[
    {
        "id": 215693,
        "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": 470,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "423\n\nValery M. Garrett. Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away, Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton, Oxford University Press [Oxford University Press (China) Ltd., 2002] xiv, 210,\n\nMrs. Garrett has put a lot of loving effort into this book, and it shows.\n\nShe made many visits to Canton during its years of gestation, and the contents fully endorse her claim (Introduction, xiii) that \"instead of discovering that all had been swept away, I found that much had survived.' We are also in her debt for another reason. She has provided wealth of description from older works obtained during her searches in the second-hand and rare book market, many of them never reprinted, and hence scarce and expensive to buy, if you can find them! One such book is by the American, Osmond Tiffany Jr. (Boston, 1849), which has supplied the two little gems given on pages 79 (on the Parsee merchants of Canton) and 90 (on Chinese shopmen).\n\nThe result is a lively, informative, and very readable account of a City, once famous across the Four Seas, which has been long neglected and deserves to be again better known. No matter - as the author has felt obliged to add that a visit there is \"like an audience with a grand old lady who has had too many face-lifts\". She is still worth cultivating, for all that!\n\nThe long history of Canton is given in outline, but the focus is on its 18th and 19th centuries \"heyday,\" when the city was the only port on the long Chinese seaboard open to foreign trade: and as promised in the sub-title, here we have 'merchants and mandarins' superabundance, firmly set within the geographical, social, and historical context of their times.\n\nI liked the book's organization. Its three parts, with fourteen chapters and accompanying notes, together with an Introduction, cover the subject very neatly, whilst each chapter is long enough to impart adequate information, but not to the point when it becomes too much to handle.\n\nI also like the illustrations, especially the three sections in colour. All very well reproduced and including some that (I predict) many",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215696,
        "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": 473,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "426\n\nMade more by way of observation, there is the matter of the restrictions imposed, in their turn, upon the foreign traders at the Thirteen Factories in Canton (see p.97 and the Addendum). Mrs. Garrett has explained how they were increasingly ignored by them, in her chapter 9 (\"Disobedience and Destruction: The China Wars\"). Here, it seems appropriate to note that the laws of China, designed to support the security of the government and the happiness of the people through enforcing the moral ideas and usages which had characterized the nation over two millennia, were (like the 'Regulations' for the foreign merchants) precisely and minutely detailed, so as to be readily available to the authorities as and when required.\n\nNon-compliance with the laws was not confined to outsiders! One notable deviation was noted by Sir George Thomas Staunton (a resident at the Factories 1798-1816) in his part translation of Qing Statute Law, published in London in 1810; that is, how certain ‘religious' activities, prohibited in the penal code, were 'openly practised in every part of the empire,' leading him to surmise that these clauses were 'retained for the purpose of enabling the magistrates to control and keep within bounds these popular superstitions,' when required. (p.175n of the Taiwan reprint by Ch'eng-Wen Publishing Co., Taipei, 1966; with another such on theatrical representations at p.418n). I mention these points in passing, as being relevant for the times.\n\nReturning to Mrs. Garrett's book, the standard of production is high, and typos are few. But (e.g.) since he has been mentioned, Osmond Tiffany, Jr. appears variously in several places, including the index, as 'Oswald' or 'Osmand': Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)'s book, The Golden Chersonese has been misspelt: and the Cantonese romanization for the Eighteenth Ward is Shap Pat Po, not ‘Shap Pak Pu.' (pp.144-5).\n\nBut this is to cavil. All in all, this is a very competent and attractive recreation of a bygone world, linked to surviving buildings and other relics from the time, and heartily recommended to the reader - for all of which reasons, the kind of specially-drawn map I have suggested should form part of any further edition of this book.\n\nJAMES HAYES",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]