[ { "id": 205114, "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-1966", "page_number": 70, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n65\n\nhad been converted to Christianity somewhere in the eleventh or twelfth century. Christian tombs of Önggüt tribesmen have been discovered in Inner Mongolia near Olon Süme and in Ch’üan-chou (Fukien), mostly with Turkish inscriptions, in some cases also accompanied by a Chinese version of the inscription text. But whether Nestorian Christian, Uighur, or Mohammedan Arabs or Persians, all these foreigners became Chinese in a cultural sense. One would look in vain for traces of their foreign origin in their literary works. If they wrote Chinese poems, then these poems are indistinguishable from those written by native Chinese, much as in Medieval Europe when a poet wrote in Latin and thereby obscured his national characteristics. It is amazing to what degree this rapid acculturation was carried out in China. One could perhaps assume that members of a national community which had not yet developed a national literature of its own were easily attracted by Chinese literature; this would apply to the Mongols and some Turkish tribes. But it remains a singular phenomenon that even foreigners coming from a highly civilized country with a considerable literature of their own, such as Arabs or Persians, were so soon absorbed by Chinese literary culture. Nothing in the poems of Sa'd ad-Daula suggests even the slightest trace of a foreign origin. As a typical example, let me quote one poem by Jacob, Ya-ku, in Goodrich's translation:\n\n44\n\nThe path to the plum blossoms is short; snow has been falling. The ripples on the water are as smooth as peach leaves; it is favorable for ferrying across the river.\n\nOne whistle of a metal flute pierces the air above a thousand moonlit homes.\n\nTen reed matting sails ride before a wind of a myriad li.\"\nNothing could be more Chinese than these lines. And they are typical for the poetry written by foreigners. Things are similar in prose literature and philosophy. Foreigners tried to be as Confucian as possible, writing commentaries to the Classics and trying to live up to traditional Chinese ideals. And if they painted, their works were equally Chinese. At least one famous Yüan painter, Kao K'o-kung (1248-ca. 1310) came from the Western Regions, or rather his family did. He was born in Ta-t'ung (Shansi Province), rose to high offices, and became ultimately President of the Board of Justice. Kao was chiefly known as a landscape painter who carried on the tradition of Mi Fu and Tung Yuan, two famous", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206732, "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-1973", "page_number": 9, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "On the gains side, during the year we had seven new life members, three members transferred from ordinary membership to life membership, and one honorary life member was added: a total of eleven new life members in all. A total of sixty-one new ordinary members joined during the year, and thus our total membership gains over losses was thirty. Present membership stands at 555.\n\nProgramme of Events\n\nSome new members join when they attend one or other of our activities as guests of members. Altogether, during the calendar year, we have had eight lectures, two film shows, two tours, and an Extraordinary Meeting to discuss a proposal for joining the Hong Kong Arts Centre. Our last Annual General meeting took place on March 27, 1972, accompanied by a dinner which has now become one of our annual events.\n\nAs always, your Council has tried to arrange a varied programme to suit the many interests of members. May I say here that any suggestions from members as to topics they would like to see introduced or discussed are most welcome, as is also any information as to specialists passing through Hong Kong whom we might capture for an evening to talk to us, or talks you might be able to give us yourselves.\n\nOur programme for the calendar year covered many topics related to our general sphere of interest. Several lectures dealt with historical subjects currently being investigated by scholars. They related to such places as Sarawak, Hong Kong, Japan, and Mongolia. Other subjects were related to the arts, sociology, geography, and natural sciences. Several lectures, I am pleased to relate, were in fact given by our own members. One film show consisted of two films presented by their producer and filmer, Mr. Hugh Gibb. One was on Chinese religion and the other on Chinese opera, both in Hong Kong. Mr. Gibb, a member of our Society, is well known for his cultural and ethnographic films and we are grateful to him for making these films available to us. The other film shown was Mr. Brian Brake's documentary on Borobudur in Java. We are similarly grateful to him for lending it to us.\n\nThe Java film was shown at the end of the Extraordinary Meeting and this brings me back to the Hong Kong Arts Centre. During the resuscitated existence of our Society, we have not been able, despite all our efforts, to raise enough funds from firms, individuals,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207285, "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-1975", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CHINA'S ECONOMIC PLANNING & CHANGING GEOGRAPHY 45\n\nthe present regime is making efforts to convey water from the Yangtze River in the south to the Yellow River in the north. Since 1958, several survey parties in western Szechuan and southern Kansu have studied the possibility of transferring superfluous water to the Yellow River from the Gold Sand River, the Taito River, and other tributaries of the Yangtze.\n\nThere are, of course, many difficulties to be encountered in carrying out this plan. For example, the northwestern region is so sparsely settled that a tremendous number of workers must be brought in to construct the necessary canals and locks. The area has a serious problem of seepage and evaporation, and it experiences violent earthquakes.\n\nIf the plan is successful, however, it will provide ample compensation for the effort required. It will lessen the threat of flood in the southeast part of China, and will prevent drought in the northwest. It will improve the use of the region for pasture land, and increase its agricultural production. It can also develop electric power, which will make up for the shortage of coal in the region. It will modify the dry climate to some extent; this in turn will encourage forest growth. It will form a system of waterways that will facilitate navigation throughout the country.\n\nThe building of Railroads—For the sake of political coherence and the furtherance of economic development, the present government has paid great attention to the building of railroad systems. The length of the main line built since 1949 was 16,000 miles. Of the many completed systems of railroads, three have geopolitical significance. They reflect the determination of the present regime to unify the state and to open up the frontier border by connecting it with the inner areas.\n\n1. Along the east coast, five ports—Yentai, Ningpo, Foochow, Amoy, and Chiankiang—have been linked to the interior by short lines. The military intention of the railroads built in the areas around Foochow and Amoy apparently is that of “liberating” Taiwan.\n\n2. Two long railroads have been built for the purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union. One, which was built in 1954, runs from Tsining to Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia, and then to the Soviet Union. With the completion of this railroad, China was joined to the Mongolian People's Republic. The other, which is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212394, "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": 336, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "313\n\nlarge balloons in the sky with banners attached calling on Group Members to purchase real estate.\n\nThe group leaders, Rosemary Lee and Anita Wilson, had done their preparatory work thoroughly. But the weather did not behave according to plan. Rain prevented a visit to the botanical gardens on the last day. The newly completed Harbour View Holiday Inn Hotel was comfortable with generally good service. The plumbing really worked unlike in some provinces such as Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang even if there were complications with key tags having to be wedged into light master-switches with a small wad of paper. But all banquets come to an end and Members arrived back in Hong Kong with fond memories of their three days' break.\n\nT\n\nI-\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nFurther Reading\n\nCourtauld, Caroline, An Illustrated Guide to Fujian, (1988) Hughes, George, Amoy and the Surrounding Districts, [1872]\n\nMcCunn, Ruthanne Lum, An Illustrated History of the Chinese in America, (1979) Pitcher, Philip Wilson, In and About Amoy (1912)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214016, "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-1997", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "50\n\nin pairs on Min [Fukienese] community altars as offerings to the Jade Emperor, whose birthday is celebrated the following day and who had persuaded Yang to call off the pursuit.\n\nAn image categorically identified as the Seventh Son, Yang Yen-ssu has only been observed in one temple, in Medan in Sumatra, where it stands alone on a separate side altar simply marked, Yang Ch'i Yeh. He is portrayed as a black-bearded general, standing dressed in long yellow robes and holding a long staff but without any unique features. In a temple near Taichung where he is depicted together with the rest of his brothers he is inexplicably portrayed with a ferocious, decorated face and a bird's beak mouth. His black skin is decorated with a white [opera-style] face pattern, whilst the beak with a red edging is under a human nose. His eyes are staring, round and bulging, and he is holding an unsheathed sword at the ready. All in all, an extraordinary image which, whilst accepted and labelled as the Seventh Son by the temple staff, is completely out of character.\n\nFinally, in Seremban in central Malaysia, the temple keeper of a small rural temple pointed out a small standing figure of a soldier in armour at the rear of a crowded secondary altar. The image has no unique characteristic and could be any soldier/deity. The temple keeper identified him as Yang Sung-pao, a T'ang general who had been the protector of a Sung emperor. In Seremban he was also known as the Venerable Golden Lion, Chin-shih Ta-jen, as well as the Great General, Ta Chiang-chün.\n\nThe Eighth Son, Yang Pa Yeh, has only been noted on two altars in northern China despite the two Yang Family Daughters being numbered Eight and Nine, Yang Pa Chie and Yang Chiu Mei. These two daughters were involved in several battles fighting alongside the Sixth Son.\n\nPost Script\n\nChinese characters carved into a roadside rock beside the modern main road from the Fen River plain in northern Shansi to Inner Mongolia proclaimed that the nearby old temple had been dedicated to Wu Lang, the Fifth Son of the Yang. This was confirmed by a local peasant. The temple was in a col between two mountains, itself several thousand", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214018, "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-1997", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "52 \n\ndedicated to the 3rd century BC hero, Li Mu? Peasant memories have so frequently proved to have been selective and extremely partial to local heroes and as the famous battle fought by Yang Yeh in northern Shansi took place quite close to the site of the temple it would be understandable for them to assume rightly or wrongly that the temple had been dedicated to his son in those distant days before the temple was destroyed. And here is another problem. No one nowadays knew when the temple had been demolished, the best bet would seem to be during the Japanese campaigns of the 1930s.\n\nNOTES\n\n'The Khitan [in Chinese Ch'i-tan] were Tatars who adopted the Chinese name Liao for their dynasty, and were hunters from approximately the area now known as Inner Mongolia\n\n4\n\n༣\n\n\"General\" in Chinese used to be a generic term for the leader of an independent body of soldiers and was even used for leaders of village militia groups as small as a score or so\n\nHe was also known as P'an Hung and referred to in the novel as the Sung Imperial adviser Hung-yang Tung At the Hung-yang cave)\n\nThe Eldest Son was Yang Yuan-ping, the Second Son, Yang Yen-ling, and the Third, Yang Yen-kuang.\n\n*This cult is in no way connected with Yang Hou, whose images have been noted in eight temples in Hong Kong and Macau\n\n7\n\nA small temple in Taipei is dedicated to the Four Ambassadors [who crossed to Taiwan] from the Chin Lake in Ch'uanchou, and despite the main deities within all being pestilence Wang-yeh, and acknowledged as such by the temple keeper, they were also identified as four of the sons of Yang Yeh. The images were well-nigh impossible to discern with any clarity as the protective plate glass was extremely grimy.\n\n8 Werner also noted that Ch'an Shih-kung was a popular deity in Kiangsi province whose aid was sought by peasants for rain during prolonged drought. He added that pictures of the deity in monasteries showed him with a vermilion mark on his forehead and with a tiger crouched at his feet. Legend explained that a tiger which had menaced travellers had been ordered by Ch'an Shih-kung to desist, and it had followed him like a dog thereafter. It would seem that the deity noted by Werner was not in any way connected with Yang Wu Lang.\n\n9 In a small Singapore temple the following title was inscribed into a multi-deity tablet, even though no images of the Yang clan were present: Hsien-feng Yang Chiang-chun Chi-chiao Wang-yeh [The Fleet of Foot Vanguard General].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215066, "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-2000", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "119\n\ninside each annual Farmer's Almanac whether it be printed in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore, is of the Spring Ox and the youthful ox herd. The youth, usually armed simply with a willow wand, the symbol of rain, was connected with fertility, good harvests and happiness. Popular belief also claimed that Mang Shen's clothing was intentionally misleading. One shoe meant a balanced rainfall, two shoes meant poor rain, possibly drought and no shoes meant a good and adequate rainfall. If he was dressed in mourning it would be a good year, whereas if he wore light clothing a cold year could be expected. [Similar rituals involving the Spring Ox have been observed as far afield as Inner Mongolia (Wm. Grootaers: Chahar: Peking Catholic University: Monumenta Serica: 1948), Sichuan (Mrs Pruen: The Western Provinces of China: 1906), the Rev. Milne in Beijing and Ningbo in the mid 1840s] and in illustrations within provincial guide books of the 1990s in Shanxi and Shaanxi.\n\nTaisui on Altars\n\nAlthough Taisui is only very rarely the main deity in a temple he has been seen as a lone deity in a wayside shrine, and is frequently the sole deity on a temple's secondary altar. However, in southern Chinese communities, especially Hunan and Guangdong, he is portrayed by sixty individual images in serried rows on a secondary altar, and in one temple in Lukang, on the west coast of Taiwan, all sixty are depicted in a modern temple mural in four rows of fifteen.\n\nNormally Taisui whether as one or sixty images exclusively occupies the altar dedicated to him. However, two temples, provinces apart, have their rows of sixty Taisui, rising row on row, but with different deities, neither apparently connected with Taisui, standing in the superior position on the very top tier of the altar. The first is in Tainan in southern Taiwan where a new hall, built onto the side of the first floor main hall of the large Jade Emperor Temple, is entirely dedicated to Taisui apart from the painted wooden doors and three unconnected images on the top row. The main deity in this instance is Doumu Yuanjun, also known as Zhunti Pusa, the Bodhisattva of Light [or the Dawn]. She is worshipped by Chan [Zen] Buddhists as a merciful goddess and has been assimilated by Chinese religion as the deity Doumu with many of her devotees regarding her as a bodhisattva in her own right, a powerful deity 'who prolongs life and helps avoid", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215070, "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-2000", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "123\n\nscroll stands in the centre and is flanked by two images each with his right arm raised holding a bell. The faces are one red and one black, and the pair are known as the Red Taisui and the Black Taisui, all three functioning as one deity.\n\nA six-armed image of Taisui in the side hall of the Penang City God temple shares the main altar with Guan Yin and the Great Saint [Qitian Da Sheng - though better known as the Monkey God]. In Cholon, Saigon, three separate deities are portrayed on one altar, each with Taisui added to his title. These are Ziwei Xingjun, Wenchang and Xuantan, the first being a stellar deity whose likeness is pasted or nailed to doors as a popular charm to ward off demonic attack, the second is the God of Literature and the third, a Wealth God. This nomenclature would appear to be a local whim, not seen nor heard of elsewhere.\n\nOnly in very few instances does Taisui have any assistants. Several temple keepers in Taiwan and Singapore explained that Taisui, like so many protective deities, has Five Demon Armies under his command. These he despatches to cope with recalcitrant humans who fail to honour Taisui properly or who have insulted him in any way. When humans come under any form of demonic attack the cause and source of the attack is usually revealed to them by mediums, who are then in a position to advise the individual what should be done to counter and ward off the evil effects, particularly so when the attack is mounted by tamed demons under the control of a deity, Taisui. They advise the human to immediately propitiate him and request him to call off his demonic forces.\n\nIn several novels Taisui is described as having ten assistants the last four being the gods of the year, the month, the day and the hour. All were described in the Deification of the Gods as having been slain at the famous battle between the good and evil forces at Wan Xian Chen and have been named as:\n\nLi Bing\n\n李丙\n\nHuang Chengyi\n\n黃丞乙\n\nZhou Deng\n\n周登\n\nLiu Hong\n\n劉洪\n\nIn a temple in Kalgan, a city known today as Zhangjiakou in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, Yin Jiao's second brother, Yin", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]