[ { "id": 204648, "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-1963", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n115\n\njourney by chair. He was the first Englishman to travel by this route, which it was hoped would develop into an important trade route from Upper Burma and West China.\n\nIn 1872 John Swire of London formed the China Navigation Company to trade on the Yangtse, and started by purchasing the two steamers of the Union Steam Navigation Company, following this up a year later with three ships of their own specially built on the Clyde. In this same year of 1873 the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company was formed, a Chinese company partly under government control and direction. This company purchased the steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in 1877, and so became the owners of the largest river fleet. A few years later Jardine returned to the Yangtse with the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, and by the early 1880's the greater part of the Yangtse trade was shared between these three companies: the China Navigation Company, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company.\n\nThe formation of the China Navigation Company in 1872 was a logical development from that of the Blue Funnel Line by Alfred Holt in 1866. Alfred Holt and John Swire were close friends and business associates, and when the latter opened an eastern branch of his company in Shanghai he took over the agency of the Blue Funnel Line ships. One reason behind the formation of the China Navigation Company was to provide cargoes for the Blue Funnel ships to and from the Yangtse. Alfred Holt was unwilling to operate ships so far from his personal control, but was willing to support the Swire enterprise. The inauguration of the Blue Funnel Service to the Far East, the opening of a Far Eastern branch of John Swire and Company in Shanghai in the same year, and the formation of the China Navigation Company six years later, meant the introduction of a new and powerful combination to the China coast. Holt and Swire, in association with the Clyde shipbuilding family of Scott, were soon to play a very important part in the China trade, and in the shipping of the whole of the Far East. Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, and Australia, were all to come within their orbit before many years had passed.\n\nIn 1881 the various shipping interests of Jardine were merged into the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, of which Jardine were made permanent managers. For a list of the main shipping companies plying on the Yangtze see Appendix on p. 130.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204656, "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-1963", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n123\n\nThe Peking government claims that even greater floods took place during the summer of 1954, but because of the reconstruction work carried out on the dyke system by the Communists, the damage was much less. The dyke system, they say, has been still further strengthened since 1954.\n\nIn spite of its great depth along much of its length, navigation on the Yangtse always posed special problems. The main channel changes course from time to time, while the strength of the current varies from season to season. Foreign steamers usually carried two pilots, but in spite of all precautions many steamers have been lost on the river. Towards the end of the era of foreign shipping, losses had been greatly reduced by means of more efficient pilotage, greater knowledge and better charts, improved lighting, and other aids to navigation.\n\nLife on the Yangtse was very different from that on the coast, and had a strong fascination for most of those who experienced it. The river steamers penetrated right into the heart of China, where conditions were widely different. Even in the 1920's and 1930's the countryside and towns bordering on the Middle and Upper River remained much as they had been in the previous five or six hundred years. Foreign trade and influence had barely touched the fringes of social life and customs evolved many centuries earlier.\n\nThe heyday of Yangtse travel was in the 1920's and 1930's, when it was possible to travel in comfort, and even luxury, although not always in complete safety, from Shanghai to Chung-king, and beyond to Chengtu and Sui Fu. At that period there were four large companies operating regular services along the whole navigable length of the river, with something like a hundred steamers between them. There were also several small companies operating a few steamers each. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company with 31 ships had the largest river fleet, followed by the China Navigation Company and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company with 21 ships each, and then the Japanese Nisshin Kisen Kaisha with 15 ships. A German company had started a service in 1900, at the same time as the Japanese, but had been compelled to withdraw during the 1914-18 war, and had never resumed the service. At least four steamers left Shanghai for Hankow every day, where connection was made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205328, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "THE CHINA COASTERS\n\n83\n\nessential; although there was a point beyond which these could be detrimental to the owner.\n\nThe rent which the compradore paid to the owners for the deck passenger space depended on the number of passengers usually carried in that particular trade. It was adjusted periodically according to fluctuations in trade and other factors, and was the subject of keen bargaining between owners and compradore — the latter naturally putting a much lower evaluation on the ship's passenger potentiality than the owners. At irregular intervals the owners sent someone to travel on the ship, and check the number of passengers and the amount of cargo carried. These men were known as 'pidgin snatchers' and were very unpopular with the floating staff. If the captain and compradore were good friends and either knew in advance of the 'pidgin snatcher's' movements, the other was warned, and co-operative counter measures instituted in good time.\n\nMost China coasters called at their home port of Hong Kong or Shanghai at least once a month, so that their officers were in much closer touch with life ashore than their contemporaries on overseas ships. During the inter-war period, normal tours of service on the coast were five years, in the course of which officers would serve in several of their company's ships. Many senior officers were married, and had wives and families in Hong Kong or Shanghai, or in a few cases Hankow. Long home leave was granted after a five years tour, but the attractions of life on the coast made many officers and their wives reluctant to go on leave. Captains and mates on ships where 'pidgin' were plentiful, were afraid they might be posted to less profitable ships on their return; while wives were loath to exchange their smoothly-run homes for the doubtful comforts of furnished rooms or boarding houses in Britain. European homes in Hong Kong, Shanghai, or the treaty ports, were sparsely staffed by African or Indian standards, but run much more efficiently. A cook and house boy, sometimes only a cook boy, sufficed for a small house or flat, supplemented by a baby amah or gardener if circumstance warranted this. A similar establishment in India would have been indifferently served by a staff twice as large. Although the taipans of the big foreign companies and senior customs commissioners lived in considerable style, life on the coast was in general much less ostentatious than in India, and much more pleasant.\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207793, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "166 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nIn 1868 T. T. Cooper, a British merchant in Burma, came to Shanghai and attempted to improve on Blakiston's feat. His venture was partly financed by the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce. Cooper went up the Yangtze to Chungking, and then overland to Chengtu, the capital of Szechwan. Here he received permission from the Governor General to travel on through Szechwan and Tibet to India; but he met such determined opposition and hostility from the lamas on the Tibetan border, where he was imprisoned for five weeks, that he was forced to turn back. \n\nIn the following year, Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister at Peking, sent Robert Swinhoe of the China Consular Service to investigate trade prospects on the Upper Yangtze. Vice-Admiral Keppel, R.N. was making a survey of the river, and Swinhoe's party, which included Alexander Michie and Robert Francis of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and two naval surveyors, travelled to Ichang on H.M.S. Opussum. This was the first time a steamship had reached Ichang, and the Chinese pilot refused to go any further. A junk was hired for the passage through the Gorges to Chungking, and soundings and surveys taken en route. The surveyors, however, gave an unfavourable report on the feasibility of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze. They particularly commented on the force of the current, lack of suitable anchorages, intricacy of navigation because of the changeable channel, and so on. They also thought descent would be even more difficult than ascent. The chief engineer of Opossum described a sample of coal obtained half way between Ichang and Chungking as resembling good anthracite in appearance, but requiring large furnaces and a long time for combustion. \n\nThis was the most thorough navigational survey of the Upper Yangtze, and many of the factors militating against steam navigation between Ichang and Chungking were investigated and made known. The bed of the river falls 470 feet in the 360 miles between the two places, and this fall of one and a third feet per mile is the cause of the strong currents and rapids in this section of the river. The most difficult stretch is the first half of the Upper River between Ichang and Wanhsien, where the most difficult rapids and gorges are encountered. The Ichang Gorge begins five miles above Ichang, and then come the Ox Liver and Horse's Lung Gorges, and the Hsintan Rapid immediately after the latter. The most spectacular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208388, "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-1978", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "96\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nthoughts of the younger worker actually were on the matter, it was apparent that the older fellow eventually carried the day. His younger colleague eventually joined the union. Nor would he have done so simply on a whim. Association with a communist cause is not something casually assumed in the Hong Kong context. The episode shows clearly how the membership drive in progress was implemented at the factory level.\n\nIn the foregoing, one gets a feel for the role of the Woodwork Carvers' Union both as a carrier of a proletarian message and as an agent of Peking policy. Its close association with the Federation of Trade Unions is also highlighted. The union premises are the site of meetings of various kinds, political discussions and planning sessions all of which are oriented in one way or another toward the promotion and consolidation of a unified class conscious labor force, with the Peking government the object of its members' patriotism.\n\nThe use of the union premises as a center of recreation, the provision of board to its indigent members, the linkup with Communist Chinese bureaucracies like China Travel Service, are all examples of ways in which the union can cater to its members' needs.\n\nThe operation of a school in the union hall is particularly noteworthy. Traditional Chinese guilds often provided charitable services to their members, such as medical care, proper burials and relief to workers during periods of unemployment. It was not unusual for guilds to establish schools for children of their members (Gamble, 1921: 198) so that they might be able to better themselves, or more properly, the fortunes of their families. In this sense, the use of the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises as a site for the operation of a small primary school may be seen as a significant continuity with traditional guild practice. With curriculum updated in political content, and text and reading materials from the Mainland, the small patriotic school in the union premises turns our attention to the ways in which the union has adapted the practices of traditional guilds to the contemporary scene and incorporated them into its organizational repertoire.\n\nThere are two other occasions which are of special interest in highlighting this process. The first is the Woodwork Carvers' Union", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208592, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "223\n\nLUKE KWONG\n\npunctuated by periodic transfers from port to port, station to station, and they still recalled memorable events and personalities they encountered on their various postings. What follows is a summary of the more notable points that emerged during the interviews. It might be noted that the dialect used on these occasions was Cantonese, the interviewees being all from the Canton area in Kwangtung. Yet, these elderly gentlemen's flair for English expressions was given ample opportunity to manifest itself.\n\nIndeed, knowledge of the English language was, in those days, an essential requirement for any Chinese who wanted to join the Customs' clerical staff. In view of the Service's cosmopolitan character, illustrated by its multi-national personnel composition, this emphasis on an international language seemed only fitting. Facilities for learning English in early twentieth-century China, though limited, were nevertheless available. Despite their somewhat disparate educational background, somewhere in their early training the interviewees had all studied the language. One learned it for two and a half years at a school in Tientsin. Another attended St. Francis Xavier's College in Shanghai, where English was an instruction language. The third actually graduated from the Customs College in Peking, where students were required to attain a certain proficiency in a second foreign language, English being counted as their first (consequently, he knows French, as well). Invariably, they had had to demonstrate a sufficient mastery of English before entering the Service in 1910, 1917 and 1919, respectively.\n\nCompetition for Customs positions was always keen. For a post with the Customs was not just any job. It had a number of superior features. One was security. Once inside the Service and beyond probation, and as long as he did not commit any serious legal offence, a Customs employee could consider his job as secure, in colloquial parlance, as an “iron” or even \"gold rice-bowl.\" Another was its liberal pay. It was recalled that even a janitor working in a Customs office made three times as much as he would working for a private firm. There were fringe benefits, as well. At the end of every seven years of service, an employee received a gratuity as \"retiring allowance\" and on retirement would be provided with \"pension benefits” in a lump sum. Moreover, high-ranking officials on transfer to duties elsewhere were to travel first-class with their families. One of the former commissioners", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208859, "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-1980", "page_number": 21, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "been teaching at Wah Yan since 1960. The other was given by myself, and I spoke on “Chinese and Western medicine: compatible or antagonistic?\" My data was gathered during a three-year research project into the medical system of Hong Kong conducted at Hong Kong University's Centre of Asian Studies. In February Mr. Patrick Lau spoke on \"Rural Architecture in Hong Kong\". He is the author of a book on the subject, based on a series of survey studies and published jointly by the Government Information Services and the Hong Kong Tourist Association.\n\nIn February Dr. Norman Ko, Reader in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong, gave a talk on \"Underwater Photography and some Observations of Marine Life in Hong Kong\". Finally, in March, there were two talks: one given by Mr. Nigel Cameron, a well-known locally-based historian and art critic, and author of many books and essays, on \"The K'ang-Hsi Emperor (1662-1722)\". The other was given by Professor Winston Wan Lo on the work of his late father, Lo Hsiang-lin, who was Professor of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. Winston Lo is himself a professor of History at Florida State University. Future talks are in the process of being arranged, and you will already have received advanced notice of two, possibly three talks for April.\n\nTours Abroad\n\nIn April 1979 Dr. Shaw led a trip to Darjeeling and Sikkim, and in July another to Srinagar and Ladakh or “Little Tibet\". Members on the latter trip were particularly fortunate in that, by a harsh 3 a.m. start, they were able to witness and record the most interesting part of the final day's ceremonies in the annual masked dance festival at Hemis Monastery near Leh. Our Society is, of course, a non-profit-making organization, and Dr. Shaw was able to make a refund of $240 to each participant on the Sikkim trip, although a nominal loss was made on that to Srinagar and Ladakh. At the end of this week, a group of 19 members will leave for the Kingdom of Bhutan, the last of the forbidden kingdoms opening its doors to a select group of visitors. Again, they will be led by Dr. Shaw. In the absence of any response from China International Travel Service in Peking concerning our proposals for visits to China by groups of members of the Society, no further representations were made during the past year. Members will, of course, know they can now, as individuals, join a number of tours operating from Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209002, "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-1980", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "132 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nIs this mismanagement? It can be called mismanagement by all who are dissatisfied: by ardent Maoists and by the proponents of greater liberalization. Teng Hsiao-p'ing must feel sometimes like a squeezed beancake. He will be criticized by some no matter what he does. \n\nThe reader must be tired of articles that breathlessly give eye-witness accounts of the truth about China. There is no simple truth about China, which is too large and complicated a country. Articles about it often tell more about the observer than the observed; and about those on whom the observer depended for his information. This problem is not unique to China. England is complicated. The United States is more complicated. Russia and China are still more complicated. About Russia it is hard to learn because of the paranoid secrecy emanating from the Kremlin. About China it is hard to learn because of its long history of ups and downs, ins and outs, and the tendency of most Chinese to assume that \"behind the curtain\" much is going on that differs from what is going on in public view... \n\nDuring my whole trip in China I never heard any Chinese bring up Mao Tse-tung. His portrait was still everywhere—though I have heard that it is rarer in Canton. There was a very long line of people waiting to enter his mausoleum in Peking. But no guide—no one at all, in fact—brought up the name of Chairman Mao. I had an interesting experience in Nanking. The local head of the China Travel Service gave our tour-group a banquet in order to make amends for a mix-up about our arrival in his city. At the end of the banquet he proposed a toast to friendship between China and the United States, to future tourism, and so on. Then one of our tour group responded by proposing a toast to Mao Tse-tung. I was watching our host's face. He was at a loss. Then, after a moment's pause, he joined in the toast. If I had been he, I would have responded with a toast to George Washington. \n\nI had very good luck in visiting monasteries and meeting monks when I went to Sian, Loyang, Nanking, Soochow, Shanghai, and Peking. I have described some of what I learned in the Far Eastern Economic Review for August 15, 1980. Let me say here only that my good luck was because China is a free country today in a way that the Soviet Union is not. While my tour group went off in a bus to see the sights, I hired a taxi and visited a monastery. Only on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209003, "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-1980", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n133\n\nmy first such expedition was I accompanied by anyone from the China Travel Service and that was simply because he knew the way, not because he had been ordered to check on my activities. I was never followed. Taxi drivers made out duplicate slips on each of my expeditions. They gave me a copy and kept the original (as they always do for every taxi ride). In my opinion Public Security cadres did not correlate—or even read—the slips from my many expeditions. One thing alone is of concern to cadres when it comes to tourists: foreign exchange. My taxi rides produced foreign exchange—though taxi fares are far less than in the United States or England. This is because there is only a minuscule charge for waiting; and the taxi often waited for me at a monastery for two or three hours.\n\nThe People's Government wishes the outside world to know that there is now freedom of worship in China. I found that there is freedom of worship and have even published a remarkable photograph to prove it. Thus I have helped Peking to undo the harm that was done to public opinion abroad in 1949-1976.\n\nHarvard, Mass 1981\n\n+\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nCHINESE RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT WITH ISLAM\n\nSince I wrote my Note on two examples of Chinese religious involvement with Islam on pages 199-202 of Volume 19 of the RAS(HK) Journal 1979, I have been fortunate enough to be able to purchase an image, some ten inches high, a typical Chinese altar figure, said to be off a Chinese temple altar in Surabaya on Java. It is of a middle-aged gentleman, dressed in songkok, sarong and a white shirt with cufflinks and removable buttons, worn outside the sarong. He also has white trousers under the sarong and is seated on a Chinese dragon-throne, a typical pose, decoration and carving of a Chinese deity from Fujian province.\n\nThe Chinese who sold it to me said that he had obtained it from the temple keeper in Surabaya as it was no longer needed. It depicted, so he was told, the former President of Indonesia, Dr. Sukarno, born in Surabaya in 1901 and died in 1970. The image had been carved and placed on the altar in a Chinese temple as an\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209484, "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-1982", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "119\n\nit should be remembered, travellers to England needed no passport or travel document, so that Lock had no problems about residence or work. Liverpool, as a great port, had a long-established Chinese colony — a small 'China-town' as it would now be termed — so one infers the young Lock did not feel too cut off from his homeland.\n\nBecause of his maritime experience, he became the European representative of the Chinese Seamen's Mutual Benefit Society, formed in 1914 among Chinese seamen on ocean-going vessels.* This society was registered in Hong Kong under the name of the 'Seamen's Philanthropic Society'. It was more than a mutual-aid society; it had political aims. Lock was also a member of the T'ung-meng-hui (Sworn League), the secret revolutionary party organised by Sun Yat-sen and others in 1905, which later became the Kuo-min-tang. Sun used seamen as couriers in his revolutionary activities and, it is claimed, Lock worked for Sun as a secret service agent in England. Lock also founded the Chinese Republic Progress Club (a significant designation) in Liverpool in 1918 and became the leading figure in the Liverpool Chinese community. At his trial it became known he had convened a secret court to punish a Chinese for beating his English wife (but we do not know what punishment, if any, was meted out to the callous husband). Lock was thus highly respected in both the English and Chinese communities and was a spokesman for his compatriots. He became that well-known figure: a Chinese community leader. He was also a British subject: a naturalised Englishman.\n\nEdward Marjoribanks affirms that ‘... he was not the sinister \"King of Chinatown\" of detective romance; a kindly, gentle person, he distributed much in charity and hospitality, giving Christmas treats to the poor children of Birkenhead and Liverpool, and renting a shoot where he entertained his English friends'.5 All his affairs prospered until 1923 when he launched out on a large commercial undertaking and lost most of his investment. As a consequence, he was forced to file his own petition in bankruptcy, although he continued to live with his wife and children in some style. Friends said that after these events he became moody and his behaviour erratic, flying into sudden rages and weeping uncontrollably. He also began to drink heavily,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211662, "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-1989", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "52\n\nA second legend also tells of five scholars, again during the T'ang dynasty, on their way to the capital to take the imperial examinations when they overheard demons plotting to poison a village well with pestilence pills. The villagers themselves would not believe the scholars so the five jumped into the well and polluted it with their corpses. The Jade Emperor was impressed by their self-sacrifice and appointed them Pestilence Wang Yeh. This story was originally specifically told by people from Ch'uanchou in Fukien.\n\nA third legend claimed that five men, Li, Chih, Wu, Chu and Fan became blood brothers in order to serve the man who, after his military campaign, established the T'ang dynasty and became its first emperor, Kao Tsu. The five were appointed to various offices of state, served the country well, and after they died were appointed Celestial Inspectors, known colloquially as Pestilence Princes, Wen Wang (HE).\n\nTwo further legends date the origins of the Pestilence Wang Yeh to the Ming, some four hundred and sixty years after the T'ang. The first tells of 36 literati ordered by an early Ming emperor to travel forth beyond the borders of China to tell the world about China's greatness and in particular about the history of the great Tang dynasty. On one of the voyages all 36 were lost in a storm at sea and according to one of the surviving sailors, an auspicious pink cloud drifted over the roaring waves and celestial music was heard as the 36 were borne aloft. The emperor ordered a new ship to be built to be called the Ship of the Wang Yeh into which was placed a tablet for each of the 36 together with a decree personally written by the emperor requiring the officials at every port where the ship docked to welcome and honour the spirits of the dead literati.\n\nYet another local legend claims that towards the end of the Ming era five literati, Chih, Li, Chu, Hsing and Chin, on their way to invigilate at the local imperial examinations at Ch'uanchou fell ill and died of plague. They lost their lives in the service of the people of the town and have been worshipped ever since as the Five Excellencies (Wu Fu Wang Yeh).\n\nIn a popular story teller's tale, the Feng Shen Pang, recorded during the Ming dynasty, Lu Yueh, a Taoist with his four disciples fought for the last of the Shang dynasty against the Chou forces, using germ warfare (pestilence weapons). All five were on the losing side and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212204, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "cannibalisation. Until the Japanese advance, in the autumn of 1944, flowed over Hengyang you could see a harlequinade of locomotives there in various states of disintegration. Without these reserves, saved through the foresight of the railway personnel, the Chinese would have found it impossible to maintain the service between Kukong, Hengyang, Kweilin and the west as long as they did.\n\nThere was much activity in the airfields, the civil field over at Wuchang, and the military field near the Race Club behind Hankow. From the latter the Russians were operating light bombers, which would pass over in twos and threes on missions beyond Kiu Kiang; and Russian fighters laid in wait for Japanese raids. As I was riding down the Bund one day in a rickshaw - petrol was scarce and under control - a single Russian bomber flying overhead, for no apparent reason, blew up.\n\nThe foreign married women and children had long since left Hankow. The two faded cabaret dancing-halls prospered even more than usual. Artistes, who spoke Russian with a Harbin accent, so I am told, made lots of hay; but, as will happen when news and women both are short, it was chiefly at the clubs that the men foregathered. It was the fashion to go out to the Race Club of an evening. There on the lawn after sunset you would see the British, the Americans, and the French. Hitler had recently recalled the officers of von Falkenhausen's mission, so that the usual sprinkling of German officers was missing, but occasionally Russian air-force officers came to sit huddled in a group by themselves.\n\nI was able to book a berth on a ship of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company leaving for Kiu Kiang. It is an overnight journey. I do not propose to enlarge on the minor discomforts of travel in China. In the railway carriages, in the ships, and even in the cinemas, the bedbugs and fleas take a long rest during the winter from November to February. It was only June and so I was up on deck soon after dawn to watch the familiar banks go by. As we moved alongside the same old hulk I observed the Kiu Kiang Bund. It had grown shabbier. The process of degeneration, which appears to follow on the withdrawal of the foreigner, was evident. Flaking paint, dirty window panes, broken plaster, left their mark. The Chinese are not good at maintenance, whether it be of houses or machines.\n\nApart from Shanghai, Hankow, and Tientsin, where there were large\n\nIII", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212222, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "141\n\nvehicles, with much kind assistance from my Chinese friends, I found my way, frequently changing buses, to Kinhwa, the large commercial town to which the capital of Chekiang had been removed after the fall of Hangchow. A stretch of the Kiangsi-Chekiang railway was still in operation, though the terminals at either end, Nanchang and Hangchow, were in Japanese hands. The railway carried me to Yintang, where I again took to the bus, and eventually made my way, via Kanshow, to Laolung, the roadhead above Hongkong, at the head of junk navigation on the East river. My progress was often delayed by air alarms, as in accordance with their usual practice, the Chinese would not allow vehicles to enter a town while the alarm was on, and you might spend half a day waiting in the country outside.\n\nOn the way I was struck by the enormous numbers of Chinese migrating from occupied to unoccupied parts. These mass migrations, which have been extended by each subsequent Japanese advance, cannot but have a great influence on conditions in China after the war. The people of the provinces are getting mixed up in a way which has not happened in China before. The effect should help to break down the exclusive provincial barriers which have handicapped unity in the past. Also, owing to the bombing, it was the habit, in many towns, to close down until about four in the afternoon. Everyone who could manage it would walk out into the countryside early in the morning, only to return late in the afternoon after any chance of bombing might be over. The shops would then open and remain open till late at night, and all the intercourse of the town would be...* ...good progress, but the boatman refused to travel at night; muttering about the danger of bandits, he tied up alongside a number of other junks - they always go into a huddle at night for safety - and proceeded to light his opium pipe. Next day we reached a town whence a launch service connected with Waichow. The launch only travelled at night to avoid the risk of being shot up by Japanese aircraft; so we reached Waichow early in the morning and breakfasted off the hot steamed rolls which are popular amongst the Cantonese.\n\nFrom Waichow the track led overland to Mirs Bay in Hongkong waters. For about half of the sixty miles, the recognised form of conveyance was on the carrier of a push-bike propelled by a muscular coolie. We distributed ourselves and our baggage over the necessary\n\n* 27 lines missing here...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212309, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 251, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "By the 1970s, it was no longer such a competitive and profitable organisation and its operations were scaled down. A purpose-built factory was completed on Tsing Yi island in 1991.\n\nAlthough the Swire Group over five generations has always had its head office in England, it has interests throughout Asia and the South Pacific, as well as in North America and Australia. Its China Navigation Company began operations on the Yangtze River in 1872. In World War II, more than half of Swire's ships were lost. A dockyard (of which more later) was established in Hong Kong at the turn of the century.\n\nThe group, which adopts a relatively low profile, has about 28,000 employees in 1988, and is the second largest employer in Hong Kong after the Government. Its complement included, up to 1990, 78-year old Madame Ho Sau-King who had worked at Taikoo Sugar Limited since 1928.\n\nIn 1981 John Bremridge (later Sir John), Taipan of Swire's, became Government Financial Secretary for a term of five years. This was an unprecedented appointment as previous 'FSs' had been promoted through the ranks of the civil service. Like the son of the founder of Swire's, Sir John Bremridge writes and speaks to the point”.\n\nThe conglomeration of interests of this (still largely) family firm and private limited company includes an elite collection of Hong Kong enterprises. Swire's has a controlling interest in Cathay Pacific Airways, founded in 1948, as well as in HAECO aircraft maintenance company. Property is also big business and about 45 per cent of the group's net asset value is in bricks and mortar. Other interests include container terminals, technology, engineering, air catering, investment banking, travel and general trading. Sir Adrian and Sir John Swire have a family fortune estimated at HK$6.3 billion, and in 1989 Sir John was quoted by the Sunday Times Magazine as being Britain's 12th richest person, a position he held jointly with his brother.\n\nDodwell's\n\nW.R. Adamson and Company (later, Adamson Bell and Company), the forerunner of Dodwell's, was founded as a result of the efforts of a group of Cheshire weavers who needed to increase supplies of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212414, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 356, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "333\n\ntheatre-going society of pre and post-war London, personified by Noel Coward. Indeed he belonged to that world.\n\nBeaton was an extremely talented man - a man of the theatre (as stage designer); and of films (as artistic designer). He was also an extremely brilliant portrait photographer of celebrities - politicians, film and stage stars, beautiful aristocrats - and a sharp autobiographer.\n\n―\n\nOxford University Press have, indeed, performed a public service in re-printing these two books, products of the propaganda arm of the Allied War effort in World War II. They capture in words and pictures the exotic and heroic backdrop of places and people - the military, of course, but also the peasant men, women and children of the two main theatres of war in the Far East, South East Asia and China. The words of Beaton's travel diaries and pencil sketches provide marginal observations to the photographs which, in most cases, \"speak for themselves\" in usually the direct language of propaganda. (However, it must be admitted that exposures of the manly heroic breasts of the soldiery record as well Beaton's sexual ambivalence, which doubtless lies at the heart of his creative genius).\n\nIt is interesting to note that at the time, in 1942, when these War Correspondent's despatches were being executed, Beaton was anguishing over the artistic dilemma of whether to carry out the assignment, principally as a photographer war-artist, or whether to pursue his more artistic endeavours.\n\nIn conclusion, it is perhaps unfair to Oxford, when they have done a very good job with an introduction by the Keeper of Photographs at the Imperial War Museum, London, illuminating the context of these now exceptional picture archives of the war - for this reviewer to feel a slight pang of disappointment with the reprints when compared with the originals. There the typography, design and format provide an additional dimension of insight into the ethos of that dramatic period of history.\n\nALAN BIRCH\n\nNancy Tapper, Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in an Afghan Tribal Society Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, xx + 309pp. Bibliography, Index.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214310, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "132\n\nArthur Sowerby was recorded in the Directory & Chronicle of China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, etc. for the years 1932 and 1938 as manager of China Industries Ltd, with an office in Museum Road, Shanghai and in 1938, as a director of the Post-Mercury Company Inc., USA in Avenue Edward VII, also in Shanghai. The latter was involved in printing and advertising.\n\nArthur was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Zoological Society, a member of the RAS North China Branch and also President [1928] of the China Society of Science and Arts [in Shanghai], as well as being Honorary Director of the Shanghai [RAS] Museum.\n\niii\n\nHe married three times, the first time in about 1910, at the age of twenty-five, to Mary Anne Mesny, the daughter of John Mesny of the Chinese Customs Service. She would have been just about the same age as Arthur though more than likely his elder by a few years. She seems to have disappeared from the scene almost immediately, perhaps dying comparatively young but not before she bore him a son. She does not appear in any notes after their marriage even when his parents and sisters were evacuated from Taiyuan to the safety of Tientsin during riots. This suggests that she was no longer present after about 1911 or 1912. As Mary Anne's father, John Mesny, was married to a Chinese lady whom he married in Hankow in 1866, Mary Anne was half-Chinese. This was a time when mixed marriages and even more so, marriage to someone with native blood, was frowned upon by the more bigoted expatriates.\n\nHis second wife, to whom he was married at the age of forty-two in 1927, was Clarice Moise, the American with whom he founded the China Journal. Clarice died in 1944 during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai.\n\nHis third wife was Alice Cowens, an old friend and the lady who had nursed Arthur's brother when he had been gassed during the First World War. She was invited to join Arthur in Shanghai in the Autumn of 1946 at a time when he was too ill to travel back to England alone and promptly flew out, first to Hong Kong and then, five days later, she arrived in Shanghai and married him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214516, "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": 374, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "343\n\nFurther west still, on the edge of Four Funnel Bay, is a fort containing a large gun emplacement (complete with large gun) and extensive underground magazines and chambers. South from here takes one along the former \"Queen's Road\" past a number of buildings including the former Royal Marines barracks and the officers mess.\n\nBack to the harbour front and the mass of naval storage and commercial buildings that we saw from the ferry. The map shows these as being the victualling store, the blacksmith's shop, the fire engine house and other evocative descriptions. Standing four-square with no obvious means of entry, and clearly visible from the sea as the tallest of the buildings, is the distillery - as vital to a naval station as any of the other facilities there. Running through the buildings and along the little streets are tram tracks. An extensive system used to enable goods to be unloaded at the end of the pier from incoming ships and moved for storage.\n\nA fascinating and well-preserved place to just “poke about,” Liu Kung Tau was a gem and a highlight of the trip.\n\nDalian - Far Away, by Whatever Name\n\nWe had been advised by the travel agent to cross to Dalian from Yantai rather than take the service from Weihai. The boats, we were told, are better and faster. Not many weeks after our trip we were to hear of the tragedy whereby almost 300 people lost their lives when one of the Yantai boats went down in heavy seas.\n\nOur three-hour crossing was relatively calm, although many of the local passengers spent most of the time being rather noisily “uncomfortable\" into plastic bags and other containers.\n\nThe first sight that greeted us at the dockside was a large banner in stirring Chinese characters, the sort that you always see in China extolling the virtues of this or that, or exhorting the people to even greater achievements. This one had an English translation that said something like: \"Make Dalian the successful tourist port with successful business and multifunction.\" I like to think that we lived up to this entreaty during our stay.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215598, "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-2001", "page_number": 375, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "بلد\n\n325\n\nthey listened to his plans to modernise China and how he could raise the capital to assist them succeed in doing so, they always went their own ways, often adapting his plans but - as he stressed - without his guiding hand they were never the success they could have been had he been permitted to supervise them.\n\nIn 1905 he described how back in 1879 he had travelled to Sichuan from Guiyang where he had been trying to persuade the Guizhou Provincial Governor, Chen Yuying, to develop the resources of the province by means of a railway from Guiyang to Yongxian in Guangxi province, connecting that city with Canton by a line of steamers on the Yun and West Rivers. He then spent over six months in Chongqing, again offering to supply funds and plans for building suitable steamers to navigate the upper waters of the Yangzi, through the Gorges as far as Chongqing and beyond to Yibin. He added that he was able to speak with authority on the navigation of the upper Yangzi by steamers, \"but no one would listen to me, and even intelligent foreigners, when consulted on the subject, declared I was a visionary and an imaginator of many impractical plans. Some ten days later in a subsequent issue of his Miscellany he wrote 'Whilst here in Shanghai in November 1875, I offered to superintend the construction of a suitable steam-boat for navigation on the upper Yangzi, as far up as Yibin and Chengdu, but the wise Britishers of those days declared that was an impossibility, because British naval officers had studied the subject and declared it to be impossible. I proved to be a good quarter of a century ahead of the progressive age.' Steam-boats now navigate the Upper Yangzi for all that, though they are not as useful as they might have been, had they been devised and constructed under the guidance of a mastermind!\n\n3\n\nPaul King : In the Chinese Customs Service: Heath and Cranton Ltd : London : 1924.\n\nArchibald John Little : Through the Yang-tse Gorges or Trade and Travel in Western China: Sampson Low, Marston & Co.: London : 1898 [Third and Revised Edition].\n\nFacing p. 288 of Little's book, Through the Yang-tse Gorges or Trade and Travel in Western China.\n\nWilliam Mesny: Mesny's Chinese Miscellany : Shanghai : 1st January\n\nPage 375\n\nPage 376", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216062, "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": 361, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "295\n\nregular aside about their breasts and occasionally their naked crotch. He also made much of his affairs with Chinese women and at this point, in 1864 had a 'romantic and intimate interlude' with a young Chinese widow. She did not appear to be short of money and, having sought Mesny's company, accompanied him up river from Zhenjiang to Hankou where they remained until she left to join her in-laws in 1865. He had been away for a fortnight to the cotton growing districts and on his return had been handed a very polite letter from the 'fair charmer' thanking him for all his attentions to her and informing him that she was continuing on to her late husband's home in Hunan there to rear her children and end her days in virtuous widowhood. She ended, wishing him joy and happiness, by saying that the Chinese banker would hand Mesny a little keepsake to be retained by him in everlasting remembrance of their unexpected meeting at Zhenjiang, their romantic adventures and intimacy on the voyage up the Great River, and their separation for ever at Hankou.\n\nMesny's visit to Zhenjiang 1874\n\nAfter he had left military service in 1874 Mesny made frequent and repeated egotistical assertions to prominence and repute within Chinese bureaucracy and commercial circles with his endeavours, so he claimed, concentrated on guiding and promoting what he described as the westernisation and modernisation in China. It is far from clear how he made a living after 1874 though later we read in his Miscellanies that he had obtained lucrative business in Guiyang at one stage; that in 1886 he had an insurance agency in Shanghai; and was also the representative for the Lartigue Railway Construction Company. He must have had many other irons in the fire to enable him to travel so widely and so far within China, of which only a few were described in his Miscellanies.\n\nIn late 1874 he travelled down river to Zhenjiang and then overland through Shandong to Beijing, spending the winter in Jinan. From the dates he gives in his autobiographical notes Mesny must have left his bride fairly soon after their marriage as he travelled through Shantung province on his way to Peking from Chen-kiang' [Mesny does not explain why he was there though almost certainly it would have been no more than a port on his journey from Hankou to Shandong]. In Shandong he visited, amongst other places, the home and burial place of Confucius at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216204, "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": 503, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "437\n\nAssociation on 3 December 1999. Behind the church over 100 steps led up to a tall statue of St Francis Xavier. Beside the steps were 14 stone posts bearing Chinese numbering and inscription. The pedestal of the statue bears worn inscriptions in Chinese and Portuguese - ‘Aqui foi sepultado S. Fran.co Xavier da Comp.a de Jesus, Alpo do Oriente. Este Padrao se levantou no anno de 1639.'\n\nThe current caretaker, Mr Lam, took over in 1996 from a Christian caretaker aged 86, who had cared for the church since 1984. We had the pleasure of meeting this delightful old man in the village beside the church. The current caretaker suggested that for further information we could contact the Religious Affairs Dept. of Tai Shan Municipal Government on Tel 075 552 5980.\n\nWe returned to the port for a good seafood lunch. The ferry arrived a little late but took us safely back to Shen Ju in good time for us to hire a taxi to Zhuhai. There we crossed the border to Macau and enjoyed our dinner accompanied by a bottle of good Portuguese wine, and a toast to the memory of St Francis.\n\nA visit assisted by China Travel Service\n\nBy chance, in June 2001, I (Chris Bailey) had read an article in HK Magazine about the Jesuit-run Xavier Retreat House on Cheung Chau - dedicated to the missionary Saint Francis-Xavier. The article quoted the resident priest, Father Kane, as follows: \"Xavier was one of the founding members of the Jesuits, and came to Asia in 1542. He was a tough guy, a trailblazer and died very near to Hong Kong, on an island about 60 miles west of Macau. His letters describe travelling from Japan and trying to get to Guangzhou, and stopping somewhere nearby to get fresh vegetables and water. There is one historian who theorizes that he stopped at the Old Port in Hong Kong. In any case, he must have passed through Hong Kong waters and seen the islands here. So I stand here (in the Xavier Retreat House) and see what he saw over 400 years ago It's very private, on top of a hill and overlooking the sea. It's a very beautiful sight.”\n\nThis information inspired me to speak to Father Kane who said he knew the island well, had been there several times via Macau and that there was a non-active church dedicated to Francis Xavier, built close", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]