[
    {
        "id": 204850,
        "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-1964",
        "page_number": 153,
        "title": "RAS-1964",
        "content_text": "128\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nGEORGE CHINNERY 1774-1852, ARTIST OF THE CHINA COAST. By Henry and Sidney Berry-Hill. 61 pages text, bibliography, and 76 pages of black and white photographs. F. Lewis, Publishers, Ltd., England. Price U.K. 10 Guineas, U.S. $30.00.\n\nThe various phases of the artist's life - early years, the English and Irish periods, the sojourn in India, and the final years in South China are described. The 76 plates of photographs comprise 154 subjects.\n\nSince the Arts Council exhibition of 1957 in England and Scotland, there is renewed interest in Chinnery. As information about him is frequently fragmentary, there is definite need for a comprehensive biography. However, enthusiasts and scholars will be disappointed by this book. The approach is lyrical and romantic instead of factual, authoritative, and scholarly.\n\nIt is all very well to quote the inscription on the silver palette presented to Chinnery by the Artists of Dublin (even though this information appears in Plate 1), but why describe it as “measures 16 inches across and was made by one of the leading silversmiths” when actual measurements, hallmark, date letter, and silversmith mark are all known and recorded.1\n\nTo claim Chinnery painted unsigned oils of sporting scenes2 in India on the sole basis of a label admittedly dated at least eight years after he left Dacca, strains imagination to the bursting point. Those who know what Chinnery sketched and painted in India and China - houses, temples, people, domestic animals — all placid scenes - will find it difficult, if not impossible, to accept this attribution.\n\nThe false alarm of Mrs. Chinnery's prospective arrival in China, amusingly described by W. C. Hunter, intimate friend...\n\n1 Arts Council Catalogue 1957 15\" x 13\", Dublin hallmark, date letter \"E\" (for 1801), and silversmith mark \"R.W.” (for Richard Whitford).\n\n2 Page 25, Plates 18 and 19.\n\n* Page 268, W. C. Hunter Bits of Old China,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206423,
        "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": 240,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "214\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\ninto a modern system of law. No less important is the way in which this book tells us much of western attitudes towards Chinese law and of the ways in which the westerners attempted to come to terms with a system which was so unlike their own. Though we might today criticise Jamieson's comparative law approach and his defective anthropology, his book was a creature of its own time and of his own intellectual experience, and as such it must take a place on the sinologists' bookshelves.\n\nNotes\n\n1. A. M. Kotenev, Shanghai: its Mixed Court and Council, (Shanghai: North China Daily News and Herald Ltd, 1925; now reprinted by Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company, Taipei, 1968).\n\n2. But see now Hao, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, Cambridge (Harvard U.P.), 1970.\n\n3. pp. 124-126.\n\nHong Kong, 1971.\n\nDAFYDD EVANS\n\nCHINNERY AND CHINA COAST PAINTINGS, Henry and Sidney Berry-Hill, 64 pages text, 144 photographs, F. W. Lewis. Publishers, Ltd., England 1970, U.S.$30.00.\n\nThe writers operate a picture gallery in New York City. In 1963 they published George Chinnery 1774-1852, Artist of the China Coast, which was reviewed in this Journal, Vol. 4, 1964, pp. 128-132.\n\nIn spite of severe criticism of their previous efforts, the authors, in another volume under the present title, persist in claiming that Chinese Port Scenes painted in Cantonese style were influenced by Chinnery and therefore are \"Chinnery School\". Even though there are numerous pictured examples in both books that Chinese Port Scenes before, during, and after Chinnery do not change and bear no resemblance to English painting, the authors plod on with their futile theory. For some 26 illustrations in the List of Plates marked \"Chinnery School\", substitute “Chinese artist\".\n\nObviously this book is written for the inexperienced collector. It lacks bibliography, an index, and a comprehensive table of contents. The text is largely a lyrical history of China from Macartney through the Arrow War. It positively oozes opium and frequently lacks accuracy.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214190,
        "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": 48,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "Successful comedians who travel the international circuit learn to adapt and vary their act depending on audience response. The British-born Bob Hope was taken to the United States by his parents to live as a baby, and he received an honorary knighthood from the Queen in 1998 at the age of 95. Yet he did not go down well in the Middle Kingdom, where many of his sallies fell flat when he visited China in 1979. Conversely, Jerry Lewis has been a great success in France, even more so, some Americans will tell you, than in his native United States.\n\nWhen Bob Hawke was Prime Minister of Australia, he made a speech before a group of (what are sometimes described by foreigners as) inscrutably-faced Japanese (McGregor, 1997:). 'I promise you this,' Hawke said, with his carefully placed punchline, 'We will never play silly buggers with you.' One wonders how the Japanese interpreters handled the situation. Myth has it that it came out as, 'We won't play funny homosexuals with you,' although this has been denied. It is frequently said Australian humour does not travel well. On hearing of the involuntary buffoonery of Hawke, one can understand why.\n\nWith some jokes and ways of telling them (like, 'Have you heard the one about the commercial traveller...?' [Chinese do not employ this kind of approach]), it is necessary to understand the cultural background of the country. To make it more difficult, as we have seen, some expressions are almost impossible to translate properly. A real-life comedian may have got over Hawke's situation by quipping: 'Please excuse; my Japanese is not yet wonderful. Please laugh now!' Such remarks could well have had the Japanese in stitches.\n\nWith some forms of humour, as found at the circus, music hall, or pantomime, language need not be a barrier. Charlie Chaplin's act included a blend of slapstick and pathos (Kao, 1946). He was a great tragedian and managed to arouse pity for himself among the audience. He was an immortal not only in the West but also in China. With his own blend of comedy, characterised by mistaken identity, embarrassment, horseplay, and physical action, including the pie in the face, the slip on the banana peel, and the falling petticoat, Chaplin was also a great success in Asia. He made fun of being miserable, and the Chinese saw ludicrousness in the pathos of life.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]