[
    {
        "id": 206530,
        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 78,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "72\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\ntheir duties effectively. Of this latter group, student-interpreters in the Consular Corps probably made the greatest contribution — such names as Herbert A. Giles, E.H. Parker, E.D.H. Fraser, W.F. Mayers, Thomas Watters, G.M.H. Playfair, E.T.C. Werner,44 speak for themselves but Hong Kong cadets, although few in number (from 1861 to 1941 only eighty-five were appointed), also made a significant contribution and one should cite not only Lockhart but Sir Cecil Clementi45 and Sir R.F. Johnston. All these early British 'scholar-officials' helped to lay the foundations in Britain of Chinese studies and were among the first to staff and to head new departments of Chinese studies or to interest people in the study of a unique Asian civilisation and culture.\n\nLockhart, of course, was a busy, conscientious and efficient civil servant who could not spend his working hours brooding over knotty problems of translation or sinological conundrums; but he was always a remarkably energetic man and, according to his daughter, rose early in the morning and did his private work long before his Department was open officially.\n\nLockhart's studies appear to have extended into the evenings as well. There is an interesting reference to him, by T. Kirkman Dealy, in the Preface (1907) to his revised edition of Chambers' English-Cantonese Dictionary:\n\nI still vividly retain very clear recollection of a periodical after-dinner meeting which I was privileged to attend, in the middle eighties, at the former London Mission House, where, round a lamp-lighted table, under the personal presidency of the then venerable head of the London Mission [Dr. John Chalmers], sat the late Dr. Faber, Mr. J.H. Stewart Lockhart (now His Honour the Commissioner for Wei-hai-wei), Mr. (now Dr.) G.H. Bateson Wright, Head Master of Queen's College, Mr. Addys of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the late Mr. A. Falconer, Second Master of the old Government Central School, and others, eagerly discussing, assiduously comparing, commenting on, and revising, translations of portions of a minor Chinese classic made, since the previous session, by individual members of the class.46\n\nThis very Victorian passion for work, which embraced not only his official duties but his private interest in sinology, allowed Lockhart to publish in 1893 his first book, a Manual of Chinese Quota-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216339,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 98,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "47\n\nThere was a downside to this denial of access and more reliable information. For most Britons (as for most Europeans) China had been a country steeped in fantasy and misconception. The 18th century craze for \"Chinoiserie\" had left them with a vision of Cathay, rather than knowledge of the real China. But as time went on; in some curious way, a much less attractive hodgepodge of exotic notions about the country and its people had been assembled, and by the time of the Opium War, this seems to have displaced the benign willow-pattern, and the romantic tale which accompanied it, in the public mind.\n\nAn early Protestant missionary to China told his readers that when he went there in 1839 he carried with him the following notions in regard to what 'most people in the West entertain about the Chinese,' some of [which] elements may be said to be, \"odd manners, pig-tails, cramped feet, long nails, fans, paintings, rice-paper drawings, processions, concentric balls, lanterns, chopsticks, eating rats, mice, and bird's nest soup, popular infanticide, and an utter want of benevolence'.73 These were attributes which found visual expression in the comic illustrations provided by the artist John Leech for Thomas Henry Sealy's 1841 compilation, The Porcelain Tower, Nine Stories of China, a book purporting to provide more information on the country, but more likely intended as a great \"send-up\" of the entire Chinese nation.74\n\nNor, in retrospect (albeit there was little alternative, given the linguistic variations of the Chinese language and the more or less permanent ban against teaching it to Westerners) was the enforced adoption of “pidgin\" at Canton, as the lingua franca of commercial and social exchange, calculated to convey a fuller understanding or enhance mutual respect.75\n\nChinese disdain for the West\n\nThe half truths and misconceptions common to those Britons who bothered to think at all about China and the Chinese were only matched by the even greater ignorance exhibited by Chinese about the West, even by the governing classes. However erudite (they were largely scholar-officials) their mind set was cast in an entirely different mould. For them, China was the \"Middle Kingdom,\" the centre of the universe, and all outside its borders were barbarians who were only allowed a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]