[ { "id": 211605, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "medical care not available in many mission countries, the Superiors of the Paris Foreign Mission Society decided to put up a house in the Far East for sick and old missionaries. Hong Kong was chosen for this purpose on account of its climate and medical facilities available. It must be added that at that time few places in the Far East offered the political stability and religious tolerance of the Colony\". \n\nThose words have long rung in my ears. I doubt if there could be a finer unsolicited tribute to British Hong Kong. \n\nI must confess, too, against that stirring background of service, and recalling the over 100 priests and high dignitaries of the Mission who were buried in the private cemetery then within the grounds, that I was moved by the inscription that can still be found over the entrance. \n\nFather Caminondo had continued, \"The name of Bethanie was chosen after \"Bethany village\" of the Holy Scripture, and the inscription above the main entrance \"Lord he whom thou lovest lies sick\" is part of the message sent to Jesus by Martha and Mary when their brother Lazarus became sick”. \n\nTruly memorable, at least for me. \n\nBut enough of the past: though it enriches the present. We are a strong Society in both numbers and spirit. We aim to continue in the service of scholarship and mutual understanding in this great City for as long as may be possible. Judging by the record of the last 30 years, there will never be a shortage of willing workers and contributors, whether British, Chinese or others. With Sir David's consent, I shall now ask him to propose a toast to the Hong Kong Branch of the RAS. \n\nxix \n\nJAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214548, "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": 406, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "375\n\nBACKSTREETS OF BEIJING\n\nNOTES ON THE EASTER, 1998 VISIT TO BEIJING\n\nPENNY ROBBINS\n\nMEREDITH TONG-DRAPER GEOFFREY ROPER\n\nThe idea of a visit to Beijing, the Branch's first, came up during the Easter 1997 visit to Shanghai when Council member Dr Joseph Ting offered to lead a trip to aspects of the capital seldom seen by the tourist. Despite a busy work schedule, Dr Ting came true to his promise and on Good Friday, the 10th April led a party of 26 members and guests, including Branch President Dr Dan Waters, to Beijing.\n\nDriving in from the Airport we found that spring had already arrived with the highway lined with trees sprouting every shade of green that one could imagine, and blossom in white, pink and deep crimson. Everything, that morning, looked fresh and clean, and to those who had not been there for some years, more prosperous. \"Bamboo\", the tour guide supplied by the travel agent, soon let us know that Beijing was now sharing in the nation's wealth.\n\nDr Ting soon had us working hard and we went straight from the Airport to the Foreign Missionaries Cemetery in the western suburbs of Beijing, off Chegongzhuang Road, rather ironically tucked away in the grounds of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee Cadre Training School, where a billboard proclaimed Deng Hsiao-ping's pragmatic message “learn from experience\". At the Cemetery, for which the Ming Emperor Wanli had given land in 1611, we were met by Professor Liu Shuyong a research fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Hon. Secretary of the Hong Kong University Alumni Association in Beijing, who had helped make many of the arrangements for our visit, and Madam Gao Zhiyu, President of the China Association for Matteo Ricci Studies, which had been formed in 1995. Madam Gao gave us a very informative guided tour of the cemetery. [Illustration One].\n\nThere are two main sections, one, which has three graves and another with almost fifty more. The principal grave is that of Matteo", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216058, "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": 357, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "291\n\n+\n\nIn early December 1881 Hudson Taylor convened an informal missionary conference at Zhenjiang to discuss the crucial and imperative need to increase their numbers in order to accelerate the pace of converting China. This was an on-going problem raised and discussed by Protestant missionaries across China down the years. The staff and language students from the Missionary Language School at Anqing, another city on the Yangzi, were invited to attend the Zhenjiang conference as were missionaries of the American Episcopal Church.\n\nIn 1900 Mr Absolom Sydenstricker and his wife were both Presbyterian missionaries living in Zhenjiang, together with their daughter Pearl who was eight. During the first months of the Boxer troubles they refused to flee, then in July of that year when conditions had worsened they were compelled to escape to Shanghai, to return a year later. Life for a growing young woman was fairly circumscribed with the white population limited to the few in the consulates, other missionaries and a dozen or so men working with British and American companies. Pearl left in 1917 to marry Mr Buck, an American missionary and academic interested in China's rural economy, at Nan Suzhou in Anhui. Pearl's mother died in Zhenjiang several years later and was buried in what was then known as Zhenjiang's foreign cemetery. In 1920 Pearl's father sold their house and moved to Nanjing. Pearl Buck spent in all some forty-three years in China, and her writings brought Chinese social inter-relationships, especially those of the peasants, to western readers, possibly the first to achieve a world-wide circulation leading to many a westerner's first fascination about China. She wrote many a book and chaired many a public meeting telling people, mainly in the US, of the enduring spirit and resilience as well as the wretched lives lived by Chinese peasants and of the threat from Japanese Imperialism. Her best known works include The Good Earth, and a translation of the Shuihu Ji, 'All Men are Brothers', one of China's most popular pieces of literature. Her parents' family house in Zhenjiang, at the present day address of 6 Runzhou Shan Lu, is now one of the leading tourist attractions, for Americans in particular, despite being part of a semiconductor factory.\n\nIn May 1905 Hudson Taylor, freshly back from recuperation in Europe, stopped by Zhenjiang on his way to Changsha, where he visited the graves of Maria [his first wife who had died there in July 1870] and his children in the little cemetery among the hills. He, himself,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]