[ { "id": 204248, "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": 16, "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\n13\n\nDuring the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, this region became one of the most important regions for archaeological study by Russian, French, German, Japanese, Swedish, and British archaeologists. The great names for the English reader are those of Dr. Sven Hedin of Sweden, and Sir Aurel Stein. The geographical exploration of the one, and the archaeological exploration of the other provide reading material of the utmost fascination and charm, and offer a key to open the closed door of Central Asian studies.\n\nTo these must be added the scholarly work on Central Asian languages Sogdian, Karosthi, Persian, Turkish, Uighur, and Mongolian that illumined the work of the archaeologists, including the names of the two great French sinologues, Edouard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot, and of the Russian Central Asian historian, W. Barthold.\n\nThe greatest episode in the history of Central Asia was the outbreak of the Mongols of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The most extensive land empire that the world has seen stretched from Russia to Mongolia, and embraced also China, Annam, and Persia, and in its later developments the Moghul dominion in India.\n\nThe trade routes between East and West were once more opened, mediaeval travellers from Europe made their way to Mongolia and China, which they knew by the name of Cathay, and for the first time the West had detailed accounts of farther Asia. The book of Marco Polo is known to all, but not so widely known are the slightly earlier journeys and narratives of the Franciscan Friars, John of Pian Carpine, one to the court of Kuyuk Khan (1245-1247), and the other to the court of Mangu in Mongolia (1253-55). Yet these both present to the reader first-hand information of the Mongols, and of the Chinese, on matters overlooked by Marco Polo.\n\nII. The Persians were the first of the great Oriental Empires with which Europe was confronted. The main theme of the History of Herodotus was the invasion of the independent city-states of Greece by the King of Kings.\n\nIt was to understand how this situation came about, how and why the invasion failed, that Herodotus set out on his seventeen years' travels, collecting material—geographical, historical, sociological, and religious from all the peoples and tribes within his reach, to work into his great history.\n\nA hundred years later Alexander reversed the process and the Greeks invaded the East. In three great battles Syria, Egypt, and Persia fell, and the Macedonian army penetrated to the tributaries of the Indus.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204393, "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-1962", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "16\n\nF. S. DRAKE\n\nIn A.D. 489 the Theological School at Edessa was closed by the Roman Emperor Zeno. In A.D. 496 the Nestorian Catholicos (or Archbishop) of Nisibis was made Patriarch of the East with his seat at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia on the Tigris, and the Persian Churches with their own Patriarch were henceforth independent of the Patriarch of Antioch.\n\n4\n\nIt is doubtful how far the split was due to theological differences, and how far to patriotic motives. Although the name 'Nestorian' is commonly applied by others to this ancient independent Syro-Persian Church, it is not the name by which they describe themselves. And in fact they were probably little conscious of the theological differences indicated by the name. They were conscious rather of being a Church outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; their Patriarch was the Patriarch of the Christians of the East, and they called themselves the Church of the Chaldees. Some still call them the Chaldaean Church. But this name has now become attached to a section of them that has become incorporated in the Church of Rome. Some call them the Assyrian Church, and this perhaps is the name least liable to cause confusion. Their centre was in fact, and is, the mountainous country of Kurdistan, east of Mosul (the ancient Nineveh) and of Arbela, where Alexander defeated Darius and commenced the conquest of Persia (331 B.C.). The sturdy peasants, who under the Persian Empire after an initial acceptance, endured a period of bitter persecution, and who maintained their primitive faith and life derived from the early days, are in all probability the descendants of the ancient Assyrians.\n\nAfter the conquest of Persia by the Moslem Arabs, the seat of the Patriarch was moved in A.D. 762 to Bagdad, the new capital, at that time a centre of learning and science, where at first they lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot. During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church was allowed to go on its own way, sometimes with kindly recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognized institution within the territory of Islam.\n\nWith the Mongol invasion Hulugu, grandson of Genghis, took Bagdad in A.D. 1258 and put an end to the Eastern Caliphate.\n\n7 Adeney, op. cit., p. 494.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205574, "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-1968", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "SUN YAT-SEN AND CHINESE HISTORY\n\n111\n\nOne day, a fellow student picked one of the volumes at random and questioned Sun on its contents. It is reported that the student was surprised to discover that young Sun Yat-sen had read the work thoroughly. In this fashion then, is built the image of the revolutionary whose knowledge of his own nation's past was firmly grounded.\n\nYet if anything at all is clear about Sun Yat-sen's career, it should be that he had no real proclivity toward history. Aside from the required Chinese part of his curriculum at Queen's College in Hong Kong, an interest in history seems to be lacking completely in Sun's formal education, which in any case eventuated in a medical degree. But even if there was some interest in Chinese history, as manifested in his hiring of the tutor, it is even more evident that his historical curiosity was not matched by an equal amount of critical acumen as he internalized what he read of it. These then are basic considerations to be taken in hand from the beginning. Any question of the influence of nationalism momentarily aside, Sun's lack of interest in history led to a ready and unquestioning acceptance of the Chinese schoolboy's idealistic self-image of Chinese history, as taught among Western subjects in colonial Hong Kong. This left him without the slightest concern for the possibility of alternative interpretations of questionable historical points or problems, and also led to unabashed carelessness with respect to the accuracy of historical references.\n\nOnly in this way can one explain the surprising and numerous overly-facile historical generalizations and outright errors to be found even in the most cursory reading of Sun's writings. Perhaps the simple comment by Sun that Marco Polo “occupied an official post under Genghis-Khan, of the Yuan dynasty,” might be overlooked even though it contains a double error (since Marco Polo served under Kubilai Khan, and there was as yet no Yuan dynasty in the time of Genghis Khan), because it is of such little importance. But Sun's claim that Cheng Ho visited all the islands of the ocean (ostensibly the Pacific) \"and even reached San Francisco\" certainly merits some notice. Incidentally, Sun was amiss on the date for this supposed expedition as well. Sun was much taken with the pat concept of China's irresistible assimilatory capability, and on more than one occasion referred to it. He noted that China was never \"enslaved\" by foreign invaders but on the contrary the latter “were assimilated by the Chinese as easily as the moving of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208016, "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-1977", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "STANLEY INTERNMENT CAMP, HONG KONG 1942-1945\n\n39\n\nThe pursuit and preparation of food occupied a lot of time for most, and many had jobs of a sort, working on committees, in kitchens, workshops, etc. In addition, there were diversions such as education and dramatic or musical activities. With more than 200 children in Camp as well as teachers and administrators from the Government's Education Department, the University and a number of primary, middle and other schools, education flourished. There were primary, as well as secondary classes, which although greatly hampered by lack of books and equipment, managed to provide lessons for the children. Matriculation examinations were held in 1943 and 1944, with another planned for 1945, but liberation came first. After the war ended, five Stanley students were admitted directly into English universities: two into London and three into Oxford. For the adults in Camp, there were extensive \"adult education\" courses, lectures and programmes ranging from the study of foreign languages such as Chinese, Malayan and French, to lectures on photography, yachting, journalism and poultry-keeping.\n\nAt St. Stephen's College was a large hall with a stage. This was used for the school and also put to active use by those internees interested in dramatic pursuits - plays, musicals, recitals, pantomimes, variety shows, etc. Plays such as \"Private Lives\" and \"Midsummer Night's Dream\" were presented. \"Cinderella\" appeared as a pantomime, and a full-length ballet based on the life of Genghis Khan also provided the internees with moments of pleasant diversion. There were two pianos in Camp which saw a great amount of use, and every Christmas a nativity play and a Christmas concert were presented. In addition, a number of exhibitions were held including art, handicrafts and hobbies.\n\nThroughout the years of internment, there was never a lack of rumours, particularly concerning repatriation and the end of the war. In 1945, rumours multiplied like wildfire, especially following the surrender of Germany in May. News of the Potsdam Proclamation of 26th July, calling for the unconditional surrender of Japan and threatening the destruction of the Japanese homeland, reached the internees through a newspaper stolen from some Chinese workers delivering rations to Camp. Anxious days passed and then on Wednesday, 15th August, the Emperor broadcast his acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation. The following day, Mr. Gimson", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213622, "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-1995", "page_number": 218, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "191\n\nfounder of the Lung-men (P) [Dragon Gate], a sub-sect of the Taoist Complete Truth Sect, Ch'uan-chen P'ai (A) of which he was an early Patriarch. He was the last Immortal to rule the Ch'üan-chen sect in Shantung, having run it for twenty-four years. He is also one of the Seven Immortals the Northern School Pei Ch'1-chen (-) [the Seven Disciples of Wang Ch'ung-yang], and probably is best known as the Ch'uan-chen Master (h) who won imperial support for his sect\n\nHe is remembered not only as the Patriarch but also for his steadfast faith and sacrifice of personal material reward and welfare in the pursuit of the Tao; however, his impetuous urge to voice his opinions during lectures was a major obstacle he had to overcome.\n\nBorn in Teng Chou in Shantung province in about AD 1146 he lived during the troublesome era during which the Sung had been driven into southern China whilst the north was under Tatar rule. At the age of 19 he left home to seek perfection in Taoism in the fabulous Kunlun Mountains, so it is claimed, and at the end of the first year he heard of and sought out the patriarch Wang Ch'ung-yang, became his student and, when Ch'ung-yang died in Ninghsia, another disciple, Ma Tan-yang and Ch'ang-ch'un kept a vigil over Ch'ung-yang's grave for six months.\n\nCh'ang-ch'un became a hermit, and living in extreme conditions with only two possessions, a coir raincoat and bamboo hat, he spent seven years away from mankind, which led to him being known as \"Mr Coir Raincoat and Bamboo Hat\" in his remote hideaway on Lung-men Mountain.\n\nCh'iu Ch'ang-ch'un's fame spread to the capital, and three times he was invited by the Chin [Tatar] emperor Shih Tsung to visit him before Ch'iu agreed. He soon left again for reasons unknown for his remote abode despite the exceptional treatment he was accorded. Genghis Khan in 1222 also invited Ch'iu Ch'ang-ch'un to visit him in the Karakorum to satisfy the Khan's curiosity about Chinese religious beliefs. Ch'iu, about 73 years of age at the time, accepted only because he wished to convince the great Khan to give up slaughter. Ch'iu, accompanied by eighteen disciples, so impressed Genghis with his teachings it is said that he stopped killing from that day forward.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214970, "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-2000", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "22\n\nHan Suyin's patrimonial heritage is very specific, as her father originated from the Hakkas, or \"Guest People,\" a sub-group of ethnical Han Chinese, which initially meant displaced, dispossessed, and hungry peasants, the refugees from misery, migrating in millions from the regions struck by floods, droughts, foreign invasions, civil wars, and rural upheavals, and simply \"seeking a roof.\" The Hakkas themselves claim that they moved five times within recorded history, their first migration dating at about A.D. 311, and the fifth one at the end of the Taiping rising (i.e., in the sixties of the nineteenth century). Their culture was to a very large extent affected by the turbulence of political and social events, by their own relative insecurity in the territories of new settlement, and by the resulting enormous eagerness and ability to survive. For these particular reasons, a somewhat remote analogy can perhaps be drawn between the mobile, industrious, and hard-working Hakkas, dispersed among the settled Han population, and the Jewish enclaves dispersed in medieval Europe and in the contemporary world as well.\n\nIn the thirteenth century - the time of Gengis Khan's invasion and of the resulting third migration - Han Suyin's distant ancestors, named Chou, settled in Meihsien in the province of Kuangtung, a purely Hakka district. The wave of the Manchu-dynasty-inspired fourth migration (1680-1720) took some of them further to Szechuan, the region of Four Streams, a remote Chinese hinterland guarded from the outer world by the cliffs of Tibet, the Snow Mountains, and the Cold Mountains, and the dangerous Yangtse gorges. The recorded family history starts from the first ancestor, who arrived in Szechuan as an itinerant pedlar, most probably carrying across his shoulder a pole, with the baskets swinging at both ends to transport miserable personal property and sale goods.\n\nBy the nineteenth century, Han Suyin's family had managed to climb up the economic and social ladder, to attain the top echelon, i.e., the scholar-official-administrator class. They had become local landed gentry, the cornerstone of the Chinese feudal social setup, and this anachronistic setup might have continued ad infinitum, had it not, under pressure from the colonial superpowers, ultimately collapsed.\n\nHan Suyin's father, Chou Yentung, was born in 1886 in China already invaded by the French and the British, the two colonial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216032, "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": 331, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "265\n\nin 1144, built to the west of the Bridge of a Thousand Autumns, Qianqiu Qiao, beside a small canal with landing places attached. It would seem to have been inside the present city, about where the road from the west gate crosses the canal, before you reached the City God Temple. It was restored in 1271 with a commemorative inscription composed by Liu Xiufu, and the whole establishment was enlarged during the Ming so as to have 109 rooms, with stabling for 80 horses, forty of which had to be kept constantly saddled, presumably for use by imperial messengers.\n\nMoving on to the Yuan [Mongol] dynasty, an interesting account, if indeed it is genuine, claims that Marco Polo mentioned the foundation of Nestorian Christian churches at Zhenjiang (Cinghian fu) by a Nestorian Christian governor, Mar Sargis [or Mar George] from Samarkand. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China during the 13th century employed foreigners within his civil service, one of whom was Marco Polo who spent three years as Governor of Yangzhou, the city a short distance upstream on the northern arm of the Grand Canal immediately across the Great River from Zhenjiang. The story goes that the maternal grandfather of Mar Sargis cured Genghis Khan of a sickness by administering sherbet and his secret recipe. The latter was passed down the family and each generation did good business ensuring their fortune. The story of his appointment as governor would appear to have been confirmed by various entries in the old records of Zhenjiang in which there are references to seven Christian monasteries [i.e. churches] in or near the city, adding that the Zhenjiang Christian population in about AD 1280 amounted to 215. These were started after Mar Sargis had a dream in which he was instructed to construct seven Nestorian churches. Using his fortune he is said to have completed all seven but unwittingly with one on the site of a former famous Buddhist monastery which Mar Sargis was ordered to hand back to the Buddhists. Of the remaining six two were said to have been on the ridge running inland from the former site of the British consulate.\n\nDuring the early days of the Ming, in the reign of the Yongle emperor, various expeditions sailed down the Yangzi from Nanjing, and out into the Eastern Ocean, a commander of several of the expeditions being the renowned eunuch, Zheng He. The policy of despatching such expeditions far beyond China's shores was short-lived. Between 1405 and 1425 Zheng's fleet voyaged through south-east Asia", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]