[ { "id": 208020, "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-1977", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN, 1946\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS*\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe purpose of this paper is to record some experiences of a truck journey in early 1946 from Chungking, the wartime capital of the Republic of China, to Yenan, the Headquarters of the 18th Group Army, the Chinese Communist Party and capital of the Kansu-Ninghsia-Shensi Border Region, and back. This three-truck convoy carrying medical supplies was the first delivery to take place for a period of about four years, and a very brief review of the political background is perhaps required to set the scene.\n\nFollowing the Sian incident of December 1936, there were moves towards a united anti-Japanese front between the Nationalist Government (Kuomintang) under Marshal Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists (Kungchangtang). This was followed on July 7, 1937, by the Marco Polo Bridge fighting and the start of the Japanese invasion of the heartland of China. In this period, there was a nominal united command of Kuomintang and Kungchangtang with Marshal Chiang Kai-shek as Supreme Commander. The New Fourth Army, based in Anhwei, had been formed from the Communist guerilla groups left behind in Central China, but friction developed between this and the Kuomintang forces, and in January 1941, it was attacked in South Anhwei and partly destroyed. This marked the end of the united front, and the Kuomintang re-introduced the blockade of the Liberated Areas under 18th Group Army control. These Liberated Areas were basically the provinces of Kansu, Ninghsia, Shensi, Suiyuan, Honan, Hupeh, Hopeh, Shantung, Anhwei, Kiangsu, and Jehol. Much of these areas were also under Japanese occupation of the cities, railways, and roads, but the countryside was effectively under the control of the Liberated Areas Regional Councils.\n\nThe reintroduction of the blockade meant that a proportion of the Kuomintang troops were engaged in this exercise rather than\n\n* Paper delivered to a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch on 31st May, 1977. Mr. Reynolds is head of the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212175, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "94\n\ncity, which is some eleven miles in circumference; that was before it was included in the prohibited areas. Now concrete machine-gun loopholes peered at you from various angles; and towards the great gate, where the wall made its nearest approach to the Yangtze, the fortifications were believed to be particularly heavy and well provided with deep dugouts to serve as battle headquarters in time of need. We heard that even the German officers, who advised on how these concrete emplacements should be constructed, were not allowed to know the actual details of their location, and we used to think how ungrateful and suspicious it was of the Chinese to act thus. However, subsequent events have surely justified the Chinese attitude.\n\nNear the gate, at intervals, the older houses of the foreign business community, sited along Socony ridge, stare out over the long squat wall of the city at the Yangtze, and the intervening mile of pond, field and shack: but the last house turns its back to the river, straddling a narrow spur, an offshoot from the main ridge. Set in a pattern of mellow brick, our windows faced Nanking and Purple Mountain beyond. From the small lawn in front we could look down on the familiar landmarks of the city, the hillock of the Northern temple, the ancient Drum Tower, the hard concrete lines of the sumptuous International Club, and the salmon-pink walls of the New Metropolitan Hotel, so soon to be painted a hideous black. From the verandah of this house we were to watch the flash and smoke of the bursting bombs of many an air raid.\n\nThis August the discussion of the trivialities of a daily routine had continued against a background of mounting tension. How exercised we were to find a method of circumventing a malignant crack through which the water of our small swimming pool sought to escape down the hill! At the bridge tables of the Bungalow Club, at dinner parties, dancing at the International Club, amidst the humdrum of everyday life, there was a mystery of 'phone calls, a whispered exchange of latest information, the question of increasing urgency **Is it war?**\n\nAlready in July members of the various embassies had begun to return from the summer seaside resorts in the north, where the storm was brewing, following the Marco Polo Bridge incident on July 7th; and a trickle of refugees came in from Tsinanfu. But in Nanking the cinemas remained open, the tennis tournament continued, and I remember an entertainment which was given towards the end of the month to the twenty-four Chinese students, who had been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212202, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "121\n\nday to Changsha. The capital of Hunan, the province with a long history of anti-foreign fanaticism, is situated on the Siang river, which flows down to the Yangtze above Hankow. In summer the middle-river steamers come up as far as Changsha, but in winter the level over the sand flats where the river passes through the Tung Ting lake, near its mouth, is so shallow that even the specially designed river gunboats cannot pass. One British gunboat generally wintered at Changsha.\n\nThere was no concession, and in the course of time the foreign community had congregated on a long sand bar, which made an island in the river, opposite the city. The few bungalows were grouped round the Club. It was a simple life with tennis and walks for relaxation. Normally Changsha connected with the outer world by ship through Shanghai, but now for over a year that channel had been closed by the war and the number of the foreign community, usually not more than a couple of dozen, was reduced. It did, however, include two British tank officers, loaned to the Chinese army, whom I had last seen in Nanking. They now depended for their supplies on the new railway to Hongkong. I left my car here and went on to Hankow by train.\n\nIt was nearly twenty years since I had last been in Hankow, years crowded with change, not only material but also intellectual. Hither junks from the far north-west of China, in Shensi Province, came down the Han river. From here they could sail a leg up the Yangtze, and proceed along the Siang river, until their mast-tops showed a view towards Kweilin. To the west, through the famous gorges, the small steamers fought the current to Chungking 700 miles distant; and 600 miles downriver, past Kiu Kiang, Wuhu, and Nanking, lay Shanghai and the sea. The railway in normal times ran north-east to Peking and south to Canton and Hongkong. On the opposite bank, a kilometre away, the provincial capital, Wuchang, showed; larger than Hankow and, across the Han, where that river made an angle with the Yangtze, the industrial town of Hanyang belched its smoke. Of the Concessions along the water front, only the French retained its status. The British Concession had been returned at the time of the Chen-O'Malley negotiations ten years previously; the German and Russian Concessions had reverted to China after the Great War, and the Japanese Concession had been evacuated soon after the Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge) incident.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216032, "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": 331, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "265\n\nin 1144, built to the west of the Bridge of a Thousand Autumns, Qianqiu Qiao, beside a small canal with landing places attached. It would seem to have been inside the present city, about where the road from the west gate crosses the canal, before you reached the City God Temple. It was restored in 1271 with a commemorative inscription composed by Liu Xiufu, and the whole establishment was enlarged during the Ming so as to have 109 rooms, with stabling for 80 horses, forty of which had to be kept constantly saddled, presumably for use by imperial messengers.\n\nMoving on to the Yuan [Mongol] dynasty, an interesting account, if indeed it is genuine, claims that Marco Polo mentioned the foundation of Nestorian Christian churches at Zhenjiang (Cinghian fu) by a Nestorian Christian governor, Mar Sargis [or Mar George] from Samarkand. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China during the 13th century employed foreigners within his civil service, one of whom was Marco Polo who spent three years as Governor of Yangzhou, the city a short distance upstream on the northern arm of the Grand Canal immediately across the Great River from Zhenjiang. The story goes that the maternal grandfather of Mar Sargis cured Genghis Khan of a sickness by administering sherbet and his secret recipe. The latter was passed down the family and each generation did good business ensuring their fortune. The story of his appointment as governor would appear to have been confirmed by various entries in the old records of Zhenjiang in which there are references to seven Christian monasteries [i.e. churches] in or near the city, adding that the Zhenjiang Christian population in about AD 1280 amounted to 215. These were started after Mar Sargis had a dream in which he was instructed to construct seven Nestorian churches. Using his fortune he is said to have completed all seven but unwittingly with one on the site of a former famous Buddhist monastery which Mar Sargis was ordered to hand back to the Buddhists. Of the remaining six two were said to have been on the ridge running inland from the former site of the British consulate.\n\nDuring the early days of the Ming, in the reign of the Yongle emperor, various expeditions sailed down the Yangzi from Nanjing, and out into the Eastern Ocean, a commander of several of the expeditions being the renowned eunuch, Zheng He. The policy of despatching such expeditions far beyond China's shores was short-lived. Between 1405 and 1425 Zheng's fleet voyaged through south-east Asia", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]