[ { "id": 204942, "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-1965", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "# TABLE OF THE DIFFERENT CENSUSES OF THE EIGHTEEN PROVINCES\n\n| Provinces | Area in English Square Miles | Average Population! To a Square Mile, according to Last Census | Census in 1710 or before | Census of 1711 | Census of 1743 | Census of 1753 | Census of 1762 or 1765 | Census of 1792 (Macartney) | Last Census of 1812 | Revenue in Taels of $133. each |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Chibli, | 58,949 | 475 | 3,260,075 | 3.274,870 | 16.702,765 | 9,374,217 | 15,222,940 | 38,000,000 | 27,990,871 | 3,942,000 |\n| Shantung, | 65,104 | 444 | 2,278,595 | 12.159.680 | 12,769,872 | 25,180,734 | 24,000,000 | 28,958.764 | 6,344,000 | |\n| Shansi, | 55,268 | 252 | 1,792,329 | 1,727,144 | 8,969,475 | 5,162,351 | 9,768,189 | 27.000,000 | 14,004,210 | 6,313,000 |\n| Honan, | 65,104 | 420 | 2,005,088 | 3,094,150 | 12,637,280 | 7,114,346 | 16,332.507 | 25,000,000 | 23.037,171 | 5,651,008 |\n| Kiangsu, | 44,500 | 850 | 3,917,707 | 2,656,465 | 12.618,987 | 23,161,409 | 37,843,501 | | 11,733,000 | |\n| Nganhwui, | 48,461 | 705 | 1,350,131 | 1,357,829 | 26,766,365 | 32,000,000 | 12.435,361 | 22,761,030 | 34,168,059 | 3,744,000 |\n| Kiangsi, | 72,176 | 320 | 5,528,499 | 2,172,587 | 6,681,350 | | | | | |\n| Chehkiang, | 39,150 | 671 | 2,710,649 | 2,710,312 | 15,623,990 | | | | | |\n| Fuhkien, | 53,480 | 276 | 1,468,145 | 706,311 | 7,643,035 | | | | | |\n| Hupeb, | 70,450 | 389 | 469,927 | 433,943 | | | | | | |\n| Hunan, | 74.320 | 251 | 375,782 | 335,034 | 4,264,850 | | | | | |\n| Shensi, | 67,400 | 153 | 240,809 | 2.150,696 | 3,851,043 | | | | | |\n| Kansuh, | 86,608 | 175 | 311,972 | 368,525 | 14,804,035 | 2,133,222 | | | | |\n| Sz'chuen, | 166,800 | 128 | 144,154 | 3,802,689 | 15,181,710 | 1,368,496 | | | | |\n| Kwangtung, | 79,456 | 241 | 1,148,918 | 1,142,747 | 6,006,600 | 3,969,248 | 5,055,251 | 11,006,640 | $,662,808 | 15,429,690 |\n| Kwangse, | 78,250 | 93 | 205.995 | 210,674 | 1,143,450 | 1,975,619 | 3,947,414 | 10,000,000 | 7,313,895 | 185,000 |\n| Kweichau, | 64,554 | 82 | | | | | | | | |\n| Yunnan, | 107,969 | 51 | | | | | | | | |\n| Shingking, | 51,089 | | 2,255,666 | | 4,194 | 37,731 | 255,445 | 1,718,848 | 3,402,722 | 9.000.000 |\n| | | | | | 1,189,825 | 1,003,058 | 2,078,802 | 8,000,000 | 5,561,320 | 235,620 |\n| | | | | | | 221,742 | 668,852 | 2,167,286 | 1,297,999 | 268 |\n| Total | | | 27,241,129 | 28,605,716 | 150,265,475 | 103,050,060 | 198,214,553 | 198,214,553 | 333,000,000 | 362,447,183 | 58,097,000 |", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205114, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n65\n\nhad been converted to Christianity somewhere in the eleventh or twelfth century. Christian tombs of Önggüt tribesmen have been discovered in Inner Mongolia near Olon Süme and in Ch’üan-chou (Fukien), mostly with Turkish inscriptions, in some cases also accompanied by a Chinese version of the inscription text. But whether Nestorian Christian, Uighur, or Mohammedan Arabs or Persians, all these foreigners became Chinese in a cultural sense. One would look in vain for traces of their foreign origin in their literary works. If they wrote Chinese poems, then these poems are indistinguishable from those written by native Chinese, much as in Medieval Europe when a poet wrote in Latin and thereby obscured his national characteristics. It is amazing to what degree this rapid acculturation was carried out in China. One could perhaps assume that members of a national community which had not yet developed a national literature of its own were easily attracted by Chinese literature; this would apply to the Mongols and some Turkish tribes. But it remains a singular phenomenon that even foreigners coming from a highly civilized country with a considerable literature of their own, such as Arabs or Persians, were so soon absorbed by Chinese literary culture. Nothing in the poems of Sa'd ad-Daula suggests even the slightest trace of a foreign origin. As a typical example, let me quote one poem by Jacob, Ya-ku, in Goodrich's translation:\n\n44\n\nThe path to the plum blossoms is short; snow has been falling. The ripples on the water are as smooth as peach leaves; it is favorable for ferrying across the river.\n\nOne whistle of a metal flute pierces the air above a thousand moonlit homes.\n\nTen reed matting sails ride before a wind of a myriad li.\"\nNothing could be more Chinese than these lines. And they are typical for the poetry written by foreigners. Things are similar in prose literature and philosophy. Foreigners tried to be as Confucian as possible, writing commentaries to the Classics and trying to live up to traditional Chinese ideals. And if they painted, their works were equally Chinese. At least one famous Yüan painter, Kao K'o-kung (1248-ca. 1310) came from the Western Regions, or rather his family did. He was born in Ta-t'ung (Shansi Province), rose to high offices, and became ultimately President of the Board of Justice. Kao was chiefly known as a landscape painter who carried on the tradition of Mi Fu and Tung Yuan, two famous", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205396, "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-1967", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "SALT MANUFACTURE IN HONG KONG\n\n151\n\nwell acquainted with the Hong Kong area, and never saw those remains. In Hoifung I did not find any furnace or anything which could be referred to an ancient salt industry. In China the manufacture of salt has been of the greatest importance from the most ancient time. In the salt-lake districts (Shansi, Shensi, Kansu and Mongolia) the heat of the sun causes the salt to crystallise at the edge of the lakes and in some cases on the surface of the water. In Yunnan and Szechwan the brine is drawn up from the salt-wells and boiled in cauldrons. Boiling is rare in other provinces. At the sea-coast the salt-pan system is generally in vogue.\n\nIn the last issue of the Hong Kong Naturalist (Vol. X, No. 1) Mr. S. Y. Lin has published a good article on salt manufacture in Hong Kong. In Hoifung both the leaching and the ordinary method are practiced; at the bay of Tchanki.... the former is more common, and at the bay of Swabue only the latter is in use. The salt produced by the leaching method is somewhat refined; it is freer from soil and in fine crystals and is required therefore for kitchen use; but its production needs much more work and its price is greater, too. The salt produced by the ordinary system is coarser and more impure and is chiefly used for pickling and salting fish. People say that the latter salt is more bitter than the former. If this statement is true we must suppose that the mother-water is more easily over-saturated in the ordinary salt-pan method, so that magnesium sulphate can be produced along with sodium chloride. As here the salt season is principally in the dry autumn and winter and from mother-water saturated at over than 32°5 Baumé during cool nights the magnesium sulphate easily crystallises, likely much of our salt is really a mixed-salt.\n\nNowhere in our province, as far as I know, the boiling system is now in use, except occasionally by boat-men when it is impossible to buy salt. Here fuel is very expensive and scarcely sufficient for domestic purposes. Moreover, I note that on the granitic rocks at the sea-shore salt easily crystallises; ancient people may have collected it and so learned how to manufacture salt. Even at the present time some people gather salt by sweeping it from the rocks. However, the note of Dr. Heanley suggests a new field of research; indeed, many of our prehistoric sites are near modern salines or in a good position for salt-works.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205638, "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-1968", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n175\n\nequally varied. Priests and missionaries; diplomats, consuls, officials and their wives; businessmen; journalists; soldiers and sailors among the foreigners; emperors, Ching officials and literati, Kuomintang and Communist leaders among the Chinese. Chairman Mao has his place (pp 306-308).\n\nIt is easy to choose items to illustrate the striking nature of much of the contents, and to dwell on how well they illuminate the scene. One might mention inter alia the Rev. Timothy Richard's account of a journey made during the dreadful Shansi famine of 1876 (pp 179-181) and of his encounter with a man in a Shantung village who persisted in repeating the official version that England was a revolted tributary (p 182); the description of the filth of Canton's canals and thoroughfares in 1910 (pp 233-234); a French resident of Peking's comments on the passage through his neighbourhood of a tatterdemalion body of troops from the warlord period (pp 286-287) and the striking eye-witness account of one of the outflanking hill marches of the Red Army against Japanese troops (pp 448-489). The cover given to the thirty year period 1917-49 between pp 261-504 half the volume is justified by the material available to the compiler. The chapter of extracts on Red China 1935-45 (pp 413-456), is particularly good. In the midst of such riches it is pointless to recite choice items from one's own reading that might have gone into the work; though no doubt, like this reviewer, readers will be able to suggest alternatives here and there, such is the tremendous outpouring of works on experiences in China up till 1949.\n\n—\n\nThis reviewer recommends the book to a wide range of readers, specialist and general alike; there is something for all in its 500 pages. Its main contribution is to expose the starkness of China's experience and convey some of the misery occasioned for the common people by both natural and man-made disasters over the period. Thereby the essential background to a better understanding of Mao's China and, indeed, of the desperate self-strengthening movement behind the Cultural Revolution is provided in its true perspective and deeper meaning.\n\nHong Kong, 1968.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206589, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n131\n\nNorth China: Generally speaking, much of the northern area of China is dry, dusty and barren land. It suffers from continental temperature ranges which cause differences of 65°-70°F between summer and winter. The limited and unpredictable rainfall results in uncertain agricultural output. The Yellow River, which runs through the region, is a determining factor in the lives of the Chinese who live on its banks. The river bed is higher than much of the surrounding land and must be controlled and watched constantly. Under these geographical conditions, the land is often ravaged by the extremes of flood and drought bringing great famines. A large section of the North is comprised of the loess highlands in the provinces of Honan, Shansi, Shensi and Kansu. The soil in this area is of fine yellow-grey grains which have been laid down in thicknesses of from a few feet to two hundred and fifty feet. As the loess is blown into the region from the northwest, it forms vertical cleavages which result in steep cliffs. Not only is the soil extremely fertile, it also holds moisture well and thus in this region of little rainfall, crops can still be grown. The loess soil has also been used by the Chinese to solve their housing problems. A second major region of the North, which is important to this study, is the North China Plain which has been built up from the silt of the Yellow River. The Plain is often raked by severe duststorms from the loess region. Here in this flat land, the Chinese had to devise an architecture which protected them from the harsh extremes in climate.\n\nSouth China: Throughout the dynasties the Chinese have expanded southward and have developed the valley of the Yangtze River. As early as the reign of Ch'in Shih Huang-ti (221-210 B.C.), the rulers and military forces fought to subdue and colonize the fertile land of the South in order to bring prestige and glory to their thrones. Because of the successive invasions of the barbarians, the Chinese fled to this region to seek peace and a new start. A final reason for the continuous mass migrations to the South was to escape the oppression of the government and the large landowners. The land in the South was very fertile which appealed greatly to the settlers and, in contrast to the North, the South became comparatively more prosperous. In this tropical and subtropical climate the growing season is much longer than in the North and allows for double cropping in most areas. From the beginning the South became a food supplier for the North. The rainfall, especially from typhoons and monsoon rains, is heavy although unpredictable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206592, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "134\n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN\n\nthis adaptation of feng shui was much more severe but in most cases the principles were followed. The Chinese sought ways in which to build their houses according to their economic and social conditions but never forgot the principles of feng shui. This paper will now describe the numerous, different examples of regional domestic architecture in an attempt to illustrate the ways in which each family in its own way tried to deal with the problems of privacy, protection, and personal needs in building its living and working space.\n\nEXAMPLES OF REGIONAL DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE:\n\nNorth: The first homes to be described are the caves of North China. They are not the same as the subterranean pit dwellings of the Late Neolithic Ages but rather are dug at a ninety-degree angle into the sides of mountains. These caves are found in the loess region stretching across Honan, Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu provinces where through vertical cleavage the soil mixed with water has hardened to form steep cliffs. Here the winters are long and bitter with a strong Northwest wind sweeping the region. The extremely limited rainfall is highly variable and often comes as a cloudburst. The land is barren of trees and because of the lack of timber, these cave dwellings have formed the typical dwelling of the region.\n\nThis cave in Honan is based on a plan for a free-standing house but has been built into the side of the cliff. The superstructure is basically a courtyard system with the main gate positioned at the southeast corner (North-South axis). The building on the left within the courtyard is for receiving guests, and thus the privacy of the man's cave is maintained. In other words, as the townhouse courtyard plan had provided for a system of \"graduated privacy\", the cave dweller has adapted this system to his specific location and circumstances. This particular cave complex has two storeys. The first level has three caves of which the left and middle ones each have two rooms which are used for living space, while the right side cave has an additional third room for storage. As one comes out of the left-hand side cave, there is a stairway leading to the second-level platform at the back of which there are two more caves. It should be noted that the Chinese have developed a system of interlocking support in the construction of these caves. The second-level platform is reinforced in front and on its surface and is supported...\n\n* See also Fig. 1 at the rear of this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207176, "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-1974", "page_number": 247, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n241\n\nYuan CKT Cheng Ch'en-to has also analysed the chu-kung-tiao literature of three different dynasties in great detail. Furthermore, Cheng again devoted a special chapter to CKT literature in the second volume of his Chung-kuo su-wen-hsüeh shih (i.e. History of Popular Literature in China), at pp. 63-154. This work was first printed in 1938 in Shanghai, and reprinted in 1953 in Peking. As to Liu Chih-yüan CKT in particular, Cheng Ch'en-to has also edited it into his Shih-chiai wen-ku (Library of Literature of the world) volume II (1935, Shanghai) pp. 483-508.\n\nRegrettably, just as Aoki's article in Japanese and its Chinese translation was omitted from Grump and Dolezelova-Velingerova's bibliography, so Cheng's contributions were also ignored.\n\nSecond, the authors' knowledge of the Liu Chih-yüan CKT is not complete. Whilst the edition of this CKT has been correctly regarded by the authors of this book as “a woodblock print which came from a workshop in the region of P'ing-yang in Shansi province\" (p. 5), such an identification would have been far more authoritative and scholarly if the authors had referred to an article written in Chinese by Chao Wan-li, a specialist on Chinese rare books who has served the National Peking Library since the 1930's. The title here referred to is Ch'ung-kao ti yu-i (On the Sublime Friendship). Its subtitle reads chi su-lien cheng-fu tsang-sung ti Liu Chih-yüan chu-kung-tiao ho liao-tsai tu-shuo (Notes on the various-mode of Liu Chih-yüan and the Illustrations of Strange Tales from a Chinese studio as being donated by the Government of the Republic of Soviet). This article appeared in Wen-wu tsan-kao tzu-liao No. 7 (1958, Peking) pp. 15-16, and p. 22. In it Chao Wan-li has not only firmly stated that the printing of the Liu Chih-yüan CKT was woodblocked around the P'ing-yang region at the Shansi province during the Chin period but also specified that the print of this chu-kung-tiao should be identified as the \"P'ing-shui edition\" since the quality of paper, the format of the block, the style of the carving as well as the forms of the blocked characters of this particular chu-kung-tiao are all in conformity to some other books of the Chin period woodblocked at the P'ing-shui area.\n\n3 The title Liao Tsai here referred to follows that of the annotated edition of a selected English translation made by Herbert A. Giles in 1880 (London, Thos de la rue & Co.), and since reprinted in many editions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207277, "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-1975", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "MERCHANT ORGANISATIONS IN IMPERIAL CHINA\n\n37\n\nthat it became a coordinator of commercial activities between Swatow merchants living at home and elsewhere.31\n\nBut neither of them became fully community-wide organisations. In Newchuang, the city was divided into two parts, east and west, and each elected one president and one vice-president on an annual basis. These four officers then formed a governing committee with all the business transacted in their names. In Swatow, the assembly was divided territorially into two divisions, each electing annually twenty-four leading firms as representatives. From them officers were selected and again paired to assure each division equal representation.\n\nA variant of these guild assemblies was the Chungking Assembly (Pa-sheng hui-kuan), which was composed of the eight major provincial Landsmannschaften in that city. The assembly operated as a committee made up of the presidents of the Landsmannschaften of Kwangtung, Chekiang, Fukien, Hukuang, Kiangsi, Kiangsu, Shansi and Shensi.32 Its responsibilities were to represent the merchants' interest vis-a-vis the local government. It also performed municipal duties such as running a fire brigade, a police force and a social welfare service.33\n\nWhether an assembly of this sort was composed of Landsmannschaften or trade guilds seems to be determined by whichever group happened to dominate the local scene. In Chungking, the dominant group was the provincial Landsmannschaften. In Canton and Swatow, where commerce was controlled by the native Cantonese and Swatowese, there was no confederation of provincial Landsmannschaften to play a leading role. Hence Swatow's Wen-nien-feng Assembly was based on a number of the large firms from the various trade guilds. In Canton, a somewhat different arrangement took place. Prominent merchants from the community joined the boards of the large charitable halls which then performed roughly the same roles as the guild or Landsmannschaft assemblies.\n\nIn Shanghai, both the Landsmann guilds and the trade guilds were influential. Since there was no prominent group of merchants who were natives of Shanghai, one assumes that practically all the prominent trade guild leaders were leaders in the various Landsmann guilds as well. There was, however, no consolidated assembly in a formal way, although we know that informal consultations between them often took place when decisions had to be made on issues of community-wide interests.34\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207281, "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-1975", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "MERCHANT ORGANISATIONS IN IMPERIAL CHINA\n\n41\n\n5 Ho Ping-ti, \"Salient Aspects of China's Heritage,\" in Ping-ti Ho and Tang Tsou, eds., China in Crisis (Chicago, 1968), I. 1:34-35; Ho Ping-ti, Hui-kuan shih-lun, pp. 33-34, 37-40.\n\n6 See John Fincher's article on provincialism in Mary C. Wright, ed. China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913 (New Haven, 1968).\n\n7 Ezra F. Vogel and Tamako Yagai, “Japanese Studies of Chinese Guilds,\" unpublished paper delivered at the Seminar on Problems of Micro-Organs in Chinese Society, 1963; Peter J. Golas, \"Early Ch'ing Gilds,” unpublished paper delivered at the Conference on Urban Society in Traditional China, 1968.\n\n8 Ch'üan Han-sheng, Hang-hui chih-tu, pp. 99-101; Peng Chang, “Distribution of Provincial Merchant Groups in China, 1842-1911,\" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington, Seattle, 1958), pp. 51-55.\n\n9 The others were from (1) Chihli, (2) Shantung, (3) Nanking, (4) Wusih and (5) the Shansi bankers. See A. M. Kotenev, Shanghai: Its Mixed Court and Council (Shanghai, 1925), p. 253 n.\n\n10 Lai Lien-san, Hsiang-kang chih-lüeh (A brief account of Hong Kong) (Hong Kong, 1931), 115-17\n\n11 For a detailed account, see Fang Teng, \"Yü Hsia-ch'ing lun,\" (On Yu Hsia-ch'ing) in Tsa-chih Yüeh-k'an (Monthly miscellany), 12.2:46-51 (Nov. 1943); 12.3:62-67 (Dec. 1943); 12.4:59-64 (Jan. 1944).\n\n12 P'eng Tse-i, \"Shih-chiu shih-chi hou-ch'i Chung-kuo ch'eng-shih shou-kung-yeh shang-yeh hsing-hui ti chung-chien ho tso-yung\" (The revival and function of urban handicraft and commercial organizations in late nineteenth century China), Li-shih yen-chiu (Historical studies) 1:71-102 (1965).\n\n13 T'ung-chih Shang-hai hsien-chih (Gazetteer of the Shanghai County for the T'ung-chih reign), ed. Yü Yueh (n.p., 1871), 2:21-28.\n\n14 Ibid.\n\n15 Nan-hai hsien-chih (Gazetteer of the Nan-hai County), eds. Chang Feng-chieh, et al. (n.p., 1910), 6:106-13.\n\n16 Sixtieth Anniversary of the Tungwah Hospital: A Commemorative Issue (Hong Kong, 1930).\n\n17 They were Ai-yü, Kuang-chi, Kuang-jen, Ch'ung-cheng, Shu-shan, Ming-shan, Hui-hsing, Fang-pien, Jun-shen.\n\n18 \"Reports of the Special Committee appointed by H.E. Sir William Robinson, KCMG, to investigate and report on certain points connected with the Bills for the Incorporation of the Po Leung Kuk, a Society for the Protection of Women and Girls\" (Hong Kong, 1893).\n\n19 E.g. see Hsiang-shan hsien-chih hsü-pien (A continuation of the Gazetteer of the Hsiang-shan County), ed. Li Shih-ch'in (n.p., 1923), 4:18a-20b, in which it is stated that a number were founded during the Kuang-hsü reign (1875-1908).\n\n20 Song Ong Siong. One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore (Singapore, 1967), pp. 277, 309, 424, 432; George W. Skinner, Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand (Ithaca, 1958), pp. 2-13.\n\n21 Nan-hai hsien-chih, 6:10b.\n\n22 Shang-hai hsien hsü-chih (A continuation of the Gazetteer of the Shanghai County), ed. Yao Wen-nan (Shanghai, 1918), 2:38a.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207764, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "Tehgchuan \n\n甘肅 \n\nGANSU \n\nPaschi \n\nSHANSI \n\nSlau \n\n= \n\n成都 \n\nSZECHMAN \n\nCheng tu \n\nHUBEI \n\n重度 \n\n演练 \n\nChungKinE \n\nLushien \n\n贵州 \n\nKHEICHOW \n\nPichieh Kweiyang \n\nTali \n\nAnshun \n\nKutsing, \n\nTu yun \n\n下面 \n\n南庄 \n\nUstakuan \n\nPaoshan \n\n昆明 \n\nNactan \n\nKunming \n\n河池 \n\nHochih \n\nTUNNAN \n\n源涟 Yuinling, \n\n長沙 \n\nChangsha \n\n兴遠 Xingyuan \n\n○ 柳州 \n\nLiuchow \n\nKWANGSI \n\n湖南 \n\nHUNAN \n\nFig. 1. Map of China showing FAU Transport Main Routes \n\nA ROAD TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN WEST CHINA 1942-46 \n\n137", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208031, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "54\n\nTien-Shui\n\nHui-Hsien\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nNINGSIA\n\nKANSU\n\nYung-Ping\n\nYEN-AN\n\nKan-Cho\n\n-Chu\n\nSlo-Pa\n\nKien Rateni (?)\n\n \n-Cheng\n\nCheng-Ku\n\nHan-Chang\n\nDigi-Hsiang (?)\n\n?\n\nSHENSI\n\nNan-Hsing\n\nturng (?)\n\nWEI HO\n\nHsing-Ping\n\nPAO-CIT\n\nHung-Hua-Pu\n\nHSIA Fang\n\nKuang-Shih-Pu\n\nHONAN\n\nLo-Chuan\n\nHiao-Ho-Kou\n\nHuang-Ling\n\nI-Chun\n\nSHANSI\n\nRiver\n\nKuang-Tiao\n\nChien-La (?)\n\nTru-Tung (?)\n\nHien-Yang\n\nTe-Yang\n\nSun-Tai\n\nWan-Yuan\n\nLo-Heh-Pa\n\nShuang-Po-Chang\n\nSZECHWAN\n\nTa-Haien\n\nRs In-Tu (?)\n\nCHENG-TU\n\nSui Ning\n\n \nden-Yang (?)\n\nLa-\n\nTung-an\n\nIzu-Yang (?)\n\nPeng-Ch\n\nChu-Hsien\n\nCHANG\n\n CETAM (?)\n\n-Nan-Char (?)\n\nTa-Chu\n\n-Ch:\n\neng/An\n\n1in-Shui (?)\n\nChung\n\n ́ung-\n\nLo\n\nJung-Shi\n\nHei-Chiark\n\nP1-Shi (?)\n\nhg-Chuan (?)\n\n\"Lung-Chiang\n\nKWEI CHOW\n\nHUPEH\n\nHIUNAN (?)\n\nSzechuan & Shensi Main Road System 1946. Scale: 1:3,000,000. Figure Map of Szechuan & Shensi showing routes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208297, "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": 21, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "in China we have taken steps to initiate a Society tour to major cultural areas particularly Luo yang (Long Men caves), the Gong Xian caves and Anyang (all in Henan), Da Tong; Tai Yuan and the Yun Gang caves (all in Shansi) and Sian. It seems unlikely that a visit can be arranged before early 1979. Meanwhile interested members can visit Kwangchow and/or Kweilin by joining the regular tours offered by major travel agencies in Hong Kong.\n\nPublications\n\nDuring the year the Journals for both 1975 and '76 were published and distributed, and Dr. Hayes, our editor, has already assembled most of the material for the 1977 Journal. We are very fortunate to have Dr. Hayes as our editor. Editing requires a great deal of time and work and despite his own heavy responsibilities as Town Manager for Tsuen Wan he has continued to work to bring our Journals up to time on publication. This has been no mean effort. I would also like to take this opportunity of congratulating Dr. Hayes on the publication of his own book based on his Ph.D. thesis and entitled The Hong Kong Region, 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside,\n\nThe Photographic Survey\n\nWork is also continuing on our intended publication of a book of annotated photographs of Hong Kong, in connexion with the Photographic Survey project of the Society. For the benefit of our more recent members, this survey was started in 1974 with the object of making a photographic record of Hong Kong as it appears today and before all the older buildings disappear beneath the swell of redevelopment. This record includes not only buildings but also street scenes and shots of such everyday sights—but for how long one cannot say—as hawkers' stalls, small workshops, fortune-tellers' booths. Such things have of course been photographed before, but rarely with full documentation of date or place. Work on the Survey has been greatly delayed since the departure in 1976 of Mrs. Edmunds who was responsible for organizing the files of prints and negatives. We have been fortunate, however, in finding two new volunteers to take over: Mrs. Mona Davies and Mrs. Maurisette Mellor, to both of whom I take this opportunity of expressing our gratitude. The collection is now taking shape. Nine schedules have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208386, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "94\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nbasis coinciding with the monthly publication of Hong Kong Worker and were known as \"discussions of our livelihood”. On June 29, 1973, a similar discussion occurred, this one concerning developments in Shansi province, printed and sent around in a circular by the Federation of Trade Unions. The article was also read aloud paragraph by paragraph, but the discussion was not as lengthy as that which accompanied the reading of Hong Kong Worker. The event seemed designed to promote national consciousness as opposed to class consciousness, and the news did not seem to so directly affect the lives of the art carved furniture workers as the articles in Hong Kong Worker,\n\nOn any given weekday evening at union headquarters, there may be three or four Chinese chess games in progress with a number of persons standing around giving advice on which pieces to move. Anyone near enough to give advice to one or another of the players usually does, and any given game serves as a focus for endless voicing and countervoicing of opinion as to what constitutes the right move. There is also a chance that when one enters the union premises there may be a game of bumper checker pool in progress, involving four participants and a great ruckus about the board. One may be teased to within an inch of one's life for a poorly executed shot.\n\nMah jong is significantly absent as a diversion at Union premises, although it is played regularly at union halls not affiliated with the pro-communist Federation of Trade Unions. It would not, however, be true to say that many pro-communist union members never play the game.\n\nUnion representatives come in from time to time with dues they have collected in their particular geographical area, laying the money and receipts before the treasurer who enters the transactions carefully into the books. The representative may also pick up the latest copy of China Pictorial or China Reconstructs to distribute to the union members in his area. He keeps a careful checklist of who's received one every month. Sometimes a union representative will bring an application form from a worker who has just joined the union, together with three pictures, one of which is pasted in a huge membership book along with a great deal of personal data, name, place of origin, age, date of first registration, address, etc., another affixed to a small certificate of membership, and a third", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208449, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n157\n\nof approximately 2437 inhabitants. It differs from typical rural villages in at least three respects: it is very young, having a history of only about fifty years; it is rather a grain market town with many stores than an agricultural community; and it is really a suburb of Peiping, lying just north of the former capital, and its whole economic, political and social life is highly colored by this fact.\n\nAt present there exist in the town two sets of political organizations: the old type established by the people themselves, and a more recent type set up by provincial or Kuomintang authorities. The two sets of organizations function simultaneously, and each seems to be weakened by the presence of the other. Of the first type is the village self-government of the traditional kind, a Chamber of Commerce composed of the leading merchants, and an Association of Farmers for the Protection of Crops.\n\nIn 1915 a district self-government movement was started. The term is not exactly accurate, however, since all the officers were appointed from among the various heads of villages by the county government or by the governor of the capital district of Peking direct. This organization worked with the cooperation of the traditional village governments, and seems both to have supplemented and coordinated them.\n\nIn 1919 the provincial authorities decided to remodel the system of self-government after the Shansi plan. According to this system, which is almost identical with the plan adopted later by the Central Government, five and twenty-five families were to be gathered into groups each with a chief. One hundred families or more were to constitute a village with a village head. Above the village there was to be a district office under a leader who would serve as a link between the self-government of the villages and the officials of the county government. This district head was also to serve as chief of the local police.\n\nThis theoretic plan was not so democratically carried out. In Ching Ho the selection of the village head was not made by popular vote in a mass meeting, as was supposed to have been done. Only the leaders of the village were present, no vote was taken, and the office was assumed by the associate of the former village head. Nor was the district head elected, his office being taken temporarily\n\n1 Ibid: chapters seven and eight, p. 96-121. The following description is taken from this section of the book.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208462, "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "170\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nof the Chinese terms the writer obtained the help of Dr. Robert R. Gailey and Mr. Ma Yü-fen (4), both of Peiping. Dates and prices have been included when they were given.\n\nI. THE SUBJECT IN GENERAL (LA)\n\nChou Ch'eng (MB); Summary of Local Government in Shansi (縣政概要). Shanghai, Hsien Tai Book Store (現代書局). $1.40.\n\nCh'en Han-sheng (£); The Relation of Rural Products to Feudalistic Society (農村生產關係與封建社會). Shanghai, National Central Research Bureau (國立中央研究院). $0.30.\n\nChou Ku-ch'eng (&); New Theories Regarding Rural Social Organization (農村社會組織的新論). Shanghai, Far Eastern Book Company (遠東圖書公司).\n\nCh'u Shih-chen (RM); Questions and Answers about Government in Districts, Villages and Hamlets (區村自治問答). Shanghai, San Min Company (三民公司).\n\nFeng Kuo-chen (*); The A.B.C. of Village Government (村治常識). Shanghai, Ching Yun Book Company (景雲書局).\n\nFeng Ho-fa (*); Principles of Rural Sociology (農村社會學大綱). Shanghai, Li Ming Book Store (黎明書局). $2.20.\n\nHo Ping-hsien (MMK); Problems of Local Self-Government (地方自治問題). Shanghai, Hsien Tai Book Store (現代書局). $0.40.\n\nHsing Chen-chi (#✯✯); Principles of Village Government in Shansi (山西村政綱要). Shansi Rural Government Bureau (山西村政處).\n\nJen Hsi-lu (****); Laws for Self-Government in Village Confederations (聯村自治法). Peiping, Li Ta Book Store (立大書局), 1931.\n\nKu Fu (#); Rural Sociology (農村社會學). Shanghai, The Commercial Press (上海商務印書館), 1928.\n\nLang Ching-hsiao (***); Theory and Practice of the Pao-chia System for Maintaining Public Order (保甲制維持治安之理論與實際). Shanghai, Ta Tung Book Store (大同書局). $0.20.\n\nLectures on Local Self-government (地方自治講義). Shanghai, T'ai Tung Book Store (上海泰東書局).\n\nLiang Shu-ming (***); The Most Recent Expressions of Concern for National Salvation as Revealed in the Chinese Peoples' Enterprises for Saving the Country (中國民族自救運動之最近動向). Peiping, Rural Government Monthly Publication Bureau (鄉村建設月刊社), 1932. $1.20.\n\nThe New Era of Village Local Self-Government (鄉村自治的新時代). Peiping, Fu Wen Chai Book Dealers (輔文齋書莊). $1.00.\n\nNiu Jen-yen (BMT); A Complete Book of Local Self-Government (地方自治全書). Shanghai, Kung Min Book Store (公民書局), 1930. 4 vols. $5.00.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208463, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n171\n\nPractical Application of the Theories of Village Government (**). Peiping, Fu Wen Chai Book Dealers (EMG). 實施 $0.80.\n\nShansi Village Government Series (††*). Shansi Rural Government Bureau (4&H¤Å).\n\nShao Yuan-ch'ung (***); Plans for Local Government During the Period of Political Tutelage (*********). Shanghai, Min Chih Book Store (E4A§). $0.10.\n\nSun Hung-ych (***); Local Self-Government During the Period of Tutelage (‡$45 107 § 1). Shanghai, Kuang Yi Book Store (上海廣益書局), 1929.\n\nTs'ai Ping-chang (*); New Village Government (#1). Shanghai, Yu Yi Book Store (EAA#5).\n\nWang Tao (1); Historical Development of the Chinese System of Local Government (+E***£<*). Peiping, Board of Internal Affairs (46*A**), 1918.\n\nWang Tsung-p'ei (1##); Chinese Rural Assemblies (+@<\"%#\"). Shanghai, Li Ming Book Store (±***$6). $1.40.\n\nWhat Village Elders Should Know (#±NM). Peiping, Ching Chao Yin Kung Shu (北京,京兆尹公署), 1925.\n\nYang K'ai-tao (M); Policies of Village Governments (*#**). Shanghai, The World Book Company (L**H), 1930, $0.60. Rural Sociology (£#*#*). Shanghai, The World Book Company (###5), 1930. $0.60.\n\nVillage Leadership (★ #† 41). Shanghai, The World Book Company (#5), 1930. $0.60.\n\nVillage Organization (AH). Shanghai, The World Book Company (*****), 1930. $0.60.\n\nVillage Self-Government (B). Shanghai, The World Book Company (****), 1930. $0.60.\n\nYin Chung-ts'ai (*#*); General Discussions on Village Government (†† *****). Hunan, Sha Ni Chih Book Store (V£%#4). $2.50.\n\nLectures on the Study of Village Government (#*#A). Shanghai, Ta Chung Book Store (#5). $1.80.\n\nThe Study of Village Government (###). Shanghai, Ta Chung Book Store (£*£†#5).\n\nII. LAWS (**)\n\nHu Hsing-chih (#42); Most Recent Laws for District, Village and Hamlet Local Self-Government (A*#*). Shanghai, Hsin Hsueh Hui Shê (1*****).\n\nLaws and Privileges of Village Government (###). Central Rural Government Research Bureau (★★#*#✯).\n\nLaws for Local Self-Government Now in Force in the Republic of China (P*AMÚGE* •**^ [*1]). Shanghai, The Commercial Press (*$$Y$*), 1922.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208466, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "174\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nLu Shao-chi (£##); General Discussion on Rural Education ($#** \n#4). Shanghai, Ta Tung Book Store (£#££$5). $1.00. Wang Tsun-sheng (144); Reconstruction of China's Rural and Village Life-the Central Emphasis in Education ( **+s+£*£#£ i). Shanghai, The Commercial Press (1###/##). $1.20.\n\nYü Mo-lich (†); Rural Education (**). Shanghai, The Commercial Press (##). $0.65.\n\nVIII. PERIODICALS (H)\n\nAgriculture Weekly (★★★). Nanking, Huang-ni-kang, Chinese Agricultural Society(南京黃泥冈。中國農學社 ).\n\nAgriculture Weekly (★★4). Nanking, Agriculture Weekly Publication Bureau(南京大王府巷,農業週報社).\n\nCh'i-hsia Semi-monthly (★★+A#). Ch'i-hsia Rural Normal School (#E鄉村師苑)\n\nCoöperation Monthly (4† A 7). Shanghai, Chinese Cooperative Society (L*+*+***). V. 1-4, 1929. $0.60 per year.\n\nFarmers' Voice (#). Canton, Nung-sheng Publication Bureau, National Chung-shan University (AHB>+»£$£$*£**HA).\n\nHonan Village Government Magazine (Thrice-Monthly) ($#*«7). Honan Provincial Affairs Bureau (HRÆRHLA).\n\nHopei Village Government Monthly (TA). Hopei Provincial Affairs Bureau (XRkXƒ¥¤Â ).\n\nKiangsu Agriculturalist (★L). Chenkiang, Kiangsu Agricultural Bank (辑江、江蘇農民銀行。\n\nMinistry of Interior Record (*). Nanking, Ministry of Interior (南京内政部), (****). $4.00 per year.\n\nNew Agriculture and Forestry Magazine (****). Nanking, Kinling University (**££*********). $0.60 per year. Shansi Village Government Magazine (Thrice monthly) (†æk á] 7] ).\n\nShansi, Rural Government Office (4*). $3.60 per year.\n\nVillage Government Monthly (H&AN). Peiping, Rural Government Monthly Publication Bureau (+#AMμ). (V. 1-3). $1.40 per year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209662, "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-1982", "page_number": 319, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n297\n\n北\n\n* H. D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village, Sheung Shui (London, Frank Cass, 1968) 79-83, 128 for details.\n\n'James L. Watson, Emigration and the Chinese Lineage, The Mans in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975) mentions the San Tin Village watch at 27, 42, 177, 183 but gives no details of its organization.\n\n5 Useful comparative information about the night watch in villages in Hopei, Shansi, Shantung and Hunan is given at pp. 109-112 of Sidney D. Gamble, North China Villages, Social, Political and Economic Activities before 1933 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1963). See also pp. 22-23 of his article \"Hsin Chuang, A Study of Chinese Village Finance\" (1907-1931) in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, VIII (1944-45), 1-33. Ordinarily the paid watch, sometimes replaced or augmented by volunteers, operated in these villages from the first of the tenth month until the end of the twelfth month, and sometimes into the second lunar month of the following year, whereas in the Hong Kong region it seems to have been permanent. However, more information is needed on this point, as there are cases here, such as Muk Min Ha, Tsuen Wan, where the former Village Watch was active mainly in the winter quarter.\n\nVILLAGE RULES; FIRECRACKERS IN THE SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES AND IN TOKEN OF FINES\n\nIn rural society in the Hong Kong Region, there was until very recently and certainly up to the discontinuance of the padi farming that was the basis of subsistence agriculture a great reliance on local customary rules. These were generally unwritten, and carried in the heads of the elders, available for use when required. They were generally known to, and accepted by, the villagers, who would know when rules were being infringed or broken, and the appropriate remedy or penalty. Sometimes the rules would be put in writing, and in matters deemed to be important would be placed on a wooden board in the community temple or cut on a stone tablet let into the wall of the temple. Copies of the rules would often be written into the handbooks held by the village scholars. Copies of individual rules were also, on occasion, written out and posted up in a public place for all to see.\n\nThis much is generally known, but one aspect of local practice in connection with the settlement of disputes that has come to my attention in the Hong Kong countryside is not so well covered in modern studies of village life in China. This was the provision for the letting off of firecrackers, to an appropriate but always", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212748, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "42\n\nbreach of good manners, but the veteran told me that the pony was a very nice one, presented to him by the late Marquis Tseng, and then added the doctor, you see I have the regular Peking wheels, not those flash Shansi wheels, and my man does not wear an official hat. This last item is another fault rather than a virtue, which shows that thirty-two years' constant residence has not sufficed to enable the good doctor to learn all the niceties of Chinese etiquette.'\n\nAmongst the scores of interesting items about his various achievements minor themes emerge such as his ability to play Chinese chess. This he used to while away the long hours during the lengthy trip up the Yangtze in early 1868 when he played with Fan Ho-ting. On a somewhat contradictory note he later claimed that General T’ang Chiung had taught him how to play wei-ch'i [Chinese chess] in his camp at Chung-an Chiang in Kueichou in 1868/9. Though Mesny said that he could beat several good players in camp he never seen anyone beat T'ang who was famous for his ability at the game.\n\nThere were however occasional instances of inexplicable ignorance, more often than not surprising in view of the depth and width of his knowledge but never the less excusable as they were nearly always on specialised subjects, such as the story he related about the turtle and snake. Mesny, both in a letter to a Shanghai newspaper in March 1883 and in his Chinese Miscellany some twenty years later, referred to seeing a snake and turtle together crossing the Chung-an river below Kueichou. During his lengthy description of his first Kueichou campaign he states that he was at an elevated position on the bank of the river at the foot of the bluff where the Commander-in-Chief had his headquarters, when he saw a turtle swimming with its head out of the water about thirty yards off. His shot, he saw in the clear water, had beheaded the turtle which sank fast and half cut through the neck of the snake which floated to the surface dead. He then went on to describe how the snake had been connected,\" mating to conceive the most venomous of reptiles called the pang pang-she or cudgel snake or the ch'ing-chu piao, a small dark-coloured springing or darting or leaping toad-like reptile. People told him that when a turtle and snake were so coupled they were referred to as kuei-she er chiang-chun, that is 'a turtle and snake both military commanders', which meant that they were to be feared or dreaded. That particular shot of Mesny's was reported far and wide in quick time. This, mused Mesny in another section of his Miscellany, proved to Mesny what the Chinese have often asserted, that is, the snake and turtle love one another\n\ni", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212751, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "45 \n\nworks recommended by Pioneer [i.e. Mesny] through Governor Chang Chih-tung of Shansi, are now, or soon will be, in full operation in various parts of China, though with no other advantage to the conceiver of those useful nineteen undertakings than that of having done just so much good, gratis, for the benefit of China and her millions of industrious people, to whom we wish long continued peace, happiness and prosperity.\" However, whenever China attempted anything which would lead to modernisation, Mesny leapt into print to congratulate whoever was putting the modernisation in train stressing that it was in line with his suggestions of so many years ago. \n\nIn his early days he displayed extraordinary qualities - audacity, determination, adventurousness and a depth of interest in everything he came across; later, however, when in his declining years he had reverted into a petty entrepreneur, he displayed his achievements on his sleeve and at times waved them above his head just in case they might be overlooked. His rank as a brevet Lieutenant General1 in the Chinese Imperial army with the award of the Pa-r'u-lu and the peacock's feather is stressed right to the end of his life. He is an FRGS and a FR Hist S; and in the very last years of his life he even records in his curriculum vitae as one of his qualifications his membership of the Royal Asiatic Society, North China Branch, into which he was elected as late as 1914 when he was 72. This despite having written for the Journal back in 1891 and his son having been elected in 1911. An outstanding question regrettably remains unanswered. Well we might ask why Mesny was promoted brevet Lieutenant General in 1886, so many years after he had completed his active military service in 1874? Balleine may have the answer. He wrote that Mesny volunteered for active service in 1883: whereupon he was sent to Yunnan, and in 1884 to Foochou. In 1885 he was in charge of two arsenals in Canton and the following year was promoted i.e. whilst still working at the arsenals. \n\nMesny explained that officers as junior as Lieutenant Colonel, when in command of troops, were referred to by the honorific title of General. Mesny began his service in 1868 as a company commander rising to brevet Colonel in 1869 and technically in command of troops, though as he himself does not make this point, we can assume that he was never referred to as 'general'. In 1873 he was promoted to Major-General during the latter days of the second Kueichou campaign when, though he again does not say so, he would have been referred to as 'general'. \n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212755, "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "49\n\nDespite the feeling we have acquired simply from his own writings that he had many acquaintances and few friends, that he was neither a European nor a Chinese and was held at arms length by both, that he was God's gift to the girls, that he offered guidance and good advice with great foresight to the Chinese, and was either ignored or his ideas purloined by others, the obituaries, possibly following a policy of avoiding speaking ill of the dead, described him as ‘a great traveller, a great scholar, a soldier, an author and publisher. A cheery man who most people knew, who at 77 walked briskly to and from his office, beloved by many, although not rich in the world's goods he was always ready to help others, and was of a very cheerful disposition. He endured many shrewd blows of fortune but always came up smiling.'\n\nHe must have been regarded both in Shanghai and in Hankow as an eccentric and colourful old man. Everyone would know of him but to what extent he was accepted socially we shall probably never know unless, that is, someone's private correspondence in which he is mentioned comes to light.\n\nNOTES\n\nMason was a young British official in the Chinese Customs on the Yangtze who organised the shipment of arms to and became involved with Nien rebels. Mesny, who knew nothing of Mason's schemes and plot, found himself officially ostracised after being accused by Li Hung-chang of being a rebel leader.\n\nIt is strange that there appears to be no reference to the typhoon in the available Shanghai papers of the day. Also, in view of his complaints about people's refusal to face up to disaster by taking out insurance, why did he not have the Rink insured? Probably, considering his circumstances, he was unable to afford the premium.\n\nThe Tsar-li Hui has been variously described as a minor religious cult, in Shantung province in particular, or as survivors of the White Lotus Society, an anti-dynastic body since its foundation in the fourteenth century through to its final defeat in Shansi in 1815. A number of members then joined the Nien revolt, and here we have a link perhaps between Li Hung-chang's accusation that Mesny was a leader of a Nien rebels during the Mason case.\n\n$\n\nMesny's Chinese Miscellany: Volume 2 item 1431 page 362\n\nBat'uru: 'A kind of Manchu Distinguished Service Order [DSO]' Johnston RF Lion and Dragon in Northern China. Murray: London 1910\n\nWilliam Mesny always referred to himself as 'Knight Ying of the Pa-t'u-lu' BA\n\nThis decoration was intended to correspond to European Orders [sic].\n\nGarrett, Valery M Mandarin Squares. Oxford University Press. Hong Kong. 1990", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212769, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "63\n\n1881\n\nApril\n\nJune\n\n1882 February March Spring\n\n1882 November 1882/1883\n\n1883 May\n\n1833 Autumn\n\n1883\n\nca 1883/1884\n\nEarly 1884\n\n1884 July\n\nArrived Hami\n\nPassed through Shensi and Kansu to Turkestan he tried to push on through Central Asia to India but was stopped; again, tried to push on to the Russian frontiers via Ili and Tarbagatai but was stopped, visited Hami [HQ Chinese Army]. Residence in Hami where he said he remained until the Treaty of Livadia [2-10-79] was signed and where he learned a number of Turkish words. [Mesny claimed that in 1882 returning from Kashgaria he stayed in Tso Tsung-t’ang's camp. [Tso was recalled from Hami to Peking in late 1880] Departed Hami and retraced his steps leisurely across the Gobi desert to Kansu, on to northern Tibet (visited old fashioned gold diggings) and back to Kan-chou to refit before continuing into Tibet a second time in another direction. He then, travelled through the Kokonor region ending up at Lanchou, February 1881, via Hsi-ning.\n\nDeparted from Northwest China for Peking, via Si-an, Ho-nan Fu, Tai-yuan Fu and Pao-ting Fu.\n\nWhilst in Si-an Mesny visited the Nestorian Cross, later, on his first evening in Taiyuan he lost 640 pages of notes, the journal of his Journey to Hami from Canton\n\nArrived Peking\n\nVisited Tientsin to await the first steamers of the season carrying mails Returned to Tai-yuan in Shansi and Pao-ting Fu, and again visited Si-an.\n\nVisited the famous Shao-lin monastery in the Sung-shan [Mountains] near Ho-nan Fu and invited to settle down for a couple of years with the monks.\n\nDeparted Shansi for Canton; however,\n\nVisited Yunnan province at the invitation of T'ang Chung to assist in the development of natural resources of the province The French authorities in Tongkin insisted that Mesny leave the province Passed through Ch'engtu and Yunnan Fu heading for Canton via Po-se, Nanning Kuangsi [Kuei-hsien, where he spent three to four months whilst the Franco-Chinese war raged in Tongkin), Kueichou and the West River. He travelled much of the way by large house boat. He took careful notes which he offered to the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce but failed to receive any encouragement\n\nArrived Canton, then visited Hong Kong, Macau, Swatow, Amoy and Foochou [Viceroy Chang Chih-tung retained Mesny at Canton for one year and ten months (nfd) He lived in an hotel unable to get an appointment from Chang he eventually withdrew. Mesny met Kung Chao-yuan, the Commissary General at Shanghai for Formosa, at the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai\n\nVisited tomb of Su Hsiao-hsiao near Hangchou. (a celebrated courtesan of the 11th century AD)\n\nDeparted Canton via Hong Kong for Foochou and Shanghai [elsewhere he noted that he had been recommended for the post of Foreign Superintendent of the Arsenal at Foochou during his visit there in 1883)\n\nIn Wu-chang and Han-yang", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212799, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "93\n\nthe first anti-foot binding societies in China.\n\nLovatt, W N\n\nEx-Royal Artillery serving in Honan Road in Shanghai. He, with Massagorra, taught Mesny the skills of guns and gunnery in 1864. He later became a Commissioner of Customs in Korea.\n\nMason, Charles H. A. W.\n\nA young Imperial Customs Assistant who was the main figure in the 'Mason case'. He joined the Customs in 1887 and after an involved plot was arrested for smuggling arms into China with the intention of providing foreign weapons for the Ko-lao Hui, a secret society whose aim was to overthrow the Imperial government.\n\nMassagorra, W\n\nFormerly Royal Navy and subsequently mate on one of the large lorchas plying the Yangtze: he, with Lovatt, taught Mesny gunnery.\n\nMayers, W F\n\nChinese Secretary at the British Legation in Peking in the mid-1870s. His best known work was the Chinese Reader's Manual. [Mesny culled a large number of items from Mayer's Manual and included them in his Miscellanies]\n\nRichard, Timothy\n\nBaptist missionary in Shantung and Shansi provinces. He met Mesny in Taiyuan Fu where Richard was superintending a branch of the English Baptist Mission. Richard was renowned for his humanitarian work during the great famine in Shansi in 1877-1878.\n\nSu Chin-wang\n\n[Shan-ch'i ## or Shan Ai-t’ang #E#: born ca 1865]\n\nThe Manchu Prince with whom Mesny had breakfast in Peking in 1892 when Su had not yet inherited his title and was then simply the captain of the Emperor's Bodyguard. A black and white photograph", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213621, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "190\n\nher son would produce two images of the Patriarch if the son was cured. The son then produced the now famous Liu Tsu image, copying the mummified body, one small and one large, which have now been copied by most temples.\n\nThe Taoist Seven True Ones\n\nThe Taoist Patriarch Chung-yang founded the Taoist Ch'üan-chen sect during the Southern Sung dynasty. His seven disciples, enlightened ones, were known as the Seven True Ones (of the Northern school), though in some places, notably in Taiwan, it is believed that he and Ch'iu Ch'ang-ch'un were both only members of the group of Seven, and not the founder and senior member respectively. He and his seven disciples lived during the eras of the Southern Sung and Yüan dynasties, the 12th and 13th centuries AD. The Seven taught that meditation and exercises were the path to perfection through internal transformation of mind and body. Most of the Seven have not been noted in image form on altars, though tales of their lives, struggles and attainments to achieve the Tao are written up and available in a number of southern Chinese Taoist temples, though none have been encountered in Taiwan. The monastic headquarters of the Sect was first established in Shantung province, later moving to the Pai-yün Kuan in Peking. The tenets of the sect advocate the path to Tao through meditation and the transformation of mind and body rather than through physical exercises and the use of medicinal herbs. The secondary title of the Sect is the Golden Lotus Orthodox Belief, Chin-lien Tseng-tsang, reflecting the influence of Buddhism on the Sect.\n\nImages of Wang Chung-yang and of all Seven were noted in a major monastery in Shansi early this century, and are still to be seen in the temple at the base of Hua Shan in Shensi province.\n\nThese Seven Disciples or Taoist Masters, known as Chen-jen, were:\n\nThe first of the disciples is Ch'iu Ch'ang-ch'un, Ch'iu, the Perfect One of Eternal Youth. A master of alchemy and now a Taoist saint and Immortal, he lived towards the end of the twelfth century, the period of Tatar rule over China, and is renowned as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214010, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "45\n\nas a Buddhist monk. The problem of identifying which members of the family are portrayed by images on altars has been complicated by temple keepers having their own personal views of the exact identity of each deity on their altars. At least four of Yang Yeh's other sons are individually revered on altars, with the complete family, usually seven sons, revered in at least four temples, though in two of these there are eight sons, together with Yang Yeh's two young daughters and several of his sons' wives.\n\nLegends recounted by tea-house story-tellers claimed that General Yang Yeh defeated the Mongols near Heng Shan in Shansi early in the Sung dynasty becoming one of the most powerful supporters of the Sung. Later he, together with his heroic sons, tried to save the emperor from the invading hordes, and with his wife chose to die rather than surrender. All but two of their sons died with them. The Fifth and Sixth made their separate ways home after many adventures. After falling in battle fighting the enemies of the Sung, Yang Yeh was awarded the title of The Marshal who Protected the Sung, Sung-pao Yüan-shuai*. His body was recaptured from the enemy, so legend relates, by a valorous captain who had used a secret weapon to defeat them. He caused fire to flow from a pot thereby scorching the hillside and then, having exhumed the general's corpse, he returned to the capital at Kaifeng where it was buried in state. A temple keeper in Kowloon Tsai in Hong Kong claimed that General Yang Yeh was killed by the Tatars who hung his body on a gate tower where, daily, Mongol soldiers fired arrows at it to cause pain to his soul.\n\nA popular opera describes how the Commander-in-Chief of the Sung forces, General Yang Yeh, was encircled by the Tatars and seeing no other way out defied capture by knocking out his own brains on a stone monument dedicated to the loyal Su Wu, the unyielding plenipotentiary of the Han dynasty. The Tatars recovered his remains and honouring his bravery built a mausoleum in the Hung-yang cave, but covertly buried his remains in a secret place elsewhere to avoid the Sung forces taking the corpse back to be buried in the family grave. Meng Liang, a junior officer serving with the Yangs [and possibly now represented by the image of the unidentified deity on the temple altar beside the main altar bearing the images of the Seven, near Taichung] bravely recovered the corpse from the false coffin which, as the Tatars had feared, then was buried back home. However, Yang Yeh's spirit", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214011, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "46\n\nappeared to the Sixth Son who was resting, weary and sick with over-work and revealed to him that Meng Liang had recovered the bones of another and gave the Sixth Son details of where his, the father's, body really lay. Meng Liang set out once more, disguised as a Tatar soldier and after a series of episodes the bones were recovered, but not before several of the Sixth Son's comrades had been killed or committed suicide. These deaths led the Sixth Son's condition to deteriorate and for his spirit to wander whilst he lay in a coma. The emperor's nephew on his way to visit him saw a tiger barring his path and shot and grazed it with the arrow. On reaching the bedside of the Sixth Son, who rallied at that point, the Prince was told that the tiger was the spirit of the Sixth Son roaming the hills and was duly appalled at the idea that he had nearly killed the Sixth Son. Despite all efforts, the Sixth Son's condition grew worse and soon he died, vomiting blood.\n\nIn another episode of the tea-house tales the ruler of the Liao Khitan planned to assassinate the Sung Emperor at a meeting to which the Sung Emperor had been invited at Chin-sha Nan. As the plan had been detected by the Eldest Son of the Yang family he disguised himself as the Sung emperor whilst the Second Son went as the Crown Prince, with the other brothers in attendance. In the event they in turn were recognised and in the ensuing fight the Second and Third Sons were killed and, apart from the Sixth and Seventh Sons, the others were captured.\n\nOne of several cult centres dedicated to the Yangs in northern China developed in a temple on the Buddhist holy mountain of Wu T'ai Shan, in northern Shansi province. There are at least three temples in Taiwan in which Yang Yeh is the main deity. And only in Taiwan are the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth sons collectively portrayed together on several altars with the collective title of the San Wang-tsu. In an old temple near Taichung the seven main images on the main altar represent the Seven Sons although, according to the temple keeper, the group did not include the father. However, the smaller portable images of the Seven on the front of the same altar had alongside them several other images which did include the Father, Yang Yeh, and the Mother, Yü Lao T'ai-chün, and a complete outsider, the mythological deity, Yang Chien [Erh Lang] who bears the same surname. The temple keeper explained that in about 1986 all nine main images, carved on the mainland many years ago and brought over to Taiwan, which at that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214016, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "50\n\nin pairs on Min [Fukienese] community altars as offerings to the Jade Emperor, whose birthday is celebrated the following day and who had persuaded Yang to call off the pursuit.\n\nAn image categorically identified as the Seventh Son, Yang Yen-ssu has only been observed in one temple, in Medan in Sumatra, where it stands alone on a separate side altar simply marked, Yang Ch'i Yeh. He is portrayed as a black-bearded general, standing dressed in long yellow robes and holding a long staff but without any unique features. In a temple near Taichung where he is depicted together with the rest of his brothers he is inexplicably portrayed with a ferocious, decorated face and a bird's beak mouth. His black skin is decorated with a white [opera-style] face pattern, whilst the beak with a red edging is under a human nose. His eyes are staring, round and bulging, and he is holding an unsheathed sword at the ready. All in all, an extraordinary image which, whilst accepted and labelled as the Seventh Son by the temple staff, is completely out of character.\n\nFinally, in Seremban in central Malaysia, the temple keeper of a small rural temple pointed out a small standing figure of a soldier in armour at the rear of a crowded secondary altar. The image has no unique characteristic and could be any soldier/deity. The temple keeper identified him as Yang Sung-pao, a T'ang general who had been the protector of a Sung emperor. In Seremban he was also known as the Venerable Golden Lion, Chin-shih Ta-jen, as well as the Great General, Ta Chiang-chün.\n\nThe Eighth Son, Yang Pa Yeh, has only been noted on two altars in northern China despite the two Yang Family Daughters being numbered Eight and Nine, Yang Pa Chie and Yang Chiu Mei. These two daughters were involved in several battles fighting alongside the Sixth Son.\n\nPost Script\n\nChinese characters carved into a roadside rock beside the modern main road from the Fen River plain in northern Shansi to Inner Mongolia proclaimed that the nearby old temple had been dedicated to Wu Lang, the Fifth Son of the Yang. This was confirmed by a local peasant. The temple was in a col between two mountains, itself several thousand", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214017, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "51\n\nfeet above sea level with the col being barred by a massive stone gateway. This was the Pass of the Wild Geese HEP, said by the local Cultural Site custodian to be one of the Three Passes facing Central Asia defended by the Yang family, and the main defensive point on the former main road, with its old track still visible winding up from the Chinese side and down to the Mongolian plain.\n\nThe aged local custodian pointed out the location of the old temple and identified it as having been dedicated to Wu Lang. It was standing on the Chinese side of the gateway though all that remained of it, apart from the outline of the outer walls, were two tall marble flag-poles, several large inscribed tablets standing vertically on the backs of stone tortoises and a number of pieces of dressed stone and the entrance steps. A modern temple dedicated to Kuan Kung, the Patron both of Loyalty and of Shansi province, has been built on the northern side of the gateway, constructed since the Cultural Revolution. However, the old temple, according to the aged custodian and the local peasant back on the main road, had most certainly been dedicated to Yang Wu Lang whereas, according to a large coffee-table book on the temples and architecture of Shansi published by the Shansi provincial authorities, the old temple had been dedicated to Li Mu, with no mention whatsoever of Wu Lang.\n\nLi Mu, like Yang Yeh, was a soldier renowned for his valour in guarding the northern frontiers against incursions from Central Asia. Li Mu was a general of the state of Chao during the 3rd century BC who always maintained a defensive posture and, ridiculed for it by the enemy, the barbarian Hsiung Nu, a major warring race, he was removed by his Prince. His successor failed miserably; Li was recalled and after intense drilling of his forces Li decisively defeated the Hsiung Nu; he also routed the forces of the neighbouring state of Ch'in. Finally, the ruler of Ch'in [who later became the first emperor of China, Ch’in Shih Huang-ti] succeeded by means of bribes to induce the Prince of Ch'ao to dismiss his great general. Li refused to accept the order to stand down and was put to death. Three months later, in 229 BC, Ch'in declared war and carried off the Prince of Ch'ao, annexing his state.\n\nThe question here is, which is correct? Folk memory claiming that the temple was dedicated to the 10th century hero, Yang Wu Lang or the official publication which claimed that the temple had been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214018, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "52 \n\ndedicated to the 3rd century BC hero, Li Mu? Peasant memories have so frequently proved to have been selective and extremely partial to local heroes and as the famous battle fought by Yang Yeh in northern Shansi took place quite close to the site of the temple it would be understandable for them to assume rightly or wrongly that the temple had been dedicated to his son in those distant days before the temple was destroyed. And here is another problem. No one nowadays knew when the temple had been demolished, the best bet would seem to be during the Japanese campaigns of the 1930s.\n\nNOTES\n\n'The Khitan [in Chinese Ch'i-tan] were Tatars who adopted the Chinese name Liao for their dynasty, and were hunters from approximately the area now known as Inner Mongolia\n\n4\n\n༣\n\n\"General\" in Chinese used to be a generic term for the leader of an independent body of soldiers and was even used for leaders of village militia groups as small as a score or so\n\nHe was also known as P'an Hung and referred to in the novel as the Sung Imperial adviser Hung-yang Tung At the Hung-yang cave)\n\nThe Eldest Son was Yang Yuan-ping, the Second Son, Yang Yen-ling, and the Third, Yang Yen-kuang.\n\n*This cult is in no way connected with Yang Hou, whose images have been noted in eight temples in Hong Kong and Macau\n\n7\n\nA small temple in Taipei is dedicated to the Four Ambassadors [who crossed to Taiwan] from the Chin Lake in Ch'uanchou, and despite the main deities within all being pestilence Wang-yeh, and acknowledged as such by the temple keeper, they were also identified as four of the sons of Yang Yeh. The images were well-nigh impossible to discern with any clarity as the protective plate glass was extremely grimy.\n\n8 Werner also noted that Ch'an Shih-kung was a popular deity in Kiangsi province whose aid was sought by peasants for rain during prolonged drought. He added that pictures of the deity in monasteries showed him with a vermilion mark on his forehead and with a tiger crouched at his feet. Legend explained that a tiger which had menaced travellers had been ordered by Ch'an Shih-kung to desist, and it had followed him like a dog thereafter. It would seem that the deity noted by Werner was not in any way connected with Yang Wu Lang.\n\n9 In a small Singapore temple the following title was inscribed into a multi-deity tablet, even though no images of the Yang clan were present: Hsien-feng Yang Chiang-chun Chi-chiao Wang-yeh [The Fleet of Foot Vanguard General].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214024, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "58\n\n上\n\nImage of the Fifth Son on a side altar in a temple originally dedicated entirely to him on the holy mountain of Wu T'ai Shan on the northern border of Shansi province. He is portrayed as the Buddhist monk he was.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214026, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "60\n\n1\n\nThe gateway in the col at the Pass of the Wild Geese in northern Shansi province where formerly a temple dedicated to the Yang family stood. Steps up to the site of the old temple are in the foreground.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214245, "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-1998", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "66\n\nIn Malaysia where a number of Tamils also pray in certain Chinese folk religion temples, they refer to Tou-mu on her tortoise and pigs as the sister of the deity Maritci.\n\n5] Pancika known in Chinese as Pan-chih-chia\n\nPancika is the third of the Eight Great Yakshas, one of the Eight Generals of Vaisravana, husband of Hariti. An image of Pancika is present in both the Pi-yun Ssu and the Ta Pei Ssu. His image in the latter depicts him as a semi-demon, with dark skin, large round eyes and a narrow coronet with a sunburst facing forward. He is dressed in colourful robes over armour and has the swirling scarf round the back of his head, draped over his arms. He is making a 'v' sign horizontally with his right hand pointing to his left, using his fore- and middle-fingers. He has no other unique characteristic. In the Pi-yun Ssu, however, he could easily be taken for Wei T'o but without Wei T'o's diamond sword. His hands are grasped together before his chest; otherwise, he is much the same as in the Ta Pei Ssu.\n\n6] Hariti known in Chinese as Kuei-tzu Mu The Mother of Demons\n\nHariti is also known as the Mother of Loving Children, the children sometimes being known as the malevolent Yaksha [Yeh-sha]. She was the mother of one thousand demons, half of them living in Heaven and the rest on Earth. She is one of the standard group of Twenty Devas [Erh-shih T'ien] though she, too, is regarded by some as a Yaksha.\n\nOriginally her diet had consisted solely of human children and only after Sakyamuni, the Buddha, snatched one of her five hundred children and hid it, causing her great anguish, did she come to realise the suffering she was causing to humans by her diet. She became a vegetarian and a devout Buddhist. She eventually became a Buddhist deity whose images were to be seen in a few temples in northern China, in Shansi in particular, portraying her as a tall, slim beautiful woman whilst beside her stood one or more tiny demonic creatures, some of her offspring.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214255, "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-1998", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "76\n\nfact that he is listed in Soothill as one of the Twenty Deva. His image is to be seen in both the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu. In both temples he is depicted as a ferocious guardian general with a wide gaping mouth, large round eyes and a highly decorated Buddhist crown. He holds the standard weapon, the vajra, the diamond sword, resting in his left hand and against his left shoulder, and has the swirling scarf behind his head. He is stripped to the waist, has bare legs beneath a highly colourful decorated skirt, and sandals. A mural in the Sakyamuni Pagoda in Ying county in Shansi province depicts Guhyapati in much the same form.\n\nThe Chin-kang as a group are minor deities, guardians belonging to the class of Lokapalas borrowed by Buddhism from Brahmanism. The standard four Chin-kang, the Diamond Kings, are each the ruler of the four continents surrounding Mount Sumeru and though Guhyapati Raja is a Chin-kang he is not one of the usual four. The standard four are the Ssu Ta T'ien-wang [see 23-26 below].\n\n23-26] Ssu Ta T'ien-wang XX The Four Great Celestial Kings\n\nThe Four Deva Kings, known also as the Four Diamond Kings, Ssu Ta Chin-kang X, are the four guardians whose images stand, usually portrayed much larger than life-size, just inside temple entrance doorways, in pairs, two to either side.\n\nWerner points out that these are not gods but guardians, Buddhist protectors who should be thought of as minor divinities. Chinese Buddhists adopted four Hindu Brahmin deities from Indian Buddhism, the Lokapala, the guardians of the four sides of the fabulous Mount Meru [the Guardians of the Four Corners of the World] who, in turn, were later adopted by the Taoists from the Chinese Buddhists. The Four were probably first introduced into China during the T'ang dynasty [6th and 7th centuries AD] and still today are regarded as the grim-faced temple guardian generals, enormous statues in T’ang armour, tamed demons who were redeemed and who now symbolise the seasons and control the elements of fire, water, earth and air. Although the majority of images of the Four stand up to and even over fifteen feet high they can also be as tiny as eighteen inches high. They used to be deities in their own right and offered worship, reverence and offerings. Nowadays however although most devotees solemnly place one smoulder-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214264, "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-1998", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "85\n\nIn addition to being the final arbiter in the judgement of souls and the Keeper of the Registers of Life and Death, Tung-yüeh Ta-ti protects the virtuous, especially those who are truthful, good and excel at filial piety.\n\nImages of Yama, that is Yen-lo Wang, are to be seen in both of the temples in the Western Hills where they are Deva, but together with Tung-yüeh Ta-ti, indicating that they are regarded as two separate deities in these temples.\n\n38] Tzu-wei Ta-ti\n\nThe Great Emperor of the Purple Heaven, a major Chinese Taoist stellar deity of the North Pole Star, the keeper of the book of destiny, a controller of blessings, and one of the most potent destroyers of demons, is revered for his power to ward off evil influences and spirits. In northern China he was occasionally regarded as one of the Four Heavenly Kings and portrayed as a benign middle-aged Taoist, with Taoist crown and tablet held between both hands before his chest. Icons bearing his likeness are pasted or nailed to doors as popular charms to ward off demonic attack.\n\nHis image stands in both the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu. In both he is portrayed as a standard Chinese Taoist figure, with long multi-coloured and highly decorated robes, and a small Taoist crown on his head. He has a benign face, a small goatee and moustache and in the Ta Pei Ssu holds both hands together before his chest as if holding a tablet. His image in the Pi-yun Ssu is similar but has the tablet in place.\n\nA mural in the Mahavira Hall of the Yunlin temple at Yangkao in Shansi portrays the Emperor Tzu-wei of the North Pole.\n\nThere is also some confusion within Cantonese communities about the role of this deity. In some temples he has been claimed to be the chief of the heterodox Taoist stellar deities and identified either as the god, or one of the gods of the Pole Stars. He is popular with the Boat People of the Pearl River estuary, and is also one of the stellar deities seen on charms and scrolls used during rituals. A number of devotees", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214300, "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-1998", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "122\n\nhis birth and childhood, and my favourite stamping ground in China Taiyuan, the capital of Shansi province, to his first wife, the daughter of John Mesny, a junior employee of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service, the life of whose elder brother, William Mesny, was the subject of my earlier research [vide.: my paper in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch: Volume 32, 1992]. Sowerby roamed far and wide throughout northern China before serving for a while in France as an officer with the Chinese Labour Corps [vide: my Note on Chinese Labour Corps Graves in England in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch Volume 29, 1989]. He then visited Fukien province and met Caldwell whose book on the Blue Tigers of that province had intrigued me when I was much younger. Finally, I was drawn to Sowerby's life story because he was not only a dedicated member of the North China Branch of the RAS in Shanghai for whom he wrote prolifically and eventually became its President, an honour he held for some five years, 1935-1940 but also because he produced his fascinating bimonthly journal on both everyday and exotic Chinese subjects. Since his death nearly fifty years ago he has faded into insignificance and is forgotten by all but those who happen to come across his books and journals.\n\nArthur Sowerby was an explorer and author who lived through very exciting times, first as the son of a Christian missionary in the Chinese interior at the time of the decline of the Manchu dynasty, through the Revolution of 1911 and the fall of the Manchu dynasty to the War Lord period during which he roamed some of the more remote areas of northern China. This was followed by the crises and struggle between the Nationalists and the Communists, the incursions and eventual full-scale invasion by the Japanese, his incarceration in an internment camp in Shanghai during the Second World War, ending with learning during his latter years in retirement, first in England and then in the United States, of the Communist victory in 1949 and, just before his death, of the Korean War when China sent its \"Volunteers\" to aid the North Koreans against the South Koreans and their allies which included the Americans and British. During the last thirty-five or so years of his life he suffered great pain wracked as he was by arthritis.\n\nIt was said that he could speak Chinese ‘like a Chinese.' There is no reason to doubt this as he must have learned it at his ayah's knee though he appears never to have made any effort to learn to read and write the language. During his life in China, the next forty or so years,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214301, "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-1998", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "123\n\nwhile trekking and living amongst Chinese his Chinese language skills must have been of immense value and probably were the prime reason why he was invited to join several natural history expeditions through northern China.\n\nArthur's father, the Reverend Arthur Sowerby was a missionary in China for forty years, mostly in Taiyuan though during his latter years he was a tutor to the sons of Republican President Yuan Shih-kai [who attempted to mount the imperial throne in 1916].\n\nSowerby was a man of his time. He would have seen the Chinese first, as a child and a young man, from a missionary point of view, “sad heathen souls needing saving,\" later, with the eyes of a traveller and so-called explorer as \"dullards who needed leadership and western civilisation,” and finally, as a businessman and resident in the Foreign Concession of Shanghai, where the Chinese were regarded as \"the Yellow Peril, natives to be kept at a distance, and frequently ridiculed.\" China and the Chinese were popularly denigrated by the Western community and Chinese in general were distrusted. These strongly rooted beliefs reflected nearly a century of western misunderstanding and reaction to Chinese conduct, and shaped the behaviour of Treaty Port Westerners and Britons in particular. However, Sowerby had a redeeming feature as the editor of and a writer for a journal, one of the aims of which was to educate foreigners living on Chinese soil on, amongst other things, Chinese culture,\n\nThe only connection this article has with the Millennium, however tenuous, was the fortunate escape of the Sowerby family, including the fifteen year-old Arthur, from the largest Boxer massacre of missionaries exactly a century ago in 1900. The great majority of Western missionaries in Shansi, many scores, were murdered - with the provincial Governor, Yü Hsien, taking part in the killing of fifty-one Catholic and Protestant missionaries in his yamen, and with a further fifty or so being killed elsewhere in the province. The Sowerbys were lucky enough to be back in England on long furlough at the time and the Reverend Arthur Sowerby who lost many friends and colleagues had the sad task of writing the obituaries of several of them.\n\nArthur was educated at home in Taiyuan and also at a missionary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214302, "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-1998", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "124\n\nschool in Chefoo in Shantung province before returning to England where he attended the Bath Art and Technical School. There he studied art before switching to Bristol University to read for a BSc in science. He would appear to have given up his higher education following the shattering of his romantic aspirations when he ran away to sea and worked his passage to Canada. He toiled for a while in Canada before returning to his parents in Taiyuan in 1905 with vague plans to hunt and explore the wild and barren areas of north China; he was twenty at the time. In practice he took up a teaching appointment at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin and only during the vacations was he able to hunt and seek specimens for the natural history museum he was establishing at the college. From the vague evidence available he would appear to have remained at the school for only a matter of a year as he was invited at the end of the final term to join the Duke of Bedford's expedition to collect zoological specimens in Shensi province for the British Museum. Shensi is the neighbouring province to Shansi and lies to its west.\n\nThe Duke of Bedford's expedition travelled through Sowerby's home province of Shansi where they lived for a week or so in one of the typical village cave houses of the Yellow Earth country, in a village some fifty miles west of Taiyuan. From there they continued west, across the Yellow River to Yenan in Shensi and on into the Ordos desert. Their return route took them north to the Great Wall, which they then followed to the east before turning south to Taiyuan down the main route through Shansi. The whole expedition took some five months and Arthur Sowerby would have been just twenty-one. It was during this expedition that Sowerby discovered a new species of jerboa [kangaroo rat] which was sent back to the British Museum and subsequently named after him, Dipus sagitta sowerbyi.\n\nComing from a missionary family he would have had little or no financial support from his father and would have needed to work for a living. He was sponsored for a number of years by a wealthy American, Robert Sterling Clark, who remained a friend for most of Sowerby's life, and although it is no more than supposition he may well have continued teaching at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin especially in view of his marriage in that city in 1910, at the age of twenty-six. The long vacations would have been an advantage enabling him to gather the material he later used in the China Journal, especially his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214309, "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-1998", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "131\n\nNot only did he write many of the Journal's editorials but also in each edition a number of miscellaneous articles on subjects ranging from hunting in Manchuria and boating as a holiday to the Hall of Antiquities in the Hude Museum in Shanghai - a pet project of his, as well as Scientific Notes and Reviews. His editorials ranged from Shanghai's Position in the World to China's New Industrialisation. A typical editorial described the colossal task facing the leaders of China's Republic and, as the years passed, so his editorials became more and more anti-Japanese. In the great age of European self-confidence these editorials reflected the general mood of expatriates not only in the Treaty Ports but also within the hinterland of China. None of this necessarily precluded a measure of genuine interest in Chinese culture though he, himself, appears not to have been a convinced ‘Orientalist.' He covered a vast range of subjects under broad-brush headings Engineering, Industrial and Commercial Notes; Scientific Notes and Reviews; Educational Notes and Intelligence and Travel and Exploration Notes.\n\nA number of articles written by people whose names have come down to us as authors of well-known books such as Florence Ayscough, L.C. Arlington, Juliet Bredon and James Hutson appeared in the Journal over the years. It would be impossible to list here many of the articles and papers printed issue by issue ranging as they did from tea to river craft, secret societies to criticisms on the Shanghai local artists exhibitions as well as descriptions of expeditions into the interior With Kua-tzu and Camera in the Yangtze Gorges by H. Foote-Carey and in 1923 - Investigation of the Thermal Dissociation of Hydrated Alumo-silicates, Prehnite, Zoisite and Epidote by E. Norin of the Nystrøm Institute, Taiyuan Fu, Shansi.\n\nIn early 1938 Arthur and his wife, Clarice, sold their interest in the China Journal to a new company called \"The China Journal Publishing Company Limited\" based at 117 Hong Kong Road, Shanghai, accepting part of the purchase price in shares of the new company. There were now three directors, H.J. Timperley, A. de C. Sowerby and H.J. Freyn. The manager at that point was a Mr. W.V.D. White with Clarice Moise no longer referred to on the staff of the Journal. Then, on 7 December 1941, after Pearl Harbour, men of the Japanese navy broke into the offices and destroyed everything, including the files, mailing lists, back numbers, and that was the end of the China Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214359, "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-1998", "page_number": 217, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "182\n\nLei Kung\n\nAll but Wei Hu now being commonly seen on popular religion temple altars,\n\n\" The other four are Hua Shan [in Shensi], the Lord of the Western Peak; Heng Shan [in Shansi] Lord of the Northern Peak; T'ai Shan [in Shantung], Lord of the Eastern Peak; and Heng Shan [in Hunan] Lord of the Southern Peak.\n\n10 Stevens, Keith: Chinese Gods: Collins and Brown: London: 1997: illustration on page 61\n\nsee also page 23 of Chinese Gods [ibid.] for illustration.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214363, "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-1998", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "187\n\nTEMPLES ARISE\n\nFROM THE ASHES OF REVOLUTION\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nReturning from each of our tours of temples in Mainland China the question most frequently posed is the extent to which religious freedom exists in China? I find this difficult to answer. I have yet to visit an area where we have observed any form of obvious religious discrimination or evidence of current iconoclasm. At the risk of being accused of being a 'blind' observer in a country with a record of political suppression, I know that constraint of religion by the State exists as I have read numerous articles in the Chinese press about Chinese government calls for crackdowns on illegal temples and superstitious practices, but the extent to which these instructions have been carried out has not been apparent during our tours around the countryside. Indeed, there are few signs of religious suppression in any form. In late 1997 we came across a small rural temple in one of the loess canyons some fifteen or so miles north-east of T'aiyüan in Shansi province and were told by one of the villagers that the local Public Security Police had ordered it be pulled down as it was 'a bad element, a manifestation of superstition'. The small modern shrine, constructed some eight years ago, contained just one deity, a very rough and amateurish, modern baked-mud and concrete image of the local protective spirit, Ts'ai T'ai-yeh. The PSB had passed through the village many times during the two years since they issued the order for the destruction of the image; however, the villagers had simply ignored it and even when crowds of visitors drove in by car during the annual festival on the fifteenth of the first lunar month, the PSB again had simply turned a blind eye.\n\nChina's constitution theoretically protects the freedom of religion in China with party members being dissuaded from practising. Whilst permissive religion is unquestionably allowed within certain bounds I suspect 'tolerance' should be substituted for the word freedom. The Bureau of Religious Affairs under the State Council in Peking permits the five major organised religions to worship as they wish, within reason. These are Taoism, Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism [known in China as 'Christian'] and Islam. The Bureau does, however, frown on and frequently clamps down on popular religion, [also known as folk religion and even as Taoism by foreigners who have not perceived the difference] and some of the smaller proselytising western", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214365, "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-1998", "page_number": 223, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "189\n\nIn late 1997 in northern Shansi province whilst touring round village temples as well as those on high mountains it was soon apparent that the Cultural Revolution had laid the majority of village temples low and left them in ruined dereliction. However, Buddhist temples far from the cities had been more fortunate and these still contained undamaged images albeit in a poor state of care. Many of the village temples were being used as squatter residences usually for a single elderly person, with the walls crumbling, the roofs matted with grass and weeds between the roofing tiles, doors and windows agley and hanging on one hinge, and in a few places the images of the old deities still lying on their backs on the floor where they had been flung thirty years earlier by the Red Guards, and awaiting rescue. Villagers were still interested in their temples but have not the funds to do anything about renovation, at least for yet a while. The elderly remembered the gods and the majority had small cheap images, on their household altars or paper icons pasted to their walls, mainly of Kuan Yin and Kuan Kung.\n\nOne temple stood out as a born-again Buddhist establishment, with an in-house priest and several ladies ranging from very old to a young woman in her late twenties who all cared for him and hung on his every word. They were punctilious with their greetings and their constant invocation of O-mi-t'o Fu, as well as with their gentle pressure on their foreign visitors to feel the sanctity of the place and, in particular, of their priest. The temple, a recently refurbished building of wood and tiles on the site of a former temple, had no feel of age nor did it in any way bring to mind its former self, the building which had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Sadly, it was a utilitarian construction with a few religious appendages, and similar in style to many an old village school with little if any of the sense of numinous felt in old temples.\n\nAlso during this visit to northern Shansi we came across the old temple which had been dedicated to Wu Lang. This was described in detail in Volume 37 in an article entitled the Yang family of Generals.\n\nMainland press reports during the years 1995-6 have frequently referred to provincial crackdowns on the construction of 'illegal' religious temples as well as the excessive building of tombs. Some regions, it was reported, had been seeking to promote tourism by engaging in superstitious activities on the pretext of respecting \"the traditional culture of the motherland.\" The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the party, called for a complete ban on Chinese tourists paying homage at temples and monasteries, even though such practices have been tolerated", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214366, "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-1998", "page_number": 224, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "190\n\nfor\n\nmany years. Although the government had turned a blind eye to such activities in the past, mainly in the name of making tourist dollars, it now focused attention on these 'superstitious rituals' which were said to be daily corroding the ideology of the people. The magazine, saying that market forces had prompted a resurgence of 'backward' religious practices, described how the system of traditional beliefs which had been finding fertile ground in the countryside was now creeping towards urban centres. This would seem neither to have inhibited nor prevented Taiwanese pilgrims flying into mainland China bearing Taiwanese images of deities to their particular cult centres in Fukien and Chekiang provinces for their 'power' [ling] to be renewed. It has to be remembered, however, that Taiwanese visitors are treated as privileged guests.\n\nProblems of luck and fate are as real today in China as they are in any rural society, and as they were in pre-communist China. Some private firms are reported maintaining altars on company premises and are making offerings to the traditional God of Wealth in the belief that this would help ensure their success in business. Buddhist statues have been placed in cultural centres and tutelary deities adorn the roofs of schools. Children too seem to have succumbed to the craze. A survey of 1,622 children between 11 and 12 in Changchun showed 50 per cent believed in fate and 40 per cent believed in the immortality of the soul. A further 40 per cent of boys and nearly 60 per cent of girls believed in spirits and in Heaven and Hell. It went on to describe the resurgence of superstitious practices and the appearance of several 'reactionary sects.' The September 1996 issue of Democracy and Legal System magazine said that tens of thousands of temples dedicated to China's colourful assembly of gods were being illegally built or restored. It quoted 20,1692 in Fukien province, 9,000 in Honan and 10,000 in Shansi provinces had been destroyed, and even 597 state-run restaurants in Peking had taken down and removed Buddhist shrines during one month alone. A further report described a similar crackdown in Hupei province where 1,600 'pagan' shrines, mostly dedicated to the Earth God, had been destroyed as part of the nation-wide crackdown. Similar action had been taken in Kueichou province where nine illegal temples had been closed in one month. A report about Chekiang province about the same time claimed that provincial officials had brought under control 17,900 Taoist, Buddhist or Christian [sic] temples and monasteries.\n\nThe mainland newspaper, Paok'an Wenchai, had about this same time criticised the widespread superstitious practices in the building", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214368, "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-1998", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "192\n\nfunded for the temple.\n\nA logical progression, though always thought impossible in Mainland China, has been the deification of the late Chairman Mao. In Taiwan we have seen images of Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen on altars, revered as are the scores of historical worthies and heroes, but the thought that one day an image of Mao Tse-tung would grace the altar of a Chinese temple was so far fetched as to be ludicrous. None the less, Reuters printed a picture of a peasant in a rural temple in northern Shansi in early 1996 standing before a life-size image of Mao on the altar. Another sighting, of the small white bust of Mao on a household altar in a village on the banks of a river in the upper reaches of Yünnan province during the summer of 1997, was easily explained. The altar bore no other images and it was through this village and across the village's bridge, during the Long March, that the Chinese Red Army passed leaving behind a strong folk memory.\n\nMao, it must be remembered, was revered as a god in his lifetime, with cadres and Red Guards bowing before his image during the Cultural Revolution, and reporting the day's activities. And it has not been uncommon for taxi drivers in some of the major cities during the late 1980s and early 1990s to carry pictures of Mao suspended from their rear-view mirror as a protective amulet, though this has been more of a gimmick, but the idea of a statue of Mao on the altar in present day China is still astounding.\n\nWhat is less strange, perhaps, is the description of a Mao image being carried at the head of a religious procession in Fukien province, providing \"legality\" for this ritual procession of deities. Posters portraying the main Central political leaders were also borne aloft at the head of the procession.3\n\nNo doubt there have been zealous cadres carrying out the anti-feudal, iconoclastic purges following the party line and, recalling the clue provided in the report on Hupei, it would seem more than likely that the large number of illegal temples and shrines destroyed are in fact the small rural shrines dedicated to the Earth God which farmers have in their fields. By and large, it has been quite obvious that in general people will continue to go to temples to offer prayers and incense, and that temples and the deities will thrive, or possibly simply survive.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214372, "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-1998", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "196\n\nThe small modern Shrine in rural Shansi which had been ordered to be destroyed by the PSB, an order ignored by the villages.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214373, "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-1998", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "Gateway over the wild Goose Pass (M) in northern Shansi with ruins of old temple dedicated to Wu Lang in the foreground.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214374, "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-1998", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "198\n\nA derelict village temple some dozen miles west of Taiyuan in Shansi.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]