[ { "id": 212204, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "cannibalisation. Until the Japanese advance, in the autumn of 1944, flowed over Hengyang you could see a harlequinade of locomotives there in various states of disintegration. Without these reserves, saved through the foresight of the railway personnel, the Chinese would have found it impossible to maintain the service between Kukong, Hengyang, Kweilin and the west as long as they did.\n\nThere was much activity in the airfields, the civil field over at Wuchang, and the military field near the Race Club behind Hankow. From the latter the Russians were operating light bombers, which would pass over in twos and threes on missions beyond Kiu Kiang; and Russian fighters laid in wait for Japanese raids. As I was riding down the Bund one day in a rickshaw - petrol was scarce and under control - a single Russian bomber flying overhead, for no apparent reason, blew up.\n\nThe foreign married women and children had long since left Hankow. The two faded cabaret dancing-halls prospered even more than usual. Artistes, who spoke Russian with a Harbin accent, so I am told, made lots of hay; but, as will happen when news and women both are short, it was chiefly at the clubs that the men foregathered. It was the fashion to go out to the Race Club of an evening. There on the lawn after sunset you would see the British, the Americans, and the French. Hitler had recently recalled the officers of von Falkenhausen's mission, so that the usual sprinkling of German officers was missing, but occasionally Russian air-force officers came to sit huddled in a group by themselves.\n\nI was able to book a berth on a ship of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company leaving for Kiu Kiang. It is an overnight journey. I do not propose to enlarge on the minor discomforts of travel in China. In the railway carriages, in the ships, and even in the cinemas, the bedbugs and fleas take a long rest during the winter from November to February. It was only June and so I was up on deck soon after dawn to watch the familiar banks go by. As we moved alongside the same old hulk I observed the Kiu Kiang Bund. It had grown shabbier. The process of degeneration, which appears to follow on the withdrawal of the foreigner, was evident. Flaking paint, dirty window panes, broken plaster, left their mark. The Chinese are not good at maintenance, whether it be of houses or machines.\n\nApart from Shanghai, Hankow, and Tientsin, where there were large\n\nIII", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212560, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "94\n\nperfected in the United States, Stevenson adopts an approach which gives great emphasis to the expression of the inner, emotional state of the characters, an alternative to the approach Chinese dancers were familiar with. In the summer of 1979, he trained two Chinese student dancers at the Houston Ballet Academy. At the end of the summer, the students returned to China with a pas-de-deux Stevenson choreographed for them. In China, the performance of that piece caused a stir among the audiences and a revision of the approach Chinese dancers took towards their profession. In the succeeding years, Chinese artists choreographed some pieces, such as the Spirit of the Yellow River, which also suggests Stevenson's influence on dance in China.6\n\nObviously, the contributions American Cultural presence made to cultural pluralism are twofold: direct presentations gave a different feature to the cultural life of the Chinese people while they introduce new ideas. The latter, therefore, is of more significance as it is more persistent and penetrating. As for exchanges in arts education and exchanges of specialists, the consequences were also twofold: the influx of new ideas and the improvement in China's artistic activities.\n\nIn this context, the work of David Gilbert can be taken as an example of how American specialists helped Chinese artists in the improvement of artistic quality. David Gilbert, music director and conductor of the Greenwich Philharmonia in the United States, began to serve as principal guest conductor of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO, affiliated to the CPS) in June 1980. At the conclusion of his first term, he reflected: \"The players (of the CPO) are fine professional musicians but they have no repertory and no experience.” “The orchestra itself had never done Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, and when I scheduled the overture to 'Die Meistersinger' I discovered it was their first Wagner of any kind.\"37 Nonetheless, in mid-1981, he was able to tour with the CPO to Mudan Jiang, Harbin, and Changchun for two weeks with a repertoire made up largely of pieces learnt by the orchestra from him, and since then the orchestra had presented one concert every two weeks, rehearsing six days a week.\n\nIn evaluating the consequences of Sino-American arts exchanges in the 15 years since 1972, and particularly in the eight years since 1979, one important aspect to discuss is whether these exchanges have affected domestic socio-political development of China. It is important, and even vital, to the further development of China's arts exchanges with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212857, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "151\n\na handful, because efforts had to be made in order to make sure that there would be enough male Jews to constitute a daily Minyan.\n\nThis community was by far the most prominent of the three groups of Jewish residents in Shanghai. They were among the first foreign traders in the metropolis, bearing names that included Sassoon, Kadoorie, Ezra, Abraham, Solomon, Rahmin, Moses, and Gubby, families still active in Hong Kong today, and were a part of the international mercantile community in the Far East at that time, enjoying business and personal links with the close-knit Jewish communities in Hong Kong and Bombay. At first they traded in raw cotton and general goods, then took over the opium trade. In time, in Shanghai as well as in Hong Kong and Bombay, they branched out into real estate, banking, shipping, warehousing, insurance, hotels, utilities, and other industries, gaining power and influence locally as well as in international commerce. The names of 38 prominent Sephardic Jews were found among the 1932 list of 99 members of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.\n\nAshkenazi Jews\n\n6\n\nImmediately following the completion of the trans-Siberian Railroad and the pogrom in Russia in 1905, a number of Russian Jews moved to Manchuria through Siberia, with about 300 filtering down to Shanghai. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, more than 10,000 Jews emigrated to Harbin. Apparently at that time the Chinese government had been contemplating expelling the Jews from Manchuria. In the mid 1920s when White Russians and Japanese interests began to spread in Manchuria, many of the earlier immigrants moved southward to Tianjin and Shanghai, swelling the total Jewish population in Shanghai to just under 2,000.\n\nThe Ashkenazi community of Jews in Shanghai, mostly Russian but by then joined by stragglers from Lithuania as well, increased to more than 1,000 after 1924. They were not exactly embraced by the Sephardic community of Shanghai. The Ashkenazi were not princes of commerce, but small businessmen who engaged in the import and export of such items as wool, bristles, and fur. The Chinese in Shanghai remembered Jewish salesmen going from house to house, carrying rugs for sale. The Ashkenazi Jews were also professionals; physicians and lawyers, for instance; and, above all, musicians.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 233, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "183\n\nVISIT TO MACAU MUSEUM OF ART. 26 OCTOBER 2003\n\nA splendid day was enjoyed by the 28 participants on a visit to Macau on Sunday, 26 October 2003. Organised and led by the very knowledgeable and enthusiastic Council Member Jason Wordie, the purpose of the visit was to see the exhibition of George Smirnoff's watercolours, drawings and oil paintings at the Macau Museum of Art and to explore some of the places shown in the paintings. We were most fortunate to be joined for the day by Smirnoff's younger daughter, Nina Bieger, who remembers well the time her family spent in Macao in 1944 and 1945, when she was a child. Her memories, graciousness, and answers to our many questions added greatly to the pleasures of the day, making it a unique occasion. George Smirnoff was born in 1903 in Vladivostok. Educated as an engineer and architect, he worked in Harbin and Tsingtao. In 1939, he escaped to Hong Kong from the turmoil of Japanese-occupied northern China. Then, in 1944, with Hong Kong occupied by the Japanese, he and his family found refuge in Macau, where fortunately for posterity he was commissioned by Dr. Pedro José Lobo to paint a series of Macao scenes. These were the works we saw in this exhibition commemorating the centennial of Smirnoff's birth.\n\nCésar Guillén-Nuñez, who curated the first exhibition of Smirnoff's works in Macau almost twenty years ago, gave a brief introduction on the paintings themselves. When we left the Museum, we were each delighted to be presented with a hardcover copy of the exhibition book as a gift from the Museum, showing all of Smirnoff's works of art on display and giving fascinating historical information on his life.\n\nThe book proved very useful when, after an excellent lunch at the Club Militar, Jason led us on a 3-hour walk through the back streets and parks of Macau to see many of the locations shown in the watercolours. It was amazing that many of the scenes had changed very little in the nearly 60 years that have passed since they were painted. And the time passed very quickly as we listened intently to Jason's explanations and Nina's recollections.\n\nOur heartfelt thanks to both of them for such a memorable day.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]