[
    {
        "id": 206137,
        "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-1970",
        "page_number": 217,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "210\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nby prolonged contact with the urban environment. Excellent material for comparison with the Plover Cove situation exists in the Tai Lam Chung (1956) and Shek Pik (1960) removals. Like the Plover Cove villages, they were agricultural villages which were removed to urban Tsuen Wan to allow the construction of reservoirs. They have been resettled for a number of years, however, and a brief survey of their religious practices would provide the Christian Study Centre with a most interesting supplement to its information on the Plover Cove villages.\n\nHong Kong, 1970.\n\nELIZABETH L. JOHNSON\n\nNOTES\n\n1 p. vii of the book under review.\n\n2 More information on this village removal can be found in M. I. Berkowitz, \"Plover Cove to Tai Po Market: A Study in Forced Migration.\" Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Volume 8, 1968, pp. 96-108.\n\n3 p. 142.\n\n* V. R. Burkhardt, Chinese Creeds and Customs. 3 vols. Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1955, and Wolfram Eberhard, Chinese Festivals. New York: Henry Shuman, 1952.\n\n3 p. 100.\n\n6 Ibid.\n\n7 Ibid.\n\n8 Ibid.\n\n9 See, for example, pp. 14-15, 116-117.\n\nTRADITIONAL CHINESE PLAYS, translated, described and annotated by A.C. Scott, Ssu Lang visits his mother, Ssu Lang T’an Mu, The Butterfly Dream, Hu Tieh Meng, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1967, Madison, Milwaukee, and London, pp. ix, 165, 13 photos hors-texte.\n\nA. C. Scott, the best Western specialist of Chinese and Japanese theatre, here gives us a translation of two Peking operas. The first, Ssu Lang visits his mother, is a tragedy which takes place in the second half of the tenth century, under the reign of the Sung. The son of a famous general has been taken prisoner by the barbarians, but, because of his fine looks, he is married",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206139,
        "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-1970",
        "page_number": 219,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "212\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nTRADITIONAL CHINESE PLAYS, Volume 2, translated, described, annotated and illustrated by A. C. Scott, Longing for the worldly Pleasures, Ssu Fan, Fifteen Strings of Cash, Shih wu kuan, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Milwaukee and London, 1969, pp. X, 156.\n\nThe second volume is translated with all the same accompaniments that we find in the first one. But the two plays chosen are not Peking operas. They belong to another kind of opera which was predominant in China from the end of the XVIth century to the end of the XVIIIth. The music was softer than in Peking opera and the main instrument for accompanying the singing was the flute. As in more ancient forms, the sung parts were written on different types of melodies, with verses of unequal lengths. The literary character of these verses made them difficult for a popular audience to understand. And this type of opera, created at K'un-shan, near Suchow, was later overcome by the success of the genre elaborated at the capital and favoured by the court.\n\nBut this K'un-ch'ü, as it is called, remained for years part of the training of a good Peking opera actor. The famous actor Mei Lan-fang tried to revive it around 1915-16 and again later in 1933 with the great actor Yü Chen-fei. After 1949 a new troupe of K'un-ch'ü was formed, which put on Fifteen Strings of Cash in 1956, with the actor Wang Ch'uan-song as the clown, Lou the Rat.\n\nLonging for worldly Pleasures comes from a Buddhist story: a nun, put in a monastery, escapes to find her paramour. Fifteen Strings of Cash is a detective story from storytellers' repertoires: Lou the Rat commits a murder to steal and puts the blame on the stepdaughter of the murdered man. But a good judge, disguised as a fortune-teller, confounds him.\n\nThe interest of these books lies not so much in the translation of four librettos as in all the information about costumes, make-up, and the movements made by the actors at each moment. Consequently, the work is not just one more translation, but, first and foremost, a handbook; and a good one for anyone wanting to put on and adapt Chinese plays for a foreign audience, instead of being interested in Chinese opera as a museum piece or as an...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    }
]