[ { "id": 204254, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n19\n\nthe density of nesting birds is considerably less owing to the lack of suitable cover and nests are in any case difficult to find, there is a wide variety of nesting birds ranging from the great family of egrets and herons, with eight or nine species, through a list including the Black-eared Kite, White-bellied Sea-eagle, Francolin, Koel and Crow-Pheasant, drongos and mynahs, bulbuls and babblers down to the Tree-sparrow and Spotted Munia—altogether a large range.\n\nNow I shall discuss Hong Kong's birds in more detail, taking them roughly in the order of the new Check-List* so that gaps, especially in the case of rarities, may be filled in by reference to that book.\n\nThe Great Crested Grebe and the Little Grebe are both common winter visitors but are very localised. The favourite haunt of the former is Deep Bay, whilst up to forty of the latter may be observed on Tai Lam Chung Reservoir. They are rarely seen in breeding plumage and are consequently rather dull-looking. In Deep Bay, along with the Great Crested Grebe one may also see quite large numbers of cormorants, big black diving birds which feed voraciously on fish. An even larger companion of these two varieties in the same area is the Spotted-billed Pelican. Up to twenty of these enormous white birds may be seen, especially at low tide, during the coldest months.\n\nOne of the greatest attractions to bird-watchers in the Colony, particularly in June and July when there is little else to see, is the great variety of egrets and herons which visit and nest here. There are the small Yellow Bittern and Little Green Heron which may be seen in the mangroves on the edge of Deep Bay; the Great, Little, Swinhoe's and Cattle Pond Herons which nest widely in heronries throughout the northern New Territories; and the lonely Reef Egret which nests on Tung Lung Island, Waglan, and perhaps elsewhere in the southeastern part of the Colony. These birds are an ever-present source of delight with their fine plumage and graceful flight and movements. There are others in the same family, such as the Grey and Purple Herons, but they unfortunately are only visitors.\n\nDespite the abundance of water surrounding the Colony and a good deal of suitably marshy ground in the north-west, duck are by no means common, and apart from the Falcated Teal at the mouth of the Shum Chun River, and the Yellow-nib Duck and Teal in evening flight near Lok Ma Chau, very few can be expected. This is a pity, for duck are exciting birds to watch.\n\nAnnotated Check-List of the Birds of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, South China Morning Post Ltd., 1960.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204284, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n48\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nand makes a kind of extract of tea. They put that into another mixer, added a good chunk of butter, some soda, and some salt, and go on pounding until they get a well-mixed soup. It is excellent provided that the butter was good to begin with.\n\nQ: Is it true that some monks can move objects by sheer thought?\n\nA: Marco Polo described a contest between various religious personages at the court of the Great Khan at which they were put through their paces to see who would be the best chaplain to the Crown. He chose the Tibetans because their representative could make a cup rise from the table to his mouth. That was quite a long time ago and I haven't seen it done myself, but that's the story.\n\nQ: Is there any truth in the story of an operation to open the \"third eye\"?\n\nA: None whatsoever. The book which describes it is an utter fraud. It was written by somebody who had never been out of England.\n\nQ: Are the roofs of the Kumbum Monastery really gold?\n\nA: Unfortunately I have never been there but I have read accounts of it, and quite obviously it is a little bit too modern. You can have dances put on for a sum of money. But I assure you that the golden roofs in Tibet proper, although they are not pure gold, are well-coated in the stuff.\n\nQ: Is it true that Tibetans place no importance on gold and jewels, despite an abundance of them underground?\n\nA: There are certainly some gold mines in Tibet, but nobody knows whether the resources are very great. It isn't quite true to say that they don't place any importance on gold and precious stones—they like them very much. They use them as the principal offerings in religious places. All the butter-lamps are made of gold in the holy places; the scene in the holy of holies, the cathedral in Lhasa, is quite fabulous. The main image, behind large iron-mesh curtains, is surrounded by huge gold butter lamps, all blazing with butter—a wonderful sight.\n\nAlthough Tibetans used to dig for gold, it became rather an imposition, because the peasant would dig it out and then the landlord would come and say \"This is my gold\", so in general they stopped digging. Tibetans did not use much money of any sort—it was mostly barter.\n\nQ: Is there capital punishment in Tibet?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204308, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n72\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nhua-pên (story-tellers' prompt-book), we can hardly know their origin or the invaluable part played by the author of the Fêng-shên in transforming them into interesting characters.\n\nLi Ching, bearing the same name as the historical hero in the early part of the T'ang dynasty, is no doubt derived from the Buddhist heavenly king Vaisravana.\n\nWe know from many Buddhist texts the legends of the Four Heavenly Kings. According to the Abhiniskramana-sutra (出曜集經) translated by Jnanagupta in 587, they are,\n\nDhritarashtra or Chih-kuo T'ien-wang in the East, who leads the gandharvas, musicians in heaven; Virudhaka or Tseng-chang T'ien-wang in the South, who is the sovereign of the kumbhandas or deformed demons; Virupaksha or Kuang-mu T'ien-wang in the West, who is king of the nagas who dwell in their palaces at the bottom of the lakes; and Vaisravana or To-wen T'ien-wang in the North, who is head of the yakshas, strong and brave genii.\n\nThe author of the Fêng-shên Yen-i adapted these four heavenly kings in his novel (Chs.31-40) and called them \"the four generals of the Mo family\". He made them brothers and commanders who took charge of the Chia-mêng Pass under the command of the Premier Wên T'ai-shih. Their individual names are Mo Li-ch'ing, Mo Li-hung, Mo Li-hai and Mo Li-shou. But in Ch.31 when they are summoned by Premier Wên T'ai-shih, the author writes, \"The four heavenly kings (ssu t'ien-wang) strode forward,” thus unconsciously revealing their origin, and afterwards in Ch.99 they are given the titles of Tsêng-chang T'ien-wang (Mo Li-ch'ing), Kuang-mu T'ien-wang (Mo Li-hung), To-wên T’ien-wang (Mo Li-hai) and Ch'ih-kuo T'ien-wang (Mo Li-shou) respectively. In Ch.40 the author describes the weapons of these four brothers through the mouth of General Huang Fei-hu as follows:\n\nThe eldest brother Mo Li-ch'ing is twenty-four feet in height, with a face resembling that of a crab, and his beard is like copper wires. He fights always on foot with a long spear, and he has a sword which is called \"Blue Cloud\", on which there are charms and a seal saying \"earth, water, fire and wind\". The wind caused by the brandishing of this magic sword is a black wind in which hundreds of thousands of spears would run and cut off the limbs of men. Following the wind is a blaze in which flaming golden serpents cover the atmosphere with black smoke. The weapon of Mo Li-hung is an umbrella.\n\n* chúan 16, Shê-kung Ch'u-chia P'in (攝功出家品).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204319, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n83\n\ncolour, and as No-cha stirred it up in the stream heaven and earth were shaken and the river trembled. This river was called Chiu-wan Ho (Nine-bend River) and was situated at the mouth of the Eastern Sea. Ao Kuang (#), the dragon-king of the Eastern Sea, surprised at this unexpected earthquake, ordered his inspector-yaksha, Li Kên (R), to go at once and find out the cause. When the yaksha reached the river he saw that the river was red and a child was bathing there, dipping his red silk gauze in the water. He cleft the water asunder and shouted angrily: \"What prompts you, little child, to make the river red and the crystal palace shake?\" No-cha turned back and saw a monster coming out of the water, a monster whose face was as blue as indigo, whose hair was as red as cinnabar, whose mouth was big with long projecting teeth and who had in his hand a halberd. No-cha scolded, \"You monster, how can you speak like a human being?\" The yaksha was exasperated and said, “I am an appointed officer. How dare you insult me?\" He jumped up to the bank and brandished his halberd towards No-cha. No-cha was naked and could only jump aside. Then he took off the bracelet from his right arm and hurled it in the air. This bracelet was a precious weapon bestowed on the Immortal T'ai-I by the Patriarch Yüan-shih T’ien-tsun of the Jade Palace of Abstraction to protect the Chin-kuang Cave where T'ai-I dwelt. It fell upon the head of the yaksha and his brains spilled on the ground. No-cha ignored his corpse but smiled and said, \"He has stained my precious weapon!\" He sat himself again on the rock, smiling and washing the bracelet. The crystal palace was shaken again and even more violently. When Ao Kuang was vexed the soldiers came back to report, “Yaksha Li Kên was killed by a child on the bank.\" The dragon-king was frightened, \"Li Kên was appointed by the Jade Emperor; who dared to murder him?” Saying this he summoned his men, intending to go himself. No sooner had the dragon-king finished his words than Ao Ping (F), his third son, requested permission to go for the father. So, Ao Ping, at the head of a troop of sea-warriors, mounted his water-cleaving monster, and with his trident in his hand, left the palace. The form of the breaking waves was so furious that the river seemed to rise several feet. No-cha stood up and marvelled, \"This is a flood!\"... (Ch.12)\n\nIn Ch.48 of the prompt-book Tung-yu-chi (\"The Eight Saints or The Voyage to the East\") when the Eight Immortals were crossing the Eastern Sea, Lü Tung-pin (SM) initiated an idea, \"During our crossing would it not be fine for each of us to throw one precious thing into the sea so that our divine power may be revealed?\" Therefore, \"When the dragon-king of the Eastern Sea was holding a meeting in his crystal palace, he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204921, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "T. HARRISSON\n\ntiny flakes, remain. It is planned to concentrate on continuing down to deeper levels when we resume field work later in 1964.\n\n2. West Mouth (b) rest of outer mouth-rich, undisturbed stone-age occupation in light area; stratified sequence from late neolithic down to full palaeolithic occupation; about 700 square feet completed.\n\n3. West Mouth, (c) inner, half dark section not in general early use as occupation, but dense late Stone Age cemetery, and up to early Iron. Eighty burials so far exposed; most treated and left in site for fuller physical study.\n\n4. Lobang Angin (“Wind Mouth\") - a shelf of c.400 square feet high on cliff edge, fully occupied before the late Stone Age and back into the palaeolithic; excavations, half-done so far, will be completed.\n\n5. Gan Kira (Traders Cave\") — a smaller rockshelf near sea level, evidently a neolithic trading camp, which includes an apparent murder incident and scattered sub-surface skeletons (some beheaded). Fully excavated down to limestone bedrock (fossil oysters, O.gigas).\n\n6. Lobang Tulang (“Caves of Bones\")-cliff grottos full of jar and other secondary burials, mainly of the early birds' nest trade with China period (?900 - 1200 A.D.); bronze and other finds; completed.\n\n7. Kain Hitam (\"the Painted Cave\")-a separate cave high in a limestone island, discovered by Barbara Harrisson in 1958; 200 feet of wall paintings above floor littered with \"death ships\" and an abundance of bone, beads, porcelain and stoneware sherds, etc. Evidently this was the centre of elaborate prehistoric funerary rites, related to those still extant in the Niah River (as filmed). C-14 dates on four \"death ships\" so far received give between 0 and 780 A.D.\n\nExcavated in 200×5 foot square blocks correlated to wall paintings. A small section was left for a check-study in 1965.\n\n8. Samti - a small rock shelter in an isolated corner of the Great Cave formation, which also held death ship remains.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204960, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "THE DIALECTS OF HONG KONG BOAT PEOPLE\n\n61\n\nGiven these obstacles in the way of locating KS origins geographically, I will continue to speculate that the most fruitful area for further research in the problem would be in the regions bordering the northern part of the Pearl River delta. Furthermore, and on firmer ground, it seems clear that the anthropological and the linguistic data put this group of Boat People well within the mainstream of Han Chinese culture and it would take some new type of evidence to assign other origins to them. I repeat the point that similar research should be done on other Boat People groups in Hong Kong before the full picture can develop. On the basis of this one study and a series of more casual observations I would also expect to find support for the thesis, shared by others, that the Boat People are not of a single origin but come from various regions of China at various times.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The Kau Sai village and anchorage are located on Kau Sai Chau in the Port Shelter area off Sai Kung in the New Territories. My sincere thanks are due to those people of Kau Sai who gave so freely of their time to help with this project.\n\nI am especially grateful to Mrs. Stella Lau Fessler of Hong Kong for her generous assistance during all the collection phases of the research in Kau Sai and Sai Kung; she also served as informant for Standard Cantonese against which base the Kau Sai speech was compared.\n\nBy Standard Cantonese I refer to the dialect spoken by the majority of persons residing in Canton, Hong Kong, and now possibly Macau.\n\n2 See Egerod (1956) for some notes on the Hoklo and a detailed study of the dialect spoken by one particular group of Fukien Province immigrants in south Kwangtung.\n\n3 These three terms are not technical but may be self-explanatory. For a more precise definition reference should be made to Hockett (1958 pp. 137-8). My term grammar might include his terms grammatical and morphophonemic; my term lexical is roughly equivalent to his term semantic.\n\n4 The distinction between a phonetic and a phonemic description is highly significant in scientific linguistics and in oversimplified terms represents the differences between a close transcription of the gross sound features of a language and a transcription of this same language in an unambiguous script with a minimum number of symbols. Thus, a good phonetic transcription might indicate all the differences in the 'h' of he, hat, and home since the 'h' is articulated in slightly different areas from the roof of the mouth to the back of the throat as these words are pronounced. A good phonemic script, as English happens to be in this instance, would use one symbol with the guiding principle that these three 'h' sounds are nearer to each other than to other sounds in the language and that as a group they signal...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205288, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n43\n\nHalf-way up the valley Plum Grove Village (Mui Tsz Lam) climbs the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain peak, overlooking a widening stretch of land. No flat land is to be found here and farming takes place on stone terraces built on the slopes. There is plenty of water, running down the hillsides in small brooks. The third and uppermost settlement is another composite one, Grass Field Village (Mau Ping). It comprises three hamlets and some isolated houses. The valley ends in a bowl-shaped area, and the settlement is spread around on three steep sides. Farming is done entirely on stone terraces. Parts of this bowl are densely forested.\n\nRice production is a prominent feature of the valley. The irrigated fields are double-cropped but the yield is and has, within living memory, never been sufficient to cover the local consumption. It seems that even in a good year the basic food supply would last only for about seven months. Small holdings are characteristic of this valley. Bad soil and lack of arable land limit the possibilities of agricultural expansion, together with the frequent and serious damage caused to crops by typhoons. The torrents of rain accompanying the storms sometimes flood the whole area. The water carries away fertilizers and soil. On the other hand, the crops, especially the first, are exposed to periods of drought since, however well-watered the valley is, people find it extremely difficult to make use of the supply. There is a constant want of rain-water as the fields are often too far away from the brooks. The main stream pursues its way in a deep ravine and is hardly of any use at all, whilst its mouth is, as mentioned, filled with salt water during high tide. The hillsides are steep and the run-off of water is rapid.\n\nIn earlier days the rice produced in the village was consumed on the spot. According to the rice merchants in the market towns the quality of the grain from this mountain area is as good as any from the New Territories' plains. When rice mills operating in the Sai Kung and Sha Tin markets after the Pacific War (1941-45) started an exchange system, the villagers were presented with a new alternative. They could transport their high-quality rice crop to the market and there exchange it for inferior broken polished rice, generally imported from Burma or Thailand. This is now usually done, and on a 'picul for picul' system;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205403, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "158 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nTHE CHAN FAMILY OF TSEUNG KWAN O \n\nThe village of Tseung Kwan O (4) is situated in the Hang Hau sub-district of the New Territories. It stands at the head of the bay of the same name, which is the northern inlet of Junk Bay. The village is said to derive its name of \"a general's bay\" from its resemblance to a general's armour in a geomantic sense.\n\nThe village is a small one; two rows of houses of the single room type. It is surrounded by padi fields, which in front stretch down to the sea, and behind climb up the stream valley in many terraces to the Clear Water Bay Road and the village of Tseng Lan Shue (##). Although the village is but a short distance from Kowloon as the crow flies, it was, until recently, difficult to reach and thus remained largely unaffected by urban influences. Now, however, the bay has been made the home of the Colony's ship breaking industry and both shores are being reclaimed for steel rolling mills.\n\nThe village itself is compact and was perhaps originally walled. Because of this, the fact that it is situated at the mouth of the stream, and because it possesses a large area of fields, it is not surprising to find that the village is inhabited by Cantonese (or Punti) in an area where most of the other villages in the highlands are Hakka. It is also not surprising that this village was founded at an earlier date than the Hakka villages in the same district.2\n\nThe village includes a number of surnames, but the main clan is the Chan (陳). Although this clan does not now possess an official genealogy or tsuk po (族譜), having destroyed it during the Japanese occupation, they maintain records of their family for 26 generations, dating back to the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279), the first recorded ancestor being reputed, as is usual, to be a successful scholar and official. During the Sung, this branch moved from Kiangsi to Nam Tau, the district capital of the present Po On district. In their travels, they followed the route of many of the old Cantonese families of the New Territories area. The village itself was founded by the 16th generation at the beginning of the Ching dynasty (1644-1911), approximately the same date of foundation as the other large Cantonese villages of the Sai Kung district.4\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205537, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "74\n\nBEING CAUGHT BY A FISHNET\n\nON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nBig Stream Village is situated on the east shore of Tide Cove in Hong Kong's New Territories. It is a Hakka-speaking settlement exclusively inhabited by people of the surname of Zhang (*) all members of one major lineage. In 1964 there were 146 persons in the village and 33 members of the community working elsewhere. Big Stream Village is located at the mouth of a mountain valley. About one mile and a half further up this valley the small Plum Grove Village is picturesquely situated on the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain. It is inhabited by a localized major lineage of the surname of Wu (吳). In 1964 their number was 74 but over 20 members were then away.1\n\nI was told a story about these two villages. Formerly, the story has it, the people of Plum Grove Village were living on the spot now occupied by the Zhang; and the Zhang were living where the Wu are now. Because of influences emanating from the natural surroundings the Wu were not too happy about their location at the mouth of the valley. It is said that the Zhang people pointed out to the Wu that the mountain on the other side of the fields in front of the village was a fishnet. This fact, it was pronounced, had a very special effect on the settlers there. The local Hakka pronunciation of Wu, their shared surname, is Ng. But ng in Hakka also means 'fish', and the Zhang assured the settlers at the mouth of the valley that they were, for certain, in the process of being caught by the net. The Wu seem to have agreed with this suggestion, and the result was that both communities exchanged their locations for their present-day situations.\n\nThis story may need some comments. It deals with influences emanating from the natural surroundings, a believed-in order that in Chinese is designated fengshui – ‘wind — water'. It implies an aspect of ecological adjustment in that it is concerned with natural\n\n* Standard Chinese is given in pinyin form. Dr. Aijmer, whose article \"Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society\" appeared in Vol. VII of the Journal, is Assistant Professor in the University of Stockholm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205779, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "TUNG KWU ISLAND\n\n79\n\nor saucer, painted with an open flower in underglaze blue, crudely executed and very badly glazed; and the third, found at 78 cm. in the sandbank, was a bronze button wrapped in a fragment of coarse cloth, hollow and containing a small object which rattles. I interpret this as a fragment from a modern burial: its depth is noteworthy.\n\nA group of late pottery fragments is recorded on my last visit but one to the site. Three of them were at 69, 71 and 76 cm. from the surface, and one, probably a piece of tile, at 61 cm. They were near the north end of the west beach, where rainwash from the hill has increased the depth recordings compared with those on the sand isthmus. Other pieces of tile, with textile impressions on their concave sides, and gray in colour, apparently old-fashioned, lay at 1 m. depth in rainwash 25 m. north of the group described. These tiles evidently mark an occupation level, most likely fishermen's huts of the Yuan or later period; some of the fishermen may even have been using pieces of porcelain left behind by the Sung court after its retreat from the Kowloon district to its final end on the Ngai Mun mouth of the West River. The accumulation of rainwash over this level points to the island's deforestation as having started about the Sung period, when Chinese immigration from the north had increased the population, and with it the demand for timber and firewood, as the log runways on the Lantau hills testify.\n\nPUMICE\n\nAn interesting feature of the site is a layer, roughly 32 cm. thick, and from 75 to 107 cm. from the surface, containing fairly numerous rolled pebbles of pumice, stained yellow by the sand. It is confined to the east shore of the isthmus. This layer evidently points to an eruption that took place in Japan or the Philippines, possibly submarine, and coming from a magma of the acid type rather than the basic, from which the 'froth' was expelled by explosions, and was drifted by wind and currents on to the Tung Kwu beach. Similar beds of ancient pumice are found at eight other sites in the Colony, very likely more, and give a very useful datum line for correlation, like a zone fossil in geology.\n\nThis holds good also in some sites on the Tonkin (North Vietnam) coast visited by Dr. Andersson in 1938; his results were published in the Stockholm journal of the Museum of Far Eastern", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207103, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "168\n\nSUNG HOK-PANG\n\nthe heart in his mouth went off with it. The villagers gave chase but after a while there was a terrific gust of wind and the dog disappeared.\n\nThe present Kam T'in is divided into two distinct districts. The South, Naam Wai (南圍) was originally a large common or open space of grassland; the North, Pak Wai (北圍) was hilly country surrounded by mangrove swamp. The principal villages of Naam Wai are Kat Hing Wai (吉慶圍) the first village on the right-hand side as one approaches from the main road, which was built by Tang Paak King (鄧伯經) and two other men during the Shing Fa years 1465-1487 of Ming Dynasty; Wing Lung Wai (永隆圍) the village at the end of the road on the left-hand side, facing the open green where football is now nearly always in progress, which was started by Tang Shiu Kui (鄧紹舉) and seven others; and T'aai Hong Wai (泰康圍) the large walled village on the left just before one reaches the Cottage Hospital, which was founded by Tang Ts'ung (鄧聰) and four other contemporaries. Later on during the civil wars of the Hong Hei years 1662-1722 of Ts'ing dynasty these three villages were walled to protect the inhabitants from marauding bandits and soldiers. Tang Man Wai (鄧文蔚) and Tang Kaai Yuet (鄧啟悅) built the wall of T'aai Hong Wai; Tang Sui Ch'eung (鄧瑞昌) and Tang Kwok Yin (鄧國賢) built that of Wing Lung Wai and Tang Chue Yin (鄧珠彥) and Tang Chik Kin (鄧積堅) walled Kat Hing Wai. About the same time Tang Yuet Man (鄧悅民) of Kat Hing Wai and Tang P'ooi Hing (鄧培慶) of T'aai Hong Village both formed the village of Kam Hing Wai (錦慶圍), which is on the north of Kam T'in market; and Tang Chau Man (鄧秋文) of Kat Hing Wai built the village of Ko Po Ts'uen, on the left-hand side of the main road, on the west of Kam T'in market. These walls in many places are in a wonderful state of preservation to-day. Kat Hing Wai and Taai Hong Wai have very strong iron chain gates, and a tablet fixed in the wall outside the gateway of Kat Hing Wai explains the story of them. It can be roughly translated as follows:\n\n\"The inscription on the tablet of Kat Hing Wai:—\n\nSince Foo Hip, the ancestor of our family Tang who was a Government officer, came from Kiangsi to Kwang Tung in the years of Sung Ning of Sung dynasty, we lived in both waais (villages)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207544, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 312, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "304\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\npatrons of musicians and sketched them without either crab decorations or the dog. The main brother was shown holding a fan in each hand whilst the other two stood beside him with two attendants. Later in this Note, you will see that one of Chief Marshal T'ien's titles is Wu Tai Yuan Shuai. Père Doré described Wu Tai separately and sketched him as a young man with green twigs behind the ears, a large crab on his forehead, a tiny Taoist crown on his bald head and dressed in loose-fitting robes. Wu Tai, according to Doré, was accompanied by two male and two female attendants. This would appear to be the southern provinces' temple version which Doré did not realize was a manifestation of Marshal T'ien.\n\nThere are, as one would expect, many variations in characteristics in Ch'aochow and Fukienese carvings. For instance, occasionally he is represented as bald, or the front of his hair is shaven in Ch'ing fashion making him half-bald; in others he has a long queue or two long pigtails; sometimes he wears a military helmet or a scholar's cap, and in some images he has a black cock under his other foot. In several places he is represented as a youth standing on one foot with both arms raised in a dramatic, theatrical stance, and in others he is standing stolidly, with both feet together holding one or two swords. A sketch of T'ien To Yuan Shuai by a Singaporean Fukienese god carver depicted him with a red face, staring eyes and dressed in scholar's robes. (Plate 21). An actor, one of a company of Ch'aochow players in Bangkok, explained that they only had a tablet in their portable shrine, and that their image with only one crab painted on his forehead, was permanently in a temple. He told me that the single crab on the forehead meant that T'ien was the patron of actors, whereas others with the crab on the mouth represented the middle brother of the T'ien trio who is only prayed to for good health.\n\nIn one sighting in Ipoh, in North Malaya, Marshal T'ien was wearing armour, carried a sword and bell, but was barefoot and had a crab painted on his mouth. He was known to the temple priests to have been a vegetarian monk from Ch'aochow, insane as a child who had cured himself and is now worshipped for a similar cure by parents of the mentally sick. (Plate 22).\n\nAbove his image on a small backstage altar of a Foochow opera troupe in Singapore, was the carved inscription ‘Ministry of Wind", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207548, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 316, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "308\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nfind that for a joke, which he would be unable to explain to his friends, she had painted a crab in indelible ink around his mouth. The prince got away with it the first time by telling his friends that he had painted it himself for amateur theatricals. However, when next she painted one on his forehead, he was at a loss as to how to explain it away and never again demanded the company of the businessman's wife.\n\nHaving examined Chief Marshal T'ien in some detail, let us move on to a Swatow articulated figure with which it is closely connected. At the back of a bamboo temporary stage of a travelling Ch'aochow opera company in Singapore there was a small shrine (Plate 23) on one of the crates used for transporting the actor's robes. This shrine contained Marshal Tien seated well back, under a plaque bearing the title Han Lin Yuan (✯✯E) (The Han Lin Academy*). Before it, between a doll's size wicker chair and a bamboo pot of incense sticks, was a seated articulated puppet (Plate 24) dressed in a short-sleeved jacket and knee-length trousers. He was known as Chi Hsiang Ko (**) (Lucky Brother) and, as one of the actors explained, he is a three-year-old child, another form of Marshal T'ien, who when seen outside the bounds of the theatre is an extremely potent fertility deity and who, when on a permanent altar in a temple, is also prayed to for luck. This articulated image of a child deity can be seen in several temples, (one especially attractive one—rather surprisingly nude—being in a cave temple near Tanjong Rambutan in Perak), all worshipped by the childless of the Ch'aochow communities for sons and daughters. One temple keeper, possibly with tongue in cheek, said that Chi Hsiang is the brother of Kuan Yin, who in one of her forms is the 'Giver of Sons'***.\n\nThe Three Jesters\n\nIn his articles on three prominent puppets Schipper explains that the 'Jesters' who stand out amongst the total of 72 puppet heads and 36 bodies of the Fukienese puppet theatres, are the three gods of marionettes. He continued that puppet plays are connected\n\n* The Chinese nation's highest academic institution during Imperial times.\n\nSK. M. Schipper: 'The Divine Jester', Academica Sinica 21:1961, pp. 81-94.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208150, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 189, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n173\n\nfamous mountains from Tung Koon, Sun On and to the east of Kwangtung' (JHKBRAS13(1973): 115.) Indeed, one of Po's poems appears on the tomb inscription of one of the first ancestors of the Tang clan who is buried on a little hill opposite my office in Tsuen Wan.\n\n14. In the case of our Tai Mo Shan, it is, I believe, far from being the case that its history, legend and mythology are fully known, either as recorded or oral history. An enquiry into this subject among the older residents of the hill villages and the larger settlements beneath its slopes would be a worthy subject, before what is still remembered in a long unbroken verbal tradition is lost amidst the disruptions of removal and the distractions of modernisation.\n\n15. I have come across several examples of its legends, one old and one new in the making. The older is a story of locomotive rocks, of the kind mentioned by Krone. It comes from Chuen Lung village on the west of the mountain, and is as follows:\n\nHeung Shek had already been in existence over three hundred years ago, before Chuen Lung Village came into being. The story goes that Heung Shek was a group of rocks lying on top of Tai Mo Shan. They gradually moved towards the fung shui \"mouth\" of Tsuen Wan (near the present Tsing Yi Bridge) intending to improve the Tsuen Wan fung shui as a whole. But then, seen by an expectant mother, they could move no more and stayed at their present location.\n\nNow Heung Shek is divided into two parts: the first being the 'gong' rock weighing approximately 20 tons and lying next to the 'drum' rock, the second being the drum rock weighing approximately 30 tons. Also, lying aslant the top of the second is a long flat boulder. If one picks up a stone and knocks against it, a hollow echo sound is produced. Amongst the rocks, there is a fissure wide enough to allow a man to go through. Inside there exists something like a stone chamber. Such things are really fantastic and too mystic to understand.\n\n16. The second, which I found in a 1951 Guide Book to Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, published by the well-known newspaper, the Wah Kiu Yat Pao, is about a rock called 'Hero's Rock'. I was, as you might expect, all set to expect a stirring tale of battles long ago, but when I came to track down the history, local worthies said that the name was given by the pre-war", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208195, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 234, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "218\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nOnce this trade was taken up, not a single family member could sit idly by. If the family consisted of only five members, all five had to be mobilized: first of all, to grind the beans and then boil the paste. After the paste was hot enough, one member had still to keep heating it to produce the layers of bean skim. Another member carried the products prepared the day before to Kowloon where he sold them to the shops and bought more beans. The remaining members, after finishing their breakfast, had to climb the hills to look for dry grass which they fetched home for fuel. This was the hard way by which our ancestors managed to make a hand-to-mouth living and rear us.\n\nNowadays, we have electricity, motor and transport facilities and the manufacturing process has mostly been mechanized. The kind of hard life that our ancestors once led will never be repeated.\n\nADDENDUM\n\nThe brief account that follows is taken from Peng-chun Chang's China at the Crossroads (London, Evans Brothers, 1936) p.145.\n\nAn example of a type of manufacturing common in the villages is the preparation of tofu, or bean curd. A tofu shop may be seen in nearly every village. In this shop is the mill used for crushing the beans. This mill is run by human or animal power. The beans are ground in the mill and then mixed with water. The liquid, called bean milk, is squeezed from the mass and boiled in a boiler which is part of the shop's equipment. This boiled milk is frequently eaten. If, however, certain chemicals are added to the boiled liquid, it solidifies and is known as bean curd, or tofu. The tofu manufacture represents a rough, everyday type of manufacture common in the villages. It exhibits the skill of accumulated experience, for this food has been common in the diet of the Chinese people for centuries.\n\nTofu is high in protein and takes the place of dairy products and meat in the diet of the people. Recent scientific experimentation in China is endeavouring to find a commercially profitable way of reducing the bean milk to a powder to take the place of imported powdered milk.\n\nChang was a native of Tientsin and presumably is referring mainly to North China. For a recent detailed account from Hong Kong based on field work in 1961 and 1963 see Vol. One, Part III, 27, \"The Bean Curd Maker\" of Cornelius Osgood's The Chinese. A Study of a Hong Kong Community (Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Press, 3 vols, 1975), pp. 393-404. These volumes contain a wealth of information on many traditional economic undertakings.\n\nFOUR CHINESE ‘BANKS' FAIL, PARTNERS BLAME HEAD\n\nThe following is extracted, in part, from a report in The Washington Post Metro for Sunday 26 February, 1978.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208955, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n85\n\nThe basic premise of geomancy is the location of ch'i, the cosmic breath, of the site in question. This ch'i is dispersed by wind and carried by watercourse; too much of each or both will drive the site's good influences away, and too little movement will cause stagnation of the influences. An ideal site should be south-facing and constitute the following topographical features: The hills should have the formation of an armchair; those in the rear should fence off evil spirits brought in by the cold bitter northerly wind, those on the left and right should flank it like embracing arms, and the front should be opened or unobstructed such that view, airiness, and sunlight can be brought in by the yang spirit. These features are represented by the four numinous animals: the azure dragon on the left, the white tiger on the right, the red bird in the front, and the black tortoise in the back. Thus, the point where the two forces meet, and in a proportion of three to two of the azure dragon and the white tiger in elevation, is the perfect location for burial and building. As to water, a site with confluence of streams brings good influences; conversely, branching does the opposite. \"Sharp bends are bad since they make straight arrow-like lines, meander being the natural path of good influence...\" However, favourable and auspicious sites are not always readily available, and less desirable ones are remediable by means of tree planting, or building a fung-shui pagoda at proper places, or removing contours and watercourses according to geomantic principles. As fung-shui can bring good influences to people if dwellings are properly placed, so can it cause ill fate if they are placed otherwise. According to a geomantic professor I interviewed in Hong Kong, inauspicious fung-shui can induce illness or even death in the family if, for example, windows or doors or kitchen stoves are mislocated. The same fatality may occur if a beam of a house is erected directly over one's head in a sleeping area. Or a house is in a baleful location if it is situated at the crossroad of a Y-junction. My investigations concur with the Yang Dwelling Classics, which says in the opening paragraph: “All dwellings should not be at the mouth of a thoroughfare, or in a monastery (Buddhist temple grounds), nor come near to a shrine, nor be where plants and trees do not grow (to screen and protect), nor in an old battleground ... nor at the gate or opening of a large wall, nor opposite a prison gate.\"12 In Maurice Freedman's research\n\nyang", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210063, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "13\n\n \n+ + +\n\n \naway some at will; the remaining ones were counted to see whether they were even or odd. To avoid making a mistake, they were arranged by twos, each pair in the shape of a cross. If at the end one cross remained (an even number), the result was a bad indication, hsiung (†4: 2 sticks inside a container); if only one stick remained, it was a good omen, chỉ (l'¡ : the top shows 3 sticks, which is clearer than just one; the bottom shows a ‘mouth', probably replacing an older writing of a container)”*\n\n \nThis originally very simple technique, in which only 2 kinds of answers were obtained, “yes” and “no”, developed into more complex forms: perhaps the question was repeated several times (cp. the present-day \"moon-block\" divination) and the results written above each other. In that case, an even number was expressed by two short lines written in a horizontal way: - - It had nothing to do with yin or a ‘broken line'. An odd number was expressed by just one line. The Iching philosophy started from the trigrams: at one time the eight different answers obtained by repeating the oracle three times were interpreted in a cosmological way. That left the door open for further speculation and resulted in the 64 hexagrams. At this stage, numerology lost its meaning. The only trace of the older method of counting sticks in a container is found in the use of 50 yarrow stalks: they are still counted, but merely to obtain one of the 64 hexagrams, not any longer to find a positive or a negative answer to one's question.\n\n \nThere are many other ways of using a number of dried stalks in divination: several methods are found in China as well as in other cultures, and it is not certain that the old milfoil method has always been a uniform technique. One other hypothesis is that a number of sticks were thrown at random on the ground and the diviners would draw interpretations from the configurations obtained. This is suggested by the definition of “geomancy” as given in Webster's dictionary: “a kind of divination by figures or lines formed by a handful of earth cast on the ground, or by dots or points drawn at random.””\n\n \nOne can clearly see how lines can be obtained by throwing a handful of stalks. To go even one step further: one can find a strong similarity and perhaps a historical link between oracle bone", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210343, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 314, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "293 \n\nis the gayest of the gay cities. Yet I am told that the officers of the army and navy do not care much about being quartered at Hong Kong. Even gaiety becomes monotonous on an island scarcely nine miles long, so rocky that you cannot ride, and where pirates and squalls keep people from boating or fishing.\n\nThe island formerly constituted a part of the district Sun-on. It is scarcely a mile from Kiu Lung or Kow Loon on the main land, which is also British property. It is mainly granitic, but with a varied geology, so as to make it a most interesting place of study. There are some volcanic dykes in places, and traces of minerals, especially lead and molybdenum, of which fine specimens may be easily obtained. The highest peak is 1,825 feet high, and there are other peaks ranging between that height and 1,000 feet. Hong Kong as far back as the Ming dynasty belonged to the Tang family, whom I suppose everybody knows. It is an island at the mouth of the Canton river, and was a noted resort for pirates, who used to lie in wait for sailing craft in the Ly-ee-mun pass, a very narrow strait between the mainland and the island. In January, 1841, it was ceded to Great Britain. The capital is called Victoria.\n\nWood's description continues with surveys of the vegetation, fauna, and geology. It was part of a long article “Geographical Notes in Malaysia and Asia”, which was published in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales, in 1888, shortly before his death.\n\nWoods: An Appreciation\n\nAs in Sir George Bowen's day, so in our own, there is a tendency to try to set religion and science in opposition. But more than a century ago, we find in Woods a lived conviction that there is no such opposition. His scientific work is certainly a product of his own time, but his Australian research is still cited in official geological publications.\n\nIn the antipodes, interest in Woods is growing. He has been the subject of three biographies, two of which have a full list of his scientific publications. There are many minor works about him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210414, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 21, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "2\n\nBARTHOLOMEW P.M. TSUI\n\nordinary run of religious sects in Hong Kong and render it worthy of attention.\n\nII. History of a Faith-healer\n\nPerhaps the best introduction to Tan Tse Tao is to tell the story of its founder, Patriarch Lo Ka Ping.2 Born into a well-to-do family in the District of Hsiang-shan in Kwangtung Province in the year 1894, the Patriarch received a thoroughly Western education from Protestant missionaries.1 He studied in Lingnan University, again a Christian institution, and graduated with a B.A. degree at its first convocation in 1918. He became a tutor in English at the Chung-shan University (中山大學) and later became the headmaster of a number of middle schools.*\n\nIt is no longer possible totrace the exact route of the Patriarch's religious development in his early years. Suffice it to say that he became a fervent Christian and married the daughter of a Protestant minister by the name of Tan (譚). Apparently, he did not show any interest in Chinese philosophy or religion. He adopted a Western style of life and became a keen player of tennis, joining tournaments including at least one in Hong Kong. In his spare moments he also took up traditional physical exercises, to be precise, the set of exercises called I-ken-ching.5\n\n6\n\nIt was during one of these exercises that Patriarch Lo felt God's presence, an experience which radically changed his life. Recounting the event he said: \"The Supreme Spirit's manifestation occurred on the 18th day of the eighth month of the year yi-hai (乙亥). The location was at my residence Man Lu in Canton.6 While I was exercising in the twelfth position of the I-ken-ching, suddenly I felt that all my limbs moved of their own accord. It was as if my ten fingers were charged with spiritual energy and light. The execution of the exercises was not only effortless and skilful, but I was also absolutely tireless. The same thing happened to me a second time, and again a third time. At first, I thought this was an effect of my subconscious mind, but later it dawned on me that it must have been a gift from God. Then I burned incense and bowed in veneration.7 Not knowing how to communicate with God, I simply asked with my mouth\n\n8", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210586, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "174\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\nback gate, sing a hymn to draw the crowd, then Mr. Malcolm steps out to preach to them. A great many of them won't come here, so we go to them. When they are eating their food you may think a queer time to hold a meeting, but do you know how they eat their food! And it's perhaps the only time to catch the men. The men do not eat with their wives and they do not know such a custom as tablecloth and knives and forks, except as they have heard of the extravagant foreigners. But the man of the house takes his bowl of rice, if he can afford it, or if not his bowl of dough strips and perhaps a bowl of salted garlic or some kind of greens. If it's the first or fifteenth of the month he will have another bowl with some stewed meat and onions etc. These he puts down on the ground and he sits on his front door step holding his bowl of dough strips which he pushes into his mouth with his chopsticks, stopping once in a while to take a little relish from one of the bowls on the ground. Those on the ground are public property if anyone else is eating with him, all dipping into the common bowl. Such is the life of our back lane. The women eat when their masters have finished. And perhaps our meetings disturb some of their calculations, for the men may have their bowl along with them and the housewife may not have another. However, there are people in Taiho who spend more money than we do over their everyday meals, and they do not eat them on their front steps, but they do not live in our back lane.\n\nWe think these back lane people keep very many from coming here, one man trying to frighten some women away from us said \"the Boxers will finish them all off yet!\" And several apparently friendly women invited me to drink tea with them one afternoon when I was passing. I refused as I was in a hurry, and had no sooner passed than I overheard “Foreign devil”. There seems to be an organized opposition against all of us. The city is largely Mohammedan, and they seem almost impossible to work with. \"All things are possible with God” and “to him that believeth.\" So we will continue to hope and pray. We have our little encouragements. I could write you several. The Lord has not forgotten us, nor these people. I have taken up this letter with things of not much account, if it's unprofitable. I am sorry to have taken your time. I will write next time more of my", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211013, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "50\n\ntended to concentrate on the areas of the curriculum considered most important, which certainly included the English language. An almost universal feature of the private tuition business was the relatively high level of fees. Indeed, private coaching (and cramming) had become something of a racket. It had certainly become so prevalent by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century that official notifications and advertisements for teaching posts in government schools regularly included, as a matter of course and as a form of inducement, the formula \"Private tuition is allowed by permission of the Director of Education.\" Mok's emphatic claim that his method could be, and should be, practised without recourse to a teacher was probably a very effective selling ploy which would have appealed to those who disliked paying high fees as well as those who suspected that neither the teaching ability nor the conscientiousness of private tutors was all that it should be.\n\nIn the preface Mok Man Cheung outlines briefly the nature of his \"unique\" pronunciation system, which, by utilizing the sounds normally associated by Cantonese with written Chinese characters so that they could mouth English words, would have appealed to the national pride of his fellow Chinese residents of Hong Kong. At the same time, however, he was prepared to compromise his Chinese-ness by arranging that “all Chinese characters given for pronunciation of English words are to be read from left to right\". This attempt simultaneously to attract support from many sections of Hong Kong society—the increasingly influential radical Chinese, unsympathetic to the Imperial Government but insistently proud of their Chinese culture, the more pragmatic Chinese businessmen, the westernized Chinese, and even the colonial establishment—was good commercial practice. The preface also helps to emphasize a distinction between Mok Man Cheung's \"higher valuations” and his “lower valuations”, in the sense that Gunnar Myrdal made of these concepts. According to the outward, open and rationalized “higher valuations” of Mok Man Cheung, Chinese readers and users of his book might find his inclusion of model letters \"handy in their everyday business and social relations with their European friends.\" From the fact that the book contains not a single sample of an informal, friendly letter to a European, one might infer that Mok Man Cheung's\n\n!\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211017, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "54\n\nIn addition to the vocabulary one might expect in these sections (like “Plaintiff”, “Judge”, “Barrister at law”, “Fine”, “Reprimand”, etc.), one discovers “Sly brothel”, “Registered prostitute”, “Utter false money”, “Branded”, “Put in the cangue”, “Squeezing the ankles”, “Strangled (to death)”, and “Slap the mouth”.\n\nIn many of the sections of this part of the book, Mok Man Cheung is able to demonstrate considerable expertise in the special or technical vocabulary of different crafts, trades, businesses, and professions. \"Silks and Cloths\" (p. 110f.), \"Timbers” (p. 130f.), “Bamboo and Rattan Wares” (p. 134f.), “Iron Wear” [sic] (p. 135f.), \"Vessels and Boats”, “Building Contractor's Terms” (p. 149f.), “Wood Work” (p. 154f.), and the special \"Tallyman's Vocabulary\" are all examples of a practical acquaintance with the fields or conscientious research. There are, however, other sections of the book where, with a similar sense of confidence and authority, Mok Man Cheung actually betrays his lack of familiarity either with the content or with the precise idiom used. In the second section of “Short Sentences”, for example, Mok Man Cheung ranges from such idiomatic expressions as “He got tight” and \"all squared up\" to near misses like \"The real with the false got mixed up” and “He is pulling your legs”. Even the accuracy of local information is wanting in some places, though this, again, could be the fault of slipshod copy editing or careless proof reading. Under “Roads, Streets and Public Offices in Hongkong”, for example, a reader would have been puzzled to find, right next to Bowen Road and Kennedy Road, a certain \"Mac Donald Road”, presumably in error for MacDonnell Road.\n\n17\n\nThe tone of the model letters which Mok Man Cheung offers his readers is invariably formal and respectful, even if the matter is one of reminding a client to pay his bills. The nearest Mok Man Cheung gets to expressing irritation is in the brief note at the top of p. 427:\n\nDear Sir,\n\nI have been to your office and have wasted nearly half an hour to see you, so pardon me for not staying any longer.\n\nYours faithfully,\n\nA. King.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211259, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 320, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "295\n\non 1 October 1930. The Chinese, in the opinion of Dr. Atwell, had not done their homework. The administrator sent by the central government was a naval officer. Instead of working within the framework of local traditions, the central government chose to embark on a programme of immediate modernization and reform, doing away with practices of many centuries, leading to deprivation and resentment. Economic and social conditions continued to deteriorate. The area was again occupied by Japanese forces when the second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937.\n\nIf Dr. Atwell's work had to be faulted at all, it would be on her preponderant reliance upon British documents. Even what Chinese policies were and how people felt about them were discerned from Foreign Office records. Motivations and reasons for adoption of certain policies, therefore, were not exactly taken from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Dr. Atwell has a more than respectable command of Chinese, and could have investigated more Chinese sources in greater depth. Perhaps her mentors at the University of London did not encourage consultation of Chinese historical archives. Perhaps the documents were not accessible. In addition, it must have been a disappointment to Dr. Atwell and a loss to the readers that she was denied access to some important personal papers of Lockhart.\n\nIt must also be noted that Chinese central governments did not normally look at localities except as a small part of the whole. Policies and programmes were adopted for the entire country, and Weihaiwei came only as a part of it. It was, as Dr. Atwell has pointed out, T. V. Soong, Minister of Finance, therefore, rather than the local administrator, who determined fiscal policies for Weihaiwei. The National Government was following the time-honoured tradition of giving priority to the total policy over individual localities. Perhaps, had British administrators followed modernization programmes adopted elsewhere in China, Chinese rulers after 1930 would not have needed to use such drastic means. Scholars in future may examine Chinese materials more fully, including extant archival sources which are becoming routinely consulted in Chinese historical research, and may find some of the answers raised by Dr. Atwell's investigations.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211882, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 297, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "272\n\nbeautifully marked by black bars on a white ground.\n\nOn Thursday there were several albatrosses. The first mate says the wings of the largest would have measured quite 12 feet if spread out. They look almost as big as a dog of fair size, and fly round close to the stern of the ship. The bird I skinned was cased with fat, and very oily indeed. Directly they are caught and placed on deck they begin to vomit oil, and can never rise to fly from the deck.\n\nThis cold weather is very agreeable after such a roasting as we had in the tropics. Soon however we shall experience the second edition which will be hotter. The captain has behaved uncommonly well lately, and has almost forgotten to swear. Moreover he is getting quite kind and obliging. Capt Moate and I keep together, and he finds that two to one is rather too many, so he had to knock under a little.\n\nOur provisions have lasted far better than I anticipated; we have still quite a respectable stock of fowls and vegetable. My mouth, however, quite waters for the pine-apples, mangosteins, bananas, yams, etc. which we shall get at Java when we get there. Our yesterday's dinner will give you a fair idea of what we have. Roast fowl, cold pork, preserved mutton pie, green peas preserved, potatoes, plum pudding (bottled plums), cheese, etc. etc. There is nothing to complain of as regards food. Yet I do not get fat upon it someway or other. I believe it is for want of exercise. They tell me I ought to drink wine, but as long as I can I shall be a tee-totaller.\n\nThe captain's wife has been very unwell for some days. The sea evidently does not agree with her. A breeze is just now beginning to spring up, although it is hardly a favorable one. The sunset is very fine indeed. There is a ship just in sight, and the captain has just gone on the deck with his glass. I shall often be thinking of home, and all my friends and relations tomorrow. I can picture you all out now at home. Mother and Siss busy in the shop, and having a long chat with some old woman or other on Saturday night.\n\nMonday, June 3rd\n\nSince my last entry upwards of a fortnight has passed away, during which I have passed through no end of difficulties and misfortunes, that I am almost disheartened, and have not had the courage to attempt the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211903, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 318, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "293\n\nfrom our journey's end. The wind for days has sent us along at two or three miles an hour; but we hope it is now freshening for good. We ought here to have the regular SE monsoon, but it seems we do not deserve it. The captain tries to persuade everybody that it is through someone on board; and often he makes out that no ship can sail, with a b---- of a parson on board, as he considers me. All I wonder at is that his swearing has not been more severely punished, and that worse visitations have not befallen us. It is truly wretched to live with such a man, whom you perpetually feel to be your enemy, and whom you know hates you from the very bottom of his heart. Nowhere can I get out of the way of his swearing; and his daily conversation, saying nothing of his swearing, is enough to disgust even the lowest of the low.\n\nThe night before last an amusing incident occurred, which at the time was rather alarming. Of course you know these islands are infested with Malay Pirates, who attack every ship that falls in their way, and murder the crew to get the cargo, after which they sink the ship. About four o'clock I was woke out of sleep by a shout. I heard the captain run on deck and in a tone of despair say: \"Good God, it is a pirate boat alongside; we shall all be murdered.” I instantly got up, and dressed, and after putting my watch out of sight, was ready to sell my life only after trying my best at fighting. I determined that if I was robbed, the fellows should pay dearly for what they got. No one had seen the boat come alongside. The lookout had not seen it through negligence, and the second mate on the quarter deck had not seen it, because it lay the other side of the mainsail. But nobody moved, and there the boat lay, till at last we came to look closely at it, and found that it was an old tree that had been washed away by the sea, and drifted along side of the ship. The shoals of fish following it and leaping out of the water, sounded like the oars of a boat. Poor captain's guilty conscience made him a coward. He did nothing and said nothing through fright. His heart I believe was up in his mouth, and he came down to his cabin, where I heard him vomiting at a fine rate. It just shows what he is, with all his bullying. It was, however, very gratifying to find out our mistake. Yet I cannot reflect that if it had been a true alarm, there could have been but little resistance, since the firearms are kept out of the way and out of order. We have nearly 50 muskets, but not one can be used. Our two signal guns are both dismounted, and lie down on the main deck.\n\nThe heat continues very great, but it does not effect me in the least.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211999, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 414, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "nine Fung Shui sites in the Dragon's Mouth (ref. EMPZ-). The story goes that the Ho family used to worship there twice every year, at the Spring and Autumn rituals. They required all the boat-people to use their vessels to make a floating bridge, so that the descendants could go to and fro to worship at the grave. It was solely because the boat-people feared the power of the Ho family that they obeyed their commands. Because of this, the boat-people all considered for a long time whether it was possible to destroy the Fung Shui. The result was that they employed a Taoist of great magical powers. He dug a hole on one side to allow him to inspect the bone-urn. He saw that the bone-urn was completely wrapped around with the roots of a banyan tree. The Taoist realised that the name of the site corresponded with the reality. He therefore cut away all the banyan roots. However, the next day, when he went back to inspect, he found that they were all back as before. In the same way, he cut the roots away on a number of occasions, only to find that they immediately returned to their original form. Eventually, the Taoist took a black dog and a black cock and sprinkled their blood all around the cut back banyan roots. In this way the Golden Bell Hanging on a Silken Thread was totally destroyed, for the roots could never grow back into their original form. After this, Ho, the Minister of the Left, found it very difficult to retain either his position or his life, and the boat-people never again had to suffer the hardship of building a floating bridge\". \n\n389 \n\nP.H. HASE \n\nNOTE \n\nJournal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 28, pp. 198-203. \n\nTHE WHITE TIGER \n\nWhenever an opera performance is to be staged in a venue where no operas have ever been staged before, it is customary for the actors to stage a short piece called \"The White Tiger\" (白虎), first, before any of the advertised operas. This piece involves a fight between a man dressed in black and an actor dressed as a “white” (usually yellow) tiger.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212026, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 441, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "416\n\nOctober 1930. The Chinese, in the opinion of Dr. Atwell, had not done their homework. The administrator sent by the central government was a naval officer. Instead of working within the framework of local traditions, the central government chose to embark on a programme of immediate modernization and reform, doing away with practices of many centuries, leading to deprivation and resentment. Economic and social conditions continued to deteriorate. The area was again occupied by Japanese forces when the second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937.\n\nIf Dr. Atwell's work has to be faulted at all, it would be on her preponderant reliance upon British documents. Even what Chinese policies were and how people felt about them were discerned from Foreign Office records. Motivations and reasons for adoption of certain policies, therefore, were not exactly taken from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Dr. Atwell has a more than respectable command of Chinese, and could have investigated more Chinese sources in greater depth. Perhaps her mentors at the University of London did not encourage consultation of Chinese historical archives. Perhaps the documents were not accessible. In addition, it must have been a disappointment to Dr. Atwell and a loss to the readers that she was denied access to some important personal papers of Lockhart.\n\nIt must also be noted that Chinese central governments did not normally look at localities except as a small part of the whole. Policies and programmes were adopted for the entire country, and Weihaiwei came under them only as a part of the whole. It was, as Dr. Atwell has pointed out, T. V. Soong, Minister of Finance, therefore, rather than the local administrator, who determined fiscal policies for Weihaiwei after 1930. The National Government was following the time-honoured tradition of giving priority to the total polity over individual localities. Perhaps, had British administrators followed modernization programmes adopted elsewhere in China, Chinese rulers after 1930 would not have needed to use such drastic means. Scholars in future may examine Chinese materials more fully, including extant archival sources which are becoming routinely consulted in Chinese historical research, and may find some of the answers to the questions raised by Dr. Atwell's investigations.\n\nIndividual treaty ports in China as well as other parts of Asia, large and small, are receiving attention from scholars. Meanwhile, British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers should be read by all who are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212133, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "52\n\nNow while such a statement might have been reasonable if applied to the Christian Byzantine empire in 781, it certainly did not represent the true state of affairs in Syria, which had been under Arab Moslem rule for nearly 150 years. Here the author had in mind the Christian culture of the wider Mediterranean world, and was not thinking of conditions in Syria alone.\n\nThe term ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching', was a striking and original expression, appropriate for a religion whose founder claimed to be the Light of the World. The character ching, 'brilliant', could be found in Buddhist contexts with happy connotations. It was a term which may also have particularly appealed to Persians, whose religious thought, whether Zoroastrian, Manichean, or Christian, has traditionally stressed the conflict between light and darkness.\n\nInterestingly, the Nestorians used a rare, but apparently permissible, form of the ching character. Its normal form consists of the character ching, 'great', which supplies the pronunciation, surmounted by the radical jih, 'sun', which indicates the meaning. The Nestorians transposed one horizontal stroke to convert the radical jih into the character kou, 'mouth', and to make a reciprocal change in the ching character below, which includes the character kou among its elements. At least thirteen variants of the character ching are known to have been used by Chinese calligraphers, but most, if not all, involve only minor alterations which enhance the character's basic meaning. A Yüan dynasty example of Chou Sheng-chou, for example, has an extra stroke, giving two suns. The Nestorian version, on the other hand, is not found elsewhere, and achieves an effect which goes beyond the elegant variation permitted to eminent calligraphers. The Nestorian variant is dominated by the kou radical, and its effect is to subtly subvert the impression made by the character in its normal form and to suggest that the 'brilliant teaching' is a doctrine to be spread to others, to be communicated by word of mouth.\n\nThe expression ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching', occurs several times in the Sian tablet inscription. The character ching, 'brilliant' also occurs on its own in a number of different contexts in the inscription, sometimes as an adjective meaning little more than 'bright', sometimes implying 'Christian', and occasionally, when applied to the Messiah, seeking to convey a sense of divine splendour. Christian churches are ching-ssu, 'brilliant monasteries', Christian priests ching-ssu\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212256, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "175\n\n3.\n\n4.\n\n(to make a posture and show one's face), the actor goes through a series of stylised stage movements known as tiu dai ga (literally \"to dance the grand posture\") which is often used in Cantonese opera at battle scenes when a general appears onstage.\n\n5.\n\nWith another series of gestures and stage movements in a style similar to mime, the Deity of Fortune goes indoors, falls asleep, wakes up and discovers that his tiger has gone. The Deity goes out and searches for the tiger but cannot find it. He then climbs up and stands on the top of the wooden table, symbolizing that the Deity is now on the top of a mountain and waits for the tiger to appear. One of the backstage workers often hides under the table to keep the structure steady and firm.\n\n6.\n\nThe White Tiger actor enters the stage from stage right. Sometimes an actor might choose to enter with his back turned towards the audience (if there are any) so that the White Tiger's magical power would not hurt them.\n\nThe White Tiger crawls towards the piece of pork, grabs it and puts it through the mouth of the tiger mask. To symbolize the consumption of the pork, the actor throws it beneath the edge of the stage.\n\nThe Deity of Fortune jumps down from the table and fights with the White Tiger. After some struggle, the Deity surmounts the tiger and sits on its back. A backstage worker then goes onstage and hands a chain to the Deity who then fits it to the tiger's mouth.\n\n7. After the capture of the White Tiger, the Deity of Fortune holds the ends of the chain in his left hand and raises the wooden staff upright with his right hand. In order not to harm the troupe members backstage, the two actors keep facing the audience. With a backstage worker pulling its tail, the White Tiger and Deity of Fortune step backward towards the Tiger Gate at stage left. Upon their arrival at the gate, one of the workers helps the two actors to remove the mask, hat and beard; another worker assists in the cleaning of the painted face with a thin pile of joss papers. Sometimes a towel is used instead. Interviews with some experienced actors reveal that the tradition prescribes that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212259, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "178\n\nAs a major form of entertainment business, a troupe has to reinforce a set of management rules, probably through trial and error, accumulation and empirical experiments, to maintain harmony among its members and keep the theatre in good conditions. But having to perform day after day and year after year in temporary structures, which could be situated in an isolated area miles away from local residences, and having to spend so much time travelling from village to village, it is understandable that troupe members might easily incline towards religion and in this way \"dress\" their empirical rules.\n\nFunctionally, the taboo of restricting the activities of the troupe employees in the vicinity of the \"new stage\" will help to ensure the health and safety of the employees as the firecrackers and joss sticks, and the burning of the mock money, form a kind of fumigation process which cleans the air and scares away snakes and other harmful rodents which might infest a plot of uncultivated land. The practice of writing an \"open mouth\" also serves to remind the employees of the importance of singing and speaking well in their performances.\n\nIt has long been the traditional aesthetics of Cantonese opera that a performance is evaluated first in its sing (sound), then in the sik (appearance) and last in its ngae (art and technique). The taboos related to the opening and shutting of mouths also reflect this consciousness of the primary importance of \"oral activities\".\n\nAs fire has been and still is a major threat to the temporary theatres, Cantonese operatic employees worship the deity Wa Gwong (literally \"bright and brilliant\"), who is also the deity of fire, as the profession's major patron deity. Undoubtedly, paying respect to this deity reminds the troupe members of their major threat.\n\nSimilarly, the reasons for placing joss sticks at the edge of the front stage are twofold. Firstly, the action itself arouses the actor's awareness of the danger of falling down. Secondly, the lit joss sticks placed there serve as a marker for the stage edge, so as to facilitate the actor's keeping away from it.\n\nThe practical functions of the taboos and religious practices which have been adopted by Cantonese opera employees might well suggest that such taboos and practices were originally products of repeated empirical trials, which have gradually been accumulated in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212350, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 292, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "269\n\nwas more proper. In the document translated below, the first view tends to be assumed; it is worth bearing in mind that there was a different way to view the question of rights to toll.\n\n“A VILLAGE WAR IN SHAM CHUN\n\nWhen we travel in either direction between Hong Kong and Lilong, our route usually passes the market of Sham Chun, or, to be more precise, the two markets and cluster of villages which bear this name.\n\nThis area lies about three hours walk to the south-west of Lilong. It also lies several hours walk from the mouth of a stream which flows into the Pearl River. This stream is not really fully navigable. At the ebb-tide the passenger boats at Sham Chun lie on the mud for a certain time: with the flood-tide, however, they can make their way down to the vast body of water of the main river. In the same way they return back up the stream to Sham Chun. Because of this, Sham Chun is one of the most significant ports in the district of San On. Every three days many boats leave here for Hong Kong. Similarly, there are regular ferry connections with Canton, Fu Mun, and Nam Tau.\n\nThis lively traffic brings considerable prosperity to the inhabitants of Sham Chun. A major factor in this prosperity is the \"Transit Toll\". This is a sort of toll taken on goods leaving the port. It is levied on all goods as they are brought to the ships. Particularly important in this respect are the pineapples and pears which, in the harvest season, are carried in hundreds of loads each week from the warehouse area near Sham Chun, where there are rows of godowns, to be shipped out to Hong Kong, Canton, and elsewhere.\n\nThe right to levy this \"Transit Toll” on goods originally belonged, not to the main village of Sham Chun, but to the village of Lo Wu, about half-an-hour's walk away, and to the Yuen clan of that village. The land on which the landing place stands is owned by that clan, who also own", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213322, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "125\n\ncalling the Chinese \"disloyalists\", the Fukien braves sided with the enemy and set fire to the town. The foreigners then got over the wall and burnt the Manchu quarter, the Assistant Tatar-General and the acting Sub-Prefect losing their lives, and the taotai escaping to Kashing. The Magistrate Wei Feng-chia led a body of militia to oppose the British advance on the town and was killed, and whilst Heng Hsing, the Chinese Force commander at Hangchou was cashiered, the Chinese commander at Chapu, Chang Hsi, escaped death and capture but was later, posthumously, accused of having run away. The official toll of Chinese casualties including civilian casualties was said to exceed 1300. This figure includes more than 400 officers and men from the Green Standard force and 280 Manchu Bannermen.\n\nWhen I-li-pu \"arrived at Chapu, the English demands, so the Chinese version continues, were so extravagant that nothing definite could be arrived at; and, when the Governor requested the Emperor's sanction to the restoration of the score or two of white and black barbarian prisoners, the foreign ships had left Chapu. The prisoners were then sent to Chen-hai, and it was suggested that bygones should be bygones; but the English would not listen any more.\n\nThe idea of an attack on Hangchou itself by the British forces was now abandoned and attention was directed to the important trade centre of Shanghai. The British, having destroyed the Chinese arsenal, guns and all Chinese government stores in Chapu, released all their prisoners of war cash with a small present, and then on the 28th May embarked for the Yangtze and Woosung, the town at the mouth of the river leading to Shanghai. The transports took fifteen days to cover the hundred miles to Woosung which was bombarded and captured by naval forces. The war ended two months later before the walls of Nanking,\n\nThe 18th Royal Irish was disbanded in 1922 and amongst its many battle honours was 'China 1840-42'. The men of the regiment who took part in the campaign were eligible for the medal awarded for the 'China War' though, regrettably, there was no bar for Chapu.\n\nIn March 1994 my daughter and I tried to find the site of the joss house. Enquiries in the town of Chapu itself were received with polite replies that no such place existed and that there were no temples now near Chapu, this despite the fact that standing less than thirty yards from the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213811, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "135 o'clock we had our dinner on the deck. Such fun and such make shifts. Our stock of portable soup was very good however, and what with venison pasties and other items we got a very comfortable dinner, much to the amusement of the Chinese passengers, about 20, and the sailors. My servant came in very handy, as he was the only professional cook of the party. Our food was cooked in the Chinese way, in a little earthenware stove, and a camp canteen kettle. The deck all the while was at a very considerable slope, so that it was necessary to mind one's p's and q's, in order to avoid catastrophies. Then when we were done and cleared away, the Celestials came forward and took the deck and began their meal. Each passenger pays 30 cash (not quite three halfpence) for his meal of rice and fish and little nic nacs: and as they only eat two meals a day, you may imagine that there is not much profit to be got out of it. They did walk into the rice and no mistake.\n\nOne little boy I took a fancy to: he was a friend of the owner of the ship and his father a rich man at Sam-tsun the place we were going to. I had a long talk with him, and we read some of the Pilgrim's Progress. He had been to school 6 years, and literally knew nothing after all. The Chinese system of education is the greatest folly imaginable: No Chinaman, in less than ten years is supposed to be able to know the meanings of the characters. Many learn 5 years and only know the sounds.\n\nHowever this little fellow and I got on very well together. He was much amused with Stringer's dog, and asked dozens of questions about it. Then I offered to sell it for a dollar, but the youngster said it was no good only to eat,\" and therefore was too dear. So I joked him that he had not a dollar belonging to him, whereupon he produced a handful of dollars from his purse, and showed me a bundle of paper which he said had 7 dollars inside. He seemed to have perfect confidence in us that we would not try to rob him. It was hard to talk with him, through his dialect. It was like a Londoner and Yorkshireman. “Tea” he called \"Chay-yup\" and we call it \"Chah-eep.\" About four o'clock we entered the “Kup shui moon\" a channel opening into the \"Bogue” or as English people say \"Bocca Tigris\" or \"tiger's mouth.\"\n\nHere we passed the Canton steamer going to Hong Kong. The people stared to see Europeans on board a Chinese craft. Towards evening the breeze dropped off, and at sunset there was quite a calm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214369, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "193\n\nThese communist iconoclastic campaigns are by no means unique in Chinese history. Over the centuries one or other of the beliefs have found favour at the expense of others, temples have been razed, religious communities dispersed and images destroyed. Within the past century and a half we have seen the Taiping Rebellion of the mid 19th century which covered much of central-southern China; the Boxer Rebellion of the turn of the century in northern China; and the nationwide Anti-Superstition Campaign of the Republican Kuomintang in the late 1920s, all of which destroyed temples and their contents. From an historic preservation point of view it is worth recalling that temples within the two foreign colonies at the mouth of the Pearl River, held by Portugal and Britain, remained unscathed during these years and, in Macau for instance, some of the images and temples date back three to four hundred years.\n\nWe look forward then with great interest to see what will happen in the future to the urban and rural temples and shrines in Hong Kong and Macau. They are sure to survive though I have a horrible suspicion that sooner or later they might be converted to electronic devices.\n\nNOTES\n\nIt is not difficult to see how the confusion rose in Chinese minds. During the 19th and early 20th centuries Catholic and Protestant missionaries rarely co-operated and, in many places, actually denounced the other as heterodox. Also, the Catholic priests, berobed bachelors, with prayers and chants in a dead language, with church images and incense, were sufficiently similar to the Buddhists for the Chinese to empathise. Protestant missionaries on the other hand tended to be married and live isolated from their parishioners; they dressed either as pseudo-Chinese or in dark heavy western suits, and lived frugally whilst preaching of hell fire and damnation. To the Chinese these were two entirely separate religions.\n\nIf we take as a very rough estimate 6,000 temples in present day Taiwan where religious freedom is permitted and temples have been flourishing, then the figure of 20,000 in the coastal province in mainland China opposite to Taiwan across the Straits must include every possible shrine, never mind how small.\n\n3 I have to thank Professor K Dean of McGill University for this observation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214839, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 254, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "221\n\nChinese officials upon shipwrecked Britons and Indians, and upon captives generally, was strongly condemned throughout the Expeditionary Force. There was universal outrage at the treatment accorded to the survivors of the brig Kite, including the wife of its Master who had been lost in the wreck.\n\n\"Where shall I find language sufficiently strong to execrate the beings that inflicted the following cruelties on wrecked and starving fellow creatures?” asked Commander Bingham in his account.41 The terrible treatment of Captain Stead of the Pestonjee transport, ending in his death, excited similar outrage;42 as did, when they became known, the brutalities and executions visited upon many of the mainly Indian personnel on board another transport, the Nerbudda, cast away on Formosa.43\n\nPoor treatment of Chinese by Other Chinese\n\nHowever, during the course of the War, many British officers came to realize that ill treatment of prisoners by the Chinese authorities was the norm in dealing with their own population. They also came to see that some Chinese treated their fellow-countrymen very badly. Upon taking Chinese towns and cities, they were astonished at the Chinese mobs that came out to loot them, and did so much more effectively than the British troops who had captured them. Similarly, during naval operations along the coast the crews of British warships saw how ruthlessly Chinese pirates treated peaceful traders and harmless villagers.\n\nBritish commanders' readiness to attack the pirate ships always won the heartfelt appreciation of Chinese fishermen and country people. Bingham cites a good example. Some fishermen had pointed out three pirate junks off the mouth of the Pei-Ho. A colleague's subsequent encounter with them, upon his boats' crews being attacked, led the sufferers to express \"the most lively feelings of gratitude for being delivered from the vagabonds who had been for some time plundering them.\"44 Bingham also mentions the effrontery of several pirate craft that had hoped to evade attention by anchoring near his ship but had been informed against by the people they had been plundering.44\n\n45", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215109, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 205, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "162\n\nthe altar and the altar table is a typical temple offertory box into which devotees have thrust cash offerings [Photograph 3],\n\nBoth the sad emperor Tang Ming Huang and his putative doctor, Lei Haijing, are both popular religion cult deities revered particularly in Fujian communities. Images vary from temple to temple, all being standard scholar-official figures with none having any special attribute or feature\n\nSome believe that Lei Haijing, commonly referred to as Marshal Tian Dou, (Tian Dou Yuanshuai), when his image is on an altar, was a doctor who accompanied 'the Emperor in the West' during his flight. After Lei died during the emperor's escape to Sichuan province his spirit remained on, guarding and protecting the emperor who\n\nSaw and recognised the two characters 'Tian Dou' of his protector floating in the air. And once he had arrived in the relative safety of Sichuan the emperor created Lei Haijing - Marshal Tian Dou.\n\nOthers claim that Lei was a musician popularly referred to a thousand or more years ago in Fujian as the 'Marshal'. Lei Haijing is another patron of actors, but predominantly from southern Fukienese communities. There are two Marshals Tian Dou revered on altars within Fukienese communities, with their legends so enmeshed that they virtually become one and the same deity.\n\nIn the most commonly repeated legend Tian Dou was a young prince named Lei Haijing, whose age has varied from ten to his mid-twenties. He lived in Fujian province where he was obsessively keen on practical jokes and opera. As a twenty-year old he lived for pleasure and one day having used his position and rank to force a married woman spend the night with him woke to find that she had painted a crab around his mouth in indelible ink, some say to punish him, others to ensure that his lasciviousness received wide publicity. The prince got away with it the first time by telling his friends that he had painted the crab on his mouth for amateur theatricals; however, when he forced her yet again to spend the night with him she painted another crab on his forehead which this time he was unable to explain away. Another version claims that he slept with a young girl who as a joke painted the crab around his mouth whilst he slept and again, several nights later, as he had been so annoyed at the first joke she drew one on his forehead", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215578, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 355, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "305\n\nrecords of \"old salts\" who were happier \"afloat\" than when taking shore leave (Jones; 1985).\n\nIn 1955, Sydney Frank Barnsey occasionally used to drop into the author's home in Conduit Road for a mid-morning cup of coffee. He sometimes smiled and said, 'I shall leave my bones in Hong Kong.' The author did not realise at the time what he meant. In fact, in his will he requested that he be buried on Waglan Island where he had spent many, what he considered to be, peaceful years as a keeper. He had deep affection for 'The Rock.' When the last trumpet call sounded government approval was sought and Barnsey's ashes were interred at a lovely spot with a small garden,\n\n49\n\nHis Malaysian Chinese wife visited his grave at appropriate Chinese festivals, such as at Ching Ming and Chung Yeung. But after Waglan was no longer manned, with no Marine Department boats going there on a regular basis, she had difficulty in visiting his grave. His remains were then exhumed and moved elsewhere. The author recalls the grave, but what was a tranquil spot is now overgrown.\n\nHow did life at Waglan over a period of years, mould personalities? Although it is an interesting question the author is not a psychologist and thus not really qualified to answer. But certainly, with a small group of men living together for 24 hours a day, one can speculate that there must have been instances of personality clashes although the author did not hear of any. But also many close friendships were, at the same time, forged.\n\nIt is relevant that Roger Parry told the author that Hong Kong lighthouse men were, 'a wonderful bunch of special people.' 50 Stories were handed down by word-of-mouth and there was a kind of mythology and history belonging especially to them.\n\nA comparison: before and after automation\n\nFor a time, after Waglan was automated, the island retained some of its original glory.51 But since that changeover, in many respects, it has become rather run down. Every step, leading from sea level to the top of the island, is no longer clearly numbered in brightly coloured paint. What had been a garden has become overgrown. There is litter.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216481, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "190\n\nof his first command and the position of trust in which his employers had placed him. The Euphrates and Tigris Shipping Company had come into possession of the Shushan after it was no longer required for the Nile expedition and decided to use it to extend their operations into South West Iran up the Karun River beyond Ahwaz. They were already running a regular passenger and freight service up to Ahwaz but were unable to proceed further because of a series of rapids that had effectively closed the river to conventional steam traffic.\n\nPlant picked up his new command at Basra and was introduced to his engineer officer, a young Englishman called Stanley Webber with whom he would be sharing his Persian adventure. Together, they and a temporary crew from Basra, made their way down the Shatt al Arab to Mohammerah, a town at the mouth of the Karun River and from there, up river to Ahwaz. His next task was to take the Shushan up and over the rapids at Ahwaz, where the water rushed down a seemingly impenetrable rocky slope although, it was said, there were a few fast water channels through which the craft might proceed with safety provided it had sufficient paddle power. To be on the safe side he obtained some long safety lines and hired a crowd of pullers and heavers to man them should the craft not be able to manage the rapid under its own steam.\n\nRiver pilotage\n\nThus, all was made ready for the assault on the feared Ahwaz rapids. The great day came and so did the crowds to see the fun - but his hard work and planning paid off. With a full head of steam and Plant on the wheel the Shushan climbed the first rapid and then went full ahead upstream for the next gap between two great rocks where the river 'poured through like a sluice.' She just made it and then moved up to through the next rapid that was just a little easier and finally entered the calmer waters above the town. Here, the crew was discharged and sent back to their home port while Plant made preparations for taking the Shushan on its first trip to Shuster some 50 miles up river.\n\nFirst, he had to find and train a permanent crew, including someone with knowledge of the river and a Tindal (bo'sun) to take charge of the deck hands. He also needed an interpreter, through whom he could give instructions to the crew, most of whom spoke no English. He would\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]