[ { "id": 208355, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n63\n\nwill have had close associations with rice production, the festival being focused on the theme of the transplantation of the young shoots. My suggestion was that the visit paid by the ancestors to the world of the living might be regarded as return visits in response to the visits paid to the dead by the living at the Qingming festival. Qingming is an occasion for visiting the tombs of the dead. Again, it may be hypothesized that the autumnal festival of Chongyang implies another visit to the ancestors. Qingming is correlated in the agricultural calendar with sowing, Chongyang with harvesting. In such calendrical events ritual concerns with ancestry become fused with practical interests in rice production. I suggested that we may look upon the calendrical system of at least Central China in terms of the following scheme:\n\n \n Qingming\n Duanwu\n Chongyang\n New Year\n \n \n Ancestors producing\n Ancestors reproducing\n Ancestors stop producing\n Ancestors not producing\n \n \n Sowing\n Transplantation\n Harvest\n Festival\n \n\nIn this essay, I will try to carry this argument one step further by way of a close examination of such data as we have on traditional life in the Dongting Lake area in Central China, which concern the spring celebration of the Qingming festival.\n\n3. The Grave Rituals\n\nThe main ritual focus of Qingming is the ancestral graves.10 In Wuling, people prepared wine and food which was brought to the graves. The latter were swept with bamboo branches. Bamboos were inserted in the graves, and on these branches were hung paper money. This practice was called biao fen 'top branch grave' or perhaps 'to mark the grave'. Another note tells us that the women of that town went out on strolls and ‘climbed the graveyards' 上塚.2 In Tauyuan 桃源, it was recorded that people made ji 祭 offerings on the graves before the Qingming day. They erected top branches, biao, presumably of bamboo, and hung paper on them.13\n\n12", "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": 208364, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "GÖRAN AIJMER\n\nfor wine are used, jiu H, and it's 'sweet wine'. It is hard to tell from the data whether different kinds of wine were used on different occasions. More generally, we may remember that wine is manufactured from rice; in fact, it is rice transmuted into liquid form.\n\n7. Food\n\nFood was sacrificed and eaten on the graves after they had been swept. Again, the lack of detailed data makes it difficult to interpret the presenting of food as a ritual act. Some notes could be observed here. In Yiyang people ate 'stalks and grass', which, being unusual food, probably signified 'non-rice' or 'non-food'.65 We are told that in Anxiang officials prepared 'cattle'. The term may have a more narrow sense of 'beef'. Meat seems to have been paired with rice wine in many sacrifices throughout the area: on the Lantern Festival (in the first moon) in Jiangling, on Earth God Day in Wuling and Zhongxiang,7 on the Dragon Boat Festival (in the fifth moon) in the Yozhou prefecture (around Baling), and Yunmeng #,68 on Zhongyuan (in the seventh moon) in Wuling,69 and on Churia, New Year Eve, in Jiangling, Hanzhou, Jingshan, Chongyang, and Yingshan.70\n\nAgain, in the temple dedicated to General Goan in Mienyang, mentioned above, the offerings on the 13th day of the fifth moon consisted of 'cattle' meat and sweet wine. A chronicler mentions that in Tauyuan, at mourning, there was an 'excess' of slaughtering.71\n\nIf we assume that the wide category of sheng-cattle-indicates that cows, oxen and buffalos, and such bovine animals were of primary interest as slaughtering animals on Qingming (although pigs may have been included in the category), it may be interesting to associate that circumstance not only with the excessive slaughtering which was part of the mourning practices in Tauyuan, but also with the display of a clay oxen at the Lichum 'Establishment of Spring' festival around the 5th of February in the solar calendar.72 In Chongyang the 5th day of the fifth moon was called niu ri ✈ a Ox Day. Then the buffalos or cows were fed, and it was not allowed to whip the beasts or swear at them on this day.73 These practices seem all to have a close link with agriculture.74\n\nThe fact that cattle was modelled in clay seems to indicate that the nature of cattle was earthly. The breaking of the clay oxen may,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208366, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "74\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nconnection between the rice growth cycle, the agricultural activities and the grave ancestors, a connection suggested already by the information from Wuchang and Chongyang, quoted above, that grave worship was conducted on She ri.\n\n9. Willow Twigs.\n\nIn Wuling people inserted willow twigs over their doors and also carried willow twigs in their hair. There was a term for this custom: neng pixie 'ability to punish evil'. The same convention was observed in other places in the Dongting area, like Taoyuan,80 Hanzhou,81 Jingshan,82 Chongyang, where it was called 'nun lo'83 'tender willow', and Yingshan.84 It seems as if the twigs were protective and their function was to guard the house, or doorways, and the individuals living behind them. It is hard to say against what willow provided protection. It is interesting, though, to note that willow twigs were used in Jiangling on the full moon day of the first moon when, again, they were inserted above the doors.85\n\n10. Strolling in the Wilderness and Treading on the Green.\n\nSeveral chroniclers report that Qingming was an occasion for strolls and wanderings away from built-up areas. These excursions may well be seen in connection with the visits to the graves, the latter being situated outside the villages. Such ramblings in the countryside are recorded from the prefecture Changde (around Wuling),86 Hanzhou,87 Chongyang,88 and Wuchang.89 From the latter two places it is also reported that men and women 'tread on the green', ta qing, in connection with their strolls in the 'wilderness'. The latter term seems to be a name for strolling and eating al fresco. Earlier I have interpreted this practice as a feature which stresses periphery as contrasted with centre, the latter being emphasized, for instance, at Duanwu. It is interesting to note that the chronicler of Changde says that there were no such customs in that area as ta qing or qui qian 'swinging'. Swinging is reported as part of the Lantern Festival in Zhongxiang,91 Swings are referred to in a Liang dynasty calendar, Jingchu suishi ji,92 in connection with the Cold Food festival. Ta qing was part of the Flower Dawn celebrations in Zhongxiang,93 in this area generally observed on the second full moon of the lunar year. It is probable that a number of notions were expressed in such\n\n90\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208371, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n79\n\nand a new transplantation followed in the fourth moon. In Baling we find that grave worship was conducted in the first moon, at Qingming, and on the 3rd day of the third moon. I think it possible to correlate this unusual dispersion with the existence of two periods of sowing.\n\nThis short sketch indicates how much more we must know in order to make anthropological sense out of the Chinese calendar system. I leave the argument at this juncture. When we know more about the autumn rituals and the New Year celebrations we may, in this new knowledge, find clues to a better understanding of the distribution of ceremonies over the calendric span of time. Again, when we know more about the local conditions and variations to be found in this limited area of Central China, we may find some co-variation in ritual events, which would be helpful in our attempts at establishing the overall system.\n\nNOTES\n\n*This paper was written when in 1975 I was privileged by All Souls College, Oxford, with a Visiting Fellowship. I remain most thankful to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls. I owe a further debt of gratitude to the two Swedish Research Councils for the Social Sciences, and for the Humanities. Part of the material which concerns this essay was found in the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University, in 1970. I am indebted to that Institute for their hospitality, and also to University of Stockholm and the Nathhorst Foundation for generous support. The argument of this paper was presented at a seminar in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. I am grateful for this occasion. For comments and discussion I remain thankful to Hwang Tsu-yu, Wang Gung-wu, James Watson, Arthur Wolf and the late Maurice Freedman.\n\n1 See, for instance, the papers by Maurice Freedman, ‘A Chinese Phase of Social Anthropology,' British Journal of Sociology 14, 1-19, 1963, and 'Why China', (Presidential Address 1969) Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 1969, 5-13.\n\n2 Gujin Tushu Jicheng. The Complete Collection of Books of All Times, Eds. Chen Menglei & Jiang Tingxi, 1885-1888 reprint of 1726 edition. (Hereafter GJTSJC). References to this work are given according to the system of Lionel Giles, An Alphabetical Index to the Chinese Encyclopaedia. London: British Museum, 1911.\n\n3 Taoyuan Xianzhi. Records of Taoyuan County. Auths. Fang Kun and Pi Zhen. n.d. juan 3:12a.\n\n4 Yiyang Xianzhi. Records of Yiyang County, Auth. Zhao Zhepei 1807-1819. juan 2:66.\n\n5 GJTSJC, VI:1259 lb, 1193 # 3a, 1120 # 4b.\n\n6 GJTSJC VI:1130 # 2a.\n\n7 Baling Xianzhi. Records of Baling County Auth. 1872 juan 11:7b, quoting that is an earlier sub-prefectural gazetteer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208965, "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-1980", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SYMBOLISM OF THE NEW LIGHT\n\n95\n\noriginated. K. Schipper's knowledge of the ritual is based on the Taoist tradition of Southern Taiwan; Saso on the other hand gathered his data in Northern Taiwan; so did Mr. Liu, who describes the chiao celebrated in Chung-li (Taoyuan district) and Shulin (Taipei district). Why is M. Saso's term different from Mr. Liu's? And why are there two different appellations in the first place?\n\nThere is no doubt that the two different names refer to the same ritual. One wonders only why neither of the three authors mentions the alternative designation. M. Saso seems to know the expression since his translation 'lighting of the new fire' makes more sense if chu-teng is taken as the Chinese substratum rather than fen-teng.\n\nThis terminology aspect would not concern us so much if it were not an indicator of the basic significance of the ritual itself. In any case, both fen-teng and chu-teng are merely partial designations of a ritual event that we have to examine in greater detail; since the ritual is composed of various successive acts, there is apparently no term available that would indicate all these events: so, each designation necessarily is pars pro toto.\n\nThe ritual is described in minute detail by K. Schipper (pp. 15-25) based on his personal observations made during a chiao festival in the village of Su-ts'u, Taiwan, on March 26, 1967. Five Taoist priests participated in the event, while 4 musicians and an apprentice formed the orchestra. Besides the exceptional visitor, there is a group of laymen representing the whole community. The ceremony takes place in the sacred area of the temple, usually on the first evening of the festival.\n\nThe ritual, as summarized by Schipper, is the first part of a threefold liturgy; the second part is called \"The Rolling up of the Screen\" (\"Enroulement du Rideau\"), the third part is 'Sounding of Bell and Chime' (\"Tintement solennel de la Cloche et de la Pierre Sonore\"). (Parts two and three are left out of the present discussion, but will return to focus in section three of this paper.)\n\nThe fen-teng ritual itself can be divided into five episodes:\n\n(i) an introduction with chanting of purification texts and solemn declaration of the high priest's ritual rank (ca. 5′40′′);\n\n(ii) the striking of the new fire: after invocation of the deities, the lights inside the temple are extinguished. Two assistant-priests", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210075, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "25\n\nA more carefully planned survey would make sure that all areas of Taiwan are included. In my survey, some are totally omitted, although I do have representatives from most administrative units throughout Taiwan (and 2 samples from Hong Kong).\n\nCities:\n\nTaipei: 19\n\nKeelung: \n\nTainan: 17\n\nKaohsiung: 23\n\nTaichung: 115+37 Yangmingshan:\n\nCounties: Taipei: 4\n\nYunlin: 6\n\nIlan: \n\nChiayi: 11\n\nTaoyuan: 9\n\nTainan: 4\n\nHsinchu: 16\n\nKaohsiung: \n\nMiaoli: 8\n\nPingtung: 5\n\nTaichung: 31\n\nTaitung: 5\n\nChanghua: \n\nNantou: 23\n\nHualien: 18\n\nPenghu: \n\nFinal Considerations\n\nThe practice of divination appears to be a universal phenomenon in the history of religion: universal both in time and in space. The modalities display an immense variety, and to come up with a complete list of types would require another essay. The Chinese temple oracles seem to belong to a category of numerological divination types in which the probability of certain results can be calculated according to mathematical laws. The other type of Chinese folk divination, using two \"moon blocks\", follows similar probability patterns, and is often used in combination with the temple oracles.21\n\nOne can wonder about the reasons why this type of divination remains so popular among Chinese temple goers. There may not be a simple answer to the question and it very likely touches on the borderline between conscious and unconscious motivation. Consultation of the oracles, moreover, is not dissimilar to gambling, with the important difference that the oracle consultant believes implicitly in the divine guidance and control of the oracle result. Although aware that probability patterns are involved, the ordinary believer is still convinced that the outcome of his consultation...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210383, "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": 354, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "333\n\nChina's Island Frontiers Studies in the Historical Geography of Taiwan. Edited by Ronald G. Knapp. The University Press of Hawaii and The Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1980. xv. 296 p. 41 figures.\n\nAs the cover jacket to this book states \"This collection of essays is not a comprehensive treatment but a multifaceted look at the patterns and processes of Taiwan's historical geography.\" The range of the eleven essays is quite broad. The editor, however, has grouped them under two headings: the first includes essays on migration and rural settlement, and the second on urbanization and economic integration.\n\nThe first article by Wen-hsiung Hsu traces the development of Taiwan from an island inhabited solely by Malayo-Polynesian speaking aboriginal groups to a Han-Chinese primary settlement frontier by 1683. This study uses mainly Chinese sources and a Dutch source, plus some archeological information on pre-historic Taiwan. No Spanish or Portuguese documents are consulted. Hsu's viewpoint of early Taiwan's political history is summed up in the conclusion: “Taiwan is the only Chinese area that has been colonized by three foreign powers: the Dutch (1624-1662), the Spanish (1626-1642), and the Japanese (1895-1945)” (p. 28, italics mine). In my opinion, the Chinese were one of many foreign groups encroaching upon the island during the early colonization of Taiwan and only the Japanese can be said to have colonized a truly \"Chinese area”.\n\nThe second chapter by I-shou Wang, “Cultural Contact and the Migration of Taiwan's Aborigines: A Historical Perspective\" describes the problems the aborigines have encountered under each period of political control and colonization starting from the Dutch period and ending with the current Chinese period (1945 to present). Wang is objective in his view of Taiwan's settlement history, but he does not draw any comparative conclusions concerning aboriginal treatment during the various periods mentioned.\n\nIn the third chapter, Ronald G. Knapp focuses on a case study of settlement and land tenure on the Taoyuan plain concentrating on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Knapp describes in detail the tenancy rights found during the early eighteenth century.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210384, "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": 355, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "334\n\nwhich were divided into cultivation rights, surface rights, and sub-soil rights. Knapp's article on Taoyuan is followed by Cho-yun Hsu's description of settlement in the Yilan (I-lan) plain where such tenancy practices were not found. Hsu's main argument is that it was \"entrepreneurial leadership that guided pioneering activities and affected subsequent development\" (pp. 85-86) on the Yilan plain in contrast to \"foreign initiatives, military colonization, and patent-derived efforts” common in other areas of Taiwan.\n\nWen-hsiung Hsu's second essay concentrates on discovering the role voluntary organizations played in instigating social disorder during the Qing (Ch'ing) period in Taiwan (1683–1895). The author divides the Han-Chinese settlers of Taiwan into three large groups: Zhangzhou (Chang-Chou) people, Quanzhou (Ch'uan-chou) people, and the Hakka. Uprisings usually only received support from the group to which the leader belonged whereas the other two groups would oppose the uprising out of hatred of the third group rather than out of love for the Qing. Hsu concludes that the voluntary organizations, often based on the above-mentioned groupings, increased the frequency and raised the scale of social disorder prior to the mid-nineteenth century but their proliferation after that date facilitated social integration (p. 105). Why the three groups began to cooperate with each other at that time is not explained which leaves the topic somewhat unfinished.\n\nThe final chapter in Part One is a brief discussion by Chiao-min Hsieh of names given to places in Taiwan by the island's various ruling groups.\n\nPart Two, \"Urbanization and Economic Integration,\" begins with a chapter written by Tao-chang Chiang on the walled cities and towns in Taiwan. The discussion deals both with the form of individual walled towns and their distribution throughout the island. Chiang briefly describes how the walls often limited urban growth and how they affected the street patterns when growth beyond the walls did occur since main roads all began at the gates. The Japanese removed many of the walls and in their place built broad encircling boulevards.\n\nNext Donald R. DeGlopper traces the development and decline of the port of Lugang (Lu-kang) on Taiwan's west coast and the trading \"systems\" or hinterlands", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210385, "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": 356, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "335\n\nwhich it served. Some reasons for Lugang's decline include the silting of the port's shallow harbour, integration of its hinterland into the island-wide economy — largely accomplished by the construction of the west coast railroad, and the limitation of the Fujian (Fukien) trade after the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in 1895. Deglopper concludes that the decline of Lugang after the mid-nineteenth century is not an isolated phenomenon but must be understood through the port's relationship to the rest of Taiwan and to Fujian. This is a good descriptive presentation of Lugang.\n\nChapter 9 by Yi-rong Ann Hsu, Clifton W. Pannell, and James O. Wheeler applies statistical methods to analyze the development of Taiwan's transportation network both in terms of network connectivity and connectivity of urban centres from 1600 and 1972. The analysis clearly portrays the development of the road and rail systems after 1893. The concluding comments stress the parallel relationship between transport development and economic growth. Another chapter by Ronald Knapp delves into the particulars of a rarer mode of transportation, the push car railway or daisha as it is known in Japanese. The daisha played a significant role in integrating Taiwan's agriculture into the rest of the Japanese empire by providing transport between farms and railway stations. Knapp discusses the relationship of this mode to the development of railroads and roads, again stressing the Taoyuan plain as a case study.\n\nIn the final chapter, Jack F. Williams discusses the importance of the sugar industry in Taiwan's development from the Dutch period down to 1975 with some predictions about the future. Williams points out the significant transformation in this industry when the Japanese took over the island in 1895. The Nationalist Chinese Taiwan Sugar Corporation is seen as a slightly less exploitative continuation of the Japanese system. Despite the declining role sugar plays in Taiwan's economy, when one considers the company's importance in the lives of the thousands of cane growers and workers and the indirect employment generated in other related industries, the Taiwan Sugar Corporation emerges as the single most important government-owned corporation on the island even today.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212769, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "63\n\n1881\n\nApril\n\nJune\n\n1882 February March Spring\n\n1882 November 1882/1883\n\n1883 May\n\n1833 Autumn\n\n1883\n\nca 1883/1884\n\nEarly 1884\n\n1884 July\n\nArrived Hami\n\nPassed through Shensi and Kansu to Turkestan he tried to push on through Central Asia to India but was stopped; again, tried to push on to the Russian frontiers via Ili and Tarbagatai but was stopped, visited Hami [HQ Chinese Army]. Residence in Hami where he said he remained until the Treaty of Livadia [2-10-79] was signed and where he learned a number of Turkish words. [Mesny claimed that in 1882 returning from Kashgaria he stayed in Tso Tsung-t’ang's camp. [Tso was recalled from Hami to Peking in late 1880] Departed Hami and retraced his steps leisurely across the Gobi desert to Kansu, on to northern Tibet (visited old fashioned gold diggings) and back to Kan-chou to refit before continuing into Tibet a second time in another direction. He then, travelled through the Kokonor region ending up at Lanchou, February 1881, via Hsi-ning.\n\nDeparted from Northwest China for Peking, via Si-an, Ho-nan Fu, Tai-yuan Fu and Pao-ting Fu.\n\nWhilst in Si-an Mesny visited the Nestorian Cross, later, on his first evening in Taiyuan he lost 640 pages of notes, the journal of his Journey to Hami from Canton\n\nArrived Peking\n\nVisited Tientsin to await the first steamers of the season carrying mails Returned to Tai-yuan in Shansi and Pao-ting Fu, and again visited Si-an.\n\nVisited the famous Shao-lin monastery in the Sung-shan [Mountains] near Ho-nan Fu and invited to settle down for a couple of years with the monks.\n\nDeparted Shansi for Canton; however,\n\nVisited Yunnan province at the invitation of T'ang Chung to assist in the development of natural resources of the province The French authorities in Tongkin insisted that Mesny leave the province Passed through Ch'engtu and Yunnan Fu heading for Canton via Po-se, Nanning Kuangsi [Kuei-hsien, where he spent three to four months whilst the Franco-Chinese war raged in Tongkin), Kueichou and the West River. He travelled much of the way by large house boat. He took careful notes which he offered to the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce but failed to receive any encouragement\n\nArrived Canton, then visited Hong Kong, Macau, Swatow, Amoy and Foochou [Viceroy Chang Chih-tung retained Mesny at Canton for one year and ten months (nfd) He lived in an hotel unable to get an appointment from Chang he eventually withdrew. Mesny met Kung Chao-yuan, the Commissary General at Shanghai for Formosa, at the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai\n\nVisited tomb of Su Hsiao-hsiao near Hangchou. (a celebrated courtesan of the 11th century AD)\n\nDeparted Canton via Hong Kong for Foochou and Shanghai [elsewhere he noted that he had been recommended for the post of Foreign Superintendent of the Arsenal at Foochou during his visit there in 1883)\n\nIn Wu-chang and Han-yang", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212799, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "93\n\nthe first anti-foot binding societies in China.\n\nLovatt, W N\n\nEx-Royal Artillery serving in Honan Road in Shanghai. He, with Massagorra, taught Mesny the skills of guns and gunnery in 1864. He later became a Commissioner of Customs in Korea.\n\nMason, Charles H. A. W.\n\nA young Imperial Customs Assistant who was the main figure in the 'Mason case'. He joined the Customs in 1887 and after an involved plot was arrested for smuggling arms into China with the intention of providing foreign weapons for the Ko-lao Hui, a secret society whose aim was to overthrow the Imperial government.\n\nMassagorra, W\n\nFormerly Royal Navy and subsequently mate on one of the large lorchas plying the Yangtze: he, with Lovatt, taught Mesny gunnery.\n\nMayers, W F\n\nChinese Secretary at the British Legation in Peking in the mid-1870s. His best known work was the Chinese Reader's Manual. [Mesny culled a large number of items from Mayer's Manual and included them in his Miscellanies]\n\nRichard, Timothy\n\nBaptist missionary in Shantung and Shansi provinces. He met Mesny in Taiyuan Fu where Richard was superintending a branch of the English Baptist Mission. Richard was renowned for his humanitarian work during the great famine in Shansi in 1877-1878.\n\nSu Chin-wang\n\n[Shan-ch'i ## or Shan Ai-t’ang #E#: born ca 1865]\n\nThe Manchu Prince with whom Mesny had breakfast in Peking in 1892 when Su had not yet inherited his title and was then simply the captain of the Emperor's Bodyguard. A black and white photograph", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214004, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "THE YANG FAMILY OF GENERALS\n\nYang Chia Chiang\n\n楊家將\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\n39\n\nThe story of the Yang Family of Generals is inextricably involved with the struggle between the Chinese of the Sung dynasty [early in the 10th century AD] and the invading hordes from Central Asia. Memories of the fearless Yangs, who were dreaded by the Tatars from beyond the Wall, are kept fresh by tea-house story tellers, Chinese opera, and tales told by temple keepers. We have, therefore, three versions of the story of the Yangs: first, as we read it in history books; then, the story as told in novels, by professional story tellers, and in opera; and finally, tales related by temple custodians and devotees about the deified Yang heroes.\n\nWe shall never know the real story of the Yang family; nevertheless, the chronological story as told in history books is relatively straightforward. General Chao K'uang-yin became the first emperor of the Sung in AD 960 with his capital at Kaifeng and with the reign title of T'ai Tsu. He eventually achieved his primary aim and unified most of China under his rule, one of the exceptions being the small state, a princedom in the area of today's Shanxi province known by its dynastic title as the Northern Han, and also known by its regional name as Ho-tung [East of the (Yellow) River]. When the Northern Han refused to submit to him in the Autumn of AD 968, T'ai Tsu decided to invade and moved on Taiyuan, the capital of Ho-tung. The Prince of the Northern Han, realising that they were powerless before the Sung, called on the warlike and powerful Liao [Khitans'], a minor empire to the north of the Great Wall, for assistance. Also realising that outside aid could not arrive in time to save the immediate situation, the Prince made his most able soldier, Yang Chi-yeh, possibly better known simply as Yang Yeh, Generalissimo and ordered him and his five senior sons to lead the resistance against the Sung to allow time for the Liao forces to join up with them. The combined Northern Han and Liao forces were too strong for the Sung, and even though Taiyuan had twice been besieged by the Sung, T'ai Tsu pulled back and turned south where he subdued the Southern Han. Once more, in 976, he sent an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214005, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "40\n\narmy against the Prince of Han, and this time he gained a victory, but the practical results of it were of little service for the Liao came to the rescue and the Sung troops once more had to retreat. T'ai Tsu died a short time later at the age of 50 and was succeeded by his brother who ruled as Sung T'ai Tsung.\n\nIn 980, following the policy of his brother, T'ai Tsung made extensive preparations for the subjugation of the Prince of Han and a great Sung army under the command of the veteran P'an Jen-mei set out. The Prince of Han in great alarm sent messengers to the Liao Khitans begging them to hasten once more to his assistance, which they were well pleased to do. This time, however, the Khitans were defeated and the Northern Han capital at Taiyuan eventually capitulated and became a mere district city. Over-confidence then led the Sung to invade Khitan territory where they were badly defeated.\n\nThe hero of our story, Yang Yeh had been one of the captains of the Prince of Han, but after his surrender with the city of Taiyuan to the Sung he entered the service of Sung T'ai Tsung and became conspicuous for his daring and gallantry. Yang Yeh was perhaps the one man that the Liao Khitans feared, for he was so invariably successful in action with them that he was popularly referred to as 'Yang the Invincible.'\n\nIn 981 a Khitan force of many thousands again marched south. Yang Yeh learning of their plans laid a successful ambush of several hundred horsemen which caused the Liao army to fall back, abandoning their plan to invade.\n\nAgain, in 986 hostilities were once more embarked upon with the Liao Khitans. The Sung emperor sent four armies to attack them and at first they were successful. However, fortune then began to desert the Sung. First one army and then another were picked off and destroyed by the victorious Liao, one of which, commanded by P'an Jen-mei, was routed at a great battle at Ch'en-chia Ku near Huan-chou where the invincible Yang Yeh was killed whilst bravely fighting against overwhelming numbers. The Emperor felt the immensity of the loss of Yang Yeh who, as the Warden of the Marches, had been the most efficient commander serving Sung T'ai Tsung.\n\nNext is the story in legend. As a family they are renowned as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214006, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "41\n\nheroes of the Yang-chia Chiang, [the Romance of the Generals of the Yang clan), the novel in which elements of fact are linked and held together by chunks of fiction, embellished over the generations by public story tellers and opera. The title by which several of the family are known individually is Yang Fu Ta-shih. This is also the group title in the few temples in which the whole family of the Yangs are revered as protective deities. The family in the novel includes not only the mother, but also a daughter-in-law, two daughters and a serving maid, all of whom served as generals during the Sung dynasty, as did all seven sons.\n\nIn one of the numerous episodes in the novel, P'an Jen-mei is said to have planned during the martial promotion jousts to promote his soldier son, P'an Pao, by unfair means. He caused the sons of Yang Yeh to be forbidden to compete and also eliminated other major contestants by having them killed. The Seventh Son of Yang Yeh was furious and despite the ban, entered the jousts and killed P'an Pao. Yang Yeh and two of his sons were sentenced to death but had the sentence commuted to banishment.\n\nAt one stage P'an Jen-mei, who hated Yang Yeh, had him beaten for disobeying orders and then ordered him and his sons to attack the Liao forces. Unfortunately for Yang Yeh during the battle he and his sons were cut off on Liang Lang Shan [the Mountain of the Two Wolves]. The Seventh Son managed to escape and on returning to P'an's headquarters to seek help was accused by P'an of desertion and shot to death with arrows. Yang Yeh, surrounded and without hope, killed himself by banging his head against a tombstone whilst the Sixth Son managed to get away and back to the capital at Kaifeng. There he laid charges against P’an Jen-mei who was brought back to the city and put on trial. After various machinations he was finally convicted but attempted an escape to the Liao only to be caught and killed by the Sixth Son and his sisters. As a result the Sixth Son was banished by the Sung Emperor.\n\nOn his way to Ho-tung [Taiyuan] and banishment at his old family home, the Sixth Son by chance met his elder brother, the Fifth Son, who had become a Buddhist monk on the holy mountain, Wu T’ai Shan. The Fifth Son listened to the story of the fate suffered by members\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214239, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "60\n\nconcrete images of Thai Buddhas, the [Chinese] Jade Emperor and Siva with the tiger. Temple staff of the three religions attend to their own altars and help devotees as and when required.\n\nThe most widespread Buddhist images seen throughout China which are obviously not Chinese deities are the four major guardians in the entrance hall to Buddhist establishments, the Defenders of the Faith. These and other similar minor guardian deities are former gods of Indian folklore and include the giant guardian deities known in Chinese as Wu-shih, such as those whose images stand outside the main hall of the Jinci in Taiyuan. A further two are the traditional guardians of Buddhist temple gates dating from at least the 8th century. The one [facing the gate] on the right hand is opened-mouthed and coloured vermilion, whilst the guardian on the left has a closed-mouth and is the colour of charcoal. Both are made of stucco. In China they are known as the two generals Heng and Ha, the Blower and the Snorter. In legend they fought with secret weapons; one blew a deadly yellow gas from his mouth with a ha! and the second snorted a white beam of light from each nostril with a heng! which vaporised his enemies. They can also be seen guarding the entrances to Japanese Buddhist temples where they are known as Kongo Rikishi. All of these guardians are undeniably foreign in form in comparison with the gilded images of the standard Buddhas which are now not even considered by Chinese devotees to be anything but Chinese.\n\nWe know who the Deva are, when they were placed in their present temples, both in Taiwan and the Western Hills, but not why. From our various sources it would seem that these Sinicised Indian deities are celestial protectors. We can guess that the concept was imported at a comparatively late stage but who, individually, sponsored them and had the images made is now lost in time. It is interesting to note that present day monks in the Western Hills have little idea of their origins and were apparently completely disinterested in the subject.\n\nIn the cave-tunnel in the comparatively modern temple in Taiwan, however, the images were, to the religious specialists there, simply Buddhas of Yore, the principal ones who preceded Sakyamuni.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214300, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "122\n\nhis birth and childhood, and my favourite stamping ground in China Taiyuan, the capital of Shansi province, to his first wife, the daughter of John Mesny, a junior employee of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service, the life of whose elder brother, William Mesny, was the subject of my earlier research [vide.: my paper in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch: Volume 32, 1992]. Sowerby roamed far and wide throughout northern China before serving for a while in France as an officer with the Chinese Labour Corps [vide: my Note on Chinese Labour Corps Graves in England in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch Volume 29, 1989]. He then visited Fukien province and met Caldwell whose book on the Blue Tigers of that province had intrigued me when I was much younger. Finally, I was drawn to Sowerby's life story because he was not only a dedicated member of the North China Branch of the RAS in Shanghai for whom he wrote prolifically and eventually became its President, an honour he held for some five years, 1935-1940 but also because he produced his fascinating bimonthly journal on both everyday and exotic Chinese subjects. Since his death nearly fifty years ago he has faded into insignificance and is forgotten by all but those who happen to come across his books and journals.\n\nArthur Sowerby was an explorer and author who lived through very exciting times, first as the son of a Christian missionary in the Chinese interior at the time of the decline of the Manchu dynasty, through the Revolution of 1911 and the fall of the Manchu dynasty to the War Lord period during which he roamed some of the more remote areas of northern China. This was followed by the crises and struggle between the Nationalists and the Communists, the incursions and eventual full-scale invasion by the Japanese, his incarceration in an internment camp in Shanghai during the Second World War, ending with learning during his latter years in retirement, first in England and then in the United States, of the Communist victory in 1949 and, just before his death, of the Korean War when China sent its \"Volunteers\" to aid the North Koreans against the South Koreans and their allies which included the Americans and British. During the last thirty-five or so years of his life he suffered great pain wracked as he was by arthritis.\n\nIt was said that he could speak Chinese ‘like a Chinese.' There is no reason to doubt this as he must have learned it at his ayah's knee though he appears never to have made any effort to learn to read and write the language. During his life in China, the next forty or so years,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214301, "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "123\n\nwhile trekking and living amongst Chinese his Chinese language skills must have been of immense value and probably were the prime reason why he was invited to join several natural history expeditions through northern China.\n\nArthur's father, the Reverend Arthur Sowerby was a missionary in China for forty years, mostly in Taiyuan though during his latter years he was a tutor to the sons of Republican President Yuan Shih-kai [who attempted to mount the imperial throne in 1916].\n\nSowerby was a man of his time. He would have seen the Chinese first, as a child and a young man, from a missionary point of view, “sad heathen souls needing saving,\" later, with the eyes of a traveller and so-called explorer as \"dullards who needed leadership and western civilisation,” and finally, as a businessman and resident in the Foreign Concession of Shanghai, where the Chinese were regarded as \"the Yellow Peril, natives to be kept at a distance, and frequently ridiculed.\" China and the Chinese were popularly denigrated by the Western community and Chinese in general were distrusted. These strongly rooted beliefs reflected nearly a century of western misunderstanding and reaction to Chinese conduct, and shaped the behaviour of Treaty Port Westerners and Britons in particular. However, Sowerby had a redeeming feature as the editor of and a writer for a journal, one of the aims of which was to educate foreigners living on Chinese soil on, amongst other things, Chinese culture,\n\nThe only connection this article has with the Millennium, however tenuous, was the fortunate escape of the Sowerby family, including the fifteen year-old Arthur, from the largest Boxer massacre of missionaries exactly a century ago in 1900. The great majority of Western missionaries in Shansi, many scores, were murdered - with the provincial Governor, Yü Hsien, taking part in the killing of fifty-one Catholic and Protestant missionaries in his yamen, and with a further fifty or so being killed elsewhere in the province. The Sowerbys were lucky enough to be back in England on long furlough at the time and the Reverend Arthur Sowerby who lost many friends and colleagues had the sad task of writing the obituaries of several of them.\n\nArthur was educated at home in Taiyuan and also at a missionary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214302, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "124\n\nschool in Chefoo in Shantung province before returning to England where he attended the Bath Art and Technical School. There he studied art before switching to Bristol University to read for a BSc in science. He would appear to have given up his higher education following the shattering of his romantic aspirations when he ran away to sea and worked his passage to Canada. He toiled for a while in Canada before returning to his parents in Taiyuan in 1905 with vague plans to hunt and explore the wild and barren areas of north China; he was twenty at the time. In practice he took up a teaching appointment at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin and only during the vacations was he able to hunt and seek specimens for the natural history museum he was establishing at the college. From the vague evidence available he would appear to have remained at the school for only a matter of a year as he was invited at the end of the final term to join the Duke of Bedford's expedition to collect zoological specimens in Shensi province for the British Museum. Shensi is the neighbouring province to Shansi and lies to its west.\n\nThe Duke of Bedford's expedition travelled through Sowerby's home province of Shansi where they lived for a week or so in one of the typical village cave houses of the Yellow Earth country, in a village some fifty miles west of Taiyuan. From there they continued west, across the Yellow River to Yenan in Shensi and on into the Ordos desert. Their return route took them north to the Great Wall, which they then followed to the east before turning south to Taiyuan down the main route through Shansi. The whole expedition took some five months and Arthur Sowerby would have been just twenty-one. It was during this expedition that Sowerby discovered a new species of jerboa [kangaroo rat] which was sent back to the British Museum and subsequently named after him, Dipus sagitta sowerbyi.\n\nComing from a missionary family he would have had little or no financial support from his father and would have needed to work for a living. He was sponsored for a number of years by a wealthy American, Robert Sterling Clark, who remained a friend for most of Sowerby's life, and although it is no more than supposition he may well have continued teaching at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin especially in view of his marriage in that city in 1910, at the age of twenty-six. The long vacations would have been an advantage enabling him to gather the material he later used in the China Journal, especially his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214303, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "125\n\nnotes on nature and hunting in Manchuria. He founded the first natural history museum in China, at the Anglo-Chinese College and this brought him to the notice of directors of museums in the United States and England.\n\nWe have little idea what he did between his return from the Duke of Bedford's expedition and the start of the next expedition nearly three years later, the Clark expedition of 1908/9, which again sought specimens. This time they again set out from Taiyuan to the west, across the Yellow River into Shensi and then on to the north-west, into Kansu province travelling up the Silk Road as far as Lanchou. It was a well-financed private expedition with Sowerby taken on as the Naturalist and though not spelled out - the interpreter. Their route took them through Yulin, a city in the Ordos desert in Shensi province, noted for its large Buddhist temple. This was selected as the first main stopover where they remained undisturbed within the temple compound. Sowerby, brought up in Taiyuan, spoke the local dialect and was able to converse with the local officials and obtain their co-operation and assistance. They remained in Yulin over the winter during which time the Emperor and the Empress Dowager died in Peking. This event brought the second most senior Chinese official in Yulin to the compound to break the news and warn the party of the general apprehension that the deaths of their Majesties might bring about a revolt against the dynasty. Clark, who was also an amateur astronomer, had been seen by Chinese peering through his telescope at the night sky leading the second most senior Chinese official to ask Sowerby whether Clark had foreseen this calamity? Sowerby's answer that he had foreseen it led the official to demand to know why Clark had not passed on the warning to him. Sowerby was able to answer that the official knew full well that it would have been treason for anyone to even suggest that such a thing would take place before it happened. This satisfied the awed official, though the warning of possible unrest left the expedition in a quandary. They decided that the best move would be to set off at once for Sian [now known as Xi'an], the provincial capital, where they would expect to have better protection. On reaching Yenan, some short distance to the south of Yulin, en route for Sian they were assured that the situation was stable and once more settled down for a while, hunting and prospecting locally. After several weeks of visits to Loyang and Honan Fu [now Chengchou] in a neighbouring province, whilst Clark returned to Shanghai to settle a family matter, they continued on to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214304, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "126\n\nSian and Lanchou where once more they remained for a while. Here people were more hostile. The area already barren was also suffering from a drought. Clark decided to move south towards the Tibetan border where the situation was more favourable; however, before they could do so the Indian surveyor of the party had set up his instruments on a local peak known to the local population as the seat of the deities controlling the wind and rain. The locals saw him carrying out mysterious incantations on the top of their holy mountain and believing that he was the cause of the drought they beat him to death. This was the end of the expedition, which promptly returned to Peking.\n\nClark took the large collection of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and botanical specimens back to the US National Museum in Washington and in 1912 a book embodying the results of the expedition was published by T. Fisher Unwin in London under the joint authorship of Clark and Sowerby entitled Through Shen-Kan. This was the start of Sowerby's fame as a scientist and explorer and for the next twenty or so years he continued his collecting expeditions, financed by Clark, with the specimens being sent to the US National Museum.\n\nOnce more we have no idea what he did between the end of the Clark expedition in 1909 and the end of 1911, apart from getting himself married. In late 1911, one year after the revolution which brought the Republic into being, he took part in what came to be known as the Shensi Relief Expedition. The expedition's task was to rescue and lead to safety as many foreign missionaries as possible. Setting out in December 1911 they trekked to Sian where the whole area was in a state of political upheaval following the overthrow of the dynasty. Bandit hordes were rampaging and had taken over much of the countryside. After a number of hair-raising experiences they were successful, returning to safety and Peking in early 1912. He was twenty-seven at the time.\n\nHe described this in some detail in an appendix to P H Kent's The Passing of the Manchus, published in London in 1912 by Edward Arnold. The appendix, written in the third person was pseudonymous, though a note at the bottom of the page reveals that originally it had been written by Mr A de C Sowerby for the Peking and Tientsin Times.\n\nHe returned to Tientsin where his family had been taken to safety from Taiyuan and from which he planned to set out into the peaceful areas of Manchuria to explore and continue his collecting of specimens. He made four separate expeditions into Manchuria and parts of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214309, "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "131\n\nNot only did he write many of the Journal's editorials but also in each edition a number of miscellaneous articles on subjects ranging from hunting in Manchuria and boating as a holiday to the Hall of Antiquities in the Hude Museum in Shanghai - a pet project of his, as well as Scientific Notes and Reviews. His editorials ranged from Shanghai's Position in the World to China's New Industrialisation. A typical editorial described the colossal task facing the leaders of China's Republic and, as the years passed, so his editorials became more and more anti-Japanese. In the great age of European self-confidence these editorials reflected the general mood of expatriates not only in the Treaty Ports but also within the hinterland of China. None of this necessarily precluded a measure of genuine interest in Chinese culture though he, himself, appears not to have been a convinced ‘Orientalist.' He covered a vast range of subjects under broad-brush headings Engineering, Industrial and Commercial Notes; Scientific Notes and Reviews; Educational Notes and Intelligence and Travel and Exploration Notes.\n\nA number of articles written by people whose names have come down to us as authors of well-known books such as Florence Ayscough, L.C. Arlington, Juliet Bredon and James Hutson appeared in the Journal over the years. It would be impossible to list here many of the articles and papers printed issue by issue ranging as they did from tea to river craft, secret societies to criticisms on the Shanghai local artists exhibitions as well as descriptions of expeditions into the interior With Kua-tzu and Camera in the Yangtze Gorges by H. Foote-Carey and in 1923 - Investigation of the Thermal Dissociation of Hydrated Alumo-silicates, Prehnite, Zoisite and Epidote by E. Norin of the Nystrøm Institute, Taiyuan Fu, Shansi.\n\nIn early 1938 Arthur and his wife, Clarice, sold their interest in the China Journal to a new company called \"The China Journal Publishing Company Limited\" based at 117 Hong Kong Road, Shanghai, accepting part of the purchase price in shares of the new company. There were now three directors, H.J. Timperley, A. de C. Sowerby and H.J. Freyn. The manager at that point was a Mr. W.V.D. White with Clarice Moise no longer referred to on the staff of the Journal. Then, on 7 December 1941, after Pearl Harbour, men of the Japanese navy broke into the offices and destroyed everything, including the files, mailing lists, back numbers, and that was the end of the China Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214310, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "132\n\nArthur Sowerby was recorded in the Directory & Chronicle of China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, etc. for the years 1932 and 1938 as manager of China Industries Ltd, with an office in Museum Road, Shanghai and in 1938, as a director of the Post-Mercury Company Inc., USA in Avenue Edward VII, also in Shanghai. The latter was involved in printing and advertising.\n\nArthur was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Zoological Society, a member of the RAS North China Branch and also President [1928] of the China Society of Science and Arts [in Shanghai], as well as being Honorary Director of the Shanghai [RAS] Museum.\n\niii\n\nHe married three times, the first time in about 1910, at the age of twenty-five, to Mary Anne Mesny, the daughter of John Mesny of the Chinese Customs Service. She would have been just about the same age as Arthur though more than likely his elder by a few years. She seems to have disappeared from the scene almost immediately, perhaps dying comparatively young but not before she bore him a son. She does not appear in any notes after their marriage even when his parents and sisters were evacuated from Taiyuan to the safety of Tientsin during riots. This suggests that she was no longer present after about 1911 or 1912. As Mary Anne's father, John Mesny, was married to a Chinese lady whom he married in Hankow in 1866, Mary Anne was half-Chinese. This was a time when mixed marriages and even more so, marriage to someone with native blood, was frowned upon by the more bigoted expatriates.\n\nHis second wife, to whom he was married at the age of forty-two in 1927, was Clarice Moise, the American with whom he founded the China Journal. Clarice died in 1944 during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai.\n\nHis third wife was Alice Cowens, an old friend and the lady who had nursed Arthur's brother when he had been gassed during the First World War. She was invited to join Arthur in Shanghai in the Autumn of 1946 at a time when he was too ill to travel back to England alone and promptly flew out, first to Hong Kong and then, five days later, she arrived in Shanghai and married him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214357, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "180\n\nOne of the many deities canonised by Jiang at the Investiture was Tai Sui, the Ruler of the Year. In the Feng-shen Yanyi he is also known as Yin Jiao and under that title is usually represented on altars by one image. In southern Chinese communities, however, as Tai Sui he is more often portrayed by sixty separate images each representing a year of the sixty-year cycle of the Chinese calendar, and devotees wishing to seek his aid will place spirit money offerings under the image in the group representing the year of the devotee's birth. In a number of the smaller popular religion temples in Hong Kong and Macau several rows of Tai Sui images, depicting all sixty, line one of the sidewalls of the main hall. Although in a few temples each of the sixty images is carved with unique characteristics, in the majority they are merely sixty identical heads, each mounted on a frame concealed under a red cloth robe. Even when the deity is portrayed as a single image, normally he can easily be identified by the pile of spirit money placed under his image.\n\nSome months later, this time in central Shanxi province, we came across a former temple which had been converted into what can only be described as a \"waxworks\" museum of celestial and historical deities. The contents of the former temple had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, whilst the structure had recently, in 1995, been turned into a museum. It stands on the major highway between Taiyuan, the provincial capital, and Pingyao, to the south, but rather surprisingly no attempt seemed to have been made to advertise its presence to passing motorists. The halls had been labelled guiding visitors to Historical Heroes, The Eight Immortals, Mythological Worthies and the Underworld.\n\nThese two examples, and there are probably more, are local provincial or county initiatives to remind Chinese of their cultural, feudal heritage but without offering any opportunity for worship or reverence. Similar refurbishing has taken place of many of the old, larger Buddhist and Daoist monasteries in northern China but with a difference. These too are places where visitors can nowadays pass several hours of pleasurable 'tourism' but a number of them have also reverted to being working temples and monasteries with priests and rituals. The weekend visitors from the cities enjoy the scenery and ambience and in some temples offer up incense without let or hindrance to one or more of the major deities. Although to foreign visitors what we saw", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214374, "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": 232, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "198\n\nA derelict village temple some dozen miles west of Taiyuan in Shansi.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]