[
    {
        "id": 212857,
        "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": 166,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "151\n\na handful, because efforts had to be made in order to make sure that there would be enough male Jews to constitute a daily Minyan.\n\nThis community was by far the most prominent of the three groups of Jewish residents in Shanghai. They were among the first foreign traders in the metropolis, bearing names that included Sassoon, Kadoorie, Ezra, Abraham, Solomon, Rahmin, Moses, and Gubby, families still active in Hong Kong today, and were a part of the international mercantile community in the Far East at that time, enjoying business and personal links with the close-knit Jewish communities in Hong Kong and Bombay. At first they traded in raw cotton and general goods, then took over the opium trade. In time, in Shanghai as well as in Hong Kong and Bombay, they branched out into real estate, banking, shipping, warehousing, insurance, hotels, utilities, and other industries, gaining power and influence locally as well as in international commerce. The names of 38 prominent Sephardic Jews were found among the 1932 list of 99 members of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.\n\nAshkenazi Jews\n\n6\n\nImmediately following the completion of the trans-Siberian Railroad and the pogrom in Russia in 1905, a number of Russian Jews moved to Manchuria through Siberia, with about 300 filtering down to Shanghai. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, more than 10,000 Jews emigrated to Harbin. Apparently at that time the Chinese government had been contemplating expelling the Jews from Manchuria. In the mid 1920s when White Russians and Japanese interests began to spread in Manchuria, many of the earlier immigrants moved southward to Tianjin and Shanghai, swelling the total Jewish population in Shanghai to just under 2,000.\n\nThe Ashkenazi community of Jews in Shanghai, mostly Russian but by then joined by stragglers from Lithuania as well, increased to more than 1,000 after 1924. They were not exactly embraced by the Sephardic community of Shanghai. The Ashkenazi were not princes of commerce, but small businessmen who engaged in the import and export of such items as wool, bristles, and fur. The Chinese in Shanghai remembered Jewish salesmen going from house to house, carrying rugs for sale. The Ashkenazi Jews were also professionals; physicians and lawyers, for instance; and, above all, musicians.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    {
        "id": 212862,
        "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": 171,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "156\n\nThe Abraham Family\n\nEleazer Joseph Abraham\n\nDavid Ezekiel Joshua Abraham\n\nDavid Abraham Reuben m Ruby Moselle (1890-1982)\n\nEzekiel\n\nJoseph\n\nIsaac\n\n1\n\nAziza\n\nof the Jewish community, and served it well. His son, Ezekiel Abraham, recalled how the Jewish community had rallied to succour the refugees from Eastern Europe and Germany in 1938 and 1941 when some 17,000 to 18,000 refugees found their way to Shanghai.\n\n\"The Japanese commander had called in R.D. Abraham, as leader of the Jewish community in Shanghai, to tell him that a shipload of Jewish refugees had arrived. 'We cannot let them land,' said the Japanese. 'Why?' Abraham wanted to know. 'There is no place for them to live, and the refugees have no money to feed themselves,' reasoned the Japanese. 'In that case,' said Abraham, thoughtfully, without a smile, 'you will just have to shoot all of them, because there is no other place on earth for them to go.' Then he paused for a few moments before confiding in the Japanese, 'or, we can open the Sassoon warehouses in Hongkew and let the refugees live there, and put them to work in the factories.'\n\nGhe Ezras\n\n+15\n\nEdward Ezra switched from the opium trade to large-scale real estate construction and management in 1900. He erected - on the land bounded by Nanking, Kiujiang, Szechwan and Kiangse Roads - 1,000,000 taels worth of residences that enjoyed modern amenities. His own home on Joffre Road boasted a ballroom and a music room. The family interests included hotels. The Astor House Hotel, on Broadway and Whangpoo Road, occupied three acres of ground. Edward Ezra, who was a Director of Astor House, was the first person born in Shanghai and educated at the Shanghai Public School to be elected to the Municipal Council. Socially linked to the Sassoons from the beginning by marriage, today",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214186,
        "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": 44,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "beach with his Chinese cook carrying a wok (Chinese frying pan) under his arm, he proclaimed 'Mat ye lei ga? (†1) (meaning \"What is this?'). But to a Cantonese it sounds very much like the word 'America'.\n\nAgain, regarding the appreciation of someone else's humour, a Chinese who has never lived outside China may be unable to laugh at a joke because he has limited knowledge outside his own country. For instance the ideal world has jokingly been said, by Asians, to be an English stately home, Chinese food, an American salary and a Japanese wife. But then another Asian pipes up, \"If you had a Japanese house, English food, a Chinese salary and an American wife you'd be in real trouble!\"\n\nOf course general knowledge, background and nuances often play an important part. For instance if you say in English, 'She's no chicken,' you mean a woman is not young. But in Cantonese it means she is not a prostitute.\n\nChinese and Westerners may face various obstacles before they can laugh at each other's jokes. Nevertheless, as Ezra Pound (1885-1972) the American poet and translator wrote: The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension. Although there is much fine Chinese literature there have been few Chinese Nobel Prize winners. It is unfortunate that many of the finest passages of Chinese writing lose their sparkle when translated into western languages (Ball 1903; 358).\n\nIn a similar way the English language is not always easy for foreigners to appreciate. Tsim Tak-lung, at one time in charge of the Hong Kong Chinese University Press, once said that when enquiring after someone the English reply, ‘As well as can be expected.' 'What on earth does it mean?' asked confused Tsim.\n\nAgain he tells the tale of when he asked someone in a railway carriage in England whether a certain train went to Blanktown. He expected a 'yes' or 'no' answer. Instead he received the reply: 'I should be very surprised if it doesn't!' When the train pulled up at the platform",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]