[
    {
        "id": 205147,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1966",
        "page_number": 103,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "98\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\n43 Reichelt quotes a warning by the late Ming monk, Hsi-ming, against \"being deceived into joining the Catholic church or some other outside sect,” and states that it was often reprinted (Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism, Shanghai, 1927, pp. 157-158).\n\n44 It was in 1920 that Reichelt first proposed an \"institute for special work among the Buddhists.\" He wanted to make contact with monks whose hearts were filled with bitterness towards Christianity because some Christians were \"so fatally lacking in a sympathetic and gentle attitude towards others.\" It was to be \"a half-way house\" with many of the features of a Buddhist monastery, including a wandering monks' hall, a meditation hall, a bell tower, a crematorium, and a hall for the aged. See K. L. Reichelt, \"Special Work among Chinese Buddhists\" Chinese Recorder 51.7 (July 1920), 491-497. When it finally went into operation, under the name of the \"Christian Mission to the Buddhists,\" in the autumn of 1922, it had only a \"very small, semi-foreign house.\" After a year and a half, it moved to somewhat larger quarters which included a dining room, where vegetarian meals were served, and the all-important \"pilgrims hall\" where monks were allowed to put up for three days (as they would be at a Buddhist temple) and stay longer if they were interested in serious study. The layout was \"just as in monasteries with two long platforms where they can spread their bedding, and, above them, shelves where they can place their things. Between the two platforms, there is an altar with an incense burner and two candlesticks and above all an impressive crucifix.\" Even more significant was the arrangement of the chapel, to which they were summoned for worship twice a day (as they would be in a monastery) by \"a Chinese bell with deep tones.\" The altar was of red lacquer \"in a true Chinese style,\" adorned with gilt designs that included the following: \"the lotus lily symbolizing the purity, the fire, and the water of the cleansing spirit” (but also, of course, symbolizing the Buddha Amitabha and his Pure Land), \"the swastika of peace and cosmic union\" (but also one of the Buddha's sacred marks and a general symbol for Buddhism), and the cross over a lotus, which was the Mission's emblem.\n\nJust as in a Chinese temple, plaques with parallel inscriptions were hung on the walls. One bore a quotation from the Gospel according to St. John: \"The true light that enlightens every man has come into the world.\" The other legend was more Buddhist in flavour than Christian: \"[Join in] the great vow compassionately to help people across to the other shore\" (ta-yüan tz'u-hang).\n\nThese efforts to make Buddhist monks feel at home attracted a large number of them as visitors (about a thousand annually) but in the first four and a half years of operation, only seventeen male Chinese were converted and baptized. See Notto Normann Thelle \"The Christian Mission to the Buddhists,\" Chinese Recorder (September 1927), 571-575. A photograph of four of the Buddhist and Taoist novices, whom Thelle says were enrolled in the boys' school opened by the Mission, appears in the Chinese Recorder 54.11 (November 1923), facing p. 671. When the permanent headquarters of the Mission were constructed at Tao-fung Shan in the New Territories of Hong Kong during the 1930s, the approximation of a Buddhist monastery became almost as close as Dr. Reichelt had originally envisaged it. Some missionaries were afraid that he was being too broad-minded in his use of Buddhist motifs and even that he might be fostering a kind of Buddho-Christian syncretism. He and his colleagues maintained, however, that their only purpose was to \"lead these people into a living faith in Jesus Christ.\" (Thelle, p. 571).\n\n45 Maha Bodhi, 41.3.4 (March-April 1933), 133,\n\n46 Most of the information on Chao-k'ung up to this point is taken from David Lampe and Laszlo Szenasi, The Self-made Villain, London, 1961.\n\n47 Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, London, 1951, p. 47.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211796,
        "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": 211,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "186\n\nwho evidently had no 'tender cares' to occupy them, manfully maintained their seats in front, and remained so spellbound as to forget entirely the courtesies of gallantry and good breeding. We are of opinion that a perusal of Lord Chesterfield's 'Hints' might be a useful exercise for such as have no innate impulses to enable them to understand and practice what is conveyed in the phrase 'Place aux Dames' when those fair patronesses choose to honour public entertainments with their presence\".\n\n129 Once front seats were shunned by ladies, but that was not the case in mid-century Shanghai. In the Regulations to be Observed on the Evenings of Performances at the Shanghae Theatre printed in the North China Herald of February 14, 1857, it was even stipulated that, \"after the front row had been set apart for the exclusive accommodation of H.B.M. Consul and the French and American Consuls, the seats numbered 2 to 6 will be reserved for ladies, and the gentlemen who escort them.\"\n\nVII. The Plays\n\nFrom the references above, and even more from the Calendar of Performances, it will be clear that the dramatic fare in Shanghai consisted for the greater part, nay for nearly one hundred percent, of pieces that could easily amuse the people. That is to say: farces, comediettas, burlesques, melodramas, burlettas, musical comedies or whatever name may be invented for the genre. There is no space here, nor is it within the scope of this Survey, to give an analysis of these plays, so I shall keep myself to some general remarks.\n\nMost pieces that were performed dated from the 19th century, but there were some from the previous one, like Henry Carey's The Dragon of Wantley (1737), a short three-act opera with music by John Frederick Lampe which burlesqued the Handel style works which were then in vogue (but hardly a century later); and James Townley's (or was it David Garrick's?) High Life below Stairs which one rather antiquarian critic thought \"worth whole bales of farces of the 'Box and Cox' pattern\". Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) was also on the programme several times (although not on that of the local amateurs) but it is remarkable (and, considering the travesties that were common, maybe just as well) that a classic comedy like Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer was not tackled.\n\n130\n\nOf contemporary authors the most prolific was John Maddison Morton and it should cause no surprise that his plays took top of the bill: no",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
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]