[ { "id": 208700, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "130\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nIn the first raid, bombs fell on the Kowloon dock area, on Whitfield Barracks, on a Japanese army canteen on Nathan Road and a few in the streets of Kowloon. The second and midnight raid was on the lighting plant at North Point, but the bombs, fortunately for us, missed their target. On the third visit, a few bombs fell near the Kowloon shipbuilding yards. One unexploded bomb was said to have been found near the lighting plant, and it was marked \"Cleveland, Ohio.\"\n\nAs a consequence of these raids, the whole city was blacked out at night, all Japanese flags which had been so gaily flying from many buildings were hauled down, and for a month after, there were from two to a dozen Japanese planes in the air all day, flying at a great height looking for more visitors, no doubt.\n\nWith the advent of the month of November, we secured a Hakka teacher and our Language School was functioning, though not too briskly. Early in the month, Father Moore took to his bed with some ailment, which Dr. Samy diagnosed as a nervous stomach. Dr. Samy, by the way, is a neighbor of ours, and an Indian doctor, very prominent in Hong Kong. He has a very talented Chinese wife, and two daughters. He formerly lived near the Queen Mary Hospital, but the Japanese took over his home and, in exchange, gave him a house just below Bethany. Fathers Toomey and McKeirnan teach his children daily, and they often come to visit us. The doctor and his wife have been extremely kind to us and have offered to give us financial help if we find it necessary.\n\nWe mustered up enough courage again to approach the Foreign Office about permission to go to Kwangchauwan, but again came back a final \"NO!\" Since their release from the Camp, the Maryknoll Sisters have been living in Holy Spirit School on Caine Road, but now they are threatened with eviction, as some branch of the government wants the house for some purpose or other.\n\nDuring the month, Father Troesch secured permission to visit our House at Stanley, on pretext of getting some church goods which we needed. All together, we made five trips, two or three Fathers going each time, and each time bringing back a few suitcases full of odds and ends which we managed to salvage in the attic. A few of the extern Carmelite Sisters accompanied us, and they saved quite a number of things for us, which the Mother Superior kindly consented to keep in Carmel for us. Among the salvaged goods were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208970, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "100 \n\nJULIAN F. PAS \n\nin the understanding of faith and ritual, its essential characteristics transcend time and remain unchanged: the re-enactment of the divine salvation work performed by its Founder, Jesus Christ, in order to let people of all times and places participate in the fruits of redemption. This central concept has been liturgically expressed in rituals that are often symbolic, and more often, sacramental. Whereas the essence of theological content is believed to be eternal, its manifestations in time can be numerous and changeable.\n\nThe liturgical year develops round the major themes of the life of Jesus: his nativity and manifestation to the world, his passion, crucifixion and resurrection and finally, his effusion of the Holy Spirit who continues the work of sanctifying grace in the Church. Although this theme is one of uniqueness when compared to the other world religions, the celebration of the resurrection, which is central in Christianity, can easily be seen as a parallel found in many other traditions. The occurrence of Easter in early spring is phenomenologically related to the spring equinox, celebrated in various ways throughout antiquity. Without denying the uniqueness of meaning inherent in the Christian liturgy, it is striking to find that a pre-existing pattern, almost like an archetype, has been adapted to the new faith of Christianity.\n\nThe consecration of new fire on Easter Eve, from which the Easter candle is lit, is a concrete example of the Church's adaptation of old rituals and customs to a new belief system. Although this particular ritual act seems to be rather simple in its structure, there are various levels of meaning that have been superimposed on it. In its primitive significance, the ritual may be a borrowing from the old Roman custom of keeping a sacred fire burning in the temple of Vesta.19 In the early times of the Christian Church, everyday before the Vesper service, a light was struck from a flint: this new light was used to light candles and lamps during the vesper service, and was kept burning until vespers of the following day:\n\nThe Church of Rome observed this custom with great solemnity on Maundy Thursday morning, and the new fire received a special blessing. We learn, from a letter written in the eighth century by Pope St. Zachary to St. Boniface, archbishop of Mainz, that three lamps were lighted from this fire, which were then removed to some safe place, and care taken that their fire was kept burning. It was from these lamps that the light for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209245, "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-1981", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "134\n\nTA ACTON\n\n\"home village associations\", which are formed by all members of particular villages in China who have migrated to Hong Kong. The clubs are the home village associations of two little fishing villages left behind not in distance, but in time, engulfed by technological change and urban sprawl. The villages still exist, surrounded by or transmuted into flats, but their former inhabitants are as much spiritual exiles as most other Hong Kong Chinese.\n\nThat these clubs are not primarily economic in aim does not mean, however, that they cannot be used for economic advantage, of course. The members do help each other. Members of the clubs, for example, had managed to secure most of the life-guard jobs at the new Chai Wan public swimming pool.\n\nThe fishermen's club on Lamma Island was founded by a business-man who had been active in trade with China since the 1930s, Jonathan Gray. It is similar to those of Chai Wan and Stanley, but has been prepared to be more militant and public in its pressure group activity to gain compensation for fishermen when their best fishing areas off Lamma were being 'reclaimed'.\n\nThese three clubs, confined to a small area in the south of the territory, are the only instances that even approach an ethnic mobilisation of the Shui-sheung-yan,\n\nThe True Jesus Church\n\nThe True Jesus Church was founded in Peking in 1917, and is evidently part of the world-wide Pentecostal revival of the early years of this century. It is distinctive in that, as well as being charismatic, it is \"Seventh Day\" — that is, it holds the Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday, not Sunday. It also holds that believers' baptism should be carried out by total immersion with the face facing downwards, and should be followed by the washing of feet. Otherwise, it is fairly orthodox in its evangelicalism. It describes itself as \"a revived apostolic church”, preaching \"a full gospel of salvation based on the truth in the Bible, accompanied by signs and miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit\".\n\nThe membership of this church remained almost wholly Chinese as it spread to South-East Asia, apart from some missionary work in Nigeria. Its headquarters are now in Taiwan. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, a lady fish merchant belonging to the church came to Hong Kong from Malaya to buy seafood. She began to preach to her Shui-sheung-yan suppliers, and to pray for healing for their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212153, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "72\n\nin the Christian quarter of Baghdad, when Ch'ang-an and its glories were only a distant memory, and the Nestorian church in China proper was virtually extinct.\n\nIts tone is one of elegiac regret for an illustrious past, when the leaders of the Nestorian church had enjoyed access to the emperors of China; when Fang Hsüan-ling and Wei-cheng, two of the most powerful men in T'ai-tsung's court, had welcomed the first Nestorian missionary to China, and when the emperor Te-tsung had summoned a Nestorian archbishop to the imperial palace to translate the Christian scriptures into Chinese. The term 'brilliant teaching' does not appear either in the text of the Book of Praise or in the explanatory note, although there is a single reference in the note to our religion of Ta-ch'in'. The text of the Book of Praise lists, as we have seen, a number of books brought by Reuben to China in 635, including the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, the Book of the Origin of Origins, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. The manuscripts of the last three documents which have survived contain the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' in their titles, but the phrase is omitted from the titles as given in the Book of Praise. Also, the term ching-feng (pure wind) is no longer used for Holy Spirit: instead we find a transliteration of the Syriac Ruha de Kudsha. The man who wrote the Book of Praise did so on a manuscript which contained a text of the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity with 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' prominently displayed in the hymn's title. He nevertheless felt able to ignore this example of 'correct' usage in the Book of Praise.\n\nThere are a number of stylistic similarities between the Book of Praise and the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, which suggest that our manuscript of the latter, although deriving from a seventh century Syriac original translated into Chinese by Adam, was copied in the tenth century. Firstly, its title is exactly as given in the text of the Book of Praise, and does not contain the expression 'Syrian brilliant teaching', found in the other late eighth-century manuscripts. Secondly, as in the Book of Praise, a transliteration of the Syriac Ruha de Kudsha is used instead of the term ching feng to denote the Holy Spirit. Thirdly, both texts use an obscure transliteration of the Sogdian word for 'rock' in the proper name 'Simon Peter' (Chang-wan Chang-jia, 'Simon the Rock'), instead of adopting a straightforward Chinese equivalent. Fourthly, both texts use one only of the two", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215418, "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": 195, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "144\n\nof Triumph theme itself has been incorporated here into a more sumptuous design and at first glance is not immediately apparent.\n\nAlthough it is not possible to discuss it in detail, one should at least take note of the articulation of the façade. Its luxuriously applied decoration is executed in a soft local stone and stands out from the brick wall, once coated in white plaster. It starts with Corinthian columns on three bays of the ground floor that connect to Doric and Corinthian pilasters in the two storeys above and a fanciful Mannerist Composite order with decorative shafts in the attic. But the overall design is highly compartmentalized by means of large buttresses framing the corners and central bay in the shape of classical brick pilasters rising on all storeys.\n\nHowever, in spite of similarities, one can see a marked difference to the churches the Jesuits has built previously. Quite novel are the Mannerist carvings now embellishing practically the whole design of the façade of the Bom Jesus. The rendition of the symbol of the Society of Jesus in the attic, inside an oculus framed by a Mannerist cartouche upheld by eight angels, as well as other unusual details, is typical of the Mannerist style (Fig.10).\n\nStarted in 1601 the Collegiate Church of the Society in Diu is the second most important example of a new development in Jesuit churches in India. Its proper name is Espírito Santo, or Church of the Holy Spirit. The design of the front elevation basically reproduces that of the Bom Jesús, except that it has been greatly unified by the abolition of the third storey and the compartments created by the buttresses in that building (Figs. 11,12).\n\nIn ornamental extravagance its carved white stucco decoration outdoes the Bom Jesús and it has been argued that this is partly due to the influence of Indian architecture.\n\nBoth the influence of retables claimed by D. Kowal for the Jesuit portals showing arches of triumph in Velha Goa and Baçaim, as well as the decorative complexity of the fronts of the Bom Jesus and Espiritu Santo are new developments. They point the way towards the even more novel departures seen in the façade of the Church of Madre de Deus in Macao.\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215423, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "149\n\neach one in his niche, over stone bases with their names carved on them in the same order as we have them on the main altar, all in bronze with their foundry signs: hands and faces painted red; vestments gilded throughout the length of the body, with no other colour. On the second frieze and third storey with columns that rest on the middle window the Image of Our Lady of the Assumption, titular saint of the Church, has its niche, which image steps on a large gilded moon; over her head two Angels in the round of the same metal appear to be holding a closed crown, each one of which holds out his arm on the side where he is. Below these another pair seem to go through the air giving a hand in favour of Our Lady's ascent.\n\nThe third frieze, which runs underneath the last storey, gave place to the last niche. It has on its base the Image of the infant Jesus with a cross on the globe of the world on his hand and which does not differ from the others in anything, except that it is of lesser height than them. Inside the field of the pointed summit which makes a straight triangle - on which rests the stone pedestal on which is to be fixed the iron cross with rod arms that is the crown of the whole work, for which alms were given this year as I said above - from the middle of rays carved in the stone, a kind of image of a dove goes fourth, representing the Holy Spirit with its wings wide open, in gilded bronze and of significant size. Note: for all of this magnificent and sumptuous work expenses were met with alms ....' (italics mine).\n\nThere are several quite remarkable points here. Apart from their gilded garments, the first is that the faces and hands of the images of the Jesuit saints were painted red. That these bronzes were painted is highly unusual. If the faces and hands were actually painted red is perhaps arguable. But the gilded garments of the four bronzes could well have been intended to imitate the technique of gilding practised on carved statues since Late Gothic retables.\n\nBrightly painted images are known in medieval Spanish portals, an obsolete practice in the seventeenth century. It was, however, still in use in the case of some Latin American retable-façades, as the researches of Humberto Rodríguez-Camilloni on the façade of San Francisco, Lima, Peru, have disclosed.21\n\nWhat has equally remained unknown because it is missing in José", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215426, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "152\n\npair emerges at the back of the fourth storey. These six lions obviously served the same purpose as the gargoyles of Gothic churches, and may be void of iconographic meaning. In this case more important than classical orthodoxy for the Jesuits was evidently the incorporation and integration of Chinese and Japanese decorative motifs.\n\nPurpose of Decoration\n\nOne of the most striking features betraying the influence of retables is the profusion of religious symbols adorning the walls of the frontispiece, an esoteric hieroglyphic language growing in iconographic intensity as it moves towards the top. In purely architectural terms this richness of imagery appears to be mainly artistic and non-functional, and is not found to this extent in the decoration of more conventional church façades. However, it is something typical of Counter-Reformation altarpieces, one of its main purposes being a didactic one. Not only the structure, but also the decorative dialogue of the façade also reveals it to be a mixture of medieval scholasticism and Renaissance classicism.\n\nAnother characteristic of retables found in the façade is the hierarchy and progression of symbols and sculptured images that goes from bottom to top. For example, instead of the geometric decoration of the first storey, the second storey's bays display naturalistic bas-reliefs of palm trees. The bronzes themselves start with images of blessed and saints, above which appear those of the Virgin and Jesus.\n\nThe upper half of the façade consists of a third storey united to those below by carved volutes, and a fourth storey or attic joined to it by segmental brackets and crowned by a large pediment displaying the dove of the Holy Spirit.\n\nIn this upper half there are several Chinese inscriptions, further attesting to the didactic purpose of the decoration. Although these apparently were not the work of Chinese artists knowledgeable of calligraphy,25 they are quite legible and visible from the upper steps and the entrance courtyard below. There can be little doubt that their main purpose was to make the iconographic and calligraphic messages of the frontispiece, largely concentrated in the upper half of the façade, clear to the Chinese population and to potential Chinese converts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]