[ { "id": 204276, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n40\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nheroes have remained favourites.\" On the stage, a knight errant is easily distinguishable from a general: the former usually wears a short jacket and trousers and wields a sword or club, while the latter wears full armour with banners behind his back and uses a spear or halberd,\n\nWe now come to the last stages in the evolution of chivalric literature. In the Ming and Ch'ing periods, two notable trends developed in chivalric fiction. On the one hand, in some stories of chivalry, the supernatural element was increasingly emphasized, so that a type of knight with “flying swords\" and magic power became popular. On the other hand, some tales of knightly deeds became mixed with stories about “legal cases”, so that a new type of fiction, which may be called chivalric-romance-cum-detective-story, developed. An early example of the first type is a novel called The flying sword (Fei-chien chi), published in the Ming dynasty, about the Taoist immortal Lü Tung-pin and his acquisition of magic powers. Later examples are too numerous to mention. In fact, such stories are still being written now in Hong Kong. Sometimes they are presented in the form of comic strip cartoons, known as \"serial pictures\" (lien-huan t'u-hua), obtainable from small book stalls and pavement lending libraries. The second type, which combines tales of chivalry with detective stories, has also remained popular to the present day and is still being written. There is an interesting difference between this type of fiction and earlier tales of chivalry. In stories belonging to this type, the knights errant are usually on the right side of the law, instead of rebelling against it. For instance, in popular stories about Judge Pao, the Chinese Solomon, various knights errant help him in detecting crimes and arresting bandits and local bullies. Originally these stories about Judge Pao only dealt with crime and detection. They were first joined together and published as a novel entitled The cases of Judge Pao (Pao-kung an) about 1600. Later, the knights who helped Judge Pao assumed greater importance in these stories, which formed the basis of another novel, Three knights and five righteous men (San-hsia wu-yi), published in 1879. This was revised by Yu Yüeh and given the title Seven knights and five righteous men a few years later, and achieved great success. It was followed by a sequel, the Junior five righteous men (Hsiao wu-yi), and further supplements. Imitations also followed. Among these may be mentioned The cases of Judge Shih, first published in 1838, and The cases of Judge P'eng, first published about 1895. These were based vaguely on recent historical figures, and the knights errant in these novels were probably in\n\n24 Plays about the Shui-hu heroes have been collected by Fu Hsi-hua and Tu Ying-t'ao in Shui-hu hsi-ch'ü (Shanghai, vol. I, 1957; vol. II, 1958).\n\n25 Sun K'ai-ti, op. cit., p. 170.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204859, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n137\n\nMr. Liu to task for an alleged sacrifice of sense and style to rhyme. There is, however, much to be said for Mr. Liu on this debatable issue. Poetry does not aim merely at the transmission of information or even of ideas. It is in essence a mood, the purpose of which is to induce the same mood in the reader. A completely literal translation no doubt conveys to the reader all the telling details in the original, but often fails to impart the æsthetic pleasure which rhyme and rhythm can alone create. A rhymed translation may lose in factual reality and may at times sound affected; nevertheless, it more often succeeds in conveying the original mood of the poem. Provided that the meaning is clear to the translator, there is always room in the rendering of Chinese poetry for a choice between rhymed verse and prose, and between an emphasis on what is said and how it is said. Mr. Liu's English version of Ma Chih Yuan's lyric to the tune \"T'ien Ching Sha\" perhaps justifies his method:\n\nWithered vines, aged trees, twilight crows.\n\nBeneath the little bridge by the cottage the river flows.\n\nOn the ancient road and lean horse the west wind blows\n\nThe evening sun westward goes,\n\nAs a broken-hearted man stands at heaven's close.\n\nThe translation as it stands does not, may I say so for the translator, pretend to be poetry in its own right: it is entirely up to the reader to judge whether or not it is superior to a completely literal translation which would look something like this:\n\nWithered vines-old trees-twilight crows.\n\nLittle bridge-flowing water\n\n— people's house. Ancient road-west wind—lean horse.\n\nEvening sun- west set\n\nBroken-bowel man at heaven's end.\n\nThe book classifies themes in Chinese poetry into Nature, Love, History, Time, Nostalgia and Leisure. The conspicuous absence of Friendship in these categories is a bit disturbing to most readers whose impressions of Chinese poetry are based on the \"Three Hundred Tang Poems\". But Mr. Liu explains the omission as follows: \"Some Western translators, it seems to me, have over-emphasized the importance of friendship between men in Chinese poetry and correspondingly underestimated that of love", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206139, "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-1970", "page_number": 219, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "212\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nTRADITIONAL CHINESE PLAYS, Volume 2, translated, described, annotated and illustrated by A. C. Scott, Longing for the worldly Pleasures, Ssu Fan, Fifteen Strings of Cash, Shih wu kuan, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Milwaukee and London, 1969, pp. X, 156.\n\nThe second volume is translated with all the same accompaniments that we find in the first one. But the two plays chosen are not Peking operas. They belong to another kind of opera which was predominant in China from the end of the XVIth century to the end of the XVIIIth. The music was softer than in Peking opera and the main instrument for accompanying the singing was the flute. As in more ancient forms, the sung parts were written on different types of melodies, with verses of unequal lengths. The literary character of these verses made them difficult for a popular audience to understand. And this type of opera, created at K'un-shan, near Suchow, was later overcome by the success of the genre elaborated at the capital and favoured by the court.\n\nBut this K'un-ch'ü, as it is called, remained for years part of the training of a good Peking opera actor. The famous actor Mei Lan-fang tried to revive it around 1915-16 and again later in 1933 with the great actor Yü Chen-fei. After 1949 a new troupe of K'un-ch'ü was formed, which put on Fifteen Strings of Cash in 1956, with the actor Wang Ch'uan-song as the clown, Lou the Rat.\n\nLonging for worldly Pleasures comes from a Buddhist story: a nun, put in a monastery, escapes to find her paramour. Fifteen Strings of Cash is a detective story from storytellers' repertoires: Lou the Rat commits a murder to steal and puts the blame on the stepdaughter of the murdered man. But a good judge, disguised as a fortune-teller, confounds him.\n\nThe interest of these books lies not so much in the translation of four librettos as in all the information about costumes, make-up, and the movements made by the actors at each moment. Consequently, the work is not just one more translation, but, first and foremost, a handbook; and a good one for anyone wanting to put on and adapt Chinese plays for a foreign audience, instead of being interested in Chinese opera as a museum piece or as an...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207373, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT\n\n133\n\n6 On this point, see John K. Fairbank, \"The Early Treaty System in the Chinese World Order,” in J. K. Fairbank, ed. The Chinese World Order (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). See also L. S. Yang's article entitled \"Historical Notes on the Chinese World Order\" in ibid., 22, for a discussion of Kuo Sung-t'ao's innovative outlook.\n\n7 See Fairbank's introductory essay in The Chinese World Order; also, John K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, “On the Ch'ing Tributary System,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 6 (1941). An exception to the standard tributary view of China's foreign relations is John Wills' Pepper, Guns and Parleys (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).\n\n8 James Legge, The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong, 1961), 5:521. For the use of this phrase in various contexts, consult Li Te-yü, chüan 8: 59; Li Hung-chang, Li Wen-chung-kung ch'üan-chi [The collected works of Li Hung-chang] (Nanking, 1908), Letters to the Tsungli Yamen, 11:24b; Chang Ch'i-yün, Chung-kuo chin-shih shih-lüeh (A short history of Chinese military affairs] (Taipei, 1956), 115.\n\n9 Dai Kanwa jiten [Sino-Japanese Dictionary] (Tokyo, 1955-1960), 1926, 6437. For random examples of this common usage, see Su Ch'ing-pin, 1, 2, 35; Hsin T'ang-shu, 145:14b; Ch'ou-pan i-wu shih-mo [The management of barbarian affairs from beginning to end] (Peiping, 1930; hereafter, IWSM), TK, 72:34b, TC 4:25b; 5:51; 8:64b; 12:2b; 23:36b; etc.\n\n10 See the illuminating discussion in Mi Chu Wiens, \"Anti-Manchu Thought during the Early Ch'ing,\" Papers on China, 22A (May, 1969), especially 2-3.\n\n11 Legge, 2:253; Wiens, 2; Wu Hung-chu, \"China's Attitude towards Foreign Nations and Nationals Historically considered,\" The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, 10.1 (1926), esp. 17-19. On the reverse theme, consult Li Hung-chang, Letters to Friends, 1:9b; Lu Shih-ch'iang, Ting Jih-ch'ang yü tzu-ch'iang yün-tung [Ting Jih-ch'ang and the self-strengthening movement] (Taipei, 1972), 241-244.\n\n12 Chinese policy toward the \"sinicization\" of foreigners was not consistent, however. See Schafer, 22, 49, 291 note 75; also Ch'ien Hsing-hai and L. C. Goodrich, trans., Western and Central Asians in China under the Mongols, by Ch'en Yuan (Los Angeles, 1966), 6ff.\n\n13 Cited in Ch'ien and Goodrich, 9. I have modified the translation slightly after consulting the Chinese original. For a view contrary to Ch'en Yuan's, see Legge, 5: 355: \"If he is not of our kin, he is certain to have a different mind”—an oft-cited passage from the Tso-chuan. These two conflicting views suggest a central question: What constituted a barbarian? Unfortunately, no clear answer can be given. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao noted in the late nineteenth century that the implications of the term had changed over time (see Wiens, 1); but even his comparatively sophisticated analysis oversimplifies an enormously complex problem. Lacking an objective standard by which to judge barbarian-ness, one is perhaps best served by deferring to the Chinese chronicler. If, for whatever reason, an individual appears in the record as a barbarian, then that is what he is. Such an arbitrary classification is in many respects unsatisfactory, but it reflects accurately the Chinese viewpoint at a given time, and underscores the uncertain status of even the most \"sinicized\" barbarian. An argument against writing about China's relations with foreign peoples \"in the Chinese idiom and from the Chinese point of view\" may be found in Timothy Connor, \"Translating the 'Barbarians': A New Book in an Old Tradition,\" Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (hereafter, HJAS), 32 (1972).\n\n14 Cited in Benjamin Schwartz, \"The Chinese Perception of World Order, Past and Present,\" in Fairbank, The Chinese World Order, 280.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208044, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n67\n\n12 Lockhart lists 255 villages occupied by Hakkas, with a total population of 36,070 in the Tung Lo in 1898. Assuming a population of 250,000 for the total district in 1900, Hsin-An probably had a Hakka population of around 90,000.\n\n13 Rawski's bibliography in Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China offers the most complete listing of works bearing on perpetual tenancy.\n\np. 64.\n\n14 CSO280/04 Extension. See note 4, Essay 2.\n\n15 Hsu T'ien-tai, Fu Chien Wen Hua (福建文化), Vol. 1, No. 1, (1941),\n\n16 Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China, March 1898-September 1900. \"Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong,\" (Presented to both Houses of Parliament, November 1900) p. 19.\n\n17 The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u (世鑑堂家譜), a collection of genealogies from Kam Tin, gives the following settlements of lineal descendants in Tung Kuan: Chuh Yuan (竹園), Yen Tien (燕田), Fu Lung (福龍), Huai Te (懷德), Shih Ching (石井), Tu Kao (土高), and Ping Hu (平湖).\n\n18 \"These clans gain their local influence, not through numbers alone, but owing to the fact that certain of their numbers have official rank, gained through competitive examinations, or obtained by purchase, which keeps them in touch with the Magistrate and even higher officials.\" Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China ibid., p. 20. The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u records that, from Cheng Hua (Ming Dynasty) to Tao Kwang (Ch'ing Dynasty)—that is, from roughly 1470-1820—fourteen Kam Tin Tangs passed the state examination. Several of these became office holders. Another indicator of gentry connections with officialdom was the construction, in Kam Tin, of a temple (祠堂) dedicated to the two officials (Chou Yu-te (周有德) and Wang Lai-jen (王來任)) who petitioned the Emperor, on behalf of the inhabitants of the coastal areas, to allow resettlement.\n\n19 Introduction to the Nan Yang Tang Shih Tsu P'u (南陽堂世族譜), compiled by the Ping Shan Tangs.\n\n20 Sung Hok-P'ang, in his articles on the Kam Tin Tangs in the Hong Kong Naturalist, claims to have seen references to Tang lands on Hong Kong in the Land Register (土地冊) of Tung Kuan. \"One may judge that the land was owned by the Tangs before the first year of Maan Lik, AD 1525, (sic) as after that the San On District was formed” (Vol. VIII, nos. 3 and 4).\n\n21 HKTCSMTC, \"Details of Cultivated Land” (耕地詳情).\n\n22 ibid.\n\n23 The landlord clans were often referred to by the British as \"first cultivators.\" See, for instance, CSO3172/1915 cited in the essay on tax-lordism.\n\n24 Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China, ibid., p. 16.\n\n25 Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 8.\n\n26 In this regard, note the high degree of correlation among the different \"tax-burdens\" in Table II. One is tempted to speculate that a native formula for the conversion of rent rates from tax-rates existed.\n\n27 In the 1934 edition of the Chung-Kuo Ch'ing-chi Nien-chien (中國經濟年鑑), chapter 7 (Chinese Tenancy Systems), contains the following description of the Fen Chih Chih (分種制) system, a form of perpetual lease found in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture: \"This", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212162, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "81\n\nAlso in Taiwan lone images occupy the altar of a number of small temples in the Hsinchu area. In each case the image is a portrait rather than a standard image, of elderly men, obviously ancestral images, revered and prayed to as local benefactors by local residents who rarely know their personal names or life stories. They are all from Hakka communities, and are referred to as Ta-jen A. They include Yang Ta-jen, Huang Ta-jen, Hsieh Ta-jen, Heng Ta-jen and Chao Ta-jen. Presumably each had some social position and status and their present day minor cults have been stimulated by the construction of a decorous and specific shrine or temple housing its charismatic image.\n\nThe following are examples of the legends and cults connected with four deceased locals whose charisma led to them being honoured and later revered as local deities. Two were local secret society gang leaders, the third a scholar who was a renowned healer and the fourth was a local philanthropist.\n\nYeh Te-lai, a Hakka immigrant to Kuala Lumpur where he is better known as Yap Ah-loy, was appointed Kapitan China by the Sultan of Selangor in 1868 with the right to tax tin and opium and to judge lawsuits between Malays and Chinese. During inter-racial troubles his private army of some 2500 Chinese fought many battles against his rivals. He was a go-getter who succeeded in establishing a firm business base for the community in Kuala Lumpur, a 'frontier town' where he maintained law and order by means of his secret society 'soldiers' under their generals, one of whom was Sheng Ming-li and another Ch'en Chung-lai. Ming-li and Chung-lai were both murdered in Negri Sembilan in about 1860, and on the orders of Yeh Te-lai, were deified and their images placed on the main altars in some four temples, in Rasah, Semenyih and Kuala Lumpur. Ming-li was referred to as Shih-yeh (Adviser) or Ssu Shih-yeh Kung-li (the Fourth Secretary [in an official yamen]). His image and that of Chung-li used to be borne around Kuala Lumpur during their annual festival on the 1st of the ninth lunar month. Legend has it that when Sheng Ming-li was decapitated his blood was white, not red, a miracle in the eyes of his followers, who buried him near Malacca.\n\nThe second case is Hsin Ting. Hsin Ting is the main deity in his temple in Taipei where he is portrayed as a scholar holding a scroll. Although his cult was carried to Taipei by a scholar who had passed his examinations after praying to the deity, Hsin Ting has reverted to his original skill of medicine and is now prayed to by the sick for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212750, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "44\n\nacknowledging the initial concept having been his, or so he claimed.\n\n+\n\nHe has been described as 'an adventurer and an explorer, a plant collector and a Chinese general. He was certainly an adventurer though nowadays he would be referred to as a soldier of fortune, an adviser, an opportunist, and even a mercenary.\n\nThe question remains, how successful was he? Money certainly came his way at times though judging from his Will, he was not a particularly successful businessman. He certainly collected plants and sent them back to the British Consul in Canton and has one specimen, Jasminum Mesnyii, named after him. He bore the brevet rank of Lieutenant General in the Chinese Imperial army but to what extent this was a genuine rank rather than an honour and a courtesy rank, though fully earned during his military service, is hard to judge. Again, though accurately described as an explorer, he was in fact much more of a traveller in parts of China already settled by Chinese and visited earlier by other foreigners. The trek he made, as recorded by Captain Gill, from Ch’eng-tu in Szechuan province to Burma through what was then called lower Tibet has a different slant to what would have been Mesny's account. In Gill's Mesny is scarcely mentioned and he would appear to have been taken along by Gill as his interpreter. It would have been interesting to have read what Mesny would have, and indeed may have written about his journey of very nearly four months with Gill.\n\nHe saw himself as what nowadays would be called a go-between, a consultant, and in those days regarded, perhaps, as a fixer. Mesny had a few major bees in his bonnet the most barefaced of which was the value he put on the advice he constantly proffered to every senior Chinese official whose ear he could reach on how to modernise China. He had, for example, prepared a list of some nineteen items, suggestions presented to the Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, and although Mesny assures us that Chang accepted the list there is no evidence that he did anything about it or if he did, that he even mentioned Mesny in any memorials to the throne. Mesny wrote indignantly at one point in his Miscellany about his list of suggestions to Chang having been ignored, or put into practice piecemeal and inexpertly, penny pinching and ineffectually without any reference whatsoever to Mesny.\n\nIn 1906 at the very end of his fourth and final volume of his Miscellany he prided himself on his advice with the words 'All those great industrial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213619, "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-1995", "page_number": 215, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "Canton He founded the Meditative School, Ch'an Men (9) which taught that the Buddha was to be sought within the mind and not learnt from books. His image is to be seen alone on a number of altars, revered in his own right.\n\nThe second Patriarch is Shen Kuang (4) the Spiritual Light, who lived some 107 years, dying in AD 593, some sixty years after the death of Bodhidharma. When he was forty he went to the Shao-lin Monastery near Loyang in Honan province following a vision and there received from Bodhidharma the robe and the sacred alms bowl. Bodhidharma also changed Shen Kuang's name to Hui K'o (7) Intelligent Ability. Many years later the emperor T'ang Te Tung bestowed upon him the title of T'ai-tsu Ch'an-shih ().\n\nThe Third Patriarch, Seng-ts'an (), is said to have introduced himself to Hui K'o and as a result of the conversation the Patriarch realized that he had met his successor. He explained and taught Seng-ts'an all he knew and when dying appointed him as his successor. Seng-ts'an died in 606.\n\nThe Fourth Patriarch, Tao-hsin (), was a precocious youth who became a disciple of Seng-ts'an and eventually his successor. He lived during the period when the first two emperors of the T'ang ruled China, with the reign of the second, Tai Tsung, regarded as one of unrivalled brilliance and glory, and died in 651. He appointed Hung-jen as his successor. Legend describes how Tao-hsin saw a beggar woman and her child at the side of the road and learnt that she had been driven from her home by her parents having become conceived her child miraculously, it being a reincarnation of an aged wood gatherer who had sought instruction from Tao-hsin. Tao-hsin immediately recognised the child as his successor and having sought his mother's consent to the boy entering a monastery. Tao-hsin instructed him and changed his name to Hung-jen, Vast Endurance.\n\nHung-jen (L), the Fifth Patriarch, died some 24 years after his appointment. Hung-jen, and to a greater extent his successor, Hui-neng, founded the Ch'i-su Chiao, the Buddhist Vegetarian sect. To select this successor he held a verse competition, more a hymn with a moral purpose, and Lu Hui-neng being judged the winner became the Sixth and final Patriarch of Chinese Buddhism.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215103, "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": 199, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "156\n\nwhereupon he changed his surname He grew up to be a tall, heavily built, clever fellow, and a good judge of character.\n\nHe spoke the various frontier dialects well, a point which once saved his life when condemned to death for sheep-stealing He began to be employed in repressing the raids of the Kitan Tatars, in which occupation he made quite a name for himself, and was at length taken to the capital. The emperor T'ang Ming Huang took a great fancy to him, and the emperor's concubine, Yang Kuei-fei, called him her adopted son, making him do obeisance to her first and to the emperor afterwards, on the ground that such was the Turkic custom.\n\nDespatched upon an expedition against the Kitans, he was so successful that he was ennobled as Duke. Then, with inflated pride and ambition, he rebelled, and added to the general confusion which was surrounding the wretched Ming Huang, who had been repeatedly warned of this new danger. An called himself Emperor Hsiung Wu of the Great Yen dynasty, and for a time carried everything before him. He was assassinated by his own son, An Ch'ing-hsu, who feared that he was going to be deprived of the succession in favour of the offspring of a concubine. And within three years of the first rising, the son too had been put to death by Shih Ssu-ming.\n\nThis rebellion was one of several eras in Chinese history which has provided a popular theme for opera and tea-house story tellers' tales providing Chinese with a familiarity with the dramatic events of the times and details of the lives and times of well-known heroes and villains of the time.\n\nThe same can also be said of traditional stories told within popular religion temples where tales are told and retold of a select number of the deified heroes of the victorious Tang imperial forces whose images are on altars. We shall be examining the roles of the emperor, his personal doctor and six generals loyal to the emperor during the campaign to suppress the rebellion and their eventual role in the celestial bureaucracy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]