[ { "id": 207139, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "204 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nthere is a shrine at the rear inscribed Tao Kuang 27th year (1847-48). \n\nPoints of interest are the excellent granite work screen and balustrade along the whole front of the temple: the Shek Wan pottery decorations on the roof (Hsuan-Tung 1st year: 1908-09) and the large boulder inside the building which was probably the uncovered site of the original shrine. (There is a similar one inside the Lin Fa Kung temple at Tai Hang, which is of approximately the same age.) \n\n3) The Sui Tsing Pak temple at Tik Lung Lane. This is not housed in a temple building but in several houses in a terrace. The god is said to have been a man named Chan (**陈**) enobled as marquis (**侯**) who lived in the Sung dynasty and performed many good deeds. His title means the 'Pacifying Marquis' (**遂清侯**). The date of its establishment is not known, but several of the memorial boards inside the temple carry inscriptions in the late Kuang Hsü reign (1875-1908). Among them are boards presented by residents of 'The Thirty Houses' (the local Chinese name for Staunton Street, in Central District) and another by the community of Hung Hom village in Kowloon. \n\nThe upstairs rooms are devoted largely to the care and worship of memorial tablets, many with photographs of the deceased, placed there for a subscription by friends and relatives. This temple is of particular interest for the various art objects and antiquities kept inside the upper rooms, which make it almost a museum. They include paintings and porcelain. The interior decoration of the temple should also be noted especially the screens and fittings for the various altars upstairs which are probably at least 60 years old. \n\n4) Yuk Hai Kung Temple (**玉皇宫**), Stone Nullah Lane. This temple to Pak Tai, the god of the North (**北帝**), is again of early origin. According to an inscription above the entrance, the present structure dates from the first year of the T’ung Chih reign (1862-63). This is a large temple with side rooms which is still in an excellent state of repair. The building on the right of the temple is a public office or kung sor (**公所**) in which the temple management committee met to discuss the affairs of the temple and the neighbourhood. It was, as Carl Smith remarks, under the control of the Wanchai Kaifong from 1882 and before. \n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212722, "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Mesny's Personal Life\n\nPART TWO\n\nConsidering how detailed and verbose Mesny could be in his writings it is surprising how little we know about his personal life during the later years. A certain amount about his well-being and illnesses, his religion and his relationships with the female sex during his first fifteen to twenty years in China can be extracted from his autobiographical snippets but on the whole they add little but colour to the overall picture. He did however reveal relatively more to us about his financial situation but only because it had deteriorated and was obviously causing him great anxiety.\n\nMesny must have lived from hand to mouth for most of his later years. He had always had an eye for the big break and though at times he seemed to make himself a small fortune, though we never hear the details, he soon enough appears to have reverted to scraping by. He loved the adventure of travel and for some years managed to earn sufficient or at least obtain adequate sponsorship to visit all eighteen provinces of China. However, the day came when he could just dream. In 1896, at age of 54, he wrote that being strong and active though getting old, he would like to make an expedition to Lhasa [he called it Lassa]. He bemoaned the fact that he had not the necessary funds - but, he wrote, if he had had sufficient he would liked to have journeyed to Mukden [Shenyang] and Kirin, then via the Amur region, return via Urga [Ulan Bataar] or the K'un-lun and the Seven Lakes including Ch'ing-hai [Kokonor], Tengri Nor to Lhasa and Darjeeling [in India]. He felt capable of accomplishing the feat penetrating right through unknown Thibet [sic] to India and added the hopeful 'Wait and see.' He never made it.\n\nHe was forever trying to persuade Chinese officials to allow him to help them and China with his grandiose ideas. Presumably he was planning and hoping to earn commission from any scheme which took off though he repeated several times in his writings references to such schemes in which he was prepared to act on behalf of China for the good of the Chinese people without benefit to himself. But for one reason or another, and we rarely learn why, these failed to come to anything. In 1878 he had been asked by a French bank to contact a very senior Chinese official, Marquis Tso, to arrange a loan to build railways, etc. in China's Northwest. Mesny would have to pay his own travelling expenses crossing China by land but would receive a handsome commission if", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212767, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "61\n\nNovember 1862\n\n1863 March\n\n1863 May 1864 April\n\n1864\n\n1864-1865\n\n1867 Winter\n\n1867\n\nhis junk and three others\n\nCaptured at Fu-shan-chan by Taiping rebels. Mesny held first in Soochow and Chang-shu, then at Pao-ying the Taiping camp, and finally in Nanking\n\nRescued by Adkins, the British Consul at Chin-kiang aboard HMS Slaney and taken back to Chin-kiang\n\nJoined Chinese Imperial Customs Service, Hankow\n\nResigned from Customs Service after fourteen months Involved in cotton broking\n\nEstablished the Hankow Horse Bazaar, a private hotel in Hankow, and set up Hupei Iron and Brassworks, Han-yang Romantic interlude with a Chinese widow in Hankow Mesny called on Tso Tsung-tang during the latter's visit to Hankow and was appointed his French and English Secretary, and was further offered the opportunity to accompany Tso on his campaign to the Northwest. Mesny also claimed that he had made recommendations to Marquis Tso Tsung-tang for a number of undertakings to help modernise China\n\nSold the Huper Iron and Brassworks to officials of the Viceroy of Szechuan province\n\nMesny's trek to war\n\n1868 June\n\nLate July or early August Late August\n\nSeptember\n\nLeft Hankow, after five year's residence, for Szechuan to become a drill instructor with the Szechuan Force\n\nArrived Chungking\n\nDeparted Chungking for Kueichou to join the Szechuan Force suppressing the Miao rebellion: he accepted employment as a military instructor (wu-chiao hsi)\n\nArrived Niu-ch'ang, the headquarters of the Szechuan Force in Kueichou\n\nSeptember 1868-May 1874 Involved in the military campaigns to suppress the Miao\n\nThe Advance: Late Summer 1868-March 1869\n\n1869\n\nPromoted Colonel, awarded the Star of China and the Flowery Plume The Retreat: Summer 1869-Summer 1870 1870/1871\n\n1871\n\n1872\n\nHelped form a joint stock company in Kuei-yang to \"recover mercury\"\n\nThe Withdrawal: mid-August 1870-Lunar New Year 1871\n\nca 1873\n\n1873\n\n1874 Spring\n\nEstablished a small day school for poor boys and girls in the Jade Emperor temple in Kuei-yang, importing suitable books and paying a Chinese teacher, a struggling student painter, Chin Yü-t'ang Siege of Hsin-ch'eng in upper Kueichou (Mesny involved in preparations for the siege during 1871)\n\nWent to Szechuan with General Chou Ta-wu\n\nPromoted Major-General and awarded the Ying-yung Pa-t'u-lu Left Kueichou for Szechuan: Margary expected to meet Mesny in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212778, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "72\n\nbasic elements of the social network and were such obvious facts of life that Chinese took them for granted and did not think of them as in any way unusual.\n\nThe Army of the Hsiang was an important Field Force raised in Hunan, especially in the area of the Hsiang River, a sort of counter-balance to the Huai River Army, raised about the same time for the suppression of the Taiping rebellion in the valley of the Yangtze and elsewhere. The Marquis Tseng Kuo-fan was the C-in-C of the Hsiang-chün consisting of Hunan troops which had at first been designated as the Ch'u-chün or Army of Ch'u, a name derived from the ancient state of Ch'u, which comprised the provinces of Hunan and Hupei, as well as other provinces including the whole or part of Anhui and Honan. The Ch'u-chün was commanded by Tso Tsung-t'ang. The Hsiang Army was divided into several army corps or divisions, each numbering from ten to twenty, or even thirty battalions each of five hundred men. Each corps had a distinct designation or appellation, derived from the locality where it was actually organised or from the name or part of the name of the commander of the particular corps. One corps however, the principal one, was styled the Hsiang-ying from its having been organised in the prefecture of Changsha Fu on the banks of the Hsiang River. When more corps were required, however, the name Hsiang-chün was brought into use as with the Huai-chün, to represent all the corps of each army.”\n\nAlthough Mesny obliquely mentioned a higher command, the Ministry of War in Peking, regrettably he did not offer any information which would explain the subordination and chain of command other than telling us that the commander of the Szechuan Force, General T'ang, took his orders from the Viceroy of Szechuan and obtained supplies and funding, when they were forthcoming, from the Szechuanese provincial authorities in Ch'eng-tu.\n\nThe plan now was for the main body of the Ko-i Brigade to advance and occupy the city of Chung-an [Szu] on the Chung-an River by way of Ta-ngai and Chung-pai (later renamed Chung-sheng), whilst another element of the brigade would advance and occupy Huang-p'ing Hsin-chou [New Town].\n\nThe advance began on 18 March 1869. Several days later Chung-an had been occupied and fortified, as had Huang-p'ing New Town. Chung-an was overlooked by hills and mountains occupied by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212814, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "WÊN-KAO WILLIAM MESNY\n\nWith Complimentary Tablets presented by the late Marquis Tso Tsung-tang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 } ]