[ { "id": 204318, "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": 86, "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\n82\n\nfloated up again, until the Buddha of Light transformed himself into a monk to advise the elder that it was not a lump of flesh, and that inside it were five children.\n\nNo-cha's mother was pregnant for three years and six months. I think this is derived from the Pei-yu-chi (\"The Dark God Chên-wu or The Voyage to the North\"), Ch.6, which depicts one of the re-incarnations of the god Chên-wu (EH). In that story it is said the queen of Li T'ien-fu (X), a king of the Kingdom of Hsi-hsia (E), was pregnant for three years and sixty days. The king was vexed about it and thought it inauspicious. When the baby was born at last, the whole chamber was \"full of an extraordinary fragrance.\"\n\n4. THE COMBAT AND THE STORY OF THE PAGODA-BEARER\n\nWhen No-cha was only seven he was six feet in height. It was in the fifth month, the weather was hot and that made No-cha irritable and uneasy. He went to request his mother to allow him to go out of the Pass for a walk. The mother was very fond of him and approved his request but said, \"You must be accompanied by an attendant and must not stay outside very long lest your father should come back.\" (Fêng-shên Yen-i, Ch.12)\n\nIn Ch. of the Nan-yu-chi we read: \"The young Intelligent Light (XAF) prostrated before his mother and said, 'Your son knows that the hills around here have lovely scenery. Please allow me to ramble about them.' The mother said, 'You may go, but you must be accompanied by an old servant, lest you rush into calamity. Do not stay too long and forget your home-work.' When we come back again to the Fêng-shên, we read: No-cha and the attendant went out of the Pass for about one li, when he was covered with perspiration and could not continue the journey. They decided to rest under the shade of some willows. Sitting there he unfastened his waist belt, opened his coat and enjoyed the cool air. A stream of green water running between two banks of willows with a lively current was in front of them. A gentle breeze blew over its surface, and the murmur of the water flowing through the rocks could be heard. No-cha hastened to the bank and cried out, 'I will bathe here on the rock.' 'Hurry up,' the attendant reminded him, 'and take care of yourself. Your father will be anxious if he returns and does not find you.' No-cha agreed. He stripped off his clothes, and dipped his seven feet of red silk gauze, which covered his body, into the water as a towel. When this precious gauze was immersed in the water its brilliant ray turned the river to a reddish", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204427, "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-1962", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "50 \n\nT. Y. LI \n\nThe seal originated from jade tablets used by the Emperor and members of his Court in religious rituals. Later, seals were used to seal articles in the same way as we use sealing-wax nowadays. The only difference is that in those days, a ball of clay was used to receive the impression made by a seal. Writings on slips of wood or bamboo were bundled and sealed. Valuables were placed in a sack which was tied by string and again sealed in the same way. Naturally, these seals had to be small. Paper or silk for writing was not in popular use until long after the Han period (206 B.C.-221 A.D.), and it was then that vermilion ink was first used for seals. This practice has continued to the present day. \n\nThe Ancient Seals. \n\nThe so-called ancient seals were discovered at a much later period. They were thought to belong to the Chou Dynasty (1122-221 B.C.), or possibly earlier, but there is a lack of historical evidence to support it. The form of this class of seal is most variable. The size ranges from a fraction of an inch to a few inches square. The shape is mostly square, but many odd and strange shapes are also found. The engraving may be intaglio or relief. Many characters are difficult to decipher. The matrix was of bronze, though a few were of jade. The decorations are simple but elegant. They are the \"platform\" or \"nose\" type with an \"eye\" or \"hole\" provided for a cord to go through it. \n\nSubsequently, in the late Chou or Warring States Period (481-221 B.C.), a type known as Small Seals is found. The size is usually about one inch square. The shape may be oblong, oval, or round. The style of engraving is either intaglio or relief. Many characters are difficult to read because during the Warring States Period, each feudal state developed their own writing, and these were afterwards prohibited by the Emperor of the Chin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.). Hence, they became obsolete. However, their style is delicate, graceful, and well-balanced. They are all made of bronze with simple decoration, as in the ancient seals. \n\nAfter the First Emperor of the Chin Dynasty united the feudal states (221-206 B.C.), China was once more under one Government. Great reforms were carried out in many things, among which was the standardization of Chinese characters. A form known", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204535, "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": 16, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "PROTESTANT CEMETERY IN MACAO\n\n11\n\nCompany doing in Portuguese territory? Why did the Protestants need a separate cemetery? What is the significance of the date 1814? These are but a sample of the problems that these few words pose.\n\nThe first Europeans to set up permanent maritime contacts with the Chinese were the Portuguese, and by 1557 they had been granted permission to settle on a small peninsula of the delta island of Heung Shan. This peninsula, covering an area of only about five square miles, thus became the first permanent European trading base in China.\n\nLater came the Dutch, the Spanish and the British traders and navigators; the first and the second of these national groups eventually made their oriental headquarters elsewhere, but the British, through their highly organized East India Company, were more persistent and more successful as far as trade with the mainland of China was concerned.\n\nBut the China of those days was, in the eyes of her own people, the centre of the universe, and all those who lived outside the confines of her ancient and well-tested civilization were considered barbarians. They could only be admitted inside the fold as tribute bearers to the Imperial Court to receive the ethical instruction of the Son of Heaven, and were then sent back home. When such admissions were allowed, portals of entry were carefully chosen and rigidly controlled, and in the case of sea-faring people, the port appointed was Canton, situated ninety miles up the river from Macao, and thus the barbarians were kept as far as possible from the sacred heart of the Middle Kingdom.\n\nBut even at Canton there were further restrictions, geographical as well as political. The ships could only get up as far as Whampoa, which was the deep-sea port for Canton, and about eleven miles down river from it. The foreign merchants were allowed to go on to Canton itself but they had to reside in a place set apart outside the city—the Factories; nor could they remain there permanently; the length of residence permitted was determined by the time it took to dispose of the cargo brought in their ships and to load the return cargo of silk or tea. The time of the year at which these operations took place was determined by the monsoon; foreign trade was therefore completely seasonal—from September to March approximately, and as soon", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206153, "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "226\n\nLOTHROP, F, B.*\n\nLUCAS, Col. E. S. S.\n\nLUM Miss Ada\n\nG\n\nLUPTON, G. C. M.\n\nLUTZ, Hans F.\n\nMA, Prof. Meng\n\nMACK, A. M.\n\nMACKEITH, J. S.\n\nMACKENZIE, J.\n\nMAGEE, M. W. P.\n\nMAHLKE, W. J.\n\n+\n\n-\n\n-\n\n176 Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, U.S.A.\n\n94, Main Street, Stanley, H.K.\n\n142, Boundary Street, Kowloon.\n\nc/o Colonial Secretariat, H.K.\n\nTak Wai Mansion, Flat B, 3rd Floor, Man Fuk Road, Kowloon.\n\nc/o Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Hong Kong, H.K.\n\nNo. 34 Wilton Crescent, London, S.W.1., England.\n\n80 Robinson Road, H.K.\n\nc/o Davie, Boag & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K.\n\nc/o Operations, Cathay Pacific Airways, Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon.\n\n19, South Bay Close, Repulse Bay, H.K.\n\nMANSFIELD, Miss M. B. c/o Diocesan Girls' School, Jordan Road, Kowloon,\n\nT\n\nMAO, Dr. Wen-chee, Philip 326-8 Tung Ying Building, 100 Nathan Road, Kowloon.\n\nMARTINHO-MARQUES, E. J.\n\n-\n\nMAYNARD, Prof. D. M.\n\nMcBAIN, E. B.\n\nMcBAIN, G.\n\n+\n\nMcCABE, Mrs. S. J.\n\nMcCOY, Dr. J.\n\nMcDOUALL, J. C.*\n\nMcCRARY, M.\n\nMcELNEY, B. S.\n\n-\n\nP. O. Box 104, Macau,\n\nc/o Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California, USA.\n\nc/o Geo. McBain & Co., S.C.M.P. Building, H.K.\n\nc/o Imperial Chemical Industries (Japan) Ltd., Central P.O. Box 411, Tokyo, Japan.\n\nFlat 1, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K.\n\nDivision of Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, U.S.A.\n\nThe Old School, Souldern, Bicester, Oxfordshire, England.\n\nFlat 6A, United Mansion, 7 Shiu Fai Terrace, H.K.\n\nc/o Johnson Stokes & Master, H.K. Bank Building, H.K.\n\nMcFADZEAN, Prof. A. J. S. c/o University of Hong Kong, H.K.\n\nMcGEE, Mrs. Joan S.\n\n-\n\nFlat A, 134 Pokfulum Road, H.K.\n\n* Life Member\n\nPlease notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207153, "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-1974", "page_number": 224, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "218 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\ncame about at the time of the building of the Ko Shing Theatre in 1870. The theatre gave its name to the old Praya when the sea was reclaimed near the turn of the century. Today a new building is being built on the site of the theatre. Two lanes were left on either side. The western one was called Kom Yu and the eastern Wo Fung. A short lane, Pan Kwai, ran off Wo Fung. It contained five family houses on each side. It no longer exists, as the Ko Shing Telephone Exchange has been built over it. Tsung Sau Lanes East and West were developed between 1877 and 1879, as was also In Ku Lane and Sutherland Street with its godowns. Li Sing Street was opened later.\n\nAs an illustration of the diversity of shops conducted on Queen's Road, the 1885 Rate and Valuation Table lists the following between Queen's Street and Wilmer Street: four each of chandlers, druggists and barbers; three each of tin smiths, merchants and tea dealers; two each of coopers, shoes, scales, lamps, lumber and tobacco; and one each of iron, cotton, silk, joss paper, pickles, rice, pawnshop, mason, carpenter, eating house, marine store, copper smith and gun smith.\n\nCurrently much redevelopment is taking place, but some of the old alleys, particularly In Ku, still retain buildings erected when they were first opened a hundred years ago. Queen's Road still has the same variety of shops and Ko Shing Street is still lined with Nam-pak business hongs.\n\n(b) Chinese Tea Houses\n\n(1) A Chinese friend has supplied the following Note:\n\nCha Kui (**茶居**) is the old, local name for a Chinese Tea House. It is a special type of Chinese restaurant catering exclusively for tea-lovers. Tea drinking or Yum Cha (**飲茶**) has been a long-standing pastime with the people of the Kwangtung Province to which Hong Kong once belonged. It is popular with poor and rich alike. A tea house is sometimes looked upon as a gathering place for meeting people, talking with friends or for taking leisure in a friendly atmosphere. Most tea-house goers used to go to the same tea house everyday and also at almost the same time of the day and it is also customary that they ask for the same kind of tea each time they go. In a sense, a tea house for Cantonese people is much like and comparable to a 'pub' for English people.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207186, "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-1974", "page_number": 257, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LIST OF MEMBERS\n\n251\n\nLIFE OVERSEAS MEMBERS:\n\nJORDAN, Dr. David K. - Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, U.S.A.\n\nKNOWLES, Mrs. W. C. G. Wakes Colne Place, Nr. Colchester, Essex, England.\n\nLINDSAY, T. J., M.B.E. 3, Bareena Avenue, Wahroonga, N.S.W., Australia.\n\nLOTHROP, Francis B. 176, Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.\n\nMANSFIELD, Miss M. B. The Royal Naval School, Haslemere, Surrey, England.\n\nMcBAIN, George c/o Imperial Chemical Industries (Japan) Ltd., C.P.O. Box 411, Tokyo, Japan.\n\nMcDOUALL, J. C. - The Old School, Souldern, Bicester, Oxfordshire, England.\n\nMEFFAN, Mrs. I. E. - c/o Swire, MacKinnon, C.P.O. Box 703, Tokyo 100-91, Japan.\n\nMICHAELIONES, Miss E. O. The British Council, Halls Croft, Old Town, Stratford-upon-Avon, England.\n\nMIDDLEBROOK, R. W. 165, East 66th Street, New York 21, N.Y., U.S.A.\n\nMILL, Capt. C. S., Jr. - Indian Hill, Pittsboro, N.C. 27312, U.S.A.\n\nMILLER, Carl Ferris O. c/o Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, G.P.O. Box 255, Seoul, Korea.\n\nPLAG, Rev. A. 7000 Stuttgart 1, Roemerstr. 41, Germany (F.R.)\n\nROBINSON, Prof. K. E. The Old Rectory, Church Westcoat, Kingham, Oxford, OX7 6SF, England.\n\nROTHE, Ulrich 'Wohnstift Augustinum' Apt. 778, 5483 Bad Neuenahr, Germany.\n\nSINFIELD, G. H. C. Hong Kong Tourist Assoc., 159 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.\n\nSPERRY, H. M. 64, Hillbrook Drive, Portola Valley, California 94025, U.S.A.\n\nSTEVENS, Major K. G. - 9 Cherry Glebe, Mersham, Ashford, Kent, England.\n\nSWIRE, A. C. c/o John Swire & Sons Ltd., 66, Cannon Street, London, E.C.4, England.\n\nTARARIN, P. A. 623, Harper Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. 90048, U.S.A.\n\nTILL, The Very Rev. Barry c/o Morley College, 61, Westminster Bridge Road, London, S.E.1, England.\n\nTURNER, Sir Michael c/o The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., 9, Gracechurch Street, London, E.C.3, England.\n\nWARD, Miss Janet A. c/o National Provincial Bank Ltd., Bideford, North Devon, England.\n\nWELCH, Holmes H. 4 Holden Lane, Concord, Mass., USA", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207417, "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-1975", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n177\n\nOur food came from four sources; the Japanese rations, food sent in by our friends in Hong Kong, supplies received from the Red Cross Society and food purchased with funds contributed by officers mainly those in the hospital but also those in the camps from time to time. These contributions were made from pay received from the Japanese by these officers.\n\nJapanese Rations\n\nI have prepared tables (Appendix A) to show the kinds and the amounts of foods issued to us from Japanese sources and used on behalf of patients and staff who were on a full diet. Notes given in the tables give additional information and include details of certain additional Japanese food received and how it was used. The amounts in these cases were very small and while they must be recorded, especially the milk, it was rare for any to appear in the general diet and then only as a treat when supplies allowed. Since this is not a scientific treatise, I intend the tables to present a broad picture of our food situation. The daily quantities of food therefore are shown as averaged over five months in 1942, rather under three months in Bowen Road in 1945, rather over three months in Kowloon in 1945, and over the whole years of 1943 and 1944. These averages should be read in conjunction with specimen daily menus I set out in tables at Appendix B. There were many, many days on which our diet consisted of boiled rice and vegetables.\n\nIn these tables, I make no allowances for losses resulting from poor quality, preparation, and cooking in the case of vegetables and fish. These losses were usually high, and on occasions reached a level of 30% in the case of vegetables, which were sometimes rotten when received. We were not choosy when deciding when food was fit to cook and eat. The fresh vegetables, in addition to the more usual varieties, which practically never included Western-type potatoes, though we had sweet potatoes more often, did however include such unusual varieties as chrysanthemum leaves, Chinese lily root, tara root, and so on. The fish varied greatly; on 10 October 1942, I noted that we had received \"long thin fish, shark flesh, baby sharks, and heaven knows what, most of it a little old\". Sergeant Seino, of whom I shall have more to say later, warned the quartermaster that some fish was perhaps poisonous and advised us to be careful using it. I believe Seino's intention was to be helpful, though...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207523, "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-1975", "page_number": 291, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "Notes:-- \n\n10.\n\n11.\n\n12. Fresh Milk\n\nThe flour ration ceased at the end of February.\n\nIn August fully feathered Manchurian pheasants and partridges, (dated 1941 and obviously from a cold store) were received undressed; they provided one issue of 8.3 g. pheasant and 4.9 g. partridge in August, i.e. well under half ounce total but they made very acceptable stews.\n\nA total of 3958.9 litres was issued to patients only over the 10 months January to October. In addition each patient and each member of staff received a total of:-\n\n0.17 litre in January\n\n0.3\n\n0.25\n\n0.8\n\n71*\n\nFebruary\n\nMarch\n\n77**\n\nApril\n\n0.36 litre in May\n\n0.5\n\nJune\n\n**\n\n0.23\n\n39\n\nJuly\n\nNone thereafter.\n\nThe total thus issued to patients and staff was 802.4 litres.\n\nTable 4: 1945, 1 January - 23 March, at Bowen Road\n\n \n CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n Rice\n Vegetable\n Fish\n Soy Beans\n Peanut Oil\n Curry\n Sugar\n Tea\n Salt\n Powder\n \n \n \n 445.0\n 323.0\n See Note 14\n 3.0\n 19.0\n 5.0\n 4.0\n 5.0\n 1.0\n \n \n\nNotes:-\n\n13.\n\n14. Fish\n\n15.\n\nDuring March 1945 the staff had extra (working) rations as follows daily for 14 days:-\n\nRice 120.0; Soy Beans 1.0; Peanut Oil 20.0; Sugar 10.0.\n\nIn January a daily average of 32.0 g. per day; in February, the fish issue was 4.0 grammes per day; there was no further issue while in Bowen Road.\n\nIn January, cockles were issued equivalent to 3.0 g. per head per day.\n\n283", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208160, "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-1977", "page_number": 199, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe five graves may be summed up chronologically as follows:\n\n(1) TANG Hon-fat\n\n(2) TANG Kun\n\n(3) TANG Yuk\n\n(4) TANG Fu-hip\n\n(5) TANG Wai-kap\n\nHong Kong, Nov. 1976\n\n183\n\n(Yuk Nui Pai Tong) near Wang Chau.\n\nYuen Long.\n\n(Kam Chung Fook Fo) on a small hill\n\nbehind Pok Oi Hospital.\n\n(Pun Yuet Chiu Tam) Tsuen Wan on\n\nCastle Peak Road.\n\n(Sin Yan Tai Tso) near Wang Chau,\n\nYuen Long.\n\n(Wu Lei Kuo Shui) near Au Tau cross-\n\nroads.\n\nDAVID LIU\n\nACCOUNT OF THE VISIT\n\nOn Saturday, 11th December, 1976 some thirty members of the Society visited the five main graves of the Tang family of Kam Tin and other old established villages in the New Territories (see the programme notes above).\n\nWe first visited grave No. 3 in Tsuen Wan which is located on a small hill that was bought by the family in 1927 to protect the grave in the face of various encroachments. In addition to the grave, there exist two round granite pillars (similar to those at graves 1 and 4 but without their lion-dog tops). These are situated each at a distance of 132 feet and angles of 125 and 217 degrees from the centre of the grave, as measured standing at the main table with the compass pointing north.* Lower down, a little off the main road there is also part of an entrance, built of inscribed rectangular granite pillars, erected in the 4 year which the Tang elders say is, in this case, 1894.\n\nMr. Peplow was Land Bailiff, Southern District at the time the Tangs purchased the land in 1927, and his account,† quoting from a silk scroll given to him by one of the Tangs, is as follows:\n\n† S. H. Peplow Hong Kong About and Around (Hong Kong Commercial Press 1930) pp. 148-149.\n\n* I have since learned from the Tangs that the two pillars stood further to the front of the grave, nearer the former shore line, and that they were moved to their present location when the first Castle Peak motor road was constructed about 1917-1919.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208470, "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-1978", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "178\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\nThe fact that in the Tsin Dynasty (#), 303-379 AD, the technique had been widely used, and about the seventh or eighth century the Chinese already used woodblock to print calendars (Ɔ).\n\nThe oldest woodblock printed book still in existence, so far as we understand, is the Diamond Sutra (✨#∞) a Buddhist text (**) printed in the year 868 AD, which was found along with thousands of manuscripts from Mokao (†) the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (†) at Tun-huang ( ). Tun-huang, a city situated on the outskirt of the Lob Desert in western Kansu Province (+), was once the main gate of the Old Silk Road (***). From the first century until the fourteenth century, merchants, caravans, travellers, monks, and armies leaving for the West all passed through Tun-huang on their way to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Europe. The Italian merchant Marco Polo („§ +) used the same route to come to China.\n\nHollowed out in irregular tiers along the face of a steep cliff, the cave temples of the Thousand Buddhas were known in the Tang Dynasty () as Mokao or “Grottos of Surpassing Height\". They are located a few miles southeast of Tun-huang City. There had been huge Buddhist monasteries at the place for centuries, but it became forgotten when the Ming Dynasty (#9) began trading with the West by sea, and since then most of the caves had been buried by the shifting sand of the desert. In the late nineteenth century, it was rediscovered by a Taoist Priest called Wang Yuan-lu (10*), but by then all the wooden structures of the monasteries had vanished, and only the stone caves used as shrines remained.\n\nMokao is more than five thousand feet in length and consists of four hundred and ninety-two caves of various sizes. Over two thousand Buddhist statues and numerous huge murals can still be found in the caves. If we could have all the murals linked together, they would be at least twenty-five miles long.\n\nIn the year 1899, Wang Yuan-lu discovered an old monastery library in a walled-up chamber behind a mural in one of the caves. In the chamber, he found more than twenty thousand volumes of manuscripts and woodblock-printed documents and books, among them the Diamond Sutra. The news of the discovery soon spread abroad. In 1907 an Englishman, Sir Aurel Stein, traded with the priest and carried away 29 cases of manuscripts and books. More", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208471, "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-1978", "page_number": 195, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "# WOODBLOCK PRINTING\n\n179\n\nthan eight thousand volumes together with the world's oldest wood-block printed book are now kept by the British Museum in London. In 1908 a Frenchman, Professor Paul Pelliot, took away two thousand five hundred more volumes. What remained in the library, around eight thousand volumes, were sent to Peking in 1911 and are now kept in the Peking Library.\n\nBuddhism came to China along the Old Silk Road first from Central Asia at the end of the last millennium BC and again in 67 AD when a mission sent to India by the Han Emperor Ming Ti (***) returned with two learned Indian scholars. Chinese pilgrims, notably Fa-hsien (3); §) 399-424 AD and Hsuan-tsang (✯✯) 625-645 AD, used the Old Silk Road. All went through Tun-huang,\n\nBy the time of the Tang Dynasty, 618-905 AD, woodblock printing had already developed to a high state of artistry. Buddhists made full use of the printing technique to popularize their religion. Buddhism was very prosperous at that time. There were more than five thousand temples in existence, and around three million people became monks or nuns. The temple authorities and their followers engaged in publishing Buddhist texts or sutras with great enthusiasm, as they believed that the more texts or sutras that could be published and circulated the more merit would be rewarded. Most of the sutras were printed with images and illustrations so that they could be better understood by those followers with only little education.\n\nIn the year 931 AD the government of Late Tang (k) set up a special printing section under the Education Department (§76) to engage scholars, carvers, and printers to make woodblocks to print all classical texts copied from the stone texts, the first official textbook printing in Chinese history. It took twenty-two years to accomplish the whole series, consisting of nine classical texts totalling one hundred and thirty volumes and finished in the year 953 AD, Late Chou (£§).\n\nThe great advance in wood engraving skill should be credited to Northern Sung Dynasty (a). In the period of the tenth or twelfth centuries, the production of both classical texts and illustrated novels, including imprints of stone and woodblock folk prints, increased in quantity and quality. Books of fiction printed in the Sung Dynasty 960-1179 AD were amply illustrated, with illustrations\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208826, "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": 283, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "256\n\nOVERSEAS LIFE MEMBERS\n\nKNOWLES, Miss Moira G.,\n\n3 Kirkmay House,\n\nMarketgate,\n\nCrail.\n\nFife KY10 3RF, SCOTLAND.\n\nKNOWLES, Mrs. W. C. G.,\n\nWakes Colne Place,\n\nNr. Colchester, Essex.\n\nUNITED KINGDOM.\n\nKURATA, Mrs. Lucien,\n\n478 Edison Avenue,\n\nOttawa,\n\nOntario K2A 1TQ.\n\nCANADA.\n\nLANCHESTER, Mrs. G. W.,\n\nAlderfen,\n\nSurlingham,\n\nNorwich NR14 7AW,\n\nUNITED KINGDOM.\n\nLI, Dr. Choh-Ming,\n\n81 Northampton Avenue, Berkeley,\n\nCalifornia 94707,\n\nU.S.A.\n\nLINDSAY, Mr. T. J., M.B.E.,\n\n3 Bareena Avenue,\n\nWahroonga,\n\nNew South Wales, AUSTRALIA.\n\nLOTHROP, Mr. Francis B,\n\n176 Milk Street, Boston,\n\nMassachusetts 02109, U.S.A.\n\nMANSFIELD, Miss M. B.,\n\n51 Fairlawns,\n\nMaldon Road,\n\nWallington,\n\nSurrey,\n\nUNITED KINGDOM.\n\nMCBAIN, Mr. George,\n\nc/o Imperial Chemical Industries\n\n(Japan) Ltd.,\n\nCentral P.O. Box 411,\n\nTokyo,\n\nJAPAN.\n\nMCDOUALL, Mr. J. C.,\n\nThe Old School, Souldern, Bicester, Oxon,\n\nUNITED KINGDOM.\n\nMICHAELIONES, Miss E. O.,\n\nThe British Council, Halls Croft, Old Town,\n\nStratford-upon-Avon,\n\nUNITED KINGDOM.\n\nMILL, Capt. Charles Stuart, U.S.M.C.,\n\n132 Greenbriar Court,\n\nJacksonville, N.C., 28540,\n\nU.S.A.\n\nMILLER, Mr. Carl Ferris O.,\n\nc/o Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch,\n\nC.P.O. Box 255. Seoul,\n\nKOREA.\n\nO'BRIEN, Mr. J. R.,\n\n+\n\nSt. Paul's,\n\n1 Roma Avenue,\n\nKensington,\n\nNew South Wales 2033, AUSTRALIA.\n\nPLAG, Mr. Albrecht (Rev.),\n\n7000 Stuttgart 1, Roemerstr. 41,\n\nGERMANY (F.R.).\n\nPOLAND, Mr. T. D.,\n\n15 Bellevue Lawns,\n\nDelgany,\n\nCo. Wicklow,\n\nREPUBLIC OF IRELAND.\n\nROBINSON, Prof. K. E.,\n\nThe Old Rectory, Church Westcoat, Kingham,\n\nOxford OX7 6SF, UNITED KINGDOM.\n\nROTHE, Mr. Ulrich,\n\nWohnstift Augustinum, Apt. 778,\n\n5483 Bad Neuenahr,\n\nGERMANY.\n\nSINFIELD, Mr. G. H. C.,\n\nHong Kong Tourist Association,\n\n159 Bay Street,\n\nToronto,\n\nCANADA.\n\nSPERRY, Mr. H. M.,\n\n64 Hillbrook Drive, Portola Valley,\n\nCalifornia 94025,\n\nU.S.A.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211460, "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-1988", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "152\n\nyears later, Maternal Grandmother had her third child, a son, who died in infancy in China when he and Mother were taken there for a visit.\n\nMother was a very good-looking woman. She had rather large eyes, well-formed features and a fair, pleasant face. Her hair was dark and very fine, a characteristic she had inherited from her father, who, she said, had hair of silk and skin that was fair, smooth and hairless. There was an air of gentility and femininity about her. A modest, humble and friendly person, she made friends easily and always avoided conflict. She formed strong and lasting friendships with many who found in her an understanding and sympathetic confidante. Because she was a fine seamstress, many sought her help in cutting or sewing their Chinese clothes. Mother never lost her sense of pride, even though early years of poverty left their mark on her to save and deprive herself for that \"rainy day\" which never came. She was a pessimist, always anticipating disaster, and consequently was cautious and conservative, often warning us, \"Walk with hand holding onto a wall\".\n\n—\n\nBeneath her soft appearance, however, Mother was a person of strength. She dominated our early lives and we submitted whether we agreed with her or not, due to an ingrained sense of respect for our elders. It was not until I was nearly 30 years old that I began to exert myself and this resulted in a few emotional confrontations. Because it was felt that education would cause daughters to become too independent and also too old to be sought after as wives, Mother was allowed only a few years of schooling. On the other hand, because Hakka (**) parents saw the advantage of a good education, some of Mother's Hakka schoolmates went on to become teachers or prominent citizens. One of them was Mrs. Samuel Young and the other was Mrs. How Fo Chong, wife of a minister and daughter of Lee Toma. From these early associates, Mother learned to speak the Hakka dialect fluently.\n\nBright, alert and curious, Mother had a great thirst for knowledge and never hesitated to ask when she did not know. With added guidance from Father, she could read and write both Chinese and English better than many Hawaiian-born Punti girls of that era. She would tell us stories about the heroic deeds of old, about which she had read in such Chinese classics as The Three Kingdoms and The Dream of the Red Chamber. Even up to a year before her death, she left evidence of having used", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211931, "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": 346, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "321\n\nThese accusations were made at the county magistracy. The Kam Tin Dangs got news of the accusation and arranged that all their young men gathered in the various ancestral halls and temples to read, so as to deceive the investigators from the county government. The county magistrate was deceived, and believed that the Kam Tin Dangs were all scholars and would not give any time to the accusation. Therefore he did not pursue the case any further.\n\nSome of the Dangs believe that the fighting between the people of Kam Tin and those of Pat Heung was over agricultural resources such as irrigation water. The Dangs of Kam Tin used only one bei reservoir, the one called Fui Sha bei. The water flowed from Pat Heung, near Lin Fa Tei, and the Pat Heung people could stop the water. One recent (about 100 years ago) example of a dispute over agricultural resources was the Ngau Wong Wui association which had been started to organize the cowherds of Kam Tin, to protect them against their Pat Heung counterparts, and to preserve Kam Tin pasture rights.\n\nOne piece of documentary evidence of the conflict between the Dangs and their Pat Heung tenants has survived. It is a stone inscription dated 1777 found in both the Daai-Wong Temple of Yuen Long Old Market and the Jau and Wong Temple of Kam Tin. It records a rent dispute.\n\nFive Dangs are named as the landlords in this inscription. In general terms, the document calls the landlords \"the Dang surname\", and the land \"the land of the clan\". It is therefore clear that the landlords were all from the same lineage and the property was considered as linked to the lineage as a whole albeit it was probably individually owned. Four of the five names can be found in various documents from Kam Tin. All four appear in a silk embroidery presented to a Dang of Kam Tin to celebrate his birthday in 1771. We have more specific information about two of them: one, Dang Si-Daan, was a descendant of Yam's second son Gwong-Yu, and the other, Dang Chung, is a descendant of one of the other sons of Hung-Yi, most probably Gyun. It is therefore clear that one of the parties to the dispute were many of the Dangs of Kam Tin, including members of different branches and represented in general terms the Dang lineage.\n\nA few names are also given of the tenants. There were about the same number of Dangs and non-Dangs among them. While the landlords were referred to as members of a lineage, the tenants were referred to as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212317, "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "236\n\nThe Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage Company Limited\n\nThe supply of ice for the preservation of food is obviously important in the tropics. George Wingrove Cooke, correspondent for The Times, in 1857 provided a vivid picture:\n\nIn Hong Kong and Shanghai, a dinner table in the summer season is a melancholy spectacle of spoiled food. The creatures to be eaten were necessarily killed the same day, and the tough tissues are as hard as death stiffened them.”\n\nIn the 1850s, large expatriate households often owned at least one cow, and a block of ice bought from George Duddell prevented the milk from going sour. The selling of ice was one of the earliest trades in Hong Kong, and the first consignment of ice was imported by Jardine's in 1843. The Ice House Company was established in 1845. The price fluctuated depending upon the season and the demand and varied, in 1849, from three to six cents a pound. The ice was stored in a specially constructed building at the corner of Ice House Street at the southern side of Queen's Road. Importers often lost money. Although the Tudor Company imported ice from North America in the early days, by the 1870s ice manufacturing apparatus was shipped into Hong Kong, and, in 1874, the Hong Kong Times reported the ice making establishment at East Point was completed. In 1881, the Hong Kong Ice Company was founded with its headquarters at East Point.\n\nLater the Hong Kong Ice Company was taken over by Jardine's, although Butterfield and Swire was the first company to diversify into selling Australian butter, and, later still, frozen foods including poultry, pigs, and the provisioning of ships. B&S was also the first to sign a contract to supply the armed forces. The frozen food business was taken over from Butterfield and Swire, by Dairy Farm, in 1904.\n\nDairy produce\n\nIn those early days milk was obtained from native buffaloes and a few sickly cows. Then, John Kennedy, a veterinary surgeon who died in 1902, imported cows from Britain, and, in 1880, the dairy (established 1856) stood next to the Horse Repository close to where the Peak Tram is now situated in Garden Road. At a time when expatriates", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212319, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "238\n\nCompany joined Dairy Farm and became known as the Dairy Farm, Ice and Cold Storage Company Limited, following the merging of the food sections of Lane Crawford and Dairy Farm.\n\nBecause records were lost little is known of the company's history between 1920 and 1942. The directors who were not killed fighting the Japanese in 1941, however, did manage to hold a minuted board meeting, on June 1st, 1942, in Stanley prison camp. They later held a joint meeting with the directors of Lane Crawford's when it was suggested the two firms should co-operate after hostilities ceased.\n\nThis idea materialised in 1960 with limited success. In 1972, Hong Kong Land acquired Dairy Farm in the first contested takeover bid in Hong Kong. The old building on Lower Albert Road, used by the Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage Company Limited until 1978, now houses the Foreign Correspondents' Club and the Fringe Club. In the late 20th century milk is tankered into Hong Kong mainly from China.\n\nWatson's\n\nAnother of the few firms that is as old as Hong Kong itself is A.S. Watson's. It is connected with the Canton Dispensary which operated from 1828 to 1858. The Hong Kong Dispensary was opened in a matshed at Possession Point by Doctors (Peter) F.H. Young, a naval surgeon, and Alexander Anderson. The latter became the first Colonial Surgeon of Hong Kong. Doctor John Morrison, son of Doctor Robert Morrison who founded the Canton Dispensary with Doctor Livingstone, was also involved. In July 1841, a bad typhoon destroyed the Dispensary's matshed at Possession Point as well as other structures in Hong Kong.\n\nThe main purpose of Di Yeuk Fong (†) (big medicine shop as it was then called) was as a dispensary for soldiers and sailors. On 1st January 1843 it moved to Captain Morgan's Bazaar, and the same year a Doctor Samuel Marjoribanks, a surgeon, joined as a partner. In 1845 the dispensary moved to permanent premises, in Queen's Road, and Doctor James Hume Young (a relative of F.H. Young) became manager.\n\nThe first member of the Watson family to go East was Thomas", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212395, "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": 337, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "314\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nPeter Hopkirk, The Great Game, On Secret Service in High Asia. (Oxford University Press 1991) 524 pp. illus., index.\n\nWhere Britain and other Western powers extended their colonial influence by the sea-routes, Russia's empire was achieved overland, first into Siberia and then east and southeast into Central Asia. Inevitably this brought Russian armies and officials nearer the frontier with British India, causing alarm in London; and throughout the nineteenth century a continuing system of intelligence-seeking and diplomatic nursing of local chiefs occupied some of the brightest and most adventurous of Russian and British officers and agents.\n\nThis was the Great Game of Hopkirk's title, a phrase popularised by Kipling but first coined by young Lt. Connolly of the 6th Bengal Native Light Cavalry fifty years earlier. It was certainly not a game for the soft-hearted, the difficulty being that any Briton found making maps or gathering information in the wild kingdoms north of the Himalayas was suspected of plotting a British invasion and would certainly risk death.\n\nThe story begins after the defeat of Napoleon when the Russians were strong and confident and felt that Central Asia was their rightful sphere. Russian troops fought their way southwards through the Caucasus, then inhabited by fierce Muslim and Christian tribesmen, towards northern Persia. Then the pressure switched eastwards, and by the middle of the century, as one after another of the cities and khanates of the former Silk Road fell to Russian arms, it looked part of a grand design to bring the whole of Central Asia under Russian control. Once that was achieved, strategists in London feared, the final advance would be on India.\n\nAs the gap between the two frontiers gradually narrowed, the Great Game intensified. Despite the dangers, there was no lack of young officers ready to risk their lives, filling in the blanks on the map, reporting on Russian movements. One of the earliest in the field, in 1810, was young Lt. Henry Pottinger, who would become Hong Kong's first Governor thirty-odd years later. He was bright, brave and self-confident. And there were just as courageous operators on the Russian side.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212484, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "18\n\nthe old Co-hong system at Canton.\" The appointment of Wu indicates the power of Cantonese merchants which had gradually become the most predominant group. The Kiangnan Arsenal which opened in 1865, with additions of more industrial projects as dockyards and guandu shangban enterprises, attracted numbers of Cantonese working class to Shanghai. For instance, in Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Work, Cantonese workers constituted the dominant group. They were experienced and most of them had worked formerly in foreign dockyards at Hong Kong and Canton.\n\nCantonese in the early development of Shanghai found themselves particularly at an advantage in foreign trade as against other groups of sojourners. First, they were more experienced and better connected. Canton had been opened to foreign trade for centuries, and Cantonese merchants were connected to foreign firms in Canton or Hong Kong, most foreign firms in Shanghai at that time were only branch offices. Second, Cantonese were linguistically better equipped to deal with foreigners. It is probable most, if not all, were able to speak English, at least Pidgin. Third, early compradors of major foreign firms at Shanghai as Jardine, Matheson & Co., Augustine Heard & Co., Dent & Co., and Russell & Co. were all recruited from either Canton or Hong Kong. Fourth, Cantonese were more skilled in western industries such as ship-building and ship-repairing since most of these modern industries started earlier in Canton and Hong Kong,\n\n22\n\nBecause of the turmoil of the late nineteenth century, employers had to recruit workers on the basis of personal ties so as to prevent desertion or betrayal, thus conflicts between local ethnic groups were obvious. Cantonese in Shanghai did not meet with no competition. Sojourners came from other regions near Shanghai. The Ningbo group was regarded as a great rival. Ningbo people, for instance, concentrated in the French concession and in the northern part of the South City (nanshi) along the Huangpu River; Cantonese mainly settled in Hongkou or along Guangdong Road, near the large shipyards where many were employed. Ethnic groups in Shanghai, such as Cantonese versus Ningbo men, competed with each other not only in commercial interests but also in the local government. Ningbo merchants like Yang Fang challenged the Cantonese by connecting his business in the silk trade with Jardine, Matheson & Co. Since Zhejiang was an important silk producing region and Zhejiang merchants strictly controlled the regional marketing system in the Lower Yangzi. Zhejiang compradors rose to break up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213721, "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-1996", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "45\n\nfigures are not strong enough to make any such a drop in population certain, they do make it unlikely that the population was rising fast.\n\nThe reason for the low fertility is probably the practice of late weaning. Oral evidence suggests that boys were not weaned until they could walk and talk, and, in some cases, not until they were 4 or 5 years old, since it was recognised that mother's milk was strengthening. Girls were weaned younger, but still not until after they reached 1 year, in many cases. This must have acted to slow down conception.\n\nSocial Statistics\n\nEducation\n\nThe 1911 Census lists 26,460 males in Northern District of 10 years of age and upwards. It gives the educational attainments of 25,679 males in that district, probably intending this to equate to all males of 10 years old and above, which was specifically the case with the corresponding statistics for the City and floating population in that census. 14,162 males were entered as \"Able to Read and Write\" (55.2%), and 11,517 as \"Unable to read and Write\" (44.8%). Even taking into account the 778 males aged over 10 whose educational attainments are not given, it is clear that significantly over half of the male population reported itself literate. In 1921, the census found even higher levels of male literacy. 17,611 literate males, representing 67.2% of males over 10. The difference is unlikely to be due to increasing literacy, but is probably the result of a more relaxed standard of literacy in 1921.\n\nIn Southern District (including New Kowloon) in 1911 the levels of male literacy among the land population were even higher than in Northern District, presumably reflecting the more urban character of life there. 7,006 males out of 11,652 with educational attainments recorded (60.1%) were \"Able to Read and Write\" (the full total of males there over 10 was 11,859). In 1921, 7,439 males of the Southern District land population (again including New Kowloon) were recorded as \"Able to Read and Write,\" representing 65.7% of males aged over 10.\n\nHowever, if literacy among village males was common, it was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216506, "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-2003", "page_number": 265, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "217\n\nopportunity to turn knowledge into action? (pp. 138, 131) Will China reaffirm her feeling of acceptance by offering her some new task? Whatever the case, readers of this book, impressed by Ruth Hayhoe's sincerity and passion, will all, surely, wish the writer of this revealing autobiography all things good.\n\nGILLIAN BICKLEY\n\nJonathan Tucker, The Silk Road, Art and History, 2003. Philip Wilson Publishers, 7 Deane House, 27 Greenwood Place, London NW5 1LB. ISBN 0 85667 546 6. 391pp, index, bibliography, maps, 437 plates.\n\nWhy is the term 'the Silk Road' so evocative? Is it because it can be seen as a metaphor for the passage of human history in all its magnificence, cruelty and sheer grit? The patterns of trade that flourished for about fifteen hundred years along the eight thousand kilometre network of routes known today as the Silk Road can be dated back to the time of the Han Emperor Wudi (reigned 141-87 BCE). For strategic reasons, Wudi wanted to set up an alliance against the nomadic Xiongnu tribes with the Yuezhi, who had settled in the area centred on the Hindu Kush. After more than ten years, Zhang Qian, his first emissary to the Yuezhi, brought back news of lands to the far west, but it was hearing of the magnificent 'blood sweating horses' of Ferghana that made Wudi determined to establish links with Central Asia. In 101 BCE a Chinese army reached Ferghana, seized many horses and established suzerainty - much contested, however, for the next few centuries - over territory as far west as the Pamirs. The routes that opened up between China and the West became known as the Silk Road, and they were to become the main land artery along which travelled not only traded goods but also the ideas and technology of east and west.\n\nThose who used the Silk Road were driven by the search for profit, enlightenment, conquest, refuge, by missionary zeal, or by curiosity about exotic lands. Their quests faced the contingencies of physical calamities, for the regions they traversed were, and remain, prone to floods, droughts, storms, extremes of heat and cold, and earthquakes. It is likely that along it, too, from the east, came the Black Death, which brought calamity to medieval Europe.\n\nWhere travellers paused to rest arose tiny places such as forts and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216507, "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-2003", "page_number": 266, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "218\n\nshrines, and also larger caravanserai and trading centres. Many of the last developed into great crucibles for cultural development, cities that derived their often stupendous material wealth from trade, but also an equally magnificent cultural wealth derived from their location at the crossing point of cultures. It is this outpouring of human creativity at points along the Silk Road that is a major focus for Jonathan Tucker's book The Silk Road, subtitled Art and History.\n\nTucker's quest is bold, as befits his topic: to describe for the serious but not necessarily academic reader the art that flourished along the Silk Road during the fifteen hundred years of its heyday. Over four hundred colour illustrations conjure up a wonderful picture of the Silk Road, its places and people, its architecture (often in ruins today), paintings, sculpture, and even - through depictions on what remain of palace and temple walls - its music and ritual.\n\nIt is a difficult task that Tucker has set himself. To appreciate the art he presents, a knowledge of the complex passage and interaction of peoples and cultures is necessary. Tucker goes into enormous detail to try to ensure that his readers acquire this background. He gives the clearest picture when he concentrates on individual cities, for example, Chang'an (modern Xi'an) towards the eastern extremity of the Silk Road (which extended to Japan), and Baghdad towards the west (Istanbul is where Tucker draws his line here). By the Tang Dynasty, significant numbers of foreigners were reaching China along the overland route, and by then in Chang'an lived Zoroastrian refugees from Sassanian Persia (conquered by the Arabs in 651); Muslims (though the mosque in Chang'an is probably not as old, says Tucker, as the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, which dates from 627); Jews, who were significant and numerous Silk Road traders; Nestorian Christians; and followers of Manichaeism. Tucker painstakingly identifies elements that derived from non-Chinese influences in terracotta figurines, tomb paintings and sculptures, statues and other artefacts found in Chang'an and Luoyang from Tang and later periods. Most notable is a marble Bodhisattva, the 'Venus of the East' (his Fig. 119) which, in its sculptured clinging garments, reflected Indian antecedents, and was enormously influential on subsequent sculpture in this part of China.\n\nArt from the one hundred and ninety-three caves not far from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216510, "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-2003", "page_number": 269, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "221\n\nTucker establishes a framework, too, for the rise of Islam. An Arab attempt on Constantinople in 718 seems to have failed only because of outbreaks of the plague, and famine, in the Arab forces. Chillingly, Tucker argues that it was only these chance events (though famine, surely, could have been attributed to mismanagement) that gave Christianity time to strengthen its precarious hold in Europe. And, on the eastern frontier of Islam, a Chinese army was defeated by an Arab force at the River Talas in modern Kazakhstan in 751, and this meant the end to Tang hopes to control Central Asia beyond Xinjiang. Tucker argues that it was Chinese captured at the Talas River who introduced the technology of paper and silk manufacture to Damascus and Samarkand.\n\nOther books on popular reading lists about the Silk Road tend to be books of travel. Some are almost gazetteers, while others concentrate on archaeologists' researches. This book is different, focusing as it does on telling the Silk Road's history and demonstrating the links between the art forms that emerged from each era and culture. To give an idea of the scope of the book, here are the Section headings:\n\nBeginnings (three chapters: on the Silk Road's precursors; on Nomads; and on the Kushans)\n\nChina (three chapters: on the introduction of Buddhism to China; on Luoyang, and on Xi'an)\n\nThe Silk Road between Xi'an and Dunhuang (one chapter) The Silk Road through China beyond Dunhuang (two chapters, one each on the northern and the southern routes)\n\nThe Silk Road through Central Asia (ten chapters including one on The Coming of Islam to Central Asia; one on The Mongols; one on Tamerlane and the Timurids; and the rest focusing on different routes.\n\nPersia and Beyond (nine chapters, including one on The Parthians and The Sasanians, seven on different routes, and a concluding chapter on The End of the Road: The Silk Road in Decline).\n\nThe pattern, then, is to use some chapters to describe chains of events, and others to present the artistic achievements of specific periods. In addition, there are useful chronological tables on China; on the pre-Islamic States of Western and Central Asia; on the Islamic States; and on the Emperors of Byzantium. Tucker also provides a Summary of Traded Goods.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216513, "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-2003", "page_number": 272, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "224\n\njade, spices, ceramics, horses and so on of the old days. This book is enormously revealing in the understanding that it provides about the cultural melting pots that extend today from western China to the Mediterranean Sea. We are in as much need today of the understanding that travellers along the Silk Road gained about the cultures they encountered as were those travellers of the past.\n\nELIZABETH KENWORTHY TEATHER\n\nThis point is the focus of Chung, Tan (ed.) (1994). Dunhuang Art: Through the Eyes of Duan Wenjie. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts/ Abhinav Publications.\n\nTing, J.S.P. (ed.) (1996). The Maritime Silk Road. 2000 years of Trade on the South China Sea, Hong Kong: Urban Council.\n\nEbery, P.B. (1996). The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See P. 120.\n\nI found the WorldWideWeb an invaluable source of maps to clarify the historical geography of the Silk Road. Readers may like to try searching Google for 'Bactria,' for example.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]