[ { "id": 211420, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "112\n\nI remember Uncle as a tall, serious person with rather high cheek bones and a broad, prominent chin, altogether a rather handsome gentleman. He had a soft voice, unexpected of a man his size. He was frugal, conservative and cautious in whatever task he undertook. His wife, née Auyoung, was a tiny woman, with bound feet, exuding energy and efficiency, a true Chinese matriarch. She was born on 14 October 1874 in the village of Ma Tsze To a family of some stature. One of her cousins was well-known in national politics and was connected with the building of the Yet Hon Railroad connecting Canton and Hankow. Toby described his mother as a good woman and a good mother. She was a literate person even though she only had tutoring at home. Because she had experienced poverty at some point before marriage, she was very thrifty herself, but generous with others. She stinted on food for herself to give her children. Toby was very much touched when she sent him off to the United States with a 20 dollar gold coin she had saved for emergencies, and regrets that he did not save it as a permanent reminder of her great love and sacrifice.\n\nThe three boys and four girls in the family attended St. John's and St. Mary's in Shanghai, where they learned English well, as Uncle had hoped. They are:\n\nToby Ting Kin E (18 Feb 1900-); also known as Tung Pai |0f| Helen Moo Ching AA (5 Feb 1902-15 Jan 1974)\n\nCharles Ting Hing (21 Dec 1903-1978)\n\nGeorgette Moo Yung\n\nMoo Yun\n\nTing Cheong\n\nL\n\n(3 Apr 1909-25 Jun 1979); also known as Tung Sui 同瑞\n\nMoo Sau 慕修(1919-).\n\nNo doubt very bright, after two years at St. John's, Toby was admitted by competitive examination to Tsinghua University in Peking at the age of 16. Tsinghua was founded with Boxer Indemnity money the United States had returned to China to prepare Chinese students for further studies in the American universities. Toby became interested in fisheries and selected the University of Washington after Tsinghua in 1920. He earned a B.S. degree in 1923 in Fisheries but he felt the need to study other aspects of the field not available in Washington. After two semesters", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212176, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "95\n\nsuccessful in winning scholarships to England under the terms of the British Boxer Indemnity Fund. The tea party was held in the grounds of a lovely little Elizabethan-style house recently opened as the headquarters of the Sino-British Cultural Association.\n\nIt was hard to believe that all the work of reconstruction, the town planning, the laying out of parks, the building of government offices, which had continued uninterrupted since Nanking had become the capital, those material expressions of the national effort to drag administration out of the centuries-old morass of incompetence and venality, were so soon to be wrecked.\n\nThe fighting in the north went badly for the Chinese, who were repeatedly compelled to withdraw. They accordingly decided to divert the Japanese effort to a terrain more favourable to themselves, and nearer to the main bases of their army. Two divisions were concentrated on the outskirts of Shanghai, and it was their attempt in August to drive the small Japanese garrison into the Whangpoo, the tributary of the Yangtze on which Shanghai stands, that unleashed the aerial war in central China. The Chinese light bombers tried to sink the Japanese flagship, H.I.J.M.S. \"Idzumo\", where she lay anchored off the Shanghai waterfront, and the Japanese retaliated by attacking Chinese airfields in the vicinity of Shanghai, Hangchow, and Nanking.\n\nRealising the danger of air raids, but without experience, the authorities in Nanking in an excess of zeal issued instructions that all light-coloured buildings were to be painted black, and so through the advancing days the view from our windows turned from the bright red and green of brick and tile to a blurred dirty grey. Even the white and blue omnibuses were changed to match the mud of the roadway. For our part we got hold of some bituminous paint and caused it to be spread on our red-tiled roof; but in the course of time rain streaked it and spoiled the effect.\n\nThe first air raid caught us by surprise at lunch on August 15th. A warning system had been established, but when the 'phone rang to advise us that the alarm had gone we did not know what to do. Someone remembered we had a large Union Jack in the attic, which after some discussion, feeling rather foolish, we decided to spread on the lawn. Tim, the pup, thought it was a new toy to be pulled at and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212615, "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "I should like here to explain that the Japanese intelligence service is efficient; very little that goes on in China is not quickly known to it. But obviously considerations of security, no less than a courteous regard for a great Ally, require a severe discretion in what may or may not be mentioned while a war is still in progress; unperceived by the reader there will be gaps in the story which follows, a story of some minor assistance given to our Chinese Allies in the 3rd War Zone by the British, when themselves hard-pressed during 1942. For similar reasons, where persons are concerned, I propose to refer to them by their Christian names.\n\nI had asked that the Chinese government should provide me with an interpreter for my trip; but Michael was much more than that. He had been educated in Peking and at the Chelu University in Tsinanfu, and was the type of modern young Chinese patriot, on whose enthusiasm, integrity, and sense, the future of China depends. The horizon of these young Chinese is only too often limited by the fact that not only have they never travelled outside China, so that their knowledge of the foreigner is confined to the few they may have met in their schools or in their immediate environment, but also they know so little of their own enormous country. The displacement of schools brought about by the Japanese aggression has helped much to overcome the second difficulty; and it is to be hoped that far more extensive opportunities will be provided after the war to enable the youth of China to visit foreign countries. In the past, by reason of proximity, Japan has received most Chinese students; followed by the United States, where special endowments, arising initially from the excessive claim made for indemnity at the time of the Boxer trouble, and the facility of “earn while you study”, have attracted students. A few, far too few, have come to England.\n\nMichael spoke fluent English, had seen much of his own country, and for his years carried a wise head on his shoulders; he had, moreover, a most engaging personality. For a year he was my constant companion, on whose advice I came to rely much. I found also awaiting me at Kweilin members of General Ku Chu Tung's staff. We left for Hengyang by train, and thence motored a thousand kilometres to Shangjao, the headquarters of the 3rd War Zone. I was the first foreign officer, Russian liaison officers apart, to visit the 3rd War Zone in two years: I was, in fact, a visible token of the assistance which China might now expect from her new allies, and my reception was correspondingly cordial. I was shown everything; the Arsenal, in a cave; The Prisoners of War cage, where some twenty Japanese were kept pending transfer further west;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213163, "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-1993", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "213\n\nme. 'She sacrificed to have me well educated,'\n\nLater the young Lee returned to China, to attend the Canton Christian College, later renamed 'Lingnan'. He came back to Hong Kong every year by tram or ship, on holiday, at Christmas and for the summer. In Canton, he mixed with his American missionary teachers. He did not meet Europeans much in Hong Kong. A photograph in Mr Lee's home shows him, as a teenager, in a Chinese tunic buttoned up at the neck. There is also a group photograph of him as an American Army Cadet, taken in 1921. 'We used to drill,' he explained.\n\nHe recalls that he saw Sun Yat Sen, dubbed the 'George Washington of China', once when he visited Lingnan.\n\n'While attending the college we played basketball, soccer, volleyball and tennis,' Mr. Lee told me. He did not care much for the Chinese game of tek in (kicking the shuttlecock).\n\nOn completion of his Lingnan course, in 1922, he sailed on the *President Grant* for the United States to further his studies. There he befriended several 'Boxer Scholars'.\n\nResulting from the Boxer Uprising, China had to pay reparations for the damage done to Western buildings and for the Europeans murdered. These amounted to nearly a thousand million taels, repaid over 39 years. Later, however, to repay partly this large sum, the Americans, and later the British government, established a 'Boxer Indemnity' fund. The money was used for Chinese to study overseas. Most Boxer Scholars were sons of Nationalist Government officials. Boxer Scholars received tuition fees, board and lodgings and other benefits free of charge. They even received free spectacles,' Mr Lee exclaimed.\n\nThe young Lee studied chemistry at the University of Washington. He enjoyed it there, where he was boarded out with the Jacobs family. He completed the four-year course in 1926. Once his mother went to the States, by ship, for a visit. 'She did not speak English. It was too difficult for her to come and see me,' Mr Lee told me.\n\nHe came back to Hong Kong in 1927, when things had returned to normal in the Colony after the General Strike of 1925.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213872, "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-1996", "page_number": 224, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "198\n\nwere named the \"South-west militarists\".\n\nConcerning how these governments sustained themselves, I have selected four possibilities for discussion. They are taxation and provincial remittances, customs surplus, foreign loans, and internal loans.\n\n1) Concerning provincial remittance and taxation, the government in Beijing enjoyed a limited amount from those provinces it managed to control. The southern government, however, failed to get any taxation from other provinces.\n\n2) About customs surplus, collected by foreign authorities to guarantee payment of the Boxer indemnity, this was returned only to the Beijing government, the only legitimate government recognized by the foreigners. In the South, when Sun Yat-sen threatened to seize the customs in Guangdong, Canton was surrounded by British and American gunboats.\n\n3) Foreign loans were monopolized by a \"Financial Consortium\", formed by major western banks aimed at avoiding mutual competition. As the consortium recognized only the Beijing government, all foreign loans to China were monopolized by Beijing. This picture, however, was upset by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Money was then moved away from the Far East to Europe again. As a consequence, by about 1915, the Chinese governments, in Canton and in Beijing, were increasingly dependent on domestic loans. The Chinese merchants were a major source for these domestic loans.\n\n4) Domestic loans are where the role of Chinese merchants came into play. Generally, three important groups of financiers can be identified. They centred around Tianjin, Shanghai, and Canton-Hong Kong. One common feature of these regions was the foreign presence, which secured a base for final retreat. Understandably, many Chinese companies were registered in the foreign concessions even though they operated outside them.\n\nPolitical Investment in the Hong Kong - Canton Region\n\nAgainst this background, I will focus the second part of my article", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214971, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "23\n\nsuperpowers of that time, incessantly challenging one another, and by the Belgian, German and other colonial regimes soon following exactly in the pioneers' footsteps. All of them were hypnotised by China's reported wealth, by the trade of Central Asia and Tibet, and Szechuan was the key to Tibet. All were active in corrupting the declining Manchu regime, thus receiving multiple concessions as a reward, one of them being the privileges for Christian missionaries to preach their faith all over China. French endeavours made Szechuan into the main bastion of Roman Catholicism and the reservoir of missionaries to convert further regions of Central Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia. These events, which resulted in a series of anti-European and anti-Christian riots and culminated in the Boxer Rebellion (1900), are well described in Chapter Five of The Crippled Tree (volume one of the aforementioned epic cycle):\n\nTheir [i.e. the French priests'] courage and ability to endure hardship might have been praiseworthy had it not been only too clear that the religious garb covered most unreligious actions. Catholic priests and bishops bought up whole villages in times of flood and famine, demanded and obtained on threat of military action the best land in cities for their churches, after evicting the inhabitants and paying no compensation. Catholic priests formed militia bands of their own, and claimed to rank higher than our own magistrates. Bishops were invested with the pomp and power of governor-generals. They used sedan chairs with eight carriers, a drummer going in front, and everyone in the street where they passed had to stop work, stand up, and unroll their headbands in obeisance to the Catholic bishop, on pain of being beaten with the heavy bamboo.\n\nThe Boxer Rebellion marked the end of the feudal epoch and announced an approach of an unpredictable Great Change. In the Boxer Protocol of 1901, imposed after the defeat, China had to pay an enormous indemnity sum of five hundred million dollars, open more ports and cities, accept a permanent garrison of soldiers in Peking and other towns and along the existing railways. Moreover, the Boxer Protocol abolished the Imperial Examinations, an inevitable part of recruiting imperial administration and training classical Chinese scholars. This reform prepared the way for the long awaited New Learning, i.e. for finally educating young people in Western science and technology, until then almost unknown in China. New Learning", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214978, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "30\n\nAfter the First World War and the return to China of the Powers, a movement to finance a new westernized Chinese élite began among the Powers. Each country hoped that the Chinese educated by them would naturally favour their country of education; gratitude, ties of friendship, as well as cultural and emotional orientations, would see to that. This also Leopold, the astute King of the Belgians, had foreseen. He had spoken of it urging that young men be sent to Belgium for training. \"Ils seront des nôtres,\" they will be ours.\n\nAbout her own Western studies, she wrote the following equitable lines:\n\nI myself was, in 1935, a recipient of a scholarship derived from the Belgian Boxer indemnity fund; I went to study in Belgium, following in my father's footsteps. But it was, in the end, China's money which was being spent to educate me, it was the Chinese people paying the Boxer Indemnity of 1900 who paid for my years in Belgium. And so my gratitude must go to them, for making me in turn, as they made my father, a privileged person, a returned student from abroad. Later I was to study in England, on a British Council scholarship, and also be grateful to England. But this has not influenced me in the end. For truth is truth and it cannot be bought at any price.\n\nVigilant yet dispassionate, non-compromising yet lacking even the slightest urge for revenge, always eager to unveil painful truths about enslavement of one people by another, Han Suyin is a born defender of human dignity and human rights. In the pages of her autobiographical/historical cycle, multiple shrewd remarks about interference of indigenous Chinese and foreign powers' interests in Old China are a most natural and therefore a matter-of-factly element, masterly interwoven in a vast political and economic panorama of Chinese life in that pre-1949 epoch. After all, the so-called 'gunboat diplomacy' and also the other forms of political blackmail, extensively practised by the white powers to threaten feudal, backward and corrupt society in order to press even more lucrative concessions out of it, had directly affected Han Suyin's and her family clan's existence on an everyday basis. Surprisingly enough and in the circumstances incomparably more neutral (or even favourable) for her, Han Suyin wrote a stunning and remarkable book - And the Rain My Drink - devoted entirely to the declining post-World War II period of the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]