[ { "id": 207170, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nHUA SHAN, THE TAOIST SACRED MOUNTAIN IN WEST CHINA ITS SCENERY, MONASTERIES AND MONKS. Foreword and 111 Photographs by Hedda Morrison, Introduction and Taoist Musings by Wolfram Eberhard, published by Vetch and Lee Ltd., Hong Kong, January 1974.\n\nVetch and Lee Ltd. have published many beautiful and outstanding books on Chinese culture in the past, and have just added another two to their record, both dealing with sacred mountains in China. The Vetch and Lee editions are well-produced bibliophile books with a dark-blue cloth hard cover engraved in gold with a phoenix, the emblem of the publishers, and a very heavy matt white paper is used, which adds to the soft quality of the black and white photographs.\n\nIn August 1935 Hedda Morrison, a photographer, and Wolfram Eberhard, a sinologue and serious student of Chinese culture, both living in Peiping at the time, visited the Hua Shan, one of the five sacred mountains in China. According to the foreword by Hedda Morrison, the excursion cannot have lasted longer than one to two weeks.\n\nConsidering the fact, it is remarkable that 110 photos of great artistic beauty and solid technical skill were produced in such a short period of time.\n\nThe photos are divided into three groups: 40 depicting the scenic grandeur of the five peaks of the Hua Shan and their various moods; shaded by clouds or shrouded in morning mist, or illuminated by bright sunshine with silhouettes of crooked pine-trees. Also, small temples dangerously stuck on cliffs, a ladder of steps cut into a sharp angle stone slab, top and bottom connected with an enormous iron chain to facilitate the ascent.\n\nThen are followed by a group of 24 photos with details of the monasteries, close-ups of the images inside, a mural of the god of thunder, and the graffiti of visitors, a perpetual calendar carved in a slab, embroideries representing shaman dancers, a monk dozing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207171, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "236\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\non his blackwood cage-bed which is decorated by painted porcelain panels, and a glimpse into a corner of the monk's kitchen.\n\nThe third group of 35 photos are portraits of the monks who inhabited the monasteries of Hua Shan. Hedda Morrison must have been quite a personality to be appreciated and trusted by the monks in such a short time, that she could catch their faces in so many moods and showing so vividly their characters.\n\nAlthough the photos were taken in 1935 they were not published before 1975. In 1935 it was possible for anyone who would brave the steep cliffs and the narrow mountain paths to enjoy the beauty and the peace, to purify one's mind and unite with the Tao. There is not much chance of going there today, nor of finding monks enacting dances symbolizing the cosmic battle of nature (plates 43, 44). The photos are thus a priceless record of the faces of Hua Shan, their value enhanced by their poetic quality.\n\nThe texts are of minor importance but help us to understand the basic Chinese thinking that the individual must be in harmony with the universe.\n\nHong Kong, 1975.\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nSEALS OF CHINESE PAINTERS AND COLLECTORS OF THE MING AND CH'ING PERIODS. REPRODUCED IN FACSIMILE SIZE AND DECIPHERED. REVISED EDITION WITH SUPPLEMENT. By Victoria Contag and Wang Chi-ch'ien (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1966. pp. Ixviii+726. Illustrations. Paperback issue 1974, HK$50.\n\nThe academic interest of collecting ancient seals in China was generally developed during the first 150 years of the Ch'ing period (1644-1911) and subsequently sub-divided into several offshoots: such as collecting ancient official seals, an interest related to the study of government organization; or collecting seals of the Han (204 B.C.-220 A.D.) and pre-Han period, connected with either an artistic interest in the archaic style of Chinese sealscript or a paleographic interest on etymology. Following these trends, however, the cited scholastic interests are replaced in the 20th century by a more specified academic practice; for instance, to collect seals of established artists and learned art collectors of previous periods. By so doing, the collected seals can serve students of Chinese art,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215664, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 441, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "393\n\nService and was posted to the British Consulate in Beijing. He was interned by the Japanese during World War II but was then exchanged for Japanese diplomatic staff and made his way to India. He spent the War serving in various capacities with the Indian Army. In 1940, he met the German photographer Hedda Hammer and they married in Beijing in 1946. Due to the increasing instability of the political situation in China, they left Beijing soon after. The Morrisons spent six months in Hong Kong before relocating to Sarawak, in the north-west of the island of Borneo, where Alastair was appointed to the British Colonial Service and later became a district officer. Throughout her 20-year residence in Sarawak, Hedda accompanied Alastair on all his official journeys and made numerous independent photographic tours. From 1960 to 1966 Hedda was employed by the Sarawak government to work part-time in the photographic section of the Information Office in Kuching. Her duties included taking photographs, establishing a photographic library and training government photographers. Hedda wrote two major books on Sarawak, Sarawak (1957) and Life in a Longhouse (1962).\n\nJennie Morrison, 1912, (Mitchell Library)\n\nIn 1967 the Morrisons settled in Canberra, Australia. Hedda died in Canberra in 1991, at the age of 82. Alastair lives in Hughes, Canberra. His Fair Land Sarawak: Some Recollections of an Expatriate Official (Ithaca, Cornell University) and The Road to Peking (Canberra, Highland Press, private distribution), both appeared in 1993.\n\nMr. Morrison's other brother, Colin Morrison was born in April 1917. He joined the Administrative Service in Hong Kong and was also a member of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, which held out valiantly for 17 days against the Japanese in December 1941.2 He was interned by the Japanese at the Shamshuipo camp for the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]