[ { "id": 204594, "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-1963", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "64 \n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG \n\nuninhabitable according to our notions, and we therefore tell the Chinese that the Minister is obliged to postpone taking up his residence until the residence is fit to receive him. Mr. Adkins is therefore charged with the task of repairs, and in March of next year or possibly earlier Mr. Bruce expects to take up his quarters there. His arrival at Peking before we quitted it was a happy hit. Formal interviews took place between Lord Elgin and Prince Kung at which the former introduced his brother and abdicated in his favour; so that before we quitted Peking Mr. Bruce had commenced his business with the Chinese authorities, while that of the Special Embassy terminated.7 \n\nSo interpreter Adkins remained alone in the Palace of Duke I-liang throughout the winter of 1860-61, until in March 1861 Bruce set out from Tientsin, accompanied by Thomas Wade, his interpreter, and Dr. Rennie, physician to the new Legation. Colonel Neale, the Secretary of the Legation, with two attachés, St. Clair and Wyndham, had gone ahead with the baggage. We are fortunate to have a detailed account of the first year at the British Legation kept by Dr. Rennie. In the Preface to his book Peking and the Pekingese he explained that \"a few months after Her Majesty's Legation had been established in Peking, a feeling began to be entertained by its members, that, with a view to future publication, some record should be kept of the various incidents which were from day to day occurring, during what may be termed the inaugural period of foreign diplomatic residence at the capital—the most important event in the modern history of Anglo-Chinese intercourse.\" Since Rennie had been keeping \n\n7 Quoted in The Life of Sir Harry Parkes by Stanley Lane-Poole, 2 vols., (London, 1894), I, 404-5. \n\nParkes was born in 1828, and came out to China in 1841 to join his two sisters who were living with their cousin, the wife of the Protestant missionary, the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff. Parkes was attached to Sir Henry Pottinger's suite in the expedition up the Yangtze in 1842 and witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. He started to learn Chinese and at the age of fifteen was attached to the British Consulate at Canton. Many appointments as interpreter and consul followed until 1865 when he was appointed Minister to Japan. In 1883 he became British Minister at Peking. He died in 1885. \n\n* D. F. Rennie, Peking and the Pekingese during the First Year of the British Embassy at Peking, 2 vols. (London, 1865) vii. \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204596, "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-1963", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "66\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nBruce's arrival the Union Jack was hoisted over the entrance to the Leang-koong-foo.\" In his diary for April 1st Rennie gives a detailed description of the Legation as it then appeared.\n\nThe Leang-koong-foo may be described as consisting of two sets of quadrangular courts, running parallel to each other north and south, with a covered passage between them. These courts contain blocks of buildings, built in the ordinary Chinese style of architecture. The set of squares on the eastern side form the palatial portion, and contain the state apartments. The roofs on this side are covered with green glazed tiles, and supported by heavy columns of wood. The interior, though out of repair, is still very handsome; the ceilings of the state apartments being beautifully decorated with gold dragons, within circles on a blue ground, which again are in the centres of small squares of green, separated by intersecting bars in relief of green and gold. The western division of the Foo is composed of buildings of a less showy kind, but nevertheless fitted up with great elegance and taste. The roofs are covered with ordinary grey tiling. It is in a fair state of repair, and is at present occupied by the Legation. Moral sentiments, painted in gilt letters on ornamental boards, are placed over the entrances of the various buildings in the different courts. Some of them Mr. Wade translated to me this morning. That over the door of the apartments occupied by Colonel Neale and myself means, 'Hall for the nourishment of virtue', and that over the house reserved for Mrs. Reynolds, the Legation house-keeper, shortly expected from Shanghai, is 'Hall for the study and development of politeness'. Arrangements have been made with a Chinese builder, named Choon, for putting the whole in thorough repair; and it has been determined to convert the palatial portion into the Legation residence, retaining as much as possible its Chinese character. The other division of the Foo is to be fitted up partly for the Chinese secretary's department, partly as residences for the student-interpreters, who are in future to learn the language at Peking under the supervision of Mr. Wade.\n\nDr. Rennie was soon out sightseeing, going everywhere on horseback through the dust or the mud of the Peking streets and lanes. At this time, and for long afterwards, the Imperial Canal", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204599, "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-1963", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n69\n\nhad now come for Dr. Rennie to leave Peking, since he had been appointed Senior Medical Officer of the British Forces. He left in April 1862, and one of the last pen-pictures he gives us in his diary is of a Mrs. Wright, a milliner at Shanghai, whom he met on the road between Peking and Tungchow, riding in a cart with a friend, Mrs. Innocent, the wife of a missionary, these two good ladies being on their way to the Legation to stay with the house-keeper, Mrs. Reynolds, since the three had been old friends in Shanghai.\n\nOnly a few years later the Legation was in disrepair. A. B. Freeman-Mitford, who was a member of the Legation staff from 1865 to 1866, described it as it appeared to him in June 1865.\n\nOur Legation is situated in the southern part of the Tartar city. We occupy a most picturesque palace called the Liang Kung Fu, or Palace of the Duke of Liang, which, like all Chinese buildings of importance, covers an immense space of ground. There are courtyards upon courtyards, huge empty buildings with red pillars, used as covered courts, state approaches guarded by two great marble lions, and a number of houses with only ground floor, each of us inhabiting one to himself. When the Legation first came to live here the whole place was put into repair, and redecorated in the Chinese fashion with fluted roofs of many colours, carved woodwork, kylins of stone and pottery, and all the thousand and one fancies with which the Chinese cover their buildings. Unfortunately the repairs were badly executed, and nothing further has been done to keep matters straight, so the Legation, which ought to be as pretty as possible, is really a disgrace to us. The gardens are a wilderness, the paving of the courts is broken, the walls are tumbling down, and the beautiful place is going to rack and ruin. In this climate of extreme heat and cold a stitch in time saves ninety-nine. Fancy a residence in the heart of a great and populous city where foxes, scorpions, polecats, weasels, magpies, and other creatures that one expects to find in the wild country, abound. That will give you an idea of how space is wasted in Peking.\n\n12 A. B. Freeman-Mitford. The Attaché at Peking (London, 1900), 66-7. The author, who later became the first Baron Redesdale, spent the years 1866-70 as a member of the British Legation in Japan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215663, "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": 440, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "392\n\nMs. Han did not practice medicine in China in the 1950s or at any other time\n\n*\n\nMs. Leon Comber was a superintendent (not assistant superintendent) with the Malayan police, and acted as assistant commissioner\n\nOn the morning of Sunday, 25 June, 1950, communist forces from North Korea crossed the border into South Korea. The next day, on 26 June, President Harry S. Truman ordered American air and naval forces to go to the assistance of South Korea, and Clement Attlee in the House of Commons expressed support for Mr. Truman's actions.\n\nOn 27 June, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution recommending that all members of the UN furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to meet the armed attack.' The Korean War had begun.\n\nThe unexpected outbreak of the Korean War took all newspapers by surprise but The Times had Ian Ernest McLeavy Morrison, a member of its staff, in the Far East at that time. By August of that year he would be dead.\n\nBorn in Beijing on 31 May 1913, he was the son of the famous Australian journalist, Dr. George Ernest Morrison (4 February 1862-29 May 1920) and a New Zealander Jennie Wark Robin (1889 – 20 June 1923), Dr. Morrison's former secretary who he had married in 1912. Dr. Morrison was known as \"China Morrison\" and was himself a correspondent for The Times during 1897-1912 and later political adviser to the Chinese Government.\n\nHis brother, Alastair Gwynne Morrison was born on 24 August 1915. He ultimately joined the Diplomatic\n\nDr. Morrison and his three sons, Ian, Colin and Alastair, 1917, (Mitchell Library)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]