[ { "id": 208951, "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-1980", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI, AN INTRINSIC WAY TO ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN WITH ILLUSTRATION OF KAT HING WAI\n\nIN THE NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG\n\nDAVID LUNG*\n\nIn modern society where our environment is largely dictated by economy and technology, much of the deep meaning in places and placemaking has been lost. Scientists, psychologists, sociologists and environmentalists have repeatedly warned us of the danger of alienation from nature, from other men, and more drastically, from our inner self. What Alvin Toffler wrote in Future Shock, published in 1970 is no longer shocking to us; instead, the symptoms have become real societal sickness. Rapid industrial developments and acceleration of social changes have created what Toffler calls a ‘new throw-away culture': our relationship with things is more temporary; with human beings, more transient; with our environment, ‘nomadic.’ Too much is happening too fast. In expressing his strong anguish that human value is being eliminated by technology, Rene Dubos, a distinguished microbiologist, pathologist and Pulitzer Prize winner, protests by saying that \"[s]cientific technology is presently taking modern civilisation on a course that will be suicidal if it is not reversed in time.\" He finds no excuses in affluent societies where, although resources are ample, human values are still neglected by establishments concerned with self-interests only. \"[The institutions base their] choices and decisions on technological means rather than on human ends; [their] criteria are power, efficiency of production, and quantity of consumption, rather than the quality of human life.\" \"Yet... productivity and efficiency have no value in themselves; they have merit only as means to ends.” Therefore, in viewing modern architecture, he deplores that \"apartment and office buildings [in particular] have nothing to communicate beyond efficiency and conspicuous wealth, hence their architectural triviality.\" Indeed our buildings today are so utilitarian that human\n\n* Mr. Lung is a practising architect in Hong Kong. This article is excerpted from his M.Arch. thesis Heaven, Earth and Man: Concepts and Processes of Chinese Architecture and City Planning. Oregon: Centre for Environmental Research, 1978.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208961, "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-1980", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n91\n\nis, borrowed from Wheatley's words, \"... affinial expressions of shared conceptions of the ordering of space, or a common, ‘astrobiological' thought. Each was established only after an array of geomantic considerations had been satisfied. Each was constructed as an axis mundi incorporating a powerful impulse to centripetality. Each was laid out as a terrestrial image of the cosmos, in a schema which involved cardinal orientation and axility...\"24\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n1 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (1970; rpt. New York: A Bantam Book, 1974), pp. 49-177.\n\n2 Rene Dubos, So Human an Animal (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968), p. 179.\n\n3 Rene Dubos, Beast or Angel? (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974), p. 166.\n\n4 Dubos, So Human, p. 179.\n\n5 Dubos, So Human, p. 178.\n\n6 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture (New York: Praeger, 1975), p. 434.\n\n7 For these and other villages of the Kam Tin area, see The Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong Govt Printer n.d. pp. 170-175,\n\n8 考卜維王,宅是京,維龜正之,太王成之,武王哉。 The Wen-wang Yu-sheng song, Shih Ching, Shih-chi-chuan, ed. Chu Hsi ([Sung]; rpt. Hong Kong: China Book Co., 1961), p. 188; trans.\n\n9 J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China (Leiden: Librarie et Imprimérie, 1892-1897), III, pp. 1006-1009.\n\n10 Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society (London: The Athlone Press, 1966), p. 123.\n\n11 Stephen Feuchtwang, An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Geomancy (Vientiane Viettanga, 1974), p. 130.\n\n12 Feuchtwang, An Anthropological Analysis, p. 118; trans, words in brackets are his.\n\n13 Freedman, Chinese, p. 139.\n\n14 Feuchtwang, An Anthropological Analysis, p. 223.\n\n15 Freedman, Chinese, p. 140.\n\n16 Feuchtwang, An Anthropological Analysis, pp. 113-114.\n\n17 Freedman, Chinese, p. 138.\n\n18 Sung, Hok-pang, \"Legends and Stories of the New Territories,\" 1935-1938; rpt. Journal of Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, 13 (1973) and 14 (1974). See 13 (1973), p. 111.\n\n19 Sung, \"Legends\", 14 (1974), p. 171.\n\n20 K... FAX. The commemorative stone tablet was erected in 1925 by Tang Pak-kau.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211665, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "55\n\nare all standard images but, without the temple keeper's clarification it would not have been possible to identify the three as Koxinga in the centre, flanked by two of his generals.\n\nKoxinga was however, an important figure known nationwide, whereas most of the non-pestilence Wang Yeh are petty individuals whose story and influence rarely ranges beyond the boundaries of their native area. The following three examples are from the Tainan area of southern Taiwan.\n\nThe first of the three non-pestilence Wang Yeh is Ch'ih Kan-lin (**), the youngest of three children. His father, Ch'ih Chung-ming brought his family to the small fishing village of Hsiangyang some 350 years ago, at the beginning of the Ch'ing era, from Tainan, the then capital of the island. He had fled from Tainan where he had been an official as he had been falsely accused. His wife was eight months pregnant and when they reached the wretched and poverty-stricken village of Hsiangyang she just could not face going any further. They found a small shack and moved in. The village was in the throes of a very serious drought and the villagers were slowly losing all hope. Their crops were failing and fish ponds, lakes, and rivers had all dried up; the future looked bleak indeed. The father, Chung-ming and his wife joined the villagers in prayers for rain and no sooner had they done so than the mother gave birth to Kan-lin and the rains fell. The rivers and lake filled and the villagers were able to fish again and their crops thrived. The father started a school in the village.\n\nKan-lin was a highly intelligent child and pleased his father with his diligence. When he was twelve he saved the entire village by bringing timely warning of an impending flash flood which destroyed the village but, due to the boy's warning, without loss of life. In the years that followed he did many good deeds which benefited the village as a whole and on several occasions drove off bandits single-handed. He died at the age of 60 and was carried off straight to Heaven from whence he was posted back to the village as the protective deity and has been known as Ch'ih Wang Yeh ever since.\n\nThe second example of a non-pestilence Wang Yeh is Hsu Wang Yeh who lived some five hundred years ago. His mother and father lived in Hsuchou in Kiangsu province where they had put everything they had into a partnership in a silk and textile shop. The father was cheated, badly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 } ]