[ { "id": 205248, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "and in the Colonial Office in London. Mr. Endacott's History of Hong Kong (1958) has already indicated what sort of material is available to form the necessary background to new studies in urban history and sociology.\n\nWe hope, then, that this Journal will receive contributions in this neglected field and that, in particular, it will benefit from the new project in urban studies, now being initiated by Dr. Alan Birch of the History Department at the University of Hong Kong. We hope, too, that some of the material being obtained from the Urban Family Life Study commissioned by the Hong Kong Government and now in progress under the direction of Dr. Robert Mitchell from the University of California, Berkeley, may appear in its pages. As a Hong Kong publication the Journal must play its part in encouraging and making available some of this basic information.\n\nMeantime we have not made much progress with the ethnographic aspects stressed by the Hon. Editor in 1962. Unfortunately, pure ethnography is rather neglected by scholars nowadays and, probably for this reason, less progress has been made in this field, though the curator of the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery, with the help of the New Territories Administration and others, has begun collecting items of interest, with a view to forming a local collection. Members were fortunate recently in hearing a lecture from Mr. Alan L. Kagan on the Cantonese Puppet Theatre in Hong Kong. It is hoped to include this article in the 1968 Journal. Mr. Kagan's assessment has reinforced Mr. Cranmer-Byng's remark five years ago that time is indeed short. Whereas there are only two part-time puppet troupes operating in present-day Hong Kong, there were more full-time operators twenty years ago, when a smaller, poorer, less-sophisticated and less westernised population supported this type of entertainment enthusiastically and business was good, their services being in demand all over the territory. The Editorial Committee welcomes articles of this sort and would be glad to have more of them from interested persons.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205469, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "5\n\n1 June\n\n19 June\n\nMiss Barbara E. Ward\n\n“Social and Economic Changes among the Boat People of Hong Kong.”\n\nMr. Alan L. Kagan\n\n44\n\nCantonese Puppet Theatre in Hong Kong\"\n\n4 September Dr. Patricia M. Marshall\n\n2 October\n\n\"The Meaning of Conservation and its Application in Hong Kong.\n\nProfessor L. B. Thrower\n\n\"The Flora of Hong Kong in its Geographical Setting.\n\n20 November Professor G. B. Harrison\n\n\"The Dutch Embassy to Peking 1794-95.\"\n\n18 December\n\nMr. G. B. Endacott\n\n\"The Old City Hall.\n\n**", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206802, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "SWATOW (CH’AOCHOW) HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS\n\nHELGA WERLE*\n\n# Introduction\n\nThe so-called Swatow puppets are in fact wrongly named. This is due to a confusion which requires some explanation. In Western languages the adjective Swatow is used to attribute a dialect, culture or people etc., when the Chinese themselves speak of Ch’aochow. This is because the British gained access to the Ch’aochow area by the opening of the port of Shantou (Swatow) by the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. Chinese know that the city of Ch’aochow heads one of the 8 prefectures of the province of Kwangtung and is situated on the Han River about 40 miles from the sea and as far from the border with Fukien. Swatow itself, a port with about 85,000 inhabitants in 1925, is in the delta of the Han River, five miles from the open sea.\n\nIn this article the term “Swatow” has been replaced by the use of the proper Chinese description of Ch’aochow.\n\nCh’aochow developed very early into a culturally independent area. Its seaboard position and flourishing port gave it the necessary economic basis and exposed it to various cultural influences. Culturally and linguistically, it is more like a prefecture of Fukien than of Kwangtung. Its dialect is distinctly different from Cantonese, so are its customs and its music, which all deserve to be studied in detail for the value of its rich ancient tradition. Among its cultural assets, the Ch’aochow puppet-theatre is truly amazing, with unique features found nowhere else in the world.†\n\nThe author has studied in the Sinology departments of the Universities of Munich, Hamburg, and Cologne. She has been a resident of Hong Kong since 1966 and has followed up her studies with field work in Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines. She is particularly interested in folk art and theatre and is at present on the staff of the Hong Kong Arts Centre Ltd. She has published various articles on puppet theatre and folk art.\n\n† For the Introduction, see L. Richard (translated, revised and enlarged by M. Kennelly), Comprehensive Geography of the Chinese Empire and Dependencies, Shanghai, T’usewei Press 1908, pp. 206 and 210. Also J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese or Notes connected with China (5th edition, revised by É. Chalmers Werner), Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai, Hong Kong etc., 1925, pp. 689-690. For the Min dialects of which Ch’aochow and Swatow are part, see R. A. D. Forrest, The Chinese Language, Faber & Faber, London, 1958, pp. 225-232.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206803, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "74\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nThe Ch'aochow Puppets in Hong Kong\n\nBeing interested in all forms of puppet-theatre, I had heard of the existence of horizontally-moved Ch'aochow stick-puppets in Hong Kong, but it took a long time to have the opportunity to actually see them performed. In the spring of 1973, the leader of the Cantonese rod-puppet troupe, Mak Shiu-tongA, invited me to watch a show near his home, at Block 9 of the Tsz Wan Shan Resettlement Estate. The Ch'aochow people of the estate celebrated the birthday of their patron saint Po-yeh-tan1 on the 27th, 28th and 29th day of the first month.* On a limited rectangular area of about 1,500 square feet there was a bamboo-shed on stilts serving as a puppet-theatre on one end (Plate I), another serving as a make-shift temple opposite to it (Plate II), with an altar on one side and an enormous paper dragon-robe on the other (Plate III).\n\nThe robe complete with boots, belt and lots of neatly folded paper money was to be burned at the end of the celebration, in order to bestow insignia of rank upon the saint in acknowledgement of his merits. The decoration of the robe varies according to the saint to whom it is dedicated. But it is noteworthy that besides the elaborate dragon in relief, pairs of phoenixes and young hornless dragons and the Eight Immortals, three pavilions with eight paper-figures are added. These figures strongly resemble the puppets which I saw later and their heads are also made of plaster. In Ch'aochow the tradition of puppetry and ceremonial figures are very closely related.\n\nThe stilts of the stage were four feet high, with a floor area of 10' x 10' (Plate I), where on the same level the musicians and the puppeteers sit and on which the puppets move (Plate IV). The puppet-stage was very small, with four chairs and a table, all with embroidered covers. The stage is created by five flaps of richly embroidered curtains called chu lien4; the middle one being short to enable the back-stage musicians to follow the performance closely. The two long side-flaps cover a puppeteer each. The decoration of the curtains complement each other to form a cosmical unity: the square middle part shows the lion with four peonies for each direction, representing the earth, the Yin. The Yang is expressed in the dragon design of the other four flaps.\n\nBehind the stage stands a small chest with three drawers—one for puppet-heads, one for headgear and one for arms or pennants\n\n* Lunar calendar.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206805, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "76\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nThe hands are made of wire (Plate VII) which facilitates the fastening of the sticks or arms, but their appearance is ugly.\n\nThe sticks have the length of chopsticks. Made of iron, they form a small ring at one end and have a wooden handle on the other, to prevent the sticks from slipping out of the hands. The third stick is thicker and is hooked into a hole at the puppet's back from below. The puppeteers tell that in Ch'aochow some puppets were considered so precious that they were handled with sticks made of pure gold.\n\nNeither the waist nor the stick is movable.\n\nThe Historical Background in Ch'aochow\n\nAlthough well proportioned and even beautiful, this puppet has many technical disadvantages compared to the Cantonese rod-puppet or the Fukienese string or glove-puppet. The reason for this incongruousness can be found in the dominance of Ch'aochow's ancient leather shadow-puppet tradition, which was definitely well established in the Ming dynasty in that area. One can assume that it existed earlier but any proof is lacking so far.\n\nIn Ch'aochow these shadow-puppets were cut out of cowhide (which is very rough when compared to the donkey-hide used in North China or Szechuan) which was coloured. They have two-jointed arms and legs and are handled with three sticks attached to the hands and the back of the two-dimensional puppet. The author has seen such Min-nan shadow-puppets in Taiwan, and some old Ch'aochowese confirmed that the Ch'aochow ones had exactly these features. By the end of the last century, supposedly under the strong influence of the extraordinary perfection of the string and glove puppets of Ch'uan-chou, Fukien, a new type of puppet evolved, a hybrid with the beauty of a Ch'uan-chou puppet, but handicapped in movement by the technique of a two-dimensional puppet. The name paper-shadow-theatre chih-ying-hsi was also applied to the new puppet. These two kinds of puppets existed side by side for one generation, and according to witnesses the leather shadow-puppets disappeared in the 1920s.\n\nIt is yet possible to receive first-hand accounts of the time when puppets were much used. An educated elderly Ch'aochow gentleman, Mr. Su related that in his childhood, at the beginning of the Republic, there were still 3 different kinds of puppets: shadow, horizontal stick-puppets and a third kind which he describes as...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206812, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "SWATOW HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS\n\nCh'aochow Puppets in contemporary China and overseas\n\n83\n\nLiu Fu-kuang §✯ an educated person of about 40, who is the most outstanding Ch'aochow orchestra-leader here, is closely connected with the Hsin-shun-hsiang puppet-troupe. He came to Hong Kong in 1959. According to him, puppet-troupes completely disappeared in Ch'aochow after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. This is probably because their performances were intimately connected with the festivals of the myriads of local deities, the worship of which was strongly discouraged by the Communists. In 1957, Liu Fu-kuang saw the last troupe, called Shant'ou Ying-hsi-t'uan 4⇓✯D (Shadow-play-troupe of Shant'ou) perform in Swatow. He believes that not even one troupe is now left in Ch'aochow, after a history of about one thousand years and a hundred active troupes fifty years ago.\n\nPeople from Ch'aochow make up a large percentage of the Overseas Chinese population of South East Asia and Ch'aochow opera flourishes there; but there is said not to be one single \"paper-shadow-play\" troupe overseas. This shows that from the great tradition of puppet-theatre, only the two troupes in Hong Kong are left. It is therefore the last chance to savour and study this tradition before its extinction which, at least at the moment, appears to be inevitable.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nBatchelder, Marjorie H.: Rod-puppets and the Human Theatre, Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 1947.\n\nHuang Chun-ming: The Forbidden Puppets' in Echo of Things Chinese, Taiwan, October 1972, pp. 24-34.\n\nJacob & Jensen: Das Chinesische Schattentheater, Stuttgart, 1933.\n\nMargareta Niculescu: The Puppet Theatre in the Modern World compiled by Union Internationale des Marionettes under Margareta Niculescu, George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, Toronto, Wellington, Sidney, 1967.\n\nTsim Tak-lung (compiler): Puppet-demonstration on pages 45-47 of ‘Chinese Theatre in Hong Kong', Proceedings of a Symposium, Nov. 22-23, 1968, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1968.\n\nBurger, Helga: 'The Cantonese Stick-puppets', in Kaleidoscope, Hong Kong, March/April 1973.\n\n\"The Far Eastern Puppet Theatre' in Souvenir Book of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, 1974.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210754, "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-1986", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "88 \n\nCHAN WING HOI \n\nidiosyncrasies of the festival. But no, it was because the priest had become familiar with the local leaders. Chan himself later explained to me why he was given the job. The village representative had attended a jiu festival in 1965(?) and was impressed with the small banners put on display at the Taoist altar. Those were presented to Chan by various communities for his performances at their festivals. The Shek O leaders asked the puppeteer Leung Nung about him. Leung had worked with Chan when Chan worked as a puppeteer and spoke favourably of him. The Shek O leaders subsequently contacted Chan to negotiate for his service at the Shek O jiu festival. Before Chan was hired, the contract for the priestly service went to Lau Sing Jai, a priest who lived in Tai O.\n\nA Cantonese puppeteer group was hired to perform for all three days of the festival. For the principal day of the celebration two other kinds of entertainers were also hired. These included piu-sik, children in stage costume representing well-known historical or fictional characters. They were hired from Cheung Chau, for they performed at the annual jiu festival there (which was also dominated by Hoklo, Wai Chau and Chiu Chau people). The other team was a Chiu Chau ceremonial music group hired through their fellow townsmen in the committee.\n\nTwo lion dance groups participated in the procession on the main day of celebration. One was styled \"lion dance group of Shek O residents\" and the other \"Leung Yi Hoi\", a kungfu master. The members of the latter dance group were probably also local residents.\n\nIV. The ritual site\n\nAs in the other places, for their festival Shek O residents built temporary structures in which altars for gods were set up. In these structures, the Taoist rites and theatrical performances took place.\n\nTwo long temporary structures had been built facing one another, each divided into several partitions. One of the structures housed the priests' altar, a room for them to rest in, the puppet theatre, and a room for the puppeteers. Facing the altar and the theatre was the other structure, with partitions for paper images of\n\n! \n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 } ]