[ { "id": 204241, "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": 9, "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\n6\n\nyear we had 182 of whom 20 were life members and who included several eminent scholars from overseas. But as Sir Robert Black said in his address last month, \"there must be many times 200 people in Hong Kong who are interested both in the cultural life and history of this part of the world which has great riches to offer to anybody interested in research or in studying and enquiring about the inheritance which we all enjoy who live here.\" While we can feel pride in having in our present membership a substantial nucleus not only of scholars but of members generally representative of the cosmopolitan community of the Colony who are keen and enthusiastic, we need more members and hope to appeal to a wider public. As this is a Royal Society, membership is not a matter of form only, and we do not go out into the highways and byways to recruit members, but we feel that the Society can enlarge its activities and membership if the present members will help by bringing within the fold those of their friends and acquaintances who are interested in its activities. There seems to be no reason why in time the membership should not equal that of the Shanghai Branch, which before the war was about 800.\n\nDuring the year the Society has held eight meetings at which addresses have been given, all of them by persons of outstanding eminence in their respective spheres. Most of them were very well attended. Good lecturers are a gift from heaven but so far we have been truly blessed.\n\nWe were particularly fortunate in starting the year with two outstanding meetings. For an opening meeting we had an intensely interesting talk by Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark on \"The Social and Economic Organisation of Tibet\", illustrated by a coloured film taken over a period of seven years during his exploration of Central Asia. The formal inaugural address was given by Professor F. S. Drake of the University of Hong Kong on \"The Study of Asia: a Heritage and a Task.\" It was a memorable address which gave the stamp of learning and authority on the Society's efforts and the text of which is printed in this volume.\n\nOf no less interest and merit were the addresses following:\n\nby the\n\nProfessor John K. Fairbank on \"Chinese Studies in the United States\",\n\nMr. A. C. Scott on \"The Chinese Theatre\" illustrated by Chinese actors in costumes and makeup,\n\nMr. G. B. Downer of the University of London on \"The Yao People of Laos.\"\n\nIn the summer months we followed the advice of the first President of the original Hong Kong Branch, Sir John Davis,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204437, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "58\n\nHEROLD J. WIENS\n\nmountainous regions of south China but also across the southern borders in Burma, Laos and Vietnam.\n\nThe Yao, like the Miao, also are mountain-loving people, but appear to have originated as ethnic groups in the hill country of east-central China, in such regions as the present provinces of Anhwei, Chekiang and Kiangsu. They were here as early as Chinese records mention them, but they appear to have gradually abandoned these areas, as Han-Chinese settlement increased in density, and friction over land and other matters led the Yao to seek more isolated mountains. Since they were like the Miao in their type of fire-field or forest-burning, shifting cultivation, they inevitably came into close contact with the Miao and have many cultural features in common with the Miao. Elements of the language also appear similar. Some Chinese ethnographers have considered the Wu-ch'i Man a Yao rather than a Miao group, and others believe them to have common origins. This confusion is probably due to strong Mon Khmer influences originating from India and Southeast Asia in the earliest times.\n\n4\n\nOne of the supporting arguments for the common origin of Yao and Miao is the common cult attached to the dog and the tiger. The Yao trace their ancestry mythically to the union of a princess with a supernatural dog-hero called P'an-hu. Yao myths trace their movement southward from both the central Yangtze valley regions and from the Chekiang-Fukien mountains. Folk songs of the Yao indicate further that they crossed over the Nan-ling mountains in great numbers during the period of Huang-ch'ao's rebellion in the reign of the T'ang Emperor Hsi-Tsung (A.D. 874-889),4\n\nWhen the Miao moved into the Kweichow region in the earliest times, they probably found the Yi or Wu-man peoples already in occupation of western Kweichow. The Yi certainly preceded the Han in this part of China, and the Han Chinese have known of the Yi in their present habitats in southwest China for over 2,500 years. The peculiar manner in which the\n\n* Chiang Ying-liang, Hsi-nan pien-chiang min-tsu lun-ts'ung (A discussion of the peoples of the southwest borderlands), Canton, 1948, 74-79; see also Ling Shun-sheng and Jui Yi-fu, Hsiang-hsi Miao-tsu t'iao-cha pao-kao (Report of research on the Miao of west Hunan), Academia Sinica, Shanghai, 1947.\n\n4 Hsu Sung-shih, Yueh-chiang liu-yü jen-min (The peoples of the Yueh river drainage), Shanghai, 1939, 130-135.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204494, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "A NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE\n\n111\n\nMaglioni continued archaeological work further afield. After his death, Maglioni roughly outlined the area of their researches and designated it as the Han-Chu region, naming it this because it is bounded by the Han and Teng Rivers in the East and the Chu (or Pearl River) and Tung in the West.\n\nMaglioni divided the neolithic era into three main periods, to each of which he assigned one of the cultures he found. SON was early neolithic, SAK was middle neolithic, and PAT was late neolithic.* All three names were taken from parts of the names of the villages nearest to the sites where the cultures were first discovered.\n\nThe stone artifacts that I have found are typical of the middle neolithic era, and they also closely resemble the SAK artifacts in the Maglioni collection. They differ strikingly from the PAT materials found in the Western part of the Colony. Unlike the latter, they are almost exclusively made of chert. They are also cruder and less sophisticated, with traces of chipping left in spite of the polishing, as if the chipping had been too deep. The cutting edge of the axes as well as the adzes is not bevelled as in the case of those from Lamma and Lantao. They are almost all longer in shape and narrower, not as thick in cross-section as the latter, and to my unpractised eye, they resemble more the stone artifacts displayed in the Hong Kong University Museum from Annam and Laos.\n\nThe most typical element of SAK culture is its pottery, which is a fine ware of smooth mix and is stamped with a variety of patterns, the most common one being a basket weave and others including a herring-bone and concentric circles. The pots are of a small size (perhaps because the SAK people were nomadic), globular in shape, with a shallow ring-like foot, which was added after the pots had been shaped and stamped. They were frequently decorated with an equatorial band in bas-relief as well as other bands above and below it. These bands were also added after the pot had been shaped and stamped. The SAK potters made great progress in both preparing and baking the clay. Maglioni says: \"They utilized clays which received their bright colour when fired, added little or no sand, made very thin ware,\n\n\"PAT appears to have continued uninterruptedly from the stone age into historic times,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "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": 204887, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "165\n\nNIXON, F. A.* NOBLE, H.\n\nNORONHA, J. E. -\n\nOGDEN, B. J. N. -\n\nOKA, T.\n\nOLIPHANT, R. G. L.\n\nRoom 63, Hong Kong Club, H.K. Ying Wah College, Oxford Road, Kowloon. c/o W.F. Bollmeyer & Co., (H.K.) Ltd.\n\n408, Yu To Sang Building, H.K.\n\nc/o The H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K.\n\n124 Pokfulum Road, H.K.\n\nc/o The H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K.\n\nOLIPHANT, Mrs. R. G. L. c/o The H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K.\n\nOLIVER, J. R.\n\nc/o Supreme Court, H.K.\n\nPAYNE, Mrs. M. M. -\n\nPAYNE, Miss P. M.\n\nPELZEL, J. C.\n\n+\n\nPENNELL, W. V.\n\nPERDIEUS, H.\n\nPERESYPKIN, O. P.\n\nPHILLIPS, Prof. J. G.\n\nPICCIOTTO, Mrs. J. R.\n\nPICKFORD, J. B.\n\nPICKFORD, Mrs. J. P.\n\nPIRIE, J.\n\n-\n\nPOLAND, T. D.\n\nPOLDY, Mrs. K.\n\nPORDES, F.\n\nPRATT, M. S.\n\nPRESCOTT, J. A.\n\nRAE-SMITH, W. B.\n\nRASSIM, Mrs. E.\n\n-\n\n-\n\n-\n\n+\n\nPhysiotherapy Dept., Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Kowloon.\n\nFlat 49, 7th floor, 79 Waterloo Road, Kowloon.\n\nC'an Boyet Mear Puerto Pollensa, Majorca, Spain.\n\n22-B, Barker Road, The Peak, H.K.\n\nP. O. Box 1382, H.K.\n\nAlberose, 134 Pokfulum Road, H.K.\n\n46 Stubbs Road, H.K.\n\n21 Old Church Lane, Kingsbury, London, N.W.9., England.\n\nAs above.\n\nP. O. Box 117, H.K.\n\nC.A.S. Headquarters, 39 Gloucester Road, 2/F., H.K.\n\n37, Macdonnell Road, H.K.\n\n209, Gloucester Building, H.K.\n\nAmerican Embassy, Vientiane, Laos.\n\nWest Penthouse, 11 Conduit Road, H.K.\n\nc/o Messrs. Butterfield & Swire, Union House, H.K.\n\nc/o H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K.\n\n* Life Member\n\nPlease notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206624, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "166\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nand exported them to Hong Kong. Even a scrap of tin, perhaps smelted from ore obtained on the Kwangtung coast, was found during excavation at one site where bronze axes were cast. At the same time, the bead trade, so active in Malaya and the great islands, and even in the Philippines, appears to have passed South China by, for the only beads found are either of jade or of soft greenish local stone used as a substitute. This bead trade is in fact coextensive with Indian influence in the Archipelago.\n\nFifth, these finds raise the vast question of the immigrations of the Polynesians and Indonesians from Asia into the Pacific, and the routes they followed. Having regard to the distribution of anthropological types today, we cannot suppose that any large number of Polynesians ever visited the China coast; but there is the strongest probability that tribes of the types of those inhabiting Hainan, Formosa, the Philippines and Borneo frequented the coast, and perhaps started from it to their present seats. It may be possible eventually to prove that survivors of these peoples still live on the coast; personally, I am disposed to regard the Tan Ka or boatpeople of the Kwangtung coast as such survivors. Certain tribes of the interior, the Yui or Yao, and the Siapo of Foochow, may be similar remnants.\n\nThe archaeology of the historic periods has, inevitably, been comparatively neglected in the attractions of unearthing ancient and unknown cultures. Pottery of types familiar to archaeologists in Canton, and attributed to the Han and the Six Dynasties period (100 B.C. to 600 A.D.), has been found at several Hong Kong sites: urns probably of pre-T'ang date (615 A.D. or earlier) have been unearthed at Sheung Shui near the border and elsewhere; and pottery and porcelain of Sung, Yuan and later dynasties can be found everywhere, especially near villages. Forts and watch-posts are to be seen on islands and promontories, and walled towns and villages are frequent inland; such fortifications are, however, post-mediaeval, and the oldest are late Ming, designed for coast defence against Japanese pirates. Of megalithic remains, such as are known as near as the Laos country in Indo-China, no trace exists. No ancient porcelain kilns, such as exist in North and Central China, were ever started within the Colony, though one small establishment for making rice bowls and cooking pots has been found. In one road cutting a mass of broken porcelain of early Ming date, much", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206667, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n209 \n\nat Castle Douglas. It was a very large building as befitted the size and importance of the Press, and can be seen on the old photographs on view in the entrance corridor at University Hall. \n\nAn account by the Rev. Fr. Leon Trivière states: \n\nThe press used 67,899 matrices, which shows how much work was carried on at this house. Thousands of examples of catechisms, prayer-books, works on dogma and morality, spirituality and meditation, the pastorate, canon law, sermons, catechesis, liturgy were brought out. These books were published in 28 languages: Chinese, Annamite, Latin, French, English, Chamorro, Tibetan, Laotian, Malay, Tho (Cao-Bang), Cambodian, Japanese, Thai (Chau-Laos), Banhnar, Portuguese, Kanaka, Lolo, Tagalog, Yap, German, Italian, Siamese, Kanao, Korean, Dioi, Palau, Spanish and Ainu. Notable among the publications of Nazareth Press was an amazing collection of dictionaries printed in twelve languages. A certain number of them were honoured by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, and sought after by great Universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, London, etc. ...or by famous Libraries specialising in Oriental Languages. Numerous works by missionaries attached to the École Française d'Extrême-Orient, the Académie Stanislaus and other bodies engaged in scientific research, were printed at Nazareth \n\nNazareth House. Considerable building alterations and additions were made to Castle Douglas by the Mission, including, some years after its occupation, an extensive reconstruction of the original building which was in danger of collapsing. The additions included dormitory accommodation, a chapel, a library and the printing house. The new House was first used in May 1896 and the chapel was blessed in October of that year. A life of prayer and work on editing, translating, printing and proof-reading was inaugurated at the former Castle Douglas, and was to continue until the Japanese Occupation in 1941-1945. The house continued to be used by the Fathers in those years, but printing stopped. Work began again after the war; but with the establishment of the People's Government at Peking in 1949, continental China was soon closed to foreign missionary effort, and in 1953 the Central Council in Paris decided to give up Nazareth House. It was bought by the University of Hong Kong in 1954, to be used as a Hall of Residence for students.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206934, "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": 5, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPage\n\nPRESIDENT'S Report for 1974 · 1\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1974 · 8\n\nTHE LIBRARY, 1974 · 10\n\nTRANSACTIONS OF THE BRANCH: · 12\n\nThe Paper Chase-Archives and the Public Records Office of Hong Kong (A lecture given on 7th January, 1974) - A. I. DIAMOND · 28\n\nAdventurers in Hong Kong: the Marquis de Morès and David de Mayréna (A lecture given on 29th March, 1974) - HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE · 58\n\nDogs and Horses in Ancient China (A lecture given on 27th May, 1974) CAROLE MORGAN · -\n\nARTICLES: · -\n\nThe Craft of God Carving in Singapore- KEITH G. STEVENS · -\n\n\"Oh for the Joys of England\": Lt. Orlando Bridgeman's Letters from China and Hong Kong, 1842-1843– ROBIN MCLACHLAN · -\n\nFather Ernesto Gherzi, S. J., 1886-1973—G. J. BELL · 68\n\nNotes on the Sources of De Mailla, Histoire Générale de la Chine-Richard Gregg Irwin, with Introduction by L. Carrington Goodrich · 76\n\nThe Monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang (Report of the RAS Tour to Laos, 23-24 January, 1974)— MICHAEL SMITHIES · 85\n\nThe Hong Kong Region: its place in Traditional Chinese Historiography and Principal Events since the Establishment of Hsin-an County in 1573....-JAMES HAYES · 108\n\nREPRINTED ARTICLES · 136\n\nPlace Names of Hong Kong and the New Territories (1958) K. M. A. BARNETT · 160\n\nLegends and Stories of the New Territories: Kam T'in (1935-38) (continued) SUNG HOK-PANG · -\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES · 188\n\nThe European Grave on Shek Kwu Chau, Hong Kong JEAN MOORE · -\n\n\"Fung Shui\" Woodlands-L. C. SHEN · 190\n\nUnusual Trees in Hong Kong: the Cassia Bark Tree- L. C. SHEN · 191\n\nTraditional Farming Techniques and their Survival in Hong Kong-P. L. SIAK · 196\n\nProgramme Notes for Visits to Places of Interest in Hong Kong and Kowloon, 1974: Kennedy Town, Old Wanchai, Old Western District, the Diocesan Boy's School and La Salle College, and Ceramic Factory and Sam Tung Uk, N.T. JAMES HAYES, CARL SMITH, HELGA WERLE et. al. · -\n\nBOOK REVIEWS · 235\n\nLIST OF MEMBERS · 245", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206936, "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": 7, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "1\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1974\n\n(Covering the period March 26, 1973 — March 25, 1974)\n\nI am pleased to report this evening on the activities for the past year of this Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The local branch of the Society was founded originally in March 1843, but unfortunately collapsed with the death of its Hon. Secretary in 1859, and despite all efforts it failed to revive. It was not until 1959, a hundred years later, that a group of people who had become concerned at the shortage of cultural opportunities existing in Hong Kong at that time, decided to bring the Society back to life, to provide a milieu for the study of Hong Kong, China, and adjacent areas. This met with considerable local enthusiasm and support. Many scholars — historians, anthropologists, sociologists and natural scientists, to mention a few examples — have given talks to the Society, presented papers at our symposia (papers often based on original research), and helped to organise field trips. The Hong Kong Branch, in its new form, has now completed its fourteenth year.\n\nBoth the Hon. Treasurer and Hon. Librarian have submitted separate reports, and the Hon. Treasurer will presently explain the mysteries of the balance sheet to us. I therefore propose to concentrate on our programme, membership, and plans for the future.\n\nTHE PROGRAMME\n\nDuring the year we have had ten lectures, one followed by an extraordinary general meeting, and two invitations: one to Dr. Dale Craig's music workshop to learn about Chinese music, and one to a lecture held by the newly-formed Ceramics Society on March 18, and delivered by Mr. Soame Jenyns, formerly Deputy Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum. We organised four visits to local places of interest, and one overseas, to Laos; and we held one week-end symposium.\n\nThe symposium was the first event of the year, and was devoted to “The fauna of Hong Kong\". It was organised by Professor Brian Lofts, head of the Department of Zoology, University of Hong Kong, who also arranged two associated field trips. On the Saturday...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206941, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "6\n\nsuch facilities. Our representative on the Arts Centre Management Committee is Mr. David Gilkes, our Hon. Treasurer, who reports that because of the constantly increasing costs of building in Hong Kong (currently about 35% a year) and because of difficulties in fund-raising (always a problem with cultural projects in the Colony) building is not likely to start until April 1974. The Society is of course keeping an eye on developments. Because of this delay we are not now proposing to raise our subscription rate from $30 to $50 until January 1976 (we had originally intended to raise it in 1975). At present we continue to be extremely grateful to the British Council for the facilities they provide to us, both in the use of an office for Council meetings of the Society, in clerical assistance, and in housing part of our library. We are also grateful to Hong Kong University for the various facilities they provide, including housing more than half our library collection.\n\nIn early December the Arts Centre held an exhibition at the City Hall at which constituent-member Societies each had a space to demonstrate their own activities or display examples of their work. Mr. Tony Rydings, our Hon. Librarian arranged our own exhibition most effectively and provided show cases. One of the items we showed was our Tibetan scroll obtained from the late Mr. F. A. Nixon, a former member of the Society (you will see from the Hon. Librarian's report that we are also indebted to him for a large donation of books from his estate). We also had samples of our Journal and symposium publications on display. A book was provided for people who wanted further information on the Society, to write their names and addresses. Nearly 100 people expressed interest and all were sent information.\n\nMEMBERSHIP\n\nOur membership increased this year, probably due to the interest shown in the Society at the Arts Centre exhibitions and to the Laos tour. At this time last year membership stood at 555. It is normal, in this very mobile community, for us to have our gains and losses during the year. During the last annual period we lost eight members through resignation, one through death, and thirty-two did not renew their membership: thus there were forty-one losses in all. Again I would urge members to avail themselves of that useful facility, the banker's order: both useful to our treasurer who has to chase up tardy members to discover if they have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207036, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang\n\nMichael Smithies*\n\nThe second international tour organized by the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, went over the Chinese (Lunar) New Year 1974 to Laos. 41 members and their guests visited Vientiane and Luang Prabang from 23 to 27 January, flying directly between Hong Kong and the Laotian capital. Some persons on the tour went ahead to visit Chiengmai in Thailand or Vat Phu in southern Laos and joined up with the main group later.\n\nThe attractions of the monuments of Vientiane, the administrative capital of the Kingdom of Laos, are slight in comparison to those in the royal capital of Luang Prabang. This is less a reflection of the religious fervour or artistic sensibility of the inhabitants of Vientiane, but a proof of the efficiency of the Siamese sack of the city in 1828 as a reprisal for Chao Anou's attempted attack on Bangkok two years previously and his subsequent alliance with Hué.\n\nVientiane's position in relation to Luang Prabang is ambivalent. Luang Prabang was the original capital of the Kingdom of Lane Xang (a million elephants) which was founded in 1353 by Fa Ngum, the son of a Lao chief who had been in exile in Angkor. King Potisarat moved the capital to Vientiane in 1520 and it was from the more central position of the kingdom, which then included much of the territory now in northeast Thailand, that the most famous Lao monarch, Souligna Vongsa, ruled from 1637-1694. On his death, however, the kingdom split into three, not counting the semi-independent existence of Xieng Khouang in the northeast: Vientiane, in alliance with Burma and a vassal of Annam; Luang Prabang, which at first drew support from China and later Siam; and in the south Champassak, which drew ever closer to Siam. The devastation of Vientiane by the Siamese in 1828 and the elimination of the line of Vientiane left in the centre a power vacuum, which the...\n\nMr. Smithies, at the time of this visit and report, Lecturer in French at the University of Hong Kong, was Secretary of the Hong Kong Branch 1972-73 and Councillor until his departure from the Colony in 1974. He organized and led this visit to Laos.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207037, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "102\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nFrench, advancing up the Mekong from Saigon, over-anticipating its value as a trade route to China and claiming suzerainty over Annamese vassals, slowly filled.\n\nThe explorer Mouhot was at Luang Prabang in 1861 and Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier shortly thereafter. The Kha rebellion of 1885 gave the French an excuse for intervention and stopping further extension of Siamese power in Laos; in 1886 a provisional Franco-Siamese convention was signed giving the French the right to establish a vice-consulate at Luang Prabang. The first mission by Pavie to Luang Prabang took place early in 1887, but French expansionism was effectively held in check for three years by the devastation caused by Deo Van Tri and the Black Flags (the Ho 'pirates' operating from Yunnan and Tonkin). Incidents increased between Siam and France and culminated with the French naval demonstration at Bangkok in 1893; the Siamese gave way and ceded the left bank of the Mekong to France. The Franco-Siamese treaty of 1907 gave the right-bank province of Sayaboury and those right bank parts of Champassak to France, but recognised Siamese authority over the rest of the right bank. The present frontiers of Laos were effectively decided by the French, from whom the Lao gained independence in 1949 under King Sisavong Vong. Prince Boun Oum of Champassak having in a secret protocol of 1946 renounced his right to the kingdom. More recent events have been well chronicled and the agreement of the three major political princes of left, right and centre in 1974 to form a joint government offers hope that the troubled post-war history of Laos might enter a more peaceful phase.\n\nThe buildings in Vientiane then are either restorations or totally modern and, as always in mainland southeast Asia, the monuments of note are almost exclusively religious. The most attractive shrine is the That Luang slightly outside the city. This solid tapering square tower was built in the 16th century by King Settathirat and is said to contain Buddhist relics. It was badly destroyed by the Red Flags in 1873 and its reconstruction was completed in 1929. It is an impressive pile set in a large open square fringed with trees. A vast fair takes place here every November and assumes a national importance.\n\nVat Pra Keo was also built originally by King Settathirat to house the Emerald Buddha on its arrival from Chiengmai; the statue", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207040, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE MONUMENTS OF VIENTIANE AND LUANG PRABANG\n\n105\n\non Tonkin and Laos; the Dutch merchant van Wusthoff also visited the capital of Souligna Vongsa from 1641-42 and left an interesting account of his travels. But neither Protestant merchants nor Jesuit priests could have made such a visual impression that more than two hundred years later their envoys should be recorded in a different city from that they visited. No known accounts, either written or visual, survive from the Lao side to record the visits of these gentlemen; however the visual tradition of Europeans, particularly the French, in 17th century Siam was strong during the reign of King Narai (as the lacquer pavilion in Suan Pakkard Palace in Bangkok bears witness), and was continued into the nineteenth century, and as the artists for the frescoes undoubtedly came from Siam one suspects that the inspiration for the unusual door and window carving comes from the same source. It is significant that the foundation date of the temple is also that of Mouhot's visit to Luang Prabang, one of the first recorded visits by Europeans. In the grounds of the temple a resourceful monk had utilised a plasma bottle and dripper to feed his roses.\n\nVat May, past the royal palace in the main street, was built in 1820 and has an unusually high roof; the portico is decorated with large gilded panels representing scenes from the life of the Buddha. It was for a time the shrine of the Pra Bang, the palladium of the Lao kingdom. This statue came from Cambodia in 1358 at the founding of the Kingdom of Lane Xang and was moved to Vientiane when the capital was transferred in the 16th century. It was taken in 1778 with the Pra Keo by the Siamese; the Pra Bang was returned in 1781 to Ong Boun. The Siamese again removed it in the sack of Vientiane in 1828 but King Mongkut restored the statue in 1867. Recently it has been moved from the temple for safekeeping in the Royal Palace. Between the temple and the palace is a small red lacquer post and dais; until recently, each year the royal elephants were preached at and requested to behave themselves before being sprinkled with lustral water.\n\nThe two other principal temples of the town are away from the main street. Vat Vixun was restored in 1867 and much changed in shape. It has a large nave and fat pillars and it is far more imposing than many temples in the town. A number of pieces of woodcarving have been collected in it to form the basis of a museum, but at present it is but a jumble of spirit houses and shrines. Here are to be found several flags, each with a number of small Buddhas", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207042, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang\n\n107\n\nOn the return journey one can stop at the village on the bank opposite to Luang Prabang which contains one of the most interesting temples in the whole of Laos, Vat Chieng Men. Its doorways are among the best examples of the carving modelled with a mixture of mahogany sap and ash which hardens in the air; peacocks, perhaps a reminder of the Mon hamsa, decorate the outer arch of each door which is triple tiered and deeply recessed. The ceiling is coffered and carved, and the altar contains a fine Buddha statue. The surrounding buildings are simple kuti, or monks' dwellings, and the whole temple blends harmoniously into the jungle background of the mountain at the very wall of the temple. Not least of the attractions of this temple is the walk to get there from the river bank; one goes along a path through the village where children play, mothers chatter and sell bananas and dogs look suspicious but wag their tails. As everywhere in Laos, the scene may be unsophisticated but it is not wanting in humanity and charm.\n\nReaders of this note should not think that the tour did nothing else but visit temples. A silk-weaving village was seen, a Meo settlement, and the making of silver; the royal palace dancers performed specially for the group and the final evening included a specially-arranged baci blessing ceremony with a Lao dinner.\n\nThe principal point of the tour was to absorb something of the restful atmosphere of Luang Prabang through its not magnificent but charming temples, its unhurried way of life and its noble simplicity. Vientiane provides a more modern contrast, but remains a quiet provincial town rather than a frenzied capital of the twentieth century. Laos might have the lowest income per capita in the world and its problems may be enormous, but it is not lacking in dignity and the charm of its people is unforgettable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207226, "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": 297, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "Plate 42. Baci ceremony. R.A. Society tour to Laos, January, 1974.\n\nPlate 43. Baci ceremony. R.A. Society tour to Laos, January, 1974.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207795, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "168\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nMeanwhile exploration continued from the south. Between 1866 and 1868 the French under Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier made their famous expedition from Saigon by the Mekong River through Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos to Talifu and Kunming in Yunnan. The Panthay Rebellion was then at its height, and the Chinese authorities refused them permission to proceed further up the Mekong. Garnier, who had succeeded to the leadership after Lagrée's death, had to abandon his plan to explore the sources of the Mekong, and turned east across Yunnan to the Upper Yangtze at Iping. Here boats were obtained to take them on the four weeks journey to Hankow. Garnier saw enough of the Mekong to realise that it could never rival the Irawaddy, let alone the Yangtze, as a trade route to West China, and French interest shifted to the Red River route from Haiphong through Tongking. During an enforced delay on the Siamese border, Garnier made the first thorough survey of the ruins of Angkor, and his expedition is important in that it encouraged French ambitions for an Indo-Chinese Empire.\n\nThere was no clear policy on the part of the various British parties concerned with developing trade with West China, nor over the best way to reach this region of supposed inexhaustible wealth. Lack of accurate information is also a constant theme in the history of British relations with West China. However, penetration and exploitation from the West, that is from India and Burma, attracted greater public and official support in Britain than that from the Yangtze by the China traders, though by 1874, a combination of circumstances led to a co-operative effort being made from both East and West, the aforementioned Dual Mission of 1874-75, which I shall now describe.\n\nThe Panthay Rebellion finally came to an end in May 1873 when the Imperial troops captured Momein, this completing the reconquest of Yunnan after eighteen years of civil war. During the ensuing period of rehabilitation the provincial authorities tried to revive the Burma-Yunnan overland route, and caravans reappeared after nearly twenty years' absence, undeterred by disbanded soldiers and lawless hillmen. By May 1874 the British Political Agent at Bhamo reported that more caravans were passing between Burma and Yunnan than for many years, and that British and Chinese merchants were sending such large consignments of goods", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "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": 209715, "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": 372, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "350\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nHowever, such incomplete listings are probably common to many gazetteers.\n\nIn truth, the gazetteer was never intended to be comprehensive, and Mr. Ng and Dr. Baker cannot be faulted. Perhaps it is just as well to emphasize this. Instead, we should be thankful that the informative and often picturesque descriptive writing in the gazetteer comes over so well in translation, and for the liveliness of Dr. Baker's notes and his other writings (particularly the Ancestral Images series mentioned above). Through the far-sightedness of the Hong Kong University Press, the two authors have surely provided us with a most valuable and useful basis for intelligent appreciation of our past, as well as with many hints for further reading and further studies if we are so minded.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nHistoire de l'Asie du Sud-Est, Révoltes, Réformes, Révolutions, Pierre Brocheux (compiler), Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1981, 276 pp.\n\nThis collection of twelve essays, with a 9-page introduction by one of the contributors on behalf of himself and eight others, devotes itself largely to Vietnamese history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also includes material on early 20th century Laos and Cambodia, on Java and early Indonesian communism, and on present-day Singapore.\n\nThe Vietnamese subjects are widely distributed in time and place. They include a historical review of peasant movements; reform and traditionalism at the court of Hué in the later 19th century; Ta Thu Thau, an unsuccessful revolutionary assassinated by the Vietminh in 1945; a revolt (1918-22) among the Hmong \"montagnards\" living on the confines of China and Vietnam; the extreme left pan-Asiatic movement and the Vietnamese national movement 1905-25; and a survey of the communists' approach to the peasantry in Vietnam. There is also an essay on the agrarian reforms of the Diệm regime with American prompting and support.\n\nIn their introduction, the authors make the point that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209716, "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": 373, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n351\n\nstudy of revolts, reforms and revolutions in the South East Asian region is of particular interest and relevance for the outside world. This is because the variety of its component races, religions and political systems, before and after the colonial period, are paralleled by the diversity of situations experienced in revolution, reform and revolt. They are as diverse in kind as the very varied social, cultural, economic, historical context will allow, whether in or outside the colonial period, whether the colonial power was French, British or Dutch, whether a communist party was present or not. They are also, they claim, made the more interesting through the variety of \"models,\" outside assistance and influences available to the leaders of its governments and insurgent movements alike.\n\nThe authors state that, out of the total of twelve articles, five study revolts, three reforms and four revolutions. Five of the nine new states are represented (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore and Vietnam), with the former colonies of French Indo-china making up three quarters. Two articles concern events before 1914, three take place between 1914 and 1945 and four after the Second World War, and three span several of these periods. Neither the early period of colonial penetration nor the contemporary scene have been neglected, though by choice the authors have generally not gone back beyond 1850.\n\nGenerally speaking, the essays illustrate the theme of the Introduction, and they do cover a most diverse and interesting set of events. This is a stimulating collection of essays which will certainly be of value to serious students of South East Asia. Also, they bear out the authors' claim that they have a wider relevance than the region in which they are set.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nChinese Festivals Joan Law and Barbara E. Ward, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 1982, 95pp, including Bibliography, Index. 85 Colour plates\n\nIt is surprising that no-one produced a book like this long ago. Of course, this superb volume is no less welcome for that. The book consists of a short introduction, followed by brief", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210796, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "130\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\nernment looked to Hainan to rapidly expand production of rubber, coffee and tropical fruit as these were in short supply and could only be grown in small quantities in parts of Yunnan Province. However, in spite of this encouragement and efforts by the Hainanese, only 20 per cent of the Island's arable land was under production in 1965 (Kirk, 1965).\n\nAlthough significant achievement was made in the agricultural sector, this was overshadowed by advances made in industry. Only a few, poorly equipped machine repair shops were operative at the time of Liberation, but by 1965 more than 20 farming and other machinery plants were producing 73 kinds of new products, 38 of which were in serial production (Kirk, 1965). Among the latter were peanut planters, water turbine pumps, threshers, husking mills, coconut processing machines and fluorescent lamps for deep-sea fishing. Processing factories including food canneries, sugar refineries, textile mills and rubber footwear plants not only increased in variety, but also in product quality and economic efficiency (Kirk, 1965).\n\nDuring this period, Hainan assumed greater military importance: first in response to the conflict involving French and American forces in Vietnam, and more recently to the Soviet-backed military and political takeover of Laos and Cambodia by Vietnam. This importance was further enhanced by the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war and the discovery of oil and natural gas by American and French joint-ventures in the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea. As a first line of defence, China maintains constant surveillance from the air supported by a formidable naval force of 300,000 stationed in Hainan and the Leizhou Peninsula plus strategically placed missile bases (Hollingworth, 1982). Initially, military personnel were engaged in road construction, installation of communication networks and improvement of defence positions, but in these more settled times, they have played a key role in the agricultural and industrial development of Hainan (China Daily, August 11, 1983).\n\nIn spite of these efforts, however, development of Hainan's resources proceeded too slowly to raise the living standard to keep pace with the national average (Wu and Zhi, 1981). While the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212073, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "OBITUARY\n\nHUGH GIBB\n\nMr Hugh Gibb, a long-term Member of Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, died in August 1990. With the permission of The Daily Telegraph, we reproduce here an obituary which appeared in that newspaper on Friday, August 24, 1990.\n\nHUGH GIBB, who has died aged 75, was a maker of sensitive documentary films, chiefly about Asia, which combined artistic distinction, rigorous research and a strong cultural message.\n\nHis much applauded seven-part series, The Borneo Story, made in the mid-1950s, won a Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival. Another seven-parter, Images of the East shot in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand for BBC television during the 1960s gave a unique record of the old Indo-China, particularly of the monuments at Angkor in Cambodia.\n\nGibb was re-working his Angkor films, in the hope that they would widen sympathy for the Cambodian people and perhaps lead to the neutralisation of the site under UNESCO's aegis, when he was struck down by a sudden illness.\n\nA stickler for detail, Gibb was perhaps the last of the \"one-man\" producers: he did the research, wrote the scripts, filmed, edited, wrote and even spoke the commentaries of his films.\n\nHis style on location was exigent, authoritarian and sometimes irascible, and this discouraged many of his would-be collaborators. Gibb's extreme individualism perhaps accounts for the incomplete state of his later work. Several ambitious films about China, particularly its great waterways, were never finished.\n\nA Lloyd's broker's son, Hugh James Gibb was born in London on March 15, 1915, and educated at Rugby and Oriel College, Oxford. He followed his father into Lloyd's before enlisting in the Royal Artillery on the outbreak of the Second World War.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213661, "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": 14, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "Any learned society depends on an impressive programme which provides a stamp of learning and authority. Details of our past year's programmes are as follows.\n\n1996\n\n12 April\n\n10 May\n\n14 June\n\n19 July\n\n6 September\n\n4 October\n\n18 October\n\n1 November\n\n15 November\n\n6 December\n\nTitle\n\n\"The Forbidden City: the Great Within,” by May Holdsworth and Caroline Courtauld\n\n\"What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans make Sense of their Worlds,\" by Dr Gordon Matthews\n\n\"Fung Shui in the New Age,\" by David Yung.\n\n\"Chinese Export Ware for the Dutch Market,\" by Dr Christian Jorg\n\n\"An Introduction to Tam Kung: the Hakka Boy Deity,\" by Geoffrey Roper and Dr Anthony Siu Kwok-keung\n\n\"Tsuen Wan: from Hakka Enclave to Post Industrial City,\" by Dr Graham Johnson.\n\n\"Textiles and Traditions of Laos,\" by Mary Connors\n\n\"Hong Kong Heritage Trails,\" by ST Chiu\n\n\"Second Thoughts on a Memoir,\" by Dr James Hayes.\n\n\"Dr Aurelius Harland: Prominent Hong Kong Doctor 1843—1858,\" by Professor Harland.\n\n1997\n\n17 January\n\n\"Food Dynamics: Family, Class and Chineseness in Hong Kong,\" by Cheng Sea-ling.\n\nxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213771, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "94\n\nlonger recorded in genealogies. While this article limits itself to the case of the Hakka, preliminary investigation suggests that the practice is probably also found among some Cantonese-speaking lineages.*\n\nThe Nature of Ordination Names\n\nMany Hakka genealogies contain names for ancestors described as faming, langming, or duming. The three are used interchangeably. The first and third of these terms can be translated respectively as “magic/religion name” and “ordination name”, and the second refers to the form of such names. The ordination names found in Hakka genealogies are of two varieties: the first with Fa as the first character of the given name, reminiscent of the titles of some Buddhist monks and the Hakka “Daoist” ritual specialists. The other is a non-numeric character followed by a number and the word “Lang”, reminiscent of some Japanese given names such as Junichiro in the name of the famous novelist Tanizaki Junichiro. The ordination names for earlier times, perhaps during the Song, tended to be of a simpler form: just a numeral followed by lang. The non-numeric character could have been a refinement to the system for telling generations apart. The “Japanese” pattern is also found in the names of some of the gods of the Lu Shan tradition of sorcerers, which I shall discuss later.\n\nThe two styles of ordination titles are identical to those found as the Daoist titles in Yao documents from Qujiang county of Northern Guangdong prepared for an ordination ceremony.* Information on the Yao of Thailand and Laos provided some hints as to why two different styles of names are used. There was more than one level of initiation. Although there are variations in the specifics, the following example would help to illustrate the point:\n\n[A] Yao man is introduced to the Taoist Pantheon through the Kwa tang “hanging the lamps” ceremony. Its main purpose is to entitle him to perform some rituals, and to confer on him a first “official” degree in the celestial hierarchy. As a result, he will be granted a religious name fa bua [faming] when he will drop his middle generation name and replace it by the word fa, “The Law (of Tao)”. For example, somebody whose adult name reads Tang (family) Fu (generation) On (personal) will then be called Tang Fa On, that is ‘the faithful On of the Tang family’, in all religious documents and ceremonies, including", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213773, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "96\n\nthat the religion is of Han origin. e.g. the use of Han language in the manuals, especially when the Yao use it for ritual purposes alone; that the Southern Song Daoist's description, to be discussed later, of the \"ancestry\" of the sorcerers magic does not mention at all that this is the practice of a minority people; and that major elements of the tradition (though perhaps not ordination itself) is shared by the Fujian, Cantonese and Hakka ritual specialists.\n\nHakka genealogies have adopted different theories about those names. One asserts that those names were given by \"Daoists\". One example is a genealogy of the Lius, revised probably in 1920.\n\nIn the previous compilation names of ancestors from Song to Yuan times had names calling them fa and lang, with numbers involving ten, hundred, thousand to ten thousand, and disregarding seniority among brothers. It was because customs of those times gave Daoists considerable power, to the extent that names were given by Daoists.\"\n\nSimilarly, the genealogy of the Lins of Hang Ha Po explained that \"during that time [which?] it was popular to be ordained by the Heavenly Master Zhang. Those who obtained such ordination are to be called by their famung and langhao, which is to be passed down to future generations and never forgotten.\" That such a claim cannot be wholly true can be shown easily by comparing the names with those found in Daoist ritual documents. There the Daoist names, although possibly different from the everyday names that they identify, are not different in form from ordinary names.\n\nAnother example, the Sixing He's 4th Genealogy, claimed that the eleven sons and one daughter of an ancestor Weitai, had all attained the status of immortals; they are therefore identified by langming ordination names in their entries. Yet another theory is proposed in the genealogy of the Luos of Luobo, compiled between 1914 and 1930. It contains a lengthy attempt to refute interpretation of lang names as ordination names. It objected to what it alleged to be popular belief that such names were religious names given by Shimu sorcerers. Basically, it brings our attention to lang being used as a rank during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, and numbers possibly used to refer to heads of household. This does not explain the combination of lang and the numeric expressions, especially those prefixed by a non-numeric character. Nor does it explain the ordination names of the other format. More importantly, his theory", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213790, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "113\n\nalways foretold by noise made automatically by a cane, presumably left by the monk, as if the uneasiness of the enlightened monk in the presence of his own folks continues even after his death.\"3\n\nIf the tradition of ordination was so persistent despite contact with \"orthodox\" Daoism and Buddhism, the sudden disappearance of the ordination names among ancestors from the 17th century, and the fact that the genealogist writing around the 1920s is apparently unaware of such practice, is all the more interesting. We may get hints from the genealogist who spent four pages to refute any connection of the lang names with priests/sorcerers. He lived between around 1856 to 1946, was appointed a jiaoshi (“professor”?) at the Jingshi Daxue (“Capital University”) of the Qing. Among the evidence he cited was that in his family that produced ten generations of scholar/bureaucrats it would have been an insult to accept ordination names from priests/sorcerers. He makes the point to prescribe omission of du (“ordination”) before the lang names in genealogies and spirit tablets, and adds di “number (\")\" before these names. One wonders if the opinion of people of such status as this genealogist would be sufficient to put a stop to the practice of ordination. But other genealogists mentioned above, some perhaps not so many decades before him, saw in those names indications that the ancestors had attained immortality. In any case, the opinion of this scholar/bureaucrat is a contrast to the sorcerer's view in which fangming and gongming were comparable as titles of prestige. Luo Xianglin, the Hakka scholar who wants the Hakka to be known as \"Tarmei-scholars” and perhaps “farmer-nationalists” would not, similarly, want the Hakka to be thought of as “farmer-sorcerers\". In a passage from the genealogy of the Lius explaining the two special styles of names among ancestors as given by “Daoists”, Luo inserted a note saying that \"this is not correct, see the Genealogy of the Luos of Luobo ***.\n\nBut, as I have already mentioned, the two Hakka scholars do not have to look further than the Guangdong Xinyu and the local gazetteers to see that the villagers' beliefs are not \"fictitious\", as they claimed. Moreover, the practice of ordination continued well into the 19th Century according to county gazetteers. The absence in genealogies of ancestors born in that period bearing ordination names probably reflects the fact that ordination continues but is no...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214595, "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": 10, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "CONTRIBUTORS\n\nPhilip J. Aston, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Surrey, UK. His research interests are in bifurcation theory and chaos. Code-breaking has been only an interesting sideline. (p.aston@mcs.surrey.ac.uk).\n\nPatrick H Hase, BA, Ph.D., is a long-standing Member of Council of RASHKB and currently the Hon. Editor (Books). He is a noted scholar and Hong Kong historian and has written prolifically on the subject (phhase@hkusua.hku.hk).\n\nJames Hayes, Ph.D., D.Litt. (Hon.), is a Past-president of RASHKB. He is a noted scholar and Hong Kong historian, and has written several books, the most recent being Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People, 1953-87. He has contributed prolifically to the Journal (mouseh@one.net.au).\n\nLawrence Lai, is an Associate Professor with the Department of Real Estate and Construction, University of Hong Kong (wclai@hkusua.hku.hk).\n\nCrystal Tang, is an active member of RASHKB (crystal.tang@dfait-maeci.gc.ca).\n\nNicholas Tapp, has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (1988). He lectured in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1989 to 1992 and then at Edinburgh University for five years. He is currently Senior Fellow, Acting Head, Department of Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra. His main publications are; Sovereignty and Rebellion: the White Hmong of Northern Thailand; (co-ed. with Chien Chiao) Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups in China; and (forthcoming) Context and the Imaginary: the Hmong of China. He has researched extensively on Hmong society in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and China (ntapp@coombs.anu.edu.au).\n\nDan Waters, M.Phil., Ph.D., is a retired Assistant Director of Education of the Hong Kong Government. He is a long-time council member of HKBRAS and has been President since 1997. He has written \n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214793, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "173\n\nThe experiences of migration, exile, refugees and diasporic communities all suggest that nostalgia can be employed as a strategic resource to re-appropriate and forge new identities in the face of globalising dislocations from place. 'Exile is the nursery of nationality', as Anderson (1994) quotes Acton as saying. In this context, David Parkin (1998) points out that anthropologists 'can no longer assume that the people they study see themselves as attached to a particular, bounded locality', as in colonial ethnography which tended to depict territorially distinct peoples in homogeneous locations clearly bounded one from another in a way which facilitated ease of administration (the 'simplifications' of the state talked of by Scott, 1998). Yet real life has never actually been like this, as Parkin (1998) notes; there have almost never been autonomous communities perfectly isolable from one another, there has always been movement of peoples across boundaries and borders, and globalisation too has a long pre-capitalist, imperial history, as Friedman (1999) also notes. Nor in my opinion is the experience of the imaginative reconstitution of place so clearly linked either with the modern or post-modern, although it is often assumed to be.21 We have always constructed 'simulated worlds', admits Iain Chambers (1994); what is really new is the awareness of taking part in a global network of other and similar peoples. The experience of deterritorialisation is however a dislocation of place, and what we find here, for the Hmong as for many other dispersed or fragmented communities, is the use of nostalgia to reconstruct the past - and the nostalgic construction of place.\n\nLouisa Schein (1998) and myself (1996) have both documented the returns of overseas Hmong, settled after the conflicts of Indochina as refugees in Western countries like France, the US, or Australia, to revisit their immediate homelands in South East Asia, and the imaginary homelands of their ancestors in Southwest China. A Hmong friend of mine in Chiangmai, who has lived all his life in an urban environment, makes a point of bringing his children every year to visit his wife's parents in their rural village, so that they should remember where the Hmong came from and what it is to be really Hmong. It is for similar reasons that some of those who are able to afford to do so return with their families for extraordinary, emotional homecomings which I have witnessed in Hmong homes in Laos and in Thailand, and the same happens, although on a smaller and less public scale, in Vietnam.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214795, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "175\n\nin this sense therefore does NOT mean it is impossible to 'go home again', as Chambers (1994) maintained (cf. Mathews 2000). Homes, whether imagined or remembered, are physically being returned to and are being transformed through these nostalgic homecomings.\"\n\nI have seen something of this process occurring with the Hmong, in Thailand and Laos and China, and the transformations it has wrought on local senses of identity. I recall a sophisticated Hmong tourist from California in Chiangmai, North Thailand, telling me how he had insisted on wearing a suit and tie to address a meeting at his wife's brother's village despite his brother-in-law's pleas not to do so; it had felt very wrong to him not to do so.\n\n27\n\nBut local senses of Hmong community, both in Thailand and Laos, have been severely disrupted by some aspects of these return visits. A Hmong group in Chiangmai expressed their alarm at the behaviour of some American Hmong, who made love to local young Hmong girls at the New Year, the traditional time for a certain licence of courtship practices with a view to eventual marriage, and disappointing them with false promises of marriage and a new life in the West before disappearing back to their American families. Feelings became violent about this behaviour at a time of increasing fears of the spread of HIV/AIDS, and some of the Hmong who had complained received anonymous death threats.2 In China too there have been cases of Hmong expelled for courting several young girls in different villages at the same time.\n\nWhile there is certainly the sense of belonging to a much wider, expanded Hmong community, in a global sense, and a great longing expressed both by many overseas Hmong and local Hmong for the Hmong community to reunite as a whole in a return to their original homeland, there is also an emerging awareness of class and regional differences among groups of Hmong settled elsewhere or even within the same communities, which has paradoxically added to an increased sense of the importance of bonds of locality.\n\nAnd indeed a resurgence of local power, and local identities, has been seen as one response to the forces of economic, political and cultural globalisation, even to the extent that those localities (‘homes') have been partially reconstituted, or re-constructed, through the powerful\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214797, "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "177\n\nquite the reverse. Richard Coyne (1999) has recently pointed to the romantic stream in digital narratives, which implicates them in notions of utopia through the discourse of the 'global village and the electronic cottage', the return to a tribal stage of freedom and a Golden Age equality, the ideal of preindustrial arts and crafts. It may well be, as Coyne argues, that such 'digital narratives', whether romantic or rationalist, necessarily provide spaces of interpretation rather than referring to contextual realities beyond language.\n\nPerhaps as part of a general tendency in anthropology away from getting dirty hands by doing fieldwork in local sites, my more recent research has tended towards a great interest in the power of the Internet, and its World Wide Web, to forge new ties of community between Hmong in France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, French Guyana, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China (Tapp 1999). Of course the Hmong voices represented on the Internet are the voices of those most in the position of being able to represent themselves in this way; that is, the most educated, most literate, and those with computer access. Yet these representations of themselves, both those aimed purely at other Hmong and those aimed at others, are of considerable interest for the way they so often speak directly of the losses and separations suffered by the Hmong community as a whole, and the need to reunite and re-bond, the memories of particular households and the life in Laos or Thailand, or an ancestral home in China. Evans (1998) also draws attention to the power of these nationalist images of homeland among groups of overseas Hmong refugees from Laos.29 These are moving, and deeply felt, images, and they are not necessarily emanating from those Hmong with a particular political agenda, or even from those Hmong who individually left Laos themselves, but often from members of the younger generations, college students who cannot themselves recollect such pasts or places.\n\n20\n\nCoupled with the facts of overseas Hmong tourism to South East Asia and China, return family visits and the emergence of small-scale transnational businesses, we must I think see these Internet representations, these uses of the Internet together with other forms of telecommunication, as directly contributing to the formation of a new kind of Hmong identity and Hmong community, on a global scale, the kind of identity which more nearly approximates our understanding of a nationality or national group, perforce without a state or sovereign", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214802, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "182\n\nCheung, Sydney 'Being Here, Searching 'There': Hong Kong as a Virtual Community'; in Sydney Cheung (ed.) On the South China Track : Perspectives on Anthropological Research and Teaching (Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Research Monographs No.40). Hong Kong. The Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nChiu, Fred Yen Liang 1997 'Politics and the Body Social in Colonial Hong Kong', Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, ed. Tani E. Barlow. Durham and London. Duke University Press.\n\nChoi Chi-Cheung 1995 'Reinforcing Ethnicity: the Jiao festival in Cheung Chau,' Down to Earth : The Territorial Bond in South China, ed. David Faure and Helen Siu. Stanford; Stanford University Press.\n\nCohen, Anthony P (ed.) 1982 Belonging : identity and social organisation in British rural cultures. Manchester. Manchester University Press.\n\n1985 The Symbolic Construction of Community. London and New York. Routledge.\n\n1986 (ed.) Symbolising Boundaries : Identity and Diversity in British Cultures. Manchester. Manchester University Press.\n\nCohen, Robin 1997 Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle. University of Washington Press.\n\nCoyne, Richard 1999 Technoromanticism : digital narrative, holism, the romance of the real. Cambridge, Mass. M.I.T. Press.\n\nDirlik, Arif 1994 'The post-colonial aura : third world criticism in age of global capitalism' Journal of Asian Studies 328-356 20.2 (Winter)\n\nEvans, Grant 1998 The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975. Chiang Mai; Silkworm Books.\n\nand Maria Tam 1997 ‘Introduction' to Hong Kong : The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis, ed. Grant Evans and Maria Tam. Richmond; Curzon Press.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214807, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "187\n\nThousand Oaks, New Delhi.\n\nbarren\n\nSinn, Elizabeth 1998 'A study of regional associations on a mountain? In the Chinese Diaspora: the Hong Kong Experience, The Chinese Diaspora: selected essays (Vol.1), ed. Wang Ling Chi and Wang Gungwu. Singapore. Times Academic Press.\n\n1995 Emigration from Hong Kong before 1941: General Trends Emigration from Hong Kong : tendencies and impacts, ed. Ronald Skeldon. Hong Kong. The Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nSiu, Helen 1999 Hong Kong : Cultural Kaleidoscope on a World Landscape' in Gary Hamilton (ed.) Cosmopolitan Capitalists: Hong Kong and the Chinese Diaspora at the end of the Twentieth Century, Seattle. University of Washington Press.\n\n1996 Remade in Hong Kong: Weaving into the Chinese Cultural Tapestry', Unity and Diversity: Local Cultures and Identities in China, ed. Tao Tao Liu and David Faure. Hong Kong; Hong Kong University Press.\n\nSkeldon, Ronald (ed.) 1995 Emigration from Hong Kong: tendencies and impacts. Hong Kong. The Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\n(ed.) 1994 Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the Overseas Chinese. New York. M.E.Sharpe.\n\nSouvannavong, Si-Ambhahaivan Sisombat 1999 'Elites in Exile: The emergence of a transnational Lao culture, Laos: Culture and Society, ed. Grant Evans. Chiang Mai; Silkworm Books.\n\nStewart, Susan 1984 (1993) On Longing; narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham. Duke University Press.\n\nTapp, Nicholas (forthcoming) 'Exiles and Reunions : Nostalgia among overseas Hmong (Miao), The Anthropology of Separations, ed. Charles Stafford. London. The Athlone Press.\n\n1999 'The Consuming or the Consumed? Virtual Hmong in China'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]