[ { "id": 204653, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "120 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nShanghai, travelled by junk from Yochow to Pingsan on the Yunnan border, 1800 miles from the mouth of the river; but were then forced to turn back because of the unsettled state of the country.\n\nIn 1894, the Australian A. G. Morrison,15 successfully completed a somewhat similar journey. Travelling alone and by the customary methods, Morrison went up the Yangtse from Shanghai to Chungking, and then across Western China and the Shan States into Burma, a total distance of 3,000 miles. Morrison was unable to speak Chinese, but travelled in Chinese dress, and experienced nothing but kindness and hospitality all the way. He went from Shanghai to Hankow as a deck passenger on the Jardine steamer Taiwo, paying a dollar a day extra to the steward for foreign 'chow'. From Hankow to Ichang he again travelled as a deck passenger on the China Merchants steamer Kweili, then the only triple screw steamer on the river. At that time Ichang was the last open port on the river, and no foreign ships went past there. For the next stage to Chungking, therefore, Morrison hired a small sampan called a \"weipan\", with a captain and crew of four. This stage of nearly 400 miles through the Yangtse Gorges took 15 days, which was a record at the time, and cost him the equivalent of £2-16-0 in copper cash.\n\nIn his journey up the river Morrison noticed that many of the largest trading junks flew foreign flags, thus avoiding paying “likin” at the various provincial and regional boundaries. Under treaty regulations they only paid an ad valorem duty of 5% on their cargo, which was collected by the Chinese Maritime Customs at Ichang or Chungking. Morrison left the river soon after Chungking, and travelled overland for the remainder of his journey. He found food plentiful and cheap everywhere, and opium growing all along the Chinese section of his route. The total cost of his whole journey from Shanghai to Bhamo was under £20.\n\nSir Reginald Johnston, a British consular official, followed fairly closely in Morrison's footsteps in 1906. He started from Peking, going from there to Hankow by rail, and then up beyond Chungking by steamer and junk, finally going overland to Mandalay.\n\n15 Later to become famous as \"Chinese Morrison\" of the Times.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204654, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE \n\n121 \n\nA mere recital of the dates on which the different ports and sections of the Yangtse were opened to foreign trade gives little idea of the difficulties encountered in establishing regular steamer services on the river. Some of these difficulties were political, some economic, and some technical. Physical factors inclined to divide the river into three sections - Lower, Middle, and Upper. The Lower River was the 600 miles from the mouth to Hankow, navigable for ships of up to 10,000 tons in the high water season, and for ships of about half that size all year round. The Middle River was the 340 miles from Hankow to Ichang, and this was navigable for 3,000 ton ships in the high water season, and for slightly smaller ships all year round. The third section was the Upper River, the 400 miles from Ichang to Chungking, which included the famous Yangtse Gorges. At Chungking the bed of the river is 600 feet above sea level, as compared with 130 feet at Ichang, and it is this fall of 470 feet in 400 miles, 1.17 feet per mile, which is the cause of the strong currents and rapids in this section of the river. Only small, very powerful, and specially designed ships could navigate the Upper River. There are some seventy gorges and rapids on the Upper Yangtse, and at some places the river is only 150 yards wide. It is probably the most dangerous stretch of water in the world, and the Chinese estimated that one in ten of junks going through were seriously damaged, and one in twenty lost, while a thousand lives were lost each year. Judging by the many accidents and near accidents, and the callous disregard of life shown by junk men, this is probably an under-estimate. There is some justification, therefore, for an old Chinese saying that \"it is more difficult to ascend to Szechuen than to heaven\". \n\nDuring the high water season ships of up to 1,400 tons could navigate the Upper Yangtse between Ichang and Chungking, but in the low water season ships of less than half that size could do so. Companies operating on the Upper Yangtse, therefore, had two types of ship, one for the high water and one for the low water season. \n\nThere was a bewildering variety of native craft operating on the different sections of the Yangtse, ranging from the large ocean-going junks which sailed on the Lower River and to coast ports, to the smallest junks on the highest reaches of the river above \n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204657, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "124\n\nA. D. BLUB\n\nwith the Middle River steamers for the next stage of Ichang. At Ichang another change was made into the Upper River steamers for the journey through the Gorges to Chungking, where motor launches took over for the final stages to Sui Fu and Chengtu. In the high water season some of the Lower River steamers extended their run to Ichang, and some of the Upper River steamers extended their run to Sui Fu, but Chungking was usually regarded as the upper limit of navigation for all practical purposes.\n\nChungking became internationally famous when it became China's war time capital. Before that it was comparatively unknown to the outside world, although, under various names, a city has occupied the site for some 4,000 years. It is a unique site, a high, rocky bluff on the peninsula formed by the junction of the Yangtse and the Kialing Rivers, nearly 1,400 miles from the mouth of the Yangtse, and in the very heart of China. At this point the normal variation between high and low water seasons is 75 feet, and has been known to reach 100 feet. In the low water season the city is reached by innumerable broad flights of steps leading up from the river, most flights having 240 steps. The transport of goods from the river to the city provided work for an army of porters and ponies. Until 1934 all the water for the city was carried up those steps by coolies who earned the equivalent of a farthing for a load of two heavy wooden buckets.\n\nWhen A. G. Morrison passed through the city in 1894 he estimated the population to be about 200,000. He described the coolies as being hungry and wretched in the midst of plenty, and riddled with malaria and phthisis. Although he estimated that about 40% of the men and 5% of the women were opium smokers, he thought it a law-abiding city. Szechuen is one of the richest provinces in China, and Chungking's exports included silk, hides and skins, bristles, tung oil, musk, rhubarb, and wool, some of these things coming from Tibet.\n\nThe loss of the German steamer Suichsiang in 1900 and a narrow escape of H.M.S. Woodlark in the same year, coupled with the Boxer troubles, postponed the establishment of a regular steamer service between Ichang and Chungking for several years. When this was eventually established in 1908 the honour belonged to a Chinese company, the Szechuen Steam Navigation Company. The formation of this company was largely due to the inspiration", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204658, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE \n\n125 \n\nand enthusiasm of Captain Cornell Plant who occupies the place of honour next to Archibald Little in the history of Upper Yangtse navigation. Little met Plant in London when the Pioneer was nearing completion, and infected Plant (whose previous experience of river work had been command of a paddle steamer on the Euphrates) with his enthusiasm for the Upper Yangtse. Plant took over the Pioneer and commanded her on her early voyages, and the Upper River fascinated him as it had Little. After the Pioneer was taken over by the Royal Navy, Plant built himself a large houseboat and traded successfully between Ichang and Chungking for several years, studying the Upper River in its varying moods and seasons. In 1907 he persuaded a group of Chinese merchants and officials in Chungking to make a further attempt to establish a regular steamer service, and the Szechuen Steam Navigation was formed, 40% of the capital coming from official sources. Their first ship, the Shuting, was built by Thorneycroft at Southampton under Plant's supervision, and he commanded her on her first voyage in 1908, and for the first five years of her successful operations.16 The Szechuen Steam Navigation Company's Shuting was soon followed by the China Navigation Company's Shutung, and both ships maintained a regular service between Ichang and Chungking, except for the three winter months — January to March — of low water. Both the Shutung and the Shuting were about 115 feet long with a draft of 3 feet, and both towed a float alongside for both passengers and cargo. If the current was too strong at any of the gorges or rapids the steamer went ahead on her own, tied up at the head, and then pulled the float up after her. Sometimes the steamer half steamed and half pulled herself up by her windlass. For this reason the Upper River steamers had very powerful windlasses and capstans, but even with this help there were some rapids it was impossible to overcome without further help. Then gangs of coolies called trackers, were employed, and there were villages at certain places whose sole raison d'être was to supply these trackers. The first steamer to go up the whole distance from Ichang to Chungking solely under her own power was the Szechuen Steam Navigation \n\n10 Plant joined the Chinese Maritime Customs in 1913 as River Inspector for the Upper River, which post he held at his death in Hong Kong in 1921. He is buried in Happy Valley alongside his wife. See his Glimpses of the Yangtse Gorges, 2nd edn., (Kelly and Walsh, 1936) which contains some interesting photographs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204659, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "126\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nCompany's second steamer Shu-hun, a larger and more powerful steamer than their Shuting, which was built by Yarrow's in 1913. It was not until the 1930's, however, that the majority of Upper River steamers were able to do the whole trip unaided.\n\nA unique feature of the Upper Yangtse was the trackers' paths cut in the hillside above the rapids, at some places as high as 30 or 40 feet above the river level. At the most dangerous rapids the junks were lightened of their passengers and most of their cargo, only a few men staying on board with the pilot to work the bow sweep and pole. The negotiation of the rapids required great skill on the part of the pilots, and instant obedience and co-operation from the junkmen and trackers, and it might take an hour or more of unremitting exertion to pull a junk up the worst 200 or 300 feet of one of those rapids. The trackers and junkmen would be encouraged and stimulated by drumming, and by the antics of the headman, to which they replied by a low, monotonous chanting. Some of the gorges were too precipitous for trackers' paths, and at such places junks had to wait for a strong, favourable wind.\n\nThere were frequent accidents, many of them fatal, at the more dangerous rapids, and special large-sized sampans were stationed at such places to rescue those who came to grief. These were called \"red boats\", and it was in a sampan of this kind that Sir Reginald Johnston travelled from Ichang to Chungking in 1906. One of the most dangerous rapids was the Hsin Tan, or New Rapid, 135 miles above Ichang, which was formed by a landslide some 300 years ago. It was here that the China Navigation Company's first Upper River steamer, the Shuting, was lost in 1937. The Hsin Tan was most dangerous in the low water season; other rapids were most dangerous in the high water season.\n\nThe Yangtse Gorges provide some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. Windbox Gorge and Witches' Mountain Gorge are the most famous of the Gorges. The latter is also the longest, being 20 miles long, with the river only 150 yards wide at some places. It is also probably the most beautiful and mysterious, in an awe-inspiring manner. As in Windbox Gorge, there are places where the passenger on a river steamer has the distinct impression that the mighty and almost sheer precipices actually overhang the river in places. There are caves high up in the cliffs, and villages over 1,000 years old clinging to ledges more", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204662, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n129\n\nMany of the Chinese government's most ambitious plans are connected with the Yangtse. The bridge at Wuhan, first mooted in 1913, was completed in 1958 at a cost of $35,000,000, and after only two years and four months work. This is of double-deck construction, and 4,465 feet long. The lower level carries a double railroad track, and the upper level vehicle and pedestrian lanes. The bridge crosses the river just below Hankow, and is high enough to allow the largest ocean ships likely to call at Hankow to pass under all year round. Then there is the Three Gorges Dam project, between Ichang and Chungking. This is to provide hydro-electric power, flood control, irrigation, and to improve navigation. A much greater project is the plan to divert Upper Yangtse water into the Yellow River, and surveys have been made to see how much of the Yangtse's flow can be diverted for this purpose.\n\nAt present that part of North and North West China drained by the Yellow River has 51% of the cultivated land of China, but only 7% of the surface water flow; while the area around and south of the Yangtse with only 33% of the cultivated land has over 76% of the surface water flow. From these vast schemes under-way or planned, it is plain that in the future the Yangtse will play an even greater role in China's history than in the past.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205329, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "84 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nChina coasters came from all parts of the Commonwealth, but with a preponderance of English, Irish, Scots, and Welshmen. There was never any lack of Welshmen, and no coaster was complete without its Jones or Evans, invariably prefixed by 'Dai' or 'Taffy'. Australians and New Zealanders were not uncommon, and there were also a few Anglo-Indians. In my time, however, I can recall only one Canadian and one South African. One pleasant feature of coast life was the friendship and harmony between deck and engine departments, something still too rare on home ships. The small number of Europeans on the average coaster may have contributed to this, seldom more than three mates and four engineers, with the radio officer often a Hong Kong Chinese.\n\nThe riverboats were a special species of 'China coaster', and many of their officers spent their entire careers on the Yangtse. The Lower Riverboats, which ran between Shanghai and Hankow, operated a fortnightly schedule, of which three days were spent in Shanghai and two in Hankow. During the summer months of high water, however, some Lower Riverboats continued to Ichang, which extended their schedule to three weeks. Jardines, the China Navigation Company, and the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company each had a daily sailing from Shanghai to Hankow, calling at the intermediate ports, of which the most important were Chinkiang, Nanking, Wuhu, Anking, Kiukiang, and Yochow and Shasi on the Middle River between Hankow and Ichang. The China Navigation Company's Lower Riverboats left the French Bund at three o'clock in the morning, so that they could navigate the tricky Lungshan Crossing at the estuary in daylight, and it was not unknown for junior officers to miss their ship. By catching an early morning train from Shanghai, however, they could rejoin at Nanking in the afternoon, an extreme form of pierhead jump.\n\nIf riverboat men were a special species of 'China coaster', the men who sailed on the Upper Yangtse were a distinct sub-species. The Upper Riverboats ran between Ichang and Chungking, the section of the Yangtse which included the famous and spectacular Yangtse Gorges. The men on these ships had some justification for considering themselves the aristocrats of the China coast. The slightest error in navigation, or the slightest engine mishap, would almost certainly have meant a serious casualty. The Gorge boats", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210956, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 18, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "June 24\n\nJuly 15\n\nProf. Alan Griffiths\n\n\"Victorian Flower Power'\n\nMr. Phillip Bruce\n\n\"The Bogue Forts'\n\nSeptember 29\n\nDr. Elizabeth Sinn\n\n'Kowloon Walled City' (repeat)\n\nOctober 17\n\nRev. Carl Smith\n\n\"History of the Wanchai District'\n\nOctober 28\n\nMr. Mitya New\n\n'Expatriates in Pre-Revolutionary China'\n\nNovember 27\n\nDr. Betty Wei Peh-T'i\n\n'Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China'\n\nFebruary 8\n\nMs. Veronica Pearson\n\n'Health and Welfare in Modern China'\n\nFebruary 27\n\nProf. Jean Chesneaux\n\n'China in the eyes of French intellectuals'\n\nLocal tours were made to the following places of interest: Wanchai and the Ruttonjee Sanitorium (7 November, led by Rev. Carl Smith and Dr. Elizabeth Sinn), Stonecutters Island (3 December, led by Phillip Bruce), the Hong Kong Bank Picture Collection (18 December, led by Mrs. Anita Wilson), Tai Po and Island House (9 January, led by Dr. Patrick Hase) and Sam Tung Uk Museum and Tin Hau Temple in Tsuen Wan (10 February, led by Dr. James Hayes).\n\nTours outside Hong Kong included two visits to Shekou, Humen and the Bogue Forts on 18/19 and 25/26 July organised and led by Phillip Bruce, and an eight-day visit to the Yangtse River Gorges starting 29 August led by Dr. Michael Lau.\n\nYou will, I am sure, agree that these activities have given a great deal of pleasure to members of the Society. Our thanks and appre-\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214970, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 66, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "22\n\nHan Suyin's patrimonial heritage is very specific, as her father originated from the Hakkas, or \"Guest People,\" a sub-group of ethnical Han Chinese, which initially meant displaced, dispossessed, and hungry peasants, the refugees from misery, migrating in millions from the regions struck by floods, droughts, foreign invasions, civil wars, and rural upheavals, and simply \"seeking a roof.\" The Hakkas themselves claim that they moved five times within recorded history, their first migration dating at about A.D. 311, and the fifth one at the end of the Taiping rising (i.e., in the sixties of the nineteenth century). Their culture was to a very large extent affected by the turbulence of political and social events, by their own relative insecurity in the territories of new settlement, and by the resulting enormous eagerness and ability to survive. For these particular reasons, a somewhat remote analogy can perhaps be drawn between the mobile, industrious, and hard-working Hakkas, dispersed among the settled Han population, and the Jewish enclaves dispersed in medieval Europe and in the contemporary world as well.\n\nIn the thirteenth century - the time of Gengis Khan's invasion and of the resulting third migration - Han Suyin's distant ancestors, named Chou, settled in Meihsien in the province of Kuangtung, a purely Hakka district. The wave of the Manchu-dynasty-inspired fourth migration (1680-1720) took some of them further to Szechuan, the region of Four Streams, a remote Chinese hinterland guarded from the outer world by the cliffs of Tibet, the Snow Mountains, and the Cold Mountains, and the dangerous Yangtse gorges. The recorded family history starts from the first ancestor, who arrived in Szechuan as an itinerant pedlar, most probably carrying across his shoulder a pole, with the baskets swinging at both ends to transport miserable personal property and sale goods.\n\nBy the nineteenth century, Han Suyin's family had managed to climb up the economic and social ladder, to attain the top echelon, i.e., the scholar-official-administrator class. They had become local landed gentry, the cornerstone of the Chinese feudal social setup, and this anachronistic setup might have continued ad infinitum, had it not, under pressure from the colonial superpowers, ultimately collapsed.\n\nHan Suyin's father, Chou Yentung, was born in 1886 in China already invaded by the French and the British, the two colonial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215597, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 374, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "324\n\nJapanese were able to demand the formal opening of Chongqing to steamers, and a clause to this effect was embodied in the Treaty of Shiminoseki. By this treaty, under the favoured nation clause, the Chongqing and the Upper Yangzi became open to the world and Little immediately applied to the then British Minister, Sir Claude Macdonald [of the later Boxer Siege fame], who encouraged Little to proceed and promised energetic support. Little ordered a twin-screw steamer to be built in Shanghai, fifty-five feet long and ten feet beam. It steamed at nine knots, and though he would have preferred a larger and more powerful vessel he had to cut his coat according to his cloth. This was the Leechuen.\n\nHe left Yichang on 15th February 1898 for the 500-mile voyage through the Gorges, ascending some 500 feet during the journey to Chongqing. The story, told by Archibald Little in his Through the Yangtse Gorges,2 describes the most frightening moment when at dusk in the Scissors Gorge, making about six knots they bumped over a sharp rock that cut through the inch planking, broke two hardwood frames and sent water spouting up over the saloon floor. Fortunately they soon spotted a steep patch of sand on to which they ran the boat. Then, overnight, they stuffed cotton, white lead and tallow into the cracks; nailed blankets down with planks all over and by dawn had stopped the leak sufficiently to be able to get under way again. The rock had only newly fallen from the cliff above and had been unknown to the pilot. They reached Chongqing eleven days up from Yichang and the only photograph I have seen of the Leechuen during her epic journey is a very fuzzy snap of high cliffs with the Leechuen amidstream, a not so large speck, her billowing smoke being almost twice her size.3\n\nTwo British gunboats, H.M.S. Woodcock and H.M.S. Woodlark, made the same journey fifteen months later in May 1899, and then, in June, the first merchant steamer, Pioneer, followed them up to Chongqing.\n\nWe now turn to William Mesny. In 1878 and 1879 he travelled across south-west and central China calling on the most powerful and influential officials and gentry, advising them to adopt modern means for developing the riches of the country and bettering their conditions.* Mesny was a Jerseyman who spent most of his life, from first setting foot in China in 1861 until his death in Hankou in 1919 endeavouring to make his fortune. He was never backward in relating how he had the ears of many of the most influential Chinese of the day and although", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216115, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 414, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "348\n\nregularly to eat a good curry),\n\nI see my embassy, tiny, great water reservoirs, the beginning of the magnificent Yangtse gorges, innumerable rice fields looking like contour lines, on a relief map. A splendid landscape in miniature, the kind the Chinese love for their gardens.\n\nI amuse myself by flying back and forth across the town. I go into crazy spirals opposite an American gunboat and climb in seconds, or so it seems, to 2,000 feet. There I decide to stop and wander about. I am worried about the Japanese who no doubt would come and bomb us and could well send a reconnaissance aircraft, which could easily come and shoot me down ... I am flying in Chinese military colours so I would be in the wrong.\n\nTowards 4:00 pm, I feel very tired. I have eaten my lunch, great nervous tension, since I have not flown for more than a year. Moreover, the seat is hard and the parachute is stifling me. I put out the braking flaps in order to descend and I realise that I have to dive at 90 degrees to lose height, so strong are the thermals in mid-river. I amuse myself for five or six minutes in doing turns right above the British Embassy and over the airfield, where I see thousands of Chinese. Finally, I put down at the end of the island in order not to land on the cranes. A perfect landing in 42 degrees of heat after a flight of four hours, 44 minutes.\n\nThe Asian duration and altitude records were broken at the first attempt. It was the first demonstration flight in China. That evening, the capital's newspapers gave the following news, in Chinese and English:\n\n\"New glider record registrated here, - Chungkin, April 25 (Central News). By remaining in the air for 4 hours and 44 minutes, M Louis de San, Belgian glider-flyer and honorary director of the Sino-French-Belgian Swiss Cultural Association, set a new endurance record for Asia to day. Flying a glider of the Aeronautical Affairs Commission, de San took off at 11:25 this morning. He gained an altitude of 5,700 feet.\"\n\nM", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216127, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 426, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "360 \n\ndate was April 25, 1940, but his contemporary annotation of photographs puts the date as May 24.\n\nConditions were perfect and there was no sign of the Japanese fighters which he feared could attack his plane - painted in Chinese military colours. Although at one point he lost altitude badly after dismissing his tow, he soon found the thermals and soared to 5,700 feet and stayed aloft for four hours 44 minutes, an Asian record.\n\nHe writes: 'I see my embassy, tiny, great water reservoirs, the beginning of the magnificent Yangtse gorges, innumerable rice fields looking like contour lines on a relief map. A splendid landscape in miniature, the kind the Chinese love for their gardens.'\n\nHe notes at one point flying over the Tutuila 'where I used to go for a good curry.' This U.S. Yangtse patrol boat with a displacement of 395 tons was marooned at Chungking by the Japanese occupation of areas down-river like Hankow. The USS Tutuila was bombed by the Japanese in July 1941, the first U.S. Navy ship damaged by Axis powers in World War Two. It was decommissioned in January 1942 and handed over to the Chinese in March under Lend-Lease and renamed Mei Yuan. One can imagine that in wartime Chungking, Europeans could be assured of a decent meal aboard a U.S. patrol boat that was more or less a permanent fixture at the quayside.\n\nPictures show Louis beside the machine with an air force pilot who was possibly the one who towed him up, and a few others nearby. Afterwards, massive crowds have gathered around Louis's plane to celebrate the record-breaking flight. He was justifiably proud of his achievement and maintained his interest in aviation, flying between subsequent diplomatic posts in a succession of small private planes.\n\nLouis de San was transferred to Hong Kong in 1941; on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, he secured a berth on a freighter which took him and his wife to Ceylon and they passed the war in Africa. Louis de San held various diplomatic posts for Belgium, ending in Damascus in the 1970s. He died in 1995.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216476, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 235, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "185\n\nTHE MAKING OF CORNELL PLANT THE PILOT\n\nAuthor's note\n\nMICHAEL GILLAM\n\nAlthough Cornell Plant died some ten years before I was born, he had an important place in my early memories of family visits to his younger brother, Uncle Charles Plant, There I heard the story of this grand old man of the river and his untimely death and that of his wife on their way home from China. In later years, when his papers were passed down to my parents I became more interested, particularly in the account of his adventures in Iran, where I had spent a year working with the Iranian Navy.\n\nWhen the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich expressed an interest in his papers and undertook to take some of them into safe keeping, the valuable contribution he made towards the opening up of the Yangtse Gorges to steam navigation became all too evident. Eventually, his remaining books, papers, photographs and other memorabilia came into my possession and, once I had retired, gave me the opportunity to study them in depth.\n\nBut it was not until I read the article on Cornell Plant by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society [Hon.Ed.-Vol.41] that I became aware of the world wide interest in his life and achievements. This article dealt mainly with his time in China, with only a brief mention of his early life. It also posed a number of questions about him and his wife Alice. The papers that he left behind him and the information that has come to light through the research of Plant enthusiasts over the years enables some of the gaps in his life to be filled and shines some light on the making of Captain Samuel Cornell Plant - 'Plant the Pilot.'\n\nThe early days\n\nCornell Plant was the third of four children born to Samuel Plant, a Suffolk farmer's son and his wife, Harriet, neé Bennett, daughter of a Suffolk village baker. Perhaps it was the proximity of the North Sea that caused Samuel Plant to make his career in the Mercantile Marine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216485, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 244, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "194\n\nThe move to China\n\nWhether his meeting with Archibald Little in the Oriental Club in London in 1899 was accidental as contended by some, or whether it was arranged by one or other of them is a matter of conjecture. The meeting itself was important to both of them. Archibald Little, an Imperial entrepreneur with an ambition to be the first to establish a regular passenger and steam service in the Upper Yangtse, was back in the UK to supervise the building of a paddle steamer designed for the task. He also needed an experienced and professional river pilot to command it. Cornell Plant needed just such employment. He must have been enthralled by Little's description of the great river, its problems and its dangers. The undoubted difficulties that Plant had overcome on the Karun River were trivial in comparison with the many natural hazards that existed in the Upper Yangtse that some claimed to make it the most dangerous river in the world. The annual snow melt in the high mountains and the seasonal rainfall over the whole area combined to produce variations in the height of water of as much as 150 feet - a scarcely believable phenomenon to a deep sea sailor. Plant was used to rocks, rapids and river water turbulence, but not the standing whirlpools, the moving whirlpools, the sudden holes that appeared in deep water and the rapidly changing nature of the river bed with every new rush of water down the feeder rivers of the great Yangtse Kiang. The talk must have whetted his professional appetite to such an extent that he even joined Little on his trip to Denny's of Glasgow where the new paddle steamer, the Pioneer, was being built. The result of their meeting was that Cornell Plant joined Archibald Little in China and took command of the Pioneer on her voyage up through the gorges, the first truly successful trip by a commercial vessel driven by steam.\n\nPostscript\n\nThis is the story of how Captain Samuel Cornell Plant came to be in China. His career as a trader, river pilot and finally Senior River Inspector of the Upper Yangtse is well covered in the article by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee. They also tell of the tragedy that occurred when Captain and Mrs Plant were on their way home on leave in 1921 accompanied by two young Chinese girls they were thought to have adopted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216491, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 250, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "4. This final photo is of Junie, his 'old three decker, the largest houseboat on the Upper Yangtse that he and his wife lived in while trading up and down the Gorges after the Navy took over the Pioneer.\n\n200", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]