[ { "id": 208320, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "28\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\nagainst a more aggressive enemy.82 Furthermore, in the absence of strict discipline and competent middle-grade officers, the elaborate military evolutions of the parade ground could not be preserved on the battlefield, Chinese tactics were often absurdly simple, or outlandishly naive. One general reportedly planned to arm his men with bags of pepper to be thrown in the faces of the advancing Japanese, whereupon they would be attacked by spearmen.84 Chinese commanders were continually baffled by Japanese tactics, indicating a general lack of acquaintance with even the rudiments of modern warfare. A pincer attack by the Japanese, which threatened the rear of Chinese troops, was almost invariably successful. Even when solidly entrenched and well-armed, Ch'ing forces seldom held their ground for as long as they should have.85 Demoralization and lack of leadership were the root causes.\n\nAnother serious problem was the almost incredibly poor marksmanship of the Chinese in rifle and artillery fire.86 This problem was unquestionably related to inadequate training and discipline, and false economy in drill. During the war there were numerous reports of naval officers being thrown off the bridge by the concussion from their own guns, indicating either the lack of regular practice, the failure of superior officers to supervise gun drill, or both.87 The military commander-in-chief at Shan-hai-kuan undoubtedly spoke for many commanders in informing the British military attaché that he did not believe in musketry instruction for all his troops, since \"it was quite sufficient to have ten good shots in each ying [battalion] to pick off the Japanese officers.\"88 In the early defense of Wei-hai-wei, Liu Ch'ao-p'ei of the Anhwei Army resorted to newly-mounted quick-firing cannon only after two of his older, less effective pieces had jammed.89 In the absence of adequate leadership and training, the Chinese found, contrary to normal experience in war, that although they were on the defensive most of the time, and usually had numerical superiority, they almost invariably suffered much heavier casualties than the Japanese. According to one estimate, China lost over 56,000 men in the fighting to Japan's paltry 4,117.90\n\nAt sea the situation was little better. Although Admiral Ting, a former Anhwei Army cavalry officer, won the praise of virtually all foreign observers, the Peiyang navy proved totally incapable of contending with the Japanese fleet. At the battle off the mouth of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208323, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "MILITARY EDUCATION in CHINA, 1842-1895\n\n31\n\nChinese society.103 The new content of military education, which emphasized technical skills and diluted traditional values and loyalties somewhat, created a new professional elite that was significantly different in outlook from even such relatively progressive (and rare) individuals as Chou Sheng-chuan.104 For all his innovativeness, Chou remained bound by the inhibiting institutional structure of the Anhwei Army as well as the limits of his own educational experience within that force. As a result, he was never able to resolve certain fundamental conflicts in his self-image, attitude, and approach toward military affairs and reform.105\n\nOne is tempted to see in Chou the tensions of becoming \"modern\" and remaining \"Chinese\" suggested by Joseph Levenson, and even a kind of nineteenth-century version of the \"red versus expert\" dilemma of more recent times. Although Chou obviously admired Western military organization and repeatedly solicited foreign military advice, he was also anxious to demonstrate that the Chinese yung-ying model was in many respects equivalent or superior to the Western model, and he often reacted quite defensively to foreign criticisms.106 Chou admired foreign technology (at one point maintaining that bullets were more important than rations), but he also repeatedly stressed the human factor in warfare, down-playing on occasion foreign advantages in organization and weapons, emphasizing the importance of \"will\" (chih-ch'i), and periodically suggesting to Li Hung-chang the utility of rapidly recruiting volunteers (i-yung) and employing them as \"surprise troops\" (ch'i-ping).107\n\nObsessed with the need for intensive drill, Chou nonetheless continually employed the Sheng-chün in non-military tasks which undoubtedly compromised its fighting effectiveness—work on military agricultural colonies (t'un-t'ien), land reclamation, flood and famine relief work, and so forth.108 Finally, although Chou seems to have considered himself to be a professional soldier, and was anxious to foster positive attitudes toward the military, he, like virtually all of his fellow officers and commanders, esteemed civil status and sought identification with the civil bureaucracy.109\n\nThe more genuinely professional education provided by the Tientsin Military Academy after Chou's death helped resolve some of the tensions that seem to have plagued Chou.110 Certainly, it allowed the many Tientsin-trained commanders in Yüan Shih-k'ai's Peiyang Army to accept more readily the modern principle and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210051, "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-1984", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "TEMPLE ORACLES IN A CHINESE CITY\n\nA Study of the Use of Temple Oracles\n\nin Taichung, Central Taiwan*\n\nJULIAN PAS\n\nPrelude\n\nIn the early morning of February 26, 1978, our group of over a hundred pilgrims from Taichung arrived in the city of Peikang, one of the major centres of the Matsu cult. The ch'ao-t'ien temple there was first built in 1694 and enlarged in 1775. The whole previous day had been spent in visiting temples in other places and burning incense to prepare for this solemn visit. As we arrive, the sedan chair of the goddess which we had brought from Taichung is carried toward the temple gates by ten strong men; the pilgrims follow behind, while musicians blow high-pitched trumpets and beat gongs and drums.\n\nSoon our group disappears inside the temple gates, while the great bell and drum are beaten to welcome the visiting Matsu. All the courtyards and halls are crowded with worshippers. It is still three weeks before the deity's birthday celebration but already every day large crowds of visitors pour into the small town from all over Taiwan. Peikang is the seat of the mother temple of Matsu on the island, and hundreds of temples claim affiliation with it.\n\nWhile the visiting gods and goddesses are carried into the inner shrine and seated on the altar tables to pay homage to the Peikang Matsu, the crowd of pilgrims go about their private devotions. They offer incense to all the deities enthroned here, pray to Matsu, tell her about their problems and uncertainties at home, and ask her advice. Matsu's counsels have been embodied in her temple\n\nTo prepare this survey I was greatly inspired by my learned friends Mr. Liu Chih-wan, a research scholar at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Institute of Ethnology, and by Professor Wolfram Eberhard of the University of California at Berkeley. I am also indebted to the untiring efforts of Miss Ch'en Yu-mei in Taichung, who collected many samples of the temple oracles. I finally wish to recognize my gratefulness to the Tunghai University in Taichung: my team of anthropology students, 1977-78, contributed to the completion of the Taichung sample collection, while the Centre for Environmental Studies kindly offered me office space. (Dr. Pas is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada,)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210052, "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-1984", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "JULIAN PAS \n\noracles. Many deities in China have their own set and devotees consult them for all important questions, problems or difficulties. They believe that after honest prayer and a gift of incense or other offerings, the compassionate goddess will manifest her advice through the paper oracle slips, printed by the temple officials.\n\nOn the altar are several bamboo tubes, each containing 60 bamboo sticks numbered from one to sixty; they can be found in almost any temple in Taiwan.* Here in Peikang, however, there is a large number of sets since the flow of pilgrims is endless. Moreover, in many larger temples of wide reputation, one can nowadays see huge oracle containers three or four feet high, made of dark green marble, extracted from the Hualian mountain quarries. The bamboo sticks in these marble containers are very long.\n\nWith almost no elbow space the people kneel on the floor in front of the sacred images. Incense smoke curls up to the carved beams and one hears the unceasing noise of shaking bamboo sticks and the accompanying clatter of the small or large moon-shaped divining blocks dropping on the temple floor. The noise is non-stop but there is reverence in the atmosphere, and the worshippers believe that Matsu's spiritual power is at its strongest here in her Peikang shrine.\n\nI am standing near a pillar on the side, watching the whole scene of devotees coming and going, of groups leaving the temple, and groups arriving to the joyous sounds of bell and drum. I watch the people, study their facial and bodily expressions and realize that their sense of religion is perhaps different from the Western type. Yet, there is faith in their actions and an implicit trust in the power of the goddess. Her oracles are the especial focus of this power. An older lady goes to the marble container, shakes the sticks (she cannot lift the heavy container itself, of course) and picks up one of them. She puts it on the altar table, takes a set of small divination blocks — there are dozens of them here — and holds them with both hands at the level of her chin. Her lips mutter prayer; she must be asking the goddess whether the numbered stick she has just taken is her true and correct answer in this case. The situation\n\n* See line drawings on following pages, by Ho Yu-dao, of Taichung, Taiwan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210069, "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-1984", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "19\n\ncome. From a religious viewpoint, Taichung is a rather average and conservative town; there are no very old and large temples of provincial reputation, attracting large crowds of tourists or pilgrims. In that respect, Tainan and Taipei are more famous, and of course so are other old places like Peikang and Lukang, once very flourishing fishermen's settlements but unable to keep up with modernization. Still, their temples keep attracting steady flows of pilgrims from afar.\n\nIn recent years the provincial and municipal governments have taken a more active interest in the religious life of the people. This can be seen as a continuation of the old imperial system, when religion was strongly supervised and even controlled by the officials, but the present day practice includes quite a few innovations. One innovation is the requirement that all temples should be legally registered. In municipalities this can be done at the city hall. The administration of the cities includes a department of population (min-tsu pu), which in turn has a sub-department of religious affairs. In 1976 the Taichung city hall printed a list of all the temples duly registered; upon request I obtained a copy. Later on I was allowed to borrow and photocopy a similar list in Tainan, whereas in Kaohsiung no such list had been printed yet: I was permitted to look through the register containing all the filled out registration papers sent in to the city hall by the temples.\n\nI expect that all the major cities in Taiwan (Taipei, Keelung, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Yangmingshan) will have such a list by now, and each county or hsien government has started to register all the temples within their own jurisdiction. Copies of all these registers have to be sent to the provincial government. This will hopefully make future temple research much easier: to me and others it has often been a time-consuming and frustrating experience not to find up-to-date temple lists providing the most basic information, especially in a rapidly changing urban environment, where temples are continuously being broken down and rebuilt elsewhere.\n\nThe city of Taichung was one of the first to complete a list of the city temples. (Tainan was earlier: my copy dates from 1974.) When I visited the \"religious officials\" again in the autumn of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211655, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "45\n\nOn another occasion the main Wang Yeh of the Five was on his way to Hsikang in central Taiwan on a tour of inspection when he encountered a demon causing trouble. He had gathered together a large force of spirit soldiers from the Underworld and was causing great hardship and harm to the local people. The Wang Yeh summoned the other four Wang Yeh and, with help from Kuan Yin, the local City God, and the Ma Tsu from Peikang, he defeated the demon and his army but suffered a wound to his head. Although repeated efforts have been made by craftsmen to repair the damage to his head the wound can still be seen today. Some say that the wound on the Wang Yeh's head was the result of his fight with the Yu Ying Kung, but whatever the reason might be, the people look upon the deity as a hero.\n\nIn Fulai, a village near Chia1 in central Taiwan, the main Pestilence Wang Yeh of the five on the altar is afforded an honour generally reserved for powerful major deities like Kuan Kung. He possesses a horse whose image stands alongside the side wall of the main hall of the temple.\n\nThough the Pestilence Wang Yeh are 'popular' deities they have their demonic aspects as well as their divine and are in general looked upon as dangerous, awesome and fearsome spirits to be approached with great circumspection. A number of devotees believe that the task of the Pestilence Wang Yeh is to police the World and control demons. While a small minority regard them as healing gods the majority believe that their function is to ward off and even attack demonic influence. If the attack is successful, it leads to a cure.\n\nBeing awesome deities the Pestilence Wang Yeh are only worshipped when devotees have a problem which requires the dispersal or destruction of malignant and demonic forces. Only very rarely are these deities approached by worshippers seeking advice and therefore the use of fortune slips and forms of communication such as divining blocks between the devotees and the deities are not usually to be found on the altars dedicated simply to them. Divining blocks are used however when temple committees wish to ascertain the views and wishes of Wang Yeh concerning his personal circumstances such as the location or use of his images.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh are not approached for aid and advice as are, say, agricultural or fertility deities. Their role is limited to protection, and by extension to cures from pestilential diseases. They are, however,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213871, "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": 223, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "197\n\n3) Politics, like other business investments, is risky but potentially profitable. It is very much the case in financing a government while trying to satisfy vested interests.\n\nMarket for Political Investments\n\nThis raises the question of under what circumstances financing a regional government is possible? A convenient starting point is to look into the mentality of the time. In a despatch to the Colonial Office, C. Clementi, the Governor of Hong Kong and a famous sinologist who graduated from Oxford, diagnosed a decade of unsuccessful British policy toward China by saying:\n\nA China united under a central Government is not applicable to the facts... China is a civilization, not a state\n\nHis contemporary also commented that\n\nIf Italy was but a geographical expression, China until very recent times has been but a social expression. China has been a society, not a state; and a Chinese, a familial not a political animal.\n\nIn a polity as large as China, regional distinctions are enormous, but these contemporaries believed that the split was between Canton and Beijing. In the book, “Oriental Trade Methods” one finds the following passage:\n\nI observed that the Cantonese have been called the Irish of China. They are traditionally and by temperament against the government, against the constituted authority of Peking [Beijing]...\n\nThe Beijing government was first under Yuan Shikai and his followers who were recruited from his Beiyang Military Academy. After Yuan's death, his followers divided into several camps such as Anhui and Zhili. They were named the \"Beiyang militarists\". The Canton government, nominally, was under Sun Yat-sen. Without an army of its own, until 1924 when the Huangpu Military Academy was established with Soviet aid, Sun and his Canton government had to rely on the \"guest armies\" from neighboring provinces - the Yunnan and the Guangxi troops, all of whom proved to be ungovernable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 } ]