[
    {
        "id": 206105,
        "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": 185,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTHE J.O.P. BLAND PAPERS\n\nIntroduction\n\nOne day in September 1967, I received, quite out of the blue, a letter from my former commanding officer during the Second World War, Michael St. J. Packe, to say that he had been entrusted with J.O.P. Bland's private papers, with instructions \"to find a good home for them,\" and asking me whether I would like to have them. Before going further, let me explain that Mr. Packe is himself a historian and wrote an excellent biography of J. S. Mill.* We have kept in touch intermittently since we were demobilized from the First Airborne Division (British) at the end of the war, and I have been to visit him at his home on Alderney. This is the really fantastic part of this chain of coincidences. Here was Mr. Packe, living and writing on the little island of Alderney in the Channel Islands while a near neighbour of his was Mrs. Dolores Coombs, an old friend of the Bland family, who had often visited them at their home at Aldburgh in Suffolk. Bland himself died in 1945 and Mrs. Bland in 1953. His private papers were entrusted to his goddaughter, Miss Ailsa Cochrane, who was to act as his literary executor and to try, if possible, to complete the memoirs which he had begun before his death, and to have them published. Before she could achieve much Miss Cochrane became ill and in 1955 her brother sent these papers to Mrs. Coombs who, in turn, was to act as literary executor. Meanwhile Bland's books on China had been given to Trinity College, Dublin. However, a list of these books, preserved among his papers, shows that they amounted to a modest collection without containing anything rare.\n\nSometime in 1966 Mrs. Coombs was forced by illness to leave Alderney, and it was at this point that she entrusted her friend and neighbour, Michael Packe, with the task of finding a home for these papers. Thus for a period of over twenty years Bland's private papers disappeared from view while two successive literary executors struggled with the task of trying to complete and publish his memoirs. Bland himself, to judge from his instructions to his\n\n* The Life of John Stuart Mill (London: 1954).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206107,
        "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": 187,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "182\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nAnother major group of letters consists of correspondence 'out', arranged alphabetically and by date, for the period 1907 - 1935.\n\nA third group consists of correspondence ‘in', arranged in the same way, for the period 1907 - 1945, and includes letters from specialists on Chinese affairs such as Sir Robert Hart, Alfred Hippisley, C. S. Addis, Willard Straight, G. E. Morrison, (The Times correspondent), and Sir John Jordan, as well as letters from various scholars of Chinese history and culture such as H. B. Morse, Henri Cordier, Percival Yetts, Edmund Backhouse and Arthur Waley. This group also contains letters from a variety of literary and political figures, important in their own time, but not specifically connected with China.\n\n7. Nine volumes of pamphlets on China, formerly belonging to Dr. George Jamieson, mainly dating from the period 1836-1898. (A list of titles is available in the Rare Book Department of the University of Toronto Library).\n\n8. Twelve chapters in draft of an autobiography which Bland had started to write before his death. These appear, from a brief perusal, to be somewhat disappointing, mainly social trivia, and were declined by his publishers, William Heinemann.\n\nThe Bland Papers are housed in the Rare Book Department of the University of Toronto Library. (Head of Department: Miss M. E. Brown).\n\nOne piquant twist of fate. When I was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Packe on Alderney in 1951 I apparently met Mrs. Coombs. At that time, however, she was not yet in possession of the Bland papers and I had not yet developed a special interest in modern Chinese history.\n\nUniversity of Toronto, 1969,\n\nPostscript\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nDoes anyone know of the whereabouts of the private papers of Sir Thomas Wade? I am working on his career as British minister in Peking from 1870 until 1882, but so far have failed to find any of his private, as opposed to his public, papers. Is anyone still sitting on them?",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207739,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 127,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "CHAN LAI-SUN AND HIS FAMILY:\n\nA 19TH CENTURY CHINA COAST FAMILY\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nProfessor John K. Fairbank of the Harvard-Yenching Institute in an address to the Society during his visit to Hong Kong in 1976, referred to the importance of the study of what he termed \"China Coast Culture\", meaning thereby the type of social groups, values, institutions, etc., that emerged from the commingling of diverse traditions in the port cities of China. He suggested that an understanding of the forces that created this social milieu and an analysis of its structure and operation might provide models for life as it is developing in an age of rapid cultural interchange.*\n\nThis study of one family which was a part of the China Coast culture illustrates some strands in its creation and emergence as a distinct way of life, with its own values and manners. This new life style is seen in such features in the family of Chan Lai-sun as the intermingling of Chinese and foreign home decoration; changed attitudes toward certain Chinese practices, such as the social mingling of sexes, foot binding, dress and the wearing of the queue; the employment in a Chinese setting of language, educational and scientific skills acquired by a Western-style training; and marriage across racial boundaries.\n\nMr. Tin-yuk Char has provided interesting information on the career of Chan Lai-sun. In the light of his suggestion that more information might be forthcoming, I can add a few more facts from material I have collected on the family.\n\nThe careers of Chan Lai-sun and his children are examples of the role marginal Chinese played in the Westernization of China. Chan's mother was probably Malay. His wife Ruth A-tik was born in Indonesia and was not of pure Chinese ancestry. In a list of members of the Presbyterian Mission Church at Ningpo for 1850, she is described as \"Indo-Chinese\". Both as children came under the patronage of foreigners and both received an English language education. Miss Aldersey, the patron of Ruth A-tik, first in Batavia\n\n* This is my interpretation of his remarks and may not be an altogether accurate assessment.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212708,
        "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": 17,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "2\n\nof bonnes bouches relating to him and his family. The information, its presentation and language tell us more about William Mesny than about Chinese life. A considerable part of his writings consisted of piecemeal notes or essays written to emphasize, probably unconsciously, both his prominent standing with important Chinese and his foresight as a man of ideas. He played up so many of the episodes in which he was involved that it is difficult not to minimise and even to discount what in practice must have been his quite significant achievements. Three major subjects regularly featured in Mesny's Miscellanies, his economic and political foresight which was inevitably spurned by westerners and Chinese alike; his activities as part of the Chinese imperial military forces in Kueichou quelling a rebellious minority ethnic group; and his wives and women in general.\n\nIn one of his forthright, self-congratulatory moments he wrote, \"The Editor of Mesny's Chinese Miscellany feels that he has a sort of an inspired mission in China to set forth, preach and proclaim the inspiring and magic-working words of Reform and Progress to the inquiring multitudes amongst China's 400 million black-haired people.'\n\nWilliam Mesny (pronounced “May-knee' in Jersey), was brought up in the bilingual Channel Island community speaking English and French. He left home when he was nearly twelve to travel far afield but without ever losing pride in being a Jerseyman and British.\n\nMesny was born at La Croiserie Vingtaine in the parish of Trinity in Jersey on 9 October 1842, the eldest son of William Mesny of Alderney and Marie Rachel née Nicolle, second daughter of Philip Nicolle of du Nord, Jersey. Mesny's father was described in one place as a cobbler, a local preacher preaching several times a year in French and English Wesleyan chapels, and a member of the Royal militia (probably the Jersey Militia). Mesny writing elsewhere in his Miscellany described his parents as poor; his mother was 'bed-ridden' and his father, though a Wesleyan local preacher, was forced to work for a living in attendance on divers engaged in the harbour works, and often repaired his own shoes to save the expense of having them repaired at a shoemaker's. Mesny's father and his grandfather, Guillaume Mesny, were both said to be of St Martin, Jersey, whilst Mesny himself claimed that his roots lay in the ancient family of Megny d'Auregny [i.e. Auregny Alderney]. It has also been recorded that Mesny's father and grandfather had both been born and brought up in Alderney with the father moving to Jersey at some stage. Guillaume's brothers included the great grandfather of Miss Lucie",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]