[ { "id": 206231, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "42 \n\nCHIU LING-YEONG \n\nintoxicated, but the government, and her few high officials who blindly and ignorantly thought that China had gained victory over France, were in a state of intoxication. One could not deny that China had to have a series of urgent internal reforms and the method and procedure were not so simple as Tseng put forward in his article.\n\nThe welfare of a nation, Ho Kai emphasized, especially where absolute monarchy obtained, was very much in the hands of the officials who were entrusted by its sovereign to rule over his subjects. On these depended in a large measure the happiness, unity and strength of the people under their sway. By their exalted positions, Ho Kai further stressed, they were capable of doing good or evil to those around them. In ancient time, responsible persons were selected to help administer the Empire. The Emperor and those in authority always opened their ears and cast their eyes over the Empire. When a person was found renowned for virtue, talent, learning, ability and experience, he was immediately invited to take office, high or low according to his capacity. The invitation was always cordial and sincere. In the case of a person of extraordinary merit, it was always the highest authority who went in person to tender the invitation. However, in late 19th century China, this mode of behaviour had long since gone out of fashion. It had been buried with the sages who had ruled over China so successfully. There were only two ways of entering officialdom, either by literary examination or by purchase, Ho Kai pointed out. He rejected Tseng's statement that Chinese officials were carefully selected from those who possessed varied talents.\n\nTo secure an official position by purchase was indeed vile. Those who obtained their official positions in this way usually got back their investment with a handsome profit after a brief period. The first method of entering officialdom, that is, by the literary examination, appeared to be very reasonable and to conform with modern ideas; but anyone who took the trouble to enquire, would see at once that these examinations were entirely worthless as a test of real ability and talent. Success in these examinations involved no knowledge of modern sciences or arts. It certainly required a good memory for or knowledge of the precepts and sayings of China's ancient sages. Unfortunately, very few people honestly succeeded in their examinations in this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212419, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 361, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "338\n\nconsiders the scale of the task that he set himself. The Search for Modern China is a landmark in China scholarship. Spence's talent as a raconteur and his immensely readable style enable him to succeed in making history interesting to the nonspecialist.\n\nOn the present succession crisis in China, Spence points out the eerie parallel between Deng Xiaoping's behavior today and that of Mao Zedong in his last years, with each man anointing, then purging, one hand-picked successor after another. Even greater perspective is provided by his relating the present situation to that of the early Qing dynasty, when the emperor Kangxi was brought, as Spence put it, \"to the edge of despair\" by the succession question (p. 245), not being able to decide which of his many sons to name as his heir.\n\nThe author provides a rare perspective on China's centuries-old struggle to come to terms with the rest of the world,\n\nHe recalls that the reformers of 1898 had sought to resolve this tension by developing the concept of ti, or \"essence,\" and yong, or \"practical use.\" This formulation, Spence says, \"affirmed that there was indeed a fundamental structure of Chinese moral and philosophical values that gave continuity and meaning to the civilization. Holding on to that belief, China could then afford to adopt quickly and dramatically all sorts of Western practices, and to hire Western advisers\" (p. 225).\n\nSpence sees Deng and the other Chinese leaders today falling victim to the nineteenth-century fallacy that China could join the modern world entirely on its own terms, sacrificing nothing of its prevailing ideological purity\" (p. 746).\n\nHe feels this effort is doomed to failure. \"The task was even more hopeless in the late 1980s than it had been in the 1880s”, Spence concludes. \"What was left of Chinese Communist doctrine after the rejection of many of Mao's ideas and the emergence of the enterprise system was a thinner gruel even than the overformalized Confucianism that had guided the reformers of the late Qing. The party elders flailing out at Zhao Ziyang and his noisy supporters were reacting in an oddly similar way to the Empress Dowager Cixi as she struck back at Emperor Guangxu for attempting his Hundred Days' Reforms\" (p. 746).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213878, "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-1996", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "204\n\nHong Kong to Beijing. Speculation arose over whether Li would really depart from Canton. The Governor was informed by the Chinese Legislative Councillors that while Li did not dare to disregard the imperial edict, he would welcome an excuse for refusing.\n\nIn the meantime, the Governor of Hong Kong sent an urgent telegram to London asking for permission to detain Li by military force. London called upon the British Consul in Beijing for advice. This Consul, always on good terms with Beijing, advised that Britain should remain neutral. On the day when the Governor met Li, he recorded something very interesting:\n\nThe Viceroy then asked... whom the Powers wanted to see to be Emperor. Who would England like to see Emperor?... I answered that in such an event the Powers would probably ask the advice of the strongest man in China that they could find as to what was best to be done.\n\nEnding his record, the Governor predicted that Li would remain in Shanghai until \"the tide turn[ed]”. His prediction proved to be correct. Through Hong Kong, Li travelled northward, and stayed in Shanghai for three months, before he departed for Beijing probably after the \"tide really turn[ed]\".\n\nThe Late Qing Reforms\n\nTo curb this rising provincialism, the Manchu government put forward a constitutional reform in 1904. Part of its aim was to institutionalize and to centralize the practice of networking. The Manchu government introduced reform to re-define élite status in China - the imperial examination was abolished, a merchant charter was introduced, China's first legislation on chambers of commerce came about, and the first company laws were implemented. Accordingly, all commercial associations were to be reorganized as chambers of commerce. Through the medium of these chambers, merchants and companies were required to register with the Beijing government. These policies intended to organize a national system of chambers of commerce which corresponded to a hierarchy of regional assemblies leading all the way up to the Senate in Beijing. In economic terms, several Commissioners of Business Promotion were appointed by Beijing to supervise the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213879, "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-1996", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "205\n\ndifferent parts of China As the Manchu government was drumming up a \"commercial war\" between Chinese and foreign enterprises, overseas Chinese merchants were targeted by Beijing as a source of wealth for new industries.\n\nIn Hong Kong, the first groups of Hong Kong Chinese to respond to this reform were a group of newly returned migrants of Siyi and Xiangshan origins. They returned from America and Australia, where exclusion policies against Chinese immigrants had been implemented during the 1890s. Once settled in Hong Kong, they found themselves left outside the established leadership hierarchy in the colony (the Legislative Council-Tung Wah circle). They had to vest their interests in other institutions They looked northward and, immediately, they saw hope in China, where the late Qing reforms offered them ample chances for political and economic advancement. The Governor recalled with contempt the composition of the Siyi Chamber.\n\n[It is] composed of Californian and Australian coolies, artisans who though [they] could often talk fair English, could not write their names in any language\n\nThanks to this rhetoric of \"commercial war\", these overseas returned migrants penetrated into south China. They formed themselves into regional chambers of commerce and through which they raised capital for such large-scale investments as railways, public utilities and land reclamation in Guangdong. Among others, these enterprises included a Siyi Steamship Company, a Sunning (of Siyi) Railway Company and two companies, with respectively 500,000 and 580,000 silver taels in capital, for “port-building” against Portuguese Macao and British Hong Kong. With the approval of the Qing government, these two port-building companies initiated two large-scale port and market development schemes in Siyi and Xiangshan which were intended to recover benefits lost to Hong Kong and Macau. The channel that these merchants went through was the following, the chambers of commerce submitted petitions to the Commissioner of Industrial Promotion and thence to the Bureau of Commerce in Beijing\n\nConservative in design, this late Qing reform led to revolutionary consequences. Among these policies of centralization was Beijing's attempt to nationalize economic resources in the provinces. It was the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214197, "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "18\n\npeople believe, and there appears to be truth in this (with greater use being made of the Chinese language since the Handover), that Hong Kong as a city-state is becoming more Chinese. Although this can affect the development of Hong Kong humour it is expected to be more than offset by globalisation and the world-wide effects of radio, television, the Internet and information technology.\n\nThe late Lin Yutang postulated that a Chinese believes, while getting in a few puffs while standing in front of a no-smoking sign, that the world is a stage where drama and high comedy abound. Life is a huge farce and one must not take matters too seriously, whether they be government reforms or funerals (Lin, 1936:65). The latter have a certain amount of 'gaiety' about them. Sending a person on his or her last journey to confront the final mystery of life should, it is believed, be expensive. The Chinese consider only Europeans (Lin insists) take funerals seriously and try to make them solemn affairs. What is wrong at a funeral in getting a few words across to a pal, about horse racing or morning walks, when you have not seen him for a long time? The man who takes life too seriously and obeys all the rules (according to Lin), and keeps off the grass when nobody is looking, appears ridiculous. In addition Chinese humour often takes a tolerant view of vice and evil. Instead of condemning them outright why not make fun of them? Lin Yutang believed humour could transcend cynicism and be used for other and better purposes than reconciling oneself to one's down-trodden position.\n\nAccording to Lin Yutang (1936:64), first-class humour is to be found in the Confucian Analects. \"After all, Confucius is quoted as having said, because Tsai Yu napped during the day:\n\nRotten wood cannot be carved nor a wall of dried dung trowelled. How would I rebuke him?\n\nA saying like that is always good for a chuckle.\n\nMuch humour is to be found in Ming dynasty novels, in Hong Kong's New Territories' folk songs (largely forgotten except among the elderly), and in the poetry of the drunkard, Li Po (alias Li T'ai-po), who lived in the eighth century. He made much of the solace and lib-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]