[ { "id": 204318, "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-1961", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n82\n\nfloated up again, until the Buddha of Light transformed himself into a monk to advise the elder that it was not a lump of flesh, and that inside it were five children.\n\nNo-cha's mother was pregnant for three years and six months. I think this is derived from the Pei-yu-chi (\"The Dark God Chên-wu or The Voyage to the North\"), Ch.6, which depicts one of the re-incarnations of the god Chên-wu (EH). In that story it is said the queen of Li T'ien-fu (X), a king of the Kingdom of Hsi-hsia (E), was pregnant for three years and sixty days. The king was vexed about it and thought it inauspicious. When the baby was born at last, the whole chamber was \"full of an extraordinary fragrance.\"\n\n4. THE COMBAT AND THE STORY OF THE PAGODA-BEARER\n\nWhen No-cha was only seven he was six feet in height. It was in the fifth month, the weather was hot and that made No-cha irritable and uneasy. He went to request his mother to allow him to go out of the Pass for a walk. The mother was very fond of him and approved his request but said, \"You must be accompanied by an attendant and must not stay outside very long lest your father should come back.\" (Fêng-shên Yen-i, Ch.12)\n\nIn Ch. of the Nan-yu-chi we read: \"The young Intelligent Light (XAF) prostrated before his mother and said, 'Your son knows that the hills around here have lovely scenery. Please allow me to ramble about them.' The mother said, 'You may go, but you must be accompanied by an old servant, lest you rush into calamity. Do not stay too long and forget your home-work.' When we come back again to the Fêng-shên, we read: No-cha and the attendant went out of the Pass for about one li, when he was covered with perspiration and could not continue the journey. They decided to rest under the shade of some willows. Sitting there he unfastened his waist belt, opened his coat and enjoyed the cool air. A stream of green water running between two banks of willows with a lively current was in front of them. A gentle breeze blew over its surface, and the murmur of the water flowing through the rocks could be heard. No-cha hastened to the bank and cried out, 'I will bathe here on the rock.' 'Hurry up,' the attendant reminded him, 'and take care of yourself. Your father will be anxious if he returns and does not find you.' No-cha agreed. He stripped off his clothes, and dipped his seven feet of red silk gauze, which covered his body, into the water as a towel. When this precious gauze was immersed in the water its brilliant ray turned the river to a reddish", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204348, "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-1961", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n112\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nThe Nim Ts'z Primary School, also operated by the Lotus Association, opened during December 1960 in Blocks P and Q of the Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate. It accommodates 1,440 boys and girls, is government subsidized, with a tuition fee of HK$50 a year.\n\nPlans for another school, to be called the Ts'z Yan Primary School, are still in the initial stage. It is to be housed in a new building, built specially for the purpose, that will not be ready before the end of 1961. The government has made the necessary grant of land on Kwong Lee Road in Kowloon and will provide a HK$300,000 construction loan, interest free, for repayment over 11 years. The remainder of the $450,000 construction cost will be donated by Buddhist laymen, especially the members of the Lotus Association. The operating expenses will not be government subsidized, but will come in part from donations and in part from fees of HK$120 a year (i.e., $70 more than in subsidized schools). The enrollment will be 1,890 boys and girls.\n\n4. HONG KONG BUDDHIST BOOK DISTRIBUTOR\n\nThis organization operates a non-profit publishing house and second-hand book store. It publishes reprints of the Chinese Buddhist sutras as well as contemporary Chinese works on Buddhism. It also collects used copies of Buddhist sutras (many of them out of print) and sells them at just above cost. Its stock of 20,000 volumes fills the walls of a large room in the western district of Hong Kong (42 Bonham Strand West, 2nd floor). The staff of three are all volunteer workers. Since it was founded in 1945, the Hong Kong Buddhist Book Distributor has published some 228 items in 600,000 copies at a total outlay of HK$500,000. About 30 per cent have been distributed free of charge and the rest at cost. The expenses of the entire operation are borne by a small group of Buddhist laymen in Hong Kong.\n\nVII. ROLE OF BUDDHIST ORGANIZATIONS IN HONG KONG\n\nBuddhist organizations in Hong Kong do not play the economic, political, and cultural role that is played by their counterparts in Southeast Asia. In particular, they attempt to avoid politics. The closeness of the Communist Chinese mainland means, first of all, that few if any Buddhists here entertain illusions about the nature of the Peking regime or its policy towards Buddhism, and second, that they feel an underlying uncertainty about their future and prefer to do nothing and say nothing that would prejudice it if events took an unexpected turn. Although anti-Communist efforts have been made by a few Buddhist groups, the majority concentrate on religious activities and social welfare.\n\nThe welfare activities of Buddhist organizations have been described above at some length. Of the 15 Buddhist schools now in operation, 12 are subsidized and 1 is partly subsidized. This means that for about 7,000 pupils plant, textbooks, hygiene, and methods of instruction must conform to standards set by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204435, "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-1962", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "56\n\nHEROLD J. WIENS\n\nContact between the Han and non-Han resulted in the gradual acculturation of the lesser to the superior culture, and military conquest hastened the overwhelming of the lesser cultures in the kind of areas in which the Han were interested in settling, chiefly lowland valley farming regions. Into the poorer mountain lands of south China the Han found small reason at first to penetrate, and these were left to the mountain tribesmen whose ancestors occupied the land before the coming of the Han.\n\nThe history-conscious Han people left records of their contacts and conflicts with the non-Han peoples in all parts of China, so that we can find the names of some 800 ethnic groups, or, rather, 800 names of ethnic groups with whom the Han came into contact in the course of their expansion from the Yellow river heartland. Many of these names no doubt were of identical groups recorded at different times by different people. The brief notices revealing the ethnic characteristics of these groups were sufficient to allow their classification by later students into larger common tribes. An especially useful study of these groupings was made by Professor William Eberhard, presently of the University of California, Berkeley.2\n\nOf these 300 odd ethnic groups, Professor Eberhard found that only eighty were met with in north China; 290 were found in south China and 345 were found in southwest China. The small percentage found in north China probably reflects both the topography and the climate of the north. The dry climate of the northern peripherals of China restricted livelihood and population number, whereas the grasslands and plains reduced isolated ethnic evolution and developed a greater degree of intermixture and homogeneity than in the south. Similarly, the south China hills and valleys are less isolating than the high mountains and deep gorgelands of the southwest, so that less ethnic variety is found in the south than in the southwest. Thus, cultural diversity appears to reflect the topographic character of the land.\n\nProfessor Eberhard recognized that, with the beginning of history in south and southwest China, there were four major cultural groupings in southwest China and three major and six\n\n2 William Eberhard, Kultur und Siedlung der Randvölker China (The culture and settlement distribution of the peripheral peoples of China), T'oung Pao, Supplement to Vol. 36, Leiden, 1942.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204455, "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-1962", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "76\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nThe New Territory comprised an estimated 376 square miles of hill and plain situated on the mainland of China and a number of offshore islands, large and small, some of which were inhabited and some were not. For the purpose of this article it is sufficient to say here that in 1898 it was primarily an agricultural district consisting of a few broad valleys and many pockets of farm land among the hills or at their foot, both on the mainland and on some of the larger islands, with a few market towns here and there. The emphasis was on agriculture, though there were a few small industries in operation. Village life was bounded by the two rice crops in summer and autumn and the winter season, when most land lay fallow; and by the occasional visit to the market town, often two or three hours away and over the hills, always on foot, and frequently laden with produce and livestock to sell or exchange.\n\n3\n\nIt goes almost without saying that this small slice of territory, only half the size of San On District which was one of the smaller administrative districts of the Kwangtung Province, and 1,500 miles from Peking, was an insignificant part of the Chinese Empire. However, despite its minute size and remoteness from the central provinces and the seat of government it was fundamentally Chinese and essentially Confucian in its component parts, two features which are worth emphasising. One of its former District Magistrates made an observation covering both these points in a Confucian discourse which he contributed to mark the restoration of a school at Kam Tin in 1744 when he wrote \"In this era of prosperity culture has spread to even this remote place near the sea. Here the Book of Poetry is read as early as sunrise\".4\n\nThe integrated life in which everything under Heaven has its place and plan is a recognisable feature of the Confucian code which was evolved and formulated in an agricultural society ever 2,500 years ago. A study of the daily life and background of New Territory people in 1898, which was also placed in an agricultural setting, though one based on the cultivation of rice and not of wheat, leaves me with the impression that the high degree of mental and environmental integration attainable within a Confucian framework had certainly been attained here. Life was lived generation after generation according to a set pattern. The disciplined life imposed upon an agricultural community", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204481, "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-1962", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nthere are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence.\n\n53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years.\n\n54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies.\n\n55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away.\n\n56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204482, "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-1962", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "103\n\nEXCAVATIONS AT MAN KOK TSUI ON LANTAU ISLAND\n\nELSPETH MANEELY *\n\n[On 13 May 1961 over fifty members of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society landed from a launch at Man Kok Tsui, a promontory on Lantau facing Hong Kong. Here Professor S. G. Davis and Dr. S. M. Bard explained to the members of the Society how the excavations were carried out and what objects had been discovered. Later the party walked over the hills to Silvermine Bay. This article gives an account of the excavations carried out there in 1958, Ed.]\n\nTo date, the investigation of Neolithic remains in China points to the existence of three main Neolithic cultures.' This broad classification depends largely on differences in the types of fine pottery. In the north-west traces of the Painted Pottery Culture were first noted by J. G. Andersson at Yang Shao, Honan in 1920, and three years later at the Tao river sites, Kansu. In the north-east, traces of the Black Pottery Culture were uncovered in 1928 at Lung Shan, Shantung. The finds at Man Kok Tsui belong to the third of these Neolithic traditions: the South-East Neolithic, and the characteristic fine pottery found is a hard stoneware bearing a variety of impressed designs. This type of impressed pottery was first discovered in Hong Kong by Dr. C. M. Heanley in 1926 and it was associated with several kinds of stone artifact. It is interesting to note that the traces of these three Neolithic cultures were uncovered within a period of eight years and that in 1926—the year in which Dr. Heanley began his work on pre-historic remains in Hong Kong—the exciting discovery of \"Peking Man\" took place at Chou Kou Tien, south-west of Peking.\n\nDr. Heanley was joined in his systematic survey of the Hong Kong area by Professor J. L. Shellshear and Mr. W. Schofield and they soon established that the Colony was rich in scattered finds, in general concentrated near the beaches and on the low\n\n* Mrs. Maneely has lived in Hong Kong since 1956, and is the Hon. Secretary of the Hong Kong University Archaeological team.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204484, "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-1962", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "EXCAVATIONS AT MAN KOK TSUI\n\n105\n\nrunning east to west watered by a small spring-fed stream, and is protected by rocky promontories and steep hillsides. The beaches are raised beaches. That is: behind the present-day beaches there are raised sandy terraces marking an old sea level. This geological feature is common on the western side of the Colony and is typical of the beaches where Neolithic remains have been found. At Man Kok Tsui the numerous surface finds of impressed pottery sherds and stone artifacts were widely dispersed over the two raised terraces, the central valley and the surrounding hill slopes. In August 1958 the Team planned and carried out a series of excavations with the aid of a grant of money from the Government of Hong Kong. The technical details of the Team's work have been reported in a paper by Professor S. G. Davis and Miss Mary Tregear.\n\nThe central valley and some of the lower hill slopes at Man Kok Tsui were then under cultivation and therefore finds in these areas had to be regarded as surface finds, giving us no useful information apart from the quantity and the quality of their workmanship. When trial trenches were dug some of the uncultivated hilltops revealed evidence of earlier cultivation, although there was no official record of habitation at Man Kok Tsui before 1927. Again, such disturbance meant that finds from these trenches were to be considered as surface finds. A more hopeful spot was found after careful survey—a series of low hillslopes rising fairly steeply from the sea to the north of the stream mouth. The present villagers had been cutting into the hills to expand their vegetable fields and discovered several whole pots and some fine unbroken stone rings. It was here that the five main trenches were planned and dug. No traces of earlier cultivation or disturbance were noted and the majority of the finds were uncovered at a depth of between 2 and 3 feet. But there was no stratification observable in any of the trench sections, no animal or human remains were found and no definite plan or arrangement of pots or stone artifacts emerged from the excavations.\n\nTHE FINDS:\n\nThere were three categories of artifact uncovered at Man Kok Tsui: bronze, stone and pottery.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204490, "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-1962", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "109\n\nA NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE\n\nIN HONG KONG\n\nPRELIMINARY REPORT\n\nM. W. WELCH\n\nDuring the Hong Kong University's Golden Jubilee in September 1961 I heard an excellent paper by Mrs. E. Maneely on archaeological possibilities in Hong Kong. It encouraged me to think that there was a role that even an amateur could play. We frequently sail in the New Territories and during our sails I began to search for what might be neolithic sites. I worked on a very simple principle: to look at the shore of islands, as we passed by, for places that, if I had been a neolithic man, I would have liked to settle in. There had to be a good harbour, well sheltered for mooring in storms. There had to be sufficient elevation for good visibility over surrounding waters and approaching boats. There had to be level land for cultivation as well as an accessible source of water.\n\nCL\n\nHaving picked the first prehistoric site, we anchored and went ashore to explore. My surprise was great when within minutes of landing I discovered a fine polished adze exactly in the place I hoped to. Spurred on by the excitement of this discovery I looked around in earnest to find more artifacts. I went on to the next hillock and indeed had further success.\n\nI found, in all, three sites on the same island, each on hills 30 to 50 metres above sea level, each located near or on kaolin deposits, and each in an area used for target practice by the British Army and Navy as well as by navies from Commonwealth countries. The island, Kau Sai Chau, between Port Shelter and Rocky Harbour, offers one of the few areas in the Far East which have been cleared of inhabitants and where firing can be carried out at will. Over several years of practice the hillsides have become peppered with shell holes and on some of them heavy erosion has started. Only in or near those heavily eroded areas, that look almost like moon landscapes, have I found artifacts, and all have been surface finds (though usually far\n\nThe author has lived for the past four years in Hong Kong, where she developed a keen interest in amateur archaeology.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204564, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "40\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\npublished by numerous local and provincial schools under the direct supervision of the directors of these schools. Various government administrative officers also printed books; for example, the Offices of Tea and Salt in Chekiang published in 1151 the complete works of Wang An-shih. These government editions were distinguished by good quality of paper, elegant type, and also by a carefully checked text. They are therefore of high value.\n\nA considerable number of books in this period were published privately. This was done for various reasons: as gifts to friends and relatives; by relatives for a scholar-author; for philosophic reasons; possibly even for sale and to make a profit.\n\nCommerce in books flourished. In spite of the decree of 1180 forbidding non-government printing, bookstores continued to engage not only in the sale of books, but also in their printing, particularly in the province of Fukien and Chekiang, the political and cultural centres of China at the time. They put out such books as those on classics, history, medicine, lexicography, and the like; also a large number of text-books and review books for students going up for the examinations. Some of the latter were minute; they were called \"kerchief case copies\" and the students used to take them into the examination halls secretly. A special decree, issued during the period 1208-1224, forbade the printing of these books; but they continued to be issued nonetheless. From the point of view of quality, the commercial ones were very inferior to those put out by either the government or by private individuals.\n\nNo special permission was required for the publication of a work, and there was no censorship. No regulations existed restricting the rights to the publication of such-and-such a book. In certain cases, however, the government could forbid such publication. (After his death the books of Wang An-shih were for a time proscribed, and the Writings of the three Su were burned in 1103.)\n\nThe spread of books had a marked influence on the education of the general public. Likewise, the change in the shape of books—to accordion style from the scroll—helped the handling of books and their storage. Many schools were established, even in small localities. Confucianism began to lose its character as\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204597, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n67\n\nran parallel to the wall of the Legation in which the main gate was situated, and in summer often flooded the road, and at times gave off a horrible stench since many drains ran into it. Meanwhile repairs to the Legation proceeded and Rennie describes, among other things, Colonel Neale doing his accounts, the five hundred Chinese coolies being paid, a temporary strike, and continual trouble over 'squeeze'. The part intended for the members of the Legation to live in was now called 'Legation Court' and Rennie preserved, in translation, an estimate for redecorating the front of these buildings in the Chinese style, the total being one thousand and fifty Mexican dollars.\n\nBy mid-April the weather was growing hot and on April 26th Parkes, Wyndham, Lt. Gow (in charge of the guard) and Rennie made a trip to the Western Hills in search of a temple which could be adopted as a residence during the extreme heat of the summer. The Russians, who had maintained an ecclesiastical mission in Peking since the Treaty of Kiakhta in 1727, had been in the habit of going to the Western Hills in the summer, and probably gave the newly arrived English this tip. Henceforth this was to become the yearly practice of foreign legations in Peking. Meanwhile the first mail from home arrived on April 27th, having been posted in England on February 26th. In this way Rennie's account is full of interesting detail. For instance just near to the entrance to the Legation there was now a line of Peking carts for hire, just as later there was a rickshaw stand, and more recently pedicabs. From this time onwards Rennie described the arrival of various English visitors who were entertained at the Legation.\n\n* Rennie visited it in March, 1861. It was situated in the same street as the newly acquired French Legation, and the members consisted of an Archimandrite together with three ecclesiastical and six lay members. (Rennie, I, 43-4.). This place, known as the Nan-kuan (\"Southern Hostel\"), was originally a hostel for Russian envoys and, since it had a large compound, it was used by Russian merchants who after 1698 received the privilege of sending a trade caravan to Peking at regular intervals. It was situated near the Mongol market. As a result of the Treaty of Kiakhta (1727) two hundred Russian merchants were allowed to come to Peking every third year to trade, and Russia was permitted to build a church in the grounds of the Nan-kuan, and appoint priests. In addition four Russian students and two tutors were allowed to reside there and were subsidized by the Chinese government to study the Chinese, Mongol and Manchu languages. When the first Russian minister to Peking, Colonel Balluzeck, took up residence there in July 1861, the Nan-kuan became the Russian Legation, and the ecclesiastical mission then joined up with another Russian mission at the Pei-kuan (\"Northern Hostel'). See footnote 29 below,\n\n}\n\nI\n\n:\n\nJ", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204598, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "68\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nand shown the sights of Peking. This became an agreeable task for the members of the Legation, and there was a constant stream of visitors to Peking enjoying the hospitality of the old Legation right up until its closure in 1959. One of the earliest of these visitors was Sir Robert Hart, the Acting Inspector-General of the Chinese Customs. Meanwhile the business of engaging Chinese clerks, gate keepers, and language teachers proceeded. At various times Rennie mentions such familiar things as burglaries within the Legation, and the virulence of the mosquitoes. By now the Legation was the haunt of curio dealers, many of the things they had to offer being of real value, since the destruction of part of the old Summer Palace by the British and French forces had occurred as recently as the previous autumn, and a great deal of loot was now in Chinese hands. In fact, what with buying antiques, conducting visitors round the sights of Peking, and going to the Western Hills in the summer the members of the foreign legations had already set a pattern during their first year in Peking which has continued much the same until the present.\n\nThe local craftsmen found nothing beyond their capacities, and one Chinese tailor made a fine new Union Jack with the old one to copy from. Rennie remarks: \"The Peking tailors have already mastered the making of European clothing, and several members of the Legation have had things made by them\". The total number of Europeans in the three legations (English, French and Russian) was twenty-two. The first American minister to reside at Peking did not reach the capital until July, 1862. On 23 August, 1861 Rennie records: \"We have been busy to-day getting ready for Her Majesty's Foreign Office a large bird's-eye view of the Leang-koong-foo, made by a Chinese artist. Figures for reference have been painted on it by Colonel Neale, and a key also made. The drawing is very exact, every building being carefully depicted.\" In October buildings next to the Legation on the south side were bought by the British Government from a brother of Duke I-liang. This new area was leased to a medical missionary, William Lockhart, who wanted to set up a medical mission in Peking. By January 1862 the extensive alterations to the Legation had come to an end, and the Chinese interpreter, who had made a good harvest of 'squeeze' out of it, now resigned and departed for Tientsin where the foreign troops were stationed. The time ran out.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204605, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n75\n\nWilkinson's book is a gay account of student life with work and play nicely balanced. He mentions many things which must have been familiar to generations of inmates of the Foreign Legations at Peking, such as paying calls on the European residents, buying a pony, choosing a reliable 'boy', the continual battle against 'squeeze', the danger of theft and so on. For pleasure not only was there the bowling alley, which provided the chief amusement inside the Legation during the winter, there was also skating on an improvised rink nearby. Three of the students once skated down the canal to Tungchow, a distance of about twelve miles. There was also the usual entertaining. \"Balls and concerts were given at some of the Legations and at the Inspectorate-General of Customs (where a number of young European men were employed). Dinners everywhere. But the pleasantest of all, perhaps, were the carpet dances (with the carpet up) at two or three houses. We shared the misfortune of most European communities in the East: an undue preponderance of the male. Dancing men were at a discount.\" At Chinese New Year the students generally put on a pantomime or a Christy Minstrel Concert. By this time there was a weekly arrival of mail throughout the summer, and a monthly one during the winter. In the spring and autumn the Peking race meetings were held at a place a mile or so from the western wall of the city. The race-course boasted a tiny grand-stand but Wilkinson is careful to state that these were pretty amateur races; they were picnics first and race meetings second. In summer there was tennis on the Legation lawn, and in the grounds of the residence of the young European employees of the China Maritime Customs, as well as garden parties at the American Legation. The courts in the British Legation lay east and west, and since it was too hot to play until sundown one of the players had to perform with the sun full in his eyes which made play somewhat erratic. For summer dress the students wore a patrol jacket of white drill with trousers to match. In July and August they usually moved to a temple in the Western Hills where they could go for rambles. The main disadvantage of this life came from rain and rats. One summer it rained prodigiously and they were almost washed out of their temple. As for rats an ingenious student subdued them by training four owls which he had bought. They spent the day roosting one on each post of his bed, but at night went into action", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204655, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "122\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nChungking. Junks which sailed on the Middle River and above were designed for shoal water, and were lighter in construction as well as smaller than the Lower River junks, but still strong enough to withstand constant grounding. Naturally the largest type of junk was found on the Lower River, and this was as big as ocean-going junks. Such junks rarely went above Nanking. River junks were not usually painted like sea-going junks, but were coated with wood oil instead.\n\nOn the Upper River there were many types of junks, such as only the ingenuity of Chinese could devise. Among the more exotic types designed to cope with the peculiar and exacting conditions found on certain stretches of the Upper River were junks with crooked bows and others with crooked sterns. The largest junks on the Upper River were 120 feet long and carried 60 tons of cargo up river and about 90 tons down river, and took 25 to 60 days between Ichang and Chungking, depending on the season and state of the river. These large junks had a crew of about 100 men, of whom three-quarters were trackers.\n\nThe Yangtse is subject to remarkable changes in level, caused by the melting snows in Tibet, and by the time taken by these to reach the Lower River. In the high water season of summer the level in the Middle and Lower River is as much as 35 feet above the winter level. In August 1866 the rise at Hankow was 50 feet, and it has been twice as much in the Upper River. During floods great stretches of the Lower River become immense lakes, exceeding 20 miles in width at places between Nanking and Hankow. At such time no land can be seen between the deck of a river steamer and the distant foothills. Thousands of villages may be inundated during such a flood, and every few years when flooding is more than usually severe, hundreds of thousands of lives are lost. The greatest floods on record were those of the summer of 1931, when 25 million people in an area of 700,000 square miles were affected, and 140,000 were drowned. On this occasion the streets in the Wuhan cities were flooded to a depth of 9 feet, and the surrounding country to 35 feet. The Yangtse Valley is so fertile, however, and the pressure on the land so great, that the inhabitants always return when the river falls, after encamping in the hills during the floods.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204753, "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-1964", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE\n\n45\n\nis one important point to be cleared up. The Chinese are highly skilled farmers. Their techniques of land-winning and of irrigation change landscapes. So, alas, does their age-long war against trees. But since A.D. 900 the topography of this territory has been changed not only by human technique. There has also been a gradual, small, but identifiable and, I believe, measurable tilt of the surface of the earth along the axis of the four high peaks (the two on Lantao,37 Tai Mo Shan and Ng Tung Shan104) which has altered and is still altering the coast line. I leave it to geologists to say whether this is a necessary effect of what happens when the subsidence of a long straight shore meets a range of hills parallel to the shore (in which case it will be reproduced at many points of the Chinese coast), or whether it is a local peculiarity. It would also be interesting to fill in some of the chronological gaps and find out whether the two clear cases of recent river capture13 took place before or after the Chinese settlement. Until these gaps are filled up, I do not claim that the details of the shore line indicated on the map are authoritative, but they are not far wrong for the northwestern part of the territory, which was the part first settled by the ancestors of the Man94 and Tang.44\n\nYou will observe that the present Castle Peak and the mountain attached to it on the north42 were at that time an island, separated from the mainland of the New Territories by a sea channel which in A.D. 900 was probably very shallow but navigable. The traditions of the oldest villages leave no room for doubt that there has been a general uplift in excess of 5 metres in this area. The red line approximately follows the present 5 metres contour. The ground on both sides of the navigable channel was swamp, probably mangrove swamp, dotted about with small islands and intersected by creeks and streams. The first fort of which there is written record was known as Tuen Mun Chan141 and was almost certainly located at a point I have marked on the map,138 about three miles north of the present location called Tuen Mun.141 It would be an advantage if all doubts could be settled by excavation on the site, which can be seen even from the ground (and more clearly still from the air) to have contained old earth-works and possibly buildings.\n\nIt will be noticed that the present Sham Chun120 River had a much shorter course at that date, and the northern half of what", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204763, "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-1964", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE\n\n55\n\nof these sites in this territory and three have been expertly excavated with results which are well known to many of my hearers this evening. There can be no doubt that the people who left those deposits were a fishing community and the direct ancestors of our present boat population, either the Tanka13 or the Hoklo155 or, as I believe more likely, of both. At the same time, the patterns on the pottery excavated from these sites clearly connect the culture both with other sites excavated elsewhere on the coast of China and those excavated further south, much further south; and the shape of the stone adzes connects them, I am told, with other boat-making cultures in the Pacific. These sites therefore are an important link between a people who are now culturally and sentimentally Chinese but were not so as recently as 200 years ago; and who earlier still formed part of a wide-flung and comparatively advanced culture. Boat people by various names, but answering the same description, are mentioned frequently in the literature of the Tang,139 Wu-tai105 and early Sung132 periods. They are described as numerous, which they still are, bellicose, which they certainly are not, and dangerously hostile to the Chinese settlers, which brings to my mind the couplet: Cet animal est très méchant; quand on l'attaque, il se défend. Later on, in the Tsing12 Dynasty, we find a change of tone; and official documents both from the local officials to Peking, and from the Manchu Emperor himself to the inhabitants of Kwangtung63 and Fukien,49 speak of the boat people as a hard-pressed community to whom their landward neighbours are called upon to stop being beastly. I think the latter assessment might be somewhat nearer to the truth if it could be applied not only to the Tsing period but to the whole of the last 1,000 years, and not only to the boat people but to the tribes of the hills.\n\nA practical suggestion which I should like to make regarding the excavations of the former coastal sites, having regard to their number and to the meagreness of the resources, both pecuniary and human, available for this work, is that some archaeologists who are familiar with this type of site should conduct a search north of the axis of tilt of the New Territories. All the sites so far excavated have been on the side which is going down, that of Hung Shing Yel56 having first come to light as a result of the sea cutting into a sandbank. But on the other side of the territory,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204828, "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-1964", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "110\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nto within ten yards of the shore. We saw a hut on the beach, and six men at work with some bamboos. Here we disembarked and the sailors filled a cask with excellent water from a well close to the shore. The inhabitants who were fishermen were civil, but they appeared to be alarmed at our arrival14. Mr. Alexander and myself walked up to the high land over the point I, where we had a view of the island and of the north east end of Lantao, as well as of the eastern shore of the main as it is laid down in the charts. The general form of the island appeared to be triangular. Its length from north to south about a mile, and from east to west about three quarters. Its general surface is irregular, rising in unconnected hills or joined only at their bases, but these are smooth and thickly covered with grass of different kinds, some of which had been lately cut down. The soil is red, light and sandy; if we may judge from its verdure it is very fertile. Besides three or four other plants the gardener found some ginger, there were also some guava trees and wild figs15. The projection K is narrow but rather high, on it are five or six huts of fishermen, whose nets are suspended from different points, and hauled up occasionally by windlasses. Between K and I is a rocky bay, that appears to be very deep. South of the projection K we saw some trees, but there are not very many on the island17. About ten acres of land are under cultivation in two separate patches from the bay on the east shore where the land is low. The water on this side of the island is very rocky. Whilst on the hill we were visited by about fifteen persons, men, women and children, from these we learned, that the island is called Toong Shing-ow-a18.\n\nAs to its extent, its fertility and its situation, in a point of view merely military, it appears a desirable island, but perhaps it may be seen in a different light when examined as a situation for a settlement, intended to protect the large and valuable ships employed in the China trade. It appears incapable of future improvement to any very great degree as an harbour, since on account of the rapidity of the currents, the depth of the water and the badness of the bottom, large ships cannot lie with safety on that side of the channel next the island. A few may lie on the north shore, and perhaps but a few, and on this account it\n\n¡", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204830, "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-1964", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "112\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nweigh at daylight. The morning of the 17th was thick with much rain, we could scarcely discover the land, and were disappointed in our intentions of examining the islands, and of sounding around them. We had found that all the soundings within the line joining the point L, and the islands, were regular and in soft mud, and it is highly probable from the appearance of the land, that this bay affords good anchorage for the space of three or four miles, and the Bottoe Islands with the rock to the southward of them, would afford very good situations for batteries for its defence.\n\nThe westermost island appeared about a quarter of a mile in length, and nearly the same in breadth; on its south end, as we observed from the anchorage of Shatlapko, it ascends gradually from the water's edge, having a small bay as appears in the view; on the north, east and west sides, it rises boldly from the shore. A bank of land extends a little way from its north west angle, on which we found 44 fathoms water when very near the island.\n\nThe eastern island appears longer than the former; it is perhaps half a mile from north to south, and a quarter or upwards in breadth. It shows a bold shore, and has 13 and 15 fathoms water over soft mud close to its north end. They are each of them about 70 or 80 feet in height, and distant from each other about a mile. If these islands were occupied by good batteries, they would afford protection to a number of ships. The establishment might at first be small, and at very little expense, and the island of Lantao would at all time admit of its being extended at pleasure.\n\nIt is probable that the dotted line running south east from Shatlapko, should be nearly the boundary of the shallow water, but there is hardly a doubt that there is a sufficient extent of water of the required depth for any number of the largest ships beyond it, and this over a fine bottom of soft mud. The depth of water round the islands promises a good situation for heaving down ships and small as they are they have every appearance of fertility, being quite covered with shrubs and grass almost to the water's edge.\n\nThe point M appeared to project considerably into the bay, and to offer a good situation for a battery. Along the shore of Lantao there is occasionally cultivated land, particularly in the depth of the bay, where we observed a stream of water rushing down from the hills. We did not see the island named Tysa in the charts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204858, "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-1964", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "136\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nbrush and the most excellent ink, washed his hands and cleaned the ink stone as if to receive an important guest. He let the thoughts settle in his soul, and then he work” (page 46). Among other essays and jotting here translated should be mentioned Ching Hao's \"Notes on Brush-work\" and the Hua Yü Lu #4 (\"Notes on Painting\") by Shih-t'ao of the Ch'ing dynasty. One sentence from Shih-t'ao's essay is typical of his attitude: \"When the superior man borrows from the old masters, he does it in order to open a new road\n\nTwo illustrations gave me special pleasure: \"Misty Hills\" by Ch'en Shun and \"Peach-blossom Spring\" by Shih-t'ao (plates 18 and 19). The book is equipped with a full index of Chinese names, terms and books with their Chinese characters.\n\nThis new edition of an important work by the doyen of Western authorities on Chinese art can be recommended to all who are interested in Chinese painting and it serves as introduction to Sirén's magnum opus, his Chinese Painters, Leading Masters and Principles in seven volumes.*\n\nJ. L. C-B.\n\nTHE ART OF CHINESE POETRY. James J. Y. Liu. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962. 166 pages. 30/-\n\nMr. James Liu's book is a fine introduction to the poetry of China for the uninitiated, and a substantial source of information and enjoyment for the sophisticated.\n\nOf a moderate size, the book is divided into three sections. Part I consists mainly of information, Part II of interpretation and Part III of criticism. The subject is generously illustrated with short poems translated by Mr. Liu and others.\n\nA remarkable feature of this book is the way in which Chinese poems are translated. Mr. Liu has in many cases followed the original verse form and rhyme scheme, a difficult and painstaking process requiring considerable virtuosity and originality. What he does, goes contrary to prevailing fashion and one is not surprised to find the critic of the Times Literary Supplement, while maintaining the general excellence of the book, taking\n\n*Lund Humphries, 1956. Profusely illustrated,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204908, "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-1965", "page_number": 16, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY\n\n11\n\nfound. The explanation for this is that this part of South China has been rising relative to sea level. This positive rise is connected with isostasy and eustatic movements of the oceans that cause cycles of submergence and emergence. Assuming a rise of one foot every hundred years then, Hong Kong in the last 2,500 years has risen 25 feet,\n\nDr. Heanley and his friend Mr. Walter Schofield, a government administrator, gathered a large and varied collection of celts from Kowloon, Cheung Chau and Lantau Island. Examination of this collection by experts soon established that they were not just freaks of nature but definite human artifacts. Since Heanley's first notification, other workers have found them in practically every part of the Colony, and contrary to his belief that they were principally found on granite hills, they have been found often in abundance on every other rock outcrop represented in the area — especially volcanic rock. It may be that because of the extreme susceptibility of granite to erosion, which causes 'badland country' with thin or no vegetation cover, the celts can be seen more easily,\n\nIncluding the places mentioned by Dr. Heanley, celts can still be found in the fields, on raised beaches or on low hills at Tai Wan, Hung Shing Ye, Yung Shu Wan, Aberdeen, Tai Po, Castle Peak, San Hui, So Kun Wat, Tsun Wan, Shatin, Shataukok, Man Kok Tsui, Ha Tsuen, Sheung Shui, Shek Pik, Sai Kung, Lai Chi Chung, Sok Ku Wan, Fanling and Kau Sai Chau.\n\nMuch is owed to Dr. Heanley, Mr. Schofield and Professor J. L. Shellshear, who was head of the Anatomy Department in the University of Hong Kong, for their conscientious and patient work in combing the Colony for other archaeological remains and sites after the celts had been identified. I have been told by our Vice-President, Sir Lindsay Ride, who knew all three intimately and often accompanied them on their field trips, that they were superbly energetic and covered tremendous distances in a day at great speed. Only fit and enthusiastic walkers could hope to last a whole day with them. They located several prehistoric sites, the most notable being So Kun Wat, Shek Pik and those at the northwest end of Lamma Island.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204972, "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-1965", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n71\n\nPiracy was firmly rooted along the South China coast. Then, during the First China War, many junks were allowed to act as armed privateers, and when the war was over, became pirates rather than return to peaceful trade. Hong Kong and its neighbouring islands had always been centres of piracy, or the home of fishermen ambitious to earn a dishonest dollar or two from piracy. The new British colony must have appeared like manna from Heaven to these people, and the colony's first years were marked by an increase in piracy. There was a similar increase in piracy around Singapore at the same time. The founding of Singapore in 1819 had resulted in a great increase in native trade in the area, and this suffered severely from attacks by well-armed Chinese junks, which sometimes attacked European ships. Captain James Brooke with his sea Dyaks played a big part in suppressing piracy in these waters.1\n\nThe period between the First and Second China Wars is one of the most confusing in Chinese history. On one hand is the founding of a British colony at Hong Kong, the opening of the treaty ports, and the inception of regular shipping services along the coast; while on the other is the persistence of lawlessness and piracy. In the background is the increasing weakness of the Manchu Dynasty, and during the last years of the period, the Taiping Rebellion.\n\nWhen the East India Company controlled the China trade, there was little need for naval protection in Chinese waters, and the Cantonese were traditionally opposed to the Royal Navy. The large and well-armed East Indiamen and \"Country\" ships were perfectly capable of fighting their way past the pirates who infested the Canton River delta, as were smaller, but faster and equally well-armed opium clippers. In spite of Chinese objections, however, British warships visited Canton on several occasions. Anson called in the Centurion in 1741, on the famous voyage on which he captured the Manila galleon, and Cook in 1779 with the Resolution and Discovery after his three-year cruise in the Pacific. Cook's ships were careened, refitted, and provisioned at Canton, the East India Company advancing the money in return for bills on the Admiralty in London.\n\n1 The first white Rajah of Sarawak.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205024, "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-1965", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n123\n\nhappened recently at Tong Fuk on Lantau Island, a multi-clan Cantonese village with a population of 198 at the Hong Kong Census of 1911. Its present population is about the same number. In 1958 the scheme to build a new reservoir at Shek Pik was confirmed and work went ahead on the dam and associated works. Behind Tong Fuk there were to be catchwaters for which an access road had to be constructed to the west of the village. This led to difficulties with the villagers, because in feng shui ideology the place was held to be the seat of the White Tiger. They therefore requested a ceremony known locally as a tun fu (符) — to propitiate the gods and spirits who would, as they thought, be aroused by digging earth and blasting stones in this particular place.\n\nPrecedents were cited by the village elders. They said they had carried out such a ceremony thirty-five years before, following several unexpected deaths in the village. The inhabitants had worshipped at the Hung Shing (廟) temple on the beach nearby, praying for the removal of the malignant influence. It transpired that a villager had cut stone from this particular spot to build a house. The elders then invited a Taoist priest — a Hakka — to come from one of the neighbouring villages to carry out the propitiatory observances usually made under such circumstances. They also said that a similar ceremony had also been conducted twenty years before in the adjoining Cantonese village of Shui Hau, this time by a priest engaged from the urban area. Deaths had also occurred there and had been traced to one of the villagers having constructed a cowshed in front of his house on ground with feng shui properties.\n\nReturning to the 1958 case, the elders proposed to call in the services of the nephew of the priest who had supervised the ceremony thirty-five years before. He was a man of forty years of age who had followed in his uncle's footsteps. Such persons are known locally as feng shui hsien sheng (風水先生).\n\nThis ceremony was supposed to cause considerable inconvenience for the villagers, in theory if not in practice. One week of vegetable diet was obligatory for all and there was also a three-day prohibition on entering and leaving the village: that is, if the ceremony was to realize its full value. This meant that no cows could be grazed or grass or firewood cut on the hills; nor, presumably, could men go out to work in the fields.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205082, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "The Five Great Clans\n\n33\n\ntried to retain and modernise this tradition by building modern schools for their children and teaching a curriculum equal to that in the cities of Victoria and Kowloon. The Tangs of Kam Tin and the Lius operated schools with a modern curriculum at least as early as the 1930s, and have since installed them in modern buildings. Other modern schools may be seen at Ho Sheung Heung, Kam Tsin, Tai Po Tau, and San Tin. Usually, the schools have been built on lineage initiative and money, with the Government meeting a proportion of the cost. Boards of Governors are generally composed of lineage members only, though teaching staff may be drawn from any surnames.\n\nBut far from consolidating the position of the clans, as education did in the old days, the new education has cut off the young men (and the young women) from their lineages by educating them up to a level where they are employable only in the city, where they quickly learn to renounce village values and the lineage way of life. Some of the older men recognise the danger which this constitutes to the lineage system, and they try hard to reconcile the modern education with old values, striving to keep the young people based on the village even if facing towards the city. The Lius have recently initiated the practice of sending all their school-children to take part in the worship of the First Ancestor's grave on the 9th of the 9th month,80 a practice which certainly would not have been permitted in the past.\n\nAncestor worship in its manifestations above the level of the family was and is on a larger scale in the five clans than in smaller clans. The five own large ancestral halls (often as large as three M) for the corporate worship of their founding ancestors, and most of their villages have more than one hall, often as many as three or four, each one serving as the focal point for a branch or sub-branch of the lineage. Comparatively few lineages or clans outside the five have ancestral halls of any size; in many, a converted house does duty as the hall, while perhaps no other lineage is able to boast of more than one hall. Wealth again is the factor which enables the five to build and maintain halls.\n\nAll of these clans observe ancestral rites on a large scale and at great expense. The major ceremony of the year is Chung Yeung, on and around the 9th day of the 9th month, when the grave of the founding ancestor is worshipped. Since these graves", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205087, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "38\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nmen temples were built and dedicated to them in many parts of the effected area. In the New Territories there were three such temples - one at Sha Tau Kok,10 one built by the Kam Tin lineage of the Tang Clan,102 and a third in the market town of Shek Wu Hui known as the Chau Wong Yee Yuen,103 which was built by the five clans and endowed by them with land for its upkeep. It was not the five clans as clans which did this, but rather lineages of the five clans which came together and each purchased a share in the temple.104 The Man Clan took two shares in the temple, one purchased by each of the two lineages; as was the case with the eastern Tangs.105 The Pangs, Hau* and Lius each had one share. Not only was land purchased and a temple106 built with this money, but also a ferry boat was bought to assist all members of the five clans to cross the Sham Chun River107 to get to the large market town of Sham Chun, with which all had dealings. The share-holding lineages took part in an annual feast at which the business of the temple was discussed, the feast being paid for out of temple funds. As might be expected, however, the history of this temple association has not all been peaceful, and recently a major dispute has arisen, three members108 claiming complete control of the funds to the exclusion of the others.109 The matter quickly escalated to a point where both sides hired lawyers and placed vituperative advertisements in the Colony's newspapers. Eventually, after three years of argument, it was settled in 1963.\n\nThe second example of cooperation between the clans is of the army which they raised between them to oppose the arrival of the British when they took control of the New Territories in 1899. Under the leadership of literati of the Tang Clan, working from the ancestral hall of the Ha Tsuen lineage,110 they mustered men, arms and supplies in quantity and attacked the British at their landing point in Tai Po. Unfortunately they lacked training and could do no more than fight an ignominious retreat back over the hills. Some records of the organisation of this force are still available through documents captured by the British at the time, and it is obvious that all the planning was done by and communications established at the level of the literati of the five clans. It seems that these men kept up some kind of informal contact, and there is mention of an organisation called the Tung P'ing Kuk112 in the first British reports on the area, which was said\n\n*Hau is the correct spelling, not \"Haus\". I've made the correction. \nPlease let me know if you need further assistance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205269, "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-1967", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "24\n\nII. KUAN-FU\n\nJEN YU-WEN\n\nWhere was Kuan-fu Ch'ang? It can be definitely identified with no other place than the eastern side of the Kowloon Peninsula. For several hundred years from Sung to mid-Ch'ing Kuan-fu was the official name of the area, while Kowloon was the vernacular name used by the local people. To avoid confusion, we must carefully differentiate Kuan-fu Ch'ang from Kuan-fu Tsai (stockade), Kuan-fu-shan (mountain) and Kuan-fu hsun-ssu (sub-district).\n\nKuan-fu Ch'ang meant Kuan-fu Field, one of the four salt-producing fields in the Tung-kuan District amongst the thirteen fields of the whole province of Kwantung in the Sung Dynasty. The area of the Field covered not only the entire peninsula but also the nearby islands, including the present Hong Kong. It was under the administration of an office in the stockade called Kuan-fu Tsai, the present so-called Kowloon Walled City. During the last years of the Emperor Tu Tsung (1265-75) the administrator of the field was Yen I-chang of Kaifeng, Honan Province, who had the engraved stone made at North Fu-t'ang in 1274, less than three years before the royal visit to Kuan-fu.6\n\nMy interpretation is that the name Kuan-fu has a political and economic meaning: “Kuan\" means Tung-kuan District and \"fu\" means rich. The field was thus christened by officialdom to signify the rich resources of Tung-kuan. Or else, it might signify the riches of the Emperor, for Kuan Chia was a popular term for the emperor. Anyway, it could not be a natural name and it may be inferred from this that the name of Kuan-fu Mountain, which was a long range of mountains with many hills, was adopted from the Kuan-fu Ch'ang and not vice versa. Researches into the Gazetteer of Hsin-an District, the writings of some historians and maps furnished by the Public Works Department of the Hong Kong Government lead to the conclusion that the Kuan-fu Mountain was along the western side of the Kowloon peninsula (see Plate 12). There were a number of hills of various heights inside the area and the highest, the rocky peak west of Ma-tau-wei Road, reaches a height of 405 feet. On the plain and in the valleys at the foot of the hills were separate salt-producing fields. Certainly, there were other such fields all over the Kuan-fu", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205302, "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-1967", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n57\n\ntinuum of generations. The Hakka concept of major lineage is intimately connected with a process of fission and resettlement; it seems impossible that one particular, geographically distinct, settlement could contain more than one tsu (M) or major lineage of the same clan. Minor lineages — fang (M), tracing descent to the different sons or grandsons of the first village founder, are always present and tend to live in hamlets separate in space, but close enough to form together a distinct compound settlement. If a fraction wished to manifest itself as a segment within the localized group by way of establishing a new ancestral hall, it remained part of the existing system, and became merely an addendum to a series of lower order segments already in being.\n\nThis kind of segmentation, the result of accumulation of wealth and status, does not appear to have been frequent in Hakka society. In none of the three villages studied has ramification of ancestral halls occurred below the minor lineage level. This might be correlated with the small amount of social and economic differentiation pertaining to the small-sized hill settlements in 'traditional' times.20\n\nAnother factor may be of importance in this connection. As far as my experience allows me to generalize, Hakka ancestor ceremonialism differs from that of the Punti population in the arrangement of the ancestral halls. The Hakka do not have individual tablets symbolizing particular dead persons, but they have one tablet for the collective unit of dead ancestors in the centre of the table for ritual paraphernalia. All ancestral halls in the valley have been rebuilt after the war, and on a smaller scale than before. A look at the District Demarcation Maps, drawn soon after the British takeover in 1899, seems to reveal that in Big Stream Village and Plum Grove Village, where segmented ancestral halls on minor lineage basis could be found, the different units were erected side by side, thus probably expressing the unit of higher order.21 Ancestral ceremonialism, expressing unit, thus seems to have been instrumental in a process of fusion, discouraging segmentation within the existing structural framework.\n\nSegmentation implying an expansion beyond the limits of the localized settlement, requires some consideration. Freedman, in scrutinizing social conditions in the provinces of Kwangtung and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205319, "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-1967", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "74\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\n16 The still wider surname groups, hsing (M), in Chinese society, based on entirely fictitious agnatic relationships, expressed in at least preferred exogamy, have often indiscriminately been designated 'clans'. See e.g. Lee 1960, p. 134f. and Willmott 1964, p. 33. This purely conventional consanguinal kin group comes close to the sociological concept of 'phratry', and kin group constellations of this kind may be described better as units of this higher order. The Hakka nomenclature may vary but the units discussed are always conceived of,\n\n17 Freedman 1958, pp. 47, 129.\n\n18 Census 1911, p. 103f.\n\n19 Nine villages with Cantonese-speaking Punti population in the same district at the same time display numbers ranging between 346 and 9, with an average of 108.\n\n20 However, Jean Pratt, in her account of a Hakka village to the north of Tolo Harbour in the New Territories, gives an example of a non-symmetrical segmentation, reflected in the establishment of a new ancestral hall; Pratt 1960, p. 148.\n\n21 This also applies to the Hakka village studied by Miss Pratt: 'The three lineage halls are merely buildings in a row like an ordinary dwelling house'; Pratt 1960, p. 148.\n\n22 Freedman 1958, p. 50.\n\n23 Skinner, in discussing the importance of marketing communities, points out that in Szechuan there existed organizations of Hakka 'composite lineages', with headquarters in teahouses in the market towns (Skinner 1964/65, p. 37). I have no knowledge of similar organizations in the New Territories. One would have expected something of this kind in a portion of China where the Hakka groups suffered political strain from the Punti population. Local groupings on a non-kin basis may sometimes have fulfilled a protective function. Such local organizations, with headquarters in small temples, are for instance to be found in the Sha Tin Valley, and in the Three Fathom Cove area. All three villages studied belonged in pre-British times to an administrative organization called Luk Yeuk, focussed on the old government centre of Kowloon City. Freedman (1966, p. 86) sees yeuk organizations as means for weak communities to seek 'protection against being molested by local powers'. For a discussion of yeuk see op. cit., pp. 82-89 and for the Luk Yeuk especially pp. 85f.\n\n24 A map of Hakka migrations is, for instance, provided by Kuo 1964, facing p. 6. But there are also other views as to the origin of the Hakka, see e.g. Barnett 1958, p. 2.\n\n25 Izikowitz 1963, p. 171.\n\n26 One man from Grass Field Village has settled for good in Borneo. He has taken his wife and children there. This is the only instance of permanent overseas settlement I have come across.\n\n27 This particular migration is said to have been encouraged and even given financial assistance by the Chinese Government as an aftermath of the war mentioned below; Dyer Ball 1925, p. 282. Another author thinks less of the generosity of the government:\n\n'Comme ces tribus Hak-ka se montraient particulièrement turbulentes, les mandarins chinois ne pensaient qu'à les éloigner de leur territoire; c'est ainsi qu'en 1864 et 1866, à la suite de nombreuses revoltes, ils furent expulsés dans le sud du Kouang-Si, vers ces marches frontières qui, comme la province de Moncay, étaient peu habitées et dans un état habituel d'anarchie politique.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205352, "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-1967", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n107\n\nof the mountains, in order to procure a more luxuriant herbage, and these conflagrations seen at night have a very picturesque effect.\n\nThe height of the Mountains is not very considerable, but some of them reach to between 4,000 and 5,000 feet.\n\nThe Islands usually consist of mountains and rocks; the Chinese therefore very seldom use the expression “island” — Hoi-taou, but call them \"mountains\" — Shan, as Lin-tin-shan 零丁山.\n\nThere are only three Plains of any extent in the district. The most important lies in the N. W. part of the district, and is well watered and covered with villages; it is under the government of the Mandarin of Fuk-wing, who, by-the-by, though he is supposed to rule over 200 villages, confided to me, in a conversation that I had with him, that he had nothing to do but to eat, to drink, and to smoke.\n\nThe important towns of San-keaou, Wong-kong, Cap-sui-hou✯, and Sha-tsing #, are situated in this plain, and it might be named the San-keaou plain, San-keaou being the largest and most influential of its towns. The inhabitants of the plain are industriously occupied in the pursuits of agriculture and trade; and in the more populous and richer towns, is found the highest degree of cultivation and learning which the Sanon district affords.\n\nThe north-west angle of the plain lies very low, and is covered with rushes, some parts of it only being under cultivation, and in these only a certain kind of rice will flourish. The second plain extends from Si-heong to Deep Bay, and is continued on the southern side of that bay, there forming a triangular perfectly-even plain, the sides of which measure about five miles. The third plain occupies the eastern part of the district, near the city of Ti-pung, and is not personally known to me; even these plains have ridges of hills running through them.\n\nAmongst the principal mountains, that of 'Ng-tung † ♫ is said by the Chinese to be the highest and the most powerful; all remarkable mountains are supposed by the Chinese to have some spiritual influence over the affairs of mortals. It lies in the eastern part of the district near Mirs Bay, and is probably about", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205379, "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-1967", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "134\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nThe inhabitants of a pretty little village on Deep Bay called \"Kam-tin\", also trace their origin up to the Sung dynasty. A high mandarin, they say, of the name of Tung, came to Sanon from the interior of China, and was so much pleased with the country around Deep Bay, that he settled down and made himself very popular, by giving gratuitous instruction. The grandson of this man having done some meritorious service to the State, the emperor Ko-tsung, of the Sung dynasty, gave him his daughter in marriage. This princess became so enchanted with Kam-tin, that she had no wish to return to the Imperial court. This pair were the progenitors of a numerous posterity.\n\nHaving finished our account of the cities, we will make a few remarks on the principal buildings which are found in other parts of the district. These consist of temples, ancestral halls, pagodas, convents, and triumphal arches.\n\nThe Triumphal Arches are numerous. They are erected to the memory of aged people and chaste women. The oldest person mentioned in the list given in the Sanon-che, is a woman who attained to the age of 105.\n\nThree classes of \"chaste women\" are recognised. The first are such as willingly sacrifice their lives to save their honour. The second includes those who lost their intended husband before marriage, and still remained single, living in the house of their parents-in-law and serving them. The third numbers those who lost their husbands shortly after marriage, and who afterwards remained widows, and maintained their chastity to an advanced age.\n\nPagodas, Sanon contains twelve pagodas, and all of these are situated in the three plains previously mentioned. They are not of great size; all, except the five-storied one at Namtaou, have only three stories. The places on which they are erected are selected according to the rules of geomancy, a superstitious science which has very great influence over the minds of the Chinese. The pagodas themselves are supposed to exert a beneficial geomantic influence.\n\nThe Ancestral Halls are very numerous, as each village contains several of them. They are of two different classes: The first, the Tse-tong, are of larger dimensions, and are owned by a whole clan. These edifices are very considerable, consisting of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205380, "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-1967", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n135\n\nthree rows of houses, one behind the other. The centre one contains the principal tablets of the ancestors. Separate tablets commemorate the names and titles of the graduates and officers, which the clan has at different times produced.\n\nThe second class are the Tangs, which belong to families who set up in them their private tablets of their ancestors. They are much smaller, consisting of only one edifice, with two small out-houses, but they are neatly decorated according to the Chinese taste.\n\nThe Temples\n\nare in general inferior in size and beauty to the ancestral halls. The largest, most elegant, and most renowned is that of Chick-wan, which is dedicated to \"Teen-hau\" — the Queen of Heaven. The building may be seen from the entrance of Deep Bay. Imperial officers sent on a mission to Siam or Cochin-china, were in the habit of worshipping at this temple before starting, and if they returned safely from their perilous voyage, endowed the temple with rich offerings. By these means spacious buildings were gradually erected, and about six Taouist priests are supported on the income derived from the possessions of the temple. No Chinese vessel passes this way, without making some offering to \"the Queen of Heaven.\"\n\nSecond to this temple is the one in Man-chau, near San-keaou, which is also dedicated to the same goddess.\n\nThe most popular idols to which temples are erected in Sanon, are \"Teen-hao\" — the Queen of Heaven; \"Quan-yin\" — the Goddess of Mercy; \"Kwan-tai\" — the God of War; and \"Pak-tai\" — the God of the North.\n\nIn Sai-heong there is a considerable temple dedicated to a man who was once a high official at Canton. The following is the history of his apotheosis: The Emperor Kanghi once gave orders that the people should retire from the sea-shore, and settle some miles further in the interior, so that the pirates would be unable to carry on their depredations. This man interceded with the Emperor, and succeeded in getting the decree repealed. Out of gratitude to him, numerous temples were erected along the coast, in which he is worshipped.\n\nAltars are erected before the villages, in the fields, under green trees, and upon the hills, and are dedicated to the worship of the tutelary deities. They are the Gods of Land and Grain,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205381, "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-1967", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "136\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\ncalled \"Sha-tau\"; or the Gods of the Earth and Soil, called “Pak-kung.\" Sometimes images represent these gods, but more commonly there is only a smooth stone to be seen on the altar.\n\nThe Monasteries and Convents are either Buddhist or Taouist. There are in Sanon about twenty-five Buddhist monasteries, which are inhabited by about seventy monks, and fifteen convents, which contain a like number of nuns. The most noted of the Buddhist monasteries is that of Wan-kai, near Sha-tsing, the abbot of which claims a sort of superiority over all the Buddhist establishments of the district. Some of these buildings are situated on hills, and command a fine view,\n\nThere are about twenty Taouist monasteries in the district, with some sixty priests who are engaged in medical practice, and in fortune-telling. They are more highly esteemed than their Buddhist brethren, and are employed in the temples, as is the case at Chik-wan. There are also establishments on Castlepeak, and on a mountain near Fuk-wing. On this mountain a renowned Taouist is said to have distilled the Elixir of Life, and then to have ascended to heaven. There are no nuns in the district.\n\nAs regards religion: \"The three different ways,\" as they are called by the Chinese, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taouism, all find their followers in the Sanon district. It must not however be supposed that the line of demarcation is strictly drawn, that a man must belong solely to one of these sects, for it frequently happens that the same individual embraces all three beliefs.\n\nThe doctrines of Confucius are taught in all the schools, and are firmly believed in as far as they go. But the great deficiency in the system of Confucius is, that it does not pretend to say anything of the state of the soul after death; and in consequence we find the staunchest adherents of Confucius take refuge with the Buddhist priests at the hour of death, and engage them to say mass for their souls, that they may gain admission into heaven,\n\nThe Taouist religion is had recourse to in any supposed case of need, as in sickness, or for the purpose of divining future events,\n\nThe Christian religion has been introduced into the province only a few years. There are some Roman Catholic convents in the district, but their number is not known. There is a Roman Catholic chapel at Tsin-wan, but no European missionary resides there. The first attempt at a Protestant missionary establishment...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205530, "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-1968", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "67\n\nFURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI\n\nW. SCHOFIELD*\n\nThe very interesting paper by Professor Lo Hsiang-lin on the Sung Wong T'oi and the travelling courts of the Sung Dynasty, in Volume III No. 2 of the Journal of Oriental Studies,† and the partial wrecking of the historic site by the Japanese in the war,‡ have prompted the writer to put on record some notes made during the years 1918 and 1937 on the earthworks, inscriptions and relics found by him on and near the site, which may help to supplement Professor Lo's paper. In what follows the hill is described as it was in 1937, as the writer has not seen it since 1938.\n\nIt is a crescent-shaped hill, convex towards the east, where it rises steeply from the beach to a height of nearly 40 metres. It commands a good view of the south slope of the Kowloon hills and the plain beneath, the east half of the harbour, and of Lyemun channel and the west end of the Fat Tau Mun channel beyond, except for a few hundred metres at its north side by Slope Island (see Plate 5). A watch-tower on its summit would provide an observation post well over 40 metres above sea level. The concave side, on which lies the main path to the top, is terraced for cultivation up to 15 or 20 metres.\n\nThe objects investigated on and near the hill can be classed in three categories, earthworks, inscriptions, and pottery and other objects, and will be dealt with in that order.\n\nThe Earthworks (see sketch plan at Plate 3)\n\nThere are signs that the hill was formerly fortified. On its top from the south end above the 20 metre contour as far as the great inscribed rock on the summit, there is a gentle rise from which the ground falls away steeply to the east, and rather less so to the west and south. At the south end of the ridge traces of a bank at the edge appear to form a rough semicircle, presumably as a flank defence, for a clearly defined earth bank about a metre high by three or four wide at the base runs northward from it nearly straight along the centre of the hill crest to a point near the south-\n\n*See biographical note at the end of this article.\n\n† Published by the Hong Kong University Press, May 1958. [See also Mr. Jen Yu-wen's article \"The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung in Kowloon\" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 7, 1967, pp. 21-38. Ed.]\n\nMr. Schofield writes in the present tense, Unfortunately the hill has now disappeared completely, what was left by the Japanese being removed for the airport extension about 1958. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205548, "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-1968", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "FAN LAU AND ITS FORT\n\n85\n\nLau, meaning \"division of flows\" and the name of that point on the southwestern tip of Tai Yu Shan, describes accurately and specifically the abrupt change of colour of the sea off the point, from a clear green to a muddy brown, as any traveller from Hong-kong to Macau can attest. The name Fan Lau is not only appropriately but propitiously applied. In fung shui the confluence of streams or sea currents is considered auspicious (conversely, a site flanked by forking streams is not considered lucky). Fan Lau, situated as it were at such a confluence, is considered a lucky site; hence the presence of a fort, a temple, and a settlement.\n\nConditions must have deteriorated in the Chu Kong estuary some sixty years after the return of Ch'ing control in 1669, for we hear of the garrisoning and reinforcement of troops in Tai Yu Shan in 1730 to shore up existing coastal defences there. \"In the 7th year of Yung Cheng (1730) forts were constructed on two hills, to deploy garrisons for their defence and to reinforce the troops garrisoning Tai Yu Shan, thus forming an angle similar to that made by the horns of an ox, to serve the exterior defence of Macau and the Boca Tigre\". The Kai Yik Kok fort must have been one of the two strong points mentioned, the other being probably the fort at Tung Chung. The analogy between the location of the fortifications of the estuary and the shape of an ox's horns is interesting. A glance at a map of the Chu Kong estuary would show Macau (in reality, the Heung Shan district forts) and Fan Lau to be the tips of those horns. Both these strategic areas cover the entrance to the estuary. The Boca Tigre (Fu Mun19) at the apex of the near-isosceles triangle formed by these three points, served as the pivotal central fortification.\n\nWe know too, that the Fan Lau fort was designated as the administrative boundary between the San On District and the Heung Shan District on the other side of the estuary from Fan Lau. A map of the Chu Kong estuary in the O Mun Kei Leukaz depicts the Kai Yik Kok fort with the accompanying caption “San Heung Fan Kai” (***), meaning \"This is the dividing boundary between the San On and the Heung Shan districts\".\n\nIt is very likely that some of the fort's soldiers were allotted plots of land for their own use. Another interesting possibility is that the soldiers and officials appointed to preserve law and order came from the very ranks of rebels and pirates who had previously\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205569, "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-1968", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "106\n\nMORRIS I. BERKOWITZ\n\nof income. Twelve families have only single income sources, two from non-household head workers, four from rent only and six from wages earned by the household head, either in his own shop or through employment. Of the twenty unemployed household heads, 9 are seeking employment, the others seem to be contented with their unemployed status. An additional four women are looking for jobs.\n\nUnemployment not only has implications for family income, however; it also has great relevance to the quality of the life which the villagers are now living. The data shows rather clearly that, lacking employment, the men of the villages have found few outlets for their energies other than gambling, going to the movies, and going out to eat with other unemployed men. All of these activities require money which for men in their status must come from sources which diminish the funds available for schooling of children, food, monthly bills, and so forth. Little wonder, as shown above, that the housewives (who bear the burden of household management) show such marked preference for living under the old conditions in the villages. In a style of life in which money income is a requisite for continuing family life the inactivity of the husband is a burden: in the village it (when it occurred) had probably been only an annoyance. This is clearly shown among the four women looking for work, three of whom are trying to earn supplementary income when they have a working laborer husband, but no rental income, while the fourth has rental income, but her husband is not employed. In large measure, the burden of economic support of the family has been placed on the females by the resettlement: it is certainly not unusual for Hakka women to carry this burden, but to carry it in an urban environment and a money economy appears to have created quite a stressful situation. We can assume that more wives would be looking for employment were it not for the presence in the home of young children preventing active employment. Those wives who are working are employed doing home industry (plastic assembly dominates). This is low paid labor but, because all of them are illiterate, possibly the best source of employment available.\n\nSummary\n\nWe have tried to present a short summary paper concerning the experiences after resettlement of a group of formerly isolated", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205601, "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-1968", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "138 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nsaid to have been of the Buddhist faith and to have lived in China in the early part of the eighth century; or to one of their patriarch-successors. These sects share a common ideology, have the same goals, and some have a similar system of rank and appointments, even possessing the same rank-names and terms of address. Some of these sects are, like Hsien-t'ien Tao, vegetarian, that is to say they demand a permanent vegetarian diet (and also sexual abstinence) from their rank-holders; and some, generally speaking the more recent off-shoots, are non-vegetarian. It is only the vegetarian sects which are organized through vegetarian halls. \n\nSome of the other sects operating in Hong Kong today and recognised by Hsien-t'ien Tao to be related to it are P'u-tu Men: \"The Salvation Sect\" and Kuei-ken Men: \"The Sect of Reverting to the Root [of Things],\" which are both vegetarian; and T'ung-shan She: “The Fellowship of Goodness\", which is non-vegetarian and was particularly active in the period leading up to the founding of the Chinese Republic and immediately afterwards. \n\nThe ideology of these sects is known by Hsien-t'ien Tao rather confusingly as Hsien-t'ien Ta-tao: \"The Great Way of Former Heaven\". It is syncretic, incorporating elements from a number of sources but most importantly from Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism, and from Taoism, and the Yin-Yang cosmology which received general acceptance by the Chinese in traditional times. In combining all these elements however Great Way ideology, as we will refer to it here, produces an original synthesis: a system of ideas distinct from any other. The religion divides time into three major epochs, or cyclical periods, during each of which it is supposed that Absolute Truth comes into the world, is taught by a major Buddha and other distinguished sages, and then, unless men have made efforts to prevent it, becomes distorted and finally disappears. The disappearance of Truth from the world is followed by a major catastrophe (there might also be minor, localised disasters during each period due to minor Truth distortions). All sects in the group believe we have already passed through the first of these periods which was followed by a great flood; some believe we are in the second period now (dominated by Sakyamuni Buddha) which will be followed by a great fire unless we act to prevent it; and a few believe we are actually in the third period which will be followed by a wind catastrophe (interpreted by the sect Kuei-ken Men as an atomic war). It is in this final period that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205606, "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-1968", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n143\n\nas the landlord claimed back these premises, the home moved temporarily to the Pun Har Tung chai-t'ang at Ngau Chi Wan. In 1946 the Association again raised money to build a home for the aged at Shatin and in the same year the home moved into these new premises. In 1955 Sir Alexander Grantham, then Governor of Hong Kong, visited the Home at Shatin.\n\nThe sect today appears to attract business men, mainly in traditional-type pursuits and of middle years, and a few school teachers; but its largest contingent is undoubtedly female. Although the District Officer in his comments about talks of vegetarian halls being designed to attract chiefly the well-to-do, the majority of inmates of the halls are certainly in the lower income brackets. One is not certain where the money raised for charity comes from but one might assume, perhaps, that it is largely from lay-members in business and living in their own homes. It is hard to believe that the vegetarian halls make large profits.\n\nThere are said to be something like 70 halls of this sect in Hong Kong (including the New Territories) today. Those we visited were said to have from about 30-40 permanent inmates and some 20-30 casual residents each, although we have not been able to check these figures to date. One of the spiritual advisors of the ladies living in the halls we visited told Marjorie Topley that the various sects of the religion represented in Hong Kong (excluding the non-vegetarian) had recently been coming together again. Previously they had regarded each other as mutually unorthodox as they sprung from different leaders, but they had decided to sink their differences and work together in their common beliefs. This, interestingly, coincides with a similar campaign for amalgamation underway in Singapore.\n\nVI. VISIT TO THE HALLS IN NGAU CHI WAN\n\nThe following background information was obtained by James Hayes on three of the halls visited by the Society. Our visit to the fourth hall was not on our original itinerary and was in the nature of a surprise. We therefore have no information, unfortunately, on this hall at present.\n\n1. Wing Lok Tung\n\nThis hall was built in the 20th year of the Chinese Republic (1931-32). It was founded by a female member of the sect who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205608, "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-1968", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n145 \n\nfollowers and would-be subscribers encouraged her then to build a new hall and she was able to purchase a private plot with a small house on it at Ngau Chi Wan, formerly occupied by a Buddhist nun. The house was pulled down and replaced then by the present hall. This hall belongs to the same sect as a group of halls studied by Marjorie Topley in Singapore and the founder of one of these halls, the FEI HA CHING SHE (*), there, was not only well known to the inmates of this hall in Hong Kong, but his photograph was observed by us to hang on its wall in a place of honour. \n\n3. Man Fat Tong (4) \n\nThis hall was established in the first year of the Chinese Republic (1912-13). The founder was a native of Sai Chiu, Kwangtung and was at some time a domestic servant in Hong Kong. She held the same rank as the founders of the above halls and co-operated in financing the hall with three or four other former domestic servants. They began by building the main shrine room, the rest of the main structure being added some years later (about 1923). Gradually she bought more land and enlarged the structure as funds came in from co-religionists and would-be inmates. \n\nOne of the present inmates of the hall, now 67 years old, was brought here by the founder from Canton when she was 20 and she worked two years in Hong Kong as an amah before returning to the hall, where she has been ever since. Another lady, now 58, was brought here when 14 years old and has never been employed outside the hall, \n\nAppearance and Lay-out of the Halls, and Deities Worshipped \n\nThe founders of these halls said there was no particular reason why they had chosen Ngau Chi Wan for their halls apart from the fact that the land was cheap and had good fêng-shui (geomantic properties) and the environment quiet. The surroundings of these halls must undoubtedly have been conducive to the contemplative and religious life in those early years. Although they are now bordered by a busy and noisy market and adjacent to the big housing estate of Choi Hung, the noise does not appear to penetrate into the halls and their small gardens in which they grow some of their vegetables even today. \n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205701, "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-1969", "page_number": 7, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "# PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1968\n\nThe Society is now in its tenth year since its revival in 1959. Its membership at the end of 1968 was 437 - an increase of 17 over 1967. Despite the loss of 47 members mainly owing to their departure from the Colony, we gained 63 new members including 5 life members, one of whom was already an ordinary member. We have now reached the point where our gains over our losses each year are not great but are steadily maintained.\n\nDuring the year, the Society met fourteen times, at which addresses of a high standard were given both by eminent scholars from overseas and a welcome number of scholars living or working in the Colony.\n\nThe crowning and most popular activities of the year were the two symposia organized under the chairmanship of Dr. Marjorie Topley. Firstly, in March last year, we had the weekend visit to Chinese Vegetarian Halls of the Sect of Former Heaven in Kowloon. Then, on November 2 and 3, the Branch held a Weekend Symposium organized by Professor D. J. Dwyer of the Department of Geography and Geology of the University of Hong Kong, which had for its subject \"The Changing Face of Hong Kong\". The programme included six lectures with illustrating exhibits by Professor Dwyer himself and members of the staff of his department and of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department, followed by a panel discussion of members' questions. On the second day, there were three field trips under the specialist lecturers for further study of the subject on the spot. The Society is deeply indebted to Professor Dwyer and the specialists who took part in this most edifying and highly successful study, and to those who were responsible for its organization.\n\nThe Journal of the Society deserves special attention. With Mr. James Hayes as Editor, the Journal has not only maintained its standard of scholarship but has increased in popularity and repute, especially among scholars and readers overseas, and we have built up a valuable library of journals which other societies with similar objects have been keen to exchange for ours. The sale of our Journal last year was more than twice that of the previous year. There is a greatly increased demand for back", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205737, "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-1969", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n37\n\nHow were such composite forces recruited? Wakeman stresses three factors: gentry leadership, the she-hsüeh (local school) as an organisational node, and agnatic kinship. Let us consider them in turn. \"Usually a gentry organizer would form a cohesive t'uan-lien around one town\n\nWhen he had assembled his men, he persuaded the elders of neighbouring villages to enroll their banners under his . . . From such integral nuclei, other, less tightly organized 'banners' could be extended: but gentry leadership was the essential factor.\"29\n\nShe-hsüeh were often resurrected or founded to serve as headquarters for militia forces: \"in 1836 . . . village leaders near Whampoa had become alarmed by secret society activity. Twenty-four of the villages built a common hall under the guise of a 'local school' at a market town on the south side of Honam island. There the elders met to try miscreants and bind them over to the district magistrate.\"30 During the period discussed by Wakeman (1839-61), the she-hsüeh served as \"recruiting depots, treasuries, meeting halls, posting places, and drill grounds.\"\n\nKinship was also significant in the formation of militia: \"clan and t'uan-lien were mutually intermingled in Kwangtung during the 1840's and '50's. The militia of a uniclan village was nothing more than a clan organization.\"32 Kinship ties might constitute an important organizational element even in the case of more widely based militia. Wakeman has shown that, of the twenty-five leaders of the Tung-p'ing militia, 60 percent shared surnames.33\n\nThe possible relationship between these factors and Skinner's analysis of marketing systems is striking. The most obvious instance is that of the twenty-four villages which combined to establish a she-hsüeh at a market town on Honam island. Skinner says of this association that it \"can only be interpreted as a formalization of structure within a standard marketing community.”34 To take another example, Wakeman reports that one of the leaders of militia in the San-yuan-li area combined the \"twelve local schools\" of his region (En-chou) into a defence command.35 En-chou lies within the area classified by Skinner as the central region of Kwangtung province. In the 1890's the average number of villages per market town in this region was 17.9.36 Could this also have been a “formalization of structure within a standard marketing community\"?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205743, "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-1969", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n43\n\nbad informal connections with Hong Kong's officialdom and that its activities were a foretaste of the future.\n\nBy March of 1899, British officials began to appear in the territory. A party was busy near the Sham Chun river, marking out the frontier with China. Meanwhile, the officer in charge of the Hong Kong police was touring the territory, considering alternative locations for police stations. This official—Captain Superintendent F. H. May arrived at Ping Shan on 27th March. His first action was to post a proclamation saying that the Hong Kong government would not interfere with the land, buildings, or customs of the people. He then designated a hill behind Ping Shan as the site for a police station. A crowd gathered and the argument began. “It says that land, buildings, and customs will not be interfered with but will remain the same as before. Why should they, therefore, when they first come into the leased area, wish to erect a police station on the hill behind our village? When has China ever erected a police station just where people live? The proclamation says that things will be as before. Are not these words untrue?”\n\n54\n\nThe Resistance Movement -- 28th March to 18th April, 1899.\n\nThe day after May's visit to Ping Shan, discussions were held in the ancestral halls of Ping Shan and Kam Tin. In both instances, agreement was reached that resistance should be offered to the British. Following the two meetings, a third took place in an ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Representatives of all three Tang lineages were present and previous decisions to offer resistance were ratified. Messages were sent to leaders throughout the marketing area, asking them to attend a meeting at Yuen Long market the next day.\n\nSteward Lockhart later argued that the resistance leaders feared for their positions of power and privilege. At the Ha Tsuen meeting, a wider range of anxieties were expressed: “... that under English law a poll tax would be collected; that houses would be numbered and a charge made therefor; that fishing and wood-cutting would be prohibited; that women and girls would be outraged; that births and deaths would be registered; that cattle and pigs would be destroyed; that police stations would be erected, which would ruin the Fung Shui [Mandarin: Feng Shui] of the place. In short, that the evils that would arise would be so great", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205779, "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-1969", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "TUNG KWU ISLAND\n\n79\n\nor saucer, painted with an open flower in underglaze blue, crudely executed and very badly glazed; and the third, found at 78 cm. in the sandbank, was a bronze button wrapped in a fragment of coarse cloth, hollow and containing a small object which rattles. I interpret this as a fragment from a modern burial: its depth is noteworthy.\n\nA group of late pottery fragments is recorded on my last visit but one to the site. Three of them were at 69, 71 and 76 cm. from the surface, and one, probably a piece of tile, at 61 cm. They were near the north end of the west beach, where rainwash from the hill has increased the depth recordings compared with those on the sand isthmus. Other pieces of tile, with textile impressions on their concave sides, and gray in colour, apparently old-fashioned, lay at 1 m. depth in rainwash 25 m. north of the group described. These tiles evidently mark an occupation level, most likely fishermen's huts of the Yuan or later period; some of the fishermen may even have been using pieces of porcelain left behind by the Sung court after its retreat from the Kowloon district to its final end on the Ngai Mun mouth of the West River. The accumulation of rainwash over this level points to the island's deforestation as having started about the Sung period, when Chinese immigration from the north had increased the population, and with it the demand for timber and firewood, as the log runways on the Lantau hills testify.\n\nPUMICE\n\nAn interesting feature of the site is a layer, roughly 32 cm. thick, and from 75 to 107 cm. from the surface, containing fairly numerous rolled pebbles of pumice, stained yellow by the sand. It is confined to the east shore of the isthmus. This layer evidently points to an eruption that took place in Japan or the Philippines, possibly submarine, and coming from a magma of the acid type rather than the basic, from which the 'froth' was expelled by explosions, and was drifted by wind and currents on to the Tung Kwu beach. Similar beds of ancient pumice are found at eight other sites in the Colony, very likely more, and give a very useful datum line for correlation, like a zone fossil in geology.\n\nThis holds good also in some sites on the Tonkin (North Vietnam) coast visited by Dr. Andersson in 1938; his results were published in the Stockholm journal of the Museum of Far Eastern", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205946, "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "MORE ON THE YUNG-LO TA-TIEN\n\n21\n\nserved in the Legation Guard in Peking in 1900. The Chester Beatty Library (Dublin) has three volumes not otherwise accounted for (chüan 803/4, 805/6, and 10,110/1). The Wason Collection of Cornell University has chüan 13,853, and the National Central Library, Taipei, has chüan 7527, which Yang Chia-lo failed to reproduce. The number at present count then is 809 chüan out of the original total of 22,877 chüan (not counting the table of contents which has been separately published).\n\nWhat subjects are covered in the volumes that have been saved? Practically everything that concerned the Chinese around the year 1400, but in fragmentary fashion. Thought, morals, poetry of several kinds, frontier people (the Hsiung-nu and Hu, for example), geography, surnames, government, law, the spirits, biography, divination, architecture (gates, bridges, halls, storehouses, walls, offices), villages, capital cities, history, burial customs, astronomy, botany, grain, military matters, Buddhism, Taoism, travels, bronzes, food and drink, caves, dreams, scholars, drama, sacrifices, clothing, mathematics, images, carpentry, post stations, shamans, literary collections. Dr. Walter Swingle, writing on the YLTT in the Report of the Library of Congress (1922-23), asserted: \"It combined all existing Chinese books that were available to Yung-lo, excepting novels and possibly some plays.\" Fortunately, his remark was found to be in error when the Library of Congress acquired (1935) from the collection of Dr. H. A. Giles, professor of Chinese at Cambridge University, a copy of a \"short historical novel, Ch'ieh-fên-lu and a hsü-lu, purporting to describe the experiences of Sung Hui-tsung, made captive by the Chin in 1127.\" (The son of Dr. Giles, Lancelot, was in the British Legation during the siege in 1900, and doubtless picked it up then.) The first notice of the famous play P'i-pa chi (The Lute Song) also appears in a volume of the YLTT. Professor Pelliot has characterized as one of the most important volumes saved the sections from a great Yuan dynasty encyclopaedia (Ching-shih ta-tien, published 1331), including a part on courier stations (jamči), now in the Toyo Bunko. Among other interesting works saved, generally fragmentary, are geographical. Francis D. M. Dow of Australian National University has recently drawn attention to certain gazetteers preserved: one of the prefecture of Soochow, published in 1379, for example; and years ago (1929) the Metropolitan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206101, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "176\n\nS. F. BALFOUR\n\nis not an effective way of fighting pirates to give up territory, such useless tactics have never been heard of before in history.”\n\nThe hypocrisy of the official excuse is also pointed out by the scholar Ch'ü Ta-chün, author of a book on Kwangtung province30 which contains many satirical comments on the Manchus. He writes:\n\n“A Manchu self-styled official arrived who proclaimed himself greatly concerned with the protection of the people from marauders. The fact of the matter was of course that Formosa remained unconquered.”\n\nThe evacuation was announced by a proclamation giving the people three days in which to remove behind a boundary which had been set up roughly 50 li from the coast. This was disregarded and soldiers had to be marched in to drive the people away. At the same time the coastal defences were organised into a line of fortifications only a few miles from each other. Many of these mounds of earth and stone must still be visible on the hills. The people evacuated had no food or lodging provided for them. The fishing boats were prevented from entering or leaving the rivers by a line of stakes set across them. There appears to have been no attempt at organising relief. Some local magistrates tried to assign places for the refugees to live but there was too little land available for such a vast number. As a result, large numbers died, others trekked inland; whilst a good many managed to avoid the boundary guards and returned to their villages.\n\nA second and more stringent evacuation then took place. The boundary was placed even further inland and everyone was made to leave their homes. Twenty-four villages whose population remained were severely punished and the people were threatened with death if they returned. A large number died from ignorance of the official decrees since they were not adequately circulated and not all could read them. The soldiers after removing the population had instructions to pull down the houses and build forts and towers with the bricks. Ch'ü Ta-chün describes the distress over the boundary as follows:\n\n30 廣東新語 - 屈大鈞著", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206195, "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-1971", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "In Conclusion, there remain to me now three brief duties to perform and they are the duties of recording thanks.\n\nFirstly they go to you members who have demonstrated your public spirit by coming here this evening and making the number present up to that which is necessary to give this meeting legal status. Secondly, I must also thank the members of the Committee who, by so dextrously and loyally serving two masters during the year 1970, have ensured an even maintenance of policy and achievement during the change in Presidency.\n\nAnd finally, a bitter-sweet item, bitter because it is the last meeting at which we shall have the pleasure of the presence of Mr. Webster as our Hon. Secretary. He is leaving Hong Kong in the very near future on transfer to Istanbul, and this brings to an abrupt end his all too short stay here. We offer him our heartiest congratulations on his new appointment and we would like him to know that he takes with him our most grateful thanks for his invaluable services to the Society for the past two years. The sweet part of this item is the news that the British Council has offered us the continuation of its services, which, I think you should know, include facilities for the venue of all our Committee meetings as well as the procuring of halls for our Society's meetings; a central home for our secretariat; the services of two senior members of its staff on our committee; and the behind-the-scenes help of Mrs. Margaret O'Hara, who is invariably prepared to cope with the hundred and one minor problems which so frequently confront an organization such as ours in its ordinary every day affairs. In fact I am certain that without this sympathetic help from the British Council, we would have no chance at all of running this Society with the efficiency and success that you have come to expect of it. To the British Council, to its local Representative, Mr. G. A. Bridges, and to his staff, we again offer our most grateful thanks.\n\nWith these words of thanks to all our helpers, I beg to table this report of the affairs of the Society for the year 1970.\n\n3rd May, 1971.\n\nL. T. RIDE", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206244, "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-1971", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "LETTERS FROM CHINA 1835-36 \n\n55 \n\naverage of one in a fortnight! Moreover, I can't swim a stroke. Thus, the house-top is my esplanade and Champ-de-Mars every morning and evening; and seriously, the view from it is very interesting at least to an eye not palled by long repetition of it. All Canton, the City, and the Suburbs (far more extensive than it) stretches away below you on the north, with its strange curved roofs and gables, such as you always see painted in China tea-cups; and now and then the pinnacles of a joss-house, or temple, with tall flag-staffs; until the eye takes in a most beautiful hill some 2 to 3,000 feet high, and perhaps three miles away from you in a straight line. There stands an enormous Pagoda at the foot of this hill, towering prodigiously many stories above all the trees and houses around it, and with a tree (which looks a merest shrub) growing on its summit. That hill is the finest thing here; I wander over it—I mean in spirit—every morning that day breaks on it drawing out all the tints of the scene; there are half a dozen fissures in one part, which I look on as thunder-rifts; and a delicate whitish line creeps up one shoulder, which I take to be a path-way for those happy, happy, thrice-enviable and most-favored Chinamen who can walk thereon without being bamboo'd to death for the offence! The river opposite the Factories joins another great branch only a few yards higher up, and the remote shores of the united stream above, show yellow with harvest, and painfully rural to the poor bird in the cage. The country there stretches away into hills too, but perhaps 15 or 20 miles away, a long and very high range—several indeed—which break the horizon nearly half its circuit. Down the River, i.e., to the S.E., the stream curves like an S, and thereby, from your point of view, a forest of masts, of all heights and sizes ever used in boats, is visible in one coup-d'oeil, such as I never saw before. I should not say boats, though; for most of them are the masts (single sticks!) of junks from 2 to 600 Tons Burden. Their number is perfectly prodigious. You see the horizon beyond and near this, striped with one or two delicate lines of alternate land and water from the windings of the noble river, the last line of all being perhaps ten miles off. It is over there the sun rises to you, else you could not see that tiny thread of water inlaying the meadows. Not a single European ship is in sight here, and only a few sailing boats and wherries. All the European ships are down at Whampoa reach, some 12 or 13 miles away.\n\n—\n\n—\n\n—", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206381, "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-1971", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\nFrom a lecture by the Rev. JAMES LEGGE, D.D., LL.D., on reminiscences of a long residence in the east, delivered in the City Hall, November 5, 1872.\n\nEditor's note. The following article is reprinted from the pages of The China Review, Vol. III, (1874) pp. 163–176. Its subject, and its distinguished author, (1815-97, appointed first Professor of Chinese at Oxford, 1876) are of equal interest and require no introduction from me.\n\n[The lecturer, having stated that his main object would be to interest his hearers by a review of the progress of the Colony, almost from its commencement down to nearly the present time, and by some references to the changes which during that period have taken place in the relations of China and Japan with the Christian nations of the West, the old nations of Europe and the young nation of the United States, proceeded to say that wherever he might interject views of his own in the course of his historical survey, he claimed perfect freedom in doing so, and was ready to accord the same to others in estimating the value of his opinions. He then sketched briefly his arrival in the East in 1839, and a residence in Malacca of nearly three years and a half, which brought him to his removal to Hong Kong in 1843. From this point, he shall speak in his own person.]\n\nIn the month of May, 1843, I reached Macao, and, a few days after, came over with my family to this place. Our passage was made in a small cutter, chartered for the occasion, and I have not forgotten the sensations of delight with which, when we had passed Green Island, I contemplated the ranges of hills on the north and the south, embosoming, between them the tranquil waters of the bay. I seemed to feel that I had found at last the home for which I had left Scotland; and here has been my abode, with intervals occupied by visits to the fatherland, for nearly thirty years.\n\nThe hill-sides now occupied by the graceful terraces of our city then presented a very different appearance. But the small and rude beginnings would not have been what they were in the middle of 1843, if they had not dated from before the treaty of Nanking. The island had been ceded to Great Britain in January 1841, by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206404, "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-1971", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n195 \n\nin frames hung on the walls. A portrait of Sir Robert Ho Tung's mother and a photograph of his wife appear in the older of these two memorial halls. \n\nThe Tam Kung Temple at Happy Valley \n\nThis temple, which seems to have been removed here about 1900, was formerly located at Wong Nei Chung Village and was the local village temple. The village of Wong Nei Chung was one of the main villages of Hong Kong Island and its existence pre-dated the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. It was eventually removed in the 1920s to make way for the present development of Wong Nei Chung and Blue Pool Road. The present race course was formerly the paddy fields belonging to this village. \n\nThis temple is in fact dedicated to two gods, Pak Tai, (11) the god of the north and Tam Kung, (342) a Kwangtung worthy. Other gods worshipped in the temple include the Goddess of Mercy (left of the main altar) and Lung Mo, the Dragon Mother (right of the altar). Up some steps and behind the main building is another altar in which there is an image of Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven. To the right of this altar are some memorial tablets which have been put there by relatives of dead persons for regular worshipping rites to be carried out in return for a small initial sum. You will note that one of these contains bone ashes in a small porcelain jar. \n\nTin Hau Temple, Causeway Bay \n\nThis is by far the oldest of the three temples we shall visit today. The structure, apart from some later repairs, dates mainly from a last major reconstruction in 1868, and the bell is dated 1747. There are various items of temple furniture inside and outside the temple bearing dates in the Tao Kwong (1821-51) and Tung Chi (1862-74) periods, including a very good pair of large stone lions dated 1845. Inside the temple the major items of interest are the carved granite altars which date from the 1860s and are worthy of close inspection. \n\nThe temple is dedicated to Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven and has long been famous for attracting large numbers of boat people on this goddess' festival in the fourth moon. Unlike most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206408, "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-1971", "page_number": 225, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "bination with rattan\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n199\n\n() for net frames only. The ropes were usually up to 20-28 in length and could be even 30+ ★, in which case the rope was turned round and carried part of the way back the rope road. Mr. Yue recalled that the first type of rope had been used by trawlers up to and through the Japanese Occupation but had stopped shortly after the Liberation. The second type had been made and used in local fishing craft up to his brother's death some 7-8 years ago.\n\nThe ropes were twisted from three strands, so that there were three stands with handles at one end of the rope road and a single one at the other. Up to ten persons were employed in the work. Unlike dyeing, this business had been in the Yue family for several generations as both Yue's father and grandfather are reported to have engaged in this work.\n\nThere were several pools at Ta Lam Lo filled with sea water and lime in which the ... was soaked for 10 days to soften it and preserve it. If fresh water was used salt had to be added.\n\nThere is still some rope-making on Ap Lei Chau at a place beyond the Kwun Yum temple but the material used is nylon and wire. This place had also been used to manufacture the other kinds of rope in the earlier period and was known locally as Lam Lo Mei (44), being subsidiary to the main area.\n\nA short description of the calendering process is given at p. 190 of the 1970 Journal. This dates from the 1860s, and probably relates to Central China,\n\nHong Kong, April 1971.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nCHARCOAL BURNING IN HONG KONG\n\nIn his compendious work on China published in 1878 Archdeacon Gray of Canton wrote:\n\n\"As coal is not used for domestic purposes, charcoal is in great demand, and charcoal-burners are to be seen daily on the hills. The hillsides of Pun-yu, Fa-yune, and Tsung-fa -districts of Kwun Tung- are studded with their fires; and on the slopes of the Lew-Shan range of mount-\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206481, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "Scarth3 \n\nNINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON \n\nT \n\n- \n\n23 \n\nan excellent artist by the way (who) told me he once saw 150 people beheaded on the execution ground at Canton”.4 The Bishop of Victoria, the Rev. George Smith has almost the right initials, but neither he nor Scarth were on the Adelaide. None of the artists in the Catalogue of the Chater Collection has the initials G.A.S. \n\nAmong the passengers arriving on the Adelaide, the \"Friend of China\" of December 2nd notes the twenty officers by name, among them Lieutenants Schomberg and Short. \"The Hongkong Shipping List\" of the same date, refers to Major Schomberg, R.A., and Lieut. Short. The artist of the paintings must have been subsequently sent from Hong Kong up the Pearl River to the Bogue before December 16th, to join the troops which had arrived earlier on the Imperador and Imperatrix who had been sent on to the Bogue immediately after their arrival. Indeed the Adelaide, with her troops on board, moved up the river from Hong Kong on December 2nd. The artist presumably was present at the capture of Canton on 29th December, and at any rate was in the city in February 1858. He took part in what he calls the \"Jingal pic-nic\" on the 20th of that month. \n\nThis curious inscription (a jingal being a sort of portable Chinese field-gun hardly conducive to a picnic atmosphere) is explained further, and at some length in Col Fisher's Three Years' Service in China, Col. Fisher relates: \"On the 20th February a pic-nic party went out to see a little of the country and of the people; and as we did not know what sort of reception we should meet with, we made rather a strong muster. There were nine officers and twenty-four men, with a couple of ponies to carry the luncheon. We started before seven o'clock, going out through the north-east gate of the city. \n\n+ \n\n\"After walking for about three hours, we rested in a very pretty spot under some fine trees, and one of the party shot a woodcock, which was hailed as a great event; and we determined to devote some little attention to so good a cause. We did not wish to return by the same road by which we had come out. The valley in which we were, we knew to be divided from the great north plain, by the White Cloud Mountains, a range familiar to our eyes from Canton. We hoped to reach that plain by some pass through the hills, and so return to Canton by way of the North Gate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206598, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "140\n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN\n\nand have traditionally been looked down upon by other groups. In the southern provinces, they have fought bitterly against the native Punti for ownership of land.17\n\nIn their building arts and plan arrangements, the Hakka houses or complexes have varied greatly from the homes of other Chinese. Their houses have a distinct character which in many ways reflects the hardy and fearless spirit of their inhabitants. Generally Hakka complexes are three or four storeys high with from ten to a hundred and twenty rooms. There are both horizontally and vertically rectangular storeyed houses with as many as three halls and two cross sections. It is the circular house, however, which is so markedly different from all other domestic architecture in China. Most of the houses built in this style were constructed during the Ch'ien Lung reign (1736-1796).18\n\nThe first example is a complex of rectangular houses.19 The complex is symmetrical on the right and left. One comes in from a gate on the southwest corner, turning so that upon entering the front courtyard one is heading toward the front door which faces south on the main axis.* After passing the front door there is a small gatehouse behind which there is a five-sided courtyard. After crossing the yard and climbing a few steps, one enters a large hall at the back of which there is a second courtyard. Further on there is a hall from which one has access to the ancestral hall which completes the main axis. Around the inside of the external wall are the kitchens and surrounding the central area are the animal sheds. On both sides of the central area there are stairs which lead to the upper floors. The second floor is for storage and the third and fourth are the living quarters. The windows are only on the top floor for which there may be many reasons. One is that the noise of the ground floor cannot penetrate the living quarters of the various families. Secondly it might be for protection and lookout purposes. It is known that the walls on both the left and right sides are thickened for defense. The appearance of this housing complex is very strong and stable and gives the impression of a fortress.\n\nThe circular type of Hakka house is shown in the next example.20 The plan of the complex is basically the same as the rectangular variety.† As one enters from the front door, one proceeds along a central axis from the gatehouse to the central courtyard which is\n\n* See also Fig. 2.\n\n† See also Fig. 3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206648, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "190\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\npoverty stricken to maintain them all, and was so persuasive that he managed to gain the monopoly of worship and offerings in that area. He is always to be seen poverty stricken and unkempt in his efforts to keep up the pretence before all the other gods.\n\nb. Chang (3) was a local peasant who, in Ying Chüen presented himself before the leader of a large invading force, dressed in rags and burnt black with exposure due to heavy labour in the fields, thus showing the invader just how poverty stricken the area was. The invaders changed their direction of march and laid waste neighbouring counties, saving Ying Ch’üen. Chang was deified Fa Chu Kung by the Emperor of China for his heroism.\n\nC. A very evil king came to Ying Ch’üen and demanded considerable tribute. This was collected from the peasants and was about to be transported away, when Chang (k), a peasant, challenged the enemy king to a duel. Chang using more powerful magic, defeated the king, and gave him three days to be clear of the district. However, some of the king's followers cut the ropes securing the king's boat, stranding him. He had, therefore, to pay a ransom of $130,000 to Chang, which was then shared among the peasants. When Chang died, the peasants requested the Emperor of China to deify him Fa Chu Kung.\n\nd. Whilst still a youth, Fa Chu Kung was living with his brothers and his sister-in-law in the barren hills. His sister-in-law told him to go out to collect wood for the stove. As he walked over the hills, he heard a voice telling him to go deeper into the unknown woods and when he did so, he met a sage who taught him magic. He was away for several years and when he returned his sister-in-law was more irritated by the fact that he had not brought back any firewood rather than by his being missing for so long. She scolded him and sent him out to gather some, telling him to return quickly as the rice had to be ready for the return of her husband. Fa Chu Kung surreptitiously returned and employing his magic, used his legs as firewood and soon had a roaring fire burning, quickly boiling the rice. This he did for every meal and his sister-in-law became very suspicious because she never saw any ash nor any wood lying around. Next meal she peeped around the door and saw Fa", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206847, "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-1973", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "118\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\n() as they were called, with themselves ruling almost independently of the Emperor. When the Five Dynasties ended, and the Sung dynasty began, the emperor Sung T'aai Tso (in), in the 3rd year of Kin Loong (1) A.D. 962 made an attempt to unite China and break the power of the generals. He sent certain able and trustworthy men from his own court at the capital, to be responsible for the different districts. They were appointed for three years only, and were called Ling (†). A year later, in the 1st year of K'in Tak () A.D. 963 more civil officers were appointed to take charge of the “Chau” (#) which in the Sung dynasty were as large as provinces although later on they became as small as districts. These officers were called Chau Sui (H}}) or T'ung P'oon (*), and had full power to control the military administration and civil administration of their own Chau. Such officers were under, and reported directly to the capital, and were independent of the generals of the feudatory states, and on an equal footing with them. Thus the generals were gradually deprived of their power, and little by little their armies were taken from them until they were no longer a menace to the crown. It will be seen then, that Tang Foo was a man of considerable importance in his time, having been firstly a \"Ling\" of a district, and then a “Sui” of Naam Hung Chau.\n\n[2]\n\nKwai Kok Shaan where Tang Foo built his school is one of the five famous hills of San On, and is mentioned in the book of \"To Shue Chaap Shing\". The name was originally Kwai Kok (±✩), Kwai meaning sceptre made of jade; but later it was changed to Kwai Kok (⇓), being the Chinese name for olea fragrans, a flower that is considered to be very lucky. There is an old saying, Shim Kung Chit Kwai (#), \"eager to break a branch of the Kwai from the Palace in the Moon.\" Shim Kung means Toad's Palace. According to an old Chinese legend the moon was inhabited by a toad, who was originally Sheung Ngoh () the wife of a feudal prince and famous archer named Ngai (#) who lived in the time of the Emperor Yiu (4) B.C. 2357. Ten suns are said to have been in the sky at that time, and the heat was so great that all the grass was burnt up. The emperor commanded Ngai to shoot the suns down which he did, and as each sun was inhabited by a large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206851, "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-1973", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "122\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\nwho her father really was, and Yuen Leung was very troubled as to what to do with her. However when she became of marriageable age the elders of the village advised him to marry her to his son Tsz Ming (A) which, as she was quite willing, he did.\n\nMeanwhile the fighting between the Tartars and the Sungs had ceased. Peace was made, and Hong Wong had now become the Emperor Ko Tsung, who ordered that enquiries should be made concerning his daughter. All the district officers throughout the Empire were instructed to help and when the official notice was posted up in the vicinity of Kam T’in, Tsz Ming was much frightened at having married the princess without the emperor's permission. But the princess said, “Do not fear. My life was saved by the Tang family and I have willingly become your wife. Go and tell the District officer who I am.\" When the official heard the news he came at once and did obeisance to the Princess, and then sent a petition to the Emperor. Ko Tsung ordered Tsz Ming and his wife to come to the capital, where they stayed for about a year, but the princess pined for Kam T'in and begged to be allowed to return to the place of her adoption. So the Emperor let her go, but first he bestowed on her many wharves in the district as \"powder expenses\"; and a large area of hill and forest land as \"toilet expenses\". On the thirteenth day of the seventh month of the 8th year of Siu Hing (2) A.D. 1138 they started back for Kam T’in. When they got there, the princess gave orders that the hills and woodlands should be thrown open to the public, so that anyone could make graves on her land without paying tax. In the 51st year of Hong Hei (‡) of Tsing dynasty, A.D. 1712, when the princess' grave was repaired, her dowry was still being used by the country people for a free burial ground. In the 5th year of K'in Lung (†) A.D. 1169, the princess gave thirty-six wharves to the Tsz Fok Monastery (*) the oldest monastery in Tung Kwun. Among these wharves was that of Shek Kit (5) near Shek Lung. When the history of Tung Kwoon was revised in the 12th year of Sung Ching (†††) of Ming dynasty, A.D. 1639, only three out of ten of the wharves were mentioned as still being in use, but Shek Kit is still in existence now.\n\nIn some books the princess is referred to as Sung Tsung Kei (***). Sung being the name of the dynasty, Tsung meaning royal, and Kei high lady. She is known, however, in the Tang family as Wong Kwu (2), the Emperor's Aunt, as her nephew became", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206863, "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-1973", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "134\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nof a new building for Queen's College. In January 1877, the Government advertised for sale at public auction the \"materials, bricks, stones, tiles, doors, windows, joists, floors, etc. of buildings on Inland Lots 55, 93, 91 and 91A—known as Rangel's Estate”. Among the properties was \"the Joss House, No. 10 Shing Wong Street\". Soon after, the wreckers moved in and the temple was no more. So passed what was presumably the first community project of the Chinese population of urban Hong Kong.\n\nIt is difficult to establish the exact date for the erection of the Temple from records now available. It is possible that a notice in The Chinese Repository, October 1843, (Vol. XII, p. 549) may refer to the Shing Wong Temple. \"A new Chinese temple is about to be undertaken [in Hong Kong]. Handbills and placards are out, for the purpose of raising money for the erection of the building\".\n\nThe references to Chinese temples in the Hong Kong Blue Books are confusing and difficult to interpret. In 1844 under the heading of Ecclesiastical Establishments there is listed:\n\nBuddhist in Victoria, W.D. [Western District]\n\nBuddhist in Chekchoo [now Stanley]\n\nBuddhist in Shekpaiwan [Aberdeen Harbour]\n\nBuddhist in Sookumpoo\n\nEstablished in 1842 Chinese\n\nIn 1845 it is stated that \"There are 17 Chinese Temples in the colony, dedicated with few exceptions to 'Tee-how-mong-mong' (the Queen of Heaven)\". In 1846 and 1847 it is stated that there are three small Chinese temples in Victoria, and in 1847 it is noted that there is \"a small one in each village\".\n\nUnder the Blue Book schedule of Chinese buildings a Chinese Town Hall is listed in 1845 and 1846. In 1847 two Town Halls are enumerated, with the addition of one Joss House. Was the Shing Wong building listed as a Town Hall? A statement made in a Chinese document entitled \"Information as to the period of the formation of Districts in Hongkong and the alteration of the Character Wan-a bay-to Wan—a circuit” translated and published in The China Review, Vol. I, p. 133 (1872-1873) suggests that the Town Halls were Temples.\n\nThis article also provides a date for the construction of the Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road:\n\nIn 1843 one Sz-man-king opened a place for gambling. . Two years later, traders began to come, and two years after that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207048, "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-1974", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n113\n\nfu. In the long entry on hills and streams, which covers three chuan (6-8), only one local feature is named: the Pui To or Castle Peak hill. There is another single entry, for Tuen Mun—the old name for the settlement at the foot of Castle Peak—in the chüan (10) dealing with customs and check points. Only one monastery, the Hai-kuang Ssu of Hsin-an city, is included in the chüan (14) dealing with Buddhist and Taoist temples: by comparison, 37 columns are given to those of Kuang-chou, Nan-hai and P’an-yu, and no doubt with good cause. Only when we come to the chüan dealing with residences (13) and tombs and graves (15) does Hsin-an attract a little more attention from the compilers.\n\nThe entries in chüan 13 and 15 identify those items that most interested scholars attracted to local history and show how Hsin-an has been notable for two widely different topics. It had been one of the areas that had sheltered the last two boy emperors of the Sung in their flight and final struggles against the victorious Mongol invaders of their empire: and it was a coastal district that had forever been plagued by pirates and bandits. These entries are typical items of Chinese historiography and relevant to the scholar official view of Hsin-an.\n\nOne item, in chuan 13, relates to the temporary stay of the Sung court and army in Kowloon in the winter months of 1278. A watchtower had been constructed as one of the measures taken to deal with the near-starvation conditions that afflicted the fugitive army. The tower was used as a vantage point from which to look over the encampment. Relief visits were made to any dwelling from which no kitchen smoke was seen to rise in the early morning. This is a graphic and unusual way of conveying an impression of impermanence and suffering. The second entry on the Sung is in chüan 15 which deals with noted graves and tombs. It relates to the grave of Lady Chin-fa, also in Kowloon. The brief statement is that the empress Chi-yuan lost her daughter by drowning, and that she ‘filled the body with gold' for burial at Kwun Fu Mountain.2\n\n1KTKKCY 13/5. Two Sung 'travelling courts' are also recorded for the Hsin-an district in this section. See also Lo 1956.\n\n2KTKKCY 15/2. Lo (1963) renders this as 'made a gilt statue', p. 67. The Government of Hong Kong established a Sung Wong Toi memorial park in Kowloon in 1960, and to mark the occasion the Chiu Clansmen's Association published a memorial volume edited by Jen Yu-wen entitled Sung Wang T'ai Chi-nien Chih which usefully brings together many old writings on this subject.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207063, "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-1974", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "128\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nbe feared, but internecine wars are almost always raging between some or other of the villages: and these wars, although often arising from trivial causes, are not mere temporary quarrels, but are often long-continued and sanguinary'.1 He gives a description of these feuds, and relates one example in which the District Magistrate, even with a force of 1,000 men, was unable to restore peace, and could not even save his face without the mediation of a neighbouring village. The device that secured this, Krone comments, had no influence at all upon the dispute, fighting being carried on afterwards just as before\".2\n\nThere are several documented examples of intervillage and clan wars from the mainland New Territories at this time which indicate that Krone was not exaggerating the situation in mid century. Halls to 'martyrs' killed in these struggles were provided in at least four local temples, each containing memorials to slain heroes. These are to be found in the temples at Shek Kong (Pat Heung), Miu Kong (Tsuen Wan), Lam Tsuen, and Yuen Long (Shap-pat Heung). The Tsuen Wan memorial tells of a three year feud between the Tsuen Wan villagers and Shing Mun Pat Heung, beginning in the first year of the Tung Chih reign (1862-1863) and ended only after eventually successful mediation by elders of neighbouring villages. During this time, the Tsuen Wan villages—their men being outnumbered according to the tablet—were invaded and left in ruins, and 17 local men were killed in the prolonged struggle.3\n\nBaker gives other local and contemporary examples of these clan wars taken from genealogies and village tradition in the northern New Territories. He also draws attention to the feuds that occurred within local lineages, including frequent fights between the Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen branches of the Tang lineage. These persisted into the British period. In 1921, in his administrative report for that year, the District Officer North mentions trouble that 'assumed very serious proportions' over water rights between\n\n1 Krone, p. 114.\n\n2 Krone, pp. 125-126.\n\n3 The hall at Miu Kong is entitled the I-yung Tz'u (義勇祠) and that at Yuen Long the Ying-yung Tz'u (英勇祠). In the Pat Heung temple the tablet is in the Ching-chung Tz'u (清忠祠). At Lam Tsuen there is no named hall, but a side room contains a tablet bearing the characters jang hsiang ch'ang sheng lu wei (...).\n\n4 Baker, 1968, pp. 167, 183 and 187.\n\n5 Baker, 1968, p. 188 and Baker 1965, pp. 39-41.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207073, "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-1974", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "138 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\never attempted to solve... who lived in what is now the Colony and Leased Territory of Hong Kong 600 years ago and what language did they speak?' \n\nI had then just written an article for Mr. J. M. Braga's Hong Kong Symposium in which I summarized evidence from various historical sources. A little new evidence has come to light since that article was written in 1956, and it will not be amiss to mention the chief facts. \n\nThree of the existing Punti160 clans, and one Hakka137, claim continuous residence since the eleventh century A.D. The Punti clans appear to have been connected with the military posts set up in the Southern Han135 dynasty (A.D. 917-971) and wherever Punti160 and Hakka11 are found in the same area the Hakkas always have the inferior foot-hill land--the typical pattern of a partial conquest by later arrivals, pushing the earlier inhabitants up into the hills. \n\nAt this time Lantao141 and other islands, Hong Kong harbour itself and the peninsulas that jut into Mirs Bay153 were controlled by boat-people. It can be shown that both of the present kinds of boat-people (Tanka175 and Hoklo138) were represented. They were still unassimilated, and independent enough to require strong garrisons to keep them quiet, at the beginning of the Yüan182 dynasty. The suppression of the pearl fishing A.D. 1319-(the late Mr. Sung Hok Pang169 said 1324) was intended to conciliate them. \n\nThe assimilation of the hill-tribes was not begun till the Yuan dynasty at the earliest. The petition of Chang Wei-yen134 of Taipo170 in 1318 mentions two tribes, named Yao179 and Shan-lao-165. The 1819 edition of the Hsin-an-chih139 mentions only Yao. All the present hill cultivators claim Chinese descent and all speak Hakka137. Some, however, claim continuous occupation since the Ming152 dynasty, so that if they are really of Chinese descent they must have lived side by side with aboriginal tribes for two centuries. Again, some of those who claim to be Chinese claim also to have been there from time immemorial, and some still preserve the cult of the creator-god P'an-ku159, which is said to indicate a Yao origin. The truth is probably that in some places the aborigines were killed off or driven away, in a few others they adopted the Chinese language and 'passed' as Chinese, while in others there was intermarriage and the offspring were accepted as Chinese. \n\nIn circumstances such as these it is usual for something of the original languages to survive: in the everyday terms used in fishing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207118, "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-1974", "page_number": 189, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n183\n\nroad,” now Victoria city, and So Kwun Po (7). From the fact that these references occurred in the Leung Ch'aak (##) or Register Book of Tung Kwun district, one may judge that the land was owned by the Tangs before the 1st year of Maan Lik, A.D. 1525, as after that the San On district was formed.\n\nTo the East of Shui Mei village there is an ancestral Hall called Mau King T'ong (N). It was built by the descendants of Tang Chan (1) Tang Yui (*) and Tang Kuen (#) the three younger brothers of Tang Yam (3) the father of Tang Tsing Lok. When the descendants of Tang Yam completed the building of Sz Shing Tong, the descendants of the three younger brothers felt it was a disgrace that there were no ancestral halls for their respective ancestors. However they were far from being rich, so they decided to combine together and build one hall under the leadership of Tang Man Wai (4X4), who was a man of rank and a descendant of Tang Chan. On the top of the front door they carved the characters §; › §¡› ✯ ✯✯ “Chan, Yui, Kuen, the three Ancestors Hall,\" and on a signboard the three big characters ✯✯ Mau King Tong, were written by Ts'oi Hok Yuen (4) a scholar of San On, and hung in the hall in the 22nd year of Ka Hing, A.D. 1817, of Ts'ing dynasty.\n\nThe reason why the name Mau King Tong was chosen was on account of the old story \"Tin Shi King fa fook mau” ( # A#*M*) “the Judas-tree of T'in family again becomes luxuriant.\" The story is as follows:--\n\nT'in Chan (₪) and his two younger brothers T'in Hing (w A) and T'in Kwong (□), natives of Chiu Shing district (#K) of Shantung, during the Hon dynasty, decided to divide their family property between them. Among other things, they owned a Tsz King (**), judas tree, and the evening before the dividing up was to take place they found to their surprise that the tree was withered. This upset T'in Chan's feelings very much, he sighed and said to his younger brothers, \"The different branches of the tree come from one root; now that they have heard that they are to be divided up, they have become melancholy and look sorrowful. Now we brothers are human beings, but although we have separate bodies we all came from the same parents, so why should we divide the family property and live separately? Do we not feel ashamed in seeing the appearance of this tree?\" Then the younger brothers were moved by this, and they never mentioned the idea of dividing the family property", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207168, "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-1974", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n233 \n\nThe fung shui name of the selected spot was known as \"Sleeping Beauty\" (*) Her legs were in the crossed position, and the selected point for the erection of the village was at her thigh. The village was to be pointed 256° at the west, to accept the incoming water from Kap Shui Mun, and would rest on a hill at the back (local name Lion Land *), with the hills of Tsing Yi Island to the left and Fa Shan to the right. The frontage of the village was to face the water channel. It was a glorious view showing the sun setting with the sails of homeward-bound fishing craft, especially in the Spring and Autumn seasons. When the sun is just lowering on the horizon, millions of golden beams reflect from the sea, shining at the village. It is really an excellent site for a village to be established. That is perhaps why Sam Tung Uk and Yeung Uk Village are facing west while the other villages in Tsuen Wan are facing in a south direction. A well was constructed on the right, apart from the north corner of the village, for drinking purposes, just below the Sleeping Beauty's lower part. This well never dries up even in the driest seasons. Even when the supply of water was given once in every 4 days in the 1963 drought, the water was still adequate for use by all the surrounding villagers. How wonderful to find that it is 95% full of water even in the dry season to-day.\n\nTo suit the fung shui requirement, all members of the family started to work jointly, after farming hours, to lower the site. This task lasted for several years, and was very arduous labour. They then began building the super-structures. Solid walls 16 inches thick were formed with a mixture of lime, clay and straw. The entrance to the Chi Tong (ancestral hall) was partly decorated with long hand-hewn granite stone blocks. Roof tops were constructed with wooden beams and clad with Chinese tiles. The entire structures in the village are approx. 17 feet high, of one storey. No height addition or alteration has since been made. Stone steps were laid to the door-way of every house. The structures proved to be strong and stable for nearly 200 years. There were three rows of houses built in the first instance and for this reason it was called Sam Tung Uk (A). After the construction work was completed, they moved in on a lucky day, in the 51st year of Ch'ien Lung (1786). The Chan Sze Pit Tong (), shown in the land record of District Office, Tsuen Wan, was formed by the four brothers at the time of village establishment. Another row of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207278, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "38 \n\nWELLINGTON K. K. CHAN \n\nCharitable halls in Shanghai did not display the same amount of community leadership even though they should have had a greater community base than the guilds. The reason seems obvious. Charitable halls dominated in communities where the merchants had no problem of collaboration because of differences in dialects or in regional customs. Hence their pre-eminence in places like Canton and Hong Kong. In Shanghai, the cultural gaps between, say, a Cantonese and a Ningpo merchant were often insurmountable. In the final analysis, charitable halls, like the formalised committees of guilds and Landsmannschaften, failed to grow into truly community-wide institutions. \n\nAchievements \n\nMerchant leaders in nineteenth century China were adept at adjusting their organisations to the changing needs of the day. By building up different types of organisations, they hoped to acquire first, broader economic and social interests; second, a large community base; and third, greater political leadership responsibility. As a result, these leaders were singularly successful in the first, especially in providing social welfare and municipal services, but were only partially successful in the second. Thus, in the more homogenous commercial centres such as Canton and Swatow, the charitable halls and the assembly commanded a community base far larger than the traditional guilds, but could not win the allegiance of the entire community. In other places like Shanghai, where the merchant leaders came from several provinces, it was more difficult to set up community-wide organisations. Even the chamber of commerce which followed these organisations and which had explicit aim of involving each entire community was unable to do without sectional interests. \n\nThe Shanghai chamber was dominated by the Ningpo merchants from its inception in 1904 to at least the 1920's.35 The Canton chamber had seven vice-presidents (fu-pan) who were elected by the various guilds from among the chamber directors.36 The most extreme assertion of this form of group separatism was written into the bylaws of the overseas Chinese chamber of commerce in Singapore. There, two concurrent presidents were elected by the two most powerful Hokkien and Teochiu (i.e. Ch'ao-chou) merchant groups, while a specific number of vice-presidents and directors were assigned, in diminishing sizes, to these two and three", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207454, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "214\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nserve for Japan?\". We either left this particular question unanswered or replied that we were unwilling to serve for Japan. One young man who had put down roots in Hong Kong before the Far East war, in answer to this question gave a detailed account of his qualifications which were substantial. As the replies passed through my office I saw his answer and persuaded him to leave this question blank in a new form which I gave him and I left him to tear up his own original completed form.\n\nEach month all in hospital received what we called necessities. The items varied but as a rule there were a couple of cakes of coarse soap, an envelope of tooth powder, a packet of toilet paper, and a fandoshi. This last looked like a triangular bandage and was tied round the waist, the point being passed back between the legs to be secured to the waistband behind, thus preserving the decencies. From time to time there would be an undervest or stockings or a toothbrush. In September 1942 we were able to restart our gramophone concerts broadcast to the wards during permitted hours after a stoppage which had lasted for several weeks. Also in September we equipped and opened a barber's shop served by men who could shave those unable to do so themselves. Thereafter growing beards, an affectation much in favour soon after our surrender, but already dying out, was forbidden! Ten Canadian combatant soldiers who volunteered for the job came to us as orderlies. Two wounded Chinese members of the H.K.V.D.C. whom we had been caring for were removed by the Japanese. By this time they were reasonably fit to leave and we were told that they would be released in the town. I only hope this was so.\n\nIn October '43 all our staff received ten yen each from the Red Cross Society and we began to receive three or four copies daily of the Hongkong News free. We were also given twelve X-ray films, and having previously been given glass for windows but having no putty, we eventually obtained a supply of thin wire which our sappers made into nails and re-glassing broken windows began.\n\nOn the afternoon of 26 October a single American plane flew low over the harbour and rose steeply to the north to disappear over the Kowloon hills. There were further raids during the nights of 27 and 28 October. No bombs were dropped, but thereafter I thought it wise not to remove the ‘Mimi Lau' concrete blocks protecting the ground floor wards on the harbour side. At this time we had beds on every verandah in the hospital in order to gain as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207847, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "220\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nputting the point. In the traditional Chinese view man stands in a relationship to Heaven and Earth which links him with both and causes him to stand with them as one of the three primary powers of the cosmos. The conception is as old as Chinese metaphysics and is basic to a classical work, the Book of Changes, which is cited as an authority by geomancers of the present day. True, much of what is to be heard and seen in the New Territories under the name of fung shui cannot be explained from the classical works; we are dealing here with popular religion, not an expression of canonical purity; but just as the Bible supplies conceptions to modern Christians who are not very familiar with it, so ancient Chinese thought lives on in some of the ideas of contemporary Chinese peasants.\n\n50. Again in a Western idiom, we may say that fung shui is the craft of adapting the abodes of men (graves and buildings) to the landscape. But while it may be perfectly true that geomancy has produced in the Chinese a sharpened aesthetic appreciation of their natural surroundings and led to a superb technique of landscaping, it is not in fact the physical landscape which is directly in question in fung shui. I have heard people in the New Territories commenting enthusiastically on the prospects from geomantically favourable sites; but their appreciation is grounded in their feeling for the virtues flowing from the harmony between the site, its owners, and the segment of the universe within which it is placed. Man is involved in his surroundings; in some places he feels at ease and at peace (shue fuk, he is content), the properties of the setting having an immediate effect on him and his fortunes. And it is for this reason that English-speaking Chinese will often say that fung shui is ‘psychological'. They do not mean, as one might superficially conclude, that geomancy is an illusion, a figment of the imagination; what they are asserting is that a man's mind is responding to a mysterious field of forces set up in a given place. He need not know very much about the details of fung shui as a craft or body of esoteric science; it is enough to be conscious of the few hints contained in the landscape—a stretch of still water, embracing hills—that he is being soothed and protected. 'You', living or dead, ‘are content'. That is the heart of the matter.\n\nL\n\n51. Fung shui: Winds and Waters. The Breaths (hei) which constitute the virtue of a site are blown about by the wind and held by the water. If the wind is high the Breaths will disperse; if the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207996, "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-1977", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n19\n\nin insurrection; but being disunited, they have not thereby improved their condition: the Bornean Government always threatening them with calling in the Kayans to subdue any opposition. The Muruts and Bisayas of Limbang are the most impoverished people I have ever met,\n\nMy own findings concerning the sultans of Brunei during this period show quite conclusively that they supported and frequently had financial interests in pirate fleets.\n\nBrunei throughout the nineteenth century is pictured by most authorities as a decrepit principality whose chief characteristics are political weakness and anarchy.\n\nBrunei is in a state of anarchy and the sultan too mixed up with trading affairs and piracy to care for administration of justice or the welfare of the country.8\n\nThat less than sanguine description was written in 1854. Almost twenty years later the situation remained generally unchanged:\n\nThe picture that has been presented to us is of an aged prince devoting the last years of his life to the unscrupulous pursuit of wealth... ruled by his petty rajas, whose first aim is their own aggrandizement.9\n\nBy the middle of the 19th century the physical look of Brunei, built over the mud flats of the Brunei River, had changed only in terms of its now lack of pretension and prosperity from what Pigafetta had observed three hundred years before. The following is a description of the place by Raja James Brooke of Sarawak—taken from an 1841 entry in his journals. It describes the town and Brooke's reception by the sultan's court, and contrasts rather vividly with that of Pigafetta.\n\n**24th At 7 A.M. the state-boat, a shabby concern, decorated with yellow flags, arrived; at eight the letters were borne away under a salute. Thus we had a second time the satisfaction of getting rid of the mob at an early hour.\n\n\"25th At 9 A.M. I started with Williamson in the gig, with the long-boat in company, carrying the presents. On approaching the town, before the ebb had run long, it appeared to be a very Venice of hovels, a river Cybele rising from the water. For those who like it, the locality is not ill chosen. The hills recede from the river, and form an amphitheatre; and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207997, "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-1977", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "20\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nseveral other rivers or streams flowing in, cause a muddy deposit, on which the houses are built. At high water they are surrounded; at low water, stand on a sheet of mud. On nearing it, we were encompassed by boats which preceded and followed us, and we passed the floating market, where women, wearing immense hats of palm-leaves, sell all sorts of edibles, balanced in their little canoes, now giving a paddle, now making a bargain, and dropping down with the tide, and again regaining their place when the bargain is finished. The first impression of the town is miserable. The houses are crowded and numerous, and even the palace does not present a more captivating aspect, for, though large, it is as incommodious as the worst. We had been seated but a few minutes when Pangeran Usop arrived, and directly afterwards the Sultan. He gave us ten leaf-cigars, and sirih, and, in short, showed us every attention; and, what was best of all, did not keep us very long. Our apartment was partitioned off from the public hall, a dark-looking place, but furnished with a table brought by us, and three rickety chairs, besides mattresses and plenty of mats. We were kept up nearly all night, which, after the fatigues of the day, was hard upon us.\n\nFurther observation confirmed us in the opinion that the town itself is miserable, and its locality on the mud fitted only for frogs or natives; but there is a level dry plain above the entrance of the Kiangi river, admirably suited for a European settlement; and across the Kiangi is swelling ground, where the residents might find delightful spots for their country-houses. The greatest annoyance to a stranger is the noisome smell of the mud when uncovered; and all plated or silver articles, even in the course of one night, get black and discoloured. The inhabitants I shall estimate moderately at 10,000, and the Kadien population are numerous amid the hills.\n\nAnd yet another graphic picture of the city of Brunei written in the early part of the present century. This is an observation by C. A. Bamfylde, an officer in the service of the Raja of Sarawak, Charles Brooke,11\n\nIt may be as well here to give a description of Brunei and of its Court.\n\nThe Brunei river flows into a noble bay, across which to the north lies the island of Labuan. Above the town the river is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208039, "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-1977", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "62\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nThat is, the Tangs, as well as the other large landholding clans, first established rights over cultivation-value; their claims to ownership rested primarily on their identity as \"first-cultivators.\"23\n\nThe priority of cultivation-value is best revealed by a brief examination of tax assessment in Hsin-An. Land has traditionally been classified according to its production potential. At the time of British occupation, first class land (甲) yielded two crops of paddy annually, or one crop of sugarcane. Second class land (乙⺕) was capable of producing one crop of rice, or one crop of sugarcane. Third class land (丙) \"was generally devoted to the cultivation of peanuts, sweet potatoes, millet and other hardy crops.\"24 This classification scheme was recognized by the Hsin-An Magistrate in 1582, a mere nine years after the creation of the county. Different rates were fixed according to whether the land was considered to be first, second, or third class land.25\n\nThus, by the time of the great Hakka influx, little cultivatable land was available in the county. The landlords, who often lived miles away from their fields, were eager to take on tenants, and offered the migrants “reasonable rents.” Rent-value was assessed by a simple extension of the tax assessment value; i.e., rent-value was extracted from an already established cultivation-value.26\n\nOnce fixed, tax-rates and rent-rates seldom, if ever, changed. The tax-rates listed for the three classes of land in the Hsin-An Hsien-chih, which had been in force for decades prior to the publication of the gazetteer in 1819, were quoted in the petitions concerning the Tang holdings in Hong Kong, written in 1842. Similarly, there is strong evidence to suggest that landlords were generally powerless to impose greater rent-burdens, and, as we shall see, were occasionally forced to lighten the rent.27 Rent-values were often stated in all bills of sale between landlords.\n\nThe increasing alienation of rent-value from cultivation-value was reflected in the inability of landlords to locate their plots of land when called upon to present evidence to the Land Court. Furthermore, there were often significant disparities between the market-prices of the \"skin\" and the \"bones.\"28 Tenants were occasionally able to manipulate the system to their own advantage:\n\nFor generations, landowners have been content to collect their rents without ever having taken the trouble to enquire into the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208080, "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-1977", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CEREMONIAL LIFE OF 2 MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES 103\n\nThe Kwaan and the Oo conducted their Spring and Autumn Rites on separate days and in their own ancestral halls. These rites were conducted by a leader (*) and a deputy (1A). It was usually the eldest son of the first fang (branch) who was the leader, the one with the highest scholarly title being the deputy. The rites were supposed to be attended by all male members, but in practice, like many lineages in South China, the attendance of the heads of the households and their sons was optional. The attendance of the elders and the gentry was compulsory, while those over sixty were invited as guests of honour. The kowtow and the three prostrations were in the order of the government officials first, then the gentry, then the elders, then whoever happened to be there. After the ceremony was over, there was a feast in the empty spaces of the ancestral hall. Meat, paid for by the corporate property, was divided. One share of meat was about three to four catties (four to five pounds). The elders and those over sixty years old had two shares of meat. Those who had or were holding posts in the government of Hoi-p'ing or elsewhere were given four shares.\n\nAs in the villages in Yuen-long, Hong Kong,* hang-tseung (††*) (i.e. portable images of gods) played an important part in Na-loh's ceremonial life. The Kwaan and the Oo each had its own image.\n\nThe Kwaan worshipped Kwaan-kung (▲). This image was placed outside the village in the Lo-yeung Temple which catered exclusively for Kwaan worshippers of Lo-yeung Heung as a whole. The Oo worshipped the statue of the Goddess of Heaven which at ordinary times was placed in the Ue-leung Temple, a temple catered exclusively for Oo worshippers of Ue-leung Heung.\n\nOn the second day of the New Year, the villagers performed the hoi-tang ceremony () which was also popular in many other parts of South China. This event took place in a bamboo hut known as tang-liu (** : lantern house). In Na-loh, there were two of these huts: one for the Oo and the other for the Kwaan. Inside each hut was a beautiful lantern which signified life for all the members. When the hoi-tang ceremony was about to begin, representatives of the Kwaan would go to the Lo-yeung Temple to carry the image of Kwaan-kung to their own tang-liu in Na-loh. The Oo would go to Ue-leung Temple to fetch the Goddess of Heaven.\n\n* See Brim 1971.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208086, "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-1977", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CEREMONIAL LIFE OF 2 MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES\n\n109\n\n2 The two villages described in the paper have been based on my data of the Kwaan lineage. Na-loh Ts'uen was part of Lo-yeung Heung and Lung-tsai She was part of Tsung-long Heung. The county gazetteer, K'ai-p'ing Hsien-chih (Hong Kong, 1933) provides extracts of genealogies of the Kwaan and the Oo as well as other prominent lineages of Hoi-p'ing but does not mention Na-loh Ts'uen and Lung-tsai She.\n\nThe table at p. 111 shows the historical origin of the Kwaan lineage of T'oh-fuk. This account is based on personal communications from elderly informants. Again, Na-loh and Lung-tsai She were not mentioned. Much of the data used in this article was obtained from 14 Kwaan in Victoria and Vancouver, B.C. Canada 1973-74. They all came from Toh-fuk and Tsung-long areas. Of these six came from the two villages of Na-loh and Lung-tsai She as follows:-\n\n \n Name\n Birth Date\n Age\n Place of Origin\n Year Left Hoi-p'ing\n \n \n Kwaan F\n 1902\n 75\n Na-loh Ts'uen\n 1915\n \n \n Kwaan H\n 1911\n 66\n Na-loh Ts'uen\n 1927\n \n \n Kwaan I\n 1932\n 45\n Na-loh Ts'uen\n 1953\n \n \n Kwaan J\n 1941\n 36\n Na-loh Ts'uen\n 1951\n \n \n Kwaan K\n 1903\n 74\n Lung-tsai She\n 1920\n \n \n Kwaan L\n 1937\n 40\n Lung-tsai She\n 1949\n \n\nMy Ph.D. thesis (Social Organization in South China 1911-1949: The Case of the Kwaan Lineage of Hoi-ping) deals with the general area.*\n\n3 G. W. Skinner (\"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,\" Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV (1964-65), 6-7, 20-31, 41-43) distinguishes between three types of periodic markets in traditional rural China: the standard market town, the intermediate market town and the central market town. The standard market town is a type of rural market which meets the normal trade needs of the peasant household. An intermediate market town serves the needs of the local elites of the standard market towns in the vicinity since it provides decorative items of quality which are inaccessible in the standard market towns. It serves as a centre for interclass dealings between the gentlemanly elite and the merchants of the market town itself. The central market town is normally situated at a strategic site in the transportation network and had important wholesale functions.\n\n4 Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society in Fukien and Kwangtung (London, 1966, pp. 18-42) distinguishes between a localized lineage, a dispersed lineage and a higher-order lineage. A “localized” lineage denotes a group of agnates who live together in the same geographical area. The members claim to be descended from a common founder. They usually have ancestral halls to practise ancestral worship together.\n\nA \"dispersed lineage\" denotes two or more groups of agnates with the same surname which are separated geographically. One group has an ancestral hall to practise ancestor worship. The members of other groups do not have a hall of their own. They would go to the first group to worship because it is believed that they were originally descendants of the first group but had at some point in time moved away from the parent settlement. A \"higher-order lineage\" denotes two or more groups of agnates with the same surname which are separated geographically. Each group has an ancestral hall of its own but there is also a common hall comprising all the members for the performance of ancestral worship together because it is believed that they were all descended from a common founder.\n\n5 I collected the marriage history of informants up to five generations. Whilst of interest in itself, it did not shed any light on village origins.\n\n* Now accepted for publication by the University of British Columbia Press.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208121, "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-1977", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH, NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nMy first introduction to the Southern District took the form of journeys by Water Police launches to various parts of it during the summer of 1919, when I lived for three months in the Water Police station quarters before my first leave. After it I sometimes repeated such voyages for purposes of geological research, on which I embarked with Government encouragement. A professional geological survey of the Colony was being planned in order to help in developing the resources of the Empire after the 1914-18 war, and to most people the Colony's geology was, quite understandably, a sealed book. The coasts and islands of the Southern District afforded many instructive sections, often showing the relations of different rock and mosses in a nearly undecayed state, which except in stream beds could hardly be seen anywhere else in the days before great motor roads cut the hills. This work enabled me to prepare a preliminary report on the Colony's sedimentary rocks and granite batholiths which was presented in 1923 not long before the Canadian geologists began their labours.\n\nIn 1922, while I was working as second assistant to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and deputy registrar of marriages, on the first floor of the Post Office building, Mr. Wynne-Jones, the D. O. South, whose office was just above mine on the second floor, went to hospital with appendicitis, and I was instructed at ten minutes' notice to go upstairs and do his job till he got better. As I had coveted the job for some time, and had told my chief so (then the late E. R. Hallifax), I was delighted.\n\nIn those days one of the D.O.'s duties was to sit in his office as magistrate for the Southern District, excluding New Kowloon and the Lyemun area.† This court usually functioned from 9 to 10 a.m.\n\n* 1888-1968, Cadet Officer, Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-38. This article was written in response to my request to Mr. Schofield and others for memories of their service in the Southern District of the New Territories for which I was then (1958) District Officer - Hon. Editor.\n\n† Place names may be found in the official publication A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Government Printer 1960, since reissued).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208155, "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-1977", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "178\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n29. Yet another bridge, in Central Tsuen Wan, still has its protecting shrine in place, with a stone tablet inscribed to the Fuk Tak Kung (福德公) of the Wing Fuk Bridge (#). The cyclical date would make it 1945 (which is obviously too late) 1885, 1825 or earlier. There is no means of telling which it is, but its style and appearance indicate an early date. Incidentally, all three bridges noted above have lost their original appearance, having been repaired post-war with concrete and reinforcing steel bars.\n\nConclusion\n\n30. A recent visit to the mountain took me from Lead Mine Pass, above the head of the Shing Mun Reservoir, to a point east of Chuen Lung, along paths formerly opened by villagers but in most cases now widened by the Agriculture & Forestry Department of the Hong Kong Government to assist their fire prevention and fire fighting activities.\n\n31. The route ran through the Sei Fong Shan area, where there are many graves: so named (四方山) because there is access to it from four sides i.e. Tai Po, Pat Heung, Kwai Chung-Tsuen Wan and Chuen Lung (on Route TWSK). Then through the abandoned fields and village site of Nam Fong To, a single lineage village of the Law family (羅氏), evacuated in 1928 to Wo Hop Shek near Fan Ling (NT) for the construction of the reservoir. The site was enclosed by a thick low rubble wall and stands amid large boulders and (now) many trees. From the Tsuen Wan side the last stage of access was across a large stream and up a steep flight of stone (boulder) steps. West of the village the hills on both sides, but especially the opposite side of the valley, were marked by steep slides of water that became water-falls in places. Further on, the path overlooked the valley of Wu Yeung Shan (烏羊山) with many abandoned fields. The village of that name, on the main lower path to Wo Yee Hop village (*) and Kwai Chung, was inhabited by a branch of the Chengs (鄭氏) from Shing Mun Tai Wai. Moving SW and passing along the slopes of the mountain above Wo Yee Hop and Lo Wai well above catchwater level we encountered a few more graves placed in good locations. Also patches of abandoned cultivation built up here and there on stone-walled terraces above the path.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208162, "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-1977", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n185 \n\ndogs. We observed those at the first but actually visited those at the second, which were close to our path back to Wang Chau. The first of these sites is particularly well placed and the outlook and general air of peace and perpetuity on a most beautiful sunny winter day were unforgettable. Alas for permanence! Though not itself in danger, the land to the rear of the second grave is threatened by a plan to establish a borrow area for development projects requiring soft fill. This would cut into the hills and remove features that are considered by the Tangs to threaten the good geomantic qualities of the grave. Consequently, a number of the persons who had earlier met us at Kam Tin were waiting there patiently to explain the position to us, obviously hoping for our support, and several members of the party walked with them to the ridge behind to see the land and hear their views, as courtesy required. \n\nAll told, this visit was a memorable one. The Society is most grateful to the elders of the Tang family for their courtesy, hospitality and assistance with the day's arrangements. \n\nHong Kong, 1978. \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nGrave No. 3 is Plate 50 of LO Hsiang-lin and others' Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Chinese version, 1959) and Plate 35 of the English version (1963). Grave No. 5 is at Plates 51-53 of the Chinese version and Plates 36-37 of the English. \n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY VISIT TO TSUEN WAN SATURDAY, 10TH DEC., 1977 \n\n‘A VILLAGE WAR' \n\nA. NOTE ON THE VISIT \n\nIn the 1860's, an ill-natured three-year struggle took place between villagers of Shing Mun, where the Jubilee Reservoir now is, and of Tsuen Wan. A good deal of damage was caused on each side, and many lives were lost. Fortunately, the descendants of the combatants are still living in this area, and it is possible to reconstruct the details of the struggle and to view some interesting relics", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208175, "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-1977", "page_number": 214, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "198\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIn that night, strange happenings occurred. Chickens crowed and dogs barked. When the village watchman searched the area for the cause, he discovered to his surprise two tiger-like animals crawling about. He immediately fired a shot at them. One of the 'creatures' was hit and its mate came to the rescue. The two fled, and showed themselves to be human beings! The AU-YEUNGs were convinced that these two persons were thieves and wondered from where they had come.\n\nOn the next day, the Shing Mun villagers declared war on the AU-YEUNGs, intending to avenge the wounding of their fellow villagers. It was then revealed that the two night intruders were Shing Mun people who had come to steal, probably aiming at the belongings of the two brothers who had just returned from abroad. When the Shing Mun villagers approached the entrance of the AU-YEUNGs' village, they recklessly opened fire. The AU-YEUNGs, however, were not to be so easily daunted: they returned the fire. But being gradually outnumbered and overpowered by Shing Mun invaders, the AU-YEUNGs desperately enlisted the support of villagers of Lo Wai, Kwan Mun Hau, and Shek Lei Pui who readily offered help.\n\nThe war dragged on for nearly three years and was finally settled by a villager from Kwan Mun Hau. Having served in the army for some time in the past, he decided to borrow two cannons to blow up Shing Mun Village. When the Shing Mun villagers learned this, they hastily asked for peace. Seeing that the war had caused tremendous loss to both parties, the AU-YEUNGs agreed to settle the matter without conditions. The war ended up with a death toll of about thirty on Shing Mun side and over ten on the other side.*\n\nFrom this war, the AU-YEUNGs realised that the distance between them and other friendly villagers was too great and, fearing that the terrible experience might be repeated in the future, they eventually migrated to Chung Kwai Chung to re-establish their village. There they named their new settlement Wai Kek Village (*) and continued their farming livelihood by opening up barren hills and tilling the land.\n\n* It will be noted that the numbers killed are not accurately stated, and that the way in which the war was ended does not tally with the version given at p. 190.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208359, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n67\n\nthan is brought out by an analysis merely stressing the combination as a metaphorical expression.\n\nMountains are of ritual concern at the autumn festival of Chongyang, when people, among other things, climb mountains, or 'ascend heights', as the Chinese chroniclers put it. In my earlier explorations of the structure of the ritual calendar I have suggested40 that this festival has something in common with Qingming. Both occasions are ritual gatherings of people away from built-up areas in natural surroundings. They differ in that Qingming activities are focused on the ancestral tombs, whereas at Chongyang attention is on mountain tops. Now, indeed, we have found that the difference between the two festivals is less clear in that the tombs are called 'mountains'. One conclusion to be drawn from this circumstance provides support for our earlier hypothesis. There is a positive link between the two occasions. In a way, climbing tombs and climbing mountains were seen as rather similar activities. They were similar, but apparently not identical,\n\nIn this light, it is most interesting to read that in Youxian there is a mountain three li outside of the East Gate of the town, called Lingguifen**. The local population climb its top on the third day of the third moon, and again on the ninth day of the ninth moon.4 The third day of the third moon may, as we have seen, be a projection of the Qingming event on to the lunar calendar.\n\nAgain, graves are containers for the physical remains of dead persons, and thus they are linked to the ancestral tablets which, in a sense, are 'containers' for some more spiritual essence of the same dead.42 The cult of the dead in their graves can, on one hand be juxtaposed mountain worship; and, on the other, the ceremonialism focused on the ancestor tablets in homes and special halls. This triangular set of relationships will be of importance in our search for a system of meaning embedded in the Chinese festival calendar.\n\n4. Sweeping the graves\n\nAt this point we must examine what people did on the graves. One prominent feature was that the latter were cleaned and repaired. This meant presumably that they were cleaned of weeds and, if necessary, resurfaced.\n\nresurfaced.43 In my earlier outline of a hypothesis of the Chinese annual calendar as a system of ancestor worship, I suggested that in this sweeping and mending of the graves we encounter a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208384, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "92\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\ninstilling old social forms with new revolutionary content, making them serve new purposes.\n\nThe current premises of the union are in an apartment block in Tokwawan in Kowloon. They occupy a flat decorated with Communist slogans and a picture of Chairman Mao Tse-tung flanked by two Chinese flags. The Federation of Trade Unions runs a small school for children of \"patriotic\" workers in the union headquarters, although the children are not generally those of art-carved furniture workers. The union premises are seldom used by the workers before the evening as they are all off working; thus the flat was made available to the Federation for the operation of the school. Curricular and extra-curricular activities are structured around revolutionary and pro-Peking themes with texts and reading materials published in Peking. Shortly before my departure from Hong Kong this school was discontinued and the teacher, a middle school graduate, went to work in a factory.\n\nOther Federation affiliated unions have also used the union's premises for meetings and other activities such as preparing for the celebrations of October 1, the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. The premises are, however, under the control of the Woodwork Carvers' Union, and it is my impression that any such use of their premises by affiliated Federation unions must be agreed to by them.\n\nThe flat serves as a place where workers without means to afford a private apartment in Hong Kong's over-inflated real estate market, and without family in Hong Kong to take care of them, may sleep at night. However, one must be prepared to put up with the regulations, which include lights out and lock up at 11:00 p.m. One worker friend of mine, forced by circumstances to stay temporarily at the union, had a serious falling out with the union because of these regulations. Nevertheless, during the year that I was acquainted with the union, two or three workers made the union premises their more or less permanent dwelling place. There were no bunk beds in the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises, although I observed them built into the walls of other union halls I visited in Hong Kong. Workers just unrolled their bed-rolls across boards which had been laid across the students' desks.\n\nOnce every week or two these same desks were pulled together to form a long table and the officers and activists in the union", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208386, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "94\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nbasis coinciding with the monthly publication of Hong Kong Worker and were known as \"discussions of our livelihood”. On June 29, 1973, a similar discussion occurred, this one concerning developments in Shansi province, printed and sent around in a circular by the Federation of Trade Unions. The article was also read aloud paragraph by paragraph, but the discussion was not as lengthy as that which accompanied the reading of Hong Kong Worker. The event seemed designed to promote national consciousness as opposed to class consciousness, and the news did not seem to so directly affect the lives of the art carved furniture workers as the articles in Hong Kong Worker,\n\nOn any given weekday evening at union headquarters, there may be three or four Chinese chess games in progress with a number of persons standing around giving advice on which pieces to move. Anyone near enough to give advice to one or another of the players usually does, and any given game serves as a focus for endless voicing and countervoicing of opinion as to what constitutes the right move. There is also a chance that when one enters the union premises there may be a game of bumper checker pool in progress, involving four participants and a great ruckus about the board. One may be teased to within an inch of one's life for a poorly executed shot.\n\nMah jong is significantly absent as a diversion at Union premises, although it is played regularly at union halls not affiliated with the pro-communist Federation of Trade Unions. It would not, however, be true to say that many pro-communist union members never play the game.\n\nUnion representatives come in from time to time with dues they have collected in their particular geographical area, laying the money and receipts before the treasurer who enters the transactions carefully into the books. The representative may also pick up the latest copy of China Pictorial or China Reconstructs to distribute to the union members in his area. He keeps a careful checklist of who's received one every month. Sometimes a union representative will bring an application form from a worker who has just joined the union, together with three pictures, one of which is pasted in a huge membership book along with a great deal of personal data, name, place of origin, age, date of first registration, address, etc., another affixed to a small certificate of membership, and a third", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208729, "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-1979", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n159\n\ngroup or individual, enshrining distinctly Taoist deities for worship and aiming at promoting the cultivation and practice of a Taoist way of life. Such temples are perhaps rarely found in Taiwan, but if any of the criteria is not realized, the designation of such a temple as Taoist is incorrect and confusing. Therefore the great majority of temples in Taiwan do not fall under any of the above three categories and are to be considered as temples of the popular religion (group 4). Here again several sub-categories can be distinguished.\n\nFourth, the temples of the popular religion consist of several types. The most important and visible type is the formal community temple, established and controlled by the community or its representatives. Since the deities of some temples have proven special efficacy, they will attract worshippers from across the geographic boundaries of their own communities: one could consider them as temples of regional or even provincial (in China: national) communities. On the other hand, within a particular community (of a town or city) one frequently sees smaller social groups like hamlets or even neighborhoods with enough cohesion and economic power to build their own neighbourhood shrines or temples: one may call them neighbourhood temples: they are similar to the large community temples in origin and administration and are essentially public temples, although very often small and humble structures. In this group fall the majority of Earth-god shrines, and similar shrines built to house the bones of orphan spirits, or built to house the spirits of strange phenomena, like stones and rocks. Not all of them are public or community shrines: in many cases they are erected by individuals or individual families, which makes them private rather than community temples. Here the distinction is not always clear.\n\nThe second type of temples that I consider as belonging to the popular religion are the ancestral halls, built and controlled by clans. They are private or semi-private according to each case. They even in rare cases develop into community temples.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208766, "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-1979", "page_number": 223, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Tung Chung Fort\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTung Chung15 is a valley which lies on the north coast of Lantau Island. It is surrounded by hills on three sides,16 facing the sea on the north. The valley is well-drained by streams, giving fertile farmlands to the people. A century or so ago, there was a walled area, called the Tung Chung Walled City; and a fort which guarded the coast, the Shek She Fort A6.\n\nThe Tung Chung Walled City was erected between the Sheung Ling Pei village #17 and the Ha Ling Pei village 下嶺皮村 T## 18. During the early years of K'ang Hsi period, there was only the Tung Chung Shuen (post)✯✯ under a Tsin Tsung +(or lieutenant) of the Tai Pang Battalion 19. However, the post was quite isolated, and it was far from Tai O where there was the Tai Yue Shan Shuen 大嶼山汎20.\n\nAfter the surrender of Cheung Po-tsai in the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign2, foreign intercourse and influence increased; and fortifications along the coast were strengthened. In the 22nd year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1817), the Tung Chung Walled City and the Shek She Fort were erected 22.\n\nThe Walled City and the Fort remained strongholds on the island until 1898, when the New Territories were leased to the British. Then the Walled City was used as the Police Station and later as the Wah Ying School **** during the Second World War.23 It is now the site of the Tung Chung Rural Committee's office and the Tung Chung Public Primary School.\n\nThe Walled City measures 225 feet by 265 feet. It is backed by the Tai Tung Shan. It has three rubble walls: its front wall is about 15 feet thick. The building stone of the walls came from Chik Lap Kok Island.24\n\nThe Walled City has three gateways: The East Gate was called Chip Sau ✩✩, the West Gate was called Luen Kun, and the Main Gate, Kung Sun. The East and West Gates are now blocked by bricks, and the main gate is used as the entrance to the Rural Committee and the Public School.\n\nInside the Walled City, there is a playground. Behind the playground, there are two old houses, which are the remains of the guardhouses built during the 22nd year of the Chia Ch'ing reign.25 These houses are now used as the office of the Tung Chung Rural Committee.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208872, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "6\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nAn example of the latter is the very recently established open-air shrine on a hillside, half way up, and some 120 steps above, the tarmac road of Black's Link on Hong Kong island. It consists of a small row of three shrines in one long concrete construction. Each is no bigger than 2' by 1'6\", and contains a printed and framed coloured icon, one Buddhist, and two of the folk religion. The title given to the whole is the Temple of the Three Immortals (49) The final character \"Miao\" (temple) normally gives the impression of roofed halls containing images and icons. However, the concept of the three altars of the Temple of the Three Immortals is no different from other temples with large altars, numerous images, high walls and a roof, which with all their other refinements in no way add to the power of the prayer of the devotee. There are, however, not many examples in Hong Kong of permanent outside shrines being referred to as a miao (temple).\n\nMonasteries were usually built away from the main centres of population, on hillsides backing on to slopes and facing downwards, overlooking wooded landscapes or the sea; whilst Daoist folk religion temples are to be found in population centres (especially where the centres existed a hundred or so years ago) and in sheltered coves at a convenient landing point.\n\nFishermen's folk religion temples may seem at times to be in isolated spots, but in practice they are near safe anchorages and just far enough from the next temple to be economically viable for the temple keeper. The pattern of fisherfolk temples, dedicated predominantly to Tian Hou (A) and Hong Sheng (), when plotted on a map, is quite distinctive, particularly in Wanchai and the centre of Victoria. The temples, now quite far inland, were originally built back a little from the original coastline and faced what then was the nearest stretch of water.\n\nUrban popular religion temples, built in traditional style in the early days of the two settlements, are usually simple folk religion establishments dedicated to the popular cults of Guan Di, Tian Hou and Wen Chang, whilst more modern temples built since the 1880's tend to be dedicated to less well-known deities who offer specialised services such as the plague deity, Sui Jingbo.\n\nOver the years a few temples have been closed down or moved elsewhere, from lack of patronage or because of reclamation, urban redevelopment and street widening. In one fell swoop a fisherman's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208874, "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "KEITH G. STEVENS\n\nserve Buddhist devotees and which have Buddhist images on altars in their halls and offices. These include Buddhist schools, clinics, book-stores and libraries, homes for the aged and vegetarian food shops and restaurants.\n\nBuddhist temples and monasteries are not only more airy, lighter and cleaner than the Daoist folk temples, their images are larger, gold-lacquered and usually distinctive. However, there are the exceptions, few though they be, of small, dark and, because they are old, more drab Buddhist establishments. Some images too can be multi-coloured, though very few are of any material other than wood.\n\nExclusively Buddhist establishments are few and far between, the majority having an altar or two containing folk religion deities. Quite a number of the Buddhist temples were first instituted in Hong Kong by a single wealthy Chinese who recommended or selected the specific deity or deities to be placed on the altars. The donation of funds to help found a monastery is not only a move to obtain merit for the donor, or for perpetual prayers to be said by the monks in the Memorial Hall of the monastery for the donor himself or for his parents or wife, but is often a gesture to display the importance of the donor (it entitles his or her name to be engraved and displayed at the entrance). Once the monastery has been built the flow of funds from devotees enables it to flourish, but when devotees disappear the monastery too withers. Once the decision to found a Buddhist temple has been made, a board of directors is established and executive decisions are then made by them. (The same is true of Daoist and folk religion temples). In Buddhist and Daoist establishments a priest is invited to become the abbot, and nuns, monks and lay men and women are gradually enrolled. Abbots and hermits choose attractive and secluded spots on remote mountain sides to escape from the tumult of life and to devote themselves to quiet meditation. Founded by either fervent monks or wealthy benefactors, they were usually built on sites which were both aesthetic and practical because, in addition to being a place of meditation, in old China travellers in remoter areas found it necessary as well as agreeable to stay overnight in monasteries. (Plate 1)\n\nThree very distinctive areas in Hong Kong's New Territories were all sufficiently remote to satisfy the \"hermit\" in the monks.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208876, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "10\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nInside the library large cases of books cover the walls and some books, used more frequently, are individually wrapped in cloth and lie on tables and altars. The larger monasteries have rooms for the aged, and most have halls where ashes of devotees may be deposited.\n\nIn general, a visit to a Buddhist monastery would take you first past the shrine of the folk religion tutelary deity of the neighbourhood, the Earth God (1✯✯). (Illustration 3) Once through the gates and the entrance hall with its six \"guardians” (Mi Luo Fu, Wei Tuo and the Four Heavenly Kings) the layout follows a fairly standard pattern. The main altar will be straight ahead in the Great Hall which houses the main Buddhas. The main altar may be occupied by a single image, a group of three, or an array of a dozen or so. On and along the secondary altars, altars down the side walls and side halls there are images of other lesser deities. These, in twelve monasteries and temples in Hong Kong and Macau, include the well-known groups of eighteen or five hundred Luohan. Frequently, immediately behind the main altar and back to back with the main deity, stands the most popular and honoured of the Bodhisattvas, Guan Yin, with her two assistants.\n\nMahayana Buddhist temples contain a large number of images of Buddhas and major Bodhisattvas, some of which are considered to be more important than the image of Sakyamuni Buddha himself, unlike the Theravada Buddhist temples of Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and Srilanka in which Sakyamuni is the most important.\n\nThere appears to be only one temple in Hong Kong in which Lamaist images are worshipped, although there is one other, above Tsuen Wan, where in a private room, some forty or so Lamaist bronze images are on display.* The temple in which the Lamaist images appear on its altars is a shoddy, fairly modern concrete and corrugated iron construction above a new estate in North Point, where an elderly and now deceased Cantonese gentleman settled after spending some years in Tibet. Most devotees appear to have little idea of the style or origins of imagery, and the rituals and ceremonies performed in the temple by the widow of the founder are identical with those in other temples in Hong Kong.\n\n* Guan Yin temple in Fu Yung Shan,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208877, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n11\n\nThere are a dozen or so temples in Hong Kong the titles of which should leave one in no doubt that they are Buddhist. To highlight the problem of classifying temples by their religious affiliation, let us examine one in Lo Wai above Tsuen Wan which has a typically Buddhist name followed by the characters for \"Buddhist temple\". The staff consists of three laymen who run the vegetarian restaurant below the temple and the deities on the altar from senior to junior are Guan Di, Guan Yin, Lu Dong Bin, Dou Mu and Yao Shi Fo. Guan Yin and Yao Shi Fo are Buddhist, whilst the other three are Daoist folk religion deities. Opposite the main altar, on a secondary altar, are a Kitchen God and a Protector of the Law, both represented by framed prints; the first is a folk religion deity and the second Buddhist. And finally, on the table before the main altar is a red wooden rice bucket containing a peck of uncooked rice in which stand numerous items which have without doubt Daoist and not Buddhist origins. Despite the mixture, the three laymen were surprised that there was any doubt that their temple was Buddhist.\n\nConfucian and Daoist temples\n\nIn Hong Kong and Macau there are no Confucian temples as there were in China and still are in Taiwan. There are, however, Confucian Halls such as the one in a school sponsored by the Confucian Society at Caroline Hill, Hong Kong Island. Several Chinese societies in Hong Kong are understood to have private altars dedicated solely to Confucius.\n\nThe official state religion had its own rites and deities and involved the official bureaucracy and the gentry only. The nearest thing to a State temple in our two territories is the rural school at Fanling where an image of the Yellow Emperor (*) stands on an altar in the main hall, and the side hall of a Macau temple in which a school is held where on an altar there are full-size images of the inventors of ink and writing.\n\n\"Pure\" Daoist temples are rare, there appearing to be none in Macau and some two dozen in Hong Kong of which two are branches of two of the others. These two dozen contain distinct Daoist deities, are run by Daoist bodies represented by a committee, whilst Daoist lay priests and priestesses perform Daoist ceremonies.\n\n* Peng Lai Ge (**M**)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208878, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "12\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nA typical Daoist temple is the very bare flatlet on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise block in crowded Shamshuipo, established by a widow from Fujian province in about 1965. Now in her early eighties, she lives alone in the flat, which has a resounding Daoist temple name, and has services performed once a week by a visiting lay priest. She recalled eight occasions when near death, she was saved by a specific Daoist Immortal, Lou Da Zhen Jun (**★**IA) who died late in the Ming dynasty, in Fujian, but who appeared again in spirit form in the twenties of this century in Amoy successfully to persuade a Bank of China manager to stop gambling. Lou's likeness is the only icon in the temple, and before it, services are held and sand-table prognostications obtained.\n\nA modern major religious complex above Lo Wai, Tsuen Wan, has on its main altar large images of Confucius, Lao Zi, and Sakyamuni, representing the three religions: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Above the altar hall, which is a modern pagoda, there are several buildings dedicated entirely to memorials, and in two of these halls, Daoist services for the dead are frequently performed.\n\nFolk Religion Temples\n\nThere are some two hundred and forty-six folk religion temples in Hong Kong. When sub-divided into architectural groups, approximately two-thirds of them are traditional buildings, two-ninths are modern constructions, legally built with the Hong Kong Government's permission,18 and one-ninth resettlement shacks, huts, or other illegal constructions. These latter fall into those tolerated by the Hong Kong authorities and those not tolerated.* The latter are regularly pulled down, often to be built illegally again nearby.\n\nTraditional temples in rural areas tend to have flourished around a catchment area of a village or two and have been built on the outskirts of one of the villages. Frequently, there is an adjacent open space used primarily for holding elaborate festivities on the main deity's annual feast day.\n\nAlthough most traditional folk religion temples built before World War II have a similar plan and general layout, no\n\n* To be explained by the periodic amnesties given to older, but still not tolerated illegal structures. 1976 saw the last to date, the purpose being to provide a new, realistic baseline for demolition of new structures (Hon. Editor).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208879, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n13\n\ntwo temples are alike. The interior decoration and content of temples tend to reflect their keeper's foibles, whims and beliefs, and whilst some temple keepers offer special rituals, others are thoroughly disinterested and their temples often bare and ill-kept and bereft of any spark of life. Rural temples are considerably barer than their urban equivalents. In some, poverty is stark and all that can be seen is a well-nigh empty hall, with an ash container for incense sticks and perhaps a paper plaque or two, with possibly an image and, if it is at all possible, electric illumination even in fairly remote areas. At the other end of the scale some of the urban temples are cluttered with objects of every kind, with the cool courtyard being used as a social gathering place. Incongruities abound such as, not uncommonly, sweaty vests drying on hangers suspended from the front edge of the altar, and the blaring gramophone record of church bells which greeted several surprised Westerners when they entered a small temple in Kowloon. Many temples have private courtyards for use by the keeper and his family.\n\nVisitors touring the Far East frequently compare the spacious, light and clean Thai Buddhist temples with Chinese folk religion's dark and grimy temples. Many Chinese Buddhist monasteries and temples, not usually on the itinerary of tourists, are also bright and clean whereas the religious edifices in which folk religion deities dwell and which are visited by tourists in Hong Kong central and Kowloon, appear quite forbidding. Traditional folk religion temples consist of a single-storey building with windowless outside walls and one large dark, cavernous entrance, through which one can see oil lamps flickering in the gloom. Inside the temple the altars at the far end of the dimly lit halls may contain a single deity, a small group of deities or hosts upon hosts of them. Clouds of incense with its soft fragrance adds to the eerie dimness and in time blackens the gods. It also makes one's eyes water! One aspect obtrudes during certain seasons - open drains in the older traditional temples.\n\nThe basic urban, village and coastal traditional temple is a one-roomed “box”. It can be a traditional building (Illustration 4) or a simple old cottage. It might even be an old two or three bedroomed two-storey house or, if the founder has been fortunate with his sponsors, it will be a purpose-built construction.\n\nThe main doorway of the basic traditional temples at the front is normally the only entrance. It has large inward-opening doors", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208881, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n15\n\nIn single-room and larger temples the major altar, which faces the entrance, may be either one large space reaching from side wall to side wall or it can be divided into three, five or more individual altars with, on occasions, a separate altar or two constructed down the side walls. (Plate 6).\n\nIn quite a number of traditional temples the main hall is divided longitudinally by partition walls from floor to ceiling. These stretch a short distance into the main hall from the rear wall of the temple, one on either side of the main altar. The two side altars are therefore outside the partitions, and in practice these partition walls serve to isolate the side altars.\n\nIn many traditional temples several major deities, and even a few minor deities, have a side hall dedicated entirely to themselves and their attendants. These include the God of Loyalty and Literature Guan Di; the fertility goddess Jin Hua Niang Niang; the bodhisattva Guan Yin and the wealth god Cai Bo Xing Jun. It is not necessarily a down-grading of the importance of the deity but a late recognition and addition to the temples' complement. A great many side hall altars contain a group of unconnected and unidentifiable minor images around the major and identifiable deity's image, all placed there over the years by zealous devotees.\n\nA side hall in one temple contained the lone image of the Earth God on the only altar, although the characters above the altar read Jin Hua Niang Niang. Presumably over the years the images of this fertility Goddess and her attendants had been removed and replaced by the image of the Earth God without the title above the altar being changed.\n\nThe temple incinerator, and the temple keeper's kiosk or counter from which he sells charm papers and incense, are usually in one or other of the side halls or courts between side halls.\n\nSide halls also contain large ritual items such as the temple bell, drum and the removable head and tail from the village dragon boat, and in one of the side halls of most Boat People's temples replicas of early junks (some 8' to 10' in length) also gather dust in the gloom. These model junks are used only on festival days when offerings are placed on the decks. The devotees thank Tian Hou for good catches over the previous year and request similar benefits for the coming year.\n\nThe roofs of traditional temples consist of interlocking tiles resting on lathes supported by strong cross beams. The latter are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208882, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "16\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\noften picked out in green or left in their natural state, though very quickly they are covered with incense soot.\n\nTraditional temples in Hong Kong and Macau have two predominant styles of facade. The first has a verandah, which stretches from side to side across the front and is covered by the roof (Illustration 7). The second style, the more common, consists of a regular oblong plan with the entrance door and the section of the front facade which fronts the main hall, set back about two feet into the whole facade. The facade fronting the two side halls is usually windowless, though occasionally it is decorated with long murals at roof height (Illustration 8).\n\nThe verandah of the first style is occasionally enclosed in a low, open balustrade. Above it the roof is supported by a stone beam from each side wall, reaching to and resting on the vertical columns which flank the entrance. Stone animals occasionally grace the beams, and more often than not the wooden support beams which stretch from the facade to the vertical pillars are heavily carved or support carvings depicting Chinese social life. In some villages, the Deng Family clan temple at Ha Tsun for example, the carvings depict everyday life, such as fishermen wading ashore from their grounded boats. In other temples, under the eaves high above the long verandah, murals of scenes in three dimensions in Shekwan pottery decorate the facade.\n\nThe majority of temples in Macau are single-hall temples (a total of 19 out of 32). The main halls of the two largest traditional temples in Macau, the Lin Feng Miao and the Guan Yin Miao are much the same basic size as those in the large Hong Kong traditional temples. However, the side halls and annexes of the two Macau temples are considerably larger. The large main hall of the Lin Feng Temple in Almirante Lacerda, facing WNW and backing onto the hill Colina de Mong Ha, has a main altar with two secondary altars on either side and, in addition, a second main altar in the front of the court, facing the main entrance. The whole Lin Feng complex has four separate major altars. There are two in the main hall, one at the front and one at the back and one each in the two side halls (with the one to the east having a further altar in a separate room). The temple's two side halls, each with its own main altar, are more than likely looked upon as separate temples as they have their own Earth Gods beside their entrances.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208883, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n17\n\nThe even larger Guan Yin temple, facing south west on the reverse of the same hill, has a similar layout, though in this complex the side halls are separated from the main hall by unroofed passageways.\n\nA third large temple, but not of traditional architectural style, the Lin Dai Temple off the Estrada do Repouso, has two separate secondary halls to the west but only one to the east. Each of the two western secondary halls are sub-divided into two altar halls, one to the front and one to the rear, making a total of seven separate altar halls.\n\nThe nearest equivalent in Hong Kong to the two largest traditional temples in Macau, are the traditional temples in Hollywood Road in Central Victoria, Temple Street in Yaumati and Stone Nullah Lane in Wanchai. Nowadays the traditional temple in Yaumati (Illustration 9) is in practice four individual temples under the management of the Tung Wah Hospital Group. Originally it was a single temple consisting of a large main hall with two side halls on either side, each hall separated from the next by an uncovered passageway. For at least thirty years, however, the complex has consisted of the main major temple, with the two secondary halls to the north being divorced from it and becoming individual temples with their own keepers, controlling committees and cults. The two secondary halls to the south have again been divorced from the main hall. One is an individual temple with its own cult etc and the other is a clinic and dispensary. The main cults in the four temples from north to south are Guan Yin, the City God, Tian Hou and again Guan Yin, though in addition the major deities worshipped in the second and fourth temples are the Ten Judges of the Underworld and She Ji (**) the Spirit of the Harvest and Crops. The carved titles of the main deities over the four temples' entrances, are interesting. The first is Fu De (**), the Earth God (and not Guan Yin as one would expect), the second has the title of the City God Temple above its entrance, the third has Tian Hou and the fourth has She Tan (***) (again not Guan Yin as one would expect). The last entrance, the clinic, has the characters for the Library over it.20\n\nThe traditional temple in Stone Nullah Lane in Wanchai is comparatively larger than other similar temples in the colony and is made up of four individual halls. The main hall, roughly 40 feet wide by 55 feet long, has three side-altars on each side of the\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208884, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "18\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nmain altar, with a further three altars down the side walls. In the centre, a long altar divides the upper part of the hall from the lower. A side hall to the west, dedicated to one goddess, is also used as a workshop for the construction of paper items to be burnt in ceremonies for the dead. Behind this side hall is a courtyard beyond which is a separate hall containing three more altars. To the east of the main hall is a secondary hall, dedicated, not altogether surprisingly even in a traditional temple, to the Buddhist Trinity. This hall contains just the one large altar and behind it are the living quarters for the staff.\n\nSome traditional temples have had a secondary temple built alongside, as an annex or as a separate temple dedicated to a particular deity, and many traditional temples nowadays have had windows knocked into the outside walls, particularly into the rooms in which the keeper and his family reside.\n\nIn villages and hamlets there are two types of temple. The first is the small, often single-room popular folk religion temple or shrine, of the kind we have described above, in which one or two major deities are depicted on the main altar. The second, the clan ancestral hall or temple, may be a comparatively large complex of halls and rooms, the main hall of which contains, by seniority, serried rows of ancestral tablets of the most senior members of the family, the public ancestors of each generation back twenty or more generations.\n\nVillage temples, be they traditional folk religion or clan temples, are more than just religious establishments where prayers and offerings may be made. Side halls and rooms are used as the village storehouse for items like the old rice winnower, large tables and clan crockery*, as the village school, the games room and as the civic and medical centre. They also frequently are homes for one or two of the village needy.\n\nMost walled villages in the New Territories have a very small single-hall folk religion temple called a Shen Ting (神廳), dedicated to one of the national or local heroes (such as Guan Di or Hou Wang) situated in the north wall, facing south, and located at the opposite end of the main lane which bisects the village from the main gate. In most walled villages too, the Tu Di Gong (the Earth...\n\n*\n\nLineage or village properties that can be borrowed by families on festive occasions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208885, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n19\n\nGod and tutelary deity of the village) sits in a niche inside the ground floor of the tower of the gateway, watching over his parishioners. In the attic of the gateway of some of these villages, out of sight and only accessible by a rickety ladder, is an image of Gui Xing, one of the Gods of Literature, placed there for students to pray to prior to taking an examination, and for parents to pray to for the blessing of a bright child.\n\nThe majority of more recent temple structures, mostly built on hillsides during the past twenty-five years, mainly by Chaozhou immigrants and a few by Min An immigrants, have been extended room by room over a period of years and may be any shape and size, according to the possibilities of the site, and may have a dozen or so rooms for one use or other.\n\nQuite a few of the temples constructed by ethnic minorities contain very local cults brought to Hong Kong from the area in China from which the emigrants came, and the temples themselves are a focus for the ethnic or sub-ethnic groups concerned. Thus, in Hong Kong over the years, separate shrines, halls, and finally complete buildings have been built by Chaozhou, Min An and Hoklo immigrants. There are even a few built by refugees from Shanghai and the north.\n\nA unique structure in concrete, shaped and moulded to look like rock, was demolished in 1979 in Tsuen Wan to make way for a major new housing estate. The building, a squatter temple built by immigrants from Swatow, covered a large area and had three major and four minor altars. The inside of the temple was shaped to resemble a large rocky cavern with the altars shaped like small caves, fronted with glass and illuminated with neon lights. The outside walls were painted smooth concrete. The roof, however, was a phantasmagoria of small concrete figures from Chinese legend amidst miniature buildings, more caves and grottoes, all painted in vivid colours. The whole was over-shadowed by a large vividly crimson concrete structure which can only be described as a massive red pepper standing vertically on a greeny-blue base, and punctured by small holes to act as windows. Although the building looked a ghastly monstrosity to foreigners, it had a unique character and was very popular amongst the Chaozhou immigrants of Tsuen Wan and Kowloon.\n\n* It has been resited, and is in course of redevelopment, but alas not in such a picturesque form! Hon. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208886, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "20\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nAlthough clan or ancestral halls and temples are usually handsome buildings located near the centre of a village, many now old and rarely used have been permitted to fall into disrepair and are derelict. These memorial halls contain only the ancestral tablets of the senior member of each generation of the clan whose surname appears over the main entrance of the hall or complex. Some villages have two and even three such temples, dedicated to each of the clans dwelling within their bounds. (Plates 10 and 11).\n\nThe memorial and ancestral tablets of the man-in-the-street (personal ancestral tablets) are placed on either the private household altar of the family or the shelves of the memorial halls of Buddhist or Daoist monasteries and temples. Personal ancestral tablets are rarely retained for more than three generations, whereas the tablets of the public ancestors of the clan are retained as far back as the first ancestor who moved to the area in which they are presently situated.\n\nLike the small temples, the clan halls are usually cluttered with agricultural equipment used only when the season comes around. None of the clan halls is spotless, and often the plaques, panels, mirrors and other decorations are so covered in accumulated filth that they are hard to decipher. The excuse given is that the lineage is too poor to employ a temple keeper and by implication there is no one else who should keep it clean, so the halls remain decrepit and forlorn.\n\nFamily and clan temples very rarely contain images, particularly as Cantonese do not carve images of their ancestors as did the people of Hunan and Fujian provinces. When family and clan temples do contain deities, these are represented by either a framed print usually of the bodhisattva Guan Yin or a small image of a popular deity placed there by a devotee who either had no place for it at home or had a misguided notion to donate such an image to the clan (Plate 12). This happened in a small clan temple near Sheung Shui where the tolerant members of the clan have ignored the deity and have left it there to avoid hurting the donor's feelings.\n\nShrines\n\nShrines almost certainly pre-date temples and in their basic form have remained essentially unchanged for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. A considerable percentage of Chinese ritual is performed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208896, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "30\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nor halls.32 Nearly 70% of all nunneries are on Lantau island, whereas only 10% of the monasteries are; and three hundred and fifty-three temples and monasteries have resident staff.\n\nThere are thirty-two temples in Macau, of which two are well-nigh derelict. Of the thirty-two temples, six are coastal, twenty-four are urban, and two rural. The majority of temples contain a mixture of Buddhist and folk religion images (no temples contain only Buddhist images), and the remainder contain only folk religion deities.\n\nDegrees of popularity of the major deities in temples and shrines\n\nThe total number of temples dedicated to a specific deity throughout the two areas reflects the importance of that deity to devotees. In Hong Kong and Macau, forty-four different gods each have at least one temple dedicated to him (or her), whilst only seven gods have more than five temples to him (or her). The seven, in order of precedence (based simply on them being the main deity of a temple or monastery), are Tian Hou (seventy-eight) (*), Sakyamuni Buddha (thirty-nine), Guan Yin (thirty-eight), Guan Di (twenty-one), Hong Sheng (twenty), Bei Di, who is better known as the Northern Emperor, (ten), and Lu Zu or Lu Dongbin (seven). Although this gives only a very rough guide, the number of images of Guan Yin throughout Hong Kong and Macau vastly outnumbers those of Tian Hou. However, when the criterion is the number of temples in Hong Kong and Macau in which a particular deity is to be found (on any altar and not necessarily as the main deity), then the first five are Guan Yin, whose image appears in at least seventy-five temples, Tian Hou (114), Guan Di (88), Qi Tian Da Sheng (Monkey) (61), and Di Zang Wang (59).\n\nThe Kitchen God, most frequently depicted by a reddish-orange paper pasted on the chimney above the stove, is the most common deity to be seen on the household altar, followed closely by Guan Yin, whose image, as we have noted, is also to be seen in 70% of all temples. The most common deities outside the home are Tu Di Gong, the Earth God (the local tutelary deity), in both urban and\n\n* The totals are not the number of images seen but the number of temples in which the deity is the main image in both Hong Kong and Macau.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208955, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n85\n\nThe basic premise of geomancy is the location of ch'i, the cosmic breath, of the site in question. This ch'i is dispersed by wind and carried by watercourse; too much of each or both will drive the site's good influences away, and too little movement will cause stagnation of the influences. An ideal site should be south-facing and constitute the following topographical features: The hills should have the formation of an armchair; those in the rear should fence off evil spirits brought in by the cold bitter northerly wind, those on the left and right should flank it like embracing arms, and the front should be opened or unobstructed such that view, airiness, and sunlight can be brought in by the yang spirit. These features are represented by the four numinous animals: the azure dragon on the left, the white tiger on the right, the red bird in the front, and the black tortoise in the back. Thus, the point where the two forces meet, and in a proportion of three to two of the azure dragon and the white tiger in elevation, is the perfect location for burial and building. As to water, a site with confluence of streams brings good influences; conversely, branching does the opposite. \"Sharp bends are bad since they make straight arrow-like lines, meander being the natural path of good influence...\" However, favourable and auspicious sites are not always readily available, and less desirable ones are remediable by means of tree planting, or building a fung-shui pagoda at proper places, or removing contours and watercourses according to geomantic principles. As fung-shui can bring good influences to people if dwellings are properly placed, so can it cause ill fate if they are placed otherwise. According to a geomantic professor I interviewed in Hong Kong, inauspicious fung-shui can induce illness or even death in the family if, for example, windows or doors or kitchen stoves are mislocated. The same fatality may occur if a beam of a house is erected directly over one's head in a sleeping area. Or a house is in a baleful location if it is situated at the crossroad of a Y-junction. My investigations concur with the Yang Dwelling Classics, which says in the opening paragraph: “All dwellings should not be at the mouth of a thoroughfare, or in a monastery (Buddhist temple grounds), nor come near to a shrine, nor be where plants and trees do not grow (to screen and protect), nor in an old battleground ... nor at the gate or opening of a large wall, nor opposite a prison gate.\"12 In Maurice Freedman's research\n\nyang", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208957, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n87\n\nvalley surrounded by hills in the east, north and south forming an armchair embracing it. It is located at the crosspoint where the breath of the azure dragon and the white tiger meet. The entire valley is fed by flowing streams like the sinews and veins within a body. It is also the confluence of meandering tributaries before the main river runs off to the sea. According to a geomancer who never saw Kam Tin, \"It is said [in the geomancy classics] that the Dragon [Water Dragon, not the same as the Azure Dragon] follows the watercourse, and the meeting-place of waters is the meeting-place of the dragons, where the virtues of hills and streams are united and the grass ever green.\" He continued, \"In the distance there should be groups of mountains with streams of water encircling them; in front a stretch of level plain, a pond, or lake. In the wider circuit, the space should be large enough for 10,000 horses, and the watercourse be sufficient to admit a dragon [large] boat... If the expanse be wide, children and grandchildren will multiply and be strong. From the top of the hill the view should extend for miles, with mountains and streams interspersed.\"16 Such vivid and precise description of the geographical features of Kam Tin by a fung-shui professor who never saw the place can only lead to the conclusion that the siting of Kam Tin was done piously in accordance with the geomancy canons. Moreover, \"the place where the flow out being low, with no hill or high embankment to obstruct the escape of good influences, a pagoda is erected to check these influences and throw them back over the land.”17 Indeed a fung-shui pagoda called Man Ch'eung Kok was erected near where I Tai College now stands in Shui-tau hamlet.* By the year 1850, \"the Tang family seemed to have reached the height of their prosperity. Many of them passed the highest government examination and a census taken that year showed that there were more than 1,800 males living...\"18 But the family experienced a decline in population and wealth after the pagoda was torn down and the course of the river was altered to accommodate three fish ponds and buildings of a school that blocked the view of the village.19 This mistake was remedied by repairing the banks of the river in 1930 and family membership was said to be on the increase again.\n\nFig. 2 in the original version of this article, published in Asian Architect and Builder, October 1979, which contains many other drawings and diagrams not reproduced here.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209025, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nLOCAL REACTIONS TO THE DISTURBANCE OF\n\n'FUNG SHUI ON TSINGYI ISLAND, HONG KONG, MARCH 1978 — DECEMBER 1980*\n\n155\n\nThe Chung Mei and Lo Uk villagers moved to their new houses in April/May 1979. Preparations were then made for a start to the engineering works and excavations in the sensitive hill area.\n\nWe then discovered that the opposition to interference with this area came also from the four old villages located round the lagoon. These face directly (in some cases indirectly) on to the fung shui hill. They had requested and been granted payments for periodic tun fu (**) ceremonies at the same time as the villages of Chung Mei and Lo Uk. Also, in connection with their temporary removal to public housing pending completion of their new resite villages in three to four years' time, a temporary resiting for ancestral halls for all these villages had been agreed and was being effected. Notwithstanding these considerations, village objections continued to be received.\n\nIt was becoming clear that though work might start on excavations, it was likely to cause incidents and to lead to interference with the contractors and further delay: in turn incurring claims from the companies engaged in the work. We were virtually back in the same situation that had led to the 1974 decision to resite Chung Mei and Lo Uk. Thus, when it was learned that the new public housing blocks into which the villagers were to be temporarily cleared would not be available for another year owing to heavy commitments to house large numbers of people from ongoing clearances for major public works in other parts of the Town and District, we decided to face facts. It was agreed to leave the Four Villages on their old sites until mid-1980 when new public housing blocks would be available, and not to start excavations till then.\n\nFortunately this decision was also made necessary on other grounds. Owing to financial stringency, tightened controls and the need to continue financing for engineering and building works already in progress, it was not possible to commence the Tsing Yi contracts scheduled for 1979-80. However, all the necessary arrangements were made, including the detailed planning for the villagers'\n\n*This is a sequel to the note at pp. 213-216 of the 1979 issue of the Journal. It details the difficulties faced by the District Office Tsuen Wan in arranging for development works to proceed smoothly.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209384, "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-1982", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "19\n\nwelfare director, one women's section director, and adds two new subcommittees, one sanitation director and one football instructor. The same kinds of subcommittees are found in an additional three committees (those for Blocks #16, #19, and #23) but Block #19 has two additional categories of junior police call (three members) and security (nine members), and Block #16 adds that of hygiene. Block #17's MAC has recently formed subcommittees for recreation, general affairs, women's section, and public relations.\n\nWhat do these committees do? Are there any differences with the subcommittee descriptions given earlier? Take, for example, the recreation subcommittee. The MACs of Lok Fu Estate may participate in two kinds of recreational activities, those organized through the District Office and planned for the estate as a whole and those organized by the block itself. The latter are much less common, as many committees do not have enough enthusiastic members to do the organizing nor do they have sufficient funds to pay for the expenses. Picnics are popular in the summer and fall, however, and the residents of many blocks are enthusiastic about outings to local temples to eat vegetarian food. One committee provides summer activities for its resident young people (such as camping trips, chess playing sessions, and table tennis) and a few committees have obtained basketballs and footballs for residents to use. The women's section subcommittee of one block's MAC provides a special service by seeing to the needs of old women living in the block. For example, it helps to pay the electricity bills for those in need and gives general assistance to these older women. The functions of the other subcommittees are generally the same as described.\n\nOne special subcommittee, that for security, is characteristic only of public housing estate Mutual Aid Committees. There, multiple entrances and exits make security a problem. It is true enough that private housing units also have security problems, often serious ones, but in my experience they rarely have patrol teams, relying instead on gates, an occasional watchman or two, or a company-hired professional security team. In the public housing estates, the security subcommittee is usually the one responsible for the neighbourhood security patrols, the regularly-rotating groups of committee members and residents who patrol", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209392, "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-1982", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "27\n\nLok Fu Estate. I did, however, hear of such misuse during my earlier research in other districts.\n\n17 It might be mentioned here that a number of MAC office-holders, most often the chairmen, are asked to participate on other community organizations, thereby representing the MAC and forming a link between it and the organization. The nature of such links varies from committee to committee, but membership on the Area Committee is common. For example, nearly all the chairmen of Lok Fu Estate MACS participate in the Lok Fu Area Committee. Participation on such outside organizations increases the duties of the office-holders, as they must carry back to the MAC information and announcements for dissemination.\n\nIn a few committees, these items were purchased by the officers (usually the chairman) and donated to the committee. Other committees have applied to the Sir David Trench Fund. This fund, made up of a sports grant from the Council for Recreation and Sports, can be used to pay for sports equipment such as table tennis tables. Applications are invited once a year, usually in September or October. At that time, the District Office sends the temporary community organizer to each MAC, to ask the chairman if any equipment is desired. If so, the forms are completed and forwarded to the City and New Territories Administration by the District Office. The forms are tabulated and the committees are then informed of what they can buy. The committees then buy the approved items and are reimbursed.\n\nThe Mutual Aid Committees are not unusual in their practice of inviting honorary members. Honorary members seem to be a part of many Chinese organizations, both traditional and modern.\n\nThe position of honorary member is not based on sex; both men and women can be asked to be honorary members, although male honorary members are more numerous, reflecting the generally greater participation of men in the Mutual Aid Committees.\n\nDespite the popularity of inviting honorary members, the District Office does not encourage this practice, as it views the officers and the floor representatives as the functioning members. In addition, there is potential for committee conflicts if members cannot agree on who to invite as honorary members, and this should be avoided.\n\nThe terms \"honorary\" or \"ordinary\" refer to the distinctions made by some committees. Actually, there is very little substantive difference between president and honorary president or consultant and honorary consultant. In a few committees, it seems that the titles of honorary president or honorary consultant confer a bit more prestige, but this is by no means certain.\n\nEach registered Mutual Aid Committee may request reimbursement of its essential expenditure up to a total of $2,000 per year, computed quarterly (that is, $500 every three months). This money is provided for the MACs from a special fund from the City and New Territories Administration and may be used to pay the costs of the initial setting up of the MAC office; to purchase supplies such as blackboards and notice boards, first-aid kits, and loud speakers; and to pay the monthly bills (such as rates or the cost of electricity) for the office. Sports equipment cannot be bought with this money. Newly-established committees that are setting up their offices can ask for a one quarter's advance, so that they can use up to $1,000 in the first quarter if necessary. However, if the $2,000 yearly allotment is insufficient for the committee's needs, or if special expenditure is planned, the additional funds must be collected from the residents, or donated by the honorary members.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209633, "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-1982", "page_number": 290, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "268\n\nNOTES\n\n* A general study on traditional education in the New Territories before the arrival of the British is given in another paper, \"Village Education in the New Territories under the Ch'ing\" shortly to be published by the Centre of Asian Studies, Hong Kong University. This present article is a related study on a single village in the N.T., with the purpose of seeing how and why education changed from its traditional pattern to a modern structure in the late 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century.\n\n* Sheung Shui is a large single surname village consisting of eight sub-villages lying at the heart of the Sheung Shui/Fanling plain (originally called Sheung U Tung [上烏塘] in Chinese). The village lies in a fertile low-lying river valley some twenty miles north of Kowloon and four miles south of Sham Chun. The village has been discussed in detail by Hugh Baker in his book, A Chinese Lineage Village, Frank Cass, 1968.\n\n* We were told by the village elders that their ancestors made special efforts to convert their dialect and custom into Punti shortly after their settlement in the district, just to be qualified to partake in the imperial examinations, for it was not until 1802 that the Hakkas were given a small quota in the examination, see also Hsin-an-Hsien-chih, 1981 reprint of the 1819 edition, Hong Kong, vol. 9, p. 99.\n\nAccording to the Liao genealogy and records on the ancestral tables (神主牌), the number of first degrees (生員) won by the lineage by generation were as follows:\n\n \n no of Sheng-yuan\n Generation\n \n \n 9\n 1\n \n \n 17th\n \n \n \n 10\n century\n \n \n 11\n \n \n \n 12\n 10\n \n \n Enw.\n 2\n \n \n 13\n 13\n \n \n 18th\n century\n \n \n 14\n 8\n \n \n 15\n 4\n \n \n 16\n 12\n \n \n 19th\n century\n \n \n 17\n 4\n \n \n 18\n 3\n \n\nThese data are not completely reliable, especially for those before the 14th generation, when the genealogy had not yet been written. Yet the numbers can be taken as an indication of the academic success of the Liaos. According to official records, there were at least three chu-jen degree holders from Sheung Shui in the 19th century.\n\nThe six halls included the Ming Te Tang 明德堂, Hsien Ch'eng Tang, Yun Sheng Chia-shou 潤生齋, Tu Nan Tang 圖南堂, Ming Te Chia-shou 明德齋, and Yen Siu Tang 延壽堂. The Liaos stood next only to the T'angs of Kam Tin and Ping Shan within the New Territories in possessing such a number of halls for studying purposes.\n\nThe Wan Shih Tang, unlike the other ancestral halls, was seldom used as a classroom as it was reserved for ceremonial functions. But in 1932, the building was re-modelled to accommodate the Fung Kai School, the first modern school set up in the village. For the history of the Wan Shih T'ang and founding of the Fung Kai School, see Liao Yin-sen.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209859, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "96\n\nIn the North District the islands are much barer and less cultivated than in the South District. Only two business centres of any importance exist; Tap Mun and Kat O. Both have shipbuilding sheds; the former has or had a launch service with Taipo, and the latter a distillery which gave a good deal of trouble to the Revenue Department. The business centres of these islands are in fact on the mainland; the Crooked Harbour islands look to Shataukok, the Port Shelter isles to Saikung.\n\nA very important element in the economy of the islands is the returned emigrant or seaman: Lamma has a good many of them; Lantau also. Emigrants generally go to America or Borneo, and a few to Singapore. Some returned emigrants are from Australia, they usually buy land, build a house and settle down.\n\nTour of the Islands\n\nTo get a view of each island as a whole, I suggest that a tour be taken as if in an imaginary launch, starting from Kowloon and going west as if to reach Canton through Kapshuimun (\"Rushing Water Channel\") but turning south of Lantau, passing the East Lamma Channel, and round Cape d'Aguilar into Port Shelter, and so up the East coast to Taipo and Crooked Harbour.\n\nStonecutters: or Ngong Shuen Chau (\"High Junk Island”). Most Chinese placenames are descriptive and have meanings. This one needs no elaboration, I think.\n\nTsingyi: (literally \"Green Clothes\": but the real meaning is uncertain). Has a fair harbour, a few shops and several villages in the northern half. The hills on this island are unusually high. There are two or three limekilns. A ferry calls about four times a day. Once a reclamation was started at the head of the harbour but it came to nothing and only two or three walls now mark where it was meant to be. The inhabitants are Hakka.\n\nIn 1856 this island was the scene of a small naval action against a number of pirate junks flying the rebel flag of the Taipings. The captain of H. M. S. Sampson states in his dispatch:\n\nIn proceeding through the mandarin channel (going west) some junks were observed at anchor inside the island, close", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209863, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "100\n\nFurther to the west is Shalowan (\"Sand Snail Bay\") a big village with a fine beach and a fine wood behind it for “fungshui”. The villagers defend their beach against sand diggers with firearms; it guards their paddy fields behind. There is a settlement of early man on the headland near the village; old fields just behind the site are, apparently, for dry crops.\n\nIn a suitable light ancient log slides can be seen, running straight down the steepest hills, on this stretch of coast.\n\nBetween Shalowan and Tai O the only place of note is Sham Wat (\"Deep Dene\"), a narrow valley with two or three tiny hamlets.\n\nJust to the east of Tai O is Po Chu Tam (“Precious Pearl Pool\"). The name may either preserve the memory of a pearl fishery or enshrine a local legend: pearl oysters were once to be found in Hainan only 200 miles away. Po Chu Tam is the back door to Tai O, from it a navigable creek runs down to Tai O town. Po Chu Tam has a big temple with a shed for dragon boats; the head and tail are kept in the temple. On a low headland nearby is a ruined Chinese fort: its work is now done by an Indian guard, put there after a piracy in 1926. Another protection is an old wall with a gate, which stands across the path from Po Chu Tam just outside Tai O. Any active man could out-flank it by going up the hill.\n\nTai O (\"Big Haven\") is the biggest town in Lantau, with over 2,000 people. It was recently building an electric light and power station, run on oil. The town straggles along the shores of its creek, and has a small agricultural plain behind it. About 3 miles up into the hills is a big Buddhist temple, with a number of \"fasting halls\"; these have lately built a bridge and widened the path going up hill. Tai O salt is made in big salt pans, but is of poor quality, and only fit for salting fish. The creek cuts off the hills on which the Police Station stands from the town: it is crossed by a sampan ferry which is leased by auctions held by the elders of the place. In the wider part of the creek is a substantial settlement of boatpeople. They live in huts built on piles driven into the creek bed. These piles are often of stone, but often also of wood or bamboo. The huts are lashed to the piles with wire.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209864, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "101\n\nThe\n\nThere are two similar settlements nearer the Police Station. boatpeople's huts are designed on the model of a sampan or junk, it would seem. Almost certainly the boatpeople are a sign of a non-Chinese element in the population. Several fires have happened, the last in 1930, since when galvanised iron has become popular as roofing, replacing the older roofing of woven palm leaf matting.\n\nTemple funds are often applied to small public works, and in such cases the District Officer gives dollar for dollar from his vote. Works such as repairing tracks, or steps to the water, or paving streets in Tai O often use this source of funding. The District Officer often holds court in the charge room of the Police Station, which is one of the coolest and healthiest in the Territory.\n\nA little to the south of Tai O is Yi O (“Second Heaven\"), which is a mere village, and a little further south again Tsin Yu Wan (\"Arrow Fish Bay\") which has a beautiful sandy beach with a temple, but is otherwise deserted.\n\n1.1\n\n0\n\nOn the extreme south-west tip of Lantau is Shek Sun (“Stone Bamboo-shoots\") on a typical dumb-bell isthmus of sand between two bays. The isthmus connects Lantau proper with the low granite hills forming Fan Lau point which is the end of British territory in this direction. On one hill is an ancient fort, thought to be Dutch; if so, it was probably built and occupied at the time of their attack on Macao in 1622. (The failure of this attack led to the Dutch occupying Taiwan in Formosa, thus drawing Chinese settlers there, who expelled them about fifty years later.) The fort may, however, in fact be Chinese. The name of this village probably comes from the way the boulders stick out of the hills above it, like low pillars.\n\nThere are some fields on the hill above Shek Sun enclosed by dry-stone walls: evidently these were once used for dry crops, but they are now abandoned. They were not pastures: animals are never enclosed when grazing.\n\nTurning to the south coast of Lantau, and moving eastwards from Fan Lau Point, you see in succession three valleys each with a group of villages, all of which are purely agricultural and fishing.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209867, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "104\n\nBefore moving on to discuss the larger islands to the south-east of Lantau, it is worth just mentioning the small islands off Lantau. There are small islands both to the north and the south of the main island.\n\nThe Islands north of Lantau are six in number.\n\nEast Brother, Reef Island and West Brother; fishermen sometimes live there.\n\nChek Lap Kok (\"Red Sea-perch Point\") is a barren island of low granite hills which lies in front of Tung Chung, sheltering its harbour. Big reefs of quartz run through it. Two formerly prosperous quarries on this island were ruined by the 1925 strike. Now there is only farming and fishing. Kwo Lo Wan is a ruined village on the southern isthmus: it is a common placename.\n\nShau Chau (\"Guard-station Isle\") 18; has three dumb-bell isthmuses, two covered at high water, and a third, on which there is a settlement of early man. There is a deserted temple here.\n\nTongkwu (“Brass Drum\") 19 has the chief early settlement of men in this area. The objects found show very little Chinese influence. Later settlements in Sung and Ming times were at the northern end of the beach. The island is used now for fishing and pasturing cattle, and there is a lighthouse. It is a very good example of a dumb-bell island - a sandy isthmus connecting two hills.\n\nUrmston Roads, as the waters between Tongkwu and the mainland are known, was a frequent anchorage for foreign fleets in the 1839 and 1857 wars, despite a strong tidal flow. It was used by a French squadron in 1857, and one ship left a record of her presence by inscribing a stone at Castle Peak with \"Nemesis 1857\".\n\nWe now pass south of Lantau. All this coast suffers from lack of harbours: only bays facing south-west are any good. There is always some swell; and it can be very violent sometimes.\n\nTaking the small islands to the south of Lantau, we have firstly the Soko Islands. There are eight islands in this group", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209868, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "105\n\nwith rocks and reefs in addition; the name may mean \"Dragnet Isles\". The northernmost island is a dumb-bell with quite a good harbour, and a fishing village of huts very different from ordinary Chinese dwellings. This island was another settlement of early man. The southern larger isle has two or three villages on its dumb-bell isthmus. There is a shrimp paste factory here which exports to Europe and America. The names Tai and Sai A Chau mean \"Big and Little Forked Island\". A small island to the west of the group is also a dumb-bell; the isthmus here is covered at high tide.\n\nPatung or Shek Kwu Chau (“Stone Drum Island\") is rocky and barren, but with one small valley where cultivation is possible. It was once proposed to lease the island as a rabbit farm, but the proposers never went on with it.20\n\nits English name\n\nTo the south-east of Lantau are a number of more important islands. Of these the most prosperous is Cheung Chau (“Long Island\"). Cheung Chau is the best example of a dumb-bell island in these waters. The northern end contains a small hamlet and cultivation, the southern end contains the \"Peak\", or European reservation. It started there through missionaries building holiday bungalows on the hills: they began doing so in 1906, attracted by the beaches, the easy marketing and the village ferry to Hong Kong. This was run in the interest of the fish trade, but was taken over some 10 years ago by the Western Ferries Co., a Hong Kong concern,\n\nBetween the fish trade and the market gardens, Cheung Chau breeds more flies per square yard than any other place in the Colony. It has a street cleaning squad, but of course this cannot touch the masses of filth on private property. There is a fire engine, a Government school, a hospital, and a big temple to Pak Tai, god of the Pole Star, the finances of which were inextricably mixed with those of the market, the ferry, and the electric light station. There are plays annually performed in May for the pleasure of Pak Tai, and incidentally for his worshippers, in a huge decorated matshed put up in front of the temple. It draws big crowds, and stimulates business quite a lot. There are other temples too, and little shrines to local spirits. There is also", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209869, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "106 \n\na boarding house where Europeans can put up at cheap rates on the \"Peak\". \n\nAn interesting feature of the island is that nearly all the land is owned by a family association called the Wong Wai Tsak Tong, which has its headquarters in Namtau21. All the buildings, however, are owned by the people who built them, or their modern representatives, who pay a small ground rent to the Tong for their sites. Most of the European houses are on hills, and so are on Crown land, unclaimed by the Tong in 1905 when the land settlement was made. This system of ground landlordism is found very rarely now elsewhere in Hong Kong. It is a relic of the system of paying land tax in distant Namtau by deputy, as happened before 1898, when the Territories were leased. \n\nTo the north-east of Cheung Chau is Neikwuchau (“Nun Island\"). This island once had three villages on it: but two are deserted; the third (Ngau Tau Tong, Cow's Head Pond) still flourishes.22 Pak Pai took its name from the high white rock in the bay off it; Kwo Lo Wan (\"The Bay Along the Road\") is where the limekiln used to be, Chau Kong (\"Old Man Chau\") 28 is a small island lying off Neikwuchau opposite Kwo Lo Wan. It is practically a desert island. I have never seen anyone on it. \n\nFurther to the north-east, beyond Neikwuchau is Pingchau (\"Flat Island\"). Pingchau is another dumb-bell island, its houses being built on the isthmus, with limekilns thick along the western and southern shores, facing sheltered water. An industry not mentioned so far is gambling, which flourishes vigorously in the large, long shops fronting on the main street. As no Police live on Pingchau, nothing serious can be done to stop it. The island is full of Hakkas and Hoklos, who have little in common save mutual dislike. I once had a very bad riot case to try, in which a man had been killed by someone unknown, and the only thing I could do was to bind everyone over to keep the peace. The chief point is that to my amazement they did so! \n\nLeaving Pingchau and travelling east we first come to a group of small uninhabited islands. The first of these, Kau Yi Tsai (\"Little Armchair\")24 is a little desolate island, chiefly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209871, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "108\n\nand more than half of them still live within two miles of these ancient sites, which speak of hundreds of years of settlement and progress, before the Han emperors conquered the coast with a fleet and army.\n\nLeaving aside the islands close to Hong Kong, which have little of interest, we next pass the Potoi group off Cape d'Aguilar (named after a Major-General who commanded the troops in Hong Kong in its early years). All are of granitic rocks seamed with dykes of dark green stone which decay more rapidly than the granite and so often form valleys, caves and hollows. All but Potoi itself are barren and deserted, except for the light on Waglan (Wang Lan \"Barrier Fence\"). About nine years ago, the Chinese second officer of a ship distinguished himself by steering straight on to the island, where the ship not unnaturally stopped. There was no discoverable reason for this exploit; it was not bad weather, though dark it was about 2 a.m. and the light showed clearly. A similar but more excusable disaster occurred in 1916 on the east end of the Lema's eight miles to the south on Tam Kon Shan (“Carrying Pole Mountain\"), when the Chiyo Maru, which was a big trans-Pacific liner, ran aground. I believe few or no lives were lost.\n\nnets.\n\nPotoi has a small but good harbour, very popular with boat people, and with a handsome temple. There are a few shops, and its economic centre is Stanley. The beach is used for drying. Once in 1930 an ingenious fellow tried to monopolize the beach by applying for a matshed site right in the middle of it. I saw the place, saw through his game, and turned him down. Up in the hills are three tiny hamlets, living on the scanty crops their fields produce, and probably selling to the boat people as well; their names mean \"Long Stone Ridge\", \"Cow Lake\", and \"Mountain Hut\" 27.\n\nTo the north, at the entrance to Junk Bay, known in Chinese as \"General's Haven\" (Tseung Kwan O), is an island called Fat or Fu Tau Chau (“Buddha's or Tiger's Head Island\"). It was the site of one of the \"Blockade of Hong Kong\" customs stations; the station is in ruins, although the island has a few inhabitants.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209872, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "109\n\nNam Tong Island (“Southern Hall Island\"). This island is large and mountainous. Military defence work is currently going on there. It was formerly cultivated, but in 1929 the cultivated area was abandoned. There is an Aga light on the southern point. The channel to the north of this island is \"Buddha's Head Pass\". The harbour within this channel is well sheltered: there is a big temple on the mainland to the north of the channel. The chief place of interest on this island is the old fort near the north point, with a south wall thickened, apparently for mounting cannon. This fort is probably Chinese, perhaps built by pirates.\n\nHere we leave the islands of the South District, and enter the North District as we pass into Port Shelter. The interest of this place lies in its extraordinary geography and geology, and its wonderful beauty. The surf which beats on the high pillared cliffs of High Island, Bluff Island, and Basalt Island dies away as your launch passes into the long calm channels, and under the hills of the mainland there is perfect shelter, though I do not think the anchorages are good. Grassy hills come down to the waters' edge, and near Saikung the sea is studded with diminutive islets.\n\nThe soil of these islands appears extremely barren, as the population of the islands is very small. Fishing seems the chief occupation. Settlements are few. Yim Tin is named after some abandoned salt fields a little to the south of the (Roman Catholic) mission church: Kau Sai (\"West of the Channel\") explains itself. There is also a group of settlements in the southern part of High Island. These have the remarkable names of \"North Fork\", \"Tribute Rice Junks Bay\", and \"White Insect Wax\",32 This group and Yim Tin are the only places in these islands where cultivation is of any extent. \"North Fork\" is a most remarkable place. Someone has lavished money on it, the houses and the ancestral temple are well built, a high platform held up by a big masonry retaining wall stands in front of them, and a small stream by the village is crossed by a fine three-span bridge all of stone: it is the sort of stream for which the rest of the Territory think six stepping stones are ample. I have no idea how these names originated, except that the bay may have been an anchorage for junks carrying the tribute rice north from Canton to Peking.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209983, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "220 \n\nand loved the hills, a keen shot and a good one, above all a very good sport who took his failures with a grin and exposed all his mistakes with an engaging candour. There were little gems of descriptive story-telling that made you feel you were with him in all his adventures, and you got to know his favourite spots by his brief and vivid descriptions and little sketches.\n\nI came eventually to several stories about a mystery pig he called the Old Grey Boar, a hermit who was never seen in company with other pigs or who, as he explained it, had been thrown out by the other pigs because he was too bad-tempered. Now this pig could apparently carry without discomfort all the lead the hunters could pump into him, and he had given them the slip on several occasions when they felt sure they had bagged him. Currie always went out with three companions, but he alone wrote up the day. Finally he mentioned that the Chinese beaters firmly believed this was a Joss pig that could not be killed. They were also afraid of him, for after he had been wounded he terrorised the villagers, especially the grass-cutters, and had killed several of them. I did not pay much attention to the story at the time, but I was fascinated by Currie's general descriptions and sat up reading till after midnight, I think I got pig fever that night, a great urge to roam those hills with a few good companions like Currie and, like him, to find new strength up there. Finding good companions was the rub, and the only one I could think of was Hunter. The others had given up the struggle and would not move out of the Club; the hills were too far out and pig-shooting too much like hard work.\n\nThe next day I explored the country around and made myself familiar with the various ranges of hills. To the south was a long range called Chang Shan, on the top of which was a small temple. In between the two main mountains were rolling hills with the main road to Chinkiang twisting through the valley, past a solitary hill like a hog's back, sticking out of the flat country to eastward. This was called Tung Shan, and close to its northern base lay Chakamen, or the beaters' village, as we called it, for most of the beaters lived there.\"\n\nThose readers who wish to read more should turn to page 51 of Rasmussen's fascinating book. My own interest is in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210000, "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "237\n\nThe mud brick walls had been heavily interfered with, having been patched and rebuilt by the squatters. In most parts only one or two feet of mud brick survived, although in two or three places the wall still survived to 8'. The junctions between the mud brick and the granite rubble walls as also between the granite rubble walls and the better built walls of the front were all very crude: the different constructions were not butted in, but left with clean joints. The resulting structural weaknesses were masked by the heavy plastering covering the joints. Three construction joints were broken open to allow this point to be investigated. Walls varied in thickness from 1′ 0″ to 1′ 2½″.\n\nAltar\n\nFrom the memory of villagers who can remember the temple before the War, it is clear that the altar was a solidly built construction made of the same sort of granite rubble blocks as the external walls and again plastered on the outer faces. On either side of the altar a granite rubble and plaster screen wall of the same type as the adjacent external walls existed to divide the altar area off from the rest of the temple. The main hall, that is, the area around the main altar, between the screen walls, was about 10' wide. The two side halls, outside the screen walls, were each about 7' wide. The altar and the adjacent walls were demolished after the War by the squatters who used the granite blocks gained to construct temporary walls across the temple dividing it into three. The plaster at the site where one of the screen walls had been removed could be seen with clear marks showing where the stones had been taken, but no trace of the fittings of the altar could be seen.\n\nSpirit Wall and Incense Smoke Tower\n\nFrom the memories of the villagers who saw the temple before the War a spirit screen was built just inside the main entrance to shield the altar from the view of the people walking past along the footpath. No trace of this feature could be found. Similarly there are memories of an Incense Smoke Tower (courtyard with lateral lean-to roofs) in the centre of the temple, but no signs could be located. A drain in the area which was used by the squatter's cooked food stall may, however, represent the original rain water drain for the Smoke Tower. This area had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210051, "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "TEMPLE ORACLES IN A CHINESE CITY\n\nA Study of the Use of Temple Oracles\n\nin Taichung, Central Taiwan*\n\nJULIAN PAS\n\nPrelude\n\nIn the early morning of February 26, 1978, our group of over a hundred pilgrims from Taichung arrived in the city of Peikang, one of the major centres of the Matsu cult. The ch'ao-t'ien temple there was first built in 1694 and enlarged in 1775. The whole previous day had been spent in visiting temples in other places and burning incense to prepare for this solemn visit. As we arrive, the sedan chair of the goddess which we had brought from Taichung is carried toward the temple gates by ten strong men; the pilgrims follow behind, while musicians blow high-pitched trumpets and beat gongs and drums.\n\nSoon our group disappears inside the temple gates, while the great bell and drum are beaten to welcome the visiting Matsu. All the courtyards and halls are crowded with worshippers. It is still three weeks before the deity's birthday celebration but already every day large crowds of visitors pour into the small town from all over Taiwan. Peikang is the seat of the mother temple of Matsu on the island, and hundreds of temples claim affiliation with it.\n\nWhile the visiting gods and goddesses are carried into the inner shrine and seated on the altar tables to pay homage to the Peikang Matsu, the crowd of pilgrims go about their private devotions. They offer incense to all the deities enthroned here, pray to Matsu, tell her about their problems and uncertainties at home, and ask her advice. Matsu's counsels have been embodied in her temple\n\nTo prepare this survey I was greatly inspired by my learned friends Mr. Liu Chih-wan, a research scholar at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Institute of Ethnology, and by Professor Wolfram Eberhard of the University of California at Berkeley. I am also indebted to the untiring efforts of Miss Ch'en Yu-mei in Taichung, who collected many samples of the temple oracles. I finally wish to recognize my gratefulness to the Tunghai University in Taichung: my team of anthropology students, 1977-78, contributed to the completion of the Taichung sample collection, while the Centre for Environmental Studies kindly offered me office space. (Dr. Pas is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada,)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210282, "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": 253, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "232\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nwords, he starts to accept orders for making Ming-che\" from the middle of the 7th moon. However, not until the beginning of the year is any actual work done. The Association first elects a committee for the 'Yue Lan' festival during the feast for the Lantern Festival (15th of the 1st moon), and several donation-books (Yuan Bu*) are sent out to different places in Japan to collect donations from the Chinese. At about the same time (2nd of the 2nd moon), Mr. Lin starts to make figures, Ming-ches, Chos (paper-made houses for the gods and ancestors), gold and silver paper-made hills, direction flags, and other paraphernalia. Major figures are completed a month before the festival starts. Then, a priest is invited to open the eyes (Kai Kuan H or Kai Yen MIR) of the paper-made figures, and the statues of the Kwan-ti temple and the Tao-ch'ang. On the same day, a ‘Raising the Lantern of Heaven' (Chie T'ien Dan) ritual is done to invite all the spirits to the festival. The committee will then start to send invitation letters to the Chinese in Japan.\n\nThe festival lasted 4 nights and 5 days from Aug. 31 to Sept. 4 (from 13th to 17th of the 7th moon), 1982.” According to a public notice, the rituals included: (i) a daily morning and a daily night ritual, (ii) praying for the reincarnation of the dead in the morning and afternoon, (iii) reporting to Heaven in the afternoon, (iv) offering to the hungry ghosts at night, and, (v) a lantern floating ceremony in the afternoon of Sept. 2.10 Table 1 shows, however, that the scheduled time-table was not strictly followed. For example, on the last morning of the festival, three rituals were performed to thank the gods of the Temple, to thank Heaven, and to offer to the ghosts which were supposed to be late or handicapped, instead of the previously advertised \"praying for reincarnation”.\n\nFrom my observation, it appeared that no one attended the 'Morning Lessons' (Morning ritual and prayer for reincarnation), and, except for the rituals for reporting to Heaven, the lantern floating ceremony and the last ‘Great Offering', there was less than ten persons who attended from start to finish. Besides the rituals for reporting to the Heaven, the three rituals held on the last day and the lantern floating ceremony, all other rituals took place at the 'Tao Ch'ang' area.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210285, "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": 256, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "20\n\n235\n\nhand-gestures implying that he was going to replace the ghosts who were suffering in Hell.\" After that, he threw six Man Taus as if he was offering millions of bread to the hungry ghosts who had been released from Hell. All three representative worshippers of the committee, each holding a small incense stick, attended each night offering ritual. During the last ‘Offering', the Tao Ch'ang area was crowded with worshippers who were mainly family members and relatives of the 'Newly Dead'. Everyone attending the last ‘Offering' held a small incense stick. According to the informants, the ‘Last Offering', different from the other offerings, was especially for the ancestors of the worshippers.\" After the ritual, all the paper-made figures, Chos, and Ming-ches were burnt with paper-made gold and silver hills, bundles of paper money, and fire crackers. As each Ming-che was burning, the family members and the relatives of the 'Newly Dead' bowed down to send it off. For most of the worshippers, the festival had now ended, and only the committee members attended the rituals held on the last morning.\n\nOn the last day, there was a ritual to (i) thank the temple god, Kwan-ti, (ii) thank Heaven, and (iii) give offerings to those handicapped ghosts who were supposed to have come late. For the first time in the whole festival, meat was presented at this ritual.” The festival ended with the priests' departure after the rituals. The Association held a feast in the afternoon of the last day to celebrate the successful completion of the festival.\n\nIII. Composition of the Participants\n\nFour categories of the participants should be specially mentioned. They are: (a) the priests, (b) the common worshippers, (c) the families of the \"Newly Dead,” and (d) the committee members and workers.\n\nA team of nine priests, including eight monks and one nun, were employed from the Huang Po (## Obakku in Japanese) Buddhist sect from the Wan Fu temple (万 Manfukuji in Japanese) in Uji (宇治), Kyoto.23 Although (as at least two informants told me) in the past the priests in this temple were mainly Chinese, they are now all Japanese. They used to have\n\n4:2", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210287, "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": 258, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "Table 2. Income of the Festival\n\nTitle\n\n(Yuan Shau) #T\n\nA B\n\nContribution (yen)\n\nTotal (yen)\n\nSpecial\n\n150,000\n\n150,000\n\nPrincipal\n\n1\n\n110,000\n\n110,000\n\nVice\n\n12\n\n100,000\n\n1,200,000\n\nTu\n\n151\n\n16\n\n50,000\n\n800,000\n\n26\n\n30,000\n\n780,000\n\n37\n\n20,000\n\n740,000\n\n92\n\n10,000\n\n920,000\n\n112\n\n5,000\n\n560,000\n\n40\n\n3,000\n\n120,000\n\n1\n\n2,500\n\n2,500\n\n108\n\n2,000\n\n216,000\n\n1,500\n\n1,500\n\n96\n\n1,000\n\n96,000\n\nTotal\n\n165\n\n543\n\n5,696,000\n\n* A: number of names listed in the Yellow-book\n\n* B: number of names listed on a red paper pasted on the wall\n\nA B\n\nF\n\n* note:\n\nInformants said that A was the P'ang (†) and B was Kifu ( Japanese term means donation)\n\n= Jap-\n\n1\n\n# The A class Ming-che was 470,000 yen, B class was 350,000, and C class was 200,000. In addition, each of the Gold, silver, cloth, and coin hills ( · Mil ki - l) was 25,000 yen. In the case of Kyoto, the prices were: a) gold or silver hills (full): 5,000 yen, b) rice (16): 3,000 yen, c) 10 kinds of vegetarian food (FM): 3,000 yen, d) Gold or silver (paper money) ( IN ): 3,000 yen, e) paper-made gold bar ( CW ): 700 yen, f) Japanese type incense sticks (#); 800 yen, g) paper money ( 24 ); 200 yen, small candle (one) (--); 200 yen, h) Chinese incense sticks ( f ); 500 yen.\n\n@ Moreover there were 266 paper tablets presented in the 'Ancestral Hall', each tablet costing 3,500 yen. Thus, the total income from the tablets was 931,000 yen.\n\n=\n\nSecond World War, he and three of his brothers married and live separately but they have only one Cho-sin-pai-lau (i ★m in Cantonese altar of the ancestor) in his mother's house. And in the festival the family presented only one paper tablet. One committee member told me that all Chinese ethnic groups living in Kobe came to the festival but those who came from other Prefectures were mostly Hokkienese. There were three groups of non-Kobe worshippers:\n\ni) They were Hokkienese or they had affinal relationship with the Hokkienese in Kobe. For example the man from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210667, "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-1986", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "IMMIGRANTS AND SOCIAL ETHOS: HONG KONG IN THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES\n\nHELEN F. SIU*\n\nIntroduction\n\nSince the early 1980s, terms such as “mainland boy” (大陸仔), “green stamp alien” (綠印客), “Canton Boy” (廣東仔), “Ah Chan” (阿燦), have entered the daily vocabulary of the Hong Kong media.' These terms specifically address Chinese immigrants who came to Hong Kong in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Around 1949, 700,000 refugees fled to Hong Kong from China. Another wave came in the wake of the famine years in the late 1950s. A third group consisted of “sent-down” city youths who escaped the chaos of the Cultural Revolution from 1969 to 1974. The recent wave of immigrants was triggered by liberalization policies in China. In 1977, 31,000 arrived in Hong Kong legally and illegally. In 1978, another 95,000 came. Immigration reached its peak in 1979 when 178,000 crossed the border. Another 91,000 made their way into Hong Kong in 1980, not to count numerous others who would never be found in the crowd. By the time the Hong Kong Government passed emergency bills in 1980 to restrict the inflow of immigrants, one out of twelve Hong Kong residents had settled for fewer than three years. Considering that different waves of immigrants have made up the population of Hong Kong since the 1940s, and that their energies and resources are well recognized, it is intriguing to see recent immigrants being singled out as a distinct social category and heaped upon with negative images. According to a survey conducted by students in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public sentiments towards recent immigrants were not couched in the most friendly terms. Eighty-five percent\n\n* Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Yale University.\n\nAuthor's note:\n\nI wrote this paper under very sad circumstances. Judy Strauch, a fellow student, colleague, friend, had organized a panel for the Regional China Seminar at UC Berkeley in 1985 on refugees in Hong Kong. Due to her untimely death, I was asked to present a paper in her place. I kept the topic Judy had chosen with the hope that this was what she would have liked written.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210758, "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-1986", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "92\n\nCHAN WING HOI\n\nthe celebration only this time. Neither the yn-sau nor his indigenous deputy whom I talked to knew anything about the gods except for Tin Hau.\n\n9\n\nNeglecting my question as to whether the gods other than Tin Hau had been invited at their own places, the priest Chan Wa expounded his theory of the connection of each god with a locality. He started with the earth gods. The earth god of the “head” of a village guarded the “head” of the village, and his counterpart of the \"tail\" of the village guarded the \"tail\" of the village. Other earth gods, such as the earth gods of the homes of individual families and of hills and graves, guarded their own locations of responsibility. The same principle applied even to Tin Hau (“Ma-neung”). Each village (heung) was guarded by a different ma-neung, each of whom received offerings from the temple of her village. To stress that there was more than one Tin Hau, the priest alluded to the belief that the title was applied to three sisters, not one goddess. He compared the localized nature of the gods with the Qing administration of this region. The Dongguan and Bao'an counties were once under the same magistrate. As communication between different spots of the vast area was inconvenient, the place was later split into separate counties each under its own administration.\n\nMy impression was that although most gods were localized, some were more so than others. While the influences of earth gods were strictly limited to their localities, temple gods were given guardianship of their localities as well as a more or less global portfolio. It is therefore to be expected that when the interest of an individual or a group becomes less localized, it is gods such as Tin Hau whose protection extends beyond a narrowly defined geographic area that remain important, and localized gods whose influence is limited to a small area would receive less attention. In the case of Shek O, some of the latter were earth gods who protected the villagers while they fished and farmed. Now that Shek O residents had given up farming and fishing, although these gods continued to be invited to the jiu, many at the festival hardly knew who they were.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210836, "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-1986", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "170\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nstrengthened by his baptism and resolve to study theology.\n\nAs a theological student, A-sow was soon preaching and in 1849 Dr. Legge noted that he began to show considerable ability in public speaking. The following year the missionary committee agreed that he should continue his studies for two or three more years. He was urged to improve his Chinese. At the same time he was to assist at the school in teaching English.\n\nIn December 1850, Dr. Legge received a shock, A-sow appeared in a hearing before the Police Magistrate. The case concerned the loss and reappearance of bills of exchange worth about $50,000,\n\nIn the summer of 1849, the agent of the P and O Shipping Company reported the loss of a valuable parcel from one of its ships. It had been addressed to the firm of Gibb, Livingston and Co, a firm that is still doing business in Hongkong today. About this time a cook's assistant picked up a bill for some £300 near Union Chapel in Hollywood Road not far from the London Mission House and School. Being written in English he could not read it. So he showed it to his employer. It was from the lost parcel.\n\nNow more than a year later A-sow turned up at the police station with two bills worth about £2,000, asking if the owner was known. He told the police he had received these bills and others from a former coolie in Dr. Legge's employ. The coolie in turn said he had received them from two other people, one who had left for California and the other was the same man who claimed to have picked up the £300 bill the year before.\n\nOn the basis of this testimony, the latter was charged with robbery. Under oath A-sow deposed that the London Mission Society coolie had brought the bills to him some ten months earlier asking if they were of importance.\n\nA-sow said he took them to the Rev Ho Fuk-tong for his opinion. The reply was they were worthless, whereupon A-sow put them in a drawer in his desk and forgot about them. Ho Fuk-tong at the hearing denied ever having seen the bills, thus putting into question A-sow's credibility.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211545, "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-1988", "page_number": 262, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "238 \n\nputs it, this was xuewen, which we can render only crudely as \"learning\" or \"book learning\". As Dennerline notes, there is really no English equivalent for the term, for what matters is not the learning but the spiritual communion that xuewen establishes among scholars.\n\nQian Mu understood more than most Chinese scholars of the present time (though as Dennerline demonstrates, the matter was one of much open dispute in the 1930s), that aside from the culture of the written word with which he identified Chinese culture, there was an arena that might be described as local custom. In Chapter Three Dennerline describes this arena as it appeared in Qian's home village, and in Chapter Four as it appeared to Qian himself when, at the age of eighty, he wrote about his childhood and youth, and especially, his parents' devotion to his upbringing.\n\nThese are fascinating chapters. Outside the scholar's intellectual world was this community in which his values early in life were formed. This was a community that saw itself as being organised into a lineage. An apical ancestor gave birth to seven sons and so Qian's family was immersed in one of seven lines. This was a community that was very much represented by its ancestral halls and temples, where outwardly the rules for governance might be described in terms of propriety. However, harsh reality was different in many ways from the requirements of propriety. Competition for scarce resources gave rise to the control of family estates by a minority of rich households, and to widows being forced to disinherit their adopted sons (so that their legacy might be assigned to another member of the lineage). Dennerline refrained from commenting on Qian's own description of his family's position within the community, but Qian's reminiscence that he translates in full in Chapter Four would have us believe that his father, who died at forty-one, could hold the balance in this complex world of wheeling and dealing, by sheer force of moral character. There is the sense of a fairy tale in that account, of traditional morality winning in a contest dominated by private greed, with only a little support from a local magistrate. Those two chapters form the real background to Dennerline's own conclusion in Chapter Five.\n\nDuring one of Dennerline's interviews with Qian Mu, Qian asked him if he thought there was hope for mainland China. Dennerline states", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211551, "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-1988", "page_number": 268, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "244\n\nhalls and genealogies as significant constituents of the lineage when in fact they were just status-symbols of a past era. In the end, that aspect of the lineage which constituted the product of an official culture must be distinguished from those real lineages \"on the ground\" having rights of settlement and built upon rules of inheritance and estate.\n\nI would like to address my criticism with regard to three dimensions of his overall argument: 1) his assertion that the principles of lineage organization (i.e. descent) and village are distinct and that both then collaborate to produce a \"lineage society\" (his part 1), 2) his contention that the \"great\" lineages depicted in the historical and ethnographic literature are official \"fictions\" and thus should be dissociated from those real lineages on the ground” (his part 2), and 3) his argument that the appearance of lineage-villages and village-alliances in the \"post-traditional” era was made possible only following the decline of the \"great\" clans (the historical relationship between parts 1 and 2). I think there are failures with respect to all three dimensions.\n\n1\n\nWith respect to the first, frankly I see nothing in his alternative thesis which presents any salient criticism of Freedman's thesis or any serious understanding of the latter in its own terms. In fact, his basic argument would have been enhanced by not even referring to Freedman at all. Faure's attack on Freedman's focus on the apparent \"coincidence of agnatic and local community” misses the mark completely because the actual local constitution of territorial groups was never a crucial concern in any of Freedman's monographs as it is for Faure as a local historian. In his preface to the first of two monographs on Chinese lineage organization, Freedman (1958:xii) recognized the existence of both single-lineage and multi-lineage villages in order to emphasize the thrust of his thesis as something quite other, namely the functional operation of the lineage (as descent group) in analytical terms, irrespective of how it happens to be constituted in territorial terms. As he put it rather unambiguously.\n\nI must make it plain that while I attempt to remain faithful to the facts I have been able to adduce, the picture I gradually build up inevitably departs from reality by subsuming (territorial) variations under generalized heads. But if my picture of the localized lineage (as sociological ideal type) in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211569, "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-1988", "page_number": 286, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "DAVID FAURE'S REJOINDER:\n\nThere is much in this review that I dislike how can Chun take me to task, on the one hand, for dabbling in Anthropology, and on the other hand, conclude that I think “local history can be understood simply by looking at events and personages as they take place on the ground”?\n\nHowever, let me answer the several criticisms that I think touch on some of the major issues. First, Chun thinks I do not have a salient criticism of Freedman's thesis. Let me reiterate that much as we have learnt from Freedman, I found him wanting for not being able to incorporate village religion into his lineage framework, and for being sloppy in his use of terms such as \"local lineage\", \"higher-level lineage\" and \"clan\". I think my argument for the importance of \"settlement rights\" salvages his concept of the \"local lineage\".\n\nSecond, Chun does not present here accurately my argument concerning the grandiose freestanding ancestral halls built in the official style. I do not argue that there was a \"period\" of the \"Five Great Clans” not even in the eastern portion of the New Territories. I think the linkage of lineage groups across settlement, and the adoption of a code of conduct that included the compilation of written genealogies and that was consistent with officially prescribed standards, took root as a change in style that began in the sixteenth century and gradually worked its way from the richer and more powerful lineages to the poorer ones. This process took fully three centuries, and during this period different territorial groups dominated different parts of the eastern New Territories. In a nutshell, Lung Yeuk Tau (Tang surname) was overlord of all this area, with minor concessions to the Haus of Hung Leng and Ho Sheung Heung, up to the end of the Ming dynasty, The Lius of Sheung Shui sprang into prominence in the early Qing, nibbling into former Tang terrain, while possibly some time in the eighteenth century, the Hung Leng Haus lost their holdings. Of the other two surnames in the “Five”, the Fan Ling P'aangs did not achieve prominence until the nineteenth century, and while the Tai Hang Mans were taken into account by Lung Yeuk Tau, Sheung Shui and Ho Sheung Heung when the Po Tak Tz Old Alliance was formed in the early Qing (possibly eighteenth century), its influence declined subsequently until it became a party of the Kau Yeuk, along with the P'aangs, that founded Tai Po new market in the late nineteenth century. This history notwithstanding, my argument is quite simply that the ancestral worship one sees the villagers practise", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211639, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "29\n\ndedicated to Pao Kung, the Lenient Judge, and also in a Buddhist temple in Beverley Hills on Cebu where he has behind him a small image of the Jade Emperor's second son Erh T'ai Tzu (...). The whole group of the Jade Emperor's family, though only the two sons (the second one and the third) are portrayed, is referred to as Chiu Chung T'ien Lao Tsu (LICEEM).\n\nA rural temple on the island of Penang contains three images on its secondary altar identified as the Three Sons of the Jade Emperor. They are referred to as San Yuan T’ai Tzu (SAT).\n\nAnother rural folk religion temple at Bukit Mertajam on the Malaysian mainland opposite Penang contains an image of the Jade Emperor's Fourth Daughter (Ti Ssu Kung Chu Pч2) on one side of the main deity on the altar, the Jade Emperor himself, with an aide to the princess on the other side of the Jade Emperor. The aide is known as Meng Yen Hua (夢燕花),\n\nAn unusual image, of a farmer standing holding a hoe over his shoulder, stands on a private altar belonging to a Hakka petty businessman in Kranji, Singapore. The businessman explained that it portrayed one of the sons of the Jade Emperor and had been brought from eastern Kuangtung province last century; it has been prayed to for good crops ever since. He is known as Li Po Kung Kung (#22).\n\nIn one group in Singapore, on a Taoist altar in Lorong How Sun, the Jade Emperor is attended by four of his seven daughters. The first is Hsien Chi Niang Niang (瑄姬娘娘), the second is Kuan Yin, the third is T'ien Hou and the fourth is Nu Wa. All but the eldest are well known deities from early Taoism and Buddhism in their own right. Hsien Chi Niang Niang has only been noted twice, both times in Singapore, on altars where she is said to be the eldest daughter of the Jade Emperor. She is portrayed standing on rocks, holding a fly whisk in her right hand.\n\nAgain in Singapore, on a private altar, a Buddha figure, gilded and seated in a lotus position, was identified as Han Hsien Fu Tsu (#\n\nbili), and said to be a daughter of the Jade Emperor (see Plate 8). She has three identifying features apart from her Buddhist five-leaf crown. These are a small dragon crawling over her left knee, a vase balanced on her right knee and her palms held facing together before her chest with her fingers making a mystic sign. This image has also been seen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211710, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "100\n\nTsun Wan has several local industries; . . . In the valley running up into the hills to the south-west of Tai Mo Shan there is a village consisting entirely of watermills, where wood is ground up for the manufacture of joss sticks. This picturesque place is about half a mile beyond Tsun Wan, near the 9th milestone, and follows the stream upwards, first on the one bank and then on the other. The first watermill is reached in 5 minutes' walk from the road, and beyond are a dozen more little houses perched on the sides of the valley, each with its waterwheels busily turning. For a small tip the owner of one of these mills will show you inside; the atmosphere is thick with fragrant dust, and through it you can dimly see great stone-headed hammers pounding away the aromatic wood.23\n\nFrom the description cited, the area seems to be Tso Kung Tam (2H), which is situated to the north-west of Tsuen Wan. According to elder villagers, there were six water-wheels in operation after 1930, and one of these was still in operation until 1952-1953. Later, they were replaced by electrically driven grinders, and manufacturing activities expanded to include the production of incense coils. Heywood's description was written during the last few years in which the incense wood was pounded by water power. The whole area was resumed by the Government around 1978 for the construction of the Tsuen Wan Mass Transit Railway Terminus.\n\nAlthough Tsuen Wan is the best known of the incense milling centres of the New Territories, and was the only one to survive after the 1920s, in the early years of the century there were at least two others. Sandalwood mills were noted at Pak Kiu Tsai between Pun Chung and Wun Yiu immediately outside Tai Po New Market during the Block Crown Lease surveys of about 1905. Similarly, early twentieth-century maps show sandalwood mills at Heung Fan Liu (56%, “Incense Powder Sheds\") just outside Tai Wai in Sha Tin. Heung Fan Liu and Pak Kiu Tsai are sites very similar to Tso Kung Tam in Tsuen Wan immediately alongside a fast-flowing stream with a substantial year-round flow of water to power the water-wheels. Heung Yuen Wai (I, \"Incense Tree Grove\") in Ta Kwu Ling may also be a placename referring to the incense trade → adjacent villages are called Tsung Yuen (AB, \"Pine Grove\") and Chuk Yuen (†, \"Bamboo Grove''), suggesting three local specializations. No sandalwood mills at Heung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211731, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "121\n\nCHEUNG SHAN KWU TSZ (長山古寺), AN OLD BUDDHIST NUNNERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES, AND ITS PLACE IN LOCAL SOCIETY\n\nThe Plan of the Nunnery\n\nP. H. HASE*\n\nHong Kong has dozens of Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, mostly located in the New Territories. Almost all are recent foundations. The majority were founded by monks or nuns fleeing from one of the three major disturbances to Buddhist life in China in the last 80 years - the 1911 Revolution, and the chaos of the Warlord years which succeeded it; the Anti-Superstition Campaign mounted by the Kuomintang from the mid 1920s; and the Communist Revolution of 1949-1952.\n\nThese monasteries and nunneries mostly share a single common plan, which distinguishes a Buddhist place of worship from the ordinary temple of the traditional village religion. The ordinary temple consists of a windowless rectangular hall, with the altar to the God against one of the short walls, and entered through the opposite short wall. The hall usually has a Tin Tseng (天井), or lightwell, in the centre for the escape of incense smoke. Often two subordinate similar halls are placed one on either side of the main hall, interconnecting by arches.\n\nMost Buddhist institutions are built to a different plan. They are centred on a Buddha Hall (A, 大殿), which is also a rectangle, but one entered through the centre of one of the long walls, and the altar is not against the opposite long wall, but free-standing a little in front of it. These Buddha Halls usually have windows, and do not have Tin Tseng. In large monasteries or nunneries, the Buddha Hall is a free-standing structure surrounded by a portico, placed in the centre of an enclosed courtyard-garden on a raised podium, with the other buildings forming ranges along the edges of the courtyard. The whole complex is enclosed: the monastery or nunnery, unlike the ordinary temple, is\n\n* The author would like to thank those Ta Kwu Ling elders who gave him the information on which much of this article is based, and also the staff of the District Office, North, who assisted in setting up the interviews. He would also like to thank the staff of the District Land Registry, North, for their unfailing courtesy and assistance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211737, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "127\n\nabove it which could be used as a further bedchamber. A small window lights the cockloft, and there is also a single-brick opening near the ladder to the cockloft which provides a little light. Apart from this, the only light for this area comes through the archway linking it with the Main Hall. In front of the bedchamber was a small living hall, originally with chairs and side-tables this space could also have been used as sleeping space if the number of guests was large. The nunnery Bell and Drum are housed in this area, near the arch.\n\nThe front part of the fourth section is the kitchen, with a store-room behind it. The kitchen is quite large, with a large wok built into a brick stove, and three charcoal stoves on a stone shelf. The kitchen also contains the big water jars and the guest latrine. There is no cockloft in this area; the kitchen occupies the whole space below the rafters. There are two tiny windows in the front wall of the kitchen, one above the other, to let light in and fumes out.\n\nIn the kitchen, in place of the more frequently found Kitchen God, is a paper tablet to Na Luo Wang (**捺罗王**). This rare deity, found only in monastic kitchens in the Hong Kong region, is the deity who supervises fasting and vegetarian diets, and his shrine in the kitchen is intended to ensure that the kitchen is not defiled by being used to cook meat.*\n\nThe ruins of the Lung Kai nunnery seem to show a plan similar to that of the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz. The Lung Kai nunnery was larger, forming a rectangle about 60 feet deep and a little over 60 feet broad. It was divided into five sections rather than the four of the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz. Whereas the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz faces approximately south, with the residential area on the west (to the left as you look at the building), the Lung Kai nunnery faces approximately north-west, with the residential area on the west (to the right as you look at the building). The worshipping halls at the Lung Kai nunnery were three in number, and occupied the back part of the three easternmost sections. They opened into a large Tin Tseng, which occupied the central part of all three of these sections, and which was surrounded on all four sides by a covered walkway. The Tin Tseng was one or two steps lower than the worshipping halls. The three altars were to an eighteen-armed Kwun Yam, to Yuen Tan, (2), and, it is thought, to Kwan Tai.\n\n* I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Keith G. Stevens for the information in this paragraph.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211738, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "128\n\nThe front part of these three easternmost sections at the Lung Kai nunnery comprised the guest quarters (in the first and third sections), and the main entrance to the nunnery (in the second section). The guest quarters consisted of a twelve foot square room in each of the two sections in question, each with a cockloft above, and each opening off the Tin Tseng.\n\nAt the Lung Kai nunnery the residential accommodation for the nuns, with the kitchen, was in the fourth and fifth sections, but nothing of this survives, except for the doorsill of the door connecting it with the Tin Tseng (including the marks of the settings for the bars), and the sill of the external door connecting the quarters of the nuns directly with the access path to the nunnery. The nunnery opened directly onto this access path, and backed directly onto the hillside; there was no courtyard or enclosure.\n\nThe present layout of the Ling To monastery (this institution was previously a nunnery, but has housed immigrant monks for the last seventy years) suggests that the original plan there was not dissimilar. The present (1970) buildings form a rectangle, of about 85 feet by 65 feet, divided into rooms which seem to represent the shadow of a previous arrangement whereby the buildings were divided into sections by walls running from the front to the back. The present structure suggests that there were, before the 1970 rebuilding, five of these walls, and six sections. The buildings face approximately due north. The easternmost two sections seem likely to have been the original living quarters. The third to fifth sections are now used as worshipping space, and this seems likely to have been the original use as well. The main entrance was previously in the fourth section, (it was moved to the sixth section in 1970) and the space where it used to be has two small square rooms to either side of it, which are likely to be part of the original design; these may have been the original guest-quarters, as in the corresponding position at Lung Kai. The monastery is roofed with two transverse gables, with Tin Tseng between, and this is also likely to be part of the original design: Tin Tseng are currently found in the second, the fourth (this Tin Tseng probably originally covered the whole of sections three to five), and another in the sixth section.\n\nIt will be seen that the Ling To monastery originally had a plan which seems to have been almost identical with Lung Kai, with the addition of a sixth section beyond the triple worshipping halls. It is possible that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211739, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "129\n\nthis sixth section was added at the 1928 rebuilding, and was connected with the taking over of the nunnery by immigrant monks at that date. If the original building was of only five sections, then it would have been of a very similar size to Lung Kai - about 70 feet by 65 feet - as well as of an almost identical design; the only significant difference would be that, at Ling To, the living quarters of the nuns were to the east of the worshipping space, while at Lung Kai they were to the west.\n\nBoth at the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and at the Lung Kai monastery, therefore, and at the Ling To monastery, as far as the original layout can be deduced, the plan is quite distinct from the standard Buddhist plan seen in most of Hong Kong's Buddhist institutions. The worshipping halls are entered through the short walls, and the main altar is set against the opposite short wall, with a Tin Tseng between. There is no trace of the transverse hall arrangement. Both the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the Ling Kai nunnery open directly onto the roadway; neither has any trace of a courtyard-garden or other enclosure - although the Ling To monastery is now surrounded by a garden, which is probably original.\n\nAll these institutions were clearly designed for only a few resident nuns - the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz for probably no more than an abbess and three nuns at most, and the Lung Kai nunnery (and probably the Ling To house as well) for an abbess and perhaps up to four or five nuns. In none of these cases was provision made for large communities by way of substantial ranges of residential buildings. The groundplan of these nunneries is very similar to that of the ordinary temples to the gods of the traditional village religion, with living quarters similar to local farmhouses attached. The implications of this sort of plan must be of closer integration into the local community, and of closer identification of Buddhism and the traditional village religion than is now common.\n\nThe Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the local road system\n\nThe Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was probably founded in the late eighteenth century. The whole of the Sha Tau Kok area was settled by Hakka clans, none of which claims a settlement date of before the Coastal Evacuation (1669), and many of which settled there only during the first half of the eighteenth century, or even later. Most clans consisted of only just one or two nuclear families at the date of their settlement in the area. The population of the Sha Tau Kok area was, therefore, very low during the early eighteenth century, and only started to build up", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211747, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "137\n\nCheung (張) lineage of Wong Pui Ling. The area, however, was fertile, rich, and, by the later eighteenth century, becoming relatively densely populated. Growth of stronger and less politically quiescent inter-village groupings could be expected, and the clearest evidence of this comes from the nunnery.\n\nThe nunnery was founded by the villages of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung on the one hand, and Loi Tung and Man Uk Pin on the other. Loi Tung was a tight lineage alliance of three large villages of the Punti Tang clan (Loi Tung Lo Wai, San Wai, and Tai Tong Wu), and Man Uk Pin was a single, large Hakka village, predominantly of the Chung clan. The nunnery lay in six shares: Ping Che, Ping Yeung, Wo Keng Shan, Loi Tung, Tai Tong Wu, and Man Uk Pin. Of these, the Wo Keng Shan and Tai Tong Wu shares were probably there to reflect the greater size and strength of the Chan and Tang lineages within the grouping. In practice, however, the nunnery was controlled by the four clans of the Mans, Chans, Tangs, and Chungs, and normally probably had one Manager drawn from each lineage.” This group of eight villages, most of them large and wealthy, clearly represents a new generation of inter-village grouping in the Ta Kwu Ling area.\n\nThe importance of the road through the Miu Keng pass has been discussed above. The position of the nunnery on the road was not only of value to travellers seeking shelter, it was also of major strategic and political significance. The road was the only passage through the hills, and could not be by-passed. Whoever controlled this pass controlled much of the Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun road. The foundation of the nunnery was the result of the grouping together of a few villages which were clearly seeking to capitalise on their strategic location, and thus to increase their local political leverage and district significance. The political significance of the foundation should not be downplayed. The religious impetus behind the foundation should not, of course, be ignored, but the strategic significance of the grouping is too strong to be overlooked. The nunnery-founding group of villages seems to be, in fact, an early example of a Yeuk (約) mutual defence and support inter-village alliance. The villages which had founded the nunnery seem to have worshipped there together at the Yu Lan Festival in the summer, when vegetarian food was served to the elders and faithful in front of the nunnery.\n\nIt is likely that the Ping Yuen Hap Heung people used their alliance with the groups east of the pass to strengthen their position as against", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211753, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "143\n\nwere maintained throughout the area. How long the watch on the Ta Kwu Ling was maintained is unclear, but a watch of some sort on the entrances to the area was kept up for a long time.\n\n33\n\nThe Shing Ping She was probably managed by a management committee, composed of one representative from each of the six Yeuk. The names of the committee appointed in 1924 survive. Below the management committee, there seems to have been a manager or managers for day-to-day activity.\n\n14\n\nThe villagers wanted spiritual protection as well as physical protection for the area. The Ping Yuen temple at Ping Che watched over the Ping Che road, and the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz over the Miu Keng road. The Shing Ping She established a third temple, the Kim Ho Temple, between the two bridges, where the Sham Tsun road passes through the gorge. This temple was built where the extinct Cheung market had been, and may have been a re-foundation of an older temple, since most markets in the area had temples. The re-foundation or foundation would, in any case, have marked very clearly the ending of Cheung power in the area. The Kim Ho temple was a Tin Hau temple, and the divinity was invited to the new temple from the Ping Yuen temple. This linked the new temple with the old one. In addition, a nun was appointed to live in the Kim Ho temple and conduct Buddhist rituals in a side-hall. Thus the three main entrances to the Ta Kwu Ling area were well defended spiritually, and ritually connected together into one system.\n\nThe Shing Ping She also rebuilt the temple at Ping Che. It was rebuilt as a temple in two parts, the main worshipping hall, with the altar to Tin Hau, and its side-halls, and a second worshipping unit consisting of a Heroes Shrine, to commemorate the young men who had died in the fighting with Wong Pui Ling. After the rebuilding, the temple was returned to the Ping Yuen Hap Heung for management. The Heung continued to own the main worshipping hall, but the Shing Ping She owned the Heroes Shrine, as a couplet in the Shrine, commemorating a repair in 1915, confirms.\n\n15\n\nThe Shing Ping She worshipped communally at the Heroes Shrine at Ping Che at the Spring and Autumn Rituals, followed by a communal vegetarian meal in front of the temple. Similar rituals then took place at the Kim Ho temple.\n\n36", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211920, "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": 335, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "310\n\nin Guangxi, Documents preserved in genealogies testify to his involvement in clan matters. He was credited with having compiled a genealogy. He and his son headed the short name list on the new grave stone for the wong-gu prepared in 1471. A preface he wrote in 1472 for a genealogy written by a certain “clan uncle” can be found in many existing genealogies. They also record accounts of the wong-gu and her husband written in 1489 by a jeun-si of the surname Lau from Dongguan at Ting-Jing's request.\n\nThe Xin'an gazetteer of 1688 named Hung Yi as the tax-payer for two local ferries. The two ferries had most probably provided income to an ancestral fund in his honour. But it was unlikely that his trust had any significant income. Present-day elders remember that in earlier days the expenses for the worship for Hung-Yi had to be shared among the villages of Kam Tin.\n\nIn terms of ancestral trusts and ancestral halls, however, the lower level ancestors in whose names the segments of the lineage below the branches were organised were probably even more important. Besides the annual worship at the ancestral halls and graves, such segments had various ways of reinforcing their solidarity and maintaining their network of information. In the case of Ching-Lok jou it used to be the case that the managers, heads of the main branches (ga, or \"family\") and the accountant were invited to a banquet on the day before each of the major festivals of the year. A member of Ji-Ga Tong, another lineage segment, mentioned to me a customary get-together of all the male members on one day at the New Year. I have heard of a similar practice in another segment, Gwong-Yu Tong. They hold a get-together on the first day of the New Year at their ancestral hall from early in the morning, and again worshipped at the Daai-Wong Temple, a temple the founding ancestor had started, on the seventh day of the First Month.\n\nC. Wan Guk and the Ching Lok Ancestral Hall\n\nThe senior branch (descended from Yam) was the most successful until late in the seventeenth century. Hung-Yi's eldest son Yam had three sons. Yam had the second, now known as Naam-Kai jou, adopted to be heir of his (Yam's) youngest brother Gyun. The two remaining sons of Yam were Ching-Lok and Loi-Sing (alias Gwong-Yu, but not to be confused with the Gwong-Yu of Gwong-Yu Tong). Ching-Lok had four sons, the eldest of whom was Wan-Guk. According to oral tradition", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211925, "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": 340, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "315\n\npiracy problem in the late Ming, the Coastal Evacuation and its aftermath. In 1662, to deny Ming loyalists supply and support, the Qing government ordered the coastal population of Xin'an county, among others, to evacuate inland (see Ng 1983:26-28). Many died. They were only allowed to return in 1669, thanks to the petitions of the Governor of Guangdong Wong Loi-Yam and the Governor-General Jau Yau-Tak.\n\nIt is to be expected that the population became smaller in the period just after the evacuation. Many new lineages had migrated into the area in this period (Siu 1984:5-6). These newcomers would have been a threat to those who had settled long before the evacuation. Some of the “locals” had probably also learnt from the previous experience the need to get organized. Others would have to follow suit if they did not want to be dominated by large power groups. Students of the region see the Evacuation (1662-1669) as a turning point in its history. Watson (1985:25), for example, pointed out, \"Many of south [Xin'an] temples, and large corporate descent groups trace their beginning to this period”. The construction of temples and ancestral halls, she suggested, were steps to strengthen the organizational framework and power of the dominant lineages.\n\n12\n\nThe ancestral hall for Ching-Lok's segment, as I have noted above, was probably first built before this period. In Kam Tin a few other ancestral halls and the Jau and Wong Temple were erected in this period. Before this period, therefore, some of the Dangs in Kam Tin had ancestral halls and some had none. From early in this period every one \"belonged” to at least one ancestral hall. One of them, the Mau-Ging Tong, was obviously different in nature from the earlier Ching-Lok ancestral hall. It encompassed the three junior branches of the lineage. An inscription for the rebuilding of the Mau Ging Tong included in the Si Gim Tong genealogy acknowledged that it was built subsequent to the Ching-lok ancestral hall, in the Kangxi period (1662-1735). Another ancestral hall, Loi-Sing tong, was also built in this period, in 1701, for the brother of Ching-Lok, as noted above. All of the Dangs of Kam Tin belong to one of these three ancestral halls. Even then, there is no common ancestral hall for all the Dangs of Kam Tin. The Gwun-Yam temple at the site of the present Ling-Wan Ji monastery, to which I shall return later, may have been important to Kam Tin as a whole since very early days. The Jau and Wong Temple built in 1685 dedicated to two officials, and its associated decennial jiu festival also provided all the Dangs of Kam Tin with a unified symbol of identity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211944, "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": 359, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "334\n\nBui Leng village was established in very early days, “even earlier than Kam Tin\". But the building of Yau-Leun Tong had destructive effects on its fung-sheui. After the rise of the Dangs the Sa Bui Ling villagers became their ha-fu.\n\nI have talked with a 64-year-old Mr. Chan, who was the oldest person in this village. The villagers were originally of three surnames: Chan, Yeung and Yun. The Yuns have left no descendants. The villagers had established Sa Bui Leng at the same time as the Dangs established their settlement. The Dangs had taken measures to prevent the prosperity of this village. They built three ancestral halls (chi tong-jai), i.e. Yau-Leun Tong, and two others, which used to be at the site of the present playground, and dug a pond which had only been filled up to build the cinema some ten years ago. The combination had bad impacts on the fung-sheui of Sa Bui Leng and the Chans suffered a serious decline. Therefore some of them had moved to Tai Kiu, a small village in Yuen Long.\n\nBefore the war, the Chan family had grown rice on fields rented from a wealthy Dang and one of the jous of the Kam Tin Dangs. Mr. Chan stressed that the family farmed land rented from the Dangs, they did not work for them. There are indications that at least for the last hundred years, the Sa Bui Leng people were accepted as equals by some of the poorer Dangs. The Chan family was a member of the Yi-Chung Wui, a ritual association which drew its members mostly from the poorer Dang villagers of Kim Tin, since at least the time of his great grandfather. I also discovered that Mr. Chan's wife was a daughter of a Tai Hong Wai Dang.\n\nV. WORSHIP\n\nThe supernatural world was very real to the villagers. It is still so to many of the elders. A Mr. Dang who had spent his youth in a trading firm on Hong Kong Island told me that in the old days when the area was less densely populated, one often encountered ghosts. Now that there were more people one rarely saw ghosts. I have heard something similar from a younger Mrs. Dang. The belief in the reality and power of the gods is strong too. It is, above all, manifested in the villagers' behaviour in the jiu festival.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211971, "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": 386, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "361\n\nBack at the ritual site, the ritual representatives installed the image of Gwun-Yam in the temporary altar dedicated to her, and the spirit tablets for the others in the san-paang altar for general gods. These, with the spirit tablets for the gods from the villages, gradually filled up the three levels of the temporary altar. Two ritual representatives fetched the tablet of Hung-Yi from the Ching-Lok Ancestral Hall to his altar on the stage. The portrait of the Heavenly Master was fetched from the village gate of Tai Hong Wai, and installed at a temporary altar set up for him in the Mau-Ging Tong ancestral hall.\n\nThere were also a few deities to be invited from the sky. They included Tin-Dei-Sheui-Yeung, the gods of the realms of Heaven, Earth (the Underworld), Water, and the human world; Gods of the Naam-Dau (\"North Dipper\") and Bak-Dau (\"South Dipper\"), both for blessings to men; the City God and the Lei-Wik (who supervises the local Gods of Earth and Grain and the Earth Gods); Tin-Chyun San-Gwan (two common titles of the highest deities); and the Dragon King. In the last stage of the Opening Rite there were complaints that those gods were omitted. But later on that day temporary spirit tablets for them were seen in the san-paang.\n\nD. Procession of incense I\n\nThe first Procession of Incense took place on the main day of the ritual, to the participating villages of the Kam Tin heung. It was to visit all the temples, shrines, and major ancestral halls to worship the gods and higher-level ancestors. There did not seem to have been a clearcut rule about the lower-level ancestral halls. When I mentioned to an elder that the procession had stopped and worshipped at Lai-Gaan Tong, his first response was that the procession should not have worshipped there. But he changed his mind later: the worship in the rite was indiscriminative, it went to every ancestral hall if the doors were open.\n\nA very large number of villagers participated. Priests took part in the procession as well, but their part was limited to a brief invocation. Most of the villagers wore hats with special ornaments indicating their villages. The procession was accompanied by the sound of large gongs, a flag saying jeun-heung (\"to offer incense\"), and the priests' musician playing sona. There was one lion dance group, and Luk Gwok flags and percussion teams playing drum and gong on lo-gu ga frames representing each of the five main villages. There were also flags", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212134, "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-1990", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "53\n\n1\n\n景案\n\n+\n\n'brilliant scholars', and a Christian community ching-chung\n\nthe 'brilliant assembly'. The Christian monasteries which\n\nappeared all over China in Kao-tsung's reign filled the land with 'brilliant happiness', ching-fu. Christ is described as 'the brilliant and reverend (ching-ch'uan) Messiah'. At his birth a brilliant star (ching-shu) told of good fortune'. In the most emotionally-charged context of all, ching occurs in a veiled and ambiguous reference to the crucifixion: the Messiah 'hung up a brilliant sun (ching-jih) to take by storm the halls of darkness'. The use of the character ching in this way shows that the composer of the Sian tablet inscription wanted to extend and deepen its normal meaning 'brilliant', thereby adding to its effectiveness as a descriptive term for Christianity.\n\nUntil the beginning of this century the Sian tablet was the only source for the expression Ta-ch'in ching-chiao, Syrian brilliant teaching', as an official identity for Nestorian Christianity in T’ang China. We now have more evidence for its use. The expression occurs in a number of Nestorian manuscripts discovered in 1980 at Tun-huang, where there was a Nestorian monastery in the Tang period. Altogether seven separate works, all in Chinese, have been discovered. Two, the Book of Jesus the Messiah, and the Essay on Monotheism, are seventh-century documents composed shortly after Reuben's arrival in China, and neither the geographical term Ta-ch'in nor the descriptive term ching-chiao are found in these early works. Of the other five works, one, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, contains three occurrences of the term ching-chiao, but none of Ta-ch'in. The manuscripts of three other works, the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Book of the Origin of Origins, all display Ta-ch'in ching-chiao prominently in their titles, but neither Ta-ch'in nor ching-chiao occurs in their contents. All three works, however, are listed in a fifth work, the Book of Praise, with the phrase Ta-ch'in ching-chiao omitted from their titles. The Book of Praise, which was found together with the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity on a single manuscript, is rather different in style from the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. It contains one reference to Ta-ch'in pen-chiao, ‘our teachings of Syria', but does not contain the expression ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching'. All occurrences of ching-chiao in these documents use the curious variant form of the character ching found on the Sian tablet.\n\n12", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212136, "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-1990", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "55\n\nassociated with Persia, not Syria, until 745. The expression 'teaching of the scriptures' is found in three texts dating from before the middle of the eighth century. One is a Nestorian tract, the Book of Jesus the Messiah, written between 635 and 641, shortly after Reuben's arrival in China. The other two are imperial decrees, one of 638, and the other of 745. They deserve special respect because, as official documents, they were drafted with care, and used terminology with precision. The decree of 745 also provides evidence that up to 745 Christian churches were called 'Persian monasteries, and that the official name for Christianity was Po-ssu ching-chiao 'Persian teaching of the scriptures'.\n\nThe Book of Jesus the Messiah is the earliest Nestorian document to survive from Tang China. There are two, slightly different, versions of this work, and the earliest version has been shown on stylistic grounds to predate the Essay on the Charity of the Creator (one of the three chapters of the Essay on Monotheism), a work known to have been written in 641. The Book of Jesus the Messiah was therefore written within six years of Reuben's arrival in China in 635. It is probable that it is the 'scripture' which, according to the Sian tablet, Reuben translated into Chinese for the emperor T'ai-tsung to support his petition to establish a monastery in Ch'ang-an. It gives a fair digest of the Christian message, and its length is right for a document intended for submission to an emperor. If so, it was written before 638, the year in which Reuben's petition was approved.\n\nTowards the end of the text of the Book of Jesus the Messiah, after a description of the crucifixion, the following passage occurs:\n\n\"The earth quaked and the hills rocked, and the gates of all the graves in the world were opened and all the dead received life. When men saw that it was so, some still did not believe the teaching of the scriptures (ching-chiao), that the Messiah would die again, but most men did believe.\n\nIt is true that in this passage ching-chiao most probably bears its literal meaning, and refers to the Old Testament prophecies of the death and resurrection of Christ; but once this convenient term was coined, it did not take long before it suggested itself as a suitable Chinese name for the Christian religion. Christians liked to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212167, "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-1990", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "86\n\nA local Ch'ao-chou cult image seen on a secondary altar in a tiny makeshift rural temple in Ulu Sembawang in Singapore is said to represent the spirit of a nine-year-old boy who died in the late 1960s. He is the medium spirit who speaks through his aunt, providing advice for local devotees. His aunt raised the image after she found that the spirit of the boy returned to her in a dream offering to help people. The boy is known by the title of 'the Prince of the East of the Sea', Hai-tung Tai-tzu.\n\nA Cantonese Kuomintang soldier, Huang Chin-ch'uang, crossed to Taiwan in 1949 with the retreating KMT forces. He was posted to Pingtung near Kaohsiung and served with a unit near the main village on the island of Little Liuchiu where some time later he became ill and died. The people of the village, remembering his kindness and goodwill and knowing that he had no family of his own, buried him in an auspicious spot on the hillside. He became the spirit guarding the hills above the village and also gained renown for his ability to protect fishermen in danger. A shrine, a privately run temple, was built in his honour and an image of him placed on the altar where he is now known as Marshal Huang despite having been a mere private soldier.\n\nWang was a sailor left behind in Java by the great Ming explorer Cheng Ho at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His image is to be seen on a side altar in the Earth God temple at Ancol, not all that far from Jakarta, whilst tablets dedicated to him are to be seen in Chinese temples in Semarang and near Sourabaya, all on the island of Java. Local Chinese belief is divided as to whether he was pure Chinese or Javanese, and whether he was a shipwright, navigator, or senior member of Cheng Ho's crew, or merely a Javanese interpreter. They are at one, however, that Wang was a Moslem and that he married a Javanese wife and lived out his days, dying peacefully in Semarang.\n\nOf these ten male and two female spirits, all but two are represented by stylised images on altars, and they are taken from each of the main ethnic groups along the south China coast, the Cantonese, Fukienese, Hakka, Ch'ao-chou, and Hainanese.\n\nFive originated during the past fifty years, three some time during the past century, whilst four definitely developed during the Ch'ing dynasty.\n\nOnly six of the spirits still have their full names remembered, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212173, "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-1990", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "92\n\nto present a neatly typewritten note in English, carefully preserved in a cellophane envelope, stating that the area was prohibited.\n\nThe pheasant shooting season continued until the Chinese New Year holiday, which falls late in January or early in February. It was generally possible to get two or three days off for this holiday, and at this date in 1937 two of us found ourselves some ten miles up the Yangtze above Nanking in the neighbourhood of the Three Hills. We had come in the houseboat, now so seldom used owing to the opening of the countryside to the greater convenience of the motor car. Only where the river bank was steep-to could we bring the boat sufficiently inshore to throw a plank across and step off; and so having disembarked we had to walk awhile until we reached a small creek, which we crossed in a borrowed sampan, before arriving at the extensive reed beds for which we were heading.\n\nAt this late season great stretches of the reeds had already been cut by the country people for use as fuel, leaving small clumps and narrow strips standing here and there. Inland, the fields, turned over by the shallow Chinese plough, showed long rows of soft green where the shoots of winter wheat sprouted. The country was ideal for pheasant. Unfortunately it was drizzling and blowing hard. Sandy, the smooth-haired black Labrador was at the top of his form, but nonplussed by the poor shooting. In such weather the birds would as a rule sit tight until the last moment, when they would get up suddenly at your feet; for some reason today they were wild and rising almost out of range. As we approached each patch of reeds, inside which pheasant might be sheltering from rain and squall, we would carefully move to the lee end and beat our way back upwind. My wife worked with us, and two of the boatmen, who also served to carry the bag. The pheasants were reluctant to fly, and would run unseen out of the reeds through the more open stretches of stubble to start up cackling indignantly at unexpected moments. The expenditure of cartridges was considerable, but so far as I remember, the bag only held six brace. Late in the afternoon, soaked, we boarded the houseboat. Luckily the run down with the tide was much quicker than the outward trip, and there was something in the icebox to keep the damp out. Little did we realise that was to be the last shoot for many a season!\n\nThat year was Coronation year: great preparations were made by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212186, "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-1990", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "105\n\ntimed with their fuses set to burst just a few feet above water level. But the gunners evidently found the moving targets difficult to follow, because the aim grew wilder and eventually the shelling ceased. As the sun set in the west, the British ships came to anchor off the Three Hills, where I had my last pheasant shoot, while the American ships anchored in a group a few miles lower down.\n\nNext morning broke clear and sunny, one of those late autumn days in China, when there is not a ripple on the river, and the smoke hangs low in a thin pall over the country villages. Gun fire could be heard in the distance, both above and below the concentration of neutral vessels; and by-and-by the three American ships, escorted by the U.S.S. \"Panay\", got under way and steamed upriver. As she went by, the \"Panay\" stopped to pass back one of our wounded men, who had been kindly accommodated in her sick bay, and the Commander explained that he was taking his ships further up towards **Pidgeon Island** as the Japanese had been dropping some \"bricks\" in the river just below them. Not for the first, or the last, time in China, the Americans elected to play a lone hand.\n\nMeanwhile the refugees on the British vessels whiled away the time counting up the splinter holes in their ships, attending to the wounded, and in mutual visits for gossip over the events of the previous day. Every one thought it was all a mistake, although some concern was caused at about 10 o'clock, when a number of Japanese military landing craft were seen upriver pulling in to the north bank, on to which they ran a small gun which was openly trained at the ships. But the feeling of security was confirmed when the Japanese craft, one after the other, steamed out towards the British gunboats, circled round them, waved a salute or two, and then went on their way down river. There appeared to be no Chinese troops in the neighbourhood, and the Japanese sailed down the Yangtze unmolested, stopping to burn an occasional junk.\n\nIt was without an after-thought that we all sat down to lunch on that lovely Sunday morning on the Yangtze. We were anchored off the reed beds which grow round Rosina Beacon, and through the porthole I could see across the river the clumps out of which not so many months before we had driven our last pheasant. Imagine our astonishment and indignation when suddenly we heard the approaching noise of planes, the roar of power dives, and bombs", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212200, "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-1990", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "119\n\nLiuchow where one of Colonel Chennault's schools for training Chinese pilots was at that time established. I arrived just in time to observe the results of a Japanese air-raid on the field, when they succeeded in shooting up two of the latest type of Curtis Hawk fighters, the only two at that time in China, concealed in some trees on the edge of the field. Training under such conditions was not easy and the school soon had to move west again into Yunnan province.\n\nThree hundred kilometres a day is good going on these lightly metalled roads. I reached Kweilin on the evening of the third day after leaving Wuchow, and put up at the government hostel. From time immemorial the idea of travel has filled Chinese with apprehension, induced not only by fear of the ubiquitous bandit, but also by the abomination of the fetid roadside inn. With the advent of the motor car, the need for better hotel accommodation became evident, and the various provincial governments opened official hostelries at key points. While these left much to be desired by western standards, they were a prodigious improvement on the old-style inn.\n\nKwangsi is one of the more progressive provinces, for long controlled by Generals Li Tsung Jen and Pai Chung Hsi, who rank next to the Generalissimo himself. The hostel at Kweilin was better than average. There was a wireless in the lounge, and a small crowd of us sat and listened to the news as it came in. It was the period before Munich. A young German amongst us, flushed with arrogance, gloated over Hitler's successes. My first contact with the aboriginal Nazi spirit left me angry and dismayed.\n\nChinese buildings are flimsy. The rooms are small and dark, and not clean. When you have made allowance for this idiosyncrasy, Kweilin appears a delightful little town. The city wall circumambulates from shrine-crowned hill to hill; the river is full of junks that sail down to Wuchow; the roads are wide and straight, and shop arcades cover the pavements on either side. The little separate hills rise steeply from the plain, in those fantastic shapes seen in Chinese paintings. Their rocky tree-fringed summits staggered drunkenly beneath the sky. The hills are full of natural caves, most convenient for storing war supplies, or to act as shelters in the event of raids. But Kweilin was still far from the war. The Kweilin merchants believed that the Japanese planes would have difficulty in locating their little city snuggling amongst the hills. The excitement was all about the new railway,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212242, "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-1990", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "161\n\nis the loftiest room I was ever an occupant of, being 15 feet high, which is the height of all the rooms upstairs belonging to me.\n\nAThe sea view is very good, though slightly interrupted by trees, which Mr Beach advises to cut down. We now come into the verandah, which has Venetian shutters, or rather doors, which open with a view of the playground, and the whole way up the Peak and surrounding hills. Many fine villas lie around. The villas in the corner of the [ground floor plan] are very fine ones indeed, and are occupied by high families. We can see them very capitally, although they are a good height above. If it were evening by moonlight we could see the dining and drawing rooms of each house well lighted up, and hear the piano, accompanied by some good male and female voices. Sometimes I have to wait half an hour before I can sleep, till they have finished.\n\nAMy bedroom has two large windows opening to the verandah, and one the other side with a sea view. I had the bed newly painted. You will see the mosquito curtain of green gauze, which however I never want to use. There is a capital barometer which I hang up inside the window; about the best I ever saw; so that I can always know the state of the weather and temperature. Over the mantel piece hangs my picture gallery of portraits, before which I spend several odd minutes, and wish often enough I had a great many additions to it, which I expect every mail. There is a mahogany dressing table, which however I do not use, so I cover it with my “deer skin”, and use it as a side board. I forgot to point out the round mahogany table in the parlour. Next allow me to show you my pantry, etc. There are two or three [meat-] safes and cupboards, a dresser, and shelves all round piled up to the top with Chinese books. The other day I had 500 large books put up there out of the way. Here all my provisions are kept, and the food that has been prepared in the kitchen below. Beyond is a spare room, which I can in emergency use as a bedroom. Indeed it was intended for that purpose, but I never want to use it so leave it locked up. Any of my friends who can honour me with a permanent visit shall be made very comfortable there I promise them.\n\n^We now turn the corner, and enter the library, which has large doors opening to the verandah, as well as the opposite end. The breeze in the daytime is generally very refreshing through the room.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212310, "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-1990", "page_number": 252, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "224\n\nraw silk for their mills. Adanison arrived in Shanghai, on their behalf, in 1852. In 1858 he formed his own firm, exporting tea and general merchandise, and set up branches in Hong Kong, Foochow and Hongkow. There were ten European employees.\n\nIn 1872, the firm appointed a shipping clerk in its Shanghai office named George Benjamin Dodwell. He was 20 years old, born in Derby, and was paid 400 pounds for the first year of service, with a room, fire, light and medical bills met by the firm. Dodwell was allowed five per cent of all profits of the shipping business on everything earned above 700 taels per annum (equivalent to 2,100 sterling). He also had a share in other profits in an attempt to stop him branching out on his own account. Another condition of appointment was that he should 'not indulge in racing of horses and ponies'. This contrasted with the conditions of service for Jardine's who were not against their employees having a wager.\n\nIn 1876, Adamson Bell and Company's tea shipments (at the end of the nineteenth century nearly 60 per cent of China's exports consisted of tea and silk) were only marginally behind those of Jardines and Butterfield and Swires. For much of his work Dodwell was assisted by the firm's compradore. Nonetheless, a considerable amount of financial risk was involved. Dodwell and A.J.M. Carlill finally took over the bankrupt Adamson Bell Company [which is still known as Tien Cheang (天昌) meaning heavenly prosperity] on May 1st, 1891.\n\nCanadian Pacific Railways (CPR) chartered sailing ships to import goods from China and Japan. Dodwell had entered into a three-year contract with Sir William Van Horne of CPR. But, as business was good, CPR decided to run its own fast mail line in place of hiring old Cunarders.\n\nDodwell was told his contract would not be renewed, but he was asked to continue to manage the CPR services at the Far Eastern end. Van Horne was impressed by Dodwell as a man, and he offered him full control of the new CPR shipping line if Dodwell would abandon his newly established firm and join CPR as an employee. He was offered a salary and commissions totalling at least 4,000 pounds a year. Dodwell declined, preferring to head his own new enterprise which he had rescued, and would rebuild, from bankruptcy.\n\nIt is the worst day's work you have ever done, Dodwell\",", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212576, "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-1991", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "110\n\nbuildings, traffic congestion and increased costs, erecting stagings became impracticable.\n\nWith the advent of death the 'blue lantern' used to be hung outside the house. This corresponded to the matt black 'mourning boards' that were fixed outside a home in Britain. The latter went out of fashion in the early part of this century.\n\nThe three important events in a Chinese life are birth, marriage and burial. If a person is not 'buried well' he may suffer in the next world. A great deal of money can be expended on a funeral and giving a parent a good 'send off' epitomises filial piety. Relatives are unlikely to haggle over cost. Although the undertaking profession has few bad debts, and is said to enjoy a profit margin of from 30 to 45 per cent, it is not seen as a salubrious occupation: 'Such men are bad luck and their touch is very filthy.' Misfortunes of the deceased can be transmitted to the toucher. In slang, a corpse is known as 'salt fish' (MA).\n\nThe Day Before the Funeral\n\nIn sub-tropical Hong Kong there used to be a 48-hour limit for storing corpses. With refrigeration and 70 to 80 per cent of bodies being embalmed, which includes injections, this is no longer so. A cadaver can be kept for two months. The ceremony in this study took place seven days after death and close relatives arrived at the 'Hong Kong Hotel' (slang for funeral parlour where a funeral is known as the 'complete menu') the day before, at three o'clock.\n\nA multi-storey funeral home contains many halls to cater to both Christian and (like this one) non-Christian funerals. Two large 'blue lanterns' hung outside the hall. These are in fact white, with the family name in large, purple (at a Roman Court this was the royal or imperial colour) characters and the deceased's age in smaller red characters. On that day and the day of the funeral close relatives were 'not allowed to kill'; namely to eat meat, fish or eggs. Also, sexual intercourse should not take place during the mourning period.\n\nIn addition to the deceased's 16 by 20 inch photograph, incense was burning on the altar. Western candles (candles are normally burnt in pairs) symbolised Christianity and Chinese candles Buddhism, another example of hedging. Also on the altar were tasty snacks that the dead person", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212604, "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-1991", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "138\n\nI was anxious to reach Burma, and when I arrived at Rangoon in July found that I was one of the early swallows. The garrison still only consisted of two British battalions, and some battalions of the Burma rifles. In 1937, when Burma was separated from India, the army, which had been part of the Indian army, achieved a nominal emancipation from that tutelage; but in practice, from the general downwards, the majority of the officers came from India and the dogmas peculiar to the North West Frontier prevailed.\n\nI was sent up to Maymyo, in the Shan hills, to collect the wherewithal for an establishment, later to be known as the Bush Warfare School. Maymyo was the hill resort for Burma, the summer capital of the government, and the station of one of the two British battalions. This battalion kindly provided an orderly room sergeant, a stout fellow from Yorkshire, and between us we started to get things ready for the troops who were due to arrive shortly. I made my first acquaintance with the great brotherhood of the Indian Babu, the parasitic growth that sucks energy from administration in India. The Babu's great idea in life is to find a job for his brothers, of whom there are many, and to do so he must write more and more letters. A reply, which postpones decision, invites further correspondence. The more letters, the more filing; the more filing, the more indexing; the more indexing, the more work; the more jobs for brother, until one job has been expanded into six, and promotion is created: for first-brother can then claim to be exalted to the rank of head-clerk, to supervise the other six. The promotion not only brings an increase of pay, but also creates yet another vacancy for yet another brother in the position originally held by first-brother. It is a great game, not, however, convenient for warfare.\n\nI was later to meet the Indian Canteen Contractor, whose profits are so great; and the Indian Controller of Military Accounts, who also multiplies himself exceedingly, and travels round with a whole shelf-full of Army Regulations, without reference to which he cannot place one foot before the other. In India, even in the banks, every entry, receipt, payment, or other transaction is checked and counter-checked by three people, as a control on corruption, a control, to judge by all one hears, that is not superlatively successful. In this welter of procrastination time ceases to have value: amidst this accumulation of paper, decision is bogged down. It is a bureaucrat's paradise.\n\nIn Burma too I first came across the great game of discards. It was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212614, "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-1991", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "148\n\nnormal form of exercise was the evening stroll. There is, perhaps, nothing which so readily distinguishes the Chinese from their lugubrious neighbours to the west, the Indians, as their cheerful spirit. That evening the scene was more animated than usual. I could read in the happy faces of the crowd the joy they felt at finding themselves at last no longer alone in the struggle.\n\nArrangements had been made to send the officers of our little group to various parts of the Chinese front to study war conditions. The others had already left, and I was due to leave by air for Kweilin next day. I went down to the island air-strip early in the morning to find several planes just in from Hongkong, with the families of the C.N.A.C. staff who had been living there. The American crews had flown to Kaitak from a field in China, loaded up, and flown out again all at night. Over a cup of bad Chungking coffee they described the events in Hongkong, the bombing of the airfield and the destruction of the majority of the C.N.A.C. planes, caught on the ground by the sudden Japanese attack.\n\nBy and by the covers were taken off the three engines of the old Junkers 52 plane, in which I was to fly, and mechanics started them up. The plane was the last of those belonging to the Eurasia Aviation Corporation, a Sino-German company, the only competitor of the C.N.A.C. The German pilots had been replaced by Chinese. There were a dozen passengers; we clutched our seats a little nervously as the heavy-looking machine accelerated down the runway towards the river only to rise from the ground just before we hit the water. We spiralled up above the Chungking escarpment and flew away over the Szechuan mountains at a steady hundred miles per hour, until we dropped back through a gap in the clouds to see below us the sabre-toothed hills of Kweilin. I was taken in hand by an efficient \"Fu kuan\" (Adjutant) of General Li Tsung Jen's staff and motored into the city, where I found Michael waiting.\n\nMy destination was the 3rd War Zone, the most important of the nine war zones in China. It covered the greater part of the richest provinces, Kiangsu, Chekiang, Anhwei, Kiangsi and Fukien: bounded by the Yangtze to the north, the sea coast in the east, Fukien to the south, the area of the 3rd War Zone reached west as far as the Kan river. General Ku Chu Tung, famous for his defence of Shanghai in 1937, was the Commander.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212777, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "71\n\nThe Szechuan Force, of five corps with a total of thirty-three battalions* [i.e. 18-20,000 men] to start with, had two brigades up to full strength, the An-ting Brigade and the Ko-i Brigade [the latter with fifteen and a half battalions]. Mesny was located with the headquarters of the Ko-i Brigade during most of the campaign as a foreign adviser to the C-in-C of the Force on the use and maintenance of foreign arms. His descriptions of skirmishes between the Imperial troops and the Miao tribesmen reflect this limitation, being restricted to what he saw for himself and information he was able to gather within both the C-in-C's and the Ko-i Brigade Headquarters.\n\nThe first location of the headquarters of the Ko-i Brigade referred to by Mesny was Niu-ch'ang, though it moved forward shortly afterwards towards the old city of Huang-p'ing Chou. The vanguard advanced to Ma-ping-bah, occupying a Miao camp where the Szechuan Force planned to spend the winter of 1868/9. Shortly after this, Mesny moved to Huang-p'ing Chou, and described a skirmish at Ta-ngai, followed the next day by a full-scale battle at Huang-p'ing itself.\n\nJust before Chinese New Year in 1869, the Ko-i Brigade despatched a reconnaissance party in the direction of the Miao headquarters at Hsin-chou [Huang-p'ing New Town] some ten miles further into tribal Kueichou beyond the old city of Huang-p'ing. They discovered that the Miao had left only a small body of men in the town, having withdrawn their headquarters to Wu-ku Lung. The day after the New Year, a large body of Miao rebels descended from the hills and fired on the Imperial camp at Huang-p'ing but were driven off by the Ko-i Guards Regiment.\n\nRegionalism and factionalism were two powerful factors influencing the inter-personal relationships between members of the various Forces involved in the Kueichou campaign. In order to achieve anything, one had to rely on personal connections. Mesny, who did not hide his partisan views, repeats again and again how unfairly his Commander-in-Chief, T'ang Chiung, had been treated both in rewards for good service and in support, both financial and matériel [both of which were withheld]. Jealousy between the commanders of the various forces caused not only disharmony but, if Mesny is to be believed and there is no reason to doubt him, the failure of the whole of the first campaign. One of China's cultural characteristics was reflected in a number of instances referred to in Mesny's narrative. Personal relationships and connections, 'squeeze', and deep concern for one's self to the detriment of others were the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212821, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "115\n\ncontrol. Lung Yun still maintained his own troops, well equipped and better paid and fed than those of Chungking, out of the revenues he had collected from the supplies which had flowed over the Indo-China railway and the Burma road. The control of the only communications into China had made the Governor of Yunnan a very rich man.\n\nMy experiences during the subsequent year were to be discouraging. In the past my championship of the Chinese cause had been unpopular with my own people; it had involved me not only in disapproval but also in financial loss. As the situation in Western China unfolded itself to me I began to wonder whether, after all, there was not a lot to be said for the view of the die-hards. Since my return to England I have made a point of studying the aspects to which I have drawn attention in these writings. I examined the history of Sun Yat Sen's Three Principles and the record of Kuo Min Tang teaching. I have set out the facts as they came to my notice, and will leave it to the reader to judge for himself how far the extraordinary incidents in which I was now to find myself involved sprang from independent impulses present in a backward province, or more directly from the nationalist teaching of Sun Yat Sen.\n\nAs the 'plane flies in from India, over the mountains of Yunnan, and begins to circle to come down to Kun-ming, the ribbon of the Burma road shows up below where it passes a cluster of villas nestling, some fifteen miles short of the town, at the foot of the hills on the edge of the lake. The 'plane crosses the tip of the forty-mile long lake to land on the large airfield at the far side of the city, 6,150 feet above sea level.\n\nAccommodation in the city was hard to find; for some weeks I stayed out at the lakeside. Owing to its height, Kun-ming enjoys an excellent climate all the years round, cool in summer, mild in winter. The great mountain ranges to the west absorb the moisture of the monsoon, leaving an adequate but moderate rainfall: apart from a period in the autumn the sun shines daily. The two Chinese characters Yun and Nan mean 'South of the Clouds,' an appropriate reference to the climate of Szechuan to the North East, where for six months in the year, at Chungking, they never see the sun.\n\nThe foreign community, in addition to the small number of French who were concerned with the operation of the railway line to the Indo-China border, included the Consuls of the leading countries, and an increasing number of American military personnel, attached to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213035, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "83\n\nestablishment in 1893 of the Nethersole Hospital for women and children, as part of the Alice Hospital, with Mrs. Stevens as Matron. These three steps drew attention to women's health in general, but a maternity service for Chinese women in particular resulted from the support of the Chinese elite and the LMS in the context of public health fears about infant mortality.\n\n4\n\nMrs. Stevens had reported in 1898 that the Alice hospitals did not have enough wards for women. The two beds set aside for maternity cases at the Nethersole Hospital were not only inadequate to meet demand, they were inappropriately placed in the eye ward, where labour was disruptive for general patients, especially when an operation was necessary, and the mothers and other patients were at risk of cross-infection. The number of cases treated had steadily increased to seventeen in 1900. Therefore an Obstetric Bungalow was mooted and a call for public subscription made in 1901. Correspondence notes that funds were only slowly forthcoming, fund-raising limited by the guidelines of the LMS as a mission. For example, the enthusiasm of the wife of the American consul was dampened when the LMS would not agree to fund-raising from a Charity Ball or Theatricals. It took a move from the Chinese establishment and the sanction of government for midwifery training for the plan to materialise.\n\nFor the government, infant mortality was not only a public health risk, a fear heightened at the time of the 1894 plague because of the abandonment of bodies, it also prevented a tidy collecting of demographic statistics. Births and deaths information was of course essential to plan public health services and control contagious and infectious diseases. The problem was that deaths were not recorded and it was only male babies that were registered at the ancestral halls when one month old. In 1896 a Bill recommending the registration of Chinese Midwives' and 'Chinese Doctors' was drafted, but not presented, such regulation being seen as premature.\n\nHowever, it became clear to the government that a Chinese midwifery service which would enable the recording of births was desirable. In 1901, the Medical Officer of Health recommended the payment of a small fee to the Chinese midwife to report the birth, and in 1902 arrangements to train Chinese midwives at the Civil Hospital were made. In 1904, an Inquiry into Chinese Infant Mortality recommended the payment of a fee to the registrant of a birth, and the employment of female visitors to verify", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213108, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "158\n\nKong waters. This petition was probably written because of fears as to the practical problems they would face if they lived in British territory, and their market was in Chinese territory. \"In the early years after the lease, grievances over the Customs remained at high heat. In the winter of 1906, the villagers from the New Territories went on strike, and refused to go to market. In 1907 there was a full-scale riot, triggered by a Customs official beating a villager for not paying duty. Later that same year, the elders of the Shap Yeuk petitioned to the authorities at Canton, begging that the Customs officials at Sha Tau Kok be restrained.4 Later, relations with the Customs improved a little, but the duty demanded from villagers remained a major irritant and grievance throughout the period from 1899 to 1951.\n\nAnother irritant, and brake on economic development, was the political chaos in the border area of China. As can be seen from the Calendar of Border Disturbances at Appendix 1, political trouble in this area began even before the Revolution of 1911. An abortive rebellion in the Wai Chau (Huizhou,H) area in 1900 saw the Ch'ing Government lose control of the wild lands east of Yim Tin. A second abortive rebellion was centred in these hills, at Sam Chau Tin (Sanzhoutian,E), in 1904-1905.\n\nA second period of disturbance came after the Revolution, during the years 1911-1928, when the area immediately north of the frontier was the plaything of various competing political groups and would-be warlords, passing from one to the other week by week - 'In those days, when we went to market, the soldiers would be wearing yellow, but the next week, they would be wearing brown'. This period was marked by large-scale banditry, piracy, and general turmoil. With the large garrison of Customs and military personnel at Sha Tau Kok, bandits never threatened the town itself, but the Yim Tin Customs post was sacked by bandits in 1913 and (three times) in 1916, Nam O (Nanao,) Customs post at the entrance to Mirs Bay, was sacked in 1913 and 1914, Chan Hang in 1915, and, a little east of Chan Hang, Kai Chung (Xichong,) Customs post was sacked in 1916 and 1917. The Customs post at Sha Yue Chung (Shayuchong,) was sacked in 1919 and 1920, while the Sha Yue Chung Ferry (the lifeline of the market to the east) was captured by pirates in both 1921 and twice in 1922. For nearly one and a half years in 1918-1919, indeed, all the Customs Stations in Mirs Bay east of Yim Tin were forced to close, so lawless had the area become. The irregular soldiers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213254, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "55\n\nThere were two attempts to escape from the Hung Hom Bay Camp. The first try was made by five prisoners. They were assigned to build a platform for concerts. The platform was near the barbed wire fence. It provided a shelter for them to tunnel to freedom and a storage place for the earth removed during their digging. Under cover of darkness, five crept through the tunnel; however, the last of the group was spotted by a sentry, who shouted the usual \"Halt or I shoot\". The escapee kept on going, and the sentry shot. The bullet hit the bag the prisoner was carrying, containing some of his gear, so he escaped injury, but he was overtaken and captured. Shortly after, another of the escaped internees was found in the hills of the New Territories. Several days later, the remaining three were rounded up near Sai Kung.\n\nSome time after this incident, another man arranged to accompany two other prisoners on a visit to a dentist in the Hong Kong Hotel. The dentist was only expecting two patients. He took these two into his surgery; one was to serve as an interpreter for the other. The third man, who had somehow arranged to come along, was left in the waiting room with a guard. He informed the guard he must go to the toilet. The guard accompanied him there; however, he did not go into the toilet as he wished to keep his eye on both the door of the dentist and the door of the toilet to ensure that none of his three prisoners escaped. The man in the toilet was able to escape through a window, but he was caught the same night and returned to the camp.\n\nThe patriotism aroused by war stirred up in a British colony much doubt, distrust of old friends, ill will, and harsh words. The clubs passed resolutions excluding enemy aliens; the ties of former friendship were severely strained and, in many cases, broken. Many in the Colony who frequently passed the former premises of the Deutsche Asiatische Bank on Queens Road, not far from the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, were irritated by the continuing presence of the Prussian double-eagled ensign, an architectural feature of the building. Many indignant letters appeared in the correspondence column of the newspapers before the emblem was finally removed.\n\nSince my delivery of the talk upon which this paper is based, Anne Selby has published a well-researched article in the South China Morning Post on 25 June, 1988, entitled \"When Germans were unwelcome in HK\". She used many of the same sources as I have used in the Public Records Office. I would refer interested readers to her article for information I have not included in my account.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213267, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "69\n\nthe views expressed right at the start of this paper by Dr Ernest J. Eitel, sometimes titled Hong Kong's first historian and for some time a Hong Kong civil servant, were by no means unusual.\n\nToday, far more empathy is shown towards Chinese culture in general by Westerners. For instance, many Caucasian firms believe aquariums enrich the fung shu of an office. It is not just Chinese who can relax, Westerners will tell you, when they lie back and watch fish swimming. It gives everyone a special feeling and lowers their blood pressure by a few degrees.\n\nOf course, certain rules have to be followed. The number of fish kept is often six or nine. Three multiplied by three equals nine (a lucky number); and a homonym of three, in Cantonese, sounds similar to the character meaning 'lively'. Because of colour symbolism, one fish may be black (a Black Molly), another reddish (a goldfish), and the rest any other colour. Because the fish are supposed to act as a shield against bad fung shui, sometimes a fish dies. But better a dead fish than a dead customer.\n\nHigher up the hill above Central District, at the Albany in Albany Road, residents were concerned about the 70-storey, new, People's Republic Bank of China Building 'giving off vibes'. They feared the sharp edges of its structure with their negative forces would menace the abode of some of Hong Kong's rich and famous. In the West, the new Bank of China building would perhaps be described as 'ominous', 'overshadowing' or 'overpowering'. Many Chinese, however, liken the sharp edges of the Bank of China to a knife pointed at, or arrows cast at, Government House and Central Government Offices, namely, the heart of the British Colonial Administration. These 'weapons', together with the flyovers close to Government House, tie the decision-making hands of the British Governor and threaten the prosperity of Hong Kong. The fung shui 'dragon vein', with the dragon's head turned to face its ancestors, serpents down from Victoria Peak, close to the Albany, concealed by a carpet of vegetation. It passes close to the Albany apartments. The dragon thrusts and turns as the topography changes. The earth surges with natural energy. Chinese dragons are more serpent-like and sinuous than those in the West. And, as the vein gathers strength, it proceeds vigorously on to the 'dragon sites'\n\nsuch as the home of the Governor and down to the Hong Kong Bank. It then dips into the harbour, the 'dragon's lair'. Although now the slope up the Peak is largely obscured by high-rise buildings, on some hills and\n\n70", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213268, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "70\n\nmountains it is possible to trace with the eye the paths where 'dragon veins' run.\n\nGeomancers are particularly interested in spots where hills and mountains rise from plains. In Hong Kong's case much of the level ground on the Island is reclaimed (many masters maintain that reclaimed land possesses no chi). Nevertheless, with the kind of setting that this part of Hong Kong Island has, with its 'dragon form', it is bound to be prosperous.\n\nVarious modifications were made to Government House shortly after Sir (now Lord) David Wilson, a sinologist, took up the appointment of Governor in 1987 (Mattock, 1994:133). The house today is hemmed in with tall buildings obstructing its original harbour view. One fung shui master, in the 1980s, suggested moving Government House to a more auspicious site. This was not then considered practicable. Consequently, remedial measures were carried out to improve the fung shui (Mattock, 1994:133). A fountain with a round pool (instead of a square one), to compensate for the loss of the harbour view, was constructed. A pavilion (an alternative would have been a pagoda) was built. Three additional trees and more bamboo were planted. Flowers are grown now between the two staircases, on the north side of the residence, replacing the water cascading down a channel away from the building. Some geomancers maintain that Government House represents a cat (the tower symbolises the head and the ballroom the legs). This now plays with a mouse in abstract form — namely the new pavilion. In the past, the 'cat' toyed with the Governor. These alterations were made specifically to improve fung shui. They helped to put the minds of Hong Kong people, notably staff who work at Government House, at ease, especially after the sudden death of Governor Sir Edward Youde in 1986. Meanwhile other Hong Kong inhabitants, including some who profess not to believe in fung shui, are inwardly relieved that the sharp edges of China's national bank do not point at, and threaten, their home.\n\nBut a Cantonese youth born in Hong Kong, who attended secondary school in England, put it rather differently. 'I do not believe in fung shui,' he insisted. 'The sharp edges of the Bank of China mean nothing to me. Nor do gold fish swimming in an aquarium.'\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213319, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "122\n\nthe 49th Regiment (Hertfordshire Regiment consisting of 25 officers and 426 men) and a Sapper unit. The Force commander, Sir Hugh Gough accompanied the Left Column.\n\nThe Centre Column under Lieutenant Colonel Montgomerie consisted of detachments of Royal Artillery and Madras Artillery, a Sapper unit and a rifle company of the 35th Madras Native Infantry.\n\nThe Right Column, under Colonel Schoedde, consisted of the 26th Regiment (The Cameronians) under Lieutenant Colonel Pratt, the 55th Regiment (Westmorland Regiment) and a unit of Sappers.\n\n6\n\nThe British plan required the 2,200 troops to be landed on the right flank, on the west face of the line of low-lying hills some two miles to the east of Chapu Bay. From there the three battalions would separate, one, the Centre Column, to hold the base, one, the Right Column, to pass round the base of Huang-p'an Shan to cut off the Chinese retreat and the third, the Point or Left Column, to storm the heights of Kuan Yin Shan. On 16 May the Nemesis and the Phlegethon reconnoitred the northern coast of the Bay of Hangchou and on the 18th they landed in a bay some two miles east of the city without opposition, with the Left Column advancing along the heights parallel to the coast, whilst the rest moved inland to the rear of the heights on which the enemy was posted. Elements of the British Naval Brigade, consisting of some 700 men, landed within a quarter of a mile of the harbour and advanced straight for the harbour battery and then on to the town itself. Only about one in ten of the Chinese force had firearms, the rest being armed with bows and spears. The British plan so took the Chinese by surprise that they fell back in disorder, throwing away their arms and fleeing in every direction. The Chinese having made their nominal stand in the hills had left their rear wide open allowing Chapu to be taken without any major problems. After a battle lasting more than four hours, Chapu was taken by the Right Column and the Naval Brigade with the British casualties of nine killed and fifty-five wounded. Of these, in addition to Colonel Tomlinson, the loss to the Royal Irish were one serjeant and three other ranks killed, and Lieutenants E. Jodrell and A. Murray, one serjeant, one drummer and twenty-seven other ranks wounded. Major Jeremiah Cowper was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the day following the battle, in succession to Colonel Tomlinson. The Chinese defenders fled to the west, towards Hangchou leaving the British with the town which was promptly looted by the native Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213320, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "123\n\nCasualties suffered by the Chinese were estimated at some twelve to fifteen hundred, with a powder factory and several arsenals destroyed.\n\nThe incident which has left its mark in regimental histories is now known as the Battle of the Joss-house. A small detachment of the Royal Irish were held up by some three hundred Manchu Tatars who, having seen their retreat cut off by the Naval Brigade, had taken cover in a small Buddhist temple, the Temple of Reverence for Heaven, between two hills, one of which was Kuan Yin Shan, with a single entrance guarded by an internal 'spun wall'. The stubborn valour of the Tatar soldiers cost the Royal Irish dear. After an initial sortie, their detachment commander, Lieutenant A. Murray, drew off his men to wait for reinforcements. The next assault by a small number of men from both the Royal Irish and the 49th (Hertfordshires) had already been repelled with at least one killed and several wounded. A company of the Royal Irish, commanded by Captain Edwards, was intercepted in its advance and, accompanied by Colonel Tomlinson, who had heard what was passing, proceeded to the valley and joined the small body blockading the joss house. While the platoon of the Royal Irish waited for the rest of the battalion to come up, Lieutenant Murray was approached by the Hertfordshire's battalion commander who, having been warned that the temple was strongly manned, was understood to have made \"an injudicious and undeserved remark\" which was overheard by Colonel Tomlinson. They were now a force considered strong enough by Tomlinson to carry the building at the point of the bayonet, and Tomlinson's reaction to what he must have taken as a slur on Irish courage, his regiment or himself, was immediately to call for the men of the Royal Irish and the Hertfordshires to follow him and storm the temple. He rushed in at the temple door where he was shot dead with two bullets through the neck and all who had accompanied him were either killed or wounded. After Tomlinson had fallen, it became almost impossible to prevent the Royal Irish from rushing madly at the temple, for the men burned to avenge their Colonel, whom they described as \"the best officer who ever said 'Come-on' to a grenadier company\". In more formal language, General Gough recorded the same opinion, saying in his despatch that Tomlinson fell \"in full career of renown, honoured by the troops, and lamented by all\". The defenders, who were determined to fight to the bitter end, held out against assaults by the Royal Irish and part of the Naval Brigade, until Sappers under a Captain Pears finally used a 50-pound bag of powder to bring down the thick walls, after a party of Gunners commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Knowles who had brought...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213351, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "156\n\nintellectual and historical traditions. Thus they were able to push the study of Hong Kong history to new frontiers.\n\nThe Hong Kong History Project, Chinese University of Hong Kong\n\nResearch was pursued with great energy at the Chinese University, and a history project its members began in 1978 may be said to have marked a turning point in the development of the study of local history.\n\nAimed at saving whatever historical information that might still be found, the Project included Ng Lun Ngai-ha, Kwan Li-hung, David Faure, Bernard Luk, Tam Yu-yim and Barbara Ward, and teams of students. They began by gathering historical inscriptions in temples and ancestral halls, and then went on to interviewing villagers for what they remembered of the villages. Villagers were also asked to come forward with whatever documents they had. Soon, gathering documentary materials and interviewing became complementary. The research teams worked on one district at a time, first concentrating on Sha Tin and Sai Kung, then Lam Tsuen and in 1982, Tsuen Wan, though members would approach other villages in the New Territories whenever the opportunity arose. Their search yielded rich fruits because they cast their nets wide - they sought materials that earlier researchers had not considered relevant. Thus documents such as village regulations, land deeds and accounts, ritual and ceremonial texts, scholars' handbooks, textbooks and almanacs, clan records and so forth were gathered, and these were able to throw new light on important, and yet hitherto neglected, aspects of village life - daily life, farming and subsistence, sickness and death, family life, marketing, intervillage organizations, internal village organization, \n\n22\n\nThe project must have seemed like a massive raid by scholars into the New Territories, and its benefit to other scholars is incalculable. Many of the manuscripts and books were deposited in public libraries. Inscriptions copied were published in three volumes as Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, now standard reference. The wealth in information supplied by these inscriptions is overwhelming, and Maurice Freedman noted that, together with land deeds, genealogies and other records, they formed the basic sources for an understanding of the New Territories. The exercise was all the more timely since, in face of Hong Kong's rapid development, it was possible that many of the inscriptions might have been lost had the project not been undertaken at that time. 24", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213581, "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-1995", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "147\n\nincense or joss sticks. According to Lo (1959, quoted in Iu, 1983), these trees were introduced into Guangdong Province from Vietnam in the Tang dynasty (619-907 AD) and were planted in large numbers in the New Territories during the Sung dynasty (960-1279 AD). In the late Ming period, the county of Tung-kuan was renowned throughout China for the quality of its incense. Until 1572, Tung-kuan county included the area subsequently forming the county of Hsin-an (including the present day New Territories) (Chan, 1989). In the Kuang-tung hsin-yu (Ch’u, 1974), it is noted that many people in Tung-kuan made their fortune from Kuan-heung (meaning incense from Tung-kuan) which was so popular that the annual sales values amounted to tens of thousands of taels. Incense trees were very suitable for the decomposed granite soils of the area and were particularly grown in the area of Shatin and the lower part of Lam Tsuen valley, whose name means \"forest village\", and around Tung Chung and Sha Lo Wan on Lantau. Interestingly, Schofield (1983) referring to the fine fung shui wood at Sha Lo Wan adds “In a suitable light, ancient log slides can be seen running straight down the steepest hills on this stretch of coast\", although whether these have anything to do with the incense trade may never be known.\n\nThe successful cultivation of the incense tree depended on three conditions, the suitability of the soil, adoption of proper methods of cultivation and the mastering of tapping and cutting methods for the collection of resin, which had a medicinal use. The general name of the varieties of incense produced in Tung Kwun, Po On districts, which included Hong Kong and the New Territories in those times, was \"Kuan-heung\" (Iu, 1983).\n\nThe logs were collected at Tsim Sha Tsui from where it was shipped by small boats to Shek Pai Wan near present day Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, where it was re-shipped onto Chinese seagoing junks to Canton, SE Asia and as far away as Arabia.\n\nIt has been suggested that the cultivation of and trade in incense trees gave rise to the name of Hong Kong (meaning incense harbour). \"Little Hong Kong, or Heung-kong-wai, is said to have been so-called on account of the quantity of Pak-miu-heung-shu then growing there, the wood of these white-wood fragrant trees is called \"Nga-heung\" (i.e. fragrant wood white as a tooth), is odoriferous when burnt, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213792, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "115\n\nbetween three-compartment ancestral halls restricted to officials and ancestral worship within the domestic unit or bed chamber appropriate for commoners. Faure points out that the three-compartment ancestral hall is related to claims of official title. Faure sees some small ancestral halls found in the New Territories of Hong Kong as the “bed chamber” variety. Examples of villages in which ancestral halls of this style are found include Ping Long, Kau To, Man Uk Pin and Wo Hang, the last three of these four are Hakka villages. Faure thus writes of the New Territories in the 19th Century: \"with rising prosperity and acquisition of official degrees, some of their ancestral halls became more ornate even though none quite reproduce the official style.\" Although the bed-chamber type ancestral hall is found in both Hakka and Cantonese villages, a Hakka ancestral hall holds a single spirit tablet, dedicated to unnamed shi, gao, zheng ancestors. This is probably related to the practice of moving incense ashes from the domestic unit to the incense burner of the ancestral hall mentioned above. This contrasts with the “major surname” clan ancestral halls in the Hakka county town of Xingning described in ZHJLS, in which those who had made donations had a spirit tablet of their ancestor installed.\n\nThat ancestors are represented in individual ancestral tablets is a prerequisite of some ancestral hall ceremonies found in Cantonese lineages in Hong Kong, such as one found in the Qingle ancestral hall of Kam Tin, in which the group of ancestors to whom the ancestral hall is dedicated is escorted in the form of ancestral tablets for special treatment.\n\nDespite the possible difference in the form of ancestral halls, the Hakka probably followed the trend of development of lineages since the 16th century. Ancestral hall rites, Faure has pointed out, was an example of the incorporation of a literate tradition into a proto-literate culture, the literate tradition spread with the literati ideal, coming... in the Ming and the Qing dynasties as local government strengthened, as neo-Confucianism was taken for granted as an acceptable social code, and as examination awards were granted in large numbers for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213815, "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "a fluvial plain nearly all fresh ploughed up. We were too late to see the paddy, or rice growing. Here and there were a few patches of barley, and now and then a field of hemp in full blossom that scented the air for a long way round. Often our road lay through fields of sugar cane. The canes grow about 7 or 8 feet high, and look very well with their green tops.\n\nThe highway road passing through these fields is a curiosity. It is raised a few feet above the field, and is about a yard wide on an average. On each side runs a ditch about a foot wide. Since these roads are only for foot passengers they answer very well. Remember there are no horses ever dreamt of, and only here and there a poor lean solitary Chinese cow, with a hump on his back on the hills. There are no hedges or fences, and thus it is all open country. The outside narrow ditches are all that separate the fields, and as most of the people are not troubled with shoes, a little mud and dirt is not minded.\n\nWe now and then passed a troupe of pedestrians on their way to the town to sell their produce and buy new supplies. Many of them had brown sugar in square cakes, and many more were loaded with oil, which is obtained from a kind of ground nut, largely grown in China. We often saw immense heaps of these nuts. All these things were carried in China fashion, with a pole, and a basket or bucket balanced on each side.\n\nEvery few miles we rested in a tea house, and in one, we got some preserved dates and plums. The dates were on strips of bamboo, three on each, and each string cost a cash. They and the plums were very good, especially to us who had been walking a great deal. We passed through Po-kuk - where Mr Lechler lived as a Chinaman for 5 years in one house which he showed us. He is a fine noble fellow and no mistake. Would that all our missionaries were like him. We were again on our route; and continually heard the sound of heavy firing at a distance. These towns and villages have continual animosity with each other, and are continually fighting. They can make their own clumsy cannon, and they pound away at each other finely, sometimes for weeks together. The different clans often get up a bit of a brush about something or other.\n\nOur road at length wound up a narrow pass between two hills, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213817, "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "141\n\nthe verandah and afterwards in the little parlour I was soon deep in an argument with Eitel and Winness, as to the general tendency and aim of Paul's preaching, and we maintained the point a long time, without either giving way. At last Winness is a fine Chinese scholar, and we had a long talk about religious publications in the Chinese language, of which he has written several. Then we turned in for the night, after our evening devotions, and after hearing Mr Winness' evening service, in his chapel. Really the singing of his boys was melodious to a high degree. He has about 20 whom he teaches German, etc. One is now at Hong Kong waiting to go to Germany to be educated as a missionary, and can play the Harmonium quite well.\n\nWe then turned in. The only two rooms in the house for Europeans served our turn. Four in one, and three in the other. It was sharp work. The mosquitoes were immense great things, and big enough, and many enough to suck all the blood out of one man, but with seven of us, they could not quite manage it. So in the morning we were all able to get up. Few of us slept much. I slept but very little, although I had the best bed.\n\nIn the morning I took a walk over the hills with Eitel for an hour or two, and then after breakfast we prepared to go on the hills pheasant shooting. I got a long two-barrelled gun, and Stringer got another, and so four of us started, with a guide. Two at last struck out one way, and then Capt Drummond and I went the other.\n\nWe were soon out of sight and hearing of the rest. But no pheasants were to be seen. This Drummond is a fine fellow, and has no foolery about him. He appears to be as good a Christian officer as could be expected, considering the many things they have to make them wild and dissipated. His right hand and shoulder were bitten severely by a great tiger in India, which caught him and carried him off. The tiger was soon wounded, and at length dropped him, and next day was shot dead. It just gave him a pat on the head with its paw, and made him insensible. It was a narrow escape. The tiger was rather old and its teeth were almost worn out, or it would have been far worse with him.'2 We walked a long time, but shot nothing.\n\nSo we began to bend our steps home through the village of Lilong. We looked at many houses and things, and even entered some of them and looked about. We were much amused with the immense great wheelbarrows the people use. The wheel is made of planks, sawed...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213826, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "151\n\nTHE HOUWANG CULT AND\n\nTUNG CHUNG'S COMMUNAL CULTURE\n\nHON-MING YIP AND WAI-YEE HO'\n\nWhile the ancestral hall often serves as the socio-political centre of a single-surname village, a temple of folk religion always stands out as the focal point of local people's social and cultural life in such a multi-lineage rural community as Tung Chung. For the dozen or so villages in the Tung Chung valley, the Houwang has long been their principal deity and the Houwang Temple, their main local shrine. For years, the popular worship of the Houwang has functioned as a cultural and social binding force to hold this secluded community together. In what follows, the development of Tung Chung's Houwang cult is traced, and details of the area's religious and social activities and their cultural as well as political significance for the locality are expounded.\n\nTung Chung as a Secluded Community of Multi-Surname Villages\n\nSituated on the north shore of Lantau Island, Tung Chung used to be a strategic port for maritime defence and trade during the early Ch'ing period. The area's economic development was also facilitated by its favourable position in sea transportation at a time when the northwestern New Territories were Hong Kong's economic centre of gravity. With the British occupation after the Opium War, however, the north end of Lantau suffered gradual marginalization and isolation as the colony's economic core shifted eastward to Hong Kong Island. The decline of ocean transport to north Lantau and underdeveloped overland communication with the southern part of the Island, in effect, kept Tung Chung in a state of seclusion. Hills to the east, south, and west separated this valley from other parts of Lantau. Between Tung Chung and Bak Mong in the east, Mu Wo and Tong Fuk in the south, and Tai O in the west, there were only muddy paths over the mountain or along the shore. Before transportation improved in the 1960s, travel between Tung Chung and these districts on Lantau required two to three hours by foot, roundtrip. Communication was even more difficult with regions outside of Lantau. Beginning from the 1920s, a few ferries carrying goods sailed on\n\nPl", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213829, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "154\n\nlimited surplus funds.\n\nThe Local Principal Deity Cult and the Making of Communal Culture\n\nLarge-scale local festival activities can best demonstrate a community's communal culture. Unlike single-clan communities, where ancestral halls serve as the venues for collective functions, Tung Chung's ceremonies of ancestor worship generally occur within individual families. Most villages are multi-surnamed and do not have ancestral halls. Only a few single-lineage villages, such as Mok Ka 家 Wong Ka Wai 黄家圍 Lam Che 藍峰 Nim Yuen 稔園, and Ba Mei te, and some larger lineages such as the Hsiehs, the Hos, and the Chous at the multi-surname village San Tau, have, or used to have, ancestral halls for worship ceremonies in spring and autumn. For villages with ancestral halls, ancestor worship may be conducted on both a family basis and a lineage basis. At the houses of most villagers, spirit tablets of their ancestors are enshrined on the family altars in the main halls. Joss sticks are burnt daily in front of the tablets. During festival days, animal sacrifices, food, wine, and other offerings are prepared. Kowtow and the burning of incense and ritual paper form part of the simple ceremony.\n\nFor a minority of single-surname villages with ancestral halls, collective ancestral worship on a lineage basis is held at the halls during the Ch'ing-ming Festival and the Double Ninth Festival. Among ancestral halls built before World War II at villages such as Mok Ka, Wong Ka Wai, Ba Mei, and San Tau, the Mo-yu-sheng tang at Mok Ka, and the Yung-ho t'ang at Wong Ka Wei are best maintained. Some of these halls also served as village schools to which boys were sent for three to four years, before a modern school was established near the Tung Chung Fort in the 1940s. At these halls, pupils were taught with the traditional primers, i.e., the San-tzu-ching (Trimetrical Classic), Ch'ien-tzu-wen (Thousand Character Classic), the Confucian classics, and the collection of Chinese idioms. After some halls had deteriorated, village offices would sometimes be used to accommodate the schools. As a case in point, the public office of the upper Ling Pei village was turned into a classroom after Ho's Study, the ancestral hall of the Hos and a village school at upper Ling Pei, had fallen into ruin.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213830, "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "155\n\nDuring the pre-War period, traditional rituals of worship in the spring and autumn seasons were observed at ancestral halls. All lineage members assembled there for the rituals of offering of animal sacrifice and setting off of firecrackers. Lineage members then followed the elders to their ancestral graves, usually located on foothills bordering the village. Upon returning to the ancestral hall, the elders monitored the formal collective worship ceremony in which lineage members, in the order of seniority, kowtowed and presented incense to their ancestors. Some lineages at multi-surname villages, such as the related Los at Shek Lau Po and Shek Mun Kap, held reunions twice a year for ancestral grave visiting before the War. Fruit and three to four roasted pigs were offered as oblations and pork meat was divided immediately after the performance of the ceremonies of worship.\n\nRituals performed at ancestral halls and visits to ancestral graves were both collective activities of worships at the lineage level. However, without strong lineage organizations supported by economic power, these ancestor worship ceremonies were rather simple and small in scale. There were no communal properties to support big feasts or entertainments. Only pork meat was divided among males. Sheer numbers might explain Tung Chung's weak lineage organization and small-scale ancestor worship. As indicated by the 1911 census, the community had a population of only about one thousand. Single-surname villages there were sparsely populated with 77 people at Mok Ka, 47 at Wong Ka Wai, and 46 at Pa Mei.\n\nBanditry and Japanese occupation during the Second World War struck a serious blow at the already weak lineage organization in Tung Chung. Japanese soldiers wrecked or burnt some ancestral halls and genealogies, and in effect, disrupted the tradition of ancestor worship for some lineages. Pa Mei, for example, caught fire during a Japanese campaign against bandits, and a new village had to be built later. Although a part of the Teng's ancestral hall remains at the old site, according to one of the lineage members, no collective worship has been carried out there since the War. The Japanese also seized the genealogy of the Tengs. The Huangs of Tai Po saw their family register burnt by the Japanese. For fear of Japanese looting, some villages destroyed their genealogies themselves. Throughout our field investigation in Tung Chung, no genealogy was ever found.\n\n157\n\n \n17", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213831, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "156\n\nIn recent years, mass emigration to the cities has further weakened the lineage tradition at some villages. Only the Mos at Mok Ka and the Los at lower Shek Lau Po seem to have maintained the status of their lineages. As the strongest lineage in Tung Chung, the Mos managed to rebuild their ancestral hall, the Mo-yu-t'ang, and continue to visit the graves of their focal ancestors collectively. As for the Lo lineage at lower Shek Lau Po, the reconstruction of their ancestral hall, the Lo-yu-chang t'ang, in the 1970s, as a centre for ancestor worship, contributed to the reinforcement of lineage identity. Nevertheless, the majority of Tung Chung's villagers worship their ancestors inside their family halls.\n\nThe worship of the earth god in Tung Chung also occurs on a small scale. Symbolically, the earth god stands for the spirit of the village at which he is located, and is represented usually by a rock at an open-air shrine or by an old banyan tree. Variously known as Ta-wang (great king) or Po-kung (lord or paternal great-uncle), the earth god guards a village at its entrance or rear. As a guardian deity at the basic level of rural organization, the god helps to mark the territorial line between villages. In Ngau Au, for example, four Po-kungs are located there at both the entrance and the rear of the village. Three of them, as a village elder confirmed, are more than three hundred years old. At Mok Ka, earth gods are enshrined, two by the stream and one at the village entrance, and one at the rear of the village. As the oldest village, Shek Mun Kap has the largest earth god, represented by a giant boulder.\n\nOn the 1st and 15th of every lunar month, during the major festivals, and on the earth gods' collective birthday, Ta-wang or Po-kung are offered sacrifices. On auspicious days of their choice, villagers also come to pray for the god's blessings and repay his protection. The ceremonies concerned include the display of wine and animal sacrifices in front of the shrine, the spraying of the wine on the ground, the burning of paper offerings, and kowtow to the god. Compared to ancestor worship, the earth god worship functions more directly to enhance the village identity, especially among individual members of a mix-lineage community. In Tung Chung, however, the ceremony has never taken the elaborate form of the tso-she (doing the she), i.e., special collective rituals and celebratory activities consisting of a feast in honour of the neighbourhood god at various times of the year. Being", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213837, "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": 189, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "162\n\nbeen built in 1765. Since its establishment, the building has been renovated several times, in 1878, 1910, 1962, and 1978.7 The first recorded reconstruction, that is the one in 1910, is evident on the commemorative tablet installed on the interior wall of the temple. It is fortunate that the architecture through all these ages has retained its original style and character,\n\nThe temple, which can be considered a well-endowed and elaborate structure for its time, consists of three halls. In the main hall, a wooden idol of Houwang is installed at a shrine, covered with a canopy with the title \"Imperial Bestowed Loyal and Brave Marquis Yang\" (JAKE) written on each side. Clay statues of a civil official and a military official stand on the left and the right, respectively, as attendants to the local god. Enshrined in the side hall on the left are three spirit tablets. The one in the middle is for the pioneer villagers who established the temple; the one on the left is for those who donated the construction fee; the one on the right is for the men in charge of the reconstruction. In the side hall on the right, secondary divinities, such as mountain gods and earth gods, are enshrined. (See the floor plan of the temple.)\n\nThe facade of the temple is decorated by murals of scenes on walls and doors. On the left and right tips of the roof, there are streaked clay decorations in three dimensions. Figures of the martial arts, embellished with coloured glaze, are installed on the central ridge of the roof. It is recorded that these ceramic figures, of high quality workmanship, were manufactured at the well-known Shekwan kilns in 1910. In terms of structure and design, the Houwang Temple can be considered architecture of characteristic style. If the construction of a temple reflects the wealth of a community, Tung Chung's Houwang Temple seems to indicate that people there fared quite well before the locale declined into a periphery along with the shift of Hong Kong's economic core.\n\nIt is also surmised that a village coalition was being formed at the time of the construction of the Houwang Temple. As hundreds of immigrants moved into the New Territories after the \"Coastal Evacuation\" order in the early Ch'ing had been abolished, cult worship might have contributed to social integration and community building. Tung Chung's Houwang Temple, as mentioned above, is believed to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213905, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "231\n\nTHE HAN LIN ACADEMY AND A CHINESE DEITY\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nThe Chinese Imperial Academy, Han Lin Yuan E, known to foreigners as the College of Literature or the Academy of the Forest of Pencils, was founded ca. 8th century AD and at any one time contained about five hundred of the most brilliant scholars of the Empire selected from the highest graduates at the national triennial examinations. Martin in his Lore of Cathay explained that those selected were in practice Chin-shih graduates who could pass a further examination called tien-shihPC, the palace examination. Their role was the advancement of learning generally, and included compiling dynastic histories, drafting and drawing up decrees, composing prayers for ceremonial occasions, drawing up patents for nobility and proposing posthumous titles for deceased emperors. They were, ex-officio, Imperial counsellors. The Academy also contained the Great Encyclopaedia of the Yung Lo emperor.\n\nThe Han Lin Academy formerly stood on the site which, in 1900 after the Boxer rebellion, became part of the extended British Legation. It had consisted of some twenty to twenty-five separate halls and was utterly destroyed in June 1900 by the Kansu Muslim soldiers of the Chinese provincial military force accompanying the Boxers, and commanded by General Tung Fu-hsiang1, in their attempt to burn down the besieged British Legation during the Boxer troubles. They only failed because the wind suddenly veered, saving the legation whilst the Academy was burnt to the ground.\n\nAdmission to the body was the highest literary honour obtainable by a Chinese scholar. Much has been written about the academic aspirations of individual Chinese down the ages and here we shall simply note the three degrees qualified at state examinations during dynastic times. They were the hsiu-ts'aiA, the county level examination which foreigners equate to the bachelor's degree, the chu-jenA, the provincial degree equated to the master's degree, and finally the chin-shih, the advanced scholar, at the national level triennial examinations, equated to the PhD. The one who passed out top of all in a year was known as chuang-yuan, the First Scholar of the Empire.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214011, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "46\n\nappeared to the Sixth Son who was resting, weary and sick with over-work and revealed to him that Meng Liang had recovered the bones of another and gave the Sixth Son details of where his, the father's, body really lay. Meng Liang set out once more, disguised as a Tatar soldier and after a series of episodes the bones were recovered, but not before several of the Sixth Son's comrades had been killed or committed suicide. These deaths led the Sixth Son's condition to deteriorate and for his spirit to wander whilst he lay in a coma. The emperor's nephew on his way to visit him saw a tiger barring his path and shot and grazed it with the arrow. On reaching the bedside of the Sixth Son, who rallied at that point, the Prince was told that the tiger was the spirit of the Sixth Son roaming the hills and was duly appalled at the idea that he had nearly killed the Sixth Son. Despite all efforts, the Sixth Son's condition grew worse and soon he died, vomiting blood.\n\nIn another episode of the tea-house tales the ruler of the Liao Khitan planned to assassinate the Sung Emperor at a meeting to which the Sung Emperor had been invited at Chin-sha Nan. As the plan had been detected by the Eldest Son of the Yang family he disguised himself as the Sung emperor whilst the Second Son went as the Crown Prince, with the other brothers in attendance. In the event they in turn were recognised and in the ensuing fight the Second and Third Sons were killed and, apart from the Sixth and Seventh Sons, the others were captured.\n\nOne of several cult centres dedicated to the Yangs in northern China developed in a temple on the Buddhist holy mountain of Wu T'ai Shan, in northern Shansi province. There are at least three temples in Taiwan in which Yang Yeh is the main deity. And only in Taiwan are the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth sons collectively portrayed together on several altars with the collective title of the San Wang-tsu. In an old temple near Taichung the seven main images on the main altar represent the Seven Sons although, according to the temple keeper, the group did not include the father. However, the smaller portable images of the Seven on the front of the same altar had alongside them several other images which did include the Father, Yang Yeh, and the Mother, Yü Lao T'ai-chün, and a complete outsider, the mythological deity, Yang Chien [Erh Lang] who bears the same surname. The temple keeper explained that in about 1986 all nine main images, carved on the mainland many years ago and brought over to Taiwan, which at that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214051, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "86\n\nReclamation\n\nVictoria Harbour, the raison d'etre for Hong Kong's foundation, formed the focal point around which the new settlers clustered and around which the banks, business houses, the shipyards and, later, commercial factories were built. Hemmed in by hills both to the north and the south, the population around the harbour became concentrated on the limited flat or less steeply sloping land available along the coast. Expansion was only possible by reclamation into the sea (and later by higher buildings), spoil being obtained from nearby hills thus providing additional building land. Until the advent of motor vehicles, reclamations were unable to benefit from more remote fill sources, like the Peak where site development necessitated balanced cut and fill. In all several hundred hectares of land were reclaimed in the hundred years up to 1941 (compared with many thousands in the 50 years following).\n\nSome of the people who were lucky enough to lease the first lots of land fronting on the sea, which had been auctioned in 1841, extended their lots by illicit reclamation over the foreshore absorbing such land as could easily be reclaimed, a procedure which was soon forbidden. Quite early, probably in 1842-3, some valuable land was reclaimed in Victoria, part of which was subsequently occupied by the Hong Kong Cricket Club (now Chater Garden).\n\nThe first formal praya (waterfront) reclamation scheme was partly carried out in 1851, by the filling of a small creek in the Bonham Strand area, but as might be expected it aroused stiff opposition from affected lessees who claimed marine rights. This, compounded by the destruction of part of the original praya wall by severe typhoons in 1867 and 1874, delayed matters but, despite these problems, by 1886 an 8km-long near-continuous strip of land (the major discontinuance being the section adjacent to the naval and military areas), perhaps broadly averaging around 100m wide was formed between Kennedy Town and North Point, the seawalls providing much needed access for handling marine cargo. In 1887 further reclamation was recommended to alleviate overcrowding in the city. As a result, the Praya Reclamation Ordinance was gazetted in 1890 and a year later Paul Chater (later Sir Paul) initiated a band of reclamation, totalling 26 hectares and extending three kilometres westward from Murray Road along the northern foreshore.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214231, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "52\n\nSsu and the Pi-yun Ssu. They were first placed there some three hundred years ago, towards the end of the last fully Chinese dynasty, the Ming and before the overthrow of the Ming by the non-Chinese Manchus.\n\nThe Two Temples in the Western Hills\n\nThe old Kuan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu X, the fourth of the Eight Great Places in the Western Hills of Peking, is sealed off and not available to the general public. It contains a modern image of the major deity, the bodhisattva Kuan Yin with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes together with old but refurbished images of the Deva with their name in Sinicised Sanskrit but without providing any hint as to their origins and legends. The statues of the Deva were originally made during the Ming, ca. 1500 AD, and consist of clay reinforced with hemp. They are referred to in temple literature as the Group of 28 Great Immortals +. The image of the Thousand Arm and Thousand Eye Kuan Yin was replaced by the Japanese after the Second World War in an attempt to make amends for having taken the original and melted it down for the brass content during the War.\n\nThe Kuan Yin Hall in the Ta Pei Ssu contains in addition to the one bodhisattva, Kuan Yin, twenty-eight images, which can be categorised as follows: twenty-six deities with Sanskrit titles including the five T'ien-wang [Guardians] together with two Chinese folk religion deities. Of the twenty-six, five are deities specifically referred to separately in the Eight Classes of Supernatural Beings? [Deva, Mahoraga, Kinnara, Asura and Gandharva]\n\nIt is lamentable that the Kuan Yin Hall is closed to the public; however, fortunately, there is also a Hall of Bodhisattvas in the second temple, the Pi-yun Ssu #, some five kms. to the north of the Ta Pei Ssu, which is open to the general public and it too contains the Twenty-eight Deva; however, the images here have all been made within the past fifteen years, probably replacements for the original images destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and yet again without any signs to indicate that they are anything other than Chinese deities. The fact that all but three were originally Hindu deities brought to China by Buddhism is not explained in temple literature, though the monks un-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214232, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "53\n\nderstood that all twenty-eight of the deities in the hall were followers or disciples of the Kuan Yin with the Thousand Arms and Thousand Eyes.\n\nThe twenty-eight images in the Bodhisattva Hall of second temple, the Pi-yun Ssu, (apart from the main deity Kuan Yin), fall into three categories: four bodhisattvas [P'u Hsien, Wen Shu, Ta Shih Chih and Ti-tsang Wang - but not including the main deity, the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin]; seventeen deities with Sanskrit titles [including four T’ien-wang Guardians] and three Chinese native folk religion deities.\n\nThe monks also explained that a stream which ran through the area had attracted imperial favour and several temples had been sited and built by palace eunuchs to enable the emperors to relax during the summer heat or visit the nearby shrines of deities of longevity and prosperity. Amongst these were the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yün Ssu. They also understood that when the decision was taken to set up the images in the Hall each image was specially constructed and given a name or title all in accordance with Buddhist sacred writings.\n\nHowever, these two temples in the Western Hills are not quite unique in that a further 28 deities can be seen in a cave-tunnel in a comparatively modern temple near Taipei in Taiwan, each labelled with a Sinicised Sanskrit or pseudo-Sanskrit name, similar to the deities in the two temples in the Western Hills. Such alien names mean nothing to most Chinese.\n\nIn the Ta Hui Ssu X, a third temple, within the city of Peking, statues referred to in the temple as the Twenty-eight Protectors of the Buddhist Law line the flanking walls of the main hall. These too are very similar in style and appearance to the Twenty-eight Deva in the Ta Pei Ssu in the Eight Great Places and though not individually identified as such in the Ta Hui Ssu they are probably similar Deva.\n\nAccording to Soothill's Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms Deva is a general designation of the gods of Brahmanism, celestial beings whom he lists as the Twenty Deva [+]. The Sinicised Sanskrit titles of the deities seen in the two temples in the Western Hills, compared with the list of twenty in Soothill's dictionary, con-\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214233, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "54\n\nfirms that the majority of deities in these two temples are Deva. The categorization of the Twenty-eight Immortals as Deva was arrived at by comparing the Sanskrit identities of the twenty-eight images and the list of the Twenty Deva provided by Soothill. The minor variation in inclusion and omission between the Twenty Deva listed by Soothill, the Twenty-two Deva in the Ta Pei Ssu and the Twenty-five in the Pi-yun Ssu cannot be explained.\n\nIn some temples the Deva have been equated with the Asuras. This is incorrect as the Asuras are those who are not only not Deva but are, according to some writings, the greatest enemies of the Deva and, in others, it is written that the Asuras are anti-gods and not, as claimed so often in English, demons.\n\nIt would not have been possible to identify any one of the images of the Deva without its Sinicised Sanskrit title on the tablet before it apart, that is, from the three fundamentally Chinese deities with their Chinese titles included within the Deva groups, Wei T'o and the four T'ien Wang Guardians.\n\nImages within the Two Temples in the Western Hills\n\nWithin the main hall of both temples, apart from the images of the Deva lining the side walls, stands the popular and well-known Buddhist bodhisattva, the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin adapted from images brought from India where he [a male deity at that time] was the Brahmanist deity Avalokitesvara. In the Ta Pei Ssu she is alone whereas in the Pi-yun Ssu she is sitting crossed-legged and is flanked by two pairs of secondary bodhisattva. The first pair is Wen Shu and P'u-Hsien, whose Sanskrit titles are Manjusri and Samatabhadra respectively. They were two of the twelve divine Buddhist teachers. They in turn are flanked by another pair of bodhisattvas, Ti-tsang Wang, the Saviour of the Underworld and Ta-shih Chih. The latter is one of the members of the retinue of Amitabha [O-mi-t'u Fu] known in Sanskrit as Kshitigarbha and Mahasthama respectively. Mahasthama is believed to be the deified Maudgalyayana, the right hand disciple of the Buddha, Gautama.\n\nIn the Pi-yun Ssu, the bodhisattva Saviour of the Underworld, Ti-tsang Wang, is depicted in his modern standard form, sitting side-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214234, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "55\n\nsaddle on his recumbent lion, holding his rattle-stick in his right hand and his pearl in his left. He wears monk's robes and the five-leaf Buddhist crown and is a benign middle-aged monk. However, in the Ta Pei Ssu he is without any unique characteristics, and is portrayed as a middle-aged deity, standing, with palms held together in prayer before his chest; he is dressed in multi-coloured robes and an ornate crown. Without his label it would not have been possible to identify him.\n\nNative Chinese Deities co-located but unconnected with the Deva\n\nTwo of the Twenty-eight deities in the Ta Pei Ssu are not Deva, being native Chinese deities. One is known as the Lord of the Purple Planet, Venus, Tzu-wei Ta-ti and the other, the Lord of the Underworld, Tung Yüeh Ta-ti.\n\nIn the Pi-yun Ssu the additional native Chinese deity, bringing the total to three, is the Spirit of Thunder, Lei Kung, though in practice he might perhaps be regarded as originally Hindu in that he is a form of Garuda, a human with wings, the beak of a bird and clawed feet.\n\nThe great majority, if indeed not all Chinese visitors to these temples, be they devotees or merely sight-seers, tend to assume that the deities were legendary Chinese figures, possibly because the sign-board outside one of the halls describes them as P'u-sa [bodhisattvas], a term Chinese are familiar with considering it to be Chinese. Having said that, a number of the deities have titles on individual tablets before them which, though in Chinese characters, are obviously not Chinese names such as Kan-ta-p'o, the Sinicised version of Gandharva. These names can be somewhat confusing if not bewildering as different Chinese characters for the alien sounds are used. In addition they are not always the full titles provided in Buddhist religious literature.\n\nThere are several major differences between the array in the Ta Pei Ssu and in the Pi-yun Ssu. Primarily, though both groups stand within a hall dedicated to Kuan Yin, the image of the goddess in the closed temple hall stands some fifteen feet tall and is the thousand-arm, thousand-eye Tantric version, standing, with two of her arms resting one each on the heads of her two attendants. The image of Kuan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214238, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "59\n\nConclusion\n\nWe have been examining a particular arrangement of Indian Deva within two temples in the Western Hills of Peking. Each group has an image of the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin as the main deity within the Deva hall itself. Although monks explained that the images of deities down the side walls of the hall had been created in accordance with researches in old Buddhist books, there was no explanation why they should all have a Chinese rather than an Indian form. It has been suggested by devotees that the concept of the Deva might have reflected the Manchu dynasty's affinity with Tantric Buddhism, and perhaps Vedic beliefs or been brought by Lamaist monks during the late Ming but there is no evidence that this was so. Yet another devotee thought that when the images were first created during the early sixteenth century, Chinese craftsmen had a somewhat limited idea of the origins of the deities concerned and even, perhaps, no idea what the people of South Asia looked like and therefore made the images in the form of Chinese. An unanswered question is the presence of several deities within the groups of Deva whose origins were entirely Chinese without any connection whatsoever with Vedic Hinduism.\n\nA small number of individual images of deities with a Brahmanist origin have been seen on altars in temples in all Chinese communities; these however have not been at all widespread. Typically they were adopted by immigrant Chinese from native Buddhism. A remarkable example of a syncretic group of Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese folk religion deities is to be seen in a joint Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese folk religion temple in a quiet area of Angsila some sixty miles south of Bangkok. The three altars against the rear wall in the main hall of this temple are the Thai Buddhist altar, stage right with an image of Sakyamuni Buddha in its centre flanked by two other Thai Buddhist images. The central altar, the Hindu altar, contains one large image of Shiva [Siva], holding a trident and dressed in a robe and turban, and with several small unidentified images standing before him. And finally, the Chinese folk religion altar dedicated to T'ien Hou, the patron deity of sailors, with her small image on the altar, stage left, flanked by her usual demonic attendants, Thousand-Mile Eye and Following-Wind Ear. Devotees of all races pray before each altar in turn, usually beginning with the altar of their own culture and cursorily placing incense before the other two. In the temple forecourt are large brightly painted", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "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": 214250, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "one of the Twenty Deva. Sagara Naga, the Dragon King of Rain.\n\n71\n\nIn Chinese he is the Dragon King. His image has only been noted in one of our two temples in the Western Hills, the Pi-yun Ssu where he is portrayed as a standing, black-skinned official in multi-coloured robes and a pill-box cap with a small sunburst on the front. He has large round eyes and a black beard and is holding a tablet in both hands clasped before his chest. His image is also present in the cave/tunnel under the Taiwanese temple where he is known as Sha Lo Wang 沙洛王 and is portrayed as a middle-aged Chinese, standing,\n\ndressed in gilded armour and small Taoist crown. He is holding an unsheathed sword in his right hand and a small snake-like dragon in his left.\n\n15] Asura known in Chinese as Ah-hsü-lo\n\nThe Asura in the Lotus Sutra are one of the Eight Classes of super-natural beings - Asura originally meant a spirit or even a god - and are regarded as demons who fight against the forces of Indra. There is an image of an Asura in the group in the Ta Pei Ssu but not in the Pi-yun Ssu, nor in the cave/tunnel in the Taiwanese temple. In the Ta Pei Ssu he is a demonic human with four arms, three eyes and a further head superimposed upon his normal head. He has fiery red spiky hair, red moustache and beard, large round eyes and rings one in each ear. He is stripped to the waist and is white skinned, has bare legs and feet and is wearing a highly decorated colourful skirt.\n\n16] Vimalakirti known in Chinese as Wei-mo Chu-shih\n\nVimalakirti was a disciple of Sakyamuni at Vaisali who the Buddha is said to have instructed, and who later recorded it as the Sutra of Vimalakirti. The realm of Vimalakirti is a realm of profound joy.\n\nAn image of Vimalakirti is in the group in the Ta Pei Ssu but not in the Pi-yun Ssu, nor in the cave/tunnel in the Taiwanese temple. He is standing, dressed in a green robe decorated with gilded roundels and border, and a scarf round his head holding his hair in a loose knot protruding up and through it. He has grey hair, beard, moustache and eyebrows. There are no unique characteristics.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214276, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "97\n\nNOTES\n\nMacGowan J : Men and Manners of Modern China: T Fisher Unwin: London 1912\n\n2 Werner in his Dictionary of Chinese Mythology gives the Eight Classes of Dragon Kings as follows:\n\n3 Deva naga, Yaksha, Gandharva, Asuras, Garudas, Vinnaras, Mahonagas and Rakshas Soothill in his Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms lists the Eight Classes of Supernatural Beings as follows: Deva, Naga, Yaksha, Gandharva, Asura, Garuda, Kinnara and Mahoraga.\n\nMajor well known Brahmanist deities not included in the groups of Deva in the Western Hills of Peking include Hanuman, Parbati and Ganesh.\n\n* A Student Interpreter: Where Chineses Drive : English Student Life in Peking Wm Allen & Co : London: 1885\n\n6 As with a number of titles the romanised spelling varies depending upon the form used and, as examples, we have Siva and Shiva, Pancika and Panchika. He is the esoteric cult Deva, a masculine form of the wife of Siva. He is the tutelary god of Mongolian Lama Buddhism, and is also said to be an incarnation of Vairocana for the purpose of destroying demons.\n\n7 Werner, ETC: A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology:\n\n8\n\n9 x stands for an illegible character. Although images iconographically look like the standard Buddhist image of the Temple Guardian, Wei T'o, they have been identified as being one of three Vedic deities. Lessing in his Yung-Ho-Kung [Stockholm 1942] and the Taiwanese guide to The Guan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu both identify Wei T'o's origin as Skanda whilst Soothill claims that he is Viharapala.\n\n10 Occasionally Yüeh T'ian-wang, that is the 12th century hero Yüeh Fei, takes the place of Li Yüan-shuai.\n\n\"Chin-se are the Five Primary Colours permutated in various ways to represent various ideas; also, a five coloured emblematic cord, a Brahman sign worn on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214317, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "139\n\nThree of the four lesser halls, though as large as the Jade Emperor Hall and Xu Hall or nearly so, are dedicated one to the Three Matrons of fertility and childcare; one hall to the wife of Xu, whose personal names were Heshi, known as the Palace of the Consort - Furen Gong - in which her image stands on the uppermost tier of three with the Lord of Time and his sixty minions, the Tai Sui, occupying the lower two tiers; a third hall to Guan Gong, the patron deity of loyalty and honour, and patron of soldiers; whilst the fourth hall, much smaller, is virtually empty apart from a single, small pottery image of a wealth god. This spread of cults within one temple is typical of the majority of the larger temples throughout Chinese communities.\n\nAll of the images within the temple complex are of comparatively recent manufacture, certainly since the early 1980s. The original images were destroyed during the years 1949-1976, during one or more of the political campaigns against superstition or social reform, mostly during the first days of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 when the temple was gutted. Some of the new images have been well made, artistically finished in paint on plaster and concrete. Others are crude, poorly finished and eyesores for posterity. The image of Xu, however, is one of the better ones and far from crude workmanship.\n\nThe grounds and halls on the day we were there in the Autumn of 1998 were seething with devotees, many of whom had travelled some distance to pay their respects to the deities. Long strings of firecrackers were being let off and amidst the deafening racket and the palls of smoke from these and burning offerings, the whole area was what Chinese know as re'nao, excitement and noise.\n\nAcross the road, however, in the comparatively small, enclosed and dilapidated garden, silence reigned and not a soul was to be seen. On the far side of the square artificial lake in the centre of the garden is a lengthy row of small, weathered and battered modern images, all unnamed, which on closer examination appeared to be many of the emperors of China since time immemorial. A Nine Dragon Spirit Screen stretches out behind them. Of greater interest were the half a dozen small rooms, similar to horse boxes with half-doors, which lined the rest of the far side, each containing a small tableau of life-size simple and gaudily painted plaster and cement figures. These were identified as episodic scenes from the life of Xu, ranging from his miraculous birth,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214419, "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": 277, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "243\n\none so pretty!\" said my friend. \"That's dear,\" I remarked. \"Two shillings,\" she repeated flatly. \"You can't be from here, because you're too white. Where are you from? What's your name?\" probed P., trying to move nearer to her. \"I'm from Macau; my name is Etola,\" she answered in English, slurring over a few syllables as is the Chinese habit. \"Two shillings,\" she added later, after a pause. \"How pretty you are!\" continued my companion. \"Show me your hand, tell me how old you are. Who do you like better: us, the English or the Chinese?\" \"Two shillings,\" She replied. We drew up to the frigate; my companion took her hand, while I was already on the ship's ladder. \"Talk to me, Etola,\" he said to her, holding her hand. She remained silent. \"Tell me what you...\" \"Two shillings,\" she repeated. I with a laugh, and he with a sigh, paid the money and went to our separate cabins.\n\nHere, as in England and in the Cape, we were granted free entry into the club. The club is a type of superlative palace: its founders have spared no expense, to impart to the club the same opulence that is customary in London clubs. A number of big halls with windows facing the bay, a verandah, fireplaces, windows set in marble; bronze and crystal everywhere; excellent mirrors, elegant furniture - everything brought from England. But - alas! The halls remain empty; you'll have trouble attracting the attention of a sleepy Chinese man-servant, and then you'll order dinner and pay three times what it costs right nearby, in the tavern. The club is close to bankruptcy. The Europeans sit in their own corners for the greater part of the day, and in the evening prefer to gather in family circles - and so the club fails. But what a delight it is to relax on that verandah in the early evening, when the cool night air takes the place of the intense heat.\n\nAt six o'clock in the evening the whole population pours out of doors, along the seashore, along the avenue. Officers on foot and on horseback, business men, ladies make their appearance. On a meadow, near the Governor's house, music is playing. Not far from there, on a hill, in a stone house, lives the General commanding the local detachment, and right nearby a building, something like a monastery, houses an Italian bishop with a few monks.\n\nOur people left for Canton, at which time I was lying in a fever and half sleeping heard the launch being lowered. I was awakened by a crash of thunder; a storm had erupted just at the moment of their leaving.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214646, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "25\n\nSeven, rather than into any relationship with Po Kong. Tai Hom was the only Hakka village in the League of Seven. It was probably this Hakka ethnicity, their rejection by Po Kong, and their relative isolation from Nga Tsin Wai that led the Tai Hom villagers to establish a temple of their own outside their village, somewhere in the period 1821-1850, probably late in the period: it was greatly expanded in 1904. This temple, the Tung Shan Temple (it was dedicated to Kwun Yam) became, for a short period during the 1920s and 1930s, the main religious focus of the \"thirteen villages of Kowloon\", that is, the villages of both the League of Seven and of the Six Villages Alliance, but it was left ruined in the War.\n\nThe land south of Ma Tau Kok formed part of the Alliance of Three (三聯盟) of Hung Hom (Hung Hom including Tai Wan, Hok Yuen including Shek Shan, and To Kwa Wan, probably including Ma Tau Kok). The land east of Ngau Chi Wan and Pak Uk Tsai formed the inter-village alliance called \"The Four Stone Hills\" (四石嶺). This was a sworn alliance of the quarry-villages of this mountainous and infertile area (Ngau Tau Kok, Sai Cho Wan, Cha Kwo Ling, and Lei Yue Mun).\n\nInter-village alliances normally centre on joint worship by the elders, either at the higher earth god of the area, or at the local temple. Nothing is now remembered in Nga Tsin Wai of any inter-village worship by the elders of the League of Seven as a group at any higher earth god shrine, nor of any She, * , Feast of the elders in front of the shrine. However, the Nga Tsin Wai villagers do not now even remember where their earth gods used to stand - they were all removed by the Japanese, except for the earth god of the Village Gate - so too much should not be made of this. The elders of the villages of the League of Seven did and do worship the Nga Tsin Wai Tin Hau, however, on her Birthday each year (the Tai Hom elders consider the villages of the League of Seven as \"belonging to the Tin Hau of Nga Tsin Wai\"): it is likely that this was the ritual focus of the League, and that the meetings of the elders of the district took place after the worship. The elders hold a feast today after the worship of Tin Hau, and this is probably a very ancient tradition. The Temple, however, was the property of Nga Tsin Wai alone (it is owned by all three of the Nga Tsin Wai clans, and the Manager of the Temple, chosen by the elders of the three clans, is the Village Headman): it was probably for this reason that, on her Birthday, the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214678, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "57\n\nand patchings. It was at this date that the village started to look generally run-down.\n\nDespite the obvious problems, the displaced villagers who took up the empty premises inside the walls managed to survive the War. Although the village had lost many fields to the new Airport and the new nullah, nonetheless, what was left enabled the village to survive - just by growing vegetables for the market at Yaumatei. The villagers all starved, but not quite to the point of death. This is unusual - very few villages in the New Territories were able to survive the War without even one person dying of hunger.\n\nMany of the villagers, in their blazing hatred of the Japanese, however, joined the guerrillas who were active in the hills behind Kowloon. As a result, there were several raids by the Japanese on the village. Several villagers were taken and executed (by beheading, usually in front of the village) for assisting the guerrillas. The villagers say that between a minimum of three and perhaps as many as seven village men were executed in this way. The present Temple Keeper of the Tin Hau Temple had her husband of less than a year beheaded in this way.\n\nBy the end of the War, the village was on its last legs. \"If the War had gone on another year, we would all have died\": this statement is heard from all over the New Territories, including very definitely Nga Tsin Wai.\n\nAt the end of the War, the village looked to an improvement. The returning British felt they had to keep the Airfield as extended by the Japanese, but they paid solid compensation in cash to all the villagers whose land or houses had been taken by the Japanese. Some years later the \"Model Village\" was closed down, but compensation was, again, paid to those living there. New work opportunities began to open up. The village was able to find funds for a full-scale restoration of their Tin Hau Temple, in thanksgiving for the favours shown them by the goddess during the years of hardship (1948). Before these improvements could bring about any major changes, however, the Revolution in China sent another wave of refugees into Hong Kong. As in the late 1930s, many of these settled around Nga Tsin Wai, on what was left of the villagers' fields. From Diamond Hill to Kowloon City, there was, by the middle 1950s, a solid mass of squatter housing interspersed with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214683, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "62\n\nmarket clearly grew in the later nineteenth century, but it was already large and prosperous by 1846.\n\n\"The map is the Coastal Map of Kwangtung of 1553 of Ying Ka (MW l), reproduced in Hal Empson, Mapping Hong Kong: A Historical Atlas, Hong Kong, Government Information Services, 1992, Plate 1-2. Kowloon is not included in the list of Markets in the 1688 San On County Gazetteer (at least, not under an easily recognisable name), but both a \"Kwun Fu Village\" (九龍墟) and a “Kowloon Village\" (九龍村) are, as well as Nga Tsin Wai, Po Kong, and Ma Tau Wai Villages. Despite this, however, it seems likely that a market was in existence at Kowloon City from well before the late seventeenth century. The Kowloon City Market is equally not included in the 1819 County Gazetteer, by which date there can be no shadow of a doubt that the market was very well, and very long, established. The earliest surviving land-deeds for the market date from 1751 and 1755, by when, clearly, the market was well-established: see J. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside, Hamden, Connecticut, 1977, p. 235, n. 14. In 1822, when the Hau Wong Temple near the market was restored, 85 shops from Kowloon City Market donated to the restoration, together with 5 (probably apothecaries), 31 quarries (石場), presumably from the surrounding hills, 4 ferryboats and 29 fishing-boats, as well as 8 shops from other markets. Clearly, the market was, in 1822, a vital and very well established place. See D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit. Vol. 1, pp. 75-78.\n\nWE\n\nThe dates of 1354 and 1724 are included on a tablet giving the history of the village placed by the villagers in the Tin Hau Temple in the village. The details of the three founders' connections with the late Sung court are from statements made by village elders to Dr Hayes, and again to me, at various dates.\n\n14 I have used a copy of one of the Nga Tsin Wai hand-written versions (kindly given to me by Mr Ng Hung-on, 吳雄安), the (privately printed) Nga Tsin Wai Wai Clan Genealogy (寶安縣衙前圍吳氏族譜), and the hand-written version from Siu Lek Yuen, a copy of which may be found in the “Historical Literature of Sha Tin\" series in the library of United College, Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\n15 A copy was kindly given me by Mr Chan Wai-hong (陳偉康). This Tsuk Po was produced some years ago, from genealogical information written on the back of the clan Ancestral Tablets.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214710, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "89\n\ncalled. 'hair vegetable), is a homonym for 'get rich'. This basin-meal lunch was the final item on the agenda for the day that the main ceremony was held.\n\nWith this having taken place on the Wednesday at Sheung Tsuen, and the god, Taai Wong Ye, having been burned the same evening, the bamboo-framed matshed was dismantled the following day. As follow up, the Author thus decided to return to the village three days later. The five tun fu pots filled with sand, with a single, split-bamboo talisman with prayers written on it in each pot, had been placed circling the old banyan tree (see Plate 7). Tied to the top of each talisman was a golden (foil) kam fa and a red ribbon - both auspicious colours. There were remains of joss sticks burned by villagers.\n\n10\n\nFurther follow up visits by the Author revealed that, on the 1st and the 15th of every Chinese month especially, joss sticks are burned near the tun fu pots largely by elderly women on behalf of their families. Nevertheless, the pots often give the impression of not being particularly well looked after. The site is untidy. This is a pity. The new West Railway line, of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, is planned to come into operation in November 2003. The tunnel is due to be finished in 2002. The pots will be left for the full duration of its construction and, if they cease to be effective, a nuen fu ('warming' of the talismans) \"revival ceremony\" may be needed. If so, Taoist priests will again officiate.\n\nComparisons of various tun fu ceremonies\n\nHow does the Pat Heung ceremony compare with other tun fu ceremonies that have been conducted elsewhere (Baker; 1980, 21)? Unfortunately the Author has not been able to find any written information, nor has he heard any oral accounts of tun fu ceremonies conducted outside Hong Kong although he gathers they do take place in places like Taiwan. Often in Hong Kong, like the one mentioned earlier (see Endnote 1) on Ma Wan Island, or those that the Author has seen in places like Sha Tin and Kam Tin, the pots were placed near earth-god shrines. All these ceremonies were much smaller than the main ceremony at Pat Heung described in this paper. No matsheds were erected at these smaller gatherings. Sometimes ceremonies are held close to tsz tongs (ancestral halls), although not normally inside.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214816, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "197\n\nquite separate strands in Chinese religion: firstly, the didactic aspect of the \"Three Religions,\" the urge on the part of the few to instruct and teach, and the expectation (indeed acceptance) of the many that they will be on the receiving end of an endless stream of exhortations and admonitions; and secondly, the paying of respects to gods and spirits in the expectation that returns will follow the investment of time and money in its pursuit.\n\nDr. Smith makes another important observation:\n\n“In China, as nowhere else in the world, different forms of instruction (religion) are intertwined. The fact that there are three chief religions in China does not mean that the people are divided into three different sects, each professing a separate faith. The majority of Chinese profess all three religions, and practice each, as occasion requires.”\n\nThe Contributions of the Three Religions\n\nViewed as \"Instruction,\" Confucianism was the Chinese religion par excellence. Practiced over millennia, Confucianism made its greatest impact through the schoolroom and the scholar's study. The Chinese character has been shaped by the Confucian ethics, principally by their laying down of the five human relationships and enjoining adherence to them in everyday life. Outside the schoolroom, the pervasiveness of its teachings was most visible in the ancestral tablets to be found in the homes of the people and in the ancestral halls of lineages large and small alike; as also in the ancestral rites carried out in Spring and Autumn within the family and at the tombs of ancestors.\n\nChinese Taoism has a less pronounced didactic element. In this regard, and so far as the common people are concerned, it has not had the wide influence over mind and behaviour wielded by Confucianism. Its founder Laotzu's teaching has been, as one writer has well described it, \"well-nigh submerged, like a diamond in a heap of rubbish\" buried in a mass of superstitious practices. Since its temples and rich mythology are home to a remarkable diversity of gods, and its religious personnel were and are principally involved with assisting the common people to prevent, avoid or neutralize harmful influences, it falls more within the province of De Groot's \"polytheism and demonism.”7", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215067, "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": 163, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "120\n\ndisasters.' She is portrayed as a Daoist deity sitting cross-legged on a lotus, with gilded robes and a small crown, and with eight arms and three faces. Flanking her are two demonic, black-skinned deities standing, each with six arms and dressed in armour, holding weapons and charms in each of their hands. They are her attendants known here as Gnasher, Qiechi J, and Biter, Yaoya, titles not encountered anywhere else. The sixty Taisui images stand on lower tiers in two groups in five rows, either side of a space between the groups leading from the main entrance to the main deity on the top tier. But before the main deity on the second tier is a lone Taisui, the Taisui of the current year, changed annually at the Lunar New Year. Finally, the sets of double doors to the hall are decorated with depictions of the deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations +, the Ershi ba Xiuxing each deity having a 'human' form and its own attributes.\n\nThe second temple is some fifteen miles from Nanchang, the provincial capital of Jiangxi province in mainland China. Once more there is a separate hall but here dedicated to the wife of the main deity of the complex, the major medical god Xu Zhenjun. In the centre of the Hall is a large rectangular altar with the sixty Taisui ranged on all four sides along two tiers, with the image of Xu's wife and her two attendants positioned on the top of the third tier where she is identified merely as 'Xu's wife,' furen A. Her Hall, the Furen Gong, has stood within the temple complex since at least 1820 though it, together with the other temple halls, has been destroyed three times. Once apparently by accident in 1820, once by the Taiping iconoclasts in 1856 and finally by the Red Guards in 1966. However, it has only been within the last century that her hall has had images of the Taisui added to the gods within the complex and placed on the lower tiers of the plinth of her altar. The temple custodian did not know who decided on this addition, why or when.\n\nIn both of these temples, as in a number of other temples, the images of the sixty Taisui are portrayed as individuals with unique characteristics. A few look demonic, the majority are normal humans, with or without facial hair, young and old, and all are seated and dressed in a wide range of robes. Some are soldiers, some elderly mandarins - and although from lists provided in temples they all have individual personal names, none apart from the President, Yin Jiao, would appear to be recorded in legend or myth. However, several god carvers in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215108, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "161\n\nand the Fulu particular of two opera companies, the Xipi Pai and Erhuang Pai [or Fi Pai], the latter, the northern school, being especially dedicated to woodwinds3. In legend he is said to have had an emotional reunion with the soul of his dead concubine, Yang Guifei, in the palace of Guanghan on the Moon.\n\n4\n\nA tablet on a minor altar at the rear of a secondary hall in the temple of the City God in Hsinchu in northern Taiwan refers to him as Tang Xuan Zong, whilst his usual title in Taiwanese temples of the Lord of the Western Qin, Xi Qin WangyeE is not usually understood beyond Taiwan. There is no image, whereas in the Ma Tsu temple in Taipei a side altar is dedicated to him and his image, portraying him as a standard scholar-official with a black beard, is flanked by two very elderly male aides.\n\nIn South-east Asia images of the emperor have been seen in temples in Seremban and Ipoh in Malaysia, and in Singapore, in some of which he is simply referred to as Zunzhu Mingwang, the Lord Prince Ming, 尊主明王,\n\nAn image seen on the only altar in a side hall of the temple on Miaofeng Shan in Beijing's Western Hills and identified as Tang Ming Huang, is better known in the temple as the God of Happiness, Xi Shen [Photograph 2]. He is referred to as Liyuan Shen, and is portrayed as a smiling figure with beard and moustache, standing with his hands in a theatrical pose. His modern image is dressed in imperial yellow robes decorated with a large dragon and the whole body of the image is swathed in a red robe placed there by devotees.\n\nDisappointingly, there appears to be no image of the Concubine Yang on any altars. However, a modern [1996] tableau in an old temple, now converted into a theme-park, depicts in a series of life-size plaster images scenes ranging from the Tang Ming Huang's first sight of the Concubine Yang bathing, progressing through stages of his infatuation though ending before her death and his overthrow. This can be seen on a low hill overlooking the bend in the Yellow River at the south-western tip of Shanxi province, at a place known as Yang Guifei's pool. The main altar has the Tang Ming Huang and the Concubine sitting with her pouring wine for him. Before the altar stand three incense pots, a container holding fortune spills and plastic fruit as an offering and before", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215830, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "62\n\nOH: USAAF, 1944), p.178 (hereafter referred to as USAAF). The higher the altitude of an airfield, the softer the surface of its runway, and/or the heavier the B-29, the longer its runway had to be for the aircraft to take off. Kai Tak was at sea level, but its runway was soft-surfaced for much of the war.\n\n37 The B-29 runways that were constructed in India and China were 8,500 feet (2,591 metres) long and hard-surfaced. See Keith Wheeler and the editors of Time-Life Books, Bombers Over Japan (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982), p.99.\n\n38 Peter Pigott, Kai Tak: A History of Aviation in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1990), p.67. After the war, the press reported that the Japanese had cleared some residences and hills around Kai Tak to make way for its expansion. See SCMP, September 11, 1945 (Morning Edition), p.2.\n\n39 (1) Eather, p.53. (2) Hong Kong Government Information Services, Hong Kong Airport (Hong Kong: s.n., 1962), p.27. (3) Wings Over Hong Kong: a Tribute to Kai Tak: an Aviation History, 1891-1998 (Hong Kong: Odyssey, 1998), p.131. The Japanese apparently had a scheme to extend one of Kai Tak's runways to about 5,580 feet (1,700 metres), which still didn't allow much latitude for B-29 operations. See \"Japanese Scheme for Extension of Kai Tak,\" 7 Nov 42: Series 10/38; WIZ (Waichow Intelligence Summary) Vol.2; Nos.27-72 (Excluding Nos. 35, 37, 64, 65), April 1943-April 1944; Ride Papers.\n\n40 Wheeler, p.39, 44, 59, 63.\n\n41 Wheeler, p.44.\n\n42 USAAF, p.178. The U.S. also faced a rubber shortage after Japan gained control over most of the world's natural supplies. But it eventually produced synthetic substitutes.\n\n43 USAAF, p.180.\n\n44 According to temperature data available for the three most recent years before the war in Hong Kong (1937-1939), early morning (1-5 AM) temperatures began to approach 75°F by late April, and didn't dip well below this figure until mid- to late November. See HKRO, Meteorological Results, 1937, 1938, and 1939 (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1938, 1939, and 1940) for hourly temperature readings for each day of the year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216022, "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": 321, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "THE YANGZI PORT OF ZHENJIANG DOWN THE CENTURIES\n\n鎮江\n\nPART I\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n255\n\nIntroduction\n\nZhenjiang is a former walled city on the south bank of what is known to the Chinese as the Chang Jiang, the Long River, or simply as The Great River, and to Westerners - the Yangzi [Yangtze]. The city lies some 40 miles downstream from Nanjing and 156 miles upstream from Shanghai, and in its prime during the Northern Song, in the eleventh century, it was one of the major ports on the River, and even though its influence and authority came to a sudden and dramatic end with its capture and destruction by the Taiping rebels in 1853 it remained the provincial capital of Jiangsu province down to the 1940s.\n\nZhenjiang commanded one of the two junctions of the southern or main arm of the Grand Canal with the Yangzi. The city is surrounded on one side by the Yangzi and on three other sides by hills, none at all high or steep, with the Grand Canal winding past the southern and western face of the walls to its convergence with the River at the Xiannü Temple. The city has been walled since the Yuan [13th century], and was built on the level ground between the Yangzi and the Grand Canal. Three of these numerous hills, all islands or former islands in the Yangzi, Jiao Shan, Beigu Shan and Jin Shan, are part of the city's legend. Some ten miles to the south lies a range of higher hills within which foreigners used to seek their exercise, riding and hunting.\n\nOf all the treaty ports Zhenjiang is possibly the least remembered by the great majority of westerners, with very few nowadays even having heard of the place. Not even when it is explained that in former romanisations it has been known to foreigners as Chinkiang, Chin-kiang, Chen-chiang Fu, Chin-keang-foo, Tsing-kiang-foo, Kin-kiang, Chingkiang, Tsing-kiang and Jingkou [i.e. Gateway to the Capital - Nanjing]. It was even known by the title of Chin-shan [Jin Shan], Gold", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216027, "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": 326, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "260\n\none of the ports of call on the routine and customary journey up the Yangzi. It was also within easy reach from Shanghai, no more than a night's sail, with the more adventurous and especially the sportsmen spending a short vacation there. The game varied from wild boar to pheasants and a typical excursion was described by Percival1 who, in April of 1887, was invited by Sir Roderick Runnimede to join him in a voyage up through the Yangzi gorges. Percival wrote that 'it was not a scientific excursion, there were no new countries to discover, no new people to trot out before the world, no new trade routes to open up; it was simply an excursion for health and pleasure combined. In a short time we arrived at the city of Chinkiang [Zhenjiang] itself, the place never having recovered its prosperity since it was burned by the [Taiping] Rebels about 1860. Not more than four or five years earlier [i.e. 1882-3] the shooting around Zhenjiang was all that could be desired; game (principally birds) of every description was most abundant. Sportsmen made Zhenjiang their headquarters. Feathers and fur - everything, in fact, between snipe and leopard - could be found within easy distance. Each year as cultivation advances, population increases, and villages, destroyed by the rebels are gradually being rebuilt, so game is being driven farther and farther into wilder and more remote regions∗. Percival went on to describe how one winter afternoon some years earlier he had joined W. De St. Croix, an old friend, stationed in Zhenjiang in the service of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, and using Zhenjiang as a base they had sailed in the Custom's cruiser up stream to shoot wild fowl. After several days shooting they returned and, on the following day, set off on ponies for the Wu-chow-shang [Wuzhou Shan] Hills, about ten miles south of Zhenjiang to round off the trip with three or four days among the boars and deer.\n\nFrom the early 1890s and for about six years local post offices existed in eleven of the treaty ports issuing their own stamps, one of which was Zhenjiang. A contemporary comment noted that just as many of the stamps were sold to tourists and collectors as were used postally.\n\nZhenjiang down the centuries\n\nZhenjiang has been a place of great importance for a great many centuries. In the beginning, no more than a crossing point for boatmen plying their ferries across the Yangzi, it was known in much earlier times first as Dantu and then as Runzhou. Local historians", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216033, "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": 332, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "266\n\nand on as far as the coast of Africa bringing back treasures which included the first giraffe. These expeditions would have sailed past Zhenjiang and must have been a sight to behold.\n\nToday Zhenjiang is twinned with Tempe, near Phoenix in Arizona. Presumably there is a common factor linking these two places but whatever it might be has escaped me.\n\nHostile incursions up the Yangzi\n\nDown the centuries many raids by Japanese pirates on the eastern Chinese seaboard, some large scale but mostly small, led to the permanent awareness and terror amongst the Chinese along the coastline. The Yangzi estuary was not spared and on a number of occasions they even penetrated up River as far as Zhenjiang. Having been beaten off during the 12th century they reappeared in force during the early 13th century, and in 1419 they were beaten decisively and piracy stopped for a while. The Japanese were again defeated in 1542 by Yu Dayu, however, they reappeared in force in the Yangzi in 1550 capturing Zhenjiang before going on to threaten Nanjing. For three months they plundered the Zhenjiang area before retiring with their booty. For many a year the hills around the city each had beacons ready to fire to warn of impending Japanese attacks. - and by the end of the 14th century their depredations were recurring annually.\n\nA major incursion up the Yangzi was made in 1629 by a naval force despatched by Zheng Zhilong, the father of Zheng Chenggong, better known to foreigners as Koxinga and Taiwan's most famous hero. Koxinga was a child of destiny, a seagoing warlord who opposed and fought the newly-established Manchu Qing dynasty on the mainland from his base in Taiwan. He finally established a new mini-dynasty which ruled Taiwan for some twenty or so years. His father, Zheng Zhilong [1604-1661], had been a notorious Xiamen [Amoy] Chinese pirate chief who had made a fortune through his trading and piracy, raiding the shipping and settlements of south China with his fleet of pirate raiders and trading junks. The Ming authorities, to tame him, allowed themselves to accept his offer of service and were forced into making him an admiral and a marquis in charge of the suppression of piracy - and thus drew his teeth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216058, "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": 357, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "291\n\n+\n\nIn early December 1881 Hudson Taylor convened an informal missionary conference at Zhenjiang to discuss the crucial and imperative need to increase their numbers in order to accelerate the pace of converting China. This was an on-going problem raised and discussed by Protestant missionaries across China down the years. The staff and language students from the Missionary Language School at Anqing, another city on the Yangzi, were invited to attend the Zhenjiang conference as were missionaries of the American Episcopal Church.\n\nIn 1900 Mr Absolom Sydenstricker and his wife were both Presbyterian missionaries living in Zhenjiang, together with their daughter Pearl who was eight. During the first months of the Boxer troubles they refused to flee, then in July of that year when conditions had worsened they were compelled to escape to Shanghai, to return a year later. Life for a growing young woman was fairly circumscribed with the white population limited to the few in the consulates, other missionaries and a dozen or so men working with British and American companies. Pearl left in 1917 to marry Mr Buck, an American missionary and academic interested in China's rural economy, at Nan Suzhou in Anhui. Pearl's mother died in Zhenjiang several years later and was buried in what was then known as Zhenjiang's foreign cemetery. In 1920 Pearl's father sold their house and moved to Nanjing. Pearl Buck spent in all some forty-three years in China, and her writings brought Chinese social inter-relationships, especially those of the peasants, to western readers, possibly the first to achieve a world-wide circulation leading to many a westerner's first fascination about China. She wrote many a book and chaired many a public meeting telling people, mainly in the US, of the enduring spirit and resilience as well as the wretched lives lived by Chinese peasants and of the threat from Japanese Imperialism. Her best known works include The Good Earth, and a translation of the Shuihu Ji, 'All Men are Brothers', one of China's most popular pieces of literature. Her parents' family house in Zhenjiang, at the present day address of 6 Runzhou Shan Lu, is now one of the leading tourist attractions, for Americans in particular, despite being part of a semiconductor factory.\n\nIn May 1905 Hudson Taylor, freshly back from recuperation in Europe, stopped by Zhenjiang on his way to Changsha, where he visited the graves of Maria [his first wife who had died there in July 1870] and his children in the little cemetery among the hills. He, himself,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216160, "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": 459, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "393\n\nAFTERTHOUGHTS ON\n\nSOUTH CHINA VILLAGE CULTURE\n\n(Hong Kong: Oxford University Press (China), 2001)\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nAfter completing a book, there are bound to be after-thoughts! Whether one likes it or not, the mind continues to work away in the sub-conscious, reviewing the end result. This has certainly been the case with my South China Village Culture.\n\nThe Oxford University Press Images of Asia series, to which it belongs, has been a considerable success, but perhaps because it is a tall order to compress big subjects into a small book format, does render its authors more prone to having such after-thoughts. I now consider there have been certain omissions, and would like to make at least some amends.\n\nSome precedents for supplying further information after publishing come to mind. When reviewing Dr. Hugh Baker's three volumes in his Ancestral Images series (Hong Kong, SCMP Ltd., 1979-81), I had regretted the lack of full references for so many interesting quotations from older books, whereupon Dr. Baker had supplied a complete set, prefaced by an interesting bibliographic note. These were printed in a subsequent issue of the Journal (Vol. 23, 1983, pp.221-232), to our enduring benefit.\n\nMy first omission was to completely overlook, in the 'Heritage and Preservation' chapter, the former Hong Kong Government's policy for the reinstatement of old village communities in the New Territories. Although a large number of villages were demolished to allow New Town development, the indigenous communities themselves were preserved intact through reprovisioning on new sites at public expense. This applied - and as far as I know the policy is still being followed by the SAR Government - not only to houses, but also to ancestral halls, shrines, and temples. Over a hundred old villages have been reprovisioned in this way in the last forty and more years.\n\nHowever, a greater omission was the absence of any reference to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216309, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "17\n\nIn the early Qing Dynasty Longhua Temple received considerable attention in the form of repairs to the existing buildings and construction of new ones. A major construction project started in 1647 resulted in the completion of the Abbot or Temple Master's Room (Fang Zhang Shi) and the Wei Tuo Hall (Wei Tuo Dian), as well as the repair of the Scripture Storage Pavilion (Cang Jing Ge).\n\nIt will be recalled that during the Yuan Dynasty the temple experienced a massive expansion in the size of its territory, if not its actual structures. In 1672 the Qing authorities measured the size of the immediate area around the temple halls as occupying 93 mu of land, plus an additional 74 mu of open land in the surrounding area which was used to plant vegetables. It was this later open space which gradually evolved into first Longhua Park, and then the present day Martyr's Cemetery.\n\nDuring a 155 year period in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, from 1672 to 1827, no new construction, reconstruction or repairs were recorded. This begs the question as to why the temple was dormant during such a long period of time. Was it lack of imperial sympathy for Buddhism in general, or simply the absence of wars and destruction requiring later rehabilitation during this relatively peaceful time?\n\nAfter a century and a half of dormancy, the Taiping Rebellion finally provided the opportunity or the need for new construction and repairs. Between 1860 and 1862 the Taiping rebels attacked Shanghai three times, during which records say vaguely that most of the Longhua Temple buildings were destroyed. On August 18, 1860 the Taipings captured Xu Jia Hui, and it was probably then when the nearby Longhua Temple was destroyed. Although no list is provided of exactly which buildings were destroyed, we can infer from later lists of the structures rebuilt afterwards that this included the Great Sadness Hall (Da Bei Dian), the Precious Hall of the Great Hero (Da Xiong Bao Dian), the Heavenly Kings Hall (Tian Wang Dian), the Three Gods Hall (San Sheng Dian), the Maitreya Buddha Hall (Mi Le Fo Dian), the Drum Tower (Gu Lou), the Bell Tower (Zhong Lou), and the Big Buddha Hall (Da Fo Dian). Basically every previously existing key structure is mentioned as having been rebuilt after this period of destruction, with the exception of the die-hard Precious Pagoda (Bao Ta) and the Master's Room (Fang Zhang Shi), raising the possibility that the two structures which stand today are both authentic originals.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216310, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "18\n\nRestoring the damage done by the three years of Taiping destruction required a massive reconstruction project which lasted for nearly 30 years from 1871 to 1899. In addition to rebuilding the previous structures, several new halls which had not existed before were added during this time, including the Guest House (Ke Tang) and the Dining Hall (Zhai Tang) in 1887; the Goddess of Mercy Hall (Guan Yin Dian), Ancestors Hall (Zu Shi Dian), and the Kshitigarbha Hall (Di Zang Dian) in 1890; and finally the 500 Arhats Hall (Wu Bai Luohan Tang) in 1896.\n\nThe Republican era, 1911-1949\n\nAt the beginning of the Min Guo Republic (1912), all the monks were forced to move out by armed soldiers who moved in and used the temple as a barracks. The soldiers looted the golden statues from the temple, and wooden parts of the temple such as window frames were used by the soldiers to make cooking fires. However, in 1920 the temple and the pagoda were both repaired, and after being closed for a whole decade the temple finally officially reopened in 1922 when all the monks came back. Holmes Welch's otherwise authoritative 1967 study of Buddhism in China mistakenly stated that Longhua Temple was occupied by the Chinese military for the entire Min Guo period. Photos from D. C. Burn's brief 1926 study of the temple show that the Qing Dynasty 500 Arhat Hall (Wu Bai Luohan Tang) was still intact then, although it no longer exists now.\n\nLonghua Temple enjoyed 15 years of peace and tranquility until September 11, 1937 when the temple was badly damaged during the Japanese attack on Shanghai. Nine Japanese airplanes dropped 30 bombs on the Longhua area. Most likely they were targeting the nearby Longhua Airport and the Guomindang's Longhua Garrison military camp next door, but they accidentally caused severe damage to the temple. Before the attack there had been 80 monks living in the temple, but afterward there were only 7 monks remaining.\n\nDuring the first five years of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1942, the internal affairs of the temple were confused and disorganized, with rival masters claiming the post of Abbot, and unqualified persons claiming to be Buddhist monks for the sake of seeking safe haven in the temple. On September 9, 1942 a reorganization committee was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216311, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "19\n\nestablished to restore order within the temple's community of resident monks. In 1944 this committee restored the Da Xiong Bao Dian, and the next year, 1945, the Bao Ta. Once the Sino-Japanese War had ended, in 1946 life in the temple returned to a resemblance of its pre-war normalcy. However, the tranquility which existed within the temple for the next three years was suddenly disrupted when the Communist's captured Shanghai in May 1949 and proclaimed the People's Republic in October 1949. With all the disasters the temple had survived over the previous 900 years, the worst was yet to come.\n\nPeople's Republic, 1949-2003\n\nIn June 1949, one month after their capture of Shanghai, the new Communist government took over the temple, and on October 1, 1949, the day celebrating the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the Red flag of the P.R.C. was flown from the top of the pagoda. This unprecedented disrespect shown by the new regime to the temple by flying its flag from the pagoda was only the first in a series of incidents which illustrated the temple's now endangered status. The temple grounds were drastically reduced in size by at least two-thirds when their garden area was seized by the state and converted into Longhua Park in 1954. The temple's halls were temporarily appropriated by the government in January 1956 for a series of meetings held between local government officials and Chinese businessmen to explain and then celebrate the new policy of abolishing private enterprise in favor of a new system of joint private-state companies. The celebration involved a party for 2,000 people which undoubtedly included activities such as smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol which are contrary to the Buddhist faith. This temporary appropriation of the temple by the government for non-religious purposes was herald of worse things to come during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).\n\nIn the summer of 1966 Longhua Temple suffered a devastating series of events over a one month period which destroyed nearly all vestiges of its centuries old heritage. On August 24, 1966 a mob of more than 1,000 Red Guards (Hong Wei Bing) rushed into the temple and in one day destroyed all of the temple's Buddha statues, library of books, treasures, and art work. The next day, August 25, the Red Guards returned with the intention of destroying the Longhua Pagoda (Bao Ta), which we've seen had probably been built in the Northern Song", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216312, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "20\n\nDynasty (960-1126). First they tied ropes around the base of the pagoda and tried to pull it down, but when this failed they poured oil all around its base, intending to set it on fire and burn it down. At this stage the account recorded in the local records (zhen zhi) states rather mysteriously that \"the strong opposition of the residents and other people\" forced the Red Guards to give up. Thanks to the intervention of these nameless people, the pagoda repeated its performance of having miraculously survived many upheavals throughout the temple's history.\n\n1\n\nNonetheless, the destruction of the relics within the temple halls continued for another month. On September 3rd an estimated 103 antique relics found in the temple were looted. This was followed on September 14th by the intentional destruction of the Da Cang Jing, a sacred Buddhist scripture which weighed 1,763 kilograms before it was shredded into waste paper. Finally, on September 30th the Ming Dynasty bronze bell in the Bell Tower (Zhong Lou), which weighed 2,574 kilograms, was cut into pieces and melted down as scrap metal, as was the last remaining Buddha statue, which had been a gift of Ming Emperor Wan Li, and weighed 334 kilograms.\n\nHaving now been destroyed as a functioning temple, all that remained were the empty buildings. In 1967 the temple buildings were all rented out as warehouse storage space to the China Rice and Oil Import Export Co. The one exception was the Master's Room (Fang Zhang Shi), in which some monks may have continued to live a hidden existence.\n\nAfter 15 years of having been closed as a place of worship, Longhua Temple was finally reopened in February 1981 after three of the main halls had been repaired, including the Mi Le Dian, Tian Wang Dian, and the Da Xiong Bao Dian. The government tried to make further amends in 1983 by giving the temple a new set of scriptures known as the Long Cang, which had been preserved in the Shanghai Library. In 1984 the Bao Ta pagoda was repaired, and these repairs continued with the restoration of the San Sheng Dian in May 1986.\n\nIn 2001 a giant new shopping centre called Longhua Tourist City was built behind the pagoda, but this surprisingly has not damaged the environment, and in fact has added the convenience of additional restaurants in the area at which one can rest after a long day's exploration.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216314, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "22\n\nsuccessive courtyards which separate the six main halls on the central axis. All told there are about a dozen halls, towers, and pavilions, each containing golden effigies of a wide variety of various Buddhist deities. This goes well beyond the typical scale of the average Buddhist temple which normally has only three main halls and sometimes just one.\n\nIn this first courtyard are four stone relics of uncertain age, but probably not older than the Minguo era at most. These include two stone lions and two octagonal stone lanterns, all four enclosed by stone railings. Two large trees in the courtyard were transplanted here in January 2004. On the right side of the courtyard is a new expanded gift shop (shu dian) added in January 2004. It offers not only Buddhist trinkets, but a fine selection of Chinese language books containing histories of Longhua Temple and Buddhist scriptures. Until 2004, there was not a single published history of Longhua Temple available for sale here, but late in December 2003 no less than three new well-researched titles on this topic were published, several of which can be found here.\n\nThe first main hall is the one-story Maitreya Buddha Hall (Mi Le Dian). This hall dates from an 1884 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1981. It is dedicated to the Maitreya Buddha of the future, known in China as Mi Le Fo, and depicted here as the fat laughing Buddha of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). This Mi Le Fo image is a golden effigy, seated on a square stone base and protected by a glass case. He is depicted as having a third eye in the centre of his forehead. The Buddha can be seen from the first courtyard through a partially open gate of the hall, but the hall itself cannot be entered without passing through the adjoining orange wall into the second courtyard and entering from the other side.\n\nAlthough, Mi Le Fo usually does occupy the first hall of many temples, he often has to share his space with the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang). In this case he has the whole hall to himself, the kings occupying a separate building of their own. Until January 2004 he had to share his home with the temple gift shop (shu dian), but this has now been moved out to a separate new hall in the first courtyard.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216318, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "26\n\nwhich is open to the public, the Mu Ta Yuan, so named for the Tao Ming Chan Si Mu Ta, a broken stone tomb pagoda dating from the year 1667 in the reign of Emperor Kang Xi which stands in the centre. The Mu Ta is a hexagonal stone pillar on a lotus flower with a round stone ball balanced on top decorated with dragon images wrapped around it. Two faint inscriptions can be seen on either side of the pillar. Lying on the ground beside the Mu Ta is a broken piece of an ancient inscribed tablet. This is one of the original four boundary stones of Longhua's predecessor Kongxiang Temple dating from the year 1262 in the late Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Near the Mu Ta are three stone statues of a mythical animal, the Si Ge Lin Shou. These broken stone remains may be the oldest relics on the site, but their age, origin, and significance seem a mystery. In one corner of this courtyard is a corridor connecting with the Longhua Hotel next door. At the rear of the courtyard is the monk's Dining Hall (Zhai Tang), not to be confused with the separate Vegetarian Restaurant (Su Cai Guan) intended for public visitors located on the right side of the Da Xiong Bao Dian beneath the sign of the large wooden fish (pang) hanging from the rafters.\n\nTwo long barracks-like halls run along almost the full length of the western side of the temple compound and are divided up into many small Buddhist chapels. The major ones include the Arhat Hall (Luo Han Dian), and the Goddess of Mercy Hall (Guan Yin Dian). The Luo Han Dian is a new addition to the temple, added sometime during 2002. It features small golden statues of 500 arhats or Buddhist saints. This chapel has become quite popular with worshippers, but one woman who had just finished praying mistakenly told the author there were 800 arhats, testimony to the newness of this innovation. The Guanyin Dian is on the left side of the fourth courtyard and features an impressive golden statue of Guanyin, who is depicted as facing in all four directions, and has 1,000 arms. Many of her hundreds of hands hold objects of special significance.\n\nIn between the Luo Han Dian and Guanyin Dian is yet another hall, seemingly nameless, which although devoid of architectural splendor does have three splendid gilded Buddha statues. These three include Sakyamuni Buddha (Shi Jia Mou Ni Pusa) in the centre, Manjusri (Wen Shu) on your left, and Guanyin on your right. The interior walls of this hall are literally covered with memorial slips of paper and photographs meant to commemorate lost loved ones. It is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]