[ { "id": 207764, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "Tehgchuan \n\n甘肅 \n\nGANSU \n\nPaschi \n\nSHANSI \n\nSlau \n\n= \n\n成都 \n\nSZECHMAN \n\nCheng tu \n\nHUBEI \n\n重度 \n\n演练 \n\nChungKinE \n\nLushien \n\n贵州 \n\nKHEICHOW \n\nPichieh Kweiyang \n\nTali \n\nAnshun \n\nKutsing, \n\nTu yun \n\n下面 \n\n南庄 \n\nUstakuan \n\nPaoshan \n\n昆明 \n\nNactan \n\nKunming \n\n河池 \n\nHochih \n\nTUNNAN \n\n源涟 Yuinling, \n\n長沙 \n\nChangsha \n\n兴遠 Xingyuan \n\n○ 柳州 \n\nLiuchow \n\nKWANGSI \n\n湖南 \n\nHUNAN \n\nFig. 1. Map of China showing FAU Transport Main Routes \n\nA ROAD TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN WEST CHINA 1942-46 \n\n137", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208353, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n61\n\nI have chosen to work on data from central China, southern Hubei and northern Hunan, the marshy and hilly areas around the Dongting Lake water system in the middle Yangzi valley. I have chosen so primarily because I have a personal academic interest in that region, and again because it seems to be a kind of heartland of 'rice China'. This study draws on data from local gazetteers, fang zhi, and from the compilations of fang zhi materials contained in the great 18th century ‘encyclopaedia’ Gujin tushu jicheng.\n\n2. Some Frameworks\n\nQingming is the name for one of the twenty-four periods of the Chinese solar calendar, each being fifteen days long. Approximately, it starts on the 5th of April and lasts until about the 20th of the same month. The name means 'Clear Brightness'; this term may correspond to prevalent climatic conditions for this time of the year in some parts of the vast country, but it does not translate well the meteorological facts of the season in the stretch of country surrounding the big Dongting Lake in the central Yangzi valley, which were more on the dull side. According to one chronicle, the period was noted for 'much strong wind and heavy showers'.\n\nThe agricultural activities in this rice producing part of China followed the landmarks set by the twenty-four solar period calendar. Thus the Qingming period marked the beginning of the sowing of rice, and it seems as if this was a widespread traditional pattern in the Dongting basin. Generally rice was sown toward the end of April in special small plots, in the literature often known as seed beds or 'nurseries'. Although this practice may have been normal, there was certainly a great deal of variation, even within this limited region of China. Some chroniclers give us dates in the second moon; She ri and Hua zhao are mentioned in places like Wuling, Gongan, and Chongyang, a period of the lunar calendar which corresponds roughly to March, as the time for the beginning of sowing. The Spring Equinox, or rather the solar period of Chunfen, is also mentioned in a record from Hanyang. It seems reasonable to say that, given a variation of a few weeks in accordance with local circumstances, rice was sown in late March and throughout April. As a period of ritual", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208354, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "62\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nactivities Qingming is well correlated in time with the important phase of sowing in the annual agricultural cycle.\n\nThe Dongting basin in Hubei and Hunan is regarded as a single crop area. Only one gazetteer mentions a different arrangement; this is the 1872 edition of Baling xian zhi which states:\n\nthe first crop of paddy is sown at the second halfmoon. In the third moon it is transplanted. In the sixth moon it is reaped. The late crop of paddy is sown in the middle of the third moon. In the fourth moon it is transplanted. In the seventh moon it is reaped.7\n\nIn this case the two crops were not successive ones. Apparently the same seedbeds were used. The two rounds of seedlings were transplanted to two different sets of fields, or otherwise the peasants must have practiced a scheme of intercropping. There is a possibility that either arrangement was a response to a situation characterized by a lack of labour at peak seasons; to spread the sowing in time would ease the 'bottlenecks' in rice production, the intensive work periods at transplantation and harvest. In this Baling case the late crop seems to correspond to the main rice production cycle of the Dongting area. To the extent that double cropping existed in the middle Yangzi basin, it was a late introduction, probably not earlier than the Sung dynasty.8\n\nBefore the sowing, the seedbeds are carefully cleaned and fertilized; water is conducted to flood the beds and the grain grows in mud. The earlier shoots are protected from low night temperatures by the cover of water. In sunny weather the beds are drained to allow the grain to root and grow faster. Qingming falls into this first phase of the rice cycle. On the basis of this circumstance we may take it as a part of our hypothesis that there is a positive semantic relationship between Qingming and sowing.\n\nThe essay elaborates further some very general propositions on the Chinese calendrical system I offered some years ago.9 I suggested that one dominant principle in the structure regulating the annual events embedded a notion of social exchange. Visits and return visits are important acts of social ceremonialism all over China. This is especially so during the lunar New Year. Again, the New Year rites told about the visit of the dead ancestors to their living progeny. The ancestors made a similar visit during the Duanwu festival in the fifth moon. Their appearance on this occasion", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208358, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "66\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nearth.30 We are told that in Yingshan there were jiao offerings on the graves in the eighth moon. It is said explicitly by the chronicler to be similar to the practice of Qingming. This Yingshan custom began on the day of the new moon and continued for the next few days. It is said that one 'escorted the departing'.31 On the first day, and continuing through the first half of that moon, people of Tongshan burnt paper (money?) sheets on the burial grounds.32\n\nUnfortunately, we know very little about traditional funeral customs in the Dongting area and the surrounding region. The few notes I have found tell us that in Taoyuan, in the Yuan River valley, people practised an excess of slaughtering at mourning.33 In Baling, it was the custom to have music, food, and Buddhist monks to perform.34 From Zhongxiang, we read that at an instance of death, there was drumming and singing mixed with lamentations.35\n\nI will assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that double burial did not exist in this area of Hubei and Hunan. Further, I will assume that the graves were, in the general Chinese fashion, marked by small brick or chunam structures.36 A later traveller through Hunan reports that graves in the Xiang River valley were cone-shaped and whitewashed. There seems also to have been some concentration of graves into 'yards'.38 I will assume that the body of a dead person was placed in a wooden coffin and interred in a dugout grave, probably covered by a tumulus, on or at which, as mentioned, was erected some sort of structure to mark it. The grave was a permanent one, and it was only for very particular reasons of fengshui* geomancy39 the body might be exhumed. The graves were ritual foci for members of continuous social groups, membership in which was determined by agnatic ascent and descent. Sometimes such kinship groups seem to have formed lineages.\n\nIn our present attempt at understanding the essential features of the semantics of the grave, we are helped by some local terms, names of customs, and other phrases. We have already met the expressions 'to hang money on the mountain' and 'to suspend on the mountain'. From such instances, it seems permissible to say that they represent some conceptual link between graves and mountains. How is this? Graves look perhaps like small mountains or hills—but I think there is more to the grave-mountain association", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208360, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "68\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nsymbolic statement which parallels the set of technical acts which cluster together into the agricultural phase of sowing. Just as the graves are cleaned and repaired, the seed beds are cleaned and repaired.44 In the same light, the offerings on the grave make sense as a statement parallel to sowing. Meat and wine were offered to the graves and rice was offered to the seed beds. The grave offerings were probably shared between the dead and those who were presenting them. In Yuanjiang it was called to 'drink wine on the grave'. If these suggestions are correct, do they fit in an interesting way with our earlier reasoning? At any rate they lead us to a new and puzzling juxtaposition: graves are not only mountains, they are also seedbeds.\n\n5. Money trees.\n\nThe other important feature of the spring grave worship was the erection of bamboo top-branches with paper money or paper strips hung on the twigs. This kind of ritual arrangement has a certain Southeast Asian flavour, but here we shall resist all temptations to make comparisons in this broader perspective. Here we deal with Chinese ritual phenomena in their Chinese setting.\n\nI have discussed the sign of bamboo elsewhere,45 and from its contextual appearance in rituals in the lake area of Hubei and Hunan I induced the conclusion that it had ambiguous connotations to productive force and ‘driving-away' power. When the sweeping of the graves implied that they were swept with bamboo twigs, this may have entailed some sort of 'driving-away' or purification. A reminiscent practice is that of Jiangling where, on the 24th day of the twelfth moon, the doorways were swept with bamboo branches.46 It would, then, be possible to argue that the bamboos erected on the graves gave protection to the graves or the dead. But if so, what about paper money and paper strips? The latter are in all probability a version of the former. But what does it mean to hang paper money on bamboo branches?\n\nA similar arrangement is mentioned in the essay Wuling jingdu lue. It is said that during the dragon boat races in the fifth moon there were special small boats on the river; their task was to supply the competitors with food and wine. Each of these small boats was equipped with two trees in which 'yellow money' had been hung. They also had 'multicoloured scrolls', drummers and flutists.47", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210390, "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": 361, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "340\n\nThe Chinese Hospital: A Socialist Work Unit. By Gail E. Henderson and Myron S. Cohen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.\n\nThe authors of this book worked one as a medical researcher and the other as an English teacher and translator - and lived for five months between September 1979 and March 1980 at the Second Attached Hospital (SAH) of Hubei Provincial Medical College. This rare opportunity allowed sociologist Gail Henderson and physician Myron Cohen to undertake field research at a Chinese \"work unit”, or danwei (“an administrative term referring to the organization of almost all urban workplaces under the authority of the central government\"), and observe at close distance the organizational structure and process of what Fox Butterfield describes as \"the basic building block of (urban Chinese) society”. The research methodology employed was appropriately participant-observation and the result: a fascinating case-study that reveals many insights into social life and health care in post-Mao China. Between the covers there is much rich empirical material and many observations that will interest China scholars, medical sociologists, and researchers on comparative organizational studies.\n\nThe study confirms the importance of the work unit as a central institution in organizing the social, economic and political life of China's urban population. In the SAH, which is a rather special kind of danwei for sure, approximately two-thirds of the 830 people who work in the hospital also live there, and many spouses and even some children are employed by the danwei. What is even more significant is that 70 to 80 per cent of all hospital and medical staff are married to colleagues within the hospital. Participation as members in the danwei is basically involuntary, for assignment to a work unit is a decision always made by the state. When workmates are frequently also neighbours or close family members, and when marriage, divorce, childbearing, education, job assignment, job transfer and the resolution of disputes all involve the knowledge and, in most cases, approval of danwei leadership, there can hardly be any material separation between the public and the private, and indeed different institutional spheres of life. What results from this is a unique community that integrates the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212469, "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "the reliance on native place ties by Shaoxing natives away from home. Susan Naquin and Evelyn Rawski, in their history of eighteenth-century China, observe that \"native place was the principle most often invoked as grounds for affiliation and assistance by men who left their homes to work in an alien environment.”\n\nThe most extensive analysis of native place ties in an urban environment is William Rowe's detailed study of the central China treaty port city Hankow (Hankou). Although concluding that \"the prevailing mood of the city was cosmopolitan,\" he nevertheless emphasizes the persistence of localism in urban development. Rowe describes the importance of hometown bonds in securing jobs, financial help in time of need, and defence in daily street brawls. Commercial cliques, worker recruitment, and leisure activities were often organized around native place ties. More interestingly, Rowe's study has demonstrated a process of different ethnic groups establishing themselves in the newly developed city. The most distinctive one was a rivalry between Cantonese and Ningbo with Shaoxing people, the two prominent ethnic groups in Hankou. Cantonese used the advent of Western trade to advance their position in native commercial circles while the Ning-Shao natives had become the most powerful force in the native banking and lower Yangzi River trade, but they were second to their Cantonese counterparts in foreign trade. More recently, in addition to the above studies, as shown in Emily Honig's study of Subei people in Shanghai, there are many more factors determining ethnic identities than race, religion and nationality.\n\nOrigins of Cantonese Emigration in the Nineteenth Century\n\nHistorically, South China was the recipient of successive waves of migration from the north, which is more hilly and hence conducive to the isolation of one social group from another. In Guangdong province, the Chinese inhabitants categorized themselves as Punti (Bendi, locals) which included the Cantonese and the people of Teochiu; Hakka (Hejia, guests); Hoklo or Tanka (Danjia, boat people). By the end of the eighteenth century, the rate of delta land reclamation could not match the rate of increase in population in South China. Growth of population caused massive emigration both domestically and overseas. The rapid growth of population, unaccompanied by improvements in agricultural technology, meant that it was increasingly difficult for peasants in this area to depend on the soil alone for a decent livelihood. To support", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214983, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "35\n\nOn the British side, other nationalities were considered for recruitment for use in Labour Corps, including Egyptians (thought to be reliable), Indians (considered to be lazy and would be affected by the climate), Maltese (whom Kitchener thought bad workers), as well as conscientious objectors, but were deemed for various reasons to be unsuitable. There were Labour Corps serving in France from Egypt, Fiji, India, Malta, Mauritius, Seychelles, the British West Indies as well as a Native Labour Corps from South Africa.\n\nFollowing protracted negotiations between Beijing, the British Government and the War Office, the first contingent of 1078 coolies, under six officer candidates, one doctor and one regular Army captain, left Weihai Wei on 18th January 1917, three months after recruitment commenced.\n\nThe (British Army) Labour Corps was formed in April 1917 from various ASC, RE and infantry labour units which had come into existence from the early days of the war to meet the need for unskilled labour in large numbers for handling stores, constructing rear lines of defence, making and repairing roads, etc.\n\nAt the same time a Directorate of Labour was formed at GHQ, BEF, to take over the control, administration and allocation of all labour. Companies belonging to the Chinese or similar Labour Corps were included but not RE technical units.\n\nChinese were recruited both directly and through the Wei-min and other recruiting companies while Chinese-speaking British personnel for officers were contacted directly through the British Legation in Peking. Later, advertisements were placed in newspapers throughout the British Empire seeking Chinese-speaking Europeans to enlist as officers and NCOs in the CLC.\n\nThe Chinese, invariably from the “up-country” farming class, were mainly recruited from the provinces of Shandong and Zhili [Chihli in the former romanisation, and the metropolitan area covering much of present-day Hubei province]. They were considered physically strong and were used to adverse weather conditions. Others also came from the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and even as far as Gansu. This was ascertained from the graves of those visited.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215008, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "60\n\nremembered that the cemeteries and memorials are primarily places of individual commemoration and excessive signage can detract from this.\n\nThere are many cemeteries and memorials in Belgium and France where members of the Commonwealth forces are buried and commemorated. The Menin Gate at Ypres commemorates over 54,270 who died in the Ypres Salient, from October 1914 to the 15/16th August 1917, and who have no known grave. Those who died from 17 August 1917 to the end of the war and have no known grave, over 34,880, are commemorated on panels at Tynecot, which is also the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world with 11,856 graves. In France, the memorial at Thiepval commemorates over 72,000 Commonwealth members who died on the Somme and who have no known grave. At none of the above are there any names of members of the CLC. At Etaples, there are over 11,400 graves of World War I, including that of one Chinese member of the CLC, Fu Puzhen, 9436, a Ganger of the 56th Company. As Keith Stevens remarked, Fu here, alone, represents his countrymen with a population amounting to a quarter of the world's total.\n\nThe last cemetery the Friends visited was Les Baraques Military at Sangatte, south of Calais. Of the 197 named CLC members buried there virtually all were from Shandong province and the metropolitan area of Zhili. Only two came from other provinces, Anhui and Hubei. There were several seamen commemorated who most probably would have been Cantonese from the south and recruited by the Royal Navy in Hong Kong. There are also graves of British personnel who served with or were attached to the CLC. We saw the grave of 2Lt E S Burley, Army Labour Corps, attached to the Chinese Labour Corps, who died on 15th February 1919, aged 44 years, whose parents came from London, England and whose wife lived in South Africa.\n\nOn a later personal visit to this cemetery, with my wife, we located the grave of Gunner M E Barnes of the 43rd Company, Royal Garrison Artillery who transferred, in the rank of corporal, to the 135th Labour Company, Chinese Labour Corps Royal Garrison Artillery. He died on 19th November 1919, aged 49 years; and was a native of Lewes in Sussex. Also the grave of Private M Cooper of the 2nd/6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, who transferred to the 88th Labour Company,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215080, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "133\n\nchambers or tanks. The most famous of the early clocks was constructed in the then national capital, Kaifeng, about the time of the Norman Conquest of Britain, by Su Song [1020 - 1101 AD]. Su Song, born in Tongan county in Fujian province where he is still revered within the Su ancestral hall, created an astronomical clocktower in which he incorporated his mechanical clock, a celestial globe and an armillary sphere. The difference between water clocks until the time of Su Song and his invention was his creation of an escapement mechanism which controlled the regular movement of the small water tanks providing previously unheard of accuracy.\n\nThe Twenty-eight Constellations\n\nIn early China the visible stars were divided into 28 zones or constellations, referred to as lunar mansions. These provided manageable proportions of the heavens, with seven in each of the four directions. The selection of twenty-eight reflects the time it takes the moon to make a complete circuit of the stars, a fraction under twenty-eight days. Books describing such celestial spirits, printed in Taiwan, illustrate each spirit with a sketch showing the \"human\" form and giving its attributes. Although usually regarded as a group, in some places a number of these celestial spirits, always mythological, are referred to individually in legend or by ritual specialists. According to religious specialists each of the stellar deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations has a title and a specific role, the latter differing depending upon the individual ritual specialists or books.\n\nThe Pole Star was also the celestial base of the several deities, the main one being the Northern Emperor, also known as the Dark Warrior, Xuan Wu, one of the spirits of great antiquity who ruled one quarter of the universe. Each of the Thirty-six stars of the Plough was a legendary hero recorded in one of the numerous stories of the deification of and struggles between the deities. They are deities of good omen, whereas the Seventy-two Stars of ill-omen, without individual legends, are just that, stellar spirits of bad luck. The great popularity of the Northern Emperor has rested for many centuries on devotees' belief in the mighty magical powers with which he suppresses demonic forces with his Daoist Pole Star sect, Beiji Pai, of which he is the patron, centred at Wudang Shan in Hubei. Xuan Wu was the Lord of the northern sector of the 28 Lunar Mansions and as one of the Spirits of the Four", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "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": 215300, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "25\n\nEARTH GOD WINE AND THE MEETING OF THE FLUTTERING BUTTERFLIES LOCAL CUSTOMS OF EARLY SPRING IN LATE IMPERIAL CENTRAL CHINA\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nAs spring was approaching in the lake lands of Southern Hubei and Northern Hunan, people became increasingly involved in the new agricultural season. Once snow and frosts were part of the past, the new season for rice began. In the first place the irrigated seedbeds were prepared to receive the sowing of the grain, and later to see the sprouting of the first thick green carpet of the young shoots. Irrigation systems had to be looked over and repaired in anticipation of the period when the large paddy fields were to be set under water.\n\nAfter the celebration of the Lantern Festival as the finale of the New Year season, on the fifteenth of the first moon of the lunar year, there was a bit of a ritual slack season. The advantage of this for people was that there was then a period of uninterrupted time necessary for the urgent agricultural spring tasks. What followed after New Year was a string of smaller seasonal events, somewhat more modest than the big cardinal festivals. Even so these celebrations were certainly of some importance - at least they provided a few short but joyful breaks in days otherwise filled with heavy loads of work. In this essay I shall examine two relatively minor festive events which were celebrated in the early spring, in the second lunary of the year or around that time.\n\nWe must remember that Chinese reckoning of time in Imperial days was structured by two main and different annual calendars. One was based on the phases of the moon and comprised twelve lunaries. The other took account of the annual behaviour of the sun and contained twenty-four solar phases. The lunar dates varied in terms of the sun calendar, but it was the latter which gave the pragmatic landmarks in terms of seasonal weather and rural tasks for the countryman, whereas various celebrations of agricultural achievements and social events were held in accordance with the moon year. The lunar New Year could fall any time from the twenty-first of January to the nineteenth of February, Gregorian reckoning, and thus varied a great deal from year to year in\n\nI have dealt with these elsewhere: Aijmer 1964; 1968; 1979; 1991; 2002.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215306, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "31\n\nShe further on in the year, by the summer solstice, when people in Changsha Prefecture sacrificed to the She and provided the earth god with wine.”\n\nIn some places the She Day was also associated with visits to the graves of the dead. This was so already in the early Liang dynasty in the sixth century when the chronicler notes that there were sheng-meat-offerings to the dead on the She Day.23 A much later account describing Yuanjiang Magistracy in Changde Prefecture tells us that on the She Day and earlier, people suspended paper—possibly ritual paper stripes or paper money—on the graves and swept them. There was a maxim saying: 'For new graves, one should not pass the She; for old graves one suspends [paper] when thirty nights have passed'.24 In Wuchang Magistracy people sacrificed fresh things on the graves on the She Day of the second moon.25 In Suiyang the graves were decorated with twigs and banners on the She Day and there were ji offerings.26\n\nIn an earlier essay27 I have discussed the visit to graves at springtime in the lake area of southern Hubei and northern Hunan. Grave rituals were most prominent in the solar period of Qing Ming and seem to have been one of the cardinal activities in a grand exchange of visits and counter-visits between the dead and their living descendants. This ritual scheme of reciprocity over time was parallel with the agricultural year and integrated into the major structure of the annual progression of festivals. The graves were swept and cleaned, which paralleled the weeding and preparation of the soil in the rice nurseries. There were offerings to the dead of food, generally in some sort of commensality. There was a gift-giving combined with the insertion of bamboo branches with hanging paper money on top of the graves. These bamboos can be seen in the area even today. Gifts corresponded to sowing—the dead and the soil were closely related in iconic symbolism. These visits to the graves and the dead were later rewarded by counter-visits of the ancestors to their living progeny, which occurred on the\n\n22 古今圖書集成. 1888. II, 1142: 山川考 8b.\n\n23 沅江縣志: 1807-19, 卷18, 風俗 2b.\n\n24 古今圖書集成. 1888. VI, 1120: 風俗考 2b.\n\n25 古今圖書集成. 1888. VI, 1120: 風俗考 4b.\n\n26 Aijmer 1979.\n\n27 Aijmer 1964.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215314, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "39\n\nif they were already engaged to be married, to exchange gifts with their future affinal relatives. Flower Dawn was a day which marked young girls' attainment of womanhood. Ears were pierced for wearing jewellery and from this day, marking the same shift, adolescent women let their hair grow long to announce their entry into the world of female concerns.\n\nEarly spring in the plains and hills of Hubei and Hunan was a period of beginnings and anticipations. The return of life force in Nature was a process drawing from symbolic codes and involving various rituals, as well as giving rise to a sequence of practical concerns in the mundane work in the rice fields. It is in these spring days that we find the celebration of two different festivals, each in its own way attuned to the season: the festivals can be seen as mutually complementary, the two handling different dimensions of the same world.\n\nThe ritual activities on this day reflected a social grammar of reciprocity in which gifts—meat and wine—were expected to generate a response from the She. The counter-gift would be an abundance of rice in the fields in late summer. A cognate ritual procedure would be staged some weeks later, but this time the rites would engage the mortal remains of the individual dead and the combinations of ancestral graves that formed the stock of memorabilia of particular lineages. These rituals would aim at a similarly beneficial effect on the coming crops, but would also be forward-looking, inviting the dead to return to the living in early summer.\n\nThe She Day was celebrated on a date calculated according to the sun's movement through the celestial zodiac, a procedure providing a relatively stable seasonal appearance. Its ritual liturgy related the occasion to the yin cosmic principle and stressed a downward direction, further associated with female forces, darkness and death. It is interesting that this festival of clear yin associations was calculated in accordance with the movement of the sun, the foremost exposition of the male, life-giving and celestial cosmic principle of yang. The festival appeared on the first wu day after the Li Chun day. Wu is, as already mentioned, the seventh of the 'Earthly Branches,' which, apart from being used to represent cyclical time, was associated with the midday hour and the southerly direction. It seems that a conventional calendar discourse, by the use of the wu branch, tied celestial progress", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215317, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "42\n\nFaure, David, 1986. The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong. Hong Kong &c: Oxford University Press.\n\nGu jin tu shu ji cheng 4 (The Complete Collection of Ancient and New Matters from Illustrations and Documents). 1885-88 (1726). Compiled by Chen Menglei and Jiang Tingxi. 3rd edition. Shanghai: Major Brothers.\n\nHODOUS, Lewis. 1974 (1929). Folkways in China. Taipei: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company.\n\nJing Chu sui shi ji (Records of the Seasons in Jing and Chu). Complied by Zong Lin. Liang Dynasty. In Hubei yunxin yi shutt (Documents on Traditional Morals in Hubei). N.d.\n\nTUN LI-CH'EN. 1987 (1936). Annual Customs and Festivals in Peking as Recorded in the Yen-ching Sui-shih-chi. Translated and annotated by Derk Bodde. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.\n\nTURBAN, HELGA. 1971. Das Ching-Ch'u sui-shih chi, ein chinesischen Festkalender. Augsburg: Dissertationsdruck W. Blasaditsch.\n\nYANG, C.K. 1961. Religion in Chinese Society: A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors. Berkeley: University of California Press.\n\nYiyang xian zhi (Chronicle of the Magistracy of Yiyang). 1874. N.p.\n\nYuanjiang xian zhi (Chronicle of the Magistracy of Yuanjiang). 1807-09. N.p.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]