[ { "id": 205148, "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-1966", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n48 Ts'en, Hsü-yün ho-shang nien-p'u, Hong Kong, 1962, pp. 21-22.\n\n49 Ts'en, Hsü-yün, pp. 40-43.\n\n99\n\n50 Ts'en, Hsi-yün, pp. 47-48. I have been unable to get confirmation of this story in Thailand; nor have I been able to confirm the related episode, in which Hsü-yün on his way to Bangkok that year met an Englishman who had been British consul in Teng-yüeh and Kunming and who gave Hsü-yün 3,000 pounds Sterling towards the expense of transporting a set of the Tripitaka back to Yunnan. The records of the Foreign Office in London do not appear to reveal who this may have been.\n\n51 White marble images from Burma and Thailand, termed in Chinese \"jade buddhas\" (yi-fo) have been popular in China during the past century. In the late 1890's a set of such images was made in India for a Chinese monk from P'u-t'o Shan, who spent the better part of three years at Oudh overseeing the work. So popular were these particular images that when they arrived in Shanghai, they were kept on exhibit in nearby Woosung at the request of the authorities as a large number of Chinese visit them daily, which was quite profitable for the railway.\" See Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 31 (1896-1897), 203. These may well have been the jade buddhas installed during the reconstruction of the Fa-yü Ssu on P'u-t'o Shan,\n\n52 Ts'en, Hsi-yün, p. 66.\n\n53 Cheng-lien, Ch'ang-chou T'ien-ning ssu-chih, Shanghai, 1948, 7:102. Cf. Chou Hsiang-kuang, History of Chinese Buddhism, Allahabad, 1955, p. 214,\n\n54 See Eastern Buddhist, 3.3 (October-December, 1924), p. 274. This is the earliest instance I have encountered of a Chinese Buddhist going abroad to study Theravada. Unlike Huang Mao-lin he is not stated to have had the goal of spreading Mahayana as well.\n\n55 For example in 1916 the head of the Chi-le Ssu, Pen-chung, led a group of his Refugee disciples to Ku Shan to receive the lay ordination: they numbered five out of the six upasakas and forty out of the 114 upasikas. This information comes from the 1916 ordination yearbook.\n\n56 See Yüan-ying fa-shih chi-nien k'an (Memorial volume for Yüan-ying), Singapore, 1954, pp. 13-14.\n\n57 However, they came from around Amoy rather than around Foochow, where Ku Shan was located.\n\n58 Chinese Year Book 1937, p. 74.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206006, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 81\n\nUntil the treaty port era that began with the Treaty of Nanking 1842, most Chinese emigration was voluntary, and mainly to South-east Asia. Then the situation changed. Almost coincident with the opening of the treaty ports and the expansion of foreign shipping on the coast, a widespread demand for cheap labour arose in many parts of the tropics, to replace the recently emancipated slave labour, and also to supply the additional workers required for the increased agricultural and industrial development which followed the establishment of European administrations. In many of these places contract labour from China provided the solution.\n\nMuch of the contract labour was voluntary; but many thousands of the Chinese emigrants to the Spanish and ex-Spanish colonies of South America and the West Indies were kidnapped, abducted by unscrupulous crimps, or sold by cruel or poverty-stricken relatives. The coolies themselves were not always blameless, and many accepted engagement money and then failed to turn up at the collecting centres, or absconded before joining the ship. The labour agents employed by the centres received a capitation fee for every coolie they delivered at the coast, and were specially active during famines and depressions. In 1853 the capitation fee was three dollars per head, but in addition these agents often appropriated any money advanced to the coolies on the score of defraying expenses, and also charged them with the capitation fee, maintenance costs at the depot, and other expenses. As a result the unfortunate coolie often found himself saddled with a heavy debt which might amount to several months' wages before he ever set foot on the promised land. But whether voluntary or forced, the coolies were herded into wretched barracoons at the coast while waiting for their ship, and then suffered great hardship and cruelty on the voyage. In spite of repeated protests, British ships and Hong Kong played an invidious part in this infamous traffic in the early treaty port years.\n\nHowever, the British government soon made attempts to ameliorate the abuses of the emigrant trade but only succeeded in diverting much of it to other ports such as Whampoa, Macao, Cumsingmoon, Amoy, and Swatow. The Chinese Passengers' Act, passed in 1855, prescribed certain standards of food, accommodation, medical attention, and so on; and two years later a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206865, "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-1973", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "136\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA few months after the festive opening of the temple, \"The Joss House Committee\" received from Government the grant of a lot adjoining the temple for the erection of a school.\n\nSometime between 1860 and 1865 a small building was built on the rocky hillside just below the Man Mo Temple. It was near Circular Pathway and Ladder Street. In the Hong Kong Rate lists its name is given at one time as \"Sam Young” Miu and at another time as \"Sam Sing\" Miu. The 1878 Rate has the notation \"removed\". This is clearly another temple.\n\nEitel states that the Tai Wong Temple in Spring Gardens was in existence at the time of the British occupation of Hong Kong. If so, title to the Queen's Road East property on which it is built was not obtained until 1847. Lee Fun-wei, a compradore, then obtained a Crown Lease for Inland Lot 257. In 1852, Lee Muy, \"carer of Joss House\", was witness to the transfer of a nearby house. He may be the same as Lee Amoy, \"formerly a butcher, but now of no occupation”, who obtained a court order in 1864 prohibiting Lee Fun-wei from selling or further mortgaging the temple property. In the following year the two parties exchanged properties. Lee Amoy conveyed to Lee Fun Wei a lot with five houses and in return received Inland Lot 257 with \"Joss House, dwelling house and building erected thereon\". Lee Amoy immediately mortgaged the temple property to Delfino Noronha, a Portuguese printer, for $1,500. The mortgage remained unpaid, and in 1869 Noronha sold the temple to a committee composed of Tam Achoy, Ho Asik, and Lee Yuk Hang. It thus passed out of the private ownership of the Lee family to the representatives of the Chinese community.\n\nIf Eitel's statement is correct, that the temple on Queen's Road East at Spring Gardens was in existence before the British occupation of the Island, its proprietors the Lee family may have been settled in the Spring Gardens area, now better known as Wanchai, before the occupation. When Crown Leases were issued for land in this area in 1847, several members of the Lee family secured lots.\n\nA notice of the Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau written by Mr. James Hayes appears in Vol. 7 of this Journal. The date of the bell in the temple is given as 1773. As we have noticed Eitel states the temple was built about 1770. Information on when and by whom it was built is given in a court case reported in The China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208215, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 254, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "238\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nI wish to express my thanks to Dr. Robert F. Inger (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago) for kindly confirming my identifications of specimens of both R. paraspinosa and R. spinosa from Hong Kong, and to Dr. Frank F. Reitinger and Mr. Jerry K. S. Lee for their generous gift of all of the above-mentioned specimens from Tai Mo Shan.\n\nREFERENCE\n\nDubois, A.\n\n1975 Un nouveau sous-genre (Paa) et trois nouvelles espèces du genre Rana. Remarques sur la phylogénie des Ranidés (Amphibiens, Anoures) Bull. Mus. natn. Hist. nat., Paris, 3rd series, No. 324, Zoology 231, pp. 1093-1115.\n\nHong Kong, 20 September 1978\n\nJ. D. ROMER\n\nA VILLAGE WAR (Postscript)\n\nA very similar incident is reported by E. J. Dukes in his late 19th century work Everyday Life in China, pp. 106-107:\n\n\"Several years ago, in a village near Amoy, rival idols were being carried in procession. The paths converged to a point a little way out of the village. The persons forming the procession caught sight of one another, and ran towards the junction of the paths, to see which could get the precedence. They came into collision, indulged in a little fighting, and began a quarrel which lasted fourteen months. Thirty-two villages became involved. A tax was levied upon them by the elders of the villages for the purchase of firearms and ammunition. Sentries were placed at the top of square towers, to shoot at any of the hostile party that might venture into the fields. The seeds could not be sown. The standing crops could not be reaped. Two small cannon were bought in Amoy, and with these they amused themselves occasionally in battering a wall or a roof. Great damage was done. The whole neighbourhood was reduced to distress. Where were the mandarins? Calmly waiting till some one was killed. When that event occurred, and was multiplied by twenty-two, the district mandarin became indignant, sent three thousand troops to take possession, levied black-mail on all the villages involved, and retreated with the spoil.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212391, "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": 333, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "310\n\nDr Elizabeth Sinn explained at intervals during the three-day trip something of the history of Amoy. Together with Ningpo, efforts were made by the British to establish the two towns as centres of trade before Canton secured commercial dominance in 1757. The Canton monopoly was broken in 1842, with the Treaty of Nanking, by the opening of not only Amoy and Ningpo but also the Treaty Ports of Foochow and Shanghai. From and to these ports, among other commodities, were shipped tea, silk, and opium.\n\nBut before then, in the late 17th century, Amoy had been the lair of freebooting, swashbuckling Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), who not only drove the Dutch from Taiwan to make it an anti-Manchu base but also attempted to wrest power from the Qing Dynasty. Today, the People's Republic is trying to proclaim that Koxinga, who had a Japanese mother, was no common pirate but a national hero.\n\nAmoy also played a big part in the infamous, so-called in Chinese, 'pig business'. The first Chinese contract coolies left Canton in 1845, but they were soon being shipped from other ports in southern China. Recruiters frequently shanghaied labourers who departed for various countries, including Hawaii, Trinidad, British Guiana, Jamaica, and British Borneo. The journey to Peru or Cuba took about 130 days. Conditions aboard, because of overcrowding, were unimaginable. With a lack of food, unsanitary conditions, and harsh treatment, and 500 men crowded into a hull with barely room to lie down, riots and murders sometimes occurred. Over one-quarter of the labourers are said to have died aboard in their 'pens'.\n\nMany others, however, emigrated from Fujian under somewhat better conditions, and today most families in Xiamen have relatives living overseas. But the Province's most famous son has to be Tan Kah Kee (1874-1961), well known for his philanthropy, which is evident in several parts of town, including Xiamen University. This was completed in 1919 on its 100-hectare campus. Tan (pronounced Chan in Cantonese) was born just north of Xiamen to a father who had emigrated to Singapore and was engaged in the rice, pineapple, and rubber business. At an early age, Tan Junior also transferred to the British Colony, as it was then, where he later had four wives and fathered 17 children. Although he spoke neither Mandarin nor English, for business convenience, he became a British subject in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212394, "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": 336, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "313\n\nlarge balloons in the sky with banners attached calling on Group Members to purchase real estate.\n\nThe group leaders, Rosemary Lee and Anita Wilson, had done their preparatory work thoroughly. But the weather did not behave according to plan. Rain prevented a visit to the botanical gardens on the last day. The newly completed Harbour View Holiday Inn Hotel was comfortable with generally good service. The plumbing really worked unlike in some provinces such as Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang even if there were complications with key tags having to be wedged into light master-switches with a small wad of paper. But all banquets come to an end and Members arrived back in Hong Kong with fond memories of their three days' break.\n\nT\n\nI-\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nFurther Reading\n\nCourtauld, Caroline, An Illustrated Guide to Fujian, (1988) Hughes, George, Amoy and the Surrounding Districts, [1872]\n\nMcCunn, Ruthanne Lum, An Illustrated History of the Chinese in America, (1979) Pitcher, Philip Wilson, In and About Amoy (1912)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213062, "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-1993", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "111\n\nTHREE FUKIENESE (MIN-NAN) CULTS\n\nPao-sheng Ta-ti, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih and San P'ing Tsu-shih\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nNot more than seventy miles distant from Amoy, though in different directions, three separate cult centres remain extremely popular not only with local residents but with Chinese emigrants from the area who now live as far afield as Java, Sumatra, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. They are the cults of the health protector, Pao-sheng Ta-ti; and of two individual and distinctive Buddhist monks deified centuries ago, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih and San P'ing Tsu-shih.\n\nPao-sheng Ta-ti\n\nThe first, Pao-sheng Ta-ti, was traditionally a Sung dynasty local herbalist doctor, Wu T'ao or Wu Pen, who remained a bachelor and died in AD 1035. He is remembered not only for the magic spells he performed, such as spraying spirit water from his mouth on corpses or human skeletons bringing them back to life but, as his fame as a successful herbalist spread beyond Fukien, it led several centuries later to him being officially deified by Imperial Decree. It is not surprising therefore that his paramount role as a deity is to heal the sick. Known throughout his district, near Amoy, as the expert doctor who used his skills to cure the man in the street, he is remembered as having given his services free to the poor and by becoming a local deity by popular acclaim very shortly after his death. An image was carved by a local carver not long after his demise, said to be a true likeness but, according to another legend, it was how the carver had seen him in a dream. He is said by some to have been accompanied by a former petty official, only known as the Great Saint who Flew Off to Heaven [Fei-t'ien Ta-sheng], who also helped with his medical services. Pao-sheng Ta-ti is the patron deity of herbalists in Taiwan who claim he wrote a major medical encyclopedia and was a specialist in acupuncture in addition to his other skills.\n\nWu T'ao, born around AD 979, is said to have lived a virtuous life.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214565, "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": 423, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "392\n\nfor that area. Our local guide quite unabashed, led us straight into the main courtyard, where we took photographs before a polite message from the Admiral, relayed to us by a staff officer, advised us that he was shortly expecting visitors.\n\ni\n\nNOTES\n\nZhoushan Island, as with many other cities and areas in China, is now rapidly undergoing industrialisation with plans for an airport, factories and container terminals. There has even been talk of building a bridge across to the mainland. Zhoushan is romanised using the current Chinese pinyin system. Formerly it was known as Chusan using the western system devised by British scholars during the late 19th century.\n\ni China was published in 1844, illustrated by Allom and referred to in general as Allom's China; however, a former missionary, the Reverend Wright, wrote the text.\n\niii\n\nFolk memory can be short, especially when it suits the authorities, and in 1998 people in Wei-hai under the age of seventy either looked blank and disbelieving when we told them of the British lease, or corrected us saying that we were mistaken. They explained that it was the colony of Hong Kong which had been handed back in 1997 and that the British had never been near Weihai.\n\niv Other pedants may wish to note that the word Tatar tends to be 'misspelled' as Tartar. The original word in Chinese is Dada'er in pinyin and Ta-ta-erh in Wade-Giles. My history professor used to bark that tartar is on teeth!\n\nA Chinese historian writing during the late 1950s described the progression of the British forces up the South-east coast of China in a very abbreviated history and mentioned in a few words that \"the local people in Amoy [Xiamen] had dislodged the British occupationists and forced them to evacuate the port city. The Chinese defenders made a gallant stand at Tinghai [Dinghai]. Fierce fighting continued for six days and nights. The British suffered heavy casualties. Although General Ko Yun-fei [Ke Yunfei] was covered with more than forty wounds, he fought till he breathed his last. Hei Shui Tang [Black Waters], a people's armed unit, also inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy\". [Tung Chi-ming: An Outline History of China: Foreign Languages Press: Peking: 1959; P 215].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214960, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "11\n\ncrisis, wrote in his diary: 'A fine day: wrote couplets on fans.'\n\nLin's letter drafted to Queen Victoria was a noble and convincing message. In it he points out that opium is forbidden in England and therefore the English know its harmful effects. 'As long as you do not take it yourselves but continue to make it and tempt the people of China to buy it, you will be showing yourselves careful of your own lives but careless of the lives of other people....such conduct is repugnant to human feeling and at variance with the Way of Heaven.' He further writes: 'Rather than waste your efforts on a hopeless endeavour, would it not be better to devise some other form of trade?' (author's italics); surely a hint that trade relations without opium could perhaps be established. Unfortunately the letter was never sent. One can only speculate what might have happened if the young Queen, barely two years on the throne, had received this letter.\n\nLin reminded the foreign traders that they were allowed to trade as a favour, because China was completely self-sufficient, while the foreigners, especially the British, could not live without tea and rhubarb. The belief was widely held in China that the English would die of constipation if they were deprived of rhubarb.' Lin later modified his statement omitting rhubarb but leaving tea as an absolute necessity' (author's italics). The existing opium stocks in the factories were surrendered and destroyed (in salt and lime; not burned as sometimes stated), and for a while it seemed as if Commissioner Lin might succeed in his task, but the confrontation led to an armed conflict, known as the First Opium War (1839-1842), in which the Chinese with their antiquated methods of warfare and ineffective weapons were defeated on land and at sea. It was ‘A conflict between ignorant weakness and conscious strength. It ended in the Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking), by which terms China opened to foreigners the five ports of Guangzhou (Canton), Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou (Foochow), Ningbo (Ningpo), and Shanghai as Treaty Ports, where they might reside and trade; an indemnity of 21 million dollars was exacted, and the Island of Hong Kong was ceded in perpetuity to Britain. For China the war was a disaster and humiliation, the last vestiges of which were erased only a short time ago when Hong Kong was returned, in 1997, to its homeland. By contrast, Queen Victoria referred to the war in flippant tones. Writing to her uncle, the King of Belgium, in 1841, she states:- 'The Chinese business vexes us much, and Palmerston is deeply mortified at it. All", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215938, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "171\n\nCommunists and the China coast for Major Egerton Mott of the SOE. * Holmes referred to guerrillas who would be known to Kendall. He was convinced that the expansion of the Communists into British territory in the New Territories 'was planned in some detail before the Japanese attack on the Colony,' so working with this group required uncommon discretion and diplomacy on the part of any Britisher trying to win their support. Holmes, working with Kendall before the war and with the guerrillas later, would have been unusually well informed. He identified the Communist leader in the Hong Kong area as Tsoi Kwok Leung, a man ‘formerly connected with minor Chinese industrial enterprises in Hong Kong and Amoy and...consumptive.'\n\nSome form of SOE organisation was clearly in place in China, covertly, awaiting the Japanese attack before becoming fully activated. Col Chauvin had been removed from Hong Kong on 18th December, on the very day that the Japanese landed on Hong Kong Island, and sent to the British Military Mission in Chongqing. As the battle raged around them, Kendall, Talan and McEwan were stood by for special orders. Col. Harry Owen Hughes who had ostensibly been seconded to liaise with Chinese Armies in the 7 War zone, moved back to the Hong Kong area to await the arrival of something important. This was the arrival, in deep secrecy, of perhaps the most important escape party to ever leave occupied Hong Kong.\n\n[\n\nAt the very moment that Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese, a car was hurrying towards Aberdeen harbour. Inside sat Admiral Chan Chak, the Chinese Nationalist government's chief representative in Hong Kong, and a number of his KMT assistants. The group was led by DM MacDougall, an official seconded to Hong Kong from London to work on political affairs. He had been assigned to look after the Admiral personally, and maintained twenty-four-hour contact with the Admiral's party during the hostilities. They were to rendezvous with five boats of the 2nd Motor Boat Flotilla, who had been held back in battle. Reaching the pier an hour after the surrender, they found the boats gone. The only functioning vessel they could find was a fifteen-foot launch but the party piled in, knowing that the Japanese would be on them at any moment. Hardly had they gone 500 yards when they were fired on by Japanese occupying a post on Brick Hill, opposite, on the southern side of Hong Kong Island. The boat's engine disintegrated under the heavy fire, killing several men and wounding others, including", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216033, "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": 332, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "266\n\nand on as far as the coast of Africa bringing back treasures which included the first giraffe. These expeditions would have sailed past Zhenjiang and must have been a sight to behold.\n\nToday Zhenjiang is twinned with Tempe, near Phoenix in Arizona. Presumably there is a common factor linking these two places but whatever it might be has escaped me.\n\nHostile incursions up the Yangzi\n\nDown the centuries many raids by Japanese pirates on the eastern Chinese seaboard, some large scale but mostly small, led to the permanent awareness and terror amongst the Chinese along the coastline. The Yangzi estuary was not spared and on a number of occasions they even penetrated up River as far as Zhenjiang. Having been beaten off during the 12th century they reappeared in force during the early 13th century, and in 1419 they were beaten decisively and piracy stopped for a while. The Japanese were again defeated in 1542 by Yu Dayu, however, they reappeared in force in the Yangzi in 1550 capturing Zhenjiang before going on to threaten Nanjing. For three months they plundered the Zhenjiang area before retiring with their booty. For many a year the hills around the city each had beacons ready to fire to warn of impending Japanese attacks. - and by the end of the 14th century their depredations were recurring annually.\n\nA major incursion up the Yangzi was made in 1629 by a naval force despatched by Zheng Zhilong, the father of Zheng Chenggong, better known to foreigners as Koxinga and Taiwan's most famous hero. Koxinga was a child of destiny, a seagoing warlord who opposed and fought the newly-established Manchu Qing dynasty on the mainland from his base in Taiwan. He finally established a new mini-dynasty which ruled Taiwan for some twenty or so years. His father, Zheng Zhilong [1604-1661], had been a notorious Xiamen [Amoy] Chinese pirate chief who had made a fortune through his trading and piracy, raiding the shipping and settlements of south China with his fleet of pirate raiders and trading junks. The Ming authorities, to tame him, allowed themselves to accept his offer of service and were forced into making him an admiral and a marquis in charge of the suppression of piracy - and thus drew his teeth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216336, "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-2003", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "44\n\nthe Delta on fishermen going out to sea and returning with their catches, citing so-called 'watchmen's wages, registration charges and gifts of money to buy firecrackers and joss-sticks at festivals' and 'presents' of fish. The pressure had intensified after a soldier had fallen into the sea and drowned whilst collecting. Failure to pay led to their catches being speared with iron rods on the pretext of looking for contraband. It was recorded that a similar prohibition had been set up in 1801, but after being observed for a time had then been ignored by the garrisons and patrol boat crews.60\n\nThe prevailing climate of bad behaviour\n\nThe general expectation of the populace was that officials and their underlings at all levels of government would feather their nests whenever they could.\n\nEarly British consular reports after the Opium War reflect the condition of the people and the exactions of the mandarins.\n\nFirst, there was the general poverty. In his report for 1862, the British Consul at Canton described the people of the province as being 'a people among whom wealth is an exception and poverty a rule.'61\n\nNext, there were the reasons for it. A brother Consul at Tientsin attributed various causes and wrote that it is, no doubt, owing still more to the bad civil administration under which the people live,' adding: \"They generally content themselves with the acquisition merely of a moderate subsistence because wealth would be certain to lay them open to the extortions of the officials, with all the troubles which these involve. The Imperial Government, it is true, taxes lightly, but the rapacity of the civil officers discourages the accumulation of wealth in private hands, by subjecting its possessors to unmitigated oppression and spoliation.\"+62\n\nThirdly, there was the system. As reported by the British Consul at Amoy, another feature of administration was the farming out of collection duties, and the collusion between the farmers to whom the collection of taxes and duties were delegated ('who are people more or less connected with the mandarins') and the officials. The two shared 'the difference between the amount at which the revenue is let and that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]