[ { "id": 204247, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 15, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n12\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nOne by one successive tribes arose Huns, Avars, Turks, Mongols, Manchus-dashed themselves against the frontiers of the Empire, and sometimes recoiling proceeded through Central Asia to Europe, sometimes breaking through the Wall, submerged for a time the whole Empire.\n\nApart from some stone monuments found in Central Asia, few but of great importance, the record of these tribes is to be found in the Chinese Histories, with references in the Greek authors of the Byzantine Empire, whenever the tribes impinged upon the West.\n\nInterest in collecting the Scythian bronzes commenced with Peter the Great. It is natural that the Russians and the scholars of Eastern Europe should be the first to be interested in the history of the Central Asian tribes. To them is largely due the excavations in Southern Europe and Siberia, and also in Mongolia. But in English we have the massive work 'Scythians and Greeks' by E. H. Minns. The Turks also are particularly interested in these studies, which have thrown much light upon the origin of the Turkish peoples.\n\nOne outcome of the struggle of the Chinese Empire with the Huns was the first extension of Chinese power in Central Asia, through the Tarim Basin, the present Sinkiang, to the Pamirs. This chapter in world history includes the fascinating account of the journey of Chang Ch'ien to the West in the second century B.C., the exploits of Pan Ch'ao in the Tarim Basin in the first century A.D., and the despatch of a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, to the shores of the Persian Gulf,\n\nDuring the first and second centuries the famous silk trade arose between China and Rome, recorded by Ptolemy and the Chinese histories. For a short time the land route between China and the West was open. The road passed through the Tarim Basin, between the northern grasslands and Tibet. It also became the great highway between India and China.\n\nThe Tarim Basin is one of the most remarkable geographical regions in the world, lying as it does between glaciated mountains on three sides, with a waterless desert in the centre. Around the desert, watered by streams from the mountains, are the oasis towns and villages, which form stepping stones as it were for travellers passing from east to west, or from west to east. By this thoroughfare have passed from time immemorial the travellers of Central Asia-merchants, soldiers, monks. And by this thoroughfare the great cultural influences-Indian, Persian, Greek-have passed with Buddhism from Western and Southern Asia to China. By this thoroughfare Chinese colonization spread to the Pamirs. By this route Marco Polo journeyed to China in the thirteenth century.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204249, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n14\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nThe retreat of the Macedonian army was followed by the complicated history of North-west India, the present Pakistan, in which invasion followed invasion, Bactrian Greek, Indo-Scyth, Ephthalite and Turk, and dynasty followed dynasty, of which that of the Guptas was one of the most illustrious.\n\nBut the impact of the Greeks, though it was eventually absorbed, lasted for a long time, and its effect is still to be seen in the abundance of Graeco-Buddhist sculpture unearthed in the ruins in the Buddhist monasteries in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, reaching even to the confines of North-west China.\n\nTo the Greeks of Alexander and of his successors, we owe a large part of our early knowledge of Persia and of Northern India.\n\nWhen the power of Islam had spread through Western Asia, the Moslem Arabs and Turks became the intermediaries between East and West.\n\nThe Crusades were one, but not the only, answer of the West to the Moslems,\n\nThe way of St. Francis was another, But yet another was that of Raymond Lull, who, born as it were before his time, advocated the study of Moslem philosophy and the Moslem tongue as a preliminary for the preaching of the Gospel.\n\nMeantime Moslem learning in Latin translations, and even the Greek authors, translated into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin, reached the Western World.\n\nThe Mongol dominion became divided. The Mongol rulers of Persia, and the partly Turkish partly Mongol rulers west of the Pamirs became converted to Islam. The dominion of Timur arose, and the Moghuls of India followed.\n\nFirst-hand accounts in Persian and Arabic now became added to the study of the Mongol regime. I refer in particular to Juvaini's History of the World Conqueror (between 1252 and 1260), by one who had served as a high official under the Mongol conquerors.\n\nFrom henceforth Islam contributed to the philosophy, poetry and art of the Persians, and the study of Islamics formed part of the study of Persia.\n\nBefore leaving the subject of Persia one can only refer in passing to the mystic philosophy and poetry of Persia, the beauty of Persian miniatures, Persian rugs, and of Persian architecture.\n\nIII. Finally we come to the sea-route to India and China, and the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan.\n\nIn the course of his travels Herodotus had visited Egypt, where he had learned about the navigation of the Red Sea, and recorded that Phoenician sailors in the service of the king of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204250, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n15\n\nEgypt had sailed through the Red Sea, and keeping the land on their right had rounded Africa and returned through the Straits of Gibraltar; on the way they had found that the sun appeared for a time on the north side.\n\nA hundred years later, after Egypt had fallen into his hands, Alexander had founded the city of Alexandria on the western side of the delta of the Nile. The city was destined to become the second city of the Roman Empire. Connected by canal with the Red Sea, and making use of the newly understood monsoon winds (A.D. 47) for crossing the Arabian Sea, it became the chief port of the maritime trade with Persia, India, and the regions beyond.\n\nReferences to this maritime trade exist in the Chinese histories as well as in the writings of the Greeks. In A.D. 97 a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, travelling from Central Asia reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, and was informed by the seamen whom he met that the sea-route from the Gulf proceeded first south-west and then north-west to the port of Wu-ch'ih-san (Alexandria), the return journey taking three months with favourable winds, and two years with unfavourable winds.\n\nThe Chinese records speak of the Persians and the Indians trading by sea with Ta-ts'in (the Chinese name for the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire: Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor) and of the fact that the profits were ten-fold.\n\nThey speak also of traffic between India and China by sea, and record that in A.D. 120 two jugglers who claimed to have come from the Roman Orient (Ta-ts'in) reached Burma, and were sent by the king of Burma as a present to the Emperor of China, via the Burma Road.\n\nAbout the same time a book was written by an unknown Greek sailor called The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea giving a port-to-port description of the voyage down the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula (The Land of Gold) 'under the very rising of the sun, with a notice of China beyond.\n\nShortly after this in the 2nd century A.D. the Geography of Ptolemy was written at Alexandria, where Ptolemy gathered together and systematized all that was known to the Western world about Asia and Africa. In particular he plotted the longitude and latitude of the places known, which when transferred to a modern map give surprisingly accurate results, reaching to China itself.\n\nFrom this time notices of the sea-route increase, both on the Greek and on the Chinese side. The Chinese histories in particular show a rapidly increasing knowledge in the early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204281, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n45\n\nThe geographical isolation of the country resulted in a peculiarly isolated culture. Government, religion, social customs all developed in their own secluded world. In that world many qualities which we are apt to describe and look on as primitive were present and survived until very recent times; I mean characteristics like simplicity, honesty, confirmed religious devotion, obedience, leisure, contentment, and kindness.\n\nNowadays it is a fairly common contention in certain circles that a feudal upper stratum oppressed the Tibetan populace. But that ignores, for one thing, the fact that there was a very considerable body of yeoman farmers who held land directly under the Tibetan Government and worked it themselves with their own families and with the help of their friends, in the good old English system of exchanging services. There were of course bad landlords as there are everywhere; bad landlords included monks and laymen. But the difference between rich and poor in Tibet really was a very small one; it was not a money economy at all, and the difference, either social or economic, between a rich man and a poor man was in no way comparable to what you may see in many of the world's great cities. Income from exports was more than enough to buy all essentials from the outside world. There was a three-year reserve of grain, sometimes more. The people ate a good deal of meat and their standard of living was certainly higher than what I have seen in any Indian village.\n\nOne of the most obvious products of oppression is discontent, and no traveller in Tibet before 1950 that I can think of has described the Tibetans as anything but cheerful and contented. Heinrich Harrer, whose name and book, Seven Years in Tibet, you doubtless know, is probably the only Westerner who has actually worked as a landless Tibetan labourer. He did it not as a social experiment, but from the sheer necessity of keeping alive. He has told me, and I think he may have written it in his book, that his life as a labourer was easy and he was treated extremely well. He has also given evidence of the touching kindness of the Tibetans, particularly of the poor, but of the rich as well. Now it is quite true that the Tibetans have from time to time been described as inhospitable in their dealings with large explorers' parties; but that was due to fear of such parties as a spearhead of Western penetration. To anyone in want they have the most wonderful warm-hearted generosity. In so many ways, certainly in their character, they really provide an example for the Western world.\n\nThese were some of the valuable assets that were swept away in Tibet as it was. There is a great deal more that could be said about the very pleasant peculiarities of living in that country, about the exhilaration and the occasional difficulties of travel in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204346, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n110\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nThe Association's clinic at 117 Wanchai Road is a small-scale operation which dispenses Western medical treatment on the school premises every Sunday to 120-150 patients. No charge is made, drugs and injections being completely free. The Association now has in view a much larger project in the field of medicine, namely a HK$3,000,000 hospital to be constructed, it is hoped, at the end of Cheung Sha Wan Road (off Castle Peak Road), Kowloon. Half a million dollars has already been pledged; a government subsidy of another half a million dollars, plus a free grant of the necessary land, is under negotiation; and, once plans have been firmed up, the Association expects little difficulty in raising the remaining million and a half dollars from Buddhist laymen. It is to be a public hospital of 150 beds, of which 30 will be entirely free, with priority for refugees. There will also be an out-patient department for treatment of the poor families of this heavily industrialized area. The Medical and Health Department of the Hong Kong Government will control the standards in the same way as for other private hospitals, but the actual management will be the responsibility of the Buddhist Association. The plan is to incorporate a nursing school, where graduates of the various Buddhist primary and secondary schools can be placed for nurses' training. The medical staff will be recruited from among locally qualified physicians, e.g., graduates of the Hong Kong University Medical School. The physicians now acting as advisers on this project are prominent in the profession in Hong Kong: Drs. F. I. Tseung, Renald Ching, Peter Fok, T. Y. Li, David Wong, and Sir S. N. Chau. Three of them are Buddhists.\n\n2. HONG KONG AND MACAU REGIONAL CENTRE OF THE WORLD FELLOWSHIP OF BUDDHISTS 世界佛教聯誼會港澳分會\n\nThis acts as the \"foreign relations\" arm of the Hong Kong Buddhist Association (with which it has an interlocking directorate rather than a formal connection). It was established in June 1951 to discharge four specific functions:\n\n(1) to organize delegations to represent Hong Kong and Macau at future World Buddhist Fellowship Conferences (the first Conference had been held in Ceylon, June 1950)\n\n(2) to assist and entertain foreign Buddhists visiting Hong Kong and Macau\n\n(3) to answer inquiries from abroad about Buddhist activities in Hong Kong and Macau\n\nMacau has one large Buddhist monastery, the Po Chai Chi, which is classified as Ch'an and has about 20 monks (this is a monastery often visited by tourists, since the first commercial treaty between China and the United States was signed there in 1844). There are also a number of hermitages (perhaps a dozen), most of which are said to be chai tong. One, however, the Kung Tak Lam, serves as a study centre, where lectures are given by well-known dharma masters. The Macau Po Kok Buddhist Association, founded in 1949, also fosters Buddhist studies. At least one primary school is operated by a Buddhist nun with the support of devout laymen.\n\nBuddhism does not seem as vigorous in Macau as it is in Hong Kong, the most obvious reasons being its small size, limited wealth, and extreme exposure to political pressure. Furthermore, the influence of the Catholic Church has been paramount there for four hundred years. This has necessarily reduced the potential strength of the lay Buddhist movement.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 204503, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "120\n\nCOLINA LUPTON\n\nargued that any reform in the constitution, especially one which permitted elections, would immediately be exploited by the Communist regime in China, seizing the opportunity to infiltrate its own supporters into positions of power and using political meetings to stir up trouble. While it is true that the economy has hitherto flourished because of Hong Kong's exceptionally stable conditions, the government should remember, as Mr. Luard points out, that it has an unequalled opportunity for disseminating the ideals of western culture, of which democracy is one, on the very shores of China. Too much should not be sacrificed to material prosperity. Yet despite all the criticisms which could be made, the fact remains, as Mr. Luard says, that \"it has proved a more fertile and more stable meeting ground of East and West than almost any other city of the world\". And whatever its political driving force, it is one of the finest examples existing of the speedy and successful development of a non-Marxist economy, which alone should provide some food for thought for the pragmatic Chinese over the border.\n\nAs to the future, Mr. Luard predicts that Britain and China will almost inevitably find themselves in conflict in both South East Asia and Hong Kong, since the new China expects to expand to the borders reached in its historic periods of greatness. Not everyone agrees that China's plans stretch only thus far; many close observers of the scene might think that China has territorial designs on South East Asia at the least—an area which in the past she has held in fee but not actually settled (if the Overseas Chinese are excluded). And today China is trying to extend her influence as far afield as Africa and Latin America. Nor is it Britain's interests only which are affected; not only the whole of the west, but also the neutrals have an interest in preserving the status quo in these areas. In this context particularly to speak of British interests in isolation from the rest of the world gives the book a false emphasis.\n\nBut when Mr. Luard deals with the future of British policy—as he does in a highly practical manner—this is avoided, partly because he discusses subjects which are specifically British concerns, trade and economic relations with Communist China and the future of Hong Kong, and partly because he conceives British policy as it truly should be in these days of her declining power—as a matter for giving advice and bringing influence to bear.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204582, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "52\n\nMA MENG\n\nin many parts of China since 1913. It is still used as a teaching aid notably in Taiwan and in some schools in Hong Kong. However, on the Chinese mainland, it has been replaced since 1957 by a new system of romanization.\n\nThe May 4th Movement of 1919 gave a tremendous impetus to language reform in China, widening not only its scope but also its application. Previously the concern of only a handful of pioneers, it now became a spontaneous mass movement of the intellectuals, particularly the students. The importance of radical language reform gained general recognition, and demands for a literary revolution could be heard all over the country. From this wide-spread awakening sprang all subsequent efforts to reform the Chinese language.\n\nIn particular, the May 4th Movement gave rise to the two chief currents of subsequent language reform: the New Literature movement in which the classical language was replaced by the vernacular, or pai-hua; and the movement to create a common spoken language based on the Peking dialect. The New Literature movement led to changes in terminology, syntax and style which culminated in a new plan to romanize the language. Both movements showed deep traces of Western influence, which became more and more apparent in subsequent language reforms.\n\nRecent language reform has continued to follow its historical course, developing with particular vigour after the Second World War. As a result, some linguistic innovations have been practised more widely than before. These innovations, though the result of long-standing demands for linguistic reform, gained unprecedented force from political and social changes. Great differences in phraseology, syntax and style could be found in almost all popular writings. No reader can miss these differences when he compares a current journal with one, say, twenty years old. Great differences also appear in the spoken language as more and more Chinese speak Mandarin since the war, not only on the Mainland, but also in Taiwan, Hong Kong and within the overseas Chinese communities of South-east Asia.\n\nSince Chinese language reform still continues, it is difficult at this stage to make a final appraisal of the linguistic changes that have taken place since 1919. Hence I merely wish to present a brief summary of the most important changes that have occurred recently.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204600, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "70\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nThe life of a young attaché is described by Freeman-Mitford in all its facets; fun and boredom together. By mid-June the temperature in the Legation was between 95° and 107° Fahrenheit, so the majority of its members moved out to the Western Hills and took up residence in part of the Pi-Yün Ssu, the Temple of the Azure Clouds, the most beautiful of all the temples in the Western Hills. But even then he had to ride to the Legation (a distance of about 12 miles) from time to time to 'copy despatches'. Even while in the Western Hills it was not all sightseeing, as his teacher went with him, and Mitford had to press on with his Chinese studies. However, he contrived to ride out to the Great Wall and to visit the Ming Tombs and the Summer Palace (the I-Ho Yüan) among other places. Not all was heat and perspiration. By the end of October he was writing: \"Outside, the rain is falling fitfully and the wind blowing a hurricane; it moans and howls dismally through the courts and cranky buildings of the Legation, piercing its way into all sorts of odd nooks, and routing out old bells that jangle in a harsh and discordant way from the quaint eaves, as if they were angry at being disturbed in their dusty dens. Doors are creaking and timbers groaning in every direction, and the windows threaten to burst in, but the stout Corean paper holds good, though it gets stretched and flaps unpleasantly like loose sails in a calm, and on the whole I confess I prefer glass. Every now and then, as the storm abates for a while, I hear the tap, tap, tap, of the watchman's bamboo as he goes his rounds.\n\nIn short, we are working gradually into winter.\"13\n\nThe rest of his letters are principally concerned with snow and ice, and on 25th November he mentions that they are sending off the mail that day \"in the hopes that it will yet be able to leave Tientsin for Shanghai before we are finally shut out by the frost from all communication with the outer world.\" However, in winter there were compensations. A skating rink was fixed up inside the Legation; food was more enjoyable because there was now plenty of game—hares, pheasants, wild duck, and venison; and also by now pears and grapes were available. In February\n\n13 Ibid., 163-4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204631, "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n99\n\nlocal parties who support the venture which is designed to assist the public by providing a safe, regular and reliable means of conveying cargo and passengers between the island and, in this case, Hong Kong. An agreed percentage of the profits is supposed to be contributed towards charitable and welfare purposes at need. Four junks appear on the list of donors to the Fong Pin hospital, and one of these, together with a fifth, appears on the list for the repair of the Tin Hau Temple a year later, in 1879. They have business names such as Tung On “universal peace”, Kung Cheong “public prosperity”, Yee Tai On “righteous peace”, Kung Yik “public welfare” and On Shun “peaceful tranquility”, all propitious names for sea and river travel. It is likely that the two which made donations to the repair of the temple were kaifong junks since their generous contributions placed their names almost at the head of the list.\n\nScrutiny of the tablets and other sources of information mentioned in this brief account of Cheung Chau just before the British lease therefore leaves a vivid impression of a lively, bustling community, largely dependent upon its own leaders and local resources for initiating works of communal benefit, but making use of its links with the outside world, both by business and kinship, to help achieve its ends. So far as I know, there are no studies of the internal structure of a community of similar size and location in the same period available in any western language and it is therefore difficult for me to say whether Cheung Chau is similar or dissimilar to the general pattern of small coastal towns in South China. It does, however, present a basic pattern of association and an enforced reliance on self-help which is typically Chinese, in which respects the community has altered little to this day.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204639, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "107\n\nEUROPEAN NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\nA. D. BLUE *\n\nThe Yangtse is the greatest river in China, and has been of much greater importance in the history of the world than the Amazon and the Mississippi, which are superior in length and volume. In this respect it ranks with the Nile and the Euphrates, but unlike them it has always had a much greater population living along its banks. The Chinese know the Yangtse as the Long, or Great, River. Marco Polo may not have been the first European to see the Yangtse, but he was certainly the first to appreciate its importance, and to bring it to the notice of the Western world.\n\nOf the Yangtse in general Marco Polo said \"the multitude of vessels that invest this great river is so great that no one who should read or hear would believe it. The quantity of merchandise carried up and down is past all belief. In fact it is so big, that it seems to be a sea rather than a river\". There is no doubt but at that time, the second half of the 13th century, the Yangtse carried a greater volume of traffic than any other river in the world. Marco Polo was correct in thinking that no one would believe his reports on the Yangtse, or on China, and it was left to later generations to appreciate the accuracy of his observations.\n\nIt was the missions to China of Lord Macartney and Lord Amherst in 1793 and 1816 respectively, that made Europeans realise the importance of the Yangtse. Then in 1842, during the First China War, a British naval force entered the Yangtse, and was on the point of attacking Nanking (182 miles from the mouth) when the Chinese sued for peace. Sixteen years later, after the Second China War, one of the clauses of the Treaty of Tientsin\n\n* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtse in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. During and after the War he was in the Colonial Service in West Africa, but in 1958 he returned to service with the China Navigation Company, and this has enabled him to revisit a number of the former Treaty Ports.\n\n1 Chinese records mention the visit of a 'Roman merchant' to Nanking about 230 A.D. See G. F. Hudson, Europe and China (London, 1931), p. 90.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204672, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n137\n\nIt is therefore a delight to read such a work as Mr. Cranmer-Byng's An Embassy to China. Produced by an historian, and one moreover who combines integrity with an uncommon knowledge of the East, this book is indispensable to an understanding today of the problems that East and West have inherited in their dealings with one another.\n\nThe main body of the book consists of the Journal kept by Lord Macartney on his embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung in 1793. He describes his journey to Peking, beyond the Great Wall to Jehol, and back by the Grand Canal and by river to Canton. There follow a series of \"observations\", compiled by Macartney from his own shrewd judgment and from data supplied by members of his entourage, on subjects such as the Manners, Religion, Government, Population, Arts and Sciences, Language etc. of China under the Ch'ing Dynasty.\n\nThe first 58 pages of the book contain an Introduction by the editor, in which he comments on early Anglo-Chinese relations, paints a brief biographical picture of Lord Macartney, and discusses the embassy, the manner of its reception, and its results. The final pages of the Introduction lead up to the Journal itself, its style, content and the method used by the diarist in compiling such a detailed account of his mission - an account written by a professional diplomat, skilled at seeing behind the facade, patient in negotiation, lucid in recollection and description.\n\nLooking back today from our vantage point in time nearly two hundred years later, it is easy to see that Macartney was given an impossible task. Remote in her geographical isolation and sublimely ignorant of world affairs, China had sealed herself for centuries in a false cocoon of imagined cultural superiority. The eighteenth century was both too late and too early for any European power to overcome the supreme complacency of the Imperial Court and Government. From the mid-sixteen hundreds onwards, Western nations, notably the Dutch, the Russians and the Portuguese had sent embassies to China, but all had failed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204852, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "130\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\ntoday. This information negates the subsequent statement \"The only specifically recorded Lamqua portrait in an American collection is that of Dr. Peter Parker\n\n+\n\n8\n\nA bibliography omitting nearly 50% of the last published bibliography will startle any serious scholar. It may be possible to write about Chinnery without consulting E. W. Bovil's articles in Notes and Queries and about the Opium War without using Maurice Collis' Foreign Mud with its Chinnery illustrations, but it is not recommended practice. W. C. Hunter, partner in Russell & Co., is quoted in the text, but both of his books The Fan-Kwae in Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 and Bits of Old China with its chapter on Chinnery, are omitted from the list. Any modern researcher will want to check the Jardine-Matheson papers in Cambridge, England. They are not mentioned here. There is a list of plates, but no general index.\n\nIn the China section of photographs, there are 57 oils, water-colors, and drawings captioned as by Chinnery, also 10 so-called \"School of Chinnery\", 28 port scenes, all called \"School\", and 2 miscellaneous. Authentication of any artist's work, particularly if unsigned, is a matter of opinion. When in doubt, it is far sounder to \"attribute\" and the best museums follow this custom. In recent months, a world expert on Chinnery and your reviewer considered together these 57 pictures and questioned or denied 21 of them, a substantial percentage.\n\n+ •\n\nIn 1953 the statement was made, and remains unchallenged, it is obvious that the Hong Kong Chinnery is the only portrait of Howqua that may be said to have been painted in a truly accomplished Western manner such as one would expect from the brush of Chinnery. The other portraits of Howqua, in spite of their long-standing attribution to Chinnery, almost without exception speak of Western art with a strong Cantonese accent\". There is no photograph of the Chinnery portrait of Howqua in Hong Kong in this book a significant omission. However, there are three portraits of Howqua11- all obviously by Chinese\n\n* Page 39.\n\n9 Arts Council Catalogue 1957.\n\n10 Albert Ten Eyck Gardner-The Art Quarterly, Winter 1953\n\n11 Plate 39 top and bottom, Plate 40 top.\n\n10", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204855, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n133\n\nThe University of Hong Kong has from the beginning been handicapped by mixed aims and by financial difficulties. Sir Frederick Lugard, Governor of Hong Kong from 1907 to 1912 and the first Chancellor of the University, according to Professor Harrison \"advocated a university for Hong Kong on various grounds: it would help to serve the higher educational needs of an awakening China; it would be a lighthouse of learning, a symbol of the Western cultural tradition in the Far East and a meeting-place for Chinese and Western cultures; it would help to maintain British prestige in Eastern Asia; and, through its dissemination of modern knowledge and of the English language, it would indirectly benefit British business.\" The primary aim for many years \"was not so much a university of and for Hong Kong itself, as a university in Hong Kong for China.” (p. xiii)\n\nExcept in the field of medicine, the University of Hong Kong was not able, prior to the late 1940's, to provide a level of instruction that would draw students from China, where a number of universities of at least as high quality were developing at the same time. A large proportion of this University's students therefore have come from Hong Kong itself; and it would appear that as many students were drawn from Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as from China. Since World War II, particularly since 1949, thanks to the phenomenal economic and cultural growth of Hong Kong and to the active support of both the British and the Hong Kong governments, the University has developed rapidly, both in size and in quality. Today it stands among the recognized universities of Asia and of the British Commonwealth, and its sponsors and staff are determined to achieve an even higher level of educational and scholarly leadership. The colony is populous and rich enough now to justify and to support a great university.\n\nThe historical narrative is found principally in chapters III (The Beginnings, by George B. Endacott), V (The Years of Growth, by Brian Harrison), VI (The Test of War, by Sir Lindsay Ride), and VII (A New Beginning, by Francis E. Stock). Most of the other chapters are also essentially historical and supply details which elaborate or supplement the basic narrative, although there is some unnecessary duplication. One is impressed with the relative indifference of the colony toward the University during", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204860, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "138\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nbetween man and woman. True, there are many Chinese poems by men professing affection for other men in terms which would bring serious embarrassment if not public prosecution to an English poet; true also that in old China, where marriages were arranged by the parents, a man's need for sympathy, understanding, and affection often found their answer in another man\n\n15\n\nOne of the things that often lead to a misunderstanding of Chinese poetry is the insistence, to the point of excess, on the associative power of Chinese characters. One often hears that the genius of China is in its written language, in the curves and squares and dashes of its mystic signs. However, to the Chinese there is much less mysticism attached to their ideograms. They are taken for granted. No doubt association is important in Chinese poetry but it is allusion which provides the chief difficulty to readers, foreign and native alike. It is often impossible for people who have no classical Chinese background to go beyond the first line of some Chinese poems.\n\nPerhaps Mr. Liu's chief contribution to an understanding of this art is his application of Western methods to the criticism of Chinese poetry and his attempt at a synthesis between the traditional Chinese views of poetry and the verbal analytical approach of the West. This is contained in Part III of the book which begins with a criticism of the four schools of critics, namely, The Moralists, the Individualists, the Technicians and the Intuitionalists, and continues with a description of how these views might be reconciled. Imagery, symbolism, allusion, antithesis and other poetical devices are then described, contrasting Western and Chinese uses of them.\n\nThere will always be two types of readers: the man in the street and the academician. To whichever category one may belong, to those who are looking for something peculiarly Chinese or to those who look upon poetry as an exploration of different worlds (world as \"emotion and scene\")—there will be much to enjoy in Mr. Liu's well-conceived volume The Art of Chinese Poetry.\n\nT. C. LAI.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204900, "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": 8, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "20th January \n\n9th March \n\n23rd March \n\n27th April \n\n9/10th May \n\n25th May \n\n22nd June \n\n2nd September \n\n27th October \n\nMr. J. L. Cranmer-Byng, M.C., M.A. \n\n\"The Macartney Embassy Through Chinese Eyes\". \n\nProfessor J. K. Fairbank \n\n\"The Western Response to China”, \n\nAnnual General Meeting \n\nProfessor F. S. Drake, O.B.E., B.A., B.D., \n\n\"The Jewish Colony at Kaifeng and its Relation to other Monotheistic Faiths in China”. \n\nSymposium on Social Organization of Villages in the New Territories, including visits to villages in the New Territories. \n\nMr. Michael Lau, B.A., PID.ED.(H.K.), M.A.(HARV.) \"The Fung Ping Shan Museum”. \n\nDr. Marjorie Topley, B.SC.(ECON.), PH.D. \"Some of China's Little Known Religious Sects, and Their Migration Overseas”. \n\nMr. Tom Harrisson, D.S.O., O.B.E., \n\n\"Living Cultures in the Niah Context of Prehistory\". \n\nPeter Scott, Esq., C.B.E., D.S.C. \n\n\"The Conservation of the World's Wild Life and Wilderness”. \n\n16th November Professor Chao Mei-pa, B.A. \n\n\"A Brief Sketch of Chinese Music\", with instrumental illustrations by Dr. C. K. Wong and folksongs by Barbara Fei, Winnie Wei and Lee Bing. \n\nOf particular interest was the enthusiasm and the spirit of inquiry that were exemplified in the Symposium held on 9th and 10th May on the Social Organization of Villages in the New Territories which was organized and conducted by Dr. Marjorie Topley and Mr. R. E. Lawry with the active participation of two anthropologists from the University of London and District Officers of the New Territories, whose work had brought them", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204943, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "44\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\n(No. 3.)\n\nCANTON, 29TH JUNE, 1855.\n\nDEAR SIR,\n\nIn respect to the question of the Population of China, I have nothing new of any general application to the subject. It would be a good service to the statistics of the race, for Hienfung to make out a general census, as his grandfather did, now forty-three years after the last.\n\nThe visits made to villages and towns in this prefecture since the breaking out of disturbances last June, have strengthened rather than diminished one's faith in the accuracy of the census. Large towns, like Shihlung, Kiúkiáng, Kinchuh, Fuhshán, Sintsiun, and others, have been found to contain even larger numbers than the representations of the Chinese had led one to believe. Fuhshán occupies even more ground than Canton, rather than less; and several observers agreed in estimating the portion which was burned last autumn as large as the entire western suburbs of Canton. Sintsiun is estimated at Half a Million, though data are wanted to confirm this figure. You will see a list of villages enumerated by Mr. Bonney in the Anglo-Chinese Calendars for 1852 and 1853, all of which were situated within a radius of two miles of Whampoa, or on Fa-té island, west of Macao passage. Few spots in the world maintain a denser population than the delta of Pearl River, nearly all of which is included in the prefecture of Kwangshan, which is about one-ninth of the whole province. Its density of population doubtless is greater than any other equal area in the whole province; for if the whole contained as many, the entire amount could hardly be less than thirty millions instead of nineteen millions as now reckoned.\n\nThe Registrar General must needs be content with an approximate estimate, from the nature of the case, our inability to make minute personal examination, and the lapse of time since the last general census. Hue, I see, estimates the combined population of Wúcháng, Hányáng, and Hánkau in Húpeh, at the high figure of Eight Millions, if I remember aright, for I have not the book to refer to; this is more than I have seen any one else reckon it. He", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204997, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "96\n\nCOLINA LUPTON\n\nhalves, one of which today is really not of great relevance. The watershed provided by the war, and the change in Hong Kong's fortunes as a result of the establishment of a strong and Communist Government in China, the independence of most other former colonial territories in Asia and the incipient industrialization of all of them put post-1949 Hong Kong into a totally different category from the quiet backwater which it occupied before.\n\nSo much has changed that the early history of the Colony sheds little light on its development today, and it remains only of academic significance, particularly in connection with the expansion of Western interests in China. An account of Hong Kong's growth in the last fifteen years, however, does go some way towards explaining what is a unique political and economic phenomenon and one which is too much overlooked by the outside world. It is the chapters which deal with the post-war years and look to the future which are the most thought-provoking in the book, for they discuss questions and problems to which there are many answers and varying solutions. These speculations are more stimulating than the carefully documented facts about, for example, the evolution of Hong Kong's Sanitary Board; and the summing up of how today's Government actually functions has more relevance than the picturesque disputes between early officials.\n\nThe success of the present Administration — “government by discussion\", Mr. Endacott calls it — is certainly peculiar and deserves examination. In this most uncolonial age, Hong Kong's Colonial Government has grown and prospered. Of the Legislative Council, Executive Council and Urban Council, only the last named has any elected members, and the number of electors is minute compared to the population (and, it may be added, a very small percentage of those entitled to vote actually do so). Mr. Endacott adduces a good deal of evidence that public opinion, while having little constitutional voice, is very carefully ascertained and considered before a new policy is embarked upon, and given the lack of unrest here, it must be conceded that Government seldom if ever inflicts a truly unpopular policy on the people. The press, and the various sections of the populace which have an articulate voice are given considerable attention, and the members of the Urban Council are apt to bring well into the\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205003, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "102\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nand enlarged opportunity. Yet this volume also acknowledges beginnings that antedate World War II. It is an index to historical studies in periodicals in the Fung Ping Shan Library of the University, founded by generous gifts to the University from the Fung family before World War II. This library is representative of the kinds of resources of long standing in the community which also have made their contribution to the mature development of the study of Chinese history and culture that we can now observe.\n\nThe present volume is a research tool of value to sinologues and historians everywhere, but it is of particular interest to persons already in Hong Kong or who are planning to work in Hong Kong since it provides a systematic listing of the academic periodical resources readily available in public collections in the Colony. Some few items of great interest in private collections also have been included, but these too probably would be accessible to scholars. At the time of compilation of this volume, one notes with some surprise, that more or less complete files of almost all of the major sinological journals published in Chinese, whether in original form or in microfilm, were available to Mr. Yu and his assistants in Hong Kong.\n\nIn addition, the Hong Kong resources include a number of items that are rare if not unique.\n\nThis index volume consists principally of an index by names of authors, of all articles on or relevant to Chinese historical studies, that appeared in Chinese periodical publications between 1902 and 1962, so far as these publications were available in Hong Kong by 1963. It includes 10,325 articles by 3,392 authors in 355 different periodicals. This is by no means the total content of those periodicals; only articles of some specific academic import were included. The usefulness of the index is greatly increased by the inclusion of a supplementary listing of articles by the major subject area indicated by their titles. Thus any article can be located either by author or by subject. Another supplementary index cross-lists all articles included in the main index under the name of the periodical in question. There are also lists of pen names of authors and of Chinese names used by Western authors of articles that appeared in Chinese most useful sources of difficult-to-locate information. The final \"Table of Errata\" is remarkably brief, indicating in this case the great", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205098, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "49\n\nSINO-WESTERN CONTACTS UNDER THE\n\nMONGOL EMPIRE*\n\nHerbert FRANKE\n\nContacts between Chinese civilization and that of the West, whatever we take \"West\" to mean in this context, have a long and tortuous history which, for some periods, is still far from sufficiently studied. All historians, however, even the most Europe-centered ones, do agree that these contacts reached a pre-modern, all-time high under the Mongol empires in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and even the most superficial or condensed textbooks of world history have a few words to say about East-West relations following the conquests and campaigns of Chingis Khan. In such books, we frequently encounter the statement that this period facilitated intercourse and exchange because of the so-called Pax Mongolica, \"Mongol Peace\", when the Mongol domination of East and Central and even great parts of West Asia crystallized into an empire stretching from the Yellow Sea to Southern Russia. Like so many historical tags, this is, however, a statement that loses much of its seemingly uncontrovertible truth when one considers the historical facts. If it is really the task of the historian to reconsider from time to time historical writings and historical dicta, and to debunk history if necessary, then this notion of Pax Mongolica requires qualification.\n\nA historian of China will therefore perhaps ask if cultural contacts and interchange between China and the non-China West were really more frequent and easy under the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than under the Six Dynasties and the T'ang when no Eurasian universal empire like that of the Mongols existed. We know that a great number of travellers, missionaries, and merchants from the Western Regions came to China between the late second and the ninth centuries A.D., and that many non-Chinese cultural elements penetrated East, among them the world religion of Buddhism that became such an important part of Chinese culture. Most of the early Buddhist\n\nText of the Hume Memorial Lecture delivered at Yale University, February 5th, 1965. The author is Director of the Institute for East Asian Cultural and Linguistics Sciences, University of Munich.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 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": 205101, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "52\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nKhan of the Golden Horde (r. 1313-1340) is mentioned together with a very few notes on some nations which belonged to the Golden Horde, the Cherkess, the Alans and Ossetes, the Qipchaq Turks, the Russians (Wo-lo-ssu, from the Mongol Oros) and the Bulgars (Chinese Pu-li-a-êrh). Under the Qipchaq entry we find some data mentioning Russia and the Russians, such as Batus' conquest of Yeh-lieh-tsan which is the Chinese name for the ancient Russian town of Ryazan (1237), adorned with an Altaic prothetic vowel (like Oros from Ros, Rus). And in 1253 the Chinese annals record that a Mongol dignitary was dispatched to register the households of the Russians for taxation purposes. This was under the Great Khan Mongke (r. 1251-1259) under whom there was still a certain unity of command over the vast territories of the Mongol empire. But in later years the cohesion among the ulus was reduced more and more, and the Chinese official sources have little if anything to say of the West.\n\nThe multi-national auxiliaries of the Mongols included some Russians. These were mostly slaves, or prisoners of war, and repeatedly gifts to the Mongol rulers in China of Russian slaves are mentioned. In 1330 even a Russian guards regiment was established in Peking. There were other guards regiments in addition to the Mongol and Chinese soldiers at that time, consisting of Alans (i.e., Ossetes), Tanguts, Jurchen, Koreans, Qipchaq, and \"Western Regions People\", probably from Turkestan. And a Mohammedan (Hui-hui) artillery corps was equally a part of the Mongol armed forces. The Russians who served in the Peking guards regiment were given land north of Peking and settled there as military colonists. Their total number must have been something like 10,000 because the Yuan-shih mentions that figure in 1330. Other Russian troops were, together with Ossetes, dispatched to the Manchurian and Korean borders (Liao-yang Province), and to places in Northern China. As late as 1339 the Chancellor Bayan was appointed a commander of these Russian soldiers but after that date no more is heard of them. We do not know what became of these Europeans who had been a definitely Western element in the multi-national metropolis of Yüan China.\n\nIf official Chinese historiography as reflected in the dynastic annals did not display any great interest in the West, there are at least other fields where we find traces of broader world conception stimulated by a growing consciousness that the world did stretch", "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": 205112, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n63\n\ntestify to their Oriental origin, such as the lute (from Arabic al-lūt, \"wood”), and even in our century we have witnessed the spread of Negro jazz over the whole world. A similar development took place in China, and there are many passages in Yüan literature where foreign music and musicians are mentioned.15 In this connection we should perhaps save from oblivion the name of one of these musicians from the Near East. We find her name in the Ch'ing-lou chi “Records from the Green Bowers\", an anonymous work dated 1364 which gives a list of the most popular courtesans under the Yüan, together with a description of their accomplishments. Among these ladies of easy virtue we find one solitary girl from the Western Regions mentioned among her many Chinese professional sisters. She was a Mohammedan girl by the name of Miliha (or Maliha) praised for her sweet and clear voice and her skill in singing. She was, alas, not beautiful, but we are told that she was a superb theatrical performer. The author of the book once made her acquaintance and was duly impressed by her acting.16\n\nThere must have been many influences from Near Eastern folklore that reached China under the Yüan. I shall quote here only two examples. A well-known Near Eastern folk-tale motif, that of the honest loser, the greedy finder and the Solomonic judge, can be traced both in European medieval and Chinese literature. It reached Europe via Spain through the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi of Toledo (thirteenth century A.D.), a work which contains many Arab stories and anecdotes that subsequently became immensely popular in the West. Boccaccio has not a few stories from the Disciplina Clericalis in his Decamerone and also at least one motif in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, that of the three caskets, comes from that source. The story of the loser, the finder and the judge can be found in European literature in many versions, the classical German version being J. P. Hebel's \"Der kluge Richter\". In China we find this story in a text dated 1360. Here the story is set in a typical Chinese environment and being given some additional touches typical of China. The most interesting feature is, however, that the Chinese text does not present the anecdote as a mere story but as a historical event. The clever judge to whom the final solution of the case is entrusted was a perfectly real person, a circuit prefect from Kiangsi Province. This shows the Chinese tendency to attach literary clichés and even,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205118, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n69\n\ncome to light. The Berlin State Library preserves several scrap-books compiled by Ottoman Turks where miniatures cut out from manuscripts are pasted in the album in much the same way as one collects stamps. This is surely a barbaric procedure, but many valuable specimens of early Persian and Turkish miniature painting have been preserved in this way. One of these so-called Saray Albums contains also a cutting from a Chinese painting — a fragment showing the Taoist saint Ha-ma with his toad, a well-known figure in Taoist hagiography. This must then come from a Yüan painting that somehow found its way to Persia.25\n\nI am sure that a closer study of the old MSS in Persian libraries would furnish still more evidence of Mongol and Chinese influences during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.\n\nWe have seen when discussing the presence of non-Chinese scientists in China that they were chiefly appreciated as technicians, practitioners and surgeons, and that Chinese medical theory was hardly influenced by Near Eastern medical thought. On the other hand, Chinese medicine became known in Persia under the Mongols. The famous Persian author and statesman, Rashid ad-Din was responsible for compiling a medical encyclopedia, Tangsuq-namāh-i Ilkhân dar funūni-ïulūm-i Khitai, \"Treasures of the Ilkhan on the Sciences of Cathay\", that is, China. This book was written in or about A.D. 1313. The illustrations in this work are evidently taken from some Chinese source. No similar translation of a Near Eastern work into Chinese seems to have survived, which shows how much cultural interchange in some fields was a one-way traffic under the Mongols.26\n\nPersia presents, under the Mongols, a unique feature. Rashid ad-Din was the author of another work, the Jami' at-tawārīkh or \"Collection of Histories\". This book is the first world history which deserves that name. It contains not only a history of the Mongols but equally a history of the Europeans (the Franks), of the Indians and of the Chinese. The Chinese part of the Jami' at-tawarikh has not yet been properly edited (there are several manuscripts but no printed edition), and a thorough investigation of this text is needed. Preliminary studies have shown that Rashid ad-Din had Chinese informants and that his material was, in all probability, taken from a Chinese Buddhist chronicle. We may therefore say that, in the Mongol period, Persia was the only", "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": 205122, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "73\n\nTHE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM IN MODERN CHINA\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\n(This article is the preliminary version of a chapter in a forthcoming book, The Buddhist Revival in China. It deals with most aspects of its topic except for certain activities of T'ai-hsu, who is the subject of a separate chapter. Some readers may have personal knowledge of the events described and be in a position to add or correct. The author hopes that they will communicate with him at the East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, so that the chapter in its final form may be as complete and accurate as possible.)\n\nThe Ch'ing government frowned on its people having contact with foreigners almost as much as does the government in Peking today. From 1911 to 1950, however, there was a forty-year interlude during which foreigners could travel freely in China and the Chinese found it relatively easy to go abroad. This was also the period when foreign ideas and ways of doing things enjoyed the highest esteem, when the impact of the West was at its zenith. The Buddhist monastic establishment could not remain unaffected, although, being \"outside the secular world,” it was affected somewhat less than other segments of Chinese society.\n\nSometimes the foreign impact on Buddhism was circuitous--such as, for example, the Western military victories, which led to the call for modern secular schools, which led to the confiscation of monasteries, which led to the establishment of Buddhist associations, seminaries, and social action by the sangha. But in other ways foreign impact was direct. Chinese Buddhists entered into contact with foreigners for a variety of reasons and purposes.\n\nContact with Japan\n\nFrom the sixth through the seventeenth century imports of Chinese Buddhism had been entering Japan. In the late nineteenth the process was reversed. Japanese Buddhism began to be imported to China, partly because of the Japanese parishes that were springing up in the Treaty ports and partly because of the possibilities for the use of Buddhism as an instrument of foreign policy.\n\nCopyright 1966 by Holmes Welch.\n\nThe author is a Research Associate of the East Asian Research Center, Harvard University.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205124, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n75\n\nanti-Western anti-Christian united front among the people of the East. Visits were exchanged with Buddhists in Thailand, China, and India. In 1904 Dr. Inoue Entyu, after returning from a trip to India, proposed that the Japanese should establish a great Confucian-Buddhist university that would serve the whole Buddhist world and maintain branches in Korea, China, and Mongolia.\n\nOther possibilities for work in China were opened that very year. The Ch'ing government had been encouraging local officials to confiscate monastic property and use it for the establishment of modern schools. Chinese monks were looking desperately for a way to save their property. At this juncture a Japanese priest named Mizuno Baigyo advised them to start schools of their own in order to \"get the jump\" on the confiscators. He and other Japanese also suggested that protection might be obtained by applying to the headquarters of the Higashi Honganji sect in Japan; and indeed, the latter was pleased to accept the affiliation of some thirty-five monasteries in Chekiang province towards the end of 1904.5 It sent its representatives to protect them. A test case soon arose. Part of one Hangchow monastery was about to be turned into a technical school. On January 10, 1905, with a blaze of firecrackers, a large wooden plaque was installed over its front gate, reading: \"General place of worship of the Imperial Japanese Shinshu-Honganji sect.\"\n\nThis caused deep consternation among literati and officials throughout the province. The governor appealed, without success, to the Japanese Consul. The Japanese priests stood pat on their passports. Peking wrung its hands, but said that the Japanese would have to be respected. All that the local officials accomplished was the removal of the plaque; Japanese protection remained in force.\n\nThis was the signal for general resistance by the monasteries of neighboring provinces against the confiscation of their property. In Fukien and Kwangtung they began to place themselves under Japanese protection. Such immunity was the latter believed to confer that in Canton, on February 26, 1905, a school established on monastery land was completely destroyed by a group of infuriated Buddhists. The newspaper Shen-pao castigated the insolence of Chinese monks in accepting Japanese protection", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205192, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "142\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nIn matters of mutual understanding, as in every real dialogue, mutual respect is essential. In the search for self-understanding, whether for Europeans or Asians, a certain self-respect is primary also. That requires a degree of self-acceptance, the acceptance of one's own past history and present limitations. This would, it seems, qualify the demand for \"parity of esteem.\" (Cf. Joseph Levenson's bold thesis on modern Chinese response to the West and evaluation of Chinese tradition.) Although it is clear, as one gathers from this book, the time of Western arrogance and Asian \"colonial or semi-colonial mentality\" is past, it is not clear that the time of Western dominance is in fact over, at least for the immediate future. An Asian can certainly agree with Joseph Needham in his essay on \"The Dialogue between Asia and Europe\" when he warns the man of the West that \"before it is too late, let him take one at least of the essential steps towards self-knowledge, that is to say, knowledge of others. Let him study the words of their saints and sages as well as those of his own. Let him experience his own humanity in the image of theirs\" (p.289). This is, however, a moral demand. To be fair, it should be made equally of the man of the East. Comparatively little is suggested in this direction by this book, outside of Robert L. Slater's essay on \"Living Religions and World Community.\"\n\n\"Western science and technology, Eastern religion and ethics\" — this idea has been developed in the response to Western predominance and self-esteem on the part of many Asians. This is expressed in the 'i-yung formula of the Chinese: Chinese learning for substance, Western for function. It in fact constitutes a dominant pattern in the Glass Curtain itself. And one finds this pattern present also in the book, in a variety of ways. The Englishman who, in presenting his view on the uniqueness of Asia, idealizes the East and deprecates the West partly for its science and technology represents a curious inversion of the more typical Western arrogance. One wonders whether anyone who seems to be so lacking in sympathy for his own tradition is really capable of appreciating others'. Then, in another essay, the uniqueness of Europe is identified by a Malaysian Chinese to be science — the spirit of science, to be sure, but quite distinct from religion meaning the spirit of dogmatism. The highly autobiographical nature of this essay (the shortest of the twenty con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205426, "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n181\n\nappendices. The first, Appendix A, is on the Chinese calendar, with a table of the twenty-four fortnightly periods,\n\nThe only criticism of this is the third column giving the approximate date in the Chinese calendar. This presumes New Year to fall on 20th February, the last possible day, throwing forward everything on an average by a fortnight.\n\nAppendix C, furnishing a list of the names of Fireworks, Pigeons, Popular forms of entertainment, Melons, Crickets, and Chrysanthemums is most intriguing. Valuable varieties of pigeons are the \"Toad-eyed grey,\" \"Square-edged unicorn\", and \"Wild duck of the Great Dipper\". Poets have similarly exercised their ingenuity in finding epithets for the Flower of the Ninth Moon for they include \"Purple Tiger whiskers\", \"Concubine of the Hsiao and Tsiang Rivers,\" and \"Wild Goose settling on level sand.\"\n\nIn short, Tun Li-ch'en has left us a vivid picture of life as it must have been lived in the capital for centuries before the violent impact of the western world. It was to change soon after. Within twelve years the Imperial fishpond, Wang Hai Lou, had filled up and was a snipe marsh, whilst in another decade it was walled-in as an experimental agricultural establishment. Again, the emancipation of women through the abolition of foot binding, and their escape from the purdah of the mud-walled compound killed all those forms of entertainment which could only be enjoyed in the home. The famous Shadow play, which he describes as bringing tears to women's eyes, was virtually extinct thirty years later, smothered by the cinema.\n\nTun's study of the human side of the ancient capital is an admirable supplement to the work of two foreigners who spent the best part of their lives there, namely — Arlington and Lewisohn's In search of old Peking.\n\nHong Kong, 1966,\n\nN DU BREUIL\n\nAs noted in the President's Report earlier in this volume Madame du Breuil, former Peking resident and a member of our Council, died in 1966.\n\nPRELUDE TO HONGKONG, Austin Coates. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966, pp. xi, 232. 40/-.\n\nIn view of the recent events in Macao and Hong Kong this book has a certain topical relevance. It covers the period from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205578, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "SUN YAT-SEN AND CHINESE HISTORY \n\n115\n\nperiod. This produced for him an identity problem of sorts, and may explain the hiring of the Chinese tutor, but it also produced a rather cosmopolitan man. This familiarity with the real political world made Sun personally aware of China's relative position in the world, as a nation among nations. He was unencumbered by the traditional culturalism that inhibited a clearer-cut and timely appreciation of nationalism on the part of many of his peers. And Sun, as pragmatic revolutionary, early recognized the mobilizing efficacy of nationalism. His problem was that of finding the way of \"turning-on\" the Chinese people by means of it.\n\nYet the \"nationalism\" that Sun articulated is a difficult concept to pin down, as Lyon Sharmon's excellent analysis has shown.14 Min-ts'u, Sun's term for nationalism, means the people's clan. Prior to 1912 it had meant Chinese solidarity against the Manchus, but afterwards was re-interpreted to mean the unity of all races in China, including the Manchus, on an equal basis. Almost until the end of his life this concept of nationalism was interpreted in moderate terms. As late as 1923 it carried two connotations, or aspects. The first was the internal one of unity of races within China; the second, external, aspired for an equal place of respect for China among the nations of the world.\n\nHowever, in 1924 the San Min Chu I lectures muddied the issue considerably. Suddenly, there was evinced in Sun a bitterness against imperialism that was uncharacteristic of the man, but probably explainable in terms of accumulated disappointments at the lack of Western support and, at the same time, of increasing Russian influence. This sudden antipathy toward imperialism was contradictory, incidentally, to Sun's own erstwhile plans to solicit incredibly large amounts of foreign economic assistance for China. Unfortunately too, this final form of nationalism had again a strong racist connotation. Sun expressed in alarmist fashion the fear that the Chinese people, because their population was allegedly static at a time when the West's was increasing, would be absorbed by the racially alien foreigners. Sun made race then, and fear, a part of his nationalism. He also was at pains to demonstrate now how it was that China's nationalistic spirit had declined historically. This he laid directly to the Manchus whose superior techniques of denationalization allegedly robbed China of her \"precious jewel.\"15 This is not exactly persuasive, and one is left to wonder further at his concept of nationalism when he\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205651, "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": 193, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "188\n\nHOÀNG, Peter.\n\nTHE LIBRARY\n\nA notice of the Chinese calendar, and a concordance with the European calendar. 2nd ed. Zi-ka-wei near Chang-hai, Catholic Mission P., 1904.\n\nHOBSON, R. L.\n\nHandbook of the pottery and porcelain of the Far East in the Department of Oriental Antiquities and of Ethnography. [London, British Museum] 1937.\n\nHODGSON, Mrs. Willoughby\n\nHow to identify old Chinese porcelain. 4th ed., enl. London, Methuen, 1920.\n\nHong Kong et la côte chinoise, du Tonkin à Ning-po... Paris, Hachette, 1910.\n\nHONG KONG. University. Institute of Oriental Studies.\n\nChinese tomb pottery figures: catalogue of exhibition... 26th-28th September, 1953. Hong Kong, University Press, 1953. (Institute of Oriental Studies. Catalogue series, no. 1)\n\nHOSIE, Dorothea, Lady.\n\nTwo gentlemen of China: an intimate description of the private life of two patrician Chinese families... London, Seeley, Service, 1924.\n\nHSUAN Tsang (玄奘)\n\nSi-yu-ki: Buddhist records of the western world. Tr. from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629) by Samuel Beal. Popular ed. London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, [189-?] 2 vols. in 1\n\nHSUEH, Chün-tu\n\nA review article: the years of triumph. London, 1962. Reprinted from China quarterly, no. 11, 1962, pp.225-235. Presentation copy inscribed by the author in Chinese.\n\nHUANG, Raymond\n\nIntonation in idiomatic English, for Chinese students in south-east Asia; by Raymond Huang in collaboration with A. W. T. Green. Hong Kong, University Press, 1964- v.1 only.\n\nHUCKER, Charles O.\n\nChina: a critical bibliography. Tucson, University of Arizona P., 1962.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205709, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\nAs things turned out, Gibb did not return to Hong Kong, and Ng Choy was therefore appointed on a three-year term. This appointment was unfortunately interpreted by some members of the British community as an attempt to create an anti-English party feeling in Hong Kong.\n\nIn May 1880 when one of the magistrates went on leave, the Governor replaced him temporarily by Ng Choy who thus became the first Chinese to hold a senior appointment in the Hong Kong Government. This led to a question in the House of Commons as to why Ng Choy should combine a paid official post with an unofficial seat in the Legislative Council; but by the time these explanations were required the original holder of the post had returned to the Colony.\n\nThe attitude of the British community towards him and the Governor as a result of his appointment to the Legislative Council as well as this parliamentary question must have embarrassed Ng Choy very much. During this time, China having suffered repeated defeats from the hands of foreign powers, there was a movement in China to promote western technology and to modernize China, and any Chinese who had been trained or educated abroad would be welcome back to China. Thus when an invitation came from China for him to serve China, Ng Choy accepted it gladly. He left Hong Kong in 1882 before the expiry of the 3-year term in the Legislative Council, and later sent in his resignation from Tientsin.\n\nNg Choy became Secretary and Legal Adviser to Viceroy Li Hung-chang, one of the most important Chinese political figures of the time. Now known as Wu Ting-fang, he soon rose to become Chief Director of Railways and later Ambassador to the U.S.A. After the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911, he held important appointments respectively as Minister of Judicial Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Financial Affairs. In 1917, when China entered the First World War, he was for a short time nominated as Premier. In 1922 he became Governor of Kwangtung and died the same year in office, soon after General Chan Kwing-ming's revolt in Canton.*\n\n* In his The Chinese (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1909) p. 196, John Stuart Thomson praises Wu and styles him \"the Chesterfield of China in all the graces of speech and manners.\" Ed.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205783, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n83\n\nopened the Treaty Ports and a second British conflict with China had proved the superiority of Western arms, the Chinese court refused to reform. The Japanese were quicker to read the signs. Only Siam, unlike her weak neighbours in the tropical south, was able to adapt herself to the new world without war or its threat and without loss of sovereignty.\n\nWhy was this? Was it because Britain and France had agreed to the Thai kingdom being a buffer between their Indian and Indo-Chinese empires? Or was it that the King of Siam who received Sir John Bowring had more vision than most of his Asian contemporaries and was succeeded by an equally gifted son? Whatever the reasons, the Treaty of 1855 was a major factor in determining the future of the Thai kingdom. It provided for the opening of diplomatic relations with Britain and, as a natural consequence, with other western nations. It introduced extra-territorial rights to British subjects living in Siam and allowed them to own or rent property. In commerce the Treaty abolished the strangling system of monopolies owned by the King and 'farmed' to Chinese merchants - replacing it by a free market with low duties on imports and exports. The year after the conclusion of the British treaty the Americans and the French secured similar agreements and these in turn were hastily followed by treaties with various European nations. These treaties marked a turning-point in the modern history of Siam.\n\nIn the century and a half which followed Louis XIV's mission to Ayuthia in 1689 Siam had little or no contact with the West. In the mid-eighteenth century her main preoccupation was the constant war with the Burmese who finally sacked their ancient and splendid capital in 1767. By the time the new house of Chakri had established the capital at Bangkok in 1782 the British East India Company had consolidated its dominion over India. The tea trade with China was growing rapidly and ports of call on the eastern run were obvious advantages. Francis Light obtained Penang island for the Company from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786 for the annual payment of $6,000 and the vague understanding of British protection. Kedah was an acknowledged feudatory of Siam, but at that time King Rama I was far too busy with the building of Bangkok to concern himself with the incident and the British were not then interested in Siam. Raffles had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205791, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n91\n\nthe Throne and Buddhism are, today as much as in the nineteenth century, the foundation of society.\n\nIn the West we might think that life in a Buddhist monastery was poor training for kingship. Not so in Siam. Prince Mongkut came to know his people as no Palace-dwelling King could ever do. His colleagues in the monastery were peasants, artisans, sons of nobles and merchants. He walked the streets of Bangkok with his begging bowl and saw the homes of his people. Like other monks he travelled across the country from one Wat to another. His father, Rama II, only left the Palace once a year for the ceremonial presentation of robes to monks at the end of each rainy season and his brother maintained the same semi-divine remoteness.\n\nMongkut's interests were not limited to Buddhism whilst he was in the Order. His intelligence was singular. He had that rare quality in oriental princes — intellectual curiosity, an eagerness to inquire into things. Not far from Wat Bowaniwate there lived a Roman Catholic priest, no less than the able Frenchman, Bishop Pallegoix, from whom we learn a good deal about the Prince. The Bishop and the Abbot became friends and Mongkut invited Pallegoix to preach Christian sermons to his brother monks in the Wat. The sermons and discussions were impressive. Mongkut admired the Christian morals and achievements which the Bishop explained to his yellow-robed congregation, but the Abbot could make nothing of Christian doctrine. With immodest presumption he commented: \"What you teach people to do is admirable but what you teach them to believe is foolish.\"\n\nBishop Pallegoix learned Pali and a great deal about Buddhism from the royal Abbot and, in exchange, he taught Mongkut some Latin and French. This was the Prince's introduction to the thought of the Western world. He learned about Christianity and the customs of Europeans. He became interested in mathematics and science. Other Christians of a different sort had recently come to Bangkok. These were the American Presbyterian missionaries who brought with them the first printing press, a new kind of Christianity which, to Mongkut's astonishment, included married priests, for they brought their wives and, most precious of all, the English language. Their leader, the Rev. Dr. Beach Bradley, became Mongkut's English tutor. He found in the Abbot a most apt and diligent student who quite quickly acquired a good", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205792, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "92\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nknowledge of the language. English for Mongkut was the key to the new knowledge. What he had started with the French bishop he now continued more avidly with the American missionaries. Geography, mathematics and especially astronomy fascinated him and he found no inconsistency between Buddhism and science. He placed no obstacles in the way of the American Presbyterians who, like the Catholic Bishop, were invited to discuss religion and to preach their doctrine.\n\nHere then was an unusual Abbot of a Buddhist monastery in nineteenth century Siam; not that Buddhists are ever inimical to other faiths but Mongkut excelled in liberalism. As a devout and learned monk he had brought fresh inspiration and discipline to his religion. As a monk he had come to know his people and his country better than any of his royal predecessors. And because of his intellectual stamina he had acquired a greater knowledge of Western civilisation than any of his contemporaries.\n\nWhen Mongkut became King Rama IV in 1851 he had been a monk for twenty-seven years. The kingdom which he inherited was a feudal corner of Asia, an absolute monarchy in which the people were forbidden to look upon the face of the King. Slavery was common, polygamy normal. The economy was primitive, the population small, there were no roads and no schools. Except for a few missionaries and merchants there was practically no contact with the Western world, King Mongkut determined to change all this. Nobody urged him, there was no popular discontent, no demand for reform. He was his own most radical liberal.\n\nWithin a year of his accession decrees came from the Palace \"by Royal Command, reverberating like the roar of a lion\" which began the slow process of change. The people were invited to look at the King when he moved among them, not to shut their windows and run away. Citizens could send him petitions on any matter and he would investigate each complaint. He did not abolish slavery but he insisted on good treatment for slaves. Nothing was too detailed for him: he issued edicts on the safe construction of fire-places and ovens and the improvement of window fittings. To prevent disease he ordered that dead animals should not be thrown in the canals. He reformed the currency, replacing lumps of gold and silver with flat coins.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205799, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n99\n\nsources the bestness and most curiosity of the new breach-loading cannon invented by Sir William Armstrong I was eagerly desirous of obtaining one small gun for my own enjoyment or play to see the power and curiosity and usefulness etc. thereof.....\"6\n\nHe was too fond of women but he is said to have treated his wives well and to have loved all his enormous nursery of children. If his harem may be regarded as a mark of eastern backwardness in a changing world his social and economic reforms vastly outweighed this defect. Mongkut was the pioneer in the modernisation of Siam. He had vision for the future of his country. Harry Parkes writing on the negotiations records this impression of the man:\n\n\"I was fortunate in securing and maintaining the friendship of the First King who listened to several of my propositions even against the will of his Ministers. He is really an enlightened man.... It is scarcely a matter of surprise that he should be capricious and at times not easily guided but he entered into the treaty well aware of its force and meaning and is determined, I believe, as far as in him lies, to execute faithfully all his engagements which are certainly of the most liberal nature.\"\n\nThe \"force and meaning\" of the Treaty was the opening of Siam to western commerce and ideas, social and economic reform and her continued independence. Balanced between competing empires, Siam accepted reform and western influence and by yielding, averted domination.\n\nThe circumstances of Mongkut's death were typical of the King. He predicted an eclipse of the sun in 1868 and made elaborate arrangements to observe the event. He chose a place far to the south, near the Malay States, and invited Sir Harry Ord, Governor of the Straits Settlements, his officials and their ladies to attend. Invitations had gone to Paris to send French scientists. A palace and residences for the distinguished visitors were built, and quantities of European food and wine were brought to this remote spot. The King with his suite of nobles and their wives sailed south for the occasion. Mongkut's prediction was right, and at the last moment the clouds cleared to reveal the eclipse. The foreign visitors were much impressed and Mongkut\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205838, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "138\n\nJ. T. COOPER\n\nare used mainly as street plans. No contours are shown. Four sheets cover Hong Kong Island and three cover Kowloon and New Kowloon. From these a series at 4\" to 1 mile has been produced, one sheet covering Hong Kong Island and another Kowloon and New Kowloon.\n\nAll the new maps and plans now being produced will, however, quickly lose their value unless they are kept up to date. A continuous revision programme is being put in hand, and it is planned that in the near future the large-scale plans of the built-up areas of the Colony will be revised at least once a year. After each block of large-scale plans is revised on the ground the smaller scale plans will be revised by photographic reduction in the drawing office.\n\nAfter the strenuous efforts of the last few years it can be modestly claimed that by 1972 the Colony may well be the best mapped territory in the Far East and probably in the world. Even in Great Britain, which is probably the best mapped country in Western Europe, the national mapping of large cities is at 1/1250 scale and most of the country is at 1/2500 scale, while the largest scale at which contours are plotted (at 25 ft. vertical intervals) is the 6\" to 1 mile series.\n\nThe plans and maps summarized at A and B below can be obtained from the Crown Lands & Survey Office, Public Works Department. Since several thousand sheets are involved and the demand for any one sheet is very limited outside of Government departments, no stocks of prints are held, but a print of any sheet can usually be supplied within an hour or two at a cost of $3.00.* The negatives of the air-photos are held by the contractor in England. Prints can be supplied by air mail within about 10 days. Cost of a contact print (9″×9″) is $23.10, (including air mail postage). Index diagrams of all plans and air photos can be inspected at Crown Lands and Survey Office, Central Government Offices, Hong Kong.\n\nA. HONG KONG ISLAND, KOWLOON, NEW KOWLOON\n\n(i) 1/600 scale (50 ft. to 1 inch) with 5 ft. contours†\n\nNo. of sheets 700\n\n* All costs should be taken to refer only to those operative at the time this Journal goes to press. Ed.\n\n† See Plate 11.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205842, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "142\n\nRONALD C. Y. NG\n\nits appearance, two copies of this significant contribution to the geographical world were presented to the Society by J. L. Southey in 1868, but for a century the authorship and the identity of this 'Italian missionary of the Propaganda' remained unknown.\n\nConsidering the difficulties presented by the rugged terrain and the unsettled times under which the observations were made, the map has a remarkable degree of accuracy and contains a wealth of information. Although it cannot be ascertained whether Mgr. Volonteri had received any cartographic training, either before or after he entered the priesthood, the map displays no sign of amateurism and, indeed, it won several enviable awards in various European exhibitions, including the Milan Cartographic Exhibition of 1894, in the years immediately following its appearance. Other things apart, the fact that it is probably the first ever bilingual map of its kind must place it in a class of its own.\n\nThere are several features of the map that merit close attention. The longitudes shown are reasonably accurate, but the latitudes are some 2 minutes north of their true positions. Apparently Mgr. Volonteri did not make the actual measurements himself, but had copied the grid from a previously existing source. It would be an impossible task to determine which particular version he adopted but it is fairly certain that it had not originated from British sources, for an official map of Hong Kong Island published twenty years earlier by the Government had the longitudes and latitudes in their correct positions. Naval charts might well have been consulted in the process of plotting the coastline because of the inclusion on the map of the depths of water - information which would obviously be of little relevance to the priest who must have compiled the map for some utilitarian purposes. The quality of the coastline has a great variation in accuracy. In spite of the highly irregular coast due to submergence, Mirs Bay, Tolo Harbour, Tide Cove, Hebe Haven and the eastern approaches of Victoria Harbour are not only packed with sounding records but are also depicted accurately down to the uninhabited islets. On the other hand, for the remainder of the map, the accuracy of the coastline is most disappointing. There could be two possible explanations for this. It was either that coastal charting was still in progress and had not yet covered the western parts or that Fr. Volonteri might have improved on an outline from an earlier smaller-scale map for the areas with which he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206122, "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-1970", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMAP OF THE SUN-ON DISTRICT\n\n195\n\nParties are referred to the M. S. circulated. The intention is to have it engraved in London, provided a sufficient number of copies to pay the expense of publication are subscribed for. It is proposed to charge $5 per copy, and it is estimated that it will require a subscription list of 120 copies to liquidate the outlay of engraving, &c. Any surplus which may be left will be devoted to Missionary purposes.\n\nThe scope of this Map embraces an area of about Forty Five miles from North to South, and of about Sixty miles from East to West; that is to say, the District of Sun-on, whereof Nam-tao, is the departmental town. It is within the district of Sun-on that Hongkong and its dependencies stood prior to their cession, and the whole Coast line for many miles adjacent is under the jurisdiction of the Mandarin at Nam-tao.\n\nThe Map is the result of four years' labor, and is made entirely from the personal observations of the author. The dangers, the difficulties, and the hardships which the work has involved, have been very great. The district is excessively mountainous and as ocular demonstration had exclusively in all cases to be relied on, by reason of the worthlessness of native information, the fatigue attending travel has been no light matter. The villagers entertain the idea that their mountains contain auriferous deposits, and are very jealous of foreigners examining them. The consequence is that there is much difficulty in procuring the services of guides and still more difficulty in obtaining correct information on any point. In fact, the idea above alluded to proves a strong incentive to the conveyance of false information, and excites resistance to the progress of the traveller, besides creating great personal danger.\n\nUnder these circumstances, this Map has been produced, and it has been suggested to the author that it is a pity the result of so much labor, danger, and difficulty, should in these days of progress, be concealed from the world. Science, Religion, and Commerce are now allied in the vast work of the dissemination of knowledge and of Western Civilisation, and it cannot be doubted that Geography is the pioneer of the movement.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206237, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "48\n\nCHIU LING-YEONG\n\nThe opinion of Tseng Chi-tse expressed in his article was thoroughly criticized by Ho Kai, as shown above, on the basis of his personal judgment and also his knowledge of the Western world acquired during his residence in Hong Kong and stay in England. Ho Kai's article was, indeed, an important proclamation on China's reforms, and his criticism was very logical and sincere. In his conclusion he said that every word in his article had been uttered with sincerity and without the slightest malice or ill-feeling. Ho Kai also reminded Tseng Chi-tse that it was no use to hide China's defects and to defer the remedy. He hoped Tseng would realize that if a man wore a sword and put on a coat of armour it did not prove that he was a knight. In conclusion, Ho Kai urged Tseng Chi-tse to read a passage which he extracted from the work of Mencius and Analects as a guide of his policy.\n\n「王如施仁政於民,省刑罰,薄稅斂,可使制梃,以撻秦楚之堅甲利兵。」...... 「上下交征利,而國危矣。」...... 「苟為後義而先利,不奪不餍。」... 「保民而王,莫之能禦也。」...... 「足食足兵,民信之矣。自古皆有死,民無信不立。」...... 「羿善射,奡盪舟,俱不得其死然禹稷躬稼而有天下。」\n\nThese passages may be rendered as follows; after Legge's translation:\n\n \n If your Majesty will indeed dispense a benevolent government to the people, being sparing in the use of punishments and fines, and making the taxes and levies light, you will then have a people who can be employed, with sticks which they have prepared, to oppose the strong mail and sharp weapons of the troops of Ts'in (#) and Ch’ü (#).\n \n \n Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch the profit one from the other, and the kingdom will be endangered.\n \n \n If righteousness be put last, and profit be put first, they will not be satisfied without snatching all.\n \n \n The love and protection of the people; with this there is no power which can prevent a ruler from attaining it.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206317, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "128\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nmonthly meetings, but it is clear that consensus was usually arrived at and the Registrar General/Secretary for Chinese Affairs given sound advice on important local matters for it was politically unwise for the Committee to be deadlocked or sharply split for long. If that had occurred too frequently, the utility of the Committee as the chief consultative body would have declined46,\n\nIt would be wrong, however, to think of the Committee as being, in modern parlance, a purely 'Establishment' body. Certainly its members had very close links with European businessmen in the Colony. At the beginning of this century over half its members were compradores to European firms and banks. On the other hand it is clear the Committee did succeed in expressing what we can only call a Chinese point of view”. There are a number of reasons for this. Most committeemen had contacts of one sort or another with the commercial world of Canton and some were involved in the politics of Kwangtung Province and one in particular, Ho Kai, with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement47. Many owned property and land in Kwangtung and were interested in the economic development of that area48. And nearly all sent their male children back to China for education49. Thus the members of the District Watch Committee were involved in two sets of interests: those of Hong Kong and those of Kwangtung.\n\nYet when they spoke up about an issue they represented principally the interests of the compradore bourgeoisie, suggesting a narrower but perhaps more complex set of interests than would be conveyed by the use of the word 'Chinese'. Even the highly westernised Ho Kai, a Chinese who had studied Western medicine at Edinburgh University, dispensed with the queue and wore London suits, who married an Englishwoman and wrote better English than Chinese50 was still able to represent the generalised opinions of the Chinese community and, more importantly, the point of view of a segment of Hong Kong's Chinese community, that of the Chinese businessman and speculator. The advice given by the Committee to government must be seen then as a distillation of all these complex sets of interests.\n\nThere were, as I have already emphasised, several reasons why the Committee became so important as a key advisory body.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "16\n\nDR. F. I. TSEUNG\n\nstitute for santonin for the treatment of round worms. The treatment of leprosy with Chaulmoogra is an old-time remedy of China, and only in recent years was brought to light by western-trained doctors.\n\nThe now famous Ephedrine, which took Europe and America literally by storm, is derived from ma huang (**), a Chinese herb which has been used in China for treating asthma for more than four thousand years. It was first brought to the notice of the western world by Dr. K. K. Chen in 1926 and has since been extensively used everywhere.\n\nThere are still many other drugs which are still unknown to the outside world and which require scientific investigation. Such investigation would undoubtedly result in many remedies of great value being found. It is interesting to note that the Chinese people pay great attention to food and nutrition. An analysis of Chinese foods shows that they are rich in vitamins and other nutritional elements.\n\nAcupuncture (+), consists of puncturing certain points of the body with needles of all kinds. 367 such points are described, each having its own name and supposed relationship with internal organs. In the Sung dynasty a copper model of the human body was made which was pierced with holes at the proper places for puncturing. The figure was covered with paper, pasted on, and the student was required to learn where to drive the needle. Acupuncture spread to Japan very early. It was introduced into Europe by Ten-Rhyne, a Dutch surgeon, at the end of the 17th century and was much extolled in France early in the 19th century. Recently Sir James Cantlie and others tried it on sprains and chronic rheumatism and reported very favourably on it. Owing to the ignorance of asepsis by native doctors more harm than good is done by its practice. But sometimes miraculous results are witnessed and with further scientific investigation it might, no doubt, prove a valuable addition to our armamenta.\n\nMassage has been practised from time immemorial. Its value was fully recognized, and in the Tang dynasty it was elevated as a science, forming one of the seven departments of medicine. A special chair was established with a professor in charge. After the Sung dynasty it degenerated and at the present day it is mostly in the hands of the barbers and the blind. Massage was first brought to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206686, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "228\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThis book is one of the gems of a vast movement. Between the two world wars, Chinese scholars took a great interest in the study of ethnology and folklore. The two most important groups were in Peking University and in the Sun Yat-sen University of Canton. After the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals fought against their traditional culture and its Confucian interpretation, and looked toward the West.\n\nEthnology was one of the by-products of this new fashion for the Occident and Science. Dissatisfied with a mere copy of Western culture, some people realised at this time that they had, in China itself, a whole culture buried in scorn, which deserved to become part of modern culture. And the movement towards a mass culture, in the early thirties, used for propaganda both by left-wing intellectuals and by missionaries, saw it as a gold mine to be exploited.\n\nThis interest in folk culture was not something new in China. In the Ming dynasty, scholars scandalously proclaimed certain popular novels and plays to be masterpieces comparable to famous classics, while the staid scholars did not even grant them the dignity of literature. Moreover, in Chinese literary history, a keen interest in folk literature has periodically risen in attempts to revive a stereotyped academism. However, in the XXth century, this movement was brought about by ethnologists, and not by avant-garde scholars of literature.\n\nThis ethnological interest had a certain influence. Several modern poets used the tone of popular songs; Lao She studied the folklore of Peking and recalled it in his novels; Wen Yi-tuo used ethnological data to explain the Songs of Ch'u and thus gave more insight into this famous anthology than philological interpretations had ever done.\n\nAmong the materials brought by Chinese ethnologists, the Choice of \"Yang ke\" from Ting Hsien is now a classic, and its translation is very welcome. It was part of a general survey made by a team on rural life in that district, situated about 128 miles south of Peking. The original meaning of \"Yang ke\" is folk songs sung while transplanting the young rice shoots. But it took on a broader sense: short operas performed by amateurs in villages, with music and singing mainly drawn from folk songs. In Peking and elsewhere, these short scenes were sometimes sung by actors on stilts, in processions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206736, "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-1973", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "7\n\nList of activities arranged during 1973:\n\n8 January\n\nMr. James C. Y. Watt\n\n\"Recent archaeological discoveries in China” (illustrated)\n\n23 January\n\nMr. Pracha Guna-Kasem\n\n1-6 February\n\nMr. James C. Y. Watt\n\n21 February\n\nMr. Michael Smithies\n\nPanel presentation on \"The culture of Thailand\" prior to the Society's tour to Thailand.\n\n26 February\n\nMr. Michael Smithies (Organizer)\n\nArt and archaeological tour to Thailand (Bangkok, Pitsanuloke, Sukhothai, Srisachanalai).\n\n7 March\n\nDr. C. M. Turnbull\n\n\"The impact of western education on the Straits Chinese\".\n\n19 March\n\nMr. Quing N. Yng-Wong\n\n“Acupuncture\"\n\n26 March\n\nDr. Dale M. Craig\n\n“Chinese instrumental music” (with performers playing on traditional instruments).\n\n31 March - 1 April\n\nMr. C. M. N. Sahay\n\n\"Moghul Miniature Painting\" (illustrated by slides).\n\n11 April\n\nAnnual General Meeting followed by a dinner\n\n29 April\n\nProfessor Brian Lofts (Organizer)\n\nSymposium \"The fauna of Hong Kong\" (with field trips).\n\nProfessor Murray Groves\n\n\"The Motu in the modern world: Social Change & Musical Styles among a seafaring people\" (illustrated with tape recording and slides).\n\nMr. Ian Watson\n\nVisit to the Sikh and Hindu Temples in Happy Valley.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206774, "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-1973", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA\n\nA. D. BLUE*\n\nIn East Asia: The Modern Transformation, Professor J. K. Fairbank writes, \"This carrying trade on China's waterways was to prove the Westerners' main point of entry into the Chinese economy, for here the introduction of the steamship could alter the inherited technology\" As late as 1880 there was still not a single mile of railway in China, nor a single machine-driven loom or spindle. At that date, however, the three leading steamship companies owned forty-two steamships operating on the various routes on the Canton River, the Lower Yangtse, and between the various treaty ports on the coast. As K. C. Liu points out in his Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-74, the steamship was not only a technological innovation. It was also a business innovation, because it brought with it new methods of capital organisation and management on a scale hitherto unknown in China. Many Chinese of the scholar-official class also recognised the importance of steamships, and of guns, and—by inference—the political system which made these things possible. From the mid 19th century onwards, memorial after memorial to the Throne emphasised this. Sir Charles Snow was not exaggerating so very much when he wrote that the steam engine helped to shape the modern world as much as Adam Smith or Napoleon. Unfortunately for China, officials closer to the Throne discouraged its occupants from pursuing modernisation.\n\nSteam navigation in China began in the south, on the Canton River, and—like so many other aspects of the Western invasion—came by way of India. The first steamship in Asia seems to have been the Nawab of Oude's steam yacht, about which little information has survived. According to Prinsep, this was built at Lucknow in 1819, and equipped with an eight horse-power engine sent out from England, so she must have been very small. She is said to have been capable of seven to eight knots, but when the Nawab tired of her was allowed to go to ruin. Apart from this, the first\n\n* Mr. Blue is well-known to readers of the Journal. An engineer officer of the British Merchant Marine since 1928, he has now contributed five articles on Eastern marine subjects.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206778, "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-1973", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA\n\n49\n\nAlexander and Company of Calcutta. In 1846 she was bought by Jardine, Matheson and Company, and remained in their service until she was lost in the early 1870s.\n\nIn 1835, Jardine, Matheson and Company brought out the small steamer Jardine, intending to run her as a passenger and dispatch boat between Canton, Lintin, and Macao. She arrived at Lintin on 20th September 1835, but was never allowed to run on the river. The Canton Register of 13th November described one of her first excursions, contributed by a passenger.\n\nWe all assembled on board the steamer Jardine, alias 'fast ship Greig' (the name of her captain), and getting under weigh went round the different vessels lying in the anchorage, some of whom cheered the little craft on her experimental trip; she then started to make a tour of the island, which she accomplished in a little better than an hour; on her return she made another circuit round the shipping, and being cheered returned the compliment with a salute. It was indeed a pleasing scene; to see the velocity with which the little vessel (although not at her full power) ploughed the waters of the deep, and the readiness with which she answered her helm; to hear the echo of the music (which was kindly supplied by the commanding officer of the Balcarres, and which continued to play during the trip) reverberating from the adjacent hills, and made more distinct still by the still calm of the evening; to see the setting sun gilding the western horizon with his last, expiring rays; the shipping at anchor; the blue hills which on nearly every side bounded the view; the whole scene being heightened by the presence of the colleens, produced a calm in the mind, foreign to those engaged in the busy world; indeed, here you might have beheld in the reality all that the speculative imagination of the lover of romance could picture to itself.\n\nUnfortunately, Chinese reaction was much less enthusiastic. No reply was received to a letter signed by all the foreign merchants at Canton and sent to the hoppo through Howqua, the senior hong merchant; which requested permission for the Jardine to run on the river as an unarmed passenger boat. Eventually a trial run from Lintin to Canton was attempted, but the Jardine was fired on from the forts on both sides of the Bogue, and a Chinese district official who was approached said that the orders were peremptory that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206802, "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-1973", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "SWATOW (CH’AOCHOW) HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS\n\nHELGA WERLE*\n\n# Introduction\n\nThe so-called Swatow puppets are in fact wrongly named. This is due to a confusion which requires some explanation. In Western languages the adjective Swatow is used to attribute a dialect, culture or people etc., when the Chinese themselves speak of Ch’aochow. This is because the British gained access to the Ch’aochow area by the opening of the port of Shantou (Swatow) by the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. Chinese know that the city of Ch’aochow heads one of the 8 prefectures of the province of Kwangtung and is situated on the Han River about 40 miles from the sea and as far from the border with Fukien. Swatow itself, a port with about 85,000 inhabitants in 1925, is in the delta of the Han River, five miles from the open sea.\n\nIn this article the term “Swatow” has been replaced by the use of the proper Chinese description of Ch’aochow.\n\nCh’aochow developed very early into a culturally independent area. Its seaboard position and flourishing port gave it the necessary economic basis and exposed it to various cultural influences. Culturally and linguistically, it is more like a prefecture of Fukien than of Kwangtung. Its dialect is distinctly different from Cantonese, so are its customs and its music, which all deserve to be studied in detail for the value of its rich ancient tradition. Among its cultural assets, the Ch’aochow puppet-theatre is truly amazing, with unique features found nowhere else in the world.†\n\nThe author has studied in the Sinology departments of the Universities of Munich, Hamburg, and Cologne. She has been a resident of Hong Kong since 1966 and has followed up her studies with field work in Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines. She is particularly interested in folk art and theatre and is at present on the staff of the Hong Kong Arts Centre Ltd. She has published various articles on puppet theatre and folk art.\n\n† For the Introduction, see L. Richard (translated, revised and enlarged by M. Kennelly), Comprehensive Geography of the Chinese Empire and Dependencies, Shanghai, T’usewei Press 1908, pp. 206 and 210. Also J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese or Notes connected with China (5th edition, revised by É. Chalmers Werner), Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai, Hong Kong etc., 1925, pp. 689-690. For the Min dialects of which Ch’aochow and Swatow are part, see R. A. D. Forrest, The Chinese Language, Faber & Faber, London, 1958, pp. 225-232.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207179, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 250, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "244\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nromanization, Chinese characters and their translation. The authors were also able to round off their observation with a fair knowledge of Chinese civilization and the basics of Buddhism and Taoism.\n\nAs these 9 sacred mountains were of such fundamental importance for the world concept of Chinese civilization since its dawn and few western people ever had, or perhaps ever will have, the chance to visit these mountains, this might be justification enough to publish this travel diary 37 years after this strenuous pilgrimage was undertaken, although judged as a whole the text is somewhat meager and weak.\n\nIt is a beautifully produced book, with good quality of paper and printing and a generous layout, and clean dark blue linen hard cover which is the trade-mark of all books published by Vetch & Lee Ltd.\n\nHong Kong, 1975.\n\nHELGA WERLE", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207286, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "46\n\nCHIAO-MIN HSIEH\n\n1,400 miles long, runs between Lanchow and Urumchi via Hami in Sinkiang.\n\nThe Communist government obviously feels that the political importance of these railroads is greater than their economic value. Since the great bulk of China's population, markets, and production lies east of Lanchow and south of the Great Wall, many railroads are urgently needed in that part of China. One must wonder whether the two railroads built in the desert for the main purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union were so necessary and their construction so urgent. Moreover, there is at the moment a sand-dune problem confronting the operation of the railroad in these desert areas. This seems to be insoluble by use of present techniques and makes the value of the whole project even more questionable.\n\n3. In southwest China a railroad was built between Nanning and Pinghsiang in 1955, which is connected with Haiphong and Hanoi. The significance of this new rail link between the Red River delta and the South China province of Kwangsi is that it opens a new major sea outlet for south China.\n\nSince China is an amphibious nation, facing the interior continent in the northwest and the Pacific Ocean in the southeast, one of the most significant geopolitical factors in China's history is her changing relations with the continent and the sea. In ancient times China faced the northwest, where the \"Silk Road\" passed through: the Pacific coast was the back door. The Kansu corridor in the northwest was the main entrance, playing an important role in communications between China and central Asia. In the nineteenth century, Western sea powers acted to open China's coastal ports, China began to turn her face toward the Pacific, which then became the front door, through which came new ideas and knowledge, but also new problems and troubles. Shanghai, Canton, and Tientsin replaced the cities in the northwest as the key cities. This reversal in geographic accessibility has transformed China's isolated condition to one of contact with the world.\n\nThe eastern coastal areas soon became the main part of China, where were located most of the large cities, heavy industries, railroads, and inland water routes, and about 70 per cent of the population. Because of its location, the area is vulnerable to attack by foreign sea powers. During World War II the area was easily", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207354, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "114\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\npolicymakers tended to respond to the unprecedented situation in terms of their own sophisticated tradition of \"managing\" barbarians. The theoretical foundations of this tradition have been much discussed, although usually with reference to China's external relations. Its practical application has received little systematic study apart from inquiries into the structure and operation of the well-known tributary system. Against the background of Chinese tradition in both its dimensions--theory and practice--this article examines the major features of Ch'ing policy toward foreign military employees in the T'ung-chih period (1862-1874), when Western influences first became a significant factor in China's military affairs. It argues that behind the rhetoric of the Chinese world order throughout the imperial era lay realistic, sophisticated and generally effective policies of \"barbarian management,\" which were neither inherently \"unmodern,\" nor even uniquely Chinese. Furthermore, it suggests that the Ch'ing throne was more flexible in its outlook toward Western barbarians than is generally recognized, and that its failure to go further in abandoning its Sinocentrism may be explained largely by the behavior of the barbarians themselves.\n\nThe Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Policy\n\nClassical sanction for the use of foreigners to serve Chinese purposes may be traced to the Tso-chuan (Commentary of Tso), a work written during the chaotic Warring States period, which referred to the practice of using the talents (lit., materials) of the semi-barbarian Ch'u state for the purposes of the Chin state (Ch'u-ts'ai Chin-yung). As employed by later writers, the phrase usually implied the notion that barbarians would willingly turn toward or revert to Chinese civilization (hsiang-hua or kuei-hua) and offer their allegiance. Other classical literature reinforced this view of China's cultural superiority, emphasizing the natural gravitation of foreigners to the Middle Kingdom.10 Mencius provided the neat formula, \"using [the doctrines of] China to transform the barbarian\" (yung-Hsia pien-i), a phrase which became the standard expression of Chinese ethnocentrism for the next twelve hundred years.11 The reverse theme (yung-i pien-Hsia) served as a derogatory epithet to be hurled at those who had allegedly departed from the Chinese cultural tradition.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207373, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT\n\n133\n\n6 On this point, see John K. Fairbank, \"The Early Treaty System in the Chinese World Order,” in J. K. Fairbank, ed. The Chinese World Order (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). See also L. S. Yang's article entitled \"Historical Notes on the Chinese World Order\" in ibid., 22, for a discussion of Kuo Sung-t'ao's innovative outlook.\n\n7 See Fairbank's introductory essay in The Chinese World Order; also, John K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, “On the Ch'ing Tributary System,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 6 (1941). An exception to the standard tributary view of China's foreign relations is John Wills' Pepper, Guns and Parleys (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).\n\n8 James Legge, The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong, 1961), 5:521. For the use of this phrase in various contexts, consult Li Te-yü, chüan 8: 59; Li Hung-chang, Li Wen-chung-kung ch'üan-chi [The collected works of Li Hung-chang] (Nanking, 1908), Letters to the Tsungli Yamen, 11:24b; Chang Ch'i-yün, Chung-kuo chin-shih shih-lüeh (A short history of Chinese military affairs] (Taipei, 1956), 115.\n\n9 Dai Kanwa jiten [Sino-Japanese Dictionary] (Tokyo, 1955-1960), 1926, 6437. For random examples of this common usage, see Su Ch'ing-pin, 1, 2, 35; Hsin T'ang-shu, 145:14b; Ch'ou-pan i-wu shih-mo [The management of barbarian affairs from beginning to end] (Peiping, 1930; hereafter, IWSM), TK, 72:34b, TC 4:25b; 5:51; 8:64b; 12:2b; 23:36b; etc.\n\n10 See the illuminating discussion in Mi Chu Wiens, \"Anti-Manchu Thought during the Early Ch'ing,\" Papers on China, 22A (May, 1969), especially 2-3.\n\n11 Legge, 2:253; Wiens, 2; Wu Hung-chu, \"China's Attitude towards Foreign Nations and Nationals Historically considered,\" The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, 10.1 (1926), esp. 17-19. On the reverse theme, consult Li Hung-chang, Letters to Friends, 1:9b; Lu Shih-ch'iang, Ting Jih-ch'ang yü tzu-ch'iang yün-tung [Ting Jih-ch'ang and the self-strengthening movement] (Taipei, 1972), 241-244.\n\n12 Chinese policy toward the \"sinicization\" of foreigners was not consistent, however. See Schafer, 22, 49, 291 note 75; also Ch'ien Hsing-hai and L. C. Goodrich, trans., Western and Central Asians in China under the Mongols, by Ch'en Yuan (Los Angeles, 1966), 6ff.\n\n13 Cited in Ch'ien and Goodrich, 9. I have modified the translation slightly after consulting the Chinese original. For a view contrary to Ch'en Yuan's, see Legge, 5: 355: \"If he is not of our kin, he is certain to have a different mind”—an oft-cited passage from the Tso-chuan. These two conflicting views suggest a central question: What constituted a barbarian? Unfortunately, no clear answer can be given. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao noted in the late nineteenth century that the implications of the term had changed over time (see Wiens, 1); but even his comparatively sophisticated analysis oversimplifies an enormously complex problem. Lacking an objective standard by which to judge barbarian-ness, one is perhaps best served by deferring to the Chinese chronicler. If, for whatever reason, an individual appears in the record as a barbarian, then that is what he is. Such an arbitrary classification is in many respects unsatisfactory, but it reflects accurately the Chinese viewpoint at a given time, and underscores the uncertain status of even the most \"sinicized\" barbarian. An argument against writing about China's relations with foreign peoples \"in the Chinese idiom and from the Chinese point of view\" may be found in Timothy Connor, \"Translating the 'Barbarians': A New Book in an Old Tradition,\" Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (hereafter, HJAS), 32 (1972).\n\n14 Cited in Benjamin Schwartz, \"The Chinese Perception of World Order, Past and Present,\" in Fairbank, The Chinese World Order, 280.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207648, "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "STUDY OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINA & JAPAN\n\n21\n\nvernment was, in Perkins' words, \"an almost unbelievably weak [financial] instrument.\"\n\nEven if the Ch'ing government had been moved to undertake more fundamental military reform, China's transition to modernity would have been painful; but without such reform, it was virtually impossible.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Paul Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang Tao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 4.\n\n2 Ibid.; see also 148-149.\n\n3 Thomas Kennedy, \"Self-Strengthening: An Analysis Based on Some Recent Writings,” Ching-shih wen-t'i, 3.1 (November, 1974), 27.\n\n4 Cohen, 149.\n\n5 Quoted in S. Y. Teng and John K. Fairbank, eds., China's Response to the West: A Documentary Survey 1839-1923 (New York, 1966), 109.\n\n6 See, for example, William Lockwood, \"Japan's Response to the West: The Contrast With China,\" World Politics, 9.1 (October, 1956); Marion Levy, \"Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan,\" Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2 (October, 1953); Marion Levy, \"Some Structural Problems of Modernization and High Modernization: China and Japan,\" Proceedings of the Symposium on Economic and Social Problems of the Far East (1962); Allan Cole, \"Contrasting Modernization in China and Japan,\" Ch'ung-chi hsieh-pao, 4.2 (May, 1965); E.O. Reischauer, “Modernization in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan,\" Japan Quarterly, 10.3 (July-September, 1963), etc. A partial exception is the fine article by John K. Fairbank, et al., entitled \"The Influence of Modern Western Science and Technology on Japan and China,\" Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 7 (1954).\n\n7 Two of the most obvious advantages were, of course, Japan's greater and more immediate awareness of the Western military challenge (a product of geography and historical timing), and the military orientation and ethos (bushido) of the Japanese elite, as compared to the civil orientation and ethos (wen-te) of the Chinese elite. Other factors were also important, including the absence of opium smoking among Japanese officers and the rank and file, which again contrasts so markedly with the case in China. See Jonathan Spence, \"Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China,\" in Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Carolyn Grant, eds., Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1975).\n\n8 See Fairbank, et al., \"The Influence,\" 192-194, esp. 193.\n\n9 Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression: Europeans Prepare the Japanese Army (Tucson, 1955), 139.\n\n10 See Richard J. Smith, Ward, Gordon and the Ever-Victorious Army: Foreign Assistance and Military Modernization in Nineteenth Century China (manuscript).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207658, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG\n\n31\n\n371,000 Teochiu in Hong Kong in that year (1971 Census). All \"official\" Teochiu estimates of the total Teochiu population suggest that the census figure is considerably too low. Various Teochiu associations have estimated that there are as many as one million Teochiu (Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce, 1971:105; Chiu Chow Cultural and Educational Association, 1974:125). If this is an accurate estimate, then between 20 to 25% of the total population is Teochiu. This figure is most probably, however, an overestimate and the true figure probably lies somewhere between the government figure and the Teochiu estimate. Whatever the actual number of Teochiu, they are the second largest ethnic group in Hong Kong, Cantonese being the largest.\n\nIt is difficult to outline the pre-World War II history of Teochiu in Hong Kong in that there are few written sources aside from brief statements in Teochiu publications. The major source of information is thus the recollections of older Teochiu who lived in Hong Kong prior to World War II. It is clear that the largest portion of Teochiu lived and worked in Nam Pak Hong (南沛行 at #5), a triangular area of several blocks in what is now Western District. This area was the location of the earliest import-export trading firms after the establishment of the Colony in 1842. Many of these firms were owned by Teochiu and although there appear to be no records indicating the extent of Teochiu control in the early entrepôt trade, Teochiu informants suggest that many of the firms in Nam Pak Hong were Teochiu.\n\nThe success of these early firms, some of which are still in existence, is in large part due to what must have been a very rapid development of commercial ties with Teochiu businessmen in Thailand, other areas in Southeast Asia and Swatow.1 It can be assumed that many of the Teochiu and perhaps a majority, who came to Hong Kong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did so in order to participate in and to extend the regional Teochiu commercial networks. A Teochiu publication discusses the biography of an important Teochiu businessman who came to Hong Kong in 1842. This man had emigrated from his home district in\n\n1 Swatow was the second largest town in Teochiu in the 1800s and not very important commercially, but quickly became the centre of commercial and industrial development after it was opened as a treaty port in 1858. It later became the administrative centre for Teochiu and is still the administrative centre today.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207660, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG\n\n33\n\nbetween Hong Kong and Thailand was at its height during two periods of several years following the two World Wars. Teochiu import/export firms trading with Thailand established a commercial association in 1946 (Hung, 1961:4). In the 1920s there were at least 21 Teochiu firms involved in trade with Singapore, and in 1930 these firms established a commercial association which by 1951 had 41 member firms (Hung, 1961:2). Teochiu trade between Hong Kong and Vietnam began in the last years of the Ch'ing Dynasty and became substantial in 1914, apparently as a result of World War I. This trading gradually increased until the involvement of the U.S. in the war of liberation at which time the importation of goods into Vietnam from China ceased. This drastically curtailed the importing activities of Teochiu firms in Hong Kong exporting Chinese commodities to Vietnam (Hung, 1961:7).\n\nAfter the opening of Swatow as a treaty port in 1858, Teochiu firms in Hong Kong became active in importing Teochiu products from there and then re-exporting them to Southeast Asia, primarily for Teochiu consumption. In 1946 there were at least 20 firms involved in such trading and by 1948 about 100. Many of these were evidently forced out of business or into other areas of business after 1949, although there were still about 20 firms still involved in Swatow/Southeast Asian trading during the 1950s. These firms were evidently forced to operate with a very low profit margin (Hung, 1961:8).\n\nImmediately prior to World War II there were perhaps 20,000 Teochiu in Hong Kong, many living in Western District. During the 1930s, however, some Teochiu began to move over to the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon, particularly Haiphong, Hankow and Canton Roads (Lee, 1969:55). Many of these people were employed as coolies in the Kowloon Godown, which still today employs predominantly Teochiu laborers. Most, however, were forced to move out of the area after World War II with the commercial and tourist development of Tsim Sha Tsui.\n\nAnother area of Teochiu concentration prior to World War II was in the hills around Kowloon Walled City where Teochiu squatters raised pigs and poultry (Lee, 1969:56). This early concentration was undoubtedly a factor in the later heavy concentration of Teochiu in Kowloon City in the 1950s and 1960s. By 1961, according to the government census, there were 257,319 Teochiu in Hong Kong and by 1971 the figure", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207708, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "\"PATTERNED BANDS” IN THE NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG\n\nIntroduction\n\nELIZABETH L. JOHNSON*\n\nThese notes on a form of peasant textiles are based on research conducted in Kwan Mun Hau (关门口), one of the old villages of Tsuen Wan District, in the New Territories of Hong Kong.1 Tsuen Wan, now an industrial city with a population of nearly 600,000 with a small rural hinterland,2 consisted until after World War II of a group of about twenty Hakka villages, with a central market area. The villages remain, (some have had to be resited) but most are now surrounded by the city. The area's rapid urban development has meant that traditional forms of dress and adornment have virtually disappeared, to be replaced by western-influenced styles of clothing. Despite this, women of Kwan Mun Hau village were able to describe the use and significance of these textiles, and to demonstrate the technique of weaving them.3 The information reported here, which refers to Tsuen Wan of about thirty years ago but is applicable to the more rural areas of the New Territories even today, is derived from interviews with informants in Kwan Mun Hau Village, as well as from observations elsewhere in the New Territories. The findings are only preliminary; additional research must be done elsewhere in the New Territories to supplement this report.\n\nDefinition\n\nThe fa tai (花带) or \"patterned band” is worn by Hakka women in the New Territories of Hong Kong as an article of personal adornment. Patterned bands are hand woven, intricately patterned ribbons about 1 CM wide, and ranging in length from about 65-145 CM. They are most commonly flat, with tassels of varying length and thickness at either end, and are either multicoloured, or white with coloured or black patterns. If multicoloured, they are made of silk (now often synthetic) threads with silk tassels; if white, they are of cotton with the patterns in silk or cotton and the tassels of white cotton cord.\n\n* Dr. Johnson is on the staff of the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia.\n\nThe plates illustrating this article are at the back of this volume.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207738, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "IN SEARCH OF THE CHINESE NAME FOR “LI SUN”\n\n111\n\nLo Hsiang-lin's book translated into English, Hong Kong and Western Cultures (Hong Kong, 1963) which gave this same official name for the interpreter of the Chinese Educational Mission,\n\nThus, it may well be concluded that Chan Laisun was the name given at his birth in Singapore and Tseng Heng-chung\n\nwas his official name in later years.\n\nIt is hoped that this article about the search for a Chinese name will stimulate a response from relatives and friends of Tseng Lan-sheng (Tseng Heng-chung) and bring forth corrections and additions to the story of an unusual person and family who lived during the early historical period of China and American cross-cultural exchanges.9\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See pp. 92-106 of JHKBRAS 16 (1976).\n\n2 William N. Armstrong, Around the World with a King (London: Heineman, 1909), pp. 92-93.\n\n3 Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains: Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975), pp. 44-51.\n\n4 Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: Holt, 1909), p. 183.\n\n5 容閎自傳:西學東漸記, 台北文海出版社 1973 重印,\n\n6 Carl T. Smith, \"A Register of Baptised Protestant Chinese, 1813 - 1842,\" Chung Chi Bulletin, December 1970, pp. 23-26; Smith, \"Idols on a School Hill: the American Board School for Chinese Boys in Singapore, 1835-1842,” Chung Chi Bulletin, December 1974, pp. 28-30.\n\n7 舒新城編: 近代中國留學史, 上海中華書局 1933.\n\n8 羅香林著: 香港與中西文化交流,\n\n9 Tsung-1 Dow, Chronological Biography of Li Hung-chang - 著: 李鴻章年, 香港友聯社, 1968 does not include King Kalakaua's visit in 1881 nor does it mention Chan Laisun (Tseng Heng-chung), although otherwise most comprehensive.\n\nMr. Char has since added the following extra note:\n\nIt would add great interest should Hamilton College be able to find Chan Laisun's family photograph of 1872. Also, some one in Hong Kong may be able to add to the family story of his son Spencer who married the daughter of the Rev. Ho Fuk-tong of Hong Kong. Probably Carl Smith has additional materials and will write the next article.\n\nThe October 1975 issue of Smithsonian carried a good article on Li Hung-chang's visit to New York in August 1896, accompanied by 18 aides and 2 servants, 300 pieces of luggage, a golden sedan chair, several cargoes of song-birds, 2 noisy parrots. He brought along his own chefs, bakers, valets, guards, footmen, secretaries, interpreters, and physician. His chief interpreter was then Lo Fing-luh, a skilled linguist in German and French as well as English. There was no mention of Chan Laisun as an interpreter or secretary. Perhaps by that time he had gone on to other work or may have died. In 1896 he would have been 67 years old (born 1829).\n\nEditor's note: Carl Smith's article extending the story of Chan Laisun and his family follows on.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207744, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES\n\nOF TAIPING LEADERS\n\nCarl T. Smith*\n\nThe Christian element in the Taiping rebellion has been of special interest to interpreters of the movement. It was this non-Chinese factor which made this rebellion different from all previous Chinese rebel movements. Through its Christian elements the rebels were expressing one aspect of the effect of increasing western influence on Chinese national life.\n\nThe precise relation of Christianity to the origin and development of the movement has been a matter of debate. One aspect of the problem is the relationship established between family members and friends of the originators of the movement and the missionaries.\n\nOn the one hand, there was a tendency for these relations and friends to seek out the missionary in the course of the disruption to their lives caused by their connection with the rebel leaders. They especially looked to the missionaries for financial assistance in their efforts to join the movement once it had been successfully established at Nanking.\n\nOn the other hand, the missionary vision and hope had been stimulated by the early, but confusing, reports of the Christian nature of the rebel movement. They welcomed the opportunity to learn more particulars about the movement from first-hand accounts. It was the small book written by the Rev. Theodore Hamberg in Hong Kong on The Visions of Hung Siu-Tschuen which first gave the outside world detailed knowledge of the Christian influence upon the rebels. Most of the subsequent accounts of the origins of the movement draw heavily upon the material recorded by Hamberg, who received it through Hung Hsiu-ch'uan's cousin Hung Jen-kan.\n\nThe missionaries were eager to use the refugees, who were physically cut off from the movement by the troops of the Imperial\n\n* Carl Smith, at present Research Associate in the Theology Division, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, is well known for his researches into the early Chinese community of Hong Kong and the Protestant church in China. He is currently Vice-president of the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207803, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "176 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nChinese shipping in these years, and anti-Japanese boycotts led to the virtual disappearance of Japanese shipping for long periods. \n\nNot that these last few years were trouble-free for British ships. There were also anti-British boycotts, brushes with pirates, war lords, and lawless soldiers, and the famous 'Wanhsien Incident' of 1926 which has already been described. Then when Japan gained control of the Lower Yangtze at the end of 1937, the British presence on the Yangtze rapidly declined. Hankow became the capital before Nanking fell to the Japanese in December 1937, and Chungking succeeded Hankow before the latter fell in October 1938. As the Japanese moved up the river the British steamers moved ahead of them as far as possible, maintaining an increasingly restricted service, which by mid 1940 had been reduced to infrequent trips between Chungking and Wanhsien. During this period many Lower River steamers were abandoned. By mid 1940 the situation had become impossible, fuel was unobtainable, and the last few British officers were evacuated from Chungking by the new road to Kunming, then by the French railway to Haiphong, and finally by sea to Hong Kong. \n\nAt this time there were two Royal Navy gunboats still at Chungking, H.M. Ships Falcon and Gannet. The former remained to act as radio link for the British Embassy, while the latter was decommissioned and her crew sent to Hong Kong by the same route. \n\nSoon after this the Japanese occupied Indo-China, and the Haiphong-Kumming-Chungking lifeline was also denied China. The Chungking-Kunming road was then extended to Burma, and became China's most important route to the outside world, fulfilling the dreams of earlier generations of China traders. This was the famous Burma Road, sometimes identified with the whole 1,000 miles from Rangoon to Chungking, but more accurately with the 600 miles from Lashio (the railhead 130 miles above Mandalay) to Kunming. \n\nThus, after decades of neglect and oblivion, the Burma Road into China was restored to international importance. It was again disrupted when the Japanese conquered Burma in early 1943; but re-opened along a new western route when General Stilwell's American and Chinese forces built a road through North Burma to link Assam with the eastern section of the Burma Road. This route played a vital part in the Allied reconquest of Burma, Malaya, and Indo-China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207823, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "196\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\ntime than I could give it; and I am aware that I raise more questions than I can answer.\n\n11. It seems to me, if I may interpret behaviour only intermittently glimpsed, that administrators in the New Territories today are often in the dark about the kind and extent of the influence wielded by the men known in official language as Village Representatives. Are they elders or do they in some sense stand in opposition to elders? Are they mere spokesmen or do they in fact exercise independent power? Are they supported generally by their 'constituencies' or do they represent factions? Are their motives selfish or are they attempting to maintain and improve the general welfare? Do they provide a satisfactory channel for the expression of public opinion or do they represent as a class some sort of New Territories elite cut off from the ideas and aspirations of the ordinary people? Of course, the New Territories do not, even traditionally, form a homogeneous area; leadership in one of the big settlements in the Yuen Long District must differ in its sources and expression from leadership in a small Hakka village in the east. If, in gross terms, villages differ from one another in their clan composition, their riches, their education, and their contacts with the wider world, then we may assume a priori that their leaders will be different kinds of person. Moreover, the situation becomes further complicated by the role of immigrants in supplying a source of support (or not supplying it, as the case may be). There can be no simple rule for determining that the New Territories will have such and such a kind of leader. The question then arises whether we can isolate some typical situations in which particular characteristics of leadership are likely to be found. Again, formal leadership as exemplified by the Village Representative cannot realistically be treated independently of other institutions in which, within local communities and groupings of them, interests are promoted, disputes settled, and political decisions made.\n\n12. Let us consider how the predecessors of present-day administrators saw and tackled the problem of leadership. To deal with the newly leased territory the Administration set up a land system, which was in its day a workable compromise between traditional Chinese land tenure and the requirements of a western bureaucracy, and, after an abortive attempt to systematise (in the Local Communities Ordinance, 1899) what it romantically thought to be the customary mode of local government and law, achieved a practical solution", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207846, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n219\n\nof disbelief is other than what might be called purely contextual. Let me illustrate. Early in my study I found myself, during a visit to a remote coastal village, a fellow guest at lunch with two building contractors engaged in some local works. The conversation between my hosts and me turned to fung shui. One of the contractors spoke fluent English, as I discovered when he addressed me across the table to lament the nuisance caused by geomantic beliefs. I concluded that he had had trouble at some time with geomantic obstructions, and I read into his final remark on the subject an envy for a world where people would not be allowed to raise fung shui against builders; the talk had turned to how the authorities across the border in China had cast out geomancy along with the rest of traditional religion, and the contractor cried: 'Yes, they have cancelled all that bloody nonsense'. (If the others at the table had understood what he had said they would have been very shocked, for they had been giving me an enthusiastic account of fung shui and its benefits). Some weeks later I came across the contractor again, this time in the area where he lives, and, since I was already on good terms with members of the circle within which he moves, I was able to discuss many aspects of Chinese religion with him. I discovered in him a passionate interest in and devotion to fung shui. It is not necessary to conclude that he had been deceiving me on the first occasion. He had perhaps been irritated by the consequences of the fung shui beliefs of others; his own beliefs, bound up with his own interests and those of his close associates, were another matter. Again, I am acquainted with a man in the New Territories whom I may fairly describe as a devotee of geomancy and a constant client of geomancers who, quite sincerely and without any sense of strain, condemns the foolishness of people who raise fung shui objections to government works designed to benefit them. What one believes and how and in what circumstances one chooses to express and implement one's beliefs are two different things.\n\n49. The Administration is often forced to pay for geomancy; it is not alone. People make real economic sacrifices for their fung shui beliefs. Graves and dwellings are moved and altered, often at great expense. How are we to define and account for the nature of this faith? Fung shui is in fact a complex of beliefs concerned with a central theme in Chinese metaphysics: man's place in nature and the universe. But the last few words are a Western way of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207993, "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-1977", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "16\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nporcelain cup full, the size of an egg, of a distilled liquor made from rice. We ate also rice and sweetmeats, using spoons of gold shaped like our own. In the place where we passed the two nights, there were always burning two torches of white wax, placed on tall chandeliers of silver, and two oil lamps of four wicks each, while two men watched to look after them. Next morning we came on the same elephants to the sea-side, where, forthwith, there were ready for us two praus, in which we were re-conducted to the ships. The city is entirely built in the salt water, the king's house and those of some chieftains excepted. It contains 25,000 fires or families. The houses are all of wood, and stand on strong piles to keep them high from the ground. When the flood tides make, the women, in boats go through the city selling necessaries. In front of the king's palace there is a rampart constructed of large bricks, with barbacans in the manner of a fortress, on which are mounted fifty-six brass, and six iron cannon. During the two days we passed in the city many of them were discharged. That king is a Moro and his name Raja Siripada. He was forty years old and corpulent. No one serves him except women who are the daughters of chiefs. He never goes outside of his palace, unless when he goes hunting, and no one is allowed to talk with him except through the speaking-tube. He has scribes, called Xiricoles who wrote down his deeds on very thin tree bark.\n\nThus Pigafetta's description of Brunei.\n\nII\n\nThe nature of the traditional kingdom in the Malay world differs markedly from the western conception of state. In very general terms it consisted of a ruler and his followers whose kampong or court was at a relatively strategic location such as on a narrow strait, (e.g. Malacca), at the mouth of a large river, or at the confluence of two streams where his forces could collect tolls on water traffic and his city could act as a trading center or entrepot. From his court the sultan's power radiated outward along the coasts, up rivers and along waterways as far as both his revenue collectors could operate, and his ecclesiastical title as sultan was respected. His kingdom or “empire” had no bounds as such. He \"owned\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208125, "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-1977", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "148 \n\nW. SCHOFIELD \n\nto nearness to the market in Hong Kong, partly to the presence of coral in the shallow and then comparatively clean waters of the western approaches: in fact the sea near Ping Chau was officially divided into two Marine Lots, Nos. 1 and 2. Not long after, with constant raking of the sea bed for raw material, growing pollution of water from rubbish dumping by the Sanitary Department and increasing sewerage from Hong Kong by increase of the water carriage system, the industry declined for lack of coral to burn: complaints were made about this to me at one time. In Ping Chau this industry employed numbers of Hoklo lime burners and in 1925 they staged a clan fight which cost several men their lives. There was no police station on the island, so investigations were delayed and no evidence of murder could be got: so after taking a lot of evidence in my 'court' in the Hong Kong office, I simply bound everybody over, which at any rate gave a period of peace to Ping Chau. It must not be thought that the decline of lime burning ruined Ping Chau, for the islanders had thoughtfully provided themselves with a lucrative light industry in the shape of six or seven flourishing gambling houses, which naturally emptied whenever a D.O.'s or Water Police launch appeared. \n\nCommunications with the outside world were then pretty elementary. A junk left Ping Chau about 8 a.m. for Hong Kong and returned to the island in the evening; no more encouraging to anyone wishing to 'Come to sunny Ping Chau' than the clouds of smoke and lime dust that rose perpetually from the kilns. Another industry for which Ping Chau and the other western islands were well adapted was distilling, as their inaccessibility was a great assistance to undertakings wishing to short-circuit the revenue regulations. \n\nYet another industry flourished at one time in this group of islands. The small islet of Kau Yi Tsai, between Ping Chau and Kau Yi Chau, has a cleft in its granite cliffs which opens inwards into a cave of some size. About 1922 this was the scene of the greatest opium seizure in the Colony's history up till then: 8 tons of Persian opium came from the cave, and the crew of the sampan guarding it were put up for banishment. Only the banishees appeared before me, as I was then in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, but what became of them I cannot remember. \n\nThe increasing population and prosperity of the Colony caused similar developments at Cheung Chau: building land was greatly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208606, "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-1979", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "36 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\ntions were flying thick and fast from both sides. Everybody was happy and elated, and when we retired it was with the thought of arising the next day to celebrate the glorious Feast of our Blessed Lady, Her Immaculate Conception, and to make preparations for our trip to the missions. \n\nDecember eighth in the Far East and December seventh in the Western world! Maryknoll at Stanley rose as usual. Masses and breakfast followed and shortly after we were electrified by the report that Kai Tak airport had been bombed at 7:45 and that the Pan American Clipper which brought our new missioners had been destroyed. WAR! And Hong Kong is in the news! Being eleven miles over the mountains from Hong Kong we had, of course, heard nothing of the bombing, and were inclined to believe that the whole thing was a hoax of some kind. But soon we were entirely disillusioned when the radio flashed news of Pearl Harbor and when shortly after tiffin the planes flew over Stanley and dropped a few bombs to the west of us, apparently over the sea. We tried to get news from Hong Kong over the telephone but nobody seemed to know just what was happening. We anxiously gathered around the radio and tried to pick up what news we could. Evidently, war was on in earnest and America and we were involved. \n\nAbout five o'clock in the afternoon, our telephone jangled and we heard the voice of His Excellency, Bishop Valtorta, saying that all his Italian priests had been interned by the British Government, and that he would like to have Father Downs come to help him out at the Cathedral. His priests were given only a short time in which to pack up their personal belongings and were immediately taken away to a destination which was not disclosed to the Bishop. Father Downs hastily packed his suit case and caught the half past five bus for Hong Kong, and it must be confessed, with no little trepidation. The trip to the city was a tense one. Along the route the bus was stopped periodically by the British sentries, inspected and finally diverted by way of Aberdeen, instead of the usual Happy Valley route. The whole city, too, was tense, and though the downtown streets were crowded, there was fear and uneasiness everywhere. \n\nAt the Cathedral were His Excellency, Father Rosello, a Spanish priest attached to the Cathedral and Father Craig S.J., from Wah Yan College, as also a few young Chinese priests. His Chancellor,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208799, "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-1979", "page_number": 256, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n229\n\nThis book, then, places a major part of Freedman's material in the context of his career. It reviews one aspect of its contribution and points up the significance of Freedman as a promoter of future research. Many have been influenced by both his ideas and his standards of excellence (this writer included), and as the editor comments in his introduction; Freedman's own students together with those from American, European and Chinese universities \"produced during the 1960's studies that in number and scope exceeded the sum total of the anthropological work done in China proper before 1949. Nearly all of this research was inspired by Freedman's work\".\n\nHong Kong,\n\nJune, 1980.\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nTHE CHINA STATION; WAR AND DIPLOMACY, 1830-1860, Gerald S. Graham. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. pp. XX, 444, appendixes, bibliography, index, maps.\n\nIt has been over ten years since Professor Graham published his most useful study of the British navy in the Indian Ocean (Great Britain in the Indian Ocean 1810-1850, Clarendon, 1967) and established himself as a leading authority on naval history. He had been for many years the Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in the University of London.* The book under review is Professor Graham's long awaited study of the British navy in China during the most crucial period of the development of China's contacts with the western world in the nineteenth century. And because the Royal Navy played the major official role in \"opening China\" the book covers the full sweep of British policymaking and its implementation on the China coast during a period that saw the change from mercantilist principles to \"free trade\" - the ending of the British East India Company's \"monopoly\" of the Canton trade and its replacement by private trading houses, loosely shepherded by a new British official, denominated Superintendent of Trade, who was given consular powers.\n\n* Where the Hon. Editor studied British Colonial History and a Special Course on the Development of Dominion Status under his guidance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208948, "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-1980", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "78\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\ncommercial acumen, of piety and profit. It demonstrates how in Macau as elsewhere in their far-flung empire, the Portuguese desire to win both converts to Christianity and fortunes by trade went hand in hand.\n\nThe Macaonese received the news with \"tears of joy in their eyes, congratulating each other on such a piece of good fortune, especially the families and relatives of the martyrs, all of whom dressed not in mourning but in gala clothes. They did not shut the windows of their houses from grief, but opened them wide, placing many lights in them, and sounding shawms and other musical instruments for many days, singing many tuneful songs as a sign of their joy. It is a most noteworthy thing that, as the welfare, maintenance, and almost the very existence of this city depends chiefly on the Japan trade, if the news that the embassy had failed in its purpose had come without that of this glorious triumph, the citizens of Macau would have been aghast and their spirit would have sunk to their shoes. With this glorious news, however, everyone rejoiced exceedingly, and nobody spoke sadly or showed any sorrow because the trade was not reopened. On the contrary, they all rejoiced in the comforting thought that they had their ambassadors in Heaven, hoping with good reason that through their intercession, God would cast his eyes on that commonweal to save and sustain it, either by restoring the Japan trade or by opening some other way for its preservation\".34\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n1 Tomé Pires Suma Oriental. Trans. and ed. Armando Cortesão. 2 vols. Hakluyt Society 2nd series. LXXXIX, 1944. 1. p. 286.\n\n2 Pires, op cit. 1 pp. 128-134. João de Barros. Da Asia, dos feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento das terras e mares do Oriente. Ed. N. Pagliarini 3 vols. Lisbon, 1777-1778. III. 2. ch. 8.\n\n3 O. H. K. Spate. The Spanish Lake. London, 1979, pp. 147-148.\n\n4 On Sino-Japanese relations and European dealings with the Japanese in the 16th century see C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan. University of California Press and Cambridge University Press, 1951, G. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, London 1950, Idem, A History of Japan 1334-1615, London, 1961, J. Murdoch, A History of Japan II. 1542-1651, London 1949, M. Cooper S.J. (ed.), The Southern Barbarians. Tokyo, 1971, especially D. Pacheco SJ. The Europeans in Japan, 1543-1640, Knauth, Confrontación Transpacifica, el Japon y el Nuevo Mundo Hispánico. Mexico, 1972, and Kuichi Matsuda, The relations between Portugal and Japan. Lisbon, 1965.\n\n73", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208960, "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-1980", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "90\n\nDAVID LUNG\n\n'just growed,' how, or why, no one knows or cares. At some remote and generally unascertainable time in the dim past some families arrived from somewhere else, camped down, made themselves a 'local habitation.' ... and that was the village. It has a street, and perhaps a network of them, but no two are parallel, except by accident, and no one of them is straight. . .\"22\n\nThere is little doubt that fung-shui has played an important role in the planning of Kam Tin village. The reluctance of Smith and other Western observers alike to accept geomancy as a viable scientific planning principle has rendered their statements inaccurate.\n\nThe manifestation of the innermost layer of the Chinese mandala in built forms is the private home. In the farmsteads of Kat Hing Wai, the longitudinal axis penetrates through the enclosed space and open space recapturing the rhythm of light and shadow, gradient intimacy, and fusion of space, time and motion.\n\nThe private dwelling, resembling the cosmic diagram of the walled city and the walled empire, focuses inwards. The central courtyard in the house, just as the term t'ien-ching, well of Heaven, implies, is the ceremonial centre for worship vis-à-vis the two roofed areas housing mundane activities of men. The exceedingly narrow lanes and the windowless rear walls reiterate this idiom of privacy. No one from the outside world can tell what goes on behind the blank facades of the row houses, since rich men and poor men live side-by-side. Only the telltale granite slabs in the exterior walls show unostentatiously which house was once occupied by a scholar. Inside the house, the back room is generally more private and is, therefore, used as sleeping area and storage for more personal belongings, while the front room is an undesignated space in which various activities take place according to the purpose and the time of the day. In a way, Kat Hing Wai is more like a large house inside which there are many rooms. The clustering of several walled hamlets together resembles a residential neighbourhood. As Wong Chung-hong points out in \"Walled and Moated a Hong Kong Village\", the Chinese regard a village, a town or even a nation as just an enlarged family... all were to be built with the same principles in mind.\"23 Such a strong desire to attain an intimate relationship between man and nature in Chinese cities and villages", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208990, "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-1980", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "120\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nthe interest nor the techniques were available to study that other side of Chinese society which in fact was the experience of more than 90% of the population—the rural villages, small and large market towns, peasants, artisans, small tradesmen, fishermen and so on: in other words, the Little Traditions that were of course just as much part of the whole entity which was China, and without which the elite section would not have existed at all. After about 1920, interests changed a good deal in China, as elsewhere, and at about the same time anthropological and sociological techniques for studying the Little Traditions of the world began to be developed, but by the time that Wu Wen-tsao, Fei Hsiao-t'ung, Francis Hsu and their colleagues started to use the new techniques in the mid—and late thirties it was already very late. Despite the appalling conditions of national and civil wars they did a remarkable amount of work. Without it we should be immeasurably poorer than we are; but inevitably they could only cover a relatively small part of the vast whole before 1949.\n\nTo-day Mainland China is completely closed to the kind of prolonged, detailed, intimate study that classical anthropological fieldwork depends upon. Virtually no-one, not even Mainland Chinese themselves, has been able to do this kind of work since 1949, nor, in my opinion is it at all likely that it will become possible for very many years to come. (It is necessary to add that, of course, China does not stand alone in this prohibition; for what are in every case held to be good political reasons, the lights are going out for this kind of study in many, many parts of the world at present.) The result as far as Mainland China is concerned is that it will now never be possible to recover in detail the social and cultural heritage of what I have just referred to as the Little Traditions. The saddest words in all human languages have to be said—it is too late.\n\nThus only Hong Kong and Taiwan remain, and Dr. Wang Sung-hsing has just told how in his view Hong Kong is now the more valuable for this kind of recovery work and no-one in the world is better placed to know.\n\n—\n\nWe may ask why are the New Territories still so rich in this way? It is, when you think of it a very odd thing! Surely two of the strangest outcomes of the history of opium wars and Western imperialism are, first, that Hong Kong to-day is one of the rather", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209001, "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-1980", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n131\n\nThe Chinese are both adept at make-believe and at the same time very practical—in a way that confuses some Westerners. This flexibility also creates problems for the government of Teng Hsiao-p'ing. I have heard these problems talked about inside China and outside China. The most serious problem is that mid-level cadres report to Peking only what they think will please the orthocrats there. Therefore mid-level cadres conceal from their superiors the fact that a target has not been met. They do not want to be criticized for not meeting targets—and perhaps lose some of their perks.\n\nIn Peking the perquisites of cadres struck me more than anywhere else. I did not myself see the special schools that their children attend; nor their superior places of residence. What I did see once was a procession of about fifty cars, each with its curtains drawn as if to shield the occupants from curious gazes. I was told that the wife of the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka was visiting Peking. The first of several of the cars in the cavalcade were flying national flags as they went past me on Ch'ang-an Boulevard. Ambassadors rode in them.\n\nAfterwards I was walking back to the Peking Hotel, where I lived not in the western part (built with Russian help), but in the eastern part built in 1975. I happened to look in a gateway on the south side of Ch'ang-an Boulevard. I could hardly believe my eyes. What I think I saw was a white marble statue of Stalin, about ten feet tall. I could not enter the courtyard and inspect the statue more closely because the sign at the gate informed me that this was the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security.\n\nThe Chinese government is now revealing that many of the statistics released in 1958-1976 were erroneous. It is issuing corrections when it can. But it faces limits. For example, how can it state with certainty the approximate population of the world's most populous country? Cadres in distant areas may be reluctant to report that they have failed to carry out the program to stop married couples from having more than three children. Many peasant families still believe that the best old-age insurance is a larger number of children. Where they feel this way and have four or more children, the village cadre may be reluctant to report the fact to the county cadre; and the ascending accumulation of errors may be concealed from Peking. If Peking does not know the population of an area, it cannot plan to take adequate measures in case of drought—like the one in Kansu, for example, in 1979.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209134, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "TOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO- DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n23\n\na shaman has to have a large number of spirit friends; and human aristocrats, whose social relationships with other villagers are mostly those of clients and followers, do not readily admit others to their friendship. On the whole shamans are middle-ranking people. Their personal histories often show that at some stage in their lives they suffered from psychological disturbances; and that once they accepted the role of shaman they usually calmed down. Some of them, especially men who appear ambitious, and who were blocked in their political or economic careers, were very intelligent, and used their position as a shaman to gain advantages. On the other hand, some of the shamans were not intelligent; but were also not very well thought of as shamans. One man, who was particularly ambitious, had had his career blocked by aristocrats, it was said, on several occasions; and it was whispered that he was a witch, a very venomous shaman who could only just control his more dangerous spirit friends. Some people, indeed, said that his moral character was not strong enough to keep them in order, and that he did allow them to feed on neighbours' blood. A hundred years earlier the aristocrats would undoubtedly have speared him to death.\n\n―\n\nAt this point I realise, with some dismay, that I have given only the roughest idea of the Melanau's ideas on human illness and its causes and cures. What I hope I may have done is to give some indication of the complexity and sophistication of the system of thought that lies behind their ideas on illness. The universe they live in, which, if used incorrectly, almost automatically produces the ills that the human condition is subject to, is as complex and as aesthetically and imaginatively satisfying as the universe inhabited by Dante and the men of the European middle ages. Clearly the way in which the Melanau empirically handled many of the illnesses that afflicted them was less effective than the practice of western medicine in 1950. The terrifying number of newly born babies who died during my first visit to their villages and the fact that the owner of the house next to the one I lodged in died of tuberculosis six months after my arrival was sufficient evidence that many of their cures failed. But most of the disorders they suffered would in any event have cured themselves, as they do almost everywhere else in the world. The fact that the Melanau had little control over their environment, though they did have a detailed and extensive knowledge of its possibilities and dangers, meant that the way in which they organised that knowledge into an extension of the ordinary moral system gave them the assurance they needed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209156, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF 1-KUAN TAO 45\n\nIntellectual conditions which are implied by the modernizing process in Taiwan should go hand in hand with significant changes in religion. The fact that there are connections between social and religious change is too obvious to be doubted. What is less obvious are the kinds of religious changes which are connected with modernization in Taiwan. To be sure, one tendency has long been observed, i.e., secularization. Yang has given an excellent analysis of secularizing tendencies in modern China which can also be applied to Taiwan. Moreover, it can easily be seen that the factors mentioned above do in fact undermine the social base of many traditional forms of religion. The socio-economic frame of many traditional religious activities has been the peasant village community. To the same degree that industrialization reduced the relative importance of agriculture, the religious rites and festivals which were strongly related to the cycle of the farming seasons lost their significance for the society as a whole. Urbanization, a seemingly inevitable concomitant of industrialization, brought many people to the fast-growing cities, which lack the intimate social contacts of the villages. While in the countryside residential community and religious community were nearly identical, symbolized in the village temple; in the modern cities, new social relationships are formed, which normally do not coincide with the residential neighbourhood. As a result, the traditional religious life which formed an integral part of the village community loses its social base and is weakened. Finally, cultural contact in Taiwan has taken place to a degree that it can properly be named 'westernization'.\n\nWesternization in Taiwan has several aspects. On the one hand, there is the integration in the capitalist world economy, which resulted in a socio-economic readjustment after the model of the Western industrial nations. On the other hand, there is the strong impact of the Western intellectual tradition, above all of science, but also of philosophy, political thinking, and religion. The rationalistic and materialistic coloration of Western science and philosophy induces many well-educated people to disregard traditional forms of religion as superstitious. At the same time, the Chinese cultural heritage is no longer the sole repository of social and cultural values; people are turning more and more to Western ways of life, which are fashionable especially among the middle and upper classes in the cities.\n\nThere cannot be any doubt that industrialization, urbanization, and westernization affected many traditional forms of religion and diminished their structural as well as their functional position in Taiwan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209163, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "52 \n\nHUBERT SEIWERT \n\nof fu-luan cults in Taiwan in recent years?\". \n\nThere are many links between fu-luan cults and practices and the I-kuan Tao sect. Most of the texts which expose the teachings of this sect have been revealed by \"spirit-writing\" since the beginning of the sect in the nineteenth century28. Fu-luan sessions are held regularly, normally four times a year?, during which new revelations and instructions are received. Furthermore, the content of the teachings which are propagated by I-kuan Tao show strong similarities to those of many of the common fu-luan cults10. This is the case especially where the religious interpretation of the present time, the assessment of the historical role of the Chinese tradition and the confrontation with Western influence is concerned. It is these elements of the beliefs which show most clearly the popular religious responses to the modernization process. \n\nReligious interpretation of the present time: traditionalism \n\nTo illustrate some basic elements of the world-view of these cults I quote a few passages from a revelation of the god Shang Ti which was given during a fu-luan session in 1977: \n\nFrom 1914 to 1939 two world wars broke out. As a result the correct truth was almost eradicated and the traditional culture went up in flames. Streams of blood were shed and millions of corpses covered the earth. Wives were separated from their husbands and their sons scattered to the four winds, unbearable was the misery. If this happens again, if a third world war breaks out, mankind will face destruction. For the military weapons which are developed by the modern sciences are being improved day by day, nuclear weapons are perfected day and night. In such a situation we must give up our hope for the Great Harmony and the peace in the world. Therefore, there is only one way, if we want to avoid the final catastrophe: the original orthodox tradition of the Tao which our Chinese nation possesses has to be restored. The four social relations (szu wei9) and the eight virtues (pa teλ) [must be put into practice again]. We must continue the past in order to save the future, that means to follow the orthodox tradition of the Tao which has been transmitted from Yao, Shun, Yü, T’ang, Wen Wang and Wu Wang, Confucius and Mencius. Only in this way can one escape this huge cosmic catastrophe.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209165, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "54\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nsuperiors and inferiors are without righteousness, there is no faithfulness between friends. What a talk of liberalism! People get married and they get divorced again; if such conditions are common everywhere, how then can the orthodox tradition of the Tao be restored? Look at the following examples: In the European and American nations it is such that, when people are old and approach the end of their life, one is only waiting until they close the eyes and die. This is called the New Culture! Continually new weapons are being developed to destroy the human race. This is called the New Morality! How terrible it is! And we Chinese, we are giving up our own culture and our own morality, which we have inherited from our ancestors, in order to adopt the so-called New Culture and New Morality of other people. If one continues in this way, then our Chinese nation will soon have perished!\n\nIn the first section the present time has been pictured as one of utmost danger, threatened by an impending catastrophe. The second passage exposes the roots of this crisis, i.e. the general moral decline which can be stopped only by reviving the traditional virtues. In the above section the explanation again goes one step further. The moral decay, i.e. the extinction of traditional Chinese morality, is seen in relation to the influence of Western civilization. The westernization of Chinese society is regarded as promoting licence and demoralization. By implication, westernization is a major obstacle to the restoration of the orthodox tradition and will finally result in the perishing of the Chinese nation.\n\nThis pessimistic and critical picture of the present forms the background to the final revelations of the deity, which show the way to deliverance leading to a bright future:\n\nIf my heavenly Tao can be spread all over the world, the multitudes will not know any more suffering caused by weapons nor will there be malefactors or criminals. This is called to regulate without acting purposely (wu wei). Even if one does not plan for peace, peace will occur without doubt; even if one does not plan for a renaissance, a renaissance will come by itself. Then, what need will there be for rules and regulations, what need for severe laws and heavy punishments? And yet the days of Yao and Shun can come again and there can be a perfect world for men to live in.\n\n31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209166, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO 55\n\nWhile former passages showed a clear Confucian coloring, this last section depicts an ideal future world whose Taoist stamp cannot escape notice. A crucial point to be observed here is the admonition to spread the Tao all over the world, which will result in the emerging of a paradise-like new society. Since the Chinese expression for “world” here is not t'ien-hsia but shih-chieh, it is obvious that the deliverance is not thought of as confined to the Chinese nation only but is open to all mankind.\n\nI cannot decide for certain which religious group this text originates from. There is some evidence that it was revealed during an I-kuan Tao fu-luan session, but it could also be the product of any other fu-luan cult. In the interpretation of the present time there is a common stock of beliefs which is shared by most of the popular religious movements. According to my observations it normally consists of the following four basic elements:\n\n1. The present political, social and cultural situation is regarded as a time of decay and decadence. This can be seen above all in a general decline of public morality.\n\n2. The present time of decay is interpreted against the background of a religious theory of history. This applies especially for the I-kuan Tao and related groups. According to this theory we are now in the last phase of a cosmic period at the end of which there will be a worldwide catastrophe. Only a few elected, i.e. those who follow the true Tao, will survive this cataclysm. After this they will live in the ideal world of the Great Harmony (ta t'ung).\n\n3. The cause of the present decadence is to be found in the decline of the true Tao, which is a result of the influence of Western civilization. Western civilization is regarded as materialistic and immoral. The Chinese tradition, in contrast, is seen as a fountain of religious and moral values from which the spiritual renewal of mankind will grow.\n\n4. The divine revelations not only stigmatize the present time as a period of decay; the divine revelations also show the way to deliverance. This path is essentially the same one that was marked out by the sages of Chinese antiquity. That means it consists in the observance of the traditional Confucian moral values. While deviation from the true Tao accounts for the cause of decay, observance of the true way contains the key to salvation.\n\nObviously these views reflect the tensions between traditional", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209169, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "58\n\nHUIBERT SEIWART\n\nculture is by no means absolute. As can be observed in the above quoted text, the real contrast is not between the Chinese and the Western cultural traditions but between spiritual and materialistic approaches to life. To be sure, the spiritual culture is represented above all by the religious and moral traditions of China, while materialism is seen as the product of Western civilization. But at the same time it is admitted that in the West there also exist spiritual traditions, namely the two religions Christianity and Islam.\n\nIn this view Western civilization is not objected to in its totality, only its materialism is rejected. The menace of the modern world results from the fact that the West has submitted to materialistic thinking and this materialism gains more and more ground in China as well. Since the Chinese religious traditions and the Western religions are equally opposed to this materialism, they are all fighting for the same cause, they are allies not adversaries.\n\nThe recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions equal to the Chinese religious traditions can be observed at different intellectual levels. A rather superficial level is represented by some of the fu-luan cults. While the deities which manifest themselves by the writing-stick originally all belonged to the traditional Chinese pantheon, it does happen today that Western gods, above all Jesus and Mohammed, give revelations by fu-luan. This integration of Western deities into the fu-luan cults may be seen as symbolic of the lack of opposition to Christianity and Islam; it is no proof, however, of any deeper understanding of these foreign religions. Actually, as far as I could observe, the knowledge of the general fu-luan believer and even the mediums about Islam is virtually non-existent, though somewhat more is known about Christianity. When I asked a medium how Jesus and Mohammed could manifest themselves in a Chinese temple, I was simply answered that in heaven no boundaries between East and West exist and all gods live in the same heaven3.\n\nWhile the recognition of Christianity and Islam in the fu-luan cults is purely formal, allowing Jesus and Mohammed a status equal to the Chinese gods, the teachings of I-kuan Tao go one step further, trying to integrate the doctrines of these Western religions. To be sure, a manifestation of Jesus during an I-kuan Tao fu-luan session is recorded as early as the year 1939, and we might suppose that at that time their understanding of Christianity was much like that of today's fu-luan cults in Taiwan. But in recent years texts have been published which prove beyond doubt that one is earnestly attempting", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209172, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF KUAN TAO 61\n\ndegree is a result of the impact of the Western powers and the ensuing cultural contact, not only was reflected in the field of religion negatively but also led to a further development of popular religious ideology. That basically means that traditional religion can cope with modernization and is not necessarily doomed to extinction.\n\nAt a glance it looks as if the recognition of Christianity and Islam amounts to a withdrawal of the traditional claim for superiority of the Chinese culture. To a certain degree this may be the case. But if we analyze the argument carefully we find that this is only one side of the coin. By declaring a basic unity of the Western and the Chinese religions, the Christian (and Muslim) claim to absoluteness is countered most effectively. Christianity and Islam are no longer fought against but embraced and in this way their thunder is stolen. Having neutralized the Western claim to superiority, in a second step of the argument the priority of the Chinese tradition can be restored. For, as we have seen, Christianity and Islam are recognized as true teachings because they partake of the same Tao as the Chinese religions. But in China the orthodox tradition of the Tao goes back as far as Yao and Shun and even Fu-hsi, i.e. it is significantly older than the Western traditions. That means that the Tao originally came down in China.\n\nAge is an important factor in the Chinese way of thinking. Since China was in possession of the Tao from the beginning it is obvious that she occupies a special position among the nations. Indeed Chinese tradition is made a yardstick for the assessment of foreign cultural traditions. The recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions implies their subordination to the standards of the Chinese tradition.\n\nThe exceptional position of China can be seen from still another angle. In the revelation of Shang Ti which was quoted above we saw that the dangerous disorder of the present world is regarded as an immediate consequence of that materialistic way of life which originated in the West. To save China from the impending catastrophe it is imperative to redress Chinese tradition. This is what I have called \"traditionalism\". In addition to the traditionalist approach, however, there is the universalist one. By universalism I mean the tendency to extend the normativity of the Tao, i.e. the original Chinese tradition, beyond the boundaries of China proper. One aspect of this universalism has been described above: the inclusion of the Western religions in the tradition of the Tao, thereby extending by implication the validity of the Chinese Tao to the Western cultures. Another aspect of universalism comes to the fore when the deliverance from threatening disaster and\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209177, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "66\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nto the traditional legitimation system results in increasing tensions. If the tensions are to be diminished or at least kept to a tolerable level, then either the modernization process has to be stopped or even reversed, or the legitimation system has to be changed in such a way that it is more compatible with the social reality. I would argue that such an adaptation of the legitimation system can be observed in the teachings of I-kuan Tao.\n\nOne typical innovation in the teachings of many popular religious societies, of which I-kuan Tao is just one example, is what has been described as universalism. Not only are Western religions, especially Christianity, not fought against anymore, but they are accepted as being equal to the Chinese tradition. Foreign religions should even be learned from as they may contain truth which has not been revealed in China. On the other hand, the Chinese spiritual heritage is valid not only for the Chinese nation but for all of mankind. There is only one truth, one Tao, in the world of which all religions partake.\n\nIn a certain way, this universalist view is not new in Chinese intellectual history. In historic times too, there was only one truth which was theoretically valid for the whole world. But this truth did belong to the Chinese tradition, and to the degree that other nations did not accept the Chinese way, they were barbarians. The Middle Kingdom was the centre of the world, unequalled by other civilizations. While, as we have seen, the claim of uniqueness is not completely abandoned, the new universalism still represents a decisive innovation. The pretension to Chinese superiority could not be reconciled with the events of history since the last century. In the first phase, the national consciousness refused to take cognizance of other nations as being equal or even superior. The result was a rigid rejection of and hostility towards everything foreign. But reality could not be disputed for long. In the second phase, the pendulum tended to swing to the other extreme. China was seen as backward and unenlightened, and the Chinese intellectual tradition, especially Confucianism and religious thinking, was held responsible for this backwardness. By contrast, the West was idealized as a model which had to be emulated.\n\nOn the popular level, the replacement of the traditional symbol system by Western science and philosophy, which might be possible for intellectuals, was never a realistic alternative. To be sure, the success of Christian missions during the last hundred years would probably be unthinkable had there not been the strong need for new world interpretations which promised to be more consistent with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209319, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "208\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThese and other difficulties in realizing this project seem to have deterred the present compilers. The result, I am afraid, is far from satisfactory. Although the book is set out in several sensible sections, focusing on the harbour, China Town (Western), the strategic areas of Central, the Peak, Mid-levels, several suburbs such as Happy Valley, the vast area of change in Kowloon and the New Territories is condensed into one chapter.\n\nHowever, there are chapters devoted to People (a few random pictures of groups of Chinese people), Buildings of Note, Early Hotels and the Beaches (Repulse Bay).\n\nBut in design and execution scrappy unrelated text set to grey, dull pictures (even a couple of crudely coloured pictures advertised as the highlights of this collection stand out like sore thumbs) — this book will not satisfy anyone coming to consult it to see how Hong Kong has changed.\n\nEric Cumine, Hong Kong: Ways & Byways: A Miscellany of Trivia. (Hong Kong, 1981).\n\nGiven the rich varied cornucopia so generously offered to the reader by a man who is so evidently in love with Hong Kong, it seems the best idea is to adopt his own menu arrangement to give some idea of this book. There is some significance in the letters and entries chosen here as examples of 'Cuminology.'\n\nRecords\n\nA measured sense of pride informs this book; so it is no surprise that Eric Cumine says \"we have a few records to gloat over\". Some, we might agree with e.g. \"Hong Kong is the noisiest place in the world, according to a H.K.U. lecturer\" (Reviewer's note: not me!)\n\nI do not agree that we have the best lawn bowls players in the world. Architecture\n\nThis is a category not included here: but it should be. In fact, there is a goodly sprinkling of drawings by Eric and his P.W.D. friends. Reflecting the author's modesty, he does not include any mention of his own architectural contributions to Hong Kong's Ways & Byways. Of course, Hong Kong's architecture (apart from the house where the author lives) is a mediocre mass of box-like uniformity.\n\nGlamorous City\n\nCumine quotes Fodor to the effect that Hong Kong is the fifth most glamorous city in the world. A captivating but elusive concept. It would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "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": 209709, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 366, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "344\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nbegan to develop around 4000 B.C., that iron metallurgy was practiced in the Shang dynasty, and that the Hsia dynasty existed as described in much later texts—all highly controversial views—but the reader does not glean this information from the essay. Cheng's concluding sentence typifies his approach, with confident optimism and will to believe displacing scholarly caution: \"and what an exciting day it will be when the discovery of a Hsia capital site is announced to the world!!\" (emphasis added).\n\nWILLIAM MEACHAM\n\n+\n\nOxford Reprint Series: Things Chinese J. Dyer Ball (reprint of Kelly and Walsh 1925 Edition, Shanghai) 766pp inc. index, Peking J. Bredon (reprint of Kelly and Walsh 1931 Edition, Shanghai) 571pp inc. index, The Moon Year J. Bredon and I. Mitrophanow (reprint of Kelly and Walsh 1927 Edition, Shanghai) 514pp + index, The Hong Kong Guide 1893 (reprint of Kelly and Walsh 1893 Edition, Shanghai) 137pp + 36pp of advertisements, Kwang Tung, or Five Years in South China J. A. Turner (reprint of S. W. Partridge and Co. 1894 Edition, London) 194pp inc. index. All Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1982, all with introduction by H. J. Lethbridge.\n\nThe Oxford University Press is to be wholeheartedly congratulated on their courage in deciding to reprint many of the classic western texts on China dating from the last decades of the Ch'ing and the first years of the Republic. These works have become increasingly difficult to buy in recent years, and their reappearance on the market is most welcome. The reprints of this year do not represent the end of OUP's hopes in this field; also under consideration for reprinting are, it is understood, among others, Couling's Encyclopedia Sinica, Eitel's Europe in China, and Montalto de Jesus' Historic Macau.\n\nThe last decades of the last century and the first years of this are usually considered a period when Europeans either merely had contempt for the Chinese or else, at best, regarded them with patronising condescension. Surely, it will be thought, books on Chinese religion, society, or customs written by Europeans in China in this period would have nothing of value to tell us today. There are, certainly, remarks in almost all these books which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209710, "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": 367, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n345\n\nseem to arise from an invincible conviction of the superiority of some western ways, of the inferiority of some Chinese practices, and of the inevitability and desirability of a general westernisation of China in at least religion, and some social customs. Lethbridge rightly draws attention to these remarks in his short but clear introductions. At the same time, it is abundantly clear from all these books that these remarks arise only from routine acceptance by the writers of the common assumptions of their time and class. Bredon's Peking, indeed, makes it abundantly clear that some of these beliefs, and particularly the belief that traditional religious practices were \"superstitious\", were also held by many Chinese at this time, particularly by the new revolutionary groups. In most of their work these western writers were recording facts, from a depth of personal acquaintance with the Chinese that few modern writers can even begin to emulate. What is more, the China these writers knew was the traditional, pre-modern society of the late Ch'ing: the society that so many modern scholars labour so hard to comprehend was lived and breathed by them.\n\nFor me at least, my first introduction to Dyer Ball's Things Chinese has led to a very real admiration for a work which is still of the greatest value as a prime source for traditional China. Similarly, I have never been to Peking, but Bredon's Peking is so well and clearly written that the later Imperial capital now seems very real and vivid to me. Again, there can be little doubt that Bredon and Mitrophanow's The Moon Year represents, for all time, the fullest, clearest, and most sympathetic treatment of northern religious practices: these differ markedly from those in the Cantonese speaking parts of China. Reading The Moon Year leads me to regret that no writer of similar stature was moved to record southern ritual practices at the same date.\n\nIt would be invidious to attempt to judge between these works. Peking and The Moon Year are clearly classics which will stand for all time as the best statement obtainable of a vanished world, but Things Chinese will almost certainly be the most consulted of the three, at least from my bookshelves. This is for two reasons. First is Dyer Ball's clarity, lack of bias, common sense and accuracy: his articles spell out well the traditional attitudes of the Hong Kong area. His comments are, indeed, a better insight into traditional practices than almost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209760, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "OBITUARY\n\nBarbara E. Ward (1919-1983)\n\nMembers will be saddened to learn of Barbara E. Ward's death in 1983. Barbara was a gifted teacher of social anthropology and sociology in general and of Chinese society in particular. She will be remembered with respect and affection by the many students who learnt from her at the various universities in which she taught: London, Cornell, Cambridge, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\n3\n\nBarbara read history at Newnham College, Cambridge before the Second World War, gained a Diploma in Education at London University in 1942 and then taught in schools in England and West Africa until 1947. Like a number of other British social anthropologists of her generation, Barbara was led to the discipline by the experience of overseas service gained during and immediately after the war. Although she completed a thesis on the social organization of the Ewe-speaking peoples of southeast Ghana for a Master's degree at the London School of Economics in 1949 and later published some of her observations on social change in West Africa, Barbara became drawn to the study of Chinese society. The presence of enthusiastic Chinese scholars at the L.S.E., such as Tien Ju-k'ang, as well as the inherent attractiveness of a civilization which since the Enlightenment has had a special place in western social thought, were important factors underlying Barbara's growing interest in China. Much of her subsequent writing was based on field research carried out in Kau Sai, a New Territories community of boat-dwelling fishermen, between 1950 and 1953 and during a number of later visits. Barbara's essays on the boat people represent very substantial contributions to sinological anthropology, and through this work Barbara played a leading role in opening up the field of China to modern anthropology. Her friendships with the people of Kau Sai, many of whom appeared in an ethnographic film on the fishing community made by her and Hugh Gibb, were maintained for the rest of her life, and news of Barbara's death will have been received with much sorrow by her friends in Kau Sai as well as by many other residents of Hong Kong.\n\nxviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209800, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "37\n\nhas apparent existence because of the apparent union of countless dust particles. Aside from the dust particles, there is no world. Similarly, according to modern scientific view, the world is made up of atoms. Aside from the atoms, there is no world.23\n\nThe third argument is that since the Buddha's teaching is the truth, it must contain all the knowledge ever discovered by science. However, the Buddha's words do not contain every detail of science, but they do contain the principles from which science is derived. One writer puts it: \"Although Buddhism is not science, it is science and philosophy on a higher level.\"24 Another writer puts it: \"Buddhism is the philosophy from which science is derived.”26 Since Buddhism is super science, it fulfills the a priori conditions of not getting into conflict with science.\n\nThe fourth kind of argument is the reconciliation of apparent contradictions between science and Buddhist teaching. One problem discussed is the existence of Amitabha's western paradise. The conviction that the world is a globe spinning round the sun has rendered the interpretation of the term \"west\" rather problematical. Two essays have been written to solve this problem and I leave the reader to reconstruct the arguments for themselves.20\n\nIV. The Self-perception of the Monks\n\nAt the outset of this paper, the observation was made that the monk's self-perception changes in relation to his perception of the reality around him. At whatever point in time, monkhood must maintain its sense of purpose. The monk must find his own life attractive and his sense of value adjusted to his perception of reality, which cannot be totally cut off from the community's perception of it. Hong Kong has experienced a lot of changes in recent decades and these changes posed challenges to the sangha and I have documented some of its major responses. Here I shall discuss the monks' self-perception in terms of these responses.\n\nDuring the last two or three decades, monks in Hong Kong have experienced great changes in material conditions. There have been great fluctuations in the numbers of monks when immigrant monks came from mainland China and later dispersed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209898, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "135\n\n14.8.1897, all three Ap Lei Chau residents belonging to the old Luk Hing, Sau Hing, and Fuk Hing Tongs respectively. Their evidence enlarges and confirms the information obtained from the record of the Squatter Board's proceedings.\n\n\"Hayes 1977, pp. 99-101. The Tai O information is more explicit on this point, but the Cheung Chau practice was the same.\n\n** See E.G. Pryor, Housing in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1983) pp. 15-17. These new urban districts were very susceptible to contagious disease. It is well to recall Governor Des Voeux's report of 1889 in which, describing the City of Victoria, he wrote: \"Going ashore our visitor would see in the Chinese quarters houses, constructed after a pattern peculiar to China, of almost equally solid materials, but packed so closely together and thronged so densely as to be in this respect probably without parallel in the world.. It is believed that over 100,000 people live within a certain district of the City of Victoria not exceeding 1⁄2 square mile in area. It is known that 1,600 people live in the space of a single acre.\" (Sessional Papers 1889, pp. 303-304).\n\n15\n\n** Victoria had seven officially-approved sub-districts in 1857, as listed and described in the Hong Kong Government Gazette for 9 May 1857, GN No. 69. They included \"No. 1, or SEI-YING-POON — From the small village westward, called Cowee-wan, to the end of Circular Buildings, including all the houses on Bonham Strand, west of No. 1 Police Boat Station. The historical development of this area is given by Revd. Carl T. Smith's note at pp. 211-218 of JHKBRAS 14(1974) in \"Programme Notes for Visits to Older Parts of Hong Kong Island (Urban Areas....)\n\nSee also Chapter 3, Sheung Wan, of Frank Leeming's Street Studies in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1977) pp. 45-66.\n\n24\n\nSheung Fung Lane itself is situated between Second and Third Streets in that section bounded by Centre Street to the East and Western Street to the West.\n\n** An account of pao wui at the Tam Kung festival in Shau Kei Wan from a Secretariat for Chinese Affairs' file of 1958 is typical: \"There were about 15 Kaifong elders in the Tam Kung temple who were enrolling pao wui (K), there were about 18 pao wu's from the sea and about 10 from the land. The wul's who brought their own roast-pigs with them had to pay \"oil money\" and \"worshipping fees\" from $10 to $30 to the elders before entering the temple. It is learned that the worshippers have no objection to pay these fees. In addition the temple keeper also charged $5 or $10 for each roast-pig brought into the temple plus $5 to $10 \"oil money\".\n\n20 A recent account of the proceedings at Sheung Fung Lane is given in the article \"Everyone's festival\" in The Asia Magazine issued weekly by Asia Magazines Ltd., Hong Kong, Vol. 21, Number V7, 4th January 1981, pp. 3-6.\n\n3-6. For a very well illustrated account of a similar old neighbourhood in Singapore, and its community festivals, see \"Singapore's Vanishing Chinatown\" by Joan Ogden in The Asia Magazine 25th July 1976.\n\n* \"No. 3, or TAI-PING-SHAN From the end of Hollywood Road near Circular Buildings, to Gough Street steps, including all the houses on the south side of the Queen's Road between these two points.\" See the plan opposite p. 124 of Marjorie Topley (ed) Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch 1967). This was drawn in 1882 (ibid, pp. 123-124).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210369, "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": 340, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "319\n\nSaiyingpun for the 11 a.m. Matins service. St Peter's at that time was situated at the site where the Western Police Station now stands. The site also contained a Seamen's Home. In days of old many ships berthed at West Point and the sailors attended the services there. I have but to close my eyes now and I can see the words GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON painted in brilliant letters on the wall behind the altar. The school supplied two rows of choir boys. Henry Sykes, the assistant headmaster, often filled the role of organist.\n\nBetween 2.00 and 4.00 p.m. on Sundays, the boys had to learn the Collect of the day and a portion of the Gospel by heart for repetition to the Master on duty. The Gospel was easier to learn than the Collect which, although shorter, was more difficult to master.\n\nThere followed a short rest after which the boys, with the exception of the very young ones, had to proceed to St John's for the 6.30 p.m. Evening Service. On returning to school after Evensong, after the long walk, the boys had to attend a final service held in the School Hall by the Master on duty. They were then permitted to retire to their dormitory at 8.00 p.m. Meals were frugal.\n\nSir Claud Severn, who was then the Colonial Secretary and, for brief periods, the Officer Administering the Government, took a keen interest in the Diocesan Boys' School. He would send the Governor's car, with its Crown, when he was O.A.G., to the school to fetch some of the choir boys to join the Cathedral choir. Sir Claud himself sang with the Cathedral choir. He had a strong bass voice which he employed to perfection in his rendering of Good King Wenceslas and the First Nowell in Christmas services. His singing always thrilled the boys who sang treble. According to one of our school masters Sir Claud nearly married Miss Goggin, our school matron. Unfortunately the romance ended when Miss Goggin died in January 1920. She had a brother who was shipping manager of Dodwell & Co. Ltd., at the time.\n\nThe organist at St John's in my time was Denman Fuller. In those days the Cathedral had a grand pipe organ which to my", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210781, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "HAINAN ISLAND: \n\nA BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH \n\nD.L. MICHALK* \n\n115 \n\nIntroduction \n\nHainan Island forms the extreme southern limit of the People's Republic of China, save for the Paracel Reefs. Sometimes referred to as the Tail of the Dragon, Hainan lies between longitudes 108°30′ and 111° east and latitudes 18° and 20°31' north. It is separated from the mainland by the 25 km Qiongzhou Straits, and is part of Guangdong, accounting for 15 percent of the Province's area. Located in the South China Sea, Hainan is about 300 km east of Vietnam across the Gulf of Tonkin, some 500 km southwest of Hong Kong, and a similar distance from the provincial capital, Guangzhou. \n\nHainan is oval-shaped with the longest NE to SW axis measuring 309 km and the shorter NW to SE axis, 221 km. With an area of 34,077 km2 (Anon., 1982b), Hainan is about half the size of Tasmania and ranks as the world's twenty-sixth largest island. Although it accounts for less than 1 per cent of China's land area, its tropical climate, rich mineral and petroleum resources and strategic location make it an important, yet undeveloped region of China. \n\nHainan has always been regarded as a backwater by successive Chinese dynasties and a mystery to foreigners. Indeed, had it not been for a handful of inquisitive academics and devoted missionaries who \"found Hainan\" around the turn of the century, our knowledge of the island would have amounted to little more than folklore. Using these western sources, the aim of this paper is to provide a brief insight into the history of Hainan, particularly the role played by foreigners in its development. \n\n* Senior research agronomist, Agricultural Research and Veterinary Centre, New South Wales Department of Agriculture.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210804, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "138\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\nSince the departure of resident specialists from Gaopoling Farm in 1984, pasture development has been continued by Chinese technicians on at least four other farms in Guangdong with the sowing of about 2,500 ha of improved pasture in 1984 and 85 and the production of 25 tonne of pasture seed. This brings the total area of improved rangeland in Guangdong to approximately 4,000 ha. More important than area developed was the fact that different methods have been developed for each farm to suit the environmental conditions and resource constraints. This is evidence that Gaopoling Farm has been truly effective in demonstrating the principles of range improvement and has not simply promoted an Australian-style pasture development recipe.\n\nConclusion\n\nIn this paper, the history and gradual development of Hainan Island have been traced in accordance with the information gathered from western sources and contemporary experience. Regarding the future of this tropical nook, Frederick Mayers wrote in 1872;\n\n\"It remains for coming years to lift the veil of uncertainty, and to decide whether so rich and productive, but neglected an expanse of territory is to continue in its present state or to become a valuable contributor to the world's wealth by means of the admission of western enterprise and commercial relations\".\n\nIt is this author's belief that this statement is still as relevant to the development of the \"Shore of Pearls\" as it was when penned a century ago.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210938, "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": 288, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "271\n\ncounter to one side of the entrance hall. We were not allowed to enter until the opening ceremony at 10 sharp, when a male executive came out, looked at the \"opening hours\" signboard outside the entrance, and then placed himself in the centre, flanked by the two girls. Together, they bowed us into the building.\n\nMuch more was in store for us. As usual, all the employees, male and female, and there were very many of them, standing in their sections. Being among the first customers, we received many bows and gracious words of welcome. Similarly, at each escalator level, more floor staff together with executives waited to receive us as we ascended to the first and second floors. Meanwhile, an organ began to play. First (presumably) came the Japanese national anthem and (perhaps) the Company's own song, and then a selection of “vintage” Western songs of the type popular before the Second World War. Advancing to the balcony, and looking down, I was astounded to see a large assembly hall at ground level, with a huge multi-coloured wooden religious carving in the centre and a large painting (in fact, two, as it was paralleled by another on the opposite wall, hidden from my view). The organist was there, placed high up behind the carving. Looking up, I saw the coloured glass roof of the building high above me and each succeeding upper floor. The whole, being old and opulent, together with the ceremonial and the music and the art works, caused a very acute awareness of time and place, so that I felt the occasion deeply. Indeed, I cannot recall being so affected in recent years.\n\nUpon descending to the hall — and cursing myself for having told Mabel not to bring the camera as I thought it unnecessary and just something more to carry — we found that the carving and the paintings had been specially commissioned about the years 1906-08, which probably dates the building to that period. What a pity not to have all this on film!\n\nHong Kong, June 1986\n\nJames Hayes\n\nEnd note: Mitsukoshi is the department store chain of the famous Mitsui concern which began the drapery side of its business in Edo (Tokyo) in the early 17th century. See Charles J. Dunn, Everyday Life in Traditional Japan (Tokyo, Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1972), pp. 114-121.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210980, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "17\n\nOne must always take into account this French addiction to performing and making an impact on their public, whether dealing with the intellectual fireworks in honour of China in the eighteenth century, or on the occasion of more recent and far less pleasant pyrotechnics, somewhere in Polynesia.\n\nSo the Philosophes' encounter with China had, at its own level, contributed to the fall of the French monarchy. And for more than a century, French intellectuals were to be concerned with a completely different range of issues: political revolutions and counter-revolutions, France's position in Europe, industrial development and its social fall-out, freedom of speech and of thought, as well as colonial expansion. China had very little to do with these French-centred debates of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It had by then become a target for Western imperialism including France, and its cultural prestige was accordingly declining. China only mattered for a few isolated if not eccentric French intellectuals. China in this period was a very marginal feature in French intellectual life.\n\nSome of these marginal Sinophiles of the nineteenth century were belated admirers of an ideal and abstract China in the grand philosophical tradition. In a little-known novel by Balzac, L'Interdiction — a legal measure depriving a spendthrift of control over his estate — a Marquis d'Espard spends all his fortune on reprinting old Jesuit memoirs on China. He is a devoted right-wing monarchist; he admires the Chinese imperial monarchy for allegedly maintaining a social order the French kings had been unable to maintain. His wife, a typical Balzacian marquise, has a legal interdiction passed on him.\n\nThe Marquis d'Espard is a lonely figure in Balzac's little world — the Human Comedy — and equally solitary was the young Baudelaire, who was at college when Balzac was flourishing. In one of his strongest poems, Le Voyage (or 'the trip', also with the colloquial connotations of this word), his concern for China is expressed through brief but extremely challenging verses — a concern he must have developed in his college years:\n\nDe même qu'autrefois nous partions pour la Chine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210982, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "19\n\naventure de jeunesse as had been the case of young René Leys, the intriguing adventurer, the mythomaniac hero of Segalen's best novel, the secret lover of China's last Empress.\n\nSegalen's novel may allow me to say one more word on his unusual cultural itinerary, which began in Polynesia where he was searching for old Polynesian myths and also for Gauguin's manuscripts, and which ended up in China with René Leys and his cryptic poems Stèles. China and the Pacific probably fascinated Segalen because of their mutual irreducibility. They utterly contrast one with the other, one in its historical as well as geographical compactness, the other in its marine immensity and its tiny, highly diversified societies. It is hardly surprising that so few Western intellectuals have combined an active interest in both. My own intellectual detours between Chinese studies and the problems of the Pacific have probably brought me closer to Segalen's rather unique position.\n\n15\n\nAll these lively but isolated figures have left us with highly valuable literary contributions. However, they expressed little interest in China's historical fate and political plight. They were concerned with China's essence. China for them, or most of them, was a kind of cultural and aesthetic curiosity. And I am not sure that Malraux does not fall into this category, whatever the political setting of his novels. The powerful voice of Victor Hugo, combining artistic concern and political involvement and condemning from his Guernsey exile the sack of the old Summer Palace in Peking in 1860, has remained distinctly isolated:\n\nSomewhere in a dark corner of the world, there was a marvel of the world and this marvel was named the Summer Palace... It was a kind of frightening unknown masterpiece of Asian civilisation on the horizon of European civilisation.\n\nAll the treasures of our cathedrals would not match this formidable Museum of the East.\n\nTwo bandits once entered the Summer Palace... One of the victors filled his pockets, whereas the other filled his treasure chests... In the face of history one", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "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": 211173, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "209\n\nburden\" to bring enlightenment and civilisation to the dark and backward corners of the world was a serious obligation.\n\nBehind the justifying idealistic philosophy for imperialism were hard economic facts. Expanding industrial production demanded larger markets. The world must be opened up both as a source of raw materials and as an outlet for the manufactured product. If this meant subjection of weaker powers, so be it. It was all in the high cause of progress and civilisation.\n\nToday we are critical of these attitudes and practices of Western powers toward African and Asian peoples. In that day British imperialism was in its heyday. Britannia ruled the waves; the sun never set on the Union Jack. The triumphant posturing of the British lion was acclaimed with enthusiasm.\n\nThese attitudes lay behind the words of the speakers at the public meeting.\n\nIn his introductory remarks the chairman, the Chief Justice Sir George Phillippo, spoke of the high regard in which Her Majesty Queen Victoria was held by the whole world.\n\nIn making his remarks he followed a well-known practice of speakers, to state it is unnecessary to say what they then proceed to elaborate on at length. So he begins: “It is unnecessary for me to dilate at length upon the many virtues Her Majesty possesses, and that she has shown both in her public and private life.”\n\nHe then proceeded to speak of her worldwide reputation as a virtuous woman and sovereign: \"They are well known to you as they are to every member of the British community and to nearly every member of the civilised world (applause).”\n\nOther matters he said he would not mention, but proceeded to do so, were, \"that during the whole of these 50 years during which Great Britain has advanced in the most remarkable way, Her Majesty has been at the heart of affairs, and that during the whole of that time she has shown herself from girlhood upwards to be one whose virtue we must all admire, as a loving daughter, as a most\n\n: \n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211342, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "34 \n\nTHROUGH HISTORICAL RECORDS AND ANCIENT WRITINGS IN SEARCH OF THE GIANT PANDA* \n\nPère David's discovery \n\nWEI PER TI \n\nIn 1869, the western world was regaled with the glad tidings that a heretofore unknown animal had been found in China. It was not exactly running to ground the legendary unicorn, but still joyful news indeed to the handful of scientists who had been anxious to locate concrete evidence of this elusive animal, reputed to be roaming the dense bamboo jungles in the mountains of southwestern China. \n\nL'Abbé Armand David, a French naturalist and missionary, known to his colleagues simply as Père David, was given the pelt of a large, predominantly white mammal by hunters of southwestern China who had called it a white bear, (baixiong). This pelt, \"du fameux ours blanc et noir\", was dispatched post-haste to Paris, where it was subsequently identified as that of a new species, ailuropoda melanoleusa, literally black and white panda foot. The animal was called the giant panda in English, to distinguish it from the smaller and reddish-coloured lesser panda, ailurus fulgens styani (Thomas). \n\nIt was clear from Père David's diary that he himself had never seen a live panda, only the pelt of the animal \n\nPanda hunts \n\nThe final decades of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth witnessed adventurers pressing into the wilds of Africa and Asia. American and European explorers were interested in hunting \n\n* Grateful thanks are due Joyce Wu Tong of the Sinological Institute of the University of Leiden who has made it possible for me to research this article while ensconced in the deserts of the Middle East. I would also like to thank Linda L. Reichert, Reference Librarian of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, for making available copies of the museum's journal of the 1930s through my good friend Anne Phipps Sidamon-Eristoff, Vice-President of the museum.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211350, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "42\n\nThe search for the giant panda through Chinese historical records and ancient writings represented an interesting exercise. Nevertheless, no positive statement can be made that the Chinese had known about the giant panda before the pelt was brought to western attention.\n\nPère David, it is safe to say, may continue to bask in glory as the discoverer of the giant panda for the whole world, including China.\n\nbaixiong 白熊 Bishan 璧山\n\nBishi 壁溪\n\nGLOSSARY\n\nErya 爾雅\n\nLi Shizhen 李時珍\n\nLiaodong 遼東\n\nLolo 玀羅\n\nMing 明\n\nmo 貘\n\nOuyang Xiu 歐陽修\n\npixiu 貔貅\n\nSima Qian 司馬遷 Sichuan 四川\n\nShandong 山東 Xuande 宣德 Wuding 武定\n\nYunglo 永樂\n\nYunnan 雲南\n\nZhou 周\n\nzhouyu 州圉\n\nZhu Su 朱橚\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nBrightwell, L. R., \"The Giant Panda, Its History in Ancient China and Modern Europe”, Field 187:497-498 (London, 1946)\n\nDavid, Armand, \"Journal d'un Voyage dans le centre de la Chine et dans le Thibet Oriental\", Nouvelle Archives Musée Naturelle de Paris (Bulletins) 10:3-82 (Paris, 1874)\n\nFox, Helen (editor and translator), Abbé David's Diary, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949.\n\nDictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644, New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1976. Essay on Li Shih-chen (1518-1593) by L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, I:859-865.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211367, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "59\n\nbeen thrown out by the Legislative Council and whether it was to be reconsidered. The questioner did not realise that the proposal had never come before the Legislative Council but had only been under consideration in the Executive Council.\n\nIn reply to the question the Government spokesman said the matter had been under consideration by the Colonial Government and the Governor was to be asked what measures, if any, were contemplated.\n\nA comment for the information of the Under-Secretary minuted on a Colonial Office Despatch contained the following history of the progress of the Sanitary Board's recommendation through the Executive Council. In June 1919 the Executive Council in Hong Kong had considered the proposals of the Sanitary Board but had postponed the matter. The next week it asked the Sanitary Board to supply statistics relating to the classes of work in which children were employed and the hours of work. This report was considered on 24 July, but the Colonial Secretary had concluded that if the education problem were solved, then the child labour problem would solve itself. Though the Executive Council side-stepped the problem, pressure for action was continued by interested groups. At the end of December the Council proposed appointing a Commission to enquire into the conditions of the industrial employment of children and to advise as to the desirability and feasibility of legislation. But as the agitation died down the Executive Council in March 1920 decided to postpone the appointment of the Commission.\n\nProposals passed at a Church of England Men's Society Meeting February 1921\n\nThe example Hong Kong could set for China was a theme which ran through the discussions on child labour laws. When Mr. Bowley again addressed the Church of England Men's Society on the subject in February 1921, he took up the theme. “Our Colony is in a unique position as an outpost of Western civilization on the fringe of one of the oldest civilizations of the world, and, if we are to justify our boast that Western civilization is the better, it behooves us to look carefully at the conditions of our own community.' \n\nIt must be noted, however, that he had preceded this by a reference", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211428, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "120\n\non 23 June 1898, and was thoroughly spoiled by Aunt Yim. When George was nine years old, his mother took him to China, but after a year he returned alone to live with First Paternal Uncle in San Francisco. On his way to California, he stopped over for a night in Honolulu. A year later he went to Los Angeles to join his father, who was working for Dr. G. S. Chan in his herb business. Although inducted into the army during World War I, George never saw active duty. In 1919 when Uncle Yim died, he took his father's remains to China for burial, first stopping over at First Paternal Uncle's home in Hong Kong where his mother was waiting for him. This was during the time my father was there, ill with tuberculosis.\n\nGeorge finally gave in to Aunt Yim's continual pressure and married Sai King Auyoung of Ma Tse Village in 1919. She was a young bride (born in 1904) when I visited them that year. In 1922, after the birth of their daughter, Gladys Yung Hoy, on 8 June 1922, George left his family for Honolulu. His wife then entrusted the care of Gladys to Aunt Yim and went to work. In 1931 when Aunt Yim died, George sent for his daughter. It was not an easy adjustment for a girl of ten, but a good relationship with her stepmother developed and after some schooling, she went into restaurant work where she met her husband, Lam Kwai #, born in 1906, by whom she had a daughter and a son, Claudia Ngit Oi A and a son, Calvin Yuen Tim K.\n\nBefore Gladys joined her father, he had married Josephine Kekai Fung Kyau Liu, who was born on 30 September 1910. From this union came Kwock Wah, born on 7 January 1930. He is a pharmacologist on the staff of Purdue University. They subsequently adopted one of Josephine's nieces, Lorna Siu Lan. Josephine's father was a Chinese from See Yup and her mother was a Chinese-Hawaii-Caucasian woman. From this multi-ethnic background, she learned to speak Chinese fluently as well as to cook authentic Chinese, Hawaiian and Western dishes. These skills enabled her to work as a cook for many years before she had to retire because of a bad knee.\n\nGeorge found employment in the Navy Yard after working as an auto mechanic for several private shops. After his retirement, he made a visit to China to see his ailing first wife before her death in 1968 at the age of 64. He had a great deal of warm feelings for his Chan relatives, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211469, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "161\n\nfaith, the Lam Toy's and Lam Quan's, who became our life-long friends. By this time Chinese women were freer to visit with each other, and Mrs. Lam Quan taught Mother how to sew Western style dresses for us children, to bake cakes, to make delicious ice cream (which was a great treat in those days), and to use Western medicine. When Mr. and Mrs. Ai took a trip to China in 1913, their son, Samuel, would often play with me or Helen. One afternoon while he, Mung Yee Yap and I were playing ball, the family dog, tied to a mango tree, bit Samuel repeatedly when he tried to retrieve a stray ball. I stood immobilized and horrified by his screams. He happened to be wearing clothes his friend had loaned him when his head became wet while playing in a stream, and the unfamiliar scent must have provoked the dog. Fortunately his sister Bessie, who happened to come to the front door, rescued him. It was also traumatic to hear Samuel's scream while he was being treated on the back porch by Dr. Francis Wong-Leong.\n\nAmong Mother's non-Christian friends was the first Mrs. Siu Kit who lived in a small lane behind the Dutro's. She had come from China with her oldest child to join Mr. Siu, who ran a butcher shop at the corner of King and Aala Streets. She bore five more children, but the youngest died of whooping cough before he was even a month old. After the death of this infant, Mrs. Siu seemed to have no will to live, and, again, pregnant, became very ill, possibly from influenza. She died in 1919, insisting to the end that Mr. Siu had taken in a concubine in his village. There was no foundation to her accusations, because only after her death did he go to Japan, where he met and married a young girl from the village selected by his family to be his second wife. This second Mrs. Siu also became our life-long friend, who looked upon Mother as a surrogate parent and was always generous and thoughtful. She found the care of five undisciplined stepchildren and seven of her own a difficult responsibility. When the exchange rate was very favourable, Mr. Siu retired to Shekki with his whole family but gradually sent his children, two or three at a time, back to Honolulu. He died during the Japanese occupation of China. Mrs. Siu returned to Honolulu after the Second World War to live with her daughter, Siu Ying Chun, and died in 1985 while on an extended visit in California.\n\nThis was a worry-free and happy period of my life in spite of the fact that occasionally I had a stormy time with Mother, who did not spare", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211541, "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": 258, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "234\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nDian H. Murray, Pirates of the South China Coast 1790-1810 (Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. viii, 243.\n\nIn 1813, there appeared in English a translation by the European scholar Neumann of a Chinese work on pirates: more specifically, on that particularly large group which infested the China Sea from 1807-1810. Dian Murray takes a look at them over a longer period of twenty years, to give us the first modern work on the subject. She uses a wide range of sources in Chinese and Western languages, the subject of a useful bibliographic essay towards the end of the book.\n\nAt their peak, the pirate bands numbered between 50,000 and 70,000 men and women, organized into a confederation of six fleets and 20,000 junks: surely a horrifying prospect for officials and villagers and townpeople alike, not to mention other seafarers. And so it proved. The author gives many examples of defeats inflicted on Ch'ing officers, and the killings, abductions and sackings to which the inhabitants of many places were subjected over the period of greatest piratical activity. Chapters 6 and 7 (pp. 99-136) contain many examples of the kind, in colourful detail often culled from county gazetteers. In the end, the pirate menace was removed by a combination of greater force and foreign aid, together with application of the well-known expedient of buying over the leaders with money and titles, which resulted in the surrender of the last fleet, leaving the way open for the Ch'ing navy to overcome the remaining smaller groups piecemeal (Chapter 8).\n\nOther chapters deal with the milieu in which the pirate menace originated: the (Cantonese) \"Water World\" as Professor Murray entitles it (Chapter 1), the Sino-Vietnamese piracy of the late 18th century whose leaders were enlisted by the rival claimants to the Vietnamese throne (Chapters 2 and 3), the \"Professionalization of Piracy\", which gives an account of organization, leadership, recruitment and life at sea (Chapter 4), whilst another chapter is devoted to the manner in which piratical operations were conducted, including information on ships and weapons (Chapter 5).\n\nA \"Conclusion\" surveys the era and the pirate phenomenon under", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211542, "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "235\n\nvarious heads, including causation and factors leading to the development of such large fleets, whether the pirates were rebels or only another form of Chinese bandit (using the later 19th century North China Nien Rebellion on land for purposes of comparison), and suggesting that overcoming the pirate menace was not, in the end, a good thing for Ch'ing government or its coastal forces, owing to its contributing to the false sense of security and sufficiency that was to be shattered by the encounters with Western forces thirty years on.\n\nThere are useful appendices giving information on a small number of pirates' social backgrounds (for voluntary pirates), on the “Pirates' Declaration” of 1809 posted in Macao and Canton, on Pirate Junks, on the Pirate Surrender Document of 1810, and on Chinese Weights and Measures. The Notes at pp. 179-213 contain much extra material.\n\nProfessor Murray has given us a readable and fascinating account of a colourful period, and an insight into a group of persons who brought fear, suffering and violent death to many people.\n\nThere appears to me to have been no particular socio-economic or political reason that would either justify or extenuate the activities of these pests. The times no harder nor the government more inept or corrupt than the norm, on land or at sea, although the beneficial results of a long period of stability and prosperity were beginning to be offset by increased pressure of population. As the author says, piracy was a part of life in the \"Water World”. In the Hong Kong Region, this was true up to and after the British took over the New Territories in 1899: see pp. 26-31 of my book The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983). In the late 18th century, as Dr. Murray states, it just so happened that larger than usual groups of pirates on the Sino-Vietnamese coast were encouraged by contesting rivalries over the Vietnamese throne, and that above average leadership was available.\n\nThe book resulted from a doctoral thesis. Dr. Murray has done a good job. Her industriousness is evident, and she has opened up a fascinating subject with asides on other major themes. If I can voice a personal \"moan\", it is about something for which she herself is not really responsible. I refer to the deplorable habit of giving Cantonese place", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211611, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "IN THE STEPS OF LU PAN:\n\nREMINISCENCES OF BUILDING IN HONG KONG\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nLu's architectural precepts hold good forever;\n\nHis methods of computation will endure a thousand years.\n\nTranslation of inscription at Lu Pan Temple, above Kennedy Town, Hong Kong Island.\n\nParts of Hong Kong give the impression of being one gigantic building site, and a visiting schoolboy, on being asked what he thought of the Territory, replied, \"It will be nice when it's finished!\"\n\nThere have, of course, been recessions, and those brought about by the 1967 Disturbances in the Colony, and the world shortage of oil in the mid-1970s, spring to mind. Yet all employed in the construction industry in Hong Kong, with its unrivalled prosperity which provides a barometer of the economy, have a great deal to thank Lu Pan, master builder and patron saint of the industry, for.\n\nHe was born in 606 BC, and was a leading technical innovator in the era of Confucius (551-479 BC). Besides being credited with creating the handtools that revolutionised carpentry, such as the saw, the plane and the chisel, he also invented, among other things, a kite which took him up to the sky. Homage is paid to this early \"Leonardo Da Vinci\" on the 13th day of the Sixth Moon, his birthday, when banquets are held.\n\nThe author first attended a Lu Pan dinner, hosted by the Hong Kong Building Contractors' Association, in 1955. This was held at the old Kwong Chow restaurant in Western. It was the close of the period when Western was the entertainment district of the Territory. Large gatherings could be hosted at the Kwong Chow and the Kam Ling, each of which were capable of providing 100 tables (a circular Chinese table normally seats 12 or so persons). In the late 1950s a few Sing Song girls, the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese Geisha, were still active.\n\nThe writer attended the Lu Pan dinners from 1955 to 1975 (except", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211616, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "Tin magnate and businessman Eu Tong-sen had 13 sons and 11 daughters by his many wives, among whom were a few Europeans. He was also told he must continue building, although when he died, in 1941, he had completed only three fantasy homes (all now demolished); one at Eucliff at Repulse Bay and another at Euston in Bonham Road, both in pseudo-Gothic style. The third was an old-world, rambling, English-style country mansion, named \"Sirmio\", which stood on the north shore of Tolo Harbour.\n\nThe author attended a swimming party at Eucliff which contained a large number of paintings — in 1955, and a picnic in the grounds of Sirmio a few months later. At the time, apart from caretakers, both were unoccupied.\n\nWith 1997 approaching the Aw and Eu prophecies regarding building, as stated above, are now being applied to Hong Kong itself, and some believe that, if construction stops, the Territory itself will wither and die.\n\nAcknowledgement\n\nThe author is grateful to Doctor James Hayes for his comments on a draft of this paper.\n\nNOTES\n\n2 V.R. Burkhardt, Chinese Creeds and Customs (1982), p. 174.\n\n3 Remarks of the nephew of J.J. Ropes, letter to the Editor Hong Kong Standard (later 1970s); and Anthony Walker and Stephen M. Rowlinson, The Building of Hong Kong. Constructing Hong Kong Through the Ages (1990), passim.\n\n4 Burkhardt, op.cit. passim; and Anthony Walker and Stephen M. Rowlinson, op.cit. Chapter Four.\n\n5 The author recalls how, when a Chinese woodwork instructor in one of the old Technical College workshops (which was equipped with western-style tools) wanted a particularly good finish on a piece of timber, he would always use his own Chinese plane.\n\n6 The author taught building technology and allied subjects at the Government Technical College (this became the Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1972) during his early years in Hong Kong.\n\n8 G.B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong (1958), p. 116.\n\n9 The Craft of Chinese Scaffolding, editor Ho So (Circa 1972); and Jayson Wong, \"The bamboo wonders of territory's high-rise world\", South China Morning Post, 20 September", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211708, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "98 \n\na door through which the western world traded with the East, particularly China. Import values of incense wood increased. In 1846, 131 tons of sandalwood were imported from New South Wales, 12 tons from Kuang-tung and 5 tons from Lombok and Bali.\" This might not seem impressive at first sight, until one considers that the total amount of import from New South Wales was 550 tons carried on 6 vessels, so that sandalwood constituted approximately a quarter of the total. In 1847, the quantity of imported sandalwood from New South Wales grew to 228 tons, almost double that of the previous year.'* \n\nNo direct mention can be found of local incense milling and joss stick manufacture during this period, although the export table for 1848 given in the Hong Kong Blue Book does make a distinction between trade in incense logs and incense powder. In that year, incense exports from Hong Kong to ports on the east coast of China consisted of 48 tons of sandalwood shipped in 213 packages, and to Whampoa consisted of 25 casks of powder and 318 logs while another 144 tons of sandalwood were sent to other places in Kuang-tung. \n\n15 \n\nIt is possible, therefore, to speculate that incense wood milling evolved in Hong Kong alongside the lumber trade in incense wood, probably as an attempt to reduce the bulk and weight of the logs. At that time, incense wood was ground by stone hammers operated by water power. Such hammers could be worked in pairs or in groups of five to six. The idea was to grind the incense wood by means of an overshot wheel. The axle of the water-wheel rested on a cross beam and was held in place by wedges within the place where it was to revolve. When water was conducted through a leat onto the bamboo boards of the wheel, the wheel turned, causing the cross beam to revolve. The revolution of the cross beam, in turn, caused the hammer to rise slowly and then fall with a crash. As a result, the continuous raising and dropping of the hammers onto the wood would grind it up into powder. This idea of incense milling was taken from the overshot wheel used in irrigation, as outlined in the Nung chêng ch'üan-shu,\" and is similar to the process used in pre-industrial Europe for the fulling of woollen cloth, and the working of iron blooms. \n\nYung-yen has referred to water milling in Heung Fan Liu (**) in Sha Tin in the late Ming Dynasty.\" This is possible, and it is even likely that there was incense milling in the area in and after the eighteenth century. However, the first positive evidence of incense milling in Hong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211863, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 278, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "253\n\ndescribed by other missionaries. It included a ship's captain who was irreligious, malicious, and perhaps incompetent; a sailing ship that suffered doldrums, storms, groundings, and tensions between officers and crew; a trip that subjected the passengers to tedium; a call at a tropical port that exposed the missionary to the wider colonial world; and, at the end of the voyage, the excitement of the unknown in China.\n\nFryer wrote a \"Diary of Voyage to China\" in the form of a letter to be circulated among his parents and friends in England. The “diary” is no doubt an abstract of a journal he kept, edited for home consumption, and titled to coincide with his 22nd birthday on August 6th. Although Fryer mentions keeping a journal or a diary in several of his later letters, no such journal has surfaced.\n\nThe Diary is the earliest example of Fryer's writing to come to my attention. It is well thought out, expresses Fryer's deepest convictions, conveys a sense of confidence in himself and his mission, and describes the excitement and adventure experienced by a young man about to make his mark on the world.\n\nThe Diary starts with expressions of faith and anticipation about the future. In it one obtains a feeling for Fryer's upright character and resoluteness, characteristics that were to serve him well in his life's work as a translator, introducer of Western science and technology, advocate of the superiority of the West, and educator. During the trip he familiarizes himself with nautical terms and the names of items on the ship; he studies the Chinese language; he observes and notes the changes of climate and visible stars, discusses local flora and fauna, describes people he met and records strange fruits and vegetables. In the **diary** he comments on customs of the sea and on peculiarities of both colonized and colonizer in Batavia. Above all, he describes the terrors of a journey fraught with danger and uncertainty.\n\nThe text of the holograph Diary required editing only in details. Minor changes were made to bring dates, prices, capitalization, emphasis, and spelling into conformity with modern usage and to improve readability. Fryer's use of the apostrophe and various punctuation marks was often capricious. Usually, Fryer wrote just one run-on paragraph for each day's Diary entry. These have been separated into smaller units for ease of reading. Where a single day's entry is broken in the original into more", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212012, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 427, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "402\n\ncivilization occurred during the time of Confucius and not, as Schwartz argued in his latest book, The World Of Thought In Ancient China (1985), half a millennium earlier in the Western Zhou. Metzger underlines foundations for individual moral autonomy in traditional Chinese thought, a position contradicting the general evaluation (supported by Schwartz) that 'Confucian norms emphasized the importance of the group at the expense of the individual's freedom, spontaneity, creativity and moral autonomy', (p. 263). The fact that Chang's analysis uncovers no decisive break with tradition, but only a 'counter-tendency' to the cosmological myth which legitimated imperial rule (pp. 30-31), manifests the need to question the usefulness of positing an axial age when applied to pre-Qin cultures. Studies edited by Eisenstadt have recognized this methodological dilemma, noting the difficulty of identifying a period of radical metaphysical construction and social repositioning during Confucius' era. This leaves open the possibility that Schwartz's location of the major shift in the earlier period of the sage kings, in spite of oracular bone evidence to the contrary (pp. 18-19), may yet identify an important option. Metzger's challenge, on the other hand, unveils a leitmotif which weaves the polychronic essays into a single tapestry: the question of the relationship between modernity and China.\n\nThese essays being divided into four general sections entitled 'Thought', 'Literature and Culture', 'Political Theory', and 'Culture and Methodology' — tend to converge on either characterizing the process of modernization in some dimension of Chinese societies or evaluating the methods scholars have employed to illuminate China's status in the modern world. These convergences are imbedded in comparative discussions of intriguing complexity, making this thread less easy to identify at times. Nevertheless, recourse to the touchstone of modernity is a central feature of the volume. In fact, the discussion regarding it is not always complementary.\n\nDon Wyatt, like Metzger, locates a singular continuity in Confucianism: Confucian language is \"this-worldly\", especially in its use of analogical arguments, (pp. 42-57). Surprisingly, perhaps, this does not mean that Confucianists (especially in the Song) did not address metaphysical, even other-worldly, ideas. Emphasizing this kind of 'language consensus' which sinologists have regularly typified as this-worldly, Wyatt goes so far as to claim that, although Confucian society was clearly stratified, no class-bound structures are evident in Confucian language, (p. 61). Whether or not this is still the case, this assertion", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212104, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "23\n\n2\n\nChina: The Land and the People (New York, William Sloane Associates. 1948), pp. 152-153.\n\n3\n\nA most useful survey is given in chapter 4, Autonomous Hong Kong, 1972-1982, of Ian Scott's Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong (London, Hurst and Company, 1989).\n\n4\n\nMy government service was mostly spent in departments and in direct contact with the population.\n\n5\n\nLin Yutang, My Country and My People (New York, Halcyon House, 1938), pp. 203-206.\n\n6\n\nMy The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Connecticut, Archon Books, 1977) and The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) are directed at this theme. See especially the Introduction to the former, at pp. 11-13. See also David Faure, \"The Hong Kong History Project”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 27 (1987), p. 261.\n\n7\n\nPersonal letter from Walter Schofield (1888-1968) dated 27 July 1962.\n\n8\n\nAustin Coates, Summary Memoranda on the Southern District of the New Territories, Spring 1955 (Unpublished). He was District Officer between May 1953 and July 1955.\n\n9\n\nEverard Cotes, Signs and Portents in the Far East (London, Methuen & Co., n.d. but 1907), pp. 110-111,\n\n10\n\nRev. R.H. Graves, D.D., Forty Years in China, or China in Transition (Baltimore, R.H. Woodward Company, 1895), pp. 18-19,\n\n11\n\nReginald F. Johnston, Confucianism and Modern China (London, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1934), p. 66, citing Mencius, Book 1, Part 2, Chapter viii.\n\n12\n\n13\n\nStuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1967), p. 21.\n\n14\n\nHerbert Giles gives numerous examples in the chapter \"Democratic China\" at pp. 75-106 of his China and the Chinese (New York, The Columbia University Press, 1912). Many others are cited by Kung-Chuan Hsiao, Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1960), pp. 433-440.\n\n15\n\nI am uncertain whether this record was engraved on a stone which has since been lost, or whether it only ever existed on paper. Either way, the original is now lost, and I cannot now recall who was kind enough to give me a copy.\n\n16\n\nMy early lectures came from male and female indigenous New Territories villagers living in remote places at a time when modernization had not yet set in; it was seemingly part of the tradition.\n\n17\n\nIn Leonard A. Lyall, China (London, Ernest Benn. 1944). p. 99.\n\n18\n\nE.R. Hughes, The Invasion of China by the Western World (London, Adam and Charles Black, 1937), p. 157.\n\n19\n\nArthur H. Smith, China in Convulsion (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier. 1901), Vol. 1, p. 6. Striving to convey to his readers and listeners the power of these teachings, he explained that ... the tenets of Confucianism, as a whole and in detail, [are] intellectually and psychologically appropriated by the Chinese as on a par with a law of nature.\n\n20\n\nYang Kang, Daughter, An Autobiographical Novel, (Beijing, Phoenix Books: Foreign Languages Press, 1988) pp. 225-226, and see also pp. 67-74, 80-83 of this fascinating book.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212125, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE 'SYRIAN BRILLIANT TEACHING’\n\nDAVID WILMSHURST\n\nIntroduction\n\nFew Christians nowadays outside the Middle East are familiar with the name, let alone the history, of the Nestorian church of Persia, yet between the ninth and fourteenth centuries it was in some respects perhaps the largest Christian church in the world, with bishoprics stretching from the Mediterranean right across Asia to China. The church took its name from Nestorius, who became archbishop of Constantinople in 428 and was deposed not long afterwards for holding heretical views on the nature of Christ. Nestorius placed great stress on the human nature of Jesus, and tried to discourage the use in the churches under his jurisdiction of the title Theotokos, 'mother of God', a term which had long been applied to the Virgin Mary. To his enemies, he appeared to be denying the divinity of Christ, and regarding him as a mere man who had been adopted by God as his son, though it is now clear that his views were considerably closer to the orthodox position than he was given credit for at the time. A heated controversy ensued, and both sides in the dispute supported their arguments with bribery and intimidation. The opposition to Nestorius was led by Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, who was motivated partly by a genuine distaste for his opponent's theology and partly by jealousy of his ecclesiastical status. Cyril finally procured the deposition and banishment of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in 431.\n\nIn the next century and a half the Nestorian heresy was stamped out within the territories of the Roman empire, and its adherents fled to neighbouring Persia. Although the state religion of Sassanian Persia was Zoroastrianism, Christianity had firmly established itself in the western provinces of the Persian empire, particularly among the mainly Syrian population of northern Mesopotamia and in Khuzistan and Fars, and Persia's Christian minority by and large sympathised with the theological position which Nestorius had taken. The influx of Christian refugees from the Roman empire strengthened the native Persian church, and after the Persian empire was conquered by the Moslem Arabs in the seventh century the Nestorian church enjoyed a period of rapid expansion. Syrian and Persian Christians were tolerated by their Moslem rulers and organised into a melet, or official minority", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212211, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "130\n\nto commercial goods, as it moved under the Japanese shadow. Under her conception of “incident” Japan had methods of applying pressure to foreign shipping companies, a pressure which in the existing atmosphere of appeasement it was difficult to resist.\n\nFollowing on the occupation of Canton, the Japanese mopped back towards Hongkong, but they left only a small garrison to watch the border. A heavy smuggled trade sprang up, not only over the border, but also by junk through the countless small inlets and bays of the neighbourhood. The Japanese exerted themselves to coerce the Colonial Government to suppress the trade. Their efforts met with failure: until Hongkong was itself submerged in a wider conflict, the Chinese war effort continued to benefit.\n\nHongkong is one of the world's great ports, the offspring of British administrative practice and Chinese commercial fecundity. Every year twenty-two million tons of shipping were entered and cleared. In the harbour the flags of many nations could be seen, from those of the great Western Powers to that of the little republic of Panama. The flags of the Scandinavian nations, of Norway and Denmark, were particularly in evidence, so far from home, witness to the freedom of the seas for which Britain stood sponsor. The volume of trade which passed through Hongkong was naturally restricted by the Japanese occupation of Canton. Cargo vessels called less frequently, but the great liners on fixed passenger schedules continued to go alongside the Kowloon wharves, often two or three at a time, ships of the American President line, the Canadian Pacific line, the Peninsular and Oriental, the Nord Deutscher Lloyd, the Nippon Yoshen Kaisha, the Dutch J.C.L., the Lloyd Trestino, the Blue Funnel, the City, the Messageries Maritimes and many other lines.\n\nI was due for home leave and sailed in the new P.& O. liner, the R.M.S. \"Canton\", on her maiden trip, in December 1938. The passengers lined the rails as we steamed towards the Lyeemoon passage. Did they realise what a remarkable monument to Sino-British co-operation was that lovely green hill side at which they gazed? Hongkong bears happy testimony, in a difficult future, to the benefits that flow from cordial relations between China and the British Empire.\n\nShanghai and Eastern China 1939\n\nShanghai was the splendid stronghold of foreign interests in the Far", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212288, "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": 230, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "207\n\nsystematic and precise schools of textual interpretation in the 17th and 18th centuries which provided Legge with commentarial support for his criticisms of the Confucian orthodoxy. He could criticize the authorities from within their own traditions, rather than merely employing alien categories for his analysis. As has already been pointed out, Legge did prefer values outside of Confucianism in some cases, but his criticisms always took into account the many levels of commentarial tradition and their own analysis of the situations whenever they were relevant. In this way, he could defer to the authorities whenever he believed they were correct, and if not, he could often identify other Confucian scholars who suggested a way out of the difficulties. This kind of awareness of the Confucian tradition was rarely found among Western scholars anywhere in the world in the nineteenth century.\n\nFurthermore, Legge himself progressed into a genuine and personal transformation of his thought and life as a result of his understanding of Confucianism, and particularly with regard to his respect and devotion to Confucius. This change of attitude is most clearly seen in the differences found between the 1861 and 1893-1895 editions of the Four Books. It came as a result of both his profound concern for China as a missionary-intellectual and his intimate knowledge of the many positive aspects he found in the person and philosophy of Confucius. Legge's shift of position was not a matter of convenience, but the result of a lifetime of missionary service and a constantly refined and critical awareness of Confucius and Confucianism.\n\nThough many other examples could be given to illustrate this final clue to Legge's life, perhaps the most poignant indicator of his personal immersion in the Confucian tradition is manifest at the end of his life. Having completed the second edition of the Four Books, the octogenarian professor focused his scholarly attention on a single pre-Qin figure, the minister-poet Qu Yuan (屈原) (BC 340-278),* Qu Yuan was an heroic individual to Legge, remaining devoted to his ruler even in spite of circumstances which would have led others to run away from the responsibilities placed on him. In the end, Qu Yuan committed suicide as an act of frustrated loyalty. But before he did so, he had written a number of philosophical poems, among them a very famous one entitled \"Heavenly Questions\"\n\n* In these ruminations on the nature of reality, Qu Yuan displayed a mind ready to receive deeper truths, hungering for answers which would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212293, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "212\n\nKong CT. London Missionary Society Archives, South China, April 24, 1845: Legge writes to the headquarters, sending copies of Collie's work to them.\n\nC Andrew J Nathan, \"The Place of Values in Cross-Cultural Studies: The Example of Democracy and China\", in Paul A. Cohen and Merle Goldman, eds., Ideas Across Cultures: Essays on Chinese Thought in Honor of Benjamin I. Schwartz (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 293-314. I quote here the three relevant sections.\n\n**After World War II] relativism especially recommended itself as a corrective to our society's nineteenth and early twentieth-century missionary impulses... that their way of life was not going to sweep the world.... (Ibid. p 296).\n\n**The relativist position |-| adopted in order to prevent missionary zeal from clouding our understanding of the non-Western world |. led in some cases to an equal but opposite kind of self-deception”. (Ibid. p 304).\n\n\"Evaluative universalism by no means requires a return to the missionary mode of promoting Western values. It is not a call for proselytism but an expression of the belief, first, that value differences when they exist can, and can only, be honestly expressed, and second, that beliefs originating in different societies can fruitfully be confronted with one another, compared, and judged, even though disagreement is expected to persist”. (Ibid. pp 312-313).\n\nRecorded in Legge's autobiographical account entitled \"Notes of My Life\" (pp. 25-27), kept now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.\n\n12 These books are Paraphrasis Psalmorum Davidis Poetica (n.p., 1566) and Rerum Scoticorum Historia (ed. apud A. Arbuthnetum, 1582). English translations of both were available in Legge's time.\n\nLi\n\nThis version was apparently intended as a replacement of the earlier rendition of The Book Of Poetry published by Legge in 1871. It was a completely revised text of both the verse and the commentarial notes. Because it only included the English text and not the Chinese text which appeared in the first edition, however, the later Oxford edition of 1893-1895 republished the earlier text. A comparison of this earlier rendition with the second edition (which others called Legge's \"metrical“ Shijing \"jén) would display the kind of discipline Legge had as a translator of classical texts. See James Legge, The Chinese Classics: translated into English, with Preliminary Essays And Explanatory Notes – Vol III: The She King; or, The Book Of Odes (London: Trübner & Co., 1876). See also Alfred Lister, \"Dr. Legge's Metrical Shi-King\", The China Review 5:1 (July 1876), pp. 1-8.\n\n11\n\nThis Hebrew Psalter was prepared with a twenty-seven page introductory essay which included some critical commentary, and over three hundred pages of metrical paraphrases of the Psalms. Legge's position in presenting the Psalter was primarily meditative and not textual-critical; neither did this tome contain the kind of extensive commentarial apparatus which The Chinese Classics always included. Perhaps it is for some of these reasons that the manuscript was never published. It is now kept in the library of New College at the University of Edinburgh.\n\n14 The printed text of this poetic summary of Chinese history I found in the Oriental Studies Library in Oxford. It was clearly planned and printed as part of some larger work.\n\nFor the value of \"cherishing the old\", see the Analects 2:11, The Chinese Classics: Vol 1, op. cit., p. 49. Han Yu's opposition to Buddhist and Taoist superstitions, his courageous attack on their spiritual deceptions, and his consequent punishment must have stood as a courageous example to Legge. Han's specific interest in the old style, and his influence in stimulating interest in the renewed study of ancient texts and writing styles, parallels some of Legge's own interests.\n\n17 After graduating from King's College, the young James spent time with his father", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212295, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "214\n\nlast in the Hok-keen and Canton dialects (Malacca, 1841), 111 pages.\n\nThe breadth of Legge's vision is fully realized in the extensive studies and translations of his later career. A testimony to this fact is found in the current editions of The Chinese Classics (first prepared in the 1960 edition published in Hong Kong) which include tables locating parallel passages in all other major translations. Legge is the only non-Chinese scholar who has translated all of the major Confucian classics. In some standard Confucian lists, two classics on the rites are included which Legge did not translate: The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli) and The Rites on Etiquette (Yili). This in itself is a feat, but when one recognizes the further achievement of the extensive commentarial apparatus, it is easy to understand why one missionary-scholar referred to Legge in the 1870s as the greatest sinologist in the Western world.\n\n1\n\nJames Legge, “A Fair and Dispassionate Discussion of the Three Doctrines Accepted in China\", sometime in the 1880s (1881?) to an Orientalist Conference. I have seen the published article, but could find no precise reference for it. In addition, Legge published an annotated translation of a Korean recension of a text important for the understanding of Chinese Buddhism. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399-414) in Search of the Buddhistic Books of Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), which included at the end a copy of the Chinese manuscript.\n\n++\n\nGeorge Baker, author, James Legge trans., Graduated Reading, comprising a Circle of Knowledge in 200 Lessons: Gradation 1 (Zhihuan qimeng shuke chubu) (TER224) (Hong Kong: London Missionary Society Press, 1856, second printing, 1864).\n\nThis monthly magazine was entitled Xidi quanzhen (遠邇貫珍) Penetrating Treasures from Far and Near which Legge edited from mid-1855 to mid-1856,\n\nHì\n\nWhile remaining a patriot of Great Britain, and feeling at times that war was a necessary means for promoting international justice in the specific case of relations with Guangdong provincial leaders, Legge questioned the employment of war for the sake of \"stimulating the economy\". For this reason, he challenged the Hong Kong government's militarism in 1856 (the Arrow affair) as well as its questionable motives. In addition, he argued that China had good reason to fear and hate the English because of the evils of opium trade, comparing her response to that of Japan, where opium trade had been made illegal from its very beginnings. See James Legge, \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), [reprint from The China Review of 1872-3, see n. 2 above] pp. 185-191. In the prolegomenon of the first volume of The Chinese Classics, Legge explicitly argued that the colonial responsibilities Great Britain had assumed in India and China would best be put into the hands of governors who, as if following the dictates of benevolent government advocated by Confucius, were worthy examples of moral, ethical, and political well-being. A criticism of some of the British imperialistic intentions and its accompanying evils could not be put more plainly by a loyal citizen. See The Chinese Classics: Vol 1, op. cit., p. 105.\n\nTheodore Hamberg, The Visions of Hung Siu-Tshuen (Hong Kong: 1854).\n\nJ7\n\n44\n\nAt the end of his missionary career, Legge could still speak of Hong Rengan with some affection. In public Legge praised his intelligence and amiability; see Legge's \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., p. 186. In private notes found in the Bodleian Library entitled \"Reminiscences\", Legge tells how they would walk, arms across each other's shoulders in close friendship, and how adept Rengan was when they performed Christian Ministry together. See James Legge, \"Reminiscences\", manuscript in the Bodleian Library, pp. 13-14.\n\n典\n\nIn his lecture on the history of Hong Kong in 1872, Legge indicated his satisfaction in seeing the rearrangement of all Chinese schools. E. T. Eitel also discussed Legge's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212393, "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": 335, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "312\n\nof degree holders, indicating social rank, there is also a wealth of swept ridges and stylised, 'teapot-handle', gables among the roofs of the common folk.\n\nLike Hong Kong, granite was readily available, and a good, dense, red face brick, some of which is quite narrow, is manufactured locally. The brickwork has an attractive, diaper pattern, with dark kiln marks on the face. Unlike Hong Kong, arches with keystones and pediments are in evidence. Much of the architecture resembles that of Taiwan, and, not unusual in many parts of China, there is a marvellous variety of murals and stone carving, including stylised motifs. Small figurines ride lions or other mythical beasts on roof ridges, which, together with eight-diagram (ba gua) and knife and sword charms ward off evil spirits. Similarly, 'wind lions' have stood on guard at entrances since the days of Koxinga.\n\nAnother scenic spot for architectural gems is the 1.71 square kilometer Gulangyu Island, where at least one member of every family is said to play a musical instrument. This Island has two beautiful white egrets as its emblem and is situated a five-minute ferry ride from Xiamen proper. Part of the beauty is, however, marred by large, ugly, cigarette signs which generate high rents. No vehicular traffic is permitted in this hilly haven. It was a cold day, and RAS Party Members kept themselves warm by exploring. This included climbing to the Lotus Flower Monastery and beyond up the 90-metre high, crowded, precipitous 'Sunlight Rock'. Koxinga chose this as his bastion because it reminded him of Japan.\n\nGulangyu Island is full of architectural 'relics' from the old International Settlement, with patchworks of yellow, terracotta and pink walls blending with oranges and greens. The forlorn, dilapidated building which once served as the British Consulate, is still there. Before World War II, 13 other governments also had consulates on the Island. They, together with tea merchants and financers, could afford to pay for, and insisted on, the best quality building materials.\n\nMuch of the architecture of this 'garden island' is European, but there are examples of eclectic styles with Chinese columns and western capitals, and Chinese friezes and western brickwork. All these contrast with rows of old, Chinese type, shops with colonnades in Xiamen, with upper floors projecting over pavements; or with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212396, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 338, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "315\n\nDespite their conflict in the Crimea in 1855 the British and the Russians never turned the Great Game into all-out war: There the risks and horrors were in the local tribal scene — agents unmasked and beheaded or just disappearing, and mobs lynching unwelcome interlopers. A dreadful interlude was the British penetration of Tibet in order to check the rival influence, causing the slaughter with modern weapons of hundreds of ill-armed monks.\n\nHow did the Great Game end? Officially, when both sides were tired of it, by an Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Britain was by then seeing Germany as a more immediate potential enemy, and Great Power attentions were focused more sharply on Europe and less on any Russian ambitions in the East. Today there are no Great Games but rather a series of smaller games in Bosnia, the Gulf, Cambodia by smaller men unaware of any code or rules. Strange to recall far-off days when Russian and British officers, meeting inadvertently somewhere in the wild Pamirs, would ask each other to dinner and apologise for their governments' cussedness.\n\n—\n\nThe Great Game is a long, intricate and absorbing tale and Hopkirk tells it with unflagging enthusiasm, reflected in his lively writing-style. His is not a book garnished with footnotes for the historian (though it has a good index) but for the general reader it provides an excellent introduction to the amazing and still largely unknown and unreported world of Central Asia.\n\nANTHONY LAWRENCE\n\nAleko E. Lilius. I Sailed with Chinese Pirates (Hong Kong Oxford University Press reprint 1991) 245 pp illus.\n\nAs this is a re-print of a book first published in 1930 its relevance to present-day events is necessarily limited. The author, a United States citizen of Finnish origin, reveals himself as a journalist of extraordinary drive, pertinacity and courage but he is very much a creature of a pre-World War II colonial era when Western attitudes towards Chinese (even dangerous-looking pirates) were condescending and patronising in a way which reads quaintly today. Which is a pity, because with a different approach and greater knowledge of Cantonese and the coastal people of Southern China it might have been possible to produce a valuable study of the motives, pressures", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212402, "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": 344, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "321\n\nDudden's work is essentially narrative history based upon Western-language secondary sources. Beginning with a summary of early American involvement in the China trade, he proceeds to describe the United States' acquisition of and subsequent relations with Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines. After surveying the contrasting course of American dealings with Japan and China up to World War I, he covers the Pacific War, the beginning of the Cold War, and American intervention in Korea and Vietnam. A final chapter deals with the somewhat ambiguous developments of the past two decades.\n\nThe early portion of the book tells the fascinating story of how the American Republic gained its two last states and its largest colony. An irredeemably commercial nation, the United States purchased two large tracts of its own territory, Louisiana from the Emperor Napoleon I of France in 1803 and Alaska from the Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1867. Until 1910 the near exclusive domain of fur trading companies and gold miners, Alaska's sparse population and remoteness meant that, despite its mineral wealth, only in 1958 did it win statehood. Not until 1778, when Captain James Cook's final expedition landed there, did Westerners discover the Hawaiian islands, \"the most isolated archipelago in the world\". Once found, they became a magnet attracting American whalers, merchants, and missionaries. In the 1820s the last group assisted Queen Kaahumanu, one of the widows of King Kamehameha the Great, 'a six-foot, three-hundred-pound, strong-willed beauty', to overthrow the dominant religious kapu system which among other things banned women from exercising political power. From then onwards successive rulers were under the tutelage of Americans, who eliminated the native religion, advised the monarchs, and introduced private property rights in land. Soon afterwards, American sugar and pineapple interests acquired large holdings, which would dominate Hawaiian economic and political life until after World War II. In the 1890s the efforts of the anti-American Queen Liliuokalani to restore the powers of the monarchy led to a coup, backed by American sugar interests, and suggestions that the United States annex the islands, also long coveted by French, German, and British imperialists. Congress initially rejected the suggestion, but in 1898, in the war-generated expansionism of the Spanish-American War, reversed itself. Hawaii would become a major American naval base, a centre of tourism, and a focus of Japanese immigration: the attack on Pearl Harbour", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212416, "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": 358, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "335\n\nacademic scope and complexity of what follows. The concepts of honour a man's prestige, achieved partly by controlling the women of his household and shame the ability of a woman to undermine the man's honour, and precipitate a public scandal (with the power implicit in that) are central and fascinating themes drawn out of Durrani society. Thus the skeins of women's subordination within a patriarchal system start to unravel.\n\nIf those can be seen as horizontal themes, then the vertical ones are suggested by the inclusion of historical material over a period of 50 years which allows an exploration of social change within marriage. That leads to suggested explanations for concurrent changes in other areas of social organisation and environment. Even more distinctive, the Durrani marriage forms an integral part of political relations at all levels, from the household to the ethnic group: it is both the cause and consequence of political activity. The goal is political and economic security and continuity, both in this world and the next. Thus the brideprice, which enables the acquisition of new wives, is the economic pivot.\n\nOne of the most poignant examples of women as commodity, exemplified by marriage, is the fact that women of different households only cooperate in productive work when it comes to the preparation of the trousseau. From the trousseau will come recognition for the bride in her marital home. And yet, she can be given she plus another woman in compensation for a killing. A woman given in exchange for a brideprice suggests higher status on the part of the bride taker, than that of two men who exchange two women as brides.\n\nLIZ\n\nBut, the point in the study that I am now emphasising, woman as commodity, suggests that I am in danger of beginning to treat a scholarly book in an unscholarly way. I am indicating my unfitness coolly to observe and record and analyse; I am putting my Western feminist sentiments inappropriately in the picture. I wonder why that wife looks so contented in the photograph; perhaps no one has told her she is a mere commodity: but when she finds out for herself, and its implications, and works out solutions to what will then be a problem, someone may be in trouble!\n\nSUSANNA HOE", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212419, "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": 361, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "338\n\nconsiders the scale of the task that he set himself. The Search for Modern China is a landmark in China scholarship. Spence's talent as a raconteur and his immensely readable style enable him to succeed in making history interesting to the nonspecialist.\n\nOn the present succession crisis in China, Spence points out the eerie parallel between Deng Xiaoping's behavior today and that of Mao Zedong in his last years, with each man anointing, then purging, one hand-picked successor after another. Even greater perspective is provided by his relating the present situation to that of the early Qing dynasty, when the emperor Kangxi was brought, as Spence put it, \"to the edge of despair\" by the succession question (p. 245), not being able to decide which of his many sons to name as his heir.\n\nThe author provides a rare perspective on China's centuries-old struggle to come to terms with the rest of the world,\n\nHe recalls that the reformers of 1898 had sought to resolve this tension by developing the concept of ti, or \"essence,\" and yong, or \"practical use.\" This formulation, Spence says, \"affirmed that there was indeed a fundamental structure of Chinese moral and philosophical values that gave continuity and meaning to the civilization. Holding on to that belief, China could then afford to adopt quickly and dramatically all sorts of Western practices, and to hire Western advisers\" (p. 225).\n\nSpence sees Deng and the other Chinese leaders today falling victim to the nineteenth-century fallacy that China could join the modern world entirely on its own terms, sacrificing nothing of its prevailing ideological purity\" (p. 746).\n\nHe feels this effort is doomed to failure. \"The task was even more hopeless in the late 1980s than it had been in the 1880s”, Spence concludes. \"What was left of Chinese Communist doctrine after the rejection of many of Mao's ideas and the emergence of the enterprise system was a thinner gruel even than the overformalized Confucianism that had guided the reformers of the late Qing. The party elders flailing out at Zhao Ziyang and his noisy supporters were reacting in an oddly similar way to the Empress Dowager Cixi as she struck back at Emperor Guangxu for attempting his Hundred Days' Reforms\" (p. 746).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212422, "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": 364, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "341\n\ndegradation and contempt. Questions of reform or revolution, democracy or proletarian dictatorship were deeply exercising the minds of those bent on national salvation, personal power, or both.\n\nMen seized on new ideas and later changed their attitudes under the influence of both local pressures and growing familiarity with western political theories. The moves of the major actors rarely seem to have been clear-cut or consistent.\n\nThe aim of the author here, Michael Y.L. Luk (a Senior History Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong) is to trace the thinking of leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and their attempts to develop an agreed ideology. He is also concerned to show how the outcome of these attempts would in time affect the party's whole political destiny.\n\nThis is a book for scholars and students, a dissertation not aimed at the general reader. The interplay of ideas on the part of the activists and theoreticians has its own dense vocabulary, and the writing and presentation are uncompromisingly academic.\n\nHowever Luk fully achieves his purpose. The book records the varying convictions of visionaries and men of action at a crucial time in the history of China and gives a penetrating view of the way men thought and the policies they accepted in those years of warlords, Sun Yat-sen republicanism, and struggling political parties.\n\nTwo influences emerge clearly first, that of the Russian Revolution echoing round the world, and the writings of Lenin on colonialism. Secondly the indigenous thinking of left-wing Chinese intellectuals, notably Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu. Why did the Chinese avant-garde listen to the voice of the Russians and brush aside the teaching of a Dewey or Hu-shih? Almost until the official founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921 it was the Americans who had exercised a major influence. But new universities and hospitals and the YMCA seem to have provided an insufficient answer to the frustrations of Chinese life. Revolution was in the air and it was the Russian experts who moved in to show the Chinese enthusiasts how to organise it.\n\nYet although Marxism-Leninism entered China as a brand-new", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212474, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "Cantonese, while only four out of 16 compradors from Russell & Co between the 1830s and 1870s were non-Cantonese. Jardine, Matheson & Co. employed 18 Cantonese from its total 32 Chinese compradors between the 1850s and the 1900s, however only three out of the rest were non-Cantonese and 11 were from uncertain native places. Dent & Co. totally had twenty-one compradors in the period of the 1830s to the 1860s. Non-Cantonese were not recorded but nine were reported as of uncertain native places. Moreover, as Hao pointed out, Cantonese had a supremacy amongst Chinese compradors not only in China but also in Southeast Asia and Japan. They were regarded to have talent in tea trade, whereas Zhejiang compradors were especially skilled in silk trade and banking business. Zhejiang compradors overshadowed their Cantonese counterparts in Shanghai by the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. It is of interest that Western merchants always went to explore business in Asia with their Cantonese compradors, particularly in Yokohama and Nagasaki. Perhaps this might be linked to the local influence of Cantonese merchants in the above places.\n\nThe comprador system was soon imported to Hong Kong when British firms flocked to open their business there. It lasted until the Second World War; longer than at any other Chinese coastal city. During the growth of early colonial society in Hong Kong, by the 1850s the Chinese community was beginning to develop leaders and most of them were successful compradors, merchants, and contractors. Typical of this emerging Chinese middle class were Cantonese compradors like Wei Yuk (Wei Yu), Robert Ho Tung (He Dong), and Law Pak Sheung (Luo Bochang). They formed the core of leadership in the local Chinese community.\n\nWei succeeded his father Wei Kwong who came from Choy Mei village near Macau as the comprador of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London, and China in Hong Kong in 1879. In 1896, he was appointed an unofficial member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, being the fourth Chinese to this post (the first was Ng Choy [Wu Tingfang]). Wei held a lot of appointments in public and private organizations and represented Chinese interests in the government.\n\nHe Dong acted as Jardine's Hong Kong comprador from 1883 to 1900. He was among the richest of the Chinese compradors in the treaty", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212501, "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "35\n\nFaure, David W. 1990. The Rice Trade in Hong Kong Before the Second World War. In Between East and West Aspects of Social and Political Development 216-25. Edited by Elizabeth Sinn. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong.\n\nFok, Kai-cheong. 1988. Wanqing qijian Xianggang dui neidi jingji fazhan zhi yingxiang (The influences of Hong Kong on the economic development of mainland during the late Qing period). In Xueshu Yanjiu 1988/2 70-4.\n\n1989. Xianggang huaren zai jindaishi shang dui Zhongguo de gongxian shixi (A preliminary study on the contributions of Hong Kong Chinese to China in modern history). In Huaren Yanjiu | 81-8.\n\n1990a. Lectures on Hong Kong History Hong Kong's Role in Modern Chinese History. Hong Kong: Commercial Press.\n\n1990b. Private Chinese Business Letters and the Study of Hong Kong Industry: A Preliminary Report. In Collected Essays on Various Historical Materials for Hong Kong Studies. Edited by Hong Kong Museum of History. Hong Kong: Urban Council.\n\n1992. Xianggang yu Jindai Zhongguo (Hong Kong and modern China). Hong Kong: Commercial Press.\n\n1993. Nineteenth Century Hong Kong: China's Gateway to the Western World of Business - themes and sources. Unpublished paper presented at the 34th International Congress on Asian and North African Studies. Hong Kong.\n\nGaw, Kenneth. 1988. Superior Servants: the Legendary Cantonese Amahs of the Far East. Singapore and New York: Oxford University Press.\n\nGodley, Michael R. 1981. The Treaty Port Connection: An Essay. In Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12/1 248-59.\n\nHamashita, Takeshi. 1991. Higashi Ajiashi ni okeru Honkon no ichi (The role of Hong Kong in East Asian history). In Sōbun 320 1-8.\n\nHamilton, Gary Glen. 1991. Edited Business Networks and Economic Development in East and Southeast Asia. Hong Kong: University Press.\n\nHao, Yen-p'ing. 1969. Cheng Kuan-ying: The Comprador as Reformer. In Journal of Asian Studies 29/1 15-22.\n\n1970a. The Comprador in Nineteenth-Century China: Bridge Between East and West. Cambridge and Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.\n\n1970b. A New Class in China's Treaty Ports: The Rise of the Comprador-Merchants. In Business History Review 44/4 446-59.\n\n1970c. Maiban shangren wanqing tongshang kouan yi xinxing jieceng (Comprador-merchants: \"new class\" in late Qing treaty ports). In Gugong Wenxian 2/1 35-44.\n\n1977. Zhongguo jindai yanhai shangye de buwenling-sheng (Commercial uncertainties along modern China's Coast). In Shihuo Yuekan 7/8-9 1-11.\n\n1979. Commercial Capitalism along the China Coast during the Late Qing Period. In Proceedings of the Conference on Modern Chinese Economic History 303-27. Edited by Chi-ming Hou and Trong-shian Yu. Taiber: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica.\n\n1982a. Entrepreneurship and the West in East Asian Economic and Business History. In Business History Review 56/2 149-67.\n\n1982b. The Compradors. In Maggie Keswick (edited) 85-102.\n\n1986. The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.\n\nHayes, James. 1979. The Nam Pak Hong Commercial Association of Hong Kong. In Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 19/2 16-26.\n\n1984. Collecting Business Papers of Chinese Enterprises in Hong Kong. In Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies 47-55. Edited by Alan Birch. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong.\n\nHe, Wenxiang. 1989. Xianggang Jiezushi (History of Hong Kong's big families). Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "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": 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": 212576, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "110\n\nbuildings, traffic congestion and increased costs, erecting stagings became impracticable.\n\nWith the advent of death the 'blue lantern' used to be hung outside the house. This corresponded to the matt black 'mourning boards' that were fixed outside a home in Britain. The latter went out of fashion in the early part of this century.\n\nThe three important events in a Chinese life are birth, marriage and burial. If a person is not 'buried well' he may suffer in the next world. A great deal of money can be expended on a funeral and giving a parent a good 'send off' epitomises filial piety. Relatives are unlikely to haggle over cost. Although the undertaking profession has few bad debts, and is said to enjoy a profit margin of from 30 to 45 per cent, it is not seen as a salubrious occupation: 'Such men are bad luck and their touch is very filthy.' Misfortunes of the deceased can be transmitted to the toucher. In slang, a corpse is known as 'salt fish' (MA).\n\nThe Day Before the Funeral\n\nIn sub-tropical Hong Kong there used to be a 48-hour limit for storing corpses. With refrigeration and 70 to 80 per cent of bodies being embalmed, which includes injections, this is no longer so. A cadaver can be kept for two months. The ceremony in this study took place seven days after death and close relatives arrived at the 'Hong Kong Hotel' (slang for funeral parlour where a funeral is known as the 'complete menu') the day before, at three o'clock.\n\nA multi-storey funeral home contains many halls to cater to both Christian and (like this one) non-Christian funerals. Two large 'blue lanterns' hung outside the hall. These are in fact white, with the family name in large, purple (at a Roman Court this was the royal or imperial colour) characters and the deceased's age in smaller red characters. On that day and the day of the funeral close relatives were 'not allowed to kill'; namely to eat meat, fish or eggs. Also, sexual intercourse should not take place during the mourning period.\n\nIn addition to the deceased's 16 by 20 inch photograph, incense was burning on the altar. Western candles (candles are normally burnt in pairs) symbolised Christianity and Chinese candles Buddhism, another example of hedging. Also on the altar were tasty snacks that the dead person", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212579, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "113\n\nBe born in Soochow; Live in Hangchow; \n\nEat in Kwangchow; \n\nDie in Liuchow, \n\nThe first is noted for beautiful women, the second magnificent scenery, the third tastiest cuisine, and the last durable timber for making coffins.\n\nIn 1988 coffins ranged from about $2,500, for a humble pine ‘box', to $300,000 for one smelling of eucalyptus. The coffin in this study cost $7,200. Coffins, known in slang as 'four half boards' (*), come, basically, in either Chinese or western styles. Timber for western coffins, say teak or rosewood, is often imported from Malaysia. For Chinese coffins, boards can be roughly hewn, up to four or five inches thick, retaining the curved outside of the tree trunk and hollowed out on the inside. Good quality China fir (**) from Luchow, in Kwangsi Province, can last, buried, for up to 100 years as demonstrated by old buildings in Hong Kong with their China Fir, piled, foundations. There are a number of coffin shops, some watched over by Ts'oi Shan the God of Wealth, at the western end of Hollywood Road. Many coffins with their white or yellow cloth linings are imported from China.\n\n23\n\nBy comparison, a British coffin is normally made of English oak (elm was used for cheaper coffins before World War II) with boards one-inch thick.24 This is usually rendered watertight with pitch or mastic and lined with a bed of sawdust, white drapery and a pillow stuffed with fine wood shavings.\n\nBecause of space, in present day Hong Kong it is not practicable for the elderly to have coffins made in advance and stored in an ancestral hall or at home, as was the custom in old China. They were revarnished every year. But if a person is too interested and 'finds the smell of coffins more appealing than the smell of cooked rice' (聞見棺材香過飯) the gods may come after him. (Similar words are occasionally uttered as a curse.) Some believe a small piece of coffin wood, if boiled and the water drunk, will keep away ghosts.\n\nContinuously, from three o'clock the day before to the actual funeral ceremony in this study, relatives and friends visited the hall to give face to the family and the departed. It is a greater offence not to attend a person's funeral than not to attend his wedding. The author recalls", "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": 212599, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "133\n\n21\n\nHugh Baker, 'Hell Bank Notes', Ancestral Images, A Hong Kong Album (1979), pp 105-108\n\n✰\n\n21\n\nHugh Baker, 'Nuns', More Ancestral Images, op. cit (1980), pp 13-16\n\nTin Sau Ho Coffin Shop, Hollywood Road, visited by author 20th July 1992\n\nThe Art of Death 1500 to 1800, exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum early 1992\n\n24\n\n09 Hugh Baker, 'Marsh', Ancestral Images Again, A Third Hong Kong Album (1981), pp 109-112; Frena Bloomfield, 'The Chinese Almanac', The Occult World of Hong Kong (1980), pp. 100-2, and 'The Chinese Almanac', The Peninsula Group Magazine 13 (Hong Kong, April 1978), pp 66-71.\n\n26 Hugh Baker, 'Mourning', Hong Kong Images. People and Animals (1990), pp. 121-3\n\n21 T.C. Lai, op. cit. pp 152-3\n\n28 Ingrams, loc. cit\n\n29 Carl T. Smith, 'The Emergence of a Chinese Elite', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol 11 (1971), pp 74-115 (p 98).\n\n30 S.M. Bard, Study of Military Graves and Monuments Hong Kong Cemetery (1991), pp. 16 (B), 26 and 27\n\n32\n\n33\n\nJ. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (first published 1903), p 166\n\nDiscussion between author and David Shu Tat-koon, feng shui master, 7 August 1992\n\nHugh Baker, 'Burial', Ancestral Images, op. cit. (1979), pp 17-20\n\n34 Hong Kong Government Urban Services Department / Urban Council Annual Reports\n\n3 Hugh Baker, 'Exhumation', Ancestral Images, op. cit (1979), pp 110-104\n\nJJ Hugh Baker, 'Exhumation', Ancestral Images, op. cit (1979), pp 110-104\n\n37\n\nFrena Bloomfield, 'Fung Shui: Chinese Earth Magic', The Occult World of Hong Kong (1980), pp. 103-114; and Ernest J. Eitel, Feng Shui (Singapore, 1984).\n\n38 Discussion between author and David Shu Tat-koon concerning his own theories, 7 August 1992\n\n39\n\nIn other cases the author has been told of dead people's spirits returning home three, seven, ten or other periods after death\n\n40 All dead persons except infants and wandering strangers are entitled to a spirit tablet\n\n41\n\nVisit by Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, to Sang Woo Loong Art Advertising Model Work Company, 28 Western Street, 10 December 1988, second visit by author to same establishment 20 July 1992.\n\n42\n\n43\n\nHugh Baker, 'Earth God', Ancestral Images, op. cit. (1979), pp 1-4\n\nHugh Baker, 'Mourning', Ancestral Images Again, op. cit (1981), pp 101-104. Laurence G. Thompson, op. cit. pp 54 and 55.\n\n44 Leung Chor-on, 'Blessings Are Not For All', The Hong Kong Anthropologist, no 5 (April 1992), pp. 26-28 (p. 27)\n\n45 Rubie S. Watson, 'Remembering the Dead: Graves and Politics in Southeastern China', eds James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, op. cit., pp. 203-227", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212713, "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Until the middle of the 19th century China assumed and acted on the principle that the world owed allegiance to the supreme ruler, the Emperor of China, a view considered by the British in particular as ludicrous, and despite costly emissaries to try to persuade them otherwise, the Chinese were only forced to accept change by military force—leading to what it was hoped by foreigners would be an era of equality such as existed between other nations. Mesny experienced but probably failed to appreciate the depth of change within China in which he was involved; Chinese military commanders in the field without the presence of their foreign overlords, the Manchus, being one. But much more important were the changes in style of xenophobia, a newly acquired awareness of the power of western nations by the Chinese and most of all the deep resentment of the imposition of foreign equality. It is this more than anything else which makes Mesny's story so fascinating and refreshing.\n\nHe also lived in China during the era when the attitudes of Christian missionaries were changing, from those who felt such a strong cultural superiority and behaved arrogantly, with an attitude of self-righteousness and a complete lack of sensitivity towards Chinese feelings, which caused the vast majority of Chinese to become even more xenophobic than they had been before westerners forced through 'unequal' treaties; to those with more sympathetic views. By the end of the century many missionaries were comparatively understanding and tolerant of Chinese customs and culture, and though their mercantile compatriots were still of the old views, a number of missionaries were working with Chinese and helping to bring about the modern transformation of China. Although Mesny was one of the few foreigners whose sympathies lay with the Chinese, with his feet in both camps he found good and bad on both sides. One of Mesny's more revealing snippets is the irritated and grieving rather than angry digression; an item in the Miscellany on an uncommon Chinese saying \"Tsai ssu szu wei\" meaning \"Try, try and try again\". He wrote 'It (the phrase) is probably worth using by foreigners as a very expressive and convenient tenor when trying to persuade natives [Chinese] that it is impossible to comply with the requests and importunities to \"do something for them\". I have reflected on the matter,' he continued, 'and though I have repeatedly tried still I have not succeeded.' Many foreigners, even to this day, will sigh in agreement.\n\nMesny would, in later life, doubtless have seen himself as a ‘China Expert' and would also have wished others to regard him so. He cultivated this impression in print from the first issue of his Miscellany with his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212736, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "30\n\nin 1886, a year after he had ended his service 'being retained by Viceroy Chang Chih-tung in Canton.' It would appear that he mistakenly claimed the seal bore the more senior rank.\n\nMesny - Neither Chinese nor Western: But Perhaps Both\n\nMesny lived within the two cultures to the extent that we are left in no doubt that he was able to see both the good and the bad in both. He criticised national traits of Chinese and westerners on numerous occasions, though despite the almost universal criticisms by western travellers in China of the dirt, personal filthiness, disregard for decency, boorishness and inquisitiveness, to say nothing of the incessant and noisy talk, Mesny never comments. Foreign travellers almost without exception comment on one or more of the following Chinese characteristics, their remarkable mechanical aptitude, with a delicacy of touch; a patience probably unrivalled in the world; adding however that their inability to draw the necessary inferences, and improving and inventing as they proceeded always surprises. The Chinese, they continue, are an intensely practical people who dislike doing anything for which there is no necessity; and finally, despite there being hardly a product which Chinese would not use, and with a hatred of waste that makes them utilise everything, westerners are always amazed that they should be so averse to milk and milk products. Mesny hardly touches any of these matters, possibly as they had either not crossed his mind or more likely because he saw no reason to add to the chorus.\n\nHe was not impervious to Chinese arrogance and occasionally added a barbed aside such as his reference to a non-Chinese tribe in southern China when he added, ... [the Chinese] are ever ready to apply the very opprobrious term of barbarian to every other people, but not their darling selves...' A more telling paragraph amidst the hundreds of snippets or topics, and pen pictures of things Chinese which were the primary fillers of his weekly Miscellanies, one written in February 1905, after forty-five years in China, and therefore presumably a distillation of his views, was a description of:\n\n'Chinamen [sic]. hua-jen #A, a Brilliant man, a Glorious or Elegant Person, a Chinaman.\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212754, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "48\n\nIn the end he must have been disappointed at his inability to make and keep a fortune and to have public recognition. He must have felt rejected by the world to which he would have liked to have belonged, an outcast having married a Chinese during an era when it was considered beneath one's dignity to do so, and then having to live with the 'stigma' for the rest of his life of having 'gone native'.\n\nAs with most westerners in China, ending up frustrated at being unable to bridge the gap between themselves and the Chinese, Mesny appears to have resigned himself in his later years to being a westerner who, though still claiming to understand and being able to communicate with them, was one of 'us' and not of 'them', despite the opinion of other Shanghai westerners to the contrary.\n\nLet it not be forgotten that he had fought his way up from poverty and a lack of education to being the writer, editor, and publisher of a magazine which appears to have held its own for several years in a community which would have been comparatively discriminating. Despite being self-educated, he appears to have entertained high hopes of achieving popular esteem through his 'academic' and other achievements. He attempted to write for the edification of others and produced his Miscellany which, though only marginally out of the ordinary, does have some value for its detail of the late Taiping era; the organisation of the Chinese Imperial Army of the day, in particular the provincial forces under Chinese rather than Manchu generals; his contacts with Chinese officialdom and his knowledge of obscure facts about China. Many of the latter, however, were culled from other western sources, and he appears not to have translated much, if anything, from Chinese material.\n\nMesny must have been a difficult man to live with. He was self-made, with a great pride in his achievements offset by his egotism, self-absorption, and his apparent need to denigrate others. He was dependent on his wits, and perhaps his charm, to improvise an alternative existence.\n\nHis obituary appeared in two separate Shanghai English language papers some ten days after his death. Both cover three columns, most of which are taken up with an autobiographical account of his life written shortly before his death. They provide additional biographical detail but fail to answer the many questions which naturally spring to mind.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212820, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "114\n\nits population. With the fall of Tengyueh, soon after, the rebellion was finally suppressed. Survivors of Sultan Suleiman's family took refuge with King Mindon at the Court of Ava in Mandalay. Two years later a British consular official, Margary, who had been appointed with the consent of the Chinese government to accompany a British expedition, which was to leave Bhamo to explore a commercial route to Tengyueh - now called Tengchung - was murdered under treacherous circumstances near the latter town. It was thought at the time, but not proven, that a Chinese official, named Li Su Tai, whose mother was Burmese, was implicated: the incident led to negotiations between the Chinese and British governments and was settled by the Chefoo Convention.\n\nAfter the British occupied Mandalay and Upper Burma in 1885 they sought to define the boundary between Burma and China. The question was not found to be easy because the Chinese advanced claims to large sections of territory which had obviously been part of the Kingdom of Ava. However, a considerable length of boundary was agreed upon and marked by enormous stones: they are the size of a small cottage, I suppose to discourage easy removal, and each stone is numbered and its position is marked on the quarter-inch map. The length of border left undefined made for an unsatisfactory situation, not unlike that between the United States and Mexico before that boundary was fixed, or like the situation which now exists on the border between China and Tibet. Various attempts were subsequently made to agree the undelimitated part of the boundary, and by 1942 only a stretch of the frontier from just N.W. of Tengchung up to Tilset remained undemarcated.\n\nThe railway from Haiphong, through Indo-China, reached Kun-ming in the early years of this century and so opened the province to French influence; whether, however, owing to strong local conservatism or a lack of enterprise on the part of the French, their influence appears to have left little mark. It was only with the opening of the Burma road in 1939 that Yunnan for the first time felt the full impact of the modern world.\n\nI had had no previous experience of western China. I knew that Lung Yun, the Old Dragon, as the Governor of Yunnan was generally called, had for long been almost independent of the National Government. It was only with the transfer of Government troops to Burma through Yunnan in 1942, and their subsequent retreat to Yunnan, where they remained, that the Chungking government had established a partial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212822, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "116\n\nAmerican air forces based in China and to the extensive establishments supplied to train and equip the Chinese Expeditionary Force, as the army which had been built up in Yunnan by the Chungking government to assist in driving the Japanese out of Burma was called.\n\nI was sent to Kun-ming to see about giving assistance to the Myosa of Kokang, prince of a small Burmese border state. The longest unnavigable river in the world, the Salween, rises in Tibet, flows through China, and enters Burma at about the level of Bhamo. For a stretch the river flows from east to west; to the north of it the territory is still China, to the south lies Kokang. The river then leaves China altogether, bends south, and lower down at Kunlong receives the Nam Ting flowing in from the east. The Nam Ting forms the southern boundary of Kokang, while the mountain-tops that divide the Salween watershed from the next river to the east form the state's eastern boundary. The stones marking this boundary were set up in 1898 as a result of the agreements made at that time. Kokang also spreads across the Salween to the territories of the large Shan state of North Shenwi, of which Kokang is actually a sub-state. The greater part of Kokang though is sandwiched between the Salween and China. Kunlong is the site of one of the most frequented of the Salween ferries, and it is down the valley of the Nam Ting that the projected railway from Kun-ming to Lashio, connecting China with Burma, will run. The embankments to carry the line had been nearly completed before the Japanese advance into Burma put an end to the work. To the south of the Nam Ting are situated the Wa states, inhabited by wild head-hunting tribes.\n\nThe Myosa of Kokang was a most loyal subject of the British crown, and because of that loyalty he was to suffer great injuries. When the Japanese advanced up the length of Burma in 1942, the British troops, who were covering the western flank, that is the flank towards India, withdrew into India. The civil administrative staff of the Shan States also withdrew to the west, while the Chinese armies, on the eastern flank,\n\n\"One British administrative officer, Evans, withdrew from Kengtung, away to the south of Kokang, into south-west Yunnan. He had established cordial relations with the Chinese troops there, and with their assistance organised local levies, drawn from the dispersed ranks of the Burma Rifle regiments; he used these to wage a small campaign of his own against the enemy until he was killed during an assault on a position manned by Siamese troops. He died unknown, unsupported, unrewarded, but not unsung, because at a time when throughout the East the British star was thought to have set for all time, this lonely man left a record of British pluck which will long be remembered on the border.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212823, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "117\n\nwithdrew partly into India and partly back into Yunnan. Kokang was left high and dry. Undaunted the Myosa from his own funds purchased what weapons he could from the retreating Chinese troops and the disbanded men of the Burma Rifles, who had been instructed to disperse to their villages with their weapons, which were to be retained for local protection until the British returned. He acquired several hundred rifles, a small stock of ammunition, and a few Bren guns, and organised his own force, the Kokang Defence Force. Fortunately the prowess of the force, which could scarcely have proved high in the face of the battle-trained troops of Japan, was not put to the test. The Japanese advance stopped at the Salween, a convenient barrier on which to consolidate their East Wall in Burma.\n\nThe Myosa, left thus in a most dangerous situation, in the front line, as it were, of the Allied positions, applied to the nearby ally, China, for assistance. The Chinese who were themselves receiving equipment from America for their forces in this part of the world, could spare him no equipment, but undertook to train officers for his force. The quality of the training so provided will grow evident as this story unfolds.\n\nIn 1943 the Myosa made the journey to Kun-ming to apply to the British authorities for assistance and it was at the British Consul General's* house in Kun-ming that I met him. I saw an alert slight figure, young looking and brisk for his 45 years, dressed in a western suit of Palm Beach cloth. He looked Chinese, but I believe there is also an admixture of tribal blood, possibly Shan; there is, of course, a good deal of intermingling throughout all that border country. The prince spoke Burmese and Chinese, but very little English: though his schooling on the border had probably been rough and ready, he possessed in a strong degree that charm, which goes with a courtesy so cultivated that it becomes natural and can conceal the aptitude for decision based on a habit of command. The prince was accompanied by his son, a capable young man in his early twenties, who had been educated at the Princes' School in Taungyi and spoke excellent English. The Myosa explained to us, his son serving as interpreter, the difficulties of his position, the trouble he was having with Chinese troops, a battalion of whom had been stationed in Southern Kokang, and the hope that we might be able to come to his support. We discussed the situation and the nature of the\n\n*Strangely, he had been the Consul at Kiu Kiang in 1927, from whose house we retired to the warships", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212866, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "160\n\npublished weekly under the editorship of Ezra, was in English. Others were in Russian and German.\n\nSchools\n\nYoungsters from the Sephardic community were educated at the Public School in the International Settlement. The fee was too hefty for most of the Ashkenazi boys. As a result, the Kadoorie family endowed the School for Hebrew Boys where there was a respectable scholarship program.\n\nB'nai B'rith\n\nAn article entitled 'Shanghai Fortunes' in the National Jewish Monthly (June 1930) revealed that B'nai B'rith, considered the foremost secular Jewish organization in the world, but by the Sephardic community as particularly Ashkenazi, had trouble getting started in Shanghai. The Shanghai lodge was established officially in 1928, but, 'the circumstances of Jewish life in Shanghai are such that the organization of a B'nai B'rith Lodge was fraught with the most unusual difficulties. National divisions are sharp, particularly between the older Jewish families of the city and the more recently arrived Ashkenzim.\n\nEventually the Shanghai Lodge of B'nai B'rith went on stream when leading citizens of the Sephardic community, notably the Kadoorie, lent their support. It sponsored such activities as the Jewish Boy Scouts and the Jewish Girl Guides. On Seder Night, hospitality was extended to all Jews. At a Hanuka tea, 500 children were present.\n\nClubs\n\n17\n\nThe Jewish Club opened in 1919 or 1920 in a colonial style building at the corner of Great Western and Tifeng Road. The cost for the building was $250,000. The entrance fee was $25 and the monthly subscription was $7. There was an auditorium of 80 by 40 feet for lectures, and a billiard room 'that was rarely neglected.' Meanwhile, Jews joined major clubs such as the Shanghai Club, the French Club, the American Club, and the Country Golf Club. They were also active in horse racing.\n\nAs the reader can see, a great deal of work remains to be done in order to obtain a more complete portrait of the Jewish community in Shanghai.", "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": 213034, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "82\n\nthe breakdown in the relationship between Dr. Sibree and Dr. Gibson had significant effects on the extent, direction and control of the maternity service in the pre-World War II period.\n\nA Maternity Service for Chinese Women: the antecedents.\n\nThe view of Western doctors that traditional midwifery in Hong Kong was problematic is abundantly clear in the reports of government medical officers in the late nineteenth century. Horrific tales were told of the septic interventions of traditional midwives in difficult confinements, and reports of the cases of puerperal fever with high maternal mortality attended at the Civil Hospital. As well, there were concerns about the high infant death rates at the French and Italian Orphanages, the subject of an enquiry in 1887, and the practice of abandoning dead infants on hillsides, a public health threat, especially in years of plague. That is, the involvement of government was driven by both humanitarian and pragmatic concerns at a time when concern about infant health was high in England itself and the Colonial Office was demanding attention to the problem in Hong Kong.\n\nBy the turn of the century, there were already several developments that made attention to maternal health viable. On the one hand there were steps to the professionalisation of medicine, and on the other to the recognition of the need for specialised services for women. The practice of Western medicine was becoming more scientific and doctors were better trained. That training required hospital beds and patients. The Medical Registration Ordinance of 1884 that licensed Western doctors and the establishment of the Alice Memorial Hospital with the Hongkong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1887 acknowledged these changing needs. Nursing also was becoming professional, a vocation for ladies. The first English women nurses sent to the Civil Hospital in 1890 were well received as replacements for the untrained and uncivil wardsmasters, many of whom had been dismissed for theft and alcoholism.\n\nAt the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897 a hospital for women was supported by public subscription, resulting in the Victoria Hospital for Women and Children and a Training Institute for Nurses. Although this hospital was to be available to women of ‘all ranks, classes, creeds and races', its location in Barker Road made it inaccessible to poor women, and it is clear that the Training Institute was to produce midwives for European mothers. Morbidity amongst Chinese women led to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213053, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "101\n\nthat he had been reinstated as a lecturer, but in 1916 he resigned that position, since the Chair of Surgery had been established, and could only be held with clinical rights at the Government Civil Hospital. Why Dr. Gibson was treated as Mr. Pearce said 'shabbily', is not known, although in Dr. Mitchell's eyes, there had been no necessary connection between the LMS and medical education, and he had warned against any expectation of a linkage.\" The effect, however, was to remove the students from the institution of the Alice, and with it, the main rationale justifying the exclusion of the lady doctor from general medical work. By this time, maternity work had grown and lack of work was no longer an issue. 94\n\nThe AMMH was most important in the establishment of Hong Kong's maternity service for several reasons: first, the resources set up were both hospital-based and domiciliary, and therefore set the parameters for subsequent development, which included hospitals, maternity clinics, and government midwives attending home births. Secondly, under the umbrella of the LMS, the place of Western medical practice amongst the Chinese people was strengthened, demand increasing in the post-World War I decades. Thirdly, female doctors acquired a primary role in service provision and thereby a career pathway for Chinese women as doctors and midwives was opened. That pathway was to extend to general nursing, although even until the 1930s at the Alice Hospital, male dressers, supervised by female European nurses, were needed to work in male wards. Fourthly, a service which was accessible to all classes of Chinese women was set in place. That is, poor women were looked after on the basis of need, whereas the wives of the wealthy Chinese subscribers were entitled to care in terms of the Lady Doctor's contract. The outcome was a service that was, as much by default from the power play between Dr. Gibson and Dr. Sibree as by intention, culturally appropriate to the Chinese community. That is, status differentials were recognised, and at the same time, the level of qualification seen as adequate for a public health-oriented service was selected, analogous to the level of training for the Chinese doctors.\n\nThe lack of continuity in the service left a gap which, with greater recognition of need, was filled by secular agencies, as the Chinese Public Dispensaries Committee set up a maternity home in Wanchai in 1919, run by Dr. Alice (Sibree) Hickling, followed by the Tsan Yuk Hospital in 1922. The Tung Wah and Kwong Wah Hospitals improved their maternity service, and domiciliary care was the province of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213060, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "108\n\n85 An observation which lends some support to this view is that of Hill, that the American women missionaries came from a conservative Protestant tradition, and did not share the egalitarian view of the 'women's movement'. See Patricia R Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), pp. 33-5.\n\n86 Dr Mitchell was married to Dr. Isabella Little, of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission in Macao, in January, 1906. His wife died of typhoid at their posting, Poklo, in May, 1909. Dr Mitchell was transferred to Hong Kong at the end of 1909, initially for six months, to help Dr Gibson, 'to prevent the risk of a breakdown'. See LMS Box 16, 1905-06 No. 290, Dr. Mitchell to Mr Cousins, 11 August, 1905; LMS Box 18, 1909 No. 313, Dr. Gibson to Mr Cousins, 13 May, 1909; LMS Box 18, 1909-10 No. 316, Mr Clayson to Mr Wardlaw Thompson, enclosure: Urgency Resolutions of DC, 28 January, 1910.\n\n*7 See, for example, the biography of Lady Clara Ho Tung, whose identification, though Eurasian born, was Chinese. Irene Cheng, Clara Ho Tung: A Hong Kong Lady, Her Family and Her Times (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1989, paperback), p. 133.\n\n88 By 1890, in all schools under the Education Department, girls made up 32 per cent of enrolments. See G.B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, 2nd edn (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 240.\n\n89 LMS Box 18, 1910 No. 319, Dr Sibree to Dr. Thompson, 26 September, 1910.\n\n90 LMS Box 22, 1922 No. 385, Mr Pearce to F.H. Hawkins Esq., 2 May, 1922. To what extent Dr Sibree's views were coloured by her father-in-law is unknown. Rev. C.H. Hickling was a critic of the LMS work in Hong Kong, particularly of the medical mission work, which he considered redundant. See LMS Box 19, 1913 No. 340, C.H. Hickling to Mr Lenwood, 8 July, 1913. He stated:\n\nmedical mission work is argued 1) as a pioneering agency to break down prejudice & 2) to introduce modern & humane Medicine & surgery. The Hongkong medical work is superfluous now for either purpose. The direct evangelistic work is of the most puny order. Dr. Gibson knows comparatively little of the language - so transfer would not be hard.\n\nand concluded:\n\nIf LMS work in HK & Canton were dropped & Poklo handed over to the German Mission which is working all round it, I believe that Christian enterprise would suffer to an infinitesimal extent for a year or so & after that not at all. The HK Hospitals would be locally supported as now & worked with Western trained medicals.\n\n91 LMS Box 19, 1913 No. 340, Dr. Gibson to Mr. Lenwood, 18 June, 1913.\n\n92 Paterson, op. cit., p. 111.\n\n93 LMS Box 18, 1920 No. 319. Dr. Mitchell to Rev. G. Currie Martin, 1 September, 1910.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213161, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "My friend, Mr. Lee Yuen Tsaan, was born in Heung Shan, China, opposite to Macau, in December 1903. This, coincidentally, was also the birth place of Dr. Sun Yat Sen (alias Suen Chung Shan), who graduated in 1892 from the Hong Kong College of Medicine. After his death the name, Heung Shan, was changed to Chung Shan in memory of Dr Sun.\n\nMr Lee told me, as a boy, he enjoyed life in the village of Haang Mei (meaning ‘constantly beautiful”), which had a population of about 2,000. It was a single-lineage village. Every person had the surname ‘Lee’. He recalled living close to a stream with running water which contained shrimps. He is proud that his father was the first Christian in the village where he was known as ‘Christian Kwoon-hor’ (his given name on marriage). He had been baptised in Australia where he lived when he was young.\n\nXenophobic disturbances, such as the anti-foreigner Boxer Uprising in 1900, sometimes created waves of people who had been associated with western firms on the Mainland. These Chinese often felt it prudent to move to Hong Kong. Others went there just because it was a better place to do business.\n\nIn a speech to students at Hong Kong University, in 1923, Sun the Revolutionary contrasted the peace, law and order and good government of the British Colony with the backwardness and corruption of China.\n\nUntil after World War II, there were no immigration restrictions when travelling from the Mainland to the British Territory. Many Chinese looked upon it as little more than moving from one part of China to another.\n\nThe Lee family moved to Hong Kong, from Heung Shan, in 1987, when the population of the Colony was just over half a million. Although electric fans started to replace punkas as early as the late 1890s, when young Lee arrived in Hong Kong some punkas could still be seen. For instance in offices, schools and barbers shops. Electric fans were expensive and coolie labour (to pull the punkas) was cheap,’ Mr. Lee explained.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213264, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "66\n\nBanks, Hongs and Government House\n\nMany old established western hongs have long come to terms with the 'breath of the dragon'. As one senior Standard Chartered Bank staff member phrased it (partly with tongue in cheek perhaps?): 'Some Europeans are more concerned about fung shui than the Chinese. Besides, paying attention to it is good for business.'\n\nThe British Standard Chartered is the oldest foreign bank in Hong Kong (its forerunner, the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, was established in Hong Kong in 1859). Management was advised that for its new building, completed in 1990, one main door was not enough to 'catch all the good fortune and allow money to flow in'. An additional entrance, facing northeast, was included in the plan, 'to capture \"luck\" from Central District and from the harbour and business from the Hong Kong Banking Corporation next door'. The main entrance is very important. It is subjected to more foot traffic than any other part of a building. Its door should be well-hinged, upright and in scale with the building as a whole.\n\nSimilarly, the decor of Chartered Bank's interior includes a number of features synonymous with prosperity in Chinese culture. The stained-glass windows in the entrance hall portray a bus with registration number 28 (homonyms in Cantonese also meaning 'easy to prosper'). A red (a lucky colour) tram car has the number 88 (signifying 'doubly prosperous') and steps have been constructed in flights of eight. Lucky numbers are popular in Chinese communities around the world.\n\nSimilarly it is good if one's grave, or niche in a columbarium where one's ashes are deposited, has a fortuitous number. In Europe numbers carry different meanings. Seven (among Chinese, this number is often associated with how many dishes mourners partake of at a funeral wake) is sometimes considered lucky, while 13 is deemed unlucky. Consequently, a 13th floor is sometimes omitted in a building.\n\nAs is common in many commercial premises in Hong Kong, running water is good because water signifies money. While having a water feature may not mean much in a bank in York or New York, such beliefs do imply a great deal to many customers in Hong Kong. Yet, surprisingly, few appeared to have been too upset when the fountain at the 'Landmark', in Central District, was done away with.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213265, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "67\n\nStandard Chartered Bank's big brother, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (surrounded by the Bank of China, Standard Chartered Bank, the Legislative Council building, and others, which act as 'dragon and tiger' guards), also went to considerable lengths to build 'fung shui considerations' into its award-winning headquarters. It was completed in 1985. Sir Norman Foster, the English architect, brought in fung shui masters at various stages throughout the Bank's design and construction. Although it was described as the 'most innovative bank building in the world', symbolising flexibility with no expense spared, nevertheless 'The Bank' (as it is sometimes known locally) went to great pains to lift its two bronze lions into position simultaneously (Lions Return Home, 1985:19). Work commenced on a propitious day, starting at 5.00 am (Guarding the Bank.., 1985:10) (Chung, 1985:10). Senior British Bank officials attended. On the advice of the fung shui practitioner, the two lions, Stitt and Stephen (named after two past Bank managers), act as guardians. They ward off evil. They are often patted by Chinese to bring them good luck, although the two lions do not directly face each other. Their exact positions are important. Heavy objects such as stones or statues (like two-ton, bronze lions symbolising energy) have the power to stabilise a situation. In everyday life, heavy ornaments and the like can affect the ability of a person to hold down a job or to hang on to a wife.\n\nIn addition to placing two lions in position in front of a bank, turning the first sod, foundation stone laying and topping out ceremonies, and house-warming parties are all important in Western society (Groves, 1991:passim). Also, a Christian priest consecrates a new church. In Chinese culture too, although human sacrifices have long disappeared, special building ceremonies are still sometimes conducted, for example, when starting work on the foundations, erecting the main door, or hoisting the ridgepole of a village house. With the last example, items are hung from the ridge. These include 'lucky' objects, such as a small bag of rice (no-one must ever go hungry). All such ceremonies must be carried out on auspicious days.\n\nOne would imagine the Hong Kong Bank is too concerned with profit and loss accounts to bother about what some describe as superstitions. Yet care was taken, when planning the front entrance on Des Voeux Road, that it is lower than the exit on Queen's Road. This is similar to a humble Chinese college in that the front door should be bigger and lower than the...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213266, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "68\n\nback door. In this way prosperous winds are not allowed to blow straight out of the other side. Considerable care was taken, too, in selecting the positions and angles of the two long escalators leading up to the first floor of the Bank. They should not directly 'confront' the entrance.\n\nUnlike most enterprises in urban Hong Kong 'The Bank' still has an open space in front of it and a sea view. The harbour is the bathing place of the dragon. With water signifying money this is important. Water is the most powerful of all the Elements. It is non-resistant. It can wear away rocks. A deluge can sweep all before it.\n\nIn many cases planners go to some lengths, among other measures, to ensure that interior water features assist good joss to circulate throughout a building. The height of the ejection of water of a fountain is often considered important.\n\nThe now liquidated Hong Kong Branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce was sadly not so wise. '... the BCC displayed a large water feature which cascaded away from the entrance... this means (in fung shui terms) wealth pours out of the bank. I am surprised anyone should put their money into this bank in the first place,' a fung shui master contended.\n\nThere are countless cases where western managements have paid consideration to fung shui in Hong Kong (Saw, 1990:8) In Exchange Square, for example, a special skylight was installed and the 'water curtains' on either side of the two escalators are spectacular. In the Hyatt Regency Hotel doors and furniture were repositioned.\n\nVirgin Atlantic Airways timed their first flight to the Far East to start on a propitious day. Marks and Spencer buried lucky gold coins in strategic positions under floors in its stores, and Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm, also pays regard to the 'caring philosophy'. Asians, of course, like to see Westerners respecting their culture. In turn, it is good for business (Sunday Times, 1995:16).\n\nThe author has no hard data, but his personal recollections are that clearly far more interest is shown in fung shui by western establishments today than 40 or so years ago. Certainly there is far more interest in it now than there was between the two World Wars. Going back still further,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213277, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "Fung shu' originated from the love of, and the worship of nature. It consists, simply, of geographical advantages and orientation rules similar to requirements home builders take into consideration in many parts of the western world today (Maitland, 1977:11). Often, with the landscape being manipulated so it falls into line with culture and cosmological requirements, 'the setting can be more important than the Jewel'. For example, a house on low-lying ground may become flooded and water can affect the foundations. Fung shu doctrine maintains that dry soil which is arid and does not support vegetation is bad. Earth which is dark and moist and has an appropriate bearing pressure will bring happiness.\n\nIf the architect prepares a good design the occupants will be contented living there. A home shapes the destiny of its master and his family. If a Chinese makes a fortune while living in a particular house he is likely to believe it brings him luck. He will be loathe to move. The flat under examination in the case study has a superb view. That makes sense in any language.\n\nIn Chinese culture vital cosmic breath and magical currents, known as hei shar (*) and described as a form of primordial force, animate superbly landscaped countryside. This may be studded with pagodas, grottoes and temples. Generally, highland and ridges are yang and valleys are yin. But in every type of ground, in every range of mountains, in every bluff or rock, nature has laid down a certain quantity of yin. Or terrestrial breath. Balance between the two is important. In an idyllic place, where life forces flow from heaven along the veins of the earth, obviously, people are more likely to be content. If there is not a 'bond' between person and place, then he or she will feel miserable, and, in the extreme, illness, paralysis or death will result.\n\nBruce Lee, the popular martial arts expert and film star who died tragically in 1973 at the age of 33, lived, many believe, in an 'unlucky house' (Block, 1974:passim). A fung shu master would more likely say, 'compatibility between Lee and his home in Hong Kong were lacking.'\n\nFung shui has been described as the doctrine of nature's breath in which one 'inhales and exhales nature'. Fung shui enters every stem and every fibre (Eitel, 1882:37). Just as acupuncture is about subtle energy in the body, so fung shui is about discriminating energy in the earth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213302, "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "104\n\nChristians believe in, rather than by fung shur? Indeed for most religions and persuasions when faith is involved, there is usually no rational way to measure faith. Although, so often, the more rational the person's view the greater the degree of rationalisation. This does not of course imply fung shur is completely illusionary. A person must believe in the cure. So much, after all, is psychological. Many things in life are.\n\nThose who are afraid of contracting some illness become disease conscious, which helps to attract what they fear, just as those who think always in terms of health are helping to attract health. It is a case of attunement. A natural force, seemingly, turns on the switch. An aggressive attitude towards fighting disease can help prolong life. If you change your outlook you change your vibrations.\n\nOne Englishwoman told the author:\n\n\"There are electrical fields. Why can't there be other fields too, like those emanating from crystal? Again, there are things like 'thought transference'. There must also be other dimensions of which we are not really aware. Things that give out an aura.\"\n\nCertainly most Chinese and many Westerners do believe in the 'breath of the dragon'. As one Irish friend explained to the author:\n\n'Fung shui? Yes, it works so well. I'm an advocate. Believe and it will happen. Get fung shui working for you. When my Chinese wife and I last went on leave to Dublin we bought a house, largely because of fung shui, on the spur of the moment. With a street number of 80 it also has a good setting.'\n\nTo some extent fung shui is commonsense dressed up in the language of fairy tales and folklore. As people enter the next millennium (western reckoning) it is opportune to question, as mankind stands at the crossroads, whether the world should continue down a path that leads to an even greater alienation from nature and contrary to the laws of creation.\n\nAs new energies surge into the earth's fields, if man, in the home, on the job, or in the grave, as a result of the fung shui master creating a better environment, is more content, then fung shui will have achieved an important aim. If man is more content he will feel more comfortable. He will accomplish more and enjoy life more.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213335, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "139\n\nJournal, this set out the basis on which the Hong Kong Branch of the Society had operated during its 30 years' existence. It explained our independent status and self-financing within an approved constitution; how we operated with complete freedom of action, without our activities being controlled, directed or restricted by the present government in any way; and mentioned the willingness of our guest speakers, and the cooperation of all the persons and institutions visited during our local tours. I emphasized that these were all vital elements in the Society's successful operation, and that they rested on the personal freedoms enjoyed in contemporary Hong Kong, stating in conclusion, that I hoped they would continue after 1997 and enable our Society to continue with its role as a cultural interpreter of Hong Kong and China to (in the main but not exclusively) the territory's expatriate population,\n\n20\n\nChinese Membership of the Hong Kong Branch\n\nOne of the interesting features of any voluntary society is undoubtedly its membership. A glance through the RAS membership lists for the 1960s, supplemented by my recollections of those years, indicates that the membership was widely distributed among the non-Chinese population, and that quite a number of them had been resident in pre-war China and Shanghai, the headquarters of the former North China Branch of the Society. There was a sizable Chinese component too, again largely with a Shanghai connection. The standard of English among members of that group and their knowledge and appreciation of Western culture, had struck me as being very high, perhaps even generally superior to the level among our Hong Kong Chinese members today. Educators in Hong Kong have agreed for years that, whilst the quantity of English-speakers in the population has increased, quality has not kept pace. However, such comparisons are facile, and not really helpful. It has to be remembered that English-speaking Chinese of the time were generally older and had belonged to another era and a very different world. Those able to acquire Western languages and culture in those now far-off days often came from families that were comfortably off, or even wealthy, well able to provide their offspring with an overseas education, or at schools and universities in the International Settlement at Shanghai, the main Treaty Ports, or in Hong Kong.\n\nThe percentage of Chinese members in the Hong Kong Branch has never been high, amounting to not more than 15% to 20% and sometimes", "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": 213489, "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-1995", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "53\n\ntied. For the novice, or a less experienced, this can cause the wearer to faint. I have seen amateurs have their hats fall to the ground while on the stage, much to the amusement of the audience and dismay of the actor.\n\nIn the light of these anomalies, you would ask why people still choose this career. This is attributed mainly to poverty. The young boys, on joining the school, already burned their bridges behind them because they cannot go back and tell their parents the hardship they have experienced and become a burden to the family.\n\nIn spite of all these difficulties, quite a few do reach the top, like Di Mei Lan-tang and many others, who enjoyed international fame during their lives.\n\nThe Social Position of the Theatrical People in China\n\nUnder the feudal system in China, previous to the 1911 Revolution, the scholars class dominated, while the theatrical people were placed on the lowest rung of the social ladder, along with the barber, prostitute, worker in the bathhouse, and the cook. Their position in society was slightly better than the “untouchable” class in India. It is well known that in the Ch'ing Dynasty, candidates to the Imperial Examination, or any other literary examinations, must report the names and occupations of their ancestors for three generations from great grandfather down to the father. These applications had to be counter-signed by the Chairman of the Neighborhood Board of the district in which the candidate lived. They must state that none of these had ever worked in the five categories of trades listed above. False declaration would nullify the application and the applicant would never be allowed to sit again. What the punishment would be if detection occurred after success in examination is not known. The Imperial Examination was abolished in 1904.\n\nAnother reason why people looked down on the theatrical people was because they were regarded, more or less, as homosexually inclined. Strange to say, in a Confucian society like China, homosexuality, like foot binding, was never condemned as unforgivable sin, as in the Western world. I guess that many of the actors had to compromise if they wanted to stick to their careers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213491, "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-1995", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "55\n\npoor doctor escaped to Taiwan on some other score.\n\nThen we learned that the famous playwright Woo Tzu-kwong () married the actress Hsin Fung-hsia () and the couple live happily together until now. It is fair to say that the theatrical people in China, including those actors and actresses, are living a stricter moral life than their counterparts of the European and American origin. I hope that, one of these days, the social differences will be swept away so that men and women can live a non-hobbled life as anybody else.\n\nThe Applause and the Booing\n\nApplause by hand clapping is only a recent invention to the theatres in China. In the old days, applause came spontaneously from the audience when the public felt the singing or acting was beautifully done by yelling the word “Hao” (好) in the third tone. Booing was seldom practiced except for the following few reasons:\n\n(a) when the singer missed or could not keep up with the rhythm or beat of the music;\n\n(b) when the hat fell off from the actor's head to the ground; \n\n(c) in a fighting scene, when his spear, or weapon, fell to the ground.\n\nCoincidentally, booing is delivered by yelling the same word “Hao\" (好) in a different tone, the fourth tone, pronounced as ().\n\n\"The Patron Saint” of the Theatre\n\nYou have probably heard that in China, every trade has its quasi-deity who is worshipped with reverence. The position of this quasi-god equals, in status, the “Patron Saint\" in the Western world.\n\nIn the theatrical profession, they worship Emperor Xuan-zong (玄宗) of the Tang Dynasty - his real name is Li Long-ji (). Xuan-zong is his reigning name.\n\nHe was an exceptionally talented man, possessing charm and charisma. In the second year of his reign, he established, within his palace, a school which he called the \"Pear Garden”, to teach young and talented men and women how to sing and to put on a show. Up to this day, people like to refer to theatrical men and women as \"disciples", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213568, "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-1995", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "133\n\nJoss\n\nThis word is supposed to be derived from the Portuguese Deos. The Anglicised written form, Joss, appears in many sources, and Tong does not have a Chinese form.\n\nTwo sources dated 1672 quoted in Hobson Jobson are intriguing.\n\n\"But the Devil (whom the Chinese commonly called Joosje) is a mighty and powerful Prince of the World..\", and\n\n\"In a four-cornered cabinet in their dwelling-rooms, they have, as it were, an altar, and therean an image. This they call Joss.\"\n\nWhat is striking is that the latter is clearly describing a household ancestral altar for the worship of ancestors. Moreover, the former quotation, which gives the word used by Dutch writers, joosje, is the pronunciation of “ancestors\" in the Wu dialects. There is a possibility, then, that Joss has a Chinese and not a Portuguese origin.\n\nMaskee\n\nThis word basically means \"whatever\", “never mind” or “perhaps\" in Pidgin. Tong gives it as maskee. Batalha lists a Patoa word, masqui, and says that in the meaning of \"all right” the word is commonly used in Creole. She concludes that there is no basis for some assertions that the word is derived from the Cantonese m sai.\n\nAPPENDIX I\n\nSelected Pidgin Dialogues Quoted in 19 C. Western Sources Bits of Old China. William C. Hunter. Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co. London 1855.\n\nPage 5\n\nOlo flen. My savee you last voyagee My savee you two, te-lee voyagee.\n\nPage 6\n\nMake look see", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213631, "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-1995", "page_number": 227, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "201\n\n'Will some kind hand in a foreign land place a flower on my son's grave.' \n\nAvril Williams has answered that call countless times. She looks upon the departed, including of course the two Chinese, as members of her extended family. It is important they all have visitors.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 J Keith Stevens, 'British Chinese Labour Corps' Labourers Buried in England', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society vol. 29, 1989 (1991), p 390 and Plates 24 and 25\n\n2 Michael Summerskill, China on the Western Front, Britain's Work Force in the First World War, published by Summerskill (1982), passim\n\n3 The Register at Foncquevillers Military Cemetery\n\n*S M Bard, Report on Survey and Study of old Service Graves at Stanley Military Cemetery, Antiquities and Monuments Office (Hong Kong, c 1990), p.10, and S M Bard, Annex to Board Paper Antiquities Advisory Board/21/91, Study of Military Graves and Monuments Hong Kong Cemetery (Hong Kong, 1991), p 17\n\n4 In large Chinese families children are still sometimes known by numbers eg 'Number Four Sister'\n\n5 British soldiers in World War Two each wore two identity discs on a cord around their necks. On these plastic discs were stamped their army number and their name. If a soldier was killed one disc was buried with the body and the other was sent back to base for record purposes\n\n6. Four proverbs were used. The other two were, 'A noble duty bravely done', and 'Though dead he still liveth'. All four have a hint of a Christian message\n\n7 Tim Sebastian, 'Haunted by the Ghosts of Heroes', South China Morning Post (1 July 1995), Features p.3\n\n8 Ibid\n\nPLATES\n\nPlate I Although an army number is inscribed, this grave of a Chinese labourer in Foncquevillers Cemetery is unnamed. This is not uncommon\n\nPlate II The inscription on this grave shows the name of the labourer and his native place in China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213872, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 224, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "198\n\nwere named the \"South-west militarists\".\n\nConcerning how these governments sustained themselves, I have selected four possibilities for discussion. They are taxation and provincial remittances, customs surplus, foreign loans, and internal loans.\n\n1) Concerning provincial remittance and taxation, the government in Beijing enjoyed a limited amount from those provinces it managed to control. The southern government, however, failed to get any taxation from other provinces.\n\n2) About customs surplus, collected by foreign authorities to guarantee payment of the Boxer indemnity, this was returned only to the Beijing government, the only legitimate government recognized by the foreigners. In the South, when Sun Yat-sen threatened to seize the customs in Guangdong, Canton was surrounded by British and American gunboats.\n\n3) Foreign loans were monopolized by a \"Financial Consortium\", formed by major western banks aimed at avoiding mutual competition. As the consortium recognized only the Beijing government, all foreign loans to China were monopolized by Beijing. This picture, however, was upset by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Money was then moved away from the Far East to Europe again. As a consequence, by about 1915, the Chinese governments, in Canton and in Beijing, were increasingly dependent on domestic loans. The Chinese merchants were a major source for these domestic loans.\n\n4) Domestic loans are where the role of Chinese merchants came into play. Generally, three important groups of financiers can be identified. They centred around Tianjin, Shanghai, and Canton-Hong Kong. One common feature of these regions was the foreign presence, which secured a base for final retreat. Understandably, many Chinese companies were registered in the foreign concessions even though they operated outside them.\n\nPolitical Investment in the Hong Kong - Canton Region\n\nAgainst this background, I will focus the second part of my article", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213883, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 235, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "209\n\nmembers of the Alumni Association. All of them had at one time or another worked as compradores for foreign firms; the two Eurasian families, Ho Tung and Lo Changzhao (E) had almost monopolized the compradoral posts of Jardines and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank up to the 1940s. Liu Zhubo, He and Lo's sons were at one time or another appointed Legislative Councillors of the Colony. When the First World War broke out in Europe, these three partners contributed a huge sum of money to the British Government for the purchase of an aeroplane. The plane, as requested by the donors, was named \"Da You Bank of Hong Kong\".\n\nThe wealth of this western-educated group did not derive from the joint-stock company. They owned their own native bank despite the fact that they were compradores in western firms. It seems likely that this was an attempt to avoid the disclosure of financial accounts as required by the company ordinance. As these Eurasian families monopolized the compradoral posts of many of the foreign firms, including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, it is highly likely that capital was transferred between their accounts in the compradore offices and those in their private businesses.\n\nAs they had exclusive access to capital, they did not rely on a capital market in the same way as the overseas returning migrants did, though we cannot tell whether this capital market was governed by the invisible hand of the economy or the invisible hand of political intimidation, as the governor suggested.\n\nFollowing the example of the Siyi men, Hong Kong-born, western-educated groups participated in the political arena in China. In 1913, the Governor reported to the Colonial Office that \"several leading Chinese\" in Hong Kong had informed him that they would welcome the reorganization of the administration of the Canton Province under \"tactful and conscientious British supervision.\"\n\nAccording to Liu Zhubo's proposal, a loan of 25,000,000 taels was to be raised in Hong Kong to redeem unsecured currency in Canton. In return, Liu requested of the Beijing Government the privilege of establishing a central bank in Guangdong \"with a monopoly of the Provincial Government business\". To guarantee the smooth functioning of this arrangement, Liu suggested \"inviting the Government of Hong Kong\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214103, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "140\n\nMacau's inner harbour is extended around the north-western flank and ship yards appear along the coast. The city grows to meet the new edge with street patterns in keeping with the forms of the older city. Streets follow contours or natural edges. Larger spaces appear at intersections of streets of odd angles. We see the first intimations of a more formal city plan being made at the northern, agricultural edge of the city in the centre of the peninsula in an area now known as San Antonio. Here the planner has organised city blocks in a rectilinear street pattern with a large square where streets meet at 45°, reminiscent of Cerda's plan for Barcelona of 1859.\n\nFigure 3: 1912\n\nThe map of 1927 shows us the first dramatic intentions to grow. The initial expansion shown in 1912 is mostly completed, the central square implemented, diagonal streets breaking up the overlaid grid. City blocks and urban forms are created which show more order than the old city but still retain the same scale. The new sections of town show another heritage, however, large sections of reclamation are laid out with indications of intended street patterns, all laid out on strictly rectilinear forms. The expansion into the small remaining areas of agricultural land mediates the change, shifting from tightly woven streets to straight avenues. Accidental gathering places no longer happen as streets meet at odd angles. A large park is shown in the centre to provide a formal open space of a city scale. This is the section of town into which the growing middle class move, traders without established trading houses. Many too are the members of the growing Eurasian community who now control much of the local economy.\n\nThe scale of the 1927 expansion is significantly different from previous growth, just as the scale of the harbour facilities shown are larger. A new sense of the world is manifested - the impact of an ordered manufactured world can be found in this by now quiet trading station. Massive reclamation is required to implement this plan. In an effort to bring back some of the sea-going shipping trade, the main harbour is to be moved from the inner harbour to the outer. Harbour walls are to be built to the south east in an (ultimately futile)\n\nFigure 4: 1927", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214150, "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": 8, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT ........................................................................................................................ xii\n\nFRIENDS OF THE RAS (UK) REPORT.................... xxvi\n\nAUDITOR'S REPORT ........................................................................................................................ xxviii\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT ............................................................................................................. xxxv\n\nARTICLES\n\nDan Waters - Laughter Across the Great Wall: A Comparison of Chinese and Western Humour ........ 1\n\nKeith Stevens - Images of Sinicised Vedic Deities on Chinese Altars ................................................ 51\n\nRichard J. Garrett - Weapons of the China Wars ............................................................................... 107\n\nKeith Stevens - Naturalist, Author, Artist, Explorer and Editor, and Almost Forgotten President: Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 1885 - 1954, President of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1935 - 1940 ............ 121\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch - Xu, the Taoist Perfected Lord Xu Zhenjun, the Protective Deity of Jiangsi Province........... 137\n\nGillian Bickley - Plum Puddings and Sharp Boys, \"One Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin\": An Analysis of the China Coverage in the Illustrated London News, 5 January to 23 September, 1861 ........ 147\n\nKeith Stevens - The Deification of Heroes Following the Struggle by the Vassal State of Chou to Overthrow the Shang Dynasty...... 173\n\nKeith Stevens - Temples Arise from the Ashes of Revolution ........................................................... 187\n\nvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214182, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "This paper's main aim is to compare Chinese humour with Western humour, although, again to narrow the field, of these two forms emphasis is placed on Cantonese as compared to English humour. There is of course common ground; but many Chinese wisecracks are not considered really funny outside China. This paper looks at an assortment of jokes, including Western and Chinese. Many are 'lowbrow.' It also looks at the everyday humour of ‘old 100 names' (, the common man). To round this study off, conclusions are arrived at. Because it concentrates on Cantonese humour it uses the Cantonese style of Romanisation rather than the more modern Pinyin.\n\n# Introduction\n\nThe British Museum's Egyptology Department has researched the bawdy fun and games that went on in the land of the Pyramids more than 4,500 years ago.3 Many of the gags which are still portrayed in the form of stone carvings centre around ‘adult jokes,' drunkenness, vomiting and sexual exhibitionism. With language and communications intertwined with culture, these antics were very much part of the humour which developed with the environment of the times (Lexikon der Agyptologie; 1997).\n\nCulture, the framework that provides people with their identity, includes not only language and communications but also multifarious parts of everyday life: such as dress and appearance, food and eating habits, and how people perceive and appreciate themselves in relation to the society in which they live. Culture also includes relationships, values and norms, beliefs and attitudes, work habits and practices, and the relationship between work and leisure and so on. Any of these aspects of culture, as well as entertainment and sex, can, of course, be related in some way to humour. All this is very much related to one's cultural background.\n\nIn a completely different culture in Egypt, four-and-a-half millennia ago, what has been described as 'the oldest joke in the world' is recorded on a slip of papyrus (Pharaohs thigh slapper; 1998). Translated it went something like this. How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young, attractive women wearing only nets down the Nile and invite the pharaoh to go and catch a fish. Although the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214185, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "6\n\nlaughter to one person and a mere smile to another. Indeed to a third person, the joke may fall completely flat. People often do not agree about what they find funny. Why? Much is physiological and beyond the scope of this paper. Some people take the view that life is not funny and you need to be a philosopher to extract fun from it. Nevertheless, few men or women will confess to a total lack of humour. As Frank Moore Colby (1865-1925) the United States editor wrote:\n\nMen will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humour? The British statesman, William Gladstone (1809-98), is one of the few who was said by his critics to have been entirely lacking in humour (Muir, 1990; XXXII).\n\nSidonie Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954) the French novelist wrote: Total absence of humour renders life impossible (one could add, this applies for both Chinese and Westerners).\n\nNevertheless humour is probably not unique to the human race and many canine lovers will tell you can sometimes spot a grin on the face of a dog.\n\nWestern senses of humour\n\nThe brand of humour common in the United States, where people are not afraid to ‘debunk' anyone or anything, is, according to one middle-aged American woman living in Hong Kong, not always the most subtle. It can vary considerably compared to the humour, often based on behaviour or appearance, found in Britain where irony is frequently used and words portray the opposite of what is actually meant. Of course an Englishman may be unable to laugh at a Chinese joke because he has insufficient command of the language.\n\nFor instance, a European and a Cantonese were arguing how America was discovered. The European said Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492, together with soldiers and missionaries. Columbus landed, kissed the ground, and declared the name of the new land 'America'. The Chinese disagreed saying that Fa-Xian (AD 337-422), a Buddhist monk, landed there in a Chinese junk. As he walked up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214186, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "beach with his Chinese cook carrying a wok (Chinese frying pan) under his arm, he proclaimed 'Mat ye lei ga? (†1) (meaning \"What is this?'). But to a Cantonese it sounds very much like the word 'America'.\n\nAgain, regarding the appreciation of someone else's humour, a Chinese who has never lived outside China may be unable to laugh at a joke because he has limited knowledge outside his own country. For instance the ideal world has jokingly been said, by Asians, to be an English stately home, Chinese food, an American salary and a Japanese wife. But then another Asian pipes up, \"If you had a Japanese house, English food, a Chinese salary and an American wife you'd be in real trouble!\"\n\nOf course general knowledge, background and nuances often play an important part. For instance if you say in English, 'She's no chicken,' you mean a woman is not young. But in Cantonese it means she is not a prostitute.\n\nChinese and Westerners may face various obstacles before they can laugh at each other's jokes. Nevertheless, as Ezra Pound (1885-1972) the American poet and translator wrote: The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension. Although there is much fine Chinese literature there have been few Chinese Nobel Prize winners. It is unfortunate that many of the finest passages of Chinese writing lose their sparkle when translated into western languages (Ball 1903; 358).\n\nIn a similar way the English language is not always easy for foreigners to appreciate. Tsim Tak-lung, at one time in charge of the Hong Kong Chinese University Press, once said that when enquiring after someone the English reply, ‘As well as can be expected.' 'What on earth does it mean?' asked confused Tsim.\n\nAgain he tells the tale of when he asked someone in a railway carriage in England whether a certain train went to Blanktown. He expected a 'yes' or 'no' answer. Instead he received the reply: 'I should be very surprised if it doesn't!' When the train pulled up at the platform", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214192, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "13\n\nvariety of humour and just talking mo lei tau (nonsense, f). It all adds up to people coming out of a show and feeling good about themselves.\n\nChinese humour\n\nWhereas Westerners have been described as being seriously humorous, Chinese have been said to be 'humorously serious' (Kao, 1946; XVIII). Chinese humour is, by and large, down to earth, with a surfeit of action, with the hero's mother breaking a leg or the bully being beaten up. Much of it may, nevertheless, be, so called, mo lei tau, and include a certain amount of Western style slapstick.\n\nIt was not until the beginning of the 20th century (unlike the West where they became popular two or three centuries earlier) that cartoons became popular in China (Xu, 1989; preface). The reason was largely because China was a semi-feudal society and people did not have freedom to create works of humour and sarcasm. Today, under socialism, works considered 'in poor taste' are often still not accepted for publication. Often cartoons tend to be used as resistance to oppression and, like a dagger or javelin, aimed to do 'battle.' Having said all that, however, many Westerners (as well as many Hong Kong Chinese) believe humour in China is not subtle enough and it does not demand rapid thought. In the main it is straightforward, then there is a pause followed by the punchline.\n\n'Laugh talk' (slapstick), as it is sometimes dubbed, generally goes down well with Chinese, and, between the two World Wars, it is understood that on the first night of a show put on by the family of Sir Run Run Shaw, in Shanghai, an actor, purely by accident, fell through the floorboards. Because this was considered hilarious by the audience, the Shaw showbiz family made it a permanent part of the act.\n\nThe author recalls when he visited Hainan Island, in China in 1987, in an off-the-beaten-track village, a Chinese infant was placed on his shoulder. The child wore standard Chinese shorts, with a longish vertical split in the seat. This conveniently opened automatically when it squatted to do its business. As it sat on the author's shoulder its bare bottom rubbed against his face. What a joke! All the Chinese, espe-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "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": 214214, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "35\n\nnationalities which have been brought about as a result of linguistic differences. Nor is it possible to ascertain whether observed differences in behavior, belief and humour develop as a result of varied expressions of a universal human mind (Wu, undated; 265). Considerably more research is needed.\n\nNevertheless, the findings of this paper do point to the following main, basic conclusions:\n\n(1) In the past, limited research has been undertaken comparing Chinese and Western humour.\n\n(2) Just as there are different kinds of Western humour (and even different kinds of English humour with cockney humour as but one example), so Chinese humour varies. For instance Guangzhou-Cantonese humour, which is more simple and straightforward, differs from that found in Hong Kong. The fact that the latter is a small city state, partly westernised, and people are short of time and life is frenetic, tends to bring about a so-called 'combat' situation. All this has a bearing on the development of the 'Hong Kong sense of humour.'\n\n(3) Certainly, jokes based on societal convention or wordplay only get their message across when language or society allows them to do so. Although there may be deeper differences, with humour linked to a large extent to culture and 'social conditioning,' it often means jokes cannot be understood fully or appreciated properly by peoples of different nationalities or regions. Thus an itinerant comedian staging shows around the world will have to vary his act to prevent jokes falling flat.\n\n(4) People often need not only to be able to comprehend the language but they also need to be able to visualise the situation before they can appreciate humour. Thus 'extending' (rather than changing) one's sense of humour, when living in a different culture, is an 'education process.' Some people 'learn' and extend their sense of humour faster than others.\n\n(5) Chinese humour, generally, is lowbrow, physical and not philosophical; but to the average Chinese it is fun. Often there is a liberal inclusion of 'adult jokes' and obscene language. Such humour", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214216, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "37\n\n(15) Humour changes over time and many Chinese, for example Singaporeans, have become Westernised in various ways, including regarding their sense of humour.\n\nThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976), and its vicious aftermath, even though it was for many Chinese largely of their own making, had a profound effect on China physically,\n\npolitically and morally. But the Chinese have considerable capacity for survival boosted largely by their philosophy of life, acceptance of realism, and capabilities to surmount the vicissitudes of life with understanding, limitless grace and (it must be stressed) with considerable humour.\n\nNevertheless, where there are differences in senses of humour, the more a Westerner learns about and appreciates Chinese culture, or when a Chinese understands Western culture, the more he or she 'extends' his or her own sense of humour in an alien culture. More rigorously chronicled jokes and more well-researched material will assist this process.\n\nBut with time, improved travel facilities and communications, including radio, television, the Internet, other forms of the mass media and information technology, the world is becoming more of a global village. In spite of Hong Kong becoming in some respects more 'Chinese' since the 1997 Handover, from Britain to China (including more use being made of the Chinese language), the merging of western and Chinese cultures will continue. This will, in the end, result in differences being narrowed and Chinese and Westerners laughing more at each others' jokes. Laughter will then cross the Great Wall more easily.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214231, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "52\n\nSsu and the Pi-yun Ssu. They were first placed there some three hundred years ago, towards the end of the last fully Chinese dynasty, the Ming and before the overthrow of the Ming by the non-Chinese Manchus.\n\nThe Two Temples in the Western Hills\n\nThe old Kuan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu X, the fourth of the Eight Great Places in the Western Hills of Peking, is sealed off and not available to the general public. It contains a modern image of the major deity, the bodhisattva Kuan Yin with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes together with old but refurbished images of the Deva with their name in Sinicised Sanskrit but without providing any hint as to their origins and legends. The statues of the Deva were originally made during the Ming, ca. 1500 AD, and consist of clay reinforced with hemp. They are referred to in temple literature as the Group of 28 Great Immortals +. The image of the Thousand Arm and Thousand Eye Kuan Yin was replaced by the Japanese after the Second World War in an attempt to make amends for having taken the original and melted it down for the brass content during the War.\n\nThe Kuan Yin Hall in the Ta Pei Ssu contains in addition to the one bodhisattva, Kuan Yin, twenty-eight images, which can be categorised as follows: twenty-six deities with Sanskrit titles including the five T'ien-wang [Guardians] together with two Chinese folk religion deities. Of the twenty-six, five are deities specifically referred to separately in the Eight Classes of Supernatural Beings? [Deva, Mahoraga, Kinnara, Asura and Gandharva]\n\nIt is lamentable that the Kuan Yin Hall is closed to the public; however, fortunately, there is also a Hall of Bodhisattvas in the second temple, the Pi-yun Ssu #, some five kms. to the north of the Ta Pei Ssu, which is open to the general public and it too contains the Twenty-eight Deva; however, the images here have all been made within the past fifteen years, probably replacements for the original images destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and yet again without any signs to indicate that they are anything other than Chinese deities. The fact that all but three were originally Hindu deities brought to China by Buddhism is not explained in temple literature, though the monks un-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214236, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "57\n\nis the conservation or preservation of the divine order in the world. Despite being a major deity and having many incarnations, of which Rama is but one, he is not included within the 28 Deva seen in the Ta Pei Ssu. However, his wife Laksmi is included. Another Vedic deity not included in the groups of Devas in the Western Hills is Krishna probably because he is the eighth avatar of Vishnu.\n\nPopular Buddhist figures which, at first thought, we might have expected to see listed among the Deva would, however, not be eligible because they were purely Buddhist without a Brahmanist or Vedic origin, and were Indians who lived and died during the lifetime of the Buddha himself. These include, amongst others, Kasyapa, Ananda and Lochana.\n\nAlthough Ming iconography portrayed Indra and Brahma on many altars as Chinese figures; the question remains why are they, and in particular in these two temples in the Western Hills why are so many Vedic deities, portrayed as Chinese?\n\nTales of the Ta Pei Ssu\n\nAn off-beat description of the Ta Pei Ssu in 1884 describes its picturesque location and whilst not referring to the deities, least of all the Deva, it does provide two colourful vignettes. The first gave the reason for the main entrance to the temple being blocked. It was a punishment for the priests who had permitted a suicide to take place within the temple confines. One of the monks so the story went had greatly insulted a coolie and he, instead of attacking his persecutor, had “with the perverseness of your true Chinaman” had taken vengeance on him by committing suicide. The second told of the usual practice of the era when foreigners rented temples in the cool of the hills for the summer. Having read various bits of graffiti the 'Student-Interpreter' claimed that the temple must have been a favourite resort of members of the Russian Mission between 1828 and 1840.\n\nA Third Temple containing a Group of Deities with Sinicised Sanskrit Names\n\nYet another group of deities with sinicised Sanskrit names can be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214263, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "84\n\nShan is one of the five sacred mountains of China and is located in Shantung. It is believed to be inhabited by many divinities both male and female with T'ai-shan Yeh the primary deity for most pilgrims to the mountain even though the main deity in the temple on the peak is the Jade Emperor. Temples dedicated to the Lord of T'ai-shan were to be found in all parts of China, where he was regarded as the guardian of life and death.\n\nAs the Supreme Lord of the Underworld he has a very large bureaucratic organisation responsible to him for the maintenance of the Book of Life, the register of the due date on which the soul of every living soul must be summoned to appear before the Judges of the Underworld. Popular belief claimed that the entrance to the Underworld was to be found in one of the temples at the base of the mountain. The arrest and escort of souls is carried out by lictors and runners from the yamen of the local City Gods who drag each soul before the local City God, together with the biography and report on the soul prepared by the local Earth God [T'u-ti] who has carried out the first, very preliminary interview to ensure that the right soul has been arrested and is ready for onward despatch. Again, after verification of the identity of the soul the City God endorses the Earth God's report and if available adds any further information on the soul he might possess, and sends the soul under escort to the First Court of the Underworld where the process of purging the soul of all sin commences. After the soul has passed through all Ten Courts and been fully purged of its sins, it is then despatched either to the Western Heaven [Celestial Paradise] or for rebirth in an incarnation to be decided upon depending upon the weight of sins incurred during the previous incarnation.\n\nIn parts of China and in Taiwan, the alter ego is Tung-yüeh Ta-ti with Yen-lo Wang being the senior and chief of the Ten Judges who are under his charge. This dual role played by both Tung-yüeh Ta-ti and Yen-lo Wang is a further complication and a confusion which appears to be insoluble. The former is not only the Supreme deity of the Underworld but also the Judge of the Seventh Court whilst Yen-lo Wang is not only the senior Judge in charge of all Courts but also the Judge of the Fifth Court. The latter has been explained as Yen-lo Wang having ten different forms, as Judges in each of the Ten Courts. This, however, would mean that T'ai-shan Yeh of the Seventh Court would also be a form of Yen-lo Wang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214523, "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": 381, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "350\n\nShanghai, 1917\n\n1933\n\nHandbook for China, Carl Crow, pub. Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai,\n\nThe Philatelic and Postal History of Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports, FW Webb, pub. Royal Philatelic Society, London, 1961\n\nStrangers at the Gate, Frederic Wakeman Jr, pub. University of California Press, Berkeley Cal., 1966\n\nChina's Struggle for Naval Development, 1839-1895, John L Rawlinson, pub. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1967\n\n\"The Invasion of China by the Western World”, ER Hughes, pub. Adam & Charles Black, London, 1968\n\nThe British in the Far East, George Woodcock, pub. Atheneum, New York, 1969\n\nTrade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, John King Fairbank, pub. Stanford University Press, Stanford Cal., 1969\n\nWestern Enterprise in Late Ch'ing China, Edward LeFevour, pub. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1970\n\nImperialism and Chinese Nationalism - Germany in Shantung, John E Schrecker, pub. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1971\n\nNagel's Encyclopedia Guide to China, pub. Nagel, Geneva, 1980\n\nBritish Mandarins and Chinese Reformers, Pamela Atwell, pub. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1985\n\nLion and Dragon in Northern China, Reginald F Johnston, pub. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1986", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214831, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "213\n\nYet however misinformed or ignorant of the real China they might have been, the British officers who went there in the course of the Opium War were not prejudiced against her either. Albeit they usually measured Chinese behaviour against Western concepts of ethics and convention, their writers were still generally respectful of China and its people.\n\nMatched by Chinese Ignorance of the West\n\nThe half truths and misconceptions common to those Britons who bothered to think at all about China and the Chinese were only matched by the equal, if not greater ignorance, exhibited by Chinese about the West, even by the governing classes. Their mind set, even of the most thoughtful among them, was cast in a different mould.5\n\nThe Chinese themselves may be held partly to blame for this state of mutual ignorance. Major George Henry Mason, who produced one of the most valuable early works in English on China and the Chinese, based on his personal experience of the situation at Canton in 1789-90, commented that in his day:\n\nThe very circumscribed limits which are marked out for foreigners at Canton, have rendered the natives of China so completely cut off from human kind that only a very superficial acquaintance has been hitherto obtained with the Religion, the Laws, the Manners or the Arts of a people the most ancient in the discovered world.\n\nIt was, Mason said, “to be exceedingly regretted, that either habitual caution, ungenerous suspicion, or experienced necessary circumspection, should influence the Chinese, even at a distance of fourteen hundred miles from the capital of their empire, to restrain the observing traveller within his narrow compass.\n\n196\n\nThis situation had not changed a whit by 1839. Each party to the War was boxed in by its own limitations.\n\nBritish Officers' Differing Views on the War\n\nLike the British public at home, some members of the Expeditionary", "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": 214844, "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "226\n\nconcerning the Opium Question and have come to the conclusion that we have no right to date the present eruption to that cause, as we have been insulted, our Trade interfered with, and British subjects have been maltreated long before Opium was mentioned and we have only been too tardy in seeking redress.” Letter of August 21st 1840 from Chusan, from “An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842”, Blackwood's, 1964, p. 80.\n\n\"The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856 Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. (Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981), p. 117.\n\n12\n\nAs, e.g. in Bingham, op.cit., Vol.I, p. 187: \"Captain Elliot assured the Chinese, by proclamations in their language, that no harm was intended to the peaceable inhabitants by the present expedition; that it was caused by Lin's bad treatment of the English; and that the force would only act against the mandarins, officers, and soldiers of the government.\"\n\n13 Bingham, Vol.II, p.171, and Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Hutchinson of London, 1975), p.129.\n\n14 Beeching, p.149. They had done the same in Lower Burma in 1824-26 (George Bruce, The Burma Wars 1824-1886 (London, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973) pp.33-35.\n\n15 See Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos and Mark R. Sheridan (Eds), The Laws of War, Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994), chapter 6, \"The Age of Napoleon”, in which Gunther Rothenberg wrote (p.97) that \"Professional soldiers were well aware of the laws and customs of war between civilized states, and by and large observed them,” and that despite atrocities and violations, their \"basic existence and validity” were never challenged.\n\n16 The most notable example being the firing of a salute of minute guns by the flagship, HMS Blenheim, when Admiral Kuan's body was recovered by his family after the battle of the Bogue in January 1841: see Bingham, Vol.II, p. 151, and Beeching, p. 128.\n\n18\n\nBeeching, pp. 147, 151. Wyndham Baker in Blackwood's p.79. By way of comment he added, “The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214856, "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": 271, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "239\n\nTwo important things happened in October 1971: firstly, men were no longer allowed to take concubines and, secondly, every person had to have at least one full day off work a week. Up until then people in small Chinese firms frequently laboured seven days a week with a few days off at Lunar New Year and odd days off at major Chinese festivals - like Dragon Boat and Mid Autumn Festival.\n\nPeople\n\nEnough about statistics: what about RAS members who made things happen?\n\nI will always remember Dr J R Jones CBE, MC, MA, LL.D, JP, who served as our President from the time our Branch was reconstituted until 1970. I first met J R in early 1955 at a Dante Alighieri (the Italian Society) meeting. Then I learned he had a penchant for things antiquarian as well as languages — although he spoke little Chinese. There are a few short pieces written by him in early RAS Journals.\n\nI remember him in a pinstripe, blue suit and, although fairly tall, he could be described as dapper, polished and a ladies' man. He was gentlemanly, personable and, as such, made a splendid RAS ‘front man.' Much of the work behind the scenes, such as setting up the reconstituted Branch in 1960, was in fact done by Dr Marjorie Topley and Jack Cranmer-Byng, Honorary Editor. Marjorie Topley became our President in 1972.\n\nDr Jones had led an interesting life including serving King, Country and Empire in two world wars, as well as helping to organise the Ukrainian Army soon after the end of World War One. He also went on archaeological expeditions to Italy and Africa. As a lawyer he practised at the High Court in London and later in Shanghai. In Hong Kong he was legal advisor to The Bank, as he always referred to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.\n\nIn fact he advised 'the Bank' to buy a number of paintings by George Chinnery (1774 to 1852). The latter is often said to have been the most accomplished western artist to have worked in the East in the 19th century. These paintings, which the Bank purchased, were a splendid investment. In addition, JR sat on a number of government", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214919, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY 2000/2001 PRESIDENT'S REPORT PRESENTED AT THE 41ST ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING\n\nON FRIDAY 16 MARCH 2001 AT THE HONG KONG CLUB\n\nOnly those who take leisurely what the people of the world are busy about\n\ncan be busy about what the people of the world take leisurely.\n\nCHANG CHAO\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis is my fifth President's report. In addition to the first two-and-a-half months of 2001, it covers nine months of 2000 during which we celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the reconstitution of our Branch. The Royal Asiatic Society was founded in London in 1823 by that eminent Sanskrit scholar Henry Thomas Colebrooke. Its Royal Charter was granted the following year. Even in those early times Hong Kong was pretty quick off the mark. A Branch was formed here in 1847 but it lasted only 12 years. In my Report I shall look at some of the things we have achieved during 2000/2001 and make comparisons with earlier years.\n\nMembership\n\nAs at 12 March, 2001, total membership stood at 477. This comprised 391 local members and 86 overseas members. After the Council meeting on 26 January 2000, through to 13 March 2001, 100 new members were recruited. During the 1960s and '70s there were few organisations with similar aims to our own. Since then a number have been established. Today they include Asian studies centres in universities, friends of museum groups, various overseas branches of western institutions as well as other Hong Kong societies. While we have splendid relationships with our sister institutions some competition has naturally been generated. This is healthy. Nonetheless, in the 1960s\n\nxiv\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214950, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "ARTICLES\n\nTEA AND OPIUM\n\nSOLOMON BARD\n\n“Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?\n\nHow did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”\n\nPreamble\n\nSidney Smith, clergyman and author (18th cent.)\n\n2\n\nThe tragic events and the underlying causes of the Anglo-Chinese Conflict of 1839-1860, known as the Opium Wars, have been analysed in many scholarly publications and debates from various, sometimes opposing viewpoints. To the Chinese, the opium question seemed its principal cause. For the British, opium was only an immediate pretext; the issues were much deeper, such as opening the gates more fully to all manner of foreign trade and forcing China to engage in commercial and diplomatic intercourse according to Western rules. The West sought after Chinese goods; in particular, the demand for tea and silk was immense, and China was for the present the sole source of tea. In return, the Chinese demand for British goods was insignificant. The resulting imbalance in trade was an unsound practice then as it would be today. The strength of this argument can be judged by the fact that Britain was prepared to go to war with China to force bilateral trade relations. India offered Britain a solution in the way of opium and, to a lesser extent, raw cotton, both accepted by the Chinese. Even when consideration is given to different knowledge existing at the time regarding the harmful effects of opium, it is clear that the opium trade, backed as it was by force, was evil and unjustified. By the end of the 18th century, the consumption of tea in Britain had become phenomenal. It has been pointed out on occasions that the value of tea exported from and of opium imported into China appeared to be linked. The critical role played by opium in the Anglo-Chinese conflict has never been in doubt. The role of tea, however, has been less obvious. It is intended in\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214952, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "had become a mere staple drink. May be so, but no one would doubt its importance to the Chinese people. 'The cup that cheers but not inebriates' as the Chinese describe it, remains one of the pillars of Chinese social customs.\n\nTea and the British\n\nThe British people's love of tea is proverbial, but it came late, centuries after its pleasures were known to the Chinese. Who introduced tea to the western world? Thoughts naturally turn to Marco Polo. But the Venetian traveller, who wrote vividly and at times with exaggeration of the many marvels of Cathay, did not mention tea; perhaps it was not a favourite drink in the court of Kublai Khan. Instead, credit is sometimes given to another Venetian called Ramusio who in the 16th century wrote enthusiastically about tea. However, this lies in the realms of conjecture. Historically, it is the Dutch who are credited with introducing tea to Europe, around 1610 AD. Europe was slow to respond. Opinions swayed as to its merits or demerits. Within the next hundred years, Europe accepted tea as its best loved beverage, and while it has remained popular in Holland and the rest of Europe, it had never reached the level of popularity it enjoyed in Britain.\n\nStories abound as to when Britain took to tea, but all are agreed that 1660 was a milestone - when Samuel Pepys, that inveterate diarist and Admiralty official, took his first cup of tea and so noted in his diary. It had infiltrated into Britain slowly. First drunk in tea houses, then favoured by the Court, by the beginning of the 18th century, tea had found its way into the home and to the daily table of the common man. It seemed to permeate every aspect of British life. It became a panacea for a multitude of ills and support in difficult times. Confronted by an emergency, tea was the immediate remedy. The Army made its own particular brand of strong sweet tea. 'Let's have a brew' was a great encouraging cry during a lull in fighting. Some would go as far as to assert that it helped the people of Britain to endure the blitz during the Second World War.\n\nBy the end of the 18th century, the rise in tea consumption in Britain was phenomenal. To the British people tea had come to be almost a necessity of life. Afternoon tea had become a treasured custom in every British household, and a whole ritual had evolved as to how to prepare", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 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": 214963, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "14\n\n4) Had Commissioner Lin adopted less drastic measures in suppressing the opium trade? A difficult course to predict. However, knowing Elliot's repugnance of the opium trade, it is possible the two might have joined forces in fighting the infamous trade. It was Lin's methods, in particular laying siege to the foreign factories, that alienated Elliot's respect, not the end he sought to gain by adopting them.\n\n5) If China had suddenly developed a strong interest in British goods? Tin, wool, and cotton were imported from Britain, but not in sufficient quantities to balance the export of tea. A strong public opinion against opium had been building up in Britain. A greater demand for British goods might have shifted the British official position from laissez faire to oppose opium, dealing a serious blow to the opium trade.\n\nNo doubt, many other alternative courses of history can be suggested, but the few above show how the two addictions—to opium and tea—had determined the course of history of that period and region, and how easily that course might have been altered, preventing the conflict, and possibly subsequent imperialist policy of western nations in China.\n\nConclusion\n\nOf all the foods, solid or liquid, tea has had great influence over the centuries around the world. It has played a part in history, medicine, politics, manners and customs. British interests in the 19th century kept the opium supply line open and the manufacture of opium in India solvent in order to pay for China's tea. Britain went to war with China to protect those interests. In this sense the war was also the Tea War. When Sir George Staunton, an authority on Chinese-British relations and a member of Macartney's mission to China in 1793 (aged 15, he went as a page-boy), declared in Parliament: 'If there had been no opium, there had been no war,' he might well have added: \"And if there had been no tea, there had been no war.\"\n\nSELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nALLEN, N.:\n\nThe Opium Trade, Lowell (2nd Edition), U.S.A., 1983.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214969, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "21\n\nTEA, IVORY AND EBONY: \n\nTRACING COLONIAL THREADS IN THE INSEPARABLE LIFE AND LITERATURE OF HAN SUYIN\n\nTERESA KOWALSKA\n\nHan Suyin, medical doctor and fierce Chinese patriot, is the grand dame and doyenne of Chinese writers, born and brought up in pre-communist semi-colonial Old China, and has devoted over fifty long years, in a splendid literary career, to the interpretation of her beloved and largely misunderstood motherland China to the Western world. In spite of perfect fluency in French, Mandarin Chinese and English, she decided to write in the latter language in order to reach the largest possible audience. Her ultimate intention has always been to build bridges of communication and understanding between East and West, and her much under-estimated artistic and intellectual contribution has added a non-Eurocentric reflection on modern history of the Far East and South-East Asia to the treasury of contemporary global thinking. Maybe the humiliating touch of quasi-colonial atmosphere in Peking of her childhood and adolescence spurred her to undertake this challenging task of becoming an outspoken ambassador of her nation in front of the outer, fairly prejudiced and occasionally hostile world. Her inner independence irritated many, provoking accusations of being a communist, or a communist sympathizer at least. The artist's answer to these unfounded objections and simultaneously her meaningful artistic as well as human credo is contained in the below cited fragment of Chapter Eleven from Phoenix Harvest, volume five of her powerful six-volume epic cycle on modern history of China:\n\nI have had to live by what was imprinted in my cells, remaining averse to and suspicious of high-flown abstractions, but totally engaged to that smell and savour and warmth, that feel of the tide, blood beat, which is for me the people of China. With others, exultant ideologies may have priority, but it has never been so with me. I shoulder and make do with systems, with ideologies. I am not committed to any. Only one thing concerns me: in the great sweep of history, will this or that system have been another step forward for the Chinese people? They are the only 'side' I am on.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214978, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "30\n\nAfter the First World War and the return to China of the Powers, a movement to finance a new westernized Chinese élite began among the Powers. Each country hoped that the Chinese educated by them would naturally favour their country of education; gratitude, ties of friendship, as well as cultural and emotional orientations, would see to that. This also Leopold, the astute King of the Belgians, had foreseen. He had spoken of it urging that young men be sent to Belgium for training. \"Ils seront des nôtres,\" they will be ours.\n\nAbout her own Western studies, she wrote the following equitable lines:\n\nI myself was, in 1935, a recipient of a scholarship derived from the Belgian Boxer indemnity fund; I went to study in Belgium, following in my father's footsteps. But it was, in the end, China's money which was being spent to educate me, it was the Chinese people paying the Boxer Indemnity of 1900 who paid for my years in Belgium. And so my gratitude must go to them, for making me in turn, as they made my father, a privileged person, a returned student from abroad. Later I was to study in England, on a British Council scholarship, and also be grateful to England. But this has not influenced me in the end. For truth is truth and it cannot be bought at any price.\n\nVigilant yet dispassionate, non-compromising yet lacking even the slightest urge for revenge, always eager to unveil painful truths about enslavement of one people by another, Han Suyin is a born defender of human dignity and human rights. In the pages of her autobiographical/historical cycle, multiple shrewd remarks about interference of indigenous Chinese and foreign powers' interests in Old China are a most natural and therefore a matter-of-factly element, masterly interwoven in a vast political and economic panorama of Chinese life in that pre-1949 epoch. After all, the so-called 'gunboat diplomacy' and also the other forms of political blackmail, extensively practised by the white powers to threaten feudal, backward and corrupt society in order to press even more lucrative concessions out of it, had directly affected Han Suyin's and her family clan's existence on an everyday basis. Surprisingly enough and in the circumstances incomparably more neutral (or even favourable) for her, Han Suyin wrote a stunning and remarkable book - And the Rain My Drink - devoted entirely to the declining post-World War II period of the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214980, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "32\n\nmovement, and the innocent uninvolved citizens as well. In a memoir-like fragment somewhat randomly chosen from the volume My House Has Two Doors, we read:\n\nAnd so the Emergency began. It would justify the suspending of all rights, giving the police (Special Branch) total power to arrest, search, detain anyone without trial and indefinitely, to disband all trade unions, arrest trade unionists, ban demonstrations, mete out the death sentence for 'possession of dangerous weapons,' which included school penknives, to apply censorship in all its forms, to impose curfews, to shoot suspects on sight.\n\nThere are a vast number of Han Suyin's excellent essays also, which had originally been published basically in the magazines of South East Asia (e.g., in the Hong Kong journal Eastern Horizon) and tackle various different sociopolitical problems of former colonies, generated just in the course of their colonial past. Luckily enough, a good deal of these largely dispersed essays were saved from oblivion by a rather recent re-editing them in a book entitled Tigers and Butterflies - Selected Writings on Politics, Culture and Society (London, 1990). The very titles of some of these essays are eloquent enough to remind us of Han Suyin's steady interests and passions: Social Changes in Asia (1960), The Aborigines (1961), Relations between East and West (1963), The Rich vs the Poor (1964), or The Troubles Miscalled Racial (1965).\n\nThe entirety of Han Suyin's literary achievements - and especially those parts which tackle predominantly colonial threads - have still to be sufficiently investigated and discussed. One reason for this situation seems to be the vagueness of average Western opinion in the matter of colonialism as sociopathology of the world's not so very distant past. In this particular context, Han Suyin's profound analyses followed by very moderate conclusions ought to be studied very attentively indeed, whereas her remarkably open, yet self-restrained and balanced attitude can only be gratefully acknowledged, admired and revered.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215005, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "57\n\nan auspicious location to build a palace [of peace] where all the world's powers could meet and create a peace that will last ten thousand years.\n\nThe second letter is not addressed to any specific addressee with the writer also signing himself 'The Spiritual Man Yuan Chun`.\n\nSir,\n\nYour humble disciple learned that your righteous attempt to bring peace to Europe was rebuffed. Your setback was not due to your lack of sincerity for peace, but is due to the Western people's desire for war.\n\nSir, you know that the Chinese people [in Europe] have been placed in great danger by the war. We believe in your powers to make further attempts for peace, and to ensure our safety and our eventual return to China.\n\nThe third letter is addressed to His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief and is unsigned:\n\nThe current situation is one of utter chaos; the people's lives are very hard and we have waited in vain for the government to alleviate our difficulties. Our country is weak and the people disunited. Now is the time for an heroic brave man to take command and launch a crusade to stabilise the nation and unite the people. I hope Your Excellency will not hinder my efforts to carry out this righteous duty and I ask for your assistance in this endeavour.\n\nI wonder if any of the above letters were sent and, if so, whether the contents had any result on the final cessation of hostilities.\n\nWhilst writing this article I was fortunate to find a book on the life of Two-gun Cohen, the well-known personage with strong ties to China. Morris Abraham Cohen was born on 3rd August, 1889 in Stepney, London's East End, of an immigrant Jewish couple from Poland. He was shipped to Canada at the age of 16 after having come into conflict with the authorities. In Canada he learnt to ride, shoot and gamble, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215023, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "75\n\nhad been handed over the Chinese departed and nothing further had been heard from them. A member of the Mayor's office in Noyelles asked whether we knew where Tungkang was as they had searched the map of China to locate it without success. They seemed quite surprised when they were informed that it is a small fishing town south of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. The French and Chinese inscriptions on the socles of the two Lions gave the date as 1984 and not 1994.\n\nOur next move was to telephone the Tungkang Town Council Offices only to find that everyone, though very helpful, had no idea what we were talking about. The Mayor of Tungkang of the time, 1984, had long gone and was, they thought, dead. The more we thought about it the more puzzling it became with the only ideas we could come up with being the short semi-official drive in the 1980s by the Taipei government to widen their contacts with the western world and to remind foreigners of Taiwan's existence.\n\nSome months later, the Mayor's Office in Noyelles came up with two documents. One was an undated invoice to the then Maire de Noyelles, M. Claude de Valicourt, covering the shipment of two ‘marble of ramp as they were called, 'Gift of No Commercial Value' being shipped from the port city of Kaohsiung to Noyelles via Le Havre. It was signed Tungkang Town, Town Office. The Bill of Lading, however, was dated 1st June 1985.\n\nThe other was a typed certificate in Chinese signed by both the Tungkang Mayor and the 'Nuo-ye-le' Mayor, with the French translation. Neither signature is legible, though the date clearly is 20th January 1984 [the 73rd year of the Republic and not 1994]. It is headed Dijie Jiemei Zhen Mengshu which literally means 'Wedded Sister Towns Alliance' and is addressed to the Noyelles's Mayor [Nuo-ye-le Shizhang]. The flowery language used, typical of such pronouncements, declared everlasting friendship between the people of Noyelles and people of the Republic of China [Taiwan] and good wishes for future co-operation for mutual understanding. The significant line, however, thanks the people of Noyelles for their respect for the graves of the Chinese labourers in the Chinese cemetery.\n\nThe French version of the Chinese produced 'Pledge,' freely translated, also mentions the Chinese cemetery. The date in 1984 is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215040, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "Fisher, W M : Dr E J Stuckey and the Chinese Hospital at Noyelles-sur-Mer. A biographical fragment of World War I : unpublished: BA Hons. Thesis at Monash University: 1984\n\nGriffin, NJ: The Use of Chinese Labour by the British Army : PhD thesis, University of Oklahoma : 1973 - held by the Imperial War Museum, London\n\n: Britain's Chinese Labour Corps in World War 1: Military Affairs : vol.XXXX No. 3 [Oct 1976]\n\nJones, A. Philip: Britain's Search for Chinese Co-operation in the First World War : Garland Publishing Inc.: New York and London: 1986\n\nKlein, Daryl\n\nLoisel, M : : La Chine de l'Empire Celeste [Chine des Han] en Terre Française - Picardie: 1995\n\n: With the Chinks: Bodley Head: ca. 1918\n\nLucas, C : The Empire at War\n\nMaxwell, J : The Chinese Labour Corps: A précis of their participation in World War: Unpublished\n\nMellor, Norman: With the Chinese Labour Corps - France 1918\n\nPaton, Alec : Occasional Gunfire, Private War Diary of a Siege Gunner: Bishop-Laggett Publishing: London: 1998\n\nPutkowski, J: British Army Mutineers 1914-1922 : Francis Boutle Publishers: 1998\n\nStevens, Keith : British Chinese Labour Corps Labourers Buried in England Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society: Vol. 29: 1989\n\nSummerskill, M: China on the Western Front: pub by Michael Summerskill", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 411, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "362\n\nwhich once made up Gondwanaland, with tree-ferns massing in the stream bed. It seems that the entire world is coming eventually to Cornwall.\n\nTom's in-depth knowledge of the flora of western China in particular was illuminating for us. He explained that whereas much emphasis is put in the protection of rainforests internationally, in fact small \"islands\" of temperate conditions and vegetation within the tropics, where unique species exist, are also vulnerable: a single fire, for instance, could break the growth cycle for trees. Collection of seed is of great importance, but Chinese taxonomy is underfunded (compared to botanical research for medical purposes) and collection for propagation abroad is illegal according to CITES. Another of his legacies to the future will be a naturalistically planted Far Eastern temperate woodland, with acers, viburnums, sorbus, gordonia, and the rare Taiwania.\n\nTom also delighted and surprised the group by being able to take us to see a specimen of the camellia named after HK Governor Alexander Grantham, and another of Camellia hongkongensis, plus a Hogplum (Choerospondias), which he said grows around reservoirs in Hong Kong. Full marks for being the only garden visited to have a direct Hong Kong connection, and to Tom for his thoughtfulness in pointing it out.\n\nAmong great gardens, that of Caerhays Castle is one of the greatest, particularly for oriental plants. The gardens are set spectacularly on a hillside cupped around the castle, with their back turned to the little beach and bay nearby and the sea winds, and are filled with some of the oldest specimens of rhododendrons, magnolias and camellias in England. The architect of the gardens was John Charles Williams, “one of the towering figures of the Edwardian age” (M. Campbell-Culver). By the time he died in 1939, he had the best collection of rhododendrons in the country, and he had been responsible for crossing for the first time the two most important types of camellia, C. japonica (from Japan) and C. saluenensis. The latter had been discovered by George Forrest in the early part of the 20th century in the Salween area of China, and Williams was an early recipient of seed. The resulting hybrids, C. x williamsii, are now some of the most highly regarded of all, being hardy, profusely flowering, and tidily shedding their dead blooms. (The original", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215648, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 425, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "377\n\ninscription. The ivory canister is accompanied by a book to which one refers to read one's fortune. In Cantonese, this method of fortune telling is called Cow Tsim\n\n3. A copy of the Hong Kong Telegraph Pictorial Supplement dated 2nd June, 1934. It includes a group photograph of staff and pupils of the Peak School among who is Douglas Franklin's sister - Sylvia. Other photographs in the supplement include the construction of the Shing Mun dam, the latest fashion and high society of the day\n\n4. Photograph taken some time before Mr Frederick Franklin's wedding in 1925. Mrs Franklin had been a nursing sister employed at the Government Civil Hospital in Western District. She originated from Scotland\n\n5. The old Peak Church, taken in 1925, where Frederick Franklin and his bride were married\n\n6. Saint John's Cathedral Choir, on the steps of the Cenotaph in Statue Square, taken at the Armistice Service in 1938. The statue of Queen Victoria, under the canopy, is in the background. The Cenotaph is a smaller version of the one in Whitehall, London\n\n7. Christmas Fancy Dress Party at the Peak Hotel, 1924. The hotel was demolished after World War Two\n\n8. Snapshot of Mr Franklin senior with Sir Robert Ho Tung, one of Hong Kong's most famous sons. Robert Ho Tung died in 1956. Although Eurasian he normally wore Chinese clothes\n\n9. Snapshot taken in 1924 of Frederick Franklin and the lady who later became his wife, together with a friend in front of a matshed at Repulse Bay. The three are in \"whites\" and, apart from pith helmets, the two men are dressed very much as we dressed in the 1950s and '60s. Mr Franklin was wearing shorts and knee-length socks and his male companion was wearing a Saigon linen wet-wash suit\n\n10. Another snapshot taken in 1924; again, all three are wearing similar attire. Father sits on the running board of the car, which is definitely 1920s vintage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215690, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 467, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "420\n\nAlthough there were Red Cross food parcels occasionally, these were much fewer and further between than for POWs in Europe. Some food was passed through the wires by Chinese women—some from the Wanchai bar district—loyal to their menfolk, often at great personal risk to themselves. As with most members of the armed forces during the Second World War, great dependency was placed on cigarettes. In prison camp, they also served as a form of currency. In spite of Spartan living conditions, gambling took place, sometimes for cigarettes or for Red Cross food parcels.\n\nConstant hunger brought out the worst in people. There was unfairness, selfishness, and stealing. Yet there were many staunch characters, and mutual support was vital to see an inmate through. Three or four men bonded together stood a better chance of survival than the loner. There were few suicides, but many just \"gave up the ghost\" and ended it all. We are told there was no evidence of religious conversions as conditions in camp worsened. The number of deaths among British Army Indians is recorded as being higher than for Canadian or British soldiers, partly because conditions in their camp were worse. Pressure was put on Indians to enlist to fight against the British. That so many resisted was a demonstration of strength of character and loyalty to the British cause.\n\nIllnesses such as diphtheria, dysentery, and malaria were ever-present, together with a shortage of medicine and medical facilities. Operations were sometimes carried out without anesthetics. Some inmates' hair turned white overnight, while others lost their sight. One prisoner even set himself up as a \"bone crusher,\" breaking limbs on demand so that fellow prisoners could be given time off from work.\n\nAccustomed to a Western lifestyle, differences in culture exacerbated the situation. European POWs did not enjoy a diet based on rice. Nor did they care for Japanese or Chinese tea without milk and sugar. A number of prisoners believed moxibustion, where pressure points on the body are stimulated not by needles but by burning mugwort, was a form of torture, although the Japanese may not have always administered treatment with the comfort of the patient in mind.\n\nMention is made in the book of a POW, although no name is given, who complained while on parade to the Red Cross that prisoners were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215829, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "61\n\n28\n\nChic Publishers, 1996), p.12-14. (3) Heywood, p.17:\n\nTyphoon winds that approach Hong Kong from the southeast blow on Victoria Harbour from the north, so Kowloon's mountains can serve as a partial barrier. See Donald Alan Mantner & Samson Brand, An Evaluation of Hong Kong Harbour as a Typhoon Haven (Monterey, CA: Environmental Prediction Research Facility, Naval Postgraduate School, 1973), p.53.\n\n29 Navy Department, \"Advanced Base: Hong Kong,\" p.14-15. However, Tolo Harbour could do little more than serve as a secondary anchorage because shore facilities in Tai Po were limited.\n\n30\n\n31\n\n32\n\n(1) Heywood, p.7-8. (2) Adamson & Kosco, p.12. Although described by many sources as a \"tidal wave,\" the wave would be more appropriately described as a storm surge because it is not caused by the moon.\n\nHKRO, A Statistical Survey of Typhoons and Tropical Depressions in the Western Pacific and China Sea Area From 1884 to 1947 (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1951), p.3 (hereafter referred to as HKRO, Statistical Survey). See also P.C. Chin's Tropical Cyclone Climatology for the China Seas and Western Pacific From 1884 to 1970, Vol. I: Basic Data (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1972) for maps of typhoon tracks for each year.\n\n33\n\nThe evasion option became more popular after the war, probably because of better typhoon location and tracking methods. See Mantner & Brand, p.78-79, 88. The authors cited British and American dissatisfaction with Hong Kong as a \"safe haven\" for ships during a typhoon.\n\n34 HKRO, Statistical Survey, p.9.\n\n35\n\nRomanus & Sunderland, Stilwell's Mission to China, 1953 of U.S. Army in World War II: the China-Burma-India Theater (rpt. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1984), p.12-13.\n\nCPS 83, \"Appreciation and Plan for the Defeat of Japan,” 8 Aug 43, Map F; CCS 381 Japan (8-25-42), sec.6; Geographic File, 1942-45; Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 218; NA, Washington, DC. The map shows that Hong Kong lay within the minimum area required for the air bombardment of Japan.\n\n* United States Army Air Force, B-29 Erection and Maintenance Manual (Dayton,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215944, "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": 243, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "177\n\n3 xii\n\nThe whole plan was discussed with RAC North, Secretary for Chinese Affairs and JA Fraser, Defence Secretary who agreed. When Harrop went to Chongqing the first person she contacted was her old friend from pre-war, Madame Soong Ching Ling.\n\nMadame Soong was the widow of Dr Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese Republic and a former Hong Kong resident himself, and graduate of the Hong Kong Medical School which predated Hong Kong University. When Chiang Kai Shek and his extreme rightist faction won the power struggle for control of the National Government, Madame Soong moved to Hong Kong where she and other supporters of the left wing principles Sun had espoused were able to operate with more latitude. She headed an organisation known as the China Defence League which raised funds in support of the anti-Japanese war effort in China, and had connections with many left wing liberal groups, both within China and among the western intelligentsia in Hong Kong and China. This organisation was effectively a form of interface between the KMT Old Guard and more progressive groups. Agnes Smedley, Rewi Alley, Anna Louise Strong and other westerners with strong contacts with the Communist Party under Mao Ze Dong mixed in the same circles as Madame Soong and her supporters, which included Sun Fo, Dr Sun's son by a previous marriage. Sun Fo himself, though he lived in Hong Kong, frequently travelled to Moscow, ostensibly for 'medical treatment,' often staying for long periods. The league did humanitarian work, organising aid for the millions of refugees in Guangdong and in Hong Kong. Percy Chen, son of Dr Eugene Chen, Dr Sun's Foreign minister and close friend worked closely with this aspect of the League's activities. Chen was a socialist and would later declare for the Communist Party. Significantly, FW Kendall had worked with the league in organising programmes to cope with refugees. He himself was something of a refugee, having lost his livelihood in the same Japanese push in Guangdong. Contacts between this left faction of the Guomindang and British people in Hong Kong of a progressive frame of mind were also significant. Hilda Selwyn-Clarke, known as 'Red Hilda' not only for the colour of her hair, but for her politics, was part of this group, rather than a member of the conventional, highly stratified world of colonial society. Her husband may have been a member of the government administration but she did not subscribe to colonial or establishment values. Kendall also worked with Selwyn-Clarke, as did his Chinese wife, who was to be one of the Selwyn", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216058, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 357, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "291\n\n+\n\nIn early December 1881 Hudson Taylor convened an informal missionary conference at Zhenjiang to discuss the crucial and imperative need to increase their numbers in order to accelerate the pace of converting China. This was an on-going problem raised and discussed by Protestant missionaries across China down the years. The staff and language students from the Missionary Language School at Anqing, another city on the Yangzi, were invited to attend the Zhenjiang conference as were missionaries of the American Episcopal Church.\n\nIn 1900 Mr Absolom Sydenstricker and his wife were both Presbyterian missionaries living in Zhenjiang, together with their daughter Pearl who was eight. During the first months of the Boxer troubles they refused to flee, then in July of that year when conditions had worsened they were compelled to escape to Shanghai, to return a year later. Life for a growing young woman was fairly circumscribed with the white population limited to the few in the consulates, other missionaries and a dozen or so men working with British and American companies. Pearl left in 1917 to marry Mr Buck, an American missionary and academic interested in China's rural economy, at Nan Suzhou in Anhui. Pearl's mother died in Zhenjiang several years later and was buried in what was then known as Zhenjiang's foreign cemetery. In 1920 Pearl's father sold their house and moved to Nanjing. Pearl Buck spent in all some forty-three years in China, and her writings brought Chinese social inter-relationships, especially those of the peasants, to western readers, possibly the first to achieve a world-wide circulation leading to many a westerner's first fascination about China. She wrote many a book and chaired many a public meeting telling people, mainly in the US, of the enduring spirit and resilience as well as the wretched lives lived by Chinese peasants and of the threat from Japanese Imperialism. Her best known works include The Good Earth, and a translation of the Shuihu Ji, 'All Men are Brothers', one of China's most popular pieces of literature. Her parents' family house in Zhenjiang, at the present day address of 6 Runzhou Shan Lu, is now one of the leading tourist attractions, for Americans in particular, despite being part of a semiconductor factory.\n\nIn May 1905 Hudson Taylor, freshly back from recuperation in Europe, stopped by Zhenjiang on his way to Changsha, where he visited the graves of Maria [his first wife who had died there in July 1870] and his children in the little cemetery among the hills. He, himself,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216128, "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": 427, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "361\n\nTHE LIBRARY OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nJ. L.Y. CHAN\n\nIn the early days of Empire, when western institutions permeated around the world as a result of colonisation in the nineteenth century, libraries were among the first community organisations established wherever foreign settlements developed. Some of the libraries began as informal shared collections of reading materials, but a few developed a specialty of publications providing sources of information about the host country and its culture. This paper traces the development of the Library of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, its progress and growth since inception, and addresses some of the concerns faced by the Library.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society\n\nThe establishment of the Asiatic Society dates back to 1784 when a group of interested traders, missionaries, diplomats and administrators founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, the then capital of British India. This provided the impetus for the formation of the Royal Asiatic Society in London (now known as the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland) in March 1823 which again gave rise to the founding of other branches, in Bombay and Madras in 1838, in Ceylon in 1845, in Japan in 1875, in Malaya in 1878, and in Korea in 1900. In China, two branches were established, the Hong Kong Branch (formerly named the China Branch) started in 1847 followed by the North China Branch in Shanghai in 1857/58. The aim of the Royal Asiatic Society and its branches is \"... investigation of the subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts, in relation to Asia.\" As such, they serve as fora for discussion and greater understanding of Asian culture.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society had actually grown out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society which was founded in 1845, initially constituted as the China Branch in January 1847 with the effort of Sir John F. Davis, the then Governor, himself a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society in London. Due to dissent and feuds within the trading community in Hong Kong, the China Branch collapsed in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216133, "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": 432, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "366\n\nand keyword searching of author, title and journal. The full text of the articles will be displayed if copyright clearance has been obtained. Together with the printed indexes, the database, which provides greater coverage, and fast and convenient searching capabilities, will greatly assist scholars in locating information in the Journal for their research on Hong Kong and the Far East.\n\nAutomation\n\nWith computerisation of the collection at the City Hall Library, the Society's collection has become far more accessible than it was in the past. The Dynix Library System makes available bilingual access to the Society's records of both western and East Asian materials. Books, journals and other materials can be more efficiently retrieved by searching the automated catalogue, by author, title, subject, and/or keywords. The old printed card catalogues are no longer used and have been discarded. In November 1997, the system was further enhanced to allow remote access to the collection via the Hong Kong Public Libraries online catalogue. Users who are connected to the network may access the catalogue in offices or at home, and no longer have to take special trips to the Library for required information.\n\nIn support of the Hong Kong Government's Digital 21 initiative, the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society created an Internet website in 2001. This was done by Ms. Moody Tang and the website provides information on the Society, its history, activities, and publications on the Internet. Also, with the establishment of a hyperlink to the Hong Kong Public Libraries' online catalogue, the website offers an alternative gateway to the Society's collection. It also serves as a powerful vehicle in promoting the Society and its collection to scholars, libraries, institutions, and the world at large.\n\nConclusion\n\nFounded in 1847, the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, through the dedication and support of its members, will continue to strive to provide a forum for the sharing of knowledge and experience, and discussion of common interests. The Library, moved to the new Hong Kong Central Library in May 2001, has finally found a home with modern well-equipped facilities where its excellent and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216223, "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": 522, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "456\n\nsouth-westerly monsoon in the summer. As the Cantonese saying has it, ‘Even with a 1,000 taels of gold it is not easy to buy a flat facing south.'\n\nOn the steep hillside with its lush vegetation, opposite and well above Realty Gardens, exists even now what is sometimes still called Cheung Po-Tsai's Path. Shown on maps, starting more or less opposite and a little higher up than May Road, although heavily overgrown and not negotiable in parts because of landslips and other obstructions, the footpath goes around and finishes up on the southern slopes of the Peak. Cheung was Hong Kong's most notorious and fearsome pirate who was at the zenith of his powers during the first decade of the 19th century. He was reputed to command as many as 600 junks, 40,000 fighting men - including a few British ex-Royal Navy gunners and \"own\" the prettiest girls. No firm evidence, however, appears to exist that he himself ever walked along that path.\n\nFrom the fung shui aspect Victoria Peak with its spurs, and Seymour Cliffs to our southeast, symbolise strong backing. The \"cosmic breath\" of fung shui rides on the wind and is dispersed and checked by watercourses. Realty Gardens' location brings blessings, which are just, and inevitable rewards deserved by the skilful and the diligent. Watercourses stream down the mountain keeping fortunes flowing into our flat and protecting our well-being. Some fung shui specialists maintain that the spiritual energy on the Peak is the best in the whole of Hong Kong.\n\nAt the far western end of Conduit Road, close to the junction with Kotewall and Po Shan Roads, a steep, narrow road branches off. This is Hatton Road. It leads to the Peak. About half way up it passes the remains of Pinewood Battery, which has been turned into a picnic spot. This artillery emplacement was constructed by the British, starting in 1903. The whole area around Hatton Road is relatively unspoiled and provides a wonderful recreational area for Conduit Road residents to stretch their legs and to appreciate nature. Many of the elderly Chinese who walk up there daily for exercise call it \"Long Life Road.\"\n\nSadly however, while talking of heritage, with the villa at No. 55 (completed in 1919) having been demolished in the summer of 2000, there is only one pre-World War Two building still standing in Conduit", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216337, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "45\n\nwhich is actually levied,' and since the dealers believed the authorities to have been personally interested in these illegal transactions, they believed it would be useless to look to them for protection or redress'.\n\n63\n\nWhilst these passages are taken from early Treaty Port days, two decades after the Canton System had been replaced, they describe a world which had otherwise scarcely changed. It was still, in its essentials, the working milieu in which the Co-hong, the officials and their minions, both civil and military alike, and the people at large, on land and sea, had been obliged to exist; and with which, and with whom, the Western traders had to contend,\n\nRough treatment by the mandarins\n\nIt was also a milieu in which criminals, and anyone falling foul of officials would have a very bad time. The Chinese personnel of the Old China trade were no exceptions to the general rule, and could be very roughly treated by the mandarins when they chose to enforce the minute and graduated regulations that governed all and sundry throughout the Empire.“\n\n64\n\nA compradore was severely beaten and tortured and thrown into prison in 1816, because the EIC's ships' captains had presented a petition at a city gate over difficulties with obtaining a permit to load, with more beatings ordered for another compradore and two linguists, whilst the Company's head compradore had to leave hurriedly because police runners were looking for him. 65 In 1831, during the Canton Prefect's unannounced visit to the EIC's hall, a linguist was put in chains, taken away, and threatened with decapitation. 66\n\nThe officials, their courts and prisons were justly to be feared. Just how bad they could be was experienced at first hand by Captain Denham, shipwrecked on Formosa with his mixed crew of 55 Europeans, Chinese and Indians, and 2 passengers, in 1842. Perhaps because their brig, the Ann, had been an opium runner, they were treated like Chinese criminals, subject to the practices and procedures usual when men were imprisoned, tried, and condemned to execution, as indeed nearly all of them were. 67\n\nThe truth is, that the Chinese government was very severe with its", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "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": 216418, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "127\n\n## BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS: CHINA AND THE CHINESE DURING THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR 1904-1905\n\n## KEITH STEVENS\n\nThe power confrontation between Russia and Japan finally developed into all-out conflict in 1904 in Manchuria, ending with a victory for the Japanese that shook the western world, who had assumed that no Asian power could possibly defeat a European one.\n\nApart from on the high seas, the Russo-Japanese War was fought in the main on Chinese territory, in the three provinces of Manchuria, homeland of the Manchus, now known as Dongbei, the North-east. China was not a participant. The first stage of the land campaign took place in Korea, where Japan landed an army, which fought its way up the peninsula to the northern border, the Yalu River, and on into Manchuria for the long slog to victory.\n\nSince the Manchu conquest of China in 1644, the Three Provinces, Fengtian (renamed Liaoning), Jilin, and Heilongjiang, originally the homeland of the Manchus, was known to westerners as Manchuria, and although referred to as part of the Chinese (Qing) Empire, it was not considered to be part of China Proper.\n\nDuring the 19th century, the population of Manchuria grew by leaps and bounds as Chinese settlers flooded in, particularly from Shandong province, encouraged to occupy its wide open spaces before the Russian advance could extend its influence into the area.\n\nIn 1931, at the time of the eventual Japanese occupation of the whole of Manchuria, the population was estimated to have been more than 90% Han Chinese, with a mere 3% Manchus. The rest was made up of 6% Mongols and a handful of Japanese, Russians, and Koreans.\n\n## The lead-up to the war\n\nThe Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 ended the Sino-Japanese War, fought under the guise of securing the independence of Korea, and included the cession to Japan of the Liaodong Peninsula. This", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216426, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "135\n\nthey could get out of it, other western correspondents provided a different picture. What may have been a comparatively common experience was described by a correspondent in the area just south of Mukden in June 1905:\n\n'Hamlets and farmhouses studded the landscape, and it seemed to us that we were wandering through a veritable Arcadia. The inhabitants, too, seemed fitted to the land, being a peaceable, amiable people of pleasant countenance and fine physique. In this portion of this now strictly neutral country, China, the agricultural population is apparently quite faultlessly neutral. The people seem altogether heedless of the two foreign armies that are sweeping across their land. Of international politics they know nothing. Their one care in the world is that the local representative of the Imperial Government in Peking does not wring extortionate taxation from them. A man ploughing in his fields does not take the trouble to look\n\nup when a regiment of Japanese or Russians marches by.'\n\nHowever, elsewhere it was reported that during the land campaign Chinese peasants fled to the hills as Japanese forces approached but soon returned to their farms and cottages once the fighting had passed them by. Foreign correspondents frequently reported that they had seen only goodwill between the Japanese officers and men and the Chinese working man.\n\nChinese in general took every opportunity to earn whatever cash they could obtain from both the Russians and the Japanese. Typical were the junk owners who were of inestimable value to the Russians carrying messages and messengers from besieged Port Arthur across to the Shandong Peninsula, and even when the Japanese imposed a tight net of patrol ships the wily Chinese managed to get the messages through by enclosing them in steel containers fastened to the bottom of the hull on the outside. Finally, when the Japanese had confiscated or sunk every Chinese junk they could lay their hands on, the Chinese posed to the world as long-suffering martyrs, who, because they were endeavouring to turn an honest dollar, suffered ruin at the hands of the Japanese.\n\nThe Russians also employed their fast patrol boats and destroyers to patrol the coastlines to ensure that foreign vessels were not aiding the Japanese cause. They frequently boarded likely vessels, during", "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 } ]