[ { "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": 206080, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n155\n\nnot a general practice, it was probably due to the easiness of running before the wind that the ships could become such large hulks. Unfortunately, we do not know who built them.\n\nBy the eighth century, the boats had become huge. \"Ladders several tens of feet high had to be used to get on board.\" The trade was organised. Foreign captains had to be registered with the Office of Trading Ships, which inspected manifests and collected export and import duties. These captains had legal powers to deal with offending passengers when at sea.\n\nIn 758, the Mohammedans had so much the upper hand in Canton that they yielded to the temptation of sacking and burning the city and making to sea with the loot. However, trade continued to flourish, the principal imports being, according to Soleyman, ivory, frankincense, ingots of copper, turtle shells, and rhinoceros horns (with which the Chinese used to make girdles), and the principal exports: silk and porcelain.\n\nThe foreign ships also carried as passengers Chinese Buddhists visiting the holy places in Java and India. In the biographies of sixty pilgrims composed by I Ching,12 37 of them took the sea route to India. Some of these went from the Tonkin delta region, but the majority started from Canton or returned thither. The compass was still unknown in those days, and the first mention of its use for navigation in Chinese literature occurs at the beginning of the 12th century.\n\nV. T'UN MUN\n\nIn the preceding sections, a picture has been given of the elements which made up the population of South China up to the end of the T'ang dynasty. We now come to our region — the peninsula South East of the Canton delta, and we must do our best to piece together such fragments of historical knowledge that we can find into a sequence which will indicate how its population developed and thrived.\n\nThe first historical reference to any place in the region occurs in a list of itineraries from China to the Persian Gulf collected\n\n11 Tang Kuo Shih Pu, by Li Chan.\n\n12 義淨,大唐西行求法高僧傳", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207792, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n165\n\nboats as far as Bhamo, and then partly by land and partly by water into China. Other exports were amber, ivory, precious stones, betel nuts, and edible birds' nests; while in return Burma got raw and wrought silk, velvet, gold leaf, preserves, and chinaware. Similar reports came from other sources. By 1850, the possibility of extending trade from Yunnan into Szechwan was envisaged, and the glowing prospect of an extensive market for British goods in West China became an obsession among many British officials and merchants in Burma and India.\n\nCaptain McLeod's mission of 1836 is the first official British attempt to find an overland route to China. McLeod went from Moulmein, the port in the newly acquired province of Tenasserim, via Kungtang to Kenghang, a Shan state on the border of China. Here he failed to get permission to enter Yunnan, being told that if the British wanted to trade with China they should go to Canton, and that if he still persisted in wanting to enter Yunnan he would require official permission from Peking. McLeod had to admit defeat, and turned back.\n\nAfter this came a succession of other ventures from Assam and Burma, all—for one reason or another—failures. These culminated in the famous and ill-fated Dual Mission of 1874-75, which led to the Margary Affair.* This was a joint attempt to explore West China from the Burmese and Chinese sides. Previous to this the only important attempts to find a route between Burma and China from the eastern side had been Captain Blakiston's in 1861 and T. T. Cooper's in 1868.\n\nThe Royal Navy's expedition of 1861 which went up the Yangtze to establish the first treaty ports on the great river—Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow—continued 153 miles beyond Hankow to Yochow. Here they transferred Blakiston's party to junks in which they continued for another 1050 miles to Pingshan, nearly 1800 miles from the sea and 400 miles above Chungking. It had been intended to follow the Yangtze to its source in Tibet, and then cross the Himalayas into India. Because of unsettled political conditions at Pingshan and beyond, however, they were forced to turn back; but they had obtained valuable information about the Middle and Upper Yangtze.\n\nSee pp. 169-170 below.\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208470, "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "178\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\nThe fact that in the Tsin Dynasty (#), 303-379 AD, the technique had been widely used, and about the seventh or eighth century the Chinese already used woodblock to print calendars (Ɔ).\n\nThe oldest woodblock printed book still in existence, so far as we understand, is the Diamond Sutra (✨#∞) a Buddhist text (**) printed in the year 868 AD, which was found along with thousands of manuscripts from Mokao (†) the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (†) at Tun-huang ( ). Tun-huang, a city situated on the outskirt of the Lob Desert in western Kansu Province (+), was once the main gate of the Old Silk Road (***). From the first century until the fourteenth century, merchants, caravans, travellers, monks, and armies leaving for the West all passed through Tun-huang on their way to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Europe. The Italian merchant Marco Polo („§ +) used the same route to come to China.\n\nHollowed out in irregular tiers along the face of a steep cliff, the cave temples of the Thousand Buddhas were known in the Tang Dynasty () as Mokao or “Grottos of Surpassing Height\". They are located a few miles southeast of Tun-huang City. There had been huge Buddhist monasteries at the place for centuries, but it became forgotten when the Ming Dynasty (#9) began trading with the West by sea, and since then most of the caves had been buried by the shifting sand of the desert. In the late nineteenth century, it was rediscovered by a Taoist Priest called Wang Yuan-lu (10*), but by then all the wooden structures of the monasteries had vanished, and only the stone caves used as shrines remained.\n\nMokao is more than five thousand feet in length and consists of four hundred and ninety-two caves of various sizes. Over two thousand Buddhist statues and numerous huge murals can still be found in the caves. If we could have all the murals linked together, they would be at least twenty-five miles long.\n\nIn the year 1899, Wang Yuan-lu discovered an old monastery library in a walled-up chamber behind a mural in one of the caves. In the chamber, he found more than twenty thousand volumes of manuscripts and woodblock-printed documents and books, among them the Diamond Sutra. The news of the discovery soon spread abroad. In 1907 an Englishman, Sir Aurel Stein, traded with the priest and carried away 29 cases of manuscripts and books. More", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208697, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n127\n\nhave been uniformly courteous to us, except under the eyes of their masters and I think they realize that their position is a precarious one. They are, however, pretty cruel at times to the Chinese.\n\nExcept army trucks, there is no transport in the city. On the Pokfulam Road, however, the Chinese have resurrected a few very small wooden carts with tiny iron wheels which they laboriously pull along up the grades of the winding Island Road. Only a few bus routes are in operation. The Aberdeen route is running; the University route via Caine Road is in operation, and the Stanley run, with a bus every two hours, completes the service. The trams, of course, are running and quite crowded. Ferry service has been resumed, but on a very limited scale. I speak only for Hong Kong, as I know little about conditions over in Kowloon. As for purely private cars, practically none are seen in the streets, all having been confiscated and shipped to Japan. A taxi service was attempted but the fares were prohibitive.\n\nThe Dairy Farm is functioning under, of course, Japanese management and control. However, over half the dairy herd has been shipped out of the Colony to Formosa and Japan. A few British overseers have been retained. The milk is being sold for thirty yen a small bottle, but it is of very watery consistency. No butter is available.\n\nAs for the once flourishing harbor, it is now bare of shipping, save for an occasional Japanese freighter. Occasionally, a destroyer or two or a small cruiser are seen in the harbor, but they come and go. As will be remembered, the regular east channel leading to the harbor has been blocked with scuttled and burned ships, so all vessels now enter Hong Kong by the west channel, which passes just beneath Bethany, so we have a splendid view of all incoming and outgoing ships. Now and then we will see a steamer limping into port, disabled and apparently sinking. Once a convoy of some seven or eight ships entered and left the harbor, and on two occasions we saw a very large trans-Pacific liner like the Asama or Chichibu Maru enter and leave. On another occasion, a small destroyer engaged in maneuvers ran aground just to the south of Bethany on a point near the Dairy Farm, but was later pulled off by tugs. Before the war, the British were assembling ten thousand ton fabricated ships in Kowloon, and apparently the Japanese found one of these under construction, as later on we saw it under-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208944, "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-1980", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "74\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\nOriginally the Spanish had hoped to gain a share of the Moluccan spice trade from Manila, but the Portuguese and later the Dutch were too strongly entrenched and the trade with China soon became virtually the Philippines' only economic resource. Silk and other Chinese goods were brought to Manila at first by Chinese junks and after about 1604 also by Portuguese ships from Macau. In the 1630s the annual value of imports from Macau to Manila averaged about 1.5 million silver pesos. At the end of the 16th century between 40 and 50 large seagoing junks were still coming yearly to Manila from Fukien bringing Chinese goods, which they sold for Mexican and Peruvian silver pesos and rials-of-eight.20 In 1573, for example, the two galleons bound for Acapulco carried 712 bolts of Chinese silk and 22,300 pieces of fine china gilt and other porcelain wares.21\n\nAlthough the Manila merchants gained enormous profits from this trade, the government of the colony had an annual deficit of between 85 to 350 thousand pesos. The Mexico treasury made up this deficit with silver bullion, much of which found its way into the coffers of the Chinese merchants. This tremendous drain on Spanish resources led to various proposals being put forward to abandon the Philippines altogether. The merchants of Seville, who enjoyed a monopoly of the trans-Atlantic carrying trade with Nueva España, and the Andalusian textile manufacturers, who feared that Mexico and Peru would be flooded with cheap Chinese silks, were especially hostile to the Philippine colony. In the end, they succeeded only in having the trade restricted to the Manila-Acapulco route, the trade between Mexico and Peru abolished, and the value of the goods to be shipped annually from Manila to Acapulco restricted to 250,000 pesos, which was deemed a large enough quota to maintain the Philippine colony and small enough to be easily absorbed in Mexico. In practice, however, the value of the goods shipped from Manila was closer to 2 million pesos a year, the quantity of merchandise loaded being determined not by royal decree but by the amount of cargo space available on the galleons. The Chinese packers were extremely skilled at cramming goods into the galleons, with resulting overlading, which caused many shipwrecks. Individual seamen were also each allowed to carry one chest, which, as one contemporary wryly observed, had a most expansive capacity.22 Space on the galleons was bought by a few wealthy entrepreneurs and by groups such as the cathedral chapter and charitable foundations such as orphanages and hospitals, which often amassed enough", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212182, "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "101\n\nignorance. The cook, on the other hand, a tall northerner from Tientsin, would blanch at the first sound of the siren and bolt like a rabbit to his hole; and our little amah, a timid soul, would stand and weep in a corner. At one time we got quite worried about her, because whenever there was a raid her temperature went up; she, however, recovered her normal poise when she followed her \"missy\" to the quieter atmosphere of Wuhu.\n\nDuring all this period the Chinese commercial community watched the attitude of the foreign residents and judged of the progress of the war from what they read into their movements. The war had naturally resulted in a severe restriction of credit and we were all concerned with the collection of outstanding accounts. One foreign business man, who controlled a large upcountry organisation, maintained that his wife's continued residence in Nanking inspired his Chinese agents with such confidence that they continued to remit funds, so that he estimated her presence was worth several lakhs to the firms by whom he was employed. This is one aspect liable to be overlooked by Consuls, who order their nationals at short notice out of a place in the hope of avoiding international complications.\n\nWhether because they grew tired of the discomforts of a bucolic existence, or of the expense, or whether it was because they found that the part of the town in which they used to live had escaped the attention of the enemy bombers, it was a fact that many Chinese, who had left Nanking in August, returned in October, and many of the shops which had closed their doors reopened.\n\nThe question of provisions became easier again, and some enterprising compradores even replaced exhausted stocks by railway from Tsingtao, or by motor lorry from Shanghai, though to cover the risk of loss en route they found it necessary to raise their prices from two to three times. Butter was a problem, until we discovered that while the number of milk consumers had fallen off heavily the number of cows had remained static, and the surplus of cream thus available produced excellent fresh butter. The dairies in Nanking existed for the convenience of the foreigners as the Chinese themselves do not consume milk or milk products. In more recent years, however, Chinese have taken to tinned milk, particularly for infants, and by this indirect approach are to a small extent developing a taste for cow's milk.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213418, "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": 14, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "I Jul 95\n\n19 Aug 95\n\n23 Sept 95\n\n18 Nov 95\n\nTraditional Trades and Crafts of Hong Kong - HK Museum of History (Exhibition)\n\nHeaven's Embroidered Cloths A Thousand Years of Chinese Textiles (Exhibition) - HK Museum of Art\n\nLife Under the Japanese Occupation 1941-45 (Exhibition) - HK Museum of History\n\nExhibition of Chinese Folk Art - HK University Museum and Art Gallery\n\nNew Territories Temples and Da Jiu at Kam Tin\n\n26 Nov 95\n\n16 Dec 95\n\nJade Exhibition - HK University Museum and Art Gallery\n\n13 Jan 96\n\nPrince of Wales Barracks and former HMS Tamar Site\n\n20 Jan 96\n\nVillages of the north eastern New Territories\n\n10 Feb 96\n\nWalk through the deserted villages of Sai Kung\n\n9 Mar 96\n\nMaritime Silk Route (Exhibition) - HK Museum of History\n\n16 Mar 96\n\nOrganic Farm on Lamma Island\n\nVisits outside Hong Kong:\n\n22/23 Apr 95\n\nDapeng, Xin'an County\n\n2/3 Feb 96 14/17 Mar 96\n\nBocca Tigris Forts of the Pearl River\n\nTemples of northern Taiwan\n\nSuch activity demands some very dedicated organisers and besides those already mentioned in the Activities Committee we are particularly grateful to Dr. Joseph Ting, Dr. Anthony Siu, Mr. John Wilson, Mr. Philip Bruce, Dr. Patrick Hase, Mr. David Sheil and Dr. Michael Lau for their help. Sometimes not all members can obtain places on these outings and I would like to say that we are quite willing to run the trip again provided we can find someone to assist in organising it. In fact, if any member is willing to propose any trip to somewhere of interest the Society will always be prepared to consider it.\n\nThere is one other activity to which I would like to draw your", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213814, "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-1996", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "138\n\nIn many places the country was remarkably pretty. Very much like Devonshire, with this exception that all round were the barren dreary dry looking hills. Some clumps of trees were very fine.\n\nAfter above an hour's walk we began to go down into a valley, that was considerably cultivated, and just at the beginning of the descent under the shade of several lofty trees was a Chinese public house - would that in England there were such on the roadsides - We went up and sat down at the table which was covered with packets of cakes, and in a few minutes, away came cups of tea from the house. Real Chinese fashion, with covers. The tea is made in each cup. And you dip it out from the leaves with a small cup holding about a tablespoonful. Really it was delicious. It was tea, such as I never tasted. No milk or sugar wanted. It was milk and sugar in itself. Such tea! Didn't we enjoy it, and didn't we eat the cakes, and didn't we have no end of fun! No one should travel in China who cannot speak to the people and understand them. We gave them 1/4 dollar for all we ate and drank, and really refreshed we went on our way.\n\nAbout 12 o'clock we entered Sam Chun, a fine village, or rather market town. We entered the temple, where were many curious things, as well as the group of idols in the Centre, representing a great officer who died heroically, and his family and a black servant who is honoured because when his master died he killed himself. What noble heroism! These images were all larger than life, and no pains had been spared on them. They were all spangling with gold. I obtained the history from the officiating priest, whose apartments were adjoining the temple. At Sam Chun the same curiosity was manifested, and we at last went into a shop of one of the former converts of the German missionaries from Po-kuk. Here we rested and got chairs for the remainder of the journey. Adjoining was a rice shop, and a man was hulling rice. Another was winnowing it, with a curious machine.\n\nThe people swarmed in crowds round the door, and when we rose to depart we had to push our way through them. Our chairs were of the most curious kind. Two long bamboo poles, 1 1/2 ft apart, a board hanging down by ropes to sit on, and a stick hanging down by two strings to rest the feet on. Nothing could be more simple, and withal, it was not so very uncomfortable. The men were twice as strong as the Hong Kong carriers. And we got on very well. Our route lay through a large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214153, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "Gillian Bickley, Ph.D., B.A. (Hons.), Cert. Ed., M.Litt., F.R.S.A., is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Hong Kong Baptist University. She has previously held posts in Hong Kong at the University of Hong Kong, Longman Far East, the British Council, St. Stephen's Girls' College, and the Hong Kong Examinations Authority. She has taught at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has lived in Hong Kong for 23 years.\n\nPaul Bolding, works as a financial journalist at the news and information organisation Reuters in London. He has been with Reuters since 1974. He lived in Hong Kong from 1993 to 1997 and has travelled widely in Asia. Mr Bolding has previously worked in Europe and the Middle East including Brussels, Berlin and Nicosia. He has a special interest in the silk route and is a co-author of the Insight Guide to Turkey.\n\nB.C. Fawcett, was born in the Far East where his father served with the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. He also joined the bank and served from 1961 to 1978, being based in Hong Kong from 1971 to 1978. During that time he was also a volunteer with the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force, now the Government Flying Services. He is a life member of the HKBRAS.\n\nRichard J. Garrett, M.A.(Cantab), C.Eng., F.I.C.E., F.I.Struct.E., F.H.K.I.E., is a director of an international firm of Consulting Engineers and based in Hong Kong since 1973. He has been a collector of antique arms and a member of the Arms and Armour Society of the U.K. for over 30 years. He has published a number of articles on the subject of early firearms.\n\nSheilah E. Hamilton, B.Sc., M.Soc.Sc., Ph.D., is a long-time resident of Hong Kong and former forensic scientist with the Hong Kong Government from 1968 to 1988. Her passion for Hong Kong history began in 1992 and areas of interest include historical fires, forensic issues and security.\n\nR.G. Horsnell, is a Chief Property Services Manager with the Architectural Services Department, Hong Kong Government, and a ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214303, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "125\n\nnotes on nature and hunting in Manchuria. He founded the first natural history museum in China, at the Anglo-Chinese College and this brought him to the notice of directors of museums in the United States and England.\n\nWe have little idea what he did between his return from the Duke of Bedford's expedition and the start of the next expedition nearly three years later, the Clark expedition of 1908/9, which again sought specimens. This time they again set out from Taiyuan to the west, across the Yellow River into Shensi and then on to the north-west, into Kansu province travelling up the Silk Road as far as Lanchou. It was a well-financed private expedition with Sowerby taken on as the Naturalist and though not spelled out - the interpreter. Their route took them through Yulin, a city in the Ordos desert in Shensi province, noted for its large Buddhist temple. This was selected as the first main stopover where they remained undisturbed within the temple compound. Sowerby, brought up in Taiyuan, spoke the local dialect and was able to converse with the local officials and obtain their co-operation and assistance. They remained in Yulin over the winter during which time the Emperor and the Empress Dowager died in Peking. This event brought the second most senior Chinese official in Yulin to the compound to break the news and warn the party of the general apprehension that the deaths of their Majesties might bring about a revolt against the dynasty. Clark, who was also an amateur astronomer, had been seen by Chinese peering through his telescope at the night sky leading the second most senior Chinese official to ask Sowerby whether Clark had foreseen this calamity? Sowerby's answer that he had foreseen it led the official to demand to know why Clark had not passed on the warning to him. Sowerby was able to answer that the official knew full well that it would have been treason for anyone to even suggest that such a thing would take place before it happened. This satisfied the awed official, though the warning of possible unrest left the expedition in a quandary. They decided that the best move would be to set off at once for Sian [now known as Xi'an], the provincial capital, where they would expect to have better protection. On reaching Yenan, some short distance to the south of Yulin, en route for Sian they were assured that the situation was stable and once more settled down for a while, hunting and prospecting locally. After several weeks of visits to Loyang and Honan Fu [now Chengchou] in a neighbouring province, whilst Clark returned to Shanghai to settle a family matter, they continued on to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214578, "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": 436, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "405\n\ndery of Shakyamuni preaching on Vulture Peak, with attendants. This is notable for the skill of the stitchwork, which flows with the contours of faces and draperies to add depth and texture. Some colours, such as the blues, are stunningly deep and fresh, but the reds and greens have faded with time. This item dates from the 7 or 8th century.\n\nA Japanese conservator mounted the paintings on silk in the 1910s at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Many were in an extremely fragile state and they survive today largely as a result of extremely fragile condition. Unfortunately some of the backing material is quite dark. One of the brighter paintings is of Kwanyin on a lotus base surrounded by swirling green draperies that bring the work to life. An inscription on the back of this exquisite piece, from 910, has aided scholars.\n\nA scroll painting also depicts Kwanyin waving a banner on a staff, with the figure of a deceased lady in the background. The scroll is believed to have been offered so that the lady might ascend to the halls of paradise, with Boddhisattvas leading the way. Posters of this work were used to publicise a past exhibition. The collection includes some of these banners - surprisingly modest pieces a metre or so long. One of these notably depicts a Boddhisattva holding a glass bowl of Middle Eastern design, clear evidence that the object, or at least knowledge of its form, was carried on the Silk Route.\n\nWe also saw a vibrant section of a scroll painting of a fierce guardian, originally larger than life size. Sadly only a fragment remains of what would have been a fabulous piece.\n\nIn a different medium altogether, another item is a window painting on paper backed with cloth. This depicts stylised lotuses on the outside and images of the Buddha on the inside.\n\nTo realise that these items, when Aurel Stein discovered them, were rolled, stacked up and abandoned in a cave in northern China only makes one grateful that this much has survived.\n\nFurther reading: The International Dunhuang Project website (http://idp.bl.uk) includes a vast amount of material. It says that an international conference, Dunhuang 2000, is to be held in Beijing to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214579, "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": 437, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "406\n\ncoincide with the 100th anniversary of the opening of Cave 17 in June 2000. Another takes place at Dunhuang in August and the site has been getting a facelift in preparation. The website has a massive illustrated database of collections held in various parts of the world - those interested can sponsor a sutra for as little as £50 sterling. The money pays for the digital scanning and the sponsor's name appears beside the object. A newsletter reports on meetings of academics and recent research. Sadly, the BM does not appear to be part of the International Dunhuang Project, but Dr Farrer told us that the museum is trying to raise funds to put its collection on the Internet in the same way.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nRoderick Whitfield and Anne Farrer, Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route, The British Museum, London 1990.\n\nPeter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, John Murray, London 1980.\n\nAnnabel Walker, Aurel Stein: Pioneer of the Silk Road, John Murray, London 1995.\n\nLife Along the Silk Road, Susan Whitfield, Hardcover - 253 pages (June 1999), John Murray; ISBN: 0719557577", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214988, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "40\n\nAmongst the equipment issued to each coolie in France were boots, ankle and puttees, two pairs of socks, one towel and one piece of soap, one groundsheet and one blanket in the summer and three in the winter, and an enamelled mug instead of a tin mug.\n\nTransportation to France\n\n31\n\nThe Chinese Labour Corps was officially formed on 21 February 1917 with Lt. Col. B.C. Fairfax appointed as the officer-in-charge as early as 15th November 1916. In the meantime, the first labourers left China in January 1917 and the first to leave France to return to China left in November 1918. Some of those sent from China died en route to France on the sea voyages. These ships travelled either via South Africa or Suez to England via the Panama Canal or sailed to Canada, the labourers being transported across Canada by train and then sailing on to England. These routes were chosen so as to confuse German intelligence and to avoid the submarine menace. None was lost in this way despite a German presence still in northern China at that time. Thence both groups were shipped to France.\n\nThose travelling via Canada landed at William Head, Vancouver Island, the old quarantine station and, following authorisation, travelled by train to Halifax, Nova Scotia. They were guarded, to prevent escape, and consequently the usual poll tax of Can$500, levied by the Canadian Immigration Department, was waived. Over a thirteen-month period, over 84,000 were so transported. From Canada, they would be shipped to the UK to Liverpool or Plymouth, then from Folkestone to Noyelles-sur-Mer in France.\n\nG.E. Cormack, who acted as an escorting officer to five hundred labourers, was stationed at the collecting depot, a German silk factory near Qingdao. This town had earlier in the War been captured from the Germans by the Japanese, assisted by a small British force. On a monolith at one of the forts was a Prussian eagle with an inscription in German stating that this town had been captured by the Germans from the Chinese. Over this, there was a Japanese inscription stating that Qingdao had been captured from the Germans by the Japanese! China had declared war on Germany on 14th March 1917.\n\nAgain, to quote from G.E. Cormack's memoirs, he sailed, with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216259, "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": 18, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "Roderick O'Brien, LL.B. (Adelaide), M.A. (Hong Kong), Postgraduate Certificate in Ethics (Griffith), has been a life member of HKBRAS since 1976. He is an Australian lawyer, and currently teaches international law at the Northwest Institute of Politics and Law in Xian, China, where he lives. He travels widely in China.\n\nJonathan Parkinson, was born in Trinidad in 1939 and educated in England. He started his maritime career in the shipping business in Sarawak between 1960 and 1964, and thereafter was based in the Bahamas, South Africa, Belgium and the U.S.A. He retired to Johannesburg in 1987 where he spends many hours a week happily engaged in aspects of Naval research (jmp@iafrica.com).\n\nKeith Stevens, B.A., was born in 1926 on Merseyside, Great Britain where he lived until he enlisted in the Royal Navy during World War II. He later transferred into the Indian Army and then in 1948 joined the British Army as a career soldier. He read Chinese at both London and Hong Kong Universities, before going onto a second career with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office serving, altogether, more than 25 years in the Far East. He first became interested in Chinese iconography in 1948 and has been compiling a Who's Who of Chinese deities for more than 30 years. He has visited around 3,500 temples in Mainland China, Taiwan, the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions, and across South-East Asia, gathering material. His personal collection includes more than 1,000 images (statues) of Chinese deities, 30,000 photographs of temples and their images, and he has documented the legends and folk law surrounding approximately 2,500 gods. In addition he has written prolifically on modern Chinese history. His publications include Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons and Chinese Mythological Gods (chgods@btopenworld.com).\n\nElizabeth Kenworthy Teather, Ph.D. (Lond.), LRSM, FRGS, was previously Senior Lecturer in the School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of New England, Australia. She was Scholar in Residence in the David C Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University (1995-97, 1999-2000 and 2001-02). She now lives in Canberra, Australia, where she is enjoying the delights of the University of the Third Age (courses on the Silk Route in 2003 and Chinese History in 2004). A summary of her research into deathspace \n\nxviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216507, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 266, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "218\n\nshrines, and also larger caravanserai and trading centres. Many of the last developed into great crucibles for cultural development, cities that derived their often stupendous material wealth from trade, but also an equally magnificent cultural wealth derived from their location at the crossing point of cultures. It is this outpouring of human creativity at points along the Silk Road that is a major focus for Jonathan Tucker's book The Silk Road, subtitled Art and History.\n\nTucker's quest is bold, as befits his topic: to describe for the serious but not necessarily academic reader the art that flourished along the Silk Road during the fifteen hundred years of its heyday. Over four hundred colour illustrations conjure up a wonderful picture of the Silk Road, its places and people, its architecture (often in ruins today), paintings, sculpture, and even - through depictions on what remain of palace and temple walls - its music and ritual.\n\nIt is a difficult task that Tucker has set himself. To appreciate the art he presents, a knowledge of the complex passage and interaction of peoples and cultures is necessary. Tucker goes into enormous detail to try to ensure that his readers acquire this background. He gives the clearest picture when he concentrates on individual cities, for example, Chang'an (modern Xi'an) towards the eastern extremity of the Silk Road (which extended to Japan), and Baghdad towards the west (Istanbul is where Tucker draws his line here). By the Tang Dynasty, significant numbers of foreigners were reaching China along the overland route, and by then in Chang'an lived Zoroastrian refugees from Sassanian Persia (conquered by the Arabs in 651); Muslims (though the mosque in Chang'an is probably not as old, says Tucker, as the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, which dates from 627); Jews, who were significant and numerous Silk Road traders; Nestorian Christians; and followers of Manichaeism. Tucker painstakingly identifies elements that derived from non-Chinese influences in terracotta figurines, tomb paintings and sculptures, statues and other artefacts found in Chang'an and Luoyang from Tang and later periods. Most notable is a marble Bodhisattva, the 'Venus of the East' (his Fig. 119) which, in its sculptured clinging garments, reflected Indian antecedents, and was enormously influential on subsequent sculpture in this part of China.\n\nArt from the one hundred and ninety-three caves not far from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216511, "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": 270, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "222\n\nand (from Needham) a “Summary on the Transmission of Mechanical and other techniques from China to the West'. There is an index, and an extensive bibliography. Tucker acknowledges the assistance of experts in many cities along the Silk Road, and also his wife, Antonia Tozer, who accompanied him on several of the journeys that he undertook while writing the book and whose photographs comprise the majority of those included. Other sources of photographs include the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, Tucker's alma mater.\n\nNo book is perfect, and although my background does not qualify me to comment on the content and arguments of this one, I have one major reservation about the way Tucker argues his thesis, and several reservations about the book's presentation.\n\nMy first point relates to Tucker's failure to compare the relative significance of the overland Silk Road with that of the maritime Silk Road. An excellent, though very different and far briefer, companion to Tucker's book is a volume produced in 1996 by the Hong Kong Museum of History, edited by Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong) member Dr. Joseph Ting.2 Contributors to this edited volume make it clear that the cultural exchange between China and countries to the west was just as significant by sea as by land. Admittedly, Tucker notes a contemporary account in around 800 that describes Chinese junks in Baghdad, and several maps indicate the maritime routes, but his single-minded focus on the overland route detracts from a more balanced picture of the relative significance of the two routes. In fact, Patricia Ebrey comments that the trade along the sea routes in the Tang Dynasty was higher in volume than that by land. Tucker's concluding chapter implies that it was European voyages of discovery in the fifteenth century that led to the development of the sea routes between China and the west. His emphasis on Chang'an, which is appropriate as it was a major destination for travellers along the overland Silk Road, might lead readers to overlook the significance of Guangzhou, a city which dominated the maritime Silk Road for centuries, and in which the cultural mix in the Tang dynasty was as great as in Chang'an.\n\nThis leads me to wonder whether the extant art and history of the Chinese influence in the ports used by Chinese vessels on route for India, the Middle East and East Africa have been investigated, and whether this would be a worthy subject for a book. I note a tantalising\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216512, "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": 271, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "223\n\nphotograph in Ting's volume of a fifteenth century grave in Tanzania which features Ming Dynasty blue and white dishes set into the tomb's pillar. I would like to know more about the surviving archaeological evidence of this trade and its influence on the art and craft of the countries involved en route.\n\nMy other reservations relate to editing details. The sheer vastness of Tucker's canvas means that he frequently backtracks. I suspect he didn't write each chapter in the order in which they appear in the book. Although some cross-references are supplied, more are needed. Some clumsy editing has removed entire paragraphs from the text into Figure captions without amending the flow of remaining paragraphs. There are innumerable errors of the typo variety that a proofreader should have picked up. Although there are many maps, these leave much to be desired. There are no scales or north points: blue is used for frontiers as well as rivers; place names on the maps are not always in the text and vice versa; names of archaeological sites feature as prominently as modern settlements. There are no scale objects on the photographs.\n\nI need to make a cautionary note, too. Comparing some of Tucker's historical details with similar details provided by Ebrey, I found some differences. For example, how had the silk that reached Rome got there? As a result of Wudi's mission to the Yuezhi, as Tucker suggests? Or via silk acquired by the Xiongnu as gifts from the Chinese government in exchange for receiving their tribute, as Ebrey suggests?\n\nReservations aside, my final point is that this is a book to fascinate not only those interested in the past, but also those keen to understand the present. Every region through which the Silk Road passed is today socially and politically unstable, primarily because of the very clash of cultures and associated value systems that the Road made possible and that underlay the flourishing creative output of places along it. Frontiers imposed or negotiated in the interests of defining twentieth century nation-states rarely enclose regions that are ethically or culturally distinctive, or reflect loyalties that are limited to the area they define. Hence, these boundaries are often in dispute, and issues that nation states need to address (such as water usage and conservation) are not confined within them. In addition, Central Asia remains militarily highly strategic even in the era of long range ballistic missiles, while its resources - oil and, increasingly, water - remain as coveted as the silk,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]