[
    {
        "id": 204243,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1961",
        "page_number": 11,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Vol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n8\n\nand contributions from the community, it built a commodious home for itself with a spacious lecture room and provided accommodation for its very valuable library and museum. In Hong Kong we hope that some facilities may be afforded in the new City Hall for societies like ours but if our plans are to mature we need a meeting place of our own where we can build up an Oriental library which should fill a special need which cannot be supplied by the University, whose library is not readily accessible to the public, or by the new City Hall, whose library will probably be of a wider popular interest.\n\nAs the basis of our projected library we propose to print a sufficient number of our periodical journals to enable us to exchange periodicals with kindred societies in other parts of the world. We also propose in our journal to review books on Oriental affairs which may bring us a useful nucleus of publications. Until we have enough money to buy books it would be greatly appreciated if members who have any books of interest and connected with the objects of the Society would kindly remember that any gifts of books and journals would be most welcome.\n\nThe Branch is greatly indebted to benefactors who have been generous with donations. In Sir Richard Winstedt's message on its formation he expressed the hope that both European and Chinese firms with their accustomed generosity would help to foster the growth of a Branch of high promise. This hope was realised in the donations received of 500 dollars each from Messrs. Butterfield & Swire, Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., and The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and 250 dollars from Mr. Ellis Hayim. Then in April last year there came a munificent gift from an anonymous donor who is not now resident in the Colony. This was the gift of 10,000 dollars in memory of Arthur de Carl Sowerby, a great authority on the natural history of China, who was the founder and curator of the museum of the Society in Shanghai. These contributions have enabled us to put aside a capital fund which will help us in our aims for the future while yielding a useful interest in the meantime. It is greatly hoped that other merchant houses and individuals in the Colony may, without any direct appeal, emulate the example of these benefactors and help us to build up a Branch of the Society in Hong Kong worthy of the heritage which Professor Drake in his inaugural address coupled with the corresponding task which such heritage implied.\n\nDuring the year there was little change amongst the officers and members of the Council. Mr. Endacott resigned owing to pressure of work and the vacancy was filled in accordance with the rules by the co-option of The Hon. A. G. Clarke. Mr.",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
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    },
    {
        "id": 204380,
        "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-1962",
        "page_number": 12,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "June 12th\n\nDr. T. Y. Li\n\nJuly 10th\n\nMr. G. Findlay Andrew, O.B.E.\n\nSeptember 20th Professor B. P. Groslier\n\n\"Chinese Seals\"\n\n\"Currency Problems in a Cycle of Cathay\"\n\n\"Recent Work in Angkor\"\n\nOctober 30th\n\nMr. Holmes H. Welch\n\n\"The Buddhist Monk's Career\"\n\nDecember 11th Professor F. S. Drake\n\n\"Nestorian Crosses and Nestorianism in China under the Mongols\"\n\nSome of these lectures will be reproduced in the forthcoming Journal of the Society. We are particularly fortunate in being able to include the memorable address of Professor Drake on Nestorian Crosses, even though the printed article cannot reproduce the warmth and inspiration of his personal eloquence and exposition.\n\nThe first Journal of the Society produced last year by the Editorial Board and completed, in the absence of Mr. Cranmer-Byng, by Mr. James Liu, had a very good reception. The Editors are to be congratulated on a worthy production which has set a pattern and standard for the future and which I feel will be more than sustained in this year's issue which, it is hoped, will be ready for delivery in May or June next.\n\nThe report of the Hon. Treasurer, Mr. T. J. Lindsay, will, in his absence on leave, be presented to you by Mr. A. L. Harman of The Hong Kong Bank, who has been good enough to step into the breach. Some features of the Report deserve serious attention. In the first place, we had at the end of 1961 a narrow margin of $2,265.61 over and above our expenditure and $4,790.94 cash in the Bank. In addition, we had a capital investment of $16,247.25 at cost. This apparently favourable financial position is mainly due to donations of $500 each from three leading concerns in the Colony, Messrs. Butterfield and Swire, Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co., and The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, together with a magnificent gift of $10,000 from an anonymous donor given in 1960 in memory of Arthur de Carle Sowerby. These are non-recurrent benefactions, however, and I\n\n7",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
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    },
    {
        "id": 204530,
        "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": 11,
        "title": "RAS-1963",
        "content_text": "The Honorary Treasurer has submitted a statement of accounts which appears eminently satisfactory. It shows an excess of income over expenditure of $1,708.18. I wish, however, to stress the point that the income from the annual membership fees is $4,779.55 from 240 members but the expenses of the Society amount to $6,605.15. The deficit is made good partly by the receipts from the sale of journals but mainly by the income from capital investments derived from the gift of $10,000 made by a generous and anonymous donor in memory of the late Arthur de Carl Sowerby on the re-establishment of the Society. It is the Council's aim to reserve the income from investments, to build up a fund for a library and for the permanent interests of the Society, and to increase the income from annual subscriptions to meet our annual expenses. For the present annual subscription of $20 members receive all the benefit of the lectures during the year and a free copy of the Journal, which together cost the Society nearly 40 per cent over the amount of their subscriptions. In order to enable the Society to work on a steady basis we need an addition of another 100 members. At the end of 1962 we had on our books 33 life members and 247 ordinary members including 8 overseas members. There has been a gratifying and steady increase each year, but each year many resign on their departure from the Colony, while too many go away on leave and forget to pay their subscriptions. The Treasurer and the Secretary are both busy people who have neither the time nor the staff to collect past dues, and it would greatly lessen their burden if members would make their subscriptions payable by Banker's Orders or become life members.\n\nThe present membership of somewhat over 240 members represents a permanent nucleus of those who are interested in our cultural heritage in the Colony; but as H.E. Sir Robert Black, our patron, said two years ago: \"There are many times this number who are interested both in the cultural life and history of this part of the world, which has great riches to offer to anybody interested in research, or in studying and inquiring about the inheritance which we all enjoy who live here.\" Hong Kong provides the greatest opportunity in the world today for a meeting of minds between East and West. East may remain East and West, West, but here, more than anywhere else, if the world is to be one, they must meet.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205935,
        "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": 15,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "and by Professor Thrower. Again it will be seen that the modest subscription of $30 a year, for which apart from the ordinary amenities of the Society members receive a free copy of all the Society's publications, falls far short of the costs of running the Society. The gap is as usual bridged mainly by interest from investments, bank interest and the sale of journals. Our investments at the end of 1969 showed a market value of $52,855 against cost of $43,554. The origin of our investments was the anonymous gift of $10,000 by a friend in 1947 in memory of Arthur de Carl Sowerby, who was the founder and curator of the Society's museum in Shanghai and a great authority on the natural history of China. This was supplemented by a gift of $5,000 by the late Stanley Smith in aid of the Society's funds in 1965.\n\nThere have been no changes in the Council of the Society during the year except that the vacant office of Vice Chairman in place of Prof. K. E. Robinson was filled by the appointment by the Council under Rule 11 of the constitution of Mr. J. W. Hayes who has been Editor of the Journal since 1966 and whose scholarly contributions to it and his popular tours of historic Hong Kong have been so greatly appreciated. The Council is a hard working body and meets at least once a month, and its activities involve a great deal of time and labour. Every member has his particular function and role to fulfil, apart from his general contribution to the Council work.\n\nIt has been a great pleasure to work for ten years with such harmonious and hardworking colleagues, and I want to thank them for their loyalty and for the unremitting help they have given me over the last ten years. In resigning at this juncture from the Presidency I do so with great regret, but am happy in the knowledge that the future of the Society is in safe hands.\n\nIn conclusion I want to thank the British Council for its continued support and for all the services it provides for the Society. I want last but not least to pay tribute to and thank, both on my own behalf and that of the Society, Mrs. O'Hara of the British Council for her willing and ready help during those ten years which all members of the Council have good reason to appreciate. She is an indispensable repository of the infinite details connected with the secretarial work, and her ready and\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208482,
        "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-1978",
        "page_number": 206,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMISSING MAPS: SOWERBY'S \"SPORT & SCIENCE ON THE SINO-MONGOLIAN FRONTIER”\n\nThe name of Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885-1954) is closely connected with the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was President, 1936-1940. He was a contributor to the Hong Kong Naturalist and the author of numerous books on natural history and sport in northern China. The present note relates to one of his books.\n\nIn the author's introduction to his Sport and science on the Sino-Mongolian frontier (London, Andrew Melrose, 1918), speaking of the six scientific explorations and hunting trips between 1908 and 1912 which provided the subject matter of the book, Sowerby states (p.x):\n\nThe results of the compass traverses have been carefully reduced to a convenient scale (1,000,000), and maps will be found in the cover-pocket at the end of the book.\n\nNo copy of this work, however, has any maps, and the explanation is found in a brief manuscript note, date-stamped May 22 1922, attached to the front fly leaf of the Hankow Club Library copy, now in the University of Hong Kong Libraries. This reads:\n\nDear Dr. Skinner,\n\nWith reference to the maps mentioned in the preface of my book. They were never published — and the publisher failed to delete the notice of them in the preface.\n\nYours faithfully,\n\nA. de C.S.\n\nDr. A. H. Skinner was the librarian of the Hankow Club for many years, and in his preface to the \"China Class\" catalogue, 1922, he acknowledges the advice received regarding book selection on special subjects from, amongst others, Dr. Arthur de C. Sowerby.\n\nHong Kong, June 1979\n\nH. A. RYDINGS",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211351,
        "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": 67,
        "title": "RAS-1988",
        "content_text": "43\n\nHarkness. Ruth, The Baby Giant Panda, New York: Garrick and Evans, 1938.\n\n1\n\nHu Jin Chu, \"Daxiongmao kao” [On giant pandas], Sichuan Kejibo 24 (Sichuan Journal of Science and Technology) 103 (3 July, 1980).\n\nKang Chingliang and Bi Fengzho, \"Wolong qu-wen\" (Interesting tidbits from Wolong), Sichuan Linyebao (Sichuan Forestry Ministry News), 254, 255, 256, (22, 25, 29 October, 1980).\n\nMorris, Romona and Desmond, The Giant Panda (1966), revised by Jonathan Barzdo, London: Macmillan, 1981.\n\nPei Wenzhong, \"Daxiongmao fazhan jianshi” (An outline of the development of the giant panda), Acta Zoologica Sinica 20:2:188-190 (June, 1974)\n\nRoosevelt, Kermit, \"The Search of the Giant Panda“, Journal of American Museum of Natural History XXX:3-6 (New York, 1930).\n\nSage, Dean Jr., \"In Quest of the Giant Panda”, Journal of American Museum of Natural History XXXV:309-320 (New York, 1935).\n\nSung edition of the Thirteen Classics, 1816 edition.\n\nSynthesis of Books and Illustrations of Ancient and Modern Times, first printed in 1722.\n\nSowerby, Arthur de C., \"The Pandas or Cat Bears\", China Journal of Science and Arts 17:6:296-299 (Shanghai, 1932).\n\n\"Hunting the Giant Panda\", China Journal of Science and Arts 21:30-32 (Shanghai, 1934).\n\n\"A Baby Panda Comes to Town\", China Journal of Science and Arts 25:6:335-330 (Shanghai, 1936).\n\n+\n\nWang Tsiang-ke, \"Guanyu daxiongmao zong di huafeng, dishe fengbu jichi yenhua lishe di tantao\" (On the Taxonomic Status of Species, Geological Distribution and Evolutionary History of Ailuropoda), Acta Zoologica Sinica 20:2:191-201 (June, 1974)\n\n+\n\nZhu Jing and Long Zhi, \"Daxiongmao di xingshuai\" (“The Vicissitudes of the Giant Panda\"), Acta Zoologica Sinica 29:1:93-104 (March, 1983).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212654,
        "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": 208,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "189\n\ninvestigated the special field of Chinese Medicinal Plants and published a book \"An Atlas of Chinese Medicinal Plants\". It was wartime and, owing to some unskilled people who helped him, his 125 specimen drawings, the typing and the printing of his French manuscript, were full of errors. I corrected this publication and filled 12 typed pages. Years after, as I corresponded with someone in Malagasy, I discovered that J. Roi was there. I wrote to him and among other things, I asked him about his book. He told me he had published another one on the same subject. I ordered a copy from Paris: Les Plantes Medicinales Chinoises. This was a quite different achievement, a well-documented and well-presented volume containing chemical analysis, explaining the uses of plants and their extracts, with references from Chinese and European Medical Literature.\n\nDuring the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, at the end of 1941, I often met scientists who normally would have been connected with the Shanghai Museum in the International Settlement. One of them was Mr. Arthur de Carle Sowerby. He had offered the Museum a small but interesting collection of plants from Eastern China. This was prepared and published in 1950 by I. V. Kozloff, a Russian botanist who was working at the Museum at that time. But his main publication at the Heude Museum was his book illustrated by the author in Chinese-style drawings. Unfortunately, it was printed on newsprint paper, the only type available at that time. Copies couldn't last long.\n\nKozloff was a white Russian botanist who had acquired a good knowledge of the North China flora. He had many articles to his credit. When he came to Shanghai in the 40s, he couldn't find a job as he spoke only Russian. He contacted me through the school where his son was studying. I found out that he was living in an attic with his family and that they were starving. He was invited to work at the Museum with a decent salary. Later, he migrated to the USA.\n\nI could not fail to mention Charles De Vol, of America's Fern Society who was encouraged by Dr. Roi to publish Courtois' fern collection. When Dr. Belval published Courtois' Flora, he did not include the Pteridophyters. De Vol's book is a classic but suffered the effects of the war, i.e., lack of proper proofreaders, poor printing, and wartime paper. I met De Vol again at the Herbarium of the University of Taipei. He had contributed the volume on Ferns in the Flora of Taiwan.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213386,
        "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": 208,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "196\n\nCambridge History of China, edited by Denis Twitchett et al, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978+\n\nCampbell, Charles S. Special Business Interests and the Open Door Policy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951\n\nCarlson, Evans Fordyce. Twin Stars of China, the Behind the Scenes Story of China's Valiant Struggle for Existence by a US Marine Who Lived and Moved with the People, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1940\n\nCarr, Henry. Riding the Tiger: An American Newspaper Man in the Orient, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934\n\nChang, Sul-jeung. The Jews in Kaifeng. Reflections on Sino-Judaic History, Monographs of the Jewish Historical Society of Hong Kong, vol. II, Hong Kong: Jewish Chronicle, 1986.\n\nChardin, Pacifique Marie. Les Missions Franciscaines en Chine, Paris: Auguste Picard, 1915\n\nCh'en, Yuan. Western and Central Asians in China Under the Mongols, translated from the Chinese and annotated by Ch'en Hsing-hai and L. Carrington Goodrich, Los Angeles: Monumenta Serica, 1966\n\nChester, Ruth (Professor of Chemistry and Associate Dean of Ginling College), 'Women in Wartime China', broadcast May 1941 from Chengtu, in United China Relief Series Inc.\n\nChesterton, Ada Elizabeth (Jones). Young China and New Japan, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1933\n\nChina in the Sixteenth Century, the Journal of Matthew Ricci 1583-1610 translated by Louis J. Gallagher, SJ, New York: Random House, 1953\n\nChina Miscellany, pamphlets and reprints, Shanghai and Hong Kong, 1864-1948\n\nChinese Repository, Macao and Canton, 1832-1851\n\nChinese Travellers, the. Containing a Geographical, Commercial and Political History of China, etc. collected from Du Halde, Le Comte, and other modern travellers, second edition, London: printed for E. and C. Dilly, 1772\n\nChitty, J.R. Things Seen in China, London: Seeley, Service, 1912\n\nChristmas, Margaret C.S. Adventurous Pursuits: Americans and the China Trade 1784-1844, Washington, DC: National Gallery, 1984\n\nClark, Robert Sterling and Arthur de C. Sowerby. Through Shen-Kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in Northern China, London: T.F. Unwin, 1912",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214150,
        "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": 8,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT ........................................................................................................................ xii\n\nFRIENDS OF THE RAS (UK) REPORT.................... xxvi\n\nAUDITOR'S REPORT ........................................................................................................................ xxviii\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT ............................................................................................................. xxxv\n\nARTICLES\n\nDan Waters - Laughter Across the Great Wall: A Comparison of Chinese and Western Humour ........ 1\n\nKeith Stevens - Images of Sinicised Vedic Deities on Chinese Altars ................................................ 51\n\nRichard J. Garrett - Weapons of the China Wars ............................................................................... 107\n\nKeith Stevens - Naturalist, Author, Artist, Explorer and Editor, and Almost Forgotten President: Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 1885 - 1954, President of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1935 - 1940 ............ 121\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch - Xu, the Taoist Perfected Lord Xu Zhenjun, the Protective Deity of Jiangsi Province........... 137\n\nGillian Bickley - Plum Puddings and Sharp Boys, \"One Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin\": An Analysis of the China Coverage in the Illustrated London News, 5 January to 23 September, 1861 ........ 147\n\nKeith Stevens - The Deification of Heroes Following the Struggle by the Vassal State of Chou to Overthrow the Shang Dynasty...... 173\n\nKeith Stevens - Temples Arise from the Ashes of Revolution ........................................................... 187\n\nvii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214299,
        "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": 157,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "NATURALIST, AUTHOR, ARTIST, EXPLORER AND EDITOR\n\nAND AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN PRESIDENT\n\nArthur de Carle Sowerby 1885-1954\n\nPresident of the North China Branch\n\nof\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society 1935 - 1940\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n121\n\nAlthough the lives of many Western expatriates who lived in China and experienced the excitements and horrors of travel and the exoticism of the old civilisation cry out to be recorded, most expatriates lived mundane, cliché-ridden existences, apart from the occasional excitement caused by the troubles and emergencies of the times, brigandage, rioting, and war. They never, or only very rarely, ventured far from their Treaty Port and certainly not into the dark hinterland of China. Should they have ventured anywhere at all, it would have been to hunt or shoot in the immediate area of the Port or go to a nearby beach or classical tourist site, such as Nanking or Soochow. And of all, only a mere handful of those who did venture far afield have left sufficient records to enable a portrait of their life to be disentangled and recorded. Arthur de C. Sowerby was one such venturer.\n\nBefore the centenary of his and his family's fortunate furlough in 1900 passes, I wanted to pay a debt of pleasure to the author and publisher, Arthur Sowerby, on behalf of all those who gained some insight into a China now long departed.\n\nI have unorthodox reasons for taking a special interest in Arthur Sowerby. Beginning some years ago, a train of circumstances led me to him when I bought several unbound second-hand copies of the China Journal published by him and his wife in Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s. I was then drawn by a series of coincidental incidents to the fascinating and exciting period of his life, his early years. Each of these incidents has had some significance to me, ranging from the city of",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214300,
        "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": 158,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "122\n\nhis birth and childhood, and my favourite stamping ground in China Taiyuan, the capital of Shansi province, to his first wife, the daughter of John Mesny, a junior employee of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service, the life of whose elder brother, William Mesny, was the subject of my earlier research [vide.: my paper in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch: Volume 32, 1992]. Sowerby roamed far and wide throughout northern China before serving for a while in France as an officer with the Chinese Labour Corps [vide: my Note on Chinese Labour Corps Graves in England in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch Volume 29, 1989]. He then visited Fukien province and met Caldwell whose book on the Blue Tigers of that province had intrigued me when I was much younger. Finally, I was drawn to Sowerby's life story because he was not only a dedicated member of the North China Branch of the RAS in Shanghai for whom he wrote prolifically and eventually became its President, an honour he held for some five years, 1935-1940 but also because he produced his fascinating bimonthly journal on both everyday and exotic Chinese subjects. Since his death nearly fifty years ago he has faded into insignificance and is forgotten by all but those who happen to come across his books and journals.\n\nArthur Sowerby was an explorer and author who lived through very exciting times, first as the son of a Christian missionary in the Chinese interior at the time of the decline of the Manchu dynasty, through the Revolution of 1911 and the fall of the Manchu dynasty to the War Lord period during which he roamed some of the more remote areas of northern China. This was followed by the crises and struggle between the Nationalists and the Communists, the incursions and eventual full-scale invasion by the Japanese, his incarceration in an internment camp in Shanghai during the Second World War, ending with learning during his latter years in retirement, first in England and then in the United States, of the Communist victory in 1949 and, just before his death, of the Korean War when China sent its \"Volunteers\" to aid the North Koreans against the South Koreans and their allies which included the Americans and British. During the last thirty-five or so years of his life he suffered great pain wracked as he was by arthritis.\n\nIt was said that he could speak Chinese ‘like a Chinese.' There is no reason to doubt this as he must have learned it at his ayah's knee though he appears never to have made any effort to learn to read and write the language. During his life in China, the next forty or so years,",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214301,
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        "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": 159,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "123\n\nwhile trekking and living amongst Chinese his Chinese language skills must have been of immense value and probably were the prime reason why he was invited to join several natural history expeditions through northern China.\n\nArthur's father, the Reverend Arthur Sowerby was a missionary in China for forty years, mostly in Taiyuan though during his latter years he was a tutor to the sons of Republican President Yuan Shih-kai [who attempted to mount the imperial throne in 1916].\n\nSowerby was a man of his time. He would have seen the Chinese first, as a child and a young man, from a missionary point of view, “sad heathen souls needing saving,\" later, with the eyes of a traveller and so-called explorer as \"dullards who needed leadership and western civilisation,” and finally, as a businessman and resident in the Foreign Concession of Shanghai, where the Chinese were regarded as \"the Yellow Peril, natives to be kept at a distance, and frequently ridiculed.\" China and the Chinese were popularly denigrated by the Western community and Chinese in general were distrusted. These strongly rooted beliefs reflected nearly a century of western misunderstanding and reaction to Chinese conduct, and shaped the behaviour of Treaty Port Westerners and Britons in particular. However, Sowerby had a redeeming feature as the editor of and a writer for a journal, one of the aims of which was to educate foreigners living on Chinese soil on, amongst other things, Chinese culture,\n\nThe only connection this article has with the Millennium, however tenuous, was the fortunate escape of the Sowerby family, including the fifteen year-old Arthur, from the largest Boxer massacre of missionaries exactly a century ago in 1900. The great majority of Western missionaries in Shansi, many scores, were murdered - with the provincial Governor, Yü Hsien, taking part in the killing of fifty-one Catholic and Protestant missionaries in his yamen, and with a further fifty or so being killed elsewhere in the province. The Sowerbys were lucky enough to be back in England on long furlough at the time and the Reverend Arthur Sowerby who lost many friends and colleagues had the sad task of writing the obituaries of several of them.\n\nArthur was educated at home in Taiyuan and also at a missionary",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214302,
        "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": 160,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "124\n\nschool in Chefoo in Shantung province before returning to England where he attended the Bath Art and Technical School. There he studied art before switching to Bristol University to read for a BSc in science. He would appear to have given up his higher education following the shattering of his romantic aspirations when he ran away to sea and worked his passage to Canada. He toiled for a while in Canada before returning to his parents in Taiyuan in 1905 with vague plans to hunt and explore the wild and barren areas of north China; he was twenty at the time. In practice he took up a teaching appointment at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin and only during the vacations was he able to hunt and seek specimens for the natural history museum he was establishing at the college. From the vague evidence available he would appear to have remained at the school for only a matter of a year as he was invited at the end of the final term to join the Duke of Bedford's expedition to collect zoological specimens in Shensi province for the British Museum. Shensi is the neighbouring province to Shansi and lies to its west.\n\nThe Duke of Bedford's expedition travelled through Sowerby's home province of Shansi where they lived for a week or so in one of the typical village cave houses of the Yellow Earth country, in a village some fifty miles west of Taiyuan. From there they continued west, across the Yellow River to Yenan in Shensi and on into the Ordos desert. Their return route took them north to the Great Wall, which they then followed to the east before turning south to Taiyuan down the main route through Shansi. The whole expedition took some five months and Arthur Sowerby would have been just twenty-one. It was during this expedition that Sowerby discovered a new species of jerboa [kangaroo rat] which was sent back to the British Museum and subsequently named after him, Dipus sagitta sowerbyi.\n\nComing from a missionary family he would have had little or no financial support from his father and would have needed to work for a living. He was sponsored for a number of years by a wealthy American, Robert Sterling Clark, who remained a friend for most of Sowerby's life, and although it is no more than supposition he may well have continued teaching at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin especially in view of his marriage in that city in 1910, at the age of twenty-six. The long vacations would have been an advantage enabling him to gather the material he later used in the China Journal, especially his",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214305,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 163,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "127\n\nMongolia during the next few years, the last being in 1915 and then wrote his book Fur and Feather in North China. In the autumn of 1915 he went over to meet his brother and sister, both missionaries in Sian, and took the opportunity to seek more specimens in the Ch'ingling range to the south of the city.\n\nDuring this period President Yuan Shih-kai's soldiers mutinied in Peking, and there was talk of Chinese troops in the Chinese city of Tientsin being in an ugly mood. Sowerby, having learned of the potential for trouble, went to discuss the matter with the Military Intelligence Officer of the British Garrison in Tientsin who then ensured that the Garrison was alert and properly guarded. Although expatriates were safe in the European quarters of the city the Chinese city of Tientsin suffered that night from mutineers on the rampage. The rioting was brought under control by the police together with the soldiers who did not mutiny and Sowerby, who had gone with a friend to see what was going on, watched something, he later wrote, that he could never forget.\n\nRR Sowerby [possibly a relative] explained in his short biography of Arthur Sowerby that Arthur travelled back to England during the first World War with the intention of joining the forces. He had already been told while still in China that his chronic arthritis, caused by exposure during expeditions to Manchuria, gave him no chance of success but despite this he went and \"to his disgust he was immediately posted to the Chinese Labour Corps [CLC] as there was urgent need of officers who could speak the language.\" As this Corps was not formed until 1917 and did not reach France until late that year it would seem that Arthur did not make his way to England until 1917 or even 1918. It would also appear from correspondence that he had already been involved with the Corps before, in Shantung, again from R R Sowerby: \"He had been anxious to avoid the CLC, having already had all he wanted of it, recruiting coolies in Shantung...\" He was posted to the Staff of the CLC base at Noyelles near Abbeville where he was involved in court-martial, criminal investigations and other similar duties but was soon struck down by another attack of arthritis and sent to hospital where he met up with his brother, now a major with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Some time later Sowerby heard that his brother had been gassed at Passchendaele and unlikely to live. In the event he recovered but his lungs were permanently damaged. Arthur was demobilised in 1919 and for one whole year settled down in England.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214306,
        "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": 164,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "128\n\ngland to write the rest of his magnum opus, the five-volume work The Naturalist in Manchuria, and, as we shall see, kept in touch with the nursing sister who had looked after his brother in the military hospital in France.\n\nIn 1921 he returned to China by way of the United States and visited the National Museum in Washington where so many of the specimens he had collected were exhibited. Once back in China he could not wait to get on with his next expedition, to southeast China. From Peking he travelled first to Shanghai and then on to Foochow in the spring of 1922 where he met Harry Caldwell, the American missionary famous for his book on the 'blue tiger of Fukien province' but, as luck would have it, the blue tiger eluded him. From Fukien, Sowerby decided to move on to southwest China, to Yunnan province in particular, a place he had long wished and planned to visit. It was not to be as Clark telegraphed an order that he should not risk his life as the bandit situation in Yunnan was extremely bad. And as Clark was funding Sowerby, he obeyed and to his everlasting regret never made it to the southwest. China was unstable for several decades following the Revolution of 1911, during which time banditry was endemic. A generic term for some of the bandits was Red Beards, hung hu-tzu, and Sowerby's own red beard, which he had during his expeditions, was quite an asset and rarely was he trifled with.\n\nBy the early part of the 1920s, Arthur found that his chronic arthritis was preventing him from making any more major expeditions and, therefore, when he met and married Clarice Moise in 1922, during her stay in Shanghai on her world tour, they settled in Shanghai where they decided to found the China Journal.\n\nWhat Sowerby later described as the most tense moment in his life happened immediately after the 30 May incident in 1925 when the Shanghai police had to resort to the use of firearms to prevent the over-running of a police station and to quell a student riot during which some students were killed. This led to a major strike against all foreigners and the city came to a standstill. The expatriate Volunteer Corps was called out and organised into specialist units. Sowerby was placed in charge of the 'Sniper' unit with the sole role of covering the Chinese policemen to ensure that they carried out orders. The 'Sniper' unit had orders to pick off any policeman who failed to obey orders and, though",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214308,
        "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": 166,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "130\n\nalready full. So off they went again across the Pacific by sea to Manila, Hong Kong and Shanghai before setting out for Cape Town where they remained for five months. They finally returned to Washington having stayed in Buenos Aires for a month en route. Back in Washington they found that he was still unable to obtain a residence permit. However, someone pointed out the small print that as a dependent of his wife they would be allowed to stay and there they remained for the next six years until Sowerby died on the 16th of August 1954 at the age of sixty-nine. His last years were confined to his sickroom from which he continued his researches and writing.\n\nFor some twenty-five years of his life he lived in Shanghai, through its heyday, and for fourteen years he produced and published a creditable monthly periodical, the China Journal, aimed at ‘educating' Westerners in China to appreciate many of the aspects of Chinese civilisation and life under headings - Science, Art, Literature and Travel. It was to \"encourage an active enthusiasm for the powerful and often enigmatic Chinese self-contained culture,\" though the Journal not only pursued interests concerned with culture and the Chinese social environment it also pursued the major leisure activities available in China - hunting, shooting and fishing - all subjects close to Sowerby's heart. His primary interest centred on the collection of scientific and geological specimens for museums in Britain and the United States, as well as retaining some specimens for a unique museum in Shanghai.\n\nThe bimonthly Journal was originally titled The China Journal of Science and Arts, and edited by Arthur de C. Sowerby [Science] and John C. Ferguson, PhD [Literature and Arts]. Clarice Moise BA began as the Assistant-Editor and Manager but later simply became the Manager. We know nothing of Ferguson whose name continued on the editorial staff until the late 1930s. The first issue, No. 1 of Volume 1 was issued in January 1923 with a primitive sketch on the cover designed by A de C. S showing a mounted T'ang horseman, a dragon and bats. At first, the journal was based at 103 Ben Building at 23 Avenue Eduard VII in the French Concession though later, by 1928, its offices had moved to 8 Museum Street in Shanghai. The cover was changed in 1926, again designed by ‘A de C S', to a cross-legged Buddhist deity with his palms held together in front of his chest in prayer, with a flaming nimbus behind him and sitting on a pedestal.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    {
        "id": 214309,
        "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": 167,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "131\n\nNot only did he write many of the Journal's editorials but also in each edition a number of miscellaneous articles on subjects ranging from hunting in Manchuria and boating as a holiday to the Hall of Antiquities in the Hude Museum in Shanghai - a pet project of his, as well as Scientific Notes and Reviews. His editorials ranged from Shanghai's Position in the World to China's New Industrialisation. A typical editorial described the colossal task facing the leaders of China's Republic and, as the years passed, so his editorials became more and more anti-Japanese. In the great age of European self-confidence these editorials reflected the general mood of expatriates not only in the Treaty Ports but also within the hinterland of China. None of this necessarily precluded a measure of genuine interest in Chinese culture though he, himself, appears not to have been a convinced ‘Orientalist.' He covered a vast range of subjects under broad-brush headings Engineering, Industrial and Commercial Notes; Scientific Notes and Reviews; Educational Notes and Intelligence and Travel and Exploration Notes.\n\nA number of articles written by people whose names have come down to us as authors of well-known books such as Florence Ayscough, L.C. Arlington, Juliet Bredon and James Hutson appeared in the Journal over the years. It would be impossible to list here many of the articles and papers printed issue by issue ranging as they did from tea to river craft, secret societies to criticisms on the Shanghai local artists exhibitions as well as descriptions of expeditions into the interior With Kua-tzu and Camera in the Yangtze Gorges by H. Foote-Carey and in 1923 - Investigation of the Thermal Dissociation of Hydrated Alumo-silicates, Prehnite, Zoisite and Epidote by E. Norin of the Nystrøm Institute, Taiyuan Fu, Shansi.\n\nIn early 1938 Arthur and his wife, Clarice, sold their interest in the China Journal to a new company called \"The China Journal Publishing Company Limited\" based at 117 Hong Kong Road, Shanghai, accepting part of the purchase price in shares of the new company. There were now three directors, H.J. Timperley, A. de C. Sowerby and H.J. Freyn. The manager at that point was a Mr. W.V.D. White with Clarice Moise no longer referred to on the staff of the Journal. Then, on 7 December 1941, after Pearl Harbour, men of the Japanese navy broke into the offices and destroyed everything, including the files, mailing lists, back numbers, and that was the end of the China Journal.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214310,
        "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": 168,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "132\n\nArthur Sowerby was recorded in the Directory & Chronicle of China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, etc. for the years 1932 and 1938 as manager of China Industries Ltd, with an office in Museum Road, Shanghai and in 1938, as a director of the Post-Mercury Company Inc., USA in Avenue Edward VII, also in Shanghai. The latter was involved in printing and advertising.\n\nArthur was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Zoological Society, a member of the RAS North China Branch and also President [1928] of the China Society of Science and Arts [in Shanghai], as well as being Honorary Director of the Shanghai [RAS] Museum.\n\niii\n\nHe married three times, the first time in about 1910, at the age of twenty-five, to Mary Anne Mesny, the daughter of John Mesny of the Chinese Customs Service. She would have been just about the same age as Arthur though more than likely his elder by a few years. She seems to have disappeared from the scene almost immediately, perhaps dying comparatively young but not before she bore him a son. She does not appear in any notes after their marriage even when his parents and sisters were evacuated from Taiyuan to the safety of Tientsin during riots. This suggests that she was no longer present after about 1911 or 1912. As Mary Anne's father, John Mesny, was married to a Chinese lady whom he married in Hankow in 1866, Mary Anne was half-Chinese. This was a time when mixed marriages and even more so, marriage to someone with native blood, was frowned upon by the more bigoted expatriates.\n\nHis second wife, to whom he was married at the age of forty-two in 1927, was Clarice Moise, the American with whom he founded the China Journal. Clarice died in 1944 during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai.\n\nHis third wife was Alice Cowens, an old friend and the lady who had nursed Arthur's brother when he had been gassed during the First World War. She was invited to join Arthur in Shanghai in the Autumn of 1946 at a time when he was too ill to travel back to England alone and promptly flew out, first to Hong Kong and then, five days later, she arrived in Shanghai and married him.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214311,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 169,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "133\n\nSeveral questions remained unanswered. We have no idea what happened to Mary, his first wife who is not referred to anywhere after 1911. R R Sowerby recorded their marriage and added that she bore him a son.... \"there is one son of the marriage, now [1956] living in Australia.'\n\nAnother aspect of Sowerby's life about which we know nothing is the financial side. His father is unlikely to have left him much if anything. He is unlikely to have earned much teaching in Tientsin or working for the wealthy American. His printing press would not have been cheap and his and his wife's collecting hobby again reflects an adequate income. He had several business directorships, was the manager of China Industries and, of course, had an income from the Journal. During his earlier years he did, of course, receive financial support from Mr Clark during expeditions. There is no doubt that there was money; perhaps brought into his life by his second wife? The 1938 and 1939 China Hong Kong Lists record the Sowerbys as living in the area beyond Bubblingwell, and near the American Country Club, at 34 Lucerne Road, a very upmarket address. Of tangential interest only, their neighbours at No. 33 were Captain and Mrs J V Davidson-Houston, the British Assistant Military Attaché, whose autobiography of the era was quite gripping.\n\nSowerby's works include The Naturalist in Manchuria, A Sportsman's Miscellany, Sport and Science on the Sino-Mongolian Frontier, A Naturalist's Notebook in China and, in joint authorship with Robert Clark, Through Shenkan.\n\nMy sources have included The Passing of the Manchus, Through Shen-Kan and also Sowerby of China, a privately produced short booklet published in Kendal in 1956 by R R Sowerby.\n\nPost Script\n\nSince submitting this article to the Editor of the Journal, I have been fortunate to come across the 'Obituary of Arthur Sowerby' written in 1954 by Professor Frank Drake of the University of Hong Kong who had the great advantage of having personally known Sowerby.' It has thrown a little more light on the life and times of our subject and I",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214312,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 170,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "134\n\nhave therefore added it here for the record.\n\nThe Sowerbys were an old family of Saxon stock that can be traced back to the time of Edward the Confessor, and possibly earlier to the first kings of Kent in the fifth century AD.\n\nArthur de Carle Sowerby was the great grandson of James Sowerby, who died in 1822, the botanist who wrote English Botany and was one of the founder members of the Geological Society. His son in turn continued his work and helped organise the Royal Botanic Society and Gardens in Regent's Park.\n\nOn his mother's side Arthur was descended from Pierre Séguier, the Chancellor of France in the reign of Louis XIII; he was also the great grandson of Anthony Stuart, the miniature and portrait painter of the early Victorian period. Arthur's uncle was part-founder and first Keeper of the National Gallery of Portraits in Trafalgar Square.\n\nAt the end of his schooling he began his training to be an artist but soon left it for that of a scientist, working for his BSc. at Bristol. He returned to China having dropped out of College and after his arrival back in China he was appointed in 1906 in the double capacity of lecturer and curator on the staff of the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin.\n\nHe served in France during World War 1 as Technical Officer in the Chinese Labour Corps, and on his return to China made his headquarters in Shanghai where he remained until the end of the Second World War.\n\nHe developed an interest in Chinese Art and was impressed by the accuracy of ancient Chinese craftsmen in modelling pottery animals for the tomb, an accuracy that enabled him as a naturalist to identify the breeds of various domestic animals in use in ancient China. He wrote a series of articles for the China Journal on Birds in Chinese Art; the Owl in Chinese Art; The Flora in Chinese Art; Rocks, Mountains and Water in Chinese Art; Animals in Chinese Art; as well as Animals in the Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales of China. His interest in craftsmanship also led him to write a series of articles on Chinese arts and crafts, including four papers on the Chinese ivory industry.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214313,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 171,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "135\n\nProfessor Drake summed up the probable chief monument to Sowerby's life in Shanghai as the China Journal. He added that it was not a sinological journal but a storehouse of information on all manner of subjects, the range and variety of which reflect the editor's [Sowerby's] mind. To a large extent it is a record of a world that is past and one of its chief functions was to educate the foreign community in the China of those days in appreciation of varied aspects of Chinese civilisation and life.\n\nWith his increasing knowledge in Chinese Art Sowerby gradually made a small but choice collection of Chinese pottery and porcelain, being attracted chiefly by the animals of the T'ang and Six Dynasties periods. These, with his fine collection of books on Chinese Art and his natural history specimens he donated to the Heude Museum, Shanghai before he left China in 1946.\n\nHis last illness was the now all but forgotten debilitating sprue which left him an apparently broken man, yet whilst in the Japanese concentration camp he maintained his interests and discovered a new species of some small creature.\n\nIn his final year, in Washington DC he began composing an ambitious history of the old Saxon family from which he was sprung - The Sowerby Saga - which included in the third and later parts his own autobiography. [Note: this does not appear to have been published and nothing more is known about the work].\n\nBefore the centenary of his and his family's fortunate furlough in 1900 passes I wanted to pay a debt of pleasure to the author and publisher, Arthur Sowerby, on behalf of all those who gained some insight into a China now long departed.\n\nPost Post Script\n\n[Editor's Note: Keith must have sent me at least six revised versions of this article, each time declaring that \"this is definitely the last one.\" Then things went quiet and I edited the \"absolute final version.\" Then this arrived with the usual \"final\" exhortations. I include it to confirm to readers that here at HKBRAS we truly go the extra mile!]",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214314,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "page_number": 172,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "136\n\nI am grateful to the Reverend Carl Smith for the following information:\n\nAn announcement from a China mail of 1925. Married, at Shanghai, yesterday, Miss Clarice Sara Moise, to Mr. Arthur de Carle Sowerby, publisher of the China Journal of Arts and Science. Will of wife, Clarice Clara Sowerby, probated in Hong Kong in 1948, written in Shanghai 1933, in favour of her husband Arthur de Carle Sowerby of Shanghai, and son, Arthur Mesny de Carle Sowerby. Sister, Nina Ethel Moise. Will of Sowerby himself: Arthur etc., probated in Hong Kong, 1955, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, scientist, at present residing at Fairfax Hotel (?), 2100 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington DC. Wife, Alice Muriel Sowerby. If predeceased, sister-in-law, Nina Ethel Moise, 6485 San Marco Circle, Hollywood, to receive half; and son, Arthur Mesny de Carle Sowerby, to get the other half. Will written 7th November, 1949. A death record of Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 16th August 1954.\n\nCarl Smith also commented that it was known that Sowerby had children (sic) by a Chinese woman. It would appear that most expatriates in Shanghai were unaware of Sowerby's first marriage in Tientsin to William Mesny's niece, Mary Anne, and that the reference to the 'children by a Chinese woman,' remembering that Mary Anne's mother had been Chinese, suggests that Sowerby's first marriage had been quietly 'forgotten.'\n\ni The bandits were referred to as the Ko-lao Hui, the Elder Brother Society, an old powerful secret society, membership to which was strictly forbidden by the Ch'ing government and punishable by death. Their gangs robbed and killed far and wide as well as causing trouble with their inter-gang feuding.\n\nii The British Residents' Association was formed in 1931 to enable long-term residents to have a say in the running of the Concession. At about the same time, in order to support the authorities in the Concession following the recent troubles and crises, a body known as the Shanghai Fascisti was organised, and led for a while by Sowerby. The Fascists at this time were regarded by many as an honourable force against encroaching communism.\n\niii John Mesny died in 1884 in Hankow leaving a widow and eight children, all under the age of sixteen.\n\niv Davidson-Houston, JV: Armed Pilgrimage : Robert Hale Ltd : London: 1949\n\nv Journal of Oriental Studies Vol. II. No. 1. January 1955 [University of Hong Kong]",
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