[
    {
        "id": 204398,
        "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": 30,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n21\n\nNestorian community in his letters, and their king George, whom he converted from Nestorianism to the Catholic faith.\n\nThe scattered references to the Nestorians in the accounts of the friars are confirmed by Marco Polo (1271-1295) who with his father and uncle can represent for us the second group of travelling merchants. Everywhere through Central Asia and China Marco found Nestorian Christians, usually in the service of the Court, and probably more often than not of Syrian, Persian or Turkish race, employed as administrative officials by the alien government on account of their high standard of literacy.\n\nMarco Polo also confirms the existence of a Nestorian Christian tribe with their Christian king George (whom he confuses with Prester John as Odoric also does) at the Yellow River bend. It seems likely that the name 'Tenduc' which he gives to the region is the early pronunciation of T'ien-tê which was an old name of the present city of Kuei-hua{ in that region, near which is the important market town of Pao-t'ou in which Mr. P. M. Scott found the first fourteen crosses of our paper. Similarly the Tozan of Odoric may be identified with Tung-sheng, an early name for the same region. The Christian Mongol tribe situated by the Ordos bend of the Yellow River is known from various sources to have been the Onguts (Wang-ku people), to which Marco Polo refers, though confusedly, in calling their king Ung-Khan.\n\nThese facts are confirmed in a remarkable way by a Syriac document describing a pilgrimage of two Eastern Nestorian monks—one an Ongut, the other of Uigur stock—from their monastery near Peking to the seat of the Nestorian Patriarch in Mesopotamia in A.D. 1278. In the course of their journey they visited the Christian Ongut tribe by the Yellow River bend, and from them received a touching farewell.19\n\nIV. NESTORIAN RELICS IN CHINA AND MONGOLIA\n\nWith the expulsion of the Mongols from China at the fall of the Yuan dynasty in A.D. 1368, the Christianity both Nestorian and Franciscan that had been associated with their regime disappeared.\n\n17 Letters of Montecorvino, see Yule, op. cit., and Moule, op. cit., pp. 171 ff.\n\n18 Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, revised by Cordier, London, Murray, 1903.\n\n19 Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, London, R.T.S. 1928.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213219,
        "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": 41,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "20\n\nLane, Crawford Restaurant and for several years in the 1930s it was known as the Exchange Restaurant, but in 1935 the name reverted again to Cafe Wisseman (details of management, location and name are from notices of the Spirit Licensing Board published in the Hong Kong Government Gazette).\n\nAn incident took place at the Cafe in September 1914, just after war was declared, which placed three German nationals under suspicion. They were observed throwing down a copy of the China Mail and stamping on it because it contained a report that the British had compulsorily bought two battleships then being built for the Turkish Government (CO129/413, Information from Provost Marshall regarding Germans on list, 8 Oct. 1914).\n\nFirms\n\nI have tried to reconstruct the history of these firms from the records available in Hong Kong. The average reader may not be interested in the detailed account of change of partnership, location and other minutia, but as most of this material has not been published previously, I presume to do so now in the hope that there may be some who have an interest in the firms may learn more about them. The information and references may provide a starting place for those who might wish to write a fuller history of particular firms.\n\nThough Germany was not a colonial power in Asia, its merchants carried on an active trade there. Throughout the nineteenth century German firms became increasingly competitive with those of other western countries. In the opening decades of the century Canton was the centre for trade, but it declined in importance when the ports at Hong Kong and Shanghai developed.\n\nWhen war was declared between Britain and Germany in August 1914 citizens of enemy countries were placed under parole but in October new laws were enacted enabling the Hong Kong Government to place German nationals who held reserve status in the military to be interned. Representatives of German businesses in Hong Kong sent a letter dated 30 October to the American Consul General there asking him to submit it to the British authorities. The merchants appealed for a reversal of the orders on the grounds that they had contributed through the years to the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215102,
        "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": 198,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "155\n\nIMAGES ON CHINESE POPULAR RELIGION\n\nALTARS\n\nOF THE HEROES\n\nINVOLVED IN THE SUPPRESSION\n\nOF\n\nTHE AN LUSHAN REBELLION [AD 755 - 763]\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nChina suffered a major internal political upheaval between 755 and 763 when General An Lushan led a rebellion against the Tang emperor. It took some seven years for it to be decisively suppressed by government forces.\n\nFrom some records it would appear that An Lushan was half Turkish and half Soghdian, the son of a Soghdian officer and known as Rokhshan before he took the Chinese name of An Lushan. Recent histories written by foreigners only rarely refer to An Lushan prior to his command of a punitive expedition against the Khitan in 736. This campaign was a failure to such an extent that his superior general considered having him executed. Within ten years, however, he became one of the most powerful of the generals, ruling most of the north-east of what was then China, and in particular holding the governorship of three frontier cities, Pinglu, Fanyang and Hedong, along the northern borders of present day Hebei and Shanxi provinces. This meant that he commanded the best and largest armies of the Empire.\n\nProfessor Giles' provided An Lushan's biography in some detail, and although very dated it is still of great interest:\n\nAn Lu-shan died in AD 757. He was born in Luk-chak, of Turkic descent, whose original name had been K'ang. [Presumably Giles was quoting Chinese sources when he related that]... An Lu-shan's mother had been a witch who had prayed for a son on the Ya-lao mountains and at his birth, a halo was seen around the house, and the beasts of the fields cried aloud. The authorities sent to have the child put to death, but he was successfully concealed by his mother. His father died young and his mother re-married, a man named An;",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216482,
        "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": 241,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "191\n\nalso want someone to translate his words to those government officials and village chiefs with whom he would have to negotiate his way up and down the river. He engaged a local small boat skipper as Nocador (coxswain); a Chaldean by the name of Judges who had served some time on board a line of Turkish steamers plying on the Tigris as bo'sun; and a steward who also doubled as interpreter. A further eleven hands were taken on to complete the crew and Plant was ready to set off on his journey of exploration up the Karun river. It was truly a journey of discovery as he had no maps or books on the river and had to rely on local knowledge provided by the Nocador. After a number of excitements along the narrow winding waterway, they stopped at the small village of Shalaliah that acted as a port to Shushter. Plant covered the last seven miles to Shuster on horseback to report the safe arrival of the Shushan to the Company's agent, one of several young Englishmen in the area serving the interests of the shipping company. As both foreigners and Christians, the company's agents lived a life of some difficulty and danger. Plant felt that his life aboard the Shushan was far more congenial.\n\nThus started the regular passenger and freight service that Plant was to run for some time. His relations with the many local officials with whom he came in contact were conducted with tact and skill - his private thoughts about them and his comments on their ways of life and business, he confined to his personal log book. The difficulties of piloting his craft up and down an uncharted river were considerable and required great resource and powers of improvisation. He found that his triple rudder could not cope with the narrow winding part of the river unless he went at full speed, which proved particularly exciting when navigating a series of blind bends. On another part of the river an unexpected eddy took him into some rocks at speed which sprung a line of rivets and opened up a section of the hull. Fortunately, the Shushan's watertight construction in sections kept it afloat but left him with the problem of making a repair - they were far from any dockyard facility. He provided the answer by lowering a weighted line through each empty rivet hole; fishing for the weight from the bank; attaching a bolt; hauling the bolt up through the rivet hole; and anchoring it with a nut which he tightened up to re-secure the sprung plate. This turned out to be a tedious, time-consuming but entirely successful means of making good a damaged hull that he later introduced to the shipmasters of the Yangtse. There were many more occasions when he was up the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]