[ { "id": 204240, "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-1961", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n5\n\n## PRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nIt is with great pleasure that I submit a report of the activities of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for the first year of its existence after its revival in December 1959.\n\nThe original Branch which was founded in 1847 in the early days of the Colony and which included some of the most eminent oriental scholars of the time as well as the leaders of the Church, Government, the Armed Services and of the merchant houses, came to an abrupt end in 1859. After the lapse of a century a movement started in the Colony among those who had been members of branches of the Society elsewhere, in Malaya and in Shanghai where the Society had been compelled by force of circumstances to close down in 1950, to revive the Society in Hong Kong. As Sir Richard Winstedt, the Director of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, wrote:\n\n\"Circumstances had placed the port in a very favourable position for the study of one of the most important cultures of the world\"\n\nand Hong Kong had now the opportunity of filling a void and fulfilling its natural role as a centre for the diffusion of knowledge and culture of Asia and of China in particular.\n\nIt is barely over a year since a meeting was held attended by more than thirty interested members when a resolution was passed for the revival of this Branch. More than twice that number had pledged their support, including persons prominent in academic, professional, commercial and financial circles. The meeting adopted the constitution which had been approved by the parent Society and elected officers and a Council to hold office until this General Meeting. (The names of those elected have already been given in the brief history of the Branch at the beginning of this volume.)\n\nThe success of the founding meeting was crowned when His Excellency Sir Robert Black set the seal of his approbation by consenting to become the patron of the new Branch and when he presided over a meeting of the Society on January 23 of this year. It was the first time that a Governor of the Colony had presided at a meeting of the Hong Kong Branch since the days of Sir John Bowring, a hundred years ago. Thus he closed the gap of a century.\n\nWe are, I feel, justified in considering the result of the first year's work as very gratifying and the second year has already started in a way that is highly encouraging. Within a month of the founding meeting we had 72 members. At the end of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205576, "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-1968", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "999 \n\nSUN YAT-SEN AND CHINESE HISTORY \n\n113 \n\ngovernment.\" In fact, he noted that the \"general psychology of the Chinese is that a man possessing marked ability should become king.\" Viewed in the most charitable way possible, such an impression of history for a twentieth-century revolutionary seems strangely incongruous. But incredibly enough, Sun was making such comments at the very moment when Ku Chieh-kang and others were making electrifying discoveries in Chinese historiography, one of the more exciting dimensions of the New Culture Movement of the 1920s. These revolutionary currents seem to have had little effect on Sun.\n\nSun Yat-sen also enjoys the distinction of having contributed a unique historical theory to historiography. One of his most ardent contemporary admirers has affirmed that of \"all theories of history, the social interpretation of history\" of Sun Yat-sen \"seems to be most illustrative of the truth of social evolution, as revealed in the legends of ancient China.\"10 Yet this theory seems to be of rather minimal consequence. Drawing on ideas supplied by the American dentist, Maurice Williams, Sun is primarily at pains to set aside Marx's concept of class struggle. Williams contended that the struggle for subsistence is the law of social progress and the central force of history. From this, Sun reasoned that since the struggle for existence is the same thing as the problem of livelihood, \"therefore the problem of livelihood can be said to be the driving force in social progress.\" With this insightful formula, Sun could now refute Marx, for class warfare was clearly not the cause of social progress. Sun could say that, conversely, since class warfare is the end product of the social disease caused by the inability to subsist, this made Marx a social pathologist, for he had concentrated upon the study of social disease, not the central element in social progress itself. However much such reasoning reveals Sun's basic humanitarian impulse, and certainly much of the rest of his writing on the subject of the People's Livelihood confirms this happy feature of Sun's personality, it presents an historical theory of but limited value.\n\nIn a similar theoretical vein, Sun also spoke briefly of universal political stages of history as traversed by mankind. These stages, the first being that of the great wilderness, the second of theocracy, and the third of autocracy, culminate in the fourth, which history has proved to be the best, democracy.12 This very loose set of generalizations is part of Sun's discussion of democracy itself, so", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206140, "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": 220, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n213\n\nacademic subject. Indeed, Scott has tried this with American actors: the Butterfly Dream was played at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts of New York. This approach to theatre breaks a new path in research. Generally speaking, academics store culture in books as if they were canning it — but tinned food loses its flavour. Here Scott treats Chinese plays as a living part of culture, made to be played, not to be kept in libraries.\n\nBut if the author, by trying not to cut culture off from life, shows that universities need not necessarily be funeral parlours of art, his publisher is singularly backward. It is very difficult to visualise movements from written descriptions alone. It would have been much better if we could have had photos and drawings of each movement in the margin and colour photos for the costumes; and if, as well as providing the tapes, the publisher could supply a little film. Books continue to be published on the same old pattern. In this instance, a little case with a tape, a film, an album of photos and the text itself would have suited the aims of A. C. Scott far better. A documentary film might have been even better than a book; but from my own experience here in Hong Kong, where I have tried to persuade companies and so-called “cultural” organisations to make a purely explanatory film on Chinese opera, I have learnt that films are the monopoly of a mafia and the scholar is condemned to be book-bound.\n\nHong Kong, 1970.\n\nANON\n\nGOLDEN GUIDE TO HONGKONG AND MACAO. P.H.M. Jones, Hong Kong, Far Eastern Economic Review Ltd., 1969, pp. 453, with colour and black and white illustrations and maps. HK$10. (Paperback)\n\nThe preface to this work states that the Far Eastern Economic Review had long planned a companion volume to its Golden Guide to South and East Asia in the form of a detailed guide to Hongkong. This has now materialized in the present Guide ‘which is designed primarily to help tourists and travellers on their way and to sharpen their interest in the modern scene'. The compiler", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206258, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND KAIFONGS\n\n69\n\nalmost invariably status-seekers, as contrasted with the ordinary, passive members whose chief aim in joining the associations is in many cases to obtain assistance in time of need. In Hong Kong, the avenues to political power are closed to the ordinary citizen, since there is no democratic government. Thus, participation in traditional social institutions has come to be the most effective means of gaining social status. When an individual has achieved sufficient prestige as a benefactor in his association, most likely he would be invited to become an office-holder in its management committees. And the more offices a person holds, through multiple holding of offices in different associations, the more likely he is to be recognized as a community leader. In fact, the number of offices held by an individual is often the index of his importance in community life. The Kaifongs are one of the many social institutions in which the traditional status-seeker desires office and prominence. They enjoy a prestige comparable to the district and dialect associations in the overseas Chinese communities.\n\nUnlike the chambers of commerce, or the district and dialect associations in overseas Chinese communities, the Kaifongs in Hong Kong do not embrace any particular economic interests, although the Kaifong members come from a wide range of commercial activities and may reap business benefits from their increasing social contacts within the associations.\n\nUnlike the community leaders among the overseas Chinese, the Kaifong leaders are in no sense \"marginal\" to the Chinese society or the European society in Hong Kong. On the contrary, the Kaifong leaders are almost completely traditional Chinese people, both in their family background, their education, their outlook and even in their personal business alliances. Unlike their overseas counterparts, few Kaifong leaders speak the official English language or are conversant with Western culture. Their leadership status is purely within the Chinese community per se, and their influence with the Hong Kong government must be traced back to the official policy of recognition and encouragement of the Kaifong movement.\n\nTo sum up, the significance of the Kaifong associations to local community life lies in their threefold functioning as welfare, political, and status agencies. However, the emphasis in Kaifong functions has been shifting in the past twenty years in response to\n\nPage 70\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206686, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "228\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThis book is one of the gems of a vast movement. Between the two world wars, Chinese scholars took a great interest in the study of ethnology and folklore. The two most important groups were in Peking University and in the Sun Yat-sen University of Canton. After the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals fought against their traditional culture and its Confucian interpretation, and looked toward the West.\n\nEthnology was one of the by-products of this new fashion for the Occident and Science. Dissatisfied with a mere copy of Western culture, some people realised at this time that they had, in China itself, a whole culture buried in scorn, which deserved to become part of modern culture. And the movement towards a mass culture, in the early thirties, used for propaganda both by left-wing intellectuals and by missionaries, saw it as a gold mine to be exploited.\n\nThis interest in folk culture was not something new in China. In the Ming dynasty, scholars scandalously proclaimed certain popular novels and plays to be masterpieces comparable to famous classics, while the staid scholars did not even grant them the dignity of literature. Moreover, in Chinese literary history, a keen interest in folk literature has periodically risen in attempts to revive a stereotyped academism. However, in the XXth century, this movement was brought about by ethnologists, and not by avant-garde scholars of literature.\n\nThis ethnological interest had a certain influence. Several modern poets used the tone of popular songs; Lao She studied the folklore of Peking and recalled it in his novels; Wen Yi-tuo used ethnological data to explain the Songs of Ch'u and thus gave more insight into this famous anthology than philological interpretations had ever done.\n\nAmong the materials brought by Chinese ethnologists, the Choice of \"Yang ke\" from Ting Hsien is now a classic, and its translation is very welcome. It was part of a general survey made by a team on rural life in that district, situated about 128 miles south of Peking. The original meaning of \"Yang ke\" is folk songs sung while transplanting the young rice shoots. But it took on a broader sense: short operas performed by amateurs in villages, with music and singing mainly drawn from folk songs. In Peking and elsewhere, these short scenes were sometimes sung by actors on stilts, in processions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207756, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES OF TAIPING LEADERS 129\n\nmovement in China illustrate the impact of the Christian aspect of the Taiping ideology had on individuals connected with it in a peripheral way. The Taiping rebellion upset the even tenor of their former village life. They became refugees. Most had an objective, however: they wished to join their former village clansmen and neighbours at the Taiping capital, Nanking. A few were successful; more, perhaps, were not.\n\nHaving been previously influenced by the confused Christian ideas as promulgated by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan and Feng Yün-shan during the period before the outbreak of open hostilities between the Imperial forces and the Taiping revolutionaries, it was natural for them to seek out the missionaries for assistance and employment and also to be receptive to more thorough training in the Christian faith. The missionaries welcomed them as a means of relating to the Taiping movement with its promise of establishing a new dynasty on Christian principles. The promise was never realized and the missionaries eventually were disillusioned, but not before forming close relations with these refugees, some of whom became valuable assistants and contributed to the growth of the Chinese Christian Church.\n\nThe Taiping Kingdom had within it, from the Christian point of view, the seeds of a transformation of China, but the end result was largely disastrous for China, and its fall left behind those who had dreamed of a glory that had passed them by. Some, as this article suggests, adjusted to a life devoted to the Christian Church, while others went other ways. But the missionaries maintained a nostalgic interest in those who had been closely connected to the leaders of the Taiping movement.\n\nNOTES\n\nThis article first appeared in Ching Feng (*) Quarterly Notes on Christianity and Chinese Religion and Culture, XIX, No. 2, 1976: 105-119, and is reproduced here with permission. Ed.\n\n1 When my sources have not given names in Chinese characters, I have used the romanization of the original manuscript, except for Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, Hung Jen-kan and Feng Yün-shan. There are particular difficulties in determining the proper surname for individuals who appear in the sources as Fung. This was the accepted Hakka form of the surname Hung #, but it was also the Cantonese spelling of the surname Fung.\n\n2 Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, Oct., 1854, Letter of Hamberg, dated, May 1854.\n\n3 Ibid., June, 1868, p. 73.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207869, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "242\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\npressions do not support this view. Certainly, in line with the traditions of their society, the successful make themselves prominent. They build new houses or renovate old ones; they contribute to communal works; they make their voices heard in local affairs, moving, if they were not already in it, into the small elite of 'elders'. But their experience of the world is in fact generally very limited, and the social ideas they bring back with them are largely the ones they took away. They tend to be traditionalists whose traditionalism has been strengthened by their newly acquired power and prestige. They seem to me, to take a telling case, enthusiastically for fung shui. So that if they appear to be outstanding and exceptionally difficult it is precisely because they have acquired so little from their experience. Riches and high status have come to them, but it might as well have come from other sources. (There are a few men who have added to their education in Britain, but all the evidence points towards the great majority of them showing little interest in the new culture around them while they are away. Alongside the restaurant migration, however, there is a small movement of New Territories boys and girls to the United Kingdom for further education. But the two migrations are closely connected, and it is not uncommon for the profits being made in the restaurant trade to be used in part for keeping members of the family at technical and commercial colleges in Britain.)\n\n80. The economic consequences of the movement have been great. The data on postal and money orders cashed in the New Territories show that money has been sent back on such a scale as to form one of the major sources of New Territories income. The remittances have been mounting on an extraordinarily steep gradient during the last five years, roughly doubling themselves from one year to the next, and reaching the sum of $16 million in 1962. Some three-quarters of this money was sent from the United Kingdom. But they tell only part of the story. Considerable sums have been coming in through the banks in the New Territories since 1960. Cash has been sent home in the post. Money has been brought back by returning migrants. Traveller's cheques, not always presented personally, have been used. I was alerted by a chance encounter to another way in which incoming money in the form of United Kingdom postal and money orders may be left unaccounted for by the available statistics: on a visit to a New Territories branch of my bank I saw one of my acquaintances paying in a thick wad of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208750, "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": 207, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "180\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nby nearly 7,500 monks and nuns.” (A study published in 1971 says that between 40 and 46 percent of Taiwan's population affiliated themselves with Buddhism.)6\n\nAs usually these statistics have to be handled with care and as the word \"Taoist\" has become a \"source of perplexity\", so are the words \"Buddhism\" and “Buddhists” often used in a very unorthodox manner. Buddhism is most easily to be recognized as such in the monastic institutions: Buddhist temples, monasteries and pagodas (sometimes built as storage places for urns or so-called \"bone-temples\") are clearly distinct from all other temples and shrines with some exceptions. Monks and nuns are living a celibate life; most of them are engaged in making a living by performing rituals for the dead, either at private homes (funeral rites) or at their own temple. Apparently very few are practicing ch'an-meditation. Some informants told me that there is no exclusive ch'an-center in the whole of Taiwan.\n\nAn important distinction seems to be necessary when discussing Buddhism in Taiwan: clerical vs. lay Buddhism. The former is related to the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China and is well organized. Visually it is very flourishing with many recent constructions of new temples. But, according to serious lay Buddhists, this whole movement is rather external: it emphasizes superficial rituals and often caters to the needs of the folk religion. An example is the performance of p'u-tu rituals (rites of ‘universal salvation') now almost identified with folk religion and equally performed by Taoist priests.\n\nLay Buddhism, on the other hand, is a smaller movement but makes great efforts to deepen the understanding of the orthodox principles of Buddhism; instead of being devotional, it tends to be more philosophical. It attracts a great number of university students: each campus in Taiwan has a local Buddhist association with regular study and discussion sessions.\n\nSome important centers of clerical Buddhism are: Kaohsiung, Fo-kuang shan, and Yang-ming-shan; Institute of Buddhist Studies (established in 1965 by the Institute of Chinese Culture). A very active center of lay-Buddhism is located in Tai-chung directed by a 90-year-old lay-Buddhist, Li Ping-nan.\n\nThese two types of Buddhism try in different degrees to dissociate themselves from the folk-religion and should therefore be seen as a distinct religious system.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208858, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1979\n\n(Covering the period March 27, 1979- March 23, 1980)\n\nI am pleased to report tonight on your Society's activities over the past year and on our ongoing projects. During the period we organized twelve lectures which, because so many members and most of your Council are away from Hong Kong in the high summer season, were arranged mainly for the Spring and Winter months. There were two overseas excursions and one local tour. Let me briefly review the lecture programme first of all:\n\nTalks to the Society\n\nIn April 1979 two lectures were given. The first had Dr. Margaret Ng as our speaker: well-known in Hong Kong for her newspaper column, and also as a social philosopher concerned with different facets of the Chinese world-view. She spoke on \"A Chinese theory of Discontent\". The other speaker in April was Professor Rulan Chao Pian who talked to us once before, in 1975. She is presently visiting professor in Music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and her talk, entitled \"A Musicological trip to China”, was related to a recent visit to China where she had lectured to the National Academy of Musicology at Peking.\n\nIn May Mr. Leonard Rayner lectured on \"Communism in the Association of South East Asian Nations”. Mr. Rayner who moved to Hong Kong from Singapore a few years ago is a journalist and perhaps best known to us for his regular column in the South China Morning Post. In June Professor D. W. Y. Kwok, who has been Director of the Asian Studies Programme at Hawaii for the past six years, spoke on \"The New Culture Movement in China”. Also in June, Dr. John Young of the Extra-Mural Studies Department of Hong Kong University, lectured on \"The Hong Kong-Canton Connection, 1905-1925”, at the same time sharing his experience with us of a research trip to Canton and pointing out the archival research opportunities which exist in that city. In October Rev. Carl Smith talked on \"The Amateur Dramatic Club (founded 1860) and the early history of Dramatic arts in Hong Kong.\n\nSince the new year we have had a relatively full programme. In January there were two lectures: one by the Rev. Father Harold Naylor who spoke on \"Wah Yan College; a case study of an Anglo-Chinese school directed by an Irish Jesuit\". Father Naylor has\n\nX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209154, "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-1981", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN: THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO†\n\nHUBERT SEIWERT*\n\nIntroduction: Modernization and religious change in Taiwan\n\nSince the middle of the last century China has been a theatre of far-reaching political, economic, social and cultural changes. The most obvious manifestation of these changes has been the revolution of 1911, sealing the end of a monarchy which had endured for more than two thousand years. But the defeat of the Manchu dynasty marked the closing of an epoch not only politically: the revolution of 1911 was also a decisive turning point in the cultural development of China. The traditional culture which so long was the pride of every Chinese scholar underwent an almost complete reevaluation. To the revolutionary intellectuals of the first decades of the twentieth century this traditional culture was the ideological expression of the overthrown feudal system. The construction of a new society should, therefore, not be a mere change of political institutions but had to comprise the formation of a new intellectual culture as well.\n\nThe central target of this cultural-revolutionary movement was Confucianism, which was regarded as the ideological foundation of the old social system. At the same time this movement also had distinct anti-religious tendencies aimed not only at the religious components of Confucianism but at all kinds of religion, traditional Chinese as well as foreign. Religion and superstition were inconsistent with the scientific worldview which had been imported to China from Europe and America.\n\nThe critical attitude of the Chinese intellectuals towards religion was certainly one of the factors which contributed to the decline of traditional Chinese religion in the twentieth century. But there were other reasons, too. On the popular level, the arguments of the intellectuals were probably of no great significance for the religious behaviour of the common people. More important were the changes\n\n*Universität Hannover\n\n† Parts of this article were read at the XIVth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, August 1980 at Winnipeg, Manitoba.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209157, "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-1981", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "46\n\nHUMIRT SI IWART\n\nese society. We can, therefore, say that religious changes which run parallel with modernization are to be characterized as a kind of secularization, if by secularization we mean that formerly existing religious beliefs and practices are abandoned. However, there is a danger that by linking modernization and secularization one is stimulating the idea of a general decrease and a final extinction of religion. This idea is fostered by some evolutionary schemes suggesting that the intellectual progress which is supposed to be implied by modernization will finally lead to the adoption of a \"scientific\" world-view in which there is no more place for religion. In other words, this theory would not be content to define modernization as the formation of new social structures and cultural values but would try to indicate the direction of this development. As usual in such cases the direction of progress leads to the position of the \"enlightened\" observer.\n\nOn the other hand, as we have seen, there is strong empirical evidence for secularizing tendencies in present day Taiwan. What is more, it can be shown that these tendencies are directly connected with certain aspects of modernization, i.e. industrialization, urbanization and westernization. In the light of these facts it might seem as if the various forms of religion which can still be observed in Taiwan are just survivals of the traditional culture. To the same degree that modernization turns the traditional society into a new, \"modern\" society, one could argue, the remaining forms of traditional religion will also disappear.\n\nIn the following parts of this paper I shall try to show that this conception results from a one-sided view of the religious changes which are actually going on in Taiwan. To do this I first give a short description of a religious movement that enjoys much popularity among the lower and middle classes. I hope to show that the teachings of this movement, though it certainly is part of the Chinese religious tradition, contain elements which reflect the changing social and cultural conditions of the present time. My argument is that the process of modernization, which unquestionably entails secularizing tendencies, also leads in another direction, i.e. to the renaissance of institutional religions and popular religious movements. In the last two parts of the paper a few suggestions will be made about the possible relationship of this renaissance to the modernization process.\n\nRenaissance of institutional religions\n\nAs has been mentioned above, social changes in China affected\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211600, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "and his contacts with higher academic circles gained through his lengthy tenure of the post of Bursar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I am happy to hand over to him. As for myself, I have served for seven years, and felt it was time to move on. As it happens, there are two vacancies on the Council this year, the other being created by David Faure's departure from Hong Kong. This enables movement from the membership onto and within the Council, and onto the Committees, which is surely in the overall interest of the Society. Dr. Dan Waters and Dr. Joseph Ting have agreed to serve as Councillors, and Dr. Elizabeth Sinn has been nominated to the second Vice Presidency.\n\nThere will also be a change of Hon. Librarian. Mr. Peter Yeung of the Special Collections Sub-Library of the University of Hong Kong Main Library is handing over to his colleague Mr. Wan Yiu-chuen. We are most grateful to Mr. Yeung; but I must also thank Peter for his work on the Library Collection since he took up the post in 1985, his last contribution being to update the Additions catalogue. He has always been a good friend and colleague.\n\nI shall continue on the Council as there is a place for Past Presidents resident in Hong Kong.\n\nConcluding Personal Remarks\n\nAs the retiring President I am permitting myself a few observations on the Society in this, my last Report.\n\nWith benefit of hindsight, I now think we were off-track a few years ago, when we held the 1987 Symposium on the Future of the Society, in presuming that in order to survive the transition to the Hong Kong RAS and prosper after 1997, the Society must gradually become more Chinese in its membership, leadership and practice.\n\nAll the signs now point to a smaller reservoir of truly “local” membership and a much larger number of expatriate short-term transients of all nationalities (including overseas Chinese, many of them former Hong Kong citizens). In this changing community, towards which we have already been gradually moving over the last few years, the need will be for an English-speaking Society that is capable, as we have been to date, of explaining Hong Kong and Chinese culture to successive waves of newcomers. Thereby, we can continue to meet a definite need in the\n\nxiv\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 } ]