[
    {
        "id": 207174,
        "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-1974",
        "page_number": 245,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n239\n\nHowever, none of the above-cited translations deal with any original work of the Chin period (1115-1234). Amongst various branches of Chinese literature developed during the Chin period, the Chu-kung-tiao3, (literally, the \"various moods\", hereafter to be abbreviated as CKT), a kind of popular literature of this period, seem to be among the more important.2\n\nTo quote from the introduction of the Ballad of the Hidden Dragon, \"The Chu-kung-tiao belongs to that large group of 'story-tellers' ballads in which prose and verse alternate, but its verse was sung, while its prose was narrated! The sung part of any chu-kung-tiao consists of a large number of tunes (ch’ü-tiao #8) succeeding each other according to fixed musical rules. Groups of tunes belonging to the same mode (kung-tiao) were assembled into a suite (t'ao-shu) to make a musical unit for which different words were supplied by each story-teller.\" (p. 3) Although popular during the Chin period, yet few original texts of the chu-kung-tiao literature remain today. A woodblock print edition of the Liu Chih-yüan CKT✰✰✰ was found in a 1907-1808 excavation by Peter Kuzmitch Kozlov (1863-1935). It remained in the Leningrad Oriental Institute, as the introduction of the Ballad of the Hidden Dragon has pointed out, “until April 1958 when the Soviet Government made the People's Republic of China a gift of this priceless volume and it is now kept in the Peking National Library\" (p. 5).\n\nThe original text of Liu Chih-yüan CKT is divided into 12 sections. But only 5 sections (1-3 and 11-12) have survived. The main body of the Ballad of the Hidden Dragon by M. Dolezelova-Velingerova, a Czech Sinologist, and his collaborator, J. I. Crump, an American professor in Michigan University is in fact, their full English translation of these 5 sections. This book is the first work about Chinese folk literature of this kind ever written in English.\n\nYet this main source of satisfaction is marred in several respects. First of all, the author's knowledge concerning the beginning about the CKT study in China is not complete. pp. 123-125 are devoted to bibliography of Chu-kung-tiao studies, in which Crump and Dolezelova-Velingerova have selected 30 articles contributed by 20 Sinologists from various countries (17 articles by 12 Chinese\n\n静農\n\n2 See T'ai Ching-nung £#£ : \"Chu-kung-tiao-Chinese literature under the rule of the Nüchen Tartars\" ƒÆŒ%TO**£*—*?* in Chung-wai Literature †±‡, Vol. I, No. 1, (1971, Taipei): 6-20.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208472,
        "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-1978",
        "page_number": 196,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "180\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\non the upper part of the page and the text on the lower. Folk prints became popular at that time. According to a historical reference every year started from the tenth lunar month, and the markets were filled with new calendars, all sizes of door gods, charms and papercut blessings in gold and coloured paper for the coming new year festival. These folk prints thus came to be known as Nien Hua or New Year Prints.\n\nA Russian named Koslov found some old prints from a ruined pagoda in Black Water City, Kansu Province, whilst exploring in China in the year 1908. One of the prints is in a form of a poster-like illustration of 2′5′′ × 1′ in size depicting four historical beauties of four different dynasties printed in black ink on yellowish colour coated paper. According to the printed year mark, it was made in the period of Southern Sung, 1127-1279 AD and is believed to be the oldest surviving Chinese folk print or Nien Hua printed by woodblock in the world. The print is now kept by the Alexander the Third Museum in Moscow.\n\nWoodblock was developed to print paper money at the time of 998-1022 AD in the Sung Dynasty, but did not last long as the woodblock printed paper notes were too easily forged. Later the government changed to using bronze plates instead. The designs on the plates were not engraved, but were moulded by using carved woodblock moulds by the same method used to make picture bricks in Chin Dynasty and the illustrated roof tiles in Han Dynasty. It is the prototype of woodblock printing.\n\nAt the time of 1041-1048 in the Northern Sung, a Chinese commoner Bi Sheng developed the use of movable types made of baked clay for printing, and later by using carved woodblocks for the types. This method did not attain extensive use because of the large number of characters used by Chinese: an ordinary book required at least four to five thousand different types.\n\nThe woodblock prints of the Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368 AD, are characterised by their boldness and simplicity. Double colour printing was developed in this period. Two blocks were used for printing. Some books printed in this period had the text printed in black and the notes printed in red.\n\nWoodblock printing was extensive by the time of the Wan Li reign of the Late Ming 1573-1619 AD, as paper making",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
        "rank": 0
    }
]