[
    {
        "id": 207853,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 241,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "226\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nman with a parent to rebury and with the resources to back up his ambition will look far and wide in his search for a good site, not necessarily confining himself to the neighbourhood of his village. The poor cannot indulge themselves so; but they are unlikely in any case to reach the stage of looking for reburial sites, and the bones of their dead probably remain for ever in the urns where they were deposited after the first burial. There is no dearth of evidence that urns lie neglected for many years, at the end of their career spilling their contents on the ground. For the humble, geomantic burial plays a small role. Among the proud and the aspiring the hunt for the Dragon, a never-ending search for promotion and security, leads people in a competitive race over the hills, Fung shui in this context represents the right of individuals to outstrip their neighbours. (I have not gone into the details of burial. See B.D. Wilson, 'Chinese Burial Customs in Hong Kong', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. I, 1961, pp. 115-123).\n\n60. Success which flows from fung shui raises a moral problem, for it is not a reward for merit. If the geomancer has done his job correctly Breaths will concentrate automatically, whether the descendants are good men or bad. Geomancy explains why some people succeed and others fail, even when they have the same advantages and appear to have the same chances, but, at least at first sight, it seems to obscure the role in success which may be played by moral worth. The problem is in fact raised in some of the fung shui stories current in the New Territories. They show that in reality the evil cannot expect to prosper by fung shui, however much they appear to benefit in the short run. The universe is a moral entity; principles of right laid up in Heaven are not to be denied by the workings of Earth. I heard one story in two different versions; here is a summary of its main points to illustrate the role of morality in fung shui. A poor duck-breeder one day observed a geomancer at work. The geomancer stuck a bamboo pole in the muddy duck-pond and left it there for the night. During the night it flowered. The duck-breeder stole it and replaced it with another bamboo pole to the surprise next morning of the geomancer who had expected to find it flowering. He tried again but once more was foiled by the wily duck-breeder, and so he was forced to abandon what he thought to have proved a magnificent fung shui. The duck-breeder, having stolen the knowledge of the site, ordered",
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    {
        "id": 215993,
        "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": 292,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "226\n\nKangxi was an earlier Manchurian emperor who had followed the movements of Catholic missionaries with great interest, both impressed by some and later revolted by others. His imperial son and successor, the Yongzheng emperor (ruling from 1723-1736), castigated those following the \"Lord Of Heaven\" as heretics (viduan) in his commentary to the seventh maxim of his father. Legge translated and commented on Yongzheng's authoritative interpretations of the Sacred Edict in lectures presented at Oxford's Taylor Institute in 1877, and later published them in Hong Kong under the title \"Imperial Confucianism\" in the sinological journal, China Review 6:3-6 (1878), pp. 147-158, 223-235, 299-310, 363-374. A good discussion of the impact of the Sacred Edict as part of the educative dimension of the Qing dynasty's civil servants is provided in Victor H. Mair, \"Language and Ideology in the Written Popularizations of the Sacred Edict,” in David Johnson, et al., eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 325-359.\n\n20. See the description and reflections of a British journalist at the scene in China Mail #803 (July 5, 1860), pp. 106-107.\n\n21. His age was given in Legge's writings on Ch'ea. The fact that he had a son is verified through the records of the Chinese congregation of Union Church in Hong Kong, where a man named Che who joined the church in the late 1860s is identified as \"the son of the martyr.\" This information was gleaned from Carl Smith's archives.\n\n22. Following Lewis Rambo's lead, we will assume that conversion is a “dynamic, multifaceted process of transformation\" including, at the very least, elements of \"cultural, social, personal, and religious systems.\" See Lewis R. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 6-7.\n\n23. This is one possible literal rendering of the translated title for the \"Bible\", the phrase also being used as a general reference term in traditional China for the Ruist canon. In contemporary China, that latter association is almost completely lost.\n\n24. One Chinese scholar believes that Wang's influence on Walter Medhurst's translation commitments in the Delegates' Committee were very extensive, but offers no precise historical documentation to support the claim. It is certainly sufficient to know that Wang was Medhurst's \"native informant,\" for the influences could not help but be there, especially when questions of style and phrasing more suitable to Ruist tastes were raised. See Lee Chi-fang, Wáng T'ao (1828-1897): his life, thought, scholarship, and literary achievement (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1992, printing 1973).\n\n25. This is very generally confirmed in I-Jin Loh's essay, \"Chinese Translations of the Bible\", published as part of An Encyclopedia Of Translation: Chinese-English, English-Chinese, eds. Chan Sin-Wai and David E. Pollard (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1995), pp. 54-69. Loh explicitly states, \"It is generally agreed that the literary style of this version [in both Old Testament and New Testament], which had the benefit of help from a Chinese scholar by the name of Wang Tao, was superior to the rival version [later prepared by American missionaries]\" (p. 57). The \"literary style\" was the form of literary conventions.",
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    {
        "id": 215994,
        "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": 293,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "227\n\nand phrasing typical of Ruist discourse in the late Qing period.\n\n26. Although Legge held this position by 1848 and argued for it in his extensive study of 1852, The Notions of the Chinese Concerning God and Spirits, he did make slight changes in the position later on in his Oxford years. Shàngdì was for Legge a high name for any monotheistic vision of God, but it was a composite term. Later in 1865 when he for the first time published a translation of the Book of Historical Documents (CC3), Legge shifted his position to claim that the single term, di (the second character in shangdi) carried the essential meaning of “God” in certain contexts. Shàngdi was only its \"intensified form.\" For this he had to develop a further justification, which he published in two different settings. For further details of these arguments see James Legge, The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Confucianism, Part I: The Shu King. The Religious Portion of the Shih King, The Hsiao King (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), pp. xxiii-xxix, and A Letter to Professor F. Max Muller Chiefly on the Translation into English of the Chinese Terms Ti and Shang Ti in Reply to a Letter to him by 'Inquirer' in the Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal for May-June 1880 (London: Trübner & Co., 1880). The first text appears as the third volume in the Sacred Books of the East series edited by F. Max Müller in Oxford.\n\n27. For the letter written by Legge and Chalmers on July 9, 1856, see the incoming letters for CWM/South China/Box 5/Jacket C/Folder 4. Later when meeting Legge in Hong Kong, Ch’ea said that \"he wished to receive the ordinance [of baptism] because it was commanded, but it was not the baptism with water which regenerated the soul, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Being asked where he had learned that, [Ch’ea] said that it was in the New Testament, he could not tell the book and the Ch., but if he had a book he knew where to find it. A New Testament being given to him, he soon turned up to the third Ch. of the Gospel of John.\" See EMMC/MM (October 1856), p. 215.\n\n28. Rambo describes \"intellectual conversion\" as the result of a person who \"seeks knowledge about religious or spiritual issues via books, television, articles, lectures, and other media that do not involve significant social contact.\" Then the person \"actively seeks out and explores alternatives.\" He adds, \"Belief generally occurs prior to active participation in religious rituals and organizations\" (Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, pp. 14-15).\n\n29. The letter describing Legge's encounter with the Daoist priest from Mount Luofu is dated February 22, 1854 (CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 8), and confirmed in a later report to the London office by John Chalmers in his letter dated March 24, 1854 (CWM/South China/Box 5/Jacket E/Folder 3). EMMC/MM 21 (September 1857), p. 206. The original quotation is in the plural, describing both Ch'ea and a more recent convert named Kot A-Yuk. David Johnson also notes that in the late Qing period\n\nthere must have been a substantial number of individuals whose limited schooling had made it possible for them to grasp the meaning of many texts but not to write easily or well. Such persons had some access to the literary tradition and hence had transcended the confines of local oral culture, but were unable to use writing to order and record their thoughts. The distinction between those literates who could not write, or at",
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    {
        "id": 215995,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 294,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "228\n\nany rate habitually did not, and those who did, is one of the most significant within the literate realm, perhaps as important as the distinction between those who did and did not have full access to the literary tradition.\n\nThe fact that Ch'a later had others write down what he dictated about his experiences suggests that he was one of these people in the middle: able to read, but not yet able to write well. See the further discussion in David Johnson's article, \"Communication, Class, and Consciousness in Late Imperial China”, in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, pp. 34-72, here p. 38.\n\n30. EMMC/MM 20 (October 1856), p. 215.\n\n31. EMMC/MM 20 (October 1856), p. 215.\n\n32. This story is part of the collection of vignettes in a typed manuscript entitled Reminiscences (pp. 15-18, quotation from p. 15) held in the Bodleian Library (Ms. Eng. misc. c. 812). Many of these stories show signs of an aging man not remembering particular details of dates and places, but there appears to be no good reason to doubt the authenticity of this encounter between Legge and Ch'ëa itself. It appears nowhere else in Legge's writings, and serves as one of the basic texts for Helen Edith Legge's typescript, \"Che'a Kin-Kwang.”\n\n33. Rambo refers to this as a further motif in conversion initially identified by John Lofland and Rodney Stark. It involves the \"direct, personal experience of being loved, nurtured, and affirmed by a group and its leaders\" (Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, p. 15).\n\n34. For a helpful summary of Mary Isabella Legge's life see the section related to \"Mary Isabella Morison\" in Wong Man-kong, \"Hidden in History: London Missionary Society Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century China (1807-1877)”, in Lí Hànjī, ed., Dú shĩ cúngão (Reading History: Extant Documents) (Hong Kong: Xuéfeng wénhuà Co., 1998), esp. pages 156-160.\n\n35. The timing of Ch'ea's leaving his post at the Poklo temple was not certain in an earlier letter, but Ch'ea himself dictates this fact in a letter translated into English for overseas readers. See EMMC/MM (September 1857), p.207. The following descriptions come from this and another translated statement (pp. 207-209) prepared by another convert led back to Hong Kong by Ch'ea, as will be described below.\n\n36. This is the intent of the seventh of the sixteen edicts, translated by Legge as \"Discountenance and put away strange principles, in order to exalt the correct doctrine” (chủ viduàn vì chống zhèng xuê). Among the “strange principles” regarded as unacceptable were Buddhist and Daoist extremities, rebellious groups like the secret societies of the White Lotus, and the Catholic religion. Legge makes clear that the condemnation of Catholicism \"must be understood simply of Christianity\" as a whole. See James Legge, \"Imperial Confucianism\" (Lecture II), China Review, 6:4 (October 1877), pp. 232-235.\n\n37. In a similar way Hong Xiùquán was seen as \"mad\" by his family and neighbours, but had experienced a physical breakdown after repeated failures in the civil examinations during the time he began having visions. The experience of Ch'ea on this score is quite different, in that he apparently maintained a relative engagement with his local lifeworld until he returned from Hong Kong in the summer of 1856. Compare Hamberg's account taken down from Hong Réngan's",
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