[ { "id": 212276, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "\"New light on the population of the country? On the governmental system? On the administration of justice? What is the relation of the different provinces of the country to the Empire? of Tartars and the Chinese?” \n\n\"What is the actual idolatry of the people? Their actual morality?” “To what degree are they intellectually active? To what extent does education pervade their masses?** \n\n195 \n\nLegge concluded: “these are not exhaustively stated questions, but those which most readily present themselves to my mind”, \n\nThese commitments became the driving force for the rest of his life. No other Western scholar in modern history or before has ever studied the full breadth of Confucian classical literature and published translations or commentaries on all of these traditions.\" Although other scholars, (including missionary-scholars like Legge and those in consular positions), pursued studies in Buddhism and Taoism with great thoroughness, none published the kind of extensive translations of both Taoist philosophy and Taoist religious texts which Legge presented in his translations for The Sacred Books of China. With regard to Buddhism, Legge did not publish any extensive translations of Buddhist scriptures, but he remained informed of some of the current work in Chinese Buddhism by Western scholars, continuing even late in his Oxford years to read and assess Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scholarship in selected fields of Buddhist literature. The results of his work in Buddhism were made public in his book on The Religions of China and in a public essay presented at an Orientalist Congress in the 1880s.** \n\nThese sinological studies do not tell the whole story of Legge's approach to his Chinese audiences. During the 1850s Legge was tempted by another missiological approach. While he remained active in teaching and publicly discussing technical problems in biblical translations in the early fifties, a major change in his life occurred as a consequence of the death of his first wife in 1852. The indefatigable Legge redirected his energies towards the training of indigenous church leaders; among his trainees was the intelligent Hong Rengan (洪仁干), a relative of the Taiping Leader, Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全), and later made one of the Taiping kings in the final years of the rebellion. Legge was intent on making Christianity relevant to contemporary China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212277, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "196\n\n45\n\nIn order to achieve these aims, he translated from English a reader for younger students which at times was a conscious attempt to impress Chinese readers with the greatness of Western culture. In addition, in the mid-1850s he took over the editing of a monthly journal, written in Chinese for the propagation of news and cultural information from a Western perspective. This kind of approach, so common among many Western missionaries of various sorts, from the early Jesuits to the educators and medical doctors of the 20th century, Legge consciously rejected in 1856. In that year he decided as editor of the monthly journal that the enterprise was not helpful, so he not only stepped down as editor, but also stopped its publication. Furthermore, never again did he translate an educational reader of the sort mentioned above for Chinese students. In doing so, he was returning to the original educational ideals first expressed in his personal journal of 1847.\n\nWhat motivated Legge to return after 1856 to his original ideals after his experiments between 1852 and 1856 with a more didactic educational philosophy? Several factors seem to have been involved. One was a disenchantment with the government's militarism and the ugly stories tied to the commercial opium trade in which English capitalists were implicated. Although Legge remained a faithful British citizen, he was not unwilling to criticize policies which stood in opposition to ethical duty and moral integrity among his own countrymen. He was a faithful citizen, but not a blind patriot.\n\nAnother factor may well have been the growing apprehension among the missionary communities about the Taiping Rebellion and its distortion of Christian faith. Some had originally hailed it as a judgement of God on the Qing dynasty, with leaders who were favourable to the representatives of Christian religion. This hope was dashed when a German missionary in contact with Taiping leaders published an account of their doctrines, displaying them as an eclectic cult which adopted some teachings of Christianity, but distorted them by combining them with other religious teachings and the visionary messages of Hong Xiuquan.47 Legge could not distance himself from this issue, because his closest Chinese friend during this period was Hong Rengan, later to become the Shield King of the Taipings (太平天國) once he arrived in their capital of Tianjing (天京) (formerly and now Nanjing). The issue was constantly in the widower's mind not only because he felt close to Rengan, but also...\n\n4K", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212278, "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": 220, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "197\n\nbecause, after Legge himself had remarried back in England in 1858, Rengan arranged for his relatives to stay with the Legge family until he called for them from Tianjing. The final demise of the rebellion included the capture and execution of Rengan by the Qing armies. In spite of the personal training given and closeness felt by Legge, the power of blood relations carried more influence than the power of Christian care. This made the need to understand the Chinese heart and mind all the more concrete to Legge.\n\nA more direct influence was the inability of Legge and his teaching staff to produce through the Anglo-Chinese College and its Seminary a continual supply of Chinese pastors and teachers. The government licensed the school with the understanding that some of those who graduated would be sent on to government placements as translators. Since the pay from the government was far more than any pastor could receive while working with a very small community at best, most students were drawn into government and business.\n\nThere is no doubt that there were also strong theological reasons behind the change. Legge's missionary service was directed toward the Chinese population. In order to know them and to be accepted by them, he felt he had to display a knowledge which they would honour: a knowledge of the Confucian Classics. Convinced that the earliest Chinese did know the true God named Shangdi, as found in The Book of Documents (HK) and the oldest portions of The Book of Odes, Legge was all the more concerned to discover how Chinese themselves responded to these religious dimensions of Confucianism. This attitude informed Legge's educational philosophy.\n\nThus, Legge supported the provision of general education for selected Chinese students, rather than requiring them to follow any rigidly missionary curriculum. He closed his own parochial school in 1858. He was the head of the education committee for the Hong Kong government which developed the new public educational system in Hong Kong. This is remarkable, since general education was not standard even in many European countries at that date. Legge arranged to have Frederick Stewart, a fellow Scotsman, come to act as headmaster of Queen's College, the new school designed to provide a higher-level general education for Chinese boys.\n\nEarly in his career as the London Missionary Society representative", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212295, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "214\n\nlast in the Hok-keen and Canton dialects (Malacca, 1841), 111 pages.\n\nThe breadth of Legge's vision is fully realized in the extensive studies and translations of his later career. A testimony to this fact is found in the current editions of The Chinese Classics (first prepared in the 1960 edition published in Hong Kong) which include tables locating parallel passages in all other major translations. Legge is the only non-Chinese scholar who has translated all of the major Confucian classics. In some standard Confucian lists, two classics on the rites are included which Legge did not translate: The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli) and The Rites on Etiquette (Yili). This in itself is a feat, but when one recognizes the further achievement of the extensive commentarial apparatus, it is easy to understand why one missionary-scholar referred to Legge in the 1870s as the greatest sinologist in the Western world.\n\n1\n\nJames Legge, “A Fair and Dispassionate Discussion of the Three Doctrines Accepted in China\", sometime in the 1880s (1881?) to an Orientalist Conference. I have seen the published article, but could find no precise reference for it. In addition, Legge published an annotated translation of a Korean recension of a text important for the understanding of Chinese Buddhism. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399-414) in Search of the Buddhistic Books of Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), which included at the end a copy of the Chinese manuscript.\n\n++\n\nGeorge Baker, author, James Legge trans., Graduated Reading, comprising a Circle of Knowledge in 200 Lessons: Gradation 1 (Zhihuan qimeng shuke chubu) (TER224) (Hong Kong: London Missionary Society Press, 1856, second printing, 1864).\n\nThis monthly magazine was entitled Xidi quanzhen (遠邇貫珍) Penetrating Treasures from Far and Near which Legge edited from mid-1855 to mid-1856,\n\nHì\n\nWhile remaining a patriot of Great Britain, and feeling at times that war was a necessary means for promoting international justice in the specific case of relations with Guangdong provincial leaders, Legge questioned the employment of war for the sake of \"stimulating the economy\". For this reason, he challenged the Hong Kong government's militarism in 1856 (the Arrow affair) as well as its questionable motives. In addition, he argued that China had good reason to fear and hate the English because of the evils of opium trade, comparing her response to that of Japan, where opium trade had been made illegal from its very beginnings. See James Legge, \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), [reprint from The China Review of 1872-3, see n. 2 above] pp. 185-191. In the prolegomenon of the first volume of The Chinese Classics, Legge explicitly argued that the colonial responsibilities Great Britain had assumed in India and China would best be put into the hands of governors who, as if following the dictates of benevolent government advocated by Confucius, were worthy examples of moral, ethical, and political well-being. A criticism of some of the British imperialistic intentions and its accompanying evils could not be put more plainly by a loyal citizen. See The Chinese Classics: Vol 1, op. cit., p. 105.\n\nTheodore Hamberg, The Visions of Hung Siu-Tshuen (Hong Kong: 1854).\n\nJ7\n\n44\n\nAt the end of his missionary career, Legge could still speak of Hong Rengan with some affection. In public Legge praised his intelligence and amiability; see Legge's \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., p. 186. In private notes found in the Bodleian Library entitled \"Reminiscences\", Legge tells how they would walk, arms across each other's shoulders in close friendship, and how adept Rengan was when they performed Christian Ministry together. See James Legge, \"Reminiscences\", manuscript in the Bodleian Library, pp. 13-14.\n\n典\n\nIn his lecture on the history of Hong Kong in 1872, Legge indicated his satisfaction in seeing the rearrangement of all Chinese schools. E. T. Eitel also discussed Legge's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212533, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "67\n\non a year by year basis, with events mainly related to performing arts and art exhibitions. In 1980, five performing arts groups visited the United States and two art exhibitions were launched. After a slight decline in activity in 1981, the number rose to eight events in both 1982 and 1983, taking performing arts and art exhibitions together. In the following two years, the numbers of Chinese cultural events continued to rise, though not drastically.\n\nLooking at these statistics, though not complete it is easy to see that there have been up and downs in the 15 years of Sino-American arts exchanges between 1972 and 1986, reflecting domestic political developments in both countries. In China, the years 1972-1978 were politically uncertain. The death of Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong in 1976 and the dismissal of Deng Xiaoping led to new political disorder. After the fall of the Gang of Four in 1976, the country began to concentrate on modernization. Eventually this programme led to a loosening of the controls of Chinese political life.\n\nThe relaxation of political control started in late 1978, which was regarded both by the leadership and by a national consensus as a prerequisite to modernization, was followed by the appearance of many posters, unauthorized journals, mimeographed sheets and demonstrations, some of which expressed demands for radical changes and some of which even questioned the authority of the party leadership. This soon caused a political reassessment. Between 1978 and 1988 there were three swings from loosening political control back to more restricted policies, which were marked by reassessments beginning respectively in 1981, 1983 and 1986. Though these reassessments were politically oriented, some of them did centre on cultural issues and all of them affected China's cultural life.\n\nMeanwhile, the Sino-American intimacy of 1979 was cooled by Ronald Reagan's campaign promises to re-establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. A strong anti-Communist, Reagan introduced into his foreign policy deep ideological prejudices in his initial years in office.\n\nBy the second half of 1983, the atmosphere of Sino-American relations began to improve, leading to Premier Zhao Ziyang's visit to the United States in January and President Reagan's tour to China in April of 1984. However, the affinity that existed around 1979 was not regained.\n\nIn this paper, I shall try to establish a framework of analysis which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212548, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "82\n\ninternational considerations once again dominated Sino-American relations, but cultural relations this time occupied an important position. The administration saw clearly that cultural exchanges were a means towards a closer relationship. In the period 1979-1981, bilateral arts exchanges were numerous, showing the strong support of the administration for such projects. Carter personally, like Nixon, granted interviews with visiting Chinese artists and to China-bound American artists.\n\nThe framework of arts exchanges established by the Carter Administration had a far-reaching impact on the coming years. The impact was so strong that a substantial number of exchanges were still carried out when Sino-American relations were at a low ebb in the initial years of the Reagan Administration.\n\nIn the Reagan Administration, cultural relations with China were handled at a lower level of management, as compared with the Carter Administration. Furthermore, the \"spirit of U.S. generosity, high expectations, and mutual understanding\" that had informed relations during the Carter administration had yielded to narrow calculations of interest, revived ideological enmity, and mutual suspicion. Nevertheless, the function of cultural exchanges as a foreign policy instrument was essentially the same - supporting general policy objectives. As the anti-Soviet strategic theme in Sino-American relations became less urgent, the United States began to pursue long-term American interests more vigorously and arts exchanges with China became even more politicized than in the previous three administrations.\n\nIn the Reagan Administration, arts exchanges were made a channel to export to China American ideology and to consciously create a cultural imagery in China. To examine the nature of arts exchanges with China in the Reagan Administration, a good example might be an incident involving a show of modern American paintings from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.\n\nThe art exhibition from the Boston Museum was an official exchange programme initiated to implement the accord reached in Beijing in 1979. Before the opening of the show, Chinese officials requested that 13 abstract paintings be deleted from the exhibition. The American side, headed by Charles Wick, Director of the USIA (then called the United States International Communication Agency (USICA)), responded", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212549, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "83\n\nfuriously, threatening to cancel the exhibition if the 13 paintings were banned. The opening ceremony was postponed one hour to wait for a settlement which finally came with concessions from the Chinese officials. In their speeches at the ceremony, the Americans repeatedly referred to the \"American\" principle of free artistic expression, and Huang Zhen, Commissioner for External Cultural Relation and Wick's Chinese counterpart, expressed strong reservations about the paintings.\n\nTo Wick, the exhibition was a showcase to the Chinese that in the United States, free artistic expression was a universally accepted value and artists in the United States enjoyed greater artistic freedom than in China, whose cultural policy, as it refused to accept abstractionism presented by those 13 paintings, was \"totalitarian\". Wick's hard line on this issue also implied that the United States supported those unorthodox Chinese artists and writers who were being criticized in the campaign against \"bourgeois liberalization\".\n\nWick's management of the abstract painting incident indicated that the United States government would sacrifice good relations with China to the goal of presenting American cultural imagery to the Chinese people. Arts exchanges with China were no longer an instrument to create a warm atmosphere, under which circumstance both parties would co-operate nicely when differences occurred. Putting this position in the anti-Communist background of the Reagan Administration, a theme of explicit cultural warfare seems to have raised its head.\n\nCompared with the American Government, the private sector's support for arts exchanges with China was stimulated by fewer political considerations. Private interests provided support for such projects in various forms, including the funding of organizations specializing in U.S.-China arts exchanges, such as the Center for United States-China Arts Exchange, and the funding of specific exchange projects. In the realm of U.S.-China arts exchanges, financial support is a very important factor. The exchange programmes could not be realized without such support, but such programmes normally cannot show a profit. To discuss the numerous organizations and private exchanges involved is impossible. What can be done in this paper with regard to the private sector's support of cultural exchanges is to examine closely the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange and to derive some conclusions from the Center's activities.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 } ]