[
    {
        "id": 204928,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 36,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "THE POPULATION OF CHINA \n\n29 \n\nSome years ago I had an opportunity of discussing the subject of Chinese population with the Mandarin at Ningpo who was charged with making the returns for that district. Ningpo can scarcely be called a progressive place; it is decidedly the least so of the Five Treaty Ports; but I found, generally speaking, that the real returns were considerably in excess of the official estimates. \n\nAnd I would remark, that, in taking the area of the Eighteen Provinces of China at 1,348,870 square miles, the census of 1812 would give 268 persons to a square mile, which is considerably less than the population of the densely peopled countries of Europe. \n\nAccording to ancient usage, the population in China is grouped under four heads, 1, Scholars; 2, Husbandmen; 3, Mechanics; 4, Merchants. There is a numerous class who are considered almost as social outcasts, such as Stage-players, professional Gamblers, Beggars, Convicts, Outlaws, and others; and these probably form no part of the population returns. In the more remote rural districts, on the other hand, the returning officer most probably contents himself with giving the average of more accessible and better-peopled localities. \n\nI have no means of obtaining any satisfactory tables to show the proportions which different ages bear to one another in China, or the average mortality at different periods of human life; yet to every decade of life the Chinese apply some special designation:- The age of 10, is called \"the Opening Degree\"; 20, “Youth expired\"; 30, \"Strength and Marriage”; 40, “Officially Apt\"; 50, \"Error knowing\"; 60, “Cycle Closing\"; 70, \"Rare Bird of Age\"; 80, \"Rusty visaged\"; 90, \"Delayed\"; 100, \"Age's Extremity.” Among the Chinese the amount of reverence grows with the number of years. I made, some years ago, the acquaintance of a Buddhist priest living in the convent of Tien Tung near Ningpo, who was more than a century old, and whom people of rank were in the habit of visiting in order to show their respect and to obtain his autograph. He had the civility to give me a very fair specimen of his handwriting. There are not only many establishments for the reception of the aged, but the Penal Code provides severe punishments for those who refuse to relieve the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
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    {
        "id": 204942,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 50,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "# TABLE OF THE DIFFERENT CENSUSES OF THE EIGHTEEN PROVINCES\n\n| Provinces | Area in English Square Miles | Average Population! To a Square Mile, according to Last Census | Census in 1710 or before | Census of 1711 | Census of 1743 | Census of 1753 | Census of 1762 or 1765 | Census of 1792 (Macartney) | Last Census of 1812 | Revenue in Taels of $133. each |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Chibli, | 58,949 | 475 | 3,260,075 | 3.274,870 | 16.702,765 | 9,374,217 | 15,222,940 | 38,000,000 | 27,990,871 | 3,942,000 |\n| Shantung, | 65,104 | 444 | 2,278,595 | 12.159.680 | 12,769,872 | 25,180,734 | 24,000,000 | 28,958.764 | 6,344,000 |  |\n| Shansi, | 55,268 | 252 | 1,792,329 | 1,727,144 | 8,969,475 | 5,162,351 | 9,768,189 | 27.000,000 | 14,004,210 | 6,313,000 |\n| Honan, | 65,104 | 420 | 2,005,088 | 3,094,150 | 12,637,280 | 7,114,346 | 16,332.507 | 25,000,000 | 23.037,171 | 5,651,008 |\n| Kiangsu, | 44,500 | 850 | 3,917,707 | 2,656,465 | 12.618,987 | 23,161,409 | 37,843,501 |  | 11,733,000 |  |\n| Nganhwui, | 48,461 | 705 | 1,350,131 | 1,357,829 | 26,766,365 | 32,000,000 | 12.435,361 | 22,761,030 | 34,168,059 | 3,744,000 |\n| Kiangsi, | 72,176 | 320 | 5,528,499 | 2,172,587 | 6,681,350 |  |  |  |  |  |\n| Chehkiang, | 39,150 | 671 | 2,710,649 | 2,710,312 | 15,623,990 |  |  |  |  |  |\n| Fuhkien, | 53,480 | 276 | 1,468,145 | 706,311 | 7,643,035 |  |  |  |  |  |\n| Hupeb, | 70,450 | 389 | 469,927 | 433,943 |  |  |  |  |  |  |\n| Hunan, | 74.320 | 251 | 375,782 | 335,034 | 4,264,850 |  |  |  |  |  |\n| Shensi, | 67,400 | 153 | 240,809 | 2.150,696 | 3,851,043 |  |  |  |  |  |\n| Kansuh, | 86,608 | 175 | 311,972 | 368,525 | 14,804,035 | 2,133,222 |  |  |  |  |\n| Sz'chuen, | 166,800 | 128 | 144,154 | 3,802,689 | 15,181,710 | 1,368,496 |  |  |  |  |\n| Kwangtung, | 79,456 | 241 | 1,148,918 | 1,142,747 | 6,006,600 | 3,969,248 | 5,055,251 | 11,006,640 | $,662,808 | 15,429,690 |\n| Kwangse, | 78,250 | 93 | 205.995 | 210,674 | 1,143,450 | 1,975,619 | 3,947,414 | 10,000,000 | 7,313,895 | 185,000 |\n| Kweichau, | 64,554 | 82 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |\n| Yunnan, | 107,969 | 51 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |\n| Shingking, | 51,089 |  | 2,255,666 |  | 4,194 | 37,731 | 255,445 | 1,718,848 | 3,402,722 | 9.000.000 |\n|  |  |  |  |  | 1,189,825 | 1,003,058 | 2,078,802 | 8,000,000 | 5,561,320 | 235,620 |\n|  |  |  |  |  |  | 221,742 | 668,852 | 2,167,286 | 1,297,999 | 268 |\n| Total |  |  | 27,241,129 | 28,605,716 | 150,265,475 | 103,050,060 | 198,214,553 | 198,214,553 | 333,000,000 | 362,447,183 | 58,097,000 |",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212722,
        "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-1992",
        "page_number": 31,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "Mesny's Personal Life\n\nPART TWO\n\nConsidering how detailed and verbose Mesny could be in his writings it is surprising how little we know about his personal life during the later years. A certain amount about his well-being and illnesses, his religion and his relationships with the female sex during his first fifteen to twenty years in China can be extracted from his autobiographical snippets but on the whole they add little but colour to the overall picture. He did however reveal relatively more to us about his financial situation but only because it had deteriorated and was obviously causing him great anxiety.\n\nMesny must have lived from hand to mouth for most of his later years. He had always had an eye for the big break and though at times he seemed to make himself a small fortune, though we never hear the details, he soon enough appears to have reverted to scraping by. He loved the adventure of travel and for some years managed to earn sufficient or at least obtain adequate sponsorship to visit all eighteen provinces of China. However, the day came when he could just dream. In 1896, at age of 54, he wrote that being strong and active though getting old, he would like to make an expedition to Lhasa [he called it Lassa]. He bemoaned the fact that he had not the necessary funds - but, he wrote, if he had had sufficient he would liked to have journeyed to Mukden [Shenyang] and Kirin, then via the Amur region, return via Urga [Ulan Bataar] or the K'un-lun and the Seven Lakes including Ch'ing-hai [Kokonor], Tengri Nor to Lhasa and Darjeeling [in India]. He felt capable of accomplishing the feat penetrating right through unknown Thibet [sic] to India and added the hopeful 'Wait and see.' He never made it.\n\nHe was forever trying to persuade Chinese officials to allow him to help them and China with his grandiose ideas. Presumably he was planning and hoping to earn commission from any scheme which took off though he repeated several times in his writings references to such schemes in which he was prepared to act on behalf of China for the good of the Chinese people without benefit to himself. But for one reason or another, and we rarely learn why, these failed to come to anything. In 1878 he had been asked by a French bank to contact a very senior Chinese official, Marquis Tso, to arrange a loan to build railways, etc. in China's Northwest. Mesny would have to pay his own travelling expenses crossing China by land but would receive a handsome commission if",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216421,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 180,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "130\n\nThe Treaty showed Japan that white races would stand together against the yellow, and the Japanese as a race were mortified at what they were convinced was a dishonourable peace.\n\nThe peace treaty provided for, amongst other things, the mutual withdrawal of Russian and Japanese armies from Manchuria within eighteen months; and the return of Manchuria to China except for the leased territories of Liaodong (Guandong) and the southern section of the Manchurian Railway which was transferred to Japan by Russia.\n\nHowever, at a Conference held in Peking in December 1905 at which the Chinese government approved the Treaty, the now enfeebled and impotent Qing dynasty gave Japan even greater rights in Chinese territory than had been agreed in Portsmouth. The Japanese had now acquired rights and concessions on Chinese territory for the first time.\n\nChinese involvement\n\nIt has not been my intention to describe the detailed progress of the war as this has been covered in numerous books and articles, but to highlight how the Chinese were involved. It has proved disappointing to find that even when China and the Chinese position are referred to, writers usually skim over the subject in a single page or two.\n\nThe Russian promise to evacuate territories in Manchuria occupied after the Boxer insurrection was ignored and the progressive Russification of the Three Provinces could only mean one thing - that the Russians had no intention of withdrawing. During 1903 the Chinese Government showed a firmer attitude in their request for promises from the Russian Minister relating to the evacuation of Manchuria. Japanese strong moral support acted as an incentive to the more progressive Chinese to strengthen the influence of the few patriotic Chinese statesmen who had the welfare of the Empire at heart. Meetings of the literati in most of the larger cities in China during October 1903 denounced Russia in no uncertain terms. Little could be expected from the Empress Dowager and her clique. One day she ranted on hearing some real or fancied desecration by Cossacks in the former Manchu capital at Mukden where the ancestors of the Manchu ruling clan were buried, and threatened reprisals; the next day she was considering possibilities of closer links between Russia and China and even, perhaps,\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]