[ { "id": 204858, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "136\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nbrush and the most excellent ink, washed his hands and cleaned the ink stone as if to receive an important guest. He let the thoughts settle in his soul, and then he work” (page 46). Among other essays and jotting here translated should be mentioned Ching Hao's \"Notes on Brush-work\" and the Hua Yü Lu #4 (\"Notes on Painting\") by Shih-t'ao of the Ch'ing dynasty. One sentence from Shih-t'ao's essay is typical of his attitude: \"When the superior man borrows from the old masters, he does it in order to open a new road\n\nTwo illustrations gave me special pleasure: \"Misty Hills\" by Ch'en Shun and \"Peach-blossom Spring\" by Shih-t'ao (plates 18 and 19). The book is equipped with a full index of Chinese names, terms and books with their Chinese characters.\n\nThis new edition of an important work by the doyen of Western authorities on Chinese art can be recommended to all who are interested in Chinese painting and it serves as introduction to Sirén's magnum opus, his Chinese Painters, Leading Masters and Principles in seven volumes.*\n\nJ. L. C-B.\n\nTHE ART OF CHINESE POETRY. James J. Y. Liu. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962. 166 pages. 30/-\n\nMr. James Liu's book is a fine introduction to the poetry of China for the uninitiated, and a substantial source of information and enjoyment for the sophisticated.\n\nOf a moderate size, the book is divided into three sections. Part I consists mainly of information, Part II of interpretation and Part III of criticism. The subject is generously illustrated with short poems translated by Mr. Liu and others.\n\nA remarkable feature of this book is the way in which Chinese poems are translated. Mr. Liu has in many cases followed the original verse form and rhyme scheme, a difficult and painstaking process requiring considerable virtuosity and originality. What he does, goes contrary to prevailing fashion and one is not surprised to find the critic of the Times Literary Supplement, while maintaining the general excellence of the book, taking\n\n*Lund Humphries, 1956. Profusely illustrated,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206798, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "PERSIANS, ARABS IN T'ANG CHINA\n\n69\n\nshould be well-treated.48 The Emperor based his policies on the principle of 't'ien-hsia pai-ch'uan kuei ta-hai' 天下百川歸大海 (all rivers in the empire enter the sea), and accepted everyone from different parts of the world, either to pay tribute to or to trade with China.\n\nThere is no doubt that Persians, Arabs, Turks, Japanese and others did enjoy their stay in China; and it is also an undeniable fact that T'ang emperors wished to befriend these foreigners. It is equally true that in such a highly Sino-centric society as the T'ang period, nobody felt that such a process of assimilation was untraditional or against the theory of Sino-centrism. In T'ang times, such a social pattern was a reality, not a myth, and its spirit may serve as a model for the future.\n\nNOTES\n\n* I wish to express my appreciation to Professor Woodbridge Bingham of the University of California, Berkeley (Visiting Professor in Chinese History, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong 1970-71) for reading an earlier version of this paper, weeding out mistakes and suggesting improvements.\n\nAbbreviations used in the footnotes:\n\nCTS Chiu T'ang-shu\n\nHTS Hsin T'ang-shu\n\nTCTC Tzu-chih t'ung-chien\n\n1 In T'ang time, Islamic followers used to call the Chinese Tamghai, Tomghaj, Tonghaj, Tangas, Tubgao or Tapkao. Some historians believe that these were transliterations of T'ao-hua-shih. However, Kuwabara Jitsuzō suggested that these were derived from T'ang-chia-tzu. Cf. J. Kuwabara 'On P'u Shou-keng', Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 2:1-79 (Tokyo, 1928), 7:1-104 (Tokyo, 1935). See also Chinese translation of this, with additional notes by Ch'en Yü-ching, P'u Shou-keng k'ao (Peking, 1954), pp. 103-109.\n\n2 Edward O. Reischauer and J. K. Fairbank, East Asia: The Great Tradition (London, 1958), p. 155.\n\n3 See Lo Hsiang-lin, T'ang-tai wen-hua shih (Taipei, 1963), pp. 54-87.\n\n4 Hsiang Tai, T'ang-tai Ch'ang-an hsi-yü wen-ming (Peking, 1957), pp. 24-25.\n\n5 Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), pp. 10-11. I must express my thankfulness to Professor Schafer's opus magnum; I have fully made use of Professor Schafer's work.\n\n6 See Chiu Ling-yeong, Superintendents of Customs in Canton during the Tang and Sung Dynasties (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1963), Chapters 5 and 6.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207027, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF DE MAILLA, HISTOIRE GENERALE DE LA CHINE\n\nRICHARD Gregg Irwin\n\nIntroduction\n\nMany years ago a student of mine, then in Peking, named Richard Gregg Irwin, sent me a draft of a paper he had written on the sources of the well-known Histoire générale de la Chine by Père de Mailla. I thought it worthy of publication and promised to help him in the revision. In the meantime he was caught in the war with Japan and imprisoned in Weihsien; by the time he returned to the United States he was wholly absorbed in completing his dissertation, which eventually was published in the Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies as The Evolution of a Chinese Novel: Shui-hu-chuan. Duties of an exacting sort at the East Asiatic Library of the University of California followed in Berkeley, and he died prematurely in 1968 without finding the leisure to turn again to his initial study of de Mailla's magnum opus, still the longest history of China in a western language.\n\nNow that the undersigned has completed his work on Ming biographies it has occurred to him to make the necessary revisions, so that Mr. Irwin's essay may see the light of day. This seems all the more timely as de Mailla's history has recently (1967) been reprinted by the Ch'eng-wen Publishing Company, Taipei.\n\nColumbia University,\n\n21st May, 1974.\n\nTHE NOTES\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nA false impression is given by the full title of de Mailla's Histoire générale de la Chine, ou annales de cet empire; traduites du Tong-Kien-Kang-Mou, par le feu Père Joseph-Anne-Marie de Mailla, Jésuite français, missionaire à Pekin; publiées par M. l'Abbé Grosier\n\nParis, 1777-1783. - 12v., which describes it as translated from the T'ung-chien kang-mu.\n\nThis work, in 104 chüan, comprising the main body of the history, written about 1190 under the supervision of the celebrated Chu Hsi (1130-1200), together with its commentaries, an introductory section based on the writings", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212672, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "207\n\nan original commission with the final decision on the book's coverage and titling.\n\nA further sign of inadequate editing is the absence of any indication of the sources of these images of the past. Beyond stating on the inside rear of the cover that the photographs were \"carefully culled from press archives of the time” (my italics), a rather inexact and fairly unhelpful statement, the book itself is totally without any list or acknowledgement of sources. For a work which is sub-titled “A History in Documentary Photographs\" and is part of an interesting series which up to the time of this book's publication had issued volumes dealing with Russia, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire around the same period.\n\nand one clearly intended to be a historical record this major omission is surprising as well as disappointing. It is to be hoped that the other books in the series are more useful in this regard.\n\n―\n\nChina, A Photohistory 1937-1987 Introduction by Jonathan D. Spence, Edited with Commentaries by W.J.F. Jenner (London, Thames and Hudson, 1988).\n\nIt is a relief to turn to this very elegant and thoroughly scholarly book so carefully compiled and edited by William Jenner and so compassionately and accurately introduced by Jonathan Spence. No need to worry about sources, or to find fault with the introduction, summaries and captions to the photographs. It is altogether a more thoughtful production which makes one realize what a great opportunity was missed with the other, whose images are equally striking and evocative but are not properly supported by the accompanying text.\n\nThe 153 photographs reproduced here are by persons from or connected with the well-known Magnum international photographers' cooperative. Jonathan Spence's fine Introduction sets the scene for them and explains how \"surprisingly large portions of the Chinese story are still not available in any visual form' in the West, through not having been covered by Western photographers. For instance, little is available from 1949 to 1956, when from that year until mid 1958 Hiroshi Hamaya took pictures and Marc Riboud \"produced a stream of photographs during his travels in China at this time\".\n\nThere is not space to do justice to all the facets of this collection, nor to the quality of Spence's commentary. However, his comments on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212730, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "24\n\nin 1884. He also claimed to have produced several minor booklets, one on Yunnan and another on Tonkin, and one article in the Royal Asian Society North China Branch Journal in 1891 on 'Yunnan: Its Treasures and Trade Routes'. He planned to incorporate the two booklets into what he saw as his magnum opus 'The Greater China' which unfortunately never saw the light of day.\n\nHe wrote a very long letter on the Yellow River and its appearances, published in 1887 in Indian Engineering, describing the different places where he had sailed on or had crossed it.\n\nMesny and Chiang Chao-ling, under noms-de-plume, produced in Shanghai in February 1898 'A New Collection of Tracts for the Times', with Mesny editing and Chiang writing the introduction. It was reviewed in the North China Daily News of 23 July 1898. Mesny and Chiang had planned some ten years earlier to publish a monthly magazine in 1887 which would seem never to have taken off.\n\nMesny wrote a lengthy account of his journey from Canton through Kuangsi in 1879 for the London Daily News, but 'this very influential and highly respectable journal did not consider my poor contribution sufficiently interesting to insert it in its widely read columns.'\n\nIn passing when describing a 'celebrated heroine of romance' a novelette based on facts, Mesny added, \"I wrote it all out in one of my stories 'Chinese Nights' years ago, considerably different from Mayer's [version]...,\" but Mesny leaves us no wiser about 'the stories I wrote.'\n\nIn 1904 he published Mesny's Chinese and English Almanac though no copies appear to be available nowadays.\n\n*\n\nIn 1905 he advertised two forthcoming publications, 'Mesny's Commercial Guide' and 'Mesny's Business Directory', presumably both one-off books.\n\nMesny's Ranks and Honours\n\nAlthough Mesny was awarded several decorations by the Chinese one, the Baturu, a Manchu military award for distinguished services rendered on the field of battle, was the award of which he was most intensely proud and which, he explained, had entitled the recipient to travelling", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214306, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "128\n\ngland to write the rest of his magnum opus, the five-volume work The Naturalist in Manchuria, and, as we shall see, kept in touch with the nursing sister who had looked after his brother in the military hospital in France.\n\nIn 1921 he returned to China by way of the United States and visited the National Museum in Washington where so many of the specimens he had collected were exhibited. Once back in China he could not wait to get on with his next expedition, to southeast China. From Peking he travelled first to Shanghai and then on to Foochow in the spring of 1922 where he met Harry Caldwell, the American missionary famous for his book on the 'blue tiger of Fukien province' but, as luck would have it, the blue tiger eluded him. From Fukien, Sowerby decided to move on to southwest China, to Yunnan province in particular, a place he had long wished and planned to visit. It was not to be as Clark telegraphed an order that he should not risk his life as the bandit situation in Yunnan was extremely bad. And as Clark was funding Sowerby, he obeyed and to his everlasting regret never made it to the southwest. China was unstable for several decades following the Revolution of 1911, during which time banditry was endemic. A generic term for some of the bandits was Red Beards, hung hu-tzu, and Sowerby's own red beard, which he had during his expeditions, was quite an asset and rarely was he trifled with.\n\nBy the early part of the 1920s, Arthur found that his chronic arthritis was preventing him from making any more major expeditions and, therefore, when he met and married Clarice Moise in 1922, during her stay in Shanghai on her world tour, they settled in Shanghai where they decided to found the China Journal.\n\nWhat Sowerby later described as the most tense moment in his life happened immediately after the 30 May incident in 1925 when the Shanghai police had to resort to the use of firearms to prevent the over-running of a police station and to quell a student riot during which some students were killed. This led to a major strike against all foreigners and the city came to a standstill. The expatriate Volunteer Corps was called out and organised into specialist units. Sowerby was placed in charge of the 'Sniper' unit with the sole role of covering the Chinese policemen to ensure that they carried out orders. The 'Sniper' unit had orders to pick off any policeman who failed to obey orders and, though", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216145, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 444, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "378\n\nI was spellbound by this revelation and decided to write an article on the subject for The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, a Hong Kong publication of which I am the Hon. Editor. This appeared in 2001.2\n\nIn researching this article I had a look around the WWW and came across a webpage dedicated to Suyin hosted by the University of Minnesota and maintained by Professor Teresa Kowalska of the Silesian University, Katowice. Without any real hope of getting a response, I e-mailed Teresa and she promptly replied. This started an exchange of e-mails, which continues to this day, initially about Han Suyin, but latterly about every subject imaginable. We have become friends.\n\nTeresa has been an ardent admirer of Han Suyin for many years and has met her four times now. She has written a number of articles about her and in 2002 told me of her magnum opus; a Polish translation of Suyin's The Crippled Tree. However, she was having great difficulty in finding a Polish publisher and the cost seemed likely to be prohibitive.\n\nBy this stage I had also developed an admiration for Suyin. None of her books had ever been published in Polish and it seemed important to rectify this state of affairs by making the power and poignancy of her writing available to the Polish reading public. What follows is an account of a collaboration between a Polish professor of chemistry and a then Hong Kong assistant commissioner of police (who, incidentally, headed the information technology department at the time) to publish Kalekie drzewo!\n\nI spoke to the HKBRAS publisher in Hong Kong (Pally Printing Co.) and he agreed upon a very favourable fee. Both he and I, however, were considerably worried about our ability to produce a book in Polish, of which we speak not one word. Taking the plunge, however, I asked Teresa to e-mail me the manuscript. This I handed to our publisher and asked him to produce the first proofs in hard copy. I forget the details but it seems that we got the typesetting all wrong for the Polish language and when Teresa saw the proofs she understandably went into paroxysms of despair at what we had done to her epic work. Henry Law (our\n\n'Vol. 40.\n\nSuyin and husband Vincent live, in retirement, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Vincent died in December 2002. R.L.P.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]