[ { "id": 208312, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "20 \n\nRICHARD J. SMITH \n\ntingents such as the Ever-Victorious Army (Ch'ang-sheng chün) brought Western drill and tactics to literally thousands of Chinese soldiers. Officers from these forces not only instructed their own men, but also trained large numbers of troops for Chinese officials, most notably Li Hung-chang.23 At about the same time, foreign-training programs arose in several port areas, including Tientsin, Shanghai, Ningpo, Foochow and Canton. A number of Green Standard forces at the capital (and eventually elsewhere) were transformed into Western-armed \"retrained armies\" (lien-chün) on the yung-ying model, and several thousand Bannermen were molded into the famous Peking Field Force (Shen-chi ying), established by Wen-hsiang and others.24 \n\nThe Peking Field Force was an especially interesting experiment. Until the late 1860's, selected members of the force were drilled by foreign instructors using English words of command but thereafter, Western-trained Bannermen carried on instruction independently in Manchu. Nominally 20,000 strong throughout most of the late nineteenth century, the Peking Field Force usually numbered closer to half that amount. According to Major A. E. J. Cavendish, a British military attaché in China, the force as late as 1894 was considered to be an elite organization with \"higher pay and quicker promotion\" than in any other Banner units at the capital. Officers in the force were described as \"the pick of the Banners,\" and posts in it were \"eagerly sought after.\" Yet Cavendish formed a decidedly negative opinion of the force, which he described as poorly armed and superficially trained, with emphasis on form rather than content. One can imagine the shape of the rest of the traditional Ch'ing military establishment.25 \n\nA major deficiency in all of the early foreign-training efforts was lack of centralized direction and support. In the absence of adequate central government guidelines, drill procedures, arms, and even the language of instruction varied widely from force to force and area to area. There was virtually no effort on the part of the Ch'ing government to co-ordinate its military programs, or to expand foreign-training in a systematic way.26 In fact, the Manchus seem to have been intent on compartmentalizing Western military knowledge as much as possible—presumably for reasons of internal control. In 1863, for example, the Tsungli Yamen stated explicitly that in the provinces only Bannermen should learn to make", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208322, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "30\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\nthey are fierce and they can fight. But Chinese women have bound feet, and are too weak even to bear the weight of their own clothes.98\n\n99\n\nNowhere was the burst of patriotic sentiment and the impulse to reform more obvious than in military affairs. In the years from 1895 to 1898, a spate of memorials on the question of military change reached Peking. Many dealt with the problem of military education. Chang Chih-tung, in particular, became an ardent advocate of military schools as a means of improving the Chinese army. Chang and others also put forward additional reform proposals touching on a wide range of pressing military problems. A number of officials agitated for the elimination of corruption, incompetence, and nepotism in Chinese military forces. Others suggested revisions in the traditional military examinations. Still others proposed drastic cuts in the Green Standard army and the reinvigoration of the degenerate Eight Banners. Not all of these proposals bore immediate fruit, but together they indicated a heightened awareness on the part of many of the need for basic military reform.100 The Sino-Japanese War had begun to teach its lessons.\n\nIn the post-war era, the Chinese navy no longer occupied a position of prominence. Limited and largely uncoordinated efforts were still made by various provincial officials to acquire modern vessels and other types of naval material, but only about half of the naval academies established in China prior to 1895 survived past the first decade of the twentieth century. By contrast, Chinese military schools and academies grew rapidly during the late 1890's and especially the early 1900's.101 This demonstrated interest in military education suggests a new attitude toward the profession of arms, inspired by rising Chinese nationalism. To be sure, ingrained prejudices did not disappear overnight—especially since the civil service examinations continued to offer an almost irresistibly attractive alternative to military service. When Li Hung-chang established his long-term officers' training program at the Tientsin Military Academy in 1887, he was fortunate to find enough capable applicants to fill the allotted forty positions; whereas by 1896 Chang Chih-tung's announcement of the first entrance examinations for his newly-founded Hupei Military Academy attracted 4,000 applicants for only 120 positions.102\n\nChinese military academies, including Li's pioneering Tientsin establishment, eventually came to exert a profound influence on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212781, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "75\n\nof the Szechuan Force under the C-in-C had been badly defeated and had left him in the lurch without support. However, the other half of the fourteen battalions remained in Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien and stood firm, and even recovered much of the abandoned equipment. This was not reported to Kuei-yang and Ch'engtu in Szechuan in time to benefit the C-in-C of the Szechuan Force, the story put about by the commander of the seven battalions who had evacuated Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien being believed and acted upon. The C-in-C, T’ang, was therefore degraded and posted to Szechuan,\n\nThe story, according to Mesny's narrative, ended with the demobilisation of several units of the Szechuan Force, the C-in-C's guards and the Ko-i Brigade in particular, and with Mesny settling into life as an adviser to the new supreme commander of all the Imperial forces in Kueichou, Chou Ta-wu; leaving us in anticipation of the next and successful campaign to suppress the rebel Miao, beginning later the same year, 1871, to be published by Mesny. Regrettably it never seems to have got beyond either Mesny's pencil jottings or good intentions.\n\nThe Organisation of the Szechuan Force\n\nIn his Notes on Chinese Military Services Mesny explained that there were several branches of the Army, the Manchu Banner Corps, the Mongol Banner Corps and the Chinese Banner Corps, each with eight banners. There were also the Chinese militia called Chih-ping; volunteer troops raised during the Taiping Rebellion and on many other occasions of emergency, called Yung-ying or simply Yung i.e. braves [known to Mesny as the Mobile Volunteer Force], and the local train bands\", Tuan-lien [known to Mesny as the Sedentary Volunteer Force]; armed peasants trained in the use of weapons for the defence of their homes in both town and country.\n\nMesny appears to have used notes written during the early 1870s to compile his descriptions of the Chinese Imperial forces and seems not to have taken much advantage of the benefit of hindsight to amend them prior to going to press in 1895. It had proved difficult to differentiate between Mesny's personal knowledge and his accuracy in recording detail, and information he acquired from other non-Chinese sources. Many of his notes on the Manchu Army and the Green Standard Regiments have been taken from Mayers'\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213316, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "119\n\nTHE TAKING OF CHAPU\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nRecently my daughter and I visited Chapu, a town which for a moment in history was the scene of one of the first encounters between British Forces and the Tatars of the Imperial Chinese Army.\n\nChapu, sometimes recorded as Chapoo but now romanised as Zhapu, is a small town lying almost exactly half way between the cities of Shanghai and Hangchou, the latter being the provincial capital of the central Chinese province of Chekiang. It used to be an important port on the north coast of the Bay of Hangchou noted for its connections with the Japan trade during earlier times; however, by the 1840s it had become a backwater garrison town for the Chinese army of the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty in support of the small Manchu garrison. The original Ch'ing fighting force, the Tatar Banners from Manchuria and Mongolia, had become effete through soft living, whilst the provincial forces of Chinese so-called soldiery, the Green Banners, were ill-equipped, ill-trained, and under strength.\n\nDuring the eighteen thirties, China wanted nothing of foreigners, whilst the Europeans, seeing a vast land teeming with millions of potential customers, wanted admission into China and its lucrative trade. Europeans, and to a certain extent the Americans too, were becoming more and more frustrated by the Chinese attitude towards foreigners in general, refusing to accept them under what was considered in the West as normal international relations.\n\nMisunderstandings were centred around China looking upon Great Britain and other European countries as tributary states, and the British East India Company, which had had its monopoly abolished in 1833, had entered the opium trade. Opium was banned by the Chinese authorities, and after an official was sent from Peking to Canton—the only port open to foreigners for trade in general—especially to put an end to the opium trade. British officials became involved due to confusion over recognition of their status and the question of the illicit trade of opium. A further quarrel broke out over the jurisdiction of Chinese courts in cases involving British subjects.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "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 } ]