[ { "id": 207036, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang\n\nMichael Smithies*\n\nThe second international tour organized by the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, went over the Chinese (Lunar) New Year 1974 to Laos. 41 members and their guests visited Vientiane and Luang Prabang from 23 to 27 January, flying directly between Hong Kong and the Laotian capital. Some persons on the tour went ahead to visit Chiengmai in Thailand or Vat Phu in southern Laos and joined up with the main group later.\n\nThe attractions of the monuments of Vientiane, the administrative capital of the Kingdom of Laos, are slight in comparison to those in the royal capital of Luang Prabang. This is less a reflection of the religious fervour or artistic sensibility of the inhabitants of Vientiane, but a proof of the efficiency of the Siamese sack of the city in 1828 as a reprisal for Chao Anou's attempted attack on Bangkok two years previously and his subsequent alliance with Hué.\n\nVientiane's position in relation to Luang Prabang is ambivalent. Luang Prabang was the original capital of the Kingdom of Lane Xang (a million elephants) which was founded in 1353 by Fa Ngum, the son of a Lao chief who had been in exile in Angkor. King Potisarat moved the capital to Vientiane in 1520 and it was from the more central position of the kingdom, which then included much of the territory now in northeast Thailand, that the most famous Lao monarch, Souligna Vongsa, ruled from 1637-1694. On his death, however, the kingdom split into three, not counting the semi-independent existence of Xieng Khouang in the northeast: Vientiane, in alliance with Burma and a vassal of Annam; Luang Prabang, which at first drew support from China and later Siam; and in the south Champassak, which drew ever closer to Siam. The devastation of Vientiane by the Siamese in 1828 and the elimination of the line of Vientiane left in the centre a power vacuum, which the...\n\nMr. Smithies, at the time of this visit and report, Lecturer in French at the University of Hong Kong, was Secretary of the Hong Kong Branch 1972-73 and Councillor until his departure from the Colony in 1974. He organized and led this visit to Laos.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207037, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "102\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nFrench, advancing up the Mekong from Saigon, over-anticipating its value as a trade route to China and claiming suzerainty over Annamese vassals, slowly filled.\n\nThe explorer Mouhot was at Luang Prabang in 1861 and Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier shortly thereafter. The Kha rebellion of 1885 gave the French an excuse for intervention and stopping further extension of Siamese power in Laos; in 1886 a provisional Franco-Siamese convention was signed giving the French the right to establish a vice-consulate at Luang Prabang. The first mission by Pavie to Luang Prabang took place early in 1887, but French expansionism was effectively held in check for three years by the devastation caused by Deo Van Tri and the Black Flags (the Ho 'pirates' operating from Yunnan and Tonkin). Incidents increased between Siam and France and culminated with the French naval demonstration at Bangkok in 1893; the Siamese gave way and ceded the left bank of the Mekong to France. The Franco-Siamese treaty of 1907 gave the right-bank province of Sayaboury and those right bank parts of Champassak to France, but recognised Siamese authority over the rest of the right bank. The present frontiers of Laos were effectively decided by the French, from whom the Lao gained independence in 1949 under King Sisavong Vong. Prince Boun Oum of Champassak having in a secret protocol of 1946 renounced his right to the kingdom. More recent events have been well chronicled and the agreement of the three major political princes of left, right and centre in 1974 to form a joint government offers hope that the troubled post-war history of Laos might enter a more peaceful phase.\n\nThe buildings in Vientiane then are either restorations or totally modern and, as always in mainland southeast Asia, the monuments of note are almost exclusively religious. The most attractive shrine is the That Luang slightly outside the city. This solid tapering square tower was built in the 16th century by King Settathirat and is said to contain Buddhist relics. It was badly destroyed by the Red Flags in 1873 and its reconstruction was completed in 1929. It is an impressive pile set in a large open square fringed with trees. A vast fair takes place here every November and assumes a national importance.\n\nVat Pra Keo was also built originally by King Settathirat to house the Emerald Buddha on its arrival from Chiengmai; the statue", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207038, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang\n\n103\n\nwent to Bangkok and the temple in Vientiane lost its importance. It has been restored many times and is technically no longer a temple but a 'haw' or hall since services are not held and the building has been converted into a museum. At the entrance is a fine Dvaravati Buddha and there are several good examples of bronze Lao Buddhas with characteristic sharp, pointed noses both outside and inside the building. Among those inside is an elegant and extremely attenuated standing Buddha and two walking Buddhas. The restored pediments of the building are good examples of Lao woodcarving and so are the carved window panels.\n\nNearby is Vat Srisaket which is a quiet spot without having any particular artistic merit, though its galleries of Lao-style Buddhas, the carved ceiling of vihara and its naive frescoes of animals are worth seeing. The only other temple of note is Vat Ong Tu, near the market with good carving on the portal only in the Chiengmai style. The primitive wall paintings at Vat Oup Muong are a modern interpretation of the Ramayana but the temple is otherwise without interest; Vat Xieng Yuen and Vat Chantaburi, by the river Mekong, have peaceful and shady courtyards, and the temple of the Sankaraj, or Lao Supreme Patriarch, Vat Dong Mieng is remarkable mostly for its carving and hideous modern paintings.\n\nVientiane boasts the usual ministries of an administrative capital and a small modern royal palace for the occasions when the king comes from Luang Prabang. Modern Vientiane is largely without interest, the only building of note being the Monument to the Dead on the broad avenue leading to the That Luang; it is a top-heavy and as yet still incomplete miniature of the Arc de Triomphe. The teak-lined boulevards running parallel to the Mekong have a tranquillity which few capital cities can boast.\n\nThe difference between Vientiane and Luang Prabang is striking; the former has on occasions something approaching a bustle of modernity. Luang Prabang, a half-an-hour away by plane, is a century away in time. There are virtually no modern buildings, there is no traffic, and the ring of mountains around seems to keep the world away. The morning market is peopled by Lao villagers and Meo tribesmen, the latter heavy with silver and bright with colour; three soldiers look after a pig and half-a-dozen people watch a kettle boil on the side of the road. Local silk is offered at very low prices and the silverware is unusual. Luang Prabang is the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208563, "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-1979", "page_number": 20, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "the future we hope it may be possible to organise a small group to visit cultural sites in Thailand (e.g. Chiangmai, Pimai, Sukhothai and Ban Chiang). December might be particularly convenient in view of the projected Hong Kong-Chiangmai direct service by Thai International from April 1. Another small group may be able to visit South Korea at Easter 1980, in cooperation with the Korean Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Plans for these visits have to be made many months in advance and many members have found it necessary in the past to withdraw after initial arrangements have been made. Some sixteen members, for example, withdrew from the proposed Darjeeling-Sikkim visit after payment of deposits which were fully refunded. But this entailed a substantial amount of rearrangement of aircraft, hotels, ground transport, and so forth. Although recent and forthcoming excursions are arranged on a 'break even' basis for the Society, they are at considerably less cost to participants than for individual travel; and it may be necessary to consider levying some non-refundable service charge in future to protect the Society's financial interests. I would like to thank Dr. Shaw for all the time and effort he has put into these excursion arrangements and I am sure those who have participated would wish me to do so. Janie Thomas of Urbis Planning Design has also offered to include interested members of our Society in a trip she is planning for later this year to Shanghai and Peking. All except our very recently joined members have been circulated with information about her proposals.\n\nPublications\n\nWork continues for our proposed publication of photographs with text of old Hong Kong buildings. Many of the buildings photographed — by members of your Council and friends — have since been demolished. Mr. Tony Rydings has played a very active role in this project together with Mr. Ian Diamond. We are now, so to speak, on the home stretch in this publication project with approximately three-quarters of the text assembled and the photographs in place. We would like also to thank Dr. Solomon Bard, Executive Secretary, Antiquities and Monuments Section, Urban Services Department, for much material assistance with the project.\n\nThe 1977 Journal is now being distributed to all members, and Dr. Hayes has already submitted a draft list of contents for the 1978 issue which promises to have a great deal of interesting and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214793, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "173\n\nThe experiences of migration, exile, refugees and diasporic communities all suggest that nostalgia can be employed as a strategic resource to re-appropriate and forge new identities in the face of globalising dislocations from place. 'Exile is the nursery of nationality', as Anderson (1994) quotes Acton as saying. In this context, David Parkin (1998) points out that anthropologists 'can no longer assume that the people they study see themselves as attached to a particular, bounded locality', as in colonial ethnography which tended to depict territorially distinct peoples in homogeneous locations clearly bounded one from another in a way which facilitated ease of administration (the 'simplifications' of the state talked of by Scott, 1998). Yet real life has never actually been like this, as Parkin (1998) notes; there have almost never been autonomous communities perfectly isolable from one another, there has always been movement of peoples across boundaries and borders, and globalisation too has a long pre-capitalist, imperial history, as Friedman (1999) also notes. Nor in my opinion is the experience of the imaginative reconstitution of place so clearly linked either with the modern or post-modern, although it is often assumed to be.21 We have always constructed 'simulated worlds', admits Iain Chambers (1994); what is really new is the awareness of taking part in a global network of other and similar peoples. The experience of deterritorialisation is however a dislocation of place, and what we find here, for the Hmong as for many other dispersed or fragmented communities, is the use of nostalgia to reconstruct the past - and the nostalgic construction of place.\n\nLouisa Schein (1998) and myself (1996) have both documented the returns of overseas Hmong, settled after the conflicts of Indochina as refugees in Western countries like France, the US, or Australia, to revisit their immediate homelands in South East Asia, and the imaginary homelands of their ancestors in Southwest China. A Hmong friend of mine in Chiangmai, who has lived all his life in an urban environment, makes a point of bringing his children every year to visit his wife's parents in their rural village, so that they should remember where the Hmong came from and what it is to be really Hmong. It is for similar reasons that some of those who are able to afford to do so return with their families for extraordinary, emotional homecomings which I have witnessed in Hmong homes in Laos and in Thailand, and the same happens, although on a smaller and less public scale, in Vietnam.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214795, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "175\n\nin this sense therefore does NOT mean it is impossible to 'go home again', as Chambers (1994) maintained (cf. Mathews 2000). Homes, whether imagined or remembered, are physically being returned to and are being transformed through these nostalgic homecomings.\"\n\nI have seen something of this process occurring with the Hmong, in Thailand and Laos and China, and the transformations it has wrought on local senses of identity. I recall a sophisticated Hmong tourist from California in Chiangmai, North Thailand, telling me how he had insisted on wearing a suit and tie to address a meeting at his wife's brother's village despite his brother-in-law's pleas not to do so; it had felt very wrong to him not to do so.\n\n27\n\nBut local senses of Hmong community, both in Thailand and Laos, have been severely disrupted by some aspects of these return visits. A Hmong group in Chiangmai expressed their alarm at the behaviour of some American Hmong, who made love to local young Hmong girls at the New Year, the traditional time for a certain licence of courtship practices with a view to eventual marriage, and disappointing them with false promises of marriage and a new life in the West before disappearing back to their American families. Feelings became violent about this behaviour at a time of increasing fears of the spread of HIV/AIDS, and some of the Hmong who had complained received anonymous death threats.2 In China too there have been cases of Hmong expelled for courting several young girls in different villages at the same time.\n\nWhile there is certainly the sense of belonging to a much wider, expanded Hmong community, in a global sense, and a great longing expressed both by many overseas Hmong and local Hmong for the Hmong community to reunite as a whole in a return to their original homeland, there is also an emerging awareness of class and regional differences among groups of Hmong settled elsewhere or even within the same communities, which has paradoxically added to an increased sense of the importance of bonds of locality.\n\nAnd indeed a resurgence of local power, and local identities, has been seen as one response to the forces of economic, political and cultural globalisation, even to the extent that those localities (‘homes') have been partially reconstituted, or re-constructed, through the powerful\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214808, "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": 223, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "188\n\npaper given at the London China Seminar, The School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 18 February 1999, on the theme of 'Consumption with Chinese characteristics' (to appear in The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology.)\n\n1996 'Confucian Ethics and Constructions of the Past: An Enquiry into Comparative Morality', Proceedings of the 6th. International Conference on Thai Studies, 14-17 October 1996. Chiangmai. Chiangmai University,\n\n1989 Sovereignty and Rebellion: the White Hmong of Northern Thailand. Oxford, New York, Kuala Lumpur. Oxford University Press.\n\n1982 'The Relevance of Telephone Directories to a Lineage-Based Society', Journal of the Siam Society, 70.\n\nTax, Sol, Laven Eiseley et al. (ed.) 1953 An Appraisal of Anthropology Today. Chicago. Chicago University Press.\n\nTonnies, Ferdinand 1887 (1957) Community and Society. New York. Harper.\n\nTrevor-Roper, Hugh 1983 'The Invention of Tradition : The Highland Tradition of Scotland', The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.\n\nVertovec, Steven and Robin Cohen (ed.) 1999 Migrations, Diasporas and Transnationalism. Cheltenham. Elgar Press.\n\nWang Gungwu 1994 'Foreword' to Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the Overseas Chinese, ed. R. Skeldon. Armonk, N.Y; M.E. Sharpe.\n\nWang, Ling Chi and Wang Gungwu (ed.) 1998 The Chinese Diaspora : Selected Essays (Vol.1). Singapore. Times Academic Press.\n\nWard, Barbara 1985 Through Other Eyes - Essays in Understanding 'Conscious Models' - Mostly in Hong Kong (ed. Tien Ju-Kang). Hong Kong; The Chinese University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214811, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "191\n\nrelations, points out how in the sense that Europe was constituted through her colonies, as her effective 'Other', the end of colonialism has meant a crisis of identity for Europe as well as for what used to be called the Third World.\n\n15 Bahloul (1996) in Lovell (1998).\n\n16 Wordsworth's discovery of an earlier self in the landscape of his remembered past merits however a rethinking in terms of this early industrial disemplacement from origins and the emergence of formalised notions of childhood.\n\n17 See Judith Okely (1978) and others on the institutionalisation of childhood. It was Wordsworth too who (in 1798) defined poetry as \"emotion recollected in tranquillity'.\n\nI must confess to a certain nostalgia for the time I lived in Hong Kong - and for other places too I have regarded as 'home', from Chiangmai in North Thailand to Nainital in the Himalayan foothills, back to the Cotswolds.\n\n19 What has been referred to as post-modernism is but one aspect of a more general shift towards roots', says Friedman (1999), a return to origins which he sees as contradictory to the demands and interests of a cosmopolitan identity. For me they are both part of a post-colonial reflection on the diasporic experience.\n\n20 This is a paraphrase of the version common in South-East Asia, recorded by Lemoine (1972). The following is a translation of some verses of a version recorded by myself in Yunnan. There is a surprising similarity in the broad outlines of the verse among Hmong from Thailand to China, yet there are also some local variations and differences which follow the teachings of particular Masters.\n\n21 Other work for instance stresses the problematisation of locality itself, its construction by wider discourses embedded in relations of unequal power for particular purposes (Olwig and Hastrup 1997, Lovell 1998).\n\n22 See Schein (1998); also Tapp (1996; 1999; forthcoming). ‘Miao' is a term used for Hmong, but also other groups, in China.\n\n23 Saskia Sassen (1996; 1999) very well charts the changing role of the state with regard to transnational forces and international migration.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]