[ { "id": 204419, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "42\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nof the ordaining monastery or some other monastery, and they were supposed to spend the next five years in meditation and study. This was the first stage of their career as monks.\n\nLife in the Meditation Hall was strict. One slept only five hours a night and meditated about ten hours a day. Rising was at 3.00 a.m. followed by an hour of morning prayers, then an hour's rest; breakfast was eaten before dawn; after it came four and a half hours of meditation. This meant sitting in the lotus position for forty minutes, then having a drink of tea, then twenty minutes circumambulating the altar, then going back to sit, then some more tea, more circumambulation, and so on. Circumambulation prevented the joints from getting stiff, but one had to keep on with mental exercises while doing it. It was not just a matter of walking about. Lunch came before noon and was followed by an hour's rest, two hours' meditation, an hour of afternoon prayers, supper at 5.30, and three and a half hours of meditation in the evening. At ten o'clock the monks went to bed. If one of them dozed during meditation the next morning, the monk on patrol, or hsün-hsiang w†, would tap him on the back. If he talked during meals, quarreled, or broke any of the other rules, he was beaten severely.\n\nThe daily schedule varied from monastery to monastery. Rising in the winter was later and retiring earlier (except during the so-called Meditation Weeks in autumn, when for up to forty-nine days one slept only two hours a night). But the schedule I have given is typical.\n\nSometimes I have asked monks whether they did not get bored meditating ten hours every day. They deny it vigorously. They say there was a programme, a method. For instance, one might be trying to find an answer to a standard question like \"What was my original face before I was born?\" The Instructor would come over and say: \"What are you looking at?\" If one replied, \"At the buddhas and bodhisattvas,\" he would say \"Where are the buddhas and bodhisattvas?\" One could not answer and was beaten. Then the Instructor would ask: \"Who is being beaten?\"\n\nI am afraid that the subject of methods of meditation is too large to embark on here. It is true, however, that many monks found themselves unable to master it, particularly Ch'an (Zen)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204665, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "132\n\nCLIVE ROBINSON\n\nHouse-boats are usually moored by the lakeside and it is possible to walk ashore into the fields across a plank. But one's chief means of transport is the shikhara which arrives each morning and remains until one has finished with it at night. A shikhara is the Rolls-Royce of gondolas full of soft cushions and gaily patterned pillows — and its crew of two young and cheerful Kashmiri is at your disposal all day to paddle swiftly and silently through the lotus-covered waterways to wherever you choose to go. On long expeditions, such as to Ganderbal three hours away, a crew of four is necessary especially if the day is hot.\n\nEach morning the tradesmen arrive by water: the postman, butcher, chemist, grocer and the florist. The latter, a picture with his boat covered from stem to stern in all the brilliant colours of the Valley's flowers. Hard for the ladies to resist! Later come the famous Srinagar dealers, also by boat. \"Mr. Butterfly\" with his exotically embroidered men's pyjamas and his exquisite sets of ladies' underwear; \"Suffering Moses\", renowned for his papier mâché ware; and, perhaps hardest of all to refuse, \"Subhana the Worst\". It was in Subhana's shop, after a large Persian lunch, that I once spent more money in one afternoon than (I trust) I am ever likely to do again.\n\nNagin, where we moored in \"Golden Gleam\", has a large house-boat, in the centre of the lake, from which one bathes or water-skis. And out of the lake the narrow water channels lead past floating gardens, orchards and meadows to Nishat Bagh and Jehangir's famous Gardens of Shalimar where we picnicked one afternoon sitting on Persian rugs and drinking tea out of a lovely samovar.\n\nBut it is wise to remember that the lotus-existence of life on a house-boat in Kashmir is an insidious one and each day it is harder to break the spell. The visitor is wise who says at the beginning how long it is to last and, if he is fond of mountains and the country, plans his expedition at an early date.\n\nThe local bus, complete with Kashmiris and their retinues of hens and pigs, took us to Pahalgam at the foot of the high mountains and there we found our camp already pitched.\n\nIt was by a stream at the end of the Liddar valley and within a stone's throw of the Prime Minister's summer lodge. Eight ponies were\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204668, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "KASHMIR HOLIDAY\n\n133\n\ngrazing round the tents and our staff from the boat, now transformed into mountaineers, plus the owners of the ponies were all waiting to receive us. Two of the ponies had been hired to carry the ladies on the trek but in point of fact they were never used except by Gaffar and his son when their feet got sore.\n\nA large log fire was already alight outside the larger tent, hot water was waiting for the canvas baths and a three-course dinner was being cooked outside the cook's tent down-wind. This, I would add, was the normal evening routine throughout our trek, for the ponies with all our tents and supplies would pass us during the morning and everything was set up before we reached camp at night. Generally one pony stayed with us to carry the lunch and our spare clothes, and later we perched on the top two live hens that we had bought from some shepherds we met on the way. They were intended for dinner one night but we became so fond of them that they survived the expedition and came all the way back to the boat with us.\n\nThe way led along the west side of the Liddar river, past Arau, the last village before the pass, and to the foot of the great Kolahoi glacier. Here we camped, at 8,500 ft., and spent the next day exploring the pink-coloured glacier and watching life in the valley: marmots, snow pigeon, white-capped redstart, chough and Himalayan griffon. By the third evening we had reached the Yamher Pass and as it was too late to attempt the crossing we camped at the foot in a bare plateau. By now we were far above the tree line and as it was very cold we had gathered wood on the day's walk and stacked it on the top of the ponies' packs.\n\nNext day we were lucky for there was not a cloud in the sky and when we reached the top of the Yamher at 14,000 ft. the high peaks of the Himalayas stretched in a great semi-circle before us. Dead ahead, clear and glittering in the sun, was the unmistakable magnificence of Nanga Parbat (26,660 ft.) whilst to the west was the fringe of the mountains in the Hindu Kush. Eastwards lay the peaks of Ladakh and Baltistan. It was unforgettable.\n\nTo the uninitiated the only part of the whole walk which may bring a slight fluttering in the stomach is the first 500 feet of the descent from the top of the Pass. But help is always at hand", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205425, "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-1967", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "180\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nChildren's toys and games are not overlooked, and are detailed in the chapter on the Tenth Moon. This was the season for kite flying, often with aeolian harps attached. The forms mentioned include the flamingo, wild goose, and flying tiger, all painted with extreme care. Tun is fond of seeking motives for children's amusements and considers the kites beneficial in making the eyes clearer as they are strained to look after the mounting objects. He finds a similar value in shuttlecocks. These were made of a skin covering sewn over a copper coin, with a bunch of feathers attached to the top with a cord. When children kick them about it promotes the circulation of the blood, and keeps them warm. As a side-line the glass factories produced two forms of trumpet, one gourd-shaped, and the other of conventional type. By blowing these the young people were obliged to take deep breaths and filled their lungs with fresh air. Boys of the poorer class ground stones into small marble-like balls which they kicked about as footballs, so keeping the blood circulating in their extremities.\n\n\"Peace Drums\" sound like very modern propaganda. They consisted of an iron circlet over which a donkey skin was stretched. They were furnished with a handle like a fan, at the lower end of which was a loop with a number of iron rings. The drum was beaten with a rattan cane making a booming noise that contrasted with the jangling of the rings. Diabolo was a favourite toy, and the flanges were provided with a rectangular opening to produce a humming sound when sufficient speed was acquired. The cotton string which operated the reel was always given a twist, and some children were very skilful at operating a diabolo with only one flange balanced by a ball-shaped piece of wood.\n\nNothing in the local scene escapes the observant author, who describes fighting crickets and the seasonal birds, with notes on their training. He describes one autumn fruit, Tou Ku-niang as being “shaped like a small egg plant, red as coral, round, glassy and slippery.\" It was, he says, a great favourite with the young, and owes its name \"Fighting girls\" from the contention it arouses for its possession.\n\nThe book is lavishly illustrated with Chinese line drawings and several coloured plates, whilst inside the covers are skeleton maps of Peking, with conventional signs for places of interest referred to in the text. In addition, there are six most useful", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205522, "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-1968", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES\n\n59\n\nlater, were badly damaged by insects, so much so that one copy of the catalogue of this collection, printed in 1873, is annotated to indicate which titles had to be discarded for this reason.\n\nWe now move on fifteen years, to 1867, when the Victoria Library had fallen on evil days. No doubt a further search would reveal more of its history in the years between, but this must wait for a future article. On 21st January an editorial in the Evening Mail opens \"It seems probable that the decline and fall of the Victoria Library will afford material for the local historian during this year of grace 1867.\" The reason was apparently that the membership had fallen to 60, whereas to provide the necessary income from subscriptions 80 to 100 members were required (yet in the satisfactory report for 1851-52 already noted the membership had risen to only 66). The Evening Mail goes on to say \"There is no advantage to be derived from membership at all equivalent to the high rate of subscription.\" This rate was $2.00 a month. Although the Evening Mail praises the quality of the magazines received, it notes that there are not enough of them, and only a few of the subscribers make much use of them. Similarly so many local residents themselves subscribe to overseas newspapers that there is little demand for those taken by the Library. Of the book stock the main criticism is that it consists almost entirely of standard authors — Scott, Dickens, Thackeray and Cooper are mentioned and neglects current literature. Most people again have their own copies of the former, but would be glad to subscribe if they might be kept up to date with modern writers. The Evening Mail editorial ends with a suggested solution, to convert the library into a book club, the books purchased to be distributed amongst the subscribers instead of being retained as the property of the institution.\n\nThis solution was not adopted, and by the end of the year, after a further decline in membership, it appeared that the gloomy prognostications in the Evening Mail editorial might be fulfilled. Before coming to that situation, however, it will be interesting to examine a list of the 34 newspapers and periodicals which the Victoria Library received regularly at this time. The list appeared in the China Mail (the new name of the Evening Mail) for February 15th, 1867, and is rather inaccurately divided into “Newspapers\" amongst which are included Punch and the Saturday Review", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205523, "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-1968", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "60\n\nH. A, RYDINGS\n\nand \"Monthly Periodicals\" — including Quarterly Review and Once a Week. The complete list is reproduced here, rearranged alphabetically:\n\nAll the Year Round Blackwood's Magazine Calcutta Englishman Chambers's Journal\n\nChina Express\n\nChina Mail\n\nColombo Observer\n\nCornhill Magazine\n\nDaily Press\n\nDublin's Magazine\n\nFrank Leslie's Illustrated\n\nFraser's Magazine\n\nFriend of China\n\nFriend of India\n\nGalignani's Messenger\n\nHongkong Government Gazette\n\nHarper's Weekly\n\nIllustrated London News\n\nJapan Herald\n\nLondon Society\n\nMacmillan's Magazine\n\nNavy List\n\nNorth China Herald\n\nOnce a Week\n\nPall Mall Gazette\n\nPunch\n\nQuarterly Review\n\nSaturday Review\n\nSingapore Straits Times\n\nSporting Magazine\n\nStraits Times Extra\n\nSydney Morning Herald The Times\n\nWeekly Alta\n\nMany of these titles have, of course, long since ceased to be published, but it is perhaps surprising how many have survived, whilst others are still used for research purposes, although no longer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205595, "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-1968", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "132 \n\nJ. NACKEN \n\nfollow their pattern sage. They pluck and eat their fruit when still unripe; this may be partly because they are afraid of thieves, and partly because the means of sending their produce to the market are so primitive and slow. \n\nOne of the most interesting aspects of street life presents itself at noon. Tables are set in convenient places shaded by a large umbrella, A bench for guests stands in front, whilst the busy cook stands behind. He cries out his delicacies and the price of them, which varies from 2 to 8 cash a bowl. Those of the Chinese who can afford it sit down to \"shik-án-chau.”* There are beef, mutton, fish, and shrimp-congee, macaroni, vermicelli, sago soup, etc. Those of the hawkers who have not yet earned so much capital as to have such a stall, offer cheaper delicacies on their perambulating tables. You may get several kinds of cooling gelatine or jelly with sugar for 3 cash a bowl, or a glass of lemon-water, or cake with meat or peanuts inside. Cakes vary according to seasons and festivals. \n\nIn the evening all the stalls and hawking tables are illuminated by paper lanterns, which, indeed, make the streets look lively and interesting. Besides the articles mentioned above you may hear cried out: Pickled, salted, or candied fruit, betel nut, almonds' milk, lotus-nut soup and a kind of whey made of milk. In winter the cooling dishes and drinks are exchanged for flour-balls and cakes boiled or cooked with oil. \n\nI think we have now listened long enough to street cries for selling articles of food, and I should not wonder if my friend ex-claimed, \"Dear me, I had no idea that the Chinese had such a variety of chow-chow.\" The fact is, I have not by any means exhausted my list of street cries of this nature. The Cantonese are gourmands and they pride themselves on their art of cooking. They have this saying:- \n\n\"Happy is he who is born in Soochow, who has his meals in Kwong-chow, and who dies in Laou-chow.”† \n\n* : to eat the noon meal; to take lunch. The last two characters have probably given rise to the pidgin-English chow-chow, to eat. \n\n† The Soochowites are envied by our orange-skinned Cantonese friends, being of a fair complexion; Laou-chow is said to have the best wood for coffins.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206894, "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-1973", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n165\n\nments which were capable of delicate romance and noisy battle music.\n\nA tour through the large compound of the National Museum gave a perspective of the best examples of Thai art from the Dvaravati to the Ratanakosin periods. The latest discoveries of pots from Ban Chieng, thought to date from approximately 5,000 BC, were on display. In a museum as packed with treasures as this is hard to select any one piece as particularly outstanding; certainly the magnificent Avalokitesvara from Chaiya and some of the early Khmer pieces were much appreciated. The museum has the added advantage of containing the buildings of the former palace of the second king, which themselves are attractive and include the chapel of Buddhaisawan with its large lacquer cupboards and fine frescoes. The lavish carving of the royal funeral carriages, the rajarot, was also noted.\n\nThe group visited Suan Pakkard Palace in Bangkok, the home of H.R.H. Princess Chumpot of Nagara Svarga, whose large collection of antiques, including some fine Ban Chieng and Sukhothai pieces, is elegantly and informally arranged in adjoining traditional Thai houses modernised for contemporary living. The grounds also contain the only lacquer pavilion to survive the Ayuthia period; with its fine decoration it has been restored to its former grandeur. After visiting the palace the members of the tour were entertained to lunch by Her Royal Highness.\n\nPitsanuloke was used as a base for the visit to the Sukhothai area. In that city Wat Mahathat with its exceptional polished bronze statue of the Sukhothai period, Phra Buddha Chinarat, was seen. At Sukhothai itself some time was spent in the vast area of Wat Mahathat, strewn with ruined chedi, chapels and ante-chapels, where there is a number of stucco Buddha statues recently restored. The well-preserved Khmer style temple Wat Si Sawai, with its three symmetrical prang and double enclosure of brick and laterite was in its severity in marked contrast with the ebullience of Wat Mahathat. The ruins of Wat Trapan Ngoen and Wat Sra Si and their moats were noted, the massive walled Wat Si Chum was visited, with its vast and contemplative Buddha open to the sky surrounded by high walls with a hidden staircase in their mass, up which the adventurous climbed. The site of the ancient celadon kilns, Tao Turiang, was seen and Wat Saphan Hin, at the end of a long stone path up a hill from which it gets its name, offered a fine view over", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207155, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "220 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nlarge paper bag. This cost 10 cents and the number of dim sum was 18 pieces, usually sufficient for 8-9 persons. The article made picturesque comparisons between the sizes of different foods, then and now, with much larger pieces being supplied in the past. Prices too came in for odious comparison. \"The difference in price in the old days and now is too great: people have said that it may be compared to the difference between the legs of mosquitoes and cows”. \n\nTea house business begins at dawn. Those in Western open between 5-6 a.m, and close about 9 p.m. nowadays. According to the article, the tea houses of 50 and more years ago started business before dawn and closed at 10 a.m., and opened again between 11-12 to 3 without doing business at night time. The interior of tea houses was very colourful. The waiters used slang to report, usually in a loud voice, the consumption of patrons for making up their bills. The customers lolled about and took things at their ease, putting their legs on their own or another stool, often dressed only in a singlet and shorts in the summer months. This sort of thing can still be seen in one of the tea houses that we will visit (the Foo Lung Tea-house, 382-386, Queen's Road, Central) and at lunch time many of the patrons bring their singbirds in cages which they hang around the walls. 50 years ago and more no women were present in the tea houses because at that time it was not the practice for them to appear in public places; and no doubt this added to the informality noted above. \n\nTea houses were also the scene of musical entertainment of a special Cantonese type known generally by the name of nam yam (✯✯) or \"Southern tunes\". Like Cantonese opera, the themes were often concerned with historical stories, handed down from one generation of entertainers to another. Blind musicians and singers often performed these roles. Until this year, this type of entertainment was given in the Tim Nam Tea House in Wing Lok Street, now under demolition. According to the former manager, the majority of the audience were boat people from the cargo boats plying in the harbour. In recent years this traditional type of entertainment has declined in popularity and both singers and audience were confined to a small group of devotees.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207441, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n201\n\nin the recreation room and put disinfectant in a bowl outside the Japanese office. The general spoke to nobody. Two months earlier, in March I had been ousted from my office in the front of the building and this pleasant room henceforward became the headquarters office of the Japanese within the hospital. I was surprised that they had not seized this earlier.\n\nOn 23 August 1943 the President of the Japanese Red Cross Society, Prince Shimatsu, inspected the hospital. At all times the appearance of the hospital was good, but at this as at all inspections the Japanese laid great stress on having the recreation room looking specially well. In addition to white cloths on the tables and vases of flowers all the musical instruments and equipment for indoor games had to be laid out on display. As usual the inspecting officer had no parley with patients or staff.\n\nI have records of only three occasions on which British doctors from P.O.W. camps were allowed to visit Bowen Road. Major Ashton Rose, Indian Medical Service, was the doctor accepted by the Japanese as being in administrative medical charge in Sham Shui Po camp. I believe he had considerable influence with them, in so far as any prisoner could have influence. On 5 March 1943 he visited the hospital bringing with him some patients for admission and came again on 23 March with an officer patient for specialist eye examination. On the second occasion he stayed to lunch, a phrase which of course indicates a higher degree of sophistication than in fact we deserved. It was however something for us to be able to entertain a guest at all. We learned from Ashton Rose that the general state of prisoners in Sham Shui Po was improving and that the men were fitter. On 13 May Captain Woodward, an Australian serving with the I.M.S., came over from Kowloon to have medical advice about himself and on this occasion Saito came too.\n\nIt seems curious now to look back upon such things, but up to March 1943 the bomb and shell damage to the hospital inflicted fifteen months earlier had gone substantially unrepaired. The top floors were badly damaged and as I reported earlier the kitchen in the middle section connecting the two blocks of wards was completely destroyed. Rain poured in at these places as well as at other damaged areas and the recreation room below the kitchen was unusable in wet weather. The fact that we did not carry out repairs earlier probably resulted from our preoccupation at that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207500, "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": 268, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "260\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nfeet to help aircraft expected to drop supplies the next day. The sign had to be yellow, and the Japanese straw sleeping mats called tatami were used to construct the sign. Some huts in the Indian camp were blown down. We got Tokunaga and Saito to turn over St. Teresa's Hospital to us while we helped also by housing a number of people in our Assembly Hall. Our staff of rice grinders had stopped functioning and we had to use R.A.M.C. orderlies to help. We had been hoping that our sisters would have arrived but a party of them had apparently missed a ferry connection. A nearby typhoon accompanied by heavy rain caused the air drop of supplies to be postponed but the weather moderated and our marooned visitors were able to leave. Two women members of a religious order arrived from St. Teresa's Hospital distressed that a Japanese officer had disturbed them the previous night and I took them to the Indian camp where I arranged the move of patients and staff through Indian Army officers to St. Teresa's Hospital and I set about compiling lists of patients from all centres in order to classify those needing treatment and special transportation when relief arrived. We had a number of Canadian officers to lunch and Major Crawford was a welcome visitor later when he came to see the Canadian patients in hospital. He himself seemed in reasonably good shape by the standards of those days.\n\nIn consultation with Colonel Field certain difficulties over medical arrangements in some camps were remedied. The sisters in St. Teresa's Hospital were keeping three rooms for their own use and the Japanese were moving out. The St. Teresa's staff and patients would be fed from the Indian camp and we were now getting news over the radio which suggested that a relief force might arrive about the end of the month. An emergency operation was performed in our hospital on a patient admitted from camp. The disease was the same as that in the case of the patient whom I reported earlier had been received by us in Bowen Road in 1942 after ten days illness, when he died before surgery could be undertaken. Early surgery would have saved this patient and operation was totally successful in the case of the patient we had just admitted. Staff and patients were again being allowed out locally.\n\nBy 26 August I had occupied the office which Saito had used, and in St. Teresa's Hospital the sisters were now content with the arrangements while they also had access to houses at No. 317 Prince Edward Road, Major Evans was in charge here with Captain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207505, "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": 273, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n265\n\nAt this time I took part in some discussions on any action to be taken to report on the conduct of individuals while prisoners and I took the view that adverse reports should only be made in cases of the grossest neglect of duty and I made no report of this kind. Our staff and patients, apart from an occasional minor misdemeanour by one or two, conducted themselves splendidly.\n\nOn 4 September the large Empress of Australia arrived. I took two R.A.F. doctors to the Central British School where they saw something of the population of bugs and very understandably wanted to occupy apartments in nearby flats. By now the R.A.F. had brought 3000 troops into the Colony and they needed hospital services for their sick. There was, as might be expected, some confusion in the various administrations. Some people were moving too fast with too little thought, while others thought too long before moving.\n\nOn 5 September I went off to the Empress of Australia early and later found that Surgeon-Captain George Abercrombie was now Fleet P.M.O. in the battleship H.M.S. Anson. Abercrombie was later to be a founder member and in due course a distinguished President of the College of General Practitioners (later a Royal College), and I had the pleasure of meeting him quite frequently in London later. He kindly invited me to lunch in the Anson one day. Long voyages in warships in wartime conditions had left him looking rather pale, while of course I was pretty thin by that time. The main dish at lunch was a mutton stew in which the mutton was extremely fat and the watery part of the stew was laden with fat globules. I well remember the look of horror on his face as he watched me dispose of what to him must have been a repulsive dish.\n\nAt this time I learned that Colonel Lindsay Ride was replacing Field as senior officer in the army in Hong Kong. Ride had commanded our Field Ambulance during the fighting in Hong Kong. He was a professor in the University and his Chinese students helped him to escape as soon as we surrendered to Mainland China, where he set up an organisation to keep in touch with events in Hong Kong and which helped people to escape from the Colony. I believe that it was through his thoughtfulness that my wife learned that I was still alive after hostilities ended but none of the messages I sent off from Hong Kong after our release ever arrived. Ride was later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, and knighted for his services to the Colony.\n\nThe R.A.F. hospital moved into the Central British School", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207711, "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-1976", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "84\n\nELIZABETH L. JOHNSON\n\nor keening done at weddings and funerals. They did little, if any, embroidery, home weaving of fabrics, or sewing: this work was generally done by specialists. The main reason for this very limited development of textile arts was, in addition to the prevailing poverty of the area, the fact that all younger women were engaged in heavy labour outside the home. While most of the housework and child-care was managed by elderly women, the younger women did most, if not all, of the agricultural work, and in addition often did heavy carrying work for wages. Many of the men were away for extended periods of time, working either in the urban areas of Hong Kong or abroad; some had local businesses, and others did not work at all. As a result, in many families, women had primary responsibility for subsistence agriculture, bearing an extremely heavy burden of work. The following is the daily work schedule 25 years ago of a woman now 55 years old, a schedule which was repeated in basic outline by many other informants.\n\n“I got up at 5:00 and fed the baby\n\nthen I made a fire and boiled water and put rice porridge on to cook\n\nthen at 6:00 I went to carry water, making four trips to the well\n\nthen I went to the fields to water the vegetables\n\nI cut the vegetables and took them to market\n\nI used the money to buy food and returned home\n\nat 8:30 we had breakfast of rice porridge\n\nthen I went to the Texaco oil company to carry kerosene\n\nat 12:30 I came home for lunch\n\nI worked again from 1:00 to 5:00 carrying kerosene\n\nwhen I got home I cleaned the pig pen\n\nthen I went to work again in the fields\n\nin winter I returned home at 7:00, in summer at 8:00\n\nafter dinner I bathed the children\n\nthen I carried several loads of firewood\n\nthen I prepared food for the pigs\n\nI fed the baby and went to sleep at 11:00”\n\nThis woman had eight children. Such a daily schedule left her little time for any other pursuits. According to another woman, now 80 years old:\n\n“When I was eight or ten years old I began to cut grass and carry firewood. I went with a group of girls, never alone. I was married when I was sixteen. After my marriage I had to work.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207749, "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-1976", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "CARL T. SMITH\n\n122\n\nKwun.\" In September there is an entry for \"Li Khi Sen, from Tseang ye\". This is probably the friend Khi-sem who was one of Tsin-kau's travelling companions.\n\nThe Hong Kong missionaries were delighted with the arrival of these refugees who were willing to receive Christian instruction and baptism. They seized upon their desire to join their relatives and friends in Nanking as a God-given opportunity to put the Taiping movement upon a more solid Christian foundation. There had been much discussion regarding the type of religious belief held by the Taiping leaders, and serious doubt had arisen regarding their interpretation of Christianity. The Rev. Hamberg hoped to raise sufficient funds through his publication of The Visions of Hung Siu-Tschuen to finance Hung Jen-kan's trip to Nanking. In reporting to the Mission Society he states:\n\nI have spent much on Fung [the Hakka version of the surname Hung] and his friends, and in order not to put a burden on the Mission have translated into English the account of the first [i.e. Hung Jen-kan] and written a small book which is now ready to be printed. Fung and his two friends left today for Shanghai. I have furnished them with the three different translations of the Old and New Testaments, Barth's Biblical History, Genahr's Catechism, a calendar and other writings, also a map in Chinese of the world, a map of China and one of Palestine, a model of a steel punch, copper matrices and the usual types, in order to show how Chinese characters can be printed in the European manner. In addition a few trifles, such as telescope, compass, thermometer, knives, etc. I am often asked if I will go to Nanking, however I have decided, and will not change my mind, that I will not go until I have received a regular and definite invitation to go. I have sought to establish what my obligations and duties are in this matter. The people who were brought to me I have baptized, instructed and assisted them on the way insofar as I was able. I believe that Fung respected me and would like to see me in Nanking, as he so often said. However, we cannot be definite about it, because we do not yet know if he will be successful in arriving at Nanking, and further, we cannot be sure that his friend there will welcome the idea, or that no obstacle will be placed in the way of foreigners, or that they have a real desire to be led deeper into the truths of God's words.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207788, "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-1976", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A ROAD TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN WEST CHINA 1942-46\n\n1 hydraulic jack\n\n1 small funnel\n\n1 syphon hose\n\n2 flexible spouts\n\n1 bleeding tube\n\n1 blow lamp\n\n1 inspection light\n\n4 wooden jack blocks\n\n2 fire grates\n\n3 charcoal sacks\n\n1 transmission pump line\n\n2 wheel wrenches and bars\n\n2 grease guns\n\n3 tire irons\n\n1 oil can\n\nTools (extra to Reynolds, personal kit)\n\n1 hacksaw frame\n\n1 heavy hammer\n\n2 screwdrivers\n\n1 cold chisel\n\n1 offset punch\n\n1 bearing scraper\n\n1 tire valve tool\n\n1 soldering iron, solder and acid\n\nFuel and lubricants\n\nPetrol\n\nfrom CK. 150 galls, Kansu petrol plus full tanks\n\nbuy in Kwangyuan\n\ncollect from FAU dump at Shuangshipu 9 drums\n\ncollect from FAU dump at Shuangshipu return trip 5 drums ......\n\nAdd full tanks at SSP on return trip\n\nTheoretical consumption at 8 mpg over 3,200 miles\n\nEngine oil\n\n15 gal. SAE 10 Det.\n\ngear oil\n\n2 gal. SAE 90\n\nBrake fluid\n\nalcohol petrol (red)\n\nbattery acid\n\n+ gal.\n\n10 gal. (for radiators)\n\n5 gal.\n\n1 bottle\n\nLen Bonsall, Garage manager\n\nTony Reynolds, Convoy leader\n\n \n 250 gal.\n 150\n \n \n 450 H\n 300\n \n \n 1150 gal.\n 100\n \n \n Total 1250 gal.\n 1200 gal.\n \n\nCorrected to:\nA ROAD TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN WEST CHINA 1942-46\n\n1 hydraulic jack\n\n1 small funnel\n\n1 syphon hose\n\n2 flexible spouts\n\n1 bleeding tube\n\n1 blow lamp\n\n1 inspection light\n\n4 wooden jack blocks\n\n3 fire grates\n\n3 charcoal sacks\n\n1 transmission pump line\n\n2 wheel wrenches and bars\n\n2 grease guns\n\n3 tire irons\n\n1 oil can\n\nTools (extra to Reynolds, personal kit)\n\n1 hacksaw frame\n\n1 heavy hammer\n\n2 screwdrivers\n\n1 cold chisel\n\n1 offset punch\n\n1 bearing scraper\n\n1 tire valve tool\n\n1 soldering iron, solder and acid\n\nFuel and lubricants\n\nPetrol\n\nfrom CK. 150 galls, Kansu petrol plus full tanks\n\nbuy in Kwangyuan\n\ncollect from FAU dump at Shuangshipu 9 drums\n\ncollect from FAU dump at Shuangshipu return trip 5 drums ......\n\nAdd full tanks at SSP on return trip\n\nTheoretical consumption at 8 mpg over 3,200 miles\n\nEngine oil\n\n15 gal. SAE 10 Det.\n\ngear oil\n\n2 gal. SAE 90\n\nBrake fluid\n\nalcohol petrol (red)\n\nbattery acid\n\n+ gal.\n\n10 gal. (for radiators)\n\n5 gal.\n\n1 bottle\n\nLen Bonsall, Garage manager\n\nTony Reynolds, Convoy leader\n\n250 gal. 150\n\n450 H 300\n\n1150 gal. 100\n\nTotal 1250 gal. 1200 gal.\n\nRevised to proper HTML format with and \n:\n\nA ROAD TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN WEST CHINA 1942-46\n\n1 hydraulic jack\n1 small funnel\n1 syphon hose\n2 flexible spouts\n1 bleeding tube\n1 blow lamp\n1 inspection light\n4 wooden jack blocks\n3 fire grates\n3 charcoal sacks\n1 transmission pump line\n2 wheel wrenches and bars\n2 grease guns\n3 tire irons\n1 oil can\n\nTools (extra to Reynolds, personal kit)\n1 hacksaw frame\n1 heavy hammer\n2 screwdrivers\n1 cold chisel\n1 offset punch\n1 bearing scraper\n1 tire valve tool\n1 soldering iron, solder and acid\n\nFuel and lubricants\n\nPetrol\nfrom CK. 150 galls, Kansu petrol plus full tanks\nbuy in Kwangyuan\ncollect from FAU dump at Shuangshipu 9 drums\ncollect from FAU dump at Shuangshipu return trip 5 drums ......\nAdd full tanks at SSP on return trip\nTheoretical consumption at 8 mpg over 3,200 miles\n\nEngine oil\n15 gal. SAE 10 Det.\ngear oil\n2 gal. SAE 90\nBrake fluid\nalcohol petrol (red)\n battery acid\n+ gal.\n10 gal. (for radiators)\n5 gal.\n1 bottle\n\nLen Bonsall, Garage manager\nTony Reynolds, Convoy leader\n\n250 gal. 150\n450 H 300\n1150 gal. 100\nTotal 1250 gal. 1200 gal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207846, "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-1976", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n219\n\nof disbelief is other than what might be called purely contextual. Let me illustrate. Early in my study I found myself, during a visit to a remote coastal village, a fellow guest at lunch with two building contractors engaged in some local works. The conversation between my hosts and me turned to fung shui. One of the contractors spoke fluent English, as I discovered when he addressed me across the table to lament the nuisance caused by geomantic beliefs. I concluded that he had had trouble at some time with geomantic obstructions, and I read into his final remark on the subject an envy for a world where people would not be allowed to raise fung shui against builders; the talk had turned to how the authorities across the border in China had cast out geomancy along with the rest of traditional religion, and the contractor cried: 'Yes, they have cancelled all that bloody nonsense'. (If the others at the table had understood what he had said they would have been very shocked, for they had been giving me an enthusiastic account of fung shui and its benefits). Some weeks later I came across the contractor again, this time in the area where he lives, and, since I was already on good terms with members of the circle within which he moves, I was able to discuss many aspects of Chinese religion with him. I discovered in him a passionate interest in and devotion to fung shui. It is not necessary to conclude that he had been deceiving me on the first occasion. He had perhaps been irritated by the consequences of the fung shui beliefs of others; his own beliefs, bound up with his own interests and those of his close associates, were another matter. Again, I am acquainted with a man in the New Territories whom I may fairly describe as a devotee of geomancy and a constant client of geomancers who, quite sincerely and without any sense of strain, condemns the foolishness of people who raise fung shui objections to government works designed to benefit them. What one believes and how and in what circumstances one chooses to express and implement one's beliefs are two different things.\n\n49. The Administration is often forced to pay for geomancy; it is not alone. People make real economic sacrifices for their fung shui beliefs. Graves and dwellings are moved and altered, often at great expense. How are we to define and account for the nature of this faith? Fung shui is in fact a complex of beliefs concerned with a central theme in Chinese metaphysics: man's place in nature and the universe. But the last few words are a Western way of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208004, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n27\n\nMalaya a \"new nationalism” has not yet emerged. It is in a sense \"bought off\" by the prosperity and good times made possible by the oil revenues.\n\nA recent account of Brunei in a well-known western journal began this way: 21\n\nThere are moments when visitors feel this sleepy state on Borneo island's northern shore is something dreamed-up in a Hollywood script conference.\n\nOur film opens in some place wild like the South China Sea coast. It's a place run by a sultan — you know, a chap with a turban and a name like Sir Omar Ali Saifuddin. He lives in this big box of a palace with a flock of cars and a bunch of hungry relatives.\n\nAnd get this, the country sits atop a huge pool of oil so nobody wants to work. In fact, most everyone just kinda mooch-es off the government, which sits back and collects millions from the oil company.\n\nThen we need something spectacular like a huge mosque with a gold-plated dome that's lit with coloured floodlights at night.\n\nExcept for the presence of the opulent gold-domed Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin mosque which now towers on the skyline Pigafetta of Magellan's crew would still recognize Brunei if he were able to sail up the river to the town today,22\n\nThe \"Water Village” (Kampong Ayer) has changed little in character. More than half the people in the capital live in houses built on piles above the water of the river, and it is said that some old women in the kampong have never set foot on land, having spent their whole lives in the river village. Today, however, Kampong Ayer is dominated by the mosque, constructed at the water's edge and opened in 1958. This dignified building, the pride of the present and the fulfilment of the hopes of the past, approached from water on one side and land on the other, seems to stand symbolically where tradition and progress meet. For although the water village changes little, on the landward side Brunei Town grows, encouraged by the easy wealth obtained from oil revenues and by the fervent desire, both patriotic and religious, to outdo its neighbours,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208100, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "\"LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)\"\n\n123\n\nSunday is the most convenient time for a temple visit during a six-day work week although the temples, run by individuals as a profit-making business, are open every day. On Sundays, especially before noon, one can find the more popular temples jammed with Fujianese all providing offerings, burning incense and making supplications for help or blessings. The worshippers are overwhelmingly female and are all Southern Fujianese, and as more people arrive in Hong Kong from Fujian the numbers that go to temples are constantly rising. For the past ten to fifteen years, though, their average age has also been rising; most worshippers readily acknowledge the reluctance of younger people to go to the temples for formal worship.\n\nYet for middle-aged Fujianese women, especially those who came to Hong Kong in the mid-1950s, the temples serve as one of the few places available to women to get together and share their problems and thoughts with each other. Anxious over events they have little control over (such as business earnings abroad) and worried about the health and welfare of husbands and families hundreds of miles away in the Philippines and in Fujian, the women come to secure blessings and protection for their families. It is no wonder that middle-aged Fujianese women are the mainstay of the traditional religious tradition in Little Fujian. The comfort and support of the other women there, though, is often as important as that derived from the spirits.\n\nThis woman-to-woman bond is a key one in male-deficient Little Fujian and can also be seen in the common practice of a woman and her children sharing a flat with other such households. Such joint ventures are usually undertaken only with women from the same locality in Fujian. As such the pattern is also representative of the heavy reliance on \"tong-xiang” (lit. \"same district,\" but more broadly, one's fellow ethnics) to help one adjust to Hong Kong life and to make life a bit more pleasant. Close friends are almost invariably all “tong-xiang”, and even in places of work or recreation where groups are ethnically integrated in the spatial sense there exists informal friendship networks that are substantially ethnically enclosed. Lunch-hours and work schedules are often arranged around these groupings as workers \"re-segregate” to eat and work with their ethnic-mates. The Fujianese do not see this as discrimination or unusual; they consciously acknowledge their separateness and explain it by proclaiming:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208157, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "180\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA visit will be made by coach to five of the oldest graves belonging to the family and, in addition, to a school in Kat Hing Wai at Kam Tin to see some of its heirlooms.\n\nQuite a bit of walking is involved and lady members are advised to wear flat shoes for comfort and ease of movement over hill paths. The visit will start from the Tsuen Wan Ferry Pier at 11 a.m. Members are advised to catch the regular ferry from the Central Terminus, Hong Kong (35 minutes by ordinary ferry, 20 by hover ferry). Please check ferry times with HK Yaumatei Ferry Co. (Tel. 5-220393) and make your own arrangements. Otherwise, come by car and park locally, allowing plenty of time to find parking space (try the western end of Yeung Uk Road, in the area of the Yeung Uk Road Sports Ground, in the same road as the pier).\n\nMembers are advised to bring a picnic lunch. The visit should end between 5--6 p.m., back at the Tsuen Wan Ferry Pier.\n\nThe tour will be limited to two buses and members and their friends are invited on a first-come-first-served basis. Please telephone names to Mrs. Kam at 12-403396 (District Office, Tsuen Wan).\n\nProgramme notes will be available on the day.\n\nDAVID LIU and JAMES HAYES\n\nJoint Organizers\n\n29.11.76\n\nTHE TANG (4) CLAN IN THE NEW TERRITORIES AND ITS OLDEST GRAVES\n\nAccording to the genealogical record kept by the Tang clan at Kam Tin, it originated from a branch settled in Kut Shui County (*) of Kiangsi Province during the northern Sung period (960-1126).* \n\nIt all started when one of the ancestors by the name of TANG Fu-hip (###) passed through this part of Kwangtung on his way to his new official assignment as the magistrate of Yeung Chun County () after he had successfully passed the imperial examination and was awarded the chin-shih degree during the reign of Hsi Ning (1068-1077).\n\n* With the exception of \"Kiangsi” romanizations used in this Note are in Cantonese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208163, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "186 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nrelating to it. The tour will include a visit to the Tin Hau Temple at Miu Kong, Tsuen Wan, where there is a memorial to the war and a tablet to the Tsuen Wan villagers who were killed. Also to the Kwan Tei Temple at Kam Tin, where part of the Shing Mun villagers were resettled in 1928, which contains a tablet to the Shing Mun villagers killed in the struggle. \n\nFrom the Tsuen Wan ferry pier, the party went first by coach to the Shing Mun reservoir, sometimes called the Jubilee Reservoir because of its completion at the time of King George V's jubilee year (1935). A picnic lunch on one of the vantage points with barbecue and sitting out facilities was followed by a talk by Dr. James Hayes, Tour Leader, on the history and livelihood of the former villagers who lived in the valley for nearly 300 years before their removal in 1928 for the reservoir project. \n\nAfter lunch, the party moved to Kam Tin where the main body of the Shing Mun people moved in 1928. Here our intrepid and helpful bus driver got into difficulties in a confined space between a USD refuse trailer and the gate to the school compound. He was rescued by the action of a group of Members who dismantled a tied up, projecting hawker cart whilst, with characteristic energy and flair, Professor Tony Reynolds directed the driver, conjuring up visions of problems expertly handled many years ago in far Yenan!* \n\nAfter this episode, we were welcomed by the village representative Mr. Cheng Siu-fong (*) and the Headmaster of the Shing Mun New Village School, Mr. Cheung Sze-man (X). We were entertained to tea in the school which has an interesting history. It bears the same name as the old school at Shing Mun Tai Wai built for the villagers by their leaders very many years before their removal in 1928. After the move to Kam Tin it was reprovisioned in the ancestral halls and in 1958, under a subsidized village school building programme supported by the Education Department and New Territories Administration, it transferred to the present six classroomed school building. \n\nOver tea our hosts told us something of the village history after the move to Kam Tin. The main difference was in livelihood, because their agricultural holdings by purchase and rent were only a fraction of those held at Shing Mun, inevitably since Kam Tin had been long densely settled by the Tang clan and later inhabitants. \n\n* See his article at pp 43-54 of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208365, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA \n\n73 \n\non one hand, have had connotations of slaughtering, and on the other, associations with 'breaking of clay or earth', as is done in ploughing. This is, of course, but a vague hunch; if, for the sake of our present argument, we accept this interpretation, we could transpose this hunch to the universe of Qingming and say that what is given to the ancestors as edible meat and drinkable wine is earth and rice. \n\n8. Order in Worship \n\nThe note from Yuanjiang, quoted above (p. ), tells us that grave worship started before Earth God Day which falls around the vernal equinox in the second moon. The ceremonies directed to the new graves took place before that particular date. Then there seems to have been an intermission of thirty days before the ritual was continued, and then it was focussed on the old graves. There is no explanation given in the chronicle for the different categories of 'new' and 'old' graves, so we will assume that new graves were those of the recently deceased. If we accept this we must look for possibilities to account for this difference between the two categories as it is represented in time, and why in that mode of representation the point of reference is She ri, Earth God Day. \n\nThis particular day was devoted to offerings to She ji, the Earth God.75 Meat and wine were used in this ritual. From Jiangling we learn that the meat for the She offerings was a mixture of pork and mutton which was placed inside a pumpkin.76 In Wuling the term sheng describes the meat. The day was generally for divining about the coming crops, and qi gu 'prayer for grain'. In Zhongxiang, according to the chronicler, there were shamanistic performances accompanying the offerings.78 \n\nThere are at least some superficial similarities between the Qingming practices and the offerings on She ri. In this context one main question concerns the sort of relations conceived of in this area of China as linking the grave ancestors and the She. I have found no substantial information from the Dongting area to provide us with any further clues. But it appears as if it was necessary to do the grave rituals for the recent dead before one could go ahead with the worship of the Earth God. And perhaps the She offerings were a necessary precondition for a successful grave worship at the older graves. At any rate, the note from Yuanjiang stresses the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208369, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n77\n\nOur findings lend support to my earlier suggestions as to the nature of the Qingming festival and its place in the annual calendar. What is new is a vague hunch that the yin and yang aspects of the ancestors, manifest in graves and tablets, are less clearcut categories than we have hitherto assumed. I even suggested as a guideline for future research that the bones needed the animation of the ancestral force associated with the tablets to be productive.\n\nWhat remains puzzling is the distribution of ritual events in time. It is as if there was a 'vocabulary' of complex signs which conveyed some sort of basic messages; but there is no clear fixed order between the ceremonies. In our survey of the Dongting area we have found that, for instance, grave worship was part of the New Year celebrations, Earth God Day, Qingming, and occurred further in the sixth, eighth, and tenth lunar months. In the Chinese 'standard' calendar as we know it from late imperial times, Qingming is the grave day—although, in some parts of the country, Chongyang forms a counterpart. Unless we satisfy ourselves with a reference to the ever-present diversity of local custom, we should attempt at explaining the distribution of ritual events within the annual cycle.\n\nThe oldest record of customs from the Dongting area I know of is the Jingchu shuishi ji, compiled in the Liang dynasty of the early 6th century. It is a calendar which describes the annual festivals and in which is added a philosophical commentary to explain the popular customs in terms of celestial phenomena, and so on. This work gives us a picture of the ritual year which may serve as a baseline for an understanding of historical processes affecting the system. It is possible, of course, that there was just as much variation in the Liang dynasty; still, the source may be useful in forming a hypothesis about the calendar system.\n\nIf we look at spring in the seasonal records of Jingchu, we may say that this season is ritually introduced on the Spring Equinox when sowing was started. On that day people did not burn grass. The avoidance of fire marks that the day was under special yin influences. On the Earth God Day there were offerings of meat and wine. People moved out to huts among the trees'. Meat was offered also to the shen spirits of the deceased. Then comes Cold Food when it was forbidden to make fires for three days — again a marker of a yin dominated period. The source mentions ritual cock fighting and swinging.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208552, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "198\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTHE MAN THE EMPEROR DECAPITATED\n\nI quote the following from notes taken at the Kat O ta-tsiu on 24th October, 1986:\n\nHalfway through lunch, I overheard Mr. Lau giving the Hoh Choh Shan story to one of the photographers from the Museum. I went over and asked him to repeat it. I have his version on tape. He reiterated that the name old people used was Hoh Choh Shan, but he thought it should be something else. This Hoh was a high-ranking official and worked at the capital. But his wife became pregnant while he was supposedly away from home. His mother, therefore, became suspicious. Then she learnt that he flew home every night. She became jealous and did something to his flying horse. So the next day he was late for the roll-call at court. The emperor wanted to decapitate him, but would rescind the order if he could name a hundred objects that could grow again after their heads had been chopped off. On the way home, he counted ninety-nine such objects (such as the sweet potato). When he got home, he saw his mother killing a chicken to celebrate his son's moon-yuet [one month after birth]. He asked his mother if the chicken would live without its head. [Of course it wouldn't.] The moment the mother answered in the negative, his head fell off.\n\nThere was a sequel to the story. At his grave three bamboos grew. Someone had left word that they should not be cut until a hundred days later. The advice was not followed. They were cut early and the bamboos flew into court but missed the emperor. [If they had grown for a hundred days, they would have hit him.]\n\nHoh Choh Shan was none other than the Tung Koon Paak, the Earl of Tung Koon whose descendants were decapitated by the Ming Emperor when his son was implicated in a conspiracy. The first half of this story I had heard once previously at Lung Yeuk Tau, but the second half was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208562, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "which drew a great deal of stimulating discussion: Leadership and Ideas in Singapore since 1945. Altogether then, there were twelve lectures during the year.\n\nExcursions\n\nDuring June, Dr. James Hayes, the very busy Town Manager of Tsuen Wan, and editor of your Journal, organised an excursion to his district. During preparatory work for the redevelopment of Northern Tsuen Wan various religious institutions came to the notice of his department, which was also able to discover more information about others. The group attending the excursion visited a Buddhist monastery, where they had a vegetarian lunch; another religious establishment for the so-called \"Three religions\"; the Holy Mother Yiu temple, in a squatter area; and a temple to a sect established to help opium addicts and which has branches also in Singapore. Another local excursion is planned for March 29 to Macao, with the help of Dr. Leigh Wright of your Council. It plans to take in visits to places not on the usual itinerary of tourist visits, such as the Theatro Pedro V. There will be a Portuguese lunch and information on the places visited will be given by Father Texeira who has helped us on past occasions. I would like to take this opportunity of thanking him for his generous help to the Society. This visit should be a 'must' for those who like old architecture, churches, cobblestone streets as well as archives and libraries.\n\nExcursions to neighbouring territories and states also remain an important part of the Society's activities each year. Some twenty-two members visited Kashmir and Kathmandu (with an unscheduled but very interesting overnight stop at Amritsar) during last Easter, under the leadership of your Hon. Secretary, Dr. Brian Shaw; and it was possible to make a refund to each participant of over two hundred dollars as a result of various economies. A further group of twenty will be leaving this Easter for Darjeeling and Sikkim; and in July a smaller number will go to Ladakh (“Little Tibet”). Some members expressed interest in proposed visits to Central Java and to sites in Thailand, but the numbers were not sufficient to make the trips feasible last year.\n\nOur requests to Peking concerning visits to cultural sites in Central China have unfortunately not yet received a favourable response, but our efforts will continue during the coming year. For\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208654, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "84 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\nthe drums. It is surprising what can be found in this Camp! Sister Rose Olive also gave a few piano selections. The latest wrinkle is the raffling of $100 notes at a discount of eighty. There has been a severe shortage of cigarettes for some time, and the smokers are becoming desperate with the result that discarded tea leaves, dried and treated with oil, are being tried. Incidentally, they have a vile odor. \n\nMARCH \n\n1—Our printer's devil has made a slight error: our songfest has been changed to Saturday evening, so yesterday was Saturday and today is Sunday. We had no afternoon services, as we received orders to remain indoors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., since the inferior white race is not permitted to gaze on the face of the new Civil Governor, who is expected out this way during the day. Brother Michael much improved. Of late, there has been growing dissatisfaction with the food and with the cooks. At times the rice has been under-cooked and the meat and vegetables either infinitesimal or tasteless and, in all, the people throughout the Camp are feeling the pinch of hunger. It is also asserted that the cooks, especially in the American kitchen, are living off the fat of the land, and that means off our fat. Everybody feels that he could eat twice or three times what he gets, and while the rice satisfies for the moment, it is quickly digested and one is soon hungry. We greatly miss the more substantial bread and also feel the lack of sugar and fruits. Repeated representations have been made to the authorities on the score of increased rations, but to no avail. It is also suspected that the Chinese comprador in charge of the rations is also using \"the hatchet\" or, in other words, \"squeezing our rations,\" and complaints have been made, with the apparent result that during the past few days we have been given a few slices of bread. \n\n2—Martial law is again on from twelve to five, but it was later called off. That meant we had to stay indoors during that period. Evidently some of the august sons of the Son of Heaven must have been in the vicinity. \n\nJust a word or two about our own quarters. We Maryknollers, that is priests and Brothers, together with Fathers O'Connor, C. M., Benson and Norris, C. P., and Brothers Anthony and Cornelius, Christian Brothers, have the whole top floor of Block A-1, that is,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208679, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46 \n\n109\n\n20- Another community meeting but no further developments on repatriation. At 11 o'clock this morning we were agreeably surprised to learn that Sister Paul and Sister Corazon were on \"The Hill\" and that we could go up and see them. Again Sister Paul moved the adamant hearts of the Japanese and secured permission to enter the Camp to say goodbye to her departing Sisters. We learn that our own names have been handed in to the Foreign Office in Hong Kong for release from the Camp, and our hopes are high. We also learn that Father Tennien is in Chungking, and that Father Briggs and Father Hater are both quite ill. Since Sister Paul and her Sisters have been in Hong Kong, we have been enabled to receive weekly parcels of foodstuffs, and this has helped a great deal. For some weeks a league of softball has been in progress, and today the last game of the season was played between the British and Americans, the score being 15 to 6 in favor of the latter. A Stanley Cup was fabricated by Camp artisans and presented to the winners.\n\n22-The first anniversary of our newly ordained Maryknollers, and they enjoy a Camp lunch at the Maryknoll Sisters' apartments at 7:00 p.m. The repatriation ship, the Asama Maru has been further delayed. Due to some circumstance or other, our rice ration on the 23rd and 24th was very meager, but Father Meyer came to the rescue with his toasted rice which he has been saving for such a rainy day.\n\n25-Rumor hath it that our papers or forms are now on “The Hill,” and that we may get final word any day now to pack up and leave for Hong Kong. Mr. Gunn, an American, and seven others, British and Portuguese, are advised they may leave Camp tomorrow.\n\n26-We were delighted today to receive a visit from His Excellency, Bishop Valtorta, who asked permission to come out and say goodbye to the repatriates. He could remain but a short time, and bade the rest of us to have hope, as he felt we would be released in due time. He is also trying to secure the release of the Canadian Sisters. The Asama Maru is now scheduled to leave on the 30th, the repatriates going on board the 29th. The British are still incredulous about repatriation of the Americans. There is now some talk about possible repatriation of British women and children and old men, but nothing definite.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208734, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "164\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nSo far so good: I can agree with some factual statements expressed here but do not understand the logic of the author's reasoning, as, for instance, expressed in his conclusion (pp. 167-168);\n\n\"Life and death, and the idea of pollution and purity show a remarkable consistency in ordering the religious concepts of the Taiwanese, be they ordinary folk or priests. The fact that they apply equally to Buddhists and Taoists shows that there is an underlying reality behind the apparent diversity of the two religions. I would say that this is evidence that the distinction between life and death services is as analytically useful as the distinction between Taoism and Buddhism in trying to understand the manner in which the average Taiwanese townsman understands his religion.\"\n\nNot digressing about the curious statement about \"the apparent diversity of Buddhism and Taoism\", I'd like to point out that the author is trying to punch open doors. Here we come to the central theme of this book: the author has rejected the traditional three-fold division of Chinese religion as inadequate and unworkable, but overlooks the possibility that the popular religion is in fact a totally different entity. He does not have to prove that according to the folk religion the universe is divided into two realms: life and death, pure and impure. On the one hand, this division is part of their world view: on the other hand, it should not be over-emphasized; and equally the classification of temples based on ritual purity and impurity should not be over-emphasized either. Philosophically and historically speaking the author's \"thesis\" is very shaky. This chapter is full of inaccuracies and subtle distortions and, in my view, the conclusion built on them has no validity.\n\nFrom a philosophical viewpoint, the argument is weak. Although the author states that \"the symbolic universe of Taiwanese religion is too rich...\" and that he will examine only \"a few of its major features\" (p. 136), he does not fulfil his promise. He has not attempted to explain to us the general religious world view of Taiwan's folk religion. The yin and yang concepts are part of this, but are not the only major feature. Besides, even the yin-yang philosophy has not been treated well. He over-states the dichotomy whereas in Chinese philosophy there is no such strict dichotomy but rather polarity. As a result, he also over-states the dichotomy of pure and polluted, of life and death. At least the author should have explored\n\n!\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208860, "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "Kong throughout the year to a large variety of destinations in China. Other societies of a cultural nature in Hong Kong do not seem to have experienced the kind of difficulties we have, in obtaining touring permission, and it appears now that it is of great advantage to have a local contact to work through, and on a society's behalf. This is something we might perhaps try to pursue for our own future interests.\n\nThe visits to Northern Thailand and Korea which were tentatively suggested previously, were not in fact followed up, for a variety of reasons. Members are always able to make their own arrangements to travel to neighbouring territories for brief holidays, and we feel the Society's best role is to cater for interests of members wishing to travel to places either more difficult of access, or very expensive when arranged on an individual or non-group basis. Substantial group airfare reductions, lower per head costs for jeeps and buses, and so on, all help the Society to provide very substantial savings to those joining our tours. Overseas tours have been a very attractive part of our programme to many members of the Society, and Dr. Shaw, who took over the major role in arranging long-distance tours from Ms. Helga Berger, has worked very hard on our behalf. I would like to take this opportunity of thanking him very much indeed for giving so much thought and attention to these very successful expeditions.\n\nTo be solely responsible, however, for making what are often quite complicated arrangements, is very time-consuming and we will have to give some thought in the future to sharing out the tasks that are involved: perhaps calling upon other members not only of the Council but of the Society generally to initiate plans and conduct such tours. I would ask anybody who is interested in contributing time and effort to this aspect of our activities to contact Dr. Shaw or other Council members.\n\nThe Council also arranges from time to time day, or half-day, trips, to places of local interest. In March of last year a group went to Macau and visited the Bishop's Palace, Leal Senado Council Chamber, Club de Macau, Teatro Dom Pedro V, and several churches not normally open for tours. They also were fortunate in enjoying a lavish Portuguese lunch at the Club de Macau hosted by Mr. and Mrs. Carlos and Mr. and Mrs. Rodrigues. The tour leaders were Carl Smith and Leigh Wright of your Council, and, at the Macau end, an old friend of the Society, Father Teixeira. I would like to thank all those involved, in various ways, in making this a very pleasant trip.\n\nxii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209131, "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-1981", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "20\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nand calling them up. A spirit, as one shaman said, may not be just casually summoned: it would be like making unintelligible noises at people, and could be as dangerous as it would be to summon an aristocrat in the village without the proper courtesies. Even so, to summon spirits is always dangerous; and the shaman and the patient go into the ceremony armed with iron for strength, and only after the ritual area has been cleansed with water and incantations. When the ceremony is over the patient is only gradually re-introduced to the mundane world over a period of three days, during which he is required to observe taboos.\n\nThe curing ceremonies that a shaman can perform are three in number. The first, and by far the commonest, is what is called caring for the sick. This ceremony is the shaman's simplest routine for diagnosing and curing illness; it lasts only one evening. The shaman and his equipment—a drum, a spearhead, and a bunch of fresh green leaves with ritual qualities—are fetched by a member of the sick person's household. When the shaman and his patient are prepared and ready, the former covers his head and face with a cloth and beats his drum, chanting an invitation to one of his spirit friends to come and help. When the spirit arrives—signalled by a shaking of the head and a hissing—the spirit, speaking through the shaman, sometimes in another voice and even in another language, asks why he has been summoned. He is shown the patient and asked to help. The shaman, with the spirit in him, then examines the sick person. He may hold up his drum (which is open at one end) and place a lighted candle between the drum and the patient and look through it into the patient's body to see if the spirit can discover what is wrong. If the inspection is successful, the spirit, through the shaman, tells the assistant and the audience what is the matter. Everybody then asks him to help. He may refuse and depart immediately, in which case the shaman hisses violently and shakes his head until the spirit is gone. He then yawns several times and asks the audience what has happened. After some discussion the shaman then summons another spirit,\n\nIf, however, the first spirit does diagnose the cause of the illness, he will usually help cure it, though he may have to leave the shaman, still in trance, in order to fetch another spirit to help in the cure. This second spirit may not be one of the shaman's familiars. When the diagnosis and the treatment are both agreed on, the shaman holds up his open right hand and sings, asking for gifts in the form of invisible stones and flowers from sky spirits. When these are given he shuts", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209132, "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-1981", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n21\n\nhis hand, catching the gifts which he then presses into the patient's head. More gifts are asked for, and are pressed into the base of the throat, the belly, the back, and other places that are sore. These stones and flowers are to strengthen the patient and to begin to drive out what is dirty, and to repair the damage done by the attacking spirit to the patient, either by its rough handling of the soul or by spearing it. Injury of that kind to the soul reacts on the body and causes it damage as well.\n\nThe next step is to finish cleaning out the sickness and any damage it may have done to the body; so that the soul, if it has already departed, may return in safety. First the shaman puts his lips to the places in which he has inserted the heavenly stones and flowers and sucks out the dirt and sickness, at the same time silently bidding what is harmful and unclean to depart. He then takes the bunch of leaves he brought with him and sweeps the patient from head to foot, sometimes singing aloud, but always bidding the sickness to go.\n\nThe treatment by this spirit is now complete. Often the helping spirit is the one who has caused the trouble because the patient in some way or other annoyed him. Once the man knows what he has done and has, as it were, apologised, or the shaman's spirit friends have persuaded the annoyed spirit to cease his attack, the situation can easily be put right. But before the spirit goes he may stop to gossip with the audience; he may also advise further treatment of the patient by other spirits; the cause of the illness may not be simple or single, and in any case one spirit's powers are limited, even if he did cause the damage. In simple cases it may not be necessary to fetch the attacking spirit; but if the attack is serious then the illness can only be cured by fetching the attacker; and it may take quite a long time to find him while the shaman explores his network of friends in the spirit world.\n\nThe attack on the man may not be the result of either anger, malice, or hunger; it may be the result of love or the wish for friendship. Spirits sometimes take an unreasonable liking for human beings — it is, as I said earlier, an improper and alarming state of affairs, and a sensible person (especially an aristocrat who has to consider his dignity at all times) is likely to ignore all the usual danger signals made by omens or in dreams. If the patient does that there is nothing for it but for the spirit to make the man or woman ill. After the spirit has made his wish for friendship known, there is nothing more the patient can do if he wishes to get better other than to accept the friendship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209352, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 9, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "Chinese University's History Department and editor of our 1981 Journal, spoke on Saikung district during World War II: the district being a regular escape route for prisoners of war from Kowloon.\n\nAfter a summer break we began again in October with Professor Shih Hsio-yen, Head of Department of Fine Arts at Hong Kong University, talking on recent Chinese archeological finds and how the Chinese on the mainland look at their origins. In December Dr. James Hayes led a tour of the New Territories, which included Sam Tung Uk village built in the eighteenth century and scheduled as a museum and cultural centre, and Tsuen Wan, with a vegetarian lunch at the Yuen Yuen Hok Yuen, Tsuen Wan, a temple complex belonging to a Chinese syncretic religious group. Also in December, Professor Rulan Chao Pian, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and of Music at Harvard, and currently visiting Professor of Music at the Chinese University, spoke on traditional forms of dance narrative in North China. Her talk was illustrated with video tape material. Finally, in January Dr. Graham Johnson, Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of British Columbia, talked on the Chinese in Canada, discussing their history from the early rural migrants who worked in the goldfields and on the railway, to the more sophisticated urban migrants going to Canada after 1967, many from Hong Kong.\n\nThere was very poor response to the two overseas tours offered through, or by, the Society during the year. The tour to India had to be cancelled through lack of sufficient numbers, and the tour of the Pearl River Delta consisted of six persons only, including the leader, Dr. Michael Lau, to whom I express my thanks. This year about seven members will be joining a tour arranged by Dr. Brian Shaw for late March-early April. The group will witness the annual sacred masked dance festival at Paro in Bhutan and also visit other places in Bhutan, and Darjeeling and Kalimpong. Other tours may be arranged by Dr. Shaw during the coming year, and Mrs. Craig will also be offering tours to members, who will be kept informed.\n\nAs the year progressed we found it increasingly difficult to obtain bookings at the Volunteer Officers' Mess due to heavy\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209493, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "H. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nshe opened a shop in Hong Kong, selling curios and objets-d'art. In 1927 she took a consignment of Chinese antiques, many from her late father's collection, to New York to sell. On October 10, 1927, she met her future husband in that city. Sir Travers Humphreys avers she was not, to English eyes, good-looking; others claimed she was attractive.20 But all agree she was charming and good-natured, much involved in charitable work.\n\nLess is known about Dr. Miao. Wai-sheung's relatives and friends never met him. He was a year younger than his wife. He was born in Chekiang (Chiang Kai-shek's native province) and, at the time of his trial, had a mother and sister living in Shanghai in the Chinese city. He claimed his father was a member of the Chinese Legislative Council (sic) and a Justice of the Peace. Miao studied law in China and later at Loyola University, Chicago. He was described as being extremely tall and slim, fluent in inaccurate English. His wife, a Cantonese, was petite, under five feet tall; so they were a noticeable couple together. They were married according to the rites of the American Episcopal Church. Siu was a devout Christian. Miao was probably a Christian, for Christianity was a sign of modernism in the early 1920s among the westernised, educated elite in Shanghai (later Marxism or Nationalism was to largely supplant all forms of religion and YMCA fraternalism among Chinese students and intellectuals). A newspaper report stated, in any case, that Miao 'professed Christianity before he died' (i.e., was hanged).91\n\nAfter marrying in New York, they honeymooned in Buffalo, then Albany where the bride had a minor operation to facilitate sexual relations (probably dilation of the hymen). About four or five weeks after their wedding, they left for a two-months' vacation in Europe before returning to China. They landed at Glasgow, stayed in Edinburgh a day or two, and on June 17, 1928, stopped at Grange-in-Borrowdale, a Cumberland village, close to Derwentwater. On the next day, January 18, they went for a walk in the morning, returned for lunch, and left for another walk, hand-in-hand, at two o'clock. Miao returned home at about 4 p.m. and said his wife had gone to Keswick, about four miles away, to buy some warmer underwear. She did not return\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209848, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "85\n\nLoan Word\n\nChinese Characters\n\n*Choy sum 蔡心\n\nConfucius 孔夫子\n\nCongou 工夫\n\nCumshaw 感謝\n\n*Chung Young 重陽\n\n*Dimsum 點心\n\n*Ding how 真好\n\n*Fanqui, 番鬼\n\nfankwei 番鬼\n\nFan-tan 番攤\n\nFen 分\n\nFeng shui, fung shui 風水\n\nFo 佛\n\n*Foki 伙計\n\nFoo yong, fu yung 芙蓉\n\nGalingale 高良薑\n\nGinseng 人蔘\n\nMeaning\n\nA species of leafy Chinese vegetable, with yellow flowers.\n\nK'ung Fu-tse n. the Chinese name of Confucius.\n\nA kind of black tea imported from China.\n\nIn the Chinese ports: A gratuity.\n\nA Chinese festival falling on the ninth day of the ninth moon on which according to traditional belief people have to go up to high places to avoid calamity. Also a day for sweeping ancestral graves.\n\nTidbits eaten at a Cantonese repast taken either in the early morning or at lunch time known as yum cha or 'drinking tea'. Literally meaning 'the most excellent best'.\n\nLiterally 'barbarian ghost', used to refer to westerners in the early days of contact between China and the west.\n\nA Chinese gambling game in which a random number of counters are placed under a bowl and wagers laid on how many will remain after they have been divided by four.\n\nA monetary unit of the People's Republic of China worth one hundredth of a yuan.\n\nIn Chinese mythology, a system of spirit influences, good and evil, which inhabit the natural features of landscapes; hence, a kind of geomancy for dealing with these influences in determining sites for houses and graves.\n\nChinese Buddha.\n\nA term used to refer to waiters in restaurants, but sometimes also used in the wider sense of people who work in the same organization, i.e., 'colleagues'.\n\nFu yung, lit. hibiscus: a Chinese omelet made with bean sprouts, green pepper, and onion and fried in deep fat.\n\nLit. 'mild ginger from Ko'.\n\nEither of two arallaceous plants, Panax Ginseng (Schinseng), of China, Korea, etc., or P. quinquefolium, of North America, having an aromatic root used in medicine by the Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209853, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "90\n\nLoan Word\n\nChinese Characters\n\nTyphoon\n\nWok\n\n大風/颱風\n\nWonton\n\n吞/餛飩\n\nYin, Yang\n\n陰陽\n\nMeaning\n\nA violent cyclonic storm or hurricane occurring in the China seas and adjacent regions, chiefly during the period from July to October.\n\nA large metal Chinese cooking pot having a curved base like a bowl and traditionally with a wooden handle.\n\nFilled pockets of noodle dough boiled in and eaten with soup.\n\nTwo complementary principles of Chinese philosophy: Yin is negative, dark, and feminine, Yang positive, bright, and masculine. Their interaction is thought to maintain the harmony of the universe and to influence everything within it.\n\nYuan\n\n院/元\n\n*Yum cha 飲茶\n\n*Yum sing\n\n# B\n\nZen\n\n禪\n\nThe basic monetary unit of China established in 1914; a department of government in the Nationalist government of China.\n\nLiterally 'drink tea'. A Cantonese repast taken in the early morning or at lunch time at which dimsum or small tidbits are consumed along with Chinese tea.\n\nEquivalent to 'bottoms up,' to drink the whole glass. Often used in mixed social gatherings of expatriates and local people.\n\nBuddhism. A Mahayana movement, introduced into China in the 16th C. A.D., and into Japan in the 12th C., the emphasis of which was upon enlightenment for the student by the most direct possible means, accepting formal studies and observances only when they formed part of such means.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209982, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "219\n\nIt was beautiful out there, amid real pine-woods. Near the bungalow was a small monastery and the monks in their wisdom did not allow any wood-cutting on their property. The bungalow was clean and well kept by the caretaker. Chun was his name so far as I remember, a sinister-looking rogue with a squint, who rarely smiled. Perhaps it was the loneliness which made him morose and surly. He had no wife, at least, not officially, and the pay was so small that he could barely live on it, for it was expected that he would make a good deal of extra money from visitors. He brightened up when I ordered supper and told him I was staying for the night.\n\nThere were two big rooms, plainly but comfortably furnished, and the kitchen and scullery were outside. A number of good books were on the shelves and I found a lot of old visitors' books, some dating back to the early 'eighties. I had no idea the bungalow was so old, and I became so immersed in the books that I forgot everything else, until Chun came in with the supper.\n\nIt was October and getting chilly at night, so I told him to get a fire going in the big round stove, as I wanted to have a long, cosy browse afterwards.\n\nChun was becoming quite amiable, and started a long story in pidgin about a bewitched boar, a big fearsome brute, which no one could kill. I knew how superstitious the Chinese were and took the whole story with a pinch of salt, until he took out one of the visitors' books and showed me an account of a shoot written by a Mr. Currie, an old-timer no longer in the port. Chun must have memorised the place for he knew no written English, and it was clear that Mr. Currie—or \"Cullee\", as he called him—was Chun's great hero, and when Currie roamed the hills after pig that was the Golden Age for Chun. He got more and more excited: \"That time, Master, plenty man come shootee shootee pig. Every week four five piecee man come. My catchee plenty cumsha (tips). My velly solly Mista Cullee have go homeside.\"\n\nAfter he had cleared away the supper things I settled down with the visitors' book. There were some excellent accounts of pig-shoots by Currie and his companions, ranging over several years, and with all the usual ups and downs, failures and successes. It was clear that they were written by a man who loved the sport.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210164, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "114 \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nlation hard at work getting in the second crop of paddy. The principal part of the labourers was the women, owing probably to the fact of the men being generally engaged in fishing. The paddy rice grows to a height of about two feet six inches. The fields are little patches of about fifty paces, on account of the unevenness of the ground. The rice is thrashed out of doors: first, in a tub with a screen, by a man, who takes a bunch in his two hands to strike the ears against the edge of the tub and then gives the rice again to be thrashed on a floor made hard with chunam, the Chinese asphalt. Ploughing is here done with a very primitive plough and a wonderfully small bullock, as the ground is soft and does not contain a single pebble, ... After being harrowed, it may receive a crop of sweet potatoes, or ground nuts. The women work with children on their backs. No one appears too young to take a part in the work. In the next fields are sugar-canes. \n\n9.29 \n\nThus long before 1841, the villagers of Hong Kong, and the shopkeepers and local boat people too, had settled into the routine of a settled life. Tied to their fields and houses, and to their businesses and daily occupations, they had established institutions of the kind that is usual in Chinese communities, including the shrines and temples that were the object of periodic and special rites through the calendar year. They were therefore to be numbered among those who, in another place and time, twenty years on at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, were described as \"the old inhabitants of this site, who are indeed orderly people” in contrast to newcomers who were suspected of being \"thieves and outlaws”.3 \n\n30 \n\nTheir good behaviour struck a series of visitors from outside. The famous botanist Robert Fortune, writing of his experiences on the Hong Kong area in the 1840s commented: \n\n\"In all my wanderings on the island, and also on the mainland hereabouts, I found the inhabitants harmless and civil. I have visited their glens and their mountains, their villages and small towns, and from all the intercourse I have had with them I am bound to give them this character. \n\nAnother observer, the military surgeon Keith Stewart McKenzie, \n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210350, "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": 321, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "300\n\nWONG TAK YAN\n\nbut also abroad as far away as Borneo. Raw materials for the kilns were not in short supply. Business was booming.\n\nUnfortunately, despite the good prospects, after several years, lime began to be imported into Hong Kong from both China and Japan. Because of the cheapness of labour in China and the highly mechanised nature of the industry in Japan, the price of the imported product was very low... furthermore, the Government normally insisted on the use of Japanese lime in its public works. As a result, the business of Hong Kong lime kilns had to face very severe competition, and they were unable to keep going. San Shing Lei Lime Kiln Factory closed in the early 1960s, and this historic industry came to a close.\n\nSince then, investment in Hong Kong has continued to grow. Under the influence of the development of the construction industry, land all along the coast has become valuable, and so, one after another, the lime kilns have closed until the industry has become no more than a feature of history.\n\nNOTES\n\nThis note was written in Chinese by Mr. Wong Tak-yan, Chairman, Tsing Yi Trade Association Ltd and President (1984-85) of the Rotary Club of the New Territories, following a lunch speech to the Club by Dr. J.W. Hayes in which he urged members of the Club with interesting family histories relating to the development of the New Territories to commit their memories to writing. The note was translated by the Editor.\n\n2 Plate 42.\n\n3 Plate 43.\n\n4 Plate 44.\n\n5\n\nPlate 45.\n\nPlate 46.\n\nPlate 47.\n\nOne small lime kiln still remains in business at Lau Fau Shan (editor).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210564, "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-1985", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "152\n\nFOUND IN A PENNSYLVANIA ATTIC –\n\nLetters from China 1903-1906*\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\nWhile cleaning out his mother's attic in Bala Cynwyd, Harry V. Ryder Jr.' found a bunch of letters that had been sent from Taiho. Bala Cynwyd is an affluent suburb of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; Taiho a river town in the northwestern corner of the interior province of Anhui in China.\n\n2\n\nThe letters were dated between January 1903 and April 1906. They were written to Harry's maternal grandmother, Louese Hedges Strawbridge, by Edith Rowe, who was a classmate at a \"finishing school” in Philadelphia. Both Louese and Edith were Baptists. Edith's letters reflected the high standard of private school education in eastern United States at that time. Her command of written English was more than respectable. Scenes and events were vividly described; ideas eloquently expressed; and grammar and spelling impeccable. Except for one or two words, her handwriting can be read without any difficulty. Two of the letters contain charming line-drawings, an old-fashioned practice still favoured by young students in American schools today.\n\nLouese Strawbridge was the only child of Samuel and Ann Hedges, who had come originally from Ohio. Samuel Hedges had served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. After the war he brought his wife to Philadelphia where he became a successful horse trader.3 Bala Cynwyd is near Devon, in the heart of the Pennsylvania horse country. After graduating from the Friends School, Louese went to a “finishing school\", then was married to George Strawbridge, scion of a family that had founded and operated the prestigious department store, Strawbridge and Clothier. Louese and George had four children. Catherine was born in 1896, Helen in 1900, Janet in 1903 and Benjamin in 1907. Except for Benjamin who died in\n\n* Lecture delivered to the Society on 6 October 1986. The author is grateful to Harry and Phyllis Ryder for making available the letters and for information on Harry's grandmother and her family.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210688, "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-1986", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "22\n\nWALTER GREENWOOD\n\nhis expressions. On one occasion an opponent complained that his truculence in court was quite intolerable and Francis responded by saying of the opponent's speech \"such stuff as that is rubbish\". In 1883 there was criticism of his ungentlemanly behaviour when prosecuting R. Fraser Smith, the Editor of the Hong Kong Telegraph and a frequent sparring partner, for libel. The criticism may well have arisen out of disappointment at Fraser Smith's acquittal. As time went by he tended to assume omniscience and in 1887 an opponent was moved to say of him \"my learned friend appears to think that he is not only an authority on law but on every department in the colony”. Francis was minded to treat that as a statement of the obvious. However Hong Kong was well used to robust and idiosyncratic characters and indeed it had all the flavour of a frontier town. In 1859 the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle, said that \"Hong Kong must be protected from the reckless libels which have so long poisoned the very atmosphere of the colony”. Francis was not only outspoken in Court. The Hong Kong Telegraph in its obituary said “his outspoken utterances estranged many persons who would otherwise have employed him professionally. But his talents were so conspicuous, his experience so great and varied, that he was bound to make his way to the front\". The China Mail said of him that “he had a ready temper but bore no malice\". A sort of verdict on him in his lifetime appeared in the Hong Kong Telegraph in 1891 in a series of articles on \"The Local Devil's Own\". It reads \"John Joseph Francis Q.C. is Hong Kong's leading counsel and one of its most prominent citizens. He served with distinction in the army and having acquired a taste for the Bar while serving Her Majesty elected to serve behind it, and by sheer hard work and natural ability succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. It is popularly supposed that to have Francis on your side means winning a case with the special exclusive order of Hong Kong jurymen. He is a warm hearted man in his own fashion and has done a lot of good for a certain class in Hong Kong”. The only deliberate act of discourtesy by him in his professional life that I have found was when the Chief Justice of the day refused to accede to his request not to sit after lunch on a Saturday and he did not attend. Francis said later that he had an engagement he could not get out of. On an occasion when he was twenty minutes late and said he had forgotten he was engaged in court the Chief Justice", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210965, "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-1987", "page_number": 27, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "2\n\nserved under him for the next nine months until he was replaced by the late (Sir) Ronald Holmes. It was my first posting after language study, and I was inexperienced and ignorant. Ken was formidable by reason of bulk and intellect, and I was instinctively wary of him. He was, too, one of those rather \"larger than life\" personalities around whom legends and stories had already accumulated. However, he turned out to be both kindly and helpful. More, he was informative; and for a new District Officer anxious to know more about his charges it was fortunate that he had written about local history, something that had attracted insufficient attention from the Civil Service, or anyone else for that matter. I probably saw more of him than the other DOS, because of our joint preoccupation with the Shek Pik Reservoir investigations and the fact that his town office was in the District Office (South) building on Gascoigne Road, Kowloon.\n\nHe used to come in once a week, on set days, and I remember once being indignant upon hearing his booming voice on another day. “Oh well” I thought resignedly, for I was still very new, “he'll come in shortly”, and dismissed him from my mind. Some time later I heard his voice again, and realized it was a tape recording on which his secretary must have been working, a draft speech or something of the kind.\n\nAfter he left the N.T., our association was mostly personal. Through joint interests, including membership of the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force, we met from time to time. The Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, to which he lectured occasionally, was another shared interest. After he left Hong Kong on retirement we exchanged letters periodically. I also saw him on his visits to his family here, and particularly remember the last occasion (1986) when, together with the then District Officer, Yuen Long, we arranged a visit to the border area including the Mai Po marshes. We began with a picnic lunch at Island House which had been his home when he was District Commissioner, New Territories. This was a particularly happy and relaxed family occasion, with his grandchildren, on which I look back with great pleasure.\n\nOne always got a lot out of Ken. Our mutual interest in local people and their history led me to send him copies of any draft", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211229, "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-1987", "page_number": 290, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "265\n\nOfficer of Shatin, and was closely involved in a large number of negotiations with village groups affected by development of the New Town. I soon obtained a very clear understanding of the village society that was consistently being expressed and explained to me by the contacts of our own making. I became interested, without any background in Sinology or Chinese studies of any sort whatsoever. I had never read any books on Chinese social studies until after I had already worked out in my own mind what sort of society was being expressed to me by the village contacts. When I went to the books, I found that I was unable to recognise anything that I was seeing in my work.\n\nIt was then suggested to me by James that Shatin might be a good place for David's people to start work. I was very enthusiastic about this, on the grounds that it was quite clear that there was a major difference between the society that was there and the society that the classic works on China were expressing. I also very strongly support what James and David have been saying about the lack of support these new studies have received from all major institutions in Hong Kong, and in particular the two Universities in Hong Kong, most of whose senior staff seem to regard village studies as \"irrelevant, minor and sub-standard dirty work\".\n\nBe that as it may, when I was shown some of the Chinese books that had been found and it was suggested that there might be some in Shatin, I used my position as District Officer to coax and encourage the villagers into letting us know what they had, and this drew me very quickly into an interviewing programme of my own. A District Officer attends many functions and almost all my interviews took place over lunch and dinner tables at official banquets, when there is nothing whatsoever to talk about, and you might just as well talk about this as about anything else. Over many months of seeing local village leaders at official banquets, we talked about the people around the tables' childhood and their memories of it.\n\nThis got me very deeply into listening to people talking about daily life in the Chinese village. Day after day, I was hearing things that I was later unable to trace any reference to in any book available to me, and almost every time I would come back with facets", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211372, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "64\n\nwork about ten days a month and that women could only work about twenty days. The child earned eight cents a day or eighty cents a month, but he had to get some lunch and it was said that this might cost three cents a day, so that his clear earnings would only be about fifty cents a month. This sum seems hardly sufficient to pay for medicine for him, if, as seems probable, he should have occasional sickness. It seems a wicked way to use the time and energy of such a child.\n\nA general conversation with men and women was held, and it transpired that they got eighteen cents for a load of one hundred catties (one hundred and thirty-three pounds) and that a man could carry two loads and a woman about 150 catties, the man would earn thirty-six cents a day and a woman in good health about twenty-seven cents.\n\nHe then proposed some changes that might alleviate some of the worst abuses he had observed.\n\nThe problem of formulation of a plan for the protection of these children is a difficult one to solve. It seems as if the small load system might be stopped at the starting point. Contractors and employees should not be allowed to make up child burdens. The lowest load might be fixed at fifty catties, and they might be informed that only strong children of full age should be allowed to carry the materials or goods. Increasingly the system might be attacked gradually, and the weight and age limit be reached by slower steps.\n\nSince they earn so little, better to give them a little schooling, and if possible, some industrial training.\n\nAs representative of the Chinese community Mr. Chow Shouson also appended a statement to the Commission's Report. He gave an assurance that the Chinese would do everything possible to improve the lot of poor children, but the facts had to be faced. One was that the proximity of Kwangtung with its great population reservoir meant that there was a constant flow of Chinese coming to Hong Kong for work. While it was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211426, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "118\n\nIn May 1903, he wrote that he had been ill since the 7th of April, three weeks before the examinations. He said that he had 'walking typhoid fever' but felt he had been cured since he no longer suffered from fever or numbness of his legs, although he was still thin and weak. His doctor had assured him he would be perfectly well by the end of the month. Subsequently, in July, he went to San Jose for a short vacation with plans to transfer to Stanford University the coming year in order to benefit from the more hospitable climate of Palo Alto. Due to increased responsibilities with the arrival of his concubine in San Francisco a few weeks before, First Uncle could not help Ping Lim much except to pay the doctor's bill of 50 dollars, and to advise him to return to Hawaii in view of the fact that First Uncle could not continue supporting him. Grandfather sent him 20 dollars, but he still had to borrow 200 dollars from a friend. He also asked Father to send him 30 dollars to buy himself a new suit. He must have left California for Honolulu soon after that, because a letter from a friend, Otis S. Lee, dated 18 August 1903, expresses surprise to learn of his departure and said that all his friends missed him.\n\nAlthough it was hoped that convalescence in Manoa would restore his health, Ping Lim died on 2 October 1903. It was a great blow to the family, especially to Grandfather. There was a eulogy to him in the San Francisco Chinese newspaper, for he had cultivated the friendship of a group of students from China and of other intellectuals exposed to Western thinking who would later participate in the political changes in China.\n\nIt was an annual ritual in early spring for Father to take Ruth and me with him to the Lin Yee Cemetery in East Manoa (established 7 June 1889) to pay respects to Uncle Ping Lim and his mother. We would take the Manoa street car to the end of the line, walk some distance along a country road to reach the cemetery and place a bunch of asters, Father's favourite offering, on each grave, located only after a long search among unkempt plots. Fourteen years after Uncle's death, Father hired a man to exhume the remains of Uncle and his mother in order to return them to their native land for permanent burial. I remember watching with fascination, after the earth was removed, the man lifting the lid from the wooden coffin and seeing a fully-clothed shape of a body that quickly deflated as air got to it. Taking mouthfuls", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211439, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "131\n\nMost of the itinerant workers were from where my father originated and spoke the Nam Long subdialect. Uncle housed them in a bedroom attached to the large barn facing the concrete area used for threshing and drying the grain. After dinner these men would lie on wooden, mat-covered beds, conversing with each other while heating beads of opium over a small lamp before puffing through a long pipe the bubbling brown drug. To this day I can recognize the sweet odour of opium.\n\nWhenever Uncle went to Honolulu, he would always stop by to bring us vegetables from the farm and have his lunch, usually large buns filled with black bean paste and large, flat cakes, made largely of flour and sugar. He usually left around two o'clock in order to reach home by sundown. The journey was difficult, especially in bad weather, because the horses would sometimes balk and refuse to proceed when they approached the Pali. Uncle believed that the horses were sensitive to the presence of ghosts, so that whenever they became stubborn and refused to proceed, he would let them turn back towards Honolulu until they reached the drinking trough of spring water near the entrance to Dr. Morgan's estate. Uncle would wait until the horses were willing to start for Kaneohe again.\n\nBefore the Pali Road, started in 1898, was completed, travel was by horseback from Luluku to the half-way house at the foot of the mountain pass and up the steep slopes to the Pali. A two-seater buggy, which supplanted the horse, was most intriguing in that the passenger seat swung out before one could get in. Once we got to ride in it when Mother allowed Ruth and me to visit our cousins without her. The visit was exciting and enjoyable, as we crowded together on the matted beds, enclosed by thick mosquito netting. Soon we thought that it was more fun to be outside on the porch. As we ran back and forth carrying each other piggy-back, Uncle suddenly appeared and ordered us back to bed. I was told later that I had become so homesick that Uncle had to take us home much sooner than planned.\n\nMother looked forward to a yearly visit to Uncle's and we would go there by coach, owned by Look Buck of Kaneohe. We often grew anxious as the automobile raced down the steep, narrow and winding road. Once Mother jumped out of the coach with Helen in her arms when it began to slide backwards while manoeuvring a hairpin curve. For several years", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211461, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "153\n\nthe dictionary to look up the meaning of unfamiliar words she had come across in her reading. Whether she was scolding, philosophizing, or teaching, she would usually quote a Chinese saying to reinforce her idea.\n\nAlthough before her marriage Mother knew only how to boil water, she became a very good cook and developed a fine taste for gourmet dishes. Endowed with a good reasoning mind, she managed to figure out how to make household repairs. Widowed at 32 and left alone to cope with the responsibility of raising four young daughters, she proved to be a skilful manager of what Father left us. Except for requiring good behaviour of us, she made no other demands on us. I am sure that she derived much strength from her deep faith in God and in the knowledge that she had fulfilled her promise to Father, before he died, that she would give their children the best of care.\n\nWhen my parents were married in 1903, Father was 25 and nine years older than Mother. Mother had found it very difficult to be dominated by a husband after having been indulged by a fond parent. Still more difficult was the fact that she began married life in the home of Aunt Yim Ali, who took on the role of surrogate mother-in-law and had a sharp tongue. Because Father felt he owed much to his sister, he tended to cater to her and did not think of giving support to Mother. Since Father was earning only 25 dollars a month, there were only two meals a day — breakfast and dinner. Mother spoke of being very hungry, for on the farm where she grew up there had always been plenty of food. At that time adequate nourishment was especially vital for her because she had become pregnant and was still a growing teenager. Whenever possible, Grandfather Jong would bring her a piece of poached chicken leg, salted, and some snacks, which she would hide away for herself. Later, Father found an apartment in a frame duplex located on the corner of Prison Road and a lane running towards the waterfront, and opposite the original site of the prison. He was now able to give Mother two dollars a month with which she was able to have lunch, usually a Chinese flat cookie, called Kiangsu Cake.\n\nBeing chief homemakers, Chinese women rarely went out. Social relationships were usually with neighbours and family members. Our next-door neighbours were the Leong Nam's, with whom we shared a common porch. They had one son, Ah Sui, and three daughters, named", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211596, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "23 March\n\nDr. Elizabeth Sinn\n\n\"Management of the Chinese in 19th Century Hong Kong and the Role of the Tung Wah Hospital”\n\nThe following Visits were made:\n\n29 April\n\n6 May\n\n24 June\n\n1 July\n\nAnita Wilson and Dr. James Hayes\n\nVisit to the Pottery Kiln at Tuen Mun, Ha Tsuen Tang Ancestral Hall and Old Market, Ling Wan Monastery (with vegetarian lunch), Lai Family Study Hall and Mansion at Sheung Tsuen, Hakka Mansion at Sham Ka Wai, and Yuen Long Old Market\n\nDr. James Hayes and Ted Brown Visit to Kowloon Walled City, Again! Phillip Bruce\n\nVisit to Old Marine Police Headquarters at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon\n\nPhillip Bruce\n\nRepeat of the Visit of 24 June\n\n14 September Dr. Patrick Hase and Lee Man-yip\n\nVisit to Wo Hang for the Hot Air Balloon release at Mid Autumn Festival\n\n25 November Dr. James Hayes\n\n9 December\n\nVisit to places of interest on Hong Kong Island, including Waterfall Bay, the Aberdeen Country Park Management Centre, Chung Hom Kok, Shek O Village and Lei Yu Mun Barracks and Leisure Centre Rosemary Lee and Richard Gee\n\nRepeat of the N.T. Visit of 29 April\n\n13-14 January Anita Wilson, Dr. Dan Waters, Rev. Carl Smith and\n\nDr. Joseph Ting\n\n22 January\n\n18 February\n\nWeek End Visit to Macao\n\nPhillip Bruce\n\nVisit to some interesting Naval and Military Graves in the Colonial Cemetery\n\nPhillip Bruce and Dr. Anthony Siu\n\nVisit to the Tung Chung Area, the site of Hong Kong's Future Replacement Airport\n\nThis varied and interesting programme has again been due to the Activities Committee, which has worked hard under Dr. Elizabeth Sinn's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211865, "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": 280, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "255\n\nDIARY OF VOYAGE TO CHINA*\n\nFrom March 10, 1861 to August 6, 1861\n\nIt is with a combination of curious feelings that this journal is commenced. There is a mingled hope and fear, gloom and light, anticipations of a bright future, and occasional forebodings of ill. Yet whatever may befall, whether pleasure or pain, prosperity or adversity, it is a joyful fact that nothing can happen unless directed by a Father's hand. Jesus knows all, and safe under his guidance all will be well.\n\nSunday, March 10th\n\nWent on board at ten o'clock, and just put matters straight enough in the cabin to be able to spend the Sabbath. About eleven I came on deck, just as the vessel began to move out of the basin. She was towed down the Thames. A great crowd of people saw her departure. As she floated down the Thames I often gave way to melancholy thoughts, when I considered all I was leaving behind, and all that is in store for me. Sometimes the burden felt greater than I could bear. Yet I felt that Jesus was with me, and under his guidance I feared no ill: it was my Father's business I was about, and surely he would give me grace and strength to perform it.\n\nThe Prince Alfred went easily down the river, and cast anchor off Gravesend. On board were several people, friends of the captain, who although it was Sunday, were going to Gravesend for a holiday and treat, at his expense. They were a swearing set of fellows, and seemed to be old captains of ships. A Sunday in such company I never spent. I would not go to lunch with them, and at dinner time I was glad when all was over, and I could be alone in my cabin. But even here their shouting and laughing, when the wine and spirits began to take effect, was a great nuisance to my ears and mind. I never spent such a Sunday in my life. So as soon as it grew dusk I fastened my cabin, made up a bed and tried to sleep. For two days I had had a headache, which now grew worse, and very little sleep I had. My cabin, although in the quietest part of the ship, is rather the worse for noise. Every person that walks overhead on the deck is distinctly heard, and the noise is enough to keep one awake, to say nothing of the rolling of the ship.\n\n* From the John Fryer Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211875, "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": 290, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "265\n\nshade in the saloon. It will not at any part of the voyage be very much hotter. I hope to be able to endure the heat without much inconvenience.\n\nI have got into a kind of system of living of which I will give you today as an instance. Rose at half past six, had a wash all over in salt water, and then at half past seven went up on deck for half-an-hour's parade. Breakfast at half past eight. Study Chinese from nine till twelve. Lunch, and then read Milton till dinner time, committing some portions to memory. At four o'clock I went at Milton again till six, when I stopped to view the sunset and walk up and down for half an hour. Then tea, and am now here writing.\n\nToday several whales played round the ship. One was estimated at 50ft long. One I saw was I believe 30ft, and leaped clean out of the water. As yet we have not caught a fish of any kind, but hope to when we reach the line, which we expect to do in eight or ten days with a fair wind.\n\nIt is now about one fourth of the voyage over, which is a great comfort to think of. The other day we killed a sheep, and now have only one left. We have still fowls enough to last for some time to come, although we generally have two every day.\n\nI am often thinking of what lies before me in China, and expect I shall find it rather strange at first, but I mean to make the best of it come what may. The sun has regularly browned my face, and made me look quite a different person, quite unlike the palefaced fellow I used to, and I am getting quite stout, so much so as to burst my waistcoat. We now have an awning spread over the deck, so that the deck is very cool and comfortable.\n\nFriday, April 19th\n\nI have nothing of any importance to add to my journal, yet I may as well put down what there is. This morning's observation showed that we have very nearly reached the line. Tomorrow if all is well we shall be crossing it. The captain and others have been joking me a great deal about what I have to undergo, according to the usual custom, on this occasion. They talk about having a long boat half filled with water for my ducking, and preparing a fine lather and iron hoop for the purpose of shaving me. But I only laugh at their nonsense, although they may perhaps want to try it on as a bit of fun. So if they do I must even make", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211892, "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": 307, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "282\n\nand look at them, and made remarks on their condition. No wonder they go almost naked, the heat is enough to make anybody do so. They wear sun hats exactly like a large wash pan turned bottom upwards. A boy was steering who was the most good-looking of the lot.\n\nThe captain bought a monkey, which was quite young and has since afforded us plenty of amusement; also about four crates of yams and some bottles of curry powder. I waited for the next boat and invested half a crown in seven cocoanuts, a quarter hundred oranges and an immense bunch of bananas. The banana is a fruit in shape like a cucumber, only larger when they are well cultivated, and about a hundred grow on one bunch. My bunch was quite as much as I could lift, and being quite green I hung them over the ship's stern where in a day or two they ripened and were quite yellow. Their flavour is delicious, and is something like that of a ripe pear. When fried in butter they are delightful. The captain also bought 300 oranges for the use of the cabin, but madam ate them nearly all herself in less than a week. They were wild ones I believe, but the flavour was very good. Afterwards when other boats came off, we bought plantains, eggs and no end of things.\n\nTwo ships came in behind us, to one of which we afterwards spoke; she was the Wynand from London, and came out above 20 days after us, and turned off up to China, where she will in all probability reach in 100 days, as we should have done had we had a proper sort of man to act as captain. We ought to have gone off behind him, and never to have gone to Batavia, which has hindered us at least a fortnight, if not three weeks; so say all the ship captains at Batavia. We however turned off Point Nicholas and scarcely came under Babic Island when the wind ceased, and for four days we scarcely moved as many miles.\n\nI grew quite disgusted. To amuse myself I got a hook and line and went fishing. But in throwing it out on the next day the hook caught the top of my finger and tore it clean through, taking away the whole of the upper part of the nail. I got it doctored up a bit, and what with cold water and other appliances it was nearly well in a day or two. I caught no fish, through not having any proper bait, although the fish were leaping out of the water by thousands, and the natives in their canoes were pulling them up by hundreds. We saw them also pulling in their nets, and trying by shouting to frighten the fish into their nets.\n\nA boat at last came off at night out of Bantam, to ask for a job in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212176, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "95\n\nsuccessful in winning scholarships to England under the terms of the British Boxer Indemnity Fund. The tea party was held in the grounds of a lovely little Elizabethan-style house recently opened as the headquarters of the Sino-British Cultural Association.\n\nIt was hard to believe that all the work of reconstruction, the town planning, the laying out of parks, the building of government offices, which had continued uninterrupted since Nanking had become the capital, those material expressions of the national effort to drag administration out of the centuries-old morass of incompetence and venality, were so soon to be wrecked.\n\nThe fighting in the north went badly for the Chinese, who were repeatedly compelled to withdraw. They accordingly decided to divert the Japanese effort to a terrain more favourable to themselves, and nearer to the main bases of their army. Two divisions were concentrated on the outskirts of Shanghai, and it was their attempt in August to drive the small Japanese garrison into the Whangpoo, the tributary of the Yangtze on which Shanghai stands, that unleashed the aerial war in central China. The Chinese light bombers tried to sink the Japanese flagship, H.I.J.M.S. \"Idzumo\", where she lay anchored off the Shanghai waterfront, and the Japanese retaliated by attacking Chinese airfields in the vicinity of Shanghai, Hangchow, and Nanking.\n\nRealising the danger of air raids, but without experience, the authorities in Nanking in an excess of zeal issued instructions that all light-coloured buildings were to be painted black, and so through the advancing days the view from our windows turned from the bright red and green of brick and tile to a blurred dirty grey. Even the white and blue omnibuses were changed to match the mud of the roadway. For our part we got hold of some bituminous paint and caused it to be spread on our red-tiled roof; but in the course of time rain streaked it and spoiled the effect.\n\nThe first air raid caught us by surprise at lunch on August 15th. A warning system had been established, but when the 'phone rang to advise us that the alarm had gone we did not know what to do. Someone remembered we had a large Union Jack in the attic, which after some discussion, feeling rather foolish, we decided to spread on the lawn. Tim, the pup, thought it was a new toy to be pulled at and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212177, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "96\n\nteased. The cook had promptly disappeared over the garden fence into a hole, dug by the servants in the hillside during the past few days, but the boy was made of stouter stuff and continued to wait on us at table. Morale, however, crumbled when a crashing inferno opened up all round and each scuttled into the nearest corner, soon to emerge under the embarrassing discovery that it was only the anti-aircraft guns. The boy issued from the linen cupboard and went to doff his white coat and put on a black mackintosh overcoat and waterproof cap, so that \"Japanese no can see\", as he explained.\n\nOn August 15th there was only one raid, but the very next day there were three raids and no less than six alerts. Each alert would last up to two hours, as it took time to check whether all enemy aircraft had left the zone, so that on that day and some of the succeeding days there was an almost continuous state of alarm. This was most inconvenient, because as soon as the alert went the Chinese police strictly stopped all road traffic and you had to stay where you were. That day we were unable to get home to lunch. We thereafter kept a reserve of food at the office against contingencies. Fortunately later on the Japanese developed the habit for a time of raiding in the morning and again in the afternoon, leaving a good long interval for lunch, for which mercy we were duly grateful.\n\nThe Japanese airforce by no means had it all their own way. In the initial raids they sent their bombers over without escort, and the Chinese fighter pilots, trained by the American Mission headed by Colonel Chennault and equipped with Curtis Hawk pursuit planes, had the legs off them and shot down many. The Chinese Ministry of Information organised tours for the foreign newspaper correspondents to review the remains of the destroyed enemy bombers, and it was not long before the Japanese took to raiding by night to avoid casualties. Later on, when they had occupied an airfield near Shanghai, they were able to send fighter escorts with their bombers. In November a few Russian planes and crews arrived and took up the battle, and in all I should say by mid-December, when Nanking fell, not less than 300 Japanese planes had been destroyed. For those days that was no mean achievement, but by then the Chinese airforce, unable to replace casualties to pilots and aircraft, had shot its bolt.\n\nOn land at Shanghai, though they failed in their objective of driving the Japanese into the river, the two German-trained Chinese divisions", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212185, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "104\n\nPetroleum Co., and a timber ship of the Import and Export Lumber Co. Together with the large \"Ewo\" hulk we were all anchored a few miles above Nanking in a stretch of the river, designated as a \"Safe Harbour\" of which the Japanese authorities had been duly notified. The American gunboat \"Panay\" was anchored two miles lower down off the creek at the top end of Nanking, whence communication with the few foreigners in the city could still be maintained through a 'phone situated in a godown on the bank.\n\n\"The Flag Captain, Commanding Officer, and Ward Room officers of H.M.S. \"Scarab\" request the pleasure of the company of the British community, now afloat in the \"safe\" anchorage, on board H.M.S. \"Scarab\" at 11.30 tomorrow, Saturday, 11th December, on the occasion of the anniversary of His Majesty's accession.\"\n\nIt was a lively party. As you may imagine there was plenty to talk about, and the bountiful hospitality dispensed by the Navy - I naturally do not refer merely to its liquid aspect - set all in a pleasant frame of mind for a latish lunch when the gathering broke up and the participants returned to their respective ships. I have no doubt that the ensuing sense of somnolence was fairly general when, with a crash, a shell burst on the river bank not 100 yards from the nearest ship. The noise disturbed the lethargy of that Saturday afternoon. Ears pricked to discover whether there was more to come. The doubt whether that first shell was a stray or not was soon settled as two more straddled the nearest ship. Captains leapt to their bridges and called for steam. Clouds of smoke belched from the assembled funnels, marking well the whereabouts of the target. Shells began to fall regularly in the anchorage, but it was not more than fifteen minutes before the merchant flotilla, festooned with attendant small craft, was underway heading upriver. The two gunboats remained to stand-by the hulk, which was full of foreign and Chinese refugees and, having slipped its anchors, endeavoured to tow it in the wake of the other vessels. By good luck there were no direct hits on any of the ships, though some vessels were holed by splinters, and two unfortunate Chinese boatmen were killed and some others wounded.\n\nThe shelling resumed when the ships were under way a mile or two above the \"safe harbour\", the guns then appearing to be of heavier calibre. The shells came over in pairs and were very well", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212186, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "105\n\ntimed with their fuses set to burst just a few feet above water level. But the gunners evidently found the moving targets difficult to follow, because the aim grew wilder and eventually the shelling ceased. As the sun set in the west, the British ships came to anchor off the Three Hills, where I had my last pheasant shoot, while the American ships anchored in a group a few miles lower down.\n\nNext morning broke clear and sunny, one of those late autumn days in China, when there is not a ripple on the river, and the smoke hangs low in a thin pall over the country villages. Gun fire could be heard in the distance, both above and below the concentration of neutral vessels; and by-and-by the three American ships, escorted by the U.S.S. \"Panay\", got under way and steamed upriver. As she went by, the \"Panay\" stopped to pass back one of our wounded men, who had been kindly accommodated in her sick bay, and the Commander explained that he was taking his ships further up towards **Pidgeon Island** as the Japanese had been dropping some \"bricks\" in the river just below them. Not for the first, or the last, time in China, the Americans elected to play a lone hand.\n\nMeanwhile the refugees on the British vessels whiled away the time counting up the splinter holes in their ships, attending to the wounded, and in mutual visits for gossip over the events of the previous day. Every one thought it was all a mistake, although some concern was caused at about 10 o'clock, when a number of Japanese military landing craft were seen upriver pulling in to the north bank, on to which they ran a small gun which was openly trained at the ships. But the feeling of security was confirmed when the Japanese craft, one after the other, steamed out towards the British gunboats, circled round them, waved a salute or two, and then went on their way down river. There appeared to be no Chinese troops in the neighbourhood, and the Japanese sailed down the Yangtze unmolested, stopping to burn an occasional junk.\n\nIt was without an after-thought that we all sat down to lunch on that lovely Sunday morning on the Yangtze. We were anchored off the reed beds which grow round Rosina Beacon, and through the porthole I could see across the river the clumps out of which not so many months before we had driven our last pheasant. Imagine our astonishment and indignation when suddenly we heard the approaching noise of planes, the roar of power dives, and bombs", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212194, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "113\n\nthe walla-walla men are\n\nwould be an argument about the fare surely descended from the original Hongkong pirates and, that settled, a slow journey across the harbour, followed by a walk home. Such conditions are discouraging to social intercourse. They tend to break the community up into cliques; into the circle who live on the Peak, the crowd down in Victoria, and the mob over in Kowloon.\n\nHow deep-seated was the snobbery amongst the few could be seen at a later date, when the remnants of the British community were interned by the Japanese. Many of the women still thought themselves too superior to keep company with their sisters in misfortune, and continued to carry their noses in the air, while living under the most dismal conditions, crowded cheek by jowl seven and eight to a small room.\n\nTo avoid overheating during the Hongkong summer called for a special technique. The idea was never to move rapidly in any direction; a slow steady advance got you there. If the advance took you past the stately building erected by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, so much the better. It was air-conditioned. You could look in on your friends, who had the good fortune to rent offices there, and while passing the time of day your body refreshed itself in the cool dry atmosphere.\n\nOwing to the discomfort of movement and the geographic complexities, on leaving office at noon most people did not return home to lunch. They either went to the Club, where the cuisine, it is unreliably claimed, compared with that of the Shanghai Club, or to the Hongkong or Gloucester Hotels. These rival but contiguous establishments were a local institution. What Shepherd's Hotel was in Cairo fifty years ago, the Hongkong Hotel was in the late 1930s; a place where wanderers met. You seldom entered the hotel lobby without running into someone you had not seen for years. It might be an official of Imperial Airways who had just flown in from India, via Rangoon and Bangkok, or an American news reporter leaving by Pan-American clipper for Manila. Both hotels provided excellent fare. Some favoured the one, some the other. At the Gloucester the dining room was eight floors up on the roof, with a view over the harbour; in the Hongkong Hotel it was at ground level with a view of the \"Grips\", the arena where the cosmopolitan crowd foxtrotted to the music of a Filipino orchestra.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212198, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "117\n\nHotel, was Japanese. So were the majority of the photographers' shops. It was known that a proportion of the workers in the Royal Naval Dockyard were Japanese, passing themselves off as Chinese. Even the Chinese could not distinguish between one of their own countrymen and a Japanese after he had lived amongst them sufficiently long to speak the language fluently. There was a police regulation under which all persons entering the Colony of nationality other than British or Chinese must register. But Koreans were classed as Chinese, and so Japanese, who wished to avoid observation, described themselves as Koreans. To overcome the difficulty it would have been necessary to make registration of Chinese compulsory, and that was a task beyond the capacity of the existing police personnel; moreover, the Chinese might have resented such a regulation as a slight on their dignity.\n\nThe Hongkong weekend continued much as usual. You could run your car onto the vehicular ferry, take it over to Kowloon, and drive the 17 miles to the border of the New Territory, either by the road which wound in and out amongst the bays along the coast, or by the road which followed the railway gap through the Kowloon hills; and play golf at the Royal Fanling Golf Club where there were two eighteen hole, and one nine hole, courses. Or you could bathe from one of the numerous beaches, or go on a launch picnic. These last were popular. On Sunday morning the time would be spent taking turns on a surfboard towed behind the launch, or sunbathing on top of the awning; in the afternoon a heavy lunch would offer the lazy an excuse to sleep.\n\nThe Japanese were bombing the railway line between Hongkong and Hankow. In those days the confidence of air enthusiasts in regard to the results which could be achieved by desultory bombing had not yet been discounted by the hard test of experience. Moreover, we were yet to learn of the devotion and sacrifice, the skill and efficiency, of the Chinese railway repair gangs. With a minimum of equipment they performed wonders, and through traffic was seldom interrupted for more than a few hours. I was instructed to reconnoitre an alternative route for the despatch of supplies from Hongkong to Central China against the time when the railway might be finally disrupted. It was a thankless task because opinion in Shanghai continued to assume that the Chinese government would soon collapse under Japanese pressure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212216, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "135\n\nPolice Station, and were allocated various districts to patrol. We worked in pairs. Sometimes a regular French policeman accompanied us, in addition to several Chinese constables of the French Police Force. We would walk along as the spirit moved us; and on arriving at a cross-roads would take up a position in the middle of the street, cock our pistols, and stop all cars to look inside them. The idea of this was to catch kidnappers, as they usually carried off their gagged victims by car. One day we stopped a large car, only to find the venerable Mr. Yu Ya Ching in it. He was the senior of the five Chinese representatives on the Municipal Council. I do not know who was the more astonished, he or we! On another occasion when we looked into a car we found a complete thuggery of Russian gunmen; there is a large White Russian community in Shanghai, a survival of the Russian revolution, and many of the men were engaged by rich Chinese as bodyguards. They looked ugly, as if they were more used to holding people up themselves than being held up. The next car turned out to contain the puppet Mayor of the Chinese Municipality, who durst not venture abroad without a heavy escort. All passed off with mutual compliments. In my time we fortunately never ran into a real gangster: I have difficulty in hitting a haystack even with a snug little weapon, let alone with so heavy a piece of ancient ironmongery.\n\nUntil about 10 p.m. a heavy traffic would continue in the Avenue Joffre, the main highway on our beat. Sometimes, when we went out on bicycles, a form of sport to which I had been unaccustomed for at least a quarter of a century. I found it rather tricky moving in patrol formation amidst the traffic. If we came across an obstreperous drunk, we would turn tactfully in the opposite direction. It at least gave the Chinese some confidence to see armed foreign patrols out at night, a confidence which, I fear, may have been exaggerated. Sometimes we would stand at the corner of the street, at about the time the cinemas came out, and watch our families go home; and, when the time was up, we might go into that little bar on the ground floor of the Cathay Mansions for a bottle of \"Ewo\" Beer.\n\nAt the police station the French Municipality provided sandwiches, crumbly French rolls split in half, buttered, and holding a slice of ham, which we would munch, while our leader made his report. Then early in the morning we would go home, feeling we had earned our sleep.\n\nThe cinemas of Shanghai are as luxurious as any in the world.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212590, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "124\n\nniches. If this happened, one bowed and apologised aloud to the spirits.\n\nThe ceremony was conducted by a Taoist brother who carefully poured the ashes through a white cloth folded in the neck of a funnel. The deceased's gold bracelet together with a piece of jade were also deposited in the urn. The top was tied on with red ribbon. Her name was written on the outside of the urn with red paint, 'free hand' (without butt of hand resting on anything). The Taoist painted fine characters although he professed to have had little schooling. After mourners bowed three times flowers were arranged in vases. Paper rosettes were burned. Also, two tables were placed in front of the two niches and a feast, including fruit, cakes and rice wine, was laid out. The two urns, each covered in white cloth, were then inserted in their respective niches, the doors were sealed with plaster and more joss sticks and yellow rosettes were burned. The six mourners then lined up, recited Buddhist prayers and received lucky packets. It was necessary for the Chinese candles to burn out before bowing goodbye and leaving the columbarium for a late, 4.00 pm, vegetarian 'lunch'.\n\nSixth Tsat\n\nAlthough official ceremonies ended with the fifth, the family paid a further visit to Ching Chung Koon, where the ashes are kept, on the sixth tsat. Joss sticks in clusters of three (one each for heaven, earth and mankind), paper 'gold bars' and a large rosette made up of coloured paper were burned. These eight-inch squares of yellow paper had been 'blessed' by an old woman. She meticulously burnt a hole in the centre of each single sheet with a joss stick. Also, single joss sticks were placed in all vases for other souls in that room of the temple.\n\nCharity\n\nAt this stage, the three daughters were informed by a fortune teller that, for their mother to enter kik lok shai kaai (extremely happy world) it would help if they performed some charitable deeds. A donation of $2,000 was made to a poor, elderly watchman to help with medical expenses. 'Give to a charitable organisation, with heavy overheads, there is no telling where the money goes,' one daughter said.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212612, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "146\n\nis made up\n\nfor the job with any material handy. It may be fired electrically or by a spring designed specially for the purpose. There are three main kinds of spring: the pressure-switch, which goes off if you press on it; for instance, if you walk on it, or a train goes over it: the pull-switch, which is generally attached to a trip wire: and the release-switch, which goes off when you take a weight off it. When you set the trap, a cap is fitted to the switch. The cap fires a length of instantaneous fuse - this is a third kind of fuse - and that sets the charge off. Setting traps and dismantling them is a battle of wits. If you use the same kind of trap too often the enemy will tumble to it and learn how to discover and dismantle it: so you have to keep on ringing the changes. If you start with a simple pressure switch trap under a loose floor board, you can improve on it by putting a release-switch trap under a loose floor board, you can improve on it by putting a release-switch, duly connected up, under the charge itself. Then when the enemy comes along, he spots your trap, carefully eases up the floor board, maybe detaches the pressure-switch from the charge and thinks he is safe; but when he stoops to pick up the charge, the release-switch is set off and the trap explodes. That is a very simple illustration. In the course of several years of warfare the refinements in booby-trapping have been developed to the nth degree.\n\nIt will be seen that traps can only be used in places which our side is preparing to vacate. They must be carefully tabulated so that they can be located and taken up should our troops return: also, special precautions have to be taken in a district where there are friendly natives, lest they suffer. In many ways the use of booby-trapping can be a two-edged weapon.\n\nAt the end of November in 1941 I was included amongst several officers detailed to proceed to Chungking. Britain was still neutral in the war between China and Japan, and so we were instructed to wear plain clothes. We set out after lunch one day to motor the hundred miles to Lashio, where we were comfortably accommodated in the American hostel operated by the C.N.A.C. Next day, December 1st, 1941, we boarded the aeroplane and touched down on the island airstrip in the Yangking at dusk.\n\nBefore leaving Burma I acquired two useful items of equipment, the one a felt hat, of the kind used by Australians and Gurkhas, a comfortable head-piece, which kept the sun out and also a certain amount of rain:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212916, "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-1992", "page_number": 225, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "210\n\nthe day we would be off to the beach annex of the Chefoo Club where there were rowing boats and canoes. From nine in the morning till lunch time and all afternoon a crowd of us were in and out of the water, rowing out to the raft which was a converted junk with diving boards. I got so brown that summer that the mark of the swimming trunks was still visible at Christmas time!\n\nHolidays at Home\n\nA great part of school life was the holidays at home. Home at this time was in Tung Shan Terrace off Stubbs Road, when my father was building the Chinese Methodist Church in Wanchai—the triangular red brick building at the junction of Hennessy Road and Johnston Road.* This was home not in a flat but a three-story house, with a garden overlooking Happy Valley. At the back we had access to Bowen Road which was a safe place to play as there were no motor vehicles. Those holidays I remember chiefly for rambles up to Sir Cecil's Ride and a major hike over to Tytam from Wong Nei Chong Gap. And we went to a school pantomime at the Central British School (now King George V School) where the bad guy called himself “ZBW my middle name is trouble you\" ZBW being the embryo Radio Television Hong Kong. We had our first family car here, an Austin Seven with a folding roof and went for picnics to the beaches at Repulse Bay and Big Wave Bay, and at Stanley where a new prison was being built. Although it was winter in Hong Kong the climate was comfortable for us from the north and we had no hesitation in swimming.\n\n—\n\nOur journeys home in the winter holidays were considerable undertakings. Of course there was no air travel nor was rail travel possible. Instead we went by sea on the B. & S. ships of the China Navigation Line. These were coasters of about 7,000 tons which made their way up and down the China coast carrying cargoes of all sorts, a small number of passengers in cabins and a much larger number of deck passengers. Sometimes we were able to get a ship that went all the way from Chefoo to Hong Kong but often we had to get off in Shanghai and wait in the China Inland Mission hostel for a suitable connection. Some luckless schoolmaster had to accompany some twenty or so children more as far as Shanghai on these journeys. They were carefree days and I have wondered how we all survived. We would sit up on the taffrail undeterred by the possibility of toppling over into the sea. I remember getting into frightful trouble from practising throwing a penknife into the cabin bulkhead. In the ports we watched\n\n*Since demolished [Editor]\n\n—\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213187, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nHONG KONG BRANCH\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1994/95\n\nMay I welcome all of you here this evening, the 35th gathering since the resuscitation of the Society in 1960.\n\nFor me one of life's real pleasures is to be a member of the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch) and I hope that this feeling of enjoyment is shared by all of you this evening. It is not idle enjoyment, it is of the active voluntary kind, which stimulates the mind, and gives you insight into areas of activity which you would not normally tread into given the very busy lives which most of us lead in Hong Kong. In other words most of us make time to come to the activities of the Society, because we know that when we come to hear a talk or go on an activity we will learn something we did not know before, or are given some insight into Hong Kong's history which is much more fascinating than many of us imagine.\n\nThese words, although they may be obvious to some, are worth saying because it gives me a lead into the very active programme which we have had since I last reported to you this time last year. At that time I said I thought we had had one of the most active years ever, but looking at this last year we seemed to have even surpassed last year. We have had no less than seventeen lectures, fifteen visits to various parts of Hong Kong and two very successful visits: one to North Vietnam, and I am very pleased to see so many Vietnamese veterans here this evening and one to North Taiwan; the former organised by Dr. Patrick Hase and the other by Mr. Keith Stevens. (Some of us did our best to conquer the Perfume Pagoda high in the Vietnamese hills but lack of time and breath in some cases prevented us from reaching the top, and seeing members of the Society sitting and wobbling precariously in a Vietnamese sampan trying to eat a picnic lunch out of a box without falling into the water was something which is not easily forgotten by those who had the privilege of seeing them). For the success of the talks and visits we have to thank the very active Programme Committee, i.e. Mrs. Rosemary Lee, Rev. Carl Smith, Dr. Patrick Hase, Dr. Elizabeth Sinn, Mr. Geoffrey Roper, Dr. Dan Waters, Mr. Philip Bruce, Dr. Michael Lau and Dr. Joseph Ting. They have really done a splendid job.\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213328, "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "132\n\nThis is perhaps an appropriate place in which to put my last remembrance of a grand old man. In the mid 1980s, on one of my visits to New York, when he was approaching his 90th year but was yet active in mind and body, we had lunch together in the faculty club at Columbia. We then adjourned to a drawing room, to enable him to look at a draft paper I was preparing for publication, on which I had asked his advice. A watery sun shone through the fading curtains, onto the rather elderly carpet and furnishings in the large and otherwise deserted room. Goodrich looked through the long draft for about twenty minutes without saying a word, then told me that it was on the right lines and worth pursuing. It was good of him to take the trouble at his age, though I have since found that \"Fu Hsien-seng\", as he was called by his devoted former pupils, had a great reputation as a teacher and friend, 19\n\nOur Printer\n\nLike many editors, I have been fortunate with printers, one of whom deserves a special mention. Lam Yung-fai (\"Y.F.\" to his friends) was our RAS printer from the very first issue of the Journal in 1960. He was works manager of Ye Olde Punterie, Ltd., in Duddell Street, and printed the Journal and all other RAS publications almost up to his retirement in the early 1980s. From first to last, \"Y.F.\" took a keen personal interest in our printing work. In those days, his firm's compositors were all elderly and experienced men. They were very efficient, but I knew that \"Y.F.\" used to help me out by doing preliminary proof-reading, so that when I got to see the galley-proofs the number of errors in them was usually small; far less than when, facing rising charges after his firm was reorganized and re-equipped around 1980 and he went on semi-retirement, we turned to other printers.\n\n\"Y.F.\" was a Hong Kong man, born and bred. Before the Second World War, he had been with the South China Morning Post, and was among those employees who helped bring out the first issues of the newspaper after the Colony was liberated at the end of August 1945. He gave me copies of these historic news-sheets, which are now in the Hong Kong Collection (Special Collections) at the Library of the University of Hong Kong, or the Museum of History, I forget which. One or two rare book items were also handed on for the Special Collections, and I had the satisfaction of looking at one recently, noting the\n\nPage 150\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214165, "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-1998", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "Appendix B\n\nLocal Visits\n\n21 March, 1998, T.T. Tsui Gallery and Hong Kong University Gallery with lunch at Luk Yu Tea House, with Dr Michael Lau.\n\n16 May, Return visit to view dolphins with Lindsay Porter.\n\n21 November, Buddhist Treasures, exhibition at Fung Ping Shan Museum, led by Catherine Maudesly.\n\n5 December, Gems of Ancient Chinese Inventions exhibition at Hong Kong Museum of History, led by Osmond Chan.\n\n16 January, 1999, Egyptian Treasures from the British Museum exhibition at Hong Kong Museum of Art proceeded by lunch at the Mariners Club. Exhibition tour led by Rosa Lee.\n\n13 March, Walk on Lantau from Pak Mong and Tai Ho to Mui Wo followed by tea at the Bunkers' residence.\n\nVisits outside Hong Kong\n\n10-13 April, 1999, The Backstreets of Beijing, led by Dr Joseph Ting.\n\n1-6 October, Ningbo, Putuoshan and Chusan, led by Geoffrey Roper and Keith Stevens.\n\n7-8 November, Macau: Heritage, Preservations and Portuguese Delights, led by Valery Garrett.\n\nxxii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214170, "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-1998", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "A Chinese New Year Lunch on 20th February, 1999 at\n\nLee Hu Fook Restaurant, Gerard Street, London\n\nThe Friends are grateful to Professor Hugh Baker, Professor of Chinese at SOAS and a well-known friend of the RAS in Hong Kong, for making the premises available for our functions, and it is hoped that when circumstances allow it will be possible to continue to meet there, which also enables us to put on light refreshments.\n\nSuch an auspicious start has enabled the committee to look further ahead and two more immediate events are:\n\na) A trip to northern France led by Mr. Keith Stevens, \"World War I Battlefield Tour - The Chinese Connection,\" in mid-May 1999\n\nb) A lecture by Dr. Dan Waters on Saturday, 29th May, 1999 on present day Hong Kong, at SOAS\n\nFor the Friends to exist and to continue to flourish, the group needs strong and dedicated personnel to move it forward. The Friends are very fortunate to have attracted some well-known names to their ranks. Besides Mr. Keith Stevens mentioned above and renowned, inter alia, for his knowledge of and publications on Chinese gods, this report cannot be complete without paying tribute to the organising abilities of Ms. Julia Barry (Treasurer), Mrs. Anita Wilson and Mrs. Rosemary Lee (Activities Secretaries). Their dedication in ensuring that the Friends move forward is invaluable.\n\nThis report is being written on a mild February morning in the United Kingdom, overlooking green fields and the River Orwell estuary, with a herd of deer in the background. It is a superb view, but in the far background there are the Felixstowe docks, with their tall cranes thrusting out into the North Sea. These docks are owned by Hutchison (Mr Li Ka-shing) and one cannot, even if one wished, which we do not, forget the Hong Kong connection even in this part of the world. Such tangible sights only help to perpetuate memories of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Branch of the RAS. It is therefore with great confidence for a successful future this year and beyond that the Friends send greetings to members of RASHKB at your annual general meeting.\n\nDavid Gilkes (Chairman)\n\nMarch, 1999\n\nxxvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214330, "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-1998", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "152\n\nIn the next issue, there is again coverage of Chinese events and background. On 19 January 1861, two half-page illustrations show, \"The Peace with China - Reading the Treaty at Pekin\"27 and \"Close of the War with China: Graves of Lieut. Anderson, Private Phipps, and Messrs. De Norman and Bowlby, in the Russian Cemetery, Pekin.\"2\n\nA brief account of a lunch meeting between Lord Elgin and Prince Kung (the two signatories of the Convention of Peking) highlights what British readers would have perceived as the need for the geography lessons which Frederick Stewart was to introduce into the Hong Kong Government Central School by 1870,29 and which - by 1889 - his successor reported as increasingly being adopted into the Hong Kong Village Schools.30 (Prior to this, according to Stewart, there was no geography taught in Hong Kong's traditional Chinese schools.)31 Apparently, Prince Kung commented that until very recently he had not known, \"that India was merely a province of the British empire; they formerly believed Great Britain to be a very small island, the population of which was so large that more than half were obliged to live in ships.\"32 Even as late as 1902, some students in Hong Kong's \"Vernacular Schools\", influenced by a different set of political circumstances, were reported as being, “at the last examination ignorant that Hong Kong was a British Colony: a number hazarded the opinion that it belonged to Russia.”33\n\nIt seems that the withholding of geographical teaching and its content when given were both decisions coloured by politics, whether on the Chinese or the British side.\n\nIn spite of Prince Kung's tenuous respect for the British land mass, the Editor of The Illustrated London News, as published on 19 January 1861, felt that there was sufficient reason for the expression of cautious optimism for the solidity of the peace that had been won: \"There seems to be good grounds for believing that we have at length fairly impressed the Chinese Government with the necessity of good faith in their dealings with us, and a reasonable hope that the treaty will be rigorously observed, leading to an interesting feeling of good will and confidence between our people and the Chinese.\"\n\n34\n\nOn 26 January 1861, the view that the Chinese were now respecting their promises was supported by a full double page spread showing \"The Chinese Bringing to the British Headquarters the 300,000 Taels [approximately one hundred thousand pounds sterling]35 as Compen-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214412, "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-1998", "page_number": 270, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "236 \n\nand the children's school. I don't know what keeping the city's sick residents in hospital costs; but outsiders, for example sailors from visiting ships, are charged very high rates - a dollar and a half a day. On the other hand education is provided to those desirous of it for next to nothing: children of both sexes and of any social class coming to the school only pay a dollar a year.\n\nFor the transference of commercial, political and other information within the colony, three papers are published here, coming out once or twice a week; and once a month the most important news is reprinted in a special publication (the Overland China Mail) for communication to other parts of the world. Commercial advertisements in these papers are published both in English and Chinese.\n\nFinally I consider it my duty to express my gratitude to the people of Hong Kong, for their hospitality and consideration, extended to us during our internment. I arrived in Hong Kong before my other comrades in internment, with only my midshipman Kovalevsky: this was on the 29th September. Released on our word of honour we had only just stepped ashore when we were met by Mr. Borrows, an American businessman, who having invited us to his home did indeed manage to make us feel at home. After that we received an invitation from the 59th Regiment stationed here, not only for lunch on a particular day but to be permanent guests at their table. It goes without saying that we declined the latter but during lunch the gentlemen officers were courteous to the degree of not a single word being said concerning military events or that could have been remotely connected to our situation. This circumstance might seem trivial to some; but we were in a particular frame of mind then, and till this day I remember it clearly. Soon after this the club, the reading library were open to us - and this without any hint on our part, but only through the attentiveness of our hosts. At first I didn't think of presenting myself to the governor, fearing a confrontation with the authorities; but I was soon convinced that Sir John Bowring was nothing like Admiral SIR JAMES STIRLING, who during the course of our internment did not even deign to glance at one of our officers. I won't list all our friends in Hong Kong, but will say, that all the inhabitants, it seemed to us, were inspired with the one desire: to make our involuntary stay with them, pleasant.\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214418, "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-1998", "page_number": 276, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "242\n\nagreeable in appearance.\n\nWe barely made it back to the European quarter and went into a hotel kept by a Pole. He said he had lived in Moscow for two years, when he was about fourteen and now he was over forty. I wanted to speak to him in Russian but he doesn’t remember a word. In a room closed from the heat, we were served a lunch of tender tasty fish and tough ham, which however we didn’t touch. P. then got into a sedan chair and ordered himself to be taken to some banker or other, while I set off further down the street to some superb quadrangular barracks. I passed an avenue with miserable scraggy trees and then walked along the water’s edge. It was no longer so hot, with a cool breeze coming from the bay. At the sea front I saw numerous large red insects flying from spot to spot. I wanted to catch a few and take them to G. Chasing after them I was unwittingly drawn to the gates of the barracks and found myself in a huge courtyard, which serves as a training area for the regiment.\n\nSome English officers saw me from the balcony, came down and invited me to join them, ‘to drink a glass of wine.’ We went into one of the rooms where the furniture, the crockery — everything confirmed what is said about the splendour of the officers’ way of life. Silverware and the finest linen are the normal accoutrements of their messes and dining-tables. The officers eat together at the one table and they adhere so strictly to this officer-family way of life that they are rarely absent from dinner. A spacious balcony, or verandah, where the masters of the barracks lazily doze during the hours of siesta, runs round the whole building. I declined the wine and was treated to some lemonade.\n\nIt was late and a sensuous, glittering and captivating night had descended when I returned to the pier, where I found P., waiting for the ship’s dinghy. Meantime a Chinese boat stood there before us; in the moonlight we could see two female figures in it. “What do we need the dinghy for?” I asked. “These women can ferry us across: let’s get in?” We got in and both women, holding on to the one oar, attached to the stern, began turning it briskly to right and left. The moon shone right in their faces: one was old, the other about fifteen, pale, with black, narrow, but nevertheless beautiful eyes; her hair was fastened at the back with a silver pin. “Take us to the Russian frigate!” we said. “Two shillings!” The young one named their price. “A hundred pounds sterling for some—", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214498, "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-1998", "page_number": 356, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "325\n\nrural simplicity. Many of those in the procession were school children dressed in a variety of international costumes whilst the presence of ladies dressed in costume (see illustration) reminded us that Tan Gong is a Hakka god and that the Hakkas have both a rural as well as coastal background. (3)\n\nAfter a sumptuous Portuguese casserole lunch at the Cacarola Restaurant in the nearby Rue das Gaivotas we made our way to the Taipa House Museum. Here there was lovingly recreated the living style of Macanese civil servant families living on Taipa Island during the early 20th Century. A reminder of much quieter times before we jet-foiled our way back to busy Hong Kong.\n\nNOTES\n\n1. It is not uncommon in 19th Century and early 20th Century Guandong folklore for dragons appearing in the guise of serpents to perform epidemic curing miracles. Witness my account of the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance on p.307. Vol.30, 1990 JHKBRAS. (For my research on this subject I am indebted to the Rev. Eric Kvan).\n\n2. Stevens, Keith (1997), p.140 Chinese Gods, Collins and Brown, in his account of the story of Lung Mu, the Mother of the Dragon, gives another example of a Pearl River area dragon turning from a serpent to a dragon.\n\n3. SIU, Anthony K.K., Vol. 27 JHKBRAS tells of the origins of Tan Gong in Guandong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214506, "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-1998", "page_number": 364, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "333\n\nroad from the Town Hall and to the right of the small public gardens. The building is still in use as a court house, and so access is allowed but only as far as the entrance hall.\n\nAlong Hu Bei Road from the Town Hall we found the former German Police Headquarters, again still in use as a police station. Compared with the vast majority of other German buildings in Tsingtao, this delightful and typically German small town-hall-like building is now looking a little dilapidated, with broken windows and peeling plasterwork. Outgrown, like the Town Hall, the police station also has an extension - but little effort has been made to match the design of the original.\n\nThe end of Hu Bei Road led us into Railway Station Square. The old German railway station building serves as the main entrance to the present-day station and is a lovely example of its kind. Unfortunately, it has been added to by a ghastly and enormous blue glass thing that has nothing whatsoever in common with its illustrious forebear.\n\nAcross the square from the southeast corner is the former Bahnhof (Station) Hotel. Impressive from a distance, but rather run-down when seen at closer quarters. Perhaps this is a project that some German hotel company might consider taking up one day - to restore it to its former glory.\n\nThe flavour then changed from the secular to the religious, with a visit to the two main churches in Tsingtao. The Protestant (Lutheran) Church, near the junction of Long Jiang Road and Su Jiang Road, again is in excellent repair and is clearly treasured by the city authorities. Built partly of granite and partly of rendered brick, the church contains a plaque that records that the foundations were laid on 19th April 1908 and the church opened on 23rd October 1910. A trip up the commanding clock tower is worthwhile, if only to inspect the wonderful mechanical clock and bell-striking mechanism.\n\nThe Catholic Cathedral of St Michael is an imposing twin-towered structure just to the west of An Hui Road. On any visit to China, one must always be prepared for odd things to happen. We arrived to find the cathedral was \"closed for lunch\"! Our inspection was limited", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214507, "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-1998", "page_number": 365, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "334\n\ntherefore to the outside of the building, which is of neo-gothic design. Although built in the 1930s, long after Germany ceased to hold sway over Tsingtao, the cathedral was built largely with German money. However, before it was completed the money supply was drastically reduced by the incoming Nazi government. Hence the inside, had we been able to see it, would have shown such incongruous features as flat ceilings instead of the vaulted and beamed roof that the outside would suggest. Legend has it that during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, two over-zealous Red Guards climbed the towers with the intention of removing the crosses from the top, but they fell to their respective deaths before completing their mission. As the cathedral is in a very narrow street, it is not possible to get a good camera angle unless one walks somewhat away from the front, down to the street to the left, where a lively street-market gives interesting and contrasting foreground possibilities - the whole looking rather medieval. In fact, the street market is worth a visit in its own right, being very extensive and lively. A chopper seller (as used in Chinese cooking and violent crime) was being very vocal at the time we were there.\n\nHills and beaches - the east of the city\n\nWe had organised a picnic lunch from the hotel. Given that time was tight we did not want to spend an hour or so hidden away in a restaurant. Instead, we took our picnic lunch up Qingdaoshan Hill, formerly Bismarck Berg. Access to the hill was somewhat unusual, being through a small museum on Jing Shan Road. The museum was in fact closed, but our guide managed to navigate us through and out of the back door, whence up the hill. A look-out post at the top gives good panoramas of the city and out to sea. The picnic lunch was adequate, but Philip Bruce appeared to be very pleased that he had brought his tin of sardines from the Co-op in Worthing.\n\nFortified and refreshed, our next mission was to find any remains of the German cemetery. Its location was clear enough from the many old maps that we had between us, but the guide was not hopeful of finding anything of interest. And so it turned out, or almost. The cemetery is now Baihua Park, and is remarkable for a reason that cannot be much further removed from cemeteries. On entering the park we noticed a wedding couple, and another - and another. There must have been upwards of 30 or more newly married couples wandering around", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214513, "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-1998", "page_number": 371, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "340\n\ncommander's residence. Indeed, its present use is a naval canteen. The sleepy staff were somewhat surprised to see an invasion by foreign tourists, but they allowed us to wander all over the house as if it were our own. Later research pinned this house down as being the governor's residence, as opposed to \"Government House\".\n\nFrom this vantage point it is possible to look into the naval base. There is not much of interest, except for one smart but small building towards the northern end of the base that looks as though it could have been the former customs house. It has a four-storey tower with a very tall flagpole and a large verandah overlooking the sea. My previous visit in 1996 afforded me a closer look at this well-preserved building, but only by gaining unauthorised entry to the naval base. The front gates were, naturally, guarded - but a door into one of the external walls had a sign that a canteen was doing business up the stairs. Up I went - and then down I went on the other side, but only very briefly. Much as I liked what I saw, I did not fancy spending a few years there.\n\nBack at the governor's residence, comparing notes and old photographs with a naval officer who had just strolled up the hill for lunch, we established that the actual Government House still exists, but that it is firmly inside a military compound. Nothing daunted, we found the place - inland and a mile or so to the west of where we were. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, no amount of pleading with the guards at the gate could get even a foot inside. But we could get a glimpse of the roof of the building in question - just through the gate and to the right - about 100 yards away, partially hidden by trees. The details that we could see confirmed it as being the former British governor's residence.\n\nDuring lunch, Jessie and a few others wandered off in search of the King's Hotel, the Hongkong Bank building and a few other places from her past. Unfortunately they did not find any.\n\nThe only other point of interest that we saw was an obelisk, in the middle of a traffic island near the seafront, commemorating \"the taking back of Wei Hai from the British after years of pain.\" Lucky, I suppose, that Wei Hai was not subjected to as much pain as Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214517, "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-1998", "page_number": 375, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "344\n\nAlthough our Qingdao guide accompanied us throughout the trip, we were met off the ferry in Dalian by another guide - Ying, an expert on the local attractions, although she quickly learned, as had her Qingdao colleague before her, that she was surrounded by a bit more expertise than she found in the average tour group.\n\nYing and Jack, the driver, very quickly learned that her new brood had another difference. She greeted us at the ferry pier by saying: \"I suppose you would all like to go to lunch now?\" This was met by a resounding answer in the negative. Having been jolted about on the boat we were not immediately interested in food.\n\nDalian city tour\n\nInstead we asked for the bus to go round some of the streets in the old Russian quarter. Specifically, we pointed out the photographs in \"Far from Home\" and said that we would like to see those and see them we did.\n\nThe People's Theatre looks a bit more garish these days, and has been turned into a Blackpool-like amusement hall. However, the majority of what we had come to see was there waiting for us, looking as splendid and impressive as we had hoped. Zhongshan Square (the former Great Square of the original Russian plan) still contains all the solid bank buildings from many years ago. All are now Chinese banks, but clearly recognisable are the buildings from all the old photographs. The square also includes one of Dalian's three former Yamato Hotels, now glorying in the name of the Dalian Guest House. Do not be put off by this name, however it is far from being a bed and breakfast in Bognor. The wrought iron canopy leads you into one of the most impressive marble lobbies of any hotel I have seen. Our experience in Yantai leads me to believe that the term \"guest house\" is reserved for the grandest of available accommodation, reserved for the party's great and good.\n\nFor me one of the most distinctly Russian buildings, and one that features prominently in \"Far from Home\", is located just on the far side of the Victory Bridge (rather a practical name - not sure who's victory over whom), on the road leading north-west from Zhongshan Square.\n\nPage 375\n\nPage 376", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214518, "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-1998", "page_number": 376, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "345\n\nIt immediately became clear, however, that although very similar to the building in the picture taken by Tess Johnston, the present building was somewhat different. On enquiry, we were told that the old building had been demolished and rebuilt as an almost exact replica. This appeared to be true.\n\nBeyond this, along the road, were a line of impressive European-style residences, with delightfully contrasting back streets leading left and right. The far end of this street opened into a cobbled square with six or eight storey apartment buildings, reminding me of the suburbs of Milan. In fact the whole city has a very European feel to it. Compared to many Chinese cities, Dalian is very neat and tidy, and organised. It is proud of being the first (or only?) city in China to rid itself of rats. (I witnessed some public garden workers in a state of great excitement when they thought they saw a rat in the garden they were working in - it turned out to be a squirrel when the four of them flushed the unfortunate beast out of the bushes.) The streets are clean. There are trees everywhere. The roads leading out of the city are marked with white bollards at the roadside. One finds oneself wondering how come this particular part of China can stand out so much as being - well, rather nice. The answer is quickly offered by anybody to whom you ask this question, and that is that it is the Mayor of Dalian who is responsible for the city's progress. He has travelled extensively overseas, and when he comes home he tells his officials that he wants to see in Dalian the sort of facilities that he has seen abroad. And he is getting his way. The man deserves a medal. It would not be surprising for Dalian to be giving Shanghai a good run for its money some time in the new century.\n\nAnother feature of Dalian is that there is very little in the way of graffiti, although our guide spoiled the illusion somewhat by explaining that \"nobody can afford the paint\".\n\nLunch was in an enormous restaurant where our party were the only customers.\n\nThe city tour continued with a visit to the Nanshan suburb, the former Japanese residential area. Here are a number of quiet leafy streets containing very smart houses that would be at home in Surrey or Kent or a London suburb.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214521, "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-1998", "page_number": 379, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "348\n\ndome of very Russian origins.\n\nLunch was had in a small restaurant on the road back out of town towards Dalian, in a building next to the one in which the Russians surrendered to the Japanese on 1 January 1905. A sign board records the events of that time, noting that after the Russian defeat the people of Lushun were \"pressed by the Japanese invaders.\" From what we could see, they are still very smartly turned out, with neat creases down their trousers. Next to us at lunch was a tale of rather elderly and venerable Japanese. We were wondering whether or not they had “been there before,\" but we were too polite to ask.\n\nA very productive morning, but it then struck us that there was nothing left to do in the afternoon. We turned down the guides' suggestion that we visit a carving factory. One of our number, who is famous for it, suggested that we visit a textile factory - but this too was voted against. Instead we asked if we could find some Dalian United football jerseys to take home as souvenirs. Believe it or not, the many sporting goods shops that surround the main stadium in Dalian could not between them come up with one jersey of the local heroes' team. England? Yes. Watford? Plenty. Juventus? Loads. Dalian? “Sorry - we don't get much call for them.\"\n\nAfter this disappointment we rather all went our separate ways. A few of us opted for a return visit to Nanshan to take photographs of the beautiful houses there as the sun was going down.\n\nDinner that night was a very pleasant western-style buffet in the Dalian Shangri-La, followed by a beer or two in the hotel's FATS Bar. I never did find out what \"FATS\" stands for, but the place was very popular with the local lads and a number of \"working girls.”\n\nAnd then, suddenly, it was all over. The weeks of planning, and the months before that. The reading and researching, the writing and the wondering. Was it all worth it? Certainly! Would I do it again? Er\n\nDid I learn anything from the experience? Yes - a number of things. I learned (again, for I have been on RAS trips before) that trips with members of this society are always fascinating experiences, attracting, as they do, people who have their own personal mines of information", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214551, "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-1998", "page_number": 409, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "378\n\nthe Xuan-wu Gate. The church was built by Adam Schall and completed in 1652. Emperor Shun Zhi visited it 24 times, and often had heart-to-heart talks with Schall. On our visit the church was packed. The 7 o'clock mass was just finishing and the 8 o'clock mass then started, but many of those attending the first mass stopped for the second, for that was the Bishop's mass. After the distribution of communion he moved amongst the congregation, shaking hands, including those of several of our party. Emotional moments captured superbly on video by Allan Painter. [Also Illustration Three].\n\nThis was followed by a quieter visit to the massive National Museum of Chinese History, fortunate to have a superb view over Tien An Men Square. The many different objects set out on display in traditional museum style fascinated different members of our group. It was lovely to see a large number of children, some with parents, busy drawing different articles in the collection with notable artistic talent. At the main entrance we saw long queues of children in uniform going into an exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of Chou En Lai's birth.\n\nAfter lunch amongst the spring blossoms of Bei Hai (North Sea) Park we drove north to Prince Kung's Garden (Gongwangfu). Prince Kung (Gong), a Late Qing Dynasty statesman and reformer, was the Garden's second owner. Exquisitely designed, the mansion exhibits a high level of classical Chinese architecture. The buildings are joined together by winding corridors whilst there is also an opera hall decorated with delicate wisteria patterns, however, the actual gardens were rather dry, dusty and crowded.\n\nThen we visited the nearby Changqiao Community Service Centre in Liu Yin Street where the Society was presented with the scroll painted by elderly members of the Centre. We heard about the various activities organised by the Centre. This was followed by a short walk and then the group divided up to go to individual homes in the hutongs for a meal. This was a delightful experience, enjoyed equally by both hosts and guests alike.\n\nThe long day came to a delightful end with a visit to the Huguang Hall at 3 Hu Fang Qiao Road, Xuan Wu District. First built in 1807 it was also known as the Guangdong and Hunan Guildhall and was a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214607, "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-1999", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Appendix Two\n\nActivities - Visits\n\nDate 1999\n\n24 April: Kadoorie Farm, led by Dr Gary Ades, followed by visit to Shui Tau and Kam Tin led by Jason Wordie and Dr Patrick Hase.\n\n29 May: Adornment for the Body and Soul, Ancient Chinese Ornaments from the Mengdiexuan Collection, led by staff of the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery.\n\n15 to 18 June: Zhangjiajie, North-west Hunan Province, Tour, led by Dr Michael Lau.\n\n27 June: Ohel Leah Synagogue, led by Rabbi Kermayer and Glenn Fromm followed by lunch at Jewish Community Centre.\n\n24 September: Wo Hang Mid-Autumn Festival Fire Lanterns, led by Dr Patrick Hase.\n\n15 to 21 October : Bits of Broken China - Shandong and Dalian, led by Robert Nield, Sarah Parnell and Michael Broom.\n\n27 November: Backstage at the Opera, led by Dr Patrick Hase.\n\n18 December: Railway Museum, Man Mo Temple and Tai Po Tau Study Hall, Tai Po, led by Dr Patrick Hase and Peter Crush.\n\n2000\n\n15 January: Public Records Office, led by Carl Smith.\n\n26 February: Wan Jing Jai Temple and Kan Lung Wai Walled Village, led by Ron and Veronica Clibborn-Dyer and Peter Stuckey.\n\nDan Waters,\n\nPresident\n\nxxi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214609, "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-1999", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "d) February 2000: A lively Chinese lunch at the suitably named Golden Dragon Restaurant in Gerrard Street, London, attended by 45 persons.\n\nFor the arrangement of these activities we again have to thank Rosemary Lee, Anita Wilson, Kirsty Norman, and Keith Stevens, all of whom really make this Friends Society bond and move forward. We are now looking at the future and we will have the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Hugh Baker, Professor of Chinese at SOAS to lecture on 27th May, at which time we will also have our annual general meeting. Unfortunately the proposed trip to visit World War I cemeteries and battlefields in Northern France and Flanders to examine Chinese graves has again had to be postponed due to the incompetence of the travel agent. However the Oxford weekend is still in the planning stages and it is hoped to visit Brian McElney's collection of oriental porcelain and artefacts in Bath.\n\nI close this report by sending you on behalf of the Friends in the UK all our best wishes for a successful annual general meeting and for the years ahead. It is very encouraging to read the newsletter and to see that the membership is at a high level; there is an enviable lecture and activity programme, and a steady stream of publications; for all of this we congratulate you.\n\nD.A.Gilkes, Chairman\n\nMarch 2000\n\nXXIII", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214639, "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-1999", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "18\n\nUntypical is the temple at the end of the central spinal lane: in other walled villages this site is occupied at most by a \"God-house\" (7), since the villagers tended to feel that to have a full-scale community temple inside a walled village was improper, as access was thus reduced for non-villagers. The absence of a well is another uncommon feature of the two villages - most walled villages, for obvious reasons, find space for one (the Nga Tsin Wai villagers, if besieged within their walls, as they were in 1854, dipped water from their moat). Moats are quite common, and are not special to these two villages.\n\nThe village was built to house far more people than can possibly have been Nga Tsin Wai villagers in 1570. 130 houses is a very large number. It is probable that it was always assumed that each village family would occupy several houses, some as residences, some as barns, some as pigsties or cattle sheds. It is likely that the large number of houses was designed to allow the other villages of the Kowloon plain to flee inside the walls when problems arose, and that at least those members of the three clans of the village living outside the walls in the other villages of the area always assumed they could find shelter there at a pinch. When the walls were rehabilitated in 1724 they certainly sheltered far more people than were then needed - the Ng clan then consisted only of some eight households, and the other two clans of no more than three or four each. Without question, the elders of 1724 were looking to the long term in rebuilding so lavishly, and must have had the defences of more than just Nga Tsin Wai in mind.\n\nAt both Nga Tsin Wai and Tai Wai, the villagers started to build houses outside the walls in the late eighteenth century at Tai Wai, more probably during the early nineteenth century at Nga Tsin Wai. These houses were larger and airier than the houses within the walls, and were built by the wealthier villagers as residences - normally these families retained one or more houses within the walls as well. By 1902 there were thirty house-lots just outside the walls at Nga Tsin Wai, mostly on the east of the village, between the moat and the river. Some were very large (see Map 2). The first of these houses were built by 1846, as several are shown in the 1846 drawing mentioned above but more were added between then and 1902. It is likely that houses built by members of the village clans in Sha Po were originally seen as no different from the houses built between the walls and the river: they were both \"houses outside the walls\". It was only at the end of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214710, "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-1999", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "89\n\ncalled. 'hair vegetable), is a homonym for 'get rich'. This basin-meal lunch was the final item on the agenda for the day that the main ceremony was held.\n\nWith this having taken place on the Wednesday at Sheung Tsuen, and the god, Taai Wong Ye, having been burned the same evening, the bamboo-framed matshed was dismantled the following day. As follow up, the Author thus decided to return to the village three days later. The five tun fu pots filled with sand, with a single, split-bamboo talisman with prayers written on it in each pot, had been placed circling the old banyan tree (see Plate 7). Tied to the top of each talisman was a golden (foil) kam fa and a red ribbon - both auspicious colours. There were remains of joss sticks burned by villagers.\n\n10\n\nFurther follow up visits by the Author revealed that, on the 1st and the 15th of every Chinese month especially, joss sticks are burned near the tun fu pots largely by elderly women on behalf of their families. Nevertheless, the pots often give the impression of not being particularly well looked after. The site is untidy. This is a pity. The new West Railway line, of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, is planned to come into operation in November 2003. The tunnel is due to be finished in 2002. The pots will be left for the full duration of its construction and, if they cease to be effective, a nuen fu ('warming' of the talismans) \"revival ceremony\" may be needed. If so, Taoist priests will again officiate.\n\nComparisons of various tun fu ceremonies\n\nHow does the Pat Heung ceremony compare with other tun fu ceremonies that have been conducted elsewhere (Baker; 1980, 21)? Unfortunately the Author has not been able to find any written information, nor has he heard any oral accounts of tun fu ceremonies conducted outside Hong Kong although he gathers they do take place in places like Taiwan. Often in Hong Kong, like the one mentioned earlier (see Endnote 1) on Ma Wan Island, or those that the Author has seen in places like Sha Tin and Kam Tin, the pots were placed near earth-god shrines. All these ceremonies were much smaller than the main ceremony at Pat Heung described in this paper. No matsheds were erected at these smaller gatherings. Sometimes ceremonies are held close to tsz tongs (ancestral halls), although not normally inside.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214711, "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-1999", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "90\n\ntemples. Nevertheless, in the case of the Pat Heung tun fu ceremony, the party did go into the temple as the reader saw, but only briefly to pay respects to the gods.\n\nAs another example, again in a predominantly Hakka community at Tai Wo Village, also in Pat Heung district, another tun fu ceremony took place on Wednesday 14 April, 1999, near an earth god shrine again close to a banyan tree. The Author attended. This time it was conducted by a single, part-time, feng shui master (not by a Taoist priest) who did not really look the part in his black, Chinese jacket, jeans and the ubiquitous sports shoes. He lives in a village on Tai Mo Shan. However, in this case, a native Cantonese speaker remarked he could understand most of what the officiating person was chanting. The Author, too, could understand a certain amount. A short walk followed this one-hour long ceremony, with the feng shui master leading the party over to the well to offer up prayers to its god. The village has had mains water for twenty years or so. Obviously, in the past, it was important to pay respects to the well god. Yet the practice continues. Precautions need to be taken to safeguard this valuable commodity, understandably, whether the supply is from a well or from the mains.\n\nEveryone present at this Tai Wo ceremony was given a red lai shi, lucky envelope containing $20, which apparently came from the coffers of the village. This appeared not to be too affluent. One wondered at the time, how many onlookers felt great and mysterious things were happening during this ceremony? It was, nevertheless, all followed by a pleasant picnic-style lunch under the banyan. Again, all present ate roast pork, which had previously been offered up to the gods. A government officer informed the Author that the villagers were pleased he was present, taking an interest in their tun fu ceremony. This pleasure appeared genuine. Certainly, everyone was very friendly, including the feng shui master who, in this case, willingly answered the Author's questions without any hint that he wanted to keep the profession a closed shop.\n\nNot only with tun fu but with Christianity, too, different denominations' beliefs and practices vary, sometimes markedly. Even within the Church of England with its high church and low church, and from one clergyman to another - with their different leanings, political or otherwise, variations can be considerable, not to mention far greater", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214714, "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-1999", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "93\n\ntold the Editor:\n\n'Villagers are out to \"screw\" Government.'\n\nOne Scottish, retired, senior civil servant and his Chinese wife who was herself at one time a government servant, both level-headed people, agreed between them it was 90 per cent money and 10 per cent belief in feng shui. Some other Chinese government servants take a similar view.\n\n'Perhaps some of the older Tang Clan members really believe in tun fu', a Chinese, past District Officer who is outwardly quite westernised but inwardly still very Chinese, told the Author. 'But not the younger ones.\n\nSome young people do believe, nevertheless. And for those that do not it does not mean to say that, as they grow older, their views will not change. Such people, in middle age or when they are elderly, sometimes become the most enthusiastic proponents of traditional values.\n\n'A woman who did not believe in feng shui nearly died', the Author was once informed. 'After recovering she became convinced', the informer continued (Waters; 1997, 63).\n\nIt has been argued by Wong Siu-lun that most Hong Kong Chinese are westernised only in a superficial sense (Evans; 1997, 3, 7). Inwardly, they are very Chinese. To a large number traditions and festivals are important. There were, however, few young people at the Pat Heung tun fu ceremony as it was a weekday and pupils had to go to school. The ceremony was, nevertheless, well attended by adults. There are, of course, other reasons for attending. In some cases villagers were expected to be there by others. In any case people could meet old friends and chat. They might even get invited to a lunch at government expense.\n\nNot everyone agrees believing is all a question of money. James Hayes, a past District Officer in the New Territories, wrote (Hayes; 1998):\n\nsome European civil engineers and contractors' staff stated their belief (to me) that it was all hooey ...'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214715, "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-1999", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "94\n\n'I don't go along with that for one moment. Village people have a long tradition of believing that cosmic harmony is required for the well-being of the living and the dead...'\n\nThe Author agrees with Hayes that many Chinese do take feng shui and tun fu very seriously. This includes some of the western-educated. The fact that with some ceremonies villagers are prepared to put up with inconveniences, such as not being allowed to leave their village, demonstrates this. People spend large sums of their own money on some festivals, not just money that is given to them by the Government. Feng shui can even be a source of terror: if a grave of an ancestor is flooded, for example (Waters; 1997, 106). Taking remedial action and conducting ceremonies can have a therapeutic effect on the persons involved. The fervency with which these ceremonies are carried out, as described in this paper, are also indicators of 'serious intent'. Organisers and participants frequently put themselves to a great deal of trouble and inconvenience.\n\nOn a lighter note a retired, English, Hong Kong senior police officer told the Author that, in the early 1960s when he was stationed in the Ping Shan district in the north-west of the New Territories, tun fu ceremonies were more common. The belief then among the police was that as long as there was money in Government's coffers to pay for them and to let off a few firecrackers, with a bit of cash left over for villagers including paying for a lunch, then everybody was happy.\n\n13\n\nWest Rail representatives complained, at a government meeting that the Author attended in 1998, that New Territories' villagers were not always co-operative. In the case of the tunnel at Pat Heung, work has not been held up. Compensation, it seems, can sometimes help buy co-operation. This has not always been so. For instance, as previously mentioned, in the case of the Tang clan, they closed some of their buildings along the Ping Shan Heritage Trail in retaliation because the Government needed to move an ancestral grave (Cheung; 1999, 582).\n\nNevertheless, even if many villagers do genuinely believe in tun fu, there are, it is agreed, inconsistencies in their beliefs even if, at times, the average Chinese does not act as though everything depends on such things as the pulsation of feng shui. Chinese not infrequently say that, when a baby is born, ‘it lands on the ground, cries three times", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214776, "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-1999", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "155\n\nspeaking guard commander about the RAF officers and he says they will soon be back, being in Canton or HK. The WO takes me to his flat where he proceeds to question me through the interpreter about the RAF, where we kept our stores, and how their Air Force compares to the RAF. He wants me to write my answers down on paper. I refuse to answer most questions but I give my opinion of their Air Force which is far from complimentary. Am also asked if they could have.\n\nThe last block of the diary was incomplete. A possible partial translation of this block is as follows:\n\nreduced HK earlier by bombing indiscriminately. I write lines of nonsense about raids on London. Manage to pinch a handful of cigarettes before I go back to camp. Cigarettes run out and we smoke dried tea leaves which are pretty foul. Another parcel including cigarettes and curry.\n\nWeek ending fourteenth. Getting warmer and diet beginning to have effect. Many men with beriberi or swelling of ankles and have difficulty in walking. Feel fairly fit but lack energy. Common sight to see several dead bodies in sea. George orders all ranks to salute him.\n\nTwenty-first. Florrie turns up in her best effort looking charming. Suspect Rangoon has fallen and Japs have a big celebration. Outlook looks decidedly grim. Troops put on an excellent concert and George attends. Have started brewing wine from raisins. Japs say officers are to be paid so shall be able to send some to Florrie. Weather hot and acquire quite a tan; ours started to malign our people in the camp. Make most of a pair of wooden clogs as I only have one very old pair of shoes.\n\nThirty-first. Japs have another search and confiscate all electrical kit including Chippys' immersion heater. No meat for over a week and everyone gets one rice pot. Celebrate the twenty-fourth birthday of Ray\n\nand T", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214877, "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-1999", "page_number": 292, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "262\n\nbeen later than 1868, when Rev. Lobscheid first published his dictionary.\n\nThe paper is not modern, of indifferent quality and badly stained, and Chinese ink and a brush were used to write the record. These facts, together with the currency in use, provide some indication of the period at which the paper was written. Most likely, it was the late 19th or early 20th century.\n\nA Money Loan Association?\n\nWhat can one make of it? I like to think that these men were members of a money loan association. This involved revolving a small sum among themselves, and paying differing amounts of interest, depending upon the order in which they agreed to take the loan, those waiting longer paying less by way of interest. If this were the case, the person drawing up the list and crossing off one name on it, was most likely the organizer.\n\nThe fact that those on the list are a mixed bunch strengthens this supposition. Two of them are listed only by family name, namely \"Sang Chan\" and \"Sang Ho\": that is a Mr. Chan and a Mr. Ho. The two men may be presumed to have been casual acquaintances of the organizer or of the man who kept the record, or else strangers introduced by other persons in the group. By contrast, \"Ah Yee\" was clearly well known to either man, this being a familiar form of address. So, too, were Yeung and Yip, whose family and personal names are both set down. The person whose name was removed from the list appears also to have been a friend or relative, as personal names only are given.\n\nIt is known that the usual number of persons joining together in this way was around twelve, each in turn to take a loan, month by month, during the lunar year. This period was considered to be the most practical by the organizers of these ephemeral bodies, since it restricted time, capital and interest to what they hoped were realistic levels. Thus it is likely that more persons were involved than those listed, and that this torn fragment may provide the names of those who had yet to receive their loans, with the amounts of principal and interest due.\n\nThe variations in the sums listed are explained by the amount of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214897, "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-1999", "page_number": 312, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "286\n\nOur fourth day started at 8.00 a.m. as we headed off to Danang via Hai Van Pass. The scenic ride took us up the mountains, travelling from north to south through Cloudy Pass (Hai Van). This pass was established under the Minh Mang dynasty and the fortresses here were strategic points during the war for the defence by the French and Vietnamese soldiers. But all these monuments were badly damaged during the American War. En route, we also saw the beautiful Lang Co Beach, a resort area, as well as the \"Reunification Express\" train passing through one of the level crossings. Our coach stopped to enable us to obtain a picture of this historic train, which is still powered by steam! Finally, we arrive at Danang for a quick lunch followed by a tour of the Cham Museum.\n\nDanang, the provincial capital, has grown from a small fishing village into an important port and the country's fourth-largest city with 400,000 inhabitants. It is the port where 3,500 American marines first set foot in South Vietnam, on 8th March 1965. In the 17th and 18th centuries the first Spanish and French landings were also made here. Subsequently, Danang became the scene of battles between the Vietnamese, who fought first the Spanish and later the French. In the course of the 19th century Danang superseded Hoi An as the most important port and commercial centre in the central region of the country.\n\nThe Danang area was the centre of the Cham civilization, from the fourth to the eighth centuries. The Cham museum was set up in 1936 by the Ecole Francaise D'Extreme Orient. Its extensive collection is displayed in four rooms featuring the following four periods according to their origins: My Son, Tra Kieu, Dong Duong and Thap Mam. The different influences, which shaped the culture and history of the Cham people, are revealed through their sculpture and carvings. The Cham Museum provides an insight into the fascinating culture and history of the Cham people. Many statues and bas reliefs attest to the rich culture of the kingdom which once flourished there and one realizes the worship of Buddhism and Hinduism was prevalent at that time.\n\nAfter the Cham Museum off we went to Marble Mountain. Five miles south of Danang towards the coast stand five large hills known as the Marble Mountains or Mountains of the Five Elements (gold, metal, wood, fire and earth). These mountains were once a group of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214931, "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-2000", "page_number": 27, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "Appendix Two\n\nActivities - Visits\n\nDate 2000\n\nSaturday 8 April: Private View-The 'Mosseum' of Sculpture, led by Roger Moss, with lunch at Lok Yu Teahouse\n\nApril 1 to 4: Foshan, Tinghu and Zhaoging, led by Dr Joseph Ting\n\nSaturday 27 May: Museum of Coastal Defence, at Lei Yue Mun, led by Dr Joseph Ting and Phillip Bruce\n\nSaturday 24 June, Bethanie Church Pokfulam, led by Phillip Bruce\n\nSaturday 23 September, Chi Lin Nunnery, led by Professor Puay Peng Ho\n\nHase\n\nSeptember 29 - October 6: Central Vietnam, led by Dr Patrick\n\nSaturday 18 November: Police Museum at Wanchai Gap, led by Curator Wong Nai Kwan\n\n2001\n\nSaturday 13 January: Hong Kong Heritage Museum, at Shatin, led by Valery Garrett and May Holdsworth\n\n22 to 29 January: Goa: Former Portuguese Enclave, led by Dr Patrick Hase\n\nSaturday 10 February: Saltfields at Tai O, led by Dr Patrick Hase\n\nSaturday 3 March: Buddhist Sculptures: New Discoveries at HK Museum of Art, led by Rose Li Assistant Curator\n\nxxvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214933, "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-2000", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "* 23 June 2000. Visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum to hear Mrs. Valerie Garrett on her collection of Chinese costumes. A real lifetime's work in Hong Kong went into this collection and members were treated to a masterly exposition by Valerie on how she succeeded in acquiring the costumes and their origins.\n\n* 17 July 2000. Visit to Oxford. This was a fascinating day to see many aspects of Oxford that one does not normally visit. We started at the Pitt Rivers museum to look at the Sir Aurel Stein collection and the conservation laboratory housing the textiles brought back by him. In the afternoon, a visit to the Ashmolean Museum was made featuring the Shaw collection (not Sir Run Run) and a collection of mid-nineteenth-century Yarkand and Kashgaria costumes once belonging to Robert Shaw, British Commissioner in Ladakh, who was an intelligence gatherer within the machinations of the Great Game. In the late afternoon, we invaded David Paskett's house to view his own paintings focusing on \"Glimpses of everyday Chinese life.\" David has made frequent visits to China and is well known for the reproductions appearing on the cards of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Art museum. The day ended with a congenial Chinese dinner. For this very successful day, we need to thank Mrs. Rosemary Lee, whose organisational ability was up to its usual high standards.\n\n* 28 October 2000. Lecture by Mrs. Janice Thorpe. \"Hong Kong Revisited.\" Janice had recently returned from Hong Kong where she was one of the R.A.S. volunteers who worked with the Antiquities and Monuments Office, surveying heritage sites. This was a wonderfully all-embracing lecture which brought home not only the places which many of us had not seen but should have seen, and were still there, but also the very rapid changes and, in some cases, demolition of many well-known heritage sites.\n\n* 27 January 2001. Chinese New Year Lunch at the China City Restaurant, Soho, London. This was attended by 51 members and friends, including one who travelled up from Cornwall and one from Belgium.\n\nXXVIII", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215134, "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-2000", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "187\n\nvirtually cut off the supply to the waterfall other than when they are overflowing, for instance after a heavy storm.\n\nApart from pleasure boats and other small craft, Tai Tam Harbour was used more in the 19th century than it is today. During the period 1806 to 1819, long before Hong Kong was taken over by Britain, James Horsburgh, a hydrographer with the East India Company, surveyed the waters around the Island. He wrote that Tai Tam afforded shelter from almost all winds (Liu Shuyong, 1997:24). It is not of course a harbour as we sometimes know it with wharves and godowns. It is an inlet, which provides a place for ships to shelter. To illustrate again the Harbour's use as a place for protection from the elements mention is made of ‘tactical manoeuvring and target practice,' in February 1878, by the Royal Navy (White Ensign-Red Dragon, 1997; 39). It continues, 'The 20th February being very misty the fleet remained at Tytam Bay.'\n\nPeople naturally ask when exactly were the two Obelisks first erected; who erected them; and what purpose did (or do) they serve? As a start, with the aims of answering such questions, two Chief Inspectors, H J W Chetwynd-Chatwin and Keith Francis, both then serving in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, arranged an informal meeting, in 1994. The meeting took place in a bar at a police officers' mess in Wan Chai. It was followed by a curry lunch. About a dozen people were invited who, it was felt, could contribute. They included the Government Director of Marine and RASHKB member R S Hownam-Meek who spent his career in shipping with Jardine. A couple of weeks or so after the meeting the topic of the Obelisks was raised by Radio Television Hong Kong. Little of real substance emerged from the meeting or the ‘phone-in radio programme. The late Arthur May, then a retired civil servant, did however ‘phone in to say that, as a youth, he went to live at Tai Tam in 1919. He also recalled that when he sailed around the Harbour in the 1920s the two Obelisks were definitely already there.\n\nThe Hydrographic Data Centre, at Taunton in England, maintains that information was received from the Commander-in-Chief, China, that two beacons, each 30 feet high, had been erected. These were first inserted on Admiralty charts by 'Notice to Mariners 755' of 1900 (Atherton, 1996:94). I have a chart showing Tai Tam Harbour, dated 1894, which shows the Obelisks, but Atherton informs me that this is a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215173, "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-2000", "page_number": 269, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "231\n\nTHE HKBRAS VOLUNTEERS\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nThe RAS Volunteers really began in the summer of 1991 when a meeting was held over lunch in a restaurant in Wan Chai. This was attended by Professor David Lung, Chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, Mr Alex Yip, then Executive Secretary of the Antiquities and Monuments Office, and Dr Dan Waters, Council member of the HKBRAS.\n\nLeading on from there, volunteers were invited from among HKBRAS members and from the membership of the Hong Kong Institute of Architects. The response was reasonably good and some 20 odd members, from both societies, submitted their names. The first get-together and briefing was held in May 1992, in the old Museum of History in Kowloon Park.\n\nThose present included historians, architects, surveyors, a civil engineer, lawyers, and others, many with a wealth of local experience. In addition, there were a few members who were interested and just wanted to tag along, help where they could, and learn something in the process.\n\nAt that first briefing, the Volunteers were split into four or so groups and the intention was for each group to operate independently. Assignments were provided by the Antiquities and Monuments Office and generally consisted of inspecting, surveying, researching, and writing up reports on various buildings, both Chinese and Western. Preparatory work was carried out for consideration by the Antiquities Advisory Board concerning the grading of buildings and the Volunteers made recommendations. The research frequently necessitated visits to the Public Records Office, libraries, and similar institutions.\n\nAlthough a great deal of useful work was undertaken, progress was not entirely satisfactory. With a group consisting of, say, four persons, there was sometimes difficulty in agreeing dates when all participants could meet. Then, on the agreed date, possibly there were some who did not turn up. Because of such factors, enthusiasm and numbers of Volunteers unfortunately gradually dwindled.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215196, "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-2000", "page_number": 292, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "256\n\nTHING\n\nT\n\nNeedless to say, I bought the book (for $8.40!) but for many years until quite recently in fact - could not bring myself to read it properly. This I have now done and have discovered that it is not a book to be trifled with. It should be read slowly and carefully, and savoured, if one is truly to understand and enjoy it. It is, as the Daily Express described it at the time, 'a true story of piercing beauty' and as Ed Murrow said of Winston Churchill, Suyin 'mobilised the English language, and sent it into battle.'\n\nThe book\n\nTrue story? I didn't know that, either, until very recently and this explains how, and why, I came to write this Note. In April 2001 Council Member Jason Wordie wrote a piece about our immediate Past-President Dan Waters in The South China Morning Post. Dan shared with us the fact that he lives in Realty Gardens, Conduit Road, which was the former site of the Foreign Correspondents Club. Dan also noted that behind his apartment block is the pavilion where Han Suyin and Ian Morrison, a correspondent for The Times, used to meet before he was killed during the Korean War.\n\nIan Morrison, circa 1943\n\nHurried e-mail to Dan. Was this the basis for A Many-Splendoured Thing? Yes. But Suyin's lover was called Mark Elliot, both in the book and the motion picture? Yes, but obviously dramatic licence was involved. But Ian Morrison was British and Mark, in the motion picture, was American? Well, maybe William Holden, consummate actor though he was, would have had trouble imitating a British accent. Can I have a look at the pavilion? Sure, come for lunch next Sunday. So I did.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215255, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "A REPORT TO THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY (HONG KONG BRANCH) FROM THE FRIENDS (U.K.)\n\nOnce again it is my privilege to present a report to the Annual General Meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong, and what a pleasure it is.\n\nFirst of all, though, the Friends would like to send its greetings and all good wishes to those in Hong Kong. We can only admire at a distance the growth of the Society, and what it is now achieving. This is well brought out in your very informative newsletters and journals, both of which convey a picture of liveliness, historical eagerness and relevant research. The Society was revived in 1959 with 'the object of encouraging an active interest in East Asia, and in particular China, through the medium of lectures and discussions and by publishing an annual journal. These objectives have certainly been achieved, and we are all the beneficiaries.\n\nBy the nature of our distance from East Asia and our far-flung membership, the Friends' achievements in the U.K. are more modest. We are only entering our fourth year of operation and we number approximately 75 members. However, what we may lack in numbers is made up by the enthusiastic response of those who attend the quarterly meetings; members do come from all parts of the U.K., and one member comes from Belgium. This is all very encouraging and augurs well for the future.\n\nSince I last reported, the Friends' programme has continued to be held quarterly, normally at London University SOAS, preceded by lunch at Sheng's Tea House. It started with the A.G.M. in May 2000 followed by a lecture by that well-known Hong Kong personality, Anthony Lawrence. Anthony gave a very lively and personal picture about H.K. today. He informed us of the gradual physical evolutionary changes but at the same time explained that the human side was much the same as it was when he first went to Hong Kong fifty or so years ago. Interspersed with anecdotes of examples, the talk lived up to the highest expectations and the Friends would like to thank him again for taking time out in his busy U.K. annual visit.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215467, "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": 244, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "193\n\nwhat appeared to be a dressing gown. The hotel's general manager? Employee of the month? I am ashamed to say that I later found out that this was none other than His Majesty King Jigme Singye Wangchuk, an active monarch-of-the-people who is held in very high regard by all Bhutanese.\n\nAfter being allocated a room key, it was more than I could manage to take my small case from the young lady who had been detailed to take it to my room, so I followed behind feeling a bit embarrassed. The \"room\" turned out to be a separate bungalow in the spacious and wooded grounds, replete with a twin bedroom, a lounge with triple sofa and twin armchairs, a dressing room and a bathroom. Having learnt from my wife, the first thing I checked was the bathroom. I wonder if the hot water is hot? YIKES!! Immediately, scalding hot water gushed out of the tap at high pressure. Very welcome, given that the bathroom otherwise felt like a refrigerator. Two electric heaters served to make the bedroom very cosy - I even had to turn one of them off.\n\nWill two rolls be enough?\n\nBrian's very comprehensive briefing notes included the advice that we bring two rolls of lavatory paper. My inspection of the bathroom revealed that this advice was very sound. The roll next to the loo had about a quarter inch thickness of paper remaining. There was a new roll, still wrapped in its cellophane wrapper, straight from the factory, but even this only had half an inch. I wondered at all the industry and effort that went into manufacturing and marketing rolls of lavatory paper with such limited reserves, in a country where chillies were a staple. I was worried!\n\nI left the room, carefully turning off each of the two light switches in the bathroom, the four in the dressing room and the eleven in the bedroom/living room (all being controlled by a majestic GEC fuse box containing equal amounts of ceramics and electrics) and headed for lunch.\n\nI am a very conservative eater, and my first exposure to Bhutanese food was approached very much with Brian's 'two rolls' advice on my mind. But lunch could not have been more pleasant or more welcome.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215468, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "194\n\nSpread before us was a buffet of rice and vegetables, fish, veal and, for those who wanted them, green chillies. All this was followed by strawberry pancakes. To help lunch go down we had half an hour to wander round the grounds. There was a cool breeze singing in the pine trees. Everything was beautifully fresh and clean. Numerous little sitting-out areas with wooden seats and benches made it possible just to sit and enjoy it all, accompanied by the distant sounds of an off-duty member of the hotel's staff sitting under a tree and strumming a guitar.\n\nA cash-less society\n\nBefore setting off, we were told that we could change money at the hotel, but there was none to be had as we had to wait for the man to come up from Paro with the cash. There were post cards and local handicrafts in the hotel shop, but this was well and truly locked with a large pad-lock. Perhaps the absence of local money was not going to be a problem if this stronghold masquerading as a shop was anything to go by.\n\nWe all piled on to the minibuses with much discussion about what to wear. Sure enough it was warm in the sunshine, but in the shade was an entirely different matter. Dozens of traditionally dressed staff were standing around with big smiles to see us off. It looked as though they were ready to stand down as soon as the two small buses and their contents disappeared for an explore.\n\nUntil the 1970's Bhutan had been more or less closed to outside influences. Even so, the spread of 'western civilisation' has not had a very pronounced effect in the last 20-30 years. Similar to pre-Meiji Japan, there are rules on a number of aspects of everyday life, including what Bhutanese people must wear - the go. I heard that for this reason, Bhutan is a popular holiday destination for Japanese; it reminds them a bit about their past. As I noted earlier, there are other regulations about building styles - they all have to follow the same traditional pattern. This makes for a very attractive and orderly appearance, but it also means that when a 16th century monastery is pointed out to us it does not look particularly old; a brand new one would look pretty much the same.\n\nOur first destination as a group of tourists was the National Museum", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215472, "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": 249, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "198\n\nand rock falls. We saw one such team, hard at it, with a pot-bellied sergeant doing the important job of watching them.\n\nA dignified repast\n\nOn the far side of Haa we took the road up the valley to inspect a small village, Nagyel - we were even able to go inside one of the houses and poke around. Everything was, of course, wooden and very solid. But at 9,000 feet we were a bit puffed and in need of lunch - and so headed back down the valley again. Very soon we realised that we ourselves were the visiting dignitaries for whom the large table and chairs had been set up. We had not up to now realised, but in addition to our two minibuses and the smaller one for our baggage, there was yet another. This fourth vehicle contained the catering crew of three, who had gone ahead and prepared a splendid al fresco buffet lunch. What a treat! An excellent spread and served most professionally. And not over the top at all, now we realised who the diners were to be.\n\nThe second night's accommodation was waiting for us in the capital city, Thimpu. As that was four hours away we had no time to hang around, but we were able to stop for a treat along the way. This was the Napchong Hadang Monastery, where we found we were just in time for a puja for the water god. This ritual, dating from the 17th century, lasts for three days, the third day involving a long procession through the nearby villages. We were there on the first day, and were lucky enough to enter the temple and see two lines of red-robed monks, sitting cross-legged on the floor facing each other and eating rice from their bowls. At the head of the lines was the master. When he started chanting the rice bowls disappeared under the robes pretty sharpish as all were expected to join in. The older monks, sitting nearer the master, had drums whilst the younger ones had enough to do to try not to stare at 27 members of the Royal Asiatic Society. To one side were two, as it were, oboists and to the other were two, as it might have been, bass horn players. The whole ensemble was absolutely magical, something I had never seen nor heard except on the National Geographic Channel.\n\nThe three further hours to Thimpu were spent in happy conversation on the bus, the subjects ranging from Tung Chi Wah's chances of a second term to African insects that lay their eggs under your toenails. I don't know how I did it in the face of such intellectual challenge, but I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215475, "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": 252, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "201\n\nus and welcomed us, at the same time giving a brief background history of his library. With very limited resources, he has made good use of his previous 20 years experience with the National Museum to bring order and inspiration to his new project. There are a great many books in the Bhutanese language, mainly on Buddhist issues, and an increasing number of books in English and other foreign languages. We increased this number further by presenting the library with a full set of HKBRAS Journals.\n\nLunch was in the delightfully named Plum's Café, including a slice of their famous apple pie. As shopping never seemed to be far from the thoughts of us Honkies, a visit to Choki Handicrafts and then the National Handicrafts Emporium sated the appetite sufficiently to face the next leg of the journey.\n\nThis was to be an enormous climb up to the Dochu-la pass (10,140 feet), being the gateway to the Wangdiphodrang Valley. The weather had been fine on the trip so far, but coming to the top of the pass the clouds descended, and with them came snow. However, as luck would have it, just as the army of RAS photographers took up their positions the clouds lifted, a rainbow appeared and we were offered enormous vistas of Himalayan peaks stretching off to the west. Thereafter the weather became (and stayed) clear as a bell.\n\nThat bell rings a name\n\nDid I say bell? Was that a yak approaching? No. In one of the handicraft shops in Thimpu, Brian had bought himself a brass bell. We were to hear that bell a lot in the coming days. It was to become his method of signalling to his unruly brood that it was time to board the buses and move on. So effective was it that when a “real” bell sounded in one of the temples, it had the effect of causing a stampede to the transport by all of us - except, of course, Brian.\n\nFrom the heights of the pass it was a very long and bouncy ride down to the hotel in Punakha at 4,300 feet. Thankfully, it was an early dinner and early to bed. Orders had already been issued for a 6:15 a.m. wake-up the following day. Even though the guide told us that we were in a sub-tropical climate zone, I had to break open my Chinese Emporium silk long johns before climbing in to bed. (Any man thinking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215477, "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": 254, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "203\n\nthought of some time in 1962. Better late than never.\n\nThe road continued past fresh rushing rivers and terraced fields. These were either brilliant green or bright yellow, the latter being mustard. Prayer flags flapping on every promontory completed the picturesque scene. Not quite so pretty was the state of the road. This had become very muddy with much evidence of landslides. Coming from Hong Kong we felt a bit uneasy not to see every slope covered in concrete and with a number on it. Perhaps we can teach these Bhutanese a thing or two after all.\n\nAt one of our stops some youths were playing the local version of darts. They were using lethal looking missiles almost a foot long which were thrown either at the ground or at a convenient tree or piece of wood. The object seemed to be to get yours as close as possible to the other chap's, and so this necessitated the other chap to stand close to where his had landed. Either they are all very good shots, or they have lightning reactions, or they are very trustful of each other, or perhaps all three - but it looked jolly dangerous to me.\n\nFurther up there was a splendid view of snow-capped Jomolhari, last seen in Paro. We came to our own peak at Pele-la pass (11,200 feet), from where there was a two-hour cruise downhill to Trongsa. About half way from the pass to Trongsa, at Chendebji Chorten, we saw a familiar sight. Right next to this magnificent Nepalese-style stupa, complete with eyes painted at the top, was a long table and 30 garden chairs. Lunch had been prepared. What a privilege to be catered for in what is presumably a sacred site. It felt for all the world like a scene from E.M. Forster when Dr Aziz organised a picnic for Miss Quested at the Malabar Caves. Can you imagine similar treatment for a group of foreigners at, say, Stonehenge? Ha! (or as they say in Bhutan Haa!).\n\nInto The Hundred Acre Wood\n\nThe stunning Trongsa Dzong looked quite close when we first saw it, occupying a commanding position on the opposite side of the valley. However, it was another half-hour before we could find our way round the valley and see it at close quarters. Tea and bickies at Trongsa Norling Hotel were very welcome before setting out on the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215480, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "206\n\nto the north? It turned out to be neither of these, although weapons were certainly involved. What we had heard was an archery contest in progress. Archery is Bhutan's chief sport (although we were delighted to see some cricket being played once or twice.) The bows are made of two pieces of bamboo, lashed together, and the arrows are also of bamboo, with steel tips and plastic flights. The target is the size of cricket stumps and is aimed at from an incredible 150 yards away, or the equivalent of seven cricket pitches. About twelve young men were competing against each other. I have to say that the scoring system seemed particularly mean. The archer was awarded one point for landing his arrow near the target, and a measly two points if he hit it. I would have thought an audience with the king and a pension for life would have been a more fitting reward. For the 20 minutes or so that I was watching, not one arrow hit the target. Once an archer had shot his arrow, he rushed to the target end of the pitch, where there were already a couple of umpires, the better to see where his fellows' arrows were landing. ‘See' is an interesting word in this context. Not one of us visitors could see anything at all until we heard the thunk of an arrow hitting the ground - and this was usually within a foot of the feet of the encouraging crowd of archers. Although not understanding a word of Bhutanese, we knew that the shouts of encouragement were along the lines of: 'I say, Jack, you were a tad off target there,' or perhaps some colourful local equivalent.\n\nSurfeited with excitement, and dodging the missiles, we had a half-hour's walk, over a wobbly bridge, to visit the 17th Century Tamshing Monastery. Although again beautiful, placid and very atmospheric, I was getting to the stage of not being able to tell t'other from which.\n\nHow now brown cow?\n\nBack on the 'bus, the guide pointed out in the adjacent fields a herd of Swiss brown cows. 'How now?' we thought. The herd is a present from Switzerland and is used to make cheese. This was available for sale in a nearby shop and was excellent. But we must not eat too much, though, as lunch was waiting for us down the road, courtesy once more of Mr Fresco. The usual long table and chairs had been set up on the grounds of a deserted royal palace, the Wangdichholing Palace. This rather cute but still impressive building dates from 1856 and is the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215481, "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": 258, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "207\n\nbirthplace of Bhutan's first king, Ugyen Wangchuk. There were one or two dogs, children playing, old people wandering through, and 27 members of the Royal Asiatic Society being waited on hand and foot. I got a clear impression of what it must have been like to take The Grand Tour in Europe in the 18th Century. I have seen prints and paintings of people wandering at will over sites of enormous classical importance, threading their way between dogs and children playing amongst the ruins, thinking to myself 'those were the days.' I imagine that in years to come such sites as the one at which we were to have lunch will be cordoned off and entered only on payment of an admission fee. I felt extraordinarily fortunate and privileged. To complete the picture, two small boys were playing Pooh-sticks from a stone bridge over a very fast stream.\n\nLunch done, we found the caretaker of the once-royal residence and he led us inside. My first impression was that we had entered Gormenghast Castle; I was to have this impression again a few times in the coming days. Upstairs in the large wooden building, one room led into another and another, until finally, at the end of the link, was the privy, from which there was direct access to the grounds via a narrow chute.\n\nNext to come was Jakar Dzong, or the Watchtower of the White Bird. Set in a commanding position up the mountainside, this looked every inch a watchtower from without. Within, it was rather like going back to a medieval European castle, in which a small village had taken root. Galleried wooden courtyards and stone steps, it would make a fantastic hotel if permission could be gained. Its present uses include a chamber for the District Court. Some of the monks were very young (monklets, perhaps), and one of them asked me in Japanese if I was alright (‘O genki desu-ka?”), reminding us that we were probably not the only tourists to have visited, although we had seen no others.\n\nAs the day was getting on, we had to as well, as the next item on the itinerary was the Jakar bazaar. Sadly for the shopaholics amongst us this turned out to be a single shop. Being the second day of New Year all the others were closed. So it was back to the hotel for tea and bickies and a much-needed opportunity to get some laundry done. Then as the light faded, again, so did the electricity, again.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215485, "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": 262, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "211\n\nauthority to this day. We could only enter on certain conditions: no hat (okay, we had become used to that), no cameras (ho hum), and no scarf! What?? I had become extremely attached to my white yak-wool scarf and to leave it in the 'bus was quite a wrench. Inside, the Dzong was suitably large and impressive, but a bit cold without a scarf.\n\nLunch was again provided by the catering crew who had gone ahead of us to Chendebji Chorten, the same site we had used on our way east. One was becoming somewhat blasé with all this looking after in such stunning settings.\n\nThe village of Gangtey Gompa in the Phubjikha Valley was where we were supposed to see the cranes. We did see some, but only at a great distance, apart from a squadron that flew in formation close overhead, practicing for the ceremonial re-entry to Tibet. The village was interesting for having an over-sized dzong in its midst that was being extensively renovated. Electricity is forbidden in this valley as it might upset the visiting cranes, so all work has to be done by hand and in daylight.\n\nA dog's life\n\nNot prone to doing things by daylight were the dogs. Throughout Bhutan it was remarkable that the dogs were extraordinarily docile. I could not imagine entering the average New Territories village and emerging with my four limbs intact. But in Bhutan a large group of strangers comes in from Mars, as it were, and the dogs just look, disdainfully, and resume their slumber. And then somebody pointed out the obvious: they are up all night yapping their silly heads off and are therefore exhausted by daybreak. But why do they do that? My theory is that they are trapped in a vicious cycle with no way out; they go to sleep in gentle morning sunshine but when they awake the sun has gone. All night, they are in a state of panic. Where has the sun gone? When at last it returns, even if in the opposite side of the sky, they can once more go to sleep and dream happily. I might be wrong in this analysis, however.\n\nOn leaving the village, I saw a sign that made me wonder if I had missed one of the attractions. Attached proudly to a post was a sign that read, 'AIDS IS DANGEROUS. AVOID MULTIPLE SEX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215487, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "213\n\never be bacon for breakfast.\n\nTwenty miles or so up the valley, still passing people coming in the opposite direction, we came within sight of the Crown Prince Chorten, also known as the Khamsum Yulley Chorten. Built only in 1999, this chorten nevertheless has some importance through having been constructed under the patronage of Bhutan's four current queens. Very decent of the other three, as only one of them could have given birth to him for whom the temple is named. To get to this site we had to leave the buses, walk across a wobbling suspension bridge and stroll for half an hour up the side of the valley to a promontory, on which the chorten is built. Had we strolled further, after a few weeks I am sure that we would have reached the ridge of 20,000 feet peaks that stood like sentries at the head of the valley, guarding the way into (or maybe out of) Tibet.\n\nHaving tried (and, as I subsequently found out, failed) to do photographic justice to the view of the Mo, meandering down the valley into the misty distance, a gentle stroll down the way found us back at the waiting buses. These obligingly took us off to our lunchtime stop. This was to be the last that was courtesy of our terrific chef, Signor Fresco. Again, he did us proud, setting up the table and chairs next to the river on a shingle bank. As the sun was rather hot, most of us repaired to the shade of the nearby pine trees. A highlight was being able to watch a cormorant diving into the icy water for his lunch. On the whole, I think we did better than he.\n\nA rare treat after lunch - a comfort stop back at the hotel! The afternoon's destination was a temple with an unusual theme. The village of Chime is home to the Chime Lhakhang, also known as Drukpa Kinley's Lhakhang. The village was about half-an-hour's stroll away from the road, through the village of Egwakha. These villages are on a bit of a plateau on the valley-side, surrounded by rice paddies - and it was along the paddy walls that we had to thread our way. It is not unusual in mountainous areas for an anabatic wind to pick up in the afternoon as the air mass heats up and flows uphill - and today was no exception. By 3.30 the wind, although not strong enough to remove my much-admired Tilley hat from my head, was enough to wobble my camera when lining up for a shot.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215495, "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": 272, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "221\n\na joke or do a trick. (See the evening's programme, set out in the appendix.) The laughter and applause must have been heard all the way up and down Paro High Street.\n\nA last munch\n\nThe last day dawned, beautiful and sunny as ever, and was celebrated with scrambled eggs on toast aplenty. Checking in at the airport was as depressing as it can be anywhere, except that this time there were 27 people with some very happy and unforgettable memories behind them. For me, my last example of the friendliness and humour of the Bhutanese people was at the shop in the departure lounge. I had not realised I had chocolate withdrawal symptoms until I saw a pile of Kit-Kats on the shelf. I rushed up and asked how much they were. '25 Nu' I was told. When I found that I only had 20 Nu left in local currency and looked suitably crestfallen, the young girl at the counter said: 'Never mind. For 20 you can have a munch.' I was impressed. Was she actually willing to let me have a munch on a Kit-Kat, and presumably put the rest back for the next customer? Actually, no. She laughed when I explained to her my misunderstanding. There was a smaller and slightly cheaper chocolate bar called 'Munch'.\n\nI have known for some time that Paro is one of the most challenging airports for pilots, and so I was pleased to see all that I have learnt about short-field take-offs is applied equally in a BAe 146 as in a Cessna 172. Full length of the runway, two stages of flap, full throttle before releasing the brakes, and then best angle of climb to avoid the mountains. Then course was set for Calcutta - and that was that.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 [Hon. Editor, I have always been a little bit worried about Robert. This article confirms my suspicions!]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215503, "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": 280, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Your lunch awaits\n\n229", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215506, "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": 283, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "232\n\nLunch at Chendebji Chorten", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215578, "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": 355, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "305\n\nrecords of \"old salts\" who were happier \"afloat\" than when taking shore leave (Jones; 1985).\n\nIn 1955, Sydney Frank Barnsey occasionally used to drop into the author's home in Conduit Road for a mid-morning cup of coffee. He sometimes smiled and said, 'I shall leave my bones in Hong Kong.' The author did not realise at the time what he meant. In fact, in his will he requested that he be buried on Waglan Island where he had spent many, what he considered to be, peaceful years as a keeper. He had deep affection for 'The Rock.' When the last trumpet call sounded government approval was sought and Barnsey's ashes were interred at a lovely spot with a small garden,\n\n49\n\nHis Malaysian Chinese wife visited his grave at appropriate Chinese festivals, such as at Ching Ming and Chung Yeung. But after Waglan was no longer manned, with no Marine Department boats going there on a regular basis, she had difficulty in visiting his grave. His remains were then exhumed and moved elsewhere. The author recalls the grave, but what was a tranquil spot is now overgrown.\n\nHow did life at Waglan over a period of years, mould personalities? Although it is an interesting question the author is not a psychologist and thus not really qualified to answer. But certainly, with a small group of men living together for 24 hours a day, one can speculate that there must have been instances of personality clashes although the author did not hear of any. But also many close friendships were, at the same time, forged.\n\nIt is relevant that Roger Parry told the author that Hong Kong lighthouse men were, 'a wonderful bunch of special people.' 50 Stories were handed down by word-of-mouth and there was a kind of mythology and history belonging especially to them.\n\nA comparison: before and after automation\n\nFor a time, after Waglan was automated, the island retained some of its original glory.51 But since that changeover, in many respects, it has become rather run down. Every step, leading from sea level to the top of the island, is no longer clearly numbered in brightly coloured paint. What had been a garden has become overgrown. There is litter.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215680, "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": 457, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "409\n\nbeginning of 1900 she was under construction at the yard of Dennys of Dumbarton. She was a side-wheeler, 180 feet long, 60 feet beam across the paddle boxes, drawing 6 feet and having a deadweight of 150 tons with accommodation for many deck passengers.\n\nHaving made all the arrangements for \"Pioneer\" to be shipped to Shanghai in pieces, Little returned to London. Whilst having lunch at the Oriental Club with some of his backers and advisors, he was introduced to Captain Samuel Cornel Plant. Captain Plant had recently returned to England having served for several years in command of steamers on the Tigris and Euphrates, rivers well known for their navigational difficulties. When Little learned of the captain's previous experience, he did his best to persuade Plant to come to China and take command of \"Pioneer.\" Plant promised to give the matter some thought. For whatever reason, he subsequently agreed to go along with Little.\n\n\"Pioneer\" was shipped to Shanghai and reassembled. Plant and his wife, Alice Sophia, took ship to China, joined \"Pioneer\" and in early June 1900 the attempt on the Three Gorges began. With Plant in command, \"Pioneer\" made the trip from Ichang to Chunking in 73 steaming hours over seven days. She was held up for three days at Hsin T'an Rapids. On arrival at Chunking she was greeted by most of the expatriates living there and it is said that the banks of the river were black with hundreds of junkmen who had crowded to see this latest barbarian wonder.\n\nThe Aftermath\n\nBad luck again struck Little. There were rumblings of trouble along the river that were to culminate in the Boxer Uprising. The British Consulate in Chunking commandeered \"Pioneer\" and used her to evacuate expatriates from the trouble spots. (It is not known whether Little was compensated for the loss of \"Pioneer\" or not. She was eventually handed over to the Royal Navy, renamed H.M.S. \"Kinshi\" and finished life as H.Q. Ship, Senior British Naval Officer on the Yangtze River.)\n\nPlant's Career\n\nPlant, having left the employ of Little, bought himself a houseboat", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215744, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "the Friends' Committee, particularly to Mrs Rosemary Lee and Mrs Anita Wilson, Events Organisers. Other active members are Mr Paul Bolding (Secretary), Mr Roger Chandler (Treasurer), Mrs Kirsty Norman, Mr Keith Stevens and Mr David Mahoney. The last of these will be retiring this year and we would like to thank him for his past support and particularly for last year's Annual General Meeting Lecture.\n\nThe Friends normally meet once a quarter in London on a Saturday at the School of Oriental Studies. There is a Chinese lunch gathering followed by a lecture [Hon. Ed. - Suggest you consider doing it the other way around!]. Once a year there could be a week-end away. In the last year Friends started its programme (April 2002) with a very successful week to Cornwall, when around 25 members visited the well known Gardens (Caerhayes, Trewithen, Pine Lodge, Heligan and the Eden Project) with particular reference to the Asian connection; a very sincere thanks to Mrs Penny Byrne who co-ordinated this.\n\nThe programme continued with a very well informed lecture by Mr David Mahoney on Awards to Britons in China. David has been collecting medals for some 50 years, some of which he brought to the meeting; the lecture was illustrated with slides which showed the extent of the awards systems to Britons who served in China in the 19th and 20th centuries.\n\nIn September 2002 the Friends were fortunate to benefit from a visit to the United Kingdom by Dr Elizabeth Sinn, who gave a talk entitled The Ultimate Return: Transhipment of Chinese Migrants' Bones to the Native Village and Hong Kong's Role in the Chinese Diaspora. This was a fascinating insight into the methods and motives as to why the Chinese living in America transported bones of relatives and friends back to China in the 19th Century.\n\nMore recently, (February 2003) the Friends held their Annual Chinese New Year lunch at the Joy King Lau Chinese Restaurant in Leicester Street, London. Around 50 members attended to welcome in the Year of the Ram, of whom six were new members.\n\nFor the future the Friends are looking forward to the Annual General Meeting (17th May 2003), when Dr Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections at the British Library will be the speaker on Marco\n\nxxxiv", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215767, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "London: George G. Harrap, 1945.\n\nRitchie, Edmee Alice\n\nMy memoirs or good of its kind. [s.l.: s.n., n.d.].\n\nSecret notes on Japanese army\n\nNorth Melbourne: Victorian Railways Printing Works, 1942.\n\nThe Shanghai directory 1941: City supplementary edition to The China Hong List. Shanghai: The Office of the North-China Daily News & Herald, Ltd.\n\nShneider, Vladimir\n\nTraces of the ten. Beer-Sheva: V. Shneider, 2002.\n\nSmith, Arthur Henderson, 1845-1932.\n\nVillage life in China: a study in sociology. Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1900.\n\nTicozzi, Sergio\n\nHistorical document of the Hong Kong Catholic Church. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives, 1997\n\nVocational Training Council (Hong Kong) The Morrison Hill story [videorecording]. [Hong Kong: s.n., 199-.\n\nWaters, Dan.\n\nLunch beat [2 sound cassettes]. (Dr Dan Waters shares his in-depth knowledge and stories about Hong Kong's past in two episodes of radio programme The Lunch Beat.\n\n[Hong Kong: RTHK, 1998 - 2001].\n\nWay, Denis M. and Nield, Robert\n\nCounting house: the history of PricewaterhouseCoopers on the China Coast. Hong Kong: PricewaterhouseCoopers, c2002.\n\nWu, You-ru\n\nShen-jiang sheng jing tu. Shanghai: Hua bao zhai shu she, 1999.\n\nZhang, Yingjin\n\nlvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215915, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "148\n\nwith Sir John Davis, the Governor of Hong Kong, as its president and remained active for 12 years, but ceased to exist in 1859. The Hong Kong branch was re-established under the active patronage of another governor, Sir Robert Black, in 1959.\n\nSince the handover, the society no longer has a patron. When the present Chief Executive of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, Mr. Tung Chee-hwa was asked to serve in that role, he politely declined.\n\nAn American in Hong Kong...\n\nThe conference participants are back from the lunch break and the 82-year-old Reverend Carl Smith is helped to the stage by Elizabeth Sinn. Smith's talk is titled \"Forty Years of Research on Hong Kong.\" The lights are dimmed and heads begin to nod off again...\n\n\"You get out at exit A and on your right you'll see this big set of steps leading up to the skies...don't take them,\" said Smith as he was giving directions to his home in Mei Foo Sun Chuen. As soon as he said that it reminded me of an episode of the popular TV series M*A*S*H when the doctors had to dispose of a bomb. It went something like, “cut the red wire\"...the doctor cuts it... \"after cutting the blue wire\"...explosion!!!\n\nThe reverend's instructions are spot on and I arrive without any trouble. The block is 19 and he's on the 11th Floor, flat D, but his flat is labelled 19D...go figure. Smith greets me and has to unlock the gate with a key. Not very safe, I think, for a man of his age. What if there's a fire? How is he going to get out?\n\nThe apartment is smaller than I had expected and it is filled wall to wall with file cabinets and card files all of Smith's research work over the last 40 years. The cards were put on microfilm and housed in the Public Records Office as the Carl Smith collection. Smith has recently agreed to leave the cards themselves to the Library of Congress in the United States.\n\n\"The Asian division of the Library of Congress, right before the handover, came to Hong Kong with the purpose of getting documents", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215918, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "151\n\nand too friendly, and the Americans think the British are stuffy and class conscious,\" said Smith, chuckling. \"But I don't think there was any conflict [before]... Some of the members would say, 'Oh, Smith is at it again, but that's Smith...'(chuckles). I don't make a big point out of it, but I do speak my mind and say what I think.\n\n-\n\n\"A member made a statement at the AGM - I won't go into detail 'cause that will go into personalities anyway, saying the society is sort of fading away and ten years from now there would be only a few old people sitting here at the meeting...and I said (using an old man's voice), 'Yes, and I'm going to be one of them.'”\n\nSmith bursts into laughter. He's more endearing than ever.\n\n\"I don't think that's true. When a society is no longer fulfilling a function, well, societies die as they have in many parts of Asia, so we need to keep abreast of changes, we need to keep looking at our programs.\"\n\nIn the Heart of the Metropolis...\n\nEarlier, a group of us made the trek to lunch for dim sum. Tim Ko sat next to me talking a bit about himself, but more about the food. He is fluent in English, but slightly accented, and is very much at home among mostly native English speakers. Today, however, he is a bit nervous because he has to give a slide presentation soon and lunch is taking an awfully long time. He begins wondering if he'll have enough time to prepare. Finally, he leaves, before dessert red bean soup...\n\nFor his slide presentation, Tim Ko has changed into a beige shirt and rust coloured tie. His \"Living in Hong Kong, 1960-1980” focuses on the city's diverse housing estates and features more than 100 photos, including some that have never been publicly shown before. The crowd seems to appreciate them.\n\nKo is a semi-professional photographer who has been snapping Hong Kong history for the past 20 years. He \"accidentally\" discovered many of his presentation slides while doing research at the Housing Authority office.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216070, "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": 369, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "303\n\nup to Zhenjiang where he was stopped, searched and arrested for carrying arms. He was returned to Shanghai where he was tried and gaoled for nine months. The Chinese were furious having wanted his head'.\n\nMason's own version described his life in some detail and, in particular, his escapade in Zhenjiang and Shanghai in 1891. He began his book with a lengthy piece about him charting his aims and future some year or so after he had arrived and settled in China as a member of the Chinese Imperial Customs. He had decided to make himself king of a great country, first by forming a band of robbers to attract more desperate men and expand the band until he was strong enough to seize a city and plunder its public treasuries and arsenals. From there on he foresaw that things would move rapidly. As he wrote many years later, describing in a summary of his aims and objectives, he had decided to make himself the King of China because, he reasoned, he was in China, was popular with the Chinese, spoke their language and the Imperial Government was weak. He decided to use the Gelao Hui to further his aims. He planned it for some two years, so he wrote, and then in 1891, at the age of 25, he embarked upon his scheme. The plan was to bring a cargo of arms from Hong Kong and distribute them to Sha's [a Gelao Hui chief] five hundred men in Zhenjiang, and they would then rise and attack the authorities.\n\nHaving purchased the rifles, he had them shipped by coastal steamer to Shanghai where, following an informer's tip, Customs men were waiting. Mason, confronted by a Shanghai-based Customs officer, declared that he had been keeping the shipment under observation of his own volition all the way from Hong Kong. He was at first believed or at least given the benefit of the doubt, and was taken off to lunch by the Shanghai Customs Commissioner, Bredon. Mason, hating himself for being a turncoat, fled Shanghai to Zhenjiang where he was promptly arrested, and interrogated at the Customs headquarters in Shanghai by the local Chinese Imperial Daotai. Having confessed all to him but having also refused to name names, even after having been shown photographs of his mangled, tortured and decapitated Chinese friends, he was put before the British Supreme Court in Shanghai where he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year or so in gaol followed by deportation. He never mentions Mesny, nor any aspect of the case as described by Mesny.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216076, "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": 375, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "309\n\nDuring their drive north to eliminate the War Lords and unify China under the Republic, the Nationalist [KMT] forces entered Zhenjiang in March of 1927 and at the same time took over the Concession. Most westerners left for Shanghai whilst those who remained lived aboard hulks on the River or as close to the River as they could get. Even the British Consul was withdrawn to Shanghai where he continued to carry out his Zhenjiang duties. Eventually, in 1929, bowing to the inevitable the Zhenjiang Concession was finally retroceded to Chinese control and the treaty port, as such, was no more.\n\nGerald Yorke travelled to China in 1931 planning to spend a couple of years travelling around China and studying, to satisfy a childhood dream. Not long after his arrival, as Reuter's correspondent, he joined a party chosen by the Chinese Government to inspect the dyke systems of the Yangzi and Huai river valleys which had just been rebuilt as a result of the disastrous floods in 1931. During the tour with the party they departed from Shanghai and reached Zhenjiang early the next morning. They were greeted on the hulk by a band which played valiantly out of tune. After motoring through the town to a public garden they were entertained at a European luncheon. The weather was cold but presuming that any entertainment would be indoors an under-dressed Yorke froze in the open pavilion. A Shandong medicinal wine was served with the first course; appetising dishes came hot from the kitchen, all of which sat on the table waiting for the Chairman of the Provincial Reconstruction Committee to finish his welcoming speech. When the tepid lunch was over they were each given a pamphlet describing the flood protection work done and the reconstruction planned for the future, a perfect example of how provincial officials wasted their time and country's money by publishing, with their portraits next to the title-page, an account of rather more than they have done and of what they would like one to think they are going to do.\n\nThe afternoon was spent sight-seeing at the monastery on Silver Island [Jin Shan], with its hundred or so monks and its ancient fir tree in the outer courtyard. The tree had but one branch still alive, its trunk bound in iron and its base enclosed in marble - a symbol of the passing of classical Chinese culture. The monastic treasures were all displayed, the bronze vessel from the Zhou dynasty, a drum from the Han, and a jade belt belonging to a former statesman, possibly Ming. There was also a small hexagonal column inscribed with the Daode Jing, the Daoist classic which had surprised Yorke as he had not expected to see a Daoist classic in a\n\nPage 375\n\nPage 376", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216092, "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": 391, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "325\n\nPeninsula and Oriental Line had four passenger ships: the Chusan, the Carthage and the Corfu. I sailed on the Royal Mail Ship Canton. As a newly joined Hong Kong government servant I went on half pay as soon as I stepped on the boat. It took 31 days from Southampton to Hong Kong.\n\nIn first class one dressed every night for dinner, except the first night and nights in port. With a long voyage some passengers were like bears with sore ears. For others there were games like deck quoits, dancing, the ceremony of \"crossing the line\" and shipboard romances. Others were seasick. Regarding romance the pretext for \"Romeo\" at night was to take a girl up to the boat deck to show her the Southern Cross. One lady boasted: 'I was taken up twice on one night and both men pointed to the wrong constellation!'\n\nThere were sea birds and flying fish to watch out for, and some wonderful sunsets in the Indian Ocean. Just as the brilliant sun dipped below the horizon you could occasionally see a green flash. Looking over the ship's rail at night one could frequently see phosphorescent, microbial animal and plant life in the tropical waters. Sometimes one could see this when one flushed the toilet in the darkness of one's cabin.\n\nAt Port Said gilly gilly men (Egyptian magicians) were allowed on board to entertain passengers. Or you could go ashore, visit the Pyramids and elsewhere, and catch the ship at the other end of the Suez Canal (that was the way people travelled on the so-called overland route, before the Suez Canal was completed in 1869.)\n\nAden, with low taxes, was a good place for shopping. Or one could visit the museum there to look at a stuffed Manatee with its broad, flattened tail. Fond of sitting on rocks, these sea creatures were said to have provided the substance for seamen's tales about mermaids. Other customary ports of call for British passenger ships were Bombay, Colombo, Penang and Singapore. P. & O. ships were manned partly by lascar seamen with stewards from the Portuguese Goa. There was a splendid array of cuisine with China, Indian and Ceylon teas. The Indian curry cook could serve a different curry for every lunch of the 31-day voyage.\n\nSome Britons preferred to travel on foreign ships which were not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216115, "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": 414, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "348\n\nregularly to eat a good curry),\n\nI see my embassy, tiny, great water reservoirs, the beginning of the magnificent Yangtse gorges, innumerable rice fields looking like contour lines, on a relief map. A splendid landscape in miniature, the kind the Chinese love for their gardens.\n\nI amuse myself by flying back and forth across the town. I go into crazy spirals opposite an American gunboat and climb in seconds, or so it seems, to 2,000 feet. There I decide to stop and wander about. I am worried about the Japanese who no doubt would come and bomb us and could well send a reconnaissance aircraft, which could easily come and shoot me down ... I am flying in Chinese military colours so I would be in the wrong.\n\nTowards 4:00 pm, I feel very tired. I have eaten my lunch, great nervous tension, since I have not flown for more than a year. Moreover, the seat is hard and the parachute is stifling me. I put out the braking flaps in order to descend and I realise that I have to dive at 90 degrees to lose height, so strong are the thermals in mid-river. I amuse myself for five or six minutes in doing turns right above the British Embassy and over the airfield, where I see thousands of Chinese. Finally, I put down at the end of the island in order not to land on the cranes. A perfect landing in 42 degrees of heat after a flight of four hours, 44 minutes.\n\nThe Asian duration and altitude records were broken at the first attempt. It was the first demonstration flight in China. That evening, the capital's newspapers gave the following news, in Chinese and English:\n\n\"New glider record registrated here, - Chungkin, April 25 (Central News). By remaining in the air for 4 hours and 44 minutes, M Louis de San, Belgian glider-flyer and honorary director of the Sino-French-Belgian Swiss Cultural Association, set a new endurance record for Asia to day. Flying a glider of the Aeronautical Affairs Commission, de San took off at 11:25 this morning. He gained an altitude of 5,700 feet.\"\n\nM", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216186, "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": 485, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "Your lunch awaits\n\n419", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216189, "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": 488, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "Lunch at Chendebji Chorten\n\n422", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216203, "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": 502, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "436\n\nAfter a good Chinese lunch at the Lai Yue Mun Restaurant in Xin Hui we took a taxi (RMB250) through the County city of Tai Shan and past some interesting old Chinese villages, including Yeung Do. We arrived at the Guang Hai Bay port of Shen Ju in good time to catch the 4:00 pm public ferry to Shang Chuan Island. The timetable shows ferries leave daily at 9:30 am, 11 am, 2 pm, and at 4 pm, for the crossing that took us just over an hour. They are scheduled for the Shang Chuan to Shen Ju crossing at 7:30 am, 9:30 am, 12:00 and 2:00 pm. A group could otherwise hire a speedboat.\n\nWe were told that the island had been closed to visitors until 1983 and that there was still a sizeable PLA naval base there. As we entered the fishing harbour at the NW side of the island we passed some naval vessels and fishing boats. We also had our first view of the St Francis Xavier Church on the hillside. There were several modern large tourist hotels in the Fei Sha Tan Tourist Resort at the eastern side of the island. We took a public minibus from the port to the Resort. Probably the best of the hotels was the Biyun Tian Hotel (Eastern Harbour View Hotel), though we chose a smaller one. Both faced the beach, with a pleasant esplanade packed with plenty of hawkers in the evening. The choice of restaurants was uninspiring. In the morning we hired a minibus with driver for a half day (RMB150) to show us around the island. He took us to the fishing village, purpose-built in 1992, and over the Cheung Po Chai pirate pass with the Twin Treasure Rocks. He also took us to a grotesque Laughing Buddha cave with little figurines representing the Journey to the West.\n\nSuch were the delights the driver thought we should enjoy, but for us the highlight was the visit to the Church of St Francis Xavier at the NW side of the Island. The church was a simple white tiled building with a plaque above the porch dating the church at 1869. There was reported to have been a church at the spot since 1700 with various restorations from 1813 to 1932. The caretaker unlocked the church for us. There are several rows of pews facing a large wooden cross. On the altar stands a statue of a bearded priest in front of which is a statue of the Virgin Mary. Religious paintings were hanging on the walls. In the centre of the church lay a stone sarcophagus with some Chinese inscriptions.\n\nOutside, a modernist sculpture had been erected by the Yamaguchi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216204, "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": 503, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "437\n\nAssociation on 3 December 1999. Behind the church over 100 steps led up to a tall statue of St Francis Xavier. Beside the steps were 14 stone posts bearing Chinese numbering and inscription. The pedestal of the statue bears worn inscriptions in Chinese and Portuguese - ‘Aqui foi sepultado S. Fran.co Xavier da Comp.a de Jesus, Alpo do Oriente. Este Padrao se levantou no anno de 1639.'\n\nThe current caretaker, Mr Lam, took over in 1996 from a Christian caretaker aged 86, who had cared for the church since 1984. We had the pleasure of meeting this delightful old man in the village beside the church. The current caretaker suggested that for further information we could contact the Religious Affairs Dept. of Tai Shan Municipal Government on Tel 075 552 5980.\n\nWe returned to the port for a good seafood lunch. The ferry arrived a little late but took us safely back to Shen Ju in good time for us to hire a taxi to Zhuhai. There we crossed the border to Macau and enjoyed our dinner accompanied by a bottle of good Portuguese wine, and a toast to the memory of St Francis.\n\nA visit assisted by China Travel Service\n\nBy chance, in June 2001, I (Chris Bailey) had read an article in HK Magazine about the Jesuit-run Xavier Retreat House on Cheung Chau - dedicated to the missionary Saint Francis-Xavier. The article quoted the resident priest, Father Kane, as follows: \"Xavier was one of the founding members of the Jesuits, and came to Asia in 1542. He was a tough guy, a trailblazer and died very near to Hong Kong, on an island about 60 miles west of Macau. His letters describe travelling from Japan and trying to get to Guangzhou, and stopping somewhere nearby to get fresh vegetables and water. There is one historian who theorizes that he stopped at the Old Port in Hong Kong. In any case, he must have passed through Hong Kong waters and seen the islands here. So I stand here (in the Xavier Retreat House) and see what he saw over 400 years ago It's very private, on top of a hill and overlooking the sea. It's a very beautiful sight.”\n\nThis information inspired me to speak to Father Kane who said he knew the island well, had been there several times via Macau and that there was a non-active church dedicated to Francis Xavier, built close", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216205, "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": 504, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "438\n\nto the spot where he died, by some French missionaries in the 19th Century. Father Kane referred me to Father Antonio Tam in the Macau Jesuit Residence who, despite being elderly, still travelled regularly to St Johns, and was leading a Taiwanese group there the following month. He recommended the services of the Religious Affairs Bureau rather than China Travel to organize our trip, so that we would gain a better insight into the history of Christianity in the area. This proved more difficult than it sounded, but China Travel came to the rescue with a reasonable-sounding itinerary.\n\nOur trip eventually took place in the first weekend of November 2002. China Travel suggested a suitable package tour for five adventurers - Patricia Bierregard, Anna and Michal Niewiadomski, Jenny Wu and myself, Chris Bailey - members of the HK Branch of the RAS. We had planned a varied itinerary including St Francis' Church on the island, Flying Sand beach, Big Buddha and Nine Dragon's cave - with the firm CTS instruction: No missioning! We caught the 8:30 am ferry to Gong Yi from the China Hong Kong Terminal. The sea journey was quite rough until we reached Macau, where a right turn along a Pearl River tributary took us back through time for a pleasant 3 hours viewing village life along the river banks (having upgraded ourselves to the upstairs first-class cabin). The rice-fields at harvest time were particularly splendid and the hamlets looked inviting, with interesting watch towers.\n\nWe disembarked at around 1 pm at the small port of Gong Yi and were met by Roger, our excellent CTS guide who escorted us to the town of Tai Shan for an elaborate lunch. We caught the 4 pm boat for another rough trip across the muddy waters, but in less than an hour were rewarded with the splendid sight of our goal - a white church on the hillside - as we arrived at the island, dominated by a large PLA base. Roger could not tell us how many military personnel were stationed at the base and we glimpsed only a few blue and white uniformed sailors walking along the streets.\n\nThe day's end was approaching and Roger speedily herded us into another vehicle for the short drive to the church, and the resident caretaker opened the gates - we finally climbed the stairs to the recently redecorated church and entered its large wooden doors. The interior was well-kept and featured a large central \"tomb\" with paintings along", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216206, "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": 505, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "439\n\nthe walls (St Francis healing the sick etc) and statues around the altar. In the surrounding grounds, a garden seemed to have been abandoned; a large copper statue dominated. We managed to snap a few interior shots. With the light fading rapidly, we walked down to a nearby spring from where St Francis was supposed to have drawn his water supply. The stone upon which he is said to have died can still be seen.\n\nWe were rushed onwards for our remaining sight-seeing: a huge, fat Buddha on the nearby hillside, an ex-PLA storage cave which had been turned into the Nine Dragons Cave, complete with waxwork figures, and Flying Sand beach - a lovely 2-mile stretch where our hotel was situated. A few weeks before our visit, the hotels had all been full for the Golden Week holiday in China, but now everywhere seemed deserted except for a few hopeful souvenir shops. The hotel itself was also empty but we were nevertheless given rooms right next to the disco and so were \"entertained\" (or changed rooms in our case) to the sounds of karaoke till 3am.\n\nWe agreed on an early start the next morning, including a pre-breakfast swim despite a chilly wind, to enable us to include an extra sight on our tour, back on the mainland - a typical village with watch tower. Roger, our guide, was very accommodating on this, though as we sped through the outskirts of Tai Shan we also spotted a Ming dynasty pagoda in the distance which looked worthy of investigation: \"No time” was Roger's response, which, at least, provided us a good reason to return.\n\nAfter lunch in Tai Shan, we walked around the central area and Roger showed us a recently completed pedestrian mall. The old facades of the buildings had all been renovated and painted in pastel tones - our photographs look like a typical Macau street scene. Tucked amongst the mall buildings was another church and we were invited inside by the female pastor, Huang Bi Juan. She gave us a brief history of the \"Three Self Patriotic Protestant Church\" and its present active role serving some 200 local families.\n\nWe took the country road for our return journey and soon spotted a suitable village with watchtower. We wandered into our chosen village with its harvest of golden grain spread out to dry in the sun in front of the houses, and spoke to some elderly residents - one old lady was 105", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216287, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "2003 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF\n\nTHE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY (UK)\n\nAlthough the number of Friends' activities during the past year cannot compete with those in Hong Kong, it is nevertheless pleasing to report that the quarterly meetings which have taken place have been of a very high standard. They started in May 2003 with a bold and forthright talk by Dr. Francis Wood, entitled 'Marco Polo and Me.' Dr. Wood is curator of Chinese Collections at the British Library and author of 'Did Marco Polo Go To China?' and 'No Dogs, Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China 1843-1943.' Her talk was very convincing and one was left in no doubt that there are still many unanswered questions about Marco Polo's trips to China.\n\nThe second event took 35 Friends to Bath and Bristol for two days in early October, 2003. Bath has an excellent Museum of East Asian Art, originally set up by Mr. Brian McElney, who lived in Hong Kong for many years in the 1960s and 70s. He became a well-known collector of Chinese artefacts. The museum now houses a wide range of Far Eastern art, including items from South Korea and Japan. Our visit coincided with the very well presented exhibition 'Death and Burial: The Chinese and the Afterlife.' The Friends were particularly impressed by the emphasis on education and the museum's outreach to local schools. The day ended with a very authentic Chinese meal at the Cathay Rendezvous in Bristol.\n\nThe following morning the Friends met at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum, which was opened in Bristol three years ago, with a great deal of local and overseas backing, including the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. It was particularly pleasing to see Dr. Dan Waters' name inscribed in the entrance hall. The exhibition portrayed in very enlightened and balanced ways a history of the Commonwealth countries, as seen by many of the local people who lived there. The items on display showed that the build-up of Empire and Commonwealth was a remarkable achievement, but there were clearly some aspects which did not come up to the high ideals many expected - this precipitated a lively topic for discussion during the lunch that followed after the visit and the subsequent river cruise through the old town of Bristol.\n\nxlvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216288, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "Our third event, in November 2003, was a lecture by Mr. Martin Palmer entitled 'Da Qin - An Imperial Christian Site of the Tang Dynasty.' Mr. Palmer, a sinologist and theologian and Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, has lectured world-wide, including to the Royal Asiatic Society of Hong Kong, and gave a riveting talk about the recent Da Qin excavations, which had brought to light the remains of the earliest Christian church in West China, dating back to the seventh century. Last, but not least, the Friends met over Chinese New Year for a good meal at the Joy King Lau Restaurant in Soho, to welcome in the Year of the Monkey. For the organization of the above events we again have to thank Mrs. Anita Wilson and Mrs. Rosemary Lee, ably supported by other members of the committee: Mr. Paul Bolding, Secretary, Mr. Roger Candler, Treasurer, Mrs. Kirsty Norman and Mr. Keith Stevens. As a committee, we try and meet at the Oriental Club in London two or three times per year; in 2003 we were especially pleased to have Dr. Patrick Hase at our August meeting. He brought us up-to-date with your events and other matters in Hong Kong. We value this interaction and I was particularly pleased to be invited to attend your December Council Meeting.\n\nThe Friends in the United Kingdom, like you in Hong Kong, continue to look to the future and broaden the activities and enlarge our membership. It is therefore very gratifying to report that on 19th May, 2004 arrangements have been made to hold a joint meeting with the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, 2 Belgrave Square, London, when our own Mr. Keith Stevens will lecture on ‘China/UK Training Chinese Guerrillas (1941-45): a token operation in war-time China.' It is hoped that further joint meetings with the RSAA can be arranged.\n\nOur annual general meeting will take place on 5th June, 2004 and any HKBRAS members are welcome to attend. It will be preceded by a light Chinese lunch at 'Poon's' and followed by what promises to be an interesting talk about Captain Plant, who is buried in the Hong Kong cemetery and who navigated the Yangtze River in the 19th century. Dr. Michael Gillam, a direct descendant of Captain Plant, will be our lecturer.\n\nOn behalf of all Friends in the United Kingdom, we send our very best wishes for 2004 and a successful annual general meeting.\n\nDAVID GILKES (CHAIRMAN)\n\nMARCH 2004\n\nxlvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216396, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "105\n\nH.M.S. HERMES1: CHINA STATION, 1930/33\n\nJONATHAN PARKINSON\n\nIn volume 41 of the Society's Journal, pages 326/328, to illustrate his article Keith Stevens kindly reproduced photographs of the aircraft carrier HERMES at Hankow during the great floods of 1931.\n\nThis was not her only rather unusual experience of this commission.\n\nOn passage from Sheerness, where on 3rd October 1930 she had re-commissioned under the command of Captain E.J.G. Mackinnon, DSO, HERMES spent Christmas at Singapore. Approaching Hong Kong on Friday, 2nd January 1931 she passed Gap Rock2 at 0357 hours and four hours later flew off her aircraft of Flights 403 and 440 to Kai Tak. At 1039 she secured to No. 1 buoy in Victoria Harbour.\n\nThe Governor of Hong Kong at the time was Sir William Peel. He spent most of Tuesday, 20 January at sea in the ship witnessing flying exercises. The destroyer THRACIAN, Commander N.L. Veresmith, conveyed His Excellency from and back to the colony.\n\nAfter lunch on 5th June HERMES slipped for Wei-Hai-Wei. There the climate in summer enabled exercises to be carried out with greater zest than in the steamy waters off South China. Once clear of Lyemun Pass her aircraft flew on. She had an easy passage up the coast and through the Formosa Strait. During the morning of 9th June when crossing the Yellow Sea full power trials were carried out during which she achieved 25 knots. Just before noon, HERMES once more proceeding at her economical speed of 12 knots, the easternmost promontory of the Shantung peninsula was sighted.\n\nTwo hours later the atmosphere onboard changed abruptly.\n\nA signal was received from MARAZION,3 Commander E.A. Aylmer, reporting that the submarine POSEIDON had been sunk in a collision.\n\nCaptain Mackinnon altered course and increased speed to 19 knots. Another boiler was flashed up and shortly thereafter our ship was...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216474, "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": 233, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "183\n\nVISIT TO MACAU MUSEUM OF ART. 26 OCTOBER 2003\n\nA splendid day was enjoyed by the 28 participants on a visit to Macau on Sunday, 26 October 2003. Organised and led by the very knowledgeable and enthusiastic Council Member Jason Wordie, the purpose of the visit was to see the exhibition of George Smirnoff's watercolours, drawings and oil paintings at the Macau Museum of Art and to explore some of the places shown in the paintings. We were most fortunate to be joined for the day by Smirnoff's younger daughter, Nina Bieger, who remembers well the time her family spent in Macao in 1944 and 1945, when she was a child. Her memories, graciousness, and answers to our many questions added greatly to the pleasures of the day, making it a unique occasion. George Smirnoff was born in 1903 in Vladivostok. Educated as an engineer and architect, he worked in Harbin and Tsingtao. In 1939, he escaped to Hong Kong from the turmoil of Japanese-occupied northern China. Then, in 1944, with Hong Kong occupied by the Japanese, he and his family found refuge in Macau, where fortunately for posterity he was commissioned by Dr. Pedro José Lobo to paint a series of Macao scenes. These were the works we saw in this exhibition commemorating the centennial of Smirnoff's birth.\n\nCésar Guillén-Nuñez, who curated the first exhibition of Smirnoff's works in Macau almost twenty years ago, gave a brief introduction on the paintings themselves. When we left the Museum, we were each delighted to be presented with a hardcover copy of the exhibition book as a gift from the Museum, showing all of Smirnoff's works of art on display and giving fascinating historical information on his life.\n\nThe book proved very useful when, after an excellent lunch at the Club Militar, Jason led us on a 3-hour walk through the back streets and parks of Macau to see many of the locations shown in the watercolours. It was amazing that many of the scenes had changed very little in the nearly 60 years that have passed since they were painted. And the time passed very quickly as we listened intently to Jason's explanations and Nina's recollections.\n\nOur heartfelt thanks to both of them for such a memorable day.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]