[ { "id": 204418, "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-1962", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "THE BUDDHIST CAREER\n\n+4\n\n41\n\nthey had a relative in the Sangha, an older brother or uncle whom they admired and who urged them to follow in his footsteps. Perhaps they had accompanied their mother when she went to the monastery to worship. They had played in the courtyard and had been impressed by the vast buildings, which were so much finer than the house they lived in. The monks were especially nice to children and told them stories that stimulated their interest in Buddhism. But the reason most often given for entering monastery life is that it was so peaceful ch'ing-ching \" I am not sure yet what is really meant by this, but we should remember that China has been in a turmoil for a century now, during most of which the individual's future has looked rather uncertain. The monastery has offered the hope of a kind of serenity not available elsewhere and it would appear that, although they were young, these people already wanted serenity. In any case, we should not accept the thesis of many Confucian scholars and Christian missionaries that the priesthood was a universally despised profession. This was true in some parts of China, but in other areas monks were much respected. In northern Kiangsu province, for example, it was done to become a monk and there was usually one in every family with three or four sons.\n\nLA\n\nto\n\nIn the last category, we have those who “left home\" in middle age, many of whom had had a lifelong interest in Buddhism. Now they wanted to work harder at religious exercises under optimum conditions, without interruptions and without the demands of family life. Therefore, they turned their backs on wife and offspring.\n\nAll three categories (those who became monks as children, in their youth, and in middle age) came from varying backgrounds. Some were rich, some were poor. Some of those in their twenties were university graduates. Some of the older ones had been successful businessmen, officials, or army officers. One cannot generalize, and I think it is a mistake to believe that most Chinese monks entered the monastery to escape from hunger or from some personal disappointment. This was, of course, the case with many. They were usually the ones who, after the ordination, went back to the small temples where they had trained and led lives of varying sanctity. Those who were more serious and more religiously motivated entered the Meditation Hall, either", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204481, "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-1962", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nthere are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence.\n\n53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years.\n\n54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies.\n\n55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away.\n\n56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204539, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "PROTESTANT CEMETERY IN MACAO\n\n15\n\ncemetery. Membership of the Board is open to the Consular Authorities in Macao of certain European Protestant nations, plus Protestant residents in Macao. In 1924 the Rev. John Galloway, a Canadian missionary, was appointed a Trustee; he still lives in Macao and it is to him that we are indebted for much of our information concerning the later history of these two cemeteries in Macao, the Old and the New. When the East India Company ceased operating in China in 1834, its property in Macao reverted to His Majesty's Government in England. But in 1870, it was thought wiser that the two cemetery properties in Macao should come under the ownership of one body, and the Old Cemetery property was transferred to the New Cemetery Trustees, under whose control it rests to this day.\n\nEntrance to the Old Cemetery. The door in the wall already mentioned gives entrance to the property which is on three levels; the highest or first level is a courtyard in which a simple chapel stands; the burial plots are on the two lower levels which we refer to as the Upper and Lower Terraces. A wide cement path leads down from the Chapel level to the Lower Terrace and a break in the left-hand wall on the way down gives access to the Upper Terrace. In the chapel are two wall memorials of interest; one is to a British merchant named Margesson who originally came from Surrey, and who was drowned on 17 June 1869 when the ship in which he was travelling struck a rock just a mile or two off the coast of Japan; the disaster occurred on a clear evening and in a perfectly calm sea, but the ship sank almost immediately with a big loss of life.\n\nThe other chapel memorial is to James B. Endicott who died of typhoid in 1870 after living for 35 years in Hong Kong, Macao, and Canton. He is actually buried in the Colonial Cemetery in Happy Valley, Hong Kong, but he has two daughters, an uncle, and many friends in the churchyard in Macao. Endicott was born in Danvers, Massachusetts, U.S.A. in 1814, and is a direct lineal descendant of John Endicott who sailed from the harbour of Weymouth, England, in 1628 in the ship Abigail on an adventurous voyage to the New World where he became the founder and first governor of the State of Massachusetts. James B. Endicott introduces us to the important American section of the foreigners who lived in Macao more than one hundred years ago, over fifty of whom rest in this cemetery.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204575, "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "# FLOWERS OF HONG KONG\n\n45\n\nCAMELLIA HONGKONGENSIS, SEEM. ***\n\nFamily: Theaceae (Ternstroemiaceae)\n\nCommon names: Red Camellia\n\nRed Hong Kong Camellia\n\nThe genus Camellia is wholly native to south east Asia with the greatest concentration in abundance and in the number of species in western and southern China. Kwangtung and Hong Kong have been known to have 16 species, 5 of which are indigenous, being only known from Hong Kong. Camellia hongkongensis, with its native home on Hong Kong island, in a spinney, off a beaten track near Peel Rise, was discovered in 1849 by Colonel J. Eyre, R.A. and was first described in 1853, by Dr. Berthold Seemann.\n\nThis Camellia is the only local native species with crimson flowers. The combination of the crimson petals, the bright golden anthers, held together below by a brown involucral perule of overlapping bracts and sepals against a background of coriaceous, glossy dark green foliage is strikingly oriental. The numerous stamens of golden anthers and crimson filaments are fused to the petals and to each other, forming a fleshy rim at the base. The gynoecium G(3) consists of a tiny hairy ovary and three glabrous free styles. After blooming, the corolla and androecium are completely shed, leaving the gynoecia, protected by the persistent perules, to develop into large semi-globose brown woody capsular fruits, taking twelve months to mature. Each dehisces explosively but irregularly into three spreading valves which remain attached at the base, dispersing the large seeds and exposing the erect axis (columella) at the centre. The seeds are viable only for a short time and must be sown immediately after dehiscence.\n\nThe evergreen trees are tall and slender but much branched, reaching up to 30-40 feet. Blooming time is from December to March when blooms in Hong Kong are rare and precious and the demand for red flowers—a happy colour—is great. Much has been written about this Hong Kong Camellia but many local residents are not acquainted with its appearance nor its existence. It is time to introduce it into cultivation into our gardens and our courtyards. We, in Hong Kong, should be justly proud of producing this special Camellia hongkongensis.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204599, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n69\n\nhad now come for Dr. Rennie to leave Peking, since he had been appointed Senior Medical Officer of the British Forces. He left in April 1862, and one of the last pen-pictures he gives us in his diary is of a Mrs. Wright, a milliner at Shanghai, whom he met on the road between Peking and Tungchow, riding in a cart with a friend, Mrs. Innocent, the wife of a missionary, these two good ladies being on their way to the Legation to stay with the house-keeper, Mrs. Reynolds, since the three had been old friends in Shanghai.\n\nOnly a few years later the Legation was in disrepair. A. B. Freeman-Mitford, who was a member of the Legation staff from 1865 to 1866, described it as it appeared to him in June 1865.\n\nOur Legation is situated in the southern part of the Tartar city. We occupy a most picturesque palace called the Liang Kung Fu, or Palace of the Duke of Liang, which, like all Chinese buildings of importance, covers an immense space of ground. There are courtyards upon courtyards, huge empty buildings with red pillars, used as covered courts, state approaches guarded by two great marble lions, and a number of houses with only ground floor, each of us inhabiting one to himself. When the Legation first came to live here the whole place was put into repair, and redecorated in the Chinese fashion with fluted roofs of many colours, carved woodwork, kylins of stone and pottery, and all the thousand and one fancies with which the Chinese cover their buildings. Unfortunately the repairs were badly executed, and nothing further has been done to keep matters straight, so the Legation, which ought to be as pretty as possible, is really a disgrace to us. The gardens are a wilderness, the paving of the courts is broken, the walls are tumbling down, and the beautiful place is going to rack and ruin. In this climate of extreme heat and cold a stitch in time saves ninety-nine. Fancy a residence in the heart of a great and populous city where foxes, scorpions, polecats, weasels, magpies, and other creatures that one expects to find in the wild country, abound. That will give you an idea of how space is wasted in Peking.\n\n12 A. B. Freeman-Mitford. The Attaché at Peking (London, 1900), 66-7. The author, who later became the first Baron Redesdale, spent the years 1866-70 as a member of the British Legation in Japan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204622, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "90\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n(1878-9 and 1906-7), stands in the street outside the Fong Pin hospital12 telling how it came to be established; and the third, in an old house in Tai Shan Street, commemorates the establishment and repair of a defence office in the 2nd and 10th years of T'ung-chih (1863-4 and 1871-2).\n\nThe three tablets give information about the island population towards the end of the Ch'ing dynasty and, for instance, tell something of the various sections of the community, especially those where local leadership and authority rested; their links with other parts of the San On district and the Kwangtung province; their relations with the district government and other officials, civil and military; and the way in which such local communal needs as a hospital, schools, and a defence corps or local militia were met.\n\nThe nucleus of Cheung Chau society seems always to have been the community of fishermen and shopkeepers, the two being interdependent to a great extent though separated by many basic differences. There has, in addition, always been a farming community, but it has ever taken a third place. A hundred years ago it is likely that the majority of the land dwellers were connected with the island's shops, as proprietors or fokis, and in subsidiary trades and occupations associated with the three main sections of the community. Cheung Chau also served as the market town for over a dozen villages on the central and southwest coast of Lantau, the largest of which was Shek Pik with a population of 363 in 1911, and for the inhabitants of the outer islands. The Fong Pin tablet states that there were two hundred shops in the 1870's, from which it can be deduced that Cheung Chau was a flourishing commercial centre at that time. This is borne out by the house in which the defence association tablet was found, which is long, narrow and surprisingly large, with a small open courtyard in the middle. It has changed very little in the last hundred years, like many other houses in the town which date from this period and before.\n\nIn this urbanized community local power lay with two groups: the members of the WONG Wai Chak Tong*** of Nam Tau and Cheung Chau; and the larger traders and shopkeepers. The two were probably intermingled to some extent, in that some Tong members would be business men, but more investigation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204719, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n13\n\nOn the evening of the 19th affairs looked so squally that Mr. Hunter who had returned to Canton a day or two before ordered all the books and papers packed up and started with them at 2 A.M. the next morning for Macao. At 7 Mr. King started Mr. Spooner and myself off in Mr. Hunter's sail boat with a load of baggage, and books that Mr. H. could not take. We were towed down by Captain Endicott's boat and arrived safer after a passage of 6 hours on board the Naraganset. On our arrival we received a chit from Mr. Hunter stating that a number of transports and men of war were on the way up and advising us to get out of Canton as soon as possible. This I forwarded to Mr. King, but he did not get it as he had already left with the remainder of R and Co's Establishment.3\n\nExplanatory terms\n\nIn China the factory was a multi-purpose building. The lower floor usually was used for office space, storage, and the like, the second floor for dining and lounging, and the third for sleeping. Broad verandahs around the building gave it a spacious and airy quality. In Canton the factories of the various nationalities, American, Danish, French, Dutch, and Swedish faced the river. The British factory was truly magnificent for it contained a huge and lavishly furnished dining hall with terrace, library, chapel and numerous private rooms.\n\nHong was sometimes used interchangeably with factory but specifically it referred to all the buildings of a commercial establishment, i.e., the factory and subsidiary buildings such as living quarters for servants and workers and large storage areas for cargos of ships.\n\nHong merchants had formed an association in the early eighteenth century; in 1839 the Chinese merchants numbered thirteen and they had a monopoly of trade with foreigners. The most powerful and wealthy Hong merchant was Howqua, spelt by Hunter Houqua.\n\nConsoo House was the property of the Hong merchants, and in actuality was a series of buildings in the Chinese style. The main building contained lavish reception rooms and a series of courtyards.\n\n3 James Duncan Phillips, editor, \"The Canton Letters 1839-1841 of William Henry Low,\" The Essex Institute Historical Collections LXXXIV, 1948.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205618, "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-1968", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "164\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nhusband's family were Hakkas from near Tam Shui and they had then been in Ngau Tau Kok for three generations.\n\nThese accounts are selected from others known to the writer, and are intended to illustrate a feature of old village life in the Hong Kong region at the end of the last century and, no doubt, for centuries before.\n\nBy way of a postscript it appears that travelling Hakka craftsmen were not only to be found in South China. Agnes Smedley's book The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1956) mentions regular visits from such persons at his home when he was young. He was born in a village near the market town of Ma An Chang in I Lung (四川) district in Szechuan in 1886. The following extracts are of interest:\n\nFrom time to time during the year, itinerant artisans left the big towns and cities and came along the Big Road, wandering from village to village to work for such families as needed their special skills. Carpenters, metalsmiths, mat weavers, cloth weavers and others, all were skilled artisans who owned and carried their own tools of trade... An old weaver, whom General Chu referred to simply as \"the Old Weaver\", came each winter to weave cloth from the cotton thread spun by the women of the Chu family. The coarse woven cloth was then dyed an indigo blue, hung on long bamboo poles to dry, after which the women cut and sewed it into garments for the family, into quilt coverings or other uses of the household... These itinerant artisans were a part of the peasant economy. Coming from the big towns or cities, they were much more advanced and independent than the peasants, to whom they brought new ideas. They were even folk historians and some of them could read and write. They lived in the homes where they worked, and each evening the family gathered about to listen to their talk... The Old Weaver who wove cloth for the Chu family each winter seems to have been a Hakka also. He was a grim old fellow with a scalding tongue who would set up his long narrow loom in the courtyard or, if it was too cold, in the kitchen, and begin his weaving... the old man's long brown hands worked as swift as light. He could weave twenty chih, some twenty to thirty feet of cloth, a day, for which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206064, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n139\n\nthe Tanka. Their boats are less well constructed than those of the Tanka and can always be picked out at a distance by their less elegant design. They are all built of pine and a feature of them, in distinction to the Tanka craft, is the pair of eyes embossed on the prow. The Hoklo build matsheds of bamboo frame covered with plantain leaves. They do not prop them on struts as the Tanka do, but set them side by side to form small fishing villages next to the beach.\n\nIn sharp distinction to this, the Punti and Hakka are architects and builders. They live in houses built of brick and mortar and roofed with tiles. Subsidiary roofing is made over a small courtyard just inside the main entrance which serves to light the rooms. This courtyard is exactly square and the space beneath the wall on the right as one enters is invariably the kitchen. The main room contains the ancestral tablets of the family and is used as a parlour, to the left and right of it are sleeping rooms. The design is as compact and comfortable as a house with neither windows nor chimneys can be.\n\nThere are no separate houses. The Punti always live in villages. The most elaborate are surrounded with walls and moats and entered over a bridge and through a main gate of wrought iron or wood. This main gate has generally two storeys and is built for armed defence, from it a main street flagged with granite leads to the farther end of the village. The dwellings are along the main street or along side streets exactly horizontal or parallel to it and there is generally a side gate with a similar portico and bridge. The more rustic villages do not have moats or main gates but are generally surrounded by a wall of loose boulders and there is the same arrangement of streets according to the size of the community. These villages are nearly always situated in front of triangular patches of dense wood which is never cut.\n\nThe Hakka villages are exactly similar to those of the Punti, but they do not tend to build walls so regularly. There are many cases of Punti and Hakka sharing villages, and a tendency for the Hakka to encroach on the land of the Punti which has often led to friction. This tendency is especially apparent in the North East corner of our region.\n\nThe evidence of dwelling therefore supports the theory that one section of the population is culturally different from the other.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206590, "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-1972", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "132\n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN\n\nmain crop, rice, requires an extensive system of irrigation. Rice farming divides the land into small paddies which tend to separate the communities. The mountainous country with its many isolated valleys further compartmentalizes the area into small and closely knit groups, speaking a large number of dialects. These conditions aided in the development of a strong clan system which is most heavily concentrated in the provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien. This type of social organization demanded an architecture that would reflect the community structure. In the rugged, mountainous regions, as in Chekiang, where land is precious, the Chinese utilized the smallest possible space for building. Hence, the Chinese, when they developed their systems of architecture, were acutely conscious of the natural environment and tried to come to an understanding with it.\n\nThe townhouse courtyard complex plan () is the most familiar architectural structure for Chinese houses. It is, however, by no means the most common of all domestic architecture but rather represents the home of the affluent. The basic plan was a rectangular walled area consisting of two courtyards separated by the guest hall. The less important buildings, kitchen, storage sheds, animal pens and servants' quarters, were located along the sides, or adjacent to the front wall. The first or main courtyard normally was larger than the second courtyard and was used for receiving visitors. The second courtyard was that of the family where the women and children spent their days. Only intimate friends and relatives would be invited into it. At the end of this courtyard, adjacent to the back wall, was the parents' suite. The children's rooms were along the sides. Richer and larger families would extend this basic design by adding more courtyards and halls and of course, gardens. Life behind the walls of the courtyard house was isolated from the life of the busy streets. The walls were normally built high enough so that only the peaks of the roofs were visible from the street. There were no windows facing out but only onto the inner yards. The courtyard house shows the attempt of the Chinese man to seek privacy and seclusion from the outside world,\n\nIn Hopei province in the city of Peking, this architectural plan was quite common. The outer walls of the complex were normally built of sun-dried brick and the roofs were made of overlapping clay tiles. It is not unusual that this house would be popular in the city of Peking, for in many ways it is a small scale model of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206591, "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-1972", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n133\n\nImperial City. A man's home and family formed a microcosm in the macrocosm of the State. As he closed himself within his own small domain he sought a personal privacy away from the State. Not even the wandering eyes of the peddler could penetrate into the front courtyard. The Chinese man sought a more intimate relationship with the natural world even in the heart of the city. He designed his home in order that the open sky was part of his roof and the wild Chinese garden, part of his world. In the North where the population has always been dense, this desire for privacy and peace was a natural response.\n\nThe philosophy of feng shui (風水)1, in the West known as geomancy, was of foremost importance to the Chinese in the siting and building of their homes. Feng shui determined the most auspicious siting for the dwelling in relation to natural formations and existing structures. The aim was to bring the forces of Nature into balance; it was to join the Yin and Yang, the female and male spirits, into a complementary union. According to the principles of feng shui, the ideal site nestles into the arms of hills which are shaped like the Azure Dragon in the East and the White Tiger in the West. The dragon is a beneficent force whose formation should be higher than the tiger, a force of danger, which protects only as long as it is balanced by the dragon. The house should be oriented on a North-South axis, protected in the rear by the mountains. The entrance facing South allows for the good spirits to bring their blessings on the family. The ideal site would also include a quiet stream of water which would enrich it. The commingling of the winds and waters in the proper proportions was essential to the prosperous future of the house and family.\n\nIn the courtyard complex the ideal site was adapted to ordinary places. The wall was substituted for the natural formations of the hills. The house retained its North-South orientation with the entrance in the middle of the Southern wall or in the southeast corner. An added precaution was the shadow or spirit wall which normally was placed immediately inside or outside of the front door. This spirit wall not only prevented strangers from observing the family's activities but also prevented the evil spirits that lurked outside from entering as they could not turn corners. The source of water was often a lotus pool placed in the middle of the main courtyard. Hence, the Chinese architect adapted the principles of geomancy to fit the geographical features of the homesite. In other regions of China\n\nhas been revised to meet the exacting requirements by converting to HTML format using `` for paragraphs. Minor corrections were made to ensure adherence to the guidelines:\n\n1. **Correction of \"auspi- cious\"** to \"auspicious\" to fix a line-break artifact.\n2. **Correction of \"beneficient\"** to \"beneficent\" to fix a spelling error.\n3. **Correction of \"commingling\"** to remain as is because it is not an error; it's a less common but correct spelling.\n4. **Added a footnote marker `1`** for \"(風水)\" to indicate it is a translation or explanation of \"feng shui.\"\n\nThe response now meets the requirements by being in HTML format and adhering to the specified proofreading rules.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206592, "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-1972", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "134\n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN\n\nthis adaptation of feng shui was much more severe but in most cases the principles were followed. The Chinese sought ways in which to build their houses according to their economic and social conditions but never forgot the principles of feng shui. This paper will now describe the numerous, different examples of regional domestic architecture in an attempt to illustrate the ways in which each family in its own way tried to deal with the problems of privacy, protection, and personal needs in building its living and working space.\n\nEXAMPLES OF REGIONAL DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE:\n\nNorth: The first homes to be described are the caves of North China. They are not the same as the subterranean pit dwellings of the Late Neolithic Ages but rather are dug at a ninety-degree angle into the sides of mountains. These caves are found in the loess region stretching across Honan, Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu provinces where through vertical cleavage the soil mixed with water has hardened to form steep cliffs. Here the winters are long and bitter with a strong Northwest wind sweeping the region. The extremely limited rainfall is highly variable and often comes as a cloudburst. The land is barren of trees and because of the lack of timber, these cave dwellings have formed the typical dwelling of the region.\n\nThis cave in Honan is based on a plan for a free-standing house but has been built into the side of the cliff. The superstructure is basically a courtyard system with the main gate positioned at the southeast corner (North-South axis). The building on the left within the courtyard is for receiving guests, and thus the privacy of the man's cave is maintained. In other words, as the townhouse courtyard plan had provided for a system of \"graduated privacy\", the cave dweller has adapted this system to his specific location and circumstances. This particular cave complex has two storeys. The first level has three caves of which the left and middle ones each have two rooms which are used for living space, while the right side cave has an additional third room for storage. As one comes out of the left-hand side cave, there is a stairway leading to the second-level platform at the back of which there are two more caves. It should be noted that the Chinese have developed a system of interlocking support in the construction of these caves. The second-level platform is reinforced in front and on its surface and is supported...\n\n* See also Fig. 1 at the rear of this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206593, "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-1972", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n135\n\nported by the lower level caves. The second level caves themselves are spaced above but between the openings of the three caves below. The reinforced brick fronts to the caves are to help prevent erosion and landslides.\n\nThese cave complexes usually house several families with each family having a courtyard or all sharing a common courtyard. In a village there might be fifty caves covering a large area with as many as two hundred families. Internal passageways are built to connect the caves. Some of the caves are surrounded by walls and watchtowers which provide an added protection against outsiders. If the walls were built high enough, they would also help keep out the dust of the loess.\n\nThe agricultural fields were usually above the caves themselves. With the very fertile soil of the loess, crops could be raised year after year without loss of soil nutrients. Although there is little rainfall, the moisture-retaining soil benefits the cave dwellers and allows the crops to flourish. Hence, the soil not only forms the shelter but also provides the food for the family, giving them two of the three basic needs for living.\n\nNevertheless, there are several problems inherent in living in a cave with erosion, landslides, earthquakes and lighting being the most serious. There is no system of lighting provided in the construction of the cave except for the light from the open entrance or the occasional candle. During rainstorms, there is the added problem of drainage. The water flows into the caves through the sloping entrance ways. Although some families have attempted to solve the problem by building wells or drainage ditches in the courtyard, the caves remain damp throughout storms. Since much of the rain comes as cloudbursts, the heaviness of the sudden downpour causes erosion and landslides. The most serious problem comes from earthquakes. This region of China has been devastated by frequent earthquakes destroying the caves and the fields above them.\n\nFinally, it must be considered why these caves would be chosen for a dwelling despite all these problems and dangers. In some ways it is a necessity. In a land where transportation of goods is so difficult the Chinese had to learn to use and adapt to local commodities and resources to supply themselves with building materials. As has been mentioned, there were no large trees for constructing wooden houses. Although there was brick with which they did build", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206594, "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-1972", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "136\n\n: \n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN \n\na few free-standing houses and reinforced the fronts of their caves, again there was no fuel (timber or with the scarcity of livestock, animal manure) with which to heat this type of house. These caves suited the climate. They provided a warm shelter in winter without fuel and a cool house in summer. The people of the region took pride in their cave homes which represented to them a way of life with all its social and economic manifestations.\n\nIn contrast, the predominant form of domestic architecture in the countryside of Hopei province is free-standing houses. This house is the most basic unit or type of house in China. It is a three-bay plan. The house is built on a North-South orientation with the main door facing south. As one enters the front door there is a large living room with an ancestral shrine placed on the back wall. On both sides of the living room there are the bedrooms. The k'ang, or platform beds, are placed on the south side of the rooms so that the windows with southern exposure allow the rays of the sun to warm the sleeping platforms. In regions further north, fires are built beneath the k'angs for added warmth in winter. The outside of the house is part brick and stone with a simple thatched roof. The three-bay house, being the simplest form of Chinese architecture, is the most easily adaptable to many types of geographical and economic conditions and is found with modifications in many regions of China.\n\nThe next house in Hopei combines itself with a small store.9 The entrance to the house has been pushed to the southeast corner so that the more auspicious central southern door is given to the shop door. In this way, perhaps, the local geomancers felt that the man's business would be more prosperous. It also would be giving the customers the more honored position. After entering the southeast gate one is forced to turn by the spirit wall before entering the large but private courtyard of the proprietor. The privacy of his house is further seen by the lack of windows on the outside wall. The main door of the house faces south. As one steps in there is again a living room with an ancestral shrine and a bedroom to the left. The kitchen can be reached only by going outside. In the courtyard there is another bedroom. All the buildings in this group are on a foundation requiring two steps to reach the floor level. At the rear of the house there is a vegetable garden. Thus, within this private domain, the individual can find peace from the outside", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206595, "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-1972", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n137\n\nworld, yet by entering the backdoor of his shop, never leaving this world, he can work and provide for the needs of his family.\n\nSouth: In South China, the topography and climate of the land varies considerably from the Northern plains. The Chinese had to learn to adapt their architectural plans to different conditions. Certain groups of Chinese eventually devised new ways of expressing their character in their building in order to separate their communities from other groups.\n\nThe former home of Mao Tse-tung11 in the province of Hunan is representative of many peasant houses in the South. It is a typical three-sided courtyard house (Fig.✯✯) with a U-shaped plan. In this case, the main door faces north and hence must be a more auspicious local orientation. There is evidence from a drawing that the house is nestled into the embrace of a sloping hill which, according to feng shui, is the ideal site and provides strength and protection for the home. The front door leads into a living room with an ancestral shrine, off which are the kitchens and bedrooms. Since Mao's house has become a national tourist attraction, a new addition has been added for the caretaker and slight renovations have been made. The left wing of the original house has bedrooms and a library now. The kitchen and animal sheds, which were originally in the left wing, have been moved to a new shelter farther to the left. The new addition runs parallel to the left wing and forms a new and totally enclosed courtyard. There is also to be found in the region a variation of the U-shaped plan which is L-shaped. Both types of houses are usually constructed of earth walls with thatched roofs—shelter provided by the material at hand.\n\nThis house in Kiangsu province✯ is actually one room which has been partitioned. One enters heading north. It is an elaboration of a square plan also found in Kiangsu province.12 The living area is an all-purpose room and kitchen. At the far side, there is perhaps a screen which provides privacy for the bedroom. Within the bedroom, there are two k'angs: the whole family sleeps in this one part of the room. The owner of the house has built an addition in the form of a cobbler shop, placing it only a few paces from his front door. This poor craftsman's dwelling contains the basic needs for the family's well-being. No doubt there are fields or rice paddies around the house, though not necessarily those of the resident, as this region of China is under intensive cultivation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206596, "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-1972", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "138\n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN\n\nAnother house in Kiangsu13 is almost a square and is of unusual appearance, perhaps because of its shape and especially the height of its southern wall. Unlike the last house which is built of earth walls and has a thatched roof, this house is made of brick. With the added strength of brick walls, the outer appearance becomes very much like a fortress. As one approaches, there is a shadow wall outside the main door which faces south. The southern end of the house is a very high wall which rises above the other walls of the house and shields the courtyard from the extremely hot and intense rays of the summer sun. After passing through the front door one enters the small courtyard which leads to a living space with two kitchens on either side which could be shared by two families. The two kitchens might also indicate that several generations live in the one house, in which case each generation would eat at different times and prepare their own food. The bedrooms are also located on either side of the living room. At the far side of the living room there is a small door which leads to the backyard where there is a vegetable garden. From a photograph, the house is nestled in the arms of a small hill, adding strength and fortune to the family.\n\nThe Ku family house in Shanghai14 is a free-standing three-sided courtyard house. The main part of the house has five bays. From the courtyard one enters a hall which combines as the living room and ancestral hall. On both sides of the hall there are clusters of three bedrooms which are entered through intermediary rooms. Perhaps these rooms are private spaces for each family or generation of a family to eat or gather for talk. From these private rooms one has access to the kitchens. The house is made of wood and is reinforced by bamboo poles. The main hall is high with an added upturned ridge at the apex of the roof. It appears that the kitchens also have this same type of roof while the corner buildings have a very plain and simple roof. The outer appearance is very light and simple and is a common sight in the southeastern parts of Kiangsu.\n\nMoving south from Kiangsu to Chekiang one leaves the Yangtze valley of waterways and rice paddies and goes into the mountainous, rugged land of the Chekiang mountains. Here the amount of arable land is scarce, and thus when the Chinese peasant builds his home he wants to use as little space as possible. Despite this constraint, there remains a strong desire to maintain a degree of privacy and to bring the world of nature within the walls of his home.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206597, "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-1972", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n139\n\nIn Chekiang there is a peasant home of recent date which has a courtyard leading up to the entrance.15 A visitor, however, must make a few turns before coming opposite the front door. The animal pens, built onto part of the house front, also add a measure of privacy to the living areas. There is another small courtyard which extends into the living quarters. This open area has two inside doors from which one can either go into a living room with a kitchen, or into the bedroom. The outside walls are windowless and have been constructed of pounded or rammed earth. The roof is thatched with bamboo rafters which are supported by timber posts.\n\nAnother house in Chekiang province near the city of Hangchow is more complex, yet extremely compact. The entrance is through a small passageway on one side of which is a garden and on the other a terrace. In the living area, there is a small courtyard. The open space is surrounded on three sides by a low (3') wall which has a wide counter surface which can be used as a work space. Half of the house is two storeys while the rest is only one storey. Upstairs there are high windows on the north side of the house which permit good ventilation. In a space less than five square meters, there are four bedrooms. This family realizes the need to economize their living space in order to maximize the size of their fields and gardens.\n\nThese houses in Chekiang illustrate that although in a tightly compact situation, the Chinese try to have as much privacy and open space as is possible within their homes. They carefully avoid using any more of the scarce arable lands than is absolutely necessary.\n\nFrom the mountainous regions of Chekiang province one travels southward into the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung and finds the homes of a particular group of people, the Hakka, besides those of other dialect groups. According to the chroniclers, the Hakka or \"guest people\" lived on the Central Plain in modern Honan and Shantung provinces during the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 B.C.) and the period of the Three Kingdoms (220-265 A.D.). During the Tartar invasions of the fourth and ninth centuries, they migrated South to escape alien oppression. During the successive mass migrations of the Chinese people, the Hakka sought refuge in the mountains of South China. The Hakka people are farmers who have been forced to struggle for subsistence on the poor soil of the highlands.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206598, "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-1972", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "140\n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN\n\nand have traditionally been looked down upon by other groups. In the southern provinces, they have fought bitterly against the native Punti for ownership of land.17\n\nIn their building arts and plan arrangements, the Hakka houses or complexes have varied greatly from the homes of other Chinese. Their houses have a distinct character which in many ways reflects the hardy and fearless spirit of their inhabitants. Generally Hakka complexes are three or four storeys high with from ten to a hundred and twenty rooms. There are both horizontally and vertically rectangular storeyed houses with as many as three halls and two cross sections. It is the circular house, however, which is so markedly different from all other domestic architecture in China. Most of the houses built in this style were constructed during the Ch'ien Lung reign (1736-1796).18\n\nThe first example is a complex of rectangular houses.19 The complex is symmetrical on the right and left. One comes in from a gate on the southwest corner, turning so that upon entering the front courtyard one is heading toward the front door which faces south on the main axis.* After passing the front door there is a small gatehouse behind which there is a five-sided courtyard. After crossing the yard and climbing a few steps, one enters a large hall at the back of which there is a second courtyard. Further on there is a hall from which one has access to the ancestral hall which completes the main axis. Around the inside of the external wall are the kitchens and surrounding the central area are the animal sheds. On both sides of the central area there are stairs which lead to the upper floors. The second floor is for storage and the third and fourth are the living quarters. The windows are only on the top floor for which there may be many reasons. One is that the noise of the ground floor cannot penetrate the living quarters of the various families. Secondly it might be for protection and lookout purposes. It is known that the walls on both the left and right sides are thickened for defense. The appearance of this housing complex is very strong and stable and gives the impression of a fortress.\n\nThe circular type of Hakka house is shown in the next example.20 The plan of the complex is basically the same as the rectangular variety.† As one enters from the front door, one proceeds along a central axis from the gatehouse to the central courtyard which is\n\n* See also Fig. 2.\n\n† See also Fig. 3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206599, "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-1972", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n141\n\nencircled by a passageway. Within the central courtyard there are two narrow, rectangular one-storeyed buildings for the pigs and chickens and the privy. At the far end of the main axis is the ancestral hall. On the outer circle of the building there are the kitchens and cattle pens. There are three storeys to this dwelling. Again, the second floor is for storage and the third is for living. This time the house is facing west which is perhaps because of the surrounding land and was the decision of the local geomancers. In front of the house there is a river encircling the site and the house is protected on one side by a mass of pine trees. Although the front door faces west, the windows on the top floor face only south, thus allowing the auspicious, and cooling, winds to blow in. The outside wall is made of loess mixed with limestone, and with the grey roof, the green pines and the river below, the entire setting is one of warmth and beauty.\n\nThe next house21 is a more complicated version of the last example. The differences are mostly in size and number. There is a central axis beginning at the front door with a southern orientation. In the middle of the gatehouse there is a small courtyard. In the center of the complex is the principal courtyard, around which there are several reception rooms for guests. At the far side of the courtyard is the main hall, behind which there is another courtyard. Finally, one reaches the ancestral hall at the back. Along the outer wall there are numerous kitchens. There also is a secondary east-west axis running horizontally from side gate to side gate. These gates were built for easy access to the mills which frequently are found in Hakka settlements. These mills provide the employment and means of support for such a self-contained, independent group. From an interior view of the house, one can see the extreme height of the outer wall in comparison to the inner circle. The upper floors are used for the living quarters, which are entered through balconies. The windows, again, are only on the upper levels where the people live. The whole complex is built to keep the outside world out and to tie the community together in a living and working environment.\n\nIn the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung there is a distinct type of society. The area is more heterogeneous and is divided by many dialects. \"The villages of the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung are compact. Many of them are communities composed of the\n\n* See also Fig. 4: also Plates 13-14.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206601, "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-1972", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n143\n\nOne of these villages is Kat Hing Wai of the Tang family, \"whose ancestors were among the earliest settlers... the largest tsu in the New Territories.\"23 The plan of the village is a square with the main gate facing west, which is probably because of the natural formations of the location which make this siting most auspicious. The village is surrounded by a moat and is further protected by four large watchtowers. Inside the walls, there are several rows of houses, all of which face west. There are no two doorways which face each other, and thus, even in this tightly knit and crowded space, privacy is given to each family. The houses themselves are built on the basic three-bay plan. Upon entering, there is a living room/dining room. In the middle, there is a small courtyard, completely private from those of other families, to the side of which is the kitchen. Finally, in the back, there is the bedroom. Hence, even within this tiny living space, the individual has afforded for himself a small courtyard from which to enjoy the open sky. The houses are made of brick cavity walls with tiled roofs.24 There is a small temple or assembly hall at the center of the eastern side directly opposite the front gate. The roof of the hall is elaborately topped by a curved gable, which is very different from the square towers on the corners. The ancestral hall is not within the confines of the village but is about five minutes away. The market, which is also usually part of a Chinese village, is a few minutes' walk away.\n\nThese villages are now being affected by modern society. The younger people are moving outside the community to find jobs and a better standard of living. Although some walled villages have been renovated and now provide a healthier atmosphere in which to grow, the world abroad still remains more appealing. This village of Kat Hing Wai once had a population of six hundred people. Now it has fewer than two hundred.25 Hence, in the modern world, these well-protected and isolated villages are forced to open and expand in order to survive. Some villages are placed on the tourist circuit, and souvenir stands are set up outside the entrance. The watchful widows of the village make sure you pay HK$1 before snapping their picture.\n\nAs one looks at the houses of China described in this brief survey, there emerges a general pattern. The Chinese man, rich or poor, strives for the same ideals. Whether hampered or helped by his economic conditions, or by the local topography and climate, he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206655, "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-1972", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n197\n\nand his three small survey ships have given their names respectively to Sulphur Channel, Starling Inlet and Plover Cove.\n\nJ. R. JONES.\n\nCHINA'S EARLIEST PRINTING A NOTE\n\nLLL\n\nIn Volume 7 (1967) of this Journal I published a brief note entitled \"Printing, a new discovery.\" This told of a find in a stone stupa, standing in the courtyard of a temple called Pulguk-sa, in Korea, erected in 751, of a printed Buddhist sutra. The find was hailed by the Korean archaeologists as perhaps the oldest example of printing known, although the exact date of the printing still remains a mystery.\n\nRecently I have learned that the Chinese discovered another piece of printing as far back as 1944. (Somehow, perhaps because of the war, news of this had escaped my attention.) Known in Chinese as T'o-lo-ni ching chou (dharani sutra charm), it was unearthed in a T'ang dynasty grave site in Chengtu, Szechwan, inside the silver bracelet of a young woman. As Professor Max Loehr has written, it \"is a charm printed on a single sheet showing a six-armed Bodhisattva figure in the center of concentrically laid out Sanscrit words written in Lantsa letters.\" This is surprising, but not unreasonable. In the last half of the Tang, Chengtu happens to have developed into perhaps the chief center of printing, and, as everyone knows, by the middle of the eighth century Chinese civilization had reached one of its heights. It was the age of Li Po and Tu Fu, Wu Tao-hsüan and Wang Wei, and Buddhism was at the summit of its influence. With the demand for reduplication in every circle - Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist - and with all the tools and techniques at hand, the printing of a highly popular charm seems natural. So it came about that there have come to light charms, printed within a few years of each other, in Korea (751?), China (757), and Japan (764-770).\n\nBibliography:\n\nChung-kuo pan-k'o lü-lu, compiled by the Peking Library (Peking 1961), pl. 1, text Vol. I, p. 7;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206896, "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-1973", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n167\n\nBy way of comparison, the tour also visited Ayuthia and saw the gigantic Buddha at Wat Phanan Cheong, by the river, and the ruins of Wat Yai Chai Mongkon, Wat Phra Sri Samphet, and Wat Phra Ram. The magnificent Wat Na Pramane in its peaceful country setting, with its elaborate carved pediment (the only one to survive the holocaust of the Burmese attack in 1767), its fine ceiling and remarkable bronze Buddha in kingly attire of the Ayuthia period in the main bot and the no less striking stone Dvaravati Buddha seated in the European fashion with its characteristically placid Mon face left a deep impression,\n\nBefore leaving Bangkok a visit was made to three representative temples of the Ratanakosin period, Wat Suthat, with its wealth of Chinese statuary and carved and gilded doors said to be the work of Rama II (the vihara was unfortunately closed and its murals could not be seen). However at Wat Borworniwes the unusual murals depicting scenes of western eighteenth century palaces introducing alien perspective were noted; the bot also contains the revered statue Phra Buddha Chinasara, a good example of Sukhothai statuary. The peaceful temple grounds with their canals full of turtles were in considerable contrast to the roaring city outside the temple walls. The better known Wat Benjamabhopit with its copies of various statues, including that at Pitsanuloke of which the original had been seen, was also visited. Most interestingly perhaps, on the last day the group visited the gold-leaf beaters' lane where for several days layers of gold are pounded by hand to produce the wafer-thin pieces which are applied on statues by the devout.\n\nIt should not be thought that the members of the tour remained aloof to daily life of contemporary Thailand; elements of this were seen at the weekend market at the Pramane Ground, and, in the country, working elephants, the pounding of rice flour in villages and the releasing of birds to gain merit in temple courtyards left their impression.\n\nIn what was effectively four very full days, a great deal was seen and much ground was covered (it took ten hours by bus to reach Pitsanuloke from Bangkok). The pace was intense but rewarding. The tour was considered culturally illuminating, revealing the many facets of the rich artistic heritage of Thailand.\n\nHong Kong, 1973.\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "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": 207349, "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-1975", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n109\n\nin the main it is a limited number of English words used more or less according to Chinese idiom, and also mispronounced. The fewest possible number of English words is used.35 The widespread use of this lingua franca prevented Chinese and Europeans from even remotely grasping the subtleties of each other's culture.\n\nThe amount of social contact, outside work and the market place, between Europeans and Chinese must not be exaggerated, for both groups enjoyed a healthy contempt for, and misunderstanding of, the other. W.A.P. Martin, at that time a Presbyterian missionary, relates that when he stepped ashore at Canton in 1850 he was greeted by a hooting mob 'who shouted Fanqui, fanqui! Shato, shato! (\"Foreign devils! cut off their heads.\")'36 L.C. Arlington, of the Chinese Maritime Customs, claims that, even in 1891, when a foreigner passed in his chair from Shameen (the foreign concession quarter in Canton) through the native city the coolies would shout out 'Take him to the execution ground'. No foreigner, he continues, be he white, Indian or Japanese, could escape the contemptuous term ‘foreign devil'. 'It was shouted at you from the tops of houses, from alleyways, and from courtyards.'37\n\nDespite the language barrier, a working class European did not find it too difficult to establish a liaison with a Chinese woman. In the early days, such women were found usually among the Tanka boat population, a pariah group that populated the fringes of the Pearl River delta region. A few of these women achieved the status of 'protected' woman (a kept mistress) and were, sometimes, well provided for by their paramour, such as a ship's captain. In time, a considerable number of police, overseers, tidewaiters and others, entered into alliances, even marriages, with local women, since, of course, there was always a scarcity of marriageable young European women in Hong Kong.* But mixed marriages were condemned by Taipans; the partners were ostracised by polite European society since a mixed marriage clearly stigmatised a European as an outcaste. Such racial attitudes became more rigid toward the end of the century.\n\nAlthough some Europeans lived with or even married Chinese women, it does not follow that such social arrangements provided\n\nSee Carl T. Smith's interesting article on one of these Tanka Women in Chung Chi Bulletin, No. 46, June 1969, 13-17 and 27.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207767, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "140\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nIt will be seen that many of the routes were mountainous, and the road near Makuchen () on the Kutsing-Luhsien (Fig. 2) run reaches 2,630 metres. The grading in almost all places was good and reflected credit on the engineers who had surveyed and built the routes, mainly with manual labour impressed from the surrounding countryside. There were no sealed or tarmac surfaces and the roads were kept in repair by filling potholes with hand-broken small stones.\n\nThe first permanent transport base was at Kweiyang where the Unit took over and extended the garage maintained there by the IRC outside the city at Shi Sang Shi (4%). (Plate 18) Cover for four trucks, stores, tinsmiths and engine overhaul shops, office and living quarters for drivers, mechanics and their families were provided. The godown was at the old IRC headquarters inside the city, a Confucian temple courtyard (M). Other bases were purpose-built. Kutsing (), opened for operation in June 1942, became Unit Headquarters in August 1942 and had a large godown. Luhsien (⇓) was a small base used for serving trucks on the arduous Kutsing-Luhsien run and forwarding supplies to Chengtu by truck or by boat down river to Chungking. A small group with one or two trucks was based on the West China Union University (#606★*), campus at Chengtu for 1942 and part of 1943 for distribution to many institutions in that area and up to Paoki (**). In early 1944 a permanent garage was acquired and extended on the South Bank at 44 kilometres milestone at Chungking, and this later became a major base.\n\nEach transport base had a garage Manager, with assistants in the large ones, and an Agent who looked after all paperwork, permits and cargo details, with an assorted force of employee mechanics, tinsmiths, carpenters etc. Drivers and mechanics also worked on their trucks when in the base. Details of garage operations and numbers are discussed fully in a later section.\n\nThe time taken for journeys varied widely according to the motive power of the truck (petrol, alcohol, diesel or charcoal gas), the skill of the driver in maintenance (especially with charcoal powered trucks) and the state of the road and the weather. When the diesel powered Fords, described in a later section, were new, convoys of 2-3 trucks would regularly complete the Kutsing-Luhsien (724 kilometres) run in 3-4 days giving, with crew rest days and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208026, "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-1977", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n49\n\nit was mid-winter, the countryside around was bare, brown, and dusty, and many people wore white surgical masks to keep out the fine dust. The hillsides in Yenan and on the way there were all seriously eroded, and there was little sign of the spectacular reclamation work on terracing slopes and damming streams of later years, the result of which can be seen by today's visitors.\n\nOccasions in Yenan\n\nHaving unloaded our cargo, checked the manifests, and visited the hospital, we spent a day servicing the trucks. We were staying at the Guest House, a row of very comfortable caves with a terrace and a courtyard in front. We were in the middle of servicing, with petrol drums and wheels scattered around, ourselves under the trucks greasing and checking, when we were informed that Chairman Mao Tse-tung was coming to see us! The courtyard was rapidly tidied, overalls and dirt removed, and the party went to the ketang to wait. We then discovered that the Chairman had been at the Guest House for some time seeing someone else and had arrived unnoticed while we were under the trucks. We were all introduced and thanked for our assistance and help, to which I replied that this was part of our normal work and not something to earn especial thanks. The impression, which I recorded then, was of great confidence and quiet strength.\n\nTwo or three days later, we were invited to a performance of the well-known opera \"Ta Ming Fu\" (★1⁄2#) part of the \"Liang Shan P'o\" (b) series, which has a very suitable theme. We found ourselves sitting three rows behind the Chairman and other leading Party members, including Marshal Chu Te, all of whom enjoyed themselves as there was a strong cast with some excellent comic character performances. This was, of course, well before the growth of revolutionary opera.\n\nOn one evening, we were entertained by, I think, members of the Lu Hsun Academy of Art (or the Anti-Japanese Revolutionary University). There was a yang ke dance team with a performance extolling improved methods of pest control on crops, some songs, and then dancing for all, mostly folk dances but including some foxtrots and quicksteps played on er hu and pi pa. We were presented with a set of woodcuts by various artists working there, including Zhang Wan, Yan Han, Xia Feng, Gu Yuan, and Weng", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208399, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "SIIIWAN POTTERY EXPLORED\n\n107\n\nthe theme of \"restoring rivers and mountains\" to the point of becoming formula, but no one complained.\n\nMai further describes how the Guangdong opera actors practised the martial arts of the Shaolin branch (*) and finally put this art to use when in 1854 their leader, the actor Li Yunmao (***) also known as Wen Mao () led three armies of actors to join the Taiping effort against the Manchus. These armies were destroyed along with the rest of the Taiping army, and in the aftermath, the Qing court issued an order forbidding the performance of Guangdong opera and had the actors' Qiong Hua (hortensia flower) Association Hall (1446) in Fushan burned to the ground.\n\nA gilt wood carved altar in the Ancestral Temple in Fushan, and a Shiwan frieze depicting the story of the Yang Family Generals, preserve in their carvings the significance of these events and their broader implications for a community not under the domination of a foreign Manchu government, but also besieged with Caucasian foreigners pressing for trade and territorial rights.\n\nThe Qing dynasty gilt wood altar carving has double meaning. The carving depicts the story of Tang dynasty Li Yuanba fighting the dragon colt (*£#£#6). On a second level however, the horse represents the unruly foreigners, and Li Yuanba, having the same surname, represents Li Wenmao. Verifying this are two hidden plaques hung above the scene which can only be seen from a crouching position. One reads \"Great Ming Mountains and Rivers\" (11) and the other \"Qiong Hua Hall\" (44), with the middle character Hua (4) substituted as disguise for the similar sounding Hua (*) of the Hortensia Flower (Qiong Hua) Association. Furthermore, according to Mr. Zhang Tao (**), curator of the Ancestral Temple, the characters on these two wood plaques were originally covered with extra slabs of wood and were only discovered while renovation was being done to the temple between 1971 and 1972. (Plate 14).\n\nIn addition to this gilt wood altar scene, a beautiful ceramic frieze depicting the story of the Yang Family Generals, Song dynasty loyalists, is displayed in the rear courtyard of the Ancestral Temple. In addition to this anti-Manchu theme (the Yang family's loyalty to the native Song dynasty during the period of barbarian Yuan conquest, symbolising the loyalty of the Chinese people to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208431, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n139\n\nvenue. As with the ancestral halls, described above, the village temple usually owns some farm land which is rented out at a profit. Village markets, held in the temple courtyard, form a source of revenue, since all outsiders must rent stalls. Revenue comes into the temple also from small contributions of the superstitious folk, who visit it to seek some benefit from the presiding deity. Much of the village budget is made up, however, of self-imposed taxes (Hui Ch'ien), and voluntary contributions solicited from the wealthy members, usually for some specific civic betterment. In theory, under the Manchu dynasty, certain sums were supposed to be returned to the village from their general government taxes for the purposes of education, as set down in the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien (...), but these seldom, if ever, did find their way back.\n\nAn annual festival in honor of the patron of the temple is the chief social event in most villages in China. The responsibility for the management of this normally falls upon the temple council. Theatricals, side shows, and feasting mark these occasions. The religious side of the carnival has largely disappeared; usually, it is merely a grand social period, a time of relaxation and merry-making for young and old. Interrupting the normally dull routine of village life, it is of some psychological importance as a social safety valve.\n\nThe duty of properly policing the village is also the charge of the temple council (when it is not handled by the Ti-pao). Every household is expected to supply a man for a certain number of nights a year, but more usually, a contribution of money is given to pay for the service by regularly employed individuals. Civic duties such as lighting dangerous corners and repairing walls, roads, canals, and boat landings, when these are ever done, are the responsibility of the village temple. The main task in this connection may be the solicitation of funds from door to door.\n\nSuch charitable duties as supplying free medicine, burial, food, and clothing, when not taken care of by the clan, are the concern of the temple council, as is the supplying of educational facilities when these are lacking.\n\nIn short, all financial and administrative matters which concern the village as a whole, rather than any individual group, are handled by the village temple. As Kulp reports for Phenix village, \"Gene-\n\n1 Ibid., p. 65.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208840, "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": 2, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "201\n\nI would like to add two more passages to this note, both of which came my way after I wrote the above. The first passage was kindly given me by James Hayes, who was given it by Mr. Ho Kei Fook, of Kei Ling Ha village, born in 1928, and educated (1937-1941) in the neighbouring village of Tseng Tau, previously village representative, and Vice-Chairman of the North Saikung Rural Committee. The second passage I came across in Ch'en T'ieh-erh5, \"Huang Hsiao-yang yu Pai-e t'an\" (Huang Hsiao-yang and the White Goose Pond), in Kuang-tung wen-hsien chi-k'an vol. 15 no. 2 (1985) pp. 60-62.\n\nPassage 1\n\n\"It is said that in the Ming dynasty there was this man Ho Tsoh Shing who obtained a wonder book. The book recorded thirty-six grave sites at the mouth of the dragon. [The family] buried there would achieve great wealth for its descendants and even produce an emperor. Ho Tsoh Shing was already an official at court, holding the post of Minister of the LeftE. But his mother did not have the good fortune to support this achievement. When his wife was pregnant, his mother scolded her saying, 'My son is an official at court many mountains and seas away, so how is it that you are pregnant?' The daughter-in-law said, 'He comes back every night'. What happened was that every night Ho Tsoh Shing rode home on a bamboo-rigged flying horse, and early in the morning he rode the flying horse back to court. The daughter-in-law said, 'If you don't believe me, you can hide by the courtyard tonight and watch him as he comes in'. [This the mother did] and saw that that was what really happened. The horse stopped at the courtyard, and the mother, being curious, rode on it. The horse could not fly, because it was bogged down by the woman's breath. When Ho Tsoh Shing rose the next morning to go to court, the horse was still bogged down by woman's breath. So immediately, he went to cut some bamboo to rig another horse to fly to court. He was late. The emperor was in his court calling the rolls. When he came to Ho Tsoh Shing's name, Ho answered from the outer court [in such a loud voice] that it shook the emperor. The emperor then suspected that Ho Tsoh Shing was scheming to take the throne, and other officials also made many comments. They found out that Ho Tsoh Shing possessed the thirty-six grave sites at the dragon's mouth. When this was known, Ho Tsoh Shing was killed by the emperor, and the fungshui was\n\nto", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208842, "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": 4, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "14\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nwhich are about nine feet high and consist of two vertical halves each bearing a painting of a guardian. Facing outwards, the pair of guardians can be military or civil officials. The doors usually are kept open by day, although if the temple keeper goes out for any length of time he will close and in certain areas, padlock them.\n\nImmediately inside the main doorway, between it and the courtyard, are the spirit doors, a pair of wooden doors to prevent direct access to the temple by demon spirits.19 Instead of the pair of inner doors, some temples have a fixed, freestanding screen from floor to ceiling which performs the same demon-deflecting function (Illustration 5). Past the spirit doors, which are quite frequently left open or have been removed, there is the open area normally let down some 6\" into the ground and frequently unroofed known as the \"Incense Smoke Tower\". This is the courtyard, though in smaller temples it may not appear to be particularly grandiose. It has been suggested that the open roofed forecourt dates back to an era when deities required open skies above them. In Macau it is quite widely held that the tutelary deity of the temple should have an open view of the heavens above, though this is only so in five of the temples there.\n\nThe main hall (zheng ting) contains the main altar and is situated beyond the courtyard and in the rear-most building, more often than not with other halls and rooms grouped around it. The rooms on either side are usually identical in shape and size. These rooms and corridors are mainly used as store houses by the temple keeper and by local inhabitants.\n\nAdvancing beyond the open area of the courtyard into the main hall, often up one or two stone steps, we face the altar table with an ordinary table before it. The former has the five major objects — an incense bowl, two candle holders and two vases — and the latter bears any offerings. Beyond these tables, usually backing onto the wall, is the main altar, more often than not flanked by side altars.\n\nThe main hall of the majority of traditional temples is about 15 to 20 feet wide, with each of the side halls a further 9 to 15 feet wide. Their length is usually some 35 to 40 feet from entrance to rear wall. However, the main halls of the larger traditional temples in Hong Kong (in Stone Nullah Land, Hollywood Road and Temple Street) are some 30 to 40 feet wide and 50 to 60 feet in length, with proportionally higher roofs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208868, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "KEITH G. STEVENS\n\nTemples and monasteries can be classified as follows:--\n\na. By religious belief-Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian and traditional folk religion,5\n\nb. By the contents of the altars - deities, ancestral tablets or charms.\n\nc. By their typological features such as the size and shape of their plans (square or rectangular); by their elevation into floors; by divisions and sub-divisions; whether free-standing or not; and whether the courtyard is enclosed or in front of the main building.\n\nd. Whether residential or non-residential.\n\ne. Whether permanent or temporary.\n\nf. By ethnic grouping (regional traditional types),6\n\nWithin Hong Kong and Macau, there are about four hundred and fifty Buddhist, Daoist, and folk religion temples, Buddhist and Daoist monasteries and nunneries, and ancestral temples. A few pre-date the advent of the British and Portuguese whilst the majority, built since 1840, have been established as specialised temples with a specific deity on their altars well known for a unique function such as destroying demons, protecting seafarers, foretelling the future, protecting mothers during childbirth and children during childhood, and the like.\n\nIt is unfortunate, out of interest in such historic places, that neither Hong Kong nor Macau have the large national temple or temples at which the official state religion was worshipped. This is due to the fact that before the arrival of the British and Portuguese, neither territory contained a county town and were primitive rural areas. Nor are there in Hong Kong or Macau the large City God temples which in Imperial China were to be found in all provincial and county capitals.\n\nWhereas the Chinese government in 1928 closed many temples throughout China during their campaign to suppress superstition,* the practices condemned by the Chinese authorities continued in Hong Kong and Macau where British and Portuguese administrators treated native susceptibilities with great caution. Hong Kong and Macau temples therefore, retained deities and practices which have probably long since disappeared on the Chinese mainland.\n\n* described in some detail by C. B. Day in his Chinese Peasant Cults (Nanking Theological Seminary English Publications, 1938), pp. 190-195.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208870, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "4\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nTemples and monasteries, despite their outward appearance are not always simple, self-contained religious units. Quite frequently they contain a number of major and minor deities, each with its special shrine or altar, hall or building.10 The original major deity may, for one of several reasons, be relegated to a secondary position and a new primary deity installed on the main altar. After some years and changes in abbots or temple keepers, the identity of certain deities, including surprisingly, major gods and goddesses, have been forgotten and, so as not to lose face, their identities are guessed at by temple staff, often wildly inaccurately.\n\nThere are several groups or complexes of folk religion temples in the two territories and to identify the number of individual temples on one particular site apart that is from where it is possible from reading the titles over the entrances-it is necessary to count the number of Earth Gods and Door Guardians in their niches inside the temple on the inside walls, usually opposite each other, facing across the various entrances. A single or pair of these deities is usually found in each individual temple within a complex of temples irrespective of how many entrances there are. The Wen Wu temple (or Man Mo in Cantonese) in Hollywood Road, Hong Kong is an example, with two temples side by side seeming to be one having only one courtyard. The Wen Wu itself, a large traditional temple, is to the east with its Door Official and Earth God sitting side by side in one shrine. In the smaller \"Temple of the Buddha of Light\" on the west, there is only a single image, a lone deity called the \"Door Official Earth God\", a title which amalgamates the titles of the two usual deities.\n\nUrban and rural11 folk religion temples differ in that the former tend to be more sophisticated, always have a keeper and several other staff, cater for worship by individuals at any hour (between 8am and 6pm) and have a wealth of images. Rural temples, in the main also boast keepers, but these are usually absent as they are \"pensioners\",12 very elderly people who spend much of their time asleep, calling on friends or shopping. Devotees visiting a rural temple normally find no one to assist them, and presumably, as this is an accepted facet of rural life, nobody seems to mind. The urban temple keeper on the other hand has to earn his living or recoup his investment of an annual tender, and so he ensures that a member of the staff is permanently in the temple during opening hours to assist in devotions, offer for sale incense, oil, charms and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208879, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n13\n\ntwo temples are alike. The interior decoration and content of temples tend to reflect their keeper's foibles, whims and beliefs, and whilst some temple keepers offer special rituals, others are thoroughly disinterested and their temples often bare and ill-kept and bereft of any spark of life. Rural temples are considerably barer than their urban equivalents. In some, poverty is stark and all that can be seen is a well-nigh empty hall, with an ash container for incense sticks and perhaps a paper plaque or two, with possibly an image and, if it is at all possible, electric illumination even in fairly remote areas. At the other end of the scale some of the urban temples are cluttered with objects of every kind, with the cool courtyard being used as a social gathering place. Incongruities abound such as, not uncommonly, sweaty vests drying on hangers suspended from the front edge of the altar, and the blaring gramophone record of church bells which greeted several surprised Westerners when they entered a small temple in Kowloon. Many temples have private courtyards for use by the keeper and his family.\n\nVisitors touring the Far East frequently compare the spacious, light and clean Thai Buddhist temples with Chinese folk religion's dark and grimy temples. Many Chinese Buddhist monasteries and temples, not usually on the itinerary of tourists, are also bright and clean whereas the religious edifices in which folk religion deities dwell and which are visited by tourists in Hong Kong central and Kowloon, appear quite forbidding. Traditional folk religion temples consist of a single-storey building with windowless outside walls and one large dark, cavernous entrance, through which one can see oil lamps flickering in the gloom. Inside the temple the altars at the far end of the dimly lit halls may contain a single deity, a small group of deities or hosts upon hosts of them. Clouds of incense with its soft fragrance adds to the eerie dimness and in time blackens the gods. It also makes one's eyes water! One aspect obtrudes during certain seasons - open drains in the older traditional temples.\n\nThe basic urban, village and coastal traditional temple is a one-roomed “box”. It can be a traditional building (Illustration 4) or a simple old cottage. It might even be an old two or three bedroomed two-storey house or, if the founder has been fortunate with his sponsors, it will be a purpose-built construction.\n\nThe main doorway of the basic traditional temples at the front is normally the only entrance. It has large inward-opening doors", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208884, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "18\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nmain altar, with a further three altars down the side walls. In the centre, a long altar divides the upper part of the hall from the lower. A side hall to the west, dedicated to one goddess, is also used as a workshop for the construction of paper items to be burnt in ceremonies for the dead. Behind this side hall is a courtyard beyond which is a separate hall containing three more altars. To the east of the main hall is a secondary hall, dedicated, not altogether surprisingly even in a traditional temple, to the Buddhist Trinity. This hall contains just the one large altar and behind it are the living quarters for the staff.\n\nSome traditional temples have had a secondary temple built alongside, as an annex or as a separate temple dedicated to a particular deity, and many traditional temples nowadays have had windows knocked into the outside walls, particularly into the rooms in which the keeper and his family reside.\n\nIn villages and hamlets there are two types of temple. The first is the small, often single-room popular folk religion temple or shrine, of the kind we have described above, in which one or two major deities are depicted on the main altar. The second, the clan ancestral hall or temple, may be a comparatively large complex of halls and rooms, the main hall of which contains, by seniority, serried rows of ancestral tablets of the most senior members of the family, the public ancestors of each generation back twenty or more generations.\n\nVillage temples, be they traditional folk religion or clan temples, are more than just religious establishments where prayers and offerings may be made. Side halls and rooms are used as the village storehouse for items like the old rice winnower, large tables and clan crockery*, as the village school, the games room and as the civic and medical centre. They also frequently are homes for one or two of the village needy.\n\nMost walled villages in the New Territories have a very small single-hall folk religion temple called a Shen Ting (神廳), dedicated to one of the national or local heroes (such as Guan Di or Hou Wang) situated in the north wall, facing south, and located at the opposite end of the main lane which bisects the village from the main gate. In most walled villages too, the Tu Di Gong (the Earth...\n\n*\n\nLineage or village properties that can be borrowed by families on festive occasions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208889, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n23\n\nof deities. It is now only three storeys high though originally it had, according to differing legends, four or seven storeys.23\n\nInternal Decoration\n\nPopular religion temples vary from the traditional old, often magnificent buildings with carved and gilded panels and beams, furnished with rich embroideries, bronze and pewter vessels and numerous personally-donated items all of which enhance local pride in the temple, to the new jerry-built squatter constructions with ramshackle altar tables littered with tins, boxes and bottles, with one or two litho reproductions only to enliven the walls. Some of the rural traditional temples are bereft of much decoration due, in all probability, to the poverty of devotees,\n\nThe range of stylistic variations that emerged as temples evolved in Hong Kong and Macau, shows an essentially conservative character, although the inner decoration of traditional temples does vary from area to area. Some temples have a frieze of panels carved or sculpted in relief above or in front of the altar tables depicting birds and animals, court scenes with generals flanked by soldiers and scholars, and scenes and characters from Chinese myths and legends. Some temples have long red (occasionally black) boards inscribed with auspicious phrases in black or gilded characters, concealing the pillars of the main hall, and some have richly decorated lintels. Most however are relatively bare. Inside, the structure of beams, brackets and roof tiles are more often than not blackened with soot from incense smoke.\n\nApart from the strikingly rich crimsons on and around the altars, there is little colour in Daoist folk religion temples and the murk and dust tends to overshadow what little colour there is. Courtyards, paved with stone, are usually calm, shaded areas of green and blue, with little decoration apart from the murals which may have been preserved, painted over doorways.\n\nTemple and monastery murals and decorative wall carvings, particularly in Daoist and folk religion temples, are so complicated in detail and pattern, and contain such a wealth of allegory and legend that non-Chinese visitors are either completely bewildered or overwhelmed by detail that usually they see little of the mural. Paintings and sketches of scenes involving numerous Immortals and deities defy identification, even though the main character may", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208903, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\nPLAN OF A TYPICAL MEDIUM-SIZED\n\nTRADITIONAL FOLK RELIGION TEMPLE-HONG KONG\n\n(with main hall and secondary halls)\n\nFig. 3\n\n1. Table for offerings\n\n2. Altar table\n\n3. Main altar in main hall\n\n4. Secondary altars in main hall\n\n5. Main altar in secondary hall 6. Spirit doors\n\n7. Shrine\n\n8. Shrine\n\nDoorway Official (11)\n\nThe Earth God\n\n(土地公)\n\n9. Main doors with guardians\n\npainted on them\n\n10. The tutelary deity of the building a tablet under the main altar\n\n11. Side altar\n\nA. Under altar (T) (beneath a\n\nsecondary altar)\n\nB. Side room (44) (storage areas) C. Side room (temple keeper's\n\naccommodation)\n\nD. Entrance hall (\")\n\nE. Forecourt (*)\n\nF. Passageway ()\n\nG. Courtyard (unroofed) (#)\n\nH. The main hall (EA) otherwise known as the Zheng Dian (EM) or Gong (palace) (g)\n\nK. Secondary hall\n\nL.\n\nX\n\nIncinerator\n\nLife size images of aides to the main deity\n\n33d", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208953, "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI; ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\nKai Hing Wat. the walled Hamlet of Good Fortune\n\n83\n\nKat Hing Wai, Walled Hamlet of Good Fortune, is the residence of an extended family of the Tang lineage. All the people who live here are closely related in Chinese kinship terms. It is situated in the middle of the Kam Tin Valley separated from most of the Tang hamlets by a modern highway. The dwelling units built by the clansmen during 1465–1487 are flanked by a fortified wall and moat of later construction, 1662-1721. The walls, measuring 275 feet by 290 feet, form roughly a square plan with gun towers about 25 ft at the four corners. Along the 18-ft high walls there are gun slots near the parapets. The moat of about 20 ft width is crossed by a stone bridge at the entrance, fenced by a pair of wrought iron gates. The entire hamlet with its main entrance and the entrances of the houses orient toward the west instead of the usual southerly orientation.\n\nThe layout of the hamlet is highly formalised and symmetrical. The main street, 10 ft wide, running from the entrance gate to the shrine at the opposite end, forms the central axis. On both sides of the main street are row houses with 10 units per row, six rows on each side, and three foot lanes separating the rows. All public facilities such as storerooms, washing facilities and animal shed are located on the periphery walls enclosing the compound. Guarding the main entrance is the shrine of the Earth God. There is no commercial establishment within the hamlet. It is a kind of communal dwelling similar to others in Kwangtung and Fukien. Shared facilities such as the market square, schools and ancestral temples are not found within the hamlet, but are located in proper places where governed by fung-shui principles, as indicated on the map.\n\nAccording to the villagers, there were as many as 600 members living here at one time; the present population is about two hundred.\n\nAll individual dwellings are identical in size and layout, with the exception of those in the first and last row where the front room is missing. It is basically a three-part house with a front room 10 ft wide by 12 ft deep, a t'ien-ching (courtyard) of 10 by 8 in the middle and a back room equal to the size of the front room. A\n\nKat Hing Wai Kam Tin 錦田\n\nfung-shui * t'ien-ching #", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208954, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "84\n\nDAVID LUNG\n\ncockloft reached by a ladder may be added to provide for additional storage or sleeping space. The front and back rooms are gable roofed, while a portion of the courtyard may be covered to provide shelter for cooking. The walls are load-bearing structures, 12-in cavity walls, made out of greyish bricks of Kwangtung size (11″X 5\" x 3\"), manufactured in regions along Sikiang, West River. Some houses have three to five courses of granite stone on the facade running up from the foundation. Clay roof tiles laid in single layers are supported by rafters spaced roughly 8 in apart. The rafters are in turn placed on beams of fir or pine roughly 6 in in diameter supported by end walls. Window openings are rare and do not belong to the original design. Light is let in through doorways opened to the courtyards and the lanes. The front door openings are usually 8 ft tall and 3.4 ft wide closed by a set of timber doors from the inside and another set of shutters about 5 ft from the outside. Decorative reliefs called hua-liang are commonly found above door openings.\n\nThe planning of the village is based on fung-shui principles. Fung-shui, literally meaning wind-water, is a form of divination based on topographical and architectural features, and is commonly translated as geomancy. It is a science (or quasi-science) which deals with the analysis of the formation of the landscape in selecting sites for graves, buildings, villages or even cities. The notion of siting of towns and buildings by means of oracle divination can be attributed to Shang times from the Chou records,\n\nSchools of Geomancy\n\nThere have been two schools of geomancy since Sung times: the Fukien School and the Kiangsi School. The former puts more emphasis on li, the earth pattern, su, number theories based on the trigrams and hexagrams of the I Ching, and hsiu, astrological elements, which consequently depend more on the use of the compass. The Kiangsi School, on the other hand, looks for ch'i, the cosmic breath, and hsiang, the forms of mountains and watercourses, and so, the use of the compass is subordinate. However, the two schools have fused together since the 19th century.\n\nli # su #\n\nI Ching 易經\n\nhsiu 宿 ch'i hsiang\n\nhua-liang #", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208960, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "90\n\nDAVID LUNG\n\n'just growed,' how, or why, no one knows or cares. At some remote and generally unascertainable time in the dim past some families arrived from somewhere else, camped down, made themselves a 'local habitation.' ... and that was the village. It has a street, and perhaps a network of them, but no two are parallel, except by accident, and no one of them is straight. . .\"22\n\nThere is little doubt that fung-shui has played an important role in the planning of Kam Tin village. The reluctance of Smith and other Western observers alike to accept geomancy as a viable scientific planning principle has rendered their statements inaccurate.\n\nThe manifestation of the innermost layer of the Chinese mandala in built forms is the private home. In the farmsteads of Kat Hing Wai, the longitudinal axis penetrates through the enclosed space and open space recapturing the rhythm of light and shadow, gradient intimacy, and fusion of space, time and motion.\n\nThe private dwelling, resembling the cosmic diagram of the walled city and the walled empire, focuses inwards. The central courtyard in the house, just as the term t'ien-ching, well of Heaven, implies, is the ceremonial centre for worship vis-à-vis the two roofed areas housing mundane activities of men. The exceedingly narrow lanes and the windowless rear walls reiterate this idiom of privacy. No one from the outside world can tell what goes on behind the blank facades of the row houses, since rich men and poor men live side-by-side. Only the telltale granite slabs in the exterior walls show unostentatiously which house was once occupied by a scholar. Inside the house, the back room is generally more private and is, therefore, used as sleeping area and storage for more personal belongings, while the front room is an undesignated space in which various activities take place according to the purpose and the time of the day. In a way, Kat Hing Wai is more like a large house inside which there are many rooms. The clustering of several walled hamlets together resembles a residential neighbourhood. As Wong Chung-hong points out in \"Walled and Moated a Hong Kong Village\", the Chinese regard a village, a town or even a nation as just an enlarged family... all were to be built with the same principles in mind.\"23 Such a strong desire to attain an intimate relationship between man and nature in Chinese cities and villages", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209001, "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n131\n\nThe Chinese are both adept at make-believe and at the same time very practical—in a way that confuses some Westerners. This flexibility also creates problems for the government of Teng Hsiao-p'ing. I have heard these problems talked about inside China and outside China. The most serious problem is that mid-level cadres report to Peking only what they think will please the orthocrats there. Therefore mid-level cadres conceal from their superiors the fact that a target has not been met. They do not want to be criticized for not meeting targets—and perhaps lose some of their perks.\n\nIn Peking the perquisites of cadres struck me more than anywhere else. I did not myself see the special schools that their children attend; nor their superior places of residence. What I did see once was a procession of about fifty cars, each with its curtains drawn as if to shield the occupants from curious gazes. I was told that the wife of the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka was visiting Peking. The first of several of the cars in the cavalcade were flying national flags as they went past me on Ch'ang-an Boulevard. Ambassadors rode in them.\n\nAfterwards I was walking back to the Peking Hotel, where I lived not in the western part (built with Russian help), but in the eastern part built in 1975. I happened to look in a gateway on the south side of Ch'ang-an Boulevard. I could hardly believe my eyes. What I think I saw was a white marble statue of Stalin, about ten feet tall. I could not enter the courtyard and inspect the statue more closely because the sign at the gate informed me that this was the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security.\n\nThe Chinese government is now revealing that many of the statistics released in 1958-1976 were erroneous. It is issuing corrections when it can. But it faces limits. For example, how can it state with certainty the approximate population of the world's most populous country? Cadres in distant areas may be reluctant to report that they have failed to carry out the program to stop married couples from having more than three children. Many peasant families still believe that the best old-age insurance is a larger number of children. Where they feel this way and have four or more children, the village cadre may be reluctant to report the fact to the county cadre; and the ascending accumulation of errors may be concealed from Peking. If Peking does not know the population of an area, it cannot plan to take adequate measures in case of drought—like the one in Kansu, for example, in 1979.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209024, "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "154\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nnumerous minor grades excel those of other places in their colour, fragrance and taste. Chu Yi-chuen of Sau Shui remarks, \"There is no fixed standard as to which place in Fukien and Kwangtung produces the best quality of lychee, but in my opinion “Kwa Luk” from Kwangtung tops all.\" The three most outstanding selections of \"Kwa Luk” are \"Siu Fa Shan”, “Luk Law Yi” and \"Kau Kei Wan”.\n\nA species named \"Sheung Shu Wai\", literally \"being carried (wai) by the Minister (Sheung Shu)\", originated from a minister Cham Man-kang who brought back a pip of lychee from Windy Pavilion. Most lychees fall into this category. The most valuable lychee tree whose fruit is priced scores of times more than others is the one growing in the West Garden located outside West Gate of the County Seat. In fact, there were other lychee trees which were as good as, or even better than, that tree. Another species called “Crystal Ball\" of Cha Kong is of the same grade as \"Kwa Luk”, and also on the list of the delicious lychees are \"Sai Kok\" (rhino's horn), \"Kwai Mei” (taste of osmanthus), \"Nor Mai Chee\" (like glutinous rice), \"Sung Ka Heung\" (fragrance of Sung Family), \"Chun Fung Yuk” (jade offered to emperor) and Ho Pau (wallet).\n\n(translation by District Office, Tsuen Wan)\n\n3. By chance, I heard recently of the existence of at least one tree of the special type of “Kwa Luk” mentioned in the opening paragraph from the father of a friend. This gentleman, a Hakka from Ng Wah District, served pre-war in the provincial administration of Kwangtung at Canton. He had a friend Mr. Wong Ping-kwan (*A), who was the district magistrate (*) of Tsang Shing at that time (about 1937-38). This official used to send a parcel of this special lychee to his superiors in Canton. The fruit came from trees in the courtyard and gardens of his office in Tsang Shing. It was not for sale, and although my friend said he had heard of some being available on the market in recent times, he was sure they were not the genuine article.\n\nHong Kong.\n\nDecember, 1979.\n\nJAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209089, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FEEFAT\n\nREFFEFFF\n\nPlate 9. The complex of four temples in Yaumati in the heart of Kowloon with the opening in the roof over the courtyard plainly visible. The entrance across the courtyard, is centre left of the photograph. Originally on the sea front, this temple is now well inland and surrounded by high rise blocks of flats and offices.\n\n芳流院税\n\n[\n\nPlate 10. Ancestral tablets of the senior members of the clan of each generation, standing in rows on the main altar in the Deng family Clan Hall at Ha Tsun, near Yuen Long.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 259, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "237\n\nThe mud brick walls had been heavily interfered with, having been patched and rebuilt by the squatters. In most parts only one or two feet of mud brick survived, although in two or three places the wall still survived to 8'. The junctions between the mud brick and the granite rubble walls as also between the granite rubble walls and the better built walls of the front were all very crude: the different constructions were not butted in, but left with clean joints. The resulting structural weaknesses were masked by the heavy plastering covering the joints. Three construction joints were broken open to allow this point to be investigated. Walls varied in thickness from 1′ 0″ to 1′ 2½″.\n\nAltar\n\nFrom the memory of villagers who can remember the temple before the War, it is clear that the altar was a solidly built construction made of the same sort of granite rubble blocks as the external walls and again plastered on the outer faces. On either side of the altar a granite rubble and plaster screen wall of the same type as the adjacent external walls existed to divide the altar area off from the rest of the temple. The main hall, that is, the area around the main altar, between the screen walls, was about 10' wide. The two side halls, outside the screen walls, were each about 7' wide. The altar and the adjacent walls were demolished after the War by the squatters who used the granite blocks gained to construct temporary walls across the temple dividing it into three. The plaster at the site where one of the screen walls had been removed could be seen with clear marks showing where the stones had been taken, but no trace of the fittings of the altar could be seen.\n\nSpirit Wall and Incense Smoke Tower\n\nFrom the memories of the villagers who saw the temple before the War a spirit screen was built just inside the main entrance to shield the altar from the view of the people walking past along the footpath. No trace of this feature could be found. Similarly there are memories of an Incense Smoke Tower (courtyard with lateral lean-to roofs) in the centre of the temple, but no signs could be located. A drain in the area which was used by the squatter's cooked food stall may, however, represent the original rain water drain for the Smoke Tower. This area had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210006, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 265, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "243\n\nOnce the latrine was full to the top of the plank partitions, after 2 or 4 weeks use, the owner would raise the planks and scrape out the latrine, heaping up the rich ash mixture on the adjacent drying ground for final drying in the sun. The ash mixture dried into rock hard dark grey lumps. When dry these were crushed to a powder by having a heavy wooden plank (often helped by having children stood on it) dragged backwards and forwards across them by a cow. The powder would store almost indefinitely if kept dry. For obvious reasons most villages forbade manure to be dried on the same drying grounds as were used for rice and vegetables, and usually each latrine would have a small walled off ground of its own.\n\nWhere the latrine was associated with cattle sheds, the animal manure and straw would be added to the latrine each day and covered with ash: in such circumstances the latrine would have to be cleared out weekly. The owner would often send out his children to pick up animal droppings from the fields and lanes to add to the manure building up in the latrine.\n\nThe powder produced in this way could be used as top dressing and packed in around seedlings, particularly of vegetables, or else could be scattered on top of the water let in to a rice field under preparation for planting, the water ensuring that the fertiliser was carried evenly to every corner of the field.\n\nObviously, animal manure could be used raw and dug into vegetable field beds before planting, but the opinion of villagers was that such unprepared manure was too rich and would burn young seedlings; it was only valuable if, after digging in, it could be left to rot down for some weeks before planting. Since time rarely allowed this, even poor families with no latrine of their own would rarely use raw animal manure. It must be remembered that a village house was very small and had no large private courtyard; heaps of animal manure maturing in a corner of a farmyard, so traditional in Europe, were just not feasible to anyone who did not own a latrine enclosure. More often poorer villagers would compound with a latrine owner, and hand over to him all the wastes of their animals and guarantee to him the custom of themselves and their families, in return for one or more buckets of prepared manure powder at the main planting.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210051, "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-1984", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "TEMPLE ORACLES IN A CHINESE CITY\n\nA Study of the Use of Temple Oracles\n\nin Taichung, Central Taiwan*\n\nJULIAN PAS\n\nPrelude\n\nIn the early morning of February 26, 1978, our group of over a hundred pilgrims from Taichung arrived in the city of Peikang, one of the major centres of the Matsu cult. The ch'ao-t'ien temple there was first built in 1694 and enlarged in 1775. The whole previous day had been spent in visiting temples in other places and burning incense to prepare for this solemn visit. As we arrive, the sedan chair of the goddess which we had brought from Taichung is carried toward the temple gates by ten strong men; the pilgrims follow behind, while musicians blow high-pitched trumpets and beat gongs and drums.\n\nSoon our group disappears inside the temple gates, while the great bell and drum are beaten to welcome the visiting Matsu. All the courtyards and halls are crowded with worshippers. It is still three weeks before the deity's birthday celebration but already every day large crowds of visitors pour into the small town from all over Taiwan. Peikang is the seat of the mother temple of Matsu on the island, and hundreds of temples claim affiliation with it.\n\nWhile the visiting gods and goddesses are carried into the inner shrine and seated on the altar tables to pay homage to the Peikang Matsu, the crowd of pilgrims go about their private devotions. They offer incense to all the deities enthroned here, pray to Matsu, tell her about their problems and uncertainties at home, and ask her advice. Matsu's counsels have been embodied in her temple\n\nTo prepare this survey I was greatly inspired by my learned friends Mr. Liu Chih-wan, a research scholar at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Institute of Ethnology, and by Professor Wolfram Eberhard of the University of California at Berkeley. I am also indebted to the untiring efforts of Miss Ch'en Yu-mei in Taichung, who collected many samples of the temple oracles. I finally wish to recognize my gratefulness to the Tunghai University in Taichung: my team of anthropology students, 1977-78, contributed to the completion of the Taichung sample collection, while the Centre for Environmental Studies kindly offered me office space. (Dr. Pas is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada,)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210087, "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-1984", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "37\n\nSample No. 5 (B-54)\n\nAn unusual type of oracle is found in the temple of Wong Tai Sin (\"the great immortal Huang\") in Kowloon, Hong Kong. This temple attracts great crowds of worshippers but especially devotees concerned with some aspects of their future. The open temple courtyard is often filled to capacity with people shaking small bamboo tubes of oracle slips, available for rent. In the neighbourhood of the temple is a covered hangar, crammed with small stands of diviners. An extremely picturesque scene!\n\n枝上\n\n枝壇普儕壇黄大仙靈第\n\n懺求得虎渡姜龍虎風雲際會時一旦凌霄揚自樂任君來往赴瑶池此仙得家風地耍註」周朝機仙文本快孕家功方周如生宅龍子隆逐求財豐百亦『可則如到龍國若婚病病求姻即財榮天太盡行喬六亨人有音樂枝通至功吉任龍問問問問問問古名出交天自遺風行易時身尖水來風龍意矣。飛功望同愈豐此到是上枝華上發達揚名也之快當時1.徙到豐四即發來處於季得貴皆有又俱兼合喜可平原丁心色喜安物財池臣姜太公上天去揚簽者定百事如意真第一枝上簽也求瑤龍得池虎之象也求快樂即瑶池", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210280, "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-1984", "page_number": 251, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "230\n\nTHE CHINESE “YUE LAN” GHOST FESTIVAL IN JAPAN: A KOBE CASE STUDY,\n\nAUG. 31 SEPT. 4, 1982*\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nKobe is one of the three places in Japan where the Chinese hold a community-wide celebration for the \"Yue Lan\" festival.1 According to 1974 statistics, there were 8585 Chinese living in Hyogo prefecture of which Kobe is the capital. About 82% of them lived in Kobe.2 Although only 11% of the Chinese living in Hyogo are Hokkienese, yet the Hokkienese Association has been in charge of the festival since the end of the Second World War. The festival I am describing here took place at the Kobe Kwan-ti Temple (關帝廟).\n\nI. The Location\n\nThe festival area can mainly be divided into four parts:3\n\n1) The Tao-ch'ang (道場) area, where the priests performed most of the rituals (this used the building normally the offices of the Association).\n\n2) The Ming-che (冥宅) area. (Min-taku in Japanese meaning House of the underworld) (this used the temple courtyard, with a temporary tented roof).\n\n3) The Temple area.\n\n4) The Association Hall and the Kitchen area(s).\n\nAll rituals took place at these places except the Lantern Floating ritual which took place at the sea-shore half an hour's ride from the temple by mini-bus. In addition, there was a screen between the temple and the Tao-ch'ang where Chinese movies were shown for three nights.\n\n* Unless specifically stated, all explanations of the rituals during the festival are as given by the participants. See Plates 15-32.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210571, "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-1985", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "159\n\n“Foreign Devils\" as they passed.25\n\nTaiho had been a market town, although not a prosperous or thriving one at the beginning of the twentieth century. Still, there were residents who were not poverty stricken and who took baths more than once a year. Edith had observed that \"There are people in Taiho who spend more money than we do over their everyday meals, and they do not eat them on their front steps, but they do not live in our back lane.”26\n\nIn due time, Edith was invited to visit some of the better off people in Taiho. She called on the wife of an official at the latter's residence.\n\nI have been moving in the \"upper circles\"... and going to the small yamen. The lady has received me very kindly. She has nothing grand but I have been served with the best they had. Imagine making an afternoon call and having fried eggs on toasted bread served to be eaten with silver and ebony chopsticks, and tea to drink holding the saucer with the cup in it and drinking so.\n\n27\n\nThe mission quarters at Taiho, consisting of living areas for the married missionaries couple or family and Edith, as well as meeting rooms, was located in a Chinese-style compound. This was a walled-in narrow piece of land, the width of a small house, with three houses separated by open courtyards. The innermost house was a two-storeyed structure. The others were single storeyed. When Edith first arrived at Taiho, she shared the two-storeyed house with Miss Trüdinger. They boarded with Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm, with Mrs. Malcolm handling the housekeeping. After Miss Trüdinger left in 1904, Edith exchanged quarters with the Malcolms.\n\n+ +\n\nI have a little house all to myself now. At first it was very cold over here, for my floor is just a few inches above the ground and my ceiling or roof is very high and my stove is so tiny it cannot begin to heat even one room.28\n\nEdith, however, did not dwell without other living creatures.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210995, "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-1987", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "32\n\nlooking as though they would roll down any moment, it formed a dramatic and distinctive backdrop to the Walled City.\n\nThe City was primarily a garrison town. In 1898, the garrison numbered 544, with a civilian population of only 200, largely dependents of the military. By then the watch towers were being used as family dwellings. Besides the several official buildings there was also the Lung-chin i-hsüeh ## (Lung-chin Communal School), named after the small Lung-chin river nearby. The school's raison d'etre is significant. Just as the British presence in Hong Kong had necessitated strengthening the civil and military establishment at Kowloon, so had it highlighted the need to strengthen the inhabitants' moral fibres against Western decadence and materialism. The Hsin-an Magistrate, commenting on the founding of the school in 1847, declared that since Kowloon had become a point of interaction with barbarians, the inhabitants needed to be fortified morally, thus making a school necessary, and he even hoped that they might exert a civilizing influence on the intruders.\n\n10\n\nBuilt of blue baked bricks on a granite foundation, with granite lintels and frames to the entrance, the school was an imposing building with two main halls and two courtyards, much like the grander ancestral halls of the New Territories. Local literati were elected to the school board each year. The source of fund was irregular. A generous official occasionally made a donation; in the 1880s, a special rate was levied on the sale of suckling pig meat to subsidize the school expenses. Characteristically, public meetings, often attended by officials, were also held there. Its reflecting wall bore the characters \"Hai-pin Tsou Lu\" to denote a place of high moral and academic excellence by the sea, emphasizing how strongly Confucian orthodoxy still prevailed in this outpost of Empire. In 1897, an annex, a fine two-storeyed building called the K'uei-hsing ke (Kuei-hsing pavilion) was added, K'uei-hsing being the god who protected the literati. This shows that fifty years after its foundation, the school was still a going concern.\n\n14\n\nA small paper-burning pavilion stood near the East Gate. Traditionally, the Chinese literati revered the written word and, to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211004, "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-1987", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "41\n\n“courtyard” effectively forms a more sinister, hostile and impregnable wall against outsiders than the one before.\n\nThe government's recent proposal to clear the area no doubt produces a collective sigh of relief for the departure of this abomination. However, fragments of the old City - the cannon, parts of the former military office, some stone lions, the odd inscription, old residents' memories deserve preservation. Since the government plans to use the area as a park, perhaps we could revive the 1934 proposal to make it a place of popular resort and historical interest. In this way, we can preserve the memory of a unique international arrangement and a fascinating chapter in the history of the region.\n\nPlates 1-7 at the rear of the Volume illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211413, "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-1988", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "105\n\nBecause of conflict between the Heong Shan and the Toy Shan cl stockholders of the bank, and depressed over the loss of Me Yuk, uncle returned to China in 1910. I remember them when they stopped over in Honolulu and the trip we took with him by taxi to the Pali. He presented Mother with a pair of etched California gold bracelets, one of which I now own. On my first visit to China in 1919, Uncle was working for the Sun Company Ltd., a large department store in Hong Kong, but he later returned to banking as the Branch Manager of the Bank of East Asia in Canton until his death during World War II.\n\none at 96 Kennedy Road, Hong Kong,\n\nM, Canton, on the bank of a small\n\nHe established two homes and the other in Lai Chee Wan river. The former was a sturdy concrete building of British design and character, while the latter was Chinese, with an enclosed courtyard and garden. Since he had accumulated a comfortable fortune, he acquired an estate in Deep Water Bay near Aberdeen, Hong Kong, where he would retreat from time to time to enjoy the beautiful flowers which his gardeners cultivated. His Kennedy Road home was like a hotel, open to relatives from the village and to other visitors as well. He found jobs for male relatives from the village who wanted to work in the city; he contributed to the support of needy kinsmen; and he paid a percentage of the debt owed to creditors of the family pawn shop which had failed during Grandfather's tenure. He was a true head of the house, assuming responsibilities for the care and support of many.\n\n1\n\nSometime before 1919 when Uncle got settled again, he brought into the household his \"Third Concubine\", a native of Sun Yup. Born on 12 December 1897, she was considerably younger than Uncle. Uncle seemed quite fond of her. This was probably threatening to both First Aunt and Small Aunt, for the former then adopted a son, Po Nin, who was born on 17 February 1908, but he died from tuberculosis when he was in his teens. Small Aunt tried very hard to conceive by frequently going to the temple to pray for a son and miraculously became pregnant and bore a son, Po Ling, on 10 May 1915. A great deal of rivalry existed between the two concubines that resulted in intrigues and accusations until eventually Uncle reluctantly had to send Third Concubine out of his household, reportedly because there was proof of her infidelity. However, he gave her a sum of money in order that she could learn to be a midwife and become self-supporting. It is reported", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211640, "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "30\n\non an altar in a folk religion temple in Pongol in northern Singapore.\n\nIn the Feng Shen Yen I, mythical tales known to most Chinese, Yang Chien is described as the nephew of the Jade Emperor. Yang, also known as Erh Lang in some stories and in some temples, was a mythical general fighting for the legendary Shang (Yin) dynasty during the wars of the 12th century BC.\n\nAnother popular romance of the Ming, the Journey to the West, better known as the story of Monkey, tells of the incident when a heavenly being was exiled to Earth for re-incarnation as a punishment for assaulting one of the Jade Emperor's daughters. By mistake he entered the womb of a sow and was born half-man and half-pig and is now best known as Piggy, one of Monkey's assistants.\n\nThe Jade Emperor's festivals are celebrated on his birthday, the 8th and 9th of the first lunar month, and on the 6th of the eleventh lunar month, the anniversary of his ascension. In parts of Taiwan he is also feasted on the 24th of the sixth lunar month, and in South-East Asia on the 6th of the fourth, and fifth of the eighth lunar months. Though it is not a date on which humans especially revere the Jade Emperor, all the gods of Heaven assemble on the 19th of the first lunar month to pay their respects to him.\n\nHe is offered a feast on his birthday which includes duck and chicken, but must include pork. These offerings are placed on a table in the open, before the front entrance to the courtyard, together with candles and the large-size sticks of incense. Two whole sugar canes with leaves intact are especially popular offerings in Fukien communities to celebrate the escape of Fukienese who hid amongst the fields of cane to avoid being killed by an enemy. The survivors offered such canes to the Jade Emperor in thanks and the custom has persisted.\n\nIn general, routine offerings before the altar of the Jade Emperor consist of the standard three sticks of smouldering incense. However, offerings of a vegetarian feast are made to him in Hong Kong on the first day of the lunar new year, accompanied by the burning of spirit money. Not all families perform this ritual, many Hoklo and Hakka families prefer only to offer the basic vegetarian meal.\n\nThe Jade Emperor is usually accompanied on the altar by images of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211731, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "121\n\nCHEUNG SHAN KWU TSZ (長山古寺), AN OLD BUDDHIST NUNNERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES, AND ITS PLACE IN LOCAL SOCIETY\n\nThe Plan of the Nunnery\n\nP. H. HASE*\n\nHong Kong has dozens of Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, mostly located in the New Territories. Almost all are recent foundations. The majority were founded by monks or nuns fleeing from one of the three major disturbances to Buddhist life in China in the last 80 years - the 1911 Revolution, and the chaos of the Warlord years which succeeded it; the Anti-Superstition Campaign mounted by the Kuomintang from the mid 1920s; and the Communist Revolution of 1949-1952.\n\nThese monasteries and nunneries mostly share a single common plan, which distinguishes a Buddhist place of worship from the ordinary temple of the traditional village religion. The ordinary temple consists of a windowless rectangular hall, with the altar to the God against one of the short walls, and entered through the opposite short wall. The hall usually has a Tin Tseng (天井), or lightwell, in the centre for the escape of incense smoke. Often two subordinate similar halls are placed one on either side of the main hall, interconnecting by arches.\n\nMost Buddhist institutions are built to a different plan. They are centred on a Buddha Hall (A, 大殿), which is also a rectangle, but one entered through the centre of one of the long walls, and the altar is not against the opposite long wall, but free-standing a little in front of it. These Buddha Halls usually have windows, and do not have Tin Tseng. In large monasteries or nunneries, the Buddha Hall is a free-standing structure surrounded by a portico, placed in the centre of an enclosed courtyard-garden on a raised podium, with the other buildings forming ranges along the edges of the courtyard. The whole complex is enclosed: the monastery or nunnery, unlike the ordinary temple, is\n\n* The author would like to thank those Ta Kwu Ling elders who gave him the information on which much of this article is based, and also the staff of the District Office, North, who assisted in setting up the interviews. He would also like to thank the staff of the District Land Registry, North, for their unfailing courtesy and assistance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211732, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "122\n\nusually considered private in character, and hence the entrances are such that the general public can be excluded as desired.2\n\nIn smaller institutions, the buildings tend to form only a single range, and the Buddha Hall is built in the middle of it. Even here, however, the range of buildings will usually front an enclosed courtyard-garden, and the Hall will be raised up a few steps higher than the other buildings.\n\n1\n\nAlthough the great majority of Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in Hong Kong were founded in the last 80 years, a few are older, founded by indigenous groups before the coming of the British. Five are known to me in the mainland New Territories3 — the Ching Shan, or Pooi To (#4 · *) monastery at Tuen Mun, (certainly in existence in the fifth century*), the Ling To () monastery at Ha Tsuen (probably founded or refounded in the Ming Dynasty), the Ling Wan () nunnery at Shek Kong (an early Ming foundation4), the Lung Kai () nunnery near Lung Yeuk Tau (probably an early Ch'ing foundation5), and the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz (££‡), near Man Uk Pin on the old road from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun (Shen Zhen).\n\nThe subject of this article.\n\nOf these ancient foundations, the Ching Shan monastery was rebuilt in 1918 and several times since, and the Ling Wan nunnery was rebuilt between 1919 and 1927. These now show the standard Buddhist plan mentioned above. The Lung Kai nunnery is a total ruin, following abandonment and the stripping of the roof during the last War. The Ling To monastery was rebuilt in 1928, and again (from the foundations up) in 1970. It is believed that both rebuildings used the foundations from the 1861 rebuilding, but the interior layout of the present structure is only a shadow of the original. Only the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz survives unreconstructured and undamaged as an example of a Buddhist institution in the area from before the twentieth century influx of immigrant monks and nuns. Because of this it seemed worth studying the monastery in some detail.\n\nThe old road from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun ran more or less along the line of the present Sha Tau Kok road from Sha Tau Kok to the Wo Hang Au above Sheung Wo Hang. It then cut to the north-west of the present road, passing Man Uk Pin village, and thence on through the mountains by a low pass called Miu Keng (M, \"Temple Pass''), past Ping Yeung village, to cross the Sham Tsun river by the bridge", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211733, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "123\n\nat Law Fong (Luofong), and so on to Sham Tsun via Wong Pui Ling (Huangbeileng). Between Wo Hang Au and Law Fong most of this old road survives as a rough, unsurfaced jeep track. The halfway point between the two towns was taken to be the summit of Miu Keng, and it was at that point that the nunnery was founded.\n\nThe site is a steeply sided valley. The headwater of the Ping Yuen River has cut what is almost a ravine between the mountains to north and south. The old road ran on a ledge about fourteen feet wide cut into the northern slope of the ravine. The nunnery is built immediately beside the road, to the north, facing approximately south, on two platforms cut into the face of the slope. The site is very remote, nearly a mile from the next nearest buildings in any direction. The only fields nearby were a few tiny plots scattered along the floor of the ravine, which provided vegetables for the nuns.\n\n*\n\nThe nunnery consists of a rectangular block of buildings almost square, about 48 feet broad and 46 feet deep. It is divided into four sections by three walls which run from the front to the back: the sections are not all of the same width, with the first (from the west), and particularly the third, being wider than the second and fourth. The second, third, and fourth sections have a common roof. This consists of two transverse gables, separated by a gap, which forms a Tin Tseng in the third section, but which is covered over by a flat roof in the second and fourth sections. The height of the gables is sixteen feet from ground level for both the front and rear gables. The first section has its own roof, rather lower, gabled at the back, but sloping inwards from all sides to a Tin Tseng at the front. All the roofs are of tile, laid on beams which rest immediately on the side walls: no beam-and-strut construction is to be found.\n\nThe buildings are, as mentioned above, built on two platforms, the rear one, furthest from the road, being some three feet seven inches above the front one. This height difference requires steep flights of steps to link the front and back portions of the building, except in the second section, where no steps were provided as there is no intercommunication between the front and rear parts of the building in this section. The front platform is about two and a half feet above the road level: steps linked the road and the entrances into the nunnery in the first and third sections. There was no courtyard or enclosure: the nunnery opened immediately onto the road in front, and backed immediately onto the tree-covered", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211738, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "128\n\nThe front part of these three easternmost sections at the Lung Kai nunnery comprised the guest quarters (in the first and third sections), and the main entrance to the nunnery (in the second section). The guest quarters consisted of a twelve foot square room in each of the two sections in question, each with a cockloft above, and each opening off the Tin Tseng.\n\nAt the Lung Kai nunnery the residential accommodation for the nuns, with the kitchen, was in the fourth and fifth sections, but nothing of this survives, except for the doorsill of the door connecting it with the Tin Tseng (including the marks of the settings for the bars), and the sill of the external door connecting the quarters of the nuns directly with the access path to the nunnery. The nunnery opened directly onto this access path, and backed directly onto the hillside; there was no courtyard or enclosure.\n\nThe present layout of the Ling To monastery (this institution was previously a nunnery, but has housed immigrant monks for the last seventy years) suggests that the original plan there was not dissimilar. The present (1970) buildings form a rectangle, of about 85 feet by 65 feet, divided into rooms which seem to represent the shadow of a previous arrangement whereby the buildings were divided into sections by walls running from the front to the back. The present structure suggests that there were, before the 1970 rebuilding, five of these walls, and six sections. The buildings face approximately due north. The easternmost two sections seem likely to have been the original living quarters. The third to fifth sections are now used as worshipping space, and this seems likely to have been the original use as well. The main entrance was previously in the fourth section, (it was moved to the sixth section in 1970) and the space where it used to be has two small square rooms to either side of it, which are likely to be part of the original design; these may have been the original guest-quarters, as in the corresponding position at Lung Kai. The monastery is roofed with two transverse gables, with Tin Tseng between, and this is also likely to be part of the original design: Tin Tseng are currently found in the second, the fourth (this Tin Tseng probably originally covered the whole of sections three to five), and another in the sixth section.\n\nIt will be seen that the Ling To monastery originally had a plan which seems to have been almost identical with Lung Kai, with the addition of a sixth section beyond the triple worshipping halls. It is possible that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211739, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "129\n\nthis sixth section was added at the 1928 rebuilding, and was connected with the taking over of the nunnery by immigrant monks at that date. If the original building was of only five sections, then it would have been of a very similar size to Lung Kai - about 70 feet by 65 feet - as well as of an almost identical design; the only significant difference would be that, at Ling To, the living quarters of the nuns were to the east of the worshipping space, while at Lung Kai they were to the west.\n\nBoth at the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and at the Lung Kai monastery, therefore, and at the Ling To monastery, as far as the original layout can be deduced, the plan is quite distinct from the standard Buddhist plan seen in most of Hong Kong's Buddhist institutions. The worshipping halls are entered through the short walls, and the main altar is set against the opposite short wall, with a Tin Tseng between. There is no trace of the transverse hall arrangement. Both the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the Ling Kai nunnery open directly onto the roadway; neither has any trace of a courtyard-garden or other enclosure - although the Ling To monastery is now surrounded by a garden, which is probably original.\n\nAll these institutions were clearly designed for only a few resident nuns - the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz for probably no more than an abbess and three nuns at most, and the Lung Kai nunnery (and probably the Ling To house as well) for an abbess and perhaps up to four or five nuns. In none of these cases was provision made for large communities by way of substantial ranges of residential buildings. The groundplan of these nunneries is very similar to that of the ordinary temples to the gods of the traditional village religion, with living quarters similar to local farmhouses attached. The implications of this sort of plan must be of closer integration into the local community, and of closer identification of Buddhism and the traditional village religion than is now common.\n\nThe Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the local road system\n\nThe Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was probably founded in the late eighteenth century. The whole of the Sha Tau Kok area was settled by Hakka clans, none of which claims a settlement date of before the Coastal Evacuation (1669), and many of which settled there only during the first half of the eighteenth century, or even later. Most clans consisted of only just one or two nuclear families at the date of their settlement in the area. The population of the Sha Tau Kok area was, therefore, very low during the early eighteenth century, and only started to build up", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212143, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "62\n\nidentify the two. Unfortunately there are other considerations. Firstly, it is difficult to see why different titles were used if they were the same person. Secondly, nearly every Syriac name given in the inscription is balanced by its Chinese equivalent, and the Chinese name 'monk Ling-pao' appears near the Syriac reference to Adam, son of Jazedbouzid, and is otherwise unexplained. It is possible that it was placed there because there was a convenient gap available, but on the whole it seems more likely that there were two different Adams, the metropolitan of China, whose Chinese name was Ching-ching, and a more humble minister, whose Chinese name was Ling-pao. Nevertheless, the possibility that the metropolitan Adam was the son of the high-ranking soldier Jazedbouzid should not be altogether ruled out, and would certainly fit in with the other known facts about Adam.\n\nThe Sian tablet inscription, composed by Adam, tells us a lot about his personality. It is unlikely that he drafted the inscription in Chinese, as it contains nuances and subtle allusions to classical Chinese works of literature which were beyond the ability of most foreigners. Nevertheless, it is legitimate to conclude that the structure of the inscription, and the main lines of its thought, were his. The Sian tablet inscription has often disappointed western Christian readers. Some have complained that the inscription pays too much attention to the compliments paid by successive T'ang emperors to the Nestorian church. Others have wondered why there is a long passage in which Chinese geographical works are quoted to illustrate Ta-ch'in's location and its main products. Others have noticed that the most important event in the Christian story, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, is alluded to so vaguely that it is difficult to discern at all. These critics have failed to appreciate why the Sian tablet was set up, and who its readers were.\n\nThe Sian tablet was above all else a tourist guide. It stood in the courtyard of the oldest Nestorian monastery in China, in Ch'ang-an's I-ning ward. The monastery would have attracted Chinese visitors, mostly with a scholarly bent, and the aim of the inscription was to explain the monastery's history, and to gratify curiosity about the Christian religion. One of its most striking features is the wealth of graphic description it provides of furnishings and articles which could be seen in this first and most impressive of the Nestorian monasteries in China. The visitor's attention was specifically drawn to a portrait of the emperor T'ai-tsung, to portraits of the 'five emperors' donated by Hsüan-tsung and brought in person to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212207, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "126\n\nwould be discussion of price, a discussion that might often wax hot; but as soon as a bargain was struck all would be smiles again and the parties would separate, each convinced that he had had the better of it. Now the new shops had glass fronts and counters inside between which the customer could walk. The goods were exposed to view and not tucked away in the back, and many of the conservative shop-keepers admitted that the new ways had their advantages; and that even the uncompensated sacrifice of 20 feet depth of shop front, with all the expense it involved in rebuilding, had possibly been worth while, as the widened street attracted more custom.\n\nI managed to borrow a lorry in Nanchang and, with some Chinese friends, took the road, which most of the way follows the Kan river, and headed south for Kukong in Kwangtung Province. The first night we stopped in a wayside temple. We were passing through country which had been devastated during the anti-communist campaigns of 1928 to 1933, before the communists made their famous long march to the North West. Many of the fields were still uncultivated and ruined farmsteads gave evidence of the depletion of the population.\n\nTemples in China are of many kinds. The Chinese are not religious; that is where they differ so from the Indians. The commonest type of temple is the ancestral hall, where the wooden tablets of the village ancestors are housed. The hall, as often as not, is removed a little from the village. It will consist of a first hall, through which you pass to a courtyard, with galleries down either side; beyond lies the second, or main, hall, where the small wooden tablets, each bearing the name in Chinese characters of an ancestor, are set out in rows, generation by generation, one beneath the other, below the single tablet of the founder of the line. The side and back walls may be of hollow brick, cheaply built and usually dilapidated; the curved tiled roofs, moss-grown and even bearing tufts of grass and small bushes, are supported by wooden pillars, sometimes lacquered red, with heavy carved transoms. All around festoons of cobwebs, traceries of dust, and perhaps the rotting heads of last year's Indian corn, stripped of the grain, adorn the broken remains of discarded agricultural implements, except in one corner, where a blackboard and some desks and benches may await the pupils of the local school, if one is lucky. Several benches put together make a better bed, on which to spread a bedroll, than the stone floor.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212208, "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "127\n\nThe Taoist temple, a centre of superstition, visited by the people of the village at certain seasons and particularly popular with the old women, is usually larger than the ancestral hall. It can be distinguished from the rarer and finer Buddhist temples by its walls of red. The Buddhist colour is yellow. Both Taoist and Buddhist temples prefer remote sites, often amidst the crags of tree-clad hills, but their colour apart are difficult to distinguish the one from the other. They are equally filled with images, from the fearsome spirits that guard the entrance hall, and the divers gods in the succeeding halls, to the Great Buddhas in the main hall, behind which there will be a very demoniacal representation of the Buddhist hell.\n\nThe temples to Confucius contain no images. They are to be found in the larger towns, amidst ancient trees and stately courtyards. They are now generally used to shelter government offices or schools. Wherever there are troops, the temples are their barracks; and they provide convenient cover for forlorn travellers.\n\nOn the second evening we reached Kanchow, the wealthy city in south Kiangsi, where the Generalissimo's elder son has been appointed Commissioner in charge of a group of magistracies. While in Russia, where he spent a number of years, he had married a blonde Russian wife. The two have set themselves to converting their district into a model area. No mercy is shown to opium smokers: they are executed. Dishonest officials are inexorably punished. Wealthy merchants, who have profited by holding stocks for a rise, are made to contribute heavily for the benefit of local services, and the sons of the influential are not allowed to dodge conscription. The dispensation is popular with the poorer classes, but not with the privileged. The Generalissimo is proud of his son's work, and one day sent a foreign reporter, who had been critical of Chinese administration, to investigate. He returned with a glowing report. Would that there were more districts in China, where honesty is the rule! Unfortunately, since 1937, there has been a relapse. The improvisations of war have left increasing spheres of administration in the hands of the military, and graft is again the order of the day. It is another of those Chinese anomalies that the Generalissimo, the relentless opponent of Communism, should be proud of a son who unquestionably is influenced by Russian ideology.\n\nConscription in China is not applied in our sense of the term. There\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212221, "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "140\n\nsometimes visited by H.M. ships, and further inland Snow Valley, high up in the mountains, was a popular resort for the more enterprising of Shanghai week-enders. Now the motor roads round Ningpo had all been destroyed by the Chinese lest the Japanese advance and make use of them. The roadhead was twenty miles away at Kikow, the Generalissimo's native village, where tourists used to leave their cars to make the ascent to Snow Valley.\n\nI had to get back to Shanghai somehow and decided the best way would be to make for Hongkong overland, a distance not far short of a thousand miles. You reached Kikow partly by boat and partly on foot, and I arrived one evening, to find I should have to wait a couple of days for a seat on the crowded bus service. The next morning I was strolling by myself along the village road when the alert sounded. This was such a common event that I took no notice, and almost before I realised what had happened two Japanese light bombers were circling over the village to locate their targets. The police hustled me into a nearby house, from the courtyard of which I watched the planes fly around and make shallow dives each time they placed a bomb, of which they dropped a dozen. Besides myself there were only women in the house, an old lady, a daughter, and a small child with their amah. They told me that only two houses away was the Generalissimo's ancestral home, at which it was probable that the Japanese were aiming. The daughter was very concerned that I should be standing in the courtyard with my sleeves rolled up displaying my wrist watch to the Japanese pilots. She feared it might attract their attention and asked me to take it off. In my halting Chinese I tried to explain to her that the pilots, who were flying about two thousand feet up, there was, of course, no defence of any kind\n\ncould neither see me nor my wrist watch, and each time the aircraft commenced to dive I signalled to the women to crouch down and comforted myself by the realisation that they were going for the other end of the village. The planes flew off after half an hour. When they were satisfied it was all over, the women collected the clothes they had been washing, and made their way, as if quite accustomed to it, across the road, down the steps to the mountain stream to resume their work. Fortunately no buildings caught fire on this occasion, and there was not much damage; the village was burnt out in another raid a week later.\n\n―\n\nNext day I started on my journey. Laboriously, on the overcrowded", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212603, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "137\n\nAnd yet, of an evening, through all those Eastern shores, you could find few pleasanter places than the inner courtyard at Raffles. Towering above at third-floor level, beneath a canopy of stars, the palm-tops shivered in the breeze; while below in the dim rose light of the table lamps, turbaned bearers moved noiselessly, and the murmur of conversation mingled with the low strains of soft music to conjure fantasy.\n\nIt was only with the arrival of the British that the Chinese, attracted by the rule of law, the security of life, and the open door, moved in numbers to Malaya, so that they are now two million, amongst a population totalling five million. They have been of great service in developing the country. They own many of the tin mines, much of the rubber, nearly all the retail shops, and they are the wealthiest community. But, as is characteristic of the Chinese everywhere, they are not assimilated. They remain a community apart, and even, surprisingly, send members to the People's Political Council at Chungking, the representative organ which advises the Chinese Government, and which is supposed to be democratic but cannot be, as the electoral machinery is controlled by the Kuo Min Tang party, and the secret ballot is as yet unknown in China.\n\nThe British colony, the actual Straits Settlements, covers only a very small part of the area of Malaya. Such control as the British may have over the remainder derives from treaty relations with the Rulers of the several States. How to frame a satisfactory sort of Malayan union out of the ten components of a country as small as England is a problem as yet unsolved. I expect it is the knowledge that the allegiance of the Chinese in Malaya is claimed by the Kuo Min Tang that makes it difficult for the British to recruit them for the armed forces, as though their allegiance were to Malaya. The Americans in the Philippines, where there is not a similar number of territorial divisions, would be faced with the same problem in an easier form were 41% of the population Chinese, instead of 1%.\n\nIn fact the Chinese in Malaya were quite happy. Through the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs they were able to make their views known to the Government. Unless external political pressure is brought to bear they are unlikely to make trouble. Here again they have found conditions of security, comparing only too favourably with those in the homeland, and they know when they are well off.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212623, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "157\n\nbut enclosed in front by a high wall. There was a small room alongside, suitable for a kitchen, so we used the hall as our mess. Another large room next door was divided into three by wooden partitions, which went up about seven feet, leaving the remaining space to the sloping roof open; it was used for sleeping quarters. In front of this too there was a little sunken courtyard, which filled with water from the roof gutters when it rained and became a pool; a drain led to the village pond in front of the building but was slow in carrying off the water. A small squirrel lived in this drain - the Chinese call them tree rats; it became quite tame, and soon got used to dodging the mongrel dogs that attached themselves to us. The quarters were cool in summer, and very cold in winter, fully open as they were to the air.\n\nOur water came from any one of the village wells, all of which obviously filled from surface drainage. During the summer when it rained heavily the water in the wells was flush with the level in the rice fields outside; in a country rife with typhoid and dysentery not a very satisfactory supply. We later decided we would dig our own well in the sunken courtyard in front of the sleeping quarters, with a stone coping to keep out surface water. The suggestion met with opposition from the village elders, who pointed out that the presence of a well in the line of approach to the Gods, left in position at the back of the hall, would interfere with the goodwill of the local spirits. When, however, we suggested we should dig the well to one side of the direct approach, though still in the sunken courtyard, they were quite agreeable. Some expert well makers were hired for us; the well was dug under the frequent inspection of curious villagers; but here too the water level continued to coincide with that in the paddy fields.\n\nPrivacy, in the western sense, is not known in China; our quarters, being something of a novelty, were for long the main attraction for local tourists, male and female, who would enter and inspect, Mac, for instance, in bed with absorbed interest and the greatest bonhomie on both sides. In my temple down the path, I was protected from this camaraderie by the presence of a sentry posted over the office.\n\nWe learnt a great deal about village life in China. Chin Ya was the largest of a number of villages in the valley. The valley was by no means flat; it was broken up by knolls and ridges, and there was, for China, an unusual number of trees. Mr. Hsiao, the headman of our village, also controlled several of the smaller villages around. The appointment was the prerogative of the magistrate in the nearby town, and carried with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212834, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "128\n\nthat serve as leaves in this plant threw a new light on the perils of parachuting. The weather was propitious and the sortie a success. The supplies included a small proportion of gifts with which we were able to show our appreciation to the battalion commander, whose troops had provided most welcome assistance. On completion of the sortie I despatched Stan up the valley to enter Kokang further south towards Sincheng, where the Myosa's brother had his headquarters, and more especially to search for a suitable dropping zone inside Kokang, and not too near the Salween. Jack had already gone on into Kokang to Nancha, the place where the parachute party had stayed, and shortly after I broke camp to join him.\n\nMany paths over the mountains connect China and Burma throughout the length of the border; passage is unrestricted and along these paths the Chinese people are gradually infiltrating, circulating as hawkers, establishing their little shops, or cultivating a small plot of land. In Kok-ang the population was very mixed as it is all along the border country. Over half the population was now of Chinese blood; up on the mountains were many Lihsaw and Palaung villages. The Chinese distinguish between ‘Land' Shans and 'Water' Shans, Han Payee and Shui Payee; one meets them all through Western Yunnan and Eastern Burma, and Kokang had a proportion. There were also occasional Was and Kachins. The best description of all this country is to be found in Maurice Collis' Lords of the Sunset; and Where China meets Burma, a book written by a government official's wife, Beatrix Metford.\n\nOver a third of Burma is occupied by the hill people; they number three-and-a-half millions, and are governed by their chieftains and princes on the British principle of indirect rule; the princes come directly under the Governor of Burma and not under the corrupt clique of professional politicians, who have formed the core of the Burmese legislative assemblies during the past few years. The unit of control under the chief is the circle, which contains more or fewer villages, each under its own headman. The system has many feudal features well adapted to these conservative and primitive people. Nancha, where we stayed for a time, contained the residence of the circle headman of that district, a dear old gentleman, who could neither read nor write, but employed a Chinese writer for the purpose. The writer had married one of his daughters, as often happens, and lived in one wing of the house. The better houses are built round the four sides of an inner courtyard; the pack animals, the cows, and the pigs, may be housed on the lower", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212835, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "129\n\nfloor, on one or two sides; while the upper storey is reserved for the various members of the family. Almost always a fire is kept going on the open verandah which looks onto the courtyard, and here the old men sit and smoke, the women boil the kettle, and the children play about. A kitchen somewhere in the background will generally be full of babbling women attending to the day's cooking.\n\nThe difference between Burma and China was noticeable immediately on crossing the border. Years of peace and security, but recently disturbed, told their tale. In Kokang the people looked more prosperous; they were more independent. Off the beaten track you could find chickens in plenty, pigs, cows, bullocks, mules and ponies. One day we suddenly came across a whole flock of sheep. The men all carried arms; generally a dah, sometimes with copper and silver bound handle. The headmen were usually attended by a follower or two armed with ancient muskets: and the hill-top people carried cross bows, beautifully made, fitted with a trigger to release the string. The arrow, a short length of hard wood, would be dipped in a deadly poison of which they retained the secret.\n\nIt was at Nancha that we had our first trouble with our escort. The parachute party had particular cause to complain of the officer in charge of the escort, who would leave them no freedom to do what they wished, but continually interfered, especially when it came to communicating with the natives. The officer, dubbed Percy, apparently received his appointment because he had misled his superiors into believing that he understood a lot of English. He only understood a little. I thought I had made it clear that I would not welcome any interference between myself and the local population, so when Percy was also appointed to command my escort I did not worry. But he began to behave in exactly the same way as before. He had obviously threatened the old circle-headman, who was terrified of being seen in solitary conversation with us: not that we had much opportunity for it; Percy was always on his heels. We even several times caught Percy eavesdropping on us, and when I had established some outside contacts and discovered how the whole countryside was held under intimidation, and that the people had been instructed to give us no co-operation or information, I decided the time had come to do without an escort. We were due to move further into Kokang and I told Percy that on arrival at our new destination I should no longer require the services of himself and his men. I thought there would be some trouble in getting rid of them but they left without fuss, only to be replaced next day by an entirely new detachment. I ordered\n\nH :\n\n-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213104, "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-1993", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "154\n\ncalled Sha Tau Kok, (, \"Sand-dune Point\") from its location amidst the sand-dunes,21 The market was quickly successful. In 1849 it was said by a missionary to be 'bustling with business', and by 1853 it had 50 shops operating.22\n\nIn 1853, perhaps 20 years after the market's foundation, there were still two areas within the walls not yet developed - \"pig market\" and an area just inside the Lower East Gate - and there had been no development outside the walls. Nonetheless, with 50 established shops, the town was clearly already flourishing. In 1854, however, the development of the town suffered a rude shock, when irregular troops claiming to be Taipings came close enough to the town for cannon-fire to be heard. The town seems to have been temporarily almost deserted in the face of this threat.23\n\nAfter 1854, however, the town seems to have entered a period of steadily increasing prosperity. Some when soon after 1854 further defences, in the form of a tall gun-tower, were added to the Upper East Gate, to cover the bridge. Guns were placed there, on the top floor.\n\nProbably at about the same time as the building of the gun-tower, the Shap Yeuk built a large and prestigious school, outside the Upper East Gate. This school consisted of two courtyards, one behind the other, and must always have required several teachers, as was certainly the case in the 1920s. The aim of the Shap Yeuk elders in founding this school was to ensure that the district as a whole had at least one high standard school, where education at a higher level than could be provided in the individual village schools could be had. That the school was a district school was shown by its name: the Tung Wo School. To ensure that boys from throughout the district could study there, it had cocklofts to allow boys to board at need. The foundation of the school also raised the prestige of the Shap Yeuk,24\n\nAt the back of the school a third courtyard contained a new Man Mo Temple, where the elders of the Shap Yeuk would worship twice a year. The side-hall of this temple to the one side was a \"Hero Shrine\" where the spirits of certain unclaimed dead, who had been buried by the Shap Yeuk in a communal grave, were worshipped.25 The side-hall to the other side was the Shap Yeuk Meeting Hall and office. The elders met here to adjudicate disputes, and to hold formal meetings: a meeting of 'several hundred' elders is recorded here in 1899.26 A second gun-tower was added", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213120, "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-1993", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "170\n\nshop on the ground floor, and a residential unit above, often with a cockloft above that, and a tiny yard at the back, backing onto an alley which separated the rebuilt shops from the rest of Upper and Lower Streets, where the shops remained as before, facing onto those streets. The shops on the western side of Wang Tau Street were also built as shop-houses. There were about 40 shop-houses in this upper part of Wang Tau Street in 1925. Most of the other shops in Upper and Lower Streets had also been rebuilt as shop-houses by 1925.\n\n58\n\nIn 1853, the Basel missionaries had found all the shops in the town single-storey structures, usually consisting of two buildings separated by a courtyard, and often with a yard at the back. These premises functioned as shops only, but not as permanent family residences. At that date, while the shop-owner and his staff usually slept in the shop in pallets in the shop cocklofts, their families remained at home in the ancestral village. By 1925, however, only the shops in the less-frequented parts of town remained as single-storey buildings, elsewhere they had been replaced by shop-houses. This move away from single storey units to shop-houses seems to have been a frequent development in the region in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: after 1898, descriptions of New Territories market towns normally refer to shop-houses in the main shopping areas, and single-storey structures elsewhere in the towns.\n\nThis redevelopment of the shops at the western ends of Upper and Lower Streets as shop-houses facing into Wang Tau Street led to the removal of the old Upper and Lower Gates. The East Gates, however, especially the Upper East Gate, remained.\n\nIt is likely that this move of the economic centre of the market, from Lower (Main) Street to Wang Tau Street had begun before 1898. At least three of the shops recorded on the 1894 tablet recording donations to the rebuilding of the temple at Shan Tsui39 were, in 1925, in the upper section of Wang Tau Street between Upper and Lower Streets. Almost certainly they did not all move between 1898 and 1925 from sites within the walls to sites outside - the most likely scenario is that they were already on their 1925 sites in 1894, and that, therefore, the move towards Wang Tau Street had begun somewhen between 1853 and 1894, and therefore arose from the steady increase in the town's prosperity in the later nineteenth century, and was thus not a response to the changes in the town's economic fortunes following the marking out of the new frontier in 1898.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213124, "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-1993", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "174\n\n-\n\nBetween the grain market and the fish laans was a broad open space. This was used for drying grain and fish, and other things. This was where the matsheds for the local Ta Tsiu were put up - the gambling house also put on opera here at the New Year, partly as a gesture of thanks to patrons, but also to cope with increased demand at this season (gambling tables were set up in the matshed). This space was where the execution of about 1935 mentioned above took place.\n\nWest of the Tin Hau Temple, the village of Sha Lan Ha (Shalandia, [] F) stretched along the shore. This was predominantly a residential village, mostly of the Ng (A) family, genealogically connected with the Ngs of Tam Shui Hang. There were no shops here, just houses, for the boatyard, 4 and one of the town tobacconists, who found except this site, close to the Customs Station, profitable. The boatyard was a large concern, with associated ropeworks and sailyards within the village.\n\n叫\n\nThe biggest and most prestigious building in the town was the Tung Wo School and Man Mo Temple at the north-east corner of the town. This was a well-built brick building, with three courtyards, and, as mentioned above, had been built shortly after 1854 by the Shap Yeuk as the district school and also their office and Meeting Hall. The temple was at the seaward end of the complex. It was built several steps higher than the school, and it had a higher roof. The whole building was essentially single-storeyed, but there were cocklofts for resident students. The original main entrance was facing the bridge, but after the soldiers took over the attached gun-tower as their barracks they used the open space in front of the main door as part of the barracks, and the villagers disliked passing that way. New side doors were, therefore, provided on the side facing the sea, both for the school and the temple, and these were the normal entrances in the 1920s. Between the school and the sea a four-foot high wall with a gate delimited the school and temple yard.\n\nWithin British Sha Tau Kok there were only a few buildings in 1925. On the saltpans, the workers lived in tiny huts - no more than 10 feet square. These workers were not local. The local villagers did not know how to make salt. The saltpans were owned by local villagers - mostly trusts and individuals from Tam Shui Hang village - but the owners merely rented the saltpans to overseers who brought teams of workers with them. The overseers and workers were Hoklos from Swabue (Shanwei, E) down the coast. The workers did not have their families with them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213333, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "137\n\nKowloon Walled City, February 1989 and After\n\nThe Kowloon City tour was again very different. Some background is required. Excluded from the New Territories' lease in 1898, but in de facto British occupation since 1900, the \"Walled City\" had always presented problems for the Hong Kong Government, arising largely from its contentious legal status. No longer \"walled\" - its rectangular wall had been demolished by the Japanese during their wartime military occupation of the Colony - the enclave had soon after become a tightly-packed warren of unauthorized buildings without water supply, roads, or sewerage. In the 1970s - again without proper authorization - most of its four and five-storey structures had been replaced with high-rise buildings of twelve and fifteen storeys, greatly worsening its already unsatisfactory condition. The \"Walled City\" was notorious for drug-trafficking and other illegal or criminal activities. Most European residents of the Colony, and probably many middle-class Hong Kong Chinese too, kept well clear, and few of them had any real idea what it was like.\n\n22\n\nAfter signature of the Sino-British Joint Agreement in 1984, and with the agreement of the Mainland Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong Government had undertaken to remove, compensate, and re-house its population, and to demolish the buildings and replace them with a public park within the same boundaries. Here was a chance to show our members this rather infamous place that few had seen, and at the same time - as on the Chai Wan visit a few years before - let them know what was being done by the Government. By good fortune, one of my friends and former colleagues from the District Office, Tsuen Wan, was the officer in charge of the complicated negotiations with the City's business people and domestic residents, and he was very willing to make arrangements for a Royal Asiatic Society visit.\n\nIn the end, the tour's extreme popularity with our members entailed three separate visits, each attended by well over 100 persons. On each visit, after a general briefing, the government officers who acted as our guides - they included two young police women inspectors - talked to us about their work as they led small groups through the twisting, narrow, and confusing thoroughfares to meet our own RAS tour speakers at a few places en route where points of interest were explained. In my case, I had stationed myself in the courtyard of the former military yamen (government office) whose pre-1898 buildings had survived many fires as well as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214101, "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-1997", "page_number": 169, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "138\n\nlikely each walled, using courtyards to form internal spaces for living and congregating and no formal external spaces for public gatherings. The latter structures were erected by Portuguese engineers, naval officers and church officials according to the general principles of building of their culture and time. The city was immediately divided into two - a fortified western city and housing for the Chinese outside the walls.\n\nIn the course of these first three centuries of occupation, we see a growing formalisation of the city. The earliest map we can find of the city is one published in 1796 by Sir George Staunton in his report on the Macartney embassy to China (Hong Kong Museum of Art 1996). Redrawn for clarity here as Figure 1, the original is annotated to identify six forts, three parishes, two colleges, four convents, four chapels and sixteen locations of note, including two Chinese temples. There are obvious mistakes in the overall shoreline when compared to more modern surveys but the form of the city can be seen. The inner and primary harbour is on the northwest shore which is more protected. The outer harbour on the southeast, the Praia Grande, is lined with buildings,\n\nFigure 1: 1796 including the governor's house, the houses of leading traders and significant ecclesiastical institutions. At the southern tip is a hill on which forts and churches stand, with temples as its base. The urban pattern is one that urban theorists in Europe such as Camillo Sitte would be familiar with and perhaps use as an exemplar. Organic growth between the Praia Grande and the harbour has led to narrow winding streets that open into wider intersections.\n\nPlazas are formed adjacent to the significant churches. A large market square is found in the middle of the city. The fabric of the city is woven from filaments of narrow lanes and nodes where people gather. Although we have no earlier maps of the city, the same pattern can be seen in the 1598 engraving of Macao (Amacao) by Theodore de Bry (Hong Kong Museum of Art 1996) with the Praia, the harbour, squares and churches.\n\nLooking at the 1898 map (Figure 2, from Hurley 1898), we see the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214102, "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-1997", "page_number": 170, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "139\n\nsame pattern, nothing has disturbed it in three hundred years. Reclamation can be observed. The harbour front has been increased, a natural act of a trading station investing in improved trans-shipment facilities. Quays have replaced shallow waterfront. This also opens up the northern edge of the city to fulfil a function similar to the Praia Grande, the place to stroll and be seen, the place to meet and conduct business and exchanges. Waterfront edges such as the Praia in Macau or Shanghai's Bund are important in coastal trading towns throughout the world and common in colonial developments in Asia.\n\nFigure 2: 1898\n\nAlthough we are examining patterns of urban development, we should note that the houses along the Praia Grande are an ingenious and significant assimilation of two cultures, echoing the underlying dual nature of Macau. The facades are purely European reconstituted renaissance style using columns of the grand orders. These facades, however, hide buildings of purely Chinese plan internally, consisting of central courtyards flanked by buildings axially and symmetrically. The central position is occupied by the main hall, the parent's quarters and the elder son's quarters. As you penetrate further back, you reach lesser members of the family. To the sides lie the service spaces. The public face, however, reflects the European order - the organic walled city, not the highly ordered Chinese walled city.\n\nTwentieth Century\n\nIt is in this century that significant and substantial changes begin to be made to Macau. By 1912 (Brito 1962), we see further expansion of the harbour. By this time, Hong Kong had been established and was a serious rival for the coastal trade in southern China. The harbour facilities in Hong Kong were better - a deeper draught, a more sheltered harbour. Major trading houses had started to establish their headquarters in Hong Kong and Macau was in need of better facilities to compete. Macau's first venture into heavy industry can be seen on Ilha Verde (Green Island) which was connected to the shore by a causeway and on which a cement production plant was established in 1889.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214418, "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": 276, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "242\n\nagreeable in appearance.\n\nWe barely made it back to the European quarter and went into a hotel kept by a Pole. He said he had lived in Moscow for two years, when he was about fourteen and now he was over forty. I wanted to speak to him in Russian but he doesn’t remember a word. In a room closed from the heat, we were served a lunch of tender tasty fish and tough ham, which however we didn’t touch. P. then got into a sedan chair and ordered himself to be taken to some banker or other, while I set off further down the street to some superb quadrangular barracks. I passed an avenue with miserable scraggy trees and then walked along the water’s edge. It was no longer so hot, with a cool breeze coming from the bay. At the sea front I saw numerous large red insects flying from spot to spot. I wanted to catch a few and take them to G. Chasing after them I was unwittingly drawn to the gates of the barracks and found myself in a huge courtyard, which serves as a training area for the regiment.\n\nSome English officers saw me from the balcony, came down and invited me to join them, ‘to drink a glass of wine.’ We went into one of the rooms where the furniture, the crockery — everything confirmed what is said about the splendour of the officers’ way of life. Silverware and the finest linen are the normal accoutrements of their messes and dining-tables. The officers eat together at the one table and they adhere so strictly to this officer-family way of life that they are rarely absent from dinner. A spacious balcony, or verandah, where the masters of the barracks lazily doze during the hours of siesta, runs round the whole building. I declined the wine and was treated to some lemonade.\n\nIt was late and a sensuous, glittering and captivating night had descended when I returned to the pier, where I found P., waiting for the ship’s dinghy. Meantime a Chinese boat stood there before us; in the moonlight we could see two female figures in it. “What do we need the dinghy for?” I asked. “These women can ferry us across: let’s get in?” We got in and both women, holding on to the one oar, attached to the stern, began turning it briskly to right and left. The moon shone right in their faces: one was old, the other about fifteen, pale, with black, narrow, but nevertheless beautiful eyes; her hair was fastened at the back with a silver pin. “Take us to the Russian frigate!” we said. “Two shillings!” The young one named their price. “A hundred pounds sterling for some—", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214515, "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": 373, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "342\n\noccupation, from 1889 to 1930. I found the exhibits and many photographs more appealing than some of the captions (memories of the \"years of pain\" etc).\n\nMost of the rest of the interesting parts of the island are to the left of the ferry pier. The first attraction is the Ching naval barracks, beautifully restored and now looking as splendid as it must have done when it was first built. It is reputed to be the best (or only) example of its kind in China. Looking rather familiar in its design - it is built around three consecutive courtyards stretching back from the main entrance - one would be forgiven for thinking it was in fact a large temple, with its colonnades and red painted columns. But the naval barracks it certainly was, even though it was relegated to be the naval canteen during the period of British occupation. The whole complex is now open to the public as a museum; exhibits include a number of guns and a large model of a battle between the Chinese and Japanese navies. This latter is rather a generous gesture, given that the entire western-built Chinese navy was destroyed by the Japanese in 1894/95. Resurgence is evident, however, as plastic construction kits of today's Chinese navy can be purchased throughout the museum.\n\nLeaving the waterfront after the Chinese barracks one finds a dusty road on which stand a number of houses, again in good repair and apparently used. Standing proudly by itself is the Masonic Hall, now emblazoned with a red star in place of the masons' square and compasses. In the museum there was for sale a fat (324 pages!) little book in Chinese all about the British occupation. I bought a copy for RMB 10, not so that I could read it, unfortunately, but because it contained three contemporary maps of the island in English. These showed that the other houses around might have included the Surgeon Commander's Residence, the Coal Contractor's Residence and the Accountant Clerk's Residence. Exact identification proved difficult as some of the roads and paths had moved from their original positions.\n\nMoving towards the west we found what must have been the cemetery, but it was clear that nobody was welcome to enter - the gates were well locked and the walls were high. Peering through the cracks did not reveal any remains of gravestones. Perhaps these had fallen victim to the enthusiasm of the Cultural Revolution, along with the two churches, of which there was no trace either.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214565, "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": 423, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "392\n\nfor that area. Our local guide quite unabashed, led us straight into the main courtyard, where we took photographs before a polite message from the Admiral, relayed to us by a staff officer, advised us that he was shortly expecting visitors.\n\ni\n\nNOTES\n\nZhoushan Island, as with many other cities and areas in China, is now rapidly undergoing industrialisation with plans for an airport, factories and container terminals. There has even been talk of building a bridge across to the mainland. Zhoushan is romanised using the current Chinese pinyin system. Formerly it was known as Chusan using the western system devised by British scholars during the late 19th century.\n\ni China was published in 1844, illustrated by Allom and referred to in general as Allom's China; however, a former missionary, the Reverend Wright, wrote the text.\n\niii\n\nFolk memory can be short, especially when it suits the authorities, and in 1998 people in Wei-hai under the age of seventy either looked blank and disbelieving when we told them of the British lease, or corrected us saying that we were mistaken. They explained that it was the colony of Hong Kong which had been handed back in 1997 and that the British had never been near Weihai.\n\niv Other pedants may wish to note that the word Tatar tends to be 'misspelled' as Tartar. The original word in Chinese is Dada'er in pinyin and Ta-ta-erh in Wade-Giles. My history professor used to bark that tartar is on teeth!\n\nA Chinese historian writing during the late 1950s described the progression of the British forces up the South-east coast of China in a very abbreviated history and mentioned in a few words that \"the local people in Amoy [Xiamen] had dislodged the British occupationists and forced them to evacuate the port city. The Chinese defenders made a gallant stand at Tinghai [Dinghai]. Fierce fighting continued for six days and nights. The British suffered heavy casualties. Although General Ko Yun-fei [Ke Yunfei] was covered with more than forty wounds, he fought till he breathed his last. Hei Shui Tang [Black Waters], a people's armed unit, also inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy\". [Tung Chi-ming: An Outline History of China: Foreign Languages Press: Peking: 1959; P 215].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214626, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "descent from an Imperial clansman who was abandoned here in 1277 (their surname is the same as that of the Sung Imperial house), - the clan subsequently left the area'. Certainly the villagers remembered the Sung Court with reverence. Many folk-tales grew up in the nearby villages about the boy-Emperors and their actions. The villagers down to the nineteenth century revered the grave of the sister of the two boy-Emperors, which stood just outside Kowloon City. The major temple of the area, the Hau Wong Temple outside the Walled City, was dedicated to the uncle of the boy-Emperors, the Prince-Marquis Yeung Leung-tsit. The villagers say that they worshipped this man in secret during the Yuan dynasty, and built him a temple as soon as the coming of the Ming made this possible. The villagers greatly reverenced Yeung Leung-tsit's benevolence and selflessness, but his deification is clearly one that was intended to reflect the local people's reverence for the Sung Court as a whole.\n\nAt some date, an important Market grew up in front of the yamen at Kowloon City. In the later nineteenth century this stretched from the south-east gate of the Walled City (the most important entrance to the City) down to the great stone pier that stretched out into the waters of Kowloon Bay. There was one long main street, with a number of side streets10. Around the Market there were a whole string of small suburban communities, mostly market gardening communities or else places doing business in offensive trades that were too unpleasant to occupy space within the Market area proper. The largest of these suburban communities was Sha Po Village, immediately east of the Market. This was mostly a market gardening village. Branches of the Nga Tsin Wai clans (among many others) were settled here, and it came to be regarded as a settled village with permanently resident clans. The Lok Sin Tong (founded in 1880), the most important local charitable organisation, was also here: the Tong occupied a large area (it had a major Meeting Hall and a dispensary for issue of free medicines, which, with its offices, were arranged around a courtyard with a garden, opening off Blacksmith Street through a substantial gateway, with a second courtyard behind with a school, which used the second courtyard as a playground). The Tong doubtless found land in Sha Po cheaper than in the Market itself. The other suburban villages - Sai Tau, Tung Tau, Hau Wong, and Hoklo Villages - were more transient. There were a few families in each, which were permanently settled, but most residents here were resident only temporarily.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214640, "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "19\n\nnineteenth century that Sha Po started to establish itself as a separate village.\n\nAs well as the residences outside the walls, the village had its latrines outside the walls, on the northern side of the moat. There were three or four of these.\n\nTo the southwest of the walled village, and adjacent to the important footpath from the village to the South-East Gate of the Walled City, there were a string of important structures. Two or three large houses stood near the moat (one, owned by Ng Kit-san jointly with Ng Yuk-chan, was about 45 feet wide by 60 deep, with a courtyard and an outhouse as big as fourteen of the houses within the walls). Next to Ng Kit-san and Ng Yuk-chan's house, was the Ng clan Ancestral Hall, another large building (about 50 feet wide by 55 deep, with an outhouse, and a well) fronted by a courtyard: the village school was held in this building\". The school was managed by the Ng Shing Tat Tso Ancestral Trust, which went to great pains to hire a good teacher. They provided him with a spacious house outside the walls since the houses within the walls were too cramped to attract a good teacher. The teacher was probably housed in one of the houses owned by the trust in the Market perhaps the large house with a courtyard behind owned by the trust in Hoklo Tsuen, near the sea. With a house in the Market, the teacher would have been in close contact with the scholars who were to be found around the Sub-Magistracy and the Lok Sin Tong. The school had an excellent reputation, and attracted boys from the Market, as well as the village.\n\nThere was a wide footpath, which surrounded the moat on all sides. Four important footpaths fed into this path around the moat. To the northwest was the footpath which connected the Market at Kowloon City with Tai Wai and the villages of the Sha Tin valley. This path crossed the mountains by the pass below Lion Rock, and came into Sha Tin past the Che Kung Temple. To the northeast was the very important footpath which, having crossed the river, passed by Po Kong to the ferry pier at Yuen Chau Kok in Sha Tin (this was the main path between Kowloon City and Tai Po, Sham Chun, and Wai Chow). A branch of this path went to Siu Lek Yuen in Sha Tin. These paths crossed the mountains into Sha Tin by Sha Tin Pass and Grasscutters' Pass. To the southwest was the path to the South-East Gate of the Walled City", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214651, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "30\n\nvillagers jointly owning property, but where one of the group also individually owned a house in Nga Tsin Wai. Eight of these seventeen house-owners owning premises only outside the village comprised groups of joint-owners. Sixteen of the 72 owners owning houses within the village consisted of joint-ownership groups of two or more villagers. Villagers of Nga Tsin Wai (including the village trusts) owned rather more than 83 acres of arable land. Villagers of Nga Tsin Wai as defined here also owned 47 house-lots in Sha Po, and 30 house-lots in Kowloon Market. In Sha Po and Kowloon City, many of these house-lots covered several adjacent shops, or else comprised large walled compounds with many workshops (one consisted of no less than fifteen small buildings set in a large courtyard). The standard shop or house occupied about one-hundredth of an acre: some of these compound lots in Kowloon City and Sha Po were as large as nine, or even eleven standard buildings. The villagers thus owned the equivalent of 95 standard buildings in Kowloon City, and 99 in Sha Po. Nga Tsin Wai village must have had a total population of about 400 people, although, even in 1902, a percentage were living away from the village, working as seamen or in the City.\n\nAccording to the Sha Tin villagers, the bare subsistence requirement for an adult in this area is about one-sixth of an acre of medium-good arable land. Between half an acre and three-quarters of an acre is the bare minimum for the subsistence of an ordinary family, although the villagers traditionally talk of an acre as desirable. The arable land near Nga Tsin Wai was all of average or good quality, with little poor quality land. Any village with above three-quarters of an acre of average or good arable land per household should definitely be seen as prosperous above the average. Villagers also say that three houses per household are desirable (allowing one for a barn, and one for a married son); villages in the New Territories range from barely one house per household to a little over two per household (“house” in this context means the small single-storey brick traditional structures, often of about 436 square feet). On both counts, Nga Tsin Wai was prosperous in 1902; it had well over two houses per house-owning household, and over an acre of reasonably good arable land per household. If the village had a total population of 400, that would imply a population equivalent to about 300 adults: that would have given every adult villager access to over a quarter of an acre of agricultural land, again, a sign of prosperity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214658, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "37\n\nname of the three brothers of the Sz Ko Ancestor, but none were very wealthy (Tak Ko, 0.68 acres: Fung Ko, 0.12 acres: Hon Ko 0.13 acres). The four \"Ko\" Ancestors, that is the Sz Ko Ancestor, and the other three, also owned 0.46 acres jointly. The income from all the land owned by these latter trusts, and the land held jointly by all four, was doubtless used for ritual purposes and the maintenance of the graves, with the Sz Ko Tso used for more aggressive commercial dealings.\n\nAn alternative investment strategy was used by the Yat Un Tso (E - this was named from the founding ancestor of the Fourth Fong, i.e. of the last nine descent lines of the village, representing probably four-fifths of the clan: about a half or a third of the members of this Tso were also members of the Sz Ko Tso), and the Wai Wing Tso (77 - this had identical membership with the Yat Un Tso). The Yat Un Tso, rather than investing in arable land, like the Sz Ko Tso, invested heavily in the development of the Market at Kowloon, but, like the Sz Ko Tso, was clearly involved in aggressive investment in land: the Wai Wing Tso invested in arable land near the village. The availability of rentable Sz Ko Tso, Yat Un Tso, and Wai Wing Tso land made the junior descent lines the wealthiest in the clan: the Village Headman of 1902, Ng Kam-tong (A) was from this section of the clan (the ninth descent line).\n\nBefore the coming of the British, the Nga Tsin Wai villagers owned a good deal of the subsoil rights, both over the Market, and in the general Sha Po area”. Some of these rights they had sold out before the coming of the British to the New Territories in 1898. On other parts of their land, however, the clan developed shops for rent. The Ng Yat Un Tso owned no less than 0.28 acres of house land in the Market, at the far southeast edge of the Market, next to Hoklo Tsuen. This was developed as five very large shops or workshops (one was jointly owned with a trust named in the Lease as the Shing Un Tso, possibly in error for the Tai Un Tso, the Founding Ancestor of the Third Fong). Several of these shops had large courtyards and wells. This strategy was also employed by the Shing Tat Tso, which owned one very large lot in the Market, with fifteen workshops scattered around a large courtyard. This complex stood on the southeastern edge of the Market, between the Market and the southern edge of Sha Po Village. This complex was probably used for some offensive trade or trades.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214702, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Kak Hang\n\nPo Kong, Sha Tin Pass,\n\nYaen Chru Kok, Tai Po\n\nSha Tei Yoen\n\nFlekkda\n\nTiu Sam and Tai Wai\n\nFields\n\nCL Courtyard\n\nLatrines\n\nMetres\n\nFluids\n\nRiver\n\nMoat\n\nSEBO SERIA\n\nThe Has Terapie\n\nEntrance Causeway, and Gate,\n\nwith Guard Chamber Over\n\nMont\n\nWall\n\n日\n\nWall\n\nMAP 2\n\nNga Tsin Wai in 1902\n\nFlekk\n\nSouth-East Gate of Walled City\n\n100\n\nLower Sha Po and Pier\n\nFielde\n\nUpper Sha Po\n\nNg Clan Ancestral Hall (Village School)\n\n+7\n\nCL\n\nD\n\n81\n\n24-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214899, "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": 314, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "288\n\nfront onto one street and back on to the street behind, thus, in a way linking two streets. All the houses are built of durable timber in a refined two-storey style. The front portion often serves as a boutique and the area behind is generally used as storage space. The interior living space has split levels with an inner courtyard open to the sky and a veranda linking several living quarters. One of the most remarkable features of these old homes is the diversity of their architecture. This varies greatly from one house to another in terms of space distribution, sculptural art, decoration and inner courtyard gardens. Space is utilized to the utmost. Walking in the streets of this beautiful and charming ancient town, a living vestige of the past, one can observe the influence of the architecture, sculpture and decorative Chinese and Japanese styles and the skills of the Vietnamese architects who have absorbed various influences and created something similar, yet somehow uniquely different.\n\nOur sixth day was spent in My Son Valley, 43 miles southwest of Danang. My Son was chosen as a religious sanctuary from the fourth century onwards. Many temples and towers were built here. Most were dedicated to kings and Brahman divinities, including the god Shiva who was considered the creator, founder and defender of the Champa Kingdom and the Cham royal dynasties.\n\nMore than 70 architectural works of different styles and eras once stood in this ancient valley but today less than 20 remain. Tragically, My Son fell within a “free-fire zone” during the American War and was almost completely destroyed by bombs. The French did the present restoration work. The Cham towers were ingeniously constructed of dried bricks stuck together with resin from the cau day tree. Once the tower was completed it was encircled by fires, which were kept well stoked for several days. The intense heat fired the whole structure completely melting and sealing the bricks and resin together to form a structure well able to withstand the combined onslaught of time and the elements - but unfortunately not 20th century bombs.\n\nOur tour ended in My Son and the next morning we left Danang for Hanoi and flew back to Hong Kong. I returned to Hong Kong with many emotions about Vietnam. It was once a tribal neighbour of China and the Chinese influence there was strong. I felt much affinity with the place and its people when I saw the tombs and I tried to interpret", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215010, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "62\n\nfrom Qing county in Zhili, having murdered a fellow-countryman was executed on 12th September 1918. The former's gravestone bears the epitaph 'A noble duty bravely done' whilst the latter's bears the epitaph 'Though dead he still liveth.'\n\nZhang Ruzhi (Chang Ju Chih in Wade-Giles romanisation), [16174], of the 150th Company CLC, from X-hai13 in Zhili appeared to lead a charmed life after murdering a French prostitute and her three children near Amiens in November 1918. He was arrested in April 1919 but in May escaped and boarded a ship in Marseilles in August for China. On arrival at Shanghai he was not allowed to land for not having the correct papers and was returned to Marseilles. After landing he disappeared in France, apparently dealt in cocaine, before finally being arrested in February 1920 near Calais and was interrogated. He eventually admitted his guilt before his execution. His last requests were not to have his eyes bandaged and to sing a hymn, both of which were granted. His gravestone carries the inscription 'A Good Reputation Endures Forever.' The wording of the epitaphs on the gravestones of those executed for such heinous crimes would seem to be ironic in the extreme. On his gravestone his date of death is shown as 14 February 1920, whilst on the CWGC printout of CLC graves, his date of death is given as 10 February 1920. [This has been queried with the CWGC]\n\nAgain, on a personal visit with my wife, we visited the Old and New Military Cemeteries at Poperinge, Belgium, in which there are lone graves to members of the CLC. That in the New Military Cemetery is of Yu Eu-peng, [30159], of the 55th Company, CLC, who died on 31st July 1917. In the Old Military Cemetery is the grave of Wang Chin-chih (Wang Jungzhi [sic] in Wade-Giles) [44735], of the 10th Company, CLC. On his gravestone is carved ‘A Good Reputation endures Forever.' He killed a colleague in their camp at De Klijte, escaped but was caught at Le Havre, tried on 19 April 1919 in Poperinge and was executed on 8 May 1919. His execution is reputed to have taken place in the courtyard of the Town Hall at Poperinge, opposite the cells in its basement which were used to detain soldiers for minor offences and also prior to being shot, but the Town Hall had already reverted to its former civilian use at this time. Word has it that his execution was the last to be held in Poperinge and the execution post, now on public view in the Courtyard, was used only once, for his execution. [see photograph] The cemetery was in use\n\n4", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "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 }, { "id": 215481, "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": 258, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "207\n\nbirthplace of Bhutan's first king, Ugyen Wangchuk. There were one or two dogs, children playing, old people wandering through, and 27 members of the Royal Asiatic Society being waited on hand and foot. I got a clear impression of what it must have been like to take The Grand Tour in Europe in the 18th Century. I have seen prints and paintings of people wandering at will over sites of enormous classical importance, threading their way between dogs and children playing amongst the ruins, thinking to myself 'those were the days.' I imagine that in years to come such sites as the one at which we were to have lunch will be cordoned off and entered only on payment of an admission fee. I felt extraordinarily fortunate and privileged. To complete the picture, two small boys were playing Pooh-sticks from a stone bridge over a very fast stream.\n\nLunch done, we found the caretaker of the once-royal residence and he led us inside. My first impression was that we had entered Gormenghast Castle; I was to have this impression again a few times in the coming days. Upstairs in the large wooden building, one room led into another and another, until finally, at the end of the link, was the privy, from which there was direct access to the grounds via a narrow chute.\n\nNext to come was Jakar Dzong, or the Watchtower of the White Bird. Set in a commanding position up the mountainside, this looked every inch a watchtower from without. Within, it was rather like going back to a medieval European castle, in which a small village had taken root. Galleried wooden courtyards and stone steps, it would make a fantastic hotel if permission could be gained. Its present uses include a chamber for the District Court. Some of the monks were very young (monklets, perhaps), and one of them asked me in Japanese if I was alright (‘O genki desu-ka?”), reminding us that we were probably not the only tourists to have visited, although we had seen no others.\n\nAs the day was getting on, we had to as well, as the next item on the itinerary was the Jakar bazaar. Sadly for the shopaholics amongst us this turned out to be a single shop. Being the second day of New Year all the others were closed. So it was back to the hotel for tea and bickies and a much-needed opportunity to get some laundry done. Then as the light faded, again, so did the electricity, again.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215489, "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": 266, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "215\n\nthey were a bit more accurate, and secondly, being faster, the trajectory of the arrows need not be so high. Arrows were whizzing past us at just about head height. It reminded me of the old line: 'Do people get killed here often?', to which the reply is: 'No sir, only once.' \n\nThe Wangdi Dzong was built in 1638, and that in Punakha in 1637. Both are massive structures and it can only be wondered at what effect all this building activity had on the local economy and employment market. Perhaps similar to the time in England when vast stone cathedrals were going up, many at the same time. More comparisons to mediaeval England and building methods were to follow, but first there was dinner and bed.\n\nDay 9 brought us to what for me was the absolute highlight of the entire trip. So overwhelming were the sights and sounds that faced us that I knew neither what to write, nor how to write it. As I am afraid you will find out on the following pages, however, I soon found some words - although it is impossible to capture anything more than a few personal observations.\n\nWe knew already that the usual ‘no hats, no scarves, no cameras’ rule applied, and this was in many ways a blessing - we were indoors mostly, it was fairly warm, and the absence of a camera meant that I was not distracted by apertures and shutter speeds. Immediately inside the first courtyard, the atmosphere struck like a blow in the face. Red-robed monks standing about in twos and threes; a deep horn blowing its long steady notes somewhere off-stage; sounds of many heavy footsteps on bare wooden floors; a small crowd cheering somewhere from within a building; a stone mason chipping a hole in a flagstone; men carrying impossible loads of stone on their heads, on their backs or in their arms, up an equally impossibly steep flight of stairs into an inner sanctum (whether they were doing so to gain merit, or because they were contract Indian labour doing what Bhutanese chose not to do we did not manage to find out). Something was clearly happening. No - Something Was Clearly Happening.\n\nThis was, after all, the beginning of Day One of a four-day festival, one that has been going on for so many centuries that it is now by no means clear what it is all about. The triumph of the Bhutanese over the marauding Tibetans. The triumph of Buddhism over evil. Whatever it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215490, "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": 267, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "216\n\nwas commemorating, it was certainly doing so with great Excitement and Atmosphere.\n\nAcross another courtyard, up a dark flight of wooden steps to a square viewing balcony with space for perhaps 40 people to stand next to the railing, looking down into\n\nTemporarily speechless\n\none of the most amazing and moving sights I have ever seen. So much so I had to leave after a few minutes, and go and look at the sunlight and distant mountains before venturing back in, still in a state of some shock. Seated one floor below us, lit only by smoking candles, cross-legged on the wooden floor, were four rows of monks dressed in their dark blood-red habits, two rows facing the other two rows, 48 monks in all. Each had a drum of about two feet in diameter, which was held vertically with the aid of a three-foot pole. They were beating these drums and chanting in the deep-throated growly tones that one only hears in Buddhist temples, all to a set but irregular rhythm without the apparent aid of written music or any other form of instruction. Wandering along the ranks of seated chanters was a sergeant-major or choirmaster with a large and solid-looking stick in his hand. He used this to apply a none-too-gentle rap on the shoulder to any monk whose drum was not held perfectly upright. I regret that my less than classical education made me think of Indiana Jones when he was deep inside the Temple of Doom amongst the thuggees. I apologise if I am upsetting any reader's sensitivities with this comparison, and I freely admit that there could hardly be less similarity than between a gentle Bhutanese monk and a murderous Indian thuggee.\n\nSeated behind these monks, beneath our viewing platform, were countless other monks - some with instruments, some without. Some of these, it seemed to be the young novices, for no apparent reason received three lashes each on the back from a gentle monk carrying a cat-o'-nine-tails. (Parent: 'Did you have a nice day at the temple today dear?' Young Novice: 'Yes thank you mama.' P: 'Did you get thrashed?' YN: 'Yes mama - thrice.' P: 'That's my boy! Your father and I are so proud of you.')\n\nBack to centre stage, where the performers were considerably more", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215491, "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": 268, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "217\n\nfortunate. An official-looking monk passed along each row, giving what looked like two banknotes to each seated monk. Then, down each row, ran a small boy-monk with a metal kettle, leaving a small trail of water behind him (the water coming from the kettle, I should point out). Obviously symbolic of something - ritual cleansing? Stunned and devoid of all feeling except a sense of being overwhelmed, we were ushered out into the next and final courtyard, beyond which was the building that had suffered most in the flood.\n\nIt may have suffered, but was now receiving its reward. This vast structure was the principal target of the king's no-expense-spared command. Ten years later and the restoration was far from complete. (But didn't Salisbury Cathedral take about a century to build?) The focus of this hall, the highly decorated ceiling of which stretched about six or seven storeys above our heads, was three enormous seated statues. The centre figure was that of Buddha himself, about 40 feet high and carved in wood. He was flanked by two smaller (30 feet) figures, one of whom was Guru Rinpoche. These, we were told, were of brass but they had been covered in clay. In front of these was what must have been a container-load of prayers and religious representations printed on tissue paper. It is the custom to fill the hollow back of statues with printed prayers, so that they are always there. These were waiting to be sealed within Buddha and his sidesmen.\n\nAttention to detail\n\nWorking in a stream of slanting sunlight, and with the dubious benefit of some 40-watt light bulbs, were about a dozen artisans who were putting the finishing touches to 100 or so smaller seated statues. These figures, about two feet high, were waiting to be placed into a similar number of niches in the walls around this 200-foot square hall. Other workmen were carving wood, modelling detailed bits of decoration in clay, and painting. Rood wooden scaffolding surrounded the three major figures, behind one of which I climbed. There I saw a craftsman carefully moulding clay to represent more perfectly the flowing robes of the seated guru. What struck me most was that nobody would ever see the fruits of this man's labours, but that did not seem to matter one bit. Again, thinking of my own culture, a similar amount of unrecognised effort went into the facial expression of a gargoyle high in the wall of Salisbury, or the decoration of a ceiling boss 200 feet off", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215492, "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": 269, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "218\n\nthe ground.\n\nUnobserved, I saw through a latticed window at the back of the hall the younger monks coming off duty from their performance next door. They were walking along happily, chatting and joking, just as young people would do anywhere, and pulling snacks from deep within their flowing robes.\n\nReturning my attention indoors, I saw that the wooden floors were also, in their own way, a work of art. Onto the pressed mud floor had been laid three-by-nine-inch joists, over which, cross-wise, had been placed two-inch thick planks. And over this second layer was a third, also two-inch planks, laid at right-angles. This last would eventually become the floor and would have the feel of polished marble when finished.\n\nIn the so-called civilised world, with so many obvious technological and other advantages over an undeveloped country such as Bhutan, would it be possible to use traditional skills, methods and materials to rebuild one of our national treasures if it were destroyed? I very much doubt it. It was most moving to see such skill and attention to detail.\n\nThen a workman's mobile phone rang.\n\nBrother, can you spare me a dance?\n\nIt was time to return to the viewing place as the monks were about to do their traditional dance. I don't know about you, but I don't normally associate monks with dancing. I was intrigued. Crossing the courtyard again, the sense of Something About To Happen was greater than ever. Some of the people wandering about were clearly important officials. They were wearing very smart gos, but the traditional white shawl in these cases had red designs on it, and they had extremely fancy woven footwear to boot. More to the point, they were carrying large shiny swords. All Bhutanese gave them an extremely wide berth. I thought it wise to do the same.\n\nThe viewing balcony was more crowded by now, even some other tourists. (Apart from ourselves, foreigners had been very few and far between during our trip - almost to the extent that some of us were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215848, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "80\n\nAppendix:\n\nA Failed Scholar\n\nBy the late 1950s, degree men like Mr. Lo Sheung-fu were few, but it was still possible, by enquiry in the villages, to seek out some old men who, in the language of an earlier day, were failed scholars. By great good fortune, when District Officer, South, I was able to visit one of their number in Ho Chung, one of the larger villages of the Sai Kung area.\n\nBorn in 1876, old Mr. Chan Min-yue was already 86 years old. His house was still older, and its interior, blackened with soot, had like its owner seen better days. The dwelling was one of several within a large courtyard, approached from the outer village street by an entrance gate, and situated within his own clan's section of the village.\n\nBent and shuffling in his gait, Mr. Chan was rather deaf. He could not see very well, and his voice quavered, but he responded well to my enquiries and his memory was still good.\n\nHis education had been long and ultimately expensive: first, at little cost, in his own village school for seven years, then in Canton for another six or seven at a considerable annual outlay to his father. One hundred silver dollars was the figure mentioned, though this was probably an approximation intended to convey the sense of expense. Board and lodging had been required, as well as tuition fees. All in all, he had taken the prescribed examinations leading to the first degree five or six times, but always without success. His father had become reluctant to spend even more money, and the young man had to return to the village. He then went into business with a herbal and Chinese medicine firm in a market town, which (he told me) provided him with a pension when he retired.\n\nUnlike many other failed scholars, Mr. Chan had never taught school, but his proficiency in writing scrolls and couplets had been recognized and utilized in the village and neighbourhood. He carried on with his calligraphy until old age and increasing debility obliged him to stop. Men of this type were accustomed to meeting together for literary pursuits. They composed poetry and discussed its merits, held literary competitions, and wrote scrolls and couplets, replicating at the local level the more prestigious gatherings of senior officials, gentry and literati of the kind to be found in all the district and prefectural cities of China, and in the provincial capitals, like Canton.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215880, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "112\n\nGough Battery\n\nThe two gun emplacements of the Gough Battery are the most conspicuous features of the defence structures on Devil's Peak. The emplacements themselves were found to be in fairly good condition. There is no obvious damage to the concrete aprons and gun pits of the emplacements, although all metal parts of the shell cubicles of the emplacements, such as hinges and doors, have been taken away, probably by scavengers.\n\nThe surface of the concrete apron of the larger gun emplacement, for a 9.2-inch gun, is slightly bevelled towards the outer rim. The spare barrel holder is intact. The cement rendering on this emplacement creates a surface with regular blobs, which probably facilitates the mounting of camouflage nests.\n\nThe smaller of the two emplacements, which housed a 6-inch quick firing gun, has become a planter for wild trees.\n\nTo the north of the emplacements lies the alleged third emplacement. This emplacement appears to be a machine gun position. Parts of the walls of this shelter have been damaged. Further to the west lies the remains of a rectangular floor slab/foundation of a former bunker structure that measures 18.3m x 5.5m. The superstructure has disappeared completely.\n\nBetween the two gun emplacements is an underground complex. Broken ramps and steps can be found around a store structure, which we believe to be the original access. The whole structure should have been largely roofed over originally. However, the central portion of the structure has collapsed, forming a \"central courtyard\". Exposed broken end-sections of the roofs show little reinforcement to the original roof slab. The cement content of the structure is relatively low, with a large proportion of stones and sand. The largest underground store between the emplacements is a magazine. As a double vault supporting structure, it was built in brickwork. All of the arches are still in very good condition, without any noticeable crack or sign of settlement. There is a shaft for lifting ammunition to the 9.2-inch gun emplacement above.\n\nNote that the following features, which have not been or continued", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215960, "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": 259, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "193\n\nruling authorities, including the emperor in the temples of the imperial college. Then very solemn ceremonies of reverence and adoration were performed, marking the Sage as the ultimate exemplar for all who aspired to any level of leadership within Chinese society.1\n\n18\n\nThe Poklo temple to Master Kong was, indeed, more impressive than those in nearby villages, such as the one at Lung Ch'un (literally, the \"River of the Dragon,\" M. Lóngchuān) also visited by Legge and others in 1861. There the temple had no images at all, but only the spirit tablet (shénpái) of the Sage along with a large plaque citing the sixteen maxims of the Sacred Edict (Shèngyù) of the Kangxi emperor (ruling from 1662-1722).19 Both temples at Poklo and Lung Ch'un were dwarfed by the massive grounds set aside to honour the sage in the capital city of Canton. There the image of the Sage was in a hall elevated from the grounds six to eight feet above the preceding courtyards, the roof made of \"those splendid burnished tiles\" constituting imperially-sponsored buildings, garnished with mystical beasts balancing on the upper beams. Seated on a large rock dais, the thick paper-maché-like image of Master Kong was taller and larger than life. Postured as if leaning over a tablet in his hands, the Sage appeared immersed in the study of the text before him.20\n\nHow Ch'ea came to take his place in this Confucian institutional and ritual system is never explained. Whether he had been a student at one time or not is also not made explicit, but he was able to read, and so had probably spent at least part of his youth as a student, one of large majority who had obviously not been elevated by successful results in the examination system. When the two colporteurs from Hong Kong met him, Ch'ea was already in his fifties, had been married, and had at least one son.21 Because no direct mention is made of Ch'ea's wife in any of the documentation after his conversion, there is the possibility that Ch'ea had become a widower even before the pair of colporteurs met him in Poklo.\n\nIf conversion is a multiform and processural event,22 then all of the above cultural, social, personal and religious factors have a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216076, "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": 375, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "309\n\nDuring their drive north to eliminate the War Lords and unify China under the Republic, the Nationalist [KMT] forces entered Zhenjiang in March of 1927 and at the same time took over the Concession. Most westerners left for Shanghai whilst those who remained lived aboard hulks on the River or as close to the River as they could get. Even the British Consul was withdrawn to Shanghai where he continued to carry out his Zhenjiang duties. Eventually, in 1929, bowing to the inevitable the Zhenjiang Concession was finally retroceded to Chinese control and the treaty port, as such, was no more.\n\nGerald Yorke travelled to China in 1931 planning to spend a couple of years travelling around China and studying, to satisfy a childhood dream. Not long after his arrival, as Reuter's correspondent, he joined a party chosen by the Chinese Government to inspect the dyke systems of the Yangzi and Huai river valleys which had just been rebuilt as a result of the disastrous floods in 1931. During the tour with the party they departed from Shanghai and reached Zhenjiang early the next morning. They were greeted on the hulk by a band which played valiantly out of tune. After motoring through the town to a public garden they were entertained at a European luncheon. The weather was cold but presuming that any entertainment would be indoors an under-dressed Yorke froze in the open pavilion. A Shandong medicinal wine was served with the first course; appetising dishes came hot from the kitchen, all of which sat on the table waiting for the Chairman of the Provincial Reconstruction Committee to finish his welcoming speech. When the tepid lunch was over they were each given a pamphlet describing the flood protection work done and the reconstruction planned for the future, a perfect example of how provincial officials wasted their time and country's money by publishing, with their portraits next to the title-page, an account of rather more than they have done and of what they would like one to think they are going to do.\n\nThe afternoon was spent sight-seeing at the monastery on Silver Island [Jin Shan], with its hundred or so monks and its ancient fir tree in the outer courtyard. The tree had but one branch still alive, its trunk bound in iron and its base enclosed in marble - a symbol of the passing of classical Chinese culture. The monastic treasures were all displayed, the bronze vessel from the Zhou dynasty, a drum from the Han, and a jade belt belonging to a former statesman, possibly Ming. There was also a small hexagonal column inscribed with the Daode Jing, the Daoist classic which had surprised Yorke as he had not expected to see a Daoist classic in a\n\nPage 375\n\nPage 376", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216086, "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": 385, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "Incense burners in the courtyard of the Jin Shan Si [photo courtesy of Jennifer Welch]\n\n319", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216314, "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-2003", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "22\n\nsuccessive courtyards which separate the six main halls on the central axis. All told there are about a dozen halls, towers, and pavilions, each containing golden effigies of a wide variety of various Buddhist deities. This goes well beyond the typical scale of the average Buddhist temple which normally has only three main halls and sometimes just one.\n\nIn this first courtyard are four stone relics of uncertain age, but probably not older than the Minguo era at most. These include two stone lions and two octagonal stone lanterns, all four enclosed by stone railings. Two large trees in the courtyard were transplanted here in January 2004. On the right side of the courtyard is a new expanded gift shop (shu dian) added in January 2004. It offers not only Buddhist trinkets, but a fine selection of Chinese language books containing histories of Longhua Temple and Buddhist scriptures. Until 2004, there was not a single published history of Longhua Temple available for sale here, but late in December 2003 no less than three new well-researched titles on this topic were published, several of which can be found here.\n\nThe first main hall is the one-story Maitreya Buddha Hall (Mi Le Dian). This hall dates from an 1884 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1981. It is dedicated to the Maitreya Buddha of the future, known in China as Mi Le Fo, and depicted here as the fat laughing Buddha of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). This Mi Le Fo image is a golden effigy, seated on a square stone base and protected by a glass case. He is depicted as having a third eye in the centre of his forehead. The Buddha can be seen from the first courtyard through a partially open gate of the hall, but the hall itself cannot be entered without passing through the adjoining orange wall into the second courtyard and entering from the other side.\n\nAlthough, Mi Le Fo usually does occupy the first hall of many temples, he often has to share his space with the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang). In this case he has the whole hall to himself, the kings occupying a separate building of their own. Until January 2004 he had to share his home with the temple gift shop (shu dian), but this has now been moved out to a separate new hall in the first courtyard.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216315, "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-2003", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "23\n\nThe second courtyard is flanked on the left side by a two-story wooden Drum Tower (Gu Lou) and on the right by the matching two-story wooden Bell Tower (Zhong Lou). On the first floor of the Zhong Lou is a glass case holding a golden effigy of Kshitigarbha (Di Zang). Dizang is the bodhisattva who has the special power to rescue departed souls from Hell, and thus plays an important role in Buddhist funeral ceremonies. Upstairs on the second floor is the bronze bell which can be rung for a fee of 50 Rmb. On New Year's Eve this bell is rung 108 times at midnight. It is considered good luck to be there to hear it ring, and even better luck to be the one who rings it. The Zhong Lou was rebuilt by Qing Emperor Guang Xu in 1895, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862. The bell itself was made in 1894, during the 18th year of the Guang Xu reign of the Qing Dynasty. Beside the Zhong Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a partially legible inscription which has been damaged.\n\nOn the first floor of the Gu Lou is a glass case containing a golden effigy of Guan Yu, the God of War. In the Ming and Qing dynasties Guan Yu had temples dedicated exclusively to him in every city in China. The former Guan Di Miao can still be visited in Shanghai's Nanshi District. The second floor of the Gu Lou cannot be ascended, and it no longer seems to contain a drum. Beside the Gu Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a lengthy inscription in very good condition. The present Gu Lou dates from an 1895 reconstruction, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862.\n\nAcross the second courtyard from the Mi Le Dian is the Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang Dian). This hall dates from an 1881 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1981. The hall contains enormous gilded wooden statues of all four kings, two on each side of the hall. All four wear crowns on their heads and are dressed in heavy armor. One holds a four-string guitar and has a light green face, another holds a sword in his right hand and has a black face, a third holds an umbrella in his right hand and a small stupa in his left hand, and has a white face, while a fourth holds a snake and has a black face. This depiction is somewhat different than in the past. In the centre of the Tian Wang Dian are two glass cases containing golden effigies of two rather obscure Buddhist deities. Tian Guan Mi Le, a variant incarnation of Mi Le Fo, is depicted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216316, "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-2003", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "24\n\nas seated, holding a long-stemmed lotus flower with a small temple perched on the blossom, and has a third eye in the centre of his forehead. Wei Tuo Pusa is represented by a golden statue in which he poses wearing armor and holding a drawn sword. Wei Tuo is the protector of all Buddhist temples.\n\nOn the other side of the Tian Wang Dian is the third courtyard, on the far side of which is the Hall of the Great Hero (Da Xiong Bao Dian). This hall's origins date to an 1878-1879 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebels' attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was closed for a massive reconstruction and renovation in November 2002, but had been reopened by January 2004. The interior is now nothing less than spectacular. Three large Buddhas (San Fo) are placed in the centre. Sakyamuni Buddha stands in the centre, flanked on the left by the bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Pu Xian) seated on an elephant, and on the right by the bodhisattva Manjusri (Wen Shu) seated on a blue lion. Overhead the hall's ceiling is pierced by a massive wooden dome that spirals upward, looking much like the wooden domes (Zao Jing) often found over traditional Peking Opera stages (Xiju Wutai). Behind the San Fo facing out the rear exit is a large Guanyin statue in front of a floor-to-ceiling landscaped rockery covered with smaller figurines depicting the Buddhist heaven and hell. Along the side walls stand 36 quite expressive human statues of the Buddhist saints, 18 on each side of the hall. This is an unusual number, which seems to include 16 Arhats (Luohan) and 20 Devas (Zhu Tian), and an assortment that includes such non-Buddhist figures from Chinese tradition as Confucius (Kong Fu Zi), the War God (Guan Di), the God of Literature (Wen Chang), and the Kitchen God; Hindu gods such as Brahma, Indra, and Yama (Yen Lo); as well as Buddhist deities such as the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang) and the bodhisattva Wei Tuo as well. The hall also houses one of Longhua's three bronze bells, this one dating from 1586.\n\nOn the other side of the Da Xiong Bao Dian is a fourth courtyard. On the far side of this fourth courtyard is the Hall of the Three Gods (San Sheng Dian). This hall is dominated by enormous floor-to-ceiling golden statues of three Buddhas (San Fo) who appear side by side in an unusual standing position with golden flames rising up behind them. In the centre is Amitabha Buddha (O Mi Tuo Fo), to your left is the bodhisattva Da Shi Zhi, and on your right is the bodhisattva Guan Shi Yin.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216317, "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-2003", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "25\n\nYin. While Guanyin has compassionate mercy for those in need, it is Da Shi Zhi who possesses the power to actually carry out her acts of kindness. The San Sheng Dian houses by far the oldest of Longhua's three bronze bells, this one supposedly dating from 1132, which would also make it the oldest historic relic the temple possesses today. The hall itself dates from an 1884 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1986.\n\nImmediately behind the San Sheng Dian is a walled garden with trees which unfortunately is closed to the public. Inside this walled garden is a fifth main hall, the Abbot's Quarters (Fang Zhang Shi), which is for the private use of the resident monks and their master, the Fang Zhang. It was the only hall which the monks maintained control of during the Cultural Revolution. Normally it is kept off limits to the public and cannot be visited. However, the author was able to steal a glimpse and found that the hall was furnished with rows of large armchairs, and lacked any large statues. Possibly it is a modern day form of the Meditation Hall (Chan Tang). At the far left end of the hall is a small office decorated with framed color photos of the temple's Buddhist leaders posing with Communist Party leaders such as Jiang Zemin.\n\nBehind the Abbot's Quarters is the sixth and final courtyard, and the sixth hall on the central axis, the newly built two-story Scripture Hall (Cang Jing Lou). This modern building holds most of the temple's few genuine relics, including a library of 7,000 Qing Dynasty volumes; a Ming Dynasty gold seal given to the temple in 1598 by the emperor Wanli (1573-1620); a Ming Dynasty gold-plated bronze Buddha statue; Tang Dynasty scriptures; and a copy of the Heart Sutra dating from the year 1098, the fifth year of the Zhe Zong reign (1085-1100) of Emperor Zhao Xu of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1126). Exactly how these relics survived the destruction of the Taiping Rebellion, the lengthy military occupation of the Min Guo era, and the Cultural Revolution is unclear. Possibly they were donated to the temple sometime later. Unfortunately the public is not welcomed to visit this sixth hall, and the relics are kept hidden from view, although photographs of them appear in a recent pamphlet sold at the temple's bookstore.\n\nHidden in a seldom visited corner of the temple grounds on the east side of the Fang Zhang Shi's walled garden is a smaller garden", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216318, "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-2003", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "26\n\nwhich is open to the public, the Mu Ta Yuan, so named for the Tao Ming Chan Si Mu Ta, a broken stone tomb pagoda dating from the year 1667 in the reign of Emperor Kang Xi which stands in the centre. The Mu Ta is a hexagonal stone pillar on a lotus flower with a round stone ball balanced on top decorated with dragon images wrapped around it. Two faint inscriptions can be seen on either side of the pillar. Lying on the ground beside the Mu Ta is a broken piece of an ancient inscribed tablet. This is one of the original four boundary stones of Longhua's predecessor Kongxiang Temple dating from the year 1262 in the late Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Near the Mu Ta are three stone statues of a mythical animal, the Si Ge Lin Shou. These broken stone remains may be the oldest relics on the site, but their age, origin, and significance seem a mystery. In one corner of this courtyard is a corridor connecting with the Longhua Hotel next door. At the rear of the courtyard is the monk's Dining Hall (Zhai Tang), not to be confused with the separate Vegetarian Restaurant (Su Cai Guan) intended for public visitors located on the right side of the Da Xiong Bao Dian beneath the sign of the large wooden fish (pang) hanging from the rafters.\n\nTwo long barracks-like halls run along almost the full length of the western side of the temple compound and are divided up into many small Buddhist chapels. The major ones include the Arhat Hall (Luo Han Dian), and the Goddess of Mercy Hall (Guan Yin Dian). The Luo Han Dian is a new addition to the temple, added sometime during 2002. It features small golden statues of 500 arhats or Buddhist saints. This chapel has become quite popular with worshippers, but one woman who had just finished praying mistakenly told the author there were 800 arhats, testimony to the newness of this innovation. The Guanyin Dian is on the left side of the fourth courtyard and features an impressive golden statue of Guanyin, who is depicted as facing in all four directions, and has 1,000 arms. Many of her hundreds of hands hold objects of special significance.\n\nIn between the Luo Han Dian and Guanyin Dian is yet another hall, seemingly nameless, which although devoid of architectural splendor does have three splendid gilded Buddha statues. These three include Sakyamuni Buddha (Shi Jia Mou Ni Pusa) in the centre, Manjusri (Wen Shu) on your left, and Guanyin on your right. The interior walls of this hall are literally covered with memorial slips of paper and photographs meant to commemorate lost loved ones. It is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216427, "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-2003", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "136 \n\nwhich they searched the holds for contraband and pulled the pigtails of the Chinese crew to see if they came off, and thus discover a Japanese on board in disguise.\n\n5 \n\nThere were few descriptions of the experiences of Chinese townsmen or peasants during the battles between Japanese and Russians, and the passage through their land by the armies of the two contenders. Several short paragraphs in the contemporary illustrated volumes simply mention in passing how in, for example, the old walled town of Port Arthur, the Russian residents started to flee north at an early stage and those who had hung on had finally to be evacuated on crowded trains, leaving behind their property and livelihoods. Also, there were several passing comments that after each battle there were Chinese loitering, waiting to loot.\n\nAs the winter set in Russian troops tore down many Chinese villages to provide material for quarters for their Army, and cut down trees for firewood, commandeered pigs, cattle, chickens and grain. Chinese refugees fled from Mukden ahead of the Japanese to avoid being caught up in the fighting, and nearby the Russians looted Chinese houses for food, clothing and women.\n\nIn contrast - as the Russian reinforcements arrived in Manchuria across the Trans-Siberian Railway so the requirement for accommodation and stores fell upon the Chinese population. \"The Chinese village of Mudzetun, a short distance to the south-east of Mukden, was utilised as a Cossack camp. The Chinese inhabitants had disappeared in a body, and their old quarters had been swept and garnished; the little courtyards had been cleansed of filth in which pigs and children had played together; several Russian baths had been constructed and strict sanitary regulations enforced. Sometimes some miserable-looking Chinese might be seen collecting from the banks of the frozen stream the discarded entrails of the cattle that had been killed for food, accompanied by outcast dogs that had been ousted from the village by its new masters.\"\n\nManchurian native bandits\n\nSparsely populated, and wild and poverty-stricken, Manchuria was a natural breeding ground for bandits, either as individuals or gangs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216435, "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-2003", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "144\n\nA contemporary western report described how Japanese discipline handled the billeting of Japanese soldiers in Andong. \"They were billeted in every house while the Chinese inhabitants went about their daily business undisturbed. At first they concealed their goods until they found that their property was secure, then producing it to sell to their visitors at exorbitant rates. Meanwhile, sanitary precautions were not neglected. Japanese officers visited every house in which their soldiers were billeted, and coolies were sent in to give them an unexpected spring clean for their Chinese owners, sweeping out accumulated dirt from passages and courtyards, and sprinkling disinfectants.'\n\nAnother western correspondent attached to the Japanese described one of the Russian towns near Port Arthur as 'suggestive of a French village. The railway station was solidly and picturesquely built of brick and illuminated by oil-lamps. The streets were broad, though in the autumn became rivers of mud. The houses, for the most part, were built of brick, as were the extensive barracks. After the battle, the barracks and many of the houses were adapted as storehouses by the Japanese. The native Chinese village, half a mile from the station, had been forsaken by its inhabitants who had a strong commercial instinct and had adopted temporary habitations of matting in the immediate vicinity of the Japanese army, where they had instituted a kind of bazaar.'\n\nBy 25th July, the Japanese had fought and reached Newchwang. The Russians had pulled out and left the burning Russian town to the victors. However, there was no rapturous welcome for the Japanese according to a report by a western correspondent describing their arrival:\n\nFour Japanese scouts rode into the square. They were mounted on sorry, tired horses, all mud-splattered, and rough. The men wore uniforms stained and torn by campaigning. The people regarded them with interest but without any display of emotion. They were not welcomed, nor was their intrusion resented. Then arrived four more, and later another four, with a non-commissioned officer. To him came the chiefs of the Chinese guilds with greetings. The foreign residents held aloof for the expected army, the officers, and the generals. A short while before, British ladies had provided free teas and free refreshments for the Russian troops arriving from outlying camps, and for recruits doing their drill-ground exercises. No one had anything to offer these tired, battle-worn men; they tendered not so much as a light for a cigarette.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216442, "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-2003", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "151\n\nas accommodation, as local or major headquarters, staff or Other Rank accommodation and as storage space. Although it was the usual practice for both Russians and Japanese to use Chinese temples as field-dressing stations and even as hospitals, only two or three references to the practice have been found in contemporary books. There are at least two published photographs of wounded Japanese soldiers lying on stretchers in rows on the floors or in the temple courtyard, with one in particular showing a seriously wounded soldier lying at the feet of two large carved and stuccoed Chinese deities, two of four standard images of Guardians and Assistants to the major deity. The role of the fierce Guardians was to protect the temple from malignant forces and must have been either a comfort to the casualty or a frightening figure from the other world.\n\nThe difference between Russian and Japanese use of Chinese temples was that the former, when they departed, seldom left anything behind worth carrying away. The Japanese respected Chinese religious statuary, because they too were often Buddhists, but also because, although the deities on altars were different, they were sufficiently similar for Japanese to respect them.\n\nPost-war\n\nWe have described a few of the aspects of Chinese problems during the war and the effect the warring armies had on the Chinese officials and commonality on whose territory the war was being fought. The Chinese, who gradually tended to side with the Japanese in the hope of recovering Manchuria, adroitly avoided any involvement in the fighting.\n\nPost-war, Japan assumed the rights in Manchuria that Russia had previously held, with a garrison of some 10,000 men to protect its interests, primarily in southern Manchuria where it was known as the Guandong Army (Kuantung), though its controls extended in practice to the whole of the territory, with the Chinese ostensibly maintaining civil authority.\n\nThe change in Chinese official and student circles within the decade following the Sino-Japanese War, i.e. from 1884-1904, was from anti-Japanese and pro-Russian, to pro-Japanese and anti-Russian after the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese victory clearly signalled to the Chinese in Peking that the Japanese were the model to study and possibly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]