[
    {
        "id": 207801,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 189,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "174 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nproblems involving steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze may be said to have been solved, or at least understood. Only political unrest, civil wars, and the preoccupation of Britain with the First World War prevented further development.\n\nSzechwan suffered severely from the breakdown of the central government after 1915. At times trade was almost at a standstill because of civil war and organised brigandage, and to a lesser extent because of floods and famines. In spite of this, steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze flourished, a tribute to the keen business instincts and adaptability of the Chinese merchants. The first British steamer to appear on the Upper Yangtze since the Pioneer of 1900 was the Asiatic Petroleum Company's Anlan which went into service in 1918, and was followed in the following year by their Anning.* In addition to carrying petroleum products, these ships carried a few European passengers.\n\nThis heralded a period when there was a great increase in steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze, remarkable in that it took place against a background of continuing and increasing civil war, political unrest, and general trade depression.\n\nOther British companies followed the Asiatic Petroleum Company. In 1919 Mackenzie and Company of Shanghai built the famous Loong Mow at Shanghai's Kiangnan Dockyard, 196.5 feet long by thirty-one feet beam, moulded depth of nine feet six inches and gross registered tonnage of 1,112. The twin reciprocating engines and oil-fired water tube boilers were built by Thorneycroft of Southampton, and the luxurious accommodation for both Chinese and foreign passengers led her to be called \"The Queen of the Gorges\". Soon after this the China Navigation and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company at last built their own ships for the Upper Yangtze, until then having used chartered junks flying their house flags for their Upper River trade. Then the Stars and Stripes appeared with several Dollar Line ships and some small tankers of the Standard Oil Company; and in 1925 by several steamers of the Yangtze Rapids Steamship Company. For a time this latter company operated a through service between Shanghai and Chungking. French, Italian, and Japanese steamers also appeared at this time. By the end of 1925 there were at least thirty-two steamers on\n\n*This company was the Far Eastern branch of the Shell Company.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212174,
        "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": 116,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "93\n\nthe British community to celebrate the event. H.M.S. \"Cornwall\", one of the 10,000 ton County class cruisers came up for the occasion. On Coronation morning, May 12th, a service was held on board. I had not previously seen those \"Chicago pianos\" which were supposed to be so effective an answer to the dive bomber. With their eight evil looking spouts, they looked formidable enough; but five years later they proved insufficient to save this fine ship from Japanese air attack off Ceylon.\n\nIn the evening there was to be a ball at the British Embassy. We went a bit of a splash for the occasion and gave a dinner party before going on to the ball. I remember in addition to some of our Chinese friends there were a couple from the American Embassy, a German officer and his wife, two officers from the British cruiser, the local manager of the Standard Oil Company, an Englishman with a Russian wife, and some visitors from Shanghai. Our cook, unknown to us, had decided he too would go a bit of a splash. For the fish course he produced a samli. In China the samli is considered the best of all fish, an opinion with which I disagree as it is too bony for my lazy nature. The cook's samli was a large fish, I suppose it must have weighed every bit of ten pounds. He served it whole and had excelled himself by inserting in each eye-socket a small electric bulb, connected to a battery concealed somewhere in the fish. To my wife's astonishment, as the chief guest helped herself, one eye gave a most suggestive wink, and the performance was repeated each time a portion was removed; a postmortem revealed that the winking was due to a short in the circuit and not to any humorous intention on the part of the cook.\n\nThe ball given by Sir Hughe and Lady Knatchbull-Hugessen at the Embassy was a brilliant affair. For weeks, of course, all the women had been talking clothes, Gay toilettes set off sparkling eyes; diplomatic, naval and military uniforms shone with gold lace, and the Ambassador's excellent champagne animated the conviviality. We did not know that within a few weeks he would be lying at death's door with a Japanese bullet through his back. In August when motoring from Nanking to Shanghai, the Ambassador's car, over which a large Union Jack was stretched, was attacked by Japanese aircraft and pierced by many machine-gun bullets. The Ambassador was shot through the back near the spine.\n\nIn the old days you could walk along the great wall of Nanking",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212187,
        "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": 129,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "106\n\nburst all round us. There were three Japanese aircraft, whose pilots circled and dived repeatedly. The gunboats were caught by surprise and it was only on the third attack that they got their Lewis guns into action, thereby possibly disturbing the aim of the attacking planes, because again fortunately there were no direct hits.\n\nThe first bomb attack took place at 1.30 p.m. At about 2.30 p.m. three larger machines, in formation, approached at a height of 6000 feet. They were seen to drop a pattern of six heavy bombs, which fell near one of the Asiatic Petroleum Company's steamers, but once again did little damage, owing to what appeared to be poor lateral splintering qualities. This time the gunboats opened with both their \"pom-poms\" and their 3\" guns but without effect.\n\nThe Staff Captain together with the British Military Attaché and the British Consul, who had been in the \"Scarab\", had boarded one of the merchant ships the previous night to go 60 miles up the river to Wuhu to contact the Japanese troops, in the hope that they would be able to arrange to avoid further incidents. Following on these raids, signals were made to the Staff Captain at Wuhu enquiring whether it would not be better to move the ships. At that time we did not know that the U.S.S. \"Panay\" and the three Standard Oil ships had already been sunk, and we were still awaiting a reply from Wuhu, when a third attack was made at about 4 p.m. by three aircraft which made a succession of dives to 600 feet, but they received such a warm welcome from the gunboats that they missed their targets and soon made off.\n\nAll the British ships had Union Jacks painted across their decks: on my ship, for instance, the Jack was 25 feet wide. There could be no further illusion regarding the possibility that these attacks had been made by mistake. The continuous raiding, following on the shelling of the previous day, began to demoralize the Chinese crews, and the numerous Chinese refugees from the various British offices in Nanking, with whom the holds of the ships were packed. It became imperative to take action of some sort.\n\nThe \"Ewo\" hulk, lashed alongside the S.S. \"Whangpoo\", had had the worst of it. The pair of them offered the largest target at which it was natural for the Japanese pilots to aim. It was fortunate that the refugees had been taken out of the hulk after the first attack, because the thin plank walls of her deck house were now riddled",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212863,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 172,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "157\n\nsurviving members of the Ezra family still enjoy a favoured position in the Jewish community in Hong Kong.\n\nNevertheless, individual members of the family (or families, since there were several separate groups of Ezras in Shanghai) attracted notoriety from time to time. In 1918, criminal proceedings were instituted against Joseph Ezra and Ellis Isaac Ezra for using the launch owned by the Standard Oil Company without authorization. The same year, Joseph Ezra was summoned to court for assaulting a Mr Gordious Nielson, a Dane, who was the proprietor of the Shanghai Gazette, which had printed something that Joseph Ezra did not like. The South China Morning Post recorded a 1933 case whereby two men named Ezra, Judah and Isaac, were brought to court in San Francisco for smuggling narcotics. By 1933, the International Convention against opium had long since been signed.\n\n16\n\nNissim Ezra Benjamin Ezra, better known as N.E.B. Ezra, founded and edited the Anglo-Jewish weekly newspaper, Israel's Messenger from 1909 to 1935. This paper became the official organ of the Shanghai Zionist Association, taking issue with Sir Victor Sassoon and other Sephardic Jews in Shanghai over the issue of Zionism. The paper supported the Jewish National Fund in China. In 1921 the fund received a donation of 21,000 pounds sterling from a single donor in Shanghai. Since it was pro-Japanese, Chinese sources speculated that the Japanese had succeeded in buying the paper's editorial policy to favour Japanese imperial ambitions in Asia.\n\nSilas Hardoon\n\nSilas Hardoon alone among the Shanghai Jewry was not spoken of as a family. To the Chinese he was the most interesting Jew in Shanghai. There is so much information on him that it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Hardoon was a colourful as well as important personality. He was also very, very wealthy. He was elected to the Municipal Council of the International Settlement as well as the Conseil Municipal of the French Concession. Chinese tradition has it that the British made this Jewish parvenu pay for the honour of being a municipal councillor by shouldering the expenses of paving Nanking Road. Hardoon married a Chinese woman reputed to be of brothel origin, by Jewish and Buddhist rites. They adopted a number of Chinese and Eurasian children, rumoured to be from a dozen to twenty. The Chinese",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]