[ { "id": 205786, "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-1969", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "86 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nmonopolies abolished whilst levies on imports were to be limited, and vessels were to pay a tax on their size. But Burney failed to get permission for a British Consul to reside at Bangkok. Nor was he able to free British nationals from Siamese law. \n\nNext came the Americans. A merchant, Mr. Edmund Roberts, was commissioned by the President to secure a treaty at least as good as the British one. This was seven years later, in 1833. Although a President seemed to the Siamese a much less august personage than a King and America was both remote and less important, Roberts secured his treaty. It was almost exactly the same as the Burney agreement. \n\nIn the next two decades, especially in the \"forties, trade became more difficult. In fact the treaties with the British and the Americans gradually eroded away, and the old monopolies were taken back by the Court. Imports and exports were farmed to Chinese merchants by the King. Duties were arbitrary and heavy and trade dwindled. Everywhere else the British had greatly expanded their commerce by mid-century. Singapore was growing rapidly, the China trade had increased still further after the Opium War, the northern coast of Borneo was open to British commerce. It seemed only natural and civilised to the bold merchant princes and sea captains of Victorian England that Siam should, willy-nilly, share in the new prosperity, especially now that the first steamships had reached the Gulf of Siam. \n\nSir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, was the next British envoy to sail up the Menam to Bangkok. He came in August 1850 on board H.M.S. Sphinx accompanied by a merchant vessel of the Company, the Nemesis, both steamers. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned Sir James to be careful in his quest for better trade. \n\n\"In conducting these negotiations\", he directed, “you must be very careful not to get involved in any disputes or hostile proceedings which would render our position in Siam worse than it now is or which might compel Her Majesty's Government to have recourse to forcible measures in order to obtain redress. It is very important that if your efforts should not succeed they should at least leave things as they are and should not expose us to the alternative of submitting to fresh affront or of undertaking expensive operations to punish insult”.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208788, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "218 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nged the Association's affairs for over a decade prior to his death, rendering most valuable services to the Association. The ground floor of the Association building then housed a \"water-vehicle\" which was one of the three \"fire engines\" then available in Hong Kong under the command of the Hong Kong Government Fire Brigade, then located at the site of the present Ho Tung Building. The fire fighting services rendered by our Association's \"water-vehicle\" were especially notable.\n\nThe ground floor of the Association building also housed a \"Patrol and Watchmen's Centre\" (later renamed \"Bonham Strand West Watchmen's Centre\", under the control of a Kaifong Committee). To man the Centre, several able-bodied men were recruited. They wore uniforms comprising hollowed caps, long stockings and straw sandals. Armed with loaded rifles, they patrolled the Strand day and night on shift duties to guard against robbery and disturbance and to maintain safety and security for the kaifong community there.\n\n'Nam Pak Hong' and ‘Kau Pat Hong'\n\nThe business of a 'Nam Pak Hong' (literally meaning 'south and north firm') as its name implies was at first confined to the transportation of native products from regions south of the Yangtze River and from North China, but later its scope was extended to cover Europe, America and countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. During the reigns of Hsien Feng and Tung Ch’ih, only a few of the firms in this Strand dealing in native products from North and South China were officially called 'Nam Pak Hong'. Later, many firms selling goods for their customers on a commission basis (2%) were established. These firms were called 'Kau Pat Hong' (literally meaning '98% firms') attached also to the Nam Pak Hong Association. In the course of time, the former and latter firms were mixed together without distinction, Hence, ‘Nam Pak Hong' is sometimes called 'Kau Pat Hong'. Afterwards, the San Yuen Tong (Association) of Shanghai firms was established in Gilman's Street, Hong Kong. These firms were of a similar nature to those of the Kau Pat Hong but of a smaller scale.\n\nA + \n\nThe advancement of the Association's functions and increase of membership after 1941\n\nAfter reforming in 1941, the functions of the Association pro-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209501, "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-1982", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "136\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nOf the forty-eight Chinese sent to Europe in 1876 by the Foochow Arsenal in order to acquire knowledge of modern shipbuilding and allied skills, the majority went to Britain. Another party came in 1881 to study naval and military science and technology. Increasingly, numbers of privately-supported students started to arrive to further their education. In 1916, there were over 300 Chinese students in Britain, of whom approximately a quarter were financed by the Chinese Government and the rest private students. Favoured disciplines were medicine, law, and economics; engineering, mining, and chemistry were also popular. At the older British universities, Chinese students were no longer absent or rare but formed a normal component of the student population, together with Indians and Africans. They were still 'exotics' in the 1920s but their presence in small packets in various university towns must have convinced some that the gap between the races was not unbridgeable, that each had many points in common. Moreover, they spoke English (some imperfectly), but not pidgin English, the lingua franca of the coolie class. The changing composition of the Chinese population in Britain must have influenced, one surmises, English attitudes to Chinese, have weakened stereotypes to some degree, although this process of normalisation was to take several decades before it made a significant impact, in the post-1945 period.4\n\nMiao Chung-yi was neither a student in Britain nor did that country become his domicile; but he may be selected as representative of the student or educated class. Hong Kong Chinese, and Chinese from the former British possessions in South-East Asia, tended to study in Britain; those from Shanghai and especially northern China, where there were many America-supported universities and institutions, were likely to go to the United States (as Miao did). The number of Chinese studying abroad has grown greatly since the 1920s; the trend, until recent times, has been ever upward. According to Ng Kwee Choo, in 1968 there were about 45,000 overseas Chinese in Britain, of whom 30,000 (mainly from the New Territories) were immigrant workers, and the rest 15,000 mostly students or nurses, etc. (these figures do not include British-born Chinese; so the figure given by Ng greatly underestimates the number of people recognizably Chinese in Britain).50", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209764, "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-1983", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "FIELD TRIP TO MARYKNOLL HOUSE, STANLEY BY THE HONG KONG ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY DEC. 8, 1984\n\nNotes on the Visit by Fr. M. McKiernan M.M.\n\nI wish to extend a warm welcome to all the members of the Royal Asiatic Society gathered here today. First of all, I should like to mention that I have been a member of this society since 1959, and have enjoyed many happy field trips organized by the society.\n\nNow to get on with the subject of today's field trip, Maryknoll House, Stanley. I should like to tell you something about the house which one sees on this knoll when one comes down the mountain side from Repulse Bay into Stanley. With its red brick walls, green tile roof and a touch of Chinese architecture the house looks a bit mysterious. So, first I should like to tell you the 'why' of the house, then the 'when', and 'how', and finally its present status.\n\nThe house was built for three reasons. First of all, it was to be the headquarters of the Maryknoll Fathers in South China. Perhaps I should mention here that Maryknoll is the popular name of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America. This is an organization of priests and brothers founded under the auspices of the American Bishops to bring the good news of the gospel to those who have not yet had the opportunity to enjoy it. Maryknoll was founded in 1911. The first priests came out to China in 1918 to a district west of Macao called Kong Moon. Several years later another area was taken in Northern Kwangtung Province around the city of Kaying. The language there was Hakka. About 1928 another area in Kwangsi around the city of Wuchow was taken. Then about 1938 another area was taken around the city of Kweilin in Northern Kwangsi. The language there was Mandarin. So there were priests working in three different language areas. The second reason for building the house was to be a language school for the new priests coming out to China. They would spend the first year here studying", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209788, "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-1983", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "25\n\nFirst we want to investigate the composition of the sangha. A convenient date to take as our start is 1949, when the present communist regime took control of the whole of continental China. Previous to that date, most of the monks in Hong Kong were Cantonese speaking. They lived in a few monasteries scattered throughout some isolated spots in the New Territories and in the rather inaccessible peaks of Lantao Island. There they practiced their religion quietly. Occasionally, they were asked to perform ceremonies for the dead. They were rather typical of the monks in traditional China. Like the majority of the monasteries in China, the ones in Hong Kong were not public monasteries (***) and were rather easy-going. However, it must not be thought that these temples were completely cut off from China. There was always a steady stream of contact with other monasteries.\n\nAfter 1949 a large influx of northern monks came with immigrants who tried to escape the communist regime. For a time they saturated local monasteries, but the majority have since migrated to Taiwan, Malaysia and elsewhere. Nowadays, northerners make up about half the total number of monks. Connections with South-East Asia and Northern America enable the monks to travel about rather frequently and this fact makes the Hong Kong sangha a rather fluid entity. Some of these northern monks came from renowned monasteries in central China and favoured a stricter life style. However, none of the temples in Hong Kong could maintain in full the system of public monasteries,\n\nThe coming of northern monks coincided with the beginning of certain developments in Buddhism unseen in previous ages. The unprecedented affluence created during the two decades 1960-80 was the material cause of these developments. Popular Buddhism flourished with the increase in population and wealth. Monks were increasingly sought to perform ceremonies over the dead () by well-to-do devotees and large sums of money were paid. Burial grounds in Hong Kong have become extremely scarce and expensive. The alternative to finding a burial plot or keeping cremated ashes within the equally crowded home was to deposit the ashes within a monastery. That way,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209859, "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-1983", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "96\n\nIn the North District the islands are much barer and less cultivated than in the South District. Only two business centres of any importance exist; Tap Mun and Kat O. Both have shipbuilding sheds; the former has or had a launch service with Taipo, and the latter a distillery which gave a good deal of trouble to the Revenue Department. The business centres of these islands are in fact on the mainland; the Crooked Harbour islands look to Shataukok, the Port Shelter isles to Saikung.\n\nA very important element in the economy of the islands is the returned emigrant or seaman: Lamma has a good many of them; Lantau also. Emigrants generally go to America or Borneo, and a few to Singapore. Some returned emigrants are from Australia, they usually buy land, build a house and settle down.\n\nTour of the Islands\n\nTo get a view of each island as a whole, I suggest that a tour be taken as if in an imaginary launch, starting from Kowloon and going west as if to reach Canton through Kapshuimun (\"Rushing Water Channel\") but turning south of Lantau, passing the East Lamma Channel, and round Cape d'Aguilar into Port Shelter, and so up the East coast to Taipo and Crooked Harbour.\n\nStonecutters: or Ngong Shuen Chau (\"High Junk Island”). Most Chinese placenames are descriptive and have meanings. This one needs no elaboration, I think.\n\nTsingyi: (literally \"Green Clothes\": but the real meaning is uncertain). Has a fair harbour, a few shops and several villages in the northern half. The hills on this island are unusually high. There are two or three limekilns. A ferry calls about four times a day. Once a reclamation was started at the head of the harbour but it came to nothing and only two or three walls now mark where it was meant to be. The inhabitants are Hakka.\n\nIn 1856 this island was the scene of a small naval action against a number of pirate junks flying the rebel flag of the Taipings. The captain of H. M. S. Sampson states in his dispatch:\n\nIn proceeding through the mandarin channel (going west) some junks were observed at anchor inside the island, close", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209868, "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-1983", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "105\n\nwith rocks and reefs in addition; the name may mean \"Dragnet Isles\". The northernmost island is a dumb-bell with quite a good harbour, and a fishing village of huts very different from ordinary Chinese dwellings. This island was another settlement of early man. The southern larger isle has two or three villages on its dumb-bell isthmus. There is a shrimp paste factory here which exports to Europe and America. The names Tai and Sai A Chau mean \"Big and Little Forked Island\". A small island to the west of the group is also a dumb-bell; the isthmus here is covered at high tide.\n\nPatung or Shek Kwu Chau (“Stone Drum Island\") is rocky and barren, but with one small valley where cultivation is possible. It was once proposed to lease the island as a rabbit farm, but the proposers never went on with it.20\n\nits English name\n\nTo the south-east of Lantau are a number of more important islands. Of these the most prosperous is Cheung Chau (“Long Island\"). Cheung Chau is the best example of a dumb-bell island in these waters. The northern end contains a small hamlet and cultivation, the southern end contains the \"Peak\", or European reservation. It started there through missionaries building holiday bungalows on the hills: they began doing so in 1906, attracted by the beaches, the easy marketing and the village ferry to Hong Kong. This was run in the interest of the fish trade, but was taken over some 10 years ago by the Western Ferries Co., a Hong Kong concern,\n\nBetween the fish trade and the market gardens, Cheung Chau breeds more flies per square yard than any other place in the Colony. It has a street cleaning squad, but of course this cannot touch the masses of filth on private property. There is a fire engine, a Government school, a hospital, and a big temple to Pak Tai, god of the Pole Star, the finances of which were inextricably mixed with those of the market, the ferry, and the electric light station. There are plays annually performed in May for the pleasure of Pak Tai, and incidentally for his worshippers, in a huge decorated matshed put up in front of the temple. It draws big crowds, and stimulates business quite a lot. There are other temples too, and little shrines to local spirits. There is also", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215408, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "134\n\nthat bore an uncanny resemblance to retables. In fact, many look like stone altarpieces carved in high relief applied to the façades of churches. Although the phrase retable-façade is not actually found in contemporary sources, a number of accounts from the seventeenth century and later supported the findings of modern specialists by alluding to retables when describing some of these façades.\n\nThese rather puzzling structures had actually first appeared towards the end of the fifteenth century embellishing the front of several Late Gothic churches in Spain, and have apparently no counterpart in Europe or anywhere else. What is equally surprising is the fact that most of the artists who helped invent the type were not themselves Spanish. They often came from countries beyond the Pyrenees, such as Holland, Germany or France, and had been attracted to northern Spanish kingdoms by the patronage of kings, the church or the nobility. If they actually invented retable-façades is a mystery that has yet to be solved.\n\nRetable-façades come in all shapes and sizes. Stylistically they range from the Late Gothic to the Late Baroque and beyond. Artistically they go from the sublime to the prosaic. Some of the finest examples of the genre were created in Spanish Latin America and in Portugal, though, as mentioned, they are practically unknown in Brazil and other Portuguese colonies. In fact, Reynaldo dos Santos and R.C. Smith have argued that retable-façades in Portuguese architecture only occur due to Spanish influence.\n\n6\n\nSanta Maria A Grande\n\nOne of the masterpieces of this type of façade is that of the church of Santa Maria A Grande (St Mary Major), in Pontevedra, Galicia, in the Northwest coast of Spain (Fig. 2).\n\nI could equally well have chosen from amongst several works to demonstrate the more distinctive features of retable-façades. But I have selected Santa Maria A Grande because I believe it has unique features in common with the façade of St. Paul in Macao. To begin with, like St. Paul's, Santa Maria a Grande's fantastically ornate façade faces the river below from an imposing promontory.\n\nEqually relevant are the economic and cultural reasons that brought", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215435, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "161\n\nen España 1450-1600, Madrid, 1988, p. 58. Some of the more important writings on Latin American retable-façades, dealing also with those of the Jesuits, Dominicans and other religious orders, include, D. Angulo Iñiguez, E. Marco Dorta, M. J. Buschiazzo, Historia del Arte Hispano-Americano. II, pp. 427-38, 559-66, passim. J. A. Baird Jr., The Churches of Mexico, 1530-1810, University of California, 1962, pp. 22-3, 37-9, passim. A. Benavides, La Arquitectura en el Virreinato del Peru y en la Capitania General de Chile, Santiago, 1941, p. 54, passim. M. Collier, The Sagrario of Lorenzo Rodriguez, Yale University, 1973 (unpublished thesis). E. Harth-Terré, \"El Imafronte de la catedral de Lima”. Arquitecto Peruano, 1941.\n\n\"La obra de la Compañía de Jesus en la arquitectura virreinal peruana\", Mercurio Peruano, 1942. P. Kelemen, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, New York, 1961, p. 123 passim. A. B. Louchheim, \"The church façades of Lorenzo Rodriguez: A focal point for the study of Mexican Churrigeresque architecture\", Inst. of Fine Arts, New York University, 1941 (unpublished M.A. thesis). G. Navarro, La iglesia de la Compañía de Quito, Madrid, 1930, R. C. Smith, A First History of Latin American Art, The 2nd volume, Washington, 1952, pp. 157-61. M. Toussaint, \"La catedra de Zacatecas y el arte del Virreinato\", Anales instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, Mexico, 1947.\n\n“La Catedral de Mexico y el Sagrario Metropolitano, Mexico, 1948, H. E. Wethey, Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru, Harvard University Press, 1949, pp. 53-6, 58-60, passim. B. Vargas-Lugo, La iglesia de Sta. Prisca de Taxco, Mexico, 1974.\n\n7\n\n$\n\nLate in the eighteenth century the fronts of Jesuit churches in Guanajuato, Tepotzotlan and elsewhere in Mexico display several of the most important retable-façades. M. Diaz, La Arquitectura de los jesuitas en Nueva España, Mexico, 1982, pp. 78-80. A. von Wuthenau, Tepotzotlan, Mexico, 1941.\n\nGran Enciclopedia Gallega, XXV, Santiago, 1974, pp. 138-9. Carmen Aznar, Summa Artis, XVII, pp. 106-8.\n\nSumma Artis, XVIII, pp. 96-7. F. Checa Goitia, Arquitectura Española del Siglo XVI, XI, Madrid, 1953, pp. 47-8.\n\nImportant carved retables were also produced in northern Europe during the fifteenth century, e.g., that of the Marienkirche, Lübeck, or that by an anonymous master of the School of Cologne, of c. 1434, in Frankfurt Cathedral. In Flemish altarpieces the theme is quite common. W. Kinkel, Der Dom zu Frankfurt am Main, München-Berlin, 1988, p. 18.\n\nPearson, M. N., The New Cambridge History of India: The Portuguese in India, Cambridge, 1987. New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 21, University of Chicago,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]