[ { "id": 206191, "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-1971", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "gramme of lectures, seminars and excursions and I should like to record our grateful thanks to those both members and visitors who contributed so willingly and so successfully to this fundamental part of our activities. Of these I should like to draw particular attention to the excursions. It takes not a little time and trouble to organize these, and a special word of thanks is due to those members who so willingly undertake these duties for us.\n\nThe following is the full list of our activities arranged during the year:\n\n12 January Professor S. Y. Teng \"Hung Jen-kan, Prime Minister of the Tai-ping Kingdom and his Reform Plans.\"\n\n16 March Commander F. Warrington-Strong, DSC, RN (Ret'd). \"Porcelain Manufacture in 18th Century China.\" (An Illustrated Talk)\n\n22 March All day excursion Visit to Tsun Wan Temples and Monasteries.\n\n24 March Captain Roger Pineau, USNR \"The Japan Expedition 1852-1855 of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry.\" (An Illustrated Lecture)\n\n6 April Mr. Frank Chippindale \"The Influence of Chinese Art and Furniture on Chippendale's Design.\" (An Illustrated Talk)\n\n18-19 April A week-end Symposium arranged by Professor L. B. Thrower of the Department of Botany, University of Hong Kong.\n\n3 May Mr. Roland W. K. Chow \"The Vegetation of Hong Kong: Its Structure and Change.\" (Demonstration and Talk, illustrated by slides) Peking Opera", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209957, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "194\n\nThe newspaper does not identify the author, or give a Chinese version, stating only that he was \"a poet and scholar who formed part of the suite of the High Imperial Commissioner (Keying) during his late visit to Hong Kong, and was composed on board the steamer on the way back to Canton.\"\n\n**\n\nIn 1981 the journals of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon, RN, were published by Webb and Bower, of Exeter in England. In 1845 Cree was surgeon on the Vixen, a steam paddle sloop. In his entry for Tuesday, November 25, Cree records that the Vixen was taking Keying and his suite back to Canton:\n\n\"A salute was fired from the battery as we started through the Cap-Sing-mun passage. On our way we were also saluted by the Chinese forts and war junks. I almost got into the bad books of Low, the Lord Mayor of Canton,' by a practical joke that Willcox, the 1st Lieutenant, played on me: he came up to me on deck and said: 'Doctor, do you know that the gunroom is full of those confounded flunkeys, and one of them is snoring in your cabin,'\n\nI rushed down and saw, on my bed, a great body and a pair of legs encased in black satin boots on the pillow, the head at the other end snoring most lustily. I unceremoniously laid hold of him, and rolled him on to the floor. At the same time one of the servants rushed in and jabbered something, holding up a mandarin's cap with the peacock's feather: I immediately saw it was the great Lord Mayor I had treated so roughly. I apologised as well as I could. His Lordship, who was now wide awake, sat at the table and said something to his valet, who brought him writing materials, with which he set to work filling a large sheet of paper with neatly written Chinese characters. I thought, now I am in for a report to the Lord High Commissioner, and told Gutzlaff, the interpreter. Chaou, who was in the Purser's cabin next door, laughed immoderately. Soon the paper was handed in, and I got Gutzlaff to interpret it. I was pleased to see it was no report, but an ode Low had been composing on his departure from Hong Kong.\"\n\nI\n\nIt seems reasonable to speculate that this was the ode which the Friend of China published a translation of a few weeks later.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211625, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "15\n\nhas not materialized is a testimony to the fact that the present and the future in Hong Kong have always been more important than the past, with the result that the recovery of information on Hong Kong's history is now very difficult.\n\nCHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE\n\nNOTES\n\nSee C. Blake, Charles Elliot R. N., 1801-1875 (London, 1960).\n\n2. W. D. Bernard, Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis from 1840 to 1843, I (London, 1844), p. 304.\n\n3. When the British flag was hoisted on Chusan on 5 July 1840, the name of the person responsible for hoisting the flag also went unrecorded as it was considered unimportant. See G. Graham, The China Station (Oxford, 1978), pp. 127-8. I am grateful to Alan Reid for this reference.\n\n4. Captain Sir Edward Belcher, RN, Narrative of a Voyage round the world performed in HM's Ship Sulphur, during the years 1836-1842 (London, 1843).\n\n6. J. Elliot Bingham, Narrative of the Expedition to China (London, 1842).\n\nBernard, Narrative, op. cit. Bernard wrote the book from the notes of W. H. Hall who had commanded the Nemesis, and included his own observations.\n\n7. Bernard, Narrative, op. cit. I, p. 291.\n\n8. Elliot Bingham, Narrative, op. cit. II, p. 120.\n\nIn the text 26 January is misprinted for 25 January.\n\n19. Belcher, Narrative, op. cit. p. 148. This account is the one usually quoted in an account of the cession of Hong Kong. See for example G. R. Sayer, Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age (London, 1937), p. 93 and J. R. Jones, “Who Hoisted the Union Jack?“, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 12 (1972), p. 196.\n\n|| Supplement to The Times of 12 June 1841. This expression appears to be formulaic as Bremer uses identical words in a letter to the Earl of Auckland who was Governor General of India of 10 March 1841. See Duncan McPherson, Two years in China (London, 1842), p. 274.\n\n12. The Times of 9 April 1841. The editorial went on to say: 'the recognition of a territorial right in the British crown, as well as the terror of the British name, will give our countrymen advantages which were never possessed by the Portuguese in China'.\n\n13. The Times of 10 April 1841.\n\nE. Jardine Matheson Archives, Cambridge University Library (hereinafter JMA), C5/6, James Matheson's private letter book, 54.\n\n15. Ibid., C5/6, 60, 22 January 1841.\n\nThe Times of 15 April 1841.\n\n17. JMA, C5/6, 69.\n\n18. The Times of 13 April 1841.\n\nMcPherson, Two Years in China, p. 76 and W. W. Mundy, Canton and the Bogue:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213387, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "197\n\nClarke, Samuel R. Among the Fathers in South West China, London China Inland Mission, 1911 (Tarpett Reprint Cifeng-wen Publishing)\n\nCoates, Austin, China Races, Hong Kong. Oxford University Press, 1983\n\nCochran, Sherman, Big Business in China. Sino-foreign Rivalry in the Cigarette Industry, 1890-1940, Cambridge (Mass). Harvard University Press, 1980\n\nCochran, Sherman, and Winston Hsieh, eds. One Day in China, May 21, 1936, New Haven Yale University Press, 1983\n\nCohen, Paul, Christian Missions and Their Impact to 1900, in Cambridge History of China 10, Part I, 543-90\n\n— China and Christianity, the Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870, Cambridge (Mass). Harvard University Press, 1963\n\nCohen, Warren I, The Chinese Connection. Roger S Greene, Thomas W Lamont, George E Sokolsky and American-East Asian Relations, New York Columbia University Press, 1978\n\nCollins P M. Siberian Journey Down the Amur to the Pacific, 1856-1857, edited by Charles Vevier, Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1962\n\nCollis, Maurice, Foreign Mud, London Faber and Faber, 1946\n\nCooper, Thomas Thornville, Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce in Pigtail and Petticoats, or An Overland Journey from China Towards India, London John Murray, 1871\n\nCorbett, Charles Hodge, Shantung Christian University (Cheeloo), New York United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1955\n\nCox, E H M, Plant-Hunting in China. A History of Botanical Exploration in China and the Tibetan Marches, London Collins, 1945 (Hong Kong Reprint Oxford University Press)\n\nCravath, Paul Dreman, Letters Home from the South Sea Islands, China and Japan, 1934, Garden City printed at the Country Life Press, 1934\n\nThe Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H Cree. Surgeon RN as related in his private journals 1837-1856, Exeter English Webb and Bower, 1981 (published in the United States as Naval Surgeon)\n\nCressy, C B, China's Geographic Foundations, New York McGraw Hill, 1934\n\nCressy-Marcks, Violet Olivia, Journey Into China. New York Dutton. 1942 (Feb/938C)\n\nCronin, Vincent, The Wise Man from the West, London Hart Davis, 1955\n\nCrow, Carl, Handbook for China, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh. 1933 (Hong Kong Reprint: Oxford University Press)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214114, "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-1997", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "151\n\nfrom the Colonial Office, in London, for the setting up of a Botanical Garden. This garden, which still flourishes today, finally came into being in 1862.\n\nBut, skipping a hundred years to the Branch's second time around, quite a lot else has been achieved. For example, the RASHKB has built up a respectable library of books on Asia. This is on permanent loan to the Urban Council, at the City Hall, and members of the general public are welcome to refer to it. On the shelves of the RASHKB Collection one can find many old, valuable titles, such as: A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793 and 1794, by Aeneas Anderson (1795) (then in the service of Earl Macartney), and Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, by Captain Sir Edward Belcher RN (1843), in two volumes. Some books in the RAS Collection bear interesting chops (stamps), such as from the old Canton Reading Room and the South China Morning Post's pre-World War II Library.\n\nIn addition RASHKB Archives, including files, photographs and papers, are deposited with the Government Public Records Office (PRO). Other Branch possessions are on long-term loan to the Hong Kong University. These include the F.A. Nixon, Buddhist, Tang Dynasty Scroll and the 38 M.A. McMullen Bills of Lading, relating to shipments in China from 1825-73. Also held by the University on behalf of the RASHKB are microfilms of 1847-59 Branch procedures and the Nixon Photographs of 991 bronze Nestorian crosses.\n\nAlthough the Society is basically apolitical, and occasionally thought of as being pro-establishment, it has not been afraid to take up cudgels when it felt there was a cause. As examples a letter was sent, in May 1995, to the Hong Kong Government pressing for the retention of the spirit hall and historical and architectural artefacts when the old Nga Tsin Wai Walled Village, in East Kowloon, is demolished.\n\nAlso, because of some government intransigence at the time, a small group of RASHKB members appeared twice before a Legislative Council committee to press for a properly established Public Records Office. When a purpose-designed, reasonably accessible, PRO opened in June 1997 at Kwun Tong, many members liked to think the RAS played a part in this successful outcome.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214846, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "228\n\n26 But war is war, as I have said. Captain Henry Keppel, RN, recently arrived at the war, went ashore at Woosung after its capture in June 1842. \"18 June 1842. Waterloo Day. General Sir Hugh Gough landed in my gig, when I witnessed the horrors of war. Mutilated carcasses of men and horses by hundreds. Houses burning, villages deserted, etc. Struck by the prevalent feeling so strong for destruction\". Sir Henry Keppel, A Sailor's Life under Four Sovereigns (London, 3 vols., 1899), Vol.I, p.\n\n27\n\nWyndham Baker wrote from Amoy, \"The troops in the city have picked up a considerable quantity of plunder and some quantity of silver, but of course it would not really do for officers to set them an example, though I have seen the most splendid and elegant satin dresses in possession of some of them.\" Blackwood's 1964, p.86.\n\nLaurence Shadwell, Life and Campaigns of Lord Clyde (London, 1881), p.120-1.\n\n29 Shadwell, p. 138.\n\n30 Shadwell, p.132. See also Sir John Francis Davis, Chinese Miscellanies: A Collection of Essays and Notes (London, John Murray, 1865), p.161n.\n\nBingham, Vol.II, p.86.\n\nBelcher, Vol II, pp.213-4. Sir Hugh Gough was particularly angry on this occasion. “You have placed me in a most critical situation,\" he wrote to Elliot, \"My men of all arms are dreadfully harassed, my communications with the rear constantly threatened and escorts attacked. My men must suffer dreadfully from the necessity of continued watchfulness; for however you may put confidence in the Chinese I do not, nor should be justified in relaxing in the least.” Cited in Holt, pp.128-9.\n\n33 Holt, p.112.\n\n34 Holt, p. 108. This step was apparently taken on the advice of the British interpreters to the expedition, who thought it was better to let the town be stripped and deserted than to coerce the civilian population.\n\n35 Ouchterlony, p.225.\n\n36 \"Oh for the Joys of England! Lt Orlando Bridgeman's Letters From China and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214849, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "231\n\n[Seen but citation mislaid] The origin of the term \"Fokies\" is unknown to me. However, it seems to have been in use in the British navy long before the Opium War. For instance, it appears in the Account of A Voyage to India, China, & in His Majesty's Ship Caroline, Performed in the Years 1803-4-5 By An Officer of the Caroline, published by Richard Phillips, London, in 1806. There, it is written \"Fukki,\" and is applied to a Chinese pickpocket who got the worst of an encounter with a British naval officer on the street near the British factory at Canton (pp.70-71). This book is remarkable for the unmistakable impression it creates of the high morale, national pride and spiritness of a well-led ship's company, the very same qualities which were to be again much in evidence in accounts of the Opium War; whilst the fate of the forts at the Bocca Tigris in 1841 are foreshadowed by a description of the battery at “Annanhoy\" (Anunghoy) and its accompanying dismissal, “Such is the gasconade of the Chinese about a fort, that a man of war's launch, armed with a carronade, would knock about their ears in a very short time” (p.55 with 56-7).\n\nYet it would seem that those few naval officers with earlier experience of dealing with the Chinese bad, like the officer of HMS Caroline, already taken the measure of their military and naval officials and their equipment. Critical assessments can be found in John McLeod's The Voyage of [HMS] Alceste to the Ryukyus and Southeast Asia, at pp. 125-170 of the Tuttle 1963 reprint of the First Edition published by John Murray of London in 1817; and in Captain Basil Hall's account of the same voyage, Narrative of a Voyage to Java, China, and the Great Loo-Choo Island (London, Edward Moxon, new edition, 1840) at pp.68-76, including the forcing of the Bogue. Hall commanded the Alceste's smaller consort, HMS Lyra. The animated spirit of the English officers and men, and the keen sense of the national honour, and especially of the flag, are well to the fore. This voyage was occasioned by the embassy of Lord Amherst to the Chinese Emperor, the two ships conveying its personnel to and from China,\n\nREFERENCES\n\nCommander J. Elliot Bingham, RN, Narrative of the Expedition to China From the Commencement of the War to the Present Period : With Sketches of the Manners and Customs of that Singular and Hitherto Almost Unknown Country, (London, Henry Colburn, MDCCCXLII [1842].\n\nWilliam C. Milne, Life in China (London, Routledge, Warnes &", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215138, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "191\n\nBard, Solomon (1988). In Search of the Past: A Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong, the Urban Council Hong Kong.\n\nEmpson, Hal (1992), Mapping Hong Kong, A Historical Atlas, Hong Kong.\n\nLack, Alan (1994 March 17), retired senior member of staff of Government Marine Department, Hong Kong. Letter to the author.\n\nHacker, Arthur, letter together with sketch to the Author dated 29 October, 2000.\n\nLiu Shuyong (1997), An Outline History of Hong Kong, Foreign Language Press, Beijing.\n\nThe Mariner's Mirror, The Journal of the Society for Nautical Research, England, vol. 81, no. 3, August 1995.\n\nOp. cit. vol. 82, no. 1, February 1996.\n\nMok, Sam (1995 February 25), 'Peaceful sea villages a Tai Tam treat', Hong Kong Standard.\n\nSinclair, Olga (2000, June), e-mail to the author.\n\nTai Tam Bay (1894), chart, surveyed by Lieut. J W Combe RN et al, published by the Admiralty, London.\n\nTrayhurn, Rob (1995, January 16), letter to author from Public Relations Officer, Clyde Submarine Base, Scotland.\n\nWhite Ensign - Red Dragon, The History of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong 1841-1997 (1997) ed. Commodore PJ Melson CBE, Royal Navy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215823, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "55\n\nbecame more secure. This allowed the Chinese to reoccupy some of their lost territory as 1945 progressed. Talks of an attempt on Hong Kong from the interior of China were revived, although a Hong Kong in Allied hands was now considered a luxury rather than a necessity. The USN was still expected to make a contribution, even if it was only to finally open up a port in China to further alleviate her supply situation, and the possession of which would complete the blockade around Japan and the Inner Zone,55\n\nWhether the USN, the chief underwriter of the Allied offensives in the Pacific, had enough resources for only a luxury objective was another story. As the Allies neared Japan, they encountered the wrath of two types of \"divine wind.\" The first was man-made in the form of massed Japanese suicide plane attacks on the USN and Britain's Royal Navy (RN). This was the Kamikaze, and was the ultimate desperation measure employed by the Japanese in a bid to stem the Allied advance. While the measure eventually failed, it proved extremely nerve-wracking for the Allies to face it down, and men and ships were lost in fighting off this threat. The prospect of more Kamikazes awaiting an invasion of Japan did not sit well with the USN.\n\nThe second was the more natural typhoon. The USN's Third Fleet had the misfortune to be caught in two of them during the last nine months of the war. The first typhoon hit the Third Fleet in December 1944 off the Philippines with winds of 125 knots. It claimed three destroyers sunk and 28 other ships damaged, 146 aircraft destroyed, and almost 900 dead or wounded. The second typhoon struck in June 1945 off Okinawa. This one wasn't as deadly, with winds kept below 100 knots, but it still damaged 33 ships, destroyed or damaged 92 aircraft, and killed or wounded 10 men.56 The Japanese could not have done so well in a conventional attack by this stage of the war.\n\nThe end of the war did not spare the USN from further punishment. In October 1945, a large assembly of support vessels was struck by a typhoon off Okinawa. Winds of 100 knots and waves as high as 35 feet (almost 11 metres) combined to damage, ground, or sink almost 270 ships, most of which were amphibious vessels. The typhoon also damaged over 60 aircraft and inflicted almost 200 casualties, including 36 dead. Shore facilities and supplies were also extensively damaged or destroyed. Fortunately, the war was over, or else the loss (even", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215824, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "56\n\ntemporarily) of so many valuable amphibious vessels would have set back any invasion of Japan, or elsewhere.\"7\n\nIn addition, after Japan agreed to surrender in August 1945, several ships of the RN heading to Hong Kong to re-establish British rule over the territory were caught in a typhoon and suffered losses.58 In all four cases, together with the 1937 and 1946 typhoons that straddled the war, the Allies suffered substantial losses without being able to hit back - because there was nothing to hit! Hence, the Japanese got their \"divine winds,\" but none were able to save them from defeat,\n\n## Conclusion\n\nIt should be noted that neither of the two typhoons that consumed the Third Fleet nor the one that hit Okinawa right after the war were as powerful as the 1937 or 1946 typhoons that hit Hong Kong. Still, the typhoons were strong enough to rattle and even damage the largest and best-protected warships, including collapsing the forward flight decks of two aircraft carriers and slicing the bow off a heavy cruiser in the June 1945 incident. (The ships survived, but the cruiser and one of the carriers were knocked out of the war.)59 Support vessels, which are not as sturdy nor as fast as the biggest warships, would stand to suffer even more from a typhoon, as demonstrated by the October 1945 storm.\n\nFor the weather to prevail in a military campaign is one of the most cost-ineffective ways to lose the campaign. The enemy would have suffered few or no losses in return, which is damaging to morale. On the other side, however, if by a certain stage of the war the weather has become one's most formidable ally, then that is usually an indicator that he has shot his bolt, and has to depend on something outside of his control.\n\nThe weather factors examined range from seemingly trivial to potentially devastating. All, however, are capable of causing unnecessary losses if either side has paid insufficient heed to any of them. In land operations on terrain as mountainous as Hong Kong's, more weight is put on the ability of the foot soldier to achieve key objectives, because the help afforded by machinery would be relatively limited. But the foot soldier is usually more vulnerable to the elements than his supporting machinery. Certainly, machinery could be replaced,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216046, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 345, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "279\n\nfrom\n\nsince. Legends claim it to be either a Buddhist pagoda dredged up the bed of the Yangzi Song dynasty from about 1000 AD or a memorial shrine to a Song dynasty prefect of about 1090.\n\nA stone Stupa or dagoba [containing Buddhist relics] is situated on a stone platform supported by four pillars over a busy street in front of the Guan Yin Cave to the north of Yuntai Hill to the west of Zhenjiang. In years gone by people heading for the small ferry across the Yangzi had to pass under it and gained confidence for their chancy ferry crossing from the protective power emanating from the relics. It is said to have been built during the Yuan dynasty during the 13th century.\n\nDaily life of foreigners in this insignificant Treaty port\n\nDuring the heady days of westerners within the Yangzi basin the steady stream of river steamers sailing the river under the protection of foreign flags and the twin fleets of protective river gun boats of the RN and USN, trade flourished and even an early form of tourism existed. Zhenjiang was famous for silk piece-goods, silk cord tassels for official hats, medicated wine called White Flower Wine, Baihua Jiu, aromatic plants, and fine sturgeon. However, for the foreign residents the greatest bane was the boredom. Although there was the Club where cards, drink and perhaps a few books and newspapers helped while away the long evenings, the ennui of the same faces, the same voices and the same topics of conversation was sufficient to bring some to the verge of suicide and some over it.\n\nLife was fairly constrained. There were only two provision stores to serve the foreign community during the first decades of the 20th century, Foo Chong and Chong Hsin. And according to L.C. Arlington Zhenjiang Concession, despite its very limited numbers, boasted its own aristocracy, with the Consul and the Commissioner of Customs as joint Sovereign Lords. The port, he added, was full of individuality, and social life; and the clubs - that for the Upper Circles [Zhenjiang Club] and that for the Lower Strata [Customs Club] - combined to produce constant gossip and occasional friction.20 There were a number of peculiar characters but none more peculiar than an American missionary who had been divorced by his wife owing, it was said, to his peculiar ways. He professed to carry out the teaching of St. Paul by consorting with the coolies in the native city, and providing them with\n\nPage 345\n\nPage 346", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]