[
    {
        "id": 204415,
        "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": 47,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "38\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nelement of the many-sided popular religion. I shall be talking about the small percentage who were consciously Buddhist.\n\nThe first stage of the Buddhist career was that of a lay devotee, the chü-shih ±. He was someone who was interested in Buddhism, studied it, and perhaps joined a devotees' club, that is, a chu-shih lin ½±✯. There were many such clubs in China, particularly in the large cities. He might attend lectures there once a week, at which an eminent monk would come to talk about the sutras. He might learn from the monk to chant the basic liturgy and to handle the liturgical instruments, the gong, clapper, and so on. He might even learn to expound the sutras himself, although an ordained monk was always supposed to be present to attest to what he said.\n\nThe second stage of the Buddhist career was taking the Refuges, kuei-i. The layman went to a monk and repeated the formula: \"I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha (i.e., the congregation of monks); and I acknowledge herewith that such and such a monk is my master.\" Afterwards he would get a certificate of this master-disciple relationship. One could take the Refuges over and over again, that is, one could have several masters.\n\n11\n\nThe third stage was to take the Five Vows, shou wu-chieh 1. This was normally done only once, perhaps at a small temple, but more probably at a big monastery in conjunction with an ordination of monks. Sometimes laymen would participate in the very first part of the ordination ceremony, which included the Five Vows, and then they would watch the ordinands go through the rest of it. Taking the Five Vows meant that a Buddhist was probably quite serious about his religion. Specifically it only committed him not to kill, not to steal, not to lie, not to drink wine, and not to indulge in illicit sexual intercourse. But many a layman who had taken the vows would recite a sutra every morning before breakfast in his household shrine, perhaps the Heart Sutra. On the first and fifteenth of the lunar month he would probably abstain from eating meat and he would also fast during the whole of the sixth month. But he was still a layman and likely to remain one.\n\nThe fourth step was to enter the novitiate. This was termed \"leaving home\" ch'u chia. It solemnized the layman's",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214212,
        "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": 70,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "33\n\nThen there is another tale which goes as follows (Giles, 1925: Joke64): A Chinese chess player was proud of his ability, although on one occasion he lost three games in a row. The next day a friend asked him how he got on. 'I didn't win the first game,' he replied, and my opponent didn't lose the second.' 'As to the last game, I asked him to agree to a draw but he wouldn't.' Many Westerners talk as if face, which really amounts to 'worth' in the eyes of others, is only important to Asians. U Thant, the Burmese diplomat who was made Permanent Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1962, was fond of saying: 'Face is very important to Europeans.' While the author does not disagree, it would appear Asians place even more emphasis on it than do Westerners.\n\nMuch has been made recently by the media about senior civil servants not being tolerant of Radio Television Hong Kong's political satire when the foolishness of the establishment has been highlighted in an amusing way (Yeung, 1998a). It amounts to what is accepted (especially in the West) as good clean fun being taken seriously by some Hong Kong government servants (Yeung, 1998b). It largely boils down to the fact that, when the joke is on them and they lose face, civil servants are unable to accept it in good heart.\n\nAlthough a bit of a struggle at first, many Japanese politicians have now, apparently, learned more recently to accept criticism, passing it off by describing it as a form of 'art' and saying the attention he receives shows that he must be popular.10 'After all, we do not criticise those who we do not think much of, but we do criticise those who we love and esteem.'\n\nWhen China's President, Jiang Zemin, visited Hong Kong in 1998, a photograph in the Hong Kong Standard, on July 1, showed him travelling in the back of a car with his seat-belt unbuckled. Most Europeans (and some more westernised Chinese too) took this as good, mischievous fun. A letter in the same newspaper, on July 5 from a Chinese living in the United States, however, asked whether, if during colonial days a member of the British Royal Family who was visiting Hong Kong, or a British governor were caught not wearing a seat-belt, whether it would have been publicised (and by implication made fun of) in a similar way. This Overseas Chinese felt it was wrong to publish the photograph of Jiang Zemin in the Standard. In fairness, of course, until",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]