[ { "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": 204247, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n12\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nOne by one successive tribes arose Huns, Avars, Turks, Mongols, Manchus-dashed themselves against the frontiers of the Empire, and sometimes recoiling proceeded through Central Asia to Europe, sometimes breaking through the Wall, submerged for a time the whole Empire.\n\nApart from some stone monuments found in Central Asia, few but of great importance, the record of these tribes is to be found in the Chinese Histories, with references in the Greek authors of the Byzantine Empire, whenever the tribes impinged upon the West.\n\nInterest in collecting the Scythian bronzes commenced with Peter the Great. It is natural that the Russians and the scholars of Eastern Europe should be the first to be interested in the history of the Central Asian tribes. To them is largely due the excavations in Southern Europe and Siberia, and also in Mongolia. But in English we have the massive work 'Scythians and Greeks' by E. H. Minns. The Turks also are particularly interested in these studies, which have thrown much light upon the origin of the Turkish peoples.\n\nOne outcome of the struggle of the Chinese Empire with the Huns was the first extension of Chinese power in Central Asia, through the Tarim Basin, the present Sinkiang, to the Pamirs. This chapter in world history includes the fascinating account of the journey of Chang Ch'ien to the West in the second century B.C., the exploits of Pan Ch'ao in the Tarim Basin in the first century A.D., and the despatch of a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, to the shores of the Persian Gulf,\n\nDuring the first and second centuries the famous silk trade arose between China and Rome, recorded by Ptolemy and the Chinese histories. For a short time the land route between China and the West was open. The road passed through the Tarim Basin, between the northern grasslands and Tibet. It also became the great highway between India and China.\n\nThe Tarim Basin is one of the most remarkable geographical regions in the world, lying as it does between glaciated mountains on three sides, with a waterless desert in the centre. Around the desert, watered by streams from the mountains, are the oasis towns and villages, which form stepping stones as it were for travellers passing from east to west, or from west to east. By this thoroughfare have passed from time immemorial the travellers of Central Asia-merchants, soldiers, monks. And by this thoroughfare the great cultural influences-Indian, Persian, Greek-have passed with Buddhism from Western and Southern Asia to China. By this thoroughfare Chinese colonization spread to the Pamirs. By this route Marco Polo journeyed to China in the thirteenth century.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204248, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 16, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n13\n\nDuring the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, this region became one of the most important regions for archaeological study by Russian, French, German, Japanese, Swedish, and British archaeologists. The great names for the English reader are those of Dr. Sven Hedin of Sweden, and Sir Aurel Stein. The geographical exploration of the one, and the archaeological exploration of the other provide reading material of the utmost fascination and charm, and offer a key to open the closed door of Central Asian studies.\n\nTo these must be added the scholarly work on Central Asian languages Sogdian, Karosthi, Persian, Turkish, Uighur, and Mongolian that illumined the work of the archaeologists, including the names of the two great French sinologues, Edouard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot, and of the Russian Central Asian historian, W. Barthold.\n\nThe greatest episode in the history of Central Asia was the outbreak of the Mongols of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The most extensive land empire that the world has seen stretched from Russia to Mongolia, and embraced also China, Annam, and Persia, and in its later developments the Moghul dominion in India.\n\nThe trade routes between East and West were once more opened, mediaeval travellers from Europe made their way to Mongolia and China, which they knew by the name of Cathay, and for the first time the West had detailed accounts of farther Asia. The book of Marco Polo is known to all, but not so widely known are the slightly earlier journeys and narratives of the Franciscan Friars, John of Pian Carpine, one to the court of Kuyuk Khan (1245-1247), and the other to the court of Mangu in Mongolia (1253-55). Yet these both present to the reader first-hand information of the Mongols, and of the Chinese, on matters overlooked by Marco Polo.\n\nII. The Persians were the first of the great Oriental Empires with which Europe was confronted. The main theme of the History of Herodotus was the invasion of the independent city-states of Greece by the King of Kings.\n\nIt was to understand how this situation came about, how and why the invasion failed, that Herodotus set out on his seventeen years' travels, collecting material—geographical, historical, sociological, and religious from all the peoples and tribes within his reach, to work into his great history.\n\nA hundred years later Alexander reversed the process and the Greeks invaded the East. In three great battles Syria, Egypt, and Persia fell, and the Macedonian army penetrated to the tributaries of the Indus.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204249, "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n14\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nThe retreat of the Macedonian army was followed by the complicated history of North-west India, the present Pakistan, in which invasion followed invasion, Bactrian Greek, Indo-Scyth, Ephthalite and Turk, and dynasty followed dynasty, of which that of the Guptas was one of the most illustrious.\n\nBut the impact of the Greeks, though it was eventually absorbed, lasted for a long time, and its effect is still to be seen in the abundance of Graeco-Buddhist sculpture unearthed in the ruins in the Buddhist monasteries in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, reaching even to the confines of North-west China.\n\nTo the Greeks of Alexander and of his successors, we owe a large part of our early knowledge of Persia and of Northern India.\n\nWhen the power of Islam had spread through Western Asia, the Moslem Arabs and Turks became the intermediaries between East and West.\n\nThe Crusades were one, but not the only, answer of the West to the Moslems,\n\nThe way of St. Francis was another, But yet another was that of Raymond Lull, who, born as it were before his time, advocated the study of Moslem philosophy and the Moslem tongue as a preliminary for the preaching of the Gospel.\n\nMeantime Moslem learning in Latin translations, and even the Greek authors, translated into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin, reached the Western World.\n\nThe Mongol dominion became divided. The Mongol rulers of Persia, and the partly Turkish partly Mongol rulers west of the Pamirs became converted to Islam. The dominion of Timur arose, and the Moghuls of India followed.\n\nFirst-hand accounts in Persian and Arabic now became added to the study of the Mongol regime. I refer in particular to Juvaini's History of the World Conqueror (between 1252 and 1260), by one who had served as a high official under the Mongol conquerors.\n\nFrom henceforth Islam contributed to the philosophy, poetry and art of the Persians, and the study of Islamics formed part of the study of Persia.\n\nBefore leaving the subject of Persia one can only refer in passing to the mystic philosophy and poetry of Persia, the beauty of Persian miniatures, Persian rugs, and of Persian architecture.\n\nIII. Finally we come to the sea-route to India and China, and the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan.\n\nIn the course of his travels Herodotus had visited Egypt, where he had learned about the navigation of the Red Sea, and recorded that Phoenician sailors in the service of the king of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204250, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n15\n\nEgypt had sailed through the Red Sea, and keeping the land on their right had rounded Africa and returned through the Straits of Gibraltar; on the way they had found that the sun appeared for a time on the north side.\n\nA hundred years later, after Egypt had fallen into his hands, Alexander had founded the city of Alexandria on the western side of the delta of the Nile. The city was destined to become the second city of the Roman Empire. Connected by canal with the Red Sea, and making use of the newly understood monsoon winds (A.D. 47) for crossing the Arabian Sea, it became the chief port of the maritime trade with Persia, India, and the regions beyond.\n\nReferences to this maritime trade exist in the Chinese histories as well as in the writings of the Greeks. In A.D. 97 a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, travelling from Central Asia reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, and was informed by the seamen whom he met that the sea-route from the Gulf proceeded first south-west and then north-west to the port of Wu-ch'ih-san (Alexandria), the return journey taking three months with favourable winds, and two years with unfavourable winds.\n\nThe Chinese records speak of the Persians and the Indians trading by sea with Ta-ts'in (the Chinese name for the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire: Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor) and of the fact that the profits were ten-fold.\n\nThey speak also of traffic between India and China by sea, and record that in A.D. 120 two jugglers who claimed to have come from the Roman Orient (Ta-ts'in) reached Burma, and were sent by the king of Burma as a present to the Emperor of China, via the Burma Road.\n\nAbout the same time a book was written by an unknown Greek sailor called The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea giving a port-to-port description of the voyage down the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula (The Land of Gold) 'under the very rising of the sun, with a notice of China beyond.\n\nShortly after this in the 2nd century A.D. the Geography of Ptolemy was written at Alexandria, where Ptolemy gathered together and systematized all that was known to the Western world about Asia and Africa. In particular he plotted the longitude and latitude of the places known, which when transferred to a modern map give surprisingly accurate results, reaching to China itself.\n\nFrom this time notices of the sea-route increase, both on the Greek and on the Chinese side. The Chinese histories in particular show a rapidly increasing knowledge in the early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204753, "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE\n\n45\n\nis one important point to be cleared up. The Chinese are highly skilled farmers. Their techniques of land-winning and of irrigation change landscapes. So, alas, does their age-long war against trees. But since A.D. 900 the topography of this territory has been changed not only by human technique. There has also been a gradual, small, but identifiable and, I believe, measurable tilt of the surface of the earth along the axis of the four high peaks (the two on Lantao,37 Tai Mo Shan and Ng Tung Shan104) which has altered and is still altering the coast line. I leave it to geologists to say whether this is a necessary effect of what happens when the subsidence of a long straight shore meets a range of hills parallel to the shore (in which case it will be reproduced at many points of the Chinese coast), or whether it is a local peculiarity. It would also be interesting to fill in some of the chronological gaps and find out whether the two clear cases of recent river capture13 took place before or after the Chinese settlement. Until these gaps are filled up, I do not claim that the details of the shore line indicated on the map are authoritative, but they are not far wrong for the northwestern part of the territory, which was the part first settled by the ancestors of the Man94 and Tang.44\n\nYou will observe that the present Castle Peak and the mountain attached to it on the north42 were at that time an island, separated from the mainland of the New Territories by a sea channel which in A.D. 900 was probably very shallow but navigable. The traditions of the oldest villages leave no room for doubt that there has been a general uplift in excess of 5 metres in this area. The red line approximately follows the present 5 metres contour. The ground on both sides of the navigable channel was swamp, probably mangrove swamp, dotted about with small islands and intersected by creeks and streams. The first fort of which there is written record was known as Tuen Mun Chan141 and was almost certainly located at a point I have marked on the map,138 about three miles north of the present location called Tuen Mun.141 It would be an advantage if all doubts could be settled by excavation on the site, which can be seen even from the ground (and more clearly still from the air) to have contained old earth-works and possibly buildings.\n\nIt will be noticed that the present Sham Chun120 River had a much shorter course at that date, and the northern half of what", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205593, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "130 \n\nJ. NACKEN \n\nCongee. As they pass your door you have your choice. Here comes the first, crying Mai 'chü 'hüt 'chuk:* the next, Mai' yü *shang 'chuck,† etc. You may have pigs' blood congee, fish congee, mulberry-root flavoured congee, or barley, or kidney or pork and a variety of other congees. \n\nI may be allowed to here remark that all street cries are also heard on the water. When you see a man paddling his own canoe among the Chinese shipping, you may know that the articles he has for sale are the same as these sold on shore. As these hawkers do not come within the regulation which is in force on shore, I cannot say how many there may be. They simply have a small boat license; their lungs are so good that I hear their cries pretty distinctly in my house up the hill, and they assist their cousins on shore to swell the number of cries considerably. Some of these are of bad character; they will paddle out to the foreign shipping, having concealed bottles of samshoo under their heaps of sugar-cane or pine-apples. They bargain with the sailors and will steal if opportunity offers. \n\nThe second batch of hawkers who have articles of food for sale go out in the hours that precede the two principal Chinese meals at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. There are firstly the sellers of vegetables. In spring they sell celery, coarse greens, water cresses, salad, spinage, and bean sprouts. In summer; pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, egg plant, popaga‡, lotus root§, bamboo sprouts, many kinds of beans, etc. In autumn: caraway plant, pepper, potatoes, taro, various cabbages etc.; and in winter: mustard plants, white greens, colewort, parsley, onions, garlic, scallion, etc. \n\nMai tau' fu' is a cry heard very frequently. This bean curd is often the only \"sung\" on the table. It is made of bean flour, prepared with salt, gypsum, and water, then pressed between two boards, and sold in little square pieces at one cash each. \n\n* ⭑## [The diacritical marks in the text are difficult to read from \n\nthe microfilm, Ed.] \n\n广费魚生粥 \n\n+ *** \n\n$ # This is a very good vegetable, which is not yet found, as far as \n\nI know, on European tables. This root, after being dried and powdered, forms the well-known arrow-root, \n\n|| 費荳腐 \n\n, ie, whatever is on the table besides the rice. \n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205984, "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "ASPECTS OF HONG KONG MARINE FAUNA\n\n59\n\narrow worm is found in it. Light is another important factor, for only the blue end of the spectrum penetrates much beneath the surface of the water. This means that at only a few feet below the water's surface, blues and greens are the predominant colors, and lend an ethereal background to submarine photographs, unless artificial light is employed. Other factors, such as pressure, depending on depth; available nutrients, or food sources; and the type of bottom on which the organisms living in a particular habitat are found, are also important factors.\n\nThe focus of tropical marine fauna in the Pacific Ocean centers around Indonesia, and spreads widely to include the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, the South Pacific, and north to Hawaii, and is thus called the Indo-Pacific marine faunal realm. Variety is great in this realm, but representatives of most marine groups can be found in areas anywhere in the region. The fauna of Guam, in the Marianas Islands, is thus similar to that of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, or that of the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean.\n\nMany marine organisms associate with one another, often in most peculiar ways. In some areas of the world, pearlfishes, which are my own specialty, live inside the body of sea cucumbers*. Some species of pearlfish are parasites, while others only use the body of the sea cucumber as a house, coming out into the open sea at night to feed. Clownfishes are another example. They often live in the folds of sea anemones. Although the clownfish is not harmed, other fishes approaching the anemone are stung by poison-filled threads, quickly die, and the clownfish and anemone share the meal.\n\nMarine biology is thus a fascinating field of study in which great advances are constantly emerging. Its importance, with over 2/3 of the world covered by oceans, is becoming quite evident.\n\nMarine Conditions in Hong Kong\n\nLet us turn our attention back to Hong Kong. Having seen the importance of temperature to marine creatures, perhaps a look at the temperature ranges found throughout the year in Hong Kong would be beneficial. A graph plotting the average\n\n* Trott, 1970.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206063, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "138 \n\nS. F. BALFOUR \n\ninto two parts: the one, Tanka and Hoklo, and the other, Punti and Hakka. \n\nThe Tanka live for the most part in boats. They support themselves almost entirely by fishing. Their only industries are net and rope-making, and dyeing with betel nut. They are rarely shopkeepers and never agriculturalists. In certain centres they form vast congregations of craft of all sizes but the nearest thing they achieve towards living on the shore is a kind of dwelling formed from what was originally an old boat too leaky to stay afloat which has been placed on struts. The very curious town of Tai O on Lantao Island is an example of this peculiar culture-dwelling. Whole streets of house-boats line the creeks, their front doors giving onto the water which is reached by a ladder. Every household has a boat moored beneath it and the traffic of boats to and fro is comparable to that of a town. Except that sometimes the struts of these dwellings are formed of granite slabs, probably borrowed elsewhere, there is a complete absence of stone or even of any notion of construction. The houses are constructed of old planks nailed together without system, their roofs are very poorly thatched with dried grass, there are no rooms beyond a covered verandah on which the cooking is done and an interior bedroom with one raised corner which forms a bed for the whole family.* \n\nOn the other hand, their boats are extremely well made. The biggest junks are constructed either for trawling or line fishing in deep water. They are made of teak or pine wood and have high sterns with accommodation for several generations of families. A feature which has apparently only been recently adopted in Europe is their water-tight compartments, so that if a leak is sprung, only one part of the ship need be baled out. Another feature which is more efficient than our European sailing craft is the rudder full of holes that can be easily turned without impairing its breaking value. The ships are cared for most regularly. Careening is done once a fortnight for pine wood craft and once a month in the case of teak. It is rather typical of their makeshift methods of house-building that they use the grass most suitable for careening in thatching their house-boats, \n\nThe Hoklo are also boat dwellers and are found in most of the main anchorages but their numbers are more frequent towards the east of the region, and in parts of Mirs Bay they predominate over \n\n* See also pp. 197-200 of this Journal. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207004, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE\n\n69\n\nin Taiwan. Elsewhere, in most Asian cities with a large Overseas Chinese community there are retailers who sell gods but who neither carve nor repair them. (Plate 2)\n\nBy way of background let me explain the various types of image produced by Chinese. The majority of north and central China's images used to be made of mud and straw and painted with a dull gold paint. (Plate 3.) They have been destroyed by the myriad in the course of the numerous iconoclastic anti-superstition campaigns conducted on the mainland in the past fifty years or so and are rarely to be seen. The next group are the bronze, iron and other metal images of which only the smaller are still in existence, mostly in America and Europe; the larger having been too large to move have long since been melted down for scrap.\n\nThe third group consists of the carved and painted or lacquered wood images mainly from the forested south of China. The best materials for these images, so Chinese have assured me, were camphor and sandalwood and the finest carvings were from Amoy where a group of seven families produced their famous images over eight generations ceasing production only in 1950. Amoy figures were precise in detail, well-proportioned and expensive but rather baroque in their appearance.\n\nIn very general terms, Cantonese images tend to be rather ill-proportioned and stylised; commonly they are gilt-painted figures with heavy features (Plate 4). Hainanese images are generally recognisable by their short limbs; Taiwanese carvings are usually identifiable by their heavy use of blues and sea-greens, and nowadays for their gaudy, cheap and shoddy plastic images. Some Taiwanese images have been made from varnishing wadded rice husks into shape (Plate 5).\n\nFor several generations the Yangtze valley produced large numbers of well carved, handsome and beautifully finished gold lacquer images, predominantly for Buddhist temples, although many were also Taoist folk religion deities. Since 1949 a factory has grown up near Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong in which Shanghai refugees still produce these for Hong Kong and for export. A fifteen foot bodhisattva was being finished whilst I was there, rolled on its back prior to being shipped to Singapore, swathed in plastic sheeting.\n\nThere are very many other local styles such as the knotted-root carvings of Shantung, the boxwood carving of the upper Yangtze\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207319, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES ON CHIUCHOW OPERA\n\n79\n\nthe occasion. Trembling yet decided to carry out her plan, she enters the lord's chamber. She moves in the most alluring way and greets the lord coquettishly. And the lord is surprised to see such a beauty. 'How fortunate am I to be blessed with such a beautiful girl in my old age,' he laughs loudly and roughly. Then she offers him wine with all good wishes and succeeds in making him drunk.\n\nSuddenly a secret message is delivered; the lord dismisses everyone and reads it. There is an uprising and he is ordered to get it under control as quickly as possible. But how could he leave the house? No; he excuses himself because of illness and dispatches someone else to take care of it. He seizes the brush but is unable to write and sinks on the table, passing out because of over-indulgence in wine. The fisher-girl comes back with a cup of wine and when she is sure of his state, she realises her opportunity. She disappears and returns in fighting dress, blue blouse and trousers, tucked-in white pleated skirt, hair in a tail hanging down, ready to avenge. She trembles, then musters up courage, but when he moves she falls down shocked. Finally she seizes him, and as he raises his head she pushes her pin into his chest. They fight before he finally dies.\n\nThese movements of the girl are some of the most interesting in the Chiuchow opera repertoire.\n\nSuddenly she hears voices and fears to be discovered. She quickly hides under the heavy brocades of the table cover. The ladies-in-waiting find the body and call the housekeeper who immediately calls the fortune-teller, because as he knew that the lord would be stabbed, he could now state by whom. The fortune-teller accuses everyone of those present and then chases them out. Then he taps on the table and the girl comes out. They recognize each other because she has once saved his life. Quickly she explains why she did it, and how, and begs him to save her.\n\nThe fortune-teller, hearing about the secret message, quickly writes into it, \"as it is my fault and I am unable to serve my country, I kill myself\".\n\nThe girl hides again, the household comes back and the fortune-teller explains the letter. Then he says, “Oh, an uprising, the rebels will be here soon and then it's difficult to save one's life, so save who can\". They all run for their lives.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209840, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "77\n\nborrowed, and may remain on the periphery of the vocabulary, or it could move, through various intermediate stages, towards the core of the English word stock. A.J. Bliss in his Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases has this to say about words of foreign origin in the English vocabulary: 'Words of foreign origin form a spectrum graduating imperceptibly from words like faith at one end, the foreign origin of which would be obvious only to the professional student of language, to words like eclat, which no one would consider anything but \"foreign\", at the other; it would be possible to prepare a segment of words each slightly but perceptibly more \"foreign\" than the preceding one, covering the whole range between these two extremes'.15\n\nWhen an expatriate greets his Chinese colleagues with dzou san 'Good Morning', or when he thanks a waiter for bringing his food by saying m goi 'Thank you', he is speaking Chinese, perhaps with an English accent. The expressions are not, strictly speaking, loans, even though they occur in the midst of what is predominantly English speech. For such words and expressions, there are no standardized written forms, and the speaker would, in most probability, not think of using them with other expatriates except perhaps in a humorous context. Other expressions well-known to the expatriate community in Hong Kong include nei hou ma; mm goi? 'How are you?' and tsoi gin 'See you again' or 'good bye'.\n\nRonald W. Langacker uses the example of 'hippie' to illustrate his point that changes in the structure of a language do not come about instantaneously. Take the word hippie for instance, which has spread very rapidly through much of the English-speaking world. Someone must have used the word first, or maybe a small number of people created it independently. In either case, many weeks or months must have gone by between the time it was coined and the time it became an item of general use'.10\n\nIn the case of loans, the words may appear first within quotation marks or in italics, to indicate their foreign origin. Before a word becomes sufficiently familiar, it is customary to provide a kind of gloss or explanation. Of course, many words which have gained currency in Hong Kong are less familiar to readers outside Hong Kong, and writers may feel a need to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210570, "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-1985", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "158 \n\nWEI PEH T'I \n\nshe continued taking Chinese lessons at Taiho. She took a second language examination in 1905. Mastery of the local dialect was also essential. It took Edith until 1905 to make herself understood in the northern Anhui dialect. “Last year I could not say much but this time I will have to do my share of the preaching,”20 Edith confided to Louese in her letter dated 5 January 1905. At the same time, another woman missionary, Mrs. Ferguson, “not having our pronunciation so that the women do not understand her very well,” was not very useful since she could not preach. \n\n9920 \n\nAt Taiho, the missionaries lived among the people to whom they were bringing the Gospel. These were poor people, judging by their daily fare and by their standards of hygiene. Edith described the scene in the back lane where the men of the neighbourhood ate their evening meal squatting outside their front doors. \n\nThe men do not eat with their wives, . . . The man of the house takes his bowl of rice, if he can afford it, or if not his bowl of dough strips and perhaps a bowl of salted garlic or some kind of greens. If it's the first or fifteenth of the month he will have another bowl with some stewed meat and onion etc.22 \n\nSeeing the population of the back lane thus gathered, the missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm as well as Edith, would assault them with the words of the Lord. \n\nevery day about the time they are eating their food we three stand at the back gate, sing a hymn to draw the crowd, then Mr. Malcolm steps out to preach to them. A great many of them won't come here, so we go to them.\" \n\nTheir timing might not be the most propitious way to make friends and influence their neighbours, but the missionaries were only following Hudson Taylor's directions to reach the people wherever and whenever possible. And Edith was surprised that the neighbours were so “unfriendly”,24 mumbling such things as \"the Boxers will finish them off yet\" and calling the missionaries \n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210586, "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-1985", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "174\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\nback gate, sing a hymn to draw the crowd, then Mr. Malcolm steps out to preach to them. A great many of them won't come here, so we go to them. When they are eating their food you may think a queer time to hold a meeting, but do you know how they eat their food! And it's perhaps the only time to catch the men. The men do not eat with their wives and they do not know such a custom as tablecloth and knives and forks, except as they have heard of the extravagant foreigners. But the man of the house takes his bowl of rice, if he can afford it, or if not his bowl of dough strips and perhaps a bowl of salted garlic or some kind of greens. If it's the first or fifteenth of the month he will have another bowl with some stewed meat and onions etc. These he puts down on the ground and he sits on his front door step holding his bowl of dough strips which he pushes into his mouth with his chopsticks, stopping once in a while to take a little relish from one of the bowls on the ground. Those on the ground are public property if anyone else is eating with him, all dipping into the common bowl. Such is the life of our back lane. The women eat when their masters have finished. And perhaps our meetings disturb some of their calculations, for the men may have their bowl along with them and the housewife may not have another. However, there are people in Taiho who spend more money than we do over their everyday meals, and they do not eat them on their front steps, but they do not live in our back lane.\n\nWe think these back lane people keep very many from coming here, one man trying to frighten some women away from us said \"the Boxers will finish them all off yet!\" And several apparently friendly women invited me to drink tea with them one afternoon when I was passing. I refused as I was in a hurry, and had no sooner passed than I overheard “Foreign devil”. There seems to be an organized opposition against all of us. The city is largely Mohammedan, and they seem almost impossible to work with. \"All things are possible with God” and “to him that believeth.\" So we will continue to hope and pray. We have our little encouragements. I could write you several. The Lord has not forgotten us, nor these people. I have taken up this letter with things of not much account, if it's unprofitable. I am sorry to have taken your time. I will write next time more of my", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "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": 211523, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "216\n\nwelcomed Greeks as government servants, mercenaries and artisans. Among many mutual influences between the two cultures one of them was that the Eastern countries imitated Greek coinage and did so even before Alexander. For example, under the occupation of the Persians in Judaea, imitations of Attic coins were minted, adding on them the word “Yahud\" i.e. \"Jewish\". Our coin is a good instance of the use of Greek currency, either genuine or imitated.\n\nThere is evidence of relations between Greece and India, as early as the 10th century B.C., in the Epic of Ramayana, where we find the counterpart of the Greek Centaur, Kinnara of the Sanskrit, and in that of the Bharatas (Mahabaratas) in the similarity between Arjun and Karna and Achilles and Hector of the Illiad of Homer. In philosophy the cynicism of Diogenes of Sinope pervaded the system of the Pasupatas of India. And we find the name of the Indian hero Lakulisa borrowed from that of the Greek hero Heracles (semantically Laku means club; Lakulisa is the cognate of (H)erakle).\n\nThis present coin was found in Papua New Guinea. It must have been brought there by some one from Asia, i.e. India, Malay or other Asian countries. This, in fact, is not only possible but even probable because of the extent of the Greek connections with all these countries in ancient times.\n\nIt would be impossible to know who owned this bracelet with the coin. A probable owner would have been an Indonesian, as these neighbouring Malays used to organize frequent expeditions into New Guinea, looking for gold, paradise-bird feathers and slaves. In that case, we may be allowed to speculate that the coin could have been a significant symbol to the owner.\n\nThe Greek figure could have represented for him Iskandar i.e. Alexander the Great, the alleged ancestor of the Malay race. The word TAPA could have been taken for a Malay word denoting asceticism in the sense of body training, yoga, endurance, etc. On the other hand, the dolphin or porpoise, “lumba\" in Malay, is synonymous with, and a symbol of, play, competition, contest. So, if my speculation is correct, this object would have been a sportsman's token, an emblem of effort in sportsmanship, or ... a simple commercial ornament. In any event,\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211681, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "71\n\nof the boatswain's whistle the Union Jack was hauled down, while the sailors presented arms and the civilians stood to attention: then we all stooped to collect our chattels, and the party in single file, laden as if returning from an especially successful jumble sale, passed over the Bund under cover of an additional guard detailed from the hulk. A surprised and now silent crowd of Chinese looked on with enquiring eyes at the strange procession, as it moved up the gangway, round the hulk, and on to H.M.S. \"Wyvern\", which had been brought alongside.\n\nWhile this withdrawal took place at Butterfield's hulk, a similar retreat was in progress from the other point of concentration further up the Bund, across Jardine's hulk, to H.M. gunboat \"Scarab”. The small group of American residents in Kiu Kiang had withdrawn to their own ship several days before.\n\nThe two warships cast off and anchored in mid-stream. The evacuees numbered three dozen males of several nationalities and various walks in life. With proverbial hospitality the Navy set about finding berths for them all; I was lucky to be detailed to one of several houseboats which had made fast alongside,\n\nThese motor-houseboats were designed for travel along the creeks and canals that formed an extensive inland water system throughout the Yangtze valley. Business men were thus able to visit in comfort the numerous cities of central China, to discuss affairs with their Chinese agents and dealers, check stocks, arrange remittances of funds through the native banks, and survey the market. The convenience was great in a country entirely devoid of motor roads. The boats were also ideal for week-end shooting trips. In season, the countryside teemed with game: snipe, woodcock, every species of duck and teal, geese and bustard; hare, hog-deer, quail, bamboo-partridge the best eating-bird of the lot and the king of them all the magnificent Chinese pheasant.\n\n―\n\nJ\n\nM.H.B. \"Hsun Si\" was a typical craft of her kind. She was fifty feet long and drew four feet of water. Right forward over the companion-way stood the small wheelhouse, where the \"laodah\"* sat to steer. Down\n\n* \"Laodah\". Name by which chief member of the Chinese crew was called. Translated literally it meant \"old great one” — generally old in skulduggery and great in prevarication. As a class, delightful. They would blandly fleece the unwary on coal, firewood, kerosene, cleaning materials, and market purchases; and more especially on mops, which would wear out at a phenomenal rate. But the real \"clean-up\" would occur during the annual overhaul, which often led to a change, but not for the better, of laodahs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211698, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "88 \n\nJ \n\nleft there were still many people who had neither beds nor mattresses. With the departure of the American internees at the beginning of July it had been possible to relieve a few of the worst cases of overcrowding, but the relief was quite insufficient, and for many I am tempted to say 'for most' — of the internees the overcrowding, the lack of privacy, and the consequent friction and nervous strain rank as a more serious hardship than the food shortage which I will deal with next.\n\nThe food question falls into two phases. During the first 2 1/2 months the food was very bad indeed, totally insufficient in quantity, poor in quality, ill-cooked and deficient in nourishment. When I was in hospital my normal food was: breakfast two thin slices of bread (sometimes with a scrape of jam or margarine, sometimes dry) and one cup of tea; dinner, a bowl of rice and soya beans cooked with two or three small pieces of buffalo beef, pork or fish and some greens; tea, one cup of tea only; supper, one slice of bread, sometimes with a sliver of cheese, and a cup of soup of sorts. (This was better than the ordinary camp fare). During this period there was no way of supplementing the basic rations of rice, soya bean, meat (or fish) and greenstuff, and everyone lost weight severely; some men lost as much as 70 lbs. The hospital was full of dysentery and diarrhoea cases and there were a large number of cases of beriberi and other malnutrition diseases.\n\nIn April, however, an issue of 1/2 lb. of flour a day was substituted for part of the rice ration and arrangements were made to bake bread in the camp. An immediate improvement in the general health of the camp appeared, and this was aided by certain other factors of which the principal were\n\n(a) the opening of a canteen where those who had any money could buy limited quantities of oatmeal, margarine, powdered milk, sugar, cocoa etc., at fancy prices, and\n\n(b) permission for parcels of foodstuffs, toilet necessities etc. to be sent in from the town.\n\nThose persons then who had money to spend at the canteen and friends in Hongkong were able to supplement their diet fairly satisfactorily. But there remained a large — a very large residue of people in the camp who had neither money nor friends in Hongkong and who were accordingly entirely dependent on their rations. These consisted when", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212393, "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": 335, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "312\n\nof degree holders, indicating social rank, there is also a wealth of swept ridges and stylised, 'teapot-handle', gables among the roofs of the common folk.\n\nLike Hong Kong, granite was readily available, and a good, dense, red face brick, some of which is quite narrow, is manufactured locally. The brickwork has an attractive, diaper pattern, with dark kiln marks on the face. Unlike Hong Kong, arches with keystones and pediments are in evidence. Much of the architecture resembles that of Taiwan, and, not unusual in many parts of China, there is a marvellous variety of murals and stone carving, including stylised motifs. Small figurines ride lions or other mythical beasts on roof ridges, which, together with eight-diagram (ba gua) and knife and sword charms ward off evil spirits. Similarly, 'wind lions' have stood on guard at entrances since the days of Koxinga.\n\nAnother scenic spot for architectural gems is the 1.71 square kilometer Gulangyu Island, where at least one member of every family is said to play a musical instrument. This Island has two beautiful white egrets as its emblem and is situated a five-minute ferry ride from Xiamen proper. Part of the beauty is, however, marred by large, ugly, cigarette signs which generate high rents. No vehicular traffic is permitted in this hilly haven. It was a cold day, and RAS Party Members kept themselves warm by exploring. This included climbing to the Lotus Flower Monastery and beyond up the 90-metre high, crowded, precipitous 'Sunlight Rock'. Koxinga chose this as his bastion because it reminded him of Japan.\n\nGulangyu Island is full of architectural 'relics' from the old International Settlement, with patchworks of yellow, terracotta and pink walls blending with oranges and greens. The forlorn, dilapidated building which once served as the British Consulate, is still there. Before World War II, 13 other governments also had consulates on the Island. They, together with tea merchants and financers, could afford to pay for, and insisted on, the best quality building materials.\n\nMuch of the architecture of this 'garden island' is European, but there are examples of eclectic styles with Chinese columns and western capitals, and Chinese friezes and western brickwork. All these contrast with rows of old, Chinese type, shops with colonnades in Xiamen, with upper floors projecting over pavements; or with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212616, "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "150\n\nand the 3rd War Zone branch of the Central Military Academy, where the junior officers of the Chinese army are trained.\n\nThe outbreak of war between Britain and Japan had altered the nature of my visit. It was agreed that a British party would be sent to the 3rd War Zone to assist in guerilla warfare, and shortly afterwards I left for a reconnaissance of the forward areas where the school, which was to be the central feature of our assistance, would be established.\n\nThe lower Yangtze delta is the most densely populated and the wealthiest region in China. Within the triangle contained by Shanghai, Nanking, and Hangchow, there are many large cities, such as Soochow, Changhsing, Huchow, Chinkiang and Kashing. In this area there is more railway traffic, more road traffic, more river and canal traffic, more sea-going shipping, and more active industry, than in all the rest of China. For the past four years, since the fall of Nanking, the Japanese had occupied the main lines of communication in the region; the Yangtze, the railways, the large cities; and they had patrolled and used the roads and creeks: in short, on the security of this base rested the whole Japanese position in China. Any threat here, any blow at Japanese dispositions, would be correspondingly the more telling. Well, as it happened, a broad tongue of mountains reached from the southwest into the area, and in these mountains the guerillas had established their quarters.\n\nOur car followed the road along the Tsien Tang river gorges: we slept in little road-side inns and ate in busy fly-blown taverns. When I had last visited these parts there had been no motor roads; I had come by junk, hauled up the rapids by trackers who bent to the ground as they strained to advance foot by foot. A new railway, leading south from Wuhu on the Yangtze, had been completed only a few years previously. In face of the Japanese advance, Chinese engineers had dismantled the line to deny its use to the enemy: but the Japanese advance had stopped at the edge of the plain; the mountain area which reached back to the mass of unoccupied China was still untouched, except for desultory bombing. The steel railway bridges had been cut, their girders sloped at all angles; and the sleepers had been taken for firewood by the farmers, leaving the rails lying along the track.\n\nAll this derelict steel, the stone piers of the bridges, the embankments and cuttings, and the rails themselves, were ideal for use in training. We had here better facilities than we had ever had in Maymyo, though", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212618, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "152\n\nperimeter of the Settlement and the Concession, but was later to be used by the Japanese to hem in the foreign areas. At the time that Hawkins passed through, about eight in the morning, the news of the Japanese attack on Britain and America had apparently not yet been handed out by the Japanese High Command to their troops. The sentry took no notice of Hawkins, who, however, a little further on saw the men of a Japanese mechanised unit tumbling out of their billets in a hurry and manning their vehicles.\n\nThe Shanghai neighbourhood, as indeed the whole of the Yangtze delta, is a network of creeks, large and small. Unless you know the country paths well you are liable to find your progress blocked at frequent intervals by creeks, the footbridges over which are few and far between. By nightfall Hawkins, keeping away from the neighbourhood of the several Japanese posts planted round the outskirts of Shanghai, had only covered ten miles; and he had lost one pony. To avoid approaching any of the bridges he had had to swim a number of creeks. It was not until his third day out, moving with great caution, that he found a farmer who could lead him to a Chinese guerilla unit. The news of the events in Shanghai was by this time beginning to filter out to the country people, all of whom shewed him the greatest kindness, gave him food, and found him shelter. Hawkins deserved all the more credit for his initiative and resource because he spoke not a word of Chinese and naturally had considerable difficulty in making himself understood.\n\nThroughout occupied China it is true to say in a general way that by night the country belongs to the Chinese. At night, owing to the guerilla activity, the Japanese, except when in force, retire to the safety of the towns. Only in the daytime, within reasonable distance of their posts outside the large towns and along the lines of communication, can they move with safety. In many places this guerilla control is effective up to the very walls of the large cities; or, in the case of Shanghai, the wire. Once Hawkins reached the guerillas he was comparatively safe. Night by night, watching their opportunities, they moved him further inland, taking him safely across the various railways, roads, or creeks, which were subject to Japanese patrolling, slipping if necessary between the machine-gun posts where the Japanese had established more permanent lines. The chief danger was from the spies and informers, in Japanese pay, who infest the whole area; they live dangerous lives themselves because they get short shrift when caught by the guerillas. It thus took him three weeks to reach the town where we sat eating our New Year", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212637, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "17!\n\nFortunately our supply of waterproofing material was short. For proofing joints however we found local products, such as wood oil, bee's wax, and vegetable oil, made good waterproof compounds if mixed in suitable proportions.\n\nThe Chinese were very anxious that we should design a mine for use in the network of creeks and shallow waterways in the delta. The Chief produced some interesting combinations. I will describe one of these, which we called the Flamingo. It consisted of a bamboo stake about 3½ feet tall and pointed at the lower end. The top was cut to allow a long bamboo cross-piece to swivel at a point about three quarters down its length; the shorter arm of the cross-piece was weighted with a heavy stone so that it would pull up into the air the other much longer arm when released from a wire which held it down level. At the far end of the long arm a pipe mine was lashed, filled with H.E., connected to a pull switch. The idea was to drive in the stake in the soft mud at one side of the creek until the level cross-piece was about one foot under the surface of the water and parallel with the shore. The pull switch was made fast by a stone to the ground below and a string went off at right angles across the creek, also a foot or so below the surface. When a boat came along it pushed against the string, which released the retaining wire at the end of the long arm. The arm, pulled up by the weight at the other end, shot up; the sharp tug on the pull switch set off the pipe mine when it was about three feet in the air in such a way that the splinters burst all over the occupants of the passing boat. The Chinese were reluctant to use this mine as they were afraid it would catch their own boats. As Cyril said, \"They want a mine which will set itself, will distinguish between friendly boats and hostile boats, and will renew itself after going off.\"\n\nTo help in the manufacture of the various devices we designed, and to make tools for us, we operated our own little workshop. I had been lucky to secure the services of a most original character, Reginald. His father was a Chinese ship's carpenter, his mother was Irish, and for the first seventeen years of his life he lived in Limehouse. He then went out to his relations in China, joined the Shanghai Fire Brigade, and moved on from that to work under Rewi Alley in the Co-operatives. He managed a machine shop for the Co-operatives, but felt that because of his half-foreign blood he had not received fair treatment from them; so he left them to join us. He was able to borrow two lathes, a drilling, and a planing machine, from a Co-operative machine shop, which had been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212909, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "203\n\nThe household was quite large with an amah to look after us children (who many years later also looked after my own children), a cook, who was the husband of the amah, and one or two others to help with the washing and housework. When the time came, I went to the primary school with all the other children of my age, a single very fair head among a sea of black. I can visualise the classroom in which we had our lessons and the playground outside. The textbooks were very thin and had paper covers, so that it was possible for the history master to roll one up and give us a good clip over the head if we were being particularly stupid. English was not taught in the primary school, only to the senior students in the secondary school, so I was sent to sit among the senior girls to learn my English grammar from my mother, who taught the subject.\n\nWe had school uniforms of a sort still seen in Hong Kong, but the school only supplied the material to ensure that everybody had the same colour. Ours was a beautiful pale blue, only slightly darker than the Cambridge blue. Quantities of the new material would arrive and then be made up into the smartest of outfits.\n\nPaddy Fields and Dragon Boats\n\nWe would walk to school through paddy fields, which for most of the year were flooded for the rice. Small fish abounded in these fields, though I never caught any. The cycle of the rice crops was familiar to everybody. First, a scattering of seeds in a small patch, then, when the seedlings were about six inches above the water, the planting out of the seedlings, and then nothing much till harvest, and there were two harvests a year. Water was supplied to the paddy fields by a complicated irrigation system and involved pumping water up from the creeks. These pumps were an endless chain of paddles, which were pulled up a trough whose lower end was in the creek and which discharged into the fields. Some pumps were small and driven by a man using his arms as extensions of wooden pistons attached to the upper wheel round which the chain of paddles rotated. Others were driven by three or four men treading spokes protruding from the driving wheel. For the winter harvest, the water was drained out, so that the rice could be cut and threshed into large tubs on the spot. Where there had been acres of water, now there were dry fields of stubble and stacks of rice straw drying out. As the fields dried, we would take short cuts across them. We also found that the mud was soft enough to make into the mud equivalent of snowballs. This led to splendid games in which factions would build forts with the straw and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212910, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "204\n\nbombard the enemies with mud balls.\n\nAs children we did not go often into the town except to walk to church. This we did along streets paved with enormous stones laid five at a time along the road and then five across. The roads were elevated above the fields and along the creeks with which the whole delta is riddled. In times of flood these dykes protected the fields. Occasionally they would be breached and then a general alarm would be raised as the whole population rushed to repair the damage before the countryside was flooded.\n\nThe creeks, one of which passed at the foot of our garden, carried the commerce of the villages and, in the fifth month, the dragon boats. For weeks before the actual festival, dragon boats would be paddled along the creeks of the delta and, from time to time, one would pass our garden. These were magnificent vessels bearing only superficial resemblance to those used for racing here. The largest had over a hundred paddlers. In the centre was an enormous drum with two drummers. Gongs were placed at other parts and large ornamental, cylindrical umbrellas, beautifully embroidered with colours and mirrors, added decoration. They had a frightful time negotiating the bend in the creek outside our house, a feat which was only accomplished with tremendous shouting added to the cacophony already supplied by the percussion. As the fifth month approached we were on the lookout for the dragon boats which we could hear long before we could see them. With the first sounds of the drums and gongs we would drop everything and rush down the gap in the bamboo hedge from which we had a grandstand view.\n\nLast Visit to Fatshan\n\nAll these events occurred in the period from about 1928 to 1933. After that we went on leave from which I returned to school in North China. I did however make one last journey to Fatshan in the spring of 1938. Normally our long school holidays were in the winter but, with the Japanese war starting in 1937, we had a short holiday that winter and a long holiday in the following spring. It was great fun to return to the old house and try and pick up a bit of Cantonese again. Canton was under attack by the Japanese who would fly over and bomb the city from time to time. We were close enough to hear the bombs but not to suffer from them. Nevertheless we had a sandbagged air raid shelter in the garden. Out of curiosity I went into this gloomy recess one day only to scurry", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212911, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 220, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "205\n\nout as soon as I was able to make out my surroundings. I have never seen such a dense swarm of mosquitoes. Thank goodness we never had to use this shelter.\n\nOur departure for Hong Kong that spring was dramatic. From the hospital we took the ancient hospital motor boat down the creeks to Canton. We found the river steamer for Hong Kong moored in the fast flowing stream. It was surrounded by an impenetrable mob of sampans carrying people fleeing from the Japanese attack on Canton which was expected any day. Our motor boat could not get to the gangway so we transferred to a sampan. We approached the ladder from downstream as most of the boats were tied to the steamer upstream. We soon found out why because as each sampan cast off from the ladder another, aided by the stream, pushed its way in from upstream. We could make no headway. The only possible approach was from the bows. As we worked our way slowly down we saw that the captain was getting worried by the crowds swarming on board. He had to sail or be swamped. Our luggage was manhandled across the intervening sampans but my father would not allow us to be passed along in the same way, which I thought was a pity. The captain saw us and waited only until our sampan at last made the steps. He then gave the order for his crew to chop through the mooring ropes of all the sampans still tied on. Once freed of these, he weighed anchor and set off for Hong Kong - an overnight journey.\n\nP & O to England – Canadian Pacific to China\n\nIn 1933 my father was due for leave so the whole family, now comprising four children and parents, set off on the P. & O Rawalpindi, a ship which was converted to be an armed merchantman during the war and sunk by a U boat. Travel by sea was the most commonly used way to reach Europe. From about 1933 one could go a little faster by taking the Trans-Siberian railway. Fast mail was marked 'Via Siberia' on the envelopes. The sea journey involved four days at sea to Singapore and trips to the Botanical Gardens there. Then on to Penang, Colombo, Aden, through the Suez Canal perhaps with a stop at Marseilles, where some in a hurry got on the train through France to England, a stop at Gibraltar and thence to Plymouth where we got off for a train to Herefordshire. Most passengers went on to Tilbury in London. There was a leisurely routine about the trip. Beef tea was served on the deck mid-morning and tea in the afternoon. An enterprising steward rounded up a number of children to help him gather up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213239, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "40\n\nfirm and Mr. Friedrich Christian Lemke was authorised to sign for the firm (GG 1 Jan. 1885). From 1879 to 1881 Mr. Garrels had been an assistant in Siemssen and Company, but in 1882 transferred to Meyer and Co. He remained a partner of Meyer and Co. until its name was changed in 1908 to Garrels, Bomer and Co.\n\nHeinrich Friedrick Myerink was admitted a partner in Meyer and Co. in 1878 (DP 1 Jan. 1878). He left the firm by 1884. From 1890 he was connected with the firm of William Meyerink and Co. The head office was in Shanghai, and a partner Max Tiefenbach was in Hamburg. Hermann Friedrich Meyerink died at Kobe on 10 September 1908, aged fifty-eight (DP 21 Sept. 1908). William Meyerink died in 1928, aged eighty-two (SCMP 31 Oct. 1928).\n\nAnother partner of Meyer and Co. was O. Grabe, who was authorised to sign for the firm at Tientsin in 1874 (DP 3 Jan. 1874). His interest as a partner ceased in 1879, but he continued to sign until 31 May 1880 (DP 1 Jan. 1880). Gustav Fischer replaced Grabe as a partner. Johann George Ludwig Schroter and Hermann Friedrich George Borner became partners in 1896. The latter had been a former assistant in Siemssen and Co. before joining the staff of Meyer and Co. as an assistant. In 1896 the firm operated in Shanghai under the name of Meyer, Lemke and Co.\n\nThere was a name change in 1908. Meyer and Co. became Garrels, Börner and Co., though there was not a change in partnership at the time. The partners were J. Heinrich Garrels, Herman Borner, Paul Wassendorf, and Carl Schroter. Hartwig Nellmer continued to sign for the firm (SCMP 1 July 1908). The Company was placed under liquidation in 1914.\n\nOne of the three assistants in E. and J. Meyer and Co. in 1866 was Gottfried Carl Friedrich Rodatz. He left in 1868 to open a ship chandlery with Rudolph Freeks. The business continued until 1878 (DP 11 May 1878). Mr. Rodatz was Secretary of Club Germania in 1876.\n\nHeuermann, Herbst and Co.\n\nLeopold Frickel conducted a ship chandlery and sail-making establishment on Queen's Road from 1862. The business later became McEwen, Frickel and Co. It was not placed under liquidation in 1914 but became bankrupt the following year (CM 4 June 1915). In 1910 Ernest", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213445, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "The territories are ribbed by rugged mountainous ranges rising to over 3,000 feet running mainly from northeast to southwest, the eastern half enclosing numerous landlocked bays and arms of the sea. Included in the area are some two hundred islands, the majority of which are small and barren. These islands are uncultivated for the most part. The largest area of cultivable land is to be found in the northwest of the territories. Only about 50 square miles altogether are under crop,\n\nThe population of the New Territories can be broadly split into land-dwellers and sea-dwellers. That broad division should be qualified by the fact that certain of the land-dwellers combine fishing with agriculture and again certain of the purely fishing population live half on the land in derelict boats and huts built on stilts in muddy creeks. The census last year revealed that the total population of the New Territories was 456,404 of which the land-dwellers numbered 409,945 and the sea-dwellers 46,459.\n\nThe land-dwellers for the most part live in traditional village communities of one or more clans. Their livelihood depends on the cultivation of rice and vegetables, in the cultivation of pine forests and in the cutting of undergrowth for fuel, in the rearing of livestock and poultry, in the picking of medicinal herbs, in oyster culture, in fishponds, brickworks, limekilns and in food factories. The sea-dwellers engage in fishing both deep sea and offshore, operate water transport by junks, and ply for hire in sampans.\n\nThere are a number of immigrant groups who have entered the New Territories as refugees since the Chinese revolution and especially during the period after the last World War. The largest of these communities is that from Shanghai which arrived during the years 1948-51 and brought with it considerable capital and industrial skill. But the unassimilated customs of these immigrants are no part of the Chinese customary law of the New Territories. It is with the indigenous inhabitants, the land-dwellers and the sea-dwellers, that we are presently concerned, and although none of these appear to have been autochthonous nor do some appear to have been of Chinese origin, they have all been settled so long in these territories and now regard themselves as Chinese and speak Chinese dialects that they must be classed as the indigenous Chinese inhabitants. These inhabitants can be sub-divided into the Cantonese, the Hakka, the Tanka and the Hoklo.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213733, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "57\n\nMuch freight was being carried by boat, and how important ferries were, in the area, both in Northern and Southern District. The census also shows just how many specialist cargo boats there were operating, as well as the large numbers of general cargo vessels.\n\n911\n\nThe 1921 Census records all the vessels seen by the enumerators. In Northern District 456 fishing boats, 84 cargo boats and seven sampans were recorded, and in Southern District 672 fishing boats, 33 cargo boats and 236 sampans. In Northern District 2.1 males are recorded for every fishing boat, and 4.1 for every cargo boat and sampan; in Southern District 4.7 and 2.8 respectively. The most likely reason for the lower figure for persons recorded for every cargo boat/sampan in Southern District as against Northern District is the very much higher number of sampans recorded in Southern District. The higher figure for males recorded against Southern District fishing boats is probably due to the fact that Southern waters were oceanic, and the fishing boats were in fact larger than those operating in the creeks and shallows of Northern District. The numbers recorded, however, in each district and for each class of vessel, are such that it is likely that few boats were manned by more than the males of a single family.\n\nThere were clear differences between women's and men's work among the floating population. The overwhelmingly female nature of the passenger-carrying work in particular is very clearly brought out in these statistics. Probably the women were working passenger sampans while their menfolk were out fishing.\n\nThe recorded occupations of Northern District women in the 1911 and 1921 Censuses and for Southern District women in the 1911 Census are given in Tables 25 and 26. Unfortunately, the method of recording the occupations of women is, for the reasons outlined above, flawed, and the information given is of only modest value, since women working from the home were left out of the census figures, thus biasing the statistics by underplaying the role of women in fishing, shopkeeping, and the minor services such as hairdressing, especially in the 1911 Census. It seems likely that the vital role of women as grass-cutters and fuel sellers is also seriously under-recorded, since this seems almost always to have been a part-time occupation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214252, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "73\n\nlarge, wide, gaping mouth has but four small teeth showing, these being normal human-size incisors top and bottom. Finally, he has three small white skulls across his forehead held in place by a pink band.\n\n19] Gandharva known in Chinese as Kan-t'a-p'o\n\nThe Gandharva are one of the eight classes of supernatural beings referred to in the Lotus Sutra. They are Indra's musicians and also in the retinue of Dhrtarastra [they are the same as or similar to the Kinnaras]. They do not eat meat nor drink wine but feed on incense and fragrance.\n\nAn image of the Gandharva is in the Ta Pei Ssu but not in the Pi-yun Ssu. His image portrays him standing, dressed in multi-coloured robes over armour, a helmet over black spiky hair, and is clean shaven. His face is semi-demonic, with large protruding eyes. He has no unique characteristics.\n\n20] Nanda Upananda known in Chinese as Nan-t'o Pa-nan-t'o 跋難陀\n\nLittle seems to be known about Nanda Upananda apart from being a protector of Magadha [near Bihar]. His image has only been seen in the Ta Pei Ssu and not in the Pi-yun Ssu. It depicts him as an elderly man but with a semi-demonic face. He has round eyes, small ugly protrusions on his cheeks, a gaping mouth and fang-like eye-teeth, no moustache but a short pointed beard, and is wearing decorated robes and cap. His hands are held together as if holding a tablet [which may well be missing].\n\n21] Skanda, Viharapala or Veda' known in Chinese as Wei T'o #BE\n\nWei T'o, a Hindu deity, the Deva Protector of the Dharma, guards the sanctuary of virtually all Chinese Buddhist temples. He stands with his back to the main entrance in the inner temple hall facing the main altar and back-to-back with the Laughing Buddha of the Future, Mi-lo Fo, who greets visitors with his smiling welcome. Wei T'o is also to be seen guarding many a folk religion temple, though only very rarely does he appear on a household altar. Because of the prayers offered to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214578, "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": 436, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "405\n\ndery of Shakyamuni preaching on Vulture Peak, with attendants. This is notable for the skill of the stitchwork, which flows with the contours of faces and draperies to add depth and texture. Some colours, such as the blues, are stunningly deep and fresh, but the reds and greens have faded with time. This item dates from the 7 or 8th century.\n\nA Japanese conservator mounted the paintings on silk in the 1910s at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Many were in an extremely fragile state and they survive today largely as a result of extremely fragile condition. Unfortunately some of the backing material is quite dark. One of the brighter paintings is of Kwanyin on a lotus base surrounded by swirling green draperies that bring the work to life. An inscription on the back of this exquisite piece, from 910, has aided scholars.\n\nA scroll painting also depicts Kwanyin waving a banner on a staff, with the figure of a deceased lady in the background. The scroll is believed to have been offered so that the lady might ascend to the halls of paradise, with Boddhisattvas leading the way. Posters of this work were used to publicise a past exhibition. The collection includes some of these banners - surprisingly modest pieces a metre or so long. One of these notably depicts a Boddhisattva holding a glass bowl of Middle Eastern design, clear evidence that the object, or at least knowledge of its form, was carried on the Silk Route.\n\nWe also saw a vibrant section of a scroll painting of a fierce guardian, originally larger than life size. Sadly only a fragment remains of what would have been a fabulous piece.\n\nIn a different medium altogether, another item is a window painting on paper backed with cloth. This depicts stylised lotuses on the outside and images of the Buddha on the inside.\n\nTo realise that these items, when Aurel Stein discovered them, were rolled, stacked up and abandoned in a cave in northern China only makes one grateful that this much has survived.\n\nFurther reading: The International Dunhuang Project website (http://idp.bl.uk) includes a vast amount of material. It says that an international conference, Dunhuang 2000, is to be held in Beijing to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214953, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "4\n\nand serve tea. Credit for initiating the custom of afternoon tea is generally given to Anna, Duchess of Bedford (1788-1861). The correct protocol states that tea should begin between 4 and 4.30 in the afternoon and should last just one hour.”\n\nTea had become so much the national drink that the East India Company was required by an Act of Parliament to keep a year's supply always in stock. For the British Exchequer, tax on tea brought revenue amounting, in the 1830s, to over three million pounds - an astonishing amount. Tea could be obtained only from China. Indian tea (or Ceylon tea) was still many years away. It had to be paid for, preferably not in silver coin, but by equitable trade exchange. China, however, while keen to export tea, wanted nothing in return except silver bullion. Faced with an alarming trade disadvantage, British merchants discovered that opium was one item by which they could balance the trade in tea. As addiction to tea, for that is what it was, could not be stopped, moral scruples did not prevent British traders from fostering opium, far more pernicious than tea, on China. It may be safely assumed therefore that had it not been for Britain's demand for increasing quantities of tea, China might never have been subjected to opium, which was grown in India under British supervision.\n\nOpium and the Chinese\n\nMany scholars and historians believe that mankind has known opium since prehistoric times. It was certainly known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, used extensively for medicinal purposes mainly as a remedy for pain and to induce sleep. Opium has been known in China at least since the Tang Dynasty (618-906AD) and possibly much earlier, originally only for its medicinal value. It was derived from Papeverum somniferum, a species of poppy cultivated in India and Turkey. Although not indigenous to China, the opium-bearing poppy plant was cultivated in the western province of Yunnan to supplement opium imported overland from India. Trade with the Middle East and India flourished in the Tang Dynasty, but import of opium into China was comparatively small as homegrown opium supplied most of local needs. It would be surprising, however, if some non-medical use of the drug had not developed. M. Booth believes that such use was not widespread and was restricted to 'an upper-class elite'; the drug was probably eaten. This seems to be confirmed by the absence", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215915, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "148\n\nwith Sir John Davis, the Governor of Hong Kong, as its president and remained active for 12 years, but ceased to exist in 1859. The Hong Kong branch was re-established under the active patronage of another governor, Sir Robert Black, in 1959.\n\nSince the handover, the society no longer has a patron. When the present Chief Executive of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, Mr. Tung Chee-hwa was asked to serve in that role, he politely declined.\n\nAn American in Hong Kong...\n\nThe conference participants are back from the lunch break and the 82-year-old Reverend Carl Smith is helped to the stage by Elizabeth Sinn. Smith's talk is titled \"Forty Years of Research on Hong Kong.\" The lights are dimmed and heads begin to nod off again...\n\n\"You get out at exit A and on your right you'll see this big set of steps leading up to the skies...don't take them,\" said Smith as he was giving directions to his home in Mei Foo Sun Chuen. As soon as he said that it reminded me of an episode of the popular TV series M*A*S*H when the doctors had to dispose of a bomb. It went something like, “cut the red wire\"...the doctor cuts it... \"after cutting the blue wire\"...explosion!!!\n\nThe reverend's instructions are spot on and I arrive without any trouble. The block is 19 and he's on the 11th Floor, flat D, but his flat is labelled 19D...go figure. Smith greets me and has to unlock the gate with a key. Not very safe, I think, for a man of his age. What if there's a fire? How is he going to get out?\n\nThe apartment is smaller than I had expected and it is filled wall to wall with file cabinets and card files all of Smith's research work over the last 40 years. The cards were put on microfilm and housed in the Public Records Office as the Carl Smith collection. Smith has recently agreed to leave the cards themselves to the Library of Congress in the United States.\n\n\"The Asian division of the Library of Congress, right before the handover, came to Hong Kong with the purpose of getting documents", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216047, "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": 346, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "280\n\nfood and shelter with money he collected from foreigners. He always wore straw sandals, Chinese clothes and cap, and had a strong Chinese complex. The local Chinese adored him, but not so the missionaries; they detested him, even refusing him food and shelter, or any assistance whatsoever - consoling themselves with the reflection that he was a 'disgrace to the cloth'.\n\nDr. James Hayes has reminded me that he produced a note for Volume 23 of this JHKBRAS[1983] in which he provided extracts from A. H. Rasmussen's China Trader21 describing the westerner's community shooting bungalow in about 1905. Rasmussen was barely twenty when he joined the Chinese Maritime Customs at Zhenjiang, a small, lonely British concession. When first posted there he had been assured by others that Zhenjiang was a very nice and clean Concession, with a good club and excellent shooting. He found this to be a good description of the Concession but not of the native town. During his first four years, two of the original thirty-five Europeans died, two went mad, two cut their throats, and he himself was twice nearly murdered by smugglers. After several years with the Imperial Maritime Customs he was offered a job representing a foreign firm still in Zhenjiang and found himself now one of the upper set. No longer could he walk down the crowded streets of the Concession but must ride in state in his sedan chair, borne by his four chair bearers garbed in his firm's colours. Rasmussen's sanity was saved by the presence of a small shooting bungalow in the countryside near by, looked after by a caretaker. It was about eight miles away on a hill called Wu Chow where he would stay during his off-duty hours either reading or hunting wild boar. Though it was relatively expensive in ammunition and tips for the beaters he was able to lessen the latter by sharing expenses with shooting companions. Rasmussen spent many happy hours scanning the visitors' book finding out more about previous hunting successes and failures. He describes how he relieved his boredom by walking up and down the Bund, three hundred yards there and three hundred back, and for a change he walked along the only cross street to the south gate of the Concession, two hundred yards there and two hundred yards back.\n\nOne of the most lucrative trades around Shanghai and Zhenjiang used to be that of being shot. Foreign merchants often went up creeks in house-boat parties, or wander about the fields in the outskirts, looking for snipe. There were no hedges or game laws and innumerable", "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": 216509, "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": 268, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "220\n\nBuddha. After all, the Greeks had settled here even earlier, in the third century BCE. Other examples, before being blown up in 2001, were the huge images of Buddha carved out of the cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, with their moulded mud and stucco draperies. Alexander's forays and settlements to lands well to the east of his Macedonian homeland remind us that several of the cities that Tucker describes were far more ancient than the Silk Road. Babylon, which fell to Alexander in 331 BCE, had already by then been the Middle East's most magnificent city for over fifteen hundred years. The earliest city to occupy the site of Chang'an was in existence before 1000 BCE.\n\nTucker manages to convey a huge sweep of history and geography. You will need time to read this book as, if you merely dip into it, you will lose the interconnecting threads, which are the crux of his thesis, i.e. that, throughout fifteen hundred years, numerous cultures met along the Silk Road and nourished each other's creative spirits. You will need to read it at a table because it is too heavy to read on your knees. And you will need an atlas alongside it that has maps showing some realms not often shown on a single spread. Your maps will need to show the geographical proximity of the towering mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush with the drainage basins of the Aral Sea to their west and north and with the upper tributaries of the Indus to their east and south. The passes connecting these regions beckoned both Alexander and, nearly two thousand years later, Tamerlane, both intent on conquering and settling the north of the Indian subcontinent. You will need a single map to show the vast latitudinal spread of the great grasslands, deserts and semi-deserts from Turkey to northern China over which the nomads galloped. It was along these northernmost routes of the Silk Road that the Mongols charged on their terrifying way to Vienna, besieging it in 1241 and only withdrawing because they had to travel back, unexpectedly but unavoidably, all the way to Karakorum to appoint a new Grand Khan. The Silk Road saw many such events that were turning points in history, such as when in 1218 the governor of a city in what is now Kazakhstan killed an envoy of Ghengis Khan, suspecting that he was a spy, an action that precipitated the wrath of the Khan, and \"was to propel the world into an abyss, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the deaths of millions of people from the Danube to the Sea of Japan' (p.221) - because Ghengis Khan's horsemen set out to avenge this insult, inflicting terrible retribution on all in their path.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]