[
    {
        "id": 207364,
        "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": 132,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "124\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\nTo be sure, the Ch'ing dynasty was not blindly anti-foreign, having accepted both Russians and other Europeans (the Dutch) as allies, and having allowed a number of Russians to be \"naturalized\" (kuei-hua) and incorporated into the elite Banner forces.58 But the ever-tightening strait-jacket of neo-Confucian orthodoxy under the Manchus, and the rise of anti-foreign (particularly anti-Christian) propaganda, did not portend a friendly reception for Westerners when they attempted to \"open\" China by force in the nineteenth century.\n\nThe Nineteenth Century Context\n\nBy the mid-nineteenth century, the West had earned China's well-deserved distrust for its aggressiveness and intractability. Pronounced anti-foreignism (championed, ironically, by a scholar of Mongol extraction in the 1860's) blossomed after the Opium War of 1839-1842 and grew apace with further Western economic, military and religious activity in China. During the Opium War, the throne had countenanced, and even encouraged, limited and unobtrusive military assistance from Americans in the time-honored tradition of \"using barbarians against barbarians.\" In the area of Canton, for example, a few individuals \"dressed in Chinese costume\" assisted the Chinese in building fortresses and casting cannon.59 But by the Hsien-feng emperor's reign, China had adopted a belligerent anti-Western stance, and despite the panic precipitated by the Taiping outbreak in 1850-1851, the throne seemed totally indisposed to accept any kind of foreign assistance against the rebels. The situation did not change appreciably until 1860, when the British and French occupied Peking in an attempt to enforce the provisions of the Treaty of Tientsin (1858).60\n\nAfter the signing of the Peking Conventions in late 1860, which ushered in a new period of \"cooperation\" between China and the foreign powers, Western barbarians began playing a prominent role in Chinese military affairs. A number of diverse individuals became involved: Foreign military men and diplomatic officials, customs personnel, swashbuckling adventurers, and even missionaries.61 On the whole, the participation of these individuals fell within the bounds of China's long tradition of \"borrowing talent from foreign lands\" (chieh-ts'ai i-ti).62 But unlike alien employees in earlier periods of Chinese history, Westerners in the nineteenth century were a new breed of barbarian, confident of their own cultural and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207756,
        "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": 144,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "NOTES ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES OF TAIPING LEADERS 129\n\nmovement in China illustrate the impact of the Christian aspect of the Taiping ideology had on individuals connected with it in a peripheral way. The Taiping rebellion upset the even tenor of their former village life. They became refugees. Most had an objective, however: they wished to join their former village clansmen and neighbours at the Taiping capital, Nanking. A few were successful; more, perhaps, were not.\n\nHaving been previously influenced by the confused Christian ideas as promulgated by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan and Feng Yün-shan during the period before the outbreak of open hostilities between the Imperial forces and the Taiping revolutionaries, it was natural for them to seek out the missionaries for assistance and employment and also to be receptive to more thorough training in the Christian faith. The missionaries welcomed them as a means of relating to the Taiping movement with its promise of establishing a new dynasty on Christian principles. The promise was never realized and the missionaries eventually were disillusioned, but not before forming close relations with these refugees, some of whom became valuable assistants and contributed to the growth of the Chinese Christian Church.\n\nThe Taiping Kingdom had within it, from the Christian point of view, the seeds of a transformation of China, but the end result was largely disastrous for China, and its fall left behind those who had dreamed of a glory that had passed them by. Some, as this article suggests, adjusted to a life devoted to the Christian Church, while others went other ways. But the missionaries maintained a nostalgic interest in those who had been closely connected to the leaders of the Taiping movement.\n\nNOTES\n\nThis article first appeared in Ching Feng (*) Quarterly Notes on Christianity and Chinese Religion and Culture, XIX, No. 2, 1976: 105-119, and is reproduced here with permission. Ed.\n\n1 When my sources have not given names in Chinese characters, I have used the romanization of the original manuscript, except for Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, Hung Jen-kan and Feng Yün-shan. There are particular difficulties in determining the proper surname for individuals who appear in the sources as Fung. This was the accepted Hakka form of the surname Hung #, but it was also the Cantonese spelling of the surname Fung.\n\n2 Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, Oct., 1854, Letter of Hamberg, dated, May 1854.\n\n3 Ibid., June, 1868, p. 73.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214668,
        "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-1999",
        "page_number": 83,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "47\n\nthe highest placed individual named on the then Donation Tablet was again an Ng (the Managers of this restoration are all entered on the Donation Tablet in the names of their shops - the Market merchants were clearly the dominant force on this occasion). This man, Ng Man-yuen, XXX, cannot be identified from the Ng clan Tsuk Po, but he was probably a Nga Tsin Wai elder appearing in the Tsuk Po under a posthumous Tong name. Some six other Ngs either certainly or probably Nga Tsin Wai villagers can be identified on this 1822 Donation Tablet, as can three more on the 1859 Tablet. It should be remembered that the Nga Tsin Wai villagers did not normally worship at the Hau Wong Temple, but at their own Tin Hau Temple: the prominent position taken by Ng clan elders in these restorations must be seen as evidence of the clan recognising their local prominence and responding to it.\n\nThus, Nga Tsin Wai was keenly aware of its role as one of the largest and most prosperous villages of the area, and its elders can be seen playing an important part in all the local charitable undertakings, a part entirely in accord with the village's wealth and standing and self-confidence.\n\nThe village, again as a response to its relatively wealthy position, placed a high importance on education, as noted above. One village youth, Ng Tsz-mei, 7, 1881-1939, even managed to get into King's College, despite being so poor in his childhood that he had to work herding cattle. He studied engineering, and established with his brother the Tung Shing Company (with its premises on High Street, in Sai Ying Pun), which did a good deal of construction work for the Government. Ng Tsz-mei prospered greatly, and retired to the house he had built on the banks of the river at Sha Tin (he called the house Ng Yuen, \"The Ng Garden\", and it still survives). He left behind him a reputation for charity. He was a major supporter of the Red Cross in its medical work in the New Territories in the 1920s and 1930s, he gave coffins to the poor who could not otherwise afford a decent burial, and bought and distributed a great deal of medicine in a cholera outbreak.\n\nNot only did the Ng clan run a high-quality school, and interest themselves in academic education, but they were also anxious to ensure that the clan youth were trained in martial arts. The response of the villagers to the Taiping bandits makes it clear that there must have",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]