[ { "id": 204250, "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": 18, "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\n15\n\nEgypt had sailed through the Red Sea, and keeping the land on their right had rounded Africa and returned through the Straits of Gibraltar; on the way they had found that the sun appeared for a time on the north side.\n\nA hundred years later, after Egypt had fallen into his hands, Alexander had founded the city of Alexandria on the western side of the delta of the Nile. The city was destined to become the second city of the Roman Empire. Connected by canal with the Red Sea, and making use of the newly understood monsoon winds (A.D. 47) for crossing the Arabian Sea, it became the chief port of the maritime trade with Persia, India, and the regions beyond.\n\nReferences to this maritime trade exist in the Chinese histories as well as in the writings of the Greeks. In A.D. 97 a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, travelling from Central Asia reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, and was informed by the seamen whom he met that the sea-route from the Gulf proceeded first south-west and then north-west to the port of Wu-ch'ih-san (Alexandria), the return journey taking three months with favourable winds, and two years with unfavourable winds.\n\nThe Chinese records speak of the Persians and the Indians trading by sea with Ta-ts'in (the Chinese name for the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire: Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor) and of the fact that the profits were ten-fold.\n\nThey speak also of traffic between India and China by sea, and record that in A.D. 120 two jugglers who claimed to have come from the Roman Orient (Ta-ts'in) reached Burma, and were sent by the king of Burma as a present to the Emperor of China, via the Burma Road.\n\nAbout the same time a book was written by an unknown Greek sailor called The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea giving a port-to-port description of the voyage down the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula (The Land of Gold) 'under the very rising of the sun, with a notice of China beyond.\n\nShortly after this in the 2nd century A.D. the Geography of Ptolemy was written at Alexandria, where Ptolemy gathered together and systematized all that was known to the Western world about Asia and Africa. In particular he plotted the longitude and latitude of the places known, which when transferred to a modern map give surprisingly accurate results, reaching to China itself.\n\nFrom this time notices of the sea-route increase, both on the Greek and on the Chinese side. The Chinese histories in particular show a rapidly increasing knowledge in the early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206224, "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-1971", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE DEBATE ON NATIONAL SALVATION \n\n35 \n\ntreaty of Nanking, in 1842, which was the result of these troubles, opened four more doors in the wall of exclusiveness with which China had surrounded herself. Amoy, Foochow, Ning Po and Shanghai were added to Canton, thus making five points of touch between China and the West. This did something to rouse China from the Saturnian dreams in which she had been so long indulging; but more was wanting to make her wide awake. It required the fire of the Summer Palace to singe her eyebrows, the advance of the Russian in Kuldja and the Frenchman in Tong-King, to enable her to realise the situation in which she was being placed by the ever-contracting circle that was being drawn around her by the Europeans. By the light of the burning palace which had been the pride and the delight of her Emperors she commenced to see that she had been asleep whilst all the world was up and doing; that she had been sleeping in the vacuous vortex of the storm of forces wildly whirling around her. \n\nIn such moment China might have been excused had she done something desperate, for there is apt to be a good deal of beating about and wild floundering on such a sudden awakening; but there was none in the case of China. A wise and prudent prince counselled China to pay the price of her mistakes, whilst the great Chinese statesman who is now in power, and who, since 1860, has rendered such incalculable services to his country, began that series of preparations which would now make it difficult to repeat the history of that, for China, eventful year. It is not a moribund nation that can so quietly accept its reverses, and gather in courage from them, set about throwing overboard the wreckage and make a fair wind of the retiring cyclone. The Summer Palace, with all its wealth of art, was a high price to pay for the lesson we there received, but not too high if it has taught us how to repair and triple fortify our battered armour; and it has done this. China is no longer what she was even five years ago. Each encounter and especially the last has, in teaching China her weakness, also discovered to her her strength.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206630, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "172\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nT'ai sui is worshipped to avert calamities and appears on altars individually; although in Cantonese, Shanghainese and possibly in other areas, he is usually to be seen in groups of sixty images, often each with the dates for which they are responsible marked on their base or above their heads. In some areas of China he is said to be also a Member of the Ministry of Thunder, which is the premier Celestial Ministry in the spirit world. No Cantonese devotee of T'ai Sui with whom this has been discussed appears to have heard of Yin Ch'iao; whereas Fukienese and Chinese of the Yangtse will know him as Marshal Yin rather than T'ai Sui. In some eastern and south-eastern parts of China T'ai Sui was referred to as the God of Spring.\n\nT'ai Sui was listed in Ch'ing Dynasty regulations in the seventeenth century A.D. to receive official worship as a second-rank deity.\n\nThe words T'ai Sui mean the \"Great Year\", the Jupiter Year, the twelve-year sidereal period which the planet takes to travel around the sun. This figure of 12 is extended to include the 12 hours (each of 120 minutes) of the Chinese day, the twelve months of the year, and the 12 constellations of the zodiac which are believed in North China to be all ruled over by this key star, Jupiter.\n\nConfusing though it may seem, the actual Ministry of Time is itself called T'ai Sui. Depending upon which part of China you are in, it consists of either sixty or one hundred and twenty officials who rule the hours, days and months.\n\nThe Story of Yin Ch'iao\n\nGeneral Yin Ch'iao was the eldest son of the evil King Chou of Shang. He is depicted in the Deification of the Gods as both a good human and an evil, very ugly deity with a face as blue as indigo, and with long protruding fangs. He is also referred to in another famous novel of the same era, the Hsi Yu Chi (The Travels to the West) as blue-faced with ugly protruding teeth. T'ai Sui, according to the Feng Shen Yen I (The Deification of the Gods) was\n\n1 In order to calculate a person's horoscope by the traditional Chinese method, the two characters for the hour, day, month and year on which he was born and which govern his fate forever, are required. These four pairs of eight characters comprise one from each of two sets: one set of 12 called Branches, the other of 10 called Stems. These combinations of characters produce a cycle of 60, the cycle of Cathay, which are 120 binomial terms.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207038, "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-1974", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang\n\n103\n\nwent to Bangkok and the temple in Vientiane lost its importance. It has been restored many times and is technically no longer a temple but a 'haw' or hall since services are not held and the building has been converted into a museum. At the entrance is a fine Dvaravati Buddha and there are several good examples of bronze Lao Buddhas with characteristic sharp, pointed noses both outside and inside the building. Among those inside is an elegant and extremely attenuated standing Buddha and two walking Buddhas. The restored pediments of the building are good examples of Lao woodcarving and so are the carved window panels.\n\nNearby is Vat Srisaket which is a quiet spot without having any particular artistic merit, though its galleries of Lao-style Buddhas, the carved ceiling of vihara and its naive frescoes of animals are worth seeing. The only other temple of note is Vat Ong Tu, near the market with good carving on the portal only in the Chiengmai style. The primitive wall paintings at Vat Oup Muong are a modern interpretation of the Ramayana but the temple is otherwise without interest; Vat Xieng Yuen and Vat Chantaburi, by the river Mekong, have peaceful and shady courtyards, and the temple of the Sankaraj, or Lao Supreme Patriarch, Vat Dong Mieng is remarkable mostly for its carving and hideous modern paintings.\n\nVientiane boasts the usual ministries of an administrative capital and a small modern royal palace for the occasions when the king comes from Luang Prabang. Modern Vientiane is largely without interest, the only building of note being the Monument to the Dead on the broad avenue leading to the That Luang; it is a top-heavy and as yet still incomplete miniature of the Arc de Triomphe. The teak-lined boulevards running parallel to the Mekong have a tranquillity which few capital cities can boast.\n\nThe difference between Vientiane and Luang Prabang is striking; the former has on occasions something approaching a bustle of modernity. Luang Prabang, a half-an-hour away by plane, is a century away in time. There are virtually no modern buildings, there is no traffic, and the ring of mountains around seems to keep the world away. The morning market is peopled by Lao villagers and Meo tribesmen, the latter heavy with silver and bright with colour; three soldiers look after a pig and half-a-dozen people watch a kettle boil on the side of the road. Local silk is offered at very low prices and the silverware is unusual. Luang Prabang is the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207719, "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-1976", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\nEditor\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR*\n\nJournal of Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch\n\nSir:\n\nI am submitting a manuscript for publication in your Journal on King Kalakaua of Hawaii and his visit to Hong Kong in 1881. It gives a clear explanation why Hong Kong was chosen as the principal embarkation port for the Chinese labor recruitment to Hawaii. The strict administration of British regulations on emigration, the designation of an honorary Hawaiian consul in Hong Kong, and the reasonable contract between employer and employee signed in Hawaii, as documented in an appendix, all give a better understanding of the good treatment of our Chinese immigrants to Hawaii compared with the abuses in Peru and Cuba.\n\nThe first reigning monarch to make a trip around the world was King David Kalakaua of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The year was 1881. King Kalakaua, born November 16, 1836, reigned for twenty-three years (1874-1891) until his death in San Francisco on January 20, 1891.† He had already had his first experience travelling abroad in November 1874 when he called on President Ulysses S. Grant in Washington and addressed the United States Congress in fluent English. As a result of this visit, the Hawaiian government was\n\n* Mr. Char was born in Hawaii in 1905 and has had a colorful life combining business and education. A graduate of McKinley High School in Honolulu, he received his B.A. degree from Yenching University in Peking and his M.A. from the University of Hawaii, and pursued graduate studies at Columbia University. He then taught, both in Hawaii and in China. In 1938, Mr. Char and his family returned to Hawaii as refugees from the Japanese military invasion of Canton. He spent the next thirty years in the insurance business. In 1952, he became the first person in Hawaii to gain the national professional designation of CPCU (Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter) in the field of insurance. Always active in community affairs, Mr. Char served on the boards of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Hawaii Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Nuuanu YMCA, and the Board of Underwriters of Hawaii (insurance), among others, and is currently a member of a number of historical societies, including the Hawaii Chinese History Center. Upon retirement in 1969 as president of the Continental Insurance Agency of Hawaii, Mr. Char spent a year on the campus of Chung Chi College, a division of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as a volunteer in student counseling and placement service. Since then, he has devoted his time to historical research and writing.\n\nMr. Char is also the author of The Hakka Chinese: Their Origin and Folk Songs and Chinese Proverbs, both published by the Jade Mountain Press of San Francisco in 1969, and The Char Family Genealogy Book, privately published in Honolulu in 1970.\n\n† See Plate 15.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207722, "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-1976", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAHAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n95\n\naccomplished linguist, went as personal attendant, to make up the Royal Suite of four.*\n\nIn personal appearance, the King was a thick-set man with dark curly hair, long sideburns, and a drooping mustache. He had a striking appearance and a warm outgoing personality. His social ease and scholarly intellect brought dignity and prestige to the Hawaiian throne. To some people, however, the \"Merry Monarch” was looked upon as a spendthrift who loved card games, feasting, dancing, and horse and yacht racing,\n\n5\n\nArmstrong had the exceptional opportunity to gather information, and he recorded his observations in a book, Around the World with a King. In the Hawaii State Archives are three folders containing correspondence and reports of Armstrong and Kalakaua about this long trip. For easier reading of the King's holograph, the Hawaiian Journal of History has published \"The Royal Tourist-Kalakaua's Letters Home from Tokio to London.”7\n\nAs a farewell to the King, a Sunday morning service was held on January 16, 1881 at the Catholic Cathedral with over 1,000 people attending. The January 22nd issue of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser also reported a Sunday evening service at the Protestant Kawaihao Church which was filled to capacity. The Honorable J. N. Kapena took the occasion to note that His Majesty spoke at the church six years ago on the eve of his visit to Washington where he was successful in making the country richer and in the betterment of his people, as evidenced by new houses, ships, railways, and other improvements. This time the King was taking a Royal Commissioner of Immigration with him to look for people of brown skins to repeople these isles. Also, the King was going to observe other governments. \"The great nations now look with respect on this little Kingdom and will have still more, when they see our King travelling among them for information to benefit his people.\" With this Aloha send-off, the Royal party started their nine-month tour.\n\nHawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs, W. L. Green, had already written ahead on January 15, 1881 to R. W. Irwin, Hawaiian Consul General in Japan, to anticipate the King's visit. Minister Green had also sent out a circular letter on January 17, 1881 to Hawaiian consular officials abroad about the Royal tour that \"one of the objects is to obtain the best possible information in the different", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207728, "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-1976", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n101\n\nToday, there are students from Hawaii studying in the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong; while, in Honolulu, many students from Hong Kong are studying at the University of Hawaii, continuing the tradition of cross-cultural relations. In the footsteps of the Royal Tourist, Hawaii's people today choose Hong Kong as a favorite spot on their tours of the Orient, to stop, look, and shop.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1953), Vol. II, pp. 180-181. For a reproduction of the Wo Hang Labor Recruitment Contract, see Appendix A, below.\n\n2 For a reproduction of the Hong Kong Emigration Officer's Certificate issued to the Alberto, see Appendix B, below. For a reproduction of the Plantation Labor Contract, signed in Hawaii by both employer and employee, see Appendix C, below.\n\n3 The Chinese in Hawaii (Chinese-English edition), (Honolulu: Overseas Penman Club, 1929), Chinese section, pp. 38-40.\n\n4 Norris W. Potter and Lawrence M. Kasden, Hawaii, Our Island State, (Columbus: Merrill, 1964), p. 185.\n\n5 Honolulu Magazine, February 1973, reprinted excerpt from Edward Joesting, Hawaii: An Uncommon History, (New York: Norton, 1973), pp. 208, 212. See also A. Grove Day, Hawaii: Fiftieth State, (New York: Meredith, 1960), p. 137.\n\n6 William N. Armstrong, Around the World with a King, (London: Heinemann, 1909). In addition, the State Archives of Hawaii has three folders of correspondence from Armstrong and King Kalakaua, FO & EX FILE (Foreign Office and Executive). The King's letters are of special interest.\n\n7 Richard Greer, \"The Royal Tourist — Kalakaua's Letters Home from Tokio to London” in The Hawaiian Journal of History, Vol. V, 1971, pp. 75-109.\n\n8 State Archives of Hawaii. List of Arrivals of Immigrants, Hawaii Bureau of Immigration Reports, 1886, pp. 266, 277.\n\n9 Jardine, Matheson & Co. in December 1973 bought the controlling interest in Theo. H. Davies & Co., Ltd., one of the \"Big Five\" business giants in Hawaii.\n\n10 Gavan Daws, The Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, (New York: Macmillan, 1968; reprinted Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1974), p. 218.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207738, "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-1976", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "IN SEARCH OF THE CHINESE NAME FOR “LI SUN”\n\n111\n\nLo Hsiang-lin's book translated into English, Hong Kong and Western Cultures (Hong Kong, 1963) which gave this same official name for the interpreter of the Chinese Educational Mission,\n\nThus, it may well be concluded that Chan Laisun was the name given at his birth in Singapore and Tseng Heng-chung\n\nwas his official name in later years.\n\nIt is hoped that this article about the search for a Chinese name will stimulate a response from relatives and friends of Tseng Lan-sheng (Tseng Heng-chung) and bring forth corrections and additions to the story of an unusual person and family who lived during the early historical period of China and American cross-cultural exchanges.9\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See pp. 92-106 of JHKBRAS 16 (1976).\n\n2 William N. Armstrong, Around the World with a King (London: Heineman, 1909), pp. 92-93.\n\n3 Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains: Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975), pp. 44-51.\n\n4 Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: Holt, 1909), p. 183.\n\n5 容閎自傳:西學東漸記, 台北文海出版社 1973 重印,\n\n6 Carl T. Smith, \"A Register of Baptised Protestant Chinese, 1813 - 1842,\" Chung Chi Bulletin, December 1970, pp. 23-26; Smith, \"Idols on a School Hill: the American Board School for Chinese Boys in Singapore, 1835-1842,” Chung Chi Bulletin, December 1974, pp. 28-30.\n\n7 舒新城編: 近代中國留學史, 上海中華書局 1933.\n\n8 羅香林著: 香港與中西文化交流,\n\n9 Tsung-1 Dow, Chronological Biography of Li Hung-chang - 著: 李鴻章年, 香港友聯社, 1968 does not include King Kalakaua's visit in 1881 nor does it mention Chan Laisun (Tseng Heng-chung), although otherwise most comprehensive.\n\nMr. Char has since added the following extra note:\n\nIt would add great interest should Hamilton College be able to find Chan Laisun's family photograph of 1872. Also, some one in Hong Kong may be able to add to the family story of his son Spencer who married the daughter of the Rev. Ho Fuk-tong of Hong Kong. Probably Carl Smith has additional materials and will write the next article.\n\nThe October 1975 issue of Smithsonian carried a good article on Li Hung-chang's visit to New York in August 1896, accompanied by 18 aides and 2 servants, 300 pieces of luggage, a golden sedan chair, several cargoes of song-birds, 2 noisy parrots. He brought along his own chefs, bakers, valets, guards, footmen, secretaries, interpreters, and physician. His chief interpreter was then Lo Fing-luh, a skilled linguist in German and French as well as English. There was no mention of Chan Laisun as an interpreter or secretary. Perhaps by that time he had gone on to other work or may have died. In 1896 he would have been 67 years old (born 1829).\n\nEditor's note: Carl Smith's article extending the story of Chan Laisun and his family follows on.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208090, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "\"LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)”\n\n113\n\nlocal communities. \"Ethnic neighborhood\" can potentially refer to either or both concepts. If this were not so, if we could not separate neighborhood from sub-neighborhood or neighborhood from community, how else could we explain the appellation of North Point, a neighborhood over 2/3 Guangdongese,2 not only as \"Little Fujian\" but as \"Little Shanghai\" as well?\n\nFrom \"Little Shanghai\"\n\nAlthough it is hard to imagine now, North Point 50 years ago was a semi-rural area. Extensive landfill projects, however, soon led to North Point's emergence by the end of the 1930s as a center of light industry and commerce as well as of entertainment. The population remained small, however, and prior to the Second World War North Point was the least crowded spot on the northern side of Hong Kong Island (Wai 1957: 2-5).\n\nMuch of the area was destroyed during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Post-war reconstruction coincided with the late 1940s arrival of the first wave of Central Chinese to North Point: those who had the means to flee the Civil War raging in the north of China and had chosen to come to Hong Kong for a \"temporary\" stay while they waited for the fighting to cease. As a newly developing, uncrowded and semi-exclusive area, North Point appealed to these relatively affluent immigrants.\n\nWhen Shanghai and the surrounding provinces of Zhejiang (Chekiang) and Jiangsu (Kiangsu) were overrun by Chinese Communist forces in 1949, a new wave of \"Shanghaiese\" descended upon Hong Kong although even at this early date North Point was not the destination of all Shanghaiese; the wealthiest went to the most exclusive areas of the colony while the bulk of the predominantly middle-class Shanghaiese proceeded to North Point and lent a decidedly bourgeois flavor to the area.\n\nBy 1950 \"Little Shanghai\" was well established. Restaurants, tailor shops, beauty parlors and other businesses were all set up by Shanghaiese to serve the area's essentially Shanghaiese population. Even today on a walk around North Point one can spot many old and fading signboards of a \"Shanghai Tailor,\" a \"Shanghai Beautiful Woman\" Beauty Parlor, a \"Shanghai Peacock Laundry Service\" as well as a couple of well-known and well-frequented Shanghai restaurants. The Shanghai population clustered within a block or so of King's Road, North Point's main thoroughfare, both Fort Street", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208621, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n51\n\nnest from the spurt of British fire at that point. Then almost instantly a Japanese shell could fall dangerously close, but the machine gun would continue to sputter. But the time came when they ceased to sputter. Perhaps they had moved their positions, or perhaps were silenced. The British had some mobile guns in the roadway leading to the Prison, and the flash from their muzzles could be easily seen. Fortunately, all during this time no bullets struck our house, it being on an eminence out of the range of fire, but the Carmelite Convent below was in the very midst of the battle. Its walls were pelted with machine gun and rifle bullets, but by the great mercy of God no one was either injured or molested, save Father Hessler, and the extent of his punishment was merely a slap or two in the face on Christmas morning.\n\nAt midnight, the battle seemed to be raging fiercely, and we could hear distinctly the blood-curdling yells of the attacking Japanese as they swarmed down the road past the Convent and reached the defending positions. So it must have been when the American savages attacked a frontier outpost when the world was not quite as civilized as it is supposed to be today. As the night wore on, the din of battle seemed to grow less and less. The defenders were slowly yielding ground, and the Japanese advanced towards the Prison and the Fort, so that when dawn began to break, the firing became more desultory, and the Japanese were in possession of Stanley Village and St. Stephen's Hill. They were not yet in the Prison, nor had they attempted the assault of the Fort, some distance out on the Stanley promontory.\n\nOn Christmas Day, needless to say, there were no Midnight Masses at Stanley to herald the birth of the new-born King, but as there seemed to be a lull in the battle raging all around us, we began saying our Masses at about five o'clock, on the portable altars in the corridors. We used but one candle, and even with that, we were in trepidation lest that tiny flame draw the fire of some lurking soldier. Some of us managed to say our three Masses, others two, and still others but one, while a few never got the opportunity, for about seven o'clock in the morning, there was a great hubbub at our front entrance, and we soon heard the sound of crashing glass. Most of us got as far as the second floor and tried to figure out what was happening. Finally, Father Meyer went down to the front entrance and there saw a group of Japanese soldiers who had gotten", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213630, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "200\n\n3\n\nand four belong to German prisoners. The remainder are Allied servicemen's graves. The headstones, including those of the Chinese Labour Corps members, are of the usual Portland Stone with the Commonwealth War Grave standard segmental curve on the top (see Plates 1 and 2). This distinguishes them from graves for civilians which are curved but with a piece notched out at each top corner. Stones for Royal Air Force graves are 'winged', with curved tops sweeping upwards slightly at each side.* Few if any of the Chinese who served in Europe in the First World War, one assumes, were Christians. There are no crosses on their gravestones.\n\nOf the two Chinese graves in this cemetery one is unnamed (see Plate I), although there is an army number. This is not unusual. When Chinese labourers were first recruited, pigtails, which could still be found in China at the time, were cut off. Thumbprints were then taken and numbered wristlets were riveted on. The inscription on the first gravestone reads, in Chinese and English, 'Faithful unto death'. The second headstone (see Plate 2) is in memory of Wong Fuk-hing with the proverb, 'A good reputation endures forever.' Wong came from Shan Tung Province, Yeung Sun county. A Chinese person's native place is important enough to be inscribed on his or her headstone. Traditionally, Chinese like to be buried on their native soil.\n\nNot far from Foncquevillers Military Cemetery is an old farm house which, in 1916, stood near the front line of the First Battle of the Somme, the largest land battle Britain has ever fought. Some 57,470 British soldiers were killed on July 1, 1916, the first day of this action. The cellar at the time, linked by a tunnel to the trenches which crisscrossed the area, served as a battlefield operating theatre. On March 19, 1916, two British soldiers were shot at dawn, close by, for desertion. Although my son and I visited this old house owned by Avril Williams, which now serves as a guest house and English tea rooms, she was unfortunately not at home. Her daughter showed us around.\n\nThe chief reason that Avril Williams came here, from England, was so she might visit and tend the graves of those who fought and died: 'So we might continue to live the way we do.' On the headstone of Private George Palmer's grave, who was killed in 1917, a request from his mother is inscribed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214047, "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "82\n\ntwo long roughly-hewn granite slabs. Near villages adjacent to the sea stone jetties were built, the largest almost certainly being that at Kowloon City with its 21 spans, each with five longitudinal slabs supported on granite piers, which was completed in 1875 with a wooden extension added in 1892, and connected to the older Walled City by a wide road.\n\nReclamations were formed, for example, at Sha Tau Kok, Nam Chung and Luk Keng (near Starling Inlet), Shuen Wan and Yuen Long. These were sited on the tidal flats behind rock/mud/stick bunds located at low water level, and incorporated horizontal timber plank sluice gates. It took seven years for the salt to leach out of the sea bed with quarterly flushings before the land could be put to agricultural use.\n\nIrrigation schemes were constructed throughout the rural areas involving construction of temporary dams across streams, simple pedal-operated wooden paddle-belt machines for raising water (usually around a metre), small bunds, catchwater channels and even bamboo pipe-aqueducts to cross low-lying ground. To provide power for traditional village industries, wooden water-wheels were installed adjacent to streams.\n\nHarbour Works\n\nOn the signing of the Convention of Chuen-pi in 1841, Captain Belcher of HMS Sulphur undertook a hydrographic survey of Hong Kong Island and the surrounding waters with separate scales indicating sea miles and cables, statute miles and furlongs, and yards. The chart's emphasis was on water depths in fathoms, rocks and coastlines with the general shape of the hills and prominent landmarks shown only for navigational purposes.\n\nAs the years passed, the benefits of Hong Kong's natural deepwater harbour were exploited and, by the turn of the century, some 40% of China's foreign trade was passing through Hong Kong which had by this time become one of the world's principal ports with its fine dockyards and excellent workforce devoted to shipbuilding and repairing - indeed \"a sort of Far Eastern Marine Clapham Junction”.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214049, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "84\n\nKowloon, mainly for ships in the coastal trade, was opened in 1868 to be followed soon afterwards by a shorter 80m-long dock. A few years later (1876) the 140m-long Cosmopolitan Dock and dockyard at Tai Kok Tsui were commissioned. Subsequently the much larger 168m-long Admiralty Dock at Hung Hom was completed in 1888 and later extended in length by some 8 metres in 1903, to be followed by further lengthenings in 1911 and 1931.\n\nIn the summer of 1907, the 170m-long Admiralty dry dock in Victoria, with an entrance width of 29 metres and 9m clearance at lowest spring tides, and Tai Koo's great ashlar-faced 238m-long 27m entrance-width graving dock (now a car park in the Tai Koo Shing development) at Quarry Bay, the latter capable of accommodating the largest ship then afloat (the liner Oceanic), were both commissioned. By laying down the former dock where it did and extending the original dockyard, with an 8ha reclamation which was started in 1900, the Navy sealed the long-held hopes of making Victoria a coherent city with a continuous commercial waterfront. Due to difficult foundation problems, including removal of a 1.2 to 1.8m layer of hard porous coral and the need to install hundreds of steam-driven hardwood piles through the underlying decomposed granite to secure the site, the naval dry dock finally took seven years to build whereas the larger commercial dock at Tai Koo was finished in five.\n\nThe whole of the Tai Koo dockyard development took seven years to completion in 1908, a remarkable achievement in so much that it not only included the large dock but also excavation of some 1.3M cubic metres of hillside to form a 21ha site, which included a 8ha marine reclamation, and the adjacent section of the 23m-wide cut for King's Road, and the building of an entire complex of slipways, workshops and all the ancillary works which are needed to make a large dockyard a world of its own. It is interesting to note that Admiralty engineers in 1908 regarded locally-made cement as unsurpassed in fineness and tensile strength (at 28-days around 750lb/sq in or 5.2MPa), and it was used exclusively when building the new naval and Tai Koo dockyards.\n\nWharfs\n\nBy 1843 there were several comparatively small piers and jetties on the Island located between East Point and Sheung Wan. Pedder's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214857, "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-1999", "page_number": 272, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "240\n\ncommittees. As was common in an earlier age, he addressed many people by their surnames, such as 'Hayes', as James sometimes likes to remind me. Nevertheless J R Jones was not a snob.\n\nHe made old bones and the last trumpet call sounded in January 1976, when he was 88. He was lucky to be buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery (previously called the Colonial Cemetery), in Happy Valley. It was already just about full at the time.\n\nOn his tombstone are two lines of Welsh, which are supposed to mean so I am informed: An affectionate son who loved life (literal translation, 'who loved the world'). I have been informed by a Welsh scholar, however, who teaches at the University of Wales, that there are mistakes in this Welsh inscription. This is a pity but fortunately, hardly anyone notices it. Few people in Hong Kong can read Welsh.\n\nI could, of course, name many other interesting people who have been members of our Branch, many of whom I knew personally. Unfortunately, time will not permit. There was the late John Romer, the 'snake king' (ser wong), who later established the Natural History Society. There was 'big,' in every sense of the word, Ken Barnett who had a splendid command of various Chinese dialects. Governor Sir Samuel Bonham (1848 to 1854) believed that studying Chinese addled the brain. But it did not apply in Ken's case. He had a prodigious intellect. In prison camp, according to Dr Solomon Bard a past RAS member, they used to play mental chess. But no one could keep pace with Ken Barnett.\n\nAims of this conference\n\nWhy are we here?\n\nAs with many of the contributors to our Journal you will find that our speakers here today, while they may not be full-time academics, have lived through or had access to important periods of local history. For instance Mr Tim Ko, who will be speaking this afternoon. His family came to Hong Kong around 1850. The male members worked as stonecutters and masons. They came here because business was brisk. Five generations of Tim's family have lived in Hong Kong. If anyone can describe himself as a true 'Hongkonger' it is Tim Ko.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216013, "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": 312, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "246\n\npellet. An arrow-bow could be shot on foot or on horseback. Each usage required its own methods and those methods changed over the centuries.\n\nArchery in China in the pre-Shang period\n\nAt the risk of stating the obvious, archery was used in hunting and warfare in pre-Shang times. In mentioning this point, I should add that there is adequate archaeological evidence to support such a view, but little to illuminate any other aspect of archery culture at those times. Pre-Shang animal and human remains have been found with arrow wounds, and cliff paintings considered to date from pre-Shang times show scenes of hunting activities with a bow and arrow.\n\nShamanism as a component of the archery tradition?\n\nLegend (Zuo Zhuan, Shan Hai Jing, Huai Nan Zi among others. Selby Chapter 2.) sets the Xia period as the background for two stories concerning the archer Yi'. In one tale, he shoots down ten suns in the sky, and in the other, he usurps the throne of Xia, but devotes all his time to the hunt and neglects affairs of state. He is ultimately assassinated. These two tales were widely confused (principally by Qu Yuan in his Chu Ci cycle of poems.)\n\nThe tale of an archer shooting the sun is both long-lived and widespread. The tale is folk-tale recorded from Guangxi to Mongolia (Erekhe Mergen). A Han commentator regarded 'Yi' as being the name of a class of archery instructors rather than an individual. The legend links archery with praying for rain in times of drought. Were the \"Yi' class in fact a class of archery shamans who controlled magical properties of the bow and arrow?\n\nArchery in the Shang Oracle bones.\n\nThe oracle bones are an important, contemporary written record of life in Shang China. Over 60,000 specimens in collections around the world allow us to see how the bow was used in hunting, what sort of quarry were hunted with it, what other methods were favoured, and what season was the hunting season.\n\nThe shooting of enemy with bows is also recorded. One of these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]