the Peking race meetings were held at a place a mile or so from the western wall of the city. The race-course boasted a tiny grand-stand but Wilkinson is careful to state that these were pretty amateur races; they were picnics first and race meetings second. In summer there was tennis on the Legation lawn, and in the grounds of the residence of the young European employees of the China Maritime Customs, as well as garden parties at the American Legation. The courts in the British Legation lay east and west, and since it was too hot to play until sundown one of the players had to perform with the sun full in his eyes which made play somewhat erratic. For summer dress the students wore a patrol jacket of white drill with trousers to match. In July and August they usually moved to a temple in the Western Hills where they could go for rambles. The main disadvantage of this life came from rain and rats. One summer it rained prodigiously and they were almost washed out of their temple. As for rats an ingenious student subdued them by training four owls which he had bought. They spent the day roosting one on each post of his bed, but at night went into action", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204610, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "80\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nGamewall, an American Methodist, became almost legendary. We get a pen picture of Gamewall in the diary of the Rev. Roland Allen, who was chaplain to the Anglican Bishop in North China at this time. \"Mr. Gamewall was almost voiceless, but still pursued his weary round of the Legation on his bicycle, overseeing the fortifications, and carrying out every suggestion of the military council with untiring zeal.\"25\n\nOutside the Legation Chapel (by now filled to overflowing with missionaries) stood a stone kiosk with a bell inside it, erected to celebrate Queen Victoria's Jubilee. This Bell Tower stood in the middle of the Legation at a point where four ways met. As Allen explained: \"The Tower stood in the midst of tree-shaded ways beautiful from every point of view, sheltered, too, more than most spots from shot and shell. It was only once struck; no one was wounded there. It was well suited to be the centre of the life, as it was by nature the centre of the structure of the Legation.\" People used to collect there in groups to discuss the latest news and rumours. The bell itself was used as an alarm in case of a general attack, when it was rung furiously, and in the case of fire when it was tolled. All round the kiosk were posted up notices for the guidance of the besieged as well as cables, messages, edicts and rumours. Here also was posted up, from time to time, an official census of the inhabitants of the Legation. For instance on August 4th Jessie Ransome entered in her diary the census figures just posted up on the Bell Tower which gave a total of 883 men, women and children. One of the few amusing incidents of the siege was only known to the besieged some time afterwards. On 16th July, 1900 the Belfast newspaper, Northern Whig, had published an account of\n\n25 Rev. Roland Allen, The Siege of the Peking Legations (London, 1901), 161.\n\nA photograph of the six fighting parsons' can be found in Archibald Little, Gleanings from Fifty Years in China (Philadelphia, 1908), 289.\n\n24 When Professor L. Carrington Goodrich passed through Hong Kong in 1962 we spoke about the siege of the Foreign Legations and he told me that he was one of the children of missionary parents who sheltered in the Legation chapel. His father was the Rev. Chauncey Goodrich, remembered today by students of Chinese as the author of A Pocket Dictionary and Pekingese Syllabary, which was first published in 1891 and is still in print, See A. H. Mateer (Mrs.) Siege Days (New York, 1903), 217-18 and photograph opposite page 44. For another photograph see Arther H. Smith, China in Convulsion (New Jersey, 1901) II, 494.\n\n27 Allen, op. cit., 119.\n\nH", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204614, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "82\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nexpansion. Thus a new student-interpreters' mess was built and also a new house for the Counsellor in a pleasant garden. A barrack was also built for the Legation guard on the site of the former Chinese Board of Works, Board of War, and Court of State Ceremonies, an area with historic associations. The barracks were large enough to house 500 men though normally not more than 100 were stationed there at any one time. As a result of this enlargement the British Legation now covered about thirty-five acres, and was the largest foreign Legation in Peking. While this reconstruction was going forward the opportunity was taken to make the Legation more self-contained so that if ever it were again besieged it would be in a better state to resist. With this object in view the Ministry of Works built a thoroughly ugly electricity power-plant and a water tower. A large coal dump was also formed so that now the Legation had its own supply of water, coal and electricity.\n\nGradually memories of the siege became less vivid and life settled down into a routine which was much the same as before the siege. Perhaps the only difference was that by 1908 there were signs of some modernization in Peking itself such as macadam roads, handsome cabs and electric light. Meanwhile visitors to Peking continued to enjoy the hospitality of those living in the British Legation, and no clear change can be seen until 1928 when the Kuomintang was victorious over the Northern warlords and the capital was established at Nanking. As a result the British Ambassador moved south of the Yangtze and resided mainly at the British Consulate in Shanghai while the majority of his staff moved to Nanking, though the student-interpreters continued to study at the Legation in Peking which now became a Consulate. When war broke out between England and Japan in December 1941 some British nationals and American nationals, who were sick or elderly, were interned in the Legation. The Swiss Consul looked after the buildings, aided by Chinese employed by Her Majesty's Ministry of Works. The buildings were reoccupied as a Consulate at the end of the war, but in 1948 the Chinese Communists captured Peking, and at first the government of the Chinese Peoples' Republic refused to recognize the status of the British Consulate there. However, in January", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204615, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n83\n\n1950 the British government recognized the Chinese Peoples' Republic, and as a result the British representative in Peking was recognized and the remainder of the diplomatic staff came to Peking from the former capital of Nanking. In 1954 the two governments agreed to exchange Chargés d'Affaires. Meanwhile a few changes had taken place which affected the Legation. For instance, in 1945 it was decided not to repaint the words LEST WE FORGET on the outside wall. In 1950 the part of the Legation compound which formerly housed the barracks was requisitioned by the government of the Chinese Peoples' Republic.\n\nThis was the position when I went to Peking as a tourist in July 1958 and enjoyed the hospitality of friends in the old Legation. It was my first and only visit to Peking and I was impressed by the spaciousness and picturesqueness of the old Legation. The British Embassies at Tokyo and at Bangkok, although impressive in their own ways, could not compare with the old Legation at Peking. Here the grounds were more extensive, and the Chinese buildings and pavilions well preserved and brilliantly painted, so that it was an attractive place in which to stay. Only the water-tower and the dingy brick power-plant spoilt the pleasant effect of trees and lawns and flowering shrubs. The large extent of the grounds deadened the noise of the city outside as well as attracting various wild birds — magpies, hoopoes, woodpeckers, and orioles, crows, cuckoos.\n\nWhile I was enjoying my stay in the Legation and sightseeing every day in the city, the news suddenly broke that American troops had landed in Lebanon and British troops in Jordan. Two days later demonstrators began to assemble outside the gate of the Legation shouting slogans and pasting handwritten posters on the 400-yard stretch of the high walls facing the old Imperial Canal. I had been warned that this demonstration was likely to start in the afternoon but I was so engrossed in sightseeing at the Summer Palace during the morning that I failed to start on the return journey to the Legation early enough. In fact, I travelled back to Peking in a bus with a number of children carrying home-made pennants bearing Chinese characters which meant 'English wolves get out', so that I knew that the demonstration was about to begin. When the bus arrived at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205711, "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\n11\n\nfor nomination by the Governor. The new Council met on 28th February, 1884, and consisted of 6 officials excluding the Governor: the Chief Justice, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney General, the Surveyor General, the Colonial Treasurer, and the Registrar General. There were also 5 unofficials: Mr. T. Jackson (elected by the Chamber of Commerce), Mr. F. D. Sassoon (elected by the Justices of the Peace), Messrs. P. Ryrie, F. B. Johnson and Wong Shing, appointed by the Governor.\n\nThus in 1884 Wong Shing became the second Chinese to serve on the Legislative Council as an unofficial member. He too was a Cantonese from Chung Shan District. In 1841 he entered, with two other Chinese boys, Yung Wing and Wong Foon, the Morrison School in Macao which was later transferred to Hong Kong. In January 1847, Dr. Robbins Brown, an American teacher in the Morrison School, had to leave China on account of ill health. He offered to take a few of his old pupils back to America for further education. Yung Wing, Wong Foon and Wong Shing signified their desire to go and, through Dr. Brown and the Morrison Education Society, expenses for two years for the three boys were arranged. They embarked at Whampoa on the ship \"Huntress\" and proceeded via the Cape of Good Hope, the journey taking more than three months. Upon arrival in the U.S.A. the three boys were admitted to the Monson Academy at Monson, Massachusetts.\n\nAs a result of ill health, Wong Shing did not manage to acquire any academic honours during his sojourn in the United States. On his return to China he was offered an appointment in the Foreign Ministry. He served with Viceroy Li Hung-chang and Marquis Tseng Chi-tze and was a member of the Chinese legation staff in Washington. He resigned later from the Chinese diplomatic service and came to Hong Kong as a merchant. He was also associated with the Anglo-Chinese College and with the London Missionary Society for which he directed its printing establishment under Dr. James Legge. When the Tung Wah Hospital was founded in 1870, he was a founder director. He was naturalized in December 1883 and was appointed to the Legislative Council in February 1884. He was described as a man of property, much-travelled, speaking good English and fully qualified to “look at Chinese affairs with English eyes and at English affairs with Chinese eyes\". His career as a Legislative Councillor was an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212761, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "55\n\non him. Mesny had taken every opportunity to praise Tso and, in good Chinese fashion, looked upon him as his 'protector' or 'patron'.\n\nIn a comparatively brief single-page highlights-only curriculum vitae printed in the Miscellany in 1905, Mesny would appear to have been careful in his choice of words. He used the phrase 'Volunteered for service' not only when he went to Kueichou in 1868, about which he later wrote at length, but also in connexion with 'Manchuria' and 'Peking', the former during the Sino-Japanese War and the latter at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, neither of which has been mentioned elsewhere in the Miscellany. This suggests that he was not taken up on his offers of service, especially as his name does not appear in any of the standard writings on the Boxer era in north China and he does not describe or offer any anecdotes on the subject in his Miscellany.\n\nHis Miscellanies contain a large number of items culled from other works such as Mayer's Chinese Reader's Manual written in Peking in 1874 where Mayers was a Chinese Secretary to HM Legation, and published in Shanghai the same year by the American Presbyterian Mission Press. At one point Mesny claimed that W F Mayers was a friend of his; but reading between the lines one is tempted to see Mesny meeting Mayers over dinner at the Legation in Peking where polite conversation would lead to a discussion on the failure of the Chinese to help build a railway, with Mesny offering advice and suggestions and Mayers, again politely, concurring. This would appear to have been seen by Mesny as Mayers accepting Mesny's ideas and entrusting him with various tasks. Mayers in all probability forgot all about the conversation, but not so Mesny who repeated himself several times in his Miscellanies, explaining how he had offered advice and had been waiting for a follow up from Mayers which never arrived. It is a matter for speculation how often this type of conversation took place, with other parties forgetting, either with or without intent, their talks with Mesny.\n\nMesny periodically advanced oracular statements which in later years would be referred to as 'China-watching'. In 1899 he made several predictions about the 'inadequacies' of the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty and forecast that the end was 'very' nigh with a new reformed China ahead. He also predicted that the Russians for all their implied power would be unable to retain Manchuria against the Japanese who also, Mesny thought, might join up with China making a powerful empire under the Mikado as ruler of the Greater China and Japan. These predictions", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215670, "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": 447, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "399\n\nin whose compound His Majesty's Legation and the United States Embassy are situated. An American guard of honour fired a salute and the Last Post was sounded. Members of the press corps acted as pall-bearers.'113\n\nMr. Morrison's last report for the paper was published on the same day as his death on 12 August 1950.2 He was 37 when he was killed.\n\nFiring the salute\n\nThe Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial lists Mr. Morrison thus:13\n\nIAN MORRISON\n\nNews Organization: THE TIMES\n\nKilled 1950\n\nLocation: South Korea\n\nBio:\n\nKilled Aug. 12 when a land mine blew up under his jeep. He was his newspaper's chief correspondent for southwest Asia. During World War II he covered the Pacific, surviving two plane crashes. At various times he suffered from dengue fever, tropical ulcers, amoebic dysentery and malaria. He was also wounded twice covering combat action, in 1943 and 1945. Morrison was 37.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216072, "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": 371, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "305\n\nMason that 'You [Mason] have been left at Chinkiang not because you have been overlooked, but because you have shown a particular proficiency in acquiring the Nanking dialect, and I did not wish to interrupt these studies by transferring you to another province. It is also important for me to train certain men in the intricate business of Transit Passes40 peculiar to Chinkiang alone, and I have been pleased with your mastery of this branch of our work'.\n\nFor the next couple of months Mason's name crops up in some dozen or so of Hart's letters, usually towards the end of a letter on, what were to Hart, weightier matters. Such comments included 'The Yamen finds \"Mason Affair\" very handy: it can now return the Legation fire neatly after last summer's bombardment sustained for the riots, etc.\n\nMason was brought to trial in the British Supreme Court before the British Consul-General and the Shanghai Settlement's Chief Judge, N J Hannen, on 29 October 1891, charged simply with the illegal possession of dynamite to which he pleaded guilty. Although he had declared before and after the trial that he was a member of the Gelao Hui, had acted to further its plans to overthrow its government, and had personally brought the dynamite into China with unlawful intent, these facts were not mentioned at the trial nor did the Chinese government produce any evidence. The Chinese Legation in London later exerted pressure to demand that Mason, on his release from prison in Shanghai, be tried in Hong Kong on charges of crimes and conspiracy against the Chinese state. Mason was, however, not tried again.\n\nHart, at one point, refers to Mason's comrade Croskey who Mason himself mentioned in his \"Confessions\" as a spy, put there by the Customs Service to watch Mason and who, according to Mason, betrayed and ruined him. In practice Croskey had been promoted from the outdoor staff to the indoor, and then posted to Zhenjiang. Mason somewhat naively explained his plans and plots to Croskey shortly after they met, and Croskey informed his boss in Zhenjiang who in turn asked Croskey to learn more about Mason's plan. Croskey resigned from the Service in the November 'on Sir Robert Hart's recommendation'. Croskey, according to Hart, was a promising young American citizen, a grandson of the first Sir Thos. Bazley, a Manchester MP.41", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]