[ { "id": 204250, "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": 18, "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\n15\n\nEgypt had sailed through the Red Sea, and keeping the land on their right had rounded Africa and returned through the Straits of Gibraltar; on the way they had found that the sun appeared for a time on the north side.\n\nA hundred years later, after Egypt had fallen into his hands, Alexander had founded the city of Alexandria on the western side of the delta of the Nile. The city was destined to become the second city of the Roman Empire. Connected by canal with the Red Sea, and making use of the newly understood monsoon winds (A.D. 47) for crossing the Arabian Sea, it became the chief port of the maritime trade with Persia, India, and the regions beyond.\n\nReferences to this maritime trade exist in the Chinese histories as well as in the writings of the Greeks. In A.D. 97 a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, travelling from Central Asia reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, and was informed by the seamen whom he met that the sea-route from the Gulf proceeded first south-west and then north-west to the port of Wu-ch'ih-san (Alexandria), the return journey taking three months with favourable winds, and two years with unfavourable winds.\n\nThe Chinese records speak of the Persians and the Indians trading by sea with Ta-ts'in (the Chinese name for the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire: Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor) and of the fact that the profits were ten-fold.\n\nThey speak also of traffic between India and China by sea, and record that in A.D. 120 two jugglers who claimed to have come from the Roman Orient (Ta-ts'in) reached Burma, and were sent by the king of Burma as a present to the Emperor of China, via the Burma Road.\n\nAbout the same time a book was written by an unknown Greek sailor called The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea giving a port-to-port description of the voyage down the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula (The Land of Gold) 'under the very rising of the sun, with a notice of China beyond.\n\nShortly after this in the 2nd century A.D. the Geography of Ptolemy was written at Alexandria, where Ptolemy gathered together and systematized all that was known to the Western world about Asia and Africa. In particular he plotted the longitude and latitude of the places known, which when transferred to a modern map give surprisingly accurate results, reaching to China itself.\n\nFrom this time notices of the sea-route increase, both on the Greek and on the Chinese side. The Chinese histories in particular show a rapidly increasing knowledge in the early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212911, "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": 220, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "205\n\nout as soon as I was able to make out my surroundings. I have never seen such a dense swarm of mosquitoes. Thank goodness we never had to use this shelter.\n\nOur departure for Hong Kong that spring was dramatic. From the hospital we took the ancient hospital motor boat down the creeks to Canton. We found the river steamer for Hong Kong moored in the fast flowing stream. It was surrounded by an impenetrable mob of sampans carrying people fleeing from the Japanese attack on Canton which was expected any day. Our motor boat could not get to the gangway so we transferred to a sampan. We approached the ladder from downstream as most of the boats were tied to the steamer upstream. We soon found out why because as each sampan cast off from the ladder another, aided by the stream, pushed its way in from upstream. We could make no headway. The only possible approach was from the bows. As we worked our way slowly down we saw that the captain was getting worried by the crowds swarming on board. He had to sail or be swamped. Our luggage was manhandled across the intervening sampans but my father would not allow us to be passed along in the same way, which I thought was a pity. The captain saw us and waited only until our sampan at last made the steps. He then gave the order for his crew to chop through the mooring ropes of all the sampans still tied on. Once freed of these, he weighed anchor and set off for Hong Kong - an overnight journey.\n\nP & O to England – Canadian Pacific to China\n\nIn 1933 my father was due for leave so the whole family, now comprising four children and parents, set off on the P. & O Rawalpindi, a ship which was converted to be an armed merchantman during the war and sunk by a U boat. Travel by sea was the most commonly used way to reach Europe. From about 1933 one could go a little faster by taking the Trans-Siberian railway. Fast mail was marked 'Via Siberia' on the envelopes. The sea journey involved four days at sea to Singapore and trips to the Botanical Gardens there. Then on to Penang, Colombo, Aden, through the Suez Canal perhaps with a stop at Marseilles, where some in a hurry got on the train through France to England, a stop at Gibraltar and thence to Plymouth where we got off for a train to Herefordshire. Most passengers went on to Tilbury in London. There was a leisurely routine about the trip. Beef tea was served on the deck mid-morning and tea in the afternoon. An enterprising steward rounded up a number of children to help him gather up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214113, "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-1997", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "150\n\neve of the Mid-Autumn Festival. In recent years visits have also been paid to such destinations as Taiwan, Vietnam and various parts of China.\n\nBefore looking in greater detail at what the Hong Kong Branch (RASHKB) does, let us review briefly the history of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS 1979).\n\nHistory\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in London in 1823, and it received its Charter of Incorporation as a Royal Society the following year. It is the oldest and most important learned society of its kind in Europe, and it is the doyen of societies promoting the study of Asia. Its membership has included generations of eminent scholars and explorers with a deep understanding of the East.\n\nA large part of the Society's work has, however, always been carried out through its branches and affiliated societies. Branches were formed in such places as Bombay and Madras about 1838, and in Ceylon in 1845. The Hong Kong Branch followed in 1847, the North China Branch at Shanghai in 1857, the Japanese in 1875, the Malayan in 1878 and the Korean in 1900 (RAS1979: 15). Such countries as Japan and Korea were never, of course, part of the British Empire, and, in any case, British territory today is reduced to a few small pink dots on the map; such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Gibraltar. Thus the RAS can now be thought of, very much, as an international organisation rather than as being purely British.\n\nAlthough the Hong Kong Branch was first established in 1847, it ran into difficulties and, consequently, ceased to exist after the end of 1859. It was, nevertheless, resuscitated a century later (Hayes 1997: 129).\n\nAchievements\n\nGoing back to the middle of the last century, although the Branch was comparatively short-lived, it was nonetheless productive. With its emphasis on practical projects one of the most conspicuous notches in its belt must have been the proposal that a piece of land be requested", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216109, "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": 408, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "342\n\nthey would have provided (had they been left) and for the urban lineage they would have represented. Those wonderful old buildings are no longer with us to provide anchors in times of need.\n\nThey were replaced within a few years by high-rise air-conditioned buildings. Many depend upon artificial lighting and ventilation and have windows which do not open. Today, so many live and work in an artificial atmosphere. This major change led long ago to people discarding shorts and open-necked shirts and wearing two-piece suits and more formal and more uncomfortable clothing. The new lifestyle meant the better off were stepping from their air-conditioned homes, carrying brief cases, into their air-conditioned cars and then being conveyed to their air-conditioned offices.\n\nAt the end of World War Two the Chinese Nationalist Government was waiting in the wings just over the border to take over Hong Kong. But the British beat them to it. If the Americans had had their way, and British rule had been terminated in Hong Kong in 1945 and the place had been returned to China, it is possible to speculate what would have happened. In 1949 Hong Kong, like other big cities in China, would have been taken over by the People's Republic Government. This would have meant that, after 30 or so years of communist rule, Hong Kong would have been as backward economically as the rest of China. There would have been no 'Hong Kong miracle'. After 1978 the Territory would not have been able to form a nucleus for the economic development for the rest of China with its 'Open Door Policy.'\n\nPigeons\n\nUp until 1914 every marine launch of Hong Kong's Water Police (as the Marine Police were known then) took a few pigeons on board. These were used to fly messages back to headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. But in spite of the introduction of radio the pigeons were kept on strength. Members of the force contributed to buy them food. The flock of about 50 birds came to be looked upon much like the Barbary Apes at Gibraltar or the Ravens at the Tower of London. It was said when the pigeons departed from Marine Police Headquarters so would the British from Hong Kong.\n\nThe pigeons disappeared during the Japanese occupation but were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]