[ { "id": 205597, "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-1968", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "134 \n\nJ. NACKEN \n\nanswer the purpose. The diamond gimlet especially is a treasure which is not known in Europe. Besides glass and China this simple looking spectacled old man will repair foreign umbrellas, clasps, and hinges, and mark China-ware. Another carries women's toilet boxes with him, which he exchanges for old ones if they are past mending. A third sharpens razors and whets scissors; then come the travelling smith, the cobbler, the tinker; one who hoops tubs and basins, and finally the repairer of mats.\n\nIn passing we may notice the familiar warning cry of our chairbearers 'Mái 'pin* “step aside,” and of the coolies in carrying loads 'T'ai keuk† or 'Hoi lot “look to your footing,” \"clear the road!” and then pass on to hear a few cries in connection with idolatry. Here is the hawker of joss paper, of incense sticks and of candles; there is a table, a chair and a picture of a man's head; a shrewd looking Chinaman has a crowd of eager listeners gathered around him, whilst with his persuasive tongue he tells his fortune to the one who for a few cash has engaged his services. He is a sort of phrenologist. His brother fortune-teller who has his stand at the next corner pretends to read a future happy fate by the lines of his customer's hand. Sometimes you may see an elderly woman with an open umbrella pacing along the sidewalk. Sün meng§ she calls out into the houses. Her prophesying apparatus consists of two tortoise shells. A happy day for a family festival or a felicitous name for a child she is sure to find. And if a child be sick she knows that the little one's spirit has been frightened away by a cat or a dog or something else. She will bargain for some twenty cash, take the child's jacket, light a fire in the street and call the frightened spirit back. After the jacket has been put on the child, the spirit is supposed to have taken up again its former abode within;\n\nand our last street crier walks on.\n\n**\n\n埋邊\n\n千睇脚\n\nL\n\nI BALAS\n\n§ to calculate destinies.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209611, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 268, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "246\n\n1884/85\n\n1885/86\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\n16 Dec. 1884 \"Still Waters Run Deep\" comedy (T. Taylor, 1855) given in 1862, 1878.\n\n17 Dec. 1885 \"Chiselling\" farce (J. J. Dilley and J. Albery, 1870) \"Nine Points of the Law\" (T. Taylor, 1859) in 1878.\n\n18 Feb. 1886 — \"The Overland Route\" (T. Taylor, 1860) second performance of season.\n\n1886/87\n\n9 Mar. 1886 \"Weak Woman\" (H. J. Byron, 1875) benefit with Canton Amateurs for burned Canton Theatre.\n\n7 Apr. 1886 — \"Heads or Tails\" (J. Palgrave Simpson, 1854) \"Chiselling\" farce (Dilley and Albery, 1870) given in 1885,\n\n18 Nov. 1886\n\n\"A Widow's Hunt, or Everybody's Friend\" comedy (J. Sterling Coyne, 1859)\n\n30 Dec. 1886 — \"Cups and Saucers\" musical sketch (G. Grossmith 1878) \"Our Wife\" comedietta (J. M. Morton, 1850)\n\n13 Apr. 1887 — \"A Comical Countess\" (Wm. Brough, 1854) \"Our Soldiers\" comedy (H. J. Byron, 1873)\n\n1887/88 8 Nov. 1887 \"Withered Leaves\" comedietta (J. W. Broughton, 1875) \"The First Night\" comedy (J. M. Maddox, 1853) \"The Rivals\" (Sheridan, 1775)\n\n17 Jan. 1888\n\n1888/89\n\n1889/90\n\n1890/91 apparently no production this season.\n\n26 Dec. 1889 last performance Mar. 1890 - 1 Christmas Pantomime: \"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves\"\n\nGrand\n\n26 Dec. 1890 --- \"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves\" pantomime 30 Mar. 1891\n\n- \"The Two Roses\" (J. Albery, 1870)\n\n1891/92\n\n24 July 1891\n\n1864) \"David Garrick\" comedy (T. Robertson,\n\n26 Dec. 1891, 23 Jan., 20 Feb. 1892- Christmas Pantomime: \"Beauty and the Beast\"\n\n27 Feb., 1 Mar, 1892\n\n21, 30 Apr. 1892\n\n+ \"Betsy\" (F. C. Burnand, 1879) \"Turned Up\" (or \"Too Much Married\") comedy, (M. Melford, 1886)\n\nPage 268", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210564, "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-1985", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "152\n\nFOUND IN A PENNSYLVANIA ATTIC –\n\nLetters from China 1903-1906*\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\nWhile cleaning out his mother's attic in Bala Cynwyd, Harry V. Ryder Jr.' found a bunch of letters that had been sent from Taiho. Bala Cynwyd is an affluent suburb of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; Taiho a river town in the northwestern corner of the interior province of Anhui in China.\n\n2\n\nThe letters were dated between January 1903 and April 1906. They were written to Harry's maternal grandmother, Louese Hedges Strawbridge, by Edith Rowe, who was a classmate at a \"finishing school” in Philadelphia. Both Louese and Edith were Baptists. Edith's letters reflected the high standard of private school education in eastern United States at that time. Her command of written English was more than respectable. Scenes and events were vividly described; ideas eloquently expressed; and grammar and spelling impeccable. Except for one or two words, her handwriting can be read without any difficulty. Two of the letters contain charming line-drawings, an old-fashioned practice still favoured by young students in American schools today.\n\nLouese Strawbridge was the only child of Samuel and Ann Hedges, who had come originally from Ohio. Samuel Hedges had served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. After the war he brought his wife to Philadelphia where he became a successful horse trader.3 Bala Cynwyd is near Devon, in the heart of the Pennsylvania horse country. After graduating from the Friends School, Louese went to a “finishing school\", then was married to George Strawbridge, scion of a family that had founded and operated the prestigious department store, Strawbridge and Clothier. Louese and George had four children. Catherine was born in 1896, Helen in 1900, Janet in 1903 and Benjamin in 1907. Except for Benjamin who died in\n\n* Lecture delivered to the Society on 6 October 1986. The author is grateful to Harry and Phyllis Ryder for making available the letters and for information on Harry's grandmother and her family.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210569, "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-1985", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "157\n\nthe letter back to Wuhu. I was explaining the delay in answering to you. Indeed your letters are worth the extra postage but I have never had to pay any on yours. This postage due system we have now takes a good many of the extra pennies and they are not always fair and square is why I sent your letter back.\n\nThe letters on the average took five to six weeks to travel between Taiho and Bala by land and sea not slow progress even by today's standard of speed. They went by way of Wuhu, Shanghai, San Francisco or Seattle, and Philadelphia. One letter went by way of Nagasaki; another by way of New York. It usually took overnight between Philadelphia and the post office at Bala. One envelope bore the cancellation stamps of both Shanghai in English and that of the French Concession of Shanghai in French. Another envelope showed that the post office at Bala had forgotten to change the date on the cancellation stamp, since it had the letter arriving at Bala before it was even sent out of Philadelphia.\n\nMissionaries of the China Inland Mission were to learn the Chinese language before they were sent to their assigned stations; then the local dialect as well since they were to live among the populace in the interior provinces. Their primary objective was \"to diffuse as quickly as possible a knowledge of the Gospel.\" Conversion to Christianity was not an essential part of their mission. In order to be as close to the populace as possible, lifestyle of the missionaries was \"to conform as nearly as possible to the social and living conditions of the Chinese\" around them. Until way after 1900, women missionaries of the China Inland Mission wore Chinese dresses. Edith Rowe's life at Taiho conformed to this pattern.\n\nImmediately after arrival in China, Edith went to the \"Yang-chow House\" of the mission to study Chinese. Her lessons continued at Taiho. Learning Chinese meant reading and writing the language as well as conversational Chinese. Commenting on a drawing she did of six Chinese men with pig-tails sitting on two benches listening to the Bible being read to them, Edith wrote that \"my teacher... has a very nice tail indeed,\" indicating that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210578, "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-1985", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "166\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\nother hand, Edith wrote three letters in 1905 — mostly because she had so much to complain about Mrs. Ferguson. Therefore, more likely than not, Edith had written after April 1906, but these letters had not been saved.\n\nWe do know that Louese had a new baby in 1907. With four children under ten years of age, even with a household of servants that Louese must have had, she would have found little time for letter writing. We also know that she became seriously ill shortly after the last child, her only son Benjamin, was born. The family today thinks that she had leukemia. At least it is thought to be a form of cancer. She was sick for a long time, and died in 1909, when she was only thirty-seven years old.\n\nNOTES\n\nHarry Ryder is serving as Commercial Counsellor at the United States Embassy in Kuwait. The Strawbridges were originally Quakers who had settled in Philadelphia, but the Ryders are Episcopalians.\n\n2 At first, the Ryder family had believed Edith to be a classmate of Louese at the Central Friends School. Correspondence with Clayton Faraday, Archivist of the school, however, reveals that Louese had been a member of the class of 1890, but there was no mention of her among the list of graduates. Edith Rowe is unknown at the school. Therefore, a conjecture must be made that they were most likely classmates at the \"finishing school\". Had they been academic scholars, they would probably have been sent to Bryn Mawr College. I am grateful to Mr. Faraday for his timely reply to my inquiry, making it possible to correct the error in my original presentation to the society.\n\n3 Colonel Hedges lived in an apartment attached to the Strawbridge house in Bala Cynwyd after his daughter's marriage. He survived both his wife and daughter. Harry Ryder remembers his great-grandfather, but never knew his grandmother.\n\n4 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.\n\n5 Protestant Missionary records. I am grateful to the Reverend Carl Smith for looking up this information. Hopefully there is more data on Edith in the archives of the China Inland Mission in London or Shanghai.\n\n6 Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility, American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 13ff\n\n7 Hunter, 29-30.\n\n8 Rowe letter dated 2 March 1905. As it turned out, one of Louese's grandchildren, Harry V. Ryder Jr., did join the Foreign Service, but it was the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210580, "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-1985", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "168\n\n38 /hid\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\n39 Rowe letter dated 29 January 1903.\n\n40 Rowe letter dated 17 February 1904.\n\n41 Rowe letter dated 5 January 1905.\n\n42 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.\n\n43 Rowe letter dated 5 April 1904.\n\n44 Rowe letter dated 24 August 1905.\n\n45 Ibid.\n\n46 Rowe letter dated 5 January 1905.\n\n47 Rowe letter dated 2 March 1905.\n\n48 Rowe letter dated 5 April 1906.\n\n49 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.\n\n50 Rowe letter dated 5 April 1906.\n\n51 Ibid.\n\n52 Ibid.\n\nAppendix: Letters from Edith Rowe to Louise Strawbridge (Mrs. George Strawbridge) of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania:\n\n(1)\n\nYangchow January 29-03\n\nMy dear Louise:\n\nIt was so kind and thoughtful of you to write to me here and send the book \"The First Christmas\". Both the letter and book came to me Christmas afternoon, so they had a double appreciation.\n\nMy hands are so cold today I cannot hold my pen very well. Our house here is very comfortable, but we have no fires except in the sitting room and dining room, so the thermometer ranges from 30 degrees to 40 degrees in my room. I enjoy it for our Chinese clothes are very warm. You would laugh if you could see me, so we did at each other when we first put them on. Would you be interested for me to describe what I have on? We wear foreign underclothes, but try to dress as much like the natives as possible.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211469, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "161\n\nfaith, the Lam Toy's and Lam Quan's, who became our life-long friends. By this time Chinese women were freer to visit with each other, and Mrs. Lam Quan taught Mother how to sew Western style dresses for us children, to bake cakes, to make delicious ice cream (which was a great treat in those days), and to use Western medicine. When Mr. and Mrs. Ai took a trip to China in 1913, their son, Samuel, would often play with me or Helen. One afternoon while he, Mung Yee Yap and I were playing ball, the family dog, tied to a mango tree, bit Samuel repeatedly when he tried to retrieve a stray ball. I stood immobilized and horrified by his screams. He happened to be wearing clothes his friend had loaned him when his head became wet while playing in a stream, and the unfamiliar scent must have provoked the dog. Fortunately his sister Bessie, who happened to come to the front door, rescued him. It was also traumatic to hear Samuel's scream while he was being treated on the back porch by Dr. Francis Wong-Leong.\n\nAmong Mother's non-Christian friends was the first Mrs. Siu Kit who lived in a small lane behind the Dutro's. She had come from China with her oldest child to join Mr. Siu, who ran a butcher shop at the corner of King and Aala Streets. She bore five more children, but the youngest died of whooping cough before he was even a month old. After the death of this infant, Mrs. Siu seemed to have no will to live, and, again, pregnant, became very ill, possibly from influenza. She died in 1919, insisting to the end that Mr. Siu had taken in a concubine in his village. There was no foundation to her accusations, because only after her death did he go to Japan, where he met and married a young girl from the village selected by his family to be his second wife. This second Mrs. Siu also became our life-long friend, who looked upon Mother as a surrogate parent and was always generous and thoughtful. She found the care of five undisciplined stepchildren and seven of her own a difficult responsibility. When the exchange rate was very favourable, Mr. Siu retired to Shekki with his whole family but gradually sent his children, two or three at a time, back to Honolulu. He died during the Japanese occupation of China. Mrs. Siu returned to Honolulu after the Second World War to live with her daughter, Siu Ying Chun, and died in 1985 while on an extended visit in California.\n\nThis was a worry-free and happy period of my life in spite of the fact that occasionally I had a stormy time with Mother, who did not spare", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 } ]