[
    {
        "id": 208395,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1978",
        "page_number": 119,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "SHIWAN POTTERY EXPLORED\n\n103\n\nMy own research on Shiwan has continued in the Department of Fine Arts and the Centre of Asian Studies over the past two and a half years. This included in March of 1978, the opportunity for a three-week individual study trip in Guangzhou and Shiwan. Encountering the concrete reality of what I had researched for so long, discovering a wealth of material I had no idea existed, while adjusting to completely different perceptions of life and study methods within a socialist system, heightened my sense of exploration. Hence the intent of the present lecture is to introduce, in a little more depth, a few of the problems explored on that trip.\n\nExploration across the border revealed that significant archaeological research relating to Shiwan had been carried on for a number of years. There was great excitement over these discoveries and I was warmed by the measure of trust placed in me by the researchers who, despite their own uncertainty, showed me the new discoveries before publication.2\n\nThe research itself calls for the re-thinking of traditional beliefs concerning the history of Shiwan pottery. These traditional beliefs can be traced back to two major written sources. In 1941, Li Jing-kang (*), principal of the Clementi Middle School in Hong Kong, wrote what was up until that time the most careful and logical account of Shiwan history, taking into account scanty written references, oral traditions, and actual objects available. His main source was a handwritten manuscript in the possession of “a certain gentleman in Fushan\". This manuscript recounted that Shiwan pottery began in Yangjiang Xian (縣), where due to the turmoil of war, potters migrating from the Jun (鈞) kilns in Northern Honan Province (河南), established kilns sometime in the late Southern Song dynasty (early 13th century). In the Ming period (A.D. 1368-1643), according to Li, these Yangjiang potters moved to the present location of the potteries in Nanhai Xian (Figure 1). Xu Zhiheng (#2), a Cantonese, and professor of Chinese literature at Beijing University in the early Republican period, recounts the same story and describes this so-called \"Yang-jiang ware\" as having sky blue-indigo blue-ash blue flambe (i.e. streaky multicoloured) glaze, which imitated Honan Jun ware.4 A group of wares which corresponded to this description were identified and placed on exhibition at the Fung Ping Shan Library in 1940.5",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
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    {
        "id": 212478,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 32,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "12\n\nsupport my wife and family. In 6 year of Hum Foong (1856) being advanced in age, I handed over all my property to my eldest son Cheng Chuen to manage and sign my name Soong Ke in all business transactions, and he has already managed for several years. In consequence of my having to return home to my native place in the present year to build an ancestor's hall out of my own money, and consequently coming and going I took sick and a large carbuncle broke out on my thigh, getting worse day by day, being now about sixty years of age and my constitution is weak.\n\nHong Kong-Shanghai and Shanghai-Canton-Hong Kong Networks\n\nCantonese compradors were predominant in the nineteenth century. They occupied most of the compradorship in foreign mercantile establishments. They were influential in Hong Kong, enjoying a high status in the business community. Cantonese compradors filled the new posts by personal ties, extending their influence from one place to another. For example, Xu Run was introduced by his uncles Xu Yuting and Xu Rongcun who had been working as compradors to Dent & Co. in Shanghai for many years. Xu was first employed as an assistant comprador and later succeeded his family members as compradors: one of his sons to a German firm; one of his cousins as Dent's Kiukiang (Jiujiang) comprador; and another cousin as Shanghai comprador to Carlowitz & Co.\n\nLikewise, Zheng Guanying was also introduced by his relative in Shanghai to serve the compradorship in Butterfield, Swire & Co. Tang Tingshu was introduced by his Zhongshan colleague called Acum (Lin Qin) to James Whittall, the Jardine's Shanghai manager, then he became a comprador to Jardine, Matheson & Co. Tang later guaranteed his elder brother Tang Maozhi as the firm's Tianjin comprador and this brother later succeeded him as chief comprador in Shanghai when Tang Tingshu was relocated to work at the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co. in 1873. The post was held by the Tang family for several decades. The last was his grandson Tang Jichang. Those three compradors came from the same Zhongshan prefecture and had an inter-relationship. Zheng was a relative to Tang by marriage and also knew the Xu family for generations.\n\nZheng had guaranteed a Zhongshan townman named Yang Guixuan",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212485,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "19\n\ndominance of Cantonese by the 1860s when a Ningbo native, Chen Xuyuan, replaced the Cantonese as the chief comprador in Russell & Co. By the turn of the century, the Zhejiang compradors had outnumbered their Cantonese counterparts in Shanghai. Wu Jianzhang acted as the Shanghai tantai less than two years and was not succeeded by a Cantonese until 1864 when Ding Richang was called to the office by Li Hongzhang. However Ding had not been wholly pro-Cantonese. In response to the challenge of the Ningbo people, Cantonese such as Xu Run, Tang Tingshu and Zheng Guanying attempted, with success, to secure patronage from Li Hongzhang by taking part in his guandu shangban project. The Ningbo clique, however, competed with every effort to seek equal political support from another bureaucrat Zuo Zongtang in the 1870s.24 Entering into the Republican period, Cantonese gradually realised they were a minor group when compared with Ningbo men. They not only competed with one another but also collaborated together. Famous Cantonese capitalists such as Guo Piao, Huang Huan'dan, and Jian Dongpu were active in the Shanghai business community.\n\nNetwork of Hong Kong and the Pacific Rim\n\nThe story of the Chinese in Hong Kong as settlers can be classified in the following way. First, the Chinese merchants or traders. They knew the region, they traded successfully and they made their homes wherever their trade led them. They remained the dominant group of settlers in nineteenth century and perhaps even into the twentieth century. Second, the labourers or coolies who arrived during the second half of the nineteenth century. Their main significance was that they came in large numbers, although for the main part they came for short periods and many failed, became destitute and were sent home. The more successful ones, however, returned with their savings to help their families back in China. Nevertheless, amongst them were a number who remained, having married locally or having lifted themselves above their labouring status and turned successfully to trade. Again, for most of them it was their ability to establish a trade, and therefore own property, which was the first step towards settling down. Included amongst them were many artisans who were able to use their skills to establish businesses. Amongst them also were partly literate or semi-literate people who used their writing skills either to work for Chinese businesses or to go into business for themselves. Sooner or later, the two main reasons for settling were success in business and the acquisition of a family. Third, the import-",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212498,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 52,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "32\n\n29\n\nThe term 'comprador' in Chinese history is quite argumentative. In late Qing times it referred to a commercial broker, an agent and employee of a foreign firm. With the rise of Chinese nationalism in the Republican period, the meaning was gradually expanded beyond its original sense to include politics in a negative meaning or collaboration with foreigners of serving interest of imperialists. In Chinese Marxist scholarship, comprador has taken on a political meaning. See Jung-fang Tsai (1981), The Predicament of the Comprador Ideologists, pp. 191-7. However, economic historians such as Wang Jingyu, realizing the role of Chinese merchants in the economic development of the nineteenth century, said they included compradors who had large investment in modern enterprises, been active in huashang fugu huodong as well as buying capital in from foreign aggressive enterprises. See Wang (1965), Shijiu shiji waiguo qinhua qiye zhong de huashang fugu yundong (The Activities of Chinese Merchants to Buy Capital-Shares from the Foreign Aggressive Enterprises in China During the Late Nineteenth Century) and (1983b) Shiji xifang ziben zhuyi dui Zhongguo de jingji qinlue (The Economic Invasion of Western Capitalism on China in Nineteenth Century), pp. 483-526.\n\n10 Xu Run, Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, pp. 4-5.\n\n31\n\nAs Xu himself stated, the estimate value of this amount after discount should be 3,219,470 taels. See ibid, p. 68.\n\n17 Other investments, though the amounts are uncertain, can also be ascertained from his autobiography. They are: a pier company at Guangdong, a grocery at Shanghai; also silk cloth shop, tea shop, partnership in Huya'an Insurance Co., Huaxing Insurance Co., Difeng Co., Shanghai Land Investment Co., Ltd., Shanghai Tramway Co., Xunhuan Newspaper in Hong Kong, a water works, and Tongyi cultivation company in Guangdong. See Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, preface.\n\n33\n\nSee Liu Kwang-ching (1962), Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-1874, p. 155.\n\n14\n\nSee Hao (1970a), p. 100. As Xia Dongyuan found that in the Zheng's zhushu (will) written in 1914, Zheng regarded 4,088 taels the interest from share-stocks as one of his main sources of income. See Xia (1985b), p. 268.\n\n35 See Zheng Guanying, Zhi Li Zhaomin Fangbo lun zhuang Lundun Hongyuan Gongsi (Letter addressed to Li Zhaomin in discussing the founding of Hongyuan Company in London), in Xia Dongyuan (1988a), pp. 507-3; Wu Chang-chuan (1974), pp. 86-8.\n\n36 As Wang Shui has concluded from various sources, during 1840 to 1894 Chinese compradors had accumulated a total income of about half a billion taels, see Wang (1983), Qingdai maiban shouru de guji jiqi shiyong fangshi (An Assessment of Compradors' Income and Its Spending Ways in Qing Dynasty), pp. 298-307.\n\n37 See Thomas G. Rawski (1970), Chinese Dominance of Treaty Port Commerce and its Implications, 1860-1875, pp. 451-73.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212509,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 63,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "43\n\ngroups which Pi Yuan (Bi Yuan) formed in Shensi in the late 1770s, and the group Juan Yuan (Ruan Yuan) formed at the Hsueh-hai t’ang in Canton in the first decades of the 19th century. The (Bi and Ruan) circles were more active in publication: Pi Yuan underwrote the publication of many monographs and critical editions, and Juan Yuan was responsible for the 1400 volume compilation of classical commentary entitled Huang-Ch'ing ching-chieh (Qing period commentaries on the classics).\n\nWang Jun Yi of the People's University recognized how important this form of patronage was to the development of scholarship and learning during the mid-Qing period.\n\nUnder the leadership of the central government, officials enthusiastically supported scholars' research. Xu Qian xue, Bi Yuan, Ruan Yuan, for example, had on their staffs a large number of scholars. They established academies and compiled books. Their activities of collecting books, compiling books, checking texts against ancient editions, and printing books, made it fashionable to collect and create books. Under these circumstances, scholarship and learning developed during the mid-Qing era.\n\nRuan Yuan had inherited the tradition of scholarly patronage from the Zhu Brothers and Bi Yuan. When Ruan Yuan first went to Peking to take the metropolitan examination in 1786, he was taken into the Zhu circle. His first important official assignment was director of studies in Shandong 1793-95 when Bi Yuan was governor. As Ruan Yuan's official career spanned half a century, in such areas as Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou, his patronage was widespread. Since his interests were all-embracing and his ability to identify quality of scholarship more than adequate, he managed to leave works in all major areas of learning of that time.\n\nImportance of Ruan Yuan as a scholar and patron of learning as seen by 20th century scholars\n\nAlthough Ruan Yuan's contributions to mid-Qing scholarship and learning have been recognized by 20th century scholars, a comprehensive study of the scholars around him is yet to be made. Qian Mu...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213802,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 154,
        "title": "RAS-1996",
        "content_text": "125\n\nHH\n\nThe volume entitled the Genealogy of the Chens of She Shan contains two or three separate genealogies of Chen surname from which I cannot trace common descent. It seems that some pages were missing in the copy in the Hong Kong University collection. The name pujao, if indeed an ordination name, does not follow the usual long or fa format. It is probably an ordination name from another, more well-known \"folk\" religion, Luozu Jiao, which have ordination names in a format of Pa followed by another character, according to an account in a Qing work of anecdotal literature quoted by Fu Yilin's article \"Qing Qrankong kupan Cilaoguançaizong Qislu Kao\" – first published in 1942 and included in his Fu Yin Zash wusht man Wengao Xiamen Daxue Chubanshe, 1989. The pantheon and practice of Laiozu Jio is not related to the tradition that is the subject of this article.\n\n* According to Lo, op cit, p. 216 n 21. So Lo Pun was a member of an alliance including Lai Chi Wo, a multi-surname village. With one exception, which is not So Lo Pun, all member villages were lineage extensions related to Lai Chi Wo. I know of some Huang people in Lai Chi Wo, but do not know their genealogical relationship with So Lo Pun or whether they celebrated the Fengchao in the past. The genealogy contains a spirit tablet related to Lu Shan and the Three Ladies, a passage of invocation, and two talismans. It is unlikely that the genealogy belonged to a wang specialist, whose repertoire will take up many volumes, not just a few pages in a genealogy as in this case.\n\n*I fail to date any of the generations. Some dates are given in the genealogy using Dynastic year names which cannot be found in reference books for year names. I have not checked as thoroughly some of the year names and title of emperors in the prefaces.\n\nCopied during an interview with the ritual specialist by Lee Lar-mu, then of the Oral History Project of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. For part of the memorial, I have a tape recording of the priest's recitation demonstration during the same meeting for comparison.\n\n12. The Xu's genealogy of Shek Pik, Lantau Island in the British Library collection of genealogies from the New Territories contains a list of offerings for grave worship which begins with one raw pig and one cow. Rubie S. Watson, in her Inequality Among Brothers, Cambridge University Press 1985, p. 43 mentioned the division of raw pork after the ancestral hall ritual at Ha Tsuen but does not say if the four pigs purchased for the occasion were first offered to the ancestors as offerings.\n\n41\n\nHuhur Xinwen Yi hun Xu Zhi, Beijing Zhonghua 1986, p. 181.\n\n\"For the note see Luo, op cit, p. 230. For his picture of the Hakka as \"farmer-scholars\" see ibid, pp. 16-18.\n\n**Luo Op Cit, p. 255-263.\n\n* The description is in vol. 2. In the table of contents, the author has inserted xiang (\"incense\") between Ahuan and Huo. The rite has some interesting features. It uses a long piece of red cloth stretched from the \"lower\" end near the entrance of the hall to the \"upper\" end of the ancestral incense burner, and the ashes were carried over the \"bridge\" thus formed to the incense burner. That additional ancestors are incorporated into the ancestral hall in the",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214227,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 85,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "48\n\nSpurr, Russell (1995), Excellency, the Governors of Hong Kong, FormAsia.\n\nStapleton, Kristin (1997), Interpreting Humour in History: Two Cases from Republican China, paper presented at 'Comparative and World History Seminar,' at John Hopkins University, USA, on 4 February 1997.\n\nSypher, Wylie (1956), Introduction and Appendix, Comedy, John Hopkins University Press.\n\nSyrett, Michel (1995, October 29), ‘Jest over the wall,' Agenda, South China Morning Post.\n\nTse, Sabrina (1997, November 14), 'What a laugh: being funny in Hong Kong,' Hong Kong Standard.\n\nVittachi, Nury (1995), The Hong Kong Joke Book, Chameleon/Hellman and Schoenberg.\n\n(1999, March, 27) letter to the author.\n\nWaters, Dan (1991), 21st Century Management; Keeping Ahead of the Japanese and Chinese, Prentice Hall/Simon and Schuster.\n\n(1995), Faces of Hong Kong an Old Hand's Reflections, Prentice Hall/Simon and Schuster.\n\nWelsford, Enid (1935), The Fool, His Social and Literary History, London.\n\nWu, Cynthia Hsin-feng, “If Triangles Were Circles...” A Study of Counterfactuals in Chinese and in English, Crane Publishing Co. Ltd., USA, undated but some time in 1990s.\n\nXu Jingxiang (1989) 200 Cartoons from China, China Today Press (China Reconstructs Press), Beijing.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214315,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 173,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "137\n\nXU, THE DAOIST PERFECTED LORD XU ZHENJUN 許真君\n\nTHE PROTECTIVE DEITY OF JIANGXI PROVINCE\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\nChinese Daoist and folk religion cults can in general terms be classified as nation-wide, provincial or local cults, the latter often limited to as few as one or two villages. Most studies of such cults made during the past half century have concentrated, for very good reasons, on Fujian and Guangdong communities in Hong Kong and Macao, Taiwan and South-east Asia as well as in Fujian and Guangdong provinces, and only a handful have described in any detail those cults limited to the more remote or less accessible provinces of Mainland China. The following short study is, in truth, no more than a tolerably full outline of a provincial cult which has spread to a limited extent into the neighbouring provinces of China. It is basically a medical cult, the deity revered for his skills in healing the sick; however, in a number of places there is also the added concept of the sick being healed by the deity using his power to cast out demons of sickness. Our particular cult is centred on the not so easily accessible southern province of Jiangxi.\n\nXu Sun, [known also as Xu Zhenren] is one of the numerous legendary Perfected Lords, the 'Immortals' or 'saints' of Daoism. He is the patron deity not only of the Xu clan but also of Jiangxi province. For at least two hundred years his cult has been very popular in the Jiangxi provincial capital, Nanchang [formerly Yu-chang] as well as throughout the whole province of Jiangxi and the immediately adjoining provinces where he is regarded as one of the most potent agents to cure sickness by ridding communities of the baleful spirits and demons who caused the sickness. He, in particular, was believed to be especially efficacious with diseases of the eye. According to Dudgeon, Xu was a doctor in Jiangxi province who, with six brothers, saved the province from devastating floods.\n\nA threesome, of Xu Zhenren and two other Immortals, Sun Zhenren and Wu Zhenren, are venerated as healers of the sick in many temples within communities from Jiangxi and Fujian, and in Fujian communities outside China.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214316,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 174,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "138 \n\nLegends surrounding the birth, life and death of Xu Sun are numerous, complicated and tangled stories. Just before his birth his mother is said to have dreamed that a golden phoenix dropped a pearl from its beak into her hand. A popular story claims that he was born either in Henan province or at Nanchang in Jiangxi, ca AD 240 where he lived out his life as a saintly doctor. Xu Sun passed the imperial examinations, became a prefect of a district and distinguished himself by his benevolence. According to some versions, his popularity was due to his power and ability to heal diseases using secret preparations. Others claim that he was an official who, having served in Sichuan province, died in about AD 293 or AD 374 when still only in his fifties. In another version, a typical mythological finale to a virtuous and extraordinary life, he died at the great age of 134 and was borne off to Heaven 'together with his wives, children, dogs, chickens and beasts'. \n\nMembers of the Daoist Jingming sect claim that he was the founder of the cult with its centre at the temple dedicated to him in Nanchang city. This no longer exists; however, a temple dedicated to him in the small town of Xi Shan [Western Hill] some twenty miles south-west of Nanchang, is the present cult centre. A large notice before his altar in the temple informs devotees that he lived during the Eastern Jin [317-420 AD] and during a twenty year struggle managed to solve the problem of annual flooding in the province and that he should be revered mainly for his success in water conservancy in northern Jiangxi, particularly around the Boyang Lake. The notice also claims that he lived for 136 years. \n\nHis cult centre in Xi Shan is now a bustling temple complex with two main halls and some four lesser halls set in large grounds. The two large main halls, side by side, are dedicated one to Xu and the other to the Jade Emperor. The inside walls of the hall dedicated to Xu are lined with some twenty or so anonymous minor perfected lords whilst the Jade Emperor's hall is lined by sixteen guardian generals, again unnamed. The Jade Emperor is flanked by four major Daoist deities, the philosopher Lao Zi; the founder of the Heavenly Master sect Zhang Daoling; the doctor of the Eight Immortals Lü Dongbin and the Northern Emperor, Zhen Wu. The main altar in Xu's hall bears two images of Xu, one tall gilded statue of Xu standing, and a smaller, portable image of him sitting swathed in red robes. Neither has any unique characteristic and he is depicted with a black beard, pink face and holding a tablet in both hands before his chest. He is attended by two youthful attendants.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214317,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 175,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "139\n\nThree of the four lesser halls, though as large as the Jade Emperor Hall and Xu Hall or nearly so, are dedicated one to the Three Matrons of fertility and childcare; one hall to the wife of Xu, whose personal names were Heshi, known as the Palace of the Consort - Furen Gong - in which her image stands on the uppermost tier of three with the Lord of Time and his sixty minions, the Tai Sui, occupying the lower two tiers; a third hall to Guan Gong, the patron deity of loyalty and honour, and patron of soldiers; whilst the fourth hall, much smaller, is virtually empty apart from a single, small pottery image of a wealth god. This spread of cults within one temple is typical of the majority of the larger temples throughout Chinese communities.\n\nAll of the images within the temple complex are of comparatively recent manufacture, certainly since the early 1980s. The original images were destroyed during the years 1949-1976, during one or more of the political campaigns against superstition or social reform, mostly during the first days of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 when the temple was gutted. Some of the new images have been well made, artistically finished in paint on plaster and concrete. Others are crude, poorly finished and eyesores for posterity. The image of Xu, however, is one of the better ones and far from crude workmanship.\n\nThe grounds and halls on the day we were there in the Autumn of 1998 were seething with devotees, many of whom had travelled some distance to pay their respects to the deities. Long strings of firecrackers were being let off and amidst the deafening racket and the palls of smoke from these and burning offerings, the whole area was what Chinese know as re'nao, excitement and noise.\n\nAcross the road, however, in the comparatively small, enclosed and dilapidated garden, silence reigned and not a soul was to be seen. On the far side of the square artificial lake in the centre of the garden is a lengthy row of small, weathered and battered modern images, all unnamed, which on closer examination appeared to be many of the emperors of China since time immemorial. A Nine Dragon Spirit Screen stretches out behind them. Of greater interest were the half a dozen small rooms, similar to horse boxes with half-doors, which lined the rest of the far side, each containing a small tableau of life-size simple and gaudily painted plaster and cement figures. These were identified as episodic scenes from the life of Xu, ranging from his miraculous birth,",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215067,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 163,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "120\n\ndisasters.' She is portrayed as a Daoist deity sitting cross-legged on a lotus, with gilded robes and a small crown, and with eight arms and three faces. Flanking her are two demonic, black-skinned deities standing, each with six arms and dressed in armour, holding weapons and charms in each of their hands. They are her attendants known here as Gnasher, Qiechi J, and Biter, Yaoya, titles not encountered anywhere else. The sixty Taisui images stand on lower tiers in two groups in five rows, either side of a space between the groups leading from the main entrance to the main deity on the top tier. But before the main deity on the second tier is a lone Taisui, the Taisui of the current year, changed annually at the Lunar New Year. Finally, the sets of double doors to the hall are decorated with depictions of the deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations +, the Ershi ba Xiuxing each deity having a 'human' form and its own attributes.\n\nThe second temple is some fifteen miles from Nanchang, the provincial capital of Jiangxi province in mainland China. Once more there is a separate hall but here dedicated to the wife of the main deity of the complex, the major medical god Xu Zhenjun. In the centre of the Hall is a large rectangular altar with the sixty Taisui ranged on all four sides along two tiers, with the image of Xu's wife and her two attendants positioned on the top of the third tier where she is identified merely as 'Xu's wife,' furen A. Her Hall, the Furen Gong, has stood within the temple complex since at least 1820 though it, together with the other temple halls, has been destroyed three times. Once apparently by accident in 1820, once by the Taiping iconoclasts in 1856 and finally by the Red Guards in 1966. However, it has only been within the last century that her hall has had images of the Taisui added to the gods within the complex and placed on the lower tiers of the plinth of her altar. The temple custodian did not know who decided on this addition, why or when.\n\nIn both of these temples, as in a number of other temples, the images of the sixty Taisui are portrayed as individuals with unique characteristics. A few look demonic, the majority are normal humans, with or without facial hair, young and old, and all are seated and dressed in a wide range of robes. Some are soldiers, some elderly mandarins - and although from lists provided in temples they all have individual personal names, none apart from the President, Yin Jiao, would appear to be recorded in legend or myth. However, several god carvers in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215112,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 208,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "165\n\nIn 755, during the revolt of An Lushan, Guo helped defend the capital, and in 760 he was despatched to recover territory from Central Asian barbarians and finally, three years after the Turfans [Uighurs] had captured the capital, Guo raised an army and drove them out, more by cunning than military force. The disasters which broke out during the declining years of the Tang Ming Huang emperor were suppressed chiefly by the vigour and determination with which Guo wrested province after province from the hands of the insurgents. He spent a considerable part of his life in warfare and was uniformly successful.\n\nHis images in temples in Northern and Central China usually portrayed him as an old mandarin, with a parted beard, both halves held separately in each of his hands, and with a tiered hat. Occasionally his image depicted him as an old man, sitting, with a long white beard and a white robe, carrying a ruyi sceptre engraved with the four characters for 'Everything shall be as You Desire'. According to one sect, the Jin Dan H., Guo is said to have founded the sect in collaboration with Lü Dongbin, the doctor of renown and one of the Eight Immortals. His image on altars in Sichuan was referred to as Cifu Tianguan14 where he was regarded as a God of Wealth.\n\nNo images of Guo have been noted on temple altars in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau or South-east Asia, though a temple in Haikang in Tainan county bears the hall title of Fenyang Dian and contains on its main altar not an image of him but one of a local provincial cult deity, Guangze Zunwang, the patron of the Guo clan.\n\nBoth Mesny and Timothy RichardR claim that Guo Ziyi was a follower of Nestorian Christianity, Mesny even claiming that Guo's name was carved on the famous Nestorian tablet at Xi'an.\n\nWe move on to images of the two major deified heroes of the era on temple altars who have had their historic figures embellished by tea-house story-tellers down the centuries include:\n\nZhang Xun✯ and Xu Yuan,F are heroes of renown and unique deities whose images have been seen on temple altars in Zhejiang, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-east Asia [Photographs 6 and 7]. Both are protective deities worshipped particularly by the southern Fukienese, both within Fujian province and in southern Fukienese",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215113,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 209,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "166\n\ncommunities outside mainland China, and also local non-Fukienese Chinese in the vicinity of Hangzhou, sometimes individually, alone on an altar or together as a pair.\n\nFrequently confused both by devotees and professional god carvers, the two deities are known to Chaozhou-speaking devotees as the Civil and Military Lords of Peace (Wenwu An Zunwang) or individually, Zhang Xun as Wen'an Zunwang and Xu Yuan as Wu'an Zunwang. They are also known by titles respectively [possibly within Chuanzhou communities only] as Baoyi Zunwang 保儀尊王 and Baoyi Dafu 保儀大夫. Both deities hereafter will be referred to as Zhang and Xu, and in a number of temples an individual, lone deity of either Zhang or Xu is known as the patron of local Zhang or Xu clans.\n\nThe most common story of the two heroes as related by a great number of temple keepers describes how Zhang and Xu were loyalists opposed to the rebel An Lushan. They died heroically defending the provincial city of Suiyang in Henan province in AD 757, which fell to the enemy after a siege of 49 days. Most temple keepers claim that they died by their own hands rather than fall into those of the enemy, though some claim that the heroic defenders were betrayed by cowards after the food gave out.\n\nZhang was born in Henan on either the 10th of the fourth or the 12th or 29th of the fifth lunar months in AD 709 and died with Xu on either the 15th of the second or the 9th of the tenth lunar months in 757. These are now celebrated annually with temple festivals in Zhang's honour.\n\nZhang was the military mandarin in Suiyang and is occasionally referred to in temple records as Zhang Suiyang. He had been employed in military operations in Central Asia before being posted to Suiyang, where his discipline was legendary. In 756, during the rebellion of An Lushan, he fought many battles, was wounded on a number of occasions, and performed prodigies of valour. The climax was reached by his heroic defence of Suiyang against the army of An Lushan's son. He refused to yield and even sacrificed his favourite concubine to no avail. The enemy broke in, and as he scorned to offer allegiance to his conqueror, was immediately put to death. It is said that during the siege",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215116,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 212,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "169\n\nthe hills. In temples in and around Hsintien and Mucha Wang Gong is revered as the protective deity (with the pair being revered in a few places but still known as Wang Gong) with his [their] annual festival celebrated on the 10th day of the fourth lunar month, but largely without the great majority of devotees realizing the original identity of the deities. Wang Gong A is also referred to as Weng Gong and Huang Gong A, both of which are almost certainly erroneous titles due to mistaken homophones.\n\nIn and around Hangzhou they are known together as Er Da Ming Huang [The Two (Generals) of Tang emperor Ming Huang]. A fierce image of Zhang, with his mouth wide open used to stand on a minor altar in a small temple near Donghu, a city some sixty miles upstream from Hangzhou. Devotees there believed that pain could be cured merely by touching the abdomen of the image whilst throwing a few coppers into its mouth. Two large images of Zhang and Xu in an old temple some fifteen miles east of Hangzhou, destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, have been replaced with modern images with the image makers being guided by the elderly from memory. This temple stands out in the countryside with the nearest village some half a mile away and with the catchment area for contributions for the rebuilding extending some ten miles in all directions. The refurbished temple has yet [early 1994] to have the two dozen aides flanking the side of the main hall completed, though the images of their main deities and their consorts have been finished. They are regarded as the local protective deities.\n\nIn 1963 in Hong Kong, in a Chaozhou community squatter-shack temple on Lion Rock hillside above Kowloon [now long demolished], the two deities, represented on a framed paper icon on the main altar as two relaxed, seated mandarins in floral robes, were first identified as \"The Two Loyal Dukes\" or \"the Two Loyal Saintly Lords\". The two deities were later identified by several devotees as Wang Zhang Ek and Wang Xu Elf. The two mandarins, with long black beards, were identical and were prayed to as the patron deities and protectors of Chaozhou people.\n\nIn 1927 Goodrich in Beijing recorded seeing images of “two famous generals of the Tang dynasty, Zhang Xun and Xu Yuan” in the Dongyue Temple to the east of the city.13",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215117,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 213,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "170\n\nThere would appear to be two minor generals also in this story. Several temples in the Chia I and Yunlin coastal strip of Taiwan are dedicated to the Three Princes, San Wangye Zhang, Li and Mo. These were identified in the temples as Zhang Xun with two of his subordinate generals, Li and Mo, both of whom died with him at Suiyang5 One temple keeper related the story of how Mo Ying15, whose real name was Gai TuoE, was one of the generals at the siege of Suiyang with Zhang Xun and his sworn brother, who committed suicide when Zhang was executed and quartered.\n\nTwo further minor soldiers, again generals who served under Zhang and Xu whose images have also been seen on altars in Taiwan and Fujian province beside those of Zhang and Xu, are Lei WanchunS, an image either with a black face with six or seven golden stars on it or with a red face, and Nan JiyunE, an image with a blue face.\n\nNothing is known about General Nan; however, General Lei Wanchun, a native of Hebei province, was a military officer who served under General Zhang Xun in the first half of the 8th century AD, commanding the garrison in the area to the north of Xi'an, within the loop of the Yellow River. During the An Lushan revolt Lei was besieged by rebel forces in Luoyang, the secondary capital of the Tang. He remonstrated with An's forces from the garrison walls accusing them of being traitors to the Tang and remained there even though six rebel arrows had struck him. He continued to exhort the rebels to surrender until his forces were overcome and he died with them. His image usually has six or seven spots on the face where, so it is claimed, the arrows pierced him. During the reign of the Qing Kang Xi emperor a military officer named Zai carried an image of Lei over to Taiwan where his cult developed and he is now revered in some dozen or so temples in and around the central plain of the West coast.\n\nA protective Wangye, a pestilence deity, in Jiali, a town just north of Tainan city, better known as the General of the Lei clan, Lei Fu Jiangjun, is the secondary deity on the altar of a small temple. The history as recorded in the temple explains that the original temple, having been badly damaged by an earthquake in 1862, was rebuilt and enlarged by devotees. During the hard labouring necessary to achieve their aim the spirit of the then main deity, General Lei, having transformed himself into an old man dressed in a feather coat, went",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216029,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 328,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "262\n\nWar in 218 AD between two of the Three Kingdoms [San Guo], between Sun Quan of Wu and Liu Bei of Shu, led amongst other things to the capture of the city of Qingzhou. One of Liu Bei's generals, Guan Yu, hurried south to defend the city but was ambushed, captured and decapitated by Sun Quan after he refused to change sides. Guan was later deified as is now the immensely popular deity, the Patron of Uniformed Bodies and is known as the God of Loyalty, Guan Di. Thus, the founder of Zhenjiang had the distinction of slaying the consequent Patron deity of Soldiers, Firemen and Detectives and the second most popular god on Chinese popular religion altars.\n\nIn the first years of the 6th century AD the first emperor of the Liang dynasty, Wu Di, who was renowned for his support of Buddhism and the Buddhist clergy, visited Zhenjiang. He had been visited by a divine monk in a dream who urged Wu Di to institute a great fast in order to rescue all sentient beings from the miseries of their existence. The Emperor ordered a new monastery to be built at Tse Hsin [Zexin], known today as Jin Shan to accommodate the Congress held in AD 507, and for centuries within the monastery there was a building known as the Hall of Liang Wang. This tradition is at odds with the date usually given for the founding of the monastery - AD 317.\n\nOur next story involves a deified hero who had nothing to do with Zhenjiang in life but, for some unknown reason, his cult would appear to have become centralised along the Grand Canal and especially at Zhenjiang. He is a canonised hero of the Tang dynasty, but one of a pair whose images elsewhere appear together on popular religion temple altars. These two euhemerised heroes, Zhang Xun and Xu Yuan, ***, have been seen on altars in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-east Asia. These two protective deities are known individually as the Venerable King of Peaceful Pacification, Wen'an Zunwang ✰✰ E [Zhang Xun] and the Venerable King of Military Pacification, Wu'an Zunwang ✯✯ [Xu Yuan] though they will\n\n+\n\nbe referred to hereafter simply as Zhang and Xu.\n\nThe most common history of the two heroes as related by a great number of temple keepers describes how Zhang and Xu, loyalists during the reign of Tang Ming Huang, opposed the rebellion led by An Lushan. They died heroically in AD 757 during the civil war defending the provincial city of Suiyang in Henan province which fell to the enemy",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216030,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 329,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "263\n\nafter a siege of 49 days. Most accounts claim that they died by their own hands rather than fall into those of the enemy.\n\nOur interest lies in Zhang. He was born in Henan in AD 709 and died with Xu on either the 15th of the second or the 9th of the tenth lunar months in 757. Zhang was the military mandarin in Suiyang and is occasionally referred to in temple records as Zhang Suiyang. Before being posted to Suiyang he had been employed in military operations in Central Asia where his discipline was legendary. In 756 during the rebellion of An Lushan he fought many battles, was wounded on a number of occasions and performed prodigies of valour. The climax was reached by his heroic defence of the Henan provincial city of Suiyang against the rebel army commanded by An Lushan's son. Zhang refused to yield and even sacrificed his favourite concubine to no avail. The enemy broke in and as he scorned to owe allegiance to his conqueror was immediately put to death. It is said that during the siege his patriotic rage caused him to grind his teeth so that after his death it was found that all but three or four had been worn down to the very gums.\n\nIn central China the rain and crop deity, the Bodhisattva of the Whole of Heaven, Doutian Pusa or the Marshal of the Whole of Heaven, Doutian Yuanshuai, was believed to be an incarnation of Zhang who, it was said, had intervened to assist the imperial forces during the Taiping wars ca. 1855 and had been awarded the title of Zhangwei. His major local shrine is some distance outside the southern gate of Zhenjiang, a little beyond the shell of a Ming pagoda. There was also a shrine to him in the city's new main street, Ma Lu; another in a village on the road to the Bamboo Grove, and yet another in the village of Doutian Miao where the Imperial battery had been located on the north shore of the Yangzi abreast of Jiao Shan. Annually, during the Fourth lunar month, Zhenjiang was crowded with country folk who came to enjoy the procession of gods being borne through the streets of the city, including the image of Doutian Pusa.\n\nWhen the Tang dynasty collapsed China fell back into feudal kingdoms, one of which was the Xiu dynasty of Nantang. Under their rule the walls of Zhenjiang were repaired. Xiu Lijing succeeded his father in 946 and during his reign he annexed what today is Fujian province and added it to his dominion of Jiangxi, most of Anhui and Jiangsu, thus becoming one of the largest states in China at the time.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216043,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 342,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "276\n\nThe fight between Lady White Snake and the monk Fa Hai leading to the flooding of Jin Shan\n\nA popular and well-known opera, Bai She Chuan, tells of Lady White Snake's fall from grace and of her eternal imprisonment under a pagoda. It begins with a small white snake which, having been both virtuous and devout for many thousands of years, became immortal and could change at will into the form of a beautiful young maiden. As a snake she had been saved from death by a compassionate man and would have to repay the debt at a future date. She discovered that the man, in his latest incarnation, was a young scholar, Xu Xian, living in Hangzhou and after recruiting as her maid a small blue snake who too could change into a young woman, she returned to Earth having been warned by the Xi Wangmu, the Goddess of the Western Heaven, not to abuse her magical powers.\n\nShe met the young scholar and they promptly fell in love. She explained that she was the daughter of a deceased army officer and lived in some style in a large house, produced by her magic, on the lakeside at Hangzhou. They were soon married and set up a herbalist store in which all three helped prepare and sell the medicines. White Snake enabled her husband's recipes gain widespread fame by the addition of a small addition of a magical powder and their fortunes were made. However, Xu began to be suspicious of the personality and origins of his wife and went to consult his old teacher, the Abbot Fa Hai at his monastery, Jin Shan Si, on the island in the Yangzi and sought his advice. The Abbot too was suspicious and gave Xu a potion to add to his wife's drink which would change any non-human back into its true self. To his horror his wife was revealed in her herpetological form and he, petrified, dropped dead with fright.\n\nThe power of the potion soon wore off and when White Snake found that her beloved husband was dead she went off to the Western Heaven to obtain herbs of resuscitation. Her husband, now recovered, was unable to get over his experience and lived a life of nervous apprehension. He returned to his teacher and explained what had happened. The Abbot explained that he too feared for Xu as both his wife and her maid must be transformed snakes who could do him great harm. Xu remained in the monastery in hiding. His anxious wife set out to find him and was met by the Abbot who ordered her away.\n\nShe",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216044,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 343,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "277\n\npleaded with him and explained that she was a good person and truly loved her husband. She added that she was due to bear his child in the not too distant future. The Abbot, who is the villain of the tale, would have none of it and White Snake at her wits end called on her allies, the fish and crustaceans of the Great River to her aid. The violent and prolonged rainstorm flooded the entire area around Jin Shan island in an attempt to free her husband and as the waters rose White Snake again pleaded with the Abbot offering to call off the dangerous river waters. He refused to listen, used his own cloak to quell the waters and even tried to catch her in his magical urn to incarcerate her but to no avail as she was protected by Wen Chang, the God of Literature, as her future son was destined to achieve the status of Zhuang Yuan, the First Scholar in the whole country. The Abbot immediately knew that he was no longer able to catch or destroy White Snake but would be able to do so once she had borne the child.\n\nThe Abbot gave Xu his magical urn and explained that once the son had been born he was to capture her in it and she would then be incarcerated forever. Xu returned home and after tearful explanations from both husband and wife they were reconciled, though once the child was born Xu threw the urn at his wife. Having been captured by the magic urn she turned back into her original form. Almost immediately the Abbot materialised and took the urn with its prisoner and placed it under the Thunder Peak Pagoda on the shores of Hangzhou's lake. Xu bitterly repented betraying his wife and sought obscurity as a solitary Buddhist monk far away.\n\nThe son grew into a handsome and talented youth and only when he had become the long forecast First Scholar, a Zhuang Yuan, was he told the sad tale of his ill-fated father and mother. At an auspicious time on an auspicious day he prepared an elaborate sacrificial ceremony in memory of his mother and there, before the Thunder Peak Pagoda he knelt in prayer. His mother, freed for a very short period as a gesture by the local guardian deity, appeared dressed in white. She approached her son and full of tears explained her love for his father and the sad ending, and especially the dreadful punishment she was suffering for having caused the deaths of so many innocent people in and around Zhenjiang by ordering the land to be flooded. She was escorted back to the Pagoda to continue her agony - for all eternity.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216309,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 68,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "17\n\nIn the early Qing Dynasty Longhua Temple received considerable attention in the form of repairs to the existing buildings and construction of new ones. A major construction project started in 1647 resulted in the completion of the Abbot or Temple Master's Room (Fang Zhang Shi) and the Wei Tuo Hall (Wei Tuo Dian), as well as the repair of the Scripture Storage Pavilion (Cang Jing Ge).\n\nIt will be recalled that during the Yuan Dynasty the temple experienced a massive expansion in the size of its territory, if not its actual structures. In 1672 the Qing authorities measured the size of the immediate area around the temple halls as occupying 93 mu of land, plus an additional 74 mu of open land in the surrounding area which was used to plant vegetables. It was this later open space which gradually evolved into first Longhua Park, and then the present day Martyr's Cemetery.\n\nDuring a 155 year period in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, from 1672 to 1827, no new construction, reconstruction or repairs were recorded. This begs the question as to why the temple was dormant during such a long period of time. Was it lack of imperial sympathy for Buddhism in general, or simply the absence of wars and destruction requiring later rehabilitation during this relatively peaceful time?\n\nAfter a century and a half of dormancy, the Taiping Rebellion finally provided the opportunity or the need for new construction and repairs. Between 1860 and 1862 the Taiping rebels attacked Shanghai three times, during which records say vaguely that most of the Longhua Temple buildings were destroyed. On August 18, 1860 the Taipings captured Xu Jia Hui, and it was probably then when the nearby Longhua Temple was destroyed. Although no list is provided of exactly which buildings were destroyed, we can infer from later lists of the structures rebuilt afterwards that this included the Great Sadness Hall (Da Bei Dian), the Precious Hall of the Great Hero (Da Xiong Bao Dian), the Heavenly Kings Hall (Tian Wang Dian), the Three Gods Hall (San Sheng Dian), the Maitreya Buddha Hall (Mi Le Fo Dian), the Drum Tower (Gu Lou), the Bell Tower (Zhong Lou), and the Big Buddha Hall (Da Fo Dian). Basically every previously existing key structure is mentioned as having been rebuilt after this period of destruction, with the exception of the die-hard Precious Pagoda (Bao Ta) and the Master's Room (Fang Zhang Shi), raising the possibility that the two structures which stand today are both authentic originals.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216315,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 74,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "23\n\nThe second courtyard is flanked on the left side by a two-story wooden Drum Tower (Gu Lou) and on the right by the matching two-story wooden Bell Tower (Zhong Lou). On the first floor of the Zhong Lou is a glass case holding a golden effigy of Kshitigarbha (Di Zang). Dizang is the bodhisattva who has the special power to rescue departed souls from Hell, and thus plays an important role in Buddhist funeral ceremonies. Upstairs on the second floor is the bronze bell which can be rung for a fee of 50 Rmb. On New Year's Eve this bell is rung 108 times at midnight. It is considered good luck to be there to hear it ring, and even better luck to be the one who rings it. The Zhong Lou was rebuilt by Qing Emperor Guang Xu in 1895, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862. The bell itself was made in 1894, during the 18th year of the Guang Xu reign of the Qing Dynasty. Beside the Zhong Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a partially legible inscription which has been damaged.\n\nOn the first floor of the Gu Lou is a glass case containing a golden effigy of Guan Yu, the God of War. In the Ming and Qing dynasties Guan Yu had temples dedicated exclusively to him in every city in China. The former Guan Di Miao can still be visited in Shanghai's Nanshi District. The second floor of the Gu Lou cannot be ascended, and it no longer seems to contain a drum. Beside the Gu Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a lengthy inscription in very good condition. The present Gu Lou dates from an 1895 reconstruction, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862.\n\nAcross the second courtyard from the Mi Le Dian is the Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang Dian). This hall dates from an 1881 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1981. The hall contains enormous gilded wooden statues of all four kings, two on each side of the hall. All four wear crowns on their heads and are dressed in heavy armor. One holds a four-string guitar and has a light green face, another holds a sword in his right hand and has a black face, a third holds an umbrella in his right hand and a small stupa in his left hand, and has a white face, while a fourth holds a snake and has a black face. This depiction is somewhat different than in the past. In the centre of the Tian Wang Dian are two glass cases containing golden effigies of two rather obscure Buddhist deities. Tian Guan Mi Le, a variant incarnation of Mi Le Fo, is depicted.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216317,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 76,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "25\n\nYin. While Guanyin has compassionate mercy for those in need, it is Da Shi Zhi who possesses the power to actually carry out her acts of kindness. The San Sheng Dian houses by far the oldest of Longhua's three bronze bells, this one supposedly dating from 1132, which would also make it the oldest historic relic the temple possesses today. The hall itself dates from an 1884 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1986.\n\nImmediately behind the San Sheng Dian is a walled garden with trees which unfortunately is closed to the public. Inside this walled garden is a fifth main hall, the Abbot's Quarters (Fang Zhang Shi), which is for the private use of the resident monks and their master, the Fang Zhang. It was the only hall which the monks maintained control of during the Cultural Revolution. Normally it is kept off limits to the public and cannot be visited. However, the author was able to steal a glimpse and found that the hall was furnished with rows of large armchairs, and lacked any large statues. Possibly it is a modern day form of the Meditation Hall (Chan Tang). At the far left end of the hall is a small office decorated with framed color photos of the temple's Buddhist leaders posing with Communist Party leaders such as Jiang Zemin.\n\nBehind the Abbot's Quarters is the sixth and final courtyard, and the sixth hall on the central axis, the newly built two-story Scripture Hall (Cang Jing Lou). This modern building holds most of the temple's few genuine relics, including a library of 7,000 Qing Dynasty volumes; a Ming Dynasty gold seal given to the temple in 1598 by the emperor Wanli (1573-1620); a Ming Dynasty gold-plated bronze Buddha statue; Tang Dynasty scriptures; and a copy of the Heart Sutra dating from the year 1098, the fifth year of the Zhe Zong reign (1085-1100) of Emperor Zhao Xu of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1126). Exactly how these relics survived the destruction of the Taiping Rebellion, the lengthy military occupation of the Min Guo era, and the Cultural Revolution is unclear. Possibly they were donated to the temple sometime later. Unfortunately the public is not welcomed to visit this sixth hall, and the relics are kept hidden from view, although photographs of them appear in a recent pamphlet sold at the temple's bookstore.\n\nHidden in a seldom visited corner of the temple grounds on the east side of the Fang Zhang Shi's walled garden is a smaller garden",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]