[ { "id": 204594, "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-1963", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "64 \n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG \n\nuninhabitable according to our notions, and we therefore tell the Chinese that the Minister is obliged to postpone taking up his residence until the residence is fit to receive him. Mr. Adkins is therefore charged with the task of repairs, and in March of next year or possibly earlier Mr. Bruce expects to take up his quarters there. His arrival at Peking before we quitted it was a happy hit. Formal interviews took place between Lord Elgin and Prince Kung at which the former introduced his brother and abdicated in his favour; so that before we quitted Peking Mr. Bruce had commenced his business with the Chinese authorities, while that of the Special Embassy terminated.7 \n\nSo interpreter Adkins remained alone in the Palace of Duke I-liang throughout the winter of 1860-61, until in March 1861 Bruce set out from Tientsin, accompanied by Thomas Wade, his interpreter, and Dr. Rennie, physician to the new Legation. Colonel Neale, the Secretary of the Legation, with two attachés, St. Clair and Wyndham, had gone ahead with the baggage. We are fortunate to have a detailed account of the first year at the British Legation kept by Dr. Rennie. In the Preface to his book Peking and the Pekingese he explained that \"a few months after Her Majesty's Legation had been established in Peking, a feeling began to be entertained by its members, that, with a view to future publication, some record should be kept of the various incidents which were from day to day occurring, during what may be termed the inaugural period of foreign diplomatic residence at the capital—the most important event in the modern history of Anglo-Chinese intercourse.\" Since Rennie had been keeping \n\n7 Quoted in The Life of Sir Harry Parkes by Stanley Lane-Poole, 2 vols., (London, 1894), I, 404-5. \n\nParkes was born in 1828, and came out to China in 1841 to join his two sisters who were living with their cousin, the wife of the Protestant missionary, the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff. Parkes was attached to Sir Henry Pottinger's suite in the expedition up the Yangtze in 1842 and witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. He started to learn Chinese and at the age of fifteen was attached to the British Consulate at Canton. Many appointments as interpreter and consul followed until 1865 when he was appointed Minister to Japan. In 1883 he became British Minister at Peking. He died in 1885. \n\n* D. F. Rennie, Peking and the Pekingese during the First Year of the British Embassy at Peking, 2 vols. (London, 1865) vii. \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216036, "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-2002", "page_number": 335, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "269\n\nthe time ripe for an insurrection..\n\nThe rebellion began among the Hakka people in the southern provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong and by 1853 was spreading north and west, led by Hong Xiuquan, a schoolmaster who had picked up a smattering of Christianity. Whilst suffering from an illness he experienced severe hallucinations and saw that his mission was to free the Chinese from Manchu rule. He also convinced himself and others that he was the younger brother of Christ and a son of God sent to save mankind. The Taiping rebels were known colloquially by the Chinese peasants as the Long-haired Rebels, Chang Mao, as they refused to shave the front of their head. [China's Manchu conquerors had ordered that all Chinese males would shave the front half of their head and wear the rest tied into a lengthy queue or 'pigtail'.] Hong Xiuquan's liberated territory was known as the Kingdom of Great Peace, Taiping Tianguo and by 1860 he had more than a quarter of China under his control. Much of the fighting between the Manchu Imperial forces and the Taiping rebel armies took place across Zhejiang province and down the Yangzi, especially around the Taiping capital at Nanjing. With Zhenjiang captured by the Taiping in April 1853 [a mere eleven years after the British had taken the city], their control of the southern bank of the Yangzi was virtually complete. Zhenjiang lay deserted during the Taiping era, being no more than a fort occupied by the Taiping rebels. The pagodas and temples were all destroyed with the usual Taiping iconoclastic fervour, and in many places their stones used as fortifications. The city, surrounded on three sides by a remarkable line of Taiping trenches some ten to eleven miles in length, was besieged several times by the Imperial forces. Each time they were driven off, with the city remaining in Taiping hands until compelled by a failure of supplies the rebels were forced to evacuate it early in 1857. Zhenjiang never fully recovered. The Taiping were finally defeated in 1864 when their capital at Nanjing finally fell to the Imperial forces - assisted by several foreign-led armies of Chinese and western mercenaries, one of which was the Ever-Victorious Army under General Gordon. Rasmussen in 1905 refers to the decayed trench system as 'Gordon's trenches', with some of his guns still to be found sunk deep into the soil of their old embrasures. He added that 'the only reminder now [1905] of the Taiping Rebellion was the thousands of graves covering the countryside, and the ghost-ridden walled city where the whole population had been put to the sword'. Thomas Adkins, the British Consul in Zhenjiang,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216079, "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-2002", "page_number": 378, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "312\n\n* Li Zee-min (1950) Chinese Potpourri. Hong Kong: Oriental Publishers [He relates a local Hong Kong legend about the arrival of the young emperor escorted by Lu in what is now Kowloon, fleeing ahead of the Mongols. Li claims that the headman of the Hakka walled village of Kowloon was Tan Gong who died during the last battle with the Mongol fleet when Lu, with the emperor in his arms, jumped overboard to their deaths].\n\nCouling, Samuel (1917) Encyclopaedia Sinica. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh\n\n11 Yu Dayu is recorded as being a native of Fujian who died in 1573 having made his name as the victor in the struggle to defeat the Japanese pirates along the coast of China and in particular that of Zhejiang.\n\n12 Yang Xiuqing as one of the leading lights of the Taiping Rebellion, to whose military genius much of the early success of the movement was due. He was known as the Taiping Eastern King [Prince], and professed to be the spokesman of God. After the capture of Nanjing by the Taipings he established his palace in the yamen of the former Viceroy and lived in great state. By 1856 he had begun a campaign of political and religious intrigue to usurp the position of leader and to overthrow Hong Xiuquan, the founder. His plans were uncovered and he, his family and thousands of his supporters were slain by Wei Changhui, the Taiping Northern King.\n\n13 extracted from the Transcription of the letters written from China to Milcote, Stratford on Avon by Thomas Adkins between 1855 and 1879 by courtesy of Theo Christophers of Dorridge, West Midlands : November 1999\n\n14 Hymes, Robert P. (1986) Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Kiangsi, in Northern and Southern Sung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press\n\n15 Although the name was known much earlier Mao Shan has always been the centre of a Daoist sect. [see Kita Aziya gakuho, a Japanese Journal, Vol. 2]\n\n16 Doré, Henri S.J. (1914) Recherches sur les Superstitions en China. Shanghai [Zikawei] : La Mission Catholique : Vol. XI\n\n17 Werner, E.T.C (1932) A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]