[
    {
        "id": 205522,
        "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": 64,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "NOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES\n\n59\n\nlater, were badly damaged by insects, so much so that one copy of the catalogue of this collection, printed in 1873, is annotated to indicate which titles had to be discarded for this reason.\n\nWe now move on fifteen years, to 1867, when the Victoria Library had fallen on evil days. No doubt a further search would reveal more of its history in the years between, but this must wait for a future article. On 21st January an editorial in the Evening Mail opens \"It seems probable that the decline and fall of the Victoria Library will afford material for the local historian during this year of grace 1867.\" The reason was apparently that the membership had fallen to 60, whereas to provide the necessary income from subscriptions 80 to 100 members were required (yet in the satisfactory report for 1851-52 already noted the membership had risen to only 66). The Evening Mail goes on to say \"There is no advantage to be derived from membership at all equivalent to the high rate of subscription.\" This rate was $2.00 a month. Although the Evening Mail praises the quality of the magazines received, it notes that there are not enough of them, and only a few of the subscribers make much use of them. Similarly so many local residents themselves subscribe to overseas newspapers that there is little demand for those taken by the Library. Of the book stock the main criticism is that it consists almost entirely of standard authors — Scott, Dickens, Thackeray and Cooper are mentioned and neglects current literature. Most people again have their own copies of the former, but would be glad to subscribe if they might be kept up to date with modern writers. The Evening Mail editorial ends with a suggested solution, to convert the library into a book club, the books purchased to be distributed amongst the subscribers instead of being retained as the property of the institution.\n\nThis solution was not adopted, and by the end of the year, after a further decline in membership, it appeared that the gloomy prognostications in the Evening Mail editorial might be fulfilled. Before coming to that situation, however, it will be interesting to examine a list of the 34 newspapers and periodicals which the Victoria Library received regularly at this time. The list appeared in the China Mail (the new name of the Evening Mail) for February 15th, 1867, and is rather inaccurately divided into “Newspapers\" amongst which are included Punch and the Saturday Review",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206028,
        "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": 108,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "A NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES\n\n103\n\nCantonese is more interested in the method, carefully distinguishing to carry something light in the hand (NHENG14), something heavy in both hands (TOK'), something heavier on both ends of a pole (DHAAMM1), something still heavier slung at the middle of a pole (TROY17); and more again for carrying slung round the neck, on the head, along the ground, on an animal, a vehicle, boat, ship or aircraft. The direction (up, down, in when you're in, in when you're out, out when you're out, out when you're in, away, close up, back, forwards, etc.) for which in English we use different words and in Latin & Greek is taken care of by prefixes, in Cantonese as in most kinds of Chinese is done by adverbs or particles, with which I'll deal later.\n\nBut just as there is a word for elder brother and a word for younger brother, but no word for 'brother' (so that if you are obliged to say 'brother' without specifying older or younger you have to get round it), so it is much easier to learn all the words for different methods of fetching and carrying than to go to a lot of trouble to find an expression that will do for all, and then find you're not understood. I have put 19 of these fetch and carry words into four lines of Cantonese doggerel: it doesn't exhaust the subject but you may find it useful:\n\nNHENG FHENQ TOK BOK CEAR DHAAMM TROY, FRUNG SUNG JRIH GHAAW PAAI WRORNG LROY, ZOI XEOI CHEAH LRAY TROH MRAAR BUUI, LHAAY ZHONQ DRAI DAAI ZURNG FHANN XHOY13,\n\nNow perhaps you're beginning to see what I'm getting at. When we communicate with one another in speech, we don't dot all the i's and cross all the t's; we leave a dickens of a lot out. What we put in, and what we leave out, is dictated partly, of course, by what we think important at the moment; but also partly by the custom of the language in selecting what is essential and leaving out what is not. This we learn not from the grammar books but from the accepted models given to us by our early reading and by the way those around us speak when we are children,\n\n15\n\n16\n\n17\n\n#\n\n18 檸拹托賻扯擔抬,奉送移交派往來,載去車嚟駐馬背,𨋢裝帶總分開。\n\n14 #",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209503,
        "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": 160,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "138\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nstatus of China in the world polity and of Chinese in general as citizens of the world).\n\n54\n\nNo one believes today that Chinese motivation needs a separate system of explanation, that the Chinese mind has its own eccentric circuitry. Freud, that Columbus of the Mind, revealed that in the unconscious · the deep, dark, oceanic under-world of the individual human beings are very much alike in their mechanisms. This great step forward in social perception has helped to bridge the gap between the races (still opposed of course by politics) and has made murder less incomprehensible, less inexplicable when committed by foreigners; and judges, counsel and juries (perhaps) less perplexed by the act.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 George Orwell, Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1965) 9.\n\n* 'Our great period in murder', Orwell writes, our Elizabethan period, so to speak, seems to have been roughly 1850-1925. Orwell was writing in 1946, but with hindsight it is plausible to suggest the 'great period' could be extended to the eve of World War I.\n\n* See: Jean Chesneaux, The Chinese Labour Movement 1919-1927 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1968) 122.\n\n• See, in particular, Harold Z. Schriffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970). Also Nym Wales, The Chinese Labor Movement (New York: John Day, 1945), which contains the biographies of some revolutionary seamen.\n\n• Edward Marjoribanks, Famous Trials of Marshall Hall (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1950) 384. At his trial Lock was described as a 'Chinese shipping agent'.\n\n• Sir Henry Dickens in The Recollections of Sir Henry Dickens, K.C. (London: Heinemann, 1934) 244-245, writes: He was a good advocate but it cannot be truly said that he was a great one. He had not the gift of far-seeing discretion which is required in a great advocate. He was much too ready to talk at length when addressing a jury, without having previously weighed the possible consequences of what he said'. An old lag once called from the dock to Sir Henry (1849-1933). 'You ain't a patch on your father!', which greatly amused him.\n\nT\n\nSee Marjoribanks, op cit. Doris Lock did not die from her wounds until January 28, 1926. See The Times of January 29, 1926.\n\n* There is a full discussion of the origin of the M'Naghten Rules in Nigel Walker, Crime and Insanity in England, vol 1 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968).\n\n* Marjoribanks, op cit, 383. See also The Times February 4 and 8, 1926.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211810,
        "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": 225,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "200\n\nrash decision to marry the first that came\". Another actor who was to become a local Roscius. Mr. Phunago BRUSHWOOD, \"gave the somewhat unusual stage character of a double-faced farmer (Wurzel) all the selfish cunning and irritable tone which it needed\". Other parts were taken by Miss Polly DEXTER, Mr. HEAVISWELL, Mr. Jehoshaphat SNAKES and Mr. PLEADWELL (as the lawyer!).\n\nIn Box and Cox Messrs PROTEUS, BRUSHWOOD and Mrs. CLAY \"kept the audience in a roar\" (NCH 22.2.1857).\n\n3.3.1857 (Tue)\n\nDramatic readings from Charles Dickens by Mr. Benjamin SEARE. Th: C\n\n―\n\nR: In the Herald of February 28 it was announced that \"we are apprized by 'Circular' that an entertainment of a novel character in Shanghai, but one which has greatly attracted the fashionable and literary world elsewhere, will be given by Mr. Scare in the Hall of the Shanghai Theatre on Tuesday Evening next the 3rd prox. The subject - The Early Writings of Charles Dickens is a theme affording scope for great versatility of talent. (...) The Community are much indebted to Mr. Scare for his gratuitous offer of an evening's intellectual amusement to diversify and enliven the monotony of Shanghai life. The Circular notifies that the divertissement will commence at half past 8 & precisely, that no personal invitations will be issued and that a syllabus of the Lecture will be placed in each seat for the use and acceptance of its occupant”. Then, in the issue of March 7, a report was published: \"A large and select circle of residents had met in the New Theatre\". It became a kind of one man show by Mr. Seare, as the \"requirements of versatility and mimic power were most successfully supplied. (...) The lecturer was perfectly at home in each and all of the various characters as they turned up, passed from one to another with an ease that was admirable and portrayed each with a force of comic power which elicited much applause, and, to select the most appropriate compliment we can bestow, did justice to the author. All in all the audience was \"kept in a roar”. Mr. Seare concluded with some general remarks on the necessity of some recreation of this kind in a community so distant from home and so isolated and comprising at the same time so much intelligence and ability\" (NCH 7.3.1857). One wonders how Mr. Seare was able to give these lectures free of charge; had he been a touring artist that would of course have been impossible. But as it turns out he was a mercantile assistant in the employment of Gilman & Co (this according to the Shanghai Almanac for 1858). In May 1865 he gave another performance (see 27.5.1865). No further details are available about the programme, but no doubt the characters from The Pickwick Papers figured largely in it. Who, after all, can resist Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Jingle and Sam Weller? Dickens himself began readings from his own works one year later, in April 1858, in Britain and the United States.\n\n26.3.1857 (Thur)\n\nJ.B. BUCKSTONE: \"A Kiss in the Dark\" (1840)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nM.B.W. JERROLD: \"Cool as a Cucumber\" (1851)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nH. DANVERS: \"A Conjugal Lesson\" (1856)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nTh: N.N. (CH\n\nR: In a witty mind \"The Man on the Bund\" informed us that \"by way of introduction there was a kiss — and in the dark too! — perhaps the sweetest kiss of all, administered with enviable gusto by Mr. SNAKES as Fathom. Mrs. Pettibone submitted to it with less indignation than the fact of her being so much respected led us to suppose. But then, it was to punish the odiously jealous Mr. Pettibone who would insist on making\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213282,
        "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": 104,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "84\n\nWith approximately one-third of a person's life spent in bed, the fung shui practitioner insists the most important room in a dwelling is the master bedroom. This is because if relations between husband and wife are cordial, harmony in the home will follow naturally. One fung shui practitioner maintains he saved a couple from divorce just by improving the ambiance of their bedroom. It is better if people sleep on a north-south axis. Some Westerners also believe, because of magnetic fields, one's body should lie in this direction. Charles Dickens the novelist, so it is said, preferred to sleep this way.\n\nBut the most common barrier to a healthy flow of chi, the cosmic breath of life and spiritual energy necessary for growth and vitality, is the proper positioning of walls and beams.\n\n'Just as Westerners don't like walking under a ladder, so we believe it's not good to sleep under a beam,' the author's fung shui consultant insisted.\n\n'Everything releases pressure of some sort, especially a heavy mass,' he continued, as he held his pointed forefinger three inches away from a friend's forehead asking him to close his eyes.\n\n'Can you feel the force?' the fung shui master asked 'Happenings' are absorbed into structures. Then afterwards, when atmospherics and other conditions are favourable, maybe years later, rays are given off which affect our subconscious depths. Such vibrations can result in headaches, mental disorders and loss of creative energy. In the case of the beam above the bed in the case study the answer was to conceal it with a 'false ceiling', which, of course, also improves the appearance of the room.\n\nThese examples always lead the author to think of two decorators who were instructed to distemper the ceiling above an open stairwell inside a six-storey building. Neither of the men had a head for heights. From the two planks on which they had to stand they could look straight down the full drop of the building. However, when a large dustsheet was draped across the handrails of the staircase, obscuring the stairwell, so the two workers could not see beyond a few feet below them, they cheerfully stood on the platform and painted the ceiling. Although they knew the dustsheet would not save them if they fell, like the beam in the bedroom, the 60-foot drop was concealed from view. It was all psychological.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]