[ { "id": 204236, "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": 4, "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\n1\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was originally founded in 1847, but it ceased to exist at the end of 1859. Exactly a century later, on December 28, 1959, it was resuscitated with the approval of the parent society in London - The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society was founded in March 1823 \"for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts, in relation to Asia\". It received its Charter of Incorporation as a royal society from George IV on August 11, 1824. The Royal Asiatic Society is the oldest and most important Society of its kind in Europe, and its standing as the doyen of Societies promoting the study of Asia has been maintained by the devotion of generations of eminent scholars, explorers and others who have contributed through its Journal, in public addresses and in many other ways, a rich harvest of knowledge, both academic and practical, in the service of Western understanding of the East.\n\nA large part of the Society's work has always been done through its branches and affiliated Societies in the East. Branches were formed at Bombay and at Madras about 1838, and in Ceylon in 1845. The Hong Kong Branch followed in 1847, the North China Branch at Shanghai in 1857, the Japanese in 1875, the Malayan in 1878, and the Korean in 1900, etc. etc.\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH grew out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society founded in 1845. This Society, however, in accord with the contemporary spirit of inquiry and the enthusiasm for better knowledge of Asia in general and China in particular, had contemplated setting up a Philosophical Society; but the movement ended in the establishment of the Asiatic Society with laws drafted by Andrew Shortrede, Editor of the China Mail, framed on the model of those of the Royal Asiatic Society. Sir John F. Davis, the Governor, by reason of his known literary and scientific acquirements rather than his official rank, was asked to be President. He suggested that the Society should seek to be admitted as a Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society with which, as a founder member, he was in close touch and with whose active President, the Earl of Auckland, he had discussions on these lines before he left England.\n\nSo in January 1847 the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was founded, and all the members of the Medico-Chirurgical Society who wished to join were admitted without ballot or entrance fee on condition of their Society's apparatus and books being handed over to the new body.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204247, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n12\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nOne by one successive tribes arose Huns, Avars, Turks, Mongols, Manchus-dashed themselves against the frontiers of the Empire, and sometimes recoiling proceeded through Central Asia to Europe, sometimes breaking through the Wall, submerged for a time the whole Empire.\n\nApart from some stone monuments found in Central Asia, few but of great importance, the record of these tribes is to be found in the Chinese Histories, with references in the Greek authors of the Byzantine Empire, whenever the tribes impinged upon the West.\n\nInterest in collecting the Scythian bronzes commenced with Peter the Great. It is natural that the Russians and the scholars of Eastern Europe should be the first to be interested in the history of the Central Asian tribes. To them is largely due the excavations in Southern Europe and Siberia, and also in Mongolia. But in English we have the massive work 'Scythians and Greeks' by E. H. Minns. The Turks also are particularly interested in these studies, which have thrown much light upon the origin of the Turkish peoples.\n\nOne outcome of the struggle of the Chinese Empire with the Huns was the first extension of Chinese power in Central Asia, through the Tarim Basin, the present Sinkiang, to the Pamirs. This chapter in world history includes the fascinating account of the journey of Chang Ch'ien to the West in the second century B.C., the exploits of Pan Ch'ao in the Tarim Basin in the first century A.D., and the despatch of a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, to the shores of the Persian Gulf,\n\nDuring the first and second centuries the famous silk trade arose between China and Rome, recorded by Ptolemy and the Chinese histories. For a short time the land route between China and the West was open. The road passed through the Tarim Basin, between the northern grasslands and Tibet. It also became the great highway between India and China.\n\nThe Tarim Basin is one of the most remarkable geographical regions in the world, lying as it does between glaciated mountains on three sides, with a waterless desert in the centre. Around the desert, watered by streams from the mountains, are the oasis towns and villages, which form stepping stones as it were for travellers passing from east to west, or from west to east. By this thoroughfare have passed from time immemorial the travellers of Central Asia-merchants, soldiers, monks. And by this thoroughfare the great cultural influences-Indian, Persian, Greek-have passed with Buddhism from Western and Southern Asia to China. By this thoroughfare Chinese colonization spread to the Pamirs. By this route Marco Polo journeyed to China in the thirteenth century.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204251, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n16\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nChristian centuries of the new states of South-east Asia, formed under Indian influence in Indo-China, Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula.\n\nDuring the Middle Ages the navigation of the Southern Seas was in the hands of the Arabs. But after the rounding of the Cape, direct contact between Europe and the East by sea was restored. It was mainly by the sea-route that India, China, and South-east Asia became known to modern Europe. In this the Portuguese navigators played an all-important part. Passing over the rivalries of the Western nations we come to the days of the East India Company.\n\nIn India the Moghul empire had reached its height, fine examples of its art remaining in the Moghul architecture of Pakistan and North-west India, and Moghul miniature painting. But with the Moghul Moslem law had come to India, and it was soon recognized by the East India Company that the study of Moslem languages was necessary for the government of India. So Islamics now became part of the study of India as of Persia.\n\nIn 1783 Sir William Jones, a brilliant linguist who had mastered Persian and Arabic during his student days in England, was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal. In 1784 he proposed the forming of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and became its first President. Becoming aware of the importance of Sanskrit, he became the founder of Sanskrit studies in the West. In accordance with Warren Hastings' decision in 1776 that Indians should be ruled by their own laws, he undertook the immense task of compiling a complete digest of Moslem and Hindu law, a task which he left unfinished at his death eleven years later.\n\nIt was from India that the Western study of Tibet commenced, initiated by Catholic missionaries, of whom the most eminent was Desideri who lived for many years in the great Sera monastery at Lhasa, and wrote the first comprehensive account of Tibet.\n\nMeantime the Jesuit missionaries had proceeded eastwards in the wake of the Portuguese to Malacca, Macau and Japan. It was from Macau that Matthew Ricci entered China in 1580 and in course of time reached Peking, where a beginning was made in the study of the Chinese Classics and Histories, which led to the first real knowledge of Chinese civilization in the West. It was now realized that the 'China' at the end of the sea-route was the same as Marco Polo's 'Cathay'.\n\nAt the beginning of the nineteenth century modern Sinology commenced with Robert Morrison at Canton, and continued with a number of able scholars, too numerous to mention here, of whom James Legge with his translation of the Chinese Classics into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204639, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "107\n\nEUROPEAN NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\nA. D. BLUE *\n\nThe Yangtse is the greatest river in China, and has been of much greater importance in the history of the world than the Amazon and the Mississippi, which are superior in length and volume. In this respect it ranks with the Nile and the Euphrates, but unlike them it has always had a much greater population living along its banks. The Chinese know the Yangtse as the Long, or Great, River. Marco Polo may not have been the first European to see the Yangtse, but he was certainly the first to appreciate its importance, and to bring it to the notice of the Western world.\n\nOf the Yangtse in general Marco Polo said \"the multitude of vessels that invest this great river is so great that no one who should read or hear would believe it. The quantity of merchandise carried up and down is past all belief. In fact it is so big, that it seems to be a sea rather than a river\". There is no doubt but at that time, the second half of the 13th century, the Yangtse carried a greater volume of traffic than any other river in the world. Marco Polo was correct in thinking that no one would believe his reports on the Yangtse, or on China, and it was left to later generations to appreciate the accuracy of his observations.\n\nIt was the missions to China of Lord Macartney and Lord Amherst in 1793 and 1816 respectively, that made Europeans realise the importance of the Yangtse. Then in 1842, during the First China War, a British naval force entered the Yangtse, and was on the point of attacking Nanking (182 miles from the mouth) when the Chinese sued for peace. Sixteen years later, after the Second China War, one of the clauses of the Treaty of Tientsin\n\n* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtse in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. During and after the War he was in the Colonial Service in West Africa, but in 1958 he returned to service with the China Navigation Company, and this has enabled him to revisit a number of the former Treaty Ports.\n\n1 Chinese records mention the visit of a 'Roman merchant' to Nanking about 230 A.D. See G. F. Hudson, Europe and China (London, 1931), p. 90.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204641, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n109\n\nThe Imperial forces had very little success against the Taipings in the next two years, and although it had been stipulated that the three ports on the river were not to be opened until they were defeated, a second naval expedition left Shanghai early in 1861 to establish consular posts at Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow. This expedition went up 158 miles beyond Hankow before turning back. Shortly after the return of this expedition the river was opened to foreign trade.\n\nThere is some ambiguity about Western policy during the Taiping Rebellion. It seems to have been regarded with sympathy in the early stages, when it was looked on as a reforming movement with Christian affiliations; and many foreigners welcomed the prospect of a change from the corrupt and reactionary Manchu régime. The British, American, and French governments, therefore, adopted a policy of neutrality in the early stages of the conflict. Later on, however, a marked change took place, which was not entirely due to the excesses committed by the rebels. Commercial considerations undoubtedly played some part. The Treaty of Tientsin had legalised the opium trade, but the Taipings were against opium and alcohol, and banned this trade in the territory under their control. They also made it clear that under their rule foreign trade would not be carried on in the one-sided manner so favourable to the foreign merchants. The Treaty of Tientsin again had stipulated that foreign ships could not navigate the Yangtse until peace was restored. Because of these and other reasons, the Western Powers abandoned their policy of neutrality. The rebels were looked on and referred to as firebrands and extremists, and the Manchu government as a peaceful and stabilising element, and steps were taken to help the latter. These included supplying the government forces with arms and ammunition — including the new Lee Enfield rifle, not yet used in Europe — allowing foreign steamers to transport government troops, and supplying officers to train and lead them.* As a result Nanking was captured in 1864, and the last vestiges of the rebellion were stamped out by 1866.\n\nIn 1862 the Scotland, a steamer belonging to Lindsay and Company of Shanghai was the first ocean-going merchant ship to go to Hankow, and thus opened the interior of China to direct\n\n* Gordon was the most famous of these officers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204746, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "38\n\n10 Linguist purser.\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nSee note 39, (J.L.C-B)\n\n11 Elliot's last day. On 25 March Elliot formally requested the Viceroy that passports should be issued within three days for all the English ships and people at Canton and that if passports were not issued he would consider the men and ships of his country as forcibly detained and act accordingly. Blue Book, Correspondence relating to China, 1840, p. 367. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n12 Edward Elmslie. Secretary and Treasurer to the British Superintendents of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot and the Deputy Superintendent, A. R. Johnston, (J.L.C-B.)\n\n13 Houqua. Known to Westerners at Canton as Howqua 7. His family name was Wu Ch'ung-yüeh (1810-1863). He was the fifth son of the famous Hong merchant Wu Ping-chien whom he succeeded as head of the firm in 1843. For his biography see Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, II, 867-8. (F.L.C-B.)\n\n14 Nam Hoe. Also written Nam Hoi. This means Nan Hai Hsien #i.e. the Magistrate having jurisdiction over the western part of Canton city and the District lying to the westward of the walls which included the area in which the foreign Factories lay. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n15 Kwang Hup. The author may be referring to the Kwangchou hsieh \"the Canton brigade\", and so to its commander. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n16 The Governor. The Governor of Kwangtung province at this time was I-liang (1791-1867). For his biography see Hummel, op. cit., I, 389. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n17 K'an-ch'o (J.L.C-B.)\n\n18 An-tsou (J.L.C-B)\n\n19 Columbia & John Adams. According to the Chinese Repository Vol. 8, p. 56 the Columbia was a U.S. frigate and the John Adams was classed as a sloop-of-war. The Columbia was commanded by Commodore George C. Read. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n20 Johnston, Alexander Robert Johnston, H.M. Deputy Superintendent of Trade. When the Government of Hong Kong was set up he was deputy first to Elliot and later to Sir Henry Pottinger and in this capacity he administered the Government of the Colony on various occasions from 1841 until 1843. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n21 Pwan Kei Kua. Probably the merchant whose name was also spelt by Westerners at Canton at that time Ponkhequa and Puan Khequa. This was P'an Chengwei (1791-1850). See Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, II, 605, (J.L.C-B.)\n\n22 Saoqua. His family name was Ma Tso-liang and the name of his Hong was Shun Tai Hong A. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n23 Sturgis. Russell Sturgis (1805-1887) of Boston was first named Nathaniel Russell Sturgis, Jr., but he was always known as Russell Sturgis after his name was changed by decree of the Middlesex County Court. He graduated from Harvard in 1823, married in 1828 but was widowed four months later. After an extended tour of Europe he returned to Boston and for a while practised law. He remarried and in 1833 took his family to the orient where he became a partner of Russell & Sturgis of Manila and Russell, Sturgis & Co. of Canton. Later in 1842 when the latter firm became incorporated with Russell & Co., China, he became a partner in 1842. In May 1844 he retired to Boston, his second wife having died in Manila in 1837. Being far too young to give up work altogether he decided to return to China in 1849 but while passing through London he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205014, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n113\n\nin the west is that Southeast Asia is undergoing 'Westernization' and that its countries differ from those of Europe or America only in being more 'backward' or 'underdeveloped'.\" Purcell quickly points out that such a view is an oversimplification, but the chapters which follow are not convincing. Purcell has done little more than present the myriad problems which beset the area, and has clouded the picture by misconceptions and personal conclusions based upon too little serious consideration of all the ramifications of a complex area. Lennox Mills, covering much of the same ground, has now provided the specialist and non-specialist alike with an extremely readable book on the political and economic condition of these underdeveloped nations. He makes no attempt at simplification. Indeed, the complexities in the situation do not lend themselves to the \"nutshell\" approach. He has instead analyzed the component parts of the large picture in each country.\n\nMills is looking for certain characteristics in each country which, operating upon economic and political forces, indicate similarities, and make possible the identification of general trends in the whole area. I should judge that the author succeeds admirably. He has isolated a dozen or so similarities which exist or have existed in the national independence movements, in the formative national period, and in the emerging period. He notes, for example, that absolute and despotic rule in all the countries has been the norm throughout most of the historical period; that the leadership of the revolutions and of the new nations rests with the Western educated elite; that their support is drawn from the urban working and \"lower middle classes,\" and that 80% of the population, the peasantry, have little part or interest in nationhood and citizenship. He notes that all the countries lack the prerequisites for democracy although all have at one time or another established democratic forms. Ruling oligarchies control the governments. The political emphasis remains tied to the personality of the leaders and not to parties or factions.\n\nHaving identified the general trends Mills goes on to analyze in some detail the political and economic ramifications of these trends. Political sophistication does not run deep. In most respects the major part of the population of the area are little", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205098, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "49\n\nSINO-WESTERN CONTACTS UNDER THE\n\nMONGOL EMPIRE*\n\nHerbert FRANKE\n\nContacts between Chinese civilization and that of the West, whatever we take \"West\" to mean in this context, have a long and tortuous history which, for some periods, is still far from sufficiently studied. All historians, however, even the most Europe-centered ones, do agree that these contacts reached a pre-modern, all-time high under the Mongol empires in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and even the most superficial or condensed textbooks of world history have a few words to say about East-West relations following the conquests and campaigns of Chingis Khan. In such books, we frequently encounter the statement that this period facilitated intercourse and exchange because of the so-called Pax Mongolica, \"Mongol Peace\", when the Mongol domination of East and Central and even great parts of West Asia crystallized into an empire stretching from the Yellow Sea to Southern Russia. Like so many historical tags, this is, however, a statement that loses much of its seemingly uncontrovertible truth when one considers the historical facts. If it is really the task of the historian to reconsider from time to time historical writings and historical dicta, and to debunk history if necessary, then this notion of Pax Mongolica requires qualification.\n\nA historian of China will therefore perhaps ask if cultural contacts and interchange between China and the non-China West were really more frequent and easy under the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than under the Six Dynasties and the T'ang when no Eurasian universal empire like that of the Mongols existed. We know that a great number of travellers, missionaries, and merchants from the Western Regions came to China between the late second and the ninth centuries A.D., and that many non-Chinese cultural elements penetrated East, among them the world religion of Buddhism that became such an important part of Chinese culture. Most of the early Buddhist\n\nText of the Hume Memorial Lecture delivered at Yale University, February 5th, 1965. The author is Director of the Institute for East Asian Cultural and Linguistics Sciences, University of Munich.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205102, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n53\n\nbeyond China's borders. A Sino-Korean world map going back to the fourteenth century has been discovered where not only Asia but also Europe and Africa are shown, the latter continent even in a triangular shape that is comparatively close to geographical reality. Not less than 100 place names are given for Europe and about 35 for Africa. It must be hoped that the Western parts of this world map will be studied in the near future because this will furnish valuable evidence for the incorporation of Arabic and Persian geographical knowledge into Chinese geography. But it does not seem that this knowledge, restricted as it certainly was to a few geographers, was ever assimilated with the Chinese world conception which continued, in spite of this geographical information, on entirely traditional lines. The idea of China as the Middle Kingdom and center of the world was not really challenged, and not much curiosity on what lay beyond China was aroused among the Chinese intellectuals. What Chinese texts of the Yuan period have to say on countries beyond the sea is usually a poor extract from an earlier work of Sung date (ca. 1225), the Chu-fan chih \"Description of Barbarians\" by Chao Ju-kua. The foreign domination of China by the Mongols did not stimulate interest in foreign countries but rather encouraged a latent tendency of xenophobia.\n\nThere is another passage in a Chinese text which should be mentioned briefly because it concerns the first Europeans who came to China in the Middle Ages. This was some years before the Polos reached China, which was in 1265 or 1266 if we are to believe that they ever were in China at all, a question which is not yet settled. It has been suggested that in Polo's description of China there are some unsupported boasts about his having been governor in Yang-chou and his taking part in the siege of Hsiang-yang as artillery engineer. It is true that the Chinese sources mention foreign engineers who built stone catapults for attacking the city, but their names are Arab and they came from Baghdad. No Po-lo mentioned in the Yuan-shih or other sources can be identified with the Italian Polos; all the Po-lo's of the sources have had a good Altaic name, Bolod (“steel”), because they were of Mongol or Turkish extraction. And there are also a few glaring blanks in Polo's otherwise very detailed account. He never mentions tea, but this may be because he did not like tea or the Mongols in China never offered him any. He never mentions the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205104, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n55\n\nthere, one which it takes one month to cross, the other one whole year. Their ships are so big that they can hold between 50 and 100 men. These people presented a wine beaker made from the egg-shell of a sea bird. If one poured wine into it the wine became warm immediately... The emperor was very pleased that these people had come from so far and gave them liberal gifts of gold and textiles.\n\nThis is quite an extraordinary story. But it is, in more than one way, typical of most descriptions of foreign countries in the Middle Ages. It is always the fanciful and fantastic that is given predominant attention, and travellers seem always to have made a point of telling yarns that they knew would impress their foreign listeners. This entire problem of cosmography in the Middle Ages, European and Chinese, cannot be understood without investigating some of the basic underlying concepts that invariably show up in descriptions of regions and peoples at the end of the world. The unknown is full of marvels, of mirabilia and portenta. But there is equally, as a rule, some factual basis for even the most fantastic notion, distorted as it is by transmission and tainted by preconceived concepts about the world. I should add here in an aside that the description of the Mongols in the European medieval Latin sources shows the gradual transition from the apocalyptic Gog and Magog concepts, derived from late Hellenistic lore, to the sober accounts of the travellers and missionaries. The Franks at Kublai Khan's court evidently tried to impress their Mongol and Chinese hosts by some tall stories. But there are certainly a few factual data that can help to elucidate this curious report. The reference to the constant daylight seems to imply that these people came from Northern Europe because of the short summer nights there. In my opinion these blonde and blue-eyed men were traders from either the Scandinavian countries or, which seems even more probable, from some Northern trading center like Novgorod. It remains a question what is meant by the two seas they had to cross. Did they reach Shang-tu by sea, that is via the Indian Ocean? Or are the two seas the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, or the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea? We do not know and perhaps never shall. The curious remark about flies and mosquitoes being born from wood reminds one strongly of the Medieval European notion, derived from Aristotle, according to which insects like flies and fleas come from wood.3\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205106, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n57\n\nwith Chinese technique and art forms. This stone is so far the \"sole material monument\" of the Franciscan mission in medieval China. It has been suggested that there might exist another one. Christian tombstones from Ch'üan-chou were published some years ago, and it has been thought that the language on one of them is Latin. It must be Christian because the inscription begins with the sign of the Cross, but the attempt to read it as Latin and to regard it as the tomb inscription for Andrew of Perugia, the third suffragan bishop of Zayton — modern Ch'üan-chou — does not seem convincing. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the inscription is not in Syriac script.5\n\nThere is, however, another mission from the West that reached China and where even the dynastic history of the Yuan has recorded their arrival. It is that of the papal envoy Giovanni da Marignolli, Bishop of Bisignano. A medieval manuscript in Prague has recorded the Western part of the story. This embassy, if we may call it that, was occasioned by a letter from some Alan Christians in China dated 11th July 1336. Some of the senders can be identified with persons mentioned in Chinese sources of the period. The Pope, Benedict XII, answered with a letter dated 13th June 1338, and Giovanni da Marignolli left Avignon — the papal see in those years — in December 1338. He travelled first to Constantinople and proceeded from there to the Crimea and the court of Uzbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde. Another station was Almaliq in Central Asia. Finally the papal envoy reached Khanbaliq (Peking) and was presented to the Emperor, Shun-ti. Giovanni presented the emperor with gifts, among them a Western horse. After a few years in China the envoy went back to Europe via India and reached Avignon in 1353. The Chinese annals have recorded the exact date of the audience when Giovanni met Shun-ti, or, to call him by his Mongol name, Togon Temur; it was August 19, 1342. The Chinese dynastic history calls the country Fu-lang, another way of transcribing the name of the Franks, that is, the Europeans. However, Giovanni's name and that of the Pope, are not mentioned by the Yuan-shih. In any case, this embassy seemed so important to the compilers of the dynastic history that they recorded it, and this means something because the basic documents for Togon Temur's reign were already lost at the time of the compilation of the Yuan-shih so that the annals for his reign are notoriously incomplete. But even so it does not seem", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205108, "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n59\n\nand that the foreign country of Fu-lang itself did not arouse any curiosity among the writers. Europe, in any case during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, remained unknown to the Chinese. It was not until the arrival of the Portuguese, and, a little later, of the Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century that the two worlds were brought into closer contact. This relative disinterest in foreign countries is paralleled 100 years earlier by the poems of Yeh-lü Ch'u-ts'ai. He had been in Khwarezmia (today Russian Turkestan) with Chingis Khan's armies and wrote a number of poems on Western subjects. If one would put it in a flippant way, one would have to say that Yeh-lü in his poems seems to have been impressed not by the proud mosques and the ancient culture of that region but mostly by the grape wine and the water melons that were grown in Khwarezmia.\n\nIf we take the word Western in a broader sense than just European and include the Near East, then we find for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries much more detailed information on \"Westerners\" and their influence on activities in China. Islamic civilization had some impact on China under the Mongols, and we have seen that certainly geography in China was flourishing, incorporating data on the non-Chinese world taken from Arab sources. The geographical interest of the Mongol court is also reflected in Kublai Khan's attempts to discover the sources of the Yellow River. Expeditions were sent and the reports that can be found in the dynastic history and also in another, private source the Cho-keng lu, printed in 1366 are a valuable source for the historical geography of the Ch'ing-hai region and Eastern Tibet. Islam had, of course, reached China much earlier, that is, under the T'ang in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., but it was under the Mongol rulers that Muslims began to take part in Chinese life to a greater extent. The Muslim contribution to Chinese civilization under the Yüan seems to have been chiefly in the fields of science. Astronomy was highly developed in the Islamic countries. After the Mongols had conquered Iraq and Persia, not a few Muslim scholars went to China. A center for astronomy was the observatory in Maraghah (Azerbaijan) founded in or about 1258. Under the Ilkhan Hulagu or his successor a Marāghah astronomer, Jamal ad-Din, was dispatched to China with what may be called blue-prints for astronomical instruments. We find their Persian-Arabic names and a short description of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205111, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "62\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\ngols and in China merchants were more powerful and influential than under previous dynasties. The Mongol rulers in China followed in their attitude towards trade and private enterprise a policy of compromise between non-interference and the traditional Chinese bureaucratic hostility to free trade. It was normal for the Chinese scholar-literati class to view the rise of merchants with misgivings and whenever they could they tried to curb the activities of the merchant class. Some of these traditional features can be found in Yuan Dynasty legislation. Yet rich merchants, mostly foreigners, found access to offices in great numbers. Tax-farming became a common practice, and some Westerners rose to positions of power and prestige by their activities in tax-collecting and in the state monopolies. The best known among these careerists is the famous or rather infamous Ahmed who became a minister of state under Kublai Khan and whose assassination is described with many colorful details both in Marco Polo's book and in the Chinese sources.13 As late as the 1350's we find foreigners mentioned as office holders in the state monopolies administration. A text published in 1360 tells us that the officers of the Hangchow Sugar Bureau were all \"wealthy merchants of Jewish and Mohammedan extraction\".14 It is not surprising that the Chinese historical sources for the Mongol period have not many friendly things to say on these foreigners and their techniques of money-making. At best tax-collectors are not popular in any country, and if they happen to be foreigners some additional venom is apt to appear. Historiography under the Mongols remained firmly in the hands of the Chinese, and therefore the picture that they give is inevitably distorted and biased.\n\nIt cannot be denied that international and transcontinental trade and relations on a non-official level contributed greatly to cultural contacts. Yet these contacts remained marginal and did not affect the basic features of Chinese civilization. The spread of Western music in China under the Mongols is a repetition of what had happened in the Six Dynasties and T'ang periods (third to ninth centuries) when dances, musical instruments, melodies and whole music bands were introduced from Central Asia and had a lasting effect on Eastern Asiatic music. Exotic music has, it seems, always found acceptance in high civilizations and been more easily integrated than other cultural elements. Europe is no exception — some of the names of our most common instruments", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205112, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n63\n\ntestify to their Oriental origin, such as the lute (from Arabic al-lūt, \"wood”), and even in our century we have witnessed the spread of Negro jazz over the whole world. A similar development took place in China, and there are many passages in Yüan literature where foreign music and musicians are mentioned.15 In this connection we should perhaps save from oblivion the name of one of these musicians from the Near East. We find her name in the Ch'ing-lou chi “Records from the Green Bowers\", an anonymous work dated 1364 which gives a list of the most popular courtesans under the Yüan, together with a description of their accomplishments. Among these ladies of easy virtue we find one solitary girl from the Western Regions mentioned among her many Chinese professional sisters. She was a Mohammedan girl by the name of Miliha (or Maliha) praised for her sweet and clear voice and her skill in singing. She was, alas, not beautiful, but we are told that she was a superb theatrical performer. The author of the book once made her acquaintance and was duly impressed by her acting.16\n\nThere must have been many influences from Near Eastern folklore that reached China under the Yüan. I shall quote here only two examples. A well-known Near Eastern folk-tale motif, that of the honest loser, the greedy finder and the Solomonic judge, can be traced both in European medieval and Chinese literature. It reached Europe via Spain through the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi of Toledo (thirteenth century A.D.), a work which contains many Arab stories and anecdotes that subsequently became immensely popular in the West. Boccaccio has not a few stories from the Disciplina Clericalis in his Decamerone and also at least one motif in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, that of the three caskets, comes from that source. The story of the loser, the finder and the judge can be found in European literature in many versions, the classical German version being J. P. Hebel's \"Der kluge Richter\". In China we find this story in a text dated 1360. Here the story is set in a typical Chinese environment and being given some additional touches typical of China. The most interesting feature is, however, that the Chinese text does not present the anecdote as a mere story but as a historical event. The clever judge to whom the final solution of the case is entrusted was a perfectly real person, a circuit prefect from Kiangsi Province. This shows the Chinese tendency to attach literary clichés and even,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205114, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n65\n\nhad been converted to Christianity somewhere in the eleventh or twelfth century. Christian tombs of Önggüt tribesmen have been discovered in Inner Mongolia near Olon Süme and in Ch’üan-chou (Fukien), mostly with Turkish inscriptions, in some cases also accompanied by a Chinese version of the inscription text. But whether Nestorian Christian, Uighur, or Mohammedan Arabs or Persians, all these foreigners became Chinese in a cultural sense. One would look in vain for traces of their foreign origin in their literary works. If they wrote Chinese poems, then these poems are indistinguishable from those written by native Chinese, much as in Medieval Europe when a poet wrote in Latin and thereby obscured his national characteristics. It is amazing to what degree this rapid acculturation was carried out in China. One could perhaps assume that members of a national community which had not yet developed a national literature of its own were easily attracted by Chinese literature; this would apply to the Mongols and some Turkish tribes. But it remains a singular phenomenon that even foreigners coming from a highly civilized country with a considerable literature of their own, such as Arabs or Persians, were so soon absorbed by Chinese literary culture. Nothing in the poems of Sa'd ad-Daula suggests even the slightest trace of a foreign origin. As a typical example, let me quote one poem by Jacob, Ya-ku, in Goodrich's translation:\n\n44\n\nThe path to the plum blossoms is short; snow has been falling. The ripples on the water are as smooth as peach leaves; it is favorable for ferrying across the river.\n\nOne whistle of a metal flute pierces the air above a thousand moonlit homes.\n\nTen reed matting sails ride before a wind of a myriad li.\"\nNothing could be more Chinese than these lines. And they are typical for the poetry written by foreigners. Things are similar in prose literature and philosophy. Foreigners tried to be as Confucian as possible, writing commentaries to the Classics and trying to live up to traditional Chinese ideals. And if they painted, their works were equally Chinese. At least one famous Yüan painter, Kao K'o-kung (1248-ca. 1310) came from the Western Regions, or rather his family did. He was born in Ta-t'ung (Shansi Province), rose to high offices, and became ultimately President of the Board of Justice. Kao was chiefly known as a landscape painter who carried on the tradition of Mi Fu and Tung Yuan, two famous", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205116, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n67\n\nching) which may be, however, an early Ming print of the late fourteenth century.22 One thing is certain: there has been virtually no lasting influence of foreigners on intellectual and artistic life in China under the Mongols. The non-Chinese intellectuals tried to become Chinese and to make the Chinese forget their non-Chinese, Western or Near Eastern origins.\n\nIn the East-West direction, the situation is different. Here we see China as a cultural center from which all kinds of influences spread west and reached Central Asia as well as Near Eastern countries. It is out of the question even to try to enumerate the many cultural elements that found their way into Western Asia and even to Europe. I shall have to confine myself to just a few examples, which do not even pretend to be representative — they have rather been selected for showing the variety of fields where Chinese influences were absorbed, sometimes with a lasting effect. It should be mentioned here that some scholars suggest that the invention of gunpowder and printing in Europe are due to a stimulus diffusion spreading from China. These things are hard to prove, in particular because there are missing links. The Islamic civilizations of the Near East, for example, never adopted printing. Books in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish were, until quite recently, always copied by hand. But in Central Asia, book printing by xylograph became fairly common. The Tibetans had, at a comparatively early date, taken to printing, and Uighurs as well as Mongols had printed books at least as early as the thirteenth century. The various expeditions to Central Asia at the beginning of this century brought to light many examples of early Uighur and Mongol prints. Some of these prints, if not most of them, were Buddhist. Their printers were probably Chinese, because usually there are Chinese paginations and Chinese characters used for identifying the woodblocks of individual texts.\n\nAnother field where Chinese influence in Central Asia and beyond turned out to be strong was institution and bureaucracy. It is surprising to see that even after the Islamisation of Eastern Turkestan (middle of the fourteenth century), Chinese institutions survived, although direct contacts with China proper were neither frequent nor intensive. There is, for example, an unpublished Mongol document in Kyoto from which we can see that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205120, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n71\n\nthe former empire of Chingis Khan this development was, as we saw, mostly a result of the conversion of the ruling minority to the religion of the ruled majority. Events would have followed a different course if the Mongols had been able to substitute a religion, or a universal set of values of their own, for the existing indigenous creeds and patterns of life in their respective dominions; this had happened some centuries earlier with the Arabs who not only conquered much of the Near East but also succeeded in imposing Islam, their own religion, on the subjugated countries. In the cultural field, Islamisation had a much stronger effect on the affected areas and nations than the equally or even more far-reaching conquests of the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The most lasting, and, from the point of view of world history, perhaps most important result of East-West contacts in the period of Mongol domination was that these commercial and cultural contacts inaugurated for Europe the age of maritime exploration. The seafaring nations of Europe attempted to reach by sea those fabulous countries in the East which Marco Polo and other travellers or merchants had described after their travels through the Mongol dominions. When Columbus left Spain to discover a sea route to the East Indies and to Cathay, land of the Great Khan, he had a copy of Marco Polo's book on board his ship. And so it came that instead of achieving a renewed contact between the Far East and the West a new world was discovered.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205121, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "72\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nNOTES\n\n1 On Europe and Europeans as mentioned in Chinese sources, see H. Franke in Saeculum, Vol. II (1951), pp. 65-75.\n\n2 W. Fuchs, The Mongol Atlas of China by Chu Ssu-pen, Peiping, 1946, Monumenta Serica Monographs, No. 8; J. Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol III, pp. 555-556.\n\n3 H. Franke in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 112 (1962), pp. 228-232 (review of Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo's Asia).\n\n4 Francis A. Rouleau, \"The Yangchow Latin Tombstone as a Landmark of Medieval Christianity in China\", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 17 (1954) pp. 346-365.\n\n5 John Foster, \"Crosses from the Walls of Zaitun\", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1954, pp. 1-25. (pl. XII).\n\n6 Saeculum, Vol. II (1951), p. 74-75.\n\n7 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 167-382.\n\n8 See for example, H. Franke, Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte Chinas unter der Mongolenherrschaft, Wiesbaden 1956, p. 34 (Nestorian surgeon).\n\n9 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 381, note (c).\n\n10 A. C. Moule, \"The Siege of Saianfu and the Murder of Achmach Bailo\", Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 58 (1927), pp. 1-28; Vol. 59 (1928), pp. 256-257.\n\n11 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 141.\n\n12 Yüan-shih ed. K'ai-ming, ch. 190, p. 6565, II/III. For the Ho-fang t'ung-i see Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng, Vol. 1486.\n\n13 A. C. Moule, op. cit.\n\n14 R. Loewenthal, \"The Nomenclature of Jews in China\", Monumenta Serica, Vol. XII (1947), p. 113.\n\n15 H. G. Farmer, \"Reciprocal Influences in Music 'twixt the Far and Middle East\", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1934, pp. 327-342.\n\n16 Ch'ing-lou chi, ed. Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng, Vol. 2734, p. 9.\n\n17 H. Franke, \"Der kluge Richter\", in Asiatische Studien, 1950, pp. 55-59.\n\n18 Renate Noethen, Das Sha-kou ch'üan-fu, München, 1961 (Diss.).\n\n19 L. C. Goodrich, \"Westerners and Central Asians in Yuan China\", Oriente Poliano, Rome, 1957, pp. 1-21; \"Western Regions Writers of Chinese Lyrics during the Yuan\", International Conference of Orientalists in Japan, No. VII (1962) pp. 17-21.\n\n20 L. C. Goodrich, Oriente Poliano, p. 15.\n\n21 O. Sirén, Chinese Painting, Vol. IV, New York/London, 1958, pp. 54-59, plates Vol. VI, Nos. 57-60.\n\n22 W. Fuchs, \"Analecta zur mongolischen Übersetzungsliteratur der Yüan-Zeit\", Monumenta Serica, Vol. XI (1946), pp. 34-39; W. Fuchs und A. Mostaert, \"Ein Ming-Druck einer chinesisch-mongolischen Ausgabe des Hsiao-ching\", ibid., Vol. IV (1939/40), pp. 325-329.\n\n23 E. Haenisch, Mongolica der Berliner Turfan-Sammlung, II, Berlin 1959.\n\n24 A. Mostaert and F. W. Cleaves, Les lettres de 1289 et 1305 des ilkhan Argun et Öljeitü à Philippe le Bel, Cambridge, Mass. 1962.\n\n25 M. S. Ipsiroğlu, Saray-Alben, Wiesbaden, 1964, pl. XLIV, No. 64.\n\n26 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 217-219.\n\n27 H. Franke, \"Some Sinological Remarks on Rashid ad-Din's History of China\", Oriens, Vol. 4, (1951), pp. 21-26.\n\n28 W. Franke, \"Zur Frage der Mongolen in China nach dem Sturz der Yüan-Dynastie\", Oriens Extremus, Vol. 9 (1962), pp. 57-68.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205192, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "142\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nIn matters of mutual understanding, as in every real dialogue, mutual respect is essential. In the search for self-understanding, whether for Europeans or Asians, a certain self-respect is primary also. That requires a degree of self-acceptance, the acceptance of one's own past history and present limitations. This would, it seems, qualify the demand for \"parity of esteem.\" (Cf. Joseph Levenson's bold thesis on modern Chinese response to the West and evaluation of Chinese tradition.) Although it is clear, as one gathers from this book, the time of Western arrogance and Asian \"colonial or semi-colonial mentality\" is past, it is not clear that the time of Western dominance is in fact over, at least for the immediate future. An Asian can certainly agree with Joseph Needham in his essay on \"The Dialogue between Asia and Europe\" when he warns the man of the West that \"before it is too late, let him take one at least of the essential steps towards self-knowledge, that is to say, knowledge of others. Let him study the words of their saints and sages as well as those of his own. Let him experience his own humanity in the image of theirs\" (p.289). This is, however, a moral demand. To be fair, it should be made equally of the man of the East. Comparatively little is suggested in this direction by this book, outside of Robert L. Slater's essay on \"Living Religions and World Community.\"\n\n\"Western science and technology, Eastern religion and ethics\" — this idea has been developed in the response to Western predominance and self-esteem on the part of many Asians. This is expressed in the 'i-yung formula of the Chinese: Chinese learning for substance, Western for function. It in fact constitutes a dominant pattern in the Glass Curtain itself. And one finds this pattern present also in the book, in a variety of ways. The Englishman who, in presenting his view on the uniqueness of Asia, idealizes the East and deprecates the West partly for its science and technology represents a curious inversion of the more typical Western arrogance. One wonders whether anyone who seems to be so lacking in sympathy for his own tradition is really capable of appreciating others'. Then, in another essay, the uniqueness of Europe is identified by a Malaysian Chinese to be science — the spirit of science, to be sure, but quite distinct from religion meaning the spirit of dogmatism. The highly autobiographical nature of this essay (the shortest of the twenty con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205728, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "28 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nNOTES \n\n1 During these early years, schools like the Morrison School, operated by the Morrison Education Society founded by Dr. Robert Morrison, the Anglo-Chinese School (or Ying Wah School) operated by Dr. James Legge of the London Missionary Society (Dr. Legge is best known for his translation of the Chinese classics and for his appointment as the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University in 1874), and St. Paul's College operated by the Anglican Bishop, were dismal failures whether from the missionary or from the educational point of view. In 1855, the Governor Sir John Bowring had this to say about St. Paul's College: \"For the last six years, £250 a year has been voted by Parliament to the Bishop's College for the education of 6 persons destined to the public service, and not a single individual from that College has been yet declared competent to undertake the meanest department of an interpreter's duty\n\nSee E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London; Luzac and Co., 1895, p. 349.\n\n2 On p. 60 of Fragrant Harbour by G. B. Endacott and A. Hinton, a statement was made that Ng Choy was \"educated at the old Central School (Queen's College)\". I find no evidence to support this.\n\n3 As a result of the founding of the Government Central School (the present Queen's College) in 1862, a number of educated Chinese well-versed in both Chinese and English had been produced, who began to regard Hong Kong as their home town and who began to develop a keen interest in the welfare of Hong Kong. Thus leading Chinese founded the Tung Wah Hospital in 1870 and the Po Leung Kuk in 1880. It is of interest to note that in the 1870's, the educated Chinese actually pressed for the election of representatives to form a Chinese Municipal Board. In 1878, when the foreign community protested against Sir John Hennessy's policy of lenient treatment of prisoners, the Chinese in Hong Kong for the first time despatched an address to Queen Victoria which was in effect a vote of confidence in the Government.\n\n4 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94. *G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94.\n\n6 In 1862 an Institute of Foreign Languages was founded in Peking and translation bureaux were established to translate scientific books into Chinese. In 1866 the first modern shipbuilding yard was started in Foochow, Fukien, and from 1872 to 1875 four batches of selected young Chinese scholars, totalling 120, were sent to the U.S.A. to further their studies.\n\n7 General Chan (陳炯明, Chen Chiung-ming) revolted against Sun Yat-sen in Canton in June 1922. For details about this revolt, see Tang Leang-li's The Inner History of The Chinese Revolution, London, p. 140.\n\n8 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 199.\n\n9 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 98.\n\n10 After 2 years there, Yung Wing (容閎, Rong Hong) went to Yale University and was the first Chinese to graduate from that famous institution in 1854. Yung later became a famous person in the history of modern China, being responsible for the opening of the first school of mechanical engineering in Shanghai; the formation of the China Merchant Steamship Navigation Company; the translation of many scientific books into Chinese; and the sending of young Chinese scholars to the U.S.A. for western studies in the 1870's. In the case of Wong Foon, after 2 years' study in the U.S.A., he crossed the Atlantic to Scotland and entered the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with honours in medicine and surgery. He returned to Canton in 1857 and distinguished himself as a surgeon. See also Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Western Cultures, Honolulu, East-West Center, 1964, Chapter 4, \"Yung Hung (Yung Wing) and Foreign Schemes\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205838, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "138\n\nJ. T. COOPER\n\nare used mainly as street plans. No contours are shown. Four sheets cover Hong Kong Island and three cover Kowloon and New Kowloon. From these a series at 4\" to 1 mile has been produced, one sheet covering Hong Kong Island and another Kowloon and New Kowloon.\n\nAll the new maps and plans now being produced will, however, quickly lose their value unless they are kept up to date. A continuous revision programme is being put in hand, and it is planned that in the near future the large-scale plans of the built-up areas of the Colony will be revised at least once a year. After each block of large-scale plans is revised on the ground the smaller scale plans will be revised by photographic reduction in the drawing office.\n\nAfter the strenuous efforts of the last few years it can be modestly claimed that by 1972 the Colony may well be the best mapped territory in the Far East and probably in the world. Even in Great Britain, which is probably the best mapped country in Western Europe, the national mapping of large cities is at 1/1250 scale and most of the country is at 1/2500 scale, while the largest scale at which contours are plotted (at 25 ft. vertical intervals) is the 6\" to 1 mile series.\n\nThe plans and maps summarized at A and B below can be obtained from the Crown Lands & Survey Office, Public Works Department. Since several thousand sheets are involved and the demand for any one sheet is very limited outside of Government departments, no stocks of prints are held, but a print of any sheet can usually be supplied within an hour or two at a cost of $3.00.* The negatives of the air-photos are held by the contractor in England. Prints can be supplied by air mail within about 10 days. Cost of a contact print (9″×9″) is $23.10, (including air mail postage). Index diagrams of all plans and air photos can be inspected at Crown Lands and Survey Office, Central Government Offices, Hong Kong.\n\nA. HONG KONG ISLAND, KOWLOON, NEW KOWLOON\n\n(i) 1/600 scale (50 ft. to 1 inch) with 5 ft. contours†\n\nNo. of sheets 700\n\n* All costs should be taken to refer only to those operative at the time this Journal goes to press. Ed.\n\n† See Plate 11.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205880, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "180\n\nTHE LIBRARY\n\nMost of the periodicals have been received in exchange for our own journal, and form a valuable portion of the collection, many of the titles not being easily accessible elsewhere in Hong Kong. Exchange agreements were made with the following three additional institutions: Monumenta Serica Institute, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and Instituto do Luis Camões, Macao.\n\nThe following is a list of titles added to the Library of the Hong Kong Branch since the publication of the previous list in volume VIII of the Journal. Items marked* are kept at the University Library, and the remainder at the British Council.\n\nALISJAHBANA, S. Takdir.\n\nA41\n\nIndonesia: social and cultural revolution. Kuala Lumpur, Oxford U. P., 1966.\n\nC517\n\nCH'EN, Yüan (†)\n\nWestern and central Asians in China under the Mongols; their transformation into Chinese (R$). Los Angeles, Monumenta Serica, 1966.\n\nCHINA. Laws, Statutes, etc.\n\nC531\n\nTa Tsing leu lee (#1); being the fundamental laws and a selection from the supplementary statutes of the penal code of China ... Taipei, Ch'eng-wen Publ. Co., 1966.\n\nCOLLIS, Maurice.\n\nC71\n\nWayfoong: the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. A study of East Asia's transformation, political, financial and economic, during the last hundred years. London, Faber, 1965.\n\nDOOLITTLE, Justus.\n\nD69\n\nSocial life of the Chinese; with some account of their religious, governmental, educational, and business customs and opinions with special but not exclusive reference to Fuhchau. Taipei, Ch'eng-wen Publ. Co., 1966.\n\nEITEL, Ernest J.\n\nE36e\n\nEurope in China: the history of Hongkong from the beginning to the year 1882. Taipei, Ch'eng-wen Publ. Co., 1968.\n\n*FERREIRA, José dos Santos.\n\nF38\n\nMacau să assi, Macau, Tipografia da Missao do Padroado, 1967.\n\nGILES, Herbert A.\n\nG47g\n\nGems of Chinese literature. 2d ed., rev. and greatly enl.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206324, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n135\n\n4 The first census of the Island in 1841 gave a population of 5,650. In 1844 the population was given as 19,009. See Historical and Statistical Abstract of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1841-1931, Hong Kong, Noronha, 1932. The validity of the first census has been questioned by G. R. Sayer in his Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age, London, Oxford University Press, 1937, p. 104.\n\n5 The China Review, vol. 1, 1872/73, p. 333.\n\n6 Ibid., p. 334.\n\n7 E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, The History of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1895, p. 282. The Man Mo Temple stands at the western end of Hollywood Road. It was originally a shrine patronised mostly by fishermen before 1841. For a description of the temple see Charles J. H. Halcombe, The Mystic Flowery Land, London, Luzac and Co., 1896, ch. xxvii. The temple was run by a committee appointed by the Five Districts and the committee used to hold an annual ceremony at Mount Davis for the dead... in celebration of the gods of literature and war: see the Hongkong Government Gazette (henceforth cited as the Gazette), 12 February 1879, p. 52. The properties of the Man Mo Temple were transferred to the Tung Wah Hospital by the Man Mo Temple Ordinance, No. 10 of 1908. Before the committee of the Tung Wah Hospital was organized, the Man Mo Temple Committee appears to have been recognised as representing the opinions of respectable Chinese.\n\n9 J. W. Norton Kyshe, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1898, vol. 2, p. 86. See also the reports of the Registrar General for 1866 and 1867 in the Gazette.\n\n9 Ibid., p. 86.\n\n10 In 1867 the police force consisted of 89 Europeans, 377 Indians (chiefly Bombay sepoys) and 132 Chinese, many of whom were employed as marine police. See Eitel, op. cit., pp. 445-6.\n\nAs late as 1893 there were only two European policemen who could act as proper interpreters and only five who could speak some Chinese. See the Report of the Commission on the Po Leung Kuk, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1893, p. 81.\n\n12 Correspondence on Hong Kong Gambling Houses, London, H.M.S.O., 1869, p. 21.\n\n13 Eitel, op. cit., p. 447.\n\n14 Gazette, 6 January 1872. The Police Commission set up by MacDonnell was not unanimous: broadly it agreed to recommend an Anglo-Chinese police force. The recruitment of Chinese police had been strongly advocated by Dr. Legge, as most likely to bring good understanding between the government and respectable Chinese', G. B. Endacott, History of Hong Kong, London, Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 160.\n\n13 Osbert Chadwick, Reports on the Sanitary Conditions of Hong Kong, London, H.M.S.O., 1882, p. 42.\n\n16 'Registration of Chinese Partners', Hong Kong Sessional Papers (henceforth cited as Sessional Papers), No. 43 of 1901, p. 22. The text reads: 'Head and District Watchmen employed to patrol the streets by day and by night, are to be recommended by the Chinese themselves, because they know whether they are trustworthy or not. If these men, however, should fail to maintain their good character and should be found to be unfit for the post by the Chinese residents of the district to which they belong, they should be dismissed at any time, in order that they may have something to fear'. The translation is clearly a bad one.\n\n17 In 1883, the Registrar General, Frederick Stewart, used the district watchmen to conduct an enquiry into all Hong Kong schools. In the 1897", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206358, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n159\n\npay certain sums into the Corps Funds. These variations to the old Ordinance are important as no fixed period under penalty had been enjoined in it, and no special duties other than active military service had been envisaged for the force.\n\nThe reasons for these changes must again be sought in the changing nature of the times. The educated youth and the industrial labour of China had entered into a period of unrest and discontent brought about by their country's weakness. China had entered the war as an ally of the Western powers in 1917 but despite this they refused to give up tariff privileges and treaty ports (the European concessions) or to make their other Eastern ally, Japan, relinquish her territorial encroachments on China. The 1920s were a time of growing internal strife in China coupled with increased resentment of the West. Hong Kong was not excluded from the impact of ideological struggle. The Seaman's Strike of 1922 and the General Strike of 1925-26 crippled the port and damaged the economy of the Colony. An emergency situation existed, and thus a fresh impetus was given to the Volunteer Corps whose services were again needed for humdrum but essential work. Colonel H. Owen Hughes recalls being called out for six weeks in 1925, and combining office work by day with duty by night patrolling the streets and guarding hospitals and vulnerable points.20 Whoever decided that a new Ordinance was needed in 1920 was a man of prescience and discernment. Other amendments were made to the Volunteer Ordinance in 1926 and 1927 (No. 15 of 1926 and No. 27 of 1927) in the light of contemporary requirements.\n\nBy the late thirties hostilities were again threatening in Western Europe and Japan's gradual encroachments in China led to actual war in 1937 and the occupation of Canton the following year. The danger which these events might bring to Hong Kong had already been anticipated. The Corps grew in size during this period and the Year Books between 1934 and 1940 make interesting reading. In the first issues we see that, following the Ordinance of 1933, the Volunteer Defence Corps consisted of one battery of artillery, a machine gun battalion that included three machine gun companies, corps infantry (largely Portuguese) and corps engineers and signals and armoured cars with a reserve company.\n\n20 Vol, 1964, p. 42.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206474, "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "16\n\nDR. F. I. TSEUNG\n\nstitute for santonin for the treatment of round worms. The treatment of leprosy with Chaulmoogra is an old-time remedy of China, and only in recent years was brought to light by western-trained doctors.\n\nThe now famous Ephedrine, which took Europe and America literally by storm, is derived from ma huang (**), a Chinese herb which has been used in China for treating asthma for more than four thousand years. It was first brought to the notice of the western world by Dr. K. K. Chen in 1926 and has since been extensively used everywhere.\n\nThere are still many other drugs which are still unknown to the outside world and which require scientific investigation. Such investigation would undoubtedly result in many remedies of great value being found. It is interesting to note that the Chinese people pay great attention to food and nutrition. An analysis of Chinese foods shows that they are rich in vitamins and other nutritional elements.\n\nAcupuncture (+), consists of puncturing certain points of the body with needles of all kinds. 367 such points are described, each having its own name and supposed relationship with internal organs. In the Sung dynasty a copper model of the human body was made which was pierced with holes at the proper places for puncturing. The figure was covered with paper, pasted on, and the student was required to learn where to drive the needle. Acupuncture spread to Japan very early. It was introduced into Europe by Ten-Rhyne, a Dutch surgeon, at the end of the 17th century and was much extolled in France early in the 19th century. Recently Sir James Cantlie and others tried it on sprains and chronic rheumatism and reported very favourably on it. Owing to the ignorance of asepsis by native doctors more harm than good is done by its practice. But sometimes miraculous results are witnessed and with further scientific investigation it might, no doubt, prove a valuable addition to our armamenta.\n\nMassage has been practised from time immemorial. Its value was fully recognized, and in the Tang dynasty it was elevated as a science, forming one of the seven departments of medicine. A special chair was established with a professor in charge. After the Sung dynasty it degenerated and at the present day it is mostly in the hands of the barbers and the blind. Massage was first brought to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206541, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n54 Index to the Tso Chuan, p. iii of Lockhart's preface.\n\n55 Ibid., p. iii.\n\n56 T'oung Pao, vol. xxix, 1932, p. 180.\n\n83\n\n57 On the study of folklore see Alan Dundes (ed.), The Study of Folklore, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965.\n\n58 N. B. Dennys (1840?-1900), a student interpreter in the Consular Service, published in Hong Kong in 1867: The Folklore of China, and its affinities with that of the Aryan and Semitic Races. It was a reprint of a series of articles first published in the China Review. Dennys' study is influenced particularly by the work of Max Müller. A typical example of Dennys' conjecturing would be the following: 'But what are we to make of the monotheistic spirit pervading the numerous sayings in which the \"Heaven\" of the Chinese answers to the \"God\" of Christian Europe or the \"Jehovah\" of the chosen race? Is this the spontaneous invention of an isolated people, or is it the surviving trace of a long-forgotten worship, when the ancestors of the Chinamen and the Semite worshipped at the same tomb?' (p. 155). See also Thomas Watters, 'Chinese Fox-Myths', JNCBRAS, vol. viii, 1873. The article by E. T. C. Werner, 'China's Place in Sociology', China Review, vol. xx, 1891/92, pp. 303-310, provides another example of the speculative thinking current among the educated in the 1880s.\n\n59 Lockhart's circular was also printed in the JNCBRAS, vol. xxi, 1886, p. 120.\n\n60 China Review, vol. xiv, 1885/86, p. 352.\n\n61 In 1860 the Hong Kong Daily Press published a separate newspaper in Chinese. This was the Chung Ngoi San Po and its first editor was Wong Shing (Huang Shêng).\n\n62 The collection contains over 600 letters from R. F. Johnston to Lockhart.\n\n63 JNCBRAS, vol. xlvii, 1916, p. 152.\n\n64 Arthur Bradden Cole, An Encyclopedia of Chinese Coins, New Collegiate Press, Kansas, 1967, vol. 1, p. 335.\n\n65 South China Morning Post, 5 January, 1972.\n\n66 Jean Gittins, Eastern Windows, Western Skies, Hong Kong, 1969, p. 47.\n\n67 The Times, 4 March, 1937. See also the obituary in the North-China Herald of 10 March, 1937. The South China Morning Post on 1 March, 1937, declared that Sir James' name is immortalised in Hong Kong by Lockhart Road on the Praya Reclamation.' Lockhart received the C.M.G. in 1898 and became a K.C.M.G. in 1908.\n\n68 R. F. Johnston's obituary notice of Lockhart: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1937, p. 393. Johnston states he was one of the first to receive the honorary degree of LL.D from the newly founded University of Hong Kong. He received this honour in 1919 and was in fact the twelfth person to be so honoured.\n\n69 See, for example, Lockhart's letter to Dr. G. E. Morrison after Morrison's speech to the China Association in 1907: 'I admired your pluck', Lockhart wrote, 'in telling your hosts what could not have been entirely pleasing to their self-satisfied ears, and in giving expression to what you well know will not make you popular with the white men in the Far West. You boldly advised removal of the troops. See Cyril Pearl,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207146, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n211\n\nNote the offices of the Nam-pak Hong Association on the left-hand side of Bonham Strand; the divided shops of the Chun Lung Sang porcelain business (1878) and the bamboo and rattan ware dealers further along, also the frontage of the Ping Heung Tea-house next to Ching Wah Kok.\n\nDuring this visit Members are advised to look around them, up as well as down, because there are all sorts of interesting little vistas to have had, often revealed by the removal of a house for redevelopment.\n\nFootnote:\n\n1) We will not be going to the Shun Tak District Commercial Association at 67, Queen's Road, West, as hoped, because a terrible blow; the furniture and fittings have already been cleared out prior to demolition of the building.\n\n2) The Tung Kwun District Commercial Association was founded as the Tung Yee Hop Tong in 1893 for charitable, including educational, work among persons of that district resident in Hong Kong. The present premises were purchased about 40 years ago. There is an interesting commemorative board above the window in the main hall presented by four shops in Liu Po New Market, Tung Kwun in 1912 in appreciation of flood relief work and settlement of disputes and of a defamation case by the Hong Kong Chamber. This shows that its influence extended beyond Hong Kong.\n\n3) The Nam-pak Hong Association in Bonham Strand, though in new premises that are of no appeal, is of great interest. This powerful commercial association was established in 1868 by merchants from different parts of China together with Chinese merchants from South-east Asia. This explains the name of the association which, in Chinese, means South-North Firms' Public Office.\n\nAdditional Notes for the Visit to Old Western District Carl T. Smith\n\n(a) The Development of West Point\n\nThe area we are visiting today was formerly dominated by two points of land. After the British occupation of Hong Kong they became known as Possession Point and West Point. Between the two was a steep hillside with a bay at its foot. The present Ko Shing Street approximates the original beach.\n\nDr. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong, Europe in China, pp. 123-124, gives an account of the event which gave Possession Point its name:\n\nOn January 24, 1841, Commodore Bremer, having arrived at Lantao, directed Captain Belcher, in command of H.M.S. Sulphur, to proceed forthwith to Hongkong and commence its occupation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207269, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "MERCHANT ORGANISATIONS IN IMPERIAL CHINA\n\n29\n\nsponsored Western-modelled chambers of commerce (shang-wu hui), merchant leaders accepted them readily, and by 1911 established some eight hundred major and minor chambers throughout China. Clearly a number of changes had taken place to span the chasm which once divided the traditional guilds from the quite modern chambers.\n\nBroadly speaking, three types of guilds existed in traditional China: those organised by craft, by common geographical origin and by trade. I shall here deal in detail with the last two, since the first, such as the carpenters' guilds, was not affected by the kinds of institutional changes which we shall discuss. Indeed, since the chambers of commerce did not take them in, the craft guilds were left relatively unchanged until the 1920's. In earlier times, however, the craft and the trade guilds were similar in many ways. Both began during the Sui Dynasty (A.D. 581-618), and they had comparable rules and rituals. The lack of substantial change in the craft guilds during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a reflection of the similar lack of change in status and function of the Chinese artisan.\n\nLandsmannschaften (Hui-kuan)\n\nThe second type—commercial associations based on common geographical origin—had a more recent origin than either craft or trade guilds. To trace their beginnings, we must go back to the early part of the fifteenth century when similar associations were formed by officials in Peking in order to cater to the needs of travelling gentry, official members and scholars who had gone there from their home area on official business or for taking state examinations. Known in Chinese as hui-kuan or \"provincial clubs,\" they resembled the Landsmannschaften of medieval Europe. As they proved their usefulness, they spread to provincial capitals and other major cities. Gradually, merchant sojourners in these cities were accepted as associate members.\n\nIn Peking, the original Landsmannschaften remained strictly official and gentry dominated. Although contributions were accepted from merchants, the latter shared little of the benefits as late as the 1800's. For example, the big tea merchant members of the Hsi-hsien Landsmannschaft in Peking made regular and sizeable contributions toward its upkeep from at least 1741 when the Landsmann", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207643, "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "16\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\npolicies, the Meiji government managed to avoid most of the difficulties that had plagued the Chinese effort to use foreign assistance efficiently.\n\nBuilding on the foundation of pre-Meiji experience, Western-trained and Western-oriented leadership,24 and strong central government direction and support, Japan made rapid strides in the modernization of her military after 1868. A leading figure in this effort was Yamagata Aritomo, who became Vice Minister of Military Affairs upon his return to Japan after a year-long tour of Europe in 1869-1870.25 With French advice and assistance, the Meiji government created an Imperial Guard in 1871, which not only made possible the abolition of the feudal han in the same year, but also set the stage for the introduction of conscription in 1872. By 1875, the Japanese had established a centralized military academy at Tokyo, with branch schools in veterinary medicine and other subjects.26 At the same time, numerous officers were sent abroad for further military education.27 By 1893, Japan had a total of sixteen military schools instructing over 2,600 students per year.28 Overseas-educated officers returned in a steady stream to assist in teaching these individuals.\n\nIn 1878, following the Satsuma Rebellion (1877), the Japanese established an independent General Staff on the German model. This marked the eclipse of the French in Japanese military affairs and the rise of Germany. Presseisen attaches profound significance to this development: \"So long as French influence prevailed, Japan's army remained under unified civilian control, her law code owed much to French legal opinions, and her government might have evolved toward a liberal, parliamentary system. After Germany's triumph the command structure, the constitution, and the Imperial Court followed the German ideological style.”\n\n19\n\nThe outstanding contributions of Jacob Meckel's German military mission to Japan in 1885 have been described in detail by Presseisen,30 The salient point is that by the early 1890's, Japan had built a modern, centralized army and had eliminated the need for further foreign military assistance. China, meanwhile, had done neither. The Sino-Japanese War underscored the stark contrast between the Chinese and Japanese reform efforts.31\n\nArmies, like individuals, can both reflect and effect change in society. Sir Lewis Namier has offered the opinion that \"the social", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208406, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "114\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nThe greatest obstacle, which confronts the student of rural government in China, therefore, is the lack of adequate, accurate information. In the first place, information from Chinese sources is scanty in comparison to the whole body of the literature. Chinese writers, generally speaking, have shared with Western students an indifference to the customs and mode of life of the people themselves. The difficulties attendant upon discovering such information as does reside in Chinese books will be well appreciated by anyone who has attempted it. Fortunately, modern Chinese students have done some work upon the subject, as will be seen from the bibliography of their studies appended to this work. These should be of considerable value for study in the future.\n\nWestern material, aside from random observations and one or two careful works, is entirely lacking. In fact, the writer has seen only one study, that of Bazin in 1854, which attempts to cover the same field as does this essay. And Bazin seems entirely to have been dependent upon a very few official Chinese literary sources and one Chinese informant with whom he corresponded. Men like S. Wells Williams, Parker, Doolittle, and Huc give extended accounts of the organization of the central government and limit their observations on rural government to a few paragraphs or pages only.\n\nIn the absence of much accurate information, it has been possible in the present study only to break ground. The attempt has been at a general consideration of a single institution, rather than a detailed study of this institution in one locality under particular circumstances. In this, it falls under all the dangers attendant to generalization. Unfortunately, generalizations about China are entirely too numerous, and the writer is aware that he may be criticized for adding to their number. But, since this was the only method open to him, he undertakes the risk because it allows him to make a start upon a subject which he believes must be studied. It has been said that China should be compared, not with any one country of Europe, but with the whole of it. Thus, a social institution such as village government may be as widely diversified in different parts of the whole territory as would be the case in Europe. The geographic conditions of China vary widely; its peoples do not all come from the same racial stock, unless we speak in the loosest terms; and the country, or much of it, has been inhabited for several thousand years. These are all factors leading to a wide diversity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208407, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN China, 1933\n\nof local custom. And there are others.\n\n115\n\nBut there are certain powerful factors which have tended toward a unity of custom. The race of the Chinese is at present more homogeneous than it is diverse; on the whole the people live everywhere on the same economic level, that of agriculture; and they have a fairly common spoken language in Mandarin, and one single written language. In all these respects Europe differs from China on the side of diversity: Europe is composed of a series of cultures which are only slowly amalgamating. Lastly, the Chinese have a common spiritual and intellectual heritage. This point is probably the most important of all, and corresponds to the common heritage which Europe enjoys, on the spiritual side from Christianity, and on the intellectual side from Greece and Rome. These considerations, while not entirely justifying the sort of generalization undertaken here, do render it more valid.\n\nThere remains to be mentioned the scope of this work and the plan adopted. What the writer has done has been necessarily modest indeed. There are in this study no original facts before unpublished; but very nearly everything of value available in English, and to a lesser extent in French, has been assembled. The writer's contribution has been the assembling of this material, and the attempt both to interpret it, and to draw conclusions therefrom.\n\nThe main attempt has been to give the picture of village government in China as it was at the end of the Manchu (Ch'ing) dynasty. At that time traditional village life was well crystallized and still quite stable, foreign influences and the disruption of the dynasty having little if at all affected the institution. Certain cultural and psychological phenomena which have contributed to the establishment and maintenance of village polity have been pointed out; at the same time certain concomitant phenomena arising from village government have been stressed.\n\nThe first four chapters of the study deal with this crystallized and stabilized form of customary government. It is the writer's belief that even to-day government in the village goes on much as it did in its crystallized form. On the whole Western forces have had little effect as yet; nor have the efforts of Western-inspired revolutionaries done much, for all their theories, to modify the situation. For this reason the writer has used the present tense almost exclusively in these four chapters.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208470, "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "178\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\nThe fact that in the Tsin Dynasty (#), 303-379 AD, the technique had been widely used, and about the seventh or eighth century the Chinese already used woodblock to print calendars (Ɔ).\n\nThe oldest woodblock printed book still in existence, so far as we understand, is the Diamond Sutra (✨#∞) a Buddhist text (**) printed in the year 868 AD, which was found along with thousands of manuscripts from Mokao (†) the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (†) at Tun-huang ( ). Tun-huang, a city situated on the outskirt of the Lob Desert in western Kansu Province (+), was once the main gate of the Old Silk Road (***). From the first century until the fourteenth century, merchants, caravans, travellers, monks, and armies leaving for the West all passed through Tun-huang on their way to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Europe. The Italian merchant Marco Polo („§ +) used the same route to come to China.\n\nHollowed out in irregular tiers along the face of a steep cliff, the cave temples of the Thousand Buddhas were known in the Tang Dynasty () as Mokao or “Grottos of Surpassing Height\". They are located a few miles southeast of Tun-huang City. There had been huge Buddhist monasteries at the place for centuries, but it became forgotten when the Ming Dynasty (#9) began trading with the West by sea, and since then most of the caves had been buried by the shifting sand of the desert. In the late nineteenth century, it was rediscovered by a Taoist Priest called Wang Yuan-lu (10*), but by then all the wooden structures of the monasteries had vanished, and only the stone caves used as shrines remained.\n\nMokao is more than five thousand feet in length and consists of four hundred and ninety-two caves of various sizes. Over two thousand Buddhist statues and numerous huge murals can still be found in the caves. If we could have all the murals linked together, they would be at least twenty-five miles long.\n\nIn the year 1899, Wang Yuan-lu discovered an old monastery library in a walled-up chamber behind a mural in one of the caves. In the chamber, he found more than twenty thousand volumes of manuscripts and woodblock-printed documents and books, among them the Diamond Sutra. The news of the discovery soon spread abroad. In 1907 an Englishman, Sir Aurel Stein, traded with the priest and carried away 29 cases of manuscripts and books. More", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209234, "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-1981", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "JUAN YÜAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826 123\n\ncome about by which most of the Shui-sheung-yan under the age of 35 now have the choices which ability to read and write gives.\n\nHow important a part is education of the F.M.O.'s activity? Its official report rather downplays it - a neat little diagram in 1979 showed no more than 2.2% of its expenditure going on education. If, however, one adds in the government's subsidy to the F.M.O. schools to both the receipts and expenditure, one sees that in fact 22.7% of the money actually spent by F.M.O. officials is spent on education; it would not be unfair to say that it represents nearly a quarter of the department's activity.\n\nThe Comparison with European Gypsies\n\nIt is thus a serious and sustained effort, and much more comprehensive, than any provision for Gypsies in Western Europe, where illiteracy rates remain high, and probably than Eastern Europe also, where Gypsies are more likely to take advantage from ordinary schools.\n\nIt is perhaps possible to make a direct comparison, in terms of the size of population catered for, between the Hong Kong F.M.O. schools and the largest project for Gypsy children in England, one jointly financed by eleven West Midlands Local Education Authorities, which replaced previous charity-financed projects in 1973/74. The West Midlands projects had in 1974 a target of up to 1,500 children from nomadic families estimated not to be receiving adequate education, with, by rough rule of thumb estimate, as many Gypsy children again already settled, as a secondary target. The F.M.O. schools have over 3,600 children attending them. There are many differences, however.\n\nAlthough the West Midlands Gypsy population is probably more distinct culturally from the majority population than are the Hong Kong Shui-sheung-yan, the West Midlands scheme is more flexibly integrated to the general school system. Although several of the West Midlands teachers work in separate units, most become additional resources in ordinary schools receiving Gypsy children. The West Midlands project has never had more than 16 teachers. The F.M.O. schools in comparison, have over 130 teachers, and have no declared intention of integrating their organisation into the normal school system at the primary school level, despite the shrinkage of the fishing fleet, and the lessening of social prejudice against fisherfolk since the founding of the system in 1947. As we have noted, the fifteenth school, on Apleichau was opened only in 1980.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209709, "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": 366, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "344\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nbegan to develop around 4000 B.C., that iron metallurgy was practiced in the Shang dynasty, and that the Hsia dynasty existed as described in much later texts—all highly controversial views—but the reader does not glean this information from the essay. Cheng's concluding sentence typifies his approach, with confident optimism and will to believe displacing scholarly caution: \"and what an exciting day it will be when the discovery of a Hsia capital site is announced to the world!!\" (emphasis added).\n\nWILLIAM MEACHAM\n\n+\n\nOxford Reprint Series: Things Chinese J. Dyer Ball (reprint of Kelly and Walsh 1925 Edition, Shanghai) 766pp inc. index, Peking J. Bredon (reprint of Kelly and Walsh 1931 Edition, Shanghai) 571pp inc. index, The Moon Year J. Bredon and I. Mitrophanow (reprint of Kelly and Walsh 1927 Edition, Shanghai) 514pp + index, The Hong Kong Guide 1893 (reprint of Kelly and Walsh 1893 Edition, Shanghai) 137pp + 36pp of advertisements, Kwang Tung, or Five Years in South China J. A. Turner (reprint of S. W. Partridge and Co. 1894 Edition, London) 194pp inc. index. All Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1982, all with introduction by H. J. Lethbridge.\n\nThe Oxford University Press is to be wholeheartedly congratulated on their courage in deciding to reprint many of the classic western texts on China dating from the last decades of the Ch'ing and the first years of the Republic. These works have become increasingly difficult to buy in recent years, and their reappearance on the market is most welcome. The reprints of this year do not represent the end of OUP's hopes in this field; also under consideration for reprinting are, it is understood, among others, Couling's Encyclopedia Sinica, Eitel's Europe in China, and Montalto de Jesus' Historic Macau.\n\nThe last decades of the last century and the first years of this are usually considered a period when Europeans either merely had contempt for the Chinese or else, at best, regarded them with patronising condescension. Surely, it will be thought, books on Chinese religion, society, or customs written by Europeans in China in this period would have nothing of value to tell us today. There are, certainly, remarks in almost all these books which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "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": 210980, "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-1987", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "17\n\nOne must always take into account this French addiction to performing and making an impact on their public, whether dealing with the intellectual fireworks in honour of China in the eighteenth century, or on the occasion of more recent and far less pleasant pyrotechnics, somewhere in Polynesia.\n\nSo the Philosophes' encounter with China had, at its own level, contributed to the fall of the French monarchy. And for more than a century, French intellectuals were to be concerned with a completely different range of issues: political revolutions and counter-revolutions, France's position in Europe, industrial development and its social fall-out, freedom of speech and of thought, as well as colonial expansion. China had very little to do with these French-centred debates of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It had by then become a target for Western imperialism including France, and its cultural prestige was accordingly declining. China only mattered for a few isolated if not eccentric French intellectuals. China in this period was a very marginal feature in French intellectual life.\n\nSome of these marginal Sinophiles of the nineteenth century were belated admirers of an ideal and abstract China in the grand philosophical tradition. In a little-known novel by Balzac, L'Interdiction — a legal measure depriving a spendthrift of control over his estate — a Marquis d'Espard spends all his fortune on reprinting old Jesuit memoirs on China. He is a devoted right-wing monarchist; he admires the Chinese imperial monarchy for allegedly maintaining a social order the French kings had been unable to maintain. His wife, a typical Balzacian marquise, has a legal interdiction passed on him.\n\nThe Marquis d'Espard is a lonely figure in Balzac's little world — the Human Comedy — and equally solitary was the young Baudelaire, who was at college when Balzac was flourishing. In one of his strongest poems, Le Voyage (or 'the trip', also with the colloquial connotations of this word), his concern for China is expressed through brief but extremely challenging verses — a concern he must have developed in his college years:\n\nDe même qu'autrefois nous partions pour la Chine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211350, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "42\n\nThe search for the giant panda through Chinese historical records and ancient writings represented an interesting exercise. Nevertheless, no positive statement can be made that the Chinese had known about the giant panda before the pelt was brought to western attention.\n\nPère David, it is safe to say, may continue to bask in glory as the discoverer of the giant panda for the whole world, including China.\n\nbaixiong 白熊 Bishan 璧山\n\nBishi 壁溪\n\nGLOSSARY\n\nErya 爾雅\n\nLi Shizhen 李時珍\n\nLiaodong 遼東\n\nLolo 玀羅\n\nMing 明\n\nmo 貘\n\nOuyang Xiu 歐陽修\n\npixiu 貔貅\n\nSima Qian 司馬遷 Sichuan 四川\n\nShandong 山東 Xuande 宣德 Wuding 武定\n\nYunglo 永樂\n\nYunnan 雲南\n\nZhou 周\n\nzhouyu 州圉\n\nZhu Su 朱橚\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nBrightwell, L. R., \"The Giant Panda, Its History in Ancient China and Modern Europe”, Field 187:497-498 (London, 1946)\n\nDavid, Armand, \"Journal d'un Voyage dans le centre de la Chine et dans le Thibet Oriental\", Nouvelle Archives Musée Naturelle de Paris (Bulletins) 10:3-82 (Paris, 1874)\n\nFox, Helen (editor and translator), Abbé David's Diary, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949.\n\nDictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644, New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1976. Essay on Li Shih-chen (1518-1593) by L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, I:859-865.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211708, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "98 \n\na door through which the western world traded with the East, particularly China. Import values of incense wood increased. In 1846, 131 tons of sandalwood were imported from New South Wales, 12 tons from Kuang-tung and 5 tons from Lombok and Bali.\" This might not seem impressive at first sight, until one considers that the total amount of import from New South Wales was 550 tons carried on 6 vessels, so that sandalwood constituted approximately a quarter of the total. In 1847, the quantity of imported sandalwood from New South Wales grew to 228 tons, almost double that of the previous year.'* \n\nNo direct mention can be found of local incense milling and joss stick manufacture during this period, although the export table for 1848 given in the Hong Kong Blue Book does make a distinction between trade in incense logs and incense powder. In that year, incense exports from Hong Kong to ports on the east coast of China consisted of 48 tons of sandalwood shipped in 213 packages, and to Whampoa consisted of 25 casks of powder and 318 logs while another 144 tons of sandalwood were sent to other places in Kuang-tung. \n\n15 \n\nIt is possible, therefore, to speculate that incense wood milling evolved in Hong Kong alongside the lumber trade in incense wood, probably as an attempt to reduce the bulk and weight of the logs. At that time, incense wood was ground by stone hammers operated by water power. Such hammers could be worked in pairs or in groups of five to six. The idea was to grind the incense wood by means of an overshot wheel. The axle of the water-wheel rested on a cross beam and was held in place by wedges within the place where it was to revolve. When water was conducted through a leat onto the bamboo boards of the wheel, the wheel turned, causing the cross beam to revolve. The revolution of the cross beam, in turn, caused the hammer to rise slowly and then fall with a crash. As a result, the continuous raising and dropping of the hammers onto the wood would grind it up into powder. This idea of incense milling was taken from the overshot wheel used in irrigation, as outlined in the Nung chêng ch'üan-shu,\" and is similar to the process used in pre-industrial Europe for the fulling of woollen cloth, and the working of iron blooms. \n\nYung-yen has referred to water milling in Heung Fan Liu (**) in Sha Tin in the late Ming Dynasty.\" This is possible, and it is even likely that there was incense milling in the area in and after the eighteenth century. However, the first positive evidence of incense milling in Hong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212000, "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": 415, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "390\n\nStaging this piece has atropaic effects, cleansing the site from harmful influences or malicious spirits. Because opportunities to see \"The White Tiger\" staged are rare, it was felt worth printing a photograph (Plate 23) of the piece as staged at the Lung Yeuk Tau rat siu opera matshed in 1983.\n\nIssei TanakA\n\nBRITISH CHINESE LABOUR CORPS LABOURERS BURIED IN ENGLAND\n\nProbably the only visible reminder of an episode in Sino-British military history in Britain is the group of six graves of Chinese labourers who died during or just after the Great War. Of the two thousand or so who died in Western Europe of the nearly hundred thousand Chinese shipped to France by the British only six lie in British soil, in the Shorncliffe Military Cemetery, which is situated beside the former Shorncliffe Military Hospital above the Channel port of Folkestone. They rest far from their native Shantung and Honan provinces, with no indication as to how they died. The proximity of the former hospital suggests that they may well have succumbed from injuries, wounds or epidemic.\n\n\"China on the Western Front\", by Michael Summerskill, published by Summerskill in 1982 which describes other military cemeteries, in France, where Chinese labourers are buried, is a most interesting description of the British Chinese Labour Corps with its officer cadre consisting mainly of missionaries and sinologues.\n\nDespite each of the thousands of Chinese labourers being awarded a war medal, it is worth noting that they are exceedingly rare and a much sought after collectors' item. It would be interesting to know where they all went.\n\nThe illustrations (Plates 24 and 25) are of Shorncliffe Military cemetery with the English Channel and Romney Marsh in the background; and of one of the six gravestones, all of which are well cared for in a tranquil spot under shady trees.\n\nKEITH STEVENS", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212396, "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": 338, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "315\n\nDespite their conflict in the Crimea in 1855 the British and the Russians never turned the Great Game into all-out war: There the risks and horrors were in the local tribal scene — agents unmasked and beheaded or just disappearing, and mobs lynching unwelcome interlopers. A dreadful interlude was the British penetration of Tibet in order to check the rival influence, causing the slaughter with modern weapons of hundreds of ill-armed monks.\n\nHow did the Great Game end? Officially, when both sides were tired of it, by an Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Britain was by then seeing Germany as a more immediate potential enemy, and Great Power attentions were focused more sharply on Europe and less on any Russian ambitions in the East. Today there are no Great Games but rather a series of smaller games in Bosnia, the Gulf, Cambodia by smaller men unaware of any code or rules. Strange to recall far-off days when Russian and British officers, meeting inadvertently somewhere in the wild Pamirs, would ask each other to dinner and apologise for their governments' cussedness.\n\n—\n\nThe Great Game is a long, intricate and absorbing tale and Hopkirk tells it with unflagging enthusiasm, reflected in his lively writing-style. His is not a book garnished with footnotes for the historian (though it has a good index) but for the general reader it provides an excellent introduction to the amazing and still largely unknown and unreported world of Central Asia.\n\nANTHONY LAWRENCE\n\nAleko E. Lilius. I Sailed with Chinese Pirates (Hong Kong Oxford University Press reprint 1991) 245 pp illus.\n\nAs this is a re-print of a book first published in 1930 its relevance to present-day events is necessarily limited. The author, a United States citizen of Finnish origin, reveals himself as a journalist of extraordinary drive, pertinacity and courage but he is very much a creature of a pre-World War II colonial era when Western attitudes towards Chinese (even dangerous-looking pirates) were condescending and patronising in a way which reads quaintly today. Which is a pity, because with a different approach and greater knowledge of Cantonese and the coastal people of Southern China it might have been possible to produce a valuable study of the motives, pressures", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212410, "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": 352, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "of Hong Kong's colonial history.\n\n329\n\nCHARLES WALKER\n\nD. E. Mungello. Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. 405+2pp. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.\n\nThe title of the book leads the reader to expect a discourse on the development of Sinology out of the accommodative approach which the Jesuits took to missionary work in China. However, this is not the theme which the author pursues. Rather he writes about the historical development of Jesuit accommodation in the 17th century within the context of European intellectual traditions and concerns, paying particular attention to the impact of their published works and in some cases correspondence with contemporary European scholars, whom he characterizes as 'proto-sinologists'.\n\nThe author's concept of accommodation is not adequately defined in the introductory remarks where he says only that it applies to the setting in China where Jesuit missionaries accommodated Western learning to the Chinese cultural scene and attempted to achieve the acceptance of the Chinese literati through the 'Confucian-Christian synthesis' (p. 15). Much later the author spells out other very important aspects of his perception of Jesuit accommodation, namely 'the supplying of Europe with information about China' (p. 207) as part of their on-going public relations effort which was conducted within the context of Ricci's accommodation whose Confucian-Christian synthesis represented 'a formula for the intellectual assimilation of China by Europeans' (p. 507). Although he notes that this appears not to have been a part of the original formulation of Jesuit accommodation in China, but appears rather to have developed 'out of practical needs' (p. 207), the author gives it nearly equal weight with the Chinese directed aspect of accommodation in his selection and presentation of data throughout this work. Therefore, the reader would have been better served by an early introduction of this idea.\n\nThe author coins the term 'proto-sinology' for the early study of China in Europe which he claims, and goes on to show, was intimately connected with the Jesuits' China mission (p. 13). Noting that the term 'applies to Europe where the assimilation of knowledge", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212765, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "59\n\nprevail elsewhere, and some of the descriptions held good for the whole of China. But,' continued Mesny, 'China is a large Empire, and General Tcheng was too young when he left China for Europe to have seen much of his own country. He was no doubt much better acquainted with Parisian manners and customs than with many manners and customs which prevail in many parts of the Chinese Empire. Nevertheless, his book deserves to be read more than once, even by me, who have seen so much more of China and the Chinese than General Tcheng has so far. Had I the literary qualifications of the writer of Les Chinois, Peints par Eux-memes, I could write at least a dozen such books on China and the Chinese without exhausting the stock of information I have acquired during my forty-four years' residence in the country. I have been treated in some parts of China much the same as General Tcheng was treated in Paris,'\n\nThe Miscellany probably just about paid its way though from the occasional note of sadness though not despair which appears from time to time, Mesny must have continued more for the desire to make a living and perhaps also to keep his name before the public eye rather than to earn a fortune. It was by no means smooth going and at times he must have upset individuals and even groups such as the announcement he made in July 1899 that his Miscellany was being boycotted by the press, bankers, insurance and shipping agencies and by shopkeepers. He bemoaned the fact [Volume II, Issue 28: Sep 1896] that the loss on the first year's publication was over $2,000.\n\nSeveral times in the course of his Miscellanies Mesny repeats a disclosure of a titbit of news or political scandal to prove that he was first and that the North China Daily News and the Shanghai Mercury had simply copied his original scoop without attribution.\n\nA number of magazines were being published around this time on the China Coast such as The East of Asia Magazine, printed and published by the North China Herald Office in Shanghai, a quarterly illustrated consisting of essays on topical subjects such as Chinese customs and superstitions, gems of Chinese poetry, bits of Fukien travel, Ningpo under the T'ai-ping's, etc mostly written by reasonably well known people. It only ran for a couple of years. Another was Social Shanghai, a monthly glossy journal relating western social happenings mostly in Shanghai but in a few instances referring to the outports. It consisted of the usual society articles, including births, deaths and marriages, the races, and lengthy pieces about the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. This ran", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213264, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "66\n\nBanks, Hongs and Government House\n\nMany old established western hongs have long come to terms with the 'breath of the dragon'. As one senior Standard Chartered Bank staff member phrased it (partly with tongue in cheek perhaps?): 'Some Europeans are more concerned about fung shui than the Chinese. Besides, paying attention to it is good for business.'\n\nThe British Standard Chartered is the oldest foreign bank in Hong Kong (its forerunner, the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, was established in Hong Kong in 1859). Management was advised that for its new building, completed in 1990, one main door was not enough to 'catch all the good fortune and allow money to flow in'. An additional entrance, facing northeast, was included in the plan, 'to capture \"luck\" from Central District and from the harbour and business from the Hong Kong Banking Corporation next door'. The main entrance is very important. It is subjected to more foot traffic than any other part of a building. Its door should be well-hinged, upright and in scale with the building as a whole.\n\nSimilarly, the decor of Chartered Bank's interior includes a number of features synonymous with prosperity in Chinese culture. The stained-glass windows in the entrance hall portray a bus with registration number 28 (homonyms in Cantonese also meaning 'easy to prosper'). A red (a lucky colour) tram car has the number 88 (signifying 'doubly prosperous') and steps have been constructed in flights of eight. Lucky numbers are popular in Chinese communities around the world.\n\nSimilarly it is good if one's grave, or niche in a columbarium where one's ashes are deposited, has a fortuitous number. In Europe numbers carry different meanings. Seven (among Chinese, this number is often associated with how many dishes mourners partake of at a funeral wake) is sometimes considered lucky, while 13 is deemed unlucky. Consequently, a 13th floor is sometimes omitted in a building.\n\nAs is common in many commercial premises in Hong Kong, running water is good because water signifies money. While having a water feature may not mean much in a bank in York or New York, such beliefs do imply a great deal to many customers in Hong Kong. Yet, surprisingly, few appeared to have been too upset when the fountain at the 'Landmark', in Central District, was done away with.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213296, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "98\n\nBritain since she moved there with her parents as a child, had this to say. 'If my mother bought a house in England she would certainly consider fung shui, I would consider it too, but not in such detail.'\n\nUndoubtedly, more interest is shown by Westerners in things Chinese today, compared to, say, a generation or so ago. Treatment like acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines have slowly become accepted by some members of the western medical profession. Likewise, fung shui is gaining Caucasian proponents. It is believed the layout of Amsterdam's waterways, the beauty of Lucerne, and the textbook layout of Paris all conform to good fung shui principles. Patrick Wong, a fung shui consultant practising in Britain, maintains that London attracts favourable water spirits from the Thames (Forsyth, 1994:64). These signify good fortune. The river's direction and flow, and the fact that it meanders and has many tributaries, are all conducive to prosperity (Walters, 1988:23). Kwok Man Ho, one of Europe's foremost fung shui masters, was called upon to advise on the design of some of the more recent projects in London's Docklands.\n\nIn addition to Chinese fung shui masters practising in the West there are also proponents like Derek Walters, a Briton who dons Chinese ceremonial robes and claims to have advised a number of British celebrities. Walters flies regularly to Hong Kong, where he learned his craft, to consult with other experts. 'We have nothing similar to fung shui in the West so it fills a vacuum,' he maintains.\n\nIn this technological age many people are searching for a 'fourth dimension'. They also want something that stirs the will. A number are looking for a simple, direct way of escaping the boredom and narrowness of everydayness. While some find their escape in mediaeval history, art or music, others find it in fortune telling or fung shui.\n\nA group of Chinese, after discussions among themselves in Holland, came to the conclusion that, among the Hong Kong, Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese living in the Netherlands, 70 to 80 per cent believe in fung shui, at least to some degree. For instance, many believe the number of windows in a dwelling should exceed the number of doors. If they do not, the inhabitants will hang up some kind of talisman to counteract possible evil influences. Similarly, gods which are popular in Hong Kong, like To Tei Kung, Kwan Ti and Kwoon Yam (觀音) are common among Chinese in the Netherlands.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213383, "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": 205, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "193\n\nSPECIAL FEATURE\n\nAN ENGLISH BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHINA STUDIES\n\nBETTY WEI\n\nAbeel, David, Journal of a Residence in China and the Neighbouring Countries from 1830 to 1833, London: Nisbet, 1835.\n\nAbel, Clarke, Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China, and of a Voyage to and From That Country, in the Years 1816 and 1817, London: Longman, 1819.\n\nAlley, Rewi, Travels in China 1966-77, Beijing: New World Press, 1973.\n\nAlmack, William, A Journey to China from London in a Sailing Vessel in 1837, 252 leaves (photocopy of manuscript at Hong Kong University Library MSS/915/1/A44).\n\nAlsop, Gulielma Fell, My Chinese Days, Boston: Little Brown, 1918.\n\nAnderson, Aeneas, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Year 1792, 1793 and 1794, London: Debrett, 1795.\n\n1\n\nAnderson, John, Mandalay to Momien: A Narrative of the Two Expeditions to Western China of 1868 and 1875 Under Colonel Edward B. Sladen and Colonel Horace Brown, Maps. London: Macmillan, 1876.\n\nAndersson, John Gunnar, The Dragon and the Foreign Devils, Boston: Little Brown, 1928.\n\nAnville, Philippe, Voyage en divers états d'Europe et d'Asie (Travels into diverse parts of Europe and Asia for a new land route to China), London: for Tim Goodwin, 1693.\n\nArlington, L.C. and William Lewisohn, In Search of Old Peking, Peking: Henri Vetch, 1935 (Hong Kong Reprint: Oxford University Press).\n\nAtwell, Pamela, British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers: The British Administration of Weihaiwei (1898-1930) and the Territory's Return to Chinese Rule. Hong Kong, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.\n\nAtwell, William, The Ta-ch'ang, Tien-ch'i, and Ch'ung-chen Reigns, Cambridge History of China, vol. 7, 585-640.\n\nAuden, Wystan Hugh and Christopher Isherwood, Journey to a War, New York: Random House, 1939.\n\nBaber, Edward Colburne, Travels and Researches in Western China in Royal Geographical Society of London Supplementary Papers, London, 1886, v. 1.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213872, "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": 224, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "198\n\nwere named the \"South-west militarists\".\n\nConcerning how these governments sustained themselves, I have selected four possibilities for discussion. They are taxation and provincial remittances, customs surplus, foreign loans, and internal loans.\n\n1) Concerning provincial remittance and taxation, the government in Beijing enjoyed a limited amount from those provinces it managed to control. The southern government, however, failed to get any taxation from other provinces.\n\n2) About customs surplus, collected by foreign authorities to guarantee payment of the Boxer indemnity, this was returned only to the Beijing government, the only legitimate government recognized by the foreigners. In the South, when Sun Yat-sen threatened to seize the customs in Guangdong, Canton was surrounded by British and American gunboats.\n\n3) Foreign loans were monopolized by a \"Financial Consortium\", formed by major western banks aimed at avoiding mutual competition. As the consortium recognized only the Beijing government, all foreign loans to China were monopolized by Beijing. This picture, however, was upset by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Money was then moved away from the Far East to Europe again. As a consequence, by about 1915, the Chinese governments, in Canton and in Beijing, were increasingly dependent on domestic loans. The Chinese merchants were a major source for these domestic loans.\n\n4) Domestic loans are where the role of Chinese merchants came into play. Generally, three important groups of financiers can be identified. They centred around Tianjin, Shanghai, and Canton-Hong Kong. One common feature of these regions was the foreign presence, which secured a base for final retreat. Understandably, many Chinese companies were registered in the foreign concessions even though they operated outside them.\n\nPolitical Investment in the Hong Kong - Canton Region\n\nAgainst this background, I will focus the second part of my article", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213875, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "201\n\n\"official-supervision merchant-management\" (A). The formula went like this: the reform-minded officials provided the political patronage - they bargained with Beijing for charter, franchise, monopoly or tax concessions for the enterprises, and the merchants provided the capital and management. Concerning merchants' ability to raise capital, their credibility came not from the enterprises they set up, but from their own reputations, as well as from the political patronage which they managed to establish. Some of the most famous of these merchants in the western affairs movement were such Hong Kong compradors as the Tang Jingxing (Tang King-sing) brothers.\n\nThis kind of business environment made China unique when compared to Europe. Historically, the political fragmentation of Europe, and the frequent wars it led to, had forced the kings and the princes to be bound by their commercial commitments - one refusal to repay their debts meant that the princes would find tremendous difficulty in raising funds for the next war. In China, on the contrary, the Emperor needed not to (and actually had not) surrendered his right to interfere into the market; the government was not bound by legislation it made. Several incidents which occurred in the fifteenth century help to illustrate these divergences. Firstly, while the Ming Emperor abolished the national debt (in the form of salt certificates) overnight in 1667, the King of England was forced to grant his debtors a charter for the formation of a national bank (the Bank of England). Secondly, while the four Atlantic states (Spain, Portugal, France, England) were competing for overseas expansion and experiencing the “Age of Discovery”, the Chinese Emperor issued an edict to stop all his subjects from going overseas in 1667, just three years after the famous Zhenghe fleets (Tr Admiral) arrived at Malaya. Business endeavours in Europe were first protected by privileges granted by the Kings (in the forms of charter or monopoly) as in the case of the East India Company. This practice was later developed into a kind of rights guaranteed by legislation (company laws). In China, with the prohibition of sea-going, overseas trades were restricted in the forms of tribute, smuggling and piracy. No legislations were developed in China to guarantee and to protect commercial endeavors. An easy alternative for the Chinese merchants, therefore, was to rely on personal networks. On this, China and Europe went their separate ways. While the feudal society in Medieval Europe based on the ties of allegiance to a local land-owning aristocracy for protection, in China, authority was nominally resided in the central", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213876, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "202\n\nstate through the mandarinate and extended downward. Dependence on the favour of aristocratic protection found in Europe was represented in China by dependence on the favour of personified officialdom from the central extending all the way down to the localities. Accordingly, the rivalry within central officialdom would extend downward to their protégés in the local regions. The Cantonese experience can illustrate this point.\n\nAs such \"reform-minded\" officials such as Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong were competing for national influence, their protégés recruited in the provinces were also competing among themselves. After the opening of Shanghai and Tianjin, increasing numbers of men from Ningpo and Zhejiang were appointed compradores of western firms or advisors to the reform-minded officials. Even within the Cantonese group, some were more influential than others.\n\nIn terms of national influence, those Cantonese engaged in economic reforms always gained the upper hand from those engaged in legal reforms. As shall be seen, for those Cantonese engaged in economic reform (from Tang Jingxing to his nephew Tang Shaoyi, and through him to Liang Shiyi), they eventually advanced to positions in Beijing and monopolized the influential Board of Communications, which commanded huge economic resources in steamships, railways, mining and telegraph. This group of Cantonese was known as the Communications Clique. Their interests were vested in a China united under the central control of Beijing. This partly explains why Liang Shiyi and his clique were willing to finance Yuan Shikai's government after 1911, as well as his monarchical movement in 1916.\n\nThose Cantonese advisors such as Wu Tingfang and Ho Kai (He Qi) who were engaged in legal and diplomatic reforms, had not established their power base in Beijing and so eventually they based their influence in south China. After all, they were appointed Legislative Councillors in Hong Kong, the highest political posts that the Hong Kong Chinese could expect. They were sympathetic to the revolutionary activities in south China. As shall be seen, they sided with Guangdong in reform, in revolution, and in independence. Remarkably, both the Communications Clique and the \"legal-reform group\" turned out to be political patrons for competing groups of Cantonese merchants in Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213883, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "209\n\nmembers of the Alumni Association. All of them had at one time or another worked as compradores for foreign firms; the two Eurasian families, Ho Tung and Lo Changzhao (E) had almost monopolized the compradoral posts of Jardines and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank up to the 1940s. Liu Zhubo, He and Lo's sons were at one time or another appointed Legislative Councillors of the Colony. When the First World War broke out in Europe, these three partners contributed a huge sum of money to the British Government for the purchase of an aeroplane. The plane, as requested by the donors, was named \"Da You Bank of Hong Kong\".\n\nThe wealth of this western-educated group did not derive from the joint-stock company. They owned their own native bank despite the fact that they were compradores in western firms. It seems likely that this was an attempt to avoid the disclosure of financial accounts as required by the company ordinance. As these Eurasian families monopolized the compradoral posts of many of the foreign firms, including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, it is highly likely that capital was transferred between their accounts in the compradore offices and those in their private businesses.\n\nAs they had exclusive access to capital, they did not rely on a capital market in the same way as the overseas returning migrants did, though we cannot tell whether this capital market was governed by the invisible hand of the economy or the invisible hand of political intimidation, as the governor suggested.\n\nFollowing the example of the Siyi men, Hong Kong-born, western-educated groups participated in the political arena in China. In 1913, the Governor reported to the Colonial Office that \"several leading Chinese\" in Hong Kong had informed him that they would welcome the reorganization of the administration of the Canton Province under \"tactful and conscientious British supervision.\"\n\nAccording to Liu Zhubo's proposal, a loan of 25,000,000 taels was to be raised in Hong Kong to redeem unsecured currency in Canton. In return, Liu requested of the Beijing Government the privilege of establishing a central bank in Guangdong \"with a monopoly of the Provincial Government business\". To guarantee the smooth functioning of this arrangement, Liu suggested \"inviting the Government of Hong Kong\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214101, "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "138\n\nlikely each walled, using courtyards to form internal spaces for living and congregating and no formal external spaces for public gatherings. The latter structures were erected by Portuguese engineers, naval officers and church officials according to the general principles of building of their culture and time. The city was immediately divided into two - a fortified western city and housing for the Chinese outside the walls.\n\nIn the course of these first three centuries of occupation, we see a growing formalisation of the city. The earliest map we can find of the city is one published in 1796 by Sir George Staunton in his report on the Macartney embassy to China (Hong Kong Museum of Art 1996). Redrawn for clarity here as Figure 1, the original is annotated to identify six forts, three parishes, two colleges, four convents, four chapels and sixteen locations of note, including two Chinese temples. There are obvious mistakes in the overall shoreline when compared to more modern surveys but the form of the city can be seen. The inner and primary harbour is on the northwest shore which is more protected. The outer harbour on the southeast, the Praia Grande, is lined with buildings,\n\nFigure 1: 1796 including the governor's house, the houses of leading traders and significant ecclesiastical institutions. At the southern tip is a hill on which forts and churches stand, with temples as its base. The urban pattern is one that urban theorists in Europe such as Camillo Sitte would be familiar with and perhaps use as an exemplar. Organic growth between the Praia Grande and the harbour has led to narrow winding streets that open into wider intersections.\n\nPlazas are formed adjacent to the significant churches. A large market square is found in the middle of the city. The fabric of the city is woven from filaments of narrow lanes and nodes where people gather. Although we have no earlier maps of the city, the same pattern can be seen in the 1598 engraving of Macao (Amacao) by Theodore de Bry (Hong Kong Museum of Art 1996) with the Praia, the harbour, squares and churches.\n\nLooking at the 1898 map (Figure 2, from Hurley 1898), we see the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214183, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "4\n\njoke may have lost some of its appeal over the centuries it was supposed to have been a real roof-raiser in its day. How does it compare with the humour enjoyed by pre-Shang dynasty (1600 to 1100 BC) Chinese or primitive man in Britain, who used woad as a body dye, about the same period?\n\nCertainly throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, coarse and crude vernacular humour was common. It was included in the banter of the court jester and in the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare. Ribald and bawdy wisecracks and coarse primitive jokes also made up part of the conversation of the Chinese masses. Risqué jokes and four-letter words, which many consider to be very much a class marker, are still common today both in western and Chinese society and among both men and women (Bolton, 1997; 299, 306). The odd 'streaker' is occasionally seen at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens and the orgy is still by no means unknown. The author recalls a European on a minibus in Hong Kong informing the driver to stop at block number nine. But he mispronounced the Cantonese equivalent of ‘nine' with a higher tone so that it sounded like a coarse word for penis. While some passengers laughed outright others sniggered or masked a smile.\n\nSypher says (1956; 208), regarding a code of decency, that some psychologists believe any group of men and women, no matter how refined, will laugh at ‘dirty' jokes. The real question is when and which dirty jokes they laugh at.\n\nIt is interesting to compare reactions to the photograph taken of a Black Watch soldier at the cenotaph, in Hong Kong's Central District, when a gust of wind had blown his kilt up exposing bare buttocks. Most Westerners questioned by the author seemed to think, ‘hard luck old chap,' but most believed it was a cleverly taken photograph and good for a laugh. The average Hong Kong Chinese, however, felt that the poor Highlander's privacy had been trespassed upon and they were sorry for him. However, some also remarked, it provided an answer to the question which puzzles so many: 'What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?'\n\nAlthough the word 'humour' can still be considered 'suspect' in the United States (Muir, 1990; XXXI), it really means the ability to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214205, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "26\n\npicture than to the tiny figures on the mountain. Chinese medicine also takes a holistic approach. Again, it has been argued that Westerners see time as stretching out in a straight path in front. Asians, however, see time as a spiral, with things repeating themselves. It has been suggested this may have something to do with belief in reincarnation and the idea that there is 'a time to live and a time to die and a time to be born again.' Again, some of us are said to be logical thinkers, sometimes called 'convergers'; and there are also 'instinctive thinkers', sometimes called 'divergers'.\n\nWith the cortex of the brain composed of two hemispheres, it can be argued (Waters, 1991; 35) that the left lobe handles thought patterns which need to be processed linearly, sequentially, in systematic stages, step by step. The right lobe, conversely, operates in a more general way with simultaneous thought processing. How does all this affect appreciating jokes?\n\nEven though China is a single country about nine-tenths the size of Europe, populated largely by Han Chinese with many different dialects, there are also 56 minority groups with different lifestyles. This means that, although there are some jokes that will raise a chuckle no matter where they are told, some senses of humour, even within China itself, are to some degree regional.\n\nOnce in rural, Eastern Guangdong, at a walled village, the author asked a group of locals where the communal toilet was. As he walked away towards it, he heard the group giggling. In parts of China where Westerners seldom frequent, the white-skinned, red-faced, perspiring foreigner is an oddity and good for a chuckle; just as in some Western countries where Chinese seldom visit, they are intrinsically strange to Westerners. In the instance of the author looking for the lavatory, even though scatology is a form of Chinese peasant humour, he certainly did not expect to find it in the unprintable condition that he did - a country with some of the dirtiest bogs in the world.\n\nEven in \n\nChairman Mao was also fond of good, earthy expressions, although the author has been unable to find confirmation that: 'Making a noise like thunder to drown out the sound of 100 farts,' was actually dreamed up by him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214549, "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": 407, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "376\n\nRicci (1552-1610) the Italian Jesuit, astronomer and mathematician who left Portugal in 1578 and reached China in 1583. After time spent in Guangdong Province (mostly at Zhaoging (Shiuhing) on the West River), Nanchang and Nanjing, he finally reached Beijing in 1601. His descriptions of life at the Imperial Court created an enthusiasm in Europe for all things Chinese and he contributed to cultural exchange between China and the West. Matteo Ricci's legacy was to be a recurring feature of our weekend.\n\nThe second grave is of Adam Schall von Bell (1591-1666) from Cologne, who arrived in Beijing in 1630. He became a translator of Western books on astronomy at the Ming court of Hsu Kuang-ch'i and later produced a calendar based on Western mathematical calculations. Under the first Qing emperor, Shih-tsu, he was granted permission to erect the Southern Church, which we were to visit on Easter Sunday. The third grave is of the Belgian, Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-88) who arrived in 1659. In the second section, graves include those of priests from Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia and Belgium, and also 14 Chinese priests. In this section the most notable is that of the Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), famed for his painting of horses. Some of the buildings bordering the Cemetery have been destroyed during the passage of history but a former French convent, built in 1926, is still standing and the Matteo Ricci Society plans to turn it into a museum as part of their revival of Matteo Ricci studies.\n\nAt our hotel, the Palace, we found that Nina Ricci now had a shop there, indicating that although some Beijing intellectuals had a revived interest in Matteo, the new-rich of the capital preferred the high-fashion consumerism of Nina.\n\nOn the Saturday we visited the National Library of China at 39 Baishigiao Road, near Beijing Zoo and Purple Bamboo Park, in West Beijing where we were received by Madam Sin Liping, Deputy Director of Foreign Affairs and Mr Huang Runhua, Head Librarian of the Rare Book Section, together with members of his staff; and given a privileged viewing of a selection of rare foreign books. These included a Catechism dated 1588 in Latin and Chinese, with the Chinese also transliterated into Roman script. This may have been the work of Matteo Ricci. Another equally fascinating book had been written in Spanish,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214833, "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": 248, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "215\n\n \nquarrel with China was always stated to be with the Chinese Government, and not with the Chinese people. The British plenipotentiaries and commanders on land and sea always made this distinction, and tried to make it clear in proclamations and public notices addressed to the people of the various parts of China in which they were conducting their operations. The most striking example was probably at the Bogue, where the war steamer Nemesis had flown a banner with large Chinese characters, declaring that Britain was making war only on the Imperial government. Such attempts were repeated throughout the War. Before the army left Shanghai in 1842, Sir Henry Pottinger had issued a proclamation of this kind, once more reminding the inhabitants that the British were in fact fighting not the Chinese people but the Imperial government.\n\n \n13\n\n \nBesides taking this general approach to their operations, the naval and military officers of the Expedition were motivated by the traditions of their branch of the armed services, and by the laws, customs and usages of war as recognized in Western Europe of the day. They expected to apply these in China, embracing such considerations as recognition of flags of truce, humanity towards a defeated enemy, the fair treatment of prisoners, and the protection of the civilian population.\n\n \nBritish officers were quick to note acts of courage by Chinese or Tartar soldiers during engagements, and they accorded posthumous honours to brave commanders. They tried to curb looting and rapine by their soldiers and camp followers, and were particularly anxious to spare women and children. They regretted the suicide of Chinese and Manchu commanders in defeat and were dismayed by the self-destruction of many families who took their own lives at Chapu and Chinkiang, rather than fall into their hands. Many examples of their chivalrous outlook can be cited from their accounts of the War, and some will be noted below.\n\n \nProblems of Control\n\n \nBut war is war. Despite the best efforts of their commanders and their officers, British troops behaved badly at times. Drink was responsible for some of the excesses. Wyndham Baker is very implicit on this point. After the capture of Amoy, he wrote:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214952, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "had become a mere staple drink. May be so, but no one would doubt its importance to the Chinese people. 'The cup that cheers but not inebriates' as the Chinese describe it, remains one of the pillars of Chinese social customs.\n\nTea and the British\n\nThe British people's love of tea is proverbial, but it came late, centuries after its pleasures were known to the Chinese. Who introduced tea to the western world? Thoughts naturally turn to Marco Polo. But the Venetian traveller, who wrote vividly and at times with exaggeration of the many marvels of Cathay, did not mention tea; perhaps it was not a favourite drink in the court of Kublai Khan. Instead, credit is sometimes given to another Venetian called Ramusio who in the 16th century wrote enthusiastically about tea. However, this lies in the realms of conjecture. Historically, it is the Dutch who are credited with introducing tea to Europe, around 1610 AD. Europe was slow to respond. Opinions swayed as to its merits or demerits. Within the next hundred years, Europe accepted tea as its best loved beverage, and while it has remained popular in Holland and the rest of Europe, it had never reached the level of popularity it enjoyed in Britain.\n\nStories abound as to when Britain took to tea, but all are agreed that 1660 was a milestone - when Samuel Pepys, that inveterate diarist and Admiralty official, took his first cup of tea and so noted in his diary. It had infiltrated into Britain slowly. First drunk in tea houses, then favoured by the Court, by the beginning of the 18th century, tea had found its way into the home and to the daily table of the common man. It seemed to permeate every aspect of British life. It became a panacea for a multitude of ills and support in difficult times. Confronted by an emergency, tea was the immediate remedy. The Army made its own particular brand of strong sweet tea. 'Let's have a brew' was a great encouraging cry during a lull in fighting. Some would go as far as to assert that it helped the people of Britain to endure the blitz during the Second World War.\n\nBy the end of the 18th century, the rise in tea consumption in Britain was phenomenal. To the British people tea had come to be almost a necessity of life. Afternoon tea had become a treasured custom in every British household, and a whole ritual had evolved as to how to prepare", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215005, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "57\n\nan auspicious location to build a palace [of peace] where all the world's powers could meet and create a peace that will last ten thousand years.\n\nThe second letter is not addressed to any specific addressee with the writer also signing himself 'The Spiritual Man Yuan Chun`.\n\nSir,\n\nYour humble disciple learned that your righteous attempt to bring peace to Europe was rebuffed. Your setback was not due to your lack of sincerity for peace, but is due to the Western people's desire for war.\n\nSir, you know that the Chinese people [in Europe] have been placed in great danger by the war. We believe in your powers to make further attempts for peace, and to ensure our safety and our eventual return to China.\n\nThe third letter is addressed to His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief and is unsigned:\n\nThe current situation is one of utter chaos; the people's lives are very hard and we have waited in vain for the government to alleviate our difficulties. Our country is weak and the people disunited. Now is the time for an heroic brave man to take command and launch a crusade to stabilise the nation and unite the people. I hope Your Excellency will not hinder my efforts to carry out this righteous duty and I ask for your assistance in this endeavour.\n\nI wonder if any of the above letters were sent and, if so, whether the contents had any result on the final cessation of hostilities.\n\nWhilst writing this article I was fortunate to find a book on the life of Two-gun Cohen, the well-known personage with strong ties to China. Morris Abraham Cohen was born on 3rd August, 1889 in Stepney, London's East End, of an immigrant Jewish couple from Poland. He was shipped to Canada at the age of 16 after having come into conflict with the authorities. In Canada he learnt to ride, shoot and gamble, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215430, "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-2001", "page_number": 207, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "156\n\nPopular Jesuit devotional manuals of the times prove useful. A good example is a 1617 book of poetry that was quickly disseminated after its author's death. The Officium parvum Immaculata Conceptionis, or Small Office, by the Spanish Jesuit St. Alfonso Rodriguez intersperses a brilliant cluster of Marian symbols amongst its prayers. Besides the Fountain, the Spotless Mirror, the Enclosed Garden and the Cypress, the Small Office also sings the praises of the Palm tree, the New Star of Jacob, the Eastern Door of the Temple of Jerusalem, the Port of Shipwrecks and others. Thus, the closed door underneath the decorative pyramid topped by a globe seen on the farthest right-hand bay of the façade can be equated to Rodriguez's porta orientalis of the Temple of Jerusalem, taken from Ezekiel, which remained ever closed after the Lord Yahweh had passed through it.\n\nOther carved symbols can be deciphered with other contemporary texts. For instance, one of the three left bay reliefs carved on the base of the third storey shows the seven-branched candlestick of the Jewish Tabernacle. Here it is reasonable to infer that this is a literary conceit typical of much of sixteenth century Mannerist literature in Europe. Thus, through allusion Mary's immaculate earthly body has been likened to a tabernacle and related to the Eucharistic mystery. This is because Mary carried the baby Jesus in her womb in the same way that the consecrated host is housed in a tabernacle, a cryptic simile known from Counter-Reformation religious literature.”\n\nSuch an interpretation is further confirmed by the reliefs decorating the section of the base of the third storey below the two adjoining bays, as well as the left volute. They show a stylised vine and a small monstrance amid branches with berries.\n\nThese reliefs correspond to the flowering plants that adorn the mirror on the right. Like the flowered pedestals of the columns, these plants seem to be more decorative than symbolic, depicting specimens of Chinese or Japanese flora in which Far Eastern artists have been encouraged to integrate more traditional painterly images with images of Western origin. As is the case with the gargoyles in the form of Chinese lions, they attest to the significant role played by Chinese and Japanese artists in the design and execution of the decoration of the church.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215690, "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-2001", "page_number": 467, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "420\n\nAlthough there were Red Cross food parcels occasionally, these were much fewer and further between than for POWs in Europe. Some food was passed through the wires by Chinese women—some from the Wanchai bar district—loyal to their menfolk, often at great personal risk to themselves. As with most members of the armed forces during the Second World War, great dependency was placed on cigarettes. In prison camp, they also served as a form of currency. In spite of Spartan living conditions, gambling took place, sometimes for cigarettes or for Red Cross food parcels.\n\nConstant hunger brought out the worst in people. There was unfairness, selfishness, and stealing. Yet there were many staunch characters, and mutual support was vital to see an inmate through. Three or four men bonded together stood a better chance of survival than the loner. There were few suicides, but many just \"gave up the ghost\" and ended it all. We are told there was no evidence of religious conversions as conditions in camp worsened. The number of deaths among British Army Indians is recorded as being higher than for Canadian or British soldiers, partly because conditions in their camp were worse. Pressure was put on Indians to enlist to fight against the British. That so many resisted was a demonstration of strength of character and loyalty to the British cause.\n\nIllnesses such as diphtheria, dysentery, and malaria were ever-present, together with a shortage of medicine and medical facilities. Operations were sometimes carried out without anesthetics. Some inmates' hair turned white overnight, while others lost their sight. One prisoner even set himself up as a \"bone crusher,\" breaking limbs on demand so that fellow prisoners could be given time off from work.\n\nAccustomed to a Western lifestyle, differences in culture exacerbated the situation. European POWs did not enjoy a diet based on rice. Nor did they care for Japanese or Chinese tea without milk and sugar. A number of prisoners believed moxibustion, where pressure points on the body are stimulated not by needles but by burning mugwort, was a form of torture, although the Japanese may not have always administered treatment with the comfort of the patient in mind.\n\nMention is made in the book of a POW, although no name is given, who complained while on parade to the Red Cross that prisoners were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216026, "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": 325, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "259\n\ntowns and villages of the region visiting their Chinese agents, taking orders for tobacco and sugar and checking sales and receipts, used Zhenjiang as one of their bases. They were known as 'sugar and tobacco travellers'.\n\nAn extract from the Shanghai Mercury in 1887 described Zhenjiang and its surroundings in the not untypical purple prose of the newspaper hack of the day:\n\nFew ports in China would seem to be better situated for trade than Chinkiang, a few perhaps have been more disappointing. The first glimpse of the port is eminently reassuring, as the fine bund, at the time of the year bosomed [sic] in trees, the conspicuous houses topped by the British Consulate, and the goodly array of hulks connected by handy bridges with the shore make a picture surpassed in our picturesqueness by none. The hum of traffic and the cry of coolies permeates the air; the familiar aspect of the Sikh policeman appears at the corners of the British concession; the concession roads are wide and well kept, and, what is unfortunately unusual in China, the enterprise of the foreign residents has succeeded in acquiring a system of good riding roads penetrating the country in all directions as far as from four to six miles from the central point.\n\nAt the first opening of the port it was assumed that, with the suppression of the Taiping rebellion, its unrivalled position would make it the centre of a large and increasing trade. The Inspector-General nursed it, and proclaimed it the natural rival of Shanghai, British consuls prophesied a direct trade on its own account with Europe, even the native authorities for a time seemed to have come out of their shell and lent it aid and counsel. One Taot'ai', to his honour, be it said, laying aside the prejudices of his class, re-introduced the art of silk cultivation, and the mulberry trees planted by his assistance have originated almost the only industry which remains in the neighbourhood. In spite, however, of all this flourish, Chinkiang remains a comparatively poor port...the British concession is but a small spot, a few hundred yards square, and on it is concentrated the entire trade of the place, native as well as foreign.\n\nAlthough Zhenjiang in reality was but a minor treaty port it was well-known to western expatriates in China during the 19th century as\n\n•", "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": 216508, "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": 267, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "219\n\nLuoyang at Binglingsi (where a ferry took Silk Road travellers across the Yellow River) also shows influence from further west, this time from Gandhara (see below). These caves date from around 420. Indian influence was significant too in the magnificent complex of four hundred and ninety-two caves at Dunhuang, 'the art gallery in the desert', nearly fifteen hundred kilometres (as the crow flies) northwest of Chang'an. The practice arose at Dunhuang of travellers making offerings for a safe trip as they set off into the Taklamakan desert, or for a safe return, in the form of commissioning Buddhist devotional cave paintings. Dunhuang also became a monastic centre, particularly flourishing after the great fair at Zhangye (nine hundred kilometres northwest of Chang'an) in 609, which was sponsored and attended by the Chinese Emperor Yangdi. Among those who travelled to attend this fair were people from twenty-seven different nations, according to Tucker. This indicates the greater freedom of travel established by this period, and it is not surprising that Gandharan influence is to be seen in Dunhuang's paintings, although Tucker argues that their style is distinctively Chinese.\n\nClearly, by the time of the Zhangye fair, the Silk Road was thriving. By then, Xinjiang Province (meaning 'New Dominion') had been firmly in Chinese hands for four centuries. The roaming hordes of nomads that had formerly menaced travellers on the routes through the Province had been brought to heel by Chinese military control and lines of forts extended west into the desert beyond Dunhuang. One of the most important power groups beyond the Taklamakan desert with which the Chinese had established good relations beginning with Wudi's efforts in 105 BCE was the Kushan Empire (c. 2nd century BCE to 3rd century AD), the territory of which straddled the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, and is now occupied by Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It had been established by a formerly nomadic tribe, the Yuezhi, which had settled after fleeing west from the nomadic Xiongnu. The Kushan Empire, with its provinces of Bactria and Gandhara, was the primary nexus of cross-cultural interaction along the Silk Road, straddling as it did the mountains and passes between the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Persia, and the plains and great river valleys draining northwest into Europe. It was in the Kushan cities of Peshawar (now in Pakistan) and Mathura (India), where magnificent schools of art emerged that blended western and eastern influences and that, in turn, spread further east into China. For example, in what is now the north of Pakistan, then known as Gandhara, Greek sculpture strongly influenced statues of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216510, "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": 269, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "221\n\nTucker establishes a framework, too, for the rise of Islam. An Arab attempt on Constantinople in 718 seems to have failed only because of outbreaks of the plague, and famine, in the Arab forces. Chillingly, Tucker argues that it was only these chance events (though famine, surely, could have been attributed to mismanagement) that gave Christianity time to strengthen its precarious hold in Europe. And, on the eastern frontier of Islam, a Chinese army was defeated by an Arab force at the River Talas in modern Kazakhstan in 751, and this meant the end to Tang hopes to control Central Asia beyond Xinjiang. Tucker argues that it was Chinese captured at the Talas River who introduced the technology of paper and silk manufacture to Damascus and Samarkand.\n\nOther books on popular reading lists about the Silk Road tend to be books of travel. Some are almost gazetteers, while others concentrate on archaeologists' researches. This book is different, focusing as it does on telling the Silk Road's history and demonstrating the links between the art forms that emerged from each era and culture. To give an idea of the scope of the book, here are the Section headings:\n\nBeginnings (three chapters: on the Silk Road's precursors; on Nomads; and on the Kushans)\n\nChina (three chapters: on the introduction of Buddhism to China; on Luoyang, and on Xi'an)\n\nThe Silk Road between Xi'an and Dunhuang (one chapter) The Silk Road through China beyond Dunhuang (two chapters, one each on the northern and the southern routes)\n\nThe Silk Road through Central Asia (ten chapters including one on The Coming of Islam to Central Asia; one on The Mongols; one on Tamerlane and the Timurids; and the rest focusing on different routes.\n\nPersia and Beyond (nine chapters, including one on The Parthians and The Sasanians, seven on different routes, and a concluding chapter on The End of the Road: The Silk Road in Decline).\n\nThe pattern, then, is to use some chapters to describe chains of events, and others to present the artistic achievements of specific periods. In addition, there are useful chronological tables on China; on the pre-Islamic States of Western and Central Asia; on the Islamic States; and on the Emperors of Byzantium. Tucker also provides a Summary of Traded Goods.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]