[ { "id": 206246, "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-1971", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "LETTERS FROM China 1835-36\n\n57\n\nof subjects that will one day avenge themselves on all of us if neglected. This is almost a more painful sight than the ignorance of the poor Chinese around us; it is being regularly \"blinded by the god of this world\" in spite of the light of day; in the other case, day has not yet dawned on the benighted souls.....\n\nI am more chagrined than I can tell you, at being unable as the time draws nigh, to give Herschel any hopes of meteorological observations here on the 21st Inst. Instruments cannot be borrowed from the Ships at Whampoa, and I cannot leave Canton for two days at this over-busy season to go to the instruments, and I have tried to move one or two Ships' Officers residing there in vain. My old Partner G.I. Gordon (whom you may know by my report of old, for a man of uncommon talents and most cultivated mind, as well as amiable and honorable feelings) is at Macao now, with Herschel's brochure in his hands, endeavoring something: he may be up here in a few days and then I shall know the worst. I look forward to disappointment on this 21st Decr as now fixed. But if I live till 21st March, I shall have better hopes of doing something, however little that something be, because for one thing I shall not be so excessively busy in office at that period as at present. So my regret though great is not altogether despair; and I wish you would give H. [Herschel] my warm love with the assurance of the hearty zeal I take in this matter, and which I shall yet evince I hope more practically than in all this bow-wowing.\n\nI am sending under the care of Lieutenant P. Nicolson by this opportunity, a small parcel to H's [Herschel's] address containing what I daresay will be a great curiosity to you both – genuine Chinese Map of China, and eke of both hemispheres. The latter (the Old World at least) you will make out immediately. But the New World will be new to most Geographers who look at it. I am sorry I have not time to search for some translation of the Chinese characters on it, but perhaps I may supply the want yet. Accompanying this map, is a Prospectus of a most excellent Institution lately set agoing here, for the success of which I feel a deep interest - a Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Society in China! Is not the idea good? Simple elementary Treatises on all useful subjects to be translated by it and diffused as much as possible, over the Empire, and into the Imperial Palace itself if", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206393, "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-1971", "page_number": 210, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "184 \n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe Colony, which his predecessor had not done, and which his successor was still less able to do. During all his time the Colony was in a dead-alive state. What trade had sprung up during its first years had rather decreased under Sir John Davis, and it was not till about 1854 that it received a fresh impulse. I remember walking, in 1849, one afternoon with old Mr. Holliday—so we should call him now with his stalwart sons among us—and having a gloomy conversation with him on the state and prospects of the place. Taking our stand at a point a little beyond what is now St. Paul's College, where we had a good view of the harbour, we counted 28 square-rigged vessels in it, storeships and all, with hardly a steamer among them. \"After all,” said Mr. Holliday, \"there must be some trade, else those vessels would not come to the place.\" By and by came the emigration to California, and afterwards that to Australia, but though these produced some excitement, they did little to the furtherance of trade. In 1850 the T'ae-p'ing rebellion began to be talked of, and, Sir George Bonham going on a visit to England, Dr. Bowring came down from his consulate in Canton to take his place, which finally became his own, when the other vacated his office in 1854, leaving his name in the Bonham Strand.\n\nAbout this time Yeh, whose name ere long became notorious all over the world, and who had for some time been governor of Canton province, was appointed viceroy of the two Kwang. The T'ae-p'ing rebels made themselves masters of Nanking, and the south and seaboard of China began to heave with rebellion. One body made itself master of Fat-shan, and Canton was threatened. Yeh, however, maintained himself there, keeping his executioners busy. The numbers put to death in 1852 and 1853 were very many every month, and they greatly multiplied, as the insurgents were gradually got under. It has always seemed to me that this was the turning point in the progress of Hongkong. As Canton was threatened, the families of means hastened to leave it, and many of them flocked to this Colony. Houses were in demand; rents rose; the streets that had been comparatively deserted assumed a crowded appearance; new commercial Chinese firms were founded; the native trade received an impetus which it had not lost till it was arrested by the superfluous vigour of some of Sir Richard MacDonnell's early ordinances.\n\nPage 210\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207096, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n161\n\nAnother ancestral hall, built by the Tang family was less fortunate. The story goes that in the 1st year of Ka Hing (✯✯) A.D. 1796 of Ts'ing dynasty, the sons of Tang Yue Cheung (**) decided to build an ancestral hall worthy to house the tablet of their illustrious ancestress, the princess. So they built a house of “kak muk” (**) in T’aai Họng (✯✯✯) village, and in shape the house was like a king's palace. At that time the district magistrate of Sun On was a man nicknamed “Hungry Bug\" on account of his habit of collecting \"squeeze\" wherever he could. When he heard of the new building being erected in Kam T'in, and how magnificent it was, he scented a chance to make money. So he sent a message to the Tangs to say he would like to inspect their new acquisition.\n\nThe Tangs were much dismayed; being familiar with the character of their district officer they knew quite well the object of his visit, they did not want to pull down the house yet its very existence was an indication of their wealth and prosperity. In the village of Lung Kwat T'au (#) where the villagers are Tangs too, being descendants of the first son of the princess, there was a portrait of the princess and the Tangs of Kam T'in borrowed it and hung it up in the entrance of the hall. When the district officer saw it he was filled with awe, and hastily made obeisance to it. He was so impressed that he dared not demand money from the descendants of so distinguished a lady, and after making a show of being pleased he stayed one night, and then took his departure.\n\nEventually the picture had to be returned to its rightful owners, and the Kam T’in men fearing further trouble, pulled the hall down, but the foundation stones, overgrown with weeds and grass can still be seen.\n\nThe legends of Kam T'in are curiously mixed up with tales of buried treasure. One story tells how at the end of the Ming dynasty the Tangs wished to build an ancestral hall for the tablet of their eleventh ancestor, Tang Kwong Yue ( ). Tang Ping Yee (*) (a grandson of Tang Kwong Yue) and eight of Tang Ping Yee's cousins chose what was, according to one \"Fung shui\" man, a very lucky day to put up the central beam of the house, but a few days later they found that the beam was putting forth shoots. The people considered this to be a bad omen, so they consulted a more reliable fortune-teller, who declared that the day had been a lucky day, but for building boats, not houses! The people at once pulled down the beam, the time happened to be the season of the dragon boat festival, and the villages decided to make the discarded", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207159, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "224\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe area still retains its distinctive character and is a tribute to the vision and public-spirit of its chief promoter, Mr. Ede (1865-1925). A small plaque set into the wall of a park in Essex Crescent perpetuates his memory.\n\nAnother Garden City plan for the area south of Prince Edward Road, west of Waterloo Road and north of Argyle Street was initiated by the Hong Kong Engineering and Construction Company in 1932. Unlike the Kowloon Tong area, which was levelled by cutting and filling, this project was to utilise the natural features of the site. It was claimed that 'for excellence of situation, beauty of outlook, serenity of location and conformity with surrounding amenities, it will be without an equal in the Peninsula'. (South China Morning Post, Jan. 21, 1932, remarks at Sod Turning Ceremony.) Mr. J. P. Braga, Chairman of the Company undertaking the project, gave his name to the road at the centre of the tract, Braga Circuit. The area still retains some of its secluded and serene character and is a favourite of courting couples. It is better known today as Kadoorie Avenue, the general name used to describe the several roads that make up this residential complex.\n\nThe Diocesan Boys' School\n\nAs the name indicates the Diocesan Boys' School is an institution of the Anglican Church in Hong Kong. In 1859 the wife of Bishop Smith, being interested in the education of girls, organised a committee of women and founded the Diocesan Native Female Training Institute. It was established 'to introduce among a somewhat superior class of Native Females the blessings of Christianity and of Religious Training' (The First Annual Report). Education was to be in English. It was hoped the girls would make suitable brides for the male converts from St. Paul's College. However, there were some publicised instances of students from the School being sought after as mistresses of Europeans, their ability to speak English being a particular asset in such an arrangement. Due to this bad publicity local support fell off and the school was in financial difficulties. In 1867 all Chinese girls, except orphans and destitute, were dismissed. In 1868 Bishop Alford somewhat reluctantly agreed to head up a reorganisation. The following year the name was changed to the Diocesan Home and Orphanage. Under a new admission policy the Home was 'to receive and place children of both sexes, sound both in body and mind, of European, Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210372, "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-1984", "page_number": 343, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "322\n\nW.J. HOWARD\n\nWednesday and Saturday afternoon long walks up the hillside. We were allowed to go up to the Peak by way of Hatton and Harlech and Lugard Road gathering wild flowers and shrubs for decorating St Peter's Church for the Christmas festival.\n\nThe Rev. Vyvian H. Copley-Moyle, who was Cathedral Chaplain from 1912 to 1927, found time to teach Scripture to our matriculation class. He was a historian as well as theologian. He tempered his religious teaching with excerpts from Roman history and the boys listened with awe to his account of the Roman legions under Titus laying siege to Jerusalem in 70 A.D., about 37 years after the death of Jesus. Our class teacher, Henry Sykes, who ruled his class under a rod of iron, proved docile whenever Rev Copley-Moyle appeared in the school. His stern appearance changed to a full smile. At the Cathedral, Copley-Moyle's sermons were always refined as he was fully prepared with copious notes.\n\nOne evening in the Prefects' Room before bedtime Rev. Featherstone found me banging away at an old dilapidated typewriter. Thereafter he gave me some typing work, usually on a Sunday afternoon, at the same time relieving me of the 2.00 to 4.00 p.m. Collect and Gospel ordeal. That ancient typewriter of 1919 vintage served me in good stead, for even now in 1985, after 66 years and at age 82 I find myself still using a typewriter to produce this report.\n\nFeatherstone was a man of vision. He was responsible for the removal of the school from its cramped surroundings in Bonham Road to its present magnificent site in Kowloon, establishing a \"brick fund\" to pay for the move. Unfortunately, I believe, he lost his job because of this as the School Committee in those days thought he had committed the school to finances beyond its limit.\n\nWhen we passed our matriculation examination in 1919, one of our classmates, by the name of Ngan Chun On, went to the United States. He applied for admission to the University of Pennsylvania, producing his Hong Kong University Matriculation Certificate. The learned professors looked askance at the certificate saying they had never heard of the Hong Kong University. Finally one of them said: “We cannot admit you on the strength of your", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213805, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "JOHN FRYER'S EARLY YEARS IN CHINA: III. ACCOUNT OF THREE DAYS EXCURSION ON THE MAINLAND OF CHINA\n\nFRED DAGENAIS*\n\n129\n\nThis is the third in a series of letters by John Fryer (1838-1928) to appear in this Journal. In the first letter Fryer described the tedious and sometimes difficult voyage from London to Hong Kong in 1861 on a sailing ship via the Cape of Good Hope with a brief stop at Batavia. In the first letter Fryer presented himself as a very young man just out of Highbury Training College coming into contact with the larger world, homesick, critical of the master of the ship and of the passengers, confirmed in his personal faith, bent on self-improvement, and interacting for the first time with missionaries in the colonial world of Batavia and Hong Kong.\n\nThe second letter, written shortly after his arrival, described Hong Kong and its environs and the European and Chinese people encountered; in it he provided us with a detailed tour of the building housing St. Paul's College, where he had been assigned to superintend by the Church Missionary Society, and of its operations. St Paul's College had its origins in a school founded in the mid-1840s by then Colonial Chaplain Rev. Vincent Stanton; the College was given a boost by the arrival in 1850 of the Rev George Smith, Bishop of Victoria (1849-64). In that letter Fryer seemed in awe of his new authority and responsibility and quite proud of the commodious school building and its library; he began to socialize with the Colonial Chaplain and his family, and revealed an appreciation of the wider perspective offered by the interaction with the Chinese population of the island and its culture.\n\nThe first and second letters were clearly identified as letters written for home consumption, for family and friends in Hythe and Chudleigh. The letters were extracted from his diary and designed to describe his adventures in an exotic land. The first letter had a salutation and a signature; the second letter had a salutation, but ended abruptly, the last page or pages with conclusion and signature having perhaps been lost or purposely destroyed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214337, "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": 195, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "159\n\nhome and the work and pleasure of establishing common cause with fellow men and women in the whole of China could progress on a less awkward foundation.\n\n(0)\n\n(2)\n\n(3)\n\nNOTES\n\nIllustrations from the Illustrated London News are reproduced by permission of The British Library, shelfmark PP7611(42).\n\nThe following convention is used: when \"[]\" appears within a quotation, this represents that the present writer has either added letters or words missing in her copy of the original, or has supplied an explanatory comment.\n\nThe author is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University, and author of The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889), published by the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, 4 Renfrew Road, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, 1997. ISBN: 962-8027-08-5.\n\nEducated in the United Kingdom, she has previously taught English Literature at the University of Lagos, Nigeria (she was there during the Civil War), the University of Hong Kong, and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has worked for Longman University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has worked for Longman Far East as an English-language editor, and she is an occasional freelance writer and journalist. She was briefly an Assistant Mistress at St Stephen's Girls' College, Hong Kong. Previous publications include articles, papers, presentations, and reviews on George Orwell, Leonard Woolf, Lafcadio Hearn, A. C. Swinburne, African Literature in English, New Zealand poetry, and numerous contributions on education in Hong Kong, with a particular focus on the creation of the Government education system under Frederick Stewart, the contributions of the first Anglican Bishop of Hong Kong, George Smith, language policy and standards from 1841 up to date, expatriate teachers, the learning of Chinese by non-Chinese, and the training and supply of translators in early Hong Kong. She has published a Bibliography of Hong Kong creative writing in English. Her entry on Frederick Stewart, commissioned by the New Dictionary of National Biography, has been accepted, and she has now been commissioned to write a revised entry on Bishop Smith, first Anglican Bishop of Victoria (who was the first Warden of St Paul's College, and based in Hong Kong).\n\nShe is married to Dr Verner Bickley, MBE, formerly Assistant Director of Education and founding Director of the Institute of Language in Education in Hong Kong (now absorbed into the Hong Kong Institute of Education).\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215431, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "157\n\nOther Images\n\nA salutation in St. Alfonso's Office praises the palma patientiae and the cedrus castitatis. This allusion to both cedar and palm trees derives from Ecclesiasticus, 24, 17-18. When it comes to the date palms of the second storey, it is very much a part of the stock-in-trade immaculist symbols, particularly dear to southern Spanish poets and painters and also known from early prints, all praising Mary's Immaculate Conception. But these may equally refer to the triumph of the Society of Jesus, with the canonisation of its main protagonists, Sts. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier in 1622 and the recent beatification of Francis Borgia and Luis Gonzaga.\n\nIn the fourth storey or attic The Child Jesus raises his right hand and holds an empty left hand forward. The latter undoubtedly held the lost orb mentioned in the 1644 Annua. It is a pose and attribute typical of the kind of devotional religious image known as an infant Salvator Mundi, that is, Infant Jesus Saviour of the World. The type of \"Menino Jesus\" as Salvator Mundi was well disseminated in Portuguese colonies in the East during the seventeenth-century, as a large number of Indo-Portuguese and Chinese ivory statuettes, usually nude, tend to confirm. Here the Child Jesus is framed by reliefs of angels displaying the Arma Christi, or symbols of Christ's suffering on the Cross. According to Christian theology, the ironically named arma are the “weapons” Christ used in his earthly battle against evil in order to redeem humankind. They were profoundly mystical symbols popularised in devotional literature and images since Medieval times in Europe.\n\nThe pediment is decorated with the large bronze of the Holy Spirit, originally gilded and emerging from rays, with four stars framing it. Next to it are square slabs of the sun and moon, with which the iconography of the main image of the Assumption is finally brought to full completion.\n\nThe dove of the Holy Spirit hovers over both Mother and Child with wings far outspread in an image that seems uncannily like a visual illustration of the Holy Spirit in the opening lines of John Milton's Paradise Lost. As bronze sculpture it is impressive enough today; with its original gilding it must have appeared awe-inspiring to the citizens of Macao and to seventeenth-century and later visitors before the fire.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215631, "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": 408, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "359\n\nunusual downward-hanging flowers with nine pure white petals, and rich red stamens, and also found a large specimen of the quite rare Michelia doltsopa, also with rich white, scented flowers. A Metasequoia glyptostroboides gave us one of many chances to benefit from Maggie's knowledge, and showed again how recent so much of our knowledge is. The tree was spotted in 1941 by a forester in Sichuan who, being unable to identify it sent leaves to Beijing. By extraordinary coincidence, a Japanese palaeobotanist was working on three-million-year-old fossils of the same tree, thought to be long extinct, and in 1946 the connection was made between the two. Like the Ginkgo biloba, therefore, this is a fossil survival - and whereas it is struggling to survive in its remote Sichuan valley, thanks to gardens like this it is actually thriving in Britain, and is now widely available. This was a theme we came across in several gardens: British horticulture feeding plants back to their original countries.\n\nHeligan is now one of the best known gardens in Britain, thanks to the televising of its restoration. Its 80 acres had almost disappeared into jungly luxuriance thanks to some 70 years of neglect, and were only \"re-discovered\" in 1990 thanks to a conversation in the pub at St. Ewe between its new owner John Willis, and one Tim Smit (now Director of the Eden Project). The gardens as we see them now are the design commissioned from Thomas Gray by Henry Hawkins Tremayne in 1780, and the last major planting was done before the First World War. Of the 22 gardeners then, all signed up; two thirds were killed, and none returned. The Tremayne family had six houses, and moved to Crone Manor, leaving Heligan tenanted but the gardens neglected, and the rest, as they say, is history.\n\nWe were taken around Heligan by Colin Howlett, whose familiarity with the project since its inception gave us a wonderful insight into its work. Many of the early plantings still visible are the results of Joseph Hooker's 1848-1850 collecting in Sikkim, which were distributed by himself and by Kew almost immediately on his return: 23 of the rhododendrons at Heligan are Hooker plantings, as is the Crinodendron, and the Magnolia campbellii collected by him is now the largest of the magnolias at 60 feet in height. Thanks to the long neglect of the gardens, however, many of the rhododendrons have hybridised, with the result that Heligan now has the job of identifying and naming many new hybrids; this is also true of its camellias.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]