[ { "id": 204498, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "115\n\nBRITAIN AND CHINA'\n\nReviewed by COLINA LUPTON, M.A.2\n\nChina is and will probably continue for some time to be the most unpredictable element in world affairs. With the passage of time she becomes more, not less so; her motives grow more obscure, her economic development more problematical, her political life—within the echelons of the Communist Party—more a matter for conjecture. On the face which she turns to the world there is little sign of the stresses and strains which she is undergoing; the information which China publishes about herself is remarkable only for the lack of knowledge it conveys. Unhappily—in view of our ignorance China is likely by sheer weight of numbers to be the dominant influence in the world in perhaps twenty years' time, and how this unleashed dragon will deal then with other nations largely depends on the kind of handling she receives now.\n\nHence any book which sheds light on Chinese thought processes, in particular relating present policies to past treatment, is a valuable one. Mr. Luard has gone one better and conjectured the course of the future. His book sets out a sane and lucid account of relations with China since the first British ships reached her shores in 1637, and describes both what he expects to see and what he would like to see happen in the next few years. In what really amounts to a series of essays on the historical background, on the Kuomintang, the Communists and the Korean war, on missionaries and merchants, Hong Kong and Taiwan—he neatly discusses, without a superfluity of chronological detail, the past, the present, and the future. This method necessitates a little overlapping between the chapters, but it is worth this since it saves a lot of narration inessential to the point of the book. For the author is trying to discuss sentiments and policies as much as facts, and this kind of pattern gives him the scope to do so. This is certainly not to say that he has ignored facts; though the historical background is compressed, the account of Britain's dealings with the Mao Tse-tung regime is very fully treated.\n\nBy Evan Luard. Chatto and Windus, 1962. 25/-.\n\n* The writer was formerly a research assistant in the Far East Department of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. She has been living in Hong Kong since the end of 1960, and is Assistant Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204672, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n137\n\nIt is therefore a delight to read such a work as Mr. Cranmer-Byng's An Embassy to China. Produced by an historian, and one moreover who combines integrity with an uncommon knowledge of the East, this book is indispensable to an understanding today of the problems that East and West have inherited in their dealings with one another.\n\nThe main body of the book consists of the Journal kept by Lord Macartney on his embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung in 1793. He describes his journey to Peking, beyond the Great Wall to Jehol, and back by the Grand Canal and by river to Canton. There follow a series of \"observations\", compiled by Macartney from his own shrewd judgment and from data supplied by members of his entourage, on subjects such as the Manners, Religion, Government, Population, Arts and Sciences, Language etc. of China under the Ch'ing Dynasty.\n\nThe first 58 pages of the book contain an Introduction by the editor, in which he comments on early Anglo-Chinese relations, paints a brief biographical picture of Lord Macartney, and discusses the embassy, the manner of its reception, and its results. The final pages of the Introduction lead up to the Journal itself, its style, content and the method used by the diarist in compiling such a detailed account of his mission - an account written by a professional diplomat, skilled at seeing behind the facade, patient in negotiation, lucid in recollection and description.\n\nLooking back today from our vantage point in time nearly two hundred years later, it is easy to see that Macartney was given an impossible task. Remote in her geographical isolation and sublimely ignorant of world affairs, China had sealed herself for centuries in a false cocoon of imagined cultural superiority. The eighteenth century was both too late and too early for any European power to overcome the supreme complacency of the Imperial Court and Government. From the mid-sixteen hundreds onwards, Western nations, notably the Dutch, the Russians and the Portuguese had sent embassies to China, but all had failed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204675, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "140\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nSOUND AND SYMBOL IN CHINESE. By Bernhard Karlgren. Hong Kong University Press, 1962. Paper covers. 97 pages. HK$6.00.\n\nThis is the first volume in a series published by the Hong Kong University Press under the title CHINESE COMPANION SERIES, and it is an admirable choice. It consists of a new edition of Professor Karlgren's illuminating study, first published in 1922, which has been revised by the author himself and the Bibliographical Notes brought up to date. Short in length this book is nevertheless of the highest importance and no student of the Chinese language can afford to neglect it. Even those who are not primarily linguists should certainly read it since the subject which it discusses lies at the very roots of Chinese culture. It is written in a pleasant and lucid style which helps to make it easy to understand. The text contains a number of Chinese characters. All students of Chinese will be glad to see that there is a photograph of the author at the front of the book. He is one of the most distinguished living Sinologists.\n\nIt is good to see this important work available in an inexpensive but attractive format and the Hong Kong University Press is to be congratulated on an auspicious start to its CHINESE COMPANION SERIES.\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG.\n\nASIAN PERSPECTIVES. The Bulletin of the Far-Eastern Prehistory Society. Edited by Wilhelm G. Solheim II. Volume V, Nos. 1 & 2, 1961. Hong Kong University Press, 1962. Approx. 130 pages each. Illustrated. HK$25 per number.\n\nNumber 1 of Volume 5 contains regional reports from seventeen areas, including a brief note for Hong Kong, and a longer one for China mainland by R. C. Rudolph giving a useful annotated bibliography of recent monographs and Journals dealing with current work on Chinese archaeology. It also includes a few notes and articles including a note on a glazed bowl from Lamma island.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205194, "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "144\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nIyer,\" a revised transcription of a UNESCO radio broadcast in April 1959. This was the origin of both the book and its title.\n\nPHILIP SHEN\n\nChung Chi College\n\nThe Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nTHE CHINESE IN PHILIPPINE LIFE 1850-1898, Edgar Wickberg. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1965. 280 pages.\n\nFor students and scholars interested in Southeast Asian studies this is an illuminating book. It discusses the Chinese in the Philippines during the period from the date of the changed Spanish policy on the status of Chinese in 1850 to the end of Spanish rule in the Philippines in 1898.\n\nThe limited number of serious studies that have previously been made of the Chinese in the Philippines have concentrated on the problems of the twentieth-century community. However, since many important features of Philippine economy and society are traceable to developments in the latter half of the nineteenth century, this period comprises the formative years of modern Philippine economic and social life.\n\nProfessor Wickberg's book is the first exhaustive research on a period of significant change of the Chinese in the Philippines. It concentrates on their institutions, and on their relations both with their host society and with China. The fully documented book is supplemented by maps, showing Manila and other areas in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and includes reproductions of paintings, vividly showing the dress fashions of Chinese and Chinese mestizos in the mid-nineteenth century. There is a glossary of Chinese names and terms, and a comprehensive bibliography listing published works in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese, on Chinese both in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and on other topics relative to Southeast Asian studies. The sources of unpublished material used are also listed.\n\nThe book begins with a lucid narrative of the Philippine Chinese before 1850. The Chinese had early contacts with the Philippine Archipelago and were directly involved in the economic and social affairs of the Philippines long before the arrival of the\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205583, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "120 \n\nH. G. H. NELSON \n\n2) the parallel process by which the wider market has penetrated the village economy; Potter here provides a detailed analysis of family finances. \n\nIn each of these two sections, one chapter is devoted to an historical analysis, and another to a description of the modern situation. \n\n3) a single chapter on the ownership and management of property, which describes the structure of the local lineage in terms of the distribution of its landholdings. This is, both descriptively and analytically, the best section of the book: the treatment of conflicts within the lineage and its prospects for change and survival, is worth a review in itself. \n\nThere is then an all too brief chapter on the social and cultural effects of economic change, before the concluding essay. \n\nAll this goes to make up a wealth of material for the general anthropologist, the China specialist, and the interested Hong Kong reader. I have nothing but admiration for the field-work which lies behind this book, and hope that by selecting only a few points for comment, I shall not do any injustice to the quality of the data and the thoroughness of its presentation. \n\nPotter gives a lucid exposition of the changes in a peasant economy which result from its adaptation to the modern world, observing that in a traditional society the economic is not fully differentiated from the social, political and ritual spheres of activity. It is unfortunate, however, that he makes little more of this crucial point. The body of the book is concerned with the increasing differentiation of the various spheres of peasant life; but one could have wished for a fuller analysis of their previous integration. For background data on the traditional economy, the quotations from the reports of Colonial Secretary Lockhart and Governor Blake, about 1900, might have been supplemented by information contained in the Chinese gazetteer for San On county, if not by the \"historical data available in out of the way places\" (p 32 fn), which, one hopes, will soon be located and researched. \n\nAt a more theoretical level, I feel that Potter might have attempted to place the social structure of peasant China in a wider context: he does not, for example, cite Leach's work on the balancing of the \"total social exchange account\". It may well be that the differentiation of spheres of activity has gone a good deal", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206515, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n57\n\nduties, and shown around various government departments. Lockhart then went by river steamer up to Canton to recruit a language teacher and learn Cantonese; but at times cadets were sent to Peking to learn Mandarin, the national language, because the Hong Kong Government always needed some officials who could converse in Mandarin with Chinese officials from the North.5\n\nE.H. Parker, then serving in the Canton Consulate, tells us that: 'on the arrival in 1879 of a Hong Kong cadet (i.e., Lockhart) to study Chinese in Canton, I lent him “Old Ow”, who took the youngster up country and taught him Cantonese very well.' Ou-yang Hui 歐陽惠 -- known affectionately to several generations of cadets as 'Old Ow' was a Cantonese scholar who had once worked in a yamên in Hunan but had fallen out of favour with officialdom. Parker also says of ‘Old Ow' that Lockhart ‘always cherished a noble veneration for his memory; and, indeed, he it was who, as a cadet, first introduced “Old Ow\" to \"outer\" barbarian life'. In 1893 Lockhart wrote that 'Old Ow' 'enjoyed a high reputation among several distinguished foreign students of Chinese for his power of ready and lucid explanation'. A few years after Lockhart's return from Canton (he became a ‘passed cadet' in 1882), he persuaded the old Cantonese scholar to come to Hong Kong and obtained for him a clerical post in the Registrar General's Department, in which Lockhart was then employed. In this department 'Old Ow' soon became a venerated institution, a lovable but formidable eccentric who deeply impressed young cadets with his Mandarin airs and graces and oddities. After his death, his portrait in oils was placed in the Registrar General's Office, a remarkable tribute to a relatively humble employee of the government.\n\nLockhart soon made his mark in the Hong Kong Civil service and his rise was rapid. He was appointed Superintendent of the Opium Revenue in March 1883; Assistant Colonial Secretary and Assistant Auditor-General in August of the same year; Acting Registrar-General in 1884 and 1885; Registrar-General in 1887, a post he occupied until 1901; and Colonial Secretary in 1895, a post he combined with that of Registrar-General. But in nineteenth-century Hong Kong departments were stringently staffed. In 1884, for example, when Lockhart worked as Assistant Colonial Secretary, apart from his superior, the Colonial Secretary, there were only five other assistants: a chief clerk and four junior clerks.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207067, "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-1974", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "132\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nIn English\n\nAlabaster, Chaloner Grenville, The Laws of Hong Kong, 3 vols., Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers, 1913.\n\nArlington, L. C., Through the Dragon's Eyes, Fifty Years' Experiences of a Foreigner in the Chinese Government Service, London, Constable, 1931.\n\nBaker, H. D. R., 'The Five Great Clans of the New Territories', in JHKBRAS, 5, 1965: 25-47.\n\nA Chinese Lineage Village, Sheung Shui, London, Frank Cass, 1968.\n\nBalfour, S. F., 'Hong Kong before the British being a local history before the British occupation', Shanghai, T'ien Hsia Monthly, Vols. 11-12, 1940-41; 330-352, 440-464. Reprinted in JHKBRAS, 10, 1970: 134-179.\n\nBarnett, K. M. A., 'The Peoples of the New Territories' in J. M. Braga (compiler), Hong Kong Business Symposium, Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, Ltd., 1957, pp. 261-265.\n\n'Hong Kong before the Chinese', 'Technical Revolution in 900 AD' and 'The Riddle of the Hakka', Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, 24-26th April, 1967.\n\nCollingwood, Cuthbert, Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Sea, London, John Murray, 1868.\n\nCooper, J. T., 'The Mapping of Hong Kong' in JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 131-140.\n\nDes Voeux, Sir G. William, My Colonial Service in British Guiana, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Fiji, Australia, Newfoundland and Hong Kong, London, John Murray, 1903, 2 vols.\n\nEitel, E. J., (revised and enlarged by Immanuel Gottlieb Genähr), A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, 2 vols., Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1910-1911.\n\nFox, Grace, British Admirals and Chinese Pirates 1832-1869, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1940.\n\nFranke, Wolfgang, An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History, Kuala Lumpur, University of Malaysia Press, Singapore 1968.\n\nFu, Lo-shu (Compiler), A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (1644-1820), 2 vols., Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1966.\n\nGiles, H. A., A Chinese English Dictionary, Second Edition, revised and Enlarged. Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc., Kelly and Walsh, 1912.\n\nGroves, R. G., 'Militia, Market and Lineage: Chinese Resistance to the Occupation of Hong Kong's New Territories in 1899', JHKBRAS, 9, 1969: 31-64.\n\nHay, Sir John C. Dalrymple, The Suppression of Piracy in the China Sea, 1849, London, Edward Stanford, 1889.\n\nHayes, J. W., 'Cheung Chau 1850-1898: Information from Commemorative Tablets', JHKBRAS 3, 1963: 88-99.\n\n'The San On Map of Mgr. Volontieri' in JHKBRAS 10, 1970: 193-196.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211781, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "171\n\nLocal amateur musicians\n\nThe resident amateurs, about whom \"Philharmonic\" was so full of praise, generally performed in combination with a professional artist — although there were exceptions. Thus, there was the amateur concert in aid of the Lancashire Relief Fund, mentioned earlier, on April 17, 1863, at which among others Beethoven's \"Egmont\" and Weber's \"Freischütz\" overtures were played on the pianoforte; furthermore, glees and songs were sung by a small choir of gentlemen. In November 1864, another charity concert was given, this time in aid of the repairs fund of the \"Hongque Free Episcopal Church\", organised by the \"Shanghai Vocal Quartette Club\".\n\nBut it was far more usual that a professional artist sought the assistance of some local amateurs in order to diversify the evening somewhat. Otherwise the chance was great that the public would be bored — despite the alleged love of Shanghailanders for music witness the remark in the Herald of October 1, 1864: \"people here hardly care to sit for two hours to listen to a performance on the violin, however well the instrument is handled; some variety is required\". So the instrumental recitals were alternated with vocal exertions by the amateurs, as e.g. on February 22, 1859, when the critic was dissatisfied with the main interpreter, Prof. Shonbrun, but on which occasion the amateur tenor solos were thought to be given \"with taste and feeling\". At a following performance of the same pianist he was again surrounded by singers one of whom even ventured to tackle the great tenor aria from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.\n\n62\n\nThe Germans, despite their small number (about 200 in 1865), were generally active in the cultural field. Even before they had their own Club, a Singverein \"Germania\" had been established as early as before 1859 although the regularity of the organisation may be doubted for, at one time, there was not even a conductor, resulting in an \"evident want of confidence and decision by which the general effect was much impaired\". Little was heard of it in subsequent years, but it may have been the fore-runners of the German \"Liedertafel\" which existed in the early seventies and which was then led by Mr. Hogquist.65\n\nGarrison music\n\nThe concerts that were given by the bands of the several military forces", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211819, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "209\n\n1.3.1859 (Mon)\n\nConcert by Prof. Shonbrun, piano, and some local amateurs (i.a. the Germania Singing Club) Programme:\n\nNo piano works were mentioned, with the exception of \"Monastery Bells\".\n\nVocal works: Sir Henry BISHOP: \"The Pilgrim of Love\", Wilhelm SPEYER (1790-1878) a bass aria, G. DONIZETTI: \"The great tenor aria from 'Lucia di Lammermoor\" (presumably \"Tombe degli avi miei – Fra poco a me ricovero\" from act III). Th: (New) Theatre Royal (E)\n\nR Were Shanghailanders music lovers or not? One wonders for again \"we were sorry to find so small an audience assembled on the occasion\", but the wretchedly wet state of the weather had no doubt much to do with this\". As it turned out the efforts of Mr. SHONBRUN were disappointing (at least in the ears of one critic — and how they may differ in opinion everyone knows). In this case the skill and artistic feeling which would be highly respectable in an amateur reflect no especial credit on a professional player and though Mr. SHONBRUN performed several pieces pleasingly we missed that precision, that brilliant crisp fingering and particularly that general careful finish which should characterize the true master of his instrument\". The amateurs were more appreciated and the tenor singer even had to repeat his Lucia aria. For the first time the “Germania Singing Club\" is mentioned, although there must have been earlier performances as the Herald says \"the number of the singers on Tuesday was much smaller than on former occasions\". Obviously it was in a somewhat precarious state for even a conductor was missing and the reviewer was \"constrained to say, without wishing to be too critical on the performers of amateur music, that the Association has not kept up to the standard which it established for itself by former deeds\" (NCH 12.3.1859).\n\n2.6.1859 (Thur)\n\nM. BARNETT: \"The Serious Family\" (1849)\n\nT: Comedy (3 acts)\n\nJ.M. MORTON: \"Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw (1851)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nTh: (New) Theatre Royal (E)\n\nR: Very late in the season the last amateur night went off. And although the review was by no means scathing, the editor of the Herald thought it wise to add that \"the heat at the theatre was extremely oppressive and this may have much to do with the lukewarm manner in which our critic speaks of the performances\". The Serious Family was described as \"an admirable satire upon that morbid and mistaken feeling of piety which regards a smile as wantonness, condemns gaiety as sin and backsliding”, nevertheless **as a scenic representation it smacks too much of dullness\". The leading parts were put on the stage by Miss Minnie O'NETTE, who acted Lady Sowerly Creamly \"to the life\"; and Mr. TINTINNABULUM upon whom \"the action of the Comedy seemed chiefly to rest. His stage bearing is admirable and his intonation excellent, but we may perhaps be permitted to take exception to his brogue which, however good as an assumption, scarcely denoted one to the manner born\". Mr. PICKWICK exerted \"to the utmost his undoubted talents for light comedy as Charles Torrens; on the other hand darling Mrs. NESBIT \"scarcely found opportunity in the part of Mrs. Torrens for the display of that vivacity which forms her chief merit\". Mr. BRUSHWOOD (00 lacked something in the role of Aminadab Sleck, viz \"that racy appreciation of his part which usually characterizes him and the hat and garb of the puritan did not sit easily upon that comical little figure which has on previous occasions so often convulsed us with merriment\". In contrast Miss WALTERS “looked and acted extremely well, causing us much regret that a drama more adapted to the exigencies of the Corps did not form the chief attraction of the evening. About the second piece, Grimshaw,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212708, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "2\n\nof bonnes bouches relating to him and his family. The information, its presentation and language tell us more about William Mesny than about Chinese life. A considerable part of his writings consisted of piecemeal notes or essays written to emphasize, probably unconsciously, both his prominent standing with important Chinese and his foresight as a man of ideas. He played up so many of the episodes in which he was involved that it is difficult not to minimise and even to discount what in practice must have been his quite significant achievements. Three major subjects regularly featured in Mesny's Miscellanies, his economic and political foresight which was inevitably spurned by westerners and Chinese alike; his activities as part of the Chinese imperial military forces in Kueichou quelling a rebellious minority ethnic group; and his wives and women in general.\n\nIn one of his forthright, self-congratulatory moments he wrote, \"The Editor of Mesny's Chinese Miscellany feels that he has a sort of an inspired mission in China to set forth, preach and proclaim the inspiring and magic-working words of Reform and Progress to the inquiring multitudes amongst China's 400 million black-haired people.'\n\nWilliam Mesny (pronounced “May-knee' in Jersey), was brought up in the bilingual Channel Island community speaking English and French. He left home when he was nearly twelve to travel far afield but without ever losing pride in being a Jerseyman and British.\n\nMesny was born at La Croiserie Vingtaine in the parish of Trinity in Jersey on 9 October 1842, the eldest son of William Mesny of Alderney and Marie Rachel née Nicolle, second daughter of Philip Nicolle of du Nord, Jersey. Mesny's father was described in one place as a cobbler, a local preacher preaching several times a year in French and English Wesleyan chapels, and a member of the Royal militia (probably the Jersey Militia). Mesny writing elsewhere in his Miscellany described his parents as poor; his mother was 'bed-ridden' and his father, though a Wesleyan local preacher, was forced to work for a living in attendance on divers engaged in the harbour works, and often repaired his own shoes to save the expense of having them repaired at a shoemaker's. Mesny's father and his grandfather, Guillaume Mesny, were both said to be of St Martin, Jersey, whilst Mesny himself claimed that his roots lay in the ancient family of Megny d'Auregny [i.e. Auregny Alderney]. It has also been recorded that Mesny's father and grandfather had both been born and brought up in Alderney with the father moving to Jersey at some stage. Guillaume's brothers included the great grandfather of Miss Lucie", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212710, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "4\n\noff with a whole pound, 'the foundation of his fortune' which induced him to go to sea as a sailor. He then sailed away, at the age of 12, and in the course of the next six years visited various parts of the world including Australia, Africa and the Americas before finally settling in China in 1860 during the last days of the Arrow War [better known perhaps as the Second Opium War].\n\nMesny arrived in China at the start of the era known to the Chinese as the 'post-unequal treaties', an extraordinary period of readjustment in Chinese thinking. He arrived in a China whose rulers were an alien dynasty, the non-Chinese Manchus from Manchuria whose dynasty, the Ch'ing, ruled China between 1644-1911. Mesny's era covered the gradual collapse of the dynasty and its fall, followed by the first years of the Republic.\n\nWilliam Mesny spent a total of 59 years in China during which time he first, for some thirteen years, led a life of high adventure and, later, one which he lived to the full but at the same time one which appears to have fluctuated between the verge of success and pathetic failure. As it stands the later years of Mesny's life, following his short military career, fall into four periods; first, trekking across China, second, his life in Shanghai whilst still hoping to make his fortune; third, his time there when that hope had all but disappeared and finally, his last days, apparently alone in Hankow. The story contains elements which can only be guessed by reading between the lines in his Miscellanies, sadly without the help of other written or oral records.\n\nI have attempted to provide a chronology of Mesny's life from the multitude of snippets and asides he provided in his Miscellanies. This will be found at Appendix B. The great majority of the research in the UK has been carried out by Dr R G Tiedemann of SOAS in the University of London to whom I am also greatly indebted for both his advice and comments, as I am too to Miss Lucie Mesny of St Lawrence in Jersey, for her memories and photographs. However, any errors are mine alone.\n\nApart from the autobiographical portions of the Miscellany we have to rely upon the tiny smattering of family memory still available, two obituaries from Shanghai English language newspapers and what little has been written about Mesny by others who knew him in China. It is unfortunate that other living descendants of William Mesny have fought", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212756, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "50\n\nHis experience when assaulted by Chinese soldiers in Wu-chang during his holiday outing.\n\n10 Mesny's Chinese Miscellany: Volume 2: 10 September 1896: page 449\n\nIn 1992 Miss Lucie Mesny in Jersey explained that as a child she had never encountered any elderly lady, a member of family, called Lydia, who had been only two years younger than William Mesny and therefore would have been only in her mid-sixties when Miss Lucie was a child, if of course Lydia had still been alive\n\n12 Mesny was referring to what had been a very recent incident when the Germans had sent a few hundred soldiers to I-chou in Shantung province 'to bring the local populace to their senses.'\n\n13\n\nPresumably the good Doctor Dudgeon was John Dudgeon, who lived in Tientsin towards the end of the nineteenth century, the author of Chinese Arts of Healing, a series in the Chinese Recorder in 1869/70; The Great Medical College at Peking (in the Chinese Recorder February 1870); The Disgusting Nature of Chinese Medicines (also in the Chinese Recorder in March 1870); The Worship of the Moon (Chinese Recorder in Mar/Apr 1882), \"The Beverages of the Chinese: and finally Kung-fu or Taoist Medical Gymnastics (Tientsin: 1895).\n\n14\n\nIt is strange that Mesny should have been unaware of the legend of the powerful and ubiquitous Northern Emperor, 玄天上帝 a deity whose aides are a turtle and snake, frequently portrayed wrapped around each other at the feet of the image of the deity in Taoist and folk religion temples, and referred to as Generals.\n\n15 Yun-yü, the Clouds and Rain, is a common euphemism for sexual intercourse\n\n16\n\nThis was recorded in his Miscellanies in 1896 as Tsung-ping: translated as 'Regional Commander', rank 2a in the Chinese military forces of the Green Standards [lu-ying], subordinate to the Provincial Military Commander and Province Governors. [Hucker C.O., A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China: Stanford University Press: 1985]\n\n11 Colquhoun A R: China in Transformation: Harper and Bros: New York and London. 1898 (and other books)\n\nScidmore E R. China - The Long-lived Empire: MacMillan & Co. London: 1900\n\nAppendix A\n\nMesny's Chinese Miscellany\n\nEach weekly issue of the Miscellany, edited and printed in Shanghai during 1896, 1899 and 1905, with a run of one thousand copies, began with Notes on China and Chinese Subjects later renamed Anglo-Chinese Notes, an arbitrary, catholic and unstructured collection of items ranging from natural subjects such as the names in English and Chinese of trees, plants etc with a short description presumably culled from a major tome on the subject, to historical and mythological items, geographical descriptions mostly in western China, and a long section", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213022, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "69\n\nas the middleman, the missing link between these two blocks of Chinese\n\nPutting it another way, sports and politics are closely related. This could be seen in the review earlier where many of the functions of sports are loaded with political flavour. But these two spheres of activities stand distant and alien to the masses. The role of face is to act midway between the masses and these activities Through the depiction of the status, performance, moral behaviour and face attributes of the athletes, the masses could feel with the athletes because they themselves are familiar with the working of these factors and attributes of face. Through the reports on the athletes, the editorial remarks, the semantic allusions to politics or the political sphere, the masses would be more susceptible to the political and ideological teachings behind\n\nMany lucid illustrations could be found in the sample. For example, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang were said to have watched the winning Chinese women volleyball team against the USA Frequent implications were made that China was dominant in Asian Games, and her strength in the Asian sports scene. This could be taken as dominance and propaganda instilled by the Chinese press. The non-recognition of the Taiwan government was also indirectly hinted at. The People's Daily praised the participation and spirit of the Chinese Taipei volleyball team but stressed that players from both Chinese teams yearned for union. The identity and self-image of China were such that she was a strong, morally upright nation with honour, her government exercised good leadership and influence. The government's current politico-ideological campaign was the four modernizations. This was reiterated time and again in the sample The people were told to continue their dedication to work for the four modernizations following the spirit of the women volleyball team and thereby enjoy success. 26\n\nBy conjuring the concept of face or its components, the people could easily and more readily feel with the athletes. The performance of athletes are clearly defined: win or lose. The moral behaviour is up to the depiction of the press. making friends with other countries, welcomed by the home crowd ... etc. The face attributes are even more abstract. Newspaper readers had nothing to challenge the association of an athlete's gold winning efforts with the honour of the country, both seemed favourable to their identity - a national of the country and a compatriot of the athlete. In this way,\n\nthe newspaper contents had all the favourable resources to induce\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 } ]