[ { "id": 204247, "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-1961", "page_number": 15, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n12\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nOne by one successive tribes arose Huns, Avars, Turks, Mongols, Manchus-dashed themselves against the frontiers of the Empire, and sometimes recoiling proceeded through Central Asia to Europe, sometimes breaking through the Wall, submerged for a time the whole Empire.\n\nApart from some stone monuments found in Central Asia, few but of great importance, the record of these tribes is to be found in the Chinese Histories, with references in the Greek authors of the Byzantine Empire, whenever the tribes impinged upon the West.\n\nInterest in collecting the Scythian bronzes commenced with Peter the Great. It is natural that the Russians and the scholars of Eastern Europe should be the first to be interested in the history of the Central Asian tribes. To them is largely due the excavations in Southern Europe and Siberia, and also in Mongolia. But in English we have the massive work 'Scythians and Greeks' by E. H. Minns. The Turks also are particularly interested in these studies, which have thrown much light upon the origin of the Turkish peoples.\n\nOne outcome of the struggle of the Chinese Empire with the Huns was the first extension of Chinese power in Central Asia, through the Tarim Basin, the present Sinkiang, to the Pamirs. This chapter in world history includes the fascinating account of the journey of Chang Ch'ien to the West in the second century B.C., the exploits of Pan Ch'ao in the Tarim Basin in the first century A.D., and the despatch of a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, to the shores of the Persian Gulf,\n\nDuring the first and second centuries the famous silk trade arose between China and Rome, recorded by Ptolemy and the Chinese histories. For a short time the land route between China and the West was open. The road passed through the Tarim Basin, between the northern grasslands and Tibet. It also became the great highway between India and China.\n\nThe Tarim Basin is one of the most remarkable geographical regions in the world, lying as it does between glaciated mountains on three sides, with a waterless desert in the centre. Around the desert, watered by streams from the mountains, are the oasis towns and villages, which form stepping stones as it were for travellers passing from east to west, or from west to east. By this thoroughfare have passed from time immemorial the travellers of Central Asia-merchants, soldiers, monks. And by this thoroughfare the great cultural influences-Indian, Persian, Greek-have passed with Buddhism from Western and Southern Asia to China. By this thoroughfare Chinese colonization spread to the Pamirs. By this route Marco Polo journeyed to China in the thirteenth century.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204618, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "86\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nin the north-east quarter of the city, well away from the new diplomatic quarter.2\n\nAll accommodation for foreign embassies was to be concentrated in one area outside the east wall of the city, and about one and a half miles from a newly constructed gate, just near to the old astronomical instruments which can still be seen on top of the east wall. Eventually, after negotiations, the new British Legation was allotted two large houses and two blocks of flats in this new diplomatic quarter. The last christening was performed in the Legation chapel, the books in the small library were taken off their shelves, the flag at the gate was hauled down, and everything was packed.3 Among the more colourful of the closing scenes in the life of the old British Legation should be mentioned the two Commonwealth cricket matches played in the Autumn of 1958 between the Moonrakers, captained by Mr. Duncan Wilson, the British Chargé d'Affaires, and the Woolgatherers captained by the Indian Ambassador, Mr. G. Parthasaratly. The rules governing this diplomatic cricket were many and local but the chief rule of all was that if anyone hit a ball into the grounds of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security next door his whole side was out.\n\nFinally, in September 1959, the staff moved to their new quarters and thus after nearly one hundred years of continuous occupation the existence of the old British Legation in Peking came to an end. From an historical and sentimental point of view its loss was sad. But from a realistic point of view which\n\n20 This was built on a site which had been granted to Russia as far back as the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689). As a result of fighting between Russian settlers on the frontier between Siberia and Manchuria about a hundred Russian prisoners were brought to Peking in the period 1683-5. They were formed into a company, given a place of residence in the northeast corner of Peking, close to the Lama Temple, and intermarried with Chinese and Manchus. They retained their Greek Orthodox faith and were allowed to have their own priests. See Michel N. Pavlovsky, Chinese-Russian Relations (New York, 1949) 145-164. It was to this place, known as the Pei-kuan (\"Northern Hostel\") that the members of the Russian ecclesiastical mission transferred in 1861.\n\n30 Unfortunately the imposing Royal Coat of Arms which dignified the gateway of the old Legation was too large to fit properly into the new Legation buildings. Mr. Michael Stewart, the Chargé d'Affaires at the time of the move, arranged with Sir Robert Black, the Governor of Hong Kong, that the Coat of Arms should be sent to Government House in Hong Kong. It is now fixed onto the wall at the far end of the long ballroom of Government House, which it dominates by the brilliance of its colours,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205099, "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "50\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nmonks, missionaries and translators of the holy scriptures came from Iranian Central Asia at a time when there was certainly no universal peace in Asia. But was there really something like a Pax Mongolica, even during a very short time? The Mongol rulers of China who had adopted the Chinese dynastic name of Yüan in 1271, regarded themselves, from Khubilai on, more as rulers of China than of a universal empire of which China was only a part. This is reflected, as we shall see, in the Yuan dynastic history which is usually vague and uninformed as soon as a geographical area outside of China proper is mentioned. Although Khubilai was the Great Khan of all Mongols, his rule was always threatened by dissatisfied pretenders who tried to set up their own kingdoms in the Northern and Western regions, and there are recorded, in Chinese historical sources at least, as many feuds, campaigns and full-scale wars with other Mongol rulers and pretenders as good-will embassies from the other Mongol ulus (dominions); those of Chagatai in Central Asia, the Ilkhans in Persia and the Golden Horde rulers of Southwestern Siberia and South Russia. The situation, at least in the fourteenth century, among the non-Chinese ulus was not much different. The Golden Horde rulers and the Persian Ilkhans were, to say the least, not friendly to each other and war was frequent. In short, it seems as if the Pax Mongolica is no more than one of those brilliant simplifications that can serve as chapter titles for world history books. There remains some doubt whether it was easier to get from, say, Venice or the Black Sea region or Persia to China under the Mongols than some centuries earlier.\n\nHowever that may be, there can be no doubt that there was a certain amount of cultural contact between China and the non-Chinese West under the rule of the Mongol emperors. But the fact remains that there was no Chinese Marco Polo, no Chinese Rubruk or Giovanni da Montecorvino. China, it seems, was not very much interested in learning more about the countries of the West; we have in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no Chinese pilgrims like I-ching and Hsüan-tsang who had travelled to India in search of the Buddhist religion. There was no appeal and no challenge to learn more about the West. This relative indifference towards the civilization outside one's own geographical habitat and cultural background is to be seen in The Secret History of the Mongols, This fascinating book, the oldest", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205991, "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-1970", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "66\n\nCOLONEL V. R. BURKHARDT\n\nyellowish cream with two rows of largish black spots. Emergence took place so quickly after this observation that the stage could not be figured.\n\nThe insect, on emergence, hangs head down, forewings slightly separated and the long tails limp and crumpled. In fifteen minutes the expanding fluid has done its work, the tails are stiff and straight, and the butterfly opens the forewings for drying. If disturbed it attempts a short flight within half an hour of its first appearance. The males were fairly active in the breeding cage to which they had been transferred on pupation, and sought the side of the light. When released on a wooded hillside as dusk was approaching, they did not fly far, but settled with outspread wings on a nearby bush. Only one had a tail damaged in transit but, in nature, many of them are seen tailless, and they are hard to net in undamaged condition.\n\nAs Lamproptera curius was fully out on 9th June, and again reached its peak on 20th July, it would appear that at the most favourable period of the year the cycle is just under six weeks. In spring and autumn it is probably extended to two months, and the butterfly may be expected to be on the wing from February in a mild winter to the end of November, or beginning of December which usually heralds the first cold winds from Siberia.\n\nImago. Wing span male: 36 mm. female 40 mm.\n\nForewing: both sexes pointed and very straight along the outer margin. Transparent with a black frame about 2 mm broad, with seven well-defined black veins from apex to tornus. The basal area black fringed with white which covers about half the hyaline area which is interrupted by a triangle of black from the leading edge (costal margin) to the last but one vein from the tornus.\n\nHind wings: upper part black crossed by a vertical white stripe continuous with the white on the upper wing. There is a tuft of white hairs on the base of the wing. The lower part of the wing, which is markedly elongated, is spangled with white dots, the inner edge being stepped and covered with reddish-brown hairs. The tails are 25 mm in length, and are black fringed with silvery white ending in a white tag.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212395, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 337, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "314\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nPeter Hopkirk, The Great Game, On Secret Service in High Asia. (Oxford University Press 1991) 524 pp. illus., index.\n\nWhere Britain and other Western powers extended their colonial influence by the sea-routes, Russia's empire was achieved overland, first into Siberia and then east and southeast into Central Asia. Inevitably this brought Russian armies and officials nearer the frontier with British India, causing alarm in London; and throughout the nineteenth century a continuing system of intelligence-seeking and diplomatic nursing of local chiefs occupied some of the brightest and most adventurous of Russian and British officers and agents.\n\nThis was the Great Game of Hopkirk's title, a phrase popularised by Kipling but first coined by young Lt. Connolly of the 6th Bengal Native Light Cavalry fifty years earlier. It was certainly not a game for the soft-hearted, the difficulty being that any Briton found making maps or gathering information in the wild kingdoms north of the Himalayas was suspected of plotting a British invasion and would certainly risk death.\n\nThe story begins after the defeat of Napoleon when the Russians were strong and confident and felt that Central Asia was their rightful sphere. Russian troops fought their way southwards through the Caucasus, then inhabited by fierce Muslim and Christian tribesmen, towards northern Persia. Then the pressure switched eastwards, and by the middle of the century, as one after another of the cities and khanates of the former Silk Road fell to Russian arms, it looked part of a grand design to bring the whole of Central Asia under Russian control. Once that was achieved, strategists in London feared, the final advance would be on India.\n\nAs the gap between the two frontiers gradually narrowed, the Great Game intensified. Despite the dangers, there was no lack of young officers ready to risk their lives, filling in the blanks on the map, reporting on Russian movements. One of the earliest in the field, in 1810, was young Lt. Henry Pottinger, who would become Hong Kong's first Governor thirty-odd years later. He was bright, brave and self-confident. And there were just as courageous operators on the Russian side.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212857, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "151\n\na handful, because efforts had to be made in order to make sure that there would be enough male Jews to constitute a daily Minyan.\n\nThis community was by far the most prominent of the three groups of Jewish residents in Shanghai. They were among the first foreign traders in the metropolis, bearing names that included Sassoon, Kadoorie, Ezra, Abraham, Solomon, Rahmin, Moses, and Gubby, families still active in Hong Kong today, and were a part of the international mercantile community in the Far East at that time, enjoying business and personal links with the close-knit Jewish communities in Hong Kong and Bombay. At first they traded in raw cotton and general goods, then took over the opium trade. In time, in Shanghai as well as in Hong Kong and Bombay, they branched out into real estate, banking, shipping, warehousing, insurance, hotels, utilities, and other industries, gaining power and influence locally as well as in international commerce. The names of 38 prominent Sephardic Jews were found among the 1932 list of 99 members of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.\n\nAshkenazi Jews\n\n6\n\nImmediately following the completion of the trans-Siberian Railroad and the pogrom in Russia in 1905, a number of Russian Jews moved to Manchuria through Siberia, with about 300 filtering down to Shanghai. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, more than 10,000 Jews emigrated to Harbin. Apparently at that time the Chinese government had been contemplating expelling the Jews from Manchuria. In the mid 1920s when White Russians and Japanese interests began to spread in Manchuria, many of the earlier immigrants moved southward to Tianjin and Shanghai, swelling the total Jewish population in Shanghai to just under 2,000.\n\nThe Ashkenazi community of Jews in Shanghai, mostly Russian but by then joined by stragglers from Lithuania as well, increased to more than 1,000 after 1924. They were not exactly embraced by the Sephardic community of Shanghai. The Ashkenazi were not princes of commerce, but small businessmen who engaged in the import and export of such items as wool, bristles, and fur. The Chinese in Shanghai remembered Jewish salesmen going from house to house, carrying rugs for sale. The Ashkenazi Jews were also professionals; physicians and lawyers, for instance; and, above all, musicians.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212911, "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": 220, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "205\n\nout as soon as I was able to make out my surroundings. I have never seen such a dense swarm of mosquitoes. Thank goodness we never had to use this shelter.\n\nOur departure for Hong Kong that spring was dramatic. From the hospital we took the ancient hospital motor boat down the creeks to Canton. We found the river steamer for Hong Kong moored in the fast flowing stream. It was surrounded by an impenetrable mob of sampans carrying people fleeing from the Japanese attack on Canton which was expected any day. Our motor boat could not get to the gangway so we transferred to a sampan. We approached the ladder from downstream as most of the boats were tied to the steamer upstream. We soon found out why because as each sampan cast off from the ladder another, aided by the stream, pushed its way in from upstream. We could make no headway. The only possible approach was from the bows. As we worked our way slowly down we saw that the captain was getting worried by the crowds swarming on board. He had to sail or be swamped. Our luggage was manhandled across the intervening sampans but my father would not allow us to be passed along in the same way, which I thought was a pity. The captain saw us and waited only until our sampan at last made the steps. He then gave the order for his crew to chop through the mooring ropes of all the sampans still tied on. Once freed of these, he weighed anchor and set off for Hong Kong - an overnight journey.\n\nP & O to England – Canadian Pacific to China\n\nIn 1933 my father was due for leave so the whole family, now comprising four children and parents, set off on the P. & O Rawalpindi, a ship which was converted to be an armed merchantman during the war and sunk by a U boat. Travel by sea was the most commonly used way to reach Europe. From about 1933 one could go a little faster by taking the Trans-Siberian railway. Fast mail was marked 'Via Siberia' on the envelopes. The sea journey involved four days at sea to Singapore and trips to the Botanical Gardens there. Then on to Penang, Colombo, Aden, through the Suez Canal perhaps with a stop at Marseilles, where some in a hurry got on the train through France to England, a stop at Gibraltar and thence to Plymouth where we got off for a train to Herefordshire. Most passengers went on to Tilbury in London. There was a leisurely routine about the trip. Beef tea was served on the deck mid-morning and tea in the afternoon. An enterprising steward rounded up a number of children to help him gather up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213389, "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-1994", "page_number": 211, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "199\n\nDewey, John and Alice Chapman Dewey, Letters from China and Japan, New York Dutton, 1920\n\nDictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644, edited by Carrington Goodrich, et al, New York Columbia University Press, 1976\n\nDingle, E.J., Across China on Foot, Bristol Arrowsmith, 1918 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing)\n\nDobell, Peter, Travels in Kamchatka and Siberia, with a Narrative of Residence in China, London H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830\n\nDonne, G.H., Generation of Giants. The Story of the Jesuits in China in the Last Decade of the Ming Dynasty, Notre Dame University of Notre Dame Press, 1962\n\nDonovan, John F., The Pagoda and the Crows, the Life of Bishop Ford of Maryknoll, New York Charles Scribner, 1967\n\nDowning, C. Toogood, The Fan-qui in China in 1836-7, London Henry Colburn, 1838 (Shannon Reprint, Irish University Press)\n\nDyce, Charles M., Personal Reminiscences of 30 Years Residence in the Model Settlement, Shanghai 1870-1900, London Chapman and Hall, 1906\n\nEames, James Bromley, The English in China, London Curzon Press, 1909 (New York Reprint Barnes and Noble)\n\nEarl, Lawrence, One Foreign Devil (on Mary Ball. A Medical Missionary in North China), London Hodder and Stoughton, 1962\n\nEdkins, Jane Rowbotham, Chinese Scenes and People, London Nisbet, 1863\n\nEdwards, Dwight W., Yenching University, New York United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, with a sequel by Y.P. Mei on Yenching in Chengtu, 1959\n\nElliot, Robert, Views From the East, London I. Fisher, 1835\n\nEllis, Sir Henry (1777-1855), Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China, Comprising a Correct Narrative of the Public Transactions of the Embassy, of the Voyages to and From China, and of the Journey From the Mouth of the Pei-Ho to the Return to Canton, 2nd edition, London J. Murray, 1818\n\nEnders, Elizabeth Crump, Swinging Lanterns, New York Appleton, 1923\n\n— Temple Bells and Silver Sail, New York Appleton, 1923\n\nEnglishman in China, The, London Saunders, Otley, 1860", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216429, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "138\n\npreyed on the Chinese who had settled in Siberia, north of the Amur River, and every now and then, upon those who lived in Manchuria just south of the river. The Russian bandits gradually disappeared from this region, and their place was more and more taken by Chinese, and so the term Hung Hutse came to be applied to Chinese bandits as well, even though the latter with rare exception have no beards.'\n\nAnother version provided by an American reporter with a vivid imagination explained that the bandits painted their faces red and wore false beards to engender fear in the hearts of all and sundry.\n\nBrindle related the story of two Hong Huzi chiefs who held high positions in the Imperial Army of China, and periodically visited Peking. They had organised large bands of Hong Huzi during the summer and autumn of 1904, the result being a determined and continual harassment of outlying Russian camps. The Hong Huzi, he wrote, 'were splendid horsemen, well armed and mounted on Manchurian ponies, and made admirable irregulars.'\n\nTwo early French travellers, Ular and Mury, described a community in northern Manchuria as 'Zheltuga, the republic of the Chinese bandits, the Hong Huzi'. Zheltuga was the community of illegal Chinese gold miners which existed on the banks of the Heilongjiang [Amur], the border between Manchuria and Russia, between 1883 and 1886. It consisted of Russians and Chinese who flocked into the area from Siberia and Manchuria when gold was found in the area of the present Chinese town of Mohe as far north as one can get in Manchuria. Zheltuga lasted three years and was destroyed by the Qing in 1886. There would appear to be no corroboration of the French claim, and the miners so described consisted of unauthorised speculators who doubtless were referred to as bandits by the Qing authorities and by extension as Hong Huzi. They may, perhaps, have been a community dominated by Hong Huzi but it is doubtful whether they were an organised community of Red Beards.\n\nGeneral Ma, one of China's generals stationed in northern Manchuria near its border with Mongolia, attracted significant attention of the Russians as he was one of a small but powerful party who urged the Chinese Government to cast her lot with the Japanese, making common cause against the encroaching northern Power. Many of his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]