[ { "id": 204246, "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": 14, "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\n11\n\nTHE STUDY OF ASIA: A HERITAGE AND A TASK\n\nInaugural Address delivered on April 7, 1960.\n\nF. S. DRAKE, O.B.E., B.A., B.D.,\n\nProfessor of Chinese, Hong Kong University.\n\nThe study of Asia by the West is the result of the total impact of East and West through the ages, in which traders, soldiers, administrators, travellers, preachers, and scholars all have a part, and in which a study of the language and literature of the peoples of Asia is an essential element.\n\nSo far as Europe is concerned the study of Asia commences with the Greeks.\n\nThe Greeks were in contact with Asia in three directions: along the coast of the Black Sea they were in contact with the Scythians; in Asia Minor they lived under the shadow of the Persian Empire; through Egypt they were in contact with the sea routes to India and beyond.\n\nThese three directions indicate three great geographical divisions of the subject around which we can, I think, arrange the historical, cultural and linguistic studies.\n\nFirst the grasslands of Central Asia, from the steppes of Russia to the plateau of Mongolia, home of the nomadic races from the Scythians to the Mongols;\n\nsecond, the Oriental Empires connected with the great river valleys and deltas from Iran to India and China;\n\nthird, the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan, including the China coast.\n\nI. The Scythians are graphically described in the pages of Herodotus, and his description is verified by the finds of archaeologists in the tombs of their chieftains in South Russia and the Caucasus region. The virile 'nomad animal style' of the ornaments in bronze and gold found from the Caucasus to the Siberian side of the Altai, and from the Altai through Mongolia to the borders of China, indicates the extent and the character of the nomadic tribes.\n\nBut the chief source of our knowledge of the nomads is to be found in the series of Chinese dynastic histories. The Chinese were in continual contact with the nomadic peoples along their northern frontier from Manchuria to Turkestan—the line of the Great Wall. The struggle between the nomads and the Empire, based on agriculture, is the great theme of Chinese history.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204254, "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": 22, "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\n19\n\nthe density of nesting birds is considerably less owing to the lack of suitable cover and nests are in any case difficult to find, there is a wide variety of nesting birds ranging from the great family of egrets and herons, with eight or nine species, through a list including the Black-eared Kite, White-bellied Sea-eagle, Francolin, Koel and Crow-Pheasant, drongos and mynahs, bulbuls and babblers down to the Tree-sparrow and Spotted Munia—altogether a large range.\n\nNow I shall discuss Hong Kong's birds in more detail, taking them roughly in the order of the new Check-List* so that gaps, especially in the case of rarities, may be filled in by reference to that book.\n\nThe Great Crested Grebe and the Little Grebe are both common winter visitors but are very localised. The favourite haunt of the former is Deep Bay, whilst up to forty of the latter may be observed on Tai Lam Chung Reservoir. They are rarely seen in breeding plumage and are consequently rather dull-looking. In Deep Bay, along with the Great Crested Grebe one may also see quite large numbers of cormorants, big black diving birds which feed voraciously on fish. An even larger companion of these two varieties in the same area is the Spotted-billed Pelican. Up to twenty of these enormous white birds may be seen, especially at low tide, during the coldest months.\n\nOne of the greatest attractions to bird-watchers in the Colony, particularly in June and July when there is little else to see, is the great variety of egrets and herons which visit and nest here. There are the small Yellow Bittern and Little Green Heron which may be seen in the mangroves on the edge of Deep Bay; the Great, Little, Swinhoe's and Cattle Pond Herons which nest widely in heronries throughout the northern New Territories; and the lonely Reef Egret which nests on Tung Lung Island, Waglan, and perhaps elsewhere in the southeastern part of the Colony. These birds are an ever-present source of delight with their fine plumage and graceful flight and movements. There are others in the same family, such as the Grey and Purple Herons, but they unfortunately are only visitors.\n\nDespite the abundance of water surrounding the Colony and a good deal of suitably marshy ground in the north-west, duck are by no means common, and apart from the Falcated Teal at the mouth of the Shum Chun River, and the Yellow-nib Duck and Teal in evening flight near Lok Ma Chau, very few can be expected. This is a pity, for duck are exciting birds to watch.\n\nAnnotated Check-List of the Birds of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, South China Morning Post Ltd., 1960.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204384, "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": 16, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "11\n\nNESTORIAN CROSSES AND NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS IN CHINA UNDER THE MONGOLS\n\nA lecture delivered on December 11, 1961\n\nF. S. DRAKE, O.B.E., B.A., B.D.*\n\nI. THE NIXON COLLECTION\n\nThe purpose of this paper is to introduce, to those who may be unfamiliar with it, the F. A. Nixon Collection of Nestorian Bronze Crosses from the Sino-Mongolian Borderland recently presented by the Hon. R. C. Lee and Mr. J. S. Lee to the Museum of the University of Hong Kong, in relation to the great movement which the Crosses represent.\n\nSoon after the attention of scholars was called by the Rev. P. M. Scott1 to these small bronze objects, fourteen of which he had discovered in the shop of a Chinese curio dealer in Pao-t'ou2 near the great northern loop of the Yellow River, the former home of the Christian Ongut tribe, Mr. Nixon, then Postal Commissioner stationed at Peking, began to make his collection, which by the time he left China in 1949 had grown to nearly 1,000 pieces, the largest collection of its kind in the world, and as far as we know, the only one of the collections then made which has remained intact, and therefore is at the present time unique. The collection includes some crosses given by Fr. Mostaert which shepherds had picked up in the sand3. From the beginning opinion among scholars was divided as to the original purpose of these bronze pendants, of which the majority were shaped like Greek crosses; but Pelliot among others came out strongly in favour of their Christian origin,4 expressing a view which now predominates. Especially interesting was the opinion of Fr. A. Mostaert, a Belgium missionary and well-known authority on the Mongols, stationed at Borobalgasoun on the\n\n£\n\n* Professor Drake is Professor of Chinese in the University of Hong Kong and Editor of the Journal of Oriental Studies.\n\n1 Discovered August 1929. Described in The Mission Field, Feb. 1930, and in The Chinese Recorder, Feb. and Nov. 1930,\n\n2 See letters to Mr. Nixon, now in the University of Hong Kong Museum.\n\n3 Paris, Revue des Arts Asiatiques, 1. VII, 1931, P. Pelliot: 'Sceaux-Amulettes de Bronze avec Croix et Colombes'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204406, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "CURRENCY PROBLEMS\n\n29\n\nMemory calls to mind how that, in 1911, when I rode out of the Minshan range, which lies between the provinces of Kansu and Szechwan, I came out onto the great silk road of the Empire at Kwangyuan and travelled along it to Chengtu. On this road one found the most magnificent hotel accommodation then existent in the Empire. Yet in the best hotel I got the best room, together with all the rice I could eat at the evening meal, for forty cash a night—then the equivalent of about 3 cents U.S. currency!\n\nThis problem of the weight of the brass cash was well exemplified during the relief work I was called upon to direct in 1921 in North West China following the catastrophic earthquake that took place in December 1920. The quakes changed the whole face of nature in some fourteen counties and it became a matter of the utmost importance that we restored communications and set free the dammed up streams before break-throughs could cause flood devastation in the lower reaches of the Yellow River. To this end I had some fifteen thousand men at work in the 14 districts, engaged in this work of vital importance. They were paid on the basis of labour giving relief. On the largest undertaking at a place called Chin-Chiang-Yi I had four thousand eight hundred labourers. Of this number 10% were overseers or foremen gangers and received five hundred, or over, cash per day. The rank and file received a straight four hundred each. This means that the total weight of the cash required to meet a single day's pay on this one undertaking amounted to just over 12 tons deadweight. Something over 35 tons of cash was needed each day to pay the fifteen thousand men. Those were the days before motor transport in that part of the country and with the roads wiped out by the earthquake and pack-animals of all kinds exceedingly scarce the situation soon became impossible. After much thought I decided to put out my own note issue to meet the emergency. This though was easier conceived than executed. Neither paper supplies nor printing facilities were available. Therefore I had wooden blocks carved representing cash denominations of four hundred and five hundred cash. From these impressions were taken on strips of calico. The pull-offs were then oiled to prevent falsification. These notes were used in paying the workers who were able to use them for the purchase of food and necessities. The Chambers of Com-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204437, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "58\n\nHEROLD J. WIENS\n\nmountainous regions of south China but also across the southern borders in Burma, Laos and Vietnam.\n\nThe Yao, like the Miao, also are mountain-loving people, but appear to have originated as ethnic groups in the hill country of east-central China, in such regions as the present provinces of Anhwei, Chekiang and Kiangsu. They were here as early as Chinese records mention them, but they appear to have gradually abandoned these areas, as Han-Chinese settlement increased in density, and friction over land and other matters led the Yao to seek more isolated mountains. Since they were like the Miao in their type of fire-field or forest-burning, shifting cultivation, they inevitably came into close contact with the Miao and have many cultural features in common with the Miao. Elements of the language also appear similar. Some Chinese ethnographers have considered the Wu-ch'i Man a Yao rather than a Miao group, and others believe them to have common origins. This confusion is probably due to strong Mon Khmer influences originating from India and Southeast Asia in the earliest times.\n\n4\n\nOne of the supporting arguments for the common origin of Yao and Miao is the common cult attached to the dog and the tiger. The Yao trace their ancestry mythically to the union of a princess with a supernatural dog-hero called P'an-hu. Yao myths trace their movement southward from both the central Yangtze valley regions and from the Chekiang-Fukien mountains. Folk songs of the Yao indicate further that they crossed over the Nan-ling mountains in great numbers during the period of Huang-ch'ao's rebellion in the reign of the T'ang Emperor Hsi-Tsung (A.D. 874-889),4\n\nWhen the Miao moved into the Kweichow region in the earliest times, they probably found the Yi or Wu-man peoples already in occupation of western Kweichow. The Yi certainly preceded the Han in this part of China, and the Han Chinese have known of the Yi in their present habitats in southwest China for over 2,500 years. The peculiar manner in which the\n\n* Chiang Ying-liang, Hsi-nan pien-chiang min-tsu lun-ts'ung (A discussion of the peoples of the southwest borderlands), Canton, 1948, 74-79; see also Ling Shun-sheng and Jui Yi-fu, Hsiang-hsi Miao-tsu t'iao-cha pao-kao (Report of research on the Miao of west Hunan), Academia Sinica, Shanghai, 1947.\n\n4 Hsu Sung-shih, Yueh-chiang liu-yü jen-min (The peoples of the Yueh river drainage), Shanghai, 1939, 130-135.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204448, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE\n\n69\n\nTable II lists the numbers of people in each ethnic group distributed by provinces in south and central China. In brief, the T'ai-related groups lead with some 10 million people at present. They are followed by the Tibeto-Burman related group with some 8.4 million, followed by the Miao-Yao related group with about 3.4 million. The greatest concentration of minorities in any one group is among the Chuang in the Tai group. The Chuang live in a compact body numbering some seven million in Kwangsi. The Miao, however, are the most widely distributed of all ethnic groups, being found in significant numbers in every province of south and central China except Kiangsi, although their chief strength is in Kweichow. Yunnan, by all odds, is the most complex province ethnically. Of the 30 national minorities listed by the Census for 1953, some twenty-four are found in Yunnan. This Census apparently may need considerable revision when the minorities are scrutinized more closely. Thus, it listed only 90,000 so-called T'u-chia, which was proclaimed to be a newly discovered ethnic group hitherto confused with Han Chinese and Miao because of their degrees of acculturation. A personal check by Fang Jen revealed over 300,000, and a still more detailed check in subsequent years disclosed that actually these were 549,000 that should be so classified and, from their original cultural traits, they belonged in the Yi-related group. They occupy an area in northwest Hunan.\n\n44\n\nThe Yi comprise so many sub-groups under different names (there are 40 sub-tribes in Yunnan alone) that confusion is understandable. In northwest Yunnan such sub-groups of the Yi as the Na-khi or Na-hsi and Li-su live in the region between the great bends of the Chin-sha river and the Burma border. In the western part of this region are the Nu, Tu-lung, and Ching-p'o, occupying parts of the Salween and Mekong drainage of north Yunnan. Farther south in the drainages of these rivers are the related La-hu and A-ch'ang. The Pai people, in a solid bloc on the plain of Erh Hai (Lake Erh), have been thought by some writers, including this one, to be a T'ai-related people, but are listed by Bruk as a Yi sub-group. In the west bank region of the Red river of Yunnan are the sub-group known as the Han-yi. The Yi proper are scattered over the three southwestern provinces,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204494, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "A NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE\n\n111\n\nMaglioni continued archaeological work further afield. After his death, Maglioni roughly outlined the area of their researches and designated it as the Han-Chu region, naming it this because it is bounded by the Han and Teng Rivers in the East and the Chu (or Pearl River) and Tung in the West.\n\nMaglioni divided the neolithic era into three main periods, to each of which he assigned one of the cultures he found. SON was early neolithic, SAK was middle neolithic, and PAT was late neolithic.* All three names were taken from parts of the names of the villages nearest to the sites where the cultures were first discovered.\n\nThe stone artifacts that I have found are typical of the middle neolithic era, and they also closely resemble the SAK artifacts in the Maglioni collection. They differ strikingly from the PAT materials found in the Western part of the Colony. Unlike the latter, they are almost exclusively made of chert. They are also cruder and less sophisticated, with traces of chipping left in spite of the polishing, as if the chipping had been too deep. The cutting edge of the axes as well as the adzes is not bevelled as in the case of those from Lamma and Lantao. They are almost all longer in shape and narrower, not as thick in cross-section as the latter, and to my unpractised eye, they resemble more the stone artifacts displayed in the Hong Kong University Museum from Annam and Laos.\n\nThe most typical element of SAK culture is its pottery, which is a fine ware of smooth mix and is stamped with a variety of patterns, the most common one being a basket weave and others including a herring-bone and concentric circles. The pots are of a small size (perhaps because the SAK people were nomadic), globular in shape, with a shallow ring-like foot, which was added after the pots had been shaped and stamped. They were frequently decorated with an equatorial band in bas-relief as well as other bands above and below it. These bands were also added after the pot had been shaped and stamped. The SAK potters made great progress in both preparing and baking the clay. Maglioni says: \"They utilized clays which received their bright colour when fired, added little or no sand, made very thin ware,\n\n\"PAT appears to have continued uninterruptedly from the stone age into historic times,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204639, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "107\n\nEUROPEAN NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\nA. D. BLUE *\n\nThe Yangtse is the greatest river in China, and has been of much greater importance in the history of the world than the Amazon and the Mississippi, which are superior in length and volume. In this respect it ranks with the Nile and the Euphrates, but unlike them it has always had a much greater population living along its banks. The Chinese know the Yangtse as the Long, or Great, River. Marco Polo may not have been the first European to see the Yangtse, but he was certainly the first to appreciate its importance, and to bring it to the notice of the Western world.\n\nOf the Yangtse in general Marco Polo said \"the multitude of vessels that invest this great river is so great that no one who should read or hear would believe it. The quantity of merchandise carried up and down is past all belief. In fact it is so big, that it seems to be a sea rather than a river\". There is no doubt but at that time, the second half of the 13th century, the Yangtse carried a greater volume of traffic than any other river in the world. Marco Polo was correct in thinking that no one would believe his reports on the Yangtse, or on China, and it was left to later generations to appreciate the accuracy of his observations.\n\nIt was the missions to China of Lord Macartney and Lord Amherst in 1793 and 1816 respectively, that made Europeans realise the importance of the Yangtse. Then in 1842, during the First China War, a British naval force entered the Yangtse, and was on the point of attacking Nanking (182 miles from the mouth) when the Chinese sued for peace. Sixteen years later, after the Second China War, one of the clauses of the Treaty of Tientsin\n\n* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtse in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. During and after the War he was in the Colonial Service in West Africa, but in 1958 he returned to service with the China Navigation Company, and this has enabled him to revisit a number of the former Treaty Ports.\n\n1 Chinese records mention the visit of a 'Roman merchant' to Nanking about 230 A.D. See G. F. Hudson, Europe and China (London, 1931), p. 90.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204640, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "108 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nprovided that the river be opened to foreign shipping. This commenced the modern or more correctly the European history of the river. \n\nBy the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin three ports on the river were opened to foreign shipping and trade - Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow, Hankow, by far the largest and most important of the three, was six hundred miles from the mouth of the river. The Franco-Chinese Treaty, signed at the same time, provided for the opening of Nanking. At that time, however, and for a further six years, Nanking was occupied by the Taiping rebels, and no attempt was made to trade there, and it was not until 1899 that the Chinese Maritime Customs opened a station there. \n\nWhen the Treaty of Tientsin was signed in 1858 most of the Lower Yangtse was in a disturbed state because of the Taiping Rebellion, and a great part of the river was under rebel control. In these circumstances, therefore, it was not expected that the river would be opened to foreign trade until the restoration of Imperial authority. Lord Elgin, the British Plenipotentiary, however, was unwilling to wait for this, and persuaded the Chinese authorities to allow him to make a voyage up the river. His expedition consisted of the frigates Retribution and Furious, and three small gunboats, Cruiser, Lee, and Dove. After being fired on by the rebels at two places, Hankow was reached on 6th December 1858, the first time it had been visited by a foreign ship. \n\nLord Elgin went ashore at several places on the river, and made short excursions into the country. He found the people to have no sympathy with the rebels, and thought they welcomed the prospect of foreign trade. He also thought them reasonably prosperous and contented, and not too heavily taxed. At Hankow he found coal and iron, the latter in abundance, also considerable quantities of imported cotton and woollen goods; but he formed the opinion that British manufacturers would have to exert themselves to supplant native goods. It was a pleasing fallacy, he wrote, to imagine that it was only the malign influence of intriguing mandarins which caused the Chinese to prefer native to foreign goods. James Matheson, one of the founders of Jardine, Matheson and Company, frankly admitted on several occasions the superiority of Chinese nankeens over Manchester cotton goods.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204643, "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n111\n\ncities, which together constitute Wuhan, as 8,000,000—almost certainly a great exaggeration.3 Lord Elgin, some fifteen years later during the Taiping Rebellion, thought it to be about 1,000,000, and that it would have been about 2,000,000 before the rebellion. It must, therefore, have been a more important city than either Canton or Shanghai at that time. Like those cities, it was the centre of a network of waterways which connected it with a great area of the surrounding country. In the first few years after the opening of the river Hankow resembled a boom town in the American West. Fortunes were made and lost in a few months, and passages from Shanghai were at a premium, up to £100 being paid for the trip. This initial boom was followed by the inevitable collapse, in this case intensified by the depression in the cotton market when the American Civil War came to an end, and a fall in tea prices which came at the same time.\n\nTrade on the river had been damned up for years by the Taipings, so that a boom following the opening of the river was only natural. By 1862 there were twenty steamers running regularly on the river, and there was such a demand for steamers that, as one writer described it, “everything which could burn coal was employed at high freights\". The freight on light goods from Shanghai to Hankow was as high as £6 per ton for a voyage lasting only three or four days. The first European ships on the river were small schooners, shallow draft paddle steamers, and lorchas.* The pioneer river steamer, as distinguished from warships and ocean-going steamers, was the American Firedart, which had been designed originally for the Canton River. She was soon followed by others specially designed for the Yangtse, and within a short time after the opening of the river, there were regular services between Shanghai and Hankow,\n\nThe early years of foreign trade on the Yangtse coincided with the last years of near American supremacy in shipping and shipbuilding, and the first British steamers to run on the river were built in America. Although the majority of foreign trading firms in the treaty ports at that time were British, the Americans were very serious competitors in the field of shipping. The\n\n* According to recent census figures the population of Wuhan is now 2,200,000.\n\n• A sailing ship with a European hull but Chinese type of rig.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204644, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "112 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nYangtse was not an easy river to navigate, and with its swift currents and shoals presented problems very similar to those on American rivers, in particular to the Mississippi. The Americans made good use of their experience in river navigation, and were also more willing to carry cargo on deck to speed up loading and discharging. They were more partial to paddle than to screw steamers, the former being better against strong currents and for reversing off shoals. This combination of factors gave the Americans a decided advantage in the early years, and the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company, belonging to the famous American trading firm of Russell and Company, was the most important company on the river for the first fifteen years of foreign trade.\n\nThe 1860's on the Yangtse was in many respects a repetition of the 1840's and 50's on the coast. Great stretches of the river were still under Taiping control, and it was constantly patrolled by British warships. Lawlessness was common among Chinese and foreign traders alike, and shipping was liable to attack from rebels, Imperial war junks, and pirates indiscriminately. Many foreign ships were engaged in illegal and immoral trades, in flagrant disregard of treaty rights, let alone of the welfare and laws of China. This applies to the sailing ships and lorchas under foreign flags, rather than to the steamers run by the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company, the other American companies of Heard and Olyphant, and the British companies of Jardine, Dent, and Lindsay. Opium trading had been legalised by the Treaty of Tientsin, and for the first decade or two at least 20% of the foreign imports into Hankow by the steamers was opium.\n\nThe salt trade was a government monopoly, and the most common illegal activity on the river was salt smuggling. Salt could be bought for the price of rice at Eching, eighteen miles above Chinkiang, and sold further up the river for at least double the price to the great detriment of the salt gabelle. Then there were foreign adventurers who supplied arms and ammunition to the rebels, and others who, if not actually smuggling themselves, convoyed native junks which were smuggling.\n\n— \n\nThe Shanghai Steam Navigation Company was formed by Russell and Company in 1862 with American, British, and Chinese capital, and performed valuable pioneer work in developing river", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204646, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "114 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nwith Howqua, the great Canton hong merchant, until 1861 and were also associated with Baring Brothers, the London bankers, shows that the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company was far from being a purely American concern. The initiative in its formation and its success, however, was almost entirely due to the determination and ability of the Shanghai heads of Russell and Company, and in particular to Edward Cunningham, the firm's managing partner in Shanghai in the vital years of 1862, 63, and '64.\n\nBecause of American influence in the early days, and the similarity between navigational problems on the Mississippi and on the Yangtse, the luxurious river steamers which plied on the Lower and Middle Yangtse during the heyday of foreign trade were very similar to the Mississippi steamers of Mark Twain's day. They had the same tall, narrow funnel, and the long promenade deck extending almost the whole length of the ship, which Hollywood has made so familiar. At the forward end of this deck was the dining saloon, and at the after end the lounge. Both of these were elegantly, and even ornately furnished, the entrance to the lounge being flanked with potted shrubs leading to a wide stairway down to the lower deck. The best cabins were on the promenade deck. Unfortunately no one with Mark Twain's genius has written a ‘Life on the Yangtse' to match his Life on the Mississippi, an omission now very unlikely to be repaired.\n\nIn his journey up the Yangtse and overland to Burma in 1874, which was to end in his tragic murder, A. R. Margary travelled from Shanghai to Hankow by the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company's Hirado.\" Margary described his cabin as large and airy, and the Hirado as a wonderful structure and not like a ship at all. She had a tall narrow funnel in front of each paddle box, tier upon tier of cabins built on the smallest possible hull, and the general appearance of a gaudy palace of pleasure full of windows and terraces floating upon the water. Margary continued by mandarin boat10 to Yochow, and then across the Tungting Lake and by the Yuan River to the border of Kweichow, and then completed his\n\n10\n\n\"The Hirado was one of the largest steamers on the river at this time, being of 1,294 gross tons. She had been built in America for Dent and Company in 1866, and sold by them to the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in 1867.\n\n10 A long, narrow junk divided into 5 or 6 compartments.\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204651, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "118\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nthe Yangtse was now open to foreign trade and navigation for almost 1,400 miles from the sea, and access had been gained to the rich and populous province of Szechuen, of which Chungking was the chief port.\n\nThe section of the river between Ichang and Chungking was known as the Upper River, and the first steamer to navigate this section belonged to Archibald Little, whose Y-Ling had been the first steamer to navigate the Middle River. Little was a member of a well-known Shanghai family, and he was the real pioneer of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtse. He had commenced his career as a tea taster for a German firm in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon went into business on his own and was one of the first to appreciate the possibility of trade in Szechuen Province and beyond in Tibet. He settled in Chungking soon after it became a treaty port, and started up several industries connected with wool, bristles, and coal—to mention some of the more prominent, and also engaged in marine insurance, specialising in covering cargoes on the Upper Yangtse.1 The Shanghai Chamber of Commerce had sent two prominent British merchants—Alexander Michie and Robert Francis—up the Yangtse to Chungking as early as 1869, to investigate trade prospects there, but no important developments followed. In 1887 Little made a much more intensive trip from Ichang to Chungking by junk, and formed the opinion that there were great possibilities for trade in Szechuen Province and beyond. The following year he attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking with a stern wheeler specially built on the Clyde called the Kuling. Because of a clause in the Chefoo Convention stipulating that foreign steamers could only go to Chungking after Chinese steamers had gone there, the Kuling was not allowed to go beyond Ichang. Little then sold her to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, who employed her on the Hankow-Ichang service.\n\nOne of his brothers was a famous editor of the North China Daily News, and another a well-known doctor in Shanghai.\n\n[Robert Swinhoe, British Consul at Amoy was sent up the Yangtse by Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister at Peking, in March 1869 to enquire into the trade of the Upper River. He reached Chungking in May of the same year. His account of this journey was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society Vol. XL (1870), pp. 268-85. It is accompanied by a folding map of the Upper River from the Tungting Lake to Chungking compiled from the charts made by two survey officers specially sent up the Yangtse for this purpose. Ed.]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204655, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "122\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nChungking. Junks which sailed on the Middle River and above were designed for shoal water, and were lighter in construction as well as smaller than the Lower River junks, but still strong enough to withstand constant grounding. Naturally the largest type of junk was found on the Lower River, and this was as big as ocean-going junks. Such junks rarely went above Nanking. River junks were not usually painted like sea-going junks, but were coated with wood oil instead.\n\nOn the Upper River there were many types of junks, such as only the ingenuity of Chinese could devise. Among the more exotic types designed to cope with the peculiar and exacting conditions found on certain stretches of the Upper River were junks with crooked bows and others with crooked sterns. The largest junks on the Upper River were 120 feet long and carried 60 tons of cargo up river and about 90 tons down river, and took 25 to 60 days between Ichang and Chungking, depending on the season and state of the river. These large junks had a crew of about 100 men, of whom three-quarters were trackers.\n\nThe Yangtse is subject to remarkable changes in level, caused by the melting snows in Tibet, and by the time taken by these to reach the Lower River. In the high water season of summer the level in the Middle and Lower River is as much as 35 feet above the winter level. In August 1866 the rise at Hankow was 50 feet, and it has been twice as much in the Upper River. During floods great stretches of the Lower River become immense lakes, exceeding 20 miles in width at places between Nanking and Hankow. At such time no land can be seen between the deck of a river steamer and the distant foothills. Thousands of villages may be inundated during such a flood, and every few years when flooding is more than usually severe, hundreds of thousands of lives are lost. The greatest floods on record were those of the summer of 1931, when 25 million people in an area of 700,000 square miles were affected, and 140,000 were drowned. On this occasion the streets in the Wuhan cities were flooded to a depth of 9 feet, and the surrounding country to 35 feet. The Yangtse Valley is so fertile, however, and the pressure on the land so great, that the inhabitants always return when the river falls, after encamping in the hills during the floods.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204656, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n123\n\nThe Peking government claims that even greater floods took place during the summer of 1954, but because of the reconstruction work carried out on the dyke system by the Communists, the damage was much less. The dyke system, they say, has been still further strengthened since 1954.\n\nIn spite of its great depth along much of its length, navigation on the Yangtse always posed special problems. The main channel changes course from time to time, while the strength of the current varies from season to season. Foreign steamers usually carried two pilots, but in spite of all precautions many steamers have been lost on the river. Towards the end of the era of foreign shipping, losses had been greatly reduced by means of more efficient pilotage, greater knowledge and better charts, improved lighting, and other aids to navigation.\n\nLife on the Yangtse was very different from that on the coast, and had a strong fascination for most of those who experienced it. The river steamers penetrated right into the heart of China, where conditions were widely different. Even in the 1920's and 1930's the countryside and towns bordering on the Middle and Upper River remained much as they had been in the previous five or six hundred years. Foreign trade and influence had barely touched the fringes of social life and customs evolved many centuries earlier.\n\nThe heyday of Yangtse travel was in the 1920's and 1930's, when it was possible to travel in comfort, and even luxury, although not always in complete safety, from Shanghai to Chung-king, and beyond to Chengtu and Sui Fu. At that period there were four large companies operating regular services along the whole navigable length of the river, with something like a hundred steamers between them. There were also several small companies operating a few steamers each. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company with 31 ships had the largest river fleet, followed by the China Navigation Company and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company with 21 ships each, and then the Japanese Nisshin Kisen Kaisha with 15 ships. A German company had started a service in 1900, at the same time as the Japanese, but had been compelled to withdraw during the 1914-18 war, and had never resumed the service. At least four steamers left Shanghai for Hankow every day, where connection was made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204659, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "126\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nCompany's second steamer Shu-hun, a larger and more powerful steamer than their Shuting, which was built by Yarrow's in 1913. It was not until the 1930's, however, that the majority of Upper River steamers were able to do the whole trip unaided.\n\nA unique feature of the Upper Yangtse was the trackers' paths cut in the hillside above the rapids, at some places as high as 30 or 40 feet above the river level. At the most dangerous rapids the junks were lightened of their passengers and most of their cargo, only a few men staying on board with the pilot to work the bow sweep and pole. The negotiation of the rapids required great skill on the part of the pilots, and instant obedience and co-operation from the junkmen and trackers, and it might take an hour or more of unremitting exertion to pull a junk up the worst 200 or 300 feet of one of those rapids. The trackers and junkmen would be encouraged and stimulated by drumming, and by the antics of the headman, to which they replied by a low, monotonous chanting. Some of the gorges were too precipitous for trackers' paths, and at such places junks had to wait for a strong, favourable wind.\n\nThere were frequent accidents, many of them fatal, at the more dangerous rapids, and special large-sized sampans were stationed at such places to rescue those who came to grief. These were called \"red boats\", and it was in a sampan of this kind that Sir Reginald Johnston travelled from Ichang to Chungking in 1906. One of the most dangerous rapids was the Hsin Tan, or New Rapid, 135 miles above Ichang, which was formed by a landslide some 300 years ago. It was here that the China Navigation Company's first Upper River steamer, the Shuting, was lost in 1937. The Hsin Tan was most dangerous in the low water season; other rapids were most dangerous in the high water season.\n\nThe Yangtse Gorges provide some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. Windbox Gorge and Witches' Mountain Gorge are the most famous of the Gorges. The latter is also the longest, being 20 miles long, with the river only 150 yards wide at some places. It is also probably the most beautiful and mysterious, in an awe-inspiring manner. As in Windbox Gorge, there are places where the passenger on a river steamer has the distinct impression that the mighty and almost sheer precipices actually overhang the river in places. There are caves high up in the cliffs, and villages over 1,000 years old clinging to ledges more", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204660, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE \n\n127 \n\nthan a hundred feet above the river. The cliffs in Windbox Gorge rise to over 700 feet above the river, and it was here that in the record year the river level rose 275 feet in a short time. \n\nIn 1917, after there had been regular services operating on the river for some years, the Chinese Maritime Customs issued a series of recommendations for steamers intending to ply on the Upper River, based on the experience gained over these years. The maximum size for steamers intending to run all year round was 210 feet long by 31 feet beam and 94 feet draft, with a minimum speed of 12 knots. If they were intended to negotiate the main rapids under their own power, a speed considerably in excess of 12 knots was recommended. It was also recommended that the hull be divided into watertight compartments, and that ships should have a flat bottom. Ships over 130 feet long were recommended to have twin screws and two boilers, and if their beam was over 22 feet three rudders; all others having two rudders. Other recommendations and regulations related to steering gears, windlasses, and capstans, and illustrate the peculiar problems posed by navigation on the Upper Yangtse. By 1931 there were over a dozen special-type ships on the Upper Yangtse, half of them British, running regularly between Ichang and Chungking. Three of the others were Chinese, two American, and one French. There were also several small oil tankers. Above Chungking there were about two dozen smaller motor launches running, but in this part of the river a great part of the traffic was still handled by native craft of various types. In 1931 the American West China Shipping Company's last ship was wrecked in the Upper River, and the Dollar Company sold their last ship, the Alice Dollar, to the China Navigation Company, who renamed her the Wantung. This left British steamers predominant on the Upper River for the short time after that it remained open to foreign trade. \n\nAll ships operating on the Yangtse required pilots. On the Lower River these were mostly foreigners of the various countries which formed the Woosung-Hankow Pilots' Association. This was not a branch of the Chinese Maritime Customs, although these pilots were licensed and recognised by the Customs. On the coast and on other rivers, the Chinese Pilotage Service, which was a branch of the Customs, was the recognised authority. There was no official body of pilots on the Middle River, but there was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204668, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "KASHMIR HOLIDAY\n\n133\n\ngrazing round the tents and our staff from the boat, now transformed into mountaineers, plus the owners of the ponies were all waiting to receive us. Two of the ponies had been hired to carry the ladies on the trek but in point of fact they were never used except by Gaffar and his son when their feet got sore.\n\nA large log fire was already alight outside the larger tent, hot water was waiting for the canvas baths and a three-course dinner was being cooked outside the cook's tent down-wind. This, I would add, was the normal evening routine throughout our trek, for the ponies with all our tents and supplies would pass us during the morning and everything was set up before we reached camp at night. Generally one pony stayed with us to carry the lunch and our spare clothes, and later we perched on the top two live hens that we had bought from some shepherds we met on the way. They were intended for dinner one night but we became so fond of them that they survived the expedition and came all the way back to the boat with us.\n\nThe way led along the west side of the Liddar river, past Arau, the last village before the pass, and to the foot of the great Kolahoi glacier. Here we camped, at 8,500 ft., and spent the next day exploring the pink-coloured glacier and watching life in the valley: marmots, snow pigeon, white-capped redstart, chough and Himalayan griffon. By the third evening we had reached the Yamher Pass and as it was too late to attempt the crossing we camped at the foot in a bare plateau. By now we were far above the tree line and as it was very cold we had gathered wood on the day's walk and stacked it on the top of the ponies' packs.\n\nNext day we were lucky for there was not a cloud in the sky and when we reached the top of the Yamher at 14,000 ft. the high peaks of the Himalayas stretched in a great semi-circle before us. Dead ahead, clear and glittering in the sun, was the unmistakable magnificence of Nanga Parbat (26,660 ft.) whilst to the west was the fringe of the mountains in the Hindu Kush. Eastwards lay the peaks of Ladakh and Baltistan. It was unforgettable.\n\nTo the uninitiated the only part of the whole walk which may bring a slight fluttering in the stomach is the first 500 feet of the descent from the top of the Pass. But help is always at hand", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204672, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n137\n\nIt is therefore a delight to read such a work as Mr. Cranmer-Byng's An Embassy to China. Produced by an historian, and one moreover who combines integrity with an uncommon knowledge of the East, this book is indispensable to an understanding today of the problems that East and West have inherited in their dealings with one another.\n\nThe main body of the book consists of the Journal kept by Lord Macartney on his embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung in 1793. He describes his journey to Peking, beyond the Great Wall to Jehol, and back by the Grand Canal and by river to Canton. There follow a series of \"observations\", compiled by Macartney from his own shrewd judgment and from data supplied by members of his entourage, on subjects such as the Manners, Religion, Government, Population, Arts and Sciences, Language etc. of China under the Ch'ing Dynasty.\n\nThe first 58 pages of the book contain an Introduction by the editor, in which he comments on early Anglo-Chinese relations, paints a brief biographical picture of Lord Macartney, and discusses the embassy, the manner of its reception, and its results. The final pages of the Introduction lead up to the Journal itself, its style, content and the method used by the diarist in compiling such a detailed account of his mission - an account written by a professional diplomat, skilled at seeing behind the facade, patient in negotiation, lucid in recollection and description.\n\nLooking back today from our vantage point in time nearly two hundred years later, it is easy to see that Macartney was given an impossible task. Remote in her geographical isolation and sublimely ignorant of world affairs, China had sealed herself for centuries in a false cocoon of imagined cultural superiority. The eighteenth century was both too late and too early for any European power to overcome the supreme complacency of the Imperial Court and Government. From the mid-sixteen hundreds onwards, Western nations, notably the Dutch, the Russians and the Portuguese had sent embassies to China, but all had failed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204716, "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-1964", "page_number": 19, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "W. C. HUNTER \n\nengaged in the lucrative trade drew out of the country large amounts of silver. Lin Tse-hsu, Governor General of Hupeh and Hunan wholeheartedly threw his support to those who memorialized the throne requesting stringent measures to prevent the use of opium within the country, and to cure addicts. Moreover, Lin took direct action and seized caches of opium, 12,000 ounces and 5,000 pipes. As a result of his success in combating opium addiction and forceful condemnation of the sale of the drug he was called to Peking by Emperor Tao-kuang and appointed Imperial Commissioner to examine the opium traffic at Canton. He arrived at the provincial capital in early March, 1839. For several years prior to 1839 nearly 30,000 chests had been imported annually there.\n\nFateful events immediately took form. Lin warned the western merchants of dire results if the iniquitous trade did not cease. His threat was followed by the demand that within three days they offer a bond that no opium would be imported. A counter proposal was made to turn over to Commissioner Lin about 1000 chests of the drug which he summarily rejected. On March 22, he demanded that Lancelot Dent, one of the principal importers be given to Chinese officials as a hostage until all opium was given up. The western merchants insisted that Dent could be surrendered only on condition that his personal safety was guaranteed. The Chinese merchants doing business with foreigners were frightened by the action of their own government. Some of them were deprived of their buttons of rank and two appeared in public with chains around their necks. Under these circumstances the Hong (the association of Chinese merchants trading with the western merchants at Canton) pressed the foreign community to comply with the ultimatum of Lin and deliver up Dent.\n\nIn the midst of this seething situation, on March 24, Captain Charles Elliot, British naval officer and Chief Superintendent and Plenipotentiary of the China Commission arrived from Macao. He entered the foreign compound with great difficulty inasmuch as the river had been blockaded and the streets leading to the foreign section had been barricaded. The predicament of approximately 300 western people seemed most serious since food and water were in short supply and a large encampment of Chinese troops was close at hand. Canton was cut off from formal communications from Macao which was nearly sixty miles distant", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204717, "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-1964", "page_number": 20, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n11\n\nin the Pearl River estuary. This estuary formed a great bay on the eastern edge of which was Hong Kong and on the western edge the Portuguese city of Macao. Many of the ships whose cargo were destined for Canton stopped first at Macao and the city was the summer home of a considerable number of foreign merchants trading to Canton. The island of Lintin, consisting of little more than a sharp peak rising in the center of the bay, was the entrepôt of the opium trade. At the mouth of the Pearl River a series of forts known as the Bogue dominated the estuary, at its widest three miles and at its narrowest one mile.* European ships were required to stop at the fortifications and receive permission from the Chinese authorities to proceed up the Pearl River. They then sailed on thirty miles to Whampoa, an island in the river where they anchored and discharged their cargos which were taken by barges and smaller ships thirteen miles to Canton, Neither the depth of the river nor the Chinese government permitted the \"Foreign Devils\" to bring large ships to the provincial capital.\n\nOn March 28, 1839 Elliot agreed to turn over to Commissioner Lin the entire holdings of opium which he stated as 20,283 chests. As each major consignment of opium was delivered restrictions on foreigners were eased in regard to food supplies and employment of Chinese workers. By early May conditions outwardly had returned to normal, the embargo lifted and the river opened to commercial traffic. The first crisis was over but the basic problem had not been settled.\n\nThe journal of William Hunter covered the critical days of siege from March to May 1839. Hunter graphically presented the dangers and concerns of the western community in Canton yet more significantly he showed the necessary patterns of life which develop even in the midst of agonizing uncertainty. In short the routine of peace was exchanged for the routine of confinement. All in all, tension produced by a state of siege, rumor, and the anticipation of an unknown fury ready to be unleashed by Chinese authorities were key ingredients of the spirit of the beleagured foreign community in Canton in 1839. Hunter was not concerned about the morality of opium trade. Apparently he saw no justification whatsoever for the action of the Chinese government.\n\n* For places mentioned here and in the Journal see the map facing p. 27.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204721, "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-1964", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n15\n\nand not knowing what is to happen. At night the police cleared the Square and posted a strong guard.\n\nMarch 25\n\nForeigners employed in all the Factories cooking their own meals and preparing food for each other, some carrying provisions from one Factory to another, and others taking buckets to the river for water.\n\nSome sailors and lascars who happened to be here when the embargo commenced have been distributed amongst some of the residents to assist in cooking.\n\nWe have clubbed together all in our Hong, and make one mess, cooking by turns. We have Mr. Snow our Consul,1 Mr. Forbes2, Green3, Delano, Kings, Low, Spooner, Gilman, Miranda and Dasilva two Portuguese clerks in our office, natives of Macao, and myself, in all eleven.\n\nSome go and milk the cows who have been removed to the yard in front of the Danish [Factory], another cooks, while others wash the plates, knives, forks and so forth. We find it a great bore, while the moment one goes out of the Factory he is watched till he returns.\n\n26th* Mouqua4 tells us the cows shall be looked after today, he had them supplied with grass, and says a shed shall be erected to keep them from the sun.\n\nAt night the Chinese brought into the square all the boats belonging to English foreigners to prevent any escape.\n\nMarch 26, 1839\n\nThis morning a linguist purser10 from Ahtore's establishment brought in a Chinaman to act as cook and left us six loaves of bread which he had secreted in his sleeves.\n\nThe cows, having been compelled to stand in the Square opposite the Danish Hong with a hot sun pouring upon them, are becoming quite desperate. This morning on going there I found a Chinaman who had prepared for them some food and was on the point of giving it to them when the police came and drove him away.\n\n* Hunter wrote 26th at this point although he started another entry for 26th a few lines later.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204772, "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-1964", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "64 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\nNg \n\n103 Ngraahcrinn-chynn, \n\n104 Ngrhtrung-shaann, \n\nN. L. \n\n105 Ngrr-droi, £1 (+908—+959, with local variations). \n\n0 \n\n106 Obliterated villages:- Nai Tong Kok,101 Pak Hok Tuns and the original Tai Pak,35 some way from the present site. \n\nP \n\n107 Phuunniryh, #5. \n\n108 Preangzhaw, , an island five miles west of the western tip of Hong Kong Island. \n\n109 Preangzhaw, H, an island in the north-eastern part of Mirs Bay,41 \n\n110 Pre-Chinese languages: I should exempt from this stricture Professor Princeton S. Hsu,23 whose books, \"History of the People of South China”72 and \"A Study of the Thais, Chuangs and the Cantonese People\"133 are of great interest and should be read by anyone anxious to learn more in this field. But I think he goes too far in suggesting a Malay origin for the Tanka-or is it a Tanka origin for the Malays? \n\n111 Prengshaann, Ħ4. \n\n112 Pruunn-gwuur, 1. \n\nR \n\n113 River Capture. The break-through of the Kwun Yam Ho62 from the Lam Tsuen74 valley to Taipo:33 formerly it flowed through Fanling48 and Sheung Shui130 into Deep Bay;152 and that of the two streams which now flow into the sea at Sham Tseng,119 the headwaters of which used to flow through Tin Fu Tsai137 into Tai Lam.38 \n\n$ \n\nSei-braak, see 35, \n\n114 Shaahtraw-gok, YA★ · \n\n115 Shaahtrinn, 3⁄4w. \n\n+ \n\n116 Shaahtrinn-xoe, , still better known to the local people as Lik Yuen Hoi. \n\nShaamm-braak, E★ see 35, \n\n117 shaann-ghoh, Hakka saan-go, L. \n\n118 Shaannloo, \n\n#. \n\n119 Shamm-zearng, ##. \n\n+ \n\n120 Shamm-zeon, . The second word means an artificial channel with earth banks and suggests that the present river was cut to drain the swamps to the east and south-east of the present town. \n\n121 Shann Ngrrdroi-sir, ĦARK - \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204825, "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-1964", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\nSecondly that the great extent of our commercial concerns in China requires a place of security as a depot for such of our goods as cannot be sold off or shipped during the short season that is allowed for our shipping to arrive and depart; and that for this purpose we wish to obtain a grant of a small tract of ground or detached Island, but in a more convenient situation than Canton, where our present Warehouses are at a great distance from our ships, and where we are not able to restrain the irregularities which are occasionally committed by the Seamen of the Company's ships, and those of private traders4.\n\n107\n\nIn fact in his Journal under an entry dated 2-7 January, 1794, after discussing the possibility of obtaining Macao, he went on to mention the possibility of a settlement on an island.\n\nOr with as little trouble and with more advantage we might make a settlement in Lantao or Cow-hee, and then Macao would of itself crumble to nothing in a short time. The forts of the Bocca Tigris might be demolished by half a dozen broadsides, the river would be impassable without our permission, and the whole trade of Canton and its correspondencies annihilated in a season. The millions of people who subsist by it would be almost instantly reduced to hunger and insurrection.\n\nTherefore it was natural that Macartney should send Lieutenant Parish to survey the coast of Lantao and the neighbouring islands in search of a harbour and a possible place for a settlement. In his report Parish refers to \"a situation for a settlement, intended to protect the large and valuable ships employed in the China trade\". It was unfortunate that the bad weather during the short time available for the survey prevented Parish from obtaining a more detailed description of the area. However, he did manage to land on an island which he calls Cowhee and his report to Macartney contains information of interest which, together with his sketch map, is worth reproducing3. It reads as follows:\n\nMacao 28th February, 1794.\n\nPursuant to your Excellency's orders, Mr. Alexander and myself embarked on board the Jackall in the Typas, at seven", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204920, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NIAH CAVE, 1947 - 1964\n\n21\n\ninterior, prior to planning an excavation programme on the island where, up until then, no systematic work had been attempted. Indeed, years before, a Royal Society report had advised against intensive exploration of Borneo caves for human remains.\n\nTo my eye, Niah was clearly a major target: by virtue of its vast size and elevation well above at least late Pleistocene submergence levels and for other exciting reasons. But it is up a small river in a remote place, unapproachable overland, and thus costly to investigate. (Archaeology is seldom worthwhile on the cheap.) So first, we settled for more accessible sites where experience, good-will, skilled staff, and public support could be built up on the basis of continuing direction and organisation. From this base, and with outside help attracted by the first phases of results, by 1954 we were able, with the aid of my friends, Mr. Michael Tweedie (then Director, Raffles Museum, Singapore) and Mr. Hugh Gibb, plus the Shell group of companies, to do a test dig at Niah. Results were so encouraging that I decided the job required major organisation and long-term planning. We therefore resumed our work in 1957, with help from the Gulbenkian Foundation (who continue their support), Shell (whose support also continues), Chicago Natural History Museum, and others.\n\nThe main work in the field is now financed from local sources. In the last seven years, we have built permanent camps on the river, and two miles away, inside the West Mouth of the Great Cave, a new plank walk over the jungle floor between the two points. We keep resident staff on the site; and at this established base, which includes a laboratory, stores, and boat-house, we have trained a team of Niah people to carry out many of the routines. These measures now greatly reduce recurrent field costs, which were very high in the first years.\n\nCAVE STUDIED TO DATE\n\nAs of 1st September, 1964, our excavation position at Niah was broadly as follows:\n\n1. West Mouth Great Cave, (a) main deep shaft (\"Hell\")\n\ndown to 180 inches. Carbon 14 at 98-100 inches was 38,000 years (approx.). Below 100 inches, all bone, shells, and carbon decompose, but stone tools, mostly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204921, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "T. HARRISSON\n\ntiny flakes, remain. It is planned to concentrate on continuing down to deeper levels when we resume field work later in 1964.\n\n2. West Mouth (b) rest of outer mouth-rich, undisturbed stone-age occupation in light area; stratified sequence from late neolithic down to full palaeolithic occupation; about 700 square feet completed.\n\n3. West Mouth, (c) inner, half dark section not in general early use as occupation, but dense late Stone Age cemetery, and up to early Iron. Eighty burials so far exposed; most treated and left in site for fuller physical study.\n\n4. Lobang Angin (“Wind Mouth\") - a shelf of c.400 square feet high on cliff edge, fully occupied before the late Stone Age and back into the palaeolithic; excavations, half-done so far, will be completed.\n\n5. Gan Kira (Traders Cave\") — a smaller rockshelf near sea level, evidently a neolithic trading camp, which includes an apparent murder incident and scattered sub-surface skeletons (some beheaded). Fully excavated down to limestone bedrock (fossil oysters, O.gigas).\n\n6. Lobang Tulang (“Caves of Bones\")-cliff grottos full of jar and other secondary burials, mainly of the early birds' nest trade with China period (?900 - 1200 A.D.); bronze and other finds; completed.\n\n7. Kain Hitam (\"the Painted Cave\")-a separate cave high in a limestone island, discovered by Barbara Harrisson in 1958; 200 feet of wall paintings above floor littered with \"death ships\" and an abundance of bone, beads, porcelain and stoneware sherds, etc. Evidently this was the centre of elaborate prehistoric funerary rites, related to those still extant in the Niah River (as filmed). C-14 dates on four \"death ships\" so far received give between 0 and 780 A.D.\n\nExcavated in 200×5 foot square blocks correlated to wall paintings. A small section was left for a check-study in 1965.\n\n8. Samti - a small rock shelter in an isolated corner of the Great Cave formation, which also held death ship remains.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204937, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "38\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\nhaving been nursed and reared by tigers.\" \"Where should we have been,\" he asks, \"if our grandmothers and mothers had been drowned in their infancy?\" And he quotes two instances of the punishment of mothers who had destroyed their infants, one of whom had a blood-red serpent fastened to her thigh, and the other her four extremities turned into cow's feet.* Father Ripa mentions, that of abandoned children, the Jesuits baptized in Peking alone not less than three thousand yearly. I have seen ponds which are the habitual receptacle of female infants, whose bodies lie floating about on their surface.\n\nIt is by no means unusual to carry persons in a state of exhaustion a little distance from the cities, to give them a pot of rice, and to leave them to perish of starvation when the little store is exhausted. Life and death in China, beyond any other region, seem in a state of perpetual activity. The habits of the people, their traditions, the teachings of the sages all give a wonderful impulse to the procreative affections. A childless person is deemed an unhappy, not to say a degraded, man. The Chinese moralists set it down as a law, that if a wife give no children to her husband,\n\n*Doubt has been sometimes expressed as to the practice of Infanticide in China on any great scale; but abundance of evidence of the extent of the usage may be found in Chinese books. The following is a translation of a Decree of the Emperor Kanghi, entitled,-\n\n\"Edict prohibiting the drowning of children.\" \"When a mother mercilessly plunges beneath the water the tender offspring to which she has given birth, can it be said that it owes its life to her who thus takes away what it has just begun to enjoy? The poverty of the parents is the cause of this wrongdoing; they have difficulty in earning subsistence for themselves, still less can they pay nurses and undertake all the necessary expenses for their children; thus driven to despair, and unwilling to cause the death of two persons to preserve the life of one, it comes to pass that a mother to save her husband's life consents to destroy her children. Their natural tenderness suffers; but they at length determine to take this part, thinking themselves at liberty to dispose of the life of their children, in order to prolong their own. If they exposed these children in some unfrequented spot, their cries would move the hearts of the parents; what then do they? They cast the unfortunate babe into the current of a river, that they may at once lose sight of it, and in an instant deprive it of life. You have given me the name of Father of the People: though I cannot feel for these infants the tenderness of the parents to whom they owe their being, I cannot refrain from declaring to you, with the most painful feelings, that I absolutely forbid such homicides. The tiger, says one of our books, though it be a tiger, does not rend its own young; towards them it has a feeling breast, and continually cares for them. Poor as you may be, is it possible that you should become the murderers of your own children? is to shew yourselves more unnatural than the very beasts of prey.”— Lettres Edifiantes, vol. xix, pp. 101-2,\n\nIt\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204972, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n71\n\nPiracy was firmly rooted along the South China coast. Then, during the First China War, many junks were allowed to act as armed privateers, and when the war was over, became pirates rather than return to peaceful trade. Hong Kong and its neighbouring islands had always been centres of piracy, or the home of fishermen ambitious to earn a dishonest dollar or two from piracy. The new British colony must have appeared like manna from Heaven to these people, and the colony's first years were marked by an increase in piracy. There was a similar increase in piracy around Singapore at the same time. The founding of Singapore in 1819 had resulted in a great increase in native trade in the area, and this suffered severely from attacks by well-armed Chinese junks, which sometimes attacked European ships. Captain James Brooke with his sea Dyaks played a big part in suppressing piracy in these waters.1\n\nThe period between the First and Second China Wars is one of the most confusing in Chinese history. On one hand is the founding of a British colony at Hong Kong, the opening of the treaty ports, and the inception of regular shipping services along the coast; while on the other is the persistence of lawlessness and piracy. In the background is the increasing weakness of the Manchu Dynasty, and during the last years of the period, the Taiping Rebellion.\n\nWhen the East India Company controlled the China trade, there was little need for naval protection in Chinese waters, and the Cantonese were traditionally opposed to the Royal Navy. The large and well-armed East Indiamen and \"Country\" ships were perfectly capable of fighting their way past the pirates who infested the Canton River delta, as were smaller, but faster and equally well-armed opium clippers. In spite of Chinese objections, however, British warships visited Canton on several occasions. Anson called in the Centurion in 1741, on the famous voyage on which he captured the Manila galleon, and Cook in 1779 with the Resolution and Discovery after his three-year cruise in the Pacific. Cook's ships were careened, refitted, and provisioned at Canton, the East India Company advancing the money in return for bills on the Admiralty in London.\n\n1 The first white Rajah of Sarawak.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204977, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "76\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nthe countryside for miles from the coast. The leaders of such fleets were often opposed to the ruling dynasty, sometimes being disaffected former high officials. Koxinga, the greatest of all Chinese pirates, comes into this category. Koxinga was a supporter of the fallen Ming Dynasty against the Manchus, and the Chinese honour him to this day as a great patriot. His greatest exploit was the capture of Formosa from the Dutch in 1661. This type of rebel cum bandit cum pirate continued to appear down to modern times.\n\nThe expansion of the China trade, and the opening of Japan to foreign trade resulted in a great increase in British naval forces in the Far East. The first naval ships to operate in the China seas were based on the East Indies station, but very soon China became an important sphere of naval operations on her own. The suppression of piracy was only one of the Navy's responsibilities. The distance between Britain and China meant that unusual and interesting duties were often entrusted to naval officers, especially before telegraphic communications were established and when senior Foreign Office or Diplomatic officials were unavailable. Hong Kong became the headquarters of the China station, which extended from Singapore to Shanghai, and later to Japan. It continued as such until, as the result of a reorientation of naval policy in the inter-war period, Singapore became the major British naval base in the Far East. Even after that Hong Kong continued to be the headquarters of the anti-piracy forces.\n\nUntil France sent naval forces to co-operate with the Royal Navy in the Second China War, the Royal Navy was the only effective naval force in the China seas, and undertook the protection of all shipping. Even after the United States and France stationed naval forces permanently in these waters, the major responsibility for the suppression of piracy remained with the Royal Navy. It was British policy to station a warship at or near each treaty port, whether it was a coastal or a river port. This meant warships of two distinct types. There were the larger ships and their auxiliaries, which only saw action on rare occasions, and which were based in Hong Kong, with a summer cruise to Wei-hai-wei. Then there were the shallow-draft river gunboats, specially designed to operate on the Yangtze and the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204978, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n77\n\nWest River, and which were stationed permanently on those rivers. These were divided into two squadrons, one for the Yangtze, and one for the West River, with a senior naval officer in charge of each squadron under the overall command of the Commander-in-Chief of British naval forces at Hong Kong. The officer in charge of the Yangtze squadron was called Rear Admiral, Yangtze. The assumption of this title seems to have aroused little comment from the Chinese, unlike the British public's reaction when the Kaiser called himself Admiral of the Atlantic a few decades later.\n\nAs old-fashioned piracy died out with the coming of steamships, a new kind designed to cope with the new conditions appeared. While some of the new pirates may have been recruited from the old, the new piracy required a knowledge of modern shipping practices unlikely to have been common among the old fishermen cum pirates. As before, however, the new-style piracy was most prevalent around Hong Kong, embarrassingly close to the headquarters of the anti-piracy forces. It was adding insult to injury when the steam launch Wo Fat Shing was pirated in Hong Kong Harbour in 1927, and $30,000 in gold bars stolen. The newspapers made great play out of such facts. Highly coloured accounts of pirate companies being established in Hong Kong along sound business lines, replete with boards of directors and so on, were common in the British and American press in the 1920's and early 30's. The rumour that some of these companies had attractive Chinese women in command added some spice to these stories.\n\nOne of the earliest cases of this new kind of piracy took place in 1874, when the Hong Kong, Canton, and Macao Steamship Company's small river steamer Spark was pirated between Canton and Macao.2 The Spark's captain, mate, purser, one fireman, and four passengers were murdered. The pirates went ashore in the ship's boats, and the engineers took refuge in the bunkers then took the ship to Macao. The Spark was only 133 tons burden, but she had over 150 passengers who had prudently taken...\n\n2 The Spark was one of the oldest steamers on the river. She had been built in New York in 1849 for Russell and Company, sent out in sections and assembled at Whampoa. She was sold to the Hong Kong, Canton, and Macao Steamship Company in 1870.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205109, "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-1966", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "60\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\ntheir functions in the Yuan-shih. On the Chinese side, the leading astronomer was Kuo Shou-ching (1231-1316). To him fell the difficult task of reconciling the Arab astronomical system with traditional Chinese astronomy which had entirely different mathematical and geometrical foundations. As I am not a specialist in the history of science, I have to refer to Needham's detailed study of this problem.7\n\nAnother field where Western Asians reached some prominence in China was medicine. It seems as if the skill of Westerners in surgery greatly impressed the Chinese, because physicians from the Near East who performed all sorts of difficult operations are frequently mentioned. Some of them were not Muslim but Nestorian Christians, like Ai-hsieh (1227-1308) whose Chinese name is a rendering of Syriac Isa, Yehoshua, or Jesus. He was not only a famous physician but also for some time served as a Court Astronomer under Kublai Khan prior to the arrival of Jamal ad-Din. Ai-hsieh reached high offices at Kublai's court and was even honored posthumously by having his biography included in the Yüan dynastic history. His activities in China, however, and the presence of many other doctors from the Western Regions, failed to leave a permanent impact on Chinese medicine. The theoretical framework of traditional Chinese medicine continued to be the basis for medical literature and there is not much trace of Western contacts to be noticed in such medical and pharmacological Chinese works as the Pen-ts'ao kang-mu by Li Shih-chen (sixteenth century). On the other hand Chinese medicine was made known rather widely in Islamic countries, as we shall see later. It seems, in any case, that individual skills and techniques were appreciated in Yüan China rather than new theoretical issues and ideas that were entirely foreign to the Chinese. This is certainly the case in both astronomy and medicine; both remained faithful to the inherited theories in spite of occasional borrowings from the West.\n\nTechnology was another field where Westerners were active in China. We have mentioned artillery already. The catapults used by the Mongol and Northern Chinese armies against the fortified town of Hsiang-yang on the Han River were built by Mohammedan engineers. Hsiang-yang has, during a long period in Chinese history, been a town of great strategic importance. Whoever commanded Hsiang-yang could block the access to the fertile Middle", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205356, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n111\n\nthe flesh of this, which is coarse, and contains much rancid oil, is also sold in the markets.\n\nThe Rivers, The district of Sanon is generally well irrigated, but the streams are of small size. Three of them, perhaps, may merit the name of rivers; in the southern and eastern part of the district there are only small mountain streams, which pour down over the precipices, sometimes forming picturesque waterfalls.\n\nDeep Bay terminates, as already stated, in a considerable creek; and into this several large streams, coming particularly from that part of the district which was first occupied by the Hakka population, pour their waters. These are too shallow and irregular even for the navigation of small craft.\n\nNot far from the village Tai-chung ★, east of the district town, another river, Ti-sha-ho ★, discharges its waters into the bay. It has its source in the Yeong-toi mountains, and after a long serpentine course, at last reaches the bay. Its bed is broad, but often shallow, and its embouchure is very sandy. On account of its breadth and the sudden floods to which it is subject, no bridges are built across this river, and as, after long continued rain, it swells to a great height, it frequently becomes quite impassable, and travellers are put to much delay and inconvenience in consequence.\n\nThe Sai-heong river, also takes its rise in the Yeong-toi mountain, and empties itself into Nam-tow bay, at the market town of Sai-heong. It is only navigable for a short distance at high water, when many trading junks and fishing-boats make their way up to the town, where they remain high and dry. If the exact time of high tide be not chosen, these boats can neither make their way outwards nor inwards. Sai-heong is divided by this river into two parts, which are called the eastern and western villages. These are united by an awkward wooden bridge about 200 yards in length. This bridge is of a peculiar construction, the planks being nailed underneath, instead of upon the cross-beams, so that it is somewhat awkward walking over it. The intervals between the cross-beams are about two yards. It is asserted that the bridge (erected about the time of the first war) was thus built, in order to prevent the British being able to transport their cannon over this river, if they should venture to make their appearance in the neighbourhood. A few years ago, a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205357, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "112\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nwealthy man, desirous of having a tablet erected in remembrance of his merits, built a stone bridge across the river about ten yards above the old one. The building cost him 200 taels, but the first rainy season carried it away, as the structure was supported only on granite piles, which rested on the sandy bed, and yielded to the slightest force. All attempts to repair it were fruitless.\n\nThe principal streams of the plain San-keaou, unite in the Pik-tou river, which, as before stated, forms the northern boundary of the district for eight or ten miles; only a few small streams discharge themselves directly into the sea. The Pik-tou river is by far the largest of the district. It has several tributaries, which have their rise partly from the Yeong-toi mountain, and partly from the mountain range which forms the northern boundary of the district. It is navigable for light craft for eight miles from its mouth, and as it is difficult of approach, on account of its course being bounded either by very precipitous banks or extensive marshy ground, it is a favourite and safe refuge for pirates. The villages scattered along its banks, are inhabited by traders with Canton, Hongkong, and Tung-kun, and fishermen who occasionally act as pirates when a favourable opportunity occurs.\n\nThe Mow-chow river, of which the Wang-kang and San-keaou rivers are tributaries, empties itself into the Pik-tou river, at a short distance before it pours its waters into the estuary of the Pearl river. Both these rivers are only navigable at high water, when light craft are able to get up as far as Wang-kang and San-keaou respectively. The greatest depth at low water seldom exceeds from two to four feet. The wells of the villages through which the rivers pass are always brackish, doubtless in consequence of the tidal flow, which is perceptible to a great extent throughout the district.\n\nAmong the fifty \"remarkable bridges\" which the district boasts, and which have generally very pompous names, there are few of any importance; a few are of solid masonry, and have several arches.\n\nA hot sulphurous spring in the neighbourhood of Tuk-lat1 between San-keaou and the Yeong-toi mountain, attracts the notice of the traveller. It is situated between two gently rising hills in the midst of rice-fields, and the steam which constantly rises from the several springs is visible at a considerable distance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205552, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "FAN LAU AND ITS FORT\n\n$9\n\ni.e. great island, by the Chinese; the town Toongchung on the north shore opposite Chulocock I. is the largest on the island\"\n\nOn the other hand, it seems by this date that the fort was already abandoned since one of the British officers who came out to China for the hostilities of 1841-42, has this to say of it in an account of his experiences:\n\n14\n\nAt the S.W. part of Lantou (sic) we saw, on a height, the remains of an old walled fort, supposed to have been one of the haunts of the famous Coxinga, the pirate However, the fort could not have been abandoned for very long since a repair tablet inside the Tin Hau temple at Fan Lau dated the 2nd summer month of the 25th year of Chia Ch'ing (11th June -9th July, 1820) records contributions by officers of the\n\n21\n\nas it is described thereon. Both these records can only apply to the Fan Lau fort.'5\n\nWhen the Hong Kong Government surveyors arrived at Fan Lau in 1904 after the New Territories were ceded to Britain, they found the fort still abandoned. In the Block Crown Lease Survey, it is described as \"old fort, ruins, waste\".16 It had probably not been re-occupied since the early part of the 19th century.\n\nIt can now be argued that the Kai Yik Kok fort is a Ming dynasty fort built sometime before 1573, possibly abandoned, but rebuilt again in 1730, captured by pirates and re-taken by govern-ment forces sometime between 1810 and 1815, and then refurbished, refortified, and garrisoned until some time before 1841-42, by which time it was already again abandoned.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Also known to the villagers as Yuen To Shan (#ll) or \"the hill from which to watch the arrival of distant boats\". There is a level spot high above the village, which, according to tradition, was used by observers to watch for incoming vessels proceeding up the Chu Kong or Pearl River estuary.\n\n2 The locations of these various strongpoints can be plotted from the text and maps in the Coastal Defence sections of the 1864 edition (map circa A.D. 1822) of the Kwong Tung Tung Chi\n\nthe 1819 edition of the San On Yuen Chi M £ M ; the 1827 edition of the Heung Shan Yuen Chi ₺ 4B #; and the 1800 edition of the O Mun Kei Leuk * 1938 #. The last three works contain maps of varying dates from earlier editions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205743, "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-1969", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n43\n\nbad informal connections with Hong Kong's officialdom and that its activities were a foretaste of the future.\n\nBy March of 1899, British officials began to appear in the territory. A party was busy near the Sham Chun river, marking out the frontier with China. Meanwhile, the officer in charge of the Hong Kong police was touring the territory, considering alternative locations for police stations. This official—Captain Superintendent F. H. May arrived at Ping Shan on 27th March. His first action was to post a proclamation saying that the Hong Kong government would not interfere with the land, buildings, or customs of the people. He then designated a hill behind Ping Shan as the site for a police station. A crowd gathered and the argument began. “It says that land, buildings, and customs will not be interfered with but will remain the same as before. Why should they, therefore, when they first come into the leased area, wish to erect a police station on the hill behind our village? When has China ever erected a police station just where people live? The proclamation says that things will be as before. Are not these words untrue?”\n\n54\n\nThe Resistance Movement -- 28th March to 18th April, 1899.\n\nThe day after May's visit to Ping Shan, discussions were held in the ancestral halls of Ping Shan and Kam Tin. In both instances, agreement was reached that resistance should be offered to the British. Following the two meetings, a third took place in an ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Representatives of all three Tang lineages were present and previous decisions to offer resistance were ratified. Messages were sent to leaders throughout the marketing area, asking them to attend a meeting at Yuen Long market the next day.\n\nSteward Lockhart later argued that the resistance leaders feared for their positions of power and privilege. At the Ha Tsuen meeting, a wider range of anxieties were expressed: “... that under English law a poll tax would be collected; that houses would be numbered and a charge made therefor; that fishing and wood-cutting would be prohibited; that women and girls would be outraged; that births and deaths would be registered; that cattle and pigs would be destroyed; that police stations would be erected, which would ruin the Fung Shui [Mandarin: Feng Shui] of the place. In short, that the evils that would arise would be so great", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205752, "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-1969", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "52\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nthe configuration of the country favoured cover and our casualties were few.\" But, \"had this advance not been conducted with great care the loss to our troops must have been heavy.\"69 After fierce fighting the militia withdrew from the valley, leaving it by way of the saddle which gives access to the Pat Heung district. The soldiers followed and, having lost touch with the Chinese, bivouacked for the night at Sheung Tsuen, on the foothills overlooking the Pat Heung valley.\n\nThe next afternoon a large force (subsequently estimated at 2,600 men), was seen approaching from a distance. It consisted of men from Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Castle Peak and from four villages in adjacent Chinese territory, including Pan Tin. The British force took up positions and stood watching the militia, deployed in three lines, \"advance across the open in excellent skirmishing order.70 The British Officer Commanding later conceded that it was \"distinctly a determined advance for Chinamen.”71 The militia began firing at long range and their rifle and jingal fire shortly became almost continuous. When the distance had been reduced to 500 yards the British tried a few ranging shots, moved forward under cover of a dry water course, and advanced into the open toward the on-coming militia. In the face of such a determined response, which now became a general advance accompanied by heavy fire, the militia broke and ran.\n\nThis battle marked the end of organized resistance within the New Territory. The next weeks were spent in establishing the civil administration and in persuading villagers to return to their normal occupations. The Governor, in attempting to explain what had happened to a remote Colonial Office, drew upon another Celtic parallel. The resistance, he said, revealed \"a state of clan feeling and power of combination not unlike that of the Scottish Highlands two centuries ago . . .\"72\n\nThe Occupation of Sham Chun and its Aftermath-- May to September, 1899.\n\nThus far, operations had been confined to the newly leased territory. Early in May, however, reports reached the Hong Kong Government of an impending attack from across the Sham Chun river. Police informers said that 140 ‘bare-sticks' from Tung-kuan Hsien had assembled in secrecy at Sha Tau, on Deep Bay. They were to form the nucleus of a force which was to be augmented by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205782, "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-1969", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "82\n\nKING MONGKUT OF SIAM AND HIS TREATY WITH BRITAIN\n\nROBERT BRUCE*\n\nWhen Sir John Bowring sailed up the river to Bangkok in March 1855 he was asked by King Mongkut not to fire a salute lest the citizens be alarmed. Sir John, Governor of Hong Kong and Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in the Far East, reluctantly agreed to postpone the ceremonial explosion from the Rattler's guns until the anxious citizens had been given one day's warning.\n\nThe Siamese had cause for concern. The Burmese, their traditional enemies, had been conquered by the British; and a dozen years before the Bowring mission the great Chinese Empire had been defeated by the British navy. On their eastern frontier, the Siamese watched with alarm the French encroachment on Cochin-China and their own dominion of Cambodia. To the south of the Isthmus of Kra British power was spreading into the Malay States, including Kedah, a feudatory of Siam. But their fears were to prove unfounded. The Bowring mission to Bangkok was completely successful for both British and Siamese. On April 18th, 1855, a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed, an agreement which was to secure for Siam, alone in south-east Asia, independence from colonial rule and which set her on the long, painful road of modernisation.\n\nForce had been used to 'open' China. In the same year as Bowring's peaceful mission to Bangkok Commodore Perry's American warships were demanding commerce and navigation rights of the Japanese. Even after the Treaty of Nanking had\n\n* This article, entitled \"King Mongkut of Siam\", appeared in History Today for October 1968. The original text, slightly extended, is reprinted here by permission of the Editor. Mr. Bruce lectured to the Hong Kong Branch on this subject in February 1968.\n\nMr. Bruce is at present a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Kentucky University, U.S.A. He served eight years as Representative of the British Council in Thailand and later filled the same post in Hong Kong where he was a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society. Mr. Bruce was also one time Director of the Government School of Chinese Language at Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205871, "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-1969", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n171\n\ntung. On the military side these events included two assaults on Canton itself, nearly four years of military occupation of the city (5.1.1858 - 21.10.1861) and various punitive expeditions on the Canton river and inside the province. On the civil and diplomatic side were the sequence of events connected with the question of entry to Canton, which the British held to have been promised them under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. This culminated in the triumph of the Canton Viceroy in 1849 who was able to defer entry still further on the grounds of the rooted opposition of the gentry and people of the province to this step by their officials — though deferment was also due to Bonham's conviction that the real key to Canton lay not by warlike action there as in the North. These years also saw economic crises at Canton occasioned, among other factors, by the opening of four other treaty ports under the Nanking Treaty, and a wave of growing lawlessness across the province culminating in the great disorders of the 1850s in the wake of the Taiping rebellion.\n\nMr. Wakeman's theme is the re-emergence of local militia in the early 1840's to assist in repelling the British forces and their continuance through the later years of the entry question (1846-49); the part they played in local defence against the Red Turban and other rebels, pirates and banditti in the early 1850s; their efforts against the British attack in 1857-58 and, under secret orders from Peking, in the guerilla struggle against the British in Canton in the first period of the occupation, until diplomatic agreement in the North led to their being told to desist.\n\nHe traces the ebb and flow in official attitudes to the local militia from encouragement to discouragement, from enthusiasm to apprehension. He describes, too, the methods by which the militia were raised and financed and shows how they were a two-edged weapon to Government and people alike. Mr. Wakeman also traces the rise and wane of anti-foreign attitudes in Kwantung during this period and the paradoxical change from bitter enmity to a realisation, at least in Canton and its surrounds, that British troops were a guarantee against a multitude of threats from lawless elements. The treatment is masterly and authoritative, being based on a wide variety of sources in English and Chinese; the book is compelling and the narrative moves smoothly.\n\nIn this review I shall confine my remarks mainly to the militia. First of all I wish to comment briefly on the use of the English", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205953, "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-1970", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "28\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\nhad not had sufficient time to inform Anking of his impending approach.18 Nevertheless, Elgin made no effort himself to notify the uninformed Taiping garrison. Instead, as soon as the Taipings opened fire at the head-on approach of the strange vessels it was returned with a vengeance. After the Taiping batteries had been quieted, the ships' cannons fired into the city itself. This was done even though the English observed the country people running into it for protection from the attacking Imperialists.19 The English did not stop at Anking, but continued upstream. On the way back from Hankow, when again approaching Anking Elgin took precautions, and \"thought it necessary to take a pretty high tone with the rebel authorities...\"20 He sent Wade ashore with a message of warning, reflecting that \"to menace with capture by two small gun-boats a great city, walled and garrisoned, might have been in bad taste elsewhere, but in China it was the thing to do.”21 On shore, Wade found out that the Taipings had since been informed of what had happened at Nanking and that they were highly apologetic for making the same mistake at Anking. Wade refused a present of oxen and other provisions. An invitation to visit the Taiping commander at Anking was similarly rejected. Wade departed with a final verbal warning indicating \"how simple a matter it would be for us to sweep them away utterly, were we provoked to do it.”22\n\nOn this return trip, Elgin decided to stop by at Nanking once again, this time to acknowledge receipt of a formal written apology which had been sent from the Taipings soon after the first visit, but which, because of the speed of the English ascent and the presence of the Imperialist fleet on the river, had failed to reach Elgin. The apology awaited, therefore, the return of the English and was delivered to them when they again passed by Wu-hu.23\n\nAs one of the few visits by Western officials to Nanking, this event deserves more attention than has been accorded by historians. The handling of the story of this visit is of interest in itself, for it sheds some light on how easily misunderstanding of the Taipings grew, as a result of both conscious prejudice and improper reporting. One contemporary writer, Commander Lindsay Brine, for example, who has a general reputation among historians for his relative objectivity in writing on the Taipings, gives three pages to the visit,24 His account gives details of the conversation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205985, "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-1970", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "60\n\nLAMARR B. TROTT\n\nmonthly temperature of the air, and the sea surface temperatures of Tolo Harbour shows striking correlation. The temperature of the water falls well below 20°C (14.5°C) during the winter months. This would normally mean that reef-building corals would not be found here, and indeed a reef as such does not exist. However, we do have flourishing patch reefs, often comprised by species of reef-building corals, making this condition in Hong Kong unique biologically. Our geographic position being on the Tropic of Cancer would normally indicate a subtropical climate; however, winter-time cold air and water currents greatly influence the temperature of our environment, whether we consider the land or the sea. Our marine fauna is thus derived from the Indo-Pacific faunal realm, but it is also influenced by more temperate forms. A characteristic of the sea is the fact that the offspring of most marine creatures live for a time in what is termed the plankton, and drift freely in the sea at the mercy of ocean currents. If they can tolerate the conditions of the environment to which these currents bring them, then they become established in that area.\n\nOf other conditions of the marine environment than temperature that are important to Hong Kong, we can mention two in passing. One is salinity. Fresh water from the Pearl River flowing into our waters during and after the rainy season greatly reduces the saltiness of the waters of Deep Bay. The organisms living there must thus be able to tolerate a great change in salinity or be able to migrate to more favorable areas when the salinity becomes too low. Correlated with this is the sediment that is washed down with the Pearl River outflow. Many organisms cannot tolerate great amounts of sediment settling on top of them. Corals are one of the best examples. Thus, our corals are concentrated in areas of the Colony less under the influence of the Pearl River — Mirs Bay, for example.\n\nMy own research at the Chinese University has been concentrated in the area of Tolo Harbour. The site of the Chinese University on the shore of the harbour at Ma Liu Shui makes work in this area ideal. We have begun a general survey of the Harbour, which has included preliminary investigations of the mudflat areas, the level bottom communities, the fishes, and studies on associations between organisms. One of the primary aims of our program is to train students in the marine sciences.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206082, "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-1970", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n157\n\nbegging bowl. However, since the first reference to Buddhist worship on the mountain occurs in 954, when an officer of the garrison called Ch'an carved a figure of Buddha which he put in a cave, we can assume that its Buddhist connotations were created by the Chinese soldiers. Before being a Buddhist hill it was made famous as a sacred spot by the visit of Han Yü, the famous Confucian scholar and one of the greatest names in Chinese literature.\n\nHan Yü was brought up in North China in the same region as Confucius, for whom he had the greatest veneration. He was a particularly intransigent type of philosopher who disliked all signs of mysticism. In 820 he attacked the Emperor for installing a relic of Buddha in the palace. \"I am not so naif as to think Your Majesty is deceived by Buddhism,\" he wrote. \"This ceremony is no more than a pageant got up to please the people, and how could your august wisdom deem it anything else?\" For these scathing remarks he was sent into exile to Chao Chou, which was then one of the most remote outposts of the T'ang Empire. On his way, whether coming or going, he passed by this region, and according to the Topography, \"ascended the mountain of T'un Mun and looked over the vast unfathomable ocean and the forests and waters and felt that it was indeed a sacred spot.” This local tradition is confirmed by a passage from one of his poems which describes a storm at sea with the lines:\n\n\"Tun Mun is a high mountain they say,\n\nBut even the waves swallow it up.\"\n\nHan Yü held an official post at Chao Chou. Although the place is outside our region it is worth while illustrating the conditions then prevailing in South China by quoting from his famous ‘Address to the Crocodiles.\" Han Yü was asked by the aborigines to drive away crocodiles by throwing charms into a river. His address to the crocodiles was thrown into the river by the chief of the garrison. Part of it reads as follows:\n\n\"If the crocodiles have any intelligence they should listen to the words of the prefect of Chao Chou. The great ocean spreads in the South. There live huge whales and monster birds, tiny shrimps and little crabs: all creatures find space and nourishment therein. If the crocodiles start in the morning they will reach the sea by nightfall. I conjure them, if they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206219, "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-1971", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "30\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\ncounter.\"'48 But, of course, this act cannot be laid exclusively to Captain Dew. Another contemporary source charged perhaps more penetratingly that the Taiping possession of Ningpo was \"peculiarly adapted\" to thwart British Minister Frederick Bruce's \"schemes for aiding and abetting\" the Ch'ing side in China's civil war. The source noted that Taiping possession of the seaport would enable them to deprive Shanghai of the greater proportion of the customs duties, which not only might now be diverted into their own exchequer, but would frustrate the object of Mr. Horatio Lay's mission to London where he was seeking to put together an Anglo-Chinese flotilla to be used against the Taipings, and \"destroy the main stay of the Imperial cause.\" The Taipings would also be able to obtain needed war munitions. Finally, they would have the opportunity to dispel \"the illusion of their being inimical to foreign trade.\" This source concluded that from \"such cogent reasons\" Admiral Hope came to agree with the Minister's views, and \"resolved on the recapture of the place by fair means or foul.\"49\n\nSmall wonder that the story of the Taiping occupation of Ningpo has received little subsequent attention in Western historical accounts of the Taiping period. When it has, it has too often been sadly distorted. It is not a happy episode to think about. But however that may be, it is an historical experience that is well worth reflection upon. It was a passing moment of history which, in a telescoped span of time, rather accurately reflected a larger contemporary story. It demonstrated that Chinese revolutionaries of the early 1860s had the capacity to achieve major objectives against a weak established government, including the conquest of much of the territory of the richest provinces in the lower Yangtze River basin and the seizure of a principal seaport. It also demonstrated that the Taipings did treat foreigners respectably well and promoted trade, which was, after all, the matter of greatest importance to foreigners. It also proved that neither the apparent military nor the civil capabilities of the revolutionaries made much difference to those key foreign officials who were determined to assist the weak established government. Finally, it showed that the intervention of foreign powers made a great deal of difference in the ultimate outcome of the civil war in China. At the most, the experience at Ningpo from December 1861 to May 1862 suggests the story in microcosm", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206243, "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-1971", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HON EDITOR \n\nof the period in later life in two well-known books entitled The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 (Kelly & Walsh, 1882 and 2nd edition 1911) and Bits of Old China, also published by Messrs. Kelly & Walsh at the same dates. C. Toogood Downing's The Fan-Qui in China (three volumes, London, Henry Colburn, 1838) is another well-known contemporary account.\n\nExtracts from the Letters * \n\nTO HIS SISTER, DATED CANTON, 12TH DECEMBER, 1835 \n\nMy time here is fully occupied, I am glad to say. If sometimes rather too much so there's no great harm done; I assure you I have supped too full of the horrors of idleness in time gone by, to fret at hard work now. There are several circumstances in Canton life which agree with me very well—and these are just enhanced by contrast with its disadvantages. There is some interest too in the strange faces, browned and weather-beaten, of the ship-captains from Liverpool and London etc. who are lodged and boarded of necessity in our Hong here all the time their Ships are in the Port, so that Covers are laid every day for an indefinite number, and the whole Domestic Establishment in short is a Boarding-House with a Table d'hôte at 7 p.m. The comfort of this evil, is the sanctity with which folks' private-rooms are regarded—seeing that there is no privacy whatever elsewhere; and in my bedroom accordingly, I enjoy greater security and deeper seclusion than if I were a stranger in an Inn with boots and chambermaids and postboys to interrupt me whether I have business with them or no. Sundry persons who dislike the strict imprisonment of a Canton-life, venture out, of evenings, on the river, in wherries. As there is a barrier, a break-water, of some thousands of boats and river-crafts of the most unutterable forms and still more unmentionable characters, to break, bruise and burst through, before ten square feet of dirty water can be won free, this is not an amusement I have taken to; and fond as I used to be of it, I think I shall become more and more averse to experiments on the Canton River the longer I remain in China. Three Europeans have been drowned by accident since my arrival here, which is just an \n\n* \n\n* The text has been left in the writer's style. Additions and queries in square brackets are the Editor's.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206244, "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-1971", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "LETTERS FROM CHINA 1835-36 \n\n55 \n\naverage of one in a fortnight! Moreover, I can't swim a stroke. Thus, the house-top is my esplanade and Champ-de-Mars every morning and evening; and seriously, the view from it is very interesting at least to an eye not palled by long repetition of it. All Canton, the City, and the Suburbs (far more extensive than it) stretches away below you on the north, with its strange curved roofs and gables, such as you always see painted in China tea-cups; and now and then the pinnacles of a joss-house, or temple, with tall flag-staffs; until the eye takes in a most beautiful hill some 2 to 3,000 feet high, and perhaps three miles away from you in a straight line. There stands an enormous Pagoda at the foot of this hill, towering prodigiously many stories above all the trees and houses around it, and with a tree (which looks a merest shrub) growing on its summit. That hill is the finest thing here; I wander over it—I mean in spirit—every morning that day breaks on it drawing out all the tints of the scene; there are half a dozen fissures in one part, which I look on as thunder-rifts; and a delicate whitish line creeps up one shoulder, which I take to be a path-way for those happy, happy, thrice-enviable and most-favored Chinamen who can walk thereon without being bamboo'd to death for the offence! The river opposite the Factories joins another great branch only a few yards higher up, and the remote shores of the united stream above, show yellow with harvest, and painfully rural to the poor bird in the cage. The country there stretches away into hills too, but perhaps 15 or 20 miles away, a long and very high range—several indeed—which break the horizon nearly half its circuit. Down the River, i.e., to the S.E., the stream curves like an S, and thereby, from your point of view, a forest of masts, of all heights and sizes ever used in boats, is visible in one coup-d'oeil, such as I never saw before. I should not say boats, though; for most of them are the masts (single sticks!) of junks from 2 to 600 Tons Burden. Their number is perfectly prodigious. You see the horizon beyond and near this, striped with one or two delicate lines of alternate land and water from the windings of the noble river, the last line of all being perhaps ten miles off. It is over there the sun rises to you, else you could not see that tiny thread of water inlaying the meadows. Not a single European ship is in sight here, and only a few sailing boats and wherries. All the European ships are down at Whampoa reach, some 12 or 13 miles away.\n\n—\n\n—\n\n—", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206245, "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-1971", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "56\n\nHONG KONG EDITOR\n\nmiles away round yon corner to the South! I ran down there for a day, to recruit, last week, and there, one walks by permission of these Celestial exclusives ashore, viz. on an island, called (I don't exactly know why) - Dane's Island. It is about 3 miles in circumference, and has a triple-peaked hill on it about as high as Arthur's Seat in Edin[burgh] which I mounted; and you can understand the titillating pleasure I derived from discovering a resemblance the most remarkable between the view from this hill and that from Ehrenbreitstein on the Rhine! The absence of a fine City and bridge was all (quite enough, you will say!) and was compensated by a river-reach (in like situation, i.e. immediately below you) occupied for the length of two miles with full 50 gallant Ships of 1500 tons and downwards. The rest of the view the character of the country -- the distribution[?] of the water the mountainous horizon-bore a great resemblance to that on the Rhine\n\n+\n\npersons\n\nSociety here is at the very lowest intellectual ebb-and is thus unencumbered by that pretension and affectation which the half-educated and half-literary disgust you with..... whether they infest the walks of literature, science, art, or anything else. We are so far, therefore, much to be envied. I discover however ominous indications in certain editorial labours of certain here who actually arrange the types for two weekly newspapers imagine if you can, what a Canton Newspaper ought to be! Apart though from what seems, and of course is, mere banter in this - we are as a community perhaps the least enlightened, the least informed, and the most vain, and the most unamiable in our intercourse together, that ever existed of its size. An American missionary who conducts our \"Monthly Repository” excellently well-is a marked but almost solitary exception. The rest of us, unless there be some \"singular few\" who like myself think of all this in secret and are unknown, are to a Man engrossed in business — Oh most dreadfully engrossed — it beats every bondage of lucre I ever beheld; mammon rules not only in the office, but at the dinner-table, and no doubt over the sleepers' dreams; not a moment of life spared to one hearty thought of any other topic that might interest liberal Englishmen\n\nand, more shocking than all, not a moment of the 24 hours (I desire not to speak uncharitably and therefore only deplore what I fear to be generally not untrue) given to the consideration", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206316, "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-1971", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n127\n\ncame from a few clearly defined areas in Kwangtung Province, because the great majority of the Chinese congregated in the urban areas spoke Cantonese4. Lennox Mills compares this situation in Hong Kong, which made government relatively easy, with pre-war Malaya. This homogeneity, he argues, ‘makes it possible to control them through the District Watch Committee. (On the other hand) the Chinese in Malaya are drawn from various provinces and are divided by provincial hostilities of long standing. The wealthy and educated Chinese in some districts come from a different province from the majority of coolies; and, in addition, the interests of the recent immigrants often differ from those of the Straits Chinese who are permanently settled in Malaya. A committee representing the Chinese of Malaya would necessarily reproduce the various schisms which divide them, and the members would in some cases have no influence over the coolies in their districts'4. In Hong Kong, however, the Chinese were not divided to any great extent by dialect or provincial hostilities, only by differences in wealth and status. The members of the District Watch Committee originated from a small number of hsien (counties) in the Canton delta, from districts and towns close to the Pearl River, the main channel of communication between Canton and Hong Kong before the completion of the Kowloon-Canton Railway in 1912. A high percentage of the committeemen were born in, or originated from, Tung Kwun (Tung-kuan hsien) and Heung Shan (Hsiang-shan hsien)42; and the merchants from these areas had their own district associations in Hong Kong.\n\nClearly, the members of the District Watch Committee had much in common: they spoke mostly the same dialect, they came from the same district or closely related districts in China and they were, if not merchants, then involved in some type of commercial pursuit—land speculation, owning and managing property, banking and insurance, finance, compradoring43. All in all, they formed a remarkably homogeneous group, united by many ties; and it would seem, rarely divided for long by political differences. Not surprisingly, some of them were inter-related through ties of blood and kinship44. There were few family dynasties in Hong Kong but a small number had children who served later on the Committee45. In the nature of things, members must have disagreed about some of the issues raised at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206385, "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-1971", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "176\n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe end of June and the beginning of September, and was then removed from its quarters of which I have spoken on board ship. Many civilians also fell victims to Hongkong fever. The mortality was mainly owing to the want of accommodation for the multitudes who kept pressing into the new colony, and to the miasma set free from the ground which was everywhere being turned up. I remember visiting officers who were living in small huts reared on the hill behind the general's house. It was no wonder that one after another they were seized with fever, and either died, or were invalided home. Then the drains were for the time all open, and an atmosphere of disease, which only the strongest constitutions and prudent living were able to resist, might be said to envelope the inhabitants day and night.\n\nI have intimated my opinion that there was no subsequent year of sickness and mortality so great as that of 1843; and nothing can be more delightful than the change in the colony in this respect. I do not think there is now a healthier residence on this side of Africa. This has been very gradually arrived at, by the increase of good houses, effectual drainage, the better supply of water, and the growth of trees and vegetation in general. There were other unhealthy years, and it came to be said that we might expect one of that character every seven years; but we have ceased to be troubled with the apprehension of such a periodic visitation. As to the healthiness from increased vegetation, I may mention that Dr. William Morrison, the colonial surgeon, who himself died from abscess of the liver, in October, 1883,* told me, some years before that event, that he had advised planting the ground on the south of the street behind the Murray Barracks with bamboos, as being of speedy growth. It was done, and soon the grove which every one of you knows, began to wave, and there was from that time a marked improvement in the health of the soldiers in those barracks.\n\nThe Colony, I have said, is now one of the healthiest residences, if not the very healthiest, in the East. The average of 14 years, reckoning back from the present, gives a rate of mortality for the foreign residents, not including the military, of a very little over 4 per cent; and in 1868, the rate was a trifle under 2 per cent, rather lower than the rate of mortality in Great Britain.\n\n* SIC: Morrison died later than the date given, but I have no reference books available at the time of writing. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206473, "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": 21, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "CHINESE MEDICINE\n\n15\n\nweakness, etc., may be too far fetched, but the basic idea of endocrinology exists. In recent years a great variety of glandular substance has been used in medicine. Of these the thyroid, pituitary, suprarenals, pancreas, liver and the placenta, have been found to be of therapeutic value. It is remarkable that many of them have been used and incorporated in Chinese pharmacopoeia for ages past.\n\nThe Ming dynasty is the most glorious in the history of the pharmacopoeia of China. The most important contribution is the Pen Tsao Kang Mu (†1), the National Pharmacopoeia of China, compiled by Li Shi-chen. This is one of the most popular works on Chinese medicine, and is considered a great classic. It consists of some 52 comprehensive volumes divided into the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the mineral kingdom and others, with a description of 1,892 kinds of different substances.\n\nIt contains many drugs which are common in both the East and the West. It took Li Shi-chen, the city magistrate, almost thirty years of hard work to complete this commendable piece of good work. This book is extremely rich in remedies, especially those of the vegetable origin, and offers a rich field for scientific research. Considerable attention has been directed to it by foreign writers, notably Du Halde who translated part of it into French in 1735 and Porter Smith in 1871.\n\nIn 1911, Stuart extensively revised Smith's work and published the Chinese Materia Medica, the vegetable kingdom. Works on the mineral kingdom and the avian kingdom were published by Bernard Read in recent years. An attempt was started by the Chinese Government to carry out scientific research on the drugs contained in the Chinese Materia Medica, but the war with Japan aborted the work.\n\nPerhaps, the earliest Chinese drug that has won its way abroad is China root, the so-called Chinese sarsaparilla, once reputed as a remedy for syphilis. Its fame spread as far as to India, Persia and Turkestan in the 16th century, and in Indian literature it was mentioned that syphilis came from Europe but China root could cure it. Eumenol, a liquid extract of tang kuei (†14), was introduced into Europe by the Germans in 1899, and is said to be effective in menstrual disorders.\n\nMacanin, a preparation from a Chinese seaweed, has been put on the market by the Japanese and vigorously advertised as a sub-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206481, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "Scarth3 \n\nNINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON \n\nT \n\n- \n\n23 \n\nan excellent artist by the way (who) told me he once saw 150 people beheaded on the execution ground at Canton”.4 The Bishop of Victoria, the Rev. George Smith has almost the right initials, but neither he nor Scarth were on the Adelaide. None of the artists in the Catalogue of the Chater Collection has the initials G.A.S. \n\nAmong the passengers arriving on the Adelaide, the \"Friend of China\" of December 2nd notes the twenty officers by name, among them Lieutenants Schomberg and Short. \"The Hongkong Shipping List\" of the same date, refers to Major Schomberg, R.A., and Lieut. Short. The artist of the paintings must have been subsequently sent from Hong Kong up the Pearl River to the Bogue before December 16th, to join the troops which had arrived earlier on the Imperador and Imperatrix who had been sent on to the Bogue immediately after their arrival. Indeed the Adelaide, with her troops on board, moved up the river from Hong Kong on December 2nd. The artist presumably was present at the capture of Canton on 29th December, and at any rate was in the city in February 1858. He took part in what he calls the \"Jingal pic-nic\" on the 20th of that month. \n\nThis curious inscription (a jingal being a sort of portable Chinese field-gun hardly conducive to a picnic atmosphere) is explained further, and at some length in Col Fisher's Three Years' Service in China, Col. Fisher relates: \"On the 20th February a pic-nic party went out to see a little of the country and of the people; and as we did not know what sort of reception we should meet with, we made rather a strong muster. There were nine officers and twenty-four men, with a couple of ponies to carry the luncheon. We started before seven o'clock, going out through the north-east gate of the city. \n\n+ \n\n\"After walking for about three hours, we rested in a very pretty spot under some fine trees, and one of the party shot a woodcock, which was hailed as a great event; and we determined to devote some little attention to so good a cause. We did not wish to return by the same road by which we had come out. The valley in which we were, we knew to be divided from the great north plain, by the White Cloud Mountains, a range familiar to our eyes from Canton. We hoped to reach that plain by some pass through the hills, and so return to Canton by way of the North Gate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206489, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n31\n\nslavery. One of the Brunei princes, Raja Muda Hasim, had shown a rather more friendly attitude toward European traders out of Singapore than had the pirate chiefs. Brooke was commissioned to make contact with Hasim and see what he could do to make English ships welcome in the rivers of Borneo. Brooke was given a letter from Governor Bonham addressed to the Sultan of Brunei, Omar Ali Saifuddin.\n\nSarawak in those days was the southernmost part of the Brunei sultanate, little more than the Malay village of Kuching and the Sarawak River. The local Malay chiefs had for some time been in rebellion against the extortionary rule of the Brunei governor, and Raja Muda Hasim had been sent to suppress the rebellion but without much success.\n\nIt was in Sarawak that Brooke, on the 15th August 1839, met Hasim and his brother Bedruddin who impressed him with their “overawing and stately demeanour”, and their above average intelligence and political acumen. They were not at all the ordinary dissipated Malay chiefs that proliferated in the environs of the Brunei court. Brooke was made welcome and carried on conversations about Malay politics and trade. He then continued his voyage to Celebes and again returned to Kuching in the summer of 1840.\n\nWithout going into the details of Malay intrigue and procrastination that surrounded a most fascinating episode of British colonial history, suffice it to say that within a year Brooke had successively: convinced himself that it was worthwhile attempting to settle the rebellion in a just and fair way; had thrown the considerable weight and prestige of his expedition behind Hasim; had negotiated an end to the rebellion, which characteristically included a fair and humane amnesty for the rebellious chiefs; and had accepted in the bargain the governorship of Sarawak. Brooke wrote a lively account of the proceedings for his journal entry,2\n\nUnder the guns of Royalist, and with a small body of men to protect me personally, and the great majority of all classes with me, it is not surprising that the negotiation proceeded rapidly to a favourable issue. The document was quickly drawn up, sealed, signed, and delivered; and on the 24th of\n\n2 R. Munday, Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes from the Journals of James Brooke, Esq. (John Murray, London, 1848), Vol. I, p. 271.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206503, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TSUNGLI YAMEN\n\n45\n\nconcerning foreign countries were reported by the governors-general and governors of provinces and were collected in the Grand Council. In recent years reports on the military situation in various areas have been continuous. Foreign affairs involve many subjects. After foreign envoys start residing at the capital if there is no one in sole charge of these matters giving their full attention to handling them then their management will be dilatory, and it will be impossible to co-ordinate policy. We request that a tsung-li ke-kuo shih-wu ya-men [office for the general management of the affairs of the various countries] be established with a minister of princely rank in charge of it. Since the Grand Councillors are responsible for drafting imperial edicts we fear that if they are not concurrently in charge of its affairs there will be discrepancies. We request that they all serve concurrently as officials [of the Tsungli Yamen]. Also we request that an office be provided in order to facilitate the transaction of business, and at the same time for receiving envoys of the various countries. As regards the staff to be established we suggest that eight men should be selected from the Manchu and eight from the Chinese who are presently serving as secretaries of the Grand Secretariat, the Six Boards, the Court of Colonial Affairs and the Grand Council. They should serve in rotation. All matters should be dealt with by the same procedure as in the Grand Council in order to specify responsibilities. As soon as military operations come to an end and affairs concerning the various countries become more simple it will be abolished, and its functions will revert to the Grand Council as before so as to tally with the old system.\n\n2. It is requested that posts for great officials be separately established at the southern and northern ports in order to facilitate the dispatch of business. We note that when trade began during the reign of Tao-kuang there were only the five ports of Canton, Foochow, Amoy, Ningpo, and Shanghai, for which an imperial commissioner was created. Now, according to the newly established treaties, in the north there are Newchwang in Fengtien province, Tientsin in Chihli, Tengchow in Shantung; in the south there are Canton, Ch'aochow and Ch'iungchow in Kwangtung, Foochow, Amoy, Taiwanfu, and Tamsui in Fukien as well as Chenkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow on the Yangtze river.\n\nThe area [covered by all these ports] is vast stretching from south to north for seven or eight thousand li. If all these ports", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206589, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n131\n\nNorth China: Generally speaking, much of the northern area of China is dry, dusty and barren land. It suffers from continental temperature ranges which cause differences of 65°-70°F between summer and winter. The limited and unpredictable rainfall results in uncertain agricultural output. The Yellow River, which runs through the region, is a determining factor in the lives of the Chinese who live on its banks. The river bed is higher than much of the surrounding land and must be controlled and watched constantly. Under these geographical conditions, the land is often ravaged by the extremes of flood and drought bringing great famines. A large section of the North is comprised of the loess highlands in the provinces of Honan, Shansi, Shensi and Kansu. The soil in this area is of fine yellow-grey grains which have been laid down in thicknesses of from a few feet to two hundred and fifty feet. As the loess is blown into the region from the northwest, it forms vertical cleavages which result in steep cliffs. Not only is the soil extremely fertile, it also holds moisture well and thus in this region of little rainfall, crops can still be grown. The loess soil has also been used by the Chinese to solve their housing problems. A second major region of the North, which is important to this study, is the North China Plain which has been built up from the silt of the Yellow River. The Plain is often raked by severe duststorms from the loess region. Here in this flat land, the Chinese had to devise an architecture which protected them from the harsh extremes in climate.\n\nSouth China: Throughout the dynasties the Chinese have expanded southward and have developed the valley of the Yangtze River. As early as the reign of Ch'in Shih Huang-ti (221-210 B.C.), the rulers and military forces fought to subdue and colonize the fertile land of the South in order to bring prestige and glory to their thrones. Because of the successive invasions of the barbarians, the Chinese fled to this region to seek peace and a new start. A final reason for the continuous mass migrations to the South was to escape the oppression of the government and the large landowners. The land in the South was very fertile which appealed greatly to the settlers and, in contrast to the North, the South became comparatively more prosperous. In this tropical and subtropical climate the growing season is much longer than in the North and allows for double cropping in most areas. From the beginning the South became a food supplier for the North. The rainfall, especially from typhoons and monsoon rains, is heavy although unpredictable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206766, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "YAUMATEI TYPHOON SHELTER, HONG KONG\n\n37\n\ntime would have been a much better purchase than that which the Government had decided upon. Heated argument followed and the levels of asperity which they raised in Council proceedings was quite exceptional in terms of today's conventions.*\n\nIt is clear from the records of subsequent meetings of the Council that the unofficials had got the bit between their teeth. Work was shortly, they thought, to begin on the shelter which had been talked about for so long, money was to be spent upon it and when the question of money arose tempers were quick to boil. Various alternative proposals to that which had been agreed by the Government were demanded for further consideration, and the unofficials returned again to the attack which had previously been mounted upon the purchase of a dredger by the Government.\n\nMatters stood thus when disaster struck again on the 17th July, 1908 when a further typhoon struck the Colony. Before opening business at the first Legislative Council meeting held after that date the Governor had yet again to comment on a further disaster, owning that he had been told that the force of the wind in the last typhoon was very much greater than that which had previously been known as the great typhoon of September, 1906. He went on, as had so many Governors before him, to acknowledge the acts of heroism which had been displayed by so many people during the\n\n* The two dredgers in question were called the \"St. Enoch\" and \"Canton River\". In Council, the Honourable Mr. Slade (Marcus Warre Slade, Barrister-at-Law, b. 1865, practised in Hong Kong from 1897) said that he wished to ask for information on one particular point before the motion was put: that was with respect to the vote for $86,500 for the typhoon refuge for small craft, which he understood included the cost of the dredger \"St. Enoch\" at £15,000. He said that he was not at the last meeting and did not therefore hear the explanation given in the Finance Committee but since his return to the Colony, he had seen a statement in a prominent position in one of the morning papers in which it was stated that the purchase of the \"St. Enoch\" for £15,000 had cost the tax-payers $100,000 more than it might have done. He presumed that meant the Government might have bought the dredger \"Canton River\", at a cost of £5,000 which was the difference between the two amounts. He said that he could hardly see how that was possible because he happened to know himself about the cost of \"Canton River\" to the present owners, and could not conceive that they would be willing to part with the vessel at such a price. He said however, that the statement had been given a very prominent position and he thought that an explanation was therefore due to the Council before the report of the Finance Committee was adopted. There were other points he referred to which were raised in that particular article with reference to the comparison and capabilities of the two dredgers. He expressed himself as no expert and could not comment upon that, but presumed that the Government had thoroughly well satisfied themselves", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206770, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "The Kam Tin Gates\n\nPeter Wesley-Smith*\n\nBehind the parked tourist buses at Kam Tin, behind the blue-rinsed American ladies and the orderly rows of Japanese camera-clickers and the outstretched palms of Hakka crones, the adventurous visitor will find a plaque on the Kat Hing Wai wall telling the story of the famous pair of gates which adorn the entrance. It is the purpose of this brief article to amplify the few facts engraved on the plaque.1\n\nKam Tin is the principal settlement of the New Territories Tangs and consists of several separate villages. Kat Hing Wai is the oldest: built in the 15th century it has been reasonably well preserved and is now a major tourist attraction.2 The road from Shek Wu Hui to Yuen Long separates it from Tai Hong Wai, a sister village whose walls have been partly demolished and which boasts no gates.\n\nThe Hong Kong Government knew little about neighbouring San On in June 1898, when a large slice of the Chinese county was transferred on lease to Great Britain. J. H. Stewart Lockhart was therefore temporarily relieved of his duties as Colonial Secretary and Registrar General and sent on a fact-finding tour as Special Commissioner. During August 1898 he visited various parts of the area and in general was given an \"excellent reception\" by the inhabitants; but the villagers at Kam Tin were less polite. Unimpressed by the sight of the first steamer ever to navigate their river, they drove away the Commission's chairs and carriers and refused to provide replacements. The elders did not deign to present themselves. A journalist of the time reported that 1,000 villagers, \"preceded by vigorously beaten gongs\", gave a rousing welcome, \"but in place of chin-chins and flowers they came with cries of 'ta' and 'foreign devils.'\" Nothing is said here of the rotten eggs that emphasized these cries, but the gates of the village were closed and the Commission could not enter. According to a journal kept of the trip the gates were opened after \"a clear explanation\" by Stewart\n\nMr. Wesley-Smith is LL.B., B.A., (Adelaide) and Lecturer in Law at the University of Hong Kong. He is currently Editor of the Hong Kong Law Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "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": 206782, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA\n\n53\n\nHong Kong on 30th August 1849, just six months after the arrival of the P. and O's Canton. The second ship, the Hong Kong, arrived barely a month later. They went into service soon after their arrival, but not until modifications to the Canton's engines in early 1850, could they be said to be operating a regular service. They then commenced a regular schedule, leaving Hong Kong and Canton every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8.00 a.m., and calling at Macao and Cumsingmoon as inducement offered. Saloon passenger rates were $8.00 between Hong Kong and Canton; $5.00 between Hong Kong and Macao; and $1.00 for Chinese passengers between any two ports. Although the two Cantons and the Hong Kong were a great improvement on earlier steamships, they were still liable to frequent accidents and breakdowns, and still often withdrawn for the more lucrative towing and salvage work.\n\nOn 21st December 1854 the China Mail wrote:\n\nWe are now pretty well supplied with river steamers, having no fewer than seven (Hong Kong and Canton of the Hong Kong and Canton Steam Packet Company; Canton, Sir Charles Forbes and Tartar of P. and O; and Spark and Ann of Russell and Company). The River Bird is on its way out (from America) and other three (Rose, Thistle, and Shamrock) are being assembled in Hong Kong. There is plenty of room for all of them, however, for every day seems to raise river steamer traffic higher in the estimation of the natives, and a very short time will elapse before Chinese merchants become steamboat proprietors.\n\nThe Hong Kong and Canton Steam Packet Company, however, was not proving profitable, and the prospect of still more competition decided the company to wind up its affairs and offer its ships for sale. Shortly after this optimistic forecast by the China Mail, river traffic was almost completely disrupted—first by the continuing Taiping Rebellion and then by the Second China War.\n\nThe fortunes of steamships as a whole, however, were very little affected by these events. Several were chartered by the Royal Navy for service in the war, and others went on coast services to Shanghai and intermediate ports. During these troubled years the foreign factories at Canton were burned, and Canton was blockaded and then captured by the Anglo-French forces on 29th December 1857. After this the tide of war moved north to the Peiho River, and peace was quickly restored to the Canton River. Admiral Seymour gave", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206856, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 127\n\n) 3rd year of T'ong (統) dynasty, by a Buddhist priest named Yuen Chong (圓聰) in the Ts'z Yun monastery (慈雲寺) in Ch'eung On (昌安) city, Shensi (陝西) province, near the Great Wall. This monastery had been built about fifty years previously by the Emperor T'ong Ko Tsung (唐玄宗) for his mother. When the pagoda was being built a wild goose flew against it and was killed, and the monks buried the bird underneath the pagoda and in this way it received its name. It became the custom ever since Shan Lung (神龍) years A.D. 705 & 706 of T'ong dynasty for the Emperor to give a banquet in the monastery called the Kuk Kong Yin (曲江宴) “winding river banquet,” to all the new \"Tsun Sz” (進士). Their names were carved on a stone tablet in the pagoda, and it became customary to use the expression “Ngaan T'aap T'ai Ming (雁塔題名) when congratulating successful candidates for the highest government examination. In Tang Lam's time the Tung Kwun people wished to have their own Ngaan Taap pagoda, and Tang Lam provided the money for them to do it. It was built some time during the ten years of Shun Yau (淳祐) A.D. 1241-1251 of Sung dynasty, and it was repaired in the 40th year of Shung Ching (崇禎) A.D. 1637 of Ming dynasty by a Tung Kwun \"Tsun Sz” named Kwok Kau Ting (郭九錠). Lam's grave is still to be found in Hon Yee Haang (巷義行) in Tung Kwun district.\n\nThe children of the four sons of Tang Tsz Ming seem to have left Kam T'in, and their descendants founded families in other villages. Those of Lam are to be found in the village of Lung Kwat Tau (龍骨頭) near Fanling (粉嶺); those of Waai still live in Tai Po Tau (大埔頭) near Tai Po market and Lai Tung (黎洞) near Sha Tau Kok (沙頭角), while Kei's descendants settled in Tung Kwun. But the great grandson of Tsz came back to Kam T'in. His name was Shau Tso (秀祖), he held the military rank of Chung Mo Kau Wai (忠武校尉) and in the Yuen (元) dynasty A.D. 1277 he received the honour of Hin Mo Tsueng Kwan (顯武將軍). He had two great-grandsons, brothers, named Hung Yee (鴻義) and Hung Chi (鴻志). The latter was a son-in-law of Hoh Tik (何狄) the younger brother of Hoh Chan (何真) who ruled Kwangtung (廣東) and Kwangsi (廣西) provinces at the end of the Yuen dynasty. When the Ming dynasty started Hoh Chan gave up his territory to the first Emperor, but later on he became involved in the case of General Leung Kwok Kung (梁國公) Laam Yuk (濫獄)...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206896, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n167\n\nBy way of comparison, the tour also visited Ayuthia and saw the gigantic Buddha at Wat Phanan Cheong, by the river, and the ruins of Wat Yai Chai Mongkon, Wat Phra Sri Samphet, and Wat Phra Ram. The magnificent Wat Na Pramane in its peaceful country setting, with its elaborate carved pediment (the only one to survive the holocaust of the Burmese attack in 1767), its fine ceiling and remarkable bronze Buddha in kingly attire of the Ayuthia period in the main bot and the no less striking stone Dvaravati Buddha seated in the European fashion with its characteristically placid Mon face left a deep impression,\n\nBefore leaving Bangkok a visit was made to three representative temples of the Ratanakosin period, Wat Suthat, with its wealth of Chinese statuary and carved and gilded doors said to be the work of Rama II (the vihara was unfortunately closed and its murals could not be seen). However at Wat Borworniwes the unusual murals depicting scenes of western eighteenth century palaces introducing alien perspective were noted; the bot also contains the revered statue Phra Buddha Chinasara, a good example of Sukhothai statuary. The peaceful temple grounds with their canals full of turtles were in considerable contrast to the roaring city outside the temple walls. The better known Wat Benjamabhopit with its copies of various statues, including that at Pitsanuloke of which the original had been seen, was also visited. Most interestingly perhaps, on the last day the group visited the gold-leaf beaters' lane where for several days layers of gold are pounded by hand to produce the wafer-thin pieces which are applied on statues by the devout.\n\nIt should not be thought that the members of the tour remained aloof to daily life of contemporary Thailand; elements of this were seen at the weekend market at the Pramane Ground, and, in the country, working elephants, the pounding of rice flour in villages and the releasing of birds to gain merit in temple courtyards left their impression.\n\nIn what was effectively four very full days, a great deal was seen and much ground was covered (it took ten hours by bus to reach Pitsanuloke from Bangkok). The pace was intense but rewarding. The tour was considered culturally illuminating, revealing the many facets of the rich artistic heritage of Thailand.\n\nHong Kong, 1973.\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206967, "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-1974", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "32 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nnot on his side. He had come to Hong Kong with an express aim - to obtain cash. His design was to persuade Hong Kong merchants to invest heavily in the exploitation of the territory he claimed to rule as soi-disant King of the Sedangs, a title he had assumed in June 1888 with the passive assent of an innocent montagnard people. There were rich men in Hong Kong - speculators, gamblers, risk-takers - and Mayréna hoped to interest them in the mineral wealth and natural products of his new kingdom. Thus he assumed that meeting Sir William and Lady Des Voeux at Government House would vouch for his respectability and provide an entrée into the social enclosure of the rich European merchant class. \n\nMorès, on the other hand, had no such motivation. He was in Hong Kong with William Van Driesche, and an engineer, a M. Thorel, en route for Tonkin. His visit to Hong Kong was an accident. The Calédonien, the ship he boarded at Marseilles, berthed at Saigon and Hong Kong but not at Haiphong, so Morès was forced to travel on to Hong Kong and transfer to another ship for Haiphong, the entry port for Hanoi and the Red River basin. He was in a hurry and bent on business. Hence he stayed in Hong Kong for only a week, leaving on 29 November by the small German steamer, the Clara. It was during this week that the alleged duel between the two adventurers took place; but to explain why they had both wandered into the East and why they clashed, we must first examine their previous careers. \n\nMarie-Charles David de Mayréna16 \n\nThe future King of the Sedangs was born into a bourgeois milieu at Toulon on 31 January, 1842. His father was a commander in the French navy, who died when Mayréna was a child so that he was reared entirely by a complaisant mother. He failed his examinations for the Ecole navale in 1857 but joined the Sixth Dragoons in 1859, transferring to the Spahis de Cochinchine in 1863. He served in Indo-China until 1868, when he resigned and returned to France. His career so far had been unremarkable. \n\nThe next year he married a colonel's daughter; but little is known about the marriage and it seems likely that they soon separated or divorced. Mayréna was a great womaniser. The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 and he was recalled to the colours and procured the rank of captain. In February 1871 he was awarded the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206997, "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-1974", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "62\n\nCAROLE MORGAN\n\nAlthough, as we have seen, horses were hunted as early as the third millennium, there is still some controversy among experts as to whether horses were eaten by the Shangs. Certainly by Chou times the practice of eating horse meat had become prevalent enough to warrant an injunction in the Chou Li against eating bad horse flesh27 and a warning in the Li Chi that the taste of a horse with black hair growing along its spine is no better than that of a burrowing animal.28\n\nIn a book from the latter part of the third century B.C. called the \"Travels of King Mu\" we are told that King Mu, while on a journey through Western China, was offered 300 edible horses by the Chu Tse (✯✯) tribe, 900 by Tsao Nu (✯ ✯) and 700 by the Chih ( ),29\n\nAs for dogs they, along with pigs, constituted the major source of animal protein in ancient China. The Shuo Wen even gives a special character for dog's meat (1) written with the radicals for dog and flesh, while the Chou Li divides dogs into three categories: the tien chuan (□) or watch dog, the fei chuan (ok†) or barking dog and the chih chuan (✯✯) or edible dog.30 With the exception of the liver every part of the animal was considered edible.31\n\nAt the banquets of feudal lords a dish of dog's broth and glutinous rice was considered a great delicacy;32 for Summer dried fish fried in pungent dog's fat was thought to be cooling33 and when dog's meat was prepared as sacrificial meat it had first to be marinated in a mixture of vinegar and pepper.34 (Animals whose meat was used for sacrificial purposes were never referred to by name. Thus an ox was known as i yuan da wu (~✰✰✰) a head一元大武) on large feet; cocks as han yin (4) birds whose cry reaches heaven and dogs as gao hsien ( ‡**) animals used to make ancestor soup.35\n\nThe Emperor was required to eat dog's meat during the first three Autumn months36 and much later dog's meat was credited with the power of reducing fatigue and was recommended for scholars sitting for their examinations.37\n\nBoth edible dogs and horses were considered fit presents for the Emperor and feudal lords, although a pure white horse was deemed unsuitable, possibly because white was the colour of mourning.38 (The writer is more inclined to believe that since white horses were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207105, "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-1974", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "170\n\nSUNG HOK-PANG\n\nShui T'au village in the Shing Fa years of Ming dynasty, and at the same time, Tang Wan Kuk #Tang Shuk Lun and Tang Kwai Yin started the village of Shui Mei, while Tang Chung, Tang Shue and eight others formed the village Ying Lung Waai near Yuen Long Market. When these villages were built on the advice of “fung shui\" men a pagoda was also erected to the west of them, called Man Ch'eung Kok. In the 30th year of To Kwong, A.D. 1850, of Ts'ing dynasty the Tang family seemed to have reached the height of their prosperity. Many of them had passed the highest government examination and a census taken in that year shewed that there were more than eighteen hundred males living, belonging to the family. Not content, the elders consulted with ignorant \"fung shui\" men as to how to increase their numbers even more. They were advised to pull down the pagoda, to alter the course of the river, making three ponds, and to build a school that would hide part of the river from the view of the village. From that time the family decreased considerably, and many of them regretted having taken the advice of the \"fung shui\" men. In 1930, however, they repaired the banks of the river and built houses called Ch'eung Ch'un Lei near where the pagoda had stood, and since then the Kam T'in people declare that more male children have been born and family is once again on the increase.\n\n[5]\n\nDuring and since the Ming dynasty Kam T'in has been able to boast of many scholarly and notable sons. Tang T'ing Ching who passed the Kui-yan degree in the 7th year of Shing Fat of Ming dynasty, A.D. 1471, of Maan On was appointed to the office of Kau Yue district in Kiangsi province, promoted later to District Magistrate of T'ang Yuen Kwangsi. He was a great friend of Hau Kui, a well-known poet of the New Territories. His poems are included in an anthology named \"Ling Naam Chue Yuk\" and also in the Record book of San On and among them is a poem written as a farewell to Tang T'ing Ching when he left to take up his new official post. The oldest family tree book of the Tang family of Kam T'in in existence now was compiled by Tang T'ing Ching.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207285, "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-1975", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CHINA'S ECONOMIC PLANNING & CHANGING GEOGRAPHY 45\n\nthe present regime is making efforts to convey water from the Yangtze River in the south to the Yellow River in the north. Since 1958, several survey parties in western Szechuan and southern Kansu have studied the possibility of transferring superfluous water to the Yellow River from the Gold Sand River, the Taito River, and other tributaries of the Yangtze.\n\nThere are, of course, many difficulties to be encountered in carrying out this plan. For example, the northwestern region is so sparsely settled that a tremendous number of workers must be brought in to construct the necessary canals and locks. The area has a serious problem of seepage and evaporation, and it experiences violent earthquakes.\n\nIf the plan is successful, however, it will provide ample compensation for the effort required. It will lessen the threat of flood in the southeast part of China, and will prevent drought in the northwest. It will improve the use of the region for pasture land, and increase its agricultural production. It can also develop electric power, which will make up for the shortage of coal in the region. It will modify the dry climate to some extent; this in turn will encourage forest growth. It will form a system of waterways that will facilitate navigation throughout the country.\n\nThe building of Railroads—For the sake of political coherence and the furtherance of economic development, the present government has paid great attention to the building of railroad systems. The length of the main line built since 1949 was 16,000 miles. Of the many completed systems of railroads, three have geopolitical significance. They reflect the determination of the present regime to unify the state and to open up the frontier border by connecting it with the inner areas.\n\n1. Along the east coast, five ports—Yentai, Ningpo, Foochow, Amoy, and Chiankiang—have been linked to the interior by short lines. The military intention of the railroads built in the areas around Foochow and Amoy apparently is that of “liberating” Taiwan.\n\n2. Two long railroads have been built for the purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union. One, which was built in 1954, runs from Tsining to Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia, and then to the Soviet Union. With the completion of this railroad, China was joined to the Mongolian People's Republic. The other, which is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207286, "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-1975", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "46\n\nCHIAO-MIN HSIEH\n\n1,400 miles long, runs between Lanchow and Urumchi via Hami in Sinkiang.\n\nThe Communist government obviously feels that the political importance of these railroads is greater than their economic value. Since the great bulk of China's population, markets, and production lies east of Lanchow and south of the Great Wall, many railroads are urgently needed in that part of China. One must wonder whether the two railroads built in the desert for the main purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union were so necessary and their construction so urgent. Moreover, there is at the moment a sand-dune problem confronting the operation of the railroad in these desert areas. This seems to be insoluble by use of present techniques and makes the value of the whole project even more questionable.\n\n3. In southwest China a railroad was built between Nanning and Pinghsiang in 1955, which is connected with Haiphong and Hanoi. The significance of this new rail link between the Red River delta and the South China province of Kwangsi is that it opens a new major sea outlet for south China.\n\nSince China is an amphibious nation, facing the interior continent in the northwest and the Pacific Ocean in the southeast, one of the most significant geopolitical factors in China's history is her changing relations with the continent and the sea. In ancient times China faced the northwest, where the \"Silk Road\" passed through: the Pacific coast was the back door. The Kansu corridor in the northwest was the main entrance, playing an important role in communications between China and central Asia. In the nineteenth century, Western sea powers acted to open China's coastal ports, China began to turn her face toward the Pacific, which then became the front door, through which came new ideas and knowledge, but also new problems and troubles. Shanghai, Canton, and Tientsin replaced the cities in the northwest as the key cities. This reversal in geographic accessibility has transformed China's isolated condition to one of contact with the world.\n\nThe eastern coastal areas soon became the main part of China, where were located most of the large cities, heavy industries, railroads, and inland water routes, and about 70 per cent of the population. Because of its location, the area is vulnerable to attack by foreign sea powers. During World War II the area was easily", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207287, "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-1975", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CHINA'S ECONOMIC PLANNING & CHANGING GEOGRAPHY 47\n\nattacked by the Japanese, who took control of it. With this sad experience, the Chinese resolved that heavy industry and institutions of higher education should not all be located in this vulnerable zone. Under the present rule, the country has built a long railroad in Sinkiang and has planned to transmit water from the Yangtze to the Yellow River for the purpose of settling more people in the northwest area. It has also planned the movement of several universities to the interior. All this indicates that the Communist government's policy is being directed toward the development of the continental interior for the reason of national safety. This is another reorientation of China in modern history.\n\nConclusion\n\nFor a period of 25 years, the Communist government has undertaken an ambitious industrialization program aimed at transforming China from an agricultural into an industrial country. The task was a formidable one. Even though China is the most populous country in the world, its skilled labor is limited. The country has vast areas, but most parts are inaccessible. The country has a long history, but important data on basic mineral are scarce and capital is in short supply. China has made a great effort in its industrial projects and has already altered its industrial position in Asia. While the official figures should be looked at with caution, the real changing of its landscape cannot be ignored.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207306, "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-1975", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "66\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nSuch wild speculation may well have created a fatalistic attitude to the inevitability of the plague as a natural phenomenon and consequently limited an awareness of the need to search in other directions. However, the desperate need to find a solution prompted a considerable amount of inquiry and reflection by a number of independent observers and some of these researchers deserve a fuller mention.\n\nDr. Gomes da Silva, the Principal Medical Officer of Macau gave an account of the disease which affected the Portuguese colony in 1895. He records that during a visit to Canton he had observed a strange disease that attacked \"only Chinese ..... and rats\" and that the same disease spread from Hong Kong to Macau in 1895. In drawing attention to the association of the plague with rats Dr. da Silva also described the general sanitary condition of Canton which he concluded was a further causal factor. He records that house refuse was usually thrown into the streets where it accumulated until such time as the torrential summer rains and the overflow of the Pearl River cleared it away. However, between May and September 1894 it did not rain to any great extent with the consequence that large quantities of rubbish accumulated and reached an advanced state of putrefaction. These conditions were paralleled by outbreaks of plague. Conversely, Dr. da Silva observed that when the summer rains were early and abundant the disease seldom occurred.\n\nIt is now not difficult to establish the chain of events that must have occurred, namely that during prolonged dry spells when refuse piled up in the streets colonies of rats thrived on the nourishment so carelessly provided. As the rats multiplied, so did the fleas and from but one source of infection carried by the fleas the disease spread like a forest fire first through the population of rats and then to homo-sapiens.\n\nHowever, amidst the wild speculation of how the disease was communicated to man scientific researches undertaken by Alexandre Yersin in Hong Kong established in June 1894 that the bacillus, pasteurella pestis, was the direct cause of plague. This was subsequently confirmed by two Japanese doctors, Professors Kitasato and Aoyama, who were also pursuing researches in the colony. Conclusive evidence was obtained by injecting animals with a virus preparation. Notwithstanding, the means of transmission of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207323, "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-1975", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES ON CHIUCHOW OPERA\n\n83\n\nto find out the reason for the continual postponement of the marriage. He is characterised as a clown, and the fat wet-nurse appears also as a go-between, a funny character in many Chinese operas. This scene gives ample opportunity to display the vocabulary of comic jokes, movements and mime typical of the Chiuchow opera. He wears gay red costumes, and carries a fan which he handles like a juggler. In this scene the two are describing their long climb by walking in various ways in a circle, pausing to admire the scenery.\n\nThe wet-nurse asks the learned Hsin-tsai for the names and explanations of things seen along the way. \"And this mountain?\"\n\n\"It is called Han Mountain.\"\n\n\"And this river?\"\n\n\"It is called Han River.\"\n\n**\n\n\"And that ancestor temple over there?\" \"It is the Han Memorial Temple.\"\n\n\"Why is everything here called Han?\"\n\n\"Because the great scholar Han Yü was sent from the Capital to Chiuchow and gave his name to all these.\"*\n\n\"Oh, you and your father are like the great Han Yü.\"\n\n\"Oh you really think so? Why?\"\n\n\"Because Han Yü grabbed all the mountains, the river and the ancestor hall, and so on, and now you and your father grab the people's land.\"\n\nThe wet-nurse carries an umbrella and a red pao-fu# or a cloth-roll containing provisions for the journey, slung over the shoulder which is the traditional requisite to indicate travelling. On the Chinese stage luggage is never carried to indicate arrival, departure or travel, but a bamboo-umbrella or a red pao-fu, or both, are used instead.\n\nThe Hsiu-tsai is complaining about the Su family who are constantly postponing his marriage with their daughter, and is wondering what strange reason there may be behind it. They come to a gate erected by the emperor's order to honour a woman who has demonstrated her chastity under hard conditions. The Hsiu-tsai\n\n*For a notice of Han Yü (768-824) see Harbert A. Giles A Chinese Biographical Dictionary, London and Shanghai, 1898, pp. 254-256.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207327, "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-1975", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES ON CHIUCHOW OPERA\n\n87\n\nto go against her parents, or go so far as to run away with her secret love? It would be unthinkable and outrageous. Because, just as today, the Yang-pan or Revolutionary Peking Opera has to propagate a certain moral and ethics, with any other human behaviour being excluded from the stage, so the Peking opera, which used to be under official support and supervision, could not deviate from the officially supported Confucian ideals.\n\nThe southern coastal areas of China were not \"enlightened\" by the Confucian civilization of the Yellow River plains until the Tang Dynasty, when the minister Han Yü, an eminent scholar, was sent into exile to Chiuchow because he tried to prevent the spread of Buddhism in China. He worked hard to instill Confucian values into the local population, and to set up a Confucian social and administrative system. Han Yu must have made a great impression on this area because his name appears frequently, not least in the name of the river which attracted the settlers to build Chiuchow on its banks, which is called after him, Han River.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207428, "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-1975", "page_number": 196, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "188\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nvaried greatly at different times. In 1942 and 1943 we had much difficulty in maintaining a growth of yeast, but we produced a kind of hop barm made from cod liver oil and hops which produced with flour, bran and ground rice a bread which in our circumstances was passable. In 1945 bread and what we called rock buns were made from rice, bran and beans steamed in an old refrigerator converted for the purpose and suspended over a fire. To us the result was excellent.\n\nStoring the food\n\nWe maintained a steward's store throughout in which food stocks were held under the care of the steward and an assistant who lived with their charge. I said earlier that the arrival of food stocks was a spectacle never missed by the observant eyes of staff and patients, and by the time the Red Cross bulk stores began to come in I judged it wise to publish lists showing the quantities and varieties of food in all intakes, and this was appreciated.\n\nCooking the food\n\nThis was a heavy and often thankless task. The cooking apparatus was improvised after the main hospital kitchen was destroyed by enemy action in 1941. It was often very hard to get a good fire burning; the early rice boilers were deep and whether because of this or as a result of inexperience, the rice produced was often stodgy and gooey. Shallow boilers were installed later, and the quality of the rice delivered to the consumer improved greatly. The worst times were in 1942 when the hospital was overcrowded, the infections were rampant and the deficiency diseases were appearing, and also in 1943 when a long period of undernutrition could be foreseen. The unfortunate cooks came in for much criticism which of course did not improve matters. In addition to cooking they were called upon to divide the cooked food into containers for messes and wards and this led to further recriminations. I watched this situation with a great deal of care and I believe that we were fortunate to have men in these key positions who did not take advantage of their offices to get extra food for themselves, and who withstood apparently with only slight resentment much ill-informed and envious criticism. My natural faith in these men was all the stronger for the fact that the records of the body weights", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207686, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "ETHNICITY IN A HOUSING ESTATE IN HONG KONG\n\n59\n\nassociation leaders in the area, there are about 1500 Teochiu households which suggests a total of approximately 9,000 Teochiu in the estate or about 13% of the total population. All other ethnic groups are found in much smaller numbers, Hakka being the next largest. Hoi Luk Fung are very small in number, perhaps one-tenth of the total number of Teochiu, and are usually classified as Teochiu by non-Teochiu within the estate. That is, Cantonese are usually unaware of the distinction between Teochiu and Hoi Luk Fung and simply consider an individual Hoi Luk Fung as being Teochiu. This is largely due to the fact that the languages spoken by Teochiu and Hoi Luk Fung are very similar and for the most part mutually intelligible, and most non-Teochiu do not and cannot tell them apart.\n\nThere are no clear ethnic occupational patterns within the estate, with the exception of several occupations which are dominated by particular ethnic groups. Most rice retail shops are run by Teochiu families, although there are a few Cantonese rice shops. At least one third of the hundreds of small retail shops within the estate are managed by Teochiu, and many of the legal and illegal hawkers are Teochiu. Most of the minibus drivers whose routes originate in the estate are Teochiu, and I have been told that it is difficult for a non-Teochiu to become a driver in the local area.\n\nThe majority of men in the estate work in nearby factories or as laborers and coolies. Virtually anyone who needs a job can find one within several weeks, but it is usually a low paid factory or coolie job which results in a great deal of temporary unemployment as men are laid off or become tired of a particular job and remain at home and in the estate for several weeks or even months. Most unmarried females work in local factories or in their families' business from the ages of 13 or 14, and many married women with children do some kind of piece work at home. Access to jobs within the industrial sector are generally available to anyone, regardless of ethnic identity. Almost always, however, individuals obtain a job through personal contacts with a foreman or worker in a particular factory and this contact is usually with a member of the same ethnic group. With the exception of the occupations mentioned above, there is relatively little economic competition between ethnic groups within the estate. The organization of inter-ethnic hostility is, for the most part, not based on competition for scarce resources or access to jobs within the local area. The major", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207757, "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "130\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\n4 London Missionary Society Archives, London, England (hereafter given as L.M.S.A.), South China Box 5, Folder 3, Jacket C, letter of Legge, 26 Sept., 1853, and Jacket D, Yearly Report of the Hong Kong Mission, 25 Jan., 1854. For a brief notice of Keuh A-gong see my article, \"A Register of Baptized Protestant Chinese 1813-1842, Chung Chi Bulletin, No. 48 (Dec., 1970), p. 24. For Ng Mun-sow see my article, \"Dr. Legge's Theological School\", ibid, No. 50 (June, 1971), pp. 16-22.\n\n5 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 2, Jacket C, letter of Legge, 28 Jan., 1869, and Folder 1, Jacket A, letter of Wong Foon, 8 May, 1857. Another missionary estimate of Hung Jen-kan is the testimonial the Rev. John Chalmers sent to the Rev. Rudolph Lechler, Basel Missionary Society Archives (hereafter given as B.M.S.A.), Vol. IV, 1857-1862, letter dated, London Mission House, Hong Kong, 24 Dec., 1857: “I have great pleasure in giving my testimony to the Christian character of Hung Jin, the relative of Hung Sew Tauen, who, since his return from Shanghai in the year 1854, has been in the employment of our mission; first as a Christian teacher, and afterwards as a preacher and assistant missionary. His general behaviour has been such as becomes the Gospel; the work which we have given him to do, he has always executed to our satisfaction and not only so, but his zeal for the promotion of the cause of Christ has been marked. He is a young man of superior abilities, and I hope he may yet be honoured to labour successfully in the preaching of the gospel to his countrymen for many years.\n\n6 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket B, letter of Chalmers, 5 June, 1858.\n\n7 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket C, letter of Legge and Chalmers, 11 Jan., 1859, with enclosure of translation of letter of Hung Jan: \"Translation of Hung Jan's last letter, sent from Shanghai by Mr. Muirhead, who received it from a Chinaman who had been with Lord Elgin's expedition up the Yangtze. He wrote in 170 or 180 miles on that river below Hankow.\" Letters from \"Shau Kwan, Nan Gan [both on the north boundary of Kwangtung], one from the capital of Keangse, one from imperialist camp at Yaou Chow [in north of Keangse]\" are mentioned as having been written by Hung Jen-kan.\n\n8 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 2, Jacket C, letter of Legge, 24 Aug., 1860, and Folder 3, Jacket B, letter of Legge, 14 Jan., 1861.\n\n9 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket A, letter of Legge and Chalmers, 14 Jan., 1857.\n\n10 L.M.S.A., Legge Family Papers, letter of 28 Mar., 1861 and 24 Mar., 1871.\n\n11 For identification of Hung K'uei Hsiu see Jen (Chien) Yu-wan “**太平£Ø*^£$*M”, (Record of Visit with Descendants of the Taiping Hung Family) ***@** (Taiping Kingdom Miscellany), No. 4, and * Lo Hsiang-lin, (Historical Sources for the Study of the Hakkas), (Hong Kong, 1965), p. 409,\n\n12 B.M.S.A., Hong Kong School Report, 14 Feb. 1875, \"Teacher Schui Thin will shortly change places with Fung Khui-syu in Tschong Hang Kang, because the last as a son of a Tai Ping Rebellion King, cannot stay anymore in the mainland without danger to the life of himself and family.\"\n\n13 B.M.S.A., Hong Kong School Report, 16 Apr. 1873, and Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, Jan., 1866, letter of Lechler, 2 Oct, 1865.\n\n14 B.M.S.A., Chinese Mission Yearly Report 1885. The ship Dartmouth left Hong Kong 25 Dec., 1878 and arrived at Georgetown, British Guiana on 17 Mar., 1879. Among its 516 emigrants were seventy Christians.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207781, "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "154\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nAll hospitals and medical services in China were very short of medical supplies both in terms of medicines, anaesthetics, equipment and everyday requirements such as bandages and sheets. In addition, in a time of inflation, assets were put into easily saleable form of which medicine, such as quinine, was a favourite. This meant that there was little western medicine for sale in the open market and supplies of such materials, whether in store or in transit, were a favourite target for thieves. However the greatest losses in the Nationalist armies were undoubtedly from the malnutrition/dysentery cycle from which, beyond a certain point, there was no recovery.\n\n3 The daily routine on the road varied with the fuel used, but there were common features. The driver and mechanic (or assistant if carried) slept on the truck, the shorter in the cab and the taller on top of the cargo. This helped to prevent theft of cargo and removal of parts such as headlamps and half-shafts which were in great demand. Passengers slept in the nearest inn, or perhaps mission station. Techniques for an undisturbed and loss-free night in an inn included an oiled sheet (p.8) sewn into the bottom of the mosquito net which was then slit at one end and fastened with clips, and placing the bed or table legs into shoes to make unauthorized removal of them difficult.\n\nActivity started at dawn and after refuelling and a check on wheels and springs a quick breakfast of ji dan dou jiang (p.8) taken from a travelling salesman, the truck would get under way. There would normally be a stop at a convenient fandian (p.8) between 10.30 and 12 noon- refuelling, wheel and spring checks and away again until late afternoon and a stop for the day.\n\nLiquid fuel was carried in 50 (US) gallon drums and was siphoned out into 5 gallon cans for transfer to the truck tank. A skilled man, using a rubber hose, can induce a siphon by sucking at the end and avoid getting his mouth full of raw alcohol, rape seed oil or whatever the fuel might be. Operation and refuelling of the charcoal burning trucks was a much longer and dirtier procedure and is described in the section devoted to them.\n\n4 The Sentinel/HSG trucks had an interesting history. With the loss of the coastal region and the main railway lines, China had not only lost the possibility of importing diesel fuel and petrol but had gained a number of experienced, but unemployed, steam railway engine drivers and firemen. The IRC decided to enquire into the possibility of steam road transport and got in touch with the Sentinel Steam Carriage and Wagon Co. Ltd. at Shrewsbury, England, the major manufacturer in the past of steam road engines. The transport would use local coal or charcoal fuel and the available engine drivers and firemen. However, the tare weight of steam wagons is high and the gross weight would have been greater than the bridges would have stood. The Sentinel company suggested an alternative. They had recently taken up the designs of the High Speed Gas engine and offered a 5 ton capacity truck fitted with a 4 cylinder horizontal HSG engine with a 12:1 compression ratio. This burnt producer gas made from charcoal in a gas generator of the cross-draught type. Four of these Sentinel/HSG were purchased and may have been the first (and possibly only) ones built. One of these had been lost on the Burma Road and the remaining three contributed to the death of one man, resignation of another, and almost broke the hearts of several other Unit members. It should be a cardinal point never to introduce any equipment, mechanical or electrical, into a tough environment lacking supporting services, unless it has been in series production and has been thoroughly tested in similar conditions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207789, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA (With especial reference to the Upper Yangtze)\n\nA. D. BLUE*\n\nWest China, and in particular the provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan, interested British merchants in India before the end of the eighteenth century, and this interest increased after Britain got a foothold in Lower Burma in the early nineteenth century. Not until Britain was established at Shanghai and on the Lower Yangtze, however, did the British China traders take any great interest in West China. Until the 1860s, therefore, the initiative in opening West China to British trade came from the West, and concentrated on reviving the old caravan routes from Upper Burma into Yunnan. The Treaty of Yandabo between Britain and Burma in 1826, which established Britain in Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and Tenasserim, rekindled interest in these old routes. Sino-Burmese contacts went back many centuries, but were usually recorded from a diplomatic or military aspect, although it was well known that there had been considerable trade along these routes. At this time Canton was the only British foothold on the China coast, and the much shorter land route across Burma seemed to offer many benefits to British and Indian merchants in both India and Burma. Then, and for many years afterwards, India was the source of most of China's foreign imports, cotton and opium in particular, and much of British policy in the Far East was concerned with maintaining and extending this trade.\n\nAn interesting side product of this China-India relationship was the proposal to import workers from west China for the infant Assam tea industry. The East India Company had become interested in the possibility of tea production in Assam as early as 1823, when indigenous tea plants were found in the Upper Brahmaputra\n\n* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtze in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Five of his articles have been published previously in the Journal. \"European Navigation on the Yangtze\" in Vol. 3, 1963, \"Piracy on the China Coast\" in Vol. 5, 1965, \"The China Coasters\" in Vol. 7, 1967, \"Chinese Emigration and the Deck Passenger Trade\" in Vol. 10, 1970 and \"Early Steamships in China\" in Vol. 13, 1973.\n\nPlates 20-25 and the sketch-maps at the end of the volume illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207790, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n163\n\nValley. A tea committee was formed whose findings were favourable, and experimental tea gardens were opened at Jaipur in Upper Assam. By 1859 over 4,000 acres were under cultivation, and the industry was assured of a bright future. Ample British capital was available for expansion, the British public's appetite for tea seemed inexhaustible; but scarcity of labour was a serious handicap. Assam was thinly populated, and the planters were dependent on Bengalis, who took a long time to get acclimatised. The idea of importing Chinese labour by the overland route was suggested, as at this time Chinese labour was considered indispensable to economic development in the tropics, and the Indian government was sympathetic. There were several possible land routes between India and West China, some passing through Burma, and Article 9 of the 1862 Commercial Treaty between Britain and Burma allowed entry into British territory from the Burmese side. The tea planters, however, failed to recruit Chinese workers, and blamed their lack of success upon the difficulties and hardships of the overland routes. This led to pressure on the government to improve the major land routes, and to several expeditions across the debatable borderlands between India, Burma, and China.\n\nFrom the 1860s until near the end of the century, therefore, there was rivalry between British commercial circles in India and those in China, over access to West China. In addition to these two approaches, from India and from the Yangtze, there were others from the south; by the Mekong or Red River from Indo-China, and by the West River from Canton and Hong Kong. Anglo-French colonial rivalry was acute during the second half of the nineteenth century, especially in the Far East. The French were keen to find and exploit a trade route to West China; and while Britain was investigating routes from Burma, the Yangtze, and the West River, France was investigating possible routes from the Mekong and Red Rivers.\n\nAs became widely known by the end of the century, and suspected by realists before then, West China and its borderlands comprise some of the most difficult regions of the world in which to build roads or railways, or in which to improve river navigation. There are high mountain ranges divided by deep valleys, densely forested in many places; and all the great rivers—the Yangtze, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Red River, and Salween—are seriously impeded by rapids", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207791, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "164 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nand gorges in their upper reaches. Yet British and French explorers light-heartedly planned roads and railways through the region, when earth moving and other civil engineering techniques were primitive by modern standards. \n\nPolitical difficulties were equally formidable. In addition to Anglo-French rivalry, there was an involved relationship between Britain, Burma, China, and the Kachin and Shan hill peoples in the borderlands. A further complication, from 1855 to 1873, was the devastation of Yunnan by the Panthay Rebellion, a Moslem uprising almost as destructive as the more famous Taiping Rebellion. \n\nAlthough the Treaty of Yandabo had established Britain in Lower Burma, Upper Burma continued as an independent state, with an ill-defined tributary relationship with China. However, during the sixty years before Britain annexed Upper Burma in 1886, Britain obtained the province of Pegu (1852), and mounted a succession of expeditions to find a practicable trade route from Burma into Yunnan, contemporary with other expeditions up the Yangtze from Shanghai. \n\nBetween Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century, and the French priest M. Huc in the 1840s, practically no European had travelled in West China. So little was known of it that while their compatriots in China looked on neighbouring Szechwan as the El Dorado of the East, the British in Burma and India had their eyes on the province of Yunnan. The extravagant and over enthusiastic appraisal of Yunnan's potential wealth gave rise to what became known as the \"Yunnan Myth\". \n\nThe first British attempts to reach Yunnan and West China came from Burma in the late eighteenth century. When Captain Sorrel went to Ava in 1792 to deliver a letter to the King of Burma from Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General of India, some Burmese offered to take him overland to China. Sorrel's reference to this aroused great interest in India. Over a century earlier, Dutch East India traders in Ava and Syriam had given glowing accounts of a flourishing trade between Burma and China, conducted through Chinese merchants in Bhamo. In 1795 when Captain Michael Symes was sent on an official mission to Burma, he was instructed to “find a mart in the south west dominions of China by means of the great river of Ava”. Symes' report was enthusiastic. He said the principal export from Ava was cotton, which went up the Irrawaddy in large", "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": 207800, "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n173 \n\nlords then fighting for power in Szechuan. Before the 'Incident' closed nearly a month later, another two China Navigation Company ships had been seized by Yung Lin. All available ships of the Yangtze Squadron were involved, and H.M. ships Dispatch, a light cruiser, and Hawkins, the flagship of the China Station, had been sent to Hankow. In addition the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company's Kiawo had been requisitioned by the Navy to carry reinforcements to Wanhsien. During the sometimes severe fighting which occurred at times, the chief engineer of the Wanliu and seven servicemen lost their lives, and several others were wounded. It was nearly two years later, and after Chiang Kai-shek had expelled the left wing elements of the Kuomintang and his Russian advisers, before the situation on the Yangtze returned to something approaching normal.\n\nAfter the Royal Navy took over the Pioneer, Captain Plant built a junk and traded between Ichang and Chungking, and made a thorough study of the Upper Yangtze. In 1908 he persuaded a group of Chinese business men and government officials to form the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company, forty per cent of the capital coming from official sources, and the balance from private Chinese merchants. The Company's first ship, the Shutung, was built by Thorneycrofts in Southampton under Captain Plant's supervision. She cost £26,000 and arrived at Ichang in 1909. The Shutung was 115 feet long, sixteen feet beam, and six and a half feet depth, and was described as 'a mass of machinery.' She towed a float alongside in which her cargo and passengers were accommodated, and in spite of only being able to carry sixty tons dead-weight of cargo, twelve first and sixty-six steerage passengers, was a great success financially and comparatively trouble-free. The Shutung's success was largely due to Captain Plant's intimate knowledge of the Upper River, his ability to inspire confidence in Chinese official and commercial circles in Chungking, and in his Chinese crew. Until 1914 the Shutung was the only steamer on the Upper Yangtze; but in April of that year she was joined by the Shuhun, a larger and more powerful sister ship, also built in Britain, sent out in sections, and assembled in Shanghai. At the same time the Szechwan Railway Company, then planning a railway from Hankow to Chungking, put three smaller steamers on the Upper Yangtze. Two of these ran between Ichang and Chungking, and the third between Chungking and Suifu. By 1914, therefore, the technical", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207801, "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": 189, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "174 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nproblems involving steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze may be said to have been solved, or at least understood. Only political unrest, civil wars, and the preoccupation of Britain with the First World War prevented further development.\n\nSzechwan suffered severely from the breakdown of the central government after 1915. At times trade was almost at a standstill because of civil war and organised brigandage, and to a lesser extent because of floods and famines. In spite of this, steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze flourished, a tribute to the keen business instincts and adaptability of the Chinese merchants. The first British steamer to appear on the Upper Yangtze since the Pioneer of 1900 was the Asiatic Petroleum Company's Anlan which went into service in 1918, and was followed in the following year by their Anning.* In addition to carrying petroleum products, these ships carried a few European passengers.\n\nThis heralded a period when there was a great increase in steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze, remarkable in that it took place against a background of continuing and increasing civil war, political unrest, and general trade depression.\n\nOther British companies followed the Asiatic Petroleum Company. In 1919 Mackenzie and Company of Shanghai built the famous Loong Mow at Shanghai's Kiangnan Dockyard, 196.5 feet long by thirty-one feet beam, moulded depth of nine feet six inches and gross registered tonnage of 1,112. The twin reciprocating engines and oil-fired water tube boilers were built by Thorneycroft of Southampton, and the luxurious accommodation for both Chinese and foreign passengers led her to be called \"The Queen of the Gorges\". Soon after this the China Navigation and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company at last built their own ships for the Upper Yangtze, until then having used chartered junks flying their house flags for their Upper River trade. Then the Stars and Stripes appeared with several Dollar Line ships and some small tankers of the Standard Oil Company; and in 1925 by several steamers of the Yangtze Rapids Steamship Company. For a time this latter company operated a through service between Shanghai and Chungking. French, Italian, and Japanese steamers also appeared at this time. By the end of 1925 there were at least thirty-two steamers on\n\n*This company was the Far Eastern branch of the Shell Company.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207808, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Ancient Mon-Pagan, Peru & NAKORN PATHOM 181\n\nof the earliest is also one of the most unusual; the Nanpaya has beneath the spire four square pillars of stone each of which on two sides has a figure of Brahma holding lotus flowers in both hands. This is reputed to have been the residence of the captive Mon king Manuha, but this seems unlikely; it could have been his particular temple. The figure of Brahma in what was almost certainly a Buddhist temple is not impossible to explain away; the Brahma carvings face towards the central square pedestal which, originally, would have had a statue of the Buddha, possibly one looking in four directions; Brahma, a representative of Hinduism would be looking towards, and lower than, the Buddha. The temple is exceptionally faced with stone throughout, and the quality of the window pediments very fine.\n\nThe Abeyadana temple, not far away, is attributed to King Kyanzittha but an inscription determines his chief queen as the founder. It has a prominent harmika or bulge on the spire above the central core and a large seated brick Buddha in a recess in the core to the north (the whole temple is oriented to the north). The temple's great importance is in the quality of the paintings it still possesses, with Hindu gods and deities of Mahayanist Buddhism round the core and some excellent Jataka scenes with Mon inscriptions in the walls of the front projecting nave.\n\nAlmost opposite this temple is the Nagayon. It has good proportion and a very dark corridor pierced with five windows running round the central core. The quality of the paintings illustrating Jataka tales with Mon and Pali inscriptions is good.\n\nThe two Seinnyet temples are a little further south; the Ama is a square temple with four main porches, and the Nyima a solid stupa on three terraces. Lastly in this group is the Lawkanada stupa, built in 1059 by Anawratha beside the Irrawaddi, over which a magnificent view is obtained at sunset.\n\nOf the temples in the central area, nothing remains of the bulbous Bupaya stupa which fell into the river in pieces in the earthquake. The Gawdawpalin of the later period suffered severely and its tall finial is no more. In style, however, it resembles the Thatbinnyu which was built in the middle of the twelfth century. Only the eastern porch projects from the main plan, and the first floor where the main Buddha is located is reached by two narrow passage stairways built into the walls. The effect is of considerably greater height than the earlier buildings. As it is still in use it is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207812, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Ancient Mon-Pagan, Peru & Nakorn Pathom\n\n185\n\nfrom 1823 to 1837, Amarapura once more from 1837 to 1857, and Mandalay from 1857 to 1885. Of Ava, which had also been the capital under another dynasty from 1636-1752, little remains; it is more famous now for the mile-long Ava bridge across the Irrawaddi, though U Bien's wooden bridge across the often dry Taungthaman lake, made from the timbers of the Ava palace, is more charming and evocative. This leads to the Kyauktawgyi pagoda of 1847, the principal interest of which is in the wall paintings similar to those in Siam of the same period. The Patotawgyi pagoda is not without interest, although it is essentially a stupa of later foundation (1820). The sacred hill of Sagaing, across the river, boasts no temples of great beauty, though the ensemble of the view from the top over the many spires and pagodas is delightful. The Kaunghmudaw pagoda, to the north of the town, is however unusual. It was built in 1636 in the shape of a gigantic almost spheroid dome, said to resemble a queen's breast. The shape is in fact Singalese, though one of the traditional attributes of Indic feminine beauty is perfectly rounded breasts. The stupa is also said to contain a tooth of the Buddha, and attracts many pilgrims to perform the pradakshina, the walking round the monument three times in a clockwise direction to obtain merit. The passage of the devotees at night was illuminated by a large number of upright pillars into which were inserted coconut oil lamps.\n\nMinggun, an afternoon's boat trip upriver from Mandalay, is well worth the journey. Clearly, Bodawpaya intended to make it his capital and he had a temporary residence there until he died in 1819. The base of the great unfinished pagoda is a witness to his folie de grandeur; the massive brick structure is on a 450-foot square and rises to 162 feet. It was abandoned even before it was severely damaged in an earthquake in 1838. Seen in the setting sun, the building impresses by its golden glow against the dark green foliage around. It has nearby a massive bell, said to be the largest ringing bell in the world, 12 feet high. To the north is the Hsinbyune pagoda built in 1816. It represents the Hindu-Buddhist cosmography; Mount Meru is symbolised by the central core containing a vaulted chamber for the Buddha, rising above the seven seas, represented by seven circular terraces with wave-like lines on their retaining walls. One has a fine view of the ensemble of Mingin from the Irrawaddi which for its size is a surprisingly empty river.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207921, "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": 309, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "294\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nof the Cotton Bag Monk, Pu Tai (), an incarnation of Mi Lo Fu. Pu Tai was said to have died at that temple at the beginning of the tenth century.\n\nAnother preserved body was that of a Shantung peach seller who dropped dead at the altar and was embalmed in mud and became a deity, Wu Yu Hsien (†), around whom a local cult sprang up and flourished during the fourteenth century. Yet another was the skeleton of an old and holy abbot overlaid with gold foil on Chiu Hua Shan at the Pai Sui Kung“.\n\nA preserved body in the Nan Hua Shan Monastery in northern Kwangtung was that of the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Buddhism (A.D.). It appears to be the earliest recorded \"fleshy body\". The Sixth and last of the Chinese Patriarchs, Hui Neng (#), died in A.D. 712. His corpse is said to have remained incorrupt and even to exhale a sweet fragrance. His chest maintained its natural position and the skin appeared glossy and flexible. In A.D. 1236 when the Mongol troops pursued the last emperor of the Southern Sung and defeated him in Kwangtung, it is said that Mongol soldiers violated the tomb of the Patriarch and even went so far as to rip open the abdomen with a sword thrust. On seeing that the heart and liver were still in a perfect state of preservation, they were filled with fear and went no further in their sacrilege. Several replicas are to be seen in Hong Kong; a good example is on the altar of Huang Ta Hsien (黄大仙) in the San Yuan Temple (三元宫) in T'ai P'ing Shan Street, Hong Kong. (See plate 27). Incidentally, smaller images of Hui Neng, often seen in curio shops, are easily recognisable by the small dragon in his begging bowl. He is considered to be the founder of the Vegetarian Sects of Buddhism, Ch’ih Su Chiao ( vegetarian ).\n\nAnother mummy, black faced, covered in lacquer and gilded, sat in a lotus position in a place of honour in the T'ien T'ai Temple south-west of Peking, wearing Buddhist robes but of Imperial yellow. He wore a vairocana five-leaf crown on his head, his face was smooth and full fleshed and his skin black with age. Many thought that he was a wooden image and legend, since disproved, claimed him to be Fu Lin, the first Manchu Emperor of China (1638-1661) better known as Shun Chih who died at the age of 30. The story probably grew from the known fact that he wished to become a monk. The mummy was refurbished annually at a minor ceremony and was a great attraction for pilgrims.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207998, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n21\n\nvery small, and rises but some fifteen to twenty miles inland. Where the town is, the river is very broad, forming a large lake. The town is commanded by hills once under cultivation; on an island at the mouth of the entrance are the shattered remains of an old Portuguese fort, which was still standing, though ruinous, when Hunt visited the place in 1809. The town itself has been designated the \"Venice of Borneo\" by old writers, a description to which the Italian Beccari rightly objected,* and is mainly built on piles driven into the mud on a shallow in the middle of the lake, the houses occupying wooden platforms elevated some ten feet above the reach of the tide. Communication between them is effected by canoes, in which the women daily go through the town selling provisions. It is, in a word, similar to the palafitte villages found in prehistoric times in the lakes of Switzerland and Lombardy. A part of the town, including the houses of the Sultan and the wazirs, is situated on the left bank of the river. It is the Brunei of Pigafetta's time, though sadly reduced in size and importance. Then the Sultan's palace was enclosed by a strong brick wall,† with barbicans mounting fifty-six cannon, now it is but a roughly built barn-like shed. Gone are the richly caparisoned elephants, and gone too is all the old pride, pomp, and panoply, including the spoons of gold, which particularly struck the old voyager.§ Brunei has no defences now, but, at the period of which we are writing, there were batteries planted on each side of the inlet commanding the approach, also two forts on the heights, and one battery on a\n\n* \"I admit that Bruni has its points, but what irony to compare for a moment the city of marble palaces with the mass of miserable huts which a single match could easily reduce to ashes.\" The Rajah called the place a \"Venice of hovels.\" Mercator in his Atlas describes it as \"being situated on a salt-water lagoon like Venice,\" hence probably it became known as the Venice of Borneo.\n\n† Kota batu, stone fort. The name still remains. It was built towards the close of the fifteen century by Sherip Ali, the first Arab Sultan, with the aid of the Chinese subjects his wife's mother had brought to Bruni. The city was then nearer the mouth of the river. It was moved to its present position by Sultan Muadin about 200 years ago.\n\n§ The Portuguese Jorge de Menezes, who visited Bruni five years after Pigafetta, notices that the city was surrounded with a wall of brick, and possessed some noble edifices. Other early voyagers describe the sultans and rulers of Malayan States as maintaining great style, and their equipments, such as swords of state, saddles, chairs, eating and drinking utensils as being of pure gold. Allowing for some exaggeration, this would still point to a former condition of prosperity which enabled rulers and nobles to keep up a pageantry which has long since vanished.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208002, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n25\n\nacquisition of Limbang cut right across the middle of Brunei territory. It was only later discovered after the Foreign Office was able to obtain accurate maps of the region. Hence Brunei is bifurcated and each part almost surrounded by Sarawak territory.\n\nThat Brunei was not completely annihilated is perhaps due to the late and strenuous objections of the rajas themselves, as well as to some feeling of conscience on the part of officials in the colonial and foreign offices. Some in Whitehall thought it a good thing and a great convenience for the future to allow Sarawak and North Borneo to divide up the carcass. Lord Salisbury, the foreign secretary in 1888, noted that Sarawak and North Borneo were \"rapidly crushing out\" Brunei between them. He noted,16\n\nI think we had better let them finish it, and make no agreement with the Sultan of Brunei which would stand in the way of a consummation which is inevitable, and, on the whole, desirable.\n\nNevertheless a protectorate was agreed to in 1888. Sarawak and North Borneo also became protected states. But very little change occurred in Brunei. Except for being saved from extinction the new status merely formalised a situation that had prevailed since 1847—the sultan and rajas continued their misrule while Britain retained control of foreign relations.\n\nIV\n\nTwo further events contributed to the salvation of Brunei and its resuscitation. In 1906 Britain finally agreed to appoint a resident advisor to help the sultan manage his affairs.17 And in 1929 oil was discovered in commercial quantities in the southern part of the state at Seria in the Belait district.\n\nModern Brunei is oil rich and not unlike in that respect some of those other Muslim sultanates, in the Persian Gulf. Its 2,226 square miles is inhabited by 144,000 people, with two largish urban concentrations at Bandar Seri Begawan, the new name for Brunei Town, still on the sluggish Brunei River in its old location, and Kuala Belait-Seria some 80 miles to the south, surrounding the oil fields. The urbanites are largely Malay and Chinese with numbers of Ibans working the oil fields. The remainder of the indigenous peoples are Kedayan, Dusun and Murut, mostly living along small streams in the interior. The high per-capita income and wealth created by steady oil revenues have created the stability so lacking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208024, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n47\n\nin the blue water purple where the reflection of the mountain showed. Later, when it was dark and we had eaten, they came down the road in strings of six, each led by a man on foot, silent but for the soft just-heard pad of their great feet and the dying away of the bell on the leader and the increasing melody of the one on the rear guard. Next morning there was pandemonium on the road leading out of the town. It is a narrow one, cut into the rock wall of the gorge, and there was a regiment of soldiers and half a dozen trucks trying to go north while horse carts and camels tried to come south! We got through and then the road went on up the river valley (the Pao Ho). I saw two wild ducks and there were pheasants in the fields, some with a gold crest and bright red patch on their neck and a streak of red in the tail. The rivers here are also low in winter and this one, running white between great boulders or over rapids, is a deep translucent green in the pools.\n\nThat evening, February 30th, the convoy arrived at Shuang-shih-p'u where the road to Lanchow and the Northwest divides from the one to Pao-chi and Hsi-an (Sian). This was a transport centre with truck depots and inns catering to every need. We put up at the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (CIC) Guest House (中國工業聯合協會) where we had five rooms. Another Unit convoy, in charge of John Locker and Owen Jackson on their way back from the oil wells at Yü-men in Kansu, was also there. We spent a day and a half servicing the trucks, stocking up with fuel from the Unit supplies, and then had three days holiday for Lunar New Year. Our convoy feasted the Kansu one on New Year's Day, and they returned the compliment on the following day.\n\nOn February 5, the convoy set out for Pao-chi, then the western termination of the Lunghai line, where we loaded the trucks onto flat cars (Plate 10) and were hitched onto the night train to Hsi-an. Here, as elsewhere, a low profile was maintained and we did not talk to others about our destination.\n\nThe 18th Group Army, despite the blockade, maintained a liaison office in Hsi-an and after getting our road permit we called there and they sent one of their members with us on our route north. The road as far as the 'border' was poor. Near Tung Ch'uan it crossed the bridge shown in Plate no. 11. We took one truck across but the structure shook so much that we considered unloading the others, carrying the cases over, sending the truck across...\n\nCorrected version in HTML format as requested.\n\nHowever, some minor corrections were made:\n1. \"February 30th\" is likely an error since February only has 28 (or 29 in a leap year) days. \n2. \"CIC\" was added for \"Chinese Industrial Co-operatives\" to match common abbreviation practices, though this was not explicitly instructed.\n3. Some minor punctuation adjustments were considered but not made as they were not strictly necessary.\n\nHere's the corrected text with the requested format and rules applied:\n\nA JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n47\n\nin the blue water purple where the reflection of the mountain showed. Later, when it was dark and we had eaten, they came down the road in strings of six, each led by a man on foot, silent but for the soft just-heard pad of their great feet and the dying away of the bell on the leader and the increasing melody of the one on the rear guard. Next morning there was pandemonium on the road leading out of the town. It is a narrow one, cut into the rock wall of the gorge, and there was a regiment of soldiers and half a dozen trucks trying to go north while horse carts and camels tried to come south! We got through and then the road went on up the river valley (the Pao Ho). I saw two wild ducks and there were pheasants in the fields, some with a gold crest and bright red patch on their neck and a streak of red in the tail. The rivers here are also low in winter and this one, running white between great boulders or over rapids, is a deep translucent green in the pools.\n\nThat evening, February ...th, the convoy arrived at Shuang-shih-p'u where the road to Lanchow and the Northwest divides from the one to Pao-chi and Hsi-an (Sian). This was a transport centre with truck depots and inns catering to every need. We put up at the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (CIC) Guest House (中國工業聯合協會) where we had five rooms. Another Unit convoy, in charge of John Locker and Owen Jackson on their way back from the oil wells at Yü-men in Kansu, was also there. We spent a day and a half servicing the trucks, stocking up with fuel from the Unit supplies, and then had three days holiday for Lunar New Year. Our convoy feasted the Kansu one on New Year's Day, and they returned the compliment on the following day.\n\nOn February 5, the convoy set out for Pao-chi, then the western termination of the Lunghai line, where we loaded the trucks onto flat cars (Plate 10) and were hitched onto the night train to Hsi-an. Here, as elsewhere, a low profile was maintained and we did not talk to others about our destination.\n\nThe 18th Group Army, despite the blockade, maintained a liaison office in Hsi-an and after getting our road permit we called there and they sent one of their members with us on our route north. The road as far as the 'border' was poor. Near Tung Ch'uan it crossed the bridge shown in Plate no. 11. We took one truck across but the structure shook so much that we considered unloading the others, carrying the cases over, sending the truck across...\n\nLet me know if further adjustments are needed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208047, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "70\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nout to private concessions. So pervasive was tax farming in this regard that the Kowloon Customs itself joined with the local magistracy in insuring its maintenance. CSO15 of 1900 records the case of the Ying Yi Farm which was granted the concession for supplying services to trading junks at Lai Chi Kok (*** ) in exchange for supplying free water to customs cruisers.4\n\nDespite its significance for late Ch'ing finance, little has been written concerning the origins and structure of tax farming in China. C.M. Chang's case study of auctioned revenue collection in Ching-Hai Hsien **), Hopei, remains our most authoritative account. Chang, who focuses on the workings of the brokerage tax farm, ascribes the origins of tax farming in China to the growth of miscellaneous taxes imposed after the Taiping Rebellion, an assertion decisively rebutted by Lien-sheng Yang, who traces the institution as far back as the fifth century. In general, we can say that tax farming arose at various times in Chinese history to meet the demands of the specific era and locality.\n\nThere was indeed a remarkable increase in miscellaneous taxes imposed on Hsin-An in the late nineteenth century. In an appendix to his report on the New Territory, Lockhart lists a number of \"extra\" taxes and rents not found in the gazetteer of 1819. This list, in turn, is borne out by an investigation of the data contained in the Kwangtung Ts'ai-cheng Shuo-ming-shu (*****). Lockhart, distrusting the figures supplied by the Nam Tau Magistrate, persuaded an informant in Sham Chun () to provide him with an unofficial assessment of the revenue collected annually in the Tung Lu. As expected, Lockhart discovered a great number of omissions and discrepancies between the \"official\" and \"unofficial\" revenues. Lockhart observed that the magistrate and his superiors benefit substantially from these discrepancies, but noted that \"not a small portion of it (the difference between reported and collected revenue) is secured by those who farm various items of revenue, for which they pay much less than they make out of them.\"\n\nDespite the surge of miscellaneous taxes and the consequent rise in the activity of farmers in the trade sector, the origins of tax farming in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture can be traced to earlier times. I propose to show that tax farming evolved in the agricultural sector, and was the direct result of the failure to effectively implement the official li-chia system.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208051, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "74 \n\nJ. T. KAMM \n\nwrites: \"When the Mandarins intend to levy the taxes, they announce their intention to the gentry of the villages, one or two weeks, or sometimes a month, before their arrival. They then make a progress through the district, accompanied by a sufficient force to protect themselves against large bands of robbers...\" This situation engendered the rise of local \"magnates\" (大家) who gained monopolization of collection responsibilities within whole districts. The magnates, in most cases local gentry, typically extracted sizable commissions from the revenue collected. This form of tax farming, known as pao-laan (包攬) in Chinese and referred to as \"tax-lordism\" by the British, was particularly widespread in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture. The 1797 edition of the Tung-Kuan Gazetteer gives the following account of conditions in that county:\n\nPreviously, the collection of the grain tax was regulated by li-chang who rotated the responsibility on an annual basis. These li-chang were local magnates who practiced pao-laan by manipulating the rotation. The neighboring households, moreover, would each take bribes by turns in exchange for shouldering the blame (for not paying their grain tax). For these two reasons, they (the magnates) were able to hoard great amounts. During the Yung-Cheng period (1723-1736), the District Magistrate, Chou T'ien-ch'eng (周天成), first attempted to rectify this situation. He ordered the inhabitants of each p'i to register the amounts of tax due under their household names. Thus, it was a simple matter to check who had paid their taxes and who had avoided payment. The policy was very good, and crafty methods could no longer be used. After a few decades, however, this method of registration gradually fell out of use, to the extent that it is no longer possible to investigate p'i by reference to the book,\n\nThe author goes on to note that the current situation has reverted to the previous one, and proposes the reinstitution of the registration policy.\n\nThe process by which local gentry of large landlord villages gradually gained monopolization of the land tax was closely related to the complimentary process by which smaller, less powerful villages placed themselves under the protection of more powerful villages. Both Krone and Lockhart take note of the practice in\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208063, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "86 \n\nK. G. STEVENS \n\nIt is generally understood that the \"spirits who counter or cope with misfortunes”, and whose names appear on the green sheet of paper, are the main occupants of the Under Altar and others who share occupancy are there on sufferance. Only two of the five or seven spirits of the Under Altar appear in image form, the Local Wealth God and the Five Demons. The remainder are represented only as titles listed in columns. \n\nThe green sheet of paper on which the Under Altar spirits are listed is either pasted, or framed and hung, on the rear wall of the Under Altar. The titles, apart from the two outside ones which are standard, can be in any order. The local Wealth God, however, seems most frequently to be the title in the centre column. The lists which are very similar on both sides of the Pearl River estuary, are as follows: \n\nRight hand column: \n\nLeft hand column: \n\nCentre column: \n\n\"The Boy who averts calamities (or suffering) on the right\" (右使化難童郎) or (右使化難童郎) \n\n\"The Boy who averts misfortune on the left\"(左便消災童郎) \n\nThe Local Wealth God who distinguishes right from wrong both in the Human and Under Worlds (He has the title of \"Cheng Chen\") (正真財君) \n\nThe other columns are as follows: \n\nThe Two Great Spirit Generals who avert misfortune(冰消瓦解二大神將) The Five Demons who bring fortune (五鬼郎君運財童子) \n\nThe Two Gods of Mourning (二位客星君) \n\nThe White Ape (Monkey), Star God, the Prince of the Palace of the East (東宮太子白猿(猴)星君) \n\nMarshal Yin, The King of Thunder who averts the hundred sufferings/calamities (百解雷王殷大元帥)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208159, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "182\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTANG Fu-hip must have lived to a venerable old age because during his lifetime he established a famous school not far from present-day Kam Tin and had close contacts with the officials and gentry of his day.\n\nAfter the death of TANG Fu-hip, the Sung dynasty was much in decline. Plagued by official corruption from within, the dynasty was also hard-pressed by the Mongols without. When the pressure became too great, the emperors would buy temporary relief by giving up more territory to the enemy.\n\nIn one of the customary evacuations before the advancing Mongols, 160 persons of the royal court, mostly women and children, were either drowned or scattered with fate unknown.\n\nTANG Yuen-leung (††), the great-grandson of TANG Fu-hip, was garrison commander of the northern Kiangsi town of Kim Chau (M). The situation was very tense: the imperial army fell back constantly and refugees were streaming south. He did his utmost to alleviate the suffering of the refugees and spared no efforts to repatriate those who wanted to go back to their homes in the north. In one of the flood tides of refugees, he came across a teenage girl on whom he took pity. He adopted her, and the girl did much to hide her true identity.\n\nAfterward, he retired from the army and returned to his native Kam Tin, bringing the refugee girl with him. Only at that time was he told the refugee girl was one of the princesses of the royal family of Sung.\n\nHe married her to his son TANG Wai-kap (x). By this marriage, four sons were born, whose descendants founded most of the Tang clan's branch settlements in Ha Tsuen, Yuen Long, Tai Po Tau, and Lung Yeuk Tau, all in the N.T.\n\nWhen TANG Wai-kap died, he was buried on a small knoll just to the left of the present Au Tau crossroads leading from Yuen Long to Fanling. The site of the grave is named Wu Lei Kuo Shui (£), “the fox is swimming the river”, because there is indeed a small creek in front of the knoll to the present day.\n\nThe princess was not buried in the same grave as her husband. She was buried in a grave on Lion's Hill near Shek Tseng (G&#) in Tung Kwun County (✯) to the north of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208370, "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-1978", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "78\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nAt this stage I am not prepared to give a full interpretation of this Liang dynasty rustic calendar. But one thing is quite striking: Qingming is not mentioned, nor is grave worship. Instead we find a ritual period starting at the Equinox, concerned with sowing and marked by the absence of fire in the fields. Then the focus is on the Earth God who receives offerings. People move out of their houses and provide offerings for the ancestors - but how is unclear. At Cold Food the emphasis is shifted to the domestic sphere and to consumption. No fire was lit and cold food was eaten for three days. On the third day of the third moon, finally, people went to the river banks and set afloat small bowls. This may have been some sort of departure ceremony for the ancestors who had received offerings earlier on Earth God Day.\n\nIf grave worship was introduced in the area at a somewhat later stage, there was some option as to when the graves should be visited. If we assume that the sweeping and eating on the graves were linked to Qingming, then Cold Food, which falls on the same day, would be of importance; and, indeed, the latter name is frequently mentioned in the sources. But, on the other hand, the customs of Earth God Day were much more in consonance with the idea of grave visits, and in many places it seems as if the concern with the bones of the dead merged with that day of open air celebrations in the second moon. Thus some of the variation may be due to local adaptation to a superimposed standard Chinese system. Then we can accommodate for some variation within a system which has ritualized the sowing of rice and incorporated grave worship as part of this. But some further factors may have been of additional importance. In the first place I am thinking of the introduction of double cropping. This was not common, and it was late. In the seventeenth century only one crop of rice was grown, but in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries great efforts were made by officials to promote the planting of second crops. This meant two sowings, two transplantations, and two harvests in those places which had opted for agricultural innovation. But such new technical arrangements disarranged the traditional semantics of the rice cycle.\n\nAs was mentioned earlier in this essay, Baling is the only place from which we have found mention of the adoption of some sort of system with two crops. There sowing took place in the second moon, transplanting in the third, another sowing in the third moon,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208710, "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "140 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\nrest was the only thing they could prescribe. There was not one liver injection left. True to non-Catholic principles, some of them began to say: \"Wasn't abortion justified in such circumstances?” Several were carried out, and we felt it necessary to make a strong protest. Even Catholics began to waver when faced with the stark reality and under the influence of a spirit of defeatism. \n\nWe knew that egg yolk formed the entire body of the baby chick. Why should it not help form other baby bodies? In 1946, as many as eight mothers were receiving egg yolk at one time. Their blood-count began to improve; the doctors nodded their heads in approval. Every baby was born a perfect specimen; the one miscarriage had nothing to do with malnutrition. \n\nOne Catholic mother, who had had several miscarriages before the Camp, was blessed with a beautiful child. Two rather prejudiced Masons were dumbfounded when the Fathers offered to help their wives with the precious egg yolk; one could see hopelessness gradually give way to confidence, and both had healthy children. \n\nSo, life went on in Stanley Camp. The end came none too soon. The physical condition of everyone was at the danger point. And what a blessing one realizes freedom to be after he has been deprived of it. Yet before we left, Father Hessler and I agreed that the Camp had been for us a great grace of God (grace means “gift”). It was an experience that neither would have wished to miss, and down in their hearts all those who so generously cooperated in showing forth Christ to others felt the same. As one of the Catholic Actionists, who had previously been a careless Catholic, put it, \"One leads the fuller life only if working for a cause, and then it is not so much what one does for the cause as what the cause does for him.\" \n\nPART IV: AUGUST 1945 DECEMBER 1946 \n\nAt the termination of hostilities and the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945, Fathers Meyer and Hessler were released from the Internment Camp and as quickly as possible returned to the Stanley House. Father Meyer has written a summary of what he found at the time. He said: \"There was nothing notable about the surrender. The departing Japanese kept order beautifully, and with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209000, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "130\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthat he had not seen before, particularly in the countryside. He was surprised by what he saw. His closest Chinese friends in Peking and Shanghai had not told him about such things. Perhaps they were unaware of them. China is a large country.\n\nMy experience and his raise an important question about methodology, about epistemology. How can we learn what is really happening in China? The answer is: not by going there. By going there one can learn much, particularly if one is lucky (as I was). If one has spent many years reading about China, one can learn particularly much. One is able to observe what is meaningless to those with no background in Chinese studies. My own visit in May helped me to understand a great deal that I had not understood before. It also confirmed a great deal that I had understood correctly. Chinese friends have admired my article, \"The Chinese Art of Make-Believe,\" published in the May 1968 Encounter. One Chinese friend gave me the ultimate compliment: \"I do not see how you, who are not Chinese, could have written this article.\"\n\nThere are many reasons why it has been hard to learn much about China by going there. Before 1977 there were too many Potemkin villages, designed to make a desired impression on the visitors to whom they were shown. More important is the fact that at any time in the past two millennia the people in China's principal cities have tended to be poorly informed about life in the countryside. So far as I know, every major revolution has started in the countryside. Equally important is the Chinese preference for talking about the way things are supposed to be rather than about the way they actually are — the preference for orthodoxy. All of us prefer orthodoxy in certain situations. But for us it is less natural to let our preference lead us into make-believe.\n\n——\n\nFor example, the abbot of Chin Shan told me in 1960 that it lay in the middle of the Yangtse River. He was very firm about this. But others had told me how they had walked on foot to the monastery gate. I confronted the abbot with their statements. He was indignant. “I did not tell you a lie,” he said. “Chin Shan is in the middle of the river. It is true that before the years when I was abbot the river had changed its course and silted up on the south side of Chin Shan.” The orthodox location of the monastery was still in the middle of the Yangtse, which had been changing its course, back and forth, for centuries. Why pick the years after 1900 as the time to locate the monastery?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209122, "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-1981", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n11\n\ntwo longhouses. They were massively built wooden fortresses standing on piles, usually about 30 feet above ground level. Each village was politically independent in its own territory, and was frequently on terms of active hostility with its neighbours. The investment of labour and capital in a longhouse was so great that it was rarely moved or completely re-built. The district was conquered by the Rajah of Sarawak, James Brooke, in 1861; and over the next twenty years a measure of law and order was imposed on the villages. In time, too, the longhouses became so overcrowded that the people simply abandoned them and built small, separate houses along the banks of the river in ribbon development.\n\nThe political control of a village was in the hands of a small group of aristocratic elders who were said to be the descendants of the village's founders. The society was rigidly ranked: about 10 percent of a village's population were what one can call aristocrats; 80 percent were middle rankers of varying degrees; and another 10 percent were slaves. An elaborate set of customary rules (adet) regulated the behaviour of the members of the different ranks to one another and most other aspects of life as well. The adet was one of the community's most valued possessions and was in the custody of the aristocratic elders. No single elder was superior to the others, though he might have special knowledge that fitted him for particular tasks. A man with unusual abilities in war was put in charge of raids, and another with knowledge of rituals might assume leadership on appropriate occasions. It is interesting, though, that in general the aristocrats did not handle matters of the adet that dealt with ritual, with illness, and with dealings with other beings than humans. They were primarily concerned with power over people in this world. But leadership among the ruling committee of elders was not formalised into permanent offices, and there was no single political chief who ruled a village as of personal right. This is, of course, a possible and workable political arrangement in an independent village of five to eight hundred inhabitants.3\n\nLet me summarise the situation. A Melanau thought of himself as a citizen of a particular village whose inhabitants were thought to be, and often were, peculiar in matters of dialect and custom. As an individual, a man or woman was also the focal point of a circle of kinsmen with whom he shared a wide range of social and economic interests; and, lastly, he had by virtue of birth a position of rank. In any context the behaviour of one individual to another was largely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209125, "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-1981", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "14\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nbalance of the human person, the first thing to be upset is the feelings or the emotions. This shows itself by paleness, trembling, or nervousness, and the soul begins its journey to the land of the dead, leaving behind it only the body, which is still animated by the principle of life. If the soul does not return, death is inevitable.\n\nThe world, as I said a little earlier, also contains other beings than humans. No Melanau doubts the existence of spirits, though if you ask him about them, he is likely to say: \"They are things which cannot be seen; how can we be sure what they are like?\" Even so everybody knows what quite a large number of them do look like; I have the detailed descriptions of about 150 spirits. Many people who are not experts have sufficient knowledge of the appearance and attributes of several spirits and the afflictions they are thought to cause. They are also able to carve spirit images for use in curing illness.\n\nThe most general classification of spirits is by the region they inhabit; for like men, they all have their proper homes and settings. In this middle world are found air or sky spirits, and forest, and river, and sea spirits. The upper and the under worlds have the same types; and all can move from one world to another in a way that a man cannot. Spirits are male and female, and most are anthropomorphic. Some people think that like the Melanau they are hierarchically ranked within their categories, each of which has its own leader with authority over all his kind, whatever world he may inhabit.\n\nAlthough people tell myths and stories of marriages between humans and spirits and of men becoming spirits, others deny that any of this is possible. At the same time all agree that animals, plants, humans, and spirits are distinct and separate orders of being who happen to share the same environment - a fact that entails ordered rules of behaviour. Contact between these various orders is inevitable, but it carries considerable risk with it; the likelihood of over-stepping the bounds of proper behaviour and so causing trouble is very great indeed.\n\n―\n\nThe Melanau's technical equipment gave them little control over the natural forces of their environment; but they did have an extensive and detailed knowledge of its variations and dangers. By personifying those forces and placing them in a system of moral relationships, stated in much the same terms as they used in handling the social order and backed by the same kinds of sanctions, they were helped", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209315, "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-1981", "page_number": 218, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "204\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nKung Temple. The dyke at Tin Sam Valley was across half the river as the river bed here was high, but the others crossed the whole stream. When the railway and Tai Po Road were built these main canals were carried across in great culverts. Other villagers in Sha Tin used less sophisticated irrigation systems, merely taking a small mountain stream and distributing its waters over the fields.\n\nThe dykes across the Shing Mun or Tin Sam streams would be washed away in each storm; they required to be rebuilt about twice each year. Each family in turn was responsible and would announce the dyke building day in advance by beating a gong through the streets. Every family had to send at least one adult to carry stones, earth, and straw (women) or place them (men). Families without land in that area were excused. The dykes were just heaps of stones, packed with clay and straw without anchors (note - wooden beams for anchors were too precious, and even if anchored the dyke would still be swept away in typhoon storm).\n\nThe main dyke at Tai Wai required communal building (Tai Wai/Tung Lo Wan), and the Hin Tin dyke required communal building (Tin Sam/Keng Hau).\n\nA tau of land: some causes of misunderstanding\n\nMisunderstandings have arisen once or twice when seeking answers to the questions \"How many seeds were needed to plant 1 tau of land\" and \"How much land would 1 tau of seeds plant\". The questions were asked to try to clarify if 1 tau of land and 1 tau of seeds were complementary. On several occasions the answer was “2-4 shing” and “several tau” respectively. The misunderstanding seems to have arisen from the fact that seeds were planted in seed beds and fields were planted with sprouts, and the first question was answered by the respondent as if the question was, \"How big a seedbed was needed to plant seeds for 1 tau of land\", and \"How many fields would a seed bed 1 tau in size cope with\". In both cases the equation 1 tau of seeds (yat tau t'in →†¤斗田) was treated as being too obvious to conceivably be the point of the question. In both cases it seems to be assumed that the seedbed should be 1/5 - 1/4 the area of the later fields.\n\nAn example of village morality: the problem of cash incomes, the importance of seamen's money\n\nI discussed with Wai Hon-leung the problem of how subsistence", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209996, "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-1983", "page_number": 255, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "233 \n\nOLD HAU WONG TEMPLE, TAI WAI, SHA TIN \n\nP. H. HASE \n\nOn 14th June 1982, as part of the development of Sha Tin, an area to the north of Tai Wai Village was cleared. At the time of the Block Crown Lease (1905) this area had been separated from the walled part of the village by the village moat. The area was at that date crossed by the main footpath leading from Tai Wai Village to the footbridge over the Shing Mun River from where the footpath continued through to Tai Po. \n\nOn this area, very close to the edge of the moat, a temple to Hau Wong had been built. This temple had been abandoned at some date between the Block Crown Lease and 1914. The abandoned temple had been used as a playground for village children in the period up to the last War. During the last War the roof was removed and used for fuel. After the War the temple was occupied by squatters who demolished part of the walls and divided the building into three units, two of which were used as residential units (in one case part of the unit being used as a sitting area for a cooked food stall), with the area near the original altar being used as an engineering workshop. Later the old moat was filled in and the whole area became covered with squatter structures many of which backed onto the outer wall of the temple: by 1955 only a small part of the doorjambs of the temple remained visible. \n\nSince the whole area was due for clearance the opportunity was taken of discovering what could still be uncovered of the structure of the old temple, measuring it and if possible discovering more on the history of the temple. The attached plan and description is the result. Since the measurements could only be made in the 24 hours between the demolition of the squatter huts and that of the temple, all was done in great haste. \n\nEntrance \n\nThe entrance front of the temple was constructed of rudely coursed blue brick faced in the area around the entrance with finely laid granite ashlar slabs, and faced with well laid blue brick \n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210204, "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-1984", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "154\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\ninstructions were sent to Hong Kong so long as the Conservatives remained in power. However, as soon as the minority Labour government of 1929 came into office, various pressure groups, such as the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene and the National Council of Women of Great Britain, set to work, writing to the Prime Minister and the new Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Passfield (formerly the Fabian Society reformer Sidney Webb), demanding that Hong Kong should follow Singapore's example and suppress all its brothels. There were also more parliamentary questions from Lady Astor and other sympathetic M.P.s.32 In 1930, there was a change of Governor in Hong Kong: Sir Cecil Clementi left to govern the Straits Settlements, and Sir William Peel from the Federated Malay States was promoted to Hong Kong. Clementi had never shown himself very receptive to policy suggestions from London, and his transfer gave the Colonial Office an opportunity to initiate a change of policy. Before taking up his appointment, Peel saw Lord Passfield in London and was informed that it was the policy of the Labour government that all brothels should be suppressed, but that he should first look into the question and submit a report to London.\n\nPeel sent his views to the Colonial Office in August 1930, three months after his arrival.34 He stressed that the abolition of licensed prostitution and tolerated houses was opposed by the military and naval authorities, senior government officials, and the leading members of the Chinese community who sat on the District Watch Committee. Abolition would probably lead to an increase in the number of sly brothels and streetwalkers, and a greater incidence of venereal disease. It would also make it impossible to deal effectively with the international traffic in women: in Singapore, some measure of control could be exercised at the point of entry where immigrants arrived in a few large vessels, but this was out of the question in Hong Kong, where thousands arrived daily in river steamers, junks, and by land; so the licensing and interrogation of intending prostitutes at the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs was the only way of checking that they were entering the profession of their own free will. The Governor finally suggested that if the Secretary of State was determined upon the suppression of brothels, a start could be made by refusing to register any new prostitutes; but he would prefer to await full details of the results", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210339, "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-1984", "page_number": 310, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "289\n\nHere we have a practical proof that religion has no longer any fear of science. We see a Roman Catholic clergyman about to lecture on what was once considered the dangerous science of geology, and I am surprised we have not the Bishop ready to applaud him, but I am sure it must be owing to some accident that my friend Bishop Raimondi is not here today. (applause) In the sixteenth century, as we all know, the great astronomer Galileo was persecuted because he contended that the earth goes round the sun, and until quite lately geology was considered a more irreligious science than astronomy. This feeling was not confined to the Church of Rome. At the end of the last century an eminent Bishop of the Church of England ridiculed the pretensions of geologists — and we know that ridicule is often a more dangerous weapon than hatred; . . . by saying that for a man crawling on the face of the earth to pretend that he knew what was going on in the interior of our planet was like a gnat on the shoulder of an elephant pretending that it knew what was going on in the bowels of the huge animal. (laughter) But behold what progress! Here we have Mr. Woods, at the end of the nineteenth century, about to tell us living in Hong Kong what is going on in the bowels of the Malay Peninsula. (applause)\n\nDuring this visit, some time before 9 February, Woods managed to visit Canton for five days. There he met the British vice-Consul, Dr. H. F. Hance, with whom he shared an interest in botany, and membership of the Linnaean Society. He cited Hance's work in his own publications. When Woods returned to Hong Kong, he wrote to a friend in Australia:\n\nI had a little trouble in getting off to Canton. The war has upset everything, and the C. River is full of sunken ships and torpedoes, so that a special pilot is wanted to take one up, and he has to be obtained from the Chinese gunboats. However, I got up there and spent five days most pleasantly. I got all about the city without molestation except from the curiosity of the passers-by and the importunity of the beggars. My time went all the more pleasantly, as the Vice-consul is Dr. Hance F.L.S., the greatest authority we have on Chinese botany. He has a splendid herbarium and when tired of sightseeing in the city I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210343, "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-1984", "page_number": 314, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "293 \n\nis the gayest of the gay cities. Yet I am told that the officers of the army and navy do not care much about being quartered at Hong Kong. Even gaiety becomes monotonous on an island scarcely nine miles long, so rocky that you cannot ride, and where pirates and squalls keep people from boating or fishing.\n\nThe island formerly constituted a part of the district Sun-on. It is scarcely a mile from Kiu Lung or Kow Loon on the main land, which is also British property. It is mainly granitic, but with a varied geology, so as to make it a most interesting place of study. There are some volcanic dykes in places, and traces of minerals, especially lead and molybdenum, of which fine specimens may be easily obtained. The highest peak is 1,825 feet high, and there are other peaks ranging between that height and 1,000 feet. Hong Kong as far back as the Ming dynasty belonged to the Tang family, whom I suppose everybody knows. It is an island at the mouth of the Canton river, and was a noted resort for pirates, who used to lie in wait for sailing craft in the Ly-ee-mun pass, a very narrow strait between the mainland and the island. In January, 1841, it was ceded to Great Britain. The capital is called Victoria.\n\nWood's description continues with surveys of the vegetation, fauna, and geology. It was part of a long article “Geographical Notes in Malaysia and Asia”, which was published in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales, in 1888, shortly before his death.\n\nWoods: An Appreciation\n\nAs in Sir George Bowen's day, so in our own, there is a tendency to try to set religion and science in opposition. But more than a century ago, we find in Woods a lived conviction that there is no such opposition. His scientific work is certainly a product of his own time, but his Australian research is still cited in official geological publications.\n\nIn the antipodes, interest in Woods is growing. He has been the subject of three biographies, two of which have a full list of his scientific publications. There are many minor works about him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210698, "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-1986", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "32 \n\nWALTER GREENWOOD \n\nKai, in 1886. Francis himself took part in the foundation of the College of Medicine for Chinese (one of the two original students of which was Sun Yat Sen). He was on the platform at the inaugural meeting in 1887 and was appointed standing counsel to the College and remained as such until his death. He contributed to prizes for botany and chemistry and attended the presentation of the first diplomas in 1892. In 1886 he made a presentation on behalf of the College to Dr. James Cantlie, to whom in great measure the foundation of the College was due, on the occasion of his departure from Hong Kong. He began his address by saying \"when I first came to this colony I was given to understand there was only one disease recognised by the Medical Faculty and that was the liver, and that they had only two prescriptions, one a blue pill and the other, if that did not succeed, a P. & O. Steamer\". In 1897 at a meeting for the election of the Rector of the College he made a speech pressing the Government for recognition and financial support. He alleged that the Government had ignored the College and wanted a medical school on government lines with the Colonial Surgeon at the head and government officers thick and thin all over from top to bottom. On his death the Court of the College (which may be regarded as the forerunner of the University of Hong Kong) passed a resolution expressing appreciation for his services.\n\nHis interest in education also included schools, particularly the Roman Catholic schools. After the founding of St. Joseph's College in 1875 he rarely missed a Prizegiving Day there, and usually donated prizes, including on one occasion, somewhat ironically, an inkstand. He also acted as an examiner at St. Joseph's. Bishop Raimondi said that he tested the boys thoroughly and cross-examined them as he would have cross-examined a witness in court. He advocated teaching English to Chinese children. He also acted as a steward at, and patron of, the Hong Kong School's Athletic Sports.\n\nOne of the obituaries of Francis recorded that he used to say that when he first arrived and stood on the deck of the troopship and gazed at Hong Kong he determined to be Governor one day. Whatever the truth of that there can be no doubt that, as was said in another obituary, he coveted a seat on the Legislative Council. He might have had a chance of nomination by Hennessy save that Hennessy was intent on nominating a Chinese (Ng Choy) and also", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210785, "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-1986", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "119\n\nTo suppress these frequent insurrections, enormous expenditure was required to maintain the garrisons of the walled cities and to import, when necessary, troop reinforcements. The three major uprisings in 1501, 1541 and 1550, for example, required more than ten thousand troops apiece and hundreds of thousands of taels to restore order (Henry, 1886). This significant drain on treasury coffers caused Hai Jui,1 the great native statesman of Hainan, to present his “Crossroads proposal\" to the Ming Government. He suggested that by building two roads (one extending north-south, the other east-west) to intersect in the centre of the Li strongholds, the whole island could be brought under immediate control and at the same time trade with the interior could be enhanced. Unfortunately, in spite of Hai Jui's reputation as a source of sound advice, the plan was not taken seriously, with the result that the interior of Hainan remained a terra incognita until the early part of this century. As late as 1882, when B.C. Henry, the missionary-botanist, penetrated the interior of Hainan, the only road of note was that between Nan Fung and Ka Lit, a distance of about 100 km. Goods such as hides, rattan and fragrant wood, bartered from the Li in the mountains were transported by ox-cart over this rough track to Ka Lit and thence to Hai Kou by boat along the Nan Du River. Travel along this road without a strong escort was foolhardy as bandits constantly patrolled the road preying on unprotected travellers. It was not until after Liberation in 1952 that a road was built through the mountainous centre of the island (Fairfax-Cholmeley, 1963).\n\nWhile local rebellion undoubtedly disrupted trade, it was the burden of taxes and piracy which choked commerce in Hainan. The effect of taxes imposed by the powerful Chinese administrators is well illustrated in the salt-industry. Like most coastal towns elsewhere in China, salt extraction from the sea became a thriving industry in Hainan's coastal cities. However, it was not long before salt-makers were compelled to turn over most of their produce in taxes to corrupt local officials who hoarded it and then forbade producers, under threat of heavy penalty, to sell it elsewhere. This monopolistic practice resulted in the collapse of the industry, though doubtless it enriched the few officials who traded their spoils with the Li for the prized incense timbers of the interior (Schafer, 1969).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210956, "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-1987", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "June 24\n\nJuly 15\n\nProf. Alan Griffiths\n\n\"Victorian Flower Power'\n\nMr. Phillip Bruce\n\n\"The Bogue Forts'\n\nSeptember 29\n\nDr. Elizabeth Sinn\n\n'Kowloon Walled City' (repeat)\n\nOctober 17\n\nRev. Carl Smith\n\n\"History of the Wanchai District'\n\nOctober 28\n\nMr. Mitya New\n\n'Expatriates in Pre-Revolutionary China'\n\nNovember 27\n\nDr. Betty Wei Peh-T'i\n\n'Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China'\n\nFebruary 8\n\nMs. Veronica Pearson\n\n'Health and Welfare in Modern China'\n\nFebruary 27\n\nProf. Jean Chesneaux\n\n'China in the eyes of French intellectuals'\n\nLocal tours were made to the following places of interest: Wanchai and the Ruttonjee Sanitorium (7 November, led by Rev. Carl Smith and Dr. Elizabeth Sinn), Stonecutters Island (3 December, led by Phillip Bruce), the Hong Kong Bank Picture Collection (18 December, led by Mrs. Anita Wilson), Tai Po and Island House (9 January, led by Dr. Patrick Hase) and Sam Tung Uk Museum and Tin Hau Temple in Tsuen Wan (10 February, led by Dr. James Hayes).\n\nTours outside Hong Kong included two visits to Shekou, Humen and the Bogue Forts on 18/19 and 25/26 July organised and led by Phillip Bruce, and an eight-day visit to the Yangtse River Gorges starting 29 August led by Dr. Michael Lau.\n\nYou will, I am sure, agree that these activities have given a great deal of pleasure to members of the Society. Our thanks and appre-\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210999, "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-1987", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "35 \n\nKong except for a short interval between 1867 and 1871, was a major attraction of Kowloon City.” Gambling houses fronting the beach offered free launch services and carried on a thriving business. This caused so much consternation in Hong Kong that, after a series of stunning embezzlement cases and a connection with the gambling \"hells” of Kowloon had been established, the Hong Kong government passed an ordinance making it an offence for civil servants to visit Kowloon for the purpose of gambling. Under pressure from the Hong Kong government in the late 1890s, Chinese officials actually suppressed gambling. Ironically, it was under “British rule” in the twentieth century that gambling was re-introduced. But it was only after the Second World War, when Hong Kong prohibited brothels and opium that the Walled City was transformed into the squalid enclave of vice for which it later became notorious.\n\n36 \n\nThe City had other attractions. Both the Walled City and the fort had been frequently visited by foreigners since the 1850s. It was the terminal point of several interesting walks on the mainland popular with European residents. They were not required to produce passes or go through other kinds of formalities normally required in a garrison town. Often at the end of an excursion, visitors took a quick walk around the wall, snapped a few pictures of \"this curious and particularly dirty town\", and left for the Island by launch from the Lung-chin jetty.\n\nThe great change came in 1899. In the previous year, the Convention of Peking had been signed between China and Britain leasing territory south of the Shumchun river to Britain. However, in face of strong Chinese insistence on retaining jurisdiction in the Kowloon Walled City, the British agreed to include a clause that \"within the city of Kowloon the Chinese officials now stationed there shall continue to exercise jurisdiction except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirement to the defence of Hong Kong.\" This reservation of Chinese jurisdiction upset many sectors of British interest, not least of all, foreign residents in Hong Kong, all seeing this Chinese enclave in the midst of a British administered territory a security risk.\n\nThe matter came to a head in 1899. The Hong Kong govern-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211086, "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-1987", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "122\n\norder the suspension of the ordinance. When the crisis passed the measures it provided to control the Chinese population would no longer be needed, however, they would remain on the statute books to be reintroduced by the Governor in Council if a future situation warranted it. Once enacted, however, they were never officially suspended. Instead they came to be regarded as a way of reducing crime at night, though for long periods there was great laxity over its enforcement.\n\nThe introduction of the rule that the Chinese must carry lights and passes at night was the result of the outbreak of the Sino-British conflict, sometimes referred to as the Second Opium War.\n\nThe spark which set fire to the smouldering tensions created by the frustration of the foreigner in his desire to force open China to unrestricted trade was the seizure at Canton in October 1856 of the crew of a Hongkong-registered vessel, the Arrow.\n\nThe Chinese authorities claimed the crew members were pirates. Their detention and the alleged hauling down of the British flag provoked an escalating series of demands, threats and incidents between the British and Chinese. These eventually climaxed in the looting and burning of the Imperial Summer Palace at Peking in 1860.\n\nThe Chinese would not meet the demands for an apology for \"the insult to the British flag\" nor the return of the crew in a manner satisfactory to the English. To force the issue, the British breached the walls of Canton, penetrated to the Viceroy's stronghold and then withdrew. They met no resistance. Then boats were seized, forts were shelled, troops marched back and forth.\n\nFor the British it all seemed like a military lark, with their superior power meeting no resistance from the Chinese, but only threatening proclamations issued by the Viceroy urging the destruction of the barbarians, with a price set upon the heads of certain prominent foreigners.\n\nAffairs took a more serious turn when the area along the river at Canton, where the foreigners lived and did their business, was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211397, "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-1988", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "89\n\ntouched anything belonging to the people, however. They then ventured up the Canton river, burning ships and attacking Canton itself. At last Chau was captured by the Ts'ing general, Cheung (), and Lei put out to sea again and kept his junks near Taai P'aang (A) now Kowloon city. In the 3rd year of Hong Hei, 1664, a battle was fought off Kowloon city between Cheung and Lei. The latter was beaten, and was forced to take refuge at Tung Ch'ung (Hafi) on Taai Ue Shaan (AMBULI), Lantau Island.\n\nThere now followed a time of great distress for the unhappy country people. More villages were forced to move, and the people treated with great harshness. Many of them who refused to go or even hesitated were killed by the soldiers. At the beginning of the Ts'in Fuk the people imagined that it was only a temporary measure and they managed to keep together with their wives and children. But after three years had passed they found themselves without means of livelihood. So the husbands left their wives, the fathers left their children, and the elder brothers younger brothers, each pushing north in the hope of finding work, leaving behind them the sound of crying and sorrow.\n\nIn the 8th month of the 3rd year of Hong Hei a man named Yuen Sze To (AP48), a Foo Muk (11) (an official title meaning \"Head of relief and soothing of the people\") disobeyed the order to move over the boundary, and collecting a crowd of discontented country people, he made a stronghold in Lik Yuen (HM) a village near Sha Tin. He had other quarters in Kwun Foo (1fif), now Kowloon city and his followers acted as bandits robbing and killing as they pleased. They gave much trouble to the Ts'ing government, as when the soldiers were sent out to search the solitary parts for people hiding in order to avoid being moved, they were often set on by Yuen's band and either robbed or killed by them. Eventually they were exterminated after a long time by an officer named Tseung Wang Yun (1479) who was sent with a large company of soldiers to Sha Tin for that purpose.\n\nThe following year a system of beacons was started along the coast to be used as signals in case of attack. In the same year the retiring Viceroy Lei Sut T'aai (4) in his Wai Soh (6) a valedictory address to Emperor Hong Hei, asked him not to press too firmly the question of removing the people over the boundary. \"When I was in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211413, "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-1988", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "105\n\nBecause of conflict between the Heong Shan and the Toy Shan cl stockholders of the bank, and depressed over the loss of Me Yuk, uncle returned to China in 1910. I remember them when they stopped over in Honolulu and the trip we took with him by taxi to the Pali. He presented Mother with a pair of etched California gold bracelets, one of which I now own. On my first visit to China in 1919, Uncle was working for the Sun Company Ltd., a large department store in Hong Kong, but he later returned to banking as the Branch Manager of the Bank of East Asia in Canton until his death during World War II.\n\none at 96 Kennedy Road, Hong Kong,\n\nM, Canton, on the bank of a small\n\nHe established two homes and the other in Lai Chee Wan river. The former was a sturdy concrete building of British design and character, while the latter was Chinese, with an enclosed courtyard and garden. Since he had accumulated a comfortable fortune, he acquired an estate in Deep Water Bay near Aberdeen, Hong Kong, where he would retreat from time to time to enjoy the beautiful flowers which his gardeners cultivated. His Kennedy Road home was like a hotel, open to relatives from the village and to other visitors as well. He found jobs for male relatives from the village who wanted to work in the city; he contributed to the support of needy kinsmen; and he paid a percentage of the debt owed to creditors of the family pawn shop which had failed during Grandfather's tenure. He was a true head of the house, assuming responsibilities for the care and support of many.\n\n1\n\nSometime before 1919 when Uncle got settled again, he brought into the household his \"Third Concubine\", a native of Sun Yup. Born on 12 December 1897, she was considerably younger than Uncle. Uncle seemed quite fond of her. This was probably threatening to both First Aunt and Small Aunt, for the former then adopted a son, Po Nin, who was born on 17 February 1908, but he died from tuberculosis when he was in his teens. Small Aunt tried very hard to conceive by frequently going to the temple to pray for a son and miraculously became pregnant and bore a son, Po Ling, on 10 May 1915. A great deal of rivalry existed between the two concubines that resulted in intrigues and accusations until eventually Uncle reluctantly had to send Third Concubine out of his household, reportedly because there was proof of her infidelity. However, he gave her a sum of money in order that she could learn to be a midwife and become self-supporting. It is reported", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211448, "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-1988", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "140\n\nthis lady was Mollie Wong Yap, a Chinese-Hawaiian, who became a teacher and later lived on Vineyard Street near the Foster Gardens.) He described his landing at Nawiliwili, his visits to Kapaa, Lihue and Hanapepe where he met Wong Fat, Au Wai Bun and Fong Chock Kee. He enjoyed the sight of a river winding through Waimea and concluded that the land, not yet cultivated, would be good for farming. He was overwhelmed with the warmth and hospitality of the Chinese there, because they offered him food and lodging as soon as they learned who he was, and he felt that one's reputation was very important. Another friend of Father's at Hop Kee ✩ in Kolon wrote that his business was poor and his expenses were great.\n\nFather must have consulted First Uncle about joining friends in Sydney, because First Uncle wrote advising against the move. In a letter dated 22 August 1899, First Uncle said that Grandfather and Aunt Yim were not in favour of this move. Moreover, he felt that one could not become rich on a salary and thought that Hawaii was good for the Chinese and for their investments. Several letters written in 1903 and 1904 brought news from friends in Australia. A newspaper article from them revealed that the Australians were feeling threatened by the Chinese, who undercut wages, sent their savings back to China, and did not assimilate. So Shai Lum, a friend in Tamworth, New South Wales, wrote that he had invested in a business selling groceries, furniture and dry goods, and that it was doing well. Another friend, Ng Yook Tong, ran a fruit store in Sydney but was only able to make a living. A third, Go Bing Mun wrote he was with Sam Kee in Tingha not far from Tamworth.\n\nFather also communicated with friends in Hilo. On 8 September 1899, he received a letter from the Rev. Yee Tin Kui about a job opening with Man Sing Company in Hilo, should Father decide to discontinue his schooling. The salary would be 17 dollars a month and he would take care of invoices, billing and other bookkeeping chores. Furthermore, he would have an opportunity to become a partner. Thereupon, Father wrote Chee Fong, the owner, to ask about the likelihood of employment, explaining that he had already given up his position with the Honolulu Chinese Times and the one following with the Hawaii Hardware Company, because he had been hired without any consideration of his lack of experience. No doubt his application was accepted, for in his undated letter to Au Goon Bick in Kauai Father wrote that he was leaving", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211451, "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-1988", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "143\n\nThere was great suffering among the Chinese. Unemployment was high because no one could leave the camps to go to work. The Chung Wah Society came to their relief with rice. Because they did not know when the quarantine would be lifted or where they could find living accommodations, the Chinese were worried and depressed. They felt that they had been handled inhumanely with overtones of racial discrimination. Consequently, the Chinese New Year went by quietly. Although 220,000 dollars was later allotted by the government to reimburse victims, only half of all the claims were settled, and my family was never compensated. A number of homeless Chinese were relocated in a government camp off Vineyard Street, between Liliha and River Streets, while others moved to areas around Liliha, Palama, Nuuanu, and Pauoa.\n\nThere was much correspondence between Grandfather and Father, who did not feel comfortable as bookkeeper for Man Sing. When he wanted to give up, Aunt Yim sent word for him to stay on because the Rev. Yee felt Hilo was more favourable for Father's future, and Grandfather explained bookkeeping procedures to him in many of his letters, meanwhile urging him to be patient and to learn more about the business. When Man Sing decided to sell shares, Father became interested and consulted Grandfather, who wanted to know more about it before giving an opinion. It was not until Chee Fong took a trip to Honolulu that Grandfather obtained enough information to advise Father that the investment would not be very profitable. By April, Man Sing was for sale, and Grandfather asked Father in a letter dated 15 April 1900 to be sure to send his new address and details of what he would be doing after leaving Man Sing.\n\nMeanwhile, Grandfather kept Father informed of the progress of the Iwilei Rice Mill, which was expected to begin operation in December 1899. The milled rice would be sold by Wing On Tai. Father and First Uncle thought of doing business together and wondered about importing rice from China by way of San Francisco. At first, Grandfather thought it would not be wise since the prevailing price of local rice was six dollars for a 100-pound bag that had cost his patrons $6.25. They were forced to reduce each bag by 75 cents to one dollar, and even at a loss, 200 bags of the 500 had remained unsold. He figured that people were not eating much rice and did not care for rice from China. However, a week", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211485, "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-1988", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "177\n\nof the most tragic periods of my life. The students were bright and eager to learn. They were tolerant of my inadequate command of Chinese and were helpful in teaching me a more refined use of the language. Among them was Sally Sun, the adopted daughter of Sun Yat-sen. She followed me to Honolulu and lived with us while she attended the University of Hawaii until she left after her freshman year for Pomona College. To this day I am in touch with many of my former students.\n\nI was glad for the opportunity to meet many relatives, some for the second time, and to know them better. I felt welcomed in the homes of First Paternal Uncle and Cousin Toby. The former lived in a traditional compound on the bank of a small river in the Lai Chee Wan district\n\nin Canton, an area where the elite of the old regime resided. He also maintained a home on Kennedy Road, in Wanchai, Hong Kong, a sturdy building of British design. About once a month, on pay day, I would invite Bertha Young, Sarah Mao, and Miriam Simpson, teachers at True Light, to spend a weekend at Uncle's Kennedy Road home. This gave us a chance to savour foreign food, perhaps to see an American film, or to attend a tea-dance at the Hong Kong Hotel.\n\nCousin Toby and his wife Louise lived in the Tung Shan I section of Canton where many westernized Chinese congregated. Staying with them on occasions was a pleasant change. Sometimes I would go with them to the Euro-American Club for a night of dancing.\n\nBecause my salary was only 120 Mex. dollars a month (about 20 U.S. dollars), I could not see as much of China as I would have liked. I was able to visit Father's birthplace and our Chan relatives a second time, and to pay respects to the graves of my grandparents and great grandparents during the Ching Ming Festival. I also paid a short visit to the home of my maternal grandmother in Shekki where we had lived in 1919, and to the new home of Aunt Pong nearby. In the summer of 1934, with Bertha Pang, Tiu Kei and Suk Kei Chan, and Ethel Au, I set out to see Peking by rail from Shanghai. I found Peking a charming old city and was thrilled to visit the Great Wall and the Imperial City and other attractions, so rich in history. People here seemed more refined, more cultivated; even the salesmen were very polite. On the way back, we stopped at several well-known places. We met and were joined at times by Daniel Yee, William Leong, Deborah Kau and Elizabeth Ching.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211522, "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-1988", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "215\n\n2. Hera was the sister-wife of Zeus, queen of the Olympian gods.\n\n3. The dolphin is a symbol of rescue: the dolphin is a friendly animal; it saves sea-farers. It also has a public connotation: the emblems of love to Ceres comprise a column and a dolphin.\n\n4. The letter K is the first letter of the inscription KYAIX found on the original gold coins.\n\n5. Kastor or Castor and Pollux are twin deities, Dioscouroi, DIO KOYPOI sons of Leda and Zeus. Castor was renowned as a horseman and Pollux as a wrestler. As deities they were famed for rescuing shipwrecked sailors. They were also called Polydeuces in Sparta.\n\n6. The letters ATOA are an abbreviation for AПOAAØN i.e. Jupiter, hence the thunderbolt, the symbol of his power.\n\nHistory\n\nAbout the year 706 B.C., during the 8th century, Greeks from Sparta and Laconia occupied the village of Taras on the river of the same name and founded the city of Taras. It lasted till 209 B.C. when it was captured by Fabius Maximus. From the widespread use of its coinage can be ascertained its great influence in history. The Tarentines founded a number of other cities on the Adriatic: Hydrus (Otranto), Heraclea (in Lucania) and Gallipoli (Gallipol) on the Dardanelles. Mention of Tarentum is to be found in several ancient writers.\n\nHellenic Culture in the Ancient World\n\nIn historic times the \"Yavans\" (Sanskrit word for Greek with reference to Ionians) were to be found everywhere in the East from the 7th century B.C. onwards. They were merchants, architects, soldiers, artisans, advisers, etc. (e.g. Greek mercenaries under Psammetichus, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Darius, etc., Artisans for Darius, Hystaspes etc.)\n\nThe original coin was dated between 344 and 334 B.C., i.e. before Alexander the Great had crossed the Indus in 326 to invade India. But in the 5th century a series of events increased East-West relations considerably, namely, the Persian Wars. The result of these events was that Persians had learned to fear and respect Greek power. Hostilities gave place to friendly relations, based on gold and diplomacy. They", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211666, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "56\n\nbeaten and thrown out by his two partners. Having lost everything the mother had to take in washing even though she was seven months pregnant. One day whilst washing clothes by the river she slipped but luckily the local Earth God seeing her falling, changed into a dog and rescued her, dragging her out of the water. When she regained consciousness the Earth God had changed into an old woman who helped deliver her of a healthy boy, Hsu En-te (4). The beating had caused the father injuries which prevented him from working and the family lived in poverty. The father, unable to stand it any more went out to hang himself but met with a local dignitary named Kuan who, when he had heard the sad story took the family back to his house and cared for them. The father slowly recovered and when fully back to his old self he became a rent collector for Mr Kuan. On one of his trips out collecting rent he encountered his two former partners from the silk shop who again robbed him and took the rents he had just collected, beat him up again and this time the father died of his injuries as he crawled back to the Kuan household. By this time En-te was seven years old and he swore never to forget those who had done his family such great wrongs. He worked at looking after the accounts for Mr Kuan and secretly started to learn martial arts. He was accomplished by the time he was fifteen. When he was sixteen the Kuan household was attacked by bandits and to everyone's surprise En-te not only beat them off but detained three of them. At first he turned down the offer from a local magistrate to become the head of the local police force but as his mother wished him to serve the people he finally accepted the offer and served three years.\n\nWhen, after the three years, he returned to live in the Kuan household he discovered that one of the two partners who had killed his father was also living in the Kuan household together with his daughter. The killer was hated by everyone but being afraid of him they left him well alone to live in peace. The killer fell ill, repented and expressed his deep sorrow at his heinous crimes. Hsu En-te gave some money to the daughter so that she could buy medicines for her father.\n\nAfter many incidents En-te eventually married the daughter of his father's killer and when, much later, En-te himself died he was revered by the local population as a benefactor and was looked upon by them as their protective deity. The cult was carried across to Taiwan, to the temple in a village near Tainan where the immigrants from Kiangsu established it as Hsu Wang Yeh,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211676, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "66\n\nAnother time the alarm went, due to a slight misunderstanding at one of the gates. It was approaching dusk and the sailor sentry, who had no doubt been standing guard at this particular gate at the back of the Concession for some time, was beginning to get bored. The gates, of wood, with a small window through which persons on the far side could be inspected, were open. Outside stood a row of hawker's stands, for the most part purveying cooked foods to the coolies who passed in and out. The stand nearest to the sentry held a large copper pan, of the sort in which rice is cooked, over a small fire. At the moment the pan was empty, and the sentry, being of an enquiring mind, wondered what would happen if he put a rifle cartridge in it. The experiment produced a loud bang and several holes through the bottom of the pan. An infuriated hawker, supported by increasing numbers of excited fellow tradesmen, shouted curses at the sentry and loudly demanded large sums of money in compensation for the damage done. At the sound of the explosion the naval guard in a near-by house turned out. The petty officer in charge was a great barrel of a man, an old tarpaulin of long service in many parts of the world where opportunities for cultivation of that diplomatic tact, in which the Royal Navy is so accomplished, must have been numerous. In less time than it takes to tell he had the situation well in hand, had paid one dollar compensation for the damage done, had closed the gates, and had nipped an incipient riot in the bud. It was considered unwise to allow a \"matelot\" of such an enquiring mind ashore again, and for the remainder of that destroyer's stay at Kiu Kiang he was confined to his ship.\n\nLate on an afternoon early in January, 1927, as the river water swirled past the hulks under the hard light of the wintry sun, a strange tall man walked down the Bund, accompanied by a number of Chinese dressed in civilian clothes. He wore the collarless buttoned-up jacket, the knee-high black leather boots, and the little leather-peaked brown cap, of one of Borodin's officers. His companions were members of the Revolutionary Kuo Min Tang party. They moved along looking at the houses, at the cross-roads, and at the foreshore, talking and gesticulating. Outside the Consulate they paused to read the pink posters and the green posters. They were planning the organisation of riots, the object of which would be to draw fire from the British sailors guarding the gates. The bodies of a few dead Chinese rioters, shot by the blackguard Imperialists, would provide excellent fuel to inflame still further the feelings of an excited populace; and would at the same time give ammunition for the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211678, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "68\n\nmembers of the Kiu Kiang Defence Force, a small volunteer group recruited from the foreign residents. Some of the men were veterans of the Great War, and the force had originally been armed with rifles and Lewis guns provided by the Navy; however, to avoid all possible accident, these lethal weapons had been withdrawn and replaced with truncheons. Men were despatched to close the Concession gates so as to keep out accessions to the rioters from those directions, and by the exercise of a good-humoured restraint and some sang-froid the rioters were gradually dispersed and shepherded away. By nightfall all was quiet again at the cost of a few broken heads and windows, but the atmosphere remained dangerously charged with emotion.\n\nThe Consul ruled that the women and children must be evacuated that very night in a river steamer, which he had caused to be held up for the purpose. I dashed off to our small flat overlooking the tennis courts at the back of the Concession to warn my wife. We had also our two infants, the one in arms and the other just able to walk; and their dear old amah, of course, had plenty of advice to give. During the early days, while the Revolutionary Army was still attacking the Northern troops who held the city, there was a certain amount of indiscriminate shooting and shots fell amongst the houses in the Concession. One came in through our front door and down the hall. The old amah then used carefully to drape a layer of blankets on the window side of the children's cots \"to keep out the bullets\", as she would ingenuously explain.\n\nOn a large verandah outside the flat where a good view could be obtained of the back gate, the Navy had mounted a Lewis gun and installed an inlying piquet. My wife arranged to cook meals for the sailors, and what with the assistance of an occasional bottle of beer from the Club over the road, they voted that life in Kiu Kiang was not so bad. It was a change from the routine of shipboard and had one unforeseen result; the sailors made so strong an impression on our infants that when he grew up nothing would satisfy the elder boy but that he should join the Navy.\n\nNow the sailors volunteered to assist in the packing, but time was short and there was little room on the steamer for other than the bare essentials. It was more than any Chinese coolie's life was worth to be seen carrying baggage for the foreigners, and so with naval assistance husbands and bachelors helped each other to get the boxes down to the ship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211679, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "69\n\nThe embarkation took place at midnight. It had begun to rain. There was no street lighting; the night was very dark and the gangway up to the hulk was slippery. These hulks were great steel pontoons, two hundred feet long, with a large deck house, in which were located the shipping company's office and some residential quarters. Wide stairs led down to the holds below, where the inward and outward cargoes were stored pending transfer elsewhere. To approach the ship you had to walk round outside the hulk along a gangway, about three feet wide, left between the deckhouse and the edge. To facilitate the movement of cargo no railings were put along this edge. I was carrying our younger child and I remember the feeling of horror when our other child, at a moment when the amah's attention was attracted elsewhere, toddled along to the edge to look over at the black tide rushing between the steel sides of the ship and hulk. My wife just in time snatched him back from the wet slippery edge.\n\nThe steamer was of the usual river design, like any small sea-going merchantman, but with more super-structure and a flatter bottom. There were not berths sufficient for all the refugees, who began to sort themselves out, some in the saloon and others in the smoking room. A wild alcoholic glow added to the sociability induced by the common dangers of the situation and I regret to say bets were taken whether one of the refugees, who was conspicuously expecting a baby, could last out till the ship reached Shanghai. When the Captain decided to start, husbands and bachelors were reluctantly persuaded to go ashore to return to their solitary and darkened houses.\n\nNext day the Consul decided to get in touch with the Chinese general who held the appointment of Garrison Commander at Kiu Kiang. This official was elusive but he eventually agreed to come to the Consulate for a conference. The safety of the foreigners in Kiu Kiang was really his responsibility and after some pressing he undertook to furnish protection. The British guards were consequently withdrawn from the Concession gates to the two hulks.\n\nDuring times of civil commotion respectable and well-to-do Chinese would bolt their doors or put up the shop shutters, as the case might be, and remain inside; but in any Chinese town there would also be an unruly element of loafers, pickpockets, thieves, and toughs, as indeed in any western city. Now was the opportunity for these hooligans. By midday the streets of the Concession were filled with a seething mob", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211732, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "122\n\nusually considered private in character, and hence the entrances are such that the general public can be excluded as desired.2\n\nIn smaller institutions, the buildings tend to form only a single range, and the Buddha Hall is built in the middle of it. Even here, however, the range of buildings will usually front an enclosed courtyard-garden, and the Hall will be raised up a few steps higher than the other buildings.\n\n1\n\nAlthough the great majority of Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in Hong Kong were founded in the last 80 years, a few are older, founded by indigenous groups before the coming of the British. Five are known to me in the mainland New Territories3 — the Ching Shan, or Pooi To (#4 · *) monastery at Tuen Mun, (certainly in existence in the fifth century*), the Ling To () monastery at Ha Tsuen (probably founded or refounded in the Ming Dynasty), the Ling Wan () nunnery at Shek Kong (an early Ming foundation4), the Lung Kai () nunnery near Lung Yeuk Tau (probably an early Ch'ing foundation5), and the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz (££‡), near Man Uk Pin on the old road from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun (Shen Zhen).\n\nThe subject of this article.\n\nOf these ancient foundations, the Ching Shan monastery was rebuilt in 1918 and several times since, and the Ling Wan nunnery was rebuilt between 1919 and 1927. These now show the standard Buddhist plan mentioned above. The Lung Kai nunnery is a total ruin, following abandonment and the stripping of the roof during the last War. The Ling To monastery was rebuilt in 1928, and again (from the foundations up) in 1970. It is believed that both rebuildings used the foundations from the 1861 rebuilding, but the interior layout of the present structure is only a shadow of the original. Only the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz survives unreconstructured and undamaged as an example of a Buddhist institution in the area from before the twentieth century influx of immigrant monks and nuns. Because of this it seemed worth studying the monastery in some detail.\n\nThe old road from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun ran more or less along the line of the present Sha Tau Kok road from Sha Tau Kok to the Wo Hang Au above Sheung Wo Hang. It then cut to the north-west of the present road, passing Man Uk Pin village, and thence on through the mountains by a low pass called Miu Keng (M, \"Temple Pass''), past Ping Yeung village, to cross the Sham Tsun river by the bridge", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211865, "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": 280, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "255\n\nDIARY OF VOYAGE TO CHINA*\n\nFrom March 10, 1861 to August 6, 1861\n\nIt is with a combination of curious feelings that this journal is commenced. There is a mingled hope and fear, gloom and light, anticipations of a bright future, and occasional forebodings of ill. Yet whatever may befall, whether pleasure or pain, prosperity or adversity, it is a joyful fact that nothing can happen unless directed by a Father's hand. Jesus knows all, and safe under his guidance all will be well.\n\nSunday, March 10th\n\nWent on board at ten o'clock, and just put matters straight enough in the cabin to be able to spend the Sabbath. About eleven I came on deck, just as the vessel began to move out of the basin. She was towed down the Thames. A great crowd of people saw her departure. As she floated down the Thames I often gave way to melancholy thoughts, when I considered all I was leaving behind, and all that is in store for me. Sometimes the burden felt greater than I could bear. Yet I felt that Jesus was with me, and under his guidance I feared no ill: it was my Father's business I was about, and surely he would give me grace and strength to perform it.\n\nThe Prince Alfred went easily down the river, and cast anchor off Gravesend. On board were several people, friends of the captain, who although it was Sunday, were going to Gravesend for a holiday and treat, at his expense. They were a swearing set of fellows, and seemed to be old captains of ships. A Sunday in such company I never spent. I would not go to lunch with them, and at dinner time I was glad when all was over, and I could be alone in my cabin. But even here their shouting and laughing, when the wine and spirits began to take effect, was a great nuisance to my ears and mind. I never spent such a Sunday in my life. So as soon as it grew dusk I fastened my cabin, made up a bed and tried to sleep. For two days I had had a headache, which now grew worse, and very little sleep I had. My cabin, although in the quietest part of the ship, is rather the worse for noise. Every person that walks overhead on the deck is distinctly heard, and the noise is enough to keep one awake, to say nothing of the rolling of the ship.\n\n* From the John Fryer Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211904, "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": 319, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "294\n\nIn fact since reaching Java I never enjoyed such good health. Captain Moate continually jokes me about my stoutness. I am really getting quite a corporation, in spite of having my clothes continually saturated with perspiration. Even now as I write the perspiration stands in great drops on the backs of my hands.\n\nOur diet holds out wonderfully well, in fact we laid in a good store in Batavia. Every morning I have a great dish of rice and curry. It is a capital dish and the condiments in the curry tend to strengthen the stomach, so that I can now almost digest a brick bat. I mean to live chiefly on it at China if all is well. Today there has been a pig killed, so tomorrow there comes a feast of liver and crow and roast pork. Meat here never keeps over a day, even under the most favourable circumstances.\n\nA few days more and with a fair wind we ought to finish our journey. I shall begin to pack up tomorrow. I brought a piece of American Drilling at Batavia. I got forty yards for eight rupees. Already I have made myself two pairs of trousers and nearly finished a third. I cannot however finish them off before reaching China. All on board in the cabin dress in white, as is the universal custom in Java, and China.\n\nMy cabin is like a little oven on account of the hot sun shining on it all day. At night I sleep with my window open and of course never think of bed clothes. It is only towards morning that the temperature of the room becomes bearable. All day nearly I sit on deck under the awning, where there is generally a fresh breeze blowing when there is a breath of wind. Walking about or taking exercise is an utter impossibility on account of the heat.\n\nI find however the benefit of taking nothing of stimulative drinks. I am always myself, which is more than I can say of the rest of the folks. Only fancy a man taking these things during the day:- at seven o'clock a stiff glass of grog, made with full quarter pt [pint] of rum. Ditto at eleven, at twelve, at five, at eight and at midnight. At dinner a large glass of beer, and three or more glasses of port or sherry. I might have just as much if I liked to drink it, only I know a trick worth two of it. Captain Moate is almost if not quite a slave to spirits. He envies me for looking so stout, while he is continually troubled with a dysentery and is quite thin.\n\nA The Chinese has come off rather badly lately on account of this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212003, "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": 418, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "393\n\nforces were defeated. In 1841, Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British. According to the Census taken on 15th May, 1841, there were sixteen villages, with 7,450 people, on the island,\n\nAt that time, pirates still caused great disturbance along the coast. Those of outstanding importance were Shap Ngai Tsai+ and Tsui Ah-po. In the 30th year of Tao Kuang (1850), piracy along the coast was suppressed by the combined force of the British and the Ch'ing navies.7 With this, the island gained its name 'Tai Ping Shan'\n\nwhich means 'the Mountain of Peace'.\n\nDuring the early years of British rule on the island, Chek Chu was considered as a suitable place for the capital city of the Colony.5 However, because it was subject to severe tropical disease, the British built the capital city between the Central and Upper Bays (Chung Wan and Sheung Wan :). It was named Victoria after the name of the British Queen at the time of the early colonization.\n\nFrom then on, development on the island continued. With political changes in mainland China,8 more people flocked to Hong Kong, and they helped to make the city famous in the world.\n\nConclusion\n\nHong Kong, an isolated island at the mouth of the Pearl River, was only sparsely populated with fishermen. During the Ming Dynasty, because of the cultivation of incense trees, which gave great profit, population increased rapidly. However, the Coastal Evacuation at the 1st year of the K'ang Hsi Reign obliged the people to retreat to the mainland. Fields were left barren, and houses were pulled down.\n\nWhen the Edict of the Coastal Evacuation was abandoned, people were encouraged to return to their old dwellings. Villages were rebuilt, people from the neighbouring counties came and settled in the Hong Kong region, too.\n\nWith political changes in mainland China, more people came to Hong Kong. They helped to develop Hong Kong into a densely populated commercial city.\n\nANTHONY SIU Kwok-Kin", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212129, "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-1990", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "48\n\nby the conversion to Christianity of a number of important Turkish steppe tribes, including the Kerait, the Naiman, and the Ongut. These successes were achieved despite competition from Buddhist, Moslem, and Manichean missionaries. But although the Nestorian church made considerable headway among the tribes whose territory lay between Persian Khurasan and the northern borders of China, little evidence has yet been produced to suggest that many converts were made within China itself.\n\nThere is abundant evidence for Christians in China during the Yüan period. It is quite clear that, while many churches and monasteries were built in China, there were few Chinese Christians. Nestorian and Latin priests competed for the allegiance of the Ongut' tribe, Turkish Christians who lived within the Great Bend of the Yellow River, and John of Montecorvino, the Franciscan archbishop of Khanbalik from 1308 to 1328, struggled to keep Alan Christian mercenaries in the Mongol imperial guard firm in the orthodox faith and safe from the errors of Nestorius: but we do not hear of either church preaching the Gospel to the Chinese. John of Montecorvino had the Bible translated into Latin, Turkish, and Persian, the languages of Khanbalik's foreign residents, but not into Chinese. Christian priests in Yüan China probably guessed that the Chinese would be unreceptive to a foreign religion associated with the unpopular rule of the Mongols, but their own behaviour was not always a good advertisement for their religion. We know of a Nestorian Christian administrator, Mar Sargis, who abused his position as governor (darugha) of Chinkiang to build Christian monasteries on land which he had confiscated from a Buddhist temple. Christians were resented, and it is therefore scarcely surprising that in 1368 both Latin and Nestorian Christians were driven from China along with their Mongol protectors.\n\nAlthough the earlier wave of Nestorians was not disadvantaged by such an association with a foreign occupying power, the few Nestorian churches known to have existed in T'ang China also seem to have been mainly there to serve the religious needs of foreigners resident in China. Syrian and Persian traders could be found in both capitals, Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang, and the number of Nestorians in China was probably at its largest during the reign of Kao-tsung (649-683), when this merchant community was augmented by an influx of refugees from Sassanian Persia. The Sassanian empire was overthrown by the invading armies of Islam at the battles of Qadisiya in 636 and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212160, "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-1990", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "79\n\nHe repeated that his shrine catered for believers from all religions and added that his spirit medium is a Roman Catholic religious novice. Wu T'ien-chu, whose festival is celebrated annually on the 13th day of the ninth lunar month, is portrayed by an image of a seated mandarin with a red and a blue demon, one under each of his feet.\n\nExamination of the legends surrounding local deities who lived or died in the vicinity of present-day cult temples, or who are worshipped in one of their branch temples, reveals that they can be either distinguished citizens or ordinary people, often nonentities, but all now characterised as shen (spirits).\n\nA great many heroes and worthies, and tens of millions of ordinary people, live and die and are never deified, and those who are have been identified as such by their possession of ‘ling' (supernatural power) which can increase or wane depending upon a number of circumstances. 'Ling' can fade until the deity is deemed powerless by devotees and ignored or deposed, or the 'ling' can be renewed by ritual means.\n\nIt is readily understandable that major heroes of antiquity, revered nationwide for many centuries, are now worshipped for their accumulated power. They were powerful in life and since death their ability to protect and guide devotees has been well authenticated to the satisfaction of devotees. However, lesser deities, local heroes and worthies and especially the spirits of ordinary people, have to ‘earn' their deified status by result, and cults grow, wither and disappear entirely depending upon their ability to provide an adequate response to devotees' pleas and requirements. Some have become major deities within comparatively large communities; in Taiwan, for example, several have become the patron deities of immigrant groups from an individual county back on the mainland.\n\nWhereas it is reasonably clear why charismatic local heroes and worthies came to be deified, usually by public acclaim (though some have achieved sanctification by wealthy families pushing their ancestor's case) it is less simple to understand why some ordinary people and not others have been deified. It is even more perplexing why a few local thugs who originally had nothing going for them have also been deified. An excellent example of this is the cult of Liao Tien-ting in Pa Li, across the Tanshui River from Tanshui town in northern Taiwan. Liao, who was killed in about 1920, is now honoured with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212173, "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-1990", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "92\n\nto present a neatly typewritten note in English, carefully preserved in a cellophane envelope, stating that the area was prohibited.\n\nThe pheasant shooting season continued until the Chinese New Year holiday, which falls late in January or early in February. It was generally possible to get two or three days off for this holiday, and at this date in 1937 two of us found ourselves some ten miles up the Yangtze above Nanking in the neighbourhood of the Three Hills. We had come in the houseboat, now so seldom used owing to the opening of the countryside to the greater convenience of the motor car. Only where the river bank was steep-to could we bring the boat sufficiently inshore to throw a plank across and step off; and so having disembarked we had to walk awhile until we reached a small creek, which we crossed in a borrowed sampan, before arriving at the extensive reed beds for which we were heading.\n\nAt this late season great stretches of the reeds had already been cut by the country people for use as fuel, leaving small clumps and narrow strips standing here and there. Inland, the fields, turned over by the shallow Chinese plough, showed long rows of soft green where the shoots of winter wheat sprouted. The country was ideal for pheasant. Unfortunately it was drizzling and blowing hard. Sandy, the smooth-haired black Labrador was at the top of his form, but nonplussed by the poor shooting. In such weather the birds would as a rule sit tight until the last moment, when they would get up suddenly at your feet; for some reason today they were wild and rising almost out of range. As we approached each patch of reeds, inside which pheasant might be sheltering from rain and squall, we would carefully move to the lee end and beat our way back upwind. My wife worked with us, and two of the boatmen, who also served to carry the bag. The pheasants were reluctant to fly, and would run unseen out of the reeds through the more open stretches of stubble to start up cackling indignantly at unexpected moments. The expenditure of cartridges was considerable, but so far as I remember, the bag only held six brace. Late in the afternoon, soaked, we boarded the houseboat. Luckily the run down with the tide was much quicker than the outward trip, and there was something in the icebox to keep the damp out. Little did we realise that was to be the last shoot for many a season!\n\nThat year was Coronation year: great preparations were made by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212175, "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-1990", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "94\n\ncity, which is some eleven miles in circumference; that was before it was included in the prohibited areas. Now concrete machine-gun loopholes peered at you from various angles; and towards the great gate, where the wall made its nearest approach to the Yangtze, the fortifications were believed to be particularly heavy and well provided with deep dugouts to serve as battle headquarters in time of need. We heard that even the German officers, who advised on how these concrete emplacements should be constructed, were not allowed to know the actual details of their location, and we used to think how ungrateful and suspicious it was of the Chinese to act thus. However, subsequent events have surely justified the Chinese attitude.\n\nNear the gate, at intervals, the older houses of the foreign business community, sited along Socony ridge, stare out over the long squat wall of the city at the Yangtze, and the intervening mile of pond, field and shack: but the last house turns its back to the river, straddling a narrow spur, an offshoot from the main ridge. Set in a pattern of mellow brick, our windows faced Nanking and Purple Mountain beyond. From the small lawn in front we could look down on the familiar landmarks of the city, the hillock of the Northern temple, the ancient Drum Tower, the hard concrete lines of the sumptuous International Club, and the salmon-pink walls of the New Metropolitan Hotel, so soon to be painted a hideous black. From the verandah of this house we were to watch the flash and smoke of the bursting bombs of many an air raid.\n\nThis August the discussion of the trivialities of a daily routine had continued against a background of mounting tension. How exercised we were to find a method of circumventing a malignant crack through which the water of our small swimming pool sought to escape down the hill! At the bridge tables of the Bungalow Club, at dinner parties, dancing at the International Club, amidst the humdrum of everyday life, there was a mystery of 'phone calls, a whispered exchange of latest information, the question of increasing urgency **Is it war?**\n\nAlready in July members of the various embassies had begun to return from the summer seaside resorts in the north, where the storm was brewing, following the Marco Polo Bridge incident on July 7th; and a trickle of refugees came in from Tsinanfu. But in Nanking the cinemas remained open, the tennis tournament continued, and I remember an entertainment which was given towards the end of the month to the twenty-four Chinese students, who had been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212183, "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-1990", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "102\n\nTo attend one of the Saturday night dinners, organised at this time at the International Club by a genial secretary of the British Embassy, was really an experience in cosmopolitan friendship. In addition to leading Chinese officials, there would be present persons of a great variety of walks in life and of a dozen different nationalities. As many as 50 would seat themselves to a meal, the relish of which would be stimulated by the incorporation of such pre-prandial solvents as were still obtainable. Amongst those present would be many of the newspaper correspondents and newsreel men, who had been attracted to Nanking by the war and who later were to achieve fame in a wider field.\n\nBut the reviving confidence in the capital was rudely shaken when the news came in of the Chinese retreat from Shanghai in November, and especially when the Government instructed its various departments to transfer to other places further inland.\n\nThen there was such a coming and going in all directions of wretched persons seeking safety, but knowing not where to look for it, as to bring home to the onlooker, in a way which all the previous horrors of the bombings had failed to do, the ghastly side of the war. The inhabitants of Nanking had no illusions about the sort of treatment they might expect at the hands of the enemy.\n\nOn the Bund at Hsiakwan, as the river front outside the city was called, an accumulation of baggage, furniture, medical supplies, munitions and stores of war, piled up day after day, waiting for space on the British steamers, which were working at high pressure backwards and forwards between Nanking and Hankow. Fortunately the weather during the weeks following the Government's decision to move was wet and stormy and kept the Japanese bombing planes away. But it increased the difficulties of loading, and the Bund coolies and sampan men reaped a fortune. They were demanding as much as four dollars to carry a package across the Bund on to the steamer, and sampan owners, who normally would cheerfully accept a fare out to a ship for twenty cents, now demanded twenty dollars. It was beyond the strength of the government to control these racketeers, as it was beyond their strength at a later date to enforce impractical regulations for the control of prices.\n\nFor the foreigners the burning question was whether the Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212195, "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-1990", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "14\n\nThe business section of Hongkong is compressed into so small an area that the hotels are just round the corner from any office. It would often be convenient to meet for cocktails before a meal, and in this way the habit had grown of doing business outside the office, either seated at a small table, or with one foot on a brass rail.\n\nWhen the Chinese Government evacuated Nanking in November 1937, the various Purchasing Departments moved to Hongkong, which, with the closing of the Yangtze, had become the main port of entry for supplies into China. The ships docked alongside at Kowloon, or discharged their cargoes into lighters in mid-harbour.\n\nThe railway between Hongkong and Canton had been completed nearly forty years previously, but the railway from Hankow on the Yangtze to Canton was only opened to through traffic in March 1937. That was before the war with Japan broke out, and in line with its anti-foreign policy, the National Government refused to connect the Hankow railway at Canton with the line from Hongkong. The intention was to inconvenience transhipment of cargo at Hongkong on to the railway and to favour use of the small steamers which sailed up the shallow waters of the Pearl River to Canton. This shortsighted policy was now quickly reversed and a connecting loop put in so that cargo loaded onto rail at Hongkong could go straight through without further handling to Hankow.\n\nMy business was mainly with the Chinese Government Purchasing Departments, and very efficient they were. They drove such hard bargains that the staff might have been Scots, though most claimed to have been trained in the States. The Hongkong government gave every facility for the traffic and there can be no question but that the existence of Hongkong as a British colony at this time was a great help to the hard-pressed Chinese.\n\n―\n\nAs regards the administration of Hongkong by the Colonial Office, by almost any western standard it was good. It was essentially better than anything that could be found in China or in Chicago but it was by no means perfect. The administration suffered from the defects of bureaucracy.\n\nThe civil servant who enters the colonial administration must pass a stiff examination; but once he has passed it, he can expect regular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212199, "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-1990", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "118\n\n1 left by steamer for Canton, the great southern Chinese town, which sprawls along the shore of the Pearl River; and spent a few days on the Shameen mud-bank, just off the city, where the small British and French Concessions are. The Concessions were untouched; but, across the narrow creek that separates them from the shore, the city had suffered heavily from bombing, and from the fires which raged furiously in the congested native districts after each raid. One morning I crossed to the South bank and took the branch line to Samshui on the West river, where I caught the steamer for Wuchow in Kwangsi province.\n\nAlthough owned by a Chinese company, the small river steamer flew the British flag. That was a phenomenon common enough on the inland waters of China. The foreign flag protected the ship from being commandeered by the local war lord. Sometimes for months on end steam traffic, on this water-way or that, would be completely disorganised. The Chinese ships would be impressed to carry the troops of the various armies contending for power. It was only under a foreign flag that they could find the security which would justify their remaining in operation at all. The British government did not welcome this use of the British flag, and introduced regulations to control abuse of the privilege. In order to qualify for British registry a ship must at least carry a British captain and a British chief engineer, and must comply with the Board of Trade regulations in regard to safety measures. But even so, the Chinese owners would make every effort to obtain British registry for their ships, thus in one direction taking advantage of the treaties between Britain and China while, in the other, probably contributing to the Kuo Min Tang party funds, which were used to denounce the iniquities of those very same treaties. In order to comply with the letter of the regulations, the particular ship I now found myself on carried three British officers, whose aggregate age exceeded 200 years. They were, of course, mere figure-heads, the actual work being done by the Chinese officers and crew. These river-boats kept communications open and provided a measure of security for travellers - owing to the presence of British gunboats these small ships moving on inland waters were seldom attacked by bandits which otherwise would have been lacking.\n\n―\n\nIn Kwangsi the road system had been extended to connect Wuchow with the other large towns of the province and I left by car for Kweilin, the capital. An American aviator, who had been down to Hongkong on a shopping expedition, travelled with me as far as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212201, "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-1990", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "120\n\nwhich the government was hurriedly building from Hengyang, on the Canton-Hankow line. The embankment was finished, the culverts and bridges were in, and the construction gangs laying the rails were only a few miles off. The rails had been salvaged from sections of line abandoned to the invader in the distant north, and brought to Kwangsi despite great difficulties.\n\nI drove on to Hengyang and on the way observed one of those curious inconsistencies to which you grow accustomed in China. The Ministry of Communications, all the handicaps of the war notwithstanding, continued resolutely with its programme of road building. Where rivers were too wide to justify bridges, ferries were used. The ferry boat, a wide pontoon long enough to carry two lorries, one behind the other, would be poled across the river, or rowed over those stretches where the water might be too deep. As the current often ran fast some skill was needed to bring the ferry safely to the far side, and it took time. You would have thought that on these main roads, on which the movement of war supplies depended, relays of ferries would have been installed at the wider rivers to avoid unnecessary delay. Not only was that not so, but the ferry men, who were controlled by the Provincial Road Bureaux under the Ministry of Communications, refused to work after dark, or at meal hours. The consequence was that again and again a long string of vehicles would be held up waiting to cross, and if the ferry-trip took half an hour, as it usually did, you might have to wait a whole day for your turn. The wooden ferry boats were of local construction and not difficult to build. It would have been easy to increase the number of boats and ferrymen, but these serious bottlenecks in transportation continued to hamper the Chinese war effort. Only too often have Japanese bombers taken advantage of the target presented by a group of vehicles bunched at a ferry.\n\nBetween Kweilin and Hengyang you pass the watershed that separates the Yangtze basin from the West river basin. An ancient narrow canal, five feet wide, recently repaired, connects the two headwaters. There is an old story of a British gunboat having come up from the West river past Kweilin to a point whence those on board could see the mast-tops of a sister ship which had sailed up from the Yangtze. The masts must have been very tall; or perhaps the story is tall, because actually the gap between them could not have been less than thirty miles.\n\nWithout stopping at Hengyang I went straight through the same", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212202, "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-1990", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "121\n\nday to Changsha. The capital of Hunan, the province with a long history of anti-foreign fanaticism, is situated on the Siang river, which flows down to the Yangtze above Hankow. In summer the middle-river steamers come up as far as Changsha, but in winter the level over the sand flats where the river passes through the Tung Ting lake, near its mouth, is so shallow that even the specially designed river gunboats cannot pass. One British gunboat generally wintered at Changsha.\n\nThere was no concession, and in the course of time the foreign community had congregated on a long sand bar, which made an island in the river, opposite the city. The few bungalows were grouped round the Club. It was a simple life with tennis and walks for relaxation. Normally Changsha connected with the outer world by ship through Shanghai, but now for over a year that channel had been closed by the war and the number of the foreign community, usually not more than a couple of dozen, was reduced. It did, however, include two British tank officers, loaned to the Chinese army, whom I had last seen in Nanking. They now depended for their supplies on the new railway to Hongkong. I left my car here and went on to Hankow by train.\n\nIt was nearly twenty years since I had last been in Hankow, years crowded with change, not only material but also intellectual. Hither junks from the far north-west of China, in Shensi Province, came down the Han river. From here they could sail a leg up the Yangtze, and proceed along the Siang river, until their mast-tops showed a view towards Kweilin. To the west, through the famous gorges, the small steamers fought the current to Chungking 700 miles distant; and 600 miles downriver, past Kiu Kiang, Wuhu, and Nanking, lay Shanghai and the sea. The railway in normal times ran north-east to Peking and south to Canton and Hongkong. On the opposite bank, a kilometre away, the provincial capital, Wuchang, showed; larger than Hankow and, across the Han, where that river made an angle with the Yangtze, the industrial town of Hanyang belched its smoke. Of the Concessions along the water front, only the French retained its status. The British Concession had been returned at the time of the Chen-O'Malley negotiations ten years previously; the German and Russian Concessions had reverted to China after the Great War, and the Japanese Concession had been evacuated soon after the Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge) incident.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212206, "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-1990", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "125\n\nThe journey takes the whole day. It was almost dark when I got off and walked across the long new road bridge, erected over the great Kan river which forms the main artery down the centre of Kiangsi province, as the Siang river does in Hunan. And as in Hunan the Siang river passes through the Tung Ting lake, one of the natural overflow reservoirs into which the surplus waters of the Yangtze pour during the summer freshets, so in Kiangsi the Kan river passes through the Poyang lake before reaching the Yangtze some miles below Kiu Kiang. Nanchang stands where the Kan river enters the lake. Like Kweilin it is not a treaty port. Apart from missionaries no foreigners were allowed to live here, but they could transact business and pay visits. In the old days owing to the discomfort of the railway we generally preferred to come by houseboat through the lake; but now the motor car had begun to replace all that, though the process was hindered by the scarcity of petrol caused by the war.\n\nThe population of Nanchang could not be far short of a million. The narrow streets were giving way to wide new thoroughfares on which the city bus services operated. Though many in China could afford motor cars, away from the treaty ports their use was not common, because only too often, unless the owner could arrange through his friends for protection, the car would be commandeered for military business claimed to be urgent. It is this fear of commandeering that has restricted the distribution of the private car and the private wireless set in China.\n\nThe very shops were changing their nature. The old shops, in their narrow alleys, would show a front open to the cust, of which there was plenty, and receive such meagre light as the proximity of the houses on either side of the strect admitted. The back of the shop would be dark. Perhaps, a small kerosene lamp stood on a desk to light up the accountant's daybook. Across the front and down part of one side, along the passage to the back, an open counter awaited the display of such goods as the customer might require. These would be drawn from the shelves at the back by one of the numerous assistants, mostly relations of the owner, who would be standing behind, leaning their elbows on the counter, and killing much time by making comment on the people passing in the street. The intending purchaser would examine the article exposed for his inspection and point out its numerous defects, imagined or real, while the assistant would take the opposite view and extol its merits. There", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212222, "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-1990", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "141\n\nvehicles, with much kind assistance from my Chinese friends, I found my way, frequently changing buses, to Kinhwa, the large commercial town to which the capital of Chekiang had been removed after the fall of Hangchow. A stretch of the Kiangsi-Chekiang railway was still in operation, though the terminals at either end, Nanchang and Hangchow, were in Japanese hands. The railway carried me to Yintang, where I again took to the bus, and eventually made my way, via Kanshow, to Laolung, the roadhead above Hongkong, at the head of junk navigation on the East river. My progress was often delayed by air alarms, as in accordance with their usual practice, the Chinese would not allow vehicles to enter a town while the alarm was on, and you might spend half a day waiting in the country outside.\n\nOn the way I was struck by the enormous numbers of Chinese migrating from occupied to unoccupied parts. These mass migrations, which have been extended by each subsequent Japanese advance, cannot but have a great influence on conditions in China after the war. The people of the provinces are getting mixed up in a way which has not happened in China before. The effect should help to break down the exclusive provincial barriers which have handicapped unity in the past. Also, owing to the bombing, it was the habit, in many towns, to close down until about four in the afternoon. Everyone who could manage it would walk out into the countryside early in the morning, only to return late in the afternoon after any chance of bombing might be over. The shops would then open and remain open till late at night, and all the intercourse of the town would be...* ...good progress, but the boatman refused to travel at night; muttering about the danger of bandits, he tied up alongside a number of other junks - they always go into a huddle at night for safety - and proceeded to light his opium pipe. Next day we reached a town whence a launch service connected with Waichow. The launch only travelled at night to avoid the risk of being shot up by Japanese aircraft; so we reached Waichow early in the morning and breakfasted off the hot steamed rolls which are popular amongst the Cantonese.\n\nFrom Waichow the track led overland to Mirs Bay in Hongkong waters. For about half of the sixty miles, the recognised form of conveyance was on the carrier of a push-bike propelled by a muscular coolie. We distributed ourselves and our baggage over the necessary\n\n* 27 lines missing here...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212314, "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-1990", "page_number": 256, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "233\n\nHong Kong for several years, Bill Wyllie, was seconded to Hutchison in 1975 by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, as 'company doctor' to put the business house's finances in order. After he had achieved this he left Hutchison's in 1981.\n\nThen in the early 1980s Li Ka-shing, believed to be the richest man in Hong Kong, became the largest shareholder in Hutchison's. His company, Cheung Kong (meaning long river and signifying 'everlasting'), held a 37 per cent stake. With a Chinese Taipan the company was no longer the bastion of British management that it had been in earlier days. However, under Chairman Li Ka-shing there is an English Group Managing Director, Simon Murray.\n\nToday Hutchison-Whampoa is thriving, and its activities range from general trading, including importing and exporting, to property, engineering and building materials. The group also has major interests in such subsidiaries as Hong Kong United Dockyards (in the past Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks), Hong Kong Electric Holdings, and A.S. Watson and Company of which more later. These firms, which in the past were basically British, are thus now largely Chinese controlled.\n\nDockyards\n\nThe first Hong Kong built vessel, the 80-ton Celestial, was launched from a slip at East Point on 7th February 1843, and a Royal Naval Dockyard started in 1854 (this was phased out in the late 1950s). Docks were also built by Douglas Lapraik and J. Lamont at Aberdeen in 1857.\n\nNevertheless, it has been claimed the first 'great firm' to be established in the Colony was really the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company, although the industry had its origins, regionally, in Canton. That is why the word Whampoa (a place in Canton) is included in the above name. The firm is No.1 on the Register of Companies. Austin Coates maintains in his book, Whampoa, Ships on the Shore, that the formation of Union Docks (which was absorbed into the Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks in 1870), in 1863, was\n\nthe most significant commercial and industrial moment in Hong Kong's history.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212344, "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-1990", "page_number": 286, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "263\n\nwould be cannot bear being thought about.\n\nThus we have no alternative but to send you a detailed map together with this statement of fact.\n\nWe once again kowtow before Your Excellency, all of us prostrate before your perspicuity and judgement.\n\nWith speed like fire send an official to investigate! Strictly punish your inferior's order and the powerful ruffians, in order to preserve the communications and roads of the mass of the people!\n\nOn the day the bridge is completed, everyone will praise your great deeds!\n\nA petition!\n\nTo the Provincial Governor of Kwangtung, Chan, for his approval and action.\n\n[The success of this bridge is entirely due to Tsok-san and Sheung-yan's efforts. This is inserted here so that people of later generations will remember]\n\nThis petition was successful. The Provincial Governor, in his response, stated his view that this was \"not a matter of Fung Shui, but a matter of the loss of ferry revenue\". Since this was a public place, the Cheungs had no right to object to the ferry being replaced by a bridge, nor had they any right to \"convert their opposition into violence\". He ordered that the bridge go ahead. He also found the accusations against the County Magistrate justified, and the County Magistrate was immediately dismissed from his post. It is not known when the bridge was actually built: the November 1924 aerial photograph shows the crossing still had no bridge there then, but the bridge was certainly in place very shortly afterwards.\n\nIt would seem that, in the 1860 war, the Ta Kwu Ling villagers were successful, but only up to a certain point. The Cheungs were ejected from Ta Kwu Ling, and the Ta Kwu Ling villagers were able to build a bridge over the main branch of the Sham Chun River,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212346, "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-1990", "page_number": 288, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "265\n\nKok and Ta Kwu Ling people had established a trust to collect cash and construct this bridge: Chan Sheung-yan (of Luk Keng in the Sha Tau Kok area), and Lei Tsok-san (of Lei Uk in the Ta Kwu Ling area) were the two Chief Managers of this trust, representing the totality of the people of the two areas.\n\nP.H. HASE\n\nI\n\nNOTES\n\n\"Cheang Shan Kwa Tsz. An Old Buddhist Nunnery in the New Territories, and its Place in Local Society”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29, 1989, pp 121-158.\n\nThe documents are contained in a recently recovered genealogy of the Chan clan of Luk Keng. I understand that a copy of this genealogy will be placed on record in the collection of Hong Kong historical documents held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in due course. I am indebted to Mr. Chan Wing-hoi for drawing my attention to these documents.\n\nII\n\nI am indebted to Mr. P.L. Lau for assistance in the translation of this document.\n\nThe Sha Wan River, unlike the main branch of the Sham Chun River, which flows in a deep and well-defined channel, was a shallow and ill-defined stream, which meandered through a broad valley which it often flooded. This river has now been dammed off to form the Shen Zhen Reservoir.\n\nSee the paper at n. 1 for details of the loss of life in this War.\n\nA VILLAGE WAR IN SHAM CHUN\n\nThe Rev. Carl Smith has drawn attention to the great wealth of material available in the Basel Mission Archive on the history of the Hakka people of Kwangtung Province. When looking through his notes and summaries of important documents I saw a summary of an important document on an inter-village war in Sham Chun (深圳). Through the courtesy of the Mission Archive, a photostat of the document was received, translated, and is published below.\n\nSham Chun lies at the centre of a broad and fertile valley, drained by the Sham Chun River. This river has four main tributaries: the stream which drains the Ta Kwu Ling valley (this stream is considered as the headstream of the main river), the Sha Wan River, which joins the first stream at Kim Hau (or) at the entrance to Ta Kwu Ling, the Sheung Yue (or Beas) River which drains the Sheung Shui/Lung Yeuk Tau area and which enters the main river", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212360, "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-1990", "page_number": 302, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "TABLE 1: VILLAGE WARS IN THE HONG KONG AREA\n\n279\n\n \n Antagonist\n Lo Wu\n Antagonist\n Tsoi Uk Wai\n \n \n Date\n Source\n Comment\n \n \n \n 18.36\n Above\n Over control of landing place\n \n \n \n Lo Wu\n Wong Pui Ling\n 1856-75\n Ahove\n \n \n Ta Kwu Ling\n Wong Pui Ling\n TRGON\n Hase 1989\n \n \n Sheung Shui\n Wong Pui Ling\n VERSOS\n Baker 1967 1979\n \n \n Sheung Shui\n Ho Sheung Heng\n long-term\n Baker 1966\n \n \n \n \n Over control of landing place\n \n \n \n \n \n Over control of river-crossings. 23 dead on TKL side alone. Hero shrine.\n \n \n \n \n \n Over control of irrigation systems\n \n \n \n San Tin\n Ping Kong\n 1851\n \n \n \n Kam Tsin\n Baker 1966 1968\n \n \n \n \n San Tin\n Ping Shan\n 1851\n Baker 1968\n \n \n Hero Shrine\n \n \n \n \n \n Shup Pat Heung\n San Tim\n Ping Shan\n 1851\n \n \n Watson 1982\n \n Over control of ferries\n \n \n \n Ha Tsuen\n \n \n Baker 1968\n \n \n Sha Tseng\n Pok Tau Kong\n 185.3\n Krone (above)\n \n \n Po Kat\n neighbours\n 1853-\n Above\n \n \n Sheung Shun\n Fanling\n long-term\n \n \n \n Ping Kong\n Fanling\n \n Baker 1966\n \n \n \n \n Over control of market\n \n \n \n \n \n Earthwall on border\n \n \n \n Ho Sheung Heung\n Long Yeak Tho\n Fanling\n long-term Oral\n \n \n Par Fleung\n ?Kam Tia\n Tinid 19\n \n \n \n Hero Shrine\n \n \n \n \n \n Sheung Tsuen\n Wang Tei Shan\n 2nud (19\n Oral\n \n \n Lam Tsuen\n \n \n \n \n \n Hero Shrine\n \n \n \n \n \n Tsuen Wan\n Shing Mun\n \n \n \n \n Tsim Sha Tsui\n neighbours\n \n \n \n \n Tai Wai\n Cheung Sha Wan\n \n \n \n \n Keng tam\n \n 1862-4\n \n \n \n \n \n 1862\n mid-late c19\n \n \n Haves 1983\n \n Hero Shrines\n \n \n \n Hayes 1983\n \n \n \n \n \n Paure 1986\n \n Hero Shrine\n \n \n \n Kak Tin\n Shek Pik\n \n \n \n \n Sha Lo Wan\n \n נִי\n \n \n \n Hayes 1983\n \n \n \n \n \n Pui O San Tsuen\n Pui O La Wai\n 1930\n Hayes 1983\n \n \n Kam Tin\n Ping Shan\n \n Chan 1989\n \n \n Heroes worshipped\n \n \n \n \n \n Pat Heung\n Kam Tiu\n Ping Shan\n long-term\n \n \n mid c19\n \n Chan 1989\n \n \n\n#\n\n[Baker 1966 = \"The Five Great Clans of the New Territories\", H.D.R. Baker, Journal. Vol. 6, 1966, pp. 25-49; Baker 1968 = H.D.R. Baker, Sheung Shui: A Chinese Lineage Village, London, 1968; Baker 1979 H.D.R. Baker, Chinese Family and Kinship, London 1979; Faure 1986 = D. Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong, 1986; Hayes 1983 = J.W Hayes. The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies anet Themes, Hong Kong. 1983; Watson 1982 = Rubic S. Watson \"The Creation of a Chinese Lineage: The Teng of Ha Tsuen, 1669-1751\", Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 16(1). 1982 pp 69-108; Chan 1989 = \"The Tangs of Kam Tin and their Jio Festival\", Chan Wing-hoi, Journal, Vol 29, 1989. pp. 302-376.]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212457, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "having discussed it many times: there is no easy solution since the number of members are invariably limited due to external restraints, such as transport or the sheer difficulty in taking too many people around one place. One solution is to organise the trip twice or even thrice and you will note we have done this on a number of occasions.\n\nThe Council continues to be wary of running tours outside Hong Kong, after finding that the response to the proposed trip to South Korea early last year was not good, which led to its abandonment. However over the last year we have been to the Pearl River Delta and Xiamen and next July there is a thrust deep into China to be led by Mrs. Rosemary Lee and Mr. Peter Lee for which there have been some encouraging responses. It does seem therefore that this will be the pattern for the future, i.e. short or long trips into China rather than elsewhere.\n\nIt is customary for this report to include a paragraph on Membership, and this cannot be done without the assistance of our very capable Assistant Secretary, Mrs. Sharon Bruce, who is able to inform me from her records that our current numbers are 581 local members (450 from H.K. Island, 76 from Kowloon and 55 from the New Territories) and 114 overseas members, making a total of 695 members.\n\nThis compares with last year's figures of 596 local members (492 from H.K. Island, 65 from Kowloon and 39 from the New Territories) and around 80 overseas members, making a total of 676 members. In this transitory society it is considered that this is a satisfactory situation. May I ask that if you are leaving Hong Kong you will continue to keep in touch: we can keep you informed of our activities and send you the annual journal all for the modest subscription of HK$180. And on the subject of membership it is with great regret to note that we will be losing our patron Lord Wilson, later this year. Lord Wilson has been very supportive of the Society's activities and his presence at our Annual General Meeting dinner two years ago was very much appreciated. I regret to say I do not have a secret line to inform you as yet who our next patron will be but we will keep you informed as soon as we have anything definite.\n\nSuch a large membership does mean of course that they need servicing and that we have a system for keeping in touch: this is done very competently by Mrs. Anita Wilson, who produces a bi-monthly newsletter: this helps enormously to bind our Society together and also when we need assistance we have means to obtain it: this was clearly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212484, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "18\n\nthe old Co-hong system at Canton.\" The appointment of Wu indicates the power of Cantonese merchants which had gradually become the most predominant group. The Kiangnan Arsenal which opened in 1865, with additions of more industrial projects as dockyards and guandu shangban enterprises, attracted numbers of Cantonese working class to Shanghai. For instance, in Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Work, Cantonese workers constituted the dominant group. They were experienced and most of them had worked formerly in foreign dockyards at Hong Kong and Canton.\n\nCantonese in the early development of Shanghai found themselves particularly at an advantage in foreign trade as against other groups of sojourners. First, they were more experienced and better connected. Canton had been opened to foreign trade for centuries, and Cantonese merchants were connected to foreign firms in Canton or Hong Kong, most foreign firms in Shanghai at that time were only branch offices. Second, Cantonese were linguistically better equipped to deal with foreigners. It is probable most, if not all, were able to speak English, at least Pidgin. Third, early compradors of major foreign firms at Shanghai as Jardine, Matheson & Co., Augustine Heard & Co., Dent & Co., and Russell & Co. were all recruited from either Canton or Hong Kong. Fourth, Cantonese were more skilled in western industries such as ship-building and ship-repairing since most of these modern industries started earlier in Canton and Hong Kong,\n\n22\n\nBecause of the turmoil of the late nineteenth century, employers had to recruit workers on the basis of personal ties so as to prevent desertion or betrayal, thus conflicts between local ethnic groups were obvious. Cantonese in Shanghai did not meet with no competition. Sojourners came from other regions near Shanghai. The Ningbo group was regarded as a great rival. Ningbo people, for instance, concentrated in the French concession and in the northern part of the South City (nanshi) along the Huangpu River; Cantonese mainly settled in Hongkou or along Guangdong Road, near the large shipyards where many were employed. Ethnic groups in Shanghai, such as Cantonese versus Ningbo men, competed with each other not only in commercial interests but also in the local government. Ningbo merchants like Yang Fang challenged the Cantonese by connecting his business in the silk trade with Jardine, Matheson & Co. Since Zhejiang was an important silk producing region and Zhejiang merchants strictly controlled the regional marketing system in the Lower Yangzi. Zhejiang compradors rose to break up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212560, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "94\n\nperfected in the United States, Stevenson adopts an approach which gives great emphasis to the expression of the inner, emotional state of the characters, an alternative to the approach Chinese dancers were familiar with. In the summer of 1979, he trained two Chinese student dancers at the Houston Ballet Academy. At the end of the summer, the students returned to China with a pas-de-deux Stevenson choreographed for them. In China, the performance of that piece caused a stir among the audiences and a revision of the approach Chinese dancers took towards their profession. In the succeeding years, Chinese artists choreographed some pieces, such as the Spirit of the Yellow River, which also suggests Stevenson's influence on dance in China.6\n\nObviously, the contributions American Cultural presence made to cultural pluralism are twofold: direct presentations gave a different feature to the cultural life of the Chinese people while they introduce new ideas. The latter, therefore, is of more significance as it is more persistent and penetrating. As for exchanges in arts education and exchanges of specialists, the consequences were also twofold: the influx of new ideas and the improvement in China's artistic activities.\n\nIn this context, the work of David Gilbert can be taken as an example of how American specialists helped Chinese artists in the improvement of artistic quality. David Gilbert, music director and conductor of the Greenwich Philharmonia in the United States, began to serve as principal guest conductor of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO, affiliated to the CPS) in June 1980. At the conclusion of his first term, he reflected: \"The players (of the CPO) are fine professional musicians but they have no repertory and no experience.” “The orchestra itself had never done Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, and when I scheduled the overture to 'Die Meistersinger' I discovered it was their first Wagner of any kind.\"37 Nonetheless, in mid-1981, he was able to tour with the CPO to Mudan Jiang, Harbin, and Changchun for two weeks with a repertoire made up largely of pieces learnt by the orchestra from him, and since then the orchestra had presented one concert every two weeks, rehearsing six days a week.\n\nIn evaluating the consequences of Sino-American arts exchanges in the 15 years since 1972, and particularly in the eight years since 1979, one important aspect to discuss is whether these exchanges have affected domestic socio-political development of China. It is important, and even vital, to the further development of China's arts exchanges with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212630, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "164\n\nafter the Tokyo raid and were now being taken to Chungking. That evening we reached Yingtan - in the event we were several days ahead of the Japanese - to be astonished on arrival at the hostel by the sight of a beautiful American girl, nicely turned out, waiting on the doorstep to greet us with a large chocolate cake. She was a newspaper reporter who had escaped from Shanghai and spent several months with the guerillas: she was now on her way to the rear, had heard that some American pilots were due to pass through, and had arranged with the Irish Roman Catholic Father, who was attached to the Mission there and who happened to have some very rare supplies, to make a cake. We explained that the Americans had already passed by on another road, and she then offered us the cake. She was worried lest we should \"steal her story\"! What she thought we would do with it I do not quite know, but we certainly enjoyed the pleasure of her company and the taste of her cake. I never discovered her name, she left along the road by which we had come.\n\nNext day it started to rain; a great advantage as the clouds kept the Japanese aircraft away. On arrival at Shangjao we found that our friends were all absent at their battle stations; we drove straight on to a village to which we learnt our own particular commander, the Army Group Commander, had withdrawn his headquarters. Owing to fifth column activities Chinese generals in the field are always careful to conceal their whereabouts, and it was long after dark before we located him. He welcomed us; I sat in his room as the reports of the fighting came in over the 'phone and a staff officer by candle light marked the enemy's movements with flags on a large map. There had been severe fighting at a key place, called Showchang, where the Chinese troops had successfully resisted for three days but the Japanese were now reported to be using tear gas. The general had had little sleep for several days and was obviously tired; we withdrew as soon as we could after receiving his instructions. We were still 200 kilometres from our camp; the road ran parallel to the front and about twenty kilometres from it. We had heard reports that the road ahead had already been cut, a likely possibility, as the front was by no means continuous, and the Japanese practice was to infiltrate bodies of plain-clothes men well ahead of their troops to seize tactical points and cut communications. However, I was relieved to hear from the general that according to latest reports the road was still open.\n\nThe morrow was our longest day. The road followed along the hillside above a mountain river, and we had not got far when we found the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212644, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "178\n\nIn November we were sent a medical officer, who had a long experience in China, and we also at last received some medical supplies, including a limited quantity of quinine. We were able to treat the sick students and also give some assistance in the neighbouring villages, an assistance which was much appreciated and created a lot of goodwill. A severe epidemic of meningitis broke out soon after; our stock of sulfanilamide was barely adequate to cope with the cases amongst our own students and staff and for lack of the drug we had to watch many around us die.\n\nLate in December the first lorry got through to us with a small supply of much-needed explosive. In the previous summer the roads had been destroyed by removing the wooden bridges, and cutting trenches across the roadway at a number of places. The trenches had now been filled in again with the spoil left on the roadside, but with rain the filling settled so as to leave a six-inch drop where the trench had been; it made for slow and rough driving, and it was very hard on the vehicles. The bridges were not replaced until later, but in winter the water level in the rivers fell and tracks were cut down the river banks so that the lorry could be driven across through the water.\n\nThere was some delay in winding up our affairs and we were still in the midst of it, when I was suddenly informed that a party of Americans had arrived. I wired this information to our people in Chungking and as it was the first they had heard of it they were even more surprised than we. The American party, consisting of men who had not been in China before, were able to pass on to them a lot of information regarding local conditions, for although they had spent five months in Chungking en route, much in the country was strange to them. They were also unused to the food. One of them, Bill, suddenly developed acute appendicitis, and our medical officer had hurriedly to perform an emergency operation with crude instruments to save his life. The operation was successful and the invalid stayed in our mess until he was stronger; his companions shot pheasant for the pot, a luxury to which we were unaccustomed as we had no shotgun. Bill had been a member of the guard on the American Embassy in London during the Blitz and he gave us descriptions of those days which were of great interest to us, as we had none of us been home at the time. It was not till May, 1943, that all our affairs were settled and we then left our new American friends with real regret. Several of them had been through our Commando schools in England, had seen something of England at war, and understood some of the difficulties", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212649, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "184\n\nand the Aurora University, the former French university, unknown to the members of the staff at the Department of Botany, where I have the pleasure and the good fortune to work. This excited their curiosity, they had never heard of a French Museum in Shanghai. That led Mr. Liu Zhong Ling, the organizer of this conference to invite me to give a talk on the History of the Heude Museum.\n\nThe following is a poor result of memory work and information plucked from a few available sources. Charles de Vol's book, Ferns and Fern Allies of East Central China, published by the Heude Museum in 1945 has been of great assistance in writing this paper.\n\nThe Zi-Ka-Wei (Xu Jia Hui) Museum\n\nThis Museum was situated at the S. W. of Shanghai, just on the border of the Old French Concession. It was established in 1868 by Pierre Heude SJ., the year of his arrival in China.\n\nP. Heude made extensive collections in the Kiangsu, Anhwei and Chekiang Provinces. Between 1868 and 1880, he organized 13 expeditions. Though he collected plant specimens, he was essentially a zoologist, interested in molluscs, reptiles, fishes, birds and mammals. From 1892 to 1902, he extended his field work to the Philippines, Indonesia (Java), French Indo-China (now, Vietnam), Siam (Thailand), Polynesia, Japan and other neighbouring countries.\n\nI remember possessing a large volume on Conchology of Freshwater Molluscs. The pages were filled with series of scientifically and artistically drawn specimens well marshalled all through the book, with full descriptions and notes. A page advertising his works I discovered at the back of volume VI book I of the Zikawei publications shows the astonishing achievement of that remarkable man. On two pages, some of his works are listed:\n\n5 tomes or large volumes each comprising 4 books, that is 20 books. A total of 1,100 pages, large format (in 4to) with 270 plates, some in colour (brush-painted). The content very impressive. (see below)\n\nRiver Conchology of the Kiangsu Province and Central China\n\nStudy on the Trionyx", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212728, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "22\n\nAlthough from several of his comments in his Miscellany Mesny would appear to have remained a God-fearing Christian, at one point, he confessed that he had grown up with a strong inclination to sinfulness and, he continued, in 1865 he had added to his gallantries the vicious habits of gambling and drinking having just lost his 'fair charmer,' a Chinese widow. However, 'having lost my fear of God and drifted from the narrow path that leadeth unto salvation,' fortunately, he wrote, the Revs. Josiah Cox and Griffith John, Dr John Falconer and Wm Grant Gordon never forsook him. They gave him good advice and showed good examples which he followed. His fall from grace appears to have been of short duration and was never again referred to.\n\nHe made the point several times that he was a Christian believer and, for example, he began a lengthy paragraph with the sentences, 'From my earliest departure from home in 1854 unto the present day [1896] the Holy Bible has been my constant companion, and the Lord God Almighty has been my refuge and strong tower, and I have had much reason to praise the Lord, for his mercy endureth forever. The VIII Psalm, and more especially the 4th and 5th verses of that Psalm, also the 1st and 2nd verses of the IX Psalm, have been very appropriate to my personal experience at various times and at various places.' He continued in this vein for the rest of the paragraph, ending with ‘Of late years I have often had reason to apply the prayer of David to my humble self as it is given in Psalm LXXXVI.’\n\nIn a card sent by him in his last year he referred to himself not only as a friend of China but also a 'Student of Primitive Christianity and Christian Science.'\n\nMesny recounted at some length, as was his wont, the cleansing of the soul of a very wild Liverpudlian who roamed the Yangtze in his lorcha and took great pleasure in killing any Chinese with his great sword in revenge for the great harm they had caused him. The Liverpudlian called on Mesny some time in the early 1860s and finding him kneeling in his daily devotions joined him, and begged Mesny first to say a prayer for him. He then asked to be purified and absolved. Mesny did as he requested and the Liverpudlian 'went away very much changed. He came boldly as a lion and departed timid as a sheep.' Mesny heard later that the Liverpudlian had disappeared from the river [the Yangtze] and was never heard of again.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212742, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "36 \n\nsomething more than ordinary adventure.' \n\nAgain, after a theatrical performance by a Chinese actor and actress in a provincial town in Kueichou province, Mesny wrote that local people, believing him [he was then 36] to be very old as he had a beard, knew that foreign women must be inferior; \"They must be, “they added\", as foreign men pass by but never foreign women, and foreign men marry Chinese wives.' Mesny added that he had one 'with very small feet and wears elegantly embroidered red satin shoes!' This must have been in 1878. \n\nWriting a paragraph under the heading of 'Slave Girls', Mesny noted that it was a common thing for well-to-do people to present a couple of slave girls to a daughter as part of their marriage dowry. It was also customary with respectable people to release slave girls when marriageable. Mesny added that he had bought three different girls, two in Szechuan, for a few taels each [less than 15 dollars Mexican]. One he released in Tientsin, another died in Hong Kong; the other he gave in marriage to a faithful servant of his. \n\nIn his Miscellanies he described a number of Chinese women, young and beautiful, who [or so he claimed] desired to marry him. Some he encouraged but in each instance the story peters out, others disappear out of his stories without explanation or further mention. He also had a 'romantic and intimate interlude' with a young Chinese widow, who did not appear to be short of money, and who accompanied Mesny down river to Hankow where they remained in a house near the Yamen where Mesny frequently visited her. He noted at one point that 'there was nothing like gushing love between us, but I could not fail to admire such an admirably sensible woman. What she thought was admiring in me I know not, but I know she said from the first that she required my protection. The only time that I ever noticed anything like affectionate love on her part for me was on my first visit to her after my misadventure at the Lung-wang Miao\". Then she wept. She took my head very gently between her fine hands and repeatedly kissed the fresh scars of my recent wounds... we were both silent.' Despite this, he shortly afterwards described in the Miscellany that he, Mesny, 'had been busy at work and with his friend Pickerell, and paid frequent visits to my charmer near the Tao-t'ai's Yamen. She complained of the scarcity and brevity of my visits and showed unmistakable signs of being in a condition likely to increase the already great population of the vast empire of China.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212794, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "88\n\n# Appendix E\n\nPotted Biographies\n\nof\n\nChinese and Europeans\n\nand\n\na list of Terms\n\nwhich appear in the Mesny Saga\n\nBaber, E Colbourne [1843-1890]:\n\nHBM's Consul-General at Seoul, formerly HBM's Political Agent, Resident at Chungking. Mesny wrote that he had met Baber every day during his stay in Chungking in 1880 having first met him in the spring of 1877.\n\nChang Chih-tung:\n\nZIF\n\nAn Imperial official, born in 1837 died in 1909.\n\nHe was a reformer with close contact with foreigners, who remained a staunch Confucianist and a supporter of the Manchu dynasty. He was appointed governor of several Chinese provinces and was unusual in that he died poor, having lived an honest and comparatively frugal life. His reputation has remained as one who took the lead in the modernisation of Chinese economic life. Gretchen Mae Fitkin in her book The Great River, [North China Daily News, Shanghai 1922,] wrote that [the city of] Wu-chang under the idealistic rule of Viceroy Chang, branched out commercially and grew and prospered. He was a man of strange personality, an impractical dreamer, possessed of the spirit of the reformer and promotor (sic), but without either the stability to stick to one thing or the foresight to fit his plan with conditions. When he decided to start the iron and steel mills at Hanyang in [1890] he sent orders back to England for blast furnaces. The manufacturers wrote back for a sample of the ore. They manufactured two types of plant, each suitable to a distinct type of ore. But as Chang Chih-tung had not yet found the ore he could not send a sample. He insisted, however, on having the plant, and one was finally sent out. But it was not of the type suitable for the ore later discovered! One can see these furnaces today (1922) at the Hanyang Iron Works. According to OM Green [The Foreigner in China]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212805, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "99\n\nrebellion [1851-1868], led by Chang Lo-hsing, was a rising of impoverished peasants against the Manchu dynasty in the area to the north of the Huai River. It was defeated by the local Huai Army under Li Hung-chang into whose army many Nien were enlisted for service in the troubles in the North-west.\n\nNingpo: a treaty port on the coast of the eastern province of Chekiang.\n\nPai-lou: an ornamental archway in memory of a deceased person of exceptional chastity, loyalty or filial piety.\n\nSeals [Mandarin]: Every Chinese official of any standing had a seal of office. [all seals, either government, business house (hong) or personal were usually referred to as 'chops' by foreigners]\n\nSedan chairs: Mesny was first carried by two bearers but was upgraded to three shortly afterwards. The emperor alone was entitled to sixteen bearers, princes of the blood eight, and all other officials down to Prefect four, including District Magistrates if in office. Below this grade two was the rule. All tao-t'ai's rode in green chairs carried by four bearers, accompanied on their official visits by a great number of attendants, some of whom were bodyguards, the others bearers of the insignias of office.\n\n'Self-Strengthening': a Chinese term denoting the policy of selective adoption of western technology and institutions between 1860 and 1895. One of the main proponents was Li Hung-chang about whom Mesny wrote many complimentary and other not so complimentary comments.\n\nSquares: pu-tzu: Square badges denoted the nine grades of official ranks in later dynastic China, worn front and back of the official's surcoat. They were some twelve inches square, embroidered in various designs, portraying, for example, a silver pheasant for a civil official grade 5, and a tiger for a grade 4 military official.\n\nSqueeze: applied both as a verb and substantive to peculation of any kind. Originally it was the commission Chinese servants, fully in accordance with Chinese custom, charged their masters on all articles purchased.\n\nTa Ch'ing**: The Great Pure Dynasty: The name of the last Imperial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212822, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "116\n\nAmerican air forces based in China and to the extensive establishments supplied to train and equip the Chinese Expeditionary Force, as the army which had been built up in Yunnan by the Chungking government to assist in driving the Japanese out of Burma was called.\n\nI was sent to Kun-ming to see about giving assistance to the Myosa of Kokang, prince of a small Burmese border state. The longest unnavigable river in the world, the Salween, rises in Tibet, flows through China, and enters Burma at about the level of Bhamo. For a stretch the river flows from east to west; to the north of it the territory is still China, to the south lies Kokang. The river then leaves China altogether, bends south, and lower down at Kunlong receives the Nam Ting flowing in from the east. The Nam Ting forms the southern boundary of Kokang, while the mountain-tops that divide the Salween watershed from the next river to the east form the state's eastern boundary. The stones marking this boundary were set up in 1898 as a result of the agreements made at that time. Kokang also spreads across the Salween to the territories of the large Shan state of North Shenwi, of which Kokang is actually a sub-state. The greater part of Kokang though is sandwiched between the Salween and China. Kunlong is the site of one of the most frequented of the Salween ferries, and it is down the valley of the Nam Ting that the projected railway from Kun-ming to Lashio, connecting China with Burma, will run. The embankments to carry the line had been nearly completed before the Japanese advance into Burma put an end to the work. To the south of the Nam Ting are situated the Wa states, inhabited by wild head-hunting tribes.\n\nThe Myosa of Kokang was a most loyal subject of the British crown, and because of that loyalty he was to suffer great injuries. When the Japanese advanced up the length of Burma in 1942, the British troops, who were covering the western flank, that is the flank towards India, withdrew into India. The civil administrative staff of the Shan States also withdrew to the west, while the Chinese armies, on the eastern flank,\n\n\"One British administrative officer, Evans, withdrew from Kengtung, away to the south of Kokang, into south-west Yunnan. He had established cordial relations with the Chinese troops there, and with their assistance organised local levies, drawn from the dispersed ranks of the Burma Rifle regiments; he used these to wage a small campaign of his own against the enemy until he was killed during an assault on a position manned by Siamese troops. He died unknown, unsupported, unrewarded, but not unsung, because at a time when throughout the East the British star was thought to have set for all time, this lonely man left a record of British pluck which will long be remembered on the border.", "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": 212842, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "136\n\nme whether I was afraid I would be arrested and carried off in the same way! It was because of the Lopez incident that for a long time some of the most useful men in Kokang, intimidated by Chinese threats, did not dare to work for us.\n\nAt Hsintang we occupied the thatched wooden building which the people of the village had erected for Lopez and in which he had been surrounded and arrested. It had two stories, with three small rooms on each floor, and packed into these rooms were no less than twenty beds, in layers. Though small, the building could thus house the whole of our party. All the furniture was made of bamboo, the beds, the steps leading to the upper storey, the stools on which we sat, and the table off which we ate. In the centre room below, Lopez had installed a mud fireplace, where of an evening we lit a fire, because here we must have been somewhere about 7,000 or 8,000 feet up and the nights were bitterly cold. The chimney, a hollowed bamboo over which we had to throw water every now and then, was unsatisfactory and the smoke hung about the top floor to the discomfort of those trying to sleep above.\n\nOur wireless was a great asset; it made such a contrast to the isolation which had been our lot when in eastern China. We could send and receive signals, and by laying the headphones in a tin basin, we could make a near-enough imitation of a loud-speaker to sit by and listen when the news came in. It was about this time that the Japanese made their desperate attack on the British at Imphal in an attempt to cut the railway, which supplied General Stilwell's Chinese divisions; in this attempt they were to exhaust themselves, and open Burma to reoccupation by the Allies. A little later General Wingate's second l.r.p.g. - long range penetration group - operations were launched. We were later to discover that the withdrawal of Japanese troops from all along the Salween to meet Wingate's threat offered an explanation of why they failed to raid across the river to disperse us.\n\nStan rejoined us, reporting that there was no flat territory in central Kokang, but that he found a hill slope which would do well enough as a dropping zone. The slope was near the large village of Lunghtang, two days march south, and we prepared to move there. The country became more open; the jungle on the mountain slopes was replaced by long grass. We passed herds of brood mares, with their young. The Myosa in the past had been the contractor for the supply of mules to the Burma Government; we were passing the breeding centres. A lonely", "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": 212944, "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-1993", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "6 November\n\n20 November\n\n18 December\n\n20 December\n\n1994\n\n18 January\n\n22 January\n\n19 March\n\nSwire Marine Laboratory, Cape D'Aguilar\n\nDiscovering Trim Sha Tsui- Historical Quiz\n\n-\n\nBattle of Hong Kong Walk - Wong Nei Chung to Tai Tam with visit to Sai Wan Commonwealth War Cemetery\n\nExhibition of Sand Mandala - Fung Ping Shan Museum, HK University\n\nThree Historic Buildings of Central (Helena May, Government House, Christian Science Church)\n\nExhibition of Archeological Discoveries of Ancient Yue Tribes in Southern China - Museum of History\n\nUniversity of Science and Technology and Tin Hau Temple, Joss House Bay\n\nVisits Outside Hong Kong\n\n1994\n\nDecember\n\nGuangzhou\n\nI expect many of you can think of several highlights, but for me the most significant and colourful event was the trip to Guangzhou and our trip on leaky sampans from one side of the Pearl River to the other, to look at Danes Island and the Military Academy at Whampoa; the whole trip was a memorable occasion and we have to thank Dr. Joseph Ting and our friends in Guangzhou for organising it so superbly. But none of these events could take place without some organisation behind them, and for this we have to thank the Programme Committee and particularly Mr. Peter Leeds, the Chairman. Peter used to be, I believe, in Transport; in fact, he gave a lecture to the Society about two years ago on the history of transport in Hong Kong. Clearly, anyone who has organised transport in Hong Kong has some very gifted organisational skills, and the Society has been very fortunate over the last three years to have him at the hub of the wheel, so to speak, of the Programme Committee. It is therefore with great regret that I have to report that due to his anticipated long period of absence from Hong Kong next year, he feels he will not be able to carry on his present role. Fortunately, however, I am pleased to report that Mrs. Rosemary Lee has agreed to take on the role, and I have promised her that she will obtain all the support the Council and I hope other members can give her.\n\nXI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213105, "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-1993", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "155\n\nto the front of the school building, to double the defences of the bridge, probably some time in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.\n\n27\n\nThe building of the gun-towers, the school, the Man Mo Temple and Meeting Hall, and the communal grave, is evidence for the prosperity and vitality of the town, and the village society in which it was set, in the later nineteenth century. By 1904, the market had about doubled in size, and in the number of shops operating, from its situation fifty years earlier. From its foundation in 1830-1835, in fact, the prosperity of the town seems to have increased steadily until 1898, with the only check being the very temporary set-back of the Taiping attack.\n\nThe Market and the New Frontier\n\nThe leasing of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898 was traumatic for the villagers of the Sha Tau Kok area. The line originally proposed for the new frontier would have run along the Sha Tau Kok River from source to sea. This would have put two of the eleven village alliance areas of the Shap Yeuk into China, the market and the other village alliance areas into the New Territories. This was unacceptable to the Chinese authorities, who were unwilling to allow so significant a place as Sha Tau Kok to become part of the area administered by Britain. Eventually it was agreed that the frontier should run along the Sha Tau Kok River from the source down to the Sha Tau Kok bridge, and then be diverted from the bridge down the centre of the bridge access road to the sluice at Yim Liu Ha, then in a straight line to the sea, and thence east along the high-water mark to the mouth of Mirs Bay.* This line was drawn very close to the northern and western edges of the market. As such it isolated the market from the rest of Chinese territory; its only access was either over the bridge, which was half in Hong Kong, or through Hong Kong territory, or by sea through Hong Kong waters.\n\nIn the late nineteenth century, China controlled imports and exports through customs regulations, enforced by the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service. By the drawing of the frontier where it eventually was, the normal, day-to-day trade of Sha Tau Kok market suddenly found itself\n\n* See Map 4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213115, "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-1993", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "The road and terry junction in this area attracted attention from the military authorities from an early date. While the Salt Commission and the Pearl Monopoly were active in Mars Bay, law and order were probably maintained by the special salt and pearl troops. After these were withdrawn, a military post was established at Shek Chung Au, with a watchtower nearby. This was close to the Wu Shek Kok ferry pier, and near to the road junction at Wo Hang Au. Other troops were established at Yim Tin. In various formulations and strengths, this military position remained at Shek Chung Au for several hundred years, until the mid-nineteenth century - eloquent testimony to the continuing importance of this traffic node.\n\nSha Tau Kok's position in the road system of the area gave it two economic advantages. The first was the Sha Yue Chung Ferry. There was only one a day in the early twentieth century, and this can safely be assumed to have been the case earlier as well. Many travellers, therefore, would be obliged to spend the night in Sha Tau Kok, or at least several hours, waiting for the ferry, and, if the weather was bad, these enforced waits could stretch out to several days. There was, as a result, plenty of opportunity for merchants in the town to profit from servicing travellers held up there. As noted already, in the 1920s Sha Tau Kok had more guesthouses, restaurants, and entertainment facilities than most towns in the area, and although most of those facilities were new, servicing the new frontier garrison and Customs staff, some at least were certainly a feature of the town from an earlier period.\n\nThe other great economic advantage was the geographical location of Sha Tau Kok in relation to Sham Chun. Sham Chun was at the head of navigation on the Sham Chun River, and was a busy port for the small junks that came up the river from Deep Bay. Sham Chun was, therefore, well located as far as water-borne traffic from the west went. But Sham Chun had no water route to the east, to Mirs Bay. By sea from Sham Chun to Sha Tau Kok is a good hundred miles: by land, barely seven. There were three important commodities not available in the Deep Bay area which could be had from the Mirs Bay area - rice, some sorts of quality fresh fish, and salt. Sha Tau Kok was, in effect, the port of Sham Chun to the east, where these commodities in particular were landed, and then carried by coolies over the Miu Keng pass to Sham Chun.\n\nMirs Bay was usually - despite occasional famines - a rice surplus area. The Sham Chun and Deep Bay area was a rice shortage area, even", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213273, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "75\n\nThe Ley, common too in Scottish and fish cultures, also includes 'black energy lines' which are harmful, like the malevolent forces (sha chi) that exist in Chinese fung shui. They manifest themselves in bitter winds that blow from a corner of a building facing a railway track or telephone lines, or a straight watercourse with bad fung shui. These can affect both physical and mental health and cause misery.\n\nLike fung shui 'veins', ley lines are believed by many to entwine with vital life forces and the mysteries of hidden earth energies. Some believe they can be sensed by the psychic when driving over them in a car. Both fung shui and the ley have sometimes been styled as examples of the 'great nature religions'.\n\nAustralian Songlines\n\nIn Australia, the aboriginals follow wandering, invisible 'dream paths' to honour spirits of the land. These were once the routes of their nomadic ancestors. Trade is said to follow the same paths, some of which are only 'visible' at sunrise. The religious duty of the aboriginals is to travel the land and to reach back in time and space. There is some resemblance between Australian 'songlines' and ley lines in Britain.\n\nA few etymologists will tell you that the first language was, in fact, song (Chatwin, 1987, 61). And, wherever men have trodden, they have left a trail of song. Nomadic aboriginal 'ancestor beings' created the 'dreaming tracks', 'memory palaces' (Edwards, 1990; 12) and the songlines as they moved across the Australian landscape (Cundy, 1994). They left a trail of, so-called, 'life-cells' or 'spirit-children' along the 'lines of force' and footprints linked to particular points and sacred sites in the landscape. To these, souls are tied. A pile of rocks represents the eggs of a rainbow snake. A boulder of red sandstone symbolises the liver of a kangaroo.\n\nDowsing\n\nThe Bible tells us Moses used a rod to discover water. Dowsing (as used to detect water, minerals, metals, and hidden treasure) employs a form of latent or sixth sense in which rods, pendulums, or forked sticks (commonly of hazel, willow, or peach) are held in the hands to measure energies emanating from the earth. Even coat hangers, pitchforks, and bones have been used on occasions. Man's natural dowsing ability may be likened...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "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": 213484, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "48\n\nThe Jujube-red colored Face\n\nGenerally this signifies a person of high morality, loyal to friends, trustworthy, who would rather die than betray a friend. Usually when Kwan Yu (or Kwan Yuin-ch'ang) appears on the stage, he would have such a face. Kwan Yu was the Minister of War in the Minor Han Dynasty, A.D. 221-263.\n\nWhen you have a chance to visit a local Police Station, you will find that the police worship an immortal with a red face, in full battle regalia, with his sword. He was Kwan Yu, being respected because he was a faithful servant.\n\nThe Black Faced Man, with little white streaks\n\nMen of great courage, brilliant minds, men with guts. If he is a civil official, he would make a good judge. If he is a fighting man, he would be a brave general, quick tempered, and always ready to fight.\n\nThe Mottled Faces\n\n(Red base with black and white streaks): Always brilliant, loyal and trustworthy. If he is an ordinary citizen, he would rob the rich to help the poor like Robin Hood,\n\nThe White Face\n\nSignifying craft, cunning, always scheming for self benefit. Would sell his friend down the river.\n\nThe Funny Man\n\nThis is a man with something like a turtle, painted in the centre of his face, around his eyes. This could be a bad person, or else he could be an ordinary man with no special talent.\n\nTwo things should always be remembered:\n\n(1) This is a general hint or idea. There are always exceptions. (2) Painted faces are limited to men only.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213506, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "70\n\nof that street is practically shut up. The mortality here was very great. The inhabitants were principally night-soil coolies and almost all died. The occupants of houses in Third Street, adjoining this were also numerously attacked \" (Lowson, 1895, P5)\n\nIn 1895, plague cases were found centred in First Street and several streets not far from the Civil Hospital. In 1902, a group of cases were discovered round Pokfulam Road and Second Street. Infected rats were also found in that area.\n\nAfter the breaking out of the plague, thousands of panic-stricken people began to leave Hong Kong. They left in every sort of conveyance: sampans, boats, junks, and river steamers. People of Sai Ying Pun could also leave by ambulance boats, which came to the China Merchants Wharf at 4 p.m. each day, on which the people were towed to Whampoa or Canton. At 1901, the population of the district was 44,722, a decrease of 848 people when compared with the 1897 figure.\n\nDr Lowson in 1895 and Dr Simpson in 1902 had both made a number of strong recommendations as to the measures which should be enforced to prevent further outbreaks of bubonic plague. According to them, back-to-back houses should be demolished. Basements should not be inhabited. Disinfected or rat-ridden houses should be either closed or walled in or thoroughly sprayed, fumigated, chlorinated, scrubbed, and lime-washed. Latrines and public markets should be maintained by the authorities in a clean condition.\n\nThe last recommendation was particularly important to the district. A latrine in the Sai Ying Pun Market was situated only three yards distant from a large quantity of meat which was often hanging for hours at a time. On the other hand, hot water tanks and bath houses, for the purposes of promoting cleanliness among the Chinese and thus preventing the spread of plague among them, were established in Second and Third Streets in 1903. A Public Health and Building Ordinance was passed in order to better sanitary conditions in Hong Kong. Unlike Tai Ping Shan district, Sai Ying Pun was excluded from schemes of resumption. However, at that time, most of the houses in Sai Ying Pun did need destruction and resumption rather than improvement of the sanitary arrangements. Actually, a few areas in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213813, "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-1996", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "137\n\nwere all tired so for exercise we took an oar to help them. We had several shots at the birds, principally teal. One great bird sat on a bush, and as we rounded a point, we got close to it. Two of them shot at it, and the thing did not move; after a minute or two it got up and flew away, much to the chagrin of the marksmen. We were gradually getting into closer quarters, and at every turn the river grew narrower. We were also getting nearer the abodes of man. At last we swept round and came to a village, where, through the shallowness of the water, we were forced to disembark, since the tide was very low. All round was nothing but immense oyster shells, in immense heaps. Some apparently very old. One would think that from the time of Mathuselah the inhabitants had fed upon nothing else but oysters. We got ashore, and off we started since we had a long walk before us. We met a man with about 1000 ducks, and I levelled a two-barrelled gun at the lot, and asked the fellow how much he would let me have a shot at them for. He was fearfully frightened, and I was obliged to tell him I was only doing so for fun.\n\nWe went through this village, and as we went through the principal street it was like a grand circus procession in England. Five of the Western barbarian foreign devils, fully armed, and followed by about 10 servants, was a sight many had never seen before. They certainly seemed to know how to make good use of their eyes, and I warrant they will never forget us in a hurry.\n\nAt last we got clear of the town and were hurrying along across the country to walk to Sam-chun. On all sides were large covered jars, or what in Kent would be called \"covered crocks,\" glazed on the outside, and standing in rows of from four to ten, at every few hundred yards. These contain the remains of Chinamen, who have been buried, and according to custom, have been exhumed, as soon as the flesh was decomposed. These jars no one ever dares to touch, much more to violate or desecrate. The mischievous urchins anywhere in England would have had a \"Cock shy\" at them, and not a jar would stand many days like that, on the road side, with plenty of nice smooth stones, made apparently on purpose to \"shy\" at them, and no one near to see or know. But Chinese boys never are up to such things. From infancy they are taught to venerate and respect, yes, and to worship the dead, and this superstition prevails over what perhaps would otherwise be as great a propensity in them as in England.\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214004, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "THE YANG FAMILY OF GENERALS\n\nYang Chia Chiang\n\n楊家將\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\n39\n\nThe story of the Yang Family of Generals is inextricably involved with the struggle between the Chinese of the Sung dynasty [early in the 10th century AD] and the invading hordes from Central Asia. Memories of the fearless Yangs, who were dreaded by the Tatars from beyond the Wall, are kept fresh by tea-house story tellers, Chinese opera, and tales told by temple keepers. We have, therefore, three versions of the story of the Yangs: first, as we read it in history books; then, the story as told in novels, by professional story tellers, and in opera; and finally, tales related by temple custodians and devotees about the deified Yang heroes.\n\nWe shall never know the real story of the Yang family; nevertheless, the chronological story as told in history books is relatively straightforward. General Chao K'uang-yin became the first emperor of the Sung in AD 960 with his capital at Kaifeng and with the reign title of T'ai Tsu. He eventually achieved his primary aim and unified most of China under his rule, one of the exceptions being the small state, a princedom in the area of today's Shanxi province known by its dynastic title as the Northern Han, and also known by its regional name as Ho-tung [East of the (Yellow) River]. When the Northern Han refused to submit to him in the Autumn of AD 968, T'ai Tsu decided to invade and moved on Taiyuan, the capital of Ho-tung. The Prince of the Northern Han, realising that they were powerless before the Sung, called on the warlike and powerful Liao [Khitans'], a minor empire to the north of the Great Wall, for assistance. Also realising that outside aid could not arrive in time to save the immediate situation, the Prince made his most able soldier, Yang Chi-yeh, possibly better known simply as Yang Yeh, Generalissimo and ordered him and his five senior sons to lead the resistance against the Sung to allow time for the Liao forces to join up with them. The combined Northern Han and Liao forces were too strong for the Sung, and even though Taiyuan had twice been besieged by the Sung, T'ai Tsu pulled back and turned south where he subdued the Southern Han. Once more, in 976, he sent an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214013, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "47\n\ntime included the Father and Mother, had been stolen and whilst only one of the original images of the Seven Sons has been recovered, new large images have been made of the others; meanwhile, large images of the two parents are awaiting donations before being carved. Handsome murals on the walls of the main hall of this same temple depict scenes from the lives of the Yang family, including one of Yang Yeh's wife being presented at court. An image of a subordinate general who served under the Yang's stands on a separate side altar though his name and details have now long been forgotten.\n\nIn a temple complex in Ang Mo Kio in Singapore, recently relocated there by the State following the demolition of the original temple to make way for a new housing estate, the main altar contains images of the father and his seven sons, with the sons referred to as Marshal Yang 楊元帥, Yang the Second 楊二帥, Yang the Third 楊三帥 etc., or as Yang Erh Shih and Yang San Shih, etc. The temple keeper at first was uncertain whether the image of the father and the First Son were present but eventually decided that there were sufficient images to assume that they were.\n\nTwo cult temples in northern China, one at Ku Pei K'ou in Hopei, some sixty or so miles north-north east of Peking and another across the Yellow River from Pao-te in northern Shensi, are both close to the Great Wall just inside China. Both temples have images not only of the father and mother but also of the eight sons, the two daughters and the wives of two of the sons.\n\nImages of the First, Second and Third Sons' have not been noted individually on their own altars in southern Chinese communities; however, images of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Sons have all been identified by temple keepers, individually or in groups of Seven, with details listed below.\n\nThe Fourth son, Yang Yen-hui and Yang Ssu Lang, Yang Ssu Yeh, as Yang Chi-yeh-di Ssu-tzu, Lif, known as Yang the Fourth, is also referred to as the Fourth son of Yang Chi-yeh. He is the main deity in a temple in Taipei where the only image of this son, alone, has been noted and where he is generally known as The Fourth Commissioner of Chin-hu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214016, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "50\n\nin pairs on Min [Fukienese] community altars as offerings to the Jade Emperor, whose birthday is celebrated the following day and who had persuaded Yang to call off the pursuit.\n\nAn image categorically identified as the Seventh Son, Yang Yen-ssu has only been observed in one temple, in Medan in Sumatra, where it stands alone on a separate side altar simply marked, Yang Ch'i Yeh. He is portrayed as a black-bearded general, standing dressed in long yellow robes and holding a long staff but without any unique features. In a temple near Taichung where he is depicted together with the rest of his brothers he is inexplicably portrayed with a ferocious, decorated face and a bird's beak mouth. His black skin is decorated with a white [opera-style] face pattern, whilst the beak with a red edging is under a human nose. His eyes are staring, round and bulging, and he is holding an unsheathed sword at the ready. All in all, an extraordinary image which, whilst accepted and labelled as the Seventh Son by the temple staff, is completely out of character.\n\nFinally, in Seremban in central Malaysia, the temple keeper of a small rural temple pointed out a small standing figure of a soldier in armour at the rear of a crowded secondary altar. The image has no unique characteristic and could be any soldier/deity. The temple keeper identified him as Yang Sung-pao, a T'ang general who had been the protector of a Sung emperor. In Seremban he was also known as the Venerable Golden Lion, Chin-shih Ta-jen, as well as the Great General, Ta Chiang-chün.\n\nThe Eighth Son, Yang Pa Yeh, has only been noted on two altars in northern China despite the two Yang Family Daughters being numbered Eight and Nine, Yang Pa Chie and Yang Chiu Mei. These two daughters were involved in several battles fighting alongside the Sixth Son.\n\nPost Script\n\nChinese characters carved into a roadside rock beside the modern main road from the Fen River plain in northern Shansi to Inner Mongolia proclaimed that the nearby old temple had been dedicated to Wu Lang, the Fifth Son of the Yang. This was confirmed by a local peasant. The temple was in a col between two mountains, itself several thousand", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214170, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "A Chinese New Year Lunch on 20th February, 1999 at\n\nLee Hu Fook Restaurant, Gerard Street, London\n\nThe Friends are grateful to Professor Hugh Baker, Professor of Chinese at SOAS and a well-known friend of the RAS in Hong Kong, for making the premises available for our functions, and it is hoped that when circumstances allow it will be possible to continue to meet there, which also enables us to put on light refreshments.\n\nSuch an auspicious start has enabled the committee to look further ahead and two more immediate events are:\n\na) A trip to northern France led by Mr. Keith Stevens, \"World War I Battlefield Tour - The Chinese Connection,\" in mid-May 1999\n\nb) A lecture by Dr. Dan Waters on Saturday, 29th May, 1999 on present day Hong Kong, at SOAS\n\nFor the Friends to exist and to continue to flourish, the group needs strong and dedicated personnel to move it forward. The Friends are very fortunate to have attracted some well-known names to their ranks. Besides Mr. Keith Stevens mentioned above and renowned, inter alia, for his knowledge of and publications on Chinese gods, this report cannot be complete without paying tribute to the organising abilities of Ms. Julia Barry (Treasurer), Mrs. Anita Wilson and Mrs. Rosemary Lee (Activities Secretaries). Their dedication in ensuring that the Friends move forward is invaluable.\n\nThis report is being written on a mild February morning in the United Kingdom, overlooking green fields and the River Orwell estuary, with a herd of deer in the background. It is a superb view, but in the far background there are the Felixstowe docks, with their tall cranes thrusting out into the North Sea. These docks are owned by Hutchison (Mr Li Ka-shing) and one cannot, even if one wished, which we do not, forget the Hong Kong connection even in this part of the world. Such tangible sights only help to perpetuate memories of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Branch of the RAS. It is therefore with great confidence for a successful future this year and beyond that the Friends send greetings to members of RASHKB at your annual general meeting.\n\nDavid Gilkes (Chairman)\n\nMarch, 1999\n\nxxvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214196, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "17\n\nSome Westerners and Hong Kong Chinese will tell you that Chinese humour on the circumscribed Mainland is not subtle. It is too ... and a great deal of it falls flat on the average European. Although 200 Cartoons from China (Xu, 1989) goes down quite well, in the series of four books Selected Jokes from Past Chinese Dynasties only about four per cent of the jokes appeal to the author's sense of humour. An exception is:\n\nA father and son were both fond of the bottle and one night they were both staggering back home. On entering the gate the father said: 'Strange! Why do you have three faces? You look neither like a ghost nor a man. I'll never leave my house to you.' The son replied, 'I don't want such a rickety, revolving house anyway' (1997; vol. 4, joke 86)! To give another example of the more simple humour on the Mainland. The sound 'wok', in Chinese, can mean either a Chinese round-bottom frying pan or 'trouble' or 'problem.' Thus a large trading company with a television 'dish' (wok) on the roof is known in Guangzhou as the ‘Trouble Company.' This more direct form of humour, common in Guangdong, contrasts with the complicated humour which requires a person to use his 'grey matter' more.\n\nFor instance Nury Vittachi, Hong Kong journalist, author and part-time comedian, writes that he believes what he calls 'personality humour' works best with Westerners. In such cases the comic goes into his role and recreates a conversation with his mother-in-law, the taxi driver, or whoever. This does not always work, says Nury, with Asians who prefer more direct, straightforward, 'Man goes into a bar' approach.\n\nBut Hong Kong, as opposed to China, is a relatively small place with western influences. As Harry Wong, the talk-show host and co-median of Metro Broadcasting said: 'In this city-state (Hong Kong) people are short of time. There is a ‘combat' situation and people have a better command of English. Western-style Rotary, Round Table clubs and the like, with their style of humour, are common. Put all this juxtaposition to Chinese humour, including films made in Hong Kong often consisting of vulgar, triad language, and obvious jokes with excessive action, and you have a peculiar mix' (Bolton, 1997; 300). Such exaggeration, found for instance in Chinese films, contrasts with much of the British humour which often relies on understatements. Some", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214264, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "85\n\nIn addition to being the final arbiter in the judgement of souls and the Keeper of the Registers of Life and Death, Tung-yüeh Ta-ti protects the virtuous, especially those who are truthful, good and excel at filial piety.\n\nImages of Yama, that is Yen-lo Wang, are to be seen in both of the temples in the Western Hills where they are Deva, but together with Tung-yüeh Ta-ti, indicating that they are regarded as two separate deities in these temples.\n\n38] Tzu-wei Ta-ti\n\nThe Great Emperor of the Purple Heaven, a major Chinese Taoist stellar deity of the North Pole Star, the keeper of the book of destiny, a controller of blessings, and one of the most potent destroyers of demons, is revered for his power to ward off evil influences and spirits. In northern China he was occasionally regarded as one of the Four Heavenly Kings and portrayed as a benign middle-aged Taoist, with Taoist crown and tablet held between both hands before his chest. Icons bearing his likeness are pasted or nailed to doors as popular charms to ward off demonic attack.\n\nHis image stands in both the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu. In both he is portrayed as a standard Chinese Taoist figure, with long multi-coloured and highly decorated robes, and a small Taoist crown on his head. He has a benign face, a small goatee and moustache and in the Ta Pei Ssu holds both hands together before his chest as if holding a tablet. His image in the Pi-yun Ssu is similar but has the tablet in place.\n\nA mural in the Mahavira Hall of the Yunlin temple at Yangkao in Shansi portrays the Emperor Tzu-wei of the North Pole.\n\nThere is also some confusion within Cantonese communities about the role of this deity. In some temples he has been claimed to be the chief of the heterodox Taoist stellar deities and identified either as the god, or one of the gods of the Pole Stars. He is popular with the Boat People of the Pearl River estuary, and is also one of the stellar deities seen on charms and scrolls used during rituals. A number of devotees", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214295, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "116\n\nThere was a gap of nearly twenty years between the first and second China Wars. It would have been expected that, in this period, the Chinese would have updated their arsenals and have been able to defend themselves more effectively. Whilst, as already seen, this was done to a degree, they were not able to overcome all the problems. The biggest problem was probably the attitude of those in charge, which is so often difficult to alter in any institution, particularly the armed forces. Hence, in the second war the story was much the same, although the batteries at the Pei Ho river were able to repel the European navies and delay the end of the war by a year.\n\nIn conclusion it can be seen that not only did the Chinese suffer a great disadvantage in the technology of their weaponry, but they also were behind in training and discipline, factors which turn brave men into efficient troops. Obviously there is more than fighting to any war, and political, economic and social factors all have an influence on events. However, in order to gain a full insight into the wars between China and the Western powers, it is necessary to understand the military aspects. Fortunately the military men, like so many Victorian travellers, have left records of their experiences. This paper draws on some of those records and aims to put them in context with the development of weapon technology that was taking place at the time. The range of weapons being used by the two sides spanned centuries of development and their coming together is, in itself, a fascinating story.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Keith Stewart Mackenzie, Narrative of the Second Campaign in China, London 1842, p. 92 notes \"the Tartars making a most determined resistance, standing by their guns till the sailors cut them down, hand to hand.\"\n\n2 Captain Granville G. Loch R.N., The Closing Events of the Campaign in China: The Operations in the Yang-Tze-Kiang and Treaty of Nanking, London 1843. P. 107. Loch is horrified by \"old men, women and children, cutting each other's throats, and drowning themselves by the dozen.\"\n\n3 Loch R.N., op. cit., p. 113.\n\n4 Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 62 notes \"for both (Admiral) Kwan and his second in command, fell by bayonet wounds received in their breasts, whilst gallantly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214302, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "124\n\nschool in Chefoo in Shantung province before returning to England where he attended the Bath Art and Technical School. There he studied art before switching to Bristol University to read for a BSc in science. He would appear to have given up his higher education following the shattering of his romantic aspirations when he ran away to sea and worked his passage to Canada. He toiled for a while in Canada before returning to his parents in Taiyuan in 1905 with vague plans to hunt and explore the wild and barren areas of north China; he was twenty at the time. In practice he took up a teaching appointment at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin and only during the vacations was he able to hunt and seek specimens for the natural history museum he was establishing at the college. From the vague evidence available he would appear to have remained at the school for only a matter of a year as he was invited at the end of the final term to join the Duke of Bedford's expedition to collect zoological specimens in Shensi province for the British Museum. Shensi is the neighbouring province to Shansi and lies to its west.\n\nThe Duke of Bedford's expedition travelled through Sowerby's home province of Shansi where they lived for a week or so in one of the typical village cave houses of the Yellow Earth country, in a village some fifty miles west of Taiyuan. From there they continued west, across the Yellow River to Yenan in Shensi and on into the Ordos desert. Their return route took them north to the Great Wall, which they then followed to the east before turning south to Taiyuan down the main route through Shansi. The whole expedition took some five months and Arthur Sowerby would have been just twenty-one. It was during this expedition that Sowerby discovered a new species of jerboa [kangaroo rat] which was sent back to the British Museum and subsequently named after him, Dipus sagitta sowerbyi.\n\nComing from a missionary family he would have had little or no financial support from his father and would have needed to work for a living. He was sponsored for a number of years by a wealthy American, Robert Sterling Clark, who remained a friend for most of Sowerby's life, and although it is no more than supposition he may well have continued teaching at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin especially in view of his marriage in that city in 1910, at the age of twenty-six. The long vacations would have been an advantage enabling him to gather the material he later used in the China Journal, especially his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214309, "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "131\n\nNot only did he write many of the Journal's editorials but also in each edition a number of miscellaneous articles on subjects ranging from hunting in Manchuria and boating as a holiday to the Hall of Antiquities in the Hude Museum in Shanghai - a pet project of his, as well as Scientific Notes and Reviews. His editorials ranged from Shanghai's Position in the World to China's New Industrialisation. A typical editorial described the colossal task facing the leaders of China's Republic and, as the years passed, so his editorials became more and more anti-Japanese. In the great age of European self-confidence these editorials reflected the general mood of expatriates not only in the Treaty Ports but also within the hinterland of China. None of this necessarily precluded a measure of genuine interest in Chinese culture though he, himself, appears not to have been a convinced ‘Orientalist.' He covered a vast range of subjects under broad-brush headings Engineering, Industrial and Commercial Notes; Scientific Notes and Reviews; Educational Notes and Intelligence and Travel and Exploration Notes.\n\nA number of articles written by people whose names have come down to us as authors of well-known books such as Florence Ayscough, L.C. Arlington, Juliet Bredon and James Hutson appeared in the Journal over the years. It would be impossible to list here many of the articles and papers printed issue by issue ranging as they did from tea to river craft, secret societies to criticisms on the Shanghai local artists exhibitions as well as descriptions of expeditions into the interior With Kua-tzu and Camera in the Yangtze Gorges by H. Foote-Carey and in 1923 - Investigation of the Thermal Dissociation of Hydrated Alumo-silicates, Prehnite, Zoisite and Epidote by E. Norin of the Nystrøm Institute, Taiyuan Fu, Shansi.\n\nIn early 1938 Arthur and his wife, Clarice, sold their interest in the China Journal to a new company called \"The China Journal Publishing Company Limited\" based at 117 Hong Kong Road, Shanghai, accepting part of the purchase price in shares of the new company. There were now three directors, H.J. Timperley, A. de C. Sowerby and H.J. Freyn. The manager at that point was a Mr. W.V.D. White with Clarice Moise no longer referred to on the staff of the Journal. Then, on 7 December 1941, after Pearl Harbour, men of the Japanese navy broke into the offices and destroyed everything, including the files, mailing lists, back numbers, and that was the end of the China Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214320, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "142\n\nand Zheng Lingguan Yuanshuai EA\n\nXu Sun's festival is celebrated on the 1st of the eighth lunar month, though in a few of the temples a further minor festival is held on the 28th of the first lunar month.\n\nApart from his title, Xu Zhenjun and his personal name, Xu Sun, he is also known as:\n\nXu Xianzhen 許仙真\n\nXu Xian Zhenren 許仙真人\n\nXu Zhenren 許真人\n\nShengong Miaoji Zhenjun 神功妙濟真君\n\na Song dynasty title\n\nJingming Zhongxiao Dao 凈明忠孝道\n\na Song or Yuan dynasty title\n\nNote: This deity should not be confused with another, Xu Jia, also known as Xu Zhenren A nor should either cult be confused with yet another local deity, Xu Tianjun. A further complication arises from the identification by some temple keepers in Singapore and Taiwan of Xu as the local Chaozhou community Military Earth God, Gantian Dadi.\n\ni Chinese Medical Deities: 1870\n\nii Sun Simiao, one of the Ten Celebrated Physicians renowned not only as a herbalist but as a diagnostician was also of Jiangxi province.\n\niii Wu Ben, a herbalist of great renown born in a village near Xiamen in Fujian province. He is possibly better known by his title of Baosheng Dadi, the Great Emperor who Protects Life.\n\niv Fitkin, Gretchen Mae: The Great River - The Story of a Voyage on the Yangtze Kiang: Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh: 1922\n\nv Professor Liang is Head of the Department of History at the Jiangxi Normal University in Nanchang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214351, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "174\n\nThe conflict is described in gory detail with both humans and deities waging unrestricted warfare using thunderbolts, poisonous gases, and magic fans. Armies are annihilated by wizardry, bizarre and fantastic magic weapons are deployed by both sides leading to the eventual defeat of the Shang, and the suicide of the ruler and death of his concubine. The story ends with the heroes of both sides being canonised. This historical fantasy describes the struggle in the 11th century BC between the forces of the evil King Zhou3 [Zhou Wang, known also as Zhou Xin] of the Shang [Yin] dynasty and the armies of Duke Fa,a with large bodies of men clashing as well as individual duels between heroes leading to the eventual victory by Duke Fa and the end of King Zhou and his concubine. It describes individual or groups of deities, their origins, careers, and their miracles and supernatural powers during the campaign of Duke Fa against King Zhou. During the struggle, both sides called upon Heaven, who in response sent mythological deities [i.e., not deified humans] to take part in the clashes and battles.\n\nThe major hero of the forces of Duke Fa was his prime minister, Jiang Ziya, who was eventually responsible for handing out honours deifying the human heroes of both sides, with both the victors and the conquered being awarded posts in the Celestial hierarchy. Images of many of these heroes can still be seen on altars, deities in their own right, with responsibility for specific roles as gods of wealth or health or as patron deities. These deified heroes are possibly best thought of as 'human' deities in comparison with the mythological orthodox Daoist and Buddhist deities of the Creation and pre-history, a number of whom also took part in the fictional conflict. It has provided a standardisation of myths and legends woven into a continuous story which has, since its compilation, been the main spring of Chinese popular knowledge about the celestial and Underworld deities. A great many deities were familiar before this work was written, and the problem, therefore, has been well-nigh impossible, of determining how much of the work was original and how much was grafted in from earlier legends.\n\nChinese histories describing the fall of the Shang are far from clear. It was the era when the Chinese in the Yellow River basin were emerging from the mists of pre-history. Dates vary from 1050 BC to 1120 and 1127 BC, but one scenario is well known to the Chinese man in the street, the final act. The Shang was ruled by a degenerate, Zhou Xin [also known as Zhou Wang], whose army was defeated in battle on the Muye plain before the Shang capital. The victor was Duke Fa [Ji Fa], who founded...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214369, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "193\n\nThese communist iconoclastic campaigns are by no means unique in Chinese history. Over the centuries one or other of the beliefs have found favour at the expense of others, temples have been razed, religious communities dispersed and images destroyed. Within the past century and a half we have seen the Taiping Rebellion of the mid 19th century which covered much of central-southern China; the Boxer Rebellion of the turn of the century in northern China; and the nationwide Anti-Superstition Campaign of the Republican Kuomintang in the late 1920s, all of which destroyed temples and their contents. From an historic preservation point of view it is worth recalling that temples within the two foreign colonies at the mouth of the Pearl River, held by Portugal and Britain, remained unscathed during these years and, in Macau for instance, some of the images and temples date back three to four hundred years.\n\nWe look forward then with great interest to see what will happen in the future to the urban and rural temples and shrines in Hong Kong and Macau. They are sure to survive though I have a horrible suspicion that sooner or later they might be converted to electronic devices.\n\nNOTES\n\nIt is not difficult to see how the confusion rose in Chinese minds. During the 19th and early 20th centuries Catholic and Protestant missionaries rarely co-operated and, in many places, actually denounced the other as heterodox. Also, the Catholic priests, berobed bachelors, with prayers and chants in a dead language, with church images and incense, were sufficiently similar to the Buddhists for the Chinese to empathise. Protestant missionaries on the other hand tended to be married and live isolated from their parishioners; they dressed either as pseudo-Chinese or in dark heavy western suits, and lived frugally whilst preaching of hell fire and damnation. To the Chinese these were two entirely separate religions.\n\nIf we take as a very rough estimate 6,000 temples in present day Taiwan where religious freedom is permitted and temples have been flourishing, then the figure of 20,000 in the coastal province in mainland China opposite to Taiwan across the Straits must include every possible shrine, never mind how small.\n\n3 I have to thank Professor K Dean of McGill University for this observation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214410, "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": 268, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "234\n\nit to the nearest river, washed all the sea salt away with the flowing water and then dried it by the above mentioned method. And so his tea will go to England, and being well roasted, will give a fine brew. And as it is well known that the English are not interested in the aroma of the tea, but in its colour, there is the hope, through this bit of speculation, of acquiring not only fine profits but a fine reputation.\n\nDon't think however that it's only speculation that occupies the minds and constitutes all the activity of the local population. There is a club here with a good library, which orders many journals; on top of this there is a reading room - a small public library, established and maintained by a few private individuals; finally there is a branch of the London Asiatic Society, which has monthly meetings and publishes its reports. I was invited on the 8th November (new style calendar), to a meeting of the Society, where among the outside visitors there was quite a number of ladies. The President of the Society, Sir John Bowring, who had been in Russia, had in the past expressed the view, that the \"Russian Government was so jealous, that there had never been an instance of even one single person being sent to the Peking Mission, who could speak another language, apart from his native Russian, and this was with the specific aim of preempting the possibility of communicating to Europe information acquired in Peking.\" Now one of the members of the Society, Mr. Shortred proposed to rectify this view and pointed to me as someone who had been at the mission and who could supply positive information. I replied, that the Russian Government had never had any such thought in mind, that on the contrary it, itself, even tried to disseminate information, received from Peking; that previously, mainly students from seminaries, where although other languages were taught the predominant language was Latin, had been selected for the mission; but that more recently people were being sent there from theological academies and universities - places of higher learning where everyone acquires a basic knowledge of several European languages. As for the view of Mr. President, it is very possible that soon after their return from Peking the members of the mission that he had seen were in no condition to converse freely in any European languages, simply because they had no practice in ten years, even though each one of them read and probably wrote one of the European languages. Sir John Bowring stated, that since the time he had been in Russia, much had undoubtedly changed there. Incidentally it is worth noting that Sir John Bowring is himself regarded as a great linguist. He", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214517, "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": 375, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "344\n\nAlthough our Qingdao guide accompanied us throughout the trip, we were met off the ferry in Dalian by another guide - Ying, an expert on the local attractions, although she quickly learned, as had her Qingdao colleague before her, that she was surrounded by a bit more expertise than she found in the average tour group.\n\nYing and Jack, the driver, very quickly learned that her new brood had another difference. She greeted us at the ferry pier by saying: \"I suppose you would all like to go to lunch now?\" This was met by a resounding answer in the negative. Having been jolted about on the boat we were not immediately interested in food.\n\nDalian city tour\n\nInstead we asked for the bus to go round some of the streets in the old Russian quarter. Specifically, we pointed out the photographs in \"Far from Home\" and said that we would like to see those and see them we did.\n\nThe People's Theatre looks a bit more garish these days, and has been turned into a Blackpool-like amusement hall. However, the majority of what we had come to see was there waiting for us, looking as splendid and impressive as we had hoped. Zhongshan Square (the former Great Square of the original Russian plan) still contains all the solid bank buildings from many years ago. All are now Chinese banks, but clearly recognisable are the buildings from all the old photographs. The square also includes one of Dalian's three former Yamato Hotels, now glorying in the name of the Dalian Guest House. Do not be put off by this name, however it is far from being a bed and breakfast in Bognor. The wrought iron canopy leads you into one of the most impressive marble lobbies of any hotel I have seen. Our experience in Yantai leads me to believe that the term \"guest house\" is reserved for the grandest of available accommodation, reserved for the party's great and good.\n\nFor me one of the most distinctly Russian buildings, and one that features prominently in \"Far from Home\", is located just on the far side of the Victory Bridge (rather a practical name - not sure who's victory over whom), on the road leading north-west from Zhongshan Square.\n\nPage 375\n\nPage 376", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214640, "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "19\n\nnineteenth century that Sha Po started to establish itself as a separate village.\n\nAs well as the residences outside the walls, the village had its latrines outside the walls, on the northern side of the moat. There were three or four of these.\n\nTo the southwest of the walled village, and adjacent to the important footpath from the village to the South-East Gate of the Walled City, there were a string of important structures. Two or three large houses stood near the moat (one, owned by Ng Kit-san jointly with Ng Yuk-chan, was about 45 feet wide by 60 deep, with a courtyard and an outhouse as big as fourteen of the houses within the walls). Next to Ng Kit-san and Ng Yuk-chan's house, was the Ng clan Ancestral Hall, another large building (about 50 feet wide by 55 deep, with an outhouse, and a well) fronted by a courtyard: the village school was held in this building\". The school was managed by the Ng Shing Tat Tso Ancestral Trust, which went to great pains to hire a good teacher. They provided him with a spacious house outside the walls since the houses within the walls were too cramped to attract a good teacher. The teacher was probably housed in one of the houses owned by the trust in the Market perhaps the large house with a courtyard behind owned by the trust in Hoklo Tsuen, near the sea. With a house in the Market, the teacher would have been in close contact with the scholars who were to be found around the Sub-Magistracy and the Lok Sin Tong. The school had an excellent reputation, and attracted boys from the Market, as well as the village.\n\nThere was a wide footpath, which surrounded the moat on all sides. Four important footpaths fed into this path around the moat. To the northwest was the footpath which connected the Market at Kowloon City with Tai Wai and the villages of the Sha Tin valley. This path crossed the mountains by the pass below Lion Rock, and came into Sha Tin past the Che Kung Temple. To the northeast was the very important footpath which, having crossed the river, passed by Po Kong to the ferry pier at Yuen Chau Kok in Sha Tin (this was the main path between Kowloon City and Tai Po, Sham Chun, and Wai Chow). A branch of this path went to Siu Lek Yuen in Sha Tin. These paths crossed the mountains into Sha Tin by Sha Tin Pass and Grasscutters' Pass. To the southwest was the path to the South-East Gate of the Walled City", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214668, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "47\n\nthe highest placed individual named on the then Donation Tablet was again an Ng (the Managers of this restoration are all entered on the Donation Tablet in the names of their shops - the Market merchants were clearly the dominant force on this occasion). This man, Ng Man-yuen, XXX, cannot be identified from the Ng clan Tsuk Po, but he was probably a Nga Tsin Wai elder appearing in the Tsuk Po under a posthumous Tong name. Some six other Ngs either certainly or probably Nga Tsin Wai villagers can be identified on this 1822 Donation Tablet, as can three more on the 1859 Tablet. It should be remembered that the Nga Tsin Wai villagers did not normally worship at the Hau Wong Temple, but at their own Tin Hau Temple: the prominent position taken by Ng clan elders in these restorations must be seen as evidence of the clan recognising their local prominence and responding to it.\n\nThus, Nga Tsin Wai was keenly aware of its role as one of the largest and most prosperous villages of the area, and its elders can be seen playing an important part in all the local charitable undertakings, a part entirely in accord with the village's wealth and standing and self-confidence.\n\nThe village, again as a response to its relatively wealthy position, placed a high importance on education, as noted above. One village youth, Ng Tsz-mei, 7, 1881-1939, even managed to get into King's College, despite being so poor in his childhood that he had to work herding cattle. He studied engineering, and established with his brother the Tung Shing Company (with its premises on High Street, in Sai Ying Pun), which did a good deal of construction work for the Government. Ng Tsz-mei prospered greatly, and retired to the house he had built on the banks of the river at Sha Tin (he called the house Ng Yuen, \"The Ng Garden\", and it still survives). He left behind him a reputation for charity. He was a major supporter of the Red Cross in its medical work in the New Territories in the 1920s and 1930s, he gave coffins to the poor who could not otherwise afford a decent burial, and bought and distributed a great deal of medicine in a cholera outbreak.\n\nNot only did the Ng clan run a high-quality school, and interest themselves in academic education, but they were also anxious to ensure that the clan youth were trained in martial arts. The response of the villagers to the Taiping bandits makes it clear that there must have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "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": 214898, "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": 313, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "287\n\nfive, offshore islets but, due to silting up over the years, they became part of the mainland. Mysterious caves within the mountain shelter altars dedicated to Buddha, different gods and genies based upon popular beliefs held by the area's inhabitants. Today, these caves still serve as religious sanctuaries. The mountains are also a valuable source of red, white and blue-green marble. At the foot of the mountains, skilful marble carvers create a great variety of objets d'arts.\n\nOur fifth day was spent in Hoi An. About 15 miles southeast of Danang, this charming old town was once a flourishing port and meeting place of eastern and western cultures in central Dai Viet under the Nguyen lords. Hoi An was originally a seaport in the Champa Kingdom; by the 15th century it had become a coastal Vietnamese town under the Tran Dynasty. In the beginning of the 16th century the Portuguese came to explore the coast of Hoi An. They were followed by the first western traders in the area. Then came the Chinese, the Japanese, the Dutch, the British and the French. In the early 1980s, UNESCO and the Polish Government took the initiative and funded a restoration program to classify and safeguard Hoi An's ancient quarters and historic monuments. The old town area borders the Thu Bon River to the South of the town. Le Loi Street was the first street to be built, about four centuries ago. The Japanese quarter with its covered bridge, Japanese style shops and houses followed half a century later, then came the Cantonese quarter a further 50 years later still.\n\nHoi An's ancient past is superbly preserved in its architecture. The old quarter is a fascinating blend of temples, pagodas, community houses, shrines, clan houses, shop houses and homes. One of the most remarkable historical architectural examples is the Japanese covered Bridge. Built by the Japanese community in the 17th century, the bridge's curved shape and undulating green and yellow tiled roof give the impression of moving water. Some pagodas and 20 Chinese clan houses stand in the centre of the ancient town. The clan house has been the meeting place for many generations of the same clan. Here they recall their origins and worship their ancestors. The Chinese migrant community built most of the temples and houses here over a span of 40 years, between 1845 and 1885.\n\nThe most characteristic examples of Hoi An's architecture are the old houses along Nguyen Thai Hoc Street. These elongated houses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214951, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "2\n\nthis paper to examine the role of tea in relation to opium and the resulting conflict. For tea, too, was an addiction of sorts, though perhaps without all the deleterious effects of opium.\n\nTea and the Chinese\n\nThe origin of tea is hidden in the remote mists of antiquity and more than enough theories of its discovery exist, mostly legendary. One date keeps cropping up - 2737BC - the legendary year that attempts to pinpoint the discovery, and attribute it to the Chinese emperor Shen Nung, the Divine Healer. Like many great discoveries, it was reputedly made by chance. Shen Nung, concerned about hygiene, used to boil his water for drinking. One day, while boiling water, a gust of wind blew leaves from a branch burning under the pot into the water. A marvellous aroma overtook Shen Nung. The branches came from a tree whose formal name today is Camellia sinensis.\n\nWhile other theories may claim a different origin (a Buddhist connection has been suggested), no one questions that tea as an industry began in China. Did the plant originate in China? Chinese sources claim that the tea tree is indigenous to Hunan Province, in Southwest China, where it grew wild in the mountains, where no other plant could grow. Cultivation of tea, however, appears to have begun around 350AD along the Yangtze River, in Sichuan Province, spreading to Yunnan and through southwest China into the central provinces. By the 5th century AD, tea had joined other products as a popular article of trade. It is not surprising, therefore, that tea's excellent qualities were known to the Chinese since early times, and that drinking tea as a pleasurable pastime had spread throughout the country. A brief attempt to tax tea, in 780 AD, was met with wide public outcry and had to be rescinded. This was also the year in which the first book on tea was published - an important milestone in its history. It was a monumental work in which the author Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty dealt with tea in detail and from every possible aspect. One can only wonder at Lu Yu's deepest knowledge of the subject. His description of various shapes of different leaves verges on poetical. He described the code of conduct in relation to tea, from which the Japanese had probably derived their tea ceremony, and which in China had evolved into a social custom bordering on ritual. Some would assert that after the conquest of the Songs, at the end of the 13th century, the Tangs' romance of tea disappeared and tea", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215105, "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": 201, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "158\n\nof victorious battles he captured Kaifeng and Luoyang where he had himself proclaimed emperor of the new dynasty of Greater Yan. His further campaigns and those of his subordinates were at first victorious; however, they then began to suffer a series of defeats at the hands of Guo Ziyi, one of China's most renowned generals, whose successes led to increased loyalist resistance to the rebel forces.\n\nA major consequence of the rebellion of An Lushan, was the withdrawal by the emperor of his forces garrisoning the North-west thereby losing control over China's far dominions in Zungaria and the Tarim Basin [today's Xinjiang province] for the best part of the next thousand years.\n\nFor a while it seemed that the balance was turning in the emperor's favour. However, the Capital garrison at Chang'an [Xi'an] was incapable of resisting the attacks of the rebel forces and after the defeat of his main army on the banks of the Yellow River the emperor in great alarm was forced to flee Chang'an accompanied by some of his entourage. They fled west heading to Sichuan province ahead of the rebel advance. En route, at Ma Wei, his escort mutinied, killed Yang Guozhong and forced the emperor to order the Concubine Yang be strangled to pacify his discontented guards. Stories have varied but the most popular versions claim that the emperor had no choice but order her to be strangled by his chief eunuch or that she was forced to commit suicide. On reaching the safety of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, the heir apparent had been persuaded to usurp the throne. Weary and distressed the old emperor, now in Chengdu, gave his assent to the new reign and became the retired emperor. The new emperor bestowed the title of Taishang Huangdi\n\nupon his father but kept him under house-arrest.\n\nThe heir-apparent made his way to Lingzhou in Gansu where he was proclaimed emperor Su Zong and was soon joined by two armies, one under Guo Ziyi. By 757 Guo had recovered the main and subsidiary capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang from the rebels, whereupon the new emperor summoned the former emperor back to Chang'an to ensure that he would not be the focus of any further intrigue and threat, where he died in 761. The father was then canonised as Zongming Huangdi\n\nthough usually he is still referred to as Ming Huang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215325, "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-2001", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "50\n\nLi Deyu died in exile in 849, in Hainan some 57 years before the end of the Tang dynasty. He was born in AD 787, the son of a minister of state, and rose to become a great minister. In his heyday he was pre-eminent in China serving six emperors faithfully, including being chief minister to Tang emperor Wu Cong. Impeached as the President of the Board of War he was banished to Hainan where his spirit withered. He was not only a fine scholar but also favoured Daoism in the rivalry with Buddhism to influence the Court. He would appear to have had a comparatively close friendship with the Mao Shan sect of Daoists and is even thought to have encouraged the persecution of Buddhism and the imperial eunuchs. He was also an untiring opponent of eunuch influence. His achievements as a poet were recognised as was his contribution to horticulture.\n\nLi Guang was born in Fujian province in 1085 and died in a monastery in Hangzhou in 1140, having been an Imperial Censor and Minister of State. He is renowned for his opposition to the encroachment of the Jin Tatars and in particular the peace proposals by which Qin Gui earned his unenviable notoriety. In 1126 he commanded troops defending the capital and succeeded in defeating the Jin Tatars with great slaughter. He was impeached in 1127 after only a matter of months as Minister of State for irregularities in connection with the purchase of horses and levies of troops, and was exiled for a while before moving to a monastery where he lived out the rest of his life.\n\nLi Guang [1077-1159] was born in Yuezhou in Zhejiang. He was also a scholar-official, but of the earlier Northern Song. He also appears to be feted in Hainan for sharing Hu Quan's rigorous opposition to any kind of accommodation with the Jin invaders and his dislike of Qin Gui. The latter earned him demotion to Jianning military district, and later still another demotion. He was, however, rehabilitated to his original position in 1158 but died the following year while travelling to Jiangzhou.\n\nHu Quan [1102-1180] was a scholar-official of the Southern Song from Luling in Jizhou, Jiangxi province, who received his appointment in the second year of Jianyan emperor. Before taking up his duties, the Jin armies crossed the River and Hu raised his own army to defend the area. He too is famous for his stubborn opposition to any kind of peace dealings with the Jin invaders. He petitioned for the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215335, "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-2001", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "60\n\nundimmed, and taking command of an army, first in face of a threatened invasion by the dreaded Huns of Central Asia, and again later, in AD 48, to pacify the wild aboriginal tribes of Hunan. However, he died during the campaign in Hunan.\n\nReverend Henry15 referred to Fupo Jiangjun, as a Cantonese deity who had temples scattered along the vicinity of the Pearl and West Rivers where he was worshipped by boatmen and travellers. The reason for his popularity apparently was because it was widely believed that Fupo and his army had crossed the range between Hunan and Guangdong, conquering south China, using double-decker troop carrying boats to ferry his troops from the hinterland of Hunan to Guangzhou. The boats had to be portered across the mountains against all odds.\n\n16 Mesny noted that a number of temples in Guangxi honouring Fupo had kept alive the memory of his martial deeds and exploits. A temple on the West River near the great rapids was striking for its perfect preservation. It was kept in repair, wrote Mesny, by boatmen who regarded the deity in some special manner.\n\nIn Taiwan Ma Yuan is the main deity in some half a dozen temples where he is known as Fushun Jiangjun.\n\nc] The Great Emperor, the Plum Blossom Immortal, Mei Xian Dadi ★✩, is a minor Daoist cult Immortal whose image has only been noted on the altars of three temples, all within the Hainanese communities in Kranji, Singapore. His title however appears on the temple deity list together with other deities in five temples in southern Malaysia. Temple keepers agree that the Plum Blossom Immortal was a famous doctor who, according to a god carver, bore the personal name of Zhang Chuang, lived somewhere in China many centuries ago, and is now particularly revered by pregnant women who he protects from malignant forces. He also helps them by ensuring that the babes themselves are small and therefore do not cause any injury to the mother during birth.\n\nImages of the Plum Blossom Immortal have no unique characteristics and vary considerably from temple to temple. Two depict him seated, and at first glance looking somewhat like Guan Gong,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215340, "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-2001", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "65\n\nshould send a message to Li that he was sending a woman, his wife, to report as he himself was incapacitated. She would take with her lavish presents borne by a thousand soldiers all disguised as porters and women with their weapons concealed within the gifts. Everything went as planned and when Madame Xian and her entourage entered the city she gave the order to attack. The city was taken and a great victory achieved. Li abandoned Gaozhou and fled to Ningzhun.\n\nIn the year of her husband's death the Chen Wu Di emperor rewarded Madame Xian by creating her nine year old son, Feng Pu, the Governor of Yangchun [Yangchun Taishou] with Madame Xian as his guide and mentor.\n\nsummoned Feng Pu, the\n\nWhen, in AD 570, Ouyang He Yangchun Taishou, to Nanhai to entice him to join yet another rebellion, Feng Pu's first reaction was to inform his mother who advised him saying that having been loyal to the throne for three generations her son should not become involved. Then she, herself, led troops to attack Ouyang, captured him and sent him to Qiankang (present day Nanjing) where he was beheaded. The Chen emperor Xuan Di conferred the title of Xuan Hou on Feng Pu, reflecting his mother's loyalty and bravery. When Feng Pu died he left his three sons, Feng Sheng, Feng Huai and Feng An in the care of his old mother.\n\nIn AD 588, the Sui emperor Wen Di planned to invade the Kingdom of Chen with a force of some half a million men concentrated in Jiangnan [the area south of the River (Yangze)]. Chen's defensive force was established in Lingnan with Madame Xian appointed commander by popular demand. She and her three grandsons were the great defenders of the Kingdom of Chen. Sadly, in the spring of 589 Jiangnan fell to the Sui emperor and the Chen emperor was captured. The Sui emperor asked the defeated Chen emperor to issue an edict to Madame Xian informing her that the destiny of a rule is decided in Heaven and that his kingdom had fallen. He ordered Madame Xian to submit to the Sui emperor and to serve him as loyally as she had the Chen dynasty. Enclosed with the edict was a rod made from a rhino horn which when examined by Madame Xian, confirmed that the Chen dynasty had in fact fallen. She agreed to surrender and peace returned to the area.\n\nIn AD 589 Wang Zhongzhuan of Panyou rebelled and attacked", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215594, "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-2001", "page_number": 371, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "321\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA TALE OF SOUR GRAPES: MESSRS. LITTLE AND MESNY AND\n\nTHE FIRST STEAMSHIP THROUGH THE YANGZI GORGES\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nIn 1898 Archibald Little was the first man to take a steam-vessel up through the dangerous Yangzi Gorges amidst great acclaim. This was a red-rag to William Mesny who, in 1905 in his Shanghai periodical Mesny's Chinese Miscellany, furiously wrote that had he been listened to in 1875, a steamboat could have completed the journey up the Gorges within a year or so of that date.\n\nThe 3,200-mile long river, referred to by westerners as the Yangzi is known to the Chinese as Changjiang, Long River, or Da Jiang, the Great River. The foreigner name, Yangzi, is a misnomer from the Chinese reference to the first stretch from the Yellow Sea, approximately a day or so sail up from Shanghai to Yangzhou, hence Yang.\n\nThe River can be divided into four sections. The first stretch from the sea to Wuhan [Hankou and Wuchang], some 600 miles upstream, is navigable for blue water vessels during the summer and small draught steamers at all times of the year. It may come as a surprise to read of the emergency run in September of 1931 of the British aircraft carrier, H.M.S. Hermes to Hankou during major floods. The Chairman of the Nationalist Flood Relief Commission, T.V. Soong, requested the British C-in-C for assistance using RAF reconnaissance aircraft from H.M.S. Hermes to assist the Chinese in flood survey patrol work.\n\nThe second stretch upstream from Wuhan to Yichang is always navigable to small draught vessels and is a very boring run passing, as it does, through a flat plain with many dykes.\n\nThe third stretch from Yichang to Chongqing is fast flowing downstream through the narrow and dangerous succession of Gorges, so popular with foreign tourists. The great variations in water level", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215595, "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-2001", "page_number": 372, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "322\n\nracing through the Gorges make this section difficult and dangerous both at low and high water. Chongqing, the chief commercial port of western China and an important distribution centre, was opened to foreign trade by an Additional Article [1890] to the Chefoo Agreement of 1876. This stretch also includes the River down to Chongqing from its junction with the Min River at Yibin [Suifu].\n\nThe fourth and final stretch, the Upper Yangzi of 1,600 miles, is torrential almost from its source in Eastern Tibet far to the west, down to Yibin. It has several major tributaries.\n\nWe, however, are interested in the Gorges. They have long been regarded by Chinese junkmen and especially foreigners who had travelled through them as passengers on river junks, as one of the most difficult stretches of river navigation on earth, with a current in places running at 13 knots.\n\nOur story concerns two British expatriates in China who, as far as we know, never met as they were of different social circles. One is Archibald Little, a British Shanghai merchant, married to a British lady and William Mesny, a struggling entrepreneur also in Shanghai but married to a Chinese. Paul King wrote that 'One of the foreign tea-tasters who each year visited Kiukiang [Jiujiang] was Archibald Little, who was never very successful in business but found himself in Yichang in the uphill work of establishing as a fact that the rapids in the upper reaches of the Yangtze could be negotiated by steam craft. In my [King] time the Navy was represented in Yichang by H.M.S. Kinsha - the famous pioneer merchant steamer on the Upper Yangtze owned and operated by the late Archibald Little.'\n\nThe first steamer to ascend the upper waters of the Great River, the Yangzi, through the Gorges above Yichang and as far as Chongqing during the low water season in the month of March 1898 was the 9-ton steam launch, Leechuen [Li Chuan], the property of Mr. Archibald Little who travelled aboard the steamer with his wife.\n\nArchibald John Little was born in London in 1838, and arrived in China in 1859 where he remained, apart from short visits back to Britain, until 1907 when he returned there and died the following year. He was a merchant, traveller and writer and is as well known to some as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215625, "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-2001", "page_number": 402, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "353\n\nA CONTENTIOUS CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY IN CENTRAL CHINA, 1887\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nChristian missionaries, especially Victorian, came in for much criticism and derision, as well as great praise for, amongst other things, their devotion to the Chinese man-in-the-street. During the years of bigoted and the blood and thunder Christianity of the Victorian era it was not uncommon for them to be mocked and lampooned by the expatriate business community, sometimes not without reason.\n\nWilliam Spencer Percival relates a hard-to-believe story in the late 1880s during one of his boating and shooting excursions to the Gorges of the Upper Yangzi. The description of Chinese reaction to such an aggressive missionary is probably reasonably accurate and possibly even moderate for the day; and from today's point of view not without some justification.\n\nHis story is related here in full, without comment. While up the river I met a gentleman who was a missionary. He was an Englishman; but belonged to an American-Scotch mission. This may appear to the uninitiated a little mixed, but it is substantially correct.\n\nAmong the various means adopted by the missionary body for Christianising the heathen, this gentleman chose the most curious and original method I ever heard of. Before he was appointed to the ------ mission he was stationed at one of the fortified towns some miles lower down the river. Here he resided in one of the strongholds of Buddha himself, among a people who were entirely ignorant of the first principles of Christianity. I cannot say he hit upon a very wise plan in his style of religious instruction.\n\nThis place, as I have said, was a fortified town, and a very stringent rule of the city - which was occupied by a detachment of troops - was, that the gates should, every night, be closed at ten o'clock. Our worthy Free-Lance of the Cross was very fond of rambling round the country in the cool of the evening, and on many occasions returned long after the gates had been closed. When he found that no entrance was to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215641, "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-2001", "page_number": 418, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "370\n\nconsiderably out of sorts and suffering from gout. During the journey Jeremy Reid, one of the guards belonging to the Royal Regiment of Artillery, died:\n\nHis disorder was occasioned by a surfeit of fruits, the man having eaten no less than forty apples at breakfast!\n\nOn reaching 'Pekin' Macartney received letters informing him that Lion and other ships were leaving Chusan and that only Hindostan was remaining (Chusan being an island in the bay between Shanghai and Hangzhou, which was preferred, over Hong Kong, as a base by the British Government). Hearing that the ships had left Chusan upset the Chinese officials who wished, now the visit was over, for the Embassy to leave the coast of China as soon as possible, the limit of forty days prescribed for visits from without the Kingdom having been reached. Because of this the Embassy was then more or less directed to start on their return journey and left 'Pekin' on 7th October 1793 for Chusan travelling down the Grand Canal from Tientsin to Hangzhou. In Tientsin they were treated to a sumptuous banquet:\n\n...excellent mutton, pork, venison and poultry of all kinds, fruits in great variety - peaches, plums, apples, pears, grapes, chestnuts and walnuts and several others new to them.\n\nThe journal describes in some detail the construction and working of the system of sluices on the Grand Canal. These were unlike the locks on British canals but consisted of a single sluice which was raised by windlass, in fairly flat country, through which the boats were hauled when the sluice was raised.\n\nAt Hangzhou it was confirmed that Lion and the other ships had left for Canton being urgently in need of medicine for the men on board. Hindostan was quite incapable of accommodating the entourage and all its heavy baggage and it was agreed, as though it was simply a matter of course, that the party would continue the long journey by river and with some trekking overland on ponies between the north and south flowing rivers, and so to make their way to Canton. They left Hangzhou on ponies on 14th November and reached Canton on 19th December. This was an extraordinary and intrepid journey. Macartney's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215673, "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-2001", "page_number": 450, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "402\n\nBy July 15, the 24th Division was forced back on Taejon, sixty miles below Osan, where it initially took position along the Kum River above the town. Clumps of South Korean troops by then were strung out west and east of the division to help delay the North Koreans.\n\nWhile pushing the 24th Division below Taejon, the main North Korean force split, one division moving south to the coast, then turning east along the lower coastline. The remainder of the force continued southeast beyond Taejon toward Taegu. Southward advances by the secondary attack forces in the central and eastern sectors matched the main thrust, all clearly aimed to converge on Pusan. North Korean supply lines grew long in the advance, and less and less tenable under heavy United Nations Command (UNC) air attacks. The U.S. Far Eastern Air Force meanwhile achieved air superiority, indeed air supremacy, and UNC warships wiped out North Korean naval craft.\n\nAlarmed by the rapid loss of ground, Walker ordered a stand along a 140-mile line arching from the Korea Strait to the Sea of Japan west and north of Pusan. His U.S. divisions occupied the western arc, basing their position on the Naktong River. South Korean forces, reorganized by American military advisers into two corps headquarters and five divisions, defended the northern segment. A long line and few troops kept positions thin in this **Pusan Perimeter**. This line was, essentially, the front on August 12, the day that Mr. Morrison was killed.\n\nMr. Morrison's movements in Korea before his death are unknown. Seoul had fallen several days before his arrival, so he would have been forced to arrive in the south of the country, perhaps at Taegu. One assumes he spent the next five weeks, or so, behind the retreating UNC frontline.\n\n\"Morrison, a Daily Telegraph correspondent, and a great friend of mine, Uni Nair (sic), acting as a UN observer, were all killed together. I have always been convinced that Nair probably got them all into trouble. He was notably fearless. While with the Indian army in Italy during WW2, as a PR officer, he thoroughly enjoyed taking visitors into particularly dangerous sectors where their jeep attracted hostile fire. Towards the end of the war, in Burma, he volunteered without training to jump with paratroops in the drop on the outskirts of Rangoon.\n\n'Nair was fond of palm reading. My own, that I would reach a ripe old age, turned out pretty true. But if we asked Uni what sort of future he read in his own palm he always said, after a pause, “A short life and a merry one.”\" (Russell Spurr -- personal communication with the author)\n\nPage 450\n\nPage 451", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215991, "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": 290, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "224 \n\n(Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981), the first volume subtitled Barbarians At The Gates, pp. 143-147, 174-175, 224-225.\n\n11. Both Hong Réngan and He Jinshan have been discussed in detail in Pfister's Striving for \"The Whole Duty of Man\", especially chapters 4-6. A more thorough study of He Jinshan's contribution to Chinese Christian history by Lauren Pfister is an essay entitled \"A Transmitter but not a Creator: The Creative Transmission of Protestant Biblical Traditions by Ho Tsun-Sheen (1817-1871)” in Irene Eber, et. al., eds., Bible in Modern China: The Literary and Intellectual Impact (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1999), pp. 165-197.\n\n12. The name of Ch'ëa Kam-Kwong is constituted by particular Chinese characters Legge described as the \"Golden Light Chariot,\" a way of expressing in English what the common meaning of each character is. Unfortunately, two misspellings have predominated in other literature, one in English and one in Chinese. In English, we surmise that Helen Edith Legge put together the typescript entitled \"Che'a Kin-KWáng,\" horribly mixing up the transliteration with something like the proper name in Hoklo dialect, but the given name in Mandarin. Legge never uses these transliterations in his own writings. In Chinese, Wáng Tão wrote the wrong characters for the name in his personal diary for 1862 when he had first come to Hong Kong, showing also his struggle in understanding Cantonese pronunciations, making his given name \"Embroidered River\" (M. Jinjiang, C. Gam-gong) presumably by guessing from the sounds he heard from other Hong Kong Chinese Christians who referred to him. Consult Fang Xing and Tăng Zhijūn, eds., Wáng Tão rìjì (Wáng Tāo ’s Diary) (Beijing: Zhōnghuá Book Store, 1987), pp. 196-197, record for the date of the 10th month and 15th day of the lunar calendar (or a day in September, 1862).\n\n13. There is no study of Ch'ea Kam-Kwong in Chinese language sources as far as I know, and very little published about him in English after the 1860s. Part of the reason, as will be argued below, is that his murder became an embarrassment to both the British embassy and the Qing dynasty at the time.\n\n14. Legge wrote memorials for his elder brother, an important Congregational minister in Great Britain, George Legge (1802-1860), and his co-pastor, Hé Jinshan, published in 1863 and 1872 respectively. See the typescript on the \"Sketch of the Life of Ho Tsun-sheen\" in SOAS/CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 7, the original manuscript on Ch'a being held in the Bodleian Library (the second item in MS Eng. misc. c. 865, fol. 1-19). Consult the long introduction written for George Legge's Lectures on Theology, Science and Revelation already mentioned above. The text of \"Che'a Kin-KWáng” is a compilation done most likely by his daughter, Helen Edith Legge. It uses many original and secondary sources citing her father's and other missionaries' writings, but also includes some perspectives and interpretations which may not portray the full story.\n\n15. The story of their visit to Daoist and Buddhist sites on Mount Lo-fow is described in Legge's \"Journey of a Missionary Tour along the 'East River' of Canton Province,\" China Mail, Supplement to #853 (June 20, 1861), p.4 (covering events of May 22-23, 1861). This is the full text from which extracts were and published in EMMC/MM, No.304 (New Series, No. 21) for September 2, 1861, pp. 249-260.\n\nmade", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216022, "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": 321, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "THE YANGZI PORT OF ZHENJIANG DOWN THE CENTURIES\n\n鎮江\n\nPART I\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n255\n\nIntroduction\n\nZhenjiang is a former walled city on the south bank of what is known to the Chinese as the Chang Jiang, the Long River, or simply as The Great River, and to Westerners - the Yangzi [Yangtze]. The city lies some 40 miles downstream from Nanjing and 156 miles upstream from Shanghai, and in its prime during the Northern Song, in the eleventh century, it was one of the major ports on the River, and even though its influence and authority came to a sudden and dramatic end with its capture and destruction by the Taiping rebels in 1853 it remained the provincial capital of Jiangsu province down to the 1940s.\n\nZhenjiang commanded one of the two junctions of the southern or main arm of the Grand Canal with the Yangzi. The city is surrounded on one side by the Yangzi and on three other sides by hills, none at all high or steep, with the Grand Canal winding past the southern and western face of the walls to its convergence with the River at the Xiannü Temple. The city has been walled since the Yuan [13th century], and was built on the level ground between the Yangzi and the Grand Canal. Three of these numerous hills, all islands or former islands in the Yangzi, Jiao Shan, Beigu Shan and Jin Shan, are part of the city's legend. Some ten miles to the south lies a range of higher hills within which foreigners used to seek their exercise, riding and hunting.\n\nOf all the treaty ports Zhenjiang is possibly the least remembered by the great majority of westerners, with very few nowadays even having heard of the place. Not even when it is explained that in former romanisations it has been known to foreigners as Chinkiang, Chin-kiang, Chen-chiang Fu, Chin-keang-foo, Tsing-kiang-foo, Kin-kiang, Chingkiang, Tsing-kiang and Jingkou [i.e. Gateway to the Capital - Nanjing]. It was even known by the title of Chin-shan [Jin Shan], Gold", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216023, "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": 322, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "256\n\nMountain, a former small island now joined to the mainland by alluvium, referred to by Victorian travellers as a 'pyramidal rock'. This used to stand out in the Yangzi a mile or so upstream from the city of Zhenjiang, hence their use of its name generically for the city. There is a further island, Jiao Shan Scorched Island, an islet some mile or so downstream from the city with its own ancient temple, Dinghui Si concealed within its tree-covered slopes. It too has its own memorials from the era of the Six Dynasties - two or three ancient cypress trees, whose storm-riven and almost barkless trunks were in the 1920s still held together by iron bands. According to Allom, Silver Island [Mountain], the name formerly given by foreigners to Jiao Shan, is to the westward of Zhenjiang, within sight of the Gold Island [Mountain] [see illustration]. Legend has it that Jin Shan, Gold Mountain takes its name from the time during the Tang dynasty when a certain Bei Totuo was digging into the hill and found a pot of gold; this has long been denied by Buddhists who believe that the name of the hill has a Buddhist symbolic meaning. Although the British Concession was originally laid out with intervening ground between it and the old walled city it did not take many years for the new native city to encroach and reach the Concession boundary. This meant that foreigners wishing to leave the Concession had to battle their way through the main street of the new native city, facing filthy and disease-ridden beggars, open drains and past open spaces which were used as public conveniences, constantly patronised by squatting men.\n\nCaptain Cunynghame, serving with the British force sailing up the Yangzi and about to mount an assault on Zhenjiang, arrived off the city on the 18th of July 1842. The force had been proceeding with great care as it was the first opportunity that western warships had had to penetrate as far inland up the Great River. He described his first sighting of Golden Island as 'the most beautiful little fairy isle imaginable, covered with temples, whose gilt-topped pagodas shone brilliantly in the evening sun'. A week or so later, once the city had been stormed and he was able to walk through it and wrote that \"the walled portion of the town was reckoned about four miles in circumference. The suburbs, extending a long distance to the west, probably occupied an equal extent of ground. The former space was chiefly occupied by streets containing shops, with an occasional blank space of wall within which were the houses of the most wealthy inhabitants. A very large portion, however, was occupied by gardens", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216024, "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": 323, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "257\n\nand pleasure-grounds, all of which showed evident signs of great neglect. The suburbs were one dense mass of habitations of two stories in height; the lower portions of which were devoted to the handicraftsmen, who employed themselves in them, or to store rooms, in which merchandise was deposited. There were numerous public buildings, most of them appearing to be of a religious character, either dedicated to Buddha or Confucius.\n\nMainly for safety reasons ships passing up and down the Yangzi tended to use the main channel which ran along the north bank of the Great River opposite Zhenjiang. Down the years spits have formed close to Zhenjiang, mainly off Ganlu Si [Consular Bluff] and Xiang Shan Bluff, whilst the Zhengrenzhou spit steadily advanced downstream from the west blocking off the approaches to the harbour. The flat sandy bottom, so the Admiralty Guide tells us, does not provide good holding ground, especially during autumn gales.\n\nThe channel of the Great River at Zhenjiang is some two miles in breadth and had long been a ferry crossing point over the Yangzi, linking Zhenjiang with the major city of Yangzhou, a short distance upstream of the northern section of the Grand Canal. The long-mooted bridge over the River has still to be built. In the early days of the opening up of China by the West the city was believed to be the furthest point upstream on the Yangzi which seagoing vessels of the heaviest burden could reach with comparative ease. When Hankou, over five hundred miles further upstream, was opened to foreign trade it soon became apparent that trade at Zhenjiang consisted of little more than being an agency for steamers using the port as a stopping point, and for the Customs House for Chinese merchants. So it was that when vessels had access to the fountainhead of trade at Hankou, together with the fact that the harbour at Zhenjiang having silted up, the importance of the port became in great measure superseded. Sadly, the dolphins which not too long ago frolicked in the Great River and were commonly seen off Zhenjiang have been fished into extinction with today's oily pollution preventing any return, though a very occasional porpoise may still be seen.\n\nA Victorian writer described the climate and temperature of Zhenjiang as 'little different from that in Shanghai, whereas the varied scenery and hilly surroundings of Zhenjiang were an advantage which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216028, "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": 327, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "261\n\nwere keen to claim association with the first rulers of the Zhou, of the 12th century BC, and also with the infamous first ruler of China, Qin Shih Huangdi who, it was claimed, had used the area of Dantu as a penal settlement.\n\nDuring dynastic times Zhenjiang was a walled administrative seat, an important prefecture, and one of twelve prefectural cities in Jiangsu province, in a major region known as Jiangnan [South of the River]. Zhenjiang means 'Guard-post of the River', a title given in 1113 during the Song dynasty, and its location, guarding the junction of the Grand Canal and the Yangzi, is such that it was a fortified post at the point where the southern arm of the Grand Canal crosses the Great River to join the northern arm, as well as being the first and ideal position to control the upstream passage of the Yangzi. The British political aim, when their soldiers captured the city in 1842, was to cut off the vital supply route, the Grand Canal, from southern China to the north in order to exert maximum pressure upon the Imperial government.\n\nAlthough Zhenjiang lays claim to a number of incidents, destruction by nature and by human hand, visits by royalty, legendary happenings we shall restrain ourselves to note but a few.\n\nSun Ce**, who was assassinated in 200 AD, conquered a wide territory down to the mouth of the Great River, to which region he gave the title Jiangdong [East of the River]. His brother, Sun Quan of Wu# succeeded to his throne, and it is to him that Zhenjiang is said to owe its existence as a city. Moreover, it was here that he came to court the beauty, Pan Furen, whose father Sun Quan had condemned to death. He pursued her until he was able to make her his wife. Although Nanjing was Sun's main city Zhenjiang had reminders of his fortifications still visible during the early years of the Republic. The foundations of the fortifications that he built round his Governor's Residence could still be traced in a line of crumbling masonry that capped the ridge of heights connecting the then existing Zhenjiang city wall northward to the monastery, Ganlu Si. Also, inside the present city stood a high solitary gateway, with a building on it known as the Old Drum Tower. The masonry foundations of the gate were alleged to date from the time of Sun Quan, and some graves outside the North gate were also said to be those of some members of his line.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "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 }, { "id": 216034, "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": 333, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "267\n\nThe force despatched up the Yangzi in 1629 by Koxinga's father was led by Zheng Huigui, Koxinga's uncle. It arrived off Zhenjiang just as the Manchu army was crossing over to Jin Shan [Golden Island], causing the Manchus to pause, change their plans and move further upstream for their crossing. However, the Manchus, having taken Nanjing, upstream, they floated downstream on rafts and after coming under fire from Zheng's force, still went on to capture Zhenjiang. Zheng fled downstream and back down the coast to Fujian. It was just at that moment that Koxinga's father deserted to the Manchu side. With most of Fujian province within his power Zheng, despite his submission to the alien Manchus, welcomed the Ming emperor who was fleeing ahead of the southward advance of the Manchus as a means of augmenting his power. Despite his protestations of loyalty he failed to aid the emperor's restorationist cause by the simple expedient of inactivity.\n\nOur next episode begins fifteen years after the execution of Koxinga's father in Beijing where he had been held hostage, with Koxinga himself vigorously opposing the Manchus. In 1659, Koxinga hearing that the Manchu forces were preoccupied in Yunnan province sailed to the mouth of the Yangzi where he remained whilst a portion of his fleet commanded by Zhang Huangyan, sailed up the Great River, captured Zhenjiang before sailing on to Wuhu, far upstream beyond Nanjing. Koxinga, himself, landed on Congming island near the mouth of the Great River and having marched across country, he entered the old Ming capital of Nanjing in triumph, where he proclaimed the restoration of the Ming. However, he was promptly besieged in Nanjing for four long months before surrendering the city and being able to escape. The failure of the second raid up the Yangzi led the Manchus to install large garrisons within the major walled cities down the Yangzi, Zhenjiang being but one. In each city a special quarter was set aside for the Manchu garrison, members of which were forbidden to have too much intercourse with the native Chinese and quite categorically were forbidden to marry them. The Manchus at first were merely feared but as the years passed so they grew to be heartily disliked. And in their later years they were despised. There was a remnant of the Manchus still in Zhenjiang in the 1920s, whose poverty was a burden on local charities and the authorities and whose extensive burial grounds down the centuries of both the Manchu White and Yellow Banners were still standing in the city's south-west suburbs. It was claimed that Zhenjiang reflected typical Jiangbei culture with a dash of Peking from the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216039, "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": 338, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "272\n\nAlthough not part of the Zhenjiang story a Daoist cult centre on Mao Shan, a mountain some fifty miles to the south, was visited annually by a stream of pilgrims in the Spring, a great many of whom passed through the convenient port of Zhenjiang. The Daoist Mao Shan school was arguably the most powerful Daoist sect during the Tang and maintained its great prestige down to at least 1949. The Mao Shan Daopai as it is known, is renowned for its seances and medium trances, and according to Mao Shan sect priests was founded in the fourth century AD with the Mao Shan sect priests considering themselves to be the highest ranking of all Daoist orders.15 The sect originally appears to have been meditative and only later did it fall into line with other sects.\n\nIn 1917 two images were observed by Otterwill in Zhenjiang, in procession, Yan Gong and Jiang Gong #, both patron deities of river boatmen. Both deities were popular on altars in and around Nanchang, Anjing and along the Yangzi. Also popular in central China, C. B. Day records that Yan Gong in Zhejiang province was one of the Five Daoist deities who presided over a period of danger, a member of the Celestial Board of Health 瘟部五帝.\n\nThere have been but few references in western writings to the legend and role of Yan Gong, a Patron of Sailors. According to Doré, \"he was regarded in Central China as the protector of sailors and the god of the tides [Chao Shen].\" This, presumably, means the patron deity of sailors in the rivers and estuaries of the Yangzi basin. However, Yang Laoda is the usual patron of boatmen on the Yangzi. Werner1 provides a more detailed description of Yan Gong, the god of sailors, adding a little to Doré. He notes that Yan Gong had a temple built in his honour near Shanghai during the reign of the first emperor of the period of the Three Kingdoms [ca. AD 240] and that he was the deified hero in that temple who protected Shanghai from rebel attacks during the reign of Ming Shi Cong [ca. 1540]. Other legends claim that he was born during the Song in Jiangxi, that he was one of the four major deities of Jiangxi province, and was a censor famous for his integrity. Or that he was again a native of Jiangxi but born during the Yuan, and drowned during a storm when returning home. He was buried but was seen by the inhabitants of his native district on the same day. When his coffin was brought to Nanchang and opened it was found to be empty, a miracle which led to a temple being built in his honour. Sailors have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216041, "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": 340, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "274\n\nThere also used to be an early Buddhist shrine dedicated to the former abbot of renown, Fa Hai, concealed in a cave on the hillock. In recent times the few foreign tourists visiting Zhenjiang have been perplexed by the description of Jin Shan being an island when it is so obviously part of the mainland. The reason is all too obvious. Alluvial silt left by the Yangzi floods down the past hundred and fifty years has not only completely joined the island to the mainland but also reclaimed part of the River, land now used for agriculture. 19th century western accounts of the town usually tended to begin with a description of the view from the Yangzi of the pagoda of the temple on the island of Jin Shan or, during the storming of the town by British forces in 1842, of troops being disembarked on the mainland across the strip of water at that time still separating Jin Shan from the mainland.\n\nAccording to Doré's description of the Jin Shan temple following his visit during the early days of the twentieth century, \"the visitor was confronted on entering with the Falstaffian figure of the Buddha Maitreya [Mile Fo], the Buddha of the Future, squatting in his turret as guardian of the precincts. Behind him opens out a vast vestibule at the sides of which are four gigantic statues - about fifteen feet in height - of the Four Heavenly Kings, Si Da Jingang, inner guardians of the monks and the monastery. Crossing the inner court, one entered the great Hall. On the altar were two Buddhist triads. Facing North are gigantic statues of Sakyamuni, Yao Shi Fo and Mile Fo, the Buddhas of the Present, Past and Future. Beside Sakyamuni in the centre, stand his two disciples, the old Kasyapa and the young Ananda. Right and left of the altar are the two guardians Li, the Pagoda-bearer and Wei Tuo. Facing South is the Triad San Da Shi: Guan Yin, Wen Shu and Pu Xian. Guan Yin rides over the waves on a sea monster; near by are the rocks of her sacred isle, Pu Tuo and, in between these, sundry immortals and Buddhas were housed. The Golden Boy, Shan Cai and the Naga Maiden, Long Nu are conventionally in attendance on Guan Yin whom the authorities in the temple recognise as formerly having been a god - not a goddess\".\n\nThe second large Hall was the Hall of the Yangzi Spirit, Jiang Shen [Spirit of the River]. Serving as a military barracks at the time of Doré's visit “it retained of its former glories only one ordinary-sized statue of the god, in a lateral niche, viz. a fish about three metres in length carved in wood with a copper plaque providing the honorific", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216044, "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": 343, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "277\n\npleaded with him and explained that she was a good person and truly loved her husband. She added that she was due to bear his child in the not too distant future. The Abbot, who is the villain of the tale, would have none of it and White Snake at her wits end called on her allies, the fish and crustaceans of the Great River to her aid. The violent and prolonged rainstorm flooded the entire area around Jin Shan island in an attempt to free her husband and as the waters rose White Snake again pleaded with the Abbot offering to call off the dangerous river waters. He refused to listen, used his own cloak to quell the waters and even tried to catch her in his magical urn to incarcerate her but to no avail as she was protected by Wen Chang, the God of Literature, as her future son was destined to achieve the status of Zhuang Yuan, the First Scholar in the whole country. The Abbot immediately knew that he was no longer able to catch or destroy White Snake but would be able to do so once she had borne the child.\n\nThe Abbot gave Xu his magical urn and explained that once the son had been born he was to capture her in it and she would then be incarcerated forever. Xu returned home and after tearful explanations from both husband and wife they were reconciled, though once the child was born Xu threw the urn at his wife. Having been captured by the magic urn she turned back into her original form. Almost immediately the Abbot materialised and took the urn with its prisoner and placed it under the Thunder Peak Pagoda on the shores of Hangzhou's lake. Xu bitterly repented betraying his wife and sought obscurity as a solitary Buddhist monk far away.\n\nThe son grew into a handsome and talented youth and only when he had become the long forecast First Scholar, a Zhuang Yuan, was he told the sad tale of his ill-fated father and mother. At an auspicious time on an auspicious day he prepared an elaborate sacrificial ceremony in memory of his mother and there, before the Thunder Peak Pagoda he knelt in prayer. His mother, freed for a very short period as a gesture by the local guardian deity, appeared dressed in white. She approached her son and full of tears explained her love for his father and the sad ending, and especially the dreadful punishment she was suffering for having caused the deaths of so many innocent people in and around Zhenjiang by ordering the land to be flooded. She was escorted back to the Pagoda to continue her agony - for all eternity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216049, "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": 348, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "282\n\nin 1896 took herself off up the Yangzi and later wrote about her six-month journey, including her stopover in Zhenjiang. She travelled on the steamer Poyang and...'after passing Silver Island [Jiao Shan], a wooded rock on which there is a fine temple, we reached Chinkiang, the first of the treaty ports on the Yangtze, and well situated at the junction of the Grand Canal with the river. On my two visits I thought it an attractive place. It has a fine bund and prosperous-looking foreign houses, with a British Consulate on a hill above; trees abound. The concession roads are broad and well kept. A row of fine hulks connected by bridges with the shore offers great facilities for the landing of goods and passengers. Sikh police are much in evidence, the hum of business greets one's ears, traffic throngs the bund, the Grand Canal is choked with junks, ...and judging from appearances only, one might think Zhenjiang a busier port than Hankow, the great centre for commerce in Central China'. Mrs Bird then goes on to describe the passing trade including...'our German rivals have done a very neat thing' in starting an albumen factory, in which the albumen, dextrously separated from the yolks of ducks' eggs, is made into slabs, which are sent to Germany for use in photography, the production of leather, and the printing of cotton, etc.'. She also commented on 'the beautiful Golden Island [Jin Shan], separated as recently as 1842 by the channel south of the island where there is now an expanse of wooded and cultivated land sprinkled with villages'.\n\nThe hulks were replaced many years ago, and yet again, since 1980, their wooden piers have been rebuilt into a row of some half dozen concrete piers. Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of Chinese Maritime Customs for forty-five years, referred several times to the hulks at Chinkiang, usually because the hulk owner, Bean in one instance, was involved in a law case with the local Customs Commissioner.\n\nIsabella Bird learned of a number of charities and organisations for the welfare of the poor from the British Consul, W R Carles, and from Rev. W W Lawton who had made careful investigations for the Christian Literary Association of Zhenjiang. She noted that there were an orphan asylum and a benevolent institute for girls in Zhenjiang as well as a benevolent institute with eighty boys. For adults there was a Bureau for Advancing Funds, of inestimable advantage to the struggling farmer or merchant. There were also two free dispensaries, with nine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216057, "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": 356, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "290\n\na chapel where they stationed an evangelist. By the turn of the century Zhenjiang had become an important Protestant missionary centre in its own right, with adequate missionary cover and the accessories for Mission work including a women's hospital, a girls' school and the large and well-organised men's college of the Methodist Episcopal Mission. China Inland Mission had by this time also opened a station in the city as well as their own hospital,\n\n4\n\nAspects of life which today sound strange were not uncommon, such as the missionary in Yangzhou, immediately across the wide Yangzi from Zhenjiang, having to cross the river with his bride for the civil ceremony at the nearest consulate, in Zhenjiang, before ferrying her back to their future home.\n\nDuring the 1860s and 1870s, the great famine in the Yellow River and Yangzi basins and the anti-missionary troubles across China, Hudson Taylor, who had founded the China Inland Mission in 1865, travelled widely encouraging his workers and authorising the expenditure of funds on orphanages and relief. In mid-March of 1877 he stopped over in Zhenjiang for a month, during which time a fire which had devoured houses all around the Mission premises had stopped short of the Mission, merely scorching one of its window frames.\n\nGunboat diplomacy was part of life on the 19th century Yangzi with recalcitrant mandarins being brought to heel when, for example, they ignored the cries for help of foreigners under attack from mobs or even encouraged such violence either openly or tacitly. In October 1868 a major confrontation in Yangzhou, the city immediately across the Yangzi from Zhenjiang, involved a large crowd of uncontrolled rioters bent on killing foreigners. They attacked the home of Hudson Taylor and his family, injuring several members of the China Inland Mission. HMS Rinaldo, a British gunboat, arrived and under its guns, the Viceroy in Nanjing agreed to terms demanded by the British Consul, Medhurst. However, the Rinaldo's captain fell ill and the gunboat had to be withdrawn. The Viceroy promptly repudiated the terms he had agreed and a further force of four Royal Navy vessels had to be sent to exert military pressure once more upon the Viceroy. Terms were again dictated and once more agreed. Meanwhile Hudson Taylor and his family had been accommodated in the home of the British Consul in Zhenjiang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216062, "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": 361, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "295\n\nregular aside about their breasts and occasionally their naked crotch. He also made much of his affairs with Chinese women and at this point, in 1864 had a 'romantic and intimate interlude' with a young Chinese widow. She did not appear to be short of money and, having sought Mesny's company, accompanied him up river from Zhenjiang to Hankou where they remained until she left to join her in-laws in 1865. He had been away for a fortnight to the cotton growing districts and on his return had been handed a very polite letter from the 'fair charmer' thanking him for all his attentions to her and informing him that she was continuing on to her late husband's home in Hunan there to rear her children and end her days in virtuous widowhood. She ended, wishing him joy and happiness, by saying that the Chinese banker would hand Mesny a little keepsake to be retained by him in everlasting remembrance of their unexpected meeting at Zhenjiang, their romantic adventures and intimacy on the voyage up the Great River, and their separation for ever at Hankou.\n\nMesny's visit to Zhenjiang 1874\n\nAfter he had left military service in 1874 Mesny made frequent and repeated egotistical assertions to prominence and repute within Chinese bureaucracy and commercial circles with his endeavours, so he claimed, concentrated on guiding and promoting what he described as the westernisation and modernisation in China. It is far from clear how he made a living after 1874 though later we read in his Miscellanies that he had obtained lucrative business in Guiyang at one stage; that in 1886 he had an insurance agency in Shanghai; and was also the representative for the Lartigue Railway Construction Company. He must have had many other irons in the fire to enable him to travel so widely and so far within China, of which only a few were described in his Miscellanies.\n\nIn late 1874 he travelled down river to Zhenjiang and then overland through Shandong to Beijing, spending the winter in Jinan. From the dates he gives in his autobiographical notes Mesny must have left his bride fairly soon after their marriage as he travelled through Shantung province on his way to Peking from Chen-kiang' [Mesny does not explain why he was there though almost certainly it would have been no more than a port on his journey from Hankou to Shandong]. In Shandong he visited, amongst other places, the home and burial place of Confucius at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216065, "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": 364, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "298\n\nhad been destroyed and burned down. Thousands of rioters had arrived there in boats and destroyed foreign property. These enigmatic statements suggest that Mesny believed that ‘charity funds for famine relief' were being misused by the Viceroy and others to buy off bandits, even if he does not actually spell it out. There is no indication in his Miscellanies to whom he reported after his fact-finding mission or what he did with his information about the famine, or whether he actually provided physical relief for some of the unfortunate victims.\n\nAs so often happened a very minor incident, in this case concerning a Sikh policeman, grew in a matter of hours into a major riot. It was riots in 1889 referred to by Mesny, when the Sikh, a member of the municipal police force of the Zhenjiang Concession, was alleged to have struck a Chinese. According to Arlington it was started by the Concession Chief of Police, an Indian, accidentally killing a coolie who 'dared' to have his head shaved on the Bund [a terrible thing to shave the head on the Bund!]. The events followed a not unusual pattern with the mob throwing stones and the Europeans managing to escape to a ship on the Great River but not before telegraphing for assistance to Shanghai. The Chinese authorities too had been called upon for help and though both Chinese police and soldiers arrived they simply stood around and did nothing. Both the British and American consulates were destroyed; meanwhile Shanghai replied requesting additional information and advising the westerners in Zhenjiang that a gun boat was being prepared. Order was restored by Chinese troops on the following day. Three days later the British gunboat arrived and was boarded by the Consul who was greeted by a gun-salute. The very first report of the guns sent every Chinese off the Bund and out of the Concession like a cloud of smoke being dispersed by a typhoon. A benefit arising from the riot was the construction of a new consulate office and house with its own garden. A slightly different picture of the cause was given by Consul Parker which he had obtained from hearsay.*4 The Zhenjiang municipal police had arrested a Chinese military officer for 'reckless riding'.\n\nAfter the riots of the 1880s strong, double riot gates of stout iron bars were constructed, each with a span of some twenty feet, so that the whole of the width of the Bund, some forty feet, would be barred when they were closed. The Concession police during the first decade of the 20th century consisted of some sixteen Shandong men from the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216069, "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": 368, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "302\n\nso that I may die childless, as I am now old and not likely to have any more children. I had never met or seen Mason before he presented himself to me as being the United States Consular Marshal at Hankou, which was a lie, he being actually a Custom House Officer at Zhenjiang.'\n\nLet us try to unravel the sorry story of Mason and Mesny. It is involved and still has aspects which are difficult to fathom. We have a number of versions or parts of it available to us but will confine ourselves to three: Mason's own story, briefly described below, written some 30 odd years later after he had roamed the world as a vagrant worker; the letters from the Inspector General of the Imperial Customs, Sir Robert Hart; and Mesny's bitter accusation. Mason, according to Mesny, practically ruined him and certainly caused Mesny great personal problems as he explained in great detail in his Miscellany. It is difficult to fit these three pieces of jigsaw together as there are few elements in common; however, the basic story is there. Mason bought a large quantity of foreign arms, ammunition, and explosives with which to arm a rising against the Imperial government, and having been arrested in Shanghai, was tried, sentenced, gaoled, and finally deported. Mesny was called as a witness but was accused to his face by the Chinese Premier, Li Hongzhang, of being the chief or very senior in the anti-Imperialist bandit body, the Elder Brother Society. This led to Mesny being ostracised by Chinese officialdom and, as his be-all and end-all as a business go-between was his contacts with Chinese officials, his life quietly slipped downhill thereafter.\n\nAccording to records — ‘Charles Welsh Mason, a young Englishman, had joined the Imperial Maritime Customs in December 1887 and was sent to Zhenjiang, an important post but a minor port on the Yangzi, as 4th assistant B, where he joined the Gelao Hui and became involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the Chinese government. In July of 1891, he took two months' leave and went to Hong Kong, where he purchased a quantity of arms and ammunition for the Society and arranged for it to be shipped to Shanghai and from there on to Zhenjiang. He also recruited men for the Society and bought a quantity of dynamite, which he carried with him to Shanghai, where he requested Commissioner Bredon of the Imperial Maritime Customs to allow it to be shipped on to Zhenjiang so that he, Mason, could uncover more of the Chinese rebels' plans. Bredon refused the \"sting\" and instructed Mason to report to Hart in Beijing. Instead, Mason took a river steamer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216112, "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": 411, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "345\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nFROM THE BELGIAN JOURNAL AVIATION, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 14, MARCH 1946\n\n©TRANSLATION BY PAUL BOLDING\n\nGliding: How Louis de San beat the Asian duration and altitude records in Chungking, China, in 1940\n\nIn 1939, Louis de San set off for China to serve as a diplomat. A keen glider pilot, he was eager to taste the eastern thermal currents. When he set off in a Chinese glider, towed by a military plane, it was to be for a flight of more than four hours and set an Asian record. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he managed to flee Hong Kong as the bombs fell, and to reach South Africa. There he joined the RAF and passed his examinations as an aeroplane pilot. Lieutenant de San then went to Congo, where he was based until the end of hostilities and undertook various missions and operations in Oxford and SV4 planes. This is his account of how he set the record in China:\n\nIt was 1940. For a year I had been in Chungking, wartime capital of the Chinese government. There was bombing day and night, crushing heat of more than 40 degrees, tension, loneliness... There were few distractions: one was being a spectator in the virtually hopeless struggle of the Chinese people, at war for two years. I travelled the country and spent hours watching the clouds, birds, weather conditions; I rapidly concluded that the good thermals had to be as numerous as fish in the Yangtse.\n\nI knew every corner of the area around Chungking. The town was a kind of peninsula, surrounded by two mighty rivers, the Yangtse and the Kialing. Thousands of dark roofs, large areas flattened by Japanese bombing, the immediate contrast of great expanses of water, and over it all leaden skies, more oppressive than the strongest sun in Coquilhatville1 or Lake Leopold II in Congo.\n\nWhere great gliding birds untiringly traced their spirals higher, there had to be powerful thermal currents. Above the town, above the white sandbanks emerging from the river, one saw from morning to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216114, "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": 413, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "347\n\nmy pilot to tow me over the town and tell him that I will release the plane at an altitude of 300 metres and that I will climb under my own steam to 2,000 metres. Sceptical glances from my Chinese friends, who find it difficult to accept that a European might do something better than a Son of Heaven.\n\nAt 11:45, I take off. At first we follow the river. The town is to our left, set on terrace up the mountainside. There is not a breath of air; all is calm. It was as I expected. Reaching the tip of the peninsula, we turn 90 degree to the left, and this time, still climbing at one metre per second, we begin to fly across the town. As we arrive over the roofs, I sense a number of small thermal currents; my gauges frequently indicate two metres per second. But I am still only at 200 metres, and too far from the airfield, in case I should fail to find serious thermals.\n\nWhen we come over San Shin Sze, the plane begins a slight turn to the left, and I sense that he is going to fly over the river again; my altimeter reads just 300 metres, and I release the glider in a light thermal, when I place myself in tight spirals. The tow had lasted seven minutes. The sky was completely blue, without a cloud, however with a slight violet haze over the ground. No wind. I was obliged to fly solely with the aid of thermal currents. Almost immediately, I find myself in a weak current. After one or two minutes, I am even descending at a speed of about 1.5 metres per second. I am flying at 75 km per hour, at an angle of about 35 degrees. I decide to resume the direction of the river and to approach the airfield but I find that I have travelled further away than I thought. There was no chance of getting back to the island from which I had taken off. I spot a great sandbank and decide to attempt a last chance to fly towards the point of the town, where I had observed and felt some good currents at the start of my tow.\n\n-\n+\n\nAt 60 metres above the roofs at last! - a few strong buffets and my two gauges are suddenly showing two metres of climb. Steep spirals, at an angle of 45 degrees, speed 80 km per hour, and I am climbing this time evenly and without being buffeted. 200 metres, 500 metres, 1,000 metres, I am always turning, always widening my turns. The fight becomes easier and easier and this time I am climbing at three metres a second. I see the magnificent panorama of the town, as if gripped in a vice between two great rivers; I see, quite small, the English, French and American gunboats (the \"Tutuila\", where I used to go\n\n3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216115, "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": 414, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "348\n\nregularly to eat a good curry),\n\nI see my embassy, tiny, great water reservoirs, the beginning of the magnificent Yangtse gorges, innumerable rice fields looking like contour lines, on a relief map. A splendid landscape in miniature, the kind the Chinese love for their gardens.\n\nI amuse myself by flying back and forth across the town. I go into crazy spirals opposite an American gunboat and climb in seconds, or so it seems, to 2,000 feet. There I decide to stop and wander about. I am worried about the Japanese who no doubt would come and bomb us and could well send a reconnaissance aircraft, which could easily come and shoot me down ... I am flying in Chinese military colours so I would be in the wrong.\n\nTowards 4:00 pm, I feel very tired. I have eaten my lunch, great nervous tension, since I have not flown for more than a year. Moreover, the seat is hard and the parachute is stifling me. I put out the braking flaps in order to descend and I realise that I have to dive at 90 degrees to lose height, so strong are the thermals in mid-river. I amuse myself for five or six minutes in doing turns right above the British Embassy and over the airfield, where I see thousands of Chinese. Finally, I put down at the end of the island in order not to land on the cranes. A perfect landing in 42 degrees of heat after a flight of four hours, 44 minutes.\n\nThe Asian duration and altitude records were broken at the first attempt. It was the first demonstration flight in China. That evening, the capital's newspapers gave the following news, in Chinese and English:\n\n\"New glider record registrated here, - Chungkin, April 25 (Central News). By remaining in the air for 4 hours and 44 minutes, M Louis de San, Belgian glider-flyer and honorary director of the Sino-French-Belgian Swiss Cultural Association, set a new endurance record for Asia to day. Flying a glider of the Aeronautical Affairs Commission, de San took off at 11:25 this morning. He gained an altitude of 5,700 feet.\"\n\nM", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216125, "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": 424, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "358\n\n'Finally a heavy rumbling, very high, and we saw a number of Japanese planes, enough to reduce everything to dust as usual in V formation... then over the first houses of the suburbs they reform into a single line and take their time dropping their bombs.\n\n'A terrible to-do. Chinese anti-aircraft crews firing tracer shells, I shooting out of conviction, even though the enemy was at 3,000 metres... instead of filing into the shelter I remained with two reporters from Havas on a high point to be able to see everything.\n\n\"We counted 27 Japanese; the characteristic whine of misdirected fire makes us head for the shelter... we see more Japanese pass above us but without dropping anything .... four Chinese planes engage them in combat but without much enthusiasm. One doesn't find much of the heroism here that we have in bucketfuls in similar circumstances. The Chinese is a terrible individualist and doesn't give a damn for the fatherland.\n\n+\n\nEmerging later, Louis, a Belgian colleague and the French chargé d'affaires, the two journalists and a Chinese, found part of the city ablaze.\n\n'Fire was effectively burning in the area of the barracks of the seamen from a French gunboat; we had to go and see if we could help them,' wrote Louis de San to his friend.\n\nThey walked towards the river, taking two hours through the rambling suburbs of Chungking. He describes the Yangtse as three or four times as wide as the Scheldt at Antwerp, itself a mighty river. “We managed to borrow a sampan from a European ... we embarked two or three km upstream from where we wanted to cross to because of the strength of the current.\"\n\n'When we got to the middle of the river, a great Chinese steamer emerged from the darkness without lights, 20 metres away and steaming upstream. We rowers, instead of giving it our best shot, start to throw ourselves into the water. The big ship hits us with full force and extraordinary violence. I dived to avoid the collision but still got a terrible bang on the head.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216127, "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": 426, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "360 \n\ndate was April 25, 1940, but his contemporary annotation of photographs puts the date as May 24.\n\nConditions were perfect and there was no sign of the Japanese fighters which he feared could attack his plane - painted in Chinese military colours. Although at one point he lost altitude badly after dismissing his tow, he soon found the thermals and soared to 5,700 feet and stayed aloft for four hours 44 minutes, an Asian record.\n\nHe writes: 'I see my embassy, tiny, great water reservoirs, the beginning of the magnificent Yangtse gorges, innumerable rice fields looking like contour lines on a relief map. A splendid landscape in miniature, the kind the Chinese love for their gardens.'\n\nHe notes at one point flying over the Tutuila 'where I used to go for a good curry.' This U.S. Yangtse patrol boat with a displacement of 395 tons was marooned at Chungking by the Japanese occupation of areas down-river like Hankow. The USS Tutuila was bombed by the Japanese in July 1941, the first U.S. Navy ship damaged by Axis powers in World War Two. It was decommissioned in January 1942 and handed over to the Chinese in March under Lend-Lease and renamed Mei Yuan. One can imagine that in wartime Chungking, Europeans could be assured of a decent meal aboard a U.S. patrol boat that was more or less a permanent fixture at the quayside.\n\nPictures show Louis beside the machine with an air force pilot who was possibly the one who towed him up, and a few others nearby. Afterwards, massive crowds have gathered around Louis's plane to celebrate the record-breaking flight. He was justifiably proud of his achievement and maintained his interest in aviation, flying between subsequent diplomatic posts in a succession of small private planes.\n\nLouis de San was transferred to Hong Kong in 1941; on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, he secured a berth on a freighter which took him and his wife to Ceylon and they passed the war in Africa. Louis de San held various diplomatic posts for Belgium, ending in Damascus in the 1970s. He died in 1995.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216231, "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": 530, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "464\n\nyou would laugh when I told you the name of the ch'uu.\n\n'Dang me if it isn't a great big white whale\n\ngot into our river; that sure makes a tale !'\n\n&\n\nPeter was happy once we'd been inside\n\nthe Trashigang dzong with its floorboards so wide.\n\nBut as for the rest of the travelling herd,\n\nour Peter was clear - he just gave them the bird.\n\nNo, that's not quite fair; he's Hon. Sec. of the RAS,\n\nand has to make sure that good things come to pass.\n\nIn the matter of birthdays, a party to make,\n\nthere's never a doubt that our Pete takes the cake!\n\nMarlene came a cropper on the road from Pele La;\n\nfell down on the black ice - nearly got hit by a car.\n\nBut she came up smiling - Marlene's never sad for long.\n\nShe was right as rain next morning when we visited a dzong.\n\nAnd finally, Kevin and Sarah and Rocky,\n\nmy time's nearly up - you should count yourselves lucky.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216287, "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-2003", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "2003 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF\n\nTHE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY (UK)\n\nAlthough the number of Friends' activities during the past year cannot compete with those in Hong Kong, it is nevertheless pleasing to report that the quarterly meetings which have taken place have been of a very high standard. They started in May 2003 with a bold and forthright talk by Dr. Francis Wood, entitled 'Marco Polo and Me.' Dr. Wood is curator of Chinese Collections at the British Library and author of 'Did Marco Polo Go To China?' and 'No Dogs, Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China 1843-1943.' Her talk was very convincing and one was left in no doubt that there are still many unanswered questions about Marco Polo's trips to China.\n\nThe second event took 35 Friends to Bath and Bristol for two days in early October, 2003. Bath has an excellent Museum of East Asian Art, originally set up by Mr. Brian McElney, who lived in Hong Kong for many years in the 1960s and 70s. He became a well-known collector of Chinese artefacts. The museum now houses a wide range of Far Eastern art, including items from South Korea and Japan. Our visit coincided with the very well presented exhibition 'Death and Burial: The Chinese and the Afterlife.' The Friends were particularly impressed by the emphasis on education and the museum's outreach to local schools. The day ended with a very authentic Chinese meal at the Cathay Rendezvous in Bristol.\n\nThe following morning the Friends met at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum, which was opened in Bristol three years ago, with a great deal of local and overseas backing, including the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. It was particularly pleasing to see Dr. Dan Waters' name inscribed in the entrance hall. The exhibition portrayed in very enlightened and balanced ways a history of the Commonwealth countries, as seen by many of the local people who lived there. The items on display showed that the build-up of Empire and Commonwealth was a remarkable achievement, but there were clearly some aspects which did not come up to the high ideals many expected - this precipitated a lively topic for discussion during the lunch that followed after the visit and the subsequent river cruise through the old town of Bristol.\n\nxlvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216324, "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-2003", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "32\n\ncould see, and it seemed as if it were one vast garden'.\"\n\nParkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas (1937) writes: \"When the whole [EIC] China fleet was collected there, twelve or sixteen of the largest merchantmen in the world, together with the country ships, the spectacle must have been magnificent.\" He records that sometimes the Viceroy at Canton would come down to visit the fleet. The ships would be decked to receive the great man, with yards manned and officers in full dress.12\n\nCanton\n\nCanton was, and is, the capital of the Guangdong Province. One of the larger and richer cities of the Chinese Empire, and dating back to pre-Han times, it had long been a major sea port for overseas trade, notably in the Tang Dynasty when it had a significant Arab and Muslim population. During the turmoil which accompanied the change of dynasty from Ming to Qing, it upheld the Ming, endured an eleven-month siege in 1650, and suffered a wholesale massacre of its inhabitants. However, it recovered, and by the mid-nineteenth century was credited with a population of around one million persons. It was renowned for its manufactories, carried on by human industry, without the aid of machinery, particularly in silk and cloth, women and children included, whilst trade - international and regional trade - was described as being 'the great business of life'.13\n\nCanton was a walled city (actually two walled cities in one, the Old and the New) with major suburbs along the Pearl River, and to the West.14 As befitted its status, it contained the yamens (office-residences) of many senior government officials, including those of the governor-general of the two linked provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, the governor of Guangdong, the Canton prefect, two county magistrates, the Tartar general, the provincial naval commander, and the like, as well as those officials with charge of other, specialised concerns, and (of special status, since he was responsible directly to Beijing) the Hoppo or Superintendent of Maritime Customs, who oversaw the foreign trade and its accruing revenue.\n\nThe Foreign Factories (British, French, Swedish, Spanish, Danish and Dutch) of the river suburb were so-called from their being the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216327, "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-2003", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "35\n\nremarks each still makes about the other to this day. Northerners thought that Cantonese were quick and tricky, often rebellious, and overly concerned with money. They rarely got a good press from the officials, Manchus or Chinese from other provinces, who were posted to the South.\n\n‘Ungrateful and avaricious,' the Emperor was advised by the Imperial Commissioner in Canton in 1841, who said he wrote in these terms 'after personal observation of the character and disposition of the people of this province,23 Earlier, in 1807, a Viceroy observed that 'not only do the common people desire to obtain money, and do all they can to get it, but the gentry talk of nothing else but money.24 In 1847, the Xinan magistrate commented, 'In Kowloon, the people mingle with foreigners, and the custom of the residents is that they value money and material things and belittle poetry and studies.'25\n\nCantonese also had a reputation for being rude to Westerners. Returning with the Amherst Embassy from Beijing in 1816, the future Sir John Davis recounted that, upon approaching Canton, 'Here for the first time in the course of our travels, my ears were greeted with the sounds so frequent and familiar at Canton, Fankwei and Hoong-maou, \"Foreign devil\" and \"Rufus\" - without having the slightest personal claims to the last distinction, however indisputable my claims to the first.'26\n\nThe Boat People of Canton\n\nThe Canton waterfront was noted for the very large number of boat people whose tiny craft were anchored off and along the whole frontage. These were the Tanka, or indigenous boat people of the Pearl River Delta. They appear in many of the China Trade Pictures, whether lying off the Foreign Factories or at Whampoa, Lintin or Macau.\n\nThe river attracted the intense interest of foreigners because of the numbers and great variety of craft and activity to be seen upon its crowded, animated waters. They were impressed by the most remarkable degree of 'order' reigning, but were less enthusiastic about the 'noise of the music, gongs, and other discordant sounds' which 'defied description', compensated in part by the night scene, 'when all the boats display coloured lanterns [and] the scene is extremely pleasing.'\n\nThe boat people provided utility services to the factories and ferried", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216328, "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-2003", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "36\n\npeople and goods over and along the river. They also helped to load ships in the river and carry goods to the European merchantmen at Whampoa. Their presence was useful to the occupants of the Foreign Factories during periodic conflagrations. For instance, a painting of the Great Fire of 1822 shows residents viewing the fire from these boats, their main refuge in time of such emergencies.28\n\nInterestingly enough, people of this type - perhaps even from the Canton group accustomed to foreigners - were of immense help to the British when they first established themselves in Hong Kong as providers of many essential services.29\n\nOther groups of Tanka constituted the sea fishermen whose craft, large and small, were to be found all over the Delta and the islands outside it; and as we shall see further on in this talk, they provided the 'outside pilots' who assisted foreign merchant vessels to get safely into the Macau Roads.\n\nPersonnel directly connected with the China Trade\n\nWe may now consider seriatim, the various personnel encountered by foreign merchants and ships' officers during their time in China over the trading season of the year.\n\nThe Hoppo30\n\nThe Hoppo was the official at the head of the maritime customs, controlling the revenues accruing from the foreign trade. Representing the ministry of finance in Beijing (hu pu) he was dubbed with this title in error by the foreigners. This lucrative office was often filled by a Manchu. The Guangzhou Custom House is shown in Plate 5.\n\nThere were Hoppo in other maritime provinces of China, but the Canton Hoppo was the most important owing to the foreign trade being confined to Canton. His circuit eventually included five sub-stations and some sixty other collection points, the catchment for the coastal and inter-national trade. International trade was itself divided into Chinese, Asian and European, each taxed at a different rate; the Governor was left with control over internal trade.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216333, "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-2003", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "41\n\ngreat importance, and vastly superior to the old man to whom the boat belonged. He kept himself apart from the rest, maintained perfect silence and gravity, and seemed to find the greatest amusement in examining and re-examining his papers, and combing and plaiting his long black hair, with the assistance of a small fragment of looking-glass.47\n\nThe linguists\n\nEach foreign merchant ship arriving at Macau had to engage a linguist before it could proceed up-river to Whampoa.4\n\nA contemporary account states, \"The linguists were custom-house interpreters, who procured permits for delivering and taking in cargoes, transacted all the custom-house business, and kept account of the duties.'49\n\nDavis writes tartly that they were characterized 'on account of the absence, rather than the presence, of those accomplishments which are usually implied by the term; for these persons cannot write English at all, and speak it scarcely intelligibly.'50\n\nHe adds: 'Like the Hong merchants, the linguists are obliged to pay largely for their licences, and are besides liable to heavy exactions, chiefly from the underlings of office, as the Hong merchants are the prey of the higher officers,' and the merchants had to act as sureties before a licence could be obtained.\n\nThe compradors\n\n'At Macau, or later at Whampoa,' Morse explains, 'a ship's comprador must be employed, who has the sole right to purvey provisions and all other articles for the ship or her crew, at prices which were quite impossible to put any check.'51\n\nWe have a brief and tantalising pen portrait of one such at the Whampoa anchorage: 'Boston Jack, as he is called, a stout, portly Chinaman, who supplies most of the American ships lying here, with whatever they require.'52\n\nJust how successful and prosperous this person became, is revealed in an American visitor's letter of 1848:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216399, "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-2003", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "108\n\nA total of five officers and thirty men were saved, and eighteen lives were lost.\n\nThe commanding officer of H.M.S/M POSEIDON was found to have been in error by improperly starboarding his helm when he should have maintained his course and speed under Collision Regulations.\n\nBased at Wei-Hai-Wei, through the summer until the latter part of August HERMES exercised regularly with other units of the fleet.\n\nMeanwhile in England the difficult financial situation, largely brought on by the effects of the Great Depression, had deteriorated further. The Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald had been unable to cope with the rapidly rising numbers of unemployed and in August had resigned. From 25th August MacDonald had continued as prime minister, but now as head of a coalition administration consisting of Labour, Conservative and Liberal members.\n\nOne measure of financial stringency which was adopted was to reduce the pay of civil servants and of members of H.M. Forces. Unfortunately in the Royal Navy the matter was badly handled by the Admiralty, and to a lesser extent by senior officers of the Atlantic Fleet. In addition political agitation had occurred, and elements of the press had not been of much assistance in calming the situation, rather the opposite in fact. The result was that early in September the Invergordon Mutiny had taken place.\n\nIn China too all was not easy.\n\nAdmiral Sir Howard Kelly drily noted:\n\n'Even for the China Station, where dull moments are unusual, the month of September has been one of considerable excitement.'\n\nHe continued in paragraph two:\n\n\"The assumption of office by the new Government of the United Kingdom and consequent economy measures, the advance of the Cantonese Forces against Nanking with the prospects of increased unrest in the Yangtze valley, the commencement of the fall of the River, when", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216401, "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-2003", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "110\n\nof China behind him, Chiang Kai-shek had made an important error.\n\nIt was against this background that HERMES was ordered south to the Yangtze River.\n\nOn 27th July, 1931 great floods had occurred when the River burst its banks at Hankow. Much land in the vicinity, especially to the north and west, lay well below river level with the result that when the enormous dyke was breached many hundreds of square miles of countryside was flooded and many thousands of people drowned. Those who were able fled across the river to Wuchang but to add to their distress then plague broke out.\n\nTransport in Hankow quickly became difficult as the water became too deep for rickshaws and wheeled vehicles. Then sampans became in short supply. Lighters and small junks were brought into use and poled down the streets. However frequently these were caught by cross currents and wind and swept away out of control. Subsequently power and telephone lines were brought down, and damage was caused to buildings. Ewo1 claim that their compradore erected a sign at their premises:\n\n\"Junks must not moor to Jardines' chimneys.\"\n\nEventually the authorities were forced to seize many of these craft in order to limit the destructive effect of their contact with various structures, and to try to exert some degree of control.\n\nIn an endeavour to assist an International Flood Relief Commission had been established. Clearly it was politically desirable that Great Britain be seen to be involved.\n\nAlso there were other problems on the River.\n\nOn the morning of Monday, 31st August HERMES anchored off Woosung. Ten hours later she continued upstream, initially steaming at 18 knots but when the river narrowed reducing to 14. While so navigating at times the behaviour of junks could be disconcerting:\n\n'When a junk saw a steamer approaching it would steer to pass", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216403, "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-2003", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "112\n\nthese river steamers. Without going into detail, commencing on Monday afternoon with S.S. SIANG WO,12 the list is impressive.\n\nIt was on 12th September that Mr. T.V. Soong, minister of finance in the Nationalist government and chairman of the Flood Relief Commission, requested the C. in C. for assistance by using reconnaissance aircraft from HERMES in flood survey patrol work from Hankow.\n\nHowever being China there were complications.\n\nUnless it particularly suited them there was a general disinclination by the Hupeh authorities to obey any instructions received from the government at the capital of Nanking. In addition allowance had to be made for a variety of especial local interests.\n\nThe British Vice Admiral and Senior Naval Officer, Yangtze, Colin MacLean summed up the situation:\n\n\"The Hupeh Provincial authorities do not, in my opinion, care a rap for Flood Relief. To them the floods are a merciful dispensation in disposing of a surplus population and the only use they have for Flood Relief is to fill their own pockets from the funds.’13\n\nFor two weeks local permission could not be obtained to fly from the ship.\n\nThis difficulty was to be overcome quite by chance.\n\nOn 29th September it was announced in the local press that the world famous aviator, Colonel Charles Lindbergh, accompanied by his wife Anne, was to fly to Hankow to assist in the aerial survey of the flooded regions. In the 1930s the press around the world tended to pay great attention to the activities of the Colonel and his wife. Clearly with such considerable publicity being given to their progress the Chinese authorities could not refuse Colonel Lindbergh permission to fly on so humanitarian a mission. Equally, to allow him to fly but not the British would be seen as a great insult. In next to no time the Hupeh authorities had changed their tune entirely. Suddenly there were no further difficulties.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216420, "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-2003", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "129\n\nChemulpo (later Inchon). This would drive north along thawing and impassable roads, across the Yalu River into Manchuria, heading for Liaoyang and Mukden (now known as Shenyang) north of the Liaodong peninsula. Then, with what remained of the Russian fleet bottled up in the harbour at Port Arthur, the second and main force would be landed some thirty miles north of Dalny (Dairen to the Japanese and now known as Dalian) cutting off Port Arthur at the tip of the Liaodong peninsula. The final stage was the landing of a third Japanese army in January 1905 and its assault on Port Arthur. The war began as planned with a Japanese 'Pearl Harbor' bombardment at Port Arthur, taking the Russian fleet by surprise.\n\nAlthough the Japanese met with a number of set-backs their overall plan succeeded. The crowning moments were the Fall of Port Arthur at the beginning of January 1905 and the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, the titanic clash between the Japanese fleet and the Russian Baltic Fleet, the latter having made its slow progress across the world from Latvia in October 1904 to Tsushima seven months later, and to its fate and destruction. News of the devastating Japanese victory alarmed a number of Chinese officials who, whilst they did not wish Japan to lose, had not wanted her to gain such an overwhelming victory.\n\nFinally, after the eighteen month campaign the land war ended with the destruction of the Russian army before Mukden. The succeeding months were a matter of Japanese mopping-up operations and the capture of Liaoyang and Mukden.\n\nDuring the final stages of the war the Japanese finally took the fighting on to 'sacred' Russian territory when they invaded the large island of Sakhalin. This was of great political importance as it was regarded as Russian territory and, with rioting on the streets of the Russian major cities, the Russians realised that they had lost. Also at that point, Japan now holding most of the cards, but militarily and financially exhausted, sought President Roosevelt's good offices to bring about a peace conference. This took place in September 1905 concluding with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in the United States. The Russians ceded the Guandong peninsula (Chinese territory) and half of the island of Sakhalin to Japan but without having to pay any indemnity. The Russians, so the Japanese believed, had been allowed by the Americans to get away without paying any financial compensation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216438, "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-2003", "page_number": 197, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "147\n\nOn 8th January Mistchenko assembled his force near Sinminting and then pushed south through neutral territory, to Sanchaho, where he crossed the Liao, as he was behind the Japanese outpost line. On his way he came into collision with a force of 500 Hunhuses and inflicted heavy losses on them. On 10th January he crossed the Liao on the ice and rode towards Newchwang. Whereupon the small Japanese garrison fell back.\n\nGeneral Mistchenko vacillated and allowed the Japanese to return in strength, leaving Mistchenko the choice of surrendering or once more violating China's neutrality. He chose the latter but was attacked before he could retreat and was badly mauled before managing to get what was left of his force back to Mukden. There was no mention of any Chinese protest.\n\nThe Russian warships, Askold and Grosovoi\n\nThere were several instances of Russian warships taking refuge in Chinese waters, each settled after investigation, acrimony and promises by the belligerents.\n\nIn early August after a major engagement at sea the Russian cruiser, Askold xiv and the destroyer, Grosovoi having been badly damaged, sought refuge at Wusong, a port on the Yangzi at the mouth of the river leading to Shanghai, leading to an international dispute on the subject of the rights of belligerent vessels in neutral ports. It was evident that some considerable time would be required before the ships would be fit for sea again. The Chinese, urged on one hand to force the ships to leave port, and yet still too much frightened that any such action would be regarded by Russia as a hostile act, continued for some time to order the ships to withdraw on one day and to cancel the order on the next. The Japanese, compelled to watch the port and to detach cruisers for the purpose, increased their remonstrances, and at one stage it was by no means certain that they would have confined themselves to mere remonstrances. Had that been the case, the jealously preserved neutrality of the foreign powers would, indeed, have been in danger. Finally, on 1st September, the Russians put an end to the situation by ordering the disarmament of the vessels, to the great relief of the Chinese.\n\nIn late 1904 two Russian sailors from the Askold murdered a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216439, "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-2003", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "148\n\nChinese on the Bund at Shanghai. The Russian Consul-General refused to try the men on the ground that theirs was a military offence. The Chinese community, especially in Ningbo where the murdered man came from, was incensed. The Shanghai Daotai (Qing dynasty mandarin - a Circuit Intendent), acting on orders from the Chinese Foreign Affairs Department, insisted that the accused be turned over to him. Finally, they were tried by court-martial at the Russian Consulate-General, and 1st Class Fireman Terente Ageef was sentenced to transportation for four years with hard labour and the other to five days for resisting the police. The Chinese authorities were not represented.\n\nThe Russian despatch boat the Ryeshitelni\n\nAnother somewhat similar incident occurred at the end of August at Chefoo (Zhifu, though nowadays Yantai) in Shandong province where the Russian despatch boat, Ryeshitelni (Retchielni), carrying important dispatches, had taken refuge in Chinese territorial waters having been cornered by Japanese destroyers. When the Russian vessel failed to emerge within 24 hours the Japanese sent a boarding party under Lieutenant Terashima.\n\nWhile the Russian Consul in Chefoo was discussing the temporary stay of the Russian destroyer to repair her engines with the Chinese Daotai, the commander of the Retchitelni, acting on instructions from the Russian Rear-Admiral, entered into negotiations with the Chinese admiral on the subject of disarming the destroyer and the handing over of the breech-blocks of guns and rifles, to the Chinese. The Japanese naval Lieutenant, who understood the Russians were about to blow up their vessel, boarded the Russian vessel and was attacked by the Russian commander who threw him overboard. The Japanese immediately took over the Russian destroyer and towed it out of the Chinese port. The Russian note demanded that the Chinese recover the Russian destroyer and downgrade the senior Chinese naval officer in Chefoo. It added that unless the vessel was recovered by the Chinese, into whose protection it had been given, China would stand convicted of acting in complicity with Japan. The Chinese as usual adopted their masterly habit of doing nothing. They gave out that they hoped Japan would restore the destroyer to Chinese custody of their own volition, observing at the same time that though Russia had constantly violated Chinese neutrality in the territory between the Great Wall and the Liao River, at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216481, "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-2003", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "190\n\nof his first command and the position of trust in which his employers had placed him. The Euphrates and Tigris Shipping Company had come into possession of the Shushan after it was no longer required for the Nile expedition and decided to use it to extend their operations into South West Iran up the Karun River beyond Ahwaz. They were already running a regular passenger and freight service up to Ahwaz but were unable to proceed further because of a series of rapids that had effectively closed the river to conventional steam traffic.\n\nPlant picked up his new command at Basra and was introduced to his engineer officer, a young Englishman called Stanley Webber with whom he would be sharing his Persian adventure. Together, they and a temporary crew from Basra, made their way down the Shatt al Arab to Mohammerah, a town at the mouth of the Karun River and from there, up river to Ahwaz. His next task was to take the Shushan up and over the rapids at Ahwaz, where the water rushed down a seemingly impenetrable rocky slope although, it was said, there were a few fast water channels through which the craft might proceed with safety provided it had sufficient paddle power. To be on the safe side he obtained some long safety lines and hired a crowd of pullers and heavers to man them should the craft not be able to manage the rapid under its own steam.\n\nRiver pilotage\n\nThus, all was made ready for the assault on the feared Ahwaz rapids. The great day came and so did the crowds to see the fun - but his hard work and planning paid off. With a full head of steam and Plant on the wheel the Shushan climbed the first rapid and then went full ahead upstream for the next gap between two great rocks where the river 'poured through like a sluice.' She just made it and then moved up to through the next rapid that was just a little easier and finally entered the calmer waters above the town. Here, the crew was discharged and sent back to their home port while Plant made preparations for taking the Shushan on its first trip to Shuster some 50 miles up river.\n\nFirst, he had to find and train a permanent crew, including someone with knowledge of the river and a Tindal (bo'sun) to take charge of the deck hands. He also needed an interpreter, through whom he could give instructions to the crew, most of whom spoke no English. He would\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216482, "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-2003", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "191\n\nalso want someone to translate his words to those government officials and village chiefs with whom he would have to negotiate his way up and down the river. He engaged a local small boat skipper as Nocador (coxswain); a Chaldean by the name of Judges who had served some time on board a line of Turkish steamers plying on the Tigris as bo'sun; and a steward who also doubled as interpreter. A further eleven hands were taken on to complete the crew and Plant was ready to set off on his journey of exploration up the Karun river. It was truly a journey of discovery as he had no maps or books on the river and had to rely on local knowledge provided by the Nocador. After a number of excitements along the narrow winding waterway, they stopped at the small village of Shalaliah that acted as a port to Shushter. Plant covered the last seven miles to Shuster on horseback to report the safe arrival of the Shushan to the Company's agent, one of several young Englishmen in the area serving the interests of the shipping company. As both foreigners and Christians, the company's agents lived a life of some difficulty and danger. Plant felt that his life aboard the Shushan was far more congenial.\n\nThus started the regular passenger and freight service that Plant was to run for some time. His relations with the many local officials with whom he came in contact were conducted with tact and skill - his private thoughts about them and his comments on their ways of life and business, he confined to his personal log book. The difficulties of piloting his craft up and down an uncharted river were considerable and required great resource and powers of improvisation. He found that his triple rudder could not cope with the narrow winding part of the river unless he went at full speed, which proved particularly exciting when navigating a series of blind bends. On another part of the river an unexpected eddy took him into some rocks at speed which sprung a line of rivets and opened up a section of the hull. Fortunately, the Shushan's watertight construction in sections kept it afloat but left him with the problem of making a repair - they were far from any dockyard facility. He provided the answer by lowering a weighted line through each empty rivet hole; fishing for the weight from the bank; attaching a bolt; hauling the bolt up through the rivet hole; and anchoring it with a nut which he tightened up to re-secure the sprung plate. This turned out to be a tedious, time-consuming but entirely successful means of making good a damaged hull that he later introduced to the shipmasters of the Yangtse. There were many more occasions when he was up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216485, "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-2003", "page_number": 244, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "194\n\nThe move to China\n\nWhether his meeting with Archibald Little in the Oriental Club in London in 1899 was accidental as contended by some, or whether it was arranged by one or other of them is a matter of conjecture. The meeting itself was important to both of them. Archibald Little, an Imperial entrepreneur with an ambition to be the first to establish a regular passenger and steam service in the Upper Yangtse, was back in the UK to supervise the building of a paddle steamer designed for the task. He also needed an experienced and professional river pilot to command it. Cornell Plant needed just such employment. He must have been enthralled by Little's description of the great river, its problems and its dangers. The undoubted difficulties that Plant had overcome on the Karun River were trivial in comparison with the many natural hazards that existed in the Upper Yangtse that some claimed to make it the most dangerous river in the world. The annual snow melt in the high mountains and the seasonal rainfall over the whole area combined to produce variations in the height of water of as much as 150 feet - a scarcely believable phenomenon to a deep sea sailor. Plant was used to rocks, rapids and river water turbulence, but not the standing whirlpools, the moving whirlpools, the sudden holes that appeared in deep water and the rapidly changing nature of the river bed with every new rush of water down the feeder rivers of the great Yangtse Kiang. The talk must have whetted his professional appetite to such an extent that he even joined Little on his trip to Denny's of Glasgow where the new paddle steamer, the Pioneer, was being built. The result of their meeting was that Cornell Plant joined Archibald Little in China and took command of the Pioneer on her voyage up through the gorges, the first truly successful trip by a commercial vessel driven by steam.\n\nPostscript\n\nThis is the story of how Captain Samuel Cornell Plant came to be in China. His career as a trader, river pilot and finally Senior River Inspector of the Upper Yangtse is well covered in the article by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee. They also tell of the tragedy that occurred when Captain and Mrs Plant were on their way home on leave in 1921 accompanied by two young Chinese girls they were thought to have adopted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216487, "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-2003", "page_number": 246, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "196\n\nIn a letter to Cornell Plant's younger brother Charles, he wrote Their deaths create a great gap in the Upper River community life and your brother's experience was so great and his work up here consequently so good that it is impossible to adequately replace him.\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nMany thanks are due for the research carried out by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee and the information provided by the Melik Society and the National Maritime Museums at Greenwich and Falmouth. I am also most grateful for the help and advice provided by the many other Plant enthusiasts around the world, in particular Fraser Stuart of Aberdeen and John Parkinson of Johannesburg.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216489, "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-2003", "page_number": 248, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "198\n\n2. The photo was sent to me by a Plant enthusiast from Scotland, Fraser Stuart, and was taken from an illustration in a book entitled The Great River by an American lady, Gretchen May Fitkin published by Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai 1922. He says that it is not a very good book - she describes a trip up and down the gorges in a river steamer intended, most probably, for American female readers. It shows him as a more confident and smart man in his thirties who was looking to get on.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216508, "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-2003", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "219\n\nLuoyang at Binglingsi (where a ferry took Silk Road travellers across the Yellow River) also shows influence from further west, this time from Gandhara (see below). These caves date from around 420. Indian influence was significant too in the magnificent complex of four hundred and ninety-two caves at Dunhuang, 'the art gallery in the desert', nearly fifteen hundred kilometres (as the crow flies) northwest of Chang'an. The practice arose at Dunhuang of travellers making offerings for a safe trip as they set off into the Taklamakan desert, or for a safe return, in the form of commissioning Buddhist devotional cave paintings. Dunhuang also became a monastic centre, particularly flourishing after the great fair at Zhangye (nine hundred kilometres northwest of Chang'an) in 609, which was sponsored and attended by the Chinese Emperor Yangdi. Among those who travelled to attend this fair were people from twenty-seven different nations, according to Tucker. This indicates the greater freedom of travel established by this period, and it is not surprising that Gandharan influence is to be seen in Dunhuang's paintings, although Tucker argues that their style is distinctively Chinese.\n\nClearly, by the time of the Zhangye fair, the Silk Road was thriving. By then, Xinjiang Province (meaning 'New Dominion') had been firmly in Chinese hands for four centuries. The roaming hordes of nomads that had formerly menaced travellers on the routes through the Province had been brought to heel by Chinese military control and lines of forts extended west into the desert beyond Dunhuang. One of the most important power groups beyond the Taklamakan desert with which the Chinese had established good relations beginning with Wudi's efforts in 105 BCE was the Kushan Empire (c. 2nd century BCE to 3rd century AD), the territory of which straddled the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, and is now occupied by Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It had been established by a formerly nomadic tribe, the Yuezhi, which had settled after fleeing west from the nomadic Xiongnu. The Kushan Empire, with its provinces of Bactria and Gandhara, was the primary nexus of cross-cultural interaction along the Silk Road, straddling as it did the mountains and passes between the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Persia, and the plains and great river valleys draining northwest into Europe. It was in the Kushan cities of Peshawar (now in Pakistan) and Mathura (India), where magnificent schools of art emerged that blended western and eastern influences and that, in turn, spread further east into China. For example, in what is now the north of Pakistan, then known as Gandhara, Greek sculpture strongly influenced statues of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]