[ { "id": 211654, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "44\n\nCommander of the Main Army [ff]) and the Yu Ying Kung share the sanctified premises and all offerings. The stalls in front of the temple sell 'gold paper' for the Wang Yeh and 'silver paper' for the Yu Ying Kung together in one bundle. Worshippers have to pay their respects at both temples or their prayers will not be answered. These are special characteristics of this temple.\n\nThe temple was completed in 1824 and Wang Te-lu (E), an Escort to the Crown Prince and a native of Taiwan, went to Nan K’un Shen to pay his respects to the Wang Yeh. It was generally believed at that time that such deities are incarnated officials and are feared by demons. The way to test whether a deity is a genuine incarnation or not is for a living high official to kick the effigy of the god and if it is a demon in disguise then the effigy will fall over. Wang Te-lu kicked an image of one of the Five Wang Yeh with his boot but the image did not budge.\n\nThe Yu Ying Kung is known in this temple as The Lord of the Myriad Kindnesses (Wan Shan Yeh). He is also referred to colloquially as the Infant Duke (FA).\n\nAccording to legend, one of the Five Wang Yeh of Nan K'un Shen in 1820 made a tour of inspection to the north of their area and encountered the local magistrate also on tour, in what is now Chia I. Neither would give away to the other and a dangerous confrontation took place. A nearby illiterate farmer suddenly had supernatural powers and wrote in the soil with his hoe, \"Representing Heaven in order to deal with both the Yin and Yang worlds. Hope that the bad government will change for the better\". The magistrate seeing these words hurriedly gave way. The local Prefect heard of the incident and decided that he would like to test the power and genuineness of the Wang Yeh. By coincidence the Wang Yeh was on his way to Tainan, where the Prefect had his Yamen, in the course of his inspection tour. So the Prefect ordered his men to tie an effigy of the Wang Yeh on the altar to a large tree stump and announced that if the effigy was unable to free itself from the tree stump then he, the Prefect would chop the effigy up for firewood. Nothing happened for two days and then, on the third day at midday two large black dogs appeared, jumped on to the shrine and tore away the large tree stump. The Prefect was very impressed and pledged that he would go each year to the shrine to worship before the Wang Yeh.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212634, "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-1991", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "168\n\nfirst successes; our teams succeeded in cutting two bridges on the important Shanghai-Hangchow railway, by which supplies for the Japanese forces attacking Kinhwa moved. One bridge, a single span, was near a Japanese post on the railway, but the team had succeeded in obtaining its measurements and preparing the charges, so that they had little difficulty in sneaking up one wet night and fixing them, when the garrison were all sheltering inside the post. The first the garrison knew of it was when they heard the explosion. But even then, they did not seem to realise that the span had been dropped into the creek, because at dawn next morning a power-driven trolley came along with an inspection party and ran full tilt over the gap into the waters. Of the party of four Japanese, two were drowned. Although Chinese troops had done some demolition work in the past, it was not of the same quality. The Japanese were furious. They took four miserable farmers off the fields by the bridge and gave them the water treatment. That consisted of inviting them in and offering them a nice bowl of tea. After the farmer had finished the first bowl, he was invited to drink another; if he showed signs of demurring, he was encouraged by prods and kicks to take more, and he had to continue drinking till he simply could not swallow any more. Four Japanese would then take him outside, seize him each by an arm or leg, and throw him into the air, allowing him to drop to the earth. If that did not rupture his full stomach, they would jump on it. They would then leave him to die in agony. Finally, the heads of the four farmers were cut off and stuck up at each corner of the broken bridge.\n\nOur own position at Chin Ya was none too secure. After the departure of our Army Group Commander, we had been placed under the command of a general, whose headquarters were not far away, but whose troops faced west towards Wuhu and the Poyang lake, where, as I have already explained, there were no targets. As soon as the success of our work became known, there was pressure from all sorts of generals to enter their students at our school; I do not flatter myself that the desire was based so much on the wish to benefit from our instruction as to have a share in our supplies. Our new general now wanted to take possession of us hook, line, and sinker, and the better to do it, he proposed we should move over to his part of the country. Not only were there no targets there, but neither was there any derelict railway on which we could train; we hastily explained what a lot of work and money we had put into our \"plant\" and the overwhelming disadvantages of moving. It was agreed we should stay, but we felt under the obligation to accept a number of teams from the General's regiments for our next course; all wasted effort.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212744, "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-1992", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "38\n\nHe covered several of his printed pages with descriptions of various groups of attractive 'fairies' who treated him as a great Lord and fussed him with food and attention. He explained that he had wondered who they were and had come to the conclusion that they were well-to-do daughters of officials captured by the Taipings and were part of the Taiping chieftain's retinue.\n\nHe implied at one point that the 'unknown charmer' who had been closely chaperoned by her sister, yet met him daily during his captivity in Nanking to learn English, was one of the daughters of the Taiping ruler Hung Hsiu-ch'üan\". She passed him a note as he was leaving with the Royal Navy rescue party, which, though lengthy and in semi-verse, left no doubt that the maiden, whoever she might have been, was expressing her desire for Mesny to return to marry her. No clue was given why Mesny should believe her to be a daughter of Hung Hsiu-ch'üan, and yet again we are left in the dark with his 'fair admirer' unidentified.\n\nAlthough there was no mention of marriage in this instance, his army commander in Kueichou province in 1870, returning home at the end of the first campaign, had offered to take Mesny back to Hunan with him where he could live en famille. Mesny then went on to say that he told the General that he had been away from his home and family in Jersey for some sixteen years and preferred to return there to get married in his own country rather than in China.\n\nThe priests or monks of the Ch'ien-lin Shan monastery more than once asked him to become a member of their order with a view to becoming eligible as a ruler over the four hundred monks in that monastery. He declined as he said that he had always had an inclination to marry some European lady of education, or to otherwise secure the life companionship of a distinguished European lady writer with whom he might associate as pupil or assistant in her literary career [this was written after he had been married to several Chinese women].\n\nOnly twice in his writings does he ever refer to European women as either attractive or otherwise, and interested in him. One was a young English lady of 'prepossessing appearance and fascinating manners,' who surprised everyone in Hankow by declaring that Mesny, who was unprepared to avail himself at the time as he had set his affections on another lady, 'Lydia,' (a girl at home in Jersey) reciprocated her love in a marvellous manner though they had not met since he was 11 and ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214562, "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": 420, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "389\n\nI append a copy of the inscriptions on the two monuments in question with a list of the other headstones in the same locality which may possibly prove useful for future reference.\n\nAppended to the report was a copy of a list of gravestones within the British cemetery in Dinghai also recorded during the visit of the individual who wrote the report. It came as somewhat of a surprise to us to note the number of graves of wives and children of British soldiers as we had assumed that during the two short assaults on Zhoushan in 1842 and 1857, and the several years of occupation British soldiers were without their dependants, because of the remoteness of China from the more permanent British bases.\n\nList of Monuments in British Graveyard\n\nat Chusan\n\n1. Monument to 55th Regt.\n\n2. Captain Colin Campbell\n\n3. Commander Harmer, H.M.S. Driver\n\n4. Eliza Woods and infant son wife of Sergeant Woods.\n\n5. Captain Hopton Steward of\n\nix Regt. Madras Native Infantry.\n\n6. Wife of Quarter Master Perl Royal Irish Regiment.\n\n7. Corporal M. Gleeson 98th Regt.\n\n8. Sergt. Blake, 98th Regt.\n\n9. Infant daughter of Sergt. Cobden\n\n10. Mrs. Gregory, wife of Lieut Colonel Gregory 98th Regt.\n\nPage 420\nPage 421", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215091, "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-2000", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "3\n\n144\n\nDoré, Le P. Henri : Recherches sur les Superstitions en Chine : Hème Partie : Tome X: Shanghai: 1915: pp 831-832\n\n* See below under Yang Ren for an alternative to Yin Jiao as Commander of the Twelve Branches.\n\n5 No Cantonese devotee appears to have heard of Yin Jiao whereas Fukienese and Chinese of the Yangzi basin knew him as Marshal Yin rather than as Taisui.\n\n6 \"Werner E. T. C. in his Dictionary of Chinese Mythology: Kelly and Walsh: Shanghai: 1932 claimed that the Ministry consisted not of 60 but of 120 spirits as he included the deities controlling the months and days\n\n7 The cycle of sixty years was the basis for the Chinese lunar calendar with its twelve branches and ten stems. The sixtieth year of a man's life signified a turning point, this being the normal life span of a human being, and anyone who is fortunate enough to be older than sixty begins the round again. Other deities are entreated for a prolongation of life beyond the normal span.\n\n* DuBose, Rev. Hampden C: The Dragon, Image and Demon or The Three Religions of China: Partridge and Co.: London : 1886\n\n\"The combination of branch and stem provides the date, with the branches and stems depicting and belonging to one of the five primordial essences [water, wood, fire, metal and earth]. The concentric rings within the compass contain information on planetary movements, the ba gua and yin and yang; the five elements; the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, etc.\n\n10 The reason for this is simple. The basic Farmer's Almanac is produced and printed in Taiwan, a predominantly Fukienese community, but with copies sent to Hong Kong and elsewhere for local binding and distribution.\n\n\"According to religious specialists each of the stellar deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations has a title and a specific role, the latter differing depending upon the individual ritual specialists or books. In early China the visible stars were divided into 28 zones or constellations, with seven in each of the four directions. Other similar groups are the Thirty-six Stars of the Plough (T'ien-kang Hsing XXI) and the Seventy-two Stars of Evil Omen [Ti-sha Hsing]\n\n1. Each of the Thirty-six was a legendary hero recorded in one of the numerous stories of the deification of and struggles between the deities. They", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]