[ { "id": 204758, "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-1964", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "J PUBL \n\n50 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\nThe Yao are reported to practise a type of agriculture based on cutting a clearing in the forest, burning the trees, hoeing in the ash and planting a crop of hill paddy, sweet potatoes or peanuts, none of which require irrigation. At the time we speak of, it is questionable whether they were yet cultivating peanuts, which had been introduced into Southeastern China by the Arabs not long before. Chinese books of reference speak of Foochow50 as the place of introduction of the peanut, but in view of the importance of this bean in the ecology of South China, it would be an advantage if Chinese botanists could collaborate with historians to fix the date and point of introduction and to trace the spread of its cultivation over the rest of South China, where it is now the principal oil plant. The sweet potato, also nowadays a vital crop in South China, is likewise an importation, but it comes from the other direction, i.e. from Central America across the Pacific. \n\nIt is quite certain that the Yao were one of the two pre-Chinese people living on the hills of this territory: and it is almost a certainty that many of our present inhabitants are their descendants. In previous studies I have already listed non-Chinese words preserved in local place names. I attempted a number of such identifications in my introduction to T. R. Tregear's Gazetteer of Hong Kong Place Names. Some of my conjectures have been since confirmed and I think many of them were sound; but there is a remarkable reluctance on the part of local Chinese scholars to admit that many of the people now living here can be of indigenous origin, or that their languages and place names can retain words from pre-Chinese languages.1 110 This attitude of mind is the reason why we are now missing so many of the pieces in our puzzle; Chinese scholars have shown remarkably little interest in the identification of the various non-Han peoples of China and their languages, betraying a tendency to group them in large heterogeneous assemblages, and to treat their languages merely as a collection of words, with no attempt to study the way those words were arranged and the way in which the languages expressed ideas which are not found in Chinese thought. This last, however, is a very common fault in the study of languages, and appears to have communicated itself even to those who have been busy inventing electrical translation machines.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206022, "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-1970", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "J\n\nA NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES\n\n97\n\nand none at all of that cross-thread I mentioned, which all the time we are speaking one phrase is guiding us away from a score of similar phrases which are not what we mean. This constant unconscious avoidance of saying what we don't mean is the pattern we must all set up when we would speak a second, third or fourth language.\n\nI hope what I am about to say will help you in this task. For most of us, when children, were crippled by being brought up to talk only one language; to those whose minds have been thus crippled, like the girls of Manchu China whose feet used to be bound in childhood, the idea of \"thinking in a language\" is as natural as the unnatural tiptoe tottering gait seemed the \"natural\" way for women to walk. The unbinding of bound feet was, I am told, a very painful matter and after a certain age could not safely be done.\n\nSo come, if you dare, and let me unbind your linguistic feet.\n\nEnglish is a language of the Indo-European family: a family the branches of which extend from Sanskrit, Old Persian and their descendants in South-Central Asia, through the Slavonic languages of Eastern Europe, Lithuanian and the Celtic languages (originally of Asia Minor, but now found only on the Atlantic and Baltic shores), Ancient and Modern Greek, the languages of ancient Italy, through Latin to the modern Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Rumanian and Catalan, Old Norse and Icelandic down to modern Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, Gothic and Old High German down to the modern German dialects and Dutch; then again overseas with the Colonizers to North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa and as a second language of convenience in the shape of a special kind of English\n\n- back to India again where it may all have started.\n\nA great deal of work has been done on this family of languages, but it is well for us to remember that it is less than 200 years since the identity of such a family was observed and not much more than a century since Indo-European linguistic studies were firmly established.\n\nBefore that, and to some extent ever since, European scholars were taught to regard Latin and Greek as the only models of linguistic organization: therefore any language had to be studied", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206985, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "H. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nEuropean expansion and domination that ended in 1914 provided a more richly fertile environment for this social type. Adventurers do not compose a social group held together by common beliefs or ideology like anarchists, bolsheviks or suffragettes; rather they are supreme individualists and their individualism and egomania asserts itself most brutally in periods of rapid social change, in periods of social dislocation, fluid social boundaries, disorder and political ambiguity. Adventurers surface in greater numbers, then, under particular social conditions; they can impose their will, in the short run at least, by force, bluff, imposture or sheer physical courage,56 either because their social audience is credulous or because their victims desire victimisation, as a martyr seeks martyrdom; for the need to be dominated is as strong sometimes as the urge to dominate. Domination means accepting constraints, and constraint may bring a measure of psychic security and peace.\n\nSouth-East Asia, Central and South America, the Wild West and the Pacific, all provided an ideal terrain for the adventurers' individual obsessions, whether it was the pursuit of power, wealth, status, excitement, luxury or sensuality. And these were areas, of course, where the white man increasingly exercised control, by means of his advanced technology and dominant culture. Mayréna in the land of the Moï and Morès in the Bad Lands of North Dakota, a frontier area only recently cleared of Sioux, lived outpost lives on the margin of civilisation—one became, briefly, the King of the Sedangs, the other, likewise, the Emperor of the Bad Lands. Conditions in these places were perfect for the seigneurial role they sought to play. Such conditions would not be found easily today.\n\nAt this time, two other factors favoured the adventurer class: respect for titles and poor communications. Mayréna succeeded in making dupes of several influential and wealthy persons because they were deeply impressed by his assumed rank—the 'King of the Sedangs' or 'le comte de Drey'. Morès was a nobleman and a grand seigneur by birth; the fact that his name and that of his noble house could be found enshrined in print in the Almanach de Gotha seduced people of lesser rank. The European bourgeoisie achieved economic and a larger degree of political power in the nineteenth century; this parvenu class, ostensibly resentful of social distinctions was, on the other hand, often mesmerised by titles of any kind. This was true even in democratic America: the shady thespians who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207004, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE\n\n69\n\nin Taiwan. Elsewhere, in most Asian cities with a large Overseas Chinese community there are retailers who sell gods but who neither carve nor repair them. (Plate 2)\n\nBy way of background let me explain the various types of image produced by Chinese. The majority of north and central China's images used to be made of mud and straw and painted with a dull gold paint. (Plate 3.) They have been destroyed by the myriad in the course of the numerous iconoclastic anti-superstition campaigns conducted on the mainland in the past fifty years or so and are rarely to be seen. The next group are the bronze, iron and other metal images of which only the smaller are still in existence, mostly in America and Europe; the larger having been too large to move have long since been melted down for scrap.\n\nThe third group consists of the carved and painted or lacquered wood images mainly from the forested south of China. The best materials for these images, so Chinese have assured me, were camphor and sandalwood and the finest carvings were from Amoy where a group of seven families produced their famous images over eight generations ceasing production only in 1950. Amoy figures were precise in detail, well-proportioned and expensive but rather baroque in their appearance.\n\nIn very general terms, Cantonese images tend to be rather ill-proportioned and stylised; commonly they are gilt-painted figures with heavy features (Plate 4). Hainanese images are generally recognisable by their short limbs; Taiwanese carvings are usually identifiable by their heavy use of blues and sea-greens, and nowadays for their gaudy, cheap and shoddy plastic images. Some Taiwanese images have been made from varnishing wadded rice husks into shape (Plate 5).\n\nFor several generations the Yangtze valley produced large numbers of well carved, handsome and beautifully finished gold lacquer images, predominantly for Buddhist temples, although many were also Taoist folk religion deities. Since 1949 a factory has grown up near Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong in which Shanghai refugees still produce these for Hong Kong and for export. A fifteen foot bodhisattva was being finished whilst I was there, rolled on its back prior to being shipped to Singapore, swathed in plastic sheeting.\n\nThere are very many other local styles such as the knotted-root carvings of Shantung, the boxwood carving of the upper Yangtze\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209788, "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-1983", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "25\n\nFirst we want to investigate the composition of the sangha. A convenient date to take as our start is 1949, when the present communist regime took control of the whole of continental China. Previous to that date, most of the monks in Hong Kong were Cantonese speaking. They lived in a few monasteries scattered throughout some isolated spots in the New Territories and in the rather inaccessible peaks of Lantao Island. There they practiced their religion quietly. Occasionally, they were asked to perform ceremonies for the dead. They were rather typical of the monks in traditional China. Like the majority of the monasteries in China, the ones in Hong Kong were not public monasteries (***) and were rather easy-going. However, it must not be thought that these temples were completely cut off from China. There was always a steady stream of contact with other monasteries.\n\nAfter 1949 a large influx of northern monks came with immigrants who tried to escape the communist regime. For a time they saturated local monasteries, but the majority have since migrated to Taiwan, Malaysia and elsewhere. Nowadays, northerners make up about half the total number of monks. Connections with South-East Asia and Northern America enable the monks to travel about rather frequently and this fact makes the Hong Kong sangha a rather fluid entity. Some of these northern monks came from renowned monasteries in central China and favoured a stricter life style. However, none of the temples in Hong Kong could maintain in full the system of public monasteries,\n\nThe coming of northern monks coincided with the beginning of certain developments in Buddhism unseen in previous ages. The unprecedented affluence created during the two decades 1960-80 was the material cause of these developments. Popular Buddhism flourished with the increase in population and wealth. Monks were increasingly sought to perform ceremonies over the dead () by well-to-do devotees and large sums of money were paid. Burial grounds in Hong Kong have become extremely scarce and expensive. The alternative to finding a burial plot or keeping cremated ashes within the equally crowded home was to deposit the ashes within a monastery. That way,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213230, "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-1994", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "31\n\nHermann Emil Hubener was admitted a partner in 1868. In 1861 Behre, Emil Hubener and A Booth were assistants in the firm. Frederick Clause, another assistant, subsequently became a partner but left the firm in 1871 (DP 2 Jan 1872). Gustav Adolph Wieler and his brother Oscar were assistants in 1866. Gustav became a partner in 1873. After the closure of Bouijau, Huberer and Co, the two brothers formed the firm of Wieler and Co. It subsequently merged with Sander and Co to become Sander, Wieler and Co.\n\nMeyer and Co = Sander, Wieler and Co\n\nMeyer, Schaeffer and Co. was established at Hong Kong in April 1851. The partners were Julius Meyer, F.A. Schaeffer and William Fiedler (FC 24 April 1851). In the notice the name is given as F.A Schaeffer. In the notice of Fiedler's retirement it appears as H.T.A. Schaeffer; in other documents it is Hermann Schaeffer. Mr Fiedler retired from the firm four months later (FC 25 July 1851). They were charterers of ships for the Chinese emigration to California during the 1850s. The firm also had business connections with the Chilean port city of Valparaíso, which suggests they were also active in shipping coolie labour to South America (FC 1 July 1852). Their office in Queen's Road Central was burnt out in December 1858 (FC 8 Dec 1858). The partnership between Schaeffer and Meyer had been dissolved in April 1855 and only Hermann Schaeffer was in charge of the business at the time of the fire (FC 18 Apr. 1855). Hermann's brother Walter, an unmarried twenty-year-old, died of consumption at Macao in July 1857 (FC 1 July 1857). After the fire H. Schaeffer and Co. found temporary quarters on Gough Street and then moved to Hollywood Road. They were agents for the Compagnies d'Assurance Maritimes de Paris and Marseilles (FC 6 Oct, 1860). The firm shut down in 1863.\n\nFritz Sander, who had been an assistant in Schaeffer and Co., entered into partnership with Thomas Henry Elmenhorst in 1862 (CM 26 June 1862). The partnership was dissolved in January 1865 (GG 21 Jan. 1865). They executed a deed of assignment to Charles Henry Maurice Bosman and Adolph Meyer in December 1866 (GG 22 Dec. 1866). Bosman was interested in the shipment of Chinese labour overseas. The connection implies that the firm of Elmenhorst and Sander was connected with the same trade, as had been the firm of Meyer, Schaeffer and Co. with whom Sander had had a link in the past.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215936, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "169\n\nindependently of each other, with little communication. History is written about those who create documents, not by those whose duty was to leave no trail. Nonetheless, it does appear that there were several groups quietly focussing on different aspects of resistance, not all military, should the day come when the Japanese took over.\n\nUsing his cover as a businessman working for Butterfield and Swire, where his \"manager,\" Mike Turner, also seems to have had SOE connections, Kendall also travelled through China, setting up contacts and listening posts, including those installed by Chauvin and Chinese intelligence. Indeed, because SOE tapped into an existing Chinese network, the intelligence it was able to access was far more sophisticated and accurate. SOE continued to fund another Chinese organisation, the RII (Research and Information Institute) throughout the duration of the war. This was a Chinese operated service using British equipment and a small British staff, working for, not in charge of, the Chinese. Many of its reports still exist, showing just how detailed was the information they gathered: exact ammunition supplies and strengths of Japanese units, area by area, names of officers, postings and movements. When, later in the war, efforts were made to amalgamate various British agencies operating in China, SOE managed to insist that RII was to remain separate and unaffected because it was a Chinese force.\n\nDespite what seems to have been a working relationship between the SOE and various forms of KMT intelligence, it is evident that Kendall also cultivated strong links in the hinterland of Hong Kong where KMT influence was weak. These areas were relatively remote and fiercely resistant to central government influence. The villagers were clannish, and their communities closed, united internally by family and traditional ties. Many of these villagers had emigrated overseas to work in places like South America and Malaya. They also had traditional systems of defence and security, but piracy and banditry were endemic, almost part of the economy. These regions were alien territory to urban Hong Kong people, European or Chinese, who as outsiders would have been treated with suspicion. Political loyalties varied, and before Hong Kong was attacked, people had no automatic regard for the British who were not yet ‘Allies, and whose record in China was not edifying. In many ways, this work was much easier after the occupation when locals and British forces, though humiliated by defeat, shared common ground. Kendall went into these areas, often alone, meeting and talking\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]