[ { "id": 204248, "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-1961", "page_number": 16, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n13\n\nDuring the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, this region became one of the most important regions for archaeological study by Russian, French, German, Japanese, Swedish, and British archaeologists. The great names for the English reader are those of Dr. Sven Hedin of Sweden, and Sir Aurel Stein. The geographical exploration of the one, and the archaeological exploration of the other provide reading material of the utmost fascination and charm, and offer a key to open the closed door of Central Asian studies.\n\nTo these must be added the scholarly work on Central Asian languages Sogdian, Karosthi, Persian, Turkish, Uighur, and Mongolian that illumined the work of the archaeologists, including the names of the two great French sinologues, Edouard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot, and of the Russian Central Asian historian, W. Barthold.\n\nThe greatest episode in the history of Central Asia was the outbreak of the Mongols of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The most extensive land empire that the world has seen stretched from Russia to Mongolia, and embraced also China, Annam, and Persia, and in its later developments the Moghul dominion in India.\n\nThe trade routes between East and West were once more opened, mediaeval travellers from Europe made their way to Mongolia and China, which they knew by the name of Cathay, and for the first time the West had detailed accounts of farther Asia. The book of Marco Polo is known to all, but not so widely known are the slightly earlier journeys and narratives of the Franciscan Friars, John of Pian Carpine, one to the court of Kuyuk Khan (1245-1247), and the other to the court of Mangu in Mongolia (1253-55). Yet these both present to the reader first-hand information of the Mongols, and of the Chinese, on matters overlooked by Marco Polo.\n\nII. The Persians were the first of the great Oriental Empires with which Europe was confronted. The main theme of the History of Herodotus was the invasion of the independent city-states of Greece by the King of Kings.\n\nIt was to understand how this situation came about, how and why the invasion failed, that Herodotus set out on his seventeen years' travels, collecting material—geographical, historical, sociological, and religious from all the peoples and tribes within his reach, to work into his great history.\n\nA hundred years later Alexander reversed the process and the Greeks invaded the East. In three great battles Syria, Egypt, and Persia fell, and the Macedonian army penetrated to the tributaries of the Indus.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204970, "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-1965", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "69\n\nPIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nFor most of recorded history piracy has been a menace to sea-borne trade, and there have been times when it has been difficult to distinguish between pirates and honest or should one say legitimate traders. Nationality has often been the only mark of distinction, as Spanish and English views of Drake, Hawkins, and the like illustrate.\n\nThe Chinese were pioneers in piracy, as in so many other things, and a history of piracy in China would begin many thousands of years ago. The Chinese were probably skilled practitioners of the art before history began to be recorded. The earliest accounts are in the records of the Chou Dynasty in the fourth century B.C., and piracy continued in China long after it had been suppressed in other parts of the world.\n\nWhen the first Europeans arrived in the China Seas in the sixteenth century, many of the pirates on the coast were Japanese. For three centuries after the defeat of Kublai Khan's invasion of Japan in 1281, Japanese pirates mainly from Kyushu were active along the whole coast, from the Liaotung Peninsula in the north to Hainan Island and the Straits of Malacca in the south. The famous Arctic explorer, John Davis, met his death at their hands in 1604. Davis was serving on an East India Company ship which was anchored off the island of Bintang, east of Singapore, when it was attacked by Japanese pirates.\n\nThis was at the end of the Japanese era, which came about as the result of several different factors. One was the establishment of a strong central government in Japan by Iyeyasu, the first of the Tokugawa Shoguns at the beginning of the seventeenth century; and another was the increasing superiority of Chinese over Japanese junks.\n\nThe depredations of these Japanese pirates often extended far inland, and they were accompanied by atrocities reminiscent of the Japanese Rape of Nanking in 1937. Because of this the Ming Emperors banned all intercourse between the two countries, and this afforded the Portuguese the opportunity to act as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205127, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "78\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nFor the next ten years Buddhist exchanges happily continued between the two countries. Japanese scholars toured China to collect material on Buddhist history and art, while Chinese went to Japan to study.13 Probably in 1936 (and at any rate before the Japanese invasion) the Sino-Japanese Buddhist Association was formed.14 It would not be too cynical to suppose that the Japanese viewed it as an instrument for political penetration, while the Chinese hoped to use it to mobilize Buddhist opinion in Japan against that country's aggressive policy.\n\nWhile the invasion of central China in 1937 put an end to voluntary cooperation with Chinese Buddhists, it increased Japanese opportunities to get cooperation under pressure and enlarged the scope of their missionary activity. As one Japanese source puts it, \"where the Japanese army went, Japanese religion went too.\"15\n\nWhile in the preceding sixty years about a dozen permanent temples had been established, nearly all in Shanghai, no less than thirty-five were opened between 1937 and 1942, not only in Shanghai, but in Nanking (six temples), Hankow (four), Hangchow (three), Soochow (two), Wuhu (two), Wusih (two), Chen-chiang, Kiukiang, Yangchow, Changchow, and many smaller cities. Most of the parishioners were Japanese — in three cases entirely so17 — but at four temples out of five there were at least a few Chinese parishioners and at one out of six the Chinese were in a majority; in other words, these were really missions.\n\nNot all Chinese monks and devotees could follow their government to Szechwan. Those who remained had to cope with the realities of foreign occupation. They had no choice but to welcome the increasing number of Japanese priests who came to work in China, living in Chinese monasteries or in Japanese research institutes, and in return they went to Japan themselves. In 1939, for example, over twenty Chinese monks were selected by competitive examination. As one of them told me in an interview, he was twenty-two at the time and had been serving as a sacristan (i-po) at Chin Shan. He wanted to go partly because he was curious about the state of Japanese Buddhism. Also he believed that if he learned the language, he would be better equipped to cope with the occupation forces on his return. “If I knew Japanese, they would not be able to bully me. I would be able to reason with them.” After qualifying in the examination,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206223, "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-1971", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "34\n\nCHIU LING-YEONG\n\nher seeming weakness and the record of her ancient greatness, they thought that, having become effete, the 19th century air would prove too much for her aged lungs. Here is the opinion of a distinguished diplomatic agent writing of China in 1849:- 'With a fair seeming of immunity from invasion, sedition or revolt, leave is taken to regard this vast empire as surely, though it may be slowly, decaying.'\n\nTseng pointed out that this was the opinion of a writer whose knowledge of China was slight. China was asleep but not about to die, he said. Further, China had failed to make her way with the foreign powers because for centuries she had been contented with her brilliant achievements in the past. He went on:\n\nPerhaps she thought she had done enough, had sat down and fallen asleep in that contemplation which, if not always fatal is at least always dangerous, the contemplation of her own greatness. What wonder if she had done so? Everything predisposed her to such an attitude of mind. The fumes of the incense brought by many embassies from far off lands, the inferiority of the subject races that looked up to her, the perfect freedom from the outer din ensured to her by the remoteness of her ample bournes all predisposed her to repose and neglect to take note of what was passing in the outer world. Towards the end of the reign of Tao Kwang, however, the sleeper became aware that her situation scarcely justified the sense of security in which she had been reposing. Influences were at work, and forces were sweeping along the coast very different from those to which China had been accustomed. Pirates and visitations of Japanese free-booters had occasionally disturbed the tranquillity of certain places on the seaboard; but the men who now began to alarm the authorities were soon found to be much more redoubtable than these. Wherever they came they wished to stay. Submissive at first, they engaged in trade with our people, and tempted them with strange merchandise. It was not long before troubles arose which showed that the white trader could fight as well as buy and sell. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207514, "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": 282, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "274\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nand I doubted very seriously whether any prisoners would get out of Hong Kong. Having reached this conclusion it seems strange that one just carried on. I do not recall discussing the situation as I saw it with any other person in the hospital, for it was my job to try to keep people cheerful rather than inspire feelings of gloom. I suppose the truth of the matter is that with the blessing of work to be done it became possible to shut one's mind to the dark thoughts that crowded in.\n\nIn 1944 the effects of the blockade on the Japanese began to become evident to us, though after April 1945 when the hospital reopened in Kowloon our conditions were improved and my own depression and I believe that of others lifted very considerably.\n\nThe military situation was such that in April 1945 the Japanese expeditionary force in China which had recently been reinforced numbered about one million men, though by this time neither the training of the troops nor their equipment were good and their efficiency was not high. Responsibility for the Canton area was laid upon the Japanese 23rd Army which consisted of six divisions, two independent mixed brigades, two independent infantry brigades and the defence force allocated to Hong Kong. In May 1945 the 23rd Army was reduced from six to three divisions, but its task was still to hold Liuchow Peninsula, the Hong Kong-Canton area and Swatow in order to repel an American invasion.\n\nWhatever plans may have been made or even considered, our Official History contain no suggestion that an American or British attack on Hong Kong was contemplated in 1945. Lieutenant General Wedemeyer, the American Chief of Staff to Generalissimo Chang Kai-shek and commander of the American forces in China, hoped to have a force of 13 Chinese armies, each of three divisions for operations in the Hong Kong-Canton area. Wedemeyer's plan was to attack the Hong Kong-Canton area in the last quarter of 1945, and the assault on Canton was to be made on 1 November. Sixteen out of Wedemeyer's 39 divisions had American training and were fully equipped. None of the other 23 was either fully equipped or trained. At the time of the Japanese surrender 20,000 troops and civilians laid down their arms in Hong Kong. It would seem therefore that the battle for the relief of Hong Kong would have been fought between Japanese and Chinese troops. All operations of course were halted after the atom bombs were dropped.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207719, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\nEditor\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR*\n\nJournal of Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch\n\nSir:\n\nI am submitting a manuscript for publication in your Journal on King Kalakaua of Hawaii and his visit to Hong Kong in 1881. It gives a clear explanation why Hong Kong was chosen as the principal embarkation port for the Chinese labor recruitment to Hawaii. The strict administration of British regulations on emigration, the designation of an honorary Hawaiian consul in Hong Kong, and the reasonable contract between employer and employee signed in Hawaii, as documented in an appendix, all give a better understanding of the good treatment of our Chinese immigrants to Hawaii compared with the abuses in Peru and Cuba.\n\nThe first reigning monarch to make a trip around the world was King David Kalakaua of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The year was 1881. King Kalakaua, born November 16, 1836, reigned for twenty-three years (1874-1891) until his death in San Francisco on January 20, 1891.† He had already had his first experience travelling abroad in November 1874 when he called on President Ulysses S. Grant in Washington and addressed the United States Congress in fluent English. As a result of this visit, the Hawaiian government was\n\n* Mr. Char was born in Hawaii in 1905 and has had a colorful life combining business and education. A graduate of McKinley High School in Honolulu, he received his B.A. degree from Yenching University in Peking and his M.A. from the University of Hawaii, and pursued graduate studies at Columbia University. He then taught, both in Hawaii and in China. In 1938, Mr. Char and his family returned to Hawaii as refugees from the Japanese military invasion of Canton. He spent the next thirty years in the insurance business. In 1952, he became the first person in Hawaii to gain the national professional designation of CPCU (Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter) in the field of insurance. Always active in community affairs, Mr. Char served on the boards of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Hawaii Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Nuuanu YMCA, and the Board of Underwriters of Hawaii (insurance), among others, and is currently a member of a number of historical societies, including the Hawaii Chinese History Center. Upon retirement in 1969 as president of the Continental Insurance Agency of Hawaii, Mr. Char spent a year on the campus of Chung Chi College, a division of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as a volunteer in student counseling and placement service. Since then, he has devoted his time to historical research and writing.\n\nMr. Char is also the author of The Hakka Chinese: Their Origin and Folk Songs and Chinese Proverbs, both published by the Jade Mountain Press of San Francisco in 1969, and The Char Family Genealogy Book, privately published in Honolulu in 1970.\n\n† See Plate 15.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208020, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN, 1946\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS*\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe purpose of this paper is to record some experiences of a truck journey in early 1946 from Chungking, the wartime capital of the Republic of China, to Yenan, the Headquarters of the 18th Group Army, the Chinese Communist Party and capital of the Kansu-Ninghsia-Shensi Border Region, and back. This three-truck convoy carrying medical supplies was the first delivery to take place for a period of about four years, and a very brief review of the political background is perhaps required to set the scene.\n\nFollowing the Sian incident of December 1936, there were moves towards a united anti-Japanese front between the Nationalist Government (Kuomintang) under Marshal Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists (Kungchangtang). This was followed on July 7, 1937, by the Marco Polo Bridge fighting and the start of the Japanese invasion of the heartland of China. In this period, there was a nominal united command of Kuomintang and Kungchangtang with Marshal Chiang Kai-shek as Supreme Commander. The New Fourth Army, based in Anhwei, had been formed from the Communist guerilla groups left behind in Central China, but friction developed between this and the Kuomintang forces, and in January 1941, it was attacked in South Anhwei and partly destroyed. This marked the end of the united front, and the Kuomintang re-introduced the blockade of the Liberated Areas under 18th Group Army control. These Liberated Areas were basically the provinces of Kansu, Ninghsia, Shensi, Suiyuan, Honan, Hupeh, Hopeh, Shantung, Anhwei, Kiangsu, and Jehol. Much of these areas were also under Japanese occupation of the cities, railways, and roads, but the countryside was effectively under the control of the Liberated Areas Regional Councils.\n\nThe reintroduction of the blockade meant that a proportion of the Kuomintang troops were engaged in this exercise rather than\n\n* Paper delivered to a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch on 31st May, 1977. Mr. Reynolds is head of the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208597, "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-1979", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "# THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG\n\n## 1941-1946\n\n### INTRODUCTION\n\nThe Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll) was founded in 1911, with headquarters thirty miles north of New York City, and took in its first students for the priesthood in September 1912. On Christmas Day, 1917 the French Catholic Bishop of Canton agreed to cut off the southern portion of his east South China vicariate and give it to the new American mission. By 1941 the Maryknoll Mission had stations at Yeung Kong (18-21) and Ka Ying (★ ★) in Kwangtung, and at Wu Chow (*) in the neighbouring province of Kwangsi. Work was also undertaken in Hong Kong where a Rest House and Language Centre had been completed at Stanley in 1934.\n\nFather James Smith of Maryknoll has completed an as yet unpublished account of the Mission's Work in Hong Kong, entitled The Maryknoll Hong Kong Chronicle 1918-1975. The lengthy extract that follows is taken from this work, and on account of its human interest is published here with Father Smith's permission. He has advised me that much of this section was, in fact, written by Rev. William Downs of Maryknoll, based on his personal experiences during those memorable years in Hong Kong's history. Also, that Fr. Downs was first assigned to Hong Kong in 1925, but left to take up mission work in the Kaying, Kwangtung, area in 1927. In July of 1938 his residence in Swatow was bombed by Japanese airplanes and totally demolished; he was seriously wounded and eventually sent to Hong Kong for treatment and recuperation. He remained in the Colony as Director of the Language School for those priests studying the Hakka dialect. This work was interrupted by the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, but in the Stanley Camp he taught the newly arrived priests, and when they were released and permitted to go into the interior, Fr. Downs accompanied them.\n\nIn 1946 Fr. Downs was again assigned to Hong Kong and remained at the Maryknoll Stanley House until failing health forced him to return to the United States in 1968. He died there in 1970.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209673, "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-1982", "page_number": 330, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nTwo views of internment: Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire by Jean Gittens (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 1982) and A Yen For My Thoughts by G. A. Leiper, (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong 1982)\n\nHappy coincidence has brought two excellent accounts of war-time internment in Hong Kong onto the bookshelves at the same time. Written from personal experience, they are a poignant testimony to the courage of all who endured hardship and deprivation at Stanley and fill a gap which has long needed filling in our knowledge of conditions during the Japanese occupation.\n\nAs a Eurasian, Jean Gittens need not have been interned, but the chance, however faint, of reunion with either her children in Australia, or her already imprisoned husband led her to enter Stanley voluntarily. The opening chapters of \"Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire\" are a revealing social commentary. She relates how her parents, the late Sir Robert and Lady Clara Hotung, were the first non-Europeans to gain permission to live on the Peak and the resulting snide remarks they had to endure from neighbours and their children. The \"difference\" was brought home with unbelievable callousness when the Eurasian wives and children of government employees, advised to leave Hong Kong prior to the invasion, were turned back on reaching Manila because of Australia's insistence that only those of \"pure British\" descent could be given refuge.\n\nThe same chapters convey the impression of a spoiled little rich girl: \"In spite of the fresh air and exclusiveness, living facilities on the Peak were understandably primitive. Braving these conditions would have tried the spirit of anyone, but for a woman with a large family of young children it needed true courage,\" and again: \"The summers were long and trying and, especially during our early years, Mother would take us away to one of the seaside resorts in the North to escape the heat.”\n\nI am not sure whether the prissiness is deliberate, but it serves to heighten the contrast with the degrading and dehumanising conditions of the camp detailed in the remainder of the book.\n\nPage 330\n\nPage 331", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212331, "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": 273, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "250\n\ngenerating their own supplies, switched to Hong Kong Electric.\n\nIn 1924 there were 1,369 gas street lights, compared to 469 electric. By 1936, few gas lights remained.\n\nDuring the invasion, in December 1941, a small group of Hong Kong Electric engineers and other staff, a few of whom were veterans of Britain's past wars, held the Japanese at bay in the epic defence of the North Point Power Station. Casualties were heavy. Of these, Vincent Sorby, the general manager, later died of wounds in prison camp.\n\nExcept for early days and the war years, blackouts have totalled only two hours 50 minutes. One was caused by a fire at North Point Power Station in 1930, and another when a shoal of fish was sucked into the cooling system in the same year.\n\nChina Light and Power\n\nChina Light and Power is younger than Hong Kong Electric, and until it was established, apart from a few lamps, the streets of Kowloon went lightless at night. Robert George Shewan registered the company in 1900 (some records say 1901). His main business was as a partner in Shewan, Tomes and Company. Its predecessor was Samuel Russell and Company (liquidated in 1879), which started business in Canton in 1818, an American trading firm originating in Boston which merged with Perkins and Company, another American company, in 1842.\n\nLawrence (now Lord) Kadoorie, Hong Kong's first peer, was born in Hong Kong and raised in China. His father, who became Sir Elly Kadoorie, arrived in Hong Kong, via Bombay, in 1880 from Baghdad where his was one of the leading Jewish families. Lawrence Kadoorie joined the board of China Light and Power in 1930. Since then, he has been one of the driving forces in the company.\n\nChina Light and Power commissioned its first power station, at Hung Hom, in 1903. In 1989, the company supplied electricity to nearly 1,400,000 customers in Kowloon, the New Territories, Lantau, and some outlying islands. 'China Light' is not dealt with at such length here as Hong Kong Electric because it did not come into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212607, "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-1991", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "141\n\nThe Mongols conquered Burma in 1287, but the conquest did not last long; and a later invasion was repulsed in 1769. The British came in the nineteenth century to occupy Lower Burma. The French established themselves in Indo-China, whence they intrigued into Upper Burma, producing a situation not unlike that which, ten years later, led to the Fashoda incident on the Nile. The British, who had been having trouble with King Thibaw, decided to forestall French projects, and march on Mandalay. Upper Burma was annexed and the Court of Ava sent into exile. The British are not Burma's real problem: they have, as usual, provided stability and security. The danger lies to the West and to the East, where 400 millions in India and 450 millions in China, hem in a small country. It is not as if Burma is densely populated; the density is only 64 to the square mile, as against 295 in India and 145 in China.\n\nBurmese intercourse, facilitated by easy sea communications, has been greater with India than with China. In 1936 the overland trade with China amounted barely to a paltry 1,000,000 rupees. The subsequent increase brought about by the opening of the Burma road was quite artificial, the result of the blockade of the China coast by the Japanese. When the artificial conditions cease, the trade will revert to its normal channels, round by sea, and over the Indo-China railway or up the Yangtze.\n\nOwing to the relative short range of Indian pressure, overwhelming Indian penetration was what the Burmese had to fear most in the past, but signs are not lacking that the psychological effect of the building of the Burma road, and subsequently the behaviour of the Chinese troops, who retreated through Burma in 1942, may have changed the emphasis. Time will show.\n\nAlready in 1941 the most virulent whispering campaigns flourished, aimed at the Chinese, and directed more especially at the alleged graft and incompetence on the Burma road. That the Japanese were behind these campaigns is as probable as the plausibility which these rumours derived from the actual state of affairs on the road. Later, there were mixed feelings, when the Chinese troops entered Burma to take part in the defence; it would not be too strong to say that in many native quarters their entry was viewed with suspicion.\n\nAs is known, part of the Chinese troops retreated in 1942 into India, where they were reorganised and trained by American officers, but paid and equipped by the British taxpayer, under reverse lease-lend. It may be news, even to General Stilwell, that the idea of training and equipping\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212717, "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-1992", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "The Boxer Rebellion in north China in 1900, which involved the massacre of some western missionaries and a siege of the Legation area in Peking, did not reach as far south as Shanghai, though in his curriculum vitae Mesny mentions 'Volunteered for service at Peking 1900'. Unfortunately, we do not know whether his service was accepted or what he did during that period.\n\nThe Chinese Imperial government survived these rebellions but slowly became even weaker as the years went by. Western nations also took full advantage of Chinese imperial weakness until in 1911 the Revolution overthrew the imperial government and established a very weak republic which, after some further thirty or so years of both inner turmoil and invasion by the Japanese, ended with the Communist victory. Mesny lived through the first eight years of the Republic, and though they were stirring times, he must have had many nostalgic memories of his prowess and success in the Chinese imperial army, particularly in the latter days of the suppression of the Miao rebels, and the time when he was a prisoner of the Taipings, features which make his eye-witness accounts of value today.\n\nMesny lived in a China which followed a predominantly masculine routine. The majority of foreigners were either isolated loners or members of small groups in remote parts of China, or they lived in treaty ports, enclaves in which the relative comfort of 'home', friends, and social occasions made life bearable, even though foreign women tended to live circumscribed and artificial lives. However, his accounts lack such intimate detail of his and his family's lives. Despite the autobiographical notes in the Miscellany, not only in segments but selective in the extreme, Mesny remains somewhat of an elusive person, and, as none of his letters appear to have survived, much of his personal life would seem to be largely irrecoverable. His enigmatic snippets about his Chinese family are such that they do little more than fuel guesswork. We still lack an account of Mesny's private life in his later years, one in which we might hear the voices of his wives and children as clearly as those of the senior officers we have been provided in the Miscellanies, of the senior Chinese officers during the Kueichou campaign.\n\nMuch of the raw material provided by Mesny contains stark, bald statements which leave loose ends and strands which we cannot gather together without straying into the realms of guesswork. Regrettably, there would appear to be little chance of ever satisfying our curiosity from...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213390, "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-1994", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "200\n\nFairbank, John King. The United States and China, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1948\n\nThe Missionary Enterprise in China and America, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1974\n\nFairbank, John K, Katherine Frost Brunet, and Elizabeth MacLeod Matheson, eds, The IG in Peking. Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs 1868–1907, 2 vols, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1975\n\nFay, Peter Ward, The Opium War 1840-1842, Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1975\n\nFenn, William P. The Effect of the Japanese Invasion on Higher Education in China, Kowloon China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940\n\nChristian Higher Education in Changing China 1880-1950, Grand Rapids (Mich), William B Eerdmans, 1976\n\nFerguson, Mary E. China Medical Board and Peking Union Medical College a Chronicle of Fruitful Collaboration, 1914-1951, New York China Medical Board of New York, 1970\n\nFeuerwerker, Albert, The Foreign Establishment in China in the Early Twentieth Century. Ann Arbor University of Michigan press, 1947\n\n-, 'The Foreign Presence in China', Cambridge History of China, vol 12, 128-207\n\nFishbourne, Edmund Gardiner 1811-1887 (Captain), Impressions of China, and the Present Revolution Its Progress and Prospects, London Seeley et al, 1855\n\nFisher, Arthur A'Court (Lt Col), Personal Narrative of Three Years' Service in China. London Richard Bentley, 1863.\n\nFisher, Emil Sigmund, Travels in China 1894-1940. Tientsin Tientsin press, 1941\n\nFitch, Janet. Foreign Devil, Reminiscences of a China Missionary's Daughter 1909-1935, San Francisco Chinese Materials Center, 1981\n\nFleming, George. Travels on Horseback in Manchu Tartary, London Hurst and Blackett, 1863\n\nFleming, Peter, News From Tartary a Journey from Peking to Kashmir. 1936 (Los Angeles Reprint JP Tarcher, 1982)\n\nOne's Company, New York Scribners 1934\n\n- The Siege at Peking. London Rupert Hart-Davis, 1959 (Hong Kong Reprint Oxford University Press)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214300, "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-1998", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "122\n\nhis birth and childhood, and my favourite stamping ground in China Taiyuan, the capital of Shansi province, to his first wife, the daughter of John Mesny, a junior employee of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service, the life of whose elder brother, William Mesny, was the subject of my earlier research [vide.: my paper in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch: Volume 32, 1992]. Sowerby roamed far and wide throughout northern China before serving for a while in France as an officer with the Chinese Labour Corps [vide: my Note on Chinese Labour Corps Graves in England in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch Volume 29, 1989]. He then visited Fukien province and met Caldwell whose book on the Blue Tigers of that province had intrigued me when I was much younger. Finally, I was drawn to Sowerby's life story because he was not only a dedicated member of the North China Branch of the RAS in Shanghai for whom he wrote prolifically and eventually became its President, an honour he held for some five years, 1935-1940 but also because he produced his fascinating bimonthly journal on both everyday and exotic Chinese subjects. Since his death nearly fifty years ago he has faded into insignificance and is forgotten by all but those who happen to come across his books and journals.\n\nArthur Sowerby was an explorer and author who lived through very exciting times, first as the son of a Christian missionary in the Chinese interior at the time of the decline of the Manchu dynasty, through the Revolution of 1911 and the fall of the Manchu dynasty to the War Lord period during which he roamed some of the more remote areas of northern China. This was followed by the crises and struggle between the Nationalists and the Communists, the incursions and eventual full-scale invasion by the Japanese, his incarceration in an internment camp in Shanghai during the Second World War, ending with learning during his latter years in retirement, first in England and then in the United States, of the Communist victory in 1949 and, just before his death, of the Korean War when China sent its \"Volunteers\" to aid the North Koreans against the South Koreans and their allies which included the Americans and British. During the last thirty-five or so years of his life he suffered great pain wracked as he was by arthritis.\n\nIt was said that he could speak Chinese ‘like a Chinese.' There is no reason to doubt this as he must have learned it at his ayah's knee though he appears never to have made any effort to learn to read and write the language. During his life in China, the next forty or so years,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214742, "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-1999", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "121\n\nThe reality is that the British had been able to retain Hong Kong as a Colony for another 52 years after August 1945, notwithstanding the promise of Britain to the Chinese Government in 1943 that she would return all her possessions in China after the end of the war. In this light, Churchill's decision was not irrational, and the garrison's sacrifice was a contribution to the way of life and system of government in Hong Kong today.\n\nIn terms of duty and moral responsibility, Churchill's decision was also reasonable, given the constraints confronting his administration. For the sake of argument, what other options were available to Churchill in December 1941, assuming that \"the British Far Eastern Strategy\" (Bell, 1996), for which he was not responsible, with respect to Hong Kong had been wrong? Should he have handed over the Colony to the invading Japanese forces without a fight? Should he have \"returned\" the Colony to the Chinese Government, which had lost control of Canton and a meagre military presence in or near Hong Kong? Or should he have made efforts to evacuate the Governor and the Hong Kong garrison by sea or air and left the rest of the population of Hong Kong in a state of anarchy?11 Bell suggests that demilitarisation and evacuation were feasible options and that the ruling out of these options by the British Government was not justified (Bell, 1996). I do not think that these options were politically sensible or morally responsible. Therefore, I dispute the view that the efforts of the Hong Kong garrison, though militarily probably doomed to fail, were unnecessary or pointless. The complaint by some authors, such as (Blackburn, 1989) about looting by the \"Chinese\" during and after the fighting testified the need for British military presence in Hong Kong to avoid a state of anarchy amongst the population. I further dispute the view of some recent authors that the British administration was humiliated in the eyes of the local population when the small Hong Kong garrison surrendered. That would have been the case had they fled or surrendered Hong Kong without a shot being fired. The majority of the law-abiding Chinese population, irrespective of their views towards colonialism in Chinese territories, had always been supportive of measures to defend their liberty, lives and property against Japanese invaders. At the time the Japanese troops marched on Hong Kong, they had already plundered Chinese soil for more than a decade. There is no doubt that the Chinese population of Hong Kong were not, as represented by some authors, apathetic about the invasion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214902, "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-1999", "page_number": 317, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "293\n\nBOOK REVIEW\n\nGillian Bickley (2201), Hong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare, with a foreword by Arthur Gomes, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 303 pages.\n\nA97NIGHTMARE\n\nIn 1897, a series of anonymous articles appeared in the China Mail. Together they constituted a story entitled The Back Door. This was a fictional account of a successful invasion of Hong Kong by the combined forces of fin-de-siècle aggressors, France and Russia. The inference is that the author was perturbed that Hong Kong's defences at the time were inadequate and so, in an attempt to galvanise the authorities, wrote this \"wake up call.\" Copies of the story ultimately found their way to Whitehall in London.\n\nGillian Bickley\n\nAs the title of the story infers, the superior invading forces entered Hong Kong by way of the south side of Hong Kong Island. There was the bloody Battle of Deepwater Bay, fought in \"the jungle\" around the Golf Club and on the beach. There was shelling of the Peak from the sea and the sea battle of Sulphur Channel. Matters neared their end when the enemy captured the Kowloon Forts and the dynamite and gunpowder stored on Stonecutters' Island were fired. At the last stand, on Stonecutters', the defenders were ultimately annihilated.\n\nThe Back Door evidently arose from the same anxiety that drove Britain's negotiations with China; concluded in 1898 when China granted the ninety-nine year lease of the New Territories, which Britain had requested as a protective buffer against attack.\n\nGillian Bickley discovered a copy of this story some years ago and it evidently fired her imagination, probably because as we all know, Hong Kong was invaded on 8th December, 1941, by the Japanese - also by superior forces - and ultimately capitulated on Christmas day. The Japanese, however, entered Hong Kong from the north, through the New Territories. Had the Japanese, she wonders, read The Back Door?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214903, "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-1999", "page_number": 318, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "294\n\nI don't for one moment think they had. The Japanese invasion of Hong Kong was a \"natural extension\" of their campaign in China in the sense that they had already occupied southern China - across the border from Hong Kong - a considerable time before. Also, although there are innumerable examples to show that invasion from the sea can be a costly business if the beaches are in any way defended, in Hong Kong's case they weren't. A number of gun emplacements had been built on Hong Kong Island before the war but these would not have prevented an invasion at Deepwater Bay. And there certainly weren't any Allied troops around. The Japanese knew all this. I rather suspect that they invaded from the New Territories rather than assault Hong Kong Island at the outset because they believed that if and when they overran Hong Kong Island, the Allied forces would cross to Kowloon and thence to the New Territories and continue to wage guerrilla warfare for months, if not years. The Japanese had every reason to think that conquering the New Territories and Kowloon first would result in the Allied forces retreating to Hong Kong Island - which they did - where they could be \"bottled up\" - which they were.\n\nIn the round, however, this discussion is academic. The hard fact of the matter is that Hong Kong was simply not defendable with the forces available in December 1941. A successful defence would have required a force of enormous size and superbly equipped, supported by comprehensive fortifications. The \"protective buffer\" of the New Territories was never any more than an illusion. These arguments, incidentally, were as valid in 1897 as they were in 1941 and to that extent The Back Door was both disingenuous and unhelpful. September 1897 was evidently what the media refer to as a \"slow news\" month!\n\nHong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare is a 'new, integrated and corrected' edition of The Back Door. Incidentally, although The Back Door was written in 1897, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that Gillian is having a gentle swipe at the momentous event in Hong Kong's history that occurred exactly 100 years later.\n\nThe actual story occupies but 56 pages of Gillian's book, including illustrations by Arthur Hacker. These, incidentally, are a disappointment. They are supposed to be illustrating a serious account of a battle fought to the last, with heroism and heavy loss of life on both sides. One would have thought, therefore, that they would have been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215118, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "171\n\ninto Tainan and nearby Yenshui to purchase building materials. After one deal had been completed in a timber yard in Tainan the shop owner, intending to show the old man the best way out of town, came out of his shop to find that the old man had completely disappeared. A short while later the Spirit showed himself more frequently in several nearby towns where, as carts were not available, he employed some sixty people with bamboos to transport stone to the temple site. One stone merchant promised a pair of sculpted stone lions when the task of transporting the stone was finished and was amazed by the speed with which the sixty people managed to complete the task and then realised that they were spirit-labourers.\n\nThe spirit of General Lei again revisited the temple during the invasion of Taiwan by the Japanese in 1895 when he turned peas into soldiers. He gave orders through the temple's divination blocks for three baskets of peas and one basket of hemp-seed to be thrown into the open court in front of the temple. On the following morning all the peas and hemp-seed had disappeared, replaced by red-coated soldiers some three foot tall standing on the tops of trees or on the tips of bamboo canes. These undertook the defence of the town which suffered no damage nor anyone injury from the Japanese.\n\nAlthough many of his devotees believe that he is the General Lei revered elsewhere as the spirit of Lei Wanchun, a subordinate of Zhang Shun, his image in their temple depicts him as a standard soldier, sitting, dressed in armour and with a long black beard. He has no unique characteristics such as gold spots, and is prayed to not only for protection but also for general benefits [Photograph 9]. Until 1915 General Lei was the sole deity on the temple altar. However, that year following a long drought devotees decided to introduce the image of Qingshui Cushi on to the altar to be prayed to for rain. Almost immediately the drought was broken and the image of Qingshui Cushi then became the main deity on the altar. Again, in 1924, after devotees wished to test the power of General Lei following complaints from devotees that his power was waning, it was proved through extensive tests that General Lei was as powerful a spirit as ever though by that time an image of another Wangye, that of Li Wangye, a local Pestilence Wangye1 had also been added to the altar.\n\nWen Yüan-shuai, a deity noted on temple altars across southern China from Zhejiang to Sichuan, has been identified by some religious specialists as Wen Qiong or . Wen was the Vanguard General", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215197, "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": 293, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "257\n\nHan Suyin was the daughter of a Belgian (Dutch/Flemish) mother, Marguerite Denis, and a Chinese father, Chou Yen Tung, (a railway engineer) and one of eight children. She was born in Sinyang, Henan Province. Her parents met whilst her father was studying at university in Belgium. In 1932, she started work as a typist at the Peking Union Medical College to earn money to study. She entered Yenching University in 1933. She transferred to the University of Brussels in 1935 but abandoned her studies in 1938 and returned to China after the Japanese invasion. The same year, she married a Kuomintang officer, Tang Pao Huang, who rose to the rank of general before he was killed during the Civil War in 1947. Tang served for a period as a military attaché in London during World War Two. Before his death, they adopted a daughter, Mei.\n\nHan Suyin, aged three (second from left) with her father behind her\n\nIn 1944, she entered the School of Medicine, University of London and in 1948 graduated M.B., B.S. (Hons.). She took an appointment as a paediatrician at Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong, in 1949. After Mr. Morrison's death in August 1950, she continued working in Hong Kong and married Leonard (Leon) F. Comber, an English publisher, on 1 February 1952, in Hong Kong. She spent the next 10 years in Johore Bahru, Malaysia, working at an anti-tuberculosis clinic. Mr. Comber was a Special Branch officer (assistant superintendent) in Malaya between 1948 and 1960. It was in Malaysia, also, that she met her current husband, an Indian Army colonel Vincent Rathnaswamy. There is a confusing report that she practiced medicine in China until about 1961.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215198, "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": 294, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "258\n\nFrom 1964, she has been a full-time writer of autobiography/history, fiction, and sociopolitical essays/written testimonies. She once said: 'I write as an Asian, with all the pent-up emotions of my people. What I say will annoy many people who prefer the more conventional myths brought back by writers on the Orient. All I can say is that I try to tell the truth. Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures.' She was acquainted with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. She presently lives with Vincent in Lausanne, Switzerland and is also known as Elizabeth C.K. Comber.\n\nHan Suyin and her husband with Zhou Enlai, 19708\n\nJan Morrison was born in May 1913 and was the son of the well-known Australian doctor and journalist (first Peking correspondent for The Times of London, 1897-1912) George Ernest Morrison (1862-1920). He was schooled at Winchester, England and was a graduate of the University of Cambridge. After going down from Cambridge, he became Professor of English at the Imperial University of Hokkaido, Sapporo.\n\nHe visited China in 1937, for the first time, to 'watch the Japanese occupation of Tientsin and the invasion of north China.' Later that year he became private secretary to the newly appointed British Ambassador to Japan, in Kyoto. In 1939, he went to Shanghai and became the representative in China of The British and Chinese Corporation, a London financial house. He traveled extensively throughout China for the next two years.\n\nHe arrived in Singapore in October 1941 and became deputy director of the Far Eastern Bureau of the (U.K.) Ministry of Information.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215292, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "quota system which kept out their Japanese competitors they must pay the same price as British textile manufacturers and use British-made rayon yarn.\" So from June 1937 the 'spun, woven and finished within the empire' requirement was enforced for all cotton and artificial silk garments if they wished to qualify for preference as empire products.\"\n\nApart from boots and shoes, forches, cotton and artificial silk clothing and hosiery there were many other Hong Kong manufactured products exported to the colonial empire which were able to claim the benefits of the imperial preferential tariff. They included hats, umbrellas, leather bags and purses, suitcases, furniture, mats, lamps, rope, firecrackers, paper, books, cigarettes, perfumes, medicines, condiments, sauces, biscuits, preserved foods and refined sugar.\" Complaints of the abuse of this privilege continued. In June 1938 the Colonial Office issued instructions that Hong Kong goods should be admitted to preference only if the suppliers' declaration that the article had a 50 per cent empire content was supported by a detailed statement of costings certified by a chartered accountant and countersigned by an officer of the Hong Kong government.\" It cannot have been easy for a workshop in the back streets of Kowloon to afford the fees of a chartered accountant and get all the paperwork in order. Many justifiable claims to imperial preference must have gone by default. The Colonial Office was under pressure from the Board of Trade active on behalf of British manufacturers who found their trade threatened by Hong Kong's success. It sought to defend the principle that all parts of the empire should be treated equally. It could not stop the self-governing dominions from discriminating against Hong Kong, but it prevented the colonial territories from doing the same. The price it had to pay was the elaborate documentation required to prove that Hong Kong goods were genuinely made in the colony and were not products transhipped from China or Japan.\n\nIn 1937 manufacturing industry in Hong Kong received an unexpected stimulus from the Japanese invasion of China. Industrialists transferred production from Shanghai to Hong Kong when their factories were attacked by the Japanese. When Japan blockaded the Yangtse river and seized all the coastal ports in East China, Hong Kong became a vital entry point for military supplies. Factories were quickly established to provide clothing and equipment to the Nationalist forces. Factories were set up to produce steel helmets, gas masks, mess tins, webbing and military uniforms. Parts for lorries, trucks and even aircraft were imported and assembled in Hong Kong. The Commercial Press moved from Shanghai and began printing currency notes for the Chinese government. The number of factories employing more than 20 workers went up from 642 in 1936 to 864 in 1938, 925 in 1939 and 1,143 in 1940. Domestic exports of manufactured goods in 1938 totalled at least HK$91,610,000 (about £6,000,000).**", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215713, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "FROM THE HON. EDITOR\n\nI have been receiving a relatively large amount of material over the last couple of years and Council has therefore authorised me to continue producing Journals which significantly exceed the '200 page' rule, in order that publication of accepted submissions is not overly delayed. At 532 pages, therefore, this Volume, No. 42 is another bumper effort.\n\nThere are 11 contributions in the ARTICLES section, which must be something of a record.\n\nAndrew Abraham has provided a most scholarly paper on the pros and cons of the transfer of the Straits Settlements from the jurisdiction of the Indian Government to the Colonial Office in 1867.\n\nContinuing our review of the Battle of Hong Kong during World War II, there are contributions from Chohong Choi and Anne Ozorio. The former rehearses Allied thinking on an invasion of Japanese-occupied Hong Kong and possibly the Chinese hinterland behind it, which area might then have been used as a base from which to bomb Japan. Chohong then discusses, somewhat novelly, the challenges to such an invasion from the weather. Anne Ozorio's paper shows that, contrary to popular belief, the British military were very much prepared for an attack on Hong Kong by the Japanese - in terms of continuing intelligence gathering and covert resistance during the occupation - and that they were very active in China until the end of hostilities.\n\nOur man in Bondi, former President, James Hayes, shares with us his experiences of Chinese ceremonial occasions and the considerable etiquette and pomp that go with them.\n\nLawrence Lai et al. reports on a survey of the World War II military installations on Devil's Peak, Hong Kong.\n\nI have reproduced a very pleasant piece from Eve Lam of TVB On HKBRAS which centres on the 40th Anniversary Celebration Conference held in December, 2000 at the University of Hong Kong.\n\nLauren Pfister's account of the life of Ch'ëa Kam-kwong (1800-\n\niii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215802, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "34\n\nBETWEEN THE NINE DRAGONS AND A DIVINE WIND: HOW HONG KONG'S WEATHER MIGHT HAVE AFFECTED AN ALLIED INVASION TO RETAKE THE TERRITORY*\n\nCHOHONG CHO\n\nSynopsis\n\nIn the War in the Pacific during World War II, the question of whether or not to engage Japan directly in China was a major one for Allied planners. If the Japanese weren't enough of a problem, an age-old factor - the weather - certainly would have provided the Allies with additional concerns. The Pacific and Asia are home to some of the most extreme weather in the world.\n\nHong Kong, a possible target in any Allied campaign in China, played host to some of this extreme weather. What this study attempts to do is to consider how Hong Kong's adverse weather conditions could have affected an Allied operation to recapture it from the Japanese.\n\nBackground\n\nAfter Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in December 1941 and Great Britain was expelled from the Pacific, only the U.S. was left to face Japan in this theatre. The U.S. itself was in bad shape, as most of its Pacific Fleet had been mauled at Pearl Harbor. On the Asian mainland, Japan was still busying herself with China and Britain. A stalemate had developed with the former, while the latter was being pushed out of Burma into India.\n\nHowever, the U.S. Navy's (USN) aircraft carriers were not caught in the Pearl Harbor debacle, and during much of 1942, they bore the brunt of the action against the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the Pacific. In a series of three engagements with the IJN (at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal), with inferior numbers accompanied by\n\n*The author would like to thank Mr. Ko Tim-keung for bringing a draft of this article to the attention of the Hon. Editor, and Professor Elfed Roberts for his comments on an early version of the draft.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215823, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "55\n\nbecame more secure. This allowed the Chinese to reoccupy some of their lost territory as 1945 progressed. Talks of an attempt on Hong Kong from the interior of China were revived, although a Hong Kong in Allied hands was now considered a luxury rather than a necessity. The USN was still expected to make a contribution, even if it was only to finally open up a port in China to further alleviate her supply situation, and the possession of which would complete the blockade around Japan and the Inner Zone,55\n\nWhether the USN, the chief underwriter of the Allied offensives in the Pacific, had enough resources for only a luxury objective was another story. As the Allies neared Japan, they encountered the wrath of two types of \"divine wind.\" The first was man-made in the form of massed Japanese suicide plane attacks on the USN and Britain's Royal Navy (RN). This was the Kamikaze, and was the ultimate desperation measure employed by the Japanese in a bid to stem the Allied advance. While the measure eventually failed, it proved extremely nerve-wracking for the Allies to face it down, and men and ships were lost in fighting off this threat. The prospect of more Kamikazes awaiting an invasion of Japan did not sit well with the USN.\n\nThe second was the more natural typhoon. The USN's Third Fleet had the misfortune to be caught in two of them during the last nine months of the war. The first typhoon hit the Third Fleet in December 1944 off the Philippines with winds of 125 knots. It claimed three destroyers sunk and 28 other ships damaged, 146 aircraft destroyed, and almost 900 dead or wounded. The second typhoon struck in June 1945 off Okinawa. This one wasn't as deadly, with winds kept below 100 knots, but it still damaged 33 ships, destroyed or damaged 92 aircraft, and killed or wounded 10 men.56 The Japanese could not have done so well in a conventional attack by this stage of the war.\n\nThe end of the war did not spare the USN from further punishment. In October 1945, a large assembly of support vessels was struck by a typhoon off Okinawa. Winds of 100 knots and waves as high as 35 feet (almost 11 metres) combined to damage, ground, or sink almost 270 ships, most of which were amphibious vessels. The typhoon also damaged over 60 aircraft and inflicted almost 200 casualties, including 36 dead. Shore facilities and supplies were also extensively damaged or destroyed. Fortunately, the war was over, or else the loss (even", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216430, "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-2003", "page_number": 189, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "139\n\nunits were in league with the Hong Huzi, whose activity was always a factor to be reckoned with in the Russian occupation of Manchuria. The Russian Minister in Peking made forcible representations and threats of what would happen should China break her neutrality. The Chinese were frightened into withdrawing General Ma and his army to a safe distance from the point of danger, and the General received the most explicit instructions not to make any move which might be used as an excuse by the Russians for an armed invasion west of the Liao River. The removal of his army from what was the main centre of bandit (Hong Huzi) activity in Manchuria left lawlessness there with a free rein against their bitterest enemies, the Russian occupying forces.\n\nAs the Russian army found itself diverted to sending more and more of its garrison troops to stem the Japanese advance so the bandits grew ever bolder. Every night villages were attacked and robbed by marauders, who eventually even commenced to carry out petty depredations in a number of the native quarters of several of the major towns and cities along the south west of Manchuria. The Western residents of the foreign settlements became seriously alarmed at the prospect of what would in all probability happen when the Russian evacuation occurred and an interregnum ensued before the arrival of the Japanese. They formed committees under a major foreign dignitary, usually a Consul-General, to arrange for the defence of foreign life and property. During the interregnum the Russian settlement of Newchwang was in flames with swarms of Chinese looting the deserted houses, parading in the streets and waving little Japanese flags which had appeared as if by magic.\n\nBrindle reported that after the fall of Port Arthur bands of Hong Huzi deserted their guerrilla units and joined the regular forces of Japanese. They were sent north towards Mongolia and the market towns from which the Russian army secured its supplies, in order to harry the Russian supply lines.\n\nBandits serving with Russian forces\n\nFollowing their occupation of Manchuria in 1900 the Russians had mounted a major campaign to suppress the Hong Huzi and found themselves to their surprise at war with well-armed parties of brave Chinese and Manchu bandits whose knowledge of the terrain provided", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]