[
    {
        "id": 207745,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 133,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "118\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nGovernment, for they hoped that through those converts, whom they financed in their efforts to reach the areas controlled by the Taiping government, they might influence the movement. Since they believed that these converts who had been under their instruction were better grounded in the fundamentals of the Christian faith than the Taiping leaders at Nanking, the missionaries expected their converts to strengthen the Christian element in the movement and correct some of its reported misconceptions in doctrine and aberrations in practice. They also hoped that through the good offices of these converts, once they had established themselves at Nanking, the missionary would, in time, be able to join them.\n\nThe most prominent of these individuals was Hung Jen-kan, a distant cousin of the Taiping leader Hung Hsiu-ch'uan. He became the Kan Wang (Shield King) in the Taiping government at Nanking in 1859 and was executed in November, 1864, after the fall of Nanking.\n\nHe accompanied Hung Hsiu-ch'uan to Canton for Christian instruction under the Rev. Issachar Roberts in 1847. In an appendix to Dr. Margaret M. Coughlin's unpublished doctoral thesis, Strangers in the House: J. Lewis Shuck and Issachar Roberts, First American Baptist Missionaries to China (University of Virginia, 1972), there is a letter of Roberts to Shuck, dated 27 March, 1847, giving details of Hsiu-ch'uan's spiritual development. After a month's instruction, they were sent out on a preaching tour in the course of which they returned to their home district, Hua-hsien, Kwangtung. Jen-kan did not return to Canton with Hsiu-ch'uan for further studies but remained at home to study medicine.\n\nWhile Hung had been preaching near his home in Kwangtung and studying with Roberts at Canton, Feng Yün-shan, a friend of his who had also been influenced by Christian ideas, had been gathering a group of followers in Kwangsi. They adopted the name of \"The Society of God Worshippers\" and were the nucleus from which developed the Taiping movement. The usual accounts of the movement attribute its origins to the activity of Hung Hsiu-ch'uan. This interpretation rests heavily on the account given in Hamberg's booklet The Visions of Hung Siu-Tschuen and Origin of the Kwang-si Insurrection, published in Hong Kong in 1854, and on various documents of the movement which were written after the death of Feng Yün-shan. There are several contemporary references which",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210864,
        "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": 215,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "198\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nson, who passed through San Francisco in the 1870s, reported that his father was still remembered by the community with gratitude and respect.\n\nWHEN FAME HAS ITS HAZARDS\n\nThe position of leadership is one of prestige and honour, but as a public figure the leader is also open to criticism by disgruntled members of the community. Tong A-chick, as leader of the Chinese community of California in the 1850s, experienced such attacks.\n\nIn one case a husband charged him with harbouring his runaway wife. The background of the story indicates some of the difficulties Chinese women had in California. Many of them had been imported as prostitutes. Some had been abducted from their home villages, others had been purchased, and still others had been deceived by false promises. Their lot was not easy.\n\nThe background of Too A-sung, the woman in the case, is not clear. She had been married in Sacramento to Fong A-lai in September 1856, by the Rev. Lewis J. Shuck, a former Baptist missionary in Hongkong. After the marriage, the couple went to live at Marysville, California.\n\nHere A-lai, the husband, began to mistreat his wife. He beat her, threatened to sell her, and, so she claimed, \"forced her into the lowest depths of degradation.” He kept her in \"constant misery, anxiety and wretchedness.\"\n\nFinally, she was able to run away through the assistance of some friends. She arrived at San Francisco and sought shelter at the business premises of Tong A-chick.\n\nThe premises were also used as a branch of the Yeung Wo Association, as the association's house was on the slopes of Telegraph Hill some distance from the centre of the Chinese settlement.\n\nTong A-chick was a director of the association, and Too A-sung",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    }
]