[ { "id": 205060, "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-1966", "page_number": 16, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY\n\n11\n\nThirdly, historians have tended to think of recent Chinese history largely in terms of the \"impact of the West\", forgetting that for most Chinese the foreigner and his activities were of little real importance. They may have been important to Peking and to some members of the bureaucracy in certain areas of the empire, but the barbarian and his doings could not have loomed large in the day-to-day life of the average Chinese villager or even the average Chinese official. Yet most studies of nineteenth-century Chinese history have been concerned with the Opium Wars, the \"scramble for concessions\", the Boxer Uprising, the impact of Western thought on Chinese intellectual history. Even the Taiping Rebellion has been thought of largely in terms of its Christian origins and its impact on Sino-Western relations and little has been done, until recently, to treat it as a Chinese phenomenon, which ultimately it was. But what relevance did all this have for the fisherman in his junk off Lantau or the peasant farmer in Szechuan?\n\nIf there is any validity to the above comments about distortions in Chinese history, it may be that a useful corrective device would be a regional approach to Chinese history. We might be able to gain a better insight into the life and times of nineteenth-century China, for example, by limiting the scope of our studies to cohesive geographic and cultural areas. This would tend to neutralize the all-China, or north-China bias. It would put the impact of the West in its proper perspective. Above all, it might provide answers to the questions raised at the very beginning of this paper: for the person living at a given place and at a given time, what was really “going on”?\n\nAs an experiment, I have chosen the Hong Kong-Macao-Canton area of south China. This has the advantage of being comparatively small and relatively homogeneous in terms of language, culture, and economic base. Its people were aware of their regional cohesiveness, especially in comparison to outside-province people, though even within this area there were racial and linguistic differences. I have limited my study, more or less, to the first half of the nineteenth century.\n\nPolitically, the area approximated the territory included in the hsien,3 or districts, which occupied both sides of the Canton River estuary. The districts constituted about two-thirds of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206106, "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-1970", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n181\n\nexecutors, clearly thought that his papers were likely to be of interest to others. These papers have recently been donated to the University of Toronto by Mrs. Coombs. The following brief summary will give readers of this note some idea of their scope, though it does not show the range of Bland's correspondence with prominent politicians, diplomats, civil servants, artists, actors, scholars, social scientists and public figures in general on subjects not specifically connected with Chinese affairs.\n\nBrief Summary of Contents\n\n1. Diaries. Those for October 1883 - March 1885 and 1906 - 1910 were kept while he was in China. Bland left China in 1910.\n\n2. Typescript of chapters incorporated into his various books. These include material later discarded, as well as translations from Chinese, handwritten by Backhouse, of material used in their two books. Unfortunately, these translations do not appear to contain any references to the Chinese sources from which they were made. Also included in this section is the original version of Backhouse's translation of Ching-shan's so-called 'Diary', together with correspondence from 1920 until 1945 with various authorities concerning its authenticity. Victor Purcell, in The Boxer Uprising, 1963, devoted an interesting appendix to Ching-shan's 'Diary', stating that Backhouse's papers were burned in Peking during the Japanese occupation, and adding: “I have not, so far, been able to trace the whereabouts of any private papers of J.O.P. Bland”.\n\n3. Manuscript notebooks, essays, etc. E.g., \"In a Peking compound and around it”.\n\n4. Thirteen scrapbooks of clippings and articles by and about Bland.\n\n5. Photographs of Peking, Shanghai, etc.\n\n6. Correspondence. This comprises the most important part of the collection.\n\nOne large group of letters concerns Bland's relations with the British and Chinese Corporation Ltd., and his case against it. Also in this section are letters concerning the Mackay Treaty, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and the British Legation in Peking.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207742, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "CHAN LAI-SUN AND HIS FAMILY\n\n115\n\nHe served as chief secretary at the Chefoo Convention in 1876, and until the time of his death assisted at the many transactions Viceroy Li had with foreign powers. He was to have joined Li in his mission to Japan after the Sino-Japanese War, but Li excused him saying, “You are old and so am I; but I have to go because there is no help for it.\"\n\nAt the time of his death Chan Lai-sun was survived by his widow, two sons and two daughters. He was predeceased by his son William and a daughter. The death notice of his widow, who died at the age of 92 on 17 Jan. 1917, was published in the Chinese Recorder (v. 58, p. 258). Her son Spencer T. Lai-sun had died only thirteen days before.\n\nSpencer had been educated at Queen's College, Hong Kong, before being taken to the United States by his father at the inauguration of the Chinese Educational Mission in 1872. He and his elder brother, Elijah, attended Yale. According to his obituary (South China Morning Post, 23 Jan. 1917), Spencer had an “extraordinary command of English” and was remarkably well informed on Chinese affairs, being one of the first to forecast the gravity of the Boxer Uprising. He was simultaneously on the staff of a Chinese language newspaper, the Hu Pao, and of an English language paper, the North China Daily News, both published at Shanghai. In 1911 he abandoned his newspaper career and as an expectant Taotai joined the staff of Viceroy Tuan Fang at Nanking. Early in his career in 1885 he undertook a special mission to India. When a reporter of the Times of India interviewed him, he was impressed with Spencer's European style clothing and the absence of a queue, for the latter he was said to have been given special permission by the Chinese authorities.\n\nDuring his school days in Hong Kong, Spencer had become acquainted with the family of the Reverend Ho Fuk-tong, being most likely a regular attendant of the Chinese congregation which met in the afternoons at Union Church. He married Ho Man-kwai, the daughter of the pastor. She died in Shanghai in 1894 at the young age of twenty-eight, leaving a young daughter, Daisy.\n\nThe other two daughters of Chan Lai-sun married Europeans. The husband of the eldest daughter was a Danish ship captain, N. P. Andersen. He had seen service in the Taiping Revolution and had a long career in the Coast Staff of the Chinese Customs. He was somewhat older than his wife and married in middle age.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209168, "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-1981", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN: THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO\n\n57\n\nsignificant innovations. These innovations, too, reflect the changing conditions of the present time.\n\nNew responses to cultural contact; universalism\n\nOne important element in the interpretation of the present time, as we have seen above, is not merely the rejection of Western influences. Indeed, the impact of Western civilization, whether militarily, economically, or intellectually, can be regarded as the driving force for change and modernization in the last 150 years. The religious interpretation of the modern situation cannot avoid facing this Western civilization and assigning it its proper place in the religious interpretation of reality.\n\nRejection of the West, even open hostility, has been the most common reaction since the last century. Not only conservative politicians had a heavy aversion to Western civilization; lower strata of society also shared this loathing. The second half of the last century is full of more or less serious incidents caused by the latent aggression of the Chinese population towards the foreign culture and its representatives. The Boxer uprising of 1900 has sometimes been seen as the culmination of this series of encroachments.\n\nPopular opposition, not only to the Western powers but also to the foreign rule of the Manchu dynasty, often organized itself in secret societies with a more or less religious coloration. The religious character of many of these groups should not be overestimated since, in traditional China, religious elements diffused into most social institutions, irrespective of their primary objectives. On the other hand, there were groups belonging to the popular religious tradition which occasionally developed strong political, especially nationalist, impulses. As to the anti-Western attitude, a further religious component was added since Western civilization was represented, not least, by Christian missionaries. To fight Western influences, therefore, also meant to fight Christianity. Indeed, Chinese Christians were not seldom regarded as foreign agents, and the fact of their Christianity was seen by many as an obvious sign of their having abandoned the traditional Chinese culture.\n\nAt first sight, it seems that the criticism of Western influences, which is common among today's fu-luan cults and I-kuan Tao groups, is but a continuation of the anti-Western attitude of popular religious groups in the last century. It would then be just another symptom of the above-mentioned cultural traditionalism. But this is only part of the picture. For if we look closer, we find that opposition to Western", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209960, "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-1983", "page_number": 219, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "197\n\nFrom 1860 there is, firstly, a collection of China Medals and related items and eight drawings by a Royal Marines Light Infantry officer who served in the Second China War. There is also a vase and a gilded, seated, Buddha which were taken from the Summer Palace in that year.\n\nThe Marines were involved in the fighting occasioned by the Boxer uprising in 1900, and the Museum holds a number of relics of this involvement. A Boxer flag is, for instance, on display. This was captured by Sgt. Preston, Royal Marines Light Infantry, on the walls of Peking on July 14, 1900, an act for which he was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. The notes explain that Preston kept the Boxers at bay while an American Marine seized the flag.\n\nA Victoria Cross was won at about the same date which is commemorated by the display of a large pike. This was captured by the RMLI detachment during the siege of the Legations. Captain L.S.T. Holliday led a sortie during which he had half a lung shot away. He later became Adjutant General of the Royal Marines and when he died in 1966 at the age of 95 he was the oldest holder of the VC. A squat, gape-mouthed, mortar about two feet high is also on show. This was seized at the capture of the Taku forts in 1900. A large brass shell case used by the Quick Firing guns at the Taku Forts is mounted in the museum as a gong. The case has the name Berndorfer stamped upon it, an Austrian firm.\n\nNext came a quick visit to the National Army Museum, in Chelsea, London. Among the items which I spotted there were the following, and I am sure there must be others which I missed.\n\nThere is a large, full-length, portrait of Sir Hugh Gough, by an unknown artist. He is shown with what looks to be an Indian servant buckling on his sword and is impressively bemedalled. A tall, slim, figure, with a white moustache, the General was in his fifties or sixties when the picture was painted. A silver model pagoda commemorating the Treaty of Nanking, August 1860, is on loan from the present Viscount Gough. It was made by Richard Hennell and is hallmarked London 1860-61.\n\nA long rampart gingall, manufactured at South Tientsin Arsenal in 1895 slants diagonally across a case which also features", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212024, "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-1989", "page_number": 439, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "414\n\nThe British stayed at Weihaiwei until 1930, when it was returned to Chinese administration. During the interim, the Kaiser and the Tsar had collapsed and China had gone through the Boxer uprising, a series of reforms, a revolution that toppled the Ch'ing dynasty, a period of disunity and warlord rule, and, finally, the establishment of the National Government at Nanking led by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927. The rise of Chinese nationalism increased demand for return of all foreign concessions in China, including Weihaiwei.\n\nPamela Atwell has taken it for granted that her readers do not need any historical background information. The story of Weihaiwei under British administration during this highly turbulent era as well as its return to Chinese rule was the focus of her research, embracing hundreds of documents in the Public Records Office in London, a number of unpublished private papers in England and Scotland, as well as sources in Japanese and Chinese but not Chinese archival documents.\n\nA meticulous researcher and skilful writer who also provided the readers with clear and interesting photographs, Dr. Atwell has produced a book that is a joy to behold, both for specialist readers and non-specialists. She has shown admirable understanding of Chinese institutions and British thinking, and thus has recreated an area that had needed a thorough examination by historians looking at imperialism in China. Dr. Atwell has found, for instance, that the leasing of Weihaiwei was not a simple and straightforward matter. The Chinese had first proposed the leasing through Robert Hart of the Imperial Customs Service and Ambassador MacDonald at Peking to a reluctant British cabinet. Then, after the British cabinet were convinced of the value of leasing Weihaiwei, the Chinese had second thoughts. Together with other diplomatic and political complications, it was not until 24 May 1898, after the Japanese forces withdrew, that the British ensign was finally hoisted over the port.\n\nResearching as a political scientist, Dr. Atwell's major interests were in the juxtaposition of government authorities. She had observed that the British administration at Weihaiwei was noteworthy in several ways. The British never claimed sovereignty over the port. They maintained that Weihaiwei \"remained part of a foreign country within which Britain exercised legal jurisdiction, but it was not a colony and the Chinese living there were not British citizens\", (p. 12), British administrators were simply superimposed over traditional Chinese rural", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212771, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "65\n\n1900 ca 1900\n\n1901 December\n\n1904\n\n1905 Jan/Jun\n\n1907\n\nca 1910/1911\n\n1914 November\n\nca 1914/1915\n\n1914-1919\n\n11 Dec 1919\n\nClaims to have volunteered for service in Peking [Boxer troubles]\n\nMesny visited Nan-chang in Kiangsi where he met Hsiung Shih-fu, a young reformer\n\nInterviewed Viceroy Liu K'un-yı în Nanking.\n\nPublished Mesny's Chinese and English Almannac\n\nPublication of his final volume of his Chinese Miscellany\n\nMost Excellent High Priest in the Keystone Royal Arch Chapter, in Shanghai\n\nHis wife, Han, obtained a legal separation in Shanghai\n\nMesny moved to Hankow\n\nClaims to have passed a medical and then offered his services to the Crown [World War 1]\n\nEmployed by Messrs. Reiss and Co. in Hankow\n\nDied in rue de Paris in Hankow\n\nAppendix C\n\nThe Chinese Imperial Forces\n\nMesny's Involvment in the Suppression of the Miao Revolt\n\nThe First Campaign by Imperial Troops\n\nin Kueichou Province\n\n1868-1871\n\nand\n\nOrder of Battle of the Szechuan Force\n\nChinese Imperial Forces, with the aid of a number of foreigners and foreign arms, had by 1864 succeeded in suppressing the Taiping rebellion against the dynasty. They then turned to liquidating the other rebellions seething in various parts of China which included the Nien movement in northern China, the Moslem minority revolt in Yunnan province, another major Moslem uprising in the North-west, and finally the Miao aboriginal tribes which had revolted in Kueichou province.\n\nThe Miao, or Miao-tzu as Mesny refers to them, rose against the Ch'ing dynasty Manchu rulers of China in 1854 after discontent reached boiling point due not only to Chinese settlers colonising the best lands in the low lying areas of the province of Kueichou, but also to the exploitation of the Miao by Chinese officials and merchants. According to Mesny the passionate and untamed Miao gradually took back almost the whole province apart from the capital, Kuei-yang Fu, and the city", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213161, "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-1993", "page_number": 229, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "My friend, Mr. Lee Yuen Tsaan, was born in Heung Shan, China, opposite to Macau, in December 1903. This, coincidentally, was also the birth place of Dr. Sun Yat Sen (alias Suen Chung Shan), who graduated in 1892 from the Hong Kong College of Medicine. After his death the name, Heung Shan, was changed to Chung Shan in memory of Dr Sun.\n\nMr Lee told me, as a boy, he enjoyed life in the village of Haang Mei (meaning ‘constantly beautiful”), which had a population of about 2,000. It was a single-lineage village. Every person had the surname ‘Lee’. He recalled living close to a stream with running water which contained shrimps. He is proud that his father was the first Christian in the village where he was known as ‘Christian Kwoon-hor’ (his given name on marriage). He had been baptised in Australia where he lived when he was young.\n\nXenophobic disturbances, such as the anti-foreigner Boxer Uprising in 1900, sometimes created waves of people who had been associated with western firms on the Mainland. These Chinese often felt it prudent to move to Hong Kong. Others went there just because it was a better place to do business.\n\nIn a speech to students at Hong Kong University, in 1923, Sun the Revolutionary contrasted the peace, law and order and good government of the British Colony with the backwardness and corruption of China.\n\nUntil after World War II, there were no immigration restrictions when travelling from the Mainland to the British Territory. Many Chinese looked upon it as little more than moving from one part of China to another.\n\nThe Lee family moved to Hong Kong, from Heung Shan, in 1987, when the population of the Colony was just over half a million. Although electric fans started to replace punkas as early as the late 1890s, when young Lee arrived in Hong Kong some punkas could still be seen. For instance in offices, schools and barbers shops. Electric fans were expensive and coolie labour (to pull the punkas) was cheap,’ Mr. Lee explained.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213163, "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-1993", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "213\n\nme. 'She sacrificed to have me well educated,'\n\nLater the young Lee returned to China, to attend the Canton Christian College, later renamed 'Lingnan'. He came back to Hong Kong every year by tram or ship, on holiday, at Christmas and for the summer. In Canton, he mixed with his American missionary teachers. He did not meet Europeans much in Hong Kong. A photograph in Mr Lee's home shows him, as a teenager, in a Chinese tunic buttoned up at the neck. There is also a group photograph of him as an American Army Cadet, taken in 1921. 'We used to drill,' he explained.\n\nHe recalls that he saw Sun Yat Sen, dubbed the 'George Washington of China', once when he visited Lingnan.\n\n'While attending the college we played basketball, soccer, volleyball and tennis,' Mr. Lee told me. He did not care much for the Chinese game of tek in (kicking the shuttlecock).\n\nOn completion of his Lingnan course, in 1922, he sailed on the *President Grant* for the United States to further his studies. There he befriended several 'Boxer Scholars'.\n\nResulting from the Boxer Uprising, China had to pay reparations for the damage done to Western buildings and for the Europeans murdered. These amounted to nearly a thousand million taels, repaid over 39 years. Later, however, to repay partly this large sum, the Americans, and later the British government, established a 'Boxer Indemnity' fund. The money was used for Chinese to study overseas. Most Boxer Scholars were sons of Nationalist Government officials. Boxer Scholars received tuition fees, board and lodgings and other benefits free of charge. They even received free spectacles,' Mr Lee exclaimed.\n\nThe young Lee studied chemistry at the University of Washington. He enjoyed it there, where he was boarded out with the Jacobs family. He completed the four-year course in 1926. Once his mother went to the States, by ship, for a visit. 'She did not speak English. It was too difficult for her to come and see me,' Mr Lee told me.\n\nHe came back to Hong Kong in 1927, when things had returned to normal in the Colony after the General Strike of 1925.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213400, "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-1994", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "210\n\nPollard, Samuel (1864-1915), In Unknown China a Pioneer Missionary Among Tribes in Western China, Philadelphia Lippincott, 1921\n\nPoussielgue, Achille, Voyage en Chine et en Mongolie de M de Bourboulon, Ministre de France, et de Madame de Bourboulon, 1860-1861, Paris L Hachette, 1866\n\nPowell, Lyle Stephenson, A Surgeon in Wartime China, Lawrence (Kansas) University of Kansas Press, 1946\n\nPower, William James Tyrone, Recollections of a Three Years Residence in China, including Peregrinations in Spain, Morocco, Egypt, India, London R Bentley, 1853\n\nPritchard, Earl H, Anglo-Chinese Relations During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, 1929\n\nPurcell, Victor, The Boxer Uprising, Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1963\n\nRabe, Valentin H, The Home Base of American China Missions, 1880-1920, Cambridge (Mass) Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1978\n\nRachewiltz, Igor de, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans, London. 1970\n\nRasmussen, Albert Henry, China Trader, London Constable, 1954\n\nReed, James, The Missionary Mind and American East Asia Policy 1911-1915, Cambridge (Mass) Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1983\n\nReid, Archibald, From Peking to Petersburg, London E Arnold, 1899\n\nReinsch, Paul S, An American Diplomat in China, Garden City (New York) Doubleday, 1922\n\nRennie, David Field, Peking and the Pekingese During the First Year of the British Embassy at Peking, London John Murray, 1865\n\nRicalton, James, China Through the Stereoscope, a Journey Through the Dragon Empire at the Time of the Boxer Uprising, London Underwood, 1901\n\nRipa, Matteo, Memoirs of Father Ripa, During Thirteen Years' Residence at the Court of Peking in the Service of the Emperor of China, with an Account of the Foundation of the College for the Education of Young Chinese at Naples, translated by Fortunato Prandi. New York Wiley and Putnam, 1846\n\nRoberts, Frances Markley, Western Travellers to China, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 1932\n\nRockhill, William Woodville, The Land of the Lamas, Notes of a Journey, London Longmans, 1891", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213877, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 229, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "203\n\nBy the 1890s, however, these patronage networks developed by the western affairs movement underwent very drastic changes. Many of the “reform-minded\" officials in China had passed away due to old age.\n\nThe most serious blow came in 1895 with China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. This destroyed the credibility of the western affairs movement. With the downfall of Li Hongzhang, the basis of political patronage began to diversify.\n\nAs for Li Hongzhang, after having been disgraced, he was assigned by Beijing to be the Viceroy of such peripheral provinces as Guangdong and Guangxi. It is where the first attempt to make south China independent came into play.\n\nIn 1900, the issue of the Boxer Uprising divided the viceroys into two factions. The viceroys of the northern provinces followed Beijing and declared war on the foreigners. The viceroys of the southern provinces, led by Li Hongzhang, declared themselves neutral.\n\nHo Kai, a former member of Li Hongzhang's think tank, and then the Legislative Councillor of Hong Kong, was the agent in a deal between Sun Yat-sen, the Hong Kong Governor, and Li Hongzhang to establish a proposed independent government in the South. He sought the Governor's assistance to persuade, even with military coercion, Li Hongzhang to declare Guangdong independent. The Governor, anticipating that China was about to be partitioned, was anxious to find ways to protect British interests in Southern China. Without committing himself, Li was said to have reacted favourably. In addition, it is recorded that Li Hongzhang wrote to Sun Yat-sen inviting him to Canton for a \"parley\".\n\nAt this juncture, Beijing offered Li Hongzhang attractive high-level posts in northern China. He was called to Beijing to tidy up the political chaos after the Boxers. The rumour that Li was about to leave for the North evoked great fear among the Chinese in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Telegraph reported that to stop Li from leaving, the merchants threatened to \"lie in front of the wheels of his carriage\".\n\nThe Governor of Hong Kong, through the Consul in Canton, urged Li to reconsider his decision. Politely refusing this advice, Li inquired whether he could be granted an interview when he passed through.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214290, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "111\n\nthough they also had some on their war junks. The war junks were of much smaller size than the large men of war of the British navy. Generally they only had one gun deck although they were beginning to realise that they needed to have better ships and Mackenzie1 records that a start had been made as early as 1841. The batteries of the various forts were not short in numbers of guns, and Mackenzie records that the North Wangtung fort mounted 167 guns ranging in size from 3 to 64 pounders. What they did lack was the ability to aim them efficiently. Their accuracy was not good, and Mackenzie notes: \"The carriages are also most clumsy, and owing to this they are unable to train the piece to bear on any particular object, but fire it off point blank\"17. It is, therefore, no surprise that they were no match for the European ships, or even the gun boats such as the Nemesis which only mounted a couple of 32 pounders.\n\nOne would have expected the shore batteries to have given a better account for themselves; however, even the batteries at the Bogue Forts were not well directed. Ouchterlony said of their efforts to dislodge a battery of howitzers set up in the middle of South Wangtung, an island well within range of the fort: \"...it will convey some idea of their miserable deficiency in gunnery, to remark that during all that time, although many guns in the southern horns of the half-moon batteries on Wangtung bore upon it, not a single casualty occurred amongst Captain Knowles' party.\"\n\n# 18\n\nAs regards field guns, the Chinese did not have much use for them as they were generally on the defensive. However, they did have an interesting variety that was mounted on a form of wheelbarrow, but these were only found in an arsenal and not in service. They also used gingals (also spelt gingall or jingal, from the Hindustani jangal), which is a large musket about twenty pounds in weight and when fired is supported either on a swivel mounting or by a second man. A photograph taken around 1910 by Leone Nani20 shows a large matchlock musket being supported on an assistant's shoulder, and specimens of similar dimensions, probably dating from the early twentieth century, were seen in the New Territories of Hong Kong in the 1970s by the author. Weapons of similar size (about eight feet long) but of more modern design were also in use at the time of the Boxer uprising (1900)21. The size of its shot varied. Loch22 observed gingals that required three men to operate and which fired a ball of about 2 pounds. However,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214972, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "24\n\npromised quick liberation from technological backwardness of China and consequently from the dependence on non-altruistic foreign assistance, or so at least hoped young, aware, fierce and idealistic Chinese patriots of the mandarin origin, Han Suyin's father, Chou Yentung, among them. Belonging to the upper class of the Old China's society, a scholarship was rather easily granted to him by the provincial government of Szechuan to study railway engineering in Belgium. He spent ten long years in Brussels (1903-1913), studying and working, and there he met his future wife, Marguerite Denis, and eventually married her in 1908. In Chapter One of The Crippled Tree Han Suyin briefly comments:\n\nWe are all products of our time, vulnerable to history. I was born because there had been, in China, a Boxer Rebellion (as the Europeans called it) in 1900, and because of this event, which the Chinese call the Uprising of the Righteous Fists, my Chinese father, instead of becoming a classical scholar, perhaps a Hanlin Academician, married my Belgian mother.\n\nRe-settlement of the Chou family from Belgium to China was a great disillusionment for both, Marguerite Denis and her young Chinese engineer husband. At that time (which - unfortunately enough - would end with the Communist Revolution only) Chinese were treated in their own motherland as citizens of the second category, by definition inferior to the whites. Han Suyin's great epic cycle on autobiography/history of China gives multiple examples to prove this abhorring and painful truth. The return trip alone was a bitter humiliation for the couple travelling such an enormously long way to the Chinese homeland with their first-born son. In Chapter Eighteen of The Crippled Tree, Han Suyin quotes fragments of her father's memoirs, which describe some details of that event:\n\nWhen we went to collect the tickets [for the English boat], the man in the booking office (tall, blond, low-voiced) said to Marguerite: \"But, madame, you can go in first class if you wish, but not monsieur. It is the rule.\n\n\"Oh,\" said Marguerite, astonished, \"but he is my husband. Of course I shall go with him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215680, "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": 457, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "409\n\nbeginning of 1900 she was under construction at the yard of Dennys of Dumbarton. She was a side-wheeler, 180 feet long, 60 feet beam across the paddle boxes, drawing 6 feet and having a deadweight of 150 tons with accommodation for many deck passengers.\n\nHaving made all the arrangements for \"Pioneer\" to be shipped to Shanghai in pieces, Little returned to London. Whilst having lunch at the Oriental Club with some of his backers and advisors, he was introduced to Captain Samuel Cornel Plant. Captain Plant had recently returned to England having served for several years in command of steamers on the Tigris and Euphrates, rivers well known for their navigational difficulties. When Little learned of the captain's previous experience, he did his best to persuade Plant to come to China and take command of \"Pioneer.\" Plant promised to give the matter some thought. For whatever reason, he subsequently agreed to go along with Little.\n\n\"Pioneer\" was shipped to Shanghai and reassembled. Plant and his wife, Alice Sophia, took ship to China, joined \"Pioneer\" and in early June 1900 the attempt on the Three Gorges began. With Plant in command, \"Pioneer\" made the trip from Ichang to Chunking in 73 steaming hours over seven days. She was held up for three days at Hsin T'an Rapids. On arrival at Chunking she was greeted by most of the expatriates living there and it is said that the banks of the river were black with hundreds of junkmen who had crowded to see this latest barbarian wonder.\n\nThe Aftermath\n\nBad luck again struck Little. There were rumblings of trouble along the river that were to culminate in the Boxer Uprising. The British Consulate in Chunking commandeered \"Pioneer\" and used her to evacuate expatriates from the trouble spots. (It is not known whether Little was compensated for the loss of \"Pioneer\" or not. She was eventually handed over to the Royal Navy, renamed H.M.S. \"Kinshi\" and finished life as H.Q. Ship, Senior British Naval Officer on the Yangtze River.)\n\nPlant's Career\n\nPlant, having left the employ of Little, bought himself a houseboat", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]