[
    {
        "id": 204642,
        "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-1963",
        "page_number": 123,
        "title": "RAS-1963",
        "content_text": "110\n\nLOWER YANGTSE\n\nHUPEH\n\nHankow\n\nDWILONA.\n\nLAKE\n\nAnking\n\nNanchang\n\nKIANGSI\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nKIANGSU\n\nChakiang\n\nNandung,\n\nMuhu\n\nEAST\n\nCHINA SEA\n\nYANGTSE ESTUARY\n\nsung*\n\nShanghai\n\nHangchow\n\nHANGCHOW\n\nBAY\n\nNingpa\n\nCHEKIANG\n\nCHUSAN ARCHIPELAGO\n\n0\n\n120°E\n\n100 MILES 200\n\ntrade with foreign countries. In the following year Killick and Martin's famous tea clipper Challenger was towed up to Hankow by Lindsay's steamer Fire Cracker, and loaded the first cargo of tea at Hankow. It was cheaper to send tea to Hankow by water than by porterage over the Meiling Pass to Canton; so the opening of Hankow to foreign trade continued the decline of Canton as a tea port, which had commenced twenty years earlier with the opening of Foochow. Freights were considerably higher from Hankow, but so was insurance, and towing was also expensive. The Challenger was said to have paid £1,000 for being towed. Many famous clippers, such as the Cutty Sark, loaded tea at Hankow in the late 60's and early 70's.\n\nHankow, with its sister cities of Hanyang and Wuchang on the south side of the river, was at the heart of the Yangtse Valley, and was the main urban concentration in the interior of China. The French priest M. Huc, who travelled extensively through China in the years 1844-6, estimated the combined population of the three\n\nT",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204982,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 90,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n81\n\nThe pirates boarded the ship in Singapore along with the other passengers, and after taking over the ship took her to Bias Bay, where they made off ashore with over $100,000 in cash, and as much more in valuables. During the attack, the chief engineer, chief officer, and a Chinese quartermaster were killed, and the captain seriously injured. For some time after this, ships on this run were provided with guards from the British garrison at Hong Kong, and no piracy was ever attempted on any ship so guarded.\n\nThe piracy of the 4,500-ton Dutch motorship Van Heutz in December 1947 was notable for several reasons. It was the first serious piracy since the war, and the Van Heutz was the largest ship ever to be pirated on the coast. She left Hong Kong on 14th December for Amoy and Swatow with 1,600 deck passengers on board, repatriates from Indonesia, many with their life savings. The pirates, about twenty-five in all, captured the ship only four hours after she had left Hong Kong, and took her to Bias Bay. On arrival at Bias Bay they went ashore in commandeered junks, taking six wealthy Chinese passengers with them. During the few hours they had the ship, the passengers were robbed of cash and valuables worth more than $90,000, but the pirates were disappointed at not getting another $50,000 in currency which they believed was on board. On her previous trip when she had carried an even greater number of repatriates, the Van Heutz had had an armed guard of thirteen Dutch policemen. A few months after the piracy four men were arrested in Hong Kong, found guilty of being involved, and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.\n\nThese four cases conformed to the traditional twentieth century pattern, where the pirates boarded as passengers, and when the passengers were likely to be well provided with money and valuables. During these same years, however, there were other piracies which did not conform to this pattern - the Tungchow piracies of 1925 and 1935, the Nanchang's of 1933, and the Shuntien's of 1935. All took place in the north, and all the ships belonged to the China Navigation Company. The Tungchow shares the distinction with the Sunning of being the only ship in modern times to have been pirated twice. On the first occasion in December 1925 it occurred between Tientsin\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204983,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 91,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "82\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nand Wei-hai-wei, in sight of a sister ship, the Linan. The Tungchow was turned south for Bias Bay, and a few days later was recognized by another sister ship, the Sinkiang, and flags were dipped. The Sinkiang accounted for the Tungchow's being off her usual route by assuming that she was bound for the Company's dockyard in Hong Kong. This was one of the most successful piracies in the interwar years. The pirates went ashore in Bias Bay with well over £30,000 in specie, $10,000 in cash, and only the last-minute cancellation of a large consignment of silver taels prevented their haul from being much larger.\n\nThe second Tungchow piracy was almost ten years later, when she was carrying several hundreds of thousands of dollar notes from Shanghai to Tientsin. The pirates captured her the day after she left Shanghai and, as before, turned her south for Bias Bay. During the next few days they painted out her name and altered the colour of the funnel. A disquieting feature of this second piracy was the fact that the Tungchow was passed by several ships when under pirate control, including a British warship looking out for her.\n\nThis second Tungchow piracy had its amusing aspects. The passengers included a number of European school children, returning to school in North China after spending their holidays with their parents in Shanghai. The pirates made friends with them, and supplied them with fruit and other delicacies broached from the ship's stores. As before, the Tungchow was taken to Bias Bay, where the pirates went ashore with their loot. Unfortunately for them, however, the dollar notes were unsigned.\n\nThe Nanchang piracy of March 1933 was even further from the normal pattern than either of the Tungchow cases. The most normal feature was that the Nanchang was a China Navigation Company ship. This piracy took place at the mouth of the Newchwang River in Manchuria, well outside the pirates' range of operations. Also, the Nanchang, which was boarded by two junks when she lay at anchor, carried no passengers. There were no casualties in this case, but four British officers were taken prisoner, and only released after five months of tortuous negotiations and the payment of a ransom. This incident took place eighteen months after the Japanese had overrun Manchuria, and had set up the puppet state of Manchukuo; it might possibly be described as banditry—with political undertones.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205201,
        "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-1966",
        "page_number": 157,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n151\n\nThe Chinese Family in the Communist Revolution is a worthy companion to the earlier volume by Marion J. Levy, The Family Revolution in Modern China, Cambridge, Mass., 1949. Levy analyzed the traditional Chinese family as a status-role system, and noted the disruptive tensions and the controls which had maintained the system until modern times. He related changes that were occurring in urban areas to the anti-traditionalist movements of the first three decades of this century, and to the weakening of the traditional controls. Yang gives a brief description of the traditional family, and discusses in detail the movements for change beginning with Kang Yu-wei in 1898 and continuing up to the end of Nationalist rule in 1949. The Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China promulgated in 1950 is contained in an appendix. The author discusses the theoretical origins of the law, and the implications of its implementation are traced through discussions of marriage, widow remarriage, divorce, and inheritance. He goes on to discuss the interrelationships of changes in the family, changes in the economy, secularization, clan disorganization, and the promotion of the state as the new focus of the individual's loyalty.\n\nThe second study, A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition, is based upon field work (1948 to 1951) by Yang and his students in Nanching, a suburban village near Canton. Information on developments after 1951 came from articles in the China and Hong Kong press. Yang had to leave his field records in China, and the village study was written from memory in 1952. The author carefully distinguishes what could be recalled exactly, what data are approximations, and what press information from other areas of China is used as a basis for conjecture on later developments in Nanching.\n\nThe study is divided into three parts. Part I describes the village during the pre-Communist period, with particular attention given to the family, the economy, and the decentralized village power structure. Part II describes the early impact of Communist rule, through the land reform program, on the economy, on the family, and in the formation of a new power structure in the village. Part III is based upon press reports of collectivization in various parts of China, with conjecture as to the further changes which probably occurred in Nanching after the author's departure.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207934,
        "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": 322,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "In Tibet \n\nKidling \n\nChength \n\nZE – CHUAN \n\nMin \n\nSulfu \n\n1 \n\nNAUTICAL MILES \n\n50 \n\nWANHSIEN \n\n100 \n\n150 \n\n\"wanting \n\nWind box Gorge B.B \n\nDasually. \n\nFam \n\n(Rapid) \n\n  \n    |chaug sh \n  \n\nCHUNG KING \n\nTOP RIVER. \n\n105* \n\n  \n    t \n    K WEI \n  \n  \n    CHAU \n    F \n    1 \n  \n\nNote: \n\n  \n    CHANG \n    1 \n  \n  \n    T \n    1 \n  \n\nHU - P \n\nICHANG $7 \n\nShast gl \n\nHANKOW 18t2 \n\nYoshow 1896! \n\nTungling LAKE \n\nANHUI \n\n-Maturg Bluff. \n\nTRIANG \n\nPOYANG LAKE \n\n  \n    I \n    Hu- \n  \n  \n    NAN \n    F \n  \n  \n    CHANGSHA 17H \n    KIA \n  \n  \n    Siantan \n  \n\nWPPER \n\nRIVER \n\n  \n    1 \n    Кал \n  \n\nNanchang \n\n  \n    SI \n  \n\nMIDDLE RIVER. \n\nYANGTZE RIVER \n\nLOWER RIVER \n\nKiangsu \n\nCANAL \n\n  \n    122 \n    35 \n  \n\nYELLOW \n\nSEA \n\n1899/NANKING \n\n•Chanklang isiz \n\nWUHU 1877 \n\nTAI \n\n  \n    Hu \n  \n\nSoochun \n\n  \n    | SHANGHA \n  \n\nHangchun 1897 \n\n  \n    181 \n    30 \n  \n\nNINGPO \n\nCHEH XIANG \n\n  \n    120* \n    115* \n  \n\nThis and the other sketch-map/chart overleaf supplied by Mr. A. D. Blue and original sources are gratefully acknowledged \n\nEASTERN \n\nSEA",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211685,
        "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-1989",
        "page_number": 100,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "75\n\nhad developed to a point where Borodin and the other Russian advisers found it expedient to depart hurriedly overland for Russia.\n\nIn Kiu Kiang, though situated in between these centres of disturbance, the local tension eased and we returned to the shore in April; it was not, however, until the end of the year that the British authorities considered conditions sufficiently stable to justify the return of the women and children who had been evacuated.\n\nKiu Kiang is a small, relatively unimportant place: the interest in the change of the status of the Concession lay rather in the new precedents set than in the local readjustments. A Chinese Commissioner was appointed to supervise the various municipal services, and if the change resulted in the removal of a long-felt grievance in the alleged loss of sovereignty, the advantage outbalanced such small inconveniences as the fact that the drains smelt a bit more, the police force was a little less efficient, and the number of clerks in the municipal office increased five-fold.\n\nThe political disputes in the ranks of the Kuo Min Tang party before the end of the year brought about no less than three changes of the official appointed to administer the Kiu Kiang Concession; and each change also involved a complete displacement of the municipal staff and police, as the new man always had his own henchmen to provide for. In one instance the departing official went in such fear of his life that he applied for a safe-conduct on a British gunboat and hurriedly left for Shanghai.\n\nIn August revolt broke out in the Revolutionary Army in Nanchang, a hundred miles south of Kiu Kiang. Two divisions under Generals Yeh Ting and Ho Lung mutinied and marched south to establish a communist state on the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan provinces. These communist forces, while guilty of the grossest cruelty to any rich Chinese \"capitalists\" they might catch, were able to attract the support of the poor, and more particularly of the landless peasantry to whom the communist policy of agrarian reform greatly appealed.\n\nConsequences of importance to the future of China flowed from these events. In the first place Chiang Kai Shek looked more and more for his support to the wealthy Chinese merchants and bankers of Shanghai.\n\nIn the second place, the seeds were then planted of the irreconcilable",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212205,
        "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": 147,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "124\n\ninternational communities, the smaller treaty ports had come to depend for their foreign population on the few large companies which maintained organisations throughout the country. These included the British American Tobacco Company, the Asiatic Petroleum (Shell) Company, amongst the distributing companies, and Messrs. Jardine Matheson and Company generally known as Ewo, and Messrs. Butterfield and Swire, amongst the shipping companies. Imperial Chemical Industries as a rule only had offices in the larger ports. China at one time offered the largest market in the world for cheap quality cigarettes, and for kerosene (paraffin as we call it). The motorist in Britain and America paid less for petrol because of the kerosene offtake in China. It is self-evident that amongst the cuts distilled from the crude oil petrol, kerosene, lubricating oil, diesel oil, wax and asphalt the cost of production is recovered in proportion on each finished product and, if the market for one of those products is limited, then the price proportionately increases on the others.\n\n—\n\n―\n\nBut let not our Chinese friends claim that the distribution of kerosene in China was a form of oppressive dumping. It was not. A very real demand for illumination was met, where other satisfactory illuminants were missing, and at a price below that at which the locally produced and less efficient vegetable oils could be marketed. And this despite the heavy duty which was collected on the imported product for revenue purposes, so that it could be said of kerosene that in China it not only provided almost the sole source of illumination, but also a substantial contribution towards the cost of government.\n\nThe urgency of war was more evident in Kiu Kiang, though the Japanese had refrained from bombing the former Concession area. My old Chinese friends all wanted to know what was going to happen. How could I tell them?\n\nThe Club had moved from the Customs godown to our former flat, the interior of which had been reconstructed to meet the new purpose. The bar was in our former bedroom, and from behind it the same ancient retainer dispensed the drinks; even the dice boxes looked the same with their heavy yellow ivory dice. But I could not loiter to rattle these for long. There was a decrepit railway to Nanchang, the provincial capital, a hundred miles to the south, and with some difficulty I procured a seat for myself on the train, which as always in China was overcrowded.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212206,
        "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": 148,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "125\n\nThe journey takes the whole day. It was almost dark when I got off and walked across the long new road bridge, erected over the great Kan river which forms the main artery down the centre of Kiangsi province, as the Siang river does in Hunan. And as in Hunan the Siang river passes through the Tung Ting lake, one of the natural overflow reservoirs into which the surplus waters of the Yangtze pour during the summer freshets, so in Kiangsi the Kan river passes through the Poyang lake before reaching the Yangtze some miles below Kiu Kiang. Nanchang stands where the Kan river enters the lake. Like Kweilin it is not a treaty port. Apart from missionaries no foreigners were allowed to live here, but they could transact business and pay visits. In the old days owing to the discomfort of the railway we generally preferred to come by houseboat through the lake; but now the motor car had begun to replace all that, though the process was hindered by the scarcity of petrol caused by the war.\n\nThe population of Nanchang could not be far short of a million. The narrow streets were giving way to wide new thoroughfares on which the city bus services operated. Though many in China could afford motor cars, away from the treaty ports their use was not common, because only too often, unless the owner could arrange through his friends for protection, the car would be commandeered for military business claimed to be urgent. It is this fear of commandeering that has restricted the distribution of the private car and the private wireless set in China.\n\nThe very shops were changing their nature. The old shops, in their narrow alleys, would show a front open to the cust, of which there was plenty, and receive such meagre light as the proximity of the houses on either side of the strect admitted. The back of the shop would be dark. Perhaps, a small kerosene lamp stood on a desk to light up the accountant's daybook. Across the front and down part of one side, along the passage to the back, an open counter awaited the display of such goods as the customer might require. These would be drawn from the shelves at the back by one of the numerous assistants, mostly relations of the owner, who would be standing behind, leaning their elbows on the counter, and killing much time by making comment on the people passing in the street. The intending purchaser would examine the article exposed for his inspection and point out its numerous defects, imagined or real, while the assistant would take the opposite view and extol its merits. There",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212207,
        "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": 149,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "126\n\nwould be discussion of price, a discussion that might often wax hot; but as soon as a bargain was struck all would be smiles again and the parties would separate, each convinced that he had had the better of it. Now the new shops had glass fronts and counters inside between which the customer could walk. The goods were exposed to view and not tucked away in the back, and many of the conservative shop-keepers admitted that the new ways had their advantages; and that even the uncompensated sacrifice of 20 feet depth of shop front, with all the expense it involved in rebuilding, had possibly been worth while, as the widened street attracted more custom.\n\nI managed to borrow a lorry in Nanchang and, with some Chinese friends, took the road, which most of the way follows the Kan river, and headed south for Kukong in Kwangtung Province. The first night we stopped in a wayside temple. We were passing through country which had been devastated during the anti-communist campaigns of 1928 to 1933, before the communists made their famous long march to the North West. Many of the fields were still uncultivated and ruined farmsteads gave evidence of the depletion of the population.\n\nTemples in China are of many kinds. The Chinese are not religious; that is where they differ so from the Indians. The commonest type of temple is the ancestral hall, where the wooden tablets of the village ancestors are housed. The hall, as often as not, is removed a little from the village. It will consist of a first hall, through which you pass to a courtyard, with galleries down either side; beyond lies the second, or main, hall, where the small wooden tablets, each bearing the name in Chinese characters of an ancestor, are set out in rows, generation by generation, one beneath the other, below the single tablet of the founder of the line. The side and back walls may be of hollow brick, cheaply built and usually dilapidated; the curved tiled roofs, moss-grown and even bearing tufts of grass and small bushes, are supported by wooden pillars, sometimes lacquered red, with heavy carved transoms. All around festoons of cobwebs, traceries of dust, and perhaps the rotting heads of last year's Indian corn, stripped of the grain, adorn the broken remains of discarded agricultural implements, except in one corner, where a blackboard and some desks and benches may await the pupils of the local school, if one is lucky. Several benches put together make a better bed, on which to spread a bedroll, than the stone floor.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212222,
        "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": 164,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "141\n\nvehicles, with much kind assistance from my Chinese friends, I found my way, frequently changing buses, to Kinhwa, the large commercial town to which the capital of Chekiang had been removed after the fall of Hangchow. A stretch of the Kiangsi-Chekiang railway was still in operation, though the terminals at either end, Nanchang and Hangchow, were in Japanese hands. The railway carried me to Yintang, where I again took to the bus, and eventually made my way, via Kanshow, to Laolung, the roadhead above Hongkong, at the head of junk navigation on the East river. My progress was often delayed by air alarms, as in accordance with their usual practice, the Chinese would not allow vehicles to enter a town while the alarm was on, and you might spend half a day waiting in the country outside.\n\nOn the way I was struck by the enormous numbers of Chinese migrating from occupied to unoccupied parts. These mass migrations, which have been extended by each subsequent Japanese advance, cannot but have a great influence on conditions in China after the war. The people of the provinces are getting mixed up in a way which has not happened in China before. The effect should help to break down the exclusive provincial barriers which have handicapped unity in the past. Also, owing to the bombing, it was the habit, in many towns, to close down until about four in the afternoon. Everyone who could manage it would walk out into the countryside early in the morning, only to return late in the afternoon after any chance of bombing might be over. The shops would then open and remain open till late at night, and all the intercourse of the town would be...* ...good progress, but the boatman refused to travel at night; muttering about the danger of bandits, he tied up alongside a number of other junks - they always go into a huddle at night for safety - and proceeded to light his opium pipe. Next day we reached a town whence a launch service connected with Waichow. The launch only travelled at night to avoid the risk of being shot up by Japanese aircraft; so we reached Waichow early in the morning and breakfasted off the hot steamed rolls which are popular amongst the Cantonese.\n\nFrom Waichow the track led overland to Mirs Bay in Hongkong waters. For about half of the sixty miles, the recognised form of conveyance was on the carrier of a push-bike propelled by a muscular coolie. We distributed ourselves and our baggage over the necessary\n\n* 27 lines missing here...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212522,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 76,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "56 \n\n+35 \n\nMatters failed to run smoothly from the beginning. Duan's feeling about being flattered had been expressed in a letter. “I found it impossible to refuse Ruan Yuan's generous and tempting offer to edit the annotation notes to the Thirteen Classics. Of course I realized that this was to be an onerous task, therefore have asked for help.” The tone changed in another letter, dated three years from the outset of the project. \"I truly regret that for three years, my time has been spent on making other people's dowry.\"**\" The completed work was not printed until 1817 in Nanchang shortly before Ruan Yuan was transferred to Canton. The edition was full of errors.\n\nRuan Yuan's changing fortune and personalities of the leading scholars working on this project were the major reasons for the long delay in completion of this project. Ruan Yuan had had to concentrate on government affairs. From 1805-1807, mourning for his father, he was able to work on the Jiao kan ji. From 1809 to 1812, he was not in a position to sponsor any literary project. Another major reason for the long delay was the personality of Duan Yucai. In 1800 Duan was 65 years old, and 80 at the time of his death in 1815. During the interim, he was becoming increasingly difficult. He and Gu could not agree on fundamental issues, with most of the scholars siding with Gu. So, the project did not coalesce until after Duan's death. That the printing and binding of the work took little more than two years indicates that a great deal of the work had been done already before Duan's death, and that the human and financial resources were such that completion of the major work was only a matter of time.\n\nHow Ruan Yuan supported the scholars\n\nRuan Yuan supported the scholars around him in three major ways. He put close relatives and friends, such as his cousin Ruan Heng (d. 1856) and Jiao Xun, as well as those with the practical knowledge he needed in discharging government responsibilities on his personal staff, paid out of his own or administrative funds. Ruan Yuan made it possible for other scholars to obtain academic appointments and to work on literary projects. Meanwhile, each scholar was to pursue his own research and writing. In many cases, although not all, Ruan Yuan published their works.\n\nEighty scholars were on his direct payroll during his long career that lasted almost half a century through the reigns of three emperors.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212525,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 79,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "Appendix 1\n\n59\n\nChronology of Ruan Yuan's Government Appointments 1789-1838\n\n  \n    Appointment\n    Location\n    Rank\n    Dates\n  \n  \n    Hanlin Bachelor\n    Beijing\n    \n    1789/5\n  \n  \n    Proof Reader (Wu Ying Dian)\n    Beijing\n    \n    1789/5\n  \n  \n    Compiler Second Class\n    Beijing\n    7A\n    1790/3\n  \n  \n    Imperial Diarist\n    Beijing\n    \n    1790/2\n  \n  \n    Supervisor of Instruction\n    Beijing\n    4A\n    1791/3\n  \n  \n    Chief Supervisor of Instruction\n    Beijing\n    3A\n    1791/11\n  \n  \n    Director of Studies (Shandong)\n    Jinan\n    2B\n    1793/6\n  \n  \n    Director of Studies (Zhejiang)\n    Hangzhou\n    2B\n    1795-1798\n  \n  \n    Vice President (Board of Rites)\n    Beijing\n    2A\n    1798-1799\n  \n  \n    Acting Vice President (Board of War)\n    Beijing\n    2A\n    1799/2\n  \n  \n    Vice President (Board of Revenue)\n    Beijing\n    2A\n    1799/4\n  \n  \n    Assistant Examiner of Metropolitan Examination\n    Beijing\n    \n    1799\n  \n  \n    Acting Vice President (Board of Rites)\n    Beijing\n    2A\n    1799/7\n  \n  \n    Governor of Zhejiang\n    Hangzhou\n    2B\n    1799-1805\n  \n  \n    Vice President (Board of Revenue)\n    Beijing\n    2A\n    1807\n  \n  \n    Vice President (Board of War)\n    Beijing\n    2A\n    1807\n  \n  \n    Governor of Zhejiang\n    Hangzhou\n    2B\n    1807-1809\n  \n  \n    Compiler Second Class (Hanlin Academy)\n    Beijing\n    7A\n    1809/10\n  \n  \n    Sub-expositor (Hanlin Academy)\n    Beijing\n    4B\n    1810/5\n  \n  \n    Imperial Diarist\n    Beijing\n    \n    1810/10\n  \n  \n    Revisor (State Historiographer's Office)\n    Beijing\n    \n    1810/11\n  \n  \n    Supervisor of Instruction\n    Beijing\n    4A\n    1811/9\n  \n  \n    Sub-Chancellor of Grand Secretariat\n    Beijing\n    2B\n    1812/1\n  \n  \n    Vice President (Board of Rites)\n    Beijing\n    2A\n    1812/1\n  \n  \n    Vice President (Board of Works)\n    Beijing\n    2A\n    1812/5\n  \n  \n    Director-General of Grain Transport\n    Huaian\n    \n    1812-1814\n  \n  \n    Governor of Jiangxi\n    Nanchang\n    2B\n    1814-1816\n  \n  \n    Governor of Henan\n    Kaifeng\n    2B\n    1816/8\n  \n  \n    Governor-General of Hu Guang\n    Wuchang\n    2A\n    1817/10\n  \n  \n    Governor-General of Guangdong & Guangxi\n    Canton\n    2A\n    1817-1826\n  \n\n38 3 3\n\n \n3833",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212628,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "162\n\nammonal, 50 lbs, if properly placed under the track will lift a locomotive ten feet into the air and throw it far enough off the track will lift a locomotive ten feet into the air and throw it far enough off the track, to make it difficult for the usual type of railway repair-crane to reach it to lift it back.\n\nWhile in Hunan, information came through that the Japanese had started to advance from Hangchow in the direction of Kinhwa and it looked as if they might cut off our part of the front. I made hurried arrangements to return; but before we left I was disconcerted to learn from the Chinese general, X....., under whom the British contingent in Hunan worked, that I was to come under his orders. General Ku had placed us under an Army Group Commander, whose headquarters were in the village next to ours; and I could not understand the advantage of now being placed under a General whose headquarters were 1600 kilometres away and, moreover, in another war zone. It looked as if the work we had commenced in Eastern China was to be wrecked; I saw General X...... and he assured me the change was a mere formality and would make no difference to the work we were doing. Later events, however, were to show that my uneasiness was fully justified and that we had become a pawn in high level politics.\n\nThe news of the Japanese advance on Kinhwa got worse. I loaded the lorry with all the stores we could beg or borrow, and we set out on a return journey which was to prove exciting. In addition to Michael and Doctor Petro, and the driver and a mechanic, I had been able to collect two Chinese medical orderlies, who had escaped from a detention camp in Hongkong, and a Hongkong wireless operator. I still hoped I might one day have a wireless set. The lorry was grossly overloaded and we nearly lost it next day when crossing on the Siang river ferry. We had to collect volunteers to help us to unload it hurriedly, as the ferry arrived on the far side with such a heavy list that we could not drive the lorry off. Further on a tyre blew out; we also received news not only that the Japanese were on the point of occupying Kinhwa, but that they had commenced a push from Nanchang to the east along the Kiangsu-Chekiang railway to meet their troops who were advancing from Hangchow. It became a race to see if we could reach Yingtan before the Japanese, and as we had no more spare tyres, we could not risk continuing with an overloaded lorry; we had to dump some of our previous cargo. We were not to see it again for six months.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212635,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 189,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "169\n\nas they subsequently produced no results, and indeed, in the absence of targets could not be expected to\n\nHowever, the next course had to be postponed time and again owing to our dangerous position. The Japanese took Kinhwa, advanced and after severe fighting took Chunsien, and joined up with their other troops who had advanced from Nanchang to Yingtan. They occupied Shangjao: the Headquarters of the 3rd War Zone withdrew to Fukien. We were thus entirely cut off. The most serious consequence was to break our telegraphic communication with Chungking. It was fully expected that the Japanese would mop up the areas left behind; in the absence of the telegraph we could not get accurate information and all sorts of wild rumours circulated. We broke up our stores and found hiding places for them in the mountains. We had already decided on our own line of retreat to a mountain hideout, which had last been used by the members of our village during the Taiping rebellion.\n\nWe ran out of money. Michael was able to borrow some from his friends, and the magistrate did what he could to help us; but currency seemed to have vanished. Eventually the Government dropped a supply by aeroplane in the area and the situation eased. I found a Chinese civilian who was a wireless expert, and who had made a good set, driven by hand-operated power, which had sufficient strength to reach Chungking. We applied to the Chinese authorities for permission to use this set; the request was relayed by wireless to Chungking, but after a long delay we received a refusal from General Ho Ying Chin \"Lest precedent be set\". I know, of course, that wireless was one of the subjects on which the Chinese government was very touchy, but I had hoped, in view of our circumstances, that an exception might be made.\n\nAfter three months the Japanese withdrew from Shangjao, conditions improved, and students collected for the second course. In the meantime, we had not been idle. One of our chief problems was to obtain the metal for our mines and booby-traps. We had heard that a number of damaged locomotives were to be found down the line; on inspection, we discovered that they had been stripped of anything portable, particularly of all brass work, but in some of them, the boiler tubes still remained. The Chief felt sure he could make good mines out of these. We obtained permission from the engineer in charge of the railway to take what tubes we could find; they had to be cut out by explosive, as those that screwed out had already been taken. The Chief put in a lot of work at this, and we acquired quite a useful stock of tubes. They were 1\" in diameter and when cut\n\nI",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212678,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 232,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "The Guerilla Training School 1942-1943 Tianmushan Mountains\n\nAnhwei\n\nKiangsu\n\nNanking\n\nChifakiang\n\nSoochow\n\nTai Hu\n\nYangtze R.\n\nKiukiang\n\nLake\n\nNanchang\n\nR. Kan\n\nKiangsi\n\nYingtan\n\nVI.\n\nGuerilla Training School\n\nHangchow\n\nShangrao\n\nFukien\n\nKimihua\n\nChekiang\n\nProvincial Boundaries\n\n1) Mountain Areas\n\nFront Line, early KAI\n\n1) Japanese Advance, Spring 1941\n\nRailway\n\nNingpo\n\n0 56 100 Kilometres",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214315,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 173,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "137\n\nXU, THE DAOIST PERFECTED LORD XU ZHENJUN 許真君\n\nTHE PROTECTIVE DEITY OF JIANGXI PROVINCE\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\nChinese Daoist and folk religion cults can in general terms be classified as nation-wide, provincial or local cults, the latter often limited to as few as one or two villages. Most studies of such cults made during the past half century have concentrated, for very good reasons, on Fujian and Guangdong communities in Hong Kong and Macao, Taiwan and South-east Asia as well as in Fujian and Guangdong provinces, and only a handful have described in any detail those cults limited to the more remote or less accessible provinces of Mainland China. The following short study is, in truth, no more than a tolerably full outline of a provincial cult which has spread to a limited extent into the neighbouring provinces of China. It is basically a medical cult, the deity revered for his skills in healing the sick; however, in a number of places there is also the added concept of the sick being healed by the deity using his power to cast out demons of sickness. Our particular cult is centred on the not so easily accessible southern province of Jiangxi.\n\nXu Sun, [known also as Xu Zhenren] is one of the numerous legendary Perfected Lords, the 'Immortals' or 'saints' of Daoism. He is the patron deity not only of the Xu clan but also of Jiangxi province. For at least two hundred years his cult has been very popular in the Jiangxi provincial capital, Nanchang [formerly Yu-chang] as well as throughout the whole province of Jiangxi and the immediately adjoining provinces where he is regarded as one of the most potent agents to cure sickness by ridding communities of the baleful spirits and demons who caused the sickness. He, in particular, was believed to be especially efficacious with diseases of the eye. According to Dudgeon, Xu was a doctor in Jiangxi province who, with six brothers, saved the province from devastating floods.\n\nA threesome, of Xu Zhenren and two other Immortals, Sun Zhenren and Wu Zhenren, are venerated as healers of the sick in many temples within communities from Jiangxi and Fujian, and in Fujian communities outside China.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214316,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 174,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "138 \n\nLegends surrounding the birth, life and death of Xu Sun are numerous, complicated and tangled stories. Just before his birth his mother is said to have dreamed that a golden phoenix dropped a pearl from its beak into her hand. A popular story claims that he was born either in Henan province or at Nanchang in Jiangxi, ca AD 240 where he lived out his life as a saintly doctor. Xu Sun passed the imperial examinations, became a prefect of a district and distinguished himself by his benevolence. According to some versions, his popularity was due to his power and ability to heal diseases using secret preparations. Others claim that he was an official who, having served in Sichuan province, died in about AD 293 or AD 374 when still only in his fifties. In another version, a typical mythological finale to a virtuous and extraordinary life, he died at the great age of 134 and was borne off to Heaven 'together with his wives, children, dogs, chickens and beasts'. \n\nMembers of the Daoist Jingming sect claim that he was the founder of the cult with its centre at the temple dedicated to him in Nanchang city. This no longer exists; however, a temple dedicated to him in the small town of Xi Shan [Western Hill] some twenty miles south-west of Nanchang, is the present cult centre. A large notice before his altar in the temple informs devotees that he lived during the Eastern Jin [317-420 AD] and during a twenty year struggle managed to solve the problem of annual flooding in the province and that he should be revered mainly for his success in water conservancy in northern Jiangxi, particularly around the Boyang Lake. The notice also claims that he lived for 136 years. \n\nHis cult centre in Xi Shan is now a bustling temple complex with two main halls and some four lesser halls set in large grounds. The two large main halls, side by side, are dedicated one to Xu and the other to the Jade Emperor. The inside walls of the hall dedicated to Xu are lined with some twenty or so anonymous minor perfected lords whilst the Jade Emperor's hall is lined by sixteen guardian generals, again unnamed. The Jade Emperor is flanked by four major Daoist deities, the philosopher Lao Zi; the founder of the Heavenly Master sect Zhang Daoling; the doctor of the Eight Immortals Lü Dongbin and the Northern Emperor, Zhen Wu. The main altar in Xu's hall bears two images of Xu, one tall gilded statue of Xu standing, and a smaller, portable image of him sitting swathed in red robes. Neither has any unique characteristic and he is depicted with a black beard, pink face and holding a tablet in both hands before his chest. He is attended by two youthful attendants.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214318,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 176,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "140\n\nborne to Earth by the Celestial Immortal Tian Fei, to his apotheosis when he was about to be borne off to Heaven; he is portrayed in one scene preparing medicinal drinks and in another overcoming the flood dragon.\n\nA popular legend related in Jiangxi about Xu describes how he destroyed a monstrous snake which had been terrorising the areas of western Jiangxi. Another describes how in Changsha in neighbouring Hunan province he killed a dragon which had transformed itself into a woman and had married a local mandarin.\n\nXu Sun, according to Fitkin, had been a good and sympathetic magistrate and as such was regarded as a protective deity throughout Jiangxi province as well as among Jiangxi people wherever they went. According to folk memory he never took 'squeeze' nor would he tolerate corruption. He also threw the flood dragon down a well telling him as he did so that he might come forth when the iron tree blossomed. This well was in the huge Wan Shou Gong, a temple in the centre of Nanchang and though the temple was burned down in about 1916, it was [in 1922] being rebuilt at a huge cost and, as far as can be ascertained, no longer exists. Folklore claims that plague and flood, as well as brigandage would come to Jiangxi if there were no Wan Shou Gong in which to offer up worship and reverence.\n\nAccording to Bai Youchan [the Daoist Thunder Ritual master of the Mao Shan cult - ca. 1200 AD] Xu was venerated initially because, using water-charms, he had cured multitudes who were suffering from a virulent epidemic. Imperial patronage of the cult ensued in the 12th century AD. All his temples used to be called Wan Shou Gong as indeed his cult centre temple at Xi Shan still is.\n\nAnother legend, possibly a variant on the water-charms story, and related in neighbouring Anhui, claimed that Xu had been an important tea merchant. Tea brewed from his leaves not only quenched the thirst but also cured sickness and even prevented people from becoming sick. He was widely renowned for his generosity giving away his tea to the poor in the Spring for people to infuse and drink to ward off sickness. He was deified for such benevolence by order of the emperor.\n\nIn 1920 Nanchang was claimed to be unique in that it had never",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214319,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 177,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "141\n\nbeen sacked in the memory of man. When the Taiping rebels came to the walls of Nanchang in the middle of the 19th century, they saw sitting on it the figure of a huge man swinging his feet in the moat. He was apparently selling sandals three feet in length to the beleaguered citizens. That was enough for the attackers who turned and fled. It was the figure of Xu Xianzhen. This, however, was not true of the Wan Shou Gong at Xi Shan which, according to temple records obtained by Professor Liang Hongsheng. These are quite clear that since the Furen Palace was first constructed there in 1743, it was destroyed by fire first in 1820 and again in 1856, after it had been rebuilt in 1848, by the Taiping rebels. It was again repaired in 1871 only to be destroyed once more nearly a century later by Red Guards,\n\nSomewhat surprisingly Xu has been seen on altars in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, possibly carried there by immigrants from Fujian province, a province immediately to the south of Jiangxi. His is, however, a minor cult deity.\n\nAn image of Xu, one of the minor healers in a group of five, on the main altar in a temple in Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan, portrays him as a standard Daoist immortal with a sword and small Daoist crown. The gilded image is swathed in a golden robe and all that can be seen are his face and bald head, his black beard and one hand holding the sword aloft. He and the others are collectively revered by devotees as celestial doctors who reveal herbal prescriptions for devotees through a spirit medium. The senior celestial doctor in the group of five is Yang Zhenren, better known perhaps as Yang Zhensong; the other three junior doctors being Xuan Zhenren, Wu Zhenren and Sun Zhenren. The old temple keeper who had founded the temple and is now dead, came over to Taiwan in the 1930s bringing the cults with him from Nanping in Fujian province, some 200 miles due south of Nanchang.\n\nA temple in Singapore, opened in 1971, has Cuji Zhenjun\n\nas the main deity on its main altar. The temple keeper was in no doubt that this deity was Xu Sun, a famous Song dynasty doctor, who was portrayed as a black-bearded, seated Daoist, dressed in colourful robes and a scholar's hat, but without any unique characteristics. His image is flanked by two aides who have not been noted anywhere else:\n\nCishui Lingguan Dadi\n\n刺水靈官大帝",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214320,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 178,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "142\n\nand Zheng Lingguan Yuanshuai EA\n\nXu Sun's festival is celebrated on the 1st of the eighth lunar month, though in a few of the temples a further minor festival is held on the 28th of the first lunar month.\n\nApart from his title, Xu Zhenjun and his personal name, Xu Sun, he is also known as:\n\nXu Xianzhen 許仙真\n\nXu Xian Zhenren 許仙真人\n\nXu Zhenren 許真人\n\nShengong Miaoji Zhenjun 神功妙濟真君\n\na Song dynasty title\n\nJingming Zhongxiao Dao 凈明忠孝道\n\na Song or Yuan dynasty title\n\nNote: This deity should not be confused with another, Xu Jia, also known as Xu Zhenren A nor should either cult be confused with yet another local deity, Xu Tianjun. A further complication arises from the identification by some temple keepers in Singapore and Taiwan of Xu as the local Chaozhou community Military Earth God, Gantian Dadi.\n\ni Chinese Medical Deities: 1870\n\nii Sun Simiao, one of the Ten Celebrated Physicians renowned not only as a herbalist but as a diagnostician was also of Jiangxi province.\n\niii Wu Ben, a herbalist of great renown born in a village near Xiamen in Fujian province. He is possibly better known by his title of Baosheng Dadi, the Great Emperor who Protects Life.\n\niv Fitkin, Gretchen Mae: The Great River - The Story of a Voyage on the Yangtze Kiang: Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh: 1922\n\nv Professor Liang is Head of the Department of History at the Jiangxi Normal University in Nanchang.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214324,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "146\n\n主福天普\n\nThe main altar in the cult centre of Xu Zhenjun at Xi Shan, near Nanchang in Jiangsi Province. Xu is portrayed as a tall gilded image and a modern, smaller portable image in modern paint",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214549,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 407,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "376\n\nRicci (1552-1610) the Italian Jesuit, astronomer and mathematician who left Portugal in 1578 and reached China in 1583. After time spent in Guangdong Province (mostly at Zhaoging (Shiuhing) on the West River), Nanchang and Nanjing, he finally reached Beijing in 1601. His descriptions of life at the Imperial Court created an enthusiasm in Europe for all things Chinese and he contributed to cultural exchange between China and the West. Matteo Ricci's legacy was to be a recurring feature of our weekend.\n\nThe second grave is of Adam Schall von Bell (1591-1666) from Cologne, who arrived in Beijing in 1630. He became a translator of Western books on astronomy at the Ming court of Hsu Kuang-ch'i and later produced a calendar based on Western mathematical calculations. Under the first Qing emperor, Shih-tsu, he was granted permission to erect the Southern Church, which we were to visit on Easter Sunday. The third grave is of the Belgian, Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-88) who arrived in 1659. In the second section, graves include those of priests from Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia and Belgium, and also 14 Chinese priests. In this section the most notable is that of the Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), famed for his painting of horses. Some of the buildings bordering the Cemetery have been destroyed during the passage of history but a former French convent, built in 1926, is still standing and the Matteo Ricci Society plans to turn it into a museum as part of their revival of Matteo Ricci studies.\n\nAt our hotel, the Palace, we found that Nina Ricci now had a shop there, indicating that although some Beijing intellectuals had a revived interest in Matteo, the new-rich of the capital preferred the high-fashion consumerism of Nina.\n\nOn the Saturday we visited the National Library of China at 39 Baishigiao Road, near Beijing Zoo and Purple Bamboo Park, in West Beijing where we were received by Madam Sin Liping, Deputy Director of Foreign Affairs and Mr Huang Runhua, Head Librarian of the Rare Book Section, together with members of his staff; and given a privileged viewing of a selection of rare foreign books. These included a Catechism dated 1588 in Latin and Chinese, with the Chinese also transliterated into Roman script. This may have been the work of Matteo Ricci. Another equally fascinating book had been written in Spanish,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215067,
        "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": 163,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "120\n\ndisasters.' She is portrayed as a Daoist deity sitting cross-legged on a lotus, with gilded robes and a small crown, and with eight arms and three faces. Flanking her are two demonic, black-skinned deities standing, each with six arms and dressed in armour, holding weapons and charms in each of their hands. They are her attendants known here as Gnasher, Qiechi J, and Biter, Yaoya, titles not encountered anywhere else. The sixty Taisui images stand on lower tiers in two groups in five rows, either side of a space between the groups leading from the main entrance to the main deity on the top tier. But before the main deity on the second tier is a lone Taisui, the Taisui of the current year, changed annually at the Lunar New Year. Finally, the sets of double doors to the hall are decorated with depictions of the deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations +, the Ershi ba Xiuxing each deity having a 'human' form and its own attributes.\n\nThe second temple is some fifteen miles from Nanchang, the provincial capital of Jiangxi province in mainland China. Once more there is a separate hall but here dedicated to the wife of the main deity of the complex, the major medical god Xu Zhenjun. In the centre of the Hall is a large rectangular altar with the sixty Taisui ranged on all four sides along two tiers, with the image of Xu's wife and her two attendants positioned on the top of the third tier where she is identified merely as 'Xu's wife,' furen A. Her Hall, the Furen Gong, has stood within the temple complex since at least 1820 though it, together with the other temple halls, has been destroyed three times. Once apparently by accident in 1820, once by the Taiping iconoclasts in 1856 and finally by the Red Guards in 1966. However, it has only been within the last century that her hall has had images of the Taisui added to the gods within the complex and placed on the lower tiers of the plinth of her altar. The temple custodian did not know who decided on this addition, why or when.\n\nIn both of these temples, as in a number of other temples, the images of the sixty Taisui are portrayed as individuals with unique characteristics. A few look demonic, the majority are normal humans, with or without facial hair, young and old, and all are seated and dressed in a wide range of robes. Some are soldiers, some elderly mandarins - and although from lists provided in temples they all have individual personal names, none apart from the President, Yin Jiao, would appear to be recorded in legend or myth. However, several god carvers in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215096,
        "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": 192,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "Modern images of the set of sixty Taisui on the altar dedicated to the consort of Xu Zhenren whose temple is at Xi Shan near Nanchang in Jiangxi province. Her image, unconnected with the Taisui, stands on the uppermost shelf [see Xu the Daoist Perfected Lord Vol 38 of the RAS HK Journal pp 137-146].\n\n149",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216039,
        "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": 338,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "272\n\nAlthough not part of the Zhenjiang story a Daoist cult centre on Mao Shan, a mountain some fifty miles to the south, was visited annually by a stream of pilgrims in the Spring, a great many of whom passed through the convenient port of Zhenjiang. The Daoist Mao Shan school was arguably the most powerful Daoist sect during the Tang and maintained its great prestige down to at least 1949. The Mao Shan Daopai as it is known, is renowned for its seances and medium trances, and according to Mao Shan sect priests was founded in the fourth century AD with the Mao Shan sect priests considering themselves to be the highest ranking of all Daoist orders.15 The sect originally appears to have been meditative and only later did it fall into line with other sects.\n\nIn 1917 two images were observed by Otterwill in Zhenjiang, in procession, Yan Gong and Jiang Gong #, both patron deities of river boatmen. Both deities were popular on altars in and around Nanchang, Anjing and along the Yangzi. Also popular in central China, C. B. Day records that Yan Gong in Zhejiang province was one of the Five Daoist deities who presided over a period of danger, a member of the Celestial Board of Health 瘟部五帝.\n\nThere have been but few references in western writings to the legend and role of Yan Gong, a Patron of Sailors. According to Doré, \"he was regarded in Central China as the protector of sailors and the god of the tides [Chao Shen].\" This, presumably, means the patron deity of sailors in the rivers and estuaries of the Yangzi basin. However, Yang Laoda is the usual patron of boatmen on the Yangzi. Werner1 provides a more detailed description of Yan Gong, the god of sailors, adding a little to Doré. He notes that Yan Gong had a temple built in his honour near Shanghai during the reign of the first emperor of the period of the Three Kingdoms [ca. AD 240] and that he was the deified hero in that temple who protected Shanghai from rebel attacks during the reign of Ming Shi Cong [ca. 1540]. Other legends claim that he was born during the Song in Jiangxi, that he was one of the four major deities of Jiangxi province, and was a censor famous for his integrity. Or that he was again a native of Jiangxi but born during the Yuan, and drowned during a storm when returning home. He was buried but was seen by the inhabitants of his native district on the same day. When his coffin was brought to Nanchang and opened it was found to be empty, a miracle which led to a temple being built in his honour. Sailors have",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216040,
        "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": 339,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "273\n\nsince sought his assistance to calm storms. In yet another legend Yan Gong is claimed to have saved the life of the first emperor of the Ming during a crossing of the Yangzi; and Werner, after relating a complicated story about the presence of a mythical creature being found, noted that Ming Hong Wu, having realized that he had been saved by a spirit called Yan, bestowed the title of Marshal of the Metropolis upon him and ordered a temple to be built in his honour.\n\nImages of Yan Gong have been only noted on altars in the area of Nanchang in Jiangxi, and in the southern maritime provinces of China including Taiwan and Hong Kong, but not within Chinese communities in South-east Asia.\n\nJiang Shen, literally the spirit of the river, is the generic title for a nameless deity on the Yangzi about whom little is known. She is said to have taken on human form and been bathing in the nude when she was stranded by the low tide. A fisherman caught and raped her, and died! The image of the deity seen in the temple near Wuhan on the Yangzi was that of a fish.\n\nJin Shan Si\n\nThe Song emperor Zhen Cong [998-1022] first gave the name of Longyou Dao, the Island of the Imperial Swim, to Jin Shan island after he had had a dream that he had been swimming in the Yangzi from it and then some ten years later gave permission to the monastery on the island to take the name Longyou Chan Si, which indicates that the temple was of the Buddhist Amitabha School of Meditation. It was restored to prominence and imperial patronage in about 1323 following several annual religious congresses.\n\nVisitors nowadays see a hillock, Jin Shan, Gold or Golden Hill, on which the temple stands with its tall octagonal pagoda with galleries marking each of the seven storeys outlined against the sky. This pagoda crowns the buildings and dominates the River and for a small gratuity permission to ascend the spiral staircase may be obtained. Today's pagoda, known as the Cishou Ta, was built in 1900, though according to historical texts there used to be two pagodas. These stood one at each end of the temple, and were first built during the Tang, though reconstructed several times down the centuries.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]