[ { "id": 204657, "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-1963", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "124\n\nA. D. BLUB\n\nwith the Middle River steamers for the next stage of Ichang. At Ichang another change was made into the Upper River steamers for the journey through the Gorges to Chungking, where motor launches took over for the final stages to Sui Fu and Chengtu. In the high water season some of the Lower River steamers extended their run to Ichang, and some of the Upper River steamers extended their run to Sui Fu, but Chungking was usually regarded as the upper limit of navigation for all practical purposes.\n\nChungking became internationally famous when it became China's war time capital. Before that it was comparatively unknown to the outside world, although, under various names, a city has occupied the site for some 4,000 years. It is a unique site, a high, rocky bluff on the peninsula formed by the junction of the Yangtse and the Kialing Rivers, nearly 1,400 miles from the mouth of the Yangtse, and in the very heart of China. At this point the normal variation between high and low water seasons is 75 feet, and has been known to reach 100 feet. In the low water season the city is reached by innumerable broad flights of steps leading up from the river, most flights having 240 steps. The transport of goods from the river to the city provided work for an army of porters and ponies. Until 1934 all the water for the city was carried up those steps by coolies who earned the equivalent of a farthing for a load of two heavy wooden buckets.\n\nWhen A. G. Morrison passed through the city in 1894 he estimated the population to be about 200,000. He described the coolies as being hungry and wretched in the midst of plenty, and riddled with malaria and phthisis. Although he estimated that about 40% of the men and 5% of the women were opium smokers, he thought it a law-abiding city. Szechuen is one of the richest provinces in China, and Chungking's exports included silk, hides and skins, bristles, tung oil, musk, rhubarb, and wool, some of these things coming from Tibet.\n\nThe loss of the German steamer Suichsiang in 1900 and a narrow escape of H.M.S. Woodlark in the same year, coupled with the Boxer troubles, postponed the establishment of a regular steamer service between Ichang and Chungking for several years. When this was eventually established in 1908 the honour belonged to a Chinese company, the Szechuen Steam Navigation Company. The formation of this company was largely due to the inspiration", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204941, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "42\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\nTo GEO: GRAHAM, Esq.,\n\nRegistrar General, &c., &c.,\n\nLondon.\n\n(Table No. 1)\n\nReign of Monarch\n\n1 Hungwu, 26th Year,\n\n2 Hungchi, 3 Wanleih,\n\n4 Shunchi, 5 Kanghi,\n\n6\n\n7\n\n+\n\nA. D. Population\n\n1393, 60,545,811) Mirror of History,\n\nChi-\n\nnese Repository, vol. x.\n\n1662, 21,068,600) General Statistics of the\n\nwww\n\nEmpire, Medhurst's\n\n++\n\n4th\n\n**\n\n1492, 53,281,158\n\n6th\n\n*\n\n1579, 60,692,856\n\npage 156.\n\n++\n\n18th\n\n6th\n\n++\n\n49th\n\n**\n\n-\n\n1668, 1710,\n\n25,386,209 23,312,200)\n\nChina, page 53.\n\n49th\n\n**\n\nJ\n\n8\n\n**\n\n9 Kienlung,\n\n50th\n\n1st\n\n10\n\n8th\n\n**\n\n11\n\n8th\n\n12\n\n*\n\n***\n\n1710, 27,241,129\n\n1711, 28,605,716\n\n1736, 125,046,245 1743, 157,343,975 1743, 149,332,730\n\n8th\n\n1743, 150,265,475\n\n13\n\n18th\n\n**\n\n\"J\n\n1753, 103,050,060\n\n14\n\n1760, 143,125,225\n\n25th\n\n**\n\n15\n\n16\n\n25th 26th\n\nH\n\n17\n\n27th\n\n1762, 198,214,553\n\n4,552\n\n1760, 203,916,477 1761, 205,293,053\n\n18\n\n55th\n\n23\n\n1790, 155,249,897\n\n19\n\n57th\n\n++\n\n1792, 307,467,200\n\n*\n\n20\n\n57th\n\n**\n\n1792, 333,000,000\n\n21 Kiaking\n\n17th\n\n>>\n\n1812, 362,467,183\n\nYih-tung Chi, a Statistical work,\n\nMorrison's\n\nView of China. General Statistics, — Chi-\n\nnese Repository, vol, i. page 359.\n\nMemoires sur les Chinois,\n\ntom. vi.,\n\nGrosier, and by De\n\nGuignes:\n\nquoted by\n\nVoyages à\n\nPeking, tom. iii. page 72.\n\n\"Les Missionnaires\" De Guignes: tom. iii. page 67.\n\nGeneral Statistics, — Chi- nese Repository, vol. i. page 359.\n\nYihtungchi, a Statistical work,\n\nMorrison's\n\nView of China. Memoires sur les Chinois, tom, vi.,- De Guignes, tom. iii, page 72. Allerstain; Groster: De Guignes: tom. iii. page\n\n57.\n\nZ. of Berlin, in Chinese Repository, vol. i. page 361.\n\nGeneral Statistics,\n\n―\n\nDr.\n\nMorrison, Anglo-Chin: Coll: Report 1829.\n\nStatement made to Lord\n\nMacartney\n\n-\n\nStatistics,\n\nChinese Repository,\n\nvol. i. page 359.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207765, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "138\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nThe first two of these had their own transport fleets, the NHA had a few worn-out trucks, while the mission hospitals were partially serviced by the International Relief Committee (IRC) which also had some worse-for-wear trucks.\n\nIt was decided that the best service the Unit could render was to take over responsibility for transport and distribution of medical supplies within China for the NHA and the IRC. The immediate task was transporting about 140 tons of medical supplies which had accumulated in Kunming to Kweiyang and Chungking. Thus the Unit became the major civilian medical and relief transport organization with a series of routes totalling about 6,000 km, and shown on the map in Fig. 1. For the next four years the pattern remained much the same; the supplies came by air over the \"Hump\" to Kunming where the Unit took delivery and transported them by road, rail and boat to all areas of China under the control of the Government in Chungking. It was not possible to take supplies to the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region controlled by the Eighth Route Army or to the New Fourth Army areas. The first medical supplies reached Yenan in Feb, 1946 at the time of the Marshall negotiations when the writer arrived with 3 truck loads; an interesting trip but outside the scope of this paper.2\n\nTransport Routes and Operation\n\nThe tonnage of goods moved on the different routes (See Fig. 1) varied but throughout the 4 year period 1942-45, three routes carried the major portion. These were:\n\n1) Kutsing-Luhsien (✰★-✯⇓) 742 kilometres. This ran from the Kunming-Chanyi railhead 170 kilometres to the west of Kunming to Luhsien on the Yangtse Kiang.\n\n2) Kutsing to Kweiyang (-) 500 kilometres. This is the capital of Kweichow province and site of the IRC distribution operations, especially to Kwangsi, Kwangtung and Kiangsi.\n\n3) Kweiyang to Chungking (†-1A) 490 kilometres. Chungking was, of course, the war time capital of the Republic and is at the confluence of the Yangtse and Kialing Rivers.\n\nA diagram map and profile of the first route is given in Fig. 2. The other routes are included in Table III.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207794, "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n167\n\ngorges are the Wushan, Witches' Mountain, and Windbox Gorges, which provide some of the most spectacular and awe-inspiring river scenery in the world. There are places where the river is only 150 yards wide, where the passenger on a steamer has the feeling that the almost sheer precipices actually overhang the river. The cliffs in Windbox Gorge are 700 feet high, and it was here that the record rise in the river level of 275 feet once took place.\n\nAbove Wanhsien the valley of the river opens out, and navigation to Chungking and beyond is comparatively simple. Until the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company's second steamer, Shuhun, went into service in 1914, steamers on the Yangtze, like junks, required trackers to pull them up the most powerful rapids, and a unique feature of the Upper Yangtze was the trackers' paths cut in the hillside thirty or forty feet above the river level. At these places junks were often lightened of their cargo and passengers before negotiating the rapid.\n\nIn the year after the Swinhoe expedition the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce supported another expedition up the Yangtze and into Szechwan by the famous German explorer Baron von Richthofen. His report on Szechwan is the most important until then, being the first to include an accurate description of the famous Red Basin of Chengtu, and its legendary irrigation system. This basin, with an area of some 3,500 square miles, is the only large area of level ground in the whole province, and has a population of about six million. Its remarkable fertility is due to the irrigation system introduced by Li Ping in the third century B.C. Li led the Min River through a hill and distributed its waters over the wide plain through a network of canals.\n\nOther notable journeys in Szechwan and West China between the late 1870s and early 1900s, included those of E.C. Baber and Sir Alexander Hosie of the China Consular Service, Archibald Little of Upper Yangtze fame, and A.E. Pratt, the zoologist. Pratt's travels lasted three years from 1887 to 1890. He built his own boat at Ichang to take him through the Gorges and past Chungking to Kiating, from where he journeyed overland to the sacred Mount Omei, over 11,000 feet high. Pratt's travels deserve to be better known, as they were the first in West China to be undertaken for purely scientific purposes. He blazed the trail for the later journeys of the botanists George Forrest, Kingdon Ward, and E.H. Wilson.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207802, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n175\n\nthe Upper Yangtze-eight British, seven American, three Chinese, six French, five Italian, and three Japanese.\n\nPolitical troubles, however, had forced the pioneering Szechwan Steamship Company out of business in 1920. During the previous few years its Shutung and Shuhun had so often been forced to carry troops for the different war lords as to make their operations uneconomic. After 1920 the Chinese flag was flown by the China Merchants Steam Navigation and the Ming Steamship Company, both of whom seemed more able to accommodate themselves to the political changes. Captain Plant, however, was still active on the Upper Yangtze, but in a different capacity. He had left the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company in 1913 to become River Inspector in the Chinese Maritime Customs, and his work was one of the factors contributing to the development of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze in the early 1920s.\n\nThere was a period during the brief heyday of the Kuomintang government between 1927 and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when shipping on the Upper Yangtze almost settled into a regular pattern. Probably 1928 was the peak year, when there were seventy small steamers in regular service between Ichang and Chungking; the smallest about thirty tons and the largest just over 1,000 tons. The average time between Ichang and Chungking was three days, as against an average of a month by junk. Britain had fifteen ships of 5,357 tons; China twenty-six of 3,672 tons; and America eleven of 2,934 tons.\n\nLosses, however, were heavy. Several of the smaller companies were forced out of business, some selling their ships to the China Navigation Company. In this manner, the latter acquired the famous Loong Mow in 1923, which was renamed Wanliu I, and the Alice Dollar in 1926, which was renamed Wantung. This company also built six ships at Yarrows on the Clyde between 1922 and 1926. These included the Wanhsien, 210 feet long with a loaded draft of eight feet and reciprocating engines of 3,000 indicated horsepower, the most powerful ship on the Upper Yangtze; two turbine steamers of less than half this tonnage, the Kiating and the Kintang, for the low water season; and two small motor ships, the Siushan and Suiting, of 296 gross tons for the Top River above Chungking. British shipping was supreme on the Upper Yangtze for the last few years of the treaty port era, since political troubles hampered", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207934, "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": 322, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "In Tibet \n\nKidling \n\nChength \n\nZE – CHUAN \n\nMin \n\nSulfu \n\n1 \n\nNAUTICAL MILES \n\n50 \n\nWANHSIEN \n\n100 \n\n150 \n\n\"wanting \n\nWind box Gorge B.B \n\nDasually. \n\nFam \n\n(Rapid) \n\n \n |chaug sh \n \n\nCHUNG KING \n\nTOP RIVER. \n\n105* \n\n \n t \n K WEI \n \n \n CHAU \n F \n 1 \n \n\nNote: \n\n \n CHANG \n 1 \n \n \n T \n 1 \n \n\nHU - P \n\nICHANG $7 \n\nShast gl \n\nHANKOW 18t2 \n\nYoshow 1896! \n\nTungling LAKE \n\nANHUI \n\n-Maturg Bluff. \n\nTRIANG \n\nPOYANG LAKE \n\n \n I \n Hu- \n \n \n NAN \n F \n \n \n CHANGSHA 17H \n KIA \n \n \n Siantan \n \n\nWPPER \n\nRIVER \n\n \n 1 \n Кал \n \n\nNanchang \n\n \n SI \n \n\nMIDDLE RIVER. \n\nYANGTZE RIVER \n\nLOWER RIVER \n\nKiangsu \n\nCANAL \n\n \n 122 \n 35 \n \n\nYELLOW \n\nSEA \n\n1899/NANKING \n\n•Chanklang isiz \n\nWUHU 1877 \n\nTAI \n\n \n Hu \n \n\nSoochun \n\n \n | SHANGHA \n \n\nHangchun 1897 \n\n \n 181 \n 30 \n \n\nNINGPO \n\nCHEH XIANG \n\n \n 120* \n 115* \n \n\nThis and the other sketch-map/chart overleaf supplied by Mr. A. D. Blue and original sources are gratefully acknowledged \n\nEASTERN \n\nSEA", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210672, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "6 \n\nON \n\nHELEN F. SIU \n\nwandering before he connected up with his maternal uncle in Kowloon. He was given the uncle's telephone number, but not knowing that dialing to Kowloon needed an area code, he could not put through the call. He did not dare to ask advice from the shopkeepers who let him use the phone for fear that naive questions would immediately reveal his alien identity. \n\nHis fears were real. Though he was wearing what a Hong Kong youth would normally have, his rural accent and his unfamiliar gestures generated enough suspicious looks from people around him. At the time, the Hong Kong police had set up check points to stop illegal aliens from reaching the city proper. Coupled with police raids in resettlement areas and the constant official warnings to prosecute those who sheltered illegal aliens, the maneuvers created the atmosphere of a state of siege for Liang. \n\nHe was lucky to have the connections of a maternal uncle, who quickly took him in as an apprentice in a Chinese restaurant. A labour certificate came with a legal status, the \"green stamp,\" giving him temporary residence rights in Hong Kong. He felt secure enough to return to his home for a visit in 1982. It was a happy event, but the three years of sojourn left an unspeakable mark on Liang's life. The mark told the story of what it meant to be an immigrant from rural Guangdong to urban Hong Kong at the historical juncture when both societies were suspended in a state of uncertainty. \n\nThe setting for emigration \n\nThe year 1979-80 was disorienting for many youths in rural Guangdong. The Third Plenum of the Party Central Committee in late 1978 gave the go-ahead signal for political and economic reforms. In the commune where Liang was, cadres with due anxiety started to introduce the new production responsibility system. Even before the reforms became official, interest groups had pushed for relaxation in the local economy. The atmosphere triggered unexpected movements in the rural commune. Though the commune was not dismantled at the time, work responsibility was gradually allocated to households. Surplus labour emerged as a problem for the more efficiently managed household economies.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216112, "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": 411, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "345\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nFROM THE BELGIAN JOURNAL AVIATION, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 14, MARCH 1946\n\n©TRANSLATION BY PAUL BOLDING\n\nGliding: How Louis de San beat the Asian duration and altitude records in Chungking, China, in 1940\n\nIn 1939, Louis de San set off for China to serve as a diplomat. A keen glider pilot, he was eager to taste the eastern thermal currents. When he set off in a Chinese glider, towed by a military plane, it was to be for a flight of more than four hours and set an Asian record. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he managed to flee Hong Kong as the bombs fell, and to reach South Africa. There he joined the RAF and passed his examinations as an aeroplane pilot. Lieutenant de San then went to Congo, where he was based until the end of hostilities and undertook various missions and operations in Oxford and SV4 planes. This is his account of how he set the record in China:\n\nIt was 1940. For a year I had been in Chungking, wartime capital of the Chinese government. There was bombing day and night, crushing heat of more than 40 degrees, tension, loneliness... There were few distractions: one was being a spectator in the virtually hopeless struggle of the Chinese people, at war for two years. I travelled the country and spent hours watching the clouds, birds, weather conditions; I rapidly concluded that the good thermals had to be as numerous as fish in the Yangtse.\n\nI knew every corner of the area around Chungking. The town was a kind of peninsula, surrounded by two mighty rivers, the Yangtse and the Kialing. Thousands of dark roofs, large areas flattened by Japanese bombing, the immediate contrast of great expanses of water, and over it all leaden skies, more oppressive than the strongest sun in Coquilhatville1 or Lake Leopold II in Congo.\n\nWhere great gliding birds untiringly traced their spirals higher, there had to be powerful thermal currents. Above the town, above the white sandbanks emerging from the river, one saw from morning to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]