[ { "id": 204278, "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-1961", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n42\n\nTIBET AS IT WAS\n\nA lecture delivered on February 9, 1961. HUGH RICHARDSON, C.I.E., O.B.E.\n\nTibet as it is is too\n\nI am going to talk about Tibet as it was. tragic, moving and lamentable a topic for a present talk. But I shall describe Tibet before its old civilisation and culture, its ancient form of government, its religion, its liberty and indeed its individuality were swept away. I must forget for the moment this outrage and try to recreate a little of the easy-going, friendly, contented country that I remember. Obviously I cannot cover the whole of Tibet's past in this very short time.\n\nYou may notice that I have not called it secret or mysterious Tibet. Of course there was plenty that was strange and little-known in the country; but to any foreigner who was living there it was hospitable and open. Many of the strange things became intelligible, and the mystery, although it was there, fell into its place.\n\nNow it is true that the idea of a rather baleful mystery was for quite a long time fostered by the policy of deliberate exclusion. But the latter is comparatively recent—it only began at the end of the eighteenth century. Before that foreigners were not specifically barred from Tibet. The occasional traveller or trader was kept out by the nature of the country, but anyone who was determined and courageous could find his way in. If the names of Antonio Daldarada, Stephen Caccella, Borazzio della Tenda and Ippolito Desideri as yet mean nothing to you, there is much enjoyment in store for you when you do make their acquaintance. They were missionaries in Tibet, mostly Jesuits, from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth. Their accounts are excellent reading, especially that of Desideri; and they all found a kindly welcome. Though they worked very hard, they made hardly any impact on the well-established Tibetan religion and on Tibetan conservatism.\n\nConservatism was the dominant characteristic of the country. It was largely due, I think, to its geographical situation and to its natural defences, of which the Tibetans have long been conscious and proud. A very old hymn in praise of their country, at least as old as the eighth century, describes it as \"in the centre of snowy mountains, the source of great rivers, a lofty country, a pure land.\" In that lofty country, behind the barrier of mountains, the Tibetans kept alive their peculiar civilisation, traceable in their own records from the seventh century. There were, of course, plenty of changes and developments in the course of thirteen hundred years, and some influences entered from outside. But every importation was assimilated and transmuted into a Tibetan form.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204536, "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "12\n\nLINDSAY RIDE\n\nas the season was over all foreigners had to leave Canton and return to their barbarian homes. It mattered not to the Chinese officials that it was a physical impossibility for the foreigners to go to their homes on the other side of the world and be back again in time for the next trading season. When the ships sailed from Whampoa, the Factories at Canton closed, and the merchant staff called Writers, Factors and Supercargoes, all left too. They went as far as Macao, and while the cargo laden ships sailed on to Europe, the merchants waited there for the coming of the next season's ships.\n\nOne other restriction that we must mention is that no European women were allowed to go up river at all, so the annual expulsion of the men from Canton was really not so very hard to bear for most people. It meant reunion with one's wife and family for those married men whose families were in Macao, and the pleasure of European female company for the bachelors. Macao was thus the foreigners' home away from home. They worked strenuously in isolation in Canton while the season lasted, and then between seasons they repaired to the more natural abode of the families in the only equivalent of a health and holiday resort that the Far East then knew. Social life in Macao was strenuous, especially for women folk who were few in number; many of the men were either bachelors or grass widowers and for approximately six months in each year, they had very little official work to do at all; at any rate this was certainly true for the juniors.\n\nAnother significant fact which had important implications was that the Chinese, at the time of which I speak, recognized only one foreign official body other than the Portuguese- namely the British East India Company, and they made all the official contacts with the other nationalities through the controlling body of this Company in Canton -the Select Committee. As may well be imagined, this situation led to difficulties between the British and the various other foreign communities whose trade with China had increased tremendously towards the end of the eighteenth century. This was particularly true of the new maritime power, the United States of America. After their independence, the Americans were naturally no longer willing to depend on the British shipping for their foreign trade; Britain made it particularly difficult for them to retain any of their trade with their former sister colonies in the West Indies, and they were thus forced to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210422, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "10\n\nBARTHOLOMEW P.M. TSUI\n\nthe Tao; below them in turn eight Healing Masters. Then came an indeterminate number of Cultivation Masters, the Protector of the Tao, Advanced Disciples and Novices.\" However, this hierarchical structure was probably only an ideal and not rigidly adhered to at any time. The current structure runs as follows. There are two Elders of the Tao at the top. Then comes a Person-in-Charge (#), four Healing Masters, Advanced Disciples and Novices. It is not clear what are the exact functions of each of the ranks beyond that vaguely suggested by their titles.\n\nEntrance into this religion is usually made by the recommendation of a follower and the permission of the Supreme Deity. The sect claims that it can discern the Supreme Deity's will by prayer. Those who are admitted can then be allowed to approach the altar and to begin a programme of learning about the way.\" The altar is the place where one can venerate the Deity, practise quiet-sitting, discuss the truth, seek healing, longevity, direction in life and ask the Deity to deliver dead ancestors.\n\nThere are no hard and fast rules about worship. The sacred shrine is opened on Sundays for reasons of convenience and on four festivals special to the sect. These four festivals, in which all believers are encouraged to participate, have absolutely no relationship with traditional customs or religions. They are the Day of Commemoration of the Establishment of Tan Tse Tao (eighth of the first month), the Day of the Disciples (fourth day of the fourth month), the Day of Revelation (eighteenth day of the eighth month) and the Day of Prayer (tenth day of tenth month).\n\nIn thanksgiving for the Deity's grace, each follower is responsible for spreading the faith, forming extensive relationships with persons of good character, establishing and bringing to perfection the follower's own person and the person of others, delivering all men from various pains and diseases, and obeying the sacred injunctions. The latter consists of the five precepts and the ten good deeds. The five precepts are: 1. Do not do wrong-doing. 2. Do not become an apostate. 3. Do not make monetary gains with healing. 4. Do not believe in astrology and geomancy. 5. Do not worship blood-eating gods. The ten good deeds are: 1. Be diligent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215642, "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": 419, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "371\n\ndescriptions of it paint a vivid picture in inland China, of towns, villages, farming and husbandry at the end of the eighteenth century and put life to the many pictures and engravings of that period.\n\nIt was on this inland journey that Macartney was able to collect his tea plants. He says in his own words:\n\nI must not omit that the Viceroy (they had been joined by the Viceroy from Canton) observing our curiosity about everything relative to natural history, allowed us to collect seeds and fossils as we came along, and to take up several tea plants in a growing state with large balls of earth adhering to them, which tea plants I flatter myself I shall be able to transmit to Bengal, where I have no doubt that by the spirit of patriotism of its Government an effective cultivation of this valuable shrub will be undertaken and pursued with success.\n\nNo doubt the hard balls of earth were wrapped in the same casings of matting in which plants arrive from China to this day.\n\nSo far as opium is concerned, rather oddly, I cannot find that it came up in conversation at all although by then the illicit trade was well established and its use had been banned by Imperial edict some sixty years before.\n\nDr. Dinwiddie, who had accompanied the Embassy to Peking, took the plants to India on Jackall, together with tallow and varnish plants as well as some silkworm eggs, all of which were delivered to Dr. Roxburgh, superintendent of the East India Company's botanical gardens in Calcutta. Some years later indigenous tea plants were discovered growing in Assam and it is tea from these which seems more like the tea that we are now accustomed to drink. Whether there was any hybridisation between the two species I cannot say. Certainly Chinese tea retains its distinctive characteristics.\n\nThe journal of the Embassy's adventures in China is a fascinating and extraordinarily detailed account and description of a way of life and scenery which has largely disappeared. Present day Chengde is a shadow of the Jehol described by Macartney with pagodas, temples", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215696, "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": 473, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "426\n\nMade more by way of observation, there is the matter of the restrictions imposed, in their turn, upon the foreign traders at the Thirteen Factories in Canton (see p.97 and the Addendum). Mrs. Garrett has explained how they were increasingly ignored by them, in her chapter 9 (\"Disobedience and Destruction: The China Wars\"). Here, it seems appropriate to note that the laws of China, designed to support the security of the government and the happiness of the people through enforcing the moral ideas and usages which had characterized the nation over two millennia, were (like the 'Regulations' for the foreign merchants) precisely and minutely detailed, so as to be readily available to the authorities as and when required.\n\nNon-compliance with the laws was not confined to outsiders! One notable deviation was noted by Sir George Thomas Staunton (a resident at the Factories 1798-1816) in his part translation of Qing Statute Law, published in London in 1810; that is, how certain ‘religious' activities, prohibited in the penal code, were 'openly practised in every part of the empire,' leading him to surmise that these clauses were 'retained for the purpose of enabling the magistrates to control and keep within bounds these popular superstitions,' when required. (p.175n of the Taiwan reprint by Ch'eng-Wen Publishing Co., Taipei, 1966; with another such on theatrical representations at p.418n). I mention these points in passing, as being relevant for the times.\n\nReturning to Mrs. Garrett's book, the standard of production is high, and typos are few. But (e.g.) since he has been mentioned, Osmond Tiffany, Jr. appears variously in several places, including the index, as 'Oswald' or 'Osmand': Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)'s book, The Golden Chersonese has been misspelt: and the Cantonese romanization for the Eighteenth Ward is Shap Pat Po, not ‘Shap Pak Pu.' (pp.144-5).\n\nBut this is to cavil. All in all, this is a very competent and attractive recreation of a bygone world, linked to surviving buildings and other relics from the time, and heartily recommended to the reader - for all of which reasons, the kind of specially-drawn map I have suggested should form part of any further edition of this book.\n\nJAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]