[ { "id": 204246, "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": 14, "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\n11\n\nTHE STUDY OF ASIA: A HERITAGE AND A TASK\n\nInaugural Address delivered on April 7, 1960.\n\nF. S. DRAKE, O.B.E., B.A., B.D.,\n\nProfessor of Chinese, Hong Kong University.\n\nThe study of Asia by the West is the result of the total impact of East and West through the ages, in which traders, soldiers, administrators, travellers, preachers, and scholars all have a part, and in which a study of the language and literature of the peoples of Asia is an essential element.\n\nSo far as Europe is concerned the study of Asia commences with the Greeks.\n\nThe Greeks were in contact with Asia in three directions: along the coast of the Black Sea they were in contact with the Scythians; in Asia Minor they lived under the shadow of the Persian Empire; through Egypt they were in contact with the sea routes to India and beyond.\n\nThese three directions indicate three great geographical divisions of the subject around which we can, I think, arrange the historical, cultural and linguistic studies.\n\nFirst the grasslands of Central Asia, from the steppes of Russia to the plateau of Mongolia, home of the nomadic races from the Scythians to the Mongols;\n\nsecond, the Oriental Empires connected with the great river valleys and deltas from Iran to India and China;\n\nthird, the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan, including the China coast.\n\nI. The Scythians are graphically described in the pages of Herodotus, and his description is verified by the finds of archaeologists in the tombs of their chieftains in South Russia and the Caucasus region. The virile 'nomad animal style' of the ornaments in bronze and gold found from the Caucasus to the Siberian side of the Altai, and from the Altai through Mongolia to the borders of China, indicates the extent and the character of the nomadic tribes.\n\nBut the chief source of our knowledge of the nomads is to be found in the series of Chinese dynastic histories. The Chinese were in continual contact with the nomadic peoples along their northern frontier from Manchuria to Turkestan—the line of the Great Wall. The struggle between the nomads and the Empire, based on agriculture, is the great theme of Chinese history.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 204396, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n19\n\nbattle of Lignitz (1241) the knights of Europe were mown down, Europe lay helpless before the invaders, when the Great Khan Ogotai suddenly died, and the Mongol princes hastened back to be present at the grand assembly in Mongolia for the election of a successor. Europe was saved. But meantime through travelling merchants and friars contacts with the Mongols had been established in the Near East and, no doubt as a result of the Nestorian missions, and the conversion of the king of the Keraits in 1007, rumours grew of the rise of a great Christian Potentate in Central Asia called Prester John\". Availing himself of the respite afforded by the withdrawal of the Mongols, the Pope conceived the idea of sending emissaries to the Mongol rulers, on the one hand to avert the threatened Mongol invasion by appealing to the reports of their common faith, and on the other to enlist their aid against the Moslem Turks in the Holy Land.\n\nThe emissary chosen by the Pope was Friar John of Pian de Carpine (Plano Carpini) who was despatched with a letter to the Mongol rulers in A.D. 1245. Proceeding with his companion Friar Benedict the Pole through South Russia and Central Asia, he arrived at the camp of Kuyuk Khan in northern Mongolia at the time of his election by the great assembly, and was received in audience by him. Friar John returned to Europe in 1247, and met King Louis IX of France in Paris preparing for the Fifth Crusade (1248-1254). He has left a short but valuable account of his journey and a history of the Mongol tribes.11\n\nDuring the disastrous Fifth Crusade King Louis was accompanied by Friar William of Rubruck, and he received several travellers returning from the nearer Mongols and despatched several emissaries, the most important of whom was Friar William of Rubruck himself whom he sent in 1253 on a personal mission to the Great Khan. Friar William travelled from Constantinople via South Russia and Central Asia to Karakoram near the present Urga, as Friar John had done, and returned through Asia Minor. He has left a long and detailed account of his journey, which for accurate observation, and balanced judgment is a document\n\n14 Rockhill, The Journey of William Rubruck with two accounts of ... John of Pian de Carpini, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, No. IV, 1900, D'Avezac: Relation des Mongols ou Tartares par le frère Jean du Plan de Carpin, Paris, 1938.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205190, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "140\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThere is no doubt that Professor Rickett has produced a good translation which makes a valuable contribution toward better understanding ancient Chinese civilization. The Hong Kong University Press is to be congratulated for making a classic readily available to the large reading public. If there be any disagreement with Professor Rickett's translation, it is on the grounds of textual corruptions in the Kuan-tzu rather than the negligence of the translator. It is with this in mind that the following corrections are made on page 62, the clause, \"our country's [territory] is exhausted...\", \"territory\" should be translated as \"chariots\" and \"is\" should be \"are\"; on page 63, the clause, \"The teachings of Lu [stress] appreciation of the arts,\" the last word should be \"learning\"; on page 64, the clause, \"While [the feudal lords] fought in support. Consequently, ...\", should be written \"Fighting in Hou-ku,...\"; on page 101, the sentence, \"It is he who enriches men ...”, should not begin a paragraph, but should follow the preceding sentence, \"The reason... of Destiny”; on page 128, the phrase, \"the fall of Chou”, should be written \"the faults of Chou\"; on page 169, the clause, \"if his ears and eyes act in accord with the beginnings [of virtue]\", should be written \"if his ears and eyes act respectfully or with dignity”; on page 172, the sentences, \"Do not [try to] run like a horse,... Do not [try to] fly like a bird”. should be written \"Do not [try to] take the place of a horse to run, ... Do not [try to] take the place of a bird to fly.” In addition, a few omissions in translation may be pointed out: on page 71, line 7, after the clause, \"Whenever there was some one\", there should be added \"who was good but had not been rewarded and”; on page 137, line 26, after \" with the spirits\", the sentences, 1 以規矩方圓則成,以尺寸量長短則得,以法治民則安, 故事不廣于理者,其成者神。\" were omitted and should be translated.\n\nf1\n\nThese are minor defects which do not detract from the excellence of Professor Rickett's scholarly work. I sincerely hope that the second volume of his work on the Kuan-tzu will be published soon so that Western scholars may have the advantage of consulting this primary source on early Chinese civilization.\n\nNew Asia College\n\nHAN-SHENG CHUAN (4)\n\nThe Chinese University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205193, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n143\n\ntributed) makes it the most interesting of all and appealing to this reader.\n\nMax Scheler's statement is quoted more than once, with approval, about the coming of \"the hour that harbours in its breast the future of humanity, the hour when Asia and Europe will enter upon a discussion of the principles of their religious and metaphysical life\" (p.313). The book does not present directly such a discussion except in a few spots, notably the essay on the uniqueness of Europe by a Frenchman. Is it because religious and metaphysical principles are the things that ultimately divide as well as unite? Slater's essay should provide a step toward Scheler's prophesy. This should be coupled with Needham's proposition that it is the common knowledge (and use) of nature, which is what he means by science, that is the real basis of dialogue, if not indeed of the unity of mankind. What is the place of normative values in the study of science and in intercultural confrontations? Should we, as the important footnote on pp.317-318 suggests, confine ourselves to \"thoughtful and accurate description\" (such as provided by the historical essays in the book) for the time being, avoiding value judgments and therefore the temptation of \"cultural egotism?\" This is the kind of significant question the book raises but does not answer.\n\nThe essays collected in this symposium are generally short (about 15 pages) and readable. Some are better documented than others. The material in the upper half of p.318, for example, is too important not to be acknowledged as to its source. The long Bibliography at the end of the book would be more useful if classified or annotated. It should be otherwise more selective. Karl Wittfogel's work, Oriental Despotism, apparently important because it is mentioned twice in the book, is strangely left out of the Bibliography. Wang Gungwu's family name is Wang, not Gungwu, as arranged in the \"Notes on Contributors\" on p.355 and stated on p.316—a minor case of East-West misunderstanding! It may be noteworthy that eight out of the twenty contributors (most of them historians) were at one time or another associated with St. Anthony's College, Oxford, making the book to this extent a joint product of that scholarly community. The book, finally, includes as its most important appendix \"A Dialogue on the Glass Curtain between Arnold Toynbee and Raghavan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205207, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n157\n\nforms should be included or the student is going to be left in the dark on numerous items which are often heard in everyday speech. K. P. K. Whitaker (\"A Study of the Modified Tones in Spoken Cantonese\", Asia Major, New Series, Vol. V, Parts 1 and 2) has treated this subject intensively and a glance at her long lists of words normally appearing in changed tone will convince anyone that a student of Cantonese will certainly need some way to handle unknown items showing this phenomenon.\n\nAdmittedly, as Rev. Cowles points out in defending his decision to ignore the changed tones, they vary considerably from area to area; it would indeed be impractical to attempt to record all the local variants. The point here should be that there is no practical way to design a dictionary to cover all the great multitude of regional varieties of the Cantonese dialects. A choice will have to be made concerning just which dialect form will be treated and the most likely selection would seem to be Standard Cantonese. I believe that this choice should have been made and that this dictionary should have included as many as possible of the common changed tone forms used by the speakers in Hong Kong and Canton. Furthermore, these forms should not be listed under the basic tone of the character but in such a way that the student can look them up in the dictionary on the basis of what he hears. Thus, since the high rising changed tone is often confused with basic tone of similar contour, it might be best to list these under the high rising basic tone and indicate in the symbolization that historically such forms are members of other basic tone categories.\n\nRev. Cowles has indeed made a very important contribution and I do not mean to detract from this by quibbling over minor points. Nevertheless, in striving for totality in a single dictionary the compiler necessarily takes on an impossible task. Obviously decisions to include and exclude face him at every turn, and no two compilers could be expected to make the same decisions. A lexicographer should define his area and depth of concentration then be as thorough as possible within these limitations. One should not in one paragraph (p. vii) defend the size of a dictionary on the grounds that the forms included ‘are in the language, and being there, call for a record and interpretation into English' then three paragraphs later argue against inclusion of the changed tone forms because they \"are simply multitudinous, and usage differs widely in many localities\". It would seem wise to skip local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205967, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "42\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nunsatisfactory. Instead, the system was adopted in the early 1880s of sending cadets to Peking where they learned Mandarin, which was little used in Hong Kong.24 Finally, in the late 1880s cadets were sent to Canton to learn Cantonese, and this arrangement continued in force until the Second World War.\n\nCadets at Canton were billeted in the former residence of the Tartar General, which was taken by Britain after the war of 1857-60 and became His Britannic Majesty's Yamen. When the Consulate was transferred to Shameen, the area of original European settlement, the Yamen was turned over as a place of residence for cadets of the Malayan and Hong Kong Civil Services learning Chinese. Some cadets also resided in Shameen. In the early 1920s, according to Victor Purcell,25 who was then a Malayan cadet, there were in Canton usually about 15 or so cadets, the majority from Malaya, but a few from Hong Kong, and one or two police probationers, who were taught Chinese by a small band of Cantonese teachers... with a core of about half a dozen stalwarts who had taught generations of cadets in the past'. Sir Alexander Grantham, who was also a cadet in the 1920s, tells us that in his day there were about half a dozen cadets living in the Yamen.26 It is clear from his memoirs that the Hong Kong Government exercised little supervision over its protégés in Canton. So long as the cadets passed their examinations—four examinations taken at six-monthly intervals—cadets had two years of glorious freedom in a very free and easy Chinese city.\n\nCadets appointed to the Hong Kong Civil Service, or transferred from other colonial territories in Asia, had much in common. All were British subjects of pure European descent and all entered the Colonial Service at approximately the same age. They were educated at fee-paying schools, but most had their schooling at minor public and obscure private schools, not listed in the Public Schools Yearbook: only one Etonian, one Wykehamist, two Rugbeians and two Harrovians are to be found among the eighty-five. The majority proceeded to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge but a substantial contingent—over 30 per cent—came from universities in Scotland and Ireland; only a handful—nine in all—were from London or English provincial universities.27 A few—Cecil Clementi, R. F. Johnston, J. H. Stewart Lockhart, F. H. May and A. M. Thomson28—had outstanding academic records; yet even the rest were above average.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206022, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "J\n\nA NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES\n\n97\n\nand none at all of that cross-thread I mentioned, which all the time we are speaking one phrase is guiding us away from a score of similar phrases which are not what we mean. This constant unconscious avoidance of saying what we don't mean is the pattern we must all set up when we would speak a second, third or fourth language.\n\nI hope what I am about to say will help you in this task. For most of us, when children, were crippled by being brought up to talk only one language; to those whose minds have been thus crippled, like the girls of Manchu China whose feet used to be bound in childhood, the idea of \"thinking in a language\" is as natural as the unnatural tiptoe tottering gait seemed the \"natural\" way for women to walk. The unbinding of bound feet was, I am told, a very painful matter and after a certain age could not safely be done.\n\nSo come, if you dare, and let me unbind your linguistic feet.\n\nEnglish is a language of the Indo-European family: a family the branches of which extend from Sanskrit, Old Persian and their descendants in South-Central Asia, through the Slavonic languages of Eastern Europe, Lithuanian and the Celtic languages (originally of Asia Minor, but now found only on the Atlantic and Baltic shores), Ancient and Modern Greek, the languages of ancient Italy, through Latin to the modern Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Rumanian and Catalan, Old Norse and Icelandic down to modern Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, Gothic and Old High German down to the modern German dialects and Dutch; then again overseas with the Colonizers to North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa and as a second language of convenience in the shape of a special kind of English\n\n- back to India again where it may all have started.\n\nA great deal of work has been done on this family of languages, but it is well for us to remember that it is less than 200 years since the identity of such a family was observed and not much more than a century since Indo-European linguistic studies were firmly established.\n\nBefore that, and to some extent ever since, European scholars were taught to regard Latin and Greek as the only models of linguistic organization: therefore any language had to be studied", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206643, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n185\n\nthe newly dead. Mara has a cleft head, ear-pressing tufts and protruding eyes. His skirt can be made of leaves and on occasions he has a staff in his right hand.\n\nTHE CULT OF FA CHU KUNG\n\nBackground\n\nThe localised cult of Fa Chu Kung appears to have originated in the areas of An Chi and Ying Ch'uen in Fukien Province and has been carried by emigrants to their new homes in Taiwan and South East Asia. Fa Chu Kung is renowned amongst his devotees for his ability to cure any illness, and is believed to be capable of such potent magic that many Chinese are fearful even to mention his name. In addition it is claimed in some areas that he is able to cause and stop rain at will, and in one Cantonese temple in Kuala Lumpur he is specifically prayed to for confirmation that a marriage in process of being arranged will be successful. A Fukienese temple keeper in Singapore, who was not too fearful to discuss the deity, confided that Fa Chu Kung is the powerful leader of a large group of gods which includes the Northern Emperor Hsuan Tien Ta Ti and has very many disciples. He also claimed that Fa Chu Kung is able to transform himself into anyone or anything and that Chinese spirit mediums can only approach other gods through Fa Chu Kung. Therefore Fa Chu Kung's goodwill and agreement are always necessary before any petition or prayers may be offered to any god apart from the supreme deity, the Jade Emperor.\n\nRecognition Features\n\nFa Chu Kung is more often to be found as a minor deity on an altar dedicated to another god rather than the main deity on an altar or of a temple. His image is very easy to recognise. The basic recognition features are his shiny black face and body, his unkempt hair and slightly protruding eyes; his unsheathed sword is held at the ready in his right hand and a red snake curls round his neck and shoulders and over his left arm. His black feet are bare and are resting on fire wheels, and finally his left hand is making a magical sign. This is made by his whole left hand stretched forward at waist level and pointing vertically with his index and little finger; his thumb and the other two fingers are pressed to the palm. The whole hand is twisted to face the right. Most images have all these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210343, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 314, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "293 \n\nis the gayest of the gay cities. Yet I am told that the officers of the army and navy do not care much about being quartered at Hong Kong. Even gaiety becomes monotonous on an island scarcely nine miles long, so rocky that you cannot ride, and where pirates and squalls keep people from boating or fishing.\n\nThe island formerly constituted a part of the district Sun-on. It is scarcely a mile from Kiu Lung or Kow Loon on the main land, which is also British property. It is mainly granitic, but with a varied geology, so as to make it a most interesting place of study. There are some volcanic dykes in places, and traces of minerals, especially lead and molybdenum, of which fine specimens may be easily obtained. The highest peak is 1,825 feet high, and there are other peaks ranging between that height and 1,000 feet. Hong Kong as far back as the Ming dynasty belonged to the Tang family, whom I suppose everybody knows. It is an island at the mouth of the Canton river, and was a noted resort for pirates, who used to lie in wait for sailing craft in the Ly-ee-mun pass, a very narrow strait between the mainland and the island. In January, 1841, it was ceded to Great Britain. The capital is called Victoria.\n\nWood's description continues with surveys of the vegetation, fauna, and geology. It was part of a long article “Geographical Notes in Malaysia and Asia”, which was published in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales, in 1888, shortly before his death.\n\nWoods: An Appreciation\n\nAs in Sir George Bowen's day, so in our own, there is a tendency to try to set religion and science in opposition. But more than a century ago, we find in Woods a lived conviction that there is no such opposition. His scientific work is certainly a product of his own time, but his Australian research is still cited in official geological publications.\n\nIn the antipodes, interest in Woods is growing. He has been the subject of three biographies, two of which have a full list of his scientific publications. There are many minor works about him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211521, "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": 238, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "214\n\nMeasurements:\n\n―\n\nAg. wt.: 4.60g - 0.43g. (wt. of 3 pins and lock) Size: 1.8 cm, diam., 4 mm. thick.\n\n=\n\n= 4.17 g\n\nSimilar original gold coins weigh 132.7 grain = 8.547 g. and have a diameter of 0.7 inches. It is only natural that the silver coin weighs much less, its density being 10.7868 compared to that of gold which is 19.6967.\n\nThe comparative volume of the coins shows a great approximation, Au. 43/Ag. 39, despite the difficulty in assessing the weight of the silver of similar original silver coins one.\n\nReports point to the possibility of the present coin being original. It is true that while gold was the precious metal ‘par excellence’ in Europe and in Asia Minor, silver was more commonly sought after in Asian countries. The coin is probably a contemporary or near contemporary copy of the gold original, probably made somewhere in the Persian Empire.\n\nDescription of the Coin\n\nObverse:\n\nHead of Demeter or Hera (?) wearing stephane (head band) and veil on the back of the head, earring and necklace. On the left, in front of the forehead, the letters TAPA (in Greek: Tara). A dolphin at the left, down the side, and a letter K near the neck, in front. A border circular line.\n\nReverse:\n\nYoung horseman (Kastor or Taras), naked, with javelin in the right hand and resting on the right shoulder. The horse is galloping or cantering. Below: AΠOΛ. In front of the horse's head a thunderbolt. On certain parts of the coin border dots are visible.\n\nNotes:\n\n1. TAPA is an abbreviation for TAPANTΩN, (Taranton), of the Tarantines.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212157, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "76\n\nworthies and locally deified ordinary people.\n\nBefore we go any further let us examine the term used by the Chinese for what we refer to as 'a god'. The word is 'shen' and it means different things to different people. To Christian missionaries the shen were 'the gods', usually represented by idols; to the conservative Confucian Chinese the shen were the good spirits, the divine; and to the Chinese man in the street they were the deities to whom they turned for protection, advice and assistance. Shen, as a word, in addition to meaning 'the soul' also has a sense of energy or force, and can be used in connexion with the inexplicably remarkable or supernatural. There is another word used by Chinese for 'spirits of the dead', kuei. This is often translated as ghost or demon. The spirit of humans when they die become kuei and at this point they either enter the Nether World for Judgement, Purgatory and finally to be reborn again, or if they have died a premature death, before the due date as laid down in the Book of Life, they remain roaming kuei, haunting the human world awaiting their due date of death. Complications arise when referring to one's own family. Their spirits on death are called 'shen' whilst other peoples' are 'kuei'. Thus it is said that whereas the locally deified are all said to be 'shen', in practice they should be called 'kuei'. This is, of course, a mere technicality and all deities on altars, be they local or national deities, are regarded as 'shen'.\n\nMany of the comparatively minor deities worshipped in Chinese temples in rural areas of Taiwan and South-east Asia have only been created within the past three hundred or so years, and not a few have been placed on altars within living memory. The nineteenth century still saw the deification of many men who had performed unusual deeds, leading to the establishment of temples individually dedicated to them. This practice was less common in China during the Republican period, 1911-1949, but there were still then some stories of miracles which occasionally gave rise to the creation of new gods. In the 1920s, in Ting county in Hopei province, a tale was told of a sick man who had revealed to him in a dream that he should prepare himself a drink from the bark of a certain old tree at the edge of the village. He did as he had been advised and was cured. The tale quickly spread and soon others stricken down with every form of illness did the same. The tree became the site of a busy shrine dedicated to the spirit of the tree, bedecked with banners presented by grateful worshippers to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212657, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "192\n\nA CHINESE MEMORIAL HALL\n\nDEDICATED TO\n\nWANG TE LU\n\nA CLAN HERO\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nAncestral halls are the family or clan memorial chapels which every respectable clan or family throughout China had, and in Taiwan and amongst overseas Chinese communities in South-east Asia, still has. Known as Tz'u-t'ang they are fine buildings in honour of family ancestors whose tablets stand in regular order on the main altar according to their respective generations.\n\nThere were, however, also the memorial halls each dedicated to nationally renowned worthies, individuals who had served their emperors faithfully to the end of their days and had had conferred upon them posthumous honours in addition to any conferred during their lives; they were also canonised with a title which, added to the family name, reverently designated their memory.\n\nNeither the ancestral temples nor the memorial halls to nationally renowned worthies should be confused with the Portrait Gallery of Heroes of Hall of Worthies, Ling-yen Ke, in which stood the tablets and portraits of heroes who assisted in the founding of a dynasty and supported it in the succeeding years.\n\nA typical example of special temples erected in the memory of a renowned worthy were those built in, amongst other places, Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai, Nanking and Soochow, in honour of one of the most famous Chinese of the nineteenth century, Li Hung-chang, a statesman and diplomat [1823-1901]. He was posthumously granted by the Ch'ing emperor the honorary title of Grand Tutor, the name Wen-chung, the hereditary rank of Marquis of the first class, whilst his name was entered in the Temple of Eminent Statesmen.\n\nYet another form of honour, in this case of a comparatively minor mandarin albeit probably the most senior of all Taiwanese during the Ch'ing dynasty, is to be seen reflected down the side walls of the shrine hall of one such Clan temple, the Wang Memorial Chapel in rural central Taiwan. The walls are covered in memorabilia dedicated", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212930, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "224\n\nP'i) mentioned in the main text. Anne Birrell's Chinese Mythology achieves such distinction that we can easily forgive its minor shortcomings. The book is a delight to read and a joy to give to others. I only hope that her editors see fit to issue a paperback version soon. My own hardbound copy is already rather dog-eared.\n\nMICHAEL NYLAN\n\nNOTE\n\nFor example, the apocrypha to the Documents give an amusing explanation of the white fish omen that appeared at the end of the Shang dynasty\n\nFrank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, Harper Collins, 624 + xv pp. Appendices, notes, appendix, maps.\n\nThis review has been excerpted from The New York Review of Books (7 April, 1994) by kind permission of the reviewer, Dr Jonathan Mirsky, who is East Asia Editor of The Times.\n\nThe entire history of Hong Kong, as Frank Welsh shows in his magnificent, much needed, and compendious history of the colony, is filled with misunderstandings and cultural collisions. One hundred and fifty years of muddle and injured pride are what permits Peking's leaders to call Chris Patten, whom they perceive as the point-man for an international conspiracy to overthrow the entire Communist system in China, 'a whore.'\n\nWelsh, a former Hong Kong banker, starts his dense but wittily written history in the early nineteenth century, and just manages to include the accession of Mr Patten in 1992. He refers to Hong Kong as 'that natural child of Victorian Britain and Ch'ing China... a source of embarrassment and annoyance to its progenitors since it first appeared on the international scene in 1842.' More than an annoyance: for the Chinese, Hong Kong has been a perpetual symbol of national humiliation. There are many instances of mutual disregard, which Welsh understandably enjoys and quotes copiously. In 1831, James Matheson, one of the founders of the 'noble house' of Jardine Matheson, the trading firm whose history", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213360, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "165\n\nHong Kong history is to make any relevant material collector's items. Old postcards, for instance, which might have been bought for several dollars a few years ago, are now selling for ten, twenty times the price. New collectors are entering the market, and no doubt 1997 has much to do with heating up the collectors' market for 'Things Hong Kong'. The effect is that items which might have gone to the museums and libraries where serious researchers have access, are now in private collectors' hands and so unlikely to be used for research.\n\nMaybe, in this respect too, the local historian is the victim of his own success.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nIt is clear that the study of local history in Hong Kong, built upon earlier foundations, has made great progress since the 1970s. In the meantime, government and semi-government bodies have contributed towards promoting interest and awareness in local history and heritage conservation. To a generation born in Hong Kong and curious about its own history, these developments have been timely. Thus we are witnessing a period of unprecedented activity in promotion and research, and ready funding. In turn, the sudden surge in public demand is creating bottlenecks. There is no quick or easy solution to the problem, and it will take a few years for the universities, and perhaps the museums, to train a sufficient number of researchers to keep up with popular demand. At the same time, we should not lose sight of the need to continue serious research to ensure that quality and depth are not sacrificed for popularity.\n\n## NOTES\n\nThe author is grateful to the Japan Foundation for funding part of the research for this paper, which is a slight modification of one presented at the 14th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 20-24th May, 1996, entitled “The Study of Local History in Hong Kong: Progress and Problems”.\n\n2\n\nLan Tien-wei dates the beginning of the study of Hong Kong history to the 1910s when the former Hanlin scholar Chen Botao revised the Dongguan Local Gazetteer. In this case, of course, Hong Kong was only a minor part of the study. In the 1920s and 1930s, some archaeologists began excavations in the Hong Kong region, but since prehistoric archaeology is a different branch of knowledge with techniques of its own, it will be excluded from this paper (See Lan Tien-wei, “Hong Kong Studies in the Past Seventy years” (in Chinese), Chu...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213615, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "184\n\nfrom China, whose image has not been noted during my travels around Chinese temples in South-east Asia nor in Taiwan, and almost certainly Hokkien as the main deity, the Third Prince Nazha, and the other deities in the original village temple included Fa-zhu Gong, Sun the Monkey deity and several unnamed pestilence Wangye.\n\nAn elderly carver in Singapore told me during the early 1960s that he knew nothing about the deity apart from having drawn a sketch for his personal records a year or so earlier. The deity is portrayed as a dishevelled fierce male, sitting, dressed in armour covered by a long red robe. He has bare feet, round staring eyes, and unkempt hair and beard. His skin is chocolate brown apart from the shaven or bald front half of his head and his cheeks which are decorated with white and coloured stripes of red and green. Such markings are very uncommon. Similar ones, typical of the painted faces of opera characters, have been noted on Fukienese pestilence Wangye and on minor warriors, escorts to major deities.\n\nSo, apart from his title and his possible ethnic group, Hokkien, we do not know his legend and background, nor do we know why or for what he was revered.\n\nHowever, now that his image has reappeared on an altar, in Tampenis New Town, who knows what might happen. It is not impossible for a miracle, revealed perhaps in a dream or trance, to be attributed to Qixing Dadi and for the cult to take on a new direction and life.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214004, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "THE YANG FAMILY OF GENERALS\n\nYang Chia Chiang\n\n楊家將\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\n39\n\nThe story of the Yang Family of Generals is inextricably involved with the struggle between the Chinese of the Sung dynasty [early in the 10th century AD] and the invading hordes from Central Asia. Memories of the fearless Yangs, who were dreaded by the Tatars from beyond the Wall, are kept fresh by tea-house story tellers, Chinese opera, and tales told by temple keepers. We have, therefore, three versions of the story of the Yangs: first, as we read it in history books; then, the story as told in novels, by professional story tellers, and in opera; and finally, tales related by temple custodians and devotees about the deified Yang heroes.\n\nWe shall never know the real story of the Yang family; nevertheless, the chronological story as told in history books is relatively straightforward. General Chao K'uang-yin became the first emperor of the Sung in AD 960 with his capital at Kaifeng and with the reign title of T'ai Tsu. He eventually achieved his primary aim and unified most of China under his rule, one of the exceptions being the small state, a princedom in the area of today's Shanxi province known by its dynastic title as the Northern Han, and also known by its regional name as Ho-tung [East of the (Yellow) River]. When the Northern Han refused to submit to him in the Autumn of AD 968, T'ai Tsu decided to invade and moved on Taiyuan, the capital of Ho-tung. The Prince of the Northern Han, realising that they were powerless before the Sung, called on the warlike and powerful Liao [Khitans'], a minor empire to the north of the Great Wall, for assistance. Also realising that outside aid could not arrive in time to save the immediate situation, the Prince made his most able soldier, Yang Chi-yeh, possibly better known simply as Yang Yeh, Generalissimo and ordered him and his five senior sons to lead the resistance against the Sung to allow time for the Liao forces to join up with them. The combined Northern Han and Liao forces were too strong for the Sung, and even though Taiyuan had twice been besieged by the Sung, T'ai Tsu pulled back and turned south where he subdued the Southern Han. Once more, in 976, he sent an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214046, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "81\n\nA LOOK BACK : CIVIL ENGINEERING IN HONG KONG 1841-1941\n\nPreface\n\nC. MICHAEL GUILFORD\n\nThis brief wide-ranging general article written as a contribution to mark the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (from 1947-1975, The Engineering Society of Hong Kong). It was originally published in three parts in Asia Engineer, the Journal of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (July, August and September 1997).\n\nIn this reprint, the opportunity has been taken to make minor corrections, mainly typographical, and to add 17 illustrations which should make the article more interesting. The author would like to express his thanks to Henderson & Associates, the publishers of Asia Engineer, for their kind agreement for the article to be reprinted in the Journal.\n\nIntroduction\n\nBefore the British arrived in 1841 the population on Hong Kong Island, who lived in or around 20 small villages, was less than 6,000 (about a third being afloat), whilst in Kowloon there were probably around 2,000 souls and, in the New Territories (then part of San On district) about 100,000 persons living in some 600 villages. At this time granite quarrying around the harbour was a thriving industry (for example at Quarry Bay and Hok Un), much of it being used locally with some being exported by boat to Canton (Guangzhou). The abundance of old lime kilns around the seashore indicates that there was no shortage of lime for the production of cementing material.\n\nCivil engineering works were generally simple and geared to meet the needs of the rural and fishing communities. As a result a network of rural paths, some paved with granite setts, and footbridges were constructed, an example of the latter being the existing Pin Mo Bridge at Shui Tau (near Kam Tin) which was built in 1710 (49th year of K'ang Hsi), a simple twin-span structure with the decking formed by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214749, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "128\n\nclaim that the defenders faced shortages in ammunition, notably for mortars. However, the movement of the defenders' guns within the defence perimeter throughout the Battle was rather hectic, aided by at least 20 armoured cars and more than 3,000 motor cars and 600 trucks. This indicated that the artillery arm of the garrison was playing a key role in prolonging the duration of the defence. Therefore, the effective firepower of the defenders did not appear to be as weak as frequently represented in publications up to now on the Battle of Hong Kong. The story of the defence of Hong Kong apparently could well have been distorted in favour of the winner.\n\nConclusion: a Plea for Further Research\n\nThe above points are just informed speculation and the Battle of Hong Kong is certainly an under-researched military episode in the Second World War. This being the case, it should be just a matter of interest not only to those directly involved.\n\n...\n\nIn broad historical terms, the significance of the Battle of Hong Kong should not be limited to a matter of war relics or past history. It has implications for the post-war political development of Hong Kong, a living issue that affects the present both physically and socially. We have mentioned the credibility of the defence of Hong Kong as a matter of responsible government and a matter of fact but not as an apology for British colonialism. There are still unknown numbers of unexploded bombs, both Japanese and Allied, yet to be unearthed in highly congested urban sites. There are also quite a number of old people in Hong Kong (and elsewhere in Asia) who still hold Japanese military currency, forced upon them when their convertible currencies were expropriated during the occupation, in the vain hope of obtaining compensation by the Japanese government (Keniti; Kobayasi Hideo and Isida Jimtarou, 1995).\n\nThe military aspects of the fighting itself should be interesting case study materials for the military scientist. Many other questions remain unanswered. The size and role and size of the \"fifth columnists\", the tactics of the Japanese and the useful value of occupied Hong Kong to the Japanese are just a few examples. Though these questions for a minor theatre of war may not catch the attention of those who are only interested in the broad-brush views of Liddell Hart (1970), they should", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215108, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 204, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "161\n\nand the Fulu particular of two opera companies, the Xipi Pai and Erhuang Pai [or Fi Pai], the latter, the northern school, being especially dedicated to woodwinds3. In legend he is said to have had an emotional reunion with the soul of his dead concubine, Yang Guifei, in the palace of Guanghan on the Moon.\n\n4\n\nA tablet on a minor altar at the rear of a secondary hall in the temple of the City God in Hsinchu in northern Taiwan refers to him as Tang Xuan Zong, whilst his usual title in Taiwanese temples of the Lord of the Western Qin, Xi Qin WangyeE is not usually understood beyond Taiwan. There is no image, whereas in the Ma Tsu temple in Taipei a side altar is dedicated to him and his image, portraying him as a standard scholar-official with a black beard, is flanked by two very elderly male aides.\n\nIn South-east Asia images of the emperor have been seen in temples in Seremban and Ipoh in Malaysia, and in Singapore, in some of which he is simply referred to as Zunzhu Mingwang, the Lord Prince Ming, 尊主明王,\n\nAn image seen on the only altar in a side hall of the temple on Miaofeng Shan in Beijing's Western Hills and identified as Tang Ming Huang, is better known in the temple as the God of Happiness, Xi Shen [Photograph 2]. He is referred to as Liyuan Shen, and is portrayed as a smiling figure with beard and moustache, standing with his hands in a theatrical pose. His modern image is dressed in imperial yellow robes decorated with a large dragon and the whole body of the image is swathed in a red robe placed there by devotees.\n\nDisappointingly, there appears to be no image of the Concubine Yang on any altars. However, a modern [1996] tableau in an old temple, now converted into a theme-park, depicts in a series of life-size plaster images scenes ranging from the Tang Ming Huang's first sight of the Concubine Yang bathing, progressing through stages of his infatuation though ending before her death and his overthrow. This can be seen on a low hill overlooking the bend in the Yellow River at the south-western tip of Shanxi province, at a place known as Yang Guifei's pool. The main altar has the Tang Ming Huang and the Concubine sitting with her pouring wine for him. Before the altar stand three incense pots, a container holding fortune spills and plastic fruit as an offering and before", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215335, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "60\n\nundimmed, and taking command of an army, first in face of a threatened invasion by the dreaded Huns of Central Asia, and again later, in AD 48, to pacify the wild aboriginal tribes of Hunan. However, he died during the campaign in Hunan.\n\nReverend Henry15 referred to Fupo Jiangjun, as a Cantonese deity who had temples scattered along the vicinity of the Pearl and West Rivers where he was worshipped by boatmen and travellers. The reason for his popularity apparently was because it was widely believed that Fupo and his army had crossed the range between Hunan and Guangdong, conquering south China, using double-decker troop carrying boats to ferry his troops from the hinterland of Hunan to Guangzhou. The boats had to be portered across the mountains against all odds.\n\n16 Mesny noted that a number of temples in Guangxi honouring Fupo had kept alive the memory of his martial deeds and exploits. A temple on the West River near the great rapids was striking for its perfect preservation. It was kept in repair, wrote Mesny, by boatmen who regarded the deity in some special manner.\n\nIn Taiwan Ma Yuan is the main deity in some half a dozen temples where he is known as Fushun Jiangjun.\n\nc] The Great Emperor, the Plum Blossom Immortal, Mei Xian Dadi ★✩, is a minor Daoist cult Immortal whose image has only been noted on the altars of three temples, all within the Hainanese communities in Kranji, Singapore. His title however appears on the temple deity list together with other deities in five temples in southern Malaysia. Temple keepers agree that the Plum Blossom Immortal was a famous doctor who, according to a god carver, bore the personal name of Zhang Chuang, lived somewhere in China many centuries ago, and is now particularly revered by pregnant women who he protects from malignant forces. He also helps them by ensuring that the babes themselves are small and therefore do not cause any injury to the mother during birth.\n\nImages of the Plum Blossom Immortal have no unique characteristics and vary considerably from temple to temple. Two depict him seated, and at first glance looking somewhat like Guan Gong,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215344, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 121, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "69\n\nexamination candidates, he also became an entrepreneur in and around the port of Xiamen [Amoy] at a time when taking part in foreign trade was illegal. He owned a fleet of cargo junks known as 'ferryboats' in order to circumvent the law. His supercargoes contracted business for him, in particular in South-east Asia, and he became sufficiently wealthy to ignore the law forbidding trade with foreigners and contacts with local coastal pirates.\n\nd] The Saintly Lord of the Dragon's Tail, Longwei Shenggong\n\nhas only been seen on the altar in two temples both Hainanese and both in Singapore where he is said to be prayed to for protection and general benefits. However, several devotees claimed that a medium had discovered that Longwei Shenggong should be specifically approached by those whose parents are thought to be suffering in Hell as the deity had proved to have contacts and had even succeeded in being their saviour.\n\nHe appears to have no personal and unique legend. His image portrays him as a standard seated mandarin with a wispy black beard but no unique characteristics, and is either the main deity on a secondary altar or a minor deity on the secondary altar, co-located with Shuiwei Shengmu in one temple, and in another he was accompanied by his consort, Longwei Furen AA.\n\ne] An image of Hai Rui, another minister banished to Hainan, has only once been noted on a temple altar, a side altar in a small coastal temple in Singapore dedicated to the Nine Emperors, and run by and for Chaozhou Chinese. His image, which depicts him as a standard seated mandarin without any unique characteristics, is attended by aides. Hai Rui, also known in temples as Hai Rui Gong was a Ming official whose reputation as a just and impartial magistrate was based on his belief that laws should be enforced at all levels irrespective of rank or blood, and his criticisms of extortion and abuse of public revenue made his name a slogan for immeasurable honesty for later generations. He is the hero of a lengthy novel 'The Story of the Scarlet Robe' in twenty volumes. Hai Rui was born in Qiongzhou [Kiungchou] in Hainan and died a natural death at the capital, Nanjing in 1587. His tomb is in the western suburb of the northern port of Haikou, at Pintian on his native Hainan where he is still revered and offered supplicatory prayers by devotees.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215352, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "77\n\na] Changhua Laoye Shen\n\nIt\n\nseen in Singapore on a Hainanese wayyang street theatre altar connected in some way with the major China-wide deity Hua Guang Dadi.\n\nb] As with small folk religion temples in all southern Chinese communities there are very minor deities on their altars about whom nothing is known. The following stand on a side altar in a small Hainanese temple on the Tampines Road in Singapore and are largely ignored though they are prayed to by a few devotees, more in passing rather than specifically for protection:\n\nmain deity: The Marquis of the Heaven of the Buddhas, Fo Tian Houwang\n\nSoldier astride a red horse, wearing green and gilt armour, with a pink face, black beard and a sword raised in his right hand.\n\nflanked by: Shata Zunwang Qi Guan\n\nand\n\nSoldier astride a white horse, with green-gilt robes, black beard, brown face and sword raised in his right hand.\n\nYongmeng Yatou Wang San Guan\n\nSoldier astride a black horse, with green-gilt robes over his armour, black bearded and a sword raised in his right hand.\n\nConclusion\n\nThere are some seventy to eighty major Han Chinese folk religion deities to be found in every part of China, and Hainan is no exception. However, in Hainan as in every local community, be it province, county, town or village, and even ethnic group, there are also local deified heroes and worthies not seen beyond their immediate area.\n\nTaken all in all, the range of deities on Hainanese altars is much the same as in all the other southern Chinese Han ethnic group temples. Hainanese communities, however, do have a number of uniquely Hainanese cult deities both on Hainan island as well as within Hainanese communities in south-east Asia. Although their legends are unique to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215417, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "143\n\nexploit for the decoration of the façades of some of their Indian churches of the last third of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the next. The theme would later be adapted to the more ornate decoration of the façades of the churches of their Casa Professa in Velha Goa and of the Jesuit College in Diu.\n\nMinor Basilica of Bom Jesus and the Diu Collegiate Church\n\nNot only the Bom Jesús, but, as we shall see, the façades of the collegiate churches in Diu and of Madre de Deus in Macao point to a further stylistic development of the architecture of the Society of Jesus in Asia.\n\nIt could be argued that the façade decoration of the three mentioned buildings reveals a transitional phase, one in which a Late Mannerist decorative idiom is elaborated to the utmost. Moreover, in the Church of Madre de Deus in Macao this idiom already heralds the Baroque style.\n\nIn India even before Jules Simão's appointment as chief of the cathedral works the Jesuits had begun work on what was to be their finest building project in India. This was their Casa Professa, or Profess House, begun in 1583-85, whose cloisters were also designed by Simão (Figs. 9,10).\n\nToday the church of the Profess House, originally dedicated to the Child Jesus, is better known as the Minor Basilica of Bom Jesus. It was started on the 24 November 1594 to the plans of G.B. Cairatti, an Italian architect from Milan, and completed about twelve years later. Perhaps its chief attraction today is the so-called incorrupt body of St. Francis Xavier and its magnificent 1690s funerary monument by Giovanbattista Foggini.17\n\nThe design of the front of the Bom Jesús, if not of its ground plan, indicates that the architect followed the general lines of the façade of St. Paul as reconstructed by M. Chicó (Fig. 9). There is the same division into three storeys and three bays, plus attic and pediment joined to the storeys below by gracefully curved brackets. Not only the façade but the whole building is crowned by numerous Herreresque spheres on bases placed as accents to the line of rising unifying pilasters. The Arch", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216078, "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": 377, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "311\n\nZhenjiang city has grown beyond all recognition. Since the Communists came to power in 1949 Zhenjiang has suffered the same trials and tribulations as all other cities in China and only within the last decade or so of the 20th century did modernisation and development take off. Today it has wide streets, modern shops, drainage and factories as well as all the benefits, or otherwise, of westernisation. Also, three historical sites have been granted Asia-Pacific Heritage Protection Awards for 2001 by UNESCO. They are the Stone Pagoda, the Guan Yin Cave and a charitable association hall, all on Xijindu Street.\n\n1\n\nNOTES\n\nZhenjiang city walls were said by the British military to have been thirty feet high and five feet thick.\n\nAllom, Thomas (1844) China - in a series of views, displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits of that Ancient Empire. London: Fisher, Son and Co Vol. IV p 41\n\n3 The area selected to be the foreign settlement was chosen in 1861 and divided into lots. Ground rent was paid to the Chinese government by leaseholders to whom titles for 99 years were issued through the British Consulate. They would have expired in 1960 had not the treaty port as a whole been formally surrendered [rendited in official parlance to avoid using the word surrendered] in 1929 after it had been decided that minor concessions were more trouble than they were worth.\n\nA\n\nCunynghame, Captain Arthur [1845] The Opium War: London\n\n\"Taot'ai [Daotai] was the term for a Qing dynasty Circuit Intendant.\n\n*Percival, William Spencer (1889) The Land of the Dragon-My Boating and Shooting Excursions to the Gorges of the Upper Yangtze. London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd. [Percival was a member of H.B.M's Civil Service in China].\n\n'Clennell, WJ (June 1922) The Historical Setting of Chinkiang or a Bit of ‘Consular Bluff Shanghai: New China Review: Vol IV. No. 3 [Clennell provides much greater detail than is offered here].\n\n&\n\nSun Quan's city was built on Beigu Shan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216239, "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": 538, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "472\n\nlacking in balance and discrimination: luckily, this is not true of the vital central three-quarters of the book. But readers should beware of the lack of balance in these two sections.\n\nThere are a few other minor flaws as well. Thus, while, of the two main Hong Kong Chinese-language newspapers, one is spoken of as the Wah Kiu Yat Po, the other is spoken of as the Xing Dao Ribao (Star Isle Daily), thus disguising (very effectively) the Sing Tao. It is difficult to discern any pattern here. There are also a few errors of fact, particularly in the first and last chapters. Thus, inter alia, nowhere near 20,000 villagers were displaced for the Japanese extension of the Airport - there were no more than a tenth of that number living in Po Kong, Sha Tei Yuen, and Kak Hang. The demolished tenements in the Kowloon City area in the 1930s were not inside the Walled City, but outside, in the Kowloon Market area. Sir Thomas Jackson was not the founder of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (1864): he was its General Manager from 1876-1902.\n\nThese flaws, however, are minor, in comparison with the immense value and interest of the bulk of the book. It is, despite the flaws, confidently and wholeheartedly recommended to anyone interested in the history of Hong Kong.\n\nPATRICK H. HASE\n\nJane Hutcheon, From Rice to Riches, A personal journey through a changing China Sydney, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2003.\n\nThis book delivers. Its coverage is broad but deep, it has the right mix of passion and detachment, with impish but biting humour, and is quietly but cleverly constructed by the author who, for five years from 1995, was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's correspondent in China.\n\nThe author is well-suited to her task. A “China-coast\" background on both sides of her family over several generations, her Hong Kong birth and upbringing, her family's devotion to journalism, plus a genuine interest in China and its people, combine with her own independent and questing spirit to make this a memorable account of their recent and current history. It is, indeed, a tale of 'China's wrestle with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]