[
    {
        "id": 205112,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1966",
        "page_number": 68,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n63\n\ntestify to their Oriental origin, such as the lute (from Arabic al-lūt, \"wood”), and even in our century we have witnessed the spread of Negro jazz over the whole world. A similar development took place in China, and there are many passages in Yüan literature where foreign music and musicians are mentioned.15 In this connection we should perhaps save from oblivion the name of one of these musicians from the Near East. We find her name in the Ch'ing-lou chi “Records from the Green Bowers\", an anonymous work dated 1364 which gives a list of the most popular courtesans under the Yüan, together with a description of their accomplishments. Among these ladies of easy virtue we find one solitary girl from the Western Regions mentioned among her many Chinese professional sisters. She was a Mohammedan girl by the name of Miliha (or Maliha) praised for her sweet and clear voice and her skill in singing. She was, alas, not beautiful, but we are told that she was a superb theatrical performer. The author of the book once made her acquaintance and was duly impressed by her acting.16\n\nThere must have been many influences from Near Eastern folklore that reached China under the Yüan. I shall quote here only two examples. A well-known Near Eastern folk-tale motif, that of the honest loser, the greedy finder and the Solomonic judge, can be traced both in European medieval and Chinese literature. It reached Europe via Spain through the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi of Toledo (thirteenth century A.D.), a work which contains many Arab stories and anecdotes that subsequently became immensely popular in the West. Boccaccio has not a few stories from the Disciplina Clericalis in his Decamerone and also at least one motif in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, that of the three caskets, comes from that source. The story of the loser, the finder and the judge can be found in European literature in many versions, the classical German version being J. P. Hebel's \"Der kluge Richter\". In China we find this story in a text dated 1360. Here the story is set in a typical Chinese environment and being given some additional touches typical of China. The most interesting feature is, however, that the Chinese text does not present the anecdote as a mere story but as a historical event. The clever judge to whom the final solution of the case is entrusted was a perfectly real person, a circuit prefect from Kiangsi Province. This shows the Chinese tendency to attach literary clichés and even,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212836,
        "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": 145,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "130\n\nthe new officer to remove himself and his troops from the village where we were staying immediately. Poor man, he was only obeying his orders and did not know what to do; but he went. After that we were only watched by plain clothes men; but the dismissal of the escort, or prisoner's guard, as it would be called to the natives, showed the natives that we intended to be masters in our house, and helped to break down the fear under which they laboured.\n\nI was sorry to lose the men of the escort: they came from far away Hunan, and were good representatives of the salty peasant stock of a great nation.\n\nExcept on certain main routes used by the Chinese troops the villages in Kokang were not deserted, like many of those we had passed in Yunnan. It is an old story. A British officer, H.P. Davies, who was travelling through these parts in 1895, wrote: 'Our first march only took us back to Na-hsang, the place I had passed through on my way to Tawnio. This village which appeared quite prosperous a month before, we found almost entirely deserted. On enquiry we learned that some Chinese soldiers were expected there soon as escort to the boundary commission. No doubt these worthy villagers had had previous experience of Chinese troops and were determined to hide themselves and their property as much as possible.\n\nTawnio in Burmese, and Malipa in Chinese, is the name of the chief town in south Kokang; Na-hsang is a village across the border on the Chinese side. Here again it is most unfair to blame the Chinese troops. They are expected to move without commissariat and to live off the country; they have no money with which to pay for what they take, so no wonder the people of the villages make themselves scarce.\n\nAt Nancha we came across the makings of a small tragedy. The old headman had two unmarried daughters - his son had been carried off by the Chinese to attend school at Kun-ming, in other words he was a hostage - the elder of whom had bound feet, and the younger not bound. The modern young men would no longer look at any girl with bound feet; that was out of fashion; but until the elder sister was married, the younger, a bright good-looking girl, could not marry. It was a puzzle to which there appeared to be no solution. But the women in these parts are very independent; I heard later that the younger girl had run away from home and married the swain of her choice by just going to live",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]