[ { "id": 204425, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "48\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nhad much less cholesterol in the blood stream than the rest of us. Whatever the explanation, their old age is still greatly admired by the laity, who have the traditional Chinese feeling that there is a connection between longevity and sanctity, in fact that longevity is a result of-and a proof of-sanctity. One of the earliest features of Chinese religion was the search for immortality and the presumption still seems to be that if a man reaches a remarkable age, it attests to his religious accomplishments.\n\nLet me say a final word about the purpose of the Buddhist career. It was, in essence, enlightenment and rebirth in the Western Paradise. According to one school of Buddhist thought, these two are the same, for enlightenment means that this present world itself becomes the Western Paradise.\n\nPursuing enlightenment for oneself alone is not necessarily selfish. One has to reach it oneself before one can help others to reach it. Chinese Buddhist monks, unlike those in Theravadin countries, take the bodhisattva ordination. The bodhisattva is a being who stops just at the brink of nirvana and refuses to enter it until all sentient beings have entered before him. This is the ideal to which Chinese Buddhist monks are theoretically dedicated. In many cases I believe that it is more than theoretical. Granted that the monk's immediate task is to help the faithful with practical problems of life and death, his ultimate purpose is to spread the dharma so that the whole of mankind may first become enlightened and then escape the cycle of life and death altogether.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204500, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "BRITAIN AND CHINA\n\n117\n\nnot altogether the fault of the author, who has written the book as part of a series on Britain in the world today—though it detracts slightly from its value, does not in practice make it any the less interesting.\n\nThe question of recognition of the Communist government by Britain is very ably dealt with; the whole trend of opinion at the time, both in Britain and in the rest of the world is summed up. In 1949 Britain's commerce with China still far exceeded that of any other western country, and since the division into blocs was less rigid then than now, (though Britain consulted both the U.S. and the major Commonwealth countries) recognition was still a matter for each country to decide for itself. Happily the British government waited only three months to take this step; had it delayed another six, it would never have been taken, for the Korean war broke out. At the time international comment, even from the United States, was fairly favourable. It was realised that Britain had followed her usual pragmatic policy of recognition where a government was clearly in control as opposed to the U.S. ideological path of recognising only where it approved. Commercial groups and other British residents in China were influential in bringing this about; strangely enough, looking back over the last thirteen years, this was because the Communists appeared more honest and efficient than the KMT, and it was hoped that after recognition British interests would be able to expand.\n\nMr. Luard shows how quickly this hope became vain. For with the Korean war the new China entered on to the world stage with a vengeance, and came face to face with the United States.\n\nIn this conflict the British government always seems to have been slightly more aware of possible Chinese sentiments than the U.S., and to have hesitated rather more than the U.S. at the 38th parallel; and when President Truman began to talk of extending the war to Manchuria and of using the atom bomb, Mr. Attlee at once flew to Washington to make certain that U.N. forces were not to be committed to any extension of the fray without consultation with the other powers involved. Mr. Luard relates this episode in a particularly effective deadpan style which contrasts vividly with the drama of the events.\n\nThis British intervention epitomises the new role that Britain has since played in the world; she has been a mediator between", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204590, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "60\n\nTHE OLD BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING, 1860-1959\n\nBased on a lecture delivered on 20 August, 1962\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG, M.A.*\n\nOn the afternoon of March 26th, 1861, Frederick Bruce, the first British minister to China to reside in Peking, entered the grounds of the former palace of Duke I-liang, and the history of the old British Legation had begun. The desire of Great Britain to have a minister resident in the capital was of long standing, and had its origins in the eighteenth century. From at least 1760, some English merchants in Canton had been arguing that only when an ambassador from England resided at Peking would their grievances be properly represented to the Emperor of China and their position improve. Eventually, this point of view was strong enough to influence the Government of England. Indeed, one of the prime objects of the embassy of Lord Macartney to the Court of the Emperor Ch'ien-lung in 1793 was to secure for England just such permanent representation at Peking. However, there was not the slightest chance that such a request would be granted. All foreign embassies to China were regarded as tributary missions of a temporary nature, and all foreign countries as inferior. Even the first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842, and the subsequent Treaty of Nanking failed to obtain this object. From the Chinese point of view, relations with the western barbarians were still a local matter to be carried on by the Governor-General at Canton or by the Governor-General at Nanking. The foreign powers, for their part, were still unable to gain direct communication with the Imperial Government at Peking, and therefore were unable to protest effectively when the treaties did not appear to be working properly, or when they wished to revise them. This was the background to the War of 1858-1860, in which English and French forces were used to secure the Treaties of Tientsin, by which the earlier treaties were revised. Article III of the British Treaty of Tientsin stated (in part): \"It is further agreed that Her Majesty's Government may\n\n* Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong. Author of An Embassy to China, reviewed on page 136 of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204931, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "32 \n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING \n\nrace is thus augmenting, the causes which lead to the destruction of food, — such as the overflow of rivers, fires, ravages of locusts, bad seasons, and other calamities, — are to a great extent beyond the control of human prudence or human exertion. It would be difficult to show what new element could be introduced which would raise up the native supply of food beyond its present productiveness, considering that hand husbandry has given to cultivation more of a horticultural than an agricultural character.\n\nThe constant flow of emigration from China, contrasted with the complete absence of emigration into China, is striking evidence of the redundancy of the population; for though that emigration is almost wholly confined to two provinces, namely, Kwangtung and Fookien, representing together a population of probably from 34,000,000 to 35,000,000, I am disposed to think that a number nearer 3,000,000 than 2,000,000 from these provinces alone are located in foreign countries. In the kingdom of Siam, it is estimated that there are at least a Million and a Half of Chinese, of which 200,000 are in the capital (Bangkok). They crowd all the islands of the Indian Archipelago. In Java, we know by a correct census there are 136,000. Cochin China teems with Chinese. In this colony we are seldom without one, two, or three vessels taking Chinese emigrants to California and other places. Multitudes go to Australia, to the Philippines, to the Sandwich Islands, to the western coast of Central and Southern America: some have made their way to British India. The emigration to the British West Indies has been considerable; to the Havana greater still. The annual arrivals in Singapore are estimated at an average of 10,000, and 2,000 is the number that are said annually to return to China.* \n\nThere is not only this enormous maritime emigration, but a considerable inland efflux of Chinese towards Manchuria and Tibet; and it may be added, that the large and fertile islands of Formosa and Hainan have been to a great extent won from the aborigines by successive inroads of Chinese settlers. Now these are all males — there is not a woman to 10,000 men: hence perhaps the small social value of the female infant. Yet this perpetual out-flowing of people seems in no respect to diminish the number of those who are left behind. Few Chinamen leave \n\n* Journal of the Indian Archipelago, vol. ii, p. 286,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "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": 205099, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "50\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nmonks, missionaries and translators of the holy scriptures came from Iranian Central Asia at a time when there was certainly no universal peace in Asia. But was there really something like a Pax Mongolica, even during a very short time? The Mongol rulers of China who had adopted the Chinese dynastic name of Yüan in 1271, regarded themselves, from Khubilai on, more as rulers of China than of a universal empire of which China was only a part. This is reflected, as we shall see, in the Yuan dynastic history which is usually vague and uninformed as soon as a geographical area outside of China proper is mentioned. Although Khubilai was the Great Khan of all Mongols, his rule was always threatened by dissatisfied pretenders who tried to set up their own kingdoms in the Northern and Western regions, and there are recorded, in Chinese historical sources at least, as many feuds, campaigns and full-scale wars with other Mongol rulers and pretenders as good-will embassies from the other Mongol ulus (dominions); those of Chagatai in Central Asia, the Ilkhans in Persia and the Golden Horde rulers of Southwestern Siberia and South Russia. The situation, at least in the fourteenth century, among the non-Chinese ulus was not much different. The Golden Horde rulers and the Persian Ilkhans were, to say the least, not friendly to each other and war was frequent. In short, it seems as if the Pax Mongolica is no more than one of those brilliant simplifications that can serve as chapter titles for world history books. There remains some doubt whether it was easier to get from, say, Venice or the Black Sea region or Persia to China under the Mongols than some centuries earlier.\n\nHowever that may be, there can be no doubt that there was a certain amount of cultural contact between China and the non-Chinese West under the rule of the Mongol emperors. But the fact remains that there was no Chinese Marco Polo, no Chinese Rubruk or Giovanni da Montecorvino. China, it seems, was not very much interested in learning more about the countries of the West; we have in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no Chinese pilgrims like I-ching and Hsüan-tsang who had travelled to India in search of the Buddhist religion. There was no appeal and no challenge to learn more about the West. This relative indifference towards the civilization outside one's own geographical habitat and cultural background is to be seen in The Secret History of the Mongols, This fascinating book, the oldest", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205100, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n51\n\nsurviving specimen of a Middle Mongolian literary text, and an invaluable source on the customs and mores of the Mongols in their early formative period, has a lot to tell about the feuds and struggles of steppe tribes. But it remains singularly uninformative about the countries outside Mongolia. The campaigns against Russia, for example, are mentioned only in the most laconic terms. It is said in No. 274 \"they destroyed the towns of Ejil, Jayah and Meget\". Of these three only Meget, modern Mzcheti near Tiflis, is a town, whereas Ejil and Jayah are names of rivers—the Volga and the Ural respectively. And later similar confusion reigns between names of tribes and towns—the text mentions the \"population of towns like Asut, Sesut, Bolar and Man-Kerman Kiwa\". Asut are the As, the Ossetes; Sesut are probably the Saqsin; Bolar the Volga Bulgars; and Man-Kerman Kiwa means in Turkish the \"great town Kiwa\" which might refer to Sugdaq near Kaffa in the Crimea raided by the Mongols in 1223. All this shows a grandiose unconcern over countries that, after all, had become parts of the Mongol empire.\n\nThe situation is not very different if we turn to the Chinese sources. The dynastic history of the Yuan, Yuan-shih, compiled in 1368-1369 from existing records does not contain much on those parts of Asia that, at some time under Kublai Khan, had belonged to him who was also emperor of China. The compilers and historiographers whose work finally resulted in the Yuan-shih as we have it were mostly Chinese, and their attitude in writing a dynastic history was as a matter of course centered on China. It is perhaps significant that in the section reserved for foreign states in the Yuan-shih we find only entries of those countries which had always had ambassadorial contacts and so-called \"tribute\" relations with China, countries like North and South Korea, Japan, Annam, Burma and Champa. These were immediate neighbors of China. No special chapters were written on other Western states, even if they were dominated by Mongols—countries such as Persia or the Golden Horde or the Chagatai dominion of Central Asia. If they sent embassies or notifications the records must be looked for in the annalistic section (pen-chi). There are, it is true, a few data on Western Asia and even Russia scattered through the Yuan-shih, but they are extremely scanty. There is an appendix on the Western Regions to the section of political geography (YS ch. 63) where the kingdom of Uzbeg.", "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": 205107, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "58\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nas if the court historiographers and recorders recognized the importance of the mission. The Western horse, at least, impressed Mongols and Chinese alike. It was, if not one of the Flemish battle horses, certainly much bigger and stronger than the native breed of horses familiar to the Mongols. The court painter Chou Lang was commissioned to paint a portrait of the horse. This painting was still extant in the eighteenth century when the Jesuit Father Gaubil saw it; the Catalog of the Imperial Collections compiled in 1815 lists it. There is no trace of that painting left, but in a time when so many and sometimes stunning discoveries are made in China and Chinese archives we should not give up all hope of tracing this pictorial evidence of Giovanni da Marignolli's embassy. Apart from painting, there are many passages in fourteenth-century Chinese literature where allusion is made to the gift of Western horses to the emperor. Many poets of that time wrote poems praising this kingly gift and extolling the horse which, as one poet says, stood out like a camel among the other horses in the Imperial stables. At least a full dozen writers can be found who considered this horse important enough to be the subject of a poem. Almost invariably, allusion is made to the famous \"Heavenly Horses\" brought to China under the Han Dynasty from the Western Regions by Chang Ch'ien. Then, as under Shun-ti, the gift of a Heavenly Horse was regarded as an auspicious omen for the Imperial house and the emperor in particular. All this is completely in accordance with Chinese tradition. If far-distant countries send tribute, this shows that the Mandate of Heaven truly extends to the end of the inhabited world. One wonders what Giovanni da Marignolli would have thought, being the representative of the Vicar of Christ on earth, if he had known that his embassy served as the subject for a display of Sinocentric sentiment and an exhibition of pro-dynastic loyalty. The lucky omen of the Heavenly Horses turned out to be of not much avail, however. A few decades later, the emperor had to flee to the Mongolian steppes when the Ming troops took Peking. It remains, nevertheless, quite surprising that so many Chinese poets (there is hardly a non-Chinese among them) went to the length of writing hymns of praise of the dynasty when nobody forced them to, and it seems that at least among the literati, there was not yet much anti-dynastic and anti-Mongol feeling. In any case, it is striking how much this incident is treated in literature in a traditional Chinese way.", "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": 205109, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "60\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\ntheir functions in the Yuan-shih. On the Chinese side, the leading astronomer was Kuo Shou-ching (1231-1316). To him fell the difficult task of reconciling the Arab astronomical system with traditional Chinese astronomy which had entirely different mathematical and geometrical foundations. As I am not a specialist in the history of science, I have to refer to Needham's detailed study of this problem.7\n\nAnother field where Western Asians reached some prominence in China was medicine. It seems as if the skill of Westerners in surgery greatly impressed the Chinese, because physicians from the Near East who performed all sorts of difficult operations are frequently mentioned. Some of them were not Muslim but Nestorian Christians, like Ai-hsieh (1227-1308) whose Chinese name is a rendering of Syriac Isa, Yehoshua, or Jesus. He was not only a famous physician but also for some time served as a Court Astronomer under Kublai Khan prior to the arrival of Jamal ad-Din. Ai-hsieh reached high offices at Kublai's court and was even honored posthumously by having his biography included in the Yüan dynastic history. His activities in China, however, and the presence of many other doctors from the Western Regions, failed to leave a permanent impact on Chinese medicine. The theoretical framework of traditional Chinese medicine continued to be the basis for medical literature and there is not much trace of Western contacts to be noticed in such medical and pharmacological Chinese works as the Pen-ts'ao kang-mu by Li Shih-chen (sixteenth century). On the other hand Chinese medicine was made known rather widely in Islamic countries, as we shall see later. It seems, in any case, that individual skills and techniques were appreciated in Yüan China rather than new theoretical issues and ideas that were entirely foreign to the Chinese. This is certainly the case in both astronomy and medicine; both remained faithful to the inherited theories in spite of occasional borrowings from the West.\n\nTechnology was another field where Westerners were active in China. We have mentioned artillery already. The catapults used by the Mongol and Northern Chinese armies against the fortified town of Hsiang-yang on the Han River were built by Mohammedan engineers. Hsiang-yang has, during a long period in Chinese history, been a town of great strategic importance. Whoever commanded Hsiang-yang could block the access to the fertile Middle", "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": 205125, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "76\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nagainst their own laws and protested vigorously against Japanese interference, but to no avail.\n\nThese developments frightened the Chinese Government, which proceeded to cancel the authorization for its local officials to confiscate monastic property. The wave of affiliation with the Honganji died down. In any case, however, it had been limited to the area of the Treaty ports. Japan had tried to claim the same missionary rights elsewhere, invoking the \"most favoured nation\" clause, but without success. It failed again in 1915 when the fifth group of its Twenty-one Demands (including parity with Western missionaries) was rejected.\n\nIndeed, during the whole first twenty-five years of the Republican period, its missionary work in China was said to have been \"hindered by conditions” - a phrase that may allude to growing anti-Japanese feeling as well as to civil wars. Very few new temples were established. Therefore Tokyo turned its attention to the possibilities for ecumenical cooperation. In 1923-1924 the Japanese Foreign Ministry took an interest in the Buddhist conferences held at Lu Shan under the auspices of T'ai-hsü. In 1924 it arranged for Japanese delegates to be present and to offer their country as the venue for a similar conference the next year. Accordingly, the East Asian Buddhist Conference was held in Tokyo November 1-3, 1925. Twenty-one Chinese delegates attended, unofficially led by T'ai-hsü. The only other delegations were from Korea and Formosa with three members each. T'ai-hsü pointed out that whereas the Chinese excelled at religious cultivation, the Japanese excelled in organizing propaganda and community service. Thus the Buddhists of the two countries had complementary talents. A Sino-Japanese liaison committee was set up to put these talents to work, with Wang I-t'ing as the Chinese representative, and resolutions were passed to carry on work in the fields of education and social welfare. Also included in the conference was a symposium on Buddhist doctrine at which T'ai-hsü gave papers on the doctrine of alaya-vijnana and the secularization of Japanese Buddhism. Plans were made to hold the next East Asian Buddhist Conference in Peking--plans that never materialized.\n\nAfter the meeting the Chinese delegates were given an eighteen-day V.I.P. tour. Everywhere local government officials entertained", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205295, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "50\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\na match-factory in Yau Ma Tei in 1880, and dockyards at Sham Shui Po in the same year. A glass manufactory was also situated here. An early account informs us that Yau Ma Tei, \"the principal village\" and the main centre of development,\n\nhas increased in population and bids fair to some day become an important town. There is a considerable Chinese junk trade at this place, and amongst other industries is a preserved ginger factory. The Military and Police Rifle Ranges are at the back and near the village. Gas works were erected here in 1892.7\n\nThe New Territories came under British control in 1898 on a 99-year lease, and subsequently new communications were developed. In 1900 a start was made with the main road from Kowloon to Tai Po, and in 1906 work was commenced on the construction of the Kowloon-Canton Railway by a private company. In the middle of the 19th century the organization of the State of California and the gold rush to the Sacramento Valley created new lines of commerce to connect Hong Kong with the American Continent. This was also the beginning of a steadily increasing emigration traffic between Hong Kong and San Francisco. Much of the coolie traffic to Southeast Asia, South Pacific, the West Indies and other countries was carried out through the port of Hong Kong. Whalers began to be a frequent sight in the harbour and, in a free port, the Hong Kong shipping trade was booming in the latter half of the century.\n\nBy the close of the 19th century the valley people had come to experience a critical situation demanding economic activities beyond the framework of the traditional system. Stimuli in this process were supplied by the change in the general economic milieu, and the impact of Western industrialism was not only experienced as something negative and destructive, but also as something that directly or indirectly offered a wide range of new choices. Many men grasped at the new opportunities, and soon found advantages in their changed situation. Men from Big Stream Village took up jobs in the road and railway construction across Tide Cove. Others could be found seeking all kinds of employment in the new urban area in Kowloon. The men in Grass Field Village early specialized in masonry and worked on construction sites all over the New Territories, and in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205580, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "SUN YAT-SEN AND CHINESE HISTORY\n\n117\n\nequal it.\"20 However this might be, Sun also conceded that it had not been implemented. Sun noted too that in the halcyon days of the Chou dynasty, which he saw as the period of maturity or the Golden Age of Chinese civilization, \"the political, economic, and educational systems, literature and the arts, attained in China the same development roughly, as they have today in the modern Western countries.\"21 This period \"of great and unlimited liberty,\" was succeeded by 2,000 years of decline. But because of reforms during the Golden Age, China's despotism was reduced sufficiently so that it was never as severe as it was in the West, or so Sun claimed.22 Whatever pride or identity serving purposes such remarks may have had, they were also among those which made for Sun more practical points as well. Such a view of history served to illustrate Sun's philosophical dictum that knowledge was difficult and action easy. Thus China's historical decline had been caused by too much intellectual reflection in the centuries following the Golden Age. Therefore, it was a revolutionary call to the Chinese people for more practical action, a necessary revolutionary ingredient which was Sun's main purpose and concern.23 Such a view of history was also designed to support the not entirely unreasonable contention that China need not seek to borrow all of its modern political forms from the West, because China had certain distinctive needs for which suitable political forms should be created.24 Whether or not the political forms Sun went on to suggest were suitable or not is something else. The point here is that the nationalistic implications of Sun's use of history were strongly action-orientated, designed to mobilize people behind his revolutionary program. The identity-serving side is there, but it is a blurred image of China's past. While containing elements of the traditional self-image, it represents as many pragmatically-necessitated departures from it, and a number of misunderstandings of it as well.\n\nIn summary then, while it is certainly legitimate to presume the influence of nationalism on Sun Yat-sen's use of history, it is a factor requiring careful qualification. Nationalistic influences there were, but there are also problems of Sun's personal identity and his shifting appreciation of the meaning of nationalism. Beyond this was his tendency to use history as seemed required or desirable for what he considered practical political programming. Finally, and most fundamental of all, was a basic lack of interest in his-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205710, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 16, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "10\n\nT. C. CHENG\n\nWhile he was Legislative Councillor in Hong Kong, Ng Choy was known to oppose the office of the Registrar-General (established 1844), also known as Protector of Chinese and later renamed in 1913 Secretary for Chinese Affairs, on the ground that it was race discrimination to force Chinese and Europeans to deal with the Government through different departments.8 During his term of office, he was a member of a very important Education Commission, appointed by the Governor Sir John Hennessy in August 1880, to study the question of raising the Government Central School into a collegiate institution, giving a higher education in English and Science. What Sir John had in mind was that Hong Kong would render a great service to China by starting a collegiate institution so that young Chinese boys could come to Hong Kong for a higher western education instead of going to distant countries like America and England. However, the Commission as a whole disagreed with the Governor. It dismissed the idea of a Collegiate Institution on the ground of cost, and pointed out that the great need of the majority of the local population was a sound elementary education. Thus it was not the province of the Government to establish, at the cost of the ratepayers, an institution that would be mainly for the advantage of a small number of wealthy members of the community.\n\nNg Choy's achievements as a Legislative Councillor in Hong Kong were by no means great as compared with some of his successors, as he held office for less than three years; but he had the distinction of being the first Chinese to serve on that Council, and since his time both the Colonial Office and the Governors of Hong Kong have agreed on the principle of Chinese membership of the Legislative Council.\n\nWhen Sir George Bowen arrived in April 1883 as Governor, he was in favour of having a Chinese member on the Legislative Council but realized that it would not be easy to find a successor to Ng Choy from \"among those qualified as British subjects, a native gentleman combining in his own person the proper social position, independent means and education\". In conjunction with the question of a permanent Chinese member on the Legislative Council, Sir George Bowen also took the opportunity of re-constituting the Council. The main differences between the old and the new Council were that a Chinese member was appointed and that the Chamber of Commerce was invited to elect a member.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205795, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n95\n\nSiamese were willing to have a treaty which would open up trade and increase Western influence. They had some anxiety, however, about what the Cochin-Chinese, the Vietnamese would think about the treaty. Would they conclude that the Siamese had surrendered to the British? King Mongkut asked Bowring time and again to go to Cochin-China to make a similar treaty. The King was also anxious about the kind of man who would be chosen as British Consul, if this article of the treaty were accepted. Would he be as much a gentleman as Sir John? Bowring assured him that only the best man would be appointed and that he hoped to go to Cochin-China.\n\nThe whole business for this momentous treaty was transacted in the most felicitous manner. King Mongkut and his equally intelligent Prime Minister, Praya Suriwongse, understood the issues at stake; these were not merely the details of imports and exports, the appointment of Consuls and the rights of foreigners, they were no less than the independence of Siam and the beginning of her modernization. It was much to Bowring's credit (and to Harry Parkes and young Bowring) that he was able to gain the confidence of the King, to allay his fears, and to assure the Siamese that the new policy that the treaty was launching was greatly to their own as well as to the British advantage.\n\nThe Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed on 18th April, 1855, less than a month after the arrival of the mission. Its first article pledged perpetual peace and friendship and the protection of the two nations' subjects in each other's countries. Article 2 provided for the appointment of a British Consul at Bangkok who would have jurisdiction over British subjects in Siam. The third article was an extension of the second, requiring that Siamese offenders should be given up to Siamese justice and British offenders to British justice, that is, the Consul. This was the system of extra-territorial rights which had recently been obtained from the Chinese after the Opium War. It was an infringement of Siam's sovereignty but it gave assurance to British subjects that they would not be exposed to the severity of Siamese justice and encouraged the setting up of business houses. This right was given up in 1909, long before its withdrawal in China, in return for the independence of Kedah and the other northern Malay States from Siam. The next three articles of the treaty were all concerned with the rights of British subjects. They could", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206207, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "18\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\nHope exclaimed that: \"Everything had been done to assist the Imperialists (i.e. the Ch'ing forces) in the defense of the town, except the use of force, in their favor.... His dismay led him to observe \"how utterly useless such measures prove, in consequence of the cowardice and imbecility of the Mandarins.\" The only real obstacle in the path of the Taiping approach was of a minor diplomatic character. Upon learning of the Taiping move toward Ningpo, representatives of the three countries of Great Britain, France and the United States decided to visit the two Taiping commanders, each of whom was approaching the city from a different direction. The representatives proclaimed their neutrality and announced their expectation that foreigners would not be injured or annoyed.2 They also tried to dissuade the commanders from taking the city. But the Taipings, who had already been similarly dissuaded months earlier, were now much more determined. While they had also several months earlier undertaken not to approach within 30 miles of Shanghai for the duration of the year, the agreement did not apply to Ningpo. The most the foreign representatives could get for their effort was an agreement that the Taipings would delay their attack, which had been scheduled for the following day, for a period of one week. The motive for the requested delay is not entirely clear, but it could have been for the purpose of buying sufficient time for naval support to arrive at the city. As things turned out, however, a British naval vessel failed to arrive until the afternoon of the day on which the Taipings finally moved into the city. The foreigners had simply underestimated the Ch'ing troops' timidity. But if the Taipings could not be kept out of Ningpo, the foreigners did receive adequate assurances that their persons and property would be respected and protected. Taiping General Huang Ch'eng-chung was explicit on this point, indicating that should any of his troops disobey his orders to this effect, the offender could be arrested by the foreigners and on being handed over the culprit would summarily be decapitated. Taiping General Fan Yu-tseng was equally accommodating. He said that he would issue strict orders forbidding his men from injuring foreign persons and property, and he furthermore assured the Western representatives that trade would be allowed to continue as usual, \"with the additional advantage of being conducted on a fairer footing.\"3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206254, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND KAIFONGS\n\n65\n\nlinguistic and economic elements of the community into one self-protective league.\" The self-protective\n\nThe self-protective league among the overseas Chinese takes its physical form in the famous \"Chinatowns', and its invisible form in the numerous associational ties which we just described. However, the closeness of Chinese communities has proved, in the long run, to be a disservice, to both the Chinese themselves and to their host societies. For centuries the Chinese emigrants have not been culturally and socially assimilated with the native populations. To the governments of the newly independent South East Asian countries, the Chinese communities form special social and political problems of their own, standing particularly in the way of national unity. No wonder many newly independent governments take up aggressive policies towards the Chinese, including both political control, such as by abolishing systems of indirect rule, and social-cultural assimilation, such as by a system of compulsory national education, and by discriminatory economic opportunities.\n\nSome writers have noted that it was only a myth that the Chinese overseas were \"unassimilable” and ascribed the closeness of Chinese communities to the fact that the host governments had not provided the Chinese with special services. Thus, it is logical to predict that in due course, the Chinese will be integrated into their host societies once the protective functions of their associations are removed. Also, the third and fourth generations of the immigrant Chinese are not exempted from the all-pervasive influence of the Western culture, particularly because they live mainly in the cities where the influence of the West is most intensively felt. Thus, the younger generations are subject to the same processes of cultural change as those experienced by the younger generations of the native population. Therefore it is not difficult to foresee that both the Chinese and the indigenous South East Asian peoples are going to be drawn together by the influence of the West.10\n\nKAIFONG ASSOCIATIONS IN HONG KONG\n\nHong Kong is considered by some as an overseas Chinese community. However, I believe that strictly speaking, Hong\n\n9 Richard Coughlin, op. cit., p. 60.\n\n10 Ibid., p. 190.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206499, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "The Establishment of the Tsungli Yamen: A Translation of the Memorial and Edict of 1861.\n\nJ. L. Cranmer-Byng*.\n\nThe steps which led to the setting up of an office for the general management of the affairs of the various countries (tsung-li ko-kuo shih-wu ya-men) have been studied by Masataka Banno in his scholarly monograph, China and the West, 1851-1861: the Origins of the Tsungli Yamen. However, no complete translation into English of the important memorial and six-point memorandum submitted by Prince Kung, Kuei-liang and Wen-hsiang advocating the establishment of the Tsungli Yamen appears to exist, though a translation of the memorandum by T. F. Wade (later Sir Thomas Wade), made from a version of the text printed in the Peking Gazette, can be found in the Public Record Office, London. Short translated passages from the memorial and memorandum can be found in China's Response to the West, while Banno has supplied a brief analysis of their contents (with a few sentences translated) in chapter seven of his monograph. S. M. Meng, in his study of the Tsungli Yamen, refers to them but without offering any translation. Therefore a complete translation of the memorial and the memorandum, together with footnotes, is here offered in the belief that a detailed study of the whole document is valuable for a proper understanding of the reasons for the establishment of the Tsungli Yamen. The memorial was received at the travelling headquarters (hsing ying) of the Hsien-feng emperor at Jehol on 13 January 1861.\n\nThe memorial is a careful piece of reasoning, written in dignified Chinese, and aimed at persuading the war party at court of the necessity of setting up the Tsungli Yamen in order to have a more permanent method for discussing problems arising with the western-ocean countries now having treaties with China. The line of argument taken by Prince Kung and his co-memorialists is that because of the Taiping and Nien rebels China is now too weak to oppose Russia, Britain, France and America by force of arms.\n\n* Professor Cranmer-Byng, now of the University of Toronto, was formerly on the teaching staff at the University of Hong Kong. He was first Editor of this Journal in 1960, and again in 1962-63.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206688, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 236, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "230\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\ntion for the field ornithologist. Most species are illustrated in colour, and some with black and white photographs.\n\nApart from tiny Hong Kong, there is no area on the eastern seaboard of Asia between Korea and South Vietnam which is accessible to Western ornithologists. This gives the Republic of Korea a somewhat artificial importance, as it is part of the breeding area of many palaearctic species which winter in South-East Asia, and on the migration route of others. A total of 366 species have been recorded from the Republic, of which about one in seven is resident. For a foreigner, therefore, the main interest of the Birds of Korea lies in the details of migratory species known to him from other countries.\n\nThis book is intended for the field ornithologist, and it is therefore a little surprising to find it too bulky to be carried on a field trip. The necessity for this large size is the very admirable fact that the text is bi-lingual in Korean and English, but it would surely have been cheaper and more practical to have printed the English and Korean texts as separate volumes. This could also have kept the price down to a more reasonable level: not perhaps that it is too expensive for the expatriate community, but it is certainly high for the ordinary Korean student for whom the Korean version was presumably prepared.\n\nThe text describing each species is rather brief, even for a field guide, and in many cases is insufficient for field identification. This particularly applies in the case of difficult families like the Phylloscopi, where a key at the beginning would have helped, and where details of distinctions in the hand would not have come amiss, and of the whole order of Falconiformes, for which diagrams of flight-patterns are a sine qua non in identification works these days. Data regarding distribution are fragmentary, as would be expected from a country where practically all ornithological collections and field-work have been done by foreigners, with the notable exceptions of Professor Won and his father. However, there is a certain advantage in that the majority of records, particularly of rarer and more difficult species, are of collected specimens, and are therefore not subject to dispute in the same way as the sight-records upon which more and more modern ornithology is based.\n\nPrevious literature has been carefully collated, and, with Professor Won's knowledge of the Korean and Japanese literature, and Mr.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207372, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "132\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\nbecame American citizens,93 Meiji Japan held similar views and pursued similar policies. In short, China's response to the basic problems of employing foreign military men, although tinged with specific characteristics of Chinese political culture such as a special emphasis on personalistic relations, was reasonably enlightened, and not fundamentally different from that of other countries, Asian or Western.95\n\nChina's attempt to build a modern, Western-trained officer corps in the T'ung-chih period did not fail because the foreigners she employed refused to become Chinese subjects or to accept Chinese culture. It failed primarily because the Chinese did not use foreign military assistance in a systematic and sustained way, as did, for example, Meiji Japan. Plagued by continual foreign meddling, and unwilling to fundamentally restructure the existing military establishment with its carefully devised system of checks and balances, the weak Ch'ing government neglected to sponsor meaningful, centralized military reform, dooming itself to defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1894-95.97\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See, for example, Edward Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), esp. p. 49, 291 note 75; Henry Serruys, \"Were the Ming against the Mongols settling in North China?,\" Oriens Extremus, 6 (1959), 136ff; etc.\n\n2 For the employment of foreigners under these circumstances, consult Wolfram Eberhard, Conquerors and Rulers (Leiden, 1965); Lei Hai-tsung, Chung-kuo wen-hua yû Chung-kuo ti ping [Chinese Culture and the Chinese Military] (Ch'ang-sha, 1940); Michael Loewe, Imperial China (New York, 1969), 182.\n\n3 Kuwabara Jitsuzo, “On P'u Shou-keng,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 7 (1935), 44-45; also Su Ch'ing-pin, (Liang Han ch'i Wu-tai ju-chi Chung-kuo chih fan shih-tsu yen-chiu) [Research on barbarian families residing in China during the period from the Han to the Five Dynasties] (Hong Kong, 1967), 2; Wai-ming George Yuan, \"Ko Son-ji (Kao Hsien-chih): A Korean in the Chinese Military Service,” Asea Yongu, 13.3 (1970), 160.\n\n4 See the forward to this work in Li Te-yü's collected writings, Li Wei-kung hui-ch'ang i-pin chih [The collected works of Li Te-yu] (Shanghai, 1937), chüan 2, 10-11 (consecutive pagination). The book is listed in the sections on literature in the T'ang-shu (2:20) and the Sung-shih (2:19a). All references to the dynastic histories are to the po-na edition.\n\n5 I have discussed these challenges and their implications in a forthcoming study entitled . (University of California Press).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207640, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "STUDY OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINA & JAPAN\n\n13\n\niron factories and built many steamships. She has changed to the use of Western weapons. [...] Perhaps she is merely planning for self-protection. But if Japan seeks only self-protection, she is nevertheless oppressing and looking down on our China. Should not China plan for herself?\"5\n\n6\n\nThe outcome of the Sino-Japanese War perhaps causes us to cast the \"success\" of Japan and the \"failure\" of China in too sharp relief. But Cohen's protests to the contrary, modernization is a horserace. It involves the notion of catching up, or at least maintaining competitive presence. And nowhere is the race more evident than in military affairs. Yet curiously, very little attention has been given to the military as a perspective from which to view the comparative modernization of China and Japan. This is especially surprising in light of the importance attached to military reform by modernizers in both countries, the common threat posed to each by Western imperialism, and the same basic access to foreign military technology and assistance in the nineteenth century. This research note, based on my own preliminary investigations, suggests two tentative conclusions: First, that Japan's modernizing advantages in the military sphere on the eve of the Western encounter do not explain her military \"success\" in the Meiji period;7 and second, that the modernizing implications of Japan's successful military reforms, and the relative \"failure\" of China's, extend well beyond the sphere of military affairs.\n\nFour main stages have been identified with the responses of China and Japan to the Western \"impact”: (1) Recognition of Western military superiority; (2) recognition of Western scientific technology as the basis of military superiority; (3) recognition of the need to train native personnel in Western military technology; and (4) recognition that scientific technology in the military sphere is merely part of Western science and technology in general, and that in order to develop it, the pure science and general learning of the West also had to be introduced. These phases unfolded relatively slowly in China, while in Japan they occurred almost simultaneously.\n\nA common feature of the effort to achieve national strength and self-sufficiency in both China and Japan was the employment of foreigners in military affairs. This policy, which entailed certain obvious risks, brought substantial benefits to Japan in the Meiji period, as Ernst Presseisen has indicated. In China, however,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207644, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "STUDY OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINA & JAPAN\n\n17\n\nhistory of nations is largely moulded by the forms and development of their armed forces.\"32 In so-called underdeveloped countries, especially those facing an immediate military challenge, armies can perform a crucial modernizing function. Ike Nobutaka indicates that during the Meiji era \"the armed forces were probably more modern than the rest of the nation in terms of technology and organization,\" but it was not only in these areas that the Japanese military made its modernizing influence felt.33\n\nIn the political sphere, it is clear that the new-style army of Meiji Japan contributed to the consolidation of the regime, and to the further development of a national political consciousness. Conscription at once solidified government authority and enhanced national security. Throughout the nineteenth century, moreover, the military provided a deep pool of bureaucratic talent. From 1885 to 1912, for example, over thirty-five percent of all Japan's civilian ministries were under military men (41 of 112). The balance of generals and admirals in the cabinet did not shift in favor of civilians until 1898.34 In the lower echelons of the bureaucracy, too, the military provided talented and disciplined personnel. At yet another level, the rank and file acquired at least a heightened sense of political participation, as well as a vibrant nationalistic spirit. Educational opportunities within the army only increased this tendency.35\n\nIn the social realm, the military also promoted modernizing change. Conscription, for example, helped level society, giving greater meaning to concepts such as social equality and the idea of mobility based on performance.36 The growth of the military, which continued throughout the nineteenth century, contributed to urbanization, with all its concomitant changes.37 Living standards and health care improved for large numbers of traditionally disadvantaged individuals who were now entering the army. Individual expectations were naturally raised. Recruits acquired new tastes and personal needs. It is said that the habit of cigarette smoking was spread in Japan by soldiers who had picked up the practice in the army. Many recruits also developed a taste for beef, a mark of cultural refinement in the Meiji period.38\n\nOther new influences in the army spread rapidly to Japanese society at large. Western-style uniforms, for example, became standard in the army; soon they were adopted for policemen, train conductors, and other civil functionaries. The shift to wearing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207804, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 192, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n177 \n\nAlthough British commercial shipping operations on the Yangtze and on the China coast came to an end in 1940, the official death knell came in 1943. On the 11th January of that year China concluded new treaties, on a basis of equality and reciprocity, with Britain and the United States. This ended the period of the 'Unequal Treaties', the 'treaty port' era which had started with the 1842 Treaty of Nanking between Britain and China. Not only British shipping in Chinese waters, but significant British and Western influence in China on the former pattern came to an end with the treaties of 1943.\n\nLooking back, and with some measure of hindsight, it is evident that there was no solid commercial basis for West China providing an expanding market for British industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All the Western countries concerned with the China trade failed to appreciate the self-sufficiency and poverty of China's predominantly peasant population. Although Szechwan was considered a prosperous province, neighbouring Yunnan was sparsely populated and poverty-stricken, and much of its reputed mineral wealth was nearing exhaustion when Europeans first heard of it. As on the coast, and on the Lower Yangtze, the success of British shipping depended on established domestic trades, some of which it stimulated further. Two economic activities which expanded greatly on the Upper Yangtze during the latter years of the treaty port era were the Chinese passenger trade between the treaty ports, and the import of kerosene; while an important export from Szechwan was tung oil, a valuable wood oil used in the manufacture of high-quality paints and varnishes.\n\nThe motives of the British effort to open up West China to British trade may be questioned by some today; but the courage, determination, and ingenuity displayed by British merchants and sailors are still worthy of admiration.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208446, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "154\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nto be influenced only by bribery. They did much to contribute to the evil name which Hsien government has enjoyed. There were other factors which contributed to poor government during the Ch'ing dynasty specifically. The breakdown of the examination system through corruption during much of the nineteenth century; the law which made an official a stranger in his district, often not understanding the problems of the people, and at times not even their local dialect; and the impermanency of office which led to an attempt to make as much money as possible against lean years — all these worked for corruption.\n\nBesides an attitude of avoidance on the part of the people, there has generally also been an indifference to the central government. Several factors may account for this. In the first place, for the mass of the people the real, day-by-day government was in the village. In case of flagrant law-breaking the government stepped in. Otherwise, only when it was very bad, or when taxes were excessive, did it become real. And on the whole the government was careful not to stir the people to acts of collective resentment. On the positive side, the great mass of the people, the peasantry, had no voice in political matters, even when these concerned their own district. When it is remembered how indifferent is the majority of the population in \"democratic\" countries about anything beyond purely local issues, this attitude on the part of the Chinese peasantry does not seem so strange.\n\nThis indifference can be illustrated by a comparison between the attitude toward law as it obtains in the West and in China. In America, for example, there seems to be an increasing dependence upon government to regulate the details of living; and morality often seems to be reduced to the mere observance of codified law. In China, on the contrary, the typical attitude seems to have been, from ancient times, that the law of the state was meant to apply only to those members of society to whom moral law could make no appeal, and who must, therefore, be subjected to force.1 The School of Law (群家), with an attitude toward law which is thoroughly Western, has been repudiated in China since the Han dynasty.\n\nIt is not understood that a thing may be right or wrong, merely because it is allowed or forbidden by government; everything is\n\n1 Hummel, Arthur W.; \"The Case Against Force in Chinese Philosophy\", p. 344.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "182\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\nin print making for generations since Late Ming. To Hua Wu is a district in the city of Soochow. Fatshan is a town near Canton, also noted for its many temples, beautiful scenery and many other crafts. Prints made from these centers varied in style and printing technique, but only the prints made from Fatshan retain the ancient traditional forms, as Fatshan has been the supply center of folk prints for the Chinese overseas who have emigrated and settled down in South Asian countries for many generations. The folk prints used by Chinese people in Hong Kong were also supplied from Fatshan. There had been several woodblock printers in Hong Kong producing religious folk prints by using blocks supplied from Fatshan until fifteen years ago. Then, for economic reasons, some local printers closed down their business and the remaining ones turned to modern printing techniques by using machines.\n\nIn the nineteenth century modern printing techniques were introduced to China from Western countries, and eventually the use of woodblock for printing started to decline and began to vanish. The remaining woodblock printers only engaged in the printing of religious matter. When the Communists took over the government of China in 1949, almost all these printers closed down their trade. Those still in existence are mainly engaged in reproducing paintings of old masters. One is Wing Po Chai in Peking, another in Shanghai is styled To Wan Huen. There is also one left in Hangchow of Chekiang Province.\n\nThe usages of woodblock printing\n\nWoodblock printing had a wide range of usage in Chinese daily life. Besides printed books, calendars, folk prints and religious matter, woodblocks were used for printing stationery, account sheets, letter heads, calligraphic copy books, trade labels, posters, circular notices, playing cards, etc. The government's official documents, orders, legal contracts, etc. were also printed by using woodblocks. Decorated letter sheets had been in fashion in high society in the old days. High-ranking officials, noted families, wealthy merchants and literary scholars and artists had, for their own exclusive use, beautiful specially illustrated and coloured woodblock printed personal letter sheets for writing letters or poems. Card games were also popular in the feast gatherings of scholars, poets or artists. Monochrome, illustrated, woodblock-printed, paper playing cards", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209280, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG ORIGINS OF DR. SUN YAT-SEN'S ADDRESS TO LI HUNG-CHANG 169\n\nbuilding up a wealthy nation and a powerful army, and to their laws for social reforms. I also discerned the essentials of current events and changes, and the means of maintaining peaceful relationship with other countries.\n\nIn addition to the medical training and earlier schooling he received in Hong Kong, by \"education abroad\", Sun was referring to his schooling in Hawaii. The first Western school which Sun attended was Iolani, and it was an elementary school run by the Church of England in Honolulu, whose staff, except for one Hawaiian, was entirely British. After his graduation from school in 1882, he spent less than a year in a high school, Oahu College, run by American Congregationists and Presbyterian missionaries in the Hawaiian Islands. He was sent back to his native village, Ts'ui-heng, by his brother in the summer of 1883 and enrolled shortly afterwards at the Diocesan Home, a school set up by the Church of England in Hong Kong. The next year he entered the Central School, the first government secondary school in Hong Kong, now known as Queen's College. No record is available as to the class he entered. According to an article in Vol. 37 of Yellow Dragon, the school magazine, Sun entered the school under the name Sun Tai Tseng (Ti Hsiang), at the age of eighteen. He left in 1886 to join the Canton Poh Tsai Hospital as a medical student and then transferred in early 1887 to the Hong Kong Medical College for Chinese. The college was affiliated with the newly established Alice Memorial Hospital, which was set up by Ho Kai, a civic leader in Hong Kong, in memory of his wife. For the next five years, Sun studied under the general supervision of Ho Kai and two Scottish physicians, Dr. Patrick Manson and Dr. James Cantlie. He graduated in 1892 at the age of twenty-six, two years before he wrote the petition.\n\nThus from 1883 to 1892, except for the interval of about half a year in 1886 when he joined the Poh Tsai Hospital, Sun received a major part of his secondary education and then his medical training in Hong Kong. The schools which he attended, the Diocesan Home and the Central School were Anglo-Chinese schools. Since the 1880s, the Hong Kong Government's educational policy had been directed towards the encouragement of the learning of the English language and Western knowledge, and these schools offered subjects such as those referred to by Sun in the opening of his letter. Yet the impact of school upon the mind of a youth like Sun might go much deeper than knowledge obtained from learning in class. The environment or \"culture\" of the school itself played perhaps a more significant", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209285, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "174\n\nNG LUN NGAL-HA\n\ndemonstrated on his occasional visits to his native village while he was a student in Hawaii and in Hong Kong.\n\nAs to the promotion of commerce, Sun's ideas were very much inspired by Ho and Cheng, both of whom were of the comprador merchant class preoccupied with commercial interests. Yet, as an eye-witness of the economic prosperity of Hong Kong, a free port under the Western and British commercial system, Sun's ideas were much more than echoes of the above thinkers. His exposition on this aspect went much deeper than the section on industrial development, which was then not a main feature of the Hong Kong economy, and which he knew about merely from his reading. The three important measures prescribed by Sun for the promotion or free flow of commerce were not original. They were the abolition of internal customs barriers, protection of merchants by government against extortion and the building of railways and ships to ensure facilities for transportation. Yet the examples he cited as being carried out by Western nations, especially Britain, were evidently learnt in Hong Kong. He pointed out that the merchant class in Western countries had long been actively involved in government policies and their overseas commercial expansion had received military support from their governments. In return, it was the financial support of the merchants which enabled Britain to conquer India, territories in Southeast Asia and Africa, and also to annex Australia. Sun wanted to prove that commercialism was the road to the nation's wealth and power and that merchants were a very influential class in the nation. The privileged position and influence of merchants and the mercantile houses were in fact evident in Hong Kong since the first day of its founding. Very often, the Governor and even the home government had to yield to their requests and demands, and all the unofficial seats in the Hong Kong Legislative and the Executive Councils were taken by prominent merchants and members of the General Chamber of Commerce.18 To show that Chinese merchants, if given chance and encouragement, would also be able to help in building up a modern China, Sun pointed out that a great part of the railway network in Southeast Asia was built by overseas Chinese investment. \"If government would give assurance for proper interest and profit, these merchants would certainly be willing to invest in their native country\", Sun remarked.\n\nSince Sun had received a major part of his formal education in Hong Kong, he was able to experience personally the advantage of a Western education, especially the professional training at the medical", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209401, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "36 \n\nJ. H. HAAN \n\nThe assertion of selfgovernment \n\nIn some Western countries, especially Great Britain, the 19th century was the heyday of progress in parliamentary government. In Britain the 1832 Reform Act had substantially increased the number of voters, as well as redistributed them in favour of commerce and industry; the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act provided for the first time a uniform basis upon which local government was to be run, that is, through councils elected by ratepayers. By later acts (1865, 1884, 1918 and 1928) the parliamentary franchise was gradually widened, till the principle of taxation as a basis for voting rights disappeared. \n\nThe foreigners mainly British and Americans \n\n+ \n\n+ \n\n44 \n\n+ \n\n· \n\n- who came \n\nto Shanghai in the very early years were self-conscious of the fact that they ought to govern themselves, without in any way being subjected to a higher authority like their compatriots in Hong Kong. Although the 1845 Land Regulations provided for this self-government through article XII (about the building of roads and other public works: \"The Consul (i.e. the British consul — JH) will be requested by the various renters to urge the propriety of assembling together and publicly consulting about and contributing towards the necessary expenses incurred therein, .\") and through article XX (about taxation: \"the several contributors will request the Consul to appoint three upright merchants to deliberate upon and determine the amounts to be subscribed by them .\"), it was nevertheless thought advisable by some residents to express very clearly that local government rested upon a consensus of the foreign merchants themselves. The motive for these strong words was the fear of interference from Hong Kong with regard to the right to vote. At a Public Meeting of May 29, 1852, a resolution was moved which in its original form read: \"That this meeting consider the legal opinion of the Attorney General of Hong Kong respecting the qualifications of voters at this Meeting unnecessary, as the action of the body of landrenters is not governed by Law but by mutual agreement\", but after some discussion it was passed in the following form: \"That this meeting consider the action of the body of Landrenters with reference to Roads and Jetties is only governed by mutual agreement\",13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209423, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "58\n\nJ. H. HAAN\n\nSeventy years later it was complained that \"official business in this important municipality is conducted in secret. Members of the Municipal Council are bound not to disclose matters discussed in meetings and no reporter of a local newspaper has ever attended a meeting of the Council. The Council does issue a so-called Municipal Gazette, probably the dullest official journal in the world, which contains brief reports usually starting out \"Notice is hereby given\" or \"I have the honour to convey\n\netc.\"\n100\n\nNow it is, of course, true that in Western countries with a parliamentary government, meetings of the cabinet or other governing bodies were (and are) not open to the public. But there the rulers were responsible to representatives of the people, be it in parliament or its local equivalent. Nothing of the kind happened in Shanghai, which apart from the other structural and institutional regulations which halted democracy as understood elsewhere, made the whole administrative system come to be looked upon as oligarchic.\n\nSummary\n\nSummarizing this article we might say that the Settlement government rested on a base which became increasingly outmoded in Western countries where democracy allowed ever more people to participate in politics. Franchise according to tax paid was gradually abolished in the West, but in the International Settlement at Shanghai it remained till the last day of its existence. In the beginning, consent of all residents was claimed to be the foundation of municipal government, but as time progressed the administration degenerated into an oligarchy with or without the negative implications which the term suggests. Political interest was low and nobody really tried to change the system. Though Justice Feetham published a massive report about the situation in the Settlement and offered valuable advice in 1931, nothing was done. Only in the heyday of Chinese nationalism were some minor facelifts agreed, without altering any of the fundamentals.\n\nIt was only after the return of the Settlement to China in 1943 and especially after the communist takeover in 1949 that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209690, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 347, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n325\n\nare many other, smaller countries where no newspaper industry has developed.\n\nProfessor Lent is concerned with press freedom. He deplores its disappearance in countries ruled by totalitarian regimes. He deplores the repressive situation in Singapore, where the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act enables the government to put its own nominees in control of newspapers. Even the more liberal press atmosphere of Hong Kong comes in for some criticism. Journalists are tempted to take bribes because of their often miserably low salaries, he says, and these bad practices remain outside the reach of the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) because they are condoned by the journalists' employers. Lent also complains that there are many doors of government closed to Hong Kong journalists.\n\nSome of the book gives a somewhat out-of-date impression. It is a recent publication but much of the material was gathered years ago and in some cases there has obviously been difficulty in revising it. This detracts from the value of the survey where it deals with countries like Vietnam.\n\nIt could also be objected that the viewpoint of the editor and contributors is too western-oriented when dealing with the press in developing areas. Freedom of the Press is a hall-mark of civilised modern communities, but it can survive only in a country which is highly literate and politically awake; it has no hope in more primitive places or in countries where the government fears criticism. To expect a free press in such areas may be unrealistic. There is a considerable difference, too, between Asia and the West in attitudes towards the profession of journalism. In the West the image of the journalist as news-gatherer, critic and reformer inspires considerable numbers of young men and women to enter the profession. Its human opportunities and fascinations more than compensate for the relatively mediocre financial rewards. This is far less the case in the Far East where in many countries journalism has little appeal for the educated. Inevitably this affects the value and effectiveness of newspapers.\n\nHowever the fact that the Asian press is surveyed here from a western viewpoint in no way detracts from the impressive", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209985, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 244, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "222\n\nthousand years of continuous cultural development: it includes the present but only in the perspective of the past.\n\nTo explain the persistence and magnetism of Chinese traditional culture is too great a task for this note (and, I fear, for this writer too), but to find examples of its strength is not so difficult. The first Chinese migrants to the countries of mainland and island Southeast Asia arrived there centuries ago. Some assimilated, but many did not, with the result that there have been recognisable Chinese communities in all these countries up to the present. They have been discriminated against, massacred and evicted over the years, but they have tenaciously stuck to their Chineseness. In Britain the Chinese community has a much shorter history, but there is a great flourishing of special classes in Chinese language and writing which testifies to the eagerness of parents to pass on their cultural influences to the next generation. And the overseas Chinese maintain their links with the homeland in much the same way as the people there maintain their ties with the past.\n\nThe Chinese have shared their homes with the ancestors, eaten picnics on their ancestors' graves, lived with continuity of history to an extent that the West cannot match. While it is true that twentieth century international urban values have begun to intrude upon this sense of continuity, it also must be said that contemporary ways of thought and behaviour are still greatly informed by traditional culture. It is through studying these traditions that some kind of baseline for understanding the present can be established.\n\nOddly enough, it has mostly been the nineteenth and twentieth century foreign interest in China which has documented traditional culture best. Before Western-inspired educational reforms brought literacy within the reach of the majority of the population, China's literate few constituted an elite which not only occupied a separate social position but which also only wrote about itself and its elite activities. The Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone) has been hailed as the great Chinese sociological novel, and indeed it is, but it is the sociology of a large elite family and its household of slaves, servants and relatives; it does not deal with the villager, the peasant", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210205, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "155\n\nof the policy of suppression which had been adopted in Singapore. He strongly opposed the sending of an investigatory commission from London, which the Colonial Office had been pressing upon him. Peel's views were supported by the Permanent Under-Secretary and officials in London, who advised against any immediate action. A League of Nations commission to enquire into the international traffic in women and children was about to visit the Far East and this gave a good reason for delay, since any sudden change of policy would appear to be either designed to impress the commission or else to be an admission of guilt. Lord Passfield accepted this advice.\n\nFor the next six months the question was allowed to rest. Then in June 1931 Peel again wrote to the Colonial Office, enclosing a long memorandum on the legal position of brothels in Hong Kong written by the Chief Justice, Sir Joseph Kemp. This legal exposition concluded by warning that, though the suppression of all registered brothels might possibly lead to less illicit intercourse, it would probably arouse great resentment if the Chinese brothels patronized by the Chinese were to be suppressed. He continued: ‘I fear the danger of shaking the loyalty of the Chinese community as a whole and their confidence that the government will respect Chinese customs generally. The risk may have to be run, but I think it is a real one. It must be remembered that the Chinese do not view prostitution as we do. They look upon it with a more lenient eye, though excess is reprobated just as excess in other forms of self-indulgence is reprobated. Prostitutes are not social outcasts to the same extent as in 'Western' countries. A prostitute often becomes a highly respectable concubine . . . I realise that this is a very difficult defence to make, especially as the English public do not always realise the delicacy required in ruling an alien civilisation.' Peel offered up a small sacrifice to appease the Secretary of State: he suggested that the seven brothels containing European prostitutes should be closed down. This was not a sign that Peel had been converted to the moralists' point of view; European prostitutes were customarily deported from Hong Kong from time to time, since their presence was considered demeaning to European prestige in the East. This decision to close the brothels employing European, Australian and American women was endorsed by the Executive Council in July 1931.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210870, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "204\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nThe Tong brothers, King-sing and Mow-chee, were strong supporters of any scheme to introduce modern scientific, commercial and industrial ideas to China. They participated in the organisation of the Chinese Polytechnic Institute founded in Shanghai in 1874. Its object, as set forth in the prospectus, was “to bring the sciences, arts and manufactures of Western Nations in the most practicable manner possible before the notice of the Chinese.\" The proposed means of doing so were through exhibitions, lectures and classes, and a library and reading room.\n\nAt the time of Tong Mow-chee's 60th birthday celebrations, it was stated that \"the Tong family had played an important part in the history of the trade relations between foreigners and Chinese in Shanghai, and they may be said to be the leaders of the party of progress in the initiation and development of commerce after the style of foreign countries.\"\n\nAs compradore of the leading foreign firm in China, Tong Mow-chee held important positions in Chinese business associations such as the Canton Guild at Shanghai, the Hankow Tea Guild and the Canton-Swatow Opium Guild. In these organisations he was called on to use his ability as arbitrator when disputes arose. In this his early experience in San Francisco in diplomatic negotiation proved of great help.\n\nTong Mow-chee died in Shanghai on July 6, 1897. A description of his funeral and a sketch of his life was published in the North China Herald. Some of the statements in the biographical account do not agree with contemporary documentary evidence about certain facts of his life.\n\nThe description of the funeral procession depicts a form of Chinese pageantry that has now all but vanished. \"The coffin was of very heavy and expensive wood which had been painted and varnished, over and over again, until the outside coat of the coffin was over an inch thick, which would enable it to defy damp and wet for years. A handsome gold-embroidered red satin pall covered the coffin, which took relays of 32 men each time to carry it. Many beautiful and expensive banners were to have been unfurled for the occasion, but rain prevented it.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210988, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "in much broader terms, a crisis about France itself and not only its intellectuals, it is an ideological dilemma about the validity of our privileged position in the world of today. And at both levels, China is still part of our intellectual horizon.\n\nHow should intellectuals stand in relation to politics? Should they be involved? The prevailing trend in today's France is almost total rejection of the intellectuel engagé figure, of the politically committed intellectual in the tradition of Voltaire and Hugo, of Emile Zola, Romain Rolland and Jean-Paul Sartre. Here China has certainly played an indirect yet influential role; for the simplistic excesses of the pro-Maoist rhetoric of yesterday and the bitter, almost overnight realisation that the Maoist mirage was just a mirage, greatly contributed to the discredit of the intellectuel engagé. Ironically enough, the same ex-radicals who are presently disavowing their Maoist past have not altogether given up their incorrigible tendency to look abroad for an ideal society. The New Philosophers have turned far away from China to a completely new direction, namely the United States and Reaganism. This is the New Libertarian Right, campaigning in France for economic deregulation and military solidarity with Washington.\n\nAnother critical question for present-day French intellectuals deals with their own position in society at large. With the present-day tendency towards elitist professionalisation of academics, doctors, architects and engineers, the ‘barefoot doctor' of the Maoist era appears more and more remote. But did the barefoot doctor just represent a Utopian dream, a Rousseauistic image? Interestingly enough, in many developing countries of Asia and Africa, people who probably never read a line of Mao Zedong in their lives commonly refer to ‘barefoot architects', more familiar with local building materials than with reinforced concrete, and more concerned with the needs of the ordinary people than with the tastes of high-ranking business executives in their luxury hotels.\n\nMore generally, the relevance of the Western model of development for most African, Asian, South American and also Pacific countries is vigorously debated today among French and other Western intellectuals, and this brings us back to China. How to balance heavily centralised technologies, \"white elephants' such as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210989, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "26\n\ngiant dams, expressways, large-scale forestry felling, with 'appropriate technologies' better adjusted to the natural and social environment? How to check the power and influence of foreign technicians indifferent to local problems? How to control the abysmal growth of destitute shanty towns? These basic problems of China have become the problems of Amazonia, South Asia, Black Africa, Melanesia. The interests of some Parisian intellectuals may have shifted elsewhere, but other intellectuals have remained deeply concerned with the relevance, or the irrelevance, of our Western model of development for less affluent countries. In a recent book dealing with the problems of development, Edgard Pisani, a French intellectual who is also a former French High Commissioner in New Caledonia, has compared the energy gains offered by a large-scale modern dam with the energy savings of 5,000 peasant earthenware stoves. His point is this: these 5,000 stoves are very cheaply produced and they save the heat otherwise wasted when the kettle was just put on stones; these stoves compare very favourably in terms of energy gains with the expensive dam built by transnational corporations under the supervision of highly-paid foreign experts. Pisani is a moderate social democrat. He never indulged in radical Maoism. Yet his argument clearly amounts to a posthumous and quite unexpected validation of some basic themes of the Great Leap Forward thirty years ago.\n\nFrom Watteau paintings and the Pompadour festivities to peasant stoves in Black Africa, from the Confucian mirage of the eighteenth century to the Maoist mirage of the twentieth century, from Victor Hugo's maledictions against Anglo-French vandalism in Peking to the Gaullian joint celebration of France de toujours and Chine de toujours, from the Philosophes' appeal to China against the tyranny of the old monarchy to the New Radicals' appeal to China against the tyranny of the Western model of development, the story of Sino-French intellectual relations for the last three centuries has been extraordinarily rich and diversified.\n\nFrom this kaleidoscopic sequence, possibly the most sensitive, the most radical and the most disruptive image is that of Baudelaire:\n\nJust as in the old days we would leave for China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211502, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "194\n\nbooks\", it was reported.\n\n37\n\nBut publications on China issued during the war years outside China were lacking and efforts were made to fill this gap through donation. Exchange agreements with learned societies were re-established, and the prospects of returning the society to its former prominence were good. The toughest selling job, however, was among the local residents, as usual:\n\nWhile letters received from abroad show the high regard this Society and its institutions are enjoying in other countries, the local public is not taking much notice of it, as proven by the small number of visitors and users of our library. However, similar complaints have been voiced by successive librarians for the past 70 years without achieving the desired effect of a more extensive utilization of this Society's facilities by Local Public.\n\n38\n\nMr. Schwartz kept busy compiling \"A Descriptive Bibliographical Catalogue of the European Books Printed Before 1800 in the Library of the R. A. S.\", followed by one to the next century. Both were published in the Society's Journal.\n\nThe last issue of the Journal came out in 1948, and its only statement concerning the library was:\n\nIt has a library of some 14,000 books of reference which, though latterly hampered by lack of funds, contains many older works not available elsewhere in Shanghai, and which is constantly used by scholars and the public. The library is open daily (except on Sundays and holidays) from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.\n\n39\n\nThe demise of the library as a result of the communist victory is beyond the scope of this paper. It ceased to exist as a separate entity, and what became of its collection, by all accounts the finest assemblage of Western language books on China ever formed in that country, is not known to this writer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212098, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "17\n\nwith its inculcation of “right thinking\", the complete process has been summed up in a few well-chosen words by Dr. Monlin Chiang, one of the most prominent educationalists of the early Republican period:\n\n“These moral precepts came from the Confucian classics. Moral ideas were driven into the people by every possible means — temples, theatres, houses, toys, proverbs, schools, history and stories until they became habits in daily life, 233\n\nThe effect of both the legacy and the drilling was not lost on competent Western observers. Writing over 150 years ago, in his standard work on China first published in the 1830s, a future governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Davis, then only lately returned to England from many years' membership of the Honourable East India Company's Select Committee at Canton, had this to say: \"The Chinese lower classes are better educated or at least better trained than in most other countries”.\n\nPART THREE: “Right Thinking\" in Action in Tsuen Wan\n\n134\n\n+\n\nTsuen Wan District (like all the rest) provides plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of the indoctrination, as well as occasional examples of emulation and performance. People knew what to think and what to do, and recognized the attainment of the prescribed high standards of conduct and behaviour even if they themselves did not measure up. Men who did so were greatly respected, to the point of veneration.\n\nIt is the general opinion among Tsuen Wan natives, then and now, that such a one was the late Mr. Chan Wing-on, a former Tsuen Wan Rural Committee leader and also Chairman of the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk. Mr. Chan, who unfortunately died comparatively young, left a fine reputation behind him. He is commemorated by a tablet in a traditional-style pavilion, named for him, which was erected the year after his death near the entrance to the Chuk Lam Sim Yuen, one of the large religious houses located above the town. The memorial tablet records his life and achievements as a teacher and as a public figure; with an emphasis on his virtuous conduct and character and how it had influenced others for good:\n\n\"Entering the teaching profession, he taught the village", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212428, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 370, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "347\n\nLai, T.C., CHINESE PAINTING, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press IMAGES OF ASIA series, 1992. 64 pp. Index. Typically succinct and readable, the inimitable T.C. Lai has not merely explained the craft, philosophy, and aesthetics of Chinese painting in 60 pages, he has made it possible for the general reader to gain an easier entry into the mysteries of this genre of brush art.\n\nReardon-Anderson, James, THE STUDY OF CHANGE: CHEMISTRY IN CHINA 1840-1949, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xvi + 434 pp. Appendices. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. This work traces the development of chemistry in China from the Opium War to the end of the Nationalist era. Based on extensive research using Chinese and Japanese sources as well as those in Western languages, this book should be most useful to readers already versed in modern Chinese history and the history of science.\n\nScalapino, Robert A. THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT: PERSPECTIVES ON TWENTIETH-CENTURY ASIA, Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1989. 137 pp. This series of 1988 Edwin O. Reishauer lectures was delivered by a renowned political scientist especializing in Asia. Professor Scalapino traces the evolution of Asian countries in the 20th century, and discusses the trend of development into three different models - the Leninist system, the authoritarian-pluralist system, and the liberal-democratic system.\n\nSo Wai-chor, THE KUOMINTANG LEFT IN THE NATIONAL REVOLUTION 1924-1931, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press East Asian Historical Monographs, 1991. 290 pp. Notes. Glossary. Index, Bibliography. In this work Dr So distinguishes the Leftist members of the Kuomintang before 1927 from those after the purge. The leading protagonists of this group, Ch'en Kung-po and Wang Ching-wei, long reviled as traitors by their contemporaries because they collaborated with the Japanese, have been carefully scrutinized.\n\nTraver, Harold and Jon Vagg, editors, CRIME AND JUSTICE IN HONG KONG, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1991. 216 pp. References. Index. In these essays, nine scholars in Hong Kong and abroad examine the institutions and attributes of crime in Hong Kong through studying changes in the territory's economy, society, and politics. Institutions scrutinized include delinquency, victimization,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212536, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "70\n\nhostile rhetoric, they provided no chance for their citizens to know the other country and its people. So, when Nixon made his initiatives to open relations with China, cultural exchanges did receive certain priority, at least as a gesture to break down the fence between the two countries. He lifted restrictions against wanting to travel to China. China, similarly extended to an American table tennis team an invitation to visit China, which was accepted and the trip was made.\n\nFollowing the Nixon visit, American interest in China soon mounted. American cultural groups began to arrive. Among these visitors, the most important was the Philadelphia Orchestra, the first major Western musical group to tour this country. The Philadelphia Orchestra performed in Beijing and Shanghai, staying in China for ten days from 12-23 September 1973.\n\nIn both cities the Philadelphia Orchestra was given a very courteous reception. The then powerful Politburo members in charge of ideology and cultural affairs, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan, attended their performance in Beijing and chatted with leading members of the group afterwards. Meanwhile, the media gave friendly and sufficient coverage of the event. The media even allowed a musician to publish, in a leading newspaper, a review entitled \"friendly, enthusiastic and glorious\" in which he said that the Chinese people and Chinese art workers were very pleased to have the opportunity to enjoy the performance of this world-renowned American performing group and that China could learn from the American artists. He also expressed his hope for further development of friendship between Chinese and American artists and people.\n\nThe tour by the Philadelphia Orchestra took place against the background of the contemporary impoverished Chinese artists scene. Throughout the Cultural Revolution there had been a consistent tendency to eliminate foreign influence in arts and to produce a new \"proletarian\" culture for the Chinese people. As a result, many musicians, a large number of whom had been trained in the west, were either sent to prisons or to the May 7th Cadres' Schools to receive re-education. At the same time, the surviving musical organizations could hardly perform any symphonic music, due to the political environment and lack of qualified musicians. Under such circumstances the significance of the Philadelphia Orchestra's visit could only be political, not artistic.\n\nBy their use of the media and arts as the means for power struggle,\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212538, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "72\n\nfrom an emphasis on merely material modernization to structural changes in the Chinese system, which in turn brought about the realization of the need for cultural modernization. Starting in 1982, stress was laid on building up a socialist spiritual and cultural civilization, alongside the building of a socialist material civilization. This move was intended to a large extent to resist what was perceived as incoming “unhealthy influences”. The term \"unhealthy influences\" has never been precisely defined, but it roughly refers to the Western socio-political values which ran counter to the party leadership and socialist system in China. This new approach did show a shift from the notion of partial modernization to an overall modernization.\n\nChina's open-door policy, inaugurated in 1979, was intended to promote the material modernization program. This policy could be traced back to 1972 when trade relations with industrialized countries were restored. In the following few years, China further expanded her international trade relations gradually. During the period 1978-1980, these trade relations were expanded to other areas of economic relations at an astonishing pace. However, the massive expansion of foreign trade and economic cooperation did not lead to any extension of the open-door policy towards large-scale cultural exchanges, not even to the present. Rather, the political report at the 12th Party Congress only emphasised the importance of \"spiritual civilization”, in the building of \"socialist modernization\", but cultural exchanges were not referred to, as foreign economic relations were, as a positive contributor to the process.\n\nDespite the notion that cultural exchanges were not to carry as much weight as foreign economic relations in the building of socialist modernization, arts exchanges with foreign countries experienced a rapid and large-scale increase in the years between 1979 and 1981. In those years, there was a large presence in China of foreign culture, particularly Western culture, including that of the United States.\n\nAs has been pointed out, high culture was a part of the “spiritual civilization”, as affirmed at the 12th Party Congress, but international arts exchanges were not emphasised. In fact, a culturally open policy had never been wholly adopted as a general policy. This contradiction shows a tentative balance between policy preferences. These were sufficient reasons to promote international arts exchanges and there were considerations to limit them; both may be put forward in the national interest.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212539, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "73\n\nIn China's foreign policy one goal has never changed - the quest for national prestige. The modernization programme, judged from the international perspective, is an expression of China's striving for prestige. In that context, to have her national flag saluted, the national anthem played, and China's name mentioned was something for China to pursue. For a long time, China had viewed international sports competitions as chances to enhance her prestige. Since 1979 high culture was incorporated into the Struggle to the End. To raise the level of Chinese artists to that end needs foreign expertise.\n\nThough Western art forms such as ballet had been introduced to the Chinese scene in the first decade of the Republic, China has long been suspicious of Western influence in China's cultural life. Before the Cultural Revolution, few Western cultural groups visited China. The Cultural Revolution not only continued that tendency of suspicion, but also cut Chinese artists totally off from foreign artists for a period long enough for them to fall behind in artistic achievements. To reverse that situation, China needed to use foreign co-operation in arts.\n\nOn the other hand, Chinese audiences had become very dissatisfied with the monochrome culture developed in the years of the Cultural Revolution. After the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese artists tried to enrich the cultural life of the people, but progress was slow due to many factors. This naturally led to a growing interest in cultural pluralism. The lack of high-quality indigenous cultural performers provided a rationale to invite Western arts groups to make up the deficiency.\n\nSince 1978, a few organizations have been deeply involved in hosting artists from Western countries, among which the most important is the China Performing Arts Agency (CPAA). In the period 1979-1981, the CPAA hosted 37 Western performing arts groups, nine of which were from the United States. Among the nine American groups it hosted in this period, seven fell in the category of non-governmental exchanges. As a state agency, its policy in regards to what programmes should be accepted was surprisingly liberal. All \"orthodox\" performing arts forms, such as classical music, ballet and operas, were considered acceptable by it as long as the group was qualified and, with few exceptions, able to cover its own costs, as the agency had a limited budget for hosting foreign groups, which went almost exclusively to official exchange programmes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212540, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "74\n\nWhile the artistic level of the performances was important, balance between countries and art forms were secondary considerations. There was no \"quota\" of any kind.10\n\nActive, too, in hosting American performing artists in this period was the Central Philharmonic Society of China (CPSC). From 1979 to 1981, the CPSC invited 22 American musicians to China on 11 occasions, and co-performed with them.11 Like the CPAA, CPSC's invitations were merely based on the merit of the musicians who were willing to come. The policies of the CPAA and the CPSC demonstrated China's urgent need for quality cultural performances which could help China raise her artistic level, either for prestige or for fulfilling the demand of the society for a better cultural life, at very marginal expense. Equally important, these programmes of exchanges provide an illustration of the position of international arts exchanges under the open-door policy.\n\nThis cultural opening-up was also stimulated by the establishment of closer ties with other countries to improve general relations and win better international economic co-operation. This dynamic came from the Chinese leadership, within which it was widely accepted that economic co-operation from Western countries for China's modernization programme could not be gained without solid Chinese commitments in the international community. Cultural exchanges can be taken as expressions of such commitments.\n\nChina's international cultural exchanges were conducted on the basis of bilateral ties rather than as a function of a general policy in favour of a large-scale influx of foreign culture. Throughout the years between 1972 and 1986, there was no major speech, public announcement or publicized decision in favor of any foreign cultural presence in China comparable with those regarding foreign economic relations. On the other hand, China signed 63 cultural agreements with foreign governments between 1978 and 1986. It also renegotiated more than a dozen cultural agreements in this same period, making those old agreements compatible with China's new objectives in the new era.12 More significantly, bilateral cultural exchanges were reinforced through frequent signings of implementing accords under the agreements to consolidate cultural relations.\n\nTo foster official relations through arts exchanges, two state agencies, the CPAA and the China Exhibition Agency (CEA), were established", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212552, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "86\n\nLike the visit of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1973, the significance of the BSO's tour lay more in political consequences than in artistic accomplishment. Though the quality of the BSO's first Beijing concert was controversial to some Americans, due to some flaws in performance, all of its four concerts in China were fully attended and two of the three in Beijing were transmitted by China Central Television (CCTV). The media, musicians, music critics and journalists all offered praise. The atmosphere around the BSO's visit was so warm that the U.S. ambassador claimed the event pushed U.S.-China relations 20 years ahead.\n\nWhat made the BSO's trip different from that of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1973 was that, though overshadowed by political significance, this tour did bring a chance for Chinese artists to exchange artistically with their American guests, due to the improvement in China's political and cultural environments. By 1979, many artists in China had returned to their former posts. Artistic activities were normalized to a significant extent. Artistically, the BSO's visit generated several concrete results: the Central Philharmonic Orchestra performed with the BSO under the baton of Seiji Ozawa; two of China's most prominent musicians, Liu Dehai and Liu Shikun, toured the United States along with the BSO when it went home in March 1979 and performed with the BSO in the United States; in December, Seiji Ozawa came to China again and conducted the CPO. This event was thus successful both politically and artistically.\n\nThe impetus of Sino-American cultural exchanges resulting from the BSO's tour to China was reinforced in August 1979 when Vice President Mondale visited China and signed the first implementing accord under the cultural agreement. In his visit, Mondale praised Deng Xiaoping's visit to the United States in January for resparking the friendship of the American towards the Chinese people. This atmosphere of Sino-American cultural intimacy created by top political leaders received a new impulse in 1980 when the two governments exchanged high-level cultural delegations. In July, Chinese Vice Minister of Culture Liu Fuzhi visited the United States and the USICA director John E. Reinhardt returned his visit in October. In the latter's visit to China, both parties expressed hopes for more high-level exchanges, and confirmed the policy, agreed upon in Liu's earlier visit to the United States, to encourage and support private sector activities in cultural exchanges.\n\nTraditionally, China's cultural relations with Western countries have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212553, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "87\n\nbeen almost monopolized by the government because of its suspicion of Western culture. Though Sino-American arts exchanges were exclusively handled by the non-governmental sector\" in the period 1972-8, due to the absence of diplomatic relation between the two countries, the Chinese government closely supervised these activities and the non-governmental sector in China in fact existed only in name. Throughout the period between 1979 and 1981, the non-governmental sector in China was more genuinely active in Sino-American arts exchanges. This is because, while the government adopted a policy to encourage contacts with the United States, its capacity to handle the dramatically increased exchanges was not raised. Furthermore, its incapacity to finance a substantial number of exchanges with the U.S. and to finance the modernization of the arts was also an invitation for the non-governmental sector to take over some exchange programmes, as the non-governmental sector was able both to raise funds at home, and to gain financial support from individual Americans or American organizations. From the handling of the exchange events one can clearly see its increasing independence from government supervision.\n\nHowever, although Sino-American cultural relations were nurtured by top political leaders of both countries and were one aspect of a rapidly increasing general relationship in the first three years of diplomatic normalization, the decline in arts exchanges in 1982 did not come unexpectedly. The campaign against \"bourgeois liberalization\", which according to Hu Qiaomu, a party theorist and a mastermind of the campaign, was partially attributed to the inflow of Western culture13 obviously affected the policy regarding cultural relations with the United States. Furthermore, the management of some specific issues between China and the U.S. created distrust on the part of the Chinese leadership concerning the motives of the Americans and their goals regarding cultural exchanges with China.\n\nTo illustrate this suspicion, let us return to the incident of the Boston Museum paintings exhibition in 1981. As we have mentioned, the thirteen abstract paintings which the Chinese officials proposed to delete did get exhibited as a concession from the Chinese side. The Chinese interpretation of the abstract paintings incident is that, as the government of a sovereign country, the Chinese leaders are entitled to decide what is best for their people. So, the refusal by the Americans to accept the decision by Chinese leaders could only be interpreted as a challenge to China's dignity and authority, and therefore could nurture distrust towards", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212555, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "89\n\nThe phenomenon of the American movie diplomacy in China was unique. While exchanges in other fields were shrinking, movie diplomacy developed free from negative effects due to the deteriorating general relationship. Why was this?\n\nStarting from 7 May 1981, the first American film week was conducted in Beijing and four other cities. The movies were old and comparatively dull: a musical entitled Singing in the Rain, a cartoon Snow White and three feature films, including Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The list shows that all movies reflecting contemporary American life were ruled out. But they were met by interested audiences and the event claimed to be a success. Obviously, the American officials involved in this event might have liked some contemporary films to be included in the list. Nonetheless, these films suited the Chinese officials' appetite. The whole thing was under China's control and there was no imposition of American suggestions on Chinese leaders.\n\nPutting the inflow of foreign culture under the control of the government is a vital policy in China's cultural relations with other countries. Cultural policy in China, as has been pointed out, is very much under the influence of political developments and culture in turn also has a strong impact on politics. So it is important to have a stable and balanced cultural policy, which requires, in this case, control of the influx of Western culture. During the four years from 1981, the CFEIC, China's only agency handling the importation of foreign movies, carried out a rather consistent policy in purchasing American movies, conforming to the requirement of political considerations, the development of Chinese movie making and practical needs.\n\nWhen importing an American movie, exposing the dark side of the capitalist society took high priority in governing the selection of specific movies. This policy was best explained in a review of Nightmare, a gift of an American company, shown in 1979. In a review entitled \"In the Mill of Nightmares\", indicating that American society is a generator of nightmares, the author tells his readers that what is shown in that movie is a general phenomenon in America. In deciding on accepting movies like Alambrista, First Blood and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, this selection of negative images of America can be seen clearly. In fact, this criterion was, and is still, applied to the choice of movies from all Western countries.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212561, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "95\n\nUnited States and other Western countries simply because, as we have pointed out previously in this paper, culture is a very close neighbour to ideology.\n\nThe experience in the period 1979 - 1986 shows that the exchanges events were predominantly carried out in the realm of music which had been the least controversial of the arts in China. Despite its rather suggestive costumes, which met strong opposition up until the mid-1970s, Western ballet by the early 1980s was also accepted cordially by Chinese audiences. As for the writers, many of whom were often involved in the periodical political reassessments in China as leading figures to be bridled for their challenge to government policies, the arrival of American writers would not normally receive sufficient publicity and therefore their influence was marginal.\n\nGenerally speaking, the presence of American arts and artists in China did not bring about any forceful and immediate changes sufficient to affect China's socio-political development in an obvious manner, in spite of the fact that through this cultural presence certain American values and life styles were presented to the Chinese. The most significant impact of Sino-American arts exchanges on China's socio-political development, as has been mentioned, was the connections Chinese artists established with American artists, which was in turn used by the artists as an instrument to incorporate themselves into the modernization programme as an independent entity which they succeeded in doing to a certain degree. As a result, the government has given more emphasis to cultural development since 1982.\n\nRoughly speaking, the number of American cultural events in China between 1979 and 1986 was about the same as those from countries such as Japan, France, the United Kingdom and West Germany. Nevertheless, two characteristics made the American arts presence in China much stronger than that from those countries. On the one hand, American events in China normally received greater publicity and drew better attention from the people than those from other countries. Events such as the BSO's visit, the Boston Museum paintings exhibition and the production of the play Death of a Salesman were widely publicized so that the events carried much more significance than artistically equivalent events from other countries. The publicity was sometimes generated by the organizers, but in many cases it was just created by the interest in and enthusiasm about American cultural events.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212572, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "106\n\nunique practices as do, for instance, the Hakka, Chiu Chau and the boat people. Northern Chinese have no 'second burial' after exhumation as do southerners. Indeed funeral conventions sometimes vary slightly from village to village. Some believe that a menstruating woman must not touch a corpse as she is ‘unclean”. Men, as a sign of respect, may comb their dead wife's hair.\n\nIn Hong Kong there has been considerable merging of customs by different regional Chinese groups, but the focus is still, especially for Cantonese, on veneration of ancestors. This has been construed as meaning, if the living pay sufficient respect to the dead they will, in return, exert benevolence over the lives and prosperity of present and future family members. Ancestor worship is practised in several countries especially where communities are composed of kin groups believed to be descended from common ancestors, like the Five Great Clans of the New Territories. Christian churches have difficulty accepting the word 'worship' and prefer the term 'ancestor reverence.' Filial piety has been described as the most powerful force in China for the past 3,000 years. Probably nowhere are family records as meticulously kept as in China.\n\nReturning to the case study, while the deceased was alive, a western-trained Chinese physician suggested that she undergo an operation. She refused. Going 'intact' into the next world is still considered important by many. Thus Chinese medicine, with little emphasis on surgery, is not infrequently preferred to western medicine. This follows the Confucian dictum: 'One should not inflict harm on one's body, not even hair and skin because they were inherited from one's parents' (ADZ 膚,受之父母,不敢毀傷).\n\nThe human body is a sacred treasure which must not be marred by surgical incision.\" Eunuchs in Imperial China kept their castrated private parts in jars to be buried with them on their death. Not until 22 November, 1913, did an official edict in China grant permission for autopsies. The great shame with beheading was to have a dismembered body.\n\nIn Hong Kong, up to the 1950s and even later, if a patient had an operation and then died, some families would request that any removed organs be buried with the 'heavenly body'.\" Today, patients expect to be told whether something was removed during an operation. Donating of organs, such as kidneys for transplants or removing a beating heart,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212581, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "115\n\nmanifestion of poverty to symbolise the family has sold everything to pay for an elaborate funeral. Two hanging bands of the attire are left of different lengths to imply the mourner is distraught and does not know how to tie it properly. Women do not make-up.\n\nFor Chinese Christian funerals family mourners wear black gowns, but it is not a 'good' colour as it absorbs bad luck. When Chinese wear a black necktie they often remove it as soon as they can after the service.\n\nThe dead person in this study, who for major events such as birthdays used the Chinese calendar, knew she was born in the year of the ram but she was never sure in which year of the western calendar she was born. Because she used Chinese reckoning she was one year 'older' than if she had used the Gregorian calendar. In addition, on death, three years are usually added, 'one each for heaven, earth and mankind (天 · 人 · 地). A little subterfuge regarding age seems justified. It increases importance at one's destiny. Emphasis is placed on prolongation of age and symbols of longevity are many. They include the peach, crane and tortoise. The God of Longevity is sometimes depicted riding a deer. Because in this study the deceased was around 70 it was described as a 'happy funeral' (喜事).\n\nBy midnight all had left the funeral parlour except the three daughters, two granddaughters and two amahs (maids) who kept vigil, taking naps on the floor or on chairs. In the past gongs were banged throughout the night to keep away evil spirits. Noise restrictions today prohibit this. Although all-night vigils are not common in England now, they are still practised in eastern European countries and among those, for example, of Lithuanian descent in Scotland. Wakes are also held in Ireland, often accompanied by card playing, drinking and jollifications in an adjoining room.\n\nFuneral Day\n\nThe same as the previous day visitors paid respects, some early, shortly afterwards leaving for work. Later, the hall filled for the service. Day and time were important, as with other events concerning mourning. The Chinese Imperial Calendar and Almanac (usually known as Tung Sing(通勝) meaning 'know everything book') was consulted. Some editions of this sell a million copies a year. Dating back before 2205 BC, it is said to be the oldest, continuous publication in the world.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212726, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "20\n\nIllnesses\n\nMesny seems to have got through life with remarkably few illnesses and, apart from one major well-nigh fatal illness during the forced march from Soochow with the Taipings and the occasional bouts of malaria, had he suffered anything more serious than a high temperature, he did not mention it. During his undiagnosed well-nigh fatal illness he had to fend for himself and lived off boiled rice-water. He could not face food, ran a very high temperature and at one point he was laid out, unconscious, presumably to die. He was placed on a bed of reeds on a veranda with a cannon barrel as a pillow and covered with an old vermin-ridden sheepskin jacket, flung over him by one of the assistant cooks. He had lain there delirious for about a week before he recovered, with little recollection of anything apart from a Cantonese doctor making him swallow a large pill as a cure for fever. He later described the illness as the one 'when his hair fell out.'\n\nHe suffered from prickly heat all the time he was in hot countries, and from eczema and boils during the time he was based in Canton [1884-1887]. He was also bitten by a snake, slept amongst swarms of vicious mosquitoes and doubtless drank filthy water on occasions, though this is never recorded by him in so many words.\n\nHe obtained for himself various patent medicines, especially during his time in Kueichou province, such as Collis Browne's chlorodyne, Lepeltier's sulphate of quinine, Holloway's Pills and ointment, and described how his reputation as a doctor grew during the campaign when he successfully dosed many a sick Chinese soldier from his medicine cabinet, saving the lives of a great number of them.\n\nHe claims at a later date to be a most abstemious man if not an absolute teetotaller, and practically a vegetarian; eggs, butter and milk being the only animal food he allowed himself. Mesny repeated on several occasions that he rigidly abstained from animal food, especially whilst living in the interior of China, out of respect for the authority of the officials and as an example of obedience to well-intentioned laws. At one point, Mesny lived for three years in a Buddhist monastery in Kuei-yang Fu in Kueichou province, Western China, [though not as a religious] and at another stage in his life was vegetarian for three months at a stretch.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212821, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "115\n\ncontrol. Lung Yun still maintained his own troops, well equipped and better paid and fed than those of Chungking, out of the revenues he had collected from the supplies which had flowed over the Indo-China railway and the Burma road. The control of the only communications into China had made the Governor of Yunnan a very rich man.\n\nMy experiences during the subsequent year were to be discouraging. In the past my championship of the Chinese cause had been unpopular with my own people; it had involved me not only in disapproval but also in financial loss. As the situation in Western China unfolded itself to me I began to wonder whether, after all, there was not a lot to be said for the view of the die-hards. Since my return to England I have made a point of studying the aspects to which I have drawn attention in these writings. I examined the history of Sun Yat Sen's Three Principles and the record of Kuo Min Tang teaching. I have set out the facts as they came to my notice, and will leave it to the reader to judge for himself how far the extraordinary incidents in which I was now to find myself involved sprang from independent impulses present in a backward province, or more directly from the nationalist teaching of Sun Yat Sen.\n\nAs the 'plane flies in from India, over the mountains of Yunnan, and begins to circle to come down to Kun-ming, the ribbon of the Burma road shows up below where it passes a cluster of villas nestling, some fifteen miles short of the town, at the foot of the hills on the edge of the lake. The 'plane crosses the tip of the forty-mile long lake to land on the large airfield at the far side of the city, 6,150 feet above sea level.\n\nAccommodation in the city was hard to find; for some weeks I stayed out at the lakeside. Owing to its height, Kun-ming enjoys an excellent climate all the years round, cool in summer, mild in winter. The great mountain ranges to the west absorb the moisture of the monsoon, leaving an adequate but moderate rainfall: apart from a period in the autumn the sun shines daily. The two Chinese characters Yun and Nan mean 'South of the Clouds,' an appropriate reference to the climate of Szechuan to the North East, where for six months in the year, at Chungking, they never see the sun.\n\nThe foreign community, in addition to the small number of French who were concerned with the operation of the railway line to the Indo-China border, included the Consuls of the leading countries, and an increasing number of American military personnel, attached to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212957, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "position, to avoid total loss of face for them.\n\nIt has been pointed out by Elizabeth Croll that the party cadres were very much concerned about the scale of wedding banquets which was a symbol of their status and a means to induce favourable attitudes from others. However, these incidents had been condemned by the government-controlled media, and face had been denounced as belonging to the lot of feudal ills which had to be discontinued in the socialist era (Croll, 1981: 124-126). Surprisingly, despite this denunciation, the concept of face or the word itself did not disappear altogether in the press. As a matter of fact, it was even being directly used by government officials and the government media,\n\nOn 19 May 1985, the Chinese soccer team lost to Hong Kong in a World Cup Qualifying Round match. Afterwards, members of the crowd leaving the Beijing Workers' Stadium damaged public properties. They even attacked foreigners, their cars and shouted at them in the capital's streets. News reports and comments which covered this event accused those who created disorder as losing the nation's face.\" While there are direct proofs of the existence of \"face\" in these \"slips-of-the-tongue\", the question as to how much has been swallowed up or how much has been concealed awaits investigation,\n\nNot only was the nation's face being at stake amidst outbursts of hooliganism, but also in terms of economic activities. GNP figures have been low in China, at least not compatible with a big country. The face of the country, the government and her people, was challenged and threatened in view of the growing strength of other countries. This put China into a dilemma. On the one hand, she could not deny the success of other countries, but on the other, she could not sink behind them or lose face before them due to her sense of national superiority (Hsu, 1981: 411).\n\nTo maintain that China was still a great country, a superior nation under the Communists, the burden was put on the media. Figures in bicycle production in China and India, a rather trivial topic, had been compared to highlight the former's success.\" These types of contents were badly needed in view of the growing exposure of Chinese people to Western products and achievements (Funadashi, 1985: 232).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213219, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "20\n\nLane, Crawford Restaurant and for several years in the 1930s it was known as the Exchange Restaurant, but in 1935 the name reverted again to Cafe Wisseman (details of management, location and name are from notices of the Spirit Licensing Board published in the Hong Kong Government Gazette).\n\nAn incident took place at the Cafe in September 1914, just after war was declared, which placed three German nationals under suspicion. They were observed throwing down a copy of the China Mail and stamping on it because it contained a report that the British had compulsorily bought two battleships then being built for the Turkish Government (CO129/413, Information from Provost Marshall regarding Germans on list, 8 Oct. 1914).\n\nFirms\n\nI have tried to reconstruct the history of these firms from the records available in Hong Kong. The average reader may not be interested in the detailed account of change of partnership, location and other minutia, but as most of this material has not been published previously, I presume to do so now in the hope that there may be some who have an interest in the firms may learn more about them. The information and references may provide a starting place for those who might wish to write a fuller history of particular firms.\n\nThough Germany was not a colonial power in Asia, its merchants carried on an active trade there. Throughout the nineteenth century German firms became increasingly competitive with those of other western countries. In the opening decades of the century Canton was the centre for trade, but it declined in importance when the ports at Hong Kong and Shanghai developed.\n\nWhen war was declared between Britain and Germany in August 1914 citizens of enemy countries were placed under parole but in October new laws were enacted enabling the Hong Kong Government to place German nationals who held reserve status in the military to be interned. Representatives of German businesses in Hong Kong sent a letter dated 30 October to the American Consul General there asking him to submit it to the British authorities. The merchants appealed for a reversal of the orders on the grounds that they had contributed through the years to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 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": 214200, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "21\n\nBut, while comparing Chinese and western humour, with the latter propagated by television, radio and other forms of the mass media, it has to be borne in mind that the peoples of many countries are changing their way of life. The world is fast becoming a global village.\n\nAmusement in language\n\nIn the mid-1950s, the author recalls, a fashionable colour in Hong Kong was described in Cantonese (a vibrant, vivid language) as ‘duck's excreta green'. This tickled foreigners but was (and still is) good descriptive, serious stuff to our Chinese friends. They never seem to realise, however, that any of their own surnames, such as Mr Wu, Mrs Ma (meaning horse), Mrs Lung (meaning dragon) or Miss Ng (which is difficult for some Europeans to pronounce), may strike the average Westerner as funny. Yet the author has never really understood why his family name, 'Waters' (which hardly ever strikes Europeans as comical) (probably meaning his forebears lived near a river or a lake), is often considered amusing by Chinese. A Chinese physician once wisecracked: 'Dan Waters, please pass some water;' while a Chinese architect quipped, 'Dr Waters has been inspecting waterworks structures all morning.' In other examples just the mention of the name Green, Whalebelly or Goodbody strike many Chinese, understandably perhaps, as comical. We British have become accustomed to such names. However, the countless Chinese firms with names like Lee Kee Motor Boat Service, No-Squeak Wong the cobbler and Au-Choo the medicine shop, do strike the average Westerner as good for a chuckle.\n\nThere is a Chinese saying which, when translated, goes something like this:\n\nWalking we will not change our family name. Sitting we will not change our given name.\n\nIt really implies we are digging our heels in and sticking to our principles. Nevertheless, Sir (now Lord) David Wilson did change his name when he came back to Hong Kong to become Governor in 1987. He had served in Hong Kong before and his Chinese name had previously been romanised as Ngai Tak-ngai (Spurr, 1995;246). The Chinese, however, who read far more into a name than the average European,", "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": 214334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 192, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "156\n\nfor what lustre could our arms acquire in a contest wherein it seemed evident that all the superiority of warlike science, discipline, and equipment would be on our side and all the slaughter on the side of the Chinese?\n\nIt is represented by The Illustrated London News that there had been a concern, similar to that frequently expressed at a later period, relative to twentieth-century interventions of western powers in a variety of countries: a concern as to \"how far our demands could be enforced without shattering to atoms the machinery of the Imperial [Chinese] Government.\"\n\nThe same article praises Elgin for \"having in a few months pushed his way through this crowd of uncertainties, obtained all he went out for, and returned to England without having lost an army, without having sustained a serious check, without having been overreached by mandarin duplicity, without having inflicted any large amount of suffering upon the Chinese population, and without having shaken the Manchu dynasty from the imperial throne.\n\nIt commends Elgin because \"There was nothing vainglorious, extravagant, vindictive, nor gratuitously humiliating in the terms he set out with insisting upon from the Emperor.... Lord Elgin knew when to forbear, and when to insist - when to show patience, and when promptitude. He could wait when it seemed expedient, and he could advance with boldness and rapidity when it was necessary. The very vengeance he inflicted was levelled at property rather than at persons, and was designed to punish the Emperor and his Court rather than the [Chinese people].”61\n\nReaders' Response\n\nReaders' response to this coverage must have been mixed. Several at least would have felt unease when reading of \"Looty, a small Chinese dog, belonging to Her Majesty\" - a diminutive dog found at the loot of the Summer Palace, brought back to England and presented to Queen Victoria. \"It is supposed to have belonged to the Empress or to one of the ladies of the Imperial family. By what name it was known to its small-footed62 mistress will in all probability remain a mystery. It has, however, appropriately enough, been renamed Looty....Her Majesty", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214793, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "173\n\nThe experiences of migration, exile, refugees and diasporic communities all suggest that nostalgia can be employed as a strategic resource to re-appropriate and forge new identities in the face of globalising dislocations from place. 'Exile is the nursery of nationality', as Anderson (1994) quotes Acton as saying. In this context, David Parkin (1998) points out that anthropologists 'can no longer assume that the people they study see themselves as attached to a particular, bounded locality', as in colonial ethnography which tended to depict territorially distinct peoples in homogeneous locations clearly bounded one from another in a way which facilitated ease of administration (the 'simplifications' of the state talked of by Scott, 1998). Yet real life has never actually been like this, as Parkin (1998) notes; there have almost never been autonomous communities perfectly isolable from one another, there has always been movement of peoples across boundaries and borders, and globalisation too has a long pre-capitalist, imperial history, as Friedman (1999) also notes. Nor in my opinion is the experience of the imaginative reconstitution of place so clearly linked either with the modern or post-modern, although it is often assumed to be.21 We have always constructed 'simulated worlds', admits Iain Chambers (1994); what is really new is the awareness of taking part in a global network of other and similar peoples. The experience of deterritorialisation is however a dislocation of place, and what we find here, for the Hmong as for many other dispersed or fragmented communities, is the use of nostalgia to reconstruct the past - and the nostalgic construction of place.\n\nLouisa Schein (1998) and myself (1996) have both documented the returns of overseas Hmong, settled after the conflicts of Indochina as refugees in Western countries like France, the US, or Australia, to revisit their immediate homelands in South East Asia, and the imaginary homelands of their ancestors in Southwest China. A Hmong friend of mine in Chiangmai, who has lived all his life in an urban environment, makes a point of bringing his children every year to visit his wife's parents in their rural village, so that they should remember where the Hmong came from and what it is to be really Hmong. It is for similar reasons that some of those who are able to afford to do so return with their families for extraordinary, emotional homecomings which I have witnessed in Hmong homes in Laos and in Thailand, and the same happens, although on a smaller and less public scale, in Vietnam.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214842, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "224\n\nseemingly well prepared for paying imperial honours. Surgeon Cree relates in his diary that upon the signature of the Treaty of 1842 on board the British flagship on 29 August, a plain yellow flag was hoisted at the main and saluted with twenty-one guns. On September 14 following he noted that \"all ships of the Expedition hoisted the yellow flag at the main - the royal standard of China - and at noon fired a royal salute of twenty-one guns.\"\n\n50\n\nThere was a distinct awareness of the fineness of the country itself. Of Central China, Sir John Davis declared that “it yields to none in the whole world, and is equalled by very few.\"5 Lieutenant Wyndham Baker of the Madras Artillery also waxed lyrical on the subject.52 Even Sir Henry Pottinger, the Plenipotentiary responsible for forcing the Treaty of Nanking upon the Chinese, had called China \"this superb country,” in his despatch to the British Foreign Secretary announcing the event. Several decades earlier, Sir Henry Ellis, member of the Amherst Embassy in 1816, had written that \"it was impossible to travel through the Emperor of China's dominions without feeling that he has the finest country within an imperial ring-fence in the world.\"54\n\n53\n\nNone of the books and letters consulted contains the derogatory or offensive terms for Chinese in use later in the century. British sailors jocularly used the term “Fokies\" for their opponents,55 and referred to the mandarins as “mad-marines,\"56 but the Chinese themselves are not here dismissed as “Chinks,” “Chows,\" \"Heathen Chinee” or “Mongolians\" (as they so often were at a later time, in those English-speaking countries to which they had gone in search of gold or employment) but invariably as \"the Chinese\" or \"Chinamen.\" Indeed, many of the authors pay tribute to the honesty and good manners of the ordinary people.\n\nIn short, our naval, military and civilian writers of the period were still generally respectful of China, its Court and its inhabitants.57\n\nThese facts are worth keeping in mind when considering the Opium War. We should be careful to view the conflict in the context of its own time, and not of that later period when Western attitudes towards China had changed for the worse.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214955, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 51, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "6\n\nmet in armed conflict - futile and unnecessary. Ironically, both were strongly devoted to tea though their actual taste in tea may have been different.\n\nThe Chinese did not call their country China. To them it was the Middle Kingdom, the kingdom between heaven and earth, the Celestial Kingdom. The Emperor was the Son of Heaven who possessed divine powers. Their civilization was 5,000 years old, and for nearly half that period they lived in solid houses, dressed in silk, and produced works of art which are still admired today. Almost completely isolated from the western world since the Song Dynasty, China was oblivious to the achievements of the West in many fields. Proud and self-contained, China shunned outside contacts. In their self-proclaimed superiority, the Chinese in the 18th century still believed that only barbarians lived beyond their boundaries and that their countries were automatically vassal states of the Celestial Kingdom. Chinese contempt for foreigners persisted into the later periods, no doubt fuelled by the shameful behaviour of the foreign powers towards China, humbled and humiliated by the defeats in the Opium Wars. 'Barbarian devils' was a description often uttered even by relatively enlightened Chinese. Is it then any wonder that even in our time “Kwai Lo” (though no longer “Fan Kwai”) is still often heard, though perhaps more in jest, and used even by the foreigners themselves?\n\nBritain, on the other hand, in the early 19th century was opening one of the most glorious pages of its history. Napoleon was defeated and France was no longer a threat. The Royal Navy reigned supreme over the waves and Britain had become truly a great imperial power dominating huge areas of territory and much of the trade from the New World to the Far East. In 1837 the young Queen Victoria ascended the throne and a long period of British colonial rule had asserted itself. The British nation had every reason to feel proud and superior. But with superiority came also arrogance and a deep distrust of foreigners.\n\nWe live in a time when the world has discarded Imperialism and Colonialism, the right of strong nations to rule over weak ones, when some disputes at least are settled in a forum of nations, when the right of all peoples to self-determination is recognized. The latter is a recent principle: born of the Versailles Treaty, after the 1st World War, it has forged ahead without stopping. But in the 19th century, imperialism", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215931, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 230, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "164 \n\nlaconically states that, even on what was actually his honeymoon visit, Boxer had not lost his 'powers of observation.' \n\nIn accordance with the policy of withdrawing resources to Singapore, supposedly an impregnable fortress, the FECB was downscaled and most of its men and resources moved. Boxer was promoted to Major, with a small staff, which included his close friend and best man, Alf Bennett. Ironically, this gave him greater flexibility to use his own initiative. \n\n4 \n\nUnable to make much headway with London, Boxer flew to Chongqing to see the British Ambassador, Sir Alexander Clarke-Kerr. Boxer then made contacts with key figures in the Chinese military. He was received by none other than General Dai Li, head of the formidable Juntong or Bureau of Statistics and Military Intelligence. After the Generalissimo himself, to whom his loyalty was almost feudal, General Dai was perhaps the most powerful man in China. An extremely shrewd strategic thinker, he was in many ways the power behind the throne. His organisation, fiercely secretive and ruthless, has been described as a sort of Chinese Gestapo, prepared to use any means, including murder, to achieve its aims. Dai was fanatically devoted to Chiang Kai Shek, and shaped the Juntong to be a dreaded political as well as military machine, spying on all perceived enemies of the state, Communists and fellow Guomindang as well as Japanese. The Juntong organisation was highly effective, operating through cells united by family and social bonds, whose members were expected to subsume all private needs to the pursuance of state aims, however lethal. It has been demonstrated that General Dai and his followers modelled themselves on folk heroes from Chinese history who operated through secret societies and who believed that extreme action such as assassination, was justified in the interests of the common good. Dai was known to be anti-western, for he believed that western countries with their imperialist policies were the cause of China's humiliation, and were exploiting its weakness for their own aims. Many assumed that Dai's anti-British stance was on the personal embarrassment of having been mysteriously arrested in Hong Kong, thus conveniently sidestepping questions raised by decades of opium and gunboats. Dai also believed that any western country operating in China should function under Chinese control, an idea anathema to westerners used to extraterritoriality and getting their own terms. Boxer, however, found Dai co-operative and willing to ...\n\nbased", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216103, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 402, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "336\n\nGovernment servants completed four-year tours up until the early 1960s. When we went on leave, being seen off was a grand occasion. One would normally organise a reception for a number of friends. They boarded the ship. Occasionally, there was a bit of gate crashing by people known as \"professional see'ers off\" who enjoyed the company and a few free drinks.\n\nBrass bands would play Auld Lang Syne on the quay and paper streamers would be thrown to friends on shore. As the ship pulled away the streamers would break and the \"umbilical cord\" would be severed, as it were. After a four-year tour a government servant would earn something like seven months leave plus 30 days travelling each way. That meant you were away from the colony for about nine months. Being seen off was an important affair for Chinese too and, in the 1950s when the growing of rice was not profitable any more and the \"vegetable revolution\" was underway, many New Territories' Chinese made their way to England to work in restaurants. On being seen off just about the entire village would sometimes turn out!\n\nOn one occasion I was on leave in England and a fellow passenger on a train spotted my suitcase. 'Ah,' he said, 'you're from Hong Kong. Tell me. Do they still put paint on with their hands?' I had to admit that painters stick their woollen-gloved hand into a pot of paint when they paint metal railings and the like. They still do. It's labour saving. It's surprising what people remember about Hong Kong after they have left.\n\nPestilence\n\nThe colony was not a healthy place in its young days and many expatriates died young, as a wander through what we used to call the Colonial Cemetery (now the Hong Kong Cemetery) in Happy Valley reveals. There were cases of bubonic plague up until the 1920s with an especially bad epidemic in 1894. There was a worrying outbreak of cholera in the early summer of 1961. Stalls were manned by nurses in the street, for example by the Star Ferry. There was no wasting of time and no paperwork. All you did was roll up your sleeve. Now, from the days of pestilence and being an unhealthy place, Hong Kong has a life expectancy greater than most western countries, including Britain and the USA.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216340, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 99, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "48\n\nsubordinate status in all things, including the favour of tribute missions and foreign trade.76\n\nRev. W. Ellis, in Gutlaff's Three Voyages (1834) wrote, ‘A grave Chinese author, profoundly skilled in the literature of his own nation, congratulating himself that he was not born in our barbarous countries of the West observes, \"for then I must have lived in a cave under-ground, - eaten the bark and roots of trees, worn leaves and long grass for my covering, - and been really a beast though in the shape of a man.\"77\n\nWestern sojourners in China could not fail to observe the fact that, as the great missionary translator-scholar W. H. Medhurst wrote in 1838, 'The Chinese assume to be...the only civilised and powerful nation in the world ...,'78 an attitude that appears to have characterised official and peasant, merchant and coolie alike. As Parkinson commented in 1937, 'With such invincible ignorance it is difficult to cope.'+79\n\nAt the same time, trying to be objective about Chinese disdain, Lord Macartney, England's first ambassador to China, wrote in 1794 of his own countrymen: 'Is there any country on the globe that Englishmen visit where they do not display that pride of themselves and that contempt of others which conscious superiority is apt to inspire?'80\n\nThe Impending war\n\nBy 1839, the situation had not changed a whit. Each party to the impending hostilities was boxed in by its own ideas and limitations, in the case of the Westerners fanned by the many irritations accompanying their lives and mercantile dealings at Canton under the restrictions imposed by Chinese officials.\n\nThese prompted one of the historians of the military side of the War to opine that 'The opium question was to be regarded merely as a spark blown into a mine, and no more to be considered the primary cause of the war than the match which ignites the train...'81 But at least one of his brother officers had deplored going into a war in which the opium question was an unworthy element.82\n\nAnd at this point, on the verge of War, we must regretfully take leave of the China of the old China Trade,83", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216424, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 183, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "133\n\nContraband of ordinary commodities such as flour, clothes, etc., may be transported at the risk of the owners, to the ports of belligerent countries.\n\nIn the event of the necessity arising of landing any cargo passing through a Chinese port, the same will be landed and stored at the expense of the owners.\"\n\nArguments arose over whether foodstuffs being exported from China to Japan for consumption by civilians should be considered as contraband of war as they could be used for military purposes. It was agreed that with formal consular certificates, certifying that the goods were not destined for the theatre of war, and stating clearly that the goods were shipped at the owners' risk; foodstuffs could be exported to Japan.\n\nThe day-to-day involvement of the Chinese population and their reaction to foreign soldiers\n\nTheir land and people suffered hardships, casualties, and financial losses without any thought being given to them by the Westerners or the combatants. It has been quite surprising just how few references to China and the Chinese there were in contemporary Western writings.\n\nChinese physical involvement was marginal. Apart from individuals being employed by both sides as spies, bands of Chinese mounted guerrillas were employed by both belligerents; some under Japanese leadership made Russian lines of communication dangerous and effectively tied down ever larger Russian forces. Yuan Shikai, the Viceroy of Chih-li, turned a blind eye to these and similar activities and made every effort to co-operate with the Japanese. Although the Russians were aware of this policy, there was little they could do about it. They did, however, take it out on any individual or groups of Chinese in territories under their control who appeared in any way acting for or sympathising with the Japanese.\n\nBritish illustrated periodicals tended to portray Chinese as ‘exotic and different, something sinister or inferior.' The same journals included not only sketches from their correspondents capturing the gruesome nature of the war in all its chaos, cruelty, and destruction but also photographic images.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216502, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 261, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "213\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nFull Circle: A Life with Hong Kong and China\n\nRuth Hayhoe\n\nIntroduction by Mark Bray and Ora Kwo\n\nComparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong\n\nHong Kong, 200\n\nISBN 962 8093 31,2\n\n276pp.\n\nHK$200/US$32\n\nFew westerners in history have become as knowledgeably inculturated into respect for China and Chinese ways as Ruth Hayhoe has, or achieved her high level of trilingual Chinese skills.\n\nCenturies ago, the Jesuits adopted Chinese ways in order to convert China to Roman Catholicism. Some wore Chinese clothes and traveled in state like Confucian scholar-administrators, borne in palanquins preceded by attendants carrying their books. In the end, the Roman hierarchy thought they had gone too far, and the Order was suppressed.\n\nHayhoe wears the occasional mandarin collar, has written or edited several books and numerous articles, which could well be borne in state, and for just over four years, as a senior member of the educational hierarchy, enjoyed an official car in Hong Kong. But her avowed purpose is sometimes the opposite of that which compelled the Jesuits in the past. She wishes to bring Chinese knowledge (pp. 126, 251) -- and 'Asian ways of knowing' (pp. 20, 239) -- to the rest of the world. At other times, she looks for an equal balance; for, ‘an ideal set of relations between China and western countries, characterised by mutuality and ordered around the values of autonomy, equity, solidarity and participation.' (p. 117)\n\nThis Autobiography gives a description of how Hayhoe's inculturation took place and also expresses the illumination she found when writing this account of selected strata of her life. Although she tells us that when she left Canada for her first visit to Hong Kong, in June 1967, 'China meant nearly nothing to me' (p. 64), elsewhere she explains that, as she wrote this book, she came to feel that all her", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]