[ { "id": 204775, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE\n\n67\n\nThird Edition 1643 by Man Sz-k'ei, Leung Tung-min, Tang Leung-yuk and others; Preface by Ch'an Hei-yiu.\n\nMan Sz-kei (Tai-wu) of Suichau, Sub-director of Studies in San On, 1640-?1645.\n\nLeung Tung-ming of Tun Tau, prefectural graduate in 1641.\n\nTang Leung-yuk # Perhaps a mistake for Tang Leung-sz of Kam Tin, prefectural graduate in 1610.\n\nCh'an Hei-yiu of Chingteh, Kiangnan, Magistrate of San On, 1640–1645.\n\nFourth Edition 1672 by (?); Preface by Lei Ho-shing.\n\nLei Ho-shing of T'ichling in Liaotung, Magistrate of San On, 1670-1677.\n\nFifth Edition 1688 by (?); Preface by Kan Man-mo.\n\nKan Man-mo of K'aichou in Chihli, Magistrate of San On, 1687—(?).\n\nSixth Edition 1819 by Wong Shung-hei; Prefaces by Yuen Yuen, Lo Yuen-wai, Shue Mau-kwun and the author.\n\nWong Shung-hei of Nanch'eng in Kiangsi, a prefectural sub-graduate of Chihli.\n\nYuen Yuen, an Imperial Censor, Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief of Kwangsi, Kwangtung, Hunan, Kueichou and Yunnan; of -wei in Kiangsu; born about 1760.\n\nLo Yuen-wai, a chin-shih, Intendant of Grain for Kwangtung, of Nam Ye.\n\nShue Mau-kwun (Yue-fong), a chin-shih, Magistrate of San On, 1816—(?).\n\nSixth Edition was reprinted without its maps in the 1930s.\n\n* In which case a copy of this edition might be preserved among the clan archives.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212708, "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "2\n\nof bonnes bouches relating to him and his family. The information, its presentation and language tell us more about William Mesny than about Chinese life. A considerable part of his writings consisted of piecemeal notes or essays written to emphasize, probably unconsciously, both his prominent standing with important Chinese and his foresight as a man of ideas. He played up so many of the episodes in which he was involved that it is difficult not to minimise and even to discount what in practice must have been his quite significant achievements. Three major subjects regularly featured in Mesny's Miscellanies, his economic and political foresight which was inevitably spurned by westerners and Chinese alike; his activities as part of the Chinese imperial military forces in Kueichou quelling a rebellious minority ethnic group; and his wives and women in general.\n\nIn one of his forthright, self-congratulatory moments he wrote, \"The Editor of Mesny's Chinese Miscellany feels that he has a sort of an inspired mission in China to set forth, preach and proclaim the inspiring and magic-working words of Reform and Progress to the inquiring multitudes amongst China's 400 million black-haired people.'\n\nWilliam Mesny (pronounced “May-knee' in Jersey), was brought up in the bilingual Channel Island community speaking English and French. He left home when he was nearly twelve to travel far afield but without ever losing pride in being a Jerseyman and British.\n\nMesny was born at La Croiserie Vingtaine in the parish of Trinity in Jersey on 9 October 1842, the eldest son of William Mesny of Alderney and Marie Rachel née Nicolle, second daughter of Philip Nicolle of du Nord, Jersey. Mesny's father was described in one place as a cobbler, a local preacher preaching several times a year in French and English Wesleyan chapels, and a member of the Royal militia (probably the Jersey Militia). Mesny writing elsewhere in his Miscellany described his parents as poor; his mother was 'bed-ridden' and his father, though a Wesleyan local preacher, was forced to work for a living in attendance on divers engaged in the harbour works, and often repaired his own shoes to save the expense of having them repaired at a shoemaker's. Mesny's father and his grandfather, Guillaume Mesny, were both said to be of St Martin, Jersey, whilst Mesny himself claimed that his roots lay in the ancient family of Megny d'Auregny [i.e. Auregny Alderney]. It has also been recorded that Mesny's father and grandfather had both been born and brought up in Alderney with the father moving to Jersey at some stage. Guillaume's brothers included the great grandfather of Miss Lucie", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212714, "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "8\n\nregular references to his deep knowledge of things Chinese and in particular, their formal rituals. As with many foreign writers on China and the Chinese, Mesny frequently implied exclusive access to hidden corners. This was indisputable because, whilst most foreigners who pride themselves on having Chinese friends and have visited them at home, even perhaps having stayed with them, few have the opportunity afforded to Mesny when he served with the Chinese military forces and lived as one with them on the staff. However, in retrospect we can see that Mesny knew little of the private life, thoughts and policies of the native Chinese higher classes, or more importantly, of the ruling Manchus, simply through his lack of access. The great majority of foreigners in China were dependent upon what they could glean from their native interpreters whose depth of understanding was limited by their lack of knowledge, especially about state policies. Such people as Mesny, foreigners who spoke and read Chinese and had Chinese contacts, were one up on the foreigners who heavily depended upon their Chinese employees, but for Mesny to maintain his credibility with possible foreign investors he had to clutch at any crumb from the tables of the great and worthy, hence his repeated name dropping. It is also well nigh impossible to judge simply from his own account of events the extent to which Mesny understood the power politics of senior Chinese Imperial military officers or the nuances of the accusations aimed at a number of the generals. If he did, then his poignant description of the removal and demotion of his own Commander-in-chief from his command in Kueichou is very sympathetic.\n\nShanghai, where Mesny spent many of his later years, was one of the first Treaty Ports, opened in 1842, and by the turn of the century the largest foreign settlement in the East with a western population of many thousands. Mesny spent all but five of his last thirty-three years in the city.\n\nA Briton, Oliver Ready3, writing in 1904 of the time when Mesny first reached China said, 'Forty odd years ago, at the close of the second great war [i.e. 1860, the year in which Mesny reached the China coast], China was a veritable Eldorado for Europeans, where all turned to gold beneath the slightest touch of alien hands. Fortunes were made with startling rapidity, and money came in so freely that the standard of living amongst foreign merchants and their employees reached such preposterous heights of luxuriousness, that even when the inevitable reaction set in, want, and even ruin, supervened where plenty should have been found. Forty years ago the foreign trade was practically monopolised by Englishmen, who only had to place their goods on the market of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212715, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "9\n\nany newly-opened port for them to be snatched up and at almost any price by Chinese merchants..... until the Chinese purchaser came to close quarters with the English importer, eliminating middlemen at small ports and to transferring operations chiefly to the great emporiums of Hong Kong and Shanghai.'\n\nHankow was the other city in which, on and off, Mesny spent a dozen or so years and where eventually he died, a city on the north bank of the Yangtze, part of the three-city metropolis now known as Wuhan. It was the major commercial port in central China during the second half of the 19th century, containing British, German, Russian, Japanese and French settlements, known as Concessions. Hankow was opened as a treaty port in 1861, a year before Mesny arrived there and became famous abroad as the start of the annual tea-clipper race back to England.\n\nThe province of Kueichou in south-west China, where Mesny also spent a number of years was one of the most backward areas of China. It had been under Chinese rule since the Han at about the time of Christ, but only became a separate province during the Ming, in AD 1413. Waves of Chinese immigration, mainly from neighbouring Szechuan and Hunan provinces, forced the non-Chinese minority tribesmen out of the fertile valleys leading eventually to discontent and finally rebellion. Mesny's story is illuminating in a number of respects. There were always foreigners who took up minor posts with the Chinese bureaucracy, particularly during the modernisation campaigns which took place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Old photographs exist showing foreigners in, for example, a Chinese arsenal beside foreign machinery or weapons, both as advisers and trainers, but few ever wrote of their experiences. The most interesting part of Mesny's life, however, standing out as a unique experience, was the short period of some five to six years when he served with two provincial forces of the Chinese Imperial Army on active service helping suppress a rising of the Miao, a subjugated minority race in a remote part of southern China. [See Appendix C for a summary of the first campaign against the Miao in which Mesny took part]. Probably the most interesting part of these narratives is the reasonably detailed description of Chinese soldiering during this relatively minor campaign. It is full of anecdotal descriptions of campaigning in central south China against a redoubtable foe, the Miao people, though regrettably Mesny fails to go into detail about such interesting subjects as how he was paid, how patronage worked up to him personally, etc. He does, however, cover a number of themes in his Notes on the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "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": 212718, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "12\n\nother sources about whatever ensued and this reflects the virtual sole source of the material available, William Mesny himself. Several other foreigners with somewhat comparable careers to Mesny who eventually wrote their autobiographies, and therefore might be regarded as collateral, include Prosper Giquel whom Mesny refers to and who was in Hankow and established a Franco-Chinese force there in 1866, but who does not mention Mesny,\n\nOne of our problems in trying to bring Mesny, the man, into focus lies with the limited amount of material he published. It would seem from his writings that he recorded much more, a great deal of it lost during his travels which, had it been preserved, would have made all the difference to our overall picture. He appears not to have been particularly interested in dating episodes within his narratives and was only very rarely specific; and even during his detailed story of the first Kueichou campaign he ignored the temporal progression of the story, jumping from incident to anecdote and back again with scant regard for sequence. He was also cavalier in naming names. Without introduction, he includes a new name without any explanation or identification. In many instances, the individual could be identified from snippets thrown in at a much later stage, but several have remained unidentifiable. The narrative provided in his Miscellanies was published in weekly episodes years after the events, possibly from a diary, though it would appear to a certain extent to have been written up at the time. Many of the weeks' texts were divided into two separate sections, consciously or perhaps even unconsciously, one being the progression of the campaign and the other anecdotes about local fruits, silver mining, or the prescribing of drugs for the various illnesses prevalent at the time, etc. It might have been that he was stretched for material to fill the columns, and this perhaps is borne out by the number of times he repeats himself, offering greater and often unnecessary detail. Mesny also appears to have assumed that his readers, not only in Shanghai but 'world-wide', knew the general background to the Chinese political, economic, and social scene, and therefore a number of his allusions can now no longer be understood. Also, his views of the Chinese military, which we can assume should be relatively accurate at the lower echelons, would appear to be less accurate and lacking confirmatory detail, due to Mesny not being anything like as important as he would have had us believe.\n\nOne incident during the campaign in Kueichou exemplifies the confusion Mesny's account, and sometimes even his assumptions,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212719, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "13 \n\nimposes upon readers. He had joined the large skirmishing force led by General Liu Ho-ling, commander of the Ko-i Force of the Szechuan Army Corps and Mesny's immediate chief, to harry the Miao tribesmen. Mesny remarks that upon retiring the General and Mesny came under fire from a Miao ambush with hundreds of bullets whizzing close to them. Mesny quickly dismounted and soon cleared the wood [in which the ambushers were hidden] and the enemy fled leaving their dead and wounded. Some ten lines further on, after an anecdote about a splendid prize that he had captured, an eight foot long Miao rifle, he explained that the Miao-tzu had lost more men in and near that wood than they had all day as Mesny had laid an 'ambuscade' for them with two companies of General Liu's guards. If one bears with Mesny's usual hyperbolic claim that he had laid the successful ambush, one is left wondering what he was doing, alongside the General, when they fell into the ambush, which Mesny would appear from an earlier paragraph to have foiled alone with great success.\n\nAt another point in the narrative, when General Liu goes off leading a local attack, he leaves Mesny behind because 'the Commander-in-chief needed Mesny's advice more than he, General Liu, did.' Liu was defeated, 'badly' says Mesny, and one can sense the schadenfreude. Mesny added that one of the battalion commanders had commented that General Liu would appreciate Mesny's abilities better in future! It is not hard to imagine General Liu becoming more and more irritated by this young foreign whippersnapper who always knew best. General Liu has only to leave Mesny behind and, as luck would have it, be defeated.\n\nHis lengthy and often involved autobiographical essay in his Miscellanies only cover the period from 1861, when he was 19, to 1870 and the end of the first campaign in Kueichou to suppress the Miao tribesmen's rebellion, when he was still only 28. From 1870 on we are dependent upon the copious and varied snippets in his Miscellanies, both long and short, until the final publication of the Miscellanies in 1905 when he was 64. Dr Tiedemann of SOAS, University of London, has discovered that Mesny wrote at least a dozen letters from Kueichou from May 1872 to February 1874 published in the Shanghai newspaper, Shanghai Budget and perhaps even more in the Celestial Empire, the paper which took over the Shanghai Budget in 1874. No copies of these papers appear to be available though we can surmise that they probably covered Mesny's activities during that period. From 1905 until his death fourteen years later, in 1919, we have to rely on his obituary, admittedly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212726, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "20\n\nIllnesses\n\nMesny seems to have got through life with remarkably few illnesses and, apart from one major well-nigh fatal illness during the forced march from Soochow with the Taipings and the occasional bouts of malaria, had he suffered anything more serious than a high temperature, he did not mention it. During his undiagnosed well-nigh fatal illness he had to fend for himself and lived off boiled rice-water. He could not face food, ran a very high temperature and at one point he was laid out, unconscious, presumably to die. He was placed on a bed of reeds on a veranda with a cannon barrel as a pillow and covered with an old vermin-ridden sheepskin jacket, flung over him by one of the assistant cooks. He had lain there delirious for about a week before he recovered, with little recollection of anything apart from a Cantonese doctor making him swallow a large pill as a cure for fever. He later described the illness as the one 'when his hair fell out.'\n\nHe suffered from prickly heat all the time he was in hot countries, and from eczema and boils during the time he was based in Canton [1884-1887]. He was also bitten by a snake, slept amongst swarms of vicious mosquitoes and doubtless drank filthy water on occasions, though this is never recorded by him in so many words.\n\nHe obtained for himself various patent medicines, especially during his time in Kueichou province, such as Collis Browne's chlorodyne, Lepeltier's sulphate of quinine, Holloway's Pills and ointment, and described how his reputation as a doctor grew during the campaign when he successfully dosed many a sick Chinese soldier from his medicine cabinet, saving the lives of a great number of them.\n\nHe claims at a later date to be a most abstemious man if not an absolute teetotaller, and practically a vegetarian; eggs, butter and milk being the only animal food he allowed himself. Mesny repeated on several occasions that he rigidly abstained from animal food, especially whilst living in the interior of China, out of respect for the authority of the officials and as an example of obedience to well-intentioned laws. At one point, Mesny lived for three years in a Buddhist monastery in Kuei-yang Fu in Kueichou province, Western China, [though not as a religious] and at another stage in his life was vegetarian for three months at a stretch.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212731, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "25\n\nallowances of food, accommodation and bearers, twenty horses and eighty men to be supplied by the county magistrate through whose territory the recipient travelled. He described the order of the Pa-Tu-La (to give it its Chinese title) as 'similar to the Legion of Honour or the Victoria Cross, awarded on the strength of a recommendation of the highest provincial official for distinguished services.' He also claimed that although he had been recommended for it several times between 1868 to 1873 he had only received it in 1873 together with the rank of Brigadier-General.\n\nAccording to Mayers in his book 'The Chinese Government':\n\nPa-l'u-lu The Batʼuru distinction. The Military distinction called in Chinese Pa-t'u-lu (a representation of the Manchu word bat'uru, signifying ‘brave') is an institution dating from the early years of the present dynasty, and is conferred solely for active service in the field. It constitutes an order of merit partaking of some of the characteristics of the French Legion d'honneur, but its special feature of difference from European order consists of the fact that it has no outward mark of decoration to be worn by its possessor, in the place of which there can only be reckoned the distinguishing word (or title) which is assigned to each recipient on the bestowal of the order. These specific titles may be either Manchu, Mongolian or Chinese, the Manchu being considered the most honourable. Under this system an officer upon whom the distinction is conferred, might receive the designation Ti Yung Pa-t'u-lu, or 'Bat'uru with the title Magnanimous Brave', and so forth. The title carries with it the right to wear the peacock feather, although it seldom happens at the present day that the peacock feather, lavishly awarded as this decoration has been of late years, is not obtained previously to the bestowal of the batʼuru; and the allowances of the bearer, when employed on active service, are considerably enhanced in virtue of his possession of the title. The Bat'uru has been conferred upon at least one European, Mr W Mesny, a native of Jersey, for services rendered in the province of Kueichou.\n\nMesny commented in his Miscellany in 1896 that on several occasions during the early years of the Kueichou campaign he had been recommended to the Emperor for the bestowal of military rank and his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212732, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "26\n\nname had eventually appeared in the Peking Gazette. In 1871, he added, he was recommended for special honours on account of distinguished services on the field of battle and received the order of merit called Yung Hao with the title of Ying Yung Pa-t'u-lu [i.e. ‘Brigadier-General, the title of Knight Ying of the Order of Pa-t'u-lu, Mesny\"]. Mesny was awarded the Ying-yung for having penetrated a Miao stronghold with a few Chinese riflemen and turned the tide of battle from defeat into victory. In April 1896 Mesny wrote: 'Having lived in Hankow for some years and acquired some notoriety amongst the Chinese there, if not actual fame, the characters Wen-kao 'Eminent', were chosen and given me as a Hao or familiar by my friends.' His Chinese name is Mai Wen-kao or using a transliteration 'Mai-shih-ni [i.e. mai-knee) and his rank, Tsung-ping **General**]. In another autobiographical 'obituary' printed after his death in the Celestial Empire, a Shanghai paper, he described himself as 'I, Wen-kao William Mesny, F.R.G.S., Brevet Lieutenant-General of the Chinese Army; Knight, Ying Yung of the Order of the Pa-t'u-lu..................\n\nMesny noted on one occasion long after he had completed his military service that he had come across a battalion of Kueichou field troops with the men wearing the cuirass-shaped uniform or Pa-t'u-lu vesture, invented by Mesny in 1868 for the An-ting and Ko-i Rifle Brigades. [\"The ancient Manchu Knights of the order of the Pa-t'u-lu wore such vests as uniform when not wearing the metal cuirass, hence its significant name Pa-t'u-lu.']\n\n[NOTE: Liu Ming-ch'uan, Governor of Taiwan 1884-1891, referred to in the text as having met Mesny, initially was a freebooter who, during the Taiping Rebellion supported Li Hung-chang and the Imperial forces, and opposed the Taipings. He was at that stage a fairly lowly officer and is recorded as having received 'the honorary title of military merit, baturu': Later, when more senior he was awarded the much greater award of the Yellow Riding Jacket.]\n\nMesny was awarded the 'flowery plume' [hua-ling ##4] in 1869 together with the brevet rank of colonel after battles with the Miao tribesmen. He was also presented with the Pao-hsing in 1869. He refers to the Pao-hsing #, the Precious Planet [or decoration of the Star of China] implying that it was the same decoration as the Double Dragon Jewelled Star which he also later referred to. It was, he said, instituted after the Taiping Rebellion as a form of reward for foreigners who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212733, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "27\n\nrendered eminent service to the Imperial cause. The Double Dragon Jewelled Star (Shuang-lung Pao-hsing) was, he repeated, conferred on him in Kueichou during his first campaign in that province (1867-1869). He described it in his second note as consisting of a pure heavy gold [2oz or more] medal rather than a star, about one and a half inches in diameter, with a hole in the centre about half an inch in diameter, filled by a light sapphire globe revolving on a gold pin inserted through it. On one side were two dragons in high relief, on the other, four characters, also in high relief, viz. Ta-Ch'ing Feng-tseng meaning 'a title of honour bestowed by the Ch'ing dynasty'. The jewelled globe in the centre was intended to represent the light blue button and rank of colonel which Mesny then held. Had the medal been conferred by the Emperor, Mesny added, he would have worn it in Europe in 1878 but as it was the gift of a provincial viceroy he did not. Mesny also wrote that he preferred his ordinary Chinese rank and decorations, the Flowery Plume or single-eyed Peacock's Feather and, later, the ordinary order of Pa-t'u-lu with special designation of Ying yung, the Penetrating Knight, awarded to him by the Emperor.\n\nMayers, again, in The Chinese Government wrote about this minor award;\n\n'Isolated distinctions have indeed been conferred in China on foreigners of various nationalities, principally for services rendered in the command of drilled troops during the Taiping rebellion, and subsequently in the collection of the Customs revenue, which are known, with reference to the European term 'star', by the designation pao-hsing; but as these are bestowed, for the most part, by provincial authorities, and without the sanction of any established rule or recognised statutes, such as are required to constitute what is commonly known as an 'Order', the badges thus conferred can scarcely be regarded as having any real value as authentic marks of distinction.'\n\nMesny was recommended for 4th Degree civil rank in 1866 which, if it had been awarded, would have entitled him to wear a mandarin square 'wild goose' breast badge. He recorded that the fourth degree civil rank had the right to wear and were distinguished by a dark blue button on their official cap. The embroidered robe, mang pao, had but eight dragons with five claws on each foot. The dress badge worn by civil officers and all ladies of their class and degree bore the semblance of a swan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212734, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "28\n\n[yun-yen].\n\nIn October 1874, at the age of 32, Mesny returned to Hankow from Kueichou with the rank of Major-General and, he claimed, an excellent letter of recommendation from the Governor of Kueichou, addressed to Prince Kung and the Ministers of the Tsung-li Yamen in Peking. In 1886 he was promoted to the brevet rank of Lieutenant-General.\n\nIn his autobiographical ‘obituary' in the North China Herald, Mesny wrote \"The confirmation of my rank as a Major-General in the Chinese Army with the decoration of the Kualing [hua-ling] Plume, the order of the Pa-t'u-lu and promotion to be Brevet Lieutenant-General, with ancestors ennobled for three generations, was published in the Peking gazette, and the documents handed to me by the British Legation officials at Peking, and by the British Consul at Canton\": His decoration, the San-tai Erh-pin Kao-feng, an honorary title and patent of retrospective rank conferred upon meritorious officials, their wives and their immediate ancestors for three generations, was recommended to the Throne by the Governor of Kueichou, Ts’en Yü-ying, in 1879. [Grandfather Guillaume Mesny, who had died many, many years earlier and who was now presumably in the Afterworld, must have been most surprised, to say the least!]\n\nMesny also handed out awards and decorations: During his first campaign in Kueichou, Mesny had a supply of Meritorious Warrants (kung-p'ai [which confers the right of the recipient to wear a button on his hat, normally the fifth or sixth degree with blue feathers]). His supply was already sealed with the commander-in-chief's seal, and Mesny bestowed them on meritorious men after each battle, adding the name of the recipient, the date, etc., and Mesny's own seal. He also had hundreds of the Military Silver Medal [Chung-kung Yin-pai] made during the war in Kueichou from 1867-1874, at his own expense, and bestowed them as rewards to deserving soldiers. It consisted of a thin piece of silver about three and a half inches at its longest diameter, with a slit in it for a ribbon, and the character Shang \"Bestowed\" in repoussé work stamped upon it.\n\nHis ranks and grades during his service with the Chinese Imperial forces are a more complex subject and one that is far from clear from Mesny's own writings. He portrayed himself as having 'senior' mandarin rank, and this has been reflected in one of the postage stamps produced by the Jersey Post Office in 1992, on which he is depicted as a 'Mandarin'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212735, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "29\n\n1st Class in a sedan carried by four bearers.' This was probably no more than hyperbole. He stated in his Miscellanies that he had once possessed a very fine sedan-chair presented to him in Szechuan, with a magnetic compass let into the hand rest or bar which is placed across the chair in front of the rider to rest his hands on.\n\nImperial officials, and their principal wives, wore large embroidered square badges tacked across their surcoat's chest and back, which in addition to their hat buttons, denoted their rank. These were worn by all nine grades of civil officials and, according to Garret, by military officers of the Manchu army stationed in provincial garrisons and in Manchu quarters in large cities. This might explain why Mesny failed to mention squares, apart from five paragraphs describing them and their use, and a remark in passing that a Major-General, 2nd Class of the 2nd Degree would have a 'lion' breast badge. When he visited Amoy in 1879 he was reported in the local foreign press having worn western clothes but with the red button of mandarin rank on top of his foreign cap. As he never spelled out that he ever wore the badge and button commensurate with his military rank we shall probably never know whether he ever did wear such a badge.\n\nHe possessed a Chinese passport consisting of a large single sheet of printed white paper, usually endorsed with certain conditions but in Mesny's case it entitled him to protection in all provinces and beyond the Great Wall, unlimited as to a period of time. He was, he added, never asked for it. It called on all county officials to afford the traveller due protection, safe guidance and reasonable information. He also had at various times official Circular Dispatches [ch'uan-p'ai]. These, he explained, were issued to officials travelling on government service entitling them to named supplies of food, fodder, carts, chairs, pack mules, saddle horses, coolies and accommodation in official inns along the whole line of march.\n\nHe had an official seal when he was the General Superintendent of Foreign Ordnance for the whole of Kueichou province, an appointment he obtained during the Winter of 1875 and held until March of 1877. He explained that he observed all the due formalities of putting away his seal during the New Year annual rites and ceremonies. The seal, he claimed, bore his rank as Lieutenant-General, and Knight Ying of the Order of Pa-t'u-lu. We have no idea of the rank and grade of the Superintendent and as he does not refer to himself as Lieutenant-General", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212737, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "31\n\nA native of China generally, whose chief characteristics are: sobriety, frugality, and industriousness; having a burning desire for male offspring, an insatiable appetite for public notoriety, and a terrible affinity for lucre; a being who is perfectly willing at all times, and in all places, to worship the God of Wealth, Ts'ai Shen, or any other particular god or deity, as well as all the known and “unknown\" gods and his own ancestors, as far back as he, or somebody else, may be able to have traced them, but more especially any of them who may have acquired wealth or fame in any age.\n\nPatronage and Name Dropping, and Incidental Anecdotes\n\nHe appears never to have missed an opportunity throughout his long life in China to pay his respects by calling on the local county, provincial and even national mandarins. A number of these officials were referred to thereafter on more than one occasion as 'friends' or 'officials with whom [Mesny] had conferred.' The one he most prided himself on was his 'intimacy' with the Chinese senior statesman, Li Hung-chang, by whom he would appear to have been tolerated, but only just, though with the normal Chinese courtesies.\n\nMesny knew the importance of patronage and name-dropping, especially in China: this we can see from the two and a quarter pages he devoted in one of his Miscellanies to the momentary meeting with a Manchu hereditary prince; his obituary of Tso, etc. He was as obsessed with his affiliation and rapport with the Chinese as he was about females, and at every possible opportunity he managed to name-drop and rub home his kindred feeling for the Chinese together with descriptions of their reciprocation in kind. Mesny refers with pride on a number of occasions to Chinese 'sworn brothers.' He disclosed these individually either without ever referring to them again or in some instances he simply mentioned their names in passing during descriptions of his journeys. One such blood brother was Chang Kuang-chun (or -chin) who in about 1874 was an Expectant ta-t'ai of Szechuan, and a Metropolitan literary graduate [Chin-shih] of the Tao Kuang reign. Another was Chang Ping-tang, the Military Secretary to the C-in-C of the Szechuan Force. Elsewhere in the Miscellany he claimed to have two Chinese sworn brothers, one a literary and the other a military undergraduate whom he had met whilst travelling in a provincial town in Kueichou. He met", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212738, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "32\n\nthem during his journey across the province in 1879 and accepted their offer of sworn brotherhood. He later explained that he had done so to prove to them that Englishmen believed in cultivating and cementing friendship with all civilised beings of whatever creed or nationality. He also mentioned several times his 'never-to-be forgotten friend and brother, Yü Te-k'ai, an officer in Kueichou of the fifth degree of civil rank, the confidential correspondent to the C-in-C beside being commandant of the battalion of guards.' It would have been interesting to have learned the views of these sworn brothers about Mesny.\n\nAlthough Mesny described quite a substantial number of contacts with Chinese officialdom and his views on the very senior officials, he frequently simply referred to the names and titles of senior Chinese officials with or for whom he had worked or by whom he had been interviewed in such a manner as to imply a personal relationship which, in the majority of instances, raises suspicions that he was trying more to bolster his own ego in his passing years and convince himself as well as his readership. However, he also had many an axe to grind and debts of personal slights to repay and these he undertook with great relish in his Miscellany. He sat, in his fifties, in Shanghai, after a life of action, musing over Chinese officialdom's ingratitude, lack of foresight, ineptitude etc. taking pleasure from the opportunity afforded him to write about those who had earned his displeasure.\n\nMesny had particular respect for one very senior Chinese official, Tso Tsung-t'ang, whom he first met when Mesny called to pay his respects during the winter of 1867 in Hankow. After discovering Mesny had been a captive of the Taipings at the age of 25 and spoke French and English, he offered Mesny an appointment as French and English Secretary on his staff, with a recommendation to the Emperor for the civil rank of Fourth Degree. He also offered to take Mesny on his impending campaign to the North-west of China where Tso had just been appointed Governor-General of Shensi and Kansu provinces and C-in-C of the Imperial Forces. The offer was scuppered by the refusal by the local British Consul, Medhurst, to provide a British passport as Mesny's parents had written objecting to his involvement in recent escapades, and capture by both the Taipings and Imperial forces whilst running the blockade. Mesny was next involved or very nearly involved with Tso in 1879 when Mesny trekked from Canton to Tso's headquarters in Hami in the extreme North-west to offer him a French loan. However, Tso had been recalled to Peking just", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212739, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "33\n\nbefore Mesny reached Hami,\n\nDuring the Franco-China War of 1883 when Tso was Governor-General of the southern provinces of Fukien and Chekiang, which included Formosa [Taiwan] where the French did much of their fighting, Mesny was invited by Tso's private secretary in Foochou to come to that city to see Tso with a view to undertaking some of the 'progressive' works he, Mesny, had recommended years beforehand, including telegraphs, railways and mining. Mesny was involved at the time transacting some business in Shanghai for Viceroy Chang Chih-tung and replied that he would call at Foochou on his return from Canton. Viceroy Tso, however, died before Mesny arrived in Foochou.\n\nMesny appears to have revelled in including short tabloid-style titbits usually revealing some appalling or unspeakable act by a Chinese official. One such was the tale of the Manchu bannerman who became such an intolerable nuisance as a Chinese government spy at the British Legation in Peking, where he had been employed as a teacher for many years, that he was expelled from his job. Mesny added that as a reward for the efficient secret services he had rendered his government he was given the rank of Expectant prefect of Kueichou, in about 1874, where he did much mischief and was then transferred to Kuangtung where he remained as an ‘incorrigible anti-foreign mischief maker under the protection of the notorious anti-foreign Tatar, General Chang-shun.'\n\nMesny went into a little detail on the subject he called \"Traitors in Camp' [Nei-ying or li-ying]. These he noted were greatly depended upon in all official (and most other) undertakings. He supposed that there was not a Yamen or office in which there was not some individual paid by a rival to disclose the affairs of that place. Writing in 1905 he accused some of the anti-Christian Chinese of sowing discord amongst Christian missionaries. The latter he claimed 'are so bigoted yet simple that they are very easily imposed upon by designing mischief makers who wish to embroil the missionaries and bring them into evil repute'.\n\nAlthough the majority of titbits on Chinese culture, the social scene and personalities, consisted of one or two paragraphs, Mesny occasionally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212740, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "34\n\nhad a head of steam and wrote several pages of detailed description on one particular theme, usually with an educational value aimed at foreigners in China. One in particular was his portrayal of a Chinese banquet, consisting not only of various menus, but seating plans, courtesies and the role of the servants.\n\nHis Promotion of Western Education\n\nSince 1868, Mesny claimed, he had had an inclination to do something towards dispelling some of the gross darkness that prevailed amongst the Chinese. In 1870 he established a small day school for boys and girls in a temple called the Yu-huang Kung [The Temple of the Jade Emperor], which served as a club house for the people of the Hu-kuang provinces who resided in Kuei-yang. He imported some school books which he considered suitable and paid a Chinese teacher to teach the children during the four years of his residence in Kuei-yang.\n\nMesny in later years had interviews with senior Chinese mandarins with a view to promoting western sciences and other subjects of study for examinations in China. He also claimed that he had persuaded a Chinese Viceroy to submit a memorial on educational reform to the throne and that this was the start of such reform. The reforms were abolished by the Empress Dowager in 1898.\n\nMesny and Women\n\nDespite the genuinely colourful life he led in China, his experiences living with the Taiping rebels, his service with the Szechuan Force în Kueichou and his treks across much of the country; when we come to his descriptions of his love life with Chinese ladies, although they may have been real and authentic, for the most part they read like episodes out of a modern pulp novelette. This may be due to a possible inability to describe them without a modicum of exaggeration or 'editing' or, though unlikely, they may have been figments of his imagination. There is little doubt that he was red-blooded and normal, and as a single man in foreign parts with few if any women of his own race or culture it was the understood thing for expatriate westerners to have a local female partner. He frequently wrote of pretty women at the roadside during his journeys across China who attracted him or, more to the point, were attracted by him. However, the exact measure of his intimacy with any but his wives is destined to remain tantalizingly obscure.\n\nCorrected minor OCR errors, reformatted text into paragraphs, and corrected \"în\" to \"in\" for consistency and correctness.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212741, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Bearing in mind that much of what he claimed was written from either notes or memory between the ages of 53 to 63, the almost obsessive way he describes the semi-nudity of the girls from the minority Miao suggests that he must have been sex-starved, a red-blooded young man, and a lone Westerner amongst an army of Chinese. Mesny described various tribes and sub-groups of non-Chinese and their customs in some detail in his articles in the Miscellanies, though he did seem to be more interested in their love life and marriage customs than, for example, births and deaths.\n\nHis description of the 'fair maidens' en route during his treks in central China eyeing him and he ogling them are frequent, with no lack of comment on their bare bosoms in particular and occasionally their genitalia. These were, as one would expect in Kueichou province at that time, not Han Chinese but tribeswomen from the Chuang, Lolo, Miao, and other tribes. He also allowed himself the pleasure of preening before them and, in one instance, washed the upper part of his body, combed his beard, and brushed his hair in full view of the local ladies who, he believed, 'expressed great admiration' for him. He was 36 at the time and ostensibly unmarried, though we suspect that he had already taken a Chinese lady to wife by Chinese rites.\n\nMesny, on the subject of marriage, made much of the fact that he very nearly became the son of a Cantonese millionaire named Huang, conditional on Mesny changing his name to Huang. This apparently took place in Hong Kong shortly after he had arrived in the Far East, in 1861, when he was still under the age of twenty and a turn-key at a Hong Kong gaol. It is hard to believe that a wealthy Chinese would be so desperate to acquire a foreign son-in-law, though we know no more than Mesny has seen fit to tell us. In the event, the marriage did not take place, and though he does no more than hint at it by stating that something unforeseen had turned up, it would seem more than likely that his dismissal from the Hong Kong Prison Service had something to do with it. He was then nearly ensnared by a Chinese friend who wished him to marry his sister. Mesny, however, claimed to have declined to be a party to any scheme depriving another man of his prospective wife, as she had been betrothed to a young man in accordance with the custom of the country. Mesny added that he did not wish to break the law, even if it meant hurting the feelings of the Chinese friend who, in Mesny's words, was 'no ordinary personage, in the common sense of the word, and the [proposed] voyage up the Yangtze with him gave promise of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212742, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "36 \n\nsomething more than ordinary adventure.' \n\nAgain, after a theatrical performance by a Chinese actor and actress in a provincial town in Kueichou province, Mesny wrote that local people, believing him [he was then 36] to be very old as he had a beard, knew that foreign women must be inferior; \"They must be, “they added\", as foreign men pass by but never foreign women, and foreign men marry Chinese wives.' Mesny added that he had one 'with very small feet and wears elegantly embroidered red satin shoes!' This must have been in 1878. \n\nWriting a paragraph under the heading of 'Slave Girls', Mesny noted that it was a common thing for well-to-do people to present a couple of slave girls to a daughter as part of their marriage dowry. It was also customary with respectable people to release slave girls when marriageable. Mesny added that he had bought three different girls, two in Szechuan, for a few taels each [less than 15 dollars Mexican]. One he released in Tientsin, another died in Hong Kong; the other he gave in marriage to a faithful servant of his. \n\nIn his Miscellanies he described a number of Chinese women, young and beautiful, who [or so he claimed] desired to marry him. Some he encouraged but in each instance the story peters out, others disappear out of his stories without explanation or further mention. He also had a 'romantic and intimate interlude' with a young Chinese widow, who did not appear to be short of money, and who accompanied Mesny down river to Hankow where they remained in a house near the Yamen where Mesny frequently visited her. He noted at one point that 'there was nothing like gushing love between us, but I could not fail to admire such an admirably sensible woman. What she thought was admiring in me I know not, but I know she said from the first that she required my protection. The only time that I ever noticed anything like affectionate love on her part for me was on my first visit to her after my misadventure at the Lung-wang Miao\". Then she wept. She took my head very gently between her fine hands and repeatedly kissed the fresh scars of my recent wounds... we were both silent.' Despite this, he shortly afterwards described in the Miscellany that he, Mesny, 'had been busy at work and with his friend Pickerell, and paid frequent visits to my charmer near the Tao-t'ai's Yamen. She complained of the scarcity and brevity of my visits and showed unmistakable signs of being in a condition likely to increase the already great population of the vast empire of China.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212744, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "38\n\nHe covered several of his printed pages with descriptions of various groups of attractive 'fairies' who treated him as a great Lord and fussed him with food and attention. He explained that he had wondered who they were and had come to the conclusion that they were well-to-do daughters of officials captured by the Taipings and were part of the Taiping chieftain's retinue.\n\nHe implied at one point that the 'unknown charmer' who had been closely chaperoned by her sister, yet met him daily during his captivity in Nanking to learn English, was one of the daughters of the Taiping ruler Hung Hsiu-ch'üan\". She passed him a note as he was leaving with the Royal Navy rescue party, which, though lengthy and in semi-verse, left no doubt that the maiden, whoever she might have been, was expressing her desire for Mesny to return to marry her. No clue was given why Mesny should believe her to be a daughter of Hung Hsiu-ch'üan, and yet again we are left in the dark with his 'fair admirer' unidentified.\n\nAlthough there was no mention of marriage in this instance, his army commander in Kueichou province in 1870, returning home at the end of the first campaign, had offered to take Mesny back to Hunan with him where he could live en famille. Mesny then went on to say that he told the General that he had been away from his home and family in Jersey for some sixteen years and preferred to return there to get married in his own country rather than in China.\n\nThe priests or monks of the Ch'ien-lin Shan monastery more than once asked him to become a member of their order with a view to becoming eligible as a ruler over the four hundred monks in that monastery. He declined as he said that he had always had an inclination to marry some European lady of education, or to otherwise secure the life companionship of a distinguished European lady writer with whom he might associate as pupil or assistant in her literary career [this was written after he had been married to several Chinese women].\n\nOnly twice in his writings does he ever refer to European women as either attractive or otherwise, and interested in him. One was a young English lady of 'prepossessing appearance and fascinating manners,' who surprised everyone in Hankow by declaring that Mesny, who was unprepared to avail himself at the time as he had set his affections on another lady, 'Lydia,' (a girl at home in Jersey) reciprocated her love in a marvellous manner though they had not met since he was 11 and ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212748, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "42\n\nbreach of good manners, but the veteran told me that the pony was a very nice one, presented to him by the late Marquis Tseng, and then added the doctor, you see I have the regular Peking wheels, not those flash Shansi wheels, and my man does not wear an official hat. This last item is another fault rather than a virtue, which shows that thirty-two years' constant residence has not sufficed to enable the good doctor to learn all the niceties of Chinese etiquette.'\n\nAmongst the scores of interesting items about his various achievements minor themes emerge such as his ability to play Chinese chess. This he used to while away the long hours during the lengthy trip up the Yangtze in early 1868 when he played with Fan Ho-ting. On a somewhat contradictory note he later claimed that General T’ang Chiung had taught him how to play wei-ch'i [Chinese chess] in his camp at Chung-an Chiang in Kueichou in 1868/9. Though Mesny said that he could beat several good players in camp he never seen anyone beat T'ang who was famous for his ability at the game.\n\nThere were however occasional instances of inexplicable ignorance, more often than not surprising in view of the depth and width of his knowledge but never the less excusable as they were nearly always on specialised subjects, such as the story he related about the turtle and snake. Mesny, both in a letter to a Shanghai newspaper in March 1883 and in his Chinese Miscellany some twenty years later, referred to seeing a snake and turtle together crossing the Chung-an river below Kueichou. During his lengthy description of his first Kueichou campaign he states that he was at an elevated position on the bank of the river at the foot of the bluff where the Commander-in-Chief had his headquarters, when he saw a turtle swimming with its head out of the water about thirty yards off. His shot, he saw in the clear water, had beheaded the turtle which sank fast and half cut through the neck of the snake which floated to the surface dead. He then went on to describe how the snake had been connected,\" mating to conceive the most venomous of reptiles called the pang pang-she or cudgel snake or the ch'ing-chu piao, a small dark-coloured springing or darting or leaping toad-like reptile. People told him that when a turtle and snake were so coupled they were referred to as kuei-she er chiang-chun, that is 'a turtle and snake both military commanders', which meant that they were to be feared or dreaded. That particular shot of Mesny's was reported far and wide in quick time. This, mused Mesny in another section of his Miscellany, proved to Mesny what the Chinese have often asserted, that is, the snake and turtle love one another\n\ni", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212749, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "43\n\nespecially in water, He wrote that the Chinese generally assert that snakes and tortoises cohabit; he continued with a story with details at variance with his original version, “and I have seen paintings of turtles and tortoises,1 and metal castings also, with a snake wound about, the emblem of strength and longevity; and on inquiry, I have always been told the same story that it was the only way of multiplying both species. In the Miscellany he also wrote that he had seen a bronze image of a turtle and snake connected together in one of the taoist temples at Chi-nan Fu in Shantung.\n\nVery occasionally his stories verged on the salubrious but were never risqué. Describing his voyage up the Yangtze and passing Wu Shan he described an incident from Chinese mythology which led to a Chinese euphemism. The legend was about the 'pious and eccentric lady Yao-chi who lived before the Christian era immortalised by the ancient poet Sung Yü in an ode. She had entertained a princely guest in the Yang Tai Tower of Voluptuousness, and gratified him with the delights of Yün-yü, 'the Clouds and Rain,' hence the saying Yün-meng T'ai, 'Cloudy Dream of the Voluptuous Tower' which had become a synonym for excessive love and passionate desire for sexual intercourse. The name Yao-chi has in the same manner become the common appellation of renowned courtesans.\n\nSumming Up\n\nMesny's life in China falls neatly in two parts, the first thirteen years of excitement and adventure, followed by forty-five years living to a great extent on his 'bubble reputations', a spent force, living from day to day always in the hope of something turning up. It rarely does and on his own admission he fluctuated from comparative wealth to living hand to mouth.\n\nThere is however little doubt that at one period in his life at least, Mesny was trusted by his immediate Chinese superiors, as far that is as any Chinese official would have faith and confidence in a non-Chinese. These were the Chinese generals in the Imperial Army of Szechuan under whom Mesny served in Kueichou. Mesny seems to have spent the rest of his life trying, not all that successfully, to ensure that his ambitions were beneficial and to the best advantage of all, including himself. He made a great point about his ideas for the modernisation of China, each of them in turn rejected but then later put into practice without", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212751, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "45 \n\nworks recommended by Pioneer [i.e. Mesny] through Governor Chang Chih-tung of Shansi, are now, or soon will be, in full operation in various parts of China, though with no other advantage to the conceiver of those useful nineteen undertakings than that of having done just so much good, gratis, for the benefit of China and her millions of industrious people, to whom we wish long continued peace, happiness and prosperity.\" However, whenever China attempted anything which would lead to modernisation, Mesny leapt into print to congratulate whoever was putting the modernisation in train stressing that it was in line with his suggestions of so many years ago. \n\nIn his early days he displayed extraordinary qualities - audacity, determination, adventurousness and a depth of interest in everything he came across; later, however, when in his declining years he had reverted into a petty entrepreneur, he displayed his achievements on his sleeve and at times waved them above his head just in case they might be overlooked. His rank as a brevet Lieutenant General1 in the Chinese Imperial army with the award of the Pa-r'u-lu and the peacock's feather is stressed right to the end of his life. He is an FRGS and a FR Hist S; and in the very last years of his life he even records in his curriculum vitae as one of his qualifications his membership of the Royal Asiatic Society, North China Branch, into which he was elected as late as 1914 when he was 72. This despite having written for the Journal back in 1891 and his son having been elected in 1911. An outstanding question regrettably remains unanswered. Well we might ask why Mesny was promoted brevet Lieutenant General in 1886, so many years after he had completed his active military service in 1874? Balleine may have the answer. He wrote that Mesny volunteered for active service in 1883: whereupon he was sent to Yunnan, and in 1884 to Foochou. In 1885 he was in charge of two arsenals in Canton and the following year was promoted i.e. whilst still working at the arsenals. \n\nMesny explained that officers as junior as Lieutenant Colonel, when in command of troops, were referred to by the honorific title of General. Mesny began his service in 1868 as a company commander rising to brevet Colonel in 1869 and technically in command of troops, though as he himself does not make this point, we can assume that he was never referred to as 'general'. In 1873 he was promoted to Major-General during the latter days of the second Kueichou campaign when, though he again does not say so, he would have been referred to as 'general'. \n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212760, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "54\n\ncontinuation of Chapter VII of his long-running serial on The Life and Adventures of a British Pioneer in China describing his journey from Hankow to Kueichou in 1868. The Notice explained that 'the original notes taken by me [Mesny] on the journey were sent by special request to Mr. William Tarrant, Editor and Proprietor of The Friend of China, a newspaper published at Shanghai in those days. Before having published my notes, however, Tarrant died and his printing establishment was taken over by Messrs. Little Brothers, I believe, and my notes thus fell into their hands, and no doubt sharpened the appetite of Mr and Mrs Archibald Little for travelling in Szechuan. At any rate I never saw or heard anything more of those notes although I occasionally saw in the columns of the North China Daily News, notes of a Journey to Szechuan which were so very much like mine that I wrote to Mr F. H. Balfour about them, believing they formed part of the notes I had sent to Tarrant. In the winter of 1880-1881 I happened to be again at Chungking and there told the late Consul-General E. Colbourne Baber about the lost notes. Baber thereupon persuaded me to rewrite them from memory without further delay and I did so, hence the present chapters with their many imperfections.' The accusation that the Littles had been involved in 'pirating' his travels would have been serious and may have prompted a response. However, none appears to have been made. The explanation that he had had to rewrite the travels from memory explains why there were so many gaps and duplications. It was however strange that he delayed so long the publication of such a serious allegation against the Littles.\n\nIt is clearer in Volume IV, even more than in previous ones, that Mesny likes to portray himself as more Chinese than Western. He has long commented on individual friendships with numerous Chinese whilst rarely mentioning Europeans and Americans. When he does, they are usually sinologists of one form or another, mainly missionaries like Moule, Griffith, etc. The first article, if it may be called such, was a two-page biography of Tso Tsung-t’ang, a former Governor General or Viceroy of the Min-Che provinces. When Tso was posted to the Shen-Kan provinces in 1865 Mesny called on him in Hankow to pay his respects, and after the Viceroy had learnt that Mesny had been a prisoner of the Taipings, he immediately appointed Mesny as his French and English secretary. In the early 1880s, he invited Mesny to visit him in Foochow where he was again the Viceroy of the Min-che provinces, with a view to Mesny undertaking some progressive works including telegraphs, railways, and mining. The Viceroy died before Mesny was able to call", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212761, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "55\n\non him. Mesny had taken every opportunity to praise Tso and, in good Chinese fashion, looked upon him as his 'protector' or 'patron'.\n\nIn a comparatively brief single-page highlights-only curriculum vitae printed in the Miscellany in 1905, Mesny would appear to have been careful in his choice of words. He used the phrase 'Volunteered for service' not only when he went to Kueichou in 1868, about which he later wrote at length, but also in connexion with 'Manchuria' and 'Peking', the former during the Sino-Japanese War and the latter at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, neither of which has been mentioned elsewhere in the Miscellany. This suggests that he was not taken up on his offers of service, especially as his name does not appear in any of the standard writings on the Boxer era in north China and he does not describe or offer any anecdotes on the subject in his Miscellany.\n\nHis Miscellanies contain a large number of items culled from other works such as Mayer's Chinese Reader's Manual written in Peking in 1874 where Mayers was a Chinese Secretary to HM Legation, and published in Shanghai the same year by the American Presbyterian Mission Press. At one point Mesny claimed that W F Mayers was a friend of his; but reading between the lines one is tempted to see Mesny meeting Mayers over dinner at the Legation in Peking where polite conversation would lead to a discussion on the failure of the Chinese to help build a railway, with Mesny offering advice and suggestions and Mayers, again politely, concurring. This would appear to have been seen by Mesny as Mayers accepting Mesny's ideas and entrusting him with various tasks. Mayers in all probability forgot all about the conversation, but not so Mesny who repeated himself several times in his Miscellanies, explaining how he had offered advice and had been waiting for a follow up from Mayers which never arrived. It is a matter for speculation how often this type of conversation took place, with other parties forgetting, either with or without intent, their talks with Mesny.\n\nMesny periodically advanced oracular statements which in later years would be referred to as 'China-watching'. In 1899 he made several predictions about the 'inadequacies' of the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty and forecast that the end was 'very' nigh with a new reformed China ahead. He also predicted that the Russians for all their implied power would be unable to retain Manchuria against the Japanese who also, Mesny thought, might join up with China making a powerful empire under the Mikado as ruler of the Greater China and Japan. These predictions", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212763, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "57\n\ntaken advantage of, possibly due to the cost of reproduction in his Miscellany though more likely because he did not possess a camera during his travels.\n\n[2] Campaigning in Western China. Regrettably, despite a note in the Miscellany to the effect that he would be writing more, possibly the most interesting part, the second Kueichou campaign, he only completed the first campaign.\n\n[3] Mesny's Itinerary - from Canton to Kashgaria which was later renamed Mesny's Journeys through China (from Canton to Turkestan). This was never completed. Mesny wrote in the Miscellany that he had written an account of his journey from Canton through Kuangsi in 1879 for the London Daily News. \"This very influential and highly respectable journal did not consider my poor contribution sufficiently interesting to insert it in its widely read columns, so the useful information then written by me practically remained unpublished owing to my lack of funds until 1896 when I wrote up some of it in Mesny's Chinese Miscellany.\"\n\n[4] Varieties of Food in China [in which Mesny covers plain and exotic food and menus, eating etiquette, banquets and the production of foodstuffs such as tou-fu]\n\n[5] Progress in China [editorial essays explaining how China kept missing opportunities, and how it would have been different and better if his advice had been taken]\n\n[6] How I made my Fortune by an Old China Hand ['who is even now neither too old to row nor too heavy to ride']\n\n[7] Notes on Tibet; Mongolia; Kueichou and the Miao-tzu [and in several other places he again described Miao customs and tribal differences]; Yunnan and its Trade Routes; and Kuangsi and the West River", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212767, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "61\n\nNovember 1862\n\n1863 March\n\n1863 May 1864 April\n\n1864\n\n1864-1865\n\n1867 Winter\n\n1867\n\nhis junk and three others\n\nCaptured at Fu-shan-chan by Taiping rebels. Mesny held first in Soochow and Chang-shu, then at Pao-ying the Taiping camp, and finally in Nanking\n\nRescued by Adkins, the British Consul at Chin-kiang aboard HMS Slaney and taken back to Chin-kiang\n\nJoined Chinese Imperial Customs Service, Hankow\n\nResigned from Customs Service after fourteen months Involved in cotton broking\n\nEstablished the Hankow Horse Bazaar, a private hotel in Hankow, and set up Hupei Iron and Brassworks, Han-yang Romantic interlude with a Chinese widow in Hankow Mesny called on Tso Tsung-tang during the latter's visit to Hankow and was appointed his French and English Secretary, and was further offered the opportunity to accompany Tso on his campaign to the Northwest. Mesny also claimed that he had made recommendations to Marquis Tso Tsung-tang for a number of undertakings to help modernise China\n\nSold the Huper Iron and Brassworks to officials of the Viceroy of Szechuan province\n\nMesny's trek to war\n\n1868 June\n\nLate July or early August Late August\n\nSeptember\n\nLeft Hankow, after five year's residence, for Szechuan to become a drill instructor with the Szechuan Force\n\nArrived Chungking\n\nDeparted Chungking for Kueichou to join the Szechuan Force suppressing the Miao rebellion: he accepted employment as a military instructor (wu-chiao hsi)\n\nArrived Niu-ch'ang, the headquarters of the Szechuan Force in Kueichou\n\nSeptember 1868-May 1874 Involved in the military campaigns to suppress the Miao\n\nThe Advance: Late Summer 1868-March 1869\n\n1869\n\nPromoted Colonel, awarded the Star of China and the Flowery Plume The Retreat: Summer 1869-Summer 1870 1870/1871\n\n1871\n\n1872\n\nHelped form a joint stock company in Kuei-yang to \"recover mercury\"\n\nThe Withdrawal: mid-August 1870-Lunar New Year 1871\n\nca 1873\n\n1873\n\n1874 Spring\n\nEstablished a small day school for poor boys and girls in the Jade Emperor temple in Kuei-yang, importing suitable books and paying a Chinese teacher, a struggling student painter, Chin Yü-t'ang Siege of Hsin-ch'eng in upper Kueichou (Mesny involved in preparations for the siege during 1871)\n\nWent to Szechuan with General Chou Ta-wu\n\nPromoted Major-General and awarded the Ying-yung Pa-t'u-lu Left Kueichou for Szechuan: Margary expected to meet Mesny in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212768, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "62 \n\n1874 April \n\nJuly October \n\n1874 \n\n1874 December Late 1874 \n\n1875 Summer? 1875 Winter \n\n1877 February \n\nKueichou, but Mesny had already departed \n\nTo Ch'engtu (six month stay] \n\nVisited the temple dedicated to Tu Fu the poet in Ch’engtu Returned by very large houseboat via Sui-fu, Chungking and I-ch'ang to Hankow. Mesny entertained at the palace of General Viscount Pao Chao in K'uei-chou en route on the Yangtze. In Hankow he met Rev. David Hill \n\nPublished 'Tungking' [date in the book itself: Mesny however, claimed later that it was published in 1875] \n\nOfficially married Nien Suey-tsen in Hankow \n\nTravelled overland from Chin-kiang, through Shantung [Chi-nan], en route for Peking. Spent winter in Chi-nan at invitation of Ting Pao-chen, the Governor of Shantung, to whom he claimed he had been an adviser \n\nPeking \n\nReturned to Kueichou via Shanghai [November]. Hankow and Human [1876] Re-appointed Superintendent of the Kueichou Armouries, an appointment he held until March 1877 \n\nMesny entertained two British Protestant missionaries in Kuei-yang \n\nOverland Trek to Western China, through Burma to India and by sea to England \n\n28 May \n\nJune 1878 8 January \n\nNovember \n\n26 December 28 December \n\n1879 February \n\n9 March 4 June \n\nDeparted Kuei-yang for Szechuan [his third visit to the province (en route for England, via Tibet, Burma and India, with Captain Gill)] Arrived Ch'engtu \n\nArrived in England from Calcutta \n\nVisited Channel Islands \n\nReceived telegram from Chinese Minister in London desiring Mesny to accompany the returning Chinese Minister at Berlin to China: departed! Marseilles for Hong Kong aboard the Irrawaddy Arrived Hong Kong from England \n\nDeparted Hong Kong for Canton \n\nVisited Amoy \n\nDeparted Canton for Kueichou, via Kuei-lin (Kuangsi] Arrived Kuei-lin \n\n25 July \n\nArrived Tu-yun Fu \n\n4 August [1880/1881] \n\n1880 February \n\n15 March \n\nAugust \n\n1881 January \n\nFebruary \n\nArrived Kuei-yang \n\nPossibly visited Hanoi? \n\nGovernor of Kueichou province recommended Mesny to the Throne for the bestowal of posthumous honours for three generations [San-tai Erh-p'in Kao-feng] \n\nSet out for Lan-chou via Chungking [where he had remained six months] \n\nMesny spent the night at Ch'ien-hsi Chou, some 90 kms NNW of Kuei-yang, where he was attacked by an armed mob Departed Chungking [after 'delay due to unexpected contretemps\" which Mesny did not clarify] \n\nArrived Lanchou \n\nDeparted Lanchou, crossed Gobi to Ham taking six to seven weeks", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212769, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "63\n\n1881\n\nApril\n\nJune\n\n1882 February March Spring\n\n1882 November 1882/1883\n\n1883 May\n\n1833 Autumn\n\n1883\n\nca 1883/1884\n\nEarly 1884\n\n1884 July\n\nArrived Hami\n\nPassed through Shensi and Kansu to Turkestan he tried to push on through Central Asia to India but was stopped; again, tried to push on to the Russian frontiers via Ili and Tarbagatai but was stopped, visited Hami [HQ Chinese Army]. Residence in Hami where he said he remained until the Treaty of Livadia [2-10-79] was signed and where he learned a number of Turkish words. [Mesny claimed that in 1882 returning from Kashgaria he stayed in Tso Tsung-t’ang's camp. [Tso was recalled from Hami to Peking in late 1880] Departed Hami and retraced his steps leisurely across the Gobi desert to Kansu, on to northern Tibet (visited old fashioned gold diggings) and back to Kan-chou to refit before continuing into Tibet a second time in another direction. He then, travelled through the Kokonor region ending up at Lanchou, February 1881, via Hsi-ning.\n\nDeparted from Northwest China for Peking, via Si-an, Ho-nan Fu, Tai-yuan Fu and Pao-ting Fu.\n\nWhilst in Si-an Mesny visited the Nestorian Cross, later, on his first evening in Taiyuan he lost 640 pages of notes, the journal of his Journey to Hami from Canton\n\nArrived Peking\n\nVisited Tientsin to await the first steamers of the season carrying mails Returned to Tai-yuan in Shansi and Pao-ting Fu, and again visited Si-an.\n\nVisited the famous Shao-lin monastery in the Sung-shan [Mountains] near Ho-nan Fu and invited to settle down for a couple of years with the monks.\n\nDeparted Shansi for Canton; however,\n\nVisited Yunnan province at the invitation of T'ang Chung to assist in the development of natural resources of the province The French authorities in Tongkin insisted that Mesny leave the province Passed through Ch'engtu and Yunnan Fu heading for Canton via Po-se, Nanning Kuangsi [Kuei-hsien, where he spent three to four months whilst the Franco-Chinese war raged in Tongkin), Kueichou and the West River. He travelled much of the way by large house boat. He took careful notes which he offered to the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce but failed to receive any encouragement\n\nArrived Canton, then visited Hong Kong, Macau, Swatow, Amoy and Foochou [Viceroy Chang Chih-tung retained Mesny at Canton for one year and ten months (nfd) He lived in an hotel unable to get an appointment from Chang he eventually withdrew. Mesny met Kung Chao-yuan, the Commissary General at Shanghai for Formosa, at the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai\n\nVisited tomb of Su Hsiao-hsiao near Hangchou. (a celebrated courtesan of the 11th century AD)\n\nDeparted Canton via Hong Kong for Foochou and Shanghai [elsewhere he noted that he had been recommended for the post of Foreign Superintendent of the Arsenal at Foochou during his visit there in 1883)\n\nIn Wu-chang and Han-yang", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212771, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "65\n\n1900 ca 1900\n\n1901 December\n\n1904\n\n1905 Jan/Jun\n\n1907\n\nca 1910/1911\n\n1914 November\n\nca 1914/1915\n\n1914-1919\n\n11 Dec 1919\n\nClaims to have volunteered for service in Peking [Boxer troubles]\n\nMesny visited Nan-chang in Kiangsi where he met Hsiung Shih-fu, a young reformer\n\nInterviewed Viceroy Liu K'un-yı în Nanking.\n\nPublished Mesny's Chinese and English Almannac\n\nPublication of his final volume of his Chinese Miscellany\n\nMost Excellent High Priest in the Keystone Royal Arch Chapter, in Shanghai\n\nHis wife, Han, obtained a legal separation in Shanghai\n\nMesny moved to Hankow\n\nClaims to have passed a medical and then offered his services to the Crown [World War 1]\n\nEmployed by Messrs. Reiss and Co. in Hankow\n\nDied in rue de Paris in Hankow\n\nAppendix C\n\nThe Chinese Imperial Forces\n\nMesny's Involvment in the Suppression of the Miao Revolt\n\nThe First Campaign by Imperial Troops\n\nin Kueichou Province\n\n1868-1871\n\nand\n\nOrder of Battle of the Szechuan Force\n\nChinese Imperial Forces, with the aid of a number of foreigners and foreign arms, had by 1864 succeeded in suppressing the Taiping rebellion against the dynasty. They then turned to liquidating the other rebellions seething in various parts of China which included the Nien movement in northern China, the Moslem minority revolt in Yunnan province, another major Moslem uprising in the North-west, and finally the Miao aboriginal tribes which had revolted in Kueichou province.\n\nThe Miao, or Miao-tzu as Mesny refers to them, rose against the Ch'ing dynasty Manchu rulers of China in 1854 after discontent reached boiling point due not only to Chinese settlers colonising the best lands in the low lying areas of the province of Kueichou, but also to the exploitation of the Miao by Chinese officials and merchants. According to Mesny the passionate and untamed Miao gradually took back almost the whole province apart from the capital, Kuei-yang Fu, and the city", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212772, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "66\n\nof An-shun Fu until, by 1867, the Imperial troops, who had first fought to suppress the major threat from the Taipings, were able to raise sufficient forces to recover the 'lost' lands. The two Kueichou campaigns dragged on for five or more years with, so some claimed, possibly only one tenth of the Miao population surviving. Mesny only describes the first campaign.\n\nThe story of the first campaign which took place in the northern part of the remote and mountainous province of Kueichou during the four years from 1868 as described by Mesny consists of episodes, incidents and background in a day by day or month by month description of one or two of the major skirmishes and assaults, victories and defeats of the one particular Chinese Imperial force, raised and funded by the province of Szechuan. Two other forces were involved, the armies of Hunan province and the internal force of Kueichou province whose army was combined with a force from Yunnan province [northern Kueichou being flanked by the provinces of Szechuan, Hunan and Yunnan]. Mesny's descriptions of the problems of military re-supply, funding, rewarding merit, the punishment of criminals both military and civilian, the treatment of prisoners and medical problems, as well as his descriptions of camp life and inter-officer relations, make the narrative a most interesting story.\n\nThe campaign has been hardly mentioned in histories of China and was probably of little interest in Peking at the time. However, here we had three Chinese Imperial forces operating far from supply bases, some with little incentive to do much more than draw their pay and keep their heads down, and a foreigner with a glorified opinion of his own importance, based in the heart of the Szechuan Force alongside the general in charge of the Central Army and not too far from the Commander-in-Chief [C-in-C]. Mesny's role, so he told us, was to advise his C-in-C and his general on modern foreign arms and their maintenance. We should however bear in mind that Mesny was but 26 at the start of the campaign, and had had no official military training other than having been a seaman and having learned something about the handling of artillery from British ex-servicemen whilst he had been a Customs Officer with the Chinese Imperial Customs on the Yangtze. Amongst his numerous claims to military fame one of the lesser ones was his successful organisation and training of a company of artificers for use at headquarters during the first Kueichou campaign.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212774, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "68\n\nrendered as brevet rank, which Mesny did. 'Ts'an-chiang is an assistant regional commander [tsung-ping kuan], rank 3a in the Chinese forces called the Green Banner. However, according to Brunnert and Hagelstrom, [Present Day Political Organisation of China [1911], translated from the Russian], it equated to Lieutenant Colonel. Mesny lists it as 'Colonel, the lowest grade of general.\n\nBy the latter days of the second Kueichou campaign he appears to have been promoted to the rank of Major-General, and some twelve years later was awarded the rank of Brevet Lieutenant-General, bearing the title for the remainder of his life. As he is portrayed in foreign-style uniform in a photograph in the Miscellany and yet occasionally refers to himself wearing Chinese attire with his Chinese buttons of rank, it is far from clear whether these were genuine ranks or honorary ones awarded to an attached civilian. It is noteworthy that he never refers to himself wearing a mandarin square [the chest badge], though he does mention his cap button. His uniform as an instructor in the army of Tso Tsung-tang consisted of a cap of the French kepi pattern, ornamented with the Chinese coat of arms [two dragons struggling for a burning globe], with a coat and trousers of dark blue navy cloth, ‘nicely braided front, back and sleeves.\n\nMesny explained that between 1868-1871 for two or more years he was in one corps of fifteen2 battalions styled the Ko-i Ch'üan-chün [brigade], part of the Shu-chün, the Szechuan Army Corps; and another for four years with a corps styled Wu-tzu Ch'üan-chün741, also in Kueichou, i.e. from 1871-1874. The latter corps was also in the original Hsiang-chün, [the Hunan Army]. Regrettably this confuses his story rather than clarifying it, as we do not know when he served with the Hsiang-chün unless he means the Wu-tzu corps which in another part of his Miscellany he noted to have been part of the Hunan Force.\n\nAs far as can be ascertained from the jigsaw pieces he has supplied us with, Mesny, when he was with the Szechuan Army Corps in the first campaign in Kueichou province from 1868-1871, and again during the second campaign from 1871-1876 with the Wu-tzu Hunan Army Corps, almost certainly served with one of the new provincial armies which he refers to in his Miscellany as Disciplined Army Battalions.3 At no point does he actually say so in so many words, but bearing in mind the grades he gave for the ranks and styles of the senior officers in his Force and as he was particularly scathing about the proficiency of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212776, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "70\n\nOne of the problems faced by the Szechuan Force commander was the distance between his headquarters and the Viceroy's Yamen in the Szechuanese capital at Ch'eng-tu and the time it took for orders and reports to be carried between them. The length of time between reporting back to Ch'eng-tu and receiving instructions either encouraged the Force commander to take too much upon himself or to sit and wait for further intelligence or instructions. When the Hunanese Force was defeated on its way to take part in a joint operation with the Szechuan force, communications were such that the first the Szechuanese general knew that the plan had gone wrong was from stragglers from the defeated Hunanese Force and from captured Miao. Considering the terrain the commanders had no real choice as communications relied upon runners who had to cross enemy country where the Miao who knew the country well were in full control.\n\nWhilst Mesny did not provide any evidence of the consultative procedure, if indeed there was one, between the Viceroy of Szechuan and the Szechuan Force commander, we do know from Mesny that the military commander in Ch’eng-tu, the Tartar General Chung-shih, was visited by the Szechuan Force commander when the Szechuan Force commander returned to the provincial capital to pay his respects to the visiting Li Hung-chang.\n\nAn Outline Description of The First Campaign against the Miao: 1868-1871\n\nThe first campaign by the Chinese Imperial Forces in Kueichou to suppress the rebellious Miao tribesmen, as seen through Mesny's eyes, began with a thrust by the major element of the Szechuan Force into the heartland of Miao territory during the late summer of 1868. The Kueichou provincial Force and the Hunan Force, two other separate armies under their own commanders, paid and supported by their own provinces, flanked the Szechuan Force though, as we hear little about them and their activities from Mesny, we are led to believe that they were relatively inactive. The interesting point about the forces used to suppress this local rebellion of Miao tribesmen [which was minor on the scale of events], was that each of the Chinese Imperial forces was controlled unilaterally and led by Chinese officers from the contiguous provinces of Kueichou, Hunan and Szechuan without any senior general empowered to command all three forces. Until relatively recently senior military commanders in the Chinese Imperial Army had in the main been Manchus and not native Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212777, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "71\n\nThe Szechuan Force, of five corps with a total of thirty-three battalions* [i.e. 18-20,000 men] to start with, had two brigades up to full strength, the An-ting Brigade and the Ko-i Brigade [the latter with fifteen and a half battalions]. Mesny was located with the headquarters of the Ko-i Brigade during most of the campaign as a foreign adviser to the C-in-C of the Force on the use and maintenance of foreign arms. His descriptions of skirmishes between the Imperial troops and the Miao tribesmen reflect this limitation, being restricted to what he saw for himself and information he was able to gather within both the C-in-C's and the Ko-i Brigade Headquarters.\n\nThe first location of the headquarters of the Ko-i Brigade referred to by Mesny was Niu-ch'ang, though it moved forward shortly afterwards towards the old city of Huang-p'ing Chou. The vanguard advanced to Ma-ping-bah, occupying a Miao camp where the Szechuan Force planned to spend the winter of 1868/9. Shortly after this, Mesny moved to Huang-p'ing Chou, and described a skirmish at Ta-ngai, followed the next day by a full-scale battle at Huang-p'ing itself.\n\nJust before Chinese New Year in 1869, the Ko-i Brigade despatched a reconnaissance party in the direction of the Miao headquarters at Hsin-chou [Huang-p'ing New Town] some ten miles further into tribal Kueichou beyond the old city of Huang-p'ing. They discovered that the Miao had left only a small body of men in the town, having withdrawn their headquarters to Wu-ku Lung. The day after the New Year, a large body of Miao rebels descended from the hills and fired on the Imperial camp at Huang-p'ing but were driven off by the Ko-i Guards Regiment.\n\nRegionalism and factionalism were two powerful factors influencing the inter-personal relationships between members of the various Forces involved in the Kueichou campaign. In order to achieve anything, one had to rely on personal connections. Mesny, who did not hide his partisan views, repeats again and again how unfairly his Commander-in-Chief, T'ang Chiung, had been treated both in rewards for good service and in support, both financial and matériel [both of which were withheld]. Jealousy between the commanders of the various forces caused not only disharmony but, if Mesny is to be believed and there is no reason to doubt him, the failure of the whole of the first campaign. One of China's cultural characteristics was reflected in a number of instances referred to in Mesny's narrative. Personal relationships and connections, 'squeeze', and deep concern for one's self to the detriment of others were the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212779, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "73\n\nmany Miao, a number of whom wished to live in peace and had offered allegiance to the Imperial Force. Meanwhile the Miao rebels who were constructing stockades on the mountain sides above Chung-an prior to attempting to destroy the Imperial Force, were able to observe the C-in-C's headquarters together with Imperial reinforcements and supplies arrive from Ma-ping-bah.\n\nThe Szechuan Force's next objective was the city of Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien some 20 miles away, on the far side of the river. Despite having been in rebel hands for the previous eighteen years it was captured without too much difficulty though the Imperial Force had had a tough time for a day or so repelling Miao counter-attacks.\n\nThe C-in-C of the Szechuan Force sent a proposal to the C-in-C of the Hunan Force suggesting that the Szechuanese should advance on one side of the river Chung-an with the Hunan Force advancing up the other and, as the Hunanese had gunboats, they could also advance up the river itself.\n\nMeanwhile, and here Mesny's chronology is questionable, in early May 1869 the Ko-i Brigade advanced on Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien and prepared to storm the thirteen Miao stockades on the Tieh-chang Po heights above the town. Eventually after a fierce struggle and capture of the stockades, the Ko-i Brigade awaited the approach of the Hunan Force which should have been taking the next mountain range at the same time. Mid-afternoon on the day of the assault on the stockades, as the Hunanese had not appeared, the Ko-i Brigade withdrew to their camp in Chung-an, only to learn that the Hunan Force after initial successes had been badly defeated at Wu-ku Lung.\n\nThe Szechuan Force then remained comparatively inactive in Chung-an for the next seventeen months, until November 1870.\n\nMeanwhile, during the summer of 1869, Miao rebel forces had defeated the Kueichou provincial Force at Tu-yün Fu which left the Szechuan Force undefeated but out on a limb with both flanks exposed by the defeat of the Hunan Force on one side and the defeat of the Kueichou Force on the other. The emergence of a new Miao rebel chieftain threatened the Szechuan Force whilst at the same time the lines of communication between the Szechuan Force and the provincial capital at Kuei-yang and the rear base at Tsun-i were in danger of being cut.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212780, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "74\n\nRepeated references by Mesny to the refusal by the Szechuan provincial Viceroy to send funds, supplies, reinforcements and rations to his provincial Force in Kueichou were followed by harrowing descriptions of the great hardships caused to the Szechuanese troops, with rations virtually non-existent and rampant disease carrying off many men.\n\nBy mid-winter of 1869/70 the C-in-C of the Szechuan Force decided that he could no longer wait for the Hunan Force to complete its reorganisation, and made up his mind to capture Ka-ba Niu-ch’ang, near to where the Hunan Force had been defeated the previous year. In the event the main body of the Ko-i Brigade were defeated with heavy losses though the rest of the Szechuan Force managed to hold on. The Ko-i Brigade, after a feint attack by a flanking element of the Szechuan Force which drew off the Miao rebels, eventually reached Wu-ku Lung and Ka-ba Niu-ch'ang.\n\nAgain the C-in-C of the Szechuan Force proposed joint action with the Hunan Force, supporting an advance this time towards Tu-yün Fu and Ma-ho Chou with the express aim of relieving pressure on the provincial capital. The Hunan Commander appears not to have agreed and, without co-operation and united action, nothing could be attempted and nothing therefore was done. However, T'ang, the C-in-C of the Szechuan Force again decided to act alone. He seemed to be unaware at the time that a new Kueichou provincial C-in-C, Chou Ta-wu, had been appointed to command all troops within the province operating against the rebels; this included the Szechuan and Hunan Forces. T'ang went ahead, ordering the withdrawal of the main body of the Szechuan Force from its forward positions in Miao territory in mid August, leaving behind at Ch'ang-p'ing Hsien some fourteen battalions of his now increased Force to hold the line until new plans could be made and carried out. In less than three days the main body of the Force had retreated unmolested through Ta-ngai and Niu-ch'ang to Weng-an Hsien where the main body remained whilst the C-in-C and his headquarters withdrew a further 20 miles to Kou-ch'ang (later renamed Lung-ch'ang: about half way between Kuei-yang and Tsun-i).\n\nThe commander of one half of the force of the fourteen battalions left behind at Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien decided off his own bat to evacuate the city, abandoning all camp kit and equipment, and fleeing with his seven battalions to Kuei-yang where he spread a report that the main body", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212781, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "75\n\nof the Szechuan Force under the C-in-C had been badly defeated and had left him in the lurch without support. However, the other half of the fourteen battalions remained in Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien and stood firm, and even recovered much of the abandoned equipment. This was not reported to Kuei-yang and Ch'engtu in Szechuan in time to benefit the C-in-C of the Szechuan Force, the story put about by the commander of the seven battalions who had evacuated Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien being believed and acted upon. The C-in-C, T’ang, was therefore degraded and posted to Szechuan,\n\nThe story, according to Mesny's narrative, ended with the demobilisation of several units of the Szechuan Force, the C-in-C's guards and the Ko-i Brigade in particular, and with Mesny settling into life as an adviser to the new supreme commander of all the Imperial forces in Kueichou, Chou Ta-wu; leaving us in anticipation of the next and successful campaign to suppress the rebel Miao, beginning later the same year, 1871, to be published by Mesny. Regrettably it never seems to have got beyond either Mesny's pencil jottings or good intentions.\n\nThe Organisation of the Szechuan Force\n\nIn his Notes on Chinese Military Services Mesny explained that there were several branches of the Army, the Manchu Banner Corps, the Mongol Banner Corps and the Chinese Banner Corps, each with eight banners. There were also the Chinese militia called Chih-ping; volunteer troops raised during the Taiping Rebellion and on many other occasions of emergency, called Yung-ying or simply Yung i.e. braves [known to Mesny as the Mobile Volunteer Force], and the local train bands\", Tuan-lien [known to Mesny as the Sedentary Volunteer Force]; armed peasants trained in the use of weapons for the defence of their homes in both town and country.\n\nMesny appears to have used notes written during the early 1870s to compile his descriptions of the Chinese Imperial forces and seems not to have taken much advantage of the benefit of hindsight to amend them prior to going to press in 1895. It had proved difficult to differentiate between Mesny's personal knowledge and his accuracy in recording detail, and information he acquired from other non-Chinese sources. Many of his notes on the Manchu Army and the Green Standard Regiments have been taken from Mayers'\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212782, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "76\n\nThe Chinese Government, Mayers does not refer to the Lien-chûn Ying. Mesny's ambiguous descriptions are confusing though it would seem that there were four separate bodies, the Banner Forces, the ill-trained Green Standard armies under provincial control, the Disciplined Battalions formed from the Green Standards forces, and the local defence train bands.\n\nThe standing army was divided into two great classes, the Banner Forces, [Ch'i-ping], and the Militia Forces (Chih-ping]. The real Chinese National Army also called Ying-ping generally styled by foreigners as the Green Banner Force [Lu-ch'i Ying'] derived its title from the colour of their triangular standard, green satin with a red satin scalloped border and a golden dragon embroidered in the centre. Each province had a separate army corps under a C-in-C styled Ti-tu Chün-men [one such force was the Kueichou Provincial Force operating alongside the Szechuan Force in which Mesny served]. The forces consisted entirely of Chinese and were, in fact, a part of the local militia. Three centuries ago, wrote Mesny, it was the finest military force in the world: as it was in 1895, he added. The force was beneath criticism.\n\nThe Disciplined Army battalions, the Lien-Chün Ying [troops trained by and after foreign advisers], was a new organisation instituted by Ts'en Yü-ying, formerly Governor of Yunnan, Kueichou, Fukien and subsequently Governor-General of the Yun-kuei provinces. It consisted of detachments from the various Territorial Green Regiments formed into battalions and bearing the same territorial name as the regiment from which they had been detached and of which these detachments actually formed or constituted a fighting or field battalion. The Disciplined Battalions were armed with obsolete rifles but far superior to anything opposed to them in Yunnan or Kueichou. These Disciplined Armies, often referred to as the Anhui and Hunan Armies, were originally privately raised and financed by Tseng Kuo-fan and Li Hung-chang to combat the Taiping rebel armies and were under the personal command of Han Chinese generals. Later, they employed westerners such as Mesny to assist China's programme of 'self-strengthening', primarily in the sphere of armaments.\n\nAlthough Mesny explained that there was a lack of uniformity in organisation throughout the whole of China he went into some detail, and added that each provincial army corps was considered a regular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212784, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "78\n\nT'ang, dismissed and the Kueichou Force commander, Chou Ta-wang assuming supreme command of all Forces operating within the province of Kueichou.\n\nImperial Army Organisation as Described by Mesny\n\nA division was usually divided into three or more brigades, though some had five, designated as follows:\n\nCh'ien-lu or ch'ien-chün vanguard or the advance\n\nChung-lu 中路 the central brigade\n\nHou-lu 後路 rearguard or the rear brigade:\n\nTso-lu 左路 the left brigade or the left wing of the division, sometimes known as Tso-i\n\nYu-lu 右路 the right brigade or the right wing of the division, sometimes known as Yu-i\n\nThe lone three brigades in a division, when such a formation existed, were usually designated rear, centre and advance, with the divisional general usually with the centre brigade.\n\nThe order of their arrangement in battalions of field troops [yung-ying 勇營] was\n\nCentre, Left, Right, Van and Rear\n\nthus forming a cross [sic] when in order of battle or encampment. On the march however if the above order could not be maintained the order of movement was as follows:\n\nVan, Left Wing, Centre including staff and impedimenta, Right Wing and Rear Guard\n\nThis order held good for divisions, brigades, battalions and companies.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212785, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "79\n\nIf however moving on a broad front the order was:\n\nVan Left Centre Right Rear\n\n[on different roads]\n\nThe bodyguard in a field force and elsewhere, usually the central company of a battalion, or the central battalion of a brigade of five or more battalions, was styled chin-ping, whilst the escort or individual guardsman was a hu-ping#.\n\nEach battalion, ying, of three companies, had five hundred fighting men and one hundred and fifty supporting coolies. The battalions were commanded by a major, tu-ssu#, with two 2nd major adjutants.\n\nEach company, shao\", of three sections, consisted of approximately one hundred fighting men, supported by a further number of unpaid men awaiting appointment as soldiers, and supporting coolies. Companies were commanded by a captain, ch'ien-tsung†§, with two lieutenants, orderlies and personal coolies. Later, Mesny notes that strengths and personnel of Chinese military companies can be very elastic.\n\nEach section, tui, of three 'tents', was commanded by an ensign or warrant officer, with two further junior warrant officers or sergeants.\n\nEach tent, p'eng, contained sixteen men: these consisted of a corporal, shih-changH, in charge, two lance corporals, ten men, yung or ping, and three coolies, fu#.\n\n10\n\nThe Ko-i Rifle Brigade in Kueichou had a Guards Battalion\"[Ch'in-ping Ying#4] of six companies, each company having at least 150 men, which with staff officers brought the total strength of the battalion up to 1000 men. At the time Mesny joined the Force there were also two rifled twelve-pounder field guns and an extra battalion of light infantry, styled Fu Hu-chünH. The 700 men of this extra battalion were all former rebels [surrendered or captured\"] of various ages, from 20 to 40; many of them decorated with scars and wounds. Three months after Mesny joined in 1868 this particular battalion was formed into an independent corps, as it were, with the glorious style of the Ever Victorious Force, Chang-sheng Chün. When the Force was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212787, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "81\n\nin an office which bore the same name and in which there was a staff of clerks etc. It corresponded to all intents and purposes with the western orderly room in which was transacted nearly all the business concerning the force of which it formed a part. Before the Taiping rebellion military secretaries and clerks were all military officers but after it civil service men got the appointments owing to the fact that so few military men could read or write sufficiently well to carry on the correspondence of the force. All offenders against military laws, whether soldiers or civilians, were first of all examined by the military secretariat or a delegate appointed by him. Some viceroys had several such secretaries, each attached to some department with the chief of them styled Tsung-lu Ying-wu-ch'u, i.e., Chief Director of the Army Secretariat. Soldiers in attendance wore the name of the office on their uniforms. In provincial Governors' staff brigades, Fu-piao Ying, warrant officers and NCOs were employed as couriers and runners.\n\nStandards and standard bearers were frequently referred to in Mesny's accounts: each standard being displayed to make known the location of the unit or official represented. A number of the petty unit and formation supporting officials had the character for 'flag' [ch'i] within their title. Examples of these were the Quartermaster in charge of ammunition depots and reserves in a Field Force who displayed a red flag and was known as The Red Flag [Hung-ch'i] and the QM in charge of provisions was the Blue Flag [Lan-ch'i]. These officers were subordinate to the Quartermaster [Chün-chuang] who was responsible for all stores and clothing, and who in turn was subordinate to the Headquarters' Commissary Officer [Liang-t'ai].\n\nCoolies were paid three taels of pure silver per month of thirty days [or forty days for An-hui troops], private soldiers four taels two mace, decurions four taels five mace, orderly officers eight taels, vice commanders of companies twelve taels and one servant, commanders of companies eighteen taels and two servants, vice-commander of a battalion received thirty-two taels and three servants, the commander of a battalion received one hundred and eight taels and forty coolies, besides extras, brigadiers got two hundred taels for each battalion in their brigade besides their battalion pay and perquisites. Mesny continued: the company commanders in the Force in which he served in Kueichou made about double their pay every month in perquisites of all kinds. The battalion commanders made about seven hundred taels a month, but added Mesny, he had heard that the company and battalion commanders", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212788, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "82\n\nof the Anhui troops made much more. In the Wu-tzu Hunan Army Corps in which Mesny served during the second campaign in Kueichou, twenty battalions were farmed out to their respective chiefs who were each paid monthly two thousand eight hundred and forty taels to find pay and rations for their men. Those chiefs of battalions cleared about one thousand taels a month. The men usually got one tael a month mess money and about thirty catties of rice, for which sixty tael cents was deducted from the men's pay, even when they ate rice that had been obtained by capture from the enemy.\n\nA soldier's uniform consisted of a long shirt worn over his undershirt; a long robe or coat, split before and behind, for riding; a short over coat with a round patch on the breast and shoulders on which was inscribed the name of his division or brigade as well as the name of his regiment and company, also his own name. The riding coat was dark blue with green or red facings, the long coat was grey; he also wore a sash, hat and boots. The price for this outfit was deducted by small instalments from the soldier's regular pay, so that it took one a year or two to get out of debt on the Adjutant's books.\n\nThe Miao Rebels\n\nAccording to Mesny the enemy, during the mid-nineteenth century, consisted of four separate and individual groups.\n\n1. Remnants of the Taiping reformers detached from Shih Ta-kai's Second Army (Hung-ping chün)\n\n2. Two local factions of local rebels\n\nA. Huang-hao The Yellow 'Signals'\n\nB. Pai-hao The White 'Signals'\n\n3. Mohammedan rebels: Hui-fei, called Pai-ch'i- White Flags\n\n4. The Miao-tzu aboriginals Miao-fei (83 different tribes)\n\nThe Szechuan Force had suppressed the first three groups before beginning the campaign to suppress the fourth, the Miao.\n\n83", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212789, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "83\n\nFrom Mesny's various descriptions of the Szechuan Force with which he served the following, extracted from numerous items within his Miscellanies, is a considered view of the Order of Battle of the Force:\n\nSzechuan Army Corps\n\nKueichou\n\n(1868-1872)\n\nCommander-in-chief [tsung-t'ung]: T'ang Chiung\n\nThe Szechuan Army Corps consisted of\n\ntwo self-contained rifle brigades of Chinese forces\n\ni.e. Field Force Units (Lien-chün Ying)\n\nthe An-ting Ch'ũan-chün and the Ko (or Kuo)-i Ch'ũan-chün\n\n安定全軍\n\n果義全軍\n\nunder the direct\n\ncommand of the C-in-C\n\nconsisting of ten battalions\n\nunder command of General Liu\n\nHo-ling consisting of fifteen\n\nbattalions", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212793, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "KUEICHOU PROVINCE\n\n \n COMMISSARY(FORCE NG SETa)\n \n\nHUNAN PROVINCE\n\n \n HUMAN FORCE\n Chow foldchy)\n FORCE\n •Ching-pong\n Keel-ting\n \n\n \n +\n MIAO\n \n\nLEGEND\n\nAREA OF MAR\n\nHOLITAM\n\nВешня", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212801, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Terminology\n\n95\n\nButton : The knobs used by the Manchu dynasty to indicate rank, worn on top of caps. They were either transparent or opaque and, depending on rank, red, blue, white or plain gold.\n\nCash: the only coin cast in Imperial China prior to modernisation in the early twentieth century; a crude copper disk each with a square hole in the centre for convenience in carrying a large quantity, hence the expression ‘strings of cash'. Cash, like taels [see below] lacked uniformity in value, and strings, normally a thousand cash, often were composed of 700 pieces or even 1100 according to the regulations prevailing in the locality at the time. Giles claimed that the name was derived from Caixa, the Moorish name for the coin found at Malacca by the Portuguese in AD 1511.\n\nCh'al-kuan : Orderly Officers. These were men of all ranks, risen from the lowest grades, and were the operative staff of any commander.\n\nChai-tzu #7: a common term for a stockade or more commonly in southern Chinese rural areas, the village outer stockade.\n\nChen-t'ai #✩ : General of Division and an Area Commander\n\nChiang-chün #: General, a rank in the Chinese Imperial army used for commanders of reasonably substantial bodies of men be they regular forces or forces recruited for a specific campaign. Mesny explained that any commander lieutenant-colonel and above was referred to as general, and provided a good example with General Hsieh, the adopted son of General Liu, a major commander in the Szechuan force in which Mesny served. Hsieh was only 22 at the time of the campaign, some four years younger than Mesny. He had been the orderly to General Liu and had been adopted by him as his son after Hsieh had carried Liu off the battlefield, saving his life. General Hsieh's command in the Kueichou campaign consisted of the Left-wing Regiment and its second battalion; he could therefore be a regimental commander equating to a full colonel or brigadier at the most in western parlance. Another example is the \"solitary battalion' under command of General Ho Te-wu, the Chung-tzu Ying, with Ying being a 'force of a number of battalions' or ‘a lone battalion'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212804, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "98\n\nLikin ✰✰ : [li-chín] An arbitrary tax, originally of one cash per tael 釐金 on all kinds of produce, known to foreigners as the 'tax of one-thousandth', imposed in 1853 with a view to making up the deficiency in the land tax caused by the Taiping and Nien-fei troubles. Hence its common term, a 'war tax'.\n\nLorcha: A vessel having a hull of Chinese build but rigged with European masts and sails, and usually manned by a European captain and a Chinese crew.\n\nMace: The tenth part of a Chinese tael [q.v.] or ounce.\n\nMiao-tzu #7: shoots or sons of the soil: one of the larger of the southern Chinese aboriginal non-Chinese races subjugated by the Chinese, whose revolt in the 1860s lead to Mesny being employed by the Chinese army. This was not their first revolt; they had rebelled against Imperial rule at the end of the eighteenth century when their widespread revolt in Kueichou and Hunan provinces was put down with great difficulty owing to the mountains and forests covering that part of the world.\n\nMixed Courts: Instituted in 1865 in the Shanghai International Settlements [q.v.] for the hearing of cases between Chinese residents in the Settlements, between Chinese and foreign residents, and where foreigners were the defendants, provided always that they were unrepresented by a Consul on the spot. All suits were tried by a Chinese official having the rank of sub-Prefect, with the assistance, in cases where foreigners were concerned, of an assessor of the same nationality.\n\nMuslim Rebellion: the rebellion in the northern Chinese provinces of Shensi and Kansu between 1862 and 1873.\n\nNanking: the major city on the Yangtze and capital of Ming China. The 'Southern Capital', held by the Taipings from 1850 to 1864.\n\nNestorian Christians: The church which first introduced Christianity into China, at the close of the 6th century AD.\n\nNien-fei : [lit. The Twisting Robbers], The official designation of the large bodies of rebels who ravaged the plains of north China for a number of years. They referred to themselves as Nien-Tzu [The Coilers or Twisters] from their peculiar manner of formation in battle. The Nien", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214366, "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": 224, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "190\n\nfor\n\nmany years. Although the government had turned a blind eye to such activities in the past, mainly in the name of making tourist dollars, it now focused attention on these 'superstitious rituals' which were said to be daily corroding the ideology of the people. The magazine, saying that market forces had prompted a resurgence of 'backward' religious practices, described how the system of traditional beliefs which had been finding fertile ground in the countryside was now creeping towards urban centres. This would seem neither to have inhibited nor prevented Taiwanese pilgrims flying into mainland China bearing Taiwanese images of deities to their particular cult centres in Fukien and Chekiang provinces for their 'power' [ling] to be renewed. It has to be remembered, however, that Taiwanese visitors are treated as privileged guests.\n\nProblems of luck and fate are as real today in China as they are in any rural society, and as they were in pre-communist China. Some private firms are reported maintaining altars on company premises and are making offerings to the traditional God of Wealth in the belief that this would help ensure their success in business. Buddhist statues have been placed in cultural centres and tutelary deities adorn the roofs of schools. Children too seem to have succumbed to the craze. A survey of 1,622 children between 11 and 12 in Changchun showed 50 per cent believed in fate and 40 per cent believed in the immortality of the soul. A further 40 per cent of boys and nearly 60 per cent of girls believed in spirits and in Heaven and Hell. It went on to describe the resurgence of superstitious practices and the appearance of several 'reactionary sects.' The September 1996 issue of Democracy and Legal System magazine said that tens of thousands of temples dedicated to China's colourful assembly of gods were being illegally built or restored. It quoted 20,1692 in Fukien province, 9,000 in Honan and 10,000 in Shansi provinces had been destroyed, and even 597 state-run restaurants in Peking had taken down and removed Buddhist shrines during one month alone. A further report described a similar crackdown in Hupei province where 1,600 'pagan' shrines, mostly dedicated to the Earth God, had been destroyed as part of the nation-wide crackdown. Similar action had been taken in Kueichou province where nine illegal temples had been closed in one month. A report about Chekiang province about the same time claimed that provincial officials had brought under control 17,900 Taoist, Buddhist or Christian [sic] temples and monasteries.\n\nThe mainland newspaper, Paok'an Wenchai, had about this same time criticised the widespread superstitious practices in the building", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216068, "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": 367, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "301\n\ngaol on Amoy Road, at the end of the Kueichou Road, and he probably occupied a cell that had previously been prepared to receive me.\n\nMesny was commanded to appear before Her Britannic Majesty's Supreme Court for China and Japan in Shanghai on the 8th day of October 1891 to give material evidence and testify what he knew concerning the charge that Charles Henry Allen Welch Mason of Shanghai on or about the 13th inst. did have in his possession or under his control five pounds or thereabouts of an explosive substance under circumstances that gave reasonable suspicion that he did not have it in his possession for a lawful purpose. He attended as requested with the result that Mason got nine months imprisonment, at Shanghai and to be deported from China for ever thereafter or something like that. Thus it happened, added Mesny, 'that this biter was bitten.'\n\nMesny added that he had suffered ever since from the evil effects of this monstrous attempt to involve him in a treasonable plot. 'I have never been able to obtain employment from the Chinese Government since those days and many of my Chinese friends have cut me dead under the impression that I must have been guilty of some collusion with Mason in some inexplicable manner.\n\nThus in 1892 when I called on Earl Li Hongzhang at Tianjin he accused me of being the head centre of all the Gelao Hui men in China.\n\n'Last winter [noted as 1892 but printed a number years later] I was in Nanjing and in a fair way of getting a good command when Zai Jun, the Daotai of Shanghai, I believe, telegraphed to the Viceroy to beware of me as I was a dangerous character, the friend of Mason, the plotter. My own wife has told me hundreds of times that she is in dread of the awful fate that awaits me on this account and has begged me to grant her a letter of divorce and let her take the children away, she has worried the life out of me during the past few months with this clamour for a divorce and I believe that she is being incited thereto by designing people who take advantage of her weakness of mind to thus annoy me, and when they have got my wife away from me by divorce she ceases to be British [i.e. post-1898], then will they do to her what they do not dare to do now, and probably kill my children.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]