[
    {
        "id": 206115,
        "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": 195,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n189 \n\nMossman's China, A Brief Account of the Country, its Inhabitants, and their Institutions, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London about 1867 (no date is given on the frontispiece but the contents date it to this period, see e.g. p. 60). It is the first I have come across that provides any detail, though E. Watson's The Principal Articles of Chinese Commerce (Import and Export), published at the Inspectorate-General of Customs, Shanghai 1930, deals with the various types of Hemp and Ramie under the general head of Ma (麻) between pp. 50 - 59. \n\n\"Hemp, or, more properly speaking, fibres analogous to those of the plant which we know by that name, are extracted from several indigenous plants in China: these no doubt formed the first textile fabrics worn by the Chinese, as they did of other ancient civilized races. Since the introduction of cotton, however, the cultivation and manufacture of these fibres is limited to the finer sorts, called by the English grass-cloth. This is principally made from a plant belonging to the Urtica, or nettle family, named ma by the Chinese. In cultivating it, great care is taken in the selection of the seeds, and in preparing the soil. The former when gathered are packed in jars with sand or dry earth. A loose dry soil is selected; the ground is well ploughed, manured, and divided into beds, about eight yards long and one wide, whereon the seed is thrown broadcast, and earth is swept over it with a broom. Before it sprouts, a framework with matting is laid over the beds, to protect them from the fierce heat of the sun in June. When three inches high they are transplanted. Being perennial they are carefully tended during the winter and spring; and in the third or fourth year are ready for cutting. The plant is also propagated by roots, and yields three crops annually, the first in June, when the blades are comparatively short; but in a month or two they are seven or eight feet high, when the second cutting takes place. The latest crop is cut in September or October, from which the finest cloth is made; the first being inferior, coarse and hard. On being cut the leaves are soaked in water for an hour, and the fibre stripped by breaking in the middle; whilst the operator, generally a woman or a child, separates the filaments skilfully from one end to the other with the finger-nails. The next process is scraping the hemp with a knife by drawing the strips over the blade from within outwards, taking off all the mucilaginous parts; then it is rolled up into bundles, exposed for a day \n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209094,
        "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-1980",
        "page_number": 256,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "Plate 19. This basket contains the famous Luk Ön tea (**) from Anwhei province. It comes packed with many others in a larger basket of the same material and is being exported in this packaging format at the present time. Each package contains a few red and white papers praising or advertising the product, and all seem to date from the late Ching. The firm must have retained the woodblocks, and a great stock of the printed papers, for the practice to persist for so long, and across decades of political and ideological change.\n\nPlate 20. One of the papers included in the basket of Luk On tea is an undated woodblock printing on red paper, advertising the product. This is an old practice. A former editor of the famous North China Herald wrote in the 1860s: \"An English merchant, opening a chest of tea of superior quality, which he has just received from China, frequently finds a little red-coloured paper inside.... These are the hand-bills issued by his brother tea-merchant in China recommending his articles\". Samuel Mossman China: A Brief Account of the Country, Its Inhabitants, and their Institutions (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, c1865) p. 306. See also 195-199.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213398,
        "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-1994",
        "page_number": 220,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "208\n\nMichie, Alexander, The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, As Illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock, Edinburgh, 1900 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing)\n\nMoges, Marquis de, Recollections of Baron Gros's Embassy to China and Japan in 1857-58, London: R Griffin, 1860\n\nMorrison, G E, An Australian in China, London: Horace Cox, 1895 (Hong Kong Reprint Oxford University Press)\n\nMorse, Edward Sylvester, Glimpses of China and Chinese Homes, Boston: Little Brown, 1902\n\nMorse, H B, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, London: Oxford University Press, 1925 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing)\n\n—, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 1910 (Taipei reprint: Ch'eng-wen Publishing, 1978)\n\nMossman, Samuel (editor of North China Herald), General Gordon's Private Diary of His Exploits in China Amplified, London: Sampson et al., 1885\n\nMote, Frederick Wade, China in the Age of Columbus, in Art in the Age of Exploration edited by Jay A Levenson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, 337-350\n\nMoule, A C, Christians in China Before 1550, London and New York, 1930\n\n+\n\nMoule, Arthur Evans, City, Hill and Plain, Stories of Missionary Work in Mid-China 1861-1916, Guilford: printed privately, 1917\n\nMullins, James of St Columban's Missionary Society, Cheerful China, 1925\n\nMurphey, Rhoads, Shanghai, Key to Modern China, Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1953\n\nThe Outsiders: the Western Experience in India and China, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976\n\nMyrdal, Jan, Report from a Chinese Village, London: Heinemann, 1965\n\nNagel's Encyclopedia-Guide to China, Geneva: Nagel, Third Edition, 1973\n\nNeedham, Joseph, Chinese Astronomy and the Jesuit Mission: An Encounter of Cultures, London: The China Society, 1958\n\n-, Science and Civilization in China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960+\n\nNeil, Desmond, Elegant Flowers, First Steps in China, London: J Murray, 1956\n\n4",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]