[ { "id": 209708, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 365, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n343\n\nEven so, it is out of place in this volume, unless the title is intended to imply “a Chinese style of archaeology\" rather than \"the archaeology of China.\"\n\nThe first chapter is the only one of real substance in the book, at least for those seeking a reasonable summary and interpretation of Chinese archaeology, but it is marred by the unlabelled mixing of fact and opinion. Entitled \"The Beginning of Chinese Civilization,\" this recently revised essay presents an overview of the prehistoric and Shang periods. Cheng rightly points out the emergence of the various Early Neolithic cultures from their regional antecedents in the Paleolithic, though he is speculating wildly in assigning a date of 25,000 years before the present for this transition.\n\nUnfortunately, Cheng still clings to the outmoded “nuclear area hypothesis\" applied to the Late Neolithic. In spite of much evidence to the contrary (some of which is even mentioned in this essay), Cheng still maintains, as he has for many years, that \"the expansion of the Late Neolithic culture beyond the Central Plain was responsible for the diffusion of the new pattern of food production [cereal agriculture] in various parts of China.\" And, ignoring all the botanical, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence to the contrary, Cheng then claims that \"rice found a most agreeable home in the wet South\" after being introduced by farmers from the North. A few pages earlier, Cheng had described the important Ho-mu-tu site in Chekiang, i.e., in the South, as one of the most agriculturally advanced and the earliest dated Late Neolithic site excavated in China so far. Cheng also makes the highly disputable claims that painted pottery spread throughout China from a Yangshao origin, and that \"the expansion of the Mongoloid people into the South Seas [? the South China Sea] was an event closely related to the spread of agriculture in China.” Most archaeologists would not claim a single origin for all the painted pottery of China, and very little, perhaps nothing, is really known about the spread of \"Mongoloid people\" or agriculture in the Neolithic of East Asia.\n\nIn dealing with the earliest historical period, Cheng again on occasion mixes fact and good and bad hypothesis with pure conjecture and cultural bias. Cheng implies that Chinese writing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212380, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 322, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "299\n\nreligious practice apart, that is, from the ethnically different Boat People of the South China coast. I also explained that many of the spirit images I had obtained came from Shaoyang county in Hunan province and from the township of Wu Kang in particular. These locations could be pinpointed with accuracy from the slips of paper concealed in the cavities in the backs of the images which also gave dates and other details. The images housed, and in a few cases outwardly represented, as portrait images, the souls of dead individuals. The subject of spirit images, at that time, did not appear to have been described elsewhere and it was left in the air whether this custom was unique to Hunan and the western part of Kiangsi which joins Hunan province, awaiting further evidence.\n\nThis does not seem to have been forthcoming. However, one image with the cavity in its back still sealed, obtained very recently [November 1992] in Yangshuo, just south of Kueilin, from a stall packed with such images (the majority of which had the cavities in their backs open and empty) revealed that the image, said by locals to have been from Kueilin city itself, was also from Wu Kang. It had been carved and dedicated to a Mrs Ch'en in the thirteenth year of Tao Kuang (AD 1834), and whilst this does not answer the question whether the custom of having carved images of soul figures extended beyond Hunan and western Kiangsi, the large number of such images still available on stalls in China does highlight the popularity and extent of the custom within that limited area of China.\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nT'I-SHEN\n\n替身\n\nA SUBSTITUTE FOR A PERSON\n\nSome years ago a number of popular images commonly seen in a god carver's shop in Singapore were described by the carver as 'Half spirit and half demon', pan-shen pan-kuei.' They were all remarkably similar with only minor differentiating features though all had a surname on the back. The majority were female and were easily identifiable by the birds, one under each foot. The males were less easily identifiable though the surname on the reverse was the clue. Once or twice similar images were noted on altars in public temples", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214572, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 430, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "399\n\nAN UNUSUAL AND EXTRAORDINARY ANCESTRAL IMAGE\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nI wrote about Hunanese wooden ancestral images in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 18, 1978, when I explained that there were a number of such images on sale in curio shops in Hong Kong's Hollywood Road. Each represented an ancestor and usually took the form of an elderly or middle-aged man or woman often identified by a slip of red paper concealed in an opening in the back, sealed with a tight-fitting bung. Nearly all were impersonal figures, though several were well-carved portrait images. Since 1978, many more have appeared on the market, and even more have been seen in places as far afield as Yangshuo in Kuangsi province and Chengtu in Szechuan province, the majority still being identified by the red slip as having originated in Hunan province.\n\nRecently I acquired a most unusual image, portraying a hunter. His red slip gave little detail, merely listing his relatives who had ordered the image to be carved. It is presumably Hunanese, probably an ancestral image which can be dated very roughly by the iconographic detail and the copper coins concealed with the red slip within the cavity in the back. It stands some 11 inches high and has lost all of its original paint apart from minute lumps of non-chemical paint in crevices within the deep carving.\n\nHe is portrayed standing, facing half right, holding a muzzle-loading flint lock to his shoulder in both hands, and aiming it at an unknown prey. He is accompanied by a small dog which is also pointing at the same prey. The hunter is dressed in a jacket buttoned down the front with some five loop and cloth 'buttons', with a pouch at the waist at the front, a powder horn at the waist on his left side, and a further bag again at the waist at the back. He is wearing open-toed sandals and a standard peasant cloth cap.\n\nThe base of the image is decorated on three of the four faces with pictures of the hunt, animals such as the small deer brought down, a running rodent-like creature, and a rabbit. The fourth side of the base,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]