[ { "id": 204527, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "2\n\nmarvels of the life under the waters around us in the brilliant colours of Mr. Bromhall's underwater photography could not have been revealed to us a quarter of a century ago.\n\nThe lectures last year covered a wide variety of subjects, following the policy advised by the first President of this Society in Hong Kong, Sir John Davis, who stressed the importance of directing the attention of the Society to practical projects and to natural history, ethnology and botany as well as to linguistic and literary pursuits. The wealth of our local talent was strikingly shown by the fact that half of the lectures were given by scholars and experts from amongst our own members. The lectures given during the year were:\n\nJanuary 15th\nFebruary 26th\nDr. Herold J. Wiens* \"Some of China's 35 Million Non-Chinese\"\nMr. J. D. Pearson \"Recent Development in Oriental Studies in Great Britain\"\n\"Buddhism in Modern Life\"\nSir Lindsay Ride \"The Old Protestant Cemetery in Macao\"\nMr. Ma Meng \"Recent Changes in the Chinese Language\"\nApril 2nd\nVen. Khema \"Hong Kong Flowers\"\nMay 7th\nMiss B. T. Chiu\nJune 18th\nMr. J. L. Cranmer-Byng \"The Old British Legation at Peking 1860-1959\"\nJuly 16th\nProfessor L. C. Goodrich \"The Development of Printing in China and Its Effect on the Renaissance under the Sung (960-1279)\"\nAugust 20th\nSeptember 3rd\n\n* Printed in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 1962,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204607, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n77\n\nQueen. While we were waiting for our examiner, a sudden desire seized Gordon to show his loyalty, after the custom of the country; so he dropped down in front of the portrait, and solemnly knocked his head nine times on the floor, kotowing in proper form. He seemed much inspirited by it, and had a feeling that he was now in some way under the special tutelage of Her Majesty, and could be trusted to floor the paper.\n\nThe impression given by Wilkinson's account is that student life in Peking at that period held much that was enjoyable.\n\nHowever, there was plenty of work for them to do on being sent to their posts. As one observer wrote in 1900 \"Our Legation ... is a bigger establishment than that of any other country, owing to the fact that the British Consular Corps in China has exceptionally large requirements. In the Legation the Student Interpreters, who subsequently become Consular Assistants and Consuls, learn the language of their adopted country and to some extent their future political, judicial and commercial work. After two years at Peking they move on to a Treaty Port and begin to put theory into practice. There are often as many as twenty of them in Peking at a time, besides an efficient staff of older men who act as the Chinese Secretaries.”21\n\nMeanwhile trouble was imminent and another visitor at this same period mentions the marines. Describing the Legation Quarter he wrote: \"The familiar redcoats of British marines drilling on the lawn lent perhaps an extra touch of homeliness to the well-kept grounds. For in view of possible troubles, most of the foreign legations were provided last winter [1895- Ed.] with a special guard drawn from the fleets in the Gulf of Tchih-li. They have since been for the greater part withdrawn. ... As if to heighten the contrast, the Chinese authorities had also assigned to each legation a special guard of their own braves who were encamped along Legation Street.\n\nIn 1900 the marines were to lend a more than homely touch to the scene inside the Legation. By mid-May of that year the anti-foreign massacres inspired by the Boxers had alarmed the Europeans, who were coming into Peking for protection.\n\n20 Ibid., 266-7.\n\n21 Clive Bingham, A Year in China 1899-1900 (London, 1901), 47-8.\n\n22 Valentine Chirol, The Far Eastern Question (London, 1896), 42-3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204613, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n81\n\nthe death of Sir Robert Hart during the siege, and on July 21st it carried a long letter from the President of Queen's College, Belfast, which served as a somewhat premature obituary notice for Hart, who, in fact, lived until 1911.**\n\nThe relieving troops finally entered the British Legation on August 14th, when a Company of mounted Sikhs rode in at about 3 p.m. accompanying General Gaselee and his staff. So ended the siege which had lasted from June 20th until August 14th, a total of 55 days. Fortunately no overwhelming damage had been done to the British Legation, though many of the roofs were badly smashed about and bullets and shells had gone through most of the buildings. One last ironic touch; immediately after the raising of the siege the commissariat functioned so inefficiently that the besieged had to forage for themselves and for some days got less to eat than during the fighting. Meanwhile those who had 'enjoyed' the hospitality of the British Legation during the siege departed and the work of clearing up and repairing the damage began.\n\nThe actual damage suffered by the British Legation buildings was slight in comparison with the damage done to the other foreign Legations. The outer walls were badly damaged and had to be rebuilt, but one small section on the north-east corner facing the Imperial Canal was sufficiently unharmed to be left intact, and on its surface someone painted in black nine-inch letters the words \"LEST WE FORGET”. Most of the buildings in the compound were soon repaired and the Legation again looked substantially the same as before the siege. However, as part of the settlement after the Boxer troubles and the siege of the Legation Quarter Britain acquired considerable ground on the northern and western sides of the old Legation. This consisted of land formerly occupied by the Mongol market, by the Imperial Carriage Park and by the Hanlin Academy, which was burnt out during the fighting. This newly acquired land was later used for\n\n28 Born in 1835 Hart came out to China in the Consular Service in 1854 and spent his first three months as an interpreter at Hong Kong. After various consular appointments he was permitted by the British Government to resign from the consular service in 1859 and to join the newly formed Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs service as Deputy-Commissioner of Customs at Canton. In 1863, at the age of twenty-eight, he was appointed Inspector-General of the Maritime Customs, a post which he held until his resignation in 1908.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204618, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "86\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nin the north-east quarter of the city, well away from the new diplomatic quarter.2\n\nAll accommodation for foreign embassies was to be concentrated in one area outside the east wall of the city, and about one and a half miles from a newly constructed gate, just near to the old astronomical instruments which can still be seen on top of the east wall. Eventually, after negotiations, the new British Legation was allotted two large houses and two blocks of flats in this new diplomatic quarter. The last christening was performed in the Legation chapel, the books in the small library were taken off their shelves, the flag at the gate was hauled down, and everything was packed.3 Among the more colourful of the closing scenes in the life of the old British Legation should be mentioned the two Commonwealth cricket matches played in the Autumn of 1958 between the Moonrakers, captained by Mr. Duncan Wilson, the British Chargé d'Affaires, and the Woolgatherers captained by the Indian Ambassador, Mr. G. Parthasaratly. The rules governing this diplomatic cricket were many and local but the chief rule of all was that if anyone hit a ball into the grounds of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security next door his whole side was out.\n\nFinally, in September 1959, the staff moved to their new quarters and thus after nearly one hundred years of continuous occupation the existence of the old British Legation in Peking came to an end. From an historical and sentimental point of view its loss was sad. But from a realistic point of view which\n\n20 This was built on a site which had been granted to Russia as far back as the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689). As a result of fighting between Russian settlers on the frontier between Siberia and Manchuria about a hundred Russian prisoners were brought to Peking in the period 1683-5. They were formed into a company, given a place of residence in the northeast corner of Peking, close to the Lama Temple, and intermarried with Chinese and Manchus. They retained their Greek Orthodox faith and were allowed to have their own priests. See Michel N. Pavlovsky, Chinese-Russian Relations (New York, 1949) 145-164. It was to this place, known as the Pei-kuan (\"Northern Hostel\") that the members of the Russian ecclesiastical mission transferred in 1861.\n\n30 Unfortunately the imposing Royal Coat of Arms which dignified the gateway of the old Legation was too large to fit properly into the new Legation buildings. Mr. Michael Stewart, the Chargé d'Affaires at the time of the move, arranged with Sir Robert Black, the Governor of Hong Kong, that the Coat of Arms should be sent to Government House in Hong Kong. It is now fixed onto the wall at the far end of the long ballroom of Government House, which it dominates by the brilliance of its colours,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204619, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n87\n\nlooks towards the future it was a welcome move. By the 1950's the old British Legation had come to occupy an invidious position in the heart of Peking. It was too big and imposing for a foreign embassy. It was too closely linked in the minds of the Chinese people with a long legacy of dislike of the foreigner, connected as it was in their minds with two captures of Peking in 1860 and again in 1900. Moreover, it was in the nature of a box inside which a few British diplomats were the easy target of mass demonstrations. In the long run it was better to be rid of such a prominent place and instead to form part of a new diplomatic quarter on a site chosen by the government of the Chinese Peoples' Republic itself. Certainly, from the Chinese point of view, by 1959 the large space occupied by the old Foreign Legation Quarter in the centre of Peking was too valuable to be inhabited by a small number of foreign diplomats. It was an obvious site for the new government offices which were needed. Thus in 1959 a symbol of the far off days of the so called 'unequal treaties' disappeared, and with its disappearance the prospect of better relations between Great Britain and the Chinese Peoples' Republic was, perhaps, imperceptibly enhanced.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205945, "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "20\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nthe number as 9,881 pên). In addition, the Wu-ying-tien press in the palace printed with movable type 286 works known only in manuscript in the YLTT. From this point on the story of the YLTT makes generally sad reading. The librarians of the Hanlin Academy during the next one hundred years must have been pretty careless in their custodial duties, for, by 1894, according to an entry in the diary of the statesman Wêng T'ung-ho (1830-1904), hardly more than 800 pên were left. During the siege of the legation quarter six years later, the Chinese made an attempt to storm the British legation by setting fire to the Hanlin, immediately to the north of the legation compound. Thousands of books in the library were consumed in the blaze, but many too were picked up by Europeans, Americans, and Japanese in the legation quarter, and either taken to their homelands, or, in the case of the British minister, returned to the authorities in Peking. In the troubles incident to the overturn of the Manchus (1911), others were dispersed; so that by 1912, when Aurousseau made his report, he recorded only sixty pên in the Metropolitan Library and four in the library of the Ministry of Education.\n\nToday the situation is much better, as there has been an effort to reproduce and make generally available copies of the volumes which have found their way to major collections, mostly public, such as the Library of Congress, the British Museum, the Bodley, the Toyo Bunko, the National Library of Peking, and the National Central Library. These include the volumes returned to the mainland by the authorities in the USSR in the flush of post World War II friendship: eleven volumes delivered in 1951 and fifty-three in 1954. The learned world now has available for study two facsimile editions of extant works, one brought out in Peking in 1960 in 730 chüan under the sponsorship of Kuo Mo-jo (1892-), and a second issued in Taipei in 1962 in 742 chüan, edited by Yang Chia-lo (1913-). Several lists of surviving volumes of the YLTT have been published, the latest being that of the venerable Japanese scholar, Iwai Hirosato, in a festschrift published in his honor: Tenseki ronshū (Tokyo 1964), 1-70. His census lists 799 chüan. A few others have come to light which he did not include. In September 1963 The British Museum Quarterly announced the acquisition of one volume containing chüan 6933 and 6934, a gift from the estate of Captain Francis Garden Poole, who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211475, "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-1988", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "167\n\ngrades, graduating in June, 1932. In August of that year, she and mother accompanied me to China. Because Aunt Pong felt she could manage better in Shekki with the money from the sale of their home, she and the children left Honolulu on the Empress of Japan as we did. Uncle Pong remained in Honolulu. This was during the Depression when the exchange rate was favourable for United States currency.\n\nDora enrolled in the True Light Middle School, where I had accepted a teaching position, but when she found her inadequate knowledge of Chinese quite frustrating, she left after the first semester for Hong Kong, where Mother was living in First Paternal Uncle's Kennedy Road home. There she was tutored in Chinese by a Chinese teacher. In July, 1933, after a short visit to Shanghai and Hangchow, Mother and Dora returned to Honolulu on the President Hoover, to welcome Mother's first grandchild, Edmund Tong.\n\nFor the next three years, Dora studied at McKinley High School and after her graduation in June, 1936, she matriculated at the University of Hawaii, and received a B.A. degree in liberal arts. Then she went to the University of Chicago to do postgraduate social work. At the International House where she resided, she met Tso-chien Shen, a Vice-consul from China, and married him on 19 September, 1941. He was a native of Pi Hu Chen, Li Shui County, Chekiang Province, and a graduate of the University of Peking. An article, \"What Chinese Exclusion Really Means\" by him was published in 1942 by the China Institute in America. Dora soon became pregnant and became so ill that she could not finish her last quarter of study to earn a Master's degree. Their sons, both born in Chicago, are:\n\nEugene Tsu-wang I, born 7/5/42\n\nGilbert Tsu-shang I, born 2/3/46\n\nIn 1946 when Tso-chien was promoted to Second Secretary of the Chinese Legation in Manila, he had to leave his family behind, because his salary was too low. After 1949, Tso-chien started a chicken farm, with Paul Sim as his financial backer. However, in 1950 when he was found to be suffering from cancer, he sent for Dora, but by this time he was already in a terminal stage. Whereupon Dora returned to Mother's home and arranged to have him flown to Honolulu in December 1950", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214552, "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": 410, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "379\n\nmeeting place where candidates from the two provinces could stay while attending imperial examinations. An opera hall was added in 1830 and it became a centre for Beijing opera masters including Mei Lanfang. The hall was restored in 1992 and the site also houses a small opera museum. We watched a very lively performance of excerpts from famous Beijing Operas, the highlight of which was the Monkey King in Journey to the West defeating a rapid succession of opponents through brilliant acrobatics and martial arts.\n\nOn Monday, our final day, we visited the former Legation Quarter, now called Dong Jiao Min Xiang. This quarter had long been the place where tributary visitors, such as Mongols, Tibetans and Vietnamese stayed, and during late Qing times became a virtual \"state within a state\".\n\nDr Ting guided us on a walk which began at St Michael's Church, in Taijichang Street (formerly known as Rue Marco Polo) and built by French Vincentians in 1901. Inside the church is simple and modest with some of its services still conducted in Latin. We went on past the sites of the Russian Embassy and the former British Embassy, as well as the present Beijing Municipal Government offices, the Supreme People's Court and the Beijing Public Security Bureau. There still exists one interesting road sign, Rue Hart, named after the famous founder of the Imperial Maritime Customs, Sir Robert Hart.\n\nOur visit to Beijing ended with a brief look at the antique market Liulichang (Glazed Tile Factory) an area named after a pottery which, in Ming times, produced tiles for the roofs of the Forbidden City. It had been famous for centuries for its old book shops, pictures, rubbings, jewellery, bronzes and porcelain and for some years now it has been revived as an antique market, (but one has to bargain very hard to get a good price).\n\nWe returned to Hong Kong on Easter Monday afternoon having visited a capital undergoing both revival and development, with room for both Matteo Ricci and Nina Ricci, for both the study of history and plans for a future based on past experience; and for both the tranquillity of the Fa Hai Temple and the boisterous artistry of the Monkey King. We look forward to further insights in Qingdao during Easter 1999.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]