[
    {
        "id": 208161,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1977",
        "page_number": 200,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "184\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n\"The burial ground is situated near Chai Wan Kok, Tsun Wan. Some time ago, about ten years after the Territory was leased to Great Britain, some natives of Tsun Wan village applied to the H.K. Govt. for a piece of land near the grave to erect some houses, but the proposed area affected the Fung Shui of the said grave. The village Elders of the various branches of the Tang family assembled, and a joint petition was submitted to the District Officer in the names of the descendants. Thanks to this Official the proposed sale was withdrawn. It was afterwards put on record that the site of the grave was to be preserved for ever. Subsequently new roads were constructed by the P.W.D. and the line of one proposed road was across the grave site. The Elders of the Tang family, fearing that this might affect the \"force of the movement of the green dragon,” again assembled and petitioned H.E. the Governor, praying that the line be moved to the foreshore of the site. This was done. In the 6th moon of the 12th year of the Chinese Republic, (1923) a villager of Tsun Wan dug earth on the right side of the ancestral grave, that is, in Chai Wan Kok village, thereby affecting the \"force of the movement of the coming dragon.\" Another petition was sent to the District Officer, who inspected the grave personally. After that earth cutting was prohibited, and the ancestral grave preserved.\"\n\nWe then proceeded to Kam Tin itself where, in front of the Kam Tin Rural Committee Office, we were greeted by an impressive body of lineage elders, treated to a dim sum (*) repast and shown a number of interesting relics handed down through the centuries. These included a painting with imperial calligraphy stated to date from Sung times, and a number of other paintings.*\n\nOur next stop was at Au Tau cross roads to see grave No. 5, that of TANG Wai-kap, the husband of the Sung refugee princess referred to in the Notes.\n\nFrom Au Tau cross roads we went on to the Pok Oi Hospital near Yuen Long and walked into an area of low hills, across a stream, where we inspected grave No. 2. This is located in what is obviously considered to be a very favourable fung shui area because the adjoining ground is thickly covered with graves.\n\nAfter returning to Pok Oi Hospital, we went by bus to Wang Chau behind Yuen Long where we walked through the village and across the fields to the foothills of an adjacent hill area. We went first to grave No. 1 and from there along a winding path to grave No. 4 which is located some 500 yards to the south. Both graves are in excellent positions, and like No. 3 have granite pillars with lion\n\n* These have been reproduced at pp. 112-115 of the Inauguration Publication of the Tang Clansmen Association (Inc. 1965), in Chinese, of which there is a copy in the Chinese Library, University of Hong Kong.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210735,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 86,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "69\n\ntime in relation to an expedition he was planning:\n\n\"I find that this work [expedition to East River] meets with a good deal of opposition both from officials and the non-official members of the Finance Committee, but especially the latter. HK having no agriculture, but little horticulture to develop. There is, prima facie, some reason for objection. It is thought and said that the Imperial Govt. derives the greatest benefit for botanical investigation in China and that consequently it should defray the costs. It is difficult to procure material benefits to HK from these expeditions, especially as we have no scientific men who take an interest in botany and whose necessities we might be working for. It is to be regretted that the people here do not feel the necessity of encouraging investigations for the sake of acquirements of knowledge only. The fact remains that they do not and this cannot be ignored in considering anything that might be done to thaw their indifference and gain their support.\"\n\nIn order to gain support for his plan Ford suggested that Hooker should write to the Secretary of State or insert an article in a pamphlet form which might help to show:\n\n\"The advantages which might reasonably be expected to accrue to HK in particular and the world in general from scientific investigations, and also to show the importance of every country and colony taking upon itself a share of the work and honour of advanced position in breaking down the barriers to the acquirement of more knowledge.\n\n\"It is often said here that HK people care about nothing but the 'almighty dollar'. There is much truth in the saying but I'm glad to say, there are many worthy exceptions and these are, I think, becoming more numerous as people are less able to make fortunes and leave the place so rapidly as they formerly did.\"",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213063,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1993",
        "page_number": 131,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "112\n\nduring which he acquired extraordinary powers having been provided with a set of secret prescriptions, exorcists and talismans by the major goddess, Hsi-wang Mu'. He was a Taoist Master, a vegetarian who never married and a philanthropic doctor who died at the early age of 58 having worn himself out in the service of his fellow men. A tale told by a Taiwanese related how Wu T'ao's father, Wu T'ung and his mother, née Huang, fled from their home in northern China, during the troubled times of the Sung, to a village near T'ung-an on the Fukien coast where they settled and built a thatched cottage. His mother realised after a dream that she had become pregnant by a famous deity and eventually bore a child naming him T'ao. In another version his mother conceived after she had dreamt that she had swallowed a white tortoise.\n\nWu T'ao, or as he is known in a number of temples, Wu Chen-jen [Wu the Perfected Man] is often claimed to have come from Ch'uan-chou in Fukien, although in SE Asia there have been several other cities and areas claimed by devotees to have been his birthplace, including T'ung-an, Swatow and Chang-chou [in practice, as we have seen, he came from a small village in the centre of a triangle between T'ung-an, Amoy and Chang-chou]. As Wu T'ao grew up he travelled far and wide studying Taoist disciplines and grew strong and healthy but remained celibate and vegetarian. A temple keeper in Singapore understood that by vegetarian it was meant that he could eat buffalo and goat meat but not dog.\n\nImages of Pao-sheng Ta-ti in general represent him as a black-bearded middle-aged man dressed in court robes and an imperial crown consisting of a flat mortar board with a bead screen hanging down before his face, and sitting on a dragon throne. There are a number of variations such as the scholar's gauze cap instead of the crown. His images are generally identifiable by the convention of the cuff of his left sleeve being clutched by the thumb of his right hand, with only this thumb visible. In Singapore where all carvers were aware of this convention such images are universal. However, the carvers all added that they were unsure whether such a convention was known elsewhere. It is, and in a number of temples in Taiwan the images of Pao-sheng Ta-ti have the right thumb just poking out of the right sleeve, although in Chia I the convention has added one finger to the thumb. In the majority of temples he is portrayed with small animals under his feet, said to be lions, whilst in two temples, both in Taiwan, he has two tiny tigers protruding from his clasped hands within the long sleeves of his robes.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216075,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 374,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "308\n\nThe transit-pass business was becoming a nuisance and Parker feared that if the items being passed increased without limit then the Chinese merchants would bring the whole trade down. The Daotai suggested that as only five articles have been mentioned in the bonds Parker had seen to date the simplest thing was to permit as many donkey-skins, etc., as merchants like whether they export them or not, so long as it is limited to these five articles. Parker agreed. Some eight years later, when Parker was stationed in Korea, the then Consul in Zhenjiang wrote to solve a question which was cudgelling the legal brains of that port. The question was 'on what principle had donkey-skins, melon-seeds and lily-flowers received favoured treatment?' Parker replied that he had noted that during the previous ten years goat-skins had replaced donkey-skins and therefore assumed that the donkeys were now all dead. And even in 1903 Zhenjiang was the one port in China where transit-passes still flourished, even in purely Chinese hands. The mystery would seem to have been solved when Parker found an explanation in 1887, when Prince Chun, father of the Emperor, was treated for fever with boiled donkey-skin and mud taken from the bottom of a deep well.\n\nThe last days of the foreign concession at Zhenjiang\n\nIn October 1911, when the Emperor and his Court were overthrown, the Chinese Imperial Navy unit in Zhenjiang, consisting of twenty sampans each with one muzzle-loading bow gun, surrendered to the Republican revolutionaries. The Imperial Garrison of one hundred and fifty men also surrendered together with its four ancient muzzle-loading guns, all being handed over to the Republicans.\n\nAgainst the backdrop of mounting nationalism and hostility towards foreigners the War Lord period from 1916 until the late 1920s meant that China was ruled by hundreds of tyrants, with private armies, some large but most were petty, whose interminable activities caused widespread suffering. They all had their individual aims as well as the common feature of such \"generals\" of extracting the maximum of taxes from all and sundry. Zhenjiang did not escape and suffered from occupations and incursions from the forces of various War Lords as well as widespread destruction during the mutiny by the local garrison in 1922.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]