[ { "id": 204316, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Vol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n80\n\nthat a Taoist priest entered her chamber. She was indignant and shouted, \"This is my inner room; how dare you, a stranger, come in!\" The Taoist priest said, \"Hurry up, madam, receive your marvellous child!\" Before she had had time to reply, the priest pushed something into her arms and she awoke, and her body was wet with cold sweat. She was frightened and before she could tell her husband all about the dream, she was again seized with a birth spasm. Li Ching went to the sitting room which was adjoining and thought over the matter. Suddenly two maids came out exclaiming “Madam has given birth to a monster!” Li Ching held his sword and rushed into the chamber. The room was filled with red mist which emitted a strong fragrance. A lump of flesh was rolling round the room like a wheel. Li Ching cut it with his sword and a baby jumped out, bathed in red light. The boy was very handsome; his face was as white as powder; on his right wrist was a golden bracelet; and his belly was covered with a piece of red silk gauze, which shone with a golden glow. He was a god, a re-incarnation (avatar) of the Ling-chu-tzu (Master of the Intelligent Pearl) and was destined to be the vanguard under Marshal Chiang Tzu-ya.\n\nTo give birth to a lump of flesh is something unusual in Chinese legends. But similar cases can be cited from the Buddhist sutras translated into Chinese as early as the third century. In the tale of Putrah (7) in chüan 7 of the Avadanasataka (# E), it is said that \"when the Buddha was in the country of Kapilavastu (E6) under the nyagrodha tree (ficus Indica), there was an elder who was very rich and his treasures were abundant and beyond measure. He married a wife from a notable family whom he loved very much, and with music and dances he used to entertain her. Now she conceived and when ten months elapsed she gave birth to a freak—a lump of flesh. The elder was vexed about it and thought it inauspicious. In the Fu-kuo Chi (DE \"A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms\") under the \"stupa in the Vaisali” (œÊME) it is recorded,\n\n+\n\n·\n\n•\n\n•\n\nOn the upstream of the Ganges River there was a king whose concubine gave birth to a lump of flesh. The formal wife was jealous and said it was inauspicious, so she ordered this lump to be put in a wooden box and thrown into the river. Another king went out for an excursion on the river and opened the box in which he found a thousand babies who were extraordinarily handsome and dignified. The king took care of them until they grew up, when they were brave\n\n23 No. 20, The Tripitaka in Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204317, "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": 85, "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\n81\n\nand strong and victorious in fighting. Now the king sent them to invade their own country, and the father was much worried.\n\n24\n\nThis kind of Buddhist story would not pass without leaving some traces in the prompt-books, sources of which are predominantly Buddhist ballads. For instance, in the prompt-book Hsin-pien Wu-tai Liang-shih P'ing-hua (“Popular Tales of the Five Dynasties, Period of Liang”), chüan 1, we read,\n\nThe wife of Huang Tsung-tan was pregnant for fourteen months. One day she gave birth to a substance which looked like a lump of flesh, but inside it was a piece of purple silk gauze in which was wrapped a baby. When the wrapper was opened, purple mist of dazzling brilliance filled the room.\n\n25\n\nThus his mother gave birth to Huang Ch'ao. Again in the Ch'ien Han-shu P'ing-hua (“Han Hsin's Death at the Hands of Empress Lü”), chüan 3, when \"Madam Po (a concubine of the first emperor of the Former Han dynasty) was in labour, Empress Lü went to see her. She was glad to find that the baby was a freak without eyes or eyebrows, like a lump of flesh.\"\n\nIn the anonymous Yüan play, Chin-shui-ch'iao Ch'ên-lin Pao Chuang-ho, in Act 2, when Empress Liu ordered the palace maid K'ou Ch'êng-yü to stab the baby prince and throw him into the river from the bridge, the latter hesitated for she saw \"red light and purple mist enshrouding the body of the prince.\"\n\nWe may now admit that the novel Fêng-shên Yen-i has a closer relation with the \"Four Travels\" than with other prompt-books. In Ch.8 of the Nan-yu-chi, the Buddha of Light told the Flowery Light “to be re-incarnated in the shape of a lump of flesh.” Consequently the Flowery Light, floating about in the air, arrived at the village Hsiao-chia Chuang of Wu-yüan, Anhwei, and darted into the womb of Madam Hsiao who had been pregnant for twenty months. \"Now the maid came out to report to the elder, 'Madam has given birth.' 'A boy or a girl?' the elder asked. 'It is neither a boy nor a girl. It is just like the belly of an ox.' The elder was very much frightened. When they decided to throw the lump away into the river, it...\n\n24 Fu-kuo Chi, translated by James Legge as \"A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms\", Oxford, 1886, Ch. 25, p. 73.\n\n25 Hsin-pien Wu-tai Shih P'ing-hua, photolithographed edition, published by Prof. Tung K'ang, Wu-chin Tung-shih Sung-fên-shih (AAS), 1911. There are also several popular editions available.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205257, "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-1967", "page_number": 19, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "12\n\nPATRICIA MARSHALL\n\non the animals. Elephants and rhinos without food quickly left and with them many of the smaller animals. Much of the top soil disappeared. Without trees to hold it in place the rain washed the soil into rivers and out to sea.\n\nEven today a thousand years later the soil, flora and fauna have not recovered from the drastic deforestation carried out by the early settlers.\n\nA small fraction of the animals have been able to adapt themselves to this change in the vegetation. Of the seventeen orders of living placental mammals eight are represented today (see Table 1). There are insectivores such as shrews; a number of bats; at least one wild primate; pangolins; rodents which include rats, mice and porcupines; and a number of spectacular carnivores foxes, leopard-cats, otters and civets. There are also two hoofed animals, the wild boar and barking deer.\n\nPangolin\n\nThe most interesting local mammal is the pangolin (Plate 1). Pangolins have no near relatives but form an order of their own, the Pholidota. The back and tail of the pangolin is encased in scales which are modified hairs; and the skin of the face, belly and eyelids is thick to resist the stings of ants, bees and wasps. The claws are strong enough to dig through termite mounds and to demolish rotting tree trunks. The tongue is long and sticky for collecting termites and ant, bee or wasp larvae. The pangolin lives in a burrow, is nocturnal and is seldom seen, but it is fairly widespread in the Colony. A voracious destroyer of termites and pests it does much good and no harm to man.\n\nThe pangolin does not take well to captivity. It is almost impossible to provide it with sufficient termites or ant larvae. It cannot be weaned onto an alternative diet, and although it may eat custard or milk this will not maintain it. Within a few weeks a captive dies.\n\nPangolins brought to the Zoology Department of the University of Hong Kong are weighed, measured, marked and released in a suitable breeding area where others are known to be present. This is of far greater use to mankind than keeping them to die in captivity.\n\nCarnivores are the flesh eaters, and the most exclusively carnivorous of the carnivores is the tiger. Before 1940 tigers often", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206872, "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-1973", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n143\n\nwith bamboo strips round the ankles, above the knees and round the belly. Their arms were then lashed out to the cross pieces, and lastly their heads were firmly secured to it by two or three turns of the bamboo strip across the eyes and in the mouth, this last acting as a very efficient \"gag\". The executioners who superintended the securing each of his own man and who seemed to have several assistants, apparently volunteers who enjoyed the job, now got their knives---broad-bladed about 10 inches long-and bared their arms to the elbow; their trousers were already confined by leggings and they had taken off their shoes. Each one, when all was ready, stepped back and took a critical look at his man; one of them gave an enquiring shout to the Mandarin at the gate, probably asking for orders to go on. The Mandarin gave an answering wave of the hand, and the most sickening brutal performance I can imagine commenced.\n\nI cannot give correctly in detail how it was all done; after the first few seconds I could only take occasional looks at what was going on. Even now, writing an account of it—24 hours after—gives me \"the shakes\". I don't think any of our party looked at it through—but between us all we saw it all and we compared notes afterwards.\n\nThe first executioner at work was the one who was \"doing\" the culprit furthest off from us—about 50 yards. The first two cuts were over each eye and temple—gashes which turned a great piece of flesh down—then one down each cheek, then one over each shoulder and upwards under each arm-pit, one in each upper arm and one in each fore-arm, and then he hacked off the right hand with one blow; then a great piece was cut out of each thigh and over each knee, and I think the privates were cut clean off; then the furthest off had his stomach slashed open and the executioner got hold of his entrails—this man had to receive a greater number of cuts than the other. So the other executioner, when he had finished his slashing and was waiting, drove his knife up to the hilt under the right breast bone of his victim, and in one of my looks I saw him holding the knife there, working it about, while an assistant held an ordinary palm leaf fan in front of the poor wretch's face, in order, I suppose, to hide his contortions, for he was not yet dead, as I could see by the working of his hands. Both victims were by this time smothered in blood and hanging to the crosses, only kept up by the lashings. The next and last thing I saw was the first man cut down from the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207130, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n195 \n\nto protect the under-growth, such as citrus which cannot withstand typhoons occurring in the summer months. \n\nLiquid extracts of tobacco, derris root, and tea seed cake were sprayed by a simple syringe made of bamboo to control insect pests. The other means of control were light traps to catch June beetles and moths, and paper bagging to protect gourds and fruits from damage by wasps and fruit flies. Hand picking was employed to control insects on crops cultivated in smaller areas. Some farmers even used chicks of less than 10 days old to pick aphids and small larvae on young vegetables grown on the bed of the flood furrow irrigation system. Most varieties of rice showed some resistance to rice-stem-borer which was also controlled to some extent by natural parasites. Not much attention was given to the control of plant diseases. Crop rotation was necessary when insect pests and disease damage became serious. \n\nCattle and buffaloes were kept mainly for draught purpose. When the animals were not busy at the farm, they grazed on wild grasses on the hillsides and returned to the cattle sheds in the evening. Cattle manure and bedding materials, mostly straw were collected and piled up in a yard. Thus, the cattle not only helped the farmer in land preparation, but also collected plant nutrients in the form of grass from the hills to enrich the cultivated fields. \n\nPigs were kept for turning kitchen waste and crop refuses into edible meat. Sows and their litters were allowed to range freely in the village. Weaners were fattened in pens from which sunlight was excluded. They produced porkers with soft spareribs to meet the market preference. Some vegetable growers kept a small herd of pigs by utilizing the vegetable wastes as feed, and collected the manure for the crop. Sows were served by travelling boars. The local breed of pig is characterized by short body, fine bone and big belly which have been selected by using feed of low nutritional value such as sweet potato vine, rice bran, vegetable waste and swill. \n\nA farmer in early days could hardly keep a big flock of chickens with the limited surplus of grain produced from his farm. The chickens ran free to search for grass seeds, worms and other insects in the soil around the village. They were fed with some grains shortly before they returned to their nests in the evening. Thus, the growth rate of the chickens, in general, was very slow.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209127, "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-1981", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "STEPHEN MORRIS \n\nliving space of the man he has attacked; and it is the task of the elders, the guardians of the adat, to exact material compensation for the attack and expiation in the form of symbolic gifts, usually of gold and iron, graded according to the rank of the injured party. So also spirits, with the help of human intermediaries who have special knowledge can be made to see the offence they have committed in attacking a human and made to understand that they must co-operate in putting matters right, thus restoring proper order.\n\nHere I have to confess a difficulty that faces me; my knowledge of illnesses and the western medical classification of them is exceedingly poor. The Melanau themselves used a limited number of terms to describe the symptoms of being ill. My notes are full of words which I translated as wounds, sores, pains in the belly sharp or small, pains in the head, in the chest, in the eyes, and so on. People were feverish, hot, cold, confused, ‘felt bad', had a ‘dark face', a leg or an abdomen was swollen, and so on. Children cried incessantly and dribbled, people sweated beyond reason. To bring some order into the subject I once set a student, who was a state registered nurse, to try and classify the long list of symptoms I had collected in a way that perhaps made sense to her and that might correlate with illnesses as we understand them. She ended in very confused condition and I put her on to another project.\n\nIn 1950 one of the Medical Officers in Sarawak came to the village I was then working in, and with my help took a hundred blood samples for analysis. At my request he made a quick medical diagnosis of twenty-five of the people he saw. For what it is worth his results showed 6 people to have had syphilis or gonorrhea, 6 more, mostly women, were suffering from anemia; 6 were suffering severely from tuberculosis; 3 showed active signs of malaria; 2 had glaucoma; 1 had epilepsy; 1 had rheumatoid arthritis; and 1 showed signs of beri-beri. In other words, the doctor's classification and that of the Melanau were rather different; and though both the doctor and the villagers were agreed that in most of the cases all was far from well, their ways of arriving at that conclusion and their views on what to do about it were rather different. Both looked at a syndrome of symptoms and diagnosed a cause for the imbalance in the bodily economy; and on the basis of a theory about that economy both prescribed a course of action to set things right. For certain kinds of illness the doctor was, on the whole, more successful than the Melanau.\n\nBoth the Melanau and westerners have techniques for avoiding\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209132, "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-1981", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n21\n\nhis hand, catching the gifts which he then presses into the patient's head. More gifts are asked for, and are pressed into the base of the throat, the belly, the back, and other places that are sore. These stones and flowers are to strengthen the patient and to begin to drive out what is dirty, and to repair the damage done by the attacking spirit to the patient, either by its rough handling of the soul or by spearing it. Injury of that kind to the soul reacts on the body and causes it damage as well.\n\nThe next step is to finish cleaning out the sickness and any damage it may have done to the body; so that the soul, if it has already departed, may return in safety. First the shaman puts his lips to the places in which he has inserted the heavenly stones and flowers and sucks out the dirt and sickness, at the same time silently bidding what is harmful and unclean to depart. He then takes the bunch of leaves he brought with him and sweeps the patient from head to foot, sometimes singing aloud, but always bidding the sickness to go.\n\nThe treatment by this spirit is now complete. Often the helping spirit is the one who has caused the trouble because the patient in some way or other annoyed him. Once the man knows what he has done and has, as it were, apologised, or the shaman's spirit friends have persuaded the annoyed spirit to cease his attack, the situation can easily be put right. But before the spirit goes he may stop to gossip with the audience; he may also advise further treatment of the patient by other spirits; the cause of the illness may not be simple or single, and in any case one spirit's powers are limited, even if he did cause the damage. In simple cases it may not be necessary to fetch the attacking spirit; but if the attack is serious then the illness can only be cured by fetching the attacker; and it may take quite a long time to find him while the shaman explores his network of friends in the spirit world.\n\nThe attack on the man may not be the result of either anger, malice, or hunger; it may be the result of love or the wish for friendship. Spirits sometimes take an unreasonable liking for human beings — it is, as I said earlier, an improper and alarming state of affairs, and a sensible person (especially an aristocrat who has to consider his dignity at all times) is likely to ignore all the usual danger signals made by omens or in dreams. If the patient does that there is nothing for it but for the spirit to make the man or woman ill. After the spirit has made his wish for friendship known, there is nothing more the patient can do if he wishes to get better other than to accept the friendship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209674, "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": 331, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n309\n\nJean Gittens' medical background equips her well for the task. She takes us through the trials of the internees in equipping the camp, the gradual adaptation of the Peak dwellers to their uncomfortable surroundings, domestic arrangements and the organising of lectures and drama to the eking out of meagre rations and the gradual mental and physical deterioration of inmates despite both the sterling efforts of medical personnel and the notable courage of friends outside the camp. All described in such a matter-of-fact way that their full horror registers only slowly. For Jean, freedom when it came was to bring another blow; her husband, Billy, had not survived.\n\nAndy Leiper and his wife did not arrive in Hong Kong until mid-1939. He trained with the Volunteers, but, as one of the managers of the Chartered Bank, was required by the authorities to stay at his post to keep the bank running for as long as possible. He recounts in remarkable detail how the bank continued to deal with hordes of depositors right up to the final surrender while, at the same time, coping with refugee families and the occasional bombing raid. By day he was a banker; by night he helped out with the Volunteers, anxious all the while for his brave wife, who had refused to leave Hong Kong, preferring to work with other volunteers in the hospital.\n\nTogether with other bankers, Leiper and his wife were lodged initially in a Wanchai brothel, commandeered by the Japanese, and required to work with the occupying forces in the liquidation of the banks. This continued until June 1943 when they were finally transferred to Stanley: \"The fresh air and the sunshine were an indescribable joy and more than compensated for the shorter rations.\" Then, in January 1944, he was arrested along with several other bankers, and thrown into solitary confinement. There he was subject to constant brutality and intermittent torture at the hands of the Kempetai. Small wonder that, on return to Stanley at the end of the war, the mere sight of a hungry Japanese guard in the doorway of his room was sufficient to send him into screaming delirium.\n\nIn dealing with two very personal accounts of such harrowing experiences, comparisons can be invidious, but of the two, I much prefer Leiper's book. For all its wealth of detail, “Stanley:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211479, "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": 195, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "171\n\nremembered her with a present that Christmas.\n\nMiss Hadley taught me in the third grade. She was a tiny and older woman. The outstanding memory of this school year was that of another embarrassing incident. I had the first seat in the first row. One morning when she asked for answers to her questions, I kept popping up from my seat with hand raised to catch her attention, even after she had told me not to bob up and down. This probably irritated her so much that, to my surprise and chagrin, she took a rope and tied me to my seat. Teachers are more understanding nowadays.\n\nA good grounding in New England history about Indians, Pilgrims and Thanksgiving was given by Miss Rouse in the fourth grade, so that I felt very much a part of America's past, even though my roots originated in the Orient. She must have been of Yankee stock.\n\nWhen Mrs. Overend took over the principalship, she brought with her one of her teachers at Waipahu School, Mrs. Kemp, an army wife who became my teacher in the fifth grade. Mrs. Overend was a loud, authoritative and buxom woman, who would yell at us for any infraction of school rules, especially when anyone stepped on the wall-kept lawn. As the classroom was in one of the two front rooms of the palace formerly occupied by Princess Ruth, I could often hear her scolding or applying the rod across the hall in her office. This was enough to put fear in our hearts! Mrs. Kemp was a strong advocate of the Palmer method of writing and compulsively drilled us daily in penmanship. She challenged my interest and skill in solving arithmetical word problems. I grew very fond of her and felt sad the day she broke down and cried because her husband was ordered to the European front.\n\nI was taught by Miss Mabel Lightfoot the next year. She was a member of a local Irish political family and seemed more interested in life outside the classroom. Several of the boys (Billy Wilkins, Dick Bolton and Benjamin Kong) were always up to some prank, but this did not seem to upset her as she was able to cope with their behaviour and to run an orderly class.\n\nThe school programme became departmentalised in the seventh and eighth grades. For some reason I cannot recall the names of all six\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212803, "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "97\n\nthe barrel resting on a second man's shoulder.\n\nKang sì: a baked mud or brick bed used in northern Chinese homes, warmed in winter by hot air from the kitchen flue passing through it.\n\nKo-ino Hul #₺★ : A powerful secret society; the Elder Brother Society, membership to which was strictly forbidden by the Ch’ing government and punishable by death.\n\nKowtow : 'knock the head': The ceremony of prostration common in China, chiefly performed before the emperor, in religious ceremonies, and by inferiors to superiors as an humble apology.\n\nInternational Settlement together with the French Concession [Shanghai]: Colonial enclaves where privileges but not political control were enjoyed. The Municipal Council of the International Settlement, against which Mesny occasionally railed, eventually regarded itself as independent even of the UK and US Governments. Most foreigners regarded their presence in Shanghai, despite increasing Chinese nationalism, as in the best interests of the Chinese. Foreigners were divided socially and economically into businessmen, officials of all kinds including police officers and customs officials, missionaries and others such as be-shored seamen, refugees, later mainly White Russians and German Jews, and 'stayed-on' westerners who had married Chinese women or had nowhere better to go.\n\nLartigue railway system: Mesny would appear to have been acting as the local agent for the Lartigue Railway Construction Company in China [in 1886] though whether authorised on a retainer or on commission we shall probably never know. The Lartigue system was invented during the 1880s by Charles Lartigue, a French inventor who, having observed how camel loads were balanced on either side of the animal, invented a monorail which after a tentative experiment in France was chosen as the system to be used for the Bally-Bunion to Lisowel Railway in a remote corner of Ireland in 1888.\n\nThere is no indication that the line Mesny proposed between Wu-sung and Shanghai, ever got beyond Mesny's fertile imagination. Wu-sung, the town at the junction of the Yangtze and the river which leads up to Shanghai, was where ships first berthed before sailing up the Wu-sung River to Shanghai,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214193, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "cially as it involved the only 'foreign devil' present, thoroughly enjoyed it even though the joke has been repeated countless times throughout the ages. Many jokes, both in the East and the West, are of course repeated over and over again over a period of years. Although possibly rather feeble by today's standards, the author remembers a riddle being repeated to him when he was a child in England. The question was: 'When is a door not a door?' The answer was, 'When it's a jar (ajar)!' This was told countless times and seemed to have been passed down from generation to generation as many jokes in many countries are.\n\nIn the case of a Chinese example of an oft repeated joke there is the saying, Ah Yee Leng Tong (-). This really means \"gone to the Second Wife's to drink lovely soup.' Up to October 1971, Chinese men in Hong Kong could legally take concubines. The principal wife, generally, knew her position and was pretty secure, but the concubine, so it was said, needed to prepare tasty soup (and other things) to please her husband to make sure her position also was secure. There is a restaurant named Ah Yee Leng Tong in Causeway Bay, on Hong Kong Island, and whenever the name is mentioned it always raises a smile.\n\nHaving said that, however, Chinese tend not to laugh out loud so much as Westerners, but, in Hong Kong, said Reuben M, an American part-time comedian who has lived in the Territory for a number of years, even Westerners are inclined to be more subdued than people living in the West. Nevertheless, it was pointed out by the same comedian that, if Chinese don't like a show and they are bored, they can be a noisy, distracting audience.\n\nLaughter can certainly help break down barriers, including pricking bubbles of solemnity at meetings, and there are few occasions when some degree of hilarity does not serve a useful purpose. Certainly humour is an important key to the happiness and well-being of us all, irrespective of race, just as anger and depression have the opposite effect. Norman Cousins was stricken with a seemingly incurable disease. He decided to keep himself occupied with a diet of humour and, as he lay on his sick-bed, he watched old silent movies of Laurel and Hardy and read anything that would make him laugh (Cousins, 1979; 39). He recounts he made the joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anaesthetic effect that gave him at least two hours of pain-free sleep. Gradually he began to recover. A good bout of laugh-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214203, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "24\n\n'Eat or don't eat!' \n\nJohn Moloney, the British comedian, found that playing to a Chinese (partly westernised) audience in Hong Kong required less of a cultural leap than when he took his act to Beijing (Syrett, 1995:4). The itinerant comedian, in fact, soon learns to steer clear of anything remotely embarrassing or linguistically complicated and to resort to the 'language of action.' This is universal and capable of bringing about smiles and even belly laughs.\n\nWhile all people, no matter the culture, are said to cry at similar incidents, people in London, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, or wherever, may not always laugh at the same jokes. In the same way, people in the West and people in China may not always see insults in the same light. For example, Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily, in the run-up to the 1997 Handover in Hong Kong, called a senior China official a 'turtle's egg,' meaning more or less 'unnatural birth.' Although not too unpleasant, it caused a furore. Yet, as an American Old-China Hand commented to the author, 'Who would get worked up over name-calling like that?'\n\nThe last British Governor, Chris Patten, took it as a joke when he was described in catch-phrases by the Beijing Government as 'a serpent' and being 'disgraced in history for a millennium.' In fact, Patten quoted with relish his sobriquet of 'Whore of the East.' Most Britons also saw such 'insults' in much the same light as Patten, and as being faintly despicable, with the rhetoric unworthy of 5,000 years of continuous civilisation (Waters, 1995:168).\n\nIn the same way that Chinese and Westerners may see insults differently, so they often see humour differently. A Hong Kong Chinese, of Shanghainese stock, said to the author, 'I'll tell you a typical English joke which the average Chinese cannot really appreciate.\n\n'A publican and a customer were talking in a bar (E) when in came another man. He walked up the wall, walked upside down across the ceiling, and then down the wall the other side. He ordered a pint of beer, which he promptly quaffed. He then walked up the wall, across the ceiling, down the wall the other side, and out of the pub door. \"That's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214454, "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": 312, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "279\n\n1970\n\n1971\n\n1973\n\n1974\n\n1977\n\n1978\n\n1986\n\n1989\n\n1994\n\n1995\n\n1997\n\n1st Bttn. The Royal Welch Fusiliers at Gun Club.\n\nDeath of \"Billy\" Regimental Goat on 8 June. Buried behind Church. (The \"gravestone\" was salvaged, prior to excavation work for the new PLA Hospital, & removed to ASD Property Services Branch Antiquities Store at APB Centre in Cheung Sha Wan. No remains of \"Billy\" were found.)\n\n1st Bttn. The Black Watch at Gun Club.\n\n1st Bttn. The Royal Hampshire Regt. at Gun Club,\n\nAlanbrooke Block (British MQs) & Infants' School (Block 27) demolished. New Gurkha MQs, Temple, Clinic & School build started. 10 Int & Sec Coy moved into Colony Club (Block 36) from Argyle Street Camp.\n\nGurkha Transport Regt. & Gurkha Signals moved into Gun Club from Shamshuipo Camp. Victoria Junior School moved over from Victoria Barracks.\n\nNew Classroom built at Gun Club Primary School. Skeleton said to date from Japanese occupation unearthed during excavations.\n\nSevere flooding on May 2 to MT compound causing considerable damage to vehicles, buildings and equipment. Compound again flooded on May 20 during Typhoon Brenda.\n\nColony Club (Block 36), St. Eligius' Church, and the old gun shed (Block 29) demolished to make way for the new military hospital. Banyan trees transplanted to elsewhere in the barracks also to the new Kowloon Walled City Park.\n\nBarracks vacated by the British Army and handed over to Hong Kong Government.\n\nBarracks occupied by People's Liberation Army following handover of Hong Kong to China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214928, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "If there is such a person or institution that I have not thanked then my profound apologies. An extra word of thanks, nevertheless, must go to Sarah Parnell who served as Assistant Secretary for seven months of the past year although she has now stepped down. She is, nevertheless, continuing to play an energetic and active part in the work of our Branch. In her place we welcomed Mary Painter who quickly settled down in her new post.\n\nConclusions\n\nHow do you judge a society such as ours? We average about two functions a month. This is considerably more than most similar societies. We undertake research and publish scholarly works, including an annual Journal issued free of charge to all fully paid up members. Having read this Report you will know clearly what other benefits you can enjoy. We can be proud of what we achieve. We give value for money.\n\nRosemary Lee, past Hong Kong resident and a RAS “Friend” in Britain wrote: 'The RAS is a truly remarkable organisation - so vital and with such a variety of activities.' James Hayes wrote from Down Under, ‘... the impression I have of the Society from afar, through newsletters and publications, is that it has never been better... It is all due to the team and their sense of our Society's abiding worth.'\n\nThere have been and will continue to be, depending on the way our Branch develops, changes regarding the membership of our Council. For my own part the time has come. As an octogenarian and after four-and-a-half-years at the helm I must make room for my successor. While old age is not bad when you consider the option a younger President will no doubt bring in new ideas. It will be good for the health of the Branch to have a change. I'm sure I shall miss the duties that the post entails. Following many distinguished HKBRAS Presidents, including both those who held office during the 12 years in the mid 19th century and those over the past 40 years, it has been a great honour for me to have served as your President.\n\nMuch of the work of the President is, of course, open-ended but you cannot make an omelette without breaking the odd egg. While it is good to have fire in one's belly inter-personnel skills are also important especially in a voluntary organisation like ours. Occasionally there has\n\nxxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]