[
    {
        "id": 209599,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 256,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "CARL T. SMITH\n\nCoward was followed, in 1923, with a science-fiction drama, \"R.U.R.\" or \"Rossum's Universal Robots\". It was written by Karel Capek, a Czechoslovakian. The reviewer linked some political events with the theme of the play: \"Saturday night brought us definite news of the elections at Home indicating how the workers of the country, dissatisfied with their lot, turned upon the Government and rose in support of the red flag of Labour. It was a coincidence that on the same night the Hong Kong A.D.C. introduced to the Colony a race of soulless, voteless men-machines, made by man in his own image to do the work of the world while the rest of us recline leisurely in our armchairs; told us they developed discontent and turned and rent their human tyrants\".\n\nWalter Sinclair left Hong Kong in 1925. He continued his directing career in Toronto, Canada and the United States.\n\nAfter his departure, the A.D.C. largely reverted to comedy. It would be unfair, however, to suggest that all their productions fell into the category of the title of a 1925 piece of the A.D.C., \"A Little Bit of Fluff\". In the years immediately preceding the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, plays were presented by such respectable authors as Emlyn Williams, Terrance Rattigan and Somerset Maugham.\n\nTHE LOCAL SCENE\n\nOpportunities were seized to inject local allusions in productions. As an example we give excerpts from the burlesque \"Fra Diavolo\" given by the Rifle Brigade. The author J. H. Thresher used the original by Byron only as a skeleton on which to lay topical references. His efforts were described as having a decided Gilbertian vein.\n\nAs befitting a production of the garrison some of the local allusions were military, as for instance the following references to the barracks at Kowloon. During an altercation between Lord and Lady Allcash, the Lord says to the Lady:\n\nMadam, drive me not,\n\nFor if you do, I'll show you soon what's what; I'll make things fly, just like the late typhoon",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212214,
        "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": 156,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "133\n\n1935, and probably exceeds 30,000 today\n\nthe Japanese secured a\n\nsecond seat in 1927 and since that date, with one or two exceptions, the proportion of Foreign Councillors has been five Britons, two Americans, and two Japanese,''\n\nIt was from amongst the managers of the large firms that the foreign Municipal Councillors were selected, by a process of back-stage negotiation. There was, it is true, a form of straw vote through which nominations could be contested, but as the large firms could swing the votes that process was not democratic in operation. In point of fact the suggestion that the Council was a democratic body had long been discarded. The Council represented the interests of the large firms and, while it had to explain its actions to the foreign land-renters of the Settlement, it preferred, as such committees will, to avoid having to make explanations, by doing its work away from the limelight. That was, indeed, a necessary precaution, in so far as the delicate political negotiations in which it was frequently involved with the Chinese, and Japanese, authorities were concerned.\n\nThe Council was an international body, a diminutive League of Nations, incomparably more effective, though on a small scale, than that larger body at Geneva. The comparison lends it international significance and underlines the importance that men, who are appointed to such positions of responsibility, should be carefully selected.\n\nOn the expiration of my home leave I was appointed to Shanghai, where I arrived in July 1939. The betrayal of Czechoslovakia that Spring had increased international tension, and a series of incidents was bringing it home to the optimists, who had so cheerfully accepted the Japanese influx, that their early anticipations were so much smoke. Apart from a number of local outrages, including the bayonetting of a Briton, named Tinkler, inside the grounds of his own mill, there was the case of the British Military Attaché, who had been arrested in May in Kalgan, and was still held incommunicado, the mob attacks on the British consulate at Tsingtao, the heavy bombing of British property and shipping at Ichang, and the degrading treatment to which British nationals were being exposed at the barriers, erected by the Japanese to the exits of the British Concession in Tientsin.\n\nI was sitting on the verandah of the Country Club one day in September, after a game of tennis, when the boy called me to the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212868,
        "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": 177,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "162\n\nIt was clear when I gave the Ezekiel Abraham Memorial Lecture in 1987 that strong feelings still remained,\n\nKranzler, 745.\n\n7 The Hankow Daily News July 13, 1917,\n\n1.\n\nStatistics differ. Even the Encyclopaedia Judaica gives different numbers on different pages. Without scrutinizing temple rolls, it is difficult to ascertain the number of Jews in Shanghai at a given time, but it can be estimated to be less than 2,000 from 1920 through the early 1930s.\n\nDavid Kranzler gave the following figures: On 25 March, 1934, there were 1,671 Jewish adults and children in Shanghai (881 male and 790 female), including Sephardic Jews as well as the Ashkenazi community. A little more than ten years later, 14,245 persons (8,283 male, 5,962 female) were classified as Jewish refugees in Shanghai in November 1944. Of these, 8,114 had come from Germany, 1,248 from Poland, 3,942 from Austria, and 236 from Czechoslovakia. Between 1939 and 1946, there had been 418 births, 366 marriages, 104 divorces, and 1,726 deaths among the Jewish population in Shanghai.\n\n40 Hans and Lala Diestel, respectably bourgeois before the Japanese occupation, ground assorted grains in their living-room by hand, using a Chinese millstone, selling the meal to the Red Cross for cash. Later on, they operated a factory making shoes, employing Jewish refugees. 'There was never any problem with raw materials,” related the indefatigable Mr Diestel, who was born in Tsingtao, 'because the Japanese thought that I was German.' Betty Peh-t'i Wei, Shanghai, Crucible of Modern China, Hong Kong, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, 252.\n\n\" Conversation with Ezekiel Abraham in Hong Kong. Also, see Joseph and Lynn Silverstein, 'David Marshall and Jewish Emigration from China', China Quarterly, (London 1979).\n\n12 The New York Times, 27 February, 1983.\n\n13\n\nOld Chronicle of Hong Kong November 1870.\n\n14 Hong Kong Telegram 4 May, 1904. Shanghai dispatch.\n\n15\n\nWei, 252.\n\n16 The China Mail, 24 September, 1918,\n\n17\n\nI am sorry that I have lost the date of this issue of the Hong Kong newspaper.\n\n10 His will was probated in Hong Kong in 1886.\n\n19 Left Sassoon and Company 21 January, 1891\n\n20\n\nMerchant. His will, witnessed by Hardoon, was probated in 1893.\n\n21 The obituary in the South China Morning Post. 8 August, 1979, identified Mrs Ezra as Mozelle Robinson Ezra of Shanghai. Edward Ezra and Mozelle Sopher were married in 1907\n\n22 People's Daily (Beijing), 15 October, 1991, 2.\n\n21\n\nChinese sources insist that he worked as a door keeper. At least he had control over accessibility to the boss\n\n24\n\nComplaints included members riding to services on the Sabbath and High Holy Days rather than travelling on foot",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214549,
        "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": 407,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "376\n\nRicci (1552-1610) the Italian Jesuit, astronomer and mathematician who left Portugal in 1578 and reached China in 1583. After time spent in Guangdong Province (mostly at Zhaoging (Shiuhing) on the West River), Nanchang and Nanjing, he finally reached Beijing in 1601. His descriptions of life at the Imperial Court created an enthusiasm in Europe for all things Chinese and he contributed to cultural exchange between China and the West. Matteo Ricci's legacy was to be a recurring feature of our weekend.\n\nThe second grave is of Adam Schall von Bell (1591-1666) from Cologne, who arrived in Beijing in 1630. He became a translator of Western books on astronomy at the Ming court of Hsu Kuang-ch'i and later produced a calendar based on Western mathematical calculations. Under the first Qing emperor, Shih-tsu, he was granted permission to erect the Southern Church, which we were to visit on Easter Sunday. The third grave is of the Belgian, Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-88) who arrived in 1659. In the second section, graves include those of priests from Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia and Belgium, and also 14 Chinese priests. In this section the most notable is that of the Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), famed for his painting of horses. Some of the buildings bordering the Cemetery have been destroyed during the passage of history but a former French convent, built in 1926, is still standing and the Matteo Ricci Society plans to turn it into a museum as part of their revival of Matteo Ricci studies.\n\nAt our hotel, the Palace, we found that Nina Ricci now had a shop there, indicating that although some Beijing intellectuals had a revived interest in Matteo, the new-rich of the capital preferred the high-fashion consumerism of Nina.\n\nOn the Saturday we visited the National Library of China at 39 Baishigiao Road, near Beijing Zoo and Purple Bamboo Park, in West Beijing where we were received by Madam Sin Liping, Deputy Director of Foreign Affairs and Mr Huang Runhua, Head Librarian of the Rare Book Section, together with members of his staff; and given a privileged viewing of a selection of rare foreign books. These included a Catechism dated 1588 in Latin and Chinese, with the Chinese also transliterated into Roman script. This may have been the work of Matteo Ricci. Another equally fascinating book had been written in Spanish,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]