[ { "id": 206419, "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-1971", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nEARLY MING WARES OF CHINGTECHEN. A. D. Brankston. 106 pp. 45 plates (1 coloured), 18 text-illus. Re-issue 1970. Vetch and Lee, Hong Kong $60; Lund Humphries, London, £5.\n\nThe appearance of a reissue of A. D. Brankston's book Early Ming Wares of Chingtechen will be welcomed by the collector, connoisseur and dealer alike and will fill a long-awaited need to possess this classic in the field of Chinese ceramics. The original edition, published by Mr. Henri Vetch in Peking in 1938 was limited to 650 copies and has been, until now, virtually unobtainable to the layman, despite the fact that it is frequently referred to by writers on Chinese Porcelain and freely quoted from in sales catalogues. The present edition has been faithfully reproduced on the off-set press and Mr. Vetch is to be congratulated for turning out a most pleasing volume which retains much of the charm of the original.\n\nArchibald Brankston was born in Shanghai in 1909. He followed his father's profession as a civil engineer and, after schooling in England, came to Hong Kong to work on the Shing Mun Valley Water Scheme. Being obliged to return to England due to ill health, he was fortunate to be employed in the setting-up of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art in London in 1935. This led to his appointment as a travelling student by the Universities China Committee in London and he was thereby enabled to journey into the interior of China and visited the kiln sites around Chingtechen from which he recovered a variety of samples which now form part of the British Museum study collection. He was also fortunate in being acquainted with well-known Chinese collectors of that time, including Mr. Wu Lai-hsi and others. Back in England, he was employed in the Department of Oriental Antiquities of the British Museum for two years until he had to return to the Far East on behalf of the Ministry of Information. He died in Hong Kong in 1941 at the early age of 31.\n\nThe book deals mainly with blue and white wares of the 15th Century covering the reigns of Yung Lo, Hsüan-Tê, Ch'êng Hua and Hung Chih and also includes some information on the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206468, "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-1972", "page_number": 16, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "# ADDITIONS TO THE LIBRARY, 1971-72 (Books and pamphlets)\n\nGifts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (review copies):\n\nFEHL, N. E.\n\nLi (†): rites and propriety in literature and life . . . 1971.\n\nFEHL, N. E.\n\nSir Herbert Butterfield, Cho Yun Hsu and William H. McNeill on Chinese and history. . . 1971,\n\n香港中文大學\n\n中國語文教學研討會報告書1970\n\nExchange from Dankook University, Seoul:\n\n崔世珍\n\n訓蒙字會1971.\n\nGifts from Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd.:\n\nCHESNEAUX, J.\n\nSecret societies in China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Transl. by Gillian Nettle, 1971.\n\nWAUNG, W. S. K.\n\nRevolution and liberation: a short history of China from 1900-1970. 1971.\n\nGift from Oxford University Press:\n\nMITCHISON, L.\n\nChina in the twentieth century. 1970.\n\nGifts from Sir Lindsay Ride:\n\nLOPEZ MEMORIAL MUSEUM, Manila.\n\nCatalogue of the Filipiniana materials.\n\n4 vols. 1962-69.\n\nGift from the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch:\n\nGORE, M. E. J., and WON, Pyong-Oh.\n\nThe birds of Korea. 1971.\n\nGift from H. A. Rydings:\n\nKOREA. Ministry of Culture and Information.\n\nFacts about Korea. 1971.\n\nGift from the Tao Teh Benevolent Association, Hong Kong:\n\nWEI, Tat.\n\nAn exposition of the I-ching. 1970.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208588, "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-1979", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "18\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\n23 W. Range, Franklin D. Roosevelt's World Order (University of Georgia Press; 1959), p. 105.\n\n24 This is according to the observation of Ashley Clarke, head of the Far Eastern Department in the British Foreign Office, during his one month visit to the Department of State early in the summer of 1942; see his report on his visit to A. Eden, secretary of state for foreign affairs, 11 June 1942, FO371/31804. See also Ministry of Information to Colonial Office, 22 October 1942, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/31774.\n\n25 \"The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations\", pp. 266-272.\n\n26 Brenan's minute, 3 December, on J. G. Winant, American ambassador to London, to Eden, 2 December 1942, FO371/31664.\n\n27 Eden to Winant, 7 December 1942, in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), China, 1942 (Washington, 1956), p. 390.\n\n28 \"The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations\", op. cit., pp. 284-5.\n\n29 Ibid., pp. 287-8.\n\n30 Ibid., pp. 288-9.\n\n31 War cabinet conclusions 173 (42), 28 December 1942, Cab65/28. Also Eden to Winant, 29 December; and Eden to Lord Halifax, British ambassador to Washington, tel. 8264, immediate, 29 December 1942, FO371/31665.\n\n32 Thorne, op. cit., p. 179, and note 53, p. 198, referring to G. Atcheson to Hornbeck, 29 December 1942, Department of State, Decimal and Other Files, National Archives (Washington D.C.) 793.003/12-2942.\n\n33 W. L. Tung in his book V. K. Wellington Koo and China's Wartime Diplomacy (New York, 1977), based on the Wellington Koo Papers deposited with Columbia University, gives a possible explanation: \"Koo was then Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain and returned to Chungking for consultations. As an experienced diplomat well familiar with the attitude of British official and unofficial circles, he counselled the government to conclude the treaty on the relinquishment of extraterritoriality but reserve the right of later negotiations on the Kowloon question”, p. 53.\n\n34 Halifax to Eden, tel. 6310, immediate, 31 December 1942, FO371/35679.\n\n35 \"The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)\", pp. 58-68.\n\n34 Ibid., p. 68.\n\n*7 See memorandum in Hornbeck Papers, box 466.\n\n** Cordell Hull, secretary of state, to United States chargé d'affaires in London, tel., 4 April 1943, in FRUS, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, The Far East, 1943 (Washington, 1963), III, pp. 46-7. Also see R. E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), p. 707.\n\n30 For American interest in India, especially early in the war, see for example, M. S. Venkatramani and B. K. Shrivastava, \"The United States and the Cripps Mission\", India Quarterly, XIX, no. 3 (July-September, 1963), pp. 214-65. See also author's article, \"Britain's Reaction to Chiang\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212127, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "46\n\nmonastery in China was founded in 638, in the capital Ch’ang-an (modern Sian), though some Nestorian missionaries may have reached China earlier. In 845, a major attack on the Buddhist church in China was launched by the emperor Wu-tsung, and in an imperial decree of that year providing for the dissolution of the Buddhist monasteries and the return of the Buddhist clergy to lay life, there is a minor clause ordering the expulsion from China of over 3,000 foreign monks, some of whom were probably — though the text of the decree is ambiguous — Nestorian Christians. This decree was rescinded soon afterwards, and may not have been enforced in the more remote cities of China. Certainly, although we hear no more of Nestorians in Ch'ang-an, an Arab writer refers to Christians among the foreigners slaughtered in Canton in 877 by Huang Ch'ao's rebels, and Nestorian Christianity may have persisted in parts of China for some time after Wu-tsung's decree of 845. But it is clear that Christianity had for all intents and purposes died out in China by the end of the tenth century. The Arabian author Abu'l Faraj mentions meeting a Nestorian monk in Baghdad in 987 who had just come back from China:\n\n\"In the year of the Hegira 377, in the Christian quarter behind the church, I met a monk from Najran who seven years before had been sent by the catholicus to China with five other clergy to set in order the affairs of the Christian church. I saw a man still young and of a pleasant appearance, but he spoke little and did not open his mouth except to answer the questions which were put to him. I asked him for some information about his journey, and he told me that Christianity was just extinct in China; the native Christians had perished in one way or another; the church which they had used had been destroyed; and there was only one Christian left in the land. The monk, having found no one remaining to whom his ministry could be of any use, returned more quickly than he went.\"\n\nThe dates for Nestorian Christians in China during the Yüan period are equally vague. Although individual Nestorians are found in various parts of China from about 1200 onwards, including some siege engineers in the Mongol armies, they appear only to have come in force after the final defeat of the Sung regime in southern China by the Mongols in 1279. Most references to Christians in Yüan China are found later than 1280 and earlier than 1340. A special government department,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212177, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "96\n\nteased. The cook had promptly disappeared over the garden fence into a hole, dug by the servants in the hillside during the past few days, but the boy was made of stouter stuff and continued to wait on us at table. Morale, however, crumbled when a crashing inferno opened up all round and each scuttled into the nearest corner, soon to emerge under the embarrassing discovery that it was only the anti-aircraft guns. The boy issued from the linen cupboard and went to doff his white coat and put on a black mackintosh overcoat and waterproof cap, so that \"Japanese no can see\", as he explained.\n\nOn August 15th there was only one raid, but the very next day there were three raids and no less than six alerts. Each alert would last up to two hours, as it took time to check whether all enemy aircraft had left the zone, so that on that day and some of the succeeding days there was an almost continuous state of alarm. This was most inconvenient, because as soon as the alert went the Chinese police strictly stopped all road traffic and you had to stay where you were. That day we were unable to get home to lunch. We thereafter kept a reserve of food at the office against contingencies. Fortunately later on the Japanese developed the habit for a time of raiding in the morning and again in the afternoon, leaving a good long interval for lunch, for which mercy we were duly grateful.\n\nThe Japanese airforce by no means had it all their own way. In the initial raids they sent their bombers over without escort, and the Chinese fighter pilots, trained by the American Mission headed by Colonel Chennault and equipped with Curtis Hawk pursuit planes, had the legs off them and shot down many. The Chinese Ministry of Information organised tours for the foreign newspaper correspondents to review the remains of the destroyed enemy bombers, and it was not long before the Japanese took to raiding by night to avoid casualties. Later on, when they had occupied an airfield near Shanghai, they were able to send fighter escorts with their bombers. In November a few Russian planes and crews arrived and took up the battle, and in all I should say by mid-December, when Nanking fell, not less than 300 Japanese planes had been destroyed. For those days that was no mean achievement, but by then the Chinese airforce, unable to replace casualties to pilots and aircraft, had shot its bolt.\n\nOn land at Shanghai, though they failed in their objective of driving the Japanese into the river, the two German-trained Chinese divisions", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "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": 215091, "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-2000", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "3\n\n144\n\nDoré, Le P. Henri : Recherches sur les Superstitions en Chine : Hème Partie : Tome X: Shanghai: 1915: pp 831-832\n\n* See below under Yang Ren for an alternative to Yin Jiao as Commander of the Twelve Branches.\n\n5 No Cantonese devotee appears to have heard of Yin Jiao whereas Fukienese and Chinese of the Yangzi basin knew him as Marshal Yin rather than as Taisui.\n\n6 \"Werner E. T. C. in his Dictionary of Chinese Mythology: Kelly and Walsh: Shanghai: 1932 claimed that the Ministry consisted not of 60 but of 120 spirits as he included the deities controlling the months and days\n\n7 The cycle of sixty years was the basis for the Chinese lunar calendar with its twelve branches and ten stems. The sixtieth year of a man's life signified a turning point, this being the normal life span of a human being, and anyone who is fortunate enough to be older than sixty begins the round again. Other deities are entreated for a prolongation of life beyond the normal span.\n\n* DuBose, Rev. Hampden C: The Dragon, Image and Demon or The Three Religions of China: Partridge and Co.: London : 1886\n\n\"The combination of branch and stem provides the date, with the branches and stems depicting and belonging to one of the five primordial essences [water, wood, fire, metal and earth]. The concentric rings within the compass contain information on planetary movements, the ba gua and yin and yang; the five elements; the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, etc.\n\n10 The reason for this is simple. The basic Farmer's Almanac is produced and printed in Taiwan, a predominantly Fukienese community, but with copies sent to Hong Kong and elsewhere for local binding and distribution.\n\n\"According to religious specialists each of the stellar deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations has a title and a specific role, the latter differing depending upon the individual ritual specialists or books. In early China the visible stars were divided into 28 zones or constellations, with seven in each of the four directions. Other similar groups are the Thirty-six Stars of the Plough (T'ien-kang Hsing XXI) and the Seventy-two Stars of Evil Omen [Ti-sha Hsing]\n\n1. Each of the Thirty-six was a legendary hero recorded in one of the numerous stories of the deification of and struggles between the deities. They", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215198, "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-2000", "page_number": 294, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "258\n\nFrom 1964, she has been a full-time writer of autobiography/history, fiction, and sociopolitical essays/written testimonies. She once said: 'I write as an Asian, with all the pent-up emotions of my people. What I say will annoy many people who prefer the more conventional myths brought back by writers on the Orient. All I can say is that I try to tell the truth. Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures.' She was acquainted with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. She presently lives with Vincent in Lausanne, Switzerland and is also known as Elizabeth C.K. Comber.\n\nHan Suyin and her husband with Zhou Enlai, 19708\n\nJan Morrison was born in May 1913 and was the son of the well-known Australian doctor and journalist (first Peking correspondent for The Times of London, 1897-1912) George Ernest Morrison (1862-1920). He was schooled at Winchester, England and was a graduate of the University of Cambridge. After going down from Cambridge, he became Professor of English at the Imperial University of Hokkaido, Sapporo.\n\nHe visited China in 1937, for the first time, to 'watch the Japanese occupation of Tientsin and the invasion of north China.' Later that year he became private secretary to the newly appointed British Ambassador to Japan, in Kyoto. In 1939, he went to Shanghai and became the representative in China of The British and Chinese Corporation, a London financial house. He traveled extensively throughout China for the next two years.\n\nHe arrived in Singapore in October 1941 and became deputy director of the Far Eastern Bureau of the (U.K.) Ministry of Information.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215665, "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-2001", "page_number": 442, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "394\n\nremainder of the War. In 1946, he married Steffi Neubauer, a Czech and continued for a while with the Hong Kong Government. He took early retirement to be with his family during the school years of his three daughters in Winchester, U.K., where he became a school master. He died on 31 December 1990.\n\nIan Morrison was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. He then became Professor of English at the Hokkaido Imperial University in Sapporo, Japan, where he remained until 1937. An interest in diplomacy and politics led him to accepting the position of private secretary to Sir Robert Craigie, then British Ambassador in Tokyo, a position he held from 1937 until 1939. Eager to further his knowledge of Asian affairs, he then became representative of the British and Chinese Corporation in Shanghai until October 1941. This was followed by a short stint as deputy director of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Ministry of Information in Singapore.\n\nIn December 1941, two days after the Japanese launched their attack on Pearl Harbor and began their conquest of the countries in the area, Mr. Morrison was appointed a war correspondent.\n\nIan Morrison, circa. 1940\n\nChristmas card from Ian Morrison showing route out of the Malayan Peninsula and Java in 1942", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215941, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "174\n\nwhich the Police Commissioner handed over $20,000 without question when advised of the plot, though it was claimed that the bribe money came from the Shanghai triads leader Tu Yueh Sheng, then a refugee, albeit wealthy, in Hong Kong. Whatever the truth behind the story, it gained currency as it made the escape of General Yee and Admiral Chan Chak palatable to colonials by portraying it as an honourable act by the British to reward Yee for his assistance in saving them.\n\nIt was almost certainly also a smokescreen to disguise the removal from Hong Kong of something important to the British. MacDougall claimed in 1942 that he had not planned to go but had been persuaded at the last moment by senior government officials. MacDougall however was circumspect, careful not to betray sensitive information in an open letter. He could, however, say that during the last two years his work had 'become increasingly political in character. Officially neutral in the Sino-Japanese War, I had nevertheless behind the scenes consistently exerted what influence I possessed toward blocking and hampering the propaganda and other activities of the Japanese and the adherents of the Wang Ching Wei....I had worked very closely with Chinese organisations and did all in my power, consistent with the interests of the Colony, to aid them.' It should also be noted that he was not an officer of the colonial establishment but belonged to the Ministry of Information. He was to return to Hong Kong on liberation to reinstate the administration. While no high-profile officers escaped with the Chan Chak group, it is probable that some were carrying information. There were men from Army, Navy, and Air Force, and they were chosen for the mission, only one man being a \"guest.\"\n\n* xviii Major Goring was to spend much of the war attached to various strategic planning groups in the China theatre.\n\nThe extent of KMT activity in Hong Kong was considerable. Hong Kong was a sort of open house where all factions of Chinese politics from left to right could operate, as long as they were discreet. Overt acts of terrorism and subversion in other colonies, like the Malayan federation, were suppressed. The territory was also the port through which arms and armaments flowed into China. Technically this was in breach of the Hague Convention as Britain was supposed to be neutral, but there were ways of smuggling and circumventing the system. Baileys, the Hong Kong shipyard, built river gunboats that were outfitted with guns once they entered China. The same technology that enabled\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215943, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "176\n\n22nd December, in the midst of some of the most savage fighting on Hong Kong Island, the single largest atrocity involving civilians of the entire battle period occurred. Much has been made of atrocities that affected Europeans, but this incident is worth analysing because it gives us hints on what the Japanese knew about Hong Kong. Ma Tso Yuen recounted how, while his family were having dinner, they heard shots and found that their building, No 42 Blue Pool Road, was surrounded by Japanese. The inhabitants of the building and its neighbour, No 44, were systematically rounded up and herded together. Through a door, Ma saw a neighbour being beaten for resisting. The women were separated, many raped, and then killed. The men were taken down near the nullah and bayoneted, with Japanese stabbing the bodies to make sure all were dead. Ma survived, although he suffered nine separate wounds, because he lay hidden. When the danger was over, he realised he was surrounded by the bodies of 30 men, including that of his own son. **The number of men, women and children killed in other parts of the building is unknown; the buildings were small, low-rise apartments, but crowded: in one flat, some fourteen people were sheltering. Phyllis Harrop, through her KMT contacts, estimated that at least forty persons in her building alone were killed. No other atrocity against civilians was as systematic, organised, or as savage as this. Normal battle mayhem was not the motive. Kempeitai agents travelled with battle units, even though they were not part of the normal military structure. Under cover of fighting, they could settle other opposition. Blue Pool Road was targeted because it was where KMT officials and agents lived with their families. It was no random massacre. Among the dead included men from the Ministry of Communications and the Central Trust, a front organisation for the KMT, whose offices had been searched by the British and whose members had been arrested and sometimes deported. Ma himself had been an employee of the Central Trust.\n\nThe relationship between the KMT, the colonial government, and individuals involved in undercover work might bear further investigation. Phyllis Harrop mentions in her private diary that 'at the request of Chinese members of the Dai Li organisation who had been left behind in the colony, (she) was asked to go to Chongqing with the complete details of the guerrillas' arms and ammunition, which was buried in various homes and gardens in the island, to deliver information and arrange for instruction to be given to the men remaining in Hong Kong to carry on their work. My escape was engineered by the Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]