[ { "id": 205871, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n171\n\ntung. On the military side these events included two assaults on Canton itself, nearly four years of military occupation of the city (5.1.1858 - 21.10.1861) and various punitive expeditions on the Canton river and inside the province. On the civil and diplomatic side were the sequence of events connected with the question of entry to Canton, which the British held to have been promised them under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. This culminated in the triumph of the Canton Viceroy in 1849 who was able to defer entry still further on the grounds of the rooted opposition of the gentry and people of the province to this step by their officials — though deferment was also due to Bonham's conviction that the real key to Canton lay not by warlike action there as in the North. These years also saw economic crises at Canton occasioned, among other factors, by the opening of four other treaty ports under the Nanking Treaty, and a wave of growing lawlessness across the province culminating in the great disorders of the 1850s in the wake of the Taiping rebellion.\n\nMr. Wakeman's theme is the re-emergence of local militia in the early 1840's to assist in repelling the British forces and their continuance through the later years of the entry question (1846-49); the part they played in local defence against the Red Turban and other rebels, pirates and banditti in the early 1850s; their efforts against the British attack in 1857-58 and, under secret orders from Peking, in the guerilla struggle against the British in Canton in the first period of the occupation, until diplomatic agreement in the North led to their being told to desist.\n\nHe traces the ebb and flow in official attitudes to the local militia from encouragement to discouragement, from enthusiasm to apprehension. He describes, too, the methods by which the militia were raised and financed and shows how they were a two-edged weapon to Government and people alike. Mr. Wakeman also traces the rise and wane of anti-foreign attitudes in Kwantung during this period and the paradoxical change from bitter enmity to a realisation, at least in Canton and its surrounds, that British troops were a guarantee against a multitude of threats from lawless elements. The treatment is masterly and authoritative, being based on a wide variety of sources in English and Chinese; the book is compelling and the narrative moves smoothly.\n\nIn this review I shall confine my remarks mainly to the militia. First of all I wish to comment briefly on the use of the English", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206296, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n107\n\nHowever with the financial assistance of his wife's share in the estate of Ho Fuk Tong, he was able to study law in England. He returned to Hong Kong to practice law and in time was appointed a Magistrate. In 1880, Governor Hennessy appointed him as the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council. He served for two years, but then resigned to join the staff of Viceroy Li Hung Chung at Tientsin. In 1897 he was appointed the Chinese Ambassador to the United States and continued serving his country in other posts of responsibility until his death in 1922.\n\nA classmate and good friend of Wu Ting Fang, named Chan Ayin (陳海亭) alias Chan Oi Ting was one of thirty representatives of the Chinese community to call on Governor Sir Arthur Kennedy to welcome him to Hong Kong in 1872. He is also named among fourteen who, dressed in their official robes as mandarins, welcomed the Governor on his visit to Tung Wah Hospital in 1878. He was baptized while a student at St. Paul's College and, like most of the others whose career we are considering in this section, after completing his education he entered Government service. He was connected with the Magistrate's Court, but in 1871 he left to become a reporter for the China Mail. When the Mail began publishing the Wah Tsz Yat Po in 1872, he was head of this department. In 1877 he surrendered his lease of the paper but continued with The China Mail for a short period after. He then gave up his career in journalism to join the staff of the newly appointed Chinese Ambassador to the United States. As a member of the staff, he was appointed Consul-General in Havana, Cuba. He continued to serve in the Chinese diplomatic service for ten years, but then returned to China where he became director of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company and of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Administration. He died at Shanghai in 1905.44\n\nWhile editor of the Wah Tsz Yat Po, Chan Oi Ting was also instrumental in organizing and managing the Chinese Printing and Publishing Company which bought the press and type of the London Mission Press in 1872. This company began publishing the Tsun Wan Yat Po (Universal Circulating Herald) in February 1874. It advertised itself as the \"first daily newspaper ever issued under purely native auspices\". The paper was registered under the name of Wong Tao (£), a scholar of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206393, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "184 \n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe Colony, which his predecessor had not done, and which his successor was still less able to do. During all his time the Colony was in a dead-alive state. What trade had sprung up during its first years had rather decreased under Sir John Davis, and it was not till about 1854 that it received a fresh impulse. I remember walking, in 1849, one afternoon with old Mr. Holliday—so we should call him now with his stalwart sons among us—and having a gloomy conversation with him on the state and prospects of the place. Taking our stand at a point a little beyond what is now St. Paul's College, where we had a good view of the harbour, we counted 28 square-rigged vessels in it, storeships and all, with hardly a steamer among them. \"After all,” said Mr. Holliday, \"there must be some trade, else those vessels would not come to the place.\" By and by came the emigration to California, and afterwards that to Australia, but though these produced some excitement, they did little to the furtherance of trade. In 1850 the T'ae-p'ing rebellion began to be talked of, and, Sir George Bonham going on a visit to England, Dr. Bowring came down from his consulate in Canton to take his place, which finally became his own, when the other vacated his office in 1854, leaving his name in the Bonham Strand.\n\nAbout this time Yeh, whose name ere long became notorious all over the world, and who had for some time been governor of Canton province, was appointed viceroy of the two Kwang. The T'ae-p'ing rebels made themselves masters of Nanking, and the south and seaboard of China began to heave with rebellion. One body made itself master of Fat-shan, and Canton was threatened. Yeh, however, maintained himself there, keeping his executioners busy. The numbers put to death in 1852 and 1853 were very many every month, and they greatly multiplied, as the insurgents were gradually got under. It has always seemed to me that this was the turning point in the progress of Hongkong. As Canton was threatened, the families of means hastened to leave it, and many of them flocked to this Colony. Houses were in demand; rents rose; the streets that had been comparatively deserted assumed a crowded appearance; new commercial Chinese firms were founded; the native trade received an impetus which it had not lost till it was arrested by the superfluous vigour of some of Sir Richard MacDonnell's early ordinances.\n\nPage 210\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207742, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "CHAN LAI-SUN AND HIS FAMILY\n\n115\n\nHe served as chief secretary at the Chefoo Convention in 1876, and until the time of his death assisted at the many transactions Viceroy Li had with foreign powers. He was to have joined Li in his mission to Japan after the Sino-Japanese War, but Li excused him saying, “You are old and so am I; but I have to go because there is no help for it.\"\n\nAt the time of his death Chan Lai-sun was survived by his widow, two sons and two daughters. He was predeceased by his son William and a daughter. The death notice of his widow, who died at the age of 92 on 17 Jan. 1917, was published in the Chinese Recorder (v. 58, p. 258). Her son Spencer T. Lai-sun had died only thirteen days before.\n\nSpencer had been educated at Queen's College, Hong Kong, before being taken to the United States by his father at the inauguration of the Chinese Educational Mission in 1872. He and his elder brother, Elijah, attended Yale. According to his obituary (South China Morning Post, 23 Jan. 1917), Spencer had an “extraordinary command of English” and was remarkably well informed on Chinese affairs, being one of the first to forecast the gravity of the Boxer Uprising. He was simultaneously on the staff of a Chinese language newspaper, the Hu Pao, and of an English language paper, the North China Daily News, both published at Shanghai. In 1911 he abandoned his newspaper career and as an expectant Taotai joined the staff of Viceroy Tuan Fang at Nanking. Early in his career in 1885 he undertook a special mission to India. When a reporter of the Times of India interviewed him, he was impressed with Spencer's European style clothing and the absence of a queue, for the latter he was said to have been given special permission by the Chinese authorities.\n\nDuring his school days in Hong Kong, Spencer had become acquainted with the family of the Reverend Ho Fuk-tong, being most likely a regular attendant of the Chinese congregation which met in the afternoons at Union Church. He married Ho Man-kwai, the daughter of the pastor. She died in Shanghai in 1894 at the young age of twenty-eight, leaving a young daughter, Daisy.\n\nThe other two daughters of Chan Lai-sun married Europeans. The husband of the eldest daughter was a Danish ship captain, N. P. Andersen. He had seen service in the Taiping Revolution and had a long career in the Coast Staff of the Chinese Customs. He was somewhat older than his wife and married in middle age.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212767, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "61\n\nNovember 1862\n\n1863 March\n\n1863 May 1864 April\n\n1864\n\n1864-1865\n\n1867 Winter\n\n1867\n\nhis junk and three others\n\nCaptured at Fu-shan-chan by Taiping rebels. Mesny held first in Soochow and Chang-shu, then at Pao-ying the Taiping camp, and finally in Nanking\n\nRescued by Adkins, the British Consul at Chin-kiang aboard HMS Slaney and taken back to Chin-kiang\n\nJoined Chinese Imperial Customs Service, Hankow\n\nResigned from Customs Service after fourteen months Involved in cotton broking\n\nEstablished the Hankow Horse Bazaar, a private hotel in Hankow, and set up Hupei Iron and Brassworks, Han-yang Romantic interlude with a Chinese widow in Hankow Mesny called on Tso Tsung-tang during the latter's visit to Hankow and was appointed his French and English Secretary, and was further offered the opportunity to accompany Tso on his campaign to the Northwest. Mesny also claimed that he had made recommendations to Marquis Tso Tsung-tang for a number of undertakings to help modernise China\n\nSold the Huper Iron and Brassworks to officials of the Viceroy of Szechuan province\n\nMesny's trek to war\n\n1868 June\n\nLate July or early August Late August\n\nSeptember\n\nLeft Hankow, after five year's residence, for Szechuan to become a drill instructor with the Szechuan Force\n\nArrived Chungking\n\nDeparted Chungking for Kueichou to join the Szechuan Force suppressing the Miao rebellion: he accepted employment as a military instructor (wu-chiao hsi)\n\nArrived Niu-ch'ang, the headquarters of the Szechuan Force in Kueichou\n\nSeptember 1868-May 1874 Involved in the military campaigns to suppress the Miao\n\nThe Advance: Late Summer 1868-March 1869\n\n1869\n\nPromoted Colonel, awarded the Star of China and the Flowery Plume The Retreat: Summer 1869-Summer 1870 1870/1871\n\n1871\n\n1872\n\nHelped form a joint stock company in Kuei-yang to \"recover mercury\"\n\nThe Withdrawal: mid-August 1870-Lunar New Year 1871\n\nca 1873\n\n1873\n\n1874 Spring\n\nEstablished a small day school for poor boys and girls in the Jade Emperor temple in Kuei-yang, importing suitable books and paying a Chinese teacher, a struggling student painter, Chin Yü-t'ang Siege of Hsin-ch'eng in upper Kueichou (Mesny involved in preparations for the siege during 1871)\n\nWent to Szechuan with General Chou Ta-wu\n\nPromoted Major-General and awarded the Ying-yung Pa-t'u-lu Left Kueichou for Szechuan: Margary expected to meet Mesny in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212769, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "63\n\n1881\n\nApril\n\nJune\n\n1882 February March Spring\n\n1882 November 1882/1883\n\n1883 May\n\n1833 Autumn\n\n1883\n\nca 1883/1884\n\nEarly 1884\n\n1884 July\n\nArrived Hami\n\nPassed through Shensi and Kansu to Turkestan he tried to push on through Central Asia to India but was stopped; again, tried to push on to the Russian frontiers via Ili and Tarbagatai but was stopped, visited Hami [HQ Chinese Army]. Residence in Hami where he said he remained until the Treaty of Livadia [2-10-79] was signed and where he learned a number of Turkish words. [Mesny claimed that in 1882 returning from Kashgaria he stayed in Tso Tsung-t’ang's camp. [Tso was recalled from Hami to Peking in late 1880] Departed Hami and retraced his steps leisurely across the Gobi desert to Kansu, on to northern Tibet (visited old fashioned gold diggings) and back to Kan-chou to refit before continuing into Tibet a second time in another direction. He then, travelled through the Kokonor region ending up at Lanchou, February 1881, via Hsi-ning.\n\nDeparted from Northwest China for Peking, via Si-an, Ho-nan Fu, Tai-yuan Fu and Pao-ting Fu.\n\nWhilst in Si-an Mesny visited the Nestorian Cross, later, on his first evening in Taiyuan he lost 640 pages of notes, the journal of his Journey to Hami from Canton\n\nArrived Peking\n\nVisited Tientsin to await the first steamers of the season carrying mails Returned to Tai-yuan in Shansi and Pao-ting Fu, and again visited Si-an.\n\nVisited the famous Shao-lin monastery in the Sung-shan [Mountains] near Ho-nan Fu and invited to settle down for a couple of years with the monks.\n\nDeparted Shansi for Canton; however,\n\nVisited Yunnan province at the invitation of T'ang Chung to assist in the development of natural resources of the province The French authorities in Tongkin insisted that Mesny leave the province Passed through Ch'engtu and Yunnan Fu heading for Canton via Po-se, Nanning Kuangsi [Kuei-hsien, where he spent three to four months whilst the Franco-Chinese war raged in Tongkin), Kueichou and the West River. He travelled much of the way by large house boat. He took careful notes which he offered to the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce but failed to receive any encouragement\n\nArrived Canton, then visited Hong Kong, Macau, Swatow, Amoy and Foochou [Viceroy Chang Chih-tung retained Mesny at Canton for one year and ten months (nfd) He lived in an hotel unable to get an appointment from Chang he eventually withdrew. Mesny met Kung Chao-yuan, the Commissary General at Shanghai for Formosa, at the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai\n\nVisited tomb of Su Hsiao-hsiao near Hangchou. (a celebrated courtesan of the 11th century AD)\n\nDeparted Canton via Hong Kong for Foochou and Shanghai [elsewhere he noted that he had been recommended for the post of Foreign Superintendent of the Arsenal at Foochou during his visit there in 1883)\n\nIn Wu-chang and Han-yang", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212771, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "65\n\n1900 ca 1900\n\n1901 December\n\n1904\n\n1905 Jan/Jun\n\n1907\n\nca 1910/1911\n\n1914 November\n\nca 1914/1915\n\n1914-1919\n\n11 Dec 1919\n\nClaims to have volunteered for service in Peking [Boxer troubles]\n\nMesny visited Nan-chang in Kiangsi where he met Hsiung Shih-fu, a young reformer\n\nInterviewed Viceroy Liu K'un-yı în Nanking.\n\nPublished Mesny's Chinese and English Almannac\n\nPublication of his final volume of his Chinese Miscellany\n\nMost Excellent High Priest in the Keystone Royal Arch Chapter, in Shanghai\n\nHis wife, Han, obtained a legal separation in Shanghai\n\nMesny moved to Hankow\n\nClaims to have passed a medical and then offered his services to the Crown [World War 1]\n\nEmployed by Messrs. Reiss and Co. in Hankow\n\nDied in rue de Paris in Hankow\n\nAppendix C\n\nThe Chinese Imperial Forces\n\nMesny's Involvment in the Suppression of the Miao Revolt\n\nThe First Campaign by Imperial Troops\n\nin Kueichou Province\n\n1868-1871\n\nand\n\nOrder of Battle of the Szechuan Force\n\nChinese Imperial Forces, with the aid of a number of foreigners and foreign arms, had by 1864 succeeded in suppressing the Taiping rebellion against the dynasty. They then turned to liquidating the other rebellions seething in various parts of China which included the Nien movement in northern China, the Moslem minority revolt in Yunnan province, another major Moslem uprising in the North-west, and finally the Miao aboriginal tribes which had revolted in Kueichou province.\n\nThe Miao, or Miao-tzu as Mesny refers to them, rose against the Ch'ing dynasty Manchu rulers of China in 1854 after discontent reached boiling point due not only to Chinese settlers colonising the best lands in the low lying areas of the province of Kueichou, but also to the exploitation of the Miao by Chinese officials and merchants. According to Mesny the passionate and untamed Miao gradually took back almost the whole province apart from the capital, Kuei-yang Fu, and the city", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212800, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "94\n\n[passport) of Prince Su was printed on page 235 of Volume 4 [18 March 1904] of Mesny's Miscellanies.\n\nTseng Kuo-fan [1811-1872]\n\nA Confucian statesman and general who defeated the Taiping rebels in Nanking and put an end to the rebellion. He was first a militia leader, then a Governor-General of the Two Kiang provinces and finally the Imperial Commissioner for the suppression of the Taiping Rebels. Later he became the Imperial Commissioner ordered to suppress the Nien rebellion. He was Viceroy of Chihli in 1869. His Hunan Army provided the Manchu dynasty with a new lease of life.\n\nTso Tsung-t’ang [1812-1885]\n\nAn official who first came to the notice of his emperor when he was an active and successful military officer during the Taiping Rebellion. He was raised to an earldom and up to 1866 earned renown as an administrator in the provinces of Fukien and Chekiang. With his experience during the Taiping Rebellion he was sent to Shensi and Kansu to suppress the Muslim revolt [1862-1873] and, en route, he helped suppress the Nien rebels. He remained Governor General of Shensi and Kansu for many years and later in 1884 he became Governor of Fukien province during the French attack on Foochow and Keelung in Taiwan. He died in Foochow the following year.\n\nWard F T [1831-1862]\n\nAn American mercenary and founder of the 'Ever-Victorious Army', a Sino-foreign military force which aided the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty suppress the Taiping rebellion. He was killed in battle in September 1862 near Ningpo and was at first succeeded by another American, Burgevine, and then by Charles Gordon [q.v.]. Ward married Miss Yang, the daughter of the official banker Yang Ta-Ki, a Tartar. A magnificent mausoleum was erected over his grave in Sungkiang in 1877.\n\nWylie, Alexander [1815-1887]\n\nA missionary and scholar, editor of the Chinese Recorder.\n\nT", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216057, "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": 356, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "290\n\na chapel where they stationed an evangelist. By the turn of the century Zhenjiang had become an important Protestant missionary centre in its own right, with adequate missionary cover and the accessories for Mission work including a women's hospital, a girls' school and the large and well-organised men's college of the Methodist Episcopal Mission. China Inland Mission had by this time also opened a station in the city as well as their own hospital,\n\n4\n\nAspects of life which today sound strange were not uncommon, such as the missionary in Yangzhou, immediately across the wide Yangzi from Zhenjiang, having to cross the river with his bride for the civil ceremony at the nearest consulate, in Zhenjiang, before ferrying her back to their future home.\n\nDuring the 1860s and 1870s, the great famine in the Yellow River and Yangzi basins and the anti-missionary troubles across China, Hudson Taylor, who had founded the China Inland Mission in 1865, travelled widely encouraging his workers and authorising the expenditure of funds on orphanages and relief. In mid-March of 1877 he stopped over in Zhenjiang for a month, during which time a fire which had devoured houses all around the Mission premises had stopped short of the Mission, merely scorching one of its window frames.\n\nGunboat diplomacy was part of life on the 19th century Yangzi with recalcitrant mandarins being brought to heel when, for example, they ignored the cries for help of foreigners under attack from mobs or even encouraged such violence either openly or tacitly. In October 1868 a major confrontation in Yangzhou, the city immediately across the Yangzi from Zhenjiang, involved a large crowd of uncontrolled rioters bent on killing foreigners. They attacked the home of Hudson Taylor and his family, injuring several members of the China Inland Mission. HMS Rinaldo, a British gunboat, arrived and under its guns, the Viceroy in Nanjing agreed to terms demanded by the British Consul, Medhurst. However, the Rinaldo's captain fell ill and the gunboat had to be withdrawn. The Viceroy promptly repudiated the terms he had agreed and a further force of four Royal Navy vessels had to be sent to exert military pressure once more upon the Viceroy. Terms were again dictated and once more agreed. Meanwhile Hudson Taylor and his family had been accommodated in the home of the British Consul in Zhenjiang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216064, "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": 363, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "297\n\nbandits to seek their fortune. Mesny explained that the opportunity occurred for 'the four bold adventurers' to leave the city together with the bandits together with several old Taiping chiefs, amongst whom was a brother of the Shou Wang, the Taiping leader who formerly had held Ningbo. The four, Jerome, a cripple having had one of his legs damaged during the [Opium] war; Captain O.P. Damström, a Swede; Anthony Fiamin, an Austrian from Fiume; and Beeman, a Britisher from London. Mesny believed that they were the only foreigners who actually served with the Nian rebels. Mesny went to see them off and Jerome embraced him very affectionately after the manner of his country. They had not been gone very long when Mesny received a letter from Damström saying that he had been wounded in a cavalry charge against some 'trainbands' who had attempted to cut them off from the main body. The Four Bold Adventurers had then accompanied the Nianzi in their revolving rambles all over the country lying between the Yangzi and the Yellow River from Hankou to Zhifu and back again until the whole body of the bandits had been beaten and dispersed. At the dispersion Damström had been taken prisoner by the Imperial forces and as such had been brought down to Zhenjiang in a cage, or so Mesny understood, and had it not been for Captains Welsh and Macdonald who had been in charge of the artillery and rocket batteries in one of the Imperial camps Damström would very likely have been done to death like his three companions none of whom, though they had surrendered to the Imperial forces, ever returned to the [treaty] ports. Beeman was said to have been buried alive in Shandong, Jerome and Anthony appeared to have been murdered by their captors in northern Jiangsu [province], having become separated during the last few days march.\n\nWe know remarkably little about Mesny's life during the 1880s. A very serious famine ravaged Anhui province during 1888/9, and Mesny, then aged 46, made two long journeys through Anhui and northern Jiangsu provinces to judge and report on the extent of suffering. During his journeys, Mesny later wrote, he discovered that Earl Zeng [Guochuan], the Viceroy of Nanjing, needed the funds raised earlier by a Shanghai charity, the Renjishan Tang, to appease and pay off the Cantonese bandits, the Shap-ng Tsoi,33 who were very active in the Yangzi valley at the time. Mesny added that he, Mesny, in 1889, had assisted in the pacification of the excited populace at Zhenjiang where he had arrived a few hours after the British Consulate and other buildings", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216068, "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": 367, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "301\n\ngaol on Amoy Road, at the end of the Kueichou Road, and he probably occupied a cell that had previously been prepared to receive me.\n\nMesny was commanded to appear before Her Britannic Majesty's Supreme Court for China and Japan in Shanghai on the 8th day of October 1891 to give material evidence and testify what he knew concerning the charge that Charles Henry Allen Welch Mason of Shanghai on or about the 13th inst. did have in his possession or under his control five pounds or thereabouts of an explosive substance under circumstances that gave reasonable suspicion that he did not have it in his possession for a lawful purpose. He attended as requested with the result that Mason got nine months imprisonment, at Shanghai and to be deported from China for ever thereafter or something like that. Thus it happened, added Mesny, 'that this biter was bitten.'\n\nMesny added that he had suffered ever since from the evil effects of this monstrous attempt to involve him in a treasonable plot. 'I have never been able to obtain employment from the Chinese Government since those days and many of my Chinese friends have cut me dead under the impression that I must have been guilty of some collusion with Mason in some inexplicable manner.\n\nThus in 1892 when I called on Earl Li Hongzhang at Tianjin he accused me of being the head centre of all the Gelao Hui men in China.\n\n'Last winter [noted as 1892 but printed a number years later] I was in Nanjing and in a fair way of getting a good command when Zai Jun, the Daotai of Shanghai, I believe, telegraphed to the Viceroy to beware of me as I was a dangerous character, the friend of Mason, the plotter. My own wife has told me hundreds of times that she is in dread of the awful fate that awaits me on this account and has begged me to grant her a letter of divorce and let her take the children away, she has worried the life out of me during the past few months with this clamour for a divorce and I believe that she is being incited thereto by designing people who take advantage of her weakness of mind to thus annoy me, and when they have got my wife away from me by divorce she ceases to be British [i.e. post-1898], then will they do to her what they do not dare to do now, and probably kill my children.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216079, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 378, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "312\n\n* Li Zee-min (1950) Chinese Potpourri. Hong Kong: Oriental Publishers [He relates a local Hong Kong legend about the arrival of the young emperor escorted by Lu in what is now Kowloon, fleeing ahead of the Mongols. Li claims that the headman of the Hakka walled village of Kowloon was Tan Gong who died during the last battle with the Mongol fleet when Lu, with the emperor in his arms, jumped overboard to their deaths].\n\nCouling, Samuel (1917) Encyclopaedia Sinica. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh\n\n11 Yu Dayu is recorded as being a native of Fujian who died in 1573 having made his name as the victor in the struggle to defeat the Japanese pirates along the coast of China and in particular that of Zhejiang.\n\n12 Yang Xiuqing as one of the leading lights of the Taiping Rebellion, to whose military genius much of the early success of the movement was due. He was known as the Taiping Eastern King [Prince], and professed to be the spokesman of God. After the capture of Nanjing by the Taipings he established his palace in the yamen of the former Viceroy and lived in great state. By 1856 he had begun a campaign of political and religious intrigue to usurp the position of leader and to overthrow Hong Xiuquan, the founder. His plans were uncovered and he, his family and thousands of his supporters were slain by Wei Changhui, the Taiping Northern King.\n\n13 extracted from the Transcription of the letters written from China to Milcote, Stratford on Avon by Thomas Adkins between 1855 and 1879 by courtesy of Theo Christophers of Dorridge, West Midlands : November 1999\n\n14 Hymes, Robert P. (1986) Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Kiangsi, in Northern and Southern Sung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press\n\n15 Although the name was known much earlier Mao Shan has always been the centre of a Daoist sect. [see Kita Aziya gakuho, a Japanese Journal, Vol. 2]\n\n16 Doré, Henri S.J. (1914) Recherches sur les Superstitions en China. Shanghai [Zikawei] : La Mission Catholique : Vol. XI\n\n17 Werner, E.T.C (1932) A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]