[ { "id": 208354, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "62\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nactivities Qingming is well correlated in time with the important phase of sowing in the annual agricultural cycle.\n\nThe Dongting basin in Hubei and Hunan is regarded as a single crop area. Only one gazetteer mentions a different arrangement; this is the 1872 edition of Baling xian zhi which states:\n\nthe first crop of paddy is sown at the second halfmoon. In the third moon it is transplanted. In the sixth moon it is reaped. The late crop of paddy is sown in the middle of the third moon. In the fourth moon it is transplanted. In the seventh moon it is reaped.7\n\nIn this case the two crops were not successive ones. Apparently the same seedbeds were used. The two rounds of seedlings were transplanted to two different sets of fields, or otherwise the peasants must have practiced a scheme of intercropping. There is a possibility that either arrangement was a response to a situation characterized by a lack of labour at peak seasons; to spread the sowing in time would ease the 'bottlenecks' in rice production, the intensive work periods at transplantation and harvest. In this Baling case the late crop seems to correspond to the main rice production cycle of the Dongting area. To the extent that double cropping existed in the middle Yangzi basin, it was a late introduction, probably not earlier than the Sung dynasty.8\n\nBefore the sowing, the seedbeds are carefully cleaned and fertilized; water is conducted to flood the beds and the grain grows in mud. The earlier shoots are protected from low night temperatures by the cover of water. In sunny weather the beds are drained to allow the grain to root and grow faster. Qingming falls into this first phase of the rice cycle. On the basis of this circumstance we may take it as a part of our hypothesis that there is a positive semantic relationship between Qingming and sowing.\n\nThe essay elaborates further some very general propositions on the Chinese calendrical system I offered some years ago.9 I suggested that one dominant principle in the structure regulating the annual events embedded a notion of social exchange. Visits and return visits are important acts of social ceremonialism all over China. This is especially so during the lunar New Year. Again, the New Year rites told about the visit of the dead ancestors to their living progeny. The ancestors made a similar visit during the Duanwu festival in the fifth moon. Their appearance on this occasion", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210466, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "54\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nwould engage a Taoist priest to come down to his junk and perform a ceremony known as Changing the Gods (woon shan). This, which involved spilling the blood of a domestic fowl, was believed to provide cleansing from pollution and open the way for good fortune.\n\nThe annual ritual cycle began with the New Year and proceeded almost immediately to the public festival for the 'birthday' of the local tutelary deity, Hung Shing Kung, on the 13th day of the 2nd lunar month. These two occasions were the ritual highlights of the year. Quickly in their wake came Ch'ing Ming, fixed by the Chinese solar calendar at a date corresponding with April 6th and falling therefore usually in the third lunar month. This was one of the two special occasions for the commemoration of a family's departed members. The third month saw also the festival to T'in Hau, the so-called Queen of Heaven, protectress of all seamen, celebrated biennially with Chinese opera at the neighbouring village of Lung Shuen Wan and annually in a large number of other places in the Colony.\n\nIn the fourth month there was a festival at the temple of T'am Kung in Shaukiwan to which a few Kau Sai people sometimes went to watch the plays, and on the fifth day of the fifth month the Dragon Boat festival. Kau Sai had once had a Dragon Boat of its own which, I was told, on one memorable occasion even came in first in the 'regatta' held in those days at Aberdeen and attended by H.E. the Governor. But that was back in the 'twenties. Later, Kau Sai people merely looked on at the Dragon Boat races held elsewhere, or sometimes 'fielded' a scratch 'team' for the fun of the thing at Sai Kung. All boat families also made offerings at the temple on the Double Fifth which was also widely used as a kind of dividing mark in the calendar: hired crew, for example, were usually engaged or laid off at New Year and the Dragon Boat festival.\n\nIn the sixth lunar month was held the festival for Koon Yam, 'Goddess of Mercy', observed in all her many temples but attended particularly by Kau Sai residents at the village of Pak Sha Wan, near Sai Kung. (The fact that this village was also the site of that Kau Sai New Village to which the landsmen were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213071, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "120\n\ndrought. He is also renowned for his supernatural involvement in the construction of major bridges.\n\nIn some villages when a person dies, an image of Ch'ing-shui is taken from the temple for a fourteen or twenty-one day stay, to help pass on prayers and supplications of the relatives to the Underworld on behalf of the newly deceased soul.\n\nThe dates of his annual festival vary considerably from temple to temple. The most popular dates are the 6th of the first lunar month and the double sixth. In Singapore it is celebrated more often than not on the 7th of the first, with the second and fourth days of the twelfth lunar months being quite popular too in Malaysia and Taiwan. In a few places he is revered on the 13th day of the fifth lunar month, the anniversary of his death. In Singapore his cult followers claim that his festival is not celebrated with processions as other cults do with their deities.\n\nSan P'ing Tsu-shih\n\nThe identity of the third cult deity, San P'ing Tsu-shih, has proved controversial as a number of temple keepers in Singapore and Malaysia have claimed that he is identical with Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. The majority, however, believe him to be simply an influential Buddhist priest whose name is now lost. He was generally known by his name in religion, I-chung and, according to T'ang inscriptions, was considered to have been a patriarch of Chinese Buddhism, a local claim which failed. Nowadays he is revered by devotees in the popular religion temples where his image stands on its own altar and where he is prayed to, especially, for his ability to cure sickness.\n\nHis cult centre is some twenty miles south west of Changchou in P'ing-ho district where his temple is popular with pilgrims from Amoy and Changchou who travel to the remote site by bus in large numbers. Very small images of the deity are to be seen hanging from the rear-view mirrors in taxis in Amoy where he is claimed to be the most popular of all protective deities.\n\nLegend claims that he lived in Changpu in Fukien province, a learned man who was able to predict the patterns of lives and the dates of individuals' deaths. According to a temple keeper in Nantou in Taiwan,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214312, "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "134\n\nhave therefore added it here for the record.\n\nThe Sowerbys were an old family of Saxon stock that can be traced back to the time of Edward the Confessor, and possibly earlier to the first kings of Kent in the fifth century AD.\n\nArthur de Carle Sowerby was the great grandson of James Sowerby, who died in 1822, the botanist who wrote English Botany and was one of the founder members of the Geological Society. His son in turn continued his work and helped organise the Royal Botanic Society and Gardens in Regent's Park.\n\nOn his mother's side Arthur was descended from Pierre Séguier, the Chancellor of France in the reign of Louis XIII; he was also the great grandson of Anthony Stuart, the miniature and portrait painter of the early Victorian period. Arthur's uncle was part-founder and first Keeper of the National Gallery of Portraits in Trafalgar Square.\n\nAt the end of his schooling he began his training to be an artist but soon left it for that of a scientist, working for his BSc. at Bristol. He returned to China having dropped out of College and after his arrival back in China he was appointed in 1906 in the double capacity of lecturer and curator on the staff of the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin.\n\nHe served in France during World War 1 as Technical Officer in the Chinese Labour Corps, and on his return to China made his headquarters in Shanghai where he remained until the end of the Second World War.\n\nHe developed an interest in Chinese Art and was impressed by the accuracy of ancient Chinese craftsmen in modelling pottery animals for the tomb, an accuracy that enabled him as a naturalist to identify the breeds of various domestic animals in use in ancient China. He wrote a series of articles for the China Journal on Birds in Chinese Art; the Owl in Chinese Art; The Flora in Chinese Art; Rocks, Mountains and Water in Chinese Art; Animals in Chinese Art; as well as Animals in the Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales of China. His interest in craftsmanship also led him to write a series of articles on Chinese arts and crafts, including four papers on the Chinese ivory industry.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215075, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "128\n\nChinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons.\n\nAll Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon.\n\nUntil 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215301, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "26\n\nits relationship to the relatively stable solar year, which could deviate from the true astronomical cycle only by three days. This discrepancy between the two cycles brought the advantage that what people carried out practically, in accordance with the reckoning of the sun's passage through a zodiac, could be celebrated after the practical event, and then the moon calendar offered the opportunity. Feasting did not interfere with work. But this was not always so. Some important festivals were tied to the position of the sun. The existence of two calendars also offered the possibility of double celebrations - each feast emphasizing one of two different aspects of some phenomenon. By such a separation in time, equal weight and dignity could be given to notions that did not easily tally inside one singular ritual frame.\n\nIn solar terms, the period of 'Establishment of Spring' set in on (approximately) the fifth of February. There was a great festival at that time, which was really part of the long New Year duration, but also connoted with expectations for the coming agricultural year.2 The spring season in central China lasted through the periods of 'Rain Water,' 'Arousal from Hibernation,' 'Vernal Equinox,' 'Clear and Bright,' 'Grain Rains' and up to ‘Establishment of Summer' on the fifth of May. In terms of the varying lunar calendar, spring would correspond roughly with the period from the middle of the first moon up to the beginning of the fourth lunary.\n\nWhat were the festive concerns of people in the Lake Dongting area in the early part of the long Chinese spring? One prominent feature was a continuing divination about coming crops and the weather upon which these were dependent. Already New Year was a great period for forecasting and these predictions were continued in the course of the spring. We can find some glimpses of such activities in our sources. But there were also some more prominent days which saw a lot of ritual activities.\n\nOne day in early spring was of special importance. According to the official almanac it fell on the fifth wu day that followed Li Chun. is the fifth of a set of twelve 'Earthly Branches' that in combination with twelve 'Celestial Stems' formed a system for calculating time and days. Li Chun is the mentioned solar period\n\n2\n\nAijmer 2002: Ch. XV.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215932, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "165\n\ntalk, but was well aware of Dai's sinister \"Blueshirts,\" and thought it wise to return somewhat evasive and non-committal replies since terrorist activities would only be a source of embarrassment to us at present. Still, he held open the prospect that Dai's 'local agents may come in useful later as a check on fifth columnists and pro-Wang Ching Wei activists.'*\n\nBoxer also met a Chinese general whom he described as an 'exceptionally well-educated and much travelled individual who speaks fluent German and English in addition to being a famous classical scholar.' This was General Yu Ta Wei, who had amassed a huge store of ordnance seized from the Japanese, photos of Japanese weapons and bases, other material both of a military and intelligence nature, and chillingly, evidence that the Japanese were using chemical warfare against the Chinese. This he candidly showed Boxer, who was concerned enough to recommend that a British technical officer be sent out to examine them. General Yu, a more cosmopolitan man than Dai, had been trained in the Prussian military academy and was an urbane, well-read man, up to date with the latest developments in Europe. He wanted to develop a munitions industry in China and needed foreign help. Boxer was meeting two of the most influential men in the Chinese hierarchy.\n\nOn the evening of 10th October 1939, the Double Tenth, that most sacred celebration in the KMT calendar, a date chosen deliberately to signal how the Chinese viewed the meeting, Boxer was ushered into the presence of the Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek. This was an important meeting, for it was perhaps the first sign that the British were making a concerted effort to help the Chinese in their long struggle with the Japanese. Boxer proposed that the Chinese and British set up a joint intelligence network to get a quicker and more efficient system of exchanging information. He proposed that a network of wireless stations be set up all along the Chinese coast from Hainan to Taiwan. Moreover, it would be financed by the British, but independently operated by Chinese to monitor Japanese troop movements. All information was to be 'equally at the disposal of Chinese and British staff,' although the Chinese could not enter the British military code system. He compounded the tribute to the Chinese war effort by suggesting that Hong Kong could learn from the efficient Chinese system of predicting air raids, whereby agents reported bombers taking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]