[
    {
        "id": 204374,
        "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": 6,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "EDITORIAL\n\nThe first volume of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society published in 1961 contained a short account of the history of the original Hong Kong Branch of the R.A.S. which existed from 1847 until 1859. During this early period the original Society published six volumes of its Transactions. It may be of interest to examine the contents of these volumes, and to compare them with what has already been achieved in the two volumes of the present Society's Journal published so far.\n\nThe first volume published by the original branch was entitled Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1847. It was printed at the office of the China Mail at Hong Kong in 1848, and contained 14 pages of preliminary material and 78 pages of text. The last volume to be printed bore the title Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Part VI, 1859, and was printed at the office of the China Mail in the same year. It contained 8 pages of introduction and 164 pages of text. Surveying the articles printed in these six volumes one's main impression is that the subject matter was predominantly connected with China, and that the contributors were mainly missionaries or members of the British Consular service. For instance one of the leading contributors was Dr. John Bowring, who was Governor of Hong Kong from 1854 until 1859. Among others were T. T. Meadows, who was interpreter to the British Consulate at Canton at this time and wrote perceptively about China; the Rev. Carl Gutzlaff, principal Chinese Secretary to the Hong Kong Government; W. H. Medhurst, Jr.; Harry Parkes; Dr. D. J. Macgowan; the Rev. Joseph Edkins; the Rev. Samuel Beal and Alexander Wylie, printer to the London Missionary Society at Shanghai. To some extent this reflects the difficulties facing the Society at this period. It was forced to rely for its lectures and articles on a small number of scholarly people resident in Hong Kong and the five original Treaty Ports. The North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society which\n\n1 Bowring was a man of scholarly interests and had received an honorary doctorate from Gröningen University for services to European literature. He was knighted in 1854.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204375,
        "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": 7,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "2\n\nflourished between 1858 and 1948 was more fortunate because it was able to draw on the services of a far wider group of people who came to work in China in the years after travel and residence there was no longer restricted. The present Society is luckier still because, thanks to air travel, we have been able to draw on an extremely wide range of contributors in the first two volumes of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\nWhen examining the table of contents of the six volumes of Transactions published in Hong Kong between 1847 and 1859, one sees the titles of several articles which it would be most interesting to read if copies of these volumes were available in Hong Kong. For example, in Volume III Harry Parkes, at that time British Consul in Canton, and later British Minister at Peking, described proceedings in a criminal Court at Canton, while Dr. Bowring contributed an article “On the Character and Writings of Commissioner Lin Tsih-seu”, which at that time (1851) was still very recent history. In Volume VI (1859) Dr. D. J. Macgowan wrote on Chinese opium while the Rev. Krone contributed “A notice of the Sanon district *”. This is of particular interest since the Sanon district included all of what later became the New Territories. The full list of contents of each of these volumes can be found in Bibliotheca Sinica by Henri Cordier, Volume IV, columns 2401-2.\n\n44\n\nBy way of contrast it is interesting to consider the contents of the first two volumes of the Journal of the revived Hong Kong Branch of the R.A.S. published in 1961 and 1962. Perhaps the first point which strikes one is the wider range of subject matter covered by these two volumes. In Volume I, Mr. Hugh Richardson, the last head of the British mission at Lhasa wrote on Tibet as it was, and Professor Drake reviewed the whole field of Western contacts with Asia. In Volume II Mr. Evan Luard's newly published book Britain and China, which covers the story of recent Sino-British relations, is the subject of a review-article by Mrs. Colina Lupton. Another noteworthy point is the number of admirable contributions from Chinese scholars in these two volumes. The six volumes of Transactions published between\n\n* Although I have made extensive enquiries I have been unable to locate copies of the Transactions in Hong Kong. The City Hall Library ought to have a set. (Ed.)",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207267,
        "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": 35,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "A HONG KONG SPIRIT-MEDIUM TEMPLE\n\n27\n\n11 Jordan, op. cit., pp. 67-86.\n\n12 For a discussion of \"fairy bones\" see Potter, op. cit., pp. 225-226.\n\n13 For an English translation of the Monkey legend, see Wu, 1942.\n\n14 MacGowan, 1889.\n\n15 It is important that the medium performs this particular act of self-mutilation from time to time because the blood from his tongue is used to make \"powerful\" amulets known as ling chue ✯✯.\n\n16 Lewis, 1971.\n\n17 Feuchtwang, 1974.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nAhern, E. The Cult of The Dead in a Chinese Village, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1973.\n\nDoolittle, J. The Social Life of The Chinese, 2 vols., orig. Harper & Row, New York, 1865 (Reprint Ch'eng Wen, Taipei, 1966).\n\nElliott, A. J. Chinese Spirit-Medium Cults in Singapore, London School of Economics and Political Science Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 14, Athlone Press, London, 1955.\n\nFeuchtwang, S. \"City Temples in Taipei under Three Regimes\", in M. Elvin and G. W. Skinner eds., The Chinese City Between Two Worlds, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1974, pp. 264-302.\n\nJordan, D. Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1972.\n\nMacGowan, J. Christ or Confucius, Which?: The Story of The Amoy Mission, London Missionary Society, 1889, London (Reprint Ch'eng Wen, Taipei, 1971).\n\nPotter, J. \"Cantonese Shamanism\", in A. Wolf ed., Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1974, pp. 207-232.\n\nWu, Ch'eng-en. Monkey (Translated by Arthur Waley), Allen & Unwin, London, 1942.\n\nADDENDUM\n\nA run of annual mimeographed Chinese texts on spirit mediumship, covering the years 1933-1942 and produced in or for Hong Kong, was discovered by the Hon. Editor of this Journal in a second-hand bookshop recently and is now held by the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207280,
        "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": 48,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "40\n\nWELLINGTON K. K. CHAN\n\ncommunity in the major commercial centres helped the regional governments to become more independent of, and ultimately even more powerful than, the central government. In this way, merchant organisations helped the growth of political regionalism even as they advanced the cause of social and economic integration.\n\nWe began this study of Chinese merchant organisations on the premise that they reflected not only great resilience as institutions, but also the flexibility of their organisers in adopting changes consistent with changing values and changing times. To synchronise values and the environmental conditions, however, proved to be highly intractable. In late imperial China, as society made fast and momentous changes towards regionalism, warlordism and political illegitimacy, merchant organisations adjusted admirably, but somehow failed to keep pace with the rapidly changing environment. Our conclusion then is to suggest that indeed both men and institutions showed great resilience, but that in times of great social and political stress, there were limits as to what they could accomplish.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See, e.g. Thomas A. Metzger's \"The Organizational Capabilities of the Ch'ing State in the Field of Commerce: The Liang-huai Salt Monopoly, 1740-1840,\" in W. E. Willmott, ed., Economic Organization in Chinese Society (Stanford, 1972), pp. 9-45, showing how the organizational flexibility of the Liang-huai salt administration was matched by the manipulative skills and non-conformist behavior of its administrators; and John E. Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism: Germany in Shantung (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) for emphasizing comparable success by late Ch'ing foreign policy institutions and officials.\n\n2 Ch'üan Han-sheng, Chung-kuo hang-hui chih-tu shih (An institutional history of the Chinese guilds) (Shanghai, 1934), pp. 29-36.\n\n3 H. B. Morse, The Gilds of China (London, 1909), pp. 35-48; Ho Ping-ti, Chung-kuo hui-kuan shih-lun (A historical survey of Landsmannschaften in China) (Taipei, 1966). The German term \"Landsmannschaft\" used by Professor Ho for \"hui-kuan\" was first suggested by D. J. MacGowan in his \"Chinese Guilds or Chambers of Commerce and Trade Unions,\" Journal of North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 21 (1888-89).\n\n4 Chung-hsü Hsi-hsien hui-kuan lu (A repeat edition of the continuation to the records of the Hsi-hsien Landsmannschaft) (n.p., 1834), “hsü-lu hou-chi,” pp. 13a, 16b, 19a, 22b; \"hsin-chi,\" pp. 3b-5b, 12a.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    }
]