[ { "id": 204444, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE \n\n65 \n\nwas contrary to the intention of the cadres. The distribution of confiscated animals among the slaves and bondsmen was at first regarded as a glorious opportunity to have a religious splurge of sacrifices and feasting instead of an investment for production. Sacrifices are required to placate the various spirits that were thought responsible for every evil and ill, from accidents to rheumatism.\n\nWinnington found that the Wa or K'a-wa of southwest Yunnan represent a different society, although Hsi-meng district to which he was taken by his Communist Chinese hosts lies only in the fringes of the Wa territory and may not be entirely representative. The Wa inhabit both sides of the south Yunnan-Burma borders and are divided into the \"wild Wa\" and the Wa tamed by contact with Burmese or Chinese civilizations. The \"wild Wa\" in British Burma in 1935 were still addicted to headhunting, both on other Wa and on non-Wa people coming into or living near their village areas.15 A Chinese account of the \"wild Wa\" on the Yunnan side related the headhunting to efforts to ensure good harvests. In any event, the \"wild Wa\" decorated the approaches to their thorn-fence walled-village with a double column of skulls mounted on posts. A person entered their territory at his peril.\n\nIn the Sinicized northern part of the Wa territory there is a transition zone of intermixed hill Shan, La-hu and other mountain people as well as of Wa. Slavery here is practised in a very relaxed form, according to Winnington. Slaves constitute only about five per cent of the villagers as compared with over 90 per cent of the population in the Black-bone country. A slave suffers no social discrimination among the villagers and takes part in village and clan ceremonies open to other villagers. He can marry whom he pleases, and when the new couple sets up separate housekeeping, the master is bound by tradition to help them on pain of community criticism for failure to do so. Such a marriage virtually ends the slavery status, although the slave is expected to make payments to his master until his price is paid for.\n\n1 Great Britain Treaty Series No. 80 (1947), Exchange of notes concerning the Burma-Yunnan boundary, 18th June 1941, London, 1947, 4.\n\n16 Li Sheng-chuang, Yün-nan ti-yi chih-pien chü-yü nei chih jen-chung l'iao-cha (Research into the ethnic groups within the First Border Settlement District of Yunnan), Researches on the Yunnan Frontier Problems, Kunming, 1933, 194.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205010, "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-1965", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n109\n\nof Buddhist Tantrism\" with a discussion of the mystic's approach to what is 'experience.' When he treats the concepts of 'reality' and 'spirituality' his reference to S. Freud's 'super-ego' for the Tibetan yid i.e. 'mind,' lacks persuasiveness, but admittedly this is not part of the main argument. Comparisons with Hegel and Kant as well as the Sanskrit sources and their interpretation could not be checked for this review. Apart from referring, among others, to Bertrand Russell and Karl Jaspers, the author seems to agree repeatedly with William S. Haas's The Destiny of the Mind. Taken as a whole, this broadly conceived study is valuable food for thought to the informed philosopher.\n\n\"Three Impressions of Bamian\" by Alastair Lamb is an exciting introduction to the sculptures, caves and wall paintings of this Buddhist monastic cave complex in Afghanistan. The views and pictures of three visitors to Bamian are compared: Charles Masson in 1832, Vincent Eyre in 1842 and Lamb himself in 1958. The picture section comprises altogether thirty-two plates, mostly photographs. The main features of Bamian are the Buddha colossi of 120 and 175 feet in height respectively, the \"giants of Gandhara sculpture.\" Bamian is taken as “a gigantic demonstration of the great extent of contacts between China, India, Iran and the Mediterranean which flourished from the foundation of the Roman Empire to the period of the T'ang Dynasty.\" The various early domes in Bamian cave architecture are treated in some detail and described as \"convincing proof of the strong Western influence in the Buddhist architecture of Afghanistan.\"\n\nThaung Blackmore presents a comprehensive view of the \"Founding of the City of Mandalay by King Mindon\" in 1857. Though some ancient Burmese customs such as myosade, i.e. human sacrifices at the foundation of a city, were given up, the construction of Mandalay was still mainly influenced by traditional concepts, in particular by astrology.\n\nWalter Hochstadter is a very outspoken fighter for the \"Real Shen Chou,\" as he sees him. Under the heading of \"Popular Conceptions of Shen Chou's Style\" he particularly criticizes Professor Osvald Sirén. Hochstadter lists seven points which are useful to establish a major painter's work, the main one being brushwork. He arrives at the conclusion that only two works", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205782, "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-1969", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "82\n\nKING MONGKUT OF SIAM AND HIS TREATY WITH BRITAIN\n\nROBERT BRUCE*\n\nWhen Sir John Bowring sailed up the river to Bangkok in March 1855 he was asked by King Mongkut not to fire a salute lest the citizens be alarmed. Sir John, Governor of Hong Kong and Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in the Far East, reluctantly agreed to postpone the ceremonial explosion from the Rattler's guns until the anxious citizens had been given one day's warning.\n\nThe Siamese had cause for concern. The Burmese, their traditional enemies, had been conquered by the British; and a dozen years before the Bowring mission the great Chinese Empire had been defeated by the British navy. On their eastern frontier, the Siamese watched with alarm the French encroachment on Cochin-China and their own dominion of Cambodia. To the south of the Isthmus of Kra British power was spreading into the Malay States, including Kedah, a feudatory of Siam. But their fears were to prove unfounded. The Bowring mission to Bangkok was completely successful for both British and Siamese. On April 18th, 1855, a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed, an agreement which was to secure for Siam, alone in south-east Asia, independence from colonial rule and which set her on the long, painful road of modernisation.\n\nForce had been used to 'open' China. In the same year as Bowring's peaceful mission to Bangkok Commodore Perry's American warships were demanding commerce and navigation rights of the Japanese. Even after the Treaty of Nanking had\n\n* This article, entitled \"King Mongkut of Siam\", appeared in History Today for October 1968. The original text, slightly extended, is reprinted here by permission of the Editor. Mr. Bruce lectured to the Hong Kong Branch on this subject in February 1968.\n\nMr. Bruce is at present a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Kentucky University, U.S.A. He served eight years as Representative of the British Council in Thailand and later filled the same post in Hong Kong where he was a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society. Mr. Bruce was also one time Director of the Government School of Chinese Language at Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205783, "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-1969", "page_number": 89, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n83\n\nopened the Treaty Ports and a second British conflict with China had proved the superiority of Western arms, the Chinese court refused to reform. The Japanese were quicker to read the signs. Only Siam, unlike her weak neighbours in the tropical south, was able to adapt herself to the new world without war or its threat and without loss of sovereignty.\n\nWhy was this? Was it because Britain and France had agreed to the Thai kingdom being a buffer between their Indian and Indo-Chinese empires? Or was it that the King of Siam who received Sir John Bowring had more vision than most of his Asian contemporaries and was succeeded by an equally gifted son? Whatever the reasons, the Treaty of 1855 was a major factor in determining the future of the Thai kingdom. It provided for the opening of diplomatic relations with Britain and, as a natural consequence, with other western nations. It introduced extra-territorial rights to British subjects living in Siam and allowed them to own or rent property. In commerce the Treaty abolished the strangling system of monopolies owned by the King and 'farmed' to Chinese merchants - replacing it by a free market with low duties on imports and exports. The year after the conclusion of the British treaty the Americans and the French secured similar agreements and these in turn were hastily followed by treaties with various European nations. These treaties marked a turning-point in the modern history of Siam.\n\nIn the century and a half which followed Louis XIV's mission to Ayuthia in 1689 Siam had little or no contact with the West. In the mid-eighteenth century her main preoccupation was the constant war with the Burmese who finally sacked their ancient and splendid capital in 1767. By the time the new house of Chakri had established the capital at Bangkok in 1782 the British East India Company had consolidated its dominion over India. The tea trade with China was growing rapidly and ports of call on the eastern run were obvious advantages. Francis Light obtained Penang island for the Company from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786 for the annual payment of $6,000 and the vague understanding of British protection. Kedah was an acknowledged feudatory of Siam, but at that time King Rama I was far too busy with the building of Bangkok to concern himself with the incident and the British were not then interested in Siam. Raffles had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205784, "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-1969", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "84 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nlost Java and gained Singapore for a reluctant Company, and Malacca followed. Siam was eventually drawn into the picture not for her trade or her position on the way to China \n\na little \n\noff the route -- but, in fact, because of Kedah and the other northern Malay States. \n\nBy 1818 the Chakri dynasty had gained sufficient strength to instigate her vassal Kedah to attack the neighbouring Malay State of Perak. The Siamese army then entered Kedah itself and the Sultan fled to Penang. British merchants there were indignant and called on the Company to intervene, but the Supreme Council in Calcutta considered that \"a war with Siam would be an evil of very serious magnitude\". Their policy was one of conciliation. \"All extension of our territorial possessions and political relations on the side of the Indo-Chinese nations\" the Company declared, \"... is earnestly to be deprecated and declined as far as the course of events and the force of circumstances permit\". \n\nAs well as the Malay States there was the Burma question. The restive Burmese had extended their power to Arakan, thus making them neighbours of the British in India. By the eighteen-twenties Britain became involved in war with Burma in the southern part of the country. With the extension of the East India Company's interests to Siam's western and southern borders it became desirable that relations between the Company and Bangkok should be regulated on a peaceful basis. At the same time trading relations should be improved. The bad conditions of trade were described by Raffles as \"slavish and humiliating” for English merchants. He gave this account of the trade: \n\n“On arrival in port the most valuable part of the cargo is immediately presented to the King who takes as much as he pleases; the remaining part is chiefly consumed in presents to the courtiers and other great men, while the refuse of the cargo is then permitted to be exposed to sale. The part which is consumed in presents to the great men is entire loss; for that which the King receives he generally returns a present which is seldom adequate to the value of the goods which he has received; but by dint of begging and repeated solicitation this is sometimes increased a little.\" \n\nTo remedy the situation John Crawford was sent to Bangkok by the Governor General of India in 1822. \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205785, "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-1969", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n85\n\nCrawfurd obtained neither better relations nor easier trading conditions. What is more he was received by King Rama II's officials in a most ungenerous manner. Dr. George Finlayson, the Scots medical officer and naturalist on board their ship the John Adam records this impression of the dwelling given to the mission by the Siamese: \"A habitation was provided for the British envoy, a miserable place, an out-house with four small, ill-ventilated rooms, approached through a trap-door from below...\" An official of low rank was sent to them. All he wanted was presents for the King. Finlayson goes on: \"In the urgency to obtain and the frequency of the demands of the Court for the gifts there was a degree of meanness and avidity at once disgusting and disgraceful\". The King seems to have been petty as well as rude. On one occasion the Foreign Minister called on Crawfurd to help retrieve two pairs of \"ordinary glass lamps\" on which the King had set his heart. The lamps had been promised, said the Foreign Minister, to His Majesty and sold by a member of the John Adam's crew to somebody else!\n\nFortunately the Crawfurd mission was not treated in such a mean manner throughout all its four months' stay at Bangkok. Dignity was restored by a Royal audience and there was much friendly talk. But he got no improvement in either trade or diplomacy. Crawfurd also tried to get the Siamese to accept a Consul and to obtain exemption for British merchants and crews from the harsh justice of Siam's law, but in these matters he had no success. He comments in his account of the Mission: \"If the subjects of a free and civilised Government resort to a barbarous and despotic country, there is no remedy but submission to its laws, however absurd or arbitrary\".\n\nFour years later, in 1826, the East India Company sent another mission to Bangkok. By this time the first campaign against the Burmese had been fought and won and there was a new king on the throne of Siam, Mongkut's half brother, Rama III. The mission was led by Captain Henry Burney, a nephew of Fanny Burney and military secretary to the Governor of Penang. He was much more successful than Crawfurd and came away with a treaty which somewhat improved matters. The Burney Treaty did not, however, go very far. It obtained a certain amount of goodwill regarding the frontier and the Malay States but Kedah was still accepted as Siam's vassal. Trade was to be free and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206776, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA\n\n47\n\nonly did she carry troops, but often had a gun brig and several small boats in tow. Diana seemed to produce an effect on the Burmese analogous to that produced on the Mexicans by Cortes' horses. She continued in government service until she was broken up at Calcutta in 1835, and her engines installed in a new ship of the same name. The second Diana was also built at Calcutta, and was employed by the government as a cruiser against pirates in the Straits of Malacca,\n\nAlthough her origin was so closely connected with China, the first Diana never operated in Chinese waters. The first steamship to be seen in China was the Forbes, also built at Calcutta and launched in 1829. The Forbes was much larger than the Diana and cost 300,000 rupees. After she had been running on the Hoogly for several months, the Forbes was chartered by Jardine, Matheson and Company to tow their Jamesina, a barque of 362 tons which had formerly been H. M. S. Curlew, to China. At this time great importance was attached to getting the opium from India to China as quickly as possible in order to command the highest price, and no satisfactory passages had been made from Singapore to China against the north-east monsoon. The opium ships normally waited at Singapore until the monsoon was over before tackling the passage up the South China Sea, so that only one India-China voyage was possible in a season.\n\nThe Forbes-Jamesina convoy left Calcutta on 14th March 1830; the Forbes having 134 tons of coal on board, two-thirds English and the remainder Indian, while the Jamesina had another 52 tons of Indian coal for the Forbes, besides her main cargo of 840 chests of opium. Good weather was experienced on the passage to Singapore, where they arrived on the 27th, steaming for most of the time at 5-4 knots, and at the most favourable times reaching 7 knots. Four days were spent at Singapore, during which time the boiler was cleaned and bunkering carried out. The monsoon was still strong when they left on 31st, and speed fell first to 3-4 and later to 2-1 knots. By 12th April Forbes had only 12 days' coal left with over 500 miles to go and no sign of the monsoon easing. The Jamesina, therefore, was cast off and Forbes proceeded alone, reaching Lintin on 19th April, the first steamship to be seen in China. The Jamesina arrived two days later.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206896, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n167\n\nBy way of comparison, the tour also visited Ayuthia and saw the gigantic Buddha at Wat Phanan Cheong, by the river, and the ruins of Wat Yai Chai Mongkon, Wat Phra Sri Samphet, and Wat Phra Ram. The magnificent Wat Na Pramane in its peaceful country setting, with its elaborate carved pediment (the only one to survive the holocaust of the Burmese attack in 1767), its fine ceiling and remarkable bronze Buddha in kingly attire of the Ayuthia period in the main bot and the no less striking stone Dvaravati Buddha seated in the European fashion with its characteristically placid Mon face left a deep impression,\n\nBefore leaving Bangkok a visit was made to three representative temples of the Ratanakosin period, Wat Suthat, with its wealth of Chinese statuary and carved and gilded doors said to be the work of Rama II (the vihara was unfortunately closed and its murals could not be seen). However at Wat Borworniwes the unusual murals depicting scenes of western eighteenth century palaces introducing alien perspective were noted; the bot also contains the revered statue Phra Buddha Chinasara, a good example of Sukhothai statuary. The peaceful temple grounds with their canals full of turtles were in considerable contrast to the roaring city outside the temple walls. The better known Wat Benjamabhopit with its copies of various statues, including that at Pitsanuloke of which the original had been seen, was also visited. Most interestingly perhaps, on the last day the group visited the gold-leaf beaters' lane where for several days layers of gold are pounded by hand to produce the wafer-thin pieces which are applied on statues by the devout.\n\nIt should not be thought that the members of the tour remained aloof to daily life of contemporary Thailand; elements of this were seen at the weekend market at the Pramane Ground, and, in the country, working elephants, the pounding of rice flour in villages and the releasing of birds to gain merit in temple courtyards left their impression.\n\nIn what was effectively four very full days, a great deal was seen and much ground was covered (it took ten hours by bus to reach Pitsanuloke from Bangkok). The pace was intense but rewarding. The tour was considered culturally illuminating, revealing the many facets of the rich artistic heritage of Thailand.\n\nHong Kong, 1973.\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207789, "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-1976", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA (With especial reference to the Upper Yangtze)\n\nA. D. BLUE*\n\nWest China, and in particular the provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan, interested British merchants in India before the end of the eighteenth century, and this interest increased after Britain got a foothold in Lower Burma in the early nineteenth century. Not until Britain was established at Shanghai and on the Lower Yangtze, however, did the British China traders take any great interest in West China. Until the 1860s, therefore, the initiative in opening West China to British trade came from the West, and concentrated on reviving the old caravan routes from Upper Burma into Yunnan. The Treaty of Yandabo between Britain and Burma in 1826, which established Britain in Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and Tenasserim, rekindled interest in these old routes. Sino-Burmese contacts went back many centuries, but were usually recorded from a diplomatic or military aspect, although it was well known that there had been considerable trade along these routes. At this time Canton was the only British foothold on the China coast, and the much shorter land route across Burma seemed to offer many benefits to British and Indian merchants in both India and Burma. Then, and for many years afterwards, India was the source of most of China's foreign imports, cotton and opium in particular, and much of British policy in the Far East was concerned with maintaining and extending this trade.\n\nAn interesting side product of this China-India relationship was the proposal to import workers from west China for the infant Assam tea industry. The East India Company had become interested in the possibility of tea production in Assam as early as 1823, when indigenous tea plants were found in the Upper Brahmaputra\n\n* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtze in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Five of his articles have been published previously in the Journal. \"European Navigation on the Yangtze\" in Vol. 3, 1963, \"Piracy on the China Coast\" in Vol. 5, 1965, \"The China Coasters\" in Vol. 7, 1967, \"Chinese Emigration and the Deck Passenger Trade\" in Vol. 10, 1970 and \"Early Steamships in China\" in Vol. 13, 1973.\n\nPlates 20-25 and the sketch-maps at the end of the volume illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207790, "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-1976", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n163\n\nValley. A tea committee was formed whose findings were favourable, and experimental tea gardens were opened at Jaipur in Upper Assam. By 1859 over 4,000 acres were under cultivation, and the industry was assured of a bright future. Ample British capital was available for expansion, the British public's appetite for tea seemed inexhaustible; but scarcity of labour was a serious handicap. Assam was thinly populated, and the planters were dependent on Bengalis, who took a long time to get acclimatised. The idea of importing Chinese labour by the overland route was suggested, as at this time Chinese labour was considered indispensable to economic development in the tropics, and the Indian government was sympathetic. There were several possible land routes between India and West China, some passing through Burma, and Article 9 of the 1862 Commercial Treaty between Britain and Burma allowed entry into British territory from the Burmese side. The tea planters, however, failed to recruit Chinese workers, and blamed their lack of success upon the difficulties and hardships of the overland routes. This led to pressure on the government to improve the major land routes, and to several expeditions across the debatable borderlands between India, Burma, and China.\n\nFrom the 1860s until near the end of the century, therefore, there was rivalry between British commercial circles in India and those in China, over access to West China. In addition to these two approaches, from India and from the Yangtze, there were others from the south; by the Mekong or Red River from Indo-China, and by the West River from Canton and Hong Kong. Anglo-French colonial rivalry was acute during the second half of the nineteenth century, especially in the Far East. The French were keen to find and exploit a trade route to West China; and while Britain was investigating routes from Burma, the Yangtze, and the West River, France was investigating possible routes from the Mekong and Red Rivers.\n\nAs became widely known by the end of the century, and suspected by realists before then, West China and its borderlands comprise some of the most difficult regions of the world in which to build roads or railways, or in which to improve river navigation. There are high mountain ranges divided by deep valleys, densely forested in many places; and all the great rivers—the Yangtze, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Red River, and Salween—are seriously impeded by rapids", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207791, "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-1976", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "164 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nand gorges in their upper reaches. Yet British and French explorers light-heartedly planned roads and railways through the region, when earth moving and other civil engineering techniques were primitive by modern standards. \n\nPolitical difficulties were equally formidable. In addition to Anglo-French rivalry, there was an involved relationship between Britain, Burma, China, and the Kachin and Shan hill peoples in the borderlands. A further complication, from 1855 to 1873, was the devastation of Yunnan by the Panthay Rebellion, a Moslem uprising almost as destructive as the more famous Taiping Rebellion. \n\nAlthough the Treaty of Yandabo had established Britain in Lower Burma, Upper Burma continued as an independent state, with an ill-defined tributary relationship with China. However, during the sixty years before Britain annexed Upper Burma in 1886, Britain obtained the province of Pegu (1852), and mounted a succession of expeditions to find a practicable trade route from Burma into Yunnan, contemporary with other expeditions up the Yangtze from Shanghai. \n\nBetween Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century, and the French priest M. Huc in the 1840s, practically no European had travelled in West China. So little was known of it that while their compatriots in China looked on neighbouring Szechwan as the El Dorado of the East, the British in Burma and India had their eyes on the province of Yunnan. The extravagant and over enthusiastic appraisal of Yunnan's potential wealth gave rise to what became known as the \"Yunnan Myth\". \n\nThe first British attempts to reach Yunnan and West China came from Burma in the late eighteenth century. When Captain Sorrel went to Ava in 1792 to deliver a letter to the King of Burma from Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General of India, some Burmese offered to take him overland to China. Sorrel's reference to this aroused great interest in India. Over a century earlier, Dutch East India traders in Ava and Syriam had given glowing accounts of a flourishing trade between Burma and China, conducted through Chinese merchants in Bhamo. In 1795 when Captain Michael Symes was sent on an official mission to Burma, he was instructed to “find a mart in the south west dominions of China by means of the great river of Ava”. Symes' report was enthusiastic. He said the principal export from Ava was cotton, which went up the Irrawaddy in large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207792, "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-1976", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n165\n\nboats as far as Bhamo, and then partly by land and partly by water into China. Other exports were amber, ivory, precious stones, betel nuts, and edible birds' nests; while in return Burma got raw and wrought silk, velvet, gold leaf, preserves, and chinaware. Similar reports came from other sources. By 1850, the possibility of extending trade from Yunnan into Szechwan was envisaged, and the glowing prospect of an extensive market for British goods in West China became an obsession among many British officials and merchants in Burma and India.\n\nCaptain McLeod's mission of 1836 is the first official British attempt to find an overland route to China. McLeod went from Moulmein, the port in the newly acquired province of Tenasserim, via Kungtang to Kenghang, a Shan state on the border of China. Here he failed to get permission to enter Yunnan, being told that if the British wanted to trade with China they should go to Canton, and that if he still persisted in wanting to enter Yunnan he would require official permission from Peking. McLeod had to admit defeat, and turned back.\n\nAfter this came a succession of other ventures from Assam and Burma, all—for one reason or another—failures. These culminated in the famous and ill-fated Dual Mission of 1874-75, which led to the Margary Affair.* This was a joint attempt to explore West China from the Burmese and Chinese sides. Previous to this the only important attempts to find a route between Burma and China from the eastern side had been Captain Blakiston's in 1861 and T. T. Cooper's in 1868.\n\nThe Royal Navy's expedition of 1861 which went up the Yangtze to establish the first treaty ports on the great river—Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow—continued 153 miles beyond Hankow to Yochow. Here they transferred Blakiston's party to junks in which they continued for another 1050 miles to Pingshan, nearly 1800 miles from the sea and 400 miles above Chungking. It had been intended to follow the Yangtze to its source in Tibet, and then cross the Himalayas into India. Because of unsettled political conditions at Pingshan and beyond, however, they were forced to turn back; but they had obtained valuable information about the Middle and Upper Yangtze.\n\nSee pp. 169-170 below.\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207796, "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-1976", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n169 \n\nto Bhamo that the Irawaddy Flotilla Company doubled its service between Mandalay and Bhamo.* \n\nSimultaneously pressure in Britain from Chambers of Commerce persuaded the government to support the Indian government's plan to resume exploration of the Bhamo-Yunnan overland route, and to request co-operation from China through the British Minister at Peking. The King of Burma was also in favour of resuming trade relations with China, having been advised from Peking that China would like to resume \"the old relationship, and continue the practice of exchanging decennial missions\". \n\nLieutenant Colonel Horace A. Browne, a former Deputy Commissioner in Burma, was chosen as leader of the Burma party, which would go from Mandalay to Bhamo by steamer, and then overland into Yunnan by one of three possible routes. At the same time A.R. Margary of the China Consular Service would start from Hankow—then the limit of steam navigation on the Yangtze—and go by junk to Yochow at the entrance to the Tungting Lake, through the Lake and by the Yuan River to the border of Kweichow, from where he would complete his journey overland. Browne's party arrived at Bhamo on 15th January 1875, and were joined by Margary, who had left Hankow on 4th September 1874, two days later. The latter had had a comparatively uneventful journey, although at some places the population was decidedly hostile. At Yunnanfu, however, the officials were courteous and helpful. All through Yunnan Margary had passed ruined towns and villages, and seen the widespread destruction caused by the recent rebellion. \n\nOn 23rd January the combined party left Bhamo for Yunnan, accompanied by fifteen Sikh guards brought from India by Browne, and an escort of 150 soldiers provided by the King of Burma, who were to go as far as the border. At the last minute Browne decided to go by the Ponlyne instead of by the Sawaddy route, to avoid possible conflict with the Kachin tribesmen on the latter. A few \n\nThe Irawaddy Flotilla Company was formed in 1864 when Todd Findlay & Co. of Glasgow (who had a branch in Rangoon) bought four old river steamers and three 'flats' of the Indian government's Irawaddy Flotilla, which had given good service in the Anglo-Burmese Wars. Hopes of greatly increased trade between Burma and Yunnan were high, and there was keen competition to buy the Flotilla, including an offer from a French company, and one from Mackinnon & Mackenzie, who were then managing agents of the Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company which later became the British India Steam Navigation Company.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207797, "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-1976", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "170 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\ndays later rumours of an ambush by Chinese and Shan tribesmen led to Margary deciding to go in advance as scout, and he left the main party on 19th February with five Chinese companions. Three days later word came back that he had been murdered at Manwyne, with rumours that 4,000 Chinese troops were on their way to annihilate the whole expedition. Before Browne had time to recover from this blow, the camp was attacked by an advance guard of the Chinese force, but was beaten off by the Sikh and Burmese soldiers. Next day confirmation of Margary's murder came from the King of Burma's commercial agent at Bhamo, and on 20th February Browne's whole expedition retraced its steps to Mandalay and Rangoon.\n\nMargary's murder, and deteriorating relations between the British and the King of Burma, prevented further expeditions from Burma; but ironically led to further progress on the Yangtze,\n\nSir Thomas Wade, British Minister at Peking, took advantage of the Chinese government's failure to protect Margary to press for further trade relaxations, and the result was the Chefoo Convention of 1876 between Wade and Viceroy Li Hung-chang. This provided for the opening of five more ports to foreign trade, and of the 400 miles of the Middle Yangtze to foreign shipping. Among the new treaty ports was Ichang, located at the upper end of the Middle Yangtze and 400 miles below Chungking, the main port of Szechwan. When the Convention was ratified in 1885, a supplementary clause provided for Chungking to become a treaty port; but not for free navigation on the 400 miles of the Upper Yangtze between Ichang and Chungking. This was granted after the Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan on the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.\n\nMore than ten years before this, however, the remarkable Archibald Little had appeared on the Yangtze scene. Little began his career as a tea taster in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon started up business on his own. He was attracted to the possibilities of trade in Szechwan and West China, and fascinated by the problems posed by steam navigation through the famous gorges of the Upper Yangtze. He made a trip by junk from Ichang to Chungking in 1883 to investigate trade and navigational prospects, and in 1887 attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking, by the Kuling. This was a Clyde built stern-wheeler of 450 tons", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207806, "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-1976", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "IN THE PATH OF THE ANCIENT MON --PAGAN, PEGU and NAKORN PATHOM\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nThe fourth overseas tour of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society and the third led by the author of this article, went to Burma from 26 December 1975 to 2 January 1976. Forty-two members and guests went on the tour, and most stayed on for a two-day extension in Bangkok.\n\nMount Popa, the extinct volcano which is the home of the 37 nat or spirits worshipped by the originally animistic Burmese, can be clearly seen on fine days as the plane comes to land at Nyaung-U. But the short drive from there to Pagan past an incredible number of vast ruined brown brick temples (whitewashed where they are still in use), soon gives an idea of the Kings' and peoples' devotion to Buddhism and the splendid ensemble Pagan must have been at the time of its greatness. This lasted from 1057, the date of the conquest of Thaton by the Burmese king Anawratha, to 1287 when the grandson of Kublai Khan, Prince Ye-su Timur, occupied the city and overthrew the dynasty. Some 5,000 temples still remain in part but virtually no lay buildings, with the exception of the traces of the city wall of Pagan and the Sarabha gate to the old city dating from the 9th century. Both are probably relics of the period of the Pyu, about whom little is known after 832 since they became totally absorbed by the incoming Burmese quite early.\n\nAnawratha brought from Thaton to Pagan thirty elephant loads of sacred texts, many monks, innumerable craftsmen as well as the conquered Mon royal family, and Mon culture was dominant in the early period of Pagan, to the extent that the Burmese adopted and still use the Mon script. Mon buildings were characterised by narrow blocked windows and a certain functional squatness. The materials used were brick, with a true arch, which was covered with stucco into which were sometimes inserted green glazed terracotta plaques. The inside of the buildings was nearly always covered in paintings applied to a dry surface and so not correctly frescoes. The buildings essentially form two different types. The first is the solid stupa, often raised on receding terraces, and the second a...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207809, "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-1976", "page_number": 197, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "182\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nwhitewashed, and any paintings there might have been are obliterated. The views from the upper floor, particularly over the river and the plain at sunset, are of remarkable beauty and peace. The Manabodhi is a late temple modelled on the Pala decorated spire. The Shwesandaw pagoda outside the old city walls is a solid stupa raised on five terraces and was the first built after the conquest of Thaton and nearby is the Shinbinthalyaung or sleeping Buddha of the 11th century; like most such images, being horizontal rather than vertical, it fails to impress and is too narrowly confined within its building.\n\nIn the village of Nyang-U is to be found the much-revered Shwezigon pagoda, which is believed to contain a bone and a tooth of the Buddha. It was started by Anawratha and completed by Kyanzittha. The gilded cone of the stupa cannot be seen at present as it is sheathed in a decorative and complex framework of bamboo scaffolding in order that repairs to earthquake damage can be carried out. The only noticeable damage was to the hti or gilded and jewelled ornamental umbrella at the top, which as Groslier pointed out were 18th and 19th century additions to temples of no archeological and little artistic consequence. However, the Shwezi-gon hti is currently displayed in a building on the ground floor and one can see the precious stones close to. Of more consequence is the magnificent Kubyaukki near Wetkyiin village. This is fairly late, dating from the early 13th century and relatively small, with a stupa in the Bodh Gaya form. Its importance lies in the very good state of preservation of the wall paintings, neatly lined up in rows and illustrating the Jataka tales with a Burmese inscription beneath each scene. The colours are still in very good condition. Unfortunately most of the paintings on the lower half of the nave were removed to Germany by Thomann at the end of the nineteenth century, but what remains in place is extremely fine.\n\nHtilomino, built in 1211, is a double-storeyed building like the Thatbinnyu. There is some excellent stucco decoration still on the building, particularly on the frieze below the cornice, the ornamental corner pilasters and the pediments of the arches. There are four Buddhas on the ground floor as well as the floor above. Like all the other temples, this was once painted, but little remains except some decoration on the vaulting. Sulamani and Dhammayangyi are located near to each other and are superficially similar, the former dating from 1183 and the latter from the middle of the 12th", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207810, "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-1976", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Ancient Mon--Pagan, Peru & NAKORN PATHOM\n\n183\n\ncentury. The main vestibule of Sulamani faces east and the upper storey is reached by two stairways built into the walls; it is almost the same height as the ground floor. Sulamani used to have good paintings but these have been lost and newer ones dating from the 19th century cover the old ones. The Dhammayangyi is a single-storey building rising in stepped levels and closely resembles the Ananda in structure. The quality of the brickwork is excellent.\n\nLastly, of the many temples to be visited in Pagan, there are two not strictly speaking temples. The Pitakat Taik was built as a library by Anawratha in 1058 to house the Buddhist scriptures he took from the sack of Thaton. It is a modest square building with small Mon windows, but the roof, rather elaborate, already bears the traces of baroque flamboyance of later Burmese styles; it was repaired in 1783 by King Bodawpaya and is currently being repaired again. The Upalithein is a long, low ordination hall of the 13th century with a battlemented roof. Inside are paintings of the 17th or 18th century which are bright and arresting, though without the interest and minute detail of the early paintings to be seen elsewhere in Pagan. Only the two temples near Minnanthu are omitted from this list of the major temples in Pagan; these are Nandamannya, which is a small vaulted chamber with one entrance and paintings of a Mahayanist Tantric nature from the middle of the 13th century, and the triple form of the Payathonzu temple, late 13th century, with paintings of a similar character in the corridors and vaults linking the three main cores. The two are difficult to reach without sturdy transport.\n\nIf this catalogue of temples gives the impression that there is nothing else to see in Pagan, it would be false. There is a cottage lacquer industry, another weaving traditional shoulder bags, and making cheroots; one can take boat trips on the Irrawaddy at sunset and make journeys by pony and trap and see the colourful display of fruit and vegetables in the village's markets. But the setting of these scenes of daily life is subservient to the temples, and the arid landscape, for Pagan is the centre of the dry zone of Burma, in which they are placed, is balanced in some measure by the majesty of the river flowing through. One is left with the impression of scrub, sandy tracks, and marvellous brown brick temples arising on all sides as far as the eye can see.\n\nIn Mandalay, to the north, where the evening cool in winter is even more striking than in Pagan, the two most impressive temples", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207811, "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-1976", "page_number": 199, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "184\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nare those that form a complete contrast with the classical structures of the first major Burmese capital. These are the 19th century temples in wood. The Shwenandaw was built by Thibaw in 1880, five years before he was taken away in captivity by the British and the kingdom ended. Most of the materials came from part of a palace occupied by King Mindon which was dismantled. The elaboration of the carving is overwhelming and one suspects that to like it, after the sober majesty of Pagan, is to border on bad taste. The Shweinbin to the south of the city is even more elaborate, and still being a very active monastery the monks' saffron robes form a strong contrast to the teak wood greying with age, sun and rain on the outside. Like all wooden buildings these temples are raised above the ground on pillars and the space beneath is used for storage.\n\nMandalay has few other temples of note; those on the hill are mostly modern, and the Kuthodaw near its base dates from 1857 and is more important for the 729 stone slabs containing all the Buddhist scriptures which King Mindon had made for the Fifth Synod. The authorized version of the Tripitaka was inscribed on the slabs, each beneath its own vaulted canopy. Atumashi was built in 1880 and resembles more an Italian palace, but as only the base remains after a fire in 1890 it is hard to judge fairly. The Mahamuni was rebuilt after a fire in the 19th century and is architecturally without interest. The gold-covered bronze image is much revered and seen at night with chanting monks and the faithful at its feet is impressive.\n\nThe most interesting thing in the temple, apart from the stalls lining the temple approach, are the six bronze figures in one of the adjacent buildings. They are two of men, one probably a warrior, three of lions, and one of a three-headed elephant (erewar) and are undoubtedly Khmer, possible of the 12th century. They were probably taken by the Siamese at the sack of Angkor in the 15th century and removed to Ayuthia. The Burmese king Bayinnaung took them from Ayuthia when he sacked the city in 1563 to the then capital at Pegu. King Rajagyi of Arakan took them as spoils of war from Pegu and they were taken from Arakan by Bodawpaya in 1784 to Mandalay.\n\nThe journey to Sagaing takes one past the numerous sites of the capitals of the Alaungpaya dynasty which estimated that a new centre would give a new direction to adverse fortune associated with the old. In this way Shwebo was capital from 1752 to 1765, Ava from 1765 to 1783, Amarapura from 1783 to 1823, Ava again", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207813, "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-1976", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "186\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nWith Pegu one is back to the culture of the early inhabitants of Burma, the Mons. Their original centre was around Thaton, further east than Pegu and this was certainly in existence by the 5th century AD. It was a Mon monk who had converted the Burmese King Anawrahta in the middle of the 11th century to Buddhism, and the king had requested certain relics and texts from king Manuha, who had refused. The result of the refusal was the destruction of the Mon kingdom but its cultural preeminence was recognised in the religion, architecture and art of early Pagan. After the fall of Pagan the Mons reestablished their kingdom, first at Mataram, and then, from 1369 at Pegu (Hanthawaddy or Hamsavati). They were temporarily ruled by the Burmese from 1539-1550 and again from 1551-1740; but Mon independence was due to be short-lived and the last king Binnya Dala was killed in 1747 by Alaungpaya and the Mons, like the Chams in Vietnam, then became a people without a country, though they still exist in large numbers in lower Burma near Moulmein and also in scattered villages in central Thailand.\n\nPegu is a day trip out of Rangoon, but as much as the present capital now reflects the condition of contemporary Burma, so Pegu is lost in its past. Its most famous sight is the Shwemawdaw pagoda, centred round a stupa with a broad stepped octagonal base and which is still taller than the Shwedagon in Rangoon. It is in many ways the palladium of Mon culture. Its foundation date is not known, but it was already raised in height by the Mon king Thamala in 825. In the twentieth century it suffered three severe earthquakes, and the present spire effectively dates from 1954 when restoration was completed. A number of ancient Buddha images was found when much of the stupa collapsed in the 1930 earthquake. Not very far from the Shwemawdaw is the spot where the two Hamsa birds alighted, one on the other's back, on a shallow spot in what was then the sea. The Hamsa is the symbol of the Mons and is also of course the mount of Brahma. This site is the Hinthagone, which now boasts a rather horrible modern shrine with vulgar paintings of hamsas but with a good view towards the Shwemawdaw. Hardly less vulgar is the reclining Buddha, the Shwethalyaung, reputed to be largest such image and certainly one of the ugliest. It was originally built in 994 but fell into disrepair and was restored in the 15th century. It was neglected again and became overgrown, to be rediscovered by a railway engineer at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207814, "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-1976", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "THE ANCIENT MON--PAGAN, PERU & NAKORN PATHOM 187\n\nend of the last century. The iron shed that covers it exactly reproduces the architecture of railway stations at the turn of the century, and the quality of the decoration is likewise Burmese Victorian. The clumsiness of the feet, which are iconographically incorrect, does not however apparently disturb the local people in their veneration of the statue. The four-imaged Kyaikpan pagoda is much ruined; the Buddha's back on to a central solid square core. It was originally built by Dhammaceti (Damuazedi), a Mon king of great piety who reigned from 1472-1492. The images, of plaster on brick, have been much restored.\n\nRangoon was at first a Mon village called Dagon centred around the Shwedagon pagoda, the origins of which are lost in time. The shrine is said to cover a number of the Buddha's relics. The Mon king Binnya-U is recorded to have raised the height of the stupa to sixty-six feet in 1362. The present height of 326 feet was reached in 1774. The shape is that common in Burma, of a square base to the main terrace for the pradakshina, then the beginning of the bell after a square base with recessed edges: multiple mouldings, the bud and the hti follow. The whole is gilded where it is not actually covered with gold plates and the hti is gilded and encrusted in stones. Of perhaps greater interest are the innumerable baroque shrines round the bases of the stupa and the vast crowds of pilgrims coming for their devotions. By night the illuminated gold stupa is to be seen from the distance in impressive display.\n\nThere are no other monuments in Rangoon of interest; the Sule pagoda, reputed to be ancient, is a modern jumble. The bargaining in Scott's market or the buying in the diplomatic shop is more representative of the capital today. But the National Museum, consisting almost exclusively of the relics of Thibaw's regalia taken by the British and kept until quite recently in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, have now been returned and are well displayed. They have often been described before; the luxury of the jewel-encrusted objects, the ornamental hamsa, and the robes are in complete contrast with the austerity and constraints of present day Burma.\n\nIn Rangoon can be seen a 'cultural show' representing various traditional dance forms. The uncourtly little jumps and hops in the classical dances are as surprising as they are interesting. But the soul of Burmese dance and entertainment is not in this, nor in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207817, "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-1976", "page_number": 205, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "190\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nthe plots are largely traditional stories of love, transubstantiation and the magical. The music is strident and the voices, singing rhyming couplets, not without beauty. Not as lively as the Burmese pwe (the Thai version of which is the likay), the hoon krabawk is an interesting dramatic art which deserves to survive the rival but mundane attractions of the cinema and television.\n\nThe vestiges of the early Mon can be explored further by visiting the ancient sites of Sri Thep and Lampoon (the old Haripunchai) in Thailand and their present situation seen in villages in the Laadgrabang and Prapadaeng areas near Bangkok or, if one could get there, in lower Burma in the Ye or Kyaikkami (Amherst) district.\n\nAs a theme on which to build a visit to Burma with an extension in Bangkok the Mons, with their distinguished cultural past, may start as an excuse but become a justification; they established the earliest kingdoms in the mainland Southeast Asian region, were the first to be Buddhist and gave their religion to the incoming Burmese, Thai and Lao peoples, and built the earliest surviving religious shrines. Their influence can still be seen in the Buddhism of the region and in the use of the Burmese script. If today they are dispersed, dispossessed and disappearing, they have a noble place in antiquity.\n\nYogyakarta, January 1976.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212606, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "140\n\ninhabitants got to know us better; they accepted our lack of dinner jackets, our effect on the drink stock at the Club, our — regrettable — neglect of the traffic signals, and our other little mannerisms, and treated us right royally.\n\nThere were two seasons in Maymyo, the second and briefer one, lasting several weeks, towards the end of the rains in October. The Club, a long rambling creeper-covered building, became gay with visitors. It looked out over a pleasance, cleared from the jungle, and spreading a mile towards the reservoir dam, built by Turkish prisoners in the last war. It goes without saying that a race course and golf links were laid out over the meadowland, very pleasant to behold. But here we were next door to India. The plumbing in the gentlemen's cloak room, consisted of a row of rusty and battered enamel utensils, set out at more or less even intervals on a long low shelf. Without the door, a shadow hovered, poised to dash in the moment he heard the rattle of a utensil returned to the board. No Americans visited Maymyo while I was there. It would have been interesting to hear their first reactions to these Arcadian simplicities.\n\nAfter all Burma was a rich enough country; it was not any lack of money that left it a Victorian remnant. Amongst the Burmese there is no caste, nor is there any desire to work. The house servants everywhere are Indians, of whom there were over a million in the country. Of the annual increase of 5,000,000 in India, a substantial proportion must be of the sweeper caste. Amidst a population with so abnormal a rate of procreation, the border line between a sufficiency and famine is a fine one, easily crossed; and any modernisation of sanitary installations would create serious unemployment: thus in India the vested interest in caste puts the brake, not only on plumbing, but on all progress; and Burma, until recently had been the backwater of India.\n\nI spent six months in Burma, but had little opportunity to learn much of the country. I saw very little of the Burmese, and never met one of those attractive country maids, who wait by the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking out to sea. Of the seventeen million inhabitants, only ten million are Burmans; besides the Indians, there are 300,000 Chinese, and the remainder are tribesmen from the hills.\n\nThe history of Burma is a bloody one; the country had seldom for long been united. The Chinese under Kublai Khan, the Mongol,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212607, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "141\n\nThe Mongols conquered Burma in 1287, but the conquest did not last long; and a later invasion was repulsed in 1769. The British came in the nineteenth century to occupy Lower Burma. The French established themselves in Indo-China, whence they intrigued into Upper Burma, producing a situation not unlike that which, ten years later, led to the Fashoda incident on the Nile. The British, who had been having trouble with King Thibaw, decided to forestall French projects, and march on Mandalay. Upper Burma was annexed and the Court of Ava sent into exile. The British are not Burma's real problem: they have, as usual, provided stability and security. The danger lies to the West and to the East, where 400 millions in India and 450 millions in China, hem in a small country. It is not as if Burma is densely populated; the density is only 64 to the square mile, as against 295 in India and 145 in China.\n\nBurmese intercourse, facilitated by easy sea communications, has been greater with India than with China. In 1936 the overland trade with China amounted barely to a paltry 1,000,000 rupees. The subsequent increase brought about by the opening of the Burma road was quite artificial, the result of the blockade of the China coast by the Japanese. When the artificial conditions cease, the trade will revert to its normal channels, round by sea, and over the Indo-China railway or up the Yangtze.\n\nOwing to the relative short range of Indian pressure, overwhelming Indian penetration was what the Burmese had to fear most in the past, but signs are not lacking that the psychological effect of the building of the Burma road, and subsequently the behaviour of the Chinese troops, who retreated through Burma in 1942, may have changed the emphasis. Time will show.\n\nAlready in 1941 the most virulent whispering campaigns flourished, aimed at the Chinese, and directed more especially at the alleged graft and incompetence on the Burma road. That the Japanese were behind these campaigns is as probable as the plausibility which these rumours derived from the actual state of affairs on the road. Later, there were mixed feelings, when the Chinese troops entered Burma to take part in the defence; it would not be too strong to say that in many native quarters their entry was viewed with suspicion.\n\nAs is known, part of the Chinese troops retreated in 1942 into India, where they were reorganised and trained by American officers, but paid and equipped by the British taxpayer, under reverse lease-lend. It may be news, even to General Stilwell, that the idea of training and equipping\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212608, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "142\n\nChinese troops in India was no new one. Sir Henry Wade, who was British Minister to the Imperial Court at Peking in the 1870's had the same idea, frequently pressed, but without success.\n\nSun Yat Sen, if one is to judge from what he writes in the \"Three Principles\", claimed that Burma should belong to China. For several centuries, it is true, though maybe spasmodically, the Court of Ava sent a decennial tribute mission to Peking, and this continued even after the British occupation, until 1896, in much the same way as Siam, for instance, sent a mission every four years; but there seems little doubt that the Burmese considered the mission more in the nature of a cultural courtesy than as a token of submission. Any reassertion by China to a claim to tribute would undoubtedly be resented.\n\nThe Burmese, like the Indians, take religion seriously. Every Burmese young man spends a period, even if only a few days, in a Buddhist temple. The monks, or pongyis, as they are called, number about 1% of the Buddhist population. Their shaven heads and yellow robes are a common sight, particularly in the morning hours when they go around with the wooden bowl, begging for the day's share of rice. In recent years they have taken an active part in politics, and there was some evidence that the Japanese were using them as a fifth column. The Chinese troops, during the fighting, were so convinced of this that they shot any they caught. The political activities of the pongyis are not approved of by many true Buddhists, and opinion should be reserved on this aspect, until more is known about the facts.\n\nThe Burmese enjoyed a large measure of self-government. Unfortunately the sense of responsibility in their politicians was insufficient to overcome the native propensity for intrigue and corruption. The graft in the administration stank to high heaven: it was a situation in which Japanese money could talk. The Prime Minister himself, U Saw, slipped up and had to be arrested for high treason; as it happened, while passing through Honolulu, only a few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbour.\n\nMeanwhile, Germany had invaded Russia, the British entered Syria, the Japanese entered Indo-China, General Tojo formed a new government, the U.S.A. decided to arm her merchant ships, and the Bush Warfare School staged a demonstration for Mr. Duff Cooper and the Governor of Burma. On the edge of the jungle a small fort had been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212819, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "BEHIND THE FRONT LINES IN BURMA THE MARCHES OF THE SALWEEN BORDER\n\n1942-1944\n\nP.H. MUNRO-FAURE*\n\n113\n\nI had lost what was left of my worldly possessions in a fire which had unfortunately destroyed one of the temples at Chin Ya and so I took the opportunity of a period of leave in India to refit. By August I was back in Kun-Ming.\n\nYunnan province is recognised by all to be one of the provinces in China least affected by western ideas. It is a remote province, appointment to which in the old imperial days was considered by Chinese officials a form of banishment, indicating imperial disapproval. Until 1254 the semi-independent Shan kingdom of Nanchao shut off communications between China and Burma. In that year the capture of Talifu, the Shan Capital, by Kublai Khan extended Chinese control westwards to the Burmese border, where however through the centuries the March Barons, or Shan Sawbwas, continued to behave as independently as they might, sometimes affecting allegiance to the overlord in the East and sometimes to the overlord in the West, the kingdom of Ava.\n\nUnlike the British policy of indirect rule, which leaves the population in the Shan States on the Burmese side of the border under the administration of their own princes, with some restriction regarding the imposition of the capital sentence, the Chinese policy has been to displace the tribal chieftains by Chinese magistrates. With a few minor exceptions on the immediate border there are thus no Shan Sawbwas left inside China. As for the tribal people, they are gradually driven by the encroaching Chinese into the remoter regions and out of the valleys onto the mountain slopes: they are suffering the fate that awaits weaker peoples in the rough and tumble of natural selection.\n\nIn 1855 a great Mohammedan rebellion, known as the Panthay rebellion, broke out and a Mohammedan ruler set himself up in western Yunnan, styling himself the Sultan Suleiman. The Chinese recovered his capital again, Talifu, in 1873, put the city to the sack and destroyed\n\n*This is the fourth and concluding extract from Lt Colonel Munro-Faure's memoirs (Editor)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212820, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "114\n\nits population. With the fall of Tengyueh, soon after, the rebellion was finally suppressed. Survivors of Sultan Suleiman's family took refuge with King Mindon at the Court of Ava in Mandalay. Two years later a British consular official, Margary, who had been appointed with the consent of the Chinese government to accompany a British expedition, which was to leave Bhamo to explore a commercial route to Tengyueh - now called Tengchung - was murdered under treacherous circumstances near the latter town. It was thought at the time, but not proven, that a Chinese official, named Li Su Tai, whose mother was Burmese, was implicated: the incident led to negotiations between the Chinese and British governments and was settled by the Chefoo Convention.\n\nAfter the British occupied Mandalay and Upper Burma in 1885 they sought to define the boundary between Burma and China. The question was not found to be easy because the Chinese advanced claims to large sections of territory which had obviously been part of the Kingdom of Ava. However, a considerable length of boundary was agreed upon and marked by enormous stones: they are the size of a small cottage, I suppose to discourage easy removal, and each stone is numbered and its position is marked on the quarter-inch map. The length of border left undefined made for an unsatisfactory situation, not unlike that between the United States and Mexico before that boundary was fixed, or like the situation which now exists on the border between China and Tibet. Various attempts were subsequently made to agree the undelimitated part of the boundary, and by 1942 only a stretch of the frontier from just N.W. of Tengchung up to Tilset remained undemarcated.\n\nThe railway from Haiphong, through Indo-China, reached Kun-ming in the early years of this century and so opened the province to French influence; whether, however, owing to strong local conservatism or a lack of enterprise on the part of the French, their influence appears to have left little mark. It was only with the opening of the Burma road in 1939 that Yunnan for the first time felt the full impact of the modern world.\n\nI had had no previous experience of western China. I knew that Lung Yun, the Old Dragon, as the Governor of Yunnan was generally called, had for long been almost independent of the National Government. It was only with the transfer of Government troops to Burma through Yunnan in 1942, and their subsequent retreat to Yunnan, where they remained, that the Chungking government had established a partial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212822, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "116\n\nAmerican air forces based in China and to the extensive establishments supplied to train and equip the Chinese Expeditionary Force, as the army which had been built up in Yunnan by the Chungking government to assist in driving the Japanese out of Burma was called.\n\nI was sent to Kun-ming to see about giving assistance to the Myosa of Kokang, prince of a small Burmese border state. The longest unnavigable river in the world, the Salween, rises in Tibet, flows through China, and enters Burma at about the level of Bhamo. For a stretch the river flows from east to west; to the north of it the territory is still China, to the south lies Kokang. The river then leaves China altogether, bends south, and lower down at Kunlong receives the Nam Ting flowing in from the east. The Nam Ting forms the southern boundary of Kokang, while the mountain-tops that divide the Salween watershed from the next river to the east form the state's eastern boundary. The stones marking this boundary were set up in 1898 as a result of the agreements made at that time. Kokang also spreads across the Salween to the territories of the large Shan state of North Shenwi, of which Kokang is actually a sub-state. The greater part of Kokang though is sandwiched between the Salween and China. Kunlong is the site of one of the most frequented of the Salween ferries, and it is down the valley of the Nam Ting that the projected railway from Kun-ming to Lashio, connecting China with Burma, will run. The embankments to carry the line had been nearly completed before the Japanese advance into Burma put an end to the work. To the south of the Nam Ting are situated the Wa states, inhabited by wild head-hunting tribes.\n\nThe Myosa of Kokang was a most loyal subject of the British crown, and because of that loyalty he was to suffer great injuries. When the Japanese advanced up the length of Burma in 1942, the British troops, who were covering the western flank, that is the flank towards India, withdrew into India. The civil administrative staff of the Shan States also withdrew to the west, while the Chinese armies, on the eastern flank,\n\n\"One British administrative officer, Evans, withdrew from Kengtung, away to the south of Kokang, into south-west Yunnan. He had established cordial relations with the Chinese troops there, and with their assistance organised local levies, drawn from the dispersed ranks of the Burma Rifle regiments; he used these to wage a small campaign of his own against the enemy until he was killed during an assault on a position manned by Siamese troops. He died unknown, unsupported, unrewarded, but not unsung, because at a time when throughout the East the British star was thought to have set for all time, this lonely man left a record of British pluck which will long be remembered on the border.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212823, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "117\n\nwithdrew partly into India and partly back into Yunnan. Kokang was left high and dry. Undaunted the Myosa from his own funds purchased what weapons he could from the retreating Chinese troops and the disbanded men of the Burma Rifles, who had been instructed to disperse to their villages with their weapons, which were to be retained for local protection until the British returned. He acquired several hundred rifles, a small stock of ammunition, and a few Bren guns, and organised his own force, the Kokang Defence Force. Fortunately the prowess of the force, which could scarcely have proved high in the face of the battle-trained troops of Japan, was not put to the test. The Japanese advance stopped at the Salween, a convenient barrier on which to consolidate their East Wall in Burma.\n\nThe Myosa, left thus in a most dangerous situation, in the front line, as it were, of the Allied positions, applied to the nearby ally, China, for assistance. The Chinese who were themselves receiving equipment from America for their forces in this part of the world, could spare him no equipment, but undertook to train officers for his force. The quality of the training so provided will grow evident as this story unfolds.\n\nIn 1943 the Myosa made the journey to Kun-ming to apply to the British authorities for assistance and it was at the British Consul General's* house in Kun-ming that I met him. I saw an alert slight figure, young looking and brisk for his 45 years, dressed in a western suit of Palm Beach cloth. He looked Chinese, but I believe there is also an admixture of tribal blood, possibly Shan; there is, of course, a good deal of intermingling throughout all that border country. The prince spoke Burmese and Chinese, but very little English: though his schooling on the border had probably been rough and ready, he possessed in a strong degree that charm, which goes with a courtesy so cultivated that it becomes natural and can conceal the aptitude for decision based on a habit of command. The prince was accompanied by his son, a capable young man in his early twenties, who had been educated at the Princes' School in Taungyi and spoke excellent English. The Myosa explained to us, his son serving as interpreter, the difficulties of his position, the trouble he was having with Chinese troops, a battalion of whom had been stationed in Southern Kokang, and the hope that we might be able to come to his support. We discussed the situation and the nature of the\n\n*Strangely, he had been the Consul at Kiu Kiang in 1927, from whose house we retired to the warships", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212827, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "121\n\nWe were in the meantime collecting personnel and stores for Kokang. The trip in the 15 cwt. lorry in and out of Kun-ming each day required a gallon and a half of petrol; we could only replace our small stock by purchases in the black market, at a cost of around £2 per gallon. Opportunely we found accommodation in the city; for myself I shared a house with the officer who was stationed in Kun-ming to distribute the supplies received by the R.A.F. 'plane which flew over the Hump once a week.\n\nThese few supplies had to be stretched to meet the needs of all the British establishments in China, the Embassy, the various Consulates, the British Military Mission in that far-away place, their Headquarters in Chungking, and various odd parties, such as the one to which I was attached. The R.A.F. officer in question was Australian; J.K. was one of the most unselfish persons I have ever met, was most helpful to all the different parties he had to try to please, and had an extraordinary talent for making friends, a talent of which I unblushingly took advantage. He had not been long in Kun-ming before he had more friends amongst the Chinese and Americans than any other British officer in the place.\n\nMeanwhile time continued to pass; a couple of months flew by, the end of the rains approached in Burma, and the British tried to make their plans. Then suddenly one morning I received information from the Headquarters of the Chinese Expeditionary Force that a mob of Kokang rebels, dissatisfied with the Myosa, had attacked him. He managed to escape with a broken leg, but his fourth son and a number of his followers were killed; he succeeded in making his way to Tetang in China, where he took refuge at the headquarters of the Chinese general commanding the division in that area. The report added that the Chinese had instructed the Myosa's brother, who happened to be at Tetang at the time, to proceed to Kokang to re-establish order, and sometime later we received news that Chinese troops had captured the ring-leaders of the rebels and executed them. It was all very sudden.\n\nAt the end of October we at last received the long-awaited reply from the Chinese government. It was a refusal to issue passes on the grounds that the present time was not considered suitable for the despatch of a small party of British officers to the Sino-Burmese border. Soon after I returned to India and new plans were prepared. In the absence of Chinese co-operation, it was proposed to drop a party by parachute into Kokang, and to obviate the necessity of maintaining them entirely by ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212829, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "123\n\nHeadquarters of the C.E.F. was stationed. The British Assistant Military Attache from Kun-ming went with me to introduce me to the Chief of Staff, from whom we were to receive our passes. The Chief of Staff was not particularly affable. There was some talk of wireless and he stated we would have to supply photographs in duplicate for every member of our party: no easy matter in a small upcountry town in a land which had been closed to foreign imports for many years. However, we were lucky and found a small photographer in the place who still had some film and undertook to produce the required photographs. Next day when these were presented at the Headquarters we were informed that after all they would not be necessary; all that would be required was my own photograph in duplicate, a contingency for which I had been well prepared having armed myself with a dozen before I left India. Even then there was delay in preparing the pass and it was not till late on the afternoon of the second day that I was able to leave. The reason for the various delays became apparent later. The parachute party had reported that the Myosa was held a close prisoner by the Chinese at Tetang. My route lay through Tetang, but when we arrived there we found the Myosa had already been removed further into China. They were evidently anxious I should not meet him and wished to allow sufficient time to get him out of the way. They were holding him for trial on a charge of treasonable relations with the Japanese.\n\nOn arrival at Paoshan we found our parachute party living in the American officers' mess; the Colonel in charge was our old friend from Kun-ming. He went out of his way to make us all feel at home; he found us quarters, he fed us, and he sent our signals for us. After talking the position over with the parachute officers, I decided to send one of them back to report: that left us a party of twelve. Stan, the chief parachutist, was an expert in many lines: Bren gun, Tommy gun, machine guns, he had even taken an armourer's course, an additional accomplishment which turned out most useful. Jack had spent most of his life in Burma; he not only spoke Burmese fluently, but he also spoke Kachin, an important point, as we were to enter country bordering on Kachin land and we were anxious to enlist the co-operation of those doughty tribesmen in our work. They had already acquired a great reputation for their fighting qualities further north. We were three British officers and three Chinese interpreters, one Burmese-Chinese interpreter, two Hong Kong wireless operators, a medical orderly, and Rogue and Lao Teng. The interpreters were all men who had escaped from Hongkong and had registered with the British Relief Organisation maintained at Kweilin to...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212834, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "128\n\nthat serve as leaves in this plant threw a new light on the perils of parachuting. The weather was propitious and the sortie a success. The supplies included a small proportion of gifts with which we were able to show our appreciation to the battalion commander, whose troops had provided most welcome assistance. On completion of the sortie I despatched Stan up the valley to enter Kokang further south towards Sincheng, where the Myosa's brother had his headquarters, and more especially to search for a suitable dropping zone inside Kokang, and not too near the Salween. Jack had already gone on into Kokang to Nancha, the place where the parachute party had stayed, and shortly after I broke camp to join him.\n\nMany paths over the mountains connect China and Burma throughout the length of the border; passage is unrestricted and along these paths the Chinese people are gradually infiltrating, circulating as hawkers, establishing their little shops, or cultivating a small plot of land. In Kok-ang the population was very mixed as it is all along the border country. Over half the population was now of Chinese blood; up on the mountains were many Lihsaw and Palaung villages. The Chinese distinguish between ‘Land' Shans and 'Water' Shans, Han Payee and Shui Payee; one meets them all through Western Yunnan and Eastern Burma, and Kokang had a proportion. There were also occasional Was and Kachins. The best description of all this country is to be found in Maurice Collis' Lords of the Sunset; and Where China meets Burma, a book written by a government official's wife, Beatrix Metford.\n\nOver a third of Burma is occupied by the hill people; they number three-and-a-half millions, and are governed by their chieftains and princes on the British principle of indirect rule; the princes come directly under the Governor of Burma and not under the corrupt clique of professional politicians, who have formed the core of the Burmese legislative assemblies during the past few years. The unit of control under the chief is the circle, which contains more or fewer villages, each under its own headman. The system has many feudal features well adapted to these conservative and primitive people. Nancha, where we stayed for a time, contained the residence of the circle headman of that district, a dear old gentleman, who could neither read nor write, but employed a Chinese writer for the purpose. The writer had married one of his daughters, as often happens, and lived in one wing of the house. The better houses are built round the four sides of an inner courtyard; the pack animals, the cows, and the pigs, may be housed on the lower", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212836, "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "130\n\nthe new officer to remove himself and his troops from the village where we were staying immediately. Poor man, he was only obeying his orders and did not know what to do; but he went. After that we were only watched by plain clothes men; but the dismissal of the escort, or prisoner's guard, as it would be called to the natives, showed the natives that we intended to be masters in our house, and helped to break down the fear under which they laboured.\n\nI was sorry to lose the men of the escort: they came from far away Hunan, and were good representatives of the salty peasant stock of a great nation.\n\nExcept on certain main routes used by the Chinese troops the villages in Kokang were not deserted, like many of those we had passed in Yunnan. It is an old story. A British officer, H.P. Davies, who was travelling through these parts in 1895, wrote: 'Our first march only took us back to Na-hsang, the place I had passed through on my way to Tawnio. This village which appeared quite prosperous a month before, we found almost entirely deserted. On enquiry we learned that some Chinese soldiers were expected there soon as escort to the boundary commission. No doubt these worthy villagers had had previous experience of Chinese troops and were determined to hide themselves and their property as much as possible.\n\nTawnio in Burmese, and Malipa in Chinese, is the name of the chief town in south Kokang; Na-hsang is a village across the border on the Chinese side. Here again it is most unfair to blame the Chinese troops. They are expected to move without commissariat and to live off the country; they have no money with which to pay for what they take, so no wonder the people of the villages make themselves scarce.\n\nAt Nancha we came across the makings of a small tragedy. The old headman had two unmarried daughters - his son had been carried off by the Chinese to attend school at Kun-ming, in other words he was a hostage - the elder of whom had bound feet, and the younger not bound. The modern young men would no longer look at any girl with bound feet; that was out of fashion; but until the elder sister was married, the younger, a bright good-looking girl, could not marry. It was a puzzle to which there appeared to be no solution. But the women in these parts are very independent; I heard later that the younger girl had run away from home and married the swain of her choice by just going to live", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212840, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "134\n\ngovernment, after the withdrawal of the British, became useless: the Japanese issued a new rupee paper note of their own, and compelled the people in the areas occupied by them to accept it. In Kokang the only money now acceptable was silver rupees. We had brought some in with us, and further substantial sums were dropped to us by air: it created a problem over the border in China, where the currency situation was so desperate. Our rupees were used to pay for any services or supplies we received from the local population, and they doubtless quickly found their way to the border, where a heavy demand for silver existed owing to the continuous fall in value of the Chinese currency and where, consequently, a rupee would fetch over a hundred dollars. Curiously, Chinese half-dollar silver pieces were still current though not common on the Chinese side of the border, perhaps the only district in China where silver coins still existed, as the Chinese government had gone off the silver standard years before, and withdrawn all silver coins; the silver half-dollar was naturally worth far more than the paper dollar.\n\nOne headman asked me if I could not rescue his son from China. It was a sordid story, the details of which only reached me by degrees, but it is a story which should be told.\n\nLopez was the son of a Filipino father and a Burmese mother. He had spent most of his life in Burma, but claimed American citizenship. The Americans, working from the side of India, were anxious to obtain intelligence about conditions in eastern Burma, and so they trained Lopez, gave him a commission, borrowed some Indian wireless operators from the British, obtained for him a Chinese pass, and sent him with a party into Kokang. They sent him very secretly, a precaution which was not unwise in view of the speed at which news travels on the border; but they overlooked the necessity of informing the American officers with the Chinese Expeditionary Force.\n\nLopez arrived in Kokang in the autumn of 1934, set up his wireless, and began to collect information, a work at which he would have achieved considerable success. I found he had left a very favourable impression on the local population; some of the men who were subsequently to do the most useful work for us had first been engaged by him. The attack on the Myosa upset his arrangements; Lopez knew too much about this, and perhaps spoke indiscreetly; anyhow the Chinese decided to get rid of him. Although he had a Chinese pass, the Chinese went to the American officers attached to the C.E.F., and reported the presence of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212845, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "139\n\na mess for the British, with a kitchen where Lao Teng ruled: similar buildings for our Chinese, Burmese, Kachin and Chin assistants; and barracks for the K.D.F. We also built a store-room, where one of our Chinese assistants, a most excellent man who had previously worked in the service of one of the few remaining Chinese sawbwas, presided; an armoury, where Stan played about with screwdrivers in his spare moments; and an office, and a wireless station. As our party grew larger we kept on having to increase the accommodation.\n\n―\n\nAt most times of the day there would be a small crowd of visitors from distant villages, sitting on their haunches outside the office, with offerings of eggs and chickens, or wandering through the camp looking at everything. They too were much impressed with our water-works. But the main show-piece was a Browning machine gun, which Stan had mounted on a post in the centre of the camp for A.A. protection; it was one of a number salvaged from an R.A.F. supply plane which had crashed in the mountain nearby. If we wished to impress a visiting headman we would loose off a few tracer rounds from this gun at the hawks, circling far overhead. We never hit a hawk but the demonstrations delighted these good simple people.\n\nThe furniture was mostly of the fixed type, and of bamboo: beds, shelves, hooks; baths, basins, and stools. For our mess room we borrowed a table in the local style from the headman; it was only two feet high, with benches of corresponding height, a much more comfortable height in my opinion than our own high chairs and tables. There is a good deal to be said for the argument that the nearer you sit to the ground the more sociable you feel. A dear old man, an expert in bamboo work, became one of our permanent retainers, and when anything came unstuck he would busy himself going round and doing the repairs. There were no nails.\n\nThe evenings were still chilly; at night we would light a camp fire outside the mess door and sit around and talk, often about the ration of rum which, if we were lucky, might be included next time the aircraft made a sortie. Our talk seemed to be much of food and drink; in the supplies we received from the air naturally weapons for our work took precedence, so that we had to rely much on local provender for our nourishment. With Lao Teng in the background we did not do so badly.\n\nThe Myosa's brother paid me a visit; I shall call him the Puppet,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212848, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "142\n\nfires and flying away again unable to find them. Inevitably there were some accidents and losses.\n\n―\n\n--\n\nRarely half a dozen 'planes would make a sortie the same night; we would then be busy for days collecting the heavy containers they would weigh up to three hundred pounds and carrying them back to camp. We received reinforcements; officers with long experience in the East; British wireless operators; Chin, Kachin, and Burmese assistants. Our money and our mail also came this way; Bren guns, Stens, Italian carbines, clothing, food and occasionally drink. Sometime later we were visited by two American officers attached to the Nth division; they spent the day with us. We discovered they had a partiality for Bourbon whisky, a thing most difficult to find in Calcutta. However, we thought we would plan a little surprise for them; we asked our friends in Calcutta whether they could not find a couple of bottles and include them in the next sortie. The sortie was made in due course, several containers crashed, and when we anxiously looked over the lists of contents, we sadly found that the precious bottles had \"pranged\" as Stan put it in his airforce jargon.\n\nThe problem of cutting a way through the jungle was ever present in Burma. We decided we would equip one man out of every two with a cutting implement for the purpose. There were many opinions about which implement was the best; each officer had his own idea. We left it to our 'furnishers' to supply what they had, and I have never seen such a collection of deadly looking hacking weapons as the variety sent. It included dahs, the light Burmese single-handed sword, with a blade about two feet long and in my opinion not quite heavy enough for the job; kukris, a choice for the expert; the East African panga, which I like best, but then perhaps I am prejudiced it reminded me of my days with the King's African Rifles during the last war; a short two-edged stabbing sword, obviously borrowed straight from the Roman Legion; and some quite unrecognisable kinds, probably designed by enthusiastic cranks.\n\nThe Italian carbines had been captured in Africa and were believed useful for our type of work; they only weighed four pounds, were short and handy but they had a very high muzzle velocity and kicked like an anti-tank rifle, without the rubber padding with which that rifle is fitted. They had fixed sights; on the little thirty yards range, which Stan had built in a fold of the mountain, we found they threw at least a foot off the bull; but they appeared to be fairly accurate at somewhere around", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212850, "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "144\n\nshortly after to have raised Tsai's house, so that at any rate part of his ill-gotten wealth probably fell into their hands. Tsai and the Chinese assistant commander were then taken and executed by the Chinese troops. We saw their graves at Sincheng. This had all happened some months before our arrival. While I was in Kokang at least one further store of money belonging to the Myosa was discovered and the bullion sent to Sincheng; for whose benefit, it was no part of my business to enquire.\n\nWhen the Chinese appointed the Puppet to the Myosa's position they also made him commander of the Defence Force and gave him a Chinese colonel as second-in-command. On arrival at Sincheng, as anticipated, I found the Chinese flag flying and Chinese officers, who never left the Puppet's side, behaved as if they had taken over the country. I hoped to persuade them of my friendly disposition and to enlist their co-operation. I was not successful; at a feast given by the Puppet the second-in-command got slightly drunk and openly twitted me with my alleged friendship for China, a lack of manners with which I had never before met among Chinese.\n\nAll through Kokang there are extensive poppy fields. The crop ripens in the spring. In Burma, following the Indian practice, opium was controlled by monopoly, and could only be smoked by licence. The Burmese themselves do not smoke opium, though they sometimes eat it; only persons of Chinese blood smoke. Supplies for the Burma monopoly used to come from Kokang; there was also smuggling across the border from Yunnan, where it was for long grown openly. By the efforts of the Chinese government the cultivation in Yunnan had been very largely suppressed — I myself never saw any growing in Yunnan but a great deal of opium was still smoked in Yunnan. There was no secrecy, for instance, about the opium dens in Kun-ming. So now the flow of traffic was reversed. Yunnan received its opium from Kokang and the Wa states, and the commerce in the drug must have produced large profits for those who took part in it.\n\nIn Kokang the Myosa had been the agent for the collection of the small annual house tax, of which he retained a percentage, remitting the bulk to the government. Now there was no government to which to remit, but the Puppet had heavily increased the rate of taxation, and collected it in opium. According to the reports of the village headmen he had so assessed the tax that nearly the whole of the annual opium crop went into his hands. It was a very heavy burden for the village people to bear,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214212, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "33\n\nThen there is another tale which goes as follows (Giles, 1925: Joke64): A Chinese chess player was proud of his ability, although on one occasion he lost three games in a row. The next day a friend asked him how he got on. 'I didn't win the first game,' he replied, and my opponent didn't lose the second.' 'As to the last game, I asked him to agree to a draw but he wouldn't.' Many Westerners talk as if face, which really amounts to 'worth' in the eyes of others, is only important to Asians. U Thant, the Burmese diplomat who was made Permanent Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1962, was fond of saying: 'Face is very important to Europeans.' While the author does not disagree, it would appear Asians place even more emphasis on it than do Westerners.\n\nMuch has been made recently by the media about senior civil servants not being tolerant of Radio Television Hong Kong's political satire when the foolishness of the establishment has been highlighted in an amusing way (Yeung, 1998a). It amounts to what is accepted (especially in the West) as good clean fun being taken seriously by some Hong Kong government servants (Yeung, 1998b). It largely boils down to the fact that, when the joke is on them and they lose face, civil servants are unable to accept it in good heart.\n\nAlthough a bit of a struggle at first, many Japanese politicians have now, apparently, learned more recently to accept criticism, passing it off by describing it as a form of 'art' and saying the attention he receives shows that he must be popular.10 'After all, we do not criticise those who we do not think much of, but we do criticise those who we love and esteem.'\n\nWhen China's President, Jiang Zemin, visited Hong Kong in 1998, a photograph in the Hong Kong Standard, on July 1, showed him travelling in the back of a car with his seat-belt unbuckled. Most Europeans (and some more westernised Chinese too) took this as good, mischievous fun. A letter in the same newspaper, on July 5 from a Chinese living in the United States, however, asked whether, if during colonial days a member of the British Royal Family who was visiting Hong Kong, or a British governor were caught not wearing a seat-belt, whether it would have been publicised (and by implication made fun of) in a similar way. This Overseas Chinese felt it was wrong to publish the photograph of Jiang Zemin in the Standard. In fairness, of course, until", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214847, "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": 262, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "229\n\nHong Kong, 1842-1843,\" in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 14 (1974), pp.78 and 82.\n\n37\n\nHolt, p.142.\n\n38 Milne, p. 125.\n\n41\n\n43\n\nOuchterlony, p.225.\n\nAccording to Bingham (Vol.I, pp. 184-9), the provincial authorities issued a notification on 27 June 1840 with a carefully spelled out scale of rewards and inducements. A later proclamation by the three imperial commissioners, with greatly increased rewards, is translated in his Vol. II, at pp.404-7. Deceits and kidnapping were apparently the norm in oriental wars. In describing and condemning them, the writers were but echoing the similar complaints made by their brother officers during the First Burmese War in 1824-26, when such actions were also encountered there. See Bruce, op.cit pp.54.\n\nBingham, Vol.I, pp.286-291, adding an account of Captain P. Anstruther's imprisonment with the survivors at Ningpo (pp.292-7).\n\nBingham, Vol.II, pp. 181-3: \"When Ning-po was subsequently captured, it appeared that poor Mr. Stead had been conveyed there alive, when the brutal Chinese general had him secured to a stake, and then practised his bowmen by firing at him as a target; his body being subjected to the same brutality after life was extinct\". Davis, likely to be more authoritative, has a different but equally horrendous version. Upon Yukien's direction, \"the prisoner was tied to a stake in the middle of the public place [at Ningpo], deliberately flayed alive, and then cut in pieces\": China, During the War and Since the Peace (London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 2 vols., 1852), Vol I, p.170.\n\n4 Beeching, pp.121-2 and 136-7.\n\n44\n\nBingham, Vol.I, pp.212-217.\n\n45\n\nBingham, Vol.I, pp. 194-5.\n\nJ.D. Vaughan, The Manners and Customs of the Chinese of the Straits Settlements (Oxford in Asia Paperbacks, 1970, reprint of the original edition by the Mission Press, Singapore, 1879), pp.90-1 and see also p.36.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215775, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "However, in response to a petition by European merchants in 1835 to the EIC against piracy, some action on the part of the Indian government was taken, through the use of steam warships (for example, the Diana and HMS Wolf). These ships were effective in fighting piracy, and according to LA Mills, 'piracy in the Straits greatly decreased for several years... Conditions never became as serious as they were before 1836.'38\n\nHowever, Turnbull says that these measures only gave temporary relief and that, within a few years, the position deteriorated. Moreover, in the 1850s, a new breed of pirates began to haunt the merchants' commerce. They came from China, and the Chinese imperial government was too weak to suppress them. The main theatre of Chinese operations was the Gulf of Siam, although many vessels were captured near Singapore.40\n\nThe Indian government did not pay much attention to the problem as it was involved in the second Anglo-Burmese war at that time, and as Calcutta had passed no laws to detain suspicious vessels, there were no legal means to curb piracy. In 1857, the Indian legislative council had passed an inadequate law which permitted the right of search, but did not solve the problem of proving intent. No improvement was made to the naval force in the Straits Settlements in the last ten years of Indian rule, which consisted of only three gunboats (a 'lilliputian fleet'41).\n\nEventually the Chinese pirates were gradually eliminated from the Straits waters as a result of a series of treaties and agreements between China and other western powers (such as with Prussia 1861, Denmark 1863, the Netherlands 1863, Spain 1864, Belgium 1865, Italy 1866, and Austria-Hungary 186942), the contents of which included co-operative measures to wipe out piracy. The Hong Kong 'Ordinance for the suppression of piracy' was the first real blow delivered against Chinese piracy.4\n\nThe Indian government played a minimal role with regards to the combat of piracy in the Straits. The problem was brought under control through a list of other factors, including foreign treaties and ordinances, and hence, the merchants' complaints were not without reason, as little credit can be attributed to the Indian administration in this respect.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]