[
    {
        "id": 212905,
        "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": 214,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "199\n\nGROWING UP IN CHINA:\n\nLECTURE TO THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, HONG KONG BRANCH, 14 MAY, 1993\n\nDENIS BRAY\n\nIt is quite a challenge to compose a talk on the first 13 years of your life when there are practically no books to consult and friends from those days are scattered or gone. To the challenge is added an audience much more knowledgeable than I on the history of the area. I think I can only get away with it because nobody can check on much that I have to say. As I do not speak Putonghua or write Pinyin I am going to stick to spellings for place names used in the thirties and Cantonese for local names.\n\nThere are some references. There are three books of reference on the China Inland Mission School at Chefoo. Two are written by students who went there long before I did. They are Mrs Jean Moore and Dr. Gren Wedderburn. A full history of the school from start to finish has been written by Gordon Martin who was classics teacher when I was there and who was one of the longest serving teachers the school had. I am sure that the Methodist Missionary Society in London has copious records on the mission in Fatshan and South China.\n\nI Was Born\n\nI did not start life in China but in Hong Kong — at the Matilda Hospital in fact. My father was working in the Methodist Mission in Fatshan at the time, running Wah Ying School. This school was founded in 1913 near to a hospital, also run by the mission, which was founded in 1881. The hospital, now known officially as the Number One People's Hospital, but spoken of as the Chun Do Yi Yuen, or Methodist Hospital, celebrated its 111th anniversary last year. The school, now known as the Number One Middle School but spoken of still as Wah Ying, will celebrate its 90th anniversary in December this year.\n\nJanuary 1926 towards the end of the General Strike, when all Chinese were urged to boycott any form of service for foreigners, was accompanied by incidents of unrest in China and in Hong Kong itself. It was no time for a pregnant woman to remain in China unless it was...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216057,
        "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": 356,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "290\n\na chapel where they stationed an evangelist. By the turn of the century Zhenjiang had become an important Protestant missionary centre in its own right, with adequate missionary cover and the accessories for Mission work including a women's hospital, a girls' school and the large and well-organised men's college of the Methodist Episcopal Mission. China Inland Mission had by this time also opened a station in the city as well as their own hospital,\n\n4\n\nAspects of life which today sound strange were not uncommon, such as the missionary in Yangzhou, immediately across the wide Yangzi from Zhenjiang, having to cross the river with his bride for the civil ceremony at the nearest consulate, in Zhenjiang, before ferrying her back to their future home.\n\nDuring the 1860s and 1870s, the great famine in the Yellow River and Yangzi basins and the anti-missionary troubles across China, Hudson Taylor, who had founded the China Inland Mission in 1865, travelled widely encouraging his workers and authorising the expenditure of funds on orphanages and relief. In mid-March of 1877 he stopped over in Zhenjiang for a month, during which time a fire which had devoured houses all around the Mission premises had stopped short of the Mission, merely scorching one of its window frames.\n\nGunboat diplomacy was part of life on the 19th century Yangzi with recalcitrant mandarins being brought to heel when, for example, they ignored the cries for help of foreigners under attack from mobs or even encouraged such violence either openly or tacitly. In October 1868 a major confrontation in Yangzhou, the city immediately across the Yangzi from Zhenjiang, involved a large crowd of uncontrolled rioters bent on killing foreigners. They attacked the home of Hudson Taylor and his family, injuring several members of the China Inland Mission. HMS Rinaldo, a British gunboat, arrived and under its guns, the Viceroy in Nanjing agreed to terms demanded by the British Consul, Medhurst. However, the Rinaldo's captain fell ill and the gunboat had to be withdrawn. The Viceroy promptly repudiated the terms he had agreed and a further force of four Royal Navy vessels had to be sent to exert military pressure once more upon the Viceroy. Terms were again dictated and once more agreed. Meanwhile Hudson Taylor and his family had been accommodated in the home of the British Consul in Zhenjiang.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]