[ { "id": 204236, "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-1961", "page_number": 4, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n1\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was originally founded in 1847, but it ceased to exist at the end of 1859. Exactly a century later, on December 28, 1959, it was resuscitated with the approval of the parent society in London - The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society was founded in March 1823 \"for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts, in relation to Asia\". It received its Charter of Incorporation as a royal society from George IV on August 11, 1824. The Royal Asiatic Society is the oldest and most important Society of its kind in Europe, and its standing as the doyen of Societies promoting the study of Asia has been maintained by the devotion of generations of eminent scholars, explorers and others who have contributed through its Journal, in public addresses and in many other ways, a rich harvest of knowledge, both academic and practical, in the service of Western understanding of the East.\n\nA large part of the Society's work has always been done through its branches and affiliated Societies in the East. Branches were formed at Bombay and at Madras about 1838, and in Ceylon in 1845. The Hong Kong Branch followed in 1847, the North China Branch at Shanghai in 1857, the Japanese in 1875, the Malayan in 1878, and the Korean in 1900, etc. etc.\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH grew out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society founded in 1845. This Society, however, in accord with the contemporary spirit of inquiry and the enthusiasm for better knowledge of Asia in general and China in particular, had contemplated setting up a Philosophical Society; but the movement ended in the establishment of the Asiatic Society with laws drafted by Andrew Shortrede, Editor of the China Mail, framed on the model of those of the Royal Asiatic Society. Sir John F. Davis, the Governor, by reason of his known literary and scientific acquirements rather than his official rank, was asked to be President. He suggested that the Society should seek to be admitted as a Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society with which, as a founder member, he was in close touch and with whose active President, the Earl of Auckland, he had discussions on these lines before he left England.\n\nSo in January 1847 the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was founded, and all the members of the Medico-Chirurgical Society who wished to join were admitted without ballot or entrance fee on condition of their Society's apparatus and books being handed over to the new body.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204237, "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-1961", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nBesides the Governor and Shortrede, the first office-bearers included Major-General D'Aguilar, Peter Young the Colonial Surgeon, Mercer the Colonial Treasurer, John Bowring the Younger (of Jardines); and also Thomas Wade, the celebrated interpreter and Envoy to China, who later became famous as inventor of the Wade System of romanization of Chinese still in general use today, and, as Sir Thomas, was to become President of the Society in London in 1887.\n\nIn his Inaugural Address as President, Sir John Davis stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany, as well as to literary pursuits, and suggested that he could get the sanction of the Colonial Office to the grant of a moderate piece of ground for a Botanical Garden. Sir John left the Colony in 1848; but, as the result of a stirring appeal by Mr. G. Gutzlaff, the missionary, at a meeting of the Society in August 1848, the project was approved, although it was not carried into effect until the governorship of Sir John Bowring (the younger John Bowring's father), and then the Garden was placed under Government control and not under that of the Society.\n\nDuring the twelve years of its life, the Society was dogged to some extent by the personal animosities prevalent in Hong Kong in the early days; but it flourished under the inspiration of Sir John Davis, and also for a time under Sir John Bowring, who enjoyed a European reputation as a scholar—as President he preferred to be called Dr. Bowring—and who animated the Society with his personal influence and by his contributions to its discussions. The Society had no permanent home of its own, but in 1849 it was granted by Sir S. G. Bonham a room in the Supreme Court building. It published six volumes of Transactions, the first in 1847 and the last in 1859.\n\nWith the departure of Sir John Bowring in May 1859 and the death in the September following of the Branch's devoted Secretary—Dr. W. A. Harland, M.D.—the Society collapsed. The efforts of Dr. James Legge, as well as those of Sir Hercules Robinson, the new Governor, as President, of the Bishop of Victoria and of the Acting Chief Justice as Vice-Presidents and of Harry (later Sir Harry) S. Parkes were of no avail.\n\nThe collapse of the Society came at an unfortunate time and deprived it of the prestige and momentum which it would have gained from the work of some of its famous members. Legge was on the eve of publishing his famous translation of the Chinese Classics, which could be printed and distributed only through the generosity of Joseph Jardine, and his successor Sir Robert Jardine, and of John Dent, the heads of the two largest merchant houses in the Colony. A little later, in 1865, T. W. Kingsmill had to resort to the aid of the Shanghai Branch for the publication of his studies on the geology of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204238, "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-1961", "page_number": 6, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n3\n\nTHE NORTH CHINA BRANCH started in Shanghai in 1857 under the name of the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society. Its first President was the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, D.D., the first American missionary in China and the founder and manager of the Chinese Repository. Its first Journal appeared in 1858 in the name of the Literary and Scientific Society, but in that year the Society became affiliated to the Royal Asiatic Society as its North China Branch. Except for a brief period between 1861, when Dr. Bridgman died, and 1864 when the Society was reanimated through the unremitting efforts of Sir Harry Parkes as President, the Society maintained for nearly 85 years—until the outbreak of the second world war in December 1941—almost an unbroken vigour and a high reputation as the principal centre of Oriental culture among the foreign and Chinese communities in Central China. It also kept up a high standard of scholarship and of cultural appeal in its Journal, which appeared unfailingly every year. After the war it continued its work until, after 1948, it was forced through political troubles to cease its activities. The last issues of the Journal had been published with the co-operation of the International Institute of China.\n\nThe Society in Shanghai was from its early days fortunate in the support of a generous public and of the British Government, which in 1868 provided it with a site at a nominal rent for its own building, completed in 1871. Later the property was conveyed to the Society in perpetuity or for so long as it was used for the Society's purpose. Thus, in 1931 the Society was able, with the aid of public subscriptions and generous municipal grants, to build in Museum Road close to the British Consulate a commodious building of its own; it contained a lecture hall named after the late Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a floor to accommodate its Oriental Library of 12,000 volumes and adjacent reading rooms, as well as space for an excellent natural history museum and for the exhibition of Chinese paintings and other works of art.\n\nIn 1941 the Society had nearly 800 members, including most of the leading Oriental scholars, explorers and travellers. Amongst the outstanding personalities who had been associated with the North China Branch a few may be mentioned—Dr. Joseph Edkins, Thomas W. Kingsmill, Dr. Emil Breitschneider, Henri Cordier (at one time the Society's Librarian), P. G. van Mollendorf, Sir Robert Hart, Sir Harry Parkes, Sir Byron Brennan, W. H. Medhurst, Sir Edmund Hornby (the first British Judge in China), Sir Rutherford Alcock, H. A. Giles, G. H. Parker, H. B. Morse, A. P. Parker, Alexander Hosie, Samuel Couling, Sir Sidney Barton and Dr. J. C. Ferguson, an American, former President of Nanking University and a man of profound learning and wisdom who, in the course of half a century, served the Society as President, Secretary and Editor of the Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204242, "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-1961", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n7\n\nwho stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany as well as to literary pursuits. It may not be generally known that it was as the result of the efforts of the Royal Asiatic Society that Government was persuaded to grant a piece of ground for a Botanical Garden which was projected in the time of Sir John Davis and carried into effect when Sir John Bowring was President. Following this precedent we had three excellent lectures illustrated with a wealth of coloured slides by the following:\n\nCaptain A. M. Macfarlane on \"Birds of Hong Kong\" illustrated by coloured slides and a tape record of bird songs and calls. Miss B. T. Chiu on \"Flowers of Hong Kong\" illustrated Mr. P. A. Nixon's coloured slides, and\n\nMr. J. D. Bromhall on \"The Marine Fauna of Hong Kong\" illustrated by coloured slides.\n\nThese lectures were in part designed to appeal to the educational circles and it is hoped that with wider publicity we may have the benefit of more members from the schools and colleges of the Colony.\n\nIn concluding my reference to the lectures and addresses I wish to record our deep gratitude to those who have contributed so richly and so readily to the success of our first year's record.\n\nAll except two of the meetings held last year were held in the rooms of the British Council and the Branch owes a debt of gratitude to the generous assistance of the British Council and of its Representative, Mr. R. E. Lawry, for affording us, free of charge, the use of these rooms as well as of the projector and operator for the slides in illustration of the lectures. Without this assistance it would have been difficult for the Branch to carry on as the moderate yearly subscription of $20.00 per member would not otherwise go far towards paying our expenses, including the hire of rooms and the issue to every member of a free copy of the Journal of the Branch.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch has no home of its own. It is indicative of the importance which Governments attached to the Royal Asiatic Society 100 years ago that the Government of Hong Kong granted to the Hong Kong Branch a room in the Supreme Court, where it could hold its meetings and house the valuable library which it built up and which it had eventually to hand over to the Morrison Education Society.\n\nIn Shanghai the Government granted to the North China Branch a parcel of land on which, with the aid of generous grants from The Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Council", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204272, "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-1961", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Vol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n36\n\nThe next example is from Li Po, who, having been a knight errant himself, naturally eulogized them in his poetry. In his \"Song of the Knight Errant\", he describes a knight thus:\n\nThe man from the North wears a tasselled hat\n\nAnd a curved sword as bright as frost or snow.\n\nHis silver saddle shines on his white steed\n\nOn which he rides as fast as a shooting star.\n\nHe can kill anyone within ten paces\n\nAnd will not stop till he has gone a thousand miles. Shaking the dust from his clothes, he goes into hiding,\n\nTo shroud in secret his person and his name.\n\nAfter mentioning two famous knights of antiquity, the poet concludes:\n\nAfter death, their chivalrous bones are fragrant;\n\nThey can compare with any heroes in the world. Who cares to imitate the pedantic scholar\n\nWriting books until his hair grows white?\n\nIn another poem he again says:\n\nIt is better to be a knight errant than a scholar:\n\nWhat is the good of studying hard when your hair\n\nis turning white?12\n\nFinally, a poem by Chia Tao (A.D. 777-841), which seems to me to sum up the spirit of knight errantry in four lines:\n\nThe Swordsman\n\nThis sword I have been polishing for ten years;\n\nIts frosty edge has never been put to the test.\n\nNow that I've shown it to you, pray tell me:\n\nIs there anyone suffering from injustice?*\n\nBut the richest fruits of chivalric literature are naturally to be found not in poetry but in fiction. Among the romances in classical prose of the T'ang period, we find many tales of chivalry. Apart from their generally high literary standard, these tales are remarkable for two interesting features: first, in many of them, a supernatural element is introduced; secondly, we encounter as many female hsia, or chivalrous ladies, as knights. The story of Hung Hsien is a typical example. Hung Hsien, or \"Red Cotton\", was a maid in the household of Hsüeh Sung, the military governor of Lu-chou, in the T'ang dynasty. She was a skillful p'i-pa player\n\n11 Li T'ai-po shih-chi, chüan 3, 31.\n\n12 Ibid., chüan 3, 14.\n\n13 Ch'üan T'ang shih, chüan 571. (In the Peking, 1960 edition, p. 6618).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204274, "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-1961", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n38\n\none called \"The Capture of Chi Pu\". This refers to the same General Chi Pu mentioned earlier, whose life was saved by the knight errant Chu Chia. In this popular version, which is in doggerel verse, the story differs from the historical account. The name of Chi Pu's benefactor is given as Chu Chieh instead of Chu Chia. This is probably due to a confusion between the names Chu Chia and Kuo Chieh, the two most famous knights of early Han. Moreover, in this version, Chu is the official sent to arrest Chi Pu, and he is blackmailed into saving the latter's life rather than doing so voluntarily. This tale in doggerel verse has no great literary merits, but is of considerable historical interest as a specimen of popular chivalric literature of the Tang period.\n\nDuring the Sung dynasty, professional story-tellers flourished. According to the Tsui-weng t'an-lu (B680), a miscellaneous collection of stories and verses probably printed at the end of Sung, the story-tellers divided their tales into eight categories: \"miracles\" (ling-kuai), “female ghosts\" (yen-fen), “love romances\" (ch'uan-ch'i), “legal cases\" (kung-an), “long swords\" (p'u-tao), “clubs\" (kan-pang), \"gods and immortals\" (shen-hsien), and “magic” (yao-shu).\" Two of these, \"long swords” and “clubs”, obviously deal with chivalrous deeds. The difference between the two, judging by the examples given in the Tsui-weng t'an-lu, seems to be that the former refers to battles waged between armies using long weapons, while the latter refers to private fights involving the use of short weapons. The latter is therefore more strictly concerned with knights errant, who usually fought as individuals rather than as leaders of armies. As for chivalric tales involving the supernatural, such as the story of Hung Hsien, they were classified under \"magic\".\n\nMany of the prompt-books used by the story-tellers, known as hua-pen, have come down to us, though usually edited by later hands. Moreover, some of them became integral parts of long prose romances. The most outstanding example of a chivalric romance based on oral tradition is the Shui-hu chuan, of which there are two English versions, one by J. H. Jackson entitled The water margin, the other by Pearl S. Buck entitled All men are brothers. The historical events on which the oral legends and the prose romance were based took place at the end of the Northern Sung period. According to the History of the Sung dynasty, in A.D. 1121 a group of rebels led by Sung Chiang and thirty-five others ravaged several prefectures\n\n: \n\n: \n\n10 Wang Chung-min and others, Tun-huang pien-wen chi (Peking, 1957), vol. 1, pp. 58-71,\n\n17 Tsui-weng t'an-lu (reprinted Shanghai, 1957), pp. 3-4. This is the most precise contemporary account of the classification of stories. Other accounts are similar but not so clear.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204287, "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-1961", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n51\n\nfriends of Education the expediency of establishing a public library in China. This plan was brought to our notice by the following letter, (which we publish with Mr. Colledge's permission) addressed:\n\nTo the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, corresponding secretary to the provisional committee of the Morrison Education Society.\n\nMy dear sir, On the dissolution of the British factory, it became necessary to make some disposition of the library belonging to the members of that establishment; and it was proposed to give the whole collection to the Morrison Education Society. The arrangement, however, not meeting with the concurrence of all the proprietors, a division of the books was determined on; and while I regret that so excellent a suggestion should not have been adopted, I am still happy in performing with my share, what it was my anxious wish should have been done with the whole, by presenting it to that admirable institution.\n\nThe very injudicious method pursued in the division of the works, has allotted to me volumes of comparatively little value. Such as they are, I present them to the Morrison Education Society; with an ardent hope that I may live to see an institution, which so distinctly marks this enlightened age, attain, under your fostering care, the full realization of its philanthropic intentions, by promoting virtue and happiness through the blessings of education.\n\nI am, My dear sir,\n\nRespectfully and faithfully yours,\n\nT. R. Colledge.\n\nMacao, May 21st, 1835.\n\nFurther early history of the Society can be traced through reports in the above-mentioned journal.\n\nOne book still in the Library, A Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts Collected with A View To The General Comparison of Languages, And To The Study of Oriental Literature, by William Marsden, London, 1827, is inscribed by the author, \"For the Library at Canton from the Author\" and reminds the reader of the origin of some of the books.\n\n\"Proceedings relative to the formation of the Morrison Education Society including the Constitution\" were published in December, 1836. By this time there was a collection of some 1500 books on scientific, literary, and other subjects which had been presented to the Society, 700 from Mr. T. R. Colledge, 600 from Mr. J. R. Reeves, and others from Messrs. Dent, Fox, A. S. Keating, and J. R. Morrison, who gave a number of his father's books, some of which still bear his signature.\n\nA constitution was drawn up for the Library which stated that \"The books belonging to the Society shall form a public library and be styled the 'Library of the Morrison Education Society',\" and also provided that “rules for the regulation of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204307, "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-1961", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n71\n\nnovel. After this treatment, Vaisravana and Nata became completely Sinicized, and few, if any, Chinese readers ever suspect that they are \"alien\" in origin. This is typical of the way in which Chinese Buddhists took stories or ideas of foreign origin and gradually turned them into something totally Chinese.\n\nApart from its influence on religious practice, the novel Fêng-shên Yen-i is also of considerable importance from a literary point of view. It superseded previous stories from which it took some of its material, so much so that but for the efforts of scholars in the past thirty years these previous stories contained in prompt-books would have been unknown. Even now, only a handful of experts have read the prompt-books, while most readers are not aware that the Fêng-shên is not entirely the original creation of one man. This goes to show the success of the author as an imaginative writer.\n\nIn the following pages I shall attempt to describe how the stories about Vaisravana and Nata became integral parts of the novel, as an example of the Sinicization of Buddhist stories and figures and their assimilation into the mainly Taoist pantheon of China. I shall also try to show how the author, Lu Hsi-hsing, made use of the material derived from miscellaneous sources and turned it into a fascinating tale.\n\n1. VAISRAVANA AND NATA\n\nWhen we come to a discussion of some of the prominent figures in the novel Fêng-shên Yen-i, the most striking fact we shall find is that the author described these figures vividly and did not rely on previous legends for literary effect. Rather, he chose from miscellaneous and discordant materials and put them into a unified system which enlarged and modified the Chinese pantheon. The story of Li Ching and his three sons, especially the third one, No-cha, in this novel may serve as an outstanding illustration.\n\nIn this novel Li Ching was first a commander of the Ch'ên-t'ang Pass in the court of the ruthless King Chou (Ch.12), but he was also a Taoist, and for a period of years he had learnt the process of Taoist cultivation from the Immortal Tu O of the K'un-lun Mountain though he was unable to reach the final attainment. He had three sons: the eldest, Chin-cha, was a disciple of Wên-shu (Mañjusri), the second, Mu-cha, was a disciple of P'u-hsien (Samantabhadra) and the third one, No-cha, a disciple of the Immortal Tai-I. Both the father and his three sons joined the side of King Wu in the expedition against King Chou. Though they all knew some magic feats and possessed magic weapons, they are described as human beings. Unless we study the Tantric sutras and compare them with the Chinese\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204325, "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-1961", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n89\n\n\"the second son of the third prince of Vaisravana, the Heavenly King of the North”(北方天王吠室羅摩那羅閣第三王子其第二之孫) and in this text Nata addresses Vaisravana as \"my grandfather\" (RAXXE). Furthermore, this legend appears also in 卷一 of the Ta-fang-pien-fu Pao-ên Ching (大方便佛報恩經) (ASENNUE), and as I have found another story about the \"reincarnation from the lotus\" also in that sutra, which is also similar to the description of No-cha's reincarnation in the novel, I think both these stories may have influenced the author besides the case cited above.\n\nThe story of No-cha's reincarnation and the combat between the father and son is a very dramatic one and it reveals again the literary gifts of the author:\n\nNo-cha's souls, being dispersed, had nowhere to go, drifting about in the air. They went directly to the grotto of the Immortal T'ai-I. Chin-hsia (金霞), the younger disciple of T'ai-I saw it at the entrance, came to the master and said, \"I wonder why No-cha is now borne on the wind and drifting about freely.' (Last paragraph, Ch.13 and first paragraph, Ch.14, Fêng-shên Yen-i.)\n\nWe know from the previous narratives of the novel that No-cha was an avatar of Ling-chu Tsu, the Intelligent Pearl. But why was he so named? I think the following paragraph from Ch.2 of the Nan-yu-chi may explain both this name and the last paragraph I have just quoted:\n\nThe Intelligent Light (Ling-kuang) was enveloped by the Purple Emperor (紫皇) with the magic weapon Nine-bend Pearl (九曲珠) and died in that Pearl. The souls of the Intelligent Light borne on the wind had nowhere to go, and were seen by the Celestial Honoured All-Merciful and All-Compassionate Marvellous-Delight (慈悲妙喜天尊) (NEVRXO) who was in his meditation in the Palace of Eight-scenes. Watching the souls drifting about, he thought...\n\nAs the Chinese character is monosyllabic, it is easy to pick out the character ling (靈) and chu (珠) from this paragraph to form a new name and give it to No-cha as his other title since the description of his reincarnation is partially derived from here. The story continues thus:\n\nThe Immortal (T'ai-I) charged No-cha, “This is your place no more. Return to Ch'ên-t'ang Pass and see your mother in dreams, request her to build a temple for you to dwell in on the Ts'ui-p'ing Hill (Green Screen Hill) forty li away from the Pass. Sacrifices will be offered to you for three years and after that you may be reincarnated. Go ahead and do not tarry.\" During the third watch of that night No-cha appeared in a dream to his mother, saying, \"Mother, my souls have nowhere to go and I have suffered bitterly. Pray", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204328, "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-1961", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n92\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nfather\" was only one of revelation of supernatural powers (神通), and it was because of the imagination and the literary gifts of the author of the Fêng-shên that the story became so impressive and full of emotional appeal. The author continues:\n\nThe Immortal T'ai-I asked No-cha to follow him to the peach-garden and taught him personally how to use his \"fiery-pointed spear\" (火尖槍) which the master now bestowed on him. After that, the Immortal gave him the wind-wheel and fire-wheel which he might tread on while chanting incantations and which served him as a magic vehicle; and also a bag made of panther skin in which were the magic bracelet, the red silk gauze and a brick of gold completed his new armour. No-cha prostrated himself before his master once more, and after thanking him, held the magic spear in hand, safely mounted his wind-and-fire wheels and darted straight to the Ch'ên-t’ang Pass and challenged Li Ching, his father. (Ch.14)\n\n**\n\n** In order to prove again how the author of the Fêng-shên Yen-i adapted and utilized confused and promiscuous materials from previous works, we may list some of the arms used by No-cha with their earlier appearances in other prompt-books or plays as follows:\n\n(a) Fiery-pointed spear. In Act 4 of the anonymous play of the Yüan dynasty, Han Kao-huang Cho-tsu Ch'i Ying-pu (漢高皇祖母齊英布), the spear used by Hsiang Yu (項羽) is a \"fiery-pointed spear\".\n\n(b) Wind-wheel. The wind-wheel is originally the wheel, or circle of wind below the circle of water and metal upon which, according to Buddhist teaching, the Earth rests. It appears in many sutras including the Surangama-sutra (楞嚴經), Ch. 4. In Nan-yu-chi (南遊記) (Ch. 2 and 11) and Pei-yu-chi (北遊記) (Ch. 15) it is one of the arms of the Flowery Light (Hua Kuang or Ling Yao 華光, or San-yen Ling Yao 三眼華光). Ling Yao with a deva-eye).\n\n(c) Fire-wheel. The alatacakra, a wheel of fire produced by rapidly whirling a fire-brand. In chuan 3 of his Lêng-yen Ching Shu-chih (楞嚴經疏治) (? “The Principles of the Surangama-sutra\", in the First Series, Second Collection of the Tripitaka in Chinese, 大藏經, 1912), Lu Hsi-hsing says \"as the whirling of a fire-brand, reality does not exist\". In Nan-yu-chi (Ch. 2 and Ch. 11) and Pei-yu-chi (Ch. 15), the fire-wheel is also a weapon of Flowery Light.\n\n(d) Gold brick, The gold brick is also one of the arms of Flowery Light in Nan-yu-chi (Ch, 2 and Ch. 11) and Pei-yu-chi (Ch. 15). But both the gold brick and the fire-wheel are attributed to Flowery Light also in Yang Ching-hsien's T'ang San-tsang Hsi-t'ien Ch'ü-ching, a play of the Yüan dynasty, Scene 8. In Hsü Fu-tso's (徐復祚) T'ou-so Chi (鬧府記), Scene 19, these two weapons belong to Nata of Eight Arms (八臂那吒).\n\n(e) Magic bracelet. In Ch. 11 of the Nan-yu-chi, one of the weapons of No-cha is a \"purple-gold bracelet with raised flowers\" (紅花紫金圈) and it is the origin of the magic bracelet (ch'ien-k'un ch'üan 乾坤圈 the Bracelet of Vitreous & Resinous Electricity) in the Fêng-shên Yen-i,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204451, "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-1962", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "72\n\nHEROLD J. WIENS\n\naggressive push of Chinese Communist socialism. Whatever new syntheses will emerge, it is likely that much of what is unique in traditional customs, dress and social systems will soon disappear forever. Some, such as the slave-system of the Yi Black-bone, will be mourned by few; other aspects may be regretted.\n\nCultures appear to be relatively static when geographical isolation prevails. With present-day increasing improvement of communications, the deepest isolations are being penetrated. Whether the changes be for the good or bad of the small national groups of China, there is no turning back the hand of time. Even Communist indoctrination of a backward tribal society inevitably must bring increases in literacy, improvements in sanitation and medical care and increase in technological knowledge and production, although freedom and happiness may suffer. A final lamentable aspect for the interested observer of ethnography and culture, however, is the inevitable decrease in the variety of the intricate combinations we call cultures, and the substitution of a rather dull uniformity in the fascinating territory of China.\n\nTables I and II are printed on the following pages.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 204709, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "3\n\nThe expedition to Tung Chung produced a new inspiration for the Society's activities, mainly the idea of our admirable Hon. Secretary, Mr. R. E. Lawry. It is proposed to hold a symposium during weekends to discuss the social organisation of village life and other aspects of life in the New Territories. A programme has been arranged for the weekend May 9th-10th, particulars of which have already been supplied to members. This extension of our activities is in accord with the avowed objects of the Society for it is our aim to direct attention not only to the cultural and literary heritage of the part of Asia in which we live, but also to practical pursuits such as its natural history, fauna and flora, and the lives of the people around us.\n\nA particularly noteworthy and important work of the Society is the production of the Journal, the fourth volume of which may be expected this summer. The Journal, built up on the meticulous standard of editorship set up by Mr. Cranmer-Byng and the Editorial Board of which, until his departure earlier this month, he had been Chairman, has already achieved a well-deserved reputation among the productions of learned societies in the same field. The contributions which come from non-members as well as members are sufficiently varied in nature and interest to appeal to the specialists as well as to the general reader. The Society may well be proud of its Journal and grateful to Mr. Cranmer-Byng and his colleagues for their splendid work and achievement.\n\nThe Financial Statement of 1963, which the Honorary Treasurer will present to you, shows a capital account of £1,699.10.0 and an apparent excess of income over expenditure of HK$2,947.26. The real position in the matter of income, however, is that the annual subscriptions from members during 1963 amounted to $6,177.91, while the expenses amounted to $7,459, leaving a deficit of $1,282. This deficit is met by recourse to income from the small capital investment fund, the greater part of which was established by the generosity of an anonymous donor, when the Branch was revived, for the purpose of establishing a library and for other capital expenditure necessary for the future activities of the Society and not for meeting current expenses. For the small annual subscription of $20, members receive, in addition to the benefit of the meetings during the year, a free copy of the Journal, which is sold to the public for HK$12. To place the Society on a sound", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204757, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE \n\n49 \n\nexperimental stations. And there is literary evidence for stating that all the hills between here and Canton were densely forested, as hills of similar geological structure still are in countries such as Japan, where the population does not destroy every tree before it is ten years old as they have been doing in South China for several centuries. Exactly what trees grew in these forests I cannot say; here is another missing piece in the puzzle which can probably be filled, as I shall soon suggest. The forests are supposed to have had two different kinds of human inhabitants, or at this time perhaps more than two, (a document of the early Yuan Dynasty mentions two types of hill-dwellers by name) but until further evidence comes to light, I suggest that in view of the small size of this territory, there is little reason to pre-suppose the existence of a third, and as I shall indicate later, my own preference is for a view that only one people lived here. \n\nOf the two non-Chinese peoples mentioned, one, the Yaos, are well-known and documented from South and Southwest China, Vietnam and Laos. Their languages have been studied, not an easy matter since their society comprises many small units, each possessing its own dialect and none having any form of writing; and work has been done on their customs and religion. There is an exhibit in the National Ethnological Museum at Leiden in Holland which shows the principal elements of their cultural and social life, including the type of house and the traditional patterns which they weave into their cloth, which in South China is made of wool. The exhibit at Leiden is particularly interesting because the adjoining showcase contains, or did contain when I visited that museum, an exhibit of a people from the island of Celebes who, although physically dissimilar in appearance, built somewhat similar houses and used almost identical patterns in their cloth, which however is bark-cloth. I asked the Assistant Curator whether the juxtaposition of the two exhibits was accidental or whether they had evidence of some connection between the Yao and the people of Celebes; he said that it was not fortuitous, because the resemblances were considerable, but there was no actual evidence of any connection and, as far as he knew, the peoples were of different racial types and spoke unrelated languages. Here is another gap to be closed. \n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205156, "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "The Hanlin Academy\n\n107\n\nmentaries compiled by themselves on classical and historical work. After the emperor had perused the presented material, they were preserved by the government library.27 Sometimes, the emperor chose to give special audience to his officials, on which occasions the latter had to expound the presented work orally to him.28\n\nThe primary aim of these discussions and the presentation of literary work was for the sake of indoctrinating capital officials, particularly the Hanlins, with the right kind of political outlook. This was highly important for the government in an ideological sense, since these officials, being the elite of the scholar-official class, were the moral leaders of a society which laid so much stress on letters. They had gained the highest laurels of literature by winning the Third Degree with distinction and by being admitted into the Hanlin Academy. Scholars aspiring to the higher degrees looked to their literary work as the standard style of expression. In other words, they were in a position to give direction to the literary standard of the Empire. The government was quick to grasp the point that if this comparatively small number of influential scholar-officials were well indoctrinated with the state ideology, the scholars of all provinces would strive to follow suit and extol what the government upheld as good.\n\nHowever, we should also notice that a thirst for learning the Chinese classics and history also motivated the early emperors in bringing about such literary debates. The discussions and presentation of literary essays also served as a means to help the emperors to master Confucian ideology, used in running government. In this respect, we can easily see the intimacy attained between the emperor and his Hanlin officials. The Hanlins and the emperor, meeting every day, in the long run, influenced each other. The officials were virtually the tools and the mouthpiece of the emperor. Nonetheless, they in turn also exerted an influence, in an often unconscious manner perhaps, over their master, who, hoping to control his people with Confucian ideas, had also to play the role of a Confucian monarch.\n\nThe Imperial discussions mentioned above were one aspect of the contact between Hanlins and the emperor. In the capacity of Recorders of the Emperor's Deeds (Chi-chu kuan), Royal Attendants in the Inner Palace (Ju-chih shih-pan kuan), and Personal Followers of the Emperor (Hu-tsung), the Hanlins were inevitably linked with the \"Son of Heaven\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205405, "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-1967", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "160\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nof Hong Kong, when the latter was studying Chinese in Canton, and in later years, so the villagers say, the two used to claim to be fellow students (同窗) (F). Although in his youth he did not take any of the Imperial examinations, he had some reputation as a literary man and wrote fine characters.\n\nHe was married to a CHENG (鄭) from the nearby Cantonese village of Pak Kong (白崗), and also had a concubine from a fishing family. His ancestral tablet perversely records the wife as KAN (簡) and the concubine as CHENG (鄭). Both wives apparently lived amicably in Tseung Kwan O, where Chan spent much of his time.\n\nAt the New Territories survey of 1905 he was recorded as the owner of 2.3 acres of agricultural land and 6 building lots in Tseung Kwan O, and was the manager of the CHAN Hok-yin Tso (陳學賢祖) with 2.7 acres of agricultural land and 2 houses. He also owned 4 shops and a house in Hang Hau market. It was during this period that Hang Hau was at the peak of its prosperity as a porterage town for produce to and from Sai Kung and Hong Kong.\n\nAccording to local gossip he did not pay much attention to business, but smoked opium and lived on the wealth he had inherited from his father. The Yi Hing shop in Kowloon City lost money and had to be sold in about 1930. In spite of this he apparently continued to play a part in the affairs of Kowloon City and of the Lok Sin Tong.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Most of this information was supplied by Messrs. Chan Shui (陳瑞) the village representative and Chan Kin Ming (陳健明) the supervisor of the village school.\n\n2 See S. F. Balfour, \"Hong Kong Before the British\" in Tien Hsia Monthly, 1936.\n\n3 See Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963), Chapter IX for the Tang clan.\n\n4 The three large Cantonese villages of Ho Chung, Pak Kong and Sha Kok Mei, which dominate the three main valleys of the Sai Kung area, also give foundation dates of late Ming or early Ching. For brief notes on Ho Chung and Pak Kong, see my note \"Visit to Ho Chung pp. 46-47 of M. Topley (ed), Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories (Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1965), and James Hayes, \"Visit to Villages in the Sai Kung District\", ibid., pp. 41-42. Hong Kong. 1967.\n\nBERNARD WILLIAMS", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205494, "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-1968", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION\n\n31\n\ning divided sects, in the nineteenth century) leaders were required to travel about the country recruiting members and raising money.\n\nLeaders had to have some education, not only to pass examinations but also to write scriptures and sutras encouraging members to join and explaining the purpose of religious practices. Literacy was needed for reading and writing messages (sometimes sent even today in elaborate codes) to leaders in other areas. In some sects degrees could be purchased but a leader would have little power unless he were at least literate.\n\nThe sects however offered various attractions. Some offered to bestow degrees on ancestors of members bringing money or honour or power to the sect (T’ung-shan She, a non-vegetarian sect existing in Singapore today, still does this). And it was expected that leaders would take a percentage of the moneys they collected. Sectarian ideologies were sometimes likely to appeal to scholars. Although syncretic they could be quite sophisticated. Sometimes items of ideology were revealed by gods during seances using automatic writing, a type of seance popular as a past-time with elderly educated gentlemen in traditional China. A common Chinese notion was that social and natural disorders were the result of earth being out of phase with heaven. Sectarians often emphasised that this came about when leaders of the country lacked virtue and failed to teach the Truth stemming from Heaven. When the emperor lacked virtue there were national disasters; when local officials were corrupt, local catastrophes, floods and droughts were a result.\n\nIdeology provided, then, an explanation and even suggested action when the conditions of life deteriorated, which might be attractive to both scholar and the ordinary man experiencing hardship. Vegetarian halls, like those of the Buddhists, provided a home for the unattached; there was one in Hankow which provided for destitute and unattached seamen in their old age.3\n\nOne might expect the leaders of sects to be, then, individuals with some education and time on their hands; perhaps those with frustrated ambitions, looking for ways for compensating for their lot in secular society who desired degrees and administrative power; those feeling they had better qualities and more virtue than local officials; persons sensitive to wrongs and injuries and not tied too closely to gentry codes of behaviour and not too re-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205753, "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-1969", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n53\n\nlocal recruits. The venture was rumoured to be the work of the Ming Lan Tong, a literary society of Tung-kuan city. Additional credence was given to the reports when it was learned that some officers of the Tong were members of the Hsin-an Tang clan. Police on patrol in the New Territory also noted that women were leaving their villages. By 10th May the exodus had reached major proportions.\n\nIt was evident that the Sham Chun river was not a defensible frontier and that the best way to forestall attack was to occupy the area from which it was to be launched. On 16th May two columns, numbering 1500 men in all, landed from Deep Bay and Mirs Bay and marched on Sham Chun. That evening the Union Jack was hoisted over Sham Chun market, to the accompaniment of a 21-gun salute. A proclamation was issued declaring that Sham Chun was British territory and that the Viceroy had no further jurisdiction in the district. There had been no resistance and no sign of forces massing to attack the New Territory.\n\nThe occupation of Sham Chun was confined to an area within five miles of the Sham Chun river, including Sha Tau, Sham Chun, and the road between them. Neither civil nor military jurisdiction were extended further. However, in the hinterland the occupation of Sham Chun and the proclamation which accompanied it were interpreted as a prelude to the occupation of the entire district. In particular, the Tangs of Pan T'in feared a punitive expedition against themselves.\n\nMuch of the information about subsequent events comes from one source. The Rev. Martin Schaub* of the Basel Mission had a station at Li Long, near Pan T'in, in the north of the district. Rev. Schaub wrote periodically to the officer commanding at Sham Chun and his letters convey a vivid impression of the activity precipitated by the occupation. Late in May he wrote that the leaders of Pan T'in had asked the larger villages to help in resisting the British. He said money was being collected and that armed men were making their way toward Pan T'in.\n\n* The printed documents call him \"Hart\", but this must be in error for Rev. Martin Schaub of the Basel Mission. A photograph and brief biography are given at pp. 16, 438 of Marshall Broomhall, The Chinese Empire: a General and Missionary Survey, London, [1907]. Perhaps hand-writing was responsible for the wrong transcription into the printed documents, Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205823, "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-1969", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM\n\n123\n\n15 Unless exceptional circumstances make him de facto a property-holder; when, for example, a man's parents die before his marriage.\n\n16 This is an extreme over-simplification of the very complex pattern of property rights between father and son, and between brothers: I hope to use material from Sheung Tsuen in a fuller discussion of this topic elsewhere.\n\n17 The eldest brother, usually, who will have assumed responsibility for the family's ancestral tablet when he took over his father's house on his marriage.\n\n18 The result of this being merely to delay the division of the family property by one generation.\n\n19 Traditionally, in default of a close kinsman, any boy of the same surname might be adopted, though I have heard of very few cases of this. As far as the distribution of property is concerned, however, an adoption from outside the localised lineage is no different from a different surname adoption.\n\n20 J. Goody, “Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective\", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1969, pps. 55-78, has an illuminating comparative survey of adoption in Roman, Greek, Hindu-Indian, Chinese, and West African society; but he is concerned to point out the differences between Eurasian and African practices, and therefore does not discuss the significance of differences within the Eurasian group itself. However, his demonstration of the general primacy in these societies of the inheritance of property over succession to an ancestral cult is most strongly supported by material from Sheung Tsuen. Studies of inheritance and succession in traditional Chinese society which rely exclusively on legal and literary sources (e.g. Klaus Mäding, Chinesisches traditionelles Erbrecht, Berlin, 1966) tend to overlook this vital point.\n\n21 And his abandoned land. There is similarly no mechanism in Chinese customary law by which a non-returning migrant's land can be transferred to his kinsmen or fellow-villagers.\n\n22 And although Plum Grove had practically no migrants; if one adds the migrants from Big Stream Village to the population figure for that village, the average number of houses per family is still further reduced,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205930, "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": 10, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "4\n\ntrade and penetration to China and the Far East, and the Society was in part designed to bring together in London members of these societies who had returned to England and allow them to meet and continue publication of their work. It was founded in March 1823 and received its Royal Charter of Incorporation from George IV on 11th August, 1824. It is the oldest and most important Society of its kind in Europe, and its standing as the doyen of Societies promoting the study of Asia has been maintained by the devotion of generations of eminent scholars, explorers, and others who have contributed through its Journal, in public addresses and in many other ways, a rich harvest of knowledge, the practical uses of which serve to promote and aid our understanding of, and our relation with, the East.\n\nBefore the acquisition of Hong Kong the movement had extended to the mercantile community in Canton, under the influence of Sir John Davis who had become a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and of correspondents of the Society who included James Matheson.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch grew out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society founded in 1845. This Society, however, in accord with the contemporary spirit of inquiry, and the enthusiasm for better knowledge of Asia in general and of China in particular, had contemplated setting up a Philosophical Society under the leadership of Andrew Shortrede, Editor of the China Mail who drafted the Society's laws based on those of the Royal Asiatic Society. Sir John F. Davis, then Governor of the Colony, by reason of his known literary and scientific acquirements rather than his official rank, was asked to be President. He suggested that the Society should seek to be admitted as a Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society with which, as a founder member, he was in close touch and with whose active President, the Earl of Auckland, he had had discussions on these lines before he left England.\n\nSo in January 1847 the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was founded and all the members of the Medico-Chirurgical Society who wished to join were admitted on condition of their Society's library being handed over to the new body.\n\nBesides the Governor as President, and Andrew Shortrede as General Secretary and Major General D'Aguilar as Vice President,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205931, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "the Society included the hierarchy of the Government, Military, Medical and Mercantile communities.\n\nIn his Inaugural Address as President of the Hong Kong Branch, Sir John Davis stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany, as well as to literary pursuits, and suggested that he could get the sanction of the Colonial Office to the grant of a moderate piece of ground for a Botanical Garden. Sir John left the Colony in 1848; but, as the result of a stirring appeal by the Rev. C. Gutzlaff at a meeting of the Society in August 1848, the project was approved, although it was not carried into effect until the governorship of Sir John Bowring, and then the Garden was placed under Government control and not under that of the Society.\n\nThe Society was fortunate in enjoying influential Government and press support, including that of the China Mail, and continued under Sir George Bonham who gave the Society a room in the old Supreme Court building to hold its meetings and to house its library.\n\nWith the departure of Sir John Bowring in May 1859, and the death in the September following of the Branch's devoted Secretary, the Society collapsed. The efforts of Dr. James Legge, as well as those of Sir Hercules Robinson, the new Governor, as President, of the Bishop of Victoria and of the Acting Chief Justice as Vice-Presidents and of Harry (later Sir Harry) S. Parkes were of no avail.\n\nThe collapse of the Society came at an unfortunate time and deprived it of the prestige and momentum which it would undoubtedly have gained from the work of some of its famous members. Legge was on the eve of publishing his famous translation of the Chinese Classics, which eventually appeared only through the generosity of Joseph Jardine (and his successor Sir Robert Jardine) and of John Dent, the heads of the two largest merchant houses in the Colony. A little later, in 1865, T. W. Kingsmill had to resort to the aid of the Shanghai Branch for the publication of his studies on the geology of Hong Kong.\n\nIt was thus with a deep sense of responsibility, and also of duty, that it was decided to revive this Society in 1959 after the lapse of a century.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205933, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "and last Monday's lecture by Dr. Hu on Flowering Trees. The most popular activities each year are the annual symposia held under the Chairmanship of Dr. Topley and the occasional excursions, such as the tour of Old Shau Kei Wan organised last year by Mr. J. W. Hayes. These tours, as well as being studies in the history and social life of Hong Kong, are popular and prove of great service in bringing members together, giving them an opportunity of knowing each other and welding them into one Society of common interest and purpose. In accord with the objects of the parent society and the principles enunciated by Sir John Davis, we have tried to direct attention to practical projects and to natural history as well as to literary pursuits. Thus, a week-end symposium was organised in 1968 under Professor Dwyer of the University of Hong Kong on the subject of The Changing Face of Hong Kong, and recently another week-end symposium was organised by Professor Thrower, as mentioned above. A record of these studies is being edited and will in due course be published by the Society and so make a valuable contribution to the natural history of the Colony.\n\nThe Journal of the Society maintains its high academic standard and interest under the Editorship of Mr. J. W. Hayes. The tenth volume is in the press and will be out later this year. Vol. I, which had long been out of print, has now been reprinted and is now available to meet the increasing demand of members and of scholars and readers overseas for a complete set of the Society's publications, which are now becoming very valuable and much sought after by libraries and learned institutions as well as by individual readers all over the world.\n\nOur greatest problem is our library, and our great sorrow is that our resources do not enable us to rent a room to house our books, let alone to pay a librarian. The original society in Hong Kong had been granted by Sir George Bonham a room in the old Supreme Court to hold its meetings and to house its library. When the Society ran into difficulties in 1858, it handed over its valuable library of 400 books on trust to the Morrison Education Society, which also kept its library in the Old Court House, and in 1869 the Morrison Society presented its own library and that of the Royal Asiatic Society to the City Hall Library. I feel, therefore, that the Government is not without obligation to the Society in respect of the housing of its present library. In Shanghai", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206242, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "LETTERS FROM CHINA 1835-36\n\n53\n\nwhich were imposed upon their movement by the Chinese authorities. Their effect upon a sensitive person are readily apparent from the letters. The literary interests and charitable works of the writer and his relatives are also of interest, and the mentions of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China and the Medical Missionary Society remind us of the starting difficulties that surrounded the first of these ventures.\n\nBoth societies were inaugurated at meetings held among foreign residents at Canton. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China originated at a meeting of residents on 29th November, 1834. The Medical Missionary Society originated at a public meeting held in Canton in 1838 and, according to Samuel Couling, was \"the first society of the kind in existence\" in China. The Society was formed to develop and finance Dr. Peter Parker's ophthalmic hospital in Canton which had started in Singapore in 1834 and been moved to Canton the following year. (See Samuel Couling, The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1917, pp. 345, 520 for further details. An account of the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China is given in The Chinese Repository, volume 3, page 378).\n\nWith the kind assistance of Mr. H. A. Rydings, Librarian of the University of Hong Kong and Honorary Librarian of this Branch, it has been possible to trace the reference in the letter written from the ship Asia to the Compendium of General History printed at Singapore, being the first work of the Society for Diffusing Useful Knowledge in China. This is Koò kin wàn kwo kang kéén or Universal History, 244 leaves, Singapore 1838. This appears as No. 34 on page 60 of (Alexander Wylie's) Memorials of the Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese, Shanghae, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867. Item 17 on page 58 is also relevant. Unfortunately, the mention of the Japanese Encyclopaedia, also in the long letter written on board the Asia, is too vague to allow for any identification.\n\nIt may be of interest to readers that in Volume 4 of this Journal (1964) we printed with Introduction and Useful Notes a recently discovered M.S. Journal of Occurrences at Canton during the Cessation of Trade at Canton 1839 which is considered to have been by W. C. Hunter, a resident of Canton and Macau contemporary with Stewart. Hunter published his reminiscences", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206245, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "56\n\nHONG KONG EDITOR\n\nmiles away round yon corner to the South! I ran down there for a day, to recruit, last week, and there, one walks by permission of these Celestial exclusives ashore, viz. on an island, called (I don't exactly know why) - Dane's Island. It is about 3 miles in circumference, and has a triple-peaked hill on it about as high as Arthur's Seat in Edin[burgh] which I mounted; and you can understand the titillating pleasure I derived from discovering a resemblance the most remarkable between the view from this hill and that from Ehrenbreitstein on the Rhine! The absence of a fine City and bridge was all (quite enough, you will say!) and was compensated by a river-reach (in like situation, i.e. immediately below you) occupied for the length of two miles with full 50 gallant Ships of 1500 tons and downwards. The rest of the view the character of the country -- the distribution[?] of the water the mountainous horizon-bore a great resemblance to that on the Rhine\n\n+\n\npersons\n\nSociety here is at the very lowest intellectual ebb-and is thus unencumbered by that pretension and affectation which the half-educated and half-literary disgust you with..... whether they infest the walks of literature, science, art, or anything else. We are so far, therefore, much to be envied. I discover however ominous indications in certain editorial labours of certain here who actually arrange the types for two weekly newspapers imagine if you can, what a Canton Newspaper ought to be! Apart though from what seems, and of course is, mere banter in this - we are as a community perhaps the least enlightened, the least informed, and the most vain, and the most unamiable in our intercourse together, that ever existed of its size. An American missionary who conducts our \"Monthly Repository” excellently well-is a marked but almost solitary exception. The rest of us, unless there be some \"singular few\" who like myself think of all this in secret and are unknown, are to a Man engrossed in business — Oh most dreadfully engrossed — it beats every bondage of lucre I ever beheld; mammon rules not only in the office, but at the dinner-table, and no doubt over the sleepers' dreams; not a moment of life spared to one hearty thought of any other topic that might interest liberal Englishmen\n\nand, more shocking than all, not a moment of the 24 hours (I desire not to speak uncharitably and therefore only deplore what I fear to be generally not untrue) given to the consideration", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206297, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "108\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nthe Chinese Classics. Few Chinese in Hong Kong at this period were noted for their literary or scholarly ability. Ho Fuk Tong was a good scholar, but in the area of Christian thought; having mastered Greek and Hebrew, he translated and edited Biblical Commentaries in Chinese. Though acquainted with the Chinese Classics, he was not an outstanding Chinese scholar. Wong T'ao, who like Ho Fuk Tong was closely associated with Rev. James Legge, was generally recognized as a competent Chinese literati. He was a baptized Christian and had come to Hong Kong from Shanghai because of suspected connections with the Tai Ping movement. He was recommended to Legge by the missionaries in Shanghai. Legge, who was involved in translating the Chinese Classics, found Wong T'ao to be an invaluable assistant and paid him the following tribute: \"This scholar, far exceeding in classical (knowledge) more than any of his countrymen whom the author had previously known, came to Hong Kong in the end of 1863, and placed at his disposal all the treasures of a large well-selected library. At the same time entering with spirit into his labours, now explaining, now arguing, as the case might be, he has not only helped but enlivened many days of toil\"45 Wong T'ao continued as editor of the Tsun Wan Yat Po until he left Hong Kong to return to Shanghai in 1884. He was largely responsible for the prestige the paper achieved, fulfilling in some measure the hopes of the prospectus for the paper that it \"would eventually become in China what the London Times is in England\"46. As a mark of his position in the community, his name appears on several memorials and deputations of representatives of the Chinese in Hong Kong in the 1880s.\n\nStill another Christian associated with the introduction of western style journalism in China was Wong Shing alias 黃勝 Wong Pin Po. Like Ho Fuk Tong and Wong T'ao, he was closely associated with Dr. Legge for a number of years.\n\nWong Shing was a native of Heung Shan District near Macao and was in the first class of the Morrison Educational Society School. The school's principal, the Rev. Samuel Robbins Brown, took Wong Shing with three other students for advanced study in the United States in 1846. Wong Shing's health broke down and he had to return to Hong Kong after two years in America.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206431, "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": 248, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "222\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\naffirmations, are the opposite of jural rules. Jural rules rely for their value on their relative clarity; rites derive their strength from their poetic vagueness. Indeed, when the jural rules are themselves lacking in clear definition and are internally contradictory, then the rites exploit them by exaggerating their ambiguities and discrepancies. It seems to me that the Chinese rites of marriage above all stress the ambiguity of affinal relationships'.\n\nProfessor Wolf in an essay on Chinese kinship and mourning dress shows how his informants in the Taiwan town of Sanhsia, an old riverport near Taipei, gave conflicting versions of the mourning attire to be worn by daughters. As he writes, 'where disagreements occur, they reflect conflict in the kinship system. . . . Disagreements between people are inevitable because there is ambiguity in the kinship system. The only way to avoid variation in mourning dress without imposing an arbitrary code would be to resolve the conflicts that it reflects'.\n\nThe conflicts discussed by both Professors Freedman and Wolf take us further away from an idealised and literary version of Chinese society: they supply data and arguments that allow us to see the Chinese family and kinship group as it really is. Contradictions are the heart of the matter.\n\nThe other essays in this volume deal with a variety of interrelated problems. Mrs. Irene Taeuber, a demographer, takes another look at the data collected on farm families by J.L. Buck in 1929-31 and shows that there is some adaptation of family size (and family structure) to primary economic resources. Mrs. Ai-Li S. Chin analyses samples of short stories from the Mainland and Taiwan and concludes that, whereas in tradition-oriented Taiwan the writers concentrate on portraying the problems of the alienated and isolated individual, the Mainland writers seem to accept (in the period under review, 1962 to mid-1966) the family itself, if it is ideologically sound, as a source of happiness for the individual. Professor Johanna Meskill discusses the Chinese genealogy as a research source, describes different types of genealogy, and demonstrates its uses and limitations.* Professor John McCoy writes of Chinese kin terms of reference and address. This is a highly technical but interesting paper. Finally, in a terminal paper Professor\n\n* Hugh D. R. Baker has used genealogies with effect in his A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui (London, Frank Cass, 1968).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206533, "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-1972", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n75\n\nout the nineteenth century, a fashionable pursuit for the dilettante and the serious amateur scholar; even Elizabeth I, Queen of Rumania, acquired a European reputation, under the pen-name of Carmen Sylva, for her writings on the legends and fairy tales of her country of adoption. Lockhart, like N.B. Dennys and R.F. Johnston, became an addict of the new cult and study of folklore.\n\nThe term 'folklore' was coined as late as 1846 by the antiquarian W.J. Thoms; but the foundations of the study can be traced back to the influence of Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, published in 1765, and above all to the German brothers Grimm, whose Kinder und Hausmärchen appeared in 1812 and Deutsche Mythologie in 1835. They, in particular, laid the foundations for a study of folktales and popular superstitions upon a more scientific, comparative basis and examined problems from a wider point of view than that of the local antiquarian or literary romantic. The first folklore society in Britain was founded in 1878 and in that year appeared the first journal dedicated entirely to the study. This was the Folk-lore Record, the name of which was changed to the Folk-lore Journal and finally to plain Folk-lore.\n\nIn 1885 Lockhart was appointed to act as local Secretary of the Folk-lore Society of Great Britain and soon after he published an advertisement in the China Review asking readers to submit specimens of Chinese customs, superstitions and beliefs. He appealed to both European and Chinese readers and stated he would be pleased to translate communications in Chinese. He urged Europeans and Americans resident in China to co-operate for 'there can be little doubt that, either by their position or influence, they could materially contribute towards a thorough investigation of a subject which is daily becoming of great interest, and which is gradually assuming a place of no small importance among other branches of science.' It is not clear what sort of response Lockhart got from the readers of the China Review: but he did publish an article in 1890 in the British Folk-lore Journal, which was mainly a translation of material that had appeared originally in the Hong Kong Chinese newspaper, the Chung Ngoi San Po (Chung-wai Hsin-pao)† †† #報1\n\nLockhart's private papers are now lodged with his old school, George Watson's College, Edinburgh, and contain much material on Chinese folklore.62 What Lockhart intended to do with his treasure", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206797, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "68\n\nCHIU LING-YEONG\n\nbrother, Li Hsien and his sister Li Shun-hsien, also attained literary fame in late T'ang. Li Hsün's tz'u is very melodic and musical, Professor Lo Hsiang-lin points out that Li's work had stimulated the tz'u writing of the Northern Sung period.43\n\nLi Hsün, though a Persian, had activated the Pen-ts'ao and tzʼu writing of his time and also of the Sung Period.44\n\nChao Heng 朝衡\n\nChao Heng was a Japanese envoy who came to China with Chen-jen shu-tien A in A.D. 716. Chao Heng's original name was Abeno Nakamaro E. Chao Heng was his sinicized name. After reaching Ch'ang-an with Chen-jen shu-tien AA Chao Heng felt that Chinese culture was far superior to any other culture he knew, so he decided to stay in the Chinese capital and rendered his service to Emperors Hsüan-tsung and Su-tsung In Shang-yüan period (A.D. 760-762), he was sent to Annam as Tu-hu (Protectorate General). He died in A.D. 770.45\n\n#\n\nIV\n\nIt is interesting to note that foreigners in T'ang times had very high social standing in a multi-racial society and in the Court. Foreigners were not only offered senior posts in the government but also shared the responsibilities of policy-making for the empire.46 This, of course, was one of the reasons which led to An Lu-shan's 安祿山 rebellion.\n\nIt is mentioned earlier that Lu Chún had introduced the anti-foreign regulations when he was governor of Kuang-chou in A.D. 836. However, he also presented Li Yen-sheng, a Persian, to the Court in A.D. 847. Li was later given the title of chin-shih because of his literary achievement. It was a custom in Tang times to add two to three unusual surnames to the pass-list of the civil examinations which were held annually either in the capital or in the main cities. These unusual surnames were all those of foreigners. Those who were selected for inclusion in the pass-list were known as pang-huak.\n\nT'ang Emperors had shown no bias towards these foreigners in China. They even decreed, more than once, that Persians, Arabs and other nationals in Kuang-chou, Yang-chou and Ch'üan-chou", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206901, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "172\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThere are emperors, princes, ministers, generals, scholars, officials and the corresponding female parts, their sons and their daughters. They are dressed in gorgeous costumes and they sing and speak in a very literary language, and artistic voice, which even for ordinary Chinese is difficult to understand. As a contrast there are the common people, the servants and soldiers, who are dressed mostly in a simple dark gown and often appear as clowns with a white patch painted into the middle of their face. They speak in the common Peking dialect, sometimes even making rude jokes, in order to amuse the public and give it a chance to relax between listening to the very strenuous singing parts. This can also be found in the traditional western theatre. However, Miss Halson does not mention this technique of contrasting the two groups of society in behaviour, appearance and language, and does not give any background to the social groupings and their relationships, and to the examination system of Imperial China, all of which are absolutely essential for any understanding. Scott, at least, touches on the subject in his introduction.\n\nMiss Halson divides the roles into four major forms: male, female, painted-face roles and comic characters, with their subdivisions of young and old, military or scholar, attributing to them appearance, acting and voices. The book is illustrated with ten plates, very artistic brush-drawings by a Japanese artist called Ishizuka; these show ten different characters which give the reader very good impressions of the appearance of the actors. Scott also has about 10 sketches, beautifully done by himself, but not systematically chosen or arranged.\n\nScott tries to describe a subject in a very detailed way, whereas Miss Halson only touches upon subjects, giving only a few examples. For instance: under the section of costumes Mr. Scott gives all the major forms with all their subdivisions and their Chinese names, often as many as ten. Miss Halson only introduces the major costumes, but she has the advantage of having a detailed technical drawing of each. There is, for example, the costume representing an armour, worn by generals and commanders. It has four flags or pennants sticking out at the back of the neck. The costume is very stiff and heavily embroidered, consisting of a front and back-flap, the latter cut into stripes; there is a tigerhead-design on the front, the arms are tight, as this actor has to perform acrobatics. Scott's description is already more interesting; he says that there is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207326, "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-1975", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "86\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nching the room they find the parting letter on her desk. The mother starts wailing, cursing her husband. They call the servants to check the house, and the two male servants return and report that they found the back-gate open. They panic, and the wet-nurse rushes out to inform the groom's family.\n\nAct X\n\nThe servants lead the way with lanterns to the river. Mr. and Mrs. Su are followed soon after by the eldest of the Su clan, and by Mr. Yang and his wet-nurse. Then the group meets T'ao-hua and she joins in the search. Mr. Su now accuses Mr. Yang of having pushed their daughter to commit suicide. Mr. Yang reads Liu-niang's last letter but is not impressed. Perhaps it is a trick to avoid the marriage. He will not believe it until he has tangible proof.\n\nAfter walking in many circles they come to the bank of the river, where a servant discovers the shoes of Liu-niang. The parents wail and scold Mr. Yang, and finally the old ferryman approaches with his oar. When asked whether he had seen Liu-niang, he answers that he did not see anybody, but heard a big splash. Whereupon the whole party decides to return home.\n\nThe ferryman calls back T’ao-hua and triumphantly tells her that he can now finish the couplet of the 13th month, because every so many years there is in fact an intercalary 13th month. And on this gay note the play ends, providing the reason why this opera is colloquially called \"T'ao-hua Crosses the River”.\n\nAct VIII is the climax of the play and Act IX and X the anti-climax.\n\nFOOTNOTE\n\nChiuchow Opera and Peking Opera\n\nThe repertoire of Chiuchow opera contains plays taken from the Peking opera, as well as plays based on Chiuchow's local traditions. Ch'en San Wu-niang and Su Liu-niang are both typical Chiuchow operas which have no parallel in the Peking opera. Both are elegant and refined literary operas, with a very strong local flavour in the treatment and development of the subject, and in the music and performance style.\n\nIn a Peking opera the hard laws of society, the five relationships instituted by Confucius, are more important than human happiness; and in Peking opera the same plot would have quite a different dénouement, most probably with a tragic end. How would a well-kept young lady ever dare", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207637, "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-1976", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Library of the Hong Kong Branch Royal Asiatic Society\n\nReport for the Year 1975-1976\n\nWith the closing of the British Council Library in the Gloucester Building, new arrangements had to be made for housing the Branch's collection of books and periodicals. Once again we must acknowledge our deep gratitude to the Representative of the British Council, who has allowed us to keep part of the collection in the Council's Library since 1968. The rather unsatisfactory division of the Branch's Library between two locations continued, all the books now being housed in the Library of the Public Records Office by kind permission of the Archivist; and the periodicals (bound volumes and unbound parts) and pamphlets in the Library of the University of Hong Kong.\n\nAt the same time the Council approved a slight revision of the library rules, to reflect these changed circumstances, and a circular was sent to all members in Hong Kong explaining the new arrangements. In spite of this, usage of the Library remains at a low level.\n\nIt has not been possible so far to issue a further supplement to the Library Catalogue, as is intended, though most of the books received in the past two years have now been catalogued, and are available for use.\n\nWe have been fortunate in the acquisition of some important gifts. In June Mr. A. H. Forsyth presented seven books relating to China, mostly out of print and therefore particularly welcome. One of the last acts of the late Dr. J. R. Jones on behalf of the Society was the presentation of a bound set of the Journal of the North China Branch of the Society, of which he was for many years an active member. Starting with the Journal of the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society (precursor of the N. China Branch), no. 1, June 1858, the set is almost complete to v. 73, 1948, the last volume published. While there have been no purchases of books, the Library continues to grow as a result of the many useful exchanges established with other institutions, and a number of volumes of periodicals received in this way have recently been bound.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207899, "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-1976", "page_number": 287, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "272\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTo assist in this side of the Hospital's services it maintained a Coffin Depository. The present one is at Sandy Bay. Perhaps at some future date the Society will arrange a visit to it.\n\nWe have noted that General Rule No. 11 begins with the statement, \"The Hospital is not for the purpose of worshipping gods\". This statement, however did not prevent the Hospital from performing many functions that had religious significance.\n\nThe Social Significance of Tung Wah\n\n \n Societies tend to organize social groups in which membership confers a prestige generally recognized by the community. Qualifications for membership in such groups may vary. In traditional China the system of honorary degrees based on achievement in literary examinations and on subsequent official service created an elite class. In Hong Kong this traditional method of acquiring prestige status was replaced by membership of certain Chinese community organizations — and later official Government bodies and committees. Wealth was an important qualification for election or appointment to these status conferring bodies, but wealth was expected to be accompanied by a concern for the general welfare of the community. In commenting on the Tung Wah Committee, the American Consul in a despatch to the U.S. Secretary of State in 1875 says that \"the Association is largely composed of, and is controlled by, rich and retired Chinese merchants, who are directing themselves to morals, charity and benevolence.”\n \n\nIn the early period of Hong Kong history the Temple Committee was the major organization within the Chinese community conferring prestige. As we have noted, the Tung Wah Hospital Committee eventually replaced the Man Mo Temple Committee. It also took over its prestige conferring function. The emergence of a Chinese elite as represented by the Tung Wah Committee is discussed in my article in JHKBRAS, 11 (1971), pp. 74-115. This social function of Tung Wah is also set forth in the article by H.J. Lethbridge mentioned at the beginning of these notes.\n\nAccording to a statement made by \"a member of the Chinese Community\" in a letter to the editor of the China Mail in 1875, the recognition given to the members of the Committee rested upon popular vote by the Chinese community, and “as Government has no means of knowing who is most influential or most respectable among the Chinese, it begins to regard the ballot as the basis of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208293, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "EDITORIAL\n\nWith this Journal, No. 18 in the series, our printer and member, Mr. Lam Yung-fai, has completed eighteen years of sterling work for the Society. In my twelve years as Hon. Editor and to my knowledge before that, Mr. Lam has always treated the Journal as a special job, something dear to his heart and therefore the subject of his special attention. I have not been the best of the editors because my official duties leave little time and less energy for other pursuits, and in consequence Mr. Lam and his staff have had to accept papers as and when I was able to deal with them and often \"bad copy\" in my poor hand. It is largely owing to Mr. Lam's tolerance, patience, and his affection for the Society that a satisfactory Journal is produced each year. For this, we are indeed most grateful. It is therefore with great pleasure that I record here the Council's decision to appoint him an Honorary Member of the Society in recognition of his services to the Branch.\n\nIt is eleven years since I penned an editorial. During that time and since its inception, the Journal has provided a useful, indeed major, outlet for work on Hong Kong. The result is, by now, a large body of material on the subject that is of value to the Hong Kong community and of use to many persons seeking background to their own studies and literary work of all kinds. Perhaps the greatest compliment paid was the extensive and acknowledged use of material from the Journal in P.H.M. Jones' Golden Guide to Hong Kong published by the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1968; though of course, much more has appeared in these pages since then, thanks to the interest in Hong Kong and China that draws so many researchers here for academic work.\n\nMuch of the material provided is historical. This is important in a period of sweeping change when, otherwise, much of value that would provide essential background to the current, ever-changing scene, is swept aside and lost forever unless recorded. Some of it relates to the contemporary, equally threatened by the rapid pace and face of change. Most is sociologically-based. Here, I renew the thought expressed in 1967, and earlier by our first Hon. Editor, Professor Cranmer-Byng: that since ethnography is a particular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "182\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\nin print making for generations since Late Ming. To Hua Wu is a district in the city of Soochow. Fatshan is a town near Canton, also noted for its many temples, beautiful scenery and many other crafts. Prints made from these centers varied in style and printing technique, but only the prints made from Fatshan retain the ancient traditional forms, as Fatshan has been the supply center of folk prints for the Chinese overseas who have emigrated and settled down in South Asian countries for many generations. The folk prints used by Chinese people in Hong Kong were also supplied from Fatshan. There had been several woodblock printers in Hong Kong producing religious folk prints by using blocks supplied from Fatshan until fifteen years ago. Then, for economic reasons, some local printers closed down their business and the remaining ones turned to modern printing techniques by using machines.\n\nIn the nineteenth century modern printing techniques were introduced to China from Western countries, and eventually the use of woodblock for printing started to decline and began to vanish. The remaining woodblock printers only engaged in the printing of religious matter. When the Communists took over the government of China in 1949, almost all these printers closed down their trade. Those still in existence are mainly engaged in reproducing paintings of old masters. One is Wing Po Chai in Peking, another in Shanghai is styled To Wan Huen. There is also one left in Hangchow of Chekiang Province.\n\nThe usages of woodblock printing\n\nWoodblock printing had a wide range of usage in Chinese daily life. Besides printed books, calendars, folk prints and religious matter, woodblocks were used for printing stationery, account sheets, letter heads, calligraphic copy books, trade labels, posters, circular notices, playing cards, etc. The government's official documents, orders, legal contracts, etc. were also printed by using woodblocks. Decorated letter sheets had been in fashion in high society in the old days. High-ranking officials, noted families, wealthy merchants and literary scholars and artists had, for their own exclusive use, beautiful specially illustrated and coloured woodblock printed personal letter sheets for writing letters or poems. Card games were also popular in the feast gatherings of scholars, poets or artists. Monochrome, illustrated, woodblock-printed, paper playing cards", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208723, "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-1979", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n153\n\nhave formulated his scope differently: focussing his attention on the folk religion of Taiwan, he might have tried to define its nature (in contrast to the other traditional systems), its characteristics, its expressions in cult and ritual. Now he leaves the ambiguity of his scope bothering the reader throughout the whole work.\n\nTo say that the old method of classifying Chinese religion does not work, does not solve the problem. Before abandoning the old way, one could try to revitalize it with some modifications, and it would probably work. Indeed, one cannot deny that in China (and in Taiwan) there are historically and at the present time — at least three distinct religio-philosophical (and literary-cultural traditions, which have in different ways influenced Chinese culture on all levels of society from the higher levels of the literati and rulers down to the common people. Not all levels have been affected in the same way or by the same traditions equally, or in the same period of time. There has been interaction between the traditions and between the various social groups: thought-patterns and practices of the literati-scholars and rulers have affected the common people and vice versa. The three systems, called Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, again are not to be considered as clearly defined categories: they are rather each a collection of somehow similar but often dissimilar systems with a universal common denominator (Taoism is a classical example of this phenomenon).\n\nThe first question arising is whether the three traditional systems even if we recognize their internal divisions — have any distinct consistency. The second question follows: is the religious system of the people (presuming that there is such a reality) identical with any of these three or with all of them or is it a separate entity? In that case: how does it relate to the three systems?\n\nMy answer would be: to question 1: Yes, both historically in the whole of China, and at the present time in Taiwan and other places; to question 2: No: the popular religion cannot be identified with any of the three systems, nor with the three together. It is a distinctly separate system, with various degrees of assimilation or absorption from the three (this phenomenon of mutual assimilation also exists in the three systems). The system of popular religion is characterized by its own world view, by its own functionalism, and by its own forms of expression in cult, worship, etc. Some of its characteristics are identical with the set of criteria (or ‘parameters')\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209030, "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-1980", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "160\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIt would appear from the introduction penned by the famous American sinologue missionary and teacher, Dr. W.A.P. Martin, that this literary material was collected on the spot, at each capital, comprising \"their topographical treasures, a mass of literature destined to form the basis of a Chinese Library\" (p. viii). Also that, as for one of Dr. Geil's former books on China, on his journeyings along the Great Wall, Martin had helped to put his materials in shape (p. viii).\n\nDoes anyone know of the present whereabouts of this valuable collection which presumably was taken back by Dr. Geil to his home in Doylestown, Pennsylvania where, according to Who Was Who in America, he was born, lived and died (1925).\n\nHong Kong, 1977,\n\nJAMES HAYES.\n\nPostscript (1981). I was in error as to place of death. Dr. Geil died at Venice on 11th April 1925.\n\n(II) Letter from The Mercer Museum & Fonthill,\n\nThe Bucks County Historical Society\n\nPine Street,\n\nThe Spruance Library\n\nDoylestown, PA 18901\n\nH. A. Rydings\n\nLibrarian\n\nUniversity of Hong Kong\n\nPokfulam Road\n\nHong Kong\n\nDear Mr. Rydings:\n\nSeptember 18, 1980\n\nYour letter of July 30 was forwarded to us by Mr. Robert G. Gennett of the Lafayette College Library in the hope that we might know something of the present location of the Chinese library of William Edgar Geil.\n\nThe enclosed copy of a 1910 article in our clipping file indicates that the material did come home with Mr. Geil. However, we do not own it and we do not know what has become of it.\n\nWhen Geil died in 1925, he left his manuscripts and collections in his will to his wife (as indicated in the second enclosed clipping). Mrs. Geil died on January 16, 1959. The newspaper account of her will makes no mention of the library. She did leave a daughter, Mrs. Constance Geil Laycock, who was then of Shaker Heights,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209031, "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-1980", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n161\n\nOhio. Other legacies went to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, both in New York City.\n\nIf we find any more information on this matter, we will let you know.\n\ncc: Robert G. Gennett\n\nAnnex 1:\n\nYours sincerely,\n\nTerry A. McNealy\n\nLibrary Director\n\nas extracted from a newspaper cutting from The Doyles-town Intelligencer of 1st September, 1910 sent by the Library Director of the Spruance Library.\n\nDr William Edgar Geil, who has been engaged for a year in making political and literary investigations in China, returned to his home in Doylestown, Wednesday night, after completely circumnavigating the earth and getting material enough for three volumes which will be boiled down to one companion volume for the \"Great Wall of China,\" which he published last year.\n\n\"It has been my most successful journey,\" said Dr. Geil to an Intelligencer reporter, Thursday morning, at his home on West Court street. \"I have visited all of the twenty capitals of the Chinese empire, investigated the political situation in each, the economical conditions and gathered a library of Chinese literature different from any in existence. There is really a ton of this literature which is now on its way over and is one of the most remarkable collections ever made.\n\nThis was Dr. Geil's third visit to China. In 1902 he travelled from Shanghai to Bhamo, Burmah, and wrote \"The Yankee on the Yangtse.\" In 1908 he explored the whole length of the Great Wall and wrote a book upon it which had a wonderful sale. It is a great compliment that he has already sold the English rights to his book on his last journey, although it is not yet written.\n\nAnnex 2: as extracted from a newspaper cutting from The Doyles-town Intelligencer of 7th May, 1925 sent by the Library Director.\n\nThe residue of the estate, including manuscripts and collections are given to Mrs. Geil. In the event Mrs. Geil did not survive it was provided the collection and rest of the estate be given to the...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209035, "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-1980", "page_number": 197, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n165\n\nBranch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and other Western-language books from the former Haiguang tushuguan. In the 1950s catalogs were published of certain holdings in some of the constituent libraries.*\n\nWith over 6.7 million volumes, subscriptions to 5,000 foreign journals (predominantly in the natural sciences), and an estimated daily clientele of 3,000 readers, the library operates several specialized branches in various parts of the city. Its central facility, located in the former administrative building of the Shanghai race track, is maintained primarily to serve research needs.\n\n[This extract is taken from Frederic Wakeman Jr's Ming and Qing historical studies in the People's Republic of China. Berkeley, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. 1980]\n\n* Xujiahui cangshulou suocang difangzhi mulu chubian [First list compiled of books held in the Xujiahui Repository] (n.p., 1957); Shanghai tushuguan cang qian Haiguang tushuguan shumu [Catalog of books from the former Haiguang Library now held in the Shanghai Library], 2 vols. (n.p., 1959); Qian Yazhou Wenhui tushuguan tushu mulu [Library catalog of the former Asia Literary Association], 2 vols. (n.p., 1955).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209040, "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-1980", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "170\n\nBOOK LISTS\n\nan especially favoured form of literary entertainment but were widely popular, especially at the new year holiday and other relaxing times. Writing in the later nineteenth century, Sir Robert Douglas gives a fascinating picture of the scene in a Chinese city on the evening of the fifteenth day of the first month, the Feast of Lanterns, as he calls it\n\nAs the night advances, crowds, among whom are numbers of ladies, who, on no other occasion, venture out after dark, throng the street to gaze at the illuminations and, in some instances, to guess the riddles which are inscribed on lanterns hung at the doorways of houses. Prizes, such as parcels of tea, pencils, fans, etc., are given to the successful solvers of the rebuses, but these have little to do with the interest which is shown in the amusement which, partaking of the nature of a literary exercise, is well suited to the natural taste.\" Robert K. Douglas, China, (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Second Edition, Revised, 1887), 264-265. Rhyming games were akin to this genre, and a good example can be found in David Hawkes' translation of the famous eighteen century novel The Story of the Stone (another name for the Red Chamber Dream), Vol. 2 \"The Crab-Flower Club\" (London, Penguin Books, 1977), 299-303.\n\n(e) Educational texts, including classics, primers and other aids to literacy\n\nI am not including the classics in this list, which have been seen in a wide range of texts and commentaries for all purposes from the elementary school room to the examination hall for the hsiu ts'ai and higher degrees, and in all sizes from large format to tiny \"sleeve gems\" and \"fly-head writing\" on slips of rice paper to be smuggled into the cells of the examination place. In lieu of these, I have listed a few of the primers and aids to literacy that I have come across.\"\n\n*\n\n(f) Guides to letter writing: simple and literary\n\nLike the books on couplets, this is another popular\n\n* See also Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, Education and Popular Literacy in Ching China (Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1979), especially the book list at 265-268", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209214, "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-1981", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920's 103\n\nto England had continued the campaign to bring the Hong Kong situation to the attention of the British public. The Haselwoods and other interested people had enlisted the support of the Anti-Slavery and the Aborigine Protection Society, the Industrial Committee of the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland, the Women's Committee of the Fabian Society, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the League of Nations Union, as well as Members of Parliament.\n\nIn Hong Kong a team of volunteer lecturers had spoken in churches, schools, the YMCA, the YWCA, and labour unions. One of the members had paid for the services of a professional lecturer to address passengers on boats travelling between Hong Kong and Canton.\n\nLiterature was produced both in English and Chinese. All the Parliamentary questions and answers were translated and sent to the Chinese press, along with original articles and correspondence with Members of Parliament, philanthropists and societies abroad. Locally, a literary competition had been held. The winning entry, a ballad, had been published and distributed both in Hong Kong and throughout China. The cost was underwritten by two wealthy contractors, Mr. Li Ping (probably a Roman Catholic) and Mr. Lam Woo (1869–1932) a founding member of St. Paul's Anglican Church and an Executive Committee member of the Society. A magazine of some 400 pages published by the Society contained articles treating the question in various literary forms.\n\nAt the time of the meeting 1,370 members had enrolled in the Society.\n\nOn instructions from the Colonial Office the Governor of Hong Kong issued a proclamation on April 14, 1922 stating:\n\nSlavery is not allowed to exist in the British Empire, and therefore it must be understood that mui tsai are not the property of their employers. Those of them who wish to leave their employers and who have reached the age of discretion must be allowed to apply to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs who will consider their cases.\n\nGirls are warned that they must not leave their present employment until they have some employment to go to for fear they should fall into the hands of procuresses.\n\nMasters and mistresses are specially warned against any attempt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209622, "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-1982", "page_number": 279, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "257\n\napproximately between 1900 and 1915. We find that of the four born before 1898, three had attended class for an average of four years, one attended for only one year, and then worked first in the farm for a few years and then in the construction of the railway. Amongst the six born after 1898, however, three never went to school and one claimed that he learnt to read a little when he worked as a shop assistant in a small tea-house at Shamshuipo. Around 1900, at least two teachers are known to have given up teaching, one to work in the Land Office of the New Territories administration and the other to work for his brother-in-law at Taipo. Liao Chung-nan, the siu-tsai who formerly taught a small class at high fees in his own home as mentioned above, eventually had to move to teach at the Wan Shih Tang at a lower fee of about $5 per pupil.\n\nThree government schools providing an elementary English education were set up between 1905-1906, one being situated at Taipo, about six miles from Sheung Shui. Unlike in urban Hong Kong, response to this new educational provision was not great. The school at Ping Shan fared most badly and was closed in 1907 to be replaced by one set up in Cheung Chau. The average attendance throughout 1905-1912 in these three schools was twenty, out of a total of 224 schools in the whole Territories with an average attendance of sixteen each.15 The Report of the District Officer of 1912 states: “Government schools on a small scale have been opened at centres in the New Territories providing an elementary instruction in English, the fee for these is 50 cents per month. There is not, however, a great demand for this instruction of a more modern type in most of the districts, for the people still cling to the old-fashioned learning.”16 We have no record of village people from Sheung Shui attending the Taipo government English schools before 1913.\n\n1913. The social and economic changes resulting from the change of government were still small and the opportunities for new jobs were still limited, and the jobs were mostly confined to manual labour. New demands had not yet appeared to bring marked changes in popular literacy which remained basically rooted in the traditional and relatively confined village society, but it was perhaps beginning to lose its former hold both as a basic education for the masses and, at a more advanced level, as the avenue to position and wealth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209625, "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-1982", "page_number": 282, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "260\n\n·\n\nJ\n\n: examinations, Sheung Shui lagged behind other villages in allowing girls to attend schools, perhaps it was due to the conservatism of our ancestors\". The rate of female literacy before the turn of the century was almost zero. The change in educational concepts which led to the beginning of a literate female population in the village was brought about by the efforts of the Hong Kong and New Territory Evangelization Society and the early Christian convert from the village just mentioned above. The Society had initially fared badly in the village as the villagers were strongly opposed to Christianity. In 1912, it managed to rent a house in the village to set up a small class of fifteen girls taught by the two ladies already mentioned from urban Hong Kong.21 In 1914, this school became the first and for a time the only government subsidized school for girls in the New Territories. Unfortunately, the school had to be closed in 1917 as the two lady teachers left the village, one for Sham Chun and another for Shanghai.22 Some of the girls from this school were admitted into the other village schools such as the Yun Sheng Chia-shou and Ming I Te Tang ** and thereafter girls continued to be enrolled in the different schools in the village, but the total number was still very small. In 1921, amongst a total number of 33669 females in the northern district of the New Territories, only 674 claimed to be able to read. The rate of female literacy was then 2%. By 1931, the rate had increased to 3.5%. The different rates of female literacy among the different age groups at that date can be seen in the following table:24\n\nAll females aged\n\nTABLE I\n% with ability to read and write\n\n5 and over\n3.74\n\n11 and over\n4.14\n\n16 and over\n3.69\n\n21 and over\n2.81\n\n·\n\nThe table shows that except among those below 11, there was a higher percentage of literacy among the younger generations, which also indicates that there was a gradual growth of female literacy from about 1920, when those who were at the age of 21 in the 1931 census had just reached their school-age.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209689, "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-1982", "page_number": 346, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "324\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nNewspapers in Asia Contemporary Trends and Problems. John A. Lent. Heinemann Asia 1982 pp. xxiii, 594, appendices, bibliography, index.\n\nJohn Lent, the editor of this far-ranging study, is professor of communications at Temple University in Philadelphia. Some of the chapters dealing with various aspects of journalism and newspaper-publishing in 23 Asian countries are supplied by contributors, but Professor Lent himself has written those dealing with the subject of Press freedom and also chapters on Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Bangladesh, Korea, Macao and Vietnam. Of his 21 contributors all are residents of Asia, or American academicians and government personnel who have lived there for a number of years, and some worked for newspapers before entering academic life.\n\nContributors were asked to follow the same guide-lines as to form and content and as a result, despite some differences of approach, the reader can make country-to-country comparisons.\n\nThe result is illuminating and depressing. The conclusion to be drawn from this large-scale survey is that there are very few good newspapers in Asia; and that most governments do not favour press freedom and take steps to control or throttle the newspaper industry. Papers in many countries suffer severely from the rising cost of newsprint. Poor communications make it difficult to distribute copies of city-printed newspapers out to the villages where most Asians live; and the low rate of literacy in a number of Asian countries acts as a heavy restraint on readership.\n\nHowever there are exceptions to this overall gloomy picture. In Japan, for instance, the combined circulation of daily newspapers in 1982 was already well over 63 millions in a population of 120 million. This means more daily papers sold in Japan than in the whole of the rest of Asia. Japan is an almost totally literate country, and widespread information plays a vital role in the running of its highly industrialised society.\n\nNear the other end of the spectrum Indonesia, with about 20 million more people than Japan, has fewer newspapers now than it did fifteen years ago and fewer readers less than two million. More than half of them are in the capital, Jakarta. And there", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210259, "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-1984", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "209\n\ned April 15, 1865.\n\nIn the biographies roman figures, as above, will be used to distin-guish these committees.\n\n2. Social Committees\n\nDespite the pressure of work during part of the year and in spite also of some claims that the treaty ports were a social and cultural desert, Shanghai could boast a fair number of clubs and charitable institutions.\n\nBelow I give some elementary details about those that crop up more than once in the biographies.\n\na. British Episcopal Church\n\nThe official Anglican Church was very early established in Shang-hai; in 1847 the first Trinity Church was built, to be replaced by a new one in 1866-1869.\n\nb. Chinese Hospital\n\nFounded in 1846 by the London Missionary Society with non-mission funds; trustees supervised the activities of the hospital, which was for Chinese only.\n\nc. North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS)\n\nOriginated in 1857 as the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society, renamed the NCBRAS in 1859, temporarily suspended in 1861 to be resuscitated in 1864.\n\nd. Recreation Fund\n\nA fund that was formed in 1863 through the sale of the ground within the second racecourse (to the east of the new one at Bub-bing Well Road). In order to administer this fund a committee was formed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210268, "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-1984", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "218\n\nShanghai in late 1843.\n\nJ.H. HAAN\n\nApart from general missionary duties he was mainly active as a printer and in this capacity he issued numerous tracts in several Oriental languages.\n\nUp to 1854 he was a vocal critic of the Committee of Roads and Jetties (the forerunner of the Municipal Council), especially with respect to the taxes it levied. A number of times he refused to pay them, among other reasons because he thought not enough was done to lay out a proper road to the L.M.S. compound. Trustee of the Shantung Road Cemetery. Portrait.1 Author of many works in English, Chinese and Malay.\n\n146\n\n144\n\n143\n\nMedhurst Road was named after him and his son, W.H. Medhurst Jr., British Consul.\n\nMICHIE, Alexander 1862-1863\n\nBorn 1833, died 1901.147\n\nArrived in Shanghai about 1854 in the employment of Lindsay & Co.;148 partner from January 1, 1861;149 later partner in Chapman, King & Co.;11 was also employed by Jardine, Matheson & Co.151 1886-1891 publisher and editor of the Chinese Times in Tien-tsin.152\n\n150\n\nVice-president of the NCBRAS 1870,153 Member Committee III. 1873.154\n\nAuthor among other works of a biography of Rutherford Alcock.155\n\nMONCREIFF, Thomas 1849-1850\n\nArrival in Shanghai 1846;156 partner in Rathbones, Worthington & Co., from June 1, 1853 Moncreiff, Grove & Co.158\n\nTrustee British Episcopal Church 1856 and subsequent years. Vice-president Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society 1857.159 Member Committee IV.\n\nDied in 1863(?).160\n\nNYE, Clement Drew 1851-1852, 1855-1856, 1865-1866\n\nBorn 1821, died 1867.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210269, "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-1984", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "219\n\n161\n\nLived in Canton and Macau, 1841-1849, where he was a partner\n\nin Nye, Parker & Co. and Vice-consul for Chile.\n\nLater partner in Bull, Nye & Co.\n\nBuried at Shantung Road Cemetery.\n\n162\n\nORNE, Charles W. 1857-1858\n\nMercantile assistant Russell & Co., partner from January 1,\n\n1857.\n\n163\n\nPROBST, W. 1865-1866\n\nFirst lived in Canton, then Shanghai.\n\nUnknown in which firm he was employed; Consul for Oldenburg 1861.\n\nMember of the Shanghai Society for Relief of Distressed Foreigners of All Nationalities, 1865.\n\n166\n\nMember of the Recreation Fund Committee; NCBRAS till 1870 (non-resident).\n\n168\n\nHis wife died November 28, 1864 at the age of 28.\n\n169\n\nRANKEN, Andrew Archibald 1856-1857\n\nmember\n\nPartner in Smith, Kennedy & Co., May 1855 till December 31, 1858.\n\n171\n\nTrustee British Episcopal Church 1857; member Committee Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society 1858.\n\n172\n\nPortrait.\n\n173\n\nREID, David 1863-1864\n\n174\n\nHe was among other interests a real estate agent; partnership with John George Dunn as Reid & Co. from January 1, 1864. Member of the NCBRAS 1873-1878 (last year as non-resident). Trustee Recreation Fund Committee 1872, 1873. Member Committee VI and VII.\n\nREID, Robert 1859-1860\n\nPartner in Birley, Worthington & Co. 1862.\n\n178\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210270, "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-1984", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "220\n\nJ.H. HAAN\n\nMember Committee Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society 1858.179\n\nROBERTS, Oliver Everett 1850-1851\n\n181\n\nResident of Shanghai since 1850, before that of Canton.180 Partnership in Wetmore & Co., temporarily suspended to be renewed April 30, 1854.182\n\nMember Committee Shanghai Library 1852;183 member Committee to study the erection of a new building for the Shanghai Library 1852.184\n\nRODGERS, J. Kearney (or Kearny) 1863-1864\n\nHe is mentioned as “secretary” at the time of the issue of shares in the Shanghai Tug and Lighter Company, 1864.185\n\nSKINNER, John 1854-1855\n\n186\n\nResident of Canton from 1840, 1848 in Shanghai, then again in Canton.\n\n187\n\nPartner in Gibb, Livingston & Co. interest in which ceased December 26, 1856.188\n\nSMITH, J. Caldecott 1853-1854\n\nLived in China from 1843, as early as 1844 in Shanghai. Employed by Dent, Beale & Co.190\n\n189\n\nHe was involved in the escape of taotai Wu from the Shanghai native city when it was occupied by rebels in September 1853.191\n\nSMITH, J. Mackrill 1850-1851\n\n193\n\n192\n\nEmployed by Bell & Co. at Canton from 1840;193 Shanghai 1848 as J.M. Smith & Co., from December 20, 1851 as Smith, King & Co.\n\n194\n\nHe also sold \"superior pale sherry, port and Madeira\"195 and was a broker,196\n\nPartnership ceased December 31, 1853.197 After the death of Henry Shearman, 1856, he was, as his executor, publisher and editor of the North China Herald for one month.198", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210271, "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-1984", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "Trustee British Episcopal Church 1852-1853,199\n\nTALBOT, G.W. 1864-1865\n\nIn 1874 he was a partner in Olyphant & Co., Hong Kong. Member of the NCBRAS 1864.201\n\n200\n\n221\n\nActive in amateur dramatics and in March 1864 he participated in performances of the Shanghai Volunteer Theatrical.\n\nTATE, Joseph Priestley 1861-1862\n\nAuthorized to sign for Jas. Bowman & Co. April 23, 1858,203 later partner in Blain, Tate & Co.204\n\nMember Committee Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society 1858,205 member NCBRAS till 1873,206 member Recreation Fund Committee 1866.207\n\nMember Committee I.\n\nTHORBURN, William 1855-1856\n\nLived in Shanghai from 1847;208 partner in Hargreaves & Co. till May 17, 1856,209 in Blenkin, Rawson & Co. from August 4, 1856,210 later (1863, 1864) partner in Jarvie, Thorburn & Co.211 Member Committee IV.\n\nPossibly Thorburn Road was named after him.\n\nTHORNE, John 1858-1859\n\nCame to China as agent of Wells Fargo & Co.;212 later he acted as a broker.\n\nFrom its foundation in October 1867 till December 1871 he was editor of \"The Shanghai News-Letter for California and the Atlantic States\".213\n\nMember Committee Society for the Relief of Distressed Foreigners of All Nationalities, 1865;214 member Committee NCBRAS 1865.215\n\nTURNER, Henry 1862-1863\n\nManager Agra and United Service Bank 1862.216", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210381, "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-1984", "page_number": 352, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "331\n\nOne Day in China: May 21, 1936. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Sherman Cochran and Andrew C. K. Hsieh, with Janis Cochran, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983. xxvi, 290pp.\n\n“In the spring of 1936, newspapers and magazines in all parts of China began to carry advertisements calling for contributions to a record of a single, specific day Thursday, May 21, 1936. The advertisements were signed by two groups: the Literary Society, known for its distinguished journal, Literature, and the editorial board of “One Day in China”, whose members included some of the most famous intellectuals of the time, led by the editor-in-chief of the project, Mao Dun (1896-1981), a novelist acclaimed as China's leading writer of realistic fiction and one of the most important writers in modern Chinese literature.” Thus begins the Introduction to this selection of items translated into English. The project was inspired by Maxim Gorky (Russian novelist), who suggested “One Day in the World\" as a way of harnessing ‘collective writing'. Mao Dun and his editorial board, however, aimed at giving the vast picture of the face of China on a specific day, as presenting “a cross-section of today's China.”\n\nChina was at war, besieged from within and without. The Nationalists were fighting the Communists, both were fighting the Japanese. Here was an attempt to slice through this vast land in chaos with the fourth dimension of time, as if to cut into the ruthlessness of suffering with the ruthlessness of precision. There is something magically clean and clear about a specific point in time. That one day, 21 May, 1936, was chosen at random, but once chosen becomes a centre around which the amorphous begins to gather and to take shape. The infinite variations of life in China on that one day cohere within that continuum of time.\n\nThe entries are, with few exceptions, short. It is the cumulative effect of the entries together, rather than individually, which impresses upon the reader that life goes on, because it must, even against all odds. The facts are there, the emotions are expressed, despair is registered, but there is great economy of style in all of the pieces. The urgency is such that one does not stop to discuss, to analyze. The absence of any frenzy in all these voices makes for a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210709, "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-1986", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "43\n\nClub and Fraser Smith and represented the Club in legal proceedings. After one case Fraser Smith unsuccessfully proposed at an Annual Meeting that his fees be not paid, alleging that he had been actuated by prejudice in advising that there were grounds for expelling Fraser Smith from the Club. I have found no evidence that Francis ever rode or owned horses. However he did run on one occasion. That was in 1880 in the Veterans Flat Race during the Civilian Athletic Sports. He was unplaced off a twenty yard start. T.C. Hayllar won off thirty-five yards.\n\nHe was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the China Association and the Navy League, and in 1895 accepted the Presidency of the British Mercantile Marine Officers Association. He was also a member of the Gun Club and the Rifle Association. He joined various literary and debating societies. He supported Dr. Cantlie in the formation of the Odd Volumes Society in 1893 observing that he had been connected with many similar ventures during his thirty-three years of residence.\n\nHe was an inveterate lecturer, his subjects ranging from Jesuitism in 1872 through maritime and Asian affairs to the theory of British Advocacy in 1897. He was still lecturing in the year of his death. He was said to be an entertaining, clear and simple lecturer though the China Mail said that his chief fault as a public speaker was \"inartistic redundancy\".\n\nIn 1889 at a meeting of the Literary Society he expressed hope for an elected Legislative Council and objected to heads of departments being members of the Executive Council. In 1893 at the Odd Volumes Society on the subject \"What does Hong Kong want\" he gave the answer “public spirit”, and attacked incompetent officials and harmful legislation.\n\nIn 1899, again at the Odd Volumes Society, he disagreed with the view of an earlier speaker that the British Nation was more vulgar than others and deficient in imagination and gave his own view that the British were disliked by others because of their national self-complacency and arrogance which resulted from the accomplishment of great deeds.\n\nHe played chess and kept open house in his chambers for chess players at 4.30 p.m. on Wednesdays. In 1894 he was involved in a living chess tournament organised to raise funds for the Union Church and held in the grounds of the Hon J.J. Keswick at East Point. In 1897 he took part in the founding of the St. Cecilia Society established to cultivate a taste for music and was its President.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210960, "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-1987", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "vertise its existence and value for students and researchers, the Urban Council mounted an exhibition of important books from the collection at the Library between 18 November and 1 December. Two talks were given during the exhibition; one in Cantonese on the RAS Library by our Hon. Librarian, Mr. Peter Yeung and one by myself, in English, on the RAS in Hong Kong and Shanghai 1845-1987.\n\nConcluding Remarks\n\nI have left one major concern to the end. Our greatly increased membership is a source of gratification; for its own sake and because it reflects much effort. However, this great increase does bring one factor into sharp focus. Whereas at this time last year one-fifth of the Society's membership was Chinese, the new members are almost all European, considerably reducing that percentage thereby. This is not the way we ought to be going. The future of the Society requires that, whilst maintaining the English-speaking basis for our literary work, we should move towards recruiting more Chinese and other local members from the professional, managerial and academic sectors, having more Chinese councillors and office bearers, and using Chinese language alongside English as far as may be practicable in our programme activities. We have a balance on Council at present, and in my view this should be maintained and extended. The study of Asia is our heritage and task, as Professor Drake said in his inaugural lecture to our Society in 1960. To continue to play this role in Hong Kong after 1997 the Hong Kong Branch must ensure that it is firmly rooted in Hong Kong society. The Council endorsed this view at its last meeting, when considering our review, and requested me to form a working group to look carefully into this important matter.\n\nFinally, I wish to thank my colleagues on the Council, and those members of the Society who have helped during the past year, for their much appreciated support and encouragement.\n\n11 March 1988\n\nJames Hayes\n\nPresident\n\nxii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210987, "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-1987", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "Yet I have no regrets whatsoever for the basic motivations which led so many French radical intellectuals to side with Mao-ism in the turbulent 1970s. Some of the trendy Maoists may have been concerned most of all with the image of China they were propagating for their own satisfaction and prestige. Yet others, as I can testify, had more sincere and far-reaching motivations. We took seriously the 'mass line', in contrast to politics set at the top. People's communes appealed all the more to us, since uncontrolled urban growth had become a cornerstone of the French Fifth Republic's overall economic strategies. \"To rely on one's own strength,' zili gengsheng, made sense to us, against the prevailing trends towards cultural banalisation of French daily life on the American model. 'Bombard the headquarters' was a slogan well-received among those who, after the failure of the May '68 movement, had experienced the backlash of the established political parties regaining their monopoly over French political life. We were certainly wrong in our simplified approach to the complex realities of Chinese politics and Chinese society. But looking at it from a distance, we were not necessarily wrong in advocating Maoist analyses and Maoist thinking so as to approach critically what we probably knew better than China, namely France itself.\n\nThe major intellectual encounter between China and France in the eighteenth century belongs to the past; the solitary French sinophiles of the nineteenth century have remained marginal in French literary history, and the Maoist love affair of the 1960s and early 1970s has ended pathetically, as most love affairs do. What next? One should perhaps consider, by way of conclusion, the relevance China may still have, in relation to the French intellectual crisis of the 1980s.\n\nTo describe present-day France in terms of an intellectual crisis may just be too easy, for genuine intellectual life is by nature a crisis in itself, a clash between the world of ideas and the real world, a clash between the old and the new. Every generation is involved in such crises. But the problems French intellectuals are facing in the 1980s go much deeper and much further, they encompass our very model of development all over the world, namely modernity. The present-day French intellectual crisis accordingly develops at two distinct levels. It still concerns French intellectuals and their role in their own society. But our French crisis is also,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211493, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "\"THE ONE BRIGHT SPOT IN SHANGHAI” \n\nA HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY OF \n\nTHE NORTH CHINA BRANCH OF \n\nTHE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY \n\nHAROLD M. OTNESS* \n\n185 \n\nThe North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society had its beginning on September 24, 1857, as the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society. From its inception Shanghai had a reputation as a city of commerce rather than an intellectual and cultural center. As Henri Cordier, a key figure in the development of the society's library, dryly recalled in his retirement, \"some spirited gentlemen thinking that tea, silk, and Manchester goods, however important they were from a mercantile standpoint, were not sufficient food for the mind, created a literary and scientific association\".1 Eighteen men, six of them missionaries, gathered in the Reading Room of the Shanghai Library, then a membership circulating library, to elect officers. Three weeks later the group met again to hear the inaugural address of its president, the Rev. Elijah C. Bridgman, an American highly regarded as a Chinese linguist and the publisher of the Chinese Repository. His address called for the increase of opportunities for understanding between foreigners and Chinese. He emphasized the need for more Westerners to undertake seriously the study of Chinese with the ultimate goal of enlightening the Chinese. In the rhetoric of his trade and times he stated, \"let the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society set itself in battle array, and let each and all of its Members be prepared and resolved to quit themselves like men\".2 \n\nRev. Bridgman was not mobilizing for war, but rather proposing a learned society which would conduct a regular series of lectures and the publication of a scholarly journal. He also called for the establishment of a library: \n\nof such diversified work, and for so many labourers, an extensive apparatus is needed; especially do we want a \n\n* Southern Oregon State College Library", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211496, "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "188\n\nLet everyone bear in mind that nothing is to be rejected - a pamphlet, a newspaper, nay a handbill, which to the ordinary reader is no more than a valueless scrap of paper, may become, in the hands of the searcher, the means of an important discovery.\"\n\nUntil his departure from China in 1876, Cordier worked hard to build up the society's collection. He arranged exchanges of publications with other societies around the world and he regularly canvassed local foreign residents and members for donations. He was able to get, at no cost to the society, the British Parliamentary papers concerning China, Customs Service reports and other governmental publications, and a full run of the Shanghai Evening Courier. But in spite of his obvious successes, his last annual report revealed some frustration:\n\nDuring the last five years, the Society has endeavoured to enlist public sympathy and patronage to a greater extent, pointing out the wants of the Library in its annual reports; but the various appeals made have not fully realized the looked-for result. Unremitting attention and care have been bestowed upon the Library of the Asiatic Society; but the time thus spent, if not responded to on the part of the community, by a show of interest in its only literary and scientific institution, is uphill work, and naturally becomes disheartening.\n\nThat the Library meets a real want is proved by the great increase in the number of works consulted or lent out, as shown by the register kept for the purpose.\"\n\nHowever, when looking back thirty years later, Cordier spoke of \"the pleasant feelings I have in my heart in speaking of these days of yore\", and he acknowledged that his work with the society's library laid the groundwork for his career as a sinologist.2\n\nCordier was replaced by a German named Joseph Haas, who seemed to have been more concerned with keeping books than acquiring them. His annual reports were filled with items such as:\n\n \n \n :\n ¦", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212011, "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-1989", "page_number": 426, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "401\n\nconnections between the local guilds, membership on the committee and the emergence of a Chinese business elite, the importance of a Chinese alternative to the colonial government which the Tung Wah essentially represented, and the links between traditional Chinese political culture and the symbols and trappings of authority with which committee members sought to enhance their status. It would be interesting to see how these patterns of social control changed after the colonial government introduced more controls over the hospital in 1896. But that is another story. Dr. Sinn's book will stand as the definitive study of the early history of the hospital and it is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Hong Kong society and politics in the nineteenth century.\n\nIAN SCOTT, University of Hong Kong\n\nPaul A. Cohen and Merle Goldman, eds., Ideas Across Cultures: Essays On Chinese Thought In Honor of Benjamin I. Schwartz. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1990. xi + 400 pp. Index.\n\nThis Festschrift for the recently retired Harvard professor of Chinese history and political science, after nearly four decades of teaching and writing, is a genuine tribute to the iconoclastic Schwartzian tradition. All ten articles, written by former students of the last three decades, address questions in Chinese studies which engage broad ranges of comparison with other Asian and Western expressions, in search of Schwartz's 'possibility of a universal human discourse', (p. 314). In every case, the thematic questions take Schwartz's previous work as a starting point from which to embellish, extrapolate or challenge academic evaluations of China. Raising issues from such diverse fields as Shang oracular bones, Mo-ist and Confucian utilitarianism, medieval metaphysics, folk-opera in the 1920s, non-Eurocentric Marxist theory and recent democratic overtures in the People's Republic, the authors create a literary monument to the probing and sensitive studies of their teacher. Precisely because of these varying degrees of reference to the Schwartzian corpus and the unusual breadth of themes, the lack of an exhaustive bibliography related to the honored scholar and the absence of a Chinese glossary are regrettable.\n\nThe first and ninth articles, by Hao Chang and Thomas Metzger, pinpoint their correctives to Schwartz's claims. Chang repeats a claim already made in 1985 that the ‘axial age' (qua Karl Jaspers) of Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212105, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "24\n\n30\n\nSir George Thomas Staunton, a member of the 1793-94 Macartney Embassy, whose translation of Ch'ing Law was the first published in Britain, had been at pains to emphasize this: Ta Tsing Leu Lee, Being the Fundamental Laws... of the Penal Code of China (London, Cadell and Davies, 1801), p. 185. For its application in practice see the cases translated with commentary in Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China, Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967).21 Cited in Corinne K. Hoexter, From Canton to California, The Epic of Chinese Immigration (New York, Four Winds Press, 1976), p. 136.\n\n11 Dr. William Lockhart of the London Missionary Society, writing in 1861, cites the case of the old scholar who so greatly assisted Dr. W.H. Medhurst with his translations and researches. See his The Medical Missionary in China (London, Hurst and Blackett. 2nd edition, 1861), pp. 21-22. \"He was a living concordance of the entire range of Chinese literature. He could find any passage without hesitation, repeat page after page of most of the works, and could easily take up any citation which had been begun in his hearing, and finish it without hesitation. This is not an uncommon thing amongst the educated Chinese, but this man possessed the faculty in a remarkable degree\".\n\n23 Arthur Evans Moule, The Chinese People, A Handbook on China (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1941), p. 262. See also his New China and Old, Personal Recollections and Observations of Thirty Years (London, Seeley and Co., 1891), p. 271.24 Some of the literary material to be found in villages of the Hong Kong region is described in Dr. Patrick Hase's most useful paper. \"Research Materials for Village Studies\", Chapter 4 of Alan Birch, Y.C. Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds.) Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies (Hong Kong. Centre of Asian Studies. University of Hong Kong, 1984), pp. 31-46, especially between pp. 32-37.\n\n25\n\n—\n\nBy great good fortune, some of their libraries have survived and are in safe keeping. One of them came from Hoi Pa Village, Tsuen Wan, and had belonged to the builder of the traditional village house there which is now a listed monument. He lived between 1865 and 1937, and after his return from Jamaica engaged in educational pursuits in a literary club and at the Luen Fong School in Hoi Pa Kwan Mun Hau. When what had survived of his library was presented to the Urban Services Department in 1982, it consisted of some 200 books of various kinds, as well as manuscript essays and poems, including some of the famed \"eight-legged essays\" written in preparation for the imperial examination; all providing valuable documentation for the educational, social and intellectual activities of their period. South China Morning Post, 26 May 1982. See also the Chinese press of that date.\n\n16 What Francis C.M. Wei calls the operation of the principle of retributive justice\" featured prominently in Chinese stories. See his The Spirit of Chinese Culture (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), p. 151. See also Yao Chin-nung, \"The Theme and Structure of the Yuan Drama\", in Tien Hsia Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (November 1935), p. 392.27 The Tsuen Wan experience is echoed in the fine description of what it meant to be a village boy in late 19th century Kwangtung, contained in the memoirs of a successful Hawaiian Chinese, born in a village near Macau in 1865. In them, he describes what one might call the \"extra-curricular\" part of education. This included the telling of traditional stories by the family elders and by itinerant minstrels and story-tellers, and through the plays performed by visiting opera troupes, as well as in literary pastimes: Chung Kun Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii (1879-1958) (Hong Kong, Cosmorama Pictorial Publisher, 1960), pp. 6, 26-29.\n\n28 Francis C.M. Wei, The Spirit of Chinese Culture (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947) p. 149.\n\n24\n\nFor the former, see the chapter \"Symbol and Tradition\" between pp. 50-75 of Ronald", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212274, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "19.3\n\nDuring the two years of theological training, James was directed to take initial Chinese lessons at the University of London under the recently returned missionary from Malacca, Samuel Kidd.1 The lessons made the new student aware of the difficulties of the language, of the unrefined nature of some of the tools, and of the unusual context (Malacca rather than China, among expatriated Chinese) within which they were prepared.\n\nHaving completed seminary training in 1838, he was delegated by the London Missionary Society to replace Samuel Kidd in Malacca. Legge was presented with the task of being a teacher, and then, mostly because of the limited personnel, made the administrator-principal of the Anglo-Chinese College (#18) which the pioneer Protestant missionaries, Robert Morrison and William Milne, had established in Malacca in the second decade of the 19th century. Legge interpreted Morrison's and Milne's original intentions as including plans to remove the school to China whenever the opportunity arose. This attitude threatened others in the institution, but in the end the Society supported a move to Hong Kong when it became possible in 1843.40\n\nIn spite of the fact that the administrative task was not much to his liking, Legge achieved rapid progress in language studies and so was considered worthy of the new position. (In fact, the strain on his health during the first ten months of intense language preparation brought him to the edge of a physical breakdown.) His first major literary task was editing the translation of a long novel, but his concern for teaching was fulfilled in the production of his Lexicogus, which rendered for College students sentences in parallel English, Malay, written Mandarin, spoken Hoklo, and demotic Cantonese.1 It was apparently for these efforts that the twenty-five-year-old Legge gained enough of a reputation to be awarded in absentia an honorary Doctorate from New York University in the United States on July 13, 1841.\n\nHaving demonstrated his competence even further after he arrived in Hong Kong in 1843, Dr. Legge was designated the President of the London Missionary Society's Theological Seminary. This further promotion into an authoritative position occurred after an extended sick leave in Scotland (1846-1847), during which the thirty-one-year-old seminary president designate gave serious thought to his future.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212477, "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-1991", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "11\n\nthat all men must die and not knowing when I may be called away, I deem it right while still in bodily health and full possession of mental faculties to make my will.\n\nWei A Kwong, the father of Wei Yuk, had a typical story of success. He was a Zhongshan native; he left his hometown and worked in Macau as a teenager. His father was a comprador to two American merchants, Benjamin Chew Wilcocks and Oliver H. Gordon. It was known that Wei was forsaken by his family and had to resort to begging on the streets of Macau. He was later sent to Singapore where he studied under the auspices of the Morrison Education Society in a school of the American Board of Commission for Foreign Missions. This changed his life. He returned to Hong Kong and began his career. He served as comprador in Bowra & Co. and then in the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China until his death. Wei wrote his will in 1866. He prefaced it with a brief account of his life, particularly mentioning that he was the first student of the Morrison Education Society and that he first came to Hong Kong in 1843. He had \"ever since lived under the just and equitable rule of the British Government.\" Though we cannot prove to what extent his exposure to Western culture was related to his Christian education, he succeeded in becoming a leading member of Chinese society in Hong Kong. This contrasts with the will of Sung Chin Tseung, which reads.\n\nSung Chin Tseung, otherwise literary appellation Sung Ching, otherwise Ngok Shan, native of Kat Tai village, of Kong Sheung Division, Heung Shan District. I followed my deceased father, Mr. Shau U, to Hong Kong in 1842 to trade in foreign business as compradore. Further, in 1854, thanks to the kind support of Mr. Ryrie and others of Messrs. Turner and Co., Hongkong, I took over the office of compradore and up to the present thirty odd years.\n\nBoth Wei and Sung were natives of Zhongshan. They came to Hong Kong for business in the early 1840s when Hong Kong was already a British colony. Though they lived in Hong Kong, they maintained connections with their hometown, as Sung's father, Soong Ke, stated in his will written in 1864:\n\nIn the 21st year of Tao Kwong (1841), I came to Hong Kong and employed myself in business all the time with foreigners, always being diligent and making little profit sufficient to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212752, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "46\n\nHis essays on his soldiering days consist of strings of facts and incidents, strong on action but showing little attempt at analysis or motives. He often managed to mingle action scenes with romanticised ones. According to his writings he, at 26, displayed strategic and tactical wisdom which his seniors, experienced Chinese generals greeted with acclaim, or so Mesny would have us believe.\n\nHe lived in exciting times and enjoyed experiences worthy of being recorded for posterity. A case in point is his description of the incidents when twice in a twelve month period he had to call on British gun boats to deliver him from the hands of Chinese captors. The first was the deliverance from the 'Imps' [the Chinese Imperial forces] at the forts below Nanking and the second from the Taiping rebels at Nanking itself. His description of his experiences living with the Taiping rebels, of life in a treaty port and his explanations of, for example, the process of the literary and military degree examinations in China and the organisation of the Tsung-li Yamen [The Chinese Bureau of Foreign Affairs] are fascinating even if some of the material has been copied from other works, and some of the autobiographical episodes seem at times to be exaggerated or 'edited'. An article in The Pilot [July 1946] claimed that Mesny had served under General Gordon during the Taiping rebellion as a lieutenant and, when Gordon returned to England in 1865, Mesny remained on in the Chinese army. This would seem to have been misunderstood folk memory as it is certain that, if such had been the case, Mesny would have described it during his autobiographical essays in the Miscellanies. His love life with Chinese ladies also at times reads like a Mills and Boon novel, but however much we may smile at his amorous memoirs, the military side of his autobiographical essays ring true throughout.\n\nMesny wrote about himself as if he needed the constant repetition to reassure him of his place in society and perhaps history, and was frustrated by the lack of influence he considered his due. In March 1905 Mesny wrote that scarcely a day passed but that he was asked to adjudge of important matters between Chinese and Chinese. He added that he did not always comply though his Chinese rank was sufficient as an excuse to act as a judge. He certainly saw himself as a bridge between Chinese and foreigners, and appeared to have many nodding acquaintances in both societies.\n\nA number of foreign authors describing China as they saw it around the turn of the last century each in turn complimented other writers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212765, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "59\n\nprevail elsewhere, and some of the descriptions held good for the whole of China. But,' continued Mesny, 'China is a large Empire, and General Tcheng was too young when he left China for Europe to have seen much of his own country. He was no doubt much better acquainted with Parisian manners and customs than with many manners and customs which prevail in many parts of the Chinese Empire. Nevertheless, his book deserves to be read more than once, even by me, who have seen so much more of China and the Chinese than General Tcheng has so far. Had I the literary qualifications of the writer of Les Chinois, Peints par Eux-memes, I could write at least a dozen such books on China and the Chinese without exhausting the stock of information I have acquired during my forty-four years' residence in the country. I have been treated in some parts of China much the same as General Tcheng was treated in Paris,'\n\nThe Miscellany probably just about paid its way though from the occasional note of sadness though not despair which appears from time to time, Mesny must have continued more for the desire to make a living and perhaps also to keep his name before the public eye rather than to earn a fortune. It was by no means smooth going and at times he must have upset individuals and even groups such as the announcement he made in July 1899 that his Miscellany was being boycotted by the press, bankers, insurance and shipping agencies and by shopkeepers. He bemoaned the fact [Volume II, Issue 28: Sep 1896] that the loss on the first year's publication was over $2,000.\n\nSeveral times in the course of his Miscellanies Mesny repeats a disclosure of a titbit of news or political scandal to prove that he was first and that the North China Daily News and the Shanghai Mercury had simply copied his original scoop without attribution.\n\nA number of magazines were being published around this time on the China Coast such as The East of Asia Magazine, printed and published by the North China Herald Office in Shanghai, a quarterly illustrated consisting of essays on topical subjects such as Chinese customs and superstitions, gems of Chinese poetry, bits of Fukien travel, Ningpo under the T'ai-ping's, etc mostly written by reasonably well known people. It only ran for a couple of years. Another was Social Shanghai, a monthly glossy journal relating western social happenings mostly in Shanghai but in a few instances referring to the outports. It consisted of the usual society articles, including births, deaths and marriages, the races, and lengthy pieces about the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. This ran", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212932, "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "226\n\nWelsh manages to be both succinct and vivid in giving an impression of Hong Kong today. He observes that Hong Kong's life-expectancy statistics are better than Britain's, and its per capita gross domestic product is greater. More interestingly he compares Hong Kong to another colony, Puerto Rico, which has four million people, rather than six, and has been under American control since 1898, the same year that much of Hong Kong became a colony. Infant mortality and life expectancy figures are far better in Hong Kong, while the crime rate is lower, the rates of literacy higher, and the quality of public transport superior. Hong Kong is much safer and cleaner than New York.\n\nLittle evidence of its colonial past remains in the architecture of the famous skyline, Welsh observes, and where Queen Victoria's statue once stood, 'the only memorial is now entirely appropriate for this temple of commerce - that of a bank manager.' New towns, housing over two million people, stand where once squatter settlements spread, linked by 'the sparklingly clean and efficient Metro and the modernized railway.' He points out that notwithstanding Hong Kong's modern skyline, 'at street level... the crowds are as Chinese as those of Canton and Shanghai.'\n\nBut Welsh is right to point out a great truth. While the colony was for too long run on authoritarian lines, he says, 'there is no society in Asia that has enjoyed for so long as Hong Kong the freedom that democracy is commonly supposed to guarantee.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213172, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "222\n\nquestion and wrote the second book, because the first volume, good though it is, told a very incomplete tale. Low City, High City concentrates on the Low City, Shitamachi or the old part of the city that was originally built on swampy lowlands and into which were crowded the commoners when Japan was ruled by the samurai. \"Commoner culture\" may have been a contradiction in terms to the samurai and their culture, yet it grew and grew and attracted avid attention even from the samurai in the feudal period. The lure of commoner culture remained in the Low City and continues today to beckon to many observers. Kabuki plays, haiku poetry, \"pictures of the floating world\" or ukiyoe, and the entertainers of the nightlife districts are just some of the legacies of the Low City which provoked Seidensticker's eulogy. He also takes up the high culture of the samurai, Zen Buddhism, tea ceremony and gardens, but his first love is clearly the culture of the Low City.\n\nHe takes his tale up to 1923 when the Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed most of Tokyo and Yokohama, especially the part of the city which he lovingly portrays. The 'quake struck on September 1, at noon when cooking fires were burning throughout the city. Fire soon raged over the crowded Low City, killing an estimated 100,000 people in Tokyo and Yokohama. Although the Low City sprang back to life (Tokyo folklore had it that a business which could not reopen on the third day after a fire was one which would have failed soon anyway due to its owner's mis-management even if the fire had not occurred), for Seidensticker, and for many literary figures like Nagai Kafu and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro whom he quotes heavily, the old city and its culture failed to spring back, already having been changed by the new currents and culture flowing in from the West. Now, its physical base was destroyed as well.\n\nFortunately Seidensticker did not leave his subject on such a negative note. He took up his own challenge to deal with the 'many exciting things [that] have occurred in the six decades since the earthquake.' The second volume is increasingly different from the first volume not, however, in terms of its excellence or the tender care it gives to its subject but, rather, it deals with the High City, the portion of the city which stretches far to the west and north of the Low City and in which the samurai class once lived, but which now houses the middle-class society that pervades Japan. Although the influences of the Low City are not absent in the new High City, the atmosphere changes dramatically as one goes up the low hills. The austerity and severe-mindedness of the samurai class spreads through\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213489, "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-1995", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "53\n\ntied. For the novice, or a less experienced, this can cause the wearer to faint. I have seen amateurs have their hats fall to the ground while on the stage, much to the amusement of the audience and dismay of the actor.\n\nIn the light of these anomalies, you would ask why people still choose this career. This is attributed mainly to poverty. The young boys, on joining the school, already burned their bridges behind them because they cannot go back and tell their parents the hardship they have experienced and become a burden to the family.\n\nIn spite of all these difficulties, quite a few do reach the top, like Di Mei Lan-tang and many others, who enjoyed international fame during their lives.\n\nThe Social Position of the Theatrical People in China\n\nUnder the feudal system in China, previous to the 1911 Revolution, the scholars class dominated, while the theatrical people were placed on the lowest rung of the social ladder, along with the barber, prostitute, worker in the bathhouse, and the cook. Their position in society was slightly better than the “untouchable” class in India. It is well known that in the Ch'ing Dynasty, candidates to the Imperial Examination, or any other literary examinations, must report the names and occupations of their ancestors for three generations from great grandfather down to the father. These applications had to be counter-signed by the Chairman of the Neighborhood Board of the district in which the candidate lived. They must state that none of these had ever worked in the five categories of trades listed above. False declaration would nullify the application and the applicant would never be allowed to sit again. What the punishment would be if detection occurred after success in examination is not known. The Imperial Examination was abolished in 1904.\n\nAnother reason why people looked down on the theatrical people was because they were regarded, more or less, as homosexually inclined. Strange to say, in a Confucian society like China, homosexuality, like foot binding, was never condemned as unforgivable sin, as in the Western world. I guess that many of the actors had to compromise if they wanted to stick to their careers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213558, "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-1995", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "123\n\nHis writing was prodigious and varied: he wrote translations of the poems of Heinrich Heine, dictionaries of slang, jargon and cant, he wrote on the English, Welsh and Irish Gypsies and their languages, the art of conversation, the development of memory and willpower, Etruscan Roman remains, the discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist monks in the fifth century; and he wrote textbooks on perfumes and cosmetics, pyrography and wood-roasting, bent iron and strip work, art drawing, and leather work.\n\nThis digression into the life of Charles G. Leland is to show that, as an acknowledged philologist and literary wit, the Pidgin-English Sing-Song was well within his powers and sphere of interest. With these doubts about the authenticity of the language of the Sing-song, we propose to leave the work aside.\n\nNext, I must mention Robert A. Hall Jr's article, \"Chinese Pidgin English Grammar and Texts\" (Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 64, 1944). In this article, Hall analyses, after the manner of Jesperson, a body of China Coast Pidgin elicited from English speakers, reflecting late-19th to early 20th Century Pidgin.\n\nMuch effort was made by Hall to undertake a phonetic and syntactic analysis of his material. But given the well-known degree of variation among Pidgin speakers, we feel that most of the effort was misguided. It is well worth noting, however, the degree of consistency between what is reported by Hall and what is found in other sources.\n\nDo we have any sources for the way Pidgin appeared to the Chinese? Yes. First, there is the \"Devils' Talk” pamphlet described by a number of authors. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a surviving copy of this, although we suspect that there must be a number of them in the U.S., if only we could imagine how the National Library of Congress would catalogue them...\n\nBut the major source was published in Canton in 1862 by an individual from Kowloon, Tong Ting Kü. The \"Ying u tasp ts'ún\" or \"The Chinese and English Instructor\" consists of six volumes, organized in the Chinese style according to topics. It contains prefaces by the author as well as by the general in command of the Kowloon Walled City, Cheung Yue Tong (famous for his calligraphy).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213645, "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-1995", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "Book Review\n\n217\n\nJAMES HAYES (1996), Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People, 1953-87, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 11 chapters, appendix, glossary, index, 320 pages.\n\nJames Hayes needs little introduction to most members of the Society. He was a former editor of the Journal and President of the Council for many years. He is also an extraordinarily nice human being with a passion for bow-ties. He allegedly retired, to Bondi Beach, Australia, in 1987 but there is little evidence that he is taking this seriously. Au contraire, he continues to write prolifically for the Journal and has also added many new books to the Society's collection through his constant forays into used-book shops.\n\nAll-in-all, James spent 32 years in Hong Kong. He was a member of the Administrative Service of the Hong Kong Government from August, 1956 (he was here briefly in 1953 with the Army). Although he had the varied career that characterises the Service, he spent almost half his time in the New Territories as District Officer South (1957-62), District Officer (and Town Manager) Tsuen Wan (1975-82), and Regional Secretary, New Territories (1985-87). He was, and remains, a noted sinologist and accomplished in the Chinese language. Academically, he was very sound with a PhD from the University of London and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters bestowed by the University of Hong Kong in 1992.\n\nJames has decided to share his memories of his service in Hong Kong with us in a new book. Autobiographies by former Hong Kong Government civil servants, and by Hong Kong people generally for that matter, are relatively rare events, almost as if the majority are reluctant to write their memoirs for fear of criticism or ridicule, or have little in their careers worth writing about. James has no problem on either count. His career was rich and varied, filled with achievements and may truly be said to have added value to public life in Hong Kong. As for the telling of it, he has avoided the inclination to embark upon a literary ego trip although he is not averse to describing the highlights in detail. Few will be offended by the style.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213725, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "49\n\nare totally illiterate.\"\n\nThe four school censuses say little about the education of girls, except that it was rare. However, the 1921 School Census did record that only 145 girls were full-time students at that date, which is only a little better than the 51 noted in the 1911 Census, despite the foundation of three girls' schools, and one fully co-educational school between 1911 and 1921 in the New Territories.\n\nThe question of the degree of literacy of males in traditional Chinese society is one of considerable debate. The evidence of the 1911, 1921, and 1931 Censuses, and the 1902-1921 School Censuses in the New Territories should not be ignored in this debate. They show unequivocally that the villagers believed that between 55 and 66% of the adult men of the villages were literate, and that about a quarter or a third of the male children aged 5-15 were at school at any time. There seems no good reason not to take this evidence at face value.\n\nOccupation\n\nBoth the 1911 and the 1921 Census include tables of \"Occupations\". Both sets of records are difficult to use, although the figures in the 1911 Census are better. In 1921, in fact, the census officer apologised for the poor quality of the \"Occupation\" statistics. In 1911, the occupation of 22,770 males and 14,386 females in the Northern District are recorded. This probably represents all those who claimed to have an occupation, and omitted infants, the elderly, and those women who claimed only to be housewives. Occupations are recorded for a male population approximately equivalent to all males aged over 15. In 1921, however, occupations were recorded for 34,753 males, against a total male population of 37,287. It must be assumed that persons with more than one occupation (e.g., a farmer and a carpenter, both part-time) were entered under each occupation in 1921. \"Student\" is not given as an occupation in 1921.\n\nIn both 1911 and 1921 the occupation figures for Southern District include the New Kowloon populations, although a separate \"Occupations\" table is included for the Southern District floating population in 1921. In 1981 it is unclear if the islands boat people", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214124, "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-1997", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "163\n\nEASTER, 1997 IN SHANGHAI: NOTES ON THE RAS HK VISIT\n\nGEOFFREY ROPER\n\nThere are close parallels between the histories of the RAS Branches formed in the two China coastal ports of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Both were formed in the 19th Century and originally under different names. That in Hong Kong was first formed in 1847 as The Philosophical Society of China, but in the same year became the China Branch of the RAS, later again to become the Hong Kong Branch. The Branch in Shanghai was first formed in 1857 as the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society, but soon became known as the North China Branch of the RAS.1 Both Branches underwent temporary periods of closure.\n\nThe North China Branch finally closed in 1949. It had been a very active cultural organisation, with a renowned Library, totalling some 14,000 volumes in 1948, located on the second floor of the Branch's own building. Since 1949 little had been heard outside China of the fortunes of that Library, although in recent years it had become known that it was housed in the Shanghai Municipal Library.\n\nNews in 1996 that Shanghai Municipal Library was to be rehoused in new premises rekindled interest in the RAS Library, whilst at the same time much was heard of another feature of Shanghai's cultural renaissance, the new premises of the Shanghai Museum. So there was good support amongst members and friends when the Hong Kong Branch decided to organise a visit to Shanghai for Easter, 1997.\n\nAfter a considerable amount of prior liaison and preparation by the Activities Committee, a thirty-seven strong party flew off from Hong Kong on the morning of Good Friday, the 28th March, reaching Shanghai in time for an afternoon visit to the new Shanghai Museum at 201 People's Avenue. For many years the old Museum in Henan Road had been famous not only for the high quality of the objects on display but also for the high number of items in storage, for the size of the premises permitted an age of what was available.\n\nAs our party, led by President Dan Waters and Vice President", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214796, "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-1999", "page_number": 211, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "176\n\nimaginings of more global others. The imaginary China which is depicted in writings and videos made by overseas Hmong is of course quite different from the China of actuality which some of them may visit, and yet these imagined recreations of place and locality are in some cases supported and reproduced through the cultural productions of local artistes and performers within China, as Schein (2000) has recently shown.\n\nI should like to present these kinds of returns as importantly powered by a nostalgia born in general from separation (a kind of metaphysics of place, rather than a metaphysics of absence), and these reconstructions of an often idyllic past as part of an attempt to re-appropriate, to forge new identities in the face of globalising dislocations from place; a kind of resistance, if you like. And, as communities have dispersed, and become transnational and cosmopolitan, so anthropology has had to change, from the older near-exclusive focus on local communities, to a discipline concerned with the wide-reaching effects of global capitalism, international tourism, and the production of media images which travel far and fast across cultural boundaries.\n\nMy own very first work on the Hmong was concerned with the rapid adoption by Hmong resettled as refugees in the United States of long-distance telephone calls to keep in touch with lineage relatives, and the recourse to telephone directories to find lineage members of the same surname with whom they could stay and from whom traditional lineage hospitality could be expected when they visited other cities. I saw this very rapid adoption of modern communications technology by a people who were still largely without writing skills (although they could read surnames in telephone directories!) as a striking instance of the power of a lineage society to reconstitute itself in a new global setting (a little like the Man lineage of Hong Kong did), and of the capacity of the still largely oral traditions of the Hmong to leapfrog entirely the stage of literacy which Marshall McLuhan had seen as the inevitable precursor to a new age of oral and visual communications (Tapp 1982).\n\nAnthropologists, and social scientists in general, can perhaps be criticised for being totally unable to provide any simple or easy answers to questions about whether the use of modern telecommunications is necessarily liberating and empowering for the individual, or", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214880, "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-1999", "page_number": 295, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "265\n\nwas known to all concerned. As I have said above, it might well have been a dollar or two, but no more than that small sum.\n\nMy main reason for favouring the money loan option is the composition of the list. The Shek Pik papers show that the members of the money loan associations listed there were a very mixed bag, and this was even more likely to be the case in town. This variety we have here, as demonstrated above. And whereas membership of a small money loan association was more than likely to include strangers, I doubt whether a moneylender would be willing to loan money to persons who might not be known to him and might well have no guarantors. Thus, I still hold to the view that these persons were linked, and through having come together for a common purpose.\n\nConclusion\n\nI think the issue remains open.\n\nIf the men shown on the list were indeed members of a money-loan association, the trifling amounts are as important as the fact of its existence. For the social and economic historian, the very modest nature of this particular operation is the more intriguing - not to say exciting - since it serves to underline the fact that, large or small, the money-loan association was an important player in the economic life of ordinary folk in pre-modern times, in town and country alike. Its existence is a testimony to both need and enterprise, to the creation and circulation of money for the realization of modest aims. It was also the training ground for the entrepreneurial skills of its organizers, some of whom, in time, might move on to more significant business ventures.\n\nIf, on the other hand, the scrap of paper is only a list of defaulters on the full or remaining part of small loans, it still indicates the circulation of money by an enterprising person who was prepared to take risks against the payment of interest. It also shows how some financial needs at the bottom end of society could be met on a petty scale.\n\nFinally, whilst those on the list appear from their names to be men, were the organizers of the money loan associations always males? The Shek Pik papers show that literacy was not always a requirement", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214980, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "32\n\nmovement, and the innocent uninvolved citizens as well. In a memoir-like fragment somewhat randomly chosen from the volume My House Has Two Doors, we read:\n\nAnd so the Emergency began. It would justify the suspending of all rights, giving the police (Special Branch) total power to arrest, search, detain anyone without trial and indefinitely, to disband all trade unions, arrest trade unionists, ban demonstrations, mete out the death sentence for 'possession of dangerous weapons,' which included school penknives, to apply censorship in all its forms, to impose curfews, to shoot suspects on sight.\n\nThere are a vast number of Han Suyin's excellent essays also, which had originally been published basically in the magazines of South East Asia (e.g., in the Hong Kong journal Eastern Horizon) and tackle various different sociopolitical problems of former colonies, generated just in the course of their colonial past. Luckily enough, a good deal of these largely dispersed essays were saved from oblivion by a rather recent re-editing them in a book entitled Tigers and Butterflies - Selected Writings on Politics, Culture and Society (London, 1990). The very titles of some of these essays are eloquent enough to remind us of Han Suyin's steady interests and passions: Social Changes in Asia (1960), The Aborigines (1961), Relations between East and West (1963), The Rich vs the Poor (1964), or The Troubles Miscalled Racial (1965).\n\nThe entirety of Han Suyin's literary achievements - and especially those parts which tackle predominantly colonial threads - have still to be sufficiently investigated and discussed. One reason for this situation seems to be the vagueness of average Western opinion in the matter of colonialism as sociopathology of the world's not so very distant past. In this particular context, Han Suyin's profound analyses followed by very moderate conclusions ought to be studied very attentively indeed, whereas her remarkably open, yet self-restrained and balanced attitude can only be gratefully acknowledged, admired and revered.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215736, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "around the world where full sets of our Journal are available to scholars.\n\nMembers will have seen, in the Newsletter, a growing amount of information about the activities of a number of these other Societies, information reaching us as a direct result of the improved communications we have been seeking. I am glad to say that we have been able to get into improved communication in particular with three of the Branch Societies in India, that is, those in Madras (the Madras Literary Society), Bombay (the Asiatic Society of Bombay), and Calcutta (the Asiatic Society of Bengal), and with those in Colombo (The Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch), Kuala Lumpur (the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society), and Seoul (the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch). All these Societies have agreed to welcome our Members to any of the events they mount, and we in turn have been very happy to offer Members of these Societies temporarily visiting Hong Kong access to our activities on the same terms as our own Members. We have also improved our contacts with the Siam Society, in Bangkok, and, again, we are now offering their Members access to our events on the same terms as our own Members. We have also been in regular communication with the Parent Society in London. We have not been able to contact the Branch Society in Tokyo as yet, and any Member able to help us in this respect should contact me.\n\nAs part of our drive to improve relationships with these other Branch and Associated Societies we have agreed to donate sets of our Journal to the Madras, Bombay, and Bangkok Societies, in return for sets of their Journals, which will be placed in our Library. Exchange arrangements with the Parent Branch in London, and with the Korea, Calcutta, Malaysia, and Ceylon Branches are also in place. We have also recently agreed an exchange arrangement with the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, Sweden.\n\nFollowing the agreement of Members at the Extraordinary General Meeting of the Society on 4 October 2002, that the Society should have a new category of Member, that is Honorary Institutional Member, we have agreed in the subsequent months to make the Shanghai Library; the Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives; the Zhong-ying Street Historical Museum, Sha Tau Kok (Shenzhen); the National Library, Bhutan; the British Empire Museum, Bristol, England; and the Instituto Cultural of Macau Honorary Institutional Members of the Society. In\n\nxxvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215838, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "In the essentially conservative society of the day, partial to the observance of etiquette and sensitive to social niceties, it was equally necessary for the government departments involved in district administration and community liaison to have the services of similar experts. The former Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, and the old-style District Administration New Territories/New Territories Administration, were the two departments in question. Even more than the associations, they had to do everything in the approved style, and with smooth efficiency.\n\nIn the SCA, there was a Chinese Literary Clerk to advise and assist the senior staff. There was also a Calligraphist, whose duties included writing the apothegms requested by associations to grace the pages of their bulletins and special publications (Plate 1). These posts are listed in the SCA's printed annual departmental reports (e.g. 1966-67, Appendix 21). In the DANT, such assistance was provided by a specially selected senior member of the government's General Clerical Service. A Calligraphist came later, together with an Interpreter/Translator in headquarters (see e.g., the District Commissioner's printed annual departmental report for 1964-65, Table XI). Such help was needed if we and our Offices were to function properly within the old system: meaning, in conformity with the accepted norms of polite (i.e., educated) Chinese society.\n\nOutside the headquarters, a notable contribution was made by the Liaison Officer grade in the two departments. Their senior officers' detailed knowledge of the associations' leaders and general expertise was vital in guiding the expatriate element among their superiors. And although, on one occasion, it was unkindly said of the liaison staff in the former Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, that 'all they were good for was arranging chairs and seating, and ushering guests to their seats,' such remarks overlook the great importance attached to protocol and etiquette in traditional Chinese society and the creation and maintenance of a sense of wellbeing between the guests and their hosts.\n\nIn truth, many persons took notice of performance. Government departments and community associations alike would be criticized for any mistakes or omissions, whilst any \"gaffes\" made during speeches - including the unwary or inadvertent choice of words to whose sounds other, disreputable, meanings could be construed - would be noted at once, and give rise to profane mirth or even ridicule. I can vouch for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215926, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "159\n\nREFERENCES\n\n2000/2001 RAS president's report. .\n\nHase, Patrick H. 1998. The Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong branch) and its Journal. The Journal of Resources for Hong Kong Studies, first issue, 17-43.\n\n2001. Interview by Eve Lam. Tai Po, New Territories, 3 April.\n\nHong Kong: Forty years of a growing city. 2000. Royal Asiatic Society 40th Anniversary Conference. 9 December,\n\nKo, Tim. 2001. Interview by Eve Lam. City Polytechnic University, 7 April.\n\nSinn, Elizabeth. 2001a. Interview by Eve Lam. HKU Centre of Asian Studies office, 23 November 2000.\n\n2001b. email correspondence with the author, 12 April.\n\nSmith, Carl T. 1985. Chinese Christians: elites, middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.\n\n2001. Interview by Eve Lam. Mei Foo Sun Chuen, 7 April.\n\nWaters, Dan. 1995. Faces of Hong Kong: an old hand's reflections. Singapore: Prentice-Hall.\n\n2000. Laughter across the Great Wall: A comparison of Chinese and western humour. Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 38: 1-50.\n\nand 6 April.\n\n2001. Interviews by Eve Lam. Conduit Road, 10 November\n\nHyperlink to Literary Journalism class, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong. URL:http://jmsc.hku.hk/jmsc2002/literaryjournalism/\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215995, "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": 294, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "228\n\nany rate habitually did not, and those who did, is one of the most significant within the literate realm, perhaps as important as the distinction between those who did and did not have full access to the literary tradition.\n\nThe fact that Ch'a later had others write down what he dictated about his experiences suggests that he was one of these people in the middle: able to read, but not yet able to write well. See the further discussion in David Johnson's article, \"Communication, Class, and Consciousness in Late Imperial China”, in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, pp. 34-72, here p. 38.\n\n30. EMMC/MM 20 (October 1856), p. 215.\n\n31. EMMC/MM 20 (October 1856), p. 215.\n\n32. This story is part of the collection of vignettes in a typed manuscript entitled Reminiscences (pp. 15-18, quotation from p. 15) held in the Bodleian Library (Ms. Eng. misc. c. 812). Many of these stories show signs of an aging man not remembering particular details of dates and places, but there appears to be no good reason to doubt the authenticity of this encounter between Legge and Ch'ëa itself. It appears nowhere else in Legge's writings, and serves as one of the basic texts for Helen Edith Legge's typescript, \"Che'a Kin-Kwang.”\n\n33. Rambo refers to this as a further motif in conversion initially identified by John Lofland and Rodney Stark. It involves the \"direct, personal experience of being loved, nurtured, and affirmed by a group and its leaders\" (Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, p. 15).\n\n34. For a helpful summary of Mary Isabella Legge's life see the section related to \"Mary Isabella Morison\" in Wong Man-kong, \"Hidden in History: London Missionary Society Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century China (1807-1877)”, in Lí Hànjī, ed., Dú shĩ cúngão (Reading History: Extant Documents) (Hong Kong: Xuéfeng wénhuà Co., 1998), esp. pages 156-160.\n\n35. The timing of Ch'ea's leaving his post at the Poklo temple was not certain in an earlier letter, but Ch'ea himself dictates this fact in a letter translated into English for overseas readers. See EMMC/MM (September 1857), p.207. The following descriptions come from this and another translated statement (pp. 207-209) prepared by another convert led back to Hong Kong by Ch'ea, as will be described below.\n\n36. This is the intent of the seventh of the sixteen edicts, translated by Legge as \"Discountenance and put away strange principles, in order to exalt the correct doctrine” (chủ viduàn vì chống zhèng xuê). Among the “strange principles” regarded as unacceptable were Buddhist and Daoist extremities, rebellious groups like the secret societies of the White Lotus, and the Catholic religion. Legge makes clear that the condemnation of Catholicism \"must be understood simply of Christianity\" as a whole. See James Legge, \"Imperial Confucianism\" (Lecture II), China Review, 6:4 (October 1877), pp. 232-235.\n\n37. In a similar way Hong Xiùquán was seen as \"mad\" by his family and neighbours, but had experienced a physical breakdown after repeated failures in the civil examinations during the time he began having visions. The experience of Ch'ea on this score is quite different, in that he apparently maintained a relative engagement with his local lifeworld until he returned from Hong Kong in the summer of 1856. Compare Hamberg's account taken down from Hong Réngan's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]