[
    {
        "id": 209964,
        "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": 223,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "201\n\nThere were two museums which I intended to visit but as my daughter's birth day approached the time available for such luxuries declined.\n\nI wrote to the Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment museum, at Lichfield, Staffordshire, and received a very helpful reply. The 98th Regiment, later the 2nd North Staffords, served in the First China War and in Hong Kong.\n\nOn display at the museum are a \"soldier's watercolour\" in the uniform of the period c1840-50. \"This also shows a sentry box and the Colours and seems intended to indicate a coastal location. The 'China Dragon' is on the colour and the painting could well relate to the Regiment's subsequent service in Hong Kong (1842-45)\".\n\nThere is an officers' Shako plate (1829-44), an officers' shoulder belt plate, an officers' sword belt clasp (1826-55) and \"two buttons, a shoulder numeral and a few other relics of the period, subsequently dug up in Hong Kong\".\n\nThe other museum which I missed was that of the Royal Berkshire Museum, successors to the 49th Regiment, in Salisbury, Wiltshire.\n\nMy experience in 1983 proved that visitors to England should make a point of calling in at virtually any regimental or army museum that they pass. What may be judged an unimportant relic against the span of centuries of regimental history may be viewed quite differently from a Hong Kong point of view.\n\nNot army, but equally interesting, is the National Railway Museum, in York, which might seem an unlikely place to search for souvenirs of China--but it houses what is probably the biggest one in Britain. There, sparkling and gleaming, is a mighty Chinese National Railways Class KF 4-8-4 locomotive. The 93-foot long behemoth was built in the mid-1930s at the Vulcan Foundry, Newton-le-Willows, to haul 600-ton trains over the mountainous central section of the Canton-Hankow Railway. After 43 years in service the locomotive was presented to the museum by China and it left Shanghai for England in 1981. The sheer size of this monster makes it stand out and it looked to me far and away the biggest in the extensive collection. The engine weighs in at 114.9 tons with a 77-ton tender.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215041,
        "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": 137,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "93\n\nWaters, D. D: The Chinese labour Corps in the First World War : Labourers buried in France : Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society: Vol. 35 : 1995\n\nThe Commonwealth War Graves Commission,\n\n2 Marlow Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 7DX\n\nUnited Kingdom\n\nTel: 44-1628 634221 Fax: 44-1628 771208\n\nImperial War Museum\n\nNOTES\n\n1\n\n3\n\nLambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ Tel. 020 7416 5000\n\nLiang Shiyi (1869-1933). Chinese government official and financier. Under the Qing government, amongst his financial dealings, he helped found the Bank of Communications (1907). He was President of the Board of Communications (1912), Chief Secretary in the Presidential Office and General Manager of the Bank of Communications, acting Finance Minister (1913-1915); Director-General of the National Revenue Administration and Director-General of the Domestic Loans Office. He was linked with Yuan Shikai and in 1916 fled to Hong Kong. He formed the Wei Min Corporation for the recruitment of Chinese labourers to serve in France, as a proponent of China's entry into the war. Returning to Beijing in 1918, he was made Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Communications; Speaker of the National Assembly; Director of the Domestic Loan Bureau (1920); and Prime Minister (1921-1922). After exile (1922-1925) he again served in the Beijing Government under both Duan Jirui and Zhang Zuolin. He retired to Hong Kong in 1928 after the Northern Expedition reached Beijing.\n\nThis was usually referred to by “real” soldiers as the Crosse and Blackwells, as this British provision company had a very similar crest.\n\nLt Col. Bryan Charles Fairfax, a Yorkshireman, was born on 12th September 1873, the second son of Col. T.F. (or L?) Fairfax of the Grenadier Guards and passed through the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, being commissioned on 8th March 1893 into the Durham Light Infantry (DLI). He was posted to the 2nd Battalion, then serving in India. In 1898 he volunteered for service with the newly raised 1 Battalion, The Chinese Regiment of Infantry, stationed in Weihai",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]