[ { "id": 204259, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Vol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n24\n\nThe Great Tit, the same bird that is found in Europe although with much less yellow coloration, is a common resident throughout Hong Kong.\n\nThe Upland Pipit is the only resident member of this family, and it may be found only near the tops of some of our highest mountains, singing a very plaintive song. But Richard's Pipit is represented by one race which spends the summer here, nesting quite widely, and a race which is a common migrant and winter visitor. Both the Indian Tree-pipit and the Red-throated Pipit are often seen in the colder months, although the latter is usually confined to the lower, more marshy areas.\n\nThe Forest Wagtail is a relatively rare, but attractive passage migrant to wooded parts. Its plumage makes it look as though it had a football jersey on. 'Pied' Wagtails are very common in winter, and in fact have a large roost near the Law Courts in Victoria. The Grey Wagtail is also common in winter, but the three kinds of Yellow Wagtail are rarely seen except in the Deep Bay marshes and then only as migrants and during the winter months.\n\nA lovely bird discovered breeding in the Colony for the first time only in 1959 is the Fork-tailed Sunbird. It may be seen in Tai Po Kau and with luck in the University grounds all the year round, an iridescent sheen of green on its upper parts glistening when the sun catches it. Its close but far more common relative, the White-eye, may be found everywhere, often causing confusion of identity when seen in silhouette or brief glimpse. The Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker, perfectly described by its name, is resident, but very local, being found regularly only in the north-eastern New Territories.\n\nA winter visitor to many woods in the Colony is the Lesser Black-tailed Hawfinch, with its large, bright yellow bill, black head and prominent white markings in flight. The Chinese Greenfinch, a dully grey-green bird at rest, has a lovely gold wing-bar which shows up well in flight. It is a fairly common resident in many areas.\n\nThe buntings are a very difficult tribe to study in Hong Kong, for those that are found here are exceptionally shy. Only the Crested Bunting, with its smart plumage of black and chestnut, nests on the hillsides in the New Territories, but the Masked and Grey-headed Buntings are quite common in winter, and the Little Bunting a little less so. The Yellow-breasted Bunting, the 'rice-bird' of gourmets, is an abundant autumn visitor to the Deep Bay marshes and occasionally is seen also in spring.\n\nThe common sparrow of Hong Kong is the Tree-sparrow. It has all the habits of the Cockney Sparrer, unlike the Tree-sparrow found in England although it is the same species. The Spotted", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204438, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE\n\n59\n\nmen among these people shape their hair into a single forward-pointing horn has not changed since the time of the Later Chou (A.D. 951-960), an amazing adherence to a cultural trait that must have had a deep-seated significance now possibly lost in the mist of antiquity. According to Eric von Eickstedt, the Lolo legends, their sphere of economy and their language and culture point unquestionably to the northeastern part of the Tibetan high plateaus as their early habitat. This would be the area of eastern Chinghai Province.\n\nInstead of moving eastward as the Miao did, the Yi moved southward to their stronghold region of the Ta-liang mountains in the southwest of Szechwan. From here they appear to have spread eastward along the Ta-liang mountains and the western part of the Nan-ling mountains into Kweichow, as well as southward into the Yunnan plateau. Although the earliest habitats of the Yi are shrouded in mystery, their European-type features and pastoral traditions point to at least a Central Asiatic origin. Fiercely warlike, they have created a much larger Yi cultural sphere by capture and enslavement and ultimate absorption of numerous other peoples, Han and non-Han, to their language and way of life. Strongly caste-conscious, the noble clans have maintained a racial purity distinguished from the lower castes of assimilated or enslaved people. The former are known as Black-bone Yi, the latter White-bone Yi. At least until 1950 the Black-bone Yi in their Ta-liang mountain strongholds continued to exercise virtually exclusive control over their own affairs.*\n\nIn contrast to the Miao, Yao and Yi, all of whom are fond of the cooler climates of the high mountains, the T'ai ethnic groups all are addicted to lowland, streamside valley locations. Since they occupied a much more productive type of land, they were able to develop a superior type of economy and a stronger type of political organization. Thus, we find that the T'ai have historically been great state-builders, from the period when they occupied the entire Yangtze valley to their present seat of power in Thailand. They are no doubt among the earliest occupants\n\n* Eric von Eickstedt, Rassendynamik von Ostasien (Race dynamics of Eastern Asia), Berlin, 1944, 175-176.\n\n* Lin Yuch-hua, Liang-shan Yi-chia (The Yi people of the Liang mountains), Commercial Press, Shanghai, 3-5, 9, 13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204442, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE\n\n63\n\nAmong the Wu-man or Yi people, settlement tends to be more sedentary than among the Miao and Yao, although where forests existed, fire-field cultivation also has been practised. Dry-land crops such as corn, buckwheat, wheat, barley, beans and (since its relatively recent introduction) white potatoes are the main crops. In the higher altitude, horses, sheep and cattle, including yak, are raised on the grasslands. Hunting and fishing are practised where feasible. The material culture includes wooden houses with shingle or slat roofs, but traditionally, beds are on the floors with skin or felt bedding. Clothes of felt or coarse wool accompany the use of leather shoes and leggings. The hair of the noble men (Black-bone) is worn in a forward pointing horn. The beard is plucked out. Weapons include cross-bows, shields, armour, bows, swords and lances. As with the Tibetans, the Yi use milk, butter and tea.12\n\nThe Yi possess their own writing, but the written language has been used mainly for religious or superstitious purposes rather than for ordinary communications. Sorcery is a strong part of their religion, and animal sacrifices are made in connection with it. Divination is accomplished through the use of plant stalks. In the social organization are signs of an early matriarchal system which is reflected in the significant status of women in Yi society. A caste system of nobility and commoners differentiates them from most other non-Han tribes of southwest China.13\n\nAn interesting amplification of the Yi social system as well as those of the Wa or K'a-wa † and Ching-p'o 景颇 is provided by Alan Winnington14 who purportedly travelled under Chinese Communist auspices in western Yunnan in 1956. Although the book parrots the Communist line in making overmuch of Communist achievements and in vilifying the Kuomintang handling of the minorities problems, there is much useful information if the reader is careful to discard the chaff. The purported intention of the writer was to investigate slavery and this no doubt limited his observations of tribal society. Concerning the Black-bone Yi, Winnington found that, without a central administration among them, each family was a law unto itself. Nevertheless,\n\n12 Ibid., 50.\n\n13 Ibid.\n\n14 Alan Winnington, Slaves of the Cool Mountains, Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd., London, 1959.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204668, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "KASHMIR HOLIDAY\n\n133\n\ngrazing round the tents and our staff from the boat, now transformed into mountaineers, plus the owners of the ponies were all waiting to receive us. Two of the ponies had been hired to carry the ladies on the trek but in point of fact they were never used except by Gaffar and his son when their feet got sore.\n\nA large log fire was already alight outside the larger tent, hot water was waiting for the canvas baths and a three-course dinner was being cooked outside the cook's tent down-wind. This, I would add, was the normal evening routine throughout our trek, for the ponies with all our tents and supplies would pass us during the morning and everything was set up before we reached camp at night. Generally one pony stayed with us to carry the lunch and our spare clothes, and later we perched on the top two live hens that we had bought from some shepherds we met on the way. They were intended for dinner one night but we became so fond of them that they survived the expedition and came all the way back to the boat with us.\n\nThe way led along the west side of the Liddar river, past Arau, the last village before the pass, and to the foot of the great Kolahoi glacier. Here we camped, at 8,500 ft., and spent the next day exploring the pink-coloured glacier and watching life in the valley: marmots, snow pigeon, white-capped redstart, chough and Himalayan griffon. By the third evening we had reached the Yamher Pass and as it was too late to attempt the crossing we camped at the foot in a bare plateau. By now we were far above the tree line and as it was very cold we had gathered wood on the day's walk and stacked it on the top of the ponies' packs.\n\nNext day we were lucky for there was not a cloud in the sky and when we reached the top of the Yamher at 14,000 ft. the high peaks of the Himalayas stretched in a great semi-circle before us. Dead ahead, clear and glittering in the sun, was the unmistakable magnificence of Nanga Parbat (26,660 ft.) whilst to the west was the fringe of the mountains in the Hindu Kush. Eastwards lay the peaks of Ladakh and Baltistan. It was unforgettable.\n\nTo the uninitiated the only part of the whole walk which may bring a slight fluttering in the stomach is the first 500 feet of the descent from the top of the Pass. But help is always at hand", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205069, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "20\n\nJOHN 1. NOLDE\n\nof the six Englishmen, no one can deny that they did venture into the country-side in December, 1847, and that their bodies were found in the river several days later. But no one knows exactly what happened. They may have brought the attack on themselves by an ill-considered use of fire-arms, or they may have blundered into some kind of inter-village, or inter-clan, feud. In any case, we don't know that they were murdered simply because they were foreigners.\n\n30\n\nAs to the events of 1849, it may well be that they were organized not so much to keep the foreigner out of the city per se but to prevent serious rioting and looting within the city, which, the authorities well knew, could, and probably would, be turned against themselves. The presence of the barbarian with his goods and gold within the walls would attract every villain and trouble-maker for miles around.\n\nThe problem of the 1840's was the same as that which existed in the previous two decades: the continuing erosion of Imperial authority.\n\nChinese documents, most of them un-official, suggest a pattern of turmoil and tumult even exceeding that of the 1820's and 1830's. Triad outbreaks occurred in 1843 in the districts of Tung-kuan and Hsun-teh. In the latter, in December, \"above a hundred were killed and several hundred wounded\".31 Hsiang-shan district witnessed a serious Triad disturbance in 1844, as did P'an-yu in 1845.32 A high Chinese official, home on leave in Hsiang-shan reported that brigands ran wild in the White Cloud Mountains northeast of Canton and that the authorities were unable, or unwilling, to act.33 In 1846 the yamen of the prefect of Kwang-chou was attacked and looted.1⁄4 So serious had the situation become by that year that the Governor-General called a meeting of his chief advisors to discuss the matter. Apparently little was done, for it is reported that in 1847 a bandit chief in Hsiang-shan had gathered together more than 10,000 men and had established a \"puppet government\".35 One account notes that in 1847 and 1848 members of unlawful societies in hundreds and thousands, \"carrying tents and armed with swords\", were terrorizing the districts north of Canton.36 At the height of the \"entry\" crisis of 1849, Governor Yeh Ming-ch'en reported to Peking that should the foreigner be permitted to enter the city troublemakers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205219, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n169 \n\nplant. In Hong Kong four general groups are recognised comprising about thirteen different varieties, all of which but one, the upland rice, need to grow in standing water.\n\nThe first crop of kuk ripens in mid-summer during the typhoon season of blue skies and huge white mountains of cumulus cloud. Sudden and devastating rain storms and periods of low pressure at this time may ruin a crop not yet ripe. Rice is a particularly difficult grain to grow as right up to the last few days before harvesting there is no hard grain in the heads but only a milky white fluid, which, unless it has a few days of very strong sunshine, will not harden into grain. Typhoon winds at this period can completely ruin a crop by flattening the standing grain into the padi water. However, assuming that all is well, the first crop is harvested from the water in which it grows.\n\nBeing harvested from wet fields the grain from this first crop is unsuitable for keeping in store for lengthy periods as it tends to mildew. This crop therefore sells at a lower value than the second crop, which is harvested in the Autumn.\n\nAs the water in the fields is no longer required after the second crop the fields are drained off, the rice left standing in the drying fields, ripens and turns into a grain that will keep in store for years if necessary. This crop fetches a higher price than the first crop.\n\nBy tying his rent return to kuk instead of to a fixed cash rent the landowner ensures that his return is commensurate with the local market price at the time of harvesting. Should bad weather make a poor harvest local prices for kuk rise in sympathy with shortages. If a glut of rice ensues then prices will fall in sympathy with the economy.\n\nRentals\n\nYield should be an important factor when considering tenant rentals, but figures based on statistics collected for use at arbitration board hearings, indicate a pattern which is against yield as a factor in deciding rents in some localities. As a corollary to a technical soil survey of arable lands carried out by Dr. C. J. Grant of the University of Hong Kong, the author made enquiries and collected statistics of prices paid by tenant farmers in those areas mentioned under the heading \"Soil Associations\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205355, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "110\n\nREV, MR. KRONE\n\nseveral times taking a cruise in his Tea-cup, the mountain was named after it “Poi-tou.' \n\n\"Poi-tou.\" Among the common people, however, the mountain is known by the name \"Shing-shan\", or holy mountain. The rough, barren, mountainous country I have described, has given birth to many superstitions and legends. Some of the huge stones on the hill sides are supposed to represent the tiger, the dragon, and the phoenix. The stones on some hills are said to have locomotive powers, and to pursue any adventurous traveller who attempts to mount their sides; other stones are said, when touched, to have the power of producing pains in the stomach, and others to emit white vapours from their surface. But these matters are of but little importance to us; of more interest are the caves which are found in some of the mountains. The most remarkable of these caves is near the market-place of U-shek-ngam, &, at the base of the mountain. For some centuries this cave has been used as a temple, and its aspect is so changed by the architecture and furniture which have been introduced, that one cannot get a good idea of its natural size and appearance.\n\nNatural History. Quadrumana, A number of small monkeys inhabit the island of Lintin; but this animal is not found in any other part of the district, though Chinese books relate that in former times they were found on 'Ng-tung, and most of the high mountains of the district.\n\nQuadrupeds, — The Chinese tiger, which seems to be a true tiger, is found about 'Ng-tung, and in the neighbourhood of most of the high mountains. It sometimes reaches a considerable size, weighing 200 catties, or 266lb. It feeds generally upon pigs and dogs, and the country people say it occasionally carries off a grass-cutter, but this seems doubtful. It is taken in traps, and is a great prize to its captor, as it will bring him in a sum of $150 to $200; for the bones are in great repute as a tonic medicine, and the flesh is eaten with the idea that the courage of the devourer is improved by the meal.\n\nMore than one species of deer, a fox, and a badger, have also been seen, and a large ant-eater -- the flesh of which is considered a delicacy, and is also supposed to possess medicinal powers. There are many snakes, and among them a large species of python, which sometimes grows to the length of twenty to twenty-four feet;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205490, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION\n\nSectarian Religion and the Rural Area\n\n27\n\nSome of the organizations referred to as sects in the literature were in fact religions in their own right. Their ideas were taken from both Buddhism and Taoism certainly, and they also used cosmological notions accepted by the State and the more scholarly members of society; but they often combined such elements in a way forming a distinct ideology of their own. Many were strongly messianic, looked forward to a millenium, and sometimes had secular, even political aims, connected with their ultimate religious goals.\n\nThe literature on such organizations suggests they had a regional distribution, although the evidence is not entirely clear because various names were used by one and the same body at different times or in different places, and some of them themselves ramified into sects.\n\nSpeaking generally, they appear to have been most active in the poorer parts of the rural area especially in regions with large dislocated populations. Szechuan was birth-place to several and was not only an area of scattered settlement but the land of much of the province was poor (perhaps a factor contributing to absence of nucleated settlement). They also operated a great deal in Anhwei, and on the borders of Honan, Shantung and Hopei. Exile appears sometimes to have been a factor in their extension to new areas. Some groups I studied in Singapore in the 1950's were brought down to village areas in Kwangtung, Kwangsi and Fukien leaders exiled from Honan in the mid-nineteenth century.\n\nBut when trying to visualize their operations at the rural level one realizes how thin information in the literature is on their activities in relation to communities of different type and size. Where were their lodges, what did they look like? Were their bases in villages, towns or the open country-side? If one of the more militant, the Nien, said to be an off-shoot of the White Lotus is any example, it appears they might change their base. At one phase in its development it operated from nests in the mountains and at another based itself on earthwall communities in Anhwei for strategic reasons.34 The Nien, however, might in fact have been a secret society type organization and not a religious sect. I will return to the question of secret societies presently.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206424, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n215\n\nThe opium trade of Shanghai may have taken place \"on the busy Bund\", but not until after 1858. The authors apparently never have heard of Woosung and its hulks.\n\nThe authors, intent on opium, assert an oil painting of an island with a British flag on a pole on the shore is \"Lintin”. In the background, with top masts housed, are ships. It is painted and signed \"C. Cramer 1803\", obviously an European artist. Evidently the authors do not realize that opium trading in 1803 was conducted at Whampoa and only reached Lintin in 1821. They also err when they state Jardine Matheson & Co. “diverted their ships to Lintin Island and other independents followed suit”. In 1803 Jardine Matheson & Co. was not in existence. They maintain the ships in the background are \"Scandinavian flag-ships”. Of course there is no such thing as a Scandinavian flag, and a look at the poor photograph shows a white field and a dark cross on a flag, more indicative of the St. George ensign than either a Danish or Swedish flag with its dark field and light cross. You will find this Scandinavian error repeated 5 other times. To cap it all, one finds a British sailor rolling a barrel along the shore, surely an impossibility in 19th century China. Can the scene be somewhere in the Mediterranean where there are islands and mountains and British warships in 1803?\n\nThe authors manage to insert a most extraordinary amount of misinformation into their nautical writings. In plate 37, correct to a French \"bark”, not a “schooner\". The liner Empress of Japan is identified correctly in plate 44, but why date the picture \"circa 1880\" when the steamer begins service in 1891? The painting is on the \"stern\" of the Chinese Merchant Junk, plate 63, not the \"prow\", as the rudder shows clearly just below. For the English \"clipper\" dated 1866, substitute \"bark\". Evidently they know nothing of monsoons or they would revise \"the cumbersome East Indiamen which could only make two round sailings each season between India and China”. Of course the answer is one sailing per season. The numerous islands between Macao and the China Sea \"make a landfall at Macao\" almost prohibitively difficult.\n\nSome of the identifications of Port Scenes are ludicrous. Any person who locates \"the Praya Grande bordering the bay of the inner harbor” at Macao or \"the Governor's Palace at the northern", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206478, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SOME NINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON AND THE FAR EAST\n\nP. H. COLLIN*\n\n(The text of a lecture to the Branch given on 15th December 1971)\n\nA small collection of mid-nineteenth century water-colours of the Far East recently came to light in a London dealer's. The paintings are mainly of China, in particular Canton, with inscriptions and dates in pencil or paint; at some later date, they have been numbered in Roman numerals in ink on the reverse.\n\nThe list of the paintings is as follows, showing the number on the reverse, the inscription on the face of the painting (in italics), and a brief description by the author. The spelling and punctuations are as in the originals.\n\nII Sumatra Straits of Sunda Nov. 14 57\n\nA view of islands, with a native dhow.\n\nIII After heavy rain. Straits of Sunda\n\nA sailing vessel.\n\nIV China Sea the green clouds are from nature\n\nSmall junk against the sunset.\n\nV North Wantong|Id. Bocca Tigris Decr 16th 57\n\nA fort with a red-coated soldier on guard and mountains seen on the far side of the channel.\n\nVII Canton Feb 58\n\nA view looking across roof-tops towards a pagoda and the west gate.\n\nXI Febry 58 Canton Bamboo grove beyond White Cloud Mountains The Jingal pic-nic Feb 20th 58\n\nSome soldiers and Chinese sitting by bamboos, looking across paddy fields to a clump of bamboo where a group of figures are visible. Mountains in the distance.\n\nXIII Canton 58\n\nThree horses and riders with, beyond rolling country, the pagodas of Canton.\n\n* Mr. Collin was formerly Lecturer in English at the University of Hong Kong and is now a publisher in London.\n\nPlates 32-33 illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206481, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "Scarth3 \n\nNINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON \n\nT \n\n- \n\n23 \n\nan excellent artist by the way (who) told me he once saw 150 people beheaded on the execution ground at Canton”.4 The Bishop of Victoria, the Rev. George Smith has almost the right initials, but neither he nor Scarth were on the Adelaide. None of the artists in the Catalogue of the Chater Collection has the initials G.A.S. \n\nAmong the passengers arriving on the Adelaide, the \"Friend of China\" of December 2nd notes the twenty officers by name, among them Lieutenants Schomberg and Short. \"The Hongkong Shipping List\" of the same date, refers to Major Schomberg, R.A., and Lieut. Short. The artist of the paintings must have been subsequently sent from Hong Kong up the Pearl River to the Bogue before December 16th, to join the troops which had arrived earlier on the Imperador and Imperatrix who had been sent on to the Bogue immediately after their arrival. Indeed the Adelaide, with her troops on board, moved up the river from Hong Kong on December 2nd. The artist presumably was present at the capture of Canton on 29th December, and at any rate was in the city in February 1858. He took part in what he calls the \"Jingal pic-nic\" on the 20th of that month. \n\nThis curious inscription (a jingal being a sort of portable Chinese field-gun hardly conducive to a picnic atmosphere) is explained further, and at some length in Col Fisher's Three Years' Service in China, Col. Fisher relates: \"On the 20th February a pic-nic party went out to see a little of the country and of the people; and as we did not know what sort of reception we should meet with, we made rather a strong muster. There were nine officers and twenty-four men, with a couple of ponies to carry the luncheon. We started before seven o'clock, going out through the north-east gate of the city. \n\n+ \n\n\"After walking for about three hours, we rested in a very pretty spot under some fine trees, and one of the party shot a woodcock, which was hailed as a great event; and we determined to devote some little attention to so good a cause. We did not wish to return by the same road by which we had come out. The valley in which we were, we knew to be divided from the great north plain, by the White Cloud Mountains, a range familiar to our eyes from Canton. We hoped to reach that plain by some pass through the hills, and so return to Canton by way of the North Gate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206483, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON\n\n25\n\nwhilst our original attackers were in our rear. There was no time to be lost, so we skirted along the base of the White Cloud Mountains, for then we knew we had only one flank to watch. In case of being hard pushed, we could get up and make a stand, and the struggle might be seen from the city walls, and relief be sent to us.\n\nThe fellows came out after us with their flags and their jingalls, running along at our side, and following in our rear, and banging away with really wonderfully bad luck they never could hit any one even by chance. Meanwhile we posted on as fast as we could, firing a shot every now and then, and when they came too near, sometimes making a little charge towards them, when, of course, away they scampered. But time was everything to us, and we could not afford to chase them, for as we passed each village we saw armed men turning out, and flags hoisted on the mandarin poles. One or two of the marine artillerymen got knocked up from fatigue and had to be put on the ponies; at last, after some five miles of this fun, on turning the corner of a hill, the pagodas of Canton rose before our eyes to our immense relief. Our pursuers evidently thought they had gone far enough and hauled off, and we sat down on the grass, and finished our cold chickens and beer, determined not to be done out of our pic-nic. We got in about five o'clock, after ten hours' enjoyment of rather mixed feelings.\n\nPresumably the artist was among the officers who took part in the 'picnic'. Unfortunately Col. Fisher does not name them.\n\nContinuing his account of events in Canton in the spring of 1858, Fisher states that \"in the middle of May some troops moved off for the expedition to the Pei-ho under Sir Michael Seymour; a company of Engineers went on the 11th from Canton; the 59th were taken up from Hong Kong, and on the 16th of June a detachment of Marine Artillery was removed from Canton for the same purpose.\" Again he mentions no names, but this corresponds with the departure of the Adventure from Hong Kong for the Peiho river on 22nd June 1858, and with paintings XX, XXV and XXVI of the present collection. The gunboat in painting number XX was the Slaney, commanded by a Lieutenant Hoskens. For the remainder of 1858, it seems, the artist stayed in or around Canton.\n\nFrom the information deduced from the paintings, the artist was almost certainly the Major Schomberg who arrived in Hong Kong on board the Adelaide on December 1st, 1857.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206591, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n133\n\nImperial City. A man's home and family formed a microcosm in the macrocosm of the State. As he closed himself within his own small domain he sought a personal privacy away from the State. Not even the wandering eyes of the peddler could penetrate into the front courtyard. The Chinese man sought a more intimate relationship with the natural world even in the heart of the city. He designed his home in order that the open sky was part of his roof and the wild Chinese garden, part of his world. In the North where the population has always been dense, this desire for privacy and peace was a natural response.\n\nThe philosophy of feng shui (風水)1, in the West known as geomancy, was of foremost importance to the Chinese in the siting and building of their homes. Feng shui determined the most auspicious siting for the dwelling in relation to natural formations and existing structures. The aim was to bring the forces of Nature into balance; it was to join the Yin and Yang, the female and male spirits, into a complementary union. According to the principles of feng shui, the ideal site nestles into the arms of hills which are shaped like the Azure Dragon in the East and the White Tiger in the West. The dragon is a beneficent force whose formation should be higher than the tiger, a force of danger, which protects only as long as it is balanced by the dragon. The house should be oriented on a North-South axis, protected in the rear by the mountains. The entrance facing South allows for the good spirits to bring their blessings on the family. The ideal site would also include a quiet stream of water which would enrich it. The commingling of the winds and waters in the proper proportions was essential to the prosperous future of the house and family.\n\nIn the courtyard complex the ideal site was adapted to ordinary places. The wall was substituted for the natural formations of the hills. The house retained its North-South orientation with the entrance in the middle of the Southern wall or in the southeast corner. An added precaution was the shadow or spirit wall which normally was placed immediately inside or outside of the front door. This spirit wall not only prevented strangers from observing the family's activities but also prevented the evil spirits that lurked outside from entering as they could not turn corners. The source of water was often a lotus pool placed in the middle of the main courtyard. Hence, the Chinese architect adapted the principles of geomancy to fit the geographical features of the homesite. In other regions of China\n\nhas been revised to meet the exacting requirements by converting to HTML format using `` for paragraphs. Minor corrections were made to ensure adherence to the guidelines:\n\n1. **Correction of \"auspi- cious\"** to \"auspicious\" to fix a line-break artifact.\n2. **Correction of \"beneficient\"** to \"beneficent\" to fix a spelling error.\n3. **Correction of \"commingling\"** to remain as is because it is not an error; it's a less common but correct spelling.\n4. **Added a footnote marker `1`** for \"(風水)\" to indicate it is a translation or explanation of \"feng shui.\"\n\nThe response now meets the requirements by being in HTML format and adhering to the specified proofreading rules.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207170, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nHUA SHAN, THE TAOIST SACRED MOUNTAIN IN WEST CHINA ITS SCENERY, MONASTERIES AND MONKS. Foreword and 111 Photographs by Hedda Morrison, Introduction and Taoist Musings by Wolfram Eberhard, published by Vetch and Lee Ltd., Hong Kong, January 1974.\n\nVetch and Lee Ltd. have published many beautiful and outstanding books on Chinese culture in the past, and have just added another two to their record, both dealing with sacred mountains in China. The Vetch and Lee editions are well-produced bibliophile books with a dark-blue cloth hard cover engraved in gold with a phoenix, the emblem of the publishers, and a very heavy matt white paper is used, which adds to the soft quality of the black and white photographs.\n\nIn August 1935 Hedda Morrison, a photographer, and Wolfram Eberhard, a sinologue and serious student of Chinese culture, both living in Peiping at the time, visited the Hua Shan, one of the five sacred mountains in China. According to the foreword by Hedda Morrison, the excursion cannot have lasted longer than one to two weeks.\n\nConsidering the fact, it is remarkable that 110 photos of great artistic beauty and solid technical skill were produced in such a short period of time.\n\nThe photos are divided into three groups: 40 depicting the scenic grandeur of the five peaks of the Hua Shan and their various moods; shaded by clouds or shrouded in morning mist, or illuminated by bright sunshine with silhouettes of crooked pine-trees. Also, small temples dangerously stuck on cliffs, a ladder of steps cut into a sharp angle stone slab, top and bottom connected with an enormous iron chain to facilitate the ascent.\n\nThen are followed by a group of 24 photos with details of the monasteries, close-ups of the images inside, a mural of the god of thunder, and the graffiti of visitors, a perpetual calendar carved in a slab, embroideries representing shaman dancers, a monk dozing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207178, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 249, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n243\n\nNonetheless, despite these flaws in relating earlier scholarship on this subject and related studies, the real value of this book is that it is the first written in English and devoted to the chu-kung-tiao among Chinese folk literature.\n\nUniversity of Hong Kong, 1975.\n\nCHUANG SHEN\n\nTHE NINE SACRED MOUNTAINS OF CHINA, AN ILLUSTRATED RECORD OF PILGRIMAGES MADE IN THE YEARS 1935-36, by Mary Augusta Mullikin and Anna M. Hotchkis. Vetch and Lee Ltd., Hong Kong 1973, 155 pages, 22 coloured reproductions, 56 black and white reproductions, including 3 drawn maps, 10 vignette drawings and 13 pages of valuable index, where the Chinese characters are added to the Wade-Giles romanizations.\n\nThe book carries a short epilogue in which these two intelligent and enterprising ladies phrase the quintessence of their travelogue: by telling a story with the meaning that happiness is to have just enough for the most simple daily needs, to be free from worldly cares and to have the freedom to wander through the world at will. It was this view of life that gave them the stamina to visit, in just one year, the nine sacred mountains which are spread all over China under the prevailing, most adverse, conditions.\n\nTheir being able to artistically record their fresh impressions enables the reader to get a first-hand information through ink-sketches. Moods are conveyed by ink and wash, water-colour or pastel techniques. A. M. Hotchkis has produced 76 of the 88 illustrations. The other 12 are by M. A. Mullikin, including the sketch-maps. These illustrations depict with great skill the landscapes they travelled through, the various means of travelling they used, the mountains and the shapes of their trees, the monastic buildings in their surrounding scenery and their atmosphere and architectural details, temple interiors, and those who live and travel there, the monks and pilgrims.\n\nThe text is kept in the form of a diary which lets the reader closely follow each step in the realistic proportions of time and space, adding vivid descriptions of sights and sounds. The text transmits precise information by giving all the proper names in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207715, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "88\n\nELIZABETH L. JOHNSON\n\nTai Po. Bands, mounted on hat, predominantly of white cotton, with thick white tassels. One half the length of the band commonly has zigzag pattern. Bands commonly worn on headcloth, also of white cotton. Patterned bands not often worn on apron, which is fastened with a strip of cloth. Apron relatively short and narrow, with coloured trim at the top. Headcloth is long, hanging down the wearer's back.\n\nYuen Long. Band is used to fasten hat under wearer's chin, being drawn under the chin through rings mounted on either side of the hat, and then back to be tied under the chin. Such a band is very long and narrow, with thin tassels. These bands are silk and cotton with small patterns appearing less clear than those from other areas because of the use of a double weft thread, of white cotton and coloured silk. Similar bands, although shorter, are used on aprons, which are narrow like those in Tai Po, but longer. They are trimmed at the top and sometimes have ornamental frogs.\n\nShatin. Shatin bands are mounted on the hat and have long thick tassels like those of Tsuen Wan. The aprons are like those in Tsuen Wan.\n\nSai Kung. Pink and purple predominate in the bands. They appear to be rarely worn on hats, but are worn as apron bands and to hold head cloths. The tassels are less long and thick than those of Tsuen Wan.\n\nThe bands, and other aspects of dress and adornment, thus served as indicators of regional identity at a time when these differences were socially and politically significant. Topographic conditions in Hong Kong, with its mountains, islands and water, meant that enclaves with distinct identities developed. These were sometimes demonstrated in the form of alliances, as well as in the system of measuring land area. Tsuen Wan, for example, formed a self-conscious enclave of people with a shared identity and an ideal, at least, of cooperative relations.\n\nDespite the importance of regional identity, some Tsuen Wan men married women from outside the Tsuen Wan District. The reasons for this may have been to broaden their network of contacts, or perhaps to avoid the problems which sometimes resulted from living in too close proximity to relatives by marriage: or because the go-between arranging the marriage knew of a suitable match in another place. Interestingly, women upon marriage con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208145, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "168\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY VISIT TO TAI MO SHAN,\n\n3RD APRIL 1976\n\nHISTORICAL AND GENERAL NOTE\n\n1. Tai Mo Shan is 3,140 feet (957 metres) in height, the highest mountain in Hong Kong territory.\n\n2. It is a curiously unimpressive mountain at close quarters. Viewed from Tsuen Wan, the former small market town at its foot on the southern side, the visitor could be forgiven for not noticing the mountain at all. It is, from there, only part of a large hilly area that arises quickly from sea level and extends in all directions, with occasional higher points of which the Tai Mo Shan summit is only one, in no way outstanding or separating itself from its neighbours.\n\n3. From a distance, however, the true splendour of its peak and general mass is revealed. A visitor looking north from Magazine Gap or Wong Nei Chong Gap on Hong Kong Island, some 10-12 miles distant, cannot fail to notice, to the north, the bulk and height of the mountain, overtopping all around. The Lion Rock range of hills behind Kowloon Peninsula, closer to the viewer and usually so impressive from low ground, then appears in its true and diminished scale.\n\n4. Mountains figure prominently in Chinese historical geography. There is, in every district, prefectural, provincial or general gazetteer, a section devoted to Shan-chuen - 'Hills and Streams'. As befits its size, Tai Mo Shan always receives a notice in the local works. The earliest mention I can find so far is in the 1688 edition of the Sun On District Gazetteer. This is repeated with much the same text in the 1819 and last edition, and in the 1822 and 1879 editions of the provincial and prefectural gazetteers respectively. The 1688 notice may be translated as follows:\n\nTai Mo Shan is 50 Chinese miles east of the District City. It has the shape of a big hat. It extends south and west from Ng Tung Mountain. Its peak measures 2,000 Chinese feet. It is a big mountain in the Fifth Division, with a stone pagoda and many tea plantations.\n\n5. So far as I know, there never has been a separate gazetteer of Tai Mo Shan such as has been provided for the more famous mountains of the Province; e.g. the White Cloud Mountains near Canton or", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208149, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "172\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nAll remarkable mountains are supposed by the Chinese to have some spiritual influence over the affairs of mortals. The rough, barren, mountainous country I have described, has given birth to many superstitions and legends. Some of the huge stones on the hillsides are supposed to represent the tiger, the dragon, and the phoenix. The stones on some hills are said to have locomotive powers, and to pursue any adventurous traveller who attempts to mount their sides: other stones are said, when touched, to have the power of producing pains in the stomach and others to emit white vapours from their surface; of more interest are the caves which are found in some of the mountains (JHKBRAS 7(1967): 110).\n\n12. Krone writes of our own Castle Peak:\n\nThe mountain is reckoned one of the eight wonders of the Canton Province. Some of its large granite boulders are said by the priests to represent various mythological monsters; and several springs well up near the top, which are also esteemed supernatural wonders by the Chinese. The mountain is often visited by students and literati, and its wonders and beauties have been celebrated by them in many verses. The legends connected with the mountain seem not to be very clearly understood. (JHKBRAS 7(1967): 109).\n\n13. In the case of the more famous mountains of the Kwangtung province alone, mythology, legend and history have endowed them with fame over hundreds and even thousands of years. This is due in part to the constant visits of famous poets whose poems are so widely read over the generations that they alone are sufficient to make them sacred and immortal.* Yet our own lesser mountains seem to have had at least one such visitor. In the history of the T'ang family of Kam Tin we read of the famous Sung poet and painter PO Yu-sim, ‘Legends have attributed to him magical powers, and he is supposed to have appeared and disappeared in all the \n\nIn the introduction to his Anthology of Chinese Literature, Vol. 2 (New York, Grove Press Inc., 1972) Cyril Birch writes 'Scholar-officials were subject to a life of movement, and no one could travel very far without lighting on a place celebrated in the verse or prose of an earlier visitor. It might be a hilltop temple or a lakeside pavilion, a mountain pass or an ancient battlefield, a city gate or a particularly awesome cliff. (p. xxvi).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208193, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 232, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "216\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nhead for the hall, the result is that the hall would bring about Great Wealth (大富)\n\nOn the ancestral hall itself, it is apparent that it is being surrounded by green mountains and beautiful streams. Its walls are finely made and its direction is carefully orientated so as to suit the Dragon form. The rooms inside are spacious, comfortable, and neatly packed together. In front of it is Shau Sing Kung Shan (壽星宮山) (\"Long-life mountain\") and on the left of it is Kwun Yam Shan (觀音山). All these signs imply that from here “Great Nobility\" (貴) would appear. Its form, so magnificent, calls for the Red Bird (朱雀) to lead the way (朱雀護送迎) and the Green Dragon and White Tiger to kneel (†). It drives the ranges to curl around it and the stars to look after the outlet. Every mountain, no matter how far comes to guard the cave, and every stream comes to gather round the hall. This indicates \"Great Wealth\" (大富). Thus the window of Heaven is made open and the door of Hell is tightly shut.\n\nThis is the best Dragon form. It should foster great wealth and great nobility. It explains why the Tang clan has had so much success in wealth, fame, and in civil examinations, as compared with the other villages in Pat Heung (八鄉). Of course, it owes very much to the keen choice of Fung-shui by the Tang ancestors. Hong Kong, 1973\n\nJOHN THOMAS Kamm\n\nBEAN SKIM (豆漿皮); A PRODUCT OF BLOOD & SWEAT FROM THE MAKERS\n\nBean skim is a traditional rural product in the Tsuen Wan District of the New Territories of Hong Kong. The following account was written by WAN Chung-yan of Pun Shan Village, Chai Wan Kok, Tsuen Wan on 12.1.1976, at the Hon. Editor's request.\n\nBean skim is a kind of bean product of rich nourishment. In the age when the electric motor had not yet been invented, such product was really a product of blood and sweat from the makers.\n\nThe making of bean skim is easily described. Choose the best yellow beans, dry them under the sun and peel them. Then soak the beans in water and crush them into a paste. After filtering off the refuse, boil them in a pot. Skim off the upper layer of foam. Keep heating the paste at a certain temperature until a thin layer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 2, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "201\n\nI would like to add two more passages to this note, both of which came my way after I wrote the above. The first passage was kindly given me by James Hayes, who was given it by Mr. Ho Kei Fook, of Kei Ling Ha village, born in 1928, and educated (1937-1941) in the neighbouring village of Tseng Tau, previously village representative, and Vice-Chairman of the North Saikung Rural Committee. The second passage I came across in Ch'en T'ieh-erh5, \"Huang Hsiao-yang yu Pai-e t'an\" (Huang Hsiao-yang and the White Goose Pond), in Kuang-tung wen-hsien chi-k'an vol. 15 no. 2 (1985) pp. 60-62.\n\nPassage 1\n\n\"It is said that in the Ming dynasty there was this man Ho Tsoh Shing who obtained a wonder book. The book recorded thirty-six grave sites at the mouth of the dragon. [The family] buried there would achieve great wealth for its descendants and even produce an emperor. Ho Tsoh Shing was already an official at court, holding the post of Minister of the LeftE. But his mother did not have the good fortune to support this achievement. When his wife was pregnant, his mother scolded her saying, 'My son is an official at court many mountains and seas away, so how is it that you are pregnant?' The daughter-in-law said, 'He comes back every night'. What happened was that every night Ho Tsoh Shing rode home on a bamboo-rigged flying horse, and early in the morning he rode the flying horse back to court. The daughter-in-law said, 'If you don't believe me, you can hide by the courtyard tonight and watch him as he comes in'. [This the mother did] and saw that that was what really happened. The horse stopped at the courtyard, and the mother, being curious, rode on it. The horse could not fly, because it was bogged down by the woman's breath. When Ho Tsoh Shing rose the next morning to go to court, the horse was still bogged down by woman's breath. So immediately, he went to cut some bamboo to rig another horse to fly to court. He was late. The emperor was in his court calling the rolls. When he came to Ho Tsoh Shing's name, Ho answered from the outer court [in such a loud voice] that it shook the emperor. The emperor then suspected that Ho Tsoh Shing was scheming to take the throne, and other officials also made many comments. They found out that Ho Tsoh Shing possessed the thirty-six grave sites at the dragon's mouth. When this was known, Ho Tsoh Shing was killed by the emperor, and the fungshui was\n\nto", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208957, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n87\n\nvalley surrounded by hills in the east, north and south forming an armchair embracing it. It is located at the crosspoint where the breath of the azure dragon and the white tiger meet. The entire valley is fed by flowing streams like the sinews and veins within a body. It is also the confluence of meandering tributaries before the main river runs off to the sea. According to a geomancer who never saw Kam Tin, \"It is said [in the geomancy classics] that the Dragon [Water Dragon, not the same as the Azure Dragon] follows the watercourse, and the meeting-place of waters is the meeting-place of the dragons, where the virtues of hills and streams are united and the grass ever green.\" He continued, \"In the distance there should be groups of mountains with streams of water encircling them; in front a stretch of level plain, a pond, or lake. In the wider circuit, the space should be large enough for 10,000 horses, and the watercourse be sufficient to admit a dragon [large] boat... If the expanse be wide, children and grandchildren will multiply and be strong. From the top of the hill the view should extend for miles, with mountains and streams interspersed.\"16 Such vivid and precise description of the geographical features of Kam Tin by a fung-shui professor who never saw the place can only lead to the conclusion that the siting of Kam Tin was done piously in accordance with the geomancy canons. Moreover, \"the place where the flow out being low, with no hill or high embankment to obstruct the escape of good influences, a pagoda is erected to check these influences and throw them back over the land.”17 Indeed a fung-shui pagoda called Man Ch'eung Kok was erected near where I Tai College now stands in Shui-tau hamlet.* By the year 1850, \"the Tang family seemed to have reached the height of their prosperity. Many of them passed the highest government examination and a census taken that year showed that there were more than 1,800 males living...\"18 But the family experienced a decline in population and wealth after the pagoda was torn down and the course of the river was altered to accommodate three fish ponds and buildings of a school that blocked the view of the village.19 This mistake was remedied by repairing the banks of the river in 1930 and family membership was said to be on the increase again.\n\nFig. 2 in the original version of this article, published in Asian Architect and Builder, October 1979, which contains many other drawings and diagrams not reproduced here.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209958, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "The white dews drop down on the fragrant but leafless trees; the sombre vapours rise up from the enchanted hills and valleys; and the zephyrs soften with their sweet breath the gloom that overshadows the earth.\n\nIt is now, while seated beneath the tented canopy of the proud ships provided for our reception, that I recall with tears the days that are past: I have left my very home; my heart grows cold; my robe flutters; I am as a man pierced with a dagger.\n\nI gaze upon yonder royal white city, on the high cliffs, while the shadows of evening gather round it. There it stands, lonely as a palace built upon a rock.\n\nThe sun has disappeared beneath the waves, but lingering eyes still turn to it with straining fondness. The southern stars that gleam upon its snow-white walls look beautiful and bright as glittering flowers.\n\nAnd now I weep with bitterness, and as I sink upon my pillow, the splendid town is present to me still. I behold even in my sleep the fragrant incense urn dispensing its thousand gushing streams [a footnote explains that Hong Kong in Chinese signifies ‘Urn of Fragrant Streams'] over the mountains, while the city's white abodes seem glittering in the morning sun.\n\nIt is thus I treasure in my sorrowing soul the loved remembrance; it is thus my mourning heart clings to departed happiness, as the tendrils twine themselves around you airy cliffs.\n\nThe scene is changed. The bright moon issues from the parting clouds, and spangles with her light the feathery bamboo and the shrubby jessamine, that overarch the islet's thousand habitations; and soon the silent morning sun starts from his golden sleep, and sheds a liquid lustre on the rocky steeps that bear aloft a thousand glittering and spacious mansions.\n\nYet on this spot erewhile were only to be seen the hovels of the roving fishermen. Where are they? gone like the swallows of departed autumn!\n\nThus I record in the above lines my uncontrollable regret when leaving your Empire and returning to Canton, on board", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210159, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "109\n\nscenery of the same area. He wrote,\n\n\"In general, the south side of Hong Kong Island is far more picturesque and less bleak than the north. The villages we saw, unlike the mat-huts in the harbour, are exceedingly neat in appearance with blue tiled and white walled houses.\"14\n\nNonetheless, there were attractive places on the north and east too. A description taken from the English language Canton Press of January 1842 mentions the view of the whole valley and village of Wong Nei Chung obtained from a gap cut in a hill following the line of one of the new roads, and how the branch road to the east\n\n\"takes one to the village of 'Soo Kon Poo', at present a sequestered, well wooded and very pretty part of the island\"+15\n\na character it has not entirely lost even today!”\n\nThomas Allom's celebrated View of China, for which the text was prepared from various works by Revd. G.N. Wright, also pays tribute to the natural beauties of the island:\n\n\"The maximum length of the isle is about eight miles, its breadth seldom exceeding five; its mountains of trap-rock are conical, precipitous, and sterile in aspect, but the valleys that intervene are sheltered and fertile, and the genial climate that prevails gives luxuriance and productiveness to every spot, which, by its natural position, is susceptible of agricultural improvement.\"\n\nAnd in another place:\n\n\"Few areas so limited include so many scenes of sylvan beauty as the sunny island of Hong Kong. The country immediately behind Queen-town (sic) is peculiarly rich in romantic little glens, or in level tracts, adorned with masses of rock, in the fissures of which the noblest forest-trees have found sufficient soil for their support. These wood-crowned crags rise abruptly from wide-spread rice-grounds that closely encircle them; so", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210780, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "114\n\nNICHOLAS TAPP\n\nHsieh, Jiann. ‘China's Nationalities Policy: Its Development and Problems': Anthropos 81, 1-20, 1986.\n\nLemoine, J. ‘Ethnologues en Chine': Diogene 133, 82-112, 1986.\n\nMao Tse-tung. The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Peoples' Press, Beijing 1966).\n\nMoseley, E. The Consolidation of the South China Frontier, Univ. California Press, Berkeley 1973.\n\nTapp, N. \"The Relevance of Telephone Directories to a Lineage-based Society: A Consideration of Some Messianic Myths among the Hmong'. Journal of the Siam Society, 70, 1982,\n\nCategories of Change and Continuity among the White Hmong, Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. London 1985.\n\n'The Impact of Missionary Christianity upon Marginalised Ethnic Minorities: the case of the Hmong'; paper presented to the 32nd International Congress for Asian and North African Studies, Hamburg, August 25-30, 1986.\n\nWiens, H. Han Chinese Expansion in Southern China (Shoe-String Press, New York 1967),\n\nWinnington, A. The Slaves of the Cool Mountains: The ancient social conditions and changes now in progress on the remote South-Western borders of China (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1959).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211041, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "77\n\nnative of Tak Kai [Danxi] District. The derivation of my name as Red Pine Fairy was due to my living in seclusion in Red Pine Hill. To differentiate myself from the Red Pine Fairy who was in close company with Chang Liang [Zhang Liang], I wrote this autobiography. (Sese Yuan, 1971;3)\n\nThis autobiography is thought by some current members of the Sese Yuan to have been received from the god by the way of the fuji divination procedure, but actually it seems to have been drawn from the story related in the fourth century work titled Shenxian Zhuan (Biography of immortals). This work contains brief descriptions of the lives of eighty-four Taoist hermits and seekers of immortality. The passage on Huang Chuping is as follows:\n\nHuang Chuping came from Danxi. When he was 15 his family had him tend sheep. A Taoist seeing that he was good-natured and conscientious took him to a stone cave in the Jinhua Mountain. For forty odd years he stayed there without thinking of his family. His elder brother Chuqi searched for him for many years in the mountains but without success. Once in a marketplace he saw a Taoist. Chuqi beckoned him and asked \"My brother Chuping who was sent out to tend sheep has not been seen for more than forty years. I don't know where he is or whether he is dead or alive. Would you please find out by means of divination?” The Taoist said, \"On the Jinhua Mountain there is a young shepherd by the name of Huang Chuping. Doubtless he is your brother.\" When he heard this, Chuqi followed the Taoist in search of his younger brother. He found him. The brothers told each other of what had happened during all these years. Chuqi then asked his brother where the sheep were. \"Not far from here on the eastern side of the mountain,” Chuping answered. Chuqi went over there and looked for them. He didn't see them. He only saw white stones. He went back and said to Chuping, \"There are no sheep on the eastern side of the mountain,” Chuping said, “The sheep are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211043, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "79\n\nty] there are those who occasionally meet him in the forest. Not long ago there was somebody who traveled through Luofu and had to stay at night among the rocks. He then saw a man without clothes covered only with long hair. Thinking it must be a saint he approached him, saluted twice and asked about the way [Tao]. The man didn't even bother to look at him. He laughed with a sound that shook the trees and answered by chanting the verses: \"When the clouds arrive the hundred thousand mountains move. When the clouds retire the heaven is of but one colour, I repeatedly burst into long laughters. About the deserted mountain, the autumn moon turns white.” It was Yeren.\n\nThe key fact about Yeren in this account is that unlike Ge Hong and his wife, who ascended to heaven after ingesting the cinnabar, Huang Yeren somehow failed to achieve this, even with the cinnabar pill left behind for him by Ge Hong. In one version of this story which we heard at Mt. Luofu, there had been only half a pill left, and this accounted for his failure to levitate. (Perhaps this version is designed to deflect the implication that even with a whole pill of cinnabar, Yeren was not sincere enough or worthy enough, and hence could not levitate). We also heard a version of the story in which Yeren was late for the ascension because he was drunk (a version indignantly denied by others in a later conversation).\" In any case, Yeren became immortal but was stuck for some centuries on earth. He seems to have spent his time wandering in the hills, and engaging in the kind of behaviour which gained him the reputation of “the wild man.\" There are no biographical details available which might identify Yeren as an actual historical figure, although it is quite plausible to suppose that at least some Taoist hermits in the Mt. Luofu area were recluses, seldom seen, whose odd behaviour could have contributed to the development of a myth similar to that of Yeren, the wild man.\" In any case, this figure eventually was credited with several healings.\n\n16\n\nIn appears that there was a second historical Huang who became a Taoist hermit at Luofu about 500 years after the time of the", "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": 211490, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "182\n\na year at Tulane University, came for a visit with his family, as did my mother from home. From New England came Effie Huchmore and Beverly King.\n\nA word about Effie. I had met her while we were both staying at the Franklin Square House near the Boston City Hospital when I was studying at Simmons College and she, at Boston University. We became fast friends. She had me as her guest in her home in North Woodstock, New Hampshire, where she lived with her parents and maternal grandmother, and showed me the beautiful scenic spots of the White Mountains. This visit gave me an insight into the activities and character of a typical New England town and the enjoyment of the simple unpretentious hospitality of an old Yankee family. A rare experience indeed!\n\nBefore I left New York the summer of 1948, I was a bridesmaid to Betty Lee upon her marriage to Paul Gee on June 7, 1948. She was formerly a teacher of religion at True Light and its principal during the Second World War. I had also promised to return to marry John Shue Fong Lew, a widower with two younger daughters in Canton. I had met him casually in Boston in 1947 through a mutual friend, Grace Chin, and had become better acquainted with him when he came to see me in New York, often accompanied by his good friend, Lew Orne. We were both mature and ready to settle down by this time, and fortunately felt drawn to each other. On the way back to Honolulu, I stopped over in Chicago where Mother had taken Edmund to join his mother and where she was waiting for me to accompany her home. As soon as I had fulfilled my commitment, I left Honolulu in October 1950 for Chicago, where John and I were married from Helen's home on 4 November 1950, in a simple ceremony at a local church rectory.\n\nAfter living in an apartment near Harvard Square for a few months, we bought a duplex on 12 Littell Road, Brookline, in order to be near John's business, \"The Ming Restaurant”, at 1022 Beacon Street. By 1952, the business had deteriorated so much that it was not feasible to continue it and we turned it over to S. Y. Lew, one of the partners who wanted it. In the meantime we sent for our daughters, Gar Shuey and Gar Ling, and they arrived in Boston in August 1951 by way of Europe. Both attended Lawrence School and Brookline High School, working as waitresses during the summer in our seasonal restaurant in Bar Harbor,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212847, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "141\n\nside. So we gave the gifts to the friends we made everywhere amongst the local population round us; we even broke up the cotton parachutes and distributed the cloth. We sometimes found when we could not buy such things as chickens or eggs with money, a piece of parachute cloth quickly brought results.\n\nIn supplying us the R.A.F. ran great risks. They had to fly six hundred miles over enemy-held territory to reach us, and then they had to find their way about the mountains, locate our particular little valley, come in below the mountain crests, fly up the valley, turn sharp right at the head, where the d.z. ran up at a slope of one in three, and drop their men and containers within the length of the zone, which measured on the level could not be more than 200 yards. A stick would sometimes be as many as seven containers, but the spread was found to be too great; some would fall short of or beyond the d.z., way down in the thick jungle of the valley; and though we had many willing villagers, wondering at these new toys of the white man, to help us in the search, it would sometimes be days before all the containers were located. The white cotton 'chutes to which they were attached, of course, helped us to trace their whereabouts. The sticks were cut down to a maximum of three for men, or four for containers. Much credit is due to the pilots and their skilled crews who so successfully co-operated with us.\n\nThe risk for the parachute men was also considerable. Sawn-off stumps of trees are not comfortable to fall on; fortunately they did not know about these until they landed. Sometimes the container-chutes would not develop owing to failure of the static cord, or the container might be too heavy for the 'chute and would break away from its straps. You would then hear a swish and a plonk in the nearby jungle. In theory the faulty 'chute would leave the aircraft like a bomb, and travel with the speed of the aircraft till it hit the ground, so that it should overshoot the dropping zone; but in practice it did not always work out that way, and the first we would know, straining our eyes up in the dark, would be the plonk near at hand. One container with explosives crashed and blew up one day not thirty yards from our lower signal fire. Many is the night we spent out on the d.z. in the bright moonlight, in vain; though the weather over us was perfect, it might be cloudy in India and the aircraft would not start. Or clouds might form up over us, while they were on their way, and after vainly searching for our fires, they would fly back, without result for their pains. It was nerve-wracking to hear our own aircraft, in the clouds amongst the dangerous mountain tops, searching for our", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213280, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "82\n\nThe site of the flat in the case study is not perfect. The hills could surround the home, at the sides, more, thus providing a better 'armchair effect'. The shapes of hills and features on hills, similar to boulders such as Sha Tin's Amah Rock, frequently form the backdrop for wayside shrines. This rock did not ask, some rustics will tell you, to be eroded into the shape of a woman with a baby on her back, and the wind and the rain did not want to sculpt them, it is something that just happened. Such features display the power of nature and the majesty of the cultural landscape. Like the Australian aboriginals, boulders or other objects in Hong Kong can take the forms of beasts, real or imaginary. This is especially so for the Hakka Chinese. There is some resemblance between aspects of Chinese folklore and its Gaelic counterparts. The latter has its mischievous leprechauns.\n\nBut whether it be a Chinese village hovel or a palace, the ideals to aim for are similar. With the basic grammar of an ideal site, with us 'armchair of slopes' and 'ring of sunny hills', the spur on the right is known as the 'Azure (green in Cantonese) Dragon'. That on the left is described as the 'White Tiger'. More of an armchair effect would give the building in our case study better protection against calamities. Like typhoons for instance, which rampage in from the south-east.\n\nIn the case of a mountain, which should be tranquil but can also signify 'authority and vigour, it may 'overpower' the natural environment. A 'killer breath' (shaar hei), as mentioned earlier, with harmful currents that travel in straight lines, may develop. There, the chi is violent. In some instances these forces can be deflected by screens, fences, water, fountains, mirrors or lucky charms. An eight-sided Baat Kwa, with Trigrams in the centre, may be used. A small, hand-held 'windmill' can be employed to disperse strong chi. With such remedial measures an unfavourable site may later be classified as favourable.\n\nNevertheless, because of inauspicious circumstances and the anger of the gods, a slope or cliff consisting of partly decomposed rock may turn to mud during a storm. Thus a hill may not provide the intended security to a building. 'Feels as if the mountain top is always watching you,' is how some villagers explain it. To overcome such 'negative influences', trees can be planted to form a 'curtain' in an effort to 'mask' the ridge (Ajmer, 1968:75). But, during the Japanese Occupation in World War II, such trees were sometimes felled because of a fuel shortage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214016, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "50\n\nin pairs on Min [Fukienese] community altars as offerings to the Jade Emperor, whose birthday is celebrated the following day and who had persuaded Yang to call off the pursuit.\n\nAn image categorically identified as the Seventh Son, Yang Yen-ssu has only been observed in one temple, in Medan in Sumatra, where it stands alone on a separate side altar simply marked, Yang Ch'i Yeh. He is portrayed as a black-bearded general, standing dressed in long yellow robes and holding a long staff but without any unique features. In a temple near Taichung where he is depicted together with the rest of his brothers he is inexplicably portrayed with a ferocious, decorated face and a bird's beak mouth. His black skin is decorated with a white [opera-style] face pattern, whilst the beak with a red edging is under a human nose. His eyes are staring, round and bulging, and he is holding an unsheathed sword at the ready. All in all, an extraordinary image which, whilst accepted and labelled as the Seventh Son by the temple staff, is completely out of character.\n\nFinally, in Seremban in central Malaysia, the temple keeper of a small rural temple pointed out a small standing figure of a soldier in armour at the rear of a crowded secondary altar. The image has no unique characteristic and could be any soldier/deity. The temple keeper identified him as Yang Sung-pao, a T'ang general who had been the protector of a Sung emperor. In Seremban he was also known as the Venerable Golden Lion, Chin-shih Ta-jen, as well as the Great General, Ta Chiang-chün.\n\nThe Eighth Son, Yang Pa Yeh, has only been noted on two altars in northern China despite the two Yang Family Daughters being numbered Eight and Nine, Yang Pa Chie and Yang Chiu Mei. These two daughters were involved in several battles fighting alongside the Sixth Son.\n\nPost Script\n\nChinese characters carved into a roadside rock beside the modern main road from the Fen River plain in northern Shansi to Inner Mongolia proclaimed that the nearby old temple had been dedicated to Wu Lang, the Fifth Son of the Yang. This was confirmed by a local peasant. The temple was in a col between two mountains, itself several thousand", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214354, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "177\n\nself and appeared back home, having lost his lucrative post, where he bore the full fury of his wife as she had been enjoying the perks of the wife of a high official. He explained that he had no intention of returning to the palace as the fortunes of the evil Zhou Xin had a further twenty years to run, and went off spending his days fishing.\n\nMany years later the father of the future victorious King Wu heard a fisherman singing and learning that the song foretold the future fall of the Shang and the victory of the Zhou he went in search of the man who had taught the fisherman the song. This turned out to be Jiang who was then encouraged to return to the court of Duke Fa, where after Duke Fa's victory he was made the Prime Minister.\n\nIn the Fengshen Yanyi he was then despatched to the mystic mountains of the West, the Kunlun Shan, where he was to seek from the great deity, Yuanshi Tianjun, the Primordial Heavenly Lord, honours for the loyal ministers, brave warriors, and all the good and bad immortals, male and female, who had died during the struggle. Jiang arrived at the Palace on the Kunlun mountains and was admitted by the White Crane Youth, Bai Hao who escorted him to meet Yuanshi Tianjun. After Jiang knelt and made his plea the Primordial Heavenly Lord promised to send a decree, which would authorise the canonisation of all the warriors, and name each in turn. Jiang returned to report to King Wu, followed a few days later by the White Crane Youth who descended amidst soft music and fragrance to deliver the decree. Jiang then ordered the Terrace to be prepared and soldiers to guard it whilst he purified himself. He entered the Terrace and after unrolling the decree read aloud the order which promised that those to be deified should be free from transmigration, and would be promoted or demoted according to their merits. He ordered that they should be worshipped by the people as protectors of the nation and its people, and they were to regulate the wind, rain and natural forces for the benefit of the people. They were authorised to reward good deeds and punish the wicked. The list of names of those deified was then hung up and the ministers and warriors ordered to approach in a lengthy queue with no one being permitted to leave it. The first to be called was Bai Jian, who was created the God of Pure Blessedness. He was followed one by one until all 365 warriors and worthies had been rewarded. Not all were straightforward. Some had followed the evil King during the struggle and had perpetrated wicked acts but had eventually recanted and had tried to make", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214898, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 313, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "287\n\nfive, offshore islets but, due to silting up over the years, they became part of the mainland. Mysterious caves within the mountain shelter altars dedicated to Buddha, different gods and genies based upon popular beliefs held by the area's inhabitants. Today, these caves still serve as religious sanctuaries. The mountains are also a valuable source of red, white and blue-green marble. At the foot of the mountains, skilful marble carvers create a great variety of objets d'arts.\n\nOur fifth day was spent in Hoi An. About 15 miles southeast of Danang, this charming old town was once a flourishing port and meeting place of eastern and western cultures in central Dai Viet under the Nguyen lords. Hoi An was originally a seaport in the Champa Kingdom; by the 15th century it had become a coastal Vietnamese town under the Tran Dynasty. In the beginning of the 16th century the Portuguese came to explore the coast of Hoi An. They were followed by the first western traders in the area. Then came the Chinese, the Japanese, the Dutch, the British and the French. In the early 1980s, UNESCO and the Polish Government took the initiative and funded a restoration program to classify and safeguard Hoi An's ancient quarters and historic monuments. The old town area borders the Thu Bon River to the South of the town. Le Loi Street was the first street to be built, about four centuries ago. The Japanese quarter with its covered bridge, Japanese style shops and houses followed half a century later, then came the Cantonese quarter a further 50 years later still.\n\nHoi An's ancient past is superbly preserved in its architecture. The old quarter is a fascinating blend of temples, pagodas, community houses, shrines, clan houses, shop houses and homes. One of the most remarkable historical architectural examples is the Japanese covered Bridge. Built by the Japanese community in the 17th century, the bridge's curved shape and undulating green and yellow tiled roof give the impression of moving water. Some pagodas and 20 Chinese clan houses stand in the centre of the ancient town. The clan house has been the meeting place for many generations of the same clan. Here they recall their origins and worship their ancestors. The Chinese migrant community built most of the temples and houses here over a span of 40 years, between 1845 and 1885.\n\nThe most characteristic examples of Hoi An's architecture are the old houses along Nguyen Thai Hoc Street. These elongated houses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215328, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 105, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "53\n\nby the Hainanese and especially those from the Hainanese county of Wanning where he is primarily prayed to by the sick. He is claimed to be extremely efficacious and able to cure or heal any sickness or injury. He usually sends his Black or White Horse Generals to help devotees and only leaves the Heavens himself for very important cases. His image has only been seen in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Borneo, Bangkok and Phnom Penh where his festival is generally celebrated on the 15th of the fifth lunar month. However, he must never be prayed to for prosperity.\n\nTwo entirely different legends describe the origins of this deity, one more popular in Singapore and southern Malaysia, and the other in Thailand and Cambodia. In neither is the Marquis identified by name and he therefore remains unidentified.\n\nHe is also referred to as:\n\nthe Lord of the Seas, Wenzhou Haizhu Houwang\n\nTongzhu Houwang The Marquis Lord of the Aboriginal People\n\nShanqin Houwang The Imperial Marquis of the Mountains\n\nThe first legend claims that a petty king in China was waved by an individual who, in the city of Wenzhou on the coast of Zhejiang province, north of and nearly opposite the island of Taiwan, was awarded the title of Marquis. This happened a long, long time ago. The ruler of Hainan, as a separate state, so the legend continued, had an image of the Marquis brought to the island of Hainan and placed in a specially built temple where he has been worshipped ever since.\n\nThe second story relates that the Marquis was, variously, a Ming governor of Hainan island or a minister of an ancient dynasty against whom, through jealousy, evil ministers plotted. They killed him and threw his body into the sea where it turned into a log and floated away. A fisherman found it, realised that it had spiritual properties and so carved it into a statue which he revered and quickly became wealthy,\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215466, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 243, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "192\n\nOn arrival, I was immediately impressed also by the warmth of the Bhutanese people. Our guide came up to me and shook my hand in welcome. The 27 of us piled into the minibuses, and were presented with a white silk scarf each, a traditional Bhutanese form of welcome. The scarf proved to be a very welcome first line of defence against later chilly winds.\n\nThe road from the airport is reputed to be the longest stretch of straight road in the country. It has no choice, considering that it shares the narrow flat valley with a river and the runway. Half way up the winding road that took us from the valley floor to the hotel, I was rather touched to see the Department of Civil Aviation building - or perhaps \"cottage\" would be a more appropriate description. This delightfully small, two-storey wooden structure, beautifully decorated with traditional patterns, had a commanding view over the entire airstrip. One could imagine Mr Director looking at his pocket watch with pride as KB125 made another greaser of a landing exactly on schedule.\n\nInto the Interior\n\nI have spent many holidays in the Appian Alps in northern Tuscany, and my first impression of Bhutan's scenery was that it is all very similar, but more so. The mountains are bigger, the valleys steeper and wider, the light brighter. Comments also abounded comparing the scenery with Switzerland - mountains, neat and tidy, uniform. It soon struck us that the houses were all from the same design catalogue. Later we found out that this was in fact the case and was due to government decree - there is a standard traditional design that must be followed. And followed it is. At 7,200 feet above sea level, the air at Paro was very fresh, and being a mile and a half nearer the sun, the ultra violet was very much in evidence. (I thanked my wife for reminding me to pack my sunscreen.) Not many of us had been for long at such an altitude and there was much debate about altitude sickness. Would we all fall over or feel nauseous?\n\nThe minibuses quickly delivered us to the Olathang Hotel, about ten minutes from the airport. First impression was that it looked a bit like a monastery, but that was a function of the required building style making everything look somewhat religious. The reception desk had above it a large framed photograph of a good-looking man wearing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]