[ { "id": 204260, "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": 28, "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\n25\n\nMunia is a fairly common resident, especially in the New Territories, but it is hard to say how successful it is at nesting, for it tends to build several nests before eventually raising a brood. The Chestnut Munia, a handsome black and chestnut bird, is often found in quite large flocks in Mai Po marshes in autumn and some may be seen all the year round there, but it has never yet nested as far as we know,\n\nThe above is a very brief summary of birds that are likely to be seen in Hong Kong during the year. If readers would like to know more about them, they might first of all join the Hong Kong Bird-Watching Society. By doing so, they can get into contact with its fifty or so members, and will be able to join them on frequent expeditions to various parts of the Colony. They will also receive a copy of the Society's Annual Report and will be able to borrow books from its increasingly important and comprehensive bird library. Unfortunately the local bird-books, such as they are, are out-of-print and the ones covering neighbouring countries are expensive, especially if one considers how few of Hong Kong's birds each one covers. But three books in particular may be recommended in that between them they have pictures and notes on about 275 of our birds, besides unillustrated notes on a few more.\n\nThese are:\n\nR. T. Peterson, G. Mountfort and A. D. Hollom. Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe. Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin, 1954\n\nK. Kobayashi. Birds of Japan. Osaka, Hoikushi, 1956\n\nB. E. Smythies. Birds of Burma. London, Oliver and Boyd, 1940\n\nAll these and many more are available from the Society's library. A new 'Check-list of the Birds of Hong Kong' is due for publication later in 1960 and will contain notes on the status and distribution in the Colony of every species so far recorded here.\n\nDuring the last three years or so, members of the Bird-Watching Society have noted several problems of bird-life in Hong Kong, which, though not particularly difficult, are puzzling because of conflicting or incomplete evidence. I should like to end this article with a few examples, so that bird-watchers who feel so inclined can go out armed with an objective.\n\n(a) Does the Peregrine nest in Hong Kong? It may be seen occasionally all the year round. If so, where? Lion Rock, Sharp Peak or perhaps Tai Tan Yang are possibilities.\n\n(b) What are the curious little rails or crakes which are flushed every autumn by snipe-shooters in the marshes? One is not allowed to shoot them and they are only seen briefly in flight,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204648, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n115\n\njourney by chair. He was the first Englishman to travel by this route, which it was hoped would develop into an important trade route from Upper Burma and West China.\n\nIn 1872 John Swire of London formed the China Navigation Company to trade on the Yangtse, and started by purchasing the two steamers of the Union Steam Navigation Company, following this up a year later with three ships of their own specially built on the Clyde. In this same year of 1873 the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company was formed, a Chinese company partly under government control and direction. This company purchased the steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in 1877, and so became the owners of the largest river fleet. A few years later Jardine returned to the Yangtse with the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, and by the early 1880's the greater part of the Yangtse trade was shared between these three companies: the China Navigation Company, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company.\n\nThe formation of the China Navigation Company in 1872 was a logical development from that of the Blue Funnel Line by Alfred Holt in 1866. Alfred Holt and John Swire were close friends and business associates, and when the latter opened an eastern branch of his company in Shanghai he took over the agency of the Blue Funnel Line ships. One reason behind the formation of the China Navigation Company was to provide cargoes for the Blue Funnel ships to and from the Yangtse. Alfred Holt was unwilling to operate ships so far from his personal control, but was willing to support the Swire enterprise. The inauguration of the Blue Funnel Service to the Far East, the opening of a Far Eastern branch of John Swire and Company in Shanghai in the same year, and the formation of the China Navigation Company six years later, meant the introduction of a new and powerful combination to the China coast. Holt and Swire, in association with the Clyde shipbuilding family of Scott, were soon to play a very important part in the China trade, and in the shipping of the whole of the Far East. Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, and Australia, were all to come within their orbit before many years had passed.\n\nIn 1881 the various shipping interests of Jardine were merged into the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, of which Jardine were made permanent managers. For a list of the main shipping companies plying on the Yangtze see Appendix on p. 130.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204652, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE \n\n119 \n\nThe restriction about navigation beyond Ichang was abolished after the Sino-Japanese War by the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, and three years later the indefatigable Little had the satisfaction of taking his Leechuan from Ichang up to Chungking, the first steamer to navigate the Upper Yangtse. The Leechuan was a twin screw, wooden, steam launch only fifty-five feet long, and too small to carry any cargo. Little acted as his own captain and chief engineer, and the Leechuan had to be pulled up the strongest of the rapids by trackers. Two years later, however, a larger paddle steamer Pioneer, built by Little and a group of associates, made the first commercial passage to Chungking. The Pioneer was built by Denny of Dumbarton, and was 180 feet long, 60 feet beam over the paddle boxes, and had a draft of 6 feet. She carried 150 tons of cargo and many deck passengers, and took seven days between Ichang and Chungking on her first trip. There is a photograph of her in Gleanings from Fifty Years in China by Archibald Little (Philadelphia, 1908), p. 141. Shortly afterwards the Pioneer was commandeered by the British government to bring British subjects down the Yangtse during the Boxer troubles, and she finished her career as H.M.S. Kinshi, the headquarters ship of the Senior British Naval Officer on the Yangtse.\n\nIn that same year of 1900 the British river gunboat Woodlark, which was 145 feet long, by 23 feet beam, but had a draft of only 3 feet, also reached Chungking, and in the following year Woodlark and her sister ship Woodcock reached Sui Fu, 100 miles beyond Chungking. It was in the December of that year that the first of many serious accidents occurred on the Upper Yangtse, when the German steamer Suichsiang went on the rocks at the Tungling Rapids, 36 miles above Ichang, and was a total loss.\n\nThe Yangtse has its source in Tibet, not far from the headwaters of the Yellow, Mekong, Salween, and Irawaddy Rivers. When this became known to Europeans it became the ambition of many travellers to go up the Yangtse as far as possible, and then to cross over the Himalayas into Burma or India. This journey had a fascination for Europeans very similar to that exercised by the Nile and Niger over their fathers and grandfathers. The naval expedition of 1861, which went up the river as far as Yochow, landed three Englishmen there who intended to follow the river to its source in Tibet, and then cross over the Himalayas into India. Captain Blakiston, Lieutenant Saral, and Doctor Barton of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205012, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n111\n\n-\n\nASIAN PERSPECTIVES: The Bulletin of the Far-Eastern Pre-history Association, Vol. VII, No. 1-2 (Summer-Winter 1963), Hong Kong University Press, 1965.\n\nThe 1963 issue of Asian Perspectives comprises the following four parts:\n\n1. Regional Reports\n\nThe achievements of archaeology, mostly up to the end of 1962, are discussed by the area specialists of the Far Eastern Prehistory Association for fourteen regions. These are: Eastern Asia and Oceania (W. G. Solheim II), Northeast Asia (C. S. Chard), Korea (Kim Won-yong), Hong Kong (S. G. Davis), Union of Burma (U Aung Thaw), India (B. B. Lal), Ceylon (P. E. P. Deraniyagala), Madagascar (P. Vérin), Malaysian Borneo (B. Harrisson), Philippines (A. E. Evangelista), Polynesia (Y. H. Sinoto), New Zealand (O. Wilkes), Melanesia (R. Shutler Jr.), Australia (F. D. McCarthy).\n\nEach report is accompanied by a valuable extensive bibliography. Editor Wilhelm G. Solheim II informs the reader that China and Japan are absent because these two countries have too many news items. This issue of Asian Perspectives for the first time covers India, Pakistan (in the section \"Notes and Articles\") and Ceylon.\n\nII. Topical Reports\n\nAn outstanding contribution in this section is a bibliography by M. E. Barker on \"Linguistics\" up to the end of 1962, which also includes unpublished manuscripts.\n\nIII. Notes and Articles\n\nA very remarkable report by Erika Kaneko on the archaeological survey of several of the Ryukyu islands in 1962 sheds new light on the present archaeological situation and on megalithic structures there (pp. 113-137). B. B. Lal's article (pp. 144-159) draws a comprehensive picture of \"A Decade of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology in India, 1951-1960.\" A. P. Khatri reports on field work during 1959-60, which, though it failed in its main object to discover fossil man's bones in India, brought\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205288, "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-1967", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n43\n\nHalf-way up the valley Plum Grove Village (Mui Tsz Lam) climbs the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain peak, overlooking a widening stretch of land. No flat land is to be found here and farming takes place on stone terraces built on the slopes. There is plenty of water, running down the hillsides in small brooks. The third and uppermost settlement is another composite one, Grass Field Village (Mau Ping). It comprises three hamlets and some isolated houses. The valley ends in a bowl-shaped area, and the settlement is spread around on three steep sides. Farming is done entirely on stone terraces. Parts of this bowl are densely forested.\n\nRice production is a prominent feature of the valley. The irrigated fields are double-cropped but the yield is and has, within living memory, never been sufficient to cover the local consumption. It seems that even in a good year the basic food supply would last only for about seven months. Small holdings are characteristic of this valley. Bad soil and lack of arable land limit the possibilities of agricultural expansion, together with the frequent and serious damage caused to crops by typhoons. The torrents of rain accompanying the storms sometimes flood the whole area. The water carries away fertilizers and soil. On the other hand, the crops, especially the first, are exposed to periods of drought since, however well-watered the valley is, people find it extremely difficult to make use of the supply. There is a constant want of rain-water as the fields are often too far away from the brooks. The main stream pursues its way in a deep ravine and is hardly of any use at all, whilst its mouth is, as mentioned, filled with salt water during high tide. The hillsides are steep and the run-off of water is rapid.\n\nIn earlier days the rice produced in the village was consumed on the spot. According to the rice merchants in the market towns the quality of the grain from this mountain area is as good as any from the New Territories' plains. When rice mills operating in the Sai Kung and Sha Tin markets after the Pacific War (1941-45) started an exchange system, the villagers were presented with a new alternative. They could transport their high-quality rice crop to the market and there exchange it for inferior broken polished rice, generally imported from Burma or Thailand. This is now usually done, and on a 'picul for picul' system;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206488, "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-1972", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "30\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nentered the Borneo scene in 1839 very much the idealist-humani-tarian, nineteenth century liberal, gentleman adventurer, in the colonial tradition of such forerunners as Francis Light of Penang and Thomas Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore and sometime British governor of Java. Even much of the colour and romance painted by the early travellers and story writers bears up under the careful scrutiny of the historian.\n\nJames Brooke came from stock which had produced a seven-teenth century lord mayor of London. His father and uncle were civil servants in the East India Company, and James lived until aged 12 near Benares on the Ganges in British India where he was born in 1803.\n\nBrooke himself entered the military service of the Company after a somewhat indifferent education which involved only two years of formal schooling in the Norwich Grammar School. He was severely wounded in a campaign of the first Anglo-Burma war in 1825, and after a prolonged convalescence resigned from the Company, largely, we are led to believe, because of disenchantment with its conduct of eastern affairs and because of widespread corruption among Company servants.\n\nWhen in 1835 Brooke's father, then a retired nabob living in Bath, died leaving him a comfortable fortune of £30,000, James bought a schooner and fitted out an expedition to Borneo and the Celebes Islands, an area in the East Indies with which he was familiar from earlier voyages and from exhaustive reading of the accounts of George Windsor Earl and Stamford Raffles.\n\nBrooke's schooner sailed in December 1838 under the colours of the Royal Yacht Club. He looked forward to satisfying his adventurous curiosity about Borneo and perhaps doing some trading. He particularly wanted to penetrate to the interior of Borneo, and had in mind exploring up the rivers which flowed into Marudu Bay, on the northern end of the island. He was a private voyager, but the colours of the Royal Yacht Club commanded respect in naval and colonial circles and he was well received in Singapore where he arrived in May 1839.\n\nI\n\nThere he was given a pseudo-official mission to perform in Borneo. Several Singapore-based vessels had recently been ship-wrecked or plundered by Bornean pirates and their crews sold into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206775, "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-1973", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "46 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nsteamships in India operated on the Hoogly in the early 1820s, mainly as tug boats. \n\nThe first steamship in the Dutch East Indies was the Van der Capellen, a paddle steamer of 230 tons, designed to operate a coastal service in Java. The Van der Capellen was built by a consortium of British merchants in Sourabaya in 1825, and equipped with engines built by Fawcett and Company of Birmingham. \n\nDue to the close association between British India and Canton through the East India Company, it was not long before steamships were introduced on the Canton River. Although he did not live to see his scheme carried through, a Mr. T. J. Robarts of the Company's Canton staff is the pioneer of steam navigation in China. When on leave in London in 1821, just nine years after the Comet was launched on the Clyde, he suggested to the Court of Directors that a steam tug could be usefully employed on the Canton River. Because it was thought that the Chinese might object, his scheme was turned down, but Mr. Robarts decided to go ahead on his own. He ordered two 16 horse-power engines and a copper boiler from Henry Maudslay and Company of London, and a hull of oak frames; all of which arrived at Canton in 1822 and aroused great curiosity and admiration. Unfortunately, bad health caused Mr. Robarts to retire prematurely, and there was no one at Canton able, or willing to continue with his scheme. Everything was therefore sent to Calcutta, and arrived there in June 1822. \n\nThe parts were assembled at Kyd and Company's yard at Kidderpore, and the vessel, known as the Diana, was launched on 12th July 1823. However, the original oak hull was discarded in favour of a new hull built locally of teak. The name Diana was taken from the figurehead which had accompanied the original hull. The total cost of the Diana was 70,000 rupees, and the government declining to take any part in the enterprise--this was financed by a group of Indian agency houses. \n\nThe Diana ran successfully, but not profitably, on the Hoogly for a year, and was then sold to the government for use in the Burma War, 1824-1826. It was Captain Marryat, then the senior naval officer in India, who recommended her purchase to the government. The Diana took part in the first expedition to Rangoon, and proved so useful that she was retained on the Irawaddy for the whole of the war. She suffered at times from overloading, as not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207763, "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-1976", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "136\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nport for the work came from American United China Relief (UCR) funds through the American Friends Service Council (AFSC); there were members from Canada, U.S.A., New Zealand, as well as China itself; and the self-sufficiency required was much greater than that of other FAU groups.\n\nThe original plan, worked out in late 1940 and early 1941, was for a group of forty men, equipped with 20 trucks, a mobile operating theatre and mobile workshop, to undertake two tasks. The first was the transport of medical supplies into China from Burma and the second provision of medical teams to work with civilian and military hospitals. The proposals had the support of the British Fund for the Relief of Distress in China under Dr. H. Gordon Thompson, the Foreign Office, the U.C.R. and the AFSC. The trucks and equipment were purchased in the US and shipped to Rangoon where they were assembled and driven up to China. Dr. R. B. McClure, a Canadian medical missionary born in China, was appointed to lead the Unit.\n\nIt will be remembered that in 1941 Japan occupied all the coast of China, transport up the railway to Kunming from Hanoi had ceased and the only land routes into the western provinces still held by the Government of the Republic of China under Marshal Chiang Kai Shek were the Burma Road and the road from the USSR via Sinkiang. When the Sino-Japanese war widened into the Pacific War on December 8, 1941, about half of the FAU group had arrived in Burma and China, the first trucks were being assembled in Rangoon and the rest of the party and equipment were on the high seas. All arrived safely and the Unit undertook a number of interesting tasks during the Burma fighting of 1942.1\n\nMedical Services and Supplies in China\n\nDespite the diversion of manpower and loss of trucks and fuel in Burma the work of transporting medical supplies in China got underway in 1942. In 1941 there were four organizations concerned with military and civilian medical services:—\n\n1) the Army Medical Administration (AMA)\n\n2) the Chinese Red Cross (CRC)\n\n3) National Health Administration (NHA) Weishengshu (衛 生 署) with its civilian hospitals and clinics.\n\n4) Over 100 mission hospitals, responsible to their own Mission Boards.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207771, "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-1976", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "144\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\ntruck so that the payload of 2 tons was the maximum. However, by 1944 the charcoal trucks were being operated successfully over the Luhsien road with its high altitude as well as all the other routes. Charcoal was obtainable in most villages and was cheap in the mountain areas and the cost, per ton carried, was 1/5 of that of alcohol. The charcoal burners carried the major load of supplies through 1944 and the first part of 1945.\n\nThe successful Burma campaign of autumn 1944, the opening of the Ledo road and the petrol pipeline laid along it made a great difference to the Unit transport systems. Not only was the Unit allocated 25 Canadian W.D. 3-ton Dodge trucks in the summer of 1945 from ARC and UNRAA, but it was also able to obtain P.O.L. (Petrol, Oil and Lubrication) supplies from the US army free of charge. To quote from a letter written 10/6/45 “It was a great moment when at Kunming, Rupert (Stanley) and I drove up in a truck to the P.O.L. station and pulled up beside a real petrol pump (and bright red at that too) and said to the Sergeant \"Fill'er up\" and he filled her up to the tune of 22 gallons US. When I told him it was 34 years since I'd done that he registered the usual GI amazement that anyone could stand the place that long”.\n\nSystem Performance\n\nThe cargo carried by the system was in three categories: Medical and Relief supplies for NHA, IRC, ARC etc.; FAU maintenance and fuel supplies; and return cargoes. The Government transport administration ruled that no trucks should travel empty and on return journeys must take Government, usually military, cargoes. The Unit had a special pass, as a Christian pacifist organization, exempting it from taking soldiers or weapons and instead usually had cargoes of salt from the Yangtse valley south to Kweichow and Yunnan.\n\nThe system performance figures in terms of kilometre tons for the 4 years, as far as they are at present available, are given in Table VII. The number of trucks available on average through the years are given, and from this it will be seen that the operating efficiency in terms of kilometre tons per truck per year steadily increased. This was due to:---\n\n1) increased efficiency of the Charcoal truck operations, more than compensating for the deterioration of the diesel trucks", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207792, "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-1976", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n165\n\nboats as far as Bhamo, and then partly by land and partly by water into China. Other exports were amber, ivory, precious stones, betel nuts, and edible birds' nests; while in return Burma got raw and wrought silk, velvet, gold leaf, preserves, and chinaware. Similar reports came from other sources. By 1850, the possibility of extending trade from Yunnan into Szechwan was envisaged, and the glowing prospect of an extensive market for British goods in West China became an obsession among many British officials and merchants in Burma and India.\n\nCaptain McLeod's mission of 1836 is the first official British attempt to find an overland route to China. McLeod went from Moulmein, the port in the newly acquired province of Tenasserim, via Kungtang to Kenghang, a Shan state on the border of China. Here he failed to get permission to enter Yunnan, being told that if the British wanted to trade with China they should go to Canton, and that if he still persisted in wanting to enter Yunnan he would require official permission from Peking. McLeod had to admit defeat, and turned back.\n\nAfter this came a succession of other ventures from Assam and Burma, all—for one reason or another—failures. These culminated in the famous and ill-fated Dual Mission of 1874-75, which led to the Margary Affair.* This was a joint attempt to explore West China from the Burmese and Chinese sides. Previous to this the only important attempts to find a route between Burma and China from the eastern side had been Captain Blakiston's in 1861 and T. T. Cooper's in 1868.\n\nThe Royal Navy's expedition of 1861 which went up the Yangtze to establish the first treaty ports on the great river—Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow—continued 153 miles beyond Hankow to Yochow. Here they transferred Blakiston's party to junks in which they continued for another 1050 miles to Pingshan, nearly 1800 miles from the sea and 400 miles above Chungking. It had been intended to follow the Yangtze to its source in Tibet, and then cross the Himalayas into India. Because of unsettled political conditions at Pingshan and beyond, however, they were forced to turn back; but they had obtained valuable information about the Middle and Upper Yangtze.\n\nSee pp. 169-170 below.\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207795, "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-1976", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "168\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nMeanwhile exploration continued from the south. Between 1866 and 1868 the French under Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier made their famous expedition from Saigon by the Mekong River through Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos to Talifu and Kunming in Yunnan. The Panthay Rebellion was then at its height, and the Chinese authorities refused them permission to proceed further up the Mekong. Garnier, who had succeeded to the leadership after Lagrée's death, had to abandon his plan to explore the sources of the Mekong, and turned east across Yunnan to the Upper Yangtze at Iping. Here boats were obtained to take them on the four weeks journey to Hankow. Garnier saw enough of the Mekong to realise that it could never rival the Irawaddy, let alone the Yangtze, as a trade route to West China, and French interest shifted to the Red River route from Haiphong through Tongking. During an enforced delay on the Siamese border, Garnier made the first thorough survey of the ruins of Angkor, and his expedition is important in that it encouraged French ambitions for an Indo-Chinese Empire.\n\nThere was no clear policy on the part of the various British parties concerned with developing trade with West China, nor over the best way to reach this region of supposed inexhaustible wealth. Lack of accurate information is also a constant theme in the history of British relations with West China. However, penetration and exploitation from the West, that is from India and Burma, attracted greater public and official support in Britain than that from the Yangtze by the China traders, though by 1874, a combination of circumstances led to a co-operative effort being made from both East and West, the aforementioned Dual Mission of 1874-75, which I shall now describe.\n\nThe Panthay Rebellion finally came to an end in May 1873 when the Imperial troops captured Momein, this completing the reconquest of Yunnan after eighteen years of civil war. During the ensuing period of rehabilitation the provincial authorities tried to revive the Burma-Yunnan overland route, and caravans reappeared after nearly twenty years' absence, undeterred by disbanded soldiers and lawless hillmen. By May 1874 the British Political Agent at Bhamo reported that more caravans were passing between Burma and Yunnan than for many years, and that British and Chinese merchants were sending such large consignments of goods", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207813, "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-1976", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "186\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nWith Pegu one is back to the culture of the early inhabitants of Burma, the Mons. Their original centre was around Thaton, further east than Pegu and this was certainly in existence by the 5th century AD. It was a Mon monk who had converted the Burmese King Anawrahta in the middle of the 11th century to Buddhism, and the king had requested certain relics and texts from king Manuha, who had refused. The result of the refusal was the destruction of the Mon kingdom but its cultural preeminence was recognised in the religion, architecture and art of early Pagan. After the fall of Pagan the Mons reestablished their kingdom, first at Mataram, and then, from 1369 at Pegu (Hanthawaddy or Hamsavati). They were temporarily ruled by the Burmese from 1539-1550 and again from 1551-1740; but Mon independence was due to be short-lived and the last king Binnya Dala was killed in 1747 by Alaungpaya and the Mons, like the Chams in Vietnam, then became a people without a country, though they still exist in large numbers in lower Burma near Moulmein and also in scattered villages in central Thailand.\n\nPegu is a day trip out of Rangoon, but as much as the present capital now reflects the condition of contemporary Burma, so Pegu is lost in its past. Its most famous sight is the Shwemawdaw pagoda, centred round a stupa with a broad stepped octagonal base and which is still taller than the Shwedagon in Rangoon. It is in many ways the palladium of Mon culture. Its foundation date is not known, but it was already raised in height by the Mon king Thamala in 825. In the twentieth century it suffered three severe earthquakes, and the present spire effectively dates from 1954 when restoration was completed. A number of ancient Buddha images was found when much of the stupa collapsed in the 1930 earthquake. Not very far from the Shwemawdaw is the spot where the two Hamsa birds alighted, one on the other's back, on a shallow spot in what was then the sea. The Hamsa is the symbol of the Mons and is also of course the mount of Brahma. This site is the Hinthagone, which now boasts a rather horrible modern shrine with vulgar paintings of hamsas but with a good view towards the Shwemawdaw. Hardly less vulgar is the reclining Buddha, the Shwethalyaung, reputed to be largest such image and certainly one of the ugliest. It was originally built in 994 but fell into disrepair and was restored in the 15th century. It was neglected again and became overgrown, to be rediscovered by a railway engineer at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208572, "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-1979", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "2\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nThe American sense of guilt was largely attributable to three factors: United States' military defeats in Southeast Asia, the American commitment to the policy of defeating Germany first before concentrating on Japan, and the American failure in delivering the bulk of lend-lease and other war materials promised to China. On the first point, according to Stanley K. Hornbeck who was political adviser to the Department of State, reports from American sources from or through Chungking indicated that the American defeat in the Philippines, together with the rapid collapse of the British position in Southeast Asia, had bred \"a sense of frustration and defeatism” among the Chinese.4 To be fair, however, one must add that China had been vastly more appalled and disillusioned by, and consequently more contemptuous of, the British performance.\n\nOn the second point, it was only natural that China was disappointed and embittered by the American policy of “Germany First”. Support for this order of priority was by no means unanimous within American government circles. Admirals Ernest J. King and William D. Leahy, General Douglas MacArthur (at his new headquarters in Australia), and Stanley Hornbeck, to give some examples, all expressed doubt about it and urged that a greater military effort should be directed against Japan. While President Roosevelt was firm on his decision to stand by the agreement reached at the 'Arcadia” Conference it did not mean that he was entirely free from embarrassment when faced with his Far Eastern ally, Chiang Kai-shek.\n\nM4\n\nOn the third point, immediately after Pearl Harbour, President Roosevelt had been generous in promising China war materials, including planes, mainly through lend-lease channels. However, the Americans soon realized that it was easier to make the promise than to implement it. Two difficulties were involved. The first was the problem of transport. After the fall of Burma and the seizure of the southern part of the Burma Road by the Japanese early in 1942, air transport became the only feasible means of getting supplies into China. Until the opening of the well-known Ledo Road (later on re-named Stilwell Road) early in 1945, the bulk of the supplies flown from India to China was transported by the Tenth United States Air Force between April and December 1942, and thereafter by the United States Air Transport Command in what Joseph W. Ballantine, who became director of the Office of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208574, "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-1979", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nOstensibly for medical reasons, at the end of 1942 and early in 1943, to pass unutilized. No effort was spared to make the visitor feel welcomed and cherished. She was a guest at the White House and at President Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park. She was invited to address the Senate and the House, and was welcomed by huge gatherings at all the stops she made from the east to the west coasts.13 A further and significant gesture of American friendliness was embodied in the United States' renunciation early in 1943 of her extraterritorial rights in China,14 a subject to be further dealt with later. One last example of the American compensatory effort during the first two years of the Pacific War was the passing of an act in December 1943, by large majorities of both Houses of Congress, repealing the longstanding Chinese exclusion laws, establishing an annual Chinese immigration quota, and making legally admitted Chinese eligible for naturalization as American citizens.15\n\nIt is imperative to spell out in some detail the general American attitude vis-a-vis China, not only to serve as background to the subject under discussion, but also because such attitude unavoidably influenced Britain in her dealings with China, including those over the question of Hong Kong. Ever since Pearl Harbour, China had made no secret of her resentment of Britain for having rejected China's offer of assistance in the defence of Hong Kong and Burma, for having been so catastrophically defeated by Japan in such a short time, and for, according to Chou En-lai who was then representative of the Chinese Communist Party at Chungking, having “discriminated against and treated as inferiors the Chinese who fought with the British at Hong Kong and in Malaya.”16 Britain, on her part, was anxious to improve relations with China and to collaborate closely with the United States in relation to their Far Eastern ally. She was, not unlike the United States, \"obsessed” for the greater part of 1942 with the fear that China might \"throw up her hands.\" The Foreign Office decided that all that Britain could do was to \"adopt an apologetic and ingratiating attitude towards the Chinese.\" However, the United States, much to Britain's annoyance, stole the limelight from all the major British attempts at appeasing China. Britain's offer of a loan of £50,000,000, with stringent regulations regarding expenditure to maintain equilibrium in her post-war balance of payments, was a clear anti-climax to the Chinese after the unconditional American loan.18 Although Britain renounced her extraterritorial rights in China simultaneously", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208714, "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-1979", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "144\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nMaryknollers being driven West in the face of the Japanese advance that we had to secure a house to serve them until they got flights out over the Himalaya mountains into Burma or India. Father Frank Keelan received from the Bishop of Kunming a good-sized building, formerly a club for the French who maintained the railway between Kunming and Indo-China, and turned it into a hostel for travel-weary Maryknollers who had been walking, or riding trucks, for weeks in order to reach this city. Father Jim Smith, who had been assisting Father Tennien in Chungking, took Father Keelan's place in Kunming when the latter left for the States, and while there set up a branch of Father Tennien's continent-spanning financial operation to assure a steady supply of funds to the missioners not yet driven out of their posts by the Japanese armies. Father Tennien's mission at this time was to close out this operation; his travels brought him to Calcutta and Chungking, and in the latter place, now manned by Father Tom Brack, it was decided to move the base of operation to Shanghai since the Government was leaving this wartime capital for its former site, Nanking, while the many foreign aid organizations were leaving for Shanghai. Since it seemed that Shanghai would now become the financial center for overseas remittances, he worked out a plan with Father Brack to begin closing down the Chungking operation and move to Shanghai. Following this, he then flew to Shanghai to look things over, and reported to Maryknoll that a priest should be assigned to that city to take care of financial matters for the Society. On his return to Hong Kong, Father Tennien received the first copy of his latest book, \"Chungking Listening Post,\" written while he was in that city during the war years. This copy he autographed and sent to General Wedemeyer, Chief of the American mission in China, and a personal friend.\n\nIn response to Father Tennien's request to set up office in Shanghai, the Maryknoll General Council requested him to do this personally and to continue to manage financial affairs until the post-war situation settled down.\n\n1946\n\nAt the beginning of the year, the Maryknoll Council decided to keep Father Tennien in Shanghai over his repeated requests to return to his mission in Wuchow where there was an unprecedented", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211671, "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-1989", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "61\n\nTHE KIUKIANG INCIDENT OF 1927\n\nP. H. MUNRO-Faure\n\nThe turgid waters of the Yangtze rolled by to the sea, four hundred and eighty miles away. They swirled past the two hulks, alongside which river steamers came to discharge the cargoes of cotton material, hardware, salt, and those edible sea-products so dear to the heart of the Chinese gourmet; loading in return tea, porcelain, grass-cloth, and camphor.\n\nInshore small wavelets glistened in the wintry sun, and lapped along the edge of the dark mud, which sloped down to the water in front of\n\n* Editor's Note. Paul Hector Munro-Faure was born in 1894 of Swiss/Scottish parentage. Educated in England, he entered the Supplementary Army Reserve in 1912, and volunteered on the outbreak of War, being commissioned in the Sherwood Foresters. He was wounded on the Somme in 1916, and, on his recovery, was attached to the King's African Rifles, with whom he saw action in Tanganyika. By the end of the War he had risen to the rank of Captain. He was Mentioned in a Despatch for distinguished services in the field, and was commended in writing by the Secretary of State for War.\n\nAfter the War, he joined the Asiatic Petroleum Company, and remained in their service until the outbreak of the Second World War, as Manager of one or other of their offices in China. In 1937 he established a Chinese Refugee Safety Centre in Shanghai, and was later decorated for this by the Chinese Government with the Brilliant Star with Ribbon. In 1938 he was connected with the International Relief Committee in Nanking, by whose Chairman he was commended for his work for the displaced. He was also commended at this date by the Secretary of the Admiralty for his work in evacuating from that city civilians at risk.\n\nOn the outbreak of the Second World War he was commissioned as Major (shortly afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel) in the Special Operations Executive. He worked at first in the Bush Warfare School at Maymyo, Burma, which trained Chinese guerillas for behind-the-lines work. (For this school, see \"Prisoners of Hope\", Michael Calvert, (London, 1951), where Lt. Col. Munro-Faure is mentioned at p. 11). He then opened a similar school near the front lines in the Hangchow-Nanking area. For this he was awarded an OBE in 1943. Later still he worked between the front lines on the north-east frontier of Burma, attempting to ensure the continuing support for the British of the native princes of the region, in the face of Japanese, and particularly Chinese, attempts to replace the British as the dominant local power. He was commended for this work by his Commanding Officer. In 1944, he was recalled to England. After the War he was seconded as Oil Attache to the British Embassy in Romania. He retired in 1949, and died in 1956.\n\nLt. Col. Munro-Faure wrote a book of Memoirs in 1944-1945, in 11 chapters, covering his experiences in the Kiu Kiang Incident (1927), and between 1937 and 1944, together with an exposition of his views on the proper role of foreigners in China. The text is in the Imperial War Museum, London,\n\nBecause of the immensely valuable picture these Memoirs paint of the Kiu Kiang Incident (in which the writer was closely involved), of China during the early War years, and of the border areas of Burma during the period when the present troubles in the area were first developing, it is proposed to print them as a series in this and the next several issues of the Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212605, "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-1991", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "139\n\na game, I suspect, long known to Burma, which until 1937 was a mere annex to India. The counters were not only things, such as aeroplanes, or guns, or cement; but also persons, such as administrators, or pilots, or corporals. It all depended where you were on the list of priorities. Top priorities took their pick of what was going. When a battalion commander, or the head of a government department, is instructed to detail so many men to such and such a job, outside his own sphere of interest, being human, he will naturally discard the men he can best spare. They will not be his best men; he will get away with what he can. It would be dangerous to try to impose too far on a high priority. All is permissible. A low priority is fortunate to receive anything, but must accept what is offered. Burma was at the bottom of all the priorities.\n\nNeedless to say by the time our troops were due we had received no cooking pots, no hurricane lamps, no latrine buckets, and no brown paper. I borrowed what I could from our father and mother, the Yorkshire Light Infantry, and the night before the troops arrived went into the bazaar to purchase the rest out of my own pocket.\n\nOur troops were a grand lot: they were collected from the Commandos in all parts of the world. Some came from Australia, while others had only recently taken part in the evacuation from Greece. We were put through the motions of S.K. (silent killing) and taught the art of booby-trapping. Our Chief Instructor, Calvert, later to win renown as a Brigadier under Wingate, was a regular sapper, with a bent for thinking up ever more ingenious ways of perplexing the enemy. We developed all sorts of devices, and blew up as much as we dared. The Maymyo valley echoed to the sound of explosions, and the local inhabitants, or the visitors from the plains, would say, \"There are those Bush Warfare people at it again.”\n\nI must confess that my first impressions of Burma had been poor. Rangoon looked decayed and depressing in the heat. The walls of brick, covered with plaster, showed large mould stains, the result of the damp monsoon climate. On arrival at Maymyo, a stranger, insufficiently briefed, and knowing no one, I was shocked at the formality, in the second year of the war, which required every one to change into evening clothes for dinner at the Club. It may have been something to do with the name by which the school was known, or the free and easy ways of our Commando men, but at first people seemed to look on us with a slight suspicion, not unlike the attitude towards the stage villain who is expected to do the wrong thing by the modest maiden. However, in time the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212606, "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-1991", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "140\n\ninhabitants got to know us better; they accepted our lack of dinner jackets, our effect on the drink stock at the Club, our — regrettable — neglect of the traffic signals, and our other little mannerisms, and treated us right royally.\n\nThere were two seasons in Maymyo, the second and briefer one, lasting several weeks, towards the end of the rains in October. The Club, a long rambling creeper-covered building, became gay with visitors. It looked out over a pleasance, cleared from the jungle, and spreading a mile towards the reservoir dam, built by Turkish prisoners in the last war. It goes without saying that a race course and golf links were laid out over the meadowland, very pleasant to behold. But here we were next door to India. The plumbing in the gentlemen's cloak room, consisted of a row of rusty and battered enamel utensils, set out at more or less even intervals on a long low shelf. Without the door, a shadow hovered, poised to dash in the moment he heard the rattle of a utensil returned to the board. No Americans visited Maymyo while I was there. It would have been interesting to hear their first reactions to these Arcadian simplicities.\n\nAfter all Burma was a rich enough country; it was not any lack of money that left it a Victorian remnant. Amongst the Burmese there is no caste, nor is there any desire to work. The house servants everywhere are Indians, of whom there were over a million in the country. Of the annual increase of 5,000,000 in India, a substantial proportion must be of the sweeper caste. Amidst a population with so abnormal a rate of procreation, the border line between a sufficiency and famine is a fine one, easily crossed; and any modernisation of sanitary installations would create serious unemployment: thus in India the vested interest in caste puts the brake, not only on plumbing, but on all progress; and Burma, until recently had been the backwater of India.\n\nI spent six months in Burma, but had little opportunity to learn much of the country. I saw very little of the Burmese, and never met one of those attractive country maids, who wait by the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking out to sea. Of the seventeen million inhabitants, only ten million are Burmans; besides the Indians, there are 300,000 Chinese, and the remainder are tribesmen from the hills.\n\nThe history of Burma is a bloody one; the country had seldom for long been united. The Chinese under Kublai Khan, the Mongol,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212617, "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-1991", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "151\n\nalong the dismantled track ran no trains, under whose wheels we could get our dummy mines, as we had been able to do in Burma where the alarm created by their noisy, if harmless, explosions had often confused the Indian engine drivers.\n\nThe magistrate was helpful: he devoted two days to tramping round with us from village to village, until we could decide where accommodation for the school might be most suitable; and he promised to build a short length of road to connect the village finally selected with the motor road so that our lorries could drive right up to the door. The village was some miles outside a small country town; I shall call it Chin Ya, the Golden Duck.*\n\nNew Year's Eve fell while I was making these investigations. The local general, with that consideration which is the charming mark of Chinese breeding, fearing I should be lonely, invited me to dinner. Since arrival in the 3rd War Zone I had asked to be kept informed of any parties of foreigners escaping from Shanghai, but no news of any escapes had come through. It was accordingly with the greater pleasure, as we were sitting down to dinner, that I was surprised by the entry of a tall bearded figure, wearing a long Chinese gown, and heard myself addressed in English. He was the first foreigner to escape from Shanghai, an American, Mr. Hawkins, the manager of one of the branches of the big American bank which had offices in China.\n\nHe told us his story while we ate our dinner. Having only just returned from leave in the States, he was staying at an hotel, which happened to be near the Bund. Early on the morning of December 7th he was wakened by the sound of gunfire. He went out to investigate and found that Japanese destroyers were sinking H.M.S. Peterel in the Whangpoo River just off the Bund. He realised that war must have broken out and dashed round to his bank to 'phone his manager. He then returned to his hotel, packed a small bag, got into his car, and drove out to the stables in the western suburb, where a friend kept two ponies which he had permission to ride. He saddled the ponies, and riding the one while leading the other, passed through the gate at which a Japanese sentry stood guard where the road crossed the barbed wire barrier surrounding Shanghai. The barrier had originally been put up by the foreign troops holding the\n\n* It is in the Tianmushan mountains, near the border of Chekiang and Anhwei, near the country town Anchi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212622, "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-1991", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "156\n\non the door panels drew attention wherever they passed, the Allies were arriving. Alas, the advance party was the only party we were to receive: the attack on Burma was developing very quickly and all supplies and reinforcements were diverted there. Then the Burma road was cut, and as time advanced we found we had to get along with what we had. It was not as if we had even a first claim on such supplies as had already reached China for the British Military Mission. Our particular activity was not the main interest of the Mission, and we were not on any priority list.\n\nHowever, the future was concealed from us. We started off, full of enthusiasm, for Chin Ya in our four lorries accompanied by the General Commanding the Engineer Troops of the 3rd War Zone, a particular friend of ours, and reached our destination without incident. Mac's arrangements had all been completed and we were able to enter immediately into the quarters prepared for us.\n\nI was a little uneasy about the magazine, a flimsy outbuilding, used as a temple and distant a hundred yards from the village. We removed the idols from the shelf at the back, stacked our explosives there and on wooden racks built for the purpose, so as to keep them off the damp floor; and locking the door posted a sentry over it, hoping for the best. There were several tons of explosive; had they gone up they would have taken the village with them.\n\nA row of houses had been taken over for the students; in a small wood at the back three open thatched sheds had been erected as lecture rooms; and the top floor of the largest house in the village, owned by a widow, was occupied by our Chinese assistants. The widow lived on the bottom floor; she was old-fashioned and had strong objections to our installing windows in the walls of her house to admit light to the rooms. There was a local superstition that windows let the money fly out, thus impoverishing the occupants; all the houses in the district had only little slits, inadequate to relieve the gloom inside. With Michael's assistance we persuaded her to allow us to put in roughly made window-frames, fitted with wooden shutters for use if it rained; we, of course, had no glass.\n\nTwo temples had been reserved for our own quarters: the one, at a little remove from the village, I used as my office and living quarters: the other contained a large hall facing a small yard, open to the sky.\n\nI\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212796, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "90\n\nThree Bold Adventurers to fight alongside the Nien rebels. After being captured and carried to Chin-chiang in a cage, he was saved by two British artillery officers serving with the Taiping forces.\n\nThe third time was in Hankow when Mesny took Damström along with him as a heavy-weight. The incident occurred after Mesny 'arrested' the dishonest Chinese merchant who had swindled Dupuis. [These incidents are probably not in temporal order].\n\nDupuis, Jean\n\nA French merchant born ca. 1828, who arrived and lived in Hankow in about 1860. He built up a thriving trade in armaments. Fluent in Chinese, he introduced Mesny to the Szechuanese officials whose invitation to serve with the Szechuan Force changed his life. Mesny remarked that Dupuis was a distinguished explorer and 'conqueror of Tonkin.'\n\nGill, William J: born Bangalore 1843\n\nServed in India after being commissioned into the Royal Engineers. Inherited a fortune and indulged his passion for exploration. One of his travels was through north Szechuan province, where first he travelled alone and then later with Mesny to Burma. He wrote The River of Golden Sand in 1880, and after several other travels, in Tripoli and Afghanistan, he was murdered by Bedouins in 1882.\n\nGiquel, Prosper M. [1835-1886]\n\nA French naval officer who arrived in China during the Second China War. Formerly Commissioner of Imperial Maritime Customs at Ningpo and Hankow. He assisted the Sino-French 'Ever Triumphant Army' that fought alongside Tso Tsung-t'ang's force in Chekiang province to recapture Hangchow and Ningpo, and later commanded the force in operations that led to the recapture of Hangchow, for which he received high rank and honour from the Ch'ing government. His principal achievement was the construction and administration of the Foochow Arsenal in 1866, and dockyard with its fleet of warships. He was the only foreigner besides Gordon to receive the honour of the Yellow Riding Jacket.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212824, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "118\n\nassistance which it might be possible to provide, and, soon after, the Myosa left to return to his country.\n\nIn August 1943 British troops were poised on the Assam border at Imphal, Tamu, and Tiddim, awaiting sufficient replenishment of equipment and the cessation of the rains to undertake the return advance into Burma; and there was activity down in the Arakan: while General Stilwell's Chinese divisions, retrained, reinforced, and re-equipped in India after their withdrawal from Burma, were just beginning to feel their way forward from Ledo, away up at the northern end of Assam, down the road which later was to become famous as the Ledo road. General Wingate's first expedition into Burma had just been completed, with heavy loss on our side, but with much success in confusing the enemy and disorganising his effort to consolidate his positions. The shape of future operations depended on the enemy's dispositions, so that any information which could be collected in eastern Burma would be useful: and in Kokang it might also be possible to organise patriot parties to assail his communications.\n\nIt was not an easy matter to obtain the consent of our allies for the passage of a British party to Kokang. The Chinese have unfortunately imitated the Japanese in a predilection for red tape; formalities are extended ad infinitum. It was fair enough that any British officer who entered China should require a pass issued by the Chinese authorities - though no such restriction attached to the presence of Chinese officers in India - but was it really necessary that the power to issue the pass should be retained by the highest authority in the land, the Military Affairs Council which would correspond with our Committee of Imperial Defence and that it should have to carry the personal chop of the Generalissimo? It did not make for speed in administration. It should also be remembered that the Chinese refused to serve in Burma under British command: that is how General Stilwell first came on the scene; and I think it is fair to say that our American allies had come to look on the Far East, and perhaps more particularly China, as their own special sphere of operations, where there was no room for any British.\n\nMy appointment was from the Army in India, which in those days, before the South East Asia Command had been established, was responsible for the operations in Burma. The proposal for assistance to the Myosa was submitted by the British representatives in Chungking to the Chinese government with a request that the necessary passes be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212838, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "The mule track wound along the mountain side. Looking backwards, or forwards, you could sometimes see the green waters of the Salween glistening in the sun far below. At one point, the place was pointed out to me where Chu Ko Liang had built a fort on a knoll commanding both track and river. He was the able counsellor of Liu Pei, who in the time of the Three Kingdoms mounted the throne of Shu (Szechuan) in the second century of our era. Liu Pei stood 7 ft 5 in high; 'He could see behind his back, his ears reached to his shoulders, and his hands to his knees. He possessed the invaluable power of creating a good first impression and was able to keep his countenance under the most trying circumstances.' He sent Chu Ko Liang on an expedition to the south to subdue the border tribes. Chu Ko Liang is said to have penetrated to Burma: 'He made use of the famous device of \"wooden oxen and running horses\" as a means of transport. What the device was nobody now knows.' (From A Chinese Biographical Dictionary by H.A. Giles.) Legend relates that it was Chu Ko Liang who first thought to keep down the numbers of the wild Wa tribesmen by teaching them to bury a human head in each field at the planting of the spring crop; the plan worked all right until the Wa discovered that a Chinese head was equally effective in propitiating the gods, after which they looked beyond the tribal limits for the supply of heads.\n\nSmall side streams ran into the Salween, and each time we crossed one of these the path dropped several thousand feet, almost to Salween level: it would then rise steeply again up the mountain. Down there the hollows were very hot and steamy; the vegetation tropical and thick; higher up it was cool in the shade and many great trees spread their branches over the mountain slopes. We saw few large wild animals: the commonest I believe is the bear. The inhabitants say there are three kinds of bear; the pig bear, the dog bear, and the cow bear. I saw one pig bear in captivity; it had a thick black coat, little pig eyes, and must have weighed about 300 lbs. Tiger, elephant, panther, wild pig, wolves, sambur and barking deer also exist; the lovely Amherst and Stone pheasants, bamboo partridge, jungle fowl, hare, duck, snipe and quail. But we had no time for any of these; later, when our numbers had increased, one of our Gurkha wireless operators used to go out sometimes to shoot for the pot.\n\nNews of our arrival had gone ahead. As we moved along the headmen came out to welcome us; they prepared food for us and were disappointed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212840, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "134\n\ngovernment, after the withdrawal of the British, became useless: the Japanese issued a new rupee paper note of their own, and compelled the people in the areas occupied by them to accept it. In Kokang the only money now acceptable was silver rupees. We had brought some in with us, and further substantial sums were dropped to us by air: it created a problem over the border in China, where the currency situation was so desperate. Our rupees were used to pay for any services or supplies we received from the local population, and they doubtless quickly found their way to the border, where a heavy demand for silver existed owing to the continuous fall in value of the Chinese currency and where, consequently, a rupee would fetch over a hundred dollars. Curiously, Chinese half-dollar silver pieces were still current though not common on the Chinese side of the border, perhaps the only district in China where silver coins still existed, as the Chinese government had gone off the silver standard years before, and withdrawn all silver coins; the silver half-dollar was naturally worth far more than the paper dollar.\n\nOne headman asked me if I could not rescue his son from China. It was a sordid story, the details of which only reached me by degrees, but it is a story which should be told.\n\nLopez was the son of a Filipino father and a Burmese mother. He had spent most of his life in Burma, but claimed American citizenship. The Americans, working from the side of India, were anxious to obtain intelligence about conditions in eastern Burma, and so they trained Lopez, gave him a commission, borrowed some Indian wireless operators from the British, obtained for him a Chinese pass, and sent him with a party into Kokang. They sent him very secretly, a precaution which was not unwise in view of the speed at which news travels on the border; but they overlooked the necessity of informing the American officers with the Chinese Expeditionary Force.\n\nLopez arrived in Kokang in the autumn of 1934, set up his wireless, and began to collect information, a work at which he would have achieved considerable success. I found he had left a very favourable impression on the local population; some of the men who were subsequently to do the most useful work for us had first been engaged by him. The attack on the Myosa upset his arrangements; Lopez knew too much about this, and perhaps spoke indiscreetly; anyhow the Chinese decided to get rid of him. Although he had a Chinese pass, the Chinese went to the American officers attached to the C.E.F., and reported the presence of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212852, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "146\n\nanother. At about this time too I received a signal from Jack, who was doing most useful work across the Salween, that despite our previous agreement the Chinese were refusing to allow his agents to cross, unless they held a pass issued by the Headquarters of the Nth Division at Tetang. That meant a week's delay in each instance, and also it involved making public the names of our agents — the Chinese are not noted for security. So now I made a signal to our Headquarters, and the next I heard was that the Chinese had withdrawn their troops entirely from the ferries in question.\n\nJack himself crossed the river with a small party; but he found he could not proceed far. The Japanese kept a tab on all movement; at uncertain times their men would pass through villages, check the inhabitants and their pack animals. Any discrepancies had to be explained. Moreover, the Kachins were terrified lest the Chinese troops should cross over into their territory. It seemed that in 1942 when the armies retreated from Burma, there were a number of incidents between Chinese troops and Kachins, questions of women, taking food, pack animals, and all those difficulties which do arise on a retreat. The Chinese troops had left a bad reputation. The Kachins had killed some of them and they now feared, should the Chinese return, that they would take vengeance. The situation was difficult and we were unable to develop our plans.\n\nIn April we were joined by an American officer and his radio operator; from the first we had suggested that an American officer should join our party, and we were delighted when he arrived. He went off to join Jack across the Salween for a while. His operator stayed with us and was a great asset to our group. He had led a most interesting life in the States 'following the horses.' We learnt much about American race tracks, American girls, and other things. He would keep the campfire party at night amused for hours on end. At about this time too we ran short of \"imported\" food; things like butter, jam, sugar and tea. During the sorties that month our people had forgotten to include any in the containers, a lapse most unpopular at our end and the subject of lengthy and uncomplimentary comment, after the fashion of soldiers. But our racing expert now produced some American B ration, a large tin of butter, and another of jam, some cheese, some incredibly white caster sugar, such as we had not seen in months, and even a tin of pickles. It was all most welcome.\n\nAs will be imagined we were much dependent on the working of our", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213317, "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-1994", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "120\n\nThe First China War was the culmination of many years of irksome restraint. The British, as did other nations, objected strongly to being treated and listed with Burma, Vietnam and Korea as tribute bearers. The immediate cause was the destruction of all the opium in Canton brought in by foreigners and in 1840 the Chinese fleet attacked a British warship, followed by, amongst other incidents, Canton being bombarded by the British, and the war was on. Palmerston was Prime Minister in Britain during this, the First China War, now possibly better known as the first of the two Opium Wars. It began with a desultory naval engagement and little further happened until Major General Sir Hugh Gough arrived from Madras in March of 1841. The British plan was, first, to capture Chusan island off the coast of Chekiang to use as a pawn in the demand for Chinese agreements to British demands. This proved to be a futile gesture and during 1841 and 1842 British forces, with the continued aim of pressuring the Chinese into legitimising foreign trade within China, proceeded to attack several ports one after the other up the China coast, creeping ever further north towards the capital of Peking, causing the Chinese greater apprehension about the future. The campaign eventually ended with the imminent attack on Nanking, the former capital situated on the Yangtze in central China, avoided last minute by the agreement by the Chinese finally to the terms of a treaty signed in August 1842. One of the attacks on the China coast was on the then city of Chapu, which was to be followed up with an attack on Hangchou.\n\nChapu had a tolerable harbour, with a great rise and fall of tide, so much so that the smaller junks were left high and dry at low water. Together with its suburbs the town, perhaps five miles in circuit built in a square and intersected by numerous canals, lay about half a mile from the coast. The Reverend Gutzlaff in his third voyage up the China coast in January 1833 arrived in Chapu and described the surrounding countryside as the Chinese Arcadia with nothing able to exceed its beautiful and picturesque appearance. He further described the canals, neat roads, plantations and conspicuous buildings, adding that the whole country (of China) from the Yellow River south was flat until one came to the high lands which formed the harbour of Chapu city. The sea, he added, was receding from the land and flats had formed along the shore, visible at low water and constituting a barrier to the whole coast. Gutzlaff found nowhere so much openness and kindness, the (residents') intelligent questions respecting Britain were endless with them never seeming to be satiated with (British) company.\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214840, "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-1999", "page_number": 255, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "222 \n\nA Bold Approach to War \n\nI have referred to the indomitable spirit that animated the British troops and sailors of the War. This was something one cannot fail to notice in the various accounts of the War. As in the First Burma War, there was a boldness that must have taken the Chinese aback whenever it was demonstrated. Being practically universal, one minor example may serve to illustrate the rest. It comes from J.D. Vaughan, later a magistrate in the Straits Settlements, who had served as a midshipman on the Honourable East India Company's steam frigate Tenasserim in 1842, and is recounted here largely in his own words.46 \n\nA few days after the capture of the Yangtse city of Chin-kiang-foo, his captain took two of the ship's boats with twenty or thirty men each, with a brass three-pounder at the bow, and went to a town on a canal flowing into the great river. The writer was in one of these boats. The ship's Chinese carpenter, a Southern Chinese picked up at Singapore, could write but could not speak the Mandarin language of the area. Armed with a slate, and a truly astonishing degree of sang-froid, he made the captain's wishes to purchase provisions known to a large throng of citizens and soldiers who had assembled on the banks. Negotiating with a mandarin, they got all that they wanted, and during their brief stay were treated with the greatest civility and kindness. “A table and chairs were brought, and the elders of the city had a most interesting conversation with us through the invaluable carpenter. It was a curious sight to see the skipper sitting as cool as a cucumber smoking his cigar surrounded by our foes.\" \n\n“Few men,” Vaughan says, “would have ventured so fearlessly into the very clutches of an armed foe within a few miles of a captured city with war raging all around; and strange to say we came away un-harmed and not an angry face was to be seen amongst the crowds of men who flocked out of the gate of the town to see us.” \n\nMany other instances can be found in the books on the War, and indeed it was the norm. This verve derived from military and naval discipline and tradition, and from the leadership shown by, and expected of, British officers of the day. Only when that leadership failed, as in the contemporary disasters at Kabul in the First Afghan War, when a British army was annihilated through hesitation and mismanagement, \n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215933, "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": 232, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "166\n\noff from distant airfields and alerted possible targets. Previously the British had depended on runners and letters delivered by junk: the advantages of tapping on to the Chinese system were obvious.\n\nChiang was enthusiastic, and eager to talk. British policy seemed engineered towards appeasing the Japanese. Protecting trade and British economic interests were paramount, and the fate of China and its people were seen only in the light of that primary concern. In the deafening silence of British efforts to help the Chinese, Boxer's visit, and the recent reopening of the Burma Road, must have seemed like a breakthrough in British attitudes. Boxer sensed that Chiang was 'apparently envisaging a great deal wider form of liaison than we actually had in mind.' Later, British organisations were to claim that it was Chinese hostility and the Americans who stymied their efforts in China. There is plenty to negate this assumption. Dai Li, a shrewd judge of character and not a man to suffer fools, undoubtedly had had Boxer closely observed, and would have smoothed the way for his introduction to Chiang Kai Shek. The warmth of Boxer's reception shows the Chinese were not implacably opposed to the British. Indeed, far from being anti-western per se, General Dai gave enthusiastic support later to Americans such as Captain Miles, and indeed some British SOE related agencies, who were prepared to work with the Chinese on Chinese terms.\n\nThe wireless sets were duly sent to China and installed by a Cantonese speaking SOE officer, Major Hector Chauvin, who had been attached to Boxer in December 1939 for this purpose. Chauvin travelled extensively in China setting up the stations and meeting the Chinese personnel involved. This network was a prototype. It was the first serious intelligence system in the Hong Kong region. Most importantly, the arrangement was based on trust: the Chinese had full operational control. Although the Chinese might have a different agenda to the British, it was an implicit acknowledgement that, in China, the Chinese were paramount, and that Chinese could and did run a most efficient system. The arrangement worked: The evening before the Japanese attacked Kai Tak, Phyllis Harrop, a civilian police adviser, was at a dinner party with British intelligence personnel. At 10:30 hours, they were interrupted by a sudden telephone call, advising all staff to return immediately to headquarters. Major L left immediately and Captain Bush half an hour later. Bush was an expert on extremist secret", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]