[ { "id": 204969, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "68 \n\nJEN YU-WEN \n\nas stated above, left Kuan-fu-ch'iang on the way to Ch'uan-wan (Ch'uen-wan) on the western shore of Kowloon in the year A.D. 1277, they stopped over at a place by the name of Ku-t'a (Ku-t'ab), or \"Ancient Pagoda.\" This fact had been recorded in some historical books, but where and what this place is has never been known, Now, with the revelation from this stone-inscription plus certain statements in the Genealogical Record of the Lin clan definitely referring to the Stone Pagoda, a sound conclusion can be drawn to the effect that Ku-t'a is identical to the present-day South Fu-t'ang, the northern shore of Tung-lung Islet. It is further reinforced by the fact that, according to tradition, local people used to call the said Pagoda by the name of Ku-shih-t'a (Ku-shek-t'ab) or “Ancient Stone Pagoda\" which was later abbreviated to Ku-t'a. With the discovery of the missing link a very knotty problem in the study of the itinerary of the last two emperors of the Southern Sung is rationally solved at long last, For this the value of this stone-engraving to historical scholarship is most pronounced. \n\nSecondly, from the standpoint of archaeology, this stone-engraving, done 690 years ago (1274-1965), is the oldest historic relic with a definite date in Hong Kong and Kowloon. (The history of Sung Wong Toi began three years later than this and the three characters were not engraved there until the Yuan Dynasty. The ancient tomb in Li-cheng-wu (Lee-chang-uk) appears to have a longer history, but the date is uncertain.) \n\nThirdly, from the standpoint of literature, its diction and sentences are excellent and the narration of no less than eight events in only 108 characters is terse and elegant. As a stone inscription, it should be ranked as an exemplary piece of literature of its kind. Moreover, the calligraphy possesses beauty, gracefulness and strength, being typical of the Sung style and akin to the penmanship of the celebrated poet, Su Tung-p'o. \n\nLast of all, considered as a work of art, the craftsmanship of the engraving is highly commendable. The cutting is deep and sharp, and even after having been exposed to the elements for nearly 700 years, almost all of the engraved characters remain intact. \n\nIn conclusion, this historic relic should by all means be regarded as a distinctive feature in the cultural history of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205852, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "152\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nwhich they appear. We know, too, that the author did not go to the East until 1849 when he received the appointment of Her Majesty to be Consul in Canton.\n\nNow it is entirely possible that Bowring saw an illustration of the church somewhere. Mr. David Keir, author of THE BOWRING STORY (The Bodley Head, Ltd., London, 1962) to whom I submitted this problem, informs me that Bowring visited Portugal in 1815, and may have run across one there. But it is also possible that he had to go no farther than London. \"At the Hispano Portuguese Library in Belgrave Square,\" Keir writes, \"there is an illustration of the church.\" It \"is a high pagoda-like building, rising above many steps, with a Cross at its peak. As most churches have a cross on the roof somewhere, it is still inconclusive whether this was the church he had in mind.” “It is also possible (for instance),\" Mr. Keir continues, \"that he might have been inspired to write the hymn following his visit to the Pena Convent in Portugal - an experience which seems to have impressed him very much, for he writes in his Autobiographical Recollections:\n\n'I also went to the Pena Convent, which towers [note the use of this word] over the highest of the precipices. The rude path, which leads to it, winds round the rugged steep, and if ever there was a spot fitted for those who would withdraw from the world, it is this. Here might misanthropy revel in perfect abstraction for scarcely could any earthly idea enter into that secluded and weather-beaten temple....'\n\nCan any reader of the Journal offer any better hypothesis? Columbia University, 1969.\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nBOOKS FROM THE VICTORIA LIBRARY\n\nAs a kind of postscript to \"Notes on Hong Kong Libraries in the Nineteenth Century,\" which appeared in the last volume of this Journal between pp. 56-66, it may be of interest to record that two titles formerly the property of the Victoria Library and Reading Rooms (1848-1871) have come to light.\n\nThe first was bought by Mr. James Hayes, our Hon. Editor, from a 'fly-by-night' bookstall in Causeway Bay. This is:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208472, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "180\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\non the upper part of the page and the text on the lower. Folk prints became popular at that time. According to a historical reference every year started from the tenth lunar month, and the markets were filled with new calendars, all sizes of door gods, charms and papercut blessings in gold and coloured paper for the coming new year festival. These folk prints thus came to be known as Nien Hua or New Year Prints.\n\nA Russian named Koslov found some old prints from a ruined pagoda in Black Water City, Kansu Province, whilst exploring in China in the year 1908. One of the prints is in a form of a poster-like illustration of 2′5′′ × 1′ in size depicting four historical beauties of four different dynasties printed in black ink on yellowish colour coated paper. According to the printed year mark, it was made in the period of Southern Sung, 1127-1279 AD and is believed to be the oldest surviving Chinese folk print or Nien Hua printed by woodblock in the world. The print is now kept by the Alexander the Third Museum in Moscow.\n\nWoodblock was developed to print paper money at the time of 998-1022 AD in the Sung Dynasty, but did not last long as the woodblock printed paper notes were too easily forged. Later the government changed to using bronze plates instead. The designs on the plates were not engraved, but were moulded by using carved woodblock moulds by the same method used to make picture bricks in Chin Dynasty and the illustrated roof tiles in Han Dynasty. It is the prototype of woodblock printing.\n\nAt the time of 1041-1048 in the Northern Sung, a Chinese commoner Bi Sheng developed the use of movable types made of baked clay for printing, and later by using carved woodblocks for the types. This method did not attain extensive use because of the large number of characters used by Chinese: an ordinary book required at least four to five thousand different types.\n\nThe woodblock prints of the Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368 AD, are characterised by their boldness and simplicity. Double colour printing was developed in this period. Two blocks were used for printing. Some books printed in this period had the text printed in black and the notes printed in red.\n\nWoodblock printing was extensive by the time of the Wan Li reign of the Late Ming 1573-1619 AD, as paper making", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209032, "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "162\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nAmerican Baptist Foreign Mission Society and the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church in trust, to invest, reinvest, and keep invested for the upkeep of the rest home at \"The Barrens.\" [the Geil property at Doylestown] The trustees are directed to sell any other real estate necessary for funds for the upkeep of the rest home and the inmates.\n\nMARYKNOLL IN CHINA\n\nThose readers who enjoyed reading the long extract from the unpublished history of the Maryknoll Mission which appeared in the last issue of the Journal may wish to know of three books which through the lives they record, provide more information on its work in China.\n\nThe first, Bishop Walsh of Maryknoll, by Raymond Kerrison, published by Putnam's of New York in 1962, deals with one of the first six students to enroll in the Maryknoll Society in 1912, a newly founded order devoted to training foreign missionaries. From 1918 to 1936 he served in South China, returning to the United States to become superior-general of the Order for the next ten years. The second, entitled The Pagoda and the Cross, The Life of Bishop Ford of Maryknoll, is by a fellow Maryknoll priest, John F. Donovan, M.M., who served in China with Bishop Ford for ten years. Father Donovan, whose account of Bishop Ford was published by Scribner's, New York, in 1967, is also the author of the third book, a life of Father Bernard Meyer, M.M., under the title A Priest Named Horse (a reference to his Chinese surname of Ma) which was published for the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America in 1977.\n\nAll three men were among the party of five priests who arrived in Yeung Kong, Kwangtung, at midnight one week before Christmas, 1918. They came to this area because, the year before, the French Roman Catholic bishop of Canton had agreed to cut off the southern portion of his vast South China vicariate and give it to the new, untried American missionary society. In 1921 this mission area was extended to take in a large section of north-east Kwangsi, with the city of Wuchow as a centre, and in 1925 to include half the former Swatow vicariate of the Paris Foreign Missionary Society. This was the body which had decided in 1917,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213312, "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-1994", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "114\n\nSmith, Michael G. Crystal Power, Llewellyn Publications, 1993\n\nSung, Z.D., The Symbols of 'Yi King' or the Symbols of the Chinese Logic of Changes, The China Modern Education Co., Shanghai, 1934\n\nThe Text of Yi King', The China Modern Education Co, Shanghai, 1935\n\nWalters, Derek, The Fung Shui Handbook: A Practical Guide to Chinese Geomancy, Aquarian Press, London, 1991.\n\nFeng Shui, Pagoda Books, 1988.\n\nWebb, Richard, \"The Village Landscape'. Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong, eds, P.H. Hase and E. Sinn, Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, 1995.\n\nWilliams, C.A.S. Chinese Symbolism and Art Motifs, Charles E. Tuttle, USA, 1974\n\n- Outlines of Chinese Symbolism, Hong Kong's Living Environment, Customs College, Peiping, 1931\n\nWilliams, Martin and Richard Webb, 'Rural Landscapes', The Green Dragon, Hong Kong's Living Environment, Green Dragon Publishing, Hong Kong, 1994.\n\nWilson, B.D., 'Notes on Some Chinese Customs in the New Territories', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 23, 1983\n\nWilson, Colin, The Occult, Grafton Books, 1971\n\nYau, Hong-key, Geomantic Relationships, Beliefs, Culture and Nature in Korea, University of California, Berkeley, Chinese Association for Folklore, Corporate Unit Cultural Service, Taipei, 1976.\n\nAcademic Papers, Newspaper and Magazine Articles\n\nAu Yeung, Mabel and Arthur Kan, 'Let the Good Times Roll', Magazine, undated,\n\nChung, Challina, \"Two Lions Wait for their Tryst with Destiny\", Hong Kong Standard, 28 January, 1985\n\n'Countering Fung Shui', Building, Development, Real Estate and Construction Review, South China Morning Post, August 1982", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216046, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 345, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "279\n\nfrom\n\nsince. Legends claim it to be either a Buddhist pagoda dredged up the bed of the Yangzi Song dynasty from about 1000 AD or a memorial shrine to a Song dynasty prefect of about 1090.\n\nA stone Stupa or dagoba [containing Buddhist relics] is situated on a stone platform supported by four pillars over a busy street in front of the Guan Yin Cave to the north of Yuntai Hill to the west of Zhenjiang. In years gone by people heading for the small ferry across the Yangzi had to pass under it and gained confidence for their chancy ferry crossing from the protective power emanating from the relics. It is said to have been built during the Yuan dynasty during the 13th century.\n\nDaily life of foreigners in this insignificant Treaty port\n\nDuring the heady days of westerners within the Yangzi basin the steady stream of river steamers sailing the river under the protection of foreign flags and the twin fleets of protective river gun boats of the RN and USN, trade flourished and even an early form of tourism existed. Zhenjiang was famous for silk piece-goods, silk cord tassels for official hats, medicated wine called White Flower Wine, Baihua Jiu, aromatic plants, and fine sturgeon. However, for the foreign residents the greatest bane was the boredom. Although there was the Club where cards, drink and perhaps a few books and newspapers helped while away the long evenings, the ennui of the same faces, the same voices and the same topics of conversation was sufficient to bring some to the verge of suicide and some over it.\n\nLife was fairly constrained. There were only two provision stores to serve the foreign community during the first decades of the 20th century, Foo Chong and Chong Hsin. And according to L.C. Arlington Zhenjiang Concession, despite its very limited numbers, boasted its own aristocracy, with the Consul and the Commissioner of Customs as joint Sovereign Lords. The port, he added, was full of individuality, and social life; and the clubs - that for the Upper Circles [Zhenjiang Club] and that for the Lower Strata [Customs Club] - combined to produce constant gossip and occasional friction.20 There were a number of peculiar characters but none more peculiar than an American missionary who had been divorced by his wife owing, it was said, to his peculiar ways. He professed to carry out the teaching of St. Paul by consorting with the coolies in the native city, and providing them with\n\nPage 345\n\nPage 346", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216311, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "19\n\nestablished to restore order within the temple's community of resident monks. In 1944 this committee restored the Da Xiong Bao Dian, and the next year, 1945, the Bao Ta. Once the Sino-Japanese War had ended, in 1946 life in the temple returned to a resemblance of its pre-war normalcy. However, the tranquility which existed within the temple for the next three years was suddenly disrupted when the Communist's captured Shanghai in May 1949 and proclaimed the People's Republic in October 1949. With all the disasters the temple had survived over the previous 900 years, the worst was yet to come.\n\nPeople's Republic, 1949-2003\n\nIn June 1949, one month after their capture of Shanghai, the new Communist government took over the temple, and on October 1, 1949, the day celebrating the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the Red flag of the P.R.C. was flown from the top of the pagoda. This unprecedented disrespect shown by the new regime to the temple by flying its flag from the pagoda was only the first in a series of incidents which illustrated the temple's now endangered status. The temple grounds were drastically reduced in size by at least two-thirds when their garden area was seized by the state and converted into Longhua Park in 1954. The temple's halls were temporarily appropriated by the government in January 1956 for a series of meetings held between local government officials and Chinese businessmen to explain and then celebrate the new policy of abolishing private enterprise in favor of a new system of joint private-state companies. The celebration involved a party for 2,000 people which undoubtedly included activities such as smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol which are contrary to the Buddhist faith. This temporary appropriation of the temple by the government for non-religious purposes was herald of worse things to come during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).\n\nIn the summer of 1966 Longhua Temple suffered a devastating series of events over a one month period which destroyed nearly all vestiges of its centuries old heritage. On August 24, 1966 a mob of more than 1,000 Red Guards (Hong Wei Bing) rushed into the temple and in one day destroyed all of the temple's Buddha statues, library of books, treasures, and art work. The next day, August 25, the Red Guards returned with the intention of destroying the Longhua Pagoda (Bao Ta), which we've seen had probably been built in the Northern Song", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]