[
    {
        "id": 204481,
        "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": 113,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nthere are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence.\n\n53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years.\n\n54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies.\n\n55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away.\n\n56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
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    {
        "id": 204678,
        "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": 159,
        "title": "RAS-1963",
        "content_text": "143\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMOVEMENT OF VILLAGES ON LANTAU ISLAND FOR FUNG SHUI REASONS\n\nDuring the clearance of the village of Shek Pik in 1960 to make way for the new reservoir, it was found that the village had moved a quarter of a mile to lower ground in 1936, a few years before the Japanese War. The move represented an important decision on the part of the inhabitants who were Punti, since the houses in the old village of Shek Pik Wai had been in existence for several hundred years at least and were substantial buildings in the traditional style with stone foundations, door footings and entrance posts of worked granite, mudbrick walls, and with tiled roofs and decorated eave boards. In 1898 there were over 300 houses, though many of these were used for storage and as cow byres, whilst others were deserted and perhaps in ruins.\n\nThe reason for the move was, apparently, a continuing decline of population - 202 persons were moved in 1960, whilst the 1911 census gave a figure of 363, which was probably higher still at an earlier date — culminating, in 1936, in an unusually bad epidemic, type unknown, which reduced the population still further. Following this a decision was taken to evacuate the village on the grounds that the fung shui of the place was no longer good, and had become harmful to the inhabitants. Anything which could be used for the new houses was stripped from the old, and their ruination was completed by Japanese soldiers during the war who set fire to what remained so that it could not harbour guerillas.\n\nFurther enquiries on South Lantau reveal that between the two world wars the two Hakka villages of Lo Wai and San Tsuen immediately to the north of the present 新村 south Lantau Road at Pui O — combined population 165 in 1911, though only Lo Wai is listed—had removed by degrees from old sites on the hillside; whilst a neighbouring village, also Hakka, at the head of the small Shap Long valley had 恰塱 removed to a site on the sea-shore about 1930. The cause of",
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    },
    {
        "id": 204796,
        "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-1964",
        "page_number": 99,
        "title": "RAS-1964",
        "content_text": "FENG CHAU\n\n87\n\nChinese New Year, were accustomed to visit their parent villages, which were in any case not far away. However, there seem in mid-century to have been close links with the Tung Kwun association of Cheung Chau. Fifteen Peng Chau shops47 subscribed to the repair of the association's premises in 1866, and Peng Chau residents may have been members of the association, as is the case with several of the Cheung Chau district and other organisations today.\n\ntoday. The extent of the help given on that occasion may be attributed either to this, or else to some very energetic canvassing by the Cheung Chau organisers.48\n\nHowever, the gradual expansion of the local community did bring with it various manifestations of communal endeavour. There was an interesting building, now in ruins, known as the Yee Chee, which was a poor house rather on the lines of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau. It was a substantial structure constructed from the dark grey-blue bricks of the region, and rather like a temple in appearance. There were three rooms: one for sick persons, one for the dying and one for the caretaker. There were idols inside, the principal one being that of the God of Ghosts. The Yee Chee is said to have been constructed by the island Kaifong from funds specially raised for the\n\n# purpose and was maintained by them as occasion required. It was intended for use by destitute persons in poor health and as a place where they could die in peace. No one with relatives able to support him would ever let himself be taken there. Free coffins were provided by the Kaifong. It was available to all, land and sea dwellers alike. The caretaker was supported by collections and was allowed to cultivate land under the control of the Kaifong. The building was not in particularly good repair when Mr. CHUNG was a boy, and its origin can therefore be dated with confidence to 1850 or before.\n\nThe Peng Chau Kaifong mentioned in the previous paragraph had premises on each side of the Tin Hau temple. They were renovated in 1876-77 about the same time as the temple. Present elders clearly recall a tablet in the office building to one side of the temple which said it was enlarged. The annexe on the other side served as a school or guest house as the need arose. It is not certain when the Kaifong began,50 but it appears to have existed before this office was repaired and it has been",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205065,
        "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-1966",
        "page_number": 21,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "16\n\nJOHN J. NOLDE\n\nFirst of all, it is generally agreed that Imperial authority throughout the empire had begun to weaken during the latter years of the eighteenth century. After the era of the great Ch'ien-lung emperor, China was governed by two rather weak rulers. The sale of offices increased markedly in the latter part of the Chia-ching period and continued throughout that of Tao-kuang. Provincial authorities were being held in more and more contempt by the local populace and the gentry. We have, in short, a typical example of the setting in of a traditional dynastic decline. The mandate of heaven was running out for the Ch'ing Dynasty, and nowhere is this usually more apparent than in the outer reaches of the empire... the areas farthest from the Imperial center of power. Especially was this true in an area such as Kwangchou, with its linguistic, racial, and economic uniqueness. My guess is that Imperial control in Kwangchou had at best always been tenuous. Now it was almost non-existent,\n\n17\n\nSecondly, Kwangchou, during the 1820's and 1830's, suffered a series of severe natural calamities. In 1822 a disastrous fire swept Canton itself, doing incalculable damage. Beginning in the late 1820's catastrophic floods ravaged the area. In 1829 high tides \"to a degree unprecedented in the memory of the oldest inhabitant\", flooded the provincial city and swept away villages. Hundreds were drowned, and the rice crop was largely destroyed. An English-language journal reported that \"the loss of property far exceeds the sum of that sustained at the great fire of 1822\". The most serious of these disasters occurred during the summers of 1833 and 1834. Torrential rains raised the level of the rivers as much as ten feet above normal. Boats were reported navigating the streets of Canton. In July, 1833 10,000 lives were reported lost, 1,000 in the large town of Fushan alone. Most of the rice crop was lost in 1833 and the destruction of the mulberry-plantation-dykes in the southern part of Nan Hai Hsien resulted in the loss of the silk crop. The latter disaster would, of course, have long-range consequences. In September, 1833 the crew of the ship-wrecked vessel Bee, returning overland to Canton, reported \"the greatest possible distress among the inhabitants and a destruction of property such as has not been witnessed for many years\". The flood of 1834 was even worse and the loss of property and damage to the rice crop exceeded that of the previous",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206501,
        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 49,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "The Establishment of the Tsungli Yamen\n\n43\n\nbut after the defeat at Taku we could only pacify them and not use force. When the barbarian troops entered the capital military measures became totally impossible and whether we attack them or pacify them we shall incur harm. Thus we have to weigh up and discuss these two methods and to act expediently in order to relieve the present crisis.\n\nAfter the exchange of treaties the barbarians returned to Tientsin and sailed south one after another. Moreover, their demands are still based on the treaties. Thus those barbarians really do not covet our land and people. By good faith and justice we can still win them over and control their nature, while we plan our own recovery. This appears to be somewhat different from the situation in previous dynasties.\n\nYour servants have taken into account the overall situation and consider that our attempts to ward off the barbarians at the present time is rather like Shu's treatment of Wu. Shu and Wu were enemies yet when Chu-ko Liang held the reins of state he sent envoys to win the friendship of Wu and make an alliance with Wu to attack Wei. Surely he did not forget his determination to annex Wu for a single day. It was rather because he had to weigh up the favourable and unfavourable aspects of the situation and the relative degree of urgency.\n\nSo, if he did not suppress the hatred in his heart but risked all in a single test [i.e. by war with Wu] the result would be even worse than this. Now although the barbarians do not stand in the same relation to us as did the equal states of Shu and Wu yet the antagonistic situation between the barbarians and us is similar.\n\nAt the present time the barbarian behaviour is fierce and insubordinate. All our countrymen share a common indignation. Your servants know something about moral principles (i li); how could they forget the best interests of the state?\n\nNow the Nien are ablaze in the north and the “long haired rebels\" [the Taipings] in the south; our supplies are exhausted and our troops are tired. The barbarians have taken advantage of our weakness and as a result they have gained the upper hand.\n\nIf we do not restrain our anger but antagonize them then we may suffer unexpected reversals at any moment. If we forget the injuries they have done us and make no preparations we shall leave our sons and grandsons a cause of sorrow.\n\nThe men of old had a saying: \"Consider peace and friendship as a temporary expedient, consider attack and defense as a basic condition\". This truly is an unchanging axiom.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206846,
        "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": 123,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 117\n\nfrom Kwantung province Wong Chi Tsoi (£*) of Tung Koon district was rewarded with this privilege.\n\nThe Lik Ying Tsaai had a large library which housed many thousands of books, and outside the North gate of the village Tang Foo built several hostels for the students to live in. He cultivated the surrounding fields, and the income derived from them was used for forming scholarships for poor students. Tang Foo lectured to the scholars himself sometimes, but he also paid learned men to teach regularly. In the 24th year of Ka Hing (✯✯) A.D. 1819 of Ts'ing (†) dynasty when \"The History of the San On district\" was revised the ruins of the school were still to be seen, but now there is no trace of it left.\n\nAccording to a copy of the family tree belonging to the Ping Shaan (1) branch of the Tang family, the original stone on Tang Foo's grave was replaced in the 45th year of Ka Tsing (†) A.D. 1566 of Ming dynasty, by a man named Tang Shui Faan (†4K) as it was broken and illegible. On the new stone it was said that the date of Tang Foo was not obtainable, but it stated that he lived during the Sung dynasty. In the 33rd year of Hong Hei () A.D. 1694, of Tsing dynasty another stone was erected, and it is this one, that gives the date of Tang Foo passing his Tsun-sz (+) examination to be the 2nd year of Sung Ning ($) of Sung dynasty A.D. 1103, but considering that his great grandson Tang Sin (#) (or Tang Yuen Leung, one of the \"five yuens”) is known to have been district officer of Kung Yuen (4) Kiangsi province in the 3rd year of Kin Yim (£ƒ) A.D. 1129 of Sung dynasty, it is probable that Tang Foo lived a good deal earlier. In fact in the 8th year of Shing Fa (1 ) A.D. 1472 of Ming dynasty the Tang family wrote in their family tree the suggestion that perhaps the 2nd year of Sung Ning () was miswritten for 2nd year of Hei Ning ( ) which would put the date of Tang Foo back to A.D. 1069, a far more possible date.\n\nThe system of district magistrates in the Sung dynasty was quite different to the system in the modern dynasty of Ts'ing (). When the \"Five Dynasties” Ng Toi (£†) A.D. 907-959 began China was in a state of rebellion and disunion. Large armies under their separate generals had to be sent to the various localities to keep order, but far from supporting the Emperor the generals turned the country they were sent to control, into feudatory states, Faan Chan",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207795,
        "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": 183,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "168\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nMeanwhile exploration continued from the south. Between 1866 and 1868 the French under Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier made their famous expedition from Saigon by the Mekong River through Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos to Talifu and Kunming in Yunnan. The Panthay Rebellion was then at its height, and the Chinese authorities refused them permission to proceed further up the Mekong. Garnier, who had succeeded to the leadership after Lagrée's death, had to abandon his plan to explore the sources of the Mekong, and turned east across Yunnan to the Upper Yangtze at Iping. Here boats were obtained to take them on the four weeks journey to Hankow. Garnier saw enough of the Mekong to realise that it could never rival the Irawaddy, let alone the Yangtze, as a trade route to West China, and French interest shifted to the Red River route from Haiphong through Tongking. During an enforced delay on the Siamese border, Garnier made the first thorough survey of the ruins of Angkor, and his expedition is important in that it encouraged French ambitions for an Indo-Chinese Empire.\n\nThere was no clear policy on the part of the various British parties concerned with developing trade with West China, nor over the best way to reach this region of supposed inexhaustible wealth. Lack of accurate information is also a constant theme in the history of British relations with West China. However, penetration and exploitation from the West, that is from India and Burma, attracted greater public and official support in Britain than that from the Yangtze by the China traders, though by 1874, a combination of circumstances led to a co-operative effort being made from both East and West, the aforementioned Dual Mission of 1874-75, which I shall now describe.\n\nThe Panthay Rebellion finally came to an end in May 1873 when the Imperial troops captured Momein, this completing the reconquest of Yunnan after eighteen years of civil war. During the ensuing period of rehabilitation the provincial authorities tried to revive the Burma-Yunnan overland route, and caravans reappeared after nearly twenty years' absence, undeterred by disbanded soldiers and lawless hillmen. By May 1874 the British Political Agent at Bhamo reported that more caravans were passing between Burma and Yunnan than for many years, and that British and Chinese merchants were sending such large consignments of goods",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207829,
        "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": 217,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "202\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\non its own, Lam Tsuen consisted of twenty-six villages. When the constituent villages of the seven yeuk are plotted on a map they can be seen to form a more or less continuous arc around Tai Po, but there are two striking irregularities in the distribution. First, the three villages making up the yeuk of Fan Leng stand away to the north, being in fact so much out of the immediate Tai Po area that today they fall administratively into a different sub-district and are not involved in local Tai Po affairs except in so far as they remain responsible for the market. Second, about twenty villages in the area of the arc are not members of any yeuk. Some of these are settlements which have come into being since the 1890s, but a few certainly existed at the time the market was planned and were deliberately excluded, or excluded themselves, from the union. Naturally, the Tang settlement at Tai Po Tau is one of them; they were the general enemy. Others were probably clients of the Tang and unable, or unwilling, to participate in the revolutionary move. Were they previously members of yeuk who fell out when these were combined to form the seven?\n\n21. The Tang and the Man are Punti, the former being members of the dominant clan group in the New Territories, and the latter a branch of a clan group whose most important settlement is at San Tin. The Man had for long intermarried with the local Tang (their genealogy book shows that the Tang gave them many women), were rich, and had produced some scholars. (Their main ancestral hall, now in ruins, must have been a splendid building). Their rivalry with the Tang at Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau had had a long history. As the story of the market demonstrates, the rivalry was in part commercial; the Tang at Tai Po Tau tell jokingly of the leading Tang and his Man counterpart competing to see who could lay the longer line of silver dollars along the path leading north from their settlement. But the area in which the contest was fought out was predominantly Hakka, and it was necessary for the Man to find their support in Hakka villages. Second in importance to the Man in the founding of the new market were the Hakka Ma of Wun Yiu. They appear to have been a small but well-to-do settlement. (The only crockery kiln in the whole region was in their area, and a Roman Catholic chapel had stood there for at least thirty years before the founding of the new market; they were clearly in a centre of some importance). The last flickers to be seen today of the hostility to the Tang in Ts'at Yeuk circles fail to",
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    {
        "id": 208110,
        "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": 149,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW LONG ISLAND\n\n133\n\nTyphoons bring with them torrents of rain. More falls in the two or three days that follow than in a whole year in drier climates. It is these rains which make possible the dense population of the deltas of South China as well as the disastrous floods.\n\nFrom October to March there is little rain, but the sun is always bright and hot. The wind blows for the most part from the North and East, and the cool air, hot sun, and brilliant sea make an exhilarating setting for the activities of the little state. Even in summer the climate is far superior to Hongkong's, the air fresher and the oppressive canopy of clouds less unbroken. Hence there are summer visitors, missionaries and their families from the interior, and business and professional men from Hongkong, who live apart from the village but in perfect friendliness and to mutual advantage.\n\nThe town itself stretches for a mile along the shore, being only a few streets deep at the ends, but widening out in the middle to a little market square, some three streets wide. The main landing stage opens on to this market place, and here the police and the male and female searchers take their stand to prevent the smuggling of arms or opium which would otherwise most certainly take place. There is another and older pier a hundred yards or so away, at which the salt junks load.\n\nIn the main street almost every building is a shop, workshop, or both, until we reach the end nearest the Pak Tai Temple, which is in the \"West End\" of the town. There we find private houses of the usual narrow type. The backs of half these shops and houses run out on to the beach on a picturesque disarray of piles and retaining walls, interspersed with garbage heaps. There is none of the beautiful and simple cleanliness of the Japanese village. On this beach side or on the beach itself are two slipways for beaching and repairing the junks, a tannery, several boat-building yards, a distillery, coffin maker, and several blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and coppersmiths' shops.\n\nThe beach is a scene of constant activity. At the Eastern end is a floating village of sampans, occupied by families of the Tan Ka tribe, and when one of these sampans becomes too old to float any more, it is hauled above high water mark, and some family or other lives there until it literally drops to pieces. They look rather like huge sea slugs taking to life on shore when the struggle for survival on the water has become too severe for them.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208165,
        "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": 204,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "188\n\nB. THE WAR\n\n1. Contestants\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n(a) The Shing Mun villages, 8 in number and with a population of about 855 in 1928 when they were removed to build the Shing Mun Reservoir.1\n\n(b) The Tsuen Wan villages, some 12 in number with an estimated population of around 1500 in 1900. These villages are still in existence although some of them have been resited because of recent development.2\n\nAll these villagers were Hakka Chinese, so that the struggle was between persons of the same language group. Moreover, since their settlement in these locations in the 17th and 18th centuries, the villagers had given and taken their womenfolk in marriage through many generations, and so were closely related and acquainted with each other. Also, the Shing Mun villagers did at least part of their marketing in Tsuen Wan.4\n\n2. Time\n\nThe war lasted for three years at the beginning of the T'ung-chih reign of the Ch'ing Dynasty, between 1862-1864.\n\n3. Reasons for the Struggle\n\nThe tablet in the Tsuen Wan Tin Hau Temple dated in the 1930s and written by a local Ch'ing scholar-gentry holding the first (hsiu ts'ai) degrees is not very revealing. It merely says that at the time in question law and order was lax and barbaric customs preva3vailed, so that village feuds revived and a fight with weapons ensued between the Shing Mun and Tsuen Wan villages. By implication, the Shing Mun people were, of course, in the wrong. The record continues: \"being outnumbered our boundaries were constantly invaded and our villages were almost reduced to ruins.\"\n\nDr. Betsy Johnson, who took notes on the subject in 1967-68, from one old Tsuen Wan villager whose grandfather had taken part in the struggle, learned that relations with Shing Mun were not very good before the war. However, according to him, it began over a third party, a small hill village in the present Kowloon reservoir area east of Shing Mun which had amicable ties with Tsuen Wan. The old man continued, 'Once some...'",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208188,
        "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": 227,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n211 \n\nVillage, p. 41, the K'ang Hsi evacuation \"may well have helped the Liao lineage to consolidate its position as a major power and landowner in the area.\" This undoubtedly extends to the Tangs as well, though for quite different reason. The Liaos increased their local power by means of the formation of a Hakka/Punti alliance to finance the local school built to honor the two official Chou Yu-te () and Wang Loi-jen (). The Kam Tin Tangs also participated in the \"deification campaign\" (The two officials petitioned the emperor to allow the re-population of the coastal strip), and similarly constructed the school, the ruins of which are still to be seen in Pak Wai Tsuen. However, the school was never given official recognition [i.e. it was not listed, with the other schools, in the gazetteer], perhaps because of, again, the \"special relationship” enjoyed by the Tangs and San On magistrates. The Tangs claim that these officials were eventually to suffer at the hands of the imperial government because of their loyalty to the Tang family! [I have been unable to verify this, though I expect that it is true. How else can one explain the subsequent favors bestowed on the Tangs immediately after their (at least implicit) support of the Cheung Ta-yuk and Lei Man-wing rebellions?] \n\n23. c. The To Hing Tong () was constructed in 1707 by the five branches of the Tangs residing in San On and Tung Kwun. This followed shortly after the re-location of the Tangs in San On. The large number of Tang settlements in Tung Kwun no doubt facilitated the smooth re-location into Kam Tin, Ha Tsuen, Ping Shan, Tai Po Tau and Lung Kwat Tau. Several tales concerning this relocation are still told, some of which cast doubt on the existing theory that there was a total evacuation. The ceremonies held twice yearly at the To Hing Tong (continued into the early years of the Republic) served greatly to consolidate the consciousness of Tang unity. \n\n24. By far the most popular topics of conversation among Tang elders concern the nature and extent of their land holdings prior to 1898, and how subsequent events stripped them of much of these estates. It is probably impossible for us now to reconstruct, from records available, the exact amount and number of their holdings. However, some evidence exists: \n\n* After the Evacuation of the Coast 1662-69 by the Ch'ing authorities to deny supplies and assistance to Ming loyalists on Taiwan.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208502,
        "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": 226,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "210\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nfort in 1923. However, it is now ruined. The whole area is covered with shrub and mangrove.\n\nBefore the Ming Dynasty, there was no military post on the island. It was not until the late Ming Period that a guard-station or shuen, which was administered by the commander of the Nam Tau Walled City, was set up.2 Before then, the area had only patrol-boats, probably stationed at Tun Mun.3\n\nDuring the early Ch'ing Period, because of the increased strength of the pirates along the coast, more forts and guard-stations were set up. The Fat Tong Mun Fort on the Tung Lung Island was erected during the K'ang Hsi period (1662-1727)3, and a garrison of 25 soldiers under one pa-tsung or sergeant Tai Pang Battalion✯ was stationed there.6\n\nThe fort remained a strong outpost along the east coast of Hong Kong for nearly a hundred years. Then, in the 15th year of the Ch'ia Ching rule (1810), the fort was evacuated and finally abandoned.7 A new fort was built at the place of the present Hong Kong Marine Police Headquarters at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon.\n\nThe fort remains in ruins till now.\n\nHong Kong, 1979.\n\nSIU KWOK-KIN\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See note 4 of Mr. JAO Tsung-i's Kowloon in Historical Records of the Sung Dynasty九龍與宋季史料, 饒宗頤著\n\n2 Chapter 8 of the San On Yuen Chi, K'ang Hsi edition, records, \"In the 19th year of the Man Lik Period of the Ming Dynasty, guard-stations were established at Fat Tong Mun, Tor Ling Ngor Kung O, Kowloon, Tun Mun, Kap Shui Mun, Tung Sai Chung, Ngor Kung Tau, Chak Wan, Lo Man Shan and Long Pak.\" In the same chapter, it is also recorded, \"Six guard-stations were set up during the Ming Dynasty. They were Fat Tung Mun, Lung Shun Wan, Lok Kat, Tai O, Long To Wan, and Long Pak. These guard-stations were administered by the commander at the Nam Tau Walled City.\" Thus, we know that the Fat Tong Mun Guard Station was established in the 19th year of the Man Lik period of the Ming Dynasty; but the fort must have been built at a later time.\n\n3 Chapter 5 of the Cheong Wu Chung Tuk Kwun Mun Chi records, \"Patrol boats from Nam Tau were stationed at Tun Mun. Some sailed through Fat Tong Mun to the region as far east as Tai Pang.\" The book was completed in the 32nd year of the Chia",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208612,
        "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": 69,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "42\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nrelease, at least of a few of his most important helpers. In the meantime, Father Craig had taken up his residence with the Italian Sisters at their Canossian Convent where, in addition to their large family, there was a large number of refugees and orphans. More people were crowding into the Bishop's house as a place of comparative safety and were loath to return to their homes. Little children kept close to their mothers, and fathers walked around distractedly, not knowing what to do or to expect. All heard Mass every morning, which was celebrated in the Bishop's house after daylight, as we were not allowed to have any lights showing. We said Mass as early as we could, but very often during one's Mass planes were roaring overhead, bombs dropped, shells screeching and anti-aircraft batteries popping all around, so that Father Downs confessed that more than once his knees were pretty wobbly as he celebrated the Holy Sacrifice.\n\nNaturally during these first days of the war, all sorts of rumors were abroad. Of course we knew that the Japanese had landed somewhere in the New Territories and that the British troops had engaged them in battle, as we could hear the distant boom of guns, but with what success we knew not, until reports began to come in that the Japanese were in Shamshuipo on the outskirts of Kowloon. This heightened the fears of the populace of Hong Kong, but still everyone hoped that the British troops would succeed in holding back the enemy. However, the booming of heavy guns came nearer and nearer and finally news came that the Japanese were actually in Kowloon.\n\nOn Thursday, and on the following morning, we distinctly heard machine guns rat-a-tatting away not far from the Kowloon Star Ferry landing. We later learned that Indian troops were fighting a rearguard action at this point, and from then on all communication with Kowloon ceased, the last ferry being scuttled on the Hong Kong side.\n\nAbout this time, during an air raid, a bomb struck one of the many godowns or warehouses along the Kowloon dock area, and immediately a huge volume of yellowish-green smoke rose up from the ruins. Evidently some sort of chemicals were stored there and the fire burned for several days, casting a lurid light at night on the surrounding buildings. Shortly after, also, a string of small barges was seen slowly drifting away from the Kowloon docks and out",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208765,
        "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": 222,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n195 \n\nA STUDY OF THE CH'ING FORTS ON LANTAU ISLAND \n\nDuring the Ch'ing period, two forts were built on Lantau Island. They were the Fan Lau Fort and the Tung Chung Fort: the latter including the Tung Chung Walled City and the Shek She Fort in the Tung Chung Valley. \n\nThe Fan Lau Fort \n\nFan Lau Kok 汾流角, also called Kai Yik Kok 鷄翼角, is a promontory which lies on the south-west tip of Lantau Island.3 It has a height of about three hundred and eighty feet. To the north of the promontory is the Fan Lau Sai Wan. The Fan Lau Tung Wan lies to its south. \n\nOn the top of the promontory, there was a fort known as the Fan Lau Fort.1 It was erected in the late Ming Dynasty. During the early years of K'ang Hsi period, the coast of China was evacuated,a and the fort was abandoned. Then in the 7th year of the Yung Cheng reign (1729), the fort was rebuilt and again fortified.9 \n\nDuring the early 19th century a famous pirate, Cheung Po-tsai, plundered along the south-east coast of China. His fleet was so strong that the Ch'ing navy was also defeated. He had taken Tung Chung, Lantau Island, as a base for his fleet.10 Fan Lau was quite near Tung Chung. Thus, the Fan Lau fort might also have been in his hands during that period. \n\nAfter the surrender of Cheung Po-tsai in the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1810),11 Ch'ing forces recovered the fort.12 Before the Opium War (1841), foreign influence along the coast increased. The Ch'ing government strengthened the forts and the guard-stations of this region. The Fan Lau Fort was still fortified.13 During the Opium War, the Chinese were defeated. Most of the forts along the coast were abandoned. In 1842, British officers travelling in the region found that the Fan Lau Fort was not manned.14 \n\nThe Fort has a length of one hundred and fifty-five feet, and a breadth of seventy feet. It is formed by four rubble walls, about ten feet high. It has an entrance which faces east. The entrance is about five feet wide. There are steps for mounting the walls. \n\nThe Fort has remained in ruins till now.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
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    },
    {
        "id": 209975,
        "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": 234,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "212\n\nTHE KWUN YAM AND\n\nTUNG SHAN TEMPLE\n\nOF EAST KOWLOON 1840-1940\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nThis note details the origins, rise and fall of a temple, over the course of a full century, in what was originally a rural district of East Kowloon. The community connected with the temple originally comprised farming villages and stone cutters' settlements. To this core, urban and suburban elements were more and more added until they eventually came to dominate the area entirely. These changes led to the virtual extinction of the original community and, with it, its temple.\n\nThe Tung Shan Temple is now in ruins; only the walls remain. It became derelict during the Japanese Occupation, and was not repaired after the war. There are, in fact, two temples, standing side by side. The stone inscription above one door states that it is a Kwun Yam (*) or Goddess of Mercy temple, rebuilt in the 13th year of the Kwang Hsü reign (1887). The inscription above the main door of the other states that it is the Tung Shan (*) or Eastern Peak temple, dated the equivalent of 1904. The two are here treated as an entity, as (it is stated) they were always under the same management.\n\nAccording to two elders from the Chu Family (朱) of Tai Hom village (born in 1891 and 1896; interviewed 1967-1968), the Kwun Yam temple is built on land belonging to their clan. The Chu's were Hakka latecomers to rural east-central Kowloon, arriving in the 18th century and taking up higher land under the encircling hills. The spot where the temple was constructed was originally padi land, growing poor quality rice; but after a great grandfather had placed an image of the Goddess of Mercy near the fields they began to yield good crops. At the insistence of this same man, the village elders erected a small temple there in the Tao Kuang reign (1821-1850). My informants had this story in their youth from their clan uncles.\n\nThe next chapter in the history of the Kwun Yam temple opens with its repair in the Kwang Hsü reign (1875-1908). No",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210567,
        "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": 174,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "155\n\nloyal Chinese chroniclers did not claim any distinction for the town. A geography book published in Shanghai in 1931 found very little to recommend the town to its readers. The author devoted one brief paragraph to Taiho.\n\nEven the most bustling part of Taiho is unpleasant. Dust is flying everywhere. The climate is bad; with frequent and heavy rains. Local products consist mainly of silk cocoons, common sorghum, and some hemp. Transportation is dependent on the Ying River, which is silted. At the deepest point there is no more than a six or seven foot draft, barely adequate for local craft, 10\n\nThe China Inland Mission was unusual in several respects. The workers were not limited to any particular denomination or nationality. As long as one was Protestant and was comfortable with Taylor's fairly basic theology, one was eligible to be considered as a missionary with the China Inland Mission. Thus, workers came from such countries as England, Germany, Sweden and the United States. Dr. M. Searle Bates, a Rhodes scholar who had taught at the University of Nanking, found that the Mission did not publish lists of its field workers lest they showed the comparative strength of each nationality. The Mission organized no formal church or school, but sent missionaries to live among the people in interior China. From the beginning, there were women missionaries. The axiom of “letting women do women's work\" suited the social system of China. Women missionaries were to proselytize to women and children. By 1900, sixty percent of Protestant missionaries in China were women. Single women, including those unmarried and widowed, were to work alongside married missionaries.\n\nThe United States in 1900 was ready to expand in Asia. Victorious in the Spanish-American War and bulging with the Philippines, the Americans were looking to China. The value of American exports in 1870 was about $392 million. By 1900, it had increased to almost $1.4 billion. American producers, therefore, were looking for foreign markets. By then, European interests were already carving China into spheres of influence. After the Open Door Policy and the Boxer Protocol were",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211002,
        "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": 64,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "39\n\nalso created an atmosphere of vitality and purpose in an otherwise rather sleepy and desolate place.\n\nMeanwhile, parts of the Walled City fell into decay. The south wall soon began crumbling, and by the mid-20s, the Commodore's office, once the grandest building there and used for a time in the early twentieth century as a plague hospital, was in complete ruins. By the '30s, the sixty or so domestic dwellings were mostly in poor repair. Its vegetable gardens, pig farms and traditional crafts gave the \"City\" a rural flavour.\n\n57\n\nUntil the outbreak of war in 1941, it remained a tourist attraction. Foreigners came to seek “a little bit of Old China”. Invariably, Chinese guide books to Hong Kong recommended it for nostalgic, historical sightseeing. Local residents also found it worthwhile photographic material. It must have been rather pleasant to stroll in the shade of ancient trees, take photographs before the cannon and historical buildings, and admire the many inscriptions in them. One inhabitant even made a living by selling copies of the City's inscriptions to visitors.\n\nThe rapid development outside the wall from the 1910s onwards - the Kowloon Bay reclamation, the construction of tenement houses, shops and factories, and eventually the airport - passed the City by. Reclamation left it further and further inland. For a while after 1899, the customs station was used as a police station, but in the late 1920s, it had to be abandoned in favour of a site by the new waterfront. The Lung-chin jetty fell into disuse, and only the end portion could be used to serve a ferry running between Hong Kong Island, Hunghom and Kowloon City. After the War, the Yaumati Ferry Company built its Kowloon City Pier near the site.\n\nThe Kowloon fort was in decay. The cannon suffered various fates. The British had dismantled them, presumably out of distrust of the Chinese. Some were reportedly sold to old metal dealers. Two were displayed outside the Water Police Station, and four outside the new Kowloon City Police Station. Two more, one weighing 4,000 catties, the other 5,000 catties, were abandoned near the South Gate and much photographed. Apparently these",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212074,
        "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": 16,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "He served with the 8th Army in North Africa, where as an officer cadet he was among those deployed to surround the Abdin Palace, King Farouk's residence in Cairo, while tanks were moved into the square, a show of force to oblige the King to call on the Wafd leader Nahas Pasha to form a government.\n\nGibb was then with the 8th Army in its drive into Italy, before transferring to Intelligence, to be parachuted into Yugoslavia to join the British units helping Tito's partisans.\n\nAfter the war in which he was mentioned in despatches - Gibb returned for a short time to work at Lloyd's before going to the Far East as a journalist for the Sunday Times and other papers.\n\nIn Singapore he switched to photography and was one of the first to realise the potential of 16mm film for television. Operating from South-East Asia and the Far East, he quickly became a master of documentary film.\n\nA key point in Gibb's career as a film-maker occurred in the Great Caves of Niah in Borneo in 1954, when he watched the dangerous process whereby birds' nests were gathered from the roofs of the caves and turned into delicacies for the Chinese table: out of that moment grew his prize-winning Borneo series.\n\nDrawn by the legendary appeal of the Angkor complex of ruins, Gibb rebased himself in 1960 in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to which he drove from Singapore in his Land Rover.\n\nGibb's enduring interest in Khmer architecture and sculpture, of which Angkor is the supreme expression, was accompanied by an awareness and admiration for the French archaeological achievement in Indo-China. He became a close friend of the late Bernard-Philippe Groslier, the last French curator of the Angkor ruins, and was a frequent guest at the Conservation in the days before Cambodia was engulfed by turmoil.\n\nThis Anglo-French intellectual entente proved to be an enduring influence on Gibb's work. Earlier this year Gibb was in close contact with the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient, which was interested in his films for their archives; and his Angkor films are to be shown at a commemorative ceremony at the Musée Guimet in October.\n\n¦\n\nXV",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212218,
        "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": 160,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "137\n\nMaru was blown ashore at Hongkong during a typhoon, and the British without fuss readily agreed to allow the Japanese to salvage her themselves from right under the guns of one of the major forts of the Hongkong defences. They were hard at it when I was in Hongkong in 1938. Now, of course, all that unilateral courtesy was forgotten by the champions of Greater East Asia.\n\nIn May we were faced with Dunkirk, in June France collapsed. The Japanese applied pressure to both Britain and France to discontinue transfer of supplies to China over routes under their control. America gave no support. France agreed to close the Indo-China railway to such supplies. At the height of the negotiations with Britain, Mr. Stephen Early, the President's Secretary issued a statement asserting \"...the complete absence of any intention whatever on the part of the United States to interfere with territorial questions involving adjustments in Europe or Asia. The United States Government want to see, and thinks there should be, application of the Monroe Doctrine in Europe and Asia, similar to its interpretation and application for this hemisphere.\" Japan saw the green light. On July 18th Great Britain agreed to close the Burma road for three months to supplies of arms, ammunition, petrol, lorries, and railway material for China. Other supplies, of which there was an abundance, continued to pass through to the extent which the landslides, frequent during the summer rains, allowed.\n\nA week later America placed an embargo on the shipment of oil and scrap to Japan. America's anxiety to emphasize her determination to retain her independence of action thus created embarrassments for Britain in the Far East at a time when the British back was to the wall in Europe, and operated to the disadvantage of China. Had the American embargo been announced ten days earlier the Burma road would not have been closed.\n\nTiming is of the essence of warfare. \"Time, only give me time\", said Napoleon. It was not Germany, who missed the bus in the spring of 1940, as Mr. Chamberlain claimed, but Japan. In July, when the negotiations about the Burma road were in progress, the situation was very tense; I thought Japan would declare war. I was on the Reserve of Officers, and I was anxious not to be caught in Shanghai. From my Chinese contacts I had learnt a good deal about the guerilla organisation which was operating in the environs, and I thought I",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212230,
        "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": 172,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "a very circuitous route. Every few hundred yards, a mountain stream pours out from the rock to refresh the weary traveller in his ascent.\n\nThe climate is generally warm. Yet nothing compared with what one might expect from the accounts given. As yet the thermometer has averaged about 82° during the fortnight I have been here. In a week or two the weather will be about like an English spring, and keep about the same till April. The scenery around contains a fair proportion of foliage, which remains all the year. The college is supposed to stand on the healthiest spot in the island. The library is considered one of the coolest rooms to be met with, and here it is I am now writing. This month is a rainy month generally. It never rains but it pours. The rain descends in sheets, but it is soon over and in ten minutes the weather is generally as fine as ever, and everything dry. Sickness is remarkably little this year. The cemeteries in “Happy Valley” however testify as to the former mortality that prevailed. Yet above two-thirds of this is owing to drink. One perspires so much that an unnatural thirst is excited, especially with new arrivals. I was in a shocking state the first week. The quantity of water I drank was enormous, although I checked myself as much as possible. Now however I have got over it, and drink no more than I should at home. I can consequently quite understand how so many are carried off. It requires a power of mind of no ordinary degree, in a person who drinks moderately in England, to restrain himself here. Thanks however to the Tea-totaller's system, and to Anna, I am beyond the reach of that danger.\n\nThe temperature of the island seems entirely to depend upon the wind. When there is no breeze the air gets close, and one feels a lassitude, and weariness; but when there is only a little breath of air in motion it is all right and comfortable. The soil, although generally of no great depth, is remarkably fertile. In Happy Valley are several fine market gardens, taken care of by the Chinese. They are admirable gardeners. Everything is done by them with the greatest regularity; and they are warm advocates of father's system of manuring the ground. This plan is extensively, and in fact almost entirely, used throughout China. I hope to get the college ground in order, and do a little gardening on my own account.\n\nThere is at present a good supply of fine horses, which can be got cheap, on account of the war up the country. They are almost entirely used for riding. The Chinese answer every purpose of beasts of burden.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
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    {
        "id": 212372,
        "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": 314,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "third component [the yoke-pole: the end of this pole is in fact firmly joined to the sole-beam; it then bends up and is braced in place in the middle by the brace-bar]. This third component runs parallel to the sole-beam, but it goes further to the front. The draft animal is yoked to the front end of this third component. This instrument has to be carried by the farmer to the field while the draft animal runs ahead. The reason for this is partly because of the construction of the plough which cannot be pulled along a road, and partly because in China there are no roads, but only footpaths leading to the fields. Either a cow or a buffalo will be used as the draft animal. The furrows that can be made with this plough are not particularly regular; it is more suitable for tearing up the ground which the harrow has to smooth and even up afterwards. The harrow consists of a row of iron teeth on each side, i.e. one row in front and one behind it, and two iron uprights which are connected with each other by a transverse wooden bar. The harrow is held with both hands on the bar, and is pulled by one of the above-mentioned animals, or sometimes by the farmer in person.\n\nThe most important product that is cultivated is rice. Rice can only be planted when the field is under water, and it will only grow when it is continuously kept in water. The rice-fields are kept in this state partly through heavy rains, and partly through artificial irrigation. This can easily be done because the fields slope down from the mountains to the sea. If water is led down to the upper edge of the fields, then by opening a gap in the narrow, raised field-bund (these narrow, raised field bunds, with footpaths on, form the divisions between the tiny fields), the water can be diverted through and the whole of the rice fields can be covered with water.\n\nIn some years there is no rain at the time when the seeds are sown, and the water channels dry out, and then there is great hardship. Rice immediately then jumps to a high price, so that many people cannot afford the money for their daily rice. During such famine periods, people take refuge in theft, and thieves and robbers increase. Nowhere is safe from them any more. All the signs seemed last spring to\n\nPage 291",
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    {
        "id": 212606,
        "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": 160,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "140\n\ninhabitants got to know us better; they accepted our lack of dinner jackets, our effect on the drink stock at the Club, our — regrettable — neglect of the traffic signals, and our other little mannerisms, and treated us right royally.\n\nThere were two seasons in Maymyo, the second and briefer one, lasting several weeks, towards the end of the rains in October. The Club, a long rambling creeper-covered building, became gay with visitors. It looked out over a pleasance, cleared from the jungle, and spreading a mile towards the reservoir dam, built by Turkish prisoners in the last war. It goes without saying that a race course and golf links were laid out over the meadowland, very pleasant to behold. But here we were next door to India. The plumbing in the gentlemen's cloak room, consisted of a row of rusty and battered enamel utensils, set out at more or less even intervals on a long low shelf. Without the door, a shadow hovered, poised to dash in the moment he heard the rattle of a utensil returned to the board. No Americans visited Maymyo while I was there. It would have been interesting to hear their first reactions to these Arcadian simplicities.\n\nAfter all Burma was a rich enough country; it was not any lack of money that left it a Victorian remnant. Amongst the Burmese there is no caste, nor is there any desire to work. The house servants everywhere are Indians, of whom there were over a million in the country. Of the annual increase of 5,000,000 in India, a substantial proportion must be of the sweeper caste. Amidst a population with so abnormal a rate of procreation, the border line between a sufficiency and famine is a fine one, easily crossed; and any modernisation of sanitary installations would create serious unemployment: thus in India the vested interest in caste puts the brake, not only on plumbing, but on all progress; and Burma, until recently had been the backwater of India.\n\nI spent six months in Burma, but had little opportunity to learn much of the country. I saw very little of the Burmese, and never met one of those attractive country maids, who wait by the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking out to sea. Of the seventeen million inhabitants, only ten million are Burmans; besides the Indians, there are 300,000 Chinese, and the remainder are tribesmen from the hills.\n\nThe history of Burma is a bloody one; the country had seldom for long been united. The Chinese under Kublai Khan, the Mongol,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212824,
        "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": 133,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "118\n\nassistance which it might be possible to provide, and, soon after, the Myosa left to return to his country.\n\nIn August 1943 British troops were poised on the Assam border at Imphal, Tamu, and Tiddim, awaiting sufficient replenishment of equipment and the cessation of the rains to undertake the return advance into Burma; and there was activity down in the Arakan: while General Stilwell's Chinese divisions, retrained, reinforced, and re-equipped in India after their withdrawal from Burma, were just beginning to feel their way forward from Ledo, away up at the northern end of Assam, down the road which later was to become famous as the Ledo road. General Wingate's first expedition into Burma had just been completed, with heavy loss on our side, but with much success in confusing the enemy and disorganising his effort to consolidate his positions. The shape of future operations depended on the enemy's dispositions, so that any information which could be collected in eastern Burma would be useful: and in Kokang it might also be possible to organise patriot parties to assail his communications.\n\nIt was not an easy matter to obtain the consent of our allies for the passage of a British party to Kokang. The Chinese have unfortunately imitated the Japanese in a predilection for red tape; formalities are extended ad infinitum. It was fair enough that any British officer who entered China should require a pass issued by the Chinese authorities - though no such restriction attached to the presence of Chinese officers in India - but was it really necessary that the power to issue the pass should be retained by the highest authority in the land, the Military Affairs Council which would correspond with our Committee of Imperial Defence and that it should have to carry the personal chop of the Generalissimo? It did not make for speed in administration. It should also be remembered that the Chinese refused to serve in Burma under British command: that is how General Stilwell first came on the scene; and I think it is fair to say that our American allies had come to look on the Far East, and perhaps more particularly China, as their own special sphere of operations, where there was no room for any British.\n\nMy appointment was from the Army in India, which in those days, before the South East Asia Command had been established, was responsible for the operations in Burma. The proposal for assistance to the Myosa was submitted by the British representatives in Chungking to the Chinese government with a request that the necessary passes be",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212827,
        "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": 136,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "121\n\nWe were in the meantime collecting personnel and stores for Kokang. The trip in the 15 cwt. lorry in and out of Kun-ming each day required a gallon and a half of petrol; we could only replace our small stock by purchases in the black market, at a cost of around £2 per gallon. Opportunely we found accommodation in the city; for myself I shared a house with the officer who was stationed in Kun-ming to distribute the supplies received by the R.A.F. 'plane which flew over the Hump once a week.\n\nThese few supplies had to be stretched to meet the needs of all the British establishments in China, the Embassy, the various Consulates, the British Military Mission in that far-away place, their Headquarters in Chungking, and various odd parties, such as the one to which I was attached. The R.A.F. officer in question was Australian; J.K. was one of the most unselfish persons I have ever met, was most helpful to all the different parties he had to try to please, and had an extraordinary talent for making friends, a talent of which I unblushingly took advantage. He had not been long in Kun-ming before he had more friends amongst the Chinese and Americans than any other British officer in the place.\n\nMeanwhile time continued to pass; a couple of months flew by, the end of the rains approached in Burma, and the British tried to make their plans. Then suddenly one morning I received information from the Headquarters of the Chinese Expeditionary Force that a mob of Kokang rebels, dissatisfied with the Myosa, had attacked him. He managed to escape with a broken leg, but his fourth son and a number of his followers were killed; he succeeded in making his way to Tetang in China, where he took refuge at the headquarters of the Chinese general commanding the division in that area. The report added that the Chinese had instructed the Myosa's brother, who happened to be at Tetang at the time, to proceed to Kokang to re-establish order, and sometime later we received news that Chinese troops had captured the ring-leaders of the rebels and executed them. It was all very sudden.\n\nAt the end of October we at last received the long-awaited reply from the Chinese government. It was a refusal to issue passes on the grounds that the present time was not considered suitable for the despatch of a small party of British officers to the Sino-Burmese border. Soon after I returned to India and new plans were prepared. In the absence of Chinese co-operation, it was proposed to drop a party by parachute into Kokang, and to obviate the necessity of maintaining them entirely by ...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213580,
        "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-1995",
        "page_number": 176,
        "title": "RAS-1995",
        "content_text": "146\n\nto get it planted. Another great difficulty was to find forest guards who would do their job: a former A.D.O, North once minuted 'Where forest guards abound, there do abuses much more abound!'.\n\nAlso according to Schofield (1983), pineapples were grown on the hillsides, \"nearly always under pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years.\" Other users of hillsides were noted by Hayes (1977), “On Tai Mo Shan as on other hillsides, there are the collectors of the plants and herbs that form so essential a part of Chinese medicine; and those who trap birds, snakes and wild creatures, or comb the mountain streams and pools for items that serve the same medicinal purposes. These they sell to shops or individuals, or consume at home. These persons are usually outsiders in a skilled line rather than local villagers, although these can also be found carrying home plants and leafy branches for use at home in the bath, to soothe or invigorate the body. The collectors include the springtime pluckers of wild tea bushes, high up on the mountain, for, as mentioned briefly in the gazetteer it is famous for tea, producing a favoured type of green tea. Besides the cultivators of distant upland padi fields, village users of the mountain include boys tending draught cattle which rove across its slopes when not at work: and, most distinctive of all, the village grass-cutters, women as a rule, looking from a distance, as Heywood described them just before the war, 'like miniature haystacks wandering on the mountainside'.”\n\nTea cultivation took place on even the highest hills. The Xin An Gazetteer of 1688 refers to tea cultivation on Tai Mo Shan, which was terraced to near the summit to produce the famous green \"cloud and mist tea\", and on Castle Peak and Lantau Peak. Former tea terraces can be seen on other mountain sides in the New Territories and on Lantau, so that human impact on the native vegetation was not confined to the lowlands. The age of the terraces is not known but they probably predate the Hakka settlements. An account of traditional tea growing in 1986 around the village of Mau Tso Ngam on Kowloon Peak, where tea trees, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Ktze, are planted here and there on the edge of the hills near the village, is given by Hase et al. (1988).\n\nHill slopes were formerly used to grow heung trees, Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg., the wood from which was ground to make",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214053,
        "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": 121,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "88\n\nThe roads (some sections being only bridle paths) that followed included one from Shau Kei Wan to Sai Wan in 1845 and subsequently onto Stanley, another from Victoria to Aberdeen in 1846, one from Aberdeen to Stanley in 1848 and, at about the same time, another to Pok Fu Lam. These early roads and tracks were shown on the first contoured topographic survey (scale 4 inches to a mile, say 1:16,000, with 100ft contours) of Hong Kong Island which was carried out by Lieutenant Collinson of the Royal Engineers. The map was first published in 1845 and the quality was such that it remained in use, with periodic revisions, for some 50 years.\n\nAs might have been expected, the early roads were poorly constructed and often damaged in the summer rains with the wooden bridges being frequently washed away. Gradually the lesson was learnt and roads were surfaced and bridges constructed with masonry. Even so, as late as 1890, an editorial reported \"The recent rains once again worked up Queen's Road into a quagmire. Some months ago the road was re-metalled on a principle which it was believed would be sufficiently strong to withstand the wear and tear of jinricksha wheels, but it is now as bad as ever......... Until jinrickshas were introduced Queen's Road was always fairly clean, even in the wettest weather.\"\n\n**\n\nWhile the built-up areas were slowly expanding the road system was developing and, by 1908, Hong Kong could boast a network of 153 kilometres of roadways on the Island with cut hillside slopes typically being 75° and filling contained by masonry retaining walls. At this time a writer commented \"vehicular traffic is confined chiefly to handcarts, rickshaws and chairs suspended from poles borne on the shoulders of coolies, there being but a few pair-pony gharries and a Victoria or two used by the Chinese\". Around the turn of the century when Lugard and Harlech Roads were constructed encircling the Peak, local inhabitants were displeased - they thought it \"likened the effect of putting a halter around the neck of the Hill of Great Peace\". Fortunately no adverse consequences became apparent! The diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897 was marked by a proposal to build a road around the Island; the scheme was opposed by the military and, after lengthy delays, the section below Mount Davis along the 45m contour (Victoria Road) was commenced.\n\nThe advent of the motor car stimulated upgrading the existing",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214098,
        "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": 166,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "19\n\nAir-raid Shelter nearing completion, 1941\n\n\"Ruins of War\" (1996), Keung & Wordie",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214736,
        "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": 151,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "THE BATTLE OF HONG KONG:\n\nA NOTE ON THE LITERATURE\n\nAND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE DEFENCE\n\nLAWRENCE LAI WAI-CHUNG\n\n115\n\nAbstract\n\nFrom the stance of a person growing up in Hong Kong, this short note re-assesses the Battle of Hong Kong of December 1941 as recorded in the English and Chinese literature largely found in the University of Hong Kong Library. It examines the views of political leaders, war historians, veterans, and civilians of different persuasions and makes some informed speculation about their focus. It argues that a common omission is the relative fighting power of the defender of Hong Kong. The essay argues that the performance of the Hong Kong garrison was much better than the defenders of Crete or Singapore. It makes a few speculative suggestions as to the effectiveness of the defence and concludes by making a case for further research into the Battle from historical and military science points of view.\n\nIntroduction\n\n\"Memories of the war in Hong Kong, of the sharp and bitter struggle which ended with the capture of the Colony on Christmas Day, are kept on a more realistic plane than most other places....It was by tacit agreement decided that the war in Hong Kong had best be forgotten.” This statement in a publication of Ricci Hall of the University of Hong Kong (Ricci Hall 1954) reflected the peculiar political context of Hong Kong as a Crown Colony in China. The Union Jack as a symbol of British reign in Hong Kong has gone, and the ruins of the Second World War, associated with Hong Kong's immediate colonial past, lie wasting. The military cemeteries in Stanley and Sai Wan, however, have been as well maintained as before. The respect for those who sacrificed their lives for a just cause has not been altered by a change in governance.\n\nAuthors from the belligerent countries have intensively studied military operations in Europe and North Africa in the Second World War since the end of hostilities. The intensity of the studies is",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214741,
        "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": 156,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "120\n\nexception was the Chinese translation of Walter Easey's Hong Kong Today published in 1977 (Easey, 1977).\n\nThe last seven years of the so-called \"transition period,\" i.e. the 13 years from the 1984 Sino-British Agreement on the return of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 witnessed another boom in literary output related to the fall of the Colony to the Japanese and its aftermath. The first work was Bruce's Second to None: the Story of the Hong Kong Volunteers of 1991 (Bruce, 1991). The second work was Rollo's The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong (Rollo, 1992). Next came a Chinese work on the communist guerrillas that operated in occupied Hong Kong, Tsui's Partisan Activities in Hong Kong (Tsui, 1993), published in 1993. The following year saw the work of Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: the Fall of Hong Kong and Imprisonment by the Japanese (Wright-Nooth, 1994). In 1995, two more Chinese works appeared, Ko and Tong's Hong Kong: Japanese Occupation Period (Ko and Tong, 1995) and Tse's The Fall of Hong Kong (Tse, 1995). Ruins of War; a Guide to Hong Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites, written by Ko and Wordie (Ko and Wordie, 1996), was the major last work of this period. The publications in this period are generally less restrictive than earlier works in that they (a) give due credit to the Chinese defenders in the Battle and communist partisans, with their base in Sai Kung, New Territories, during the occupation; (b) spell out the potential and actual contribution of Chinese soldiers in the Colony; and (c) give sympathetic consideration to the Chinese civilians. The same is true of general history books on Hong Kong such as Cameron (Cameron 1991), Welsh (1997), Morris (1997) and Chan (1990).\n\nChurchill's Wisdom of Defending Hong Kong in Retrospect\n\nThe recurrent theme of unofficial publications is that the fall of Hong Kong was inevitable and its belated reinforcement by the two Canadian battalions was pointless. I would suggest that in this regard a more comprehensive view of the battle requires an appreciation of the post-war history of British Hong Kong. The books referred to above have not discussed the political consequence of not fighting an impossible battle.\n\nOne may speculate that had the British Administration given up the Colony without a fight, it would have lost the Colony forever. The",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214752,
        "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": 167,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "131\n\nGandi. R.L. Season of Storms: The Siege of Hong Kong 1941, Hong Kong. South China Morning Post, 1982.\n\nGreenhous, B. \"C Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe. 1941-1945. Oxford, Dundurn Press. 1997.\n\n1956.\n\nGuest, F. Escape From the Bloodied Sun, London: Hutchinson, 1956.\n\nHahn, E. \"Preparing for War.\" Ch 48 in White, B.S. ed. Hong Kong: Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth, Hong Kong. Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 198-205.\n\n1943.\n\nHarrop, P. Hong Kong Incident, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1943.\n\nHay, I. Singapore Repulsed, Edinburgh, Pentland Press, 1998.\n\nHong Kong Government. “Events in Hong Kong on 25th December 1941\", Hong Kong Government Gazette: Special Supplement, 2 July 1948.\n\nJapan Defence Office. The Hong Kong-Cheung Sha Operation, Tokyo, War History Division, 1971. (Japanese publication) [Honkon Chosa Sakusen, Boeichoikenshusho Senshishitzu, Asagumo Shimbunsha, Tokyo, 1971]\n\n1952.\n\nKemp, P. The Middlesex Regiment, Aldershot, Gale and Polden, 1952.\n\nKennedy, Paul, Strategy and Diplomacy: 1870-1945, London, Fontana, 1989.\n\nKo, T.K. and Tong, C.M. Hong Kong: Japanese Occupation Period, Hong Kong, Joint Publishing (HK) Co. Ltd., 1995. (Chinese publication)\n\nKo, T.K. and Wordie, J Ruins of War: a Guide to Hong Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites, Hong Kong, Joint Publishing (HK) Co. Ltd., 1996.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215741,
        "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": 40,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "APPENDIX\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY ACTIVITIES FOR 2002/2003\n\nDate 2002 April 12\n\nMay 3\n\nJune 7\n\nJune 7 June 14 August 10\n\nSeptember 20\n\nOctober 4\n\nOctober 18 November 23 November 29 December 6\n\n2003 January 3 January 10\n\nJanuary 24\n\nFebruary 14\n\nFebruary 21 March 28\n\nLectures\n\nDr Patrick H. Hase on Some Smaller Market Towns of the New Territories\n\nDr Dan Waters & Fr Louis Ha on Hong Kong's Lighthouses and the Men who Manned Them\n\nDr Ian Nish on Anglo-Japanese Relations in the Twentieth Century (Joint Lecture)\n\nDr Lindsay Porter on The Pink Dolphins of Hong Kong. Jason Wordie on Streets; Exploring Hong Kong Island\n\nDr Martin Palmer on Da Qin - An Imperial Christian Site of the Tang Dynasty (with a visit to the exhibition on this subject)\n\nTim Ko on The Development of Cemeteries in Hong Kong; 1841-1941\n\nChristopher Munn on People and Government in Early Colonial Hong Kong\n\nDr Janet Lee Scott on Up in Smoke: Offerings for the Ancestors\n\nStella Ma on Cha Duk Chang: The Appreciation of Chinese Opera\n\nWilliam Lindesay on The Great Wall: Research and Impressions\n\nValerie Garrett on Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away: Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton\n\nDr Solomon Bard on Voices from the Past: Hong Kong 1842-1918\n\nDr Christina Miu Bing Cheng on Macau: The Farming of Friendship\n\nDr Lawrence Lai & Dr Daniel Bo on Devil's Peak Ruins: A Glimpse of a British Stronghold\n\nDr Elizabeth Sinn on Ultimate Return: Transhipment of Chinese Migrants' Bones to the Native Village and Hong Kong's Role in the Chinese Diaspora\n\nAnthony Lawrence on Hong Kong: Growing Old\n\nDr Graeme Lang on The Return of the Refugee God: Wong Tai Sin in China\n\nXXXI",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215807,
        "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": 106,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "39\n\npart of the year (May to August). In fact, it rained about two out of every three days during the months of June and July, with June having a better than 40 per cent chance of experiencing three or more consecutive days, and even a 25 per cent chance of having at least an entire week, of rain.\n\nIn a largely undeveloped place like Hong Kong during the war, heavy rains falling on land usually translated into mud. Thus far in the war, both sides had already experienced the difficulty of moving across mud in various theatres. In Hong Kong, only the urban areas had all-weather roads, so its roads and terrain outside of the urban areas were trafficable only during periods of dry weather.10\n\nThen one must remember that 75 per cent of Hong Kong was mountain. By the nature of their sloped sides and rocky terrain, mountains are already difficult to traverse in good weather. In times of bad weather, mountains are even harder to negotiate, especially if they have been stripped of vegetation. This was the case with Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. As the war dragged on, supply shortages of everything became acute. Whereas coal was the preferred fuel for industrial and residential use, the increasing difficulty of importing this item into Hong Kong forced people to switch to firewood. This resulted in the felling of trees throughout the territory, thus depriving the mountains of the foliage that anchored their soil, and increasing the chances of erosion and landslides.\n\nMachinery was the epitome of the Allied arsenal, and embodied from its factories, to its logistical functions, and finally to the fighting machines on the frontline. But machinery was also very susceptible to the weather. In Hong Kong, with its high rainfall and lack of all-weather roads outside of the city, construction activities would be needed to improve its roads for the vehicle-oriented Allies. But construction would be curtailed during periods of heavy rainfall.\n\nWithout a suitable system of roads, the Allies would be unable to take full advantage of their superior mechanised transport in Hong Kong. The necessity of supporting China with a strong LoC inland from Hong Kong would have taxed its inadequate roads past their limit. Estimates for the portion of supplies landed each day that could be transported inland to support the Chinese amounted to no more than 25 per cent,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215814,
        "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": 113,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "46\n\nspeeds of at least 64 knots (1 knot equals 1.15 miles per hour). Unlike hurricanes in the Atlantic, Pacific typhoons can occur at any month, although most take place from May to October. Compared to the other weather factors that could influence a Hong Kong operation, a typhoon is more intense, more mobile, and more unpredictable. Even the USN lacked the means to predict the movement and intensity of a typhoon. If one was spotted by reconnaissance, the need to code and decode messages or to maintain radio silence meant that such information would be outdated by the time it was received. Typhoon tracking was very sketchy during the war, and remained so for decades thereafter.\n\n22\n\n'It is a memorable experience to watch a big typhoon, but it is better to do so from a well-built house than from a ship at sea.\n\n+23\n\nThe power of a typhoon is beyond the ability of most people to gauge. Its sustained winds can reach 130 knots, while periodic gusts can exceed 150 knots. Rain accompanying a typhoon strikes early (usually when the centre of the typhoon is about 250 nautical miles away), late (the heaviest rainfall occurs after the passage of a typhoon's centre), and hard. The last refers to the horizontal motion of typhoon rains, which hit like knives or bullets, and could cause damage, destruction, injury, and death. The energy released by only a small-scale typhoon during a 24-hour period is equivalent to that of almost 500,000 atom bombs, or about 20 billion tons of water.\n\n24\n\nTyphoons tend to weaken once they reach land, but that doesn't mean people are out of danger. On the contrary, for most people the danger has only begun. To give an example, in September 1937, Hong Kong was struck by one of the most powerful typhoons ever to visit the territory. Gusts of up to 145 knots were recorded, six inches (15 cm) of rain were dumped on the territory in just two days, and sea levels rose 15 feet (4.57 meters). Hong Kong's fishing community suffered the worst of it. Of the 3,500 junks and sailing craft present, 1,255 were sunk and 600 seriously damaged. The death toll from these losses totalled some 11,000.\n\n25 That was about one per cent of Hong-Kong's population at the time.\n\nIn the Tai Po area of the New Territories, the carnage was even more frightening. Tidal waves of up to 30 feet (over nine metres) in height formed at Tolo Channel, crashed onto its shores at adjacent Tolo",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215818,
        "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": 117,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "50\n\ninto the territory. Kai Tak Airfield would presumably serve as the base for the B-29s. It was right on the shores of Victoria Harbour, which would make supporting the logistical requirements of the B-29 easier. On paper, its runways of between 4,500 to 4,800 feet long (1,372 to 1,463 metres) were just long enough to accommodate a B-29, which needed at least 4,375 feet (1,333.5 metres) of runway on a soft surface at sea level to take off.36 But such numbers were theoretical, because in practice a runway had to be much longer before it could safely operate a B-29.37 Lengthening Kai Tak's runways would be time consuming, if not impossible, because the area around Kai Tak consisted of mountains and dwellings.38 While there were other places in Hong Kong that were under consideration for airfields, none were as well-equipped or logistically supportable as Kai Tak.\n\nFurthermore, a B-29 needed sturdier, preferably all-weather, runways to support its maximum 70-ton weight, and Kai Tak's runways were still mainly grass with a maximum load factor of 35 tons, although the Japanese began to convert them to concrete during the occupation. Prisoner of war labour was used to make this conversion, and sabotage ensued. By some accounts, the sabotage was so effective that in certain places the concrete could not even support the weight of a bicycle!??\n\nThe B-29 was built to withstand extreme weather conditions - at least on its exterior. During its manufacture in the U.S., the first batch was fitted out in blizzard conditions outdoors. When this first batch arrived in India, the weather shifted to the other extreme. Midday temperatures in India went as high as 115°F (46°C), which limited takeoffs to the early morning or late afternoon. Also, India was humid during the summer, which was monsoon season. Its rainfall during this time was even heavier than that experienced in Hong Kong. Rains caused the fields in which the B-29s were parked to become muddy, and much effort had to be spent freeing them, thereby wasting time.\n\nAll of these factors combined to affect the serviceability of the B-29s if they weren't maintained properly. In India, maintenance could only take place at night, which posed another problem. The maintenance crews required light to work during this time of the day, and the lights they used attracted insects, including malaria-bearing mosquitoes.?? Even without the weather, a good number of B-29s were out of order at any one time because such a new piece of equipment was bound to have defects.\n\n1",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215819,
        "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": 118,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "51\n\nHong Kong's temperatures don't go as high as India's, but they are hot enough to affect machinery. The B-29's new instruments were especially vulnerable. In tropical areas (Hong Kong is semi-tropical), temperatures inside a B-29 during a hot day could reach 150°F (65.5°C). Besides affecting crew comfort, the heat takes a toll on the B-29's engines, which would be damaged if the temperature of its cylinder heads exceeded 428°F (220°C). If the engines haven't yet been damaged, they would have suffered decreased efficiency due to the higher temperatures, thereby requiring longer takeoffs. Temperature variations also affect the air pressure of a B-29's tyres. Improper inflation of tyres affects the takeoff and landing distance of an aircraft, and could result in shorter tyres life.42 Hence, early morning takeoffs were recommended if the B-29 were to operate from Hong Kong. A temperature of 75°F (24°C) demanded a 10 percent increase in runway length (due to the lower efficiency of the B-29's engines), and 20 percent if the temperature reached 100°F (37.7°C). But summers in Hong Kong would not be conducive to the efficient operation of a B-29, for even early morning temperatures during this period would have reached or exceeded 75°F.44\n\n43\n\nHumidity and heavy rains can cause corrosion, fungal build-up, and ultimately malfunctions on idle B-29s. Electrical equipment is particularly at risk to such weathering, and when that is gone, the B-29 has lost its technological edge. Idle engines are also affected by heavy weathering, which can contaminate engine oil with impurities and thus damage the engine.45\n\nThen there is the all-powerful typhoon, which could pose a serious threat to B-29 operations. In July 1946, Hong Kong was hit by another typhoon, and Kai Tak got the worst of it. Winds of up to 130 knots were recorded. The runway was holed, and five transport planes and two Sunderland flying boats, all unserviceable, were lost - a testimony to the vulnerability of grounded aircraft to the weather and anything else. The toll would have been higher had some aircraft not been evacuated prior to the typhoon's arrival. Although the Allies did not have the power of foresight during the war, they already knew about the 1937 typhoon, which also damaged Kai Tak.46\n\nA loss of seven planes might have seemed tolerable to the materiel-rich Allies, but not so in the case of the B-29. It was the most expensive project of the war (US$3 billion in those days) - even more expensive",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215879,
        "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": 178,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "111\n\n(a) a satellite pentagonal pillbox (shown in a government 1:600 survey plan of 1963 but not in any 1:1000 plan); and\n\n(b) the inscription “REN 30th Coy 1914\", first reported by Dr. Solomon Bard.\n\nFrom old aerial photos and survey plan, an earth mound that looks like a double circular earth gun revetment for a heavy 75mm or 105mm AA gun (United States War Department 1944: pp. 110-116) could be found along the watershed to the northwest of the redoubt. It was to the southeast of the ruins of a bunker, which has been incorporated into the Chinese Permanent Cemetery. This revetment-like earth structure was destroyed when the Cemetery was built. The revetment was huge and was almost as large as the 9.2 gun emplacement in Gough Battery. The slopes below the redoubt have several tunnels, probably also of Japanese occupation origin. One is found above the steps of the Lord Wilson Trail leading to the Chinese Cemetery and another near the ruins of a bunker below the northern rock face of Devil's Peak. We leave the nature of the circular earth mound and the tunnels to experts on military engineering.\n\nThe 196m site\n\nFurther down the ridge, at 196m above the mean Principal Datum (mPD), lies the '196m site.' The site is connected with the redoubt by a firing trench built of stones, which is full of dense undergrowth.\n\nThis levelled site is small in size with the ruins of a concrete structure (approximately 40 square metres on plan) that is believed to be an observation post or machine gun emplacement that covers both the redoubt and Gough Battery. Only lower parts of some of the wall structures have remained on site. But apparently, there is no immediate danger to visitors. An area bigger than the 196m site itself uphill has been formed and developed into a plant nursery, probably by morning hikers. Such unauthorised site formation and planting work has not only created visual blight, but has also accelerated the soil erosion process by removing the top soil and the natural vegetation (Figure 6).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215881,
        "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": 180,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "113\n\nto be shown in government survey plans, were surveyed and shown in Figure 4:\n\n(a) a circular pill box (a British \"tett turret\" or a 1.3mm light Japanese AA gun position (United States War Department 1944: pp. 110-116) in the proper of the battery site [and there is another similar structure to the east of Lord Wilson Trail, to the north of (d) below];\n\n(b) two iron rings fixed to the ground of the battery site;\n\n(c) a pennant holder behind a rock of the battery site;\n\n(d) a pillbox built of stones on a rock to the east of Lord Wilson Trail, which is annotated as a rock outcrop in a 1964 1:600 government survey plan (Figure 7). The ruins of a two-storey communication centre can still be found to the southeast of Gough Battery; and\n\n(e) a number of foxholes dug into the slopes below the pillbox (and above the ruins of the communication centre referred to in (d) above) were exposed after a hill fire in autumn 2002. Like the tunnels found elsewhere in the area, it is possible that these foxholes were also constructed during the Japanese occupation. (Figure 8).\n\nRemarks\n\nThe key structures on Devil's Peak have a history of one century or nearly so, and are, by urban Hong Kong standards, extremely old. Wild vegetation has colonised large tracts of the sites since their abandonment by the military. The humid climate of Hong Kong has added to the weathering and erosion process that compromises the integrity of the ruins. Systematic removal of the roofs of disused military structures for internal security and squatter control purposes as well as scavenging have also contributed to the demise of the sites.\n\nHowever, it is careless and deliberate human action facilitated by the good system of footpaths left behind intact and upgraded from time to time that has ruined the sites the most. Littering, the careless filming gang fighting movies, and mosquitoes that breed in water containers used by unauthorised gardeners may be regarded as mere nuisances.\n\nof\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215883,
        "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": 182,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "115\n\nfor the surveying and associated film shooting exercises.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nBooks and journal articles\n\nBard, Solomon 1988 In Search of the Past: a Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, Urban Council.\n\nEather, Charles Chic 1996 Airport of the Nine Dragons: Kai Tak Kowloon. Surfers Paradise, Australia, ChingChic Publishers.\n\nEmpson, Hal 1992 Mapping Hong Kong: a Historical Atlas. Hong Kong, Government Printer (Bilingual: English and Chinese).\n\nHorsnell, R.G. 2000 \"The Story of Stanley Fort,” The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 38, 1998/1999, pp. 247-263.\n\nHorsnell, R.G. 2000 \"The Story of Gun Club Hill Barracks,” The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 38, 1998/1999, pp. 265-280.\n\nKo, Tim Keung and Wordie, Jason 1996 Ruins of War: A Guide to Hong Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites. Hong Kong, Joint Publishing (Hong Kong).\n\nKo, Tim Keung 2001 War Relics in the Green. Hong Kong, Cosmos Books.\n\nLai, Lawrence Wai Chung; Ho, Daniel Chi Wing and Lung, Ping Yee 'Disused Military Structures on Devil's Peak: a Post-Colonial Planning and Building Analysis on Pre-war British Coastal Defence Structures in Hong Kong', EKISTICS, forthcoming.\n\nLee, Klaudia 2002 \"War Relics Disappearing Under the Weight of Neglect, Historians Warn,\" South China Morning Post, 17 November 2002, p. 2.\n\nRollo, Denis 1992 The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong. Hong",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215902,
        "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": 201,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "June 1978\n\nApril 1981\n\n29 September 1983\n\nOctober 1985\n\nArea B: \"upper fort\": This is the Devil's Peak. Mostly cement and reinforced concrete, but also utilising normal rock formations and old stone walls. Very formidable arrangement of fortifications; possibly of two periods - stone and concrete. between 1st and 2nd World War. There is a tract leading from A to B. With cemented walls. Inspection of maps revealed that in the sheet printed in 1954, Area B is shown as \"fort ruins,\" but in the sheet printed 1924, it is not shown.\n\nFormation of cut platform and road to Chinese cemetery completed.\n\nPublication of a revised 1:1000 Survey Plan Survey Plan 11-SE-4D.\n\nPublication of a revised 1:1000 Survey Plan Survey Plan 11-SE-4D,\n\nA letter from Dr. S.M. Bard to A&M Office states that the \"Tung Lung Volunteer Team\" found a 25cm x 25cm stone inscription \"40 Coy, RE 1914\" in a passage inside the Redoubt. Dr. Bard explained that \"RE\" stands for \"Royal Engineers.\" \"That is, the fort was constructed by the 40th Company of the Royal Engineers in 1914.\"\n\nThe letter also states that in 1977, he \"could not find many facts about the 'Area B' (upper fort), beyond the fact that it was of British origin. Enquiries at the PRO and the Headquarters British Forces were also negative. In particular, the date of construction of the fort could not be ascertained.\"\n\nPublication of a revised 1:1000 Survey Plan Survey Plan 11-SE-9B.\n\nH\n\nSurvey Plan 11-SE-4D\n\nSurvey Plan 11-SE-D\n\nSurvey Plan 11-SE-9B\n\nPottinger Batteries.\n\nArea A is Gough Battery; B is the Redoubt.\n\nThe concealment of the Redoubt on maps is probably due to security consideration.\n\nOctober 1987\n\n1988\n\nPublication of a revised 1:1000 Survey Plan Survey Plan 11-SE-4D.\n\nThe Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club funded the repair of a footpath to Gough Battery,\n\nSurvey Plan 11-SE-4D\n\n134",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216025,
        "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": 324,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "258\n\nShanghai did not possess, and were undoubtedly conducive to health by promoting exercise. In winter the climate is bracing and healthy though fever and dysentery were to be dreaded in summer'.\n\nThere are a number of highlights for foreign visitors beginning, perhaps, with the former foreign concession, though nowadays more than seventy years on, it is difficult to discern. Outside the Chinese old city with its modern main roads, cobbled side streets and a stone pagoda said to be 13th century Yuan dynasty, though its present condition suggests that it has either been well restored or completely remade within the last century, there are the fourth century Jin Shan temple and pagoda; the Grand Canal; the former British Consulate; the home of Pearl Buck, as well as the sites of the storming of the town by a British brigade on 21st July 1842 during the First China War [commonly referred to as the Opium War]. There are also the remains of the lengthy trench dug by the Taiping rebels to protect the city from recapture by Imperial forces as well as the ruins left after the destruction of the city by the Taipings during the 1850s. And for those who have read a little Chinese literature or attended Chinese opera the widely-known tale of the White Snake Lady is also part of the story of the Jin Shan temple.\n\nBefore waxing too lyrically about its glories let us remember that Zhenjiang is the vinegar capital of China, with, if the wind is in the wrong direction, an evocative sour tang forewarning approaching visitors long before they are anywhere near to the city. The majority of Chinese when confronted with the name of the city almost to a man voice the single word 'vinegar' or to the connoisseur 'brown rice vinegar'.\n\nZhenjiang was a treaty port with a foreign concession for sixty-eight years, from the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1860 until 1928, one of the minor footholds foreigners had obtained from China in one of the 'unequal treaties' and the base for numerous foreign interests. There were great hopes for the place and Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, even anticipated that eventually it would eclipse Shanghai as a commercial centre. Despite numerous westerners passing through the place down the years only a few spent full tours of duty there. Many of the temporary visitors were the lesser employees of major western companies such as BAT and Butterfield and Swire, whose regular tours to the many small",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216166,
        "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": 465,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "A NOTE ON THE JAPANESE GUN EMPLACEMENT AT TATHONG POINT, TUNG LUNG CHAU\n\nROBERT HORSNELL\n\n399\n\nAt Tathong Point, also known as Nam Tong Mei, a small rocky peninsular at the extreme southern tip of Tung Lung Island, there still exists the remains of a little known war-time Japanese gun emplacement. Its purpose was probably to protect the south-eastern approaches to Victoria Harbour. This gun emplacement is not mentioned in the book Ruins of War by Tim Ko and Jason Wordie and is not listed in the Gazetteer of the Batteries of the Fixed Defences of Hong Kong in Denis Rollo's book The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong, although Rollo does mention an observation post for the Devil's Peak Battery at the southern end of Tung Lung Island built in 1935/36. From information in an old Public Works Department file it appears that the gun emplacement was built by the Japanese during the Occupation (1941-1945).\n\nIn 1965, the gun emplacement was converted by the Public Works Department's Architectural Office into an engine room for the Marine Department's Tathong Point Lighthouse Station to house the electric marine light, foghorn engines, light standby engine and switchboard. The staff quarters adjacent to the engine room were built later in 1973/74 to replace the old lighthouse keeper's quarters built in 1949 lower down near the jetty and landing stage. The old vacated quarters were used as stores for some time then later demolished. The remains of the concrete platforms on which these old buildings were built can still be seen amongst the rocks.\n\nFrom the original P.W.D. drawings for the conversion works, it is possible to learn something about the construction of the gun emplacement. It was built of concrete with a floor area of about 40 square metres. The walls are about one metre thick but the roof is much thicker especially over the rear part which contained the expense magazines. The chamber which housed the gun consists of a rectangular room with a semi-circular bow front in which the wide angle embrasure for the gun was formed. The armament is not known but from the size of the gun embrasure it was probably a large coastal defence gun.\n\nPage 465\n\nPage 466",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216507,
        "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": 266,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "218\n\nshrines, and also larger caravanserai and trading centres. Many of the last developed into great crucibles for cultural development, cities that derived their often stupendous material wealth from trade, but also an equally magnificent cultural wealth derived from their location at the crossing point of cultures. It is this outpouring of human creativity at points along the Silk Road that is a major focus for Jonathan Tucker's book The Silk Road, subtitled Art and History.\n\nTucker's quest is bold, as befits his topic: to describe for the serious but not necessarily academic reader the art that flourished along the Silk Road during the fifteen hundred years of its heyday. Over four hundred colour illustrations conjure up a wonderful picture of the Silk Road, its places and people, its architecture (often in ruins today), paintings, sculpture, and even - through depictions on what remain of palace and temple walls - its music and ritual.\n\nIt is a difficult task that Tucker has set himself. To appreciate the art he presents, a knowledge of the complex passage and interaction of peoples and cultures is necessary. Tucker goes into enormous detail to try to ensure that his readers acquire this background. He gives the clearest picture when he concentrates on individual cities, for example, Chang'an (modern Xi'an) towards the eastern extremity of the Silk Road (which extended to Japan), and Baghdad towards the west (Istanbul is where Tucker draws his line here). By the Tang Dynasty, significant numbers of foreigners were reaching China along the overland route, and by then in Chang'an lived Zoroastrian refugees from Sassanian Persia (conquered by the Arabs in 651); Muslims (though the mosque in Chang'an is probably not as old, says Tucker, as the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, which dates from 627); Jews, who were significant and numerous Silk Road traders; Nestorian Christians; and followers of Manichaeism. Tucker painstakingly identifies elements that derived from non-Chinese influences in terracotta figurines, tomb paintings and sculptures, statues and other artefacts found in Chang'an and Luoyang from Tang and later periods. Most notable is a marble Bodhisattva, the 'Venus of the East' (his Fig. 119) which, in its sculptured clinging garments, reflected Indian antecedents, and was enormously influential on subsequent sculpture in this part of China.\n\nArt from the one hundred and ninety-three caves not far from",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
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