[ { "id": 204407, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "30\n\nG. FINDLAY ANDREW\n\nmerce throughout the fourteen districts accepted the notes from the shops and when the quantity in hand warranted it they would redeem them from me in silver sycee at my headquarters. The scheme worked very satisfactorily and when the final liquidation was achieved we found that we had cleared nearly 5% profit.\n\nBefore the year of which I write, copper coins, representing a value of ten brass cash, had already been introduced into circulation throughout the provinces near the coast. The use and circulation of these copper coins was stimulated when the content value of the brass cash exceeded the market value and the high pressure pumps had already commenced the work of pumping a steady stream of the brass cash currency over the sea to the land of the Rising Sun. Slowly the copper coins (l'ung yuan) spread into the far interior and with their coming they changed several aspects of life. Whilst they facilitated the transfer and carriage of baser currency, at the same time they increased the cost of living. A sweet (the child's necessity) which previously cost one cash now cost ten.\n\nThose were the days of the war-lords when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes\". It was not long before these gentlemen conceived the happy idea of each establishing his own arsenal with minting machinery complete so that he might furnish himself with all the sinews of modern war both in lethal weapons and silver dollars. During the days of the Manchu dynasty the Central Government had kept tight control over both arsenals and mints. A very wise ruling established that no arsenal might manufacture both arms and ammunition of the same calibre. Thus, for instance, arms produced by the Shanghai arsenal were dependent on say the Hankow arsenal for ammunition. This shows the control that Peking was able to exercise over the militarists in this connection. But from the days of the war-lords this was entirely changed. The big men produced their own arms, ammunition and coinage. Thus the control of coinage passed from Peking and it was not long before regional, and even provincial, dollars came into circulation all of varying standards. One military gentleman, of scientific bent of mind, conceived the brilliant idea of mixing sand with the copper and minting coins whose value was indicated by their size. Thus by the time he got up to the five hundred cash value coins they were so large and brittle that they crumbled when", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204454, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "75\n\nTHE PATTERN OF LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES IN 1898\n\nJ. W. HAYES, M.A.*\n\nIn 1898 Great Britain signed the Peking Convention which gave her the lease of the New Territories for 99 years. The world has made such material progress since that time and urban Hong Kong has itself seen so many changes that it is difficult for us to-day to imagine the rural part of the Colony as it then was, without roads or wheeled transport other than the wheel-barrow, with inhabitants who knew nothing of cars, aeroplanes, or weapons of mass destruction. But having made this effort, we must think back further still if we wish to obtain a proper appreciation of the situation, as James Stewart Lockhart told the Hong Kong Government in 1898. At the end of his report on the New Territory, as he styled it, he said \"Under Chinese rule enterprise has been at a discount, and progress has been at a standstill for centuries. The San On district of to-day must be much the same as it was four or five hundred years ago\".\n\nThe report is a valuable first-hand account of the area as it was in the year of its acquisition and covers the points in which Government would be most interested such as topography, communications, trade and natural products, population, industries and the existing civil government. It also gave its author's recommendations as to how the New Territory should be governed and looked after in future. This article, whilst making use of Lockhart's report, tries to give the background which he, of course, would take for granted. It does not pretend to deal with every part of the backcloth but only touches on those parts which seem worth mentioning for their share in fixing life in its accustomed mould: the village, the people themselves and their history, the clan system, ancestral worship, education, the district government, the background of affairs elsewhere in the province, the prevalence of disturbance and epidemic, popular religion: all factors which made for integration or disruption in a life that could never have been easy.\n\n* Mr. Hayes has been an administrative officer with the Hong Kong Government since 1956.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205220, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "170\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThese investigations showed that yields in these places appear generally to have little bearing on the prices paid by tenant farmers when reaching an agreement with their prospective landlords. Other factors arise which discount yield on the basis of kuk produced by any one tau chung of land. If, for example, as in one case, an area is inhabited by a very tight, closely knit clan, which keeps to itself and discourages outsiders (even from the next village) from entering its lands or its village, this lessens the competition for their land and the low tenant rent reflects this community spirit in its affairs. On the other hand, an area whose owners keep their land wide open to the highest bidder, without restriction, attracts large numbers of immigrant farmers whose entry has raised tenant rentals to well above average. Some areas have special problems. One border area is largely low-lying padi, protected from the sea by a strip of marsh-land and subject to flooding during the rainy season. Cultivation presents problems familiar to the local people but ruinous to outsiders. The rent paid shows this trend. As a last example of outside factors affecting tenant rentals, large tracts of former padi fields in a locality quite close to the urban areas of Kowloon and Hong Kong have now been converted to the growing of flowers. These blooms fetch good prices in the city and are always in demand. Consequently, rentals are high.\n\nTo summarise, it appears that the main factor in fixing a tenant rental is not so much yield but market opportunities and freedom from restrictions.\n\nSince 1950, the immigrant farmer has become very important in the New Territories and is primarily concerned in vegetable cultivation as it pays higher profits. He has to work harder, as there is no slack season as with padi farming. With the encouragement of Government, these farmers have formed themselves into groups, dependent generally on locality and have registered themselves as cooperative societies. These groups enjoy the benefits of the Government wholesale market and transport facilities at cost less 10%, which is much better than going through a middleman. As hillside land is less easy to cultivate, the vegetable farmer seeks to acquire low-lying paddy fields and converts them into vegetable plots for which he pays a higher price than his predecessor in the tenancy, the former padi farmer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206519, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n61\n\nCouncil to fill the vacancy caused by the removal of the Chief Justice from that body; and in 1891 he was made a member of the Executive Council. In that year he was also appointed chairman of the Board of Examiners in Chinese and chairman of the Governing Body of Queens' College,17 the oldest Government Anglo-Chinese secondary school in the Colony. In 1895 he was appointed Colonial Secretary in conjunction with his office of Registrar General, 'the first time in the history of the Colony that such a combination had ever taken place and which it was believed was effected for purposes of economy.' At the same time he became Rector of the College of Medicine for Chinese, from which Sun Yat-sen had graduated in 1892. Lockhart in 1895 was, then, the most important official, apart from the Governor, in the Colony and in charge, through his joint appointment, of both Chinese and European affairs.\n\nIn 1898 the leasing of the New Territory (as it was first called) from the Chinese Government for 99 years gave Lockhart yet further employment. The New Territory was an area of 365 square miles, consisting of a portion of the Chinese mainland lying immediately to the north of the Colony; it contained about three-fifths of the Chinese county of San-on (Hsin-an), one of the smaller administrative districts of the Kwangtung Province. In March 1898 Lockhart had proceeded to England on leave of absence but he returned hurriedly to the Colony on 2 August 1898 as Special Commissioner under instructions to inspect and report upon the territory acquired under the Convention of 9 June, 1898. Having completed his inspection he returned to England on 31 August, 1898, by The Empress of India, and submitted a detailed report on 8 October, 1898.19 Thus in less than a month Lockhart had visited the entire district to be taken over, had made assiduous enquiries, and had mapped out, as it were, the entire social and economic organisation of the area.\n\nLockhart returned from his interrupted leave on 3 February, 1899, and on 11 March was appointed to be the representative of the Government of Great Britain for the purpose of fixing the exact boundaries of the extension. By the Convention the boundaries were only indicated generally and provisions had been made for their more exact determination 'when proper surveys have been made by officials appointed by the two Governments.'20 Lockhart", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206556, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "98\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nment should carry out improvements to existing properties financed from an improvement fund set up by contributions from the license fees on gambling houses; and that for buildings not capable of improvement the Government should acquire, demolish, rebuild and sell the properties concerned.\n\nChadwick's report was a landmark in the history of Hong Kong, and as with Dr. Ayres in 1873 he drew attention to the serious consequences that would arise if nothing were done to alleviate the bad sanitary condition of the Colony. On this point Chadwick reported that:\n\nIt is stated that, hitherto, Hong Kong has escaped the epidemics which have afflicted other places in the neighbourhood. The settlement is but 40 years old and the subsoil beneath the city may not yet be sufficiently saturated with filth to make it a hot bed for disease and a breeding ground of filth poison. It is somewhat premature to assume that this happy immunity will always continue for the process of saturation is slowly but surely going on and if unchecked cannot fail to bring forth abundant fruit, in the form of misery and disease.\n\nAnother twelve years elapsed before Chadwick's warning took the form he predicted.\n\nPrelude to Disaster 1882-1894\n\nChadwick's report prompted the government into action and, as a first step towards meeting the problem, a Sanitary Board was set up in 1883 under a draft Order and Health Amendment Ordinance which gave the Board wide powers to deal with insanitary houses, the inspection of premises, compulsory disinfection and the removal of persons who were a source of disease. However, strong opposition from property owners caused these provisions to be withdrawn although the Board remained in existence.\n\nFurther attempts were made in 1887 to introduce a Public Health Ordinance which, among other things, provided for the reservation of open spaces at the rear of buildings, the provision of privies and the fixing of a minimum standard of 300 cu. ft. of internal living space per adult. Great opposition against these proposals was voiced in the local press on the basis that the poorer classes would suffer\n\n8 Ibid., p. 22.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206682, "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": 230, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "224\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nis made to view the movements which have often been politically militant, first against the background of Chinese society, imperial power and foreign penetration, then the Republican cause, and finally in what is perhaps the most original and interesting section of the book, the period 1919-1949: 'the Chinese Revolution'. There are no Chinese characters in the text but a short character index is appended after an equally short bibliography and a slightly longer list of references.\n\nThis book seems to be mainly oriented to the general reader who is unfamiliar with the subject, and in as far as this is so the author may be excused for his almost entire use of secondary materials; even the official documents are largely culled from other published sources. But since he also states that one of his major concerns is to ‘illuminate certain aspects of the life of Chinese secret societies and the part they played in China's political upheavals', it does call for more considered criticism.\n\nOne does not, of course, blame the author for not reaching definite conclusions. As he says, the 'sixty or so original documents' are certainly not enough to provide an answer to such questions as how one might define a Chinese secret society in modern times (or for that matter, I would say, traditional times). Historical research is only just beginning. But I would take issue with him on what I consider to be a fundamental weakness in his analysis: the mixing of structurally and functionally, as well as ideologically, different categories. Here, in fact, the Chinese use of terminology is itself often misleading, for the same term might be applied indiscriminately to different orders of groupings: all organizations which have in common secrecy, religion, and militant, anti-establishment aims. The groups themselves, moreover, sometimes use the terms hui ('society') and tao ('religion') or men ('door' or 'sect') interchangeably, and even more confusing, dissimilar types of groups appear to have sometimes combined in order to pursue some particular aim of the moment. But enough has been written in the last decade to show that two distinctly different kinds of groupings emerged in China, and certain major differences may sometimes be discerned in fact from the earlier literature.\n\nGroups such as, for example, the Pure Tea Sect (Ch'ing-ch'a-hui), the Way of Fundamental Unity (Yi-kuan-tao), the Eight Diagrams, the Observance Society, 'Vegetarians' (in fact a qualification for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207553, "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": 321, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n313 \n\nCheung could say nothing against the decision, but as far as the demarcation line was concerned, it is said that he had secretly petitioned the Imperial Government to be very careful in dealing with its (English) counterpart in fixing the Sino-British boundary. It is also believed that the boundary was finalised upon his personal recommendation.* As a matter of fact, the boundary ranged from the eastern part of the Kowloon Walled City (now the eastern side of Kai Tak Airport) to the western waterfront of Shamshuipo. From the physical point of view, the terrain to the south of the boundary is all flat and to the north all mountainous, so in terms of national defence it is absolutely a strategic advantage to hold the mountainous area. The demarcation then follows the present Boundary Street. It was completely beyond the General's anticipation that in later days the whole region of Kowloon was leased to Britain at the 24th year of Kuang Hsü (***) (1898) and the boundary extended from the Boundary Street to Shum Chun (M). [Actually to the Sham Chun river, south of the town]. \n\nGen Cheung once acted as the Commander-in-chief of naval forces in Kwangtung Province, and it was under his care that the Bocco Tigris forts (1) were repaired. Among the relics in connection with General Cheung's administration which still remain nowadays, there is a plaque inside the Hau Wong Temple (1£ §) at Kowloon City. On the plaque there is an inscription of four large Chinese characters which literally mean \"a good administration under your Highness' Protection”.† As quoted from the accompanying inscription, the general said, “As time elapses it has already been 13 years since I was appointed as the Commander at Kowloon in the 4th year of Hsien Feng reign () (1853).\" He also said: \"It is all due to your Highness' grace and instructions that security and peace prevail in the whole domain for which I feel greatly obliged. Now I have already reached the age of 70 so the time is ripe for me to retire from a long term of service.\" Judging from the two quotations above, we realize how humble and modest he was because he attributed all his achievements and merits to His Highness the Marquis Yeung. Apart from \n\n*This may well be so. His name appears as one of the members of the Joint Land Commission of 1862 for settling land titles in Kowloon: see PRO London, CO129/85, annex to Sir H. Robinson's despatch of 30th April 1862. \n\n† The reference is to the god of this famous temple the Marquis Yeung (#1) a loyal minister of Sung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208444, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "C. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nsmallness, and the strong psychological carryover of the attributes of familism to the larger group. Secondly, these units already have a system of fixing responsibility in the hands of their own customary leaders, who do form an adequate and very convenient machinery of government. To treat the village as a unit, moreover, and to hold the leaders responsible for it, much simplifies the business of government by the state. It is cheaper, and because it is more agreeable to the people, is much more effective than any system of central control. It leaves plenty of room for differences of local practice. Finally, so far as the rulers of China were concerned, if the villages paid their taxes and remained law abiding and peaceful, there was distinctly no advantage to be gained from governing them more closely. Therefore the central authority has generally been glad to accept the customary village government as the base for a form of government which found its apex in the emperor.\n\nThis does not mean that the government delivered itself of the right to hold individuals, families or groups of neighbors responsible for the behavior of other individuals or groups. Indeed, one of the reasons for the tithing system was to enforce mutual responsibility as is definitely stated in the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien: \"The system of pao and chia has been established in order that the members may mutually make inquiry and know one another, to the end that traitors and evil doers may be put down and thieving and robbery repressed.\" The concept of mutual responsibility is especially noticeable in the idea of ken chieh (4) as explained by Jamieson.2 Whenever a respectable man is asked for evidence of his character, or whenever he wishes to do anything out of the ordinary, he will produce at once a kan chieh, the \"frankpledge\" of his neighbors in the same pao or chia. This is simply a document in which his neighbors voluntarily, freely and frankly pledge or bind themselves, because of their personal knowledge of the individual, for his respectability.\n\nMutual responsibility, which exists in all ranges of relationships and among all groups, is in the village integrated through the leaders of the several lesser groups and finally in the hands of the village elders. In the main it is only the village elders with whom the government deals when this trust is broken, as in the case of petty\n\n1 Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien, chap. 134, trans. by Jamieson; op. cit., p. 69.\n\n2 Ibid., p. 69 ff.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208722, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "152\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\ncritique and is as such beyond blame. However, his way of proceeding may be subject to doubt; one cannot completely cut off the roots of past research: \"What is needed, he says, is a new set of concepts... with which all religious phenomena can be analyzed, concepts which do not depend upon historical reconstructions, and which are empirically derived from field work.\" (p. 85). Here the anthropologist goes too far. The project is more complex than to be explainable with field work only, and in many instances needs to be clarified with historical information about the origins and development of cult phenomena.\n\nChapter III, “Temple and Home, Family and Community\" (pp. 85-135), is one of the basic chapters of the whole book.* A great amount of important new information is presented. The author first discusses the various temple types found in Taiwan: ancestral temples (87-90), putative ancestral temples (90-96), the community cult and temple (96-104), the private community temple (104-109), the t'an (109-113), the monastery (113-117), bone temples (118-121); he next offers a schema of three major and three minor (or derived) temple types (122-123) and concludes the chapter with a short treatise on the 'genesis of temples' (124-135).\n\nAlthough the chapter is richly documented with field experiences, the treatment suffers from a basic ambiguity of scope, also noticeable in other chapters. The author wants to offer an alternative model for explaining the religion of China rather than sticking to the old three-fold division, already mentioned in Chapter II:\n\n\"Because of the complexity of Taiwanese religion, with its infinite mixing of various elements from the different religious traditions, it is practically impossible to classify temple types on the basis of their religious affiliation.” (p. 85),\n\nOne ambiguity consists in the mixing up by the author of 'temple types' with ‘religion' as a whole; the temples are an important aspect of religious life, but are not the whole of it. Moreover, the author's scope is to define, describe and analyze the “folk religion\" (p. 85) which is not the same as the three religions. Instead of rejecting the three religions-model as inadequate, he just could leave it alone: everyone knows that the folk religion and the three traditional religions are not the same reality. The author might\n\n* Accordingly the discussion centring on this chapter extends until page 15 of this review.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209708, "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": 365, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n343\n\nEven so, it is out of place in this volume, unless the title is intended to imply “a Chinese style of archaeology\" rather than \"the archaeology of China.\"\n\nThe first chapter is the only one of real substance in the book, at least for those seeking a reasonable summary and interpretation of Chinese archaeology, but it is marred by the unlabelled mixing of fact and opinion. Entitled \"The Beginning of Chinese Civilization,\" this recently revised essay presents an overview of the prehistoric and Shang periods. Cheng rightly points out the emergence of the various Early Neolithic cultures from their regional antecedents in the Paleolithic, though he is speculating wildly in assigning a date of 25,000 years before the present for this transition.\n\nUnfortunately, Cheng still clings to the outmoded “nuclear area hypothesis\" applied to the Late Neolithic. In spite of much evidence to the contrary (some of which is even mentioned in this essay), Cheng still maintains, as he has for many years, that \"the expansion of the Late Neolithic culture beyond the Central Plain was responsible for the diffusion of the new pattern of food production [cereal agriculture] in various parts of China.\" And, ignoring all the botanical, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence to the contrary, Cheng then claims that \"rice found a most agreeable home in the wet South\" after being introduced by farmers from the North. A few pages earlier, Cheng had described the important Ho-mu-tu site in Chekiang, i.e., in the South, as one of the most agriculturally advanced and the earliest dated Late Neolithic site excavated in China so far. Cheng also makes the highly disputable claims that painted pottery spread throughout China from a Yangshao origin, and that \"the expansion of the Mongoloid people into the South Seas [? the South China Sea] was an event closely related to the spread of agriculture in China.” Most archaeologists would not claim a single origin for all the painted pottery of China, and very little, perhaps nothing, is really known about the spread of \"Mongoloid people\" or agriculture in the Neolithic of East Asia.\n\nIn dealing with the earliest historical period, Cheng again on occasion mixes fact and good and bad hypothesis with pure conjecture and cultural bias. Cheng implies that Chinese writing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210547, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "135\n\nout of the family.\" She goes on to contend, however, that in every other conceivable circumstance a village couple without sons must utilize their property to secure sacrificial offerings for themselves. A man with an only daughter, for example, in some regions of China may contract an uxorilocal marriage for her. At the heart of this arrangement is an agreement that one or more of the sons born to this union will continue their maternal grandfather's lineage by assuming both his name and property. In so doing, of course, they also acquire an obligation to see to his needs after death — an obligation that instantly ceases if for some reason the property should be withheld.\" In contrast, a man without natural heirs may adopt one of his collateral kin, or someone completely outside his clan; alternatively, he may effect a transfer of property to a kinsman or stranger without resort to adoption. In either event, the outcome will be the same: “just as property inheritance accompanied by descent entails the obligation to worship, so also may property inheritance in the absence of descent require worship.\"2 Indeed, the link between property and the cult of the dead is so strong in Ch'i-nan that one can acquire responsibility for the spiritual well-being of a deceased person merely by making use of his property, while a father who disinherits one of his sons for any reason thereby absolves him of all responsibility for his maintenance in the afterlife.63\n\nAhern's interpretation of the role of property in uxorilocal marriage has been confirmed by Arthur Wolf in his own field work. One of his informants in San-hsia acknowledged the obligation that the arrangement creates with the matter-of-fact comment that \"you have to worship your mother's father because he gave you his property.'64 The rest of her findings, however, have generated considerable controversy. Steven Harrell has countered with an argument that property does not play even a marginal role in fixing responsibility for the dead in the village that he investigated. Most villagers, he says, readily admit their obligation to care for everyone in their primary line of descent.“ Arthur Wolf has further complicated matters. Working in a village not more than a mile away from Ch'i-nan, his research has induced him partially to agree with both of his colleagues, thereby generating a third point of view! He has concluded that “both descent and inheritance create an absolute obligation to the dead.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211361, "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-1988", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "53\n\nas could be expected under present conditions.\n\nThe Board felt it could propose, however, that children should not be employed in factories and workshops after 6 p.m. except when special permission had been obtained from the Board, for such employment must be injurious to the health of young children who would certainly be better in bed than working by artificial light in stuffy rooms. As the returns obtained by the committee on working conditions showed that most factories stopped work at 6 p.m., the prohibition of children working after this hour would not interfere to any appreciable extent in \"the better managed factories and workshops”.\n\nMr. Bowley admitted that the fixing of the age limit at fourteen was a compromise. In England a ten hour day was the maximum for women and children of any age. For Hong Kong he would have wished an age limit much higher than fourteen, but the Chinese members of the committee had not agreed and “for the sake of unanimity I accepted the age proposed by them\". The Chinese also urged the lowering of the English statutory age of fourteen for children engaged in dangerous occupations to the age of thirteen. They claimed that Chinese children developed more rapidly than European children.\n\nThere would be another difference between the factory legislation in Britain and in Hong Kong: both had a limit of ten hours, but in Britain there was to be no work on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, thus there was a work week of fifty-five hours, while in Hong Kong, where there were only two holidays every lunar month, the weekly average would be sixty-five hours.\n\nAll in all, Mr. Bowley regarded the recommendation before the meeting as reasonable and moderate and should “commend itself to every fair-minded person”.\n\nMr. Alabaster, the Chairman of the Board, put in a cautionary note. He conceded that everyone would be in sympathy with the proposed regulations, but how were they to be administered? The burden of the Sanitary Department would be greatly increased. One problem for the Inspectors would be to determine the age of Chinese children and it would be difficult for them to state what would be injurious to a child. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211652, "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-1989", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "42\n\nBoats. Pestilence Wang Yeh are also quite common on the altars of Fukienese community temples in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia having been carried there by emigrants.\n\nAlthough there are no Pestilence Wang Yeh on the altars of temples in Hong Kong and Macau, there are two deities bearing the same honorific, and also there is the concept of pestilence demons being exiled during a major festival. One of the two deities is the comparatively rare Cantonese cult deity, Chang Wang Yeh (E), consulted before building a house or fixing the date for a wedding. His image is to be seen on a side altar in a secondary hall in the Hung Hsing Temple in Wanchai, and again in another Cantonese temple in Waterloo Street in Singapore where his title is Chang Wang Lao Yeh. The other deity is K'ang Wang Yeh (E). He is one of the four life-size images at floor level before the main altar of the Northern Emperor [Chen Wu] in Mong Tseng Wei near Deep Bay in the New Territories. These four are known simply as the Four Generals and whilst the other three are relatively common deities from Chinese mythology, Hua Kuang, Chao Yuanshuai and Yin Yuanshuai, nothing is known in this temple about K'ang Wang Yeh.8\n\nThe Five Ubiquitous Ones, the Wu T'ung (F), formerly worshipped in North China as pestilence deities have been seen in Ch'aochou (Teochew) illegal squatter temples in Hong Kong but not in Taiwan. According to several temple keepers the Five are potentially harmful unorthodox (H) spirits and not beneficial spirits (#). One keeper added that the Five had been worshipped in Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces as well as by Ch'aochou people and that they were in some way connected with the roaming spirits of the tens of thousands soldiers killed during the wars which ended the Mongol (Yuan) dynasty and led to the founding of the Ming. The Five have no individual identities whereas the Pestilence Wang Yeh do have surnames.\n\nUnlike other deified Chinese, images of the Pestilence Wang Yeh are floated out to sea or burnt to carry away the pestilence demons associated with them. The nearest in comparison here would be the paper images of deities burned after major festivals such as the image of Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy in her form as Ta Shih (±) the very ugly demonic form which she assumes to prevent lustful demons from assaulting her when visiting the Afterworld during her missions of mercy. Her image as Ta Shih in paper and bamboo is burnt to carry her over", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212146, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "6.5\n\nwas prepared to mix with the practitioners of other faiths; that he had scholarly interests; and that he was an ambitious man, used to mixing in court circles. The Sian tablet inscription demonstrates, unsurprisingly, that he was a far more sensitive and effective communicator when dealing with his own, Christian, faith. We are left to wonder what circumstances produced such a man, and here the possibility that Adam was the son of Jazedbouzid is suggestive. If his father was indeed a high-ranking general who came east from Balkh in the 750s to enter the Chinese service, Adam may well have grown up in China. If so, he would have been exceptional among Nestorian clerics of metropolitan rank in knowing something about the culture of China, and his familiarity with the imperial court and his interest in translating Christian and Buddhist thought into Chinese would be more easily explained.\n\nAdam and the invention of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'\n\nThe term 'brilliant teaching' was almost certainly invented by Adam. A man of his background, whose sensitivity to Chinese culture was displayed in the skilful composition of the Sian tablet inscription, would doubtless have realised that the old term 'teaching of the scriptures' did not convey the essence of the Christian religion. Besides general probability, one very significant feature of the inscription points to Adam as the term's inventor. Seventy-two monks are listed by name at the bottom of the main inscription, probably monks from the Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang monasteries who were present in Ch'ang-an for the tablet's unveiling ceremony. In most cases the names of these monks are given in both Syriac and Chinese. Adam is one of only three men whose Chinese name includes the character ching, 'brilliant'. His Chinese name Ching-ching (37) signifies 'brilliant purity'. Perhaps his Chinese name suggested the new term for Christianity, or perhaps it was the other way round. But it is difficult to believe that this was mere coincidence.\n\nIt is likely that the term ching-chiao, ‘brilliant teaching’, was first publicly used in the Sian tablet inscription. Firstly, it is probable that a new term would be used in the capital before spreading to the provinces, and the erection of the Sian tablet in 781, in China's first Christian monastery, offered a suitable occasion for the 'unveiling' of the new image. Furthermore, the inscription self-consciously, as if of a new term which requires explanation, draws attention to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212172, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "91\n\nswallow are quite unalike, as also are the utensils with which they eat. The Chinese like to play mah-jong or poker for high stakes; the foreigners cannot afford it. The wealthy Chinese gentleman as often as not transacts his business in the public bath house; the Club is a foreign institution. As the foreigner everywhere is so outnumbered, to avoid being swamped he has kept his clubs to himself. The Chinese resent this. And, of course, there is the almost insuperable language difficulty; fluency in Chinese requires years of study, years which few foreigners can spare.\n\nIn Nanking these difficulties could be overcome: on the foreign side the community included many officials who had spent a lifetime in China and could speak the language; and on the Chinese side there were many who had studied abroad and got used to foreign ways. Consequently, whereas elsewhere in China entertainment between Chinese and foreigners was generally confined to feasting in Chinese restaurants, here it took place quite often in the intimacy of the home. The advantage to international association was priceless.\n\nThe members of a large German military mission lived in Nanking, helping to train and equip the Chinese armies. Their departure from Europe had pre-dated the extreme Nazi phase, and they were not averse to mixing with the other foreigners. General von Falkenhausen, who commanded the mission, was later to be appointed by Hitler as Governor of occupied Holland. The mission did much to improve the quality of the Chinese troops, though it was often thwarted by the sort of obstruction to which one grows so accustomed in China.\n\nThe German mission, which under Japanese pressure was ordered out of China by Hitler in the autumn of 1938, left an excellent impression. Some officers of the mission were with the Chinese troops who fought against the Japanese at Shanghai, and the later Chinese success at Taierchwang is generally attributed to German advice. To this day the Chinese officers who were associated with the mission or who were taught in its schools, remain Germanophile.\n\nOn the advice of the Germans large areas of the extensive fortified zone round Nanking were placed out of bounds. The restriction, alas, interfered with shooting. On several occasions, when I went out with my dogs, I was politely stopped by a perspiring patrol who, having spotted me from a distant hill or heard my shots, had chased after me", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212522, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "56 \n\n+35 \n\nMatters failed to run smoothly from the beginning. Duan's feeling about being flattered had been expressed in a letter. “I found it impossible to refuse Ruan Yuan's generous and tempting offer to edit the annotation notes to the Thirteen Classics. Of course I realized that this was to be an onerous task, therefore have asked for help.” The tone changed in another letter, dated three years from the outset of the project. \"I truly regret that for three years, my time has been spent on making other people's dowry.\"**\" The completed work was not printed until 1817 in Nanchang shortly before Ruan Yuan was transferred to Canton. The edition was full of errors.\n\nRuan Yuan's changing fortune and personalities of the leading scholars working on this project were the major reasons for the long delay in completion of this project. Ruan Yuan had had to concentrate on government affairs. From 1805-1807, mourning for his father, he was able to work on the Jiao kan ji. From 1809 to 1812, he was not in a position to sponsor any literary project. Another major reason for the long delay was the personality of Duan Yucai. In 1800 Duan was 65 years old, and 80 at the time of his death in 1815. During the interim, he was becoming increasingly difficult. He and Gu could not agree on fundamental issues, with most of the scholars siding with Gu. So, the project did not coalesce until after Duan's death. That the printing and binding of the work took little more than two years indicates that a great deal of the work had been done already before Duan's death, and that the human and financial resources were such that completion of the major work was only a matter of time.\n\nHow Ruan Yuan supported the scholars\n\nRuan Yuan supported the scholars around him in three major ways. He put close relatives and friends, such as his cousin Ruan Heng (d. 1856) and Jiao Xun, as well as those with the practical knowledge he needed in discharging government responsibilities on his personal staff, paid out of his own or administrative funds. Ruan Yuan made it possible for other scholars to obtain academic appointments and to work on literary projects. Meanwhile, each scholar was to pursue his own research and writing. In many cases, although not all, Ruan Yuan published their works.\n\nEighty scholars were on his direct payroll during his long career that lasted almost half a century through the reigns of three emperors.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212611, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "145 sentries were mounting guard on it. With this information brought back the number and weight of the charges could be calculated; the charges would then be made up and fastened to wooden forms made to the requisite patterns; the correct lengths of detonating fuse would be cut, the primers, lashings, etc., prepared, and the other details of the raid worked out, such as covering parties, carrying party, pass word, rendezvous and so on. Then at the appointed time, usually of course at night, the raid would be made on the target. If all went well your trained demolition party, consisting of the right number of men for the job, working as a team, each responsible for a part, could lash on all the charges, connect up the primers and detonating fuse, and retire in very quick time, while the leader stayed behind to light the safety fuse as soon as the party was clear. The raiding party would then move as rapidly as possible to safety, dropping a scout or two to watch the result of the explosion from a distance, and to bring back the report of success or otherwise. As such raids might often be made under fire, the importance of accurate work and speed needs no emphasizing. One mistake in wrongly estimating the measurements, calculating the charges, fixing them, and connecting the fuses, results inevitably in failure. It is particularly unfortunate if, in the dark, what with rain, perhaps, and a general state of flurry, one of the men slips and lets a charge drop into the river; because a failure will put the enemy on his guard, and what can be attempted once is seldom successfully attacked a second time.\n\nTo discourage enemy repair gangs, a special team would usually be detailed to lay booby-traps round the job, and other men would prepare booby-traps along the line of retreat to prevent the enemy following up too rapidly All this is ticklish and dangerous work where the mistake of one man may imperil all; so it is important that a strong esprit-de-corps animate the raiding party to ensure that all have confidence in each other. In other words a very high standard of training was called for.\n\nBooby-trapping has its fascination too. The object is to leave a modicum of explosive, encased in metal - that provides the splinters to do the damage in some place, through which the enemy is likely to pass, but concealed in such a way that he can not see it, and set with a spring which he will unwittingly set off. You can put booby-traps anywhere. In the ground they are called mines, and standard containers are supplied for the purpose. But the ordinary booby-trap that you put behind a door, or under a floor board, or in a suit case full of clothes,\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "168\n\nfirst successes; our teams succeeded in cutting two bridges on the important Shanghai-Hangchow railway, by which supplies for the Japanese forces attacking Kinhwa moved. One bridge, a single span, was near a Japanese post on the railway, but the team had succeeded in obtaining its measurements and preparing the charges, so that they had little difficulty in sneaking up one wet night and fixing them, when the garrison were all sheltering inside the post. The first the garrison knew of it was when they heard the explosion. But even then, they did not seem to realise that the span had been dropped into the creek, because at dawn next morning a power-driven trolley came along with an inspection party and ran full tilt over the gap into the waters. Of the party of four Japanese, two were drowned. Although Chinese troops had done some demolition work in the past, it was not of the same quality. The Japanese were furious. They took four miserable farmers off the fields by the bridge and gave them the water treatment. That consisted of inviting them in and offering them a nice bowl of tea. After the farmer had finished the first bowl, he was invited to drink another; if he showed signs of demurring, he was encouraged by prods and kicks to take more, and he had to continue drinking till he simply could not swallow any more. Four Japanese would then take him outside, seize him each by an arm or leg, and throw him into the air, allowing him to drop to the earth. If that did not rupture his full stomach, they would jump on it. They would then leave him to die in agony. Finally, the heads of the four farmers were cut off and stuck up at each corner of the broken bridge.\n\nOur own position at Chin Ya was none too secure. After the departure of our Army Group Commander, we had been placed under the command of a general, whose headquarters were not far away, but whose troops faced west towards Wuhu and the Poyang lake, where, as I have already explained, there were no targets. As soon as the success of our work became known, there was pressure from all sorts of generals to enter their students at our school; I do not flatter myself that the desire was based so much on the wish to benefit from our instruction as to have a share in our supplies. Our new general now wanted to take possession of us hook, line, and sinker, and the better to do it, he proposed we should move over to his part of the country. Not only were there no targets there, but neither was there any derelict railway on which we could train; we hastily explained what a lot of work and money we had put into our \"plant\" and the overwhelming disadvantages of moving. It was agreed we should stay, but we felt under the obligation to accept a number of teams from the General's regiments for our next course; all wasted effort.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213466, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "29\n\nof the blood but sons who have left the family to support themselves are disqualified from any inheritance. Daughters of the deceased likewise have no right to any inheritance but the deceased's brothers receive a share. On the dissolution of the estate the boat and engine are first offered for sale within the family. It might be that one of the heirs wishes to sell out his share and to build or purchase a vessel for independent operation. In any case the value of the property in the estate is realised and then the debts of the family are counted. If the value of the property in the estate is insufficient to offset the debts, one of the heirs may take the whole estate and thereby assume sole responsibility for all the debts of the family. Alternatively, the heirs on sharing the assets will share the debts equally also and will then each inform the creditors what share of the debt he has assumed responsibility to pay.\n\nMarriage 17\n\nMost sea-dwellers follow the old Chinese custom in marriage and very few reach marital state through love-affairs or register their marriages in the modern manner. A match-maker is employed to introduce the relatives of the boy and the girl and then upon the agreement of the respective parents the boy sends a gift to the girl as a symbol of their engagement. Then a temple or fortune-teller is consulted regarding the fixing of the wedding date. Ten days before that day the boy gives the girl's parents notice and on the day before the wedding he sends her a large present of cakes, wine, roasted pigs and other delicacies. That night the girl's parents give a dinner party. The following morning the boy sends one of his close female relatives with the match-maker in a sampan to a given rendezvous and they escort the bride to the bridegroom's boat. On her arrival the bride first salutes the bridegroom's ancestors. In the afternoon a dinner party is given by the bridegroom's parents usually on a \"Ko Tong” (=restaurant boat). If the bride's family is wealthy a dowry may be given.\n\nSince they are accustomed to adopt a son if their wife has no issue, few sea-dwellers keep concubines. However if a concubine is kept in the traditional manner then she must receive the approval of the first wife and thereafter any sons by the concubine are treated in the same manner as sons by the first wife.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213504, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "68\n\nsubdivided into a number of cubicles and sublet to a number of households or families. In the district, examples of over 25 people clustered into a living space of 600 square feet could be found easily. The great density and the serious overcrowding had become a matter of great concern. In 1890, an exhaustive report on the subject was submitted to the Government. However, no strong action was taken after that. In that report, an enumeration of the people of the district by the method of verbal inquiry, which could only be assumed as fairly accurate, had been made by the Chinese District Watchmen. A table (Table 2) has been drawn up to show the difference between the figures of the Overcrowding Report and that of the Census.\n\nThe question of insanitary conditions in Sai Ying Pun had also excited attention for a long time. The houses in the district were usually built back to back. The rooms were dark, damp, and badly ventilated. Very few houses had been cleaned or whitewashed inside since they were built. Latrines and dustbins seldom existed in those houses. A large proportion of the houses in the district had the old-fashioned drains which were built of bricks. As the old bricks rotted away, the sewers collapsed and blocked the pipes. Furthermore, a number of houses were converted or used as storage for grains and other goods. These contained an enormous number of rats and cockroaches. In 1881, the Government had decided to seek the service of a sanitary engineer, Osbert Chadwick, to advise as to the sanitary conditions of Hong Kong. A year later, he made a special report and proposed a number of sweeping changes, which included the provision of open spaces at the rear of buildings, of a window in every habitable room, and of 600 cu. ft. of unobstructed space for each adult in rooms divided into cabins, and the layout of roads and drains before the building lots were offered for sale. A Sanitary Board was set up in 1883, but it had only limited powers because of the stiff resistance from the Chinese as well as European property owners and the laissez-faire attitude of the government. The Public Health Ordinance of 1887, which, among other things, provided for the reservation of open spaces at the rear of buildings and the fixing of a minimum standard of 300 cu. ft. of internal living space per adult, and a clause in 1889 whereby mezzanine floors could only be constructed if provision were made for a vertical clearance of 5 ft. above and below, were also met with great opposition from the Chinese.\n\nThe insanitary conditions and the inevitable direct human contacts", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213614, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "183\n\nones, having sprung up through private enterprise. Others, like a large newly completed temple in Tampenis New Town, were a complete surprise.\n\nBack in the early sixties I came across a deity who intrigued me because he did not appear to be worshipped elsewhere, and had an unusual multi-coloured striped face. He was known as the Great Emperor of the Seven Stars [the Northern Dipper], Qixing Dadi.\n\nThe temple was a basha hut with an attap roof in a humble and impoverished village on the road across the north east of the island towards Changi. The villagers were unable to tell me anything about the deity apart from it being a powerful stellar god, feared and carefully propitiated. I returned to the village a number of times and always came away disappointed. Nothing seemed to be known about his background and legend. Then, in the early seventies I again tried to find the temple but this time neither the village nor the temple remained and no one seemed to know where the temple had gone to.\n\nIn 1993 I was once more fortunate to revisit the Republic for a short visit and driving my hire car from the airport lost my way in the welter of new roads and found myself in Tampenis New Town. There ahead of me in the midst of the blocks of flats was a new and comparatively large popular religion temple. I parked and entered wondering just what I might find and was amazed to see a row of some nine separate altars facing me, all with two or three images on them with a large Pestilence Wangye shrine in the centre. I began to make notes and sketch in the detail when, at the first altar at stage right, was my old friend, Qixing Dadi.\n\nIt transpired that each altar was occupied by deities from nine separate temples from the area around the New Town, all of which had been demolished over the years to make way for modern development. The ending, however, for me anyway, is sad. Having re-found the Great Emperor and sought out the temple staff, no one again was able to help with his legend. A visiting devotee offered to help and over the next few months wrote several times explaining the progress or lack of it ending with the report that the old man who might have known more had died a matter of months earlier.\n\nSo here we have a minor cult, almost certainly brought to Singapore\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213615, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "184\n\nfrom China, whose image has not been noted during my travels around Chinese temples in South-east Asia nor in Taiwan, and almost certainly Hokkien as the main deity, the Third Prince Nazha, and the other deities in the original village temple included Fa-zhu Gong, Sun the Monkey deity and several unnamed pestilence Wangye.\n\nAn elderly carver in Singapore told me during the early 1960s that he knew nothing about the deity apart from having drawn a sketch for his personal records a year or so earlier. The deity is portrayed as a dishevelled fierce male, sitting, dressed in armour covered by a long red robe. He has bare feet, round staring eyes, and unkempt hair and beard. His skin is chocolate brown apart from the shaven or bald front half of his head and his cheeks which are decorated with white and coloured stripes of red and green. Such markings are very uncommon. Similar ones, typical of the painted faces of opera characters, have been noted on Fukienese pestilence Wangye and on minor warriors, escorts to major deities.\n\nSo, apart from his title and his possible ethnic group, Hokkien, we do not know his legend and background, nor do we know why or for what he was revered.\n\nHowever, now that his image has reappeared on an altar, in Tampenis New Town, who knows what might happen. It is not impossible for a miracle, revealed perhaps in a dream or trance, to be attributed to Qixing Dadi and for the cult to take on a new direction and life.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213773, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "96\n\nthat the religion is of Han origin. e.g. the use of Han language in the manuals, especially when the Yao use it for ritual purposes alone; that the Southern Song Daoist's description, to be discussed later, of the \"ancestry\" of the sorcerers magic does not mention at all that this is the practice of a minority people; and that major elements of the tradition (though perhaps not ordination itself) is shared by the Fujian, Cantonese and Hakka ritual specialists.\n\nHakka genealogies have adopted different theories about those names. One asserts that those names were given by \"Daoists\". One example is a genealogy of the Lius, revised probably in 1920.\n\nIn the previous compilation names of ancestors from Song to Yuan times had names calling them fa and lang, with numbers involving ten, hundred, thousand to ten thousand, and disregarding seniority among brothers. It was because customs of those times gave Daoists considerable power, to the extent that names were given by Daoists.\"\n\nSimilarly, the genealogy of the Lins of Hang Ha Po explained that \"during that time [which?] it was popular to be ordained by the Heavenly Master Zhang. Those who obtained such ordination are to be called by their famung and langhao, which is to be passed down to future generations and never forgotten.\" That such a claim cannot be wholly true can be shown easily by comparing the names with those found in Daoist ritual documents. There the Daoist names, although possibly different from the everyday names that they identify, are not different in form from ordinary names.\n\nAnother example, the Sixing He's 4th Genealogy, claimed that the eleven sons and one daughter of an ancestor Weitai, had all attained the status of immortals; they are therefore identified by langming ordination names in their entries. Yet another theory is proposed in the genealogy of the Luos of Luobo, compiled between 1914 and 1930. It contains a lengthy attempt to refute interpretation of lang names as ordination names. It objected to what it alleged to be popular belief that such names were religious names given by Shimu sorcerers. Basically, it brings our attention to lang being used as a rank during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, and numbers possibly used to refer to heads of household. This does not explain the combination of lang and the numeric expressions, especially those prefixed by a non-numeric character. Nor does it explain the ordination names of the other format. More importantly, his theory", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213782, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "105\n\nIn the Southern Song period the first ancestor (“29th generation\" in the Xus' genealogy, who lived, again, in Jiangxi Province, had the names of Er Shi Jiu (29) Lang, whose grandsons moved to Fujian “at the end of Song dynasty\". The genealogy consistently includes langming designation only when more than one name is given for an ancestor. The first of such examples is a 39th generation ancestor. Although no date is given for him, he was probably a century earlier than a 43rd generation ancestor who lived during the Yongle years (1403-1424). Some segments of this Xu clan had ordination names, with the exception of about five consecutive generations during early Ming dynasty, during a period that spans about 20 generations ending in early Qing. Another Xu genealogy, related to the Xu clan above, using another system of numbering generations, named three ancestors in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations with ordination names, the last, a sorcerer/curer widely respected among his kinsmen even long after his death, lived between Wanli and Zhengtong (1436-1619).\n\n65\n\nFor the period between Song and Yuan we have more examples. The Fourth Genealogy of the Hes of Shixing names many ancestors with ordination names; among the earliest were a Wu Lang who moved to Fujian from “[Jiang]Nan ji[di] Luzhou” sometime between the times of Song Jiezong (1086-1100) and Yuan Chengzong (1295-1307). I have already mentioned another genealogy of the He, in which the sons and daughters of the founding ancestor Weitai were all claimed to be “immortals”, at least four generations before an ancestor who moved between 1086 and 1307. L. Hade, to whom many genealogies of the Li surname trace, had several sons with ordination names, whose birth dates were given in one genealogy as 1329-1333. During the Ming the Yaos of Shixing Pingyang Tang had names in the lang style since the first ancestor named in the genealogy who lived near the end of Song. During the Ming there was an ancestor who had an ordination name designated as such, who moved to Shixing of Nanxiong in 1451. Similarly the Miaos had many names in the ordination name styles since their move to the present Guangdong province, with one for an ancestor who died around 1452 designated as such.\n\nNew ordination names probably stopped being included in genealogies early in the Qing dynasty. I have already mentioned the case of the Xus. For this last period there were examples in several Hakka genealogies from the New Territories of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213993, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "28\n\nscaffolding. The Construction Industry Training Centre, in conjunction with the Vocational Training Council, does conduct trade tests for bamboo scaffolders at Aberdeen. A Guidebook to Trade Tests for Bamboo Scaffolders has jointly been produced by the Vocational Training Council, the Building and Civil Engineering Training Board, and the Construction Industry Training Authority.\n\nAccording to the 'Code of Practice':\n\n...every scaffolder should therefore be required to wear a safety harness or belt (plus suitable lanyard) attaching to an independent life-line or a secure anchorage or fitting, or a secure fixing point at all times.31\n\nThis is how they are taught in the Construction Industry Centre. Actually, outside on the job, few scaffolders use safety belts. Most say that, because when erecting or dismantling a scaffold they have to move around so much, if they are ‘anchored down' with a safety belt and attachments, it slows them down. In practice, a scaffolder puts his leg over or around a bamboo member and 'secures' himself like that (see Plate 4).\n\nAlthough erecting bamboo scaffolding is a respected trade, one not only needs to be properly trained but also one has to be physically fit and mentally alert in order to prevent accidents. When one old master scaffolder was asked how he proved that he was properly trained without a certificate he burst into laughter 'If you are going to work 30 floors above the ground, standing on slim pieces of bamboo, you had better be properly trained,' he guffawed.\n\nThe trade of the scaffolder has been described as blending lofty ideals with a lonely life. Certainly 'up there', to a large extent you are on your own. The danger is that tradesmen take short cuts to get the job completed more quickly. If workers have a fall or an injury they normally quit because of psychological pressures. Nevertheless, most accidents are caused by carelessness. Most of those injured are workmen of various trades who use the scaffolding after it has been erected, not the scaffolders themselves. Sometimes the scaffolding may have been altered or tampered with by other tradesmen. For example, a bricklayer removes a tie from the scaffolding to a building because it gets in his way.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215106, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "159\n\nMeanwhile, General An's army was facing the threat of yet more foreign forces coming to the aid of the new emperor and the armies of Guo Ziyi. These were mainly Uighur and during the summer of 757 after the two Chinese capitals had been captured by the Uighurs, one of the cities, Luoyang, suffered several days of carnage and plunder. An was assassinated, some say by his son, Qingxu, others by a fellow rebel early in 757, but all agree that he was succeeded by his son who was in his turn murdered by his general, Shi Siming. Shi Siming was also a native of Liuchak, of Turkic descent, who had co-operated with An Lushan in his campaign against the Kitans. After the death of An Qingxu, he proclaimed himself emperor Yingtian Huangdi of the Great Yan dynasty.\n\nIn the east, severe fighting had been going on; but, owing to the valour displayed by the garrisons at Pingyuan and Chang Shan, the progress of the rebels in the direction of Shandong was checked. Nor were they more successful in their attempts to invade the Yangzi region. In the direction of Anhui, they were confronted by the stronghold of Suiyang,\n\nof which we will learn more later; and in the direction of Hubei, their advance was blocked by the city of Nanyang, both of these cities held out stubbornly. Shi Siming was in his turn murdered by his own son, who proclaimed himself emperor and reigned for a matter of months before he too was overthrown and put to death, thereby ending the four-year-old rebel dynasty. The rebellion had lost its impetus and festered on with intermittent battles until 763. Even during the last years, the outcome was far from certain. It was ultimately quelled and the dynasty regained the throne, but not before the emperor and his son and heir had both disappeared from the scene in death. This epic story is well known to all Chinese, having been related down the centuries throughout China by village tea-house storytellers.\n\nNow that we have a picture of the Rebellion, let us focus on the emperor Tang Ming Huang and the eight generals who took part in the suppression of the An Lushan rebellion and have become local, regional, and even nation-wide popular religion cult deities with their images, euhemerized heroes revered on a number of altars. Although images of leaders of various rebellions down the centuries have become popular religion cult deities, no image has been seen on altars of An Lushan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215674, "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-2001", "page_number": 451, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "403\n\n* Hammond World Atlas. p. 107.\n\nhttp://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/AMH/AMH-25.ht\n\n10 http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/photos/Korea/kor1950/kor1950.htm\n\n\"'STRIX' in The Spectator on August 18, 1950, reported Morrison's death thus: 'Although he was only 37 when he was killed last Saturday, I think Ian Morrison was what is generally understood by a great man, and I am quite sure that he would have been remembered as one had he lived. It was not merely that he was an extremely enterprising and clear-headed correspondent with very mature political judgement. His character had a sort of translucent quality, so that behind his diffident manner and his boyish appearance people of all races recognised in him a man to be liked and trusted. He had an almost feminine blend of sympathy and intuition, yet he was tougher and more single-minded in his purposes than colleagues who looked much more like thrusters. Everybody liked him, at all levels; he was becoming a legend in Eastern Asia, and no single individual did more in the last ten years for what remains of our prestige there. When I heard of his death I remembered that last year, near the borders of Tibet, I had been given a letter to deliver to him, but our arrangements for a rendezvous had failed, and I still had the letter somewhere. I found it in a drawer. It is a dull letter, from a little engineer called Hsu who wrote from the Sining Electrical Works, Tsinghai Province. It begins: \"Dear Mr. Morrison, I often think of you since you went away. I do not forget you at all...\" People have long memories in Asia, and Ian Morrison will not quickly forfeit the place that he won in them. Christopher Buckley was a very good man, too.' [Hon. Ed.'s note: The use of the phrase 'little engineer' does much to explain the reason for the earlier...what remains of our prestige there.'}\n\n12 Reproduced at Annex I\n\n13 http://www.newseum.org/scripts/Journalist/Detail.asp?PhotoID=718\n\n14\n\nThe Road to Peking, p. 156.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215991, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 290, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "224 \n\n(Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981), the first volume subtitled Barbarians At The Gates, pp. 143-147, 174-175, 224-225.\n\n11. Both Hong Réngan and He Jinshan have been discussed in detail in Pfister's Striving for \"The Whole Duty of Man\", especially chapters 4-6. A more thorough study of He Jinshan's contribution to Chinese Christian history by Lauren Pfister is an essay entitled \"A Transmitter but not a Creator: The Creative Transmission of Protestant Biblical Traditions by Ho Tsun-Sheen (1817-1871)” in Irene Eber, et. al., eds., Bible in Modern China: The Literary and Intellectual Impact (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1999), pp. 165-197.\n\n12. The name of Ch'ëa Kam-Kwong is constituted by particular Chinese characters Legge described as the \"Golden Light Chariot,\" a way of expressing in English what the common meaning of each character is. Unfortunately, two misspellings have predominated in other literature, one in English and one in Chinese. In English, we surmise that Helen Edith Legge put together the typescript entitled \"Che'a Kin-KWáng,\" horribly mixing up the transliteration with something like the proper name in Hoklo dialect, but the given name in Mandarin. Legge never uses these transliterations in his own writings. In Chinese, Wáng Tão wrote the wrong characters for the name in his personal diary for 1862 when he had first come to Hong Kong, showing also his struggle in understanding Cantonese pronunciations, making his given name \"Embroidered River\" (M. Jinjiang, C. Gam-gong) presumably by guessing from the sounds he heard from other Hong Kong Chinese Christians who referred to him. Consult Fang Xing and Tăng Zhijūn, eds., Wáng Tão rìjì (Wáng Tāo ’s Diary) (Beijing: Zhōnghuá Book Store, 1987), pp. 196-197, record for the date of the 10th month and 15th day of the lunar calendar (or a day in September, 1862).\n\n13. There is no study of Ch'ea Kam-Kwong in Chinese language sources as far as I know, and very little published about him in English after the 1860s. Part of the reason, as will be argued below, is that his murder became an embarrassment to both the British embassy and the Qing dynasty at the time.\n\n14. Legge wrote memorials for his elder brother, an important Congregational minister in Great Britain, George Legge (1802-1860), and his co-pastor, Hé Jinshan, published in 1863 and 1872 respectively. See the typescript on the \"Sketch of the Life of Ho Tsun-sheen\" in SOAS/CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 7, the original manuscript on Ch'a being held in the Bodleian Library (the second item in MS Eng. misc. c. 865, fol. 1-19). Consult the long introduction written for George Legge's Lectures on Theology, Science and Revelation already mentioned above. The text of \"Che'a Kin-KWáng” is a compilation done most likely by his daughter, Helen Edith Legge. It uses many original and secondary sources citing her father's and other missionaries' writings, but also includes some perspectives and interpretations which may not portray the full story.\n\n15. The story of their visit to Daoist and Buddhist sites on Mount Lo-fow is described in Legge's \"Journey of a Missionary Tour along the 'East River' of Canton Province,\" China Mail, Supplement to #853 (June 20, 1861), p.4 (covering events of May 22-23, 1861). This is the full text from which extracts were and published in EMMC/MM, No.304 (New Series, No. 21) for September 2, 1861, pp. 249-260.\n\nmade", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216002, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 301, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "235\n\nEdith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar, p. 120.\n\n89. Legge's letter to Arthur Tidman, Secretary of the London Missionary Society, dated October 31, 1861, also printed in the EMMC/MM 26 (1862), pp. 18-19.\n\n90. The first and second volumes comprising Legge's translations and commentaries to the Four Books had been completed in February and November that year,\n\n91. The essay, Che'a Kin Kwáng, must be a pastiche prepared by Helen Edith Legge in preparation for her larger book on her father, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar. It is particularly evident in the last few pages, when letters from Chalmers and others are quoted (without notes or details, typical of her style in the book as well). A comparison of the typescript and the chapter in Helen Edith Legge's book on \"Che'a\" (notice the same error in transmitting the name of the martyr, pp.102-121) show that she was using the typescript liberally, the last pages of both documents being exactly the same except in one final addition within the book. That addition is a final, short paragraph, hagiographic to the extreme, summarizing how Ch'ea had received the \"salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ\" so that he \"loved not his life unto the death\". Though its sentiment could be shared by all sympathetic Christians, Helen Legge's writing also had other purposes in mind.\n\nA careful reading of the chapter in her book on Ch'ea reveals numerous factual errors -- wrong timing, mixing up place and person names, confusing original situations -- but also contains some new material from her mother's letters (Hannah Mary) received from her father that provide little cameos of other dimensions of the situation. Unfortunately, she used these sources only selectively, and then apparently destroyed the originals. It is quite significant, therefore, that it is only in the typescript mentioned above and in her chapter in the book that a defence of her father's leaving Poklo in the early morning before the vigilantes attacked the city is presented. (She may, however, be referring to the content of a letter by her father to her mother, or to the later portions of the Reminiscences which I could not check.)\n\n92. See a historical description of the development of this very important institution, one which continued on for forty years as the major bureau for foreign affairs in China, provided by Masataka Banno, China and the West, 1858-1861: The Origins of the Tsungli Yamen (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964).\n\n93. See his Appendix I, “Incidents Mentioned in Text, 1861-1870\" in Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity, pp. 275-276. In spite of the title of the table, it seems that the summary is supposed to include all major incidents among the religious affairs documents within the files of the Zongli yámén. Another important gap in the record is the burning of the newly built chapel in Buddha Hill City (Fat-shan, M. Fóshan) in September 1870, a malevolent act perpetrated by crowds who opposed the erection of the building and threatened all those who were there with severe bruisings. Ho Tsun-sheen was one of the Christian officials present at the meeting, escaping through a rear window and finding his way back to Hong Kong independently. The event was so traumatic for him, that within six", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216073, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 372, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "306\n\nThe last mention of Mason in Hart's letters refers to Mason in 1897 having sent Hart his book The Shen's Pigtail or Other Cues of Anglo-China Life. Mason, wrote Hart, had been in low water at home and twice [Hart] had helped him. Mason was, added Hart, a clever fellow who, before the C'Kiang affair broke out, had just got himself on to the ladder of advancement, and in that matter [the Mason affair] he was to Hart's mind, the victim of mixed motives - he was curious, and he wanted to serve Hart, and got into a quicksand.\n\nHart was much kinder to Mason than ever Mesny would be. Mesny, in his Miscellany some ten years later, related in great detail, both from notes and from memory, the extraordinary story related above of being persecuted by Mason.\n\nMesny also wrote in his Miscellany [6 Feb. 1896] that he had gone through the evidence [on the Mason Case] in the British Blue Books and could not see how any mortal could come to any other than one of two conclusions - either Mason had been paid by the Chinese to get up a bogus scare [to create anti-foreign action] or that he was a mere maniac. Nine-tenths of his revelations had been unquestionably pure fabrication. At the bottom of the page, Mesny added, without offering any evidence, \"I am now fully satisfied that Mason was paid by the Chinese.\"\n\nOn an entirely different aspect of life in Shanghai, we read in a postscript from Mesny on the snobbish attitudes of the British in China that adds colour to our story. The British Consul in Shanghai held a party in May of 1899 to celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria. Mesny wrote in his Miscellany that despite not receiving an invitation, a fact which confirms that he was ostracised by fellow Britons, possibly because of his wife or because he made a point of living among and mixing with Chinese, though it could also have been due to his very pro-Chinese stand, he turned up at the Consulate only to be turned away by the British police at the gate. This short note in the Miscellany describing the slight would appear to have been his method of getting his own back.\n\nAs with most small expatriate bodies, factions existed. Mason described in his 'Chinese Confessions', the problems of a 'British bachelor in the Imperial Customs Service in Zhenjiang, a small Customs", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]