[ { "id": 205340, "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-1967", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 95\n\nHe also had land interests on Lantau outside his own village and entered into a business speculation with two other persons, who were probably his fellow merchants in Tai O. Land was purchased wherever it could be obtained by sale, or mortgage leading to possession, from needy farmers some of whom were very likely their customers - and registered in the name of a Tong (). In 1899, this Tong owned over twelve acres of farmland in various parts of the island and still exists today. An account book for the years just before the Japanese war is extant and shows that the Chans' share of the rents was forty per cent of the whole. Their shares were sold by degrees during the Japanese Occupation after being in the family for about a hundred years.\n\nIn due course Chan Fu-shing's growing wealth enabled him to devote himself to public duties such as the management of village affairs, the arbitration of local disputes and the organisation of small public works. One of these was the repair of the village temple in 1852. A tablet commemorating the work shows that he donated a considerable sum to its repair, in addition to being the leading spirit in the work. This self-made man set the seal on his position by purchasing the title of chien sang () or \"Student of the Imperial Academy\" for which he would have paid the Provincial Treasury upwards of 100 ounces of silver. This title would have given him standing among the gentry of the San On District, and enabled him, if so inclined, to mix on favourable terms with the civil and military officers of the local administration. This bears out Professor Ping-ti Ho's estimate that \"in late Ming and the entire Ching period it may be said that men of above average economic means almost invariably purchased at least an Imperial Academy studentship... by which they could acquire the right of wearing students' gowns and caps and exemption from corvée, thus differentiating themselves from ordinary commoners\". If, however, chien sang were two a penny elsewhere it was not so on Lantau. The island was a poor place and there were very few other chien sang to steal Fu-shing's thunder there.\n\nCHEUNG KWONG-CHUEN ()\n\nThe second of these local notables, Cheung Kwong-chuen (c.1850-1916) was a Hakka from one of the smaller villages of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206998, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "DOGS AND HORSES IN ANCIENT CHINA\n\n63\n\nconsidered very auspicious to eat one may have smacked of sacrilege.)\n\nAn elaborate set of rules governed the presentation of gifts and tribute. When offering a horse, the donor had first to tie a rope around the animal's neck and hold the other end in his right hand.39 Dogs, however, were to be held with the left hand to leave the right hand free to stop the animal from biting.40 Neither dogs nor horses were allowed into the audience chamber and they were not to be mentioned during an audience.41\n\nHorses and Warfare\n\nAs we have seen, the Chinese had been familiar with horses from very ancient times. Horse-drawn chariots were known at least as early as the reign of King Wu Ting of Shang (1327-1265 B.C.), yet it was not until the 4th century B.C. that we find a reference to a man on horseback in Chinese literature. (One expert claims that horses were already used for riding in Shang timesA, a statement seemingly contradicted by another authorityB.)\n\nAccording to the Shih Chi, the King of Chao is said to have learned the art of shooting from horseback from his nomadic neighbours in 307 B.C.42 This was a momentous step in the development of both warfare and weaponry. By the reign of Wu Ti (140-88 B.C.) of the Han dynasty, cavalry horses had become so important that the Emperor launched several campaigns in Central Asia to secure an adequate supply of them for his army.\n\nIt must be remembered that horses in ancient times were not shod except with straw or leather and thus rapidly wore out their hoofs on long journeys. The Chinese armies, therefore, required mountain-bred horses with firmer hoofs which could travel faster without the need to rest their feet. An adequate supply of such horses would not only be a great economy for the Imperial treasury but would also give a decided advantage to the Chinese cavalry.43\n\nHan Wu Ti also urged his general Li Kuang-li to provide him with the famous \"blood-sweating horses\" of Ferghana. The Emperor's interest in these animals was not so much military as supernatural. It was widely believed that \"blood-sweating horses\" were the semi-divine offspring of dragons and mares; their sweating of blood being proof of their divine origin.44 (Modern medicine has shown that \"blood-sweating\" was caused by a parasitical disease,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210783, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "117\n\nlowed the discovery of pearls with Chinese immigrants in Early Han times numbering 23,000 taxable households (Wang Hsiang-chih, 1849 edition). As time passed, however, delivery of large quantities of top quality pearls to the Imperial Treasury became routine \"local tribute\" (Schafer, 1952) which usurped the lucrative commercial trade. Nevertheless, Hainan, or the \"Shore of Pearls\" as the island was then known, continued to yield supplies of the precious gems until the end of the fifteenth century by which time the pearl beds were exhausted (Mayers, 1867).\n\nAs the size and wealth of Hainan became more precisely known, successive dynasties attempted to extend their control by using military force to break Li resistance which obstructed Chinese exploitation of the island's rich interior. Costly in lives and money, most campaigns achieved no lasting success, and for the first thousand years of occupation, the Chinese clung precariously to the northern coastal fringe, and at times their influence disappeared completely for periods of ninety years or more (Mayers, 1872).\n\nHainan's reputation as a “treasure island” changed to one of a \"dank, poisonous land unfit for normal men” (Schafer, 1969), and soon became a place of ultimate exile for intellectuals and high-ranking bureaucrats who offended the monarch, as well as a sink for pirates and desperadoes. Amongst the exiled scholars the Three Lords (Li Te-yu, Lu To-sun and Ting Wei) and the poet Su Shih are celebrated for their literary contributions (Mayers, 1872; Schafer, 1969). While the exiled scholars left a rich history of contemporary Hainan in their prose and verse, the only legacy remaining from the successive dynasties is a continuum of changes to the names of towns and counties caused by the monotonous re-organization of the administrative bureaucracy.\n\nAlthough the name Hainan (literally South of the Sea) was used as a rather imprecise collective name for all southern lands which lay beyond the familiar borders of the early dynasties, it was not until the Mongol conquest in the thirteenth century that the name was applied specifically to the island. Under the sovereignty of Kublay Khan, the island was incorporated with the western portion of present-day Guangdong Province under the designation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212150, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "69\n\nleast edited) some time after the adoption in 781 of the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching'. As we know that all four works were translated from Syriac into Chinese by Adam in the 780s, it seems reasonable to connect this editing process with Adam.\n\nThere is further evidence that the manuscript of the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord was copied in the 780s, which supplies a link with Adam's translation work in Ch'ang-an's imperial library. The manuscript concludes with a note prescribing readings from three scriptures: the Book of Heavenly Treasure, the Book of the Sacred King David, and the Book of the Good News. These works are, respectively, the Gezza, or 'treasury', a service-book containing a collection of anthems, hymns, and collects; the Book of Psalms, called Dawida, 'David', by the Nestorians; and the Evangelion, a book of selected readings from the Gospels. Although copies of these works have not yet been found at Tun-huang, all three are among the 35 books listed in the Book of Praise. Startling as it may seem, Adam seems to have been the first man to have made Chinese translations, 150 years after Reuben first arrived in China, of these standard Nestorian liturgical works. These translations were sent to Tun-huang by Adam, along with the other 32 translations he had made, and thus became available for use by the monks of the Sha-chou monastery in Chinese-language services.\n\nThe four Tun-huang manuscripts which were recopied in the late eighth century in response to Adam's efforts to promote the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching' show other traces of Adam's concern for coherence and consistency. As we have seen, Adam standardised and improved the Chinese translations of a number of Christian terms, and his versions also occur in some of these documents. A-lo-he PT, the term for God in the Sian tablet inscription, is also found in the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of our Lord and the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. Ching feng, Adam's term for the Holy Spirit, is also found in the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. Mi-shi-he, 'Messiah', occurs in the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy.\n\nThe Problem of the Kai-yuan Documents\n\nA curious puzzle, however, is presented by the manuscripts of the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord and the Book", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215277, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "2\n\nThere is one exception to these generalisations, a deviant case which has never been analysed by the economists who deplore the underdevelopment of the colonial empire. The amazing economic growth of Hong Kong since its liberation from the Japanese occupation in 1945 is well known, but it is widely assumed that before the war the Hong Kong economy was almost entirely based upon the entrepôt trade transporting goods to and from China and that its transformation from a trading mart to a manufacturing centre began with the post-war arrival of industrialists from Shanghai fleeing from the chaos of China's civil war. In fact, the development of industry had begun in the nineteenth century and by 1939 Hong Kong had built up a flourishing export trade in manufactured goods to China and neighbouring Asian countries and was even successfully competing with British firms in a few items in the British home market.\n\nThe growth of Hong Kong industry was accelerated in the 1930s by decisions taken at the Imperial Economic Conference which met at Ottawa in August 1932. The conference was called to find ways of combating the worldwide economic depression by stimulating trade between the countries of the empire after the British government had decided to abandon its long-standing commitment to free trade and to impose a ten per cent tariff on foreign imports. The conference was mainly occupied with bargaining between Britain and the dominions over the terms on which agricultural products from the dominions would enter the British market and the access of British manufactured goods to the dominions.\n\nThe ministers meeting at Ottawa also decided to impose stringent restrictions by tariffs and specific duties on imports of textiles and other goods from Japan which were beginning to penetrate empire markets, displacing British and Canadian manufactures. Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong took advantage of this attempt to exclude Japanese goods from dominion and colonial markets to export large quantities of cheap footwear and textiles to the empire. This provoked indignant complaints from industrialists in Britain and Canada who demanded that restrictions should be placed on the supercompetitive Hong Kong manufactures.\n\nHong Kong's successful penetration of empire markets forced the British government for the first time to consider what its policy should be towards the industrial development of the colonial empire. Two interdepartmental committees of civil servants were set up in 1933 and 1937, but no authoritative decision was reached by the cabinet before the outbreak of war in 1939. Officials at the Colonial Office defended the right of the colonies to diversify their economies by moving into manufacturing, but the Board of Trade and the Treasury were generally unenthusiastic about such schemes where they might result in a reduction of British exports.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]